Bobby Brown

TOTP 06 JUL 1995

Posted on December 7, 2023 by 80stastic

Sometimes these TOTP repeats throw up some names that I haven’t thought about for ages but that are lodged in the recesses of my brain somewhere. On other occasions though, there’s a person on screen in front of my eyes that I literally have no idea who they are. This is the case with tonight’s show. Who the hell was / is Wendy Lloyd?! Well, it turns out that she was briefly a Radio 1 DJ who joined from Virgin Radio but who moved on to Talk Radio within a year or so. She now works as a voice over artist and podcast host. Mind you, just about every other person in the country is a podcaster these days. OK, well let’s see how I go on with remembering the names of the actual acts on the show tonight…

Well, I’m one for one as I certainly recall Diana King and her No 2 single “Shy Guy” as we sold shed loads of it in the Our Price store in Stockport where I was working at the time. Not quite a one hit wonder in the UK – she had two further medium sized chart entries with covers of “Ain’t Nobody” and “I Say A Little Prayer” – but this was certainly her crowning glory outside of her home country of Jamaica. Fusing dancehall reggae with swingbeat to produce an ultra commercial sound, this song was also aided by being included on the soundtrack to the successful film Bad Boys. I’ve never seen the movie or either of its sequels but my wife caught the first one and said that it was one of the loudest films she’s ever watched in a cinema. I think there were lots of scenes featuring explosions and stuff being blown up. Despite the soundtrack predominantly featuring hip-hop and R&B artists and despite the film starring Will Smith, the Fresh Prince himself didn’t contribute a track to the album. He was in a fallow phase following the end of him being part of a duo with DJ Jazzy Jeff and the start of him recording under his own name in 1997. If these TOTP repeats make it that far, we’ll be seeing a lot more of Mr. Smith.

For now though, let’s concern ourselves with Diana King. I’m guessing that “Shy Guy” must have had a lot of airplay pre-release as it crashed straight into our charts at No 4 and would spend seven consecutive weeks inside the Top 10. Like I said, we sold shed loads of it. It sounded to me like it was a close relative of “Here Comes The Hotstepper” by Ini Kamoze from the year before, an association which was never going to make me a fan I’m afraid but it certainly rode the zeitgeist back then. It would go on to sell 400,000 copies in the UK alone and become our 25th best selling song of the year. “Shy Guy” it may have been called but it was no shrinking violet when it came to racking up those sales.

Who couldn’t remember Shaggy eh? Certainly not me but I wish I could forget him. After achieving a UK No 1 in 1993 with “Oh Carolina”, we hadn’t seen or heard much from the Shagster since. The follow up to that huge hit had failed to make the Top 40 and for a while it seemed like he would be that classic version of a one hit wonder – one chart topper from out of nowhere and then nothing ever again. Sadly, this wasn’t the case. OK, there’s a lot to unpack here so let’s start with the song. Shaggy needed another hit to avoid the aforementioned one hit wonder status and the best way to do that is…all together…”DO A COVER VERSION!”. Yes, of course he came back with a cover and chose “In The Summertime”, originally a huge hit back in 1970 for Mungo Jerry. This being Shaggy though, it was never going to be a straight remake and before long we get the inevitable patois rapping and him banging on about ‘sexy little women’ or something. Seeing as Shaggy can’t carry a tune, he’s brought a pal with him to do the heavy lifting singing wise. So first things first, Rayvon is not this guy…

Ah, if only it was. No, Shaggy’s mate Rayvon is a Barbadian singer whose real name is Bruce Brewster – no, really that was his name. He should have just stuck with that; much better than his stage name. Talking of names, you know what Shaggy’s true moniker is? Orville Burrell. And you know what the real name of the Shaggy character in Scooby Doo is? Norville Rogers! Norville and Orville?! That can’t be a coincidence can it? Is that why Shaggy is called Shaggy? Because his real name sounded like that of Scooby Doo’s best pal? Anyway, aside from Shaggy’s toasting interventions, the lyric “Have a drink have a drive” has been altered to “I’m gonna drive and ride” presumably after the Mungo Jerry original had been used in a public information film series about the dangers of drink-driving in 1992.

The cover version strategy worked and took Shaggy (and Rayvon) to No 5 paving the way for the second of his four UK No 1s later in the year with “Boombastic”. Looking at the track listing of the CD single there’s a remix of it called the Sting vs Shaggy remix. That’s not Mr Sumner is it who Shaggy would make an album with years later?

*checks Discogs website*

No it isn’t. It’s someone called Shaun Pizzonia who went by the name of Sting International. Sting, Shaggy, Norville, Orville…it’s all very confusing.

Now of course I remember the artist in the next video. Bobby Brown had a notorious profile especially in 1995 when he was charged with the assault of a nightclub patron, accused of urinating in a police car and cited for kicking a hotel security guard. Even Wendy Lloyd refers to his misdemeanours in her intro by saying he was giving his wife Whitney (Houston) a few headaches. However, when it comes to his discography, it’s me that suffers from a Bobby Brown migraine. I think it’s to do with all these K-Klass remixes that cause my perplexed state.

Look at “Humpin’ Around” for example. This had already been released once in 1992 when it made it to No 19. Fast forward three years and in its remixed form it peaked at No 8. This followed a similar rerelease strategy applied to “Two Can Play That Game” when it was a minor No 38 hit in 1994 but a Top 3 smash the following April. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going or indeed Humpin’around or playing a game. The fact that “Humpin’ Around” sounds like “Two Can Play That Game” and vice versa just adds to the confusion. Brown would have two more hits with remixes of his previous singles before the chart entries dried up for good. Just as well. My poor brain can’t stand much more.

There was no way I wasn’t going to remember any of the people involved in this next one. With that said, in the last couple of days, I rejected the chance to reacquaint myself with one lot of them. Over the weekend, I met up with my friends Steve and Robin whom I hadn’t seen since before COVID struck. Meeting at Steve’s gaff, a good catch up fuelled by many, many beers was had. Robin had done a cull of his CD collection and brought the unwanted titles with him to see if Steve or I wanted any of them before they were deposited at his local charity shop. I refused them all as my wife and I have been having our own declutter exercise recently. One of the titles I turned down was “Epsom Mad Funkers: The Best Of EMF”. My reasoning was that I already have a CD of their “Afro King” single which acted as a mini Best Of with the extra tracks being their first three hits. It seemed like good logic but was I right to refuse a double album including a whole CD of remixes? You know what? I think I can live with my decision.

Obviously “I’m A Believer” – the band’s collaboration with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer – is included on said Best Of but the chance to own that track wasn’t going to make me change my mind on Robin’s offer. I’m not sure of the back story surrounding how this pairing came about or why (other than EMF needing a career revitalising hit perhaps) but it would prove to be their final UK Top 40 entry. They released the aforementioned “Afro King” as the follow up but it stalled at No 51. And it’s not even on that Best Of album. I was definitely right to turn it down! The band are not all about the past though. They have a new album coming out called “The Beauty And The Chaos” but if I can’t be arsed to accept a free copy of their Greatest Hits, I’m not sure I’m ready for any new material from them.

Now here we have a case of not remembering the song rather than the artist. Nobody could ever forget about Michael Jackson but this song, “Childhood”? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it before. Wikipedia tells me that it was the other song on the double A-side single “Scream” but I don’t remember it at all. So why are TOTP showing the video for it when “Scream” is already going down the charts? Clearly, it was an attempt by Jackson’s record label Epic to drum up some sales for his “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book 1” album which, despite all the promotion they’d thrown at it, had been toppled from the top of the charts after just one week by Bon Jovi.

And so we get, billed as an album exclusive, the video to “Childhood” and for the love of God, it’s the most puke-inducing, vomit-rendering bucket full of sick you could possibly imagine. Clearly based around Jacko’s obsession with Peter Pan, there’s flying galleons transporting baseball playing kids while Michael himself sits at the base of a tree lamenting his lost childhood – it really is nauseating. Now, if I was a more fair-minded individual, I could maybe make a case in defence of Jackson given his own relationship with an abusive father that he would record a song like this but the whole package is just so overwhelmingly mawkish that I can’t get past it. He would top even this level of self indulgence at the 1996 BRIT awards show and his Christ-like performance of”Earth Song”. I think it’s time to move on…

…to what Wendy Lloyd describes as another exclusive performance but it’s not really is it? D:Ream were in the TOTP studio just the other week performing their new single “Shoot Me With Your Love” before it was in the Top 40. That was the ‘exclusive’ performance. This is just them being on the show again because they have entered the charts at No 7. Surely an ‘exclusive’ relates to something nobody else has so unless D:Ream had signed some sort of contract with the BBC that had an exclusivity clause in it not to perform on any other pop music show than TOTP, could poor old Wendy Lloyd be done under the Trades Description Act?

Anyway, Peter Cunnah does his best to get the studio audience over excited and sells the song like his life depends on it but the writing was on the wall for D:Ream. They would only have two further UK hits (and one of those peaked at No 40) before Cunnah descended into a cocaine addiction and rehab. From then on, all the band had to look forward to was a life of perpetual rereleases of “Things Can Only Get Better” and the perception (wrongly) that it was the only hit they ever had.

I guess you could be forgiven for forgetting about Amy Grant as she only ever had three UK hits, the last of which was this, her version of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”. Now, if ever a single had a chart life span in the 90s that experienced cautious traction, this was it. Bucking the dominant trend of records going straight in and straight out of the charts, its Top 40 run was:

29 – 27 – 27 – 26 – 20 – 21 – 29 – 39

Slower than a taxi ride in the London rush hour. Or displaying remarkable tenacity and durability you could argue. Grant continues to records and release new material though they mostly seem to be either Christmas or Christian music albums.

Although I’ve never really made the time to listen to this next artist, I certainly haven’t forgotten her. For years, I lumped PJ Harvey into the same basket as Björk; not musically but as an artist who I believed I could never get into. As such, I studiously avoided her and her work. She was too weird and dark for my pop sensibilities and, as with the EMF Best Of album earlier, I was happy with my choice. Fast forward nearly 30 years and, just as with Björk, I wonder if I was maybe mistaken. I’ve quite enjoyed some of the Icelandic singer’s appearances in these TOTP repeats and watching PJ Harvey here on her debut on the show, I actually don’t mind “C’mon Billy”. Taken from her third album “To Bring You My Love”, it creeps about menacingly but with a hook that resounds in your head long after the song has finished. Maybe I should investigate some of her back catalogue. Maybe.

I wasn’t the only person who felt like I used to about PJ Harvey MBE back in the day. My aforementioned friend Robin saw her on an episode of Later…with Jools Holland when he was in the studio audience and disliked her performance so much, he gave her the rods at the end of it as the camera panned round. I’m not sure which appearance it was though and haven’t managed to spot him fingers aloft on the ones I’ve found on YouTube yet.

*checks again*

Still nothing. Ah well. As with investigating PJ Harvey’s back catalogue, I’ll keep on checking.

Robson & Jerome have been toppled (for now)! Hurray! Oh shite! They’ve been replaced by The Outhere Brothers! BOO! BOO! Yes, for the second time in 1995, this pair of dolts have secured themselves a UK No 1 record with “Boom Boom Boom”. How?! Why?! Was it anything to do with the track being taken up by other fanbases. For example, Newcastle United fans adopted it as a terrace chant by changing the words to “Toon, Toon, Toon”*. No, surely not.

*Toon is how they refer to themselves and being a reflection of the way the word ‘town’ is pronounced in a Geordie accent despite Newcastle being a city and not a town. Yeah, that’s just mad isn’t it?

Apparently, the duo were the first act to have their first two singles go to No 1 in the UK since New Kids On The Block in 1990. If I remember them correctly, their hits, like The Outhere Brothers, also relied upon nonsensical, shout-a-long choruses, in their case mainly revolving around the word “oh”.

Here’s something we’ve not had for a while on the show. – a single that never made the UK Top 40. That may be the reason why I don’t recall Heavy Stereo. Wikipedia tells me that they never actually had a single that got past No 45 in the charts despite four attempts of which this one, “Sleep Freak”, was the first. Listening to it now, it sounds very derivative with a definite glam rock beat to it. Hang on! There is something familiar about them! Yes, the lead singer is Gem Archer who would later join Oasis and go on to play in both Liam Gallagher’s Beady Eye and his brother’s Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. Maybe some things are definitely best left forgotten.

https://youtu.be/5cVJ9qBeHFg?si=ugbAbC1NusK4mi2z

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Diana King	Shy Guy	No
2	Shaggy featuring Rayvon	In The Summertime	As if
3	Bobby Brown	Humpin’ Around	Nope
4	EMF / Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer	I’m A Believer	Nah
5	Michael Jackson	Childhood	God no!
6	D:Ream	Shoot Me With Your Love	I did not
7	Amy Grant	Big Yellow Taxi	Negative
8	PJ Harvey	C’mon Billy	No but maybe I was wrong
9	The Outhere Brothers	Boom Boom Boom	Away with you!
10	Heavy Stereo	Sleep Freak	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/m001sx1m/top-of-the-pops-06071995

TOTP 30 MAR 1995

Posted on October 20, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s another golden mic episode of TOTP and this week the slot goes to Ant & Dec or Ant & Declan as they introduce themselves. Or is it PJ & Duncan? Ant says that they are in fact them as well in the intro. They were releasing records as PJ & Duncan at this time (that didn’t change to Ant & Dec until 1996) but maybe they (or their management) were starting to think about a more long term brand. Certainly they’d decided on who should stand where by this point with Ant on the viewer’s left and Dec on the right. They had been positioned the other way round when performing on TOTP as opposed to presenting. I was wondering if this was their first such gig but Wikipedia tells me they’d already co-hosted a children’s programme on ITV called Gimme 5 before getting their own show on BBC. Little did we know at the time that they would come to dominate the TV schedules behemoth like for the next three decades.

