Bryan Adams | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 20 FEB 1992

Posted on January 26, 2022 by 80stastic

One of the more pleasing by products of reviewing all of these TOTP repeats is that I get to reminisce about what I was doing back then. OK most of it is pretty dull and of no significance nor entertainment to anyone but myself but there are some that can be a shared experience. TV shows that I was watching at the time for example. Four days prior to the broadcast of this particular TOTP, a new US TV series premiered (that’s what we say now isn’t it? I’d have said started back in 1992) that was a brilliantly quirky comedy drama that pulled myself and my wife in hook, line and sinker. Anyone else remember Northern Exposure on Channel 4?

It was a fish out of water tale of newly qualified NY doctor Joel Fleischman being assigned as GP to the tiny town of Cicely to repay the state of Alaska for underwriting his medical education. There he struggles to adapt to his new surroundings as he encounters some marvellously eccentric characters like his receptionist Marilyn Whirlwind, aspiring movie director Ed Chigliak and millionaire business man Maurice Minnifield. It seemed ground breaking at the time and yet you hardly hear it mentioned these days and I have not seen it repeated since its original run from 1992 to 1995.

It also had an interesting soundtrack which I bought my wife for her birthday including tracks by Etta James, Booker T And The MGs and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Well that’s enough TV nostalgia. Back to the music and proving that grunge wasn’t the only musical movement going on in the 90s, here are one of the major players in the acid jazz genre. Now I thought that The Brand New Heavies were indeed ‘brand new’ bursting into the charts with their “Dream Come True” single. However, it turned out that they’d actually been in existence since the mid 80s and released the track “Got To Give” on the Cooltempo label. As the clock clicked over into the new decade, they signed to the Acid Jazz label and released “Dream Come True” but not the version we saw on this TOTP. No, the original release featured a completely different singer called Jaye Ella-Ruth. It failed to chart and Jaye was destined to become the Pete Best of the acid jazz scene, being replaced by N’dea Davenport. A re-recorded version of the track featuring N’dea was put back out and bingo! A No 24 chart hit and a slot on TOTP. This would be the first of twenty-five Top 40 hits and two Top 5 albums during the 90s.

I wasn’t a convert to acid jazz I have to say though my wife was quite into it buying two consecutive Brand New Heavies album releases. What exactly was acid jazz though? According to Wikipedia it combined funk, soul, hip hop, jazz and disco and was characterised by danceable grooves and long, repetitive compositions. What?! What sort of description is that?! Maybe a list of its exponents might help. Well, there were BNH label mates Corduroy, Mother Earth and James Taylor Quartet whilst over on Talkin’ Loud the roster of acts included Galliano, Incognito and Young Disciples. Does that make things clearer? I’m not sure. It must have been a broad church because acts like Jamiroquai, Stereo MCS and Us3 are also mentioned under the same umbrella. I think I’ll just use Brand New Heavies as my default definition of acid jazz. Seems easier.

The ‘year zero’ revamp had gone against the show’s history and ditched a Top 40 rundown in favour of a brief run through of just the Top 10 but there’s a change to that this week in the form of scrolling graphics across the bottom of the screen detailing that week’s new chart entries. What was the point of that? Was it some lip service response to negative viewer feedback? Never mind not hearing the tracks, we don’t don’t even get the title of the hit, just the name of the artist and a chart number. Utterly pointless. It’s like travelling all the way to the Grand Canyon and not being able to see the view because of fog. Actually, I know people that happened to. Can you imagine the disappointment?

Now I thought the pronunciation of the next artist’s name was not up for debate. Everybody said Rozalla as Ro-zar-la but Tony Dortie goes for a different approach with Ro-za-la. It reminded me of my late father-in-law who insisted on referring to Paul Gascogne as Gar-za rather than Gaz-za. Anyway, however you pronounced it, the “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)” hitmaker was back with her latest single “Are You Ready To Fly”. Now she’s certainly not the first artist to stick to a winning formula but this really was just a rehash of her biggest hit just as her second single “Faith (In The Power Of Love)” had been. Talk about playing it safe. A hat trick of hits that were all basically the same song! Bah!

“Are You Ready To Fly” peaked at No 14.

It’s time for the weekly TOTP Macaulay Culkin spot! Well, at least it feels like he’s in permanent residence on the show at least. He’s on our screens again due to his featuring in the video for “My Girl” by The Temptations which has been re-released due to the film of the same name he’s starring in.

I never caught that flick and indeed, don’t think I’d ever seen any of the Home Alone films all the way through until the Xmas just gone when my son wanted to watch them. Consequently, I never understood what all the fuss was about Culkin. He just seemed really, really annoying. His brother Kieran on the other hand is currently flooring everyone with his character Roman Roy in HBO sensation Succession. Oh oh! I’ve strayed back in the world of TV drama but to be fair, I have nothing else left to say about The Temptations anyway. Job done.

I wrote quite a lot about Julia Fordham when she was a Breaker the other week as I wasn’t expecting her to actually make it into the TOTP studio but here she is meaning I’ve gone too early – damn it! OK, well you can’t fault her live vocal here as she sings “Love Moves (In Mysterious Ways)”. Faultless. However, I have to say that it’s a bit of a dirge ain’t it? I mean, the backing singers can’t even be arsed to get off their stools at the back of the stage and do all their vocals while remaining seated. Julia could have taught them a thing or two about the art of the backing singer on TOTP from her days as a Wilsation supporting the beehived one herself Mari Wilson. Much more fun.

To be fair to Julia, she didn’t write the song so I don’t think I’m really dissing her by lamenting its soporific sound. It did manage to rise to No 19 in the charts. Not bad but it was a far cry from presenter Mark Franklin’s prediction that it would go Top 10.

Oh come on! This was a video ‘exclusive’ just last week wasn’t it and it’s on again already?! I talk of course of Bryan Adams and his single “Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven”. This was the fourth of six singles released from his “Waking up The Neighbours” album and the only one (apart from “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” obviously) to make the UK Top 10. After his 16 week run at No 1 the previous year, did his record label A&M really think that amount of Adams material being foisted upon the public was justified? Had they never heard of the expression ‘less is more’?! Apparently not as the next release from Bry was 1993’s 14 track Greatest Hits package “So Far So Good”. Curiously, “Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven” wasn’t included on it but then, like Julia Fordham’s before him, the song was a bit of a duffer.

Talking of curious things, what a curiosity this next song was! Now I’m not being wise after the event but I genuinely did know the original 1983 single that this track was based around. “It’s A Fine Day” by Jane was an otherworldly sounding indie chart hit (it didn’t make the mainstream Top 40) and was basically an a capella delivery of a poem written by eccentric Manchester poet and musician Edward Barton. How did I know it? I’m not sure. I got my new music solely from Radio 1 back in 1983 so I must have heard it on there but who would have been playing it? Surely not the likes of Steve Wright? Peter Powell maybe? Or possibly the much missed Janice Long? Well, I heard it via someone and whilst I was never so avant garde at that age to buy it, its hypnotic weirdness was intriguing.

Fast forward nine years and probably not having given it a thought once in the intervening years, suddenly everyone was talking about it, or rather Opus III’s danceified version of it. Yes, inevitably, as it was the early 90s after all, somebody got hold of that 1983 leftfield outlier track, added a dance beat to it and shoved it out to the rave masses for consumption. Was nothing sacred? On reflection it puts me in mind of the film Reality Bites and the scene where Winona Ryder’s character has her documentary about her friends that she has spent so long crafting to portray them with integrity turned into some nasty, commercialised media soundbite by opportunistic new boyfriend Ben Stiller for his MTV-like cable channel. All of her original film’s soul is ripped out and replaced with flavour of the month bullshit designed to appeal to those riding the current zeitgeist.

So it was with Opus III though hats off to vocalist Kirsty Hawkshaw for her memorable delivery of the track. She struck a startling sight with her Mohawk hair topped off with…well whatever that was adorning her forehead. The touch of genius though was to get her to perform whilst rotating those…were they stress balls?… in her right hand giving the whole thing a mystical look which I guess was some sort of homage to the original track’s ethereal nature. I wasn’t a fan but at least it stood out against the rest of the dance anthems of the time peaking at No 5.

Oh do one Hucknall won’t you?! Simply Red again?! It was impossible to avoid the ginger one in 1991/92. His “Stars” album topped the best seller chart for both those years and daytime radio was all over him. “For Your Babies” was the third of five singles released from the album. That means just two more singles to go (and associated TOTP appearances) and we’ll be free of Mick for years as Simply Red won’t have any new material out until 1995. Come on! We can do this!

One of the more memorable songs of 1992 next and certainly the most relentlessly cheery. As Mark Franklin advises us, “I Love Your Smile” by Shanice came out the year before but nobody noticed (I didn’t). However, a remix by producer de jour Drizabone initiated another shot at the charts and this time it hit gold going all the way to No 2 in the UK Top 40. I’m not sure how different the versions were. Hang on. I’ll check…

*checks out Spotify*

Well, unless I haven’t actually been listening to the ‘91 original then I can’t hear too much difference. The album version does have a rap in it which the single version doesn’t but the song’s whole charm is that almost scat like ‘de de de de, do do do’ hook which dominates both the original and the remix.

“I Love Your Smile“ was manna from heaven for mainstream daytime radio, perfect for trying to put a lift in the listener’s day and a spring in their step. There was an album it came from called “Inner Child” but none of the other singles taken from it came anywhere near the Top 40. Was “I Love Your Smile” just too hard to follow up? Was it so perfectly radio shaped that any attempt to repeat the trick was doomed to fail?

As Tony Dortie says at the song’s end, Shanice was a Motown artist but he uses that reference to name check another Motown act that he tips for the top – Boyz II Men. He was certainly better at chart predictions than his mate Mark Franklin.

It’s those pesky Breakers next which make loads of work for me out of minimal screen time. I’m really starting to hate this feature. I wouldn’t mind but the TOTP producers’ choices for inclusion in it don’t stack up. Many of them are never seen/heard on the show again presumably because their subsequent chart placings didn’t justify further appearances. By logical extension they can’t have been much of a ‘happening tune’ (their words not mine) in the first place.

Exhibit 1 m’lud. “Steel Bars” by Michael Bolton. This was the fifth and final single from his “Time, Love & Tenderness” album and was co-written by Bob Dylan. This unlikely collaboration stinks of cynicism to me. Was this purely about the money for Dylan? Was his own stuff not selling too well at this point so he teamed up with an artist who was shifting millions of units? I mean, the song is pretty cruddy and surely not one that Bob would be that proud of. Look at this lyric for example:

Steel bars wrapped all around me, I’ve been your prisoner since the day you found me

What a stinker! So much of a stinker in fact that this was one of those Breakers that never made it back onto the show. And rightly so.

So what were Madness doing back in the charts? Their cover of Labbi Siffre’s “It Must Be Love” had been a No 4 hit in 1981 so why it’s reappearance in 1992? Well, it was to promote a Greatest Hits album of course. “Divine Madness” was that album and a very successful one, going to the very top of the charts. The huge public reaction to the album convinced the band to reform for a live gig promoted as Madstock. The decibels and vibrations at that gig were so loud that they caused nearby tower blocks to shake.

Of the 42 Madness singles, this one has stood the test of time better than most I would suggest. Not because it’s their best track (to my ears there are loads more worthy of that accolade) but something about it still resonates to the point that it must be one of their most played on the radio. Back in 1992, it was a welcome distraction to all those dance anthems. Talking of which…

…it’s another one of those ubiquitous dance anthems (and also one of those Breakers we never saw again). N-Joi had already had one major hit with ‘91’s reissue of…erm…”Anthem” but they were back for more in ‘92 with “Live In Manchester (Parts 1 + 2)”. Yeah, sorry but this is all bells and whistles rave nonsense and did nothing for me then or now. Horrid. Wikipedia tells me that one of N-Joi’s members was called Mark Franklin. Hang on a minute. Surely not?

No it can’t be that Mark Franklin as he says of the Breakers that his money is in Michael Bolton and not N-Joi. Mark Franklin showing off his chart prediction skills there again. Here’s the chart peaks of those Breakers:

Madness: No 6
N-Joi: No 12
Bollers : No 17

And so to the new No 1 and it was a song that would be one of the biggest sellers off the year. “Stay” was of course written for Shakespear’s Sister by Siobahn Fahey’s then husband Dave Stewart of Eurythmics. Want to hear his version. No? Tough. Here it is…

Quite different really. More of a gospel track than the haunting and haunted goth spectacle that was Shakespear’s Sister’s version. It’s worth checking out “The Dave Stewart Songbook” album. Some interesting stuff on there. I especially liked his original of “Ordinary Miracle”. Vastly superior to the version by Sarah McLachlan (there’s that surname again) that was used in the film Charlotte’s Web.

We’ve got weeks of “Stay” at No 1 so that’ll do (as the farmer said in that other famous pig flick Babe) for now apart from adding that it’s still hard to watch this performance and not be bowled over by the difference in vocal quality between Marcella Detroit and Siobahn Fahey.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Brand New Heavies	Dream Come True	No but my wife had the album
2	Rozalla	Are You Ready To Fly	I wasn’t, no
3	The Temptations	My Girl	Nah
4	Julia Fordham	Love Moves (In Mysterious Ways)	Nope
5	Bryan Adams	Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven	I did not
6	Opus III	It’s A Fine Day	No – give the original any day
7	Simply Red	For Your Babies	Never!
8	Shanice	I Love Your Smile	Just too perky for me
9	Michael Bolton	Steel Bars	See 7 above
10	Madness	It Must Be Love	No but I have that Divine Madness Best Of
11	N-Joi	Live In Manchester (Parts 1 + 2)	On yer bike!
12	Shakespear’s Sister	Stay	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/m0013mbs/top-of-the-pops-20021992

TOTP 13 FEB 1992

Posted on January 21, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve missed another show due to Adrian Rose’s still unexplained refusal to sign the repeat waiver for the TOTP episodes on which he presented and so we arrive in the middle of February, 24 hours before Valentine’s Day. That means it’s been four whole months since the new, ‘year zero’ revamp of the show. How do we think it’s been going?

