Blue Pearl

TOTP 09 JAN 1992

Posted on by 80stastic

Well, we’ve finally made it into 1992 and the first thing to say is that we’re not starting at the very beginning. No, we’ve missed a week because of the Adrian Rose issue so we start a week later on the 9th of January. In my prologue post for 1992 I was very negative about the prospects for the year but having checked the running order for this show, there’s some artists on that are distinctly removed from the mainstream’s usual suspects. None more so than the opening act tonight who are Iceland’s finest The Sugarcubes.

Now I have to be straight up about this with my cards firmly on the table and admit that I’m no fan of Björk – in fact I pretty much can’t stand her ‘singing’. All that straining and shrieking which I’m meant to find spellbinding but which actually just grates on me? No thanks. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate her record as an artist though. Her longevity alone deserves respect – 9 albums, 2 soundtrack albums, 39 singles just as a solo performer plus another 3 albums and 14 singles with The Sugarcubes. Then there’s her acting career, she’s written books of poetry and been involved in charitable endeavours such as the “Army Of Me: Remixes And Covers” project to raise funds for those affected by the Asian tsunami of 2004. Plus you couldn’t accuse her of standing still creatively. Starting with the punk of early band Spit And Snot, she moved through the avant garde indie rock of The Sugarcubes onto her solo career beginning with the dance beats of “Debut” then the experimental eclecticism of follow up “Post” through to the voice only recording of 2004 ‘s “Medúlla” and finally the folktronica of her most recent album “Utopia”. She’s a female version of David Bowie in terms of reinvention. I still can’t stand her voice though.

The only thing I really knew about The Sugarcubes in 1992 was their 1987 single “Birthday” which had been Melody Maker‘s single of the year. It had been far too out there for me though and I certainly hadn’t been tempted to find out more of their work via their first two albums “Life’s Too Good” and “Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week!”. The single “Hit” though found them at their most accessible (to me at least). The track has an almost funky back beat and the bridge into the chorus is actually quite melodic. Even Björk has toned down on her vocal stylings although I’m not sure about the Icelandic version of Bez in the cap in this performance nor his dodgy rapping skills. The album the single was taken from called “Stick Around For Joy” did reasonable business peaking at No 16 in the UK charts but the band broke up at the end of the year despite massive exposure from supporting U2 during the US leg of their Zoo TV Tour in October and November playing to a total of 700,000 people.

By the way, tonights hosts are Mark Franklin and Claudia Simon and its the latter who describes the next song as a “seriously hard dance tune that makes you want to get up and dance”. Ooh! Who could it possibly be?! Well, it’s an ensemble that went by the name of Isotonik. Now back in the early 90s, the only use of the word ‘isotonic’ had come from the lips of John Barnes in his infamous Lucozade advert – “it gets to your thirst…fast” and all that….

…until this lot turned up. Who were they? According to Mark Franklin, they were formed by one Chris Paul who was an ex copper turned DJ / producer who also dabbled in nightclub promotion – he was behind the Orange Raves brand operating out of London. Using his entrepreneurial nous, he used this TOTP appearance for a bit of free advertising (the BBC didn’t notice/care apparently) by having his mate dress up as an orange and jig along on stage with the rest of the dancers in front of an Orange Rave logo backdrop. I have to say that:

a) The costume comes across more like a tomato than an orange under the studio lights

b) It looks absolutely shit.

As for their track “Different Strokes”, it seemed too be a mash up of a load of samples (I know not which ones and I care even less) and there’s a definite flavour of 808 State and “Charly” era The Prodigy that’s been half inched and added into the mixer. Just horrible.

“Different Strokes” peaked at No 12.

We’re onto our first video of the night and it’s “Too Blind To See It” by Kym Sims. Claudia Simon gives her album a plug in the intro to it by saying “if it’s anything like her single, it’s gonna be BIG!”. So was it? Big I mean. I remember the cover to it and we certainly stocked it in the Our Price I was working in but how well did it actually sell? Hmm. Well, according to he officialcharts.com database, it spent just two weeks in the UK charts peaking at No 39 before dropping to No 50 and then slipping out altogether. I think you could find a number of words to describe its commercial track record then but ‘BIG’ would not be one of them.

