Bros

TOTP 26 SEP 1991

Posted on October 15, 2021 by 80stastic

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

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

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

*Except for the Dixie Peach suntan comment of course

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Such A Feeling” peaked at No 13.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

TOTP 19 SEP 1991

Posted on October 14, 2021 by 80stastic

Over the course of nearly 5 years of writing reviews of these BBC4 TOTP repeats covering the years 1983-1991, I’ve now written 380 posts. 380! That’s a lot of words and a lot of songs to have found something to write about. Maybe 380 is my limit as I think I may have hit a wall. I feel spent, done. My creative juice is more like arse juice and the only place it’s flowing is into my pants. Talking of backsides, the very first episode of Bottom starring Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall aired on BBC2 just two days before this TOTP went out and “the only place it’s flowing is into my pants” sounds like a line Mayall’s Lord Flashheart character in Blackadder II might have said.

Also looking and sounding like he’s hit a metaphorical wall is tonight’s presenter Nicky Campbell, who, like his fellow hosts in recent weeks, is making his final appearance before he will be axed in the ‘year zero’ revamp and won’t be seen on the show again for two and a half years. They all must have known by this point and Campbell turns in a can’t-be-arsed performance that screams ‘oh what’s the point any more?’. His usual waspish remarks are missing, replaced instead by some very functional intros and segues. Let’s at least hope he doesn’t hit any bum notes before he has to shift his backside out of it. That decision to get rid of the Radio 1 DJs from the show really messed with their profiles and careers – it could have even wrecked ’em – geddit? – wrecked ’em – no? Too many bum/arse/bottom references already? You’re probably right, this blog is going right down the pan.

Last week, the show opened with a dance tune called “Such A Feeling” by Bizarre Inc. Fast forward seven days and its opened with another dance track called “Such A Good Feeling”, this time by Brothers In Rhythm. Not helping refute accusations of the charts in 1991 being a bit samey were they?

I have to admit that I’d forgotten that Brothers In Rhythm were an actual chart act in their own right as my first thought of them is as remixers/producers for other artists. They’ve worked with such stellar names as Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, U2, Heaven 17 and many more. The suffix (Brothers in Rhythm Remix) featured so regularly as to almost be seen as part of the track’s official song title. However, back in ’91’ they seemed to just be part of the plethora of incognito acts peddling dance floor anthems like the aforementioned Bizarre Inc, Utah Saints, Altern 8 etc. Talking of incognito, the track samples Charvoni’s 1989 single “Always There” which itself was a cover of US jazz funkers Side Effect’s 1976 original and which of course, the UK’s own acid jazzers Incognito scored a hit with earlier in the Summer of ’91. Got all that? Good.

Photo Cr: startrek.com
https://shar.es/aWCUQp

To be fair, I might have thought this was Incognito performing “Such A Good Feeling” if I hadn’t seen the performance here which is giving me every strong Cruella de Vil vibes or perhaps even this guy opposite…

“Such A Good Feeling” peaked at No 14 and was the only hit they had under their name as a recording artist.

More evidence next of Nicky Campbell playing it straight for what he must have thought was his final TOTP appearance with a serious statement about there being a tendency for rap music to stereotype women but here were Salt ‘N Pepa to buck the trend. Maybe it was a surreptitious audition for those serious presenter roles he went on to for shows such as Central Weekend and Watchdog?

The video for “Let’s Talk About Sex” was directed by Millicent Shelton who’s next music promo was for a song called “Rump Shaker” by US hip-hop act Wreckx-n-Effect. The video was criticised for its alleged exploitation of women in bikinis and banned from MTV. That’s quite a leap from her work on a song with safe sex as one of its messages. I wonder how Salt ‘N Pepa reacted to that news? Or indeed, as Nicky Campbell correctly advises, the song’s writer Hurby Luv Bug? Didn’t he have a brother called Starski?

“Let’s Talk About Sex” peaked at No 2.