I have to say that I can’t think of anything that’s been introduced that’s improved the show. The live vocal policy has just found people out rather than given the performances an extra edge. The relegation of the chart rundown to just the Top 10 (with no voice over initially) seems to have been just for the sake of drawing a line under the old format and the studio set up with the audience visible running in between stages seems chaotic. The on stage interviews of the artists from the early weeks has been ditched thankfully (they were excruciating and pointless) but the new sections such as the ‘exclusive’ showing of new videos and the US charts seem shoehorned in for the sake of it.

And then there’s the presenters. It’s not that I think they were terrible – heaven knows that the old guard of Radio 1 DJs have prompted reams of ire from me during these TOTP posts – it’s just that they didn’t seem to add anything other than youthful over enthusiasm which in the case of some resulted in a lot of shouting of links (yes I’m looking specifically at you Claudia Simon). To be fair, Tony Dortie and his silly urban yoof slang has grown on me and he seems to be a decent fellow who tweets along to the repeats with good humour.

Tonight’s show has tinkered with the formula rather. There are only three studio performances and the three of the nine acts on tonight are just the Breakers which have been moved back to that incongruous position just before the No 1. It just doesn’t feel right.

The opening act tonight are…WTF?! It’s those talentless bozos Color Me Badd. Now if like me you thought this lot’s rise to fame and subsequent descent to the wilderness all happened within the calendar year 1991, then also like me, you’ll be wondering what the hell they are doing on TOTP in 1992.

Well, it’s all to do with what I was talking about earlier and those new sections. This time it’s the turn of the US charts which is why Color Me Badd are on the show except…as far as I can tell this track “Heartbreaker” wasn’t released as a single in the US. It seems to only feature in the lower regions of the chart in New Zealand, the Netherlands and this country. Yes, the lower regions, so low it didn’t actually make our Top 40 peeking at No 58. So it wasn’t in the American charts nor was it in ours? What’s that Claudia? It’s No 6 on the Top 100? What the hell does that mean? The US album chart? The graphic in the corner of the screen just had an American flag and the No 6. It must be the US chart mustn’t it? I think a bit of behind the scenes negotiating between the BBC and the band’s record company must have been afoot. I think the Beeb were out manoeuvred though as I can’t imagine that many TOTP viewers would have been excited at the prospect of this ‘exclusive’. They were literally last year’s news. That and the fact that “Heartbreaker” stinks the place out.

Do you think they had their eyes on New Kids In The Block’s crown? The track sounds a bit like them. Clearly the lead vocalist can’t do the dance moves his three band mates behind him are cranking out as he remains motionless when one of them steps forward to do a rap halfway through. No effort is made to to swap places with him and take up the slack in the dance steps. This must have been the boy band template that Take That followed early in their career. Didn’t Gary Barlow famously struggle with bustin’ his moves that the rest of them could do effortlessly?

At the end of their performance, co-host Steve Anderson says we may well be seeing “Heartbreaker” in the British charts next week. I’m guessing that line was definitely scripted in some forlorn attempt to justify it opening the show and pretty sure that nobody in the UK had heard “Heartbreaker”again in the 30 years between the original TOTP transmission and this repeat.

“Remember The Time” when the biggest scandal in the press about Michael Jackson surrounded the rumour that he bleached his skin? Sadly for everyone involved, there would be scandals of a much more serious, damaging and distinctly horrible nature to come in the years that followed.

Back in early 1992 though, Jackson was just getting started on another round of releasing every track from his latest album as a single. Seven singles were lifted from “Thriller”, nine from “Bad”. His 1991 album “Dangerous” would follow suit with another nine tracks making it into the UK singles chart. That’s twenty five singles generated from three albums. David Coleman would surely have described it as “quite extraordinary”.

Following up global No 1 “Black And White” was always going to be a hard act even for Jackson but he gave it a good go with “Remember The Time” which was a No 3 hit in both the US and the UK. Written and produced by Teddy Riley, the creator of the New Jack Swing sound that was sweeping the world, it was no surprise that the song was in the same vein. It was all a bit too slick for my liking and didn’t hold my attention anywhere near as much as “Black And White” had.

The video was a lavish affair (of course it was) but we missed the exclusive first showing of it on TOTP the previous week as it was one of those shows that was Adrian Rosed. We still get another whopping five minutes of it tonight though. Quite why it was set in ancient Egypt I’m not sure. The track has no Egyptian connection and indeed the only country specifically mentioned in the lyrics is Spain! There’s the by now routine roster of stars in the promo including Eddie Murphy and super model Iman who would marry David Bowie later in the year. Jackson plays a wizard brought to the palace to entertain the Pharoah’s bored wife but who angers him by flirting with her instead. Cue some laborious chase scene involving Jacko and the Pharoah’s royal guards. Apparently this is the first video when Jackson kisses his female co-star. However, I’m more interested in how this particular conversation may have played out.

When a video pops up on YouTube & you have to explain to your kids why grandma was married to Eddie Murphy in ancient Egypt. 😂 @The_Real_IMAN pic.twitter.com/L5VasTjlzh
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) July 13, 2020

The song won the 1993 Soul Train award for Best Male R&B single. Jackie performed it at the awards show sat in a chair having twisted his ankle earlier. I think I prefer him sat down instead of doing all those exhausting to watch dance moves.

Next we have one of two distinctly and defiantly indie bands both inside the Top 10 this week. The Jesus And Mary Chain are at No 10 and one place above them are a band that the Scottish feedback monsters gave a helping hand to at the start of their career. Apparently Jim Reid heard an early Ride demo via DJ Gary Crowley which led to interest from their former manager and founder of Creation Records Alan McGee. A recording contract followed and the band became one of the pin ups of the ‘shoegaze’ movement.

By early 1992, Ride we’re nearing their commercial peak which they would reach with their biggest hit single “Leave Them All Behind” and parent album “Going Blank Again”. Apparently the single was written about the second rate groups (in the band’s perception) that had trailed in their dust after their success came. Bit arrogant. They would be undone by a combination of touring fatigue and the advent of Britpop and they broke up in the mid 90s before reforming a couple of times in the new millennium.

Lead singer Mark Gardener would stay in the music business working with various artists and also recording as a solo artist whilst guitarist Andy Bell went onto form Hurricane #1 before famously joining Oasis and Beady Eye. However, I’m more interested in bassist Steve Queralt who was working as the singles buyer in the Banbury Our Price store when he joined Ride. Wow! There must be a few stories of pop stars working in record shops either before or after their fame. I’ve said a few times before about working with Pete the original bass player in The Stone Roses at the Stockport Our Price. I also worked with long time Peter Hook collaborater (Monaco, Peter Hook And The Light) David Potts in Manchester. Must be loads more though.

Time for one of those TOTP ‘Exclusive’ videos now but, as with Color Me Badd at the top of the show, I think the producers have seriously misjudged the demand for and excitement to be generated by the latest Bryan Adams promo. After his 16 week run at No 1 the previous year, I think we’d all had our fill of the Groover from Vancouver but that didn’t stop Steve Anderson trying his best to big up Bryan’s latest single “Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven” in his intro.

This was already the fourth single to be released from his “Waking Up The Neighbours” album that had only been out since September and it’s quite the plodder. There’s a definite Def Leppard vibe to it, not surprising though seeing as it was produced by the man responsible for all their big hits Mutt Lange.

As for the video, was it worth the build up and airtime? It’s a resounding no from me. It features Bry and his band in a sepia tinted hue, playing in a barley field (as you do) whilst some dolphins occasionally leap out over their heads. What?!

“Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven” peaked at No 8.

Almost exactly 12 months on from this TOTP, broadcast, the aforementioned Michael Jackson performed the half time show at Super Bowl XXVII. So? Well, the game took place in Pasadena, California and who are the final act in the studio tonight? Yep, The Pasadenas (I don’t just throw this stuff together you know) who are up to No 4 with “I’m Doing Fine Now”. In scenes not witnessed on TOTP since The Leyton Buzzards performed “Saturday Night (Beneath The Plastic Palm Trees)” in 1979, the band are singing their hit…yep…under some plastic palm trees.

Why? Who knows. Pretty sure there’s nothing in the lyrics about beaches or palm trees and the middle of February is hardly holiday season is it? To make the palm trees look even more ludicrous and indeed incongruous, the lead singer is wearing a full length leather coat and hat whilst the rest of the band all have warm looking jackets on. Just crazy.

The Pasadenas would have three more minor chart hits (all of them cover versions) so it’s possible we haven’t quite seen the last of them yet but the end is nigh.

The Breakers start this week with “For Your Babies” by Simply Red which had already been on the show before Xmas as an ‘exclusive’ performance basically to plug the “Stars” album for the festive market – as if it needed any more help in pushing sales. As such I haven’t got much else to say about it apart from if I was forced at gunpoint to pick a song from “Stars” that I could most tolerate then it would be this one.

“For Your Babies” peaked at No 9.

Macaulay Culkin appearing in TOTP was starting to become a regular occurrence. After his cameo in Michael Jackson’s “Black And White”, here he is again on the promo for a re-release of “My Girl”. His involvement here is of course because he was starring in a film that took its name from the title of The Temptations’ most well known song. I’ve never seen said film and have to admit I’d always assumed it was some cutesy, young love nonsense but having read the plot summary for it…well, without wanting to give away any spoilers, it does seem to be quite a bit darker than that.

Obviously “My Girl” the song is included both in the soundtrack and the film itself and given its success and Culkin’s then profile, it was given a re-release. I’d always assumed that it had been a massive hit in the 60s when originally recorded but although it was a US No 1, it didn’t even make the Top 40 in the UK. The 1992 re-release righted that wrong though when it went all the way to No 2.

It’s always sounded a bit like “The Tracks Of My Tears” by The Miracles to me but then it was written by Smokey Robinson so that’s hardly surprising. For the record, I think “The Tracks Of My Tears” is infinitely the better song. As for The Temptations, this was their first time in the UK Top 40 since 1984’s “Treat Her Like A Lady” and inevitably there was a Greatest Hits compilation album released off the back of it which duly went Top 10. They are still a recording entity with a new album due this very month but with a list of line ups changes that makes The Sugababes look like U2, you’d need a Tory minister to make the case that it was the same group.

And the grunge bandwagon keeps on moving….Were Pearl Jam actually a grunge band or was it just that they happened to come from Seattle? To me, debut single “Alive” sounded more like classic stadium rock than the punky, garage offerings of Nirvana but then I’m no expert on Eddie Vedder and co. I did like “Alive” though and the other singles from debut album “Ten” but I lost track of the band after that. Most rock fans didn’t though if their sales figures are anything to go by (which clearly they are). “Ten” went 13 x platinum whilst follow up “Vs.” sold 7 million copies in the US alone. Third album “Vitalogy” sold 877,000 copies in its first week making it the second fastest selling album in history only behind their own “Vs.”. Pearl Jam were and are a big deal. Somehow though, TOTP managed to avoid them and this Breaker appearance is the only time we got to see “Alive” on the show. Maybe the producers had got their fingers burned by that chaotic Nirvana studio performance of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

“Alive” peaked at No 16 on the UK Top 40.

The No 1 spot still belongs to Wet Wet Wet and “Goodnight Girl”. The band are still going to this day albeit without Marti Pellow in their ranks anymore. A split between the two parties back in 2017 now seems permanent, especially as there is a new lead singer installed in the form of ex Liberty X star Kevin Simm. The rift apparently surrounds Marti’s unwillingness to concentrate solely on the band and his determination to try new musical projects. A sad tale but definitely not unique. Spandau Ballet find themselves in a very similar situation with Tony Hadley.

Pellow’s real name is Mark McLachlan but he adopted his stage name which was based on his school nickname ‘Smarty’ and his mother’s maiden name. Funny that the surname McLachlan was good enough for Craig.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Color Me Badd	Heartbreaker	Not a chance
2	Michael Jackson	Remember The Time	I did not
3	Ride	Leave Them All Behind	Nah
4	Bryan Adams	Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven	And no
5	The Pasadenas	I’m Doing Fine Now	Nope
6	Simply Red	For Your Babies	No
7	The Temptations	My Girl	Negative
8	Pearl Jam	Alive	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	Wet Wet Wet	Goodnight Girl	No but my wife had the album

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/m0013cfm/top-of-the-pops-13021992

TOTP 24 OCT 1991

Posted on October 31, 2021 by 80stastic

So the week has finally arrived. One month into the revamped TOTP and its time has come, its race is run, it’s over. No, not Man Utd’s 13 match unbeaten run to the start of the 1991/92 football season (that would arrive two days later as they lost 3-2 to Sheffield Wednesday). No, it’s the 16th and last week of Bryan Adams being at No 1 with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. 16 weeks! That’s four whole months, a third of a year, people who had got pregnant in the first of those 16 weeks were now nearly half way through their pregnancy. My own personal milestone was that our first wedding anniversary had just been and gone and we were just about to clock up one whole year of living and working in Manchester. Despite being skint a lot of the time, the year had gone pretty well and we felt settled there. I was working in the Our Price store in Market Street Manchester and gearing up for my second Xmas there. I think I may have graduated from ‘best seller’ CD orderer to being in charge of chart cassettes by this point. Chart cassettes! I’d only been trusted with TDK blank cassettes and accessories at the start of the year. It felt like a big deal. The store was probably starting to recruit for Xmas temps by now – most of their names and faces have long been unretrievable from my memory banks though one or two I can recall. I felt established amongst the permanent members of staff though my best mate there Steve had left at the start of the year. Fortunately, I have kept our friendship going these past 30 years.

We start this week with 2 Unlimited and “Get Ready For This” who are up to No 2 in the charts somehow. Why didn’t they call the track “Y’all Ready For This?” which is pretty much the only lyric in the whole sorry fair. Well, that or “Yeah!” I guess. Tony Dortie promises us “the busiest dancers around” in his intro. He can’t mean those people hanging around at the back of the stage surely? And by the way, exactly who were they? Clearly they’re not part of 2 Unlimited – are they really just some people out of the studio audience? If so, how did they get the gig? Did they have to audition their dance moves in front of the producers because all they seem to be doing to me is jumping up and down a bit?!

