Beats International

TOTP 24 MAY 1990

Posted on December 24, 2020 by 80stastic

The 24th of May 1990 was not a slow news day as England football manager Bobby Robson chose this day to inform the media that he would not be renewing his contract after the Summer’s World Cup competition in Italy. Sir Bobby had a job lined up with Dutch club PSV Eindhoven which led to accusations from the tabloid press of him being unpatriotic. Hmm. It seems we haven’t progressed much in 30 years.

That year’s World Cup would become inextricably linked with the music world thanks to New Order’s “World In Motion” song but that’s for the next repeat’s post. For now though, we start with The B-52s and their follow up to their No 2 hit single “Love Shack” called “Roam”. I’d loathed “Love Shack” so probably wasn’t expecting that much from “Roam” but it it turned out to be vastly superior to its predecessor to my ears.

There seems to be a lot of discussion online about the true meaning of the song’s lyrics. On there surface an innocent message about freedom, travelling and seeing the world, the online conspiracy theorists would have you believe that it’s all just one big double entendre and is actually about the sexual act with lines like ‘Take it hip to hip, rocket through the wilderness, Around the world the trip begins with a kiss’ clearly being about cunnilingus! What?! Mind. Blown.

Moving on swiftly, for me the performance here and indeed the sound of the song is all about Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson and their rousing vocals which are just perfectly weighted for the song. So dominant are they visually that Fred Schneider, who had been so high profile in their performances of “Love Shack”, is relegated to shaking his tambourine almost absentmindedly throughout. I wonder if he was OK with that? Reminds me of a story I once heard about the single “Nobody’s Fool” by Haircut 100. When percussionist Mark Fox first heard it, he complained that there weren’t enough parts in it for him and he wasn’t going to just stand their on TOTP with a bloody tambourine thank you very much!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPR0morlE6w

There’s a parody of “Roam” called “Comb” which was a skit on Australian comedy sketch show Fast Forward about Pierson’ and Wilson’s hairstyles. There’s also a COVID-19 parody that I found on YouTube featuring lines like “No more hip to hip, keep your social distances” but now doesn’t seem the time to be dwelling on that.

“Roam” peaked at No 17 in the UK but went all the way to No 3 in the US.

The first video of the night comes from Mantronix featuring Wondress with “Take Your Time”. I have zero left to say about this one so I’ve had to plunge into the internet to come up with something. What I found chilled me to the bone. This single was taken from an album called “This Should Move Ya” the title of which alone should have been enough to set my warning bells ringing but nothing could have prepared me for what I found out about that album. It includes a version of “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll” by Ian Dury And The Blockheads! Obviously then I had to give it a listen and I’m not yet sure I have recovered. If you are brave, or possibly a masochist, listen to this….

Just horrible. Anybody involved in this heinous crime should hang their heads in shame.

“Take Your Time” peaked at No 10.

En Vogue are up next and actually in the studio for their very first visit to TOTP as presenter Anthea Turner advises. She also tells us that they have style and you have to admit she’s not wrong. They give a mesmerising performance including that a cappella intro which is actually a song within a song as it is a treatment of “Who’s Lovin’ You” by The Miracles.

I was amazed to see a filmography section in the band’s Wikipedia entry but they have actually appeared in three films – Aces: Iron Eagle III, their own Christmas movie and this fleeting cameo in Batman Forever whichI had no idea was them until now…

Four Breakers this week and Anthea Turner perversely announces them in the reverse order to the one that they actually appear. The first one then is actually Movement 98 featuring Carroll Thompson with “Joy And Heartbreak”. I had no recall of this at all before hearing it on this repeat at which point it did sound familiar but that’s probably because it is based on the melody of Erik Satie’s “Les Trois Gymnopedie”. No really. Listen to just a few seconds of Satie below…

and then play the start of the Movement 98 track….

…see? That classical music trick would be repeated later in the year when The Farm scored a huge hit with “All Together Now” which was based on Pachelbel’s Canon but that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Back to Movement 98 though and Wikipedia informs me that this was a Paul Oakenfold project with input from Rob Davis, the earrings and dresses wearing guitarist from Mud who would go onto write such huge hits as “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)” for Spiller and “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” for Kylie. As for vocalist Carroll Thompson, she has quite the musical pedigree. An award winning reggae singer, she was also a member of Floy Joy briefly and also sang on Aztec Camera’s “One And One” track from their “Love” album. She has also worked as a session singer with the likes of …deep breath…Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Natalie Cole, Pet Shop Boys, Robbie Williams, Boy George, Maxi Priest, Sting, Billy Ocean, Chaka Khan, Aswad and M People. Phew!

As well as Satie’s influence, “Joy And Heartbreak” also reminds me of something else which I can’t quite put my finger on. Is it Shanice’s “I Love Your Smile”? A Janet Jackson track maybe? It’ll come back to me …probably in the middle of the night.

“Joy And Heartbreak” peaked at No 27.

Right then, the era of Betty Boo is upon us. Having introduced herself to UK pop fans the previous year as the vocalist on Beatmasters’ single “Hey DJ / I Can’t Dance To That Music You’re Playing”, she was signed to Rhythm King Records on the strength of demos that she presented to them for “Doin’ The Do” and “Where Are You Baby?” with the former becoming her debut solo single. Mixing her hip hop roots with some irresistibly catchy pop hooks, the track was an immediate hit taking Betty (real name Alison Clarkson) to No 7 in the charts. She was a bona fide pop star in her own right.

The video worked well in promoting her cartoony rebellious image as she revisits her old school in a leather jacket and hot pants to take issue with the teachers who said she would amount to nothing. In a 2019 Classic Pop Magazine interview, Clarkson related the origin of the song:

“When I left my A-Levels I did have my tail between my legs,” she reflects, “in that [after the She Rockers split] I did go back to the head of sixth form and say, please may I come back and do my A-Levels again, and she said no. I was so annoyed with them. So I thought it’d be great if I just channelled that. I was sticking two fingers up, basically.”

For a while back there in 1990, Betty Boo was hot news. Her debut album “Boomania” went to No 4 in the charts and contained four hit singles. However, inevitably the hits dried up after taking two years to come up with a second album and she retired from the music world after losing her Mum to cancer. As with the aforementioned Rob Davis though, she would carve out a career as a successful songwriter penning hits for Girls Aloud, Dannii Minogue and the No 1 single “Pure And Simple” for Hear’Say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM_9As_2VAg

In a recent TOTP repeat we saw British rock act Thunder on the show and this week we get another of the acts of that early 90s UK rock scene in Little Angels. Having been in existence since 1984 after forming in Scarborough, the band had released four singles up to this point that had all failed to make the Top 40 but they rectified that with the release of “Radical Your Lover” which was their first chart hit peaking at No 34. If you check out the details of the release, it’s actually credited to Little Angels and The Big Bad Horns with the latter being a trio who provided the brass parts to complement their out and out rock sound.

Listening back to this now, it seems almost interchangeable with that of Thunder but then I’m not a die hard fan. Having said that, I did own a copy of their No 1 1992 album “Jam” at one point which was a freebie from Our Price – record companies would often supply the chain and its shops with a promo copy of their artists’ albums ahead of official release date to play in store to ‘create a buzz’ about it. Not sure what happened to my copy though. I also once saw them do a PA at Manchester’s HMV store to promote that “Jam” album. They performed a short set and they sounded pretty good to be fair.

More interesting than any of the above though is the fact that the band’s guitarist was called Bruce Dickinson. Yes! Exactly the same as Iron Maiden’s lead singer! What are the chances?!

Talk Talk in the charts in 1990 with a re-release of a single that flopped when originally issued in 1984? What gives? Well, “It’s My Life” had been reissued by EMI to promote the band’s first ever Best Of Collection called “Natural History: The Very Best of Talk Talk” which the band themselves had disproved of. It performed surprisingly well commercially given that the band only ever achieved three Top 40 singles despite much critical acclaim. So well that EMI released a remix album the following year called “History Revisited: The Remixes” which angered the band so much that they sued EMI claiming that material had been falsely attributed to them. Talk Talk won the case with EMI agreeing to withdraw and destroy all remaining copies of the album. I would have been working in Our Price at that point but I must admit I can’t remember having to take that album off sale.

It seems that the band were never on that good terms with their record company. As far back as the single’s original release six years previous, EMI had interfered with the band’s creativity when, disliking Tim Pope’s original video showing Mark Hollis with lips sealed and covered by animated lines (a statement against lip synching), they insisted on another video which was basically the band performing against a back drop of said original promo. The band’s exaggerated movements suggest that they weren’t totally on board with EMI’s idea!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ooj-y3LLuE

As for me, back in 1984, I’d liked “It’s My Life” on its original release and also subsequent singles “Such A Shame” and “Dum Dum Girl”. I’m pretty sure I had plans to purchase the parent album also called “It’s My Life” but somehow that purchase never materialised. The 1990 re-release peaked at No 13.

Two songs we’ve already seen on the show before are up next starting with “Won’t Talk About It” by Beats International. Featuring Lindy Layton on vocals, I’m pretty sure this would have been the band’s last ever TOTP appearance as they never made the Top 40 again after this single.

Although Lindy attended stage school in the 1980s and appeared as an actor in TV shows such as Casualty and Press Gang alongside numerous adverts, she did not, contrary to rumours, appear in Grange Hill. Apparently the press reported at the time that she had been in the long running school drama but they had confused her with the actress Lindy Brill who played Cathy Hargreaves. Maybe the reason for the confusion was that Brill did seem to have some musical chops. Witness her here in a story line about her school band who were rehearsing for a scout hall dance gig in the school’s music room at lunchtime….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUFX2LFCYac

The scout hall dance gig was small fry though compared to actually being on TOTP itself, a feat which Brill achieved as part of the St Winifred’s School Choir backing singers on Brian and Michael’s No 1 hit “Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs” some 12 years before Lindy Layton fronted Beats International on the show. Lindy Brill – only the woman Lindy Layton could have been.

“Won’t Talk About It” peaked at No 9.

Oh come on now! Seriously?! Michael Bolton on again?! How many times is this? Three? Four? It’s just the same old clip of that original performance of “How Can We Be Lovers” recycled again and again to boot. OK – let’s look on the bright side. Despite a haul of 17 chart hits in the UK, we won’t see Bolton on the show again for at least another year as his next three single releases didn’t make the Top 40 and he would only make the Top 10 twice more; once with a cover of Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman” in 1991 and secondly with the creepily titled 1995 No 6 hit “Can I Touch You…There?”. Bolton also had a hit with a song called “Said I Loved You But I Lied” – I’m starting to think Michael might not be all that nice a guy.

A song next which seemed to be the go to track if you wanted to cover it for a hit. Like most people, I knew “Venus” from the Bananarama version of it in 1986 rather than the Shocking Blue 1969 original. However, it’s also been covered by the likes of Tom Jones through to Weird Al Yankovic via Sacha Distel. Weird is certainly the word. In 1990, it was revitalised once more by Italian / German dance project Don Pablo’s Animals who took it all the way to No 4 in our charts. It’s a horrible instrumental version though with that omnipresent ‘whoo, yeah’ sample all over it. Just nasty.

And that name? What was that all about? Here’s @TOTPFacts with a decent guess:

Why the name "Don Pablo's Animals"? Here's my (unconfirmed) theory: it's a reference to "Don" Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drugs baron, who notoriously built a zoo on his estate, stocking it with antelope, elephants, giraffes and hippos. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 18, 2020

Oh OK. So Don Pablo was basically a prototype Joe Exotic of Tiger King notoriety. Joe, of course, liked a sing-song (before was sentenced to 22 years in prison for hiring someone to murder his nemesis Carole Baskin) . Here he is with “I Saw A Tiger”…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB6wYVCEY3w

Wikipedia advises me that it wasn’t really him doing the singing though. Say it ain’t so Joe.

Back to Don Pablo’s Animals, I think my wife had this on a “Smash Hits Rave” compilation album which, after a quick google search, shows me that it also included Betty Boo’s “Doin’ The Do” from earlier in the show. I have never played said album in my life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKVM8MVp9sI

In a very static Top 5, Adamski (featuring Seal) comes out on top for a third straight week with “Killer”. It’s the video this week rather than a studio performance. It’s pretty basic looking stuff by today’s standards with Seal’s body less, spinning head enhanced by some flashing graphics. Adamski himself also features as some sort of Dr Frankenstein figure with Seal portrayed as his creation.

The song has been covered numerous times most famously by George Michael and by Seal himself but there are other versions too. Witness Sugababes who recorded it as a B-side to their 2003 single “Shape”:

Four years before that, there was this vile version from German trance act ATB in 1999 which I must have voided from my memory banks and for good reason:

The play out video is “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by Was (Not Was). I would have had no clue as to when this was a bit. I’d have maybe gone for later in the decade to be honest but this cover of The Temptations classic by David and Don Was (not their real names) was the lead single from their fourth studio album “Are You Okay?”. It didn’t do much for me I have to say but I did like the other two singles lifted from the album which were “How the Heart Behaves” and “I Feel Better Than James Brown” neither of which made the Top 40.