Utah Saints, U-U-U-Utah Saints now with their debut hit “What Can You Do For Me”. As with Brothers In Rhythm at the top of the show, this lot would possibly become more famous for their work remixing other artists including Blondie, The Human League, Simple Minds, James, and Annie Lennox than as chart stars themselves though they did score three consecutive Top 10 hits between ’91 and ’93. Hang on, it says here (wikipedia) that they also remixed The Osmonds? The Osmonds? I noted in a previous post that their name was nothing to do with the toothy 70s boy band who hailed from Ogden, Utah but was inspired by the Coen Brothers film Raising Arizona. However, now it seems there was a connection after all. Look:

My God! I also mentioned “Crazy Horses” the other week when talking about Julian Lennon’s “Salt-water” as other songs that had an eco-message. Weird how seemingly random things just fall into place t providing connections and continuity sometimes. And talking of continuity and connections, a nice little segue from Campbell when he says at the end of the track “Oh yes, and I’ll tell you that’s just a sample of what they can do”. See what he did there?

Prince is the next act but wait a minute….it’s with his single “Cream”. What happened to “Gett Off”?

*checks chart rundown*

It’s still at No 11! He was literally on the show just three weeks ago promoting one single and now he’s already onto the next release! Prince has done a Bryan Adams!

I have to say that I much preferred “Cream” to “Gett Off ” at the time. It was funky, slinky and of course, with it being Prince, had an element of smut about it in the lyrics (‘You got the horn so why don’t you blow it’). What I hadn’t noticed until now but having read up on it, this is true – it’s an homage to “Get It On” by T-Rex. Not just the sound of it but also in the little messages he puts in the words like using the phrase ‘filthy-cute’ bringing to mind Bolan’s ‘dirty-sweet’ lyric. “Gett Off” as a song title would surely have been a better tribute to “Get It On” though although in the US it was renamed as “Bang a Gong (Get It On)”. The title he used (“Cream”) sounds like he’s channelling Grease rather than Bolan:

Greased lightnin’, go, greased lightnin’
You are supreme, the chicks’ll cream, for greased lightnin’

Three weeks after “Cream” was released, the “Diamonds And Pearls” album came out which was the first under the new moniker of Prince And The New Power Generation. Initial copies of the album came with a holographic cover which prompted a rush from fans to procure a copy as reorders came with a much more standard cover. I recall that the HMV shop across the road from the Our Price in Manchester where I was working at the time always seemed to be able to get more copies of the holographic cover than us leading to a few lost sales. Bah!

“Cream” peaked at No 15 in the UK but was a No 1 song (Prince’s final one) in the US.

Oceanic are still riding high in the charts with “Insanity” having now made it to No 4 – the clue to their chart position is in the tops the band are wearing! Talking of which, clearly in 1991 if you were a female vocalist fronting a huge dance anthem, the thing to do when performing on TOTP was to take your top off. After Rozalla pulled off (literally) this trick the other week, Oceanic singer Jorinde Williams does the very same here to much applause from the studio audience (and presumably much internal cheering from the TOTP camera man that week). Not sure if that sort of carry on would be acceptable these days!

It’s the inescapable Bryan Adams next but it’s not that single. No, it’s the follow up “Can’t Stop That Thing We’ve Started” whose five weeks on the Top 40 would come and go while “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” was still at No 1. Quite extraordinary. Incredibly, the follow up to the follow up (a single called “There Will Never Be Another Tonight” being the third single from Adams’ “Waking Up The Neighbours” album) was released whilst EIDIDIFY was still in the charts!

As well as being a better song than its predecessor, the video for “Can’t Stop That Thing We’ve Started” was also infinitely better despite not having access to all those clips from a Hollywood blockbuster movie. I particularly liked the bucking bronco in the shape of a guitar scene. Not sure what that says about me to be honest but there you go.

“Can’t Stop That Thing We’ve Started” peaked at No 12.

Aha! Some clear evidence of thinking having gone into the running order from the TOTP producers here as we go from “Can’t Stop That Thing We’ve Started” to “Something Got Me Started” which was the new single from Simply Red who we haven’t seen on the show this decade until now. However, Hucknall and co would make up for lost time in a gigantic way with the release of their fourth album “Stars” from which “Something Got Me Started” was the lead single. As Nicky Campbell correctly pointed out, their last album “A New Flame” sold 6 million copies worldwide but “Stars” would top even that by selling NINE million copies around the world (most of which it felt like I personally sold to punters in Xmas 1991 in the Market Street, Manchester Our Price store).

