Bizarre Inc

TOTP 25 FEB 1993

Posted on July 1, 2022 by 80stastic

After having last week off due to Glastonbury, we’re back with a double helping of BBC4 TOTP repeats to review. To be honest, I wouldn’t have said no to another week’s holiday. I’ve only just caught up and suddenly were off again! At least there’s only eight artists on the show this week as there aren’t any Breakers and, with one notable and entirely permissible exception, they’re all in the TOTP studio.

We start with Bizarre Inc with a track I don’t recall at all entitled “Took My Love”. As with previous hit “I’m Gonna Get You”, it features Angie Brown on vocals and was taken from their album “Energique”. Actually, I don’t remember the album either. I thought they were a singles band.

*checks Bizarre Inc discography*

Nope. I don’t recognise that album cover but then I probably didn’t sell many copies of it in the Rochdale Our Price I was working in as, despite the presence of three hit singles, it only got as high as No 41 in the charts. In fact, did any of the dance acts from this period have big selling albums? Did the likes of Altern 8, K-Klass, Felix, Shut Up And Dance, Rozalla, Kym Sims, U.S.U.R.A. etc translate their singles success into album sales? Check these stats out:

Artist	Album	Chart peak
Altern 8	Full On… Mask Hysteria	11
Felix	#1	26
K-Klass	Universal	73
Kym Sims	Too Blind to See It	39
Rozalla	Everybody’s Free	20
Shut Up And Dance	Death Is Not the End	38
U.S.U.R.A.	Open Your Mind	Did not chart

OK, it’s not an exhaustive list but all of these acts had decent sized hit singles in the proceeding twelve months to this point and I’d have to say I don’t see a massive crossover trend for the parent albums. Anyway, back to Bizarre Inc and I didn’t find this track anywhere near as effective as their previous hits. It followed the same formula but didn’t quite have the same immediate impact. Also, what was the deal with the synths on swings? Didn’t another dance act use this prop on the show recently? I’m sure they did but I’m not going back in the archives to check who it was. Just chalk it up to another failed attempt by the TOTP producers to make dance acts look visually interesting.

“Took My Love’ peaked at No 19.

https://youtu.be/x-gOzlWnwcg

From a single I don’t remember at all to one which always brings to mind early 1993 when I hear it these days. The repositioning and relaunch of Annie Lennox as a solo artist after Eurythmics went on a decade long sabbatical had gone as well as it could possibly have been expected to. Her debut solo album “Diva” went straight in at No 1 and furnished Annie with two Top 10 singles. Then, just nine days before this TOTP aired, it won a BRIT for Best British Album. Annie won another for Best British Female Artist. It was heady stuff but she still wasn’t finished.

“Love Song For A Vampire” was a track Annie recorded for the Francis Ford Coppola directed film Bram Stokers Dracula starring Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves. For me, it was easily the best thing about the film. I just couldn’t get past Keanu’s disastrous English accent or the odd way that Oldman glided around the set as Dracula. The sexual imagery seemed like it existed just to create a headline and the whole thing just felt like a big letdown and a missed opportunity to reboot the classic tale.

Annie’s song (no, not John Denver’s) though was a fine piece; with her vocals being hauntingly beautiful and yet unsettling at the same time. Its unusual structure helps to create that feeling of otherworldliness that resonates from it. It doesn’t have a chorus as such and is built around a constant, pressing synth refrain. The track wasn’t on “Diva” so not wishing to miss out on a chance to plug it again, her record label made it a double A-side with “Little Bird” which was from the album. It was “Love Song For A Vampire” though that got all the airplay and it was an enormous hit peaking at No 3.

For Annie’s turn here, it looks like the TOTP production team have been busy repurposing sets from previous performances by other artists. We saw those candles and burning torches just the other week when Sting was on and the dry ice coming from that little run of steps looks familiar as well though I can’t think who else used that as a prop. They’ve added a window behind Annie presumably for a vampire to fly through. Thankfully there are no fake bats anywhere to be seen on stage.

https://youtu.be/HBmLGUlMJLA

Of course, Annie’s song (still not John Denver) isn’t the only hit single to come from a film about vampires in the 90s…

The only act not in the studio tonight is Michael Jackson and in all honesty I don’t think the show can be criticised for not pulling off the coup of a personal appearance by the self styled King of Pop himself. Despite it being 1993, in true Jacko tradition, he’s still releasing songs from an album that came out two years ago. “Give In To Me” was the seventh single of nine in total to come from “Dangerous” and was released an astonishing fifteen months after the album. That didn’t seem to matter though as it scaled the UK charts all the way to No 2 (it wasn’t released as a single in the US).

Jackson’s profile was higher than usual though even by his phenomenal standards at this time owing to the recent broadcast of his Oprah Winfrey interview that host Tony Dortie references in his intro. Maybe that helped shift a few units. I’m sure the tabloids would have been full of comment about Jacko’s explanation of his ever whitening skin which we now know was due to a condition called vitiligo and nothing to do with deliberate skin bleaching. Nobody was buying it at the time though (his explanation not his single).

As for the song itself, it just sounded like a rehash of previous hit “Dirty Diana” from the “Bad” album to me. As if to confirm my opinion, the CD single came with “Dirty Diana” as an extra track along with another song that included a heavy metal guitar solo in “Beat It” from “Thriller”. That came courtesy of Eddie Van Halen whereas the solo on “Give In To Me” was the work of Slash from the aforementioned Guns N’ Roses. As with previous single “Heal The World”, the 7” came in a poster bag sleeve. I hated those things! Such a faff to put back together if you dared to open it up to look at the poster.

The ubiquitous Dina Carroll next who seemed to be on the show every other week around this time. Having released three singles in 1992, none of which got any higher than No 26, Dina was back on the chart trail in 1993 with a song called “This Time”. Nothing to do with the Bryan Adams song of the same name nor indeed the England World Cup squad of 1982’s ditty ( I would have liked to have heard Dina tackle that one!), this was another slushy sounding ballad just like previous single “So Close”. It could just as easily have been sung by the likes of Eternal.

I’ve said it before but why were her record label A&M pissing about with these nice but average tracks when they could have just released “Don’t Be A Stranger”. The album had just come out but they didn’t release the ace up their sleeve until nine months later. I’ve never worked in marketing nor promotions but the strategy behind Dina’s release schedule still leaves me baffled.

“This Time” peaked at No 23 thereby becoming Dina’s worst performing single at the time. Even then, A&M didn’t turn to “Don’t Be A Stranger”, instead opting for the uptempo “Express” as the next single. You deserve a big, Johnny Rotten style raspberry for that A&M!

https://youtu.be/T2bJs7MR0YM

We arrive now at one of the names that I will always associate with 1993 though the artist concerned has gone onto successes way past those twelve months. I speak, of course, of Shaggy or as I think of him, one of the three ‘S’s – the unholy trinity of Snow, Shabba Ranks and his good self. Now when I was growing up, the name Shaggy only meant one thing – Scooby Doo’s best mate. Not in 1993 though. Shaggy was a chart sensation with his ragga / dancehall take on obscure ska song “Oh Carolina”. With samples of James Brown and the Peter Gunn theme thrown into the mix alongside Shaggy’s gruff vocals, it sounded fresh and new in 1993 despite actually having quite the retro roots.

Needless to say, I didn’t like it. I couldn’t be doing with all that growling, wind-it-up, raggamuffin ‘toasting’ Shaggy did although the song was as catchy as hell. In his defence, I would say that if I had to choose (with a gun to my head), I found Shaggy to be the most tolerable of the three ‘S’s. My Dad taught me as a kid that the three ‘S’s referred to your daily ablutions routine – shit, shower and shave. If I had to associate those with the musical three ‘S’s of 1993, I think I’d go:

Shit – Shabba Ranks (because he is/was)
Shower – Shaggy (because you felt dirty after listening to his record)
Shave – Snow (because he looked like he needed one to get rid of his bum fluff)

Back to “Oh Carolina” though and I always thought that it sounded like Shaggy was singing “yer arse” in the chorus. You know that bit is immediately after the words “Oh Carolina”? There. The actual lyrics are “Prowl off, jump and prance” but if you watch The Story of 1993 video on iPlayer, Shaggy suggests that him and his mates in their youth used to sing an expletive in there when listening to the original by the Folkes Brothers.

A success all around Europe, “Oh Carolina” was nowhere bigger than in the UK where it went to No 1 so we’ll be seeing it again soon and for that reason I’ll leave the Shaggy discussion there for now.

https://youtu.be/raZ5vIGcCs0

Here comes another young female solo artist who was a big deal for a short while in the 90s but who, like Dina Carroll before her, didn’t quite manage to sustain a career of longevity. Tasmin Archer scored one of the biggest hits of 1992 with her No 1 single “Sleeping Satellite” but, of course, that’s a double edged sword. Yeah, the initial success is great but how do you follow it up? If your next single doesn’t go to No 1 as well, it’s deemed to be a failure and you’re all washed up already. Even if you manage to repeat the trick and bag another chart topper, it only prolongs the eventual fall. Look at the case of Frankie Goes To Hollywood – three No 1 singles straight off the bat. A phenomenon. Then the fourth only goes to No 2 and the band are immediately written off as being down the dumper.

Given that piece of history, poor Tasmin was really up against it. Many may have thought that she didn’t give herself a decent chance by choosing a follow up single that dealt with the subject of child abuse and includes the radio unfriendly line ‘son of a bitch, you broke my heart’ in the lyrics. That view though assumes songwriting to be a commercial transaction – write an unchallenging, catchy tune, get a hit. Tasmin chose another path, the path of songwriting as an art. It was a brave choice and one that didn’t bring in the sales but which should have sustained her credibility as a serious recoding artist. I’m not sure it did.

The song in question was “In Your Care”, written from the point of view of a child experiencing abuse. It was angry in tone and delivery with Tasmin spitting out the ‘son of a bitch’ line. The first time you heard it, the moment was genuinely arresting. Another unusual decision was for a new artist to allow their second ever release to be a charity single but that’s just what Tasmin did with the profits from it going to Childline. You couldn’t argue that it’s subject matter wasn’t on point but was it too much for record buyers? After all, previous Childline singles had been much more jolly Beatles covers by the likes of Wet Wet Wet and Tom Jones. The latter had only just been in the charts the other week back then so maybe there was even a case of charity fatigue?

To try and signpost the gravity of the single, the TOTP producers have put a grainy, black and white picture effect at the beginning and end of the performance. I’m not sure it really makes its point. Still, nice to see a double bass on the show.

“In Your Care” peaked at No 16.

Has anyone, anywhere ever referred to Bryan Ferry as ‘The Guvnor’ before as host Tony Dortie does here in his intro? ‘The Guvnor’?! This is Bryan Ferry we’re talking about Tony! Not Viz comic mobster Big Vern, not self styled hard man footballer Paul Ince who actually went by the nickname of ‘The Guvnor’. It’s Bryan f*****g Ferry Dortie! He studied fine art at Newcastle University, he’s the archetypal lounge lizard, one of the most stylish rock stars of all time. You make him sound like Grouty from Porridge, the top dog feared by his fellow inmates who intimidates even the prison wardens. Dear God!