In a neat bit of symmetry, Don Was produced four tracks on The B-52s album “Cosmic Thing” from which opening song on tonight’s show “Roam” was taken (although not that track itself but he did produce “Love Shack”).

For the sake of posterity, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v2dEufstZ8

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The B-52s	Roam	I didn’t
2	Mantronix featuring Wondress	Take Your Time	I could take all day but I won’t change my mind about this – no
3	En Vogue	Hold On	Nah
4	Movement 98 featuring Carroll Thompson	Joy And Heartbreak	Nope
5	Betty Boo	Doin’ The Do	No but my wife had it on that Smash Hits Rave album
6	Little Angels	Radical Your Lover	No
7	Talk Talk	It’s My Life	No but I have it on a compilation CD of theirs (not Natural History though)
8	Beats International	Won’t Talk About It	No but my wife has their album with a version of it on
9	Michael Bolton	How Can We Be Lovers	NO!
10	Don Pablo’s Animals	Venus	See 5 above
11	Adamski	Killer	No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on
12	Was (Not Was)	Papa Was A Rolling Stone	No but I have it on their Best Of compilation Hello Dad…I’m In Jail

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qcx2/top-of-the-pops-24051990

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 10 MAY 1990

Posted on December 15, 2020 by 80stastic

I haven’t done this in a while but here is a quick retread of what this blog is about. I, a 52 year old middle aged man, am reviewing each of the TOTP repeats broadcast on BBC4 whilst also trying desperately to remember what I was up to 30 odd years ago when they were originally aired. I’ve been doing this for four years since the TOTP shows got up to 1983 and we are now into 1990! The years ’83 – ’89 are covered in my blog 80spop.wordpress.com whilst ’90 onwards will all feature in this blog. Why am I doing this? I ask myself this question constantly. I guess it’s not to discover ‘new’ music although there are often songs and acts that come up that I have forgotten about or never took any notice of in the first place. I can’t think of many though that have inspired me to delve into any deeper cuts by said acts and discover new musical frontiers. I guess I must just be a sucker for nostalgia and given the state of the current world, who wouldn’t want to escape to a different era for a while to pretend 2020 isn’t happening? Come on then, let’s flee back to 1990 – I’m 21 (soon to be 22) and with my whole life ahead of me…..

Up until this point, Kylie Minogue had pretty much always been regarded as a Stock, Aitken and Waterman pop puppet, singing and dancing and smiling along to their conveyor belt of formulaic songs that they seemed to have an endless supply of. And it had served her well. Her nine single releases with The Hit Factory had yielded four No 1s, four no 2s and a No 4. Not too shabby at all. However, by 1990, following in the footsteps of many other manufactured pop stars stretching all the way back to the 60s and The Monkees, Kylie wanted to be taken more seriously. “Better The Devil You Know” is undoubtedly the starting point for that journey into credibility. Acting like a ‘year zero’ marker, it appeared fully formed out of the changing rooms of pop and said in a confident tone “What do you think?”. After getting over the ‘wow!’ factor of this performance, I think I must have been taken aback at the accomplished sound that SAW had managed to come up with for Kylie. For let’s not forget, “Better The Devil You Know” is a SAW creation in its entirety from its writing through to its production. However, the parent album “Rhythm Of Love” was the first time that Kylie was allowed more creative freedom and resulted in working with producers other than SAW on four tacks that also resulted in credits as co-writer for her. However, the four singles that were taken from the album that really solidified this new era of Kylie were all SAW productions.

Kylie is nine days older than me so, just as I was about to turn 22 and facing up to those big life decisions of what to do next, she was also making some major life choices*. She had already left Neighbours and had starred in a much more gritty vehicle in the film The Delinquents, a coming of age romantic drama. More influential than any of this though was the fact that she was now dating INXS frontman Michael Hutchence. A lot has been made and written about the corrupting effect of wild man of rock Hutchence on little girl next door Kylie but I am of the opinion that Ms Minogue had more than enough about her to be making her own career and life choices. I’m sure Hutchence was an influence but let’s face it, “Better The Devil You Know” doesn’t sound like any INXS song I know.

Generally referred to as the ‘Sexy Kylie’ era of her career, certainly this release ushered in a change of image with the video for “Better The Devil You Know” featuring Kylie recreating the replicant chase scene from Bladerunner where Deckard guns down a see through mac clad Zhora and cavorting about in a black dress with the straps constantly falling down.

“Better The Devil You Know” would peak at No 2 (kept off the No 1 spot only by Adamski with “Killer”) but the album would not sell nearly as well as her first two long players. She would complete her contract with the PWL label in 1991 with the release of “Lets Get To It” before resurfacing in 1994 as ‘Dance Kylie’ with the release of her “Confide In Me” single on Mike Pickering’s Deconstruction label.

*Obviously we took very different career paths on the back of those decisions – my time as a gay icon is yet to happen I have to admit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qycwEwZljcI

The Wonder Stuff up next with “Circle Square”. Miles Hunt and co had been making steady inroads into the business of being a chart act for a couple of years now. After their first chart breakthrough in 1988 with “It’s Yer Money I’m After Baby” which made No 40, the Stuffies had notched up a further three hit singles peaking at Nos 28, 19 and 33. “Circle Square” would continue that consolidation by topping out at No 20.

As far as I can work out, it wasn’t taken from their then current album “Hup” but rather was a stand alone single although it was included in the track listing on its 21st anniversary rerelease in 2010. I liked this and the lyric “I’ve been a long term disappointment to myself” has stuck with me these past 30 years like a personal statement (see also “I failed my own audition” from “Up Here In The North Of England” by The Icicle Works).

However the band would have to wait another year before becoming a massive commercial success when the release of their hit single “Size Of A Cow” propelled them into the Top 5 and parent album “Never Loved Elvis” into the Top 3. Their decision to hook up with Vic Reeves for a cover of Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy” in October of that year would grant them a bona fide chart topper. However, would that be the moment it all came right or the moment it all went wrong?

It’s the man known as Mantronix next alongside vocalist Wondress with a tune called “Take Your Time”. This was the follow up to their No 4 hit “Got To Have Your Love” and it did / does absolutely nothing for me. I’m not the world’s biggest electro-funk fan it has to be said but this sounds as convincing as a Boris Johnson promise.

Asked in a Smash Hits interview who he would rather go out with from a choice of Margaret Thatcher (!), Tanita Tikaram or Kylie, Kurtis Mantronix replied none of them on the basis that:

Mrs Thatch had no compassion (fair point)
Tanita was in a different frame of mind to him
He didn’t know what Kylie looked like!

Hang on, you’re on the same TOTP show as her! Weren’t you watching her perform at the top of the show Kurtis? When pressed on this by his manager Chuck (“You didn’t see her yesterday at Top Of The Pops? She’s real cute man.”) Mantronix replied “No! You guys saw her. I was back in the dressing room. She has no sensuality.” Whaaat?! No sensuality?! Kylie?!

“Take Your Time” peaked at No 10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vU_IWxWBug

Teen sensations New Kids On The Block are back with their latest offering “Cover Girl” and if you though their previous hits like “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” and “Hangin’ Tough” were drivel, then I advise you not to watch the video below. “Cover Girl” is bubble gum pop taken to a new saccharine low. Propelled by a Wurlitzer sounding organ backing and some of the dodgiest lyrics of all time, this one not only reeks but it stinks the place out. The video is just the band performing live to an adoring audience (didn’t they do the same thing for the “Hangin’ Tough” video?) with Donnie Wahlberg taking lead vocal duties and making a right arse of himself. He absolutely honks at some points in the song and just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse he gets a pre-pubescent little girl on stage with him and sings to her that she’s his ‘cover girl”. Jeeze! Could he be anymore inappropriate?!

“Cover Girl” peaked at No 4 and be warned. New Kids On The Block are not yet done with 1990; not by a long chalk.

1990 didn’t just belong to New Kids On The Block though. Here are one of the year’s biggest break out stars Beats International back in the charts with “Won’t Talk About It”. Having hit on the perfect pop / dance formula with “Dub Be Good To Me”, could Norman Cook, Lindy Layton et al repeat the trick with this new track? I say new but it had already been released as a double A-side together with “Blame It On The Bassline” under the name of Norman Cook back in 1989. That version included Billy Bragg’s vocals alongside his guitar riff from “Levi Stubbs Tears”…

When reissued under the name of Beats International the following year, Lindy Layton and Lester Noel’s had laid down their vocals on the track instead and it sounded much more polished and chart friendly though not necessarily better in my book. To answer the question of whether they could repeat the success of “Dub Be Good To Me”, the answer was yes…and no. “Won’t Talk About It” was another chart hit and even made the Top 10 but its No 9 peak was nowhere near what its predecessor had achieved. It would also prove to be their last ever Top 40 entry before they eventually disbanded in 1992. Whilst Cook went onto massive success under various pseudonyms (most notably Fatboy Slim), Lindy Layton secured herself a solo career via a recording contract with Arista. Her first single was a cover of Janet Kaye’s “Silly Games” (which Kaye also featured on) and was a No 22 hit but it was a case of diminishing returns after that for future releases. Lindy is still in the music business as a song writer and co-runs house label Good Lucky Recordings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4zkj40jCWg

I’m being absolutely tortured by the Michael Bolton appearances in these TOTP repeats. Here he is again with “How Can We Be Lovers”. I knew he would be coming up and that I’d have to confess my Bolton concert story at some point but I wasn’t planning on having to reference it so many times. Look, it was a long time ago and it wasn’t my idea OK?!

“How Can We Be Lovers” was written by Diane Warren and Desmond Child who between them have also penned the following soft rock ‘classics’:

Cher – “Just Like Jesse James”
Bon Jovi -“You Give Love A Bad Name”
Bon Jovi – “Livin’ On A Prayer”
Aerosmith – “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)”
Aerosmith – I Don’t Want Miss A Thing”
Starship – Nothings’s Gonna Stop Us Now”

Depensing on your tastes, that’s either some track record or a charge list of crimes against music.

In 1991, when I was working at Our Price in the Market Street store in Manchester, Bolton released an album called “Time, Love And Tenderness” (the title track was written by the aforementioned Diane Warren) and the picture of him on the front cover looked remarkably like one of our Assistant Managers called Rob (if you ignored all that hair which Rob didn’t have). I’m guessing it wasn’t the most flattering thing anyone had ever said to him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVzV63dld-w

“Hold On” by En Vogue is the next song on tonight’s TOTP playlist. This was not only a No 2 hit in the US and a No 5 hit over here but also an award winning track picking up the R&B Single of the Year pot from Billboard and the Best Single by a Duo/Group title from Soul Train. Given those accolades, it’s fair to say that En Vogue very much paved the way for a slew of female R&B groups of the 90s including Brownstone, Jade, Destiny’s Child, SWV and TLC.

I could never really get on board with “Hold On” though. It really wasn’t my scene in 1990 (if indeed I had a scene) but I did go on to appreciate En Vogue more as the decade progressed with songs like “Free Your Mind” and “Whatta Man” expanding my musical horizons. Free your mind indeed.

It’s new No 1 time and as confidently predicted by Simon Mayo on last week’s show, it’s “Killer” by Adamski and Seal. It’s another studio performance and the ballet woman from the other week is back and is still doing her thing in the background. And I thought Howard Jones’s mime artist Jed was annoying!

I saw Seal live in the early 90s at the Manchester Apollo but I can’t recall much about it other than his voice was amazing. I’d forgotten that, following in the footsteps of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, his debut album was on the ZTT label and was produced by Trevor Horn. Apparently there are two versions of the album in circulation. One is a ‘premix’ version and the second and more common is the updated remix. According to Seal, the two versions exist because he and Trevor Horn had very little time to finish the first version (due to needing to get some single releases mixed and out into the market) and also because of never knowing when enough tinkering is enough or as Seal puts it “a bad habit that Trevor and myself share, the inability to let go” (thanks to http://futureloveparadise.co.uk/ for that quote).

Do you get the impression that I’m finding it easier to comment on Seal rather than Adamski?!

Despite the seemingly endless smorgasbord of dance tunes populating the charts in the 90s, there was also room for some hard rockin’ dudes and I don’t mean the established acts like Def Leppard and Whitesnake. No, these were new names that emerged within the new decade. Tearing up the Top 40 with their brand of hard but melodic rock were the likes of Little Angels, The Quireboys, Terrorvision and this lot Thunder who are back on the show with their new single “Backstreet Symphony”. This was the title track from their debut album, an album that would generate five Top 40 singles – not bad going although that statement is tempered by the fact that none of them actually made it into the Top 20. Even so, it was a pretty impressive start. With former Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor producing it, the album was certified gold for shifting 100,000 units. However, in a piece on the band on rock journalist Dave Ling’s website, Thunder guitarist Luke Morley says of working with Taylor:

“He’d just say, ‘Do it louder and faster, and I’ll mix the drinks’”

Hmm. A genius at work no doubt.

