Right, I haven’t done this for a while and it doesn’t always go down well as this is a music blog but I’m just going to delve quickly into what was happening in the football in April 1993 as I have a specific memory of this time. The race for the very first Premier League title is hotting up as Manchester United, Aston Villa and surprisingly Norwich City are all in with a shout. It’s all a bit nip and tuck with United just behind Villa as they head into the weekend fixtures two days after this TOTP aired. I’m working in the Our Price store in Rochdale still and around 4.30 ish on a Saturday I would find some reason to nip upstairs into the back room where the shop radio was located to try and catch the last bit of action and results from the footy. This Saturday was no exception and the big game being covered was Man Utd against Sheffield Wednesday. It’s a crucial game in the title race and United find themselves 0-1 down late into the game – a disaster for their title challenge if the score stays the same.

Meanwhile, in another North Western Our Price store (Bury I think) is one Mick Jones. I knew Mick from when he worked in the other Manchester store in Piccadilly whilst I was down the road in Market Street. Mick was/is a big United fan but he had a problem that day – he had no access to finding out the score. Now this sounds ridiculous in 2022 where everything is at our fingertips and available on our mobile phones. Need to know the score? No problem- there’s plenty of score update apps available or there’s the goals as they go in coverage of shows like Sky Sports’ Soccer Saturday with Jeff Stelling or the BBC’s Final Score with Jason Mohammad. Back in 1993, such resources were not around and so we all relied on the good old radio. Sadly, poor old Mick couldn’t get a signal for the shop radio where he was and so was left completely in the dark.

Somehow I became aware of his predicament (a phone call about work presumably) and, taking pity on him, was phoning him up with score updates. As the game reached the 86th minute and with United still behind, an unlikely saviour appeared in the shape of centre back Steve Bruce. A header from a Dennis Irwin cross pulled United level and so I was straight on the blower to Mick. Relief but they really needed a win. In the final minute Bruce did it again and I was back in the phone with the good news for Mick. Salvation and although it wasn’t my team Chelsea winning (we lost 0-1 at Southampton that day), I felt like I had been a Good Samaritan at least with my score update service. The win sent United top and they would stay there until the end of the season winning their first league title for 26 years.

The football theme continues (very tenuously) with the first band on tonight’s show who are called Sub Sub (geddit?). Their single “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)” was one of those records that had no choice but to be a massive hit. Imprinted on your brain from the very first hearing it was immensely immediate and yet also had a baked in credibility courtesy of being released on the Rob’s Records label. Rob, of course, was the late Rob Gretton, former manager of Joy Division and New Order and co founder of Factory Records. I’m pretty sure that a work colleague called Paul introduced me to this track as he was intent on buying anything that the label released. Their other acts included Mr Scruff and A Certain Ratio.

Anyway, Sub Sub were brothers Andy and Jez Williams and school friend Jimi Goodwin who had become regulars at the legendary Manchester club The Haçienda in the early 90s and were inspired to record music of their own. Their 12” single “Space Face” was an underground club hit but it was “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) that the band’s name would become associated with. And what a tune to be known for! A retro disco sound that sounded box fresh at the same time featuring Philly soul strings, wah-wah guitar and the vocals of Melanie Williams, it was just impossible to ignore. That lolloping bass line was courtesy of a record the Williams brothers won at a fair (no really) and it was this from the musical Hair (you can hear it if you listen closely enough)…

Sub Sub went to No 3 and stayed inside the Top 10 for six weeks. I could have sworn that the record came out in 1994 but here I am showing that my memory isn’t what it once was again. Now I was very careful with my words earlier when I said that “Ain’t No Love Ain’t No Use)” was what Sub Sub are best remembered for as the Williams brothers and Jimi Goodwin are surely more well known for something else. After a fire burnt down their recording studio in 1996, they literally rose from the ashes and reinvented themselves as rock band The Doves who would go onto have three No 1 albums and score hit singles like “There Goes The Fear” and “Pounding”.

It’s the Sybil video for “When I’m Good And Ready” that gets to soundtrack the Top 40 rundown to No 11 this week. This is the third time this song has been on the show so I’m kind of out of things to say about it. The normally reliable @TOTPFacts has taken the week off as well so I can’t even pinch any of his content.