Back in 1995 though, they were those fresh-faced lads from Byker Grove who sang that song “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble” (amongst other hits) introducing Strike as the first act of the night. This is one of those occasional moments in chart history when the hit is much more well remembered than the artist. “U Sure Do” was said hit that actually made the UK Top 40 twice. It made No 31 in early January but was a much bigger hit just a few weeks later in the March and April of 1995 when it peaked at No 4. To be fair, although I used the word ‘occasional’, you could make a case that the vast majority of these 90s Eurodance hits were all about the tracks not the people behind them or indeed in front of them. For example, Strike had four further UK Top 40 hits but I defy anybody to name even one of them.

“U Sure Do” was based around the hook from Donna Allen’s 1987 hit “Serious” though I’m not sure I made that connection at the time. I also didn’t know that Strike’s singer – Victoria Newton – went onto record a dance version of All About Eve’s “Martha’s Harbour”. If that sounds like a hideous concept to you, then I urge you not to click on the video below. Trust your gut feeling. If only Victoria Newton hadn’t heard about the idea of making a dance track of All About Eve’s biggest hit, just like Julianne Regan couldn’t hear the the backing track on that infamous TOTP appearance.

Some R&B balladeering now from a new name in Brownstone. Whilst I do remember this group, I couldn’t have told you the name of any of their hits and certainly don’t recall the info shared by Ant & Dec in their intro about them being signed to Michael Jackson’s label MJJ Music. Indeed, the fact that Jacko even had his own record label can’t have registered with me at all. Apparently, it was in existence from 1993 to 2001 and was owned by Sony and distributed by Epic for whom Jackson recorded but was dissolved over disagreements between Sony and the singer over the promotion of his career. Brownstone were one of the label’s few artists to secure any hits with the other being 3T who famously were a trio made up of Jackson’s nephews. Nepotism much?

Brownstone made a splash when this single “If You Love Me” made the Top 10 in the US and UK but their subsequent releases suffered from a dose of diminishing returns and they split in 1998 before reforming in 2007 and 2019 though only Nichole ‘Nicci’ Gilbert remains from the original line up. As for this performance, the lady on the left surely couldn’t see out from under that lowered peaked cap could she? Had she seen Gabrielle with her eye patch look and said “Hold my beer”?

I’d have to say that Ant & Dec’s links weren’t the best at this stage of their career. Rather obvious and unfunny but they were both very young and not as slick the as they would become. The segue into “Two Can Play That Game” is especially lame unlike the song by Bobby Brown. Like “U Sure Do” earlier and many other hits around this time it seemed, this had already been a minor hit before bestriding the charts giant-like later in its life. Originally a No 38 in the Summer of 1994, it would go Top 3 nine months later.

Now usually it took a remix by a de jour producer to make a track a much bigger hit second time around and indeed “Two Can Play That Game” did have such a sprinkle of magic in the form of mixes by K Klass (the album version didn’t) but here’s the thing; as far as I can tell, these remixes were already present on the 1994 original release as well as the 1995 re-issue. Which begs the question why was it given a second chance? I guess either Bobby or his record company had faith in the track and thought it deserved a second chance. You can hear why I think. Steered by a hand-clapping beat with some strident house piano flourishes, it’s also got an uplifting chorus that I can imagine leant itself to much dancing with abandon on many a dance floor throughout the country. Limbs!

The success of the single prompted the release of a whole remix album of the same name later in the year which did what it said on the tin – featured remixes of some of his biggest songs that led to three more recycled tracks becoming UK Top 40 hits.

Finally! After weeks of wondering where all the Britpop artists were in this year of Britpop, here’s one that were really at the heart of it. Or were they? Well, Menswear were a bit of a conundrum. In some quarters, they were very much seen as manufactured to be part of the burgeoning scene rather than growing out of it organically and therefore not genuine nor credible. There was some truth in that of course. First mentioned in a Select magazine article by founding members Johnny Dean and Chris Gentry before the band even existed, the hype surrounding them was huge. Having put the idea out there, Dean and Gentry decided that they should probably form the band for real and lo, Menswear were born to the world in the epicentre of Britpop, namely Camden. A debut gig had the record labels frothing at the mouth, besides themselves with fear at the thought of missing out on the next big thing. In the end, London Records won the race at the cost of £90,000. A £500,000 publishing deal (they only had seven songs in their repertoire at the point of signing!) and an NME front cover followed before this TOTP appearance. They hadn’t even released anything at the time!

As if the buzz around them wasn’t big enough, they made their first single “I’ll Manage Somehow” a limited edition release with, as Dec says in his intro, just 5,000 copies made available. Ant wasn’t the only one asking the question “Why?”. Around this time, I was doing a further education night course about music of the 70s. One of my fellow course members was a guy called Dominic who had heard about this band called Menswear but was mightily pissed off that he couldn’t find their single anywhere to purchase due to its limited release. Knowing I worked in a record shop, he asked me what it was all about. I said I thought it was a marketing strategy to create a clamour for the product at the counter but Dominic wasn’t having it and thought it was daft. He had a point. In the end, “I’ll Manage Somehow” somehow managed a peak of No 49. Wouldn’t it have been better to mass produce it and give them the chance of a bigger debut hit or was I missing something? The follow up single “Daydreamer” made No 14 so clearly that was made more widely available. It was their third single “Stardust” though that did it for me. Hopefully we’ll get to see that one on a future TOTP repeat.

Having said that, watching this performance back some 28 years later, I’m not sure if the profile the band attained is quite so obviously explained. They made a decent sound to my ears but it was hardly revolutionary and indeed left them open to the same accusations of plagiarism that plagued their Britpop contemporaries Elastica. I’d forgotten Johnny Dean’s military style tunic that he wore here. A few short years later, The Libertines would copy the look in their own brief blaze of hype and glory. So was the Menswear ballyhoo that bad? After all, they were hardly the first to go there. Sigue Sigue Sputnik did it much more outrageously and ridiculously back in 1986 and were vilified extensively and that thing about being the pin up band for a musical movement? Wasn’t that what Spandau Ballet were for the New Romantics? Unlike Spandau though, Menswear weren’t able to extend their life beyond their Britpop origins and when that came to an end, so did they. Drummer Matt Everett would become a writer, presenter and sidekick to ex-Radio 6 DJ Shaun Keaveny whilst lead singer Johnny Dean became an advocate for the National Autistic Society after being diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and briefly restarted Menswear with a new line up in 2013. He ditched the project shortly afterwards though following a change of heart.

When you’ve had a name as big as Prince on your show recently, I guess you’re going to make use of his performance more than once even if you couldn’t actually see his face. Yes, it’s that former ‘exclusive’ appearance by New Power Generation promoting their “Get Wild” single where Prince hides his fizzog throughout it behind a veil in protest at the actions of his record company Warners with whom he was in dispute. With the Purple One using NPG as a means of releasing material whilst hamstrung by Warners and the latter retaliating by issuing a single called “Purple Medley”, it set up a chart battle of sorts though it would hardly rival the Blur v Oasis bout later in the year. Prince would finally disentangle himself from Warners around 1996.

He wasn’t the first pop star to use the gimmick of a mask of course. Here’s David Soul pre his Starsky and Hutch days as The Covered Singer…

https://youtu.be/eqLxxaOtl0c?si=Hto3_7TQSlfgg2KT

He wouldn’t be the last either with the advent of the TV show The Masked Singer being syndicated around the world and featuring actual pop stars…

https://youtu.be/1tUy7C6-xGQ?si=gugv6FYkVTNuwjHY

From one music legend to another. After Prince comes The Boss! The reason behind Bruce Springsteen’s appearance here seems to be to promote his recently released No 1 “Greatest Hits” album from which “Murder Incorporated” was one of four new tracks. I say ‘new’ but it was actually a really old song that was written during the “Born In The USA” album sessions but which didn’t make the cut. In fact, “Murder Incorporated” was going to be the album’s title at one point. It got reactivated for Bruce’s first compilation album and fast became a crowd favourite when played live. It’s a good song I think that doesn’t sound out of place next to some of the other more well known and celebrated tracks on the album. It was never released as a single in the UK (in fact it was only released in Canada) hence the big TOTP caption ‘Album Track’.

The “Greatest Hits” would go multi platinum but Bruce chose to follow it up with an album that would be his first to fail to make the Top 10 in the US for two decades. “The Ghost Of Tom Joad” was his second acoustic collection after “Nebraska” and on the one hand didn’t seem like an obvious direction to go in but on the other it made perfect sense. Draw a line under one phase of your career by reminding everyone how great it was with a Best Of and then deliver something unexpected. That’s how you maintain a career that’s lasted over 50 years I guess.

Snap! were still having hits in 1995? Well, yes they were but both visually and sonically you would be forgiven for believing that this wasn’t the same group that exploded onto the charts in 1990 with “The Power”. Rapper Turbo B had long gone and they were on to their fourth singer in Summer after Jackie Harris, Thea Austin and Niki Haris before her. In this performance with Summer and her two backing vocalists/dancers in crimson ball gowns, they look an era away from those early days which I guess they were. Their sound had also transformed over the years to the point that they were now peddling trance flavoured pop with “The First The Last Eternity (Till The End)” a prime example. With a title that seemed to borrow an awful lot from that old Barry White hit, it consisted of Summer repeating the word ‘eternity’ over and over until it sounded like she was singing ‘eternally’. It does, however, have a deeply hypnotic quality to it that kind of draws you in…and in…and…No! Snap out of it! Ahem.

“The First The Last Eternity (Till The End)” would make a respectable No 15 on the UK charts but the majority of their final hits would be remixes of past glories, mainly “Rhythm Is A Dancer” which provided their last Top 40 entry in 2008. It wasn’t their first hit but it was their last meaning Snap!’s success didn’t last an eternity.

Whilst I can appreciate their place in musical history, I was never a massive Nirvana fan. Consequently, by association, I was never that interested in Hole either. The band started by Courtney Love who was, of course, married to Kurt Cobain always seemed to be inextricably linked to Nirvana because of that relationship. Working in record shops throughout the 90s, obviously I was aware of their releases and the names of their albums but I never had that much interest in hearing them. Plenty of people did though. I don’t think I understood quite how many records they sold. Literally millions of copies of their second and third albums in America achieving platinum status. It wasn’t quite the same story in the UK though those two albums “Live Through This” and “Celebrity Skin” did shift 100,000 units each. In terms of singles, Hole had never had a Top 40 hit in this country until “Doll Parts”. Watching this performance doesn’t make me feel I mistakenly deprived myself of their oeuvre I have to say. It’s all a bit too lo-fi and grunge- high for me and I don’t think I could listen to Courtney Love’s voice on repeat that much.

Despite not being a fan, I do have a Hole story. A month after this TOTP aired, the band played a gig at the Manchester Academy venue. A quick search of the internet tells me it was actually Sunday 30th April. I was living in Manchester at the time and my wife and I had been for a walk somewhere and on the way back home, passed by the Academy. The ticket touts were out in force and they seemed to be particularly interested in trying to flog me one. Approach after approach was made to the point where I was getting annoyed. “No mate, I’m not interested”; my reply was almost becoming a chant. I turned to my wife and, exasperated, said “What’s going on? Why do they keep trying to flog a ticket to me?”. My wife looked me up and down and then pointed to my T-shirt. “Maybe that’s got something to do with it?”. I’d completely forgotten that I was wearing a Nirvana T-shirt. Now you would be forgiven for asking the question “Hang on, I thought you said you weren’t that into Nirvana so what gives with the T-shirt?”. Well, there’d been some sort of Nirvana promotion at the Our Price store where I worked whereby customers got a feee T-shirt if they bought the album or something. Anyway, there were loads left over so they were dished out to the staff and I happened to have mine on the day of the Hole gig completely by chance. For the record, I didn’t buy a ticket for David gig.

Ant & Dec finally start to get into their stride with their links with a nice Morecambe and Wise style routine around the No 1 record “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” by The Outhere Brothers. That intro is the only good thing about this whole footnote in UK musical history when the public lost their minds not just once but twice (there’s another No 1 coming in a few weeks) over these two dolts. The whole appeal of this record it seems to me was its sexually explicit lyrics which, of course, we don’t hear in this performance. You wouldn’t have heard them on the edit version played on the radio either. It kind of makes this TOTP appearance slightly redundant. Still, the studio audience seem to be having a great time whooping it up in call and response fashion.