I didn’t mind this track although I’d preferred their previous single, T-Rex rip off “Dirty Love”. One more thing, why is it that there always seems to be at least one member of these long haired rock bands that stands out by either having a short haircut or actually being bald?

“Backstreet Symphony” (the single) peaked at No 25.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87BRGJf3wTU

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lDfZTyCyhY

fdghjkl;

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Kylie Minogue	Better The Devil You Know	No but I think my wife has a Greatest Hits album with it on
2	The Wonder Stuff	Circle Square	Nope
3	Mantronix featuring Wondress	Take Your Time	I could take all day but I won’t change my mind about this – no
4	New Kids On The Block	Cover Girl	Away with your nonsense!
5	Beats International	Won’t Talk About It	No but my wife has their album with a version of it on
6	Michael Bolton	How Can We Be Lovers	NO!
7	En Vogue	Hold On	Nah
8	Adamski	Killer	No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on
9	Thunder	Backstreet Symphony	I did not

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000q5l5/top-of-the-pops-10051990

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 22 MAR 1990

Posted on November 19, 2020 by 80stastic

It’s two thirds of the way through March in 1990. The 21 year old me is still unemployed and has been since the start of the year. My girlfriend is miles away in Hull while I languish in poverty and hopelessness back in my parents’ house in Worcester. The only highlight of this particular week was my beloved Chelsea winning an actual trophy on the Sunday after this TOTP was broadcast. Back then, Chelsea were not the trophy winning machine they are now so any cup win was a big deal. The Zenith Data Systems trophy may seem like a joke to johnny come lately fans now but winning a final at Wembley was a huge deal for us diehards back then. Unfortunately, this was 1990 and very few games were being shown live on terrestrial TV so I couldn’t witness it live but my brother’s mate who has a Sky dish taped it for me and I watched the whole thing back on a VHS the following day. Apparently Moore’s Leisure Centre in Stockton was the place to go though. There was even a fellow Chelsea fan in there…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8f7G26wO4o

Enough football though. This is a music blog so play on sir and after last week’s ‘TOTP in decent tunes shocker’ episode, the question now is will that continue into this week’s show?

It’s a poor start. In fact, it’s a shocking start as the opening act are those three berks collectively known as Big Fun though why anybody would derive any fun (big or otherwise) from this turd fest, I have no idea. They’re in the studio after last week’s Breakers slot to perform their hit single “Handful Of Promises” and guess what? Absolutely everything about this is dreadful. The song, the bag of a fag packet dances moves …everything. Smash Hits ran a competition to win a copy of this single and I think the question they posed says it all about Big Fun:

Which of the following is an anagram of one of the Big Fun hunks’ name?

Is it :

BIG WOBBLY NETHER REGIONS
CHEST LIP WRICK
DIPSTICK OF THREE

Heh. “Handful Of Promises” peaked at No 21.

I sometimes wonder if Erasure get the credit they deserve. Their longevity alone should be recognised (2020 is the duo’s 35th year together) whilst their creativity and productivity has been prolific. Their stats alone are amazing:

35 x Top 40 singles
16 x Top 10 singles (including 1 x No 1)
18 x studio albums
4 x No 1 studio albums
1 x No 1 Greatest Hits album
1 x Ivor Novello award for Most Performed Work
1 x BRIT award for Best British Group
1 x Mercury Music prize nomination

Despite all of the above, I wonder if they are unfairly seen now as a retro act permanently tied to the 80s and early 90s of their imperial phase. I would also put Duran Duran in that category and yet a peer like U2, who although undoubtedly having their critics and detractors, are seen as somehow more ‘credible’? Is it just a rock v (electro) pop prejudice?

Anyway, that Ivor Novello award mentioned above was actually for this single “Blue Savannah” which had a limited edition 30th anniversary re-release this year as part of Record Store Day.

One of those pesky electronic dance acts next that caused the TOTP producers so many problems with what to do with them on the show. When dance music exploded at the end of the 80s, permeated the mainstream and produced bona fide chart hits, TOTP was left with the problem of how to put them on the show. The hypnotic beats as pop songs and faceless DJs as pop stars format was TV kryptonite for a popular music TV show and so it came to pass that Orbital (brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll) served up one of the most lacklustre performances in the show’s history when they were on to promote their dance anthem “Chime”. The brothers give a wonderful interview in the TOTP – The Story of 1990 film about said performance. They pushed just about every TOTP producer button when they :

Refused to mime
Left plugs on their keyboards to show they weren’t playing live
Refused a dancer on stage with them and so when one was forced upon them, refused to acknowledge she was even there
Wore T-shirts with political slogans on them (‘No Poll Tax’) when they had been explicitly told such behaviour was outlawed

Excellent work all round lads!

I always get Orbital confused with The Orb (not being a dance head and all) which to an 80s pop fan must be the same as a clubber confusing Howard Jones with Nik Kershaw! Blasphemy!

“Chime” reached a high of No 12 and the duo would return with even bigger hits later in the decade with “Satan” and the theme tune to the The Saint film reboot.

Fed up of dance tunes yet? No? Good because here’s another from 49ers who are back in the charts with their second of two Top 20 hits in “Don’t You Love Me”. Please note that these Italo Housers from Brescia are just 49ers and not The 49ers (think Eurythmics and not The Eurythmics). This is important as there is another musical act called The 49ers who are a hip-hop duo from Newark, Delaware who consist of members Jas Mace and Marchitect (I’m not making this up).

Yeah…you got me. I’ve got nothing else to say about 49ers so I’m just filling time….

…until the Breakers! Thank God! We start with another tune that I don’t remember at all and it’s a collaboration between Queen Latifah and De La Soul with “Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children”. Queen Latifah is one of those artists who seem to have been around forever but I’d be hard pressed to name any of her songs as demonstrated by me not knowing this one. I’d probably know her filmography better than her discography to be honest. She’s great as Motormouth Maybelle in the 2007 version of Hairspray for example.

Having listened to “Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children” though, it’s definitely a tune and De La Soul provide that extra special ingredient to make it a potent dish. An embarrassing spoonerism from Gary Davies when he introduces the Queen as Queen La-feet-ah doesn’t take anything away from the track.

Now despite all this dance music bouncing around the charts back in 1990, somehow there was also room for some soft metal from a band that we hadn’t seen for a couple of years. Heart had staged a delayed assault on the UK charts back in 87-88 when they broke big with Top 3 hit “Alone” before belatedly finding an audience over here for their back catalogue which also made the charts when re-released off the back of that breakthrough hit. Fast forward to 1990 and here are the Wilson sisters again back with a new song in “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” which turns out to have some of the most excruciatingly cringey lyrics ever committed to vinyl.

It’s basically one of those story songs but it’s completely ill advised. For a start there’s the plot about a woman who picks up a male hitch-hiker with the sole intent of taking him to a motel to have sex in an attempt to get pregnant. She then departs the next day leaving a note for the guy saying not to try and contact her. Inevitably they then run into each other years later with his child and she admits to him that she only did it because the man she is in love with is not able to father children. Look, I’m not making any judgements about the protagonist’s behaviour at all but is that really the best subject matter for a song? The band themselves hated it – they didn’t write it, rather it was penned by producer ‘Mutt’ Lange and they felt pressurised to record it. Here’s singer Ann Wilson from a 2017 ultimateclassicrock.com interview:

“I didn’t believe in the way the original lyrics were devaluing the man in the story. Just going, ‘Yeah, I can pick you up. We can have a night of love. We can never even know each other’s names. You can be so miraculous, and then I can just get up and leave you a note and walk out on you. Have a baby and sort of gloat about your surprise when you see the kid.’ To me, that was kind of an empty, weird, sort of hateful story.”

The song was actually banned in Ireland because the main character was a woman advocating random sex with a hitchhiker and the band didn’t play it live for years.

Then of course there are those lyrics. Here are a few of Lange’s (ahem) ‘beautiful’ words:

So we found this hotel
It was a place I knew well
We made magic that night
Oh, he did everything right

He brought the woman out of me
So many times, easily
And in the morning, when he woke
All I left him was a note

Eewww! And pray, what did the note say?

I told him I am the flower
You are the seed
We walked in the garden
We planted a tree

I mean really. It reminds me of another salacious story song – “Platinum Blonde” by Prelude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcHUvZIVv6A

Enough muck! Something a little more edifying please? Oh come on! What fresh hell is this? A dance version of a Phil Collins song? Talk about a double whammy of crapness! As far as I can tell, Jam Tronik were a German dance project who specialised in making naff dance versions of well known songs. There only UK hit single (peaking at No 19) was “Another Day In Paradise” – like the world really needed such a thing! Some of the other artists whose work they bastardised included The Carpenters, Meatloaf and Ben E. King.

As hateful as this is, it’s not the worst Phil Collins incident I have been witness to this week. I was watching some TV quiz show about music presented by that bloke from JLS and his partner the other day and they had AJ Pritchard on it – you know, that Strictly Come Dancing professional dancer whose now on I’m A Celebrity...Well, played the intro to “Mad World” by Tears For Fears, he had to identify who the artist was. His answer? “Is it Phil Collins?”. I despair.

Back in the studio now and it’s one of the biggest songs of the year (the 10th best selling in fact). Snap! were a German Eurodance group formed in 1989 by producers Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti and “The Power” would become the first of two UK No 1 singles for them. As with Black Box before them (and Milli Vanilli almost simultaneously), there was a ‘who’s the real singer?’ scandal attached to Snap! I think the female vocalist up there on stage with rapper Turbo B is one Jackie Harris who didn’t actually lay down the vocals for the track. That was Chaka Khan backing singer Penny Ford. With the Milli Vanilli lip sync scandal about to break and with Snap! being on the same record label as those two charlatans, a second miming furore was not what was required and so Penny was found pretty quickly and officially restored to the Snap! line up.

As for the song itself, it wasn’t my cup of tea at all but you certainly couldn’t ignore the blistering force of it. It fair smacked you about the face the first time you heard it. It will be No 1 soon enough.

This again?! This is the third time the video for “Lily Was Here” by Candy Dulfer and David A. Stewart has been on the show and I’m out of things to say about it now. Erm…oh yeah! I’ve got Dave Stewart’s autobiography. I wonder what he had to say about this record?

*much flicking of pages and skip reading later*

Well, he said….precisely nothing about it. I couldn’t find one mention of “Lily Was Here” or Candy Dulfer. Bit rude. I mean, I know he’s worked with just about everyone in both the music and movie worlds so it might have been hard to fit every collaboration into one tome but even so. I wouldn’t expect a Christmas card from Dave anytime soon Candy. He’s well moved on…

“Lily Was Here” peaked at No 6.

In amongst this seemingly endless ocean of generic (and frankly mostly dreadful) dance tunes, there comes the odd life raft of relief….and ‘odd’ is certainly the word for this next act. Quite how US alternative art rockers They Might Be Giants came to score a UK Top 10 hit at this time is almost as big a mystery as the lyrics to “Birdhouse In Your Soul”. This curious and beguiling piece of pop still intrigues me 30 years on. Everything about it from its peculiar song structure to its oblique lyrics screams ‘this is not a hit record’ and yet it somehow works. Ah yes, those lyrics. Making references as disparate as Jason and the Argonauts and The Longines Symphonette whilst including phrases like ‘filibuster vigilantly’ which really should have no place in a pop song, the piece is supposedly written from the perspective of a a blue nightlight shaped like a canary. As you do.

The performance here is delightfully bonkers with front man John Linnell throwing some very David Byrne-esque shapes. I also liked the follow up to this which was called “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” but it failed to make the Top 40 but they returned there again one final time in 2001 with “Boss Of Me” which was the theme tune to the US TV sit com Malcolm In The Middle.

“Birdhouse In Your Soul” flew all the way up to No 6 in the UK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FRiKeu70Go

A fourth and final week at No 1 then for Beats International with “Dub Be Good To Me”. I’m guessing that they might be on TOTP at least once more as their follow up single “Won’t Talk About It” hit the Top 10 but they never appeared in the Top 40 again after that. Why did they break up? Who knows? Maybe Norman Cook was disillusioned with the project after the commercial failure of the ska/reggae influenced second album “Excursion On The Version”? Maybe he wanted to pursue a different musical direction as he did with the acid jazz inspired Freak Power? Or maybe he just wanted to widen his palette of production skills by working with lots of other artists? Whatever the reason, thank God they made “Dub Be Good To Me” with its stretch at the top of the charts that thereby deprived Jive Bunny of a fourth consecutive No 1 single.

