The Charlatans

TOTP 31 OCT 1997

Although I know the name Mary Anne Hobbs, I couldn’t tell you much about her other than she’s a DJ. Well, she’s also the presenter on this particular episode of TOTP (the second of only two she hosted but we missed the first one due to the Puff Daddy issue) so a little research on her seems in order. It turns out that she’s had a career as a radio presenter, music journalist and a DJ but that doesn’t really tell her whole backstory. She left a chaotic family home in the small Lancashire village of Garstang to work for and live with a rock band from London on a bus in a coach park in Hayes, Middlesex before securing employment with Sounds and then the NME. Following that, she moved into radio broadcasting with XFM before a confrontational interview with the BBC’s Trevor Dann* brought her to the attention of Radio 1.

*Dann was head of Radio 1 Production known as ‘Dann Dann the Hatchetman’ for his role in overseeing the culling of the station’s old guard of DJs.

Having joined in January 1996, she presented a movie review show alongside Mark Kermode and the station’s rock show but perhaps she is best known for her show The Breezeblock that showcased experimental electronic music and was particularly influential in promoting music from the then little known grime and dubstep movements (Mary Anne even has the show’s name written across her stomach here). She would leave Radio 1 in 2010 before returning to the Beeb two years later via Radio 6. She has also run parallel careers as a touring DJ, a presenter of the World Superbikes series for British Eurosport and as a documentary maker producing a series about biker culture for BBC Choice. Phew! With all that in mind, it strikes me that she wasn’t the obvious choice to present such a mainstream music show as TOTP, what with her passion for experimental and leftfield genres. I wonder what she made of some of the acts she was introducing here?

Exhibit A m’lud. “Party People…Friday Night” by 911. I can’t believe that this would have been the sort of thing that Mary Anne played either publicly on the radio or in private for her personal listening pleasure. This piece of dance/pop fluff was the band’s fourth Top 5 hit of 1997 and the lead single from their sophomore album “Moving On”. Remarkably given the lack of depth of their talents, this lot were building themselves quite the pop career. Watching this performance back, I’m struck by a number of images. Firstly, the surfeit of balloons being held aloft and waved about by the studio audience. It’s as if we’ve been transported back to 1983. Maybe that was deliberate on the part of executive producer Chris Cowey? Secondly, why is lead singer Lee Brennan wearing a jacket with sleeves that don’t fit him? Look at the length of them! Wardrobe clearly didn’t think his outfit through as it made him far more vulnerable to the grabbing hands of the teenage girls in the studio audience. Finally, they seem to have given up completely on any pretence that they weren’t miming when dancer Jimmy strides forward to take over lead vocal duties. Surely that’s still Lee’s voice we can hear? What was all that about? Was there some dissent in the ranks about Lee always being the centre of attention? I’m probably overthinking it – something I never imagined myself doing given that the subject of my thoughts are 911!

Exhibit B m’lud. Surely this horrid 90s work over of Rod Stewart’s 1978 No 1 “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” can’t have been Mary Anne’s cup of tea can it? The trend for nasty dance covers of hits from yesteryear was unfathomably popular around this time. The other week we had Clock getting their hands all over Hot Chocolate’s “You Sexy Thing” and pulling it to pieces in the most disrespectful way and now here was N–Trance following a similar path. As with the aforementioned Clock, this lot had taken a clear decision to pursue a cheesy pop route after more credible dance beginnings. It’s hard to believe this is the same people who brought us “Set You Free” two years before. Since then though, they’d already released covers of oldies by the Bee Gees and Ottawan and now we had this monstrosity completing a most ignoble hat-trick. Apparently, Rod himself gave his blessing to this version to the point where he is credited as appearing on it. He must have smelt a potential big hit rather than the rancid stench of desperation that filled my nostrils. I never much liked his original to be fair though. Written as a response to the disco movement of the late 70s, it was a clever move by Stewart I guess but oh so cynical. Unbelievably, N-Trance would do a version of the Guns N’ Roses classic “Paradise City” for their next single before returning to their former glories in 2001 when they rereleased “Set You Free”.

With Mary Anne Hobbs referring to the Spice Girls as The Teletubbies in her intro, I think we can infer from that she wasn’t a fan. Talking of fans, were they beginning to lose a few what with them only being No 1 for a single week with “Spice Up Your Life”? Even if that were true, it doesn’t stop them being on the show again seven days later – this was the ‘repeat appearances’ era of executive producer Chris Cowey after all and he wasn’t going to miss out on recycling that ‘exclusive’ performance from New Delhi, India. However, that decision means we don’t get to see the Bladerunner inspired official promo video that accompanied the single. Obviously, the promo will have been used by other pop programmes throughout the world (I’m sure the UK’s own Chart Show would have shown it) but it does seem a waste somewhat that the BBC’s premier and historic music show chose not to feature it. I suppose Cowey was trying to rebuild the TOTP brand which didn’t include showing very many videos it seems. The Spice Girls would recover from the knock of their short-lived chart topper to bag the 1997 Christmas No 1 with follow up single “Too Much”. We aren’t nearly done with them yet in these BBC4 repeats.

Now this might have been more to Mary Anne’s taste – the latest offering from Dannii Minogue…erm…sorry…it was just Dannii by this point wasn’t it? Having made a successful comeback with her last single “All I Wanna Do” going to No 4, the youngest Minogue sister was rivalling Kylie in the popularity stakes who was struggling to get the public to buy into her ‘indie Kylie’ phase. Dannii’s follow up single was “Everything I Wanted” and it rather cleverly combined a pop melody with a shuffling drum & bass style backbeat – at least that’s what it sounds like to my unsophisticated ears. Was she going for a sound similar to the likes of Baby D or Dubstar that had garnered commercial sales as well as critical acclaim? If I’m being super critical I would say that I’m not sure about the quality of her vocals but she sells the track pretty well with a more restrained, dressed down image than previously. A tour and a role in Grease: The Arena Spectacular as the character of Rizzo would follow before she returned to music with perhaps her best received album “Neon Lights” in 2003.

Surely Mary Anne Hobbs would have approved of this one? A ‘speed garage’ anthem which was emblematic of a scene that was big in London at the time – this was just the sort of thing she’d have plugged on her The Breezeblock radio show. I’m guessing here as I never actually listened to said show obviously and that seems like a good decision if indeed “Ripgroove” by Double 99 was the sort of thing that got played on it. What a racket! Is this what speed garage sounded like? Lordy! Double 99 were duo Tim Deluxe and Omar Adimora who also recorded under the pseudonyms R.I.P Productions and 10° Below but they are best known for this track which was released twice in 1997 peaking at No 31 initially but 17 places higher the second time around. The rerelease featured the vocals of MC Top Cat though what he is actually banging on about I’m not entirely sure. Something about “bruk whine”?

*googles “bruk whine”*

Well, AI Overview tells me that it’s Jamaican patois meaning a dance move that is a twist on the traditional ‘whine’ or circular hip movements/gyrations with ‘bruk’ meaning ‘broken’ or ‘out of order’. That’s that solved then. It doesn’t change my opinion about the track though. It reminds me of that hit “Incredible” by M-Beat but Wikipedia tells me that was ragga jungle rather than speed garage. Despite working in record shops throughout the 90s and despite all these years of blogging about TOTP and all the dance tunes I’ve listened to, my knowledge of dance and all its genres and sub genres hardly seems to have improved at all. I guess that’s why ‘Dance Collections’ was always the scariest section of those record shops for me. I’m not sure me and Mary Anne Hobbs would have much to talk about in terms of music were we ever to meet.

Now, apparently we’re missing a performance from this repeat – Puff Daddy and his hit “Been Around The World” which has been edited out for obvious reasons. So why couldn’t that approach have been applied to all those shows featuring his chart topper “I’ll Be Missing You”? My guess would be that it was precisely because his hit was a No 1 and to have removed it would have wrecked the natural flow of the show as it worked its way up to the best selling hit of the week. Its place in the running order would have made editing it out look odd and incongruous.

With the offending Puff Daddy removed, we find ourselves in the company of The Charlatans. I’d forgotten that they released the title track of their album “Tellin’ Stories” but release it they did as the fourth and final single to be taken from it. It doesn’t veer too far from the style of its predecessors but there’s a definite tinge of soul in there. However, it does have a bit of a stop-start feel to it, as if it’s really going to swing into something anthemic but then it pulls itself back. Probably just me. We didn’t have to wait an age for another Charlatans album which would appear in 1999 with the intermediate gap plugged by the Best Of album “Melting Pot” which I duly bought.

As for this performance, are my eyes deceiving me or did the TOTP cameras briefly catch an attempted stage invasion that was thwarted by studio floor staff? Could be as Tim Burgess seems momentarily distracted by something going on to his left. After Oasis and Stereophonics both experienced members of the studio audience breaching the consecrated safety of the stage this year, at least BBC security seemed to have got themselves organised finally.

And so to the song that deposed the Spice Girls at the top of the charts after just one week – it’s “Barbie Girl” by Aqua. So, let’s address the controversy attached to this hit which was the litigation brought by toy manufacturer Mattel against Aqua and their record label MCA for impinging upon their trademark and copyrights for the Barbie doll. In a counter move, MCA sued Mattel for defamation. In the end, both cases were thrown out by the courts with a ruling advising both parties to ‘“chill”.

Heh. Sounds like the judge in the case was John Cusack’s character Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Just watch this…

As for Mary Anne Hobbs, this would be her last time as a TOTP presenter which is probably just as well as she didn’t really look comfortable in the role. A mainstream platform in a peak viewing time slot was really taking her out of her late night comfort zone.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	911	Party People…Friday Night	Negative
2	N-Trance / Rod Stewart	Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?	As if
3	Spice Girls	Spice Up Your Life	Nope
4	Dannii Minogue	Everything I Wanted	Nah
5	Double 99	Ripgroove	No
6	The Charlatans	Tellin’ Stories	I did not
7	Aqua	Barbie Girl	Never

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/m002blmk/top-of-the-pops-31101997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 20 JUN 1997

Posted on March 17 by 80stastic

We’re still in the early weeks of the Chris Cowey tenure of TOTP and this would seem to be the experimental stage where he’s trying things out to see what sticks. For example, we’ve gone from just seven featured songs from a couple of weeks ago to a whopping ten on this show. TEN! I better get my skates on then…Tonight’s host is Jayne Middlemiss for the second time in three weeks and hopefully she’ll have conquered those nerves which she displayed on her debut appearance. She gets an early opportunity to demonstrate that she has because, as with Jo Whiley last week, our host does a direct to camera piece before the credits have even rolled. There’s no prop for Jayne to kick over though like Jo had. Instead, there’s a shot of a studio clock and an ‘On Air’ sign and Jayne telling us it’s time to dance in front of the telly before doing that head nod thing she does – that might start to get annoying very quickly. It’s probably the nerves again.

We start though with an artist who never seems anything less than serenely confident in her own abilities. Lisa Stansfield had been having hits since the late 80s with the biggest and most well known of those arriving early on with “All Around The World”. Inspired by ‘The Walrus of Love’ Barry White, the track contained a tribute to him in its spoken word intro that was based on the album version of White’s “Let The Music Play”. Eight years on, Lisa would go into full on honour mode by recording a cover of White’s 1974 hit “Never, Never Gonna Give You Up”. In terms of topping and tailing Lisa’s chart career, it couldn’t have been more perfect as it would prove to be her final UK Top 40 hit when released as the second single from her eponymously titled 1997 album. The radio edit is a pretty faithful version but numerous remixes of it by the likes of Hani and Frankie Knuckles would propel it to the top of the US Dance Club Songs chart. The latter would receive a Grammy for the Best Remixed Recording, Non Classical category. Lisa would ultimately satisfy her Barry White fixation by duetting with him in 1999 on “The Longer We Make Love”.

I talked in the past post about not being sure that the presenter links were filmed at the same time and in the same studio as the actual performances due to the cutaway and cutback shots between the two. Well, I’m still thinking that way for this show. Curiously, last week, the only time the two were in sync was when Jo Whiley interacted with Wet Wet Wet who were the second act on and the same pattern is repeated in this show as Jayne Middlemiss is definitely in the same geographical and temporal space as this week’s artist who are second in the running order. Was something going on or am I reading too much into it? For the record, said second artist is Supergrass with their single “Sun Hits The Sky”. Similar to Skunk Anansie, I sometimes think this lot don’t get the credit they deserve. Certainly I’d forgotten or not known in the first place how many great tunes Skin and co had released and although I was more aware of the Supergrass output (I had two of their albums), it’s an easy trap to fall into to immediately think of “Alright” when you hear their name. However, they had so many more great (and better) tunes than that like “Moving”, “Pumping On Your Stereo”, “Caught By The Fuzz” and this one. “Sun Hits The Sky” is a tight, nifty indie rock tune that powers along with some force.

It was the third single taken from the album “In It For The Money” the title of which tied in quite nicely with an event that took place in April of 1996 when lead singer Gaz Coombes met the train robber Ronnie Biggs in Rio. Biggs had his own footnote in music history of course, having recorded with the Sex Pistols on two songs for The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle plus The Great Train Robbery of 1963 was the basis of the 1985 Paul Hardcastle hit “Just For Money”. “In It For The Money”? “Just For Money”? It’s close enough for a tenuous link isn’t it?

And so to the fourth and final appearance on the show by Eternal on the back of their hit with Bebe Winans, a previous chart topper, “I Wanna Be The Only One”. Fourth?! Yes, four weeks on the bounce they’ve featured but in defence of whoever’s decision it was, the single entered the charts at No 1 and then spent three consecutive weeks at No 2 so it was a very consistent seller. It’s taken until this fourth performance though to find a different way of promoting the single which they do here by doing a ‘live acoustic’ version of the track. Fair play as I think it works pretty well. Were the pure white outfits the girls are wearing a deliberate choice to project the gospel flavour this version has? If so, it’s kind of undermined by the stage they’re performing on which seems to have a leopard print design on it. Bit odd.

Despite its high sales and being the UK’s sixteenth best selling single of the year, it was towards the back of the queue in that list when compared to all the year’s other No 1 records. Only four chart toppers appeared below Eternal in the Top 40 of 1997 – the 1996 Christmas No 1 from the Spice Girls which is understandable but then also their 1997 festive hit which isn’t. The other two below Eternal were the dance hit “You’re Not Alone” by Olive and the Verve’s only No 1 “The Drugs Don’t Work”.

From current “I Wanna Be The Only One” hitmakers to a band whose first single to make the charts was “The Only One I Know” which peaked at No 9 in 1990. In the seven years since that breakthrough hit for The Charlatans, it hadn’t been a string of subsequent huge chart successes* since then. Of the twelve singles the band released between 1990 and 1995, none had got higher than No 12, five hadn’t cracked the Top 20 and three hadn’t even made the Top 40. Of course, high chart positions are no guarantee of song quality and the public cruelly ignored some cracking tunes. The nation finally got with it in 1996 with the release of “One To Another” which went Top 3 whilst follow up “North Country Boy” made No 4. Then came “How High” which peaked at No 6 giving the band three consecutive Top 10 hits for the first time ever. It was an impressive run of chart numbers but more importantly, they were all quality tracks and not a cover version in sight.

*It was a different story when it came to their albums with three of the five released up to this point having topped the charts.

“How High” is not only a quality tune but surely unique in referencing this TV show from my youth which made a huge impression on me and had kids up and down the country saying “Ah, grasshopper”. Not even “Kung Fu” by Ash mentions it in its lyrics.

We’ve finally arrived at the last Michael Jackson release that I’ll ever have to discuss in this blog, if not quite his final TOTP appearance. As I will be stopping at the end of the 1999 repeats, “HIStory/Ghosts” will be the last Jacko single I have to write about as he would not release another one until 2001’s “You Rock My World”. And there have been oh so many that I have had to comment on. My blogging started way back with the 1983 repeats and “Billie Jean”. Since then, the self styled ‘King of Pop’ had…

*checks Wikipedia*

32(!) UK Top 40 singles! My God! I haven’t gone back through all my posts to see if I reviewed every single one but it must be a pretty high number. So, 32 singles over 15 years (‘83-‘97) is almost exactly two a year, every year except it didn’t work like that of course. Jacko’s singles would come in gluts with the timing of them obviously based around when he had an album out which was pretty consistently every four to five years. And when an album came out, so did a bucket load of tracks released as singles from them. Seven from “Thriller”, nine from “Bad”, nine again from “Dangerous” and then five from “HIStory”. The final two of those 32 were taken from the “Blood On The Dance Floor: HIStory In The Mix” album with the very final one being this double A-side. There will be one final TOTP appearance in the 90s for Jacko with this single so I’ll devote this post to the “HIStory” track and the final one to “Ghosts”. So what can I say about “HIStory” the song? Not much apart from it’s hideous. I get that it’s a remix but seriously, Michael Jackson meets what? Italian house is that? I don’t care to find out any more. Even Chris Cowey can’t have been convinced as we get less than two minutes of the promo. There were periods in the early 90s when whole shows were structured around the screening of a video exclusive for his latest release which would command a good seven minutes of screen time.

Right then, what’s going on here? Two artists squeezed into just over a minute and a half of screen time? We’re not going back to having a ‘Breakers’ section are we? Well, no we’re not – it makes less sense than that. It seems to be essentially a plug for upcoming performances by artists on the show but here’s the thing – the clip used is just that; a minute long clip sourced from the actual performance that would be shown in full the following week. Why didn’t they just show the whole thing now? In the case of the first artist featured Blur, their single “On Your Own” had been released on the Monday before this TOTP aired as far as I can tell so why not just have played the song in full? They could have labelled it as an ‘exclusive’ if need be seeing as it hadn’t charted yet. Oh well, maybe it’s for the best given that we won’t see the full performance episode due to the Puff Daddy/P Diddy issue – a minute and a half is better than nothing at all as it’s a great track.

