E-Motion

TOTP 25 OCT 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

Three days before this TOTP aired, I travelled the short distance from Manchester to Bolton to see my beloved Chelsea play. They’d been drawn away to Bolton in the League Cup and my Wanderers supporting mate Steve invited me to go with him and his mates to watch the game. Predictably, we lost 2-1 after taking the lead and my hopes of seeing my team finally win a trophy were dealt a severe blow. This was supposed to be the new, exciting Chelsea of Ruud ‘sexy football’ Gullitt, Gianluca Vialli and Roberto Di Matteo and yet we got turned over by rather less glamorous opponents. In short, to paraphrase a football saying, we couldn’t do it away on a cold Tuesday night at Bolton. I returned home a very disappointed man. But at least I returned home. Chelsea vice-chairman Matthew Harding had also been at the game and would lose his life in a helicopter crash on the way back to London. Harding had contributed huge amounts of money to the club helping to finance those exotic signings and also the redevelopment of the Chelsea ground. He also had a great relationship with the fans socialising with them at the games and in the pub. He was one of them rather than a faceless director. He also contributed £1 million to the Labour Party and the helicopter that went down had often been used by Tony Blair as leader of the party and prior to him becoming Prime Minister. In a parallel universe, the future of the whole country might have been different rather than just Chelsea Football Club’s. My wish to see my blue boys finally win something came true just six months later as they won the FA Cup at Wembley. Matthew Harding never lived to see that moment.

After a very sombre opening to this post, let’s get back to the music and hope for some uplifting tunes. Our hosts are Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley and we start with a bang via a cracking song from Suede. The second single from their No 1 album “Coming Up”, “Beautiful Ones”, for me, even surpassed previous hit “Trash” in terms of immediacy and…well…sparkle. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised as supposedly it was written by guitarist Richard Oakes purposely to be a chart success and was originally called “Dead Leg” after bass player Matt Osman threatened to give Oakes a dead leg if he couldn’t come up with a Top 10 hit. Presumably that particular punishment was not dispensed as the single peaked at No 8.

The performance here is a curious one. Keyboard player Neil Codling is out front for some reason, thumbs in his pockets, occasionally leaning into his mike to mouth a few lyrics. Why wasn’t he behind a synth or something as per usual? Weren’t there any keyboard parts in this track? Was he auditioning for Brett Anderson’s position in the band? As it turned out, Codling would actually take on a lot more of the vocals duties along with an increased input into song writing later in his Suede career. He left the band in 2001 due to chronic fatigue syndrome though he would return when they reconvened in 2010.

The lyric in “Beautiful Ones” about ‘your babies going crazy’ always puts me in mind of this scene from Swingers which was released in America a week before this TOTP was broadcast. “How long till you call your babies?”…

Next, we’re straight into one of the biggest dance tunes of the year, nay the decade…how about ever?! Steve Lamacq rather undermines my ardour by just referring to it as a “really cool track” but “Insomnia” by Faithless is surely more than that. A regular in all those ‘top club tunes’ polls by the likes of MTV Dance and Mixmag, it remains a timeless classic. Indeed, I have a friend in her late 70s and she loves Faithless!

Comprising of Maxi Jazz, Jamie Catto, Sister Bliss and Rollo (yes, Dido’s brother), they’d had two minor hit singles in 1995 with “Salva Ames (Save Me)” and the initial release of “Faithless” which had only made No 27 in the December as it got lost in the Christmas rush. March of 1996 saw another attempt on the charts but “Don’t Leave” could only make one week inside the Top 40 at No 34. Come the Autumn though, “Faithless” was rereleased and this time, it crashed into the charts at No 3 and easily topped the Dance Chart. Its subject matter struck a chord with clubbers who had trouble nodding off after a substance filled night of raving (or whatever it is clubbers did back then). The original album version is nine minutes long but it was edited down to three and a half for radio with the memorable keyboard riff being intended to sound like Underworld. Perhaps unusually for an album by a dance act, their album “Reverence” would go on to sell 300,000 copies in the UK and achieve platinum status and yet weirdly would get no higher in the charts than No 26. Where’s the justice in that? And I thought God was a DJ.