The play out track is “Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)” by Jimmy Somerville. This was the title track of his debut solo album and came on the back of two other hit singles taken from it in “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and “Comment Te Dire Adieu”. Unlike the previous two, this was a Somerville original and he wrote it to promote gay rights. Indeed, there was a definite association between the song and the ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) movement and that organisation’s ‘Read My Lips’ kiss-in events to demonstrate positive expressions of queer sexuality.

Aside from its political overtones though, it’s a bloody good disco record to boot. I like the way that Jimmy wove in the phrase ‘enough is enough’ into the song – I’m guessing it was a small homage to “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” the 1979 disco stomper by Donna Summer and Barbara Streisand.

“Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)” peaked at No 26.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LppdfoTcdLw

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Big Fun	Handful Of Promises	…and a pocketful of shite, NO!
2	Erasure	Blue Savannah	No but It must be on their Greatest Hits collection that I own.
3	Orbital	Chime	Nah
4	49ers	Don’t You Love Me	No I don’t
5	Queen Latifah and De La Soul	Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children	Nope
6	Heart	All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You	It’s a no from me
7	Jam Tronik	Another Day In Paradise	NOOOOOOO!!!
8	Snap!	The Power	Not for me thanks
9	David A. Stewart and Candy Dulfer	Lily Was Here	Another no
10	They Might Be Giants	Birdhouse In Your Soul	Not the single but it’s on a Q – The Album compilation LP that I bought
11	Beats International	Dub Be Good To Me	No but my wife had their album
12	Jimmy Somerville	Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)	No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000p9v4/top-of-the-pops-22031990

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 15 MAR 1990

Posted on November 17, 2020 by 80stastic

After weeks of watching aghast at the state of the charts back in early 1990, there seemed to be some online optimism that we were finally embarking on a run of episodes that promised to turn the tide of disappointment. Even the usually disparaging @TOTPFacts seemed to have caught the good times vibe:

It’s a good one tonight. Set an alarm. #TOTP https://t.co/l8RVvPF0nO
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 13, 2020

And yet…be warned for despite the undoubted presence of some decent tunage on display tonight, there is an awful lot of shite to have to wade through first. Simon Mayo is the host for tonight’s show who is usually nondescript enough to be considered as a safe pair of hands so let’s get into it…

…hmm. Now which camp do The Mission fall into? Decent or shite? I’m going to go for the former but with the caveat that it’s a risky choice. I definitely like some of their stuff (“Stay With Me”, “Wasteland” and “Tower of Strength” for example) but there was only so much of it that I could handle in one go. “Deliverance” was the second single from their “Carved In Sand” album and I have to say it doesn’t really ring any bells with me. That may be to do with the fact that it was only in the Top 40 for three weeks and was already at its peak of No 27 by the time of this TOTP performance. If I didn’t watch this particular episode (and I’m not sure that I did) then maybe it was just in and out too quick for me to have heard it. Having caught up with it some 30 years later, it doesn’t strike me as one of their better efforts. A rousing enough chorus but the rest of it is a bit of a dirge don’t you think? Well, Norman Cook agreed with me. In a Smash Hits article reviewing the charts back then he stated of “Deliverance”:

” I hate all this macho rock business and The Mission came from a punk new wave background and they really ought to know better“

Ouch!

OK, after a debatable start to the show, I’m nailing my colours to the flag straight off the bat with this one by saying “I’ll Be Loving You Forever” by New Kids On The Block is utter excrement, a complete jobbie of a song. After two uptempo dance pop singles broke them in the UK, it was pretty obvious that they would go for a weepy ballad for their next choice of release. Not obvious enough for Simon Mayo though who declares that T’KNOB have gone “exceedingly early” for a big *hand gesture* ballad *follow up hand gesture*. What’s with the gesticulating Simon? He comes across like he’s giving a paper at some academic conference – it’s not rocket science Mayo!

The song itself is so insipid as to hardly be there at all. Jordan Knight’s reed thin vocal is barely audible (except maybe to dogs). If you want falsetto vocals allied to love songs then The Stylistics had already been there and done it (much better) in the 70s.

“I’ll Be Loving You Forever” broke their run of UK No 1 singles after “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” and “Hangin’ Tough” had scaled the summit by peaking at No 5. It was the opposite trend in the US where it was their first ever Billboard Hot 100 chart topper.

Ooh, now then. Here’s one to split the nation. After I blithely stated in a recent post that the name Candy never caught on as a popular choice for newborns despite the rise to fame of Candy Dulfer, bizarrely there was another Candy in the charts almost immediately afterwards. Candy Flip, as I recall, were briefly hailed as ‘the next big thing’ when they gave The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” the ‘rave’ treatment. This caused huge division around the duo; for some this was utter musical blasphemy while for the nation’s clubbers, it was bringing rave culture to the mainstream. In all honesty, and I say this as someone who has never been to a rave, I’m guessing that Candy Flip could have been seen by some in the rave community as betraying the whole movement by becoming pop stars off the back of it. Just a thought.

So who exactly were this pair of chancers? Well, they were Richard “Rik” Anderson- Peet and Daniel “Dizzie Dee” Spencer who had met whilst studying music and recording technology in Manchester where they moved in social circles that included the likes of A Guy Called Gerald and The Stone Roses. Clearly not ones to miss a trick when it came to burgeoning trends, they jumped on the ‘Madchester’ / ‘baggy indie’ bandwagon for their look and bingo! Ready made pop stars! They even made it onto the front cover of Smash Hits!

Apparently they did actually have some musical ability as in later life, Peet became a producer for the likes of The Charlatans and Muse whilst Spencer worked with erm…Robbie Williams…on his least well received album “Rudebox”. Yeah, maybe keep quiet about that. They also had some serious musical heritage in their locker. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

According to Smash Hits, Candy Flip singer Daniel Spencer's dad played guitar for Sandie Shaw and wrote songs for Petula Clark, while keyboard player Ric Peet's mum was in The Vernons Girls, who sang backing for the likes of Cliff Richard and… George Martin! #TOTP pic.twitter.com/OWf0mFyFjr
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 13, 2020

Mind blowing stuff. Talking of which they were named after ‘candyflipping’, the slang term for the practice of taking ecstasy and LSD at the same time. So definitely not Candy Dulfer then.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” peaked at No 3 and was their only chart hit. Their was an album which, gazumping Madness by two whole years, was called “Madstock…The Continuing Adventures of Bubblefish Car”. I don’t think a Candy Flip revival will be happening any time soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Erf4aWJFjc

Is this the third consecutive week that “Love Shack” by The B-52s has been on the show? The TOTP producers must have loved this one. It’s the video yet again (I presume the band were too busy touring or something to pop by the studio) and as such, I’m out of comments so I’ll hand over to Homer Simpson for this one:

“Love Shack” peaked at No 2.

So the Breakers are back but at 1 min and 26 seconds to cover three whole songs, it barely seems worth it! The first of these stretches the description of ‘song’ to be fair. “Handful Of Promises” was the third hit on the bounce by Big Fun and was taken from their “Pocketful Of Dreams” album of which this song gave the album its title. Clearly it’s horrible. Nasty, cynical and lacking of any sort of tune, it somehow scrambled to a No 21 peak. Smash Hits magazine did a Big Fun v Yell battle of the bands piece which Big Fun won by 23 and a half points to 11 but it was a hollow victory – a bit like trying to work out which member of the Tory cabinet is the biggest wanker.

The good news is that I think Big Fun only have one Top 40 hit left in them before they will plague the charts and us no further.

I have to admit that Fish‘s solo career completely passed me by. “A Gentleman’s Excuse Me” is yet another of his recordings that I don’t think I have heard before now. The second of three singles taken from his “Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors” album (incredibly all three were Top 40 hits) it’s actually a pretty little thing (to quote Bing Crosby from his Xmas chat with David Bowie)

It puts me in mind of “Home Thoughts From Abroad” by Clifford T. Ward. In fact, it almost seems like Fish was deliberately trying to rewrite it. In the shite v decent poll, I’m marking this one down as up to snuff.

There is a theory that Wet Wet Wet‘s second studio album (if you discount their demoes / early recordings album “The Memphis Sessions”) “Holding Back The River” should have been their third whilst their actual third album (“High On The Happy Side”) should have been their second. Confused? Don’t be because it does make sense. After their debut “Popped In Souled Out” established their blue eyed soul / pop amalgam sound, the obvious move would have been to follow it up with something very similar. What the Wets did however was to throw caution to the wind and write an album that was much more mature that dealt with more heavyweight subject matters. For example the near title track from their sophomore album “Hold Back The River” deals with alcoholism I believe.

Whilst certainly not a commercial failure (it was a No 2 and went double platinum), it didn’t perform as well as “Popped In Souled Out”. When their career was looking decidedly dodgy two year later, they returned to a more accessible sound and found their way back to the very summit of the charts with “High On The Happy Side” which also furnished them with another No 1 single in “Goodnight Girl”. Did they go for that grown up sound too early (maybe we should ask Simon Mayo – he seems to have an opinion about these things!)? I doubt it. Things worked out pretty well for the band ultimately. “Hold Back The River” remains one of their lowest charting singles though peaking at No 31 but then there is a jazz break down half way through it so what did they expect?!

OK, now we get to the big guns which all the pre-show ‘ooh this is a good one’ fuss was all about. Not just one of the biggest tunes of the 90s but one of the biggest tunes ever – it can only be “Loaded” by Primal Scream. I’m pretty sure I didn’t know anything about Bobby Gillespie and co before this point but then, I don’t think that many people did. Yes, they had been around since the early 80s and had already released two albums by 1990 but they hadn’t got anywhere near mainstream success. Enter Andy Weatherall (who sadly died in February) to alter forever not just the career of Primal Scream but also that of music culture period.

I can’t recall for sure the first time that I heard “Loaded” but I’m pretty sure I didn’t get it straight away. What were all those sampled voices at the beginning and what was with the structure of the track that seemed to be all over the place? And why did it take so long for the singer to come in? Thirty years on and hundreds of plays later, it’s hard to believe I once thought like that. I’m nothing if not consistent though. Having not immediately swooned at Morrissey’s feet as The Smiths broke and then resisted the charms of the emerging Stone Roses, this was par for the course for me. I’m glad to say that I got with the programme in time and own both “Screamadelica” and an import CD single of “Loaded” (purchased some time after the initial single release I have to admit).

For a while I was convinced that those disembodied voices at the start of the track were The Monkees but I subsequently learned that they are actually Frank Maxwell and Peter Fonda from the 1966 biker movie The Wild Angels. I’ve never seen the film but if you ever wondered what was the scene that they were sampled from, here’s the answer:

Bobby Gillespie stated in an February 2011 NME interview about the samples used in the remix:

“Imagine if we hadn’t got the Fonda one though. We wouldn’t be sat here now. I don’t know where we’d be but we would not be sat here talking to you. The gods were smiling on us that day.”

I can’t quite describe what it is that those clipped pieces of dialogue add to the track are but I totally agree with Bobby.

The original track that Weatherall remixed was of course “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have” from the band’s second album which was on that CD single I bought as an extra track and I have to say, I think that stands up pretty well on its own merits as well…

I managed to catch Primal Scream live at an open air gig in Hull in 2017 and they were belting. Bobby Gillespie definitely has a portrait in an attic at home where he looks absolutely decrepit though.

“Loaded” peaked at No 16.

The second big gun of the evening now as the TOTP TV audience gets its first sighting of Inspiral Carpets with their hit single “This Is How It Feels”. Instead of Simon Mayo blathering on about the sporting exploits of the band’s hometown of Oldham that year, I would rather have seen the current Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle introduce the band in that game show host style that he employs to command Prime Minister Questions… “and now, we travel north to Oldham where we find Inspiral Carpets – Inspiral Carpets everyone!”.

To be fair to Mayo, Oldham Athletic had a monumental season that year (I’ve no idea about the basketball and rugby teams he also mentions). Despite finishing 8th in Division 2 and missing out on the play-offs, it was in the two domestic cup competitions that they excelled. The day before this TOTP aired, they had beaten 1st Division title hopefuls Aston Villa 3-0 to reach the FA Cup semi finals and had already secured a place in the actual League Cup Final. A guy called Frankie Bunn scored SIX goals in one game on the way to the final. I distinctly remember what a big deal all of this seemed at the time. Sadly Oldham would go onto lose that final and also the FA CUp semi final after taking Man Utd to a replay.

Back to the music though and Inspiral Carpets seemed to be promoted in the press as part of some ‘Madchester’ Holy Trinity (despite not actually being from Manchester) alongside the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays. I’m not sure if that’s how they actually saw themselves having been in existence since 1983. I didn’t know this until now but they had an almost Fall like number of personnel changes in the years leading up to this commercial breakthrough.