As this is a dance track though, the TOTP graphics team have added that green haze effect at certain points in the performance as they did the other week with Carl Cox. It reminds me of that old Dr Who story with the maggots…

After the godawful mess that is the Top 10 countdown, we’re straight into the album chart feature which this week is Kenny Thomas who was only just on the other week with his latest single “Best Of You”. The song he sings tonight though is an album track (well it is the album feature) called “Something Special” which starts off sounding a bit like Labi Siffre’s “(Something Inside) So Strong” but soon turns into a weedy soul ballad about telling his love that they are…erm…well…special.

By my reckoning, this is the sixth time that Thomas has been on TOTP in 1991 and as such, I’m all out of Kenny info and trivia. I can say that his album “Voices” went to No 3 in the charts which would be its peak and I recall selling plenty of it over the Xmas period meaning I had to place many an order of the cassette version with EMI to keep up with demand. He’s turned up at the TOTP studio for this one wearing something that resembles a 50’s drape jacket and with his hair slicked back like that, he could almost pass for a Teddy Boy. Well, not really but I’m filling furiously here so give me a break! Actually, this bloke Tom on Twitter has probably got the whole thing bang to rights…

Leg it Kenny Thomas, Mike Baldwin wants his coat back #totp
— Tom (@Tommy_1972) October 23, 2021

After the Monty Python performance of “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” last week, we get another memorable turn this week as Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff get together to do “Dizzy”. This version of Tommy Roe’s 1969 No 1 was the follow up to Vic’s first hit (also a cover version) “Born Free” from earlier in the year and would go onto replicate Roe’s chart peak by making it to No 1.

The performance here is full on Vic Reeves Big Night Out which is allowed in my book given that the series had only just finished screening in the April. The Whirlpool washing machine and microwave props were a carry over from the promo video and which were a nice play on the lyrics but for me, Bob Mortimer just about steals the show with his cavorting in the background with Miles Hunt which climaxes with his back slide through Vic’s legs halfway through. As it’s a live vocal, Vic’s voice is pretty exposed but he just about gets away with it although he is just shouting on occasion and also seems to forget the words at one point. Was something meant to happen when Vic goes to look inside one of the washing machines? The fact that nothing does seems to put him off a bit. Maybe it was a piece of staging that went wrong or maybe they were all just too drunk to remember what they were doing? There seems to be damning evidence that everybody concerned had spent far too oolong in the Green Room beforehand.

At the end of the performance Tony Dortie emerges from the studio audience throng to say “Absolutely unbelievable, I can’t keep a straight face”…whilst keeping a straight face.

It’s the Queen video for “The Show Must Go On” next whose screening the other week was billed as an ‘exclusive’ to TOTP. This week it’s in the chart at No 19 and whilst the official line for the promo consisting entirely of a montage of clips of previous Queen videos and live shows was that it was to promote the band’s imminent “Greatest Hits II” album, the lack of any new footage of Freddie Mercury stoked even more rumours already circulating around his health.

After his death on 24 November, there was the inevitable rush of Queen’s music made available in the marketplace. As well as that “Greatest Hits II” album, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was re-released (twinned as a double A-side with “These Are the Days Of Our Lives” from the “Innuendo” album) which would become the ’91 Xmas No 1. In between those releases came Brian May’s solo single “Driven By You” which would go Top 10 and indeed, “The Show Must Go On” itself would resurface in the charts despite having already peaked once at No 16. It all felt very reminiscent of John Lennon’s death 11 years earlier when his music flooded the charts although he was denied the Xmas No 1 by (unbelievably) “There’s No One Quite Like Grandma” by St Winifred’s School Choir.

As for Queen, they would patch together one last studio album from the remaining recordings Freddie had managed to lay down before his passing that weren’t included on “Innuendo” which comprised the “Made In Heaven” album of 1995. One month after its release, that symmetry with John Lennon was evident again when “Free As A Bird” was released being a demo that John had recorded in 1977 that the remaining Beatles added to in the studio and which went to No 2 in the charts.

It’s ‘the rugby song’ as Tony Dortie called it the other week next as Kiri Te Kanawa is in the studio to perform “Word In Union”. She looks for all the world like she’s just arrived off the set of Dynasty with her big 80s style hair, shoulder padded jacket and…is that a diamond encrusted brooch in the shape of a lizard on one of them?! It could be a Tuatara which are reptiles endemic to New Zealand and are regarded as a ‘taonga’ or a special treasure in Māori culture (Te Kanawa’s birth father was Māori). Whatever the reason for the brooch, it’s quite a thing and maybe the studio audience crowding around Dame Kiri in a circle are all transfixed by that rather than her performance.

“World In Union” would have a life beyond the 1991 Rugby World Cup and has been recorded by multiple artists for subsequent competitions. In 1999, a version was recorded as a duet by Shirley Bassey and Bryn Terfel whilst the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand was launched by soprano Hayley Westenra’s version of the song. Paloma Faith did it for the 2015 competition although her rendition didn’t go down well – one twitter user described it thus:

Paloma Faith absolutely murdered World in Union. My non-existent cat could of sung it better.

Meow! In 2019, ITV used a version recorded by Emeli Sandé for their 2019 World Cup coverage. In tandem with all those releases came various versions of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” which is associated specifically with the England team and was taken into the charts by Union featuring the England World Cup Squad (1991), China Black (1995), Russel Watson (1999) and UB40 (2003).

Talk about from one extreme to another! As the camera pans away from Dame Kiri at the end of her performance you can see the next act awaiting their cue on the other stage who are Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine! After their chart breakthrough earlier in the year with the re-release of “Sheriff Fatman” came “After the Watershed (Early Learning the Hard Way)” which was a non album single presumably to plug the gap until their next album “1992 – The Love Album” would be released in …erm…1992.

The contrast between Jim Bob / Fruitbat and Kiri Te Kananwa couldn’t be more pronounced with their raucous, in your face track and their non conformist, counterculture look (Boris Johnson would no doubt describe them as ‘crusties’). With it being the early 90s, nobody in team Carter USM thought to gain copyright clearance for the use of the “Ruby Tuesday” lyrics and they were subsequently sued by The Rolling Stones’ publisher. The resulting legal battle forced the song off the airwaves and was only resolved by the track being officially credited to Morrison, Carter, Richards and Jagger.

This wasn’t the only infamy that the single generated though. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, this was the song that Carter USM played at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party of 1991 when Fruitbat rugby tackled host Philip Schofield to the ground on live TV when he had attempted a pathetic put down of the band after they started smashing up their instruments after the performance. His exact words were:

“Blimey! That was original. “After the Watershed” from Jim Bob and a Fruitbat pushing back the frontiers of music otherwise known as Carter and I think they’re still smashing it up out the back somewhere. Now not only…OOOOMMMMFFFF!”

Good work lads! I can’t be doing with Schofield and I find it baffling that he was deemed worthy of a Smash Hits front cover in 1991. Unsurprisingly, given Schofield’s connection with them, the publication backed Phil in a review of the Poll Winners Party referring to Jim Bob and Fruitbat as Bobbins and Dingbat. How original.

“After the Watershed (Early Learning the Hard Way)” peaked at No 11.

Is this the first time we’ve seen this feature? The US Album chart? Tony Dortie’s intro doesn’t make any sense though as he says that Mariah Carey is No 1 in the American Hot 100 singles chart with “Emotions” and No 10 in the UK album chart. He definitely said UK and not US despite the on screen graphic saying ‘US chart’. I don’t get it. Anyway, Mariah is in the studio which means she must be doing a live vocal doesn’t it? We’ll see if she can do that famous four octave vocal range for real then won’t we?

*watches Mariah’s performance*

Well, yes she can but I still don’t like to listen to it. As she sings that last hight note, co-host Mark Franklin appears from within the studio audience to do the next link and has to wade through a gaggle of young men who somehow seem to have made sure that they were at the front of the stage to get a bird’s eye view of Mariah from up close. Funny that.

“Emotions” peaked at No 17 in the UK.

So to the Breakers and we start with Simple Minds and “Real Life”. This really was a case of a release too far. The title track from their latest album, it was the fourth single to be lifted from it and was subsequently the worst performing in the chart peaking at No 34. The album had already been out for six months by this point but I guess the record company wanted to give it another push for the Xmas market. Its chart performance wasn’t helped by it being promoted by yet another boring live performance video just as previous single “Stand By Love” had been. The band really weren’t putting much effort into their videos in 1991 as lead single “Let There Be Love” had just been a straight run through performance of the song as well (although it wasn’t taken from a gig) but had some added dry ice for effect. Poor, very poor as Vic Reeves might have said.

Possibly one of the most famous songs ever next as we get an old clip of Don McLean performing “American Pie”. So much has been written about this song – just google ‘Don Mclean American Pie and you’ll immediately get a flurry of results offering the ‘story behind the song’ or the ‘hidden meaning of…’ etc – so I’m not going to forensically dissect the song line by line partly because it’s too long and I can’t be arsed but more significantly because McLean himself fessed up to its true meaning in 2015. Why then? Well, the original manuscript for the song was put up for auction (it sold at $1.2 million) and McLean agreed to tell all about those lyrics. He basically said it was an allegorical tale describing how the world was heading in the wrong direction whilst also clearing up some of those hidden references. Clearly the famous “the day the music died” line referred to the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper in a plane crash in 1959 but he also confirmed that “the jester” was Bob Dylan and that the song built to a climax that referenced the death of Meredith Hunter at the Altamont Free Concert headlined by The Rolling Stones in 1969.

None of the above answers the question why this 1972 US No 1 and UK No 2 hit was back in the charts in 1991 of course but it’s a simple explanation – to plug a Don McLean Best Of album released for the Xmas rush. The re-release of “American Pie” reached No 12 in the UK but of much more acclaim is that in March 2017, it was designated an ‘aural treasure’ by the American Library of Congress and ‘worthy of preservation’ in the National Recording Registry ‘as part of America’s patrimony’. Yeah, that’s as maybe but he was wrong about ‘the day the music died’ – that was in 1987 when Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley went to No 1 with “Jack Your Body”.

The final Breaker sees Pet Shop Boys finally relent to the inevitable and release their very first Best Of album – “Discography: The Complete Singles Collection”. After 5 years of solid hits, a collection album was certainly warranted but, as was seeming to be the done thing back then, it was a new track that was released to promote the album. “Now I’m not suggesting that “DJ Culture” should be enshrined in any Halls of Fame for its cultural significance like “American Pie, but its message was prescient. According to Neil Tennant via Wikipedia it was about:

The insincerity of how President George H. W. Bush’s speeches at the time of the First Gulf War utilised Winston Churchill’s wartime rhetoric, in a manner similar to how artists sample music from other artists.

Fast forward 30 odd years and replace Bush with Boris Johnson and…where’s the difference? Johnson’s obsession with Churchill and his enablement by the right wing press and its obsession with the war and the ‘Blitz spirit’ and it’s not hard to see why we live in a country that has created a hostile environment for ‘outsiders’. We are a much poorer country for it. The parallels with Brexit also echo in the lyrics:

Imagine a war which everyone won
Permanent holiday in endless sun
Peace without wisdom, one steals to achieve
Relentlessly, pretending to believe

Let’s pretend we won a war
Like a football match, ten-nil the score
Anything’s possible, we’re on the same side
Or otherwise on trial for our lives

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine these words as a criticism of the leave campaign narrative of ‘sunlit uplands’ and ‘Brexit is good, you just have to believe in it enough’ – there’s even a reference later on about empty shelves! Tellingly there’s also the line “Wondering who’s your friend” which could speak of the divisions between families and friends that Brexit has caused. Actually, there’s a couple more Pet Shop Boys song titles that sum up the shitshow that is Brexit and this corrupt Tory government in a much more succinct way- I’m thinking “Was It Worth It?” and “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)”. Bit of politics there as Ben Elton might have said back in the day.

For all that, I didn’t actually rate “DJ Culture” that much. It was a bit too repetitive and lacking in melody for me. It peaked at No 13 in the UK Top 40 whilst the “Discography: The Complete Singles Collection” album went to No 3 and achieved platinum status sales.

This week’s ‘TOTP Exclusive’ performance is from David Bowie….HURRAY! Hang on. Let me finish. I was going to say David Bowie’s side project rock group Tin Machine….BOOOOO!!!. Hang on didn’t they do an exclusive performance for TOTP the other week? Yes they did when they appeared on the show to promote previous single “You Belong in Rock ‘n’ Roll”! You can’t claim this to be an exclusive if its the second time in a few weeks can you?

Enter new show producer Stanley Appel, stage left: “Ah, but that first exclusive was in the pre- year zero revamp era. This is a whole new show so yes, of course we can claim it as an exclusive.

Me (not having it): So definitely not flogging a dead horse then?

Stanley Appel: How dare you?!

Is dead horse unfair? I think when it comes to Tin Machine it’s justified. Of the five singles they released only one made the Top 40 (the aforementioned “You Belong in Rock ‘n’ Roll”) whilst all the others were flops including this track “Baby Universal”…or “Baby Unusual” as Tony Dortie announces it. Clearly Tony had got the jitters being in the presence of the legend that was Bowie as he seems to fluff his entire intro. He mispronounces the word ‘exclusive’ and then nearly forgets the name of their album which couldn’t have been much easier to remember being “Tin Machine II” and all.

As for the song itself, it’s all very urgent sounding filled with moments for Bowie to deliver his unique vocal stylings but it’s just not quite there for me. Actually, listening to it back, it reminds me of “The Cabaret” by Time UK who were the group that drummer Rick Buckler formed after The Jam broke up. Don’t know it? Have a listen…

Time UK there, only the band that Tin Machine could have been (ahem)….oh and that tattoo on the drummer’s knuckles that we get a shot of at the end of the song? it definitely says HUNT and not anything else as his name is Hunt Sales!

And finally Cyril….

