Inspiral Carpets

TOTP 03 MAR 1994

Posted on February 16, 2023 by 80stastic

There’s some veritable veterans of UK music history on the show tonight in amongst all the shiny new pop kids. Sadly, we’ve also got an old timer as host who is Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo returning for his third appearance in five episodes since new producer Ric Blaxill brought back the Radio 1 DJs.

We start with 2 Unlimited who could hardly be classed as a seasoned chart act having first appeared on our charts a mere two and a half years prior but in that time they certainly packed in the hits. “Let The Beat Control Your Body” was their ninth UK hit of which all but two went Top 10. However, by 1994 the formula was starting to flounder and the hold Anita and Ray had on UK record buyers’ habits was starting to wear off. After this single made No 6, they would only return to our Top 10 once more and click up just five more Top 40 entries by the end of the decade.

I’m not sure what this performance is all about though. Are the backing dancers meant to be aliens? If so, why? I think the costumes they’re wearing are meant to be the ones that give the effect of fluorescent stripes moving independently when the person wearing it is obscured in darkness but the studio lights are far too bright and ruin any potential effect. Meanwhile, Anita seems to have styled herself on Betty Boo’s space cadet look from 1990. Interestingly, the single was renamed as “Let The Bass Control Your Body” for release in France as the word ‘beat’ sounded very similar to the French word ‘bite’ (pronounced beet). So? Well, ‘une bite’ is French slang for penis, similar to ‘cock’ or ‘dick’ in English. Sacre bleu!

The first of those veterans next. Elvis Costello hadn’t had a UK Top 40 hit for five years before this track – “Sulky Girl” – made No 22 in the charts. This was the lead single from his “Brutal Youth” album which saw Costello reunite with members of his band the Attractions for the first time since 1986. Critically well received and seen as a return to form by the fanbase, the album would go all the way to No 2 in the charts, Costello’s highest chart placing since “Get Happy!!” In 1980.

“Sulky Girl” is a good tune in my book but it still wasn’t up there with those early New Wave classics though my wife may disagree as a big Costello fan. Eight months on from this TOTP, we were at the Manchester Opera House to see Elvis on tour. He played a whopping 27 song set (including “Sulky Girl”) and was supported by a then unknown band called Cast, the members of whom were a few rows in front of us to catch the Costello show after they’d finished their slot.

After enduring 2 Unlimited at the top of the show, Costello’s appearance here is both welcome and an outlier. He seems completely at odds with the charts and indeed is on record as saying he felt the success of “Sulky Girl” was more down to record company Warner’s promotion campaign rather than the commercial appeal of the song.

He would end the decade with a collaboration with the sadly recently departed Burt Bacharach and a cover of Charles Aznavour’s “She” from the film Notting Hill. The latter is a perfect vehicle for Costello’s distinctive voice although its rise to the status of one of his most well known hits potentially undermines his back catalogue it seems to me.

Wait. What?! This is still in the charts? Yes, yes it is. “Breathe Again” by Toni Braxton spent a very impressive eight weeks in the Top 10 alone even managing to move back up it from No 5 to No 4 after it had seemingly peaked at No 2. It literally breathed again (ahem) in terms of its chart life. The performance here is a repeat of that live by satellite one from America where Toni performs to a non existent audience in an empty theatre that was originally broadcast a few shows prior.

Simon Mayo had a special talent for coming up with one liners in his intros that were so unfunny that even if you heard them whilst under the influence of Nitrous Oxide/ laughing gas then you still wouldn’t crack a smile. The latest nugget from the Mayo repertoire saw Smug Simon trying to make a quip about confusing the name of the next artist with the “Ealing Young Conservatives”. It’s not even that they weren’t funny but they were totally stupid to boot. EYC was actually an acronym for ‘Express Yourself Clearly’ but hey, why let the truth get in the way of a bad joke? “The Way You Work It” was the US trio’s second UK hit single after “Feelin’ Alright” the year before and was more of the same, over enthusiastic, anodyne R&B/pop hybrid. It really was astounding that they managed six Top 40 hits between’93 and ‘95 with such a weak appeal.

Back to that name though and although we’ve clarified what it meant, the band themselves didn’t practice what they preached. The cover of their debut album called “Express Yourself Clearly” included its title printed upside down. Hardly communicating clearly that is it? “The Way You Work It” peaked at No 14.

Mention the name Tucker to many people of my age and you’ll likely illicit memories of Grange Hill and Todd Carty as Tucker Jenkins. Or possibly if your references are a little bit more niche, Wolfie’s cowardly mate Tucker from Citizen Smith. Barbara Tucker though? She hadn’t managed to usurp either of those two in my memory banks. It turns out that Barbara is quite the all rounder though. As well as being a singer, she’s also a songwriter and choreographer and has worked with the likes of Deee-Lite, George Clinton, David Guetta and C+C Music Factory. Apparently she clocked up five UK hit singles starting with this one “Beautiful People” which is revered as a bit of a house anthem it seems. So why don’t I remember it? Oh yeah, I don’t really like house music, that’ll be it. Sorry Barbara.

There’s three Breakers this week starting with Mötley Crüe and a track called “Hooligan’s Holiday”. These California rockers were a much bigger deal in their homeland* than they were here where they were very occasional and meek visitors to our charts. They’d had only five UK chart entries to this point, none of which got any higher than No 23. The only songs of theirs I could have named were “Girls, Girls, Girls” and “Smokin’ In The Boys Room” neither of which I liked. “Hooligan’s Holiday” was never going to convert me.

*They even had a biopic made of them in 2019 called The Dirt which was released on Netflix.

As Simon Mayo states in his intro, this was the first Mötley Crüe material after lead singer Vince Neil had been fired from/quit the band (depending on who’s version of events you believe) and was replaced by John Corabi. The eponymously titled album that he recorded with the band was their first not do the business commercially resulting in their record company refusing to fund any further albums unless Corabi was removed and Neil reinstated. There was only ever going to be one outcome – Corabi was gone and Neil returned to the fold. The band are still together (somehow) touring for the first time in seven years in 2022 as co-headliners with Def Leppard.

Now it’s Beck who we saw in the studio the other week but this time, as he’s officially a Breaker now, it’s his video for “Loser”. Shot on a budget of just $300 plus $14,000 to edit and master it, it certainly has a homemade feel to it. There’s a moment in it where Beck is wearing a stormtrooper helmet which is censored by pixelation due to copyright reasons. I guess there wasn’t any capacity in such a small budget for potential litigation costs.

The song’s lyrics may be nonsensical but that hadn’t stoped it being used for educational purposes. I have a friend who’s a teacher that used it as the source material for a school assembly to promote self confidence and a positive attitude in her students. “Loser” peaked at No 15 in the UK and No 10 in America.

I guess Michael Bolton was a music veteran even in 1994. He was 41 when this TOTP aired and had been releasing music for nearly 20 years though most of us in the UK hadn’t heard of him before his 1990 breakthrough song “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You”. This single – “Soul Of My Soul” – was not just a terrible song title but also his twelfth UK hit. Now twelve sounds quite impressive but his numbers were not great. Since that first hit that went to No 3, Bollers had only managed two further Top 10 hits and one of those was a cover version (Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman”). He would manage one further trip to the hallowed upper echelons with the creepily titled single “Can I Touch You…There?” that made No 6 in 1995. He has not been back there since and quite right too.

Sadly, Michael Bolton’s appearance here gave Simon Mayo the chance to get in another pointless comment. “Michael Bolton One Villa Nil” he toots referring to the result of an FA Cup fifth round tie played nearly two weeks before this TOTP aired. Why did he think this stuff was funny?

Another of those elder statesmen of music now as Mark E Smith joins forces with Inspiral Carpets on a face blistering track called “I Want You”. Now, whilst I can appreciate the legacy of The Fall and their place in musical history, I’ve never been a great fan of the actual music. I think I always found it difficult to get along with Mark E Smith’s voice. And yes, I know that opinion is musical heresy to many people out there. I just struggle with the inflections he puts on everything – the “-ahs” that seemed to follow every line he sings especially. On this relentless track though, his idiosyncrasies are perfect. The sonic power on display here is something to behold as it lays seige to your aural capacities. The difference between it and previous single “Saturn 5” defies the notion that they were all about Clint Boon’s farfisa organ.

Mark E Smith looks like he gives zero f***s that he’s on TOTP as he wanders belligerently around the stage, sometimes referring to a piece of paper that presumably had some lyrics on it though I’m guessing he could have sang anything here and nobody would have challenged him on it. Someone certainly not going to challenge him on anything was Simon Mayo who declines the opportunity to make some barbed witticism in his link by just saying “Right…OK…thank you boys”. Not so smug now eh Mayo?