As for the song itself, I thought it was great with its prominent, swirling organ sound and heavyweight lyrics. Bizarrely, my elder brother and Paul Weller disciple seemed to be going through a ‘Madchester’ phase at the time and had a mix tape featuring all the aforementioned bands on it (including Inspiral Carpets) which he was fond of blasting out of our shared bedroom at the time. He was also a big Man Utd fan and had been going to the matches for a few years back then and went to all the FA Cup games that season including that semi final. Maybe his fleeting association with the ‘baggie’ was more to do with the football than the music. Incidentally, Man Utd used to serenade their Man City counterparts with a chant based on “This Is How It Feels” with the words changed to :

This is how it feels to be City, this is how it feels to be small

This is how it feels when you club wins nothing at all

I think that one got consigned to the dustbin of terrace chants sometime around 2011.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1nUgoUTJsY

Lead singer Tom Hingley had a very striking look back then. It was sort of Mr Logic from Viz meets Red Dwarf‘s Dwayne Dibley. Most disconcerting. I’m pretty sure I saw him do a solo gig at the tiny York venue Fibbers after he subsequently left the band but I can’t recall whether he still had the same hairstyle or not. Mind you, Clint Boon’s Stooges cut isn’t much better.

“This Is How It Feels” peaked at No 14.

Oh FFS! Seriously! We hadn’t all had enough of Jive Bunny by the time that the new decade had come around?! No, we hadn’t because they racked up another four hit singles before they finally fucked off sometime around 1991. “That Sounds Good to Me” followed the same cut and paste formula that these idiots had already used to mug off the UK public three times previously and featured tracks including “Everybody Need Somebody To Love”, “Long Tall Sally” and “Roll Over Beethoven”. I’m pretty sure that the version of “Everybody Need Somebody To Love” recorded for the Blues Brothers film was re-released not long after this Jive Bunny abomination

*checks http://www.officialcharts.com*

Yes! I was right. It was released about a month or so after this and peaked at No 12. Inexplicably, Jive Bunny peaked 8 places higher at No 4!

Beats International still claim the No 1 slot with “Dub Be Good To Me”. In a Smash Hits interview entitled ‘How To Make A Hit record In Your Bedroom’, Norman Cook admitted that putting together “Dub Be Good To Me” from the initial sampling he did in his bedroom to the finished record took just three days and £400. Wow! £400 for a record that was innovative and well…pretty good actually. By those standards, Jive Bunny, using similar techniques, must have spent about 40p to produce their steaming heap of shit.

The play out track is “You Don’t Love Me” by the 49ers which was their follow up to “Touch Me” and which I don’t remember at all. Apparently it samples Jody Watley’s 1987 hit “Don’t You Want Me” which I also have zero recall of. I’m putting this one in the shite pile which means, by my reckoning, the final tally for tonight’s show is:

Shite Music 7 v 5 Decent Tunes

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S39Knuda5kw

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The Mission	Deliverance	Nah
2	New Kids On The Block	I’ll Be Loving You Forever	Good God no!
3	Candy Flip	Strawberry Fields Forever	Nope
4	B-52s	Love Shack	Couldn’t be doing with it – no
5	Big Fun	Handful Of Promises	…and a pocketful of shite, NO!
6	Fish	A Gentleman’s Excuse Me	No
7	Wet Wet Wet	Hold Back The River	No but my wife liked this one
8	Primal Scream	Loaded	Yes but some time after the event
9	Inspiral Carpets	This Is How It Feels	No but I’ve got their Greatest Hits I think
10	Jive Bunny	That Sounds Good To Me	Oh this is an open goal….That sounds shite to me..No!
11	Beats International	Dub Be Good To Me	No but my wife had their album
12	49ers	Don’t You Love Me	No I don’t

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000p9v2/top-of-the-pops-15031990

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

Some bedtime reading?

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is imgres-2-1.jpg

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 08 MAR 1990

Posted on November 13, 2020 by 80stastic

Right then, here we are…again. It’s yet another TOTP review. For the record, if you combine all of the posts from my TOTP 80s blog – https://.80spop.wordpress.com – with this 90s version then this particular post is No 301! Three hundred and one!!! I have written three hundred posts up until now on this nonsense! God only knows how many hours of my life that adds up to?! Is it nonsense though? Well, yes clearly it is but it’s also something else I hope. During these dark times music can provide a glimmer of light I believe, something to briefly lift our mood. Maybe these tunes from long ago can provide some blissful retreat from the harsh realities we are all facing. Having said all that, it is 1990 so don’t hold your breath…

Tonight’s host is Bruno Brookes whose real name, apparently is Trevor. You don’t get many Trevors to the pound these days do you. In fact, how many famous Trevors can you think of period? Trevor Francis… Trevor Brooking…’Clever Trevor’….but these are all 70s references. Oooh…Trevor Bayliss (no relation) who invented the wind up radio. And there’s an ex-Aussie cricketer called Trevor Bayliss. OK, my point is though that there have never been that many. Maybe that’s why Brookes decided to change his name. Trevor wasn’t deemed ‘trendy’ enough (to quote the vernacular of the time). Nobody says ‘trendy’ any more do they? It’s all ‘on trend’ or ‘trending’. Sorry, I’m babbling…which leads me neatly into drawing a line under this courtesy of one David Paul Booth:

Thought it was Babbling.
— David Paul Booth (@DavidPaulBooth1) November 6, 2020

The first act tonight is Guru Josh with his dance anthem “Infinity (1990’s… Time for the Guru)“. Apparently this nearly wasn’t a hit at all. The legend goes that Mr Josh (real name Paul Walden) came up with the tune when a friend asked him to create a track for a club night of the same name. 500 white label copies were pressed of which 480 were thrown in the bin according to Walden because you couldn’t have a saxophone in a dance anthem. One of the 20 who didn’t was Hacienda DJ Mike Pickering who played it regularly at the venue and the rest is history.

The performance of the track here looks thoroughly bonkers. However, Bruno Brookes seemed to like it as he says at the song’s conclusion “Lots of energy, lots of theatre, that’s good”. Hmm. The music journalist Max Bell once described him as:

“He looked like a chap who didn’t go to bed very often, dragged himself through hedges backwards, and nibbled rare species of fungi not usually sold in Sainsbury’s” which seems fair comment to me.

Sadly Walden committed suicide in 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxV_kakCznw

Right then, here we are (woah – massive deja vu rush!) with the first video of the night from Gloria Estefan and her latest single …erm…“Here We Are”. I’ve written about this many times in previous posts but it’s as much of a constant in life as death and taxes and that is Gloria’s rigid single release schedule. It’s pretty easy to get your head around as it’s basically this:

Release a ballad
Release an uptempo number (preferably with a Latin beat)
Release a ballad
Release an uptempo number (preferably with a Latin beat)
Repeat ad finitum

With her last single being the dance song number “Get On Your Feet”, this next one had to be a ballad and indeed it is. Here we are (again) indeed.

The third single from her “Cuts Both Ways” album, it’s pretty much standard fare from Gloria if a little more laid back and less excitable than some of her other big love songs. It peaked at No 23 in the UK but went Top 10 in the US.

Here come one hit wonders JT And The Big Family next with their sample heavy track “Moments In Soul”. Having seen their video in last week’s show, we get the ‘in the flesh’ experience this week and what a visually odd bunch they were. The Jerry Sadowitz lookalike on keyboards is Mauro Ferrucci while the lanky haired guitarist doing the ‘Ah Yeah’s is Christian Hornbostel. The vocalist was known simply as Chicca while the Bez wannabe throwing some unconvincing shapes at the back is Jumbo (as in jumbo-sized twat).

In a Smash Hits interview, Ferrucci stated:

“It’s not really the words that are important, they didn’t take too long to write. They don’t mean much, there is no story“.

No shit mate! These are the lyrics (if you can call them that):

Life, life, life
Come on and
Life, life, life

Life, life, life
Come on and

One
What you’re doing back?
Two
I really mean that much to you?
Three
What’s going on? (What’s going on?)

Oh yeah

But then the song does sample The Art Of Noise’s “Moments In Love”. That’s The Art Of Noise who wrote these memorable lyrics:

That’s The Art Of Noise there making JT And The Family look like Bob Dylan. “Moments In Soul” peaked at No 7.

Three of the next four songs were all featured in last week’s show as Breakers so I may struggle to find anything else to say about them. First up are Innocence with “Natural Thing”.

These jazz funk / quiet storm / ambient chill out dudes (delete as appropriate) should not be confused with the band Innosense who were an American girl group formed in 1997 whose main claim to fame was that a young Britney Spears was one of their original members. They were managed by the mother of Justin Timberlake and listed bands such as NSYNC and Backstreet Boys as their inspirations. Wanna hear them? Nah, me neither.

Excellent! 75 words or so without really talking about Innocence at all.

Right, I wasn’t really expecting to see Marc Almond again either to be honest. How many places did he go up in the Top 40 that week?

*checks chart rundown video*

Three. Well, I guess it adheres to the TOTP rules of having to go up the charts to get on the show but even so. Maybe I’m being harsh. I read an article online recently by Paul Laird (@mildmanneredmax on Twitter) where he reviewed all the pivotal albums of 1990 as he saw them picking one for each month of the year. Marc’s “Enchanted” album, from which “A Lover Spurned” came, was chosen with Paul writing of it:

“More of the usual unusual from Almond. “Enchanted” is violently modern and defiantly retro at the same time and, often, at exactly the same moments. With an orchestra of traditional musicians and Almond’s show stopping, showtime, show me the money vocals it is a deeply layered album filled with treats and tricks“.

Well, that’s me told. I do like Marc Almond. I’ve even read his autobiography and have at least one Soft Cell CD but this one doesn’t really do it for me. Still, you can’t fault the drama in both the song and Marc’s performance here. See Brookes. That’s how you do theatre – not all that arm waving nonsense from Guru Josh earlier that you enthused over!

“A Lover Spurned” got no higher than this peak of No 29.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbmQRwE4MIQ

Oh hello – a new song. One of only three on this week’s show and it’s “Blue Savannah” by Erasure. This was the third track to be lifted from the duo’s “Wild” album and was also the biggest hit of the four singles that were ultimately released from it. Bearing in mind the album had already been out five months (including over the crucial Xmas period) by the time of “Blue Savannah”s release, its No 3 chart position is pretty impressive. It’s far more lilting and understated than the other “Wild” singles I think. Maybe that was the key to its success. Or maybe it was just a decent song in amongst a chart full of shit.

The video for it is a bit weird though. Slightly disturbing actually with that disembodied blue hand floating about before it takes a brush to Vince and Andy. It’s like that Peter Lorre horror film The Beast With Five Fingers meets the promo for The Human League’s “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” with its completely painted red ‘You are Here’ house. Odd.

Back to the name game now and following on from my musings about the popularity of the name Trevor, here we have ~~Trevor~~ Bruno Brookes pondering whether there will be a glut of baby girls being called Lily in the wake of Candy Dulfer and David A. Stewart’s hit single “Lily Was Here”. So was Bruno right? Did Lily become a really popular name for newborn girls around this time? As far as I can tell the answer is no. The most popular name back then seemed to be Jessica but certainly the rise of Lilly has been quite the phenomenon since the turn of the century. As high as No 2 around 2012, it is still in the Top 10 for 2020.

Say again? What about the song? Oh, erm…I was hoping all that name talk would have distracted you. Well, I kind of liked the oddness of it all but I was never going to buy it. As for Candy Dulfer, despite a career that spans 30 years and 12 albums, she never returned to our charts after “Lily Was Here” peaked at No 6. I’m pretty sure that there weren’t loads of newborn baby girls named ‘Candy’ in the early 90s either.

A couple of posts ago I commented on the incongruity of seeing Adam Ant in the charts in the 90s, so tied to the 80s are his glory days. I could make the same observation about Bros. I’d almost completely consigned them to the pop bin by this point but here they are, three months into 1990 with a genuine, bona fide Top 40 hit. “Madly In Love” was the fourth single lifted from their album “The Time” and, on reflection, it seems an unwise choice. Firstly, a fourth single from any album is pushing it but when it is from the second album of a teen sensation on the wane, it seems positively deluded. Secondly, for the life of me, I cannot hear a discernible tune in “Madly In Love”. It’s like some sort of jam session that got ideas above its station and all those extra bodies up there on stage with Matt and Luke just seemed to over egg the pudding. Oh, and what the heck was Matt wearing?! A jacket and tie combo topped off with a baseball cap? A fan wrote into Smash Hits to ask if Matt was going bald after seeing the video for “Madly In Love” – maybe the cap was strategically placed?

“Madly In Love” peaked at No 14, the duo’s first single to fail to reach the Top 10.

A second week at No 1 for Beats International with “Dub Be Good To Me” and this week (for the first time I think) we get the promo video instead of a studio performance. They might as well not have bothered as it’s a straight run through of the song with a sepia tint added over the top. Where did all the fun of those Housemartins videos disappear to Norman?