Erm…how about this? Twelve years on, Sybil performed on the ITV show Hit Me Baby One More Time which showcased pop stars of yesteryear singing their biggest hits alongside a cover of a (then) contemporary song. The watching TV audience voted for a weekly winner to go through to the grand final. In her heat, Sybil was up against Kelly Marie of “Feels Like I’m In Love” fame, the lead singer from Cutting Crew, those three Cleopatra girls and Chesney Hawkes. The winner? Nobody but nobody could defeat the legend that is Chesney Hawkes! If you’re interested though (and I’m certainly not) here’s Sybil doing her contemporary cover of Shania Twain’s “I’m Gonna Getcha Good!”…

Another song we’ve seen before next as Jade are back in the studio to perform their hit “Don’t Walk Away”. I can’t find a clip of this performance but it’s almost identical to the previous one even down to the long white drapes set. The only difference is that the trio have black, customised hot pants on this time as opposed to full length black leggings.

This uniformity didn’t translate into everlasting unity though. After the group petered out in 1997, the three members formed their own careers. However, when a reunion was planned last year as part of a retro concert called 90s Kickback, original lead vocalist Di Reed wasn’t invited to perform. No explanation was given by her former band mates Tonya Kelly and Joi Marshall who instead recruited one time The Voice contestant Myracle Holloway and rebranded themselves as ‘The Ladies Of Jade’. Attempts by Reed to contact Kelly and Marshall went unanswered and Reed was said to be considering action about the legality of her band mates use of the name Jade but remained hopeful it wouldn’t come to that. It all sounds a bit Spandau Ballet/ Bucks Fizz esque to me where they all ended up in court. I guess it just goes to show that bands of the longevity and democratic nature like U2 are the exception and not the rule.

Woah! Wasn’t expecting this! David Essex on TOTP in 1993! Right, I need to fess up straight away that I love David Essex mainly due to his starring role in the two wonderful films That’ll Be The Day and Stardust which are two of my favourite movies of all time. He’s also made some great pop tunes and seems like a thoroughly decent sort. By the 90s though, the hits had dried up. Indeed his last Top 40 appearance had been in 1985 with “Falling Angels Riding”. So why was he suddenly back on the show? Well, it was due to an unexpected hit album called “Cover Shot” which was, unsurprisingly, a covers album that, with the aid of a TV ad campaign, would rise to No 3 in the charts, his biggest hit since his mid 70s heyday. The album featured some fairly uninspired choices of songs by the likes of The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Cat Stevens and this one – “Here Comes The Night” by Van Morrison’s band Them.

Despite my stated admiration of Essex, I have to admit this isn’t his finest hour. His distinctive voice just about holds up but the whole thing felt like a big anachronism in 1993. David still had his long locks back then but never mind his barnet, check out the mahoosive mullet on his bass player. He still thought it was 1985 apparently. I’m glad David found some success at this time but I just wish it had been with a better project.

Wasn’t Robin S on the same show with Sybil the other week as well? I think she was. Back then, Sybil had a trio of backing dancers/singers to enhance her performance whilst Robin S took to the stage in complete solitude. This time however, she seems to have half inched Sybil’s entourage as she’s now got three dancers behind her. I wonder how the logistics of these things were decided upon? How was it deemed OK for Robin S to have no backing singers one week but three the next? Who sorted all this stuff out? The TOTP production team? The artist’s management? The label? Whatever the mechanics behind it all, “Show Me Love” was up to No 6 which would be its peak position despite this performance.

The Breakers section is jam packed with four tunes this week meaning each of them hardly get any airtime at all. As with the thought process behind the number of backing singers earlier, I wonder how the amount of Breakers was worked out each week? Sometimes it’s as low as two and I’m sure it’s been as high as five on occasion. Was it all just down to Head Producer Stanley Appel to have the casting vote?

However it was worked out, Dr. Alban was the first artist to make the cut this week. Yes, “It’s My Life” wasn’t the only hit he had. There was another one but only one. “Sing Hallelujah!” was its name and it was actually a hit on four separate occasions around Europe including in Hungary this year. In the UK though, once was enough and no wonder as this was a steaming pile of horseshit. I think the thing about the good doctor was that he was actually a really bad rapper. His voice was monotone and he garbled his words. This track had a gospel choir added to some perfunctory Italian house piano lines which we were somehow expected to be wowed by. Hadn’t (MC) Hammer already done that trick with the infinitely better “Do Not Pass Me By”?

