Extreme

TOTP 04 FEB 1993

Posted on June 23, 2022 by 80stastic

We enter the month of February in our review of 1993 here at TOTP Rewind and the Top 40 has now jettisoned all those Xmas rush singles – with one notable exception – that were clogging up the chart. There are eleven new entries this week and seven climbers and yet, looking at the running order for this TOTP, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the charts were in a state of inertia as so many of these songs have already either been on the show recently or are re-releases of old hits.

Look at the show’s opener for example. “How Can I Love You More” had been a Top 40 hit for M People as recently as November 1991 when it peaked at No 29. So why had it been made available again? Well, although they’d had racked up four Top 40 singles from their debut album “Northern Soul”, none of them had got higher than No 29. The band had been out on tour to promote the album and “How Can I Love You More” had been a live favourite. So it came to pass that record label Deconstruction decided that should be the track to be given another tilt at the charts. DJ Sasha was approached to give the song a club sheen and bingo! The band’s first Top 10 hit.

So how different was the Sasha remix to the original cut? Well it wasn’t quite as stark as the difference between the original version of Cornershop’s “Brimful Of Asha” and the Norman Cook remix but you could certainly hear it. The 1991 release has an electronic backing that reminds me of “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League whereas the 1993 version sounds like it has a lot more going on in the mix with some shuffling rhythms that make it sound like it had a faster tempo. I think I actually prefer the remix to my surprise.

1993 would be the year that M People became a really big deal. Following “How Can I Love You More” into the Top 10 came “One Night On Heaven” (No 6), “Moving On Up” (No 2) and “Don’t Look Any Further” (No 9) whilst their “Elegant Slumming” album would rise to No 2.

Here’s another! This is a third time on the show for Duran Duran and their “Ordinary World” single. So well received was the song that it got nominated for an Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. It would lose out to another song that, coincidentally, was on this very same show – “If I Ever Lose My Faith” by Sting. In his book Duran Duran: the unauthorised biography, Steve Malins tells the story that at this very TOTP, Duran’s guitarist Warren Cuccurullo (he replaced Andy Taylor) was chatting to Sting and the ex – The Police frontman admitted that he didn’t want to go on after Duran as “Ordinary World” was such a beautiful song. Given Sting’s ginormous ego, that was quite the compliment.

Cuccurullo is an interesting character. He toured and recorded with Frank Zappa before forming synth-pop, MTV favourites Missing Persons in the early 80s. He was recruited (eventually) by Duran Duran after previous incumbent Taylor approached his ex Missing Persons band members about working with him as he started on his solo career. Alerted to the possibility that Taylor would be leaving Duran, Cuccurollo contacted the Birmingham superstars about replacing their want away guitarist. By 1993 he was a permanent member of the band and, according to Malins, he had a voracious sexual appetite and would host ‘Privacy’ parties in his hotel room when the band were touring which basically sounded like orgies. Blimey! What would Princess Diana have said?!

“Ordinary World” peaked at No 6 in the UK and No 3 in the US.

https://youtu.be/44Yb9Bz17ns

And yet another song that we’ve already seen on the show before! And like Duran Duran it’s their third time on! I struggled to say anything about “Heaven Is” by Def Leppard the previous two times so God knows what I’m supposed to say about a third appearance! Well, again like the Duran boys, this showing did nothing to improve their ultimate chart placing as both acts were at their peaks in this week.

Anything else? Well, in the last post I mentioned how lead singer Joe Elliott hated the video for this single so I thought I’d see if I could spot why. I’m not sure I can as the video is by far the best thing about the single. Essentially it’s just a straight performance promo with some special effects thrown in for good measure but it’s done pretty well. It reminds me of the video for INXS’s “Need You Tonight”. I particularly liked the scene with the guitar strings morphing into one of those string art pictures. You know those ones where you can form a curve by layering loads of strings closely together at an angle? We did one in woodwork when I was at school. I made a plane I think. Erm…sorry…got a bit distracted there. Anyway, not quite sure why Joe Elliott hated it so much. Maybe he didn’t like the way his hair looked in it. To be fair, who would want their hair to look like Joe Elliott’s?

It’s a third song on the trot that’s been on the show recently and guess what? Just like Duran Duran and Def Leppard before them, it was at its peak chart position this week. This is just weird now. Unlike those two bands though, in the case of The Beloved, the No 8 peak of “Sweet Harmony” would prove to be their highest ever Top 40 placing.

https://youtu.be/mZ4rjCXF2GM

Watching this performance I’m struck by two things about lead singer Jon Marsh. Firstly his singing is pretty awful here. In fact, in the verses he’s hardly singing at all, it’s more sort of speaking rhythmically. Secondly, I’d been trying to work out who he looks like and I think I’ve worked it out – ex footballer and now pundit Dean Ashton…

Finally a new song! Not only that but there’s a great little link between it and the artist immediately previous. Rapination were two Italian producers who also went by the name The Rapino Brothers. It’s not them that provide the connection to The Beloved though. No, that would be the vocalist for their “Love Me In The Right Way” single who was, of course, Kym Mazelle. Kym was one of the people name checked by The Beloved on their “Hello” hit of 1990 alongside the likes of Billy Corkhill and Vince Hilaire…

Excellent track that. Anyway, fast forward three years and Kym is working with these Italian dudes – I’m guessing that’s them on stage with her here on drums and (gulp) keytar. I have to say I don’t recall this track at all but it sounds very generic Italian House so not a lot there for me.

The single made it to No 22 (and yes, another hit at its chart peak this week) whilst The Rapino Brothers went on to work with Kylie Minogue and Primal Scream. By the way does the name Rapino instantly make anybody else think of this?

It’s time for some Breakers next starting with another rerelease! As with The Cult last week, we have another 80s band promoting a Greatest Hits collection with the re-issue of their most famous song. I refer to Ultravox although in truth, that Greatest Hits album was actually entitled “If I Was: The Very Best Of Midge Ure And Ultravox”. Released by Chrysalis, it did what it said on the tin. It was “Vienna” though that was chosen to plug the album and what else can I write about this track that hasn’t already been written? Infamously kept off the No 1 spot when originally released in 1981 by Joe Dolce’s execrable single “Shaddap You Face”, it has gone down as a synth pop classic, an epic of the genre.

Oh, here’s something I bet nobody has ever written about it before. When it was a hit in ‘81, I was a 12 year old schoolboy and a lad called Neil used to hit me hard on the arm singing “this means nothing to me” as he did. Four years later and he was still at it giving me a wrap on the knuckles while singing “Hit That Perfect Beat” by Bronski Beat. Maybe Neil had been influenced by Clockwork Orange in his hobby of putting violence to music?

Back to “Vienna” though and the year before this rerelease, the song had been re-recorded by original band member Billy Currie who had got together a new line up of Ultravox. Currie was the only original band member and the vocals were supplied by one Tony Fennell. Released as “Vienna ‘92”, it sank like a stone. I mean, it’s not terrible but it just seems so pointless. Fennell does a pretty good impression of Midge Ure whilst the synths are a bit more strident and there’s an obtrusive funky guitar in there but all I can think is ‘why?’

The 1993 rerelease made No 13 whilst the Very Best Of album went Top 10. By the way, in another link with Sting, four years on A&M repeated Chysallis’ trick of merging two Best Ofs into one when they released “The Very Best Of Sting And The Police”.

What fresh hell is this?! Tom Jones sings The Beatles?! As well as being Tom’s first hit of the 90s, his treatment of “All You Need Is Love” was a charity record, raising money for Childline, the foundation set up by Esther Rantzen. And now that joker card has been played, I can’t really criticise it can I? Well, yes I can. It really doesn’t suit Tom’s gruff Welsh vocal chords and the song choice was less than inspired. Nothing wrong with the sentiment of course which strikes the right note but wasn’t a previous Childline charity single also a Beatles cover?

*checks online*

Yes, the Wet Wet Wet single “With A Little Help From My Friends” was for Childline. It was a double A-side with Billy Bragg covering another Beatles track in “She’s Leaving Home”. Look, I hope Tom made lots of money for the charity (the single peaked at No 19) but this was/is horrible.

At last another brand new song and it comes courtesy of Extreme with their latest single “Tragic Comic”. I know that this came from the band’s triple album “III Sides To Every Story” but I couldn’t tell you how it goes. Let’s have a listen…

…hmm. Vaguely familiar but it’s like a piss weak version of their previous hit “Hole Hearted” in that its got that acoustic sound but the tune isn’t really up to it. It would prove to be the band’s final UK Top 40 entry when it peaked at No 15.

Now I remember the name of this next act but I couldn’t have told you how their tune went. It turns out that Gloworm actually tried to create a new genre of dance music combining house with gospel. The first result of this hybrid experiment was “I Lift My Cup (To The Spirit Divine)” but to me it sounds like one of the first crossover house tunes – “Love Can’t Turn Around” by Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk. Maybe that would have been a compliment to Gloworm but I always hated that song.

The performance here with all jungle staging and costumes gives the whole thing a look of the stage version of The Lion King. Surely some sort of nightclub setting would have been better for such a tune?

“I Lift My Cup (To The Spirit Divine)” peaked at No 20.

https://youtu.be/q6vMna8mCUo

And so to the already much mentioned in this post artist Sting who brings us probably one of his better known solo songs “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You”. This was the lead single from his “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album that would become, I think, his best selling solo LP. You see, despite all his success with The Police and his undoubted star profile, Sting’s solo stats aren’t the best. Up to this point in his career, his highest charting single was “Russians” which made No 12 in 1985. In fact, he’d had more singles fail to make the Top 40 than ones that did. His last album “The Soul Cages” had only given him one hit and the album before that (“…Nothing Like The Sun”) had generated none at all although one its singles (“Englishman In New York”) belatedly provided one when remixed by Ben Liebrand at the start of the decade. Given all of this, I wonder what was expected of his latest single?

I’ll tell you what wasn’t expected – that Sting would turn up at the TOTP studio dressed like Vincent Price in Witchfinder General. What was he thinking?! Actually all of his band have got hats on. The guitarist has one that has a heavy Windy Miller from Camberwick Green vibe. Then there’s the set. Is it meant to like like the inside of a church to make a link with the word ‘faith’ in the song’s title? Maybe so what with all those candles and flaming torches but Sting’s outfit makes the whole thing seem quite menacing and, dare I say it, even satanic. Most odd.

What about the song you ask? Oh, well I always thought it was OK if a little slow and pedestrian like. Get this though. It starts with a flattened fifth chord. So? Well a flattened fifth is a tri-tone and was banned by the church as being the devil’s music! A-ha! I was right in my use of the word ‘satanic’! The single was a medium sized hit peaking at a respectable No 14 making it, at the time, Sting’s second biggest hit ever.

And still Whitney Houston is No 1 with “I Will Always Love You”! Fear not though as this is the last TOTP repeat that we will see with it still on top of the charts. However that doesn’t mean it’s the last we’ll see of Whitney herself in this year as on that very next episode she’s back with the follow up, her cover of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman”. In fact, in 1993 Whitney had five hit singles (if you include “I Will Always Love You”). Never mind being ‘every woman’, she was more ‘ever present woman’.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	M People	How Can I Love You More	No but I think my wife may have had the album
2	Duran Duran	Ordinary World	Good song but not a purchase it seems
3	Def Leppard	Heaven Is	…not having to listen to this. No
4	The Beloved	Sweet Harmony	No
5	Rapination featuring Kym Mazelle	Love Me In The Right Way	Nope
6	Ultravox	Vienna	No but I have it on an Ultravox Best Of (not the one mentioned in the post)
7	Tom Jones	All You Need Is Love	Not even for charity!
8	Extreme	Tragic Comic	Nah
9	Gloworm	I Lift My Cup (To The Spirit Divine)	Nope
10	Sting	If I Ever Lose My Faith In You	It’s another no
11	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	I did not

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0018b82/top-of-the-pops-04021993

TOTP 10 SEP 1992

Posted on March 30, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s a rare consecutive TOTP after weeks of skipping shows due to the Adrian Rose issue. I think we might be getting to the end of his 14 episodes that we are having to miss. We’re exactly a third of the way through September of 1992 and the biggest album release of the week is “The Best Of Belinda Volume 1” by, unsurprisingly, Belinda Carlisle. Singles wise, the two new releases doing the briskest trade are probably Bob Marley’s “Iron Lion Zion” and “Theme From M.A.S.H (Suicide Is Painless)” by Manic Street Preachers.

As for me, I’m pretty sure I’d have started my new post as Assistant Manager of the Our Price store in Rochdale by now. I got off the bus that first morning and went into the first newsagents I saw to ask where the shop actually was. Once I found it, I realised how much smaller it was than the two trading floor store I’d left behind in Manchester. So small in fact that they had sale stock on display in cardboard boxes shoved under the racking. Behind the scenes there was a small processing area and staff kitchen but quite a large, cavernous stock room that wasn’t really used other than as a dumping ground for various unsold stock that had accumulated over the years. Nobody spent much time in there. The staff consisted of Adrian the manager who was about to leave for Virgin, Emma and Rachel both of whom I’d worked with briefly at Manchester and Phil who was also about to leave the company for pastures new. And then there was newbie me. It was a time of significant change for the store.

I spent much of that first morning serving customers on my own whilst the regulars sorted out the new releases upstairs. However, as I didn’t know where anything was filed I kept having to buzz them to help me out. I probably didn’t make the best first impression. Presumably the product I sold that first morning would have included some of the songs on this TOTP. Let’s see if I remember…

Opening the show are a band who were very much billed as the anti-Take That and a rivalry was developed (or at least created by the press) between the two that brought back memories of Duran Duran vs Spandau Ballet from the 80s. East 17 were the brainchild of former Pet Shop Boys manager Tom Watkins who came up with the genius idea of launching this tougher, more street wise version of Take That after song writer Tony Mortimer was offered a recording contract on the condition that he form a band around himself as a vehicle to sell the songs. Taking their name from the postcode district of their hometown Walthamstow (after which they then named their debut album), they scored an immediate hit with first single “House Of Love”. Mortimer’s version of a rave anthem, I thought this sounded great. Think of the twee, cynically put together hits Take That started their career with and then listen to this. There’s no comparison. It put me in mind of the chart battle between Girls Aloud and One True Voice that same out of the Popstars: The Rivals TV show in 2002. The former’s single “Sound Of The Underground” was so superior to the latter’s…I can’t even remember what it was called it was so forgettable…it was almost embarrassing.

