Black Box

TOTP 18 APR 1991

Posted on July 22, 2021 by 80stastic

Those generous TOTP producers have seen fit to cram 14 (FOURTEEN!) songs into this particular show which means lots of typing and putting my grey cells through their paces for old muggins here. They’ve shoe horned 5 Breakers in this week which is the reason for the high song count and having timed it, they are squeezed into just 1 minute and 21 seconds of screen time. That’s 16 seconds per song. What was the point of that?! OK, there weren’t too many places that you could watch a music video back in 1991 so was it a case of something was better than nothing? I’m not sure. There was The Chart Show which was a staple of Saturday morning TV by this point having moved from Channel 4 to ITV in 1989 so maybe they were trying to compete with that? There was also MTV Europe though how may of us had access to that back in the day? Whatever the reason, I hope for my sake that this was a one off and the TOTP producers showed some self control in the future.

Tonight’s host is Jakki Brambles and for some weird reason concerning how the brain stores totally irrelevant and throw away bits of info for years, there are some parts of this show that I can really remember mainly surrounding Jakki’s to camera bits. More of that later though as we start the show with James and “Sit Down”. The boys are at No 2 by now and still have designs on that No 1 spot. *SPOILER ALERT* However, the fact that they spent three weeks there and were unable to dislodge Chesney Hawkes must have rankled with not only the band but also their army of fans. Possibly music lovers in general saw it as a monstrous injustice. Possibly.

Anyway, they’re in the studio this week and look happy enough with life especially guitarist Larry Gott who laughs and smiles his way through the performance. After leaving the band in 1995, Gott took up studying Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University, specifically furniture design. Somebody I worked with at Our Price in Stockport was also on the course with him and said he didn’t talk much about James at all preferring to just be a student with the rest of the cohort. He graduated in 2000 and won awards for his ‘reaction recliner’ design including the Allemuir Award for Industry and the Blueprint Award for Creativity. Not to be outdone, my colleague at Our Price became a successful freelance graphic designer and photographer. “Outstanding” – as Kenny Thomas might have said.

So if it wasn’t James who would dethrone Chesney, who did do the deed? In an unlikely turn of events, the honour fell to Cher who, despite her last album “Heart Of Stone” being a Top 10 success in 1989, hadn’t had a UK No1 single for 26 years when she topped the charts with “I Got You Babe” as part of Sonny & Cher. The song that rectified this for her was a cover of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” which had originally been a minor hit for Betty Everett in 1968. Cher’s version was taken from the soundtrack to her latest film project called Mermaids. This family comedy-drama which also stars Bob Hoskins, Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci is rarely shown on TV these days but, and I haven’t seen it since going to the cinema to catch it in 1991, is actually OK as I recall. A little too heavy on the quirkiness and I found Winona’s character a tad annoying but not bad.

The film’s soundtrack featuring original 60s tracks by the likes of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons and Smokey Robinson and The Miracles sold reasonably well off the back fo the success of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” but I never realised until now that there was a second Cher track on the album called “Baby I’m Yours” (another cover) which had been released as its lead single but which did bugger all in the charts.

So why did the UK go mad for the second single? I really don’t know. Was the film a massive commercial success? According to IMDB, it was ranked the 20th top film in the UK for 1991 – not too shabby but hardly a phenomenon. “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” on the other hand was the third best selling single of the year in 1991 behind only 16 weeks at No 1 “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams and Xmas No 1 “Bohemian Rhapsody”/”These Are the Days of Our Lives” by Queen. Sadly, my purchase of it added to its popularity. Now just hold on before you all pile on. The whole thing was a mistake. Firstly, I bought it for my wife and not me. Secondly, she didn’t even want it either as I had purchased the wrong thing entirely in Cher. She had wanted a completely different single that features in next week’s TOTP. Quite how I managed to make such a mistake, I have no idea. The fact that back in 1989 I had bought another Cher single (“If I Could Turn Back Time”) had nothing to do with the whole sorry escapade at all and that is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me God!

Whoah! OMD? In the charts in 1991? Yes, it was true. One of the most surprising comebacks of the year (maybe even the decade) was the return of OMD but they weren’t the same beast we had last seen in the Top 40 way back in 1986 with “(Forever) Live And Die”. No, for one, founding member Paul Humphreys had done a runner and left the band! How so? Well, after reaching a commercial peak around the middle of the 80s with the huge US hit “If You Leave” from the Pretty In Pink soundtrack, things had started to unravel. Their next album “The Pacific Age” had been recorded under duress and the results were patchy. The aforementioned “(Forever) Live And Die” had been a sizeable hit but it was the only one from the album which received mixed critical reviews.

Suffering from a creative drought, a Best Of album was released in 1988 which was a huge success going three time platinum but the band were clearly trading on former glories. By 1989, Humphreys (along with two other band members ) had had enough and left to form footnote-in-electronic-music-history band The Listening Pool whilst Andy McCluskey committed to carry on under the OMD name.

“Sailing on the Seven Seas” was the first post Humphreys single and a curious thing it was too. Listening to it now, it seems quite pedestrian though I don’t recall thinking that at the time. That almost shuffling glam rock back beat allied with McCluskey’s plaintive vocals and a decidedly weird Jean Michel Jarre style keyboard solo in the middle and yet the UK record buying public lapped it up. The single would rise all the way to No 3, OMD’s highest charting hit since “Souvenir” some 10 years earlier. I don’t think either McCluskey or record label Virgin really expected that sort of success if they were being honest.

Things would get even better though as “Sailing on the Seven Seas” paved the way for the successful launch of parent album “Sugar Tax” which would go platinum in the UK and spawn a further Top 10 single in “Pandora’s Box”. Remarkable stuff really. OMD were back and how!

Seriously?! Still with Black Box?! That ship hasn’t sailed, struck an iceberg and sunk yet?! This must surely be their last TOTP appearance (please!)? Anyway, they’re here once more with “Strike It Up” and…hang on…did Jakki Brambles say “Will you welcome Black Box featuring Steps”?! Steps?! As in Steps that did “Tragedy”? As in ‘H’ from Steps? Relax, it will be a few years before that lot appear in these TOTP repeats. No, this was Stepz (with a ‘z’ see?) who was the rapper dude on the track. And who was he? Well, as far as I can ascertain, he also went by the names Stepsi and Stepski but his real name was Lee Bennett Thompson and he also worked with Quartz who did that Carole King cover with Dina Carroll. Yeah, I don’t care either. Next!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVK8h1BUcOs

After the Levis-inspired success of “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, it was inevitable that a follow up single was released by The Clash and what more obvious candidate could there be than “Rock the Casbah“. Similarly pulled from their “Combat Rock” album, it made complete sense even though it had already been a No 30 hit in the UK 9 years previously. I certainly remember it being in the charts back in 1982 but curiously have little memory of it being an even bigger it (No 14) in the charts in 1991.

The video prompted some controversy featuring as it does a Muslim hitchhiker and a Hasidic Jew befriending each other on the road on the way to a Clash gig which, according to director Don Letts, was all “about breaking taboos”. At one point they are seen eating hamburgers in front of a Burger King restaurant whilst later on the Muslim character is seen drinking a beer. Although the track was initiated by the band’s drummer Topper Headon, that isn’t him in the video as he had been sacked for continuous drug abuse by then. That’s actually original drummer Terry Chimes on the drums that we see on screen.

Despite the recent Gulf War BBC black list, the track was chosen by Armed Forces Radio to be the first song broadcast on the service covering the area during Operation Desert Storm and to Joe Strummer’s horror, the phrase “Rock the Casbah” was written on an American bomb that was to be detonated on Iraq during the the conflict. Commercially, it was the biggest US hit that the band ever had and, alongside “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, is predominantly what The Clash are known for ever the pond in some quarters and let’s be fair, it is a f*****g tune!

It’s The Mock Turtles again with “Can You Dig It?”! Excellent! The last time they featured in this blog I rambled on and on about how they had done an instore PA at the Our Price where I was working in Manchester and that I had got on the guest list for their gig that night at The Manchester Academy and about their connection to Jude Law. This week I have dredged up my signed copy of their “Two Sides” album from that PA. I didn’t queue up to have it signed I should add. Rather it was a left over copy after they had finished and I recall having a long discussion with the Assistant Manger about how it should be treated as a promo as it was part of a promotion event. I seemed to put a lot of stock in the fact that it was signed I think rather than if it had cost the shop any money to get it in which surely was the deciding factor when it came to its promo status. For the life of me I can’t recall if it was supplied by the record company FOC or if the shop was charged fo it but the AM won and I had to cough up the readies to buy it. It’s a pretty good album with some lovely pop tunes on it but it does have an awful cover, signatures or no.

“Can You Dig It?” was a hit all over again in 2003 when it was used in that Vodafone advert featuring David Beckham who was still in his Hoxton Fin hairstyle period back then…

…but for me, they will always be a part of my 1991.

“Can You Dig It?” peaked at No 18 on its initial release and at No 19 in 2003.

It’s those pesky, high speed Breakers next, four of which were never shown on the show in full. Five write ups for me then all for the sake of 1 min and 21 seconds worth of videos. Cheers TOTP producers! We start with “My Head’s In Mississippi” by ZZ Top which I have zero recollection of. It only got to No 37 in the charts so I could be forgiven I guess. It sounds a bit like the band doing their best Johnny Cash impression from the 16 seconds we got to hear of it on TOTP – I couldn’t be bothered to root out the track in full to be honest. It was taken from an album called “Recycler” which I don’t remember either though it did have the track “Doubleback” included on it from Back to the Future Part III apparently.

ZZ Top would return the following year with a cover of the Elvis track “Viva Las Vegas” to promote a Greatest Hits album which was much more fun.

Nope, don’t remember this either. “Seal Our Fate” by Gloria Estefan was the second of four singles taken from her “Into The Light” album all of which made the UK Top 40 but none of which made the Top 20. Make of that what you will. If we saw ZZ top channelling their inner Johnny Cash before, this was like Gloria being Britney Spears some 7 years before Britney was Britney. Apparently the video was well received by her fans as if Gloria could do its choreography routine then this was proof that she had made a full recovery from her injuries sustained in a coach crash in March of 1990.

Next on the Generation Game style conveyor belt of Breakers is Silver Bullet with “Undercover Anarchist” which was the follow up to “20 Seconds To Comply”. Again I don’t remember this one at all but then that’s hardly surprising as the TOTP graphics team seemed to have forgotten what the single was called whilst it was still in the charts as their caption reads “Under Anarchist”.

It doesn’t really matter as if I’d wanted to listen to a track with the word ‘anarchist’ in the title then I would have gone for this by one Hull’s finest…

There was a definite hint of 80s chart acts making a comeback in this particular TOTP. After OMD earlier in the show here were Transvision Vamp who had been AWOL for the whole of 1990 after their last chart appearance with “Born To Be Sold ” at the end of 1989. They hadn’t been idle though as they had been recording their third album, the ludicrously entitled “Little Magnets Versus The Bubble Of Babble” and inevitably they wanted to move away from the bubble gum glam pop that had brought them fame and fortune with tunes like “I Want Your Love” and “Baby I Don’t Care”. However, record label MCA weren’t that keen on the idea of the band maturing and refused to release the album in the UK. Instead, it was given a limited world wide release with copies only available in Australia, New Zealand and Sweden. The idea was to see how it did in those territories before a UK released was sanctioned. This lead to many an import copy of the album finding its way into UK record stores. We certainly had one in the Our Price I was working in and we had a Wendy James devotee who would come in week after week to see if the UK release was out yet. I can’t recall if he was tempted by the £20 import CD that we had in stock but if he didn’t buy it then nobody would have.

The lead single from the album was “(I Just Wanna) B with U” and it was the first track that Wendy received an official co-writing credit for. Was it any good though? Well, I was underwhelmed and I’d liked a lot of the band’s previous singles. I wasn’t the only one unimpressed as it struggled to a high of No 30, the band’s last ever UK chart hit. Follow up single “If Looks Could Kill” missed the Top 40 by one place and that was that. By the time that MCA had authorised an UK release for the album, the band had split anyway. Even now, the album is not available on Spotify although its singles are on a Best Of album which can be streamed. Was it the new material that let them down or were the band just an anachronism in the new decade? Who knows but they did burn brightly during their time in the sun.

Talking of 80s pop stars making a 90s comeback, here’s Pete Wylie and he’s joined forces with fellow scousers The Farm to do a re-working of “Sinful”. Yes, despite being completely wonderful, this was the first time Pete had been in the Top 40 since “Sinful” had been a No 13 hit back in 1986. His lack of chart success really is a crime against music.

I’m not totally secure in my knowledge of the circumstances around this release. The Farm were at their commercial peak having secured two Top 10 singles in 1990 with “Groovy Train” and “Altogether Now” from their No 1 album “Spartacus” which was released in the spring of 1991. However, their commercial fall was imminent. They released a third single from the album the Monday after this TOTP aired but “Don’t Let Me Down” peaked at a disappointing No 36. This re-working of Sinful retitled “Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)” was a non-album single but presumably it was a live favourite as showcased by the video here.

