I’ve referred back to my diary again for inspiration for this post. You may remember that I rediscovered my 1996 one a while back but it carries on into 1997 and up to the month of May when I finally got fed up of it. It turns out that the day after this TOTP aired, we had a stocktake at the Our Price in Stockport where I was working. When I first joined the record retailer back in 1990, stocktakes were events that were talked about in legendary terms as to how long they took with tales of them going on well into the early hours of the morning. I would come to realise that this was the more experienced members of staff winding us newbies up. That’s not to say that they didn’t go on and on sometimes. This particular one wasn’t finished until 9.00 on a Saturday night. However, Stockport was a big store over two floors – one of the smaller shops in the area wouldn’t have taken half as long. There was a rumour once that one store completed its stocktake before it had even closed its doors and stopped trading for the day which seemed to undermine the point of the exercise to me. There were two different types of stocktake as I recall – a financial one and a unit count one. By 1997, the stock inventory had been computerised and so we had little mobile scanners to read the barcode and tell us exactly what we had in the store rather than just a number of CDs for example. These then had to be uploaded to the system once an area of the shop had been counted before they could be recalibrated and put to counting again. Someone had to be nominated to do that stock controller job who was normally a member of management so it could well have been me as Assistant Manager on this occasion. My diary tells me that we all trooped off to the pub once the stocktake was done as was tradition. Presumably all of the songs on this episode of TOTP will have been counted in that stocktake.

Tonight’s guest host is Slade legend Noddy Holder who had left the band five years previously and started on a radio and TV career – within two years he would be starring in ITV comedy/drama series The Grimleys. I served Noddy once in my early Our Price days and I was delighted that his credit card has the name N Holder emblazoned on it thinking that the ‘N’ referred to Noddy when in fact it was the initial of his actual name Neville. Doh! I’m guessing that apart from maybe a Greatest Hits CD, we wouldn’t have had any Slade albums in store to count at the stocktake.

We start tonight with Placebo and their hit “Nancy Boy”. During the course of my research on this one (I do do research – I can’t rely on my fading memory to come up with anecdotes constantly), I came across a rather sad story about the boy who was on the cover of Placebo’s debut album. His name is David Fox and he was just 12 years old when his cousin took a photo of him pulling a face one day. The next thing he knew, said cousin had licensed the photos to Placebo’s record label Virgin and his picture adorned the cover of the album, billboards, the sides of buses etc. Cool eh? Well no, actually. David suffered from bullying at school as a result of his fame and ended up being ostracised by his former mates. He eventually went through a number of different schools, didn’t take his GCSEs and ended up being unemployed. In 2012, it was reported that he was intending to sue the band for ruining his life and unpaid royalties. I’m not sure what the outcome was but a year later, he did appear on the ‘Identity Parade’ section of Never Mind The Buzzcocks pulling that same face so I’m guessing he didn’t feel as litigious as he once had. I hope he got an appearance fee at least.

Next up is perhaps the laziest and most obvious choice of single of the decade. Now I’m not a particular fan of Gabrielle but I can admire her longevity and the career that she has built off the back of what could have been one hit wonder status. After her debut hit “Dreams” shot to No 1 in 1993, there was a school of thought that said the only way from that peak was down but Gabrielle refused to conform to that stereotype and followed it with a clutch of charting singles and a Top 10 album in “Find Your Way”. An eponymous, sophomore album followed in 1996 which was certified platinum in the UK and the end of that year saw her rise to No 2 with her duet with East 17 of the Shai track “If You Ever”. Big props to her.

