Pet Shop Boys | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 07 APR 1994

Posted on March 7, 2023 by 80stastic

We’re a week into April 1994 here at TOTP Rewind and the world of music is about to be rocked to its core by a tragic event. The day after this TOTP aired, the body of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain was found at his Seattle home after he had committed suicide. The coroner estimated the time of death to have been around three days earlier. He was 27 years old when he died, joining the bizarre list of musicians, artists actors and other celebrities who passed away at that age. The rock world’s ‘27 Club’ members included Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Robert Johnson and Pete de Freitas before Cobain became its latest member. Amy Winehouse would add to its number in 2011 whilst Manic Street Preacher Richey Edwards was also 27 when he disappeared in February 1995 though legal process meant that he wasn’t declared dead for another seven years. I recall the tabloid front pages carrying that image of his corpse with just his protruding legs visible which seemed very invasive even back then. I’d never been a huge Nirvana fan but this was shocking news.

As the story didn’t break until the following day, TOTP makes no mention of it which is probably just as well as I’m not sure that chirpy host Andi Peters would have provided the right tone for any reference. Peters was a regular face on our TVs at the time. He’d graduated from Children’s BBC’s The Broom Cupboard to co-presenting the corporation’s Saturday morning kids show Live & Kicking. He was a face. However Andi, in the same way that Gary Lineker knew that he had to diversify to maintain a career after kicking a football for a living had to end, saw possibilities behind the camera rather than in front of it. He went on to be TV producer for shows such as The Noise, The O–Zone and Shipwrecked. He reached the pinnacle of that part of his career in 2003 when he returned from whence he came to be executive producer of a relaunched version of TOTP (rebranded as All New Top of the Pops). Failing to build the show’s falling audience, Peters resigned his position after two years following the show being moved to BBC2. Nowadays, you can catch him on Good Morning Britain promoting the show’s latest competitions. He’s still annoying, though in his defence, he doesn’t look a day older than he does here in 1994. My mate Robin knew him when he worked at the BBC. He got Robin to moonlight on the aforementioned The Noise show where he ended up being coerced into doing the conga with the Spice Girls. No, really.

No sign of the Spice Girls on this TOTP though (they wouldn’t arrive until 1996) but there are some big names on the show and some…well…not so big ones. We start with one of the latter. Black Machine anyone? This is quite unfair of course on your blogger as I struggled to say anything about this lot the last time they were on the show which was only last week and seeing as they were the play out song then, I’m having to comment on them twice in a row! Well, I’m nothing if not a trier so here goes. “How Gee” sounds very 1990 to me. What was that song by Chad Jackson? “Hear The Drummer Get Wicked”? Yeah, it sounds like that to me. Performance wise, they’ve clearly taken inspiration from The Blues Brothers with a robust back four of Jake and Elwood lookalikes while the front two rappers bust some moves. Sticking with the movie theme, “How Gee” was featured in the 2021 movie House Of Gucci starring such stellar names as Lady Gaga, Al Pacino, Adam Driver and Jared Leto. Sadly for Black Machine, they would not become a huge name in the world of music despite, as the TOTP caption says, “How Gee” selling a million copies worldwide.

It’s the ‘Battle of the Exclusives’ on tonight’s show according to Andi Peters starting with Erasure who are back after a year away with a track called “Always” from their sixth studio album “I Say I Say I Say”. I’d always liked Andy and Vince going right back to their debut single “Who Needs Love Like That” back in 1985 which used to get played at 17 years old me’s nightclub of choice The Barn in Worcester.

However, by 1994 I was starting to lose sight of them. Although “Always” is classic Erasure in many ways with its usual hooks and bitter sweet vocals from Andy Bell, I don’t recall it at all despite it being another huge hit for them (it was Top 10 all around Europe and No 4 in the UK). Why would I have suddenly become disinterested in a band that had soundtracked the whole of my student days? Had I decided that they weren’t 90s enough? I’m not sure but I do know that I never really rediscovered my enthusiasm for them after this point. Looking at their discography, I couldn’t tell you what any of their subsequent singles sounded like and the only album of theirs I own post the 80s is their 2013 Christmas one called “Snow Globe” that a friend bought me for…erm…Christmas.

https://youtu.be/LWunhP_vPKk

A huge tune by a huge name incoming! I say name but I think Prince was actually, officially going by that squiggly symbol in 1994. Or was it The Artist Formerly Known As Prince? Or TAFKAP? Or just The Artist?Or even Love Symbol? Whatever it was, he was doing it to display his displeasure about the working relationship between him and his record company Warner Bros. Records. Annoyed that they wouldn’t release his new material at the speed at which he was delivering it to them, he started to appear in public with ‘slave’ written on his face (he was infamously lampooned by Blur drummer Dave Rowntree who appeared on TOTP with ‘Dave’ writ large on his cheek).

Prince felt that the poor sales of his 1992 “Love Symbol” album was down to Warners not marketing it sufficiently and so he asked to release his single “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World” on his own NPG label. In doing so, he demonstrated that there was nothing that he couldn’t do when he came up with a devilishly clever marketing campaign for the single. He essentially placed a lonely hearts ad in various magazines asking women to send in photos to his Paisley Park complex and from the fifty thousand who did, he selected seven finalists to be in the single’s video and thirty semi finalists to be on the artwork for its cover. The single was a huge global hit including No 3 in the US and No 1 over here, famously his first and only in the UK (not counting Chaka Khan and Sinéad O’Connor who took covers of his songs to the top of the charts).

I always viewed “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World” as a bit of an anomaly. Firstly, there was it being released on his own label which as I recall meant it be distributed by Pinnacle in the UK rather than Warners which was odd. Then it didn’t appear on an album until 18 months later when “The Gold Experience” finally came out. Lastly, it seemed overly commercial for a Prince song. Was he writing a big, radio friendly hit to order as Warners had asked him to or was it some kind of “F**k you” from him to them with him showing that he could do all of that but he was planning on leaving Warners and therefore this was a “Here’s what you could have had” moment? I’m tending towards the latter. The fact that a lawsuit for plagiarism was successfully brought against Prince makes me think even more that he was giving Warners the finger. The song the courts found that he stole from was by one Raynard J and was called “Takin’ Me To Paradise” and was published by Warners’ own publishing company. That Prince made his point using a song that was already part of their catalogue just adds more spite to their dispute. To be fair to Prince, I can’t hear too many similarities between the tracks.

I should have mentioned earlier that there was another artist message this week before the titles began. This time it was from Pet Shop Boys who are on the show later. This was becoming a regular feature! And then, after the Prince video, we get another one from Take That who are in Germany but are on the show later as *SPOILER ALERT* the chart toppers. It all seems a bit pointless but I guess it was producer Ric Blaxill demonstrating that TOTP was still the show that the stars wanted to be on.

A new artist now as we get a first look at Tony Di Bart. This guy was almost the classic case of a perfect One Hit Wonder. Almost. The perfect template is to come from literally out of nowhere, have a No 1 record and promptly disappear never to be heard of again. This would have been the fate of ex-bathroom salesman Tony if not for the fact that he had one other minor hit as the follow up to said No 1. Curses! The Di Bart chart topper was “The Real Thing” (that dastardly second hit was “Do It” which made No 21) and was what was presumably described at the time as a ‘dance floor filler’.

I have to admit to not getting any of this little footnote in pop history at all. I thought the record was awful – I couldn’t stand his nasal voice – and didn’t understand at all why it would be a No 1. OK, maybe it was big in the clubs but it didn’t seem to have the crossover appeal that something like Haddaway’s “What Is Love” had. Also, with the best will in the world, Tony was hardly the most charismatic performer when it came to delivering the song. I mean, whether you liked “The One And Only” or not, you could see that Chesney Hawkes was a good vehicle for it but Tony? So how did it happen? I don’t know is my honest answer. Right place, right time? We’ll be seeing Tony again so maybe I’ll become more informed as to how this all came about on repeated viewings.

As with Haddaway last week, the next act on is somebody that I associate with 1993 entirely yet here he is in 1994 still having major hits. Bitty McLean shot to fame with a Fats Domino cover in “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)” and I thoroughly expected him to have his 15 minutes and then disappear but he actually managed to keep himself in the charts to the tune of seven hit singles of which “Dedicated To The One I Love” was his fourth. A cover of a song made famous by The Mamas And The Papas, it gave him his third Top 10 hit. I did find all these reggae-fied cover versions of pop standards a bit tedious I have to say but then it worked wonders for his mates UB40 who had huge hits like “Red Red Wine”, “Breakfast In Bed”, “I Got You Babe” and “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” so why wouldn’t he have gone down the same route? Fair play to him but it just did nothing for me. Bitty would go on to work and tour with dub reggae legends Sly and Robbie and in 2017 he delivered lectures on Jamaican music production techniques to the Westphalia School of Music in Philadelphia which is consistently ranked as one of the top music programs in the US. Maybe Bitty had better reggae credentials than first met the eye.

Next to a band that were on the verge of calling it a day. Little Angels had been consistent hitmakers since the start of the 90s with nine chart entries though only one of them had managed to make it into the Top 20. They had, however, achieved a No 1 album with “Jam” in 1992. So why had they decided to break up the band just two years later? Had they fallen out with their record company Polydor? Had they fallen out with each other? I don’t have the answers but they did go out with their second biggest hit ever when “Ten Miles High” peaked at No 18. Looking at the lyrics to the song, it certainly seems like it’s a valedictory track with lines like “Ten miles high and the end is in sight” and there’s also a reference to their humble beginnings and their journey to fame with “Down by Scarborough beach to the Madison Square”. Talking of Scarborough, the TOTP captions, which disappeared halfway through on a recent show, are back with a bang but couldn’t they have found something more complimentary to say about the band other than that they were from the seaside town given that this would have been their final TOTP appearance?

Little Angels released a Best Of later in the year entitled “A Little Of The Past” and played a sold out six date tour culminating in a final gig at the Royal Albert Hall. Inevitably, they reformed in 2012 for some festival dates but have not done anything together since 2013.

It’s a second time on the show now for Roachford and “Only To Be With You” and I still can’t find a clip of either TOTP performance on YouTube. The last time they were on, the single was languishing outside the Top 40 at that unluckiest of chart positions No 41 but good fortune was on Roachford’s side as new producer Ric Blaxill gave them a prime slot anyway and the exposure propelled it up the charts. This time around they are twenty places higher at No 21 which perhaps shows that the show still had the power to make hits. Or maybe not. Despite this performance, the single went down the charts by one place the following week. It’s all very confusing.

Time for the second contender in ‘The Battle of the Exclusives’ now as Pet Shop Boys enter the ring to duke it out with Erasure. It seems somehow fitting that it’s these two artists as they always seem to go together in my mind. There’s some obvious reasons for this. Both are duos, both made synthesizer heavy pop music, both came to prominence around the same time (‘85-‘86) and both had a gay vocalist (Neil Tennant actually came out as gay in this year via an interview with Attitude magazine to the surprise of nobody). There’s one more thing though. As with Erasure, Pet Shop Boys had soundtracked my youth but by 1994 I was losing sight of them as well. Again, I’m not sure why but I didn’t seem to be interested in any of the albums they released during the rest of the decade. Maybe it was that dreadful Comic Relief song (“Absolutely Fabulous”) that finally put me off. Neil and Chris got along very well without me of course still making some fine tunes and indeed, all was not lost for me. 2002’s…ahem…”I Get Along” single was a great pop tune and just last year I finally got to see them live (the date had been postponed for two years due to the pandemic) and they were great. Back in 1994 though, I was struggling to care. This single – “Liberation” – is classic Pet Shop Boys ballad territory akin to “Being Boring” or “Jealousy” but it just seemed to pass me by.

There was a lot of fuss about the song’s video which was almost completely CGI and also had a 3D element to it which made it perfect for Cyberworld, an early 3D cinema demonstration which was shown on IMAX screens and touring roadshows throughout the UK. Given all that expense and hype, there was no way that Neil and Chris weren’t going to incorporate it into their performance here which, as Andi Peters points out, you can’t miss.

So who won ‘The Battle of the Exclusives’? Per Shop Boys edge it performance wise for me thanks to that video but Erasure got the biggest chart peak of No 4 whilst “Liberation” trailed in at No 14. However , it was the fourth of five singles taken from their “Very” album so maybe that was a factor.

The aforementioned Take That are No 1 (of course they are) with “Everything Changes”. Their fourth single to go straight in at No 1, not even Slade, The Jam, Queen nor Elvis could match that.

I said the other week that though I didn’t think much of this song, if it had been one of Wham!’s poppier moments, would we have been lauding yet another George Michael classic? I’ve worked out why I drew that comparison now; “Everything Changes” has a distinct flavour of this track from Wham!’s “Make It Big” album:

Now I find out though that this wasn’t a George Michael original after all but a cover of an Isley Brothers song! I hate it when a plan falls apart!

The play out track is yet another cover. I have to say that I have zero recall of A.M. City’s take on “Pull Up To The Bumper” by Grace Jones. The reason for that is probably because it only made No 83 in the charts and the reason for that was that it was dreadful. To say that Ric Blaxill made a big deal of predicting new entries in the Top 40 for the following week by means of a rolling script across the screen during the No 1 record, he was bloody awful at picking them for the play out music. How many duds is this now? Two? Three? Get your game together Ric!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Black Machine	How Gee	No
2	Erasure	Always	I think we’ve established that I was losing interest by this point
3	Prince	The Most Beautiful Girl In The World	I did not
4	Tony Di Bart	The Real Thing	No – I didn’t get it at all
5	Bitty McLean	Dedicated To The One I Love	Nope
6	Little Angels	Ten Miles High	Nah
7	Roachford	Only To Be With You	Negative
8	Pet Shop Boys	Liberation	See 2 above
9	Take That	Everything Changes	Never
10	A.M. City	Pull Up To The Bumper	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/m001jf1y/top-of-the-pops-07041994

TOTP 09 DEC 1993

Posted on December 7, 2022 by 80stastic

In the last post I made a claim that the No 1 was a bit of an anticlimax on the grounds that it followed the biggest boy band around who performed in the studio against a backdrop of 3D images (ooh!). By comparison, the No 1 was in its seventh week at the top and we were surely all getting a bit fed up of its video. It doesn’t seem right though does it? TOTP was always a chart based show highlighting which songs were the most popular in a chronological way via the chart countdown. Despite the use of such a linear tool, the implication is that the excitement heightens as we get to the nation’s favourite song. But what if said record doesn’t deserve such a reception? I realise this leaves me open to accusations of musical snobbery but if the No 1 is so heinous, what’s the plan? The question is especially relevant to this particular TOTP as, like a Tory minister doubling down on a failed economic policy, the ending of this show has two terrible songs.