The third single from their eponymously titled fifth studio album, it tends to get overlooked when lined up against the No 1 that was “Beetlebum” and the memorable ‘woo-hoo’ of “Song 2” but it’s a good track in its own right. Damon Albarn has described it as the first ever Gorillaz track and you can understand where he’s coming from. It might not have the whiplash energy of “Song 2” but it has its own irresistible momentum and a huge hook in the singalong chorus. I have a distinct memory of being in a Birmingham nightclub six months later (I was visiting my younger sister) and being slammed around the dance floor along with the rest of the ravers when the DJ played “Song 2” and “On Your Own” one after the other. I was approaching 30 at the time so I don’t know what I thought I was doing but my sister is five years younger than me so I guess she would have still been in her club going years?

“On Your Own” would debut and peak at No 5 maintaining a fine run of hit singles for the band. Check these numbers out:

1 – 5 – 7 – 5 – 1 – 2 – 5

Their album sales weren’t too shabby either. Blur would return in 1999 with a fourth consecutive No 1 album called “13”.

We encounter the same curious plugging strategy that was reserved for Blur also applied to the Pet Shop Boys whose version of “Somewhere” from West Side Story is given a 30 seconds slot to big up the fact that the full performance will be on the show not next week even but in two weeks time! Just play the whole thing now for chrissakes! The single was released three days after this TOTP so surely it would have helped build anticipation for its release?

Anyway, why were Neil and Chris putting their stamp on this Bernstein and Sondheim classic? Well, it was to promote their mini residency at the Savoy Theatre in London called Pet Shop Boys Somewhere (Ok, we get it guys). The single would also be added to a rerelease of their latest album “Bilingual”. Of course, the duo had some history with cover versions stretching back to their 1987 Christmas No 1 “Always On My Mind”. They followed that with a mash up of U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name” and Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” to glorious, extravagant effect in 1991 before taking on a one of the campiest of camp disco classics in “Go West” two years later. All of these had worked out pretty well to my ears (especially “Always On My Mind”) but I don’t think they quite pulled it off with “Somewhere”. Maybe, Neil doesn’t gave the vocal chops for such a towering song and attempting to turn it into a club anthem by adding a techno beat just to suit his voice isn’t the answer. Maybe the answer would have been to leave well alone. My wife loves West Side Story but can’t stand Tennant’s singing so I’m pretty sure she was not a fan of this one. Pet Shop Boys had twenty UK hit singles in the 90s of various sizes of which “Somewhere” was the eighteenth. There’s not much further to go now my wife will be pleased to hear.

They’re not hip, they’re not cool but, as Jayne Middlemiss says in her intro, “they’re top turns” and I’ve always got room for a bit of Del Amitri when the chance arises. Often criminally overlooked and undervalued, the Scottish pop rockers have a very decent back catalogue albeit that their chart positions weren’t always a standout. The band had notched up 11 UK Top 40 hits to this point in their career but none had got any higher than No 11. And yet…in an unlikely turn of events, they had managed to go Top 10 just two years earlier in the US with the surprise hit “Roll To Me”. Did it make them happy? Not likely. In true dour Scot style, they weren’t big fans of the song (despite having written and recorded it) and considered it rather a throwaway tune. No pleasing some people.

Anyway, they were back in 1997 with a new single (which hopefully they did like as it was the lead track off new album “Some Other Sucker’s Parade”) called “Not Where It’s At”. Was it a musical demonstration of self knowledge about their image? Probably not but listening back to it now, it does prick something in my mind about identity. Is it me or is there a smidgen of a whiff of XTC about this one? I may be committing an act of musical heresy but it just came to me all of a sudden. Maybe it’s the jangly guitars, I don’t know. I was so taken with the idea though that I asked ChatGPT what “Not Where It’s At” would sound like done by XTC. The answer I received was almost instantaneous but it also showed how AI is based on assumptions that don’t always hold water. In its final reckoning it seemed to me to be saying if XTC had come up with the track, it would have been…well…better which I’m not sure is fair. Maybe my question wasn’t fair so I asked ChatGPT a control question – “Who was I?” It’s answer? That I was a former TOTP presenter! AI – it’s not where it at.

Next up is a guy you don’t hear much about these days but whom, for a while back there, was going to be the next new music superstar after winning a MOBO and a BRIT. Finley Quaye came from a musical family – his Dad was jazz and blues pianist Cab Quaye whilst his Mum would take him to see sets at Ronnie Scott’s legendary jazz club in his childhood. Almost inevitably, he moved into a career in music in his early 20s and appeared, fully formed, in 1997 with his double platinum selling album “Maverick A Strike” and a clutch of hit singles the first of which was “Sunday Shining”, a Bob Marley track from his 1978 album “Kaya”. It’s a radically different version though blending the reggae of the original with an accessible 90s soul sound that carried itself with an air of knowing conviction – or maybe that was the super confident Finley himself?

Talking of which, as with Beck, the Beastie Boys and Sonic Youth to name a few, just about all the cool kids that I worked with at Our Price loved this guy. Given this statement, it is of no surprise that my eternally ever cooler than me wife had his album and I think she caught him live as well. Can’t remember what she thought of him but at least he turned up which he failed to do whilst playing Hull (where I now live) in 2022 and, as I understand it, failed to rock up at the venue with paying customers already inside. Mind you, he has form in that area. He was booted off stage in 2015 after just 30 minutes of a gig by the promoter of a venue in Gloucestershire for being shambolically awful. Bloody mavericks! I’d strike them off.

New show director Chris Cowey is still tinkering with the format and this week has turned his attention to the chart rundown. Having already dispensed with a full run through of the Top 40 in favour of just the 20 best selling singles that week, he’s now tacked it on to the Top 10 countdown and it’s voiced by host Jayne Middlemiss. There’s no run up to this – we’re just straight into it after Finley Quaye’s performance. It’s all a bit jarring. Anyway, Hanson are still at No 1 with “MMMBop” but it’s the last of their three weeks at the top. It’s an unusual title for a song so what’s it all about? According to band member Zac Hanson in an interview with the Songfacts website in 2004, it’s about holding on to the things in life that matter and that MMMBop represents “a frame of time or the futility of life”. Mmm…(Bop). Whatever. I do recall a lady coming into the Our Price where I worked at the time to buy the single for her granddaughter and she was pretty sure that she had asked for the right thing at the counter but wanted to double check and so asked again what it was called. My colleague Jim who was serving her said, rather understandably, “It’s called MMMBop” and we both looked at each other and couldn’t help but laugh at the oddness of him saying those words out loud*.

*I should probably be absolutely clear that we were laughing at the song title not the lady buying it!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Lisa Stansfield	Never, Never Gonna Give You Up	Nope
2	Supergrass	Sun Hits The Sky	Negative
3	Eternal featuring Bebe Winans	I Wanna Be The Only One	Yes but for my wife
4	The Charlatans	How High	No but I had a Best Of with it on
5	Michael Jackson	HIStory/Ghosts	Nah
6	Blur	On Your Own	No but I had the album
7	Pet Shop Boys	Somewhere	No
8	Del Amitri	Not Where It’s At	See 4 above
9	Finley Quaye	Sunday Shining	No but my wife had the album
10	Hanson	MMMBop	Yes but for my six year old goddaughter

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/m0028nyj/top-of-the-pops-20061997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 04 APR 1997

Posted on February 16 by 80stastic

As widely predicted and discussed within the TOTP online community, BBC4’s repeats for 1997 are facing more disruption than the London Underground during a tube strike due to the various misdemeanours of some of the artists who had big hits this year. The first of these came at the end of March when the show that aired on the 28th of that month featured the video for R Kelly’s hit “I Believe I Can Fly”. The R&B singer is currently serving a 31 year sentence for racketeering and child pornography. Having checked the running order for that episode, my opinion is that we didn’t miss much with only the Pet Shop Boys and The Beautiful South being of potential interest to this blogger.

We’ll be jumping around for a while though as “I Believe I Can Fly” went to No 1 for three weeks and later in the year we have Puff Daddy/P Diddy/Sean Combs who spent six weeks on top of the UK charts with “I’ll Be Missing You” and who is currently facing charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. I’m assuming all shows that feature either R Kelly or Puff Daddy will be pulled and not re shown. For this episode though we are on safe ground with a load of dance tunes and those nice Spice Girls featuring. Our hosts are the irreverent pair Mark and Lard who had recently taken over the reigns of the Radio 1 Breakfast Show following the departure of Chris Evans.

We’re straight in – literally straight in as there’s no to camera piece from a featured artist nor even a presenter intro in these strange, new times – with the latest hit from Cast called “Free Me”. The lead single from sophomore album “Mother Nature Calls”, it was more of that so called ‘Britpop’ sound that had seen them become chart stars over the previous 18 months though possibly a bit more of an earthy sound and not quite as melodic. It was a decent tune – definitely not ‘filler’ but by no means ‘killer’ either. When reviewing their last hit, the standalone single “Flying”, I criticised the track’s lyrics for being basic and superficial. I have to say that this was also the case with “Free Me”. So simple are they that if they were a boy in a nursery rhyme, they’d definitely be called Simon. I mean, look at these:

Give me some time to be me, give me the space that I need

Give me a reason to be, give me some time to be

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Russell Glyn Ballard
Free Me lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

What? I wouldn’t have submitted that as an 11 year old if I’d been asked to write some poetry in an English lesson. Come on John Power – you were better than that! By the way, I’m not sure about your hat either. Must do better.

After Mark and Lard have reinforced their northern roots by insisting that you pronounce Cast as “Cast” and not “Carst” (they’re right of course), they introduce 3T who, unbelievably, were still having hits two years after their first. Happily, “Gotta Be You” would be the fifth and final time they would feature in the UK charts. Their discography informs me that this one featured a Herbie Critchlow who Wikipedia informs me is a producer and songwriter who has penned songs for the likes of Backstreet Boys, Rita Ora and…erm…Andy Abrahams. Is he the guy that comes on in the middle of this performance and raps something truly dodgy about zombie nymphomaniacs or something? Anyway, even he gets bored of the whole thing and exits stage left before the end of the song and he co-wrote the bloody thing! To paraphrase Morrissey when reviewing a Modern Romance single in Smash Hits, “there may well very well be a worse group than 3T but can anybody really think of one?”.

Next we have…what the actual f**k?! No Doubt?! AGAIN?! After venting my spleen in the last post that “Don’t Speak” had been shown in the 21 March show despite no longer being at No 1 and dropping down the charts, here they are once more. To quote from the extraordinary film Blazing Saddles, “What in the wide, wide world of sports is a-goin’ on here?” OK, the single had gone back up from No 4 to No 3 so in theory it was a chart climber, but this was the sixth time it had been on the show already and only three of those had been as the No 1 record. Sixth you say? YES! SIX! I’ve done my research and it was even on the 28 March show that we didn’t get to see meaning it was in three consecutive weeks after falling from the top of the charts. And it doesn’t even stop there as it was also on the 18 April show (which we similarly won’t get to see) meaning it was given a slot on the running order more often than when it was the actual No 1! This was just ludicrous! Who was the director during these shows?

*Checks internet*

It was that John L Spencer character again! Well, all I can say is never mind The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, this was The John L Spencer Bullshit Explosion!

When Mark and Lard looked at which acts would be featured in the show they would be presenting, what do you reckon they thought? I’m betting that when their fingers descended the list and alighted on N–Trance their reaction wasn’t “Brilliant! We’ve got N-Trance on the show and even better than that, they’re doing a cover of that old Ottawan hit!”. The descent of the people who gave us the dance floor classic “Set You Free” into a naff 70s tribute act was indeed a bizarre career move. It all seems to be down to the recruitment of rapper Ricardo da Force to their ranks who had previously featured on those huge hits by The KLF in the early 90s. He was at the forefront of N-Trance’s reworking of the Bee Gees classic “Stayin’ Alive” which had stunk the charts out in the Autumn of 1995 when it did a hit No 2.

Throwing out credibility for commercial success, they repeated the trick with “D.I.S.C.O.”. The original was gruesome enough but the 1997 version was just vulgar and the performance here, complete with 70s disco wigs and outfits (obviously) turned up the tacky-o-meter to 11. In case you’re not convinced by my argument, then here’s all the proof you need – it was covered by the King of Cheese himself Chico. It’s Chico time!….

What? There’s a counter argument? Which is?

*The guy who wrote and produced “D.I.S.C.O.” – Daniel Vangarde – is the father of Thomas Bangalter, one half of achingly hip dance outfit Daft Punk*

Daft Punk? Seriously? No, I don’t care. N-Trance can, to quote Norman Stanley Fletcher from Porridge, “Naff off!”.

Ah this is better – “North Country Boy” by The Charlatans. I recall that a record company rep turned up at the Our Price shop where I worked a couple of weeks before this all excited and carrying a pre-release copy of this single saying how it was really special and the best thing the band had ever done. Was he right? Well, music taste is totally subjective but he might have been in with a shout with that claim though it’s not my own personal favourite (which I think is “Just Lookin’”, today anyway). It’s probably one of their best known songs though, peaking at No 4 and coming from the album “Tellin’ Stories” which ushered in a period of great chart success for the band. The album itself went to No 1 while furnishing the band with four hit singles that achieved the following peaks:

3 – 4 – 6 – 16

I’m pretty sure that Mark and Lard liked this one – they even did their own version of it (sort of) under the guise of their alter ego spoof band project The Shirehorses. This is The Charley Twins…

This show really is dance heavy. After N-Trance earlier, we now get three more tracks from that (admittedly wide-ranging) genre back to back starting with DJ Quicksilver and “Bellissima”. Anybody whose stage name includes the letters ‘DJ’ in it immediately raises red flags for me and my pop sensibilities and in the case of Mr Quicksilver, I wasn’t wrong. His real name is Orhan Terzi which sounds like he’s Hull City’s latest Turkish midfield signing and I wish he had pursued a career in football rather than dance music. I can only assume that my brain can’t be wired the same way as the dance-heads that bought this single (it sold 600,000 copies- 600,000!) as I can hear nothing in the track that would have compelled me to shell out good money to buy it. It’s just the same beats all the way through with some strings sounds laid over the top of it. Repetitive, monotonous and moronic. I guess if you were tripping off your tits in a club it might make more sense but how could you listen to it in the privacy of your own home? The ballerina type dancer was a novel way to visually stage the track I guess but then she’s usurped by the usual women in PVC trousers and one in suspenders no less. Quicksilver himself gets a brief close up when he gurns down the camera lens and gives a thumbs up. Prat! It’s a massive thumbs down from me.

The second dance act on the show is that rare beast that had achieved a No 1 single. Back in 1995, Livin’ Joy rather surprisingly topped the charts with a rerelease of their No 18 hit “Dreamer” from the year before. They’d followed that up with two further Top Tenners but ultimately they would submit to the trend of diminishing returns.

This fourth single “Where Can I Find Love” would peak outside the Top 10 at No 12 and final chart entry “Deep In You” even lower at No 17. This one sounds a little too frantic for me, too much going on in the mix but who cares about that? What was going on with singer Tameko Star’s hat?! It’s enormous – I haven’t seen one that big since this fella was on our TV screens…

Did I say that dance acts having a No 1 hit were a rare beast? I was clearly talking out of my arse as here’s The Chemical Brothers with their second consecutive chart topper “Block Rockin’ Beats”. I think this might just have taken me by surprise at the time as it’s possible that I dismissed previous No 1 “Setting Sun” as having had an Oasis flavoured boost via the vocal contributions of Noel Gallagher. However, I must have underestimated the appeal of the Manchester duo as here they were again as the kings of the Top 40. Or had I? There was a lot of discussion at the time about how quickly the sales of “Block Rockin’ Beats” fell away in its second week of release as it slipped to No 8 just seven days after topping the charts. At the time, it was the ninth biggest fall from the pinnacle since charts were compiled. Was this down to the nature of it being a dance track with a lack of crossover appeal (say compared to something like “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt) or was it just more evidence of how the charts were being manipulated by record companies and their first week price discounting strategies.? Or perhaps a bit of both? I mean, they weren’t alone – both Blur and U2 had experienced similar chart slippage with their last two singles (though not quite as big as The Chemical Brothers). Did I just say ‘lack of crossover appeal’? Yet again, I seem to be spouting nonsense as when parent album “Dig Your Own Hole” came out a few weeks later, it went to No 1 and chalked up platinum sales. What was it Frank Zappa said? Writing about music is like dancing about architecture?

For the record, I quite enjoyed “Block Rockin’ Beats” and in a completely contrary stance to what I’d just said about Livin’ Joy, I liked that it sounded chaotic and all over the place. Musical opinion eh? Whatcha gonna do? The video features Perry Fenwick a year before he made his EastEnders debut as Billy Mitchell. I met his ex-partner and fellow actor Angie Lonsdale once when she was sharing a house with my mate Robin when he lived in London. She was nice. Yeah, it’s not a great story is it?

The play out video is “Mama” by the Spice Girls despite the fact that they have slipped from No 1 to the runners up spot this week. Yes, following in the footsteps of No Doubt and the nonsensical decision of temporary TOTP director John L. Spencer to show songs going down the charts, we get this one again. There were surely other hits in the Top 40 that could have been shown instead?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cast	Free Me	Nah
2	3T	Gotta Be You	No
3	No Doubt	Don’t Speak	Nope
4	N-Trance	D.I.S.C.O.	F...K. O.F.F.
5	The Charlatans	North Country Boy	No but I had the Melting Pot Best Of with it on
6	DJ Quicksilver	Bellissima	Never
7	Livin’ Joy	Where Can I Find Love	I did not
8	The Chemical Brothers	Block Rockin’ Beats	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	Mama / Who Do You Think You Are	Spice Girls	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0027pnq/top-of-the-pops-04041997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 06 SEP 1996

Posted on October 30, 2024 by 80stastic

It’s early September of 1996 and I’m on holiday in Barcelona. I loved it though I did get a case of Montezuma’s revenge the day before we were due to go back which made for a very uncomfortable flight home I can tell you. Sticking with that theme, although I really enjoyed Barcelona, a friend who visited there after me hated it saying that he’d rather go on holiday in his own toilet bowl. What has any of this to do with TOTP? Nothing really though I wonder how many shit songs we might get in this particular show?

