Diana Ross

TOTP 15 FEB 1996

Posted on May 31, 2024 by 80stastic

It’s the day after Valentine’s Day 1996 but there’s only one token slushy love song on this TOTP. What there is though are eight ‘new’ songs on the show with only the No 1 having been on previously. The grip of Britpop on the nation is on display with two bands in the running order who could be described as being part of that movement though probably not by themselves. In addition to that, the host for this one is Justine Frischmann, lead singer of Elastica, who were undeniably of that parish.

We start with one of those Britpop associated bands who were making their TOTP debut despite having been in existence for seven years by this point. I have to admit to never having heard of Ocean Colour Scene before “The Riverboat Song” though. We would all come to know the band and that song in particular thanks to the championing of them and it by Chris Evans. Not only did he play “The Riverboat Song” extensively on his Radio 1 breakfast show but six days before this TOTP aired, he had the band as the very first musical guests on the very first episode of TFI Friday performing it. Said track was subsequently used as the walk-on music for every guest as they made their way along a walkway to the bar area to be interviewed by Evans. As the show lasted nearly five years, the PRS cheques for the band must have been a substantial earner.

The success of the single (a No 15 hit) would pave the way for a run of six consecutive Top 10 hits and two multi platinum albums in “Moseley Shoals” and “Marchin’ Already”. In the April of 1996, they were the opening act on the bill supporting Oasis at their two Maine Road gigs. I went to the Saturday gig but to my shame missed Ocean Colour Scene as I was too busy pre-gig drinking with friends. We arrived in time for second support artist Manic Street Preachers though. I can’t remember much about the gig except I have a clear memory of the massive queue for the bar and pints being handed back to customers over people’s heads. A sad indictment on me that my memories of the day are mainly alcohol related.

Back to “The Riverboat Song” though and it is widely considered to be heavily influenced by the Led Zeppelin track “Four Sticks”. As I have never been a regular traveler on the boat to Led Zep island, I’ve no idea if this is true so I’ll have to investigate…

…yep, a definite similarity. However, what I’d really like to hear would be a Led Zeppelin/ Two Ronnies mash up of the track. They could call it “Four Candlesticks” (sorry).

I give myself a hard time in this blog about not recalling artists and songs from back in the day but seriously, who remembers “Giv Me Luv” by Alcatraz? Apparently this was a No 12 hit though it only remained on the Top 40 for two weeks. Listening to it now, it sounds like a mash up of “French Kiss” by Lil Louis and “Show Me Love” by Robin S. Quite what genre of dance music that would be described as I have no idea.

As I was also clueless as to who this lot were, I googled them but there seem to be a few groups called Alcatraz or variants of that name throughout musical history. There’s the English heavy metal band called Alcatrazz who formed in 1980 but split in 1983 after being dropped by their label. Picking up the baton immediately were an LA rock band also called Alcatrazz featuring Graham Bonnet, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen (great name!) in the line up. Formed in 1983, they are still a going concern or rather two going concerns as, after an internal dispute, there are two versions of the band, one led by Bonnet and one by Jimmy Waldo (another great name!) and Gary Shea. If that’s not confusing enough, there was also a German band called Alcatraz (with one ‘z’) from the 70s who played Black Sabbath and Soft Machine covers. Oh, and also an outfit called Alcatraz House Band, an acoustic rock trio who play covers by the likes of Fleetwood Mac, The Cult and Tom Petty. Seriously people, enough with naming yourselves after a Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco! I’ve been to Alcatraz Island and done the prison tour and I wouldn’t wish that place on anyone, not even the people that gave us “Giv Me Luv”!

Next a reefer anthem that got past the BBC censors presumably because they didn’t know what the slang term of the title meant. “I Got 5 On It” by Luniz was all about splitting the cost of a $10 bag of marijuana and laying down your half. It’s logical at least. After not understanding that “No Fronts” by Dog Eat Dog was all about blazing up just the other week, the Beeb did take a more cautious approach to this one as we only get to see two minutes of Luniz performing live by satellite in LA with the Hollywood sign prominent in the background. Did cutting the length of the track in half mean the watching TV audience didn’t get exposed to any drug references? Erm… not really. I watched it with subtitles turned on (in case I misheard anything) and read “hoochies wanna puff on it”, “you take a puff and pass my bomb back”, “messin’ with that weed”, “I’ll be damned if you get high on me for free” and “Hell no, you best to bring your own spliff chief”. I mean, come on! What did they think they were rapping about?!

“I Got 5 On It” crashed into the charts at No 3 continuing the popularity of huge hip hop hits in the UK at this time like “Regulate” by Warren G and Nate Dogg and Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise”. My main association of this song though is via my friend Paul. At this time, having moved to the area because of his wife’s work, Paul, who is a chef, was living temporarily out of a hotel in Manchester and used make use of our flat’s washing machine to wash his work whites. While there, he would open the flat’s big sash windows and blare some hip hop tunes out of them including “I Got 5 On It”. Thankfully, the local drug dealer who we called Mr Dodgy never seemed to notice.

Despite having been a UK No 1 way back in 1979, we still couldn’t get enough of “I Will Survive” in the mid 90s. Gloria Gaynor, of course, had that original chart topper with the song and it’s her version that is the definitive take on the track. She took it back to No 5 in 1993 when all sorts of 70s acts were having a revival. However, she wasn’t the only artist to take on the disco staple. In 1994, Dutch group Hermes House Band topped the charts in their home country with a version retitled “I Will Survive (La La La)” whilst later in these 1996 TOTP repeats, I’m sure we’ll see American singer Chantay Savage’s restyling of it as a ballad which went to No 12 in our charts. One year later, the musically eclectic US band Cake would score a minor hit with their version of it.

And then there was this by Diana Ross which managed a UK chart peak of No 14. Yet again I have zero recollection of this even existing so my first (and probably the only one required) question is WHY?! Yes, Miss Diana Ross (I bet they rehearsed and rehearsed Justine Frischmann to make sure she got that right in the intro!) is a Motown and soul legend but she didn’t add to her legacy with this limp version of a disco belter. She just hasn’t got the voice to do it justice and so we get a weak, watered down facsimile of it. I’m guessing she needed a hit as the other three singles from her “Take Me Higher” album hadn’t done any heavy lifting sales wise but even so. Also, why wear a jacket only to awkwardly take it off a few seconds into the performance and what were those gloves all about?!

Talking of being taken higher, here’s another song that is widely believed to be about drug use. Red Hot Chilli Peppers had certainly come into contact with illicit substances during their then 14 year old career in rock ‘n’ roll and were no strangers to writing songs about their experiences with “Aeroplane” appearing to be one of them, especially if you believe the online analysis. With the opening line of “I like pleasure spiked with pain”, it’s not hard to see why many would come to the conclusion it’s referring to drug use. Then there’s the lyrics about “decomposing” and “turning to dust” which could be construed as being about singer Anthony Kiedis having a relapse after being clean for a number of years. However, some offer the opinion that it’s about sex and more explicitly S&M with the titular aeroplane being the rock music lifestyle that afforded such…erm…activities. All I know is that the line about the “star of mazzy ” must surely refer to the band Mazzy Star and their track “Into Dust”. The full lyrics include the use of the ‘f’ word twice but said word is omitted in this live by satellite performance. Presumably someone had a word with Kiedis beforehand about time differences and the UK watershed!

After Supergrass announced themselves to the mainstream in 1995 with one of the anthems of the Summer in “Alright”, it all went quiet for six months. No rerelease of non-hit “Caught By The Fuzz”. Nothing. I guess they were working on second album “In It For The Money”. The problem was that the album would not be released for another fourteen months (meaning a gap of nearly two years) since debut “I Should Coco” came out. Given their new found popularity and the predominance of Britpop (of which they were seen as a prime mover), that was too long to wait for new material. Enter “Going Out” to plug the gap. This wasn’t one of those one off, non-album, standalone singles though. It would end up being the lead track from “In It For The Money” despite the gulf between their releases.

If we’d been expecting a retread of “Alright” though, we didn’t know Supergrass that well. “Going Out” was no blatant attempt to repeat the formula of their biggest success or to pin their colours firmly to the Britpop mast. Rather it harked back to the psychedelic end of 60s pop in sound – I could imagine The Kinks of the Small Faces having recorded it for example. Its No 5 peak was a very solid consolidation of their success but I wonder what Gaz Coombes was talking to the keyboard player about mid performance here? Do you think it was a pre-rehearsed set up because he didn’t know where to put himself during the instrumental break? Or maybe he was asking him about what he’d read in the papers about drummer Danny Goffey who was in the tabloids for his relationship with fashion designer Pearl Lowe at the time. Indeed, Goffey almost fell out with Coombes as he thought “Going Out” was written about them. Coming to that conclusion from the very sparse lyrics seems a bit of a stretch though.

Mariah Carey must have enjoyed doing TOTP – she always seemed to be in the studio in person and here she was again to perform her latest single “Open Arms”. This was the third track to be released from her “Daydream” album and, as a big ballad, was presumably timed to coincide with Valentine’s Day. I think she’d done the same thing two years before with her cover of Nilsson’s “Without You”. Lo and behold, and I had no knowledge of this until this very day, “Open Arms” was also a cover version. Originally recorded by American soft rockers Journey of “Don’t Stop Believin’” fame, Mariah took her take on it to No 4 in the UK charts. It’s the usual Carey production but it’s all a bit lacklustre sounding to me and was panned by the critics. Having checked out Journey’s recording, I can’t say that it’s much better to my ears though it made No 2 in 1982 in the American chart. Despite my opinion of the song, Justine Frischmann referring to Mariah as “Mazza Cazza” does seem ever so slightly disrespectful.

Now, is this the most people ever on one stage for a TOTP performance? There’s a multitude of extras up there with Sting. Obviously, the majority of them are made up of the gospel choir he’s brought with him (you don’t get small gospel choirs do you?) and it’s an impressive sight. Sadly, the word ‘impressive’ can’t be applied to Sting’s song as “Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot” is quite the dirge. The lead single from his fifth studio album “Mercury Rising”, it was inspired by a truly affecting story of a friend of his who was suffering from AIDS. It seems wrong to be so glib about a song that tells such a story but I found it really dull. Well performed and recorded I’m sure but dull nevertheless.

As ever, Sting’s fan base made sure the album was a success though it sold only half the amount of copies as previous album “Ten Sumoner’s Tales”. “Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot” would peak at No 15, easily the best performing single from the album chart wise. However, Stimg had a nice little side line being a ‘featured artist’ on other people’s hits in 1996. He’d already appeared on Pato Banton’s cover of The Police’s “Spirits In The Material World” and would also guest on Tina Turner’s “On Silent Wings” single in the May.

Another week at the top for Babylon Zoo with “Spaceman” and is Jas Mann starting to take it all a bit for granted and not putting the effort in any more. It looks like he’s got a five o’clock shadow in this performance. Maybe he thought superstardom was in the bag or that he’d have the biggest hit of the year at least even though it was only February at the time. However, despite selling 1.15 million copies, despite being the best selling single since “Can’t Buy Me Love” by The Beatles and despite being the fastest selling debut single in British pop music history, it wasn’t the biggest UK hit of 1996. It wasn’t even the runner up.* In an extraordinarily strong field sales wise featuring the phenomenon of the Spice Girls, and the fever pitch propelled football anthem “Three Lions”, the biggest selling single in the UK came courtesy of an American hip hop trio who’d only had one minor hit here before and who would only ever record two albums in their career…

*”Spaceman” came in third

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ocean Colour Scene	The Riverboat Song	Don’t think I did
2	Alcatraz	Giv Me Luv	Never
3	Luniz	I Got 5 On It	No but clearly my mate Paul did
4	Diana Ross	I Will Survive	As if
5	Red Hot Chilli Peppers	Aeroplane	Nah
6	Supergrass	Going Out	Nope
7	Mariah Carey	Open Arms	I did not
8	Sting	Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot	Nope
9	Babylon Zoo	Spaceman	I am going to admit to buying it but not for me for a friend who was obsessed with it so she could use my staff discount – honest!

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001zj09/top-of-the-pops-15021996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 24 AUG 1995

Posted on February 12, 2024 by 80stastic

And the winner is…The Battle of Britpop has been fought and the outcome declared. On the Sunday before this TOTP aired, Mark Goodier announced the Top 40 chart on Radio 1 and that Blur had come out on top of this epic tussle that had captured the attention of the media and the public alike. As I recall, he did the usual rundown one place early so that he could make a big deal of who was No 2 and, by extension, reveal the No 1 at the same time.

Whether by accident or design, the host of the TOTP that reflected this particular chart was Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker in a ‘golden mic’ guest slot. Whatever the circumstances behind it, there seemed to be something satisfying and fitting about his presence on the show; his dry sense of humour somehow deflating the media constructed frenzy around the Oasis / Blur rivalry.

Before we‘re given a glimpse of Jarvis though, we get perhaps the most well remembered (by me at least) of the top of the show direct-to-camera pieces – Blur riding a milk float into camera shot and bassist Alex James declaring that they were No 1 and would be camping it up on Top of the Pops later on before doing an exaggerated “ooh matron” gesture. I wonder who’s idea that was? There was a milk float in the video for the single so I guess there was a valid connection there but you couldn’t imagine Oasis pulling such a stunt. Maybe that was the point though – to differentiate themselves from their Northern rivals. “We’re nothing like them you know!”.

To start the show though we have…yep…a dance track. Of course we do. It is 1995 after all. This one comes courtesy of Clock who had hit upon the cheesy but successful formula of recording Eurodance flavoured versions of old hits. They’d already taken versions of Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F” and Tag Team’s “Whoomph! (There It Is)” into the Top 10 and would accelerate their output throughout the decade with covers from the catalogue of artists such as The Four Seasons, The Jacksons, KC and the Sunshine Band and Hot Chocolate. However, this one – “Everybody” – they wrote themselves…sort of. There’s a sample of “Let’s Start The Dance” by disco artist Bohannon in there as well as a vocal sound from Norman Cook’s sample library collection “Skip To My Loops”. However, the lyrics (if you can call them that) were the work of Clock members Stu Allan and Pete Pritchard.

It sounds like a poor man’s 2 Unlimited to me but the one thing that did stand out was that elongated cry of “Everybody!”. Surely that was influenced by this…

Someone noted on social media after this TOTP repeat aired that the winner of The Battle of Britpop should have been neither Blur nor Oasis but The Charlatans. They had a point. “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over” is better than either “Country House” or “Roll With It” to my ears. Indeed, it was the NME’s Single of the Week over either of those two more celebrated releases.

I’d not really been into Tim Burgess and co when they first broke through as part of the whole “baggie” scene at the start of the 90s but they were really getting into their stride by this point and I was swayed. From “Can’t Get Out Of Bed” to the end of the decade was their imperial phase in my book. I wasn’t the only person of this opinion. The eponymous album this single came from topped the chart as did their next “Tellin’ Stories”. Just typing that has made me realise how many of the band’s songs and albums have a ‘g’ missing from their titles. Aside from the two above, there’s also “Crashin’ In” and “Just Lookin’”. Not that it’s a big deal. Just sayin’.

Tim Burgess is on record as saying that “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over” was the band trying to sound like “Ramble On” by Led Zeppelin. Well, I never got the boat going to Led Zepp island (I know, sacrilege and all that) so I couldn’t comment on that but there is another song that I’ve become aware of fairly recently that it has a resemblance to. At the start of 2022, I made a New Year resolution to try and listen to a song that I didn’t know every day for 12 months. It didn’t have to be a ‘new’ song per se, just ‘new to me’. I didn’t quite hit my target but I still managed to amass a playlist with over 10 hours of songs on it. One of them was this 1973 John Lennon track from the album “Mind Games”:

If you go online and search for “Human Nature” by Madonna, you’ll find lots of articles about the meaning behind the song and of course plenty about that video. I myself added a few words on the subject in a previous post the first time the promo was shown on TOTP. There’s lots of opinion about the song being a retort to those who criticised her for being overtly sexual in her Sex book and “Erotica” album and agreeing with Madge for rightly pointing out that she wouldn’t have got such a hard time for exploring sexuality if she were a man. However, I quite like Jarvis Cocker’s succinct summing up of it all in his intro as he whispers:

“Express yourself, don’t repress yourself”

Then in his down to earth Sheffield drawl he says:

“According to Madonna’s new video that involves kind of perving around in a giant ice cube tray. Anyway, have a look for yourselves while we count down numbers 40 to 11 inclusive.”

He pretty much nails it I think. I love the way he adds the word ‘inclusive’ at the end. There’s no need for him to do that and most presenters wouldn’t have but it’s a good example of Jarvis’s idiosyncrasy.

There’s more wonderful celebrity piercing wit from Cocker next as we get the rather obtrusive and unnecessary video piece from Diana Ross. In a flat, monotone and off screen voice we hear Jarvis say simply “There now follows an important message” before we cut to Ross sat on the bonnet of a car who informs us that she’s in Detroit at the Motown Sound Exhibition and will be performing on TOTP tonight. And that’s it. Did we really need that clip shoe horning into the show? “Cheers Di” lampoons Jarvis before his next intro. “Wow. What can I tell you about this next act. Not a lot really as I don’t know anything about them” he advises. Genius comic delivery!