…and finally Esther. FINALLY. After 16 (SIXTEEN!) long weeks, we get to the final time that Bryan Adams is No 1 with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. Obviously no record should have been at the top of the charts for that long – it was a nonsense. Was it Bryan’s fault though? I can’t see how. He just wrote a song for a film and it got released as a single. I think he only did one TOTP studio performance and the rest of the time the show just broadcast the video with the the film clips montage. He wasn’t busting a gut to be in the studio every week to promote it. The way people moaned about how long it was No 1 for, you would have though that this sort of run could never happen again but just three years later Wet Wet Wet almost eclipsed it with their “Love Is All Around” single also taken from a film (Four Weddings And A Funeral). They probably would have done had the band not taken the decision to delete the single and so it fell just short at 15 weeks. Their chart buster was of course a cover version of The Troggs – at least Adams had the good grace (and financial sense) to write this own tune!

No artist got near that sort of feat until Drake in 2016 whose “One Dance” single was No 1 for 15 weeks in the UK. It occurs to me that I don’t even know how that one goes. I’m not inclined to find out.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	Get Ready For This	Get ready for what? No.
2	Kenny Thomas	Something Special	I did not nor have I ever bought any Kenny Thomas records
3	Vic Reeves and The Wonderstuff	Dizzy	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Queen	The Show Must Go On	It must but it did so without me
5	Kiri Te Kanawa	World In Union	No thanks
6	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	After the Watershed (Early Learning the Hard Way)	See 3 above
7	Mariah Carey	Emotions	Nope
8	Simple Minds	Real Life	No
9	Don McLean	American Pie	Nah
10	Pet Shop Boys	DJ Culture	Not the single but have it on their Pop Art Collection CD
11	Tin Machine	Baby Universal	Negative
12	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	I did not

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/m0010rl6/top-of-the-pops-24101991

TOTP 17 OCT 1991

Posted on October 27, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s mid October 1991 and therefore week three of the new TOTP format – had we all got used to it yet? I recall some of these performances so I must have carried on watching it whether I liked the show’s new style or not (pretty sure it was the latter). I would have been 23 by this point – was that too old to have been watching TOTP? In my defence, I was working in a record shop (Our Price) for a living so I could make a case that it was work related. Looking back, I didn’t feel too old to still be a TOTP viewer but as I say, I was working in a mainstream, chart led record shop so it kind of felt the obvious thing to do.

Now if I was too old to be watching the show, tonight’s opening act were surely too old to have been performing on it?! Presenter Tony Dortie correctly advises us that even back in 1991, it was 20 years since Slade had scored their first No 1 single (“Coz I Luv You”) and in 1991 the youngest member of the band was Jim Lea at a sprightly 42 while the rest of the band were all 45. That makes them 8 year younger than I am now and I would like to think I’m not an old man yet but mid 40s for being on a pop music show that had recently gone through a revamp to show it was still ‘hip for the kids’? Clearly new producer Stanley Appel hadn’t learned his lesson from two weeks ago when one of the bands booked for the first show under his tutelage were Status Quo!

So why exactly were these gods of glam rock in the charts and on TOTP in 1991? Well, after their resurrection in the mid 80s due to hits like “My Oh My” and “Run Runaway”, the band’s chart fortunes had once again been on the slide and they’d descended into a world of greatest hits packages for the Xmas market and endless re-releases of that festive single (8 separate occasions in the 80s). However, 1991 racked up a quartet of a century of the band’s existence (in one form or another) and the Slade fan club-organised a 25th anniversary party to celebrate. Wanting to cash in on the renewed interest in the band, their record label Polydor floated the idea of yet another Greatest Hits compilation album but backed with a TV advertising campaign and two new singles to add interest for the fanbase. “Radio Wall of Sound“was the first of those two singles and it’s a right old stomper and no mistake but why is bassist Jim Lea doing most of the singing and not Noddy Holder? Well, it was written by Lea for a solo project and when the band came to record it, they found that it was not in Noddy’s key and so Lea did most of the vocals with the Nodster just joining in on the chorus. Around this time, Noddy had come into the Our Price where I was working and I ended up serving him. I can’t recall what he bought but I was delighted to note that his credit card was emblazoned with the legend N Holder on it. However, my joy was cut short when I realised that his real name is Neville and so the ‘N’ of course referred to that and not ‘Noddy’.

Back to “Radio Wall of Sound” though and despite it definitely sounding like a Slade record, for me it also displayed another influence. The radio DJ voice-over bits were undeniably channelling Starship’s “We Built This City”. Apparently, the DJ in question is Mike Read who had presumably taken time off from writing the theme tune for BBC horse racing drama Trainer and had also had to miss a UKIP fund raiser dinner party to record his lines.

To be fair to Stanley Appel and his production team, they’ve gone in hard straight away to create a buzz with some pyrotechnic explosions behind the band before they even start singing. Happily, they haven’t reverted to that practice during their mid 80s revival of handing out nasty, cheap looking and probably highly flammable Slade scarves to the studio audience to wave around.

“Radio Wall of Sound” achieved a decent chart high of No 21 but was undone by, according to Noddy Holder, a lack of TV slots to promote it. Apparently they’d tried to do Wogan but couldn’t get on the show. I checked the listings for the week that this TOTP was broadcast and the two musical guests on Wogan were Alison Moyet and Texas both of who performed their latest singles – Alison’s track “This House” peaked at No 40 and The Texas single “In My Heart” stalled at No 74. Neither were pulling in huge hits in the early 90s so it seems odd that a space couldn’t be found for Slade (especially Texas who at this point had only scored one hit single in 1989 and were six years away from their commercial peak of the “White On Blonde” album). The second of those new Slade singles was called “Universe” and was released as the follow up to “Radio Wall of Sound” in the December but got lost in the Xmas market and failed to chart. As such, Polydor went cold on the idea of the band recording any new material and they broke up in 1992 with Lea and Holder leaving whilst Dave Hill and Don Powell carried on under the banner of Slade II.

As Tony Dortie walks up the gantry steps at the end of the song to do the link into the Top 10 countdown, you can hear what I assume can only be Noddy Holder making some guttural noises that sound like an alarm going off. Maybe he was making it up to the studio audience for his lack of vocal participation on “Radio Wall of Sound”?

Oh crikey, Enya‘s back! Yes, she of the No 1 song “Orinoco Flow” that everyone went overboard about back in 1988 for being so dreamlike and haunting and blissful and all those other epithets that the press and media bestowed up on her. The single propelled her to international stardom and the album it was taken from (‘Watermark”) sold 11 million copies worldwide. Well, it took her three years to record the follow up which was an album called “Shepherd Moons” of which “Caribbean Blue” was the lead single. I remember that the album was expected to shift a huge number of units over Xmas in the Our Price store I was working in and therefore a huge amount of units were ordered in. It didn’t disappoint going to No 1 with 13 million copies purchased world-wide. All this sales were achieved without the massive promotional pull of a No1 single that its predecessor “Watermark” had benefitted from. “Caribbean Blue” went to No 13 in the UK but was not a huge hit globally only making the Top 10 in her native Ireland.

For this studio performance, the stage has a back drop that seems to be some sort of lost temple in an overgrown jungle but which fortunately still has functioning dry ice machines. Enya herself sits statically at the piano but unlike with Julian Lennon’s keyboard performance the other week, new TOTP producer Stanley Appel resisted the urge to beef up the performance with clips of the official promo video (even though it featured future Eastenders star Martine McCutcheon).

The intro to the song by presenter Mark Franklin is a bit sycophantic…

“She’s live in the studio tonight playing the unique sound of Enya…”

What sound did you expect her to play Mark? She is Enya after all so she was hardly likely to come out and do a tribute to Liberace was she?!

Moving on and it’s another studio performance by another returning female solo star in Lisa Stansfield. Like Enya before her, Lisa had also scored a massive No 1 back in the late 80s with “All Around the World” but hadn’t been seen in the charts for a good 18 months by this point. “Change” was the lead single from her second solo album called “Real Love” and that album would help to establish Lisa as one of the UK’s most prominent soul singers by going double platinum over here and reaching No 3 in the charts. It housed four UK Top 40 singles including one of her most well known songs in “All Woman” though the track I would have liked to have seen released was “Soul Deep” that remained an album track.

Lisa’s grown her hair a bit since the days of “All Around the World” and that short cut and kiss curl look. She still looks fabulous. I worked in Our Price Rochdale (Lisa’s hometown) for a whole year between ’92 and ’93 and the only time she came into the shop, I was on my day off. Damn it!

Luckier than me was presenter Mark Franklin who gets to interview Lisa at the end of her performance for one of those embarrassing interviews in which he asks Lisa about her forthcoming tour and we find out that she is going on tour (surprise surprise), that it begins in February and is going pretty much everywhere on the planet. Quality in depth interviewing there. He reminds me of Lady One Question from early noughties Channel 4 comedy gambling game show Banzai…

So after Stevie Wonder and Queen in weeks one and two of the show’s new format, week three brings us another big hitter in the ‘video exclusive’ section as we get U2‘s latest promo for their new single “The Fly”. Their first release of the 90s, this was the lead single from their multi-platinum “Achtung Baby” album. Very much seen as a change of style at the time with its multi layered guitars and distorted effects on Bono’s vocal, it was certainly no “With Or Without You”. Indeed, Bono is on record as describing the song as “The sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree”. For me though it sounded like U2 doing their best INXS impression but that wasn’t a bad thing in my book although I was surprised to find a copy of the 7″ in my singles box as I don’t recall buying it. I would also end up buying the album on which there are much better tracks than “The Fly” for me.

The song would also announce Bono’s ‘The Fly’ character which was meant to send up the stereotype of an egomaniacal rock star. Sadly for Bono, I’m not sure everyone got the joke and his wearing of large wrap-around sunglasses backfired on him in many ways. Attending press conferences in ‘The Fly’ persona was probably not the best idea Bono ever had either and didn’t help his cause.

Whatever any of us thought about the song, it created itself a space in chart history as the single that eventually toppled Bryan Adams’ 16 week run at the top of the charts. Ironically, although it went straight in at No 1, “The Fly” was only made available for three weeks before the band’s record label Island deleted it so that they could clear the release schedules for further singles to be pulled from the album. How many music fans wished that Bryan’s record label A&M had done a similar thing with “(Everything I Do) I Did It For You”?

Dannii Minogue‘s annus mirabilis continues a pace with her fourth hit single of 1991 “Baby Love”. Not a cover of the Diana Ross & The Supremes number but a cover version all the same as this track was originally recorded by one hit wonder Regina and was a US No 10 hit in 1986. Dannii would have been better off going for the Motown track in my opinion as the Regina song doesn’t seem to have much going for it to my ears. Interesting to note that now the acts have to sing live on the show, Dannii’s dance moves are considerably curtailed – in fact she hardly moves at all leaving all the “nifty dance moves” (as promised by Tony Dortie in his intro) to her trio of backing dancers. To be fair to her, you couldn’t have expected anything but an out of breath vocal if she’d also attempted all the dancing we saw for her performance of previous hit “Jump To The Beat”.

The film that she is starring in that will be released the following year that Tony Dortie references, I hadn’t realised I’d seen until I researched it for this post. Success (also known as One Crazy Night) tells the story of four Beatles obsessed fans (plus an Elvis fan who can’t stand them) who find themselves locked in the basement of the hotel that the moptops are staying in whilst in Australia during their touring years period. While waiting to be rescued, they start to share their deepest secrets with each other. Often compared (unfavourably) to The Breakfast Club, it attracted criticism for the use of Beatles songs that didn’t belong in the time period the film was set. The plot takes place in 1964 but some of the songs used are from much later albums like “Abbey Road” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” which does seem unforgivable. However, the fact that I even remembered the film at all suggests it must have done something right to stay in my memory banks although I’d certainly forgotten that Dannii Minogue was in it.

“Baby Love” peaked at No 14.

The video for “Wind Of Change” by Scorpions is next. As Tony Dortie says, it was giving Bryan Adams a run for his money by occupying the No 2 spot in the charts this week although I have no idea how many copies it was actually selling and whether it was indeed anywhere near to knocking the Canadian off his throne.

The song was the subject of an eight part podcast in 2020 which raised the possibility that the song was written by or connected to the CIA. What?! The premise goes that the CIA may have wanted to engender anti Soviet Union sentiment by utilising pop culture and the result was the writing of this people unifying, Cold War busting anthem. I haven’t heard the podcast but it’s an interesting theory and all. However, I get the impression it involves lots of internet rabbit holes and reminds me of all those conspiracy theorists out there who believe that Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash in 1966 and replaced with a lookalike as the Beatles obsessed nation couldn’t have handled the truth. I’m not buying either story.

This week the album chart feature is fulfilled by Paul Young whose Best Of collection “From Time to Time – The Singles Collection” is at No 5 this week. I’m guessing that neither Paul nor his record label Columbia could have foreseen the album going straight in at No 1 and being certified triple platinum but that’s exactly what happened. To be fair to Paul, it was a quality package filled with substantial hits from 1983 to the present (i.e. 1991) plus four newly recorded tracks one of which was this cover of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over“. I’d bought the original back in 1987 and although Paul’s version is inferior, he does a decent job of it all the same.

The performance here is interesting with Paul sat down for the duration and strumming a guitar! Don’t think I’d ever seen him do that before or indeed knew he could play. And isn’t that Paul Carrack on keyboards once of Ace, Squeeze and Mike + The Mechanics? It is you know. Bizarrely, Carrack had shared lead vocal duties with another Paul Young whilst in Mike Rutherford’s Genesis offshoot project but this one was the ex lead singer of Sad Café who passed away in 2000 rather than the singer of such hits as “Love of the Common People”, “Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home)” and “Everytime You Go Away”.

Paul’s version of “Don’t Dream It’s Over” peaked at No 20.

