Technotronic

TOTP 08 AUG 1991

Posted on September 19, 2021 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Bang” peaked at No 24.

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

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

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

“Apparently Nothin’” peaked at No 13.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000znwm/top-of-the-pops-08081991

TOTP 23 MAY 1991

Posted on August 6, 2021 by 80stastic

To say we were still in the grip of dance music in mid 1991, this particular TOTP seems to be pretty conventional indeed featuring some very established acts, a couple of previously indie bands plotting a course for the mainstream with a more commercial sound and a new name but very much in the traditional singer-songwriter mould. There’s only two acts that would have qualified as dance music and one of them was Color Me Badd so I’m not sure they count.

Gary ‘Safe Pair of Hands’ Davies is the host and we start with a band desperately trying to convince us that they were still relevant in the new decade despite having made their fame and fortune very much as an 80s group. T’Pau hadn’t released an album for nearly three years by this point. Could they really roll back the clock and reclaim their former glories with a new one called “The Promise”? It seemed like a big ask at the time and so it would prove to be. The first taster of the songs they had been working on was lead single “Whenever You Need Me” and it offered very little in terms of a new musical direction. In short, they hadn’t developed their sound at all. Sure, it chugged along like a good ‘un in a power ballad by numbers fashion but it felt like the band had just decided to play it safe. They call it a ‘lay up’ shot in golf.

Reaction to the band’s return was mixed at best and awful at worst. Adam Sweeting of The Guardian had this to say about the album:

This melodramatic and syrupy concoction would comfortably have earned the band the Barbara Dickson slot on The Two Ronnies. Consider the first single, “Whenever You Need Me”, a Eurovision fourth-placer if ever there was one. Here, as elsewhere, Carol Decker’s masonry-toppling vocals are piled up in layers like a particularly indigestible aural lasagne

Ouch! Carol Decker still looked great and delivered the song as best she could but the rest of the band seemed to have decided that they were, in fact, serious rockers and not faded pop stars after all as they have all sprouted long hair. One of them really looks like ex- Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor. It isn’t but Andy’s shaggy locks look had clearly influenced him. I hope he had a good time up there on stage because I’m pretty sure this was T’Pau’s final ever TOTP appearance.

“Whenever You Need Me” peaked at No 16.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrRh6_ETtwM

OK, we might as well get this one out of the way early. As indicated earlier, Color Me Badd are on the show.

*sighs*

Quite how this lot got to become a record selling phenomenon in 1991 is beyond me. They had a shitty song and as poster boys for the new jack swing genre, they were totally unconvincing. They weren’t even that good looking. At least New Kids On The Block had that on their side (well some of them anyway).

Regardless, “I Wanna Sex You Up” is headed for the top and is up to No 7 already. Apparently, it had already been offered to and turned down by the likes of Bell Biv DeVoe and Keith Sweat. Not quite up there with Decca turning down The Beatles but still a big mistake on there behalves. The track went double platinum in the US and was the 10th best selling single of the year in the UK.

The band are still going to this day (sort of) although the line up has changed a few times. Original members Bryan Abrams and Mark Calderon were still giving it there all on stage as recently as 2018 but unfortunately Abrams gave it a bit too much at this performance in New York….

…I like the Wikipedia description of the incident:

Abrams allegedly screamed, “I’m motherfucking Color Me Badd!” as he pushed Calderon to the floor. Officers stated that alcohol may have been a factor.

‘Alcohol may have been a factor‘ – d’ya think?! Abrams tried to make it up to Calderon at a subsequent gig by apologising via the medium of a T-shirt….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPq0Twivg4Q

Dearie me. These are the actual guys from the band by the way and not a tribute act called Fuller Me Badd.

One of those established acts next as Simple Minds are back in the TOTP studio with latest single “See The Lights” which was the second single from their No 2 platinum selling album ‘Real Life”. Like T’Pau earlier, the band were hardly breaking new ground here. It felt like they were treading water to me. There had been a big line up change around this time as the album was made without keyboardist and original band member Mick MacNeil so maybe the band were trying to show their fans that the show would be going on as usual. More changes were a foot as drummer Mel Gaynor would also depart after this album when the band went on hiatus to reassess their options. The only album they released over the next four years was their first Best Of called “Glittering Prize 81/92”. These were uncertain times.

As with the Cher album “Love Hurts” that I talked about in a recent post, “Real Life” also swapped the cover art during its sales life. The album initially sported the minimalist and arty image on the left below before re-orders came with the shot of the band on the right which was actually the original rear cover – all very confusing. Maybe the band’s management wanted to reinforce the idea that tight were essentially a trio of permanent members now.

“See The Lights” peaked at No 20.

That singer-songwriter is up next and it can only be Beverley Craven of course with her rather affecting ballad “Promise Me”. I’m assuming her off white trouser suit and white piano in this performance are an homage to John Lennon and “Imagine”. I don’t know enough about pianos to be sure whether it is a Steinway like Lennon’s. Somebody who does know about musical instruments though is one of my wife’s best friends who is a classical musician and who, like us, was also living in Manchester in 1991 and around this time she got offered a place as part of the band for Beverley’s tour which I think included European dates. However, she turned the chance down as she had already booked a holiday with her then boyfriend and the dates overlapped. They finished not long after. I think she asked Beverley to “promise me you’ll wait for me” but she didn’t. Ahem. I’ll get my coat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u19v5j5j18

It’s that REM song next. “Shiny Happy People” may sound like a gloriously uplifting breath of fresh air pop breeze but supposedly the story behind it is a lot darker. Written about the Chinese propaganda machine spreading lies about what was really going on in the country post the Tiananmen Square uprising, Michael Stipe became concerned that rather than highlighting the propaganda, the song was actually modelling it with music fans accepting wholesale that it was just a happy, piece of bubble gum pop with no other levels to it. He may have been right.

Off the top of my head, other examples of songs where their sound is at odds with their subject matter would be “Luka” by Suzanne Vega and “Born In The USA” by Bruce Springsteen. I’m sure there are more.

“Shiny Happy People” peaked at No 6.

Impromptu gigs – they have quite the history don’t they. All the way back in the early 60s when those Cliff Richard films like Summer Holiday and The Young Ones always seemed to have a “let’s do the show right here” scene in them through to The Beatles unannounced concert from the rooftop of their Apple Corps headquarters at Savile Row in 1969 and into the 80s with U2 performing on the roof of a liquor store at the corner of 7th St and S. Main St, LA as part of the video shoot for “Where the Streets Have No Name”. Even in 1991, the practice was still alive and well as James played an impromptu gig on the roof of Manchester’s Piccadilly Hotel on 30 January. Add to that list The Wonder Stuff whose video for “Caught In My Shadow” was filmed in the grounds of St Philip’s Cathedral (otherwise known as Pigeon Park), Birmingham. Not quite a pure impromptu event though as the band had to get permission from the local council and the police had to be consulted so news of its happening had been leaked meaning that 200 indie pop kids turned up on 20 April to watch the band perform an acoustic gig.

It looked like it was great fun and that everybody had a good time (except maybe the guy in the orange top whose hands seemed surgically sewn into his pockets). The closest I ever got to an event like that was when I was on holiday in New York in 1998 and me and my mate Robin happened to stumble upon a live outside broadcast for the 1000th Ricki Lake show. I presume there’s some footage out there somewhere of me and Robin peering at the back of a crowd trying to see who everyone there was crowding round. My wife and another friend had gone off in another direction that day and saw Donald Trump coming out of Trump Tower. When we met up with them, they excitedly told us of their day and about Trump but Robin and I felt that we eclipsed then with our Ricki Lake story. I’m not sure we did given everything that has happened since.

“Caught In My Shadow” peaked at No 18.

Like T’Pau earlier, here are another band who made their name in the 80s returning with new material for the new decade. The only release that Deacon Blue had made in the 90s up to this point had been their “Four Bacharach & David Songs” EP and an album of B-sides and unreleased tracks called “Ooh Las Vegas” the previous year. “Your Swaying Arms” was their first new material since their album “When The World Knows Your Name” had, indeed, made their name and brought them huge commercial success.

Unfortunately for the band, the follow up album “Fellow Hoodlums” didn’t do anywhere near the same business as its predecessor (which had knocked Madonna off the top of the charts) and was generally seen as a mis-step. Yes, it did reach No 2 in the charts thanks to a sizeable loyal fanbase but I would wager that only second single “Twist And Shout” is remembered and indeed memorable from this era of the band. “Your Swaying Arms” was a case in point. A nice enough track that lilts along but it didn’t really go anywhere.