Despite his undeniable global appeal, Mick Hucknall remains more divisive than Brexit when it comes to music fans opinions of him. My friend Robin hates him so much that in a game of ‘if you could change history, who would you go back and eliminate so they’d never been born?” down the pub one night, poor old Mick was second only to Hitler I think for Robin. Indeed, look at these tweets from when this BBC4 TOTP repeat aired the other week as to how he splits opinion:

I couldn’t stand “Something Got Me Started” at the time but listening now, I seem to have mellowed to it a bit (where’s that thermometer? I must have a fever!). I recall sitting in my work colleague Knoxy’s car just before the release of “Stars” waiting for him to finish his Sunday morning football match before he was driving us off to another game we were playing in for an Our Price team against a team of record company reps at Preston North End’s ground. Whilst I waited for Knoxy, I was listening to Radio 1 in the car and Hucknall was on (presumably doing the promotion rounds for the album’s release) and they were doing a phone in with him. One guy called in and said he’d just bought “Something Got Me Started” the day before. The single was going down the charts by then and the album was out the next day and I recall thinking why didn’t you just wait two days and buy the album. My next thought was ‘if you were that much of a fan to be bothered to ring in into speak to Hucknall, why hadn’t you already bought the single when it was first released?’ Simply Red fans, not up there with Numanoids, but a strange breed all the same.

Making a drama out of a pop song (to paraphrase Nicky Campbell’s intro) come Erasure with “Love To Hate You”. Vince and Andy could do no wrong at this point it seemed. The second single to be released from their forthcoming album “Chorus” that would go to No 1, this single would peak at No 4 after the title track lead single had gone to No 3. These were big numbers (well they’re not they’re small but you know what I mean) and within nine months they would have their first (and only) No 1 single with the “Abba-esque” EP.

“Love To Hate You” would display the duo’s love of another huge 70s star as it borrows heavily from Gloria Gaynor’s disco classic “I Will Survive”. The video for it also owes a debt to another artist it seems to me with a performance of the song to a captivated crowd doing overhead claps and Andy in leather trousers and a red skin tight top mirroring Queen’s “Radio Ga Ga” and Freddie Mercury (sort of).

Nine years on from this, another huge star would base a song around “I Will Survive”. Here’s Robbie Williams…

Yet another single from this era that I can’t remember – the curse of never being one of the cool kids working on the singles counter in the basement of my Our Price store strikes again. Possibly the least successful of the trinity of Stourbridge indie bands after The Wonder Stuff and Pop Will Eat Itself, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin nevertheless had a loyal fanbase and showed the power of having a major label and distribution behind them when, after failing to make the Top 40 whilst on indie label Chapter 22 Records, suddenly scored two chart hits on the bounce in 1991 after signing to Sony.

“Trust” was the second of those hits and this must have passed me by completely as I’m sure I would have remembered a video based around the set of The Banana Splits. I loved that show growing up. Basically the Monkees but with the four bands members dressed in animal character costumes and added cartoons, what was not to love? My favourite was Drooper who was the Mike Nesmith of the gang (he was my fave Monkee too) whilst my fave cartoon was probably Arabian Knights. Then of course, there was the show’s theme song “The Tra La La Song (One Banana, Two Banana)” which The Dickies took into the UK Top 10 in 1978.

Just like The Monkees, The Banana Splits also released proper records some of which were quite out there. Here’s “I’m Gonna Find A Cave” which sounds like Spencer Davis Group or The Animals to me but was actually an old 60s soul song originally recorded by Charlie Starr but which has been covered many times since.

What? The ‘Neds? Oh, well “Trust” became a No 21 hit for them but it sounds very Wedding Present to me.

Three Breakers this week starting with Bros….really? Three years after they were a teen sensation stopping traffic in London with their PAs, they could still muster a Top 40 hit? Apparently so although “Try” would be their last ever visit to our charts. The second single from their third album “Changing Faces” album, it’s actually very far removed from the likes of “When Will I Be Famous?”. There’s a definite Michael Jackson “Bad” era vibe to it with a gospel tinge thrown in for good measure. If they were going for a more mature sound and audience, then it worked. They didn’t appear on the front cover of Smash Hits once in 1991 (when even the likes of Philip Schofield managed it) and having already been dethroned in the teen hero stakes by New Kids On The Block, the deadly threat of Take That was on the move, lurking in the shadows of the lower reaches of the charts. Their day was done…until that 2018 documentary of course.