For a while these boys from Walthamstow traded blows with their nemesis and matched them punch for punch. They even bagged themselves a No 1 (a Xmas chart topper no less). Ultimately though they would lose the pop war and imploded after singer Brian Harvey encouraged drug taking on a late night radio interview. The ramifications included both Mortimer and Harvey leaving the group and returning multiple times and a change of band name. A number of tabloid headlines including the frankly bizarre incident of Harvey being run over by his own car after eating too many jacket potatoes damaged the band’s reputation beyond redemption. Currently they perform as a trio with only one original member (Terry Coldwell) in their ranks.

Back in 1992 though, they were fresh faced lads who looked like they could just as likely be working in McDonalds as performing on TOTP. Somehow though, instead of dying on their arses in this frankly ludicrous performance (what the hell was the washing line all about?) it all somehow just worked. Instead of being laughed off stage, we took them on face value as proper pop stars. Things were just starting to get interesting in the boy band stakes.

I’d totally forgotten that The Christians were still having chart hits this far into their career. It had been over five years since they burst onto the scene with their eponymous debut album (the biggest selling debut album in their label Island Records’ history) but here they were still in the Top 40 and still on TOTP in the Autumn of 1992. Listening to “What’s In A Word” it sounds vaguely familiar though I couldn’t have told you how it went before reacquainting myself with it. Didn’t their last chart hit feature ‘word’ in the title?

*checks The Christians discography *

I was right! “Words” made No 18 over Xmas/ New Year in 1989/90. They seemed to be as fixated on the subject of the lexicon as Martin Fry. I bet they were elated when that bloke invented Wordle.

Anyway, it’s a nice enough tune though hardly outstanding which may explain its lowly peak of No 33. Lead singer Garry Christian feels the needs to hold a drum stick throughout this performance that comes live from Paris for no obvious reason. Meanwhile, it seems Henry Priestman was still with the band at this point as I’m pretty sure that’s him on keyboards. I saw him as a solo artist live at Beverley Folk Festival in 2010. He was great. Barbara Dickson was also there and I stood next to her at one point watching the worst game of football I’ve ever seen on TV (England 0-0 Algeria in the World Cup). She was tiny.

The Christians, like East 17, still exist today (albeit not in their original form) and released a single in December 2021 called “Naz Don’t Cry” in support of the recently released Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who had been detained in Israel since 2016.

Here’s a question. If you’ve made your name by covering other people’s songs, is the decision to call yourselves Undercover genius or incredibly lame? I’m going for the latter. The ‘drum and bass’ version of “Baker Street” as host Tony Dortie ridiculously describes it is up to No 3 so another trip to the TOTP studio is in order for the band. Vocalist John Matthews looks like he should be playing in midfield for Newcastle United (I think it’s the slight resemblance to Gazza) but he’s actually a massive Arsenal fan. Look at this interaction with a Spurs fan on Twitter when this TOTP repeat aired:

Not as bad as your trophy cabinet sunshine! #Spursy 😂👋👋👋
— John Matthews (@UNDERCOVER_JM) March 25, 2022

Ha! Talking of fans, someone who wasn’t a fan of Undercover at all was the man responsible for “Baker Street” Gerry Rafferty. According to Wikipedia, he had this to say about it:

“Dreadful- totally banal. A sad sign of the times”

Presumably he was happy to pick up the writer’s cheque their version brought in though that Tony Dortie refers to in his intro which was for £1.5 million! Like East 17 and The Christians before them, a version of Undercover featuring John Matthews are still a going concern today.

Freddie Jackson hadn’t been seen in the UK charts for six years before he turned up rather randomly with a cover of Billy Paul’s “Me And Mrs Jones”. Taken from his album “Time For Love”, this could be the most pointless cover version of all time. Firstly, he gives a completely straight take on it hardly deviating from the original at all. Secondly, he was never going to rival Billy Paul’s original. I’m putting this out there – I suspect some chart rigging was afoot getting this into the Top 40. Even if there was, it wasn’t that successful as it only made No 32 and the album bombed just about everywhere.

One of my favourite albums of 1992 was “Welcome To Wherever You Are” by INXS. The eighth album by the Aussie rockers was meant to be a rejection of the more polished studio sound that they had perfected on previous album “X” with an emphasis on a rawer sound. To my ears though it still had plenty of hooks to draw me in and includes one of the great album segues from opening track, the Eastern sounding “Questions”, into the album’s lead single “Heaven Sent”. We haven’t seen the latter on TOTP – I’m not sure why. It only made No 31 on the chart so it could be that it never made the cut at all or maybe it was in the Breakers on a show that we skipped because of the whole Adrian Rose debacle? Happily, second single “Baby Don’t Cry” has made it onto the show and it’s an unashamedly bold and out there stadium rock anthem with an exuberant, singalong chorus. Apparently it was recorded with the 60 piece Australian Concert Orchestra – so much for that raw sound the band was supposedly going for.

I thought this was going to be a massive hit but it stalled at No 20 and wasn’t even released in America. The album debuted at No 1 here making INXS the first Australian act to have a UK chart topper since AC/DC with “Back In Black” in 1980. However, that success was not repeated in the US and the album marked a decline in their commercial fortunes over there. The decision not to tour the album was probably not the correct one in hindsight.

Back in the studio we find Del Amitri who are in the midst of probably their most commercially successful period of their career. Their “Change Everything” album had been as high as No 2 in the charts and it would furnish them with four hit singles which all made the Top 30. “Just Like A Man” was the third of those and though I rather dismissed it as ‘just another Del Amitri song’ at the time, it’s actually a pretty decent tune. Do they get enough credit for their back catalogue? I’m not sure they do. My perception is that they’re somehow not seen as cutting-edge enough, not quite the real deal, perhaps even too…comfy? Also, for all that I said about the success they were having at this time, they never had one Top 10 single in this country. They’re not alone in that of course. Goth rockers The Mission clocked up 12 Top 40 singles without ever getting any higher than No 11. I guess they were more album than singles bands. “Just Like A Man” peaked at No 25.

Four Breakers now but we’ve seen three of them before as ‘exclusive’ performances/videos. To quote Ian Dury, “what a waste”. First up is Sinéad O’Connor with “Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home”. This was the lead single from her covers album “Am I Not Your Girl?” which I don’t think I’ve ever heard properly. Looking at the track listing, there a few songs I know like “Secret Love” (Doris Day), “Love Letters” ( Ketty Lester/ Elvis /Alison Moyet) and of course “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” from Evita. The latter was released as the second single from the album and I would have thought it was a safe bet for another chart hit given that it is surely better known than its predecessor. After all, it had been a No 1 for Julie Covington in 1976. Sinéad’s version didn’t even make the Top 40. Four years later, Madonna did what Sinéad couldn’t and had a massive No 3 hit with it over Xmas 1996 but then she was starring as Eva Perón in Alan Parker’s film version of Evita so a hit was almost guaranteed. “Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home” peaked at No 18.

Even the only Breaker we haven’t seen on the show before we actually have. What am I going on about? I mean it’s a rerelease of a song that was a hit back in 1985. “How Soon Is Now?” was the latest element of WEA’s release strategy for their newly acquired back catalogue of The Smiths. Possibly the greatest song in their canon, it’s certainly one of their most well known. Johnny Marr himself describes it as their “most enduring record”. It was originally released as the B-side to “William, It Was Really Nothing” alongside “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” which surely must make it the best B-side of a record ever.

The 1992 rerelease peaked at No 26, eight places higher than its 1985 outing. Maybe it benefited from a younger audience knowing it from it being sampled in Soho’s hit “Hippychick” of just one year earlier. The band detested the promo video for the song which was made by their US label Sire and which Morrissey described as “degrading”. I wonder what he thought of this one made for Psychedelic Furs spin off project Love Spit Love’s cover of it for TV series Charmed and movie The Craft?

Oh come on now! How many times have I had to find something to write about yet another Michael Jackson video recently?! OK, well there is a school of thought that says the video for “Jam” was the inspiration for the 1996 film Space Jam starring Michael Jordan. Is that likely? Well, Jordan was in the “Jam” promo in which he teaches Jacko to play basketball while in Space Jam MJ teaches some Looney Tunes characters to shoot some hoops to win a b/ball match against invading aliens so there might be something in it I suppose.

The final Breaker is “Rest In Peace” by Extreme. The video for this one really should have been prefaced with a warning about flashing lights. If the stop motion sequence of two neighbours fighting over a TV set didn’t induce queasiness then the band performing against that flickering black and white backdrop would surely bring on a migraine. It’s a real sensory overload. It was also litigious as it copied rather too closely the 1952 anti-war film Neighbours by Norman McLaren and the band got sued but settled out of court. “Rest In Peace” peaked at No 13.

Time for another ‘exclusive’ now as we see yet another return of Boy George, this time with a cover of the sixties hit “Crying Game” So was this the third time George had been on the comeback trail? After Culture Club imploded in the mid 80s, George had fashioned himself a swift and initially very successful solo career with a No 1 single with his take on Ken Boothe’s “Everything I Own”. Three more smaller hits followed but the album “Sold” didn’t sell well and he disappeared from the charts for four years. He reappeared in 1991 under the pseudonym Jesus Loves You and the gloriously quirky “Bow Down Mister”. Again the parent album (“The Martyr Mantras”) failed to shift many units and another George revival had finished almost as quickly as it had started. You couldn’t keep a good Boy down and George was back on TOTP once more.

His rendition of “The Crying Game” was recorded for the soundtrack of the film of the same name, a thriller starring Stephen Rea set against the backdrop of of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The real pull of the film though was the plot twist which I won’t reveal for those who have never watched it but which was seen as very controversial at the time. Maybe it would be today but no way am I getting into that subject on here.

I didn’t mind George’s version – he seemed like a good choice to sing it to me (not that he was serenading me personally Romeo And Juliet style you understand). Was this the start of him always being seen in public with a hat on? He’s permanently got some design of chapeau on his bonce these days. Actually, he always wore a hat when he was with Culture Club didn’t he? Am I talking bollocks again?

That’s it! I knew there must be a reason. When I said earlier that Undercover vocalist John Matthews looks like he should be playing in midfield for Newcastle United because he looked a bit like Gazza, there was a memory lurking in my mind that was the trigger for my observation. I couldn’t put my finger on it before but I have it now. Do you remember The Comic Strip Presents… The Crying Game? It came out in 1992 like the Stephen Rea film but it was a football based tale of a young English player called Roy Brush (clearly a parody of Paul ‘daft as a brush’ Gascoigne aka Gazza) with the world literally at his feet after scoring an important goal for England. He is also gay and a tabloid paper tries to out him. Keith Allen stars as Brush and at one point in the story he records a single – yep you guessed it – a cover of “The Crying Game” (Gazza’s tears and all that). He even appears on TOTP and is introduced by Mark Franklin! Go to 11.45 in the YouTube video below:

After all that excitement, the No 1 brings us back to earth rather than takes us to a peak as it’s Snap! yet again with “Rhythm Is A Dancer”. I think this is the last week though. Don’t worry though! They’ll be back before the year is out with another big hit and another line up change. You lucky people you!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	East 17	House Of Love	No but my wife had the album Walthamstow.
2	The Christians	What’s In A Word	Nope
3	Undercover	Baker Street	Nah
4	Freddie Jackson	Me And Mrs Jones	Definitely not
5	INXS	Baby Don’t Cry	No but I bought their album Welcome To Wherever You Are
6	Del Amitri	Just Like A Man	No but I have their Best Of with it on
7	Sinéad O’Connor	Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home	No
8	The Smiths	How Soon Is Now	No but I have Hatful Of Hollow with it on
9	Michael Jackson	Jam	I did not
10	Extreme	Rest In Peace	Nah
11	Boy George	The Crying Game	Didn’t mind it, didn’t buy it
12	Snap!	Rhythm Is A Dancer	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0015nq2/top-of-the-pops-10091992

TOTP 20 AUG 1992

Posted on March 23, 2022 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t You Want Me” peaked at No 6.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Walking On Broken Glass” peaked at No 8.

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0015f91/top-of-the-pops-20081992

TOTP 30 APR 1992

Posted on February 17, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s the last day of April 1992 at TOTP Rewind and the UK charts are in the middle of a run of being topped by eleven different albums by eleven different artists in consecutive weeks. This was due partly to the release schedules being full of new albums being released by established artists including Bruce Springsteen, Def Leppard and The Cure. I’ll include Annie Lennox in that category as well despite “Diva” being her debut solo album. Right Said Fred’s “Up” made it to the top spot off the back of “Deeply Dippy” giving them a No 1 double whammy. There are two Greatest Hits albums in there courtesy of Madness and Lionel Richie, a loyal fan based generated chart topper from Iron Maiden, a Eurovision Song Contest driven album from the UK’s entry Michael Ball and of course the ubiquitous Simply Red. The only album in this sequence that was a real surprise came from Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine.

The singles chart was stagnant by comparison with only twelve different songs making it to No 1 all year, the lowest number since 1962. Were any of this week’s offerings on TOTP amongst them? Well, yes obviously there’s this week’s actual No 1 but apart from that is obviously what I meant!

We start with Marc Almond whose version of “The Days Of Pearly Spencer” is ripping up the charts and currently residing in the No 4 spot. Host Tony Dortie promotes it as a future No 1 later on. Was his prediction correct? Well, *SPOILER* no but No 4 was a damn fine effort by Marc. With the exception of his No 1 in 1989 with Gene Pitney, his biggest ever solo hit before this was his cover of Jacques Brel’s “Jacky” which peaked at No 17.

Like Vanessa Williams the other week, Marc is backed by a seated orchestra in full performance dress code. The effect is rather spoilt though as Marc is isolated away from the orchestra on a small circular stage and surrounded by the studio audience clapping along enthusiastically. The sound of the hand claps is rather incongruous drowning out as it does the strings of the orchestra. Marc gives a professional turn though, all serious mannerisms and intense staring at the camera.