In truth though, Jarvis should have had better knowledge of “Move Your Body” by Xpansions 95 not least because it had already been a substantial hit previously. Yes, it’s time for another reactivated dance hit, a practice that dominated the charts in 1995. Just like hits from JX, Felix and The Original which had all been on the show in recent weeks, this was yet another dance track getting a second chart life. Initially a No 7 hit in 1991 as “Elevation (Move Your Body)”, it would peak at No 14 four years later. Xpansions was a vehicle for producer Phil Drummond whose real name, unbelievably was Phillip Phillips – no wonder he changed it. Together with actress and singer Sally Anne Marsh – wait, didn’t she play Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?!

*checks internet*

My bad. That was Sally Ann Howes. I thought the person on stage looked remarkably young in 1995 to have starred in a film that came out in 1968! Anyway Phil and Sally Anne Marsh proved a prosperous partnership. The latter had pop music form having been in the early 90s girl group Faith Hope & Charity alongside The Word presenter Dani Behr and she would add her vocals to Deconstruction label dance act Ariel as well as carving out a successful acting and voice over artist. The track itself followed a formula of the title lyric being repeated continuously over a piano house riff and did nothing for me but, as Jarvis said, went down a storm in the clubs. Is it just me or does Sally Anne have a look of “Immaculate Collection” era Madonna about her? Incidentally, Phil Drummond also went under the pseudonym of Marradonna.

With the cat out of the bag four days earlier, there seemed little point in TOTP trying to eek out any morsel of tension surrounding who was No 1 (hence the Blur piece at the top of the show) so we get Oasis slap bang in the middle of the show at No 2 with “Roll With It”. Diplomatically, Jarvis doesn’t take any sides declaring the record buying public the winner having access to so much great music. Obviously the Manc lads weren’t going to drag themselves into the studio for another performance after they’d lost out to Blur who were there in person so we get a replay of their turn from last week.

“Roll With It” would hold at No 2 for a second week and spend a further two within the Top 10. Like all the band’s other singles, it would have a protracted chart life spending 49 weeks within the Top 100. Not bad for a song who the person who wrote it once described as “shit”.

Taking the show in another direction completely now is Björk who is the first of three consecutive female solo artists on the show though that’s about all they have in common with each other. To be fair, is anybody else similar to Björk? Take this single “Isobel” for example. It’s been described by critics as a modern fairy tale, a fable and by Simon Williams in the NME as:

“Where tribal rhythms spiral into enormous swathes of galloping pop fluffiness”
Williams, Simon (10 June 1995) “Long Play” NME .p.46.

Well, quite. I haven’t got the words to rival Mr Williams so I’ll just say that this one was too divorced from the mainstream for me and that I’m surprised that Björk was given a slot on the show two weeks running, especially as it only made No 23 in the UK charts.

Think of the BRITS 1996 and inevitably the Jarvis Cocker / Michael Jackson incident comes to mind. Jarvis protesting at Jackson’s Christ mimicking performance of “Earth Song” by running across the stage and wafting his fully clothed bottom in Jacko’s direction followed by a complete overreaction from his security team and Cocker being questioned by police before being released. What I hadn’t clocked before rewatching this TOTP was the jibe that Jarvis makes about the King of Pop before introducing a satellite exclusive performance by Diana Ross saying that she’d influenced a lot of people including “Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon for one”. Ooh! Is it possible that Jacko was aware of this remark and took revenge via his security detail on Cocker at the BRITS six months later? Nah. Surely not.

Jarvis does accord Ross some respect by referring to her as Miss Diana Ross (the Miss is obligatory). Her song though deserves zero acclaim as it’s a right old stinker. Ross’s back catalogue features some stone cold classics but “Take Me Higher” is certainly not one of them. It sounds like such a desperate attempt to stay relevant in the dance obsessed 90s, as if her management had shown her a video of Lisa Stansfield and told her to do her best impersonation of her. She does her best to sell the song in this performance with her engaging, face wide smile but it doesn’t win me over. She should have stuck to the big ballads that brought her success in the early 90s like “When You Tell Me That You Love Me” and “One Shining Moment”. “Take Me Higher” peaked at No 32.

OK so when I said earlier they there was nothing in common between Björk and the two female solo artists that followed her, I forgot about the acting. The Icelandic singer has featured in a number of movies perhaps most famously Lars Bon Trier’s Dancer In The Dark whilst (Miss) Diana Ross won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Sings The Blues as well as starring in Mahogany and The Wiz. Then there’s Michelle Gayle who’s on the show with her fifth consecutive Top 40 hit “Happy Just To Be With You”. Michelle, of course, was in Grange Hill (as part of rap duo Fresh ‘n’ Fly no less) and as Hattie Tavernier in EastEnders. Her later career included stage roles in Beauty and the Beast, the Dusty Springfield musical Son of a Preacher Man and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Back in 1995 though, music was Michelle’s priority and she was pretty successful at it too. Six of her seven UK chart entries went Top 20 including two Top Tenners.

“Happy Just To Be With You” borrows heavily from the bassline of “Good Times” by Chic but it’s not on its own – the whosampled.com website says that it’s been sampled in 227 songs although Michelle’s single interpolates rather than samples it. It’s a pretty competent R&B / pop song I have to say and Michelle does a good job of promoting it.

In the end it wasn’t even that close. Blur won ‘The Battle of Britpop’ with their “Country House” single with room to spare selling 274,000 copies to the 216,000 units shifted by “Roll With It”. However, it’s generally perceived that Oasis may have lost the battle but won the war. The numbers back up that view. “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” would go 17 x platinum in the UK whilst Blur’s “The Great Escape” would achieve 3 x platinum sales. In February 1996, there was almost a repeat of The Battle of Britpop when the two bands released singles from their albums within a week of each other (presumably both camps were wise enough not to put themselves through it all again). Oasis’s track was the iconic “Don’t Look Back In Anger” whilst Blur released “Stereotypes”. At the Our Price in Stockport where I was working we sold 279 copies of Oasis in week one. And Blur? We sold 13. That’s thirteen. Rumour has it that Damon Albarn fled to Iceland to get away from the onslaught of Oasis’s album which he heard everywhere he went.

But how are their legacies viewed now? Both bands would achieve further No 1 singles and albums (although I believe Oasis had more). For me, and I was more Oasis than Blur, the former went on longer than they should have and possibly made an anachronism of themselves. Despite all predictions to the contrary, if anything Liam’s post Oasis output has been more interesting than Noel’s (I’ve never really been into his High Flying Birds). Indeed, Liam’s recent collaboration with ex-Stone Roses guitarist John Squire is meant to be excellent. As for Blur, Damon’s virtual band project Gorillaz has produced some brilliant material and shows much more imagination than cranking out rock songs for an ageing audience à la Noel. Meanwhile, Blur guitarist Graham Coxon’s solo career has produced some really interesting albums leading Noel Gallagher no less to describe him as

“One of the most talented guitarists of his generation”
Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Britpop. Bonus interviews

Oh and Alex James wearing an Oasis t-shirt in this performance – was that an olive branch extended towards their rivals or a dig at them?

The play out video is “Warped” by Red Hot Chili Peppers and guess what? I don’t remember this one either! For the record, this was the lead single from the band’s “One Hot Minute” album and made No 31 on the UK Top 40.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Clock	Everybody	Never!
2	The Charlatans	Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over	No but I have their Melting Pot Best Of
3	Madonna	Human Nature	Nah
4	Xpansions 95	Move Your Body	Nope
5	Oasis	Roll With It	YES!
6	Björk	Isobel	I did not
7	Diana Ross	Take Me Higher	As if
8	Michelle Gayle	Happy Just To Be With You	No
9	Blur	Country House	No but I had the Great Escape album
10	Red Hot Chilli Peppers	Warped	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001w2m3/top-of-the-pops-24081995

TOTP 16 DEC 1993

Posted on December 11, 2022 by 80stastic

To paraphrase Frankie Valli, here at TOTP Rewind it’s mid December back in ‘93 and very much like the temperatures in 2022, I recall it being very cold. I was working in the Our Price store in Altrincham and travelling there from Manchester every day by a bus and then a tram. As such, it was an early start and I have a distinct memory of standing next to the radiator in our little flat not wanting to go outside to start the commute. The radio was playing “Babe” by Take That which didn’t help my mood as it brought to mind the song’s video which had lots of snow themed scenes including Mark Owen wandering around in what appeared to be Russia looking for his former lover in a bit of a blizzard. Aside from the cold, the work days were long and busy as this was a time before streaming where you had to physically go out to a record shop and buy a CD or cassette if you wanted an album or single. We packed so many customers into that little shop on George Street that at times it felt like the floor would collapse*.

*That did happen once when I was working in the Rochdale Our Price. A floor tile just cracked one day to reveal a gaping hole underneath. Just one of the many mishaps that occurred during my retail years including a man walking through the window which he mistook for the door, the shop’s fuse box starting to smoke, alarm call outs in the middle of the night, blocked toilets, failed central heating systems etc etc.

Despite all of the above, I was loving my time in Altrincham to the extent that me and my wife even contemplated moving there and even looked around a flat or two. Fortunately, we never made that move as in the first couple of weeks after Christmas came the word from area management that I was being moved again. I wouldn’t get back to Altrincham for five years. Enough of my personal life though, which songs were those busy shoppers snapping up as the big day approached…

If your hear the names Chaka Demus and Pliers, what immediately comes to mind? Apart from the ridiculousness of that second name obviously. For me it’s 1993 and their hit “Tease Me” and yet that No 2 (in more ways than one) was eclipsed by this single, their version of “Twist And Shout”. Somehow though, it seems to have escaped my memory banks despite it going to No 1 one in early ‘94. Maybe it’s because there have been so many different releases of this perennial song. I’m guessing most of us know it from The Beatles take on it in 1963 but it was very first recorded before them by The Top Notes. The first time it was a hit was when The Isley Brothers took it into the charts in 1962. Brian Poole and The Tremeloes had the temerity to release a version just four months after The Beatles (though they claimed they were already playing it live in shows before anybody else) and had a hit with it. It’s also been attempted by The Searchers, The Kingsmen, Bruce Springsteen and then in 1988, it was given the hip-hop treatment by Salt-N-Pepa and became a No 4 single in the UK.

Fast forward five years and here it was again courtesy of Chaka Demus and Pliers (plus Jack Radics and Taxi Gang). Maybe they were inspired by Salt-N-Pepa – if it could be hip-hopped, then maybe the song could be also be reggae-fied? Or maybe they took inspiration from ragga duo Louchie Lou and Michie One who took another song originally done by The Isley Brothers but made famous by another artist (“Shout” by Lulu) and bagged a Top 10 hit earlier in 1993 . Whatever the reason, Chaka Demus and Pliers’ version of “Twist And Shout” didn’t work for me as I could never got on board with all that toasting. Also, wasn’t this more of a Summer tune than a Christmas one? I know host Tony Dortie goes on about what a big party tune it is which could crossover into festive celebrations I guess but clearly the TOTP producers saw it as a Summer song judging by the palm trees in the set they designed for the performance here.

You’d be hard pressed to find a more blatant example of record company cashing in than this. Not having had Meatloaf as their artist for a decade by this point didn’t matter at all to CBS when it came to exploiting the back catalogue of their previous charge. With “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” and its single “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” tearing up the charts everywhere on the planet, of course CBS we’re going to rerelease probably his most famous song. So it came to pass the Meatloaf managed to be in possession of two UK Top 20 hits simultaneously in 1993 when “Bat Out Of Hell” got to No 8 beating its original 1979 peak by seven places. Who was buying it though? The parent album is one of the best selling in history so many, many people would surely already own the song so that leaves two options to my mind. One, Meatloaf completists or two, young music fans who’d only just discovered him via his latest success and either thought this was his latest/new single or wanted to explore his older stuff.

All of this just goes to show how perceptions can change in the wake of a huge success. Two years prior to this, “Bat Out Of Hell: Re-vamped” was released -basically a straight reissue but with “Dead Ringer For Love” added – and to promote it “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” was rereleased. It peaked at No 69.

You know that debate that rages about this time of year about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not? Well, there’s surely a musical equivalent to that argument about whether “Stay Another Day” by East 17 is a Christmas song isn’t there? Why am I going on about a track that is twelve months away from being the festive No 1? I guess because looking at their performance here of “It’s Alright”, it’s clear that they weren’t averse to pushing a Christmas agenda if it suited which it did literally here as all four members are Santa suited-up. I actually beat East 17 to it by four years. In Christmas 1989, I was working in the toy department at Debenhams and used to stand in for the guy playing Father Christmas in the grotto on his breaks. That suit stank to high heaven. The store had a fire alarm go off whilst I was in it and we all had to evacuate the building. I got a few comments from the rest of the employees whilst stood outside waiting to be allowed back in.

Back to East 17 though and Tony Dortie says two things that peaked my interest in his links. Firstly that Brian Harvey was “flu affected”. We’ve been here before just the other week when Gabrielle appeared on the show in person to say she couldn’t perform her single as she had flu. Harvey goes one better by having flu but still managing to sing and jig about on stage. Flu my arse! Secondly, Dortie announces that he’s off on tour with East 17 shortly. On tour? Doing what exactly? They already had two guys in the band who appeared to do not very much at all. Surely they didn’t need a third?! Was Dortie just going to introduce them on stage each night? Was that all? Nice work if you can get it. It’s alright indeed.

In Christmas 1993, Diana Ross had a Best Of album out called “One Woman: The Ultimate Collection” which was a huge seller over the festive season going four times platinum and selling 1.2 million copies in the UK. We sold loads of it in that Altrincham Our Price where I was working but we had to go against company policy to do so. The CD was officially priced at something like £11.99 but all the other outlets in Altrincham (Boots, Woolies etc) were selling it for £9.99. Myself and the manager Cathy came to the conclusion that we wouldn’t sell any at £11.99 and so price matched. We didn’t ask permission or tell any other stores, we just did it and it worked – we sold loads and maintained a decent market share on the album. However, when the Area Manager turned up unexpectedly for a store visit we nearly shat ourselves thinking he would notice. He had this thing he did at Christmas where he would help out serving customers and so we were sure we would get busted as somebody in the queue would have the Diana Ross CD. Myself and Cathy joined in serving trying to spot anyone in the queue who would give the game away and head them off at the pass by jumping in and getting to them first. Somehow we got away with it. Phew!

Diana did an extensive tour to help promote the album an Our Price colleague went to see her on one of her dates. When I asked him how it had been the next day, he’d convinced himself that he was Ms Ross’s long lost, illegitimate child so consumed by the experience was he. I’m assuming she performed the single “Your Love” which was a new track added to the album to help promote it but it was hardly up there with some of her classic recordings for me. It peaked at No 14.

WTF?! Eight Breakers?! EIGHT?! You have to be kidding me?! That must be a record! Five is pretty much maximum capacity usually. Presumably the TOTP producers have done this because the chart at Christmas are usually clogged up with new records strategically released to cash in on the extra sales at this time of year. Even so. Eight Breakers means a whopping grand total of fourteen songs on this show! Tossers! Don’t they realise how much work this is for me?

We start with another boy band, this time of the American variety who time would surely have forgotten if not for a gimmick surrounding their name. EYC (it stood for Express Yourself Clearly) had this annoying habit of signing off from any promotional appearances by saying “E Y See ya”. Ugh! Somehow this trio of ex-New Kids On The Block backing dancers (no, that’s literally what they were) somehow managed to bag themselves six UK Top 40 hits the first of which was “Feelin’ Alright”. It had a sub House Of Pain vibe to it tailored for the teen market but it was pretty lame all the same.

My main memory of this lot came the following year. I was now working in the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester where I first started three years previously. I was on the counter with the manager and he served a young girl with one of their singles. As he went behind the shelving to get it (the stock wasn’t in the racks live at this point) he said to me in a really loud voice which the customer must have heard, “This is crap isn’t it?”. How I cringed.

Next up a tune so intensely and annoyingly catchy it’s still in my head nearly thirty years on. I would have said that “Come Baby Come” by K7 was from 1994 not 1993. I’m kind of right. It reached its peak of No 3 in the January of ‘94 but was actually released in December ‘93. K7 was essentially US all rounder Louis Sharpe. A rapper, songwriter, record producer, he also went by the name of Kayel. He’s only really known over here though for this single. Employing that call and answer style of rap (is it meant to be him and his homies who he’s hangin’ with?), it kind of reminds me of that drill instructor song from the late 80s. What was it called again?

*googles ‘drill instructor song’

That’s it! “Full Metal Jacket (I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor)” by Abigail Mead and Nigel Goulding…

Anyway, it also had that drive-you- insane shouty chorus that once heard is never forgotten*. Maybe it was just meant to distract you from those innuendo loaded lyrics which were actually pretty filthy. I guess the clue was in the song title but check these out:

Better move it fast so you can pump it (pump it)
Two balls and a bat (hoo), a pitcher with a hat (ha)
Slidin’ into home base, tryin’ to hit a home run
Swing batta batta batta batta batta swing
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Louis Sharpe / Joey Gardner
Come Baby Come lyrics © Universal Music – Z Songs, Warner-tamerlane Publishing Corp., Blue Ink Music, Third And Lex Music

You don’t have to be Finbarr Saunders to work out what’s going on here! I’m sure we’ll be seeing and hearing more of K7 in future TOTP repeats. For those of a delicate nature, you have been warned!

*Such an ear worm is it that thirty years later, when I want my dog called Benji to come to me, I often say “Come Benji come, Benji, Benji come come”.

Ah now, talking of delicate…how to approach this one? OK well, the facts around the record are that “Gone Too Soon” was the ninth and final single taken from Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” album (the first – “Black And White” – had been released an incredible 25 months earlier). As the ninth single from an album that had been out for two years, even Jackson couldn’t eke out a big hit from it and it stalled at No 33. This was his lowest UK chart placing since a rerelease of “Girl Your So Together” in 1984.