A quite horrible dance remix of a 70s classic now but instead of being by some faceless DJ hidden behind a mix desk, it’s actually by the original artists (well sort of). “Nutbush City Limits” had been a hit for Ike and Tina Turner in 1973 reaching No 4 but it was recycled as being a solo Tina Turner track for her “Simply The Best” collection as “Nutbush City Limits (The 90s Version)”. Produced by Chris “C. J.” Mackintosh and Dave Dorrell, this danced up version was horrendous, totally ruining the raw energy of the original. However, it did its job of promoting “Simply The Best” which went eight times platinum in the UK alone peaking at No 2. Mind you, this was Tina’s first official Best Of album so it was probably going to be a big seller anyway without the farce that was “Nutbush City Limits (The 90s Version)”.

Nutbush was of course Tina’s hometown in Haywood County, Tennessee. Apparently, it does not have official city limits; rather, its general boundaries are described by signs reading “Nutbush, Unincorporated” on account of it being an unincorporated rural community. “Nutbush Unincorporated” sounds stupid as a song title though with the only song that I can think of coming anywhere near to shoe-horning ‘unincorporated’ into a song lyric being the theme tune to Laverne And Shirley. Altogether now “Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!”…

From one old single prompting a Greatest Hits Collection to another. 1991 had seen REM go truly global with the success of the “Out Of Time” album, their second for Warner Bros and seventh overall. Just like any on the ball record company will always do, their previous label I.R.S. Records decided to cash in on the band’s early catalogue which they owned by re-releasing tracks under the umbrella of a collection album called unimaginatively “The Best Of R.E.M.”. The track listing included three songs from each of the band’s first five studio albums and one song from “Chronic Town”, their first EP, making a total of sixteen. One of these was “The One I Love” from fifth album “Document” which had originally been released in 1987 becoming a Top 10 hit in the US but not making the Top 40 over here. However, it was chosen to spearhead the promotional campaign for “The Best Of R.E.M.” and did a decent job when it peaked at No 16 whilst the album went gold in the UK.

A truly great track, it’s not the love song though that many might have taken it for judging by its title with it actually being about using people. I guess the giveaway is the line ‘A simple prop to occupy my time’.

It’s week 11 of 16 for Bryan Adams and “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You”. There’s a bit in the video where a clip from the film has Maid Marian screaming “Robin!!” as Mr Hood risks his life in some daring deed and every time (and I mean every time!) I have ever seen it, it always makes me think of my friend, the aforementioned Robin. More precisely it makes me think “what is she screaming over Robin for?”. Weird how your brain works sometimes.

And so it’s Nicky Campbell’s turn to bow out from presenting TOTP for at least a couple of years. He ends with a simple “I’ll see you very, very soon” and a final quip about how much closing act Julian Lennon looks like his father John when he pretends to get them mixed up (so not a fluffing of lines at all).

As for Julian, “Saltwater” is at No 29 on its way to an eventual high of No 6. Around this time, he did an instore PA at the HMV on Market St, Manchester, just up the road from where I was working at Our Price. It was to promote the single and the release of its parent album “Help Yourself”. As it coincided with my lunch hour, I decided to have a mooch up there and spy a glimpse of the son of a Beatle thinking 30 mins for an instore PA performance would leave me a good half an hour to eat my lunch. Julian turned up so late that it took up all my allotted break and I went back to work hungry. This exchange at the end of A Hard Day’s Night between Norman Rossington who payed The Beatles manager Norm and John Lennon pretty much sums up my feelings that lunch hour:

Norm: Now listen, I’ve got one thing I’m gonna say to you Lennon!

John: What’s that?

Norm: [in a Liverpudlian accent] You’re a swine

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Brothers In Rhythm	Such A Good Feeling	Nah
2	Salt ‘N Pepa	Let’s Talk About Sex	I didn’t – neither buy it nor talk about sex
3	Utah Saints	What Can You Do For Me	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Prince	Cream	No but I must have it on something
5	Oceanic	Insanity	See 3 above
6	Bryan Adams	Can’t Stop That Thing We’ve Started	I did not
7	Simply Red	Something Got Me Started	…but it wasn’t this song – no
8	Erasure	Love To Hate You	Not the single but I bought their 1992 Best Of with it on
9	Ned’s Atomic Dustbin	Trust	No
10	Bros	Try	Negative
11	Tina Turner	Nutbush City Limits (The 90s Version)	Hell no
12	REM	The One I Love	See 4 above
13	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It for You	Nope
14	Julian Lennon	Saltwater	After the instore PA farce? Not likely!