Marc would only make the UK Top 40 would more time in 1995 with “Adored And Explored” but continues to release material both in his own right and as part of a rejuvenated Soft Cell.

It’s another one of those live satellite link ups next. I’m not sure they have quite been the success that new producer Stanley Appel must have hoped they would be. It all seems very clunky and the talky bits between the presenters and artist are excruciating. That’s if they can even hear each other. In the last such link up, either Roxette couldn’t hear guest hosts Smashie and Nicey due to a technical fault or they were ignoring them.

This week’s ‘satellite’ artist are En Vogue who are coming at us live from LA on the legendary Soul Train TV show. We hadn’t seen En Vogue for a whole two years since their debut hit single “Hold On”. I’d pretty much forgotten all about them but suddenly they were back with a track that would become another huge success in “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)”.

I remember not being sure about this track when I first heard it – I think it was all those ‘ooh bops’ and that a capella breakdown half way through. It was a bit too far removed from my pop sensibilities. However, my wife loved it and I can see why now. If you Google this song, the word that keeps coming up in all the online reviews is ‘sassy’ and it’s a spot on description. These ladies were all about sassy and female empowerment.

The lead single from their “Funky Divas” album, it was a hell of a way to announce that they were back. A No 2 hit in the US and No 4 in the UK, this wasn’t even the best single released from the album for me with that honour going to anti-prejudice anthem ”Free Your Mind”.

Their performance here is great but was it live? It almost sounds too perfect. Maybe you could get away with miming if you weren’t actually in the TOTP studio and therefore didn’t have to abide by the live vocal policy? I’m sure that’s the loophole that Boris Johnson’s legal team would be pursuing.

At the start of this post I commented on how the album charts were being dominated by established artists but was that true of the Top 40 singles? Well, in this show we’ve got some R’n’B, some goth rock, some metal, two 80s acts showing there was still life in them into the 90s and…erm… Right Said Fred. And this lot who presenter Claudia Simon described as when rave meets reggae whilst also claiming that TOTP brought us all kinds of music. Hard to dispute that given tonight’s running order. Fellow presenter Tony Dortie said it was his favourite current Top 40 hit. SL2 were the act that were the apple of Tony’s eye and their hit was “On A Ragga Tip”. This was the second consecutive hit for these London hardcore ravers after 1991’s “DJs Take Control /Way In My Brain” and would be the biggest of their career when it peaked at No 2.

Not being much of a rave nor reggae fan, this didn’t really do anything for me. Apparently it’s built around a sample from Jah Screechy called “Walk And Skank”. I’ve no idea who Jah Screechy is or was but I’m betting that you can’t see his song title for the first time without doing a double take after reading it as something else completely!

In this performance the dancer on the left clearly loses her place in her moves at one point and has to count herself back in. Don’t get me wrong, they’re impressively complicated steps but it was quite noticeable.

https://youtu.be/_ff7Dr0d-4w

What’s the difference between The Beatles and The Sisters Of Mercy? Yes, obviously one were the lovable mop tops who’s sound ate the world and the others are some dour goths from Leeds but that’s not what I meant. No, I was after the answer that one gave up touring to concentrate on recording studio albums and the other gave up recording studio albums to concentrate on touring. Incredibly, Andrew Eldritch and co have not released any new material since 1993 due to a dispute with their record label EastWest. The band went on strike against the label in 1993. Why? It seems to be about accusations against the label of incompetence including a disastrously planned tour with Public Enemy. Unfortunately for the Sisters, they still owed the label two albums according to their contract and were forced to re-record 1983 single “Temple Of Love” as “Temple Of Love 92” for a compilation of their early back catalogue called “Some Girls Wander By Mistake”. To jazz it up a bit (can you jazz up goth rock?) they’ve got in Ofra Haza of “Im Nin’alu” fame on backing vocals.

This version went straight into the charts at No 3 which seemed slightly surprising to me back then and still does today. In my teenage years, going goth was a cool statement to make. I flirted with the fringes of it but never quite had the conviction to dye my hair black so I’m hardly a knowledgeable commentator on this but it still seems an unlikely chart high. Maybe I’m doing them a disservice. I’m sure they had/have a loyal fan base of hardcore devotees.

A second compilation album, “A Slight Case Of Overbombing”, released in 1993 covered the band’s back catalogue from 1984 onwards but their recording contract stipulated that they still owed EastWest two studio albums. In the end, the label accepted two albums under the moniker of SSV which were a project constructed by Eldritch just to fulfil their contractual obligations. The albums consisted of just some synths, no percussion and some mumbled, spoken word vocals by Eldritch on a loop. EastWest accepted the master tapes without listening to them first. The recordings were never released. This story reminds me of that scene in 24 Hour Party People where Shaun Ryder and Happy Mondays manager Nathan meet Tony Wilson in Dry bar in Manchester to deliver the master tapes for the band’s eagerly awaited “Yes Please” album. Listening to the tapes, Wilson starts getting into the first track until he realises there are no vocals on them with Ryder and manager giggling in the background as they’ve spent all the money Wilson fronted for the album to be recorded in Barbados on drugs.

Eldritch looks here like he’s been to a health spa since the last time we saw him on the show when he looked like a living waxwork. I guess even goth rock gods have to grow up eventually .

https://youtu.be/X8WH-vqGm3Y

I guess there was no way that TOTP wasn’t going to show Michael Jackson’s video for “In The Closet” again given the chance. Although it’s only at No 8 in the charts, that’s good enough for a second outing for it. The track was actually credited to ‘Michael Jackson and Mystery Girl’ the latter of whom provides some whispered vocals in the middle. It turns out that was Princess Stéphanie of Monaco who had a brief career as a pop star in the 80s but who was completely washed up by 1992. Maybe she thought she could relaunch herself off the back of this Jackson track. If so, might have been BBC a good idea to get yourself a proper credit rather than a lame pseudonym. Hands up who else now has the execrable “Mysterious Girl” by Peter Andre in their head after reading the above paragraph? Many apologies.

Now this next link was unusual. The Cure were meant to be playing in the studio performing “Friday I’m In Love” according to Tony Dortie but there’s a problem. Singer Robert Smith is not available due to illness so they’re going to have to play the video instead. Nothing that out of the ordinary except…why are band members Simon Gallup and Perry Bamonte in the studio to deliver this news? Was Robert taken ill at the very last moment? What gives? Simon and Perry look they’d rather be bungee jumping into a live volcano than being interviewed on TOTP. They also don’t seem too convincing with their story. Were they not on the level? Here’s @TOTPFacts:

So… was Robert Smith really "not very well"? At The Cure's Nottingham Rock City gig on 27 April 1992 he asked the audience whether or not they should bother doing it. The majority of the audience said no… #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 11, 2022

Cheeky scamps! As for their song, this is surely one of the band’s most radio friendly and therefore well known singles. The chaotically simple video with its fast cuts, set pieces and ever changing backdrop curtains just adds to its charm and won an MTV Video Music Award. The Cure were never as big commercially again as they were in this moment but then Robert Smith probably wouldn’t have had it any other way.

They’ve moved the Breakers again back to that incongruous position just before the No 1. There’s also four of them which is deeply unhelpful to this blogger who is already behind schedule writing up all these TOTP repeats. The intro for this feature sees Tony Dortie and Claudia Simon as disembodied heads on multiple giant video screens which was presumably meant to be cutting edge at the time… or was it just a blatant Max Headroom rip off? The script for the intro sounds like it was written just 10 seconds before being spoken with Extreme described as having “one hot song” and Metallica being about to “rock in at 12”. Oh dear.

And it’s Metallica that we start with “Nothing Else Matters”, the third single from their eponymous ‘black’ album. Apparently this is one of the LA heavy metallers best known and most loved songs but I’m afraid it must have passed me by. I’m trying to remember who I was working with in the Market Street Our Price shop in Manchester at the time who was a big rock fan who might have played the album in store but I can’t think of any which may explain my unawareness of it. Hang on! Our Price legend Knoxy was there and he was a true rocker. He must have given the album a spin a few times surely? I loved working with Knoxy. King of the one liners (not all of them PC back then I have to say) and possessor of an epic quiff. He later grew a huge mane of rock god hair. Top bloke.

“Nothing Else Matters” peaked at No 6.

Now this was a chart (ahem) curiosity. Back in 1987, Curiosity Killed The Cat were the dog’s bollocks when it came to being the next happening chart stars. “Down To Earth” took them to No 3 and their debut album was a chart topper. The newspapers and glossy music mags were full of these four groovy hipsters (not that sort of hipster!) with their good looks and danceable pop tunes especially lead singer Ben Volpeliere- Pierrot and his ever present beret. By the end of the year though, they were pretty much done with just one further Top 40 hit arriving in 1989.

A 90s comeback was surely not on anybody’s cards but never underestimate the power of a cover version. Trimmed down to a three piece and with a truncated band name of just Curiosity, they recorded Johnny Bristol’s innuendo heavy 1974 No 3 hit “Hang On In There Baby”. They may not have had nine lives like the felines that inspired their original name but they must have used up at least three to be back in the charts five years after their first hit. This really was a last hurrah though despite the single equalling the chart peak of Bristol’s original. Two subsequent singles failed to scratch the Top 40 and a third album “Back To Front” went straight in the bin like so much cat litter.

While the rest of the band gave up on the idea of being pop stars after that, Ben Volpeliere- Pierrot clung on to the notion that he still was and carried on performing at retro festivals. I even saw him at one of those 80s Rewind concerts in Manchester around 2001. I think he was advertised as ‘Ben from Curiosity Killed The Cat’. He was first on a bill of about seven acts. Miaow!

It’s that “hot song” from Extreme next. “Song For Love” was the fifth and final single to be released from the band’s “Pornograffitti” album and *guilty pleasure alert* possibly my favourite. It’s completely prosaic and hackneyed but I kind of like it anyway. It sounds like the band had been listening to “God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You” by Argent that was covered by Kiss for Bill And Ted’s Bogus Journey which I also had a soft spot for.

The band would return later in the year with their concept album “III Sides To Every Story” which despite receiving acclaim from their fan base sold poorly due to the absence of a genre bending, mainstream appealing hit single like “More Than Words” had been.

After opening the show last week, EMF find themselves with just a few seconds in the Breakers this week. Last week’s appearance was billed as an ‘Exclusive’ so I’m guessing their “Unexplained EP” hadn’t actually entered the charts at that point. It’s in at No 18 this week. Its spot in the Breakers didn’t do much for its chart prospects though as it didn’t get any higher.

I’m still not convinced about the legitimacy of the Breakers. In reality it was probably just the second tier of exposure that the show’s producers could offer to record labels wanting to promote their acts with the first tier obviously being a full in studio performance or playing of the promo video.

There’s a weird addendum at the end of the section when Claudia Simon bigs up the diversity of artists featured but reserves a special mention for one of them when she says “as for Extreme, they are just so good”. Odd.

Right Said Fred are at No 1 again with “Deeply Dippy” and the talk on Twitter was all about what Richard Fairbrass was wearing which seemed to be some sort of Lycra onesie. More accurately it was what his outfit highlighted that was the hot topic of conversation. It’s hard to unsee his package once you’ve noticed it. And how could you fail to notice it. Not since Stuart Adamson of Big County wore his tight white strides back in the 80s had such a lunchbox been spied. I think this tweet from Lee Roberts probably summed up most people’s reaction:

Ffs put it away mate
— Lee Roberts (@MrScoops76) February 11, 2022

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Marc Almond	The Days Of Pearly Spencer	I did not
2	En Vogue	My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)	Yes this is in the singles box but I think my wife bought it
3	SL2	On A Ragga Tip	Nah
4	Sisters Of Mercy	Temple Of Love 92	Nope
5	Michael Jackson	In the Closet	Negative
6	The Cure	Friday I’m In Love	Not the single but I have a Greatest Hits of theirs with it on
7	Metallica	Nothing Else Matters	But neither did this – no
8	Curiosity	Hang On In There Baby	No
9	Extreme	Song For Love	Liked it, didn’t buy it
10	EMF	The Unexplained EP	It’s a no
11	Right Said Fred	Deeply Dippy	And a final no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00149b0/top-of-the-pops-30041992

TOTP 21 NOV 1991

Posted on November 25, 2021 by 80stastic

Welcome to TOTP Rewind where we are deep into November 1991 and the UK charts seem to be swamped by dance tunes of every hue. Over the last few weeks we’ve had the likes of Altern-8, K-Klass, Rozalla, Control, SL2 , 2 Unlimited and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping with nearly half of the acts on tonight’s show of the same flavour. As for the rest of the twelve artists, three could possibly be categorised as metal bands, there’s two Michaels, a cover version of a 70s disco classic and some mainstream Scandinavian rock pop. There’s also another new TOTP presenter who seem to be turning up as frequently as a Boris Johnson saying “Forgive me”.

We start as we mean to go on though with the first of those dance anthems from Bizarre Inc and “Playing With Knives”. The disembodied voice of the aforementioned new presenter tells us that this is the follow up to their previous hit “Such A Good Feeling” but also describes them as ‘the Stafford ravers’. Hang on, aren’t Altern-8 also from Stafford?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yes they are! What are the chances! It turns out that Bizarre Inc founding member Mark “Aaron” Archer had already defected and was part of the Altern-8 set up by this point so it all sounds a bit incestuous. I guess this was the rave equivalent of the Stourbridge indie three of The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin who were all having chart hits at this time as well. Still, five chart acts from two West Midlands towns beginning with the letter ‘S’ – it was all a bit bizarre (inc).