Kim did have a further two hits released from her eponymous and only album but that didn’t inspire a rejuvenation of its sales and she would not trouble the chart compilers ever again despite continuing to work within the music industry, writing for both herself and other artists. Having said all that, there does seem to be a lot of love out there online for the track “Too Blind To See It” being variously described as ‘a tune’ and ‘an absolute banger’. Indeed.

Blimey! First The Sugarcubes and now Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine! TOTP was really starting the new year with an indie bang! To paraphrase Chris Tarrant from his Tiswas days, this is what the kids wanted! Having broken through the chart barrier that prohibited Grebo rock from infecting the youth of the day in 1991 with not one but two hit singles in “Sheriff Fatman” and “After the Watershed (Early Learning the Hard Way)”, Jim Bob and Fruitbat strode confidently into 1992 with some right old “Rubbish”. Or was it “R.U.B.B.I.S.H” as I’ve seen it alternatively spelt online. Either way, it was more of the same from the duo but although it undoubtedly kicked the rest of the charts squarely in the Schofields, it did sound a bit “Sheriff Fatman”-lite to me. Fair play though to them for getting Mother’s Pride bread into the lyrics a good decade before dreadful boy band Blue managed the same feat in their hit “One Love”.

The performance here seems to channel a Mad Max post apocalyptic industrial world setting with Jim Bob spending most of his time on the roof of a battered old car. Oh and that bandage on his arm? Here’s the man himself with the story behind it:

As you do. 1992 was the peak of Carter’s commercial powers and saw them score a No 1 album (no really) with “1992 – The Love Album”. “Rubbish” itself though was a stand alone single although it did get added as a bonus track to a 2011 re-release of “101 Damnations”.

Incidentally, they recorded a version of tonight’s opening song, “Hit” by The Sugarcubes, as the B-side to their 1993 single “Lean on Me I Won’t Fall Over”. I love it when a post comes together all by itself.

I think they’ve moved the Breakers section to its more traditional spot of being in the middle of the show. It seemed to be positioned just before the No 1 in recent weeks which seemed odd. Mark Franklin does the intro for it and during it, a weird thing occurs. He name checks all the acts featured in the Breakers except for one which he refers to instead as just “another great song”. Did he just forget who was on or was it some sort of indirect slur?

Anyway, the first Breaker (Franklin did name them) is The Stone Roses who despite it now being 1992 are still releasing singles from their debut album that came out in May 1989! What was going on?! Well, the band was still in a state of transition. Having removed themselves from their restrictive Silvertone recording contract and signed with US big hitters Geffen, they’d also just sacked their manager, the colourful character that was Gareth Evans. Their was precious little new music being laid down though. They mostly seemed to be following Manchester United around the country or hanging out in the bars of Chorlton shooting the breeze.

With no new material forthcoming, I’m guessing Silvertone saw a window of opportunity to make the most of the tracks they had licenced to them and put out just about every song from the first album as a single. The latest track to receive this treatment was “Waterfall”, no doubt a great song (I especially liked the line ‘so good to have equalised’) but surely we all knew it by then. Even so the band still had a loyal enough fan base to send it to No 27.

Next the one act that Franklin didn’t mention in his intro and it’s Kiss. Why the omission? Did he have beef with the US rockers? It seems unlikely. Anyway, Kiss hadn’t featured in the UK Top 40 since 1987 brought us “Reason To Live” and more memorably “Crazy Crazy Nights” but they were back via the trusted method of having a song featured in a hit film. That film was of course Bill And Ted’s Bogus Journey for which Kiss had recorded a version of Argent’s 1973 hit “God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You”. It wasn’t a straight cover though as they rewrote the lyrics in the verses to pay tribute to their drummer since 1982 Eric Carr who appears on the track but who died of cancer in 1991 aged 42. The rewrite also caused them to retitle the song “God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You II”. Carr was too ill to play drums on the track but he sings on the a capella break before the song’s finale. He also appears in the video wearing a wig as his chemotherapy treatment had caused him to lose his hair.

I don’t think I knew that it wasn’t a Kiss original at the time but I did always have a soft spot for it. I wasn’t the only one as my work colleague Justin also did specifically that a capella bit. The song’s appeal stretched beyond Justin and I though – enough people bought it to send it all the way to No 4. I liked the film as well. Stupid as mud but good fun all the same and the song works well positioned over the ending.