Having said all of the above, the start of the show is pretty ropey as well. Bad Boys Inc were one of the many awful boy bands that appeared in the wake of Take That during the 90s. The whole thing reeked of cynicism with no more of a bigger example than this slushy ballad aimed at the Christmas market. After, two uptempo pop singles had made them bona fide chart stars (albeit in quite a minor way), they took that well worn path of releasing a slowie as their third single to, you know, showcase their diversity. The fact that it was shoved out into the marketplace as Christmas approached was surely just coincidence no? “Walking On Air” (note the similarity of title to established festive tune “Walking In The Air” from The Snowman) was ghastly whilst the performance here (I can’t find it in YouTube as nobody seems interested in recording it for posterity) is just as dire. The lead singer out front forever putting his hand to his heart to show his sincerity backed by three twirling, sliding goons all performing on a bed of dry ice. What a shower!

Disregarding the Bee Gees, I haven’t heard such high pitched vocals since Modern Romance did their ballad “Walking In The Rain” a decade earlier. What is it with ballads and the word ‘walking’? “Walking In Air”, “Walking In The Rain”, “Walking In Memphis” and of course who could forget George Michael’s ‘guilty feet’ in “Careless Whisper”. The record buying public showed their lack of affection for Bad Boys Inc with their own feet by walking past their local record shop and therefore not buying their single. It peaked at No 24.

Now here’s a very old track (even in 1993) which was suddenly and maybe surprisingly a very big hit. Sudden because it’s gone straight into the chart at No 5 and surprising because when it was first released in 1981 it did nothing at all sales wise. There is a reason for its explosion of popularity though and as usual it’s to do with record company promotional activities. “Controversy” was the title track from Prince’s fourth studio album and by 1993 he’d added another ten to that number so why was it plucked for single release at this point in his career? To advertise a Best Of album of course. “The Hits 1”, “The Hits 2” and “The Hits / The B sides” was a triple headed beast of a release documenting The Purple One’s best/most well known/biggest (delete as applicable) songs so far. Previous single “Peach” was released in the October to promote the set but that was a brand new composition I think. To give the Best Ofs an extra push for Christmas, another single was required and “Controversy” was selected for the job. Did I know this track? Don’t think I did. I only cottoned onto Prince from about 1983 when conversely “1999” was in the charts the first time around. Did I like it? Not that much. Was I surprised that it was such a big hit? Yes I was. As with “Peach” though, the two CD singles contained hits that weren’t included on the Hits albums plus there was a William Orbit remix of “The Future” so maybe that was it?

We’re back to this trend of the TOTP hosts telling us that an artist should have been on the show but can’t be because they’re ill/indisposed etc. I asked the other week why they bothered with this practice as they could have just shown the video without saying anything and we wouldn’t have known any better. This week, they’ve doubled down like…ah I’ve been here before haven’t I? They have made a complete spectacle of this issue though with Gabrielle. According to presenter Mark Franklin she can’t perform in the studio tonight and the reason is…Well, let’s ask Gabrielle herself because she’s in the actual studio! What?! Mark asks her if she’s OK and Gabrielle days “Not at the moment because I’ve got flu”. Got flu?! Got flu?! Why aren’t you in bed Gabrielle?! This is madness! Look, when I’ve had flu I’ve had to crawl to the bathroom if I needed the loo on my hands and knees. The idea that I could have got myself into a TV studio and been interviewed in front of a TV audience of millions is just unconscionable. I don’t wish to doubt her but really?!

Anyway, enough of the health issues, what about the music? Well, I’m guessing that Gabrielle’s record label were ever so slightly uncomfortable at this point. After the euphoria of a No 1 single with her debut single “Dreams”, might they have been expecting a bigger follow up hit than the No 9 that the unfortunately entitled “Going Nowhere” supplied? If so, then a lot must have been riding on “I Wish”. Sadly, it wasn’t really up to the task being a fairly average piece of soul/pop and it peaked at No 26. Maybe it just got lost in the Christmas rush. Gabrielle would recover to bag a further eight Top 10 hits including No 1 “Rise” in 2000. Seems like Gabrielle’s wish came true.

The Bee Gees are up to No 6 in an unexpected tilt at the Christmas No 1 spot with “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. To mark the event we get a live by satellite performance from New York. As with the vast majority of these satellite specials, it’s a total let down. Maybe I’m viewing them through 2022 eyes and in 1993 it may have been a major event but I can’t help but think it’s totally lame. A completely uneventful run through of the song performed underneath Brooklyn Bridge is interlaced with some totally non related shots of ice skating at the Rockefeller Center. And that’s it. Yes, it’s a cinematic backdrop I guess with the Statue of Liberty visible in the background and a helicopter comes into view at one point but I was more fascinated by who the fourth Bee Gee was up there with Barry, Maurice and Robin.

There’s an easy line to be written here about the next artist and the title of her latest single but I’m not that obvious. All I’ll say is that 1993 is surely a year that Dina Carroll would never forget. Five hit singles and an album that was the highest selling debut by a British female artist in UK chart history at the time? It was the stuff of dreams. The last of those five hits was “The Perfect Year” which was from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Sunset Boulevard. It seemed a bit of an anomaly to me at the time. Firstly, it wasn’t on the aforementioned album (“So Close”) which confused and upset a few punters in the Our Price store I was working in and wouldn’t appear on an album until Dina’s sophomore effort “Only Human” appeared a whole three years later.

Secondly, the schedule for its release had clearly been set to cash in on the Christmas holidays market with the lyrics even referencing New Year’s Eve but it was hampered by the extended success of previous single “Don’t Be A Stranger”. So well received had it been that it was still in the Top 10 and outsold “The Perfect Year” on the latter’s first week of release. Clearly, record label A&M would not have wanted her previous hit to be splitting sales of her new one but because of the latter’s Christmas theme, they couldn’t keep it back any later. Dina having two simultaneous hits added to the customer confusion in store:

Customer: Do you have the Dina Carroll single?

Me: Which one? There’s two

Customer: The one that’s in the charts

Me: They both are

Customer: The one that’s a big ballad

Me: They both are

Customer: Well, I’ll get her album then I’m covered

Me: Her album doesn’t have both singles on it

Customer: Are you having a laugh?

Me: Not really, no

Dina’s performance here is very professional but then she’d had plenty of practice at being on TOTP that year. It felt like she was on the show every other week. Her black and white outfit is very effective against the Wintery backdrop though those impractical, oversized sleeves must have been a nightmare at the dinner table. Also, why did they feel the need to insert some clips (presumably) from the video while Dina was singing? They looked so incongruous. Children running across a field and then staring at the camera motionless – why? Then there’s the old fella. The expression he had on his face reminded me of something and it’s this. My sadly departed mother-in-law used to work as a receptionist in a doctor’s surgery and would sometimes bring home freebies from the pharmaceutical companies like mugs. She had one that was just an old man grinning on it. The first time I saw it I couldn’t understand why anyone would have that image on a mug and then I turned it around and saw the drug it was advertising – it was a brand of laxative. Aaah…

“The Perfect Year” had to settle for a chart peak of No 5, two places lower than “Don’t Be A Stranger”.

https://youtu.be/oIwVk6aFuek

Four Breakers now starting with UB40 whose single “Bring Me Your Cup” I don’t recall at all. It was the third track lifted from their “Promises And Lies” album and listening to it now, it’s actually a lot better than I was expecting. It starts out very understated but forms an unexpected ear worm very quickly with its lilting rhythm allied to Ali Campbell’s soothing vocals. Should probably have been a bigger hit than No 24 but then the album had been out for over four months by then so maybe it was to be expected. Not a bad effort though.

In amongst the endless diet of Eurodance bollocks that 1993 served up there were the occasional morsels of unexpected taste. Songs that would appear for no apparent reason and then the artist would pretty much disappear again. Off the top of my head I’m thinking Spin Doctors, The Frank and Walters and this lot – Blind Melon. These US psychedelic rockers reminded me of fellow countrymen Jellyfish who similarly are known in this country for one hit and not much else despite there being so much more to them. Blind Melon’s contribution to the story of 1993 was “No Rain”, a hippy, trippy, winsome tune with some Beatles influences thrown in for good measure. It sounded like an antidote to some of the god awfulness populating the charts and yet again a complete outlier.

Helping to promote the song was the video featuring the ‘bee girl’, a tap dancer in a bee costume and large glasses who gets laughed off stage and then spends the rest of the film trying to dance for anyone who will let her. She eventually finds an unlikely outlet for her routine – a field of similarly dressed people all dancing together. The girl playing the character would become a bit of a star, hobnobbing with the likes of Madonna at the MTV awards before having a career as an actress appearing in two episodes of US medical drama ER. Blind Melon themselves would have two further very minor UK chart hits before disbanding in 1999. They have reformed a couple of times since despite the drugs overdose death of vocalist Shannon Hoon.

Name a Pet Shop Boys single released in 1993? “Go West” right? Has to be. No? “Can You Forgive Her” then? Still not the one you’re thinking of? “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing” – well, no I don’t habitually spend hours trying to remember the titles of Pet Shop Boys singles but…oh, of course! That was the third track released from their “Very” album and in many ways is the quintessential PSB song. Eccentric title? Check! Swirly synth back beat? Check! Gloriously catchy, camp melody? Check! Typically deadpan vocals from Neil Tennant? Check! This was what they did best. Sadly, I think it got caught up in the Christmas rush and didn’t even make the Top 10, peaking at No 13.

The kaleidoscopic video features Chris and Neil in daft wigs that make the former look like Mike Flowers of Mike Flowers Pops (two years before anybody knew who he was) and the latter like Louis Balfour, host of The Fast Show’s Jazz Club. Nice!

The final Breaker comes from “the most successful rap group of 1993” according to host Mark Franklin. Were Cypress Hill that big?

*checks their bio*

Seems they were. The band have sold 20 million albums worldwide and in 1993 their second album “Black Sunday” went straight into the US charts at No 1 selling 261,000 copies in its first week. Their eponymous debut album was also still on the charts at the same time and they became the first hip hop artist to have two albums in the Top 10 simultaneously.

From “Black Sunday” came this third single “I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That”. I’d liked the House Of Pain sounding “Insane In The Brain” (who couldn’t?) but by this one I’d probably lost interest. Maybe I had a beef with them as the album was one of those that always needed a temporary inlay card to display it otherwise the real CD cover would get nicked especially as the booklet contained 19 facts about the history of hemp and the positive attributes of cannabis. The middle class, white kids in Altrincham where I was working loved all of that stuff and especially those T-shirts and posters with the image of an alien on them with a massive reefer blazing up bearing the legend ‘Take me to your dealer’. Laughed their arses off at that every time.

“I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That” peaked at No 15.

We have arrived at the first of those two terrible songs that end the show. By 1993, Cliff Richard was absolutely synonymous with Christmas. Not only had he claimed the festive No 1 twice since 1988 (thrice if you count his contribution to Band Aid II) but he seemed to have a tilt at it every year. “We Should Be Together” was his offering in 1991 peaking at No 10 and “I Still Believe In You” was strategically released in late November the following year to try and capture those Christmas sales making it to No 7. Come 1993 and Cliff was chancing his arm once more with “Healing Love”. Not a specifically Christmas themed song for once, it was actually the last of five singles released from his “The Album”…erm…album. It was co-written by Nik Kershaw who knows his way around a decent pop tune but this definitely wasn’t one of them. It’s not just that it’s a sluggish, turgid, completely unexceptional tune but the lyrics are dreadful. Really hackneyed stuff about losing the battle but winning the war and how about this for a line a seven year old could have written…

“Now I can see that you’re feeling sad…”

Come on! For this performance, Cliff has turned up in a jacket and tie and looks like he’s got his schedule wrong and was expecting to be on Wogan and not TOTP. As ever, he’s brought with him that guy from the aforementioned Modern Romance as one of his backing singers who’s been with him since “Mistletoe And Wine”.

“Healing Love” never hit a sniff at topping the charts peaking at No 19 but Cliff never really gave up on his quest for another Christmas No 1. The following year, he teamed up with his old pal Phil Everly for a double A-side of “All I Have To Do Is Dream” and a remix of his old hit “Miss You Nights” but it topped out at No 14. He couldn’t have come any closer in 1999 with the divisive “The Millennium Prayer” which actually went to No 1 and was still top of the pile with just one week to go before being toppled by Westlife. Undeterred, he went again in 2003 (“Santa’s List” – No 5) and 2006 (“21st Century Christmas” – No 2) and this year he has released a Christmas album. Cliff was 82 in October. You have to admire his longevity if not his music.

Just…just…f*****g WHY?! What were people thinking?! Oh, yeah. Of course. There was no thinking happening at all. A complete lack of brain activity. How else can you explain this total failure of any sense of taste on such a widespread scale? This monumental aberration. Nothing about “Mr Blobby” by Mr Blobby deserved anything but our complete contempt. So why was it f*****g No 1? Were 5 year olds (or their parents) buying it? When The Teletubbies became a phenomenon a few years later with the pre school population and released a record, I could just about understand parents doing just that but Mr Blobby wasn’t quite the same type of character. His beginnings weren’t on children’s TV but an early evening light entertainment show presumably not being watched by toddlers so who was his single appealing to? It certainly wasn’t funny and neither was its accompanying video which featured a number of celebrity cameos. Obviously, Edmonds was there being responsible for the whole debacle but there’s also a very young looking Jeremy Clarkson as Mr Blobby’s limo driver, Carole Vorderman, Wayne Sleep and bizarrely ex-footballer and pundit Garth Crooks. Mr Blobby is seen in various scenes where he inevitably falls over destroying everything in his path which includes parodies of four well known recent pop promos – “Addicted To Love” by Robert Palmer, “Rhythm Is A Dancer” by Snap!, “I Can’t Dance” by Genesis and “Stay” by Shakespear’s Sister. The last one particularly grinds my gears for the pure reason that it uses actual footage of the original in the parody – why? We all knew which video it was lampooning when the camera switched to the lookalike Marcella Detroit so why try and install some credibility by using images of the real one? I don’t know why this especially offends me but it does. Anyway, this madness will all be over soon as Take That will be top of the charts next week and surely also the Christmas No 1 won’t it? Won’t it?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bad Boys Inc	Walking On Air	Of course not
2	Prince	Controversy	No
3	Gabrielle	I Wish	Nope
4	Bee Gees	For Whom The Bell Tolls	I did not
5	Dina Carroll	The Perfect Year	Nah
6	UB40	Bring Me Your Cup	Negative
7	Blind Melon	No Rain	No but maybe should have
8	Pet Shop Boys	I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing	No but I assume it’s on their Pop Art Best Of which I have
9	Cypress Hill	I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That	It’s another no
10	Cliff Richard	Healing Love	Never happening
11	Mr Blobby	Mr Blobby	What do you think?