We should perhaps be thanking our lucky stars for small mercies. If it weren’t for Take That releasing a new single around this time, “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” would surely have stayed at No 1 for longer. In total, it spent six weeks inside the Top 2 with only one of those in the top spot.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Strike	U Sure Do	I sure don’t – no
2	Brownstone	If You Love Me	No
3	Bobby Brown	Two Can Play That Game	Nope
4	Menswear	I’ll Manage Somehow	Couldn’t get a copy despite working in a record shop
5	New Power Generation	Get Wild	Nah
6	Bruce Springsteen	Murder Incorporated	Not released as a single
7	Snap!	The First The Last Eternity (Till The End)	Negative
8	Hole	Doll Parts	Not my bag really
9	The Outhere Brothers	Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)	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/m001rb0b/top-of-the-pops-30031995

TOTP 20 JAN 1994

Posted on January 24, 2023 by 80stastic

And so the party is finally over. Not the TOTP party as the grand old show will carry on for another twelve and a half years from this point. No, it’s the end of the line for presenter Tony Dortie whose innings finishes after 57 shows stretching back to the 3rd October 1991. So who pulled the plug on Dortie? Well, presumably it was incoming new producer Ric Blaxill who replaced ‘year zero’ innovator Stanley Appel and decided to shake things up by…erm…getting some of those old Radio 1 DJs back in on presenting duties. That hardly sounds like a creative genius teeming with new ideas at work does it? To be fair to Blaxill, he did come up with some other plans to overhaul the show including the ‘golden mic’ where TV celebrities, pop stars and comedians were invited to present the show. Curiously, this change seems to already be in place before Dortie has left the building as he is joined on his final show by Def Leppard’s Joe Elliot as co-host. I presumed initially that this was just to introduce his own band’s video but he does get extra presenting duties later on in the show. The subsequent show would be Dortie’s presenting partner Mark Franklin’s last appearance. The times they were a-changin’…

…talking of which, we start the show with a tune that seemed out of time. It was now nearly four years since Inspiral Carpets burst into our lives as part of the ‘Madchester’ scene and whilst that movement had withered whilst main protagonists The Stone Roses were still missing presumed disbanded and the Happy Mondays having self destructed, these Oldham lads had carved themselves out a little niche which revolved around Clint Boon’s farfisa electronic organ and its swirling 60s retro sounds. By 1994 though, they were coming to the end of their initial incarnation and that year’s “Devil Hopping” would be their last album for twenty years after being dropped by Mute Records. The lead single from it was “Saturn 5” which seems to borrow a fair bit from “Telstar” by The Tornados. Yes, I know that 1962 No 1 transatlantic hit was an instrumental track but it was named after the Telstar communications satellite that was launched into orbit that year. Similarly, “Saturn 5” was named after the space rocket that launched all the Apollo missions. Then there’s the almost distorted, futuristic (back in 1962!) organ sound on “Telstar” which “Saturn 5” isn’t a million light years away from.

According to Boon, the song is about hope and achieving your ambitions. Here’s @TOTPFacts with an explanation of that Rockette lyric:

"Jerry wants to be a rockette" explained: "Jerry is my wife's auntie. She always wanted to be a Radio City Rockette, and now she is one! The song's about optimism and ambition." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 20, 2023

I went to New York for the very first time in 1994 and me and my wife did the Radio City Hall tour and met a Rockette. It was a a bizarre experience. Anyway, some of the other lyrics refer to the assassination of JFK (“the lifeless corpse of President 35”) and his grieving wife Jackie Onassis (“the lady crying by his side is the most beautiful woman alive”) and Boon’s mother-in-law going on a first date with her husband in a Ford Mustang (“Lady take a ride on a Zeke 64”). In my head, I’d made the line “An Eagle lands” into a reference to 1970s sci-fi series Space 1999 whose spacecrafts were called ‘Eagles’. Either that or the Eagle comic and its space captain hero Dan Dare. Both theories kind of fit with the space theme but further research on my part suggests it’s more probably to do with the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University where JFK learned to fly and whose nickname is ‘Eagles’. Regardless of its subject matter, I liked “Saturn 5” and its incongruousness with the rest of the charts. Yes, it was a bit formulaic – my work colleague Justin remarked on first hearing it “Ah, there’s the distinctive organ” – but it was well constructed and had charm as well as hooks. It would make No 20 on the chart while the album went to No10.

I saw singer Tim Hingley years later as a solo artist at tiny venue Fibbers whilst I was living in York. Can’t remember if he played “Saturn 5” though. I also caught Clint Boon do a DJ set of ‘Manchester’ tunes as a warm up for a Happy Mondays gig a few years ago. That really was money for old rope.

https://youtu.be/xjWm0OSA6iE

And so to that first Joe Elliott intro which, rather obviously, is for his own band. He actually does a decent job and seems much more at ease than an over excited Dortie. They do have some decent banter (note banter not ‘bants’) as Tony chides Joe for his Sheffield United shirt who responds with with “Hold your tongue philistine Spurs freak”. Nice comeback!

As for Def Leppard’s cover of The Sweet’s “Action”, I pretty much said everything I had to say about it in the last post. Erm…OK, did they do any other cover versions?

*checks internet*

They’ve done loads! Some are obvious like T. Rex, Bowie and Thin Lizzy but some less so. How about these? “Rock On” by David Essex and…No! “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode?! I’ve got to hear this…

…well, it doesn’t eclipse Johnny Cash’s take on it but it’s not bad I’ll admit. I suppose that’s testament to how much of a great song it is. “Action” peaked at No 14 but Def Leppard returned with their equal biggest hit ever in 1995 with “When Love And Hate Collide” which peaked at No 2 matching the high of 1992’s “Let’s Get Rocked”.

Here’s something a bit different. Tori Amos might be an acquired taste and suffer from continual accusations of being a Kate Bush wannabe but I’ve always quite liked her. I’m pretty sure we even had her first album “Little Earthquakes” at some point. It sold respectably and steadily but 1994 saw her up the ante with the release of sophomore album “Under The Pink” which went to the top of the charts. The lead single was “Cornflake Girl” which would give Tori her highest charting single by far at that point when it peaked at No 4. I said in the last post that I was surprised that Toni Braxton’s “Breathe Again” was such a big hit and “Cornflake Girl” also falls into that category. Nothing to do with the quality of the song – it’s a great track – but because it felt like such an outlier in the charts. A haunting piece with a striking melody that allows Tori’s otherworldly vocals to flourish, it sounded like nothing else in the Top 40 at the time (and no smart arse remarks about Kate Bush not having a single out that month!).

The song has some dark origins. Here’s @TOTPFacts again:

"Cornflake Girl" is about female genital mutilation, which Amos was discussing with a friend. "We were talking about the fact that the women are betrayed, by a grandmother, a mother, an older sister – that the women you trust the most are taking you into this butchery.." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 20, 2023

Out of this discussion came the song’s title which was a name that Tori and her peers would use growing up to describe girls who would hurt you despite a close relationship. On a lighter note, Amos appeared in an advert for a Kellogg’s cereal in 1984 but apparently that was nothing to do with her writing the song.

Interestingly, Billy Bragg also name checks the phrase on a track called “Body Of Water” on his 1991 album “Don’t Try This At Home”.

Summer could take a hint
Seeing you in a floral print
Oh to become a pearl
In the wordy world of the cornflake girl
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Billy Bragg / Philip Douglas Wigg
Body of Water lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

In an unlikely turn of events, as I was checking my Tori Amos facts for this post, I discovered that she is a very close friend of the author Neil Gaiman who is actually godfather to her daughter. The book literally next to me on the coffee table as I read that information? The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

For me though, the one thing that always comes to mind when I hear “Cornflake Girl” is this TV theme for a show that always seemed to be on the late night schedules growing up in the Central ITV region…

Talking of cover versions as we were before about Def Leppard, Tori has quite a few in her live set lists. I think my favourite is this unlikely coming together of styles…

Oh come on! Still with Haddaway in 1994? Surely he was a one year phenomenon? Sadly, he’s still knocking about with his “I Miss You” single. Everything about this performance is just odd, from Haddaway’s cringeworthy spoken intro to the presence of the woman on stage with him? Quite why was she there? She spends the first part of the song sat on a chair looking miserable. I’ve not seen someone look so upset in a pop song since that woman in the video for Eddy Grant’s 1982 No 1 “I Don’t Wanna Dance” when she’s left fuming on the beach whilst Eddy noodles around on his guitar whilst sat on an unlikely floating platform in the sea.

https://youtu.be/ZFT5ZVUsPIw

Back in 1994, the woman on stage with Haddaway finally gets up to wander around a bit before miming some “ooh, woohs” backing vocals. Is that why she was there all along? For that? It really wasn’t worth it. “I Miss You” peaked at No 9.

As with Def Leppard earlier, here’s another of last week’s Breakers getting a full spin on the show. Toni Braxton gets the live by satellite treatment to perform her “Breathe Again” hit. They’ve plonked her on a stool sat between two candelabras on the stage of the Apollo Theatre, New York where she belts out her song…to nobody. They even have a shot from behind Toni facing the empty theatre and its non existent audience just in case anyone was under the misconception that somebody (anybody) was actually there. Madness. I hope Ric Blaxill got rid of this nonsense when he took over the TOTP reins and resuscitated the show. Hey, maybe he made it breathe again! I’ll get me coat.

https://youtu.be/Pp_OMu3top0

Four Breakers this week starting with some bloke called Joe (just Joe) who I hardly remember and couldn’t tell you anything about before reading up on him but who somehow managed to have ten UK Top 40 hits the last of which came some ten years on from this, his debut single, “I’m In Luv”. Tony Dortie is clearly giving zero f***s seeing as he’s been given the chop and this is is final appearance as he says the following in his intro “…I know it’s politically incorrect to say so but there’s some mighty fine ladies in this video”. Well! Tone had some previous with this sort of thing dropping similar comments about Jade, En Vogue etc during his time on the show. He also says that Joe “…at last gives us the missing note between hip hop and R&B…”. Wasn’t that called New Jack Swing?

A genuine sales phenomenon next as Garth Brooks makes his first TOTP appearance. No. Really. Check these stats out from @TOTPFacts

In the USA, Garth Brooks is the only artist to have released nine albums that achieved diamond status by selling over 10 million copies (surpassing the Beatles' previous record of six). #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 20, 2023

Garth Brooks has also been certified as the best-selling solo artist when it comes to albums in the USA – ahead of Elvis Presley. As of 13 January 2023, Brooks is on 157 million, with Presley at 146.5 million. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 20, 2023

Told you. It was an unlikely occurrence though for a country artist. Or was it? Certainly in the UK, that genre had traditionally struggled to gain a foot hold commercially but in the US? I’m thinking there was a much bigger market and appetite for country music. Randy Travis, Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire, Dwight Yoakam, George Strait and loads more artists had huge careers over there as country acts. However, Troyal Garth Brooks (that’s his actual name! Troyal!) was somehow different. His melting pot of country with elements of rock and pop allowed him to crossover into the mainstream markets and he did so like nobody before him. We’d resisted in the UK for the early part of the decade despite promotion by his record company of his albums like “Ropin’ The Wind”, “No Fences” and “The Chase” but we finally caved to his fifth one “In Pieces” which rose to No 2 in our charts. The single from it that broke the dam was “The Red Strokes” – (actually a double A-side with “Ain’t Going Down (‘Til The Sun Comes Up)”) – a pleasant but unremarkable ballad to my ears and the biggest of only three UK hit singles which peaked at No 13. Hold onto your Stetson though as we’ll be seeing more of Garth Brooks on the next show.

I’d totally forgotten about the final single from Depeche Mode’s “Songs Of Faith And Devotion” album. “In Your Room” was a powerful slab of gloom rock in line with the rest of the album which was influenced by the emergence of grunge. Despite the album having been out for nearly a year by this point and despite it being the fourth track released from it, “”In Your Room” still went Top 10 displaying the loyalty and purchasing power of the band’s fanbase.

The video references much of the band’s past work with homages to “Strangelove”, “Personal Jesus” and “Enjoy The Silence” amongst others. There’s also a heavy David Lynch vibe with scenes of bondage set against the red curtain drapes reminding me of both Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet. The band themselves were in turmoil at this point with Dave Gahan struggling with his heroin addiction whilst the single would be the last to feature Alan Wilder who left the group after the completion of the album. We would not see them again for four years when they returned with “Ultra”.

Well, I suppose this was totally inevitable. Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown had been married for eighteen months when they decided they needed to record a song together to further publicly display their love for each other. I’m surprised it took that long. “Something In Common” was the chosen track but if they were expecting a gigantic hit off the back of them joining forces, it didn’t quite happen. A No 16 peak was all it could achieve over here whilst it also failed to make the Top 10 in the US. How come? I mean, Whitney was on a very hot streak with the success of The Bodyguard whilst Brown’s 1992 album “Bobby” had gone double platinum. Maybe the song was just no good? It’s uptempo and probably right on the New Jack Swing zeitgeist but it doesn’t live long in the memory. Seriously, how far down the list would you have to go when naming Whitney or Bobby Brown songs before you got to “Something In Common”?

Joe Elliott is back to do a link for the next artist who is Phil Collins. How many times was Phil on TOTP as a solo artist doing a mournful ballad? I don’t know and I’m not about to count but I’m pretty sure he did what he does whilst performing “Everyday” on every appearance; that Everyman, shuffling turn whilst wearing oversized, casual clothes to create the impression that he’s only turned up at the studio to sing a song whilst he’s waiting for the first coat of creosote to dry on his garden fence before applying the second. I’m not buying it Phil nor indeed any of your records. “Everyday” peaked at No 15.

