Ah – and I thought last week’s show was the nadir. Looking at this week’s running order, I am genuinely not inspired to even bother writing this post. If it wasn’t for the completist in me, I might well have given up at this point but nine years of writing the blog which is into its sixteenth TOTP year does cut deep and I can’t quite let it go just yet. I might have to get through this one in double quick time though and with the briefest of commentaries in places.

Jayne Middlemiss is once again our host and we begin with a hit that was on the show as recently as last week but is given some more exposure due to it holding firm in the Top 10 at No 6. Although we just get a repeat of last week’s performance of “Found A Cure” by Ultra Naté, there was also a video made went to promote the single which was directed by one Charles Stone III. Who? Well, he was the director for many a music promo by the likes of Living Colour, A Tribe Called Quest and Neneh Cherry before moving on to feature films like Paid In Full. Still no clue? Well, he was also responsible for this notorious advert which in turn was responsible for men everywhere believing they were suddenly the funniest person alive by dint of saying just one word…

The first comment under the video on YouTube for this is possibly the saddest thing I’ve read in a while:

“This ad made me really excited to have friends when I got older. Sadly that never happened. I drink a lot of beer though.”

@YesOkayButWhy; 2021

As for Ultra Naté, after finding a cure, she seemingly pursued a career in pharmacy – her next single was called “New Kind Of Medicine” and in 2006 she released the song “Love’s The Only Drug”.

Savage Garden are back on the show with “Truly Madly Deeply” – again. What was the deal with this one? It spent five consecutive weeks in the Top 10 being completely ignored by TOTP Executive Producer Chris Cowey but has now been on the show in three out of the last four episodes courtesy of it spending three weeks at No 5. I’m wondering if it was to do with a desire by Cowey to make the show almost completely studio performance based. As with Ultra Naté earlier, the song’s video is never shown but instead we get the same in studio appearance recycled three times. Were the Australian duo ignored initially because they weren’t available to appear in person and Cowey refused to show the video instead? According to the excellent @TOTPFacts, after the early May ‘98 shows, not one video was shown until the end of June when they would appear occasionally.

The word ‘mighty’ has been used a fair few times in the world of entertainment. There’s The Mighty Wah, one of the many pseudonyms of one of my heroes Pete Wylie. How about “The Mighty Quinn”, a 1968 No 1 single for Manfred Mann? Then there’s Wolverhampton indie rockers The Mighty Lemon Drops and, from the world of comedy, The Mighty Boosh. However, I’d completely forgotten about this lot. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones were a ska-punk band from Boston (geddit?) whose only UK chart entry was “The Impression That I Get”. It was an unusual title for an unusual hit. A raucous rampage of ska beat, parping brass and the rip-your-throat-to-shreds vocals of lead singer Dicky Barrett. With this being a live performance, I had to check if the recorded version of the song sounded the same and they pretty much do with Barrett sounding like he’s swallowed a razor blade even on record. Barrett is a supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the outspoken anti-vaxxer who is somehow the current United States secretary of Health and Human Services in the Trump government. Something tells me that Barrett might not be the best judge of character. His song though sounds pretty good and he sells it to the studio audience even though some of them, I get the impression (ahem), maybe don’t know who him and his band are or how to dance to the sound they are making. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones only called it a day in 2022 with Barrett’s views on COVID-19 vaccines given as the reason for this.

From a hit I’d forgotten about to one I do remember (everyone remembers this one surely?!) but it had slipped my memory quite how big a hit it was – anybody else forget that “Feel It” by The Tamperer featuring Maya was a No 1? It was for just a solitary week but a chart topper is a chart topper. So who were they? They were a bunch of Italian record producers who sampled the old Jacksons hit “Can You Feel It” to create a monster dance anthem with a model-looking woman out front to sell it. So basically another Black Box then.

Anyway, although the Jacksons sample completely dominated the track, what was even more distinctive about it were the lyrics which included the infamous line “What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?”. Like many people, I was left scratching my head on first hearing and saying to myself “Did she just sing about having a chimney on her? Surely not”. On second hearing, after the lyrics were confirmed, my fingers were still scraping my skull but this time my question to myself was “What on earth does she mean?”. Well, I didn’t know this back then as a fledgling internet wasn’t widely accessible to all but it turns out the lyrics were nicked from little known track “Wanna Drop A House (On That Bitch)” by Urban Discharge and suddenly the whole mystery is cleared up.

So successful was “Feel It” that The Tamperer featuring Maya would repeat the formula to create two further hits by sampling Madonna and ABBA but that’s all for a future post. For now, let’s marvel at the sight of two consecutive artists on the show having prominent brass sections and in the knowledge that back in 1998, pissed up clubbers would have been winding their way home in the early hours chanting “What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?”.