The play out video is “Love Shack” by The B-52s. I said last week that I found this one to be a marmite tune and judging by the online reaction to its recent airing on BBC4, I stand by that. Personally, I can’t really be doing with it – to my ears it’s the sound of a band trying too hard. I especially find the breakdown near the end of the song when the music stops and Fred Schneider asks ‘You’re what?’ especially excruciating. Ever wondered what it is that Cindy Wilson replies with? Apparently it’s ‘Tin Roof, Rusted’ and not ‘Hennnnn-ry, busted’ as I have always believed.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05I0DDgdM3A

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Guru Josh	Infinity (1990’s …Time For The Guru)	Nah
2	Gloria Estefan	Here We Are	Negative
3	JT And The Family	Moments In Soul	I’d rather have to watch John Terry miss that penalty on an endless loop – that’s a no by the way
4	Innocence	Natural Thing	No
5	Marc Almond	A Lover Spurned	Not for me
6	Erasure	Blue Savannah	No but It must be on their Greatest Hits collection that I own.
7	David A. Stewart and Candy Dulfer	Lily Was Here	Nope
8	Bros	Madly In Love	Huge no
9	Beats International	Dub Be Good To Me	No but my wife had their album
10	B-52s	Love Shack	Couldn’t be doing with it – no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000p3bp/top-of-the-pops-08031990

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 01 MAR 1990

Posted on November 10, 2020 by 80stastic

It’s the very start of March in 1990 and apparently the UK is windswept. Well, that’s according to TOTP host Jakki Brambles anyway and I really can’t remember the weather from over 30 years ago I’m afraid so we’ll have to take her word for it. Jakki (still spelt with two ‘K’s at this point) gives credence to her claim by wearing a ginormous duffle coat while she presents the show from the BBC studio. Her choice of outfit prompted many a ‘she won’t feel the benefit’ type comments on Twitter as this repeat aired on BBC4 last Friday.

Not only was she prone to feeling the cold but Brambles was also prone to exaggeration as she declares that tonight’s first act is “a man whose had more hits than I’ve been on diets; we’re into the thousands here”. What?! Who the hell can she mean?! It is of course Shakin’ Stevens who despite Jakki’s claims was actually on his 29th of 33 Top 40 hits with this one called “I Might”. Yes, unbelievable and indeed unbearable as it may seem, Shaky was still a visitor to the charts in the 90s exactly 10 years on from his first appearance. Unlike the 80s though, this decade was not kind to the Welsh hit maker and he was reduced to farting out Xmas hits in order to maintain his status as a chart act after this single.

“I Might” was the usual toe -tapping, rock ‘n’ roll revivalist number that Shaky had made his name on. Do you think he genuinely thought at the time that he could just carry on serving up this tripe forever more? Or was he secretly terrified that the game might actually be up considering that the UK was on a massive rave tip that made Shaky look even more like the anachronism than he already (and always) was? “This Ole House” seemed like forever ago and now house music was going to put Shaky on the dole. At least he didn’t try to jump on the bandwagon – “This Ole Italo House” anyone?

“I Might” peaked at No 18.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkSjD18QMNw

Oh God! It’s Rod Stewart! Don’t look! He might not see us! Too late. Brambles has given the game away and here he is in full on Rod mode with his awful version of the Tom Waits song “Downtown Train”.

Look, I can’t be arsed to write anything else about this one. It doesn’t deserve any more attention. Seek out Tom’s original instead or even Everything But The Girl’s take on it from their 1992 “Acoustic” album. Infinitely superior. Apparently Ben and Tracey’s version plays over the end of the final scene in the long running US sitcom How I Met Your Mother. I’ve never seen the show but I’m guessing that the ending is much more effective with EBTG’s soothing sounds than croaky Rod honking away in the background.

More exaggeration from Jakki Brambles next as, during the chart run down, she refers to the “cast of thousands” in the lyrics of “Hello” by The Beloved. I make it 38 actually Jakki. Right, up next is a complete howler of a song. Like “Downtown Train” before it, it’s another cover version but this one makes Rod Stewart’s seem heavenly in comparison. Jamie J. Morgan is the perpetrator of this crime against music and he should be eternally ashamed for the obscenity that he inflicted upon Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SkoWYJmvbs

When we saw the video for this in last week’s show as one of the Breakers, I made the comment that this track was almost a parody and that it could be Sacha Baron Cohen performing it. It seems I wasn’t alone in my thinking for when the Twitterati got a load of this studio performance, they made the same connection. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Expecting Sacha Baron-Cohen to trend, judging by the #TOTP timeline.
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 6, 2020

Oh and the two versions of “Walk On The Wild Side” that were out at the same time that Jakki references? Well, I tracked the other one down and it was this by Beat System. Still nowhere near as good as the original but infinitely preferable to Jamie J. Morgan for me. It spent three weeks in chart peaking at No 63.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWP22v9ghko

To put the final nail in the coffin of this sad state of affairs, Brambles reckons that “Lou Reed should be a very proud man”! Ye gods woman! Nobody could be proud of that, not even Jamie J. Morgan’s mother!

Some Breakers next starting with Innocence and “Natural Thing”. Anybody remember this lot? They were kind of like a chilled out Soul II Soul and were briefly the height of sophistication as I recall. They racked up six Top 40 singles over their short career (1990–1992) with “Natural Thing” being their biggest hit at No 16. They also released two albums in that time with the first one (“Belief”) making it to No 24 in the charts.

It all sounded a little bit insubstantial to me although I did quite like their “A Matter of Fact” single from later on in 1990.

After his surprise return to the top of the charts with his duet with Gene Pitney on “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” as the 80s came to an end, Marc Almond returned to his day job of cultish solo artist as the 90s began. “A Lover Spurned” was his first release of the new decade taken from his album “Enchanted” which was already his sixth solo album in six years. Excluding the aforementioned No 1, the single was his fourteenth of his solo career but only the fourth to make the Top 40 after. Cultish indeed.

I have zero recall of this one but it seems quite brooding and foreboding and spiky of intent. Marc’s solo output always mined this dark seam to my ears and some of his song titles support this opinion. Here are just a few of them:

“Melancholy Rose”
“Tenderness Is A Weakness”
“Tears Run Rings”
“Bitter Sweet”
“The House Is Haunted By The Echo Of Your Last Goodbye”

Wow! That last title! Cheery soul Marc isn’t he? “A Lover Spurned” peaked at No 29.

The next Breaker seems to be a marmite song and certainly split the opinion of the Twitterati the other day. Where do you stand on “Love Shack” by the B-52s? Me? I can’t really be doing with it. It’s just so….joyful and upbeat that it comes across as insincere. Lots of people both agree and disagree it seems. Taken from their “Cosmic Thing” album, it is easily their most well known and commercially successful song but I always preferred the follow up single “Roam” which was much more classy I thought.

“Love Shack” brought the band to a mainstream audience, many of whom had never heard of them before. I have to say I had only limited knowledge pretty much only knowing “Rock Lobster” and “Planet Claire” at that point from the double A-side re-release in 1986. My way cooler wife had one of their early albums I think.

In a nice bit of serendipity, it turns out that the horns on “Love Shack” were provided by The Uptown Horns, a New York-based section that played on Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs album which includes the track “Downtown Train” that we saw Rod Stewart murder earlier in the show.

“Love Shack” peaked at No 2 in the UK and No 3 in the US.

Something sultry and atmospheric now as the charts welcomes that rarest of commodities into its arms; an instrumental. I have to admit I’d never heard of Candy Dulfer before “Lily Was Here” but she had already performed as the support act for live shows by Madonna and been on stage with the likes of Prince and Pink Floyd by this point. The daughter of a Dutch jazz saxophonist, she hadn’t actually released any of her music commercially until this collaboration with Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart or David A. Stewart as he is credited here. The song was included on the soundtrack for a Dutch crime thriller flick of the same name and shot Dulfer to stardom off the back of it . The single was No 1 in the Netherlands for five straight weeks and a No 6 hit over here. It even broke the American market peaking at No 11.

I seem to recall there was a lot of fuss about Candy’s looks as much as her musical ability at the time (see also British violinist Vanessa-Mae) perhaps not helped by the fact that her debut album was called “Saxuality”. Incidentally, the single didn’t feature on that album in some territories including I think the UK. Cue lots of disgruntled customers returning it for a refund because they didn’t read the track listing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEooduDs6LA

Meanwhile back in the studio, we find Electribe 101 performing “Talking With Myself”. Is it just me or do singer Billie Ray Martin’s dance moves not seem to fit the song? It’s quite a downbeat, low key smooth sound and Billie’s all rotating arms, gyrating hips and 70s disco finger pointing. It’s like she ‘s got a Jane Fonda workout video playing in her mind’s eye. There’s even a bit of twerking going on.

Maybe she took her inspiration from the dance moves of another famous Billie…

Later in the decade another Billie appeared who also seemed to have been similarly inspired…

OK, enough of the Billies as we move onto…something called The Brits 1990 Dance Medley which took some of the biggest dance hits of recent times and slung them all together into one continuous mix. The video shown on TOTP includes footage from the actual performance of this heap of shit from the 1990 BRIT awards show which took place at the Dominion Theatre in London the previous month.

That video is bad enough but if you watch the live performance from the actual awards show it looks even worse…

Maybe we all just have choreographed dance routine fatigue now after having had our eyeballs blasted in the intervening years with every type of production imaginable. Maybe we’re all tuned in to the slickness of Strictly Come Dancing? Whatever it is, that just looked shit. And what was the point of having The Cookie Crew come on for 10 seconds right at the end?

If you were counting, then the tracks featured are:

Double Trouble & Rebel MC – “Street Tuff”
A Guy Called Gerald – “Voodoo Ray”
S’Express – “Theme From S’Express”
Beatmasters – “Hey DJ I Can’t Dance”
Jeff Wayne – “Eve Of The War (Ben Liebrand Mix)”
808 State – ” Pacific State”
D Mob – “We Call It Acieed”
Cookie Crew – “Got To Keep On”

At least two of the tracks featured were hits in 1988! How is that anything to do with The Brits 1990?! As for the show itself, if I tell you that Phil Collins won Best British Single of the Year and Best Male Solo Artist then I think that tells you all you need to know.

The Brits 1990 Dance Medley single (because let’s not forget that’s what it was, something you could actually buy and not just a performance on TV) peaked at No 2. No 2!

After all that frantic dancing, here comes Michael Bolton to calm us down with his soporific ballad “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You?”. I’ve already spilled my shaming Michael Bolton story the other week so I have no intention of going there again so what else to say about old Bollers? The hair! Of course the hair! I mean, just look at it! If you google ‘Michael Bolton’s hair’, there are so many articles, posts and interviews about his monstrous locks that it’s almost as if they had a life of their own. Well, maybe they do because there is a Michael Bolton’s Hair twitter account. It only has 36 followers and hasn’t posted since 2017 but it’s there. Here are some example tweets:

I have this fear of loosing my keys. I dread locks. #michaelbolton #hair
— Michael Boltons Hair (@BoltonsHair) May 8, 2014

How about?

How can we be lovers if we have split ends? #michaelbolton #hair
— Michael Boltons Hair (@BoltonsHair) May 3, 2014

And inevitably…

I can't believe he cut me off. What will I do with my life now. I guess I'll have to mullet over. #MichaelBolton
— Michael Boltons Hair (@BoltonsHair) April 30, 2014

Yes they’re painful but so is watching Michael perform here on TOTP and I had to do that for this blog so think yourselves lucky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4P8zx90vSw

There’s a new No 1 as Beats International topple Sinéad O’Connor after four weeks with “Dub Be Good To Me”. Do Beats International get the retrospective credit they deserve? OK, sure the whole project was overshadowed by the reach and success of another Cook alter ego Fatboy Slim later in the decade and yes they are mainly only remembered for this one song but for me, it was a glimmer of light in a sea of hopeless No1 records in 1990.

*Spoiler alert*

Elton John? Awful song. Cliff Richard? More Xmas ghastliness. A song about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? WTF?! Bombalurina aka Timmy Mallett? Aagghhhh!

Come on, given that cesspit of shite for company, “Dub Be Good To Me” was solid gold and I for one will always think fondly of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XEzPuWDiG4

Right, what’s this we’ve got to close the show? JT And The Big Family? Who? There’s only one JT in my book and that’s Chelsea legend John Terry! Well, it turns out this JT were Italian house DJs Mauro Ferrucci and Christian Hornbostel and they were the JT part of the equation as JT stood for ‘Jockers Team’ – at that time, DJs in Italy were referred to as ‘jockers’. Hmm. ‘The Family’ were a female singer called Chicca and a dancer called Jumbo. Look , I’m not making any of this up! The whole thing was meant to be a ‘fluid concept’, a collective if you like. Basically they were the Italian Beats International if that makes things easier! Their only hit was “Moments In Soul” which sampled amongst many other things the melody from Art Of Noise’s “Moments In Love” and the drums from “Back To Life” by Soul II Soul.