Anyway, rant over. Ferry is on the show to plug his new single, a cover of the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song “I Put A Spell On You”, the lead single from his latest album “Taxi”. This was Bryan’s first album since 1987’s “Bête Noire” though there had been a compilation album in between called “The Ultimate Collection” which had given him a hit single in the form of the rereleased “Let’s Stick Together”. As with much of his 70s solo output, “Taxi” was essentially a covers album (the very last track is a Ferry original) that actually did pretty well going to No 2 in the charts and achieving gold sales status. I remember being mildly surprised at its success as it seemed an anomaly in a musical landscape dominated by dance music but then, as we saw earlier, albums by dance acts never sold that well. As well this single, the album included tracks by the likes of Lou Reed, Carole King and a version of the Christian hymn “Amazing Grace”. I think I may have had a promo copy of the album though I’ve no idea where it is now.

The staging of the performance here is suitably pretentious for a Ferry production with dancers strutting about pointlessly while Bry tinkles the ivories on the piano. Is that Gail Ann Dorsey up there with him on bass? I think it is – well you can’t deny the class she brings to the proceedings I guess.

Although much of his back catalogue is outstanding, this does sound a bit dreary on reflection. It managed a chart high of No 18 but if you want a different (and in my opinion superior) take on the track, here’s the aforementioned Annie Lennox…

Those cheeky rascals 2 Unlimited are still ripping up the charts with their lowest common denominator dance anthem “No Limit”. It really was amazing how this lot managed to have so many hits (fourteen in the UK!) when their songs were so flimsy. There really is not a lot of flesh on the bones of “No Limit” but that didn’t seem to matter to the masses who sent it to No 1 for a whole five weeks!

https://youtu.be/8pmwsZ3J-uI

They’ve got a couple of masked up dancers in for this performance and the one on the right looks oddly familiar. Oh, I’ve got it. The smaller monster in this clip from 70s sci-fi show Space 1999 – dead ringer…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bizarre Inc	Took My Love	Nope
2	Annie Lennox	Love Song For A Vampire / Little Bird	No but wife had the Diva album with Little Bird on it
3	Michael Jackson	Give In To Me	Nah
4	Dina Carroll	This Time	No
5	Shaggy	Oh Carolina	Didn’t do it for me – no
6	Tasmin Archer	In Your Care	Great song but it’s not in the singles box
7	Bryan Ferry	I Put A Spell On You	No but I had that promo copy of the album. No idea where it is now
8	2 Unlimited	No Limit	Never!

Disclaimer

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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0018s7m/top-of-the-pops-25021993

TOTP 15 OCT 1992

Posted on April 13, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s mid October in 1992 here at TOTP Rewind and something very odd is happening to the UK singles charts which seems to have been infiltrated by a string of acts that have very little to do with music. Now if you haven’t been enjoying these TOTP repeats on BBC4, you may want to argue they could apply to most of the Top 40 occupants but I’m talking about a very specific form of chart interloper. These were entities that have no genuine musical connection nor talent but are just spin offs from another form of ‘entertainment’. Who am I talking about? Well, here’s an example; “Tetris” by Dr Spin, a track based on the theme tune to a computer game. Ah yes but that’s just one song you may say. You’d be wrong. In a week or two there will be another computer game based hit by an act calling themselves Ambassadors Of Funk (oh the irony) entitled “Supermarioland”. OK, so there was a mini craze for computer game inspired novelty hits. So what? It’s hardly the sound that ate the world. True but that’s not the end of it. Soon our eyes and ears will have to cope with the sight and sound of an all male stripping troupe gyrating up the charts as The Chippendales make their musical bow. Not to be outdone in the manliness stakes, the WWF Superstars will soon be pile-driving their way into Top 5 with their “Slamjam” single.

Where was all this coming from? Well, one influence may have been ITV’s new Saturday teatime show Gladiators that had just premiered the weekend before this TOTP aired. Remember that? Where members of the public tried to outdo the programme’s ‘gladiators’ in a series of physical challenges called things like Swingshot, Joust and Pole-Axe? It was presented by Ulrika Jonsson and John ‘Awooga’ Fashanu and made stars of the ‘gladiators’ like Jet, Hunter and Wolf. It was quite the ratings sensation for a while. Although there was no spin off single from the show until 1996 (an horrendous cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Boys Are Back In Town”) it was certainly part of the cultural landscape. Unfortunately we will be seeing two of these cultural giants in tonight’s TOTP.

We start though with Sunscreem who I was amazed to find had eight Top 40 hits. I have to admit that I couldn’t have named any of them without looking at their discography. I do remember them being around at this time and that they were a dance act but their material seemed to have passed me by. Listening to this track “Perfect Motion”, they’re a lot more accessible than I would have imagined, a hybrid of dance floor bpm and pop. They sort of remind me a little of New Order – certainly the single’s title sounds like a New Order track. Image wise, singer Lucia Holm was a sort of grunge version of Yazz. Hmm. Yazz does New Order? Is that really the comparison that I’m looking for?

Now what’s going on here? Pan’s People on TOTP in 1992? According to host Mark Franklin it was part of a retrospective strategy to celebrate the show’s forthcoming 1500th edition by revisiting highlights from its past. Pan’s People are dancing to “(They Long To Be) Close To You” by The Carpenters which was a No 6 hit in the UK in 1970. Mark though tells us it’s from 30 years ago to the day in 1972. I’ve checked the official charts database and can’t see anything on there to confirm that the song was in the charts then. According to the next-episode website there was no TOTP broadcast on that day so what gives? Surely the producers haven’t just made it up to fit with a neat narrative?

Pan’s People were the dance troupe that I remember from my first memories of the show which include Mud performing “Tiger Feet”. At some point they changed to Legs & Co and then Zoo was it? When were Ruby Flipper then? It doesn’t matter I suppose. Pan’s People’s performance isn’t too un-PC I guess. I’m sure there are some right howlers in the archives though.

Meanwhile back in the studio in 1992 we find Bizarre Inc featuring Angie Brown once more with their hit single “I’m Gonna Get You”. There’s two things that sprang to my attention whilst watching this back. Firstly, what was the deal with the keyboards made to look like swings? It’s literally the worst look for a musical instrument since the key-tar. Secondly, the different coloured alternate backdrops remind me of something but I can’t put my finger on it. It’ll come to me….oh God. I’ve got it. It’s Naked Attraction that weird dating show on Channel 4! The very last thing I want to put my finger on! It’s the multi coloured booths that the naked contestants stand in which reveal their bodies from the feet up! Not that I watch it myself you understand but I’ve seen it on Gogglebox. Honest!

“I’m Gonna Get You” peaked at No3.

From Naked Attraction to “Erotica” by Madonna. What a segue! Was this the peak of Madge’s controversy? She’d already incurred the wrath of the Vatican three years earlier with her “Like A Prayer” video and its imagery of the Ku Klux Klan’s burning crosses but now she was back with a three pronged attack on society’s moral standards according to some commentators (Mary Whitehouse must have had something to say about it all). Firstly there was the “Erotica” single with its S&M undertones which sees Madonna assuming the pseudonym of Mistress Dita and its MTV banned video (presumably the version shown on TOTP was heavily edited). Then there was a whole album called “Erotica” with its themes of fantasy, desire and pleasure. Lastly, and this was the real moral majority baiting clincher, there was the ‘coffee table’ book Sex. Has there ever been such a misnomer? Well, apparently not as it has sold 1.5 million copies and is the biggest and fastest selling coffee table book of all time. This was a 128 page spiral bound tome that featured images of nudity, simulations of sexual acts, bondage etc. It came in a sealed bag presumably to stop casual browsers seeing what all the fuss was about. I remember being in WH Smith around this time and some curious teenagers asking the poor sales assistant to open the seal so they could peruse the contents. Happily, she refused to do so.

As for the song “Erotica”, was it really that different to “Justify My Love” from two years prior? I’m not so sure. Maybe Madge was just taking continuing that theme to its logical conclusion? Where could you go with it other than to illicit more outrage? I have to admit I wasn’t that convinced.

“Erotica” the single peaked at No 3.

I may not have been convinced by Madonna’s latest offering but it was wholly preferable to the next act as we arrive at the first of these chart outliers that I mentioned before. I speak of Doctor Spin and the Game Boy influenced track “Tetris”. Now, there had been computer games when I was growing up in the 70s but despite amazing the pre-teenage me, they were incredibly basic. I had a Binatone console…

Ah, happy memories. By 1992, things had advanced dramatically but I had never gone back to the world of gaming after my 70s foray. Consequently, when Our Price for whom I was working started selling them in the early 90s I was a bit lost. I was in the Rochdale store at this time and we were stocking a Nintendo and Sega range. I recall there being a big deal about the latter’s release of the follow up to Sonic the Hedgehog. The release date was specifically shifted to a Tuesday so the marketing for it could be framed as Sonic 2sday which was the 24th November. That marketing budget by the way was $10 million and it worked generating 1 million sales in the US and 750,000 in the UK in a day selling out everywhere.

All of this helped establish gaming as not just a legitimate leisure pursuit but as one of the fastest growing. The cash-in spin-off was inevitable I guess and so it came to pass that Andrew Lloyd Webber exploited the gap in the market with this heinous load of nonsense. Who bought this? “Tetris” peaked at No 6 which presumably was the average age of the punter who purchased it.

We move seamlessly (not even a voice over intro) onto the next stage where Boyz II Men are patiently awaiting their cue. What on earth must they have been thinking about British taste watching Doctor Spin on before them?! They here to perform “End Of The Road” of course and, given its popularity back in the day, I was surprised to see very little love for it out there in Twitter land. Look at this guy for example:

Horrific. The auditory equivalent of rabies.
— Peter (@DasJarg) April 8, 2022

Wow! If that’s what he thought of Boys II Men I wonder what he made of Doctor Spin?! As for me, I didn’t doubt these guys could sing but their staging and image was bizarre. They’ve got the prop of a streetlight which I guess references the origins of doo-wop which was clearly an influence on the band but why are they all wearing baseball caps, jackets and jeans?! It’s ludicrous. Also, why has one of them got a walking stick? Did he have a genuine leg injury or was it an affectation Mick Hucknall style? Boyz II Men – crazy name, crazy guys!

Four Breakers now starting with a cover version which is surely one of the most pointless and also most forgotten in musical history. It had been nearly two years since The Farm had been riding a wave of popularity off the back of two huge hit singles in “Groovy Train” and “All Together Now”. Debut album “Spartacus” had risen swiftly to the top of the charts. However, subsequent singles releases had been minor hits and by the time they were releasing new material from second album “Love See No Colour”, those minor hits had turned into flops. The title track and follow up single “Rising Sun” had both missed the Top 40 altogether so what do you do when in need of a hit to reverse your chart fortunes? We all know the answer to this by now. Their choice of cover version was decidedly odd. Choosing The Human League’s classic No 1 “Don’t You Want Me” seemed frought with issues not the least being that Phil and co’s version was so definitive that anything that came after it was destined to be seen as inferior. That applied to the video as well as the song so what The Farm served up as their promo looked ghastly. Some sort of karaoke bar setting with sing-a-long lyrics on screen and a cameo by well known alcoholic George Best? My God. What were they thinking?!

The cover version trick worked though and returned the band to the Top 20 and paved the way for a rerelease of the “Love See No Colour” single which made No 35. However, it proved to be a false dawn and their only two subsequent chart entries were with reissues of “All Together Now”.

I’ve seen many a band come and go, many a musical genre rise and fall in the course of these TOTP reviews but one constant has been AC/DC. Racking up hits whatever else was going on in the charts, they never seemed to go out of fashion. They are back in our Top 40 courtesy of a live version of “Highway To Hell” which was to promote their live album called…erm… “AC/DC Live”. I’m guessing this was released to plug the five year gap that would follow the release of 1990’s “The Razors Edge” album and its follow up “Ballbreaker” which didn’t arrive until 1995. I remember that “AC/DC Live” was a double album and the slip case for the cassette version was a bugger to get back on without tearing it after taking it off. That, and that the single made No 14, are all I have to say about this AC/DC release.