Jackson recorded the track as a tribute to Ryan White, a US teenager who was haemophiliac and became infected with the HIV virus from a contaminated blood treatment. This was the dark ages of 1984 and Ryan was subsequently barred by his school from attending due to concerns from other parents that he would spread the virus. Given just six months to live, Ryan lived on for another five years in which time he became a high profile figure for HIV/AIDS research and public education attracting the attention of Jackson.

Unfortunately for the singer (and this is where the delicate bit comes in) the release of the song coincided with allegations of child sexual abuse against him made by the then thirteen years old Jordan Chandler. I’m guessing the single’s cover with a picture of Jackson walking around his Neverland ranch with Ryan maybe didn’t do the King of Pop any favours in the eyes of anyone who wanted to believe the allegations. The case was eventually settled out of court with the plaintiff reportedly receiving $23 million. Speculation about Jackson’s private life (already a media frenzy) had gone onto another, darker level. The scrutiny and effects of the accusations would never leave him and indeed resurfaced in 2003 with a second set of allegations. Jackson was acquitted on all counts in 2005. Four years later, he would be dead himself from cardiac arrest. At the memorial service, Usher performed “Gone Too Soon” and the circle was complete.

After being on the show last time, Cliff Richard is into the charts but it’s more with a loud fart than a bang at a lowly No 27 with “Healing Love”. The single would struggle on gamely to a high of No 19 but it was a far cry from the massive Christmas hits of “Mistletoe And Wine” and “Saviour’s Day”.

I can’t even find the official promo video for the single online so unloved is the song but from the few seconds we see here there seems to be a lot of billowing drapes behind Cliff as he sings. Haven’t seen as much material being wafted about since Spandau Ballet and “Only When You Leave” in 1984.

Next up a duet featuring a man who, despite being around since the time of disco, is only known in the UK for three songs, all of them collaborations with a female singer. Peabo Bryson first had a – no wait! You’re right. Let’s address that name of his before anything else. Peabo…you don’t get many of them to the pound do you? I’ve never heard anyone calling out “Peabo, come here now!” or “Have you seen our Peabo?”. However, I do know someone who once heard these immortal words come out of the mouth of a tired and frustrated mother:

“Oi! Cleopatra! Pack it in or I’ll twat ya!”
Hessle Road, Hull sometime around 2010

Only in Hull. Anyway, Peabo isn’t his real name. No, of course it isn’t! Sadly his real name is worse if anything – Robert Peapo Bryson. Peapo! That’s what you say when playing with a baby! As I was saying though, he first had a hit in the UK in 1983 with “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love For You”, an horrendously schmaltzy ballad that went all the way to No 2. There then followed an eight year gap until he returned with the title song from the Disney animation Beauty And The Beast alongside Celine Dion which bagged them a Top 10 hit. Clearly onto a good thing, he returned in 1993 with another Disney film song. This time it was “A Whole New World” which was from Aladdin and was, of course, another duet. The lucky lady this time was US singer songwriter Regina Belle who had been releasing records since 1987 without much commercial success. That was rectified and then some by “A Whole New World”. Not only was it an American No 1, it also is noteworthy for being the record that finally knocked Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” off the top spot after fourteen weeks over there. The reception to the record was a bit more lukewarm in the UK where it peaked at No 12.

It’s been covered a few times including by ex- One Direction member Zayn Malik (alongside Zhavia Ward) but the one that really stands out is the version by the god awful Peter Andre and his then wife Katie Price who included it on their album of covers also called “A Whole New World”. The track listing includes their takes on “Islands In The Stream” and the aforementioned “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love For You”. Hell’s teeth! That’s a whole new world of pain more like!

Next another of those rappers that the white middle class kids of Altrincham, Cheshire would fawn over. Ice T had a reputation for controversy that far outweighed any commercial success he achieved, certainly in this country. By 1993, he’d already released five albums but had never had a UK Top 40 hit…until “That’s How I’m Livin’”. We kind of knew already how he was living (that’s with a ‘g’ rather than as a ‘G’) and that was tendentiously. He’d provoked the ire of the POTUS George Bush no less with the release of “Cop Killer” by Body Count a track he wrote and a band he was a member of. He is also recognised as one of the defining influences of gangster rap and had well publicised disputes with fellow rappers like LL Cool J. However, Ice T was also savvy enough to diversify and forged an acting career for himself, starring in dozens of films and TV shows like New Jack City and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. “That’s How I’m Livin’” was taken from his album “Home Invasion” and peaked at No 21.

We didn’t know it at the time but the “Spooky” single would be the last material released by New Order (barring Best Ofs and rereleased singles) for eight years. For five of those years, the band didn’t see each other at all whilst the concentrated on personal projects. Yet again I have zero recall of this track. New Order singles of 1993? “Regret” of course. “Ruined In A Day”? Yeah. “World (The Price Of Love)”? Just about. This one though? I’ve got nothing, zero, nada. Like I’ve never heard it before. Why put out a fourth single from an album that been out for months during the Christmas rush? Consequently, “Spooky” only made No 22 which is actually higher than I would have expected. Maybe they just wanted to set a personal band record. This was the first time that New Order ever achieved four hits from the same album.

Tellingly, Tony Dortie says he doesn’t think the band have ever made a bad video. A bad video? Is that what they’d become reduced to by this point? What about the music? There were worst times ahead though with Peter Hook leaving under very acrimonious circumstances. Oh dear.

The final Breaker is a song that had already almost been the Christmas No 1 once and was rush released in 1993 to try again. Back in 1984, the whole of the UK record buying public seemed to be enthralled by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Two No 1 singles clocking up fifteen weeks at the top between them meant that when it came to the runners and riders for the festive chart topper, they were the bookies favourite. They had an epic, bowl-you-over ballad that was perfect for Christmas. They even had a nativity themed promo video. “The Power Of Love” duly went to No 1 on its first week of release. What hadn’t been figured into the odds was Bob Geldof and Band Aid which, when the list of high profile pop star contributors to the record became known, was always going to be the Christmas chart topper. Frankie were dethroned after just one week. Could the 1993 rerelease do what the 1984 original couldn’t and be No 1 for Yuletide? For Bob Geldof read Mr Blobby. They never stood a chance though “The Power Of Love” remains a firm favourite on Christmas playlists to this day. Mr Blobby on the other hand…

One of the success stories of 1993 now (and it pains me to say it) as we catch up with Haddaway in Disney World, Florida. Didn’t we see PM Dawn and Boy George there this year as well? Did TOTP have some sort of arrangement with Disney? Anyway, after No 2 and No 6 hits in the UK charts, the big question for Haddaway wasn’t “What Is Love?” but “how do I get a third hit? Well, one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned from these hundreds of TOTP repeats is that if you’re a new act with a shiny, uptempo pop song, you can replicate that formula for the follow up but you need something different for the third release and what is more different than a ballad? Haddaway clearly knew the rules and his third release was indeed a slow, romantic number called “I Miss You”. Sadly though, it’s not only slow but completely laboured and ponderous. It literally never gets out of first gear. Just dreadful. The lyrics sound like they came out of a one minute brainstorming session about the most obvious themes of love and regret.

I miss you, oh I miss you
I’m gonna need you more and more each day
I miss you, more than words can say
More than words can ever say
Copyright © 2000-2022 AZLyrics.com

Dreadful stuff. Somehow though, this nonsense got to No 9 to give Haddaway his third consecutive Top 10 hit. 1993 really had a lot to answer for.

Take That have gone straight into the charts at No 1 for the third consecutive time with “Babe”. No other act had done this at the time. Not the aforementioned Frankie, not The Jam (they managed two) not anyone. It really was quite the rise when you consider that eighteen months earlier, their biggest hit to date had been the No 38 single “Promises”. By Christmas 1993, they were the undisputed heroes for a generation of teenage girls. Of course, it’s not like we hadn’t seen bands being screamed at before. Bay City Rollers, Duran Duran, Bros…and yet none of them attained this particular chart achievement.

Tony Dortie joins the band on stage at the song’s end for a cosy chat about how well they’re doing and so high on success are they that they take the piss out of dethroned No 1 Mr Blobby by doing some Blobby impressions (led by Robbie Williams naturally). The pink and yellow dotted buffoon would have his revenge a week later when, rather improbably, he returned to the top of the charts to bag the Christmas No 1. I remember thinking that this was nuts and how had it happened? I was no Take That fan obviously but at least “Babe” was a proper song. Somebody who was a fan was my younger sister and years later she went to see a Robbie Williams tribute act where, in an unlikely turn of events, the worlds of Mr Blobby and Take That collided once more. The impersonator was a rather rotund figure and so his stage name was Blobby Williams and he was part of Take Fat. Marvellous.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Chaka Demus and Pliers	Twist And Shout	Nope
2	Meatloaf	Bat Out Of Hell	No
3	East 17	It’s Alright	Yes, yes I did
4	Diana Ross	Your Love	Never happening
5	EYC	Feelin’ Alright	As if
6	K7	Come Baby Come	I did not
7	Michael Jackson	Gone Too Soon	Nah
8	Cliff Richard	Healing Love	Of course not
9	Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle	A Whole New World	Noi chance
10	Ice T	That’s How I’m Livin	Not my bag
11	New Order	Spooky	Negative
12	Frankie Goes To Hollywood	The Power Of Love	Not in 1984 nor 1993
13	Haddaway	I Miss You	Awful – no
14	Take That	Babe	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001fy5t/top-of-the-pops-16121993

TOTP 14 OCT 1993

Posted on November 2, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s mid October 1993 and the England national football team have just suffered a disastrous defeat in their attempt to qualify for next year’s World Cup. The day before this TOTP aired, they lost 2-0 to Holland in a winner takes all match virtually extinguishing their chances of going to USA ‘94. Defeat came in controversial circumstances with England denied a penalty and Dutch midfielder Ronald Koeman escaping a clear red card at 0-0 before stepping up to curl a free kick into the England net just two minutes later.

A documentary crew recorded England manager *Graham Taylor’s reaction on the touch line so that the moment of his utter despair was captured for posterity. I recall going into work at the Our Price in Stockport the next day and the mood being decidedly downbeat. Presumably that mood was replicated across the country. I wonder if there were any tunes on TOTP to lift our spirits…

*Graham’s favourite recording artist was Dame Vera Lynn. I’m pretty sure she’s not on the show though.

Well, there’s a positive vibe about the opening act who are experiencing a definite high really early in their career. Eternal are up to No 7 with their debut single “Stay”. Is it just me or did they seem to appear overnight as a fully formed pop sensation? There never seemed to be any doubt that they would be successful. Maybe it was the slick dance moves that convinced or perhaps they were just the right set of people at the right time to address the gap in the market for a UK all female R&B infused pop group? Whatever the reason, they did in fact ‘stay’ around for most of the decade (albeit not all four of them together) whereas the unfortunate Graham Taylor would be gone from the England job just over a month after this TOTP aired.

I’ve been writing this TOTP blog for almost six years now covering the period 1983-1993 and written over a million words and still there’s one band who refuse to retreat from the Top 40. Starting with “Flight Of Icarus” in ‘83 and right up to this one “Hallowed Be Thy Name”, those monsters of rock Iron Maiden had eighteen UK Top 40 singles of which nine went Top 10. I haven’t gone back through the literally hundreds of posts to see if I had to find something to write about every single one but I’m guessing most of them will have featured. That’s a lot of words to write about a band I have very little interest in.

Looking at their discography, they are good for another ten hits before TOTP was axed in 2006. I fear that they may outlast my blogging resolve. As for this particular single, it was yet another ‘live’ track (they seemed quite keen on those) taken from their “A Real Dead One” album. I can’t be arsed to listen to it but I’m guessing it’s pretty similar to most of their previous chart entries. If that makes me a musical snob then so be it.

Finally!! I’ve been banging on about Dina Carroll and her single “Don’t Be A Stranger” for months now. I may have seemed at one point to be rather obsessed by it. Why? Well, I couldn’t understand why her record label A&M waited until the very last moment to release it as a single. It was the sixth and final track from her album “So Close” but it was as by far the biggest selling going all the way to No 3 when none of the previous five got any higher than No 12. They must have known they had a song with massive hit potential on “So Close” – they even used it to promote the album’s release on TOTP back on 28th January in the show’s album chart feature. So why then let it languish unreleased for another nine months? Were they holding it back for Christmas? I’m going over old territory again here. All I know is that we sold loads of “Don’t Be A Stranger” which stayed in the Top 40 for eleven weeks (nine of them inside the Top 10) with the knock on effect that sales of the album went crazy over the Christmas period that year. Ah! So it was about Christmas then! Maybe A&M knew what they were doing after all.

Next a band at the peak of their fame and apex of their commercial success. From high school slackers to darlings of the inkies music press – that was the seven year journey of The Lemonheads who had just released their sixth studio album called (rather oddly I always thought) “Come On Feel The Lemonheads”. The album would go to No 5 in the UK whilst also supplying their biggest ever hit single “Into Your Arms”.

When not talking about that England defeat, a lot of the staff at the Our Price in Stockport where I was working were very excited by the prospect of this album coming out. Undoubtedly, “Into Your Arms” is a good song but what was catching my attention about the album was its front cover on which Evan Dando looked curiously like the store’s previous manager who had just left to join HMV. Given that Dando’s face seemed to be in every magazine cover at the time – he was included in People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People list – I think I would have been pleased with the comment. Sadly my cheek bone structure would always disqualify me from any such comparison.

As with their previous appearance in the TOTP studio, Evan looks like a giant up there on stage making his guitar seem like a toy. And what was it that they were throwing about mid-song? Just bits of paper? Breadcrumbs like the audience were ducks in a pond? Pop stars eh? Don’t ya just love ‘em?

The Breakers are back with a vengeance after taking last week off with four of the blighters coming at us. We start with a rerelease of a UK No 1 from 1986 – well if it’s good enough for Frankie Goes To Hollywood…”Chain Reaction” was somewhat of a surprise chart topper for Diana Ross coming as it did after an extremely fallow three years preceding it. More so than that though, it was a UK phenomenon as it was totally ignored in the US. None of the other singles from parent album “Eaten Alive” were big hits so what was it about “Chain Reaction” that appealed to us so?* I’m guessing the Bee Gees factor seeing as they wrote it and Barry Gibb does backing vocals on it.

* I say ‘we’ but I have to admit I could never stand it.

So why was it in the charts again? To promote her latest Greatest Hits album “One Woman: The Ultimate Collection” obviously which was a huge seller over that Christmas and went four times platinum in the UK. The 1993 rerelease was actually entitled “Chain Reaction ‘93” (who’d have thought it?!) and was supposedly a remix though they just recycled the original video to promote it. The 1993 incarnation peaked at No 20.

Some big hitters in the Breakers this week as after Miss Diana Ross comes Prince. Back in 1993, the purple one had just released a sprawling Best Of package comprising three separate albums – “The Hits 1”, “The Hits 2” and “The B Sides”. I say Prince but really it was his record company Warners. The former wanted to release the first album by his latest project The New Power Generation but the latter went with the the Best Ofs that they’d wanted to release two years earlier. In total that was 56 tracks if you bought the whole set (36 singles and 20 B-sides). You could buy “The Hits 1” and “The Hits 2” separately but “The B-Sides” had to get bought as part of the whole set. To promote the kit and caboodle came the single “Peach” which was included on “The Hits 2”. Helpfully for all the completists out there, the two CD singles released in the UK came backed with extra tracks that had been singles that weren’t included on either of “The Hits” albums.

As for the song itself, it’s a damn funky, infectious number with some typically dirty lyrics. Never one to shy away from writing about sex, Prince went into the 90s really pushing the envelope. “Gett Off”, “Cream”, “Sexy MF”…and then “Peach” with lyrics like this:

She was pure, every ounce, I was sure when her titties bounced
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Prince Rogers Nelson
Peach lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Years later, I asked a work colleague when discussing “Peach” where was the censor? Her reply was succinct and to the point – “on the dance floor”. Of course, for readers of a certain vintage and inclination, the word ‘peach’ when used in a sexual manner will always conjure up images of Viz’s Sid the Sexist character and his chat up line “D’yer like fruit pet?” I’ll leave you to work out the rest.

https://youtu.be/-fWvjev6WeI

The Prodigy are next with “One Love”, the lead single from their second album “Music For The Jilted Generation” except said album would not appear until July the following year, nearly nine months later. They did a similar thing with their debut album “Experience”. That was released in September of 1992 yet their first two singles which both featured on it came out twelve and nine months before it way back in 1991. I’m not reading anything into it especially; it just struck me as curious.

There was a practice for singles that came out in between albums to be stand alone releases to maintain a band’s profile during the intervening gap. Off the top of my head there’s “The Way You Are” by Tears For Fears that came out in between “The Hurting” and “Songs From The Big Chair” and…oh, here’s a thing…remember that 1990 single from the Stone Roses that was released in between their eponymous debut and “Second Coming”? Remember its title? Yep, “One Love”. Now that is curious. The Prodigy’s “One Love” peaked at No 8 and its video is a complete head f**k.

Bon Jovi’s singles from their “Keep The Faith” album didn’t make much sense. I mean, sure the title track as their first new material of the decade was always going to be a big hit and so it was peaking at No 5. The album came out about three weeks later and then nothing was released from it until January presumably to avoid getting caught in the Christmas rush. So far, so sensible. “Bed Of Roses” was the second single to be released and it understandably peaked at a lower position than its predecessor given that punters would have already bought the album. Then things start to go a bit odd. Third single “In Your Arms” made No 9 thereby reversing the beginnings of a possible case of diminished returns. The following single “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” performed pretty well to say it was the fourth to be released from the album but it did appear to revert to type by peaking at No 17 (the worst performing of all the album’s singles).