“Sing Hallelujah!” made it to No 16 on the UK charts but surely Dr Alban’s legacy is his association with a Tampax advert.

Not only do we have David Essex on the show tonight but there’s also one of his 70s contemporaries. Yes, after last week’s in the flesh performance, Barry Manilow has crashed into the charts at No 22 with “Copacabana (At The Copa) 1993 Remix”.

Copacabana is of course a real place being a neighbourhood located in the Brazilian city of Rio De Janeiro and is famed for its 2.5 miles of beaches . Its New Year’s Eve celebrations are renowned across the world and in 1994 included a concert by Rod Stewart that was attended by…this can’t be right surely?…3.5 million people!

As for Manilow , Bazza’s no slouch in the touring department. Wikipedia lists twenty seven tours in his own right not including residency shows nor his early career stints as the opening act for the likes of Helen Reddy and Roberta Flack.

Encouraged by the success of the “Copacabana” remix, a follow up single was released, this time a remix of “Could It Be Magic” which grazed the charts at No 36. Maybe in 1993, people had become to used to the Take That version? This was Barry’s last UK Top 40 entry. Similarly, David Essex would only have one more visit to the charts in 1994 when a duet with Catherine Zeta Jones covering “True Love Ways” made No 38. Both would continue to be big live draws to this day though.

Next to a legendary US rock band but one which had a curious relationship with the UK charts. My knowledge of Aerosmith was non-existent until 1986 saw them team up with Run-DMC for their genre-bending hit “Walk This Way” but in my defence, they’d never had a song in the UK Top 40 to that point. That hit revitalised their career in the US and they released their “Permanent Vacation” album to commercial and critical success the following year.

Meanwhile, back in the UK we had returned to our habit of steadfastly ignoring them. None of the singles from “Permanent Vacation” were hits here. Fast forward a couple of years and we finally saw fit to give them another hit in the form of “Love In An Elevator” which was taken from the “Pump” album and which made No 13. After that had been and gone though, we reverted to type and ignored all the other singles from the album. As the new decade dawned, UK record buyers decided that maybe we’d made a mistake in not buying some of their previous stuff and so a rerelease from the “Permanent Vacation” album became a Top 20 hit. That song was “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” and was possibly rereleased off the back of it featuring heavily in the Robin Williams movie Mrs Doubtfire. And so to 1993 and it was time to indulge Steven Tyler, Joe Perry et al in another hit single. This time it was “Livin’ On The Edge” from the album “Get A Grip”. Was that the one with the cow’s udders on the cover?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yeah, thought it was. Anyway, the single was written in response to the Los Angeles riots incited by the acquittal of the white police officers who beat black motorist Rodney King. Nearly thirty years later and the world was to witness such tragic scenes again in America with the killing of George Floyd. Aerosmith had already made their position clear on the political and societal mood in the country that the Donald Trump era had ushered in when they sent a cease and desist letter to the president after “Livin’ On The Edge” had been played at one of his rallies in 2018. Good on ‘em.

As for how the song sounded, it didn’t seem too dissimilar to “Love In An Elevator” to me but it was criticised in the press for sounding too much like Bon Jovi! The single made No 19 at which point the UK decided it did rather like Aerosmith after all and made five of the six singles released from “Get A Grip” Top 40 hits. We seemed to have taken the album’s title to heart.

The final Breaker sees the the Lazarus like return of Duran Duran carry on at a pace with the release of “Come Undone” which would furnish the band with another hit following the surprise success of “Ordinary World”. A further example of their new, mature yet radio friendly sound, it wasn’t as immediate as its predecessor to my ears but became a rapidly established ear worm once heard a few times.

The track was actually a very late addition to their eponymous album referred to as the “Wedding Album” and was cooked up musically by Nick Rhodes and Warren Cuccurullo with the lyrics hastily developed by Simon Le Bon. I always quite liked the line “Happy Birthday to you was created for you” a lyric that Le Bon literally inserted as it was his wife Yasmin’s birthday at the time. Despite appearances to the contrary in the video, apparently John Taylor doesn’t play on the track as the bass line was created by a synth in his absence.