The Wedding Present’s single for this month was a number called “Sticky” which I don’t remember at all but then they did release 12 singles in 1992 as part of their “Hit Parade” project so I’m not going to give myself a kicking over that.

The clip of the video we see here has a bit of a Twin Peaks vibe to it with a bloke in the desert telling the listener to get out using a speeded up animation effect before a devil figure wrestles with someone in a white room with a black and white chequered floor. Very weird. The single peaked at No 17, the second consecutive single to do so in their attempt to equal Elvis Presley’s record for the most hit singles in one year.

The final Breaker comes from The Orb. After the genre breaking ‘chess’ performance on the show for the last single “Blue Room” that apparently had a major effect on Robbie Williams and his view on how to make music, they’re back with standalone single “Assassin”. I have to say this does/did little for me but then I was never a bpm fiend. The video reminds me of one that a group of students on my course made way back in the mid 80s at Sunderland Polytechnic. We all had to write, film and edit a small film as part of the module. My group’s was called “Wet Dream” but it was not what you’re thinking and nothing approaching similar to Madonna’s “”Erotica” promo! One of the other groups ran out of time so in the end just filmed some of them sat down and added some visual effects over the top to a soundtrack of Jean Michel Jarre. I didn’t think much of it at the time but I think I prefer it to The Orb’s video.

“Assassin” peaked at a No 12.

The return of Bon Jovi next. It had been four years since their last album “New Jersey” and the musical landscape had changed almost beyond recognition. Added to that, the band were facing some existential demons after taking a deliberate hiatus during which Jon Bon Jovi wrote a film soundtrack and Richie Sambora a solo album. Jon is on record as saying that “We’d been kicked in the teeth by Nirvana but we didn’t pay attention to that. We got rid of the clichés, wrote some socially conscious lyrics and got a haircut. I didn’t do a grunge thing and I didn’t do a rap thing but I knew I couldn’t rewrite “Livin’ On A Prayer” again so I didn’t try. And it paid off”.

It was true. “Keep The Faith” the single and the album were no attempt to jump on the Nirvana bandwagon but nor were they more of the poodle rock on which they’d made their name. For a start it was (and remains) the longest album they’d ever recorded clocking in at 66 minutes. The album version of the title track is nearly 6 minutes long itself though it was edited down for radio. Now I’m not suggesting that longer means a more mature sound necessarily but neither were they looking for the quick thrill opening of something like “Born To Be My Baby”.

The album would spawn six hit singles and go to No 1 in the UK and No 5 in the US. Incredibly they released the last single from it (“Dry County”) nearly 16 months to the day since the album came out. It was, in short, a monster.

Jon Bon Jovi seems to be channelling his inner Davy Jones from The Monkees in this performance with his maracas action. I had a promo copy of the album through work at one point but I’ve no idea what happened to it. You can’t really say the same of Bon Jovi.

Tasmin Archer is at No 1 for the first week of two with “Sleeping Satellite”. It really was a magnificent achievement for a debut single especially when you consider that major, established acts like Madonna and Bon Jovi had new material out at the time. Written about the moon landing and the Apollo missions of the 60s and early 70s, it must be the best (and only) song to reference space hardware since Kirsty MacColl had a hit with Billy Bragg’s “New England” in 1985. Do you hear it played on the radio these days? Maybe on the retro stations like Absolute 90s. Whether it is or not, there will always be a part of 1992 that belongs to Tasmin Archer.

And finally Cyril (one for you Esther Rantzen fans), there was an epilogue to this show where we got a glimpse (possibly unwanted) of an act on next week’s show and it’s the second of those cultural chart outliers. We are ‘treated’ to a few seconds of the new single by The Chippendales “Give Me Your Body” plus a personal invitation from one of them to join them on the show next week. You have been warned.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sunscreem	Perfect Motion	Nope
2	The Carpenters	(They Long To Be) Close To You	No but everyone has a Carpenters Greatest Hits album don’t they?
3	Bizarre Inc featuring Angie Brown	I’m Gonna Get You	No
4	Madonna	Erotica	No, I wasn’t convinced
5	Doctor Spin	Tetris	Sod off!
6	Boyz II Men	End Of The Road	I didn’t think it was the auditory equivalent of rabies but I didn’t buy it either
7	The Farm	Don’t You Want Me	No, no I didn’t want you
8	AC/DC	Highway To Hell	Not my thing
9	The Wedding Present	Sticky	Nah
10	The Orb	Assassin	See 8 above
11	Bon Jovi	Keep The Faith	Not the single but I had that promo album for a while
12	Tasmin Archer	Sleeping Satellite	Good song but no

Disclaimer

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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001648v/top-of-the-pops-15101992

TOTP 01 OCT 1992

Posted on April 6, 2022 by 80stastic

The new ‘year zero’ TOTP format isn’t so new anymore as this show marked its one year anniversary. Host Mark Franklin makes reference to this in his off screen intro and also mentions the shift of location from Television Centre to BBC’s Elstree base in Hertfordshire. All of the changes involved in the new format were meant to reconnect the then nearly 28 years old TOTP with its traditional youthful audience who were embracing a dance revolution that the show was struggling to showcase. In a case of perfect symmetrical timing, the first act on tonight is performing a song called “Connected”. I refer, of course, to Stereo MCs.

Along with Suede from last week’s show, for a short while this lot were the epitome of hip. Not the same sort of hip that Brett and the boys exuded though. No, this was a more grubby, deep down and dirty type of hip. Not that I’m suggesting that Suede were a bunch of Mummies Boys. No, it’s just that the face of Stereo MCS, Rob Birch, had the look of someone who’d seen some things that you definitely wish you hadn’t. Well, that and Catweazle (Google him if you’re too young to know who that was). I wrongly assumed that they were a Manchester band due to their image and sound and although they had toured with Happy Mondays, they were in fact from Nottingham. They’d also been around since the end of the last decade and had already released two albums before they came up with “Connected”. The lead single and title of their third album, it hit a chord with both the dance heads and the indie crowd with its skanking beat and ‘aa-aa-ye-ah’ chant. It was perfect for lumbering around the dance floor Ian Brown / King Monkey style.

Just like Sade before them on last week’s show, the band were prolific at releasing material early in their career (three albums in three years) but then took nine years to record a follow up to “Connected”. The world felt like a very different place by then (9/11 was only a few months away from happening) and it didn’t sell nearly as well as its predecessor which went platinum, won a BRIT award and peaked at No 2 in the charts. They have released another three albums since with the last coming in 2011.

Some Antipodean rock/pop now as Crowded House continue to mine the wealth of tunes from their “Woodface” album with the release of fifth single “It’s Only Natural”. The LP had come out 15 months earlier but sales of it only really took off after “Weather With You” was a Top 10 hit in February /March of ‘92. I loved this album and got a signed copy when the band did a PA at the HMV megastore in Manchester. I think they did a small set before playing a gig at Manchester Academy on the evening (which I also went to). It was a fine show, probably one of the best I have ever witnessed.

As for this TOTP performance, clearly the producers didn’t know what to do with the band and so they’ve ended up playing against a completely white backdrop with the only concession to props being the dry ice machine being put into top gear. Or maybe it was a deliberate statement that said these guys are all about the music and don’t need any cheap gimmicks getting in the way?

As for the song itself, you have to admire any song they gets ‘this mortal coil’ and ‘circumstantial’ into its lyrics but what was it actually about? Could it be that Neil Finn was singing about his hair? Neil’s barnet must be one of the most odd in music. Not flashy odd (Billy Idol) or designed to shock odd (Sigue Sigue Sputnik) but naturally odd. It’s got a life of its own, stubbornly growing at odd angles and generally behaving in an unruly way. Neil of course has previous in the hair stakes. He was in art rockers Split Enz (get it?) and his hair was even more mental then. “It’s Only Natural” peaked at No 24.

There have been a few changes to the ‘year zero’ format over the past 12 months one of which has been a return to a chart countdown (sort of). They started off just listing the Top 10 but over the last few weeks they’ve expanded that to include the rest of the chart. Here we get Nos 20 to 11 over a video by Chaos for their cover of “Farewell My Summer Love”. Who were these guys? Well, they were Sinitta’s backing dancers who were put together into a pop group by her then boyfriend Simon Cowell and included a 9 year old in their ranks, Don’t remember them? You can forgive yourself as firstly, just like with Omar’s “Music” single that soundtracked this feature last week, their song never actually made the Top 40 peaking at No 55. Secondly, their name. Does Ultimate Kaos ring any bells? That’s what they changed it to two years on from this and it worked as they clocked up six Top 40 hits. The power of the word ‘ultimate’ and some misspelling in evidence there.

If the staging for Crowded House was minimalist, then the producers have gone all Laurence Llewelyn- Bowen for the next act. Hear that noise? That’s the sound of the bottom of the music barrel being scraped. Or possibly it’s the annoying sound of one of the most iconic computer games of the decade. Tetris was that descending blocks puzzle game that was Nintendo’s top selling title and that came as the default game with their Game Boy console bundle. OK, so who’s idea was it to release a song based on the game? Nintendo themselves? Oh no. If you thought about it for long enough I reckon you would come up with the scoundrel’s name. The aforementioned Simon Cowell? Good guess but no. Need a clue? OK – Bombalurina. No, not Timmy Mallett but Andrew Lloyd Webber. The good lord (!) released a Eurodance version of the “Tetris” theme under the name of Doctor Spin and the idiotic British public bought it in enough quantities to take it to No 6.

Obviously the ex-Mr Brightman wasn’t going to perform this atrocity himself so for the sake of TOTP some dancers have been drafted in and dressed in costumes resembling blocks from the game. The absolute state of this. Unbelievably, this wasn’t the only record that was a hit based on this ludicrous idea as simultaneously in the charts came “Supermarioland” by Ambassadors Of Funk. What a time to be alive!

Some Breakers now starting with The Sundays. This is a band I really should have massively been into but yet again somehow they slipped under my radar and through my grasp. I eventually cottoned on when they released their (so far) final album “Static & Silence” five years on from this point but I really should dive deeper into their back catalogue. “Goodbye” was taken from their second album “Blind” and marked their first release on the Parlophone label after Rough Trade had entered receivership leading to the band relocating labels. Their debut album “Reading, Writing And Arithmetic” had been released with the indie legends and had been a huge success going Top 5 despite the lack of a hit single. That statistic was amended in 1998 when “Here’s Where The Story Ends” was covered by London dance act Tin Tin Out and taken into the Top 10. Somehow I always get that confused with Electribe 101’s “Tell Me When The Fever Ended”. Damn my fading memory.

I can name the first three singles from Neneh Cherry with no prompting whatsoever but ask me for anything after that and I’m struggling. There was “7 Seconds“ with Youssou N’Dour and…something on the “Red Hot+Blue” album? I remember the front cover to her second album “Homebrew” but nothing else about it and certainly not this lead single from it called “Money Love”.

Back in 1989 she’d been a huge breakout star with her “Raw Like Sushi” album achieving platinum status for sales of 300,000 units. Three years in pop music is a long time though and by the time “Homebrew” came out though, her era of glory felt like a long time ago. Did she still have the ear of pop fans? Sales of the album suggested no. It crawled to a high of No 27 despite the inclusion of a track featuring REM’s Michael Stipe. The single “Money Love” fared little better not even making the Top 20. Not that it wasn’t any good but how could Neneh expect to compete with a single based around the music used in a hand held computer game? Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber – you truly are an arse sir.