Mark Franklin goes in for another interview about tour dates when he grills Paul Young about his forthcoming Xmas tour and then we’re into the Breakers starting with Ce Ce Peniston and “Finally”. Hang on – I thought this was in the charts much later than this and after she’d had already had a hit with a track called “We Got a Love Thang”

*checks officialcharts.com*

Yes I was right…and wrong. It was a much bigger hit (No 2) when re-released in March of ’92 after “We Got A Love Thang” had been a Top 10 hit at the start of the year. I had completely forgotten that “Finally” was also a No 26 hit in ’91. The track has routinely featured in various publications and music stations polls usually called something like The Biggest 90’s Dance Anthems of All Time etc and was also a huge smash in the US where it peaked at No 5. There was also a parent album called “Finally” which also performed well in the UK peaking at No 10.

I always quite liked it and much preferred it to “We Got a Love Thang”. It was kept off the top spot in ’92 by another long running No 1 song – Shakespears Sister’s “Stay”.

The second Breaker comes from Moby with “Go”. As with Ce Ce Peniston, I get a little confused over the chart history of this one. Various sources say that it was either released in March ’91 or July of that year – either way, it took a long time then for it to get into the Top 40. Maybe it was a sleeper hit, big in the clubs but not being played on mainstream radio?

The track was originally the B-side to Moby’s debut single from the previous year “Mobility” but was remixed with added samples from the obligatory Jocelyn Brown (the ‘yeah’ bit) and David Lynch’s mystery-horror TV series Twin Peaks and it would eventually (ahem) go Top 10. It wasn’t really my cup of tea although I would end up working with someone at Our Price who adored Moby well before his record-busting “Play” album of 1999 (which I did succumb to buying).

The clip that we see on TOTP of the kaleidoscopic video for the track was pretty standard dance tune fare and gave no idea to the identity of Moby who would turn out to be a little bald headed American bloke (although he does feature if you watch the whole promo).

Oh, it’s one of those TOTP performances that get talked up as memorable but was it actually any good? I refer to Monty Python and “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”. I say Monty Python but it’s really just Eric Idle surrounded by what seemed to be a cast of thousands but was in fact a few blokes in Python-esque housewife fancy dress and a fake band. I guess it’s quite well choreographed with various explosions, instruments being broken and parts of the set falling down (hopefully the Health & Safety risk assessment was rigorous) and Idle does a good job of leading us all through it (and the studio audience through the set) but was it that funny?! That walk through the studio reminded me of similar performances by Adam Ant for “Goody Two Shoes” and that time Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes To Hollywood took a stroll to relieve the boredom of miming to “Two Tribes” on the show for the ninth (?) time. In all honesty, I preferred Adam and Holly’s excursions. The taxi at the end to whisk Idle away brought to mind Blur in that milk float at the start of the TOTP in the week of the legendary Blur v Oasis chart battle.

“Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” went all the way to No 3 whilst the re-release of the “Monty Python Sings” album off the back of it peaked at No 62.

And it’s STILL there at No 1 – Bryan Adams records a 15th consecutive week at the top of the charts with “(Everything I Do ) I Do It For You”. Bryan must have got a taste for doing songs for film soundtracks as he would record three more before the decade was out – “All for Love” (with Rod Stewart and Sting) reached No 2 in the UK charts in 1994 from the film The Three Musketeers whilst “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” a year later from Don Juan DeMarco peaked at No 4. A final soundtrack song was recorded with Barbara Streisand in 1996 called “I Finally Found Someone” from her The Mirror Has Two Faces movie. Into the new millennium, he recorded “Here I Am” for the DreamWorks animation film Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron. I don’t think I liked any of them.

Just before the closing credits, Eric Idle returns to pie presenters Mark Franklin and Tony Dortie in the face. A watching nation cheered him on.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Slade	Radio Wall Of Sound	Nope
2	Enya	Caribbean Blue	No
3	Lisa Stansfield	Change	Yes! Well, it’s in my singles box but I think my wife bought it actually.
4	U2	The Fly	Yes! Two on the trot! When was the last time that happened?
5	Dannii Minogue	Baby Love	This was never going to complete a hat-trick of purchases – no
6	Scorpions	Wind Of Change	Nah
7	Paul Young	Don’t Dream It’s Over	No but I bought his Best Of album with it on
8	Ce Ce Pensiton	Finally	I did not
9	Moby	Go	Go? No.
10	Monty Python	Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life	Never happening
11	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do ) I Do It For You”	Negative

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/m0010rl4/top-of-the-pops-17101991

TOTP 03 OCT 1991

Posted on October 20, 2021 by 80stastic

For the first time in what seems like forever, the stars have aligned and the BBC4 TOTP repeats and therefore the TOTP Rewind blog is in sync with the real world! Yes, it is October in 2021 and we have finally entered October in 1991. Come the broadcast of the repeats next Friday, we will almost be in exact parallel to the day with 30 years ago.

For now though, it isn’t exact timings that preoccupies the world of TOTP but the ‘year zero’ revamp. The 03 October 1991 show brought about the biggest changes to the show’s format in years. Radio 1 DJs as hosts? Gone! Paul Hardcastle’s “The Wizard” theme tune that had soundtracked the show’s opening credits for the last 5 and a half years? Gone! Indeed, said opening credit graphics? Gone! The option to mime to a backing track? Gone! Acts had to sing live from hereon in. Even the set was new with the show having been shifted from BBC Television Centre in London to BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood. All of these changes were the brainchild of incoming new producer Stanley Appel whose associations with the programme extended back to 1966 through various roles as cameraman, production assistant, director and stand-in producer. Despite his long standing connections with the show, I’d have to say ‘talk about a new broom’!

The concept behind all these changes was to make the show appear ‘cool’ again and install within in it a sense of it being fit for purpose as a music show reflecting the trends and taste of youth. So why get in someone who had been kicking around the show for the past 25 years? Appel was 58 at the time of being put in charge of the show! 58! That’s even five tears older than I am now and I am sooo middle aged!Given all of the above, could the new format work work? Did it succeed? Let’s see what happened in the very first show in this new era of TOTP…

Yeah well, straight off the bat I wasn’t keen on the new theme tune which was composed by somebody called Tony Gibber (who?). At least the previous theme tune was written by a bona fide pop star. Tony Gibber sounds like the name of a weatherman on local radio. In all of the online polls I have seen as to the best ever TOTP theme tune, nothing comes close to “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin and certainly not Tony Gibber’s effort! As for the new graphics, it looks like they were trying just a little but too hard to prove that this was the show for the kids and that new dance music they liked by having silhouetted figures dancing in…what was that supposed to be ? A generic warehouse setting seems most likely (it was actually The London Museum of Water & Steam). Meanwhile, the new metallic logo was widely ridiculed as looking like a weather vane.

Once all of that was out of the way, instead of the usual grinning fizzog of the host doing a to camera intro, we get a disembodied voice introducing the first act who are Erasure with their single “Love To Hate You”. I guess it was a solid and sensible choice of act to open the new look TOTP. Vince and Andy were in their imperial phase and the song itself is an upbeat number to help set the mood for the show. Andy seems to have come wearing striped, sleeveless pyjamas but it’s the backing dancers who cause you to gawp the most as they appear to be be dressed as four fortune tellers (possibly called Madame Zelda). Not sure what that was all about but someone should have asked them to look into a crystal ball to ask if this new TOTP format would be a success or not. Definitely a success was “Love To Hate You” which would become one of the duo’s biggest ever hits when it peaked at No 4.

Finally we get to see the new presenters who this week are Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin. Dortie had first been seen on 24-hour cable and satellite television channel Music Box before moving onto work for Children’s BBC on a show called UP2U which I think was meant to be a hip version of Blue Peter. If so, Dortie’s recruitment would tally with the strategy of trying to update the show’s image to be more ‘cool’. Mark Franklin was just 17 at the time of his elevation to national TV having previously worked on BBC Wiltshire Sound. By the end of his time on the show, Franklin would have presented more TOTP episodes than the likes of Bruno Brookes and Mark Goodier but that stint has hardly made him a household name I would argue. Still, they both seemed keen and enthusiastic although neither actually introduce themselves preferring to allow the on screen text below them to tell us their names. Dortie then gives some blather about the show going to reflect the changing trends in the UK music scene before saying something unintelligible about the Top 10. Here come those what Tony? I’ve rewound this a number times and still can’t understand what he’s saying. Being a mumbler is probably not great if you’re a TV presenter!

The Top 10 countdown then appears on our screens with nothing but the new theme tune playing over it. There’s not even any voiceover announcing the songs. It just looks weird. Back in the mid 80s the producers introduced a video Top 10 which played snippets of every song. This is like that but you can’t hear the actual songs! They even just throw away the No 1 reveal within the first five minutes of the show but then it is only Bryan Adams for the 13th week in a row so I guess there wasn’t much of an element of surprise anyway.

Then we’re onto the next act which is again in the new studio and its Voice Of The Beehive with “I Think I Love You”. I’m just putting this out there right now – I always liked this lot. A bit like a poppier B52s. Good songs and an enthusiastic delivery which is exactly what they give here. As markers for what we could expect from the new show, Erasure and Voice Of The Beehive weren’t bad choices at all.

Of course, “I Think I Love You” wasn’t actually a Voice Of The Beehive song and was in fact originally by The Partridge Family. I was just a little bit too young to remember this fictional family group that, like the Monkees before them, went on to have real life pop hits. Their TV show aired between 1970 and 1974 (so when I was between the ages of two and six) but it made a superstar out of David Cassidy who played eldest son Keith. “I Think I Love You” was The Partridge Family’s first hit peaking at No 1 in the US and No 18 over here.

The legacy of the song was strengthened by the reference to it in this clip from the film Four Weddings And A Funeral. A marvellously written speech expertly delivered in Hugh Grant’s characteristic bumbling, self deprecating style…

Although Voice Of The Beehive’s version would peak at a lowly No 25, I think they turn what many might see as a cheesy 70s pop song into a bouncy, jump-around-your-living-room radio friendly hit and it was a great choice of cover for them. Sadly, they would only have one more Top 40 UK hit and the band split after 1996 album “Sex And Misery” failed to chart. They still play the odd reunion gig and have a healthy community of fans on Facebook.

We go into the next studio artist with just a voice over link. As the camera switches stages to the new act you can see him awkwardly clapping along to Voice Of The Beehive. This just isn’t working for me. Is it meant to be seamless? It just looks awkward. That next act is Kenny Thomas or ‘Ke-aaaaarnny Thomas’ as Tony Dortie pronounces his name. Dortie seemed to do this sort of thing a lot as I recall, playing up to his London roots and regularly used phrases like ‘Peace out’, ‘Laterz’ and ‘Respect’. Sometimes he used to mix it up and say ‘Laterz. Much laterz!’. Was he encouraged to do it so as to try and up the show’s hip credentials? I wasn’t a fan.

As for dear old Kenny, “Best Of You” was his third consecutive hit of ’91 and like his first hit “Outstanding”, was actually a cover version. It was written by Booker T. Jones of Booker T. & the M.G.’s back in 1980 but, like “I Think I Love You” / Voice Of The Beehive earlier, it was a pretty good choice of song for Kenny to cover. Not that I liked it of course, I had an irrational dislike of Kenny back then, but the song fitted in with the brand of UK soul he was peddling.

I have since apologised in this blog for my aversion to Kenny as he seems like a very decent guy and has suffered some pretty horrendous stuff in his private life with his four year old daughter being diagnosed with a brain tumour. In the last week, Kenny himself was hospitalised with COVID and was very unwell. Thankfully he has recovered enough to be allowed to return home but he has had to cancel the 30th anniversary tour of the release of his debut album “Voices” as a result. That album was released eleven days after this TOTP performance so no doubt Kenny would have been on the promotional trail this time 30 years ago. Unlike Erasure, Kenny ‘s promotional budget could only afford a lone dancer up there on stage with him and you have to feel sorry for her as she seems to be freestyling desperately. “Best Of You” peaked at No 11.

Remember when TOTP presenters used to occasionally produce incongruous interviews out of nowhere with some of the acts on the show. I can recall The Police and Genesis being asked some truly mindless questions up on the gantry by the likes of Steve Wright for no good reason. Then of course there’s this from 1982. Was Debbie in on the joke or not?

Well, the interviews are back as Mark Franklin takes to the stage himself to chat to the next act who is Belinda Carlisle who is here to perform her new single “Live Your Life Be Free“. Before that though, Franklin starts meandering about how the show can now play any song from the US Top 10 now if it wants to …except they’re not going to as there are no British acts in the US Top 10 that week! WTF?! Why make a big deal of a new feature and then not actually, you know, do the feature? Plus, why did the act in the US chart have to be British? Surely the point was to play something that wasn’t in our charts anyway?! Madness.

Franklin is undeterred though and uses the fact that Belinda is American to shift from the US charts (where she hasn’t had Top 10 hit for three years) to her performance. All we get out of Belinda is the name of her new album (same as the single) and when it’s out. I guess that is the point of her performing on the show in the first place but none of this was really making any sense. Also nonsensical was Belinda’s decision to perform the song whilst wearing what appear to be marigold washing up gloves. To say it’s a live vocal (supposedly), I don’t think Belinda’s notoriously warbly and derided vocals sound too bad.

Oh and whilst we’re talking about promotional tools, check out the guy on guitar in the Monty Python T-shirt. Surely this was a deliberate plant by Virgin to advertise the fact that Monty Python’s “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” song had been released as a single and is in the charts and on the show later. “Live Your Life Be Free” (the single) peaked at No 12.

Next, Tony Dortie emerges from the throng of the studio audience to announce another innovative feature of the new format as he promises us “exclusive videos from all the big stars”. Brilliant! So who’s first then Tony? “Fun Day” by Steve Wonder? Obviously Steve is a legend of music but this song? Never heard of it! Taken from the soundtrack album (all Stevie originals) for Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever, the single peaked at No 63. whilst the album fared little better with a high of No 56 in the UK. Given that Stevie’s last UK hit had been three years earlier (and even that was a duet with Julio Iglesias) and that his reputation had taken a big hit after the colossal turd that was “I Just Called to Say I Love You”, were UK kids that bothered about Stevie’s latest song? I know, I know – his 70s stuff is fantastic but his 80s and 90s work? Maybe it was the Spike Lee connection that made Stanley Appel think it was a good idea. Hip film director making gritty urban movies. That’s giving the kids what they want. I wonder who else will show up in this feature?