Later in the year, Wylie would release the criminally ignored album “Infamy! Or How I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today” whilst The Farm would release an album called “Love See No Colour” in 1992 which would fail to chart making them, along with the aforementioned Transvision Vamp and purveyors of blue eyed soul Johnny Hates Jazz as acts that followed up a No 1 album with an LP that failed to chart.

A terrible accident would befall Pete later in the year when he suffered a near fatal fall when a railing gave way in Upper Parliament Street, Liverpool causing him to fracture his spine and his sternum. The legend goes that when the ambulance crew turned up and did their usual checks including to ask what the injured party’s name was, Pete replied ‘You should f*****g know who I am!”. I love Pete Wylie!

“Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)” peaked at No 28.

Next a song that was… well…just bizarre and yet it just worked. Despite no longer being the chart topper he was in the 80s, Paul Young was doing a decent job of keeping his career going into the new decade with a couple of Top 40 hits in 1990 from his “Other Voices”. By the time 1991 came around though, he had also had a couple of flops. So what do you do when your career needs a lift? Release a Best Of album of course! “From Time to Time – The Singles Collection” was a huge success going to No 1 and three time platinum in the UK off the back of an extensive TV ad campaign.

The album included three new tracks that were in fact cover versions that all ended up being released as singles. “Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” was the first of those and was actually a duet with some geezer called Zucchero. I’d never heard of him before at the time but, as Jakki Brambles says in her intro, he was a very big deal indeed in his native Italy. “Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” was actually his song and he had released it himself back in 1987. When Paul Young heard it whilst on holiday there, he approached the Z man about covering it but the reply came back ‘why don’t we do it as a duet?’. And so it came to pass that Paul Young would have his biggest hit since “Every Time You Go Away” back in 1985 stood next to a bloke who, according to the reaction on Twitter when this TOTP was re-shown the other week, looked very much like Keith Lemon. They have a point.

I think it’s the lyrics which make this record so curiously memorable. Certainly some of the lines have stayed with myself and my wife all these years. For example, ‘Look at me, I’m a flower’ and ‘You got to dig a little deeper lady’ stand out – maybe they didn’t translate too well from Italian to English. It’s the ‘even doing my own cooking’ line though that steals it. At the time, I wasn’t the most handy in the kitchen and so anything that I did produce would be met with a retort of ‘even doing my own cooking’ by my wife. I have got a lot better now! Zucchero’s inspiration for the line came from his own culinary trials…

Zucchero on "Sensa Una Donna": "At the time, I was almost divorced by my ex-wife and I was living in a small house by myself, trying to save my marriage. I was very sad and upset. I was in the kitchen and I had to cook by myself for the first time!" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 9, 2021

"So I started to cook some really terrible spaghetti, and I said, ‘I can’t live without you, because I can’t cook by myself!’ That’s why I say in the song: ‘I’m here cooking by myself.’ The song came out very quickly – music and lyrics in about half an hour." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 9, 2021

OK, just to clarify, I wasn’t that bad that I couldn’t have cooked some pasta nor was I in the process fo getting divorced!

It’s the first of Jakki’s lines that have stuck with me now as she says at the song’s end “Senza Una Donna which means Without A Woman – bare faced liars the pair of them”. Well, I’d have to say that Paul looks pretty cool with a sharp haircut but Zucchero? I can’t unsee Keith Lemon now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4SXr0p5aDI

Another Jakki Brambles line that for some reason has stuck in my brain these last 30 years next as she introduces Chesney Hawkes who is at No 1 for the 4th week with “The One And Only”. After starting off her intro with “What else can we say about our next man…” and listing all his ‘achievements’ which include having “a bit of a famous Dad” – Whoah! Stop right there! A bit of a famous Dad?! Len “Chip” Hawkes was the bassist in The Tremeloes it’s true but was he really that famous? It’s also true that Decca famously chose The Tremeloes over The Beatles for a recording contract back in 1962 so the band do have a place in pop music history but Hawkes wasn’t anything to do with it as he didn’t join the band until 4 years later. And yes, he did co-write some of their Top 10 hits but would anyone have really recognised him walking down the street back in 1991? Was he doing lots of TV appearances as some sort of talking head aficionado on pop music Paul Gambaccini style? I don’t think so. I suppose Jakki did say “a bit of a famous Dad” as opposed to “celebrity royalty” but even so.

Sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there. Anyway, finally Brambles gets to her killer line as she says “All that remains for me to say is Chesney Hawkes…GET YOUR HAIRCUT!” She had a point. Chesney’s Barnet was a disgrace. He’d clearly grown it out since appearing in Buddy’s Song and it now resembled a bob. Thankfully, he no longer has said style now that he is nearly 50.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mk82Ns6vdk

The play out video and the final of 14 songs on the show tonight is “Deep, Deep Trouble” by The Simpsons. When I was a small child, my Dad had the “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)” single by Benny Hill. I thought it was funny at the time as I had an undeveloped sense of humour. My Dad thought it was funny because…I’m not sure why…I think it must have been the ridiculousness of the tale that Hill’s distinctive voice imparted. As I grew older (and so did my Dad), that record never got played again in our house because it was a novelty record and novelty records don’t age at all well. Suffice to say, “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)” was a timeless classic compared to “Deep, Deep Trouble” which has rightly been consigned to the dustbin of popular culture.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjPA2NGxaqs

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I Buy It?
1	James	Sit Down	No but I have it on their Best Of album
2	Cher	The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)	Yes but it was an honest mistake!
3	OMD	Sailing On The Seven Seas	No but I have it on their Best Of album
4	Black Box	Strike It Up	Nope
5	The Clash	Rock The Casbah	No but I must have it on something
6	The Mock Turtles	Can You Dig It?	Not the single but I bought the album (signed!)
7	ZZ Top	My Head’s In Mississippi	No
8	Gloria Estefan	Seal Our Fate	Negative
9	Silver Bullet	Undercover Anarchist	I did not
10	Tranvision Vamp	“(I Just Wanna) B with U”	No but I have it on their Best Of album
11	Pete Wylie / The Farm	Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)	I bought the original in 1986 but not this version
12	Paul Young / Zucchero	“Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)”	No but I have it on Paul’s Best Of album
13	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	Nah
14	The Simpsons	Deep, Deep Trouble	Hell 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/m000xp0k/top-of-the-pops-18041991

TOTP 04 APR 1991

Posted on July 15, 2021 by 80stastic

In the last TOTP Rewind post, I was talking about sibling rivalries mainly as a device to shoehorn in a segue to Dannii Minogue who had appeared on the pop scene of 1991. I’m going to stick with that theme for this next show review and indeed extend it to cover the whole social unit of ‘families’. Now of course, there are lots and lots of examples of groups including brothers and sisters in their ranks and indeed, in some extreme cases, of the whole band consisting purely of same family members. There’s The Corrs, The Pointer Sisters, Sister Sledge, The Jackson 5, Kings Of Leon, Hanson etc. My challenge, should I wish to accept it (and I do), is to interweave the concept of family into every act on this particular TOTP. Is it possible? I’m going to give it a go. Wish me luck….

…we begin with Inspiral Carpets and their new single “Caravan”. Not the easiest of starts given that I don’t think any of the band were related to each other. I have to say I don’t really remember this stage of the band’s career at all. This track was from their sophomore album “The Beast Inside” which was released nearly a year to the day after their debut studio album “Life” and which went Top 5 so I must have sold some copies of it in the Our Price I was working in but it seems to have passed me by. I remember the next album “Revenge Of The Goldfish” and its singles “Dragging Me Down”, “Bitches Brew” etc and also their 1994 LP “Devil Hopping” which included “Saturn 5” and “I Want You” but “The Beast Inside”? Barely a flicker. Critical reception of the album was mixed from what I can tell but “Caravan” sounds pretty melodic to me whilst retaining the band’s trademark sound. Its No 30 chart peak seems a bit meagre and unjust.

Right, I can’t fail at the first hurdle on this ‘families’ theme so there is of course that well known link to Noel Gallagher’s employment with them as a roadie before he formed Oasis with his brother Liam but that’s more about Oasis than Inspiral Carpets. Look, I’ll have to play my joker card early and fall back on the ever reliable @TOTPFacts for this little gem about singer Tom Hingley’s Dad:

Inspiral Carpets frontman Tom Hingley's dad, Ronald Hingley, was a Lecturer in Russian at Oxford University. If you own an Anton Chekhov book, there's a good chance he translated it. He also wrote biographies of the likes of Boris Pasternak and Stalin. #TOTP pic.twitter.com/QfHLJcxwuK
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 2, 2021

Family value: 5/10

A less than convincing start but the next one is an open goal. “Deep, Deep Trouble” by The Simpsons. A single by an actual family! Yes, it’s a cartoon family and not a real one but you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. This, of course, was the follow up to the No 1 single “Do The Bartman” and was equally as annoying. It seems to be a tale of how Bart messed up mowing the lawn thereby missing a family day out and finally resulting in him throwing a party while his parents were out. Ah, we’ve all done it (I haven’t actually). There are references to Mom and Dad and Bart being their S-O-N. Like I said, an open goal for the families theme which I will gladly put in the back of the net.

Thankfully, this was the second and final single by The Simpsons that would make the charts (it peaked at No 7) so after finally ridding ourselves of Jive Bunny last week, it’s a double whammy as Bart, Homer and the rest depart forever this week. By the way, It’s not that I don’t like The Simpsons (as in the TV show), it’s just that I really couldn’t be doing with / see the point of their musical offerings.

Family value: 7/10

The first of three dance acts on the show tonight are next and it’s N-Joi with “Anthem”. This was their second visit to TOTP in a matter of months after their “Adrenalin EP” had charted at No 23 but “Anthem” was the track that they would become most famous for. Not only did it break the Top 10 over here but it was also a No 2 record in the US Dance chart. As I’ve said many time I’m not and never was much of a dance head but this sounded like a retread of “You Got The Love” by The Source featuring Candi Staton to me. No doubt someone could explain that it doesn’t even have the same bpm or something.

As host Gary Davies says, the singer on the track is called Saffron but I never until this moment twigged that it was the same Saffron who would gain fame as the lead vocalist for Republica of “Ready To Go” fame later in the decade. She seems to do more dancing than singing in this performance though and when I say dancing I mean doing a pretty rigorous work out routine full of high kicks and twirling. Did she do any of that while fronting Republica? I can’t remember so I’d better check…

*checks YouTube*

Not really. There was a lot of jumping about but it was all bit free form. Her N-Joi dance moves seemed a bit more rehearsed.

In 1995, DJ Sister Bliss of Faithless selected “Anthem” as one of favourite tracks describing it thus:

“And what an anthem it is! …That whole EP is fantastic, it’s the sound of the time but it doesn’t date. It’s a reliable classic. It’s always the last tune of the night – people must be bored with me playing it. it reminds me of driving around the M25 looking for the rave and ending up in a field with 10,000 smelly people.”

10,000 smelly people? Bliss indeed!

What? How am I going to squeeze a ‘families’ theme into this one? Erm…would you accept Sister Bliss?

Family value: 2/10

Despite being only 15 months into the new decade, we had already seen a slew of hits from the 80s reappearing in the Top 40. Some had been due to terrestrial TV premieres of blockbuster films like Top Gun and Dirty Dancing leading to the likes of Berlin and Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes having their soundtrack hits reactivated. Then there were the Best Of collections by artists being promoted by the re-release of their 80s hits. Talk Talk and Madonna were prime examples of this and also falling into this category were The Waterboys. In 1991, their collection “The Best Of The Waterboys 81–90” was released and was preceded by the re-issuing of their most famous song “The Whole Of The Moon”. I must admit to being surprised by this – not only by its existence but also by its commercial success. The album soared to No 2 in the charts yet the band had only had two Top 40 hits by this point neither of which had made the Top 20. Usually Best Of albums would be compiled to showcase a run of hit singles that an artist had racked up but this wasn’t the case with The Waterboys. Their albums though were well received and their most recent (1990’s “Room To Roam”) had peaked at No 5. They were also a very big live draw and had toured extensively over the years so they would heave reached a lot of people that way.

The band were in a state of flux come 1991 with disagreements over the band’s musical direction causing some members to leave. They would also leave their record label Ensign (an imprint of parent label Chrysalis) for whom all their back catalogue had been recorded. Ah, that’s why the Best Of album came out. A deliberate cash-in by the label to maximise the profitability of the band’s music that they owned. Anyway, “The Whole Of The Moon” smashed its previous 1985 chart high of No 26 when it went Top 3 at a stroke easily becoming their biggest ever hit. Now I’d loved this song back in ’85 and indeed my wife had the album it was from (“This Is The Sea”) but I couldn’t quite understand why it was so popular six years on. Maybe it was music fans trying to reclaim the charts from all those ghastly dance tunes that had taken up residency there?

As for the ‘families’ theme, well The Waterboys have had over 85 members through their ranks over the years including the likes of Karl Wallinger (World Party), Ian McNabb (Icicle Works) and Liam Ó Maonlaí (Hothouse Flowers) which is more than the legendary The Fall, so I think they could seriously claim to have the biggest rock family tree of all time.