We had an ‘exclusive” performance of “Sentinel” by Mike Oldfield just last week but that hasn’t stopped the TOTP producers including it in the Breakers seven days later. I’m really not sure the video which seems to be a montage of various different takes on the “Tubular Bells” graphic warranted another outing. If you Google Mike Oldfield some of the entries in the People Also Ask section include ‘How long is Mike Oldfield on Tubular Bells?’, ‘How much is Mike Oldfield?’ and ‘What did Mike Oldfield?’. Eh?

By the end of the fourth of tonight’s Breakers we will have achieved optimum capacity for shoehorning the most songs into the smallest amount of time. Eight songs in less than 12 minutes! I really think this was TOTP trying to compete with ITV’s entirely video based music vehicle The Chart Show. This last track really deserved more airtime. REM had gone truly global with the previous year’s “Out Of Time” album. Not resting on their laurels, they released their third album in four years “Automatic For The People” with the lead single being “Drive”. For me this is one of those songs that leaves an impression on you after just that first listen so heavy is its sound. A dark, brooding, menacing track, it’s marked out further by its odd structure- it doesn’t really have a chorus.

There’s various online theories about what the lyrics mean especially around who Ollie is but according to Michael Stipe, one of its influences comes from an unexpected source. The line “Hey kids, rock ‘n’ roll” was inspired by David Essex’s “Rock On”. Actually, I’m sure there’s a scene in his film Stardust when his character Jim MacLaine is doing a gig with his band The Stray Cats and he shouts out “Hey, rock ‘n’ roll!” during it now I come to think of it. As good as “Drive” is, for me it’s not best track on the album with at least three or four other songs ahead of it. It peaked at No 11, the band’s second biggest UK hit at that point in their career yet, unusually for an album’s lead single, it doesn’t feature on subsequent Best Of albums.

Right who’s next? Oh great, it’s Dr Alban who’s up to No 2. Look man, if I need a song called “It’s My Life” in my…erm…life then I’ve got that wonderful song by Talk Talk. Hell, at a stretch I’ve even got the cover version by No Doubt. I have zero need for this Eurodance-ified house track with some terrible rapping tacked onto it. Apparently the track was re-recorded in 2014 by the good doctor and some bloke called Chawki and retitled “It’s My Life (Don’t Worry)” but I really can’t be arsed to check it out not even for the purposes of this blog. Look, it’s my life OK?

Another song now that totally transports me back to this era when I had just started working at the Our Price store in Rochdale. “Iron Lion Zion” was the third posthumously released single by Bob Marley following his death in 1981. We’d already had “Buffalo Soldier” in 1983 to promote the “Confrontation” album of unreleased recordings which went to No 4. A year later came “One Love/People Get Ready” to promote the “Legend” compilation album. Fast forward to 1992 and “Iron Lion Zion” was put out to advertise the “Songs Of Freedom” box set. Like its two predecessors it went Top 5.

Espousing Rastafarian beliefs of Zion as the Promised Land of Ethiopia and the Lion Of Judah representing Haile Selassie, it also featured legendary jazzer Courtney Pine. Appealing to both daytime radio and the clubs via its 12” mix, it was a timely reminder of Marley’s talent and legacy. Apparently his final words to his son Ziggy on his death bed were “Money can’t buy life”. A wise man indeed.

If it’s the early 90s then there’s always room for one more dance tune and here it is – “I’m Gonna Get You” by Bizarre Inc featuring Angie Brown. This was the third hit on the spin for these Staffordshire techno ravers following “Such A Feeling” and “Playing With Knives” and it would prove to be the biggest of the lot when it peaked at No 3. This time they had roped in a female soul singer with the surname of Brown to help but it wasn’t Jocelyn. Nope, but Angie Brown had been recruited to sing like her namesake. “I’m Gonna Get You” featured lyrics from Jocelyn’s song “Love’s Gonna Get You” and rather than pay to sample the original, Angie filled in and re-recorded that part of the track.

So who is Angie Brown? Well, she’s worked mainly as a backing singer with some huge names like The Rolling Stones, Happy Mondays, Kate Bush, Chaka Khan and the aforementioned Neneh Cherry. She’s also on Mark Morrison’s 1996 No 1 “Return Of The Mack” but her first taste of chart success in her own right came in 1992 with Bizarre Inc. Despite having Angie to front the record, there are five blokes up there with her on stage (two dancers and three keyboard players) at least half of which have the regulation ponytail for these times. For all that, I didn’t mind this one.

As it’s an anniversary show, it’s a perfect opportunity to squeeze in a mention that Radio 1 celebrated their own 25th birthday the day before this broadcast. Fair enough so how to mark this event on TOTP? Bit of a video montage of clips featuring past and present DJs perhaps. Maybe back in the day when Radio 1 and TOTP were so inextricably linked you couldn’t see the joins that would have been what happened. This was a new era though where Radio 1 ties had been severed so just a three second clip of all the DJs together on the steps of Broadcasting House (?) saying “Happy Birthday Radio 1 FM!” was deemed more than adequate.

Also celebrating 25 years of existence (just about) were the next act Status Quo. Hang on! Weren’t they on the first show of the ‘year zero’ era? Yes, they were playing a horrible version of “Let’s Work Together” from their “Rock ‘til You Drop” album. One year on almost to the day and they’re still seen by TOTP producer Stanley Appel as the go to party band when you’re having a knees up. Had he learned nothing from the past year?! So what are they playing this time? A medley of course! Just about everything they released around this time was a medley wasn’t it? This one was called “Roadhouse Medley (Anniversary Waltz Part 25)” and featured tracks including “The Wanderer”, “Marguerita Time” and “Living On An Island”. Bigging up the performance by it being live from Amsterdam was neither here nor there as the band were just in a room that could gave been anywhere. What a horrible, pointless waste of everyone’s time!

The Shamen still rule the roost with “Ebeneezer Goode”. Remember when Wet Wet Wet deleted “Love Is All Around” after 15 weeks at No 1 because they were bored of the whole thing by then? Well The Shamen did the same thing two years before them with this single but you don’t hear much about it. There were rumours it was because of the constant press attention about the supposed drug references in the track but the band themselves said it was that its prolonged run at the top was mucking up their schedule for subsequent single releases. Naughty naughty!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MCs	Connected	Don’t think I did
2	Crowded House	It’s Only Natural	No but I had the Woodface album it was from
3	Chaos	Farewell My Summer Love	Hell no!
4	Doctor Spin	Tetris	I’d rather have eaten my own arm
5	The Sundays	Goodbye	No
6	Neneh Cherry	Money Love	Nope
7	Mike Oldfield	Sentinel	Nah
8	REM	Drive	Not the single but I bought the Automatic For The People album
9	Dr. Alban	It’s My Life	Definitely not!
10	Bob Marley	Iron Lion Zion	I did not
11	Bizarre Inc featuring Angie Brown	I’m Gonna Get You	Didn’t mind it, didn’t buy it
12	Status Quo	Roadhouse Medley (Anniversary Waltz Part 25)	Are you joking?!
13	The Shamen	Ebeneezer Goode	It’s a no

Disclaimer

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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0015x90/top-of-the-pops-01101992

TOTP 21 NOV 1991

Posted on November 25, 2021 by 80stastic

Welcome to TOTP Rewind where we are deep into November 1991 and the UK charts seem to be swamped by dance tunes of every hue. Over the last few weeks we’ve had the likes of Altern-8, K-Klass, Rozalla, Control, SL2 , 2 Unlimited and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping with nearly half of the acts on tonight’s show of the same flavour. As for the rest of the twelve artists, three could possibly be categorised as metal bands, there’s two Michaels, a cover version of a 70s disco classic and some mainstream Scandinavian rock pop. There’s also another new TOTP presenter who seem to be turning up as frequently as a Boris Johnson saying “Forgive me”.

We start as we mean to go on though with the first of those dance anthems from Bizarre Inc and “Playing With Knives”. The disembodied voice of the aforementioned new presenter tells us that this is the follow up to their previous hit “Such A Good Feeling” but also describes them as ‘the Stafford ravers’. Hang on, aren’t Altern-8 also from Stafford?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yes they are! What are the chances! It turns out that Bizarre Inc founding member Mark “Aaron” Archer had already defected and was part of the Altern-8 set up by this point so it all sounds a bit incestuous. I guess this was the rave equivalent of the Stourbridge indie three of The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin who were all having chart hits at this time as well. Still, five chart acts from two West Midlands towns beginning with the letter ‘S’ – it was all a bit bizarre (inc).

As for the track, it sounded very much like its predecessor to my un(rave)-cultured ears but not as good and what was with the weird vocal effects at the start? I’ve checked out the original recorded version and it doesn’t sound like that. It sounds like she’s singing over the top of a backing track or something. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

"We used a singer called Yvonne Yanney… She sang live and when we watched the playback it was absolutely awful, they'd put loads of delay and reverb on the vocal and it was a complete mess." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 12, 2021

Ah, that explains it. Poor woman must have been devastated watching the playback. Her big moment and she ends up sounding like she’s singing underwater. Why did the TOTP producers do that to her? Were they trying to beef up the performance a bit? Sure, by now the established template for a dance act of having the studio boffin blokes on keyboards wearing puffa jackets in the background behind a singer trying to combine a live vocal with some slick dance moves was wearing thin but this?! Still, it didn’t harm the single’s chart performance as it climbed all the way to No 4. Bizarre Inc would top that the following year when “I’m Gonna Get You” (featuring UK soul singer Angie Brown) went to No 3. As with most of these rave artists though, when it came to selling an album it was a different matter and their “Energique” long player stalled at No 41.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmjwM5adUjg

We then switch to co-host Mark Franklin (by now and old hand at this TOTP lark) who, in his segue to the Top 10 countdown, also welcomes back Terry Waite, the Anglican Church envoy who had been released by his Lebanese kidnappers after 1,763 days in captivity three days before this TOTP aired. Whilst we were all relieved for Terry and his family that he was finally free and admittedly it was a massive news story, it does sound a bit incongruous when highlighted in a pop music programme.

A first view next of a dance act that would manage to sell albums throughout the 90s and bucket loads of them too. M People would breakthrough the barrier segregating dance and mainstream pop music in spectacular fashion over the course of the decade, racking up 19 Top 40 singles (including 10 Top Tenners) and 3 Top 3 albums. They also won the 1994 Mercury Music Prize for their “Elegant Slumming” album.

However, it all began with this single “How Can I Love You More?” which, despite the promotional push of this TOTP appearance, would peak at No 29. If this has immediately made you think that you were sure that it was a bigger hit than that, rest assured that your memory is not playing tricks on you. A remix by renowned DJ and producer Sahsa was released just over a year later in February 1993 and it duly went Top 10 peaking at No 8 under the guise of “How Can I Love You More (Mixes)”.

It’s that disembodied* presenter voice again which tells us that M People are Mike Pickering, Paul Heard and Heather Small in the intro. Pickering was a DJ at legendary Manchester club The Haçienda (despite having lived in Manchester for over a year by this point, I still hadn’t ventured anywhere near the place) who had also signed Happy Mondays to Factory Records where he was an A&R person. His first name supplied the inspiration (if you can call it that) for the band’s name – I always thought it was a bit of a crummy moniker for a band to be honest.