“I Want You” would peak at No 18 making it the band’s third biggest hit ever and one year on from the single’s release, it was used to soundtrack a Sony In Car Stereo advert to great effect.

And so to another old timer (though he was only 34 at the time of this broadcast). According to Simon Mayo he hadn’t been on TOTP for many years though by my calculation he was on as recently as 1992. Is two years many years? I think not. Morrissey (for it is he) was bang in form in 1994. This single – “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get” – was the lead track from his fourth studio album “Vauxhall And I” which would prove to be his first chart topper since his debut “Viva Hate” in 1988. Indeed, TMYIMTCIG would become his first Top 10 single since “Interesting Drug” in 1989. However, no other singles released from the album made the Top 40 so was this a devoted fanbase at work desperate for new material? Fair play though, it’s a good song with a lovely, lilting chorus.

I wonder if new TOTP producer Ric Blaxill was aware of the tension between Morrissey and Mark E Smith when he booked both Manchester legends on the same show? Many people had fallen foul of Smith’s ire over the years including Mozza whom Smith always referred to as “Steven”. Oh to have been a fly on the wall of the Green Room/BBC bar for this show!

There’s no shifting Mariah Carey from the No 1 spot as her version of Nilsson’s “Without You” stands strong at the top. It will go onto sell half a million copies and end up the 7th biggest selling single of 1993 in the UK. It would be Mariah’s only solo* chart topper over here until “All I Want For Christmas Is You” finally made No 1 in 2020 after years of trying.

*She did get to No 1 in 2000 when she joined forces with Westlife to cover “Against All Odds” by Phil Collins.

One of Ric Blaxill’s innovations for the show was to use the No 1 record slot to make predictions about which records would be entering the Top 40 the following week. These were displayed in a scrolling ticker tape along the bottom of the screen. Looking at the artists posited on this show, it hardly made TOTP a musical Nostradamus. All very obvious stuff (M People, Janet Jackson etc). That doesn’t stop Mr Smug himself from praising the show by saying all of last week’s predictions came true in his intro. Mayo really was insufferable.

The play out song this week comes from Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine. Somebody on Twitter pointed out that “Glam Rock Cops” sounds an awful lot like “Parklife” by Blur. I think they may have a point although there’s no suggestion of plagiarism on either side as they were presumably written and recorded at roughly the same time? I think another artist beat them both to it by about 10 years anyway. “Steamhammer Sam” by Intaferon sounds like a “Parklife” prototype…

“Glam Rock Cops” peaked at No 24 and came from a collection of B-sides called “Starry Eyed And Bollock Naked”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	Let The Beat Control Your Body	Of course not
2	Elvis Costello	Sulky Girl	Yes I did! For my wife though.
3	Toni Braxton	Breathe Again	Nope
4	EYC	The Way You Work It	Never
5	Barbara Tucker	Beautiful People	Nah
6	Mötley Crüe	Hooligan’s Holiday	No
7	Beck	Loser	Liked it, didn’t buy it
8	Michael Bolton	Soul Of My Soul	As if
9	Inspiral Carpets / Mark E Smith	I Want You	Not the single but I have it on their Greatest Hits CD
10	Morrissey	The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get	Negative
11	Mariah Carey	Without You	It’s a no
12	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	Glam Rock Cops	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/m001hyxl/top-of-the-pops-03031994

TOTP 20 JAN 1994

Posted on January 24, 2023 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*checks internet*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001h88r/top-of-the-pops-20011994

TOTP 04 APR 1991

Posted on July 15, 2021 by 80stastic

In the last TOTP Rewind post, I was talking about sibling rivalries mainly as a device to shoehorn in a segue to Dannii Minogue who had appeared on the pop scene of 1991. I’m going to stick with that theme for this next show review and indeed extend it to cover the whole social unit of ‘families’. Now of course, there are lots and lots of examples of groups including brothers and sisters in their ranks and indeed, in some extreme cases, of the whole band consisting purely of same family members. There’s The Corrs, The Pointer Sisters, Sister Sledge, The Jackson 5, Kings Of Leon, Hanson etc. My challenge, should I wish to accept it (and I do), is to interweave the concept of family into every act on this particular TOTP. Is it possible? I’m going to give it a go. Wish me luck….

…we begin with Inspiral Carpets and their new single “Caravan”. Not the easiest of starts given that I don’t think any of the band were related to each other. I have to say I don’t really remember this stage of the band’s career at all. This track was from their sophomore album “The Beast Inside” which was released nearly a year to the day after their debut studio album “Life” and which went Top 5 so I must have sold some copies of it in the Our Price I was working in but it seems to have passed me by. I remember the next album “Revenge Of The Goldfish” and its singles “Dragging Me Down”, “Bitches Brew” etc and also their 1994 LP “Devil Hopping” which included “Saturn 5” and “I Want You” but “The Beast Inside”? Barely a flicker. Critical reception of the album was mixed from what I can tell but “Caravan” sounds pretty melodic to me whilst retaining the band’s trademark sound. Its No 30 chart peak seems a bit meagre and unjust.

Right, I can’t fail at the first hurdle on this ‘families’ theme so there is of course that well known link to Noel Gallagher’s employment with them as a roadie before he formed Oasis with his brother Liam but that’s more about Oasis than Inspiral Carpets. Look, I’ll have to play my joker card early and fall back on the ever reliable @TOTPFacts for this little gem about singer Tom Hingley’s Dad:

Inspiral Carpets frontman Tom Hingley's dad, Ronald Hingley, was a Lecturer in Russian at Oxford University. If you own an Anton Chekhov book, there's a good chance he translated it. He also wrote biographies of the likes of Boris Pasternak and Stalin. #TOTP pic.twitter.com/QfHLJcxwuK
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 2, 2021

Family value: 5/10

A less than convincing start but the next one is an open goal. “Deep, Deep Trouble” by The Simpsons. A single by an actual family! Yes, it’s a cartoon family and not a real one but you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. This, of course, was the follow up to the No 1 single “Do The Bartman” and was equally as annoying. It seems to be a tale of how Bart messed up mowing the lawn thereby missing a family day out and finally resulting in him throwing a party while his parents were out. Ah, we’ve all done it (I haven’t actually). There are references to Mom and Dad and Bart being their S-O-N. Like I said, an open goal for the families theme which I will gladly put in the back of the net.

Thankfully, this was the second and final single by The Simpsons that would make the charts (it peaked at No 7) so after finally ridding ourselves of Jive Bunny last week, it’s a double whammy as Bart, Homer and the rest depart forever this week. By the way, It’s not that I don’t like The Simpsons (as in the TV show), it’s just that I really couldn’t be doing with / see the point of their musical offerings.

Family value: 7/10

The first of three dance acts on the show tonight are next and it’s N-Joi with “Anthem”. This was their second visit to TOTP in a matter of months after their “Adrenalin EP” had charted at No 23 but “Anthem” was the track that they would become most famous for. Not only did it break the Top 10 over here but it was also a No 2 record in the US Dance chart. As I’ve said many time I’m not and never was much of a dance head but this sounded like a retread of “You Got The Love” by The Source featuring Candi Staton to me. No doubt someone could explain that it doesn’t even have the same bpm or something.

As host Gary Davies says, the singer on the track is called Saffron but I never until this moment twigged that it was the same Saffron who would gain fame as the lead vocalist for Republica of “Ready To Go” fame later in the decade. She seems to do more dancing than singing in this performance though and when I say dancing I mean doing a pretty rigorous work out routine full of high kicks and twirling. Did she do any of that while fronting Republica? I can’t remember so I’d better check…

*checks YouTube*

Not really. There was a lot of jumping about but it was all bit free form. Her N-Joi dance moves seemed a bit more rehearsed.

In 1995, DJ Sister Bliss of Faithless selected “Anthem” as one of favourite tracks describing it thus:

“And what an anthem it is! …That whole EP is fantastic, it’s the sound of the time but it doesn’t date. It’s a reliable classic. It’s always the last tune of the night – people must be bored with me playing it. it reminds me of driving around the M25 looking for the rave and ending up in a field with 10,000 smelly people.”

10,000 smelly people? Bliss indeed!

What? How am I going to squeeze a ‘families’ theme into this one? Erm…would you accept Sister Bliss?