Family value: 8/10

Next up, a band who I have rather a lot to say about and the first thing is that I love(d) The Mock Turtles. I had no idea who they were until they released “Can You Dig It?” but they had actually been around since 1985. It wasn’t until 1990 though what they really started to get some traction when debut album “Turtle Soup” was released on the Manchester label Imaginary Records which was also home to acts such as Cud and The Chameleons. The album included early singles “And Then She Smiles” and “Lay Me Down” the latter of which prompted interest from the majors including Virgin and they were duly signed to subsidiary label Siren Records. Siren chose “Can You Dig It?” which was originally the b-side to “Lay Me Down” as the next single to launch them on the label and, having added a pop sheen to it with some additional guitar work, it was an immediate hit. Its infectious groove and spiralling guitar riff proved irresistible and the added wah wah guitar in the middle eight worked a treat. It managed to traverse the thin line between attracting daytime air play whilst also trading off the Manchester effect which was still just about going into 1991. I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

An album was hastily recorded for Siren called “Two Sides” which included “Can You Dig It?” and a re-recorded version of “And Then She Smiles” from “Turtle Soup” but no other tracks made the switch to the new label. There’s some great pop tunes on “Two Sides” (I know because I bought it) yet it didn’t seem to do anything commercially. “And Then She Smiles” was re-released as a follow up single but just failed to make the Top 40 whilst third single “Strings And Flowers” disappeared without trace. It’s almost become a forgotten album, overshadowed by its indie predecessor. It’s not even on Spotify although “Turtle Soup” is, an expanded version of which was released by Cherry Red Records recently. Not even an in store appearance by the band at the Our Price I was working at could boost the sales of “Two Sides”. Ah yes, that in store PA. This was the first one we’d had at the shop since I’d been working there and it seemed like a big deal. As it was taking place in their hometown, a large crowd had gathered for the event. The band were smuggled in around the back and then positioned behind the counter for a signing session. We had the single blaring out on the shop PA constantly and the drama was heightened when my colleague Craig decided to switch the store lights on and off frantically to announce their appearance. There were even some whooping in the crowd. Business seemed to be brisk and the band duly signed whatever was put in front of them and it all seemed to be going quite well.

And then Jude Law turned up. Yes, the BAFTA award winning actor Jude Law. “Why?” you might well ask. Well, this was before Jude had made any films so he wasn’t that well known except to those of us who religiously tuned in to Granada soap Families in which he was starring at the time. Families was basically Aussie soap Sons And Daughters translated for a UK audience but with a twist -the plot was set in Cheshire, England and Sydney, Australia with he connection being a guy called Mark Thompson who leaves his family in the UK to be with his true love Diana Stevens in Australia. Then there’s the quite dark twist that unbeknownst to Mike, Diana had given birth to his son Andrew who ended up travelling to England where he met Mike’s daughter Amanda by his English wife and they fall in love not realising that they were half-brother and sister!

Me and my wife used to watch Families all the time when it was repeated late night on Granada. We were skint most of the time so we weren’t out partying that much and it kind of became a habit. So we’re happily watching the ongoing shenanigans which included Jude Law on screen as Mike Thompson’s son Nathan (he would have been around 18 I think) and Nathan’s brother called Mark who was played by a guy called Martin Glyn Murray. Still with me? Good. Fast forward to this episode of TOTP and we’re watching The Mock Turtles perform and we both look at each other and say “Isn’t the guitarist that bloke from Families?” We peered again and concluded it really did look like him but why would that actor bloke be in a pop band as well? So when Jude Law turned up at The Mock Turtles PA, it must have dawned on me that it was indeed ‘that bloke from Families‘ (that’s how we found things out back in the early 90s kids – no internet back then!). So Jude approaches the counter and asks me if he can nip behind it to go and see his mate to which I replied “Sorry mate, no chance”. Jude protested so I had to ask the manager if he could allow it which he did as I recall. Somewhere along the line he also managed to get a free pass for the shop staff to attend the gig that the band were playing that night at the Manchester Academy (maybe letting Jude Law behind the counter was his leverage). Excellent!

So, me and my wife popped down to The Academy that night and ended up standing close to Jude Law (though I was bored of him by now) but also Peter Hook and Caroline Aherne. They weren’t the only names there that night. Steve Coogan was also there. Oh yes, if the families theme wasn’t fulfilled by a soap opera actually called Families then there was also the fact that the lead singer of The Mock Turtles was the brother of comedian and TV star Steve Coogan. Whilst researching this post I came across a full recording of the gig posted on YouTube by Martin Coogan and at the end there are some scenes of the after show party where Steve Coogan makes an appearance. At this point he had long curly hair and somebody says to him “It’s him off Sit Down innit?” meaning Tim Booth from James. He doesn’t look too impressed. Mind you the same guy says to Jude Law (who’s managed to get himself back stage at The Academy with more ease than he did behind the counter at Our Price) “Ooh it’s him off Blue Peter“. Ha!

Well, I think that’s enough Mock Turtles stories for one day but there on again in a couple of shows time….

Family value: 10/10

Next is a song that I had completely forgotten about. Actually, it’s not that there’s nothing in the memory banks for it and more that my brain has shifted, re-edited and morphed it into another song entirely. There’s a good reason for this as well and that is that “Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll)” by C+C Music Factory is almost identical to their previous hit “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”. No wonder I can’t recall it – it’s been completely subsumed by their debut hit. In my head their singles timeline went straight from “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” to “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” but here is the evidence to the contrary.

The video looks like the set of Aliens 3 to me and what is that freaky looking thing writhing around on the floor in a gas mask at the start of it? Here’s @TOTPFacts with some info which goes a long way to explaining the whole visual imagery going on in this promo:

This C+C Music Factory video was directed by Marcus Nispel, whose credits also include the 2003 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the 2009 version of Friday The 13th. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 2, 2021

That explains that then. I’m struggling to fit a families theme into this one but….the history of C+C Music Factory is littered with lawsuits and fallings out including Martha Wash suing for a settlement on her vocals being uncredited on the chorus of “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”. There is also the case of rapper Freedom Williams (who is credited on “Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll)”) who, having left the group in the mid 90s, started performing shows under the C+C Music Factory name causing founding member Robert Clivillés to denounce it as “the biggest insult in the world”. So basically they were like a typical family with loads of members feuding and holding grudges against each other!

Family value: 4/10

Host Gary Davies goes all embarrassing uncle at a wedding in the intro to the next one as he says “Some more music now for you to boogie to…” WTF?! Boogie to?! At a time when the show was struggling to accommodate and reflect the domination of the charts by dance music and indeed were struggling to remain relevant to the musical landscape, comments like that really didn’t help. And who were the boogie-meisters in question? Well it was Black Box of course with the fifth single to be released from their “Dreamland” album which came out nearly a year prior to this.

I can’t find the video for “Strike It Up” online anywhere (copyright issues again) but it features Katrin Quinol up there again miming to the vocals who were actually supplied by Martha Wash. Yes, her again! And guess what, Martha had to sue the asses off Black Box as she had with C + C Music Factory to get her due credits. She might as well have given up on singing and taken up a career as a lawyer by this point!

“Strike It Up” peaked at No 16 but Black Box would not be seen inside the UK Top 20 ever again. Hurray! As for the ‘families’ concept…erm…well…I’ll have to resort to the family feuding theme again with Martha Wash as the common link between rock family trees.

Family value: 3/10

This must be the last ever TOTP appearance for Feargal Sharkey I think. “I’ve Got News For You” was certainly his last ever Top 40 hit anyway. Gary Davies says his vocal in this performance is live which is pretty impressive. Whether you like it or loathe it, you just cannot deny that Feargal’s voice is unique. He was only 32 when he made his last album (“Songs From The Mardi Gras” from which “I’ve Got News For You” was taken). Surely he had a bit more to give musically?

After a successful career in the business side of the music industry, Feargal spends a lot of his time fishing these days and campaigning about pollution in chalk based rivers. None of this has anything to do with my families theme though so I will have to delve into Feargal’s back catalogue and reference “My Perfect Cousin” from his time with The Undertones and his very first solo single “Listen To Your Father”. Job done!

Family value: 6/10

It’s the second of five weeks at the top for Chesney Hawkes and “The One And Only”. Chesney, of course, is often referred to as a classic, nay optimum one hit wonder – one huge No 1 hit then nothing, zero, nada. Except it isn’t actually true*. There was one other Top 40 hit for young Chesney which was called “I’m a Man Not a Boy” which was the follow up to “The One And Only” and was also taken from the Buddy’s Song soundtrack. It got nowhere near to repeating the success of its predecessor when it peaked at No 27 yet it remains a bona fide chart hit and therefore legitimately negates the one hit wonder claim. I wonder if it was a huge wake up call for Chesney that this pop star lark might be a short lived thing when “I’m a Man Not a Boy” hit its chart peak? Apparently he reached the point where his phone calls were not being taken by his record label and his career was kaput within two years after the failure of second album “Get The Picture” in 1993. In truth, Chesney mania was all over well before the end of 1991 though. At least he scores high on the families theme-o-meter as his brother Jodie was the drummer in his band whilst his Dad Chip was in 60s hitmakers The Tremeloes.

*see also Doctor and the Medics, Men At Work etc

Family value: 8/10

The play out video is “Word Of Mouth” by Mike + The Mechanics who are the second act on tonight’s show after C + C Music Factory to have a plus sign in their name rather than the word ‘and’. This always seemed like a bit of an anomaly to me and not very 1991 at all. It almost has an echo of being a 70s glam rock stomper with all those singalong ‘na na na nas’ and hand claps. Also, I thought we’d seen the last of Mike Rutherford’s spin off project as it had been over two years since “The Living Years” had been a big hit when its subject matter of a son confronting his unresolved conflict with his father amidst his grief at the latter’s death tugged at the heart strings of the population. Oh, there’s my ‘families’ theme ticked off! Suddenly though they were back with a No 13 hit and the album of the same name performed reasonably well going silver and peaking at No 11. It did not produce any further hit singles though.

There are all sorts of rock family tree connections with this lot. There’s Genesis of course but also Sad Café (via vocalist Paul Young) and all sorts of acts associated to Paul Carrack including Squeeze, Ace, Roxy Music, The Pretenders and The Smiths. Not quite up there with The Waterboys but certainly worthy of a decent family value score.

Family value: 7/10

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6New3AbKtM

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Inspiral Carpets	Caravan	Nope
2	The Simpsons	Deep Deep Trouble	Of course not
3	N-Joi	Anthem	Nah
4	The Waterboys	The Whole Of The Moon	No but my wife and the album
5	The Mock Turtles	Can U Dig It?	Not the single but I bought the album
6	C + C Music Factory	Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll)	No
7	Black Box	Strike It Up	Hell no
8	Feargal Sharkey	I’ve Got News For You	It’s another no
9	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	Negative
10	Mike + The Mechanics	Word Of Mouth	I did not

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000xh7f/top-of-the-pops-04041991

TOTP 03 JAN 1991

Posted on May 26, 2021 by 80stastic

After being stuck in the world of TOTP 1990 for what felt like much longer than 52 weeks, we have finally arrived in 1991! I approach it with a great deal of caution – too many times during these repeats have I been tricked by my memory into thinking that *insert year here* was pretty good only to be utterly let down by the paucity of tunes on offer each week. C’mon 1991 – don’t let me down!

I would have just come through my first Our Price Xmas around now. After working some long hours and serving queue after queue of customers, both Xmas and Boxing Day were days off. Back then Boxing Day still saw just about every store closed unlike today when it is one of the biggest trading days of the year. We had been briefed by the store management that it was the 27th Dec that was the busiest (and most horrible day) of the year in retail as that was the day everybody bought back those unwanted gifts. Back then, the company had a no cash refund policy for items that were not faulty. Swapsies or vouchers were the only things on offer which could lead to many a confrontation with a disgruntled customer. I wonder how many of the acts on tonight’s show would have had their wares brought back that day?

The year starts with someone who surely nobody would have been disappointed to find in their Xmas stocking (obviously I mean her album!). Betty Boo had been one of the biggest stars of 1990 and her single “24 Hours” was her fourth consecutive hit to be plucked from her debut album “Boomania”. So the first thing to note about her performance here is that Betty has lost her Booettes since her last TOTP appearance. Where were the two ladies with the matching black bob hairstyles? Had they all fallen out? According to Betty in a Guardian interview in 2006, those girls liked a good night out and were always pissed when they were touring the world with Betty back in the day so maybe they both had hangovers? With all due respect to Ms Boo, she looks a bit isolated and lost up there on her own. Secondly, what’s with the zebra style plastic mac look? It doesn’t fit her at all does it? As for the song, in truth, it was easily the weakest thing she had released up to this point so it was no surprise that, unlike her other hits, it got nowhere near the Top 10 peaking at No 25. We would not see Betty in the charts again for nigh on two years by which point her time had passed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOWEsuhmR8o

OK, so second song into the brand new year and what are we served up? Something that had already been a massive hit as recently as 1987 that was somehow back in the Top 40 again! What a swizz! So why was “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” by Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes back in the charts four years on? Well, we have to remember that this was 30 years ago before the digital age of streaming and catch up services – we still only had four TV channels! They hadn’t even invented DVDs! So when a ‘big’ film was finally screened on terrestrial TV, it was a huge deal. Just a few weeks before, the premiere of Top Gun on UK TV had seen “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin become a hit all over gain and so it was also the case with this song from the film Dirty Dancing which had premiered on ITV on Boxing Day pulling in 12.2 million viewers. This was appointment TV – not quite The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show but it was up there. According to the song’s co-writer Franke Previte, it only just made the cut for the film as it was “…the last song on the last tape submitted on the last day for the movie’s final scene”. A bit like Will Young who sneaked onto Pop Idol after being the very last person the judges had seen in the preliminary auditions.