*Why did they keep doing this when introducing a new presenter on the show, not putting their fizzog on screen until a third of the way through the show?

If I thought that their name was a bit rubbish, I couldn’t argue with Heather Small’s vocal which blows most of their dance act peers out of the water when it came to doing it live. So recognisable would her vocal stylings become that she would eventually become famous all over again 20 years later via the sitcom Miranda…

So that’s the new presenter! His name is Steve Anderson and sadly, his story ends tragically. A stand up comic, after his brief stint on TOTP, Steve worked on the shopping channel Price Drop TV and appeared as a trust coach on the BBC Two dating show Would Like To Meet before returning to comedy in 2007, opening the Portable Comedy Club in London the following year. However, he died unexpectedly in his sleep aged just 49 in 2012. As with The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself, he must have had a connection with Stourbridge as he was buried there. RIP Steve.

Back in 1991 though, he was introducing Bassheads and their smash hit “Is There Anybody Out There?”. Although this is another dance act, there’s not an actual ‘singer’ on this one to front the whole thing although there are the obligatory males (they always seem to be blokes don’t they?) scratching away on mixing desks in the background. What the track does have though is a small section of rapping in it so, in an attempt to mix it up a bit, the show producers have positioned the rapper within the front row of the gawping crowd to make it appear as if he is just a part of the studio audience. Then when he starts rapping, it’s got some sort of surprise value. Genius! Except it isn’t really is it? It doesn’t work that well and it’s not even an original trick is it, a studio plant? So pleased are they with this staging though that the TOTP producers repeat the trick by placing Mark Franklin in that same front row. He is clearly seen as the camera pans round before Bassheads have even finished performing and is in position to go straight to camera for the next segue. To be honest, I think they’ve overplayed their hand on this one and it’s all becoming a bit tedious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mE8I6P_vCE

Talking of tedious….here’s Michael Bolton! Bollers was onto his fifth UK hit with this, his version of Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman” which was also his second US chart topper after “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You”. Taken from his “Time, Love & Tenderness” album, he wouldn’t score quite as big a success with it over here but it did make the Top 10 all the same.

This seemed like so much cynical, money for old rope to me. Having seen a poor return in the UK on his past two singles (neither of which made the Top 20), Bolton resorted to a cover of a song that was already well known (it had been a No 2 hit as recently as 1987 over here thanks to its use in a Levi’s advert) just in time for the Christmas market. It should have been renamed “When A Tosser Needs A Hit”. Michael was still well cocooned in his monstrous mullet phase and it seems like his backing band were recruited on their ability to grow their hair the same. Check out the guitarist and drummer!

The follow up single was something called “Missing You Now” which was a collaboration with Kenny G which gives me terrifying flashbacks to when I saw Bolton in concert and the support was “The G Man” as he called him. And no, I’m not retelling that story all over again! It’s in many a previous post on the blog if you really want to know exactly what happened!

And back with the dance tunes! This is just getting ridiculous now! Who the chuff were Love Decade?! I have zero recollection of either them or their track “So Real”. Whoever they were, they seemed intent on breaking the record for the amount of faceless blokes on keyboards you could have on the TOTP stage at any one time. Unusually, this time the singer isn’t a woman and to be fair, the guy does a better job than some of his peers.

As far as I can make out, they were from Manchester and were also known as Decadance. The singer was a bloke called Jerome Stokes who sounds like he should be playing up front for a Championship football club whilst his oppos included Rob Van Winkelen…wasn’t that Vanilla Ice’s real name*? Also, what was with “THE NORTH HAS RISEN’ banner behind them. The Twitter consensus seemed to be that it was a retort to the Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu performance of “It’s Grim Up North” the other week – go on you Manc lads!

“So Real” peaked at No 14.

*No, no it wasn’t but it was close.

The Exclusive act tonight is a bit of a let down. Scorpions? Did they really qualify for a section which had recently been filled by the likes of Steve Wonder and Queen? I get that they were a bigger deal in mainland Europe and especially in their native Germany and that you had to admire their longevity (they had been formed when The Beatles were in their chart eating pomp) but “Wind Of Change” had been their only worldwide hit. Were they a band or a song?

“Send Me An Angel” was the follow up to that Cold War busting, Berlin Wall toppling anthem and was very much in the same vein but without the hook of that whistling bit. It was a big hit in countries like France, Sweden, The Netherlands and of course Germany but it caused very minor ripple in the pools of the UK and US charts where it peaked at Nos 27 and 44 respectively. I can imagine many a lighter having been waved in the air when the band performed the track live but it’s a fairly unremarkable soft rock ballad otherwise.

There’s hardly time for Steve Anderson to get through his next ink before his face is wiped off screen by the Breakers section starting with…who? Anticappella? Was that really their name? Yet again, this one must have passed me by but apparently they were the brainchild of Italian producer Gianfranco Bortolotti who was responsible for a load of shite dance hits in the UK throughout the 90s as he was also the guy behind the similarly titled Capella. Remember them? They had a slew of hits in the mid 90s with tracks like “U Got 2 Let the Music”, “U Got 2 Know” and “U & Me”. He seems to be a tad limited creatively I would suggest if his band names and song titles are anything to go by. Oh hang on, Anticapella’s debut hit here does have a different and indeed unconventional title – “2√231”. The record was still as rank as old arses though.

That Scandinavian rock pop that I mentioned earlier now from, of course, Roxette with the fourth single from their “Joyride” album called “Spending My Time”. Now I may have not been able to recall a fair few of the songs in the show tonight and this one is no exception but I won’t have been the only one. You see, the single was not one of their bigger hits and indeed only peaked at No 32 in the US where their previous five single releases had been either No 1 or No 2. The reason that hit underperformed and therefore became one of their least known songs was because of record company shenanigans, at least that’s what the band’s Per Gessle said to the songfacts.com website:

“I’m sure it would have become a Top 5 song in the US if EMI wouldn’t have scrapped the entire company and sacked 122 people in the middle of marketing this one. People loved it but radio never got the chance to catch up. The Music Business. You win some, you lose some.”

Yes apparently, at the end of 1991, EMI merged with other record companies to form EMI Records Group North America. The merger resulted in the new company firing over a hundred members of staff and saw Roxette receiving little support from the new label (that’s what it says on Wikipedia anyway).

It was either that or the fact that it was a very dull song that did for it. “Spending My Time” peaked at No 22 in the UK.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised any more by the frequency with which metal bands have sneaked onto TOTP courtesy of an inflated chart position instigated by a loyal fanbase but somehow I am. Again. In the middle of all this raving comes Skid Row and a little ditty called “Wasted Time” which would make the UK Top 20. This was from their “Slave To The Grind” album and is supposedly about Steven Adler, the original drummer of Guns N’ Roses. The song was was written by lead singer Sebastian Bach, guitarist Dave Sabo and bass player Rachel Bolan. Despite his input, Bolan is on record as describing the track as “The biggest piece of shit we ever recorded.”. Yeah, I’ll leave it there. Really nothing else to say.

Now, here’s a bunch of rockers I did quite like. Although undoubtedly part of the rock family tree as it were, Extreme made a name for themselves off the back of the acoustic sub section of that genre. Their previous and biggest hit “More Than Words” was definitely in that vein and music fans went wild for its spare, brittle nature making it a US No 1 and a UK No 2 song. Although they reportedly came to see “More Than Words” as an albatross around their collective necks, it didn’t stop the band from releasing another acoustic single as its follow up, albeit a more fast paced track. Written by Guitarist Nuno Bettencourt on his newly acquired first ever 12-string guitar, “Hole Hearted” had a strange gestation though as he described in an interview with Songfacts.com:

“I wrote it on the toilet! I got kind of excited that I had my first 12-strin, and it made me want to go to the toilet. I sat down, took my time, and dare I say, the ideas just came out. They came pouring out.”

That tale reminds me of the time when I was a first year student at Sunderland Polytechnic. Back then, I truly believed that I had a shot at a career in music journalism. How so? Well, I was the co-editor of the music section of the poly newspaper and I had secured an interview with a bona fide chart band who had recently been in the Top 10 and had scored a US No 1! Who were they? Cutting Crew of course! They were playing a gig at the poly and I interviewed them backstage beforehand. In reply to my question about how long he thought the band would last, lead singer Nick Van Eede replied that they would have a lengthy career as they had “songs coming out of our arses”. The quote made it into the published article with an addendum from the paper’s editor which read “that explains a lot”. Smart arse (ahem).

Anyway, back to Extreme, and although nowhere near as big a hit as “More Than Words”, “Hole Hearted” did a decent job as a follow up peaking at No 4 in America and No 12 over here despite never actually being shown on TOTP in full.

Meanwhile back in the studio we find Sonia – no really, she was still plugging away at it in late ’91 – with her version of The Real Thing’s “You To Me Are Everything”. Now that there’s a live vocal policy on the show, the diminutive scouser has cut down on any dance moves to concentrate on, you know, actually singing. To be fair, I’ve heard a lot worse on TOTP in recent weeks but although she was undoubtedly small, she was no Heather Small.

The track was taken back into the charts in ’95 when Sean Maguire (remember him?) recorded it during his time on the soap star turned pop star conveyor belt. Get this – he had 8 (EIGHT!) Top 40 hits! “You To Me Are Everything” was the fifth of those. Oh god! That means we’ll be seeing loads of him in future TOTP repeats on BBC4 if they get that far!

Sonia’s version peaked at No 13.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K0M3Rdb4XQ

And so to the No 1 which is the third different chart topper in four weeks after having the same song at the top of the pile for 16 weeks straight. Yes, after the (not so) ‘exclusive’ premiere full length video for “Black And White” on last week’s TOTP, Michael Jackson has assumed his place at the chart throne. Sticking with the theme of royalty, it was around this time that ‘The King Of Pop’ title started to be banded around and apparently it was instigated by Jacko himself. Supposedly, any TV network that wanted to have the rights to show the premiere of the “Black And White” promo had to agree to refer to the singer as ‘The King Of Pop’. Well, Mark Franklin doesn’t do so this week but did they comply in the last show?

*quickly checks BBC iPlayer*

No they didn’t! Maybe that story was a load of bollocks then…

As for the song itself, well the subject matter of racial tolerance was certainly a noble one though I do recall some incredulity from the critics of the day at the lyrics ‘don’t matter if you’re black or white’ given the argument that was raging in the public domain about what was happening to the colour of Jackson’s own skin. A theory of skin bleaching took hold in the media and I have to admit that when he took to the Oprah Winfrey show to explain that it was down to a skin disorder called vitiligo that causes a loss of pigmentation in patches on the body, I was one of the doubters. I think we can now all accept that he was telling the truth about that at least.

So how did “Black And White” sound? I think on first hearing I thought it was a bit overblown and all over the place but it didn’t take too many hearings for it to lodge itself in my brain. It was certainly catchy enough. It was a musical smorgasbord though with elements of pop, dance, hip hop, rap and rock all stuck in the mixer. On the rock strand though, the much peddled story that the song’s metal guitar riff was provided by Slash from Guns N’ Roses turned out to be a myth . He did play on the album but on the track “Give In To Me”.

The album was of course “Dangerous” which at the time seemed to be weighed down by its own expectations (Mark Ryden’s over the top cover art work didn’t help with that). It was meant to eclipse “Thriller” as his magnum opus both artistically and commercially. In the end it fails on both accounts for me but its reputation has grown after some revisiting of it by critics and the press. It would spawn 9 (NINE!) singles equalling “Bad”‘s haul and sell 32 million copies worldwide. Within those 9 singles, I think “Black And White” stands up pretty well.

