Ah, now this one should write itself. The ‘golden mic’ host this week is the idiosyncratic Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker. He’ll give me plenty of material to comment on surely? Thinking back now though, just how big a name was Jarvis in the Autumn of 1994 and therefore how big a coup was it for TOTP to have lured him on to present the show? Well, I would suggest this was before Jarvis and his band went into the stratosphere off the back of the “Different Class” album and the “Common People” single which both appeared the following year and indeed it was 14 months before his bum wafting protest in the direction of Michael Jackson at the 1996 BRIT Awards but Pulp were certainly more famous than they had ever been in their career which was already into its 16th year by then. They’d finally gotten themselves two Top 40 hits and their 1994 album “His ‘n’ Hers” had gone Top 10 and been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. So maybe not a household name but certainly well known enough to music fans and seeing as TOTP was the BBC’s flagship music show then it was an understandable if a bit of a leftfield choice.

P.S. After all of my musings above about how Jarvis came to be tonight’s host, here’s the ever reliable @TOTPFacts with the true story that I’ve just found. Why do I bother?!

Jarvis does seem ever so slightly nervous as he introduces himself (for the uninitiated) describing himself as lead singer of The Pulp. The Pulp Jarvis? You may have finally proved yourself to be the real deal but you didn’t need a definite article to do so. He also seems to be a little scared of timings and leaving any dead air lingering as he introduces the first act tonight Michelle Gayle and slips in an unnecessary “Here we go” at the last second. Nerves I guess. Anyway, Michelle’s record “Sweetness” is inside the Top 10 on its way to a peak of No 4 and she’s selling it well in this energetic performance. Michelle was married to footballer Mark Bright for 12 years making her one of a long line of pop stars who had relationships with players of the beautiful game. Going back as far as the 1950s you had England captain Billy Wright who was married to Joy Beverley of The Beverley Sisters pop group. Fast forward to the 90s and we saw Louise marry Liverpool midfielder Jamie Redknapp though their love proved not to be eternal with the couple divorcing in 2017. Perhaps though there is no bigger pop/football fusion than the ultimate 90s power couple David and Victoria Beckham. A Manchester United pin up and a Spice Girl? The papers and the magazines couldn’t get enough of them and despite rumours of an affair by Becks, they are still together four children and over 20 years later. Into the new millennium there was Shakira and Gerard Piqué, Ashley and Cheryl Cole and Perrie Edwards and Alex Oxlade- Chamberlain. Sadly only one of those couples are still together. Less sweetness, more sweet…well…less then.

Jarvis gets himself into a bit of a muddle with his next intro for Let Loose and their single “Seventeen”. The follow up to the surprisingly enduring “Crazy For You”, it didn’t have the same pop credentials of its predecessor and, on reflection, is quite an unremarkable pop song despite being written by Nik Kershaw who knew his way around a decent tune. Never mind all that though, what was Jarvis banging on about? Firstly, he introduces the watching audience to the show – wouldn’t he have been better doing that at the very top of the show rather than one song in? Then he tries to illicit some humour from the fact that Let Loose have gone straight into the charts at No 15 despite their song being called “Seventeen” before feigning confusion and then saying “Who’s Let Loose? Them!”. Sorry, where was the punchline in all that or have I missed something? For the record, “Seventeen” peaked at No 11 and was a rerelease having originally peaked at No 44 when first out earlier in the year.

Reacting to the title of the next song in the show, Jarvis starts on a “Don’t do drugs kids” warning with his tongue firmly inserted in his cheek. Within a year Pulp would release the single “Sorted For E’s & Wizz” which would cause all sorts of undeserved outrage in the tabloids. For now though, it was all about the booze and fags. “Cigarettes And Alcohol” was the fourth hit of 1994 for Oasis and their biggest so far peaking at No 7.