Bill Medley, of course, had already made an unlikely chart comeback of his own a few weeks prior to this as part of The Righteous Brothers whose “Unchained Melody’ was the biggest selling single in the UK in 1990 off the back of its inclusion in the film Ghost. Jennifer Warnes also had her own film soundtrack history having scored a huge hit back in 1983 as part of another duet, this time with Joe Cocker with the song with “Up Where We Belong” which featured prominently in An Officer And A Gentleman. Her only other UK chart entry had been with a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “First We Take Manhattan” which peaked at No 74 also in 1987 which I’d quite liked.

“(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” peaked at No 8 second time around just two places lower than its 1987 original release.

Not a brilliant start to the new year – so what’s next? Are you f*****g kidding me?! Gazza?! Yes, contrary to popular belief, Paul Gascoigne managed not one but two chart hits in the wake of ‘Gazzamania’ following Italia ’90. After “Fog On The Tyne” came “Geordie Boys (Gazza Rap)” which played up to the Newcastle stereotype with its lyrics such as :

Newcastle Town,There’s Geordie Brown
Cheers to the lads who sup it down
They’re Geordie boys, Tough and proud
They take their music strong and loud
North and South, it’s all the same
Gazza’s here to play the game.
Move your body,Tap your cap
Keep on going to the Gazza Rap

Dear oh dear. Had record company BMG really had plans to turn Gazza into a proper pop star? As well as his two singles, he also released an album (albeit one that was universally panned and which failed to make the Top 100 in the charts). And after all, Kevin Keegan had scored a hit back in the late 70s with “Head OVer Heels” and Glenn and Chris (Hoddle and Waddle) had nearly got into the Top 10 with “Diamond Lights” back in 1987 so why not Gazza? The truth was though that Gazza the celebrity was already in decline by this point – his business advisers, on the advice of Spurs manager Terry Venables, had already begun winding down his non-football activities when they cancelled six PAs back in Sep 1990 and there would be no further appearances. The constant limelight was also beginning to take its toll on his performances on the pitch. Even TOTP host Gary Davies has a dig at him with his “He’s doing better in charts than he is on the football pitch” quip. He wasn’t wrong. Spurs had just lost all three games over the Xmas period and had only won three times since October.

However, just two days after this TOTP was broadcast, they would win 1-0 away to Blackpool in the FA Cup to start a run to the final that was powered almost single handedly by Gazza. He scored six times on the way to Wembley but the final itself (despite a Spurs win) would end in personal devastation. Over pumped and high on adrenaline, Gazza charged around the pitch with no self control until injuring himself in a terrible challenge on *Nottingham Forest’s Gary Charles. If he hadn’t have been stretchered off he would surely have been sent off. For me, he was never quite the same player again.

“Geordie Boys (Gazza Rap)” peaked at No 31.

*Talking of Nottingham Forest, if you really want the story of a footballer becoming a rock star, look no further than Paul McGregor. Not only was he a striker for Forest in the 90s scoring this winning goal in the UEFA cup in 1996…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JCsOjfW144

…he was also the lead singer of a Britpop band called Merc who attracted the attention of Creation’s Alan McGee and went onto form post-punk band Ulterior and performs under the stage name of Honey.

Oh not this again?! Despite what host Gary Davies says in his intro, this record was Black Box‘s first four (not three Gary) hit singles all mashed together into one track which they called “The Total Mix”. I think there is an official video for this single but I can’t find it online and in any case, TOTP don’t show it here – instead just playing the track over the video for previous single “Everybody, Everybody”.

I’m guessing this must have been popular in the clubs to have generated enough sales to take it to No 12 in the singles charts. You’d think that releasing a megamix of your previous four hits all taken from the same album (“Dreamland”) would have been the final act of milking said album dry but no! They released another three singles after “The Total Mix” although only one of them (“Strike It Up”) made the Top 40. So that’s a charge sheet of fleecing the record buying public, a lip synching scandal and a lawsuit brought against them for unauthorised sampling. How did this lot sleep at night?

Finally a decent record courtesy of Seal and his hit “Crazy”. In an unlikely turn of events, this would not be the only song featured on the same show to have this title. His first truly solo single after the collaboration with Adamski on “Killer”, this track would cement him in the public’s collective mind as a proper pop star to be taken seriously. Seal always seemed to have a gravitas to him to me, that he wasn’t just another throwaway singer that would be here today and forgotten by Xmas. He delivered on this perception with a No 1 album (which, by the way, was not called “Deep Water” as Gary Davies advised but just “Seal”). Admittedly there is a track called “Deep Water” on it – maybe there had been plans for that to be the title track at some point in fairness to Davies.

Seal was perfect for TOTP studio performances, setting many a young girl’s pulse racing with his rippling muscles, cool dread hairstyle and those intriguing facial scars. He was born to do this shit. Not sure about his little man bag stuck down the front of his leather trousers though.

“Crazy” would just miss the top spot peaking at No 2.

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

A new act now as we get a first look at C+C Music Factory and their single “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)“. This lot were essentially songwriting and record producing duo David Cole and Robert Clivillés (C + C geddit?) who stormed the international charts with this relentless dance thumper. That block busting back beat was like a hammer to your head and once imprinted on your brain, it could not be forgotten or ignored. The vocals were supplied, yet again, by ex -Weather Girl Martha Wash and yet again she was not credited for her contribution on the track. That’s not her in the video but one Zelma Davis. Martha defo needed a better lawyer back then. She finally got a settlement in 1994 when Sony requested that MTV add a disclaimer to the video that credited Wash for vocals and Zelma Davis for ‘visualization’ of the track. Visualization? God, you wouldn’t want that credit would you?! All of this means that essentially, C+C Music Factory were just a US version of Black Box. Still, you can’t argue with their success. I hadn’t realised quite what a big deal this record was at the time. It peaked at No 3 over here but it was No 1 in Austria, Germany, Holland, Switzerland and biggest of all, in their native US. In 2000, it was voted by VH1 into position No 9 in their 100 Greatest Dance Songs poll.

It has been used in countless films and TV shows including the live-action/animated basketball comedy Space Jam whose soundtrack coincidentally also features the aforementioned Seal whose version of Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like An Eagle” incorporates some lyrics from “Crazy” into it (‘In a sky full of people, Only some want to fly, Isn’t that crazy?’). I’m pretty sure the phrase ‘Everybody Dance now’ also became the title for a series of dance compilation albums around this time.

I wasn’t a massive fan of “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” though. I much preferred the poppier “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” which was a No 4 hit in the Summer.

Still with this Best selling albums of the month feature? Give it a rest lads. OK so, the Top 5 albums of Dec 1990 in the UK were:

1. Madonna – “The Immaculate Collection”

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

3. Phil Collins – ‘Serious Hits Live”

4. Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti – “The Three Tenors In Concert”

5. Cliff Richard – “The Event”

This lot were hardly cutting edge were they?! Things That Make You Go Hmmm indeed…

Righto, who’s next? Anthrax?! For the love of God! Why?! These US thrash metal arses had not been higher than No 26 in the UK Top 40 before but somehow got to No 16 with “Got The Time”. I’m guessing it was a case of careful release scheduling (much less sales were required to register a hit in the week immediately following the Xmas rush when everyone is skint but more of that later).

I don’t recall this at all so I was amazed to discover it’s actually a cover of a Joe Jackson song! Yeah, that Joe Jackson of “Steppin’ Out” and “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” fame. It was a track from his debut album “Look Sharp” and should sound like this…

Ah, that’s much better than that racket Anthrax were making.

Now to that second sing of the night called “Crazy” but this time it’s by Patsy Cline. Country music legend Patsy has a legacy that completely outstrips her chart statistics. She only ever had one Top 10 hit (the original release of “Crazy” in the US back in 1961) and yet she is known and revered throughout the world. A bit like the musical reverse of my beloved Chelsea’s German striker Timo Werner – his stats say he’s had a decent season (12 goals and 15 assists in all competitions) but I am never confident that he is going to score. Please prove me wrong on Saturday in the Champions League final Timo!

I have to admit I couldn’t tell you any other Patsy Cline songs apart from this one and yet, despite only recording four studio albums before her untimely death in a plane crash in 1963, I counted 42 Greatest Hits compilation albums in her discography page on Wikipedia. I’m guessing the reason for this re-release was to promote one such Best Of package or was it used in yet another film soundtrack maybe? I’m not sure. Anyway, it peaked at No 14 this time around.

Attention Anthrax! This is how you play release schedules against sales patterns to your ultimate chart advantage. I remember the idea that Iron Maiden had some how pulled off some sort of chart-based sleight of hand being a big deal at the time. Presumably releasing a single at the optimum time when the least amount of sales were required for a No 1 record whilst also knowing you had a loyal (and crucially big enough) fan base must have been a deliberate act and wasn’t happy circumstance. The band and their record label must have known what they were doing for them to knock Cliff Richard off the Xmas No 1 spot after just one week. Have their ever been two such polar opposite records to be consecutive No 1s? The juxtaposition of saintly Sir Cliff giving thanks to God followed by a heavy rock band instructing their followers to bring their female offspring to a horrible death was frankly bizarre! Or was “Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter” about something else entirely? Originally written for the film A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, Bruce Dickinson had this to say about it on the songfacts.com website:

‘Here I tried to sum up what I thought Nightmare On Elm Street movies are really about, and it’s all about adolescent fear of period pains. That’s what I think it is – deep down.’

How lovely of you Bruce to write a song about the subject in such a sensitive way! Jeez!

Despite it being banned from BBC radio playlists, it spent two weeks at No 1 and in 2005, it was voted the second best No1 single of all time behind Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” by…yes you’ve guessed it…BBC Radio 1 listeners.

From “Bohemian Rhapsody” to “Turtle Rhapsody” by some…thing called Orchestra On The Half Shell. As you may have guessed, this was yet another association with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon. It was actually the third hit single to be released from the soundtrack to the film following “Turtle Power” by Partners in Kryme and “Spin That Wheel” by Hi Tek 3 (aka Technotronic). Yet again, I have zero recall of this and am actually surprised the whole franchise was still having hits into 1991. “Turtle Power” was a No1 in the previous Summer wasn’t it? When did the film come out in the UK then?

*checks internet*

Huh. Not until Friday 23rd November 1990 so I guess it was still doing the rounds at the cinemas? It’s utter hogwash of course and would peak at a lowly No 36.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qO-hwTu1jM

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Betty Boo	24 Hours	Nope
2	Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes	(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life	Nah
3	Gazza	Geordie Boys (Gazza Rap)	Great footballer, terrible pop star – no
4	Black Box	The Total Mix	Total shit – no
5	Seal	Crazy	No but I bought the album
6	C+C Music Factory	Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)	No
7	Anthrax	Got The Time	I really haven’t – not for this shite
8	Patsy Cline	Crazy	Negative
9	Iron Maiden	Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter	Definitely not
10	Orchestra On The Half Shell	Turtle Rhapsody	As if

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/m000w6t7/top-of-the-pops-03011991

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.

TOTP 15 NOV 1990

Posted on April 7, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s the exact mid-point of November 1990. I’m coming up to my one month wedding anniversary and have been employed in a temporary sales assistant position with Our Price for about two weeks. Xmas is fast approaching but for Maggie Thatcher, there are more issues afoot than the impending festive celebrations.1990 has not been a good year for Thatcher’s government; the introduction of the deeply unpopular Poll Tax had led to a riot in Trafalgar Square, inflation was pushing 10% meaning by late 1990 the economy was in the first stages of recession and at one point The Conservatives trailed Labour by 20 points in the polls. Dissatisfaction with Thatcher within her own party led to a challenge to her leadership from Michael Heseltine announced the day before this TOTP aired. Her time as Prime Minister was nearly over…hurray!