They’ve done it! D:Ream are No1 with “Things Can Only Get Better” a year after it originally peaked at No 24. Despite it being his last ever TOTP show, Tony Dortie still has one last presenting gaff in him when he refers to their lead singer Peter Cunnah as ‘Pete Cornelius’! Watching Pete perform here in his trademark checked suit, I can’t help but notice that there’s an element of Robbie Williams about his performance. All that energetic cavorting and arm waving and a desperation to make everything about him on stage. Well, D:Ream had just been on tour with Take That at the time so maybe he did indeed learn from the master!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Inspiral Carpets	Saturn 5	No but I have it on a Best Of CD of theirs
2	Def Leppard	Action	Nah
3	Tori Amos	Cornflake Girl	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Haddaway	I Miss You	…but I don’t miss you. No
5	Toni Braxton	Breathe Again	Nope
6	Joe	I’m In Luv	I’m not – no
7	Garth Brooks	The Red Strokes	No
8	Depeche Mode	In Your Room	I did not
9	Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown	Something In Common	Negative
10	Phil Collins	Everyday	Never!
11	D:Ream	Things Can Only Get Better	And 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/m001h88r/top-of-the-pops-20011994

TOTP 20 AUG 1992

Posted on March 23, 2022 by 80stastic

Right – a correction to start off with. I said in the last post that we’d missed the 6th August show due to the Adrian Rose consent issue. That was incorrect. It was because of the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics taking over the schedule. Presumably there was no slot left for even just 30 minutes of pop music. Thanks to those people who pointed this out to me.

So, on with the show (if that’s OK with you Mr BBC). This week’s ‘highlights’ include some British rockers, the return of a Mod hero and as it’s TOTP in 1992, a video exclusive from Michael Jackson (yawn).

We start though with some more of that horribly naff dance sound that added a lazy backbeat to an old classic tune and sold it to the masses by the bucket load. Was there a name for that sub genre of dance music? Who said ‘shite’?!

After pilfering KC And The Sunshine Band’s “Please Don’t Go” for their surprise No 1 a few weeks before, this time KWS have covered a song written by one Harry Wayne Casey – yes, Mr KC himself! This was starting to look like an unhealthy obsession! The chosen track was “Rock Your Baby” as made famous by George McRae who took it to the top of the charts here and in the US in 1974. I guess it made sense as a safe bet for another hit but they must have known there was a very short life span for this sort of thing and that they would be a fairly insignificant footnote in pop history. Surely they didn’t expect anybody to be talking about them and their hits in say 30 years time? Oh…which is exactly what I’m doing right now isn’t it? OK, how do I get out of this then. I need a Boris Johnson style dead cat on the table distraction. Ah, how about a realisation that I’ve remembered who KWS remind me of? Yes, that’ll do nicely. OK, well do you recall back in 1983 a guy called Forrest? He had two hits off the back of covers of old 70s soul hits “Rock The Boat” by The Hues Corporation and “Feel The Need In Me” by the Detroit Emeralds. And then promptly disappeared never to be heard of again. KWS were like a 90s version of him.

There seemed to be a trend around this time for overly energetic brass sections backing artists performing in the TOTP studio. The other week Jimmy Nail had some with him on stage and now KWS have four guys doing their own little dance routine mid song. They’re like a 90s version of The Shadows but with saxophones instead of guitars. One of them has a trumpet rather than a sax and he looks a bit like M People’s Mike Pickering. It couldn’t be could it?

KWS’s version of “Rock Your Baby” peaked at No 8.

It’s a live satellite link up now, this time from Boston where we find “Pornograffitti” artists Extreme. After the world wide success of “More Than Words” and a slot at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, the band’s profile had never been bigger but with a bigger profile came even bigger expectations. The pressure was on for their next album to rack up even more sales. So how do you follow up success with bigger success? What you don’t do is record a ‘concept’ album but that’s exactly what the band did. “III Sides To Every Story” contained 15 tracks split into three sections (the titular ‘sides’) each with their own name – ‘Yours’, ‘Mine’ and ‘The Truth’. The sides were differentiated from each other by their musical style and lyrical subjects – ‘Yours’ featured hard rock, ‘Mine’ displayed a more sensitive side with the band experimenting with different arrangements and instruments whilst ‘The Truth’ showcased their prog rock credentials and featured a track split into three parts (‘III Sides’ geddit?) entitled “Everything Under The Sun”. Not at all pretentious. The album sold poorly in comparison to predecessor “Pornograffitti” and the three singles released from it did not include anything like the huge mainstream crossover hit that “More Than Words” was.

The first of those three singles was “Rest In Peace”. Inspired by peace protests against the Gulf War, it offers up the rather unpalatable theory that sometimes war is necessary, or at least that war is complicated and can’t be reduced to such simple terms. Was it possible to convey such a subject effectively during the course of a rock song? This was no “Get The Funk Out”. Was it too much of a leap for fans of their previous work? Certainly in America it failed spectacularly to replicate the success of “More Than Words” for example which had been a No 1 record. “Rest In Peace” peaked at No 96 over there though it did top the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart (whatever that was). We were more receptive to it in the UK where it reached a surprising high of No 13.

The performance here stands out due to the kid sitting in front of the drum kit for its entirety. Who was he and why was he there? Twitter offered up several opinions as to his identity ranging from a young Caleb Followill of Kings Of Leon to Eminem to the band’s manager’s son. It just looks odd.

As for the track itself, I thought it was OK and preferable to some of the crud in the Top 40 but that they were taking themselves way too seriously. I could have well done without the overindulgent Jimi Hendrix tribute riff towards the end. In any case, I’m really not convinced that the world needed an Extreme concept album at all.

It had to happen eventually. In the long, tortuous and indeed torturous search for how to stage a dance act on TOTP, the producers have finally turned to podium dancing. The lucky recipients of this innovation were Felix who are in the studio to perform their Top 10 hit “Don’t You Want Me”. It’s your basic, standard set up of the singer, the obligatory guy behind some turntables but now there’s added dancers positioned on towers of TV screens overlooking the stage. The banks of monitors are showing the promo video which intercuts with the performance whilst the studio audience are ‘avin’ it large like they’re at an actual rave. It sort of almost works until you notice the outlandish costumes of the dancers. There’s one that has an actual full face mask over their head! It reminds me of Cillian Murphy’s The Scarecrow from Batman Begins. The only time I’ve been in a nightclub with podium dancers was in Rochdale in the mid 90s, a place called Xanadu’s. Think it was a work colleague’s leaving do. Very scary but even there the posers on the podiums didn’t look like one of Worzel Gummidge’s mates.

“Don’t You Want Me” peaked at No 6.

After the dissolution of The Style Council in 1989, Paul Weller, without a record deal for the first time in his professional career, went on a two year hiatus from making records. As 1990 became 1991, he was back on the road under the title of ‘The Paul Weller Movement’ playing small venues with a set list derived from his Jam/Style Council back catalogue. There was also a spattering of new material like “Into Tomorrow” which was released as a single and returned Weller to the Top 40 but in a minimal way when it peaked at No 36. It was hardly the comeback of comebacks. However, he had more tunes up his sleeve and the small success of “Into Tomorrow” was enough to convince him and new label Go Discs to release more recordings. “Uh Huh, Oh Yeh” was the next single (released purely under his own name without the ‘movement’ suffix) and this time it really did fell like he was back. Previewing his first, eponymous solo album, it felt like a return to form and duly went Top 20.

Weller looks lean and dressed down in this performance and though his Steve Marriott influenced haircut probably drew a few guffaws back then, he looks the epitome of cool compared to the haggard, raggedy Iggy Pop impersonation he peddles today.

I’m not sure what my Weller-obsessed elder brother made of it but I’m guessing he bought it along with the rest of The Jam army who still couldn’t quite let go of their hero. The album made the Top 10 and paved the way for the reinvention of Weller as ‘The Modfather’ with the release of the “Wildwood” and “Stanley Road” albums (both of which I bought actually) as Britpop dawned.

By the way, check out the saxophone player who requires not one but two saxes for this performance one of which is the biggest I have ever seen! Uh huh, oh yeh. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

From Paul Weller to “Jam” (nice!) as it’s time for yet another Michael Jackson video exclusive! By my count that’s the fourth of this calendar year and the fifth in total from the “Dangerous” album. I’m not quite sure it really deserves that ‘exclusive’ label though on account of the fact that the single (and therefore the video) had already been released in the US back in July (the US and European release schedules weren’t in sync). Presumably millions of people globally had already seen this promo by the time it was shown over here. I suppose we didn’t have access to all the TV channels we do today not to mention YouTube so maybe people in the UK hadn’t been able to catch it before now? I don’t know- it was all a long time ago. What I do know is that this glut of what seems like monthly Jacko videos is starting to get on my wick. It’s like he was trying to outdo The Wedding Present’s 1992 singles release project.

I suppose I do have to talk about the video then. Well, this one is set in a run down neighbourhood in Chicago where Jacko teaches basketball superstar Michael Jordan to dance whilst, in return, he shows The King of Pop how to shoot some hoops – as you do. This sort of shit happens all the time obviously. Just the other week Adele was down our street teaching Mo Salah how to sing from his diaphragm whilst he showed her some keepy uppy tricks. Just preposterous nonsense. There’s some cameos from rappers du jour Heavy D and Kris Kross but the whole thing feels like the track was written to be a video rather than a song in its own right. It’s just a vehicle for Jacko’s dance moves – there’s not a proper song in there.

They’ll be one more Jackson single release before 1992 is up -the sickly ballad “Heal The World” whist “Jam” peaked at No 13.

In the light of Extreme’s new direction that we witnessed earlier, there is a vacancy in the acoustic rock troubadour circuit. Early applicants for the role are Thunder with their new single “Low Life In High Places”. This was the lead single from their second album “Laughing On Judgement Day” which would debut at No 2 when released (only kept off the top spot by Kylie Minogue’s first “Greatest Hits” album). Thunder had been churning out Top 40 hits since the turn of the decade (this was their sixth in eighteen months) and the release of “Laughing On Judgement Day” would be the crowning glory of their popularity.

“Low Life In High Places” – a social comment on homelessness in New York – is very much an acoustic number for the first two thirds of its running time but then bursts into more familiar heavy rock territory on the final lap. It’s as if the band are suffering from imposter guilt and don’t really believe they can pull this acoustic lark off and, losing their nerve, revert to type as full on electric heavy rockers. If that bloke who shouted “Judas!” at Bob Dylan at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966 had been in the studio audience he would have spontaneously combusted. Talking of which, were the pyrotechnics when the track goes electric really necessary?

One last thing. What was it with performers having two instruments in this show? After Paul Walker’s sax player earlier, Thunder have a guitarist with an acoustic guitar and an electric one!

“Low Life In High Places” peaked at No 22.

Back to the usual three Breakers tonight after last week’s five song extravaganza starting with Bobby Brown. After flogging his 1988 “Don’t Be Cruel” album to death, Mr Whitney Houston’s only chart appearance had been his frankly bizarre collaboration with boy next door Glenn Medeiros on “She Ain’t Worth It” back in 1990. Now though he was back with a new single “Humpin’ Around” and new album “Bobby”.

I have to say I don’t recall this one though I do remember another single that was released from the album called “Two Can Play That Game” which was a hit a whole two years on from “Bobby” coming out when remixed by K-Klass. That one hung around the charts for ages being a hit twice. “Humpin’ Around” though – I’ve got nothing. It was a medium sized hit peaking at No 19 over here but going Top 3 in America. Apparently it was originally entitled “Fuckin’ Around”. Given Bobby Brown’s rap sheet, why am I not surprised.

It’s “Crying” by Roy Orbison and K.D. Lang next and my timeline for this song is a bit skewed so let’s start at the beginning. Originally a No 1 hit on the Cashbox chart in the US for Orbison on his own in 1961, it was taken to the top of the UK charts in 1980 by American Pie-ster Don McLean’s cover version. Fast forward seven years and The Big O re-recorded it with then little known country singer K.D.Lang for the soundtrack of the film Hiding Out starring Jon Cryer (Duckie from Pretty In Pink). The song was a middling No 28 hit in the US though it was much bigger in Lang’s native Canada where it reached No 2. It also won a Grammy award for Best County Collaboration with Vocals. In 1989, it was recycled as the B-side to Orbison’s single “She’s A Mystery To Me”.

OK, that’s all fine but why was it then released in the UK in 1992? Was it related to Lang’s breakthrough album “Ingénue” being released that year? Was K.D. a known name in the UK by this point? In my head, 1992 was the year that non country music fans became aware of her but apparently her best known song “Constant Craving” wasn’t a hit until the following year when it was rereleased. Again my memory is failing me. Whatever the truth of the matter, “Crying” the duet was a No 13 hit.

They’re still doing that thing with the Breakers where they feature a song that we have already seen in full as an ‘exclusive’ performance. I’m sure this was down to negotiations between the record pluggers and the producers with the major labels jostling for prime time TV slots but it seems like a missed opportunity to highlight Top 40 entries that we would otherwise miss. The latest artist to benefit from this policy is Annie Lennox who is in the charts with her “Walking On Broken Glass” single.