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/m001frnn/top-of-the-pops-09121993

TOTP 16 SEP 1993

Posted on October 21, 2022 by 80stastic

There’s some massive tunes and stellar names on this particular TOTP starting with one of the biggest rock songs of all time. Who doesn’t know “Ace Of Spades” by Motörhead? Seriously though, who doesn’t?

Enter Motörhead fan, stage left…

MF: Alright pal. What other Motörhead songs do you know?

Me: Erm…well…there’s that one about…you know…um…ahh…Oh God! I don’t know any others!

Yes, turns out I’m not really an aficionado on Motörhead at all though I do like “Ace Of Spades” but then who doesn’t (don’t start all that again!). What I do know however is that during their early 1980s heyday I read a series of articles about the band in the Daily Mirror (our family’s choice of paper) where I learned of the classic line up of Lemmy, Phil ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor and ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke. I also read of their tales of debauchery involving what they called ‘dodgy boilers’ who even the wet behind the ears 12 year old me knew referred to groupies who were prepared to get horizontal to meet their idols.

Sadly, all three of the classic line up have now shuffled off this mortal coil with the band officially disbanding following Lemmy’s death in 2015. Still, all us 80s kids will always have this…

The iconic tunes continue with the Pet Shop Boys treatment of The Village People classic “Go West”. This cover version had been first performed by the duo at an AIDS charity gig at the Haçienda nightclub in Manchester organised by Derek Jarman. Originally scheduled for a non-album release in 1992, it was eventually included in the set list for their fifth studio album “Very”.

I recall there being a real buzz about this single – I have a distinct memory of Simon Bates (who must have been coming to the end of his time at Radio 1) asking on air when it was going to be released. Certainly it provided a spike in sales of “Very” when it entered the chart at No 2. Somehow it never made it to that coveted top spot though.

Watching the video back now, it seems madly prophetic with Neil and Chris striding across Red Square in blue and yellow costumes which offer up images of the war in Ukraine perpetrated by Russia. This is hammered home by the intro which seems strangely redolent of the State Anthem of the Soviet Union. Obviously, nobody would have been considering any of that back in 1993 when we would probably have been marvelling at the CGI of the promo by Howard Greenhalgh which was nominated for a Grammy.

I saw the Pet Shop Boys live about six months ago with a friend and this track was a stand out inducing much hugging, swaying and singing along. Chris and Neil would never have as big a hit single again.

Another huge song now as we see the TOTP debut of Radiohead. So much has been written about “Creep” let alone the band themselves so I don’t think I can add anything much to that particular canon of work. However, these are my personal thoughts and memories for what they are worth.

I’d heard of Radiohead due to their minor hit single “Anyone Can Play Guitar” from earlier in the year but hadn’t actually heard Radiohead if you see what I mean. The initial release of “Creep” from 1992 when it failed to chart hadn’t registered on my musical radar. I’d kept meaning to give their debut album “Pablo Honey” a play on the shop stereo but never got round to it. Suddenly though, there was a huge buzz around “Creep” again. Why? It had been a big hit in Israel and gained a lot of airplay on alternative rock radio stations in the US which, in a Spinal Tap “Sex Farm” has gone Top 10 in Japan style, convinced EMI to rerelease it against the band’s wishes. Their decision was rewarded with a No 7 smash hit single.

Knowing what we do now about what the band went onto do, watching this performance back seems a little surreal. Compared to even their next album “The Bends”, “Creep” has a rather unsophisticated albeit massive sound to it. Or maybe it’s just being confronted by the shock of Thom Yorke’s peroxide blonde hair that grates. That’s not to say “Creep” isn’t a good (or even great) song just that its legacy wouldn’t be being chief representative of their catalogue. Indeed, for a while it became one of those songs that becomes an albatross around an artist’s neck. The band nearly imploded from the record company expectations of writing a similar follow up and refused to play it live for years.

For all that though, you can’t underestimate the impact of the performance here on TOTP – it blew most other songs in the chart away. That ‘ch-chunk’ guitar sound from Jonny Greenwood’s guitar was off the scale whilst Yorke’s tortured vocals could not be ignored. This was the performance Nirvana should have given on the show for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” instead of that comedy turn they served up. Certainly only Motörhead could compete on this particular show. “Creep” then – by no means Radiohead’s best song but it was still much more than just a slacker anthem.

That run of three choice tracks on the spin comes to an end then (in my humble opinion) with yet some more slick but soulless US R’n’B courtesy of Jade. A third consecutive hit for the Chicago trio, “One Woman” was a big ballad unlike their previous two, hip-hop influenced singles “Don’t Walk Away” and “I Wanna Love You” but although it’s a very accomplished sound I’m sure, it did little for me. And hadn’t we seen the choreography with a chair routine before from Janet Jackson? Or was it Madonna? Or Liza Minnelli in Cabaret? “One Woman” peaked at No 22 both here and in the US.

Another live by satellite performance now. This time it’s from Minneapolis and is by Lenny Kravitz. Is this the third time he’s been on the show doing “Heaven Help”? It feels like it and means I have very little left to say about this one…

…other than check out the hair on his backing band. The guitarist’s Afro is immense but then you see his drummer’s. Wow! If Roy Wood and the drummer from Wizzard had a love child…

Just the three Breakers this week starting with ex–Massive Attack singer Shara Nelson and “One Goodbye In Ten”. The follow up to Top 20 hit “Down That Road”, quite what we were meant to make of it after hearing just sixteen seconds of it here (I timed it) I have no idea. Sixteen seconds! What was the point?! Seriously though Stanley Appel, sixteen seconds?! Having listened to the full song on YouTube, it seems to me to be a pleasant enough ditty with a Motown-esque feel to it and some nicely inserted strings but just on the wrong side of lightweight. It would peak at No 21, two places lower than her debut hit.

What the Roxette is going on here? Marie and Per were back in the charts with “It Must Have Been Love” again? Host Mark Franklin tells us it’s because of the film it was taken from Pretty Woman having its terrestrial TV premiere recently and therefore record company EMI had rereleased it to cash in on its second wave of popularity. Yes kids, back in the day before Spotify and streaming platforms had been invented allowing continuous access to just about everything song wise, events like this would happen regularly. Off the top of my head, Berlin went back into the charts with “Take My Breath Away” four years after it was a hit initially thanks to the TV showing of Top Gun and Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes experienced a similar thing with “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” when Dirty Dancing made it to our TV screens four years after the cinema release of the film.

I wonder what Marie and Per felt about the rerelease? It’s not as if they hadn’t recorded any other material since “It Must Have Been Love” was originally a hit in 1990. In fact, they were very consistent visitors to our charts so would they have been pleased to see that by making No 10 in 1993, it became their third biggest hit over here of the eight singles they had released in the intervening years? Maybe they just thought about the royalties cheques.

1993 saw the first new material from Kate Bush of the decade. Her last studio album had been 1989’s “The Sensual World” and apart from her version of “Rocket Man” for the Elton John /Bernie Taupin tribute album “Two Rooms”, we hadn’t heard from her since. “Rubberband Girl” was the lead single from her album “The Red Shoes” and like three of her last five singles released, would improbably peak at No 12 in the charts. Was that a good return for such a big name? I dunno. Maybe Kate was always more of an album artist and her fan base would be waiting for “The Red Shoes” itself to come out? I know my wife did.

As for the song, Kate herself dismisses it rather as:

Well, it’s a fun track […] It’s just a silly pop song really […]
Mojo magazine (UK) 2011

Other online reviews I have read say the song’s production values date it and that it feels like an outlier on the rest of the album. I don’t know about any of that but I found it engaging enough. I assume the lyrics reflect somebody bouncing back from a setback? Kate Bush does Chumbawumba? Or is it more literal than that and Kate is talking about a dancer who just wants to be supple? The album cover does depict a drawing of red ballet shoes and Kate did release a short film in conjunction with the album called The Line, The Cross And The Curve in which she played a dancer who puts on a pair of magical ballet shoes. Whatever. I thought it was OK but nowhere near the standard of some of her early career classics.

No! No! No! Not Chaka Demus And Pliers again! “Tease Me” has only just gone out of the charts and they’re immediately back in with the follow up “She Don’t Let Nobody”. I have to say I don’t recall this one despite its No 4 chart peak. “Tease Me” yeah of course and their chart topper cover of “Twist And Shout” obviously but this one? It escaped the memory bank somehow.

I wasn’t expecting much based on “Tease Me” which seemed to be full of either Chaka Demus or Pliers (I’ve no idea which) shouting “Baby Girl” or “Number One In The World” repeatedly. Having listened to it though, it could have been worse. It’s almost a proper song which I guess is not surprising seeing as it was written by soul legend Curtis Mayfield. Obviously, it’s completely ruined by the inclusion of all the rapping/toasting but you know, the template was there.

If a week is a long time in politics (and that has been proven beyond any doubt by recent events in Westminster), it is also true that a year can be an eternity in pop music. Multiply that by five and it feels like time has bent and warped and no longer exists by any temporal measures. Five years though was the real time gap between Belinda Carlisle hitting No 1 with “Heaven Is A Place On Earth” and her 1993 incarnation. By this point in her career, the hits were much smaller in the UK and non-existent in America. Her last album “Live Your Life Be Free” hadn’t yielded any Top 10 singles and neither would this, her next album, “Real” though lead single “Big Scary Animal” came close when it peaked at No 12.

I was working at the Our Price store in Stockport by now having transferred from Rochdale and the staff there were quite unforgiving of artists deemed to not be credible. Belinda came into that category and there was much mocking of the title of her latest single which I didn’t quite understand. What I did understand was that this wasn’t much of a departure from her usual fare. Pleasant song with a big hooky chorus? You betcha. Still, if it ain’t broke and all that…

The album sneaked into the Top 10 at No 9 but just a year earlier, her first Greatest Hits collection had gone to No 1 suggesting that there was an appetite for her earlier work but maybe not her new stuff. I think maybe Madonna went through a similar thing with “The Immaculate Collection” release. In 1996 though, she bucked that trend when her album “A Woman & A Man” provided her with two Top 10 UK singles.

Oh, yes. I had to watch this performance very closely to realise that the blonde haired guitarist on the left wasn’t Nick Beggs of Kajagoogoo who toured with Belinda around this time and worked with her on the aforementioned “A Woman & A Man” record.

Still at No 1 are Culture Beat with “Mr.Vain” although this will be the last of four weeks at the top. The single would end up being the 10th biggest seller of 1993 in the UK. The rest of that Top 10? Oh god it was awful. Haddaway, Shaggy, 2 Unlimited, Ace Of Base…and horror upon horror another single with the prefix ‘Mr.’…”Mr.Blobby”. “Mr…f*****g…Blobby”. I give up.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Motörhead	Ace Of Spades	I must have it on something surely?!
2	Pet Shop Boys	Go West	No but I have it on there Pop Art collection
3	Radiohead	Creep	No but I had it on one off those Best Album Ever…indie compilations
4	Jade	Oner Woman	Nah
5	Lenny Kravitz	Heaven Help	I did not
6	Shara Nelson	One Goodbye In Ten	Nope
7	Roxette	It Must Have Been Love	No
8	Kate Bush	Rubberband Girl	No but my wife had the Red Shoes album
9	Chaka Demus And Pliers	She Don’t Let Nobody	Of course not
10	Belinda Carlisle	Big Scary Animal	Negative
11	Culture Beat	Mr. Vain	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/m001d09z/top-of-the-pops-16091993

TOTP 10 JUN 1993

Posted on September 3, 2022 by 80stastic

June 1993 saw the demise of two big names in the world of comedy – one a performer and one a TV show. The former was comedian Les Dawson who died on the same day this TOTP aired aged just 62. The latter was US sitcom Cheers which ended this year after 275 episodes over 11 seasons. Channel 4 broadcast the final three shows over the weekend following this TOTP. Both had a musical element to them. Dawson included his wonky piano playing in his act whilst Cheers had one of the greatest theme tunes of all time…

Let’s see if any of the tunes on this TOTP are anywhere near as good as Gary Portnoy’s famous song…

Certainly not this one! As I said in the last post when confronted by Eurodance merchant Haddaway opening the show, I’d totally had enough of that particular genre of music by this point. This time it’s the turn of Snap! to be the first act on with their new single “Do You See The Light (Looking For)”. The TOTP producers often seemed to top the show’s running order with a dance act. In recent weeks we’ve had Stereo MCs, Felix and 2 Unlimited in addition to Haddaway. I guess it made sense to try and begin proceedings with a bang. The year zero revamp hadn’t quite let go of the party atmosphere era of Michael Hurll. Having said that, the performance here of Snap! featuring Niki Harris seems to suggest a soirée rather than a massive rave-up. I have to say that as objectionable as his views were, the group seemed to lose something when rapper Turbo B left. The performance here seems very lacklustre. Maybe if the set hadn’t been so sparse it might have sparked things into life a bit. And why do the backing singers resemble water nymphs?

This track was taken from “The Madman’s Return” album and the album version of it is quite different with vocals by Thea Austin instead of Niki Harris, a rap by the aforementioned Turbo B and even a (slightly) different title in “See The Light”. The single version peaked at No 10 and No 14 in 2002 when it was remixed and rereleased.

Spin Doctors are still going up the charts? Checking its stats, “Two Princes” remained on the chart for 18 weeks so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a pretty nifty tune all said and done and there was a brief moment in time when the band seemed to be the next big thing. Parent album “Pocketful Of Kryptonite” went to No 2 and achieved platinum sales in Europe and yet somehow it all seemed to stall and fall away on both sides of the Atlantic.

If I’m honest, the follow up singles just weren’t as good. “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” just didn’t capture the imagination in the same way as “Two Princes” although in the case of the latter, in a three way race of Superman themed singles, they definitely finish above Laurie Anderson and Black Lace.

“Two Princes” peaked at No 3 in the UK.

A proper pop moment next as TOTP brings us the return of Pet Shop Boys. Neil and Chris had been away for only 18 months or so but their last release had been their first official Best Of album “Discography” which on reflection felt like a line in the sand drawing to a close the first part of their career. What would the first material of their next phase be like? Well, not too dissimilar to their previous work to be fair. “Can You Forgive Her” didn’t feel like a massive departure from what had gone before but then Neil Tennant’s voice is so distinctive that it overrides sometimes any potential musical deviation on their behalf. Not always of course. For example, something like “Jealousy” or “Se A Vida É” sound nothing like “West End Girls” but in the case of “Can You Forgive Her”, it didn’t seem, to me anyway, like a radical new sound. Not that it wasn’t any good either though. It had a strident feel to it, enabled by a punchy chorus that demanded to be heard. And heard it was as it gave the duo their first Top 10 hit in two years after their previous three singles all failed to make that achievement.