Our host for tonight is Julia Carling (remember her?) and we start with a group that my mate Robin once described as a ‘joke band’ so I presume he thought they were a big pile of poo though I think that’s a harsh description. Space were certainly idiosyncratic and they may not have been to your taste but I don’t think they can be dismissed out of hand as complete shite. After securing themselves a bona fide hit in “Female Of The Species”, the scouse band were back with a follow up in “Me And You Versus The World”. As with its predecessor, it wasn’t your conventional pop song with Tommy Scott’s grainy vocals telling a Bonnie and Clyde type story in which the protagonist admits he’s “just a joke” (maybe Robin was right after all!) before a rather grizzly end is revealed. Scott channels his inner Victoria Wood when he gets the line “a tin of baked beans and a Woman’s Weekly” into the lyrics. The single would debut at No 9 providing the band with their first Top 10 hit. Space were in full launch mode. Who was laughing now?

Hit or Shit? I’m going hit with this one

Now this, this is a complete scandal. How on earth were Clock allowed to do this?! Well, presumably they got copyright clearance from the original artist but it’s still a disgrace. Having decided the only way to score major hits with their yucky brand of Eurodance was to cover previous hit records and polish them into turds, they’d already sprinkled flecks of shit onto “Axel F” and “Whoomph! (There It Is)”. Harold Faltermeyer and Tag Team were one thing but Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons were sacrosanct! How dare they take their 1976 UK and US No 1 “December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night)” and give it the shitty stick treatment! They even had the temerity to rename their version as “Oh What A Night” (unless that was a stipulation of being granted permission to cover it – maybe they couldn’t use the song’s original title?). I mean, you just can’t improve upon the original, you can only make it worse so why try? Were they hoping to appeal to young record buyers who may not know The Four Seasons original? It’s just wrong on every level and yet somehow it was a hit spending four non consecutive weeks at No 13 unluckily for us.

I have to admit to being a bit biased in my denigration of Clock here as I do love Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I’ve seen Jersey Boys and, in my current job working in a theatre, have seen a couple of tribute acts all of which I’ve enjoyed. As such, this Clock nonsense really offends. They weren’t finished here though going on to cover the likes of Hot Chocolate, KC and the Sunshine Band and The Jacksons.

Hit or Shit? A massive, steaming turd

Next up are Kula Shaker with their No 2 hit “Hey Dude”. I discussed this one in quite some depth in a previous post so I don’t propose to say an awful lot more this time around. However, what I did discover in my research for it is that the band’s keyboard player Jay Darlington was a touring member of Oasis from 2002 until their 2009 break up. So, will he have had the call from Noel and Liam for the 2025 reunion tour and if he has, will he be allowed to go as he is currently back with Kula Shaker? When he was with Oasis, due to his long hair and beard, he was often introduced by Noel as “The Shroud”, “Gandalf” or even “Jesus Christ” leaving to the crowd chanting “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…”. Never mind Noel and Liam giving him a call, maybe Donald Trump* might reach out to Darlington. What an endorsement that would be!

*For any avoidance of doubt, I despise Trump.

Hit or Shit? Definite tune this one!

What on God’s green earth…? If I thought we’d reached a nadir with Clock, I hadn’t bargained on the sodding Smurfs making a comeback. People of a certain age (i.e. me) will have strong childhood memories of The Smurfs not least because of the ridiculous single “The Smurf Song” spending six consecutive weeks at No 2 in the UK charts during the long, hot Summer of 1978. That bloke with the long flowing beard? No, not Jay Darlington! Yep – Father Abraham (no, not the biblical patriarch but Dutch singer-songwriter Pierre Kartner). He had a bowler hat as well I seem to remember. Anyway, we finally came to our senses as a nation about The Smurfs (though there were two minor follow up hits as well) and left it all behind us after 1978 but across the rest of Europe they never went away and so, in 1996, EMI deemed it was time for their return to our shores (and ears) courtesy of “The Smurfs Go Pop” album which spent 12 consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 of our charts over the Summer and Autumn of that year. Similar to the Clock concept earlier, The Smurfs (or whoever had the licensing rights to them) took modern day hit tracks and smurfed them up with high octane vocals that were enough to give you a migraine. And we thought Pinky and Perky* were bad enough!

*In fairness, I recall there being a Pinky and Perky record in our house when I was a tiny child and presumably the infant version of me loved it.

Brilliantly, they tried to get permission to do covers of some Oasis songs but Noel Gallagher wasn’t having any of it. In the end, the songs covered were fairly awful including “Mr Blobby”, “Cotton Eye Joe”, “Saturday Night” and “No Limit”. However, the single chosen for release was their take on Technohead’s recent gabber hit “I Wanna Be A Hippy”. Clearly, a brand aimed at young children couldn’t feature any references to drugs as the original did so they were all stripped out and replaced with the tale of a small dog and retitled as “I’ve Got A Little Puppy”. A happy hardcore version of The Smurfs sounds appalling and yet the single, as with the album, was a huge hit peaking at No 4. Who the f**k was buying it?! Working in Our Price, I must have sold it to punters many times over but I can’t actually recall doing it. Perfectly for the theme of this post, the lyrics included the refrain “pooper, pooper scooper!”.

Hit or Shit? A huge pile of dog poo

Here’s a curious thing – when an artist’s biggest hit is also one of their least known. I speak of Dina Carroll and her comeback single “Escaping”. I use the word ‘comeback’ as we hadn’t seen her for nigh on three years since her annus mirabilis in 1993 saw her become one of the breakout stars of that year. Four hit singles and a four times platinum selling debut album in “So Close” saw her named Best Female Artist at the following year’s BRIT awards. She was set for superstardom and then just seemed to vanish. Health issues and record label contractual problems caused a lengthy delay to her releasing any new material and so it was not until 1996 that she returned to the charts with “Escaping”. Despite this debuting at No 3 making it her joint highest charting single alongside “Don’t Be A Stranger”, I had real trouble recalling how this one went. That may be a common experience – when was the last time you heard it on the radio? Once I’d re- listened to it, it did sound faintly familiar but I do recall being surprised at how high it had gone into the charts back in 1996 given her low profile for the previous three years. The album it was taken from “Human Nature” also did well going to No 2 and achieving platinum sales status though its predecessor sold four times as many copies.

A mixture of an hereditary bone condition that affected her ears, bad luck (a cover of Dusty Springfield’s “Son Of A Preacher Man” was aborted due to Dusty’s untimely death) and more record label and management wrangling meant that Dina never did release a third album and drifted away from the music industry come the new millennium. She seems an almost forgotten figure somehow which strikes me as unfair I have to say.

Hit or Shit? Hmm. Difficult one this. “Escaping” is pleasant but not exactly memorable but then it was her joint biggest hit. Is this an “all fart, no shit” scenario?

What the heck?! What’s going on here? Why is “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell, a No 1 record in 1981, on TOTP in 1996? Well, this show was the first of ten that had a start time of 7.25pm. So? Here’s @TOTPFacts to take up the story…

For these 10 weeks, producer Ric Blaxill introduced a "Flashback" feature halfway through the show, the idea being that viewers channel-hopping during the commercial break for Coronation Street might stick with #TOTP if they saw a familiar archive performance.
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 18, 2024

Hmm. I think Blaxill was hoping against hope with that idea. In reality, it was probably just to further plug the return of TOTP2 that Julia Carling mentions at the song’s end. As my TOTP blog only dates back to the 1983 repeats, I’ve never properly discussed “Tainted Love” before but do I really need to go into the backstory on this one? Actually, there is a little bit of its origin that ties in nicely with this post. After becoming aware of the song due to its Northern Soul profile, Soft Cell decided to insert it into their live set. The song it replaced? “The Night” by the aforementioned Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. For years it was known as the biggest selling single of 1981 in the UK until the Official Charts Company recalculated the data in 2021 and gave that title to “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League. “And I’ve lost my light” indeed.

Hit or Shit? For years it was one of those unlistenable tracks for me that you can’t hear anymore because it’s been so overplayed. However, it has recently become more acceptable to my ears again and is definitely a hit!

This next one comes charged with emotion for the band performing it. Less than two months before this appearance, Rob Collins, keyboard player for The Charlatans, died in a car crash aged just 33 on his way back to the studios where the band were recording their fifth album “Tellin’ Stories”. Despite the devastating loss, the band decided to carry on and completed the album with Primal Scream’s Martin Duffy drafted in to cover the keyboard parts. “One To Another” was its lead single coming out a good eight months before the album. I remarked in a recent post about how there seemed to be a trend around this time for huge time gaps between lead singles and its parent album being released quoting the examples of Paul Weller and Shed Seven. In the case of The Charlatans though, the loss of Collins more than explains the delay. The band had supported Oasis at their giant Knebworth gigs in the August and just weeks after Collins had died so maybe “One To Another” was released when it was as a tribute to their departed band mate? Perhaps there was also one eye on capitalising on the huge media profile those Oasis dates had generated?

Either way, the single was a banger, a huge, barrelling sound with groovy riffs aplenty. As Julia Carling said in her intro, it was their highest charting single ever when it crashed in at No 3. Interesting to note that there’s not much camera time given to Martin Duffy* on keyboards here. Could that have been at the request of the band who would have wanted to be respectful to Collins’s memory and not make it look like he’d just been effortlessly replaced?

*Tragically Duffy would also die young aged just 55 in 2022.

Hit or Shit? Huge tune this. Definite hit.

From the sublime to the ridiculous – it’s time for Los Del Rio again. Is it time to talk about the dance that went with the “Macarena”? I guess we have to at some point. I don’t propose to give a breakdown of the various moves – go online and find them yourselves if you want a refresher. However, what’s more interesting is the psychology behind why people would want to do it. In 2015, Oxford University published research into collective, synchronised dancing and found that the practice raised tolerance levels, fostered connectedness and friendship and broke down barriers promoting a feeling of togetherness. So there was some benefit to this ludicrous song. It’s still musical excrement though.

Hit or Shit? Definitely shit

And so to Rockets From The Crypt – a one hit wonder but one which I do actually remember. American punk rockers hailing from San Diego, their singular chart entry was “On A Rope” which would peak at No 12 in the UK charts. What stands out most in my memory about this one was that it was released as three different CD singles in cardboard slip covers. As I was working for Our Price, and, as we were not yet displaying stock live on the shop floor, you had to be really careful to get the correct disc from the filing behind the counter. Some of my more rock leaning colleagues were quite into this one but it didn’t do much for me I have to say. It was all a bit repetitive and certainly these days, aged 56, I would say it was too loud. It’s crap getting old isn’t it?

Hit or Shit? Is there a category for the non committed as I really couldn’t give a shit

It’s the last week at the top for the Spice Girls and “Wannabe”. Its success must have exceeded everything that record label Virgin could possibly have imagined for the debut release from a brand new act. It’s interesting to note that although the UK remained enamoured by them for the duration of their career (the first part of it at least) with nine of their first ten singles topping our charts, “Wannabe” was the only one to go to No 1 across the board in every territory globally.

The early copies of the single had a cover which doesn’t actually say Spice Girls on it but rather just ‘Spice’ with images of the individual members depicted within the lettering of the word. I think some of my colleagues were confused by this and actually just wrote ‘Spice’ as the artist name on the master bag for the filing system we used. It’s hard now to imagine a world where we didn’t know the name Spice Girls.

Hit or Shit? Sales phenomenon not withstanding, it was still a bit shit

The play out video is “How Bizarre” by OMC. By my reckoning, this is its fourth appearance on the show and therefore I have nothing left to say about it. Literally nothing. OK, OK…I’ll think of something. How about this? In 2002, “How Bizarre” was ranked at No 71 on the 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders show hosted by William Shatner. That’s William Shatner. Shatner. Shat-ner. The theme of this post? Oh forget it.

Hit or Shit? My wife bought this so I fell duty bound to say ‘hit’

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Space	Me And You Versus The World	No but my wife had their album
2	Clock	Oh What A Night	NO!
3	Kula Shaker	Hey Dude	No but I had a promo copy of their album
4	The Smurfs	I’ve Got A Little Puppy	Are you mad?
5	Dina Carroll	Escaping	Nah
6	Soft Cell	Tainted Love	I did not
7	The Charlatans	One To Another	No but I had it on their Best Of album Melting Pot
8	Los Del Rio	Macarena	Never
9	Rockets From The Crypt	On A Rope	Nope
10	Spice Girls	Wannabe	Negative
11	OMC	How Bizarre	No but my wife did

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/m00241bt/top-of-the-pops-06091996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 24 AUG 1995

Posted on February 12, 2024 by 80stastic

And the winner is…The Battle of Britpop has been fought and the outcome declared. On the Sunday before this TOTP aired, Mark Goodier announced the Top 40 chart on Radio 1 and that Blur had come out on top of this epic tussle that had captured the attention of the media and the public alike. As I recall, he did the usual rundown one place early so that he could make a big deal of who was No 2 and, by extension, reveal the No 1 at the same time.

Whether by accident or design, the host of the TOTP that reflected this particular chart was Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker in a ‘golden mic’ guest slot. Whatever the circumstances behind it, there seemed to be something satisfying and fitting about his presence on the show; his dry sense of humour somehow deflating the media constructed frenzy around the Oasis / Blur rivalry.

Before we‘re given a glimpse of Jarvis though, we get perhaps the most well remembered (by me at least) of the top of the show direct-to-camera pieces – Blur riding a milk float into camera shot and bassist Alex James declaring that they were No 1 and would be camping it up on Top of the Pops later on before doing an exaggerated “ooh matron” gesture. I wonder who’s idea that was? There was a milk float in the video for the single so I guess there was a valid connection there but you couldn’t imagine Oasis pulling such a stunt. Maybe that was the point though – to differentiate themselves from their Northern rivals. “We’re nothing like them you know!”.

To start the show though we have…yep…a dance track. Of course we do. It is 1995 after all. This one comes courtesy of Clock who had hit upon the cheesy but successful formula of recording Eurodance flavoured versions of old hits. They’d already taken versions of Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F” and Tag Team’s “Whoomph! (There It Is)” into the Top 10 and would accelerate their output throughout the decade with covers from the catalogue of artists such as The Four Seasons, The Jacksons, KC and the Sunshine Band and Hot Chocolate. However, this one – “Everybody” – they wrote themselves…sort of. There’s a sample of “Let’s Start The Dance” by disco artist Bohannon in there as well as a vocal sound from Norman Cook’s sample library collection “Skip To My Loops”. However, the lyrics (if you can call them that) were the work of Clock members Stu Allan and Pete Pritchard.

It sounds like a poor man’s 2 Unlimited to me but the one thing that did stand out was that elongated cry of “Everybody!”. Surely that was influenced by this…

Someone noted on social media after this TOTP repeat aired that the winner of The Battle of Britpop should have been neither Blur nor Oasis but The Charlatans. They had a point. “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over” is better than either “Country House” or “Roll With It” to my ears. Indeed, it was the NME’s Single of the Week over either of those two more celebrated releases.

I’d not really been into Tim Burgess and co when they first broke through as part of the whole “baggie” scene at the start of the 90s but they were really getting into their stride by this point and I was swayed. From “Can’t Get Out Of Bed” to the end of the decade was their imperial phase in my book. I wasn’t the only person of this opinion. The eponymous album this single came from topped the chart as did their next “Tellin’ Stories”. Just typing that has made me realise how many of the band’s songs and albums have a ‘g’ missing from their titles. Aside from the two above, there’s also “Crashin’ In” and “Just Lookin’”. Not that it’s a big deal. Just sayin’.

Tim Burgess is on record as saying that “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over” was the band trying to sound like “Ramble On” by Led Zeppelin. Well, I never got the boat going to Led Zepp island (I know, sacrilege and all that) so I couldn’t comment on that but there is another song that I’ve become aware of fairly recently that it has a resemblance to. At the start of 2022, I made a New Year resolution to try and listen to a song that I didn’t know every day for 12 months. It didn’t have to be a ‘new’ song per se, just ‘new to me’. I didn’t quite hit my target but I still managed to amass a playlist with over 10 hours of songs on it. One of them was this 1973 John Lennon track from the album “Mind Games”:

If you go online and search for “Human Nature” by Madonna, you’ll find lots of articles about the meaning behind the song and of course plenty about that video. I myself added a few words on the subject in a previous post the first time the promo was shown on TOTP. There’s lots of opinion about the song being a retort to those who criticised her for being overtly sexual in her Sex book and “Erotica” album and agreeing with Madge for rightly pointing out that she wouldn’t have got such a hard time for exploring sexuality if she were a man. However, I quite like Jarvis Cocker’s succinct summing up of it all in his intro as he whispers:

“Express yourself, don’t repress yourself”

Then in his down to earth Sheffield drawl he says:

“According to Madonna’s new video that involves kind of perving around in a giant ice cube tray. Anyway, have a look for yourselves while we count down numbers 40 to 11 inclusive.”

He pretty much nails it I think. I love the way he adds the word ‘inclusive’ at the end. There’s no need for him to do that and most presenters wouldn’t have but it’s a good example of Jarvis’s idiosyncrasy.

There’s more wonderful celebrity piercing wit from Cocker next as we get the rather obtrusive and unnecessary video piece from Diana Ross. In a flat, monotone and off screen voice we hear Jarvis say simply “There now follows an important message” before we cut to Ross sat on the bonnet of a car who informs us that she’s in Detroit at the Motown Sound Exhibition and will be performing on TOTP tonight. And that’s it. Did we really need that clip shoe horning into the show? “Cheers Di” lampoons Jarvis before his next intro. “Wow. What can I tell you about this next act. Not a lot really as I don’t know anything about them” he advises. Genius comic delivery!