Family value: 2/10

Despite being only 15 months into the new decade, we had already seen a slew of hits from the 80s reappearing in the Top 40. Some had been due to terrestrial TV premieres of blockbuster films like Top Gun and Dirty Dancing leading to the likes of Berlin and Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes having their soundtrack hits reactivated. Then there were the Best Of collections by artists being promoted by the re-release of their 80s hits. Talk Talk and Madonna were prime examples of this and also falling into this category were The Waterboys. In 1991, their collection “The Best Of The Waterboys 81–90” was released and was preceded by the re-issuing of their most famous song “The Whole Of The Moon”. I must admit to being surprised by this – not only by its existence but also by its commercial success. The album soared to No 2 in the charts yet the band had only had two Top 40 hits by this point neither of which had made the Top 20. Usually Best Of albums would be compiled to showcase a run of hit singles that an artist had racked up but this wasn’t the case with The Waterboys. Their albums though were well received and their most recent (1990’s “Room To Roam”) had peaked at No 5. They were also a very big live draw and had toured extensively over the years so they would heave reached a lot of people that way.

The band were in a state of flux come 1991 with disagreements over the band’s musical direction causing some members to leave. They would also leave their record label Ensign (an imprint of parent label Chrysalis) for whom all their back catalogue had been recorded. Ah, that’s why the Best Of album came out. A deliberate cash-in by the label to maximise the profitability of the band’s music that they owned. Anyway, “The Whole Of The Moon” smashed its previous 1985 chart high of No 26 when it went Top 3 at a stroke easily becoming their biggest ever hit. Now I’d loved this song back in ’85 and indeed my wife had the album it was from (“This Is The Sea”) but I couldn’t quite understand why it was so popular six years on. Maybe it was music fans trying to reclaim the charts from all those ghastly dance tunes that had taken up residency there?

As for the ‘families’ theme, well The Waterboys have had over 85 members through their ranks over the years including the likes of Karl Wallinger (World Party), Ian McNabb (Icicle Works) and Liam Ó Maonlaí (Hothouse Flowers) which is more than the legendary The Fall, so I think they could seriously claim to have the biggest rock family tree of all time.

Family value: 8/10

Next up, a band who I have rather a lot to say about and the first thing is that I love(d) The Mock Turtles. I had no idea who they were until they released “Can You Dig It?” but they had actually been around since 1985. It wasn’t until 1990 though what they really started to get some traction when debut album “Turtle Soup” was released on the Manchester label Imaginary Records which was also home to acts such as Cud and The Chameleons. The album included early singles “And Then She Smiles” and “Lay Me Down” the latter of which prompted interest from the majors including Virgin and they were duly signed to subsidiary label Siren Records. Siren chose “Can You Dig It?” which was originally the b-side to “Lay Me Down” as the next single to launch them on the label and, having added a pop sheen to it with some additional guitar work, it was an immediate hit. Its infectious groove and spiralling guitar riff proved irresistible and the added wah wah guitar in the middle eight worked a treat. It managed to traverse the thin line between attracting daytime air play whilst also trading off the Manchester effect which was still just about going into 1991. I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

An album was hastily recorded for Siren called “Two Sides” which included “Can You Dig It?” and a re-recorded version of “And Then She Smiles” from “Turtle Soup” but no other tracks made the switch to the new label. There’s some great pop tunes on “Two Sides” (I know because I bought it) yet it didn’t seem to do anything commercially. “And Then She Smiles” was re-released as a follow up single but just failed to make the Top 40 whilst third single “Strings And Flowers” disappeared without trace. It’s almost become a forgotten album, overshadowed by its indie predecessor. It’s not even on Spotify although “Turtle Soup” is, an expanded version of which was released by Cherry Red Records recently. Not even an in store appearance by the band at the Our Price I was working at could boost the sales of “Two Sides”. Ah yes, that in store PA. This was the first one we’d had at the shop since I’d been working there and it seemed like a big deal. As it was taking place in their hometown, a large crowd had gathered for the event. The band were smuggled in around the back and then positioned behind the counter for a signing session. We had the single blaring out on the shop PA constantly and the drama was heightened when my colleague Craig decided to switch the store lights on and off frantically to announce their appearance. There were even some whooping in the crowd. Business seemed to be brisk and the band duly signed whatever was put in front of them and it all seemed to be going quite well.

And then Jude Law turned up. Yes, the BAFTA award winning actor Jude Law. “Why?” you might well ask. Well, this was before Jude had made any films so he wasn’t that well known except to those of us who religiously tuned in to Granada soap Families in which he was starring at the time. Families was basically Aussie soap Sons And Daughters translated for a UK audience but with a twist -the plot was set in Cheshire, England and Sydney, Australia with he connection being a guy called Mark Thompson who leaves his family in the UK to be with his true love Diana Stevens in Australia. Then there’s the quite dark twist that unbeknownst to Mike, Diana had given birth to his son Andrew who ended up travelling to England where he met Mike’s daughter Amanda by his English wife and they fall in love not realising that they were half-brother and sister!

Me and my wife used to watch Families all the time when it was repeated late night on Granada. We were skint most of the time so we weren’t out partying that much and it kind of became a habit. So we’re happily watching the ongoing shenanigans which included Jude Law on screen as Mike Thompson’s son Nathan (he would have been around 18 I think) and Nathan’s brother called Mark who was played by a guy called Martin Glyn Murray. Still with me? Good. Fast forward to this episode of TOTP and we’re watching The Mock Turtles perform and we both look at each other and say “Isn’t the guitarist that bloke from Families?” We peered again and concluded it really did look like him but why would that actor bloke be in a pop band as well? So when Jude Law turned up at The Mock Turtles PA, it must have dawned on me that it was indeed ‘that bloke from Families‘ (that’s how we found things out back in the early 90s kids – no internet back then!). So Jude approaches the counter and asks me if he can nip behind it to go and see his mate to which I replied “Sorry mate, no chance”. Jude protested so I had to ask the manager if he could allow it which he did as I recall. Somewhere along the line he also managed to get a free pass for the shop staff to attend the gig that the band were playing that night at the Manchester Academy (maybe letting Jude Law behind the counter was his leverage). Excellent!

So, me and my wife popped down to The Academy that night and ended up standing close to Jude Law (though I was bored of him by now) but also Peter Hook and Caroline Aherne. They weren’t the only names there that night. Steve Coogan was also there. Oh yes, if the families theme wasn’t fulfilled by a soap opera actually called Families then there was also the fact that the lead singer of The Mock Turtles was the brother of comedian and TV star Steve Coogan. Whilst researching this post I came across a full recording of the gig posted on YouTube by Martin Coogan and at the end there are some scenes of the after show party where Steve Coogan makes an appearance. At this point he had long curly hair and somebody says to him “It’s him off Sit Down innit?” meaning Tim Booth from James. He doesn’t look too impressed. Mind you the same guy says to Jude Law (who’s managed to get himself back stage at The Academy with more ease than he did behind the counter at Our Price) “Ooh it’s him off Blue Peter“. Ha!

Well, I think that’s enough Mock Turtles stories for one day but there on again in a couple of shows time….

Family value: 10/10

Next is a song that I had completely forgotten about. Actually, it’s not that there’s nothing in the memory banks for it and more that my brain has shifted, re-edited and morphed it into another song entirely. There’s a good reason for this as well and that is that “Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll)” by C+C Music Factory is almost identical to their previous hit “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”. No wonder I can’t recall it – it’s been completely subsumed by their debut hit. In my head their singles timeline went straight from “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” to “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” but here is the evidence to the contrary.

The video looks like the set of Aliens 3 to me and what is that freaky looking thing writhing around on the floor in a gas mask at the start of it? Here’s @TOTPFacts with some info which goes a long way to explaining the whole visual imagery going on in this promo:

This C+C Music Factory video was directed by Marcus Nispel, whose credits also include the 2003 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the 2009 version of Friday The 13th. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 2, 2021

That explains that then. I’m struggling to fit a families theme into this one but….the history of C+C Music Factory is littered with lawsuits and fallings out including Martha Wash suing for a settlement on her vocals being uncredited on the chorus of “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”. There is also the case of rapper Freedom Williams (who is credited on “Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll)”) who, having left the group in the mid 90s, started performing shows under the C+C Music Factory name causing founding member Robert Clivillés to denounce it as “the biggest insult in the world”. So basically they were like a typical family with loads of members feuding and holding grudges against each other!