As for the track, it sounded very much like its predecessor to my un(rave)-cultured ears but not as good and what was with the weird vocal effects at the start? I’ve checked out the original recorded version and it doesn’t sound like that. It sounds like she’s singing over the top of a backing track or something. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

"We used a singer called Yvonne Yanney… She sang live and when we watched the playback it was absolutely awful, they'd put loads of delay and reverb on the vocal and it was a complete mess." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 12, 2021

Ah, that explains it. Poor woman must have been devastated watching the playback. Her big moment and she ends up sounding like she’s singing underwater. Why did the TOTP producers do that to her? Were they trying to beef up the performance a bit? Sure, by now the established template for a dance act of having the studio boffin blokes on keyboards wearing puffa jackets in the background behind a singer trying to combine a live vocal with some slick dance moves was wearing thin but this?! Still, it didn’t harm the single’s chart performance as it climbed all the way to No 4. Bizarre Inc would top that the following year when “I’m Gonna Get You” (featuring UK soul singer Angie Brown) went to No 3. As with most of these rave artists though, when it came to selling an album it was a different matter and their “Energique” long player stalled at No 41.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmjwM5adUjg

We then switch to co-host Mark Franklin (by now and old hand at this TOTP lark) who, in his segue to the Top 10 countdown, also welcomes back Terry Waite, the Anglican Church envoy who had been released by his Lebanese kidnappers after 1,763 days in captivity three days before this TOTP aired. Whilst we were all relieved for Terry and his family that he was finally free and admittedly it was a massive news story, it does sound a bit incongruous when highlighted in a pop music programme.

A first view next of a dance act that would manage to sell albums throughout the 90s and bucket loads of them too. M People would breakthrough the barrier segregating dance and mainstream pop music in spectacular fashion over the course of the decade, racking up 19 Top 40 singles (including 10 Top Tenners) and 3 Top 3 albums. They also won the 1994 Mercury Music Prize for their “Elegant Slumming” album.

However, it all began with this single “How Can I Love You More?” which, despite the promotional push of this TOTP appearance, would peak at No 29. If this has immediately made you think that you were sure that it was a bigger hit than that, rest assured that your memory is not playing tricks on you. A remix by renowned DJ and producer Sahsa was released just over a year later in February 1993 and it duly went Top 10 peaking at No 8 under the guise of “How Can I Love You More (Mixes)”.

It’s that disembodied* presenter voice again which tells us that M People are Mike Pickering, Paul Heard and Heather Small in the intro. Pickering was a DJ at legendary Manchester club The Haçienda (despite having lived in Manchester for over a year by this point, I still hadn’t ventured anywhere near the place) who had also signed Happy Mondays to Factory Records where he was an A&R person. His first name supplied the inspiration (if you can call it that) for the band’s name – I always thought it was a bit of a crummy moniker for a band to be honest.

*Why did they keep doing this when introducing a new presenter on the show, not putting their fizzog on screen until a third of the way through the show?

If I thought that their name was a bit rubbish, I couldn’t argue with Heather Small’s vocal which blows most of their dance act peers out of the water when it came to doing it live. So recognisable would her vocal stylings become that she would eventually become famous all over again 20 years later via the sitcom Miranda…

So that’s the new presenter! His name is Steve Anderson and sadly, his story ends tragically. A stand up comic, after his brief stint on TOTP, Steve worked on the shopping channel Price Drop TV and appeared as a trust coach on the BBC Two dating show Would Like To Meet before returning to comedy in 2007, opening the Portable Comedy Club in London the following year. However, he died unexpectedly in his sleep aged just 49 in 2012. As with The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself, he must have had a connection with Stourbridge as he was buried there. RIP Steve.

Back in 1991 though, he was introducing Bassheads and their smash hit “Is There Anybody Out There?”. Although this is another dance act, there’s not an actual ‘singer’ on this one to front the whole thing although there are the obligatory males (they always seem to be blokes don’t they?) scratching away on mixing desks in the background. What the track does have though is a small section of rapping in it so, in an attempt to mix it up a bit, the show producers have positioned the rapper within the front row of the gawping crowd to make it appear as if he is just a part of the studio audience. Then when he starts rapping, it’s got some sort of surprise value. Genius! Except it isn’t really is it? It doesn’t work that well and it’s not even an original trick is it, a studio plant? So pleased are they with this staging though that the TOTP producers repeat the trick by placing Mark Franklin in that same front row. He is clearly seen as the camera pans round before Bassheads have even finished performing and is in position to go straight to camera for the next segue. To be honest, I think they’ve overplayed their hand on this one and it’s all becoming a bit tedious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mE8I6P_vCE

Talking of tedious….here’s Michael Bolton! Bollers was onto his fifth UK hit with this, his version of Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman” which was also his second US chart topper after “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You”. Taken from his “Time, Love & Tenderness” album, he wouldn’t score quite as big a success with it over here but it did make the Top 10 all the same.

This seemed like so much cynical, money for old rope to me. Having seen a poor return in the UK on his past two singles (neither of which made the Top 20), Bolton resorted to a cover of a song that was already well known (it had been a No 2 hit as recently as 1987 over here thanks to its use in a Levi’s advert) just in time for the Christmas market. It should have been renamed “When A Tosser Needs A Hit”. Michael was still well cocooned in his monstrous mullet phase and it seems like his backing band were recruited on their ability to grow their hair the same. Check out the guitarist and drummer!

The follow up single was something called “Missing You Now” which was a collaboration with Kenny G which gives me terrifying flashbacks to when I saw Bolton in concert and the support was “The G Man” as he called him. And no, I’m not retelling that story all over again! It’s in many a previous post on the blog if you really want to know exactly what happened!

And back with the dance tunes! This is just getting ridiculous now! Who the chuff were Love Decade?! I have zero recollection of either them or their track “So Real”. Whoever they were, they seemed intent on breaking the record for the amount of faceless blokes on keyboards you could have on the TOTP stage at any one time. Unusually, this time the singer isn’t a woman and to be fair, the guy does a better job than some of his peers.

As far as I can make out, they were from Manchester and were also known as Decadance. The singer was a bloke called Jerome Stokes who sounds like he should be playing up front for a Championship football club whilst his oppos included Rob Van Winkelen…wasn’t that Vanilla Ice’s real name*? Also, what was with “THE NORTH HAS RISEN’ banner behind them. The Twitter consensus seemed to be that it was a retort to the Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu performance of “It’s Grim Up North” the other week – go on you Manc lads!

“So Real” peaked at No 14.

*No, no it wasn’t but it was close.

The Exclusive act tonight is a bit of a let down. Scorpions? Did they really qualify for a section which had recently been filled by the likes of Steve Wonder and Queen? I get that they were a bigger deal in mainland Europe and especially in their native Germany and that you had to admire their longevity (they had been formed when The Beatles were in their chart eating pomp) but “Wind Of Change” had been their only worldwide hit. Were they a band or a song?

“Send Me An Angel” was the follow up to that Cold War busting, Berlin Wall toppling anthem and was very much in the same vein but without the hook of that whistling bit. It was a big hit in countries like France, Sweden, The Netherlands and of course Germany but it caused very minor ripple in the pools of the UK and US charts where it peaked at Nos 27 and 44 respectively. I can imagine many a lighter having been waved in the air when the band performed the track live but it’s a fairly unremarkable soft rock ballad otherwise.

There’s hardly time for Steve Anderson to get through his next ink before his face is wiped off screen by the Breakers section starting with…who? Anticappella? Was that really their name? Yet again, this one must have passed me by but apparently they were the brainchild of Italian producer Gianfranco Bortolotti who was responsible for a load of shite dance hits in the UK throughout the 90s as he was also the guy behind the similarly titled Capella. Remember them? They had a slew of hits in the mid 90s with tracks like “U Got 2 Let the Music”, “U Got 2 Know” and “U & Me”. He seems to be a tad limited creatively I would suggest if his band names and song titles are anything to go by. Oh hang on, Anticapella’s debut hit here does have a different and indeed unconventional title – “2√231”. The record was still as rank as old arses though.

That Scandinavian rock pop that I mentioned earlier now from, of course, Roxette with the fourth single from their “Joyride” album called “Spending My Time”. Now I may have not been able to recall a fair few of the songs in the show tonight and this one is no exception but I won’t have been the only one. You see, the single was not one of their bigger hits and indeed only peaked at No 32 in the US where their previous five single releases had been either No 1 or No 2. The reason that hit underperformed and therefore became one of their least known songs was because of record company shenanigans, at least that’s what the band’s Per Gessle said to the songfacts.com website:

“I’m sure it would have become a Top 5 song in the US if EMI wouldn’t have scrapped the entire company and sacked 122 people in the middle of marketing this one. People loved it but radio never got the chance to catch up. The Music Business. You win some, you lose some.”

Yes apparently, at the end of 1991, EMI merged with other record companies to form EMI Records Group North America. The merger resulted in the new company firing over a hundred members of staff and saw Roxette receiving little support from the new label (that’s what it says on Wikipedia anyway).

It was either that or the fact that it was a very dull song that did for it. “Spending My Time” peaked at No 22 in the UK.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised any more by the frequency with which metal bands have sneaked onto TOTP courtesy of an inflated chart position instigated by a loyal fanbase but somehow I am. Again. In the middle of all this raving comes Skid Row and a little ditty called “Wasted Time” which would make the UK Top 20. This was from their “Slave To The Grind” album and is supposedly about Steven Adler, the original drummer of Guns N’ Roses. The song was was written by lead singer Sebastian Bach, guitarist Dave Sabo and bass player Rachel Bolan. Despite his input, Bolan is on record as describing the track as “The biggest piece of shit we ever recorded.”. Yeah, I’ll leave it there. Really nothing else to say.

Now, here’s a bunch of rockers I did quite like. Although undoubtedly part of the rock family tree as it were, Extreme made a name for themselves off the back of the acoustic sub section of that genre. Their previous and biggest hit “More Than Words” was definitely in that vein and music fans went wild for its spare, brittle nature making it a US No 1 and a UK No 2 song. Although they reportedly came to see “More Than Words” as an albatross around their collective necks, it didn’t stop the band from releasing another acoustic single as its follow up, albeit a more fast paced track. Written by Guitarist Nuno Bettencourt on his newly acquired first ever 12-string guitar, “Hole Hearted” had a strange gestation though as he described in an interview with Songfacts.com:

“I wrote it on the toilet! I got kind of excited that I had my first 12-strin, and it made me want to go to the toilet. I sat down, took my time, and dare I say, the ideas just came out. They came pouring out.”

That tale reminds me of the time when I was a first year student at Sunderland Polytechnic. Back then, I truly believed that I had a shot at a career in music journalism. How so? Well, I was the co-editor of the music section of the poly newspaper and I had secured an interview with a bona fide chart band who had recently been in the Top 10 and had scored a US No 1! Who were they? Cutting Crew of course! They were playing a gig at the poly and I interviewed them backstage beforehand. In reply to my question about how long he thought the band would last, lead singer Nick Van Eede replied that they would have a lengthy career as they had “songs coming out of our arses”. The quote made it into the published article with an addendum from the paper’s editor which read “that explains a lot”. Smart arse (ahem).

Anyway, back to Extreme, and although nowhere near as big a hit as “More Than Words”, “Hole Hearted” did a decent job as a follow up peaking at No 4 in America and No 12 over here despite never actually being shown on TOTP in full.

Meanwhile back in the studio we find Sonia – no really, she was still plugging away at it in late ’91 – with her version of The Real Thing’s “You To Me Are Everything”. Now that there’s a live vocal policy on the show, the diminutive scouser has cut down on any dance moves to concentrate on, you know, actually singing. To be fair, I’ve heard a lot worse on TOTP in recent weeks but although she was undoubtedly small, she was no Heather Small.

The track was taken back into the charts in ’95 when Sean Maguire (remember him?) recorded it during his time on the soap star turned pop star conveyor belt. Get this – he had 8 (EIGHT!) Top 40 hits! “You To Me Are Everything” was the fifth of those. Oh god! That means we’ll be seeing loads of him in future TOTP repeats on BBC4 if they get that far!

Sonia’s version peaked at No 13.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K0M3Rdb4XQ

And so to the No 1 which is the third different chart topper in four weeks after having the same song at the top of the pile for 16 weeks straight. Yes, after the (not so) ‘exclusive’ premiere full length video for “Black And White” on last week’s TOTP, Michael Jackson has assumed his place at the chart throne. Sticking with the theme of royalty, it was around this time that ‘The King Of Pop’ title started to be banded around and apparently it was instigated by Jacko himself. Supposedly, any TV network that wanted to have the rights to show the premiere of the “Black And White” promo had to agree to refer to the singer as ‘The King Of Pop’. Well, Mark Franklin doesn’t do so this week but did they comply in the last show?

*quickly checks BBC iPlayer*

No they didn’t! Maybe that story was a load of bollocks then…

As for the song itself, well the subject matter of racial tolerance was certainly a noble one though I do recall some incredulity from the critics of the day at the lyrics ‘don’t matter if you’re black or white’ given the argument that was raging in the public domain about what was happening to the colour of Jackson’s own skin. A theory of skin bleaching took hold in the media and I have to admit that when he took to the Oprah Winfrey show to explain that it was down to a skin disorder called vitiligo that causes a loss of pigmentation in patches on the body, I was one of the doubters. I think we can now all accept that he was telling the truth about that at least.

So how did “Black And White” sound? I think on first hearing I thought it was a bit overblown and all over the place but it didn’t take too many hearings for it to lodge itself in my brain. It was certainly catchy enough. It was a musical smorgasbord though with elements of pop, dance, hip hop, rap and rock all stuck in the mixer. On the rock strand though, the much peddled story that the song’s metal guitar riff was provided by Slash from Guns N’ Roses turned out to be a myth . He did play on the album but on the track “Give In To Me”.

The album was of course “Dangerous” which at the time seemed to be weighed down by its own expectations (Mark Ryden’s over the top cover art work didn’t help with that). It was meant to eclipse “Thriller” as his magnum opus both artistically and commercially. In the end it fails on both accounts for me but its reputation has grown after some revisiting of it by critics and the press. It would spawn 9 (NINE!) singles equalling “Bad”‘s haul and sell 32 million copies worldwide. Within those 9 singles, I think “Black And White” stands up pretty well.