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/m0010b3k/top-of-the-pops-19091991

TOTP 11 JUL 1991

Posted on August 24, 2021 by 80stastic

Do you ever find yourself trying to remember a time before huge events had happened and had entered the world’s consciousness and what that felt like? Is it possible to access that part of your memory or does it no longer exist as any recollections you may have had up to that point can now only be viewed through the filter of those happenings?

Is that too heavy an intro for a post in a blog about 90s chart music? Too weighed down in the existential? Probably as I’m not referring to personal life changing occurrences like the birth of a child or the death of a loved one. I’m not even referring to world events like 9/11 or COVID. No, I’m talking about times before we had ever heard of a particular song or artist (well, in my defence, it is a music blog as I said earlier).

I touched on this subject the other week when we got our very first airing on TOTP of “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams before it had even got to No 1 let alone staying there for 16 weeks. I’m reminded of that theme again this week as the date of this TOTP was around the exact same time that the debut single by a group came out who the vast majority of us had never heard of but from whom it would be impossible to escape in the years to come. I refer, of course, to Take That! Yes, 30 years ago in mid July their first ever single “Do What U Like” was released to a massive shrug of indifference from the public. It made zero impression on the charts despite the efforts of the put together boy band to build a fan base by playing endless shows in schools and clubs. They even made a saucy video involving naked buttocks and jelly smearing to gain them some profile although that did seem to rather shoot them in the foot as it couldn’t be played on daytime TV.

They did manage a small Top 40 hit when their next single “Promises” scrambled it’s way to No 38 but they were back pushing their faces up at the chart window again when third single “Once You’ve Tasted Love” failed to do the business. At this point they seemed destined to fall by the way side like so many other pop wannabes down the years and they couldn’t really blame their marketing and promotion teams – they had loads of press in the teen mags and were constantly being talked up as the next big thing.

At some point around this time, Gary Barlow came into the Our Price store where I worked in Manchester. We all knew who he was due to their aforementioned press coverage. As he wandered around the store, my co-worker Craig decided to follow him around mouthing behind his back “nobody buys your records, nobody buys your records”. Cruel but undeniably funny. Of course, Barlow had the last laugh as they finally hit pay dirt with their very next release “It Only Takes A Minute” and the rest was history. Hit after hit followed including 8 No 1s before they called it a day in 1996. The hits and affection for the band were still there when they reformed in 2006 as they took on near national treasure status. All of this and I haven’t even mentioned the ubiquitous Robbie Williams!

So, in conclusion and in answer to the question “is it possible to recall a time before household names entered our lives and how that felt?” then yes it is as a small part of me will always have a mental image of Craig following Gary Barlow around Our Price openly mocking him when I hear the words ‘Take’ and ‘That’!

Blimey! That intro was so long that I feel I should be tying up this post by now but I haven’t even got to the first act on tonight’s show which is…DJ H featuring Stefy. Oh. I think this lot had a hit earlier in the year but I’ve forgotten what it was called already. This track went by the title of “I Like It”, three words that proved beyond host Bruno Brookes who introduces it as “you need it and you love it”. WTF?!

Anyway, this was just more nasty Italian House but the real dregs of the genre I would suggest. Clearly the woman up there isn’t the actual singer. At points she sounds like Martha Wash who supplied the vocals for Black Box’s ‘Ride On Time” and at others like Aretha Franklin so I’m guessing there are samples of both those singers in the mix somewhere. So boring is the performance visually (Steffi herself hardly moves at all and can’t even get her miming to the few lines she has right) that the TOTP producers include loads more shots of the studio audience than they usually would. Not only that but they are dancing! Or attempting something that approximates to dancing at least – it seems to just be jumping up and down in most cases. Right at the end of the song, it sounds like the backing track is being played on warped vinyl as it carriers crazily off beat. Surely it wasn’t meant to sound like that was it?

“I Like It” peaked at No 16.