Family value: 4/10

Host Gary Davies goes all embarrassing uncle at a wedding in the intro to the next one as he says “Some more music now for you to boogie to…” WTF?! Boogie to?! At a time when the show was struggling to accommodate and reflect the domination of the charts by dance music and indeed were struggling to remain relevant to the musical landscape, comments like that really didn’t help. And who were the boogie-meisters in question? Well it was Black Box of course with the fifth single to be released from their “Dreamland” album which came out nearly a year prior to this.

I can’t find the video for “Strike It Up” online anywhere (copyright issues again) but it features Katrin Quinol up there again miming to the vocals who were actually supplied by Martha Wash. Yes, her again! And guess what, Martha had to sue the asses off Black Box as she had with C + C Music Factory to get her due credits. She might as well have given up on singing and taken up a career as a lawyer by this point!

“Strike It Up” peaked at No 16 but Black Box would not be seen inside the UK Top 20 ever again. Hurray! As for the ‘families’ concept…erm…well…I’ll have to resort to the family feuding theme again with Martha Wash as the common link between rock family trees.

Family value: 3/10

This must be the last ever TOTP appearance for Feargal Sharkey I think. “I’ve Got News For You” was certainly his last ever Top 40 hit anyway. Gary Davies says his vocal in this performance is live which is pretty impressive. Whether you like it or loathe it, you just cannot deny that Feargal’s voice is unique. He was only 32 when he made his last album (“Songs From The Mardi Gras” from which “I’ve Got News For You” was taken). Surely he had a bit more to give musically?

After a successful career in the business side of the music industry, Feargal spends a lot of his time fishing these days and campaigning about pollution in chalk based rivers. None of this has anything to do with my families theme though so I will have to delve into Feargal’s back catalogue and reference “My Perfect Cousin” from his time with The Undertones and his very first solo single “Listen To Your Father”. Job done!

Family value: 6/10

It’s the second of five weeks at the top for Chesney Hawkes and “The One And Only”. Chesney, of course, is often referred to as a classic, nay optimum one hit wonder – one huge No 1 hit then nothing, zero, nada. Except it isn’t actually true*. There was one other Top 40 hit for young Chesney which was called “I’m a Man Not a Boy” which was the follow up to “The One And Only” and was also taken from the Buddy’s Song soundtrack. It got nowhere near to repeating the success of its predecessor when it peaked at No 27 yet it remains a bona fide chart hit and therefore legitimately negates the one hit wonder claim. I wonder if it was a huge wake up call for Chesney that this pop star lark might be a short lived thing when “I’m a Man Not a Boy” hit its chart peak? Apparently he reached the point where his phone calls were not being taken by his record label and his career was kaput within two years after the failure of second album “Get The Picture” in 1993. In truth, Chesney mania was all over well before the end of 1991 though. At least he scores high on the families theme-o-meter as his brother Jodie was the drummer in his band whilst his Dad Chip was in 60s hitmakers The Tremeloes.

*see also Doctor and the Medics, Men At Work etc

Family value: 8/10

The play out video is “Word Of Mouth” by Mike + The Mechanics who are the second act on tonight’s show after C + C Music Factory to have a plus sign in their name rather than the word ‘and’. This always seemed like a bit of an anomaly to me and not very 1991 at all. It almost has an echo of being a 70s glam rock stomper with all those singalong ‘na na na nas’ and hand claps. Also, I thought we’d seen the last of Mike Rutherford’s spin off project as it had been over two years since “The Living Years” had been a big hit when its subject matter of a son confronting his unresolved conflict with his father amidst his grief at the latter’s death tugged at the heart strings of the population. Oh, there’s my ‘families’ theme ticked off! Suddenly though they were back with a No 13 hit and the album of the same name performed reasonably well going silver and peaking at No 11. It did not produce any further hit singles though.

There are all sorts of rock family tree connections with this lot. There’s Genesis of course but also Sad Café (via vocalist Paul Young) and all sorts of acts associated to Paul Carrack including Squeeze, Ace, Roxy Music, The Pretenders and The Smiths. Not quite up there with The Waterboys but certainly worthy of a decent family value score.

Family value: 7/10

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

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Inspiral Carpets	Caravan	Nope
2	The Simpsons	Deep Deep Trouble	Of course not
3	N-Joi	Anthem	Nah
4	The Waterboys	The Whole Of The Moon	No but my wife and the album
5	The Mock Turtles	Can U Dig It?	Not the single but I bought the album
6	C + C Music Factory	Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll)	No
7	Black Box	Strike It Up	Hell no
8	Feargal Sharkey	I’ve Got News For You	It’s another no
9	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	Negative
10	Mike + The Mechanics	Word Of Mouth	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/m000xh7f/top-of-the-pops-04041991

TOTP 15 NOV 1990

Posted on April 7, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s the exact mid-point of November 1990. I’m coming up to my one month wedding anniversary and have been employed in a temporary sales assistant position with Our Price for about two weeks. Xmas is fast approaching but for Maggie Thatcher, there are more issues afoot than the impending festive celebrations.1990 has not been a good year for Thatcher’s government; the introduction of the deeply unpopular Poll Tax had led to a riot in Trafalgar Square, inflation was pushing 10% meaning by late 1990 the economy was in the first stages of recession and at one point The Conservatives trailed Labour by 20 points in the polls. Dissatisfaction with Thatcher within her own party led to a challenge to her leadership from Michael Heseltine announced the day before this TOTP aired. Her time as Prime Minister was nearly over…hurray!

Away from politics, another type of of contest was being eagerly awaited. Boxing fans had been clamouring for a bout between Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank on the back of a very public rivalry between the two pugilists. That fight finally came to fruition on 18 November 1990 and was described by referee Richard Steele as “The most dramatic fight I’ve ever refereed”. It went the way of Eubank in round 9. I’m not a big boxing fan I have to say so why do I mention this fight here? Well, in 1990 Nigel Benn decided to cash in on his fame and release a single – rather predictably it was called “Stand And Fight” and was credited to The Pack featuring Nigel Benn. OK, so what? Well, ‘The Dark Destroyer’ as he was nicknamed came to the Our Price store I was working in to do a PA to promote it! I can’t recall if this was pre or post the big fight. There was a photo taken of Benn with the shop staff (including me) that appeared in a WH Smith news letter (Our Price was part of the WH Smith chain at that point). I had a copy for many years but I don’t know where it is now. I got Nigel’s autograph for my elder brother who was a fan. What? The song? Oh it was utter garbage….

Anyway, on with the show and the proper music although I’m not sure that Black Box‘s version of “Fantasy” strictly counts as ‘proper’ music. There seems to be some copyright issue with their TOTP studio performance so the official video will have to suffice for the purposes of this blog. To be fair, that performance doesn’t have a lot going on in it. Katrin Quinol is still fronting the whole sham, lip syncing away to vocals we all knew weren’t hers while the two guys at the back bang away on their keyboards with their heads down. One of them has that 90s long hair look that requires an alice band while the other guy has a top on with ‘Boys Wander In’ emblazoned across it. What’s that supposed to mean? So dull is the whole thing that during the instrumental break the cameras revert to crossing to the gantry to show some very unenthusiastic hand clapping from the studio audience. They looks so lifeless and flat that you would believe that, given the choice, they would rather eat their own arms than us them to clap along with. “Fantasy” peaked at No 5.

OK, I know that Inspiral Carpets released something called “Island Head EP” but I couldn’t have told you any of the songs on it or how they went. As far as I can see none of the four tracks on it featured on their debut album “Life” (at least not the UK version). “Biggest Mountain” performed here sounds pretty mournful to me. I’m not entirely sure why it was released to be honest. Their album had only been out six months and they’d not long been in the charts with “She Comes In The Fall”. Maybe they just had some new songs they wanted the fans to hear? Or maybe they were just jumping on an indie bandwagon – let’s not forget that EPs seemed to be a thing in 1990 with The Wedding Present and Ride both having released their own recently. And yes, mention must be made of those haircuts. Tom Hingley looks like a lockdown version of Mr Spock whilst Clint Boon…well just …Clint Boon! The “Island Head EP” peaked at No 21.

Next up are Robert Palmer and UB40 with their rendition of Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”. It strikes me that those cheeky Brummies have done rather a lot of collaborations during their career. Of course there are those two recordings with Chrissie Hynde in “I Got You Babe” and “Breakfast In Bed” neither of which I liked but there’s also “Reckless” with Afrika Bambaataa and an 808 Sate remix of “One In Ten”. There’s even two whole albums of collaborations in “UB40 Present The Dancehall Album” and “UB40 Present The Fathers Of Reggae” which featured some of their musical heroes like Toots Hibbert, John Holt, Alton Ellis and the Mighty Diamonds. And lest we forget Ali and Robin Campbell being credited on Pato Banton’s No 1 single “Baby Come Back”? Hmm…maybe we should all try and forget that one.