After the 10 and a half minutes afforded to the premiere of the video last week, it is severely curtailed tonight with the Macaulay Culkin intro and the controversy courting ‘panther dance’ coda both stripped out.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bizarre Inc	Playing With Knives	Nope
2	M People	How Can I Love You More?	No but I think my wife may have had the album
3	Bassheads	Is There Anybody Out there?	Negative
4	Michael Bolton	When A Man Loves A Woman	Hell no!
5	Love Decade	So Real	I did not
6	Scorpions	Send Me An Angel	Nah
7	Anticappella	2√231	I’d have rather have done some maths equations – no
8	Roxette	Spending My Time	I didn’t spend any time listening to this – no
9	Skid Row	Wasted Time	I didn’t waste any time listening to this – no
10	Extreme	Hole Hearted	Quite liked it, didn’t buy it
11	Sonia	You To Me Are Everything	Never happening
12	Michael Jackson	Black And White	No but I did have a promo copy of the “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I” album with it on

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/m0011f4w/top-of-the-pops-21111991

TOTP 08 AUG 1991

Posted on September 19, 2021 by 80stastic

Whilst we are into Autumn in the real world in 2021, back in TOTP Rewind and 1991 it’s still the Summer and this particular show reinforces just how bizarre the charts were back then. We have a couple of metal bands (albeit one is singing an acoustic ballad), a pair of electronic dance acts, some acid jazz, some hip hop, some singer songwriter types, an indie rock band who would become Britpop legends, yet another soap star chancing their arm as a singer, a joke rapper, Michael bloody Bolton and with it being 1991, we also have Bryan Adams of course. Pick the bones out of that lot.

As for me, the worry of the Our Price store I was working in being sold and what that meant for my job security had been resolved by this point I think as the decision to sell the unit was reversed. Phew! My wife had set herself up working as a freelance dressmaker so the work she was doing meant that we had two incomes for the first time in a while. I’m guessing we still didn’t have too much spare cash for record buying though. I wonder if any of the songs on tonight’s show would have been on my shopping list?

Nicky Campbell is tonight’s host and he’s employing his usual ‘I’m cleverer than you with my flourishes of vocabulary’ schtick. The first act he introduces are De La Soul and their “A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturday”” single.

This pretty much marked the end of the trio as chart entities in the UK with only one more minor Top 40 hit during the 90s and none in the last 20 years. The reach of their music has not been helped of course by being hamstrung in terms of digital platforms like Spotify due to the sample heavy nature of their early back catalogue. Said samples were only cleared for physical music distribution and the wording of the contracts negotiated didn’t take into account the impact of unforeseen technologies. Disputes with the owners of their catalogue Tommy Boy Records further complicated matters and negotiations to bring those early hip hop classics to online listeners are ongoing with new owners Reservoir Media. For now though, type De La Soul into Spotify and you won’t find anything earlier than 2004 on there.

I mentioned in a post that me and my wife still often quote the ‘Saturday, it’s a Saturday’ lyric to this day when the weekend rolls around but there’s another reason this song still reverberates which is the Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah reference which of course is in Disney’s Song Of The South film. For years I was convinced that the lyrics were ‘plenty of sunshine, plenty of rain’ when they are actually ‘plenty of sunshine coming my way’. Why I was under this impression I have no idea but I argued my corner for years with my wife in the pre-internet days. Not for the first time, she was right and I was completely and utterly wrong.

“A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturday” peaked at No 22.

Campbell starts blathering about ‘funked up fairytales’ when introducing Extreme. I’m not quite sure what the point is that he’s trying to make. I think he just lost his way trying to say that their single “More Than Words” is a rather delicate ballad as opposed to their usual funk metal style but gets bogged down in his own nonsense. Bloody pseud.

As for Extreme themselves, they’re up to No 2 but are the latest in what will become a long line of acts to hit the Bryan Adams bottleneck and never get to No 1. Incidentally, that list includes 2 Unlimited, Right Said Fred, Heavy D And The Boyz and The Scorpions. Given that extremely low bar, I’d say Extreme perhaps had the most plausible case to take before the court of pop injustice although I’d have also been OK with “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt ‘N’ Pepa making it to the top which was the final No 2 single to be Adams’d.

Apparently Extreme’s management didn’t see “More Than Words” as a hit record and only released it as a single after guitarist Nuno Bettencourt badgered the label leading them to testing it in several markets and territories to check out audience reaction. They’d wanted a more traditional sounding power ballad with crashing drums and kitchen sink production values. Bettencourt won out though AMA the rest is history with it making up for just missing out in the UK by going to No 1 in the US.

Campbell tells us how he’s all about ‘real’ music next referring to the next act as a songsmith in a techno-led age crafting songs like an ornament rather than a computer print out. He really was a pretentious, verbose wanker back then. So who could he have been waxing lyrical over? Why Beverley Craven of course who’s back in the charts with “Holding On”, her follow up to No 3 hit Promise Me”. Unfortunately for Beverley, she couldn’t turn her lyrics into reality as she failed to hold onto her previous success when the single peaked at No 32 despite the TOTP exposure.

Beverley wrote a song for her then baby daughter Mollie on her second album “Love Scenes” called…erm…”Mollie’s Song” and her daughter repaid her years later by appearing on ITV dating show Take Me Out causing her Mum to have to endure the embarrassment of performing on Take Me Out: The Gossip. Ungrateful kids eh?

If Extreme weren’t going to do this hard rock thing properly then stand aside as the real deal is here. “Enter Sandman” by Metallica is just huge whether you’re a devotee of that genre or just a music fan. Absolutely massive. I would certainly put myself in the latter category and my knowledge of Metallica at this point was limited at best. I knew they had released a few albums as we stocked them in the Our Price store I was working in but they were never played on the shop stereo. Not really seen as suitable playlist material for a mainstream record shop chain. I still held this view two years later when I was Assistant Manager at the Altrincham store as Xmas approached.

Whilst I was upstairs with the manager having a no doubt very important meeting planning something or other, the staff downstairs on the counter thought this was a perfect time to test my stress levels by playing some inappropriate music in the shop. After a couple of tracks had led me to ringing down to the counter and telling them to play something more shop friendly, they decided to really push my buttons by playing “Enter Sandman”. I was verging on apoplectic by this point but I could see the funny dude once I had calmed down.

“Enter Sandman” was the lead single from their self titled fifth album otherwise known as ‘The Black Album’ on account if it’s all black cover. Surely they must have taken inspiration from Spinal Tap’s “Smell The Glove”?

“Enter Sandman” peaked at No 5 on the UK chart.

The Shamen are back in the studio next to perform their hit “Move Any Mountain: Progen 91”. A retitled re-release of their 1990 “Pro>Gen” single, it was taken from their “En-Tact” album which had made a high of No 31 on the charts at the back end of the previous year but somehow, the success of “Move Any Mountain” didn’t trigger a renaissance period for the album and it struggled to a second peak of No 45 despite re-entering the charts for a seven week run.

I’m guessing it was the curse of the record label practice of temporarily withdrawing an album that had been out for a while before releasing it off the back of an unexpected hit single. That was happening all the time in 1991. The band needn’t have worried as the following year’s “Boss Drum” would go to No 3 and be certified platinum.

The second of those two singer songwriters on the show now as Amy Grant proves she was not a one hit wonder after all. “Every Heartbeat” was her follow up to No 2 hit “Baby Baby” and was also taken from her “Heart In Motion” album. It’s pretty twee stuff though I have to say, one of those airhead, superficial songs that would be on an album called ‘The Best Songs To Convince Yourself That Life Isn’t Shit After All Whilst You Do The Ironing…Ever!’. Or something.

Any would have one further UK hit single in 1995 when she covered Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and took it to No20, five places higher than the peak of “Every Heartbeat”.

I’d completely forgotten that Blur had a second Top 40 hit in 1991. I’d been labouring under the misapprehension that there was a sizeable gap between “There’s No Other Way” and their “Modern Life Is Rubbish” sophomore album but here’s “Bang” to show that there was a second hit single from debut long player “Leisure” after all.

I must have not watched this TOTP as surely I would have remembered “Bang” as the one with the chicken placard. What the hell was that about?! Cue lots of comments about Damon Albarn waving his big cock about on Twitter. There were also lots of tweets about Graham Coxon’s Oxford That University t- shirt (he didn’t actually go there) but I was more impressed by drummer Fave Rowntree’s Teenage Fanclub t-shirt.

As for the song itself, it’s just a poor man’s “There’s No Other Way” isn’t it? Even the band themselves weren’t keen:. Here’s TOTPFacts with the story:

"Bang" was apparently bashed out in 15 minutes in response to Blur's label's demands for another hit. The band are not fans (it's not on their Best Of LP). "'Bang' was just shit", Damon Albarn later said. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 17, 2021

“Bang” peaked at No 24.

Some more wise ass word play next from Nicky Campbell as he introduces Young Disciples and their one and only hit “Apparently Nothin’”. This lot were essentially a springboard for the solo career of well connected soul singer Carleen Anderson (Bobby Byrd was her stepfather and James ‘The Godfather Of Soul’ Brown was her actual godfather).

Talking of being well connected, isn’t that Mick Talbot of The Style Council up there on keyboards? Yes it is but why? How? Well, their album was recorded at Solid Bond Studios (Paul ‘The Modfather’ Weller’s personal studio) and both he and Talbot featured on it. Simples.

The album was shortlisted for the inaugural Mercury Music Prize but lost out to Primal Scream’s “Screamadelica”. Being in such exalted company makes you wonder why the band weren’t bigger than they were or at least why they didn’t last longer. Maybe it really was all about Carleen Anderson as the band split after she left in 1992.

“Apparently Nothin’” peaked at No 13.

I hate the way they’ve started putting the Breakers just before the No 1 song. It keeps killing me into a false sense of security that I’m nearly done. Also nearly done (thank f**k) are Technotronic whose appearance here in the Breakers will be their last on the show possibly ever. I think the only other UK chart entries they had were remixes of “Pump Up The Jam” years down the line so with a fair wind at our backs we might just be about to steer a Technotronic free course through the rest of the decade.

For the record, this one was called simply “Work” and featured someone just called Reggie. Who was Reggie? She’s the singer on this one I believe and also collaborated with “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life” hitmakers Indeep though to be honest she might as well have been Reggie Perrins for all I care. Just as the founder of Grot walked off into the sea never to be seen again (sort of), Technotronic are finally doing the decent thing and disappearing.

Ah shit. It’s Michael Bolton again, this time with the title track from his “Time Love And Tenderness” album which would produce five hit singles for him in this country! My Michael Bolton story has been well documented in previous posts so I don’t propose to wheel it out again here. Despite his sanitised image as a shaggy dog haired singer of bland soft rock ballads, Bolton did mix it up a bit with some of his song titles. “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” is not your archetypal love song message but my favourite is “Can I Touch You…There?”. WTF?!

Now if we thought that the whole soap star to pop star thing that dominated the end fo the 80s would disappear come the new decade, we were wrong. In 1990 we had Neighbours and Home And Away Aussie actor Craig McLachlan chancing his arm with an attempt at being a serious musician and now here was the UK’s very own Sophie Lawrence giving it a whirl with a version of Donna Summer’s disco classic “Love’s Unkind”. Sophie, of course, played Diane Butcher in EastEnders from 1988 until 1991 (her last few appearances in the soap coincided with her attempt at pop stardom in fact).

I remember wondering at the time whether Sophie’s character was popular enough to be able to attract an audience of pop fans. I mean no offence but she was hardly Kylie Minogue / Charlene Robinson was she? I mean she wasn’t even the most well known of the Butcher family I would wager being outshone by her Dad Frank (played by Mike Read) and her dopey brother Ricky (Sid Owen). Maybe I wasn’t a big enough EastEnders fan to truly understand her draw. To be fair to her, she looks like a pop star in the video; like a cross between Olivia Newton John and Debbie Gibson. Sadly for Sophie, her pop career didn’t\’t extend beyond this one single and she returned to acting after her moment in the charts.

Bryan Adams is still No 1 with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” obviously. He hasn’t even got into his stride yet. I think by this point he was selling twice the number of copies of any other record in the Top 10. I recall a colleague called Pete in the Our Price I worked in struggling to keep up with demand. When asked by the manager if he had any more copies on order as we had sold out again, Pete turned to me and whispered “No, I thought I’d leave it” in his best sarcastic tone. I would encounter my own singles buying crisis a few years later when I found myself being in charge of orders in the week of the Blur v Oasis battle but that’s for a future post.

And so we come to the joke rapper. No not Honey G of the X factor. It can only be Vanilla Ice who is back in the charts with “Satisfaction“. This take on the Rolling Stones classic “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was Ice’s fourth UK Top 40 hit. Fourth? Who’d have thought he’d had so many hits? Well, not the BBC who included him in their One Hit Wonders programme which aired on BBC4 just before this TOTP repeat. As if all the pro-government news reporting wasn’t enough, now the Beeb do this!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	De La Soul	A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturday”	Nope
2	Extreme	More Than Words	I did not
3	Beverley Craven	Holding On	Nah
4	Metallica	Enter Sandman	No
5	The Shamen	Move Any Mountain: Progen 91	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	Amy Grant	Every Heartbeat	Negative
7	Blur	Bang	Another no
8	Young Disciples	Apparently Nothin’	Yes it’s in the singles box but I think my wife actually made the purchase
9	Technotronic	Work	F**k off!
10	Michael Bolton	Time, Love And Tenderness	Never happening
11	Sophie Lawrence	Love’s Unkind	Ditto
12	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	It’s a no
13	Vanilla Ice	Satisfaction	As if

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/m000znwm/top-of-the-pops-08081991

TOTP 25 JUL 1991

Posted on September 9, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s 1991 here at TOTP Rewind and it’s a pivotal period for the grand old show which was in its 28th year. The ‘year zero’ revamp is just around the corner and we have already seen a flurry of cosmetic changes to the programme in the weeks prior to it. Various bits of tinkering with the chart rundown had led to inconsistencies in the show’s core concept and in the last few episodes we have seen a nasty green screen backdrop employed behind the presenters. However, that now seems to have been ditched as tonight’s host Mark Goodier is seen against a background of the real set. However, they do seem to have positioned him away from the studio audience who are all facing towards the stage area and not looking at Goodier at all. This gives the whole thing a rather sparse look, as if this is the dress rehearsal rather than the actual show.