It’s the Paula Abdul video for “Rush Rush” again next (the third time it’s been played I believe). This was pretty much the end fo the road for Paula as a successful pop star. She managed one more UK hit of the “Spellbound” album from which “Rush Rush” was taken and then one final solitary Top 40 entry in 1995. She only actually made three studio albums of which the final one “Head Over Heels” was a big commercial disappointment compared to her first two. That’s not to diminish her chart stats though. She did have six US No 1 singles and two No 1 albums after all and set a record for the most No 1 singles from a debut album on the Billboard Hot 100.

The four years between her second and third albums though was a lifetime in the music industry and nobody was that arsed when she finally returned. In that time she married and divorced the actor Emilio Estevez and also sought treatment for bulimia so it’s hardly surprising that she took her eye off the ball of her music career. She did however, re-invent herself as a reality TV judge working on shows like American Idol, Live to Dance and The X Factor and also was seen as a big enough draw still to undertake a Las Vegas residency from August 2019 to January 2020.

When Andy McCluskey decided to carry on the OMD name after the departure of his writing partner Paul Humphreys (plus band members Martin Cooper and Malcolm Holmes) at the end of the 80s, he surely couldn’t have imagined the success he would have had straight off the bat with the single “Sailing on the Seven Seas” and the album “Sugar Tax” with both hitting No 3 in their respective charts. So when second single “Pandora’s Box” was lifted from the album and followed its predecessor into the Top 10, he must have been tempted to do the lottery that week (had it been invented by then which it hadn’t) as his Midas touch seemed to know no bounds.

My sister’s then boyfriend was obsessed with this song apparently and bought every available version of it that was released including a limited edition collector’s CD single which came housed in a rather neat little wooden box. I’m pretty sure we had this version in the Our Price I was working in at the time.

“Pandora’s Box” seemed to be a much more straight forward type of pop song compared to its more quirky, shuffling predecessor. The verses were fairly pedestrian but the pay off of the uplifting chorus was more than worth the wait.

Inspired by silent film actress Louise Brooks and named after the 1929 film Pandora’s Box in which she starred, the single was retitled “Pandora’s Box (It’s a Long, Long Way)” for the American market but God knows why? A similar practice had been inflicted upon a single by The Icicle Works who’s song “Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)” was reversed for its US release as “Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly)”. Weirdos.

“Pandora’s Box” would peak at No 7 and was directly responsible for a spike in sales of the album around this time.

C+C Music Factory are up next (or CeCe Music Factory as Bruno Brookes mispronounces it) with their “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…”single, talking of which, does that bass line sound a bit like the one used so majestically in “Groove Is In The Heart” by Dee-Lite? Hmmm. Anyway, the track had plenty more hooks to it including that saxophone riff which is recycled at the end of every line. Sometimes it’s the little things like that which can make a song (see also that ringing almost tinny sounding double strummed guitar chord in “She Sells Sanctuary” by The Cult).

Oh and that lyric about ‘playing tic tac toe’? Nothing to do with noughts and crosses apparently. It refers to when you have sex with three different partners in one night according to the urban dictionary. You learn a new thing or three every day.

1991 saw the release of not only some of the biggest selling albums of the whole decade but also some of the most iconic. Look at some of these albums for a start

Artist	Title
Massive Attack	Blue Lines
Metallica	Metallica
Pearl Jam	Ten
Primal Scream	Screamadelica
Red Hot Chili Peppers	Blood Sugar Sex Magik
REM	Out Of Time
U2	Achtung Baby

All released within the calendar year of 1991. However, no such list could be compiled without including not one but two albums released in the same year by one band. That band was, of course, Guns N’ Roses and the albums were “Use Your Illusion I” and “Use Your Illusion II” both released on the same day (17th September) to much fanfare and excitement. Two albums by a huge artist on the same day! Long before the Blur vs Oasis chart battle, this was a majorly significant event in the record industry. Within six months though the practice would appear old hat as Bruce Springsteen followed suit with the “Human Touch” and “Lucky Town” albums both released on 31 March 1992.

Before that Guns N’ Roses day in September though, we had the first new material from the band of the decade (although the track “Civil War” had appeared on the charity album “Nobody’s Child: Romanian Angel Appeal” in 1990) with the single “You Could Be Mine”. Not only would it in effect be the lead single from the “Use Your Illusion II” album but it was also being used prominently in the soundtrack to one of the biggest films of the year, the much anticipated Terminator 2: Judgment Day the sequel to 1984’s Terminator. The flick was a huge success becoming the highest-grossing film of 1991, beating Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (more of which later) into the process.