Away from politics, another type of of contest was being eagerly awaited. Boxing fans had been clamouring for a bout between Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank on the back of a very public rivalry between the two pugilists. That fight finally came to fruition on 18 November 1990 and was described by referee Richard Steele as “The most dramatic fight I’ve ever refereed”. It went the way of Eubank in round 9. I’m not a big boxing fan I have to say so why do I mention this fight here? Well, in 1990 Nigel Benn decided to cash in on his fame and release a single – rather predictably it was called “Stand And Fight” and was credited to The Pack featuring Nigel Benn. OK, so what? Well, ‘The Dark Destroyer’ as he was nicknamed came to the Our Price store I was working in to do a PA to promote it! I can’t recall if this was pre or post the big fight. There was a photo taken of Benn with the shop staff (including me) that appeared in a WH Smith news letter (Our Price was part of the WH Smith chain at that point). I had a copy for many years but I don’t know where it is now. I got Nigel’s autograph for my elder brother who was a fan. What? The song? Oh it was utter garbage….

Anyway, on with the show and the proper music although I’m not sure that Black Box‘s version of “Fantasy” strictly counts as ‘proper’ music. There seems to be some copyright issue with their TOTP studio performance so the official video will have to suffice for the purposes of this blog. To be fair, that performance doesn’t have a lot going on in it. Katrin Quinol is still fronting the whole sham, lip syncing away to vocals we all knew weren’t hers while the two guys at the back bang away on their keyboards with their heads down. One of them has that 90s long hair look that requires an alice band while the other guy has a top on with ‘Boys Wander In’ emblazoned across it. What’s that supposed to mean? So dull is the whole thing that during the instrumental break the cameras revert to crossing to the gantry to show some very unenthusiastic hand clapping from the studio audience. They looks so lifeless and flat that you would believe that, given the choice, they would rather eat their own arms than us them to clap along with. “Fantasy” peaked at No 5.

OK, I know that Inspiral Carpets released something called “Island Head EP” but I couldn’t have told you any of the songs on it or how they went. As far as I can see none of the four tracks on it featured on their debut album “Life” (at least not the UK version). “Biggest Mountain” performed here sounds pretty mournful to me. I’m not entirely sure why it was released to be honest. Their album had only been out six months and they’d not long been in the charts with “She Comes In The Fall”. Maybe they just had some new songs they wanted the fans to hear? Or maybe they were just jumping on an indie bandwagon – let’s not forget that EPs seemed to be a thing in 1990 with The Wedding Present and Ride both having released their own recently. And yes, mention must be made of those haircuts. Tom Hingley looks like a lockdown version of Mr Spock whilst Clint Boon…well just …Clint Boon! The “Island Head EP” peaked at No 21.

Next up are Robert Palmer and UB40 with their rendition of Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”. It strikes me that those cheeky Brummies have done rather a lot of collaborations during their career. Of course there are those two recordings with Chrissie Hynde in “I Got You Babe” and “Breakfast In Bed” neither of which I liked but there’s also “Reckless” with Afrika Bambaataa and an 808 Sate remix of “One In Ten”. There’s even two whole albums of collaborations in “UB40 Present The Dancehall Album” and “UB40 Present The Fathers Of Reggae” which featured some of their musical heroes like Toots Hibbert, John Holt, Alton Ellis and the Mighty Diamonds. And lest we forget Ali and Robin Campbell being credited on Pato Banton’s No 1 single “Baby Come Back”? Hmm…maybe we should all try and forget that one.

I wondered in a previous post how Bob Palmer and UB40 came to be working together and it was down to an individual called Dave Harper who managed both artists. Now I had no idea but this guy was steeped in rock history. He’d been Jim Morrison’s roadie and looked after Bob Marley and the Wailers even mixing their “Live at the Rainbow” album before moving onto manage Robert Palmer and UB40. As I said, I had no idea of any of this so when I googled Dave Harper I found a result for:

Dave Harper Bagpipes | Wedding Music | Easy Weddings

That couldn’t be him surely I found myself asking. No, no it wasn’t. That Dave Harper has been playing the bagpipes for 45 years and offers professional, expert bagpiping services across Norfolk, Norwich and the East Anglia for a wide range of events (according to his website). Still, UB40 and bagpipes! There’s a collaboration made in Hell. “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” peaked at No 6 and that new UB40 single that host Bruno Brookes mentions? It was actually called “Impossible Love” not “It’s Impossible” as Brookes claimed and it peaked at No 47.

An unusual event next. I’m guessing that not many singles that made it onto TOTP had a chart track record of just 1 week in the Top 40 at No 40 but that’s exactly what happened with Caron Wheeler‘s “UK Blak” single. The title track from her debut album, dropping out of the Top 40 completely after securing a studio performance (so not even just a Breaker slot) must have been a shock to the system for both Caron and her record label.

“UK Blak” would be Caron’s final appearance in the UK singles charts but the following year she recorded a song called “Don’t Quit” for a film called Career Opportunities and taking her own advice and perhaps inspired by the movie’s title has continued her musical career up to this day including on/off spells with Soul II Soul.

Three Breakers next and these are “all good records” according to Bruno Brookes so let’s see if he is right…

…we start with The Mission who have turned out to be one of the most consistent chart entry makers of this whole TOTP blog thing. “Hands Across The Ocean” (nothing to do with Paul McCartney’s “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”) was their 9th consecutive Top 40 hit (and their fourth of 1990 alone) and yet none of them even made the Top 10. The only other artist that I can think of with such a discography would be Siouxsie and the Banshees.

I have to admit to not knowing this one at all although on listening to it now, it does sound very reminiscent of something else that I can’t quite put my finger on*.

Bruno Brookes ‘all good records’ clapometer score: Not bad

*Got it – the verses are like U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name” whilst the chorus sounds like Scottish popsters The Big Dish.

There was a second single from Jon Bon Jovi‘s Young Guns II project? Yes, his “Blaze Of Glory” album furnished us with “Miracle” which very much sounds like Jon doing his best Bruce Springsteen impression to me. It didn’t have the same dramatic appeal of the title track single and was accordingly a much smaller hit – “Blaze Of Glory ” was a US No 1 record and a No 13 hit over here whilst “Miracle” peaked at No 12 in the States and a lowly No 29 in the UK.

The accompanying video has very little connection to the Young Guns II film. There are no clips from it as the promo is set in the present day with Jon riding his big motorbike around what looks like Mexico setting. And yes that is a pre-Friends Matt LeBlanc catching the señorita’s eye (How you doin’?) and Jeff Beck playing guitar in the cantina.

Bruno Brookes ‘all good records’ clapometer score: Boring

Ooh now here’s something interesting. Twin Peaks appeared out of some dark hole of David Lynch’s imagination and was like nothing we had ever seen before – one of the biggest TV phenomenons of not just the 90s but of any decade. Mixing horror, mystery and the supernatural into one dramatic entity, it was almost like the most bizarre soap opera ever. Its slogan of ‘Who Killed Laura Palmer?’ was the hook that caught all of us who dared to engage in it. Its run on BBC2 started just as my wife and I had moved to Manchester and was all everybody at the Our Price store I was working in was talking about so we took the plunge. Sheesh it was weird! The final scene of series two (and the denouement of the whole story at that point) remains one of the most disturbing things I have seen on TV.

Part of the show’s creepy appeal was its soundtrack composed by Angelo Badalamenti who had worked previously with Lynch on the frankly disturbing Blue Velvet and it was to him that Lynch returned for Twin Peaks. Theme tune “Falling” would also bring back into the fold someone else who had been involved in Blue Velvet project but the name Julee Cruise will forever be associated with Twin Peaks. The song was eerie, chilling (especially for viewers of the series) and yet delightful in its delicate beauty. It (and Cruise herself) featured prominently in the series and the show’s popularity would propel it to No 7 in the UK singles chart.

Bruno Brookes ‘all good records’ clapometer score: Fantastic

What?! How was Jive Bunny still a thing in late 1990?! Wikipedia tells me “Let’s Swing Again” was their sixth hit single out of eight. What! There’s still two more to come after this?! No, sorry but f**k this! I am not wasting any more of my time or words on reviewing any more f*****g Jive Bunny singles. No. I mean it.

Right. With that declaration of intent made, who’s next? What’s that Bruno? The guys behind Jive Bunny are also behind this next act called Megabass?! You have got to be f*****g kidding me?! WTF?! Ok, well I will have to retract my previous statement. It turns out that “Time To Make The Floor Burn” was one of those medley singles like Latino Rave and The Brits 1990 that were basically an advertising campaign for a compilation album. I do recall the Telstar ‘Megabass’ series from my early Our Price days but I do wonder who the intended market for them were. Some of these tunes were ancient in terms of chart lives – “Ride On Time”, Pump Up The Jam”, Big Fun” – these were all well over 12 months old. Ah to Hell with them! Next!

Nice. It’s the Kim Appleby performance of her debut solo single “Don’t Worry” from the other week. However, like Black Box earlier, that clip has infringed somebody’s copyright and is no longer available so here she is on some European music TV show instead. Although Kim would go on to have a couple more Top 20 hits, her solo career never really progressed from this point on. I get the impression that recording the album of songs she and her late sister Mel had been working on was what had kept her going in the months after the tragedy and once that task had been completed, then Kim’s desire for the music business went cold.

A third of four weeks at the top for The Righteous Brothers with “Unchained Melody” which inevitably led to a clamour to get more of the duo’s product out there (and just in time for Xmas too!). So which song got re-released to follow “Unchained Melody” in to the charts? Yes of course it was probably their best known song “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” which had been heavily featured in the Top Gun film which had only recently received its UK terrestrial TV premiere and which had led to the re-release of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”. What a tangled web of re-issues we weaved.

I recall hearing disgraced TV and radio personality Jonathan king stating that the record label should have switched the release to the B-side which was a song called “Ebb Tide”. Wanna hear it? OK…

Hmm…I’m not sure. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” did well enough anyway thanks Jonathan peaking at No 3.

The play out video is “New Power Generation” by Prince. This was where it all started getting very confusing for me with Prince. New Power Generation was also the name of Prince’s new backing band who would continue in that role until 2013. The phrase “Welcome to the New Power Generation” was first mentioned in a track on the “Lovesexy” album whilst New Power Generation was used for the first time as a band name in the 1990 film Graffiti Bridge. Then there was the single “New Power Generation” and whilst Prince was in dispute with Warners and he became ‘symbol’ in 1993, he use the NPG as a way to release music outside of his contract. However, up to that point, any new Prince music was credited to Prince and The New Power Generation but between 1994 and 1997, the NPG had three Top 40 UK hits in their own right plus two whole albums. Still with me? I think I’ve confused myself actually.

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000tpzf/top-of-the-pops-15111990

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 01 NOV 1990

Posted on April 1, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s November 1990 and having got married just 12 days earlier, another huge moment in my life has occurred – we’ve moved to Manchester! Yes, despite knowing only two other residents of Manc land between us, my wife and I have chosen to move to that great city to begin our married life together. We arrived back from our honeymoon exactly one week after the wedding day and moved that very day to Manchester. I hadn’t even seen the rented flat we were going to be living in as my wife had sorted that out. That small studio flat would be our home for the next four years and we loved it. The big events kept coming as after the wedding, the honeymoon, moving city, moving into a flat, I then started work on the Monday at Our Price. After two days training in the offices above the Piccadilly store, I was despatched to the Market Street shop down the road. By the time this TOTP was broadcast, I would have completed two whole days there (If my dates are correct). Given that this was such a momentous time for me, I must surely remember all the songs that were on the show?

Tonight’s host is Simon Mayo who I don’t recall being so smug but that’s the exact word I would use to describe his performance here. Certainly not smug though is the opening act – if anything I would think she was the exact opposite – unsure and apprehensive. Kim Appleby was of course one half of Mel & Kim who had torn up the charts in the late 80s with their SAW dance tunes and ‘up yours’ attitude. Tragically, Mel had died of cancer-related pneumonia at the start of 1990 but Kim resolved to carry on and record some of the songs that they had been working on during her sister’s illness. “Don’t Worry” was the first of those to see the light of day but Kim’s hesitancy about going it alone was revealed in a Smash Hits interview:

“I don’t know how people are going to react to my record but all I can say is I’m doing my best.”

She needn’t have… erm…worried because “Don’t Worry” was a fantastic pop song. Was it a million miles away from her Mel & Kim era? No, of course not (even though it was not produced by SAW) but it had an added sense of maturity to it from that unexpected, gentle fade in to the uplifting lyrics promoting positivity – there was no showing out or getting fresh going on here.

If Kim was nervous about her return to the world of pop music, she disguised those anxieties with an energetic performance here although quite what she thought being dressed like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen would add to the overall effect, I’m not sure.

“Don’t Worry” surely exceeded Kim and her record label’s expectations after being away for so long by peaking at No 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLBC43xoNE0

Robert Palmer already had a reputation for being a musical chameleon with his back catalogue combining elements of soul, jazz, rock, pop, reggae and blues. Quite what he hoped to get credibility wise out of a collaboration with UB40 then I’m not sure. Not only that but it wasn’t even an original song that they might have cooked up between them but a cover version. “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was a Bob Dylan song from his “John Wesley Harding” album and given how many artists have interpreted Dylan songs down the years*, was Palmer just jumping on a well ridden bandwagon? To be fair, the version he and the Brummie reggae boys came up with didn’t sound much like Dylan with its calypso lilt and jaunty rhythms. It still doesn’t explain the reason why the two acts chose to record it though. It wasn’t as if either had been languishing in the chart doldrums for a sustained period. Indeed, both had clocked up Top 10 singles within recent memory. Maybe they just knew each other and got along?