And then came this one, the fifth called “I Believe”. This was nearly a year since the album came out and yet it managed to get to No 11. This didn’t make any sense at all. The song itself wasn’t anything special and not one of their best remembered tunes I would suggest. The CD single did have three live tracks on it so could that have influenced potential buyers? The final single to be released from the album completed the oddness. “Dry County” came out on March 7th 1994 a whole sixteen months after the album was released and peaked at No 9. Oh I give up.

There have been many songs on TOTP whilst I have been writing this blog that I have zero recall of and my general reaction has been this:

https://youtu.be/3sIUxy5hDSI

However, my discovery that there is not a single trace in my memory banks of this next act has left me shocked. Why? Well, because they sound pretty good to me and the sort of thing I would have liked. Presumably I didn’t watch this TOTP when first broadcast and missed seeing them but I was working in a record shop at the time so I really have no excuse. I’m talking about One Dove who were a Scottish dance act. Hang on…me?Liking dance music? That can’t be right. I’ve said many times I’m really not a dance head but there’s something very accessible about this track “Breakdown”. It’s got a proper tune and singer Dot Allison (who would have an extensive solo career after the band split) is playing a guitar! It’s also got a hypnotic quality to it. It reminds me of “Visions Of You” by Jah Wobble’s Invaders Of The Heart featuring Sinéad O’Connor. It should have been a bigger hit than a No 24.

Apparently the band split after becoming disillusioned with the music business when their label tried to commercialise their sound. And yes, I had to look all of this up owing to my complete lack of knowledge about One Dove before this repeat aired. I wonder if I merged them into The Doves in my head who were a completely different band altogether but who formed out of Sub Sub who had a massive hit with “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)” in this year. Maybe they were just displaced by that false memory? Getting old is just crap isn’t it?

Oh crikey! It’s Phil Collins! Yes, the much maligned croaker restarted his solo career this year after the last couple of years were taken up with the Genesis album “We Can’t Dance”. Now whatever you might say or think about Phil, his popularity is undeniable. His 1993 album “Both Sides” was his fifth solo venture. Of those five albums to that point, four of them (including “Both Sides”) went to No 1 whilst the other peaked at No 2. “Both Sides Of The Story” was the lead single and (almost) title track from the album and went straight into the Top 10 at No7. Wait…is this the one with the bagpipes near the end? I think it is. As with most of Phil’s and indeed Genesis’s TOTP turns, the producers have cleared the decks running order wise to give an enormous time slot of over five minutes for the performance. Phil spends most of it over emoting and the whole thing sounds particularly overwrought.

Phil played his last show with Genesis in March of this year having to retire from touring due to serious back issues resulting in nerve damage which won’t allow him to drum any more.

https://youtu.be/o-srnmevlL4

Take That and Lulu remain at No 1 with “Relight My Fire”.

Apparently one of the CD singles featured a live Motown medley as one of the extra tracks. A live Motown medley you say? By Take That? Yeah, I think I’d rather have these boys featuring a guy who’s possibly more maligned than even Phil Collins…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Eternal	Stay	Nope
2	Iron Maiden	Hallowed Be Thy Name	Never happening
3	Dina Carroll	Don’t Be A Stranger	Despite harping on about it all this time, I never actually bought it
4	The Lemonheads	Into Your Arms	No
5	Diana Ross	Chain Reaction ‘93	Nah
6	Prince	Peach	Liked it, didn’t buy it
7	The Prodigy	One Love	I did not
8	Bon Jovi	I Believe	No but I had a promo copy of the album
9	One Dove	Breakdown	No but maybe I should have
10	Phil Collins	Both Sides Of The Story	As if
11	Take That / Lulu	Relight My Fire	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001dhjb/top-of-the-pops-14101993

TOTP 04 MAR 1993

Posted on July 5, 2022 by 80stastic

When did you first become aware of the term ‘Reality TV’? It’s hard to recall the exact moment so ingrained has it become in our cultural terms of reference. Myriad examples of it infest our TV programming schedules of ever more ludicrous concepts and content. I have to admit at this point that I am no TV snob and have watched (and continue to watch) my fair share of Reality TV but when did it actually enter our lives? Received wisdom would suggest it all began with Big Brother back in 2000. Nasty Nick and all that. I for one was hooked back then and for a number of subsequent series until it disappeared up its own arse.

However, there was an earlier Reality TV show that beat Big Brother to our screens by a whole seven years. Three days after this TOTP aired, The Living Soap entered our lives. I say our lives but I’m not entirely sure how many people were actually aware of its existence let alone how many people were watching it. It centred around the lives of six students sharing a house in Manchester which was of specific interest to me as I was living there at the time (though working in Rochdale) and my wife was working at the University library so often saw the cameras recording around campus. I’d been a student myself as recently as 1989 so a chance to revisit that period of my life, even remotely, was also appealing.

The show’s gimmick was that it was aired immediately after it had been filmed and was edited using the very first Avid editing technology. It was essential viewing in our house and Simon, Spider, Karen etc became celebrities in the student body of Manchester. It even had a groovy, contemporary theme tune – “Renaissance” by M People which was eventually released as a single and became a big hit. Predictably, the attention and intrusion of the cameras forced four of the six housemates to leave the show before its culmination being replaced by other ‘famous for fifteen minutes’ wannabes chosen by a public vote.

I wonder what became of them all? They’ll just about be in their early 50s now (I certainly am). The only two I can trace online are Simon McEwan who ended up as a BBC producer and Karen Bishko who has had an unbelievable career. She studied History of Art at Manchester but went onto become a singer songwriter who would be the support for Take That in 2007 and would end up writing a musical that was performed in New York! Anyway, M People aren’t on TOTP tonight but let’s see who are….

We start with a to camera piece by veteran radio DJ Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman. Why? Well, it’s in aid of Comic Relief and if it’s that time of year then that can only mean one thing – another terrible charity record. Recent years had seen the likes of Bananarama, Mr Bean with Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson and Hale & Pace on single duty. The 1993 vintage was a rather obvious choice – everyone’s favourite fun chart act Right Said Fred. I mean this was an open goal surely? Who else was even in the running?

As with Hale & Pace two years earlier, the song was written specifically for the cause and was based around that year’s theme which was “Stick It Out”. Oo’er and indeed missus. The single was officially credited to Right Said Fred and Friends with the latter being various celebs of the time adding their ‘hilarious’ contributions. I know I’m stating the bleeding obvious here but this song is really, really terrible. An absolute stinker. Completely devoid of any merit – I’m talking musically of course. It’s good that it raised some money for Comic Relief although you’d have to ask who on earth bought this shite?!

As it’s the Freds, there’s the obligatory bit of double entendre in the lyrics where they sing about ‘a tall erection’ and sticking it out ‘on the doctor’s couch’ (which sounds a bit creepy) and the the rest of it seems to be a rewrite of Spitting Image’s “The Chicken Song” with lines like ‘clean your teeth with your feet’, ‘take a sprout for a walk’ and ‘make a sand igloo’. The studio performance is intercut with the official video for the celebrity interventions and almost inevitably, Bernard Cribbins, whose 1962 novelty song gave the band their name, turns up. Not you too Cribbins. Say it ain’t so! “Stick It Out” peaked at No 4.

https://youtu.be/DIcnd3A4DCU

One of only three songs in tonight’s show that we’ve seen before now as we get the video for “Are You Gonna Go My Way” by Lenny Kravitz. It’s a basic performance promo but it’s the staging of it that makes it memorable. The circular, tiered arena set has a Rocky Horror Picture Show vibe recalling that scene with Meatloaf as Eddie on his motorbike but it’s the overhead lighting that is the money shot. Consisting of 983 incandescent tubes that could be brightened and dimmed to form patterns of light, it’s a pretty cool effect, certainly for 1993.

Although the parent album was a big success, Kravitz struggled to replicate the title track’s sales with any of the subsequent singles released from it. The “Circus” album followed in 1995 but couldn’t match its predecessor’s numbers but Lenny finished the decade with a surprise UK No 1 single in “Fly Away”.

Well this is confusing. When I saw All About Eve on the running order for this show, I automatically thought it was referring to the “Martha’s Harbour” hitmakers but no. “All About Eve” was the name of the song with the artist being Marxman. I have zero recollection of them or their track so I was surprised to see that they have a decent sized Wikipedia entry. It turns out that they were quite the trailblazers. Perhaps rather lazily referred to as the Anglo-Irish Public Enemy, it’s certainly true that their music was informed by their militant socialist values and their message of ending economic and social injustices. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the story behind the slogans on their T-shirts in this performance:

The slogan on Marxman's t-shirts, "Self defence is no offence", was used in campaigns for the release of women such as Sara Thornton, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1990 after being convicted of murdering her abusive husband. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 1, 2022

Wow! Do you think the TOTP producers were aware of what they we’re putting on our screens? I’m sure the show had shied away from such political messaging previously. As for Marxman’s sound, I quite like this track though I am getting some heavy Love City Groove vibes. Who were Love City Groove? This was Love City Groove…

OK, that’s possibly a bit too irreverent a comparison. I’m pretty sure, from what I’ve read, that Marxman’s legacy is a sight more substantial than Love City Groove’s. They toured with both U2 and Depeche Mode and collaborated with artists like The Pogues and Sinéad O’Connor and producers such as DJ Premier of Gang Starr.

“All About Eve” peaked at No 28 and was the band’s only chart hit.

Now here’s a seminal song if ever I heard one. Now hear me out but is there a case for saying that Suede were the indie Take That? No, wait! Come back! Don’t go! Listen, by that I mean they both bands had experienced the unusual career trajectory of generating more press column inches than record sales in their early days; Take That in the teen mags and Suede in the inkies. Both bands would curiously finally correct that with their biggest hit singles to date that both peaked at No 7. For Take That see “It Only Takes A Minute” and for Suede it was “Animal Nitrate”. That’s the end of the Take That comparisons honest!

Despite their media profile, Suede’s first two singles had peaked at No 49 (“The Drowners”) and No 17 (“Metal Mickey”). There were no such brakes on the progress up there charts for “Animal Nitrate”. It just sounded so fresh, so new, so…dangerous. It was an enormous, snarling sound with Brett Anderson’s androgynous vocals allied to Bernard Butler’s irresistible, epic opening guitar riff a potent combination.

Like most of us, I think my first hearing of the song came a couple of weeks before this TOTP on 16th February when Suede performed it at the BRITS. The NME had campaigned for the new indie press darlings to perform on the show despite not being nominated for anything. Their performance that night felt important. They were introduced as “the already legendary Suede” and despite their fledgling career, that didn’t sound like hyperbole. Obviously the focus fell on Brett Anderson with his provocative image of naked chest, bobbed haircut and the slapping of his own arse. It was a genuine WTF? moment.

There was no looking back after that with the single going Top 10 and their much anticipated eponymous debut album going to No 1 on its release later in March. It felt like something significant was happening. In the end something did happen though, for many, the movement that followed Suede’s success would be ultimately unfulfilling.

This week’s live satellite broadcast comes from Hawaii and features k.d. Lang who thus far was best known in the UK for her duet with Roy Orbison on their re-recording of “Crying”. k.d. (it stands for Kathryn Dawn) had, however, been around for years on the country circuit before her 1992 album “Ingénue” (a more commercial and less traditional collection of songs) brought her mainstream recognition and success. The lead single from it was “Constant Craving” which would become both her most successful and recognised song. It took a couple of attempts though to make it a hit. It stalled at No 52 when it was originally released in 1992. I’m pretty sure that I’d heard it then and was aware of who she was but I can’t be sure. It’s thirty years ago!

Anyway, it was a No 15 success the second time around and deservedly so – it’s a good tune. I can’t be sure if it was 1992 or 1993 but in one of those years, some poor sod in the Our Price North West region was tasked with compiling every employee’s favourite musical choices of the year including single. So wide ranging were the replies in this category that the winning song only needed four votes to top the poll. The winner? Yep, “Constant Craving”.

My wife was a big fan and bought the “Ingénue” album. At some point in the decade (I’m not sure of the year and can’t be arsed to check) we even went to see her live at The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. Her voice was amazing as I recall. As an out lesbian artist, her audience reflected that. As we entered the venue, we were behind one lady with a very short haircut who was wearing a Harrington jacket and big Dr Marten boots. The young guy checking the tickets called her ‘sir’ and got an earful back in reply. I did kind of feel sorry for him. I think he wasn’t very culturally aware and that it was a genuine mistake.

The mix on the performance here is very odd with k.d. drowning out what I presume is a backing track easily. It feels like she’s singing accompanied by a cheap karaoke machine. Although the album sold well going to No 3 in the charts, k.d. never had another UK Top 40 hit. Follow up “Miss Chatelaine” got decent airplay but only got as far as No 68.

https://youtu.be/0CcQ3x82g04

Nah, I’ve not really got anything much to say about this next act. Had host Mark Franklin not introduced them I wouldn’t have known just by looking at them that this was Runrig. I mean I was aware that there existed a band called Runrig and that they played Celtic rock music but I didn’t really know any of their stuff at all. To be fair to me, “Wonderful” was only the band’s second charting single after the “Hearthammer EP” in 1991.

Watching this back, I kind of feel sorry for the band. Their first time on TOTP after being in existence since 1973 and they deliver that performance. I mean I know it’s not fair to expect an over the top, all singing and dancing extravaganza when they’re a bunch of forty something guys playing a rather average rock song but come on! They’re like Big Country’s more sensible, straight laced elder brothers. Do you think the lead singer had always been planning on wearing a leather jacket if he ever got on TOTP whenever that might be – the 70s, the 80s whenever? I guess it is a classic item of clothing but it just seems to jar somehow.

Anyway, “Wonderful” peaked at No 29 and that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Ah shit. We’re back to four Breakers this week after none on the last show. More content for me to have to come up with then. Super! Now, one political activist group on the show was quite daring but two? What was going on?! Like Marxman before them, Rage Against The Machine’s music was all about political messaging and anti-authoritarian views. Not that I understood any of that at the time. I thought it was all a bit of an unholy racket. Anyway, “Killing In The Name” was their debut single and although it would achieve a respectable peak of No 25 on the UK Top 40, that was by no means the end or indeed the highlight of its chart story.

Fast forward sixteen years and the singles chart is unrecognisable from its heyday with the once much celebrated race for the Xmas No 1 now hijacked and debased by TV talent show The X Factor. Two members of the public had had enough and formed a Facebook group to campaign for people to buy “Killing In The Name” instead of that year’s X Factor winner’ song. The campaign went viral and, with a physical release of RATM’s track not required as it could be downloaded online and still count as a sale, “Killing In The Name” was duly crowned Xmas No 1 for 2009. I felt a little bit for that year’s X Factor winner little Geordie Joe McElderry who got caught up in the whole media frenzy and was asked about whether such galvanising campaigns should be allowed to subvert the chart compilation in that way but ah, what the hell.

After doing a studio performance last week, Bryan Ferry’s cover of “I Put A Spell On You” is now officially a Breaker at No 22. As you’d expect, the video is set in a nightclub and populated by gorgeous models with Louise Brooks hairstyles looking glamorous and seductive whilst Bryan lurks in the shadows. It’s all very Ferry.

I suggested in a previous post that Annie Lennox had done a superior cover of the song but there is also this by the much underrated Alan Price as well. I do like a bit of Alan Price now and again I have to say…

There was definitely something up with TOTP producer Stanley Appel this week. Not only did he put two political activist groups in the show but he also sneaked The Jesus Lizard into the running order! These Illinois noise rockers (yes, ‘noise rock’ was a thing apparently) were surely one of the unlikeliest of bands to ever appear on the Beeb’s prime time music show but here they were riding on the coat tails of Nirvana’s success with a split single release of their song “Puss” along with Kurt Cobain’s “Oh, The Guilt”. I seem to remember that this was only available on a limited edition 7” but I could be wrong. If I didn’t get Rage Against The Machine then I certainly wasn’t going to be swayed by this lot.

Three years later though I did have my own peculiar little Jesus Lizard moment. It came when I was serving a customer in the Our Price in Stockport who was enquiring about the new George Michael single and wanted to know what it was called. My confident reply? “It’s called ‘Jesus To A Lizard’ madam” before correcting myself to “Jesus To A Child”. Talk about a brain fart. How we laughed!

“Puss / Oh, The Guilt” peaked at No 12.

The final Breaker is the latest single from Madonna. The third single taken from her “Erotica” album, “Bad Girl” is an almost forgotten Madge hit – well, I’d forgotten all about it anyway. To be fair to myself, she’s released eighty-nine singles to date so some of those were bound to skip through my memory cells. I’d also forgotten about the video featuring Christopher Walken who plays the role of Madonna’s character’s guardian angel thereby predating his infamous dancing appearance in Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon Of Choice” by some eight years.

“Bad Girl” kept up Madonna’s run of UK Top 10 singles in the 90s by just creeping in at No 10 itself but in the US it became her first single to fail to make the Billboard Top 20 thus breaking a run of twenty-seven hits starting with “Holiday” in 1983 and ending with “Deeper And Deeper” in 1992. Tellingly for Madonna though, this brief Breakers appearance was the only time we saw “Bad Girl” on TOTP. Back in the 80s, wouldn’t a new Madonna single and video have warranted a much bigger fanfare than this?! We weren’t (gulp) getting bored of her surely?