In truth though, Jarvis should have had better knowledge of “Move Your Body” by Xpansions 95 not least because it had already been a substantial hit previously. Yes, it’s time for another reactivated dance hit, a practice that dominated the charts in 1995. Just like hits from JX, Felix and The Original which had all been on the show in recent weeks, this was yet another dance track getting a second chart life. Initially a No 7 hit in 1991 as “Elevation (Move Your Body)”, it would peak at No 14 four years later. Xpansions was a vehicle for producer Phil Drummond whose real name, unbelievably was Phillip Phillips – no wonder he changed it. Together with actress and singer Sally Anne Marsh – wait, didn’t she play Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?!

*checks internet*

My bad. That was Sally Ann Howes. I thought the person on stage looked remarkably young in 1995 to have starred in a film that came out in 1968! Anyway Phil and Sally Anne Marsh proved a prosperous partnership. The latter had pop music form having been in the early 90s girl group Faith Hope & Charity alongside The Word presenter Dani Behr and she would add her vocals to Deconstruction label dance act Ariel as well as carving out a successful acting and voice over artist. The track itself followed a formula of the title lyric being repeated continuously over a piano house riff and did nothing for me but, as Jarvis said, went down a storm in the clubs. Is it just me or does Sally Anne have a look of “Immaculate Collection” era Madonna about her? Incidentally, Phil Drummond also went under the pseudonym of Marradonna.

With the cat out of the bag four days earlier, there seemed little point in TOTP trying to eek out any morsel of tension surrounding who was No 1 (hence the Blur piece at the top of the show) so we get Oasis slap bang in the middle of the show at No 2 with “Roll With It”. Diplomatically, Jarvis doesn’t take any sides declaring the record buying public the winner having access to so much great music. Obviously the Manc lads weren’t going to drag themselves into the studio for another performance after they’d lost out to Blur who were there in person so we get a replay of their turn from last week.

“Roll With It” would hold at No 2 for a second week and spend a further two within the Top 10. Like all the band’s other singles, it would have a protracted chart life spending 49 weeks within the Top 100. Not bad for a song who the person who wrote it once described as “shit”.

Taking the show in another direction completely now is Björk who is the first of three consecutive female solo artists on the show though that’s about all they have in common with each other. To be fair, is anybody else similar to Björk? Take this single “Isobel” for example. It’s been described by critics as a modern fairy tale, a fable and by Simon Williams in the NME as:

“Where tribal rhythms spiral into enormous swathes of galloping pop fluffiness”
Williams, Simon (10 June 1995) “Long Play” NME .p.46.

Well, quite. I haven’t got the words to rival Mr Williams so I’ll just say that this one was too divorced from the mainstream for me and that I’m surprised that Björk was given a slot on the show two weeks running, especially as it only made No 23 in the UK charts.

Think of the BRITS 1996 and inevitably the Jarvis Cocker / Michael Jackson incident comes to mind. Jarvis protesting at Jackson’s Christ mimicking performance of “Earth Song” by running across the stage and wafting his fully clothed bottom in Jacko’s direction followed by a complete overreaction from his security team and Cocker being questioned by police before being released. What I hadn’t clocked before rewatching this TOTP was the jibe that Jarvis makes about the King of Pop before introducing a satellite exclusive performance by Diana Ross saying that she’d influenced a lot of people including “Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon for one”. Ooh! Is it possible that Jacko was aware of this remark and took revenge via his security detail on Cocker at the BRITS six months later? Nah. Surely not.

Jarvis does accord Ross some respect by referring to her as Miss Diana Ross (the Miss is obligatory). Her song though deserves zero acclaim as it’s a right old stinker. Ross’s back catalogue features some stone cold classics but “Take Me Higher” is certainly not one of them. It sounds like such a desperate attempt to stay relevant in the dance obsessed 90s, as if her management had shown her a video of Lisa Stansfield and told her to do her best impersonation of her. She does her best to sell the song in this performance with her engaging, face wide smile but it doesn’t win me over. She should have stuck to the big ballads that brought her success in the early 90s like “When You Tell Me That You Love Me” and “One Shining Moment”. “Take Me Higher” peaked at No 32.

OK so when I said earlier they there was nothing in common between Björk and the two female solo artists that followed her, I forgot about the acting. The Icelandic singer has featured in a number of movies perhaps most famously Lars Bon Trier’s Dancer In The Dark whilst (Miss) Diana Ross won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Sings The Blues as well as starring in Mahogany and The Wiz. Then there’s Michelle Gayle who’s on the show with her fifth consecutive Top 40 hit “Happy Just To Be With You”. Michelle, of course, was in Grange Hill (as part of rap duo Fresh ‘n’ Fly no less) and as Hattie Tavernier in EastEnders. Her later career included stage roles in Beauty and the Beast, the Dusty Springfield musical Son of a Preacher Man and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Back in 1995 though, music was Michelle’s priority and she was pretty successful at it too. Six of her seven UK chart entries went Top 20 including two Top Tenners.

“Happy Just To Be With You” borrows heavily from the bassline of “Good Times” by Chic but it’s not on its own – the whosampled.com website says that it’s been sampled in 227 songs although Michelle’s single interpolates rather than samples it. It’s a pretty competent R&B / pop song I have to say and Michelle does a good job of promoting it.

In the end it wasn’t even that close. Blur won ‘The Battle of Britpop’ with their “Country House” single with room to spare selling 274,000 copies to the 216,000 units shifted by “Roll With It”. However, it’s generally perceived that Oasis may have lost the battle but won the war. The numbers back up that view. “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” would go 17 x platinum in the UK whilst Blur’s “The Great Escape” would achieve 3 x platinum sales. In February 1996, there was almost a repeat of The Battle of Britpop when the two bands released singles from their albums within a week of each other (presumably both camps were wise enough not to put themselves through it all again). Oasis’s track was the iconic “Don’t Look Back In Anger” whilst Blur released “Stereotypes”. At the Our Price in Stockport where I was working we sold 279 copies of Oasis in week one. And Blur? We sold 13. That’s thirteen. Rumour has it that Damon Albarn fled to Iceland to get away from the onslaught of Oasis’s album which he heard everywhere he went.

But how are their legacies viewed now? Both bands would achieve further No 1 singles and albums (although I believe Oasis had more). For me, and I was more Oasis than Blur, the former went on longer than they should have and possibly made an anachronism of themselves. Despite all predictions to the contrary, if anything Liam’s post Oasis output has been more interesting than Noel’s (I’ve never really been into his High Flying Birds). Indeed, Liam’s recent collaboration with ex-Stone Roses guitarist John Squire is meant to be excellent. As for Blur, Damon’s virtual band project Gorillaz has produced some brilliant material and shows much more imagination than cranking out rock songs for an ageing audience à la Noel. Meanwhile, Blur guitarist Graham Coxon’s solo career has produced some really interesting albums leading Noel Gallagher no less to describe him as

“One of the most talented guitarists of his generation”
Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Britpop. Bonus interviews

Oh and Alex James wearing an Oasis t-shirt in this performance – was that an olive branch extended towards their rivals or a dig at them?

The play out video is “Warped” by Red Hot Chili Peppers and guess what? I don’t remember this one either! For the record, this was the lead single from the band’s “One Hot Minute” album and made No 31 on the UK Top 40.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Clock	Everybody	Never!
2	The Charlatans	Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over	No but I have their Melting Pot Best Of
3	Madonna	Human Nature	Nah
4	Xpansions 95	Move Your Body	Nope
5	Oasis	Roll With It	YES!
6	Björk	Isobel	I did not
7	Diana Ross	Take Me Higher	As if
8	Michelle Gayle	Happy Just To Be With You	No
9	Blur	Country House	No but I had the Great Escape album
10	Red Hot Chilli Peppers	Warped	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001w2m3/top-of-the-pops-24081995

TOTP 03 FEB 1994

Posted on January 31, 2023 by 80stastic

We have arrived in February 1994 in our journey through the TOTP archives and it’s a case of “as you were” as Liam Gallagher might say. The ‘year zero’ revamp is dead, gone, finished, no more- it is an ex-revamp. Well, there’s still a few remnants of it hanging around as we’ll see but even those last few traces will be swept away by the new broom of incoming producer Ric Blaxill. The title sequence, logo and theme tune were all still the same but they would be stripped away and replaced in 1995 along with the installation of a new set. The first major change that we see is the return of the Radio 1 DJs to presenting duties who were last seen in September 1991. Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin (the last two standing of the wave of ‘year zero’ new faces) were not retained by Blaxill who wanted to re-establish the link between the show and Radio 1. First back in the host seat is Simon Mayo whose intro refers to the two institutions being back in bed together and going to be fertile which seems a totally unnecessary remark. I could never get on board with Mayo; something about his smugness that put me off. Oh, and his record of campaigning for terrible songs like “Kinky Boots” and “Donald Where’s Your Troosers?” to become chart hits.

Anyway, the new era kicks off with a record that must have passed me by at the time. After making her name in 1991 with one of the decade’s biggest dance anthems in “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”, Rozalla had rather gone missing in the intervening years. Her previous three single releases had all failed to chart and so when it came to releasing her second album (and first for new record label Epic), a hit was definitely required. And when you need a hit…you know what comes next. Yes, a cover version was sought out. Back in 1976, Philly Soulsters The O’Jays of “Back Stabbers” and “Love Train” fame had a No 13 hit in the UK called “I Love Music” and it was that track that was chosen to reset Rozalla’s career.

On reflection, whilst certainly a safe step, it also seemed like a backward one with Rozalla being repositioned as yet another singer trying to eke out a hit with a 70s cover à la Dannii Minogue or someone. Hadn’t she been seen as the princess of techno rave anthems or something? At least a bit more cutting edge than this anyway? I mean, it gave her a hit (No 18) but in terms of re-establishing her in people’s minds it seemed to be a short term fix. Her sophomore album which included “I Love Music” did absolutely nothing (despite some decent press reviews) peaking at No 138 in the UK. Somebody on her team also thought it was a good idea to restyle her which I don’t think helped. Gone were the space cadet type spangly jackets and hair tied up look and in their place was a vampy image with long, sleek hair and a sheer black dress. It was a misplaced notion. Rozalla would have a few more minor hits during the 90s but tellingly one of them was a remix of “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”.

Now here is a proper tune! I’d always struggled a bit with The Charlatans up to this point. Yes, “The Only One I Know” was a decent song but the rest of it hadn’t engaged me as much as I thought it would. For me though, this was the point where they really started to hit their stride. Great hit after great hit would emerge over the mid to late 90s – “Just Lookin’”, “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over”, “How High” and “North Country Boy” spring to mind – but it seemed to start with “Can’t Get Out Of Bed”.

Nothing to do with Matt Bianco’s debut hit of a decade earlier, this was the lead single from their third album “Up To Our Hips”. Although Tim Burgess has acquired National Treasure status for his album Listening Party project which helped to keep us sane during the pandemic, I wonder if his band get the plaudits they deserve sometimes. Just ~~looking~~ lookin’ at their discography alone shows that they had three No 1 albums (plus two No 2s) – I’m not sure that gets talked about enough for a start. “Up To Our Hips” would go Top 10 beginning the process of restoring the band’s status which seemed to take a dip when sophomore effort “Between 10th And 11th” failed to make the Top 20.

“Can’t Get Out Of Bed” seemed to have much more melody to it than their previous work to me and, in keeping with its title, an almost lazy style to it as if Tim was really having to force himself to get the lyrics out. It was also utterly joyous. Yes, his vocals in this performance aren’t strictly the best technically but some of the best singers aren’t but are perfect for the music they make (see also the aforementioned Liam Gallagher). The single probably should have done better than it’s No 24 peak but, nevertheless, the alarm clock was ringing – we were on notice of great things to come.

https://youtu.be/VqSjY9EBci0

I’m a bit confused about the timeline surrounding this next act’s release history. I’d ignored Red Hot Chili Peppers throughout the 80s – no, not ignored but barely been aware of them and their first four albums is a more accurate description. The release of their “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” album in 1991 brought them into the mainstream though. Produced by Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin, it rowed back on their metal/funk tendencies whilst promoted a more melodic sound. This was none more evident than on “Under The Bridge” which clogged up US radio playlists for months and rose all the way to No 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

However, the album’s lead single was “Give It Away” which showed that the band could still kick ass. The song has an almost face-blistering power, propelled by Flea’s frenetic bass line and John Frusciante’s funk guitar riffs. Add in Anthony Kiedis’ imploring vocals and it’s impossible to ignore. Here’s where my confusion comes in though. “Give It Away” was released in September 1991 so what was it doing in the UK charts in 1994? To add to the confusion, “Under The Bridge” which was the second single taken from the album was originally released in March of 1992 but I’m sure that was also in our Top 40 in 1994 because I bought it (it has a version of “Give It Away” on it called ‘In Progress’). So what gives? Well, I’ve pieced together a theory but I’m no Chili Peppers aficionado so it could easily be bulls**t. Here goes though. As far as I can tell, “Give It Away” was definitely originally released in 1991 but either did absolutely nothing over here or wasn’t actually made available in this country. I can see US and Europe versions of the single listed on the Discogs website but not a specific UK one. “Under The Bridge” definitely got a UK release though as it made No 26 here in March 1992. In the September of that year, just to confuse matters, a Best Of compilation called “What Hits!?” was released consisting of tracks from their first four albums recorded for EMI (“Blood Sugar Sex Majik” was their first for Warners). However, EMI were allowed to choose one track to include on the album recorded for Warners so naturally they chose “Under The Bridge” as their biggest hit. It made for a very lopsided and confusing collection album. John Frusciante left the band after “Blood Sugar Sex Majik” whilst Anthony Kiedis relapsed into drug use. The combination of these two things meant a delay to the recording of next studio album “One Hot Minute”. To fill that gap and to appease the fan base, a compilation box set was released called (rather unimaginatively) “Live Rare Remix Box” which did what it said on the tin. The box set included three different versions of “Give It Away” so I’m guessing that the track was re-released to help promote it. When that became a Top 10 hit in the UK, “Under The Bridge” was also re-released which was the single I bought and this time it made No 13. Phew!

I guess we have to mention the video shown here for “Give It Away”. Credited with helping to break the band commercially, rather ridiculously, Warners were scared it might be too weird, arty and out there for MTV and mainstream audiences. The opposite was true. Shot entirely in black and white in the desert with the band painted silver, wearing reflective outfits and cavorting about in a frenzy, it is a dazzling and exceptional piece of work from French director Stéphane Sednaoui.

“Now I know I’m not employed for my musical taste but this is going to be a No 1 record” Simon Mayo confidently informs us when introducing the next artist. Who is he talking about? Why, Wendy Moten of course. Not quite a one hit wonder (she had a No 35 follow up), she definitely did not have a No 1 record though as her single “Come In Out Of The Rain” peaked at No 8. Simon ‘Nostradamus’ Mayo at it again there.

As far as I can tell, this was originally released in 1992 in the US but only got its chance in the UK in early 1994. For reasons of a lack of time and unlike with Red Hot Chili Peppers, I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores about all of that though. Suffice to say, the song is a big slushy ballad that I could imagine Dina Carroll or even Diana Ross singing.

My main memory of Wendy Moten though is that one of my colleagues (Vicky I think) at the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester wanted a move to London and so we arranged a transfer for her to one of the soul/dance specialist stores down there. When I spoke to her on the work phone after she had moved and asked her how it was going she told me how different an environment it was. To illustrate that, she said she hadn’t yet heard the “Parklife” album by Blur that was everywhere but she’d heard the Wendy Moten album in full in the shop stereo loads of times. As my Mum says, if we all liked the same thing, the world would be a very boring place.

Who’s this fella? Joe Roberts? Sounds like somebody your Dad would know? I’m not sure I know him though. What’s his song called? “Lover”? Nope, I’ve got nothing. Hang on; did he do one called “Jessie”?

*checks internet*

Nah, that was a guy called Joshua Kadison apparently. Well, I’ve got nothing then. My research tells me his partner is Melanie Williams who was the singer with Sub Sub of “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)” fame. They even made a record together – a cover of The Stylistics’ “ You Are Everything” – in 1995. After that the trail goes cold. Maybe he could have tried to make himself more intriguing by just going by the name Joe (like Madonna or Adele). Ah shit, somebody already beat him to it didn’t they? That bloke who did “I’m In Luv” who was on the show the other week. Hard luck Mr Roberts.

They’ve retained the Breakers under the new regime and they kick off with “Perpetual Dawn” by The Orb. This was yet another re-release following Red Hot Chili Peppers earlier and indeed following The Orb themselves as their previous hit at the end of 1993 “Little Fluffy Clouds” had itself been a reissue. “Perpetual Dawn” was originally released in 1991 from their debut album “The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld” and had peaked at No 61. Presumably, also like the Chili Peppers, the strategy here was to retain profile in between albums (there were three years between “U.F.Orb” and “Orbus Terrarum”) and as the “Little Fluffy Clouds” rerelease had worked so well, another old track was shoved out. The track has a dub reggae feel to it and sounds a bit like The Prodigy to my uncultured ears. It peaked the second time at No 18.

New-age was all the rage in early 1994. After the return of Enigma last week, here was a French act called Deep Forest with their track “Sweet Lullaby”. A major hit all round Europe over the previous year, it was time for the UK to experience its ethnic ambient rhythms – could the re-emergence of Enigma have played a part in their record company’s scheduling decision?

As with Enigma’s concurrent hit which was based around an Amis chant recorded by a Taiwan folk duo, “Sweet Lullaby” was similarly structured around an indigenous lullaby from the Solomon Islands. Also like Enigma, it made for a haunting, affecting piece of music. The single went to No 10 whilst their eponymous debut album also sold steadily and was nominated for a Grammy for Best World Music album in 1994. According to founding member Éric Mouquet, the name Deep Forest came from combining Deep Purple with rain forest. I guess ‘Purple Rain’ had already gone.