The first act on tonight are making their debut in person performance on the show (I believe) but this landmark event is shot through with tragedy. The Shamen had been building a reputation on the club scene following the release of their “En-Tact” album the previous year but mainstream success had so far eluded them (bar one Top 30 entry for the single “Hyperreal”). However, the decision to remix and releases their “Pro-Gen” track from that album and retitle it as “Move Any Mountain (Progen ’91)” would prove to be a masterstroke as it crashed into the charts at No 9 this week. All of this chart activity however had come heart breakingly late for bass and keyboards player Will Sinnott who had tragically drowned whilst on a trip to Tenerife to film a promo video for “Move Any Mountain”. Founder member Colin Angus decided to carry on under The Shamen name with rapper Mr C promoted to the position of full time band member. I have to say that I prefer the original track “Pro-Gen” where Mr C’s rapping is dialled down a bit. However, if you didn’t like either of those mixes then there were plenty of others to choose from as apparently there were as many as 35 versions of the track circulating in Europe and the band themselves released a whole album (“Progeny”) dedicated to mixes of the track – 19 remixes of “Move Any Mountain (Progen 91)” plus 16 samples and loops according to Wikipedia. Phew!

I worked with someone at Our Price in later years who had a massive crush on Mr C which took me by surprise a bit. He never struck me as the hereat throb type. “Move Any Mountain (Progen ’91)” would peak at No 4 unable to dethrone Bryan Adams but they would return a year later to claim that No 1 spot with the infamous “Ebeneezer Goode” single. Naughty, naughty!

C+C Music Factory again?! How many times is this that the video for “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” has been on? Three? Four? How am I supposed to keep coming up with stuff to say about this one?! Oh, hang on…there’s a cover version of it you say by a band called Stooshe? Never heard of them. Well, that could be an oasis for my word count desert. Let’s have a listen then…

…well that was ghastly! Harrowing even. Who the hell are these people?

*checks Wikipedia*

So, they’re a British girl group from London formed to be an urban and soulful Spice Girls! The name is pronounced as in ‘pushy’ and originates from the word ‘stoosh’ which is urban slang for either something expensive, a girl who thinks she’s nicer than she is or being stoned! WTF?! The suffix -she was added on the end to represent female empowerment (oh you mean ‘girl power’ then?). The resulting name is pronounced like the Scottish word ‘stooshie’ which means ‘the disruption caused by a disagreement or misunderstanding’. What a load of old ‘tosh’… that’s ‘tosh’ as in ‘what a lot of old bollocks’.

C+C Music Factory’s version of “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” peaked at No 4.

Still enjoying 1991 was Dannii Minogue who is back on TOTP with her third hit in the last four months. “Jump To The Beat” was of course a cover of the Stacy Lattisaw No 3 hit from 1980 and it completed a peculiar little pop palindrome for Dannii when it peaked at No 8 meaning her three Top 40 entries so far had achieved the following chart peaks:

8-11-8

Stacy Lattisaw was only 13 when she had her hit but Dannii was a whole six years older at 19 when she took it back into the charts. Someone who was younger than both of them was the daughter of a guest at a wedding that I attended around this time. It was the evening do of a friend from school of my wife’s and there was a little girl there who clearly loved this record and was throwing herself around the dance floor as the DJ played it. As the night drew to a close and the DJ announced there was only one song left we all begged him to play “Jump To The Beat” again for this young girl but the jobsworth refused and played “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” instead as he had clearly decided well in advance that would be his final record of the night. Instead of at least one guaranteed person on the dance floor, he got nobody as everyone walked off as soon as the first strains of Bryan Adams came over his disco speakers. Nobhead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry8fTptf2AU

Having introduced themselves to UK audiences with the funk metal of “Get The Funk Out”, Extreme threw us all a curve ball when they followed it up with the spare and brittle sounding acoustic ballad “More Than Words”. Despite Mark Goodier’s warning not to be fooled by the gentle song and that they were a serious rock band, many a pop fan was duped into buying the band’s “Pornograffitti” album on the strength of “More Than Words”. Such a deception had not been put into practice since 1986 when the Doctor and the Medics album “Laughing At The Pieces” was bought by many a chart follower expecting an LP full of “Spirits In The Sky”s.

The joke was on Extreme in the end though as the song became an albatross around their necks and they became known as ‘the More Than Words guys’ (see also 4 Non Blondes and Berlin whose biggest hit was more famous than the band). It’s a pleasant enough rock ballad though I guess and went to No 1 in the US and would surely have done the same over here but for the Bryan Adams effect.

1991 wasn’t all about acts making their first breakthrough into the charts like Dannii Minogue, The Shamen and Extreme that we have seen on the show so far. It was also about this who rose phoenix like from the ashes to rekindle former glories like Feargal Sharkey and Mike and the Mechanics who both returned to the charts in this year after a big gap away from them. And this lot. OMD (who seemed to be basically Andy McCluskey at this point) were enjoying not one but two Top 10 hits in 1991 with the second being this one “Pandora’s Box”.

It was hard not to believe the band were all just about McCluskey to be fair when you watched performances like this and all you can see are his extraordinary ‘Dad Dancing’ moves which have been described as ‘a geography teacher with ants in his pants’ and ‘an epileptic windmill’. My brother-in-law looks a bit like Andy McCluskey I always think (although my wife can’t really see it). I have never witnessed him dancing though.

“Pandora’s Box” peaked at No 7.

After getting Bette Midler into the TOTP studios the other week, the producers have pulled off another coup by twisting the arm of Cher into making a visit. She’s here to promote her latest single “Love And Understanding” and as with Andy McCluskey’s dancing, all you can see in this performance is Cher’s hair. Presumably that was a wig? It’s not as shocking as Madonna’s pink fright-wig back in 1984 for her performance of ‘Like A Virgin” but it was still a bold statement.

Just like Madonna, Cher is up there all on her own with no backing singers / dancers / band which I’m kind of surprised about. You would imagine she would have a whole Mariah Carey style entourage with her. The following single release from Cher was a song called “Save Up All Your Tears” which was the opening track of the “Love Hurts” album and which I recall was also recorded by Robin Beck of “First Time” fame (that cola advert song from 1988) but which tonked when released as the follow up to her surprise No 1. They are almost exactly the same! Here’s Robin’s version…

And here’s Cher’s…

Apart from Cher’s more throaty vocals, almost indentical.

“Love And Understanding” peaked at No 10.

This next bloke is “a bit of a musical genius” according to Mark Goodier. Why? He’s only the ‘The Godfather of House Music’ that’s why! Even a dance tune dodger like me knew the name Frankie Knuckles and of his legendary status within the genre. “The Whistle Song” must be his best known tune in his own right but he has also remixed some massive chart hits like “You Are Not Alone” by Michael Jackson, “Un-Break My Heart” by Toni Braxton and “Ain’t Nobody” by Chaka Khan. Such is his influence that he even has another nickname which is ‘The Man Of The House’ which immediately makes me think of this:

Despite acknowledging his indisputable legacy, “The Whistle Song” did very little for me. A performance that included a key-tar and a flute on the same stage?! Come on! No wonder the TOTP producers got in four backing dancers in hot pants to liven things up a bit. The single peaked at No 17.

Three Breakers this week starting with “Twist And Shout” by Deacon Blue. Obviously not that “Twist And Shout”, this was the second single to be released from the band’s “Fellow Hoodlums” album and was easily the biggest hit from it. In fact, it would turn out to be the last of their only three Top 10 singles. I think there was just something simple and joyful about this song that made UK record buyers sit up and take note. The fact that it was released in the Summer also added to its appeal. There’s plenty of hooks in it as well which always helps and none more so than Lorraine McIntosh’s high pitched squeal on the word ‘upside’ in the lyric ‘turned the big world upside down’.

The single’s success, as with OMD and “Pandora’s Box” earlier in the show, would initiate a welcome spike in sales of the parent album which although a No 2 record, had failed to shift the units that its predecessor “When The World Knows Your Name” had done. The basic but colourful video enhanced the feel good factor of the song with the bond between the band obvious to see.

Despite the phenomenal success of his debut album, Seal‘s single releases were suffering from a dose of the diminishing returns. “Crazy” had been a huge hit just missing the top spot by one place but follow up “Future Love Paradise” hadn’t made the Top 10 and this one, “The Beginning”, didn’t make the Top 20. Maybe it was because so many people had splashed out on the album that had already been out for six weeks and which had gone straight to No 1 that there was little demand to buy more tracks released from it? Maybe Seal was an albums artist? His first two albums both went to No 1 after all whilst he only ever had three Top 10 hits under his own name and one of those was a re-recording of “Killer” (which was officially credited to Adamski). “The Beginning” was a pretty decent tune although were they all starting to sound just a little bit samey by this point?

I really didn’t see this next hit coming. Bomb The Bass? As in “Beat Dis” Bomb The Bass? Tim Simenon’s alias hadn’t been seen ins the charts since 1988 when they had racked up three consecutive Top 10 hits and been one of the breakout sensations of the year. Three years is a long time in the music industry though and I had just about forgotten all about Bomb The Bass. They had also been rather hamstrung to be fair when they had been caught up in the BBC / Radio 1 Gulf War censorship controversy with their band name being deemed far too politically sensitive leading to an airtime black out (see also Massive attack).

Undeterred, they released new single “Winter In July” after the conflict had ended to positive reviews. This new direction seemed much less frenetic than the likes of “Beat Dis” with a more soulful feel (surely the single’s title was a nod in the direction of Stevie Wonders’ “Hotter Than July”) and helped to return Simenon to the Top 10 where it peaked at No 7. Parent album “Unknown Territory” perfumed steadily rather than spectacularly but this would prove to be their commercial peak. Simenon would go on to produce material for the likes of Gavin Friday and Depeche Mode before taking an extended break from the music industry due to physical and mental exhaustion. He returned to the business in 2008 with his “Future Chaos” album.

We’re only into week 3 of Bryan Adams‘ 16 week reign at the top of the charts. How are we all holding up? Given the amount of projected posts that I will have to find content for about “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”, I’m allowing myself to use one @TOTPFacts tweet a week to help me out. Here’s this week’s :

Bryan Adams had competition: Chicago's Peter Cetera also submitted a version. Michael Kamen: "In all honesty, Cetera's was too pretty. I write sweet melodies, and sometimes they need someone to deliver them with enough authority to make sure that you don't fall asleep." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 27, 2021

Well, Cetera did have a proven track record for soundtrack compositions. His 1986 hit “Glory Of Love” was featured in The Karate Kid II for which it received nominations for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, a Golden Globe in the category of Best Original Song and a Grammy Award in 1987 for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Male Artist. It was also a US No 1 and UK No 3 song. Cetera’s effort doesn’t seem to have ever seen the light of day and even in this digital age of leaks and spoilers, I can’t find a trace of it anywhere online.

In addition to “Glory Of Love”, he also had a song on the hugely successful Pretty Woman soundtrack so the guy had chops when it came to film music. It wasn’t to be but I find it hard to believe that we would have had Peter Cetera at No 1 for 16 weeks in the Summer of 1991.

The play out video is “Pregnant For The Last Time” by Morrissey. This was a non album single that I have no memory of whatsoever. It sounds quite rockabilly and actually listenable which you can’t always say about Morrissey (especially these days). Not sure if Mozza himself still likes it though as he hasn’t played it live since the 1991 Kill Uncle tour apparently.

“Pregnant For The Last Time” peaked at No 25.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Shamen	Move Any Mountain (Progen’91)	No but I easily could have done
2	C+C Music Factory	Things That Make You Go Hmmm	Nope
3	Dannii Minogue	Jump To The Beat	Never going to happen
4	Extreme	More Than Words	Bit too formulaic for me
5	OMD	Pandora’s Box	No but it’s on their Best Of CD that I have
6	Cher	Love And Understanding	Nah
7	Frankie Knuckles	The Whistle Song	Not for me
8	Deacon Blue	Twist And Shout	See 5 above
9	Seal	The Beginning	No but I was one of those who had the album
10	Bomb The Bass	Winter In July	No
11	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	Negative
12	Morrissey	Pregnant For The Last Time	A final no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000z2j4/top-of-the-pops-25071991

TOTP 20 JUN 1991

Posted on August 17, 2021 by 80stastic

This is my fifth year of reviewing these BBC4 TOTP repeats. I started with the shows from 1983 and we are now up to 1991. This is my 367th post over two blogs. Thats over 825,000 words. I’m tired. I’m stuck in the house due to testing positive for COVID and I’m staring at a blank document awaiting inspiration to strike. I’m not helped by the fact that the TOTP production team were determined back then to cram in as many acts as possible into 30 minutes of screen time. This week there are 14 acts! 14! I’m not sure I can do it anymore. Look, I’ll try OK, just for you…

…OK, first song of the night and not only do I not remember it at all but it’s already giving me a headache. The cause of my distress is “Tribal Base” by Rebel MC / Tenor Fly / Barrington Levy. What that Rebel MC who did “Street Tuff” because this sounds nothing like that. Wikipedia informs me that this was from his second album which was in a ‘breakbeat hardcore’ style with some ‘reggae fusion’ thrown into the mix. I have absolutely no idea what any of those words mean. Apparently it was a precursor to the ‘jungle’ sound which then begat drum’n’bass both of which I do remember because you couldn’t escape them in the mid 90s (‘jungle ist massive’ and all that).

As for Tenor Fly, he was a leading light of the rave movement whilst Barrington Levy is a reggae and dancehall legend whose back catalogue stretches back to 1979. Now of course, it’s possible that there are some reggae fusion fans out there reading this (there might be!) that are now shouting at their devices incredulous at my lack of knowledge in this field but I can only tell it how it was and is via my own memories and knowledge. I have very little else to say about this one other than I didn’t expect to see a double neck guitar on stage for a track like this. I thought they were the preserve of prog rock.

“Tribal Base” peaked at No 20.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDpN6GBPMUw

Presenter Nicky Campbell makes a really lame quip about the Rebel MC never stopping and being a ‘rebel without a pause’ (groan!) and then follows it up by saying that “Salt ‘n’ Pepa would have been here tonight but Salt is currently having a baby which is kicking it almost as hard as she is here…”. Surely the pun there was about pushing it Nicky as in “Push It”, one of their most well known hits? Their actual current single is “Do You Want Me” which is promotes the idea of men respecting women and not pressurising them until they are ready to have sex….or as @TOTPFacts put it:

No shagging with Salt 'N' Pepa until the third date. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 6, 2021

Yes, well…anyway. Salt ‘n’ Pepa would continue this conversation in their next single “Let’s Talk About Sex” which including these classic lyrics:

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

“Do You Want Me” peaked at No 5.