Just to rub salt into Madge’s wounds, here comes a performance from a legendary female artist that does get the full bells and whistles treatment with host Mark Franklin even going so far as to say he was proud to introduce her. He was talking, of course, of (Miss) Diana Ross. If “Bad Girl” is a forgotten Madonna single though, what does that make “Heart (Don’t Change My Mind)”? This was yet another single to be lifted from her “Force Behind The Power” album that had already been out eighteen months! It’s one of those songs that you’ve forgotten about as soon as the last note has disappeared into the ether. So vacuous was it that it was hardly there at all. A bit like Michelle Donelan being Secretary of State for Education for thirty-six hours or however long it was. As I say, hardly there at all.

There was one thing to note here though. Diana’s clearly borrowed that bloke from Runrig’s leather jacket for this performance – maybe I was wrong to ridicule him after all. “Heart (Don’t Change My Mind)” peaked at No 31 – don’t ask me how it even got that far up the chart.

Still top of the pile are 2 Unlimited with “No Limit”. I think they’ve got one more week after this but that won’t be the last we’ll see of them as there’s at least another four Top 10 hits to come from them in the next couple of years.

What do you think the pinball themed video was all about? Was it some sort of Elton John / Tommy / The Who tribute?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I Buy it?
1	Right Said Fred And Friends	Stick It Out	Not even for charity
2	Lenny Kravitz	Are You Gonna Go My Way	No
3	Marxman	All About Eve	Nope
4	Suede	Animal Nitrate	No the single but I had the album
5	k.d.Lang	Constant Craving	Not but my wife had the album
6	Runrig	Wonderful	Never
7	Rage Against The Machine	Killing In The Name	Nah
8	Bryan Ferry	I Put A Spell On You	No but I had a promo copy of the album
9	The Jesus Lizard / Nirvana	Puss / Oh, The Guilt	Negative
10	Madonna	Bad Girl	I did not
11	Diana Ross	Heart (Don’t Change My Mind)	As if
12	2 Unlimited	No Limit	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0018s7p/top-of-the-pops-04031993

TOTP 10 DEC 1992

Posted on May 23, 2022 by 80stastic

When I was a lad (can’t believe I’ve started a post with that phrase!) things seemed straightforward, linear even. Timelines of events were uncomplicated. Things happened then finished. Then something else happened. What on earth am I talking about? Well, I’m thinking about musical movements.

When I was growing up in the 70s, it seemed to me that flavours of music would rise to popularity, burn brightly and then fizzle out whereupon something else would take over. So glam rock was prevalent from 1971 to 1975 approximately before punk rock pressed the reset button in a whirlwind of filth and fury. By 1978 with The Sex Pistols in disarray, punk had served its purpose and was superseded by New Wave and a Mod revival. When that bit the dust the New Romantics took centre stage with swagger and outrageous outfits. With the pin up boys of that movement aspiring to be more than cult status, New Pop was born with Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Culture Club dominating the charts. See what I mean? Yes, that’s a very simplistic view that could easily be debunked I’m sure (where was disco in all this for example?) but I’m going with it to enable my point. Talking of which, what is my point exactly? It’s this. By the time we got to late 1992, what musical movement were we in because I have no idea going by the running order on this edition of TOTP. Yes, obviously we had seen a dance explosion happen from at least 1988 onwards (some may even date it as early as 1986) but by this point it was the movement was so refracted that there was a kaleidoscope of sub genres. I remember whilst working for Our Price in the 90s a memo coming out from head office entitled ‘scary areas of your shop and how to deal with them’. First on the list was how to classify the dance collections section of the racks, so unwieldy had that section become.

Anyway, back to TOTP and this show featured a boy band, a Motown superstar, a part of the establishment that was into his fifth decade of hit records, the Queen of Latino pop, a posthumous release from one of the biggest and most flamboyant rock stars ever, some US R’n’B a cappella style, some indie rock, a collaboration between some Manc electronic dance pioneers and the kings of Brummie reggae and…descending from a parallel universe a troupe of wrestlers! Pick the bones out of that! What the Hell was going on?! Let’s find out..,

We start with that boy band – Take That. After having lived with the next big thing tag for a year or so without delivering on it, these lads had finally started turning potential and promotion into sales. Their cover of Barry Manilow’s “Could It Be Magic” was their fourth chart hit of the year and this one was the biggest of the lot, ascending ultimately to a high of No 3. Now Take That weren’t the first teen sensation to do a cover version – I’m thinking The Bay City Rollers doing “Bye Bye Baby” by The Four Seasons for example – but this did seem to set a template for the conveyor belt of acts that followed in their wake. Look at this lot:

911 – “More Than A Woman” by the Bee Gees
A1 – “Take On Me” by A-ha
Boyzone – “Father And Son” by Cat Stevens
Five – “We Will Rock You” by Queen
Let Loose – “Make It With You” by Bread
OTT – “Let Me In” by The Osmonds
Upside Down – “If You Leave Me Now” by Chicago
Westlife – “Mandy” by Barry Manilow

All fine versions I’m sure you’ll agree! To be fair though, Take That’s cover of “Could It Be Magic” was pretty good I think although their reworking of it had more to do with Donna Summer’s 1976 disco rendition than the Manilow version. I seem to recall it being received pretty well as an unexpectedly strong version which wrong footed most people’s expectations of what they would do next. Sure it was a cover but of a different flavour to their take on “It Only Takes A Minute” by Tavares that gave them their first big chart hit. Should they have reversed their release schedule and put “Could It Be Magic” out earlier and then gone big time on ballad “A Million Love Songs” for the Xmas No 1? For what it’s worth I think they got it the right way round.

This was the first time that Robbie Williams took on the vocals on his own. Little did we know what was to come in just a few short years. Gary Barlow is demoted to rank and file status – he’s on backing dancer/ vocals duties with the rest of the group. You can almost see him counting the dance steps in his head. I’d watch your back Gary if I was you.

Despite having passed away in late 1991, Freddie Mercury still retained a massive presence into 1992. In April, The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was held at Wembley stadium and in November came “The Freddie Mercury Album”, a collection of his solo work released to commemorate the anniversary of his death. It was a nice idea for the fanbase and no doubt record label Parlophone always had it in mind to ring every drop of revenue they could out of his existing catalogue. What I didn’t quite get though was how they were going to put together a Best Of out of such scant source material. Freddie only released one, pure solo album in his lifetime which was 1985’s “Mr Bad Guy”. Yes, there was that “Barcelona” album with Montserrat Caballé but who, apart from superfans, really knows anything from that but the title track? What else is there? Well, he had a hit single in 1984 called “Love Kills” from Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic silent film Metropolis. Then there’s his No 4 hit from 1987 which was his cover of The Platters oldie “The Great Pretender”. And…erm…oh yes! There’s “I was Born To Love You”, the only single to chart from that “Mr Bad Guy” album. Erm…except that isn’t on “The Freddie Mercury Album”! I presume it was a licensing issue as “Mr Bad Guy” was released by CBS rather than Queen’s EMI label. There are other tracks from it on “The Freddie Mercury Album” but maybe CBS/Sony didn’t want to give away the rights to its (then) best known tune.

Given all the above, Parlophone chose to promote the album with “In My Defence”. This was a track from the Dave Clark musical Time. This was the production that had already given us Top 40 singles by Cliff Richard (“She’s So Beautiful”), Julian Lennon (“Because”) and indeed Freddie himself who took “Time” to No 32 in 1986. I guess Parlophone could have rereleased “The Great Pretender” (which they ultimately did after “In My Defence”) but not “Barcelona” which had already been re-issued for the 1992 Olympics. “In My Defence” it was though and it’s a perfect vehicle for Freddie’s voice, all overblown drama and huge notes but it works pretty well. It could easily have been a Queen composition really. The single went Top 10 but there was an even bigger hit to come from the album the following year that had been hiding in plain sight but that’s for a future post…

https://youtu.be/44eEOAEC5z8

Something from the US chart now as we see a song that would end up being a big hit in the UK four years down the line but not for the original artist. I don’t recall the Shai version of “If I Ever Fall In Love” but then, despite this TOTP appearance, it only made it to No 36 in our charts. In the US however, it was a huge hit staying at No 2 for eight weeks!

Was the version they perform here the version on the record? A cappella I mean?

*checks Spotify*

I found two versions. One is the TOTP version and the other has a bit of instrumentation on it but not much. I’m not mad on a cappella I have to say and Shai haven’t made me change my mind. What was the deal with the guy with his coat half on and half off?!

Oh that version that was a hit in 1996? That was by East 17 and Gabrielle of course. They changed the title to “If I Ever”, dropped the a cappella style and took it all the way to No 2. Don’t think it stayed there for eight weeks though. I didn’t like that version either.

Right it’s time for those wrestlers! Despite the charts having been infiltrated in recent weeks by novelty tripe like computer games tunes “Tetris” and “Supermarioland” and a ‘song’ by stripper troupe The Chippendales, it seemed 1992 hadn’t done with us yet in the utter shite stakes. You may not be surprised that WWF Superstars was the idea of Simon Cowell. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

"Slam Jam" was Simon Cowell's idea: "I read in one of our newspapers that [The WWF] sold out 82,000 seats in 27 minutes. Hang on, there's not a rock band in the world that can do that. I also found out that they were selling about two and a half million videos a year…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

"… It didn't take a lot of time to realise that if they were selling that many seats and that many videos, there would be a lot of kids who would want to buy an album from the wrestlers as well." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

Hmm. It reminds me of a scene from one of my favourite ever films Stardust starring David Essex which tells the story of the rise of fictional rock star Jim MacLaine. After he has split from his band and gone solo, MacLaine’s manager Mike (played by Adam Faith) plans a worldwide TV and cinema simultaneous broadcast of a concert to promote MacLaine’s latest album. A conversation between Mike and Jim’s American manager Porter Lee Austin (played by Larry Hagman) plays out like this:

Mike: See, what we do is this. We get the cinemas and TV companies all over the world to put up a big enough advance to cover the cost of the album and the show. Well, I mean that way we can’t lose. I mean…If they can pick up money putting on boxing shows, just think what we can pick up putting Jim MacLaine on satellite. For every one boxing fan there must be at least 5,000 pop fans. I mean, to coincide with the concert what we can do is put the album out worldwide. Well, just think of all that promotion Porter Lee. It’s all or nothing this one Porter…

Porter Lee: What kind of concert Mike?

Mike: Don’t worry about the concert eh? Just leave that to me. I tell you one thing, it be like something you’ve ever seen before

Porter Lee: That’s a pretty good idea Mike. Maybe I can do something.

Mike: He’ll be bigger than Aldof Hitler after this lot.

OK, we probably didn’t need the Hitler reference but you get my drift. The WWF Superstars single was called “Slam Jam” (presumably after a wrestling move?) and it was, of course, dreadful. Produced by Mike Stock and Pete Waterman (it just gets worse doesn’t it?), the vinyl came in a poster sleeve bag as I recall (Cowell never misses a marketing trick) and it would reach No 4 in the charts. I’m guessing it was bought by 10 year old boys because if not, I have no idea how to explain what occurred here.

“Connecticut, we have a problem”. Host Mark Franklin advises us that there was meant to be an exclusive satellite performance by Diana Ross of her latest single “If We Hold On Together” from Connecticut but technical problems have put paid to that so we have to make do with the official video instead. To be honest, I’m not too fussed either way.

Now this was taken from the soundtrack to the Universal Pictures animated film The Land Before Time but I’m confused because it came out in 1988 so why was a song from it a hit in the UK four years later? I can only assume it had a terrestrial TV premiere around this time. Another thing that’s confusing me is what this video is that TOTP are showing? I can’t find it on YouTube. The only one I came across featured wall to wall scenes from the film whereas the TOTP version also includes footage of Diana herself. To add to the mystery, Wikipedia says there was no official video for the song. Maybe there wasn’t in 1988 but there was in 1992? I refer you to my earlier comment. I’m not really fussed either way.

As for the song, it sounded exactly as you expected it would. Basically “Somewhere Out There” from An American Tail. “If We Hold On Together” peaked at No 11.

One of the surprise breakout stars of 1992 were KWS who bagged an unlikely No 1 with their cover of KC And The Sunshine Band’s “Please Don’t Go”. A Top 10 follow up (another cover of George McRae’s “Rock Me Baby”) consolidated their success. On reflection, KWS were like the soul version of Undercover. However, by the end of the year their shtick was starting to wear thin. Yet another cover version was chosen as their third single release of the year – “Hold Back The Night” by The Trammps – but to spice it up a bit, they (or more likely their management) decided to team up with the original hitmakers on the track.

Now it’s easy in this performance to see who are The Trammps as they’re the older fellas who have taken their tuxedos and bow ties out of the back of the wardrobe. I’m assuming the KWS guys are the two on keyboards at either end of The Trammps but are they ‘K’, ‘W’ or ‘S’? Remember that their band name came from the initials of the band’s surnames – King / Williams / St. Joseph. And where was the one that wasn’t there?

“Hold Back The Night” peaked at No 30.

Ah the Breakers. Marvellous! After the Boney M “Megamix” single last week, there’s another one tonight courtesy of Gloria Estefan. Known as “Miami Hit Mix” in the UK, this was to promote Gloria’s first “Greatest Hits” album which was a huge seller over Xmas reaching No 2 and eventually going triple platinum in the UK. I recall that by opening time on Xmas Eve, the only chart stock line that we had ran out of in the Our Price in Rochdale where I was working was the cassette version of the album. We knew we had some on order that were due to come in on the day but the record company were out of stock when the delivery came in. Ian the store manager wasn’t too arsed saying “nobody will find it anywhere else in Rochdale today”. He was probably right. There wasn’t much competition record shop wise in Rochdale. There was somewhere in the Exchange shopping centre but it was very hit and miss and the manager of the place was obsessed with our shop and used to buy his records from us!

Anyway, back to Gloria and the “Miami Hit Mix”. There were five tracks in the medley from various stages of Gloria’s career. You can tell that as they were released under three different Gloria monikers:

Song	Gloria Moniker
Dr Beat	Miami Sound Machine
Conga	Miami Sound Machine
Rhythm Is Gonna Get You	Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine
1-2-3	Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine
Get On Your Feet	Gloria Estefan

As with Boney M, the Xmas party market meant that sales of the single were brisk enough to send it into the Top 10. Also like Boney M, it was the last time Gloria ventured so high in the UK charts.

Fed up of all the cover versions in the charts? Tough because here comes another one courtesy of The Lemonheads. I had no idea who this lot were at the time but their cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs Robinson” sounded pretty cool to me back then. According to some of the online reviews I have found, I was in the minority. Ultimateclassicrock.com describe it as ‘terrible’ and ‘meh’. Even Evan Dando himself can’t like it that much as he is on record as hating the original and indeed Paul Simon. So why was their cover even recorded then?

Apparently it was to celebrate the 25th anniversary home video release of The Graduate, the film it features in. The Lemonheads cover brought the band more coverage and success than they’d ever had up to that point. The band had already released four albums to little fanfare since their formation in 1986. The first three had been on indie label Taang! before they were picked up by major Atlantic for their fourth “Lovey”. However, it was fifth album “It’s A Shame About Ray” that would see them gain much wider recognition. Initial pressings of the album didn’t include the “Mrs Robinson” cover but its success meant that the album was re-released with its omission now corrected. It would achieve gold status sales in the UK and a rerelease of the title track brought the band a second Top 40 single the following year.

The pinnacle of the band’s success came with the release of the “Come On Feel The Lemonheads” album in October of 1993 which made the Top 5 in the UK charts. I had transferred from the Our Price in Rochdale to the much bigger store in Stockport by that time. The manager there when I started was a guy called Paul who looked a bit like Evan Dando and certainly the image of Dando on the cover of the album bore that out. Paul moved on to HMV (or was it Virgin?) not long after I got to Stockport. On my first day I asked him what lunch he wanted to go on. He replied “lunch is for wimps”. I visibly gulped.

“Mrs Robinson” peaked at No 19.

Right, what’s this then? 808 State vs UB40? What the Hell? Electronic dance music meets reggae pop? Who’s idea was this? OK, that’s enough questions. Time for some answers. Well, I haven’t got many to be fair. This remix of the Brummies 1981 Top 10 single “One In Ten” came from the Mancs’ fourth studio album “Gorgeous” which featured other guest artists like Ian McCulloch. Why they chose to tackle UB40’s unemployment referencing classic I’m not sure. Judging by some of the comments on YouTube against the single’s video, people are very divided on whether the remix was genius or a crime. For me, I’m always going to favour the original.

The remix of “One In Ten” peaked at No 17. 808 State would not return to the Top 20 for another five years when they did so with another collaboration, this time with James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers on “Lopez”.

After all the cover versions and medleys, here’s a proper, original song courtesy of Madonna. I say original but “Deeper And Deeper” does delve into one of her most iconic hits when it morphs into “Vogue” in the coda. Oh, and there’s a “La Isla Bonita” borrowing bridge that features flamenco guitar and castanets. And…it does pinch some lyrics from “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound Of Music. Apart from that though, totally original.

“Deeper And Deeper” peaked at No 6.

There’s only two weeks to Xmas so Cliff Richard is making his move for the festive No 1 with “I Still Believe In You”. He resorts to his usual over emoting performance tricks that he’s been peddling for years. I’m sure it’s just a case of slowing down with age but he could mix it up a bit. The other thing that doesn’t seem to have changed for years is Cliff’s hair. It seems to have been the same since the mid 80s at least. Cliff mate, it’s 1992 and you’re still sporting a mullet! Now granted I myself cultivated one during the period ‘84-‘86. Not a Chris Waddle but it was definitely long at the back. It was fashionable back then. By 1987 though, mine was gone forever. Cliff on the other hand was determined to keep the style going single handedly…erm headedly.