Somehow though it always feels overshadowed by the second single to be lifted from parent album “Very” which was the enormous hit that was the cover of Village People’s “Go West”. Initial copies of the album came in an orange CD jewel case featuring raised bumps which resembled Lego. In those days, the Our Price chain I worked for didn’t use security tagging and so the CDs we sold weren’t ‘live’ on the shelves as it were. The actual CDs were filed away behind the counter so the cases were empty. However, the manager of the store I was working in when the album came out thought the Lego case so nickable that we kept those behind the counter as well and had a dummy case on display that used the inner back sleeve to say what it was. Genius! Except it was a pain in the arse to put together when selling it to a customer and we also had a few people ask if our dummy sleeve was somehow a different version of the album. It would be another five years before I worked in an Our Price that displayed CDs live.

Anyway, back to the show and this performance really does give us the pop moment I referred to earlier. There’s so much to unpack here. The over exaggerated pointy dunce hats, Neil Tennant in a high chair, the cricket bat wielding space cadet backing dancers, a huge egg on stage for no reason but most of all there was Chris Lowe. The perennially motionless man moved more in that one performance than in all his previous ones added together. What had got into him? There were even what passed for dance moves! Maybe I was wrong. Perhaps this really was a different Pet Shop Boys to what had gone before.

1993 really was the year ragga/dancehall took over the charts. After Shaggy, Shabba and Snow came the ludicrously named Chaka Demus And Pliers. Opening themselves up to all sorts of tool related jibes, this pair of toasters joined forces in 1991 and released “Murder She Wrote” the following year in America to great acclaim. The follow up was “Tease Me” and the hordes lapped it up sending it to No 3 in the UK Top 40. The lyrics were fairly clear about the song’s subject matter with references to ‘reaching climax’ and its title of course. There’s also that shout out line which seemed to encapsulate the whole movement – “Number One In The World”. I’m sure that seemed to feature on every song of this type after that.

Chaka Demus and Pliers have bought all their mates with them to the TOTP studio for a jolly up whilst the camera man seemed very intent on giving us multiple views of the gyrating female backing dancers. Ahem. We’ll also be seeing lots more of CD and P before 1993 is out.

And the fascination with all things erotic thriller continues. I’m guessing Indecent Proposal must have been performing well at the box office to generate this much of a profile. It’s another outing for “Ordinary Love” by Sade which was featured heavily in the film but was not actually on the soundtrack. After last week’s glimpse of the mermaid promo video, we get a live by satellite performance from New York this time. Sade Adu looks stunning as ever but it’s the two guitarists in the background who have caught my eye. They spend the first half of the performance not even bothering to mime playing their instruments but doing the nerd shuffle together whilst clicking their fingers in unison. It doesn’t really seem appropriate for an artist as sophisticated as Sade. Bet they got a bollocking when the cameras were turned off.

Therapy? were enjoying a huge breakthrough year in 1993. After the “Shortsharpshock EP” featuring lead track “Screamager” made the Irish rockers bona fide Top 10 artists in March, the follow up was also an EP. “Face The Strange” featured four tracks of which “Turn” was chosen to promote it. Clearly the EP’s title is a David Bowie reference being a lyric from his song “Changes”. I learned recently that I know someone who met Bowie and not just met but took him out for a drink around about 1972 just as he was launching his Ziggy Stardust era. I know! There’s a few Bowie super fans that I know who would be blown away by my friend’s recollections. What’s that? The Therapy? song? Oh, I didn’t like it much. Sorry.

The Breakers are their usual eclectic/bonkers mix of artists starting with the evergreen Cliff Richard. Despite being 52 at the time and having had his first hit 25 years ago, Cliff was showing no signs of slowing down in 1993. In fact, the decade was going pretty well for him so far. He’d already clocked up a No 1 in “Saviour’s Day” and four other Top 10 hits. Also having a fine old time of it around now was Maxi Priest who’d had a hit twice with Shabba Ranks (albeit with the same song in both cases) and who’d supplied the ‘Shabba!’ sample for the massive selling “Mr Loverman” single. To add to his collection of chart connections came “Human Work Of Art”. You see, Maxi had released this as a single from his “Bonafide” album three years prior but it had failed to chart.

It was recycled for Cliff’s 1993 album called…erm…”The Album” and this time made No 24. It sounds every inch a Cliff record and you’d be hard pressed to guess at its reggae-fied earlier incarnation. It’s also utterly awful under his guardianship. Yes, it’s a polished production but then you can polish a turd of course.

I can’t find the official video online so here’s it being performed on Surprise Surprise.

From the despair of another banal Cliff record to…where? Well, fortunately it’s Manic Street Preachers with their new single “From Despair To Where” (ahem). OK, firstly weren’t they have meant to have split up by now? Wasn’t that their mission statement to make one blow your socks off, anarchistic album then dissolve the band? Clearly that was just bravado then. What they actually did was to record second album “Gold Against The Soul” which I liked enough to buy but which the fan base has always dissed as the worst album in their back catalogue. I’m sure I heard an interview with James Dean Bradfield once where he was asked to rank the band’s albums in order of merit and even he put it bottom of the list.

Maybe debut “Generation Terrorists” had raised the bar and expectations too high but the music press gave it mixed reviews at best. Maybe fan favourite and third album “The Holy Bible” would have been a more acceptable choice with its themes of human suffering and bleakness. Was “Gold Against The Soul” seen as too radio friendly, too (gulp) corporate rock? It sounded alright to my ears with the lead single ticking all my aural boxes. It swoops and soars but bites as well with lines like ‘there’s nothing nice in my head’. It had all of that and yet wasn’t even the best track on the album for me. I liked this version of the band a lot but then I’m not a paid up member of the Manics army who could shoot my opinion down in flames I’m sure.

What I’m not sure about is the video which is basically some moody shots of the band (Richie looks especially cool) intertwined with some sepia tinted clips which seem to suggest a sci-fi /horror film but it’s all a bit blurry to make a clear judgement although that look like an alien autopsy in the thumbnail below.

The Manics of course did do a TV show theme tune when they covered “Suicide Is Painless” – the theme tune from M*A*S*H. Better than the theme to Cheers? It’s a tough call but yes possibly.

The Sister Sledge revival bandwagon continues apace with a rerelease of their 1984 hit “Thinking Of You”. Remixed as the (RAMP Radio Mix), it was the last of three singles taken from the Greatest Hits compilation “The Very Best Of Sister Sledge 1973-93” following “We Are Family” and “Lost In Music”. It would peak at No 17 just six places lower than its 1984 counterpart. However the song dated back to 1979 when it was a track on the “We Are Family” album and issued as the B-side to the initial release of “Lost In Music”.

Reading that paragraph back it seems like the group made a 40+ year career based around just three songs that have been recycled over and over again. Lead singer Kathy Sledge even did her own cover version of “Thinking Of You” with house duo Aristofreeks in 2015. OK look, I know there’s also “He’s The Greatest Dancer” and “Frankie” in their repertoire but the former is very similar to the “Family/Lost/Thinking” trilogy and the latter is one of the worst recordings of all time (and I’ve just had to listen to Cliff Richard’s “Human Work Of Art”). I doubt even the Sledge sisters want to be remembered for that one.

Sister Sledge have only released one more single since this. And guess what? It was a rerelease of “We Are Family” in 2004 which made No 93 on our charts.

Who? The Time Frequency? Sounds like a phrase Dr Who might say. Have we seen this lot before? Can’t remember now. So many of these dance acts about. Anyway, “The Ultimate High” was a track off their “Power Zone EP” and sounds very much like a knock off version of “Insanity” by Oceanic to me but then, as I’ve said many times before, I’m no dance music aficionado.

The Time Frequency were from Scotland so I wonder if they knew fellow Scottish dance acts Primal Scream and The Shamen or is that a bit like an American, who on meeting someone from London, asks them if they know their cousin who lives in Notting Hill?

Lisa Stansfield? Again? It can’t be! She seems to be on every week at the moment. Given the high level of exposure it got, I’m surprised that “In All The Right Places” didn’t get higher than its No 8 peak. She’s back in the studio this time and has gone full on Louise Brooks with her haircut. No messing about like the other week with that half hearted Brett Anderson-esque wedge style. The way the stage has been set up with her first name and first name only in lights gives it a feel of a residency at Las Vegas. In fact, I could just imagine Liza Minnelli up there belting this one out.

Lisa will be back in October with her “So Natural” album and single.

UB40 have made it to the top spot deposing Ace Of Base in the process. Were they on tour at this time as it’s the video for “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” yet again this week? I’m guessing that the director got the band to perform emerging into a tight corridor to link in with the themes of claustrophobia and paranoia that the film it was taken from (Sliver) clearly was based around. Ironically, a few years down the line, the band fractured into two different identities due to internal arguments and there’s no way that Ali and Robin Campbell would ever be in such close proximity to each other like that again.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Snap!	Do You See The Light (Looking For)	Never happening
2	Spin Doctors	Two Princes	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	Pet Shop Boys	Can You Forgive Her	No but I have it on their Pop Art Best Of
4	Chaka Demus And Pliers	Tease Me	As if
5	Sade	No Ordinary Love	Nope
6	Therapy?	Face The Strange EP	Nah
7	Cliff Richard	Human Work Of Art	Of course not
8	Manic Street Preachers	From Despair To Where	No but I bought the album
9	Sister Sledge	Thinking Of You	No
10	The Time Frequency	Power Zone EP	Not likely
11	Lisa Stansfield	In All The Right Places	Negative
12	UB40	(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001bdx3/top-of-the-pops-10061993

TOTP 24 OCT 1991

Posted on October 31, 2021 by 80stastic

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyrROpMXf4Q

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn19vBdpR_A

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxi4AywDU_k

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

*watches Mariah’s performance*

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

“Emotions” peaked at No 17 in the UK.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stanley Appel: How dare you?!

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

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

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

And finally Cyril….

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0010rl6/top-of-the-pops-24101991

TOTP 06 JUN 1991

Posted on August 11, 2021 by 80stastic

When I started out reviewing all these TOTP shows beginning with the 1983 repeats, quite often a show would not be re-broadcast due to the consequences of Operation Yewtree. As the old brigade of presenters began to be weeded out, the unacceptable elements we’re also part of the cull and so the shows that were omitted from the BBC4 schedules began to get less and less. As we pushed on into the 90s, every single TOTP was shown again….until now. Yes, we are missing out the 30 May 1991 edition but it’s nothing to do with any forces of darkness. This is the first episode not to be repeated since 23 June 1988 and the reason is…well, it could be a couple of things. Firstly, the quality of the existing video isn’t up to broadcast standards or secondly, and this is the theory that Twitter seems to suggest was the true reason, oh I’ll let @TOTPFacts fill you in:

This will be due to ongoing licensing issues re: using The Doors' catalogue on TV. (The video for "Light My Fire" plays over the end credits, making it hard to edit out) #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 30, 2021

The Doors?! You might well wonder why they were on a TOTP in 1991 and it was nothing to do with an advert this time. No, it was all to do with the Oliver Stone Doors biopic that was released that year starring Val Kilmer. As part of the film’s promotion, a soundtrack album was released (featuring the original versions of the songs and not Kilmer’s vocals which were used in the actual film) and “Light My Fire” was re-released as a single to publicise it. OK, so that explains why Jim and co were back in the charts in 1991 but why can’t the BBC broadcast a show that includes their music 30 year later? It’s because The Doors and their estate have withdrawn from the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS), no longer wishing to accept the society’s licensing agreements. This means that the BBC would have to negotiate a deal directly with the artist to play their music and as the corporation is sticking with its policy of single blanket collective licensing, that rules out The Doors from any BBC playlists. The Doors aren’t the only artists to have left the MCPS – Neil Young, Bonnie Raitt and Journey have also done so. I’ll leave you to make up your own minds as to whether this is a good or bad thing.

So are we finished with the whole Doors thing now? Not quite. In orders to maximise the revived interest in the band’s music, their record company Warners withdrew all their back catalogue from sale, presumably to force punters to buy the soundtrack album. Then, when the fuss surrounding the film had died down, they made them available again. Great for Warners, not so good for those of us working in record shops trying to explain tis marketing strategy to customers. Off the back of this comes one of my claims to fame. I indeed did have to explain this to none other than the Rochdale Cowboy himself Mike Harding. Yes, the singer, songwriter and comedian who seemed to be on the TV all the time when I was growing up came in to buy some Doors albums but was dismayed by our poor stockholding. Luckily for Mike, we still had a one copy left of the 1985 Doors Best Of (the double CD with the iconic ‘Lizard King’ photo of Jim on the front cover) so I sold him that instead of the soundtrack album as it was more comprehensive (as I recall the latter didn’t have “Hello, I Love You” on it).

As for the film itself, I wasn’t sure about it when iI first saw it at the cinema. It was 2 hours and 21 mins long for a start (which was very long for a film back then). They even had an intermission in the screening I was at cutting the film into two parts. I watched it again a couple of years ago and found it more likeable.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is a non repeated TOTP. Fortunately, the whole show is on YouTube if you really need to see it but I am already behind in may reviews so I’ll be given that one a miss. For the record, these are the artists that were featured:

Technotronic
MC Hammer
Pop Will Eat Itself
Sonia
Kraftwerk
Siouxie and the Banshees
Amy Grant
Kylie Minogue
Cher
The Doors

If you’re annoyed about missing out on seeing any of the names listed above, take solace in the fact that you have also missed out on having to endure Anthea Turner presenting and get this….it was her last ever TOTP appearance! Hurray!

The decision to axe Anthea would be the tip of the iceberg in terms of changes to the show in 1991. The ‘year zero’ revamp was coming but before then even, some changes were afoot. We’ve already had the truncated chart rundown which doesn’t include records going down, the compressed Breakers section with up to five acts concertinaed into under a minute and a half and now another change that would have been heresy back in the programme’s 80s heyday. A record that isn’t even in the Top 40 opening the show! Apparently this was a regular practice in the 70s but since 1980 the criteria for appearing on the show had been inflexible one of which was your record had to be in the Top 40. Suddenly though, in June 1991, that didn’t matter as here were Northside with a very clear graphic announcing that their single “Take 5” was at No 41 in the charts. None of this made any sense. Even host Mark Goodier doesn’t seem to have got the policy change memo as he says in his intro…

“Good evening and welcome to TOTP featuring the world’s most exciting chart – the BBC UK Top 40”

…and then he introduces an act whose single is outside of that ‘most exciting chart’. Just weird. Who knows what negotiations and deals went down behind closed doors to make this happen but it didn’t really do Northside much good as the single would only rise one place in next week’s chart before falling away completely. At least they could say it was a bona fide Top 40 hit I guess. Of course, the band already one of these to their name as “My Rising Star” had made it all the way to the giddy heights of No 32 the previous year.