Yay! Another nice bit of serendipity! After the Carter USM / The Sugarcubes connection comes another link in between two artists on the same show. We saw Kym Sims earlier and I noted that after her brief fame as a chart star she ended up writing for other artists. Well, one of those was Ce Ce Peniston who is the next Breaker with “We Got A Love Thang”. No that isn’t a mistake. Ce Ce really did gave hits that weren’t “Finally”. It’s just that it felt like that was her only song. To be fair to those of us who felt like this, we could be forgiven when you consider that the release before “We Got A Love Thang” was “Finally” and the one after it was… yep…”Finally” albeit the 1992 remix. The original release in October ‘91 peaked at No 26 whilst the remix went all the way to No 2. In between came “We Got A Love Thang” and it also did the business chart wise peaking at No 6. For me though, it didn’t have any of the hooks and charm of its predecessor (and successor) and I always found it quite bland.

The final Breaker comes from The Prodigy. After being the main protagonists in initiating a brief musical sub genre of rave tunes which sampled children’s programming with their debut hit “Charly”, the pressure was on to come up with a more credible follow up. They did it and then some with “Everybody In The Place”. An instant rave classic, it would go all the way to No 2. It would be included on their debut album “Experience” which we sold loads of in Manchester (I guess due to the massive club scene there) but which I am surprised to learn didn’t even make the Top 10, peaking outside of it at No 12. It did eventually go platinum for sales of 300,000 mind. Even though “Everybody In The Place” consolidated the band’s initial success, I don’t think many of us could have foreseen the impact The Prodigy would have over the whole of the 90s nor their legacy beyond that.

Next a track that is so wicked that it will melt your boots according to presenter Claudia Simon. Who could she possibly be talking about? It turns out she’s waxing lyrical about Blue Pearl. Yes, that Blue Pearl who scored a huge hit back in 1990 with “Naked in The Rain”. So, hands up all those who thought that this lot were a one hit wonder?

*blogger raises his hand*

Well, we were all wrong for they actually had four Top 40 singles (although two of them were both “Naked in The Rain”). This one, “(Can You) Feel the Passion” – no brackets, no points – peaked at No 14 but wasn’t include on there only album called “Naked”. If it sounds familiar, that’s probably because it features samples from Bizarre Inc’s “Playing with Knives.” The spoken word delivery from singer Durga McBroom (not a character from the The Worst Witch but her actual name) does make it out stand out rather but clearly not enough to commit it to my memory first time around.

As with Carter USM before them, the staging of the performance has a Mad Max feel to it with those industrial looking drums being struck by some rather sinister looking guys with intimidating black stripes across their eyes making them look like Adam Ant’s evil twin brothers. Durga would go onto tour with Pink Floyd providing backing vocals for “The Great Gig In The Sky” thereby proving that she could also sing as well as speak.

Senseless Things (no ‘The’ for you pedants out there) were probably a band I should have got more into. Pedalling an energetic brand of punk pop and with a name pinched from a Shakespearean phrase, I could have gone big for this lot. Somehow I didn’t and now my main memory of them is that they were signed to Epic, a subsidiary of Sony – damn all those boxes of albums that I opened during my Our Price years and their delivery notes that I perused!

“Easy To Smile” was the first of two Top 20 hits that they achieved in 1992. Listening back to them now, what strikes about them is that they sound very American, like a US Green Day even. Though they never amounted to that much hit wise (they never troubled the Top 40 after 1992), they would demonstrate their musical chops in their careers after the band broke up in 1995. Lead singer Mark Keds (sadly now deceased) became a member of The Wildhearts and also has a co-writer credit on The Libertines’ 2004 hit “Can’t Stand Me Now”, which took a line from the 1998 single “Hey! Kitten” of one of his post Senseless Things bands called Jolt. Rhythm guitarist Ben Harding went on to join charting band 3 Colours Red whilst Morgan Nicholls performed with Muse, Gorillaz, The Streets and Lily Allen. Talking of Gorillaz, one other thing I recall about Senseless Things was the amazing artwork on their album covers and which is seen in the backdrop to their TOTP performance. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the lowdown on it:

“Easy To Smile” peaked at No 18.