Cliff never did make the Xmas No 1 this year because of this next record…

A second week at No 1 for Whitney Houston with “I Will Always Love You” and I think it was becoming obvious by this point that this was no ordinary record. I don’t have actual sales figures to hand but in the Our Price in Rochdale, it felt like it was outselling everything else in the Top 5 combined. With just a couple of weeks to go to Xmas, the idea of there being a race to be the festive chart topper felt like delusion. It was never in doubt.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Take That	Could It Be Magic	Good cover but I wasn’t buying Take That thank you very much!
2	Freddie Mercury	In My Defence	I did not
3	Shai	If I Ever Fall In Love	Nah
4	WWF Superstars	Slam Jam	As if
5	Diana Ross	If We Hold On Together	Never happening
6	KWS / The Trammps	Hold Back The Night	Nope
7	Gloria Estefan	Miami Hit Mix	No
8	The Lemonheads	Mrs Robinson	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	808 State vs UB40	One In Ten	Not for me
10	Madonna	Deeper And Deeper	Negative
11	Cliff Richard	I Still Believe In You	The feeling is not reciprocated Cliff
12	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0017731/top-of-the-pops-10121992

TOTP 18 JUN 1992

Posted on March 4, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve missed yet another show due to the Adrian Rose issue and so find ourselves well into June of 1992 here at TOTP Rewind. The Euros international football tournament is well under way but England are already out having lost 2-1 to hosts Sweden two days before this episode aired. After the excitement of Italia ‘90, it was a huge disappointment for the nation but in truth the team had massively underperformed not having won a single game and scoring just one goal. Graham Taylor was vilified in the press especially by The Sun and their infamous ‘turnip’ campaign. I would never endorse anything in that publication but Taylor was not, by any metric, a successful appointment.

I was still working at the Our Price store on Market Street, Manchester at this time. There was another store in Manchester at Piccadilly above which there was office space which was used by area and regional managers for admin work. I had my initial interview as a Xmas temp there. It was also used for company events where directors were invited to come and address store employees and take questions from them about company policy, initiatives etc. At one point it also housed some unsaleable stock that needed sending back to the central warehouse in Heston, Greater London and I recall spending a day up there packing up all sorts of crap albums. It was soul destroying. The person I spent the day doing this with was called Matt who went onto be a senior product manager at EMI and now runs a campaign management company for music artists. Meanwhile, I’m currently…unemployed. I seem to remember Matt was much more conscientious in his work that day boxing up loads more than I did. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Anyway, that’s enough of my personal stuff…on with the show! We start with Utah Saints and their Kate Bush sampling hit “Something Good”. Watching this back, it’s interesting to note how much the performance comes over like that of a conventional rock/pop band due to the fact that there’s some actual instruments on show. There’s the energetic bass player, someone on keyboards and the bloke with the megaphone thwacking some drums. The Kate Bush vocal is taken care of via a guy on the decks spinning a picture disc of her. As such, despite it undoubtedly being a dance anthem, the TOTP producers don’t feel the need for all that garishly coloured special effects wash to be deployed as it has been in the past for dance acts on the show. It makes for a much more enjoyable experience or maybe it’s that it just appeals to my more traditional tastes. As you know I was never a ravehead.

Tonight’s presenters are Mark Franklin and…WTF? Bob Geldof?! Why?! What was going on here?! It’s true that just a few weeks before they had Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse as Smashie and Nicey guest present but that was a tie in to promote Enfield’s comedy show that was returning to BBC2 later that evening. Was Geldof there to promote something? He released his third solo album in 1992 called “The Happy Club” but it can’t have been to do with that surely? It seems there were some other guest presenters during the ‘year zero’ era. In December, Tony Dortie was joined by Mr Blobby (I kid you not) whilst several EastEnders actors took a turn but here’s Tony Dortie to explain that connection:

One of the things that isn't mentioned much is how old School #Eastenders and #totp got on so well @westbrookdanni Sid Owen wld always come n hang out for rehearsals they were also good and fun guest hosts. @deangaffney1 ledge. Albert Sq used to always have Pop star set visits
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) March 4, 2022

So what was the deal with Sir Bob? Perhaps the more pertinent question is what the hell did he think he was doing with some of the comments he proceeds to make on the show? He comes across as a creepy, bitter, old bellend. Witness his first segue which is into one of those satellite link performances from the US this time with Sophie B Hawkins. “I don’t want to ask you any questions I just want to look at you” Geldof pervs. Eeeewww! Sophie just laughs nervously. What was he thinking?! Sadly it won’t be the last inappropriate comment he makes during the show. Here’s Tony Dortie again with his take on what went down:

#totp 2Bob Geldof was thoroughly unpleasant about the artistes appearing as well, just the worse ….being rude has never been in style. At the time nobody said anything cz Sir Soap dodger got given his "I'm Privileged pass"
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) February 25, 2022

There’s more…

#totp I'll say it you SEXIST PIG 2Bob Geldof..you are just the worst ….you were a grown man at the time as well …
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) February 25, 2022

Tony telling it how it was there. Anyway, back to the music and Sophie B Hawkins. Who was she and where had she come from? Well, she was a bit of a cultural all rounder being a singer -songwriter, musician and painter and hailed from New York City(baby!). As well as being a song title Shania Twain would pay good money for, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” was her debut single and was a worldwide smash. This was one of those songs that’s all about the hook of the chorus with the verses actually being quite pedestrian. It works though; there’s even a false ending in there just to mix things up a bit. I don’t think that I picked up on the fact that the object of her affections in the lyrics is actually a woman and that the whole song is written from the perspective of the singer observing said woman in an abusive relationship and wanting to rescue her from it. Sophie comes across as quite the bohemian her bio suggests she was/is in this performance which does a good job of engaging the audience. As Mark Franklin says (and in a much more appropriate way than Geldof would have I’m sure), she seemed like a lot of fun. Not quite a one hit wonder (she had three more UK Top 40 hits), this is probably the one she is best remembered for though. It peaked at No 14.

Now if we thought that Utah Saints were subversive earlier when it came to being a dance act on TOTP when acting more like an archetypal rock band…well, we hadn’t seen anything yet! This ‘performance’ from The Orb must be one if the most outlandish in the show’s history. These ambient house innovators had already made a splash with their debut album “The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld” but they would become a sensation with the release of “U.F.Orb” which would go to No 1. It was previewed by the single “Blue Room” which would make history as the longest track to ever enter the UK singles chart. Clocking in at a mammoth 39 minutes, it took advantage of a change in regulations when the chart compilers allowed a maxi single to run to 40 minutes (alongside the existing 25 minute limit) as long as only one title was listed amongst the single’s tracks. It duly entered the Top 40 at No 12 before climbing to a peak of No 8.

Enough of the statistics though, let’s get to what was going down on screen. No DJs nor ponytailed fellas jigging about behind keyboards here. No, the best way to promote the track in the eyes of The Orb’s Alex Paterson and Kris Weston was to have the pair sat playing a sci-fi version of chess whilst passing a cross bearing orb between the pair of them. To pad it out a bit there’s some kaleidoscopic imagery of dolphins and some strobe lights flickering about. How to describe this performance? Avant- garde? Leftfield? Eccentric? Or maybe just plain old weird. Apparently it had a cosmic effect on Robbie Williams. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

“He thought it was so radical. He’d never seen a band come in and just dictate and piss people off so much and get away with it.” A collaboration resulted: this 1997 cover of The Bee Gees' "I Started A Joke" https://t.co/tJ0jwGircR #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 25, 2022

“Blue Room” features the guitar playing of Gong and System 7 member Steve Hillage. When working at the Our Price store in Stockport in the mid 90s, Steve was the inspiration for a saying we used if someone had a mishap with a brew. If anyone spilt their drink a cry of ‘Steve Spillage!’ could be heard. Well it amused us.

Geldof is back now having a dig at Elton John whose latest video is up next. We all knew that Elton’s hair wasn’t real but to bring it up by going on about his new wig seemed unnecessary at best especially coming from a man who was criticised himself over his appearance at the time of Band Aid/Live Aid (he was too busy for a haircut if you remember). As Elton was on just the other week, I’ll return to Tony Dortie and his tweets to cover this one…err…”The One”:

We need to do more to celebrate Elton John he is truly one of the most talented Living Musicians in the history of music since time began @eltonofficial there is nobody who doesn't like Elton #totp
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) February 25, 2022

Ah. You see the thing is Tony that’s not quite true. I refer you to my comments last week about my friend Robin who dismissed all of Elton’s back catalogue as unlistenable bollocks. I was wrong about him not having a favourite Lionel Richie song though. “Three Times A Lady” was his choice which is presumably three times the song that “The One” is.

Despite 1992 being awash with dance anthems, there was still space in the UK pop landscape for a boy band. Enter Take That. Actually, was the term ‘boy band’ in use back in 1992 or am I using it retrospectively? Certainly there were groups* that attracted a predominantly female teenage fan base before then. Bay City Rollers in the 70s, Duran Duran and Bros in the 80s but were they referred to as boy bands at the time? I’m not so sure. The 90s was a boy band boom time though. Off the top of my head and not counting US groups there were the big three of Take That, Boyzone and Westlife but there were also 5ive, 911, A1, Bad Boys Inc, Upside Down, East 17 and many more probably including a number in their moniker. All of these (with the exception possibly of East 17) followed a template of pretty boys singing catchy but lightweight tunes and doing some nifty dance steps while they were at it. Their catalogue of songs would almost certainly include some cover versions.

*I’m not counting The Beatles on the grounds that the connotations of what it meant to be a boy band certainly didn’t apply to them.

I guess New Kids On The Block had shown what that set up could achieve sales wise as the new decade dawned. It was probably inevitable that the UK would find its own version of them eventually. It was just that Take That got there first. Anyway, here they are in the studio again performing “It Only Takes A Minute” again and judging by the screams of the audience, they know they’re on to a good thing. Interesting to note that even at this early stage the only other band member to get a vocal line and their own personal camera close up is Robbie Williams. Hmm. “It Only Takes A Minute” peaked at No 7.

Four Breakers this week starting with U2 and “Even Better Than The Real Thing”. The fourth single from their “Achtung Baby” album of the previous year, its original version was later eclipsed by the Paul Oakenfold Perfecto dance remix both in terms of chart peak and, for many a music lover, its artistic merit. I always liked the version as it was originally intended though. It sounded angular and dynamic propelled by another great guitar riff from The Edge, the distinctive sound of which was created by a DigiTech Whammy pitch shifter pedal which created a double octave sweep (for all you tech enthusiasts out there). The video was a Godley & Creme production with the continuous rotating footage created by a 360 degree camera rig. They certainly liked to innovate those guys. Remember the face morphing “Cry” video from 1985? “Even Better Than The Real Thing” peaked at No 12 whilst the dance mixes did even better than the real thing by going to No 8.

One of my favourite albums of 1992 was “0898” by The Beautiful South which spawned four great singles yet we hadn’t seen any of them on TOTP until now. We may have missed some appearances due to the Adrian Rose scenario I guess. That situation was finally rectified when third single “Bell Bottomed Tear” made it into the Breakers. Despite it being the biggest hit of the four peaking at No 16, we would not see it again on the show. After two faster paced singles with Paul Heaton as the main vocalist, it was the turn of Dave Hemmingway to come centre stage what with it being a ballad and all which seemed to be his forte. I say ballad though it seems to be more of a lament for a one night stand that didn’t turn into a relationship.

The final single released from the album (“36D”) was the least successful missing the Top 40 completely though was possibly the most notorious. Supposedly it was a trigger for Briana Corrigan to leave the band as she objected to it reflecting negatively on glamour models when it should have been the media that gave them the platform that was criticised. There was probably more to it than that but that was the story I heard.

A first sighting now of the best selling US girl group of all time. Yes, before Destiny’s Child, SWV and the rest came TLC and they were bigger than them all with sales of 85 million copies. With four No 1 singles and a No 1 album in America alone, no wonder the group were inducted to the Black Music & Entertainment Hall Of Fame this year alongside the likes of such legendary names as Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding and Michael Jackson. It all started with debut single “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg” though I have to admit to not being particularly aware of it at the time despite it making No 13 in our Top 40. By the time the likes of “Creep”, “Waterfalls” and the “CrazySexyCool” album came around you couldn’t fail to notice them and I didn’t. Apparently the group’s them manager Pebbles (yes she of “Girlfriend” fame in the late 80s) makes an appearance at the end of the video for “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg”. Tragically Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes died in a road traffic accident in 2002.

When I think about Diana Ross in the early 90s (not that I do very often you understand) the only song that comes to mind is her No 2 hit “When You Tell Me That You Love Me”. Taken from the album “The Force Behind The Power”, it was a huge hit over Xmas of ‘91. I was therefore taken aback to learn that the album actually generated five UK Top 40 singles. “One Shining Moment” was the third of those and even made No 10. It’s a smoother sound than WYTMTYLM which always seemed just ever so slightly hysterical in its yearning but it’s also fairly unremarkable and I’m surprised it was such a big hit.

Diana (or Ms Diana Ross to use her full title) would continue to have medium sized hits in the UK throughout the decade though interestingly not in her native US – none of the singles from “Force Behind The Power” were hits there. She even had a No 1 Best Of album in this country in 1993 when “One Woman: The Ultimate Collection” was a huge seller that Xmas.

Ah shit! Geldof’s back making more asinine comments although I can’t really quibble about his target here. When Def Leppard were on the show recently with their “Let’s Get Rocked” single, I derided it as one of the dumbest songs of the decade and I was right. However, they came pretty close to topping that ‘achievement’ with its follow up “Make Love Like A Man”. I can hardly bear to hear the lyrics on this but if I have to listen to them then you can read them. Look at this horseshit:

‘Make love like a man, I’m a man that’s what I am’

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Robert John Lange / Stephen Clark / Joseph Elliott / Philip Collen
Make Love Like a Man lyrics © Out-of-pocket-prod. Ltd., Bludgeon Riffola Limited, Bmg Rights Management (uk) Ltd (primary Wave), Bludgeon Riffola Ltd

Or:

‘I’m the one (I got it) I’m Mr. Fun, (you need it) I’m Captain Cool’

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Robert John Lange / Stephen Clark / Joseph Elliott / Philip Collen
Make Love Like a Man lyrics © Out-of-pocket-prod. Ltd., Bludgeon Riffola Limited, Bmg Rights Management (uk) Ltd (primary Wave), Bludgeon Riffola Ltd

And then there’s:

‘Don’t call me gigolo, don’t call me Casanova, just call me on the phone and baby come on over’

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Robert John Lange / Stephen Clark / Joseph Elliott / Philip Collen

Make Love Like a Man lyrics © Out-of-pocket-prod. Ltd., Bludgeon Riffola Limited, Bmg Rights Management (uk) Ltd (primary Wave), Bludgeon Riffola Ltd

What. The. Fuck?! Lead singer Joe Elliott has stated that they weren’t trying to be macho with this song but rather funny. Remind me never to invite Joe round to my house if I need cheering up with a laugh. Even Elliott seems to have seen the light though. In a 2014 interview he admitted he would rather not play this song live anymore as the lyrics are a nod too stupid. No shit. Despite all of the above, did Geldof really need to introduce it with the following words:

“Here’s their new single I’d quite like to give you one big girl otherwise known as Make Love Like A Big Girl’s Blouse”? No he didn’t. What’s that? He was trying to be funny too? Add him to the list of people never to be invited around to my gaff. “Make Love Like A Man” peaked at No 12.

Erasure are No 1 with their “ABBA-esque EP”. It’s the video this week for the “Take A Chance On Me” track with Vince and Andy dressed up as Agnetha and Anna-Frid in their 70s pomp. I wonder if they argued about who would be who? Vince looks quite convincing as Agnetha, Andy not so much as Anna-Frid. I seem to remember there being a lot of praise about how amusing the video was at the time but I’m not sure if it’s retained that humour.

Geldof and Mark Franklin are reunited for the show’s ending and we discover that unbelievably the former was there to promote his latest release – a single called “Room 19 (Sha La La La Lee)”. You’ll be glad to hear that it didn’t make the Top 100.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Utah Saints	Something Good	Liked it, didn’t buy it
2	Sophie B. Hawkins	Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover	Nope
3	The Orb	Blue Room	Not really my bag
4	Elton John	The One	Nah
5	Take That	It Only Takes A Minute	No
6	U2	Even Better Than The Real Thing	No but I had the album Achtung Baby
7	The Beautiful South	Bell Bottomed Tear	No but I had the album 0898
8	TLC	Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg	Negative
9	Diana Ross	One Shining Moment	It’s another no
10	Def Leppard	Make Love Like A Man	God no!
11	Erasure	Abba-esque EP	No but my wife did…maybe

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/m0014rlm/top-of-the-pops-18061992

TOTP 05 DEC 1991

Posted on December 6, 2021 by 80stastic

What? It’s December ’91 already here at TOTP Rewind? Wasn’t the last post on the blog from mid November? Well yes but we’ve missed the final show win November due to that confusing scenario of one of the presenters not giving permission for the repeats to be aired. We skipped numerous episodes back in the 80s due to the late Mike Smith not giving permission before his death in 2014 and the issue has raised its head again in the early 90s shows. So who is it that hasn’t given his blessings for these repeats to be aired? His name is Adrian Rose or rather was Adrian Rose. He’s not dead but he goes by a different name now. Or should that be names as I’ve found him referred to on the internet as Adrian Woolfe and Adrian Rose Woolfe. It turns out that he went on to have a successful career in TV production (he was involved in bringing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? to our screens) though that doesn’t explain his reluctance to give permission for his TOTP shows to be repeated. There’s a whole load of theories circulating on the internet about what his reasoning might be with some tweets on the subject having been deleted so I’m not about to launch into an investigation as to what happened here for fear of any litigious action. However, Adrian’s fellow presenters Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin, both of whom seem very willing to tweet along with these TOTP repeats and answer questions about them, did add to the debate on Twitter :

Put it this way name a Famous Tom Cruise Movie and a stand out scene.that gives you a answer..
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) November 3, 2021

err….