Ricky Ross had got himself an edgy, short haircut for this performance and the young man that I was at the time would have been always pleased to see Lorraine McIntosh strutting her stuff. Lorraine and Carol Decker on the same show! I was spoilt that week!

“Your Swaying Arms” peaked at No 23.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjioGexBj1s

After the “Innuendo” and “I’m Going Slightly Mad” singles, “Headlong” was much more of a traditional sounding Queen song. Very much in the style of something like “Hammer To Fall” or “One Vision” but not as accomplished. I don’t think lyrics like ‘Hoop-diddy-diddy, hoop-diddy-do’ did it any favours to be honest. The video was shot in November and December of 1990. Within 12 months Freddie Mercury would be dead having succumbed to AIDS.

His yellow top in the video here conjures up images of him in a similarly coloured jacket whipping up the crowd into a frenzy at Wembley stadium. Meanwhile, we can assume that Brian May, unlike most of the rest of us, did have access to The Simpsons TV show judging by his T-shirt.

“Headlong” peaked at No 14.

Acting as the cheerleader of the established acts on tonight’s show comes Cher who is still at No 1 with “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)”, now in its fourth week at the top. I guess it was one of those songs that maybe appealed to people who traditionally didn’t buy much music and maybe only found themselves in a record shop once or twice a year? In today’s political vocabulary, ‘it cut through’.

According to Wikipedia, her follow up single “Love And Understanding” was released this week back in 1991 even as she was still top of the pile with her previous one. Talk about striking while the iron’s hot!

Probably the only true dance act on this TOTP is the play out video. Technotronic had been having hits for a couple of year by this point but the game was nearly up come 1991. “Move That Body” was a Top 20 hit but it would be their final one and the album it was from “Body To Body” peaked at No 27 whilst debut album “Pump Up The Jam” had been a No 2 hit. Quite the contrast. I shan’t mourn their passing I have to say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2jNjketgPE

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoLS1KXKxIw

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	T’Pau	Whenever You Need Me	Nah
2	Color Me Badd	I Wanna Sex You Up	Are you shitting me?!
3	Simple Minds	See The Lights	Nope
4	Beverley Craven	Promise Me	No but why wife’s friend who turned down the tour with Beverley bought the album just to torture herself some more
5	REM	Shiny Happy People	I did not
6	The Wonder Stuff	Caught In My Shadow	No
7	Deacon Blue	Your Swaying Arms	Negative
8	Queen	Headlong	Another no
9	Cher	The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)	Yes but it was all an honest mistake!
10	Technotronic	Move That Body	Do you have to ask?

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/m000y8wv/top-of-the-pops-23051991

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

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/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?

TOTP 26 JUL 1990

Posted on February 5, 2021 by 80stastic

We are still in the middle of Summer here at TOTP Rewind, Summer 1990 that is. I haven’t dropped in on the 22 year old version of myself for a few posts so let me give him a bell and see if he’s there….oh yeah, affordable mobile phones are yet to flood the market so I didn’t have one in 1990 – indeed I spent most of the decade without one. Never mind, I know where he’ll be – working at Kingston Communications on that temporary VDU input contract. What’s that? The contract finished a couple of weeks ago? So where is he now then? Try Queen’s Gardens? OK, thanks. Not having any work again, the 1990 me used to often spend my time idling the hours away wandering around Queen’s Gardens in Hull, usually with my trusty Sony Walkman for company.

Queen’s Gardens, Hull – yes they do look nice don’t they?

I’m guessing my girlfriend / wife must have had a job at this time as I have no recollection of spending anytime with her shooting the breeze in the gardens in the sun. I think my period of free time didn’t last that long as Kingston Communications asked me to come back for a further couple of weeks work later on in the Summer so impressed were they by me as the master of VDU input. For now though, I’m busy doing nothing and listening to? What was I listening to on that Walkman? The only thing I can recall is that I had purchased the cassette single of the latest World Party single called “Put The Message In The Box” so I was probably playing that on repeat.

Enough of me though and back to TOTP. Tonight’s host is Jakki Brambles who appears to have undergone a dramatic image restyle with her hair now up but with some cascading ringlets framing her face. From cascading ringlets to cascading rain as we join opening act Blue Pearl who are still “Naked In The Rain”. As well as the unlikely named Durga McBroom on vocals, the band also featured Youth, the well known record producer and musician. His is an interesting story with notable career moments including being founding member and bass player in gothic rockers Killing Joke and going on to produce pretty much everyone from Art Of Noise to The Verve via Crowded House, James, Erasure and Bananarama (more of whom later). One of his less heralded projects but one which I always quite liked were funk pop-rockers Brilliant who included future KLF masterminds Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond as their keyboardist/guitarist and A&R manager respectively. Drummond didn’t share my like of the band though stating in an interview on Norwegian radio station NRK P2 that:

“I signed a band called Brilliant, who I worked with, we worked together, and it was complete failure. Artistically bankrupt project. And financially deaf. We spent £300,000 on making an album that was useless. Useless artistically, useless… commercially.”

Ouch! Well, I disagree Bill. What say you reader?

Back to Blue Pearl though and after “Naked In The Rain” peaked at No 4, the house duo seemed to be set to ride the dance wave into the early 90s and beyond but follow up track “Little Brother ” only made it to No 31 whilst the album “Naked” was caught with its pants down at a lowly No 58. The project was disbanded in 1993 but “Naked In The Rain” returned to the Top 40 in 1998 as…erm… “Naked In The Rain 98”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBiABXbcLBQ&pbjreload=101

Oh knackers! It’s going to be one of those dance dominated shows isn’t it? The second act tonight are Technotronic featuring Ya Kid K with “Rockin’ Over The Beat”. I really can’t think of anything else I want to say about this lot. C’mon man think! Ok, how about a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles connection? They’re all the rage aren’t they? Brilliant (no not them)! Here goes…Technotronic contributed the song “Spin That Wheel” to the soundtrack album of the film under the pseudonym of Hi Tek 3 and Ya Kid K ‘featured’ on that as well. n some territories it was released as “Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)”. The track was released as a single twice in the UK, peaking at No 69 in January 1990 but making No 15 when re-released nine months later. That do you? No? Well, Ya Kid K seemingly couldn’t get enough of those turtles so she released her own solo single called “Awesome (You Are My Hero)” from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II soundtrack in 1991. Cow and indeed abunga!

OK, so the next one is another dance track but an interesting one for all that. I already knew of the song “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega as it had been the opening track on Suzanne’s 1987 album “Solitude Standing” which my girlfriend/wife had bought. Being an a cappella song, it was quite striking on first hearing (and pretty much every one after that too). It had been released as a single but it was too out there for our tastes back in 1987 and it stalled at No 58.

The idea though that it could be converted into a dance track? Well, I for one never saw it coming. And DNA, who were they? They were a production duo from Bath who added a Soul II Soul backbeat to the original and released it as a bootleg. None of this was done with either Vega or her record label A&M ‘s approval and the former wasn’t initially keen on the idea. However, on hearing the DNA remix, artist and label decided not to sue but to get on board with the idea and give it an official release. The rest is history. Its rise to No 2 in the UK charts was still a surprise though, to me anyway. Could you actually dance to it in a club? It put me in mind more of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” more than a dance floor banger.

Seven years later, DJ and producer Armand van Helden pulled off a similar trick when he remixed American singer-songwriter and pianist Tori Amos’ “Professional Widow” track as “Professional Widow (It’s Got to Be Big)” and scored a No 1.

Oh good. Here come The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid with “I’m Free”. This still sounds good to me. Unfairly labelled as the polythene Primal Scream in some quarters – both bands had seemingly moved away from their jangly guitar roots to make indie-dance records come the new decade – somehow the moment for The Soup Dragons to become massive stars slipped through their grasp. Despite a marvellous follow up single in the re-issued “Mother Universe” and a critically well received Top 10 album in “Lovegod”, momentum was lost and by 1995 they had disbanded. Maybe chart success was never really the plan though. Singer Sean Dickson stated in a Smash Hits article that:

“I could bloody write a record to get in the charts tomorrow – I’m not that dumb. But it doesn’t appeal to me at all – that’s for nerds and assholes and idiots who want to ruin their lives.”