The final Breaker comes from a German Eurodance act called Bass Bumpers. I know, WHO? Well, their track was called “The Music’s Got Me!” which peaked at No 25 and which I don’t recall at all but that’s not really their claim to fame anyway. In 2005, they were responsible for the heinous musical crime that was the Crazy Frog version of “Axel F”. I KNOW!

A taste of things to come perhaps now. I’ve criticised the ‘live by satellite’ section many times before in this blog as being completely pointless with the majority of acts set in empty concert halls and completely undermining the whole concept of an ‘exclusive’ performance. New producer Ric Blaxill kept the slot but wanted to make it an event again by having artists perform against the backdrop of a famous/interesting landmark, building or structure. So, show No1 of the new regime have Gin Blossoms at the original London Bridge in Arizona. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the history lesson…

That bridge in the background is London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. It features exterior granite blocks from the bridge across the Thames which was built in 1831 ("New London Bridge"). #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 27, 2023

By the '60s, surveys showed that London Bridge was sinking about an inch every eight years, so it was decided to replace it. In 1968 it was bought from the City of London by entrepreneur Robert P McCulloch for $2,460,000. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 27, 2023

10,000 tons of granite blocks were shipped via the Panama Canal to California, then trucked to Arizona, where they were used to face a new, steel-reinforced concrete structure up to the task of supporting modern-day traffic. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 27, 2023

Interesting stuff but what about the band? Well, Gin Blossoms we’re actually from Arizona and had done the usual band stuff of constant gigging in a clapped out van and released their debut album “Dusted” on a small independent label. They were then picked up by a major in A&M and they re-recorded half of the songs on “Dusted” to form the basis of their second album “New Miserable Experience”. It sold unremarkably until the album’s third single “Hey Jealously” picked up airplay and became a No 25 hit in the US. Off the back of it, the album would eventually go four times platinum over there. It couldn’t replicate those sales in the UK but we bought into “Hey Jealousy” enough to make it a No 24 hit. The song has a tragic backstory. Guitarist Doug Hopkins who wrote it about wanting to get back with his girlfriend was kicked out of the band by A&M due to his alcoholism and unreliability before the song was a hit. Unable to deal with its subsequent success, he committed suicide in December 1993. There were rumours of a potential biopic of Hopkins’ life being made starring Ethan Hawke but it turned out that they were, in fact, just rumours.

One film that the band did have ties to was Empire Records for which they contributed a song to its soundtrack. Set in a US record store, I should have loved this as I spent pretty much the whole of the 90s working for Our Price. However, I found it to be completely dull and self indulgent with unlikeable characters. It bombed at the box office but has since become a cult hit. Maybe I should give it another go…

…maybe not. Anyway, I quite liked “Hey Jealousy” with its jangling guitars and catchy melody. However, I do always confuse Gin Blossoms with Gigolo Aunts who had a similar sounding band name and a similar sounding hit record at a similar time…

One of the year’s biggest hits next as Mariah Carey takes on “Without You”. I guess if anyone had the vocal range to tackle this monster of a pop song it was her. Her version would crash straight in at No 1 and be there for four weeks.

Whilst mostly known as a Harry Nilsson song before Mariah got hold of it, it was actually written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans of the band Badfinger who recorded it for their 1970 album “No Dice”. Badfinger, of course, had a strong connection with The Beatles. They recorded five albums for Apple and one of their biggest hits – “Come And Get It” – was written and produced by Paul McCartney. I quite like what I’ve heard of the band -“No Matter What” is a great power pop song – but they are one of the most tragic bands in musical history. In an unbelievably grim coincidence, like Gin Blossoms, their story was also touched by the awful shadow of suicide. After Apple folded, the band spiralled into a tumult of litigation, unpaid royalties and bankruptcy. It took its toll in an awful way. Pete Ham committed suicide in 1975 after his relationship with business manager Stan Polley went bad and Ham faced financial ruin. Then in 1983, Tom Evans also took his own life after falling out with band member Joey Molland over royalties for “Without You” the previous evening.

D:Ream remain rooted to the top spot with “Things Can Only Get Better”. Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo can’t resist making a political comment referring to it as John Major’s favourite song currently. At the time, as in 2023, the Conservatives were miles behind Labour in the polls and Major was embroiled in a row with opposition leader John Smith over the sale of the Rover Group. Things would actually get worse not better for Major four days after this TOTP aired when Tory MP Stephen Milligan was found dead at his home having died of asphyxiation presumed to be the result of an auto-erotic sex practice.

God this show has been remarkably bleak and miserable in terms of back stories. Is there anything that can raise the spirits before it closes? Well, there’s one final tune to come as it seems Blaxill made another immediate change by restoring the play out song that had been missing since the ‘year zero’ revamp. So what’s the first artist to fill this slot? The Flavour? Never heard of them! It’s hardly surprising as they never actually had a hit record. This single – “No Matter What You Do (I’m Gonna Get With You)” only made it to No 81. It was rereleased a year later and got to No 79. It wasn’t helped in its chart endeavours by Blaxill only seeing fit for it to be played for about twenty seconds and not showing their video (presuming they had one). Instead we get clips of all the artists that had been in the show we’d just seen. Not especially effective use of a slot. In fairness, it was a crap song (like a cheap version of the aforementioned Sub Sub) and unlike the Badfinger track called “No Matter What”, I didn’t like The Flavour’s…erm…flavour at all.

https://youtu.be/2obzVi-27gQ

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Rozalla	I Love Music	I do too but not this!
2	The Charlatans	Can’t Get Out Of Bed	Not the single but I have it on their Melting Pot Best Of
3	Red Hot Chili Peppers	Give It Away	No but I had a version of it on that re-release of Under The Bridge that I did buy
4	Wendy Moten	Come In Out Of The Rain	Nah
5	Joe Roberts	Lover	I did not
6	The Orb	Perpetual Dawn	Nope
7	Deep Forest	Sweet Lullaby	No
8	Bass Bumpers	The Music’s Got Me	Negative
9	Gin Blossoms	Hey Jealousy	Liked it, didn’t buy it
10	Mariah Carey	Without You	It’s a no
11	D:Ream	Things Can Only Get Better	And another no
12	The Flavour	No Matter What You Do (I’m Gonna Get With You)	What do you think?

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001hhgz/top-of-the-pops-03021994

TOTP 05 MAR 1992

Posted on January 28, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve missed another Adrian Rose episode and find ourselves in March of 1992 already. That means we missed Everything But The Girl doing “Love Is Strange” from their “Covers EP” which is a downer but never mind as the ‘92 version of me is awaiting my beloved Chelsea playing in an an FA Cup quarter final for the first time in 10 years. The game took place four days after this TOTP was broadcast. It didn’t end well. I had been telling my Our Price colleague Justin all week that our name was on the cup this year. The morning after we lost the replay to Sunderland, he showed me the back page of the paper he was reading that was emblazoned with the headline ‘C-Hell-sea’ and said “name’s not on the cup now”. There was no argument from me. We had proven ourselves to be charlatans once again, coming on like potential cup winners only to be undone by unassuming lower league opponents. And talking of charlatans (ahem)…

After a couple of stand alone singles after the release of debut album “Some Friendly”, The Charlatans were back with a new track as a forerunner of sophomore album “Between 10th And 11th”. That track was lead single “Weirdo”. I didn’t think that much of it at the time but it’s aged pretty well over the intervening 30 years I think. For me this was a period of the band’s career that was all about the consolidation of their breakthrough success and building the foundations for their golden era that was ‘94 to ‘97.

Watching this performance back, their visuals are very Stone Roses whilst their sound comes quite close to Inspiral Carpets with that distinctive organ sound to the fore. Tim Burgess looks positively angelic up there and whilst it’s grossly unfair to compare that look to his present day image (I know I would come up short under such a comparison), I can’t help thinking that his blonde Andy Warhol hairdo is maybe not the route to go. These days of course, Tim is approaching (indie) national treasure status with his Twitter Listening Party endeavours to get us all through lockdown – I got a rather lovely hardback book for Xmas chronicling the best ones.

“Weirdo” peaked at No 19.

When Extreme scored a massive hit in the Summer of ‘91 with acoustic ballad “More Than Words”, it seemed to re-popularise acoustic / stripped back rock songs. In its wake would come “Everybody Hurts” by REM, “Wonderwall” by Oasis, “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)” by Green Day and…well…this one. Now I always thought that Mr Big were a hoary old rock band from the 70s who happened to strike it lucky in the early 90s with acoustic soft rock ballad “To Be With You”. It turns out that they’d only formed in 1988 and by the time of their biggest hit had only actually released two albums.

This mega hit came from the second of those called “Lean Into It” (the one with a picture of the 1895 Montparnasse train incident on its cover) but it wasn’t really representative of their usual musical output. They’d made their name as a metal band but so all encompassingly successful was “To Be With You” that you’d be forgiven for thinking they were a one hit wonder. It was No 1 in the US for three weeks and also topped the charts in fifteen other countries (but only No 3 over here). I thought it stank though, its place in the shithouse confirmed by the fact that it was covered by Westlife. Mr Big? I’d rather have Mr Benn thanks.

Ah it’s that “It’s A Fine Day” record by Opus III again. The last time she was on, vocalist Kirsty Hawkshaw entertained us with her ball skills (no sniggering at the back). This time she’s gone all Crazy World Of Arthur Brown and brought us FIRE! For those still unable to let go of the balls though, there’s a graphic homage to their swirlingness displayed on two monitors behind Kirsty. It’s all smoke and mirrors (or balls and fire if you prefer) as this homogenised dance hit wasn’t a patch in the spooky ‘83 original by (simply) Jane.

“It’s A Fine Day” peaked at No 5.

We transition from Opus III to The KLF via a segue made by Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond themselves on Mount Fuji in Japan. As such, they can’t be in the TOTP studio to perform their latest single “America: What Time Is Love?”.

Now Cauty and Drummond can justifiably be criticised for burning a million pounds for the sake of art but they were certainly early adopters of recycling. Sadly their brand of it was never going to help the save the planet as it was their music that they were into reusing. This single was a reworking of their 1990 Top 5 hit “What Time Is Love?” which itself was a remix of its original 1988 acid house version. It would also be their last UK Top 40 hit as The KLF. This wasn’t unexpected though with their retirement from the music business having been spectacularly announced the month before with a violently controversial valedictory performance at The BRITS alongside Extreme Noise Terror.

I think I prefer this more hard rock take on the track to the version that formed part of the ‘Stadium House Trilogy’ with its “Ace Of Spades” riff. The video has the band performing under duress in a storm lashed ship (if it’s meant to be referencing the pilgrims and The Mayflower it looks more like a Viking longboat) with Cauty and Drummond (I assume it’s them under the costumes) looking like Count Binface. Truly bonkers to the very end.

“America: What Time Is Love?” peaked at No 4.

Hear that? It’s the sound of a band breaking through into the mainstream. Crowded House had been in existence for seven years before people’s awareness of them and therefore their popularity mushroomed with the release of the single “Weather With You”. The third single taken from their third studio album “Woodface” was a hit all around Europe but crucially it went Top 10 in the UK where it remains their biggest ever hit. It’s also surely in the top two of their best known songs alongside “Don’t Dream It’s Over”. When the band released their Best Of album “Recurring Dream” in 1996 with the advertising slogan ‘you know more Crowded House songs than you think’, “Weather With You” was the first track on the running order. Surely a deliberate move by their record company.

The track features some distinctive and memorable lyrics including a reference to the address 57 Mount Pleasant Street. Apparently Neil Finn’s sister used to live on Mount Pleasant Road in Auckland, New Zealand though not at No 57. I’m sure I read somewhere that the band tracked down all the residents of the various 57 Mount Pleasant Streets around the world and invited them to a Crowded House gig. Presumably it was a publicity stunt though I can’t find any mention of it online.

Someone said on Twitter that the last time the band appeared on TOTP they had followed The KLF then too. I’m not sure if anything could or should be read into that but it did tickle my curiosity. I like their brief soft shoe shuffle / The Shadows impression at the song’s intro. I wonder if that was premeditated or organic?

Ah, it’s that sunny song by Shanice now. Was “I Love Your Smile” a jolly, bouncy, happy anthem or an insanely annoying piece of pop fluff? It’s a fine line. There’s a rap in the bridge section that wasn’t retained for the radio version (it’s in the video below if you’re interested). Apparently this was standard practice in the US back then to try and broaden a song’s appeal to the various musical genre specific radio stations. The rap was strategically positioned in the song’s structure at the bridge so it could be easily edited out for pop stations but left in for the R&B ones. Further examples include Shanice’s peers like Kym Sims and Ce Ce Peniston. Having listened to the rap, I can see why most radio stations didn’t play the version with it in. It’s pretty cringeworthy and feels very incongruous.

Shanice came to pop fame off the back of a TV career as a child. She was on the show Kids Incorporated and also on a talent show called Star Search. This route to adult celebrity was a well trodden one. The above named shows also helped launch the careers of Britney Spears and Fergie from Black Eyed Peas whilst The Mickey Mouse Club brought the world its first glimpses of Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake as well as the aforementioned Spears. Is there a UK equivalent of this junior star conveyor belt? Yes, we had X Factor and Pop Idol but they had a minimum age requirement that excluded children. The only thing I can come up with is the whole S Club 7 phenomenon which begat S Club Juniors and that doesn’t bear thinking about.

“I Love Your Smile” peaked at No 2.

Four Breakers this week? Gee thanks TOTP producers! And what’s that? Three of them we’ll never see again? FFS! What’s the point then?! What’s that? Just skip them then? If only I could but the completist in me won’t allow that! Better get on with it then. First up is the only Breaker we will see again. It’s also a song with one of the most well known back stories ever.

In March 1991, Eric Clapton’s four year old son Conor died after falling from a window of a 53rd floor New York apartment. Understandably, the tragedy turned Clapton into a recluse for a while and when he did re-emerge it was to score the soundtrack of the film Rush. As part of the creative (and presumably grieving) process, the song “Tears In Heaven” came about. Initially written just to help stop Clapton being engulfed by grief, he eventually agreed to its inclusion in the film on the basis they it might help others going through similar mourning. The track would become one of his biggest ever hits peaking at No 2 in America and No 5 over here. It sold nearly three million physical copies in the US alone and won three Grammys for Song of the Year, Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a male artist. The song was a big deal.

Before this TOTP repeat, if asked I would have said that it was the live version he performed for MTV Unplugged that was the single version that was a hit but I’m wrong. The single released to promote his Unplugged album was actually the version of “Layla” that he performed on the show but “Tears In Heaven” was in the B-side which maybe explains my confusion.

Clapton has rightfully received some harsh criticism recently over some of his political views both historical and current but it’s hard not to feel his pain at the circumstances behind this song.

From Eric Clapton to Joe Cocker. The Breakers this week were hardly full of young, hip, happening acts were they? Joe Cocker? What was he doing in the charts? All I really knew about The Cocker at the time was that he was from Sheffield, he was the guy with the growling voice and jerky arm movements who sang on “Up Where We Belong” and that his most famous song was a Beatles cover. I know a bit more now but not much. This track “(All I Know) Feels Like Forever” was from a film called The Cutting Edge which I don’t know at all but that Wikipedia tells me was a romantic comedy about ice skating directed by Paul Michael Glaser aka Starsky from Starsky And Hutch. As well as Joe Cocker, its soundtrack also featured Johnny Winter, Dan Reed Network and bizarrely “Ride On Time” by Black Box. The whole thing sounds a bit niche to me.

The single was a middling hit (No 25) but it rekindled enough interest in Joe to warrant a Best Of album release backed by a TV ad campaign and another hit single in his version of “Unchain My Heart”.

Joe Cocker would die of lung cancer in 2014.

Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker and now Barbara Streisand? Come on now! Look I know Babs is showbiz royalty but this surely is not what the Breakers section was created for?! As with Clapton and Cocker before her, her single “Places That Belong To You” was from a soundtrack the film of which starred Barbara herself. The Prince Of Tides was a romantic drama which saw Streisand star opposite Nick Nolte. I do recall the film being out though I have never seen it and consequently don’t know this song which was her first UK Top 40 entry since her duet with Miami Vice’s Don Johnson on “Till I Loved You” in 1988. One of my wife’s best friends has seen Babs in concert but the tickets are like gold dust apparently and can cost a fortune. Bloody ticket prices eh? Enough is enough I say (ahem).

“Places That Belong To You” peaked at No 17.

Finally! An act that isn’t some old timer flogging a song from a soundtrack! Let’s hear it for Curve! These rather spooky goth rockers are the first of two acts on the show tonight that owe their existence to Dave Stewart of Eurythmics who introduced vocalist Tony Halliday (nothing to do with Spandau Ballet’s lead singer!) to guitarist Dean Garcia. Despite limited commercial success – this single “Fait Accompli” was their biggest hit when it peaked at No 22 – the band did inspire a loyal following and can credibly say that they laid the foundations of success for the likes of Garbage later in the decade.

Curve went in a two year hiatus in 1995 before returning towards the end of the 90s and finally calling it a day in 2005. Both Halliday and Garcia continue to work on music projects.

After the name check for TOTP repeats denier Adrian Rose (Boo! Hiss!) at the top of the post, we arrive at another A.Rose and guess what?! Just like with Adrian, we are once again denied a full 1992 nostalgia experience. Where’s the proper video for “November Rain”?! It’s one of the most expensive music videos ever made and we just get this clip of Axl Rose sitting at a piano?! WTF?! Granted the official promo does have some footage of the band performing the song in a concert setting but this TOTP clip isn’t that.