I would add I personally think as well maybe some people were never shown the deserved respect that should be expected..Adrian was a pleasure to work with and a very smart lad
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) November 3, 2021

Hmm. If you really want to dig deeper into this issue, there’s lots more out there online not least from Tony and Mark but my take on it is that when the presenters were being supplied from the Radio 1 DJ roster then their existing contracts with the BBC covered any stints on TOTP but the presenters in the new format must have had separate and different contracts with clauses that required permission for future repeats to be shown but hey, I’m no lawyer…

Anyway, the bad news is that we will miss out on 15 TOTP shows that feature Adrian Rose between now and Sep ’92 but it’s OK as I’ve checked the running order for the shows affected and all the acts on them were crap anyway. I’m kidding! Having said that, there is an awful lot of shite we won’t be subjected to (I’m looking at you 2 Unlimited) but there are some good tunes in there as well. One of the very first casualties of the Rose pruning effect is the now iconic Nirvana performance from the 28 Nov ’91 show but I’m not going there in this post as I’ll try and round up the most notable missed performances in the review the year.

Enough though of those that we missed, how about the ones that we are getting to see all over again 30 years on? Well, after last week’s rave-tastic running order, we’re right back in amongst it again with opening act Shades Of Rhythm and their hit “Extacy”. Now as I’ve said many times before, I was no clubber or indeed raver but this looks and sounds to me like all kinds of wrong. What were they all wearing?! Have they come in their pyjamas?! Nobody could sleep in those surely?! I thought they’d topped the look off with a Santa hat (it being December and all) but on closer inspection they’re like those fur lined Russian hats with the flaps but colour coded to match the rest of the outfit with the flaps done up. If the ‘performers” on stage looked bad enough, what was going on with the backing dancers? Seriously, they look like an off his tits Andy Pandy! Please tell me people weren’t going to actual clubs dressed like that at the time. As for the track itself, it seems like a pretty unexceptional rave by numbers effort to me with the TOTP live vocal policy yet again not helping much. And that title! Surely the show’s producers must have realised what the theme here was?!

Interestingly, Shades Of Rhythm were on ZTT Records. Like many I’m sure, the acts that leap to the front of my mind when I hear that record label mentioned are Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Propaganda and Art of Noise but ZTT didn’t get stuck in the 80s as they had already had huge hits this decade with the likes of Adamski, Seal and 808 State.

“Extacy” peaked at No 16.

Before we get to the next act, just a quick note on how the charts were being handled in this period of TOTP history. Basically, they’ve f****d it! If new producer Stanley Appel was given the task by BBC bosses of coming up with the worst possible way to do a chart rundown, then he couldn’t have imagined anything better than this. For a start, there is no Top 40 countdown anymore just a Top 10. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they throw it away within the first 5 minutes of the show including revealing the No 1 record. We get to see tiny clips of the Top 10 records on screen (be they the official promo video or a TOTP appearance) but we don’t hear any of them as the new theme tune plays over the top of it. It’s insane! Appel seemed to be trying to move away from the show being based on the Top 40 singles as it had been for the whole of its existence this far by meddling with the countdown and having these new features like ‘exclusive’ performances and incorporating the album chart as well. New doesn’t always mean better and this certainly wasn’t.

Anyway, ho hum. On with the show and it’s those old reliables Andy and Vince of Erasure with their new single “Am I Right?”. These two had been TOTP staples since the mid 80s and were still a safe pair of hands into the new decade. That being said, this wasn’t one of their better tunes. The third single from their “Chorus” album, they’d gone for a slowie to follow up on the title track and “Love To Hate You” which had both had much faster bpm. Was it a definite decision at attempting to be a Christmas single? Certainly the staging of this performance would suggest so. Up there on stage with the duo are some Christmas trees, a sleigh and reindeer (of the plastic variety) and a rather forlorn looking snowman. It reminds me of the Santa’s grotto I worked in as Father Christmas in Debenhams back in 1989. I was only 21 but I filled in for the regular guys when they were having their lunch breaks. I must admit to looking at the collection of elves and penguins etc on the floor beside me and thinking to myself “where is your life heading mate?”.

Back with Erasure though and all of that paraphernalia is nothing compared to the fake snow coming down for the studio ceiling in the most unconvincing of ways. Snow has surely never been so inconsistent in its precipitation anywhere in the world as it is in this TOTP studio. I hope Andy and Vince didn’t watch the playback as they were totally undermined by this nonsense.

“Am I Right?” peaked at No 15.

Oh great, it’s Simply Red (sigh)! Hucknall and co (whoever the hell those people were) were never bigger than they were at this point. “Stars” was the title track from their fourth album and it felt like every other purchase made by a customer over Christmas ’91 in the Our Price store where I was working in Manchester was that album. We sold it over and over and over again. Then we went home, came back the next day and sold it some more. It was a monster. I guess it was the default present for all those blokes who didn’t know what to get their partner (see also, Celine Dion, Dido etc). The title track would certainly have helped sell it being a sultry, smooth as velvet pop/soul standard perfectly suited to Mick’s confident vocals. It sounded like it had been written to be played on the hour, every hour on daytime radio – indeed it probably was. Having to perform a live vocal on the show in keeping with its new policy wouldn’t have worried the Huckster at all. However, he should have been worried about the outfit that he chose for the show. He appears to have come dressed as a Wild West cowboy with his waistcoat and sheriff’s badge.

Talking of Mick’s appearance reminds me that we had a guy working as a Christmas temp in the shop who looked a bit like him. He certainly had the long, curly ginger hair anyway. In fact, now I come to think of it, didn’t he tell us that he had roadied for Simply Red before coming to work in the store? I’m not sure he was telling the truth and anyway, he didn’t last the whole of the festive period due to an incident at our pre-Christmas do. I say ‘do’ but I think we all just went to Manto bar in Canal Street which was the newly opened super bar that was packing in them in down at the gay village at the time. I think the Hucknall lookalike got pissed and decided it would be a good idea to tell the store manager exactly what he thought of him via the medium of insults. When we tried to advise him that it wasn’t a good idea he said, “What? Just because he’s the manager? F**k him!” and proceeded with his plan. I’m pretty sure we never saw him again after that night.

“Stars” the song peaked at No 8 and was the highest charting single taken from the album.

After all that talk of presenters at the top of the post, I should say that tonight’s hosts are Mark Franklin and Elayne Smith who pops up on our screen to introduce the ‘exclusive’ section of the show. This was the second of only two appearances for Elayne who, in an interview with BBC Radio Three Counties presenter Edward Adoo back in 2018, described her TOTP experience as “daunting” and that she was “completely rubbish” on it. To be fair to Elayne, there have been far, far worse presenters of the show down the years than her.

Anyway, the exclusive on tonight’s show is a screening of the video for Guns N’ Roses version of “Live And Let Die”. The original was of course written by Paul and Linda McCartney and recorded by Wings for the 1973 James Bond film of the same name. Now I had always believed that the Wings version had been a huge hit so was surprised to discover that it only made No 9 in the UK. It did better in the US where it stayed and No 2 for three weeks and was kept off the top spot by three different songs including “Touch Me In The Morning” by Diana Ross (more of whom later).

Routinely chosen in polls as the best Bond theme ever, it did then beg the question as to why the world needed a Guns N’ Roses version? Well, it was just a song that Slash and Axl Rose both loved apparently so they recorded it for their “Use Your Illusion” project (it was actually on “Use Your Illusion I” for all the pedants out there). Not everyone was happy about this and the song seems to spilt opinion accordingly. In short, it’s musical Brexit. Look at these couple of tweets for example:

Brilliant cover this and even better seeing Axl do it live
— GEOFF POOLE (@venicebeach73) November 19, 2021

See? Where did I sit on the debate? I don’t mind the Guns N’ Roses version I have to say although they did seem to overdo it with the cover versions – “Use Your Illusion II” included a version of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”. Both covers would be big hits in the UK with “Live And Let Die” making it to No 5 whilst “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” peaked at No 2. As with Elayne Smith’s final TOTP appearance, the live performance promo video was the last to feature rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin before he left the band.

I did promise earlier that there’d be more Diana Ross to come and here she is with her hit “When You Tell Me That You Love Me”. Such a huge megastar is Ms Ross that she doesn’t need any backing singers or band up there on stage with her – nobody is stealing any of her limelight thank you very much – but to be fair to her, the live vocal isn’t too bad.

The sales of this single seemed surprising to me. Diana hadn’t had many big hits in the UK throughout the previous 10 years (the notable exception being “Chain Reaction” going to No 1 in 1986 obviously). It’s a huge, syrup filled power ballad which I guess went down well over the festive period when we’re all filled with love for our fellow human beings (supposedly) but even so. It would end up selling 200,000 copies in this country and *SPOILER* only missed out on the Christmas No 1 spot by a couple of hundred units.

Someone who didn’t see those sales coming was our aforementioned store manager. I distinctly recall him having a word with myself as chart cassette buyer and the CD buyer advising us not to get influenced by the success of the single into ordering loads of copies of the parent album (“The Force Behind The Power”) as in all his years of record retail, he had never seen a Diana Ross album sell well. Unfortunately, he said all of this within earshot of our colleague Andy who was a huge Diana fan and took it personally that the manager was dissing one of his idols. I think he actually said something along the lines of “ignore him, he knows nothing, go big on the album”. So who was right? Well, I think it was Andy. The album did sell well over time going platinum with sales of 300,000 in the UK despite it never getting any higher than No 9 in the charts.

Four Breakers?! Oh come on! OK, well we start with Cliff Richard (of course we do, it is nearly Christmas after all) and a little ditty called “We Should Be Together”. After bagging two of the last three festive No 1 records for himself (and he even featured on the one he didn’t as he was in Band Aid II!), Cliff naturally wasn’t not going to chance his arm again and released this…well…this! Very much his forgotten Christmas single, it peaked at No 10. Not a bad return for most artists but this was Cliff we were talking about…at Christmas! This was not a good result!

The schmaltzy video and its plot of an offshore oil worker coming home to join his family for Christmas is almost unwatchable not least for the fact that the two teddy bears that he brings as presents for his two young daughters look really crap! Very badly made. He should have gone to Build-A-Bear! Boo!

After Guns N’ Roses earlier, we now get Salt ‘N Pepa and like the former, the rap trio are also having a hit with a cover version. “You Showed Me” was written by Gene Clark and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds in 1964 and has been covered by loads of different artists the first of whom to have a hit with it were The Turtles in 1968 who slowed its pace right down from its original incarnation and took into the US Top 10. The hit that Salt ‘N Pepa had with it in 1991 also took it in a different direction, making it a sassy yet also smooth whilst the rapped punctuations added their customary edge. Yet another variation on the original theme came in 1996 when The Lightning Seeds released this trip-hopped, blissed out version:

It’s also been covered by Lutricia McNeal and was sampled by De La Soul (the Turtles’ recording) for their song “Transmitting Live From Mars (Interlude)” on their 1989 album “3 Feet High And Rising” for which they were sued by the LA band. I have to admit that although I do know the song, it’s probably the version by The Turtles that comes to mind rather then any of the others mentioned here. I’m not sure I even realised that the Salt ‘N Pepa take on it was the same song!

The festive period in 1991 was fast turning out to be Queen dominated. No, not her majesty and her Christmas Day speech (had the trend to not bother tuning in to that already started 30 years ago?) but the band of course. By the time this TOTP was being broadcast, Freddie Mercury had been dead for just 11 days, the announcement of his death coming 24 hours after his public statement the he had tested HIV positive and had AIDS. Although rumours surrounding his health had been rife for months, the timing of his demise was still shocking.

Queen’s “Greatest Hits II” album had been released at the end of October and suddenly it was a required purchase following Freddie’s death. I’ve never quite got why a pop star’s death inevitably leads to a rush in demand for their back catalogue. Yes, I know sometimes cynical record labels re-release material just to cash in but they do so knowing that people probably will buy it. It always seems a bit morbid. I guess it was a slightly different case with “Greatest Hits II” as it must have been scheduled for a late Autumn release for the Christmas market for some time. Or, could EMI have been hedging their bets what with all those rumours about the perilous nature of Freddie’s health doing the rounds? All I know is that we had loads of the album in stock when it was initially released and it wasn’t shifting until Freddie’s demise and then it went batshit crazy reaching No. 1 on the UK albums chart and, as of 2014, was the tenth best-selling album in the UK with 3.9 million units shifted.

In amongst all of this Queen-mania, a solo venture by their guitarist Brian May was released called “Driven By You”.

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

May’s only previous solo single had been “Star Fleet”, the theme tune to some long forgotten Japanese puppet sci-fi show in 1983 which I don’t remember at all (probably because it didn’t make the Top 40). I’ve just found it on YouTube and it’s horrible. “Driven By You” sounded much more like May’s day job and indeed was included on Queen’s “Greatest Hits III” album. Wasn’t it first used on a car advert though?

*checks internet*

Yes! It was used for a Ford advertising campaign! Apparently May was asked to write a song to soundtrack it and when the advert was broadcast, it was so popular it convinced Brain to re-record the song with some changed words, an expanded running time and additional verses. The result was the version that was released as a single and that would become a No 6 hit.

It would make it onto May’s solo album of the following year called “Back To The Light” which would also feature his “Too Much Love Will Kill You” follow up single that made the Top 5. However, what I recall most about the album is that it had one of the worst covers ever. Whoever thought that the image opposite would be just the thing that they wanted to promote the album….

What’s the best cover version ever? Don’t bother answering as you’ll all have a different answer depending on your musical tastes which is subjective anyway. My friend Robin used that line in defence of what I saw as an outrageous statement that he once made down the pub which was that he didn’t like any Elton John songs. None. “What?! You can’t say that!” I replied but of course he could. Talking of Elton, here’s his song “Rocket Man” back in the charts but done by Kate Bush. How so? Well, it was a track from the tribute album “Two Rooms: Celebrating The Songs Of Elton John & Bernie Taupin”. The album featured artists like Phil Collins, Sting, The Beach Boys and Hall & Oates to name but a few who all covered songs from the John / Taupin canon but it was Kate Bush with her take on her favourite Elton hit that was released as the second single from the album. She actually retitled it as “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time)” for some reason, maybe to make a distinction between her version and the original? She needn’t have bothered as nobody would ever confuse the two. Kate’s take on it added a reggae lilt and totally reworked it. Well, if you’re going to cover a song, you might as well make it your own as the hateful Louis Walsh would no doubt have said if Kate had done this on the X Factor.

The black and white promo video sees Kate in a more playful mood than perhaps we were used to though her ukulele playing looks a bit suss. Meanwhile, the scene with the concertina player with his arm around her brought back memories of her duet with Peter Gabriel on “Don’t Give Up” to mind. Kate’s version would peak at No 12. Oh, and the best cover version of all time? That would be “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time)” according to readers of The Observer newspaper who voted it as such in 2007. So that settles that then.

The KLF were a bit out of the ordinary weren’t they? That’s quite the understatement I know. Maybe I could put it in football terms. They were like a musical José Mourinho when he famously said “I’m not one of the bottle. I’m a…I think I’m a special one” and just like José, I don’t think we’d seen anything like The KLF for a very long time.

After selling more singles than any other act in 1991 so far, they decided to do a collaboration with the ‘First Lady of Country Music’ Tammy Wynette on “Justified & Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)” ! WTF?! Bizarre? Out of left field? I’m not sure there are words to describe how weird this seemed in 1991. Surely the safe thing would have been to release another dance track in the mould of their ‘Stadium House’ trilogy of hits “What Time Is Love?”, “Last Train to Trancentral” and “3 a.m. Eternal” but then The KLF could never be described as being sensible. Apparently Tammy didn’t really know what she was singing about (she’d never head of a 99 ice cream) and originally thought the lyrics were ‘justified and anxious’ but somehow it all comes together magnificently.

The single with Tammy is radically different from the album version on “The White Room” which was a much less frenetic sound and featured the vocals of Errol “Black Steel” Nicholson which caused us record shop staff some problems when disgruntled shoppers, having bought the album on the strength of the single, returned them when they discovered that “that song about ice cream vans isn’t on it”.

And so to this TOTP performance. Would this have qualified as a water cooler moment had the phrase existed in 1991? I think maybe. So obviously Tammy wasn’t actually there in the studio with Jimi Cauty and Bill Drummond but was she really doing her bits live and in sync from “somewhere in concert in Great Britain” as Mark Franklin suggests in his intro? The staging of the performance has tribal drummers and some extras dressed in towering ice cream costumes with Tammy contributing to the visuals via a bank of TV screens in the background. It was officially bonkers. My eyes though are drawn to Jimmy Cauty (I think it’s Jimmy Cauty) who’s come dressed as Jeremy Healy from Haysi Fantayzee of “John Wayne Is Big Leggy” fame.