Well quite.

“I’m Free” peaked at No 5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGpSZjfU66I

The Breakers are back! We start with Bell Biv DeVoe who were of course previously all members of “Candy Girl” hit makers New Edition. Once Bobby Brown left the band and embarked on a successful solo career, the other vocalists in the group wanted in – Ralph Tresvant will turn up in our charts again with his “Sensitivity” single soon enough whilst Johnny Gill scored big with his eponymous 1990 solo album before forming R’n’B supergroup Levert.Sweat.Gill. That left the other three guys (Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins and Ronnie DeVoe) who had pretty much always been the backing vocalists and weren’t sure what to do once New Edition splintered. Encouraged by producer Jimmy Jam, they joined forces and gained immediate success with their “Poison” single and album. The title track in particular, though only just scraping into the Top 20 over here, was huge in the US and has taken on a life of its own in the subsequent years being used extensively in film, TV and computer games soundtracks.

Unsurprisingly, it did sound very Bobby Brown to me which was like kryptonite to Superman for my pop sensibilities although I always thought that the elongated ‘poison’ hook was effective. At the song’s end, they give name checks to their ex New Editions band mates with these lyrics:

“Yo’, wassup to Ralph T and Johnny G
And I can’t forget about my boy, B. Brown
And the whole NE crew“

New Edition – the most amicable band break up ever.

Now is this the biggest ever gap between the release of a huge No 1 single and its follow up? Sinéad O’Connor‘s all conquering “Nothing Compares 2 U” was initially released on January 8th in 1990 before hitting the top of the charts in early February but its follow up, “The Emperor’s New Clothes“, wasn’t released until six months later! Why the big wait in between releases? No idea. Could it be that her record company hadn’t banked on the extraordinary success of “Nothing Compares 2 U” and the weight of expectation for more chart glory that it ushered in? Maybe they’d an original single release schedule but it was totally skewed by her rise to superstardom? Whatever the reason there certainly seemed to be some indecision before “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was plucked for single release. I don’t know parent album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” well enough to know if this was a wise choice of track or not but it was always going to suffer in comparison to its predecessor. It’s much more “Mandinka” than “Nothing Compares 2 U” and is a pretty solid effort but it was doomed from the start to fall short commercially. It duly peaked at No 31.

As the 80s ended, Bananarama could reflect on a decade that included 18 Top 40 hits (including 10 Top Tenners) and the status of being the UK’s most successful all girl group. As the 90s dawned though, the future looked less certain than their glorious past. Their fanbase was still coming to terms with the leaving of Siobhan Fahey and her replacement by Jacquie O’Sullivan whilst original and now principal group members Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin were contemplating which direction to go in next. Their fifth studio album “Pop Life” saw them lose faith with the Stock, Aitken and Waterman formula, go back to their beginnings with producers Steve Jolley and Tony Swain before finally settling on Sara’a ex-boyfriend Youth (him again!) to produce the album.

“Only Your Love” was the lead single and despite pinching ‘woo woo’ vocals from “Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones, didn’t really tear up the charts and after gathering some moss along the way, came to a standstill at No 27. The video featured the usual rabble of half dressed male hunks for the girls to cavort around and the whole thing looked and sounded a bit half arsed to me. Bit ironic considering that they left SAW behind because they said that the tracks they offered to them showed a complete lack of progression with accusations from the Nanas that the production trio had stagnated and were spending all their time working on tunes for Kylie and Jason Donovan.

The album fared even worse peaking at No 42 but then the group were never really an album act were they? The harsh truth is that there are more Bananarama compilation albums in existence (16) than studio albums (11). Pretty telling I think.

At the end of the promotion for the album, Jacquie O’Sullivan jumped ship and swapped a ‘Pop Life’ for a career as a yoga teacher leaving Keren and Sara to carry on as a duo.

Back in the studio we find Paula Abdul and her latest single “Knocked Out”. In a totally predictable turn of events, Paula has taken to the TOTP stage backed by four dancers dressed as boxers. I’m guessing Ms Abdul came up with the routine herself – I thought she was meant to be an award winning choreographer? The boxing theme was surely too lame and obvious though? She must have been so preoccupied by the routine though that she forgot to include any sort of tune in her single which really is nothing more than some beats to soundtrack her dance moves rather than a piece of music in its own right.

“Knocked Out” peaked at No 21.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2_xrb_vBPQ

Jakki Brambles fluffs her lines in the intro to MC Hammer‘s “U Can’t Touch This” by announcing that his album is called “Please Hammer Hurt ‘Em” when in fact it was entitled “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em”. Come on Jakki – this is easy stuff surely? Pretty sure I would have been docked points for that answer when asked the name of MC Hammer’s album in my Our Price interview a few months on from this broadcast.

Famously sampling “Super Freak” by Rick James, unlike the aforementioned Suzanne Vega and DNA, Rick routinely turned down requests from rappers to sample his music but his lawyers authorised the “Super Freak” sample without his permission. Despite the royalties it brought in, James claimed he wouldn’t have done the deal had he been asked.

The video to “U Can’t Touch This” became the most-played of 1990 on MTV as well as winning a clutch of awards. It has been viewed 601 million times on YouTube which is mind blowing when you consider that it’s basically Hammer in some comedy oversized pants doing some cheesy dance steps. Somehow the single only made it to No 8 in the US Billboard Top 100 which seems rather implausible given its profile.

Hammer’s run of hit singles continued for a couple of years before his star started to wane. A relaunch with a harder, gangster rapper image was unsuccessful and by the late ’90s, he became a TV preacher.

A second studio performance for River City People next with their cover of “California Dreamin'”. This lot seemed such an anachronism in the charts of 1990 though not necessarily an unpleasant one. So did their hit spark a revival of The Mamas & the Papas music? It seems not. I was expecting their to have been a quickly put together, TV advertised Best Of album rushed out on the back of the River City People’s chart success but their discography doesn’t show one. There had been one in 1977 but there wasn’t another released until 1995. Do I own one? Not exactly though my wife bought the soundtrack to the film Beautiful Thing which was basically the same thing. If you’ve not seen the film, it’s worth a watch about two young lads coming to terms with their homosexuality and slowly building relationship. Kind of like an It’s A Sin for the 90s. Kind of.

“California Dreamin’ / Carry The Blame” peaked at No 13.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyd64afymW8

King Elton of John has been deposed and we have a new No 1. Unfortunately it’s “Turtle Power” by ~~Technotronic~~, ~~Hi Tek 3,~~ ~~Ya Kid K~~….Partners In Kryme. In my mind, this was only at the top of the heap for one solitary week but in actual fact it was there for four whole weeks! Oh joy!

Not wanting to miss any opportunities, the promotions team behind the phenomenon get two guys dressed in Turtle outfits to stand beside Jakki but I’m not sure starting to touch her inappropriately was in their brief. By the time we return to Jakki at the song’s end, she’s got them back under control and the whole show is rounded off with a resounding cry of ‘Cowabunga!’ although I think Jakki cocks that up too and says ‘Carrabunga!’ which sounds like some sort of bribery attempt involving Jamie Carragher.

There is still the ‘any other business moment’ of the play out video which is “LFO” by LFO. I was not frequenting any nightclubs at this time and so this passed me by completely. I do recall their ‘Frequencies” album coming out on the achingly hip Warp label about a year later as I was working in Our Price by that time and some of the dance heads at the shop got very excited about it.