The band were part of the Factory Records roster of artists and did indeed hail from Manchester (Moston to be precise) and I remember there being some fuss about them when their only album “Chicken Rhythms” was released later in June. It did quite well as I recall (Wikipedia tells me it got to No 19 in the album chart) whilst “Take 5” was a pretty funky tune to be fair. I like that, despite the privilege of being on TOTP without a Top 40 hit, the band had a dress down Thursday approach to being on TOTP in their choice of outfits. On the other end of the spectrum and also on this show were Marillion and that led to this little Twitter spat when the repeat went out on BBC4:

Always the professionals you know…and who are Northside?😄#totp #marillion
— Marillion (@MarillionOnline) July 30, 2021

Come on lads. Play nicely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHfcQm-VPh8

Oh, by the way, before we get any further, this TOTP was originally broadcast on my 23rd birthday so Happy Birthday to me! I am now 53. This can’t be right surely? Something else which wasn’t right was the fact that rather than doing all his links in and amongst the studio audience, for some of them (those for promo videos and not studio performances) Mark Goodier seems to have been green screened! In this intro to “Jealousy” by Pet Shop Boys he does it against a backdrop of Neil and Chris before being zapped off screen Star Trek like. Not another new innovation?

This was the fourth and final single to be released from the duo’s album “Behaviour” and for me was the best at the time (I may have been swayed by “Being Boring” in later life though). A huge, sweeping, epic ballad with an orchestral outro which was perfectly at odds with Tennant’s dead pan vocals, it should have been a much bigger hit than its No 12 peak. Maybe if it hadn’t been the last track to be released as a single? Apparently it was the first proper song that Neil and Chris wrote together but they waited for years before recording it for an album as they wanted Ennio Morricone to score the orchestral part but they had to settle for Harold “Axel F” Faltermeyer in the end.

I seem to recall there was a guy working at our shop around this time who was going through some relationship problems with his boyfriend and who would play this track a lot on the store stereo. I’m not sure that helped to be honest.

The aforementioned Marillion next though it was a Fish-less version of the band by now. “Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)” was the lead single from their sixth studio album “Holidays In Eden” and guess what? It wasn’t in the Top 40 at the time either! Yes, like Northside earlier, the TOTP producers gave the band a slot anyway. What was going on?! Makes their snarky tweet about who were Northside seem a bit lacking in credibility seeing as they were benefitting from an unusual TOTP appearance just like them. And they were even further down the charts at No 42 that week. In fairness, it did make it all the way to No 34 in the end but even so.

So who was it that took over from Fish? Well it was Steve Hogarth of course though I had to do a double take to make sure that wasn’t cockney comedian Micky Flannagan up there at first. As for the song, I don’t remember it at all but that’s hardly surprising as it meanders along going nowhere for its entire length.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hVAXAL_yFE

Goodier is back with his Star Trek transported trick again next as he introduces Salt ‘N’ Pepa with “Do You Want Me”. His intro is not quite factually correct though:

“Do you remember the 1988 hit “Push It” by Salt ‘N’ Pepa. Well in fact they haven’t really been in the charts for about three years now they’re back though…”

Well actually Mark, since “Push It” they’d had three Top 40 hits the last of which was “Expression” in April 1990 so not really three years then. OK, “Expression” only just sneaked in at No 40 but as we have seen tonight, you could get on TOTP with less of a hit in 1991.

“Do You Want Me” would go all the way to No 5 but I have to say I don’t really remember it. If I think about Salt ‘N’ Pepa and 1991, the only single that comes to mind is “Let’s Talk About Sex” which was a No 2 hit later in the year. Both tracks were from their “Blacks’ Magic” album which despite the success of its singles was largely ignored in the UK. That was largely due to the fact that their record label released a Greatest Hits album in October which was a healthy seller peaking at No 6.

Another Madonna re-release next as, off the back of her whopper of a seller Best Of album “The Immaculate Collection”, “Holiday” was back in the charts. Unbelievably, this was the third time the song had been a hit in the UK! Originally it made No 6 in 1984, then No 2 when re-released in 1985 (kept off the top by her own “Into The Groove” single) and finally in 1991 when it peaked at No 5. So, at the risk of sounding like Craig David, does that make the 1991 entry a re-re-release?

Look, I’ll have covered this song twice before in my 80s blog (https://80spop.wordpress.com) so I don’t propose to spend too long on this one but I have to say I don’t really understand why record buyers would have forked out for this one for a third time especially as so many people had already bough the “The Immaculate Collection” album with it on over Xmas. Was it a rare mix of it? Or were there loads of Madonna completists out there? Or could it have been for this reason courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

This third issue of "Holiday" was released to tie-in with compilation "The Immaculate Collection". As well as the 7" you could also buy CD EP "The Holiday Collection", which included 3 Madonna hits left off the LP: "True Blue". "Who's That Girl" and "Causing A Commotion". #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 30, 2021

You’d have to be a real obsessive super fan to buy it just for that though surely?

It’s that nice Kenny Thomas now with his second and biggest ever hit “Thinking About Your Love”. I’ve said in previous posts that back in 1991, I really had a problem with Kenny and it seems irrational to me now. Yes, I thought this music was a bit on the bland side but there have been loads of artists down the years that have fallen on deaf ears with me and I didn’t despise them nearly as much as I did Kenny. From what I can make out he seems a thoroughly decent chap as well but boy did he get up my nose back then. Let me watch this performance again and see if it triggers some of those feelings of loathing…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V1jT84kmV0

…nope. Nothing there to cause such an extreme reaction in me. His backing vocalist looks a bit like TV presenter June Sarpong. Can’t be can it?

“Thinking About Your Love” peaked at No 4.

Some Breakers now starting with the first of two bands on tonight with the US spelling of the word ‘colour’ in their name. “Solace Of You” by Living Color is another one I don’t recall but listening to it now, it has a world music feel to it and a different sound altogether to hear previous hit “Love Rears Its Ugly Head”. Sort of like Paul Simon meets Eagle-Eye Cherry? Maybe not. Presumably they had to make do with a Breakers slot on the show rather than a studio performance despite being 1 and 2 places higher in the charts than Northside and Marillion respectively due to their touring commitments that Mark Goodier outlines. They had the last laugh though as “Solace Of You” was a bigger hit than either “Take 5” or “Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)” when it peaked at No 33.

Another Gloria Estefan single! Wasn’t she just on the other week with a song called “Seal Our Fate”? Well, she’s back again with another track from her “Into The Light” album called “Remember Me With Love”. I really couldn’t tell you how this one went and even after watching it on this TOTP I can’t as the clip cuts off before she’s even got to the chorus! This compressed Breakers section really was pointless, talking of which this single would surely be a jackpot winning answer on Pointless if the subject was Gloria Estefan Singles.

“Remember Me with Love” peaked at No 22.

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

While Michael Bublé was learning to shave, Harry Connick Jr was the guy being talked of as the natural successor to Frank Sinatra in the crooning stakes. He came to global recognition back in 1990 when his album “We Are In Love” tore down the traditional musical genre walls and became a mainstream hit despite essentially being a jazz album. My wife was quite taken with him at the time and had that album. Around the same time he had recorded the music for the Billy Crystal /Meg Ryan film When Harry Met Sally from which this single “It Had To Be You” was taken. The soundtrack album was a also a massive success and earned Connick a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Male Vocal Performance.

There was such a rush of material from Harry at this time that it all got a bit confusing. In September of 1991 he released “Blue Light, Red Light” which was a big band album and was also a sizeable success whilst he also contributed a song to the soundtrack of The Godfather Part III. The albums kept on coming with one released every year throughout the 90s pretty much although that initial buzz about him was never really recovered. Effortlessly cool, Connick Jr ran a career in acting parallel to his music making appearing in more than 20 films but I think I liked him best as tail gunner Clay in Memphis Belle. Eat your heart out Bublé.

Innuendo songs – it’s a niche genre but it does exist. I’m thinking “Love Resurrection”. by Alison Moyet and of course “Turning Japanese” by The Vapours but perhaps the biggest of them all was “I Touch Myself” by Divinyls (as with Eurythmics, there was no ‘The’). Largely unknown outside of their native Australia (where they were a much bigger deal), their only song to make any inroads anywhere else in the world was their homage to masturbation. It was written by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg who had form when it came to provocative pop songs – they also wrote “Like A Virgin” for Madonna.

I thought this was a great pop song. Immediately catchy but also having an angle with a great vocal delivery from Christina Amphlett. One of the best one hit wonders of the decade. Sadly Christina died in 2013 of breast cancer but her legacy lived on with the founding of the I Touch Myself Project which was created in her honour with a mission to create educational forums to remind women to check their breasts regularly.

“I Touch Myself” peaked at No 10 in the UK and No 4 in the US.

Ah, the very wonderful Kirsty MacColl is back in the charts. Last seen exactly two years prior to this with her version of “Days” by The Kinks, this would turn out to be her last ever Top 40 hit if you discount all of the re-releases of “Fairytale of New York”. Her lack of chart success remains a mystery and travesty. “Walking Down Madison” was the lead single from her “Electric Landlady” album (see what she did there?) and was seen as a change in direction for Kirsty with its hip/hop feel and extensive use of rapping in it. The guitar part in it reminds me of Happy Mondays and that influence would make sense as Kirsty supplied backing vocals for their hit “Hallelujah”. However, it was actually written by Johnny Marr and was one of the first songs that he wrote after the break up of The Smiths. Despite the multitude on stage here with Kirsty, I don’t think Johnny was one of them but is that Roland Rivron on bongos?

When Kirsty died in 2001, I was on a Xmas night out from work and recall seeing her face on the news on a TV screen in an electrical shop window as I walked past. I remember thinking why is Kirsty MacColl on the news? It was tragic news.

Oh and by the way TOTP graphics team, you spell her surname MacColl not McColl. Show some respect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DhGf_yz2hU

A brand new No 1! Cher has finally gone after what seems like ages (mind you if we thought her time at the top was a long one, watch out for Bryan Adams in a few weeks time!). The ‘Badd’ news is that it’s been replaced by that horrible “I Wanna Sex You Up” song by Color Me Badd.

The other week I commented on the fact that two of the guys in the band looked like George Michael and Kenny G. I wasn’t the only one. Here’s Beavis and Butthead making the same connection (maybe I was just regurgitating their take on it subliminally) and they’ve added another name too…

The play out video is “Shiny Happy People” by REM again. I think it’s the third time it’s been on the show and it’s that level of overkill that quickly turned a lot of people off it. I was one of them. Parent album “Out Of Time” was played to death in the Our Price I worked in and “Shiny Happy People” was never off the radio. It became one of those songs that you couldn’t listen to any more after having already reached saturation point. Other songs that triggered me like this would be “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen and “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell (which was also back in the charts in 1991!). Even the band themselves tired of it quickly and avoided playing it live whilst it was not included in the track listing for their 2003 Warner Brothers greatest hits “In Time: The Best Of REM”.

It’s not that REM were always suffering for their art with sombre, melancholic songs though. “Stand” from 1989’s “Green” album is a great pop tune full of hooks whilst 1986’s “Fall On Me” has a wonderful pop structure and melody. And yet somehow, for many of us, “Shiny Happy People” seemed to cross a line. Maybe it’s due a bit of a revisit.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZc5aZud8qk

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Northside	Take 5	No but a pretty nifty tune all the same
2	Pet Shop Boys	Jealousy	No but it’s on my Pop Art Best Of CD of theirs
3	Marillion	Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)	Cover My Ears (Pain and Hell) more like – no
4	Salt ‘N’ Pepa	Do You Want Me	Nope
5	Madonna	Holiday	No but it’s on my Immaculate Collection CD
6	Kenny Thomas	Thinking About You	No
7	Living Color	Solace Of You	Negative
8	Gloria Estefan	Remember Me With Love	Uh-uh
9	Harry Connick Jr	It Had To Be You	No but my wife had his We Are In Love album
10	Divinyls	I Touch Myself	No but I easily could have done
11	Kirsty MacColl	Walking Down Madison	This one is on the singles box though I think my wife bought it
12	Color Me Badd	I Wanna Sex You Up	Away with you!
13	REM	Shiny Happy People	Nah

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/m000y8wx/top-of-the-pops-06061991

TOTP 21 MAR 1991

Posted on July 6, 2021 by 80stastic

Talent. It’s just a six letter word but it can mean so many things. What does it conjure up in your mind’s eye? There’s the obvious meaning of an individual imbued with a natural aptitude or skill (e.g. Gazza was a footballer of great talent). Or, if you’re a fan of the wonderful Monty Python film Life Of Brian, you may think of it as a unit of currency used by the ancient Romans and Greeks. Back in the 80s, if you were a young, amorous male, you might have used the expression ‘sharking for talent’ meaning that you were looking for potential sexual partners. Do the current generation still use that expression? For tonight’s TOTP host Anthea Turner, it means musical artistry. How do we know this? Because she introduces the show by saying “Tonight, the emphasis is on talent” which strikes me as a peculiar thing to say as it implies that, on other shows, there is no particular emphasis on talent or rather that the emphasis of the BBC’s prime time music show could well be on something other than talent. Like what Anthea? Crapness? Judging by some of the acts we’ve seen that could well have been the case.

Well, let’s see if the acts on tonight all pass the talent test. I’m the judge by the way so it will all be fair and above board. Ahem. We start with a returning Boy George who has not been the Top 40 side of the chart boundary for nigh on four years. I say Boy George but it’s actually his band Jesus Loves You. An interesting, intermediary project between his successful but very brief solo star period in the late 80s (“Everything I Own” and all that) and his rebirth as a high profile club DJ, this collective had already released three singles before they finally got themselves a hit. I had never heard of them though before “Bow Down Mister”. This gloriously uplifting pop song was inspired by the experiences George had encountered whilst travelling through India and embracing the Hindu religion and specifically the Hare Krishna movement. When I was a kid growing up in Worcester, I would regularly see a small, chanting procession of Hare Krishna devotees slinking down the high street on a Saturday afternoon. People would point and laugh at the ‘Harrys’ as they were known and in my own youthful ignorance (I was probably only about 10 or so) I probably dismissed them in a similar fashion. Fast forward a decade or so and their movement is enshrined in popular music history courtesy of Boy George.

Supposedly George was interested in becoming a practicing Hare Krishna but it never quite happened. The most recent issue of Classic Pop magazine includes an interview with George to celebrate his recent 60th birthday and in it he states that:

When I released “Bow Down Mister” in the 90s, I thought, ‘Aha, I’ve got the elixir of truth!’ Then a thunder crash came out of nowhere and put paid to that idea”.