“You’re Gorgeous” by Babybird is up to No 6 on its way to a peak of No 3 which means a reshowing of their studio performance from the other week is required. I recall that when this came on the shop stereo in the Our Price in Stockport where I was working one busy Saturday afternoon, it happens to coincide with a group of ‘lads’ entering the shop and deciding to sing along at the top of their voices very badly. Saturdays were stressful enough in a record shop as it was and I could have done without this as well. I approached the group and asked them to pack it in but this only served to make them sing louder whilst eating their Greggs pasties and dripping flakes of pastry all over the floor (which was another bugbear of mine). Tossers.

Given the song’s much misunderstood subject matter, another thing that springs to mind when I hear “You’re Gorgeous” is another even more unpleasant memory, that of a particularly harrowing episode of the crime drama Prime Suspect the plot of which revolved around a pornographer who murdered a young girl after convincing her that he was a fashion photographer. Bloody hell! Death, murder…this post is bloody miserable so far! Please let there be some joyful tunes coming up to lighten the mood…

Hmm. Future Sound Of London wasn’t really what I had in mind. Experimental, ambient soundscapes are all very well but I need something to cheer me up and “My Kingdom” just isn’t doing it for me. I mean, it’s an interesting sound I guess and the accompanying video was probably cutting edge at the time with its morphing graphics but it’s kind of leaving me cold when I need something to give me a nice warm, fuzzy feeling that tells me everything is going to be OK – there must be a huge demand for such music whatever form it might take given the current state of the world.

You have to hand it to those Future Sound Of London boys though – they were ahead of their time. The album this track was taken from (“Dead Cities”) was promoted by a tour called ‘the f**k rock ‘n’ roll tour’ that allowed them to play live events via ISDN without leaving a studio. This was in 1996, well before the dawn of the digital age we all live in now. Hell, the vast majority of us didn’t even have a very basic mobile phone back then. In 2024, the idea of being separated from our mobiles for even an hour can cause a meltdown amongst many of us – ‘a phone, a phone…my kingdom for a phone’. Ahem.

Hands up who knew that Gina G had more hits than just “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit”. OK. Keep your hands up if you can name any of them. I thought as much. You’d have to be a superfan to still have your hands in the air at this point. “I Belong To You” was the first of four further hits and it was almost identical to her Eurovision song. And why not? ‘If it’s not broken…’, ‘Strike while the iron’s hot’ and so on and so on…It would have made sense for her to go with an almost identical sound – anything other than that would have been folly. Gina surely wouldn’t have been expected to reinvent herself as a serious artist within months of only being known as a Eurovision entrant? If she’d returned with a big ballad would people have accepted it? I’m not sure. Repeating the formula certainly worked for Gina giving her a none too shabby chart peak of No 6. And there’s more…she would have a further three hits after and none of them were a remix of “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” meaning that she never had to plead “Ooh aah…just a little hit…please”. Yeah, sorry about that.

This week’s ’Flashback’ slot features “Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)” by Enya. I’m far too behind with this post to comment on this so here’s what I had to say about this one in a post from my 80s blog.

TOTP 24 NOV 1988

If it’s good enough for Enya, it’s certainly good enough for E–Motion. Look, I haven’t got the time nor inclination to review something that I commented on as recently as six months ago especially when it’s as big a heap of shit as “The Naughty North And The Sexy South”. Here’s my thoughts on this one from when it was originally a hit in the February of this year and peaked at No 20 (it was rereleased in the October peaking at No 17).

TOTP 01 FEB 1996

By 1996, Madonna’s career had reached the point it was always meant to reach – i.e. that she would play the part of Eva Perón in a film version of Evita. Rumours had been circulating for years that she was destined for this role and it finally came to be. A cinema version of the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber 1978 musical, its soundtrack was always likely to sell in bucketloads even before you added in the superstar factor that Madonna brought to the project. However, the song we all know from the musical – “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” – wasn’t the first one to be released from the project. No, the first track that we heard Madonna singing from Evita wasn’t from the original musical at all – it was a brand new composition written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to promote the film and to secure an Oscar nomination (it would go on to win the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song). “You Must Love Me” was that song but despite its recognition, it wasn’t the massive hit that many may have expected. It made No 10 in the UK, No 18 in America and didn’t top the chart anywhere in the world. It certainly sounded like a huge hit or rather it sounded like a Lloyd Webber/Rice song with trademark haunting melody and a huge string backing – in fact you could be forgiven for thinking that it had been part of the original musical soundtrack so seamlessly did it sit alongside those other songs from the 1978 West End production.