“LFO” peaked at No 12.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLwLB47jpFc

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Blue Pearl	Naked In The Rain	It’s a no
2	Technotronic featuring Ya Kid K	Rockin’ Over The Beat	This beat is…shit. No
3	Suzanne Vega featuring DNA	Tom’s Diner	No but my wife had the original version of the song on Suzanne’s Solitude Standing album
4	The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid	I’m Free	Thought I did but singles box says no. I did however by the follow up single Mother Universe
5	Bell Biv Devoe	Poison	Nope
6	Sinead O’Connor	The Emperor’s New Clothes	Nah
7	Bananarama	Only Your Love	No
8	Paula Abdul	Knocked Out	Negative
9	MC Hammer	U Can’t Touch This	And I didn’t – no
10	River City People	California Dreamin’ / Carry The Blame	Nope
11	Partners In Kryme	Turtle Power	This as a crime…against music. No
12	LFO	LFO	LF…NO

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rpmq/top-of-the-pops-26071990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 12 JUL 1990

Posted on January 29, 2021 by 80stastic

So Italia ’90 is finally over, English pride in their football team has been restored and Gazzamania is upon us. Thankfully we have a few weeks yet before Mr Gascoigne enters the world of pop music. In the meantime, we have seven ‘new’ tunes to feast on at the top table of TOTP. If music be the food of love, play on…

…and we start with with Scottish rockers Gun (terrible name*) and their single “Shame On You”. When the band appeared in the Breakers section of TOTP with their debut hit “Better Days” back in the Summer of ’89, another band featured in that section that same show were The Stone Roses. In an unlikely turn of events, the Roses are again on TOTP alongside Gun tonight. In the blog post of that ’89 programme, I revealed that I should have been absolutely ripe to be swept away by the baggy movement spearheaded by Ian Brown and co and yet somehow I managed to nail my colours to the Gun mast! Fast forward a year and let’s see how that choice worked out. The Stone Roses are the coolest band in Britain and their debut album can be heard coming out of the bedroom window of just about every music fan who knows their stuff. And Gun? Well, they followed up “Better Days” with three further single releases none of which made the Top 40. Still, as presenter Anthea Turner (dressed like a tube of Opal Fruits tonight) says, they have been on tour with none other than The Rolling Stones (more of whom later).

It seems though that Gun’s luck is beginning to turn as they are back in the charts with “Shame On You” (the fifth single from their debut album “Taking On The World”). And guess what? I was still sticking to my guns (ahem) and that original choice of band as I bought this single! Yes, after months of never having bought any of the singles featured on the show, two songs come along at once that I purchased with this one and Bob Geldof’s “The Great Song Of Indifference” from the other week. I bought it on cassette single (cassettes were still my format of choice back then) and it was backed with a live version of “Better Days” on the B-side as it were. I loved the driving back beat that builds gradually and that twangy guitar riff. Unfortunately for me and for the band, it would stall at No 33 (the exact same peak as “Better Days”). Sophomore album “Gallus” released two years later was a moderate success but it was only when they released a cover of Cameo’s ‘Word Up” in ’94 that they would finally achieve a Top 10 hit.

Gun split in ’97 but reformed in 2008 and are still a going concern today…and you can’t say that about The Stone Roses can you?

*Previous incarnations of the band went by the monikers of Blind Allez and Phobia – not sure they are any improvement on Gun to be fair!

Who’s next on? Oh, yes River City People – I’d almost (but not quite) forgotten this lot. Wasn’t there a bit of fuss about them being the next big thing at this time or am I making that up? Why is Anthea Turner so enthused about the band? Well, she used to work with lead singer Siobhan Maher as presenters on Children’s BBC’s summer holiday morning programme But First This! apparently ( I’ve no recall of it at all). Maher was also an actress and appeared in Brookside spin off Damon And Debbie which I do absolutely remember (especially its tragic ending – heartbreaking it was).

Anyway, in addition to presenting and acting ambitions, Maher was also a singer and formed River City People in ’86. After a couple of false starts, they hit it big with a cover of The Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin‘”. I’m guessing that after those initial mis-steps, their record label reverted to that tried and trusted career saving trick of a cover version. Cleverly they doubled it up with a River City People original in “Carry The Blame” as the other A -side though how much radio play it got, I’m not sure.

Siobhan certainly had a smooth voice and despite all the retro hippy trappings on display in this performance, it stands up pretty well I think.

The single rose to No 13 but despite its placing, it wasn’t the spring board for success that the band (and record label) must have hoped for. A re-release of debut single “(What’s Wrong With) Dreaming?” (they had a thing about dreams seemingly) only scraped into the charts at No 40 which was a shame as it sounds a bit like Lone Justice which is no bad thing in my book.

As Anthea announced, their debut album called “Say Something Good” was released later in ’90 and a second album followed in ’91 but the band split not long after that. Shame really.

OK, after some 60s folk pop, we get back to some dance music (well it is 1990) with “Naked In The Rain” by Blue Pearl and indeed this record does scream 1990 to me. I always though they were a one hit wonder but a glance at their discography tells me otherwise albeit that two of their four chart entries were with this track.

Fronted by the distinctively named Durga McBroom, this dance floor smash would make it all the way to No 4 in the UK charts. As with Siobhan Maher before her, Durga was also a multi-skiller being an actress as well. She appeared in the film Flashdance as a character called Heels and was also in music videos for the likes of Eurythmics, Janet Jackson and David Bowie no less. As Anthea mentioned in her intro (get her dropping her Knebworth references), Durga was very closely associated with Pink Floyd touring with them between 1987 to 1994. That might explain why they covered Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” for their debut album “Naked” as Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour helped produce the 16 year old Kate’s initial demo tape.

When asked in a Smash Hits interview what “Naked In The Rain” was about, Durga replied :

“It’s not a literal naked that I’m talking of. It’s not about running to Trafalgar Square and ripping all your clothes off and jumping into the fountain. It’s more an emotional naked; stripping oneself of frustrations and the things that hold us back from being really calm and really cool.”

Hmm. Not sure anybody explained that to the video director…

Not Glenn Medeiros again?! This is the third time “She Ain’t Worth It” with Bobby Brown has been on. This track was meant to represent a change of image and sound for the boy from Hawaii and looking at the titles of his albums, he did seem to suffer an identity crisis during his career. Starting with his debut album (the one with “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You” on it) which was rather uninspiringly entitled “Glenn Medeiros” he then released an album called “Not Me” before a third album came out in 1990 (that included “She Ain’t Worth It”) which was called “Glenn Medeiros” again! So that’s:

Glenn Medeiros
Not Me
Glenn Medeiros

Wow! I bet his therapy bills were big!

Although, “She Ain’t Worth It” was a US No 1, Glenn only managed one more chart hit over there (another duet, this time with Ray Parker Jnr of all people) and his chart career did not sustain beyond that.

A band who have flown in all the way from LA to be on the show next (according to Anthea) but I’m not sure it was worth the bother to be fair. Thunder had entered the chart with their version of the old Spencer Davis Group hit “Gimme Some Lovin'” at No 38 but following this TOTP performance it only went up two places to a peak of No 36 before crashing out of the Top 40 altogether. This was however their third chart hit of the year and indeed the third of five singles to be released from their “Backstreet Symphony” album in total. The album was produced by ex-Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor who also produced “Shame On You” by the show’s opening act tonight Gun. Andy had clearly moved well beyond his new romantic pop star beginnings by this point and had fully thrown in his lot with his true love, heavy rock.

Unlike producer mates Gun who were looking to re-start their chart lives after a drop in commercial fortunes when they covered Cameo’s “Word Up”, I’m not quite sure why Thunder (or possibly their record label) felt the need to release a cover version over their own material at this very early point in their career but there you go. It didn’t seem to add anything much to the original to me.

Tune! A great song up next from The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid with “I’m Free”. Looking a bit like a hybrid of Primal Scream and Happy Mondays, it was easy to labour under the misconception that this lot were part of the ‘Madchester’ movement (pretty sure I did). The Soup Dragons were in fact from Scotland (Bellshill* near Motherwell specifically). A few months later when I was a wet behind the ears sales assistant at Our Price in Manchester, a distributor rep called in to the store with some product on his van he was trying to sell in. I can’t recall which distributor he worked for but it was one of the small ones so a lot of his stuff was quite niche. One of the artists he had on the van were BMX Bandits whom he triumphantly announced went onto be chart stars The Soup Dragons hoping this would influence the store manager to take a punt on their stock. I believed that story for ages but it wasn’t strictly true. BMX Bandits existed alongside The Soup Dragons although they did often share band members including lead singer Sean Dickson.

The group’s origins weren’t the only thing I wasn’t aware of at the time – I also was oblivious to the fact that “I’m Free” was a Rolling Stones song. It’s not a strict cover of it though. The lyrics were changed slightly, necessitated by the fact that they didn’t have them (this was pre the internet remember) so Dickson sang what he could remember and made up the rest.

Can I say that I loved the groove on this record or will I sound like a middle aged man (which is what I am)? OK, sod it – I loved the groove on this record and the toasting from Junior Reid made the song their own (as Louis Walsh would say). By the way, Reid doesn’t rap ‘Free from the Loch Ness Monster, free from the deep’ but ‘Free like a butterfly, free like a bee’ just in case you had been wondering all these years.