I don’t really remember this one at all. I don’t think I missed much.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8YOJhYHcVA

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Shakin’ Stevens	I Might	There was no might about it – a big NO
2	Rod Stewart	Downtown Train	God no
3	Jamie J. Morgan	Walk On The Wild Side	Negative
4	Innocence	Natural Thing	Nah
5	Marc Almond	A Lover Spurned	Not for me
6	B-52s	Love Shack	Couldn’t be doing with it – no
7	David A. Stewart and Candy Dulfer	Lily Was Here	Nope
8	Electribe 101	Talking With Myself	I did not
9	Various Artists	The Brits 1990 Dance Medley	Definitely not
10	Michael Bolton	How Am I Supposed To Live Without You	Quite easily Michael…oh except I saw you in concert. Oh God the shame!
11	Beats International	Dub Be Good To Me	No but my wife had their album
12	JT And The Family	Moments In Soul	I’d rather have to watch John Terry miss that penalty on an endless loop – that’s a no by the way

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000p3bl/top-of-the-pops-01031990

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

Some bedtime reading?

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https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 22 FEB 1990

Posted on November 6, 2020 by 80stastic

Welcome to TOTP Rewind where in February 1990, the charts seem to be a curious mixture of ~~old fogeys~~ established stars and fresh out of the box new acts (mainly peddling dance tunes). I have to say that despite its stuffy BBC image, TOTP does try and reflect this in its chosen turns for this particular show. Mark Goodier is our guide through this week’s wares and we start with Tina Turner and her single “Steamy Windows” which was also the single that closed the previous week’s broadcast. This seems to be have been an established practice at this point in the year with the likes of FPI Project and Halo James having done the same thing. Unlike last week though we get Tina in the flesh this time as opposed to the video.

I’m thinking Tina deigning the UK with her presence would still have been a big deal at this time – Goodier seems excited enough proclaiming her the “first lady of rock ‘n’ roll”. Certainly her commercial trajectory was in the ascendancy with her “Foreign Affair” album being a No 1 hit in this country and eventually going five times platinum whilst one year later her “Simply The Best” collection album would go eight times platinum! Given all that, the show’s producers do seem to have rather thrown her performance away right at the top of the show. Maybe they wanted a crash bang wallop beginning but I would have thought they might have built up to it a bit more and put it in the middle somewhere.

Here, Tina seemed to have toned down a notch the jerky strutting style she employed although she does get in a high kick or two. I would have expected her to have really gone for it considering the nature of the lyrics she was singing …and if we’re going to get a bit smutty, I am reliably informed by a friend that there is a clip of Tina and David Bowie performing on stage together where Bowie whispers to Ms Turner “You broke my cock”. I think it might be this clip below around 3.15 where Tina throws her head back in laughter…

Moving away from filth and innuendo to something much more wholesome…death. The back story to Chris Rea‘s song “Tell Me There’s A Heaven” includes some horrific details. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Chris Rea was inspired to write "Tell Me There's a Heaven" after his six-year-old daughter saw news footage of a riot in South Africa, which showed "this horrible thing of throwing lighted tyres over people" and "one guy burning to death". #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 30, 2020

Rea’s daughter’s Grandfather (Rea’s father- in- law) didn’t know how to explain to the child what she had witnessed on screen so he just said ‘That man has gone to heaven’. When Rea checked on his sleeping daughter later he said to himself ‘Grandad told you there’s a heaven, I’d like someone to tell me there’s a heaven, too’.

The actual song itself is very affecting I think. The heavy strings backing gives it a cinematic quality – I could imagine it turning up as the soundtrack to a emotionally drenched scene in a Spielberg flick – while Rea’s gravelly voice imbues a solemn and reflective timbre.

Anyway, all of that didn’t cut that much mustard with the UK record buying public and the single peaked at No 24.

On their way to No1 we find Beats International with their mash up tune “Dub Be Good To Me”. Of course, nobody called it a ‘mash-up’ back then so what did they call it? From my admittedly limited research, it seemed to be referred to just as a cover version (of SOS Band’s “Just Be Good To Me”) that they renamed. Norman Cook revealed at the time that he thought that vocalist Lindy Layton was destined to be the ‘British Madonna’ – a prediction that proved to be wide of the mark. Lindy did ultimately go solo but despite a debut hit single with a cover of Janet Kaye’s “Silly Games”, it was a case of diminishing returns after that. Even a short spell signed to PWL didn’t restore her chart fortunes to any great extent. She continued to work in the music industry though with the likes of Hardknox and (with a certain amount of symmetry) Dub Pistols.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UWHBnLr2AI

Lindy already had a showbiz career before she found herself in Beats International of course. There were appearances in Grange Hill and Casualty and erm…this memorable advert:

Right, I have no recollection of this next song at all. Cliff Richard with “Stronger Than That” anyone? Well, according to Mark Goodier, it has some ‘brilliant choreography’ in the video! Yeah, never a good sign that is it when a single is introduced with more fanfare about the dancing than the actual song. The bad omens prove to be true as “Stronger Than That ” is a stinker, a total turd of a record. Yes, the dancing is very in sync (apart from when Cliff sneaks in his trademark swaying arms movement into the routine) but once you’ve said that, well….Goodier reckons that it will be a Top 5 record but it actually peaked at No 14 which is staggering for a song so antiseptically banal.

Incidentally, I’m pretty sure the long haired, blonde guy on Chapman stick in the background is ex-Kajagoogoo bassist Nick Beggs. Well, it was a paying gig I suppose.

Right, after three very established artists in Tina Turner, Chris Rea and (god help us) Cliff Richard, we get four Breakers that are all new acts, two of which I don’t remember at all. First up are Thunder who were a bunch of London hard rockers who carved out a decent career for themselves in the 90s with a run of fourteen consecutive Top 40 chart hits (though none of them got any higher than No 18).

“Dirty Love” was the first of those and always seemed to me to be very heavily modelled on T Rex’s “Get It On” (which itself was Marc Bolan’s attempt to re-write Chuck Berry’s Little Queenie”). I think it’s that guitar riff that ends every chorus. To be fair to Thunder, they’re not the only ones to have tried it on for size. By my reckoning, you’ve also got Oasis (on “Cigarettes And Alcohol” and “Some Might Say”), Robbie WIlliams (“Old Before I Die”) and Andy Taylor of Duran Duran (“Take It Easy”). Taylor seemed particularly obsessed with recreating “Get It On”. He recorded a cover version of it with Power Station and was also the producer on “Dirty Love”. Listen to “Take It Easy” below and you’ll clearly hear his influence on Thunder’s track. He may have even had an influence on the band’s name as his debut album in 1987 was called “Thunder” and the band chose that as the name for their new group after disbanding Terraplane in 1989 before recording some demos with Taylor later in the year.

I saw Andy Taylor live in 1990 (no really). I had just moved to Manchester and he was playing The International 2 venue just around from our flat. It was an odd gig. Andy was determined to come over as a rock god but the audience kept asking him to play “Hungry Like The Wolf”. He wasn’t amused.

Back to Thunder and for a while there they seemed on the cusp of massive commercial success. Their “Laughing on Judgement Day” album debuted at No 2 on the chart and was subsequently certified gold. They eventually called it a day in 1999 before reforming in 2002 and have been sporadically active ever since. Their latest album was released as recently as 2019.

Next up are Electribe 101 with “Talking With Myself” which was their very first single release when it came out independently in 1988. Having signed to major label Mercury, it was re-released as a follow up to “Tell Me When the Fever Ended” and peaked at No 23 thereby becoming their highest ever charting single. It was very much in the same vein as its predecessor I thought – not an unpleasant sound but I couldn’t get worked up about it either. When I first started work at Our Price later in 1990, just about everyone else on the staff seemed to adore Electribe 101. I was never in the ‘in crowd’!

When singer Billie Ray Martin was young she was obsessed with The Beatles and had four teddy bears called John, Paul, George and Ringo. Apparently Paul’s head fell off one day after Billie had been smooching with him excessively. Blimey! Don’t tell the ‘Paul is dead’ conspiracy theorists!

OK, this happens to me occasionally – that state of affairs of having zero recall of one of the artists featured on these TOTP repeats. Here’s another in Jamie J. Morgan. I read up about this guy and it seems he wasn’t your standard lame chancer, one hit wonder at all. He was a photographer shooting covers for The Face, advertising for Levi’s and album covers for Culture Club, Soul II Soul, Sade and Neneh Cherry for whom he helped write her hit ‘Buffalo Stance’. He also dabbled in video-directing producing the promo for “Swallowed” by Bush. He continues to work within the music and fashion industries and his work was showcased in a book and an exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in 2000. Impressive stuff. However….

…his vile version of the Lou Reed classic “Walk On The Wild Side” is, well…just that, vile. Given a nasty, generic dance treatment it sounds like a parody and Morgan’s nasal vocals do nothing to dispel that image. It could be Sacha Baron Cohen up there doing one of his comedy characters. The Salt ‘N’ Pepa style rapping bits in the middle can’t rescue this complete mess of a track. Somehow it rose all the way to No 27. Sometimes it’s best to stick to what you’re good at – diversifying isn’t always the way to go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ0BWYaNwr4

The second of the Breakers that I can’t recall now. “Probably A Robbery” was the only Top 40 hit for electronic pioneers Renegade Soundwave but, having researched them, it seems that their legacy far outweighs their commercial achievements. Combining dance beats with samples and electro-industrial noise, they created a buzz in the clubs with tunes such as “The Phantom” and “Ozone Breakdown”. Both tracks featured samples with the former using a loop from The Clash’s “White Riot” and the latter taking from the film The Warriors. So they were kind of Big Audio Dynamite meets Beats International then? Not really as their influence would extend to artists such as The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers and Grooverider. Actually, I quite like this having listened to it back.

“Probably A Robbery” peaked at No 38.

There then follows a very lame attempt at humour made by Mark Goodier when he introduces the next act. Comparing the name Guru Josh to a curry – presumably he was referring to a Rogan Josh? On a sliding curry scale of hilarity with a phaal being shit your pants funny it would be a korma. “Infinity (1990’s… Time for the Guru)” was their track and, even at the time, it seemed a poor choice of title to me. Why include a specific year allied with a defining clause that states this is your time? Surely this was counter productive to future sales / plays?

The performance here is pretty weird and showcases the issues that TOTP had with these non vocal dance tunes. How do you curtail a dance floor anthem into a visual, three minute studio performance for a time restricted main stream popular music show? The short answer is ‘not without difficulty’. The powers that be employed some dancers to mime playing violins before going full on dance mode in the background whilst Mr Josh (real name Paul Walden) did some crowd baiting egotistical nonsense upfront. It’s not a good or convincing look.

“Infinity (1990’s… Time for the Guru)” sounded like a piss weak version of an 808 State tune to me and I let it pass me by without the need for further investigation.

Sadly, Paul Walden took his own life on 28 December 2015 at the age of 51.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl9iL7pGfWg

Not content with his curry joke in his intro, Goodier has another crack at humour as the song finishes by making a quip about Guru Josh seemingly wearing their pyjamas in the performance we have just seen. Mark, mate – have you clocked the shirt you’re wearing?

The next act is…wait…what? Adam Ant? In the 90s? Yes indeed. Hardly seen since his ill advised Live Aid performance of his then new single “Viva La Rock” in ’85, Adam had actually been trying his luck at acting over the pond in the US since then. Adam the actor hadn’t really worked out for him though and he slipped into a period of depression. In his autobiography Stand And Deliver, he quotes a diary entry from 1989:

“I’m disgusted at my chronic jealousy of others less talented than myself on MTV or in films. So like some bitchy brat I cry + kick + scream for attention. ‘Love me – I’m great’ is my demand from everyone. It’s terrible, disgusting. But it drives me on…….I can’t accept defeat the way I suspect many feel I should after the decline of Vive Le Rock. I’m not an actor or a rock ‘n’ roll star. I’m Adam Ant. Whatever that may be.”

‘Whatever that may be’ turned out to actually be a damned good pop star and he made an unexpectedly successful return to the Top 40 with his single “Room At The Top”. The lead single from his “Manners & Physique” album and lending its title from the John Braine novel, listening back to it now, it sounds quite the anachronism against the rest of the charts back then but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The track was produced by ex Prince bassist André Cymone and I think you can hear a little bit of the purple one’s influence on it though it doesn’t overshadow Adam’s trademark style.

Adam was 35 at the time of this appearance, he is now in his mid 60s which prompted this tweet when BBC4 repeated the TOTP broadcast….

Adam Ant will be 66 on Tuesday, which means he now qualifies for THIS year’s old age pension. #totp
— Mark Gillies (@5goalthriller) October 30, 2020

Gold standard stuff. I didn’t mind “Room At The Top” but actually preferred his follow up single “Can’t Set Rules About Love” which I came close to buying but I didn’t quite follow through on that particular commitment. It seems many others did the same as it stalled at No 47. Adam would return to the UK Top 40 for the final time in 1995 with his single “Wonderful”.