I wondered in a previous post how Bob Palmer and UB40 came to be working together and it was down to an individual called Dave Harper who managed both artists. Now I had no idea but this guy was steeped in rock history. He’d been Jim Morrison’s roadie and looked after Bob Marley and the Wailers even mixing their “Live at the Rainbow” album before moving onto manage Robert Palmer and UB40. As I said, I had no idea of any of this so when I googled Dave Harper I found a result for:

Dave Harper Bagpipes | Wedding Music | Easy Weddings

That couldn’t be him surely I found myself asking. No, no it wasn’t. That Dave Harper has been playing the bagpipes for 45 years and offers professional, expert bagpiping services across Norfolk, Norwich and the East Anglia for a wide range of events (according to his website). Still, UB40 and bagpipes! There’s a collaboration made in Hell. “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” peaked at No 6 and that new UB40 single that host Bruno Brookes mentions? It was actually called “Impossible Love” not “It’s Impossible” as Brookes claimed and it peaked at No 47.

An unusual event next. I’m guessing that not many singles that made it onto TOTP had a chart track record of just 1 week in the Top 40 at No 40 but that’s exactly what happened with Caron Wheeler‘s “UK Blak” single. The title track from her debut album, dropping out of the Top 40 completely after securing a studio performance (so not even just a Breaker slot) must have been a shock to the system for both Caron and her record label.

“UK Blak” would be Caron’s final appearance in the UK singles charts but the following year she recorded a song called “Don’t Quit” for a film called Career Opportunities and taking her own advice and perhaps inspired by the movie’s title has continued her musical career up to this day including on/off spells with Soul II Soul.

Three Breakers next and these are “all good records” according to Bruno Brookes so let’s see if he is right…

…we start with The Mission who have turned out to be one of the most consistent chart entry makers of this whole TOTP blog thing. “Hands Across The Ocean” (nothing to do with Paul McCartney’s “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”) was their 9th consecutive Top 40 hit (and their fourth of 1990 alone) and yet none of them even made the Top 10. The only other artist that I can think of with such a discography would be Siouxsie and the Banshees.

I have to admit to not knowing this one at all although on listening to it now, it does sound very reminiscent of something else that I can’t quite put my finger on*.

Bruno Brookes ‘all good records’ clapometer score: Not bad

*Got it – the verses are like U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name” whilst the chorus sounds like Scottish popsters The Big Dish.

There was a second single from Jon Bon Jovi‘s Young Guns II project? Yes, his “Blaze Of Glory” album furnished us with “Miracle” which very much sounds like Jon doing his best Bruce Springsteen impression to me. It didn’t have the same dramatic appeal of the title track single and was accordingly a much smaller hit – “Blaze Of Glory ” was a US No 1 record and a No 13 hit over here whilst “Miracle” peaked at No 12 in the States and a lowly No 29 in the UK.

The accompanying video has very little connection to the Young Guns II film. There are no clips from it as the promo is set in the present day with Jon riding his big motorbike around what looks like Mexico setting. And yes that is a pre-Friends Matt LeBlanc catching the señorita’s eye (How you doin’?) and Jeff Beck playing guitar in the cantina.

Bruno Brookes ‘all good records’ clapometer score: Boring

Ooh now here’s something interesting. Twin Peaks appeared out of some dark hole of David Lynch’s imagination and was like nothing we had ever seen before – one of the biggest TV phenomenons of not just the 90s but of any decade. Mixing horror, mystery and the supernatural into one dramatic entity, it was almost like the most bizarre soap opera ever. Its slogan of ‘Who Killed Laura Palmer?’ was the hook that caught all of us who dared to engage in it. Its run on BBC2 started just as my wife and I had moved to Manchester and was all everybody at the Our Price store I was working in was talking about so we took the plunge. Sheesh it was weird! The final scene of series two (and the denouement of the whole story at that point) remains one of the most disturbing things I have seen on TV.

Part of the show’s creepy appeal was its soundtrack composed by Angelo Badalamenti who had worked previously with Lynch on the frankly disturbing Blue Velvet and it was to him that Lynch returned for Twin Peaks. Theme tune “Falling” would also bring back into the fold someone else who had been involved in Blue Velvet project but the name Julee Cruise will forever be associated with Twin Peaks. The song was eerie, chilling (especially for viewers of the series) and yet delightful in its delicate beauty. It (and Cruise herself) featured prominently in the series and the show’s popularity would propel it to No 7 in the UK singles chart.

Bruno Brookes ‘all good records’ clapometer score: Fantastic

What?! How was Jive Bunny still a thing in late 1990?! Wikipedia tells me “Let’s Swing Again” was their sixth hit single out of eight. What! There’s still two more to come after this?! No, sorry but f**k this! I am not wasting any more of my time or words on reviewing any more f*****g Jive Bunny singles. No. I mean it.

Right. With that declaration of intent made, who’s next? What’s that Bruno? The guys behind Jive Bunny are also behind this next act called Megabass?! You have got to be f*****g kidding me?! WTF?! Ok, well I will have to retract my previous statement. It turns out that “Time To Make The Floor Burn” was one of those medley singles like Latino Rave and The Brits 1990 that were basically an advertising campaign for a compilation album. I do recall the Telstar ‘Megabass’ series from my early Our Price days but I do wonder who the intended market for them were. Some of these tunes were ancient in terms of chart lives – “Ride On Time”, Pump Up The Jam”, Big Fun” – these were all well over 12 months old. Ah to Hell with them! Next!

Nice. It’s the Kim Appleby performance of her debut solo single “Don’t Worry” from the other week. However, like Black Box earlier, that clip has infringed somebody’s copyright and is no longer available so here she is on some European music TV show instead. Although Kim would go on to have a couple more Top 20 hits, her solo career never really progressed from this point on. I get the impression that recording the album of songs she and her late sister Mel had been working on was what had kept her going in the months after the tragedy and once that task had been completed, then Kim’s desire for the music business went cold.

A third of four weeks at the top for The Righteous Brothers with “Unchained Melody” which inevitably led to a clamour to get more of the duo’s product out there (and just in time for Xmas too!). So which song got re-released to follow “Unchained Melody” in to the charts? Yes of course it was probably their best known song “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” which had been heavily featured in the Top Gun film which had only recently received its UK terrestrial TV premiere and which had led to the re-release of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”. What a tangled web of re-issues we weaved.

I recall hearing disgraced TV and radio personality Jonathan king stating that the record label should have switched the release to the B-side which was a song called “Ebb Tide”. Wanna hear it? OK…

Hmm…I’m not sure. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” did well enough anyway thanks Jonathan peaking at No 3.

The play out video is “New Power Generation” by Prince. This was where it all started getting very confusing for me with Prince. New Power Generation was also the name of Prince’s new backing band who would continue in that role until 2013. The phrase “Welcome to the New Power Generation” was first mentioned in a track on the “Lovesexy” album whilst New Power Generation was used for the first time as a band name in the 1990 film Graffiti Bridge. Then there was the single “New Power Generation” and whilst Prince was in dispute with Warners and he became ‘symbol’ in 1993, he use the NPG as a way to release music outside of his contract. However, up to that point, any new Prince music was credited to Prince and The New Power Generation but between 1994 and 1997, the NPG had three Top 40 UK hits in their own right plus two whole albums. Still with me? I think I’ve confused myself actually.

Disclaimer

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000tpzf/top-of-the-pops-15111990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 19 JUL 1990

Posted on February 3, 2021 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s more to this story though:

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh Girl” peaked at No 25.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 05 JUL 1990

Posted on January 27, 2021 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still need convincing? How about these then:

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

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

“Unskinny Bop” peaked at No 15.

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Luciano Pavarotti – The Essential Pavarotti

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

3. Jason Donovan – Between The Lines

4. Talk Talk – The Very Best Of Talk Talk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 29 MAR 1990

Posted on November 24, 2020 by 80stastic

Welcome to Britain 1990. The furore about the hated Poll Tax is about to erupt when 393 people get arrested after violence broke out at a 200,000 strong protest in Trafalgar Square. These events happened two days after this TOTP aired and the day after that, the Strangeways Prison riot in Manchester began and would last 25 days as prisoners protested against conditions there. It’s pretty grim stuff. Meanwhile in TOTP land, the increasingly unlikeable Nicky Campbell is in the chair for this particular show and he seems to have gone to town on the hairspray to ensure his bouffant hair remains in place for the whole 30 minutes.