This was the third single to be released by Guns N’ Roses from their “Use Your Illusion I” album and is just the pinnacle of overblown, overwrought, epic, wide screen panoramic view heavy rock power balladry. Just immense and a personal guilty pleasure. But the video man! It’s nearly as famous as the song. The huge pomposity of the track counter balanced against the sparseness of the desert backdrop and the TARDIS like chapel that appears tiny on the outside but can house a multitude of guests inside. Then the most famous scene of Slash striding outside to let rip that classic rock riff whilst being buffeted by a prairie wind. Quite why he would leave the ceremony directly after performing the Best Man duty of handing over the wedding rings though doesn’t really make any sense but who cares?! The second movement of the song with the strings and the Omen like chants then kicks in to coincide with the bride’s death and funeral. Brilliantly bonkers! Clocking in at 8:57 minutes long, it’s surely one of the longest ever chart hits though it wasn’t even the longest song on the album being beaten to that honour by the 10:14 of “Coma”.

Of course, the absurdity of the whole piece did leave it open to ridicule and ridiculed it was by French and Saunders….

And so we arrive at the second act that came about because of Dave Stewart. It was the hirsute Eurythmic who suggested that Marcella Detroit and his then wife Siobahn Fahey should come together as a band rather than Shakespear’s Sister being a Fahey solo project after witnessing the chemistry between the two in the recording studio. He also co-wrote “Stay” with the pair of course.

Aside from the link between Shakespear’s Sister and Curve there’s also a link between them and another of tonight’s acts as Marcella Detroit also co-wrote and sang on “Lay Down Sally” which was a minor hit for Eric Clapton in 1978. And that will do it for this week’s Shakespear’s Sister entry. Only another five weeks to go! Maybe Adrian Rose will swoop in and take care of at least one of those weeks?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Charlatans	Weirdo	No but it’s on my Melting Pot Best Of album of theirs
2	Mr Big	To Be With You	Away with you more like! No
3	Opus III	It’s A Fine Day	Nope
4	The KLF	America: What Time Is Love?	I did not
5	Crowded House	Weather With You	No but I had the Woodface album
6	Shanice	I Love Your Smile	Nah
7	Eric Clapton	Tears In Heaven	No
8	Joe Cocker	(All I Know) Feels Like Forever	Negative
9	Barbara Streisand	Places That Belong To You	I didn’t even remember it let alone buy it
10	Curve	Fait Accompli	It’s a no
11	Guns N’ Roses	November Rain	No but it’s on their Best Of album I have
12	Shakespear’s Sister	Stay	Thought it was OK but not enough to buy it

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/m0013mbv/top-of-the-pops-05031992

TOTP 07 NOV 1991

Posted on November 15, 2021 by 80stastic

After last week’s Halloween themed show, the TOTP producers have passed on celebrating Bonfire night as well (it was two days before this programme aired to be fair) but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any fireworks on offer. Not literally of course (Health & Safety and all that) but metaphorically beginning with a performance kicking off the show that must be up there as one of the weirdest in TOTP history. The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu (aka The KLF aka The Timelords aka Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty) are ripping up the rule book here (year zero revamp or not). The performance is certainly inextricably linked to the nature of the track “It’s Grim Up North” it’s true. A Scotsman reading out a list of towns and cities in the North of England against a backdrop of a pulsating industrial techno beat was hardly your standard Top 40 material so you could argue that inevitably any promotional appearance to support it would end up being unconventional at the very least. I think Drummond and Cauty delivered in spades though with a pragmatic reading of the lyrics juxtaposed with that most bizarre yet intrinsically English of art forms Morris dancing. What f****d up psyche devised this?

After giving the new format down the banks almost relentlessly these past few weeks, credit where it’s due – this was challenging in both a sensory and aesthetic manner. I can’t imagine the old guard of the likes of Steve Wright introducing this. Actually, who is that doing the disembodied voice over? It turns out that it’s one Elayne Smith. Who? Well, like Mark Franklin before her with his BBC local radio background, Elayne was plucked from the relative obscurity of pirate radio where she presented the breakfast show on the station London Weekend Radio. The internet suggests that she only made one more TOTP appearance after this debut. She doesn’t seem to get a fair crack of the whip from the start. It takes three performances and 10 mins 30 seconds before we actually see Elayne on screen and she gets a name check.

Back to The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu though and that performance. The Morris dancing – what point were they trying to make here? In my own, ill informed mind, I think of Morris dancing as a very Southern thing so my initial analysis was that it was a juxtaposition of North vs South imagery but that’s actually incorrect. The North West of England has a long history of Morris Dancing so it can’t be that. Was it a nod to the May Day celebration in legendary folk horror film The Wicker Man? That was set on a remote Hebridean island called Summerisle and Drummond and Cauty did infamously burn £1 million on the Scottish island of Jura in 1994 (or did they?) Anyway, as a jarring spectacle it’s up there with the likes of Pete Wylie and those nuns in 1986 for his performance of “Sinful”. Talking of whom, “It’s Grim Up North” was originally released as a limited edition “Club Mix” in December 1990 with Wylie on vocals and it was planned to be a prominent track on the JAM’s album “The Black Room” (a parallel follow up to The KLF’s “The White Room”) but the album was never completed.

Nevertheless, this 1991 version was put out into the market place due to The KLF’s huge success (as Elayne said in her intro, nobody had sold more singles than them in 1991). As for the towns and cities that are referenced in its lyrics, it’s very North West based (there’s no mention of Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough etc) and Cumbria is only represented by Barrow-in-Furness. The city where I live Hull creeps in but the rest of North Yorkshire is poorly represented. In fact, the cities and towns read out by Drummond reads like a list of Our Price stores in the North West area (I worked in a couple of them) mentioning as it does places like Accrington, Bolton, Burnley, Nelson and Rochdale. If Drummond wanted to have really courted controversy he should have included my mate Robin’s Cumbrian hometown…Cockermouth. When we were at Poly together, Robin was asked by a lecturer during a linguistic seminar to tell him where he was from for an example of a word he could break down into its component parts. Cockermouth came Robin’s reply prompting the lecturer to write this on his board…

Cock – er – mouth

Hilarity ensued.

Anyway, “It’s Grim Up North” finishes with a fully orchestrated arrangement of William Blake’s Jerusalem which was set to music by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916. I’m guessing this was to make use of the famous ‘dark Satanic Mills’ line and it connection to the Industrial Revolution? Somehow it works when it really shouldn’t. “It’s Grim Up North” peaked at No 10 and The KLF would tie up 1991 with the release of their collaboration with Tammy Wynette on “Justified & Ancient” which prompted many a customer to come into the Our Price I was working in to ask for that song about ‘an ice cream van’.

Now, new producer Stanley Appel’s live vocal policy has been the undoing of many a turn on the revamped show so far but here we have an example of how it can actually give the TV audience a better viewing experience – the ad lib. Second act on tonight are Crowded House for whom a live vocal was as natural as breathing and Neil Finn does a great job here but he was also able to indulge in a slight bit of off script free styling when he announces into the microphone ahead of beginning to sing latest single “Fall At Your Feet”, “It’s grim down South”. Not the funniest ad lib ever but at least it gave expression to some of the character behind the performer.

At this point, Crowded House were a one hit wonder in the UK having announced themselves in 1987 with “Don’t Dream It’s Over” (coincidentally also in the charts at this time courtesy of Paul Young’s cover version) before failing to chart with any of their subsequent (and rather excellent) single releases. Even this track from third album “Woodface” had been preceded by a flop in lead single “Chocolate Cake” (chart peak No 69) but finally the UK saw sense and bought “Fall At Your Feet” in enough quantities to send it to No 17. “Woodface” would prove to be their commercial breakthrough peaking at No 6 in the UK album chart and providing a further three Top 40 hits including Top Tenner “Weather With You”. That song would prove to be their biggest ever hit over here and helped the album to a slew of sales in 1992. I always saw that period of the band as portraying them as that year’s REM who had broken through in a big way commercially themselves in ’91 with their “Out Of Time” album.

Just to clarify co-presenter Mark Franklin’s announcement that they were an Australian band – I had to check as I wasn’t sure that was strictly true. Weren’t they from New Zealand? Both myself and Franklin were right (and wrong). The band formed in Melbourne, Australia in 1985 but Neil Finn is actually a Kiwi and was of course in New Zealand art rockers Split Enz before Crowded House. Plus at this point, Neil’s brother Tim was also in the band making it an equal Antipodean split (drummer Paul Hester and bass player Nick Seymour were Aussies).

I saw Crowded House play live at The Manchester Academy around this time and it still ranks as one of my favourite gigs ever. They’d done a PA at the HMV megastore earlier in the day when I’d got my copy of “Woodface” signed by the band and then caught them live in the evening where Nick Seymour did his infamous chocolate cake party piece. I saw them later on at the much bigger Manchester Apollo but it wasn’t as good a gig as that more intimate one in the Academy.

Like Brothers In Rhythm who were on the show a few weeks earlier, I’d kind of forgotten that the next act were actual chart stars in their own right rather than the ace face of remixers that they came to be known for in the 90s. K-Klass would go onto work with acts as major as Bobby Brown, Janet Jackson & Luther Vandross, New Order, Rihanna, Whitney Houston…the list goes on. Moreover, their remix of “Baby Come On Over” by Samantha Mumba was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2002 in the Best Remix category. And yet they started off in 1991 as another of those dance acts on the seemingly endless conveyor belt of artists who stuck rigidly to the template of anonymous blokes stood in the background fiddling around on decks of keyboards whilst a female singer belted out some sub-soul vocals front of stage. It wasn’t my bag at all but I didn’t actually mind “Rhythm Is A Mystery”. I think it was that rolling Italian House piano riff that made it tolerable.

So who were K-Klass? Well, the singer was the exotically named Bobbi Depasois and the other four blokes were …well…were literally just some blokes with regular jobs that happened to have a hit record. Russell Morgan (I went to school with a kid called Russell Morgan but it’s not him!) was a postman, Paul Roberts worked for BT, Andy Williams was a lab technician and Carl Thomas delivered fish in a fish van. Basically K-Klass were the musical equivalent of a non-league football team that have somehow got to the 3rd round of the FA Cup and drawn Man Utd generating newspaper articles about how the players are all part -time and the their ‘real’ jobs are being a plumber, electrician etc. “Rhythm Is A Mystery” peaked at No 3 after only making it to No 61 on its initial release just six months earlier.

In the ‘exclusive’ slot this week is Belinda Carlisle who, having been in the studio for the very first show in the ‘year zero’ revamp era just a month prior with her “Live Your Life Be Free” single, is back with follow up “Do You Feel Like I Feel”. This was almost an exact duplicate of its predecessor only not as good. The Our Price where I was working at the time were sent a sampler cassette for the album to plug ahead of the official release and I think (cringe!) that I may have signed that promo out for myself. It had four tracks on it including this one plus a track called “I Plead Insanity” which should have been a single but never was. “Do You Feel Like I Feel” would prove to be Belinda’s last ever US Billboard Hot 100 hit though she would keep going strong in the UK for a fair few years after that.

Oh and that first ‘year zero’ performance for “Live Your Life Be Free” which had Mark Franklin pointlessly ‘interviewing’ Belinda afterwards for about 30 seconds? Here’s Mark himself on that:

Can I please add to this. During my first show, Live Your Life Be Free. I was quite ill with food positioning. Belinda thought she had food poisoning too. By the time we met again for this episode, turns out I was ill but she was actually pregnant with @JamesDukeMason
— Mark Franklin (@MarkFranklin123) November 5, 2021

No wonder he kept the chat so short – he had to nip off camera to find the crapper pronto!

It’s that INXS video for “Shining Star” next. This was a Breaker last week and I didn’t have much to say about it then so quite what I’m expected to say about it this time I’m not sure. Well, what actually happens in the video? It’s a basic band performance set in a private club venue alongside a sub plot of some grotesque male characters being disposed of or humiliated by their female consorts. So we get a guy leaving down a chute after a lever is pulled, another fella being sent skywards on a see-saw plank and a geezer being sprayed with a bottle of bubbly as if it were a fire extinguisher. It’s all pretty daft and uninspired fare. It was directed by music video go to guy David Mallet who is responsible for some of the most iconic music promos of the 80s including David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” and “China Girl”, “I Don’t Like Mondays” by The Boomtown Rats and “Radio Ga Ga” and “I Want To Break Free” by Queen. Not sure what happened here though as he really phoned it in. “Shining Star” peaked at No 27.

Not fair! They’ve only gone and done it to me again! Two on the trot! I could hardly muster 50 words about this lot when they were a Breaker last week and now here they are in the studio. What can I say about Control and “Dance With Me (I’m Your Ecstasy)”? I’ve pretty much got nishters. OK, I guess I have to try so yet again we have a dance act conforming to the tried and tested model of having some faceless blokes on assorted keyboards etc at the back of the stage fronted by a female singer (just like K-Klass earlier in the show) but… that poor woman doing the vocals! She looks and sounds like she just happened to be wandering past the TOTP studio on her way home on a cold November evening and was asked by the producers to literally come in off the street and perform this track. The singing is definitely ropey and why has she got a Winter coat on?! Supposedly, the original 12″ release of this had the lyrics “dance with me I’m on ecstasy” which was changed to “dance with me I’m your ecstasy” for the full release. Ah, the gnarly old head of potential media outrage is raised once more

“Dance With Me (I’m Your Ecstasy)” peaked at No 17 and was Control’s one and only Top 40 hit. That enough for you? Yeah, I think that’ll more than do.

Right, there’s a grand total of four Breakers tonight but none them would ever be played in full on the show. We start with Metallica and ‘The Unforgiven”. The follow up to their seminal single “Enter Sandman”, yet again this isn’t one that sparks any synapses of recognition in my brain but, having listened to it properly, it’s actually quite interesting. Having decided that they wanted to mess around with traditional song structures to see what happened, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich hit upon the idea of reversing the template of a standard verse leading into a huge, bellowing chorus and instead had strident verses and a softer sounding chorus. It doesn’t sound like it should work but it kind of does. So pleased with themselves were they that the band would record not one but two sequels in the form of “The Unforgiven II” from the album “Reload” and “The Unforgiven III” from the album “Death Magnetic” – heavy metal recycling; it might catch on. “The Unforgiven” peaked at No 15.

There’s more than one Chris Rea Christmas song?! There’s three actually but this one, “Winter Song”, doesn’t specifically make mention of the ‘c’ word in its title nor its lyrics. Even so, it was no doubt released at this time of year in the hope of being a hit at Christmas. Chris (or possibly his record label) had quite the cynical streak – his last single, released in June, had been called “Looking For The Summer”. Hmm.

“Winter Song” doesn’t sound a million miles way from the ubiquitous festive favourite “Driving Home For Christmas” especially the original 1986 version which is a bit more sombre than the sprightly re-recording that gets plated every Yuleltide. The lyrics seem to be about keeping his lover warm from the cold of Winter (he should have borrowed that woman from Control’s overcoat!) but then missed a Christmas trick with the video which seems to be based around rivalries between the various factions of Rea’s tour crew. So not Christmassy at all.

“Winter Song” made a respectable No 27 in a crammed Christmas singles market. Oh, that third Chris Rea festive song? He released something called “Joys of Christmas” in 1987 (“Driving Home For Christmas” was on the B-side). No, I’ve never heard of it before either.

Ooh – bit of a moment here. Is this the very first time that Manic Street Preachers appeared on TOTP? Although double A -side “Love’s Sweet Exile/Repeat” was already the band’s third single release of 1991, I must admit that I wasn’t really aware of these Welsh rockers until the following year when I couldn’t ignore “You Love Us” and “Motorcycle Emptiness”. I’ll rephrase that. I was aware of the name Manic Street Preachers at this time not least because of the Steve Lamacq / Richey Edwards incident in May when Edwards carved the words ‘4 REAL’ into his forearm with a razor blade when asked by the NME journalist how serious he was about the band, their music and ideals. However, I’m not really sure that I knew what they actually sounded like. Somehow I must have missed “Stay Beautiful” and this single despite the fact that they both made the Top 40 (their earlier non Columbia singles that were either self released or on indie label Heavenly hadn’t charted).

The band’s iconic debut album “Generation Terrorists” was released in early ’92 and would spawn six singles and achieve gold status for 100,000 sales. Its length (73 minutes and 18 tracks long) led to accusations of a lack of quality control and the band maybe regretted in retrospect their decision to make outlandish claims that it would sell 16 million copies and that they would split up after its release. However, its reputation remains intact nearly 30 years later and is celebrated and cherished by fans.

Oh and that video with Nicky Wire, Richey Edwards and James Dean Bradfield all supposedly naked and quite happy to be in close proximity to each other was probably deemed a bit too controversial for a before the watershed screening by the BBC hence it only belong on screen for less than 30 seconds. “Love’s Sweet Exile/Repeat” peaked at No 26.

We finish with yet another single that I managed to let pass me by despite my working five days a week in a record shop at the time. “Me. In Time” was a non album single for The Charlatans released between their debut LP “Some Friendly” (’90) and follow up “Between 10th And 11th” (’92) and was the third not to feature on an album in a row after “Over Rising” and a re-release of early single “Indian Rope”. Presumably this was a deliberate strategy on behalf of record label Situation Two to ensure their boys didn’t disappear from view and people’s minds as the Madchester phenomenon waned as 1991 came to an end.

Now I’ve listened to it properly 30 years after the event, I conclude that it’s not bad at all if a little lightweight. It seems to be a genuinely forgotten single of theirs as well with it not being on any of the band’s Best Of albums (as far as I can tell) and the only version on Spotify is from a live gig and not the studio single release. Also, what was with the errant punctuation in the song’s title? Weird(o).

And talking of weird….what the Hell was happening here?! Neil Sedaka on TOTP?! In 1991?! Look, I know he is a legendary singer, pianist, composer and record producer (I’m pretty sure my parents had one of his albums when I was growing up) but really?! He’s been squeezed in to the show courtesy of the album chart feature as he had a Greatest Hits album to promote called “Timeless – The Very Best Of Neil Sedaka”. Not sure why the world needed one as there must have been pushing about 20 Best Of / Greatest Hits / Collection Neil Sedaka albums by this point (and there have been many more since – check out his discography) but I do remember this one coming out. It was on the PolyGram TV label and therefore received its own TV ad campaign to promote it. Presumably the marketing team at Polygram TV had negotiated a spot for Neil on TOTP because how else do you explain Sedaka’s appearance here? It’s as confounding as a sudoko puzzle. Some of the acts on tonight only emphasise how incongruous he seemed – sadly Manic Street Preachers and Metallica were only on video but I would like to imagine that Sedaka met up with Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in the BBC bar afterwards and spent a while shooting the breeze over a few beers. Maybe not.