After the 10 and a half minutes afforded to the premiere of the video last week, it is severely curtailed tonight with the Macaulay Culkin intro and the controversy courting ‘panther dance’ coda both stripped out.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bizarre Inc	Playing With Knives	Nope
2	M People	How Can I Love You More?	No but I think my wife may have had the album
3	Bassheads	Is There Anybody Out there?	Negative
4	Michael Bolton	When A Man Loves A Woman	Hell no!
5	Love Decade	So Real	I did not
6	Scorpions	Send Me An Angel	Nah
7	Anticappella	2√231	I’d have rather have done some maths equations – no
8	Roxette	Spending My Time	I didn’t spend any time listening to this – no
9	Skid Row	Wasted Time	I didn’t waste any time listening to this – no
10	Extreme	Hole Hearted	Quite liked it, didn’t buy it
11	Sonia	You To Me Are Everything	Never happening
12	Michael Jackson	Black And White	No but I did have a promo copy of the “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I” album with it on

Disclaimer

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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0011f4w/top-of-the-pops-21111991

TOTP 26 SEP 1991

Posted on October 15, 2021 by 80stastic

And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase ‘end of an era’? Alex Ferguson finally retiring as manger of Manchester United? The Beatles splitting? Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts sadly passing away the other week? How about the character of Mike Baldwin being killed off in Coronation Street? Or…the ‘Year Zero’ revamp of that great pop music institution TOTP? I think tonight’s host Gary Davies has justification for describing the 26 Sep 1991 show as the end of an era. This was the final show (until the changes were reversed in 1994) of that grand old programme being presented by Radio 1 DJs. They were replaced by a group of younger unknowns by incoming executive producer Stanley Appel who was hoping to bring about a new youthful feel to a show that had struggled to accommodate the new trends in popular music surrounding dance / house / rave genres. There were more cosmetic changes in a brand new theme tune (“Now Get Out of That”), title sequence and logo and, as Gary Davies advises at the end of the show, the entire programme was moved from BBC Television Centre in London to BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood.

I do feel a twinge of sympathy for Davies. He’d been hosting TOTP since about 1983 I think (not long after he joined Radio 1 anyway) and had always been a safe pair of hands* and must have thought he had a shot at stardom across the pond in the US in October 1987 when the CBS television network decided to try an American version of the show. There were link ups with the UK version which were always hosted by Davies. Sadly for Gary, the experiment was short-lived and the US TOTP was cancelled. By the time the old guard of presenters were reinstalled in 1994, Davies had moved to Virgin Radio meaning this is his very last regular TOTP show.

*Except for the Dixie Peach suntan comment of course

Well, enough of the sentiment and on with the show and we start with …who the hell is this? P.J.B. featuring Hannah And Her Sisters? I have literally never heard this in my life before and thank the Lord I hadn’t because now I’ve had their version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” inflicted on my ears, life in this wretched country at this horrible period of history just got even worse. This is vile – beastly even. Just 100% crapola. Who’s idea was it to do a dance version of the Simon & Garfunkel classic? Well, it turns out it was a bloke called Peter John Bellotte (the titular P.J.B.) who actually had quite an impressive CV. Most notably, he’d worked with Giorgio Moroder producing the peak era Donna Summer sound of “I Feel Love”, “Love to Love You Baby” and “Hot Stuff”. He went on to work with the likes of Janet Jackson, Cliff Richard, Shalamar and Tina Turner and in 2004 was honoured at the Dance Music Hall of Fame ceremony where he was inducted for his many outstanding achievements and contributions as producer and songwriter.

Back in 1991 though, he was responsible for this shit. As for Hannah and Her Sisters, as wells being the name of Woody Allen’s 1986 comedy drama flick, they did actually feature a Hannah who was Hannah Jones who would achieve some hits on the US Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart at the end of the 90s. This dreadful nonsense however peaked at No 21 and whoever bought it should conduct their own root and branch investigation into exactly what occurred here.

Could there be a more appropriate song to help bring the curtain down on this era of TOTP? It can only be “Wind Of Change” by The Scorpions. Of course, it was a curtain of a different kind (the iron one) that was the behind the origin of the song. Written during a visit to Moscow in 1989, these German rockers were amazed at how different the political and cultural climate felt just 12 months on from their previous visit there. The opening lines:

I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change

were a literal running commentary of a boat trip that the band took down the Moskva river that runs through Moscow, passing the sights like Gorky Park which sits on the shore of the Moskva and witnessing first hand those changes occurring. Lead singer Klaus Meine started whistling that melody and the rest of the song came quickly. Apparently, the band’s record label weren’t keen on that infamous whistling intro and the band tried to record the song without it by reverting to a traditional heavy rock intro akin to the band’s reputation but when that wasn’t working they returned to the original song opening. I seem to recall the song getting a bit of stick for that intro, that it somehow undermined it. I’m not sure why as their are loads of examples of songs with whistling in them that are credible. There’s even a direct rock comparison in the form of “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses and then there’s the classic “Dock Of The Bay” by Otis Redding. Maybe their label were concerned it might take the song in more of an almost novelty direction like Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” or “Walk Like An Egyptian” by The Bangles.

Whatever their reasoning, between them and the band, they arrived at the correct decision commercially speaking as the song went on to sell 14 million copies worldwide. More than the sales though and whatever you think about the sound of the song, its legacy was its cultural and political significance becoming a clarion call for freedom and a message of hope.

As for me, I don’t think I knew anything about The Scorpions before “Wind Of Change” despite them having been around since the mid 60s. Did I like the song? About as much as liked the nasty scorpion spider graphic that the TOTP producers shoved over the start of the video. Let’s hope that sort of nonsense disappeared in the ‘year zero’ revamp.

It’s the tiny person with a massive voice and an even bigger hit next as we get a live vocal from Rozalla on “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”. So ubiquitous was this tune that I could have sworn it was a much bigger hit than its actual No 6 peak. Maybe my confusion is because it hung around the charts for so long – ten weeks in total on the Top 40 and four consecutive weeks inside the Top 10. Eight years later, it did become a bigger hit of sorts when it was slowed down and sampled by Australian film director Baz Luhrmann on his Number 1 hit “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”.

After starting a trend for female vocalists fronting rave anthems to remove their tops in her last performance that was copied by Jorinde Williams of Oceanic, Rozalla tweaks the routine this week by suggesting her outer garment is about to come off but then keeping it on for the duration of the song. Maybe the stuffy TOTP producers had warned her off that type of thing!

REM are next with “The One I Love“. When it comes to misunderstood songs, this one must be up there with the best. If you didn’t know this song, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s a heartfelt love letter to a loved one judging by its title but one listen or perusal of the lyrics would tell a different story of manipulating people.

Any discussion of misunderstood songs must include “Born In The USA” by Bruce Springsteen and “Every Breath You Take” by The Police of course. The Boss’s song is often misconstrued as an anthem of patriotism when it’s actually telling the story of the difficulties and marginalisation Vietnam veterans felt when returning from the war. The song’s fist pumping sound led to many a politician asking if they could use the song to soundtrack an election campaign starting with Ronald Reagan in 1984. Bruce refused. Had Reagan heard this version of the song, maybe even his little brain would have realised it wasn’t really an appropriate song choice:

As for “Every Breath You Take”, my favourite misunderstanding of this song is the time when dumb as mud X Factor judge Louis Walsh told some hopeful after they had performed it on one of the live shows that they had ‘made it their own’. It’s a song about stalking you imbecile!

REM would release one final single (“Radio Song”) from their “Out Of Time” album before 1991 was up returning just a year later with the stunning “Automatic For The People” album.

Poor Gary Davies is having to introduce some right old shit on his valedictory TOTP appearance. After the car crash of the “Bridge Over Troubled Water” cover version at the top of the show, here’s that dreadful danced up remix of “Nutbush City Limits” by Tina Turner. Released as “Nutbush City Limits (The 90s Version)”, even the song’s new title grates.Why did it need the word version in there? Surely ’91 remix’ is what it should have been called? Also, the video is so lazy as well. Some old footage of Tina performing the song back in the day intercut with her jigging about to the track in the present day. Throw in some shots of lorries driving about (on their way to the city limits perchance?) and that was all the video director thought was needed.!

“Nutbush City Limits (The 90s Version)” peaked at No 23.

Back on a dance tip now with Bizarre Inc who are ‘avin’ it large with their hit “Such A Feeling”. By ‘avin’ it large, obviously I mean having two dancers at the front of the stage doing some arm-waving whilst the three guys in the band mime playing keyboards. Literally that’s all the performance is. Fine if you’re off on one in a club but a bit ridiculous looking for a prime time TV music show. I wonder if Davies was secretly relieved not have to present this type of thing anymore. Leave it for the kids and all that. He himself was approaching 34 by this point. which seems very young to the 53 year old me looking back but he might have been pushing it a bit as a purveyor of what the youth were into. I think I went to a nightclub just once after I turned 30.

“Such A Feeling” peaked at No 13.

Now here was an antidote to all that pesky dance music doing the rounds. Since his surprise No 1 single “Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart” with Gene Pitney at the end of the 80s, Marc Almond had not been a frequent visitor to the UK Top 40. He’d only racked up one No 29 hit (“A Lover Spurned”) from his “Enchanted” album in 1990 since then. So what do you do if you need a comeback hit single? You record a cover version of course! Being Marc Almond though, this was no ordinary cover. “Jacky” was a Jacques Brel song originally recorded by the Belgian singer-songwriter as “La chanson de Jacky” in 1965 and Marc was a massive Brel fan having already released an album of covers of his songs back in 1989 (although curiously it didn’t feature “Jacky”). The version that was more known to UK audiences though was the English translated one by Scott Walker who released it as his first solo single in 1967.

Marc’s version is definitely more Walker than Brel albeit with an obtrusive backbeat stapled onto it and a synthesised choir effect tagged on the end. It’s gloriously ridiculous and rather splendid for it. The lyrics are exquisitely bonkers and therefore wholly memorable. For example:

I’d have to get drunk every night
And talk about virility
With some old grandmother
That might be decked out like a Christmas tree
And no pink elephant I’d see
Though I’d be drunk as I could be

Excellent! Then of course, there is the killer hook in the chorus of Cute in a stupid ass way or rather Cute (pause for dramatic effect) in a stupid ass way. I’m sure this caused a trend amongst some young men to wear very skinny T-shirts with the legend ‘Cute in a stupid ass way’ emblazoned across them. The only thing that disappoints me about Almond’s version is that he doesn’t do the Scott Walker phrasing of ‘Jacky’ where he softens the ‘J’ which I always found very affecting.

“Jacky” peaked at No 17 and was the lead single from his first and only album for Warner Brothers “Tenement Symphony” which would implausibly spawn another hit single the following year with another cover version, this time “The Days of Pearly Spencer” which was originally recorded by David McWilliams. Despite including those hits, the album was not a big seller peaking at No 39.

A third TOTP appearance for Sabrina Johnston and “Peace” next. Interesting to note the difference in her performance here and that of Rozalla earlier. Sabrina’s backed by four dancers behind her whilst Rozalla was up there all on her tod.

With the greatest respect to Sabrina, maybe she needed to be helped out in the dance moves department as she comes across like Tina Turner meets Mrs Overall from Acorn Antiques when she’s wigging out.