Palmer’s album “Don’t Explain” (from which “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was the lead single) would go onto be certified Gold although the only other chart hit from it was another cover version – “Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me” whilst “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” would peak at No 6.

*The history of recorded music is littered is with Dylan covers by a multitude of artists but if you want a really out there one, how about “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Lofty from Eastenders?

After coming over all smug and superior with his ‘look at how much I know about pop music’ tone when advising us all that “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was actually a Bob Dylan song, Simon Mayo is at it again when introducing Black Box.

“Well, cover versions are all the thing. We’ve already had one, that was the UB40 song. Here’s another one…” he starts off. He’s like the most patronising Jackanory presenter ever. ‘Let me tell you a story about cover versions…’ he might as well have said. Git. Technically he is right of course in that “Fantasy” is the song by Earth, Wind And Fire but his tone is so condescending.

This was Black Box’s fourth consecutive UK chart hit but it would prove to be the last time that they would visit the Top 10 when it peaked at No 5. I’m not sure that their version actually adds anything at all to the original being a fairly faithful reproduction of it. Also, surely the cat must have been out of the bag by this time that the woman up there front of stage (Katrin Quinol) wasn’t the actual vocalist on any of these hits. The singer on this one was Martha Wash who did most of the vocals on their “Dreamland” album. Apparently the guys behind Black Box didn’t care a jot though and were boldly brazening it out like Boris Johnson shamelessly disregarding yet another cronyism scandal. In ‘Borisworld’, the PM would no doubt have Jennifer Arcuri up there lip syncing away whilst declaring that all her vocals had been laid down in complete propriety and that the recording sessions were all there on public record for anyone to see.

More ‘look how clever I am’ – ness from Mayo next as he references Robert Palmer / UB40’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” (yet again) with Whitney Houston‘s “I’m Your Baby Tonight” as the song titles sound very similar. Well done Simon, what an amazing insight you provided. In all honesty though, whilst I’m criticising Mayo, I’ve very little else to say about this one myself other than I have a memory of selling the “I’m Your Baby Tonight” album on tape whilst working at Our Price that Xmas and the shop chart cassette buyer (a guy called Steve who I am still friends with all these years later) sitting near the chart cassette filing one Saturday afternoon trying to order some more as we had almost sold out and asking me to go away and sell something else as he was nearly out of stock. Yeah, right, not sure how that was supposed to work Steve? I don’t think I had an ‘Actually, would you mind awfully buying something else otherwise the buyer’s going to have a breakdown’ in me. Oh, hang on – was it the Jimmy Somerville Best Of album now I come to think of it? Amazing insight from your blogger there I’m sure you’ll agree.

“I’m Your Baby Tonight” (the single) peaked at No 5.

Some Roxette next with a re-release of their “Dressed For Success” single. When I started at Our Price there wasn’t much of a dress code; certainly there wasn’t a staff uniform (although that would come in later years). You could pretty much wear what you wanted within reason. One woman turned up in a catsuit one day and asked me if I thought it was a bit much for work. I didn’t know where to look! I’ve no memory of what I’d chosen to wear for my first day in the shop but I do remember being mercilessly ribbed the day I decided to come in wearing a white shirt and a black waistcoat. Cue lots of comments about Ray Reardon, snooker and…erm…cues.

Back to Roxette and Mayo is still shoehorning in references to Bob Dylan b-sides (even though there is no relevance here whatsoever). Some eagle eyed viewer reckoned that this performance must have been recorded for the initial release of the single back in ’89 (you could tell by the BBC logos or something) and that does make sense as the cut to the duo clearly indicates that they were not there for the actual recording of the show. This of course raises the question of why a performance would have been recorded for a song that didn’t get in the chart on first release? I thought the show was meant to have a strict Top 40 only policy? What? They had ‘the look’ and were ‘dressed for success’ and that got them the gig? Sorry – that was lame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKY6ec7HSdg

Another song we’ve seen before recently now as Rita MacNeil sings us a tale of a “Working Man”. Although the song’s sentiments were very worthy, there was very little here to hold my attention. It was all a bit Lena Martell (who had been a favourite of my parents during my childhood) meets “Every Loser Wins” by Nick Berry. Rita never had another UK chart hit and sadly died in 2013.

When I think of The Cure‘s remix compilation album “Mixed Up”, the track that comes to mind is “Never Enough” which was the single chosen to promote it. I had totally forgotten that a second single was released from it. “Close to Me – Remix” was that single and of course was a remix of their 1985 track from their “The Head On The Door” album. I really cannot see the point of this 1990 version though. It sounds exactly like the original but just slowed down a bit doesn’t it? Or am I missing something? The gentle intrigue of the 1985 original gets lost in the mix for me.

It took me a little while to realise that the video for the remix single was a continuation of the original promo which I thought was very clever, playing on the theme of claustrophobia with the band performing under duress within the confines of a wardrobe. Unfortunately, the second video doesn’t really work as well. Carrying on where the first video ended with the wardrobe (and its content of band members) falling off the edge of a cliff into the sea Young Ones style. The story board of the second video had the band escaping from their potential watery grave only to be attacked by an octopus and a starfish. The 1985 video was genuinely ingenious – there didn’t seem to be much thought gone into its 1990 counterpart although I’m guessing they were both directed by the band’s long time collaborator Tim Pope. The sea creature costumes make it all look a bit Mighty Boosh but without the laughs. Actually, maybe the video was was a source of inspiration for Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt. I can imagine Fielding in particular being a big Robert Smith fan.

“Close to Me – Remix” peaked at No 13 (as did “Never Enough”) which was 11 places higher than the much better original. We would not see The Cure in the charts for another 18 months when they would return with their “Wish” album.

OK, for me, this next song is peak Kylie Minogue. I might be looking back through nostalgia-tinted glasses of a much happier and simpler time but “Step Back In Time” was a great pop-dance track and yes, I realise that means I am commending a SAW produced track! Essentially one of those tribute songs like “Nightshift” by The Commodores and… erm…”Tribute (Right On)” by The Pasadenas with its 70s disco referencing lyrics, it’s got a great hooky chorus whilst the bridges that lead into them (‘Remember the O’Jays…’) are brilliant. One of my Xmas co-workers at Our Price in 1990 was a girl called Lucy who loved this track and she was bang on the money. Also, the dance routines on show in this performance really are impressive. Say what you like about Kylie but she really was very good at jumping in time.

“Step Back In Time” was the second single from Kylie’s “Rhythm Of Love” album and peaked at No 4.

Well that didn’t take very long did it? “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers is No 1 after just two weeks! Know-it-all Mayo feels the need to once more furnish us with his pop music knowledge by giving us the details of other artists who have recorded the track by name checking Jimmy Young, Harry Secombe and Des O’Connor (all the greats then). Look Mayo, if you wanted to dazzle us with charts statistics then here’s how you do it courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

"Unchained Melody" was first a UK hit for Les Baxter in 1955, peaking at 10. The top 20 for 17-23 June 1955 included four different recordings of the song: Al Hibbler's version at 2, Jimmy Young at 3, Les Baxter at 17 and Liberace at 20 – a record! #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 26, 2021

Last week I mentioned that the video for this had confused me when I first saw it as there was only one person (Bobby Hatfield) singing and I wondered where the other Righteous Brother Bill Medley was. Well, Simon Mayo, the guru of pop trivia , had the answer for me in his closing link. At the song’s end, he says “the other one was in the loo or something, I don’t know”. Simon Mayo there doing his best Mike Read impression.

The play out video is George Michael with “Waiting For That Day”. Another video mystery with this one as last week I posited the notion that I didn’t think George had done a promo for this (much as he had refused to film one for previous single “Praying For Time” due to his dispute with Sony). All that I could find was a clip from The South Bank Show which showed George discussing the song’s origins in the studio. However, TOTP seemed to have secured a video which was solely a performance of the track in the said same studio. I’ve worked out what the deal was here though. If you go to the final minute of that South Bank Show clip, there is that very performance. Bit of clever editing going on there then I think by the TOTP producers.

“Waiting For That Day” peaked at No 23.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yvHXM9Ur5E

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Kim Appleby	Don’t Worry	Don’t think I did – great pop song though
2	Robert Palmer / UB40	I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight	No but it might be on my Robert Palmer Best Of CD
3	Black Box	Fantasy	Nope
4	Whitney Houston	I’m Your Baby Tonight	Negative
5	Roxette	Dressed For Success	Nah
6	Rita MacNeil	Working Man	No
7	The Cure	Close To Me – Remix	Another no
8	Kylie Minogue	Step Back In Time	No but I think my wife has her Greatest Hits with it on
9	The Righteous Brothers	Unchained Melody	It’s a no
10	George Michael	Waiting For That Day	No but my wife had the album

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000th90/top-of-the-pops-01111990

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?

Page 1 - Smash Hits - Issue 311 - 31st October - 13th November 1990

TOTP 31 MAY 1990

Posted on December 28, 2020 by 80stastic

As we get to the last day of May in 1990 in TOTP Rewind world, I’m just going to have a quick check-in with myself about what I was up to personally before getting into the music. After five whole months of unemployment since I left my temporary Xmas job, I think it was at this point that finally something happened to rouse me from my stupor. I got a call out of the blue about a job! On my last visit up to Hull to visit my girlfriend I had registered my details with an employment agency not expecting anything to come of it. My ‘details’ (such as they were) weren’t up to much. I had very little employment history and very few abilities (the term ‘skills set’ had yet to be invented). And yet, I was deemed viable by the agency to go and work at Kingston Communications in Hull on a temporary contract helping on some project to convert a whole load of info currently residing on paper into a computer format – yes, VDU input in other words. I got the call mid morning and was on the train up North by lunchtime such was my desire to make a change to my husk of a life. This was fantastic – not only would I be earning money but I would be living at my girlfriend’s parents’ home so would get to see her all the time as well. I arrived early evening in Hull and was to start my temporary job the next day. I wonder what tunes were doing the chart rounds to send me on my way…

…hmm. Well, it’s not a great start. Despite it being well over six months since Black Box took the UK charts by storm with No 1 and best selling single of 1989 “Ride On Time”, it seemed that they still had some pull on the nation’s tastes as they are back in the Top 40 with a third consecutive hit single from their “Dreamland” album. This one was called “Everybody, Everybody” and on the contrary to it being so good they named it twice, I found this a rather drab affair.

Proving themselves to be shameless in the pulling a fast one stakes, they are still persisting with having French model Katrin Quinol front the act despite the fact that this was the third single to feature someone else entirely doing the singing. I’m pretty sure that particular cat had been out of the bag for some time as well but it didn’t seem to matter a jot to Black Box. This single (as had the previous single “I Don’t Know Anybody Else”) featured the vocals talents of ex-Weather Girl Martha Wash without proper credit (Loleatta Holloway was the singer wronged for “Ride On Time”). Weren’t we bothered about this sort of thing back then? There was outrage when it turned out that The Monkees hadn’t played on their early 60s hits and similar furore was unleashed when it became known that the Bay City Rollers were found to be less than completely present on their recordings. And what about the Milli Vanilli miming scandal? All hell broke loose when that story found its way into the press. The great Black Box hoax though – not so much, at least not enough to make any difference to their continuing success.

“Everybody, Everybody” would peak at No 16 but we haven’t seen the last of Black Box in 1990 yet I fear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Z1agJB1fw

As the Italia ’90 World Cup is only a few days away from starting, presenter Simon Mayo has jumped on the football bandwagon and is doing tonight’s show in a whirl of ever changing football shirts to highlight the different countries involved. Why does he call them ‘outfits’ to begin with though. ‘Kit’ is the word you’re looking for Simon. I’m pretty sure Mayo is a Spurs fan – I’ll leave that there without further comment. He then makes a pathetically lame line about Ireland manager Jack Charlton’s favourite band being Talk Talk to shoe horn in a link to the next song. Woeful Mayo. Woeful.

Nothing woeful about “It’s My Life” though. Re-released and now a deserved bona fide chart hit, we established in the last post that this 1984 track was promoting the band’s “Natural History: The Very Best of Talk Talk” album, although they wanted nothing to do with the whole campaign.

In truth, they had long since moved on from the sound of “It’s My Life” when they released 1988″s “Spirt Of Eden” which has been described by the music press as ‘ambient’, ‘minimalist’ and as veering towards ‘free-form jazz’ (!!). Crucially, it was defined by their record company EMI as not being ‘commercially satisfactory’ and was the precursor to a legal dispute that would see Talk Talk depart EMI to sign with Polydor. Only one final album called “Laughing Stock” was released on their new label which was regarded as even more musically extreme than “Spirt Of Eden” and the band spilt after that. I’ve never delved into “Spirt Of Eden” nor “Laughing Stock”. Some of the reviews that basically describe them as taking music into another dimension feel like they should be worthy of investigation but I have to admit that the free-form jazz description has put me off big time. Furthermore, I’ve been stung before on a similar theme when I watched the Scott Walker: 30th Century Man documentary. Now I love Scott’s voice and his 60s catalogue of work but boy did he lose the plot big time in later life. Here he is deciding that a dead pig would be the best form of percussion instrument for the ‘song’ he was working on:

In fairness, to Scott, as mad as it looks, it’s a better use of a dead pig than David Cameron came up with in his infamous extra curricular activities.