However, I do know of one person who caught up with Sedaka in a bar once. It was at the Midland Hotel (I think) in Manchester city centre. Neil was staying there as he was playing a show (Sedaka ‘plays shows’ rather than ‘does gigs’ don’t you think?) and my Our Price manager Pete (the original bass player with the Stone Roses) happened to be in there having a few drinks on a night out. On spying the great man himself, Pete (emboldened by a few ales) lumbered over to Sedka and expressed his gratitude to him for writing “Solitaire” as if he hadn’t, Karen Carpenter would never have sang it and Pete would never have heard it. Apparently, Sedaka’s reaction to his approach suggested that Pete had scared the bejeezus out of him.

Anyway, back to his TOTP performance and did Elayne Smith really describe Neil as being ‘back in full effect’? Or was she referring to The Charlatans? He gives us “Miracle Song” which was actually released as a single despite being promoted here as an album track. It sank without trace. Surely he would have been better suited to a spot on Wogan or Des O’Connor than TOTP? For all I’ve derided him a bit here, I don’t mind a bit of Sedaka and he has written some great songs – just ask my old boss Pete.

After 16 weeks of the same song at No 1, we now have two different chart toppers in consecutive weeks. With U2 only lasting seven days in pole position, they give way to Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff with “Dizzy”. They’re not in the studio though (shame – I would love to have known what Neil Sedaka made of Vic and Bob) so it’s the promo video which is basically a carbon copy of what they did when they were in the studio last time (including Bob sliding through Vic’s legs at one point). Apparently this single was a huge favourite down at nightclubs on a student night. I can imagine. Had I been born just a couple of years later I’m sure I would have been throwing myself around the dance floor at Rascals, my club of choice in Sunderland where I was a student in the 80s. I was once stood near to Vic Reeves in a queue for the Eurostar at Paris Gare du Nord. He was with his wife Nancy Sorrell. That’s as interesting as the story gets I’m afraid.

As a follow up to ‘Dizzy’, Vic released a dance version of the hymn “Abide With Me” which is traditionally sung at the FA Cup Final before kick-off. It’s was a bizarre way to follow up a No 1 record and it duly flopped when it peaked at No 47. Maybe that was what Vic wanted all along – maybe it was some sort of satirical comment on pop music and manipulating the charts. He should have joined in with that fictional chat between Bill Drummond, Jimmy Cauty and Neil Sedaka as the former two knew a thing about how to send up the music industry.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu	It’s Grim Up North	It’s not actually and I didn’t
2	Crowded House	Fall At Your Feet	Not the single but I had the album (signed by the band!)
3	K-Klass	Rhythm Is A Mystery	I did not
4	Belinda Carlisle	Do You Feel Like I Feel	No but I had that promo album sampler thing with it on – for shame!
5	INXS	Shining Star	Not the single but I have it on a Best Of CD of theirs
6	Control	Dance With Me (I’m Your Ecstasy)	No
7	Metallica	The Unforgiven	Nope
8	Chris Rea	Winter Song	No thanks
9	Manic Street Preachers	Love’s Sweet Exile/Repeat	I’m ashamed to say I didn’t but I do own a couple of their albums and have seen them live twice
10	The Charlatans	Me. In Time	Negative
11	Neil Sedaka	Miracle Song	Of course not
12	Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff	Dizzy	I didn’t

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/m00116fn/top-of-the-pops-07111991

TOTP 07 MAR 1991

Posted on June 28, 2021 by 80stastic

Welcome back to TOTP Rewind where I am reviewing a time so long ago that in this week back in 1991, Ryan Giggs made his firtst team debut for Manchester United. He was 17 at the time and when he finally hung up his boots, he was 40! And just to hammer home how old that makes those of us who remember it feel, even that retirement was 7 years ago! Anyway, probably best to dismiss those thoughts from our minds (and certainly the subject of Ryan Giggs given the current state of his private life and what he has been accused of). Instead, let us glory in the tunes of March 1991. Our host is Nicky Campbell (watch out for the snidey remarks) and we begin with….

….FFS! Yes, 1991 saw the return of the Comic Relief single after the fallow year of 1990. Now a deeply embedded part of UK culture, at this point in history there had only ever been three Comic Relief singles in existence before Hale & Pace were recruited to be the public face of this year’s campaign courtesy of their song “The Stonk”. I say Hale & Pace but the record is actually credited to ‘Hale & Pace and the Stonkers’. Why Hale & Pace? Well, hard as it may seem to believe, these two were once very much seen as amongst the biggest names in UK comedy. They had just come off the back of a third ITV series series of their own and their characters like ‘The Two Rons’ and ‘Billy & Johnny’ had bumped up their profile significantly. Did I watch their show? I think I probably did – there wasn’t that much choice back then with there being just the four channels and all – but I never found ‘The Two Rons’ very funny at all although ‘Billy & Johnny’ did raise a smile. They were probably more controversial and cutting edge than I remember (they did start their career with appearances in the very funny and very anarchic The Young Ones after all) with sketches that included full frontal nudity and of course the microwaved cat. Yet they were perceived by the Comic Relief charity as lovable and establishment enough to front up their 1991 song.

Ah yes, the actual ‘song’. I would go as far as to say that “The Stonk” is in with a good shout at being the worst ever Comic Relief single. Too harsh? Let’s examine the competition. The very first example of this genre was “Living Doll” by Cliff Richard and The Young Ones. Now the Cliff original is crap admittedly but Rick, Vivian, Neil and Mike were great enough comedy creations to make the joke work (even Cliff plays along well enough). Plus it was the first. We hadn’t seen this before and so it was a novelty in more than one sense. The second single was “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Mel & Kim (aka Mel Smith and Kim Wilde). It’s tragically awful and as Kim sings so corny but it has become accepted as part of the Christmas song canon so I suggest it just about gets away with it. Next was “Help” by Bananarama and Lananeeneenoonoo. Again, not especially funny but it is rescued for me by the lampooning of new ‘nana Jacquie O’Sullivan by the wonderful Kathy Burke. In the years after “The Stonk”, the charity turned to artists doing straight up versions of proper pop songs without the comic attachment such as Cher, Chrissie Hynde and Neneh Cherry doing “Love Can Build a Bridge” and The Spice Girls allowing their fourth single “Mama” / “Who Do You Think You Are” to be adopted as the official song. Then there were the boy band doing cover versions years – Boyzone and “When the Going Gets Tough”, Westlife and “Uptown Girl” and One Direction and “One Way Or Another (Teenage Kicks)” – before Peter Kay took on the mantle for a few years.

So where does “The Stonk” come in this list? It’s got to be pretty near the bottom surely? I think it’s the way Hale & Pace perform it semi seriously that grates. That and the dancing. Oh God, the dancing. The song actually had some heavyweight musicians behind it including Queen’s Brian May (who produced it) and Roger Taylor plus Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour, Nick Lowe and Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi. I’m surprised not to see Status Quo’s name in there as well as their boogie woogie rock style seems to have been appropriated for “The Stonk”.

For all its many faults, “The Stonk” did the job it was meant to by going to No 1 and raising lots of money for charity. It was, and remains, awful though.

It’s that bloody Rocky V song again next. Is this the third time it’s been on the show? Seems a lot for a song that got no further in the charts than No 20. Nicky Campbell, having not really been able to go to town with the snide remarks seeing as the first song was for charity, makes up for lost time by stating “Rocky V is about to be released, the last among sequels, they promise, and we sincerely hope…” – boxing clever with his insults as ever.

As with the film itself, does anybody really recall “Go For It” by Joey B Ellis AKA MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare with any fondness? Has anyone even heard it played on the radio since it was in the charts 30 years ago? By contrast, how many times do you hear “Eye Of The Tiger” played on one of the nostalgia radio stations? The film is similarly held in low esteem. Surely the least liked entry in the entire franchise, the film tanked at the box office. Had it stuck to its original ending which saw Rocky die after having taken a beating from his ex- protégé Tommy Gunn in a car park street brawl, maybe it would have benefited from being the ultimate final act of the story. Supposedly the studio changed its mind though declaring, according to director John Avildsen in an Ultimate Classic Rock interview:

‘Oh, by the way, Rocky’s not going to die. Batman doesn’t die. Superman, James Bond – these people don’t die’.”

I’m not really sure those are valid comparisons and anyway *SPOILER* Iron Man dies at the end of Avengers: Endgame.

Although Rocky didn’t die, it was the end of the road for Joey B Ellis and Tynetta Hare who never had another UK chart hit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x36_GZgoAIc

It’s that cover of Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” by Quartz featuring Dina Carroll next. Given an innocent verdict in Miranda Sawyer’s kangaroo court article about the “great dance swizze up” in Smash Hits at the time on account of the fact that Dina does actually sing on the record, I still couldn’t be doing with this. I loved the Carole King original but the lameness of this dance version is exemplified by the Spanish guitar break in the middle eight which is actually played on a synthesiser. So taken aback at the synthetic nature of this is Dina that she misses her cue to come back in thereby adding to the while fakery by making a sham of the performance as well as the song.

Quartz did released an album with “It’s Too Late” on. Having looked it up, I do remember the cover but I’m pretty sure it didn’t sell well and we never heard from Quartz again. Dina Carroll on the other hand….

“It’s Too Late” peaked at No 8.

It’s the video for Living Colour and their “Love Rears Its Ugly Head” single next and whoever was responsible for the text on the chart run down graphics clearly didn’t know the difference between it’s and its as they add an unwanted apostrophe into the song title. Standards and all that.

Wikipedia informs me that the band’s drummer is called Will Calhoun. Will Calhoun? Why is that name stirring embers in the ashes of my memory? Will Calhoun? Come on man, think! Yes! Of course. Will Calhoun was a recurring character in The Adventures Of Champion The Wonder Horse. No, if you are anywhere near Amy age (53 as it happens) then you do remember The Adventures Of Champion The Wonder Horse. Listen to this….

…see, told you. In the show, Will Calhoun was a cowardly old timer cowboy who told some tall tales of his supposed escapades to gullible 12 year old Ricky. None of this has anything at all to do with Living Colour but I’ve got to fill out this post somehow and I used up all my meagre Living Colour knowledge the first time they were on TOTP. OK, anything else I can dredge up? How about I give some credit to Nicky Campbell who has clearly done his research for his intro to this one. “They’re candid, they’re lurid, they’re vivid and livid…” he says which in itself doesn’t make much sense but it does name check the title of their first album “Vivid” which must have been deliberate surely other wise it’s just word salad.

“Love Rears Its Ugly Head” peaked at No 12.

Now here’s act we haven’t seen before on TOTP but you would be forgiven for thinking you had. Although I mistakenly thought that they were a part of the ‘Madchester’ scene when I first heard about them, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin were actually one of the trinity of acts that came out of Stourbridge, West Midlands alongside The Wonder Stuff and Pop Will Eat Itself and wouldn’t you just know it looking at their image. All that crimped hair, shorts and slogan emblazoned T-shirts, jumping around on stage like kids at a playground. This look wasn’t restricted to bands from Stourbridge either. You could also add EMF and Jesus Jones to the list as well. The T-shirts, much like with James and Insprial Carpets, were quite a thing with The Ned’s (as their fans referred to them). They reportedly produced 86 of their own band designs within a three year period. Pretty sure we stocked some of them in the basement of the Our Price Store I was working in.

It wasn’t all about image and clothes though; they did make some music as well. “Happiness” was their first Top 40 hit after two earlier singles “Kill Your Television” and “Until You Find Out” had just missed out on that accolade and, for me, its fuzzy pop sound certainly didn’t seem out of place in the company of The Wonder Stuff, Jesus Jones et al. Maybe not quite as slick though. A bit The Wedding Present -esque even. Parent album “God Fodder” was a big success rising as high as No 4 in the charts and even making some waves across the pond in the US. As of 2013, “God Fodder” has sold around 500,000 copies worldwide. Despite splitting in 1995, the original line up reformed in 2008 to play some live shows and they retain a loyal fan base around the world. That’s not the only thing they retained though. Lead singer Jonn Penney still has that lopsided hairstyle..

Hat doffed to Jonn Penney, who is still rocking the long-on-one-side haircut. That's commitment. Could still be crimped, though, Jonn. (Tuts) #TOTP pic.twitter.com/qgugQg8OVk
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 18, 2021

The TOTP producers are still persisting with this pointless Top 5 selling albums feature. For the record then, these were the biggest albums in February 1991:

1. Queen – “Innuendo”

2. Gloria Estefan – “Into The Light”

3. Chris Isaak – “Wicked Game”

4. Elton John – “The Very Best Of Elton John”

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

Blimey. You might get a non mainstream act like Ned’s Atomic Dustbin in the singles chart but the albums chart was another matter altogether! Apart from Chris Isaak maybe, the rest are all very established rock and pop royalty.

Back to the music and next we have Xpansions with their dance track “Move Your Body (Elevation)”. A couple of posts ago, I talked about how my mate Robin had found himself in the TOTP studio audience by mistake as he and his mate had believed Morrissey was going to be on the show. When Mozza wasn’t, they were trapped in a world of terrible pop stars and songs. Determined to avoid the camera at all costs, Robin thought he had saved himself from embarrassment…until this repeat was shown 30 years later and he spotted the back of his head in amongst the throng…and he was clapping along to Xpansions! I’ve watched this back a couple of times but can’t spot him (shame). If only it had been this show that he’d attended then he would have at least have seen Ned’s Atomic Dustbin who I know he liked and ..erm..oh yeah, Hale & Pace.

As for Xpansions, in that aforementioned Miranda Sawyer Smash Hits article, they get exposed as the charlatans they were as the vocalist we see on stage – Sally Ann Marsh – didn’t actually sing on the record. No, that was a 16 year old called Lizzie D who didn’t get any credit nor repayment for her vocals. A “swizze up” indeed!

Having achieved a huge triumph with “It Must Have Been Love” from the Pretty Woman soundtrack the previous Summer, Roxette‘s record company EMI had sensibly been hurriedly re-issuing tracks from their back catalogue that had flopped initially to consolidate on this. However, that practice could only sustain for so long before new material was needed from the duo. In that context, “Joyride” (the single and album) needed to succeed. Both did in spades.

There wasn’t much in the way of musical progression with this new material but why fix something that wasn’t broke? The song “Joyride” was pure, unabashed, unashamed out and out pop. Probably inevitably so; did Roxette know how to do anything else? The opening guitar chords must surely have been pinched by The Rembrandts for their theme from Friends hit “I’ll Be There For You” whilst Per Gessle himself seems to have been guilty of being very influenced by The Doors track “Hello I Love You” in the chorus. In his defence, he says he was inspired by a note his girlfriend (now wife) left on his piano, which read: “Hej, din tok, jag älskar dig” (“Hello, you fool, I love you”). In fact, Per was all over this one – it’s him doing the majority of the vocals whereas it had been Marie Fredriksson on their recent chart hits like “Listen To Your Heart” and the ubiquitous “It Must Have Been Love” and it was his decision to include the whistling bits. Supposedly, he got the idea after watching Monty Python’s Life of Brian and its song “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”.

The “Joyride” album would go 2× Platinum in the UK and sell 11 million copies worldwide spawning 5 hit singles along the way. “Joyride” the single would be a US No 1 (their fourth) and peak at No 4 in the UK. And yet for all this success, for some, “Joyride” was everything that was wrong with Roxette encapsulated in one song. Bland, formulaic, plastic were some of the accusations thrown at it and it was certainly sneered at by the majority of the staff in the Our Price I was working in. I’m sure Per and Marie couldn’t have cared less.

And finally The Simpsons have been toppled as we have a new No 1! Not only was “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” the only UK chart topper of The Clash‘s career, it was also their only ever entry into the Top 10. Unbelievable but true. Had I been more on the ball with writing this post, I could have made a rather obvious reference to Matt Hancock after Friday morning’s revelations in The Sun. As it’s 3 days on from that and the weaselly little twerp has already resigned, I can’t. Instead, I’ll have to call on @TOTPFacts for this Tories / The Clash mash up:

Mick Jones is the cousin of Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps. Shapps: "I'm always saying to Mick, 'I know it's incredibly embarrassing for you having a Tory minister as a cousin, I'm so sorry to have ruined your cred.'" #TOTP pic.twitter.com/K0ppKzwdOY
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 18, 2021

WTAF?! Again I say, unbelievable but true.

Presumably, The Clash were happy to receive the royalties from the song being a hit all over again but the shrieks from the show’s audience that you can hear as the video is shown (presumably there was some playback of the track in the studio) don’t seem to sit comfortably to me for a band who famously boycotted TOTP.

Like its 1982 original, this 1991 Levis advert inspired re-release was actually a double A side but you’d be forgiven for not knowing what the other track was. It’s “Rush” by Big Audio Dynamite II, Mick Jones’s post The Clash creation. By remarkable coincidence, the show’s opening number “The Stonk” was also a double A side but again, this is very little known. The flip to the Hale & Pace track was “The Smile Song’ by Victoria Wood but there’s hardly any reference made to it in chart archives.