At the end of the performance, the ice cream van that was the visual image for the promotion of the single turns up at the back of the stage in which Elayne Smith pops up to do the link into the No 1 record. She does seem to waste the moment though, not making any reference to either the van or the performance that we have all just witnessed. Cauty and Drummond had a history of using vehicles to promote their singles – remember the American police car known as the JAMsMobile aka Ford Timelord that was the central image behind their “Doctorin’ the Tardis” No 1 from 1987 under their guise of The Timelords?

“Justified & Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)” was widely talked up as a potential Christmas No 1 but the death of Freddie Mercury put paid to that although it did go to No 2 in early 1992 which was the year when The KLF retired from the music industry by basically blowing up the whole project.

Now did I say that 1991 was remembered for being a Queen Christmas earlier? I may have jumped the gun as Elton John was certainly no shrinking violet (has he ever been?) when it came to records in the charts at this festive time. After Kate Bush’s version of his “Rocket Man” song earlier we now get the man himself with another of his older songs. I have to admit I’d kind of lost track of the timeline for Elton and George Michael‘s version of “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” being a No 1 hit. In my head I thought it was a chart topper much later than this but I realise I’ve melded together this record and the “Five Live” EP which was also a No 1 but in April 1993 and featured George Michael performing, amongst other tracks, “Somebody to Love” at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert held at Wembley Stadium in April 1992. In addition, Freddie scored a posthumous solo No 1 in the August of 1993 with a remix of his ‘Living On My Own” single. There was clearly a George/Queen/Elton frenzy going on between Christmas 1991 and the Summer of 1993 – no wonder my poor memory couldn’t cope.

So why was this George / Elton live version of “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” back in the charts? After all, hadn’t we already had a cover of the song in the charts recently courtesy of Oleta Adams from the aforementioned Elton John / Bernie Taupin album? Yes, yes we had – it peaked at No 33 back in October. Well, given that Elton donated the proceeds of his single 1990 “Sacrifice” to various AIDS related charities and that his friend Freddie Mercury had just died of an AIDS related illness and that he founded the Elton John AIDS Foundation in 1992, it’s no surprise that “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” was to raise money for 10 different charities for children, AIDS and education. George, of course, was no stranger to charity having been front and centre of the Band Aid single and having performed at Live Aid where he actually sang “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”. After his death, we learned that he had contributed loads of money incognito to many varied causes.

This live version of the song had been recorded on the final show of his Cover To Cover tour at Wembley Arena on 23 March 1991. The bit where George introduces Elton and the audience’s reaction to the surprise event is probably my favourite part. The single went straight in at No 1 (the fifth to do so in 1991 according to Mark Franklin) and would stay there for two weeks before giving way to the re-release of his old pal Freddie’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Shades Of Rhythm	Extacy	Nah
2	Erasure	Am I Right?	No but it’s probably on my Greatest Hits CD of theirs
3	Simply Red	Stars	Ooh no
4	Guns N’ Roses	Live And Let Die	See 2 above
5	Diana Ross	When You Tell Me That You Love Me	Nope
6	Cliff Richard	We Should Be Together	No we shouldn’t Cliff!
7	Salt ‘N Pepa	You Showed Me	No
8	Brian May	Driven By You	…but not bought by me
9	Kate Bush	“Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time)”	Negative
10	The KLF	Justified & Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)	Thought I might have but singles box says no
11	George Michael and Elton John	Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me	It’s a no from me

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/m0011myb/top-of-the-pops-05121991

TOTP 19 JUL 1990

Posted on February 3, 2021 by 80stastic

Well, Italia ’90 may have come to a painful end a couple of weeks prior but the England football team were still in the news as three days before this TOTP aired, Graham Taylor was appointed full time manager of the national team following the pre-planned resignation of Bobby Robson. It wasn’t a universally welcome appointment and within three years and after a dismal Euro ’92 performance and failure to qualify for the ’94 World Cup, Taylor also resigned. The now infamous Channel 4 fly on the wall documentary film surrounding the doomed ’94 qualifying campaign originally broadcast as Graham Taylor: An Impossible Job is now, sadly for Taylor, the best remembered part of his legacy including the immortal line “Do I Not Like That”.

What’s all this got to do with TOTP? Very little although Taylor does, of course, have some legendary ties to music. Firstly, there is his relationship with Elton John (more of whom later) as Watford FC manager to Elton’s club chairman. Secondly, Taylor once admitted that his favourite ever singer was Forces’ Sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn, an odd choice for a man who was only a one year old child when the war ended but then he was very much seen as an old fashioned type of gentleman. Funny then that he always seemed to be swearing his head off in that documentary…

Finally, and most bizarrely, I found this musical connection on YouTube. Apologies in advance…

My own personal Graham Taylor moment of 1990 came when I walked past his office door when he was still manager of Aston Villa (prior to his taking the England job). I’d contacted the football club as I was unemployed and desperate for some sort of career direction at the time. I had a chat with their commercial manager about possible career opportunities within football and his office was a couple of doors down from Graham’s.

If you clicked on this post hoping for some 1990 music memories and are wondering why you have been reading about football for the past 450 odd words, stick with me. I’m going there right now. OK, tonight’s host is Mark Goodier who has come dressed as a zebra and the first act on are Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 with “Mona”. They are up to the No 2 position and are eyeing a possible No 1 – they couldn’t could they? Well, *spoiler alert* no they didn’t but fair play, it was a gallant effort. He even got on the front cover of Smash Hits!

Craig and co are in the actual studio for the first time and he gets to show off his guitar playing credentials (or at least mime them) and they seem pretty convincing. In that Smash Hits article, he showed off his collection of guitars including the one he has with him on stage here. It’s not his most precious axe in his collection though which is an original series Ibanez Iceman made famous by KISS guitarist Paul Stanley who had a signature Iceman.

For all his rock credentials though, Craig was unable to forge a lasting music career despite a Top 10 album and halfway decent follow up single in “Amanda”. And whatever you may say about his cover of “Mona”, you have to admit it’s quite the ear worm.

Next up, the reason that poor old Craig failed to get that No 1 spot as it was stolen from under his nose by Partners In Kryme and their awful single “Turtle Power”. This was of course to promote the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise entry into the world of film. This tale of four turtles turned into crime fighting, pizza eating heroes after being exposed to radioactive sewer ooze had been around for a couple of years via the animated cartoon (retitled Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles for the more delicately natured UK audience). With turtle related merchandising also coming on line, the step into the big screen was inevitable. The film didn’t hit UK cinemas until late November but as it was already out in the US, the soundtrack was available well in advance. According to Wikipedia:

‘The collection is made up mostly of hip-hop and new jack swing styled tracks with several film score cues at the end.’

The film score bits were courtesy of John Du Prez who was the bald trumpet player in Modern Romance (no really) whilst the hip -hop was supplied by flavour of the month MC Hammer and some acts I’ve never heard of including Riff and the unedifyingly named Spunkadelic. And of course Partners In Kryme. This American duo from New York City seem to have existed solely to make music for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon. According to their discography, they have only ever released three singles – “Turtle Power” and “Undercover” in 1990 and a track called “Rock The Halfshell” on the official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles YouTube channel in 2015. They never released a full length album and the only other recorded material I can find accredited to them is a version of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” retitled “Love 2 Love U” which appeared on another soundtrack album, this time for the Vanilla Ice vehicle Cool As Ice. This film was so bad that it was nominated for eleven Golden Raspberry awards and was disowned by director David Kellogg. Sadly for us all, the time of Vanilla Ice is nearly upon us.

For the moment though, we only have Partners In Kryme to negotiate. This always seemed like a novelty record to me; I felt much the same about “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jnr. The lyrics do make some very specific references to the film and its characters which suggests a close connection to its source material (unlike say “World In Motion” whose football links are pretty loose). However, if you go down that route, make sure you get it right. Exhibit A m’lud:

“Splinter’s the teacher so they are the students.
Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello make up the team
with one other fellow, Raphael.
He’s the leader of the group, transformed from the norm by the nuclear goop”

Now I’m no turtles expert (pretty sure I’ve never seen any of the films or cartoon) but Wikipedia assures me that it’s Leonardo who is the leader of the group, not Raphael. Sometimes you do have to sweat the small stuff.

A recurring feature of these 1990 TOTP repeats is that they’re throwing up lots of hits that I have no recollection of at all. Here’s another one – the DJ Phil Chill remix of “I’m Still Waiting” by Diana Ross. As to why this was released or indeed why Motown thought we needed a nasty, dull, plodding dance remix of this song, I have zero clue. It really is one of the worst remixes I’ve heard for a long time.

Fast forward three years to 1993 and I am working as Assistant Manager for Our Price in the Altrincham branch in Cheshire. EMI have issued a Diana Ross Best of for the Xmas market called “One Woman: The Ultimate Collection” which is selling pretty well (it went 4 x platinum in the UK). There is a problem though. All the other musical outlets in Altrincham are selling the CD format of the album at £9.99 whilst our price point is holding at £11.99. Myself and the store manager, fearing we would never sell our considerable stocks of the album, therefore hatched a plan that we should price match our competitors which was completely against company policy and an action that was not within our remit at all. The plan worked and the CD was flying off the shelves and into our ringing tills …until the Area Manager descended upon the store for his Xmas ‘mince pie’ visit when he would come and ‘help’ out the staff by serving some customers. We all hated the ‘mince pie’ visits as inevitably the Area Manager would be more of an hinderance than a help as he didn’t know where anything was. Worse than that though, he might discover our unofficial Diana Ross price slash. As he began to serve in the shop, myself and the store manager desperately joined him to try and spot any customers in the queue that had the Diana Ross CD in their hands so as to head them off at the pass as it were before the Area Manager got a chance to serve them and discover our little plot. We must have looked completely hyper and preoccupied as we whittled down the queue of customers, all the while jumping in front of him should anybody approach the counter to purchase Ms Ross. Our efforts were rewarded though and he left without sussing anything untoward was occurring.

For the record, the original and vastly superior version of “I’m Still Waiting” was a No 1 record in 1970 whilst Phil Chill’s unwanted 1990 remix stalled at No 21 and it certainly was not on that Diana Ross Best Of that caused me so much anxiety.

A second appearance now for a song that only made it to No 27! Seems like a lot of exposure for such underwhelming sales. I’m pretty sure that this is just the original performance of “She Comes In The Fall” by Inspiral Carpets that was originally broadcast a couple of weeks previous. My suspicions are confirmed by @TOTPFacts:

This Inspiral Carpets performance (a repeat) was recorded the night England played West Germany in the World Cup semi-finals. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 29, 2021

There’s more to this story though:

Guitarist Graham Lambert: "We watched the game in the BBC bar. We saw Jimmy Hill after the game, and with him we re-enacted the penalty shoot-out in the Blue Peter garden." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 29, 2021

The Blue Peter garden! A fixture of the show since 1974, it was infamously trashed in 1983 supposedly by a gang that included teenage future footballers Dennis Wise and Les Ferdinand! I’ve never heard any stories about Jimmy and the Carpet boys damaging the garden thereby debunking the rock stars trashing hotel rooms template. I bet the band also tidied their hotel rooms before checking out on time whenever on tour. My friend Robin,who worked for the BBC for many years, told me recently that the Blue Peter garden is actually much smaller than it seems on screen which is very nearly a metaphor for the chart fortunes of “She Comes In The Fall”.

Host Mark Goodier goes into a weird segue next when he bangs on about how ‘trendy’ the show is! Remember when ‘trendy’ was a word we all used? Nowadays it’s all ‘on point’ or ‘cutting edge’ and the only reference to the word trend is when something trends on Twitter. Surely Goodier can’t be referring to himself in that two tone outfit of his? To be fair though, the girl in the James T-shirt would definitely have been ‘on point’ back then.

And he surely can’t mean the next act who is Paul Young. I’d almost forgotten this period of Paul’s career. He’d seemed consigned to history back in 1986 when his third album “Between Two Fires” and its attendant singles didn’t pull up the expected trees commercially. Somehow though, even in the dance obsessed charts of the early 90s, he pulled off a comeback of sorts. His “Other Voices” album spawned two hit singles in “Softly Whispering I Love You” and this one, a cover (well it is Paul Young!) of the old Chi-Lites number “Oh Girl”.

Paul does seem every inch the chart anomaly here, a position emphasised by his lime green shirt and jacket and his white trousers. At least he seems to have sorted his hair out a bit since his last appearance on the show when frankly his barnet was a right mess. As for the song, it’s all very pleasant and that but even Goodier seems to damn him with faint praise at the end when he sums it all up by pronouncing “It’s a good song well sung”

“Oh Girl” peaked at No 25.

Some pop puppets next. No, not New Kids On The Block but F.A.B. featuring MC Parker and “Thunderbirds Are Go!”. What a curious hit this was. I’m not quite sure what demographic it was appealing to but enough punters bought it to send it rocketing all the way to No 5. The framing of the Parker character as a DJ is its selling point I think. Certainly the video would not have been half as effective without the MC Parker bits inserted strategically.

Ever wondered what F.A.B. stands for though? Here’s head of the Thunderbirds operation Geoff Tracy…

…so nothing essentially. Just a clipping of the word ‘fabulous’. Other theories abound of course including ‘For Always Brothers’ as in the Tracy brothers presumably and also ‘Fully Acknowledged Broadcast’. Given that it doesn’t actually stand for anything, it was sure used a lot in the series…

Cripes! It’s that Madonna song! Yes, it’s time for some “Hanky Panky” people! An ode to sadomasochistic tendencies or just a bit of a laugh? Well, what’s for certain is that it was the follow up to her No 1 “Vogue” and it nearly repeated the trick by peaking at No 2 in the UK (though it only made No 10 in the US). This performance of it is from Madonna’s Blond Ambition World Tour and clearly gets in a bit of promotion for the Dick Tracy film in which she starred with the inclusion of a male dancer dressed as Dick towards the end of the routine.

Inevitably, the song attracted its fair share of controversy especially in Ireland where two women’s organisations accused Madonna of glorifying violence against women, specifically on the line “I’ll settle for the back of your hand”. Madonna played down the accusations stating that of course it wasn’t her saying that she liked to be spanked but rather her character in the movie Breathless Mahoney. And if you think that’s enough controversy for one year, think again. The next 1990 Madonna single is “Justify My Love” – hold onto your crotches!

Now here’s an interesting tune. DreamWarriors were a Canadian hip hop duo who briefly found success and fame with a couple of hit singles the first of which was “Wash Your Face In My Sink”. Can it really have been a complaint about someone using their sink and leaving a ring around the basin?! Online commentaries suggest it is about setting boundaries around behaviour in relationships although we must have all have shared houses/ flats with people who don’t seem to share the same standards of hygiene that we pride ourselves as having surely?

As I’ve made clear many times before, I’m not a massive hip-hop fan, but this little eccentricity always appealed to me. “Wash Your Face In My Sink” peaked at No 16.

It’s the final week of five at the top for Elton John and, to quote Captain Sensible, ain’t I glad?! I think I’m right in saying that not once in all that time did TOTP play the other song of the double A-side that was “Sacrifice / Healing Hands” so here it is…

…hmm…well, I prefer it to the gigantic turd that is “Sacrifice” but it’s hardly up there in Elton’s canon of work as anywhere near approaching his best. I’m pretty sure it didn’t get that much airplay (certainly not on the radio stations I was listening to) back then either with “Sacrifice” taking the lion’s share making it altogether quite the forgotten No 1 song – a ghost No 1 if you will, standing there in plain sight but never seen. Not a phenomenon with a large members list I would suspect – I can only think of Billy Bragg’s version of The Beatles ‘She’s Leaving Home’ which was the almost completely ignored other A-side to Wet Wet Wet’s Childline No 1 “With A little Help From My Friends”.

I was aware that Paula Abdul had a song called “Knocked Out” but I could not have told you what on earth it sounded like. I would also have said that it never made the Top 40. I was both right and wrong. It was released three times in the UK before becoming a hit. It was actually Paula’s debut single back in September 1988 but bombed completely at No 98. However, following the success of “Straight Up” and “Forever Your Girl”, it was reissued and peaked at No 41 in August 1989. It finally made the Top 40 on its third release albeit that it required a Shep Pettibone remix to do the trick. They say trouble comes in threes and this single certainly wasn’t worth all that trouble to be honest.

The Shep Pettibone remix of “Knocked Out” peaked at No 21.

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

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Craig McLachlan Check 1-2	Mona	I did not
2	Partners In Kryme	Turtle Power	This was a crime…against music. No
3	Diana Ross	I’m Still Waiting Phil Chill 1990 remix	And I’m still waiting for an explanation for this dire record’s existence
4	Inspiral Carpets	She Comes In The Fall	Nope
5	Paul Young	Oh Girl	Oh no
6	F.A.B featuring MC Parker	Thunderbirds Are Go	Loved Thunderbirds, didn’t love this – no
7	Madonna	Hanky Panky	Nah
8	Dream Warriors	Wash Your Face In My Sink	Liked it but not enough to buy it
9	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
10	Paula Abdul	Knocked Out	No

Disclaimer

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rpmn/top-of-the-pops-19071990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 15 FEB 1996

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TOTP 24 AUG 1995

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TOTP 16 DEC 1993

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TOTP 14 OCT 1993

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TOTP 04 MAR 1993

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TOTP 10 DEC 1992

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TOTP 18 JUN 1992

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TOTP 05 DEC 1991

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TOTP 19 JUL 1990

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Some bedtime reading?