The video to this one is based on the 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons starring John Malkovich who has been roped into appearing in the promo alongside Hugh Laurie who is basically reprising his Prince Regent role from Blackadder III. The costumes alone must have made it quite expensive to film. Would major film stars like Malkovich have done a music video for free or would they charge a fee?

“Walking On Broken Glass” peaked at No 8.

Thunder’s nemesis now as Kylie Minogue has turned up to promote that Greatest Hits album of hers. The first of two new singles released to promote it, “What Kind Of Fool (Heard All That Before)” was her last original song to be released on PWL before she left for pastures new (her very last PWL release was a cover of Kool And The Gang’s “Celebration”). You could hardly describe it as going out on a high on account of the fact that it’s dreadful. It sounds like it should have been a Sonia B-side. Even Kylie herself can’t stand it apparently and she hardly ever performs it live. It peaked at No 14 – it was very lucky to make even that chart placing. A real backwards step after some of her recent work had been a lot more mature. What a waste of everybody’s time.

Snap! remain at No 1 with “Rhythm Is A Dancer”. In the comments about this song on the Songfacts website, someone called Sioraf said this about the infamous ‘serious as cancer’ line:

“Cancer is very serious though. Nobody calls Waterfalls tasteless for mentioning HIV.“

Sioraf mate. The TLC song ‘mentions’ HIV as part of a whole narrative about discouraging self destructive behaviour and raising the issue of AIDS and safe sex. They do so in an affecting, insightful and subtle way – in fact, the acronym HIV is never used but rather the line “three letters took him to his final resting place”. The Snap! track on the other hand just drops the word ‘cancer’ into a rap as it rhymes with ‘dancer’ – there is literally no comparison. Honestly.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	KWS	Rock Your Baby	Nope
2	Extreme	Rest In Peace	I did not
3	Felix	Don’t You Want Me	Nah
4	Paul Weller	Uh Huh, Oh Yeh	I think this might be in the singles box you know
5	Michael Jackson	Jam	Negative
6	Thunder	Low Life In High Places	No
7	Bobby Brown	Humpin’ Around	Buy it? I don’t even remember it
8	Roy Orbison and K.D. Lang	Crying	Didn’t happen
9	Annie Lennox	Walking On Broken Glass	No but my wife had her Diva album
10	Kylie Minogue	What Kind Of Fool (Heard All That Before)	No but my wife had that Greatest Hits album
11	Snap!	Rhythm Is A Dancer	And 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/m0015f91/top-of-the-pops-20081992

TOTP 12 JUL 1990

Posted on January 29, 2021 by 80stastic

So Italia ’90 is finally over, English pride in their football team has been restored and Gazzamania is upon us. Thankfully we have a few weeks yet before Mr Gascoigne enters the world of pop music. In the meantime, we have seven ‘new’ tunes to feast on at the top table of TOTP. If music be the food of love, play on…

…and we start with with Scottish rockers Gun (terrible name*) and their single “Shame On You”. When the band appeared in the Breakers section of TOTP with their debut hit “Better Days” back in the Summer of ’89, another band featured in that section that same show were The Stone Roses. In an unlikely turn of events, the Roses are again on TOTP alongside Gun tonight. In the blog post of that ’89 programme, I revealed that I should have been absolutely ripe to be swept away by the baggy movement spearheaded by Ian Brown and co and yet somehow I managed to nail my colours to the Gun mast! Fast forward a year and let’s see how that choice worked out. The Stone Roses are the coolest band in Britain and their debut album can be heard coming out of the bedroom window of just about every music fan who knows their stuff. And Gun? Well, they followed up “Better Days” with three further single releases none of which made the Top 40. Still, as presenter Anthea Turner (dressed like a tube of Opal Fruits tonight) says, they have been on tour with none other than The Rolling Stones (more of whom later).

It seems though that Gun’s luck is beginning to turn as they are back in the charts with “Shame On You” (the fifth single from their debut album “Taking On The World”). And guess what? I was still sticking to my guns (ahem) and that original choice of band as I bought this single! Yes, after months of never having bought any of the singles featured on the show, two songs come along at once that I purchased with this one and Bob Geldof’s “The Great Song Of Indifference” from the other week. I bought it on cassette single (cassettes were still my format of choice back then) and it was backed with a live version of “Better Days” on the B-side as it were. I loved the driving back beat that builds gradually and that twangy guitar riff. Unfortunately for me and for the band, it would stall at No 33 (the exact same peak as “Better Days”). Sophomore album “Gallus” released two years later was a moderate success but it was only when they released a cover of Cameo’s ‘Word Up” in ’94 that they would finally achieve a Top 10 hit.

Gun split in ’97 but reformed in 2008 and are still a going concern today…and you can’t say that about The Stone Roses can you?

*Previous incarnations of the band went by the monikers of Blind Allez and Phobia – not sure they are any improvement on Gun to be fair!

Who’s next on? Oh, yes River City People – I’d almost (but not quite) forgotten this lot. Wasn’t there a bit of fuss about them being the next big thing at this time or am I making that up? Why is Anthea Turner so enthused about the band? Well, she used to work with lead singer Siobhan Maher as presenters on Children’s BBC’s summer holiday morning programme But First This! apparently ( I’ve no recall of it at all). Maher was also an actress and appeared in Brookside spin off Damon And Debbie which I do absolutely remember (especially its tragic ending – heartbreaking it was).

Anyway, in addition to presenting and acting ambitions, Maher was also a singer and formed River City People in ’86. After a couple of false starts, they hit it big with a cover of The Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin‘”. I’m guessing that after those initial mis-steps, their record label reverted to that tried and trusted career saving trick of a cover version. Cleverly they doubled it up with a River City People original in “Carry The Blame” as the other A -side though how much radio play it got, I’m not sure.

Siobhan certainly had a smooth voice and despite all the retro hippy trappings on display in this performance, it stands up pretty well I think.

The single rose to No 13 but despite its placing, it wasn’t the spring board for success that the band (and record label) must have hoped for. A re-release of debut single “(What’s Wrong With) Dreaming?” (they had a thing about dreams seemingly) only scraped into the charts at No 40 which was a shame as it sounds a bit like Lone Justice which is no bad thing in my book.

As Anthea announced, their debut album called “Say Something Good” was released later in ’90 and a second album followed in ’91 but the band split not long after that. Shame really.

OK, after some 60s folk pop, we get back to some dance music (well it is 1990) with “Naked In The Rain” by Blue Pearl and indeed this record does scream 1990 to me. I always though they were a one hit wonder but a glance at their discography tells me otherwise albeit that two of their four chart entries were with this track.

Fronted by the distinctively named Durga McBroom, this dance floor smash would make it all the way to No 4 in the UK charts. As with Siobhan Maher before her, Durga was also a multi-skiller being an actress as well. She appeared in the film Flashdance as a character called Heels and was also in music videos for the likes of Eurythmics, Janet Jackson and David Bowie no less. As Anthea mentioned in her intro (get her dropping her Knebworth references), Durga was very closely associated with Pink Floyd touring with them between 1987 to 1994. That might explain why they covered Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” for their debut album “Naked” as Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour helped produce the 16 year old Kate’s initial demo tape.

When asked in a Smash Hits interview what “Naked In The Rain” was about, Durga replied :

“It’s not a literal naked that I’m talking of. It’s not about running to Trafalgar Square and ripping all your clothes off and jumping into the fountain. It’s more an emotional naked; stripping oneself of frustrations and the things that hold us back from being really calm and really cool.”

Hmm. Not sure anybody explained that to the video director…

Not Glenn Medeiros again?! This is the third time “She Ain’t Worth It” with Bobby Brown has been on. This track was meant to represent a change of image and sound for the boy from Hawaii and looking at the titles of his albums, he did seem to suffer an identity crisis during his career. Starting with his debut album (the one with “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You” on it) which was rather uninspiringly entitled “Glenn Medeiros” he then released an album called “Not Me” before a third album came out in 1990 (that included “She Ain’t Worth It”) which was called “Glenn Medeiros” again! So that’s:

Glenn Medeiros
Not Me
Glenn Medeiros

Wow! I bet his therapy bills were big!

Although, “She Ain’t Worth It” was a US No 1, Glenn only managed one more chart hit over there (another duet, this time with Ray Parker Jnr of all people) and his chart career did not sustain beyond that.

A band who have flown in all the way from LA to be on the show next (according to Anthea) but I’m not sure it was worth the bother to be fair. Thunder had entered the chart with their version of the old Spencer Davis Group hit “Gimme Some Lovin'” at No 38 but following this TOTP performance it only went up two places to a peak of No 36 before crashing out of the Top 40 altogether. This was however their third chart hit of the year and indeed the third of five singles to be released from their “Backstreet Symphony” album in total. The album was produced by ex-Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor who also produced “Shame On You” by the show’s opening act tonight Gun. Andy had clearly moved well beyond his new romantic pop star beginnings by this point and had fully thrown in his lot with his true love, heavy rock.

Unlike producer mates Gun who were looking to re-start their chart lives after a drop in commercial fortunes when they covered Cameo’s “Word Up”, I’m not quite sure why Thunder (or possibly their record label) felt the need to release a cover version over their own material at this very early point in their career but there you go. It didn’t seem to add anything much to the original to me.

Tune! A great song up next from The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid with “I’m Free”. Looking a bit like a hybrid of Primal Scream and Happy Mondays, it was easy to labour under the misconception that this lot were part of the ‘Madchester’ movement (pretty sure I did). The Soup Dragons were in fact from Scotland (Bellshill* near Motherwell specifically). A few months later when I was a wet behind the ears sales assistant at Our Price in Manchester, a distributor rep called in to the store with some product on his van he was trying to sell in. I can’t recall which distributor he worked for but it was one of the small ones so a lot of his stuff was quite niche. One of the artists he had on the van were BMX Bandits whom he triumphantly announced went onto be chart stars The Soup Dragons hoping this would influence the store manager to take a punt on their stock. I believed that story for ages but it wasn’t strictly true. BMX Bandits existed alongside The Soup Dragons although they did often share band members including lead singer Sean Dickson.

The group’s origins weren’t the only thing I wasn’t aware of at the time – I also was oblivious to the fact that “I’m Free” was a Rolling Stones song. It’s not a strict cover of it though. The lyrics were changed slightly, necessitated by the fact that they didn’t have them (this was pre the internet remember) so Dickson sang what he could remember and made up the rest.

Can I say that I loved the groove on this record or will I sound like a middle aged man (which is what I am)? OK, sod it – I loved the groove on this record and the toasting from Junior Reid made the song their own (as Louis Walsh would say). By the way, Reid doesn’t rap ‘Free from the Loch Ness Monster, free from the deep’ but ‘Free like a butterfly, free like a bee’ just in case you had been wondering all these years.

The song is featured brilliantly in the Simon Pegg comedy The World’s End where main character Gary King is still living in 1990 in his head.

“I’m Free” would be the band’s biggest ever hit peaking at No 5.

*The little town of Bellshill was also home to Teenage Fanclub, Mogwai and erm…Sheena Easton. Quite a roll call.

If The Soup Dragons weren’t part of ‘Madchester’ then the next act certainly were. The time of The Stone Roses was now. Everyone was talking about them and ‘Madchester’ and the legendary Manc nightclub The Hacienda. I recall reading earlier in the year in the Daily Mirror (my parents’ choice of newspaper) about coach trips being organised throughout the country to take hordes of ravers up to Manchester to visit The Hacienda like it was some sort of spiritual pilgrimage.

“One Love” was a non -album single that should have been released to coincide with the band’s infamous Spike Island gig (that my elder brother went to) but it took so long to mix, its release was delayed. Having naively chosen Gun over the Roses the year before, I was ready to be bowled over this time and to get fully on board with the whole sound. “One Love”, yeah, too right! This is going to be mega I thought. And then I heard the song. I was completely underwhelmed. It seemed very laboured and didn’t really go anywhere and the chorus was lame. Even Ian Brown agreed with me on that in time…

Ian Brown on "One Love": "We tried in vain to cover all bases – we wanted to appeal to everyone in clubs and indie kids and whoever, but it was a poor chorus." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 22, 2021

There was no way I was wasting my money on this and so for the second time, I chose Gun over The Stone Roses when I bought their current single instead. The band’s fan base was big enough by this point to take the single to No 4 in the charts but it was a false dawn. It would be the last original material released by the band until “Love Spreads” some four and a half years later!

Ah bollocks! Elton John is still at No 1 with “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”. Three months on from this, Elton would release a career retrospective double album called “The Very Best Of Elton John” spanning 1970’s “Your Song” through to “Sacrifice” (though not curiously “Healing Hands”). The album was hugely successful going to No 1 and nine times platinum in the UK alone. It was also the very first item I ever sold to a customer when I joined Our Price in October of 1990 – and I needed some help from the Assistant Manager to do so!