The video shown here is just a plug for the film really with clips from the movie interspersed with a heavily pregnant Madonna singing in a room with her bump hidden behind a piano. The film made $141 million at the box office against a budget of $55 million and received mixed reviews from the press with the main criticism being that it was a case of style over substance though the soundtrack was a redeeming factor. It received a total of 23 film award nominations winning 12 including one Oscar and three Golden Globes. I’ve still yet to watch it though my wife took her Mum to see it at the cinema and her review was that it was one of the loudest films she’d ever sat through.

Cast are back next with their biggest ever hit “Flying”. I was a bit sniffy about this song the last time I reviewed it which on reflection was possibly a tad unfair seeing as it crapped all over most of its chart contemporaries (yes, I’m looking at you E-Motion). Originally a non-album single, it was later included in the band’s 2004 compilation “The Collection” which must be one of the least comprehensive retrospectives ever given that it does not feature the hits “Alright”, “Sandstorm”, “Walkaway”, “Guiding Star” or “Beat Mama”. Presumably a licensing issue, I guess you get what you pay for – it was a budget range album that was ineligible for a UK Album Chart ranking. A definitive collection called “Cast: The Singles 1995-2017” was released on white vinyl in 2018 however.

The Spice Girls are straight in at No 1 with their second single “Say You’ll Be There”. It’s interesting that although it is the desert based, high-tech ninja warriors video that I immediately think of when I hear this song, TOTP did not once show that promo instead having the group in the studio every time (although I think one may have been a just a repeat of a previous appearance). Which raises the question how had I seen the promo at all? On The Chart Show? Maybe but that was on TV on Saturday mornings when I would have been at work most weeks. I can’t think of any other music shows from around that time? They weren’t such a big deal already that they’d made it onto national news programmes surely? However I had seen it, I wasn’t alone. One David Beckham, legend has it, was so taken with Posh Spice in her black PVC catsuit that he vowed there and that they would become a couple. And lo and behold, two became one…or something.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1SuedeBeautiful OnesNo but I had the album
2FaithlessInsomniaI did not
3BabybirdYou’re GorgeousNope
4Future Sound Of LondonMy KingdomNever happening
5Gina GI Belong To YouYou didn’t belong to me though Gina – no
6EnyaOrinoco Flow (Sail Away)Nah
7E-MotionThe Naughty North And The Sexy SouthDefinitely not
8MadonnaYou Must Love MeNo
9CastFlyingNegative
10Spice GirlsSay You’ll Be ThereAnd 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/m0024zk6/top-of-the-pops-25101996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 01 FEB 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

I’m still way behind in these TOTP reviews (give me a break BBC4!) but at least I’m now in the same month as the repeats schedule which is February of 1996. It’s yet another ‘golden mic’ host in comedian Lee Evans (who was only on just the other week it feels like). In fact, the celebrity host rather than a Radio 1 DJ seemed to be the norm around this time. Next week we have Julian Cope (blimey!) and the week after that Justine Frischmann from Elastica. As for the music, it’s the usual mix bag of styles with the following genres represented – bouncy techno (that was a thing apparently), art rock, Britpop, heavy rock, Gabber (again, a thing apparently), hardbag (seriously, I’m not making these up!), rap metal and…well…whatever you want to label Babylon Zoo as.

So what category does opening act QFX fall into? Well, they’re the ‘bouncy techno’ outfit according to Wikipedia. I have no recall of this lot at all but it seems they were from Scotland and had five medium sized UK Top 40 hits. A bit like Time Frequency then (in my easily befuddled by dance music brain anyway). This one – “Everytime You Touch Me” – was their first and second biggest when it peaked at No 22. So what was this ‘bouncy techno’ of which I speak? Well, unsurprisingly given where QFX hailed from, it originated in the Scottish rave scene before it crossed the channel to infiltrate the Dutch happy hardcore market where it became known as gabber (more of that later). It was characterised by having a tempo of 160 to 180 bpm and…oh I’ve no idea have I? I just know it wasn’t for me. Like I said earlier, I was easily confused by dance music. Though I couldn’t get into the music, I can appreciate the wild steps by the backing dancers in this performance. Unreal. Do you think the silver suits were influenced by the current No 1?