The play out video is “Over Rising” by The Charlatans (the proper ones and not Xpansions!). This was actually an EP and didn’t feature on any of the band’s studio albums (although it is on their “Melting Pot” Best Of). Supposedly, the track “Happen To Die” was meant to be the lead song from the EP but The Gulf War effect meant it faced a potential radio ban and the decision was taken to promote “Over Rising”. It’s a nifty enough tune but not one of my favourites of theirs. It peaked at No 15.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHul2ZrQpUE

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Hale & Pace	The Stonk	The Stonk? Bloody big stink more like. Not even for charity. No!
2	Joey B Ellis AKA MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare	Go For It	Not likely
3	Quartz featuring Dina Carroll	It’s Too Late	Nah
4	Living Colour	Love Rears Its Ugly Head	No but it was on that Q Magazine compilation album I bought
5	Ned’s Atomic Dustbin	Happiness	I did not
6	Xpansions	Move Your Body (Elevation)	Hell no
7	Roxette	Joyride	No, I observed the rules of the road and did not
8	The Clash	Should I Stay Or Should I Go	Not the single but I have it on something I’m sure
9	The Charlatans	Over Rising	No but I have that Melting Pot Best Of

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/m000x2h3/top-of-the-pops-07031991

TOTP 20 SEP 1990

Posted on March 10, 2021 by 80stastic

We’re pushing on through 1990 now and find ourselves entering the final third of September. The year has brought us a dramatic World Cup, a Summer heatwave and a seemingly endless conveyor belt of awful, awful records in the Top 40…but all of those things would pale into insignificance for me as I was exactly one month away from getting married! Yes, my girlfriend and I had been reunited over the Summer when I secured some temporary employment in her hometown of Hull and now we had decided that we weren’t going to be separated again. We were only 22 by this point and none of our friends and peers had got married or were even talking about such a happening that I was aware of but we were determined and confident in each other and our relationship.

We had decided we would move to Manchester. We had very little connection to the city other than we both knew one person each who lived there. To this end, I had applied for jobs in record shops there to have some employment set up for our arrival. Why record shops? I loved music and thought that I would be working in a field that engaged me. I also figured that somehow it would be a springboard into some sort of career in the music business, that I would be headhunted to some record company position and end up running a record label or some such other fantasy. In my defence of this folly, I was very young, just starting out in life and I didn’t have a f*****g clue! The first record shop that I heard back from was the Our Price chain and they invited me to interview for a temporary Xmas sales assistant position. So it came to pass that in this very week of September 1990, I travelled over to Manchester and rocked up at the offices above the Manchester Piccadilly store where I was interviewed by a very pleasant guy (whose name I forget), sat a music quiz and was told that I would be a suitable person to work for Our Price. I remember him asking me if I though the money they were paying was enough (£100 a week as I recall) and I said absolutely! I wasn’t going to talk myself out of the opportunity before I’d even begun. Success!

My other brief whilst I was over in Manchester was to try and find some accommodation for us to live in once we’d moved across the Pennines. On this point I was less successful and I returned to Hull with nothing in place on that subject. Still, one out of two wasn’t bad. I had a start date for late October agreed and had familiarised myself with Manchester a little at least whilst I was staying with one of the two people we knew there for a couple of days. I recall travelling back to her flat on the bus on the Saturday afternoon and wondering how my beloved Chelsea had got on that day. This was before the days of mobile phones, live score apps and the rest. I was unsure about outing myself as a Chelsea fan on public transport in the centre of Manchester but fortunately they had been playing Man City that afternoon so I simply asked somebody on the bus who had a pink ‘un (remember them) sports paper the City result*. Bingo! I was already getting used to this living in Manchester lark!

*It was a 1-1 draw by the way.

As a consequence of all this grown up stuff, I had taken my eye off the ball as to the pop charts and am pretty sure I didn’t even watch this particular TOTP. Let’s see what I missed….

….we start with one of those awful, awful records I referred to earlier. Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood were one of those Eurodance outfits that we’d seen so much of in this year like 49ers and Bizz Nizz. The Captain himself was a guy called Tony Dawson-Harrison who earned his nickname when stationed with the US Army in Germany. Hang on! Wasn’t that the same back story as Turbo B from Snap!?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yes, it was! And didn’t Sydney Youngblood of “If Only I Could” fame follow the same route to chart glory?

*checks Wikipedia again*

Yes! What the hell was the deal with American army soldiers based in Germany becoming pop stars in the early 90s?! Anyway, he was joined by vocalist Nancy “Nance” Coolen (not hard to work out where her nickname came from) and a couple of dancers and hey presto! A massive hit called “I Can’t Stand It”. After that single hit big, Captain Hollywood left to pursue a solo career (he had a couple of minor hit singles in the UK in the mid 90s but was a much bigger deal in the rest of Europe) and was replaced by Stacey “Stay-C” Seedorf (they really needed to work on those nicknames a bit more!). From that point on it became a carousel of band members and line up that would put The Fall to shame (well, The Sugababes at least). Apparently they are still a going concern to this day. As for me, I couldn’t stand “I Can’t Stand It” which peaked at No 7 over here.

Wait a minute! What’s going on here? The Stone Roses in the charts with “Fools Gold”? Again? It had already spent 14 weeks in the Top 100 between Nov 1989 and Feb 1990 – why was it re-released so quickly afterwards? Well, after the band’s commercial breakthrough in 1989 with “Made Of Stone”, “She Bangs The Drums” and of course “Fools Gold”, there was a rush to get more of their product out into the marketplace, not all of it with the endorsement of the band. Early single “Sally Cinnamon” on their ex-label Revolver came out again with a video that the band hated. They tried to stop the release and when they couldn’t, it led to the legendary office trashing incident when the band, on route to the recording studio, stopped by the FM Revolver headquarters and trashed the offices by hurling paint all over them and former manager Paul Birch. The inevitable court case followed with the band fined £3,600 each.

After “Elephant Stone” was also released from their iconic debut album came the much heralded single “One Love”. Tipped to be No 1, the band’s mythical aura had slipped after the debacle of the Spike Island concert and it stalled at No 4, unable to dislodge Elton John or indeed get the better of Craig McClachlan! Given its relative failure, was “Fools Gold” re-issued to remind us of their former glories? Its original release had seen it double A-sided with “What The World Is Waiting For” but was it just a standard A -side this time? Or was it just the original release propelled back into the charts by demand? I’m not sure. he waters are muddied further by the fact that it has been re-released at least a further two times since. I’m pretty sure that the debut album was re-released with “Fools Gold” included as an extra track at some point in the early 90s as well.

The 1990 release made it to No 22 in the charts whilst the 1989 original release made it all the way to No 8. I have to say it’s not my favourite Stone Roses tune by some distance, whilst Ian Brown seems to be making quite the fool himself these days without any recourse to gold.

I had to jinx it by mentioning Snap! before didn’t I? Here’s Turbo B and co with their third hit of 1990 “Cult Of Snap”. After “The Power” and “Ooops Up”, this one at least had a differential to it in the form of the African sounding drumbeats and chanting. Indeed, it proved to be popular in that territory as it peaked at No 2 in Zimbabwe. When this TOTP repeat aired, a few social media commentators said that it reminded them of that “In Zaire” song by Johnny Wakelin which I just about remember from my childhood. Let’s see if they had a point then…

…ooh yeah, maybe. Anyway, back to “Cult Of Snap” and I found this one a little less irritating than their previous efforts (maybe it was Johnny Wakelin subconsciously drawing me in from the 70s). It turns out though that Snap! didn’t have the very first release of this track. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Although "Cult Of Snap" was a Snap! composition, this wasn't the track's first release. An Italian outfit called Hi Power rushed out a version, which charted as high as no 73, before Snap! got theirs out. https://t.co/9FBOyfjPCp #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 5, 2021

The ever generous Turbo B (who had already been involved in a homophobic instigated nightclub incident by this point) declared of Hi Power’s version in a Smash Hits interview:

“These people, they’re ridiculous. If he was a good rapper, it would be OK but he was a shit rapper, he has no timing. “

What a pleasant man! It’s a bit rich anyway given that “The Power” included the unauthorised sampling of vocals by Jocelyn Brown which led her to commence legal action. The legally complex world of sampling eh?

“Cult Of Snap” peaked at No 8 in the UK.

One of the constants of this blog throughout the 80s and now the 90s has been the persistent existence of hard rock acts within the UK Top 40 whatever the current musical milieu dictated. House music? Not a problem? Overblown ballads from film soundtracks? Out of our way, we’re coming through! Boys bands and teeny bop idols? We give zero f***s! We’re here to play loud rock music and nobody will stop us! The likes of Megadeth, Skid Row and Whitesnake had steadfastly refused to budge from the Top 40, presumably propelled their in the first pace by a sizeable, loyal fan base. Another such act were AC/DC for whom “Thunderstruck” was already their 14th UK Top 40 hit and followed the likes of “Who Made Who” and “Heatseeker” into the Top 20. As I’ve said many time previously, I never got the boat going to AC/DC island and this did nothing for me. I can’t be doing with their song titles for one thing – they all seem to just constant variants on the whole ‘power’ theme.

The song inspired a whole movie called Thunderstruck which was released in 2004 and was a comedy about five guys who go to an AC/DC show in 1991 and agree to bury the first one who dies next to Bon Scott. No really. Look, here’s the trailer….

…yeah. It looks well shit doesn’t it?

Some Breakers next and we start with the return of S’Express. Despite cornering the market as the commercial face of house music when arriving with a bang back in 1988 with the No 1 single “Theme from S-Express”, Mark Moore and co had suffered from a case of diminishing returns ever since with each subsequent single release peaking lower than its immediate predecessor. Their fortunes were not helped by a two year gap between album releases with sophomore long player “Intercourse” not arriving until a whole three years after the bomb that was “Theme from S-Express” had exploded into the charts.

“Nothing To Lose” was actually the second single to be lifted from “Intercourse”, the first had been “Mantra For A State Of Mind” nearly a year before – see what I mean about them not being fussed about maintaining momentum with regular release schedules? Indeed, the four singles that were released from the album covered a period of three years!

I have to say that I didn’t mind “Nothing To Lose” though and my wife liked it so much she bought the 12″. However, their appeal was definitely on the wane. It peaked at No 32 and became their last ever Top 40 hit until a remix of “Theme from S-Express” retitled as “Theme from S’Express – The Return Trip” made the Top 20 in 1996.

Is this the same DNA who were just in the charts with Suzanne Vega with that remix of “Tom’s Diner”? It is apparently. I had no idea they had more than one hit. A quick check of their discography shows that they had five Top 40 entries although this one, “La Serenissima”, seems to be the only one in their own right. Including “Tom’s Diner”, all the other ones were with additional artists with the most successful and famous being Kylie Minogue whom they remixed “Shocked ” for as “Shocked (DNA Remix)” (it did what it said on the tin) in 1991 which peaked at No 6.

Featuring that ubiquitous James Brown “Funky Drummer” sample, “La Serenissima” was actually a cover of a piece by Rondò Veneziano who Wikipedia tells me are ‘an Italian chamber orchestra, specialising in Baroque music, playing original instruments but incorporating a rock-style rhythm section of synthesiser, bass guitar and drums’. That sounds…erm…like an Italian version of ‘Hooked On Classics’?

“La Serenissima” – the Byzantine title for Venice if you’re asking – peaked at No 34.

Who’s up for some Monie Love? Last seen in the charts at the back end of 1989 with her Top 20 single “Grandpa’s Party”, she was back there again with “It’s a Shame (My Sister)” which was her hip-hop take on “It’s a Shame”, the old 70s hit by The Spinners. Is it my imagination or was Monie Love briefly tipped to be the next hip-hop superstar? Well, there’s still a lot of love for Monie online where she is routinely referred to as a hip-hop icon. Interviewed by http://www.pbs.org and asked what her greatest contribution was to hip-hop, she replied:

“Oh, wow, that’s easy for me. My greatest contribution to Hip-Hop was allowing the United States of America to know and understand exactly how far they reach, and how influential they are to children in completely different countries because I am the import. I’m one of the first successful imports on the Hip-Hop tree of life.”

Import? Ah, you see Monie was born Simone Johnson in Battersea in 1970 before relocating to the US permanently where she carved out a successful career in radio. Oh, and I’ve no idea who True Image are/were who are also credited on the record. Sounds like one of Louis Walsh’s X Factor boy bands to me.

After The Stone Roses earlier in the show, we get another of those acts closely associated with the baggy sound of Manchester (although they were actually from a combination of the West Midlands and Northwich in Cheshire). The Charlatans were bona fide pop stars by this point but this was actually their debut appearance on TOTP never actually having made it on the show for previous single “The Only One I Know” despite it going Top 10 (the promo video had to suffice instead). “Then” was a worthy follow up and very nearly made it two Top Tenners on the bounce, peaking just outside at No 12.

Lead singer and now near National Treasure Tim Burgess has obviously been to the barbers with his bowl cut look replaced with something altogether more sharp. The decision to lop off his locks was made because Tim felt that too many people trying to copy his floppy fringe look apparently. These days of course, he has adopted a hairstyle that seems to be a mash up of Andy Warhol and Purdey from The New Avengers. Haircuts aside, he remains a rather wonderful human being.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR-LTttw2pk

If this TOTP was a football match, it would be between the indie/dance baggie sound and heavy rock and this would be the match report:

“After The Baggies (no, not WBA!) went 1-0 up early doors via a strike from The Stone Roses, Heavy Rock equalised via the ever reliable AC/DC. Shortly after the break(ers) however, The Baggies were back in front via a good follow up from The Charlatans. Not to be out done, Heavy Rock fired a second equaliser from veterans Iron Maiden.”

Yes, just like AC/DC earlier, Iron Maiden were still rampaging up the charts as the 80s became the 90s. We could have been forgiven for thinking they were on a sabbatical given the solo career of Bruce Dickinson earlier in the year but they were back with new single “Holy Smoke” which was the lead single from their “No Prayer For The Dying” album. By this point, the band’s fan base was so big that they could guarantee a high chart placing for anything they released as demonstrated by “Holy Smoke” which entered the charts at No 3. The band (or possibly their record label) saw a way to exploit this to the max with their next single “Bring Your Daughter… to the Slaughter” which was released in the week after Xmas when there was traditionally a lull in sales after the Xmas rush. This meant that far fewer copies need to be sold to have a massive hit and so it came to pass that Iron Maiden would score their first and only No 1 single as 1991 dawned.

I don’t really recall “Holy Smoke” at all and on hearing it on this TOTP repeat iI did wonder if it was an instrumental. It isn’t but the reason for my confusion was that the show’s producers started the playback of the track from the point of a guitar solo which I’m guessing was a strategic move to omit some of the song’s more profane lyrics which occur early on such as ‘Flies around shit/bees around honey’ and ‘I’ve lived in filth/I’ve lived in sin/and I still smell cleaner than the shit you’re in’. Ooh, they were scary rebels weren’t they Iron Maiden?

Breaking News! There’s a last gasp winner in The Baggies v Heavy Rock match as the former seal the win with a goal from late substitute The Farm. Hang on, it’s gone to VAR! There’s a debate about whether the goal should stand as Stockley Park look at evidence that The Farm were not actually a baggie band and therefore they should be disqualified from playing. According to a Smash Hits interview with Tim Burgess of The Charlatans, he had this to say about the “Groovy Train” hitmakers:

“I saw them live five years ago and they were a crap R’n’ B band.”

Damning stuff. The decision is in though and the goal stands on the basis of this angle from @TOTPFacts:

A few weeks after this, Happy Mondays released their single "Kinky Afro". The track was originally titled "Groovy Afro", but the Mondays changed the title after finding out about "Groovy Train". #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 5, 2021

If holy trinity indie /dance member Happy Mondays were concerned about The Farm, then they must have been baggy! However, I’m pretty sure that I saw an Expedia advert on the TV the other day that used “Groovy Train” as the soundtrack to it which kind of undermines its indie credentials a bit in my book. Apparently, Duran Duran have turned down multiple lucrative requests over the years from various food outlets asking to use “Hungry Like The Wolf” in an advertising campaign but they have always refused. So there you have it – Duran Duran have more credibility than The Farm. Maybe.

Steve Miller Band are still at No 1 with ‘The Joker” holding off Deee-Lite’s tilt at the top for a second week. The previous week of course had raised the whole chart controversy of the two acts being tied for the No 1 position. Using a clearly unfair ruling, “The Joker” was given the number one as its sales had increased more from the previous week. To diffuse chart rigging accusations, the compilers Gallup subsequently announced that “The Joker” had actually sold 8 (EIGHT!) copies more than “Groove Is In The Heart”. How convenient. Did someone have to look for those 8 sales a bit like Donald Trump going looking for missing votes in the US presidential election?

Wanna hear Homer Simpson singing “The Joker”? Of course you do…

Confirming that he wasn’t a one hit wonder, the play out video is “Tunes Splits The Atom” by MC Tunes and 808 State. This track also confirms, Geoff Hurst in the final minute style, the victory for The Baggies over Heavy Rock with both MC Tunes and 808 State hailing from ‘Madchester’. As if that wasn’t enough, “Tunes Splits The Atom” samples a bass riff from “I Am The Resurrection” by The Stone Roses. Done and indeed dusted.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7OgnxrnCRY

eqwrt

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	The Stone Roses	Fools Gold	No but I must have it on something
3	Snap!	The Cult Of Snap	I was not a member of this cult
4	AC/DC	Thunderstruck	Clusterfuck more like! No
5	S’Express	Nothing To Lose	No but my wife bough the 12”
6	DNA	La Serenissima	Nah
7	Monie Love	It’s A Shame (My Sister)	Nope
8	The Charlatans	Then	No but it’s on my Melting Pot Best Of CD of theirs
9	Iron Maiden	Holy Smoke	They could blow their smoke out of their arses for all I cared -no
10	The Farm	Groovy Train	No but I easily could have
11	Steve Miller Band	The Joker	It’s a no
12	MC Tunes / 808 State	Tunes Splits The Atom	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/m000st47/top-of-the-pops-20091990

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 Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 31 OCT 1997

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TOTP 20 JUN 1997

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TOTP 04 APR 1997

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TOTP 06 SEP 1996

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TOTP 24 AUG 1995

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TOTP 03 FEB 1994

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TOTP 05 MAR 1992

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TOTP 07 NOV 1991

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TOTP 07 MAR 1991

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TOTP 20 SEP 1990

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Some bedtime reading?