The play out video is “Rockin’ Over The Beat” by Technotronic. This lot of Belgian Eurodancers were becoming chart regulars by this point as this was their fourth consecutive Top 40 hit and the second to feature Ya Kid K. As with all their other stuff, I couldn’t stand it. To rub my face further in their shit, the next single they released called “Megamix” was just as it said on the tin – a mash up of all four of those previous singles! And guess what? The British public lapped it up all over again sending it to No 8. “Rockin’ Over The Beat” by contrast only made it to No 16. I guess the four in one option seemed better value.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqAkeiawP0

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Gun	Shame On You	I did! No shame on me though – great song!
2	River City People	California Dreamin’ / Carry The Blame	Nope
3	Blue Pearl	Naked In The Rain	It’s a no
4	Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown	She Ain’t Worth It	And neither was this song
5	Thunder	Gimme Some Lovin’	Nah
6	The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid	I’m Free	Thought I did but singles box says no. I did however by the follow up single Mother Universe
7	The Stone Roses	One Love	No love from me for this one
8	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
9	Technotronic featuring Ya Kid K	Rockin’ Over The Beat	This beat is…shit. No

Disclaimer

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rgm6/top-of-the-pops-12071990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 05 JUL 1990

Posted on January 27, 2021 by 80stastic

It is Thursday the 5th of July 1990 and it is less than 24 hours since the England international football team bowed out of Italia ’90 in the cruelest of circumstances. Just four days earlier, a 3-2 quarter final win over unexpectedly tricky opponents in Cameroon had unleashed emotions and hopes not witnessed since 1966 (and all that). But football is a cruel business – just this week my beloved Chelsea have sacked our greatest ever player – and by the time of the usual TOTP broadcast on the following Thursday, England were out, denied at the last by a penalty shoot-out defeat to West Germany. It hurt, so close but yet so far. Buoyed by the feel good factor that the team’s progress (if nor performances ) had instilled, we allowed ourselves to believe we were back and there would be many more tilts at the big prize to come. Little could we have imagined that it would be another 28 years and 7 tournaments before we would get to the World Cup semi final again.

Two days after this TOTP, England would lose again in the pointless third place play off match to hosts Italy whilst the final itself a day later was one of the worst games of football I have ever had to endure. After Gazza’s tears in the semi-final, we had Maradona’s as his Argentina team, who barely deserved to be there, lost a bad tempered match 1-0. The England team were hailed as heroes on their return (despite Gazza’s ‘hilarious’ fake breasts outfit) and a country’s appetite for football was rekindled after the dark days of the mid to late 80s.

Just in case you haven’t seen this enough times in the intervening 30 years…and who the hell is ‘Christopher’ Waddle?

Enough of the football though, this is supposed to be a music blog isn’t it? Yes, you’re right – it is. Let’s get to it then and tonight’s host is the ever snarky Nicky Campbell and the first act on tonight are Inspiral Carpets with “She Comes In The Fall”. This was their follow up to breakthrough hit “This Is How It Feels” and for me, it wasn’t anywhere near as captivating as its predecessor. I mean, compared to some of the utter dross inhabiting the Top 40 at the time it was like musical ambrosia but it seemed a bit…I don’t know….conventional? No, not conventional… erm…unexceptional? I think maybe they peaked too early with “This Is How It Feels” for me. “She Comes In The Fall” has all the right ingredients – Clint Boon’s swirling organ sound, driving back beat and Tom Hingley’s no frills vocal stylings but it just didn’t grab me in the same way.

Talking of Clint Boon, I saw him live a couple of years ago when I caught the Happy Mondays play at Hull. It was an open air gig and the support were Peter Hook and The Light so a very Manc based line up. Boon, with his DJ hat on, provided the tunes in between acts and it seemed like money for old rope to me as he rolled out the most obvious of Manchester tunes. It was almost like a musical version buzz word bingo. Still, the crowd seemed to lap it up. Having said that, they were mainly middle aged men reliving their hedonistic youth by being of their tits on coke so they weren’t the most demanding of audiences.

“She Comes In The Fall” peaked at No 27.

What? Another Janet Jackson single? As with a lot of Ms Jackson’s output, it’s also another single I don’t recall at all. “Alright” was one of seven singles lifted from her “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” album and although the video shown here won a Soul Train Music Award for Best Music Video, I don’t remember that either. It starts off looking like Bugsy Malone before the inevitable big production dance routines kick in. The plot, for what its worth, resolves with it all having been a dream which is fitting as “Alright” is one big snooze*. It peaked at No 20 over here and No 4 in the US.

*Yes, I know the video was the inspiration behind Bill Bailey’s “Rapper’s Delight” routine on Strictly last year. I wasn’t arsed about that either.

Seven of the eleven songs on tonight’s show have already been seen before and here’s a run of three on the trot beginning with Poison and “Unskinny Bop”. Supposedly the title doesn’t refer to anything at all and was just a guide vocal that fitted phonetically into the song’s structure but having read the lyrics back, it’s pretty clear that it was all about having ‘A bit of How’s Your Father’. Check out these lyrics:

Like gasoline you wanna pump me, And leave me when you get your fill yeah

Still need convincing? How about these then:

You’re sayin’ my love won’t do ya
But that ain’t love written on your face
Well, honey I can see right through ya
Yeah, who ridin’ who at the end of the race?

I don’t think you need to be a cunning linguist to understand what was being sung about.

“Unskinny Bop” peaked at No 15.

As he introduces the next act who are Double Trouble with “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”, Nicky Campbell appears spooked by the studio audience member stood next to him. To be fair to him, her look does require a double take. She looks like she’s turned up for the Halloween show about four months too early. Dressed head to toe in black and white with a massive floppy hat and two tone hair, she’s not your regular TOTP attendee. Judging by her outfit, I din’t think Double Trouble would have been her musical act of choice. In all honesty, they’re not mine either. Their shiny R’n’B cover version of the old Rose Royce classic is functional at best.

After name checking Madonna and Jimmy Nails’s versions of the song in last week’s post, it got me thinking about just how many times it had been covered. It’s loads. The recently spied Yazz did a version for her 1997 album “The Natural Life” then there’s Seal who recorded it for his second album of Soul covers (“Soul 2”) in 2011. Of course , there are also the usual easy listening treatments of it by the likes of Michael Ball and Bill Tarmey (aka Jack Duckworth) but I think the one that really caught my eye was by “Pompeii” hit makers Bastille. Let’s have a listen then…

Hmm…I’ll stick with Jimmy Nail thanks. Double Trouble’s 1990 version peaked at No 21.

A third outing for Nicky Lockett now otherwise known as MC Tunes and his mates 808 State with “The Only Rhyme That Bites”. Fair play to the TOTP producer Paul Ciani I guess for really promoting an out and out rap sound so heavily. However, we only get 1 min and 20 seconds of the track which was again due to Mr Ciani who, in an attempt to shoehorn in more songs into the show’s half hour slot, restricted the duration of studio performances to three minutes and videos to two minutes. Not sure what MC Tunes, who looked like he could handle himself, would have made of his massively edited screen time.

“The Only Rhyme That Bites” would get no higher than its No 10 peak here.

I’m guessing that Paul Ciani was also responsible for this new segment of the show – the Best selling albums of the month. Why the new format? TOTP had always been based around the template of the Top 40 singles chart. This new feature seemed incongruous to say the least. And where was the sales info coming from? Gallup presumably. I have to admit to not recalling this bit of the show’s history so I have no idea how long it lasted. No doubt future TOTP repeats will have the answer. For the record, the Top 5 albums for June 1990 were:

1. Luciano Pavarotti – The Essential Pavarotti

2. Soull II Soul – Volume II 1990: A New Decade

3. Jason Donovan – Between The Lines

4. Talk Talk – The Very Best Of Talk Talk

5. New Kids On The Block – “Step By Step”

Back to that Top 40 singles chart though and we find an unusual new entry at No 12 in F.A.B. featuring MC Parker and “Thunderbirds Are Go”. Yes, after MC Tunes we got MC Parker, that bloke that drove Lady Penelope around in Gerry Anderson’s wonderful puppet adventures series Thunderbirds. I loved the Gerry Anderson creations when I was a small boy (Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons was my favourite) and, in retrospect, I’m not sure that he gets the credit that he deserved for what he achieved. I’m also not sure that this mash up of theme tunes from his shows given a then contemporary house dance sheen was a suitable tribute either.

The single was part of a bigger project that culminated in the “Power Themes 90” album that contained 12 tracks based around British TV show theme tunes – six were Anderson vehicles with the others made up from the likes of The Prisoner, The Saint and The Avengers. I remember the album from my first few weeks in employment at Our Price later in the year but apart from the Thunderbirds single I’m not sure I heard any of the rest of the tracks. I wonder what the Captain Scarlet one was like….

…well, that was horrible! Bloody Hell! OK, back to MC Parker and according to my Supermarionation book (yes I am that sad), Parker’s character was initially conceived as a simple dramatic support to Lady Penelope but his comedy value meant that he was often the star of the show. His incorrect use of the letter ‘h’ which would preface all vowels became his trademark. As such, I guess it made sense to promote the “Thunderbirds Are Go” single around him.

Two years after this single, The Thunderbirds TV series was rebroadcast on BBC and picked up a whole new generation of fans leading to a relaunch of a range of Thunderbirds branded toys, the biggest seller of which was the model for Tracy Island. So hard to get was the item that Blue Peter famously showed desperate parents how to make their own version out of cereal packets, pipe cleaners and washing up liquid bottles etc as demonstrated by one time TOTP presenter Anthea Turner:

In hindsight, was “Thunderbirds Are Go” a novelty record? I’m saying yes but then, we’d already had a dance record featuring samples of dialogue from Thunderbirds two years earlier when “Beat Dis” by Bomb The Bass was a huge hit and I don’t recall anyone saying that was a novelty record. Fine margins and all that.

“From plastic puppets to Australian soap operas” says Campbell as he gleefully puts the boot into the next act who are Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 with “Mona”. Craig won’t care though as he is up to No 4 in the charts and if anyone is getting a kick in the knackers it’s his ex Neighbours co-star Jason Donovan whose chart career is showing definite signs of starting to peter out. When asked about how he felt about having a bigger hit than Donovan in Smash Hits magazine, McLachlan replied:

“Ah look we’re over the moon. It’s fantastic…The music’s pretty Australian and we didn’t know how it would go down over there in a fairly techno chart. Our music is back to cranking the amp up and sweating a lot…“

Cranking and sweating? He sounds like my 11 year old when he’s playing Fortnite. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, being ‘sweaty’ in Fortnite means you’re a top player and ‘cranking’ refers to ‘cranking 90s’ which is a technique of building that is considered the fastest way to get high ground on a player. I feel so old.

Back to Craig though and although his music career fell away after the success of “Mona”, he remained inextricably (and some might say bizarrely) linked to Jason Donovan as they both played the role of Dr Frank-N-Furter in Rocky Horror Picture Show and also Caractacus Pott in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (I saw Donovan in the latter show – his performance was limited to say the least).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2ZW_uTlhEQ

What was it with the 1990 and soul dance re-workings of classic old tunes? After Double Trouble’s version of the Rose Royce song “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” earlier in this very show, we get some act called Massivo featuring Tracy and their interpretation of the Minnie Riperton hit “Loving You”. The other week we had Maureen doing Sister Sledge’s “Thinking Of You” and earlier in the year we had The Chimes giving an R ‘n’ B rendition of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” – now this. I’m not sure I recall this at all. Who was Tracy? Well she was nothing to do with the Tracys from Thunderbirds nor was she Tracy Tracy from The Primitives (despite her peroxide blonde hair). Who was she then?

Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

Tracy Ackerman previously appeared on #TOTP as long ago as 1981, when she fronted This Year’s Blonde's mash-up of Blondie hits, “Platinum Pop”. (That only peaked at 46, though.) https://t.co/razsNRMGrq
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 22, 2021

OK – still none the wiser to be honest. What? There’s more?

Tracy Ackerman went on to write or co-write tracks for the likes of Hear'Say, Geri Halliwell, B*Witched, S Club 7, Dannii Minogue and Will Young. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 22, 2021

So a bit like Betty Boo in that respect then. Watching this back, Tracy doesn’t quite nail the famous descending F sharp note for me – bit screechy (like I could do it).

Massivo peaked at No 25 but the seemingly endless conveyor belt of this type of thing (what was this genre called?) carried on into the 90s with Quartz featuring Dina Carroll (yes that one) giving us a danced up version of Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” in 1991 and The Fugees adding some beats to Roberta Flacks’ “Killing Me Softly” in 1996.

Stop! Hammer time! Shouldn’t that be MC Hammer time though? It’s the third ‘MC’ of the show and I’m sure at some point MC Hammer did actually drop the MC bit from his stage name (was it when he released “Too Legit* To Quit” in 1991?). Anyway, for now he’s got the MC prefix and he’s tearing up the charts with “U Can’t Touch This”. The single was taken from his Diamond (not platinum but diamond) selling US album “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em”. I’m glad I took notice of the title at the time as a few months later when I went for an interview for a sales assistant position with Our Price, one of the questions on the music quiz applicants had to take was ‘What is the name of MC Hammer’s current album?’. Boom! Back of the net!

Given that his commercial peak lasted only from 1990-92, Hammer’s name does still seem to resonate all these years later. Was it all about the trousers or did he actually have some good tunes in there as well? One thing is for sure, he never got so big that if you google the word hammer the first results that come up are not this:

* ‘Legit’ is another word that my 11 year old uses on a regular basis. I’m not sure what he would make of Hammer’s oversized pants though. On that theme, I once showed a younger colleague at work a video of the Bay City Rollers and she could not get her head round their tartan ~~trousers~~ troosers.