However, the decision by her (or more likely her record label) to then release a cover version of “Walk On By” lacked any integrity or creativity but was surely financially driven. I’m not sure if Noddy was right in what he said in his intro – that the song had been covered over 200 times – but it is surely one of the best known tunes of all time and it is certainly true that it had already been a hit a number of times before Gabrielle got to it. The original version of the Bacharach and David classic was recorded by Dionne Warwick in 1963 but since then it had been covered by Gloria Gaynor, The Stranglers, Average White Band and D-Train. Then, as recently as 1990, it had been a No 6 hit for American singer Sybil. Given all of this, did we really need another version of it courtesy of Gabrielle? This was a cynical, money for old rope move. Supposedly, the idea for her to record it came about when she’d performed it in an episode of TFI Friday on which she was a guest and which Bacharach was in the audience for. His seal of approval of Gabrielle’s version convinced record label Go!Beat to milk the cash cow that had been presented before them and wallop! It was back in the Top 10 again. Such was their desire to fleece the record buying public that it was added as an extra track (along with “If You Ever”) to her album which was rereleased. Money grabbing swines! It’s such an ordinary version of the song as well which added nothing to it at all to my ears. At least The Stranglers did something different with it.

Despite the expense of the recent festive period, January 1997 must have been a busy time for the country’s nightclubs if the UK Top 40 was any sort of gauge. The upper end of the chart was jam packed with dance tunes. Tori Amos and White Town had both been at No 1 whilst Lisa Stansfield and remix team The Dirty Rotten Scoundrels had taken the old Coldcut hit “People Hold On” to No 4. And the there was this – “Remember Me” by Blue Boy otherwise known as the ‘Ging Ginner’ song. Blue Boy was British DJ Alexis ‘Lex’ Blackmore who took a sample of a track called “Woman Of The Ghetto” by American jazz, blues and soul singer Marlena Shaw and ‘funked’ it up for want of a better word to create a memorable dance floor filler. A scat version of that sample of the original track formed the distinctive ‘ging gi-gi-gi-gi-ging’ hook. In my head, this got as high as those other dance hits I mentioned earlier but Wikipedia tells me that it peaked at No 8. Told you I had to do research and not rely on my memory!

My rediscovery of Skunk Anansie continues at pace. “Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)” was their fifth hit single in a twelve month period and I’ve pretty much liked them all despite only recalling “Weak” before rewatching the TOTP repeats that featured them. If the band could be said to have a gentler side then this was it. A less abrasive sound than some of their other songs albeit that Skin’s powerful vocals are still to the forefront and there’s a bit of wah-wah guitar in the middle eight.

Inevitably when you have such a striking looking female lead singer, she was always going to attract the most attention, a scenario we have seen numerous times in music history with bands such as Blondie, Toyah and No Doubt. However, in an interview with Kerrang! magazine in 2020, Skin made it clear that the reason that Skunk Anansie split in 2001 wasn’t because of any jealousy directed towards her by other members or that she felt that she had outgrown or become bigger than the band. No, she felt it was because she believed that they were about to make a bad album and that it would be harder to come back from a bad album than a break up so they chose the latter. She was proved to be right as they reformed in 2008 and are still together to this day though they have only released a few singles since their last full album in 2016 but they are touring in March and April this year.

No Mercy are back in the studio and having reviewed them and their hit “Where Do You Go” once already, I genuinely can’t think of anything else to say about them. Erm…erm…No Mercy…didn’t The Stranglers (who I mentioned earlier) have a hit called “No Mercy”?

*checks their discography *

Yes they did in 1984 – it reached No 37. Will that do? No, it won’t will it. Erm…well, the lead singer is called Marty Cintron who sounds like a character from This Is Spinal Tap. Why was I talking about Spinal Tap the other day? Oh yes, here we go. This’ll do. I currently work as a front of house usher in a theatre and me and a colleague had to take some rubbish out after a show the other day but had to use a different route to the one we normally use to get to the bins as the foyer was unusually busy. Consequently, we had to get to them via the backstage area (you know where this is going don’t you?) and, not used to this part of the theatre, we got lost. We kept wandering around corridors that led us nowhere and at one point opened a door that had us on the pavement outside (but crucially with no access to the bin area). At this point, I said to my colleague (who is much, much younger than me – he’s just started University) “This is like that scene from Spinal Tap where they can’t find the stage at a gig and they wander backstage hopelessly lost. Obviously my colleague had no idea what I was talking about so I had to explain to him the concept of Spinal Tap. I’m so old! He probably doesn’t know who No Mercy are/were either but that’s understandable given that they were a bunch of no marks anyway.