The song is featured brilliantly in the Simon Pegg comedy The World’s End where main character Gary King is still living in 1990 in his head.

“I’m Free” would be the band’s biggest ever hit peaking at No 5.

*The little town of Bellshill was also home to Teenage Fanclub, Mogwai and erm…Sheena Easton. Quite a roll call.

If The Soup Dragons weren’t part of ‘Madchester’ then the next act certainly were. The time of The Stone Roses was now. Everyone was talking about them and ‘Madchester’ and the legendary Manc nightclub The Hacienda. I recall reading earlier in the year in the Daily Mirror (my parents’ choice of newspaper) about coach trips being organised throughout the country to take hordes of ravers up to Manchester to visit The Hacienda like it was some sort of spiritual pilgrimage.

“One Love” was a non -album single that should have been released to coincide with the band’s infamous Spike Island gig (that my elder brother went to) but it took so long to mix, its release was delayed. Having naively chosen Gun over the Roses the year before, I was ready to be bowled over this time and to get fully on board with the whole sound. “One Love”, yeah, too right! This is going to be mega I thought. And then I heard the song. I was completely underwhelmed. It seemed very laboured and didn’t really go anywhere and the chorus was lame. Even Ian Brown agreed with me on that in time…

Ian Brown on "One Love": "We tried in vain to cover all bases – we wanted to appeal to everyone in clubs and indie kids and whoever, but it was a poor chorus." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 22, 2021

There was no way I was wasting my money on this and so for the second time, I chose Gun over The Stone Roses when I bought their current single instead. The band’s fan base was big enough by this point to take the single to No 4 in the charts but it was a false dawn. It would be the last original material released by the band until “Love Spreads” some four and a half years later!

Ah bollocks! Elton John is still at No 1 with “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”. Three months on from this, Elton would release a career retrospective double album called “The Very Best Of Elton John” spanning 1970’s “Your Song” through to “Sacrifice” (though not curiously “Healing Hands”). The album was hugely successful going to No 1 and nine times platinum in the UK alone. It was also the very first item I ever sold to a customer when I joined Our Price in October of 1990 – and I needed some help from the Assistant Manager to do so!

The play out video is “Rockin’ Over The Beat” by Technotronic. This lot of Belgian Eurodancers were becoming chart regulars by this point as this was their fourth consecutive Top 40 hit and the second to feature Ya Kid K. As with all their other stuff, I couldn’t stand it. To rub my face further in their shit, the next single they released called “Megamix” was just as it said on the tin – a mash up of all four of those previous singles! And guess what? The British public lapped it up all over again sending it to No 8. “Rockin’ Over The Beat” by contrast only made it to No 16. I guess the four in one option seemed better value.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqAkeiawP0

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Gun	Shame On You	I did! No shame on me though – great song!
2	River City People	California Dreamin’ / Carry The Blame	Nope
3	Blue Pearl	Naked In The Rain	It’s a no
4	Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown	She Ain’t Worth It	And neither was this song
5	Thunder	Gimme Some Lovin’	Nah
6	The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid	I’m Free	Thought I did but singles box says no. I did however by the follow up single Mother Universe
7	The Stone Roses	One Love	No love from me for this one
8	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
9	Technotronic featuring Ya Kid K	Rockin’ Over The Beat	This beat is…shit. No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rgm6/top-of-the-pops-12071990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 12 APR 1990

Posted on December 1, 2020 by 80stastic

It’s nearly Easter already in 1990 where TOTP Rewind currently resides – the day after this TOTP was broadcast was the Good Friday – but the 21 year old me doesn’t have chocolate eggs or bunnies on my mind. No, I’m more concerned with finding a job as I am in my fourth month of unemployment. What’s more, this very day (12th April) is my girlfriend (now wife)’s birthday so I would have needed to get her a present. I seem to recall that I decided for some reason that a brass ornament of a vintage style camera (one of those ones where the photographer ducked underneath a black cloth covering to take the picture) would be just the sort of thing she would like. I saw it in a shop that specialised in that sort of knick-knacker but in truth, she would rather have had my original idea which was a VHS tape of The Beatles Help! film. She really wasn’t taken by the brass camera and I’d even haggled about the price with the shop owner to get it for her! Oh well, let’s see what tunes that the charts had to offer that week – there’d better be some good stuff in stock!

Not a bad start at all! In my head, Jesus Jones didn’t appear on the charts until much later in the year but I’m clearly getting my facts skewed as here they are in mid April with “Real Real Real” which was their first Top 40 hit peaking at No 19. Very much seen as being part of that indie /dance crossover movement, they were one of the first (alongside Happy Mondays simultaneously) to make the big commercial breakthrough and opened a gate to chartdom that acts such as EMF, The Shamen and Pop Will Eat Itself would also stride through.

I think I may have heard of Jesus Jones previous to this via their nearly hit “Info Freako” from the year before but I didn’t know much about them. By the start of 1991 however, they would be genuine chart stars and the future of rock ‘n’ roll according to some. When I did my first Xmas working at Our Price in 1990 there were two albums that we were asked for all the time that hadn’t even been released yet. One was The Farm’s “Spartacus” and the other was “Doubt” by Jesus Jones. I think they were delayed possibly to heighten the clamour for them to fever pitch and when they were finally released within a month of each other in 1991, they both reached no 1 in the album chart.

I always get a bit confused about Jesus Jones’s timeline in terms of their hits, possibly because they racked up a few in quick succession over the course of a year or so. After “Real Real Real”, they scored another four Top 40 hits including “Right Here, Right Now” being released twice and peaking at No 31 on both occasions. I hadn’t realised until now that the band had also briefly been a very big deal in the US with “Real Real Real” going to No 4 over there whilst “Right Here, Right Now” peaked at No 2. I had always assumed they were a peculiarly British phenomenon.

The band are still together having gigged throughout the years when they were being referred to as residing in the “Where are They Now” files. Indeed, I recall them receiving some very derogatory press about resorting to playing corporate gigs as the entertainment for big conglomerate firm events although I’m guessing such gigs probably pay pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhUT8IAz0_U

Like Gloria Estefan, Janet Jackson has always seemed to me to be capable of only two types of song. The big, lush soul ballad like “Let’s Wait A While” and “Come Back To Me” and the uptempo R’n’B dance tune like “What Have You Done for Me Lately” and “Miss You Much”. Completely unfair I’m sure but it’s my blog and that’s my opinion when I think of her (see what I did there? No? Oh forget it!).

“Escapade” was very much in the latter category and was one of seven (!) singles taken from her “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” album. As with all the other videos for her uptempo songs, it’s all about the choreographed dance routines. Whilst undoubtedly impressive as a spectacle, it always seems to me as if the tracks are written with a routine in mind rather than for any musical reasons. Yet again, this was a Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis production and they came up with the name “Escapade” as it was one of many potential song title ideas that they kept in a little notebook which sounds overly cynical and not very organic at all to me. Aside from Jam and Lewis, the track also features ‘finger snaps’ contributed by former New Edition member Johnny Gill. Finger snaps?! If you’re going to get an official credit for that, I should maybe have bigged up my triangle playing in my Junior school concert back in the day!

“Escapade” peaked at No 17 in the UK but was a No 1 song in the US.

“It’s hot in here” informs this week’s host Mark Goodier referring to the temperature in the studio – so why are you wearing a jacket, shirt and tie then Mark? I’m sure you’ve done enough shows by this point to be able to make informed wardrobe decisions surely?!

OK, the next act is Technotronic. When I was putting this post together, my wife (she of the unwanted birthday present!) remarked, “God, you haven’t got to review this have you?” referring to “This Beat Is Technotronic”. Yes, I’m afraid so. This was the third single from their “Pump Up the Jam: The Album” erm…album and saw someone called MC Eric take the mike while previously used vocalist Ya Kid K took a rest. It still sounded the same as all the rest to me though apart from perhaps even more annoying and repetitive if that were possible.

Apparently the two dancers up there on stage with him are his old school mates called Gary and julian who he plucked from being on the dole in Cardiff to come and be in Technotronic with him. If any of my old school pals are reading this, fancy joining me for another go at perfecting the triangle?

“This Beat Is Technotronic” peaked at No 14.