Talking of having sex (as just about every song in the charts seemed to be at this time), here is LaTour with “People Are Still Having Sex”. Campbell bravely takes on the single’s title by trying to intellectualise the subject going on about a “chilling assessment of contemporary attitudes towards an activity fraught with danger” before saying it’s great to dance to. Was it really though? Even the backing dancer up there on stage for this studio performance doesn’t seem to know what moves to do. Oh yes, that backing dancer who’s mouthing “hello lover”? General consensus on Twitter was that she was one of the Bombalurina women last seen cavorting with Timmy Mallett. She got all the good gigs didn’t she?

A stage performance of this track doesn’t really work does it? The tempo of it doesn’t really naturally make for a visually engaging spectacle whilst the main guy (Mr LaTour?) comes across as really creepy. Just nasty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njX-0VAMcTs

Campbell works very hard in his next link to make sure he gets the title of the song right, overly articulating the world ‘funk’ when introducing “Get The Funk Out” by Extreme. It’s the promo video but surely this performance would surely have been better suited to the TOTP studio than LaTour’s? It’s full of energy with lead singer Gary Cherone looking almost demonic with some of the weird shapes he pulls his body into.

When I first heard this, I thought Cherone was singing ‘No Robbie Nevil’s going to spoil my fun’ as in the “C’est La Vie” hit maker from the 80s as opposed to what he actually sings which is “No rotten apple gonna spoil my fun” which makes much more sense. Quite why Robbie Nevil would have been seen as a party pooper by a bunch of funk metal heads I have no idea.

“Get The Funk Out” peaked at No 19.

Meanwhile back in the studio we find Kenny Thomas having an enormous hit (I said hit!) with “Thinking About Your Love”. Kenny was one of the biggest breakout stars of 1991 with four Top 40 hits and a Top 3 album. Eventually the hits dried up and by the middle of the decade Kenny had disappeared from view altogether. However, he re-entered the public consciousness after appearing in ITV’s Hit Me Baby One More Time in 2005 although he was beaten to a place in the grand final by one of the weakest and weediest pop bands of the 90s in 911 – the shame!

Nowadays, he’s the lead singer of Living In A Box who shared the same record label in Chrysalis Records back in the day which is how they originally met. On the band’s official website, in answer to the question ‘Are you going to be singing some of your own songs at the Living In A Box shows?’, Kenny replied:

Yes, definitely! Fans coming to see The Box will hear their hits and people who want to hear some of mine will get the chance to hear those too. I think the fans will hear six Top 10 records in our set, which is quite something.

Well it would be Kenny if that were true but although ‘The Box’ (nobody calls them that surely?!) did have three Top 10 hits, you only had the one in “Thinking About Your Love” which makes a grand total of four not six.

A load of Breakers now starting with something for which the official description is, I believe, ‘techno bollocks’. Cubic 22 were a Belgian (not Italian for once) dance project whose only UK Top 40 hit was “Night In Motion”. They comprised Peter Ramson and Danny Van Wauwe the latter of whom sounds like he should be a Man Utd midfielder who was bought for a lot of money but who can’t make the team. Apparently we’ll get to see them in the studio next week. Oh joy. Cue another visually bizarre performance just like LaTour.

If the track sounds vaguely familiar, here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why:

The piano riff from "Night In Motion" was later pinched by British dance outfit Strike for "U Sure Do", which reached 31 in 1994 and 4 in 1995: https://t.co/b639Sfosyr Borremans and Van Wauwe didn't get any money out of it. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 13, 2021

“Night In Motion” peaked at No 15.

This is more like it! Despite having been formed in 1987, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine had never achieved any mainstream success until now. Quite why was 1991 the turning point in their career? Well, it could have been that their brand of sample heavy, indie dance pop that they had been making was finally receiving national recognition with bands like EMF, Jesus Jones and Pop Will Eat Itself all having chart hits around this time. Or maybe it was just that their band name really fitted in with the sex obsessed Top 40 at this time!

“Sheriff Fatman” (possibly their most well known song though certainly not their biggest hit) was a re-release of an early single that had failed to chart though it had been a big indie hit. Like the band themselves, their timeline is a bit chaotic but as far as I can tell, it was re-released when the duo signed with Chrysalis Records (them again!) after the collapse of Rough Trade – a bit like when “Sit Down” was re-released after James has moved from Rough Trade to Fontana. Also like “Sit Down” was the fact that “Sheriff Fatman” had been on that influential ‘Madchester’ themed “Happy Daze” compilation album which I think must have been when I first heard the track.

Highlighting the dodgy practices of slum landlords via the use of some inspired wordplay in their lyrics, “Sheriff Fatman” was an absolute stomper and a mosh pit favourite for fans when played live. Indeed, those lyrics, once heard were impossible to forget.

Moving up on second base
Behind Nicholas Van Wotsisface
At six foot six and a hundred tons
The undisputed king of the slums
With more aliases than Klaus Barbie
The master butcher of Leigh-on-Sea

Those lines of course had their basis in reality. Nicholas Van Wotsisface was a reference to British businessman and convicted criminal involved in property Nicholas van Hoogstraten whilst Klaus Barbie was the German Nazi known as the ‘Butcher of Lyon’ for having personally tortured prisoners of the Gestapo. This wasn’t your average pop song – even Nicky Campbell acknowledges that in his introduction to Jim Bob and Fruitbat as “something very intriguing now…”.

All of this and I haven’t even got onto my CUSM claim to fame yet. I’ll leave that for the next post when they are on the show properly though.

“Sheriff Fatman” peaked at No 23.

Next a young man who was being talked up as the next big thing in British soul…or was it acid jazz?. Time has decreed that it was a sub genre called ‘neo soul’ actually. His name was Omar and his song was “There’s Nothing Like This”. In fact, his full name was Omar Lye-Fook (which sounds like a lyric from Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves Of London”) and he was a hugely talented musician who could play multi instruments and had a smooth, velvety voice to go with that.

Like many singles in 1991 it seems, “There’s Nothing Like This” was another re-release having originally been issued in 1990 on Kongo Records. It was re-released by the hugely influential acid jazz label Talkin’ Loud when Omar signed with them in 1991 becoming his biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 14. The bass riff gave it an instant hook that made it stand out and he looked set for superstardom. And then…nothing. There was no follow up single until the following year and that was actually the lead single from his new album. By that point, momentum appeared to have been lost. Omar didn’t have another Top 40 hit until 1997.

In my mind, I have an image of Simon Mayo saying “That was Omar and “There’s Nothing Like This”….except the rest of the album”. Maybe I made it up but it sounds like the sort of snide thing Mayo might have said.

The final Breaker sees the return of Paula Abdul with the lead single from her second album “Spellbound”. Unlike all her other hits up to this point, “Rush Rush” was a ballad and a big one at that. No uptempo dance number here. It was all very accomplished and polished and all those other words ending in ‘-ished’ but it was ever so slow and just a tad dull I thought.

In the US, it would supply Paul with her fifth consecutive No 1 single and indeed stayed top of the charts or five whole weeks. Over here, it got to No 6 which was just about the same pattern of difference between the UK and America for all her releases. And yes, clearly that’s Keanu Reeves in the video which was a play on the James Dean film Rebel Without A Cause – oh, is that what put the idea in Nicky Campbell’s ahead for his awful ‘rebel without a pause’ pun?

Talking of awful puns, here’s Driza Bone with “Real Love”. The people behind Driza Bone were producers and remixers Vincent Garcia and Billy April but it turns out they didn’t come up with the name themselves though. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the rest of the story:

Driza Bone were named after an Australian brand of oilskin raincoat. Billy April: "[Vincent Garcia] saw that name on a trip to Australia in 1990 and liked it. When we couldn’t come up with anything better we used it." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 6, 2021

As well as being an act in their own right (they employed a revolving conveyor belt of vocalists – this one was Sophie Jones), they also used their name for the remixing arm of their set up and worked with artists like Lisa Stansfield, Jody Watley, Mary J. Blige, Shanice and Duran Duran.

Sadly for Drizabone, I remembered their dreadful name more than their song which peaked at No 16.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrKvI7v1zX0

Just when we thought that the Jason Donovan phenomenon was all over, he comes back with a massively successful hit! I have to admit I didn’t see this coming at all. I thought he was spent, done – ‘you’ve had your season in the sun now f**k off mate’ type of thing. Yet his decision to agree to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s offer to play the lead role in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (apparently he mulled it over for a whole three weeks) proved to be completely correct as his version of “Any Dream Will Do” scored him a huge No 1 single.

I’d forgotten that to went straight in at No 2 – not something that happened every week in 1991 – so the buzz around the release must have been big. It would spend two weeks at No 1 whilst the cast album of this production was also No 1 for two weeks. Donovan’s success in the role and the way it reignited his career was a beacon for others to follow in his wake with the likes of Phillip Schofield, Donny Osmond and Boyzone’s Stephen Gately all playing Joseph over the next few years. In 2007, the song gave its name to a second Lloyd Webber talent show-themed TV series as he searched for a new star to play the role in a revival of the show. The winner was Lee Mead who took a version of the song to No 2 in the charts. It was clearly one of those songs that people just couldn’t get enough of.

As for Jason, “Any Dream Will Do” would prove to be a false dawn. There would be just one further Top 10 single (a cover of The Turtles’ “Happy Together”) and an album in 1993 that his new label Polydor Records had so little faith in that they licensed several of his old hits and included them on the album much to his annoyance. It didn’t work and the album stiffed at No 27. It would be the last Jason Donovan album of the 90s.

Oh, and one final thing, what were all those Pet Shop Boys references that Nicky Campbell made in his intro about?

Some sadness attached to this next performance from Bette Midler as the artist who originally recorded “From A Distance”, Nanci Griffith, passed away literally days ago aged just 68. RIP Nanci.

Getting Bette Midler into the TOTP studio in person must have been quite the coup for the BBC and she’s come dressed as if she’s auditioning for the part of Peter Pan in that year’s Xmas pantomime at the Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury. She even adopts a Peter Pan stance when starting the song with one hand at her waist while leaning back as if surveying Neverland. All that was missing was a slap of her thigh. Come the key change at the song’s finale, she attempts a few jumps as if expecting to be lifted high into the rafters by some invisible wires but sadly for her, she can’t get off the ground. Where’s Tinker Bell with her pixie dust when you need her?

Joshing aside, I have to admire ‘The Divine Miss M’ for her very overt social media stance against the horrific presidency of Donald Trump. Good on you Bette.

“From A Distance” peaked at No 6.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2GFBdOiKUI

Those jokers Color Me Badd are still at No 1 with “I Wanna Sex You Up”. In a Smash Hits interview, the band announced that “I Wanna Sex You Up is just a modern way of saying ‘I want to romance you'”. OK, so firstly, nobody’s opening line is ‘I want to romance you’ is it?! Secondly, the phrase ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’ definitely does not say ‘I want to romance you’ anyway!

The play out video is “The Motown Song” by Rod Stewart. In keeping with the sexually charged feel of the show, Nicky Campbell can’t resist one final risqué comment when he introduces the track thus:

You can hear the charts on Sunday 4.30 on Radio 1 FM, see them again next week on TOTP presented by Radio 1’s very own blonde bombshell Simon Mayo. We leave you tonight with a man who’s partial to a blonde bombshell…or three…it’s Rod Stewart and The Motown Song…”

So there you have it – a show featuring songs called “People Are Still Having Sex” and “I Wanna Sex You Up”, a band whose name included the word ‘sex’, a conversation about shagging with Salt ‘n’ Pepa and then we round it all off with an innuendo about threesomes (or was that a foursome?!). And we didn’t even have the song on about female masturbation!

I’ve made it through! Fourteen acts and their tracks all viewed and reviewed! Maybe I have more resolve than I gave myself credit for!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Rebel MC / Tenor Fly / Barrington Levy	Tribal Base	Nah
2	Salt ‘n’ Pepa	Do You Want Me	Nope
3	LaTour	People Are Still Having Sex	Definitely not
4	Extreme	Get The Funk Out	Not in the singles box but I think I might have it on something
5	Kenny Thomas	Thinking About Your Love	Negative
6	Cubic 22	Night In Motion	Not my bag at all
7	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	Sheriff Fatman	See 4 above
8	Omar	There’s Nothing Like This	No
9	Paula Abdul	Rush Rush	I was in no rush to buy this
10	Driza Bone	Real Love	Another no
11	Jason Donovan	Any Dream Will Do	Ooh no!
12	Bette Midler	From A Distance	…is where I would like to be when this song is on
13	Color Me Badd	I Wanna Sex You Up	Vile – no
14	Rod Stewart	The Motown Song	One final no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000yhc2/top-of-the-pops-20061991

TOTP 13 JUN 1991

Posted on August 13, 2021 by 80stastic

We’re just about slap bang in the middle of 1991 here at TOTP Rewind and I have just had my 23rd birthday. I’ve been married for just over 8 months and am working at Our Price in Manchester (the Market Street store). Life has settled down into a routine after the huge changes of matrimony and moving to a new city. However, things are about to get a little nerve racking as around about this time (I could be wrong on the exact timings as its 30 years ago) the staff were all called into a early meeting one Saturday morning and we were told that the company were looking to sell the shop off. Oh shit! What did that mean? Was the company in trouble? What would happen to all us guys and gals that worked there? FFS! I’d not expected anything like this when we were told the Area Manager would be coming to inform us of something. I gullibly thought it would be about some new promotion or other (though why that would have required Area Manager’s input I don’t know).