England’s World Cup may be over but Elton John‘s reign at the top of the charts carries on. What was it about this song that the nation couldn’t get enough of? Truly baffling. Well, here’s the aforementioned MC Tunes giving his verdict from a Smash Hits article on “Sacrifice”:

“I’ve always admired Elton John. He’s not my kind of groove if you get what I mean but I’ve always admired him because he’s a good writer. ‘Candle In The Wind’ is a fabulous song and the lyrics in his new one are really good so I’m into the Elton record, yer.“

Oh, it was the lyrics then. Let’s have a look at them again. This is the chorus:

And it’s no sacrifice
Just a simple word
It’s two hearts living
In two separate worlds
But it’s no sacrifice
No sacrifice
It’s no sacrifice at all

Hmm. Doesn’t seem to be a lot going on there except the repeated use of the word ‘sacrifice’. I’m not having it Mr Tunes – don’t tell him I said that though.

The play out video is “She Ain’t Worth It” by Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown. After his music career ended, Medeiros took up teaching and is now the president of St. Louis School, an all boys Catholic school in Honolulu. Sounds impressive doesn’t it…until you realise that he has a son called Chord and a daughter called Lyric. No, really.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFezRi_l2Fg

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Inspiral Carpets	She Comes In The Fall	Nope
2	Janet Jackson	Alright	All wrong – no
3	Poison	Unskinny Bop	No
4	Double Trouble	Love Don’t Live Here Anymore	No love for this one at my house
5	MC Tunes versus 808 State	The Only Rhyme That Bites	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	F.A.B featuring MC Parker	Thunderbirds Are Go	Loved Thunderbirds, didn’t love this – no
7	Craig McLachlan Check 1-2	Mona	I did not
8	Massivo featuring Tracy	Loving You	Nah
9	MC Hammer	U Can’t Touch This	And I didn’t – no
10	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
11	Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown	She Ain’t Worth It	And neither was this song

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rgm4/top-of-the-pops-05071990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 28 JUN 1990

Posted on January 23, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s Summer 1990 and World Cup fever is on the rise. The England national team have just secured a place in the quarter finals of the competition two days prior to this TOTP broadcast when David Platt produced a swivelling volley moments before the end of extra time against Belgium to win the game 1-0 for England. Platty’s memorable intervention saved the nation from a penalty shoot out, something we had no experience of back then but which, by the end of the tournament, we would know the heartache and darkness of only too well.

But for now, the nation rejoiced and, labouring under the misapprehension that we had a bye into the semi finals as we faced Cameroon next, were starting to believe something truly special might be afoot. So were there any ‘special’ tunes in the chart to match the nation’s mood? Let’s see…

…well we start with “Oops Up” by Snap! and a bizarre performance that includes a rubber duck (supplied by presenter Gary Davies from the side of the stage via a throw of admirable accuracy) that appears to get squeaked throughout the song. I hadn’t noticed that sound effect on the original recording but, having checked, it is there.

If the rubber duck was meant to soften the image and reputation of rapper Turbo B, it had a lot of work to do. Around this time, he was involved in a very unsavoury incident at a benefit show. The group had been asked by a promoter to do a PA at a nightclub for a benefit event but what Turbo hadn’t realised was that it was for an AIDS charity and the event took place in a gay nightclub. When the lights went up, Turbo found himself in a room full of drag queens and freaked out. Demanding to see the club owner, he allegedly proclaimed “If you ever book me in a place like this again, I’ll kill you”. The owner replied, with hands on his hips, “This is a gay club seven nights a week” at which point Turbo got him by his throat and began throttling him and then all hell broke loose. In a Smash Hits interview when quizzed about the incident, Turbo B’s version was a bit different:

“…if a man gets his ass grabbed by another man he tends to be upset. I tried to talk to this guy and tell him this is not supposed to be like this. His justification of my ass getting grabbed was that it was cool. It wasn’t, so he got choked.”

Despite his protestations that he wasn’t anti-gay later in the interview, it seems pretty clear that Turbo B was not exactly well informed nor accepting of anything that wasn’t strictly heterosexual. As a result of the incident, an organisation called Zap Snap! formed who would protest at Snap! gigs and this would inform singer Penny Ford’s decision to leave the group. In a songfacts website interview she stated:

“And that was another reason why I decided to leave Snap! Because my sister was a serious, staunch gay advocate, and it was like a blow to my family to have me out there being represented with a gay basher. So that’s what started Turbo’s decline“.

Sadly, I think we will be seeing more of Turbo B and his prejudiced views before 1990 is through.

Onto much safer and non-threatening ground next (or is it?*) as we get Jason Donovan and his latest single “Another Night”. From late ’88 to the end of ’89, Jase’s run of hit singles looked like this in terms of their chart peaks:

5 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 2

However, as the new decade dawned, the spell appeared to be broken. His first single release of 1990 (“Hang On to Your Love”) peaked at No 8 whilst “Another Night” would really set alarm bells ringing when it failed to even make the Top 10 (topping out at No 18)! When asked about the charts and his position within them in Smash Hits at this time, Donovan had this to say:

“Do I worry about where my records get to in the charts? Oh yeah, of course I do. It wasn’t so great that “Hang On to Your Love” didn’t do as great as some of my other singles have done but looking back on it, I think I would have to put the blame on the strength of that particular song….I think it was a bit of a grower and not nearly as catchy as say “When You Come Back to Me”.

So how did you explain the chart performance of “Another Night” then Jason? It didn’t shift the required amount of units because it was a basically proper dog shit? It is actually dreadful. It sounds like a failed Song For Europe entrant, not good enough even for the Eurovision Song Contest.

*Donovan of course had his own homophobic incident in 1992 when he sued The Face magazine for publishing allegations that he was homosexual. The lawsuit led to a backlash in which he was accused of being homophobic. In his 2007 autobiography, Jason stated that suing The Face was the biggest mistake of his life.

Pretty sure we are on safe ground finally with Maureen and her version of “Thinking Of You”. I’m very doubtful that there are any scandals surrounding Ms Walsh. As Gary Davies mentioned, she was the vocalist on Bomb The Bass’ “Say A Little Prayer” back in ’88 and…what? She lied to Tim Simenon about what she did for a living when she met him in a nightclub by telling him she was a singer when she wasn’t? So there is a skeleton in her cupboard (albeit a small one). So what was her job at the time? Well, it was either (depending on the date of that nightclub meeting) working in Miss Selfridge or working in an admin position in the police force. Lying whist she was employed by the rozzers? Shameful.

Back to the music though and that guy who comes on and raps in the middle? What was with the cane?

Three Breakers next and we start with Double Trouble and “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”. Were these the guys who had a hit with “Street Tuff” along with that Rebel MC bloke? A quick search of Wikipedia says they are and that their cover of the Rose Royce classic was actually on their album “As One” which features ‘Street Tuff”. Coincidentally, they also did a remix of tonight’s opening song “Oops Up” by Snap!.

I don’t recall them doing this track though and on hearing it back, I’m not sure why they bothered. Jimmy Nail’s version back in ’85 was far more interesting and I’m not joking.

Hell, I’d even choose Madonna’s version over Double Trouble’s and her take on it was rubbish.

“Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” (the Double Trouble version) peaked at No 21.

Right, what’s this? Bobby Brown and Glenn Medeiros? WTF?! Really?! How? Why? So many questions. This seems an even more unwanted pairing than last week’s Sonia and Big Fun coupling. So, apparently this collaboration came about through Medeiros’s friend Rick James who …wait a minute! Rick James?! Funk legend Rick James?! He was a friend of wimpy Glenn Medeiros of “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You” fame?! That requires more explanation than the Bobby Brown connection even. Anyway, it was Rick who put Glenn in touch with Bobby Brown who was looking for someone to produce while he had some free time on his hands and so they worked on a song called “Love Me Little Lady” *pause while blogger vomits* which went on Glenn’s latest album. After Brown called him up to say how much he liked said album, Medeiros asked him to put a rap on the track “She Ain’t Worth It”. And the rest is…

“She Ain’t Worth It” was a No 1 record in the US and a no 12 hit in the UK. This was Glenn’s attempt to beef up his image (he even got a new haircut!) and sound but it’s like something New Kids On The Block would have rejected as trying too hard. In short, it wasn’t worth it Glenn.

Oh OK. I hadn’t realised that Del Amitri had another Top 40 hit in 1990 after “Nothing Ever Happens” at the start of the year but here they are on TOTP again. I knew that they had re-released “Kiss This Thing Goodbye” as a follow up to “Nothing …” but it had failed to be a hit for a second time despite some heavy radio play. I mistakenly believed that the same fate befell “Move Away Jimmy Blue” but it crawled to a high of No 36. Not as intriguing as “Nothing …” nor as immediate as “Kiss This Thing…”, it’s still a pretty good tune I think although not one of my favourites of theirs.

Now then, here was a chart anomaly and a half! A Irish jig complete with accordian, fiddle and a double bass? What the Hell was this?! It was, quite simply, magnificent in my book. The perfect antidote to all this homogenised house music, when asked about the sound of “The Great Song Of Indifference” in a Smash Hits interview, Bob Geldof admitted that it wasn’t a modern sound:

“Nope, it’s not a current record but then I’m hardly a major force in modern music. I’m frankly tired of hip hop and house and that. I know nothing about it except that I hear it a lot but it just sounds old hat”

Well said Sir Bob! This was only the second chart hit of Geldof’s solo career and it remains his last. His first had been the rather worthy sounding “This Is The World Calling” back in ’86 but “The Great Song Of Indifference” was a different beast altogether. Made with his band The Vegetarians Of Love (which was also the name of the accompanying album), its subject matter of world apathy in the face of humanitarian disasters and horror was in stark contrast to its knock about, almost joyful sound. Witness:

I don’t care if the Third World fries
It’s hotter there I’m not surprised
Baby I can watch whole nations die
And I don’t care at all

Supposedly Bob had wanted to infuse it with a cajun feel and had spent some time in Louisiana soaking up the cajun vibe before recording the album. The Irish dancing element of the performance here from the wee guy in the shirt and dickie bow at the front pre-dates Riverdance by four years! Marvellous stuff all round.

A couple of personal tie -ins to Bob and this record before I move on. At some point either myself or my wife must have bought this single as we used to dance around our one room flat to it when we first married. We used to really fling ourselves around. We were skint at the time and this would be what passed for a Friday night’s entertainment. Skint or not, they were happy, simpler times. Right at the end of the record there’s a bit when the musicians fall about laughing before Geldof’s distinctive tones clearly cut in with “Let’s listen…”. One of the guys laughing really sounds like Nick Heyward but I’m guessing it’s not.

And that second Geldof story? I once had a friend who did some freelance PR work and one of the people she worked for was the sadly departed Peaches Geldof. My friend found it all a bit demanding and was ready to jack it in. The final straw that broke the camel’s back? It was when Bob got involved and began calling her to to sort stuff out for Peaches. Not known for his tact and diplomacy, Bob’s phone calls prompted her to throw her work phone into the Thames whilst mid conversation with Geldof!

“The Great Song Of Indifference” peaked at No 15.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1wbsKergpk

Damn. I thought for a moment when Gary Davies said “Still with the charts here’s Bruce…” in his intro to the next artist his next word would be Springsteen. Unfortunately for me, it was Dickinson. Yes, the Iron Maiden front man’s video for “All The Young Dudes” gets another airing for some reason. What? He went up 9 places to No 23 that week? I don’t care! His version of the Mott The Hoople* classic was awful! To be fair to Bruce Dickinson, he does seem to be a man of many talents. He’s a fully trained pilot and worked for a commercial airline for a while. He’s also a published author, he’s been a champion fencer (once rated the 7th best fencer in England), he’s presented his own radio show on BBC Radio 6 Music from 2002 to 2010 and he’s even created a successful beer called ‘Trooper’ with Robinsons brewery in Stockport. If only he’d left the singing alone.

*When I first started working in Our Price there was guy who used to come in who was obsessed with Mott The Hoople. He would come in regularly to check what albums we had of the band in stock (not many!) and would hang around for ages hoping to strike up a conversation with an unsuspecting member of staff about his faves. Takes all sorts I suppose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu4uzJsqIxE

Nest it’s a re-run of Maxi Priest‘s performance of “Close To You” from the other week next although Gary Davies tries to make out that Maxi is actually in the studio again.

Maxi never really did it for me and I got nothing else to say about this one. Do me a solid @TOTPFacts and help me out will you?

Maxi Priest was named after Max Bygraves. "He's my mum's favourite singer." He changed his surname from Elliott to Priest after discovering Rastafarianism. "It comes from the Priest Levi, a figurehead of the 12 tribes of Israel."#TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 15, 2021

Sorted!