“You Could Be Mine” seems a perfect fit with the film and was used during the ending credits and in the film itself in early scenes with John Connor and that’s despite it having what would normally be seen as the impediment of having a one-minute drum and guitar intro. The video is basically just a straight in concert performance intertwined with some action sequences from the film but it’s all held together by the fairly weak premise of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator himself being dispatched to assassinate the band after the gig. Somehow though despite the hokey ending as Arnie finally catches up with the band as they leave the venue and deciding that killing them would be a ‘Waste of Ammo’, it all kind of hangs together and just works; for me at least.

“You Could Be Mine” would peak at No 3 and would herald a run of seven singles taken from across both “Use Your Illusion” albums stretching into 1993 when the final “Civil War EP” was released.

https://youtu.be/6j0HfZCP-og

A rare in the studio appearance from Billy Bragg next as he performs his “Sexuality” hit single. To be honest, it’s nowhere near as much fun as the video we saw in the Breakers last week, shorn as it is of Kirsty MacColl in the background making small dick gestures behind Billy’s back plus some admirable attempts at slapstick humour from the Braggster himself.

So what was “Sexuality” all about anyway? There is a lot of online discussion about some of the lyrics references. What was the significance of an uncle who once played for Red Star Belgrade or of a nuclear submarine sinking off the coast of Sweden? I think a lot of it was just Billy playing around with word puns like rhyming ‘Sweden’ with ‘read them’ and Robert De Niro with Mitsubishi Zero (which wasn’t a car at all but a Japanese WWII fighter aircraft). My general reading of the song is that it’s a celebration of sexual freedom in whatever form that takes.

I saw Billy in concert in Dublin in 2006 and in the middle of his set an extremely pissed fan got out from his seat and wondered up the aisle to the stage waiving an autograph pad. Billy handled it pretty well but you could see that it really annoyed him as he issued the withering put down “I’m working mate”.

“Sexuality” peaked at No 27.

Another video from another big rock band next as after Guns N’ Roses we now get INXS with “Bitter Tears”. This was another track from their “X” album and managed to immediately see off the possibility of a run of flopped singles from the band. Despite the album having been out for 9 months by this time and “Bitter Tears” being the fourth and final single from it, another Top 40 miss (previous single “By My Side” only made No 42) was avoided when it made it to a peak of No 30.

As Bruno Brookes hints at in his intro, the band were about to play a huge gig at Wembley stadium on 13 July 1991 as part of their Summer XS tour to a sold-out audience of 74,000 fans. The band would never play live to a bigger crowd. It was recorded and and filmed and would become the live album “Live Baby Live” which would be released in the November. “Bitter Tears” was included in the set list for the concert but didn’t make it onto the track listing for the album (it did however feature in the video of the gig).

The style of the promo video for “Bitter Tears” follows the well worn template that all the band’s videos seemed based on. A straight performance of the song filmed in black and white with a few cut away graphics thrown in to maintain interest. I’m not sure if they were all shot by the same director but if they were, he or she did seem to be a one trick pony.

After Guns N’ Roses sang “You Could Be Mine” earlier in the show, here were Bros being even less decisive with “Are You Mine?”. The 90’s pop career of Bros after their late 80s success could not be better summed up than by the phrase the ‘after the Lord Mayor’s show’. The biggest group in Britain at the height of Brosmania, by the time the new decade was getting into its stride, they were an afterthought at best. Seriously, who thought a third album by the Goss twins was a good idea? A third one though they did make and it was called “Changing Faces”. It struggled to a high of No 18

I knew that they were still trying to recapture their glory days back then as I was working in a record shop but I could not have told you how any of their later singles went with “Are You Mine?” a prime example. I think I have a strong defence for my lack of recall about this one though on the basis that it is absolutely dire and instantly forgettable. A complete snooze fest from start to finish.

There would be one more single released before the duo went their separate ways, Matt Goss into a successful residency at Las Vegas and Luke into an acting career. 27 years later that documentary about them would appear and the rest is history…

“Are You Mine?” peaked No 12.