From the little info that we were given that morning about potential redundancies, I had worked out that I might just be safe by virtue of having joined a week before the other Xmas temps that were kept on. It was a precarious position which could change at any moment but obviously there were people who I worked with in a worse position than me. However, our finances were threadbare and we were living month to month with just enough to pay the rent on our flat but precious little else to cover for anything going wrong that would have financial implications let alone a budget for a social life. As I remember this threat of store closure hung over us for sometime and obviously was all the staff could talk about for a while. It didn’t make for a happy atmosphere. In the end, the company couldn’t find a buyer and the decision was taken to keep the store trading which it did for another four years before it was finally sold off and became a travel agents (I think). For now though, these were scary times so I hope that the music in the charts and on TOTP would have given me a lift.

Tonight’s host is Jakki Brambles and she gives a strange intro to the first act on tonight.

“We have probably the only ever artist to score five Top 20 singles off her debut album and still got dropped by her record label. You can’t keep a good woman down, here’s Sonia…”

That all seemed a bit personal and unnecessary Jakki. A case of damning with faint praise even. It was true though. After becoming the first female UK artist to achieve five top 20 hit singles from one album, she did leave Chrysalis Records and moved on from Stock, Aitken and Waterman though the reason why doesn’t seem clear. Maybe she felt sidelined by Kylie and Jason? Anyway, Sonia proved to be more resilient than we might have suspected and returned to the charts with new record label IQ Records and a new single called “Only Fools (Never Fall In Love)”. Supposedly written for Diana Ross (it’s close to being exactly the same title as her 1981 cover of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers!), it was pinched for Sonia by her A&R man, one Simon Cowell. And guess what, it was a horrible Motown pastiche! What a surprise! Still, the UK’s pop fans decided that the hadn’t had enough of Sonia yet and sent it to No 10 in the charts. Have that Pete Waterman!

I was at Polytechnic with someone who was bit like Sonia, except that she didn’t have red hair, wasn’t Scouse and wasn’t annoying so nothing like her at all really!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6JB01AnMec

They’ve messed round with the chart run down again! Why?! They’ve gone back to having it run along the bottom of the screen rolling news ticker style whilst a video plays. I’m sure they tried this at some point back in the 80s and gave it up as a bad job. I bet they went back to it to try and fit in more videos because they were worried about the competition provided by ITV’s The Chart Show. Jakki gamely tries to promote this new convention as “incredible value for money, two for the price of one. Yes, not only do we give you the sight and sound of Amy Grant, we also reveal in vision only, the UK Top 40”. What a crock of shit! Maybe the producers thought that the traditional countdown with the stills of the artists set against the TOTP theme tune was a bit old hat going into the 90s and so needed a revamp complete with that green screen presenter effect. Maybe it did look cutting edge back then but it looks awful now.

Anyway, as for Amy Grant, she was up to No 2 with “Baby Baby” although the TOTP graphics team have it down as a new entry. Maybe it was teething troubles with all this new technology? A more wholesome song and performer it would have been hard to imagine as Amy was ‘The Queen of Christian Pop’ whilst “Baby Baby” was inspired by her then six week old daughter Millie’s face. By way of contrast, we’ll be seeing a few songs about the sexual act and even masturbation later on. Ahem.

Nothing unsavoury here though as the squeaky clean Gloria Estefan brings us “Remember Me With Love”. I recall reading an article in the early 90s about an obsessive Madonna fan who bought anything and everything to do with Madge but when she released her “Erotica” album and that ‘Sex’ book with the nude photos and simulations of sexual acts…well, it was all to much for him and he turned his back on Madonna and instead turned his attentions to someone much purer. Yes, of course, he chose to devote himself to Gloria Estefan. Not that the dichotomy of pop stars and their sexual image hasn’t been around before this. There was Michael Jackson v Prince, The Beatles v The Rolling Stones and maybe even Paul McCartney v John Lennon?

“Remember Me With Love”peaked at No 22.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHxzmUTE0d0

Blimey! I thought we’d done with All About Eve back at the end of the 80s but here they are with yet another Top 40 single in “Farewell Mr. Sorrow”. Julianne Regan and co have one of the more bizarre chart histories going – 9 Top 40 singles but only one of them got any higher than No 29 which of course was the infamous “Martha’s Harbour” which peaked at No 10.

This one was their 8th consecutive chart hit and quite a pleasant little ditty it is too – most unlike a lot of their other work. It was taken from their third studio album “Touched By Jesus” which was their first recording without guitarist and sometime Mr Regan Tim Bricheno and it didn’t do nearly as well as their first two albums leading to the band leaving record label Vertigo and signing with MCA for their last album “Ultraviolet” by which time nobody was interested anymore. I always quite liked them though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohiBAoEKgG8

Some of that smut next with a band who Jakki Brambles tells us have never had a hit not even in their native Australia. Really Jakki? Is that actually true? We are of course talking about Divinyls and their hit “I Touch Myself” and handily, someone on Twitter has already checked this claim out and debunked it:

pic.twitter.com/UaEjNUhTUY
— Will Roney (@WillRoney98) August 8, 2021

Oh dear Jakki. Anyway, this is that masturbation song which is obviously what it’s about. Or is it? Well, yes it is. Here singer Chrissy Amphlett from a 2013 Cosmopolitan interview:

“In a world where female sexuality and masturbation is still widely feared and demonized, we need to pay some major respect to the brave women who empower us. ‘I Touch Myself’ is not just a party song, but also an emboldened call-to-action. Amphlett reminded us that we are in control of our own bodies and pleasure, and there is no shame in that game.”

Well quite. Now I didn’t know this until a friend told me years after the event but “I Touch Myself” wasn’t the first song on the subject of female masturbation. No, that was Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop” from 1984. Well, the lyrics are stacked with innuendo to be fair:

Do I want to go out with a lion’s roar
Huh, yea, I want to go south n get me some more
Hey, they say that a stitch in time saves nine
They say I better stop – or I’ll go blind

Hey, hey – they say I better get a chaperone
Because I can’t stop messin’ with the danger zone
No, I won’t worry, and I won’t fret –
Ain’t no law against it yet

Gulp! So indecent was it deemed to be that it earned a place on the Parents Music Resource Center’s Filthy Fifteen list which led to the creation of the Parental Advisory sticker. Most of the songs on that list were by hard rock bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and Black Sabbath. Oh and W.A.S.P. but then if you call a song “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)” then what do you expect. Obviously the aforementioned Madonna was also on the list for 1985’s “Dress You Up” but that guy who was the obsessive fan who rejected her for Gloria Estefan must have missed that news story.

At the time, the name Lenny Kravitz was new to me but he had already released one album back in 1989 called “Let Love Rule” but it had completely passed me by. Fast forward two years and he was back with another collection of songs called “Mama Said” from which this single, “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over” was taken. This was the second track to be lifted from the album after lead single “Always on the Run” had just missed out on being a hit by peaking at that most unfortunate of chart positions No 41. Its follow up though did the trick. Dripping with Motown and Philadelphia soul vibes, it went all the way to No 11 in the UK and just missed the top spot in the US where it peaked at No 2.

The album was pretty good too. How did I know? Well because around this time I was taking part in my first ever Our Price stocktake. I’d been warned about these mythical events that might go on until past midnight where all the staff took part and had to count at price point every single item in the shop. I’d warned my wife on the big day that I could well be home late but I think we were all done reasonably early at 9ish. Whilst counting, and possibly to stop us all gossiping about the impending shop closure, we were allowed to put music on the shop stereo and someone out on “Mama Said”. That album stayed on most of the night I think as we just kept pressing repeat so as not to waste time looking for/arguing over what the next album for playing should be and who got to choose it. I liked what I heard enough to buy the album and especially liked opening track “Fields Of Joy”:

A huge tune next as Massive Attack (now allowed to have the second word of their name included as the Gulf War had needed) return with “Safe From Harm”. After the mesmerising “Unfinished Sympathy”, surely they couldn’t pull another corker from out of their hat but yes they could. Inspired by the film Taxi Driver, this was equally as hypnotic as its predecessor with Shara Nelson’s vocals to the fore and rapping from 3D that managed that difficult feat of not being intrusive but understated and yet integral to the track.

Like “Unfinished Sympathy” and indeed the “Blue Lines’ album itself, “Safe From Harm” wasn’t as big a hit as you remember or indeed it deserved, peaking at just No 25.

Just when you thought they wouldn’t shoehorn in any Breakers this week, here they are with only *10 minutes of the show remaining. We start with Rod Stewart and “The Motown Song” which was the third single to be released from his “Vagabond Heart” album. This really did seem like money for old rope to me. He’s already done a version of “It Takes Two” with Tina Turner on that album and this seemed like more of the same corny, obvious shite. A bit like when The Rolling Stones finally released a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” in the mid 90s. As with “It Takes Two”, Rod collaborated with a legendary act in The Temptations for this one but even their presence couldn’t save it from being a steaming pool of pish.

If anything, the animated video for it makes it even more corny. Made by the same company responsible for “Dear Jessie” by Madonna, it features some ‘hilarious’ comic mishaps befalling cartoon versions of stars like Vanilla Ice (who gets buried under a truckload of ice cubes) and Sinéad O’Connor (who slips while shaving her head and has to wear plasters over the resulting nicks). Like I said, hilarious. Rod himself appears in the video both in human and cartoon form of which the latter looks more like him than the real thing.

“The Motown Song” made No 10 both in the UK and US singles charts.

*Plus the repeat edited out a video of “Light My Fire” by The Doors for copyright reasons.

Some funk/glam/metal rock or something next as Extreme make their first appearance on the show. Despite having been around since 1985, I’d certainly never heard of this lot before but suddenly there was huge interest in them thanks to their “Get The Funk Out” single. This energetic workout of a track was getting a lot of airplay on MTV (I think) and suddenly we were getting lots of enquiries about their second album “Extreme II: Pornograffitti” from which the single was taken. That title caused quite bit of confusion with many people (me included) thinking the band were actually called Extreme II. It didn’t help that Extreme II was what a member of staff had written on the master bag for the band’s name. The record company (and this seemed to happen a lot in 1991) immediately withdrew the album which had been out nearly a while year by this point so that they could re-release it later on when the single had peaked with some extra advertising for it.

Guitarist Nuno Bettencourt was getting a lot of press attention at the time not just as the latest guitar noodling prodigy but also as a bit of a heartthrob. To be fair, their lead singer (and normally the visual focus of a band) lead singer Gary Cherone was a bit more….erm…awkward looking. The album would spawn another four UK Top 40 singles including the the soft rock ballad “More Than Words” that made No 2 over here and No 1 in the US. For a while, Extreme looked like they could be the next big rock act.

Next a song that had been a hit just 8 months earlier albeit performed by a completely different artist. “From A Distance” was originally recorded by country legend Nanci Griffith (though she didn’t write it) for her 1987 album “Lone Star State of Mind”. Despite being many people’s definitive version of the song, it failed to chart. Then, in 1990, it was recorded and released as a single by both Cliff Richard (his was a live version and was also that which was a UK hit) and Bette Midler whose take on it lost out to Sir Cliff and finished up outside the Top 40 at No 45. However, in the US, Bette’s version was a huge success and won a Grammy for Song of the Year in 1991. Presumably that was why it was re-released over here. As with Extreme, there was suddenly a big demand from punters for their album that it featured on (“Some People’s Lives”) but yet again it was withdrawn by the record company so that it could be re-released and re-promoted. I was getting truly sick of explaining this phenomenon to customers by now.

I could see why Midler had chosen to record it. It was in the same ball park as her recent US No 1 “Wind Beneath My Wings” and indeed scored her a No 2 hit in there home country. In the UK, it would peak at No 6.

Some more filth now as we get “People Are Still Having Sex” by LaTour. This was like “Kissing With Confidence” by Will Powers meets “French Kiss” by Lil’ Louis. It originally included the lyric ‘This AIDS thing’s not working’ but was changed to ‘This safe thing’s not working’ to ensure it got some radio play.

I couldn’t really be doing with this at all – the track that is not sex per se. It just seemed sensationalist for the sake of getting some press. It was a minor hit globally peaking at No 15 in the UK.

And to round off this episode of smut and obscenity, the No 1 record is still “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd. So that’s two records with ‘sex’ in the title and one about masturbation on the same show. Mary Whitehouse must have been apoplectic. Just to crank up the sex-o-meter, the band are in the studio in person! Everything about this performance is so wrong. From the suits to the dancing (the three lads at the back seem to be doing ‘ring a ring a roses’ at one point) to the actual song.

Despite their success, Smash Hits magazine only had Color Me Badd on their front cover once throughout the whole of 1991. In comparison, Chesney Hawkes was on three times as was Dannii Minogue. Even The Farm, Philip Schofield and those twin sisters from Neighbours got a front cover!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rdg4kWDbIc

The play out video is “Monkey Business” by Skid Row. I get really confused by all these metal bands. Skid Row, Mötley Crüe, Anthrax, Megadeth… I couldn’t really tell you the difference between any of them. To differentiate this lot from the pack, their lead singer called himself Sebastian Bach though his real name is Sebastian Philip Bierk. The latter seems more appropriate.

Normally I include the chart rundown here but due to the new format, there is no clip I can include. Sorry.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sonia	Only Fools (Never Fall In Love)	Only a fool would have bought this
2	Amy Grant	Baby Baby	No but my wife liked it
3	Gloria Estefan	Remember Me With Love	Nah
4	All About Eve	Farewell Mr. Sorrow	I did not
5	Divinyls	I Touch Myself	Thought I might have but the singles box says no
6	Lenny Kravitz	It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over	No but I had the album
7	Massive Attack	Safe From Harm	See 6 above
8	Rod Stewart	The Motown Song	No thanks
9	Extreme	Get The Funk Out	Not the single but I have it on something I think
10	Bette Midler	From A Distance	Nope
11	LaTour	People Are Still Having Sex	No
12	Color Me Badd	I Wanna Sex You Up	I should coco
13	Skid Row	Monkey Business	I’d rather watch a monkey defecate

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/m000yhc0/top-of-the-pops-13061991

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 04 FEB 1993

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TOTP 10 SEP 1992

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TOTP 20 AUG 1992

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TOTP 30 APR 1992

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TOTP 21 NOV 1991

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TOTP 08 AUG 1991

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TOTP 25 JUL 1991

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TOTP 20 JUN 1991

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TOTP 13 JUN 1991

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