So what was that thunder crash? Could it be this explanation from X Ray Spex singer Poly Styrene via @TOTPFacts:

X Ray Spex singer Poly Styrene (a Krishna convert) recalled him visiting her at Bhaktivedanta Manor, the temple where she was living. “George never became a practising Hare Krishna. He was interested but they told him he couldn’t also be a practising homosexual." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 25, 2021

"The International Society for Krishna Consciousness accepts gay people but they have to practise celibacy or get married to a woman and have Krishna-following children. I did see George afterwards and he was pretty upset…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 25, 2021

The Hare Krishna movement weren’t the only ones who had an issue with George as his US record label refused to release any material under the name Jesus Loves You. Presumably they were wary of a backlash from the Christian lobby and so instead they credited all their songs simply to Boy George. They also declined to release “Bow Down Mister” as a US single. Their loss. The UK release was on George’s own record label More Protein which he had founded to enable the release of “Everything Starts With an E” by E-Zee Possee (actually George, his old pal and one time Haysi Fantayzee member Jeremy Healy and rapper MC Kinky) when Virgin had refused to release it.

As for the tune itself, for me it was a brilliantly quirky and out there pop song and I loved the instrumentation in the middle eight bit complete with Asha Bhosle* vocals that elevated it into the Krishna chanting / gospel choir mash up coda. Inevitably there were comparisons with “My Sweet Lord” by that other musical George Mr Harrison but my reference point was probably “Ever So Lonely” by Monsoon from 1982.

The performance here is utterly joyful including the exuberant jumping up and down form George’s ‘devotees’ in the background one of whom looks a bit like Norman Pace of Hale & Pace. But if we’re talking doppelgängers, is that The Mission’s Wayne Hussey up there with George on guitar? I really hope so.

“Bow Down Mister” was a big favourite of an Our Price colleague at then time so I heard this a lot. It would peak at No 27 and a re-release fo “Generations of Love” as a follow up would give Jesus Loves You their second and final Top 40 hit when it peaked at No 35.

*Yes that Aha Bhosle who was name checked by Cornershop in the equally unlikely pop hit “Brimful Of Asha”.

From the kooky to the defiantly mainstream where we find Simple Minds treading very familiar ground with their “Let There Be Love” single. Since their double platinum No 1 album “Street Fighting Years” in 1989, they had spent the early stages of the new decade retreading their back catalogue with four volumes of a rolling Greatest Hits project entitled “Themes” covering the various eras of their career to that point.

By 1991 they had caught up with themselves so an album of new material was required which arrived in the form of ninth studio album “Real Life”. Lead single “Let There Be Love” did the job expected of it by becoming a Top 10 hit around Europe (No 6 in the UK and No 1 in Italy) whilst the album itself would be a No 2 chart smash. All well and good except that the new songs seemed so very safe and calculating to me. Yes, they were melodic but there wasn’t any new ground being broken. The band retained the Celtic feel of their unexpected No 1 single “Belfast Child” with the penny whistle melody line but if I had been a massive disciple of the band, I would have been disappointed I think. Even the video seems half hearted being basically the band doing a performance promo of the song with loads of dry ice billowing around them for effect. Talk about blowing smoke up your arse.

This single was the first without keyboardist and original band member Mick MacNeil who had left the group after the completion of their previous world tour in 1990. Was this a pivotal moment in the band’s career? Although drummer Mel Gaynor was still there, his 10 year tenure with the band would come to an end the following year leaving the group to basically become a duo comprising Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill. Still, for the moment, Simple Minds could still substantiate a claim to be a big name in the rock fraternity.

By the way, if you want a less bombastic take on the song, try Icehouse’s 1995 version from their covers album “The Berlin Tapes”…

From the well established in Simple Minds to a brand band next. Banderas evolved out of the break up of The Communards – Sally Herbert and Caroline Buckley had both played with Jimmy Somerville’s hitmakers – and “This Is Your Life” (nothing to do with The Blow Monkeys track of the same title) was their debut single. Pretty good it was too. And so it should have been given that it featured Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner on it as well as the aforementioned Somerville on backing vocals.

Around this time, a woman called Trina transferred across to the Our Price store I was working in and she loved Banderas. Consequently I got to hear quite a bit of their only album “Ripe” which was also sounded pretty good. Sadly for them, they were unable to repeat the success of “This Is Your Life” (follow up single “She Sells” peaked at that most unfortunate and unwanted chart position of No 41) and they were gone by the end of the year.

In my head I always equate them with Trina and chart contemporaries Soho, probably as they were both fronted by women with striking images, both only had one hit and both deserved a better fate.

P.S. A little shout out for whoever came up with the Eamon Andrews style red book graphic that introduced “This Is Your Life” which peaked at No 16. Genius!

Stop the clock! Ah, too late! It’s Quartz featuring Dina Carroll yet again and for the third time now on the show I think with …erm…“It’s Too Late”. It’s not even a new performance but just a re-showing of a previous appearance. What am I supposed to say about this that I haven’t already?!

Well I’m not going to say anything. Instead I offer you a different take on the Carole King classic courtesy of the rather lovely China Crisis who recorded it for a project called “80’s Re:Covered – Your Songs With The 80’s Sound”. Excellent! The album also features the likes of ABC taking on Radiohead and Wang Chung covering Blur. What’s not to like?

Incidentally, China Crisis have also recorded a song called “It’s Never Too Late” which was an extra track on the 12″ of their 1985 hit “Black Man Ray”. Make your minds up fellas!

Now, talking of cover versions…here’s Pet Shop Boys with two for the price of one! There’s an awful lot to unpack about “Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)”. Firstly, why? Why did Neil and Chris do a mash up of a 1987 U2 song with that cheesy Boystown Gang disco hit. Yes, I know “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” was originally a hit by Frankie Valli but there’s no doubt that it was the 1982 cover that inspired the duo on this. Supposedly it was a swipe at the overly inflated egos of rock stars such as Bono and Sting. Here’s Tennant on this very subject via @TOTPFacts:

Neil Tennant: "There's an assumption that if you're writing pop music it's not an important kind of music, whereas rock music is perceived as being an important kind of music… I don't really like the idea of people projecting themselves as important humanitarian figures" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 25, 2021

Just in case Bono didn’t get the joke, they made “Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)” a double A-side with a track from their “Behaviour” album called “How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?”. Eventually, U2 issued a statement saying “What have we done to deserve this?” which was a pretty clever and semi-diplomatic response I think.

That double A-side re-promoted the “Behaviour” album but also caused headaches for record shop staff (like me) when customers came in wanting to buy the album with that disco U2 song on it when it wasn’t on the actual album. “No, it’s the other A-side that’s on the album not Where the Streets Have No Name” would be the explanation from behind the counter. “What other A-side?” would come the reply as let’s be fair, radio weren’t playing “How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?”. I don’t think the album was re-issued with it on at the time. Presumably it has subsequently been added as an extra track in a super deluxe reissue years later.

Neil and Chris were on slightly dodgy ground with all this rock star ego poking / cover version business. Back in 1987, as “It’s A Sin” became their first No 1, DJ Jonathan King accused them of pinching the melody from “Wild World” by Cat Stevens for their chart topper in his Sun newspaper column. He even released his own cover version of “Wild World” as a single constructed to sound very similar to “It’s a Sin” to prove his point. The duo sued King winning out-of-court damages which they donated to charity. OK, so I guess in a ‘who’s the dodgiest?’ contest between Pet Shop Boys and Jonathan King there’s only one winner and in fact charity was the real winner in this spat but even so, I think Bono’s response was a bit classier.

The double A-side “Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)” / “How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?” peaked at No 4 and must also be one of the longest ever song titles to trouble the chart compilers albeit that it was double -barrelled.

Some Breakers next and we start with “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” by Definition Of Sound. Now, I had no idea about the original of this single’s song title until just now but apparently it was half inched from a track by 60s hippy folk rocker Donovan. It’s actually rather nice…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E9ZNI8-_bE

Anyway, Definition Of Sound’s single was nothing like that not being a cover version and all. No, their’s was a kick ass dance tune which put me in mind of “Groove Is In The Heart” by Deee-Lite a bit. But who were these guys anyway? Well, they were rappers Kevin Clark and Don Weekes from London (I’d always assumed they were American) who used a track called “Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)” by The Hombres who were an American 60s garage rock band to construct their biggest hit. Not only did they steal the riff but also the spoken word intro that goes:

I preach my dear friend
You’re about to receive Long John Barleycorn
Nicotine and the temptation of Eve….

The first time I heard that intro I had to do a double take to check that I hadn’t heard the ‘n’ word in there. Fortunately it was the word ‘nicotine’. By bizarre coincidence, the aforementioned Jonathan King had a hit with “Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)” in 1970 and I promise I won’t mention his name again.

Back to Definition Of Sound though and it seems that they stole the song title from one source and then nicked the riff and some lyrics from another. It doesn’t sound like a good defence of their own creativity but in fact what they came up with was brilliant. The rapping is on point and the chorus is irresistibly catchy. It probably should have been a bigger hit than its No 17 peak. They followed this up with a very similar sounding single called “Moira Jane’s Café” which I don’t recall but which just scraped into the UK Top 40 but was a bigger deal over the pond where it became the first UK Rap record to become number 1 on the Billboard Dance Charts.

They released three albums in total before Clark went on to work in A&R and music publishing whilst Weekes released a solo album before leaving the music industry altogether.

What is this?! Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks? Together? As with Pet Shop Boys and their “Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)” mash up single, the question that comes to mind is why? I guess I’m asking this question retrospectively though as I had no clue who Shabba Ranks was back in 1991. Indeed it would be another two years before he became a household name with a re-release of his “Mr Loverman” single when you couldn’t mention him without exclaiming ‘Shabba!’. Even so, it does seem an unlikely alliance Green Gartside’s voice is so fey that a pairing with a dancehall rapper really didn’t seem logical. And it doesn’t really work does it? The fact that they chose a Beatles song to desecrate doesn’t help their case for me – “She’s A Woman” was the B-side to the Fab Four’s 1964 chart topper “I Feel Fine”. Quite how it got to No 20 is a mystery to me. And what is Green wearing in the video?! This would prove to be Scritti Politti’s last ever Top 40 hit and also heralded an eight year hiatus for Gartside.

Despite having formed in 1985, I don’t think I know any song by Jane’s Addiction other than “Been Caught Stealing”. Although very much one of the first funk metal acts to gain mainstream exposure it was their fellow LA contemporaries Red Hot Chili Peppers that I would come to appreciate more.

“Been Caught Stealing” was from their “Ritual De Lo Habitual” which went platinum in the US and Gold in the UK but I have to admit that I knew its sleeve art more than its contents. I’m not sure what the clip is that TOTP were showing but it’s not the infamous official video for the single which won Best Alternative Video at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards and was voted No. 47 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Videos. Maybe it was deemed too controversial for pre-watershed audiences? All that shoplifting plus there is some twerking and a false arse also features.

This was the band’s first ever UK Top 40 hit peaking at No 34 and they wouldn’t have another for 12 years.

Anthea is back on her musical talent theme in the intro to the next act who you would not have predicted being in the charts around now. Not that he didn’t have any talent – he had one of the most unique and distinctive voices ever. It was just that he hadn’t been anywhere near the Top 40 for five whole years. Suddenly though, Feargal Sharkey was back! After the heady, chart topping days of “A Good Heart” and all that, Feargal’s career took a stumble when second album ‘Wish” was a commercial failure and critically panned.

Fast forward three years and here he was bagging himself a No 12 hit though “I’ve Got News For You” wasn’t really what any of us could have expected. A warm, smooth, slowly building ballad in a blues style? This was no “Teenage Kicks”. I could imagine it being used to soundtrack a particularly tender and poignant scene in a rom-com film. The parent album “Songs From The Mardi Gras” sold if not spectacularly then solidly and included a version of the traditional Irish folk song “She Moved Through the Fair”. And who else that appeared earlier in the show used that song to score themselves a No 1? Yep, Simple Minds whose “Belfast Child” incorporated its melody. I don’t just throw this blog together you know!

It also included a track by Maria McKee who had famously written “A Good Heart” for Feargal. This wasn’t written to request though; “To Miss Someone” was from her self-titled solo debut which Sharkey just chose to cover. “I’ve Got News For You” was to be his swansong however. He quit recording and performing after this to become a big name within the music industry as CEO of British Music Rights and head of UK Music.

Oh and yes, back in 1991, he still had that floppy hair as well as a few facial whiskers.

There’s an article in the current edition of Classic Pop magazine about all the artists to have come out of Scandinavia. There’s more than you might imagine. There’s A-ha , Röyksopp and Lene Marlin from Norway whilst Denmark are represented by…erm..”Barbie Girl” hitmakers Aqua. But it’s Sweden who are the region’s big hitters. Yes, obviously we could all name Abba but there’s also The Cardigans, Ace Of Base, Europe, Avicii and of course Roxette. How do they compare to all those other names? Well, nobody will ever oust Abba from the forefront of the world’s consciousness but Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle were phenomenally successful with a run of four US No 1 singles including “Joyride”.

That said, I don’t think it ever got any bigger or better for Roxette after this point in time. The “Joyride” LP sold 11 million copies worldwide but not one of their subsequent album releases got anywhere near that figure as that old enemy of the pop star diminishing returns set in. They remained a big deal in Europe throughout the rest of the decade but their US success disappeared quickly when interest in them dwindled. Here in the UK, the duo retained a fairly loyal fanbase for most fo the decade (both albums after “Joyride” also went Top 3 ) but by 1999’s “Have A Nice Day”, we had also moved on as it peaked at No 28. Their next three albums missed the Top 100 (that’s not a typo that’s one hundred!) altogether.

So, to return to Anthea Turner’s talent watch, did Roxette have talent? Absolutely. Did they always have the public’s ear? No. Were they ever fashionable? Never.

After last Friday’s Comic Relief Day event, it was inevitable that the official song by Hale & Pace would go to No 1. “The Stonk” really was dreadful though. It starts off a bit like the theme to Only Fools And Horses and then turns into a horribly naff Status Quo by numbers boogiewoogie track. Just vile.

I saw Norman Pace in Costa Coffee in Hull once learning his lines for a production at one of the theatres here as he supped on a cappuccino. He looked considerably older than he does here probably because he was considerably older. Therein ends my Hale & Pace anecdote. Also, they kind of undermine Anthea’s musical talent promise don’t you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zeNuXsBQC8

The play out video is “Hangar 18” by Megadeth. Now all this trash metal nonsense normally leaves me cold but this one does at least have some relevance to the present day. How so? Well, it’s all about the conspiracy theory that alien bodies were taken to a facility called Hangar 18 in Dayton, Ohio when a UFO supposedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. The remains were later taken to Area 51 in Nevada or so the theory goes. Fast forward 74 years and the Pentagon’s UFO report that was published in June this year which basically no longer rules out the possibility of alien spacecraft as a possible explanation for unexplained sightings. There was not a full committal to the idea either though. In fact, the only confirmation from the report was that the acronym UFO should no longer be used and we should instead call them UAPs instead which stands for ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’. Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to fly (ahem).