It’s not getting any better (for me at least). This next hit, and this is going to make me sound like a right reactionary old fart, is literally just a lot of shouting. No, correction – a lot of shouting over the theme tune to 80s TV show Knight Rider. This is Busta Rhymes with “Turn It Up (Remix) / Fire It Up”. The third single from his “When Disaster Strikes…” album, it’s apparently radically different from the album version which sampled Al Green’s “Love And Happiness” but I’m not tempted to find out how different. It would spend two weeks at No 2 in the UK chart in its remixed format so I was clearly out of sync (yet again) with the record buying public. I stand by my original assessment though – this was just shouting as this performance evidences. Ah yes, this performance. It’s introduced by Mr Rhymes himself on the now established show prop “the big telly owa there” as Jayne Middlemiss describes it and guess what? He and his mate (no I don’t know who he is) just barks some words at the screen, banging on about No 1. Erm…Busta? You’re not No 1 fella. And what was the idea with the Knight Rider sample? It was a terrible theme tune and a terrible show with a terrible actor as the lead. Ah, I’m done with this. NEXT!

What. On. Earth? Having swiped left on Busta Rhymes, I’ve ended up with what is technically known, I believe, as ‘some right weird shit’. OK, that’s not right. Technically speaking, 187 Lockdown were a speed garage artist but I reserve the right to my original, personal qualification. I dislike pretty much everything about this – the track, the staging… everything. I get they’ve tried to add an Eastern vibe to their sound but it’s just that usual, sub-genre defining, sped-up, skittering backbeat with an culturally appropriated melody and some random spoken word samples dropped into it. As for the performance, quite what is the guy dressed in black meant to be doing? There some half hearted “Kung-Fu” styled movements, some facial grimacing, what looks like some Marcel Marceau trapped-in-a-box miming and…is that a praying mantis yoga stance? Then there’s the two female dancers who start the performance in full kimonos but end it stripped down to bras and knickers. It’s all a bit ‘lads mag’ and also a possible case of cultural stereotyping.

After the popularity of speed garage faltered, 187 Lockdown was shut down while its prime movers Danny Harrison and Julian Jonah continued to release music under the alias of M Factor and remix for artists as mainstream as Robbie Williams and Atomic Kitten. However, there was a renewed interest in the 2010s in their 187 Lockdown material thanks to the popularity of BBC TV series People Just Do Nothing and its characters that made up Kurupt FM. I can’t say I’ve ever watched it but one show I did watch religiously as a kid was Kung Fu starring David Carradine. Now, if 187 Lockdown had remixed that TV theme and had Master Po and ‘grasshopper’ performing on stage…now that I would have been there for.

Now, when I saw this on the running order, I wrongly assumed it was just another entry on the list of dance tracks that was essentially this TOTP and that, of course, I would hate it. However, “Sounds Of Wickedness” by Tzant is rather good. A track comprising some breathless rapping and some breakneck breakbeats with a funky bass line courtesy of Reuben Wilson’s “Orange Peel” (though it sounds like Dee-Lite’s “Groove Is In The Heart” to me), it fair pelts along giving the listener quite the head rush. Apparently, Tzant were the same people behind the PF Project who brought us the Trainspotting themed hit “Choose Life” in 1997 and the rapper is the same guy from all those awful cover versions by Clock. “Sounds Of Wickedness” was nothing like either of those though. In fact, it reminded me of another early 90s hit by Definition of Sound…

Maybe Tzant’s track is a bit more hard-hitting but you get my drift. They would have one more minor hit under that moniker but would score another Top 20 entry in 1999 under the name of Mirrorball and go onto mix the first volume of the “Euphoria” dance compilation albums that were huge sellers at the end of the 90s and early 2000s.

It’s the final week of six at No 1 for Run-D.M.C. versus Jason Nevins with “It’s Like That” so I suppose I should finally comment on the video we’ve been watching for all these shows. There’s not much to it really though – an unconvincing male vs female breakdance-off set in a disused building interspersed with the odd shot of the Run-D.M.C. lads doing their trademark arms folded pose and some of Jason Nevins in yellow tinted glasses which are his trademark apparently. It’s not a patch on their iconic promo with Aerosmith for “Walk This Way” but then they were always going to miss a showman like Steven Tyler.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ultra Naté	Found A Cure	No
2	Savage Garden	Truly Madly Deeply	I did not
3	The Mighty Mighty Bosstones	The Impression That I Get	Nah
4	The Tamperer featuring Maya	Feel It	I wasn’t feeling this one – no
5	Busta Rhymes	Turn It Up (Remix) / Fire It Up	Big NO
6	187 Lockdown	Kung-Fu	Negative
7	Tzant	Sounds Of Wickedness	‘Fraid not
8	Run-D.M.C. versus Jason Nevins	It’s Like That	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/m002hf79/top-of-the-pops-24041998?seriesId=unsliced