The TOTP caption for the next video informs us that the artist concerned has not appeared live on the show for 11 years. Seeing as the artist is George Michael, and that this repeat is from 1997, does that mean that George hadn’t been on the show since his Wham! days? Possibly. Anyway, this promo is for the fourth single and the title track from his “Older” album. As the first two tracks lifted from it had both been No 1s and the third a No 2, was it conceivable that the No 3 peak of this one was seen as a disappointment? Surely not. The album had been out for eight months by this point and this was the fourth single to come from it so all in all, not a bad result I would have thought.

As for the song, it’s the sort of track that had become synonymous with George by this point in his career. The sort of track that could only be described by the word ‘mature’. George’s vocals are on point as ever, but for me, it’s all just a tad dull. Apparently the trumpet part in it was played by one Steve Sidwell – I’m assuming that isn’t the ex-Reading, Chelsea and Fulham midfielder. It was released as a double A-side with the Bonnie Raitt track ”I Can’t Make You Love Me” which I think I prefer as a song (especially Bonnie’s version). George didn’t stop at four singles being released from “Older” and a further two were put out with the final one – “You Have Been Loved” – hitting the shops a good 15 months after the album did. This matched the amount of singles released from his “Faith” album.

Rivalling George in the ‘not seen round these parts for a while’ stakes were Depeche Mode who Noddy Holder informs us hadn’t been live on TOTP since 1987! They were back now but a lot had happened in the intervening 10 years. Back then, the band had not long drawn a line under their synth pop era and gone all dark with the “Black Celebration” album and had continued in that vein with subsequent albums “Violator” and “Songs Of Faith And Devotion”. Both had been massively successful commercially with “Violator” in particular being seen as the band at the peak of their creative powers too. However, it was not all good news. The mammoth Devotional Tour had taken its toll on the whole group. Martin Gore had become a borderline alcoholic, Andy Fletcher (RIP) had a mental breakdown, Alan Wilder decided to leave the band after years of feeling unappreciated and then there was Dave Gahan. Battling a serious drug addiction and after a near fatal overdose when his heart stopped beating for two minutes, Gahan went into rehab. Struggling to get their lead singer to record any new material, Martin Gore had considered breaking up the band but relented and the resulting album “Ultra” would go to No 1 in the UK selling four million copies worldwide.

The lead single was “Barrel Of A Gun” which was another slab of industrial rock the likes of which they had forged the second part of their career on and conquered America with. It’s kind of odd seeing Martin Gore up there wielding a guitar rather than behind keyboards, a drummer on stage with them and, of course, no Alan Wilder anymore. I don’t remember this one though it would furnish the band with their highest chart position since “People Are People” in 1984 when it peaked at No 4.

Listening to it now, it puts me in mind of the soundtrack to late 90s Channel 4 comedy/drama series The Young Person’s Guide To Becoming A Rock Star. That might sound like heresy to the Depeche Mode faithful but have a listen to this…

Ok, the tempo’s much faster and the tune not as industrial sounding but the structure’s similar no? Just me then.

Blur are No 1 with “Beetlebum” but as was the way at this point in the decade, it would only be for one week until the next hyped, discounted single was released that would debut at the top of the charts. Although it was the only No 1 to come from their eponymous, fifth album, I’m willing to bet that it’s not the most well known track on the album. That would be the second single taken from it, the aptly named “Song 2” (it was given its name as a working title based on its position in the album’s running order and stuck). Its memorable “woo-hoo” refrain would strike a chord with the general public and lead to it being used in many a sports stadium and computer game soundtrack. We’ll no doubt be seeing “Song 2” on a future TOTP repeat in the not too distant future. And with that, the stocktake is complete – I’ve taken stock of everything.

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/m0026qwm/top-of-the-pops-31011997?seriesId=unsliced