Guess what we open tonight with? Yep, another unremarkable dance tune. This one is by Bizz Nizz and is called “Don’t Miss The Partyline” which I barely remember at all. Turns out they were Belgian and this annoying track was their only UK hit. It’s based round an annoying keyboard riff that allied to some rudimentary rapping reeled in enough record buyers to send it all the way to No 7 for some reason. The keyboard riff is a double whammy of irritation for both sounding like an early ringtone and being mimed in this performance on a keytar! If we thought this was the pinnacle of annoying that these pillocks could create then look out as Bizz Nizz shout ‘hold my beer’ and return in a couple of years having put together that well known antidote to quality music known as 2 Unlimited. For shame!

From an infernal racket to some excruciating lyrics next as the video for Heart‘s “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” gets an airing for a second consecutive week. I’ve already dissected said lyrics in a previous post so let’s have a look at the video this time. Surely it can’t be as bad as those song words? Well, it’s basically a literal retelling of the song’s plot interspersed with footage of the band miming in a studio setting with the obligatory power lighting and smoke. It was directed by Andy Morahan and Mike Southon. Here’s the latter from his own website on the making of the video :

“The record company were worried about Ann Wilson’s weight. They suggested she wore black, that I’d photograph her against black and just light her face with a spotlight. I said that that would look ridiculous and that such a powerful singer and performer did not need trickery to sell her image. In the end they relented and let Andy and I do it our way.”

As misogynistic as their stance was, it seems to me that the record company still managed to get their way in the end as the promo is very heavily edited so that singer Ann Wilson doesn’t actually get much screen time at all. She is only shown for the waist up and there seems to be much more focus on her sister Nancy. Even when she is on screen, the camera only stays on her for a couple of seconds at a time. Southon still seems pleased with how it turned out though:

“It’s a pretty classic vid of its genre. Rain, downtown LA cheap motel, smoke, beams of light, beautiful couple making love. What’s not to like?”

Hmm. Give me the much pilloried “Rio” video anytime over your effort Mr. Southon. “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” peaked at No 8 in our charts and No 2 in the US.

Back in the studio, the increasingly snidey Nicky Campbell advises us “Here’s what we’re all going to be wearing this Summer – well you maybe – dig those flares…”. You can just tell that he desperately wanted to add the word ‘plebs’ after ‘you’ and before ‘maybe’ in his intro. And who were the flares wearing act up next? Candy Flip of course with their danced up version of “Strawberry Fields Forever”.

Apart from the obvious flares that Campbell was referring to, what else was this new strand of fashion that we would all be wearing? Well, look I’ve never been any sort of fashionista but even I know something of the baggy style that the ‘Madchester’ era ushered in. Alongside the flares there were brightly coloured or tie-dye casual tops (probably bought from Joe Bloggs) and possibly a bucket hat to top the look off as per The Stone Roses drummer Reni. Is this what those Candy Flip boys are wearing here? Sort of although it’s hard to see quite how wide their flares are because of all the dry ice. They do have their own version of Bez on maracas behind them though. We’ll get to see the real thing on these repeats soon enough.

As for the actual record, it seems remarkably dull and lifeless to me listening back to it now and I can’t quite see what all the fuss was about.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” peaked at No 3. and was the band’s only UK hit.

Ah now then. Here’s the real deal. After the faux bagginess of Candy Flip come a bona fide ‘Madchester’ band. Inspiral Carpets are back on TOTP for a second time with their hit single “This Is How It Feels” but…hang on a minute…. apart from singer Tom Hingley’s ridiculously oversized red duffle coat complete with toggles, the rest of them look pretty nondescript; not even one ‘Cool As F**k’ T-shirt on view anywhere!

Ah yes, those T-shirts. A few month on from this I relocated to Manchester and you could hardly move down Market Street for youths in Inspiral Carpets T-Shirts with the cow logo on them. In an innovative marketing campaign, their record label arranged for a quarter of a million milk bottles in the Manchester area to be emblazoned with an advertisement for their album “Life”. Despite those initial numbers, they’re pretty rare these days but you can still pick one up online for around £30 if you are so inclined. Moo!

The band revisited the milk bottle campaign
for the promotion of their 2003 Greatest Hits album

Now supposedly when the band travelled down to London on the train for this TOTP appearance, they sat opposite some girls from Manchester who were also going to the TOTP recording to be a part of the studio audience. Crushingly for the band, the girls didn’t recognise that their fellow travellers were Inspiral Carpets but did ask them what they thought of The Stone Roses though! You should have gone more heavy with the baggy togs lads!

“This Is How It Feels” peaked at No 14 making it the band’s second biggest hit ever behind 1992’s “Dragging Me Down”.

Next up is little Jimmy Somerville with his single “Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)”. In this performance he’s wearing an ACT UP T-shirt to promote the direct action gay rights organisation he was a member of and whose causes the song’s lyrics espouse. In a Smash Hits interview later in the year Jimmy wondered if his being so outspoken on gay rights had stopped him from becoming more commercially successful. Apparently his record company commissioned a survey to find out who liked him and why. Here’s Jimmy taking up the rest of the story:

“They found that a lot of boys between 15 and 23 like the music but won’t go and buy the records because they think people will think they’re gay. So I’m sure if I kept my mouth shut I would have higher singles. But then again, it’s also a little victory because it means these people know what I’m about. The survey said that really young school girls like what I do – they know that I’m gay and they just wish I’d shut up!”

I’m not sure that I appreciated what “Read My Lips” was about at the time although I knew Jimmy was gay and a gay rights activist. With lines like…

‘Here we are and standing our ground, and we won’t be moved by what they say‘

and…

‘Finding cures is not the only solution, and it’s not a case of sinner absolution‘

…I probably should have cottoned on earlier.

Right, it’s all dance tunes from here until the end of the show (no Breakers this week) and we start with “Ghetto Heaven” by The Family Stand. Not to be confused with JT And The Big Family who were in the charts at the same time, this lot were a trio from Brooklyn although the singer Sandra St. Victor was from Dallas originally as Nicky Campbell states in his intro. If you asked me before this repeat aired what they sounded like I wouldn’t have had a clue but hearing “Ghetto Heaven” back it does ring a few bells. Like Bizz Nizz at the top of the show, the employed a keytar player (urgh!) but unlike Bizz Nizz (whose single must have seemed dated even back in 1990), The Family Stand’s sound just about still stands up today. This single was remixed by Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B and it certainly sounds like it with that familiar ‘thumpin’ bass’ and cool groove vibe.

After splitting in 1997 they reformed in 2007 and are still a going concern to this day although St.Victor has also had a parallel solo career and has toured with the likes of Freddie Jackson and Chaka Khan. She also once recorded a song called “I’ll Never Open My Legs Again”. Blimey! And I thought Heart song was risque!

Moving on to Jam Tronik now and their unspeakable version of “Another Day In Paradise”. This was just proper dog shit, real gruesome stuff. Who the hell was dancing to this in the clubs back in the day? Having said all that, back in 2013 I went on a friend from work’s stag weekend in Leeds and after a night of drinking we all ended up in a club called The Cockpit. It was a right dive. God knows what the DJ was playing but it sounded awful. To my utter amazement the next track he ‘dropped’ (that’s what you’re meant to say these days isn’t it?) was “Easy Lover” by Phil Collins and Philip Bailey! And there were people (young people I may add) dancing to it! WTF?! Apparently they were being ironic the youngest person in our group advised me. And again I say WTF?!

Back to Jam Tronic though and the singer up front is called Nikita Warren but apparently, according to Wikipedia, like so many before her, she wasn’t the actual singer on the track! Well I never! Incidentally, in later life she would go into artist management and one of her clients was Jimmy Somerville! How weird is that as they were on the same show together back in the day? Nikita was just the front for the act but the whole Jam Tronik project was put together by one Charlie Glass. No, not the goal scoring Carlisle United keeper. That was Jimmy Glass. Who you say? This is Jimmy Glass….

Literally a schoolboy error from Nicky Campbell next as we get to the new No 1 from Snap! with “The Power”. Name checking the members of the band he says the rapper is called Turbo D when it’s actually Turbo B. Come on Campbell – it’s as easy as ABC! The other person that he mentions – Jackie Harris – wasn’t the person who did the actual singing, she just appeared in the video. That was ex Chaka Khan backing singer (another one!) Penny Ford whose musical pedigree is pretty impressive – her father produced James Brown, her brother founded Kool & the Gang, and her sister was the singer Sharon Redd. So who was Jackie Harris then? A random woman the record’s producers found at the German army base where Turbo B had been stationed for his national service in the US army. Hmm. As a back story it’s not really up there with my father produced James Brown is it?!