Due to the Adrian Rose effect, missed episodes and me not bothering to review the 1991 Xmas TOTP, I think this is the first of my posts that includes Queen at No 1 with “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Re-released off the back of Freddie Mercury’s death on 24 November, its ascent to the top of the charts and 5 week stay there not only secured it the Xmas No 1 spot but also meant that it became the only song to hold that accolade twice by the same artist.

Unlike its initial release in 1975 though, the 1991 version was a double A side which saw “Bohemian Rhapsody” paired with “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”, the fifth and final track to be taken from the “Innuendo” album. I guess I can understand that the fans wanted something to mark the passing of their idol, something to hang on to and what better choice than their best known and most successful song ever? Or was it pure, cynical greed by EMI to cash in on a tragic event and while they were at it, they added a song from the latest (and now last) album to try and flog that as well? A bit of both maybe.

I think at this time, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was one of those songs that I’d heard so many times that it had become unlistenable. I may still be at that stage now. As for “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”, it sounded like very untypical Queen fare to me, a lilting ballad whose title sat perfectly as a goodbye to Freddie. I suppose similar claims of appropriateness could have been made for “Who Wants To Live Forever” and “The Show Must Go On” but I think the chosen track was the most respectful. Interesting that the TOTP producers chose to show the full 6 minute video of “Bohemian Rhapsody” – was that really necessary?

Order of appearanceArtist TitleDid I buy it?
1The SugarcubesHitNo – that voice…
2IsotonikDifferent StrokesHell no
3Kym SimsToo Blind To See ItNah
4Carter The Unstoppable Sex MachineRubbishI did not
5The Stone RosesWaterfallNo but I have the album though don’t we all?
6KissGod Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You IIGuilty pleasure but didn’t buy it
7Ce Ce Peniston We Got A Love ThangNo we don’t
8The ProdigyEverybody In The PlaceNope
9Blue Pearl(Can You) Feel the PassionNo
10Senseless ThingsEasy To SmileShould have but didn’t
11Queen Bohemian Rhapsody / These Are The Days Of Our LivesNah

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/m001349m/top-of-the-pops-09011992

TOTP 09 AUG 1990

Posted on by 80stastic

It’s the height of Summer in 1990 here at TOTP Rewind so that can only mean one thing – nasty, tacky novelty records! Previous years had seen the charts flooded with some of the most brainless musical ditties ever committed to vinyl from the likes of Black Lace (“Agadoo”), The Tweets (“The Birdie Song”) and Spitting Image (“The Chicken Song”). Surely this sort of thing wouldn’t continue into the new decade? Oh yes it would (sorry went a bit pantomime there although that might actually be appropriate). I’ve been dreading this moment ever since I started posting about 1990. I knew it was there, waiting in the wings ready to ambush the nation – a heinous, wicked entity. Shield your eyes as we have arrived at the time of Bombalurina and “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini“!

In 1990, was there a more annoying choice to front a horrible novelty record than the guy who actually did? Timmy Mallett was known to most of us as that berk with the giant, pink foam mallet from children’s morning TV programme Wacaday and he was the most irritating twat that TV had seen for years. Everything about him was vexatious from his ‘bleugh!’ catchphrase to his boundless energy for leaping about on screen. And now here he was with stinking out the pop charts! Whose f*****g idea was this? Well, it was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s actually. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Unbelievably, the Bombalurina project (named after a character from his musical Cats) wasn’t even the biggest crime on Lloyd Webber’s charge sheet. Twenty five years later he would outdo himself by flying into the country from abroad on his personal plane to vote in the House of Lords over proposed cuts to tax credits – he voted with the Government in favour of the plan. Wanker.

Back to Mallett though who was clearly having the time of his life playing at this pop star lark. In a Rick from The Young Ones moment he declared to Smash Hits magazine that:

“I’m going to be the most utterly, utterly famous pop star ever”

And yet, unimaginable as it may seem, Mallett did have a more credible music background than the utter embarrassment that Bombalurina was. I clearly recall him as a presenter on the Oxford Road Show pop music magazine show back in the mid 80s. Here he is trying to interview the ever evasive Terry Hall…

OK, he was fairly useless and unconvincing but still. Fast forward five years and all credibility has been flushed down the khazi – the performance here is like the pantomime from Hell. Excruciating doesn’t come anywhere near describing the horror on view. It sounded horrendous back in 1990 and yet, in an occurrence that seems to be against all auditory science, it sounds even worse today. I wonder if any of the ‘proper’ pop stars that he interviewed on Oxford Road Show caught this performance and thought to themselves “Yeah, not surprised. I always knew he was an arsehole”.