The video prompted lots of online comments about the fact that it appears to depict Steve driving a car despite his blindness though none of the tweets I saw had the wherewithal to paraphrase the title of one of his 80s dud singles “Don’t Drive Drunk” to “Don’t Drive Blind”.

Oh God! Mark Franklin is back with another cringeworthy interview. This time his victim is Julian Lennon who is asked about why he wrote eco-anthem “Saltwater”. To be fair, Julian’s answer (“In my view the world has a bit of a problem because of us and I think we need to do something about it”) resonates even more loudly today and had we listened more to what he and others like him were saying 30 years ago, maybe we would be looking at a better world future. After nearly tumbling over his keyboards, Julian gives us a run through of his song which prompted a lot of undeserved ‘he’s just imitating his father’ type comments on Twitter. He can’t help the genetics he was born with. Although not a riveting performance, it does include a nice bit of slide guitar. Not sure he needed all that dry ice though and was that the best way to advertise his green credentials?

Meanwhile, in a BBC office somewhere, a few days before this broadcast:

Stuffy but very important BBC boss: Stanley! How’s the new look TOTP going? Got some good artists booked for the very first show of this exciting new era?

Stanley Appel: Oh yes! We’ve got Erasure and Voice Of The Beehive and Kenny Thomas…

Stuffy but very important BBC boss: OK sounds…erm…good. Who else?

Stanley Appel: Julian Lennon…

Stuffy but very important BBC boss: Not that hippy! Never could stand his farther either!

Stanley Appel: Oh…sorry…but the final act in the studio is a huge name!

Stuffy but very important BBC boss: Excellent! Whitney Houston? Madonna? If the next word that comes out of your mouth is ‘Bros’ I’m not going to be happy Stanley…

Stanley Appel: No, they’re huge I promise! Think Live Aid…

Stuffy but very important BBC boss: Not the f*****g Boomtown Rats?!!

Stanley Appel: No, think about it. We’ve got a brand new show the likes of which the world has never been seen before…just like Live Aid…and who opened Live Aid?

Stuffy but very important BBC boss: The Prince and Princess of Wales?! You’ve got Charles and Diana? Not just pop royalty, the actual Royal Family. That’s amazing Stanley. Unbelievable. Well done!

Stanley Appel: No, it’s Status Quo

*tumbleweed*

Stuffy but very important BBC boss: Tony…YOU’RE FIRED!!!

Status Quo?! STATUS “F*****G QUO?! That’s who Appel decided would be a good act to help relaunch TOTP and convince the nation’s youth that they were still a credible music show reflecting new and emerging trends?! In what universe was that a good decision?! This unfathomable choice is passed off as acceptable by use of a graphic that indicates that the Quo are included on the show as part of the album chart feature (their latest release “Rock ’til You Drop” is at No 10) but I doubt many of the watching audience were buying that – the reason for their inclusion I mean and not the album; clearly some people must have bought the album with it being at No 10 and all.

The band give us a horrible version of that old rhythm and blues standard “Let’s Work Together” made famous by Canned Heat (and later as “Let’s Stick Together” by Bryan Ferry) but just look at them! Francis Rossi is wearing a leather jacket over a collar and tie and jeans with a pair of black leather shoes! It’s just all kinds of wrong. And check out bass player John “Rhino” Edwards’ shaggy hair! Who had hair like that in 1991? Even Tony Dortie’s voice over intro is wrong as he says that the’ve had 25 hit albums but Wikipedia tells me that “Rock ’til You Drop”is their 20th studio album – unless he was including Best Ofs or live albums in that figure? Oh, who cares? This was just dire. In fact, I think the terminally uncool Dire Straits would have been a ‘cooler’ choice than Status Quo. Horrible.

They’ve retained the Breakers section for now but there’s only two acts in it this week as opposed to the four that have been crammed into this feature recently. First off is DJ Carl Cox with “I Want You (Forever)“. I have to admit that I didn’t think of Carl Cox as having hits under his own name but rather as a legendary remixer of other people’s tunes and a ‘superstar DJ’ which is probably why I don’t remember this track at all. That and the fact that I’m not really a dance head anyway so it probably just passed me by completely. As you can imagine, there’s lot of samples included here but I don’t know any of the original tracks so I’m not going to linger around here any longer.

As mentioned earlier, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” by Monty Python was in the charts and we all know who was to blame when a novelty record got into the charts around this time. No, not Timmy Mallett (for once) but Radio1 DJ Simon Mayo. Using his breakfast show to promote them, he’d already made unlikely hits out of “Kinky Boots” by Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman and “Donald Where’s Yer Troosers?” by Andy Stewart and now was at it again.

I can’t recall exactly why the irritating little tit decided he would turn his attention to the closing song from Monty Python’s Life Of Brian but turn it he did and so it came to pass that “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” would finally become a hit. It was originally released as a single to coincide with the film’s opening in 1979 but failed to chart. It was re-released in 1988 to help promote the film’s release on VHS but once again it flopped. Mayo clearly thought he had the golden touch by now and I guess he did when he inspired its re-release by Virgin and it became a No 3 hit. Thinking about it, was it intentional by Mayo to try and launch a campaign to knock Bryan Adams off the top spot and somehow make himself out as ‘the saviour of music’ in his eyes? I wouldn’t put it past the smug git.

Now I love Life Of Brian the film and a school mate taped the soundtrack for me when it first came out but did we need to have its most famous song in the charts in 1991? I don’t think we did. Its renewed popularity has led to it being voted the most popular song to be requested to be played at UK funerals in a 2014 poll by The Co-operative Funeralcare. It has also been taken up as a crowd favourite at sporting events and was sung by Eric Idle at the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics.

We end with the No 1 and it’s still “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams. How Stanley Appel must have been hoping and wishing with his whole being that there would be a new No 1 to coincide with new format of TOTP. Out with the old and in with the new and all that. The UK record buying public weren’t having that though and were still purchasing it in massive quantities. Tony Dortie is sat at a drum kit for no discernible reason before Mark Franklin does his intro sat behind Julian Lennon’s keyboards and what an intro. It’s totally non -sensical:

“Now 13 weeks ago, who would have thought 13 weeks later he would still have been No 1 but he is for the 13th week breaking all records it’s Bryan Adams…”

So that’s 13 weeks – got that everyone? That intro doesn’t make any grammatical sense does it?

There’s no play out video only the credits soundtracked by the new theme tune (just like with the Top 10 countdown) but of course there’s always time for a ‘”Laterz!” from Tony Dortie.

So what did we think of the new format? I can’t recall what my opinion was at the time of its original broadcast but watching it back 30 years later, it was a right old shambles.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Erasure	Love To Hate You	No but I have it on their first Best Of Pop!
2	Voice Of The Beehive	I Think I Love You	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	Kenny Thomas	Best Of You	Obviously not
4	Belinda Carlisle	Live Your Live Be Free	Nope
5	Steve Wonder	Fun Day	No
6	Julian Lennon	Saltwater	See 2 above
7	Status Quo	Let’s Work Together	F**k right off!
8	DJ Carl Cox	I Want You (Forever)	Not my bag at all
9	Monty Python	Always Look On The Bright Side of Life	Negative
10	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It for You	I did not

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/m0010k2p/top-of-the-pops-03101991

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 12 SEP 1991

Posted on October 10, 2021 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 2 – 3 – 4

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

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

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

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

*checks internet*

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

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

“The Big L.” peaked at No 21.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Makin’ Happy” peaked at No 18.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*checks internet*

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

TOTP 06 SEP 1991

Posted on October 6, 2021 by 80stastic

CORRECTION: In the post relating to the TOTP broadcast on 22 Aug 1991, I mistakenly reported that this was Bruno Brookes’ last ever appearance as a host on the show as he was removed along with all the other Radio 1 DJ presenters in the ‘year zero’ revamp. I also stated that we would see valedictory appearances by Mark Goodier, Jakki Brambles, Simon Mayo, Nicky Campbell and Gary Davies in the following weeks. Whilst it was true that the above names were replaced by a batch of new presenters from Oct 1991 onwards, it has been brought to my attention that four of those six would return to the TOTP family in 1994 as the year zero revamp was reversed. Only Gary Davies and Jakki Brambles did not reappear. Consequently, my claim about the show not being presented again by Bruno Brookes, Mark Goodier, Simon Mayo and Nicky Campbell is not true although we won’t be seeing them for over two years. Thank you to Matthew James for pointing this out.

Right, now that’s cleared up, I can say that this show was Jakki Brambles final TOTP appearance. Jakki always gave off the impression to me that she was quite disinterested in all this pop music lark and I never found her that convincing as a host. She also seemed to have an issue with the temperature in the TOTP studio with many a Winter coat being worn when surely it must have been boiling under those hot studio lights. She emigrated to the US in 1994, changed the spelling of her name to ‘Jackie’ and stayed there for eleven years as a news radio morning anchor and occasional television news anchor for the CBS network. She returned to the UK in 2005 and presented Loose Women until 2009 and owns her own digital media business called Broadstance Digital Media Production. She currently works on Greatest Hits Radio which seems to be some sort of retirement home for ex Radio 1 DJs as their roster also includes, yes you guessed it, Simon Mayo and Mark Goodier alongside other ‘star’ names as Andy Crane (has no brain) and Pat Sharp.

Right on with the show as we have 14 (FOURTEEN) songs to get through in this one. We start with Oceanic and “Insanity”. I’m pretty sure that this one would have been labelled as a ‘banger’ back then (and maybe even today). A huge anthem, it started life on a short run promo 12″ sending crowds of North-West ravers erm…insane.. whenever it was played. Inevitably, it was picked up for a wider commercial release by Dead Dead Good records and would go on to spend four months on the Top 40 and three months in the Top 10 including three weeks at No 3. Could it have made it to No 1 if that Bryan Adams song had never been released? Possibly although it would probably have got stuck at No 2 behind Right Said Fred. We’ll never know. What I do know however, is that around this time, rave music seemed to be taking over the world or at least the UK anyway. Just about anything that was a ‘dance’ track seemed to attract the ‘rave’ label. Oceanic obviously came under that umbrella but there were also Bassheads (from the same neck of the woods as it happened), K-Klass, Bizarre Inc, Altern 8 etc. Predictably, the scene became homogenised when all these club anthems started to be lumped together on compilation albums like Virgin’s “The Ultimate Rave”. Was that the point where it all started to go wrong? Look, when it comes to dance music, I freely admit that I don’t really know what I’m talking about despite having spent the majority of the 90s working in record shops.

As for Oceanic, despite two further Top 40 hits, they were never able to move on from the success of “Insanity” but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for the band. Back in 2012, in an interview with The Liverpool Echo in a piece about the reopening of a Liverpool nightclub called The State where the band were due to play a set, singer Jorinde Williams said:

“I love getting the metaphorical rave horn out now and again and singing Insanity. It still gives me shivers to see a crowd of grinning, dancing strangers singing back these words I wrote 20 years ago, and that it means something to them.”

The metaphorical rave horn?! That either sounds like something very rude or a band that did a session for John Peel in 1993.

Talking of rave, this next lot were also one of the acts that must have featured on that “The Ultimate Rave” compilation. The Prodigy were up to No 3 by this point with their Public Information Films themed hit “Charly”. Famously sampling the 1973 cut out animation warning children of the dangers of strangers, falling in the water, matches etc via the characters of a boy called Tony and his ginger cat, I notice that the spelling of the cat’s name originally was ‘Charley’ but The Prodigy dropped an ‘e’ (ahem) for the title of their single. That must have been deliberate and an in joke within the band surely?!

Sonia was still having hits into the Autumn of 1991?! That was over two years since her Stock, Aitken and Waterman produced No 1 single “You’ll Never Stop Me Loving You”! In the intervening period she’d eked out a further six hits all of which had gone Top 20. Clearly Sonia wasn’t going to give up on this pop star lark easily. “Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy” however would break that run of Top 20 singles when it peaked just outside at No 22. Our Sonia’s got a band of seven up there on stage with her to deliver the song but no amount of hired hands can distract from the notion that this seemed so incongruous with the rest of the contemporary charts acts. A rave anthem this was not! However, it was a firm favourite amongst the Northern Soul scene – no not Sonia’s version obviously but the version by The Tams which was a minor UK hit in 1970.

Looking at Sonia’s discography (not something I would have thought I would ever be doing) I can see that she still has another three Top 40 entries stretching into 1993 to get through before her well of chart hits finally ran dry. However, two of those were more cover versions and the final one was the UK’s Eurovision entry – so much for Jakki Brambles comment about ‘self-penned tunes’ on Sonia’s second album called …erm…”Sonia” that was released a month after this TOTP appearance. Jakki also refers to her as ‘a good old girl’ at the song’s end. She was 20 when this show was broadcast!

It’s the video for “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt ‘N Pepa next. In a Rolling Stone magazine article in 2017, Salt (Cheryl James) made the distinction that:

“The song was about talking about sex. The song was not about sex. The song was about communication and talking about a subject that nobody wants to talk about”

Pepa (Sandra Denton) added:

“It wasn’t a dirty song. It was an enlightenment song”

So powerful was the song’s message that it was re-worked in 1992 to help promote discussions about AIDS and HIV. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

At the suggestion of ABC News anchor Peter Jennings (who heard his daughter listening to the song), Salt-N-Pepa later reworked "Let’s Talk About Sex" as "Let's Talk About AIDS" for 1992 ABC special Growing Up In The Age Of AIDS. Watch it here: https://t.co/fq1Qt9wbXx #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 1, 2021

However, the song has also been used in a much more light hearted way. After Liverpool had secured their sixth European Cup when winning the Champions League in 2019, manager Jurgen Klopp was so overjoyed that he couldn’t help bursting into a rendition of it with the lyrics altered to reflect his club’s achievement. Someone then mixed it with the original track and….