The Big Brother / 1984 imagery at the start of the video helps to crank up the intensity of the track I think. And if you were in any doubt of…erm… the power of “The Power” check out this anecdote that I found on the Songfacts website:

On July 5, 2011, the top 19 stories of the 39-story building housing the Gangbyeon branch of the Techno Mart shopping mall in Seoul shook violently for 10 minutes, causing the building to be evacuated for two days. Instead of an earthquake, it was found that an exercise class on the 12th floor was playing “The Power,” which happened to match the building’s resonant frequency and caused it to violently shake.

The play put video is “Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children” by Queen Latifah and Del La Soul. In addition to his Turbo B error, Campbell also mispronounced Queen Latifah’s name as Queen La-fit-ah in the chart run down earlier. Didn’t Gary Davies make a similar mispronunciation the other week as well? How many times have I said this? “You had one job…”

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Bizz Nizz	Don’t Miss The Party Line	Miss it? I gave it a massive wide berth!
2	Heart	All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You	It’s a no from me
3	Candy Flip	Strawberry Fields Forever	Nope
4	Inspiral Carpets	This Is How It Feels	No but I’ve got their Greatest Hits I think
5	Jimmy Somerville	Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)	No
6	The Family Stand	Ghetto Heaven	Nah
7	Jam Tronik	Another Day In Paradise	NOOOOOOO!!!
8	Snap!	The Power	Not for me thanks
9	Queen Latifah and De La Soul	Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children	It’s another no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pjdn/top-of-the-pops-29031990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 15 MAR 1990

Posted on November 17, 2020 by 80stastic

After weeks of watching aghast at the state of the charts back in early 1990, there seemed to be some online optimism that we were finally embarking on a run of episodes that promised to turn the tide of disappointment. Even the usually disparaging @TOTPFacts seemed to have caught the good times vibe:

It’s a good one tonight. Set an alarm. #TOTP https://t.co/l8RVvPF0nO
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 13, 2020

And yet…be warned for despite the undoubted presence of some decent tunage on display tonight, there is an awful lot of shite to have to wade through first. Simon Mayo is the host for tonight’s show who is usually nondescript enough to be considered as a safe pair of hands so let’s get into it…

…hmm. Now which camp do The Mission fall into? Decent or shite? I’m going to go for the former but with the caveat that it’s a risky choice. I definitely like some of their stuff (“Stay With Me”, “Wasteland” and “Tower of Strength” for example) but there was only so much of it that I could handle in one go. “Deliverance” was the second single from their “Carved In Sand” album and I have to say it doesn’t really ring any bells with me. That may be to do with the fact that it was only in the Top 40 for three weeks and was already at its peak of No 27 by the time of this TOTP performance. If I didn’t watch this particular episode (and I’m not sure that I did) then maybe it was just in and out too quick for me to have heard it. Having caught up with it some 30 years later, it doesn’t strike me as one of their better efforts. A rousing enough chorus but the rest of it is a bit of a dirge don’t you think? Well, Norman Cook agreed with me. In a Smash Hits article reviewing the charts back then he stated of “Deliverance”:

” I hate all this macho rock business and The Mission came from a punk new wave background and they really ought to know better“

Ouch!

OK, after a debatable start to the show, I’m nailing my colours to the flag straight off the bat with this one by saying “I’ll Be Loving You Forever” by New Kids On The Block is utter excrement, a complete jobbie of a song. After two uptempo dance pop singles broke them in the UK, it was pretty obvious that they would go for a weepy ballad for their next choice of release. Not obvious enough for Simon Mayo though who declares that T’KNOB have gone “exceedingly early” for a big *hand gesture* ballad *follow up hand gesture*. What’s with the gesticulating Simon? He comes across like he’s giving a paper at some academic conference – it’s not rocket science Mayo!

The song itself is so insipid as to hardly be there at all. Jordan Knight’s reed thin vocal is barely audible (except maybe to dogs). If you want falsetto vocals allied to love songs then The Stylistics had already been there and done it (much better) in the 70s.

“I’ll Be Loving You Forever” broke their run of UK No 1 singles after “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” and “Hangin’ Tough” had scaled the summit by peaking at No 5. It was the opposite trend in the US where it was their first ever Billboard Hot 100 chart topper.

Ooh, now then. Here’s one to split the nation. After I blithely stated in a recent post that the name Candy never caught on as a popular choice for newborns despite the rise to fame of Candy Dulfer, bizarrely there was another Candy in the charts almost immediately afterwards. Candy Flip, as I recall, were briefly hailed as ‘the next big thing’ when they gave The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” the ‘rave’ treatment. This caused huge division around the duo; for some this was utter musical blasphemy while for the nation’s clubbers, it was bringing rave culture to the mainstream. In all honesty, and I say this as someone who has never been to a rave, I’m guessing that Candy Flip could have been seen by some in the rave community as betraying the whole movement by becoming pop stars off the back of it. Just a thought.

So who exactly were this pair of chancers? Well, they were Richard “Rik” Anderson- Peet and Daniel “Dizzie Dee” Spencer who had met whilst studying music and recording technology in Manchester where they moved in social circles that included the likes of A Guy Called Gerald and The Stone Roses. Clearly not ones to miss a trick when it came to burgeoning trends, they jumped on the ‘Madchester’ / ‘baggy indie’ bandwagon for their look and bingo! Ready made pop stars! They even made it onto the front cover of Smash Hits!

Apparently they did actually have some musical ability as in later life, Peet became a producer for the likes of The Charlatans and Muse whilst Spencer worked with erm…Robbie Williams…on his least well received album “Rudebox”. Yeah, maybe keep quiet about that. They also had some serious musical heritage in their locker. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

According to Smash Hits, Candy Flip singer Daniel Spencer's dad played guitar for Sandie Shaw and wrote songs for Petula Clark, while keyboard player Ric Peet's mum was in The Vernons Girls, who sang backing for the likes of Cliff Richard and… George Martin! #TOTP pic.twitter.com/OWf0mFyFjr
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 13, 2020

Mind blowing stuff. Talking of which they were named after ‘candyflipping’, the slang term for the practice of taking ecstasy and LSD at the same time. So definitely not Candy Dulfer then.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” peaked at No 3 and was their only chart hit. Their was an album which, gazumping Madness by two whole years, was called “Madstock…The Continuing Adventures of Bubblefish Car”. I don’t think a Candy Flip revival will be happening any time soon.

Is this the third consecutive week that “Love Shack” by The B-52s has been on the show? The TOTP producers must have loved this one. It’s the video yet again (I presume the band were too busy touring or something to pop by the studio) and as such, I’m out of comments so I’ll hand over to Homer Simpson for this one:

“Love Shack” peaked at No 2.

So the Breakers are back but at 1 min and 26 seconds to cover three whole songs, it barely seems worth it! The first of these stretches the description of ‘song’ to be fair. “Handful Of Promises” was the third hit on the bounce by Big Fun and was taken from their “Pocketful Of Dreams” album of which this song gave the album its title. Clearly it’s horrible. Nasty, cynical and lacking of any sort of tune, it somehow scrambled to a No 21 peak. Smash Hits magazine did a Big Fun v Yell battle of the bands piece which Big Fun won by 23 and a half points to 11 but it was a hollow victory – a bit like trying to work out which member of the Tory cabinet is the biggest wanker.

The good news is that I think Big Fun only have one Top 40 hit left in them before they will plague the charts and us no further.

I have to admit that Fish‘s solo career completely passed me by. “A Gentleman’s Excuse Me” is yet another of his recordings that I don’t think I have heard before now. The second of three singles taken from his “Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors” album (incredibly all three were Top 40 hits) it’s actually a pretty little thing (to quote Bing Crosby from his Xmas chat with David Bowie)

It puts me in mind of “Home Thoughts From Abroad” by Clifford T. Ward. In fact, it almost seems like Fish was deliberately trying to rewrite it. In the shite v decent poll, I’m marking this one down as up to snuff.