Mallett will be at No 1 soon enough. FFS!

Some proper music next…or is it? “Tom’s Diner” by DNA and Suzanne Vega sounded otherworldly to me back then and still unsettles me now. The lolloping Soul II Soul backbeat that Bath duo DNA added to the original a cappella song that Vega recorded for her 1997 album “Solitude Standing” sparked a mass of covers and re-interpretations of the song. So many were there that Vega’s record label compiled some on an album simply called “Tom’s Album” including a live version from Michael Stipe with Billy Bragg beatboxing and incorprating Madness’s “Baggy Trousers” and EMF’s “Unbelievable” into the mix…

More recently, Giorgio Moroder recorded a version of it for his 2015 album “Déjà Vu” featuring Britney Spears on vocal duties…

Back in 1990 though and DNA’s treatment of the track struck a massive chord with music fans who sent it to No 2 in the UK and No 5 in the US. The single’s B-side was Vega’s a cappella original – I wonder how many people who bought it actually listened to that version though? Someone who really did listen to it was one Karlheinz Brandenburg, a German electrical engineer, who developed the widespread MP3 method for audio data compression. Brandenburg used “Tom’s Diner” (the a cappella version) as a template for refining the sound quality of MP3 audio, a tale which has earned Vega the informal title “The Mother of the MP3”.

Not “Naked In The Rain” again? Is this the third time Blue Pearl have been on the show? I’ve covered all the Pink Floyd connections, the fact that legendary producer Youth was behind the project and the implausibility of singer Durga McBroom’s name – what else is there left to say? Well, apparently Durga’s favourite ever album is “Court And Spark” by Joni Mitchell. There – that’s it. That’s the comment. I’ve got nothing else.

Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 were still in the Top 40 with “Mona” when their next single “Amanda” followed it into the charts. They were on a roll! I always thought this was a passable attempt at a soft rock ballad although you could argue that the world already had quite enough of that sort of thing courtesy of American rockers Boston. So who was the titular Amanda? Why, it was a girl called Rachel of course! Eh? Well, Rachel was actress Rachel Friend who McLachlan had met on the set of Aussie soap Neighbours when she played a character called Bronwyn Davies. Rachel? Bronwyn? Where the Hell does Amanda fit into all this?! Easy really – Amanda is Rachel Friend’s middle name and her and Craig were married in 1993. They were divorced in 1994. Ah. The break up shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise to the two of them though – they wrote a song together for the debut Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 album called “Can’t Take It Any Longer”. Ahem.

By the way, Check 1-2 is a terrible name for a band isn’t it? Well, originally they were called The Y Frontz so I guess it was an upgrade on that. In 1996, in another act of predicting the future via song title, Craig released an album called “Craig McLachlan & The Culprits”. This was unfortunate as in 2018, he faced sexual harassment allegations from several actresses during his performing career. Craig was however acquitted of all charges in 2020.

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

Three Breakers next and for once, they are all from some very established artists. Roxette were riding the crest of their commercial wave having just scored a huge global hit with “It Must Have Been Love”. As that single had come from the soundtrack to Pretty Woman and the band were in between albums, EMI needed to revisit their back catalogue to unearth a follow up. “Listen To Your Heart” had been originally released back in October of 1989 from the”Look Sharp” album and although it had been a No 1 song in the US, it had failed to dent the Top 40 over here. Indeed, both it and “Dressed For Success” had failed to capitalise on the success of their UK breakthrough hit “The Look”. With Pretty Woman pulling in the crowds at the box office though and “It Must Have Been Love” receiving massive airplay, “Listen To Your Heart” couldn’t fail this time.

Much more of a traditional soft rock ballad than their previous more poppy output, the change of direction was entirely deliberate. In the liner notes of their 1995 greatest hits compilation “Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus!”, Per Gessle described the song as:

“This is us trying to recreate that overblown American FM-rock sound to the point where it almost becomes absurd. We really wanted to see how far we could take it.”