In direct contrast to Sonia earlier with her seven piece backing band packing out the stage, here’s Zoë with with just a sole guitarist for company as she performs her hit “Sunshine On A Rainy Day”. Was Zoë’s style of dancing a thing back then? You know, feet rooted to the floor with the arms supplying all the movement? I guess Susanne and Joanne from The Human League made a 40 year career out of a similar thing.

As the track is coming to an end there’s a shot where you can see Jakki Brambles in place to do the next link in the gantry. What surprised me was that she isn’t even looking at the stage as Zoë is still performing. Look I know she had a job to do but it’s a good 20 seconds before the camera actually comes to her. Remember earlier when I said Jakki always seemed disinterested in the whole pop music thing…? “Good to see that one in the charts at long last” she tells us as she segues into the next act. Well, you didn’t see it Jakki, you weren’t even looking in the right direction! “Sunshine On A Rainy Day” peaked at No 4.

So that next act is Martika with the video for “Love…Thy Will Be Done”. As Jakki tells us, her latest album “Martika’s Kitchen” (terrible, terrible title) has four songs on it that were co-written with Prince including the current single which I think we were all meant to take on board as meaning that she was leaving her pop past behind and becoming a serious artist.

We also knew this because the accompanying video was shot in black and white, that classic trick to ensure that we understood what we were watching had some gravitas to it. No pop fluff this you know. When I was a student at Sunderland Poly we had to make a video short for one of the modules and my group employed the black and white tactic for ours. The point we wanted to make though was that black and white meant dull and boring before the film came alive with the introduction of colour. Out of our way Federico Fellini! Our video was entitled Wet Dream but it’s not what you might think. The black and white footage had a guy called Ian falling asleep in a particularly dull lecture before he went into a dream in colour where he is kidnapped and thrown into a swimming pool. As he awakes from his dream back in black and white he is soaking wet. Genius! We were all do pleased with ourselves! Ah, the folly of youth. I must get around to uploading it one day. “Love…Thy Will Be Done” peaked at No 9.

Meanwhile back in the studio we find some more ravers in Utah Saints with a guy up front on bass guitar looking like what I’m sure Boris Johnson (but not me) would describe as a ‘crusty’. Their performance of “What Can You Do For Me” illustrates perfectly the issues TOTP was facing with showcasing this new fangled rave music. There are no vocals apart from the short samples from Gwen Guthrie, Eurythmics and an intro from a Kiss concert. That leaves the four members of the band having to fill the time somehow. So we have the aforementioned bass player strutting about, a drummer, someone on keyboards and a DJ scratching like his life depending on it. No wonder the show’s producers decided to pad it out with some images from the promo video. To be fair, the track was good enough to not be undermined by the performance and would go up the charts the following week.

Jakki Brambles’ comment on Utah Saints? “They’re a good bunch of lads”. Hang on didn’t she say something similar about Sonia? Yes she did (“ a good old girl”). Presumably this was her default style of phrases she would go to to fill time. A bit like a Tory politician being asked a difficult question and replying “I don’t accept your characterisation of ***”.

Kylie Minogue is up next adding to the female pop star count for this show. We’ve already had Sonia, Zoë, Martika, Salt ‘N Pepa plus Oceanic fronted by Jorinde Williams and now here’s Kylie with her latest single “Word Is Out”. As Jakki says it was her fourteenth consecutive hit but it was also the first to fail to reach the Top 10. Were UK pop fans getting bored of her? No I don’t think so – it was just a shit song. Really weak. It was the lead single from her fourth and final album with Stock, Aitken and Waterman and she seemed to be a bit lost in this stage of her career. Maybe she was just finding her feet in the creative process (she shared song writing credits on six of the tracks). The album had a mixed reception both critically and commercially (it also failed to make the Top 10, her first album to do so). Very much a forgotten Kylie single (when was the last time you heard it on the radio?), its failure to rack up massive sales wasn’t due to a lack of effort on Kylie’s part as she gives the usual energetic performance here, crammed full of more dance moves than Zoë could wave her arms at. That would all be gone come her next single though which (psst… pass it on) was a big R’n’B ballad with Keith Washington. The word was out.

This is totally unfair! Just six minutes left of the show and they cram in another six songs in that time! My poor fingers! This is due to there being four Breakers this week starting with Mötley Crüe with a song called “Primal Scream”. What? I’d rather that sentence read Primal Scream with a song called “Motley Crue”.

This blog appears to have gone umlaut crazy. After the nonsense of the Marc Bölan story the other week and the appearance tonight of Zoë, we have the LA hair metallers with a single to promote their first Greatest Hits album. Hang on, what hits? They’d had just three Top 40 entries before this in the UK and none had hit higher than No 23. To be fair, they were more successful in the US where they’d had six including two Top 10s but I’m not about to let something like the truth get in the way of a petty swipe at them! According to the band’s Nikki Sixx, the song was written about Arthur Janov’s 1970 book The Primal Scream. Yeah, maybe or maybe they just stole the idea off Tears For Fears who named themselves after said book. “Primal Scream” the Mötley Crüe song kept their run of UK singles that failed to breach the Top 20 going when it peaked at No 26.

Another dance anthem now. Sabrina Johnston may only be known for this single “Peace” in this country but she’s not without musical pedigree. She toured with The Sugar Hill Gang in the 80s and was signed to Sugar Hill Records as part of West Street Mob so you know…respect and all. “Peace” was just a huge, uplifting chunk of positivity in the form of a gospel -ish dance track that was written during the Gulf War as an antidote to the feelings of dread and horror that conflict engendered. It was a tune! Peaking at No 8, it returned to the charts the following year as a double A-side with a remix of “Gypsy Woman” by Crystal Waters to promote the “Red, Hot + Dance” charity album.

Talking of whom….now I would have laid money on Crystal Waters having been a one hit wonder but no as here she is with the follow up to No 2 hit “Gypsy Woman” with a song called “Makin’ Happy”. I didn’t much care for her first hit and this one wasn’t going to do it for me either seeing as it was very much in the same mould – indeed it was described as ‘Gypsy Woman, Part II’ in some of the music press. Even in this short clip it just seemed so damn repetitive. Her discography tells me that she had nine Top 40 hits in this country. NINE?!! Don’t panic though, I don’t think we’ll be seeing her again until these TOTP repeats hit 1994 (assuming that they carry on that long).

Roxette complete the Breakers with the third single from their third studio album “Joyride” called “The Big L.” (no punctuation after the ‘L’ , no points). It’s a bit bland this one and it really reminds me of another song (who said anything else by Roxette?!) but I can’t put my finger on it. An ABBA song maybe?It wasn’t released in the US for some reason – not sure why their American record company wouldn’t have had faith in it given their last seven singles released there had peaked at:

1 – 14 – 1 – 2 – 1 – 1 – 2

Now, remember that guy who interviews Jurgen Klopp in that ‘Let’s Talk About Six’ video. Well, his name is Jan Åge Fjørtoft (the theme was umlauts Jan not…whatever they are) who is an ex-professional footballer who turned out for Swindon Town, Middlesbrough, Sheffield United and Barnsley in this country but that’s neither here nor there. Look at him again. He could be the guy in Roxette surely?

OK, what week are we onto now with Bryan Adams and “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”? Nine? Ten? I’m struggling for any more content on this song now. What has @TOTPFacts got for me…

Sorry, I'm now considering this part of the show a tea break until the 16 weeks are over. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 1, 2021

Oh, great, thanks very much! Balls! Well, in a Smash Hits interview (Bryan was not only in the magazine but on the front cover -who’d have thought it?!) he was asked:

Are you mightily chuffed with the single then?

His reply was:

“You could say that”

Bryan Adams there with a magnificently downbeat show of being chuffed about something that has only been matched by David Batty when he was interviewed in Lee Chapmans’ house in Boroughbridge when Leeds Utd won the league in 1992. Asked how he felt about the achievement he replied:

“Well, it’s a bonus”.

Who’s this? Runrig? Oh yes, I remember them. Like a celtic Dire Straits weren’t they? Too glib? OK, well “The Hearthammer EP” was their first Top 40 hit despite having been around since 1973 and as I recall they were a very popular live draw. Indeed, there are almost as many live Runrig albums as studio albums. To prove the point, the video shows the band playing what seems to be a massive outdoor gig. The single was taken from an album called “The Big Wheel” which went gold in the UK. This really does sound like Dire Straits though.

And that’s it from Jakki Brambles. Her comment at the show’s end “Right, I’m off to the Darby and Joan Club” suggests maybe she knew she was for the bullet?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Oceanic	Insanity	I didn’t
2	The Prodigy	Charly	Nope
3	Sonia	Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy	As if
4	Salt ‘n Pepa	Let’s Talk About Sex	Liked it, didn’t buy it
5	Zoë	Sunshine On A Rainy Day	See 4 above
6	Martika	Love…Thy Will Be Done	Nope
7	Utah Saints	What Can You Do For Me	See 4 above
8	Kylie Minogue	Word Is Out	Nah
9	Mötley Crüe	Primal Scream	Never happening
10	Sabrina Johnston	Peace	See 4 above
11	Crystal Waters	Makin’ Happy	Soundin’ crappy more like – no
12	Roxette	The Big L.	F******g ‘ell more like – no
13	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	I did not
14	Runrig	The Hearthammer EP	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/m00103fv/top-of-the-pops-06091991

TOTP 29 AUG 1991

Posted on October 2, 2021 by 80stastic

The Summer of 1991 has nearly shed its last vestiges as we look towards the Autumn. And what happens in the Autumn? Yes, a new football season begins. Despite enduring years of disappointment, I still retained some small hope that 1991/92 might be the season when my beloved Chelsea actually win something. Back in the early 90s, we were a mid table side, we could beat the best one week and lose to the worst the next. We were consistently inconsistent. On the day this TOTP was broadcast, Chelsea signed a new player to help take us to the next level. There was just one problem. It was Vinnie Jones. The renowned hard man and one time member of Wimbledon’s ‘Crazy Gang’ was signed from Sheffield United for £575,000 and his main contribution that season was to break his own record for getting booked when he was cautioned for a tackle after just 3 seconds against his former club. Oh great.

Not only did Vinnie follow Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne so closely that he was infamously photographed grabbing him by the balls in 1988, he would also follow Gazza into a music career. For “Fog On The Tyne” read “Wooly Bully” which Jones recorded a version of in 1993. It failed to chart. Vinnie still thought he had a talent for singing though and in 2019 took part in The X Factor: Celebrity where he finished 6th out of 14 entries and performed covers of “I Fought The Law” and “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” by The Clash in Live Show 4 which is possibly the worst thing I have ever seen or heard…

Talking of ‘hard men’, this show starts off with someone who would make a name for himself as an actor playing some ‘tough guy’ roles along the way in flicks such as The Yards, Four Brothers and Shooter before branching out into lighter roles in Ted and Ted 2 and Instant Family. Back in 1991 though, he was more known as the brother of one of the guys in New Kids On The Block. It is of course Mark Wahlberg or as he was known in his pop career Marky Mark.

Having originally been involved in the NKOTB project but dropping out before they found fame, Wahlberg took his music career in a hip-hop direction with the creation of Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch and the decision brought immediate dividends with debut single “Good Vibrations” which was a huge global hit including being a US No 1 record. Nothing to do with the Beach Boys hit of the same name, this track instead based around “Love Sensation” by Loleatta Holloway which, of course, was famously sampled by Black Box for their mammoth No 1 “Ride On Time”. Had Wahlberg not heard that record before deciding to re-use its famous sample for his own track? He couldn’t have come up with something different? There was one difference between the records though and that was the acknowledgment of Loleatta Holloway who appears on stage here with Wahlberg. Presumably record label Interscope had taken note that Holloway had sued the heck out of Black Box for their uncredited use of her vocals and didn’t want to enter into litigation with such a formidable person.

The other thing that Wahlberg was known for back then was his pants or more precisely his Clavin Klein pants and his naked torso both on show in this performance. He would go onto star in Calvin Klein adverts the following year. Having watched them back, they really are quite repugnant.

“Good Vibrations” peaked at No 14 and was the only UK hit for Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch.

PM Dawn are next with “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” having slotted snuggly into the No 3 spot behind Right Said Fred and Bryan Adams. I had high hopes that they would displace both on its surge to a triumphant No 1 but in the end they made no inroads on either as both stood firm against the onslaught of dreamy, Spandau Ballet infused R&B.

The video features a very brief cameo by Spandau’s Tony Hadley at its denouement. Well, his band were totally inactive at the time so why not earn some extra cash? The director of said video was a guy called Mark Pellington who sounds like he should have been playing centre midfield for Sheffield Wednesday but who actually went on to produce promos for the likes of U2, Pearl Jam, INXS, REM and Public Enemy amongst a host of others.

As for their album that host Mark Goodier plugs in his intro, “Of The Heart, Of The Soul And Of The Cross: The Utopian Experience” would go gold in the UK and platinum in the US off the back fo the success of “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss”.

Apparently, after the death of the band’s Prince Be, remaining member DJ Minutemix re-recorded all the vocals of the band’s catalogue to ensure he got more royalty money and for a while they were the versions of the duo’s output that you could hear on Spotify. Didn’t Squeeze do a similar thing to get around the issue of their record label owning the rights to their back catalogue?

Back in the studio we find EMF with their latest single “Lies”. I know they weren’t a one hit wonder as some seemed to believe and could name maybe four of their singles at a push but this one has clearly escaped my memory banks. Listening to it now, the formula was starting to wear a bit thin. This really did sound like all their other songs with the exception of “Unbelievable”. Apparently this was the track they issued as a follow up to that single in the US as they skipped the UK follow up “I Believe” thinking it wasn’t right for the US market. I’d have to day that my mind really isn’t tuned in to the finer nuances between those two songs to have made such a distinction other than “Lies” has a very slight Spaghetti Western feel to it. As for Mark Goodier’s claim the the band had sold a million albums in the US, I can’t find anything online to corroborate that but certainly they were a big deal over there with “Unbelievable” going to No 1.