Who’s this then? Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam? That can’t be right surely? The people that had a hit in 1985 with “I Wonder If I Take You Home”? They had another hit 6 years later? I have literally zero recall of this but for the record their second hit was called “Let the Beat Hit ‘Em” and was produced by Clivillés and Cole who we saw earlier under their other guise of C+C Music Factory. It sounds completely bland to my non dance ears but it is lauded by the likes of Pete Tong and Trevor Nelson no less the latter of whom says of it in Music Week magazine “It’s not the coolest record I’ve ever bought but it’s the most fun.”

“Let the Beat Hit ‘Em” peaked t No 17 in the UK but it topped the dance and R&B charts in the US.

And here we are, the first of 16 weeks at No 1 for Bryan Adams and “Everything I Do (I Do it For You)“. How am I supposed to write about one song for so long?! On top of that, I need to be wary of just repeating the same trivia and tidbits that @TOTPFacts might serve up as he has the same problem. OK, I think I’ll allow myself to reproduce one @TOTPFacts tweet per post so here’s this week’s:

The starting point for "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" was Michael Kamen's "Maid Marian" cue for Prince Of Thieves… https://t.co/Hp58YEmMWs #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 20, 2021

Apparently Bryan and producer Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange wrote the song in just 45 minutes. I’m guessing Michael Kamen’s piece took a while longer.

I’d forgotten that Bryan actually made it into the TOTP studio for at least one week of the song’s chart reign but here he is in his trademark white T-shirt and jeans emoting all over the stage although the show’s producers do intercut his performance with the promo video.

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

In case you’re bored of the song already, here’s a 1992 cover of the song by Fatima Mansions which was released as part of a double A-side with “Suicide Is Painless” by Manic Street Preachers which was a charity single for the Spastics Society. It made No 7 but hardly received any airplay as the Manics track was predominantly the one played on radio.

The play out video is “Love And Understanding” by Cher. Coming hard on the heels of her recent No 1 with “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)”, I’m guessing much was expected by her record company of the follow up. It did pretty well making it to the Top 10 (just) in the UK and the Top 20 in the US. Its sales (plus a last minute inclusion of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)”) helped propel parent album “Love Hurts” to No 1 in the UK where it would stay for 6 weeks and end up becoming the best selling female album of the year.

I was working at the Market Street Our Price store in Manchester at the time and around then, the company was committed to its slogan of ‘mad about music, see a specialist’ (or something like that) which meant every week day morning, we had to play music from a particular genre like Easy Listening, Folk or Classical. Once 12 o’clock came around there was a rush to put a chart album on and I recall shoving “Love Hurts” on as the first thing that came to hand after a particularly gruelling morning of folk music. The store manger happened to walk by and said to me “Time for some proper music eh?”. We should probably both have been ashamed.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	DJ H featuring Stefy	I Like It	I’d rather have bought “I Like It’ by Gerry and the Pacemakers frankly.
2	Paula Abdul	Rush Rush	No
3	OMD	Pandora’s Box	No but I have it on a Best Of CD of theirs
4	C+C Music Factory	Things That Make You Go Hmmm…	Liked it, didn’t buy it
5	Guns N’ Roses	You Could Be Mine	See 3 above
6	Billy Bragg	Sexuality	No but I bought Accident Waiting To Happen, another single from the album
7	INXS	Bitter Tears	See 3 above
8	Bros	Are You Mine?	Are you mad more like! No
9	Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam	Let the Beat Hit ‘Em	Nope
10	Bryan Adams	Everything I Do (I Do it For You)	I did not
11	Cher	Love And Understanding	Despite somehow managing to buy two recent Cher singles (one by mistake), I managed to avoid this one. Honest!

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/m000yw8k/top-of-the-pops-11071991

TOTP 08 MAR 1990

Posted on November 13, 2020 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sadly Walden committed suicide in 2015.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In a Smash Hits interview, Ferrucci stated:

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

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

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

Life, life, life
Come on and

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

Oh yeah

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

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

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

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

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

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

*checks chart rundown video*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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/m000p3bp/top-of-the-pops-08031990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 26 SEP 1991

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TOTP 19 SEP 1991

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TOTP 11 JUL 1991

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TOTP 08 MAR 1990

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Some bedtime reading?