They absolutely nailed that sound (absurd or not) – you could easily imagine that when listening to “Listen To Your Heart” you were actually listening to…erm…Heart. Following Elton John’s “Sacrifice / Healing Hands” lead, the single was actually a double A-side with the other track being something called ‘”Dangerous”. I have no idea how that one went though as daytime radio hammered the crap out of “Listen To Your Heart” and totally ignored ‘”Dangerous”.

The re-release of “Listen To Your Heart” peaked at No 6 in the UK.

Now then, I said these Breakers were all from established artists and they are but this second one is actually the debut single from the act in question. How so? Well, it’s a Jon Bon Jovi solo single of course. “Blaze Of Glory” was the title of both the lead single and parent album that included songs from and inspired by the movie Young Guns II. With Bon Jovi (the band) on hiatus after touring the world twice to promote the “Slippery When Wet” and “New Jersey” albums and with no firm plans for further recordings at that time, Jon was open to other projects. Star of Young Guns II Emilio Estevez had approached him about using Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead Or Alive” song for the film’s soundtrack. You can see why – its cowboys theme title a seemingly perfect fit for the second instalment of the Young Guns story that was breathing new life into the Western film genre. However, Jon didn’t think the track’s lyrics were fit for that type of usage – the cowboy stuff was all a metaphor to describe the life on the road of a touring rock band (‘steel horse’ = tour bus, geddit?). Instead he wrote Estevez and the film’s screenwriter John Fusco a brand new song. I say ‘brand new’ but I actually mean ripped off / just re-wrote “Wanted Dead Or Alive”. It’s basically the same song for heaven’s sake! And that was fine by me. Bon Jovi had been a guilty pleasure of mine for a few years by this point and “Blaze Of Glory” fitted in perfectly with their previous catalogue.

The video is absolutely epic with Bon Jovi strutting around atop thousand-foot cliffs outside Moab, Utah. I always liked the way he threw his guitar around when he was really going for it in the chorus. See Jason Donovan, if you’re going to wander about of cliff tops with a guitar, this is how you do it and not as you did with your shallow attempt in the “Too Many Broken Hearts” promo.

As for the film itself, Young Guns II never really lived up to the appeal of its predecessor for me. The new characters just weren’t that likeable whilst Alan Ruck’s Hendry William French seemed completely pointless. Without that same sense of camaraderie that was a feature of Young Guns, it just didn’t work for me. Whilst watching the first film as a student in Sunderland, somebody in the audience actually stood up and shouted “Charlie!” when Charlie Sheen’s character got shot.

“Blaze Of Glory” peaked at No 13 in the UK and was a No 1 in the US.

Definitely an established artist was Sting although he hadn’t had a Top 40 single since “Russians” in late 1985. His second solo album, 1987’s “…Nothing Like the Sun”, had though been a platinum selling No 1 record but none of the singles from it had been hits. One of those was “Englishman in New York” which had stalled at No 51 on its original release. Fast forward to 1990 and for some reason, Sting’s record label A&M allowed Dutch DJ and producer Ben Liebrand to remix the track and it finally became a chart hit peaking at No 15. I’m not sure what the reasoning behind this decision was other than to raise Sting’s profile ahead of the release of his third solo album, “The Soul Cages”, which hit the shops six months on from this.

I’m not entirely convinced that the 1990 remix is that different from the 1987 original to be honest but its an intriguing tune all the same. Famously written about eccentric and gay icon Quentin Crisp who features in the video, it’s possibly one of Sting’s most well known solo efforts I would suggest and even inspired this 1993 version by reggae singer Shinehead.

Enough with all these old fogeys though, what the kids wanted back in the Summer of 1990 was….a load of bleeps set to a heavy bass sound? WTF? Yes, for all 1990 is remembered for ‘Madchester’ and the baggy movement, there was also a significant invasion of the Top 40 by a genre called ‘Bleep ‘n’ Bass’ – or was it ‘Electro Bleep’? Look, I don’t know; it wasn’t my bag at all but I do know that there was a dance compilation series called ‘Breaks, Bass & Bleeps’ that showcased this sort of thing. And just as ‘Madchester’ had its holy trinity of The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets so ‘Bleep ‘n’ Bass’ had its trio of chart stars in LFO, Together (more of whom later) and this lot, Tricky Disco. Behind the name were husband and wife duo Michael Wells and Lee Newman who used a plethora of aliases to release their music the idea behind which was that the press would not write about so much material all coming from the same act but they would review releases by supposedly distinct artists with completely different names. Some of their other identities included GTO, John + Julie, Church of Extacy, Signs of Chaos, Salami Brothers, Killout Squad and Technohead the last of whom gave them their biggest ever hit with 1996’s “I Wanna Be a Hippy”.