A bit of art rock? Look, these aren’t my categories but Wikipedia’s OK? I would just put “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” by Radiohead firmly in the ‘bloody good tune’ box. The fifth and final single from “The Bends”, its release seemed like a very big moment in the band’s career. Up to this point, their singles had only just brushed the Top 20 but going straight in at No 5 showed how much the band’s fan base had grown. Sure it was out of the Top 40 two weeks later but the fact that they could release a track from an album that had been out for just under a year by this point and it garnered such first week sales illustrated how much interest there was in Radiohead. And who wouldn’t be interested in this song! Based around a rolling guitar arpeggio, it was the definition of sublime. The fact that it was in and out of the Top 40 very quickly only added to its power – in a way it was too good for the charts. Some of the other hits taking up chart positions around it didn’t deserve to be in its presence. It came, it outshine everything else and…well…faded out. We wouldn’t see or hear any new Radiohead material for the next 15 months before “Paranoid Android” trailed third album, the seminal “OK Computer”.

Want to hear a ‘hardbag’ dance tune? No, me neither but it’s not up to me is it? Blame TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill or the punters that bought the record. Said record was “The Naughty North & The Sexy South” by E–Motion. What a racket this was both sonically and metaphorically. Somebody was making money out of this nonsense. Even this small amount of exposure to the track via this TOTP repeat is giving me a headache. Just repetitive, hammering beats with the track’s title rapped over and over. Look, everyone knows if you’re singing about the naughty north and the sexy south, it goes like this…

In the naughty north and in the sexy south

We’re all singing, I have the mouth

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Adam Ant / Marco Pirroni
Ant Rap lyrics © Tamadan Ltd.

Even the video is shite, using lazy cultural stereotype lookalikes to illustrate the north (Oasis, a whippet, an old fella gurning) and the south (Blur, Del Boy, pearly kings and queens) . Where are Marco, Merrick, Terry Lee, Gary Tibbs and yours truly when you need them?

I don’t think there can be too many disputing voices if I categorise the next band as being Britpop can there? The Bluetones were very much seen as part of that movement with their place at the forefront of it being secured by this – their biggest ever hit – “Slight Return”. I hadn’t taken that much notice of the band’s first two major label single releases “Are You Blue Or Are You Blind” and “Bluetonic” despite them both being Top 40 hits but I couldn’t ignore this one when it crashed into the charts at No 2. I recall selling out of it in the Our Price store I worked presumably because the initial copies the company’s buying department had allocated for us (the scale out) weren’t enough to cope with the demand. Maybe they were caught on the hop by the single’s success? Understandable I guess considering those two previous hits had peaked at Nos 31 and 19. I also seem to remember there being some issues restocking it with our orders continually coming back as out of stock. Distribution issues or perhaps their label were similarly caught on the hop by their artist’s sudden rise to fame? None of us should have been really as it’s a great song, full of melody and hooks. That stuttering chorus allied to a shuffling beat – it was a winner all day long. Singer Mark Morriss looked every inch a Britpop hero in his massive parka type coat. He must have just dissolved into a pool of sweat when he got back to the dressing room though after performing in it under those studio lights. Eleven days after this TOTP aired, the band’s debut album “Expecting To Fly” was released and certainly lived up to its title by soaring to the top of the charts in week one. The Bluetones had lift off!

Definitely and defiantly another Britpop act now as the watching millions get introduced to Northern Uproar. These little scamps were from Stockport which, coincidentally, was where I was working at the time in the Our Price in Merseyway shopping centre. Coming on like a distant member of the Gallagher family tree, they powered their way to a No 17 hit with this double A-side single “From A Window” / This Morning”. Listening to it now, it all seems very derivative and a bit of a mess frankly but it probably seemed very exciting back in 1996. Frontman Leon Meya did seem to have a bit of presence at least though his wardrobe had, like Mark Morriss before him, been influenced by Liam Gallagher a bit too much.

In my last post, I stated that I’d been trying to organise a PA for the Our Price in Stockport where I worked but my plans to secure Upside Down had been met with a definite “Forget it”. I’m pretty sure my attention then shifted to Stockport’s very own Northern Uproar but clearly any intentions I had didn’t get any further than the “What about…” stage as I never got any nearer to them than watching this TOTP appearance.