Back to Talk Talk, and it struck me that the band’s two biggest hits have a very definite existential fixation – “It’s My Life” and “Life’s What You Make It”. As statements about why we are all here and what to do with our time on the planet, I guess they are better song titles than ’42’. There was a cover version of “It’s My Life” in 2003 by US Ska Punk band No Doubt to (coincidentally) promote their own Best Of album but it always sounded like a poor man’s version of the original to me.

Sadly, Mark Hollis dies in February 2019 aged just 64.

Well I didn’t expect to see Sam Brown on TOTP again but a move of just one place up the charts from No 24 to No 23 for her single “Kissing Gate” this week was enough to get her on the show again. I say again but I think it’s just a re-showing of her initial appearance.

It struck me given the time of year (Xmas 2020 if you are reading this way down the line) that Sam Brown’s musical trajectory is a little like that of the late, great Kirsty Maccoll. Both had recording artists as fathers (Joe Brown and Ewan Maccoll), both had great voices, both probably didn’t get the recognition they deserved (certainly at the time) and both had their singing careers cut short – Kirtsy was tragically killed in a powerboat incident in Mexico in December 2000 whilst Sam lost her singing voice in 2007 explaining in a 2013 interview that “I can’t get vocal cord closure and achieve the proper pitch simultaneously. It feels like there are some muscles that aren’t working.”

I wondered if their similarities extended to them ever working together but the closest connection I could find was them being on the same bill together at a Children In Need charity gig in November 1991.

Make the most of this Erasure single “Star”as it’s the last time we’ll be seeing Andy and Vince on TOTP for a whole year. This was the fourth and last single to be released from the duo’s “Wild!” album and its final chart resting place of No 11 shows how strong a fan base they had at that time. No 11 for a fourth single from an album that’s already been out for seven months? Those are pretty respectable numbers.

For me this was the poppiest of all four of those singles and was a throw back to that sound that broke them with “Sometimes” back in ’86. The lyric ‘From Moscow to Mars’ would supply the title of their 13 disc 2016 box set retrospective whilst the song also contains references to ‘pretty in pink’ and ‘satellite of love’.

Erasure would return in 1991 with their third consecutive No 1 album “Chorus”.

OK 1990 – you’ve got me again. Who on earth was Jane Child? Not only do I not remember Jane nor her single “Don’t Wanna Fall In Love” but I’m struggling to see why she made the charts in 1990 at all. She sounds sooo 80s! It’s as if the chart compilers found this track left alone in a locked cupboard marked 1986 and had no idea what to do with it. “Just smuggle it into this week’s charts; nobody will notice” you can imagine them saying to each other. Just to hammer home the point, Jane’s wearing a Sigue Sigue Sputnik ‘Rambo Child’ T-shirt in the video whilst her hairstyle wouldn’t have been out of place on the noggin of one of the members of the aforementioned “Love Missile F1-11” hit makers.

Due to my lack of Jane Child knowledge, I’ve had to rely on Wikipedia to fill in the gaps for me. It turns out she is Canadian, that control of her musical style was very important to her (leading to the press labelling her ‘the female Prince’) and that she refused to appear on TOTP considering the show a “sell out”! That decision backfired on Jane however. After her promo video was shown instead, the single only moved from No 25 to No 22 where it would peak. Jane never had another UK chart hit again.

Time to ‘Get Wicked!’ next with Chad Jackson and his one and only hit “Hear The Drummer (Get Wicked)”. The first time I heard this it sounded instantly familiar and I assumed it must be a reworking of some old standard but no – it was just packed full of samples instead. The ‘deedle eedle eedle eee eee eee’ bit (as Smash Hits described it) sampled 60s soul sister Marva Whitney’s recording “Unwind Yourself”. No I didn’t know it either but here it is in all its glory…

There were loads of other samples on the record from the likes of Kool And The Gang, The O’Jays and even Soul II Soul. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the story behind some of the sampled vocal parts that the guy doing the Bob Dylan “Subterranean Homesick Blues” impression signposts in the performance:

The voice saying "Hear the drummer get wicked" is Public Enemy's Chuck D, from "Welcome To The Terrordome" by Public Enemy, while the "Peace, unity, love and havin' fun" is sampled from "Unity" by Afrika Bambaataa and James Brown. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 18, 2020

The writing on Bob’s sign looks very reminiscent of De La Soul’s “3 Feet High And Rising” album typography but then as Simon Mayo says, Chad Jackson had worked with the American hip hop trio (on “Three Is The Magic Number” to be specific) previously. Oh yes, Chad himself – who was he exactly. As Mayo* stated, he was a Manchester DJ (real name Mark Chadwick) who had won the annual Disco Mix Club (DMC) DJ World Championships competition in 1987. According to Smash Hits, he’d also previously worked with Public Enemy (presumably hence the Chuck D sample). Like chart peer Stevie V (of “Dirty Cash” fame), he now teaches music technology. His single would peak at No 3.

*Interesting how Mayo introduces the track as ‘Hear The Drummer’ and not “Hear The Drummer (Get Wicked)”. I bet he thought he was above saying ‘Get Wicked’ and considered it naff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhHW06ok_-A

From getting wicked to “Doin’ The Do” now as we get Betty Boo‘s video again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM_9As_2VAg

Just like Chad Jackson before her, Betty had worked with Public Enemy before becoming a chart star when she was in an all female hip-hop outfit called the She-Rockers. After a chance meeting at McDonalds in Shepherd’s Bush with Professor Griff, Betty and her mates ended up having their debut single produced by the Prof and touring with Public Enemy!

Can you imagine that? You just nip into McDonalds for an egg McMuffin and end up touring with the biggest rap act on the planet?! I realise there must be plenty of ‘sliding door’ moments in pop history but as chance encounters go, that’s right up there. Off the top of my head I can think of Paul Heaton meeting Jacqui Abbott at a house party and her going on to replace Briana Corrigan in the Beautiful South and then reuniting with Paul years later as a recording double act. I suppose the ultimate chance rock meeting occurred on July 6, 1957 at a church fete at St. Peter’s Church in Liverpool when Paul McCartney met John Lennon for the first time. However, the technology to record the event hadn’t been invented and, in Betty’s moment in history, she reckons that afterwards she bumped into LL Cool J in the kebab house so for the purposes of this blog, Betty steals it!

Such was the impact of her sound and image that when the Spice Girls were being put together in the mid 90s, the casting advert for the group stated that it was looking for ‘five Betty Boos’. Despite all of this though, if you put ‘Betty Boo’ into Google it will always default to ‘Betty Boop’ so she’ll never be more famous than a 1930’s cartoon character.

“Doin’ The Do” peaked at No 7.

One of the song’s of the Summer next as we get to the climax of Simon Mayo’s football shirt campaign with the first view of the official England 1990 World Cup song. Surely there is no debate that this is the best football song ever is there? I mean, I know “Three Lions” holds a place in the nation’s hearts and you can chant it at actual games but in terms of musicality, nothing beats “World In Motion” by New Order does it? To put how good it was into context, here’s the previous England World Cup campaign song from 1986…

Or how about the one before that from 1982…

and now compare them to “World In Motion”…

It’s a completely different…erm…ball game. The reaction to it initially I seem to recall was pretty much WTF?! People couldn’t get their heads around it. A legitimate band with some heavy gravitas being associated with a football song – why had they done it? It’ll ruin their career. And then when people heard it their reaction changed to something like ‘But this is a pretty good tune – this can’t be the official England song can it?’

Famously, only six squad members turned up to the recording of the song but fortunately one was John Barnes whose once heard never to be forgotten rap in the middle of it is something he continues to dine out on to this very day. Never mind being asked about playing for Liverpool or that goal against Brazil, it’s always a case of ‘Do the rap Barnesy!’. Supposedly Gazza was given a go at doing the rap but it was a complete disaster probably because he was absolutely plastered on champagne at the recording session.

I always felt that the video lets the song down a bit. Not the bits with Keith Allen or New Order in them but the montage of football action clips. They look like they are all taken from an England v Brazil friendly from March earlier in the year and there all fairly nondescript – you don’t even get to see the game’s only goal scored by Gary Lineker, just the fairly muted celebrations afterwards and Brazil are playing in blue instead of their iconic yellow shirts. There is quite a lot of footage of Chris Waddle’s magnificent mullet though.

There’s loads more to say about this song but fortunately there’s plenty more tome to do so as it will be No 1 in next week’s show.

Meanwhile, this week’s No 1 is still Adamski featuring Seal with “Killer”. After four weeks at the top and six TOTP appearances, I’ve very little left to say about this. OK, what about what happened next? Well, we all know that Seal went onto have a lengthy and successful solo career that continues to this day but what about Adamski? Well, he did go on to have another Top 10 single in “Space Jungle” and a Top 10 album with the rather unwieldy title of “Doctor Adamski’s Musical Pharmacy” but despite continuing to release new music into the new millennium and beyond, he has never returned to the UK charts.

Along with “World In Motion” though, “Killer” remains synonymous with the Summer of 1990 for me.

After The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets had all been in the Top 40 recently, The Charlatans also scored a chart hit with “The Only One I Know” at this time. Although widely associated with the Madchester movement, the origins of the band actually lay in the West Midlands where they were formed by bassist Martin Blunt. So how did the Manchester link happen? It was after the band recruited new singer Tim Burgess who was from Northwich in Cheshire and then relocated to Burgess’s hometown. Burgess had been born in Salford but lived in Northwich from an early age. I went to Northwich once to see my hometown football team Worcester City play Northwich Victoria in the FA Trophy quarter final. We lost 2-1. It was a very long journey home during which I learned the Mary Hopkin song “Those Were The Days” whose lyrics we reconfigured to be about drinking pints. I had no idea what I was singing about being 13 at the time but just as that memory has stuck with me, so did the Madchester tag to The Charlatans and it didn’t do them any harm it has to be said. “The Only One I Know”, with its swirling Hammond organ sound and Burgess’s 60s zeitgeist nailing vocals, went Top 10 while parent album “Some Friendly” was a No 1 record. Despite struggling to reach such heights with their immediate follow up material, the band really hit their stride in the mid to late 90s (my favourite era of theirs) with two consecutive No 1 albums and some stonking singles like “Can’t Get Out of Bed”, “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over”, “One to Another” and “North Country Boy”.

However, I wasn’t sure about “The Only One I Know” to begin with – I think I was still struggling to come to terms with a fast changing pop world and they seemed like one new act too many for me at the time. I think it’s great now of course.

During the shit show that has been 2020, Tim Burgess has emerged as one of the year’s heroes with his Tim’s Twitter Listening Party project helping to keep us all entertained and sane. He better get some recognition in the Queen’s New Year Honours list 2021 – that’s all I’m saying.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OafUok-iFpY

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Black Box	Everybody Everybody	Nah
2	Talk Talk	It’s My Life	No but I have it on a compilation CD of theirs (not Natural History though)
3	Sam Brown	Kissing Gate	It’s a no
4	Erasure	Star	No but I’m guessing it’s on their Pop! The First 20 HIts CD that I have
5	Jane Child	Don’t Wanna Fall In Love	And I didn’t with this
6	Chad Jackson	Hear TheDrummer (Get Wicked)	No but my wife had it on a Smash Hits Rave album
7	Betty Boo	Doin’ The Do	See 6 above
8	New Order	World In Motion	Call the cops! There’s been a robbery. This isn’t in my singles box!
9	Adamski	Killer	No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on
10	The Charlatans	The Only One I Know	No but it’s on their Best Of Melting Pot CD that I have

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qcx4/top-of-the-pops-31051990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 15 FEB 1990

Posted on November 3, 2020 by 80stastic

OK, we’ve just had Valentine’s Day in 1990 but much more important than that is the fact that four days prior to this TOTP broadcast, the world saw Nelson Mandela released from incarceration after 27 years. A world changing event of immense political importance…or so you would have thought. I clearly recall there being complaints from viewers to the BBC about their coverage of this historic event interrupting their enjoyment of Antiques Roadshow! Some simple research of the internet confirmed that they received 500 (!) such complaints! If that wasn’t bad enough, 23 years later, they received about 850 complaints about the extent of its coverage of Mandela’s death, including its decision to interrupt a repeat of sitcom Mrs Brown’s Boys on BBC1 to bring viewers news of his death. Mrs. Fucking. Brown’s Boys.