I once watched this interview below with Liam and Noel where the latter talked about how he’d not been sure initially about releasing a fourth single from debut album “Definitely Maybe” but when it placed higher in the charts than any of the others, he knew that the band were on to something big. It’s worth a watch. Noel talks about the accusations thrown at him about pinching the song’s guitar riff from “Get It On” by T-Rex (he didn’t give a shit unsurprisingly) and there’s also a nice insight into the way the band interacted with each other behind the scenes with Noel’s ‘Bonehead was a tutter’ tale. There was a time when I could have listened to Noel talk for ages but he seems to have turned into a reactionary, right-wing leaning arse of late. Who’d have thought it would be Liam that would turn out to be the more likeable one? By the way, Liam’s “Where’s the monkey?” comment was a reference to Michael Jackson’s chimp Bubbles. The talk of a fourth single off the album sounded too much to them like Jacko territory and his nine singles off “Thriller” or whatever it was and if they were going down that route then maybe they deserved a chimpanzee as a pet.

As for my opinion of “Cigarettes And Alcohol” as a song, yeah of course there’s the T-Rex similarity but I couldn’t ignore its power and I was in deep by then anyway. This seemed to be the point when the famous Liam Gallagher pronunciation of lyrics really kicked in with emphasis on words like ‘shine’ as ‘she-iiine’ and ‘aggravation’ as “aggra-vay -sheon’ which would lead to many a parody and impression

By the way, it strikes me that Noel wasn’t the first to borrow that guitar riff anyway (although he did recycle it again for the “Some Might Say” single). Nevertheless, Marc Bolan himself seemed to have been listening to “Little Queenie” by Chuck Berry when he wrote “Get It On”. Then there’s the likes of Thunder with “Dirty Love”, Robbie Williams with “Old Before I Die” and this by ex-Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor:

We had a support band on TOTP the other week who found fame (albeit it fleetingly) under their own steam in the shape of 2wo Third3 who had toured with East 17. Well, there’s another one tonight as it’s a case of anything East 17 can do, Take That can do better. Ultimate KAOS (as with 2wo Third3, another awful, awful name) had toured with the Manc boyband superstars and lo and behold found themselves in the charts themselves with their single “Some Girls” riding to No 9. This lot germinated in the mind of the ultimate arbiter on shit music Simon Cowell or rather he saw the seed of an idea that could be grown. You see, Ultimate KAOS started life as Chaos and they released a cover of Michael Jackson’s “Farewell My Summer Love” in 1992. When it flopped they were dropped by their record label but came to the attention of Cowell who picked them up, dusted them down, gave them a horrible new name and shoved them on tour with Take That.

Their debut single as Ultimate KAOS was “Some Girls” and it would prove to be their biggest of six UK Top 40 hits. It was clearly meant to sound like a 90s version of The Jackson 5 but it’s really not very good. Their song isn’t the biggest problem I have with them though. It’s the fact that their average age at the time of this TOTP performance was 14 with lead singer Haydon Eshun being just 9 and seeing them being screamed at by the studio audience which made for uncomfortable viewing. It wasn’t helped by Jarvis’s comment about them playing doctors and nurses in his intro. Eeeuuwww. Eshun would go onto appear on the West End in the Michael Jackson musical Thriller–Live and was also in Reborn In The USA as I mentioned in a recent post when discussing the aforementioned Michelle Gayle.

Now apparently the next act’s lead singer was greatly offended by Jarvis Cocker and his intro to his band, so much so that the latter had to reshoot it. In his first take he referred to INXS as ‘Inks’ – cheeky boy – but the version that went out still included him talking to a young lady in the studio audience and saying “Oh, so you prefer older men do you? Well, you might like the singer of this next group we’ve got coming on then…”. Ouch! At the time of the broadcast, Michael Hutchence was 34 whilst Jarvis himself was 31 so the latter’s comment about older men seem a bit barbed and uncalled for. He then compounds it by listing his most recent relationships in public – “he’s snogged Kylie and he’s now going out with the woman from the Brut advert” (Helena Christensen). All a bit intrusive no?

Anyway, it’s a second appearance by the Aussie rockers to perform “The Strangest Party (These Are The Times)”, a track to promote their first Best Of album. So what was the deal with the two people on four stilts that looked like human flies? Very odd especially the tongue action. A strange party indeed.

There’s only eight acts on tonight’s repeat as the BBC have edited out R. Kelly with his “She’s Got That Vibe” single (which would have followed INXS) after his conviction in 2022 for child pornography charges and three counts of enticing a minor. Needless to say, I won’t be discussing him any further than that.