As I write this, the band have just played at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in their home city of Birmingham. Not everyone was watching though. Here’s comedian Mark Lamarr…

Harsh! If you follow the thread, Lamarr doesn’t hold back on his dislike of the band. “Come Undone” peaked at No 13 in the UK and No 7 in the US.

Wait! What? There was more than one hit from The Beloved’s “Conscience” album? I’ve been thinking these past thirty years that only “Sweet Harmony” had made the charts but here’s indisputable proof that I was wrong. “You’ve Got Me Thinking” made No 23 and was actually a double A-side with “Celebrate Your Life” (which I had no idea about either). Watching this performance back though, I’m realising that it’s quite the tune. Understated yet hypnotic, it perfectly fits Jon Marsh’s idiosyncratic vocal style. Yes, the performance is hardly scintillating with everyone on stage sat down throughout but that kind of feels right for such a blissed out tune somehow. A nice little find I think which you don’t get to say too often in these TOTP repeats.

To rack up one infamous TOTP appearance would be enough for most bands but two? I guess New Order weren’t most bands. Their 1983 appearance on the show to perform “Blue Monday” live has become almost legendary and will often appear on those When TV Goes Wrong list type programmes. It was a shambles but the band’s reputation came out of it intact on account of them being seen as edgy, daring heroes for trying to subvert the show’s by then stuffy, established format. Fast forward ten years and they were back with another turn that would go down in the annals of TV history for being…well…just bizarre.

After the collapse of the aforementioned Factory Records in 1992, New Order signed with London Records, something they were able to do without impediment as they didn’t actually have a formal contract with Factory. Indeed, the reason that a proposed buy out of Factory by London failed to happen was due to the fact that Factory didn’t own their artists’ material. The first release on their new label (indeed their first since “World In Motion” in 1990) was “Regret”. The lead single from their sixth studio album “Republic”, it’s surely one of their most well known songs thanks in part to that distinctive, stop start intro. It easily fitted into daytime radio playlists just as “True Faith” had done six years earlier and ended up being a huge hit when it peaked at No 4.

But aside from all that, there was this…the TOTP performance from Venice Beach, LA on the set of Baywatch. What. The. F**k? How did this happen? Well, the band were touring America in support of the album and wanted to keep the single selling as it was helping to get their Haçienda nightclub out of the financial shit. TOTP were always keen on a performance they could promote as an exclusive and so the band plotted and planned about what was the most extreme and ludicrous setting they could come up with for their appearance. They settled on the TV series Baywatch, a show as ludicrous as New Order’s proposal. Most of the cast bailed out that day except one man, a man of no inconsiderable musical career himself – David ‘The Hoff’ Hasselhoff. Rumours abound (though denied by the band) that he wanted to somehow join in musically with the performance – possibly the only thing that could have made the whole shebang even more out there. As it was, the sight of four pasty skinned Mancs miming next to extras in thong bikinis on a golden beach with frisbees flying about and a game of volleyball going on behind them was ludicrous enough. I’m sure I read somewhere that The Hoff proved to be a lovely guy and when some photos were taken with the band afterwards for posterity, he stood in a hole dug in the sand so as not to tower over the band too much.

Did I think the performance was mad at the time? Probably not. I probably just foolishly thought well, David Hasselhoff is famous and New Order are famous so why wouldn’t they know each other? With the hindsight of thirty years, it was all clearly bonkers!

It’s a second week at the top for The Bluebells and “Young At Heart” but instead of being in the studio as they have been on both previous appearances, we get the video this week. I actually like the fact that they didn’t bother making an updated promo and we just get the original from 1984, Clare Grogan and all. There’s also a cameo from Scottish actress Molly Weir who would have been known back in 1984 for her role as Hazel the McWitch in barmy childrens show Rentaghost. In 1993, I doubt she would have been as widely recognised. And is that Craig Gannon in the band line up who would go onto replace Andy Rourke in The Smiths briefly and whom Morrissey would label as ‘undiscussable’? I think it is.

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/m0019dvp/top-of-the-pops-08041993