“Hangar 18” peaked at No 26 and was taken from their Top 10 album “Rust In Peace”.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NggH6j_NHr4

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jesus Loves You	Bow Down Mister	No but my wife has it on a Culture Club / Boy George Best Of album
2	Simple Minds	Let There Be Love	No but again I have it on a Best Of I think
3	Banderas	This Is Your Life	No
4	Quartz featuring Dina Carroll	It’s Too Late	Nope
5	Pet Shop Boys	Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)	No the single but it will be on their Pop Art Best Of that I have
6	Definition Of Sound	Where Your Love Like Heaven	Not at the time but I think I may have downloaded it from iTunes years later
7	Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks	She’s A Woman	No – its was awful
8	Jane’s Addiction	Been Caught Stealing	I did not
9	Feargal Sharkey	I’ve Got News For You	Nice song but no
10	Roxette	Joyride	Nah
11	Hale & Pace	The Stonk	The Stink more like! No, not even for charity!
12	Megadeth	Hangar 18	Negative

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000x8pb/top-of-the-pops-21031991

TOTP 29 NOV 1990

Posted on April 22, 2021 by 80stastic

We’re back! After an unexpected but welcome week off from reviewing these TOTP repeats due to the BBC’s frankly bizarre decision to suspend BBC4 broadcasts due to the death of Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, the schedule has been rejigged so we haven’t missed any episodes as a result. Back in late November 1990, there was also a major news event (quite literally) as John Major became the new leader of the Conservative party and therefore the new UK Prime Minister following the demise of Thatcher.

Despite an apparent blanket ban on TOTP presenters going anywhere near the political shenanigans of the leadership contest the previous week, maverick host Nicky Campbell almost falls over himself trying to shoe horn in a John Major reference at every turn. “John Major or no John Major – as music shows go this is the nation’s premier – TOTP! Remember if you make it to No 10 here it’s good but it could be better….” he trills before introducing the show’s opening act Dream Warriors with “My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style”.

I always quite liked this as I had their first single “Wash Your Face in My Sink”. They certainly had some intriguing song titles this Canadian duo – you had to give them that at least. Heavily sampling Quincy Jones’s “Soul Bossa Nova” (and therefore bringing it to the attention of UK audiences some 7 years before Mike Myers did via his Austin Powers* series of films), this had a similar vibe (did I really just write that?!) to its predecessor and worked pretty well I thought and crucially sounded nothing like the titular jazz (or at least my definition of it). But what was their definition? Well, they mention ‘jazz’, ‘funk’ and ‘a new blend’ in the lyrics but ultimately inform us at the end of the second verse that ‘there is no definition’. Huh.

And what was with the staffs the pair have in their hands throughout this performance? They put me in mind of Morgan fromThe Walking Dead especially with those coats on that Nicky Campbell makes a big deal of at the end of the song. Dream Warriors released an album with both hits on called “And Now The Legacy Begins” but after the use of the term ‘legacy fans’ in relation to the wanky European Super League concept this week, let’s not go there.

“My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style” peaked at No 13.

* I never got the whole Austin Powers phenomenon – I just found the whole wretched thing totally unfunny.

I have zero recall of the next song – “Missing You” by Soul II Soul anyone? Apparently it was the third single to be lifted from their second album “Vol. II: 1990 – A New Decade” and would peak at No 22. That whole album was recorded without Caron Wheeler involved and so some guest vocalists were employed – this single featured ‘The First Lady of House Music’ Kym Mazelle, probably best known at this point for her duet with Dr Robert from the Blow Monkeys on “Wait” in 1989. Well, either that or for being name checked in The Beloved’s “Hello” hit from earlier in the year.

Listening to it now, it does sound remarkably similar in tempo and style to their “Keep on Movin'” hit which was a deduction that the music press of the time also came to. Seeing the lyrics written down, the opening lines sound absolutely filthy…

Ooh, yeah
You’re the sweetest
Yeah, baby
Oh, yes, you are
You’re the sweetest
Yes, baby, ooh…

…but despite a Marvin Gaye “Sexual Healing” sample thrown into the mix, they don’t sound quite as obscene on the record. We would not see Soul II Soul in the charts for the whole of 1991 but they would return the following year with their album “Volume III Just Right”.

Right what’s this nonsense? That Megabass shite again? This was just shameless marketing on behalf of record label Telstar for one of their dance compilation albums. Supposedly, somebody wrote into Smash Hits enquiring about them:

“Who are Megabass? They’ve had a record in the charts for a couple of weeks now but I haven’t seen any pictures of them and I don’t know anything about them. Could you enlighten me?”

That letter was written by one M.Sharpe from Kent. Yeah right. Totally made up! Probably Telstar bought some space in the magazine for extra exposure. Why would anybody have wanted to see photos of two remixers who were from the same stable as those Jive Bunny arses? Unbelievably, Smash Hits did include a picture of them in their reply – two young fellas one of whom looked a bit like Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp from the side. Probably some Shutterstock image of random male models. What a total sham!

“Time To Make The Floor Burn” peaked at No 16.

Oh come on! After that Megabass rubbish we move onto a novelty song! Who’s doing was this?! Simon Mayo?! I should have known. That guy had previous for generating Top 40 hits out of nothing other than his massive ego and his Breakfast Show platform to convince dullard listeners that what they really needed in their lives was to own a copy of “Kinky Boots” by Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman. Yes, not content with having foisted “Donald Where’s Your Troosers?” on us the previous Xmas, he was at it again with a song that the public had clearly rejected twice already. It failed to be a hit when originally released in 1964 and a re-release in 1983 did nothing either. That wasn’t going to stop Mayo though who clearly believed he was radio’s version of King Midas who could turn anything to gold (or at least a Top 10 hit). Quite why Avengers stars Macnee and Blackman recorded this originally I’m not sure (to promote their TV show I guess). On top of everything else , it completely creepy. The bit when Macnee says ‘sexy little schoolgirls’ with almost breathless excitement?! Just horrible. Mercifully, the song is quite short – just one minute and thirty seven seconds long. Phew!

Meathead Mayo was at it again in 1991 when he got Monty Python’s “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” to No 3 in the charts whilst “Kinky Boots” made it to No 5.

Who?! Dimples D?! Nope, I’ve got nothing. I’m not having a good week recall wise. I think it might be linked to the fact that though I was working in a record shop at this point, which you would have thought would have only improved my memory of the charts at this time, the store (Our Price in Market Street, Manchester) had two trading floors and I worked mainly on the ground floor where the albums were. Down in the basement (where all the cool members of staff hung out) was where the singles were at so I didn’t actually get to sell many of them. That’s my story anyway and I’m sticking to that.

It turns out that Dimples (real name Crystal Smith) had recorded this track back in 1983 as “Sucker DJ’s (I Will Survive)” but it hadn’t achieved amy meaningful success. Fast forward 7 years and ubiquitous remixer Ben Liebrand got his mits on it, added a sample of the theme tune to I Dream of Jeannie* to it, called it “Sucker DJ (A Witch for Love)”and boom! A hit all over Europe, Australia and New Zealand. It’s actually not that dissimilar to the show’s opening song “My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style” in that it’s a rap over a very familiar sample.

*I was always more of a Bewitched fan than I Dream of Jeannie – I’m talking US fantasy sitcom series and not Irish all girl groups obviously.

Now I do remember this! Chris Isaak had been around for years making his twangy, moody guitar music with the added ingredient of his falsetto vocals and yet he was totally unknown over here (well, I’d never heard of him at least). “Wicked Game” appeared as a fully formed, instant classic as Xmas 1990 approached and Chris himself was causing many a heart to flutter. Almost the entire female staff of the Our Price store I was working in seemed to have fallen under his spell as had my wife.

When I think of Chris Isaak, David Lynch comes to mind immediately but I had forgotten the details of why. It is, of course, because he had featured two of Isaak’s songs in his disturbing Blue Velvet film whilst an instrumental version of “Wicked Game” had been included in his Wild At Heart flick. Lynch was already making waves at this time with Twin Peaks and indeed he would ultimately cast Isaak with a major role in that series’ film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. So quite the connection between the two really. Chris has had sporadic acting roles including a small role in The Silence Of The Lambs. However, my favourite role of his film wise is as Uncle Bob in That Thing You Do! where he pretty much just does some hand clapping.

Back to “Wicked Game” and I have a memory of being asked constantly for his album which, as Nicky Campbell advises in his intro, was called “Heart Shaped World” which of course we didn’t stock as it had done nothing in the UK at that point. After a David Lynch obsessed Atlanta radio station music director played “Wicked Game” and created an irresistible demand for the track and made it a chart hit, record label Reprise did what any right thinking record label would do and shoved out some more material into the market place. A compilation album also called “Wicked Game” containing 11 songs from Isaak’s three albums was released and the track listing was compiled by Phil Knox-Roberts of WEA UK. Why do I mention him? Well, I worked with his brother Paul around this time. ‘Knoxy’ was an Our Price legend and the supplier of many a great tale. One of my favourites was when I played in a football game with him as part of an Our Price team versus a record company reps team at Preston North End’s ground. Knoxy was very proud of his quiff that he had cultivated at this time and when he went down following a collision with an opposition player clutching his head and shouting in pain, we all feared a dreadful injury. As we gathered around him concerned, he stood up, shook his head and said “Does my hair look alright?”. Again, that’s my version of the story and I’m sticking to that.

“Wicked Game” (the single) peaked at No 10.

Now I don’t often agree with much that Nicky Campbell had to say in these TOTP appearances of his but I think he was on the money with his intro to the next act. “The new album “Behaviour” has songs that will be remembered for a long time…here’s one of them “Being Boring”, the Pet Shop Boys“. Widely acknowledged amongst the duo’s fan base as their best ever song, it was seen at the time as very much a downturn in commercial fortunes. It stalled at No 20, their first single since 1986’s “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)” not to make the Top 10 and, at the time, their lowest peaking hit ever. Proving however that wise, old theory that popularity does not great art make, “Being Boring” could well be said to be the perfect pop song. If I’m honest, I wasn’t saying that at the time. It kind of passed me by a bit and I’d preferred lead single from the album “So Hard”. I wasn’t alone in this view. Writing in Smash Hits, Miranda Sawyer dismissed it as an album track. We were both wrong.

“Being Boring” is a template for great songwriting. From the lyrics to the minor chord sequence to the understated yet perennial melody, all bang on the money. Those aforementioned lyrics don’t refer specifically to themselves (as I thought at the time) but they do tell an autobiographical tale of Neil Tennant’s teenage parties through to going to seek fame and fortune in London and the self-realisation of what that meant once achieved. Intertwined in it all is the story of how his childhood friend who had moved to London with him would ultimately die of AIDS. I’m not sure if I’m making too much of this but in their “Pop Art” compilation album of 2003, “Being Boring” is included on the ‘Art’ CD whereas some of their biggest hits such as “It’s A Sin”, “Heart” and “Suburbia” are all on the ‘Pop’ disc. For what it worth, I very much agree with the track listing here. It does seem to be more than just pop.

If all that sounds too heavy, then I’ll lighten the mood. Why did Neil turn up for this performance dressed as Inspector Gadget?

The phrase ‘from the sublime to the ridiculous’ has never been so appropriate as to describe the segue from Pet Shop Boys to the next act who are Bombalu-f*****g-rina! Yes, the hideous concoction that was Timmy Mallett and Andrew Lloyd Webber didn’t even have the good grace to be a one hit wonder. Wankers!

“Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Backseat” (originally a hit for The Avons in 1959) followed the exact same formula as “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” even down to the insertion of the same ‘Ah Yeah’ sample and ‘Wooh! Yeah!’ loop. The only difference that I can see is that the act seems to have grown an extra peroxide blonde backing singer (presumably to make up the numbers as one of the titular seven little girls).

Bombalurina‘s version peaked at No 18 and that, praise be, was the last we would see of this whole, sorry undertaking.

It’s a new No 1 as Vanilla Ice storms to the top of the charts with “Ice Ice Baby”. Watching this back it inevitably looks very dated (as so it should at over 30 years old) and yet at least one thing about Vanilla Ice lasted longer than his music career. Was this the first time that we saw the shaved eyebrow look? Wasn’t that a big thing throughout the 90s and beyond? Is it still a thing now? Look, I’m a 52 year old middle aged man so I have no idea about what is fashionable now – I don’t even know the current phrase that young people use to mean something is fashionable (‘on trend’ maybe?) – but I know shaved eyebrows were a definite thing…erm..at sometime.

I’m pretty sure the aforementioned Knoxy liked this one if only for the “Rollin’ in my 5.0” lyric speaking of which, the “Yo VIP, let’s kick it” opening line? The VIP part stood for the Vanilla Ice Posse (of course it did). A bit like Elvis and his entourage having TCB rings that were an acronym for Taking Care of Business then? Except much, much lamer obviously.

Hands up who can name a Deee-Lite song that isn’t “Groove Is In The Heart”? Yup, pretty much none of us then. They do have other songs of course – here’s one now. “Power Of Love” (surely one of the most used title in pop music history) was the follow up to that mighty dance anthem and I have to admit to not remembering at all how this one went. And then I listened to it again and thought ‘that sounds familiar’ and it was for good reason – the chorus hook bears an uncanny resemblance to Madonna’s “Rescue Me”.

So did Deee-Lite influence Madonna or was it the other way round? They were both released (and presumably recorded) around the same time so it’s hard to say. Or is it just one of those massive coincidences that life throws up occasionally? Whatever the true story, what we do know is that “Power Of Love” was Deee-Lite’s last ever trip to the UK Top 40, peaking at No 25.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Dream Warriors	My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style	I think I have this on something but I didn’t buy the single at the time
2	Soul II Soul	Missing You	I was quite happy to miss out on this one – no
3	Megabass	Time To Make The Floor Burn	Putting this record on the bonfire was too good for it
4	Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman	Kinky Boots	Stinky boots more like! This reeked! No
5	Dimples D	Sucker DJ	No
6	Chris Isaak	Wicked Game	I think my wife had the tape of the “Wicked Game” compilation album once upon a time but no idea where it would be now
7	Being Boring	Pet Shop Boys	Not the single but it’s on that Pop Art Best Of CD I have
8	Bombalurina	Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Back Seat	They might as well have been shitting in the back seat because this was a turd of a record – NO!
9	Vanilla Ice	Ice Ice baby	No No baby
10	Deee-Lite	Power Of Love	Nope

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/m000ty1n/top-of-the-pops-29111990

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 04 OCT 1990

Posted on March 16, 2021 by 80stastic

We’re really out of sync with these BBC4 TOTP repeats. In the real world in 2021 we are entering Spring whilst in TOTP Rewind land we are are well into the Autumn of 1990. Like a busted clock, even allowing for the two repeats a week schedule, there’s usually a couple of times in a calendar year when TOTP of yesteryear and real time are in harmony but the delay between the end of the 1989 shows and the beginning of the 1990 broadcasts has thrown everything out. Oh well – in a world of lockdown, time seems to have shifted from its axis anyway and no longer seems to function as it once did. The days are so much longer and the lack of anything to do means they all blur into each other anyway. When I was working in record shops in the 90s, I’m sure Mr Our Price used to mess with the space-time continuum so slowly did some of the afternoons pass.