Back to Goodier who rounds off a pretty dismal presenting stint by fluffing his lines when announcing the name of Sinéad O’Connor ‘s new album. It’s the final week at No 1 for Sinéad with “Nothing Compares 2 U” and whilst I suggested in my last post that the BBC seemed to be getting bored with her reign at the top as they only showed two minutes of her in the previous show, I’ve had to revise my stance as they have got her back in the studio for another performance. They had been relying on re-showing the first one she’d done weeks before.

Say what you like about Sinéad (and many people certainly have done over the years) but “Nothing Compares 2 U” remains one of the stand out songs of the 90s.

The play out video is “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” by Aerosmith. I already knew this song as it had been out before back in ’87 when it had got a fair amount of airplay but just missed the UK Top 40. Why was it re-released in 1990? I’m not sure. Was it to do with being used in that infamous scene in the Mrs Doubtfire film?

*checks internet*

Nope. That movie didn’t come out until 1993. I give up then. It was definitely written with the ubiquitous Desmond Child though (the man responsible for huge hits for Michael Bolton, Bon Jovi and Alice Cooper). Persistent accusations that the song is transphobic have always been refuted by Childs who describes the song as “accepting” because of the lyric ‘never judge a book by its cover, or who you’re going to love by your lover’. The band themselves had feared repercussions with Joe Perry saying ‘I don’t want to insult the gay community.’ Childs’ response was ‘Okay, I’m gay, and I’m not insulted. Let’s write this song.’

I don’t see it as transphobic I have to say but find it a fun (if slightly dumb) kick ass rock tune. The re-release of “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” peaked at No 20.

For posterity’s sake I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVs3nkhA8_Q

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Tina Turner	Steamy Windows	Nope
2	Chris Rea	Tell Me There’s A Heaven	No
3	Beats International	Dub Be Good To Me	No but my wife had their album
4	Cliff Richard	Stronger Than That	I’d have rather shat myself
5	Thunder	Dirty Love	Not at the time but I may have it on iTunes now
6	Electribe 101	Talking With Myself	I did not
7	Jamie J. Morgan	Walk On The Wild Side	Negative
8	Renegade Soundwave	Probably A Robbery	It’s a no
9	Guru Josh	Infinity (1990’s …Time For The Guru)	Nah
10	Adam Ant	Room At The Top	No but I nearly bought the follow up
11	Sinéad O’Connor	Nothing Compares 2 U	Don’t think so
12	Aerosmith	Dude (Looks Like A Lady)	No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000nwtf/top-of-the-pops-22021990

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 08 FEB 1990

Posted on October 30, 2020 by 80stastic

After a raft of new acts and songs in the last couple of TOTP shows, the charts of early 1990 seem to have slowed down a bit with only three of the performances tonight not having featured before. Also, there’s only ten artists in total as opposed to the thirteen that have been crammed into the last couple of broadcasts which means less writing for your truly. Thank f**k for that!

Tonight’s presenter is Gary ‘safe pair of hands’ Davies and opening the show are Yell! with their version of “Instant Replay”. Now these two were definitely not a couple of talentless bimbos. Says who? Erm…those two talentless bimbos up there on stage. Yes in a rather tetchy Smash Hits interview, Yell! rejected all accusations of a dearth of perceivable musical ability in their camp:

“We’re not a couple of talentless bimbos”

Well, that clears that up then. Anything else you want to say for the record:

“People tend to think if you’re doing something like this you don’t have any brains…’cause we lift our arms and go ‘Instant Replay!!!’…’cause we click our fingers at the same time…’cause we’re doing a cover…We’re saying ‘this is for now!’, let’s have a good time and get serious later…”

Hmm… bit of protesting too much going on there I think. So did Yell! ‘get serious later’? Well, they released another cover version of a dance tune (Average White Band’s “Let’s Go Round Again”) and erm…this. *Does this count as getting serious?

*No, no it really doesn’t.

Right, what’s with the guys in hard hats in the studio audience crowding around Gary Davies? I don’t get it. Bob the Builder wouldn’t become a chart sensation for a further ten years so it can’t be anything to do with that. Just weird.

On with the music though and here’s Janet Jackson with a song I don’t recall at all in “Come Back To Me”. Taken from her “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” album, it sounds very much like one of her earlier singles “Let’s Wait A While” to me. Like brother Michael, Janet wasn’t adverse to releasing multiple tracks of her albums as singles. There were seven off this album alone none of which got any higher than No 15 over here. Contrast that to their performance in the US where she clocked up four No1s, two No 2’s (including “Come Back To Me”) and a No 4. Cross-Atlantic differences and all that.

A huge record up now and indeed a future No 1 from the latest incarnation of a post Housemartins Norman Cook. Having already released two singles under his own name the previous year in “Blame It on the Bassline” and “For Spacious Lies” (albeit aided by MC Wildski and Lester respectively), he decided to formalise his collaborations under the banner of Beats International (which on reflection is a pretty crappy name). More of a collective than a stable band including singers, musicians, rappers and dancers, their first single “Dub Be Good to Me” was a huge hit straight off the bat. Mashing up The Clash’s “Guns Of Brixton” and SOS Band’s “Just Be Good To Me” proved to be a genius idea which was then expanded by lacing it with other samples from Ennio Morricone and Johnny Dynell (the “Tank fly boss walk jam nitty gritty, you’re listening to the boy from the big bad city, this is jam hot” rap at the start of the track). Featuring the lead vocals of an unknown Lindy Layton, there was just something about this almighty groove that captured the public’s attention and affection and it was soon a chart topper.

Parent album “Let Them Eat Bingo” however was only a moderate seller and generally perceived by the critics as a bit of a curate’s egg (my wife bought it though and second album “Excursion On The Version”). Cook called time on the project after that, moving onto form Freak Power and then assume the FatBoy Slim alter ego before the decade was out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaeCn_8aCkk

It’s those deadly serious looking Scottish lads Del Amitri next with their folk pop dirge of tune “Nothing Ever Happens”. Folk pop dirge? Look, they’re not my words but only those of lead singer Justin Currie himself who tweeted along to this performance as the BBC4 TOTP repeat went out. See…

Not very good clappers in the crowd this week. Probably traumatised by having to stand through our folk pop dirge.
— justin currie (@thejustincurrie) October 16, 2020

I loved the fact that Currie is very self deprecating in his tweets with this one being my favourite:

Oooh, angry look to camera 1 in last verse. Very effective. You tit.
— justin currie (@thejustincurrie) October 16, 2020

Despite this being the second time the band appeared on TOTP, the producers just reused their original performance clip for this show (there’s an abrupt cut away from Gary Davies to the band with no long, lead in shot) so this was their debut. In keeping with the acoustic nature of the song, it’s a very downbeat performance, almost as if they’re busking. It must have been a strange experience for the rest of the band. Finally, after years of trying they have a genuine chart hit and have made it onto the legendary show that was TOTP where careers are made or broken. The next three and a half minutes were vital to their career and what are they doing as the camera turns to them and they beam direct into the watching nation’s sitting rooms? They’re sat down with their arms draped over their guitars, not knowing where to look. After what must have seemed like an age whilst Justin Currie sings the unaccompanied intro, the rest of the song kicks in and they can mime along. Meanwhile, the normally excitable studio audience just sort of stand there, no clapping, no cheering and certainly no dancing.

They did go onto sell six million albums worldwide after this (and got to meet Sinéad O’Connor in the BBC bar afterwards!) so it all turned out alright in the end. Nothing ever happens indeed!

The last of the ‘new’ tunes next as Lisa Stansfield attempts to follow up her huge No 1 hit “All Around The World” with her new single “Live Together”. I was never much of a fan of the former and much preferred this one. The orchestral strings in the mix gave it a fuller, more lush sound that that of its predecessor. However, when you get such a big seller that early in your career, trying to emulate its success is never going to be easy and although achieving a very respectable No 10 peak, “Live Together” never looked likely to bring Lisa the same returns.

Lisa’s image in the video reminded me of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Dick Dastardly but instead of his twirly moustache, she’s got twirly kiss curls. Despite working in the Our Price store in Rochdale (Lisa’s hometown) for a year in the early 90s, I never saw her in the shop once. The one time she finally did come in, I was on my day off! Drat and double drat!

After appearing in last week’s Breakers section, The Beloved have moved up sufficient places in the Top 40 to warrant a studio appearance this time around to perform their single “Hello”. I loved this quirky dance / pop crossover tune and despite being on the dole, purchased the cassette single from my local record emporium.

I really like Jon Marsh’s dancing in this with his finger pointing hand guns and swishing poncho. Sadly, the song gets cut short before we get to the Jeffrey Archer name drop. I would have liked to see if Jon would have incorporated his ‘wanker’ gesture from the promo video into the studio performance. As fate would have it, I write this post on the day after one of the celebrities that we do get to hear name checked in the lyrics, comedian Bobby Ball, died. RIP Bobby and Rock On.

Those hard hat guys are back again as Gary Davies introduces the next act. There are also two young girls with matching Deirdre Barlow spectacles and frizzy perms in shot! Quite extraordinary! Very much the opposite of extraordinary though is the artist that Gary is introducing as it’s Phil Collins who plods his way through latest single “I Wish It Would Rain Down“. I’m sure I’ve told this story before but as Phil is so boring, I have no other recourse than to wheel it out again…

I once attended a wedding where the music that was played in the registry office as we waited for the bride to arrive appeared to be a Phil Collins Greatest Hits CD. As such, the three songs that were played one after the other before she arrived were:

“I Wish It Would Rain Down” (surely not on your wedding day?)
“Against All Odds” (with its lyric ‘you coming back to me is against all odds’)
“Separate Lives” (perhaps not the best song to celebrate the union of two people in matrimony)

“I Wish It Would Rain Down” peaked at No 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yseNilZX3_I

Skid Row‘s video for their “18 And Life” single is the next thing we get to see on the show despite it only being on just last week. Its rise of 11 places to No 12 though was deemed justification enough by the TOTP production team to reshow it. Written about the plight of an 18 year old who received a life sentence for the murder of his friend with a gun he thought was not loaded, the full version of the video incorporates this element of the song with many scenes showing the use of a firearm. Uncomfortable with this, MTV refused to air the video.

Comparing the full video below with the version shown on TOTP, it’s clear that the BBC had similar concerns and all of the images involving a gun have been edited out. They even removed the scene where the protagonist’s father chucks him out of the house threw a plate glass window. Well, it was before the watershed and Mary Whitehouse was still in post as President of the National Viewers and Listeners Association to be fair.

Sinéad O’Connor is still at No 1 with “Nothing Compares 2 U” and this week it’s the video that TOTP uses rather than her in studio performance. The promo won three Moonmen at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards for Video of the Year (O’Connor became the first female artist to be awarded with it), Best Female Video and Best Post-Modern Video.

With all the accolades though inevitably came the piss takes. This one is courtesy of Gina Riley on Australian comedy show Fast Forward…

The play out song this week is “The King And Queen Of America” by Eurythmics. I’m kind of surprised this video got a second airing considering it peaked at a lowly No 29 and had already been shown last week but it did go up five places in the Top 40 that week which seemed to be the criteria for inclusion on the show at the time (see also Skid Row and The Beloved earlier).

Apparently, the 7″ single was issued in an incorrect sleeve initially and had to be withdrawn on the day it went on sale. Those copies that slipped through the net have become one of the most collectable Eurythmics items and command around £1000 resell price. Sort of their version of the A&M release of The Sex Pistols’ “God Save The Queen” though not quite as desirable – a copy of that collectible sold for £13,000 at auction in 2019.

For posterity’s sake I include the chart rundown below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXlaIQkzzEw

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Yell!	Instant Replay	NO!
2	Janet Jackson	Come Back To Me	Nah
3	Beats International	Dub Be Good To Me	No but my wife had their album
4	Del Amitri	Nothing Ever Happens	No but it’s on a Q magazine compilation album I bought
5	Lisa Stansfield	Live Together	Nope
6	The Beloved	Hello	Yes! I did buy this one! The cassette single no less!
7	Phil Collins	I Wish It Would Rain Down	As if
8	Skid Row	18 And Life	Haddaway and shite
9	Sinéad’ O’Connor	Nothing Compares 2 U	Don’t think so
10	Eurythmics	The King And Queen Of America	That’s a no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000nnyn/top-of-the-pops-08021990

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 24 MAY 1990

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TOTP 10 MAY 1990

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TOTP 22 MAR 1990

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TOTP 15 MAR 1990

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TOTP 08 MAR 1990

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TOTP 01 MAR 1990

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TOTP 22 FEB 1990

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TOTP 08 FEB 1990

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