As well as being commercially successful across the pond, they also attracted controversy and notoriety surrounding the track “Lies”. Initial pressings of “Schubert Dip” originally had the song beginning with 8 seconds of a sample of the voice of John Lennon’s assassin, Mark Chapman, reciting the first two lines of the lyrics to Lennon’s “Watching the Wheels”. Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, objected to its inclusion and as a result all subsequent pressings of the album have omitted the sample. Apparently pressings that include it are very rare and much sought after. Not up there with the A&M pressing of “God Save The Queen” by The Sex Pistols a mint copy of which sold for £13,000 in 2019 maybe but worth keeping an eye out for all the same.

EMF would return with their second album “Stigma” in 1992 but it seriously under performed – it was only on the charts for two weeks while its predecessor reached No. 3 and charted for 19 weeks. It would take a link up with Vic Reeves for a cover of “I’m A Believer” by The Monkees to take them into the Top 3 one last time in 1995.

Now I don’t think I would ever have described Prince as a ‘tough guy’ but he certainly didn’t flinch when it came to courting controversy. “Gett Off” was the first single to be released under the public billing of Prince And The New Power Generation and was the lead single from the “Diamonds And Pearls” album. It was also filthy. So filthy in fact that it had to undergo a drastic edit before it could be shown on TOTP. So, the first line of the chorus “Gett off, twenty three positions in a one night stand” was deleted for starters. Next, the lyric “Now move your big ass ’round this way, so I can work on that zipper, baby” hadn’t a hope of making the cut and finally the couplet “She said you told her a fantasy, that got her all wet (wet)” was included but had the word ‘wet’ drowned out by …a woman moaning?! How did that work?! In the immediately preceding lyrics, Prince used the word ‘jizz’ that also got past the BBC censor so maybe they weren’t on top of their game that week. Or maybe they just didn’t know what the word ‘jazz’ meant? I know I once worked with someone who’s never heard of it before.

As for the sound of the song, I wasn’t that impressed at the time much preferring subsequent singles off the album “Cream”, “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night” and the title track. However, listening to it in 2021, I can hear how it really was damn funky.

However, I can’t actually hear it without thinking of this sketch from The Fast Show...

Dear God no! Not Steve f*****g Wright with another of his ‘hilarious’ comedy records. FFS! There he is with the tin hat on miming with a guitar. Bellend! Of course he had previous for this sort of shit. As way back as 1982 he’d released a single called “I’m Alright” under the name Young Steve And The Afternoon Boys and follow it up a year later with “Get Some Therapy” as Steve Wright And The Sisters Of Soul. “The Gay Cavelieros” followed in 1984 (no, not at all offensive!) and finally in the 80s “I’m So Angry” by Mr Angry featuring Steve Wright. All were based around catchphrases or characters employed by Wright on Radio 1 afternoon show and they were all f*****g awful. Not content with having tortured us with this crud throughout the 80s, he decided we needed some more of his ‘humour’ in the 90s with “I’ll Be Back” by Arnee And The Terminaters. Obviously playing on the current popularity of the Terminator 2: Judgment Day film, this just stank the studio out. Not funny, no musical talent, it was idiotic and anyone who bought it must have been as well. Some f*****s did though as it went all the way to No 5. Completely and utterly inexplicable.

Simple Minds with a third single from their “Real Life” album next. This one was called “Stand By Love” and one generous soul tweeted while watching the BBC4 TOTP repeat that it was ‘The Most meaningless song ever written’. Ouch! To be fair, this was stadium rock by numbers by this point. All the ingredients for a Simple Minds song seemed to be there but it tasted as bland as the guy introducing it, Mark Goodier. Even the video is anonymous with it just being yet another in concert promo of the band.

“Stand By Love” was already at its peak of No 13.

The story of a band starting from humble indie beginnings before scoring a huge hit and bagging a major record deal is one that permeates the history of pop music. Yet for every James who switched to major Fontana from Rough Trade in the wake of “Sit Down” and set themselves up for a career of longevity and success, there is also the other side of the coin as exemplified by The Farm. Their 80s indie singles garnered them acclaim but no sales but when “Groovy Train” and “All Together Now” hit as the new decade broke, their popularity was enough to earn them a No 1 album in “Spartacus”.

Taking note of this success were Sony Records who signed the band and even gave them their own record label called End Product. With the backing of a major, what should have been a continuing tale of hits and fame turned into a footnote in the story of 90s music as the band struggled to re-establish themselves in the charts. Second album “Love See No Colour” bombed whilst the only Top 20 hit from it came from that ever desperate ploy of doing a cover version, this one being “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League.

Before all of that though came “Mind”, the lead single from that sophomore album. It’s not that it’s a terrible record, it’s just that it’s not a very good one either. The chorus is pleasant enough but the rest of it is as sluggish as its progress up the Top 40 (where it petered out at a peak of No 31). And those shockingly awful lyrics like these:

Remember all the good times that we had
Some of them happy, some of them sad

Seriously though, what were they thinking?!

A genuine rock legend now as David Bowie is back in the TOTP studio after what seemed like forever but this time with his new(ish) band Tin Machine. This appearance was part of a big publicity push to relaunch the project with the release of their second album due out on the following Monday. They had already done Wogan in the week. For me though, once you’d got past the fact this was yer actual Bowie up there, the music just didn’t cut it. “You Belong In Rock ‘n’ Roll” was dull, dull dull. It actually belonged in the bargain bin (which is probably where it ended up). I even preferred Bowie’s much maligned late 80s output to this. Then of course there was all that nonsense with the chocolate eclair being shredded by guitarist Reeves Gaberels. What was that all about? Well, here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

No, you didn't imagine that: Tin Machine guitarist Reeves Gabrels DID just shred a chocolate eclair against his guitar. That's nothing: during Tin Machine's appearance on Wogan, he played it with a vibrator. https://t.co/TVb9D8WTjA #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 24, 2021

Gabrels did actually use a vibrator – bought from a Sydney sex shop – on the record (after experimenting with an electric razor first). Top Of The Pops were having none of that, though. Hence the eclair. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 24, 2021

Just ridiculous. What a load of jizz! Talking of which, how overexcited must the other acts in the studio that night have been to be appearing alongside David Bowie?! Let’s remind ourselves who they were again. Well, there was EMF (could be worse) The Farm (dreary), Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch (oh deary) and Steve Wright (Dear God!). Bowie must have felt like he’d stepped into a parallel universe. I hope he thought it was all worth it.

“You Belong In Rock’N’ Roll” peaked at No 33.

Third time on the show for Right Said Fred and “I’m Too Sexy” but first time for their promo video. Had they been in the studio alongside Bowie*, Richard Fairbrass could have had a reunion with him as he worked with David as a session bassist in the mid 80s and appeared in the videos for “Blue Jean” and “Loving The Alien” alongside him.

As for the video for “I’m Too Sexy”, well, it’s all very knockabout fun made on a cheap budget by the looks with the scenes within it a direct correlation to the lyrics. There’s catwalks, shirts being pulled off, cars, images of Milan, New York and Japan, and of course a hat. According to IMDB database that bit where Fred Fairbrass pulls off his brother Richard’s hat as the three Freds walk down the street was improvised and Richard’s reaction of surprise is genuine. Oh come on! There’s a string attached to the back of the hat which Fred used to yank it off. Was Richard really not aware of that and not in on the joke?

“I’m Too Sexy” stayed at No 2 for six consecutive weeks.

*Late update:

According to Fred Fairbrass, David Bowie came up to them during the recording of a #TOTP and said "What the hell are you two doing here?". This was the only show I could find with both of them on. But it was a Right Said Fred video, not a performance… Odd.
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 24, 2021

There’s only time for two Breakers this week but they were both memorable for different reasons. “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt ‘N’ Pepa would be another of those records that peaked at No 2 behind Bryan Adams and would surely have been a No 1 if the UK record buying public weren’t behaving so bizarrely as to keep the same record at the top of the charts for 16 weeks.

With AIDS very much acting as its backdrop, this was basically an upfront discussion about the dangers of unprotected sex in the form of a pop/rap song. The track was originally released on the trio’s “Blacks’ Magic” album but in the UK, it is more well known as being on their “Greatest Hits” album that seemed to appear very rapidly in October, possibly rush released to cash in on the single’s success?

The lyrics included some memorable lines none more so than the three way conversation in the middle 8:

Yo, Pep, I don’t think they’re gonna play this on the radio
And why not? Everybody have sex
I mean, everybody should be makin’ love
Come on, how many guys you know make love?

The brilliance of the track was the dichotomy at the heart of it. Whilst the subject matter was decidedly heavy, it was addressed in such a playful manner and backed up with an insanely catchy sound. A very clever rerecord all round. A huge hit globally (though not especially in there native US), it went to No 1 in eight countries including Germany where it was the first original song by an American hip-hop act to achieve that feat.

The second Breaker was significant mainly because of who it was by. Dire Straits had not released an album since the all conquering “Brothers In Arms” in 1985, an album so massive that it is the eighth-best-selling album in UK chart history. More than its commercial feats though, it was its cultural influence that made its legend. It was the first album to be recorded entirely digitally which perfectly lent itself to CD and would promote sales of that format within the rock/pop genre like never before. Despite being around since 1982, CDs had mainly sold within classical music markets but “Brothers In Arms” changed everything and became the first album to sell a million copies in that format. It became the default demonstration disc used by shops to persuade customers to turn to CD players. So huge was its perceived connection to the CD technology that it almost became a well worn joke.

Up against that legacy, anything the band released next was on a hiding to nothing. “On Every Street” was the album they came up with and despite going to No 1 and achieving double platinum sales in the UK, it was still dwarfed by “Brothers In Arms” which had gone 14 times platinum in this country.

“Calling Elvis” was the lead single and I have to say I found it a particularly drab affair. The Gerry Anderson themed video is fun though and reminds me of the Team America: World Police film from the makers of South Park. Very bad taste but very funny as well. “Calling Elvis” the song on the other hand was just very bad. If I wanted a song about Elvis Presley then there are loads of other songs that are more worthy of attention. How about “Blue Moon Revisited (A Song For Elvis) by Cowboy Junkies or “Tupelo” by Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds. Hell, I’d take “Walking In Memphis” by Marc Cohn over “Calling Elvis”! Mark Knopfler seemed very preoccupied by Elvis as he would write a song called “Back To Tupelo” as a solo artist.

Anyway, the single that announced the return of Dire Straits wasn’t a big hit peaking at No 21 but then I guess they weren’t really a singles band and the record company would have been more concerned about sales of the album. I was slightly more tolerant of the follow up single “Heavy Fuel” which was a very obvious but desperate attempt to rewrite “Money For Nothing” but that missed the Top 40 altogether. I did say they weren’t really a singles band.

We’ve reached the halfway point of its reign at the top as “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams racks up its 8th week at No 1. It’s hard to recall what the reaction of the press and media to this astonishing chart story that was unfolding was. I suppose by week 8 there must have been talk of and reference to Frankie Goes To Hollywood and “Two Tribes” which was No 1 for 9 consecutive weeks in the Summer of 1984. Once that milestone was passed, I’m guessing all bets were off.

Looking at the songs that have been No 1 for the longest (discounting anything this century like Drake and Ed Sheeran) then once Adams got into double digits then he really was out on his own. Queen had been No 1 for 9 weeks with “Bohemian Rhapsody” in 1975 and indeed spent another 5 weeks atop the UK charts on its re-release in 1991 after Freddie Mercury’s death but that was obviously not a consecutive run. Apart from that, Slim Whitman spent 11 weeks at No 1 with “Rose Marie” in 1955 but that was so long ago that any reference to it felt like talking about another universe. By the time Adams’ run was into the teens it felt like nothing would ever dislodge it.

Of course, rather than being a once in a lifetime event, the phenomenon of “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” started a mini trend. The following year, Whitney Houston took “I Will Always Love You” to the top for 10 weeks with yet another song from the soundtrack to a Kevin Costner film in The Bodyguard and two years after that Wet Wet Wet were No 1 for 16 weeks with “Love Is All Around” from Four Weddings And A Funeral. I believe they would have even eclipsed Bryan Adams had the band not asked for the single to be deleted so sick of it themselves were they. None of them though could match the feats of “I Believe” by Frankie Laine which spent 18 weeks at No 1. Initially at the top for nine weeks, after a week at No 2, he went back up to spend a further 6 at the top. He was then toppled by Mantovani before Frankie struck back by regaining the top spot for a further 3 weeks. Quite remarkable.

The play out video is the re-released “20th Century Boy” by Marc Bolan & T.Rex. My favourite story about Marc is that he chose the surname Bolan (he was originally born Mark Feld) because he liked the name of a young actor that he was flat sharing with in Landale Road in Barnes – a certain James Bolam of The Likely Lads fame. Apparently James wasn’t too keen on the idea.

Marc had been going by the name of Toby Tyler before this which would have been great alteration for his act had he stuck with it (Toby Tyler & T.Rex). Mark became Marc after a trip to Paris and at one point he adopted an absurd affectation of adding an umlaut to the ‘o’ of his new surname making it Bölan. Thankfully it dropped off somewhere in the mists of time.

“20th Century Boy” (the 1991 version) peaked at No 13.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch	Good Vibrations	Nope
2	PM Dawn	Set Adrift On Memory Bliss	Yes on cassette single! No idea where it is now mind
3	EMF	Lies	I didn’t and that’s the truth
4	Prince And The New Power Generation	Gett Off	Negative
5	Arnee And The Terminaters	I’ll Be Back	Get to f**k!
6	Simple Minds	Stand By Love	Nah
7	The Farm	Mind	Thanks but no thanks
8	Tin Machine	You Belong In Rock ‘n’ Roll	Definitely not
9	Right Said Fred	I’m Too Sexy	No
10	Salt ‘N Pepa	Let’s Talk About Sex	Don’t think I did
11	Dire Straits	Calling Elvis	100% no
12	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	It’s a no
13	Marc Bolan & T.Rex	20th Century Boy	Not the re-release but I have it on a Best Of CD

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/m000zwr1/top-of-the-pops-29081991