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

“It’s the way they move that makes you want to groove” remarks Goodier at the end of Technotronic’s turn in one of the cringiest segue ways ever which leads us into “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” by Heart. Again. Really? I think this is the third time this has been on the show in recent weeks. Look, I’ve talked about the ridiculous lyrics, I’ve commented on the nasty video…what else is there left for me to say about it?

Well, it was taken from an album called “Brigade” that managed to rise all the way to No 3 in our charts but the band would only achieve chart action one more time in this country when their 1993 single “Will You Be There (In the Morning)” made No 19 from the album “Desire Walks On’ which was also their last long player to make any impression on the Top 40. There. Now please go away.

The Breakers are back after being missing in action for the last two shows and we start with David Bowie and “Fame 90”. So why was a 15 year old Bowie track being released again? It was all part of the promotion for his “Changesbowie” retrospective album that was released in March of this year which included all his biggest hits from 1969’s “Space Oddity” to 1984’s “Blue Jean”. I remember the album being a staple of the ‘Core Stock’ / ‘Best Seller’ section when I first worked for Our Price which were titles that you should never sell out of (although I’m sure we did of course).

Bowie was also embarking on a career spanning greatest hits world tour called the Sound+Vision Tour in support of the album. In what was seen at the time as quite ground breaking, fans were asked to vote for which songs should be included in the set list by phoning a number to log their votes with proceeds from the calls going to charity. In a world where telephone voting for everything from The Eurovision Song Contest to Strictly COme Dancing is second nature to us all today, this seemed like a revolutionary idea back in 1990. I’m sure there was some sort of counter campaign to rig the vote by encouraging people to vote for “The Laughing Gnome” thereby forcing Bowie to have to perform it live but I think he twigged what was going on before committing to the idea.

The video for “Fame 90” featured clips of previous Bowie promos alongside the man himself throwing some shapes with a blonde female dancer which supports the idea of the Changesbowie retrospective but seems a little short of inspiration to me.

“Fame 90” peaked at No 28, 11 places lower than its original 1975 release.

The scouse Kylie next as Sonia is back with “Counting Every Minute”. This was the fourth of five tracks released as singles from her debut album “Everybody Knows” with each one making the Top 20, a feat that made Sonia the first ever British solo female artist to achieve this. Quite how she managed to do this remains a mystery though. “Counting Every Minute” in particular is especially weak. I’ve had dumps with more substance to them.

The video is as half-hearted as the song. Just Sonia and some backing dancers going through the motions in front of a clock face back drop. How long did the video director take to come up with that concept?! You can almost hear him saying “Right then Sonia. Just smile and do that rolling shoulders move you do and we’ll fill in the rest afterwards in post production. No, don’t worry – it’ll look great. Promise. ACTION!”

Right, so quite why was “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love’ by The Blues Brothers in the charts? It seems to be because the film of the same name was re-released on VHS for its 10th anniversary by MCA/Universal Home Video. The movie has garnered cult status over the years – the movie poster was a mainstay of student room walls when I was one of at Sunderland Poly back in the 80s. However, I was surprised to discover that it was also a sizeable commercial success. It was the 10th biggest film in the US in the year of its cinema release (1980) and is the ninth-highest-grossing musical of all time.

Where The Monkees had gone before and The Commitments would follow, the film spawned a real life band who toured in support of the movie. Its celluloid stars John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd retained their roles as front men / brothers Jake and Elwood with a supporting band of established musicians from the likes of Blood, Sweat & Tears and Booker T and the M. G.’s. The whole thing had started out as a sketch on legendary US TV entertainment show Saturday Night Live and spiralled once a film based on the characters was proposed. Here’s a 1978 clip from SNL showcasing the Blues Brothers:

Despite its legendary status and the stars it made of Belusihi and Ackroyd (thanks in part to those amazing dance steps of theirs), The Blues Brothers isn’t what I will forever associate the latter with – in fact I don’t think I’ve even seem the film from start to finish. No, I will always think of my time at Sunderland Poly where I spent three years being called Dan due to my resemblance to Ackroyd at the time.

Some more bpm nonsense now as we see Bizz Nizz and their hit “Don’t Miss The Party Line”. The phrase ‘party line’ is not associated with some crappy dance tune for many people who grew up in Hull in the 70s and 80s (of whom my wife was one). No, it referred to the type of telephone service you had and in the case of a ‘party line’, it was a local telephone loop circuit that was shared by more than one subscriber. Yes kids, this meant that there was no privacy on a party line! If you were chatting with a friend, anyone on your party line could pick up their telephone and listen in! Unbelievable! Think you’ve go a problem because you want to upgrade your phone and you’re still under contract for your existing phone? Try dealing with someone listening in while you’re exchanging tales of drunken exploits with your bestie! Or, heaven forbid, on a booty call!

What? The Bizz Nizz record? Oh, that was shit as well.

Despite all the fuss over Paula Abdul in the US (four No 1 singles and a No 1 album). reaction to her in the UK had been more muted. Yes, “Straight Up” had been a Top 3 single for her over here but that was 12 months back and her only chart entry since then had been the No 24 hit “Forever Your Girl”. What was needed was a gimmick to reinstate our attention – how about her duetting with an animated cat? Purrfect! (sorry). “Opposites Attract” would become her biggest ever UK hit charging all the way to No 2 and is probably her best known song.

So this cat business? What the f**k was that all about?! Well, there had been a big reaction to the Who Framed Roger Rabbit film at the end of the 80s with its live action / animation mash up so maybe that was an influence. The cartoon cat in question was MC Skat Cat who was voiced by a duo called The Wild Pair who get the official credit on the record as the collaborators. The guy who wrote the song, Oliver Leiber (son of legendary songwriter Jerry Leiber), came up with the title after browsing a second-hand bookstore after his car broke down and he had four hours to kill. He wrote down titles of a number of pulp fiction novels like A Bloody Moon or Midnight Mistress but the one he plumped for was Opposites Attract. Hang on, didn’t we see this method of songwriting earlier with Janet Jackson’s “Escapade”? Is that all it took to come up with a song title? What have i got on my book shelves I could use to inspire me as a song writer? Hmm. Chelsea: 100 Memorable Matches is probably a little niche in all honesty.

Back to Paula though and the song is basically a play on the Gershwin tune “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” made popular by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It all seemed very calculated and lacking in any authenticity to me and I couldn’t really be doing with it at all.

Ah, good to see that The Cure were still ploughing their own particular furrow into the new decade. “Pictures Of You” wasn’t a new song as such though as it was the fourth single to be released from their “Disintegration” album and was very much immediately recognisable as a Cure song. Doomy? Sure. Dark? Yep. Quality tune? Undoubtedly. I’ve always admired the way Robert Smith has never given a shit about following trends or chasing the zeitgeist, an attitude perfectly summed up by this clip of him at the ceremony where the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019…

“Pictures of You” peaked at No 24 and was voted No 278 on Rolling Stone magazine’s “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list in 2011.

So it took just two weeks for Madonna to hit the top spot once again with “Vogue”. I saw some online opinion criticising the lyrics of the song last week, specifically the name call section in the song’s bridge where Madonna references sixteen Hollywood stars from the 1920s to the 1950s. It seemed to be all about the ‘Harlow Jean’ line in that her name was reversed to shoe horn it into the lyrics to make a rhyming space for the following line ‘picture of a beauty queen’. I’m not sure that I agree with the negative opinions to be honest. After all, there is a precedent for this type of wordsmithery. Here’s the opening lines of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”:

“It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
There’s an old man sitting next to me
Makin’ love to his tonic and gin”

His tonic and gin?! Have you ever gone into a bar and asked for a tonic and gin as opposed to a gin and tonic? Well, if it’s good enough for Billy…Madonna could have avoided all of this if she used Norma Jeane as in Marilyn Monroe instead of Harlow Jean but she’d already used Monroe in a previous line to rhyme with DiMaggio. Oh I give up!