Not only was she outdone by Rozalla’s much more impressive dancing, Sabrina also lost out to her in the chart positions as “Peace” peaked two places lower than “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”at No 8.

Three Breakers next and we start with Fish. I never fail to be amazed about just how many solo hits this guy had and also how few of them I recall. “Internal Exile” was his fourth and, like all his others, it must have passed me by at the time. Taken from the album of the same name, it had a very obviously Celtic folk feel to it and was about his desire for Scottish independence (still relevant as a subject today of course). The album included a version of “Something In The Air” by Thunderclap Newman. Want to hear it? Nah, nor me.

Another very tall man who used to front a rock band next as we see Ozzy Osbourne back in the charts for the first time in five years. He’s also released the title track from his new album as a single in “No More Tears”. Apparently, Ozzy considers this song to be ‘a gift from God’. Really?! Hell’s teeth! There really was nothing here for me though I do remember the Our Price Store I was working in getting the album in early on import and the only way you could distinguish it from the UK release was that the cover had a slightly different colour tint to it. I think I was (ahem) ‘paranoid’ about selling the wrong version.

It’s a trio of new album title tracks released as singles on the Breakers as Belinda Carlisle returns with “Live Your Life Be Free“. The hits had dried up in her native US by this point in Belinda’s career but here in the UK we were still happy to consume some more of her pleasant if formulaic soft rock. “Live Your Life Be Free” certainly fell into both of these categories and was hardly anything much different from what she had served up on her last two albums “Heaven On Earth” and “Runaway Horses” to my ears but it was eminently listenable. The album would spawn four Top 40 hits (of which the title track was the biggest) and would achieve gold status but it was a definite tailing off of sales compared to its two predecessors.

The video sees Belinda dressed up to look like Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolitte from My Fair Lady or possibly Julia Roberts as Vivian Ward for Pretty Woman (same film basically) at the races. All together now…”Come on, Dover, move yer bloomin’ arse!”

For 36 years Slim Whitman’s chart topping statistics were unrivalled but they’ve finally been brought down by the ‘Groover from Vancouver’ as “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams clocks up a twelfth consecutive week at No 1! I think when we’d reached this point and a 36 year chart record had been broken, maybe we were all believing that the spell it held over the UK public would also have been broken. Surely now it had beaten everything else in chart history, that would have been enough, job done or as Roy Castle would have said “You’re a record breaker!”. Alas no, Bryan was good for another four weeks after this meaning his single was responsible for the following chart feats courtesy of officialcharts.com:

With 16 consecutive weeks at the summit, “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” scored the longest ever run at No 1 in UK chart history, a record which still hasn’t been bettered. Just one song has more total weeks at No 1 – Frankie Laine’s “I Believe” which enjoyed 18 weeks at the top across 3 different stints.

“(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” is the UK’s 15th best-selling single of all time with over 1.87 million paid-for sales to date including 340,000 on digital download.
Even in 2021, nine people have picked up a physical copy of the song!
To date it’s clocked up over 55 million streams in the UK since chart records began – including 10 million in the first 6 months of 2021 alone
It was the best-seller of 1991 earning 1.43 million sales that year alone. It even outsold the second biggest (Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” which was re-released following Freddie Mercury’s death) by more than twice as many copies in that year.

The play out video this week is “Try” by Bros and I guess it’s a fitting end to both the current format of the show and Gary Davies’s time as a presenter that they both finish with a song that was also the final ever chart entry for the Goss twins. Bros would split the following year with Matt Goss forging a solo career before making a name for himself in the US where he had his own Vegas Residency at The Palms, Caesars Palace and The Mirage singing the swing classics. As for Luke, he briefly formed a group called Band of Thieves who released a pretty good single called “Sweeter Than The Midnight Rain” before embarking on an acting career that would see him land roles in such films as Blade II and Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

As for Gary Davies, he bows out with a fairly unemotional goodbye although he does give an extra long stare right down the lens before the Bros video kicks in. I wonder who’s benefit that was for?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	P.J.B. featuring Hannah And Her Sisters	Bridge Over Troubled Water	Never going to happen
2	The Scorpions	Wind Of Change	Nope
3	Rozalla	Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)	Nah
4	REM	The One I Love	Not the single but I must have it on something
5	Tina Turner	Nutbush City Limits (The 90s Version)	See 1 above
6	Bizarre Inc	Such A Feeling	No
7	Marc Almond	Jacky	Liked it, didn’t buy it
8	Sabrina Johnston	Peace	See 7 above
9	Fish	Internal Exile	Negative
10	Ozzy Osbourne	No More Tears	Nothing here for me
11	Belinda Carlisle	Live Your Life Be Free	I did not
12	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	It’s another no
13	Bros	Try	And a final no

Disclaimer

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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0010b3m/top-of-the-pops-26091991

TOTP 12 SEP 1991

Posted on October 10, 2021 by 80stastic

After last week’s massive rave up of a show, surely the TOTP studio wouldn’t be taken over by mad ravers ‘avin’ it large again this week? Well, yes and no. Dance music is definitely represented by the artists in the actual building again but when you add in the videos chosen by the producers to be shown this week, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were back in the 70s or at The Royal Variety Performance. No seriously, two of the artists on this TOTP had either already been on Her Majesty’s favourite night out of the year or would appear on it in the near future, those acts being Cliff Richard (13 times!) and Right Said Fred (once in 1992). The mainstream acts didn’t stop with just those two though. No, also on TOTP tonight were Bryan Adams (twice!), Roxette and Julian Lennon who’s Dad John had also appeared at The Royal Variety Performance as part of The Beatles with his infamous “just rattle your jewellery” remark in 1963. Oh, and despite having only released one new song in the 90s so far, The Stone Roses are suddenly back on the show with a re-release of a track from their 1989 debut album for some reason. This has all the makings of a curate’s egg of a programme.

Before all that though, what’s the rather cryptic announcement from host Simon Mayo at the top of the show all about? “If you got your tickets for tonight’s show through Keith Prowse, you can watch through to 7.30 but cheer and applaud louder because you are watching for free. Seems fair enough to me.” Eh? What was the story there then? Some dispute between the BBC and the legendary ticket agency and music publisher Keith Prowse? Was Mayo legally obliged to say that? It just seems so utterly incongruous and bizarre.

Talking of bizarre, the opening act tonight are Bizarre Inc with “Such A Feeling” and these guys were definitely ‘avin’ it. In an attempt to stand out from the rest of the rave crowd, they have employed a couple of podium dancers to give a visual form to their track. Watching it back, it remains me of the time that I was working in the Our Price in Rochdale and on a night out found myself in the town’s Xanadu nightclub having become detached from my colleagues. My God! The sights I saw – including podium dancers! I loved working at that store but the delights of a night out in Rochdale I was not prepared for.

Bizarre Inc were from Stafford and at one point included a band member who would find their way into Altern-8 who were also having mainstream chart hits at this time. It all sounds a bit incestuous to me.

“Such A Feeling” peaked at No 13 but Bizarre Inc would return before the end of the year with a Top 5 hit in the re-released “Playing with Knives”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9GscEY_LkY

“20th Century Boy” by Marc Bolan & T. Rex is next having been re-released off the back of a Levi’s advert. The marketing guys at Levi’s had struck a rich vein of 70s tunes to help promote their jeans at this time, having worked through a load of 60s songs at the back end of the 80s. They’d already turned to The Steve Miller Band and Bad Company in their pursuit of soundtracks to their iconic advertising campaign but suddenly they had struck on the idea that some glam rock was now what was required. I guess you can’t knock their choice; T.Rex had lit up the charts with some huge tunes that had turned Marc Bolan into a superstar. Between 1970 and 1973 the chart peaks of their singles read:

2 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 2 – 3 – 4

with the No 3 in the list being the original release of “20th Century Boy”. Come 1974 though, the spell appeared to be broken. The release of the “Zinc Alloy And The Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow” album met with a downturn of sales and a critical backlash. The return to all those complex song titles from the band’s psychedelic folk era when they were known as Tyrannosaurus Rex maybe wasn’t the best idea – as well as the album’s title, the tracks on it included “Painless Persuasion v. The Meathawk Immaculate” and “The Leopards Featuring Gardenia & the Mighty Slug”. The album wasn’t even released in the US and the band were dropped from their label. Bolan split from producer Tony Visconti and the group splintered.

Subsequent albums releases fared even worse but the explosion of the punk movement in ’76 seemed to re-energise Bolan and he even toured with The Damned as well as reinstating his public profile with his own TV show Marc. I was too young to experience those early hits in real time being aged just 2 when “Ride A White Swan” bestrode the charts in ’70 but I have faint memories of that TV show and I think my elder brother had a pin badge with Bolan’s image on it.

Of course, tragedy was just around the corner (or more specifically a small humpback bridge near Gipsy Lane on Queens Ride Barnes, southwest London) when Marc was killed in a car accident when his girlfriend Gloria Jones lost control of the mini they were travelling in. His legacy lives on though with names like Johnny Marr and Siouxsie and the Banshees crediting him as being a major influence with the latter recording their own version of “20th Century Boy” as the B-side to the single “The Staircase (Mystery)” single in 1979.

Simon Mayo’s having a nightmare here. After the weirdness of the Keith Prowse comment he’s started going on about Paddy Ashdown now. Was Ashdown in the news back then? Was this when all the ‘Paddy Pantsdown’ stuff was happening?

*checks internet*

No that scandal blew up in the run up to the ’92 election. I can’t find a Paddy Ashdown story for Sep ’91 so I’m not sure what Mayo is going on about. Surely he wasn’t using the show as a platform for his own political views?

Anyway, the act he is introducing via this political lay-by is Roxette with “The Big L.” The circus themed video for this one includes a scene where there’s five greased up body builder types huddled together on a small circular platform all playing mouth organ. What was that all about?! Maybe the video director had been influenced by the recent bare-chested antics of Marky Mark and his Funky Bunch or maybe even the “Do What U Like” video by Take That (the one with the bare arse cheeks and a ton of jelly) which had been creating waves of controversy around this time? With it being a Roxette video though, it just comes across as a bit safe and lame rather than daring.

“The Big L.” peaked at No 21.

Is it me or is there a bit of an echo in the studio tonight? I thought I’d noticed one in a couple of Simon Mayo’s links before but it seems to have spread to the performers now. There’s a distinct trace of reverb on Sabrina Johnston‘s live vocals on “Peace”. Or was that a deliberate sound effect? Sound quality issues aside, this was up there with Oceanic’s Insanity” in the bangin’ tunes stakes. Sadly for Sabrina, she also followed the same career path as Oceanic in that she could never really follow up on the success of “Peace’ . An album was released and two further singles from it but none of them managed to indent the charts. Indeed, Sabrina’s only other chart entry was when a remix of “Peace” made No 35 as part of a double A-side with Crystal Waters to promote the HIV/AIDS charity album “Red Hot + Dance” (the one with George Michael’s “Too Funky” on it). In later years though, she did go onto appear as a backing vocalist on Lauryn Hill’s album “The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill”.

More Paddy Ashdown quips from Simon Mayo next. Give it up mate! “I Wanna Be Adored” by The Stone Roses is the the prompt for him to get in another Paddy joke (as it were). Had Ashdown done a particular poorly received press conference or something back then?