Anyway, enough of world events, back to the music and tonight’s show is hosted by Anthea Turner who has just got married to her manager and ex- Radio 1 DJ Peter Powell. Peter, of course, went out with fellow Radio 1 DJ Janice Long between ’84 and’85. It was a complicated web of relationships at Radio 1 back in the day. Anthea has ditched all that rock chick, back combed hair (for the wedding presumably) and the first act she introduces tonight are Black Box with “I Don’t Know Anybody Else”. This was the follow up to their huge No 1 “Ride On Time” which was the best selling single in the UK of the previous year so this track had a lot to live up to. Despite early encouraging signs (it crashed into this week’s chart as the highest new entry at No 5), it ultimately fell short of emulating its predecessor when it peaked at just one place higher the following week.

It always sounded like a pound shop version of “Ride On Time” to me – looks / sounds the same but isn’t quite as good. My overriding memory of this track though relates to a visit to see my girlfriend around this time whilst we were geographically separated (I was in Worcester and she in Hull). I’d saved up my dole money and traversed north to stay with her for a few days. One night, we ventured out into town and ended up in a bar called The Mint who were having a music quiz night. Fancying my chances, we entered and found ourselves in a tie break situation for first place. The winner was to be decided by the team that was the first to spot a current chart hit but played backwards. To my elation then (and shame now) I was first up off my seat to correctly identify Black Box and “I Don’t Know Anybody Else”. We won a cheap bottle of bubbly but in the bleak, unemployed Winter of 1990 it felt like gold.

Oh blimey it’s Cher again with her “Just Like Jesse James” video. On reflection, this is just Cher doing her version of Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead Or Alive” (indeed Jon Bon Jovi himself would come as close as dammit to covering his band’s own song for his almost identical solo hit “Blaze Of Glory” later in the year). This isn’t that surprising given that “Just Like Jesse James” was co-written by Desmond Childs who was responsible for the Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer”, “Bad Medicine” and “Born To Be My Baby”. By pure coincidence (or was it?), he also wrote “How Can We Be Lovers?” for Michael Bolton who will make his TOTP debut later in the show (gulp!).

This was Cher’s first hit of the 90s in the UK but she wouldn’t stop there. Oh no – she released 21 further singles over the course of the decade resulting in 16 Top 40 hits of which 6 went Top 10 and 3 were No 1s (if you include a charity single she featured on in “Love Can Build a Bridge”). Say what you like about her, she could spin a modicum of musical talent an awful long way.

After, Eric Clapton contributed guitar to Phil Collins current hit “I Wish It Would Rain Down” the other week, Phil returns the favour now by supplying the drums on Clapton’s new single “Bad Love”. Now this always sounded like Clapton had just re-written “Layla” to me and guess what? He had! Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Eric Clapton on "Bad Love": "Warner Bros wanted another 'Layla'. I thought, 'Well, if you sit down and write a song in a formatted way, it's not so hard. You think, 'What was 'Layla?' comprised of? A fiery intro modulated into the first verse & chorus with a riff around it" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 30, 2020

It really is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster of a record with the bridge part of it basically stolen from “Badge” by Cream which Clapton also wrote of course. Apparently that was the idea of one Mick Jones – no not the lead guitarist with The Clash but the one from AOR dinosaurs Foreigner (boo!). For all its calculated and knowing composition, I didn’t mind it – at least Clapton was just stealing from himself and wasn’t trying to jump on the latest bandwagon. An Italo House Clapton anyone?

“Bad Love” peaked at No 25.

Despite the proliferation of dance tunes that seemed to dominate the charts (and therefore TOTP as well) around this time, we’ve actually seen some undeniably indie bands feature on the show in recent weeks as well. We’ve had peroxide blonde Brummies Birdland and psychedelic doomsters The House Of Love on the same show previously and now we get one of the biggest names of all indiedom in The Wedding Present. Now my mate Robin had been well into this lot back in Poly but I hadn’t really got on board in the same way. I knew their single “Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now?” from a couple of years before which had just missed the Top 40 and also “Kennedy” their bona fide chart hit from ’89 and of course the iconic sleeve for their indie label debut album “George Best” but that was probably about it.

This single “Brassneck” was taken from their first major label album release “Bizarro” (albeit in a beefed up production form compared to the album version) and was a shot across the bows of the then prevalent mainstream chart music. Uncompromising is the word I would use and that can also certainly be applied to main man David Gedge’s performance of the song here. No cheeky grins and jumping about from the Gedge here. His look of disinterest is almost defiant. Apparently it wasn’t deliberately conceived but more rather grew organically. Here’s Dave himself with the story during an interview with https://gedgesongs.wordpress.com:

“I was just following an old tradition established by some of my heroes… those punk bands who didn’t take Top Of The Pops seriously and who took the mickey out of the whole ‘miming’ thing. I started doing it during the TV rehearsals, fully expecting a producer or director to tell me to stop messing about but no one did. So with each run-through it became a little more… extreme, ha, ha”.

Some 10 months or so on from this broadcast I was working at Our Price In Manchester and went out for a drink after work with some colleagues (possibly in the pre-IRA bomb version of Sinclair’s Oyster Bar or maybe the Old Wellington for the Manc pedants out there) and our table was joined by a woman who turned out to be one of Mark E Smith’s sisters. She turned to me and asked me to sing some Wedding Present songs as I was the spitting image of David Gedge! And it turned out I was back then…well sort of. She also told me that Gedge was a ‘sex god’ to use her phrase which immediately turned my complexion bright red. There’s a clip of The Wedding Present doing a cover of “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)” on TOTP where I swear it’s me up there doing the vocals. Obviously the middle aged me doesn’t look like him now of course (to be fair Gedge doesn’t look like Gedge anymore) but as a skinny 22 year old I could pass for him. In my 80s blog I revealed how I spent three years being called ‘Dan’ at Sunderland Poly due to my resemblance to the actor Dan Ackroyd so Dave Gedge was a step up! Sadly I look more like Sam Allardyce these days. Bah!

“Brassneck” peaked at No 24.

Talking of cover versions, here’s Rod Stewart doing his best to murder the Tom Waits track “Downtown Train”. Rod included his version on his 1989 “Best Of” album and it just sounds so sanitised compared to Tom’s original. Stewart somehow manages to purge all the earthiness from the song.

Not content with ruining one Waits composition he repeated the crime again two years later when he covered Tom Traubert’s Blues”. You know what, I do like some Rod Stewart stuff – “The Killing of Georgie (Part I and II)” for example is fabulous – but he’s also done a lot of crap and I get the impression that he’s not that nice a character either.

“Downtown Train” peaked at No 10 over here and No 3 in the US.

‘Sybil!!!!’ When the singer Sybil (full name Sybil Lynch) was in the charts I never made any connection (subconscious or other wise) with Basil Fawlty’s wife but every time I hear her name mentioned now I can’t get the Fawlty Towers character so superbly played by Prunella Scales out of my head!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onrhrq1k4yE

Sybil the singer’s cover of “Walk On By” peaked at No 6 but she would continue to release cover versions in her later career including treatments of Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day”, Al Greens’s “So Tired Of Being Alone” and Carole King’s “It’s Too Late”. None of them made the UK Top 40. Despite her reliance on other artists for the majority of her hits, she went on to work in education, at one point teaching lyric & songwriting composition and creative writing. Who said ‘I know nothing’?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65q1ZykHDE0

Stand well back! The career of Depeche Mode is about to rocket into the stratosphere! In March 1990, the band released their “Violator” album and their world was never the same again. It went triple platinum in the US selling 3 million copies and propelled the band into playing gigs in huge super size stadiums – an estimated 1.2 million fans across the planet saw the World Violation Tour. Such was the extent of Mode mania in the US that when the band held an in-store autograph signing at Wherehouse Entertainment in Los Angeles to promote the album, some 20,000 fans turned up with a near riot ensuing. Not that the band had been small fry by anyone’s description before then but this was next level stuff.

“Enjoy The Silence” was the second single to be taken from the album (following the excellent “Personal Jesus” ) and I’m going to say that it is perhaps the band’s most well respected and important of their career. It won Best British Single at the 1991 BRIT Awards and went Top 10 both in the US and here. Indeed, it was the first time the band had visited the UK Top 10 since “Master And Servant” six years previously. In a Q Magazine interview in 2008, Dave Gahan said of the track:

“It really made the album cross over into another cosmos. It had been a constant climb over the previous 10 years, but I don’t think we were prepared for what was about to come. The album was a worldwide success and suddenly these huge royalty checks started coming in and you were able to do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted – the velvet rope was always open.“

It really is an excellent song and the iconic video with its King Midas imagery (a man who has everything but just wants a quiet place to sit down) cements its reputation. Songwriter Martin Gore seemed to like songs that included the word ‘silence’ as much as Sybil liked cover versions – they had a 1982 hit song with “Leave in Silence” of course.

Oh bloody hell! It’s Michael Bolton! And you know what this means…my Michael Bolton story! OK, I’ve told this one before in my 80s TOTP blog when a certain Kenny G* featured on the show but here it is again. In 1993, I went to see Michael Bolton in concert! Oh God, even just typing the words out looks wrong! There are mitigating circumstances I swear!

I was working in Our Price at the time and was on a works’ night out that ended up at a nightclub where I was well and truly off my tits. A guy I worked with called Andy was also there. Andy loved his mainstream pop music and was quite a character. He named his car Jason after Jason Donovan and just about shoved me out of the way one day so he could get to serve Barbara Knox (Corrie’s Rita Fairclough) in the shop. He also loved Michael Bolton and asked me, whilst I was under the influence in the nightclub, if I would go with him to see the poodle haired one in concert in Sheffield. And I said yes. Now remember, I was blotto – that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Andy bought the tickets the next day before I could back out and so I found myself travelling to Sheffield a few weeks later to see Michael Bolton. I seem to have blacked out anything that I witnessed that evening from my memory but my impression is that Andy enjoyed it rather more than I did. Still, it’s a good story.

*And what has this to do with Kenny G? Well, Kenny was the support act. Yes, just when I though it couldn’t be any more of a surreal experience, it turned out that ‘the G man’ (as Bolton referred to him) was on the same bill!

For the purposes of factual acknowledgement, “How Am I Supposed To Live with Out You” was Bolton’s first (and biggest) UK hit peaking at No3. It was a US No 1 despite the fact that Laura Branigan (of “Gloria” fame) had already had a Top 20 hit with it in 1983.

The Stranglers‘ run of 80s chart hits had started to peter out by the middle of the decade and so to arrest that trend they used the old cover trick to beef up their profile by releasing a version of “All Day And All Of The Night” by The Kinks. It worked, returning them to the Top 10 in ’88 for the first time in five years.

Needing another fillip to start the new decade they repeated the exercise by releasing “96 Tears” which had been a US No 1 in 1966 for ? and the Mysterians. Nothing to do with Captain Scarlet (that was the Mysterions), they were a garage rock band from Michigan but you could be forgiven that “96 Tears” was a Stranglers original so easily does it fit their trademark sound. The distinctive organ riff that runs thorughout puts me in mind of those Oldham baggy stars Inspiral Carpets and guess what they also did a version of it…

Back to The Stranglers and their version would peak at No 17 and they would enjoy a brief renaissance in 1991 when their “Greatest Hits 1977–1990” collection album went all the way to No 4 in the album charts off the back of a successful TV ad campaign.

Sinéad O’Connor is still at No 1 with “Nothing Compares 2 U”. It’s the third of four weeks at the top spot and if the UK record buying audience hadn’t tired of it already, it seems the TOTP producers were starting to. We get just over two minutes of the song in this clip. The single sold three and a half million copies worldwide and was the second biggest selling single in the UK in 1990. That’s how you do a cover version Rod Stewart!

We close with “Steamy Windows” by Tina Turner. The third single from her “Foreign Affair” album, it peaked at No 13 in the UK.

The song was written by blues rock guitarist Tony Joe White who wrote “Polk Salad Annie” famously recorded by Elvis Presley. Tony was one of those artists that would get played during one of our specialist music mornings when when I worked for Our Price. You were only allowed to play music of a certain genre like easy listening, jazz or blues. Here’s his version of the track which I think I prefer to Tina’s histrionic take on it…

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDh-AATO9Ng

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Black Box	I Don’t Know Anybody Else	It helped win me a bottle of bubbly but I didn’t celebrate by buying the single – no
2	Cher	Just Like Jesse James	No – phew!
3	Eric Clapton	Bad Love	Nah
4	The Wedding Present	Brassneck	I may have looked like Gedge but I didn’t feel the need to buy his single
5	Rod Stewart	Downtown Train	God no
6	Sybil	Walk On By	No
7	Depeche Mode	Enjoy The Silence	It seems I did enjoy the silence as it’s not in my singles collection. WTF?
8	Michael Bolton	How Am I Supposed To Live Without You	Quite easily Michael…oh except I saw you in concert. Oh God the shame!
9	The Stranglers	96 Tears	It’s a no
10	Sinéad O’Connor	Nothing Compares 2 U	Don’t think so
11	Tina Turner	Steamy Windows	Nope

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000nwtc/top-of-the-pops-15021990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 18 APR 1991

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TOTP 04 APR 1991

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TOTP 03 JAN 1991

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TOTP 15 NOV 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 01 NOV 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 31 MAY 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 15 FEB 1990

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Some bedtime reading?