After two fast hits in “Seven o’Clock” and “Hey You” came the inevitable ballad from The Quireboys in “I Don’t Love You Anymore”. I’m not sure that I remember this one. Let me have a listen…

Hmm. Pretty nondescript stuff really. Reminds me a bit of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison. I can imagine it got lighters waving in the audience when they performed it live but it’s got as much longevity as lighter fuel.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDogcM_d7s

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Jesus Jones	Real Real Real	Don’t think I did actually
2	Janet Jackson	Escapade	Nah
3	Technotronic	This Beat Is Technotronic	No, this beat is metronomic and dull
4	Heart	All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You	It’s a no from me
5	David Bowie	Fame 90	Not the 90 remix single but I’m sure my wife must have the original somewhere
6	Sonia	Counting Every Minute	Huge no
7	The Blues Brothers	Everbody Needs Somebody To Love	Nope
8	Bizz Nizz	Don’t Miss The Party Line	Miss it? I gave it a massive wide berth!
9	Paula Abdul	Opposites Attract	I was repelled by this though – no
10	The Cure	Pictures Of You	No
11	Madonna	Vogue	Not the single but it’s on my Immaculate Collection CD
12	The Quireboys	I Don’t Love You Anymore	…don’t think I ever did

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pr1x/top-of-the-pops-12041990

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?

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is imgres-2-3.jpg

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

TOTP 02 FEB 1990

Posted on October 27, 2020 by 80stastic

We’ve come through January 1990 here at TOTP Rewind and by general consensus that was one shitty month. When BBC4 were showing the TOTP repeats of the tail end of 1989 back in the Summer, there was a clamour on Twitter for the 80s to be consigned to the dustbin and for the sweet release of the 90s to swoop in and rescue us. Yeah, it hasn’t quite worked out like that yet I would wager. So far we’ve had a truck load full of nasty Italo house tunes, the New Kids On The Block phenomenon go into overdrive and ..erm…Fish! OK, that’s not absolutely everyone we’ve seen so far but you get my drift. Surely February will be better?

Well, early signs are not good as tonight’s presenter is well known Tory supporter Bruno Brookes who welcomes us to another “spondicious” TOTP. Spondicious? Is that a word? Well, according to the online Urban Dictionary it is and means awesome, brilliant, amazing, ace and was used in the Midlands in the 80s. Whoa! Hold on there! I’m from the Midlands and grew up there in the 80s and I have never said that word in my life! Wait, where’s Brookes from?

*checks internet*

…hmm. Well he was born in Stoke and went to school in Newcastle-Under- Lyme in Staffordshire so yes, he is a Midlander but in an online list of 51 words and phrases you only know if you are from Stoke-on-Trent, spondicious is nowhere to be seen. I’m not convinced.

On with the music though and here comes Lonnie Gordon to kick off the show with her S/A/W penned hit “Happenin’ All Over Again”. This was Lonnie’s biggest hit by far peaking at No 4 (she had two further Top 40 entries in ’91 and ’95). There was an album as well called “If I Have to Stand Alone” but it only got a limited release in parts of Europe, Japan and Australia but curiously it was never released in the UK. However, as ever, it’s Cherry Red Records to the rescue as they gave it the special edition reissue treatment in 2009! In the promotional blurb for the album, Cherry Red state:

“If I Have To Stand Alone” is one of three sought-after albums from the Stock Aitken Waterman / PWL Hit Factory to be given a simultaneous Special Edition release on Cherry Pop, along with Mandy Smith – “Mandy” and Princess – “Princess”

WTF?! Mandy Smith’s album? Sought after? Why not go the whole hog and call it ‘spondicious’ while you’re at it?!

Back to Bruno who’s up on the studio bridge with a gaggle of young girls from the audience surrounding him as he prepares to do the next link. Bruno opens with:

“I’d just like to say that all these girls are at least six foot tall“

Jeeze! I thought for one, horrifying spilt second he was going to say ‘All these girls at least sixteen’! Thankfully he was only making a comment about his diminutive size and nothing of a more salacious nature. When he does get around to introducing the next act it’s Wreckx-n-Effect with “Juicy”. So what was their name all about? According to band member Aquil (Aquil?) Davidson it means “Making things happen, gettin’ busy”. Of course, over here in the UK, ‘gettin’ busy’ meant something altogether different…

Back to those New Jack Swingers Wreckx-n-Effect though and the lyrics to their hit single were more gettin’ jiggy than gettin’ busy…

Look a there Juicy is a cutie, she has nice legs and a big booty

Have no fear ’cause Juicy is here, she said you can lick me everywhere

Pure filth! You’d never get that sort of smut with Sooty! Actually, what would you get if you crossed New Jack Swing with the Sooty Show? New Jack Sweep? Sue Jack Swing? I’ll stop now.

More dodginess from Brooke’s next as he allows a female member of the studio audience to fondle his frankly vile looking tie! “You should be watching the band not studying my tie” he protests too much.

The next band’s TOTP performance was the source of a full three page feature in Smash Hits magazine. In said article, And Why Not? (for it is they) state that for the record, they think that Stock, Aitken and Waterman are crap. Must have been a bit awkward being on the same show as Lonnie Gordon and her S/A/W produced song then. Apparently they were in dressing room No 24 whilst Lonnie was just down the corridor in No 31. Anyway, despite going through the usual experience of TOTP debutants – admitting that everything is so much smaller than it looks on TV and being bored waiting around for hours before they get their three and a half minutes slot – the boys look like they enjoyed their moment, jumping around and grinning like good ‘uns. Their tune “The Face” isn’t bad either with its jerky bass line and choppy guitar licks – they could have dropped the Bros style grunting in places though. There would be one more very minor Top 40 hit and one flop from And Why Not? before they left the pop music world to it.

The case of US singer Sybil is a curious one. She managed to rack up five Top 40 hits in the UK including three Top Tenners and yet three of those songs were cover versions. Not only that, two of them were written by the same song writing team and then made famous by the same singer! Yes, after she scored a No 19 hit in late ’89 with the Bacharach and David tune “Don’t Make Me Over” originally recorded by Dionne Warwick, she then repeated the trick for her next single when she released a cover of the duo’s “Walk On By” again, a song best known for being sung by Dionne Warwick. There have, of course, been numerous cover versions of the song down the years by artists as disparate as Gloria Gaynor to The Stranglers and indeed, it would be continued to be covered throughout the 90s and into the new millennium by Gabrielle, Cyndi Lauper and Seal. For me, Sybil’s take on it is one of the weakest. It’s not that she couldn’t sing the thing, more a case of a clunky production that lost all the soul of the original and didn’t age well to my ears.

Sybil would return in 1993 with yet another cover and the biggest hit of her career, this time of the old Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes song “The Love I Lost”, which she took to No 3 in the charts. Meanwhile, back in 1990, her treatment of “Walk On By” would peak at No 6.

Three Breakers next starting with Birdland who I had completely forgotten about until now. These Brummie indie kids were given that poisoned chalice of the title of being ‘the next big thing’ by the music press but all that expectation quickly dissolved when they were hamstrung by delays to the release of their debut album. Initially their fiery brand of high octane, post punk noise and chaotic live gigs had the press drooling. Assisted by their strident Andy Warhol homage image, they came over like a peroxide blonde Ramones meets The Jesus And Mary Chain. Despite their first four single releases topping the indie charts between ’89 and ’90 (including this mainstream breakthrough track “Sleep With Me”), a delay that meant the album was not released until ’91 saw all momentum lost and it struggled to a peak of No 44. Their plight is nicely summed up by band members and brothers Ron and Lee Vincent in a recent Von Pip Musical Exptress (VPME) website interview in which they were asked:

What five words would best sum up Birdland’s career in the late 80’s early 90’s?

Their replies were:

ROB : Speed/chaos/pop/blonde/noise

LEE: Well ‘short’ has to be one of them!!

A great track next which shows that quirky pop doesn’t have to mean novelty song. Having finally scored a Top 40 hit the previous year with dance cross over “The Sun Rising”, The Beloved followed it up with “Hello”, a song just about as far removed from its Lionel Richie namesake as it’s possible to be. Essentially a list song, like Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire”, comprising an eclectic mixture of names of both real and fictitious people, it hooked me in immediately. Even now, I like the idea that the names chosen weren’t all mega famous identities and indeed many of them would requite lengthy explanation to today’s youth as to who they actually were/are. Billy Corkhill? Vince Hilaire? I’m guessing your average 18 year old today wouldn’t have a clue. There was also something about the order in which Jon Marsh sang the names that intrigued. I think it was probably just the alliteration and rhyming in retrospect:

“Little Richard, Little Nell, Willy Wonka, William Tell”

“Billy Corkhill, Vince Hilaire, Freddy Flintstone, Fred Astaire“

If you watch the video closely, when Marsh name checks Jeffrey Archer, he sneaks in a ‘wanker’ gesture into his dance moves such was the band’s revulsion at Archer as, in their own words, “the epitome of slimeball Tory liar”. Well played Jon. “Hello” seemed to have much more of a conventional pop song structure to me than “The Sun Rising” which was probably another reason why I was drawn in and ultimately bought it – I was always more of a pop kid than a dance head. “Hello” peaked at No 19 making it the band’s joint second biggest hit ever.