“I Wanna Be Adored” was the opening track on the band’s iconic eponymous debut album from ’89. So why was it being released as a single two and a half years later? Well, I think it was to do with the legal battle with their then-record label Silvertone. The band wished to terminate their five-year contract with Silvertone whose owners Zomba Records took out an injunction against the Roses in September 1990 to prevent them from recording with any other label. The courts ruled in favour of the band in May 1991 but Silvertone appealed the decision thereby delaying the release of any new material from the band further. I guess Silvertone wanted to make as much dough out of the band as they could before they were their act no longer and so released a number of tracks from that debut album that had never previously been released (or indeed intended for release) as stand alone singles. “I Wanna Be Adored” was followed by “Waterfall”, ‘I Am The Resurrection” and a re-release of “Fool’s Gold” in ’92. Bit naughty that.

“I Wanna Be Adored” was also one of the tracks that my one time Our Price manager Pete played on as the band’s original bass player. The Martin Hannett produced album that Pete featured on never saw the light of day as the band weren’t happy with it until it was released as “Garage Flower” in 1996 against the wishes of everyone involved in the original recordings.

I said in the last post that I didn’t think we’d be seeing this act until her next hit in about three years time. I was wrong. Following her appearance in the Breakers Crystal Waters has moved up the charts sufficiently to qualify for another appearance this week with her “Makin’ Happy” single. The single edit of this was remixed by Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley who I very much see as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse bringing death to music with his “Jack Your Body” No 1 single in 1987.

The video is a typical dance track promo with Crystal’s face superimposed over a background of abstract, dancing figure images and some very literal interpretations of the song’s lyrics – some Rocky Horror Picture Show style lips for ‘She screams Ah ooh’ and a camera for ‘Now picture you with me’. To be fair, most of the lyrics seem to be comprised of ‘ooh-wee ooh ooh-wee ooh ooh-wee ooh-wee ooh-wee’. It’s hardly Proust is it?

“Makin’ Happy” peaked at No 18.

Having gone after Paddy Ashdown for a cheap laugh, Mayo now sets his sights on pop royalty in Cliff Richard. Asking the audience the question who has appeared on TOTP most across its then 27 year history, he mimes us a clue of who it is. For some reason he thinks giving a double thumbs up and waving his arms about as if protecting himself from some falling debris is a dead ringer of an impression of Cliff! Surely the thumbs up gesture would be more likely to be Paul ‘Whacky Thumbs Aloft’ McCartney and although Cliff has been known to do some very odd arm movements whilst performing, Mayo’s interpretation seems very wide of the mark.

As for the song Cliff is singing, I have no memory whatsoever of “More To Life” but then I didn’t watch the TV show Trainer which it was the theme tune for. Apparently Trainer was a follow up (of sorts) to mid 80s yachting drama Howard’s Way but was set in the word of horse racing. As with Howard’s Way, Simon May (not Mayo) wrote the instrumental theme tune for the opening credits but lyrics were added for the version over the closing credits which were supplied by Mike Read (yes, the Radio 1 DJ). In later years of course, Read would pen “UKIP Calypso” for a UKIP dinner that he was attending and, with the endorsement of Nigel Farage, it was released as a single. It was widely panned as being racist for Reads’s mock Caribbean accent and the lyrics ‘The leaders committed a cardinal sin / Open the borders let them all come in / Illegal immigrants in every town / Stand up and be counted Blair and Brown’. That’s Mike Read there, friend of Nigel Farage and writer of racist songs. Arsehole. Read of course was very matey with Cliff as I recall and often did impressions of him. There really was no end to his talents was there?

“More To Life” the song is just bland, Cliff-by-numbers pop and the whole story saga should be condemned to the rubbish tip of terrible cultural ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nv_1GrQiN4

Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch are up next with “Good Vibrations”. Now I’ve always quite liked Mark Wahlberg as an actor. I know some of the films he’s been in have had bad reviews like Planet Of The Apes and The Happening and he’s certainly no De Niro or Pacino but even so, like I said, I quite like him.

However, I didn’t know until now when I’ve read up on him that he did some terrible things as a teenager like racially aggravated assault for which he was sentenced to two years in jail but served only forty-five days of his sentence. Eighteen years later he apologised to his victim in person who stated publicly that he had forgiven Wahlberg. Now knowing this information and reading an interview back with him in Smash Hits magazine as Marky Mark, he clearly was a prick back then. In said interview he refers to women as ‘bitches’ and the Smash Hits writer describes his conversation as “…the blokiest tirade you ever did hear this side of an Eddie Murphy Live video…” – like I said, a prick.

He followed this up a year later in December ’92, while performing on the cult late night Channel 4 show The Word, by praising fellow guest Shabba Ranks who had stated gay people should be crucified for which both he and Ranks were widely condemned and criticised (not least by The Word presenter Mark Lamarr on the show). Supposedly Wahlberg doesn’t like to be reminded or asked about his music career these days. It’s not hard to see why.

The huge dance anthems just keep on coming as Rozalla enters the game with “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”. Having been massively popular on the dance floors of the clubs in Ibiza in the Summer, it was no surprise that it became a huge hit in the UK charts when the returning hordes went searching for a memento of their holidays in the nation’s record shops. Well, at least we’d moved on from those foreign holiday hits like Ryan Paris from back in the day.

Rozalla was born in Zambia though moved to Zimbabwe aged 18 where she scored five No 1 singles. She relocated again in 1988, this time to London where she worked with production duo Nigel Swanston and Tim Cox and the collaboration bore fruit in the form of “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”. Looking at her performance here, you wouldn’t have imagined that such a huge sound could have come from such a diminutive and slight looking person. She absolutely bosses it though and has the crowd in the palm of her hand when she takes her very sparkly jacket. She would go on to have a eight UK Top 40 hits in total including a re-release of this track re-titled as “Everybody’s Free (Ca$ino Mix)” in 1996.

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

Moving the Breakers to just before the No 1 is really starting to piss me off now. It’s lulling me into a false sense of security before hitting me with the realisation that there are at least three more songs to review even though the show is nearly over. We start with a man not seen in the Top 40 for seven years but who topped all the Best Newcomer and Most Promising New Act polls at the time of that success. Julian Lennon had already released three albums by ’91 but they had spiralled into a pattern of diminishing returns since the success of debut “Valotte”. Subsequently, his return to the Top 40 with “Saltwater” was quite the surprise. Tackling the issues of environmental conservation and world poverty in a pop song wasn’t unique but neither was it a regular occurrence back then. Obviously there was the whole Bad Aid project to address famine in Ethiopia and wasn’t “Crazy Horses” by The Osmonds about pollution? Then of course there was “Save The Whale” by …erm…Nik Kershaw. I’m sure there are plenty more examples but my point is that unlike sewers and non disposable wipes, the charts weren’t clogged up with them.

Enter Julian with a rather drippy yet heartfelt take on it all with his 6th form poetry-esque lyrics bemoaning man’s capability to land on the moon but not be able to stop children starving back on earth. Musically, it inevitably drew comparisons with his Dad especially the “Strawberry Fields Forever” beginning whilst the Beatles connection was continued by the guitar part that was written but not performed by George Harrison. I quite liked it and its themes seem more relevant today than ever. Like his debut single “Too Late For Goodbyes”, it peaked at No 6 whilst his only other Top 40 entry was his cover of Dave Clark Five’s “Because” for the 1986 musical Time soundtrack winch literally crept in at No 40.

What?! Shabba Ranks was in the charts?! The Shabba Ranks that was discussed earlier for his vile homophobic comments on The Word? Yep, the very same but this was a year before that controversial moment broke so presumably, in ’91, he wasn’t courting the condemnation that followed. Here he’s teamed up with Maxi Priest for a single called “Housecall” which sounds horrific to my ears and which thankfully passed me by at the time. Fortunately we only get 18 seconds of it in the Breakers, a feature which now seems to be a totally pointless exercise in boosting the amount of songs featured in the show (we’ve gone up from 13 to 14 in recent weeks). Julian Lennon only got 24 seconds and the final Breaker Bryan Adams gets 17 seconds! This was ridiculous and presumably just a ploy to be able to say it was keeping up with ITV competition The Chart Show. Utter nonsense (as was Shabba and Maix’s collaboration).

Hang on! Did I just say Bryan Adams was in the Breakers? But *spoiler* he’s still at No 1 isn’t he? Yes, but both statements are true because he’d been at No 1 so long now that his next single was due for release. “Can’t Stop This Thing We’ve Started” chart life would would come and go within a mere five weeks peaking at No 12 whilst “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” was still riding high in the Top 40. This was the time when it really started to get nuts I think. His new (and infinitely better in my opinion) song had been rejected in favour of a record buying public continuing to purchase his previous single that had been No 1 for over three months. This was just bonkers!

In the US, it would peak at No 2 but you know what they put on the B-side of the US release? Yes, “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You”! It had been No 1 in America for seven weeks! Why make it at the B-side?! In the UK the flip was a live version of his duet with Tina Tuner “It’s Only Love”. I quite liked the speeded up stop animation in the video which enlivened an otherwise straight performance promo.

So it’s a 10th week for good ol’ Bry with that Robin Hood song. The video for “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” was directed by Julien Temple which I don’t think I knew before. Bit of a contrast to his punk origins of the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock And Roll Swindle. Apparently it was shot in Sheffield. You’d have thought that he would have chosen Nottingham as his location wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s only about 30 odd miles from Sheffield anyway. And, the day it was being shot, Nottingham Forest were playing in the FA Cup final against Spurs. All the omens and references surely pointed to Nottingham not Sheffield? I wonder which football team Bryan Adams supports? Oh he must have a team. Look at Sylvester Stallone (Everton), Tom Hanks (Aston Villa) and Kevin Costner (Arsenal). Then you’ve got Robert Plant being a Wolves fan and Dave Grohl supports West Ham.

*checks internet*

I knew it! Bryan is a fan of….my beloved Chelsea! Who said he had/was bad taste?

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

It’s Right Said Fred and “I’m Too Sexy” to play us out but before that, Simon Mayo ends his last show before the ‘year zero’ revamp by signing off with “I’ll see you sometime”. He definitely knew didn’t he?

Back to the Freds and there’s a link between them and the aforementioned Julien Temple as the latter directed the Jazzin’ For Blue Jean short film for David Bowie to promote his 1984 “Blue Jean” single which starred none other than Richard Fairbrass as one of the band for fictional pop star Screaming Lord Byron. As toe curlingly awful as Jazzin’ For Blue Jean is (and I’ve watched it) it still knocks the promo for “I’m Too Sexy” into a cocked hat. What do you think about that Fairbrass?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bizarre Inc	Such A Feeling	Bizarre Inc? Godawful stink more like! No
2	Marc Bolan & T. Rex	20th Century Boy	No but I have a Best Of CD with it on
3	Roxette	The Big L.	No
4	Sabrina Johnston	Peace	Liked it, didn’t buy it
5	The Stone Roses	I Wanna Be Adored	No but I’ve got the album
6	Crystal Waters	Makin’ Happy	It didn’t make me happy – no
7	Cliff Richard	More To Life	God no!
8	Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch	Good Vibrations	Nah
9	Rozalla	“Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”	I did not
10	Julian Lennon	Saltwater	No but I didn’t mind it actually
11	Shabba Ranks/ Maxi Priest	Housecall	NO!
12	Bryan Adams	Can’t Stop This Thing We’ve Started	Negative
13	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It for You	Double negative
14	Right Said Fred	I’m Too Sexy	It’s a final no

Disclaimer

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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00103fx/top-of-the-pops-12091991

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 25 FEB 1993

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TOTP 15 OCT 1992

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TOTP 01 OCT 1992

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TOTP 21 NOV 1991

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TOTP 26 SEP 1991

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TOTP 12 SEP 1991

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