There is a theory that Wet Wet Wet‘s second studio album (if you discount their demoes / early recordings album “The Memphis Sessions”) “Holding Back The River” should have been their third whilst their actual third album (“High On The Happy Side”) should have been their second. Confused? Don’t be because it does make sense. After their debut “Popped In Souled Out” established their blue eyed soul / pop amalgam sound, the obvious move would have been to follow it up with something very similar. What the Wets did however was to throw caution to the wind and write an album that was much more mature that dealt with more heavyweight subject matters. For example the near title track from their sophomore album “Hold Back The River” deals with alcoholism I believe.

Whilst certainly not a commercial failure (it was a No 2 and went double platinum), it didn’t perform as well as “Popped In Souled Out”. When their career was looking decidedly dodgy two year later, they returned to a more accessible sound and found their way back to the very summit of the charts with “High On The Happy Side” which also furnished them with another No 1 single in “Goodnight Girl”. Did they go for that grown up sound too early (maybe we should ask Simon Mayo – he seems to have an opinion about these things!)? I doubt it. Things worked out pretty well for the band ultimately. “Hold Back The River” remains one of their lowest charting singles though peaking at No 31 but then there is a jazz break down half way through it so what did they expect?!

OK, now we get to the big guns which all the pre-show ‘ooh this is a good one’ fuss was all about. Not just one of the biggest tunes of the 90s but one of the biggest tunes ever – it can only be “Loaded” by Primal Scream. I’m pretty sure I didn’t know anything about Bobby Gillespie and co before this point but then, I don’t think that many people did. Yes, they had been around since the early 80s and had already released two albums by 1990 but they hadn’t got anywhere near mainstream success. Enter Andy Weatherall (who sadly died in February) to alter forever not just the career of Primal Scream but also that of music culture period.

I can’t recall for sure the first time that I heard “Loaded” but I’m pretty sure I didn’t get it straight away. What were all those sampled voices at the beginning and what was with the structure of the track that seemed to be all over the place? And why did it take so long for the singer to come in? Thirty years on and hundreds of plays later, it’s hard to believe I once thought like that. I’m nothing if not consistent though. Having not immediately swooned at Morrissey’s feet as The Smiths broke and then resisted the charms of the emerging Stone Roses, this was par for the course for me. I’m glad to say that I got with the programme in time and own both “Screamadelica” and an import CD single of “Loaded” (purchased some time after the initial single release I have to admit).

For a while I was convinced that those disembodied voices at the start of the track were The Monkees but I subsequently learned that they are actually Frank Maxwell and Peter Fonda from the 1966 biker movie The Wild Angels. I’ve never seen the film but if you ever wondered what was the scene that they were sampled from, here’s the answer:

Bobby Gillespie stated in an February 2011 NME interview about the samples used in the remix:

“Imagine if we hadn’t got the Fonda one though. We wouldn’t be sat here now. I don’t know where we’d be but we would not be sat here talking to you. The gods were smiling on us that day.”

I can’t quite describe what it is that those clipped pieces of dialogue add to the track are but I totally agree with Bobby.

The original track that Weatherall remixed was of course “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have” from the band’s second album which was on that CD single I bought as an extra track and I have to say, I think that stands up pretty well on its own merits as well…

I managed to catch Primal Scream live at an open air gig in Hull in 2017 and they were belting. Bobby Gillespie definitely has a portrait in an attic at home where he looks absolutely decrepit though.

“Loaded” peaked at No 16.

The second big gun of the evening now as the TOTP TV audience gets its first sighting of Inspiral Carpets with their hit single “This Is How It Feels”. Instead of Simon Mayo blathering on about the sporting exploits of the band’s hometown of Oldham that year, I would rather have seen the current Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle introduce the band in that game show host style that he employs to command Prime Minister Questions… “and now, we travel north to Oldham where we find Inspiral Carpets – Inspiral Carpets everyone!”.

To be fair to Mayo, Oldham Athletic had a monumental season that year (I’ve no idea about the basketball and rugby teams he also mentions). Despite finishing 8th in Division 2 and missing out on the play-offs, it was in the two domestic cup competitions that they excelled. The day before this TOTP aired, they had beaten 1st Division title hopefuls Aston Villa 3-0 to reach the FA Cup semi finals and had already secured a place in the actual League Cup Final. A guy called Frankie Bunn scored SIX goals in one game on the way to the final. I distinctly remember what a big deal all of this seemed at the time. Sadly Oldham would go onto lose that final and also the FA CUp semi final after taking Man Utd to a replay.

Back to the music though and Inspiral Carpets seemed to be promoted in the press as part of some ‘Madchester’ Holy Trinity (despite not actually being from Manchester) alongside the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays. I’m not sure if that’s how they actually saw themselves having been in existence since 1983. I didn’t know this until now but they had an almost Fall like number of personnel changes in the years leading up to this commercial breakthrough.

As for the song itself, I thought it was great with its prominent, swirling organ sound and heavyweight lyrics. Bizarrely, my elder brother and Paul Weller disciple seemed to be going through a ‘Madchester’ phase at the time and had a mix tape featuring all the aforementioned bands on it (including Inspiral Carpets) which he was fond of blasting out of our shared bedroom at the time. He was also a big Man Utd fan and had been going to the matches for a few years back then and went to all the FA Cup games that season including that semi final. Maybe his fleeting association with the ‘baggie’ was more to do with the football than the music. Incidentally, Man Utd used to serenade their Man City counterparts with a chant based on “This Is How It Feels” with the words changed to :

This is how it feels to be City, this is how it feels to be small

This is how it feels when you club wins nothing at all

I think that one got consigned to the dustbin of terrace chants sometime around 2011.

Lead singer Tom Hingley had a very striking look back then. It was sort of Mr Logic from Viz meets Red Dwarf‘s Dwayne Dibley. Most disconcerting. I’m pretty sure I saw him do a solo gig at the tiny York venue Fibbers after he subsequently left the band but I can’t recall whether he still had the same hairstyle or not. Mind you, Clint Boon’s Stooges cut isn’t much better.

“This Is How It Feels” peaked at No 14.

Oh FFS! Seriously! We hadn’t all had enough of Jive Bunny by the time that the new decade had come around?! No, we hadn’t because they racked up another four hit singles before they finally fucked off sometime around 1991. “That Sounds Good to Me” followed the same cut and paste formula that these idiots had already used to mug off the UK public three times previously and featured tracks including “Everybody Need Somebody To Love”, “Long Tall Sally” and “Roll Over Beethoven”. I’m pretty sure that the version of “Everybody Need Somebody To Love” recorded for the Blues Brothers film was re-released not long after this Jive Bunny abomination

*checks http://www.officialcharts.com*

Yes! I was right. It was released about a month or so after this and peaked at No 12. Inexplicably, Jive Bunny peaked 8 places higher at No 4!

Beats International still claim the No 1 slot with “Dub Be Good To Me”. In a Smash Hits interview entitled ‘How To Make A Hit record In Your Bedroom’, Norman Cook admitted that putting together “Dub Be Good To Me” from the initial sampling he did in his bedroom to the finished record took just three days and £400. Wow! £400 for a record that was innovative and well…pretty good actually. By those standards, Jive Bunny, using similar techniques, must have spent about 40p to produce their steaming heap of shit.

The play out track is “You Don’t Love Me” by the 49ers which was their follow up to “Touch Me” and which I don’t remember at all. Apparently it samples Jody Watley’s 1987 hit “Don’t You Want Me” which I also have zero recall of. I’m putting this one in the shite pile which means, by my reckoning, the final tally for tonight’s show is:

Shite Music 7 v 5 Decent Tunes

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The Mission	Deliverance	Nah
2	New Kids On The Block	I’ll Be Loving You Forever	Good God no!
3	Candy Flip	Strawberry Fields Forever	Nope
4	B-52s	Love Shack	Couldn’t be doing with it – no
5	Big Fun	Handful Of Promises	…and a pocketful of shite, NO!
6	Fish	A Gentleman’s Excuse Me	No
7	Wet Wet Wet	Hold Back The River	No but my wife liked this one
8	Primal Scream	Loaded	Yes but some time after the event
9	Inspiral Carpets	This Is How It Feels	No but I’ve got their Greatest Hits I think
10	Jive Bunny	That Sounds Good To Me	Oh this is an open goal….That sounds shite to me..No!
11	Beats International	Dub Be Good To Me	No but my wife had their album
12	49ers	Don’t You Love Me	No I don’t

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000p9v2/top-of-the-pops-15031990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 03 MAR 1994

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TOTP 20 JAN 1994

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TOTP 04 APR 1991

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TOTP 15 NOV 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 19 JUL 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 05 JUL 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 29 MAR 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 15 MAR 1990

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Some bedtime reading?