After a double barrel of Britpop, now it’s time for something completely different. I don’t recall the term ‘Gabber’ being in common use back in 1996 as a descriptor for this type of music but maybe I wasn’t moving in the right circles to hear it. Technohead were one of its protagonists but having watched their performance of “I Wanna Be A Hippy” back, my uninformed take on it would be that it was happy hardcore. I don’t think I’m that far off in my assessment as both strands emerged from the Dutch techno rave scene in the early 90s. According to Wikipedia, the difference between the two is that happy hardcore has breakbeats running alongside the 4/4 kick drum…whatever the hell that means.

Technohead was yet another alias for husband and wife team of Michael Wells and Lee Newman whose previous vehicles included Tricky Disco and LFO. “I Wanna Be A Hippy” was remixed by Dutch-American producers Flamman & Abraxas and had been a massive hit all around Europe in 1995. Everywhere in fact except the UK. Our resistance to the Gabber effect was only so resilient though and we yielded early the following year when it made No 6 in our charts. Based around a song from the 1989 comedy film Rude Awakening called “I Like Marijuana”, its references to drug taking (“I want to get stoned on Mari-marijuana” and “I want to get high”) were never going to fly on the BBC’s prime time, before the watershed, flagship pop music show so the performance here is highly edited with the offending lyrics literally blanked out and not mimed. It kind of makes a nonsense of the whole thing as if it wasn’t nonsensical enough already. The awful thing is, once heard, the track becomes an immovable ear worm. I can’t get it out of my head and it’s driving me mad! Gabber Gabber Don’t!

And so we arrive at the second tenuous link to Adam And The Ants of the night in the form of rap metal outfit (if that indeed is what they were) Dog Eat Dog. I literally have zero memories of this lot and their hit “No Fronts:The Remixes” though I actually don’t mind it now that I’m acquainted with it. The last time this lot were on the show, the lead singer’s very staid and sensible haircut caused quite a reaction online from the BBC4 TOTP community. I wonder if back in the day a similar thing had happened as he’s donned a baseball cap (on backwards naturally) for this second appearance.

Now, we saw the BBC make heavy edits to literally the previous act’s hit and yet there seemed to be zero censorship of “No Fronts: The Remixes” which includes the lyrics:

By the smell on the skunk, it’s the funk we blow it. So split the mud and reach for the sack, ease up your mind never look back. Inhale deeply and pass it around, c’mon everybody, let’s all get down….No guns just blunts, we kick this just for fun

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Dan Nastasi / Dave Neabore / David Maltby / John Martin Connor / Sean Kilkenny
No Fronts lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Blimey! They weren’t exactly a bunch of ‘goody two shoes’ were they?! Ahem. Presumably the BBC censors didn’t know that what a ‘blunt’* was!

*A hollowed out cigar filled with cannabis

There’s no doubting the musical genre of the next artist. Meatloaf never strayed very far from the rock ballad blueprint did he? This particular example of it – “Not A Dry Eye In The House” – would be his penultimate UK Top 10 hit. After being disregarded for a slot on the show as one of the new entries to the chart last week, TOTP couldn’t ignore The Meat any longer when it climbed to No 7.

I have to say that it’s not a great example of his canon of work but then it wasn’t written by long term partner Jim Steinman. Rather it came from the pen of Dianne Warren who undeniably knew her way around a soft rock ballad having written Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”, Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” and Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” amongst many, many others. However, “Not A Dry Eye In The House” seems to be soft rock ballad by numbers to me which somehow lacks the theatre of some of Meatloaf’s biggest hits. It’s a serviceable example of the genre but I’m surprised it was as big a hit as it was.

“Spaceman” by Babylon Zoo is obviously still No 1 what with it being the best selling single in the UK for 30 years by that point.

Now as I’m still behind with these write ups, I’m going to just leave this here. This is the Zupervarian remix of the track which is what the public thought they were buying based on the Levi’s ad. The happy hardcore (that again) version with the speeded up vocals all the way through. You’re welcome.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1QFXEverytime You Touch MeNo
2RadioheadStreet Spirit (Fade Out)No but I had The Bends album
3E-MotionThe Naughty North & The Sexy SouthAs if
4The BluetonesSlight ReturnCould have but didn’t
5Northern UproarFrom A Window / This MorningNope
6TechnoheadI Wanna Be A HippyNever
7Dog East DogNo Fronts:The RemixesNah
8MeatloafNot A Dry Eye In The HouseI did not
9Babylon ZooSpacemanI am going to admit to buying it but not for me for a friend who was obsessed with it so she could use my staff discount – honest!

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/m001z96w/top-of-the-pops-01021996?seriesId=unsliced