If there was a female equivalent of the Oasis / Blur battle of Britpop, would it have been between Elastica and Sleeper? That’s probably a completely unfair, uninformed and oversimplified comparison (and there was probably no beef between them anyway) that I’ve drawn just because both bands had a high profile female lead singer but it’s out there now so I’m going with it. In my made up battle, I would have been in Sleeper’s corner I think. They appealed more to my pop sensibilities (I even saw them live) and, if I’m completely honest, I fancied Louise Werner more than Justine Frischmann. I know, I know; that doesn’t sound great but there it is. Not that I didn’t like Elastica at all – this song “Connection” (surely their best known is a tune alright) – but they always seemed a bit too…what? Intellectual? Intimidating? Something else beginning with ‘I’? Maybe it was as arbitrary a thing as me not happening to hear their album that much (despite me working in a record shop I should say so that’s a poor excuse really). Who knows? Clearly not me. Maybe I should revise my loyalties as they give a pretty good performance here and aren’t even put off by the fact that you can clearly see the stage set up for tonight’s headline act in one shot – a big blue neon sign spelling out his name seems slightly disrespectful to everyone else.

And so to that headline act. After all the success and fame in the 60s and early 70s, the hits dried up for Tom Jones. Not that he wasn’t busy. He played Las Vegas, had his own TV show This Is Tom Jones and toured extensively but maybe all that diversifying meant he took his eye off the ball when it came to chart success. He tried his luck with country music but the truth is that from 1972 to 1987, he only had three UK Top 40 hits which peaked at Nos 31, 36 and 40. And then from out of nowhere came…ahem…”The Boy From Nowhere”. Recorded for a concept album called “Matador” that would become a musical, it placed at No 2 on the charts and led to a revival of interest in Jones which culminated in a rerelease of “It’s Not Unusual” and a collaboration with the Art Of Noise on a version of Prince’s “Kiss”. Tom was suddenly hip. The spike in his commercial fortunes petered out though as the 80s ended. The first few years of the new decade saw just a couple of charity single cover versions as his only visits to the Top 40. By the end of the 90s though, another resurgence in popularity saw him top the album charts with his “Reload” project, a collection of cover versions recorded in collaboration with contemporary artists including Robbie Williams, The Cardigans and Stereophonics.

But before all that came a rather overlooked period in his career I feel which was “The Lead And How To Swing It” album and its hit single “If I Only Knew”. Although the former failed to shift huge units, the single was quite the banger but I never knew until now that it’s yet another cover. Originally recorded by experimental US rap group Rise Robots Rise, Sir Tom’s version was produced by the legend that is Trevor Horn and includes a melody that Jones came up with himself.

My wife loved Tom’s version and duly bought it and helped send it rather unexpectedly to No 11 though you rarely hear it on the radio these days. Clearly it was a precursor to the aforementioned “Reload” album and a definite indication that Tom wanted to try and remain current and valid rather than be known just for all those 60s hits. For that alone, he should be admired. Jones retains a huge presence and profile to this day. A coach on TV show The Voice UK, he released his last album “Surrounded By Time” in 2021 which topped the charts.

As for Jarvis’s input to Tom’s appearance here, I could have done without the staged handing back of a pair of knickers to a female member of the studio audience if I’m honest.

So who got the loudest screams? Tom Jones or Take That? What a show to have been in the audience for! The latter are there to perform their chart topper “Sure” and they do what is expected of them, whipping the crowd up into a frenzy by prancing and hopping around the stage. For some reason, Jason and Howard seem to be wearing their jackets inside out with the lining exposed whilst Gary is marked out as the leader of the gang with a leather jacket. This was the second of two weeks at No 1 so I’m guessing this will be the last we’ll see of them in these 1994 repeats. Not quite the stellar year for the band that 1993 was. They only released three singles and one of them somehow didn’t get to No 1. Still though, nice work if you could get it.

So how did Jarvis Cocker do on his debut as a presenter? I think I was a little disappointed on balance although I probably thought he was brilliant back in 1994. Yes, I’d rather him than Goodier or Mayo but I was expecting a little bit more. I’m probably very unfairly bringing 30 years perspective to my opinion that didn’t exist back then but if I had to grade him it would be could do better – C+.

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/m001mffj/top-of-the-pops-20101994