The first act on this week’s TOTP ought to know something about the workings of time given their name – Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood. OK, the Captain Hollywood bit doesn’t add anything to the theme but you can see where I was going. This lot seemed to be a prototype 2 Unlimited with their template of a male rapper and female singer (plus both acts were Dutch) and yet, unlike the latter who terrorised the charts for a good few years in the early to mid 90s, they never seemed able to capitalise on the success of “I Can’t Stand It” in the UK. There was a follow up single that made the Top 20 but after that, time stood still for them.

In the rest of Europe however, it was a completely different story where they remained popular and successful despite the departure of the Captain himself in 1991. By the way, Hollywood’s real name is Tony Dawson-Harrison and after leaving the band, he went a bit off the rails…

Talking of time as we were…it’s HAMMER TIME! Yes, MC Hammer is back and for the second time this year, there is a cover of a song originally recorded by the Chi-Lites in the UK Top 40. Back in July, Paul Young released his version of their “Oh Girl” track and now MC Hammer has followed suit by covering “Have You Seen Her”. As a follow up to “U Can’t Touch This”, it was quite a departure bpm wise. With it being a Hammer production though, he changes the lyrics significantly with pretty much the only one kept the same being the ‘Have you seen her, tell me have you seen her’ chorus. I’m not sure that all of the rewritten words have aged that well. Check these out:

Hammer, you know I’m looking
Calling all my friends all around the place
Guy, Levert, or my homey Rob Base

If you’ve peeped her out, tell me
Yo, veo on the phone
Ted, Dre, or Ed Lover
Fab Five, homeys won’t you help a young brother

Peeped her out?! Plus he refers to himself in the third person at least twice – a clear sing that success had gone to his head by this point. Apparently Hammer would inflict fines for breaches of discipline by any of his touring party for such crimes as making mistakes on stage! Lost. In. Showbiz. “Have You Seen Her” didn’t quite match the heights of “U Can’t Touch This” but was a solid follow up, peaking inside the Top 10 at No 8. The third single released from the album, “Pray”, would further consolidate his success by duplicating that chart position. We’re not done with Hammer time just yet!

One of the most consistently, commercially successful bands of the 80s next who, despite by their own acknowledgement had realised by this point that their imperial phase was over, nevertheless continued to produce work of substance into the new decade. “So Hard” was the lead single from the first Pet Shop Boys album in nigh on two years. When it was released later in the month, “Behaviour” would go to No 2 but would sell substantially less copies than their “Actually” and “Introspective” albums. However, despite my persistent blogging about a TV show format that insisted the opposite and made a competition out of music, creativity cannot be measured by units shifted and chart positions alone. “Behaviour” is now very much seen as a maturing of their writing and routinely named as one of their finest works by their fan base. A melancholy classic dealing with the weighty subjects of friendship, loss and, in the case of the track “Being Boring”, speaking to and for the LGBT community of the heartbreak and tragedy of AIDS.

Coming back to “So Hard”, apparently it was the first track finished for “Behaviour” but Chris Lowe has subsequently acknowledged that it could and possibly should have been left off the album so incongruous was it to the rest of the songs it contained. Even if you only know the singles taken from the album like the aforementioned “Being Boring” and “Jealousy”, it’s easy to see what Chris was getting at. Not that it isn’t a good song, I think it stands up well and I initially preferred it to the subsequent single releases but over time I have come to appreciate more the power of the song writing on those other tracks.

I once got into a Twitter row with the Absolute 80s radio station about “So Hard”. How so? Well, it was all to do with the subject of time again, or more specifically the delineation of it. What am I going on about? Well, it’s simple really. Absolute 80s played “So Hard”, a song released 10 months into the 90s. It offended my sense of musical eras. Here’s the spat in full:

@Absolute80s Sure but you just played So Hard by Pet Shop Boys released Oct 1990. Hardly 80s is it? #getyourdatesstraight
— Richard Bayliss (@Dickiebliss) October 9, 2013

@Dickiebliss Some tracks are on the cusp of a decade but fit more the style of the previous or next one… so we exercise creative curation!
— Absolute 80s (@Absolute80s) October 9, 2013

@Absolute80s Hmm..I see. So it's out with the creative shoe horn is it? Not sure how PSB will feel about being pigeon-holed as an 80s band.
— Richard Bayliss (@Dickiebliss) October 9, 2013

@Absolute80s Ridiculous! If you segregate music as you have done then stick to your own branding rules. #getyourdatesstraight
— Richard Bayliss (@Dickiebliss) October 9, 2013

Yes, I am a complete pedant. “So Hard” peaked at No 4 in the UK Top 40.

Oh come on! Who in the whole wide world needed a Technotronic “Megamix”?! This was weapons grade shithousery by the act’s record label as they basically had their first four singles (that had already been hits) mixed together and shoved that out into the market to get people to buy them all over again. Thankfully, this act of gross manipulation turned out to be the tipping point and record buyers rejected their poisonous product after this. They would achieve just one more Top 20 hit in the UK. In early 1991, fellow Eurodance snake oil salesmen Snap! would pull the exact same shit when they released a single called “Mega Mix” which was a remix of their first four singles and just like Technotronic’s effort, it also went Top 10. Would we ever learn?

The TOTP producers are still persisting with this best selling albums of the previous month nonsense. For the record, the best selling albums of Sep 1990 were:

1. Three Tenors – In Concert

2. George Michael – “Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1”

3. Elton John – “Sleeping With The Past”

4. Michael Bolton – “Soul Provider”

5. Deacon Blue – “Ooh Las Vegas”

A couple of noteworthy things here. Firstly, the weird, DIY looking clip to reflect the George Michael album. What the Hell was that?! Well, George had refused to shoot a video for the album’s lead single “Praying For Time” due to tensions with his record company Sony and seeing as there wasn’t yet another single taken from it, seemingly somebody (Sony? TOTP?) put together some stills against a back drop of the “Waiting For That Day” track. It looks odd to say the least.

Secondly, that Deacon Blue album was a compilation of B-sides and unreleased tracks so the fact that it was such a big seller says much for their popularity at that time. I’ve got “Ooh Las Vegas” and there are some great songs on there and no I don’t care what you think of that statement.

Back in the studio we find MC Tunes and 808 State with “Tunes Splits The Atom”. This was the second consecutive hit for Tunes after “The Only Rhyme That Bites” earlier in the year and while it’s crammed with his rap lyrics like its predecessor, it has a more mellow vibe to it. This was the last single to be officially credited to ‘MC Tunes versus 808 State’ – “Primary Rhyming”, the next single lifted from his debut album “The North At Its Heights”, had that wording removed from its cover credits. That act seemed to break the spell as it peaked at No 67 and MC Tunes never graced the charts again. There was no chain reaction of subsequent hits after this one (ho ho).

He made the most of his time in the spotlight though including being the guest singles reviewer for Smash Hits around this time. He chose “So Hard” by Pet Shop Boys as his single of the fortnight but he hated MC Hammer’s “Have You Seen Her” describing it thus:

“This is the sort of tune that gets played in nightclubs called ‘Mr Smiths’ wear people go wearing their nice suits, drink brown ale and chat up women. Crap.”

Quite. Smash Hits subsequently ran a competition to win the very copy of the MC Hammer single that MC Tunes damaged! “Tunes Splits The Atom” peaked at No 18.

Some Breakers now…what? Four of them?! Oh great. Lots more typing to do yet then. We start with the Adventures of Stevie V who I had no idea managed two chart hits! “Body Language” was that second hit but was nowhere near as successful as his No 2 hit “Dirty Cash” peaking at No 29. The reason why? It was a load of old cobblers! Give me The Adventures of Tin Tin over Stevie V anytime. Hell, I’d even settle for some Thompson Twins (see what I did there?).

The unusual event next of a Breaker tune becoming a No 1 record. Despite the TOTP hosts usual claims that this section featured the most ‘happening’ records on the charts, they rarely were and the whole premise of the feature was presumably just a ploy to be able to cram in a load more tunes on the show. “A Little Time” by The Beautiful South was a welcome exception. Whilst not my favourite song of theirs by quite some distance, compared to the likes of The Adventures Of Stevie V, it was chart nectar. Entering the charts at a lowly No 30, it progressed steadily to the Top 10 the following week, then the Top 5 and finally No 1 for a solitary week.

Yet another bittersweet tune from the pens of Paul Heaton and David Rotheray, the use of a male and female vocalist in Dave Hemmingway and Briana Corrigan helped to emphasise the opposing sides of the lyrics with the sting in the tale that while ‘Dave’ had been off enjoying himself before committing himself to the relationship, by the time he had decided, ‘Briana’ had pulled the plug on it and wanted nothing to do with him. The memorable video full of flour, feathers, kitchen knives and a decapitated teddy bear with its head on a spike won the 1991 Brit Awards for British Video of the Year.

“Red Hot + Blue” was a compilation album from the Red Hot Organization, a not-for-profit international body dedicated to fighting AIDS through pop culture and featured interpretations of Cole Porter songs by contemporary pop artists. It was a fairly eclectic roster of artists who contributed from Tom Waits to U2 and from Salif Keita to k.d. lang. It sold over a million copies worldwide and there was an accompanying TV special featuring specially created videos for the songs, alongside clips highlighting the effects of AIDS.

I remember the album used to get a regular airing in the Our Price store I was working in by the end of the year and my favourite track from it was David Byrne’s treatment of “Don’t Fence Me In” closely followed by Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop’s cover of “Well, Did You Evah!”. However, the official single released from the album was Neneh Cherry ‘s take on “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” which, whilst very important in terms of helping to promote AIDS awareness, I didn’t like that much at all musically. Looking back ,and given the subject matter of “Being Boring”, I’m surprised that Pet Shop Boys weren’t contributors to the project whereas the aforementioned Thompson Twins were. Not that I know anything about how such projects are put together of course. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” peaked at No 25.

As with the first of this week’s Breakers The Adventures of Stevie V, I had no idea this lot had a second hit but they did. “Heaven” was the re-released follow up to The Chimes‘ cover version of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. It was a No 1 song on the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart but struggled to a high of No 24 in the UK Top 40. Listening to it now, I can appreciate Pauline Henry’s vocal prowess but the song doesn’t do anything much for me at all I’m afraid.

Who on earth was Bobby Vinton and what was he doing in the charts? Well, you only had to hear “Blue Velvet” once to realise that he was a singing star from back in the day but apart from that I knew very little. Oh hang on, was he the guy that sang “Dream Lover” and “Mack The Knife”? No, that was Bobby Darin. Oh. Well, Wikipedia tells me that Vinton was a US singer-songwriter who, get this, released 38 studio albums, 67 compilation albums and 88 singles over the course of the 60s, 70s and 80s. However, he’d only ever had two minor Top 40 hits in the UK back in the early 60s.

So why was he riding high in our charts in the 90s? I don’t really have to spell it out do I? No, it was nothing to do with the David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet (although the song does feature in it as sung by its star Isabella Rossellini). OK, it seems I do have to spell it out. It was used in an advert. Of course it was! Everything in the charts in this year seemed to have been in a bloody advert. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

This re-release of "Blue Velvet" came about thanks to its inclusion in an ad for Nivea cold cream (which came in a blue bottle!). https://t.co/iqkvkhWjCl #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 12, 2021

Nowadays of course, Nivea have turned from blue to red and got Liverpool FC footballers to advertise their products. Thankfully, this hasn’t led to a re-release of the “Anfield Rap” yet. “Blue Velvet” would rise all the way to No 2.

Maria McKee is still at No 1 with “Show Me Heaven” but instead of that live vocal studio performance that they’ve been showing, we get the official promo video this week. As it’s from the Days Of Thunder film, it’s not long before we see Tom Cruise’s fizzog (mostly kissing co-star and later wife Nicole Kidman) although to be fair, Maria does get plenty of screen time too.

I’ve never seen Days Of Thunder but I’m imagining it’s like Top Gun but with racing cars instead of jets. Hang on, it says in Wikipedia that Cruise’s character was called Cole Trickle? Cole Trickle? Wait! It gets better (or worse). The character’s name was a reference to real life American race car driver Dick Trickle! That’s DICK TRICKLE!! Once more…DICK TRICKLE!! That’s up there with Biggus Dickus…

Just in case you hadn’t had enough Technotonic in the last 30 minutes, here they were again as the play out video but under their pseudonym of Hi Tek 3 along with Ya Kid K with “Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)”. Like Partners In Kryme before them, this was from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles soundtrack and was actually a re-release having made No 69 back in January but was propelled to No 15 this time around on the back of the fuss/success surrounding those infernal turtles.

Ya Kid K always makes me think of “Our Kid Eh” by Mark and Lard’s spoof group The Shirehorses which of course lampoons Radiohead’s “Kid A” and features songs such as “Why Is It Always Dairy Lea” (a take off of “Why Does It Always Rain On Me?” by Travis) and “Feel Like Shite” (their take on “Alright” by Supergrass). Lovely stuff.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood	I Can’t Stand It	…and therefore I didn’t buy it
2	MC Hammer	Have You Seen Her	Nope
3	Pet Shop Boys	So Hard	No but it’s on my Pop Art retrospective of theirs
4	Technotronic	Megamix	As if
5	MC Tunes / 808 State	Tunes Splits The Atom	No
6	The Adventures Of Stevie V	Body Language	Negative
7	The Beautiful South	A Little Time	Not the single but I have it on their Best Of album
8	Neneh Cherry	I’ve Got You Under My Skin	It’s a no
9	The Chimes	Heaven	And another one
10	Bobby Vinton	Blue Velvet	Not for me thanks
11	Maria McKee	Show Me Heaven	Nah
12	Hi Tek 3 featuring Ya Kid K	Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)	Hell no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t132/top-of-the-pops-04101990

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?