By the start of the new decade, Eurythmics had been around for ten whole years and had released eight albums in that time but they were nearing the end of their time together, at least the first phase of it. This single, “The King and Queen of America”, was the third to be taken from their No 1 album “We Too Are One” but there would be only one more single release (the glorious “Angel”) this year before the duo took just about the rest of the decade off. The constant recording and touring schedule had created tensions between and Annie and Dave and although there was no official split, they went on hiatus until reforming in late 1999 for the “Peace” album.

I hesitate to say this but possibly the video to this one is more interesting than the actual song with Annie and Dave playing multiple characters such as cheerleaders, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, game show hosts and TV evangelists to visualise the song’s message of taking a swipe at the concept of the American Dream. Unsurprisingly, it was never released in the US as a single.

Despite “We Too Are One” being the second No 1 album of their career, the singles from it all under performed:

Title	Peak chart position
Revival	26
Don’t Ask Me Why	25
The King and Queen of America	29
Angel	23

Maybe, the timing of that career hiatus was right after all.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, we find another indie guitar band (that’s two on the same show following Birdland in the Breakers before – have that house music!) in House Of Love. I knew of these guys from having bought the incredibly pretentious “The Hit List” compilation album fronted by Mark Goodier with its ‘for the discerning music lover‘ tagline. It included one of the band’s previous singles “I Don’t Know Why I Love You” in its track listing which had peaked at No 41 in ’89 (one of two successive singles to do so that year for the band – how’s your luck?). “Shine On” would break that particular hoodoo when it crashed into the charts on its way to a peak of No 20. It was actually a new version of their original debut from ’87 having been signed to major label Fontana who didn’t seem to ‘get’ their latest addition to their stable and desperately wanted a hit which was at odds with the creative aspirations of the band.

Lead singer Guy Chadwick, who always seemed to be trying morph into Mark E Smith to me, would come to regard signing with Fontana as the worst mistake in the band’s career. Unbelievably, Chadwick is now 64 meaning he was already 34 at the time of this performance. House Of Love limped on for another couple of years before splitting in ’93 and ultimately reforming in ’03.

Back to the videos now and we find Mantronix with “Got To Have Your Love”. Mr Mantronix’s real name is Kurtis Khaleel but he changed it to Kurtis Mantronik which then became the inspiration for his dance act’s name when he replaced the ‘k’ with an ‘x’. Why? Well, according to Kurtis himself (in a Smash Hits interview) it was because:

“Mantronix just sounds cooler. Man…and er, tronix“.

Hmm. Not sure that we’re dealing with an intellectual heavyweight here. What else did we find out about him in the interview? Well, he had just two hobbies which were:

“Music, music, music. And Girls“

Again I say hmm. Asked if he was a sophisticated type he replied:

“In some ways. Hehe. Ummm, um like when it comes to when you’re in a one-to-one situation with the the opposite sex“

I see…and his ideal woman?

“Someone that understands me, all my moods because I’m a very moody person. Um, she’d be basically independent. If I said ‘naff off she’d leave and come back the next day or whatever because she’d know that I don’t really mean it. Like I said before – music, music and girls…so she’d have to accept that.”

Does he have a girlfriend?

“No”

No further questions m’lud. “Got To Have Your Love” peaked at No 4.

Back to Bruno Brookes now who reveals that the next song is about one of his heroes. Really? Who could that be then? Nelson Mandela perhaps? Martin Luther King maybe? Who is it Bruno? Well it is of course…. Jesse James? Jesse James?! The notorious outlaw and murderer? The Jesse James who took part in a train robbery in a Ku Klux Clan mask? That Jesse James? He’s your hero Brookes? OK, there is a train of thought that depicts James as a hero, an American Robin Hood, standing up against corporations in defence of the small farmer, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. Wikipedia, however, advises though that there is no evidence that he shared the loot of his robberies with anyone other than his gang members. Think your hero worship of Jesse James is shot down in flames Bruno. Oh well, at least he didn’t say Margaret Thatcher.

Anyway, the source of all this Jesse James discussion is of course Cher and her single “Just Like Jesse James”. The second track lifted from her “Heart Of Stone” album, it was very much a reflection of the soft rock direction that Cher had gone in. It was written by AOR songwriters in chief Desmond Child and Diane Warren who had provided huge hits for the likes of Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and Starship so you could see why Cher would want to record one of their compositions. After admitting that I had bought Cher’s previous single “If I Could Turn Back Time” in my 80s blog, I am pleased and relieved to announce that I kept my money firmly in my pocket when it came to this one. “Just Like Jesse James” peaked at No 11.

From Mantronix earlier to Technotronic now and their single “Get Up! (Before the Night Is Over)“. The brain child of producer Jo Bogaert, what was the origin behind this band name? Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

Jo Bogaert says the name Technotronic was inspired by Frippertronics, a tape-loop system used by King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp. "That sounded cool. I applied the suffix of the genre I was doing, techno, to tronic." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 23, 2020

Oh, it’s another ‘it sounded cool’ moment as per Mantronix. Look, I’ve never been in a band so have never been through the whole band name saga but I’m guessing the idea is to come up with a cool sounding moniker for your group? What’s that Mr McAloon? Prefab Sprout? Ok – right you are. As I say, I’ve never been through it.

Back to Technotronic and I should point out that this single featured Ya Kid K who wrote the lyrics and sang vocals on their previous mega hit “Pump Up The Jam” although they drafted in some model with ultra-blue lipstick to do the visuals for the video and promotion. This, I believe, is yer actual Ya Kid K in this performance though. Her real name is Manuela Barbara Kamosi Moaso Djogi with the ‘Kamosi’ (meaning ‘the only one’) part informing the ‘K’ bit of her stage name. She is not to be confused with Leila K of Rob’n’Raz featuring Leila K fame. What is it with all the ‘K’s? Someone should have pointed the trend out to Kurtis Mantronik – he really should have stuck with the ‘k’ rather than dropping it for an ‘x’. That trademark Technotronic sound would eat up the charts in 1990 with this single reaching No 2 and a further three singles becoming chart hits including two Top 10s.

The third different No 1 in three weeks now as Sinéad O’Connor makes it to the top with “Nothing Compares 2 U”. Is it fair to say that, despite her clear musical talent, the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Sinéad isn’t actually her music? How many of her songs could you name apart from “Nothing Compares 2 U”? I’ve got “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (which was the follow up), that song she did with Jah Wobble (“Visions of You”) and I think she did a cover of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”. Apart from that….Sadly I think her back catalogue is over shadowed by the controversies that seem to have followed her around for her whole career from tearing up photos of The Pope on Saturday Night Live to Tweets about non-Muslims. It’s certainly been a life lived.

Whilst commenting on Megadeth in a recent post, I stated that I was never not dumbfounded by the amount of useless heavy metal acts that seemed to get so much chart action in these TOTP repeats. I also name checked Anthrax, W.A.S.P and Mötley Crüe. Well add another to the list for here come Skid Row with “18 And Life”. This lot of New Jersey rockers were fronted by Sebastian Bach whose real name was Sebastian Bierk – oh make your own jokes up….

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Lonnie Gordon	Happenin’ All Over Again	Nah
2	Wreckx-n-Effect	Juicy	Nope
3	And Why Not?	The Face	No but my wife had their album
4	Sybil	Walk On By	No
5	Birdland	Sleep With Me	I did not
6	The Beloved	Hello	Yes! I did buy this one! The cassette single no less!
7	Eurythmics	The King And Queen Of America	That’s a no
8	House Of Love	Shine On	No but I had their previous single on that Hit List album
9	Mantronix	Got To Have Your Love	Definitely not
10	Cher	Just Like Jesse James	No – phew!
11	Technotronic featuring Ya Kid K	Get Up! (Before The Night Is Over)	Obviously not
12	Sinéad’ O’Connor	Nothing Compares 2 U	Don’t think so
13	Skid Row	18 And Life	Hadaway and shite

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000nnyl/top-of-the-pops-02021990

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.

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