Still at No 1 we find Elton John with “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”. Infamously, both songs on this double A-side had been flops when initially released individually at the end of ’89 but parent album “Sleeping With The Past” also had a truncated route to the top of the charts. Although it debuted at No 6 when released in Sep ’89, it departed the Top 10 the following week and fell out of the Top 40 completely after a month. Inevitably, once the success of the re-activated single kicked in, so the album was also revitalised. After knocking around the lower reaches of the Top 100, it climbed from No 54 to No 2 in one week! After three consecutive weeks in that position it embarked on a five week run at No 1 eventually going three time platinum in the UK alone. Yet for all that, it’s hardly regarded as one of his best albums I would speculate. Apart from “Sacrifice” and “Healing Hands”, are any of the other tracks on the album well known? Follow up single “Club at the End of the Street” didn’t even get into the Top 40. Elton in the Summer of 1990 was a very curious phenomenon indeed.

The play out video is “Unskinny Bop” by Poison. Having checked out their discography, I was amazed to discover that Poison had eight UK Top 40 hits. I could have named …let me think…four absolute tops. “Unskinny Bop” would have been one of the four. The timeline of their hits would have been beyond me though, not helped by a re-release of “Nothin’ But a Good Time” with nearly 18 months in between releases. I could not have told you when “Unskinny Bop” had been a hit for example but I can tell you that it did very little for me. It was a bit like “Your Mama Don’t Dance” (i.e not that good). And what the Hell was an “Unskinny Bop” anyway? Is ‘unskinny’ even a legitimate word? Supposedly it was just a guide lyric according to guitarist C.C. DeVille, a phonetic place holder until the proper lyrics had been written but it stuck (see also the lyrics to “The Riddle” by Nik Kershaw).

“Unskinny Bop” peaked at No 15.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAn-Dar1jyU

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Snap!	Ooops Up	Nope
2	Jason Donovan	Another Night	Another shite more like – no
3	Maureen	Thinking Of You	Not for me thanks
4	Double Trouble	Love Don’t Live Here Anymore	No love for this one at my house
5	Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown	She Ain’t Worth It	And neither was this song
6	Del Amitri	Move Away Jimmy Blue	No but it’s on my Best Of CD of theirs
7	Bob Geldof	The Great Song Of Indifference	Yes – present and correct in the singles box!
8	Bruce Dickinson	All The Young Dudes	As if
9	Maxi Priest	Close To You	Not my bag
10	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
11	Poison	Unskinny Bop	No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000r6j0/top-of-the-pops-28061990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 14 JUN 1990

Posted on January 16, 2021 by 80stastic

We are less than one week (and only one game in the case of England) into the Italia ’90 World Cup and already the nation is gloomy about the team’s chances of progressing. A scratchy 1-1 draw with the Republic of Ireland in the first group match wasn’t the start that we’d hoped for and the game itself was a bit of a stinker. Cue Gary Lineker…

Ahem. Another draw (this time 0-0) with Holland followed two days after this TOTP was broadcast meaning qualification into the knockout stages hung in the balance. The drama, the tension. How about some music to calm our nerves….

Well, for a start off, presenter Bruno Brookes’ jacket of many colours would have been flashing me up and setting me on edge. Look at it! If Shakin’ Stevens and Adam Ant’s wardrobes had ever got together and sired a sprog, this would be it. Just revolting. There should have been a law to prevent such a jacket being worn on national TV. Talking of the law, here’s Guru Josh with his second consecutive hit “Whose Law (Is It Anyway?). Having conquered the charts earlier in the year with “Infinity (1990’s… Time for the Guru)”, here he is again with a single whose title sounds like it was inspired by a certain long running, satirical Channel 4 improvisational comedy series. However, I’m guessing was probably about the Entertainment (increased Penalties) Act, that the government introduced this year allowing fines of up to £20,000 for hosting illegal raves or parties. As you can probably guess by his appearance and performance here, Guru (Mr. Josh?) was very anti this legislation and its curtailing of rave culture.

As for the track itself, it’s pretty similar to “Infinity” to my ears with that distinctive saxophone sound to the fore again although the vocals (if you can call them that) are very grating and distracting. The engineer on this track was someone called Chinito Bandito whose sounds like a character from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Wacky Races.

After this single only made it to No 26 in the charts, Guru Josh decamped to Ibiza to concentrate on art and running a promotions company. He returned to the Top 40 one more time with a re-release of “Infinity” in 2008 but tragically committed suicide in December 2015.

Right. Who’s this? Maureen? Nothing to do with telephone directory services but in fact the woman who sang on Bomb The Bass’s cover of “Save A Little Prayer” back in ’88. She’s back on the show with another cover version but this time of the 1984 No 11 hit “Thinking Of You” from Sister Sledge. There seemed to be a rush of hit singles around the early ’90s that was based around the practice of taking an original well known song and covering it in a different musical style, usually of a dance orientated nature. Hell, there’s another one along straight after this! Here Maureen (full name Maureen Walsh but probably Mo to her friends don’t you think?) gives a Soul II Soul style treatment of this Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards penned disco classic. I’m not sure it was worth the effort to be fair.

The look of the performance here is very odd. Maureen at 5′ 10″ cuts an imposing figure on a small stage whilst the two guys backing her on keyboards look so out of place that they remind me of Raw Sex from French and Saunders. That’s before we even talk about the guy who comes on in the middle to do the seemingly obligatory but wholly incongruous rap.

“Thinking Of You” was as good as it got for Maureen when it peaked spookily at exactly the same chart position as the Sister Sledge original at No 11. She did release an album called “Take It From Me” in ’91 but you’d be hard pushed to find it anywhere today.

Another old tune given a musical refurbishment now as Snap! bring us their second hit of the year in “Ooops Up”. Not exactly a cover per se but it was certainly inspired by The Gap Band’s dance floor classic “Oops Upside Your Head” whilst also managing to shoe horn references to the nursery rhyme “Little Miss Muffet”. Now I never knew this before but the full title of that Gap Band hit is actually “I Don’t Believe You Want To Get Up And Dance (Oops!)”. Hmm, bit of a mouthful – I can see why it is better known by its truncated moniker. Penny Ford, who does the vocals on this track, was actually a back up singer for The Gap Band earlier in her career although she wasn’t responsible for choosing it to for the Snap! track.

The original Gap Band lyrics ‘Everybody say oops up side your head, say oops upside your head’ were added to by the addition of the line ‘somebody say opala.’ So, ever wondered what an opala is? Well, obviously it’s the German for ‘Oops’ what with Snap! being the brain child of German producers Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti and nothing to do with Opal Fruits sweets (and yes I mean Opal Fruits and not the wanky Starburst re-brand). When I was at Poly, I knew a girl who thought the lyrics to “Oops Upside Your Head” were ‘Oops swap sides again, I said oops swap sides again’ because of the dance that went with it. The one where you have two lines sat on the dance floor who lean backwards, forwards and sideways together? You know the one. She had a point.

This next song sounds like it should be a cover version but it isn’t. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Maxi Priest had done a version of The Carpenters classic “Close To You” seeing as he’d already done reggae-fied covers of “Some Guys Have All The Luck” made famous by Robert Palmer and “Wild World” by Cat Stevens but it’s actually a Maxi original. I say reggae but Wikipedia tells me that Maxi’s music was actually reggae fusion as it has an R&B influence mixed in there as well. Whatever.

“Close To You” was (almost unbelievably) a Stateside No 1 which I never knew until now making Maxi (known as ‘The happiest man in pop’ according to Smash Hits magazine) only the second ever UK reggae act to achieve that feat after UB40 with “Red Red Wine” in 1988. The Brummie lads repeated the trick in 1993 with their cover of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love”. Maybe British reggae was quite the thing in the US at the time then.

For the completists out there, yes there was a cover of The Carpenters “(They Long to Be) Close to You” (to give it its full title) recorded by soul singer Gwen Guthrie in 1986 which made No 25 in the UK charts. So definitely not by Maxi Priest.

Some ropey old shite next as we get the “Freestyle Mega Mix” by Bobby Brown. This was a medley of Brown’s previous hits “Every Little Step”, “On Our Own”, “Don’t Be Cruel” and “My Prerogative” which was released as a single to promote his remix album “Dance!…Ya Know it!” although it wasn’t included on the album itself.

Presumably the whole project was an attempt by his record company MCA to keep Brown’s profile high while he was in between albums (his follow up to 1988’s multi-platinum “Don’t Be Cruel” didn’t appear until 1992) and it reeks of cynicism. Somehow this steaming turd got all the way to No 14 in the UK Top 40.

Another run out for the video for “The Only One I Know” by The Charlatans next. Taken from the album “Some Friendly”, I didn’t realise until now (not having bought it) that it actually didn’t appear on the vinyl version of the album initially as the band wanted to take only one single from each album with follow up “Then” being the designated single.

20 years on from its release, “The Only One I Know” appeared in a Cadbury’s chocolate advert which would have been unthinkable back in the day. At least it wasn’t used to advertise Revels the orange flavour of which was the inspiration for the lyrics to their song “Polar Bear” which was also on “Some Friendly” and was gave the title of Charlatans fanzine Looking For The Orange One.

“The Only One I Know” peaked at No 9.

Pretty sure this is the third time Betty Boo‘s “Doin’ The Do” has been on the show but that this is the first time she has made a studio appearance after the promo video was broadcast twice previously. Now apparently, Betty used to work in Dorothy Perkins on a Saturday before she was a pop star and guess what? Maureen who we saw on the show earlier used to work in Miss Selfridge. This made me wonder if any other pop stars had worked in clothes shops before finding fame. Didn’t Kaiser Chiefs front man Ricky Wilson used to work in Next? I’m sure he admitted this in an interview once and managed to avoid using the till for a whole year as he hadn’t been trained on it. His time there paid off though as he won the Shockwaves NME Award For Best Dressed Person in 2006.

Not sure if Betty won any awards for her dress sense but she’s rocking that space cadet look in this performance. She should have gone for a purple wig though in the style of the female Moonbase personnel in the old Gerry Anderson space series UFO. She would really go for the space theme in a big way though with the video to her next single ‘Where Are You Baby?”

“Doin’ The Do” peaked at No 7.

Oh Lord! As if we haven’t seen enough of this lot already in 1990, New Kids On The Block are back with a new single and another album! “Step By Step” was the title of both lead single and parent album and is their biggest selling record going to No 1 in the US for three weeks and being certified platinum. I obviously wasn’t the target audience but even allowing for my unreceptive ears, this was utter, utter drivel. Bland by numbers dance pop of the most anonymous kind, what did people see in it? I’m missing the point though by looking for any musical merit. The fact was that the group’s popularity was at such a high by this point that they could have released some rectal discharge in a branded NKOTB plastic bag and it would have sold. The Step One, Step Two etc parts where the individual members get a solo bit are especially repugnant though. Worse than all of the above though is that this is only the fifth of eight chart hits that they racked up in 1990 alone! Gulp.

The World Cup is in full flow (even if the England team weren’t by this stage of the tournament) so predictably New Order are still No 1 with “World In Motion”. I say New Order but I think it was officially credited as ‘England New Order’. Unlike the Euro ’96 “Three Lions” anthem which was created by actual football fans in David Baddiel and Frank Skinner that was reflected in the lyrics, New Order weren’t massive football fans and the lyrics to “World In Motion” are suitably vague as to not specifically centre them in the sphere of football. Apparently the FA wanted to avoid anything that could be construed as a football hooligan chant. Yes, Keith Allen was a footy nut but despite his influence, I think there is a huge difference in the tone of “World In Motion” compared to “Three Lions”. New Order were not in a good place as a band (they would split three years later) and so maybe the whole football song experiment was seen as some sort of light relief and a bit of a laugh. Their expectations were low and mirrored the nation’s lack of hope for a successful campaign by the football team. Both perspectives were to be triumphantly turned on their heads by performances both in the charts and on the pitch.

Conversely, by the time Euro ’96 rolled around, football had gone through a transformation and was popular again and not just with the working classes. Under Terry Venables and with home advantage, England were expected to go all the way whilst the “Three Lions” song featuring two well known comedians who had already tied their football colours to the post with the Fantasy Football League TV show, was seen as a potential huge hit right from the off. Ultimately the record would indeed be a smash hit going to No 1 on two separate occasions during its ’96 run alone whilst the football team would fall tantalisingly short again.

The play out video is “Girl To Girl” by 49ers. I barely remembered their biggest hit from earlier in the year “Touch Me”, so this one had no chance, especially with it peaking at a lowly No 31. I don’t think I missed out on much in retrospect.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Guru Josh	Whose Law (Is It Anyway?)	Nah
2	Maureen	Thinking Of You	Not for me thanks
3	Snap!	Ooops Up	No
4	Maxi Priest	Close To You	Not my bag
5	Bobby Brown	Freestyle Mega Mix	Big no
6	The Charlatans	The Only One I Know	No but it’s on their Best Of Melting Pot CD that I have
7	Betty Boo	Doin’ The Do	No but my wife had it on a Smash Hits Rave album
8	New Kids On The Block	Step By Step	What do you think?
9	New Order	World In Motion	Call the cops! There’s been a robbery. This isn’t in my singles box!
10	49ers	Girl To Girl	Nope

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qzml/top-of-the-pops-14061990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 06 JUL 1995

Disclaimer

TOTP 30 MAR 1995

Disclaimer

TOTP 20 JAN 1994

Disclaimer

TOTP 20 AUG 1992

Disclaimer

TOTP 12 JUL 1990

Disclaimer

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 05 JUL 1990

Disclaimer

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 28 JUN 1990

Disclaimer

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 14 JUN 1990

Disclaimer

Some bedtime reading?