To me though, the bleeps in “Tricky Disco” sounded like my Binatone video game from when I was about 11 and I couldn’t be doing with it. What? Binatone? It was a huge clunky piece of hardware that, when plugged into your TV, allowed you a choice of 10 game including football, hockey, tennis and something infuriating called gridball.

This was what passed for hi spec computer game graphics in the 70s kids

However, they were all based around very limited graphic capability so pretty much all you got on screen was a paddle and a dot for a ball…and I loved it…for a while but eventually all the fuss around setting it up on the TV (there were no separate monitors back in the 70s) kind of squeezed all the excitement out of it.

Anyway, the sound of the paddles continually hitting the dot ball back and forth was just like the bleep noises on “Tricky Disco” and the like and that wasn’t music to me. Sorry.

This was though! By my reckoning, this is the third time that “I’m Free” by The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid has been on the show but the first time we have seen the video. The promo is basically a straight band performance but set against spiralling, fluorescent psychedelic colours and was directed by someone called Matthew Amos who went onto work with artists as diverse as Blur, Elton John and erm…Slipknot.

It reminds me of the old 60s sci-fi series Time Tunnel or when late night Channel 4 magazine show The Word had live bands on. Look, like Stereo MC’s here…

So after Blue Pearl and The Soup Dragons earlier in the show, here’s yet another track which has been on TOTP multiple times now. I think this might be the fourth occasion for MC Hammer and “U Can’t Touch This” but to enable these repeat performances to be squeezed onto the show, their air time has been vastly reduced. The Soup Dragons got about 1minute 20 seconds on screen whilst MC Hammer came in at 1:10!

Such is the legacy of “U Can’t Touch This” that it has been parodied time and time again. The obvious suspects like lampooner-in-chief Weird Al Yankovic have gone there but it has also been sent up by NFL American football team the Miami Dolphins, in an episode of Family Guy and to promote social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Oh and this one as well…

We’ll be seeing more of MC Hammer before 1990 is done with I’m sure.

Finally a song we haven’t seen/heard before! Well, sort of. “I Can See Clearly Now” was well known to music fans from the Johnny Nash original which hit No 5 in 1972 but it was reactivated here by Irish rockers Hothouse Flowers. The second (and most successful) single to be taken from their album “Home”, was its release just and open and shut case of needing a cover version to secure them a hit? Possibly. Lead single from the album “Give It Up” had peaked at a lowly No 30 so it could have just been a cynical record company move. I have to say that they did a nice job of it, injecting some gospel vibes and before letting it rock out in the song’s finale. However, if they were hoping to break the Top 10 with it, they were to be disappointed as it struggled to No 23. A third and final single taken from the album called “Movies'” didn’t even make the Top 40 and we would not see the band for another three years when they returned with the “Songs From The Rain” album.

In November 2016, their version of the song was featured in the premiere episode of the Amazon Prime Video motoring show The Grand Tour which was the new (ahem) vehicle for massive bell end Jeremy Clarkson after he had been sacked by the BBC from his previous show Top Gear. The exposure for the song sent it to No 1 on the iTunes’s Top 40 UK Rock Song chart in late 2016.

It’s the third of four weeks at the top for Partners In Kryme with “Turtle Power“. So popular were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that they actually went on tour! A proper concert tour playing live gigs! The Coming Out of Their Shells tour premiered at Radio City Music Hall in August of 1990 and featured live-action turtles playing music as a band. In case you were wondering, this was the line up:

  • Michelangelo – guitar
  • Leonardo – bass guitar
  • Donatello – keyboards
  • Raphael – drums and saxophone

Like I said, a proper band! Never mind the story of The Monkees starting out as a fictional band and becoming real pop stars, this was next level stuff! To be fair, The Banana Splits had kind of beaten them to it with the performing as a band schtick by a good 20 years but I’m not sure if they ever went on tour! What I am sure about is that their tune was infinitely more funky than the one those turtles were playing…

That’s all my turtle trivia for another week. Spare a thought for me though as I’ve got another week of this nonsense to have to comment on!

So back to that bleeping ‘Bleep ‘n’ Bass’ stuff for the play out video which is the aforementioned Together with “Hardcore Uproar”. I have no recollection of this at all, so much so that I assumed that the name of the act was Hardcore Uproar and the song was called “Together” when I came to review it. I think I was getting confused with Stockport based indie imps Northern Uproar on reflection. Together on the other hand were a pair of Hacienda regulars whose white label recording of “Hardcore Uproar” was so popular that hit qualified for an official release and climbed to No 12 in the charts. Supposedly the tracks title was the inspiration for a series of compilations featuring house, techno and rave tunes released on the Dino Entertainment label. I do remember that compilation series from my time in Our Price if not the band Together.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8GhXrT2qPE
Order of appearanceArtistSongDid I Buy it?
1BombalurinaItsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot BikiniHow does f**k off sound as an answer?
2Suzanne Vega featuring DNATom’s DinerNo but my wife had the original version of the song on Suzanne’s Solitude Standing album
3Blue PearlNaked In The RainIt’s a no
4Craig McLachlan and Check 1-2AmandaNope
5RoxetteListen To Your HeartI did and it said don’t buy this record
6Jon Bon JoviBlaze Of GloryNo but it’s probably on my Bon Jovi collection CD
7StingEnglishman In New YorkNo
8Tricky DiscoTricky DiscoTricky Disc-NO
9The Soup Dragons featuring Junior ReidI’m FreeThought I did but singles box says no. I did however by the follow up single Mother Universe
10MC HammerU Can’t Touch ThisAnd I didn’t – no
11Hothouse FlowersI Can See Clearly NowBut I couldn’t see my way clear to buying this  – no
12Partners In KrymeTurtle PowerThis as a crime…against music. No
13TogetherHardcore UproarHarcore! You know the score! Erm…no

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rxpk/top-of-the-pops-09081990

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 26 JUL 1990

Posted on by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well quite.

“I’m Free” peaked at No 5.

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

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

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

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

New Edition – the most amicable band break up ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Knocked Out” peaked at No 21.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“LFO” peaked at No 12.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLwLB47jpFc
Order of appearanceArtistSongDid I Buy it?
1Blue PearlNaked In The RainIt’s a no
2Technotronic featuring Ya Kid KRockin’ Over The BeatThis beat is…shit. No
3Suzanne Vega featuring DNATom’s DinerNo but my wife had the original version of the song on Suzanne’s Solitude Standing album
4The Soup Dragons featuring Junior ReidI’m FreeThought I did but singles box says no. I did however by the follow up single Mother Universe
5Bell Biv DevoePoisonNope
6Sinead O’ConnorThe Emperor’s New ClothesNah
7BananaramaOnly Your LoveNo
8Paula AbdulKnocked OutNegative
9MC HammerU Can’t Touch ThisAnd I didn’t – no
10River City PeopleCalifornia Dreamin’ / Carry The BlameNope
11Partners In KrymeTurtle PowerThis as a crime…against music. No
12LFOLFOLF…NO

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

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

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 12 JUL 1990

Posted on by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Glenn Medeiros
  • Not Me
  • Glenn Medeiros

Wow! I bet his therapy bills were big!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqAkeiawP0
Order of appearanceArtistSongDid I Buy it?
1GunShame On YouI did! No shame on me though – great song!
2River City PeopleCalifornia Dreamin’ / Carry The BlameNope
3Blue PearlNaked In The RainIt’s a no
4Glenn Medeiros and Bobby BrownShe Ain’t Worth ItAnd neither was this song
5ThunderGimme Some Lovin’Nah
6The Soup Dragons featuring Junior ReidI’m FreeThought I did but singles box says no. I did however by the follow up single Mother Universe
7The Stone RosesOne LoveNo love from me for this one
8Elton JohnSacrifice /Healing HandsNot knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
9Technotronic featuring Ya Kid KRockin’ Over The BeatThis beat is…shit. No

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

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

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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