Foo Fighters

TOTP 28 AUG 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

We’re at the fag end of Summer 1998 and with Autumn bringing with it new TV schedules, there’s a shake up happening in pop music programming. No, TOTP isn’t being axed (that doesn’t happen until 2006) but over on ITV, a new challenger to the grand old show is emerging. The day after this TOTP aired, cd:uk made its debut. Replacing The Chart Show which had run for nine years on ITV (it was on Channel 4 for three years prior to its move), it was the companion programme to SM:tv LIVE, the new Saturday morning kids show commissioned to rival BBC’s Live & Kicking and was presented by Ant & Dec with Cat Deeley. SM:tv LIVE proved to be a huge success and was the show that cemented Ant & Dec in the nation’s affections and also saw them successfully transform from pop stars to entertainment presenters. The branding of both shows was strong with their distinctively formatted titles (I always thought the ‘cd’ part of cd:uk stood for compact disc but it was actually count down – in my defence, I was working in a record shop at the time!), and the continuity of the presenters with all three just carrying on from one show to the other.

The BBC must have been concerned especially as cd:uk, rather controversially, introduced a ‘Saturday Chart’ which, although unofficial, gave a pretty fair assessment of the Millward Brown compiled chart that would be announced on Radio 1 the following day. The main consequence of this was that it made the chart countdown shown on TOTP on the Friday look out of date as it was, of course, last week’s chart in effect. Again, I wonder what the Beeb made of that? In fact at, lets take a closer look at the two charts for this week:

Chart PositionTOTPcd:uk
1BoyzoneManic Street Preachers
2StardustSteps
3The CorrsBoyzone
4Savage GardenStardust
5SweetboxHoneyz
6Sash!Faithless
7AldaMadonna
8Spice GirlsThe Corrs
9EmbraceSavage Garden
10Pras MichelSweetbox
11CleopatraSash!
12Simply RedMansun
13KavanaAlda
14Puff Daddy / Jimmy PageSpice Girls
15Brandy + MonicaPras Michel
16Apollo Four FortyTruce
17Another LevelCleopatra
18Eagle-Eye CherryElectrasy
19Ace Of BaseBrandy + Monica
20Foo FightersAnother Level

Wow! That’s quite the difference! Five new entries in the cd:uk Top 10 and eight overall. I think the Beeb might well have taken note!

OK, so with that all said and done, let’s get to the music. Our host is Jamie Theakston for the second week running and we start with an act that was only just on last week – Sweetbox with “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright”. This is just a reshowing of that performance but when I commented on it in the last post, I don’t think I mentioned the four backing violinists who have been dressed up in 18th century period costumes and wigs that look like they came from the wardrobe department of the film Dangerous Liaisons. I get that the idea behind it was to emphasise that the track was based around Johann Sebastian Bach’s Air on a G String but it looks so clunky, cack-handed and rather ridiculous, especially when positioned next to a DJ spinning turntables. And is it my imagination or have they made them up with white face powder to create that look that the French aristocracy favoured using, what AI tells me, was called ‘ceruse’? I would like to say that I blanche at the very idea for a nice quip but, in my early teens age years, I used to put talcum powder on my face and pat it off with a towel if my complexion was suffering from a spot outbreak. What was I thinking?!

Someone who definitely knew what he was thinking back in 1998 was Kavana and what was on his mind was his desire to transition from a pop pin-up to a mature, respected artist. Could he do it? Well, he gave it a try with the track “Special Kind Of Something”, the lead single from his second album “Instinct”. Having broken through in 1997 with two Top 10 singles and a Smash Hits Award for Best Solo Male Artist no less, Kavana succumbed to the notion that so many pop idols have considered, that of wanting to be taken seriously and not seen as just a pop puppet peddling catchy tunes and cover versions. Sadly for Kavana, as is so often the case, the record buying public weren’t overly keen on the pop star becoming an artist and “Instinct” bombed leading to the end of his pop music career.

Relocating to America, he had a brief acting career before resorting to the ultimate path of all ex-stars who can’t quite give up on fame, the world of reality TV. Stints in Grease Is The Word, The Voice UK, The Big Reunion and, of course, Celebrity Big Brother followed. After spending time in rehab for his alcoholism, Kavana has been sober for three years and has written a well received memoir called Pop Scars.

I know I say this a lot but how is it possible that at the time of these songs being in the charts when I was working in a mainstream record shop (presumably selling copies of them to customers) that there are some that I have zero recall of. Like nothing. At all. “Real Good Time” by Alda is yet another example. So who was/is Alda? Well, she was born in Iceland but was based in Sweden at the time of her pop career so she was kind of like a cross between Björk and Robyn and get this – her middle is, indeed, Björk!

Geography and nomenclatures she may have had in common with Björk but sonically they were continents apart. Her song was very chorus heavy, catchy yet ultimately insubstantial and say what you like about Björk (and I have in this blog many times) but insubstantial she is not. The other thing that they singularly did not share was hairstyles. Jamie Theakston can’t stop going on about Alda’s towering hair but I think I’ll leave the last word on that subject to @TOTPFacts and one Anna Cale:

I give up! Despite being on the show three times already (twice as the No 1 record and once as an exclusive performance before it was even released) and despite being at No 8 in the charts this week, here, for a fourth time, are the Spice Girls with “Viva Forever”. Why?! Why Chris Cowey?! Why?! And if you insist on including it in the running order unnecessarily, at least show the animated video that took months to create and not this exclusive performance yet again which wasn’t really ‘exclusive’ any more. Cowey could have given one of my faves Embrace a slot who had entered the charts one place lower than the Spice Girls with their single “My Weakness Is None Of Your Business” but, just as with their last hit “Come Back To What You Know”, it was cruelly ignored. Bah!

P.S. I’m assuming that Theakston’s lame intro about the band being all about Baby these days was a reference to the announcement that Victoria Beckham was pregnant with her and David’s first child Brooklyn.

From a song the chart position of which didn’t really justify an appearance on the show (in my humble opinion) to one which wasn’t even in the charts due to the fact that that it hadn’t yet been released. ‘New!’ said the caption for “My Favourite Mistake” by Sheryl Crow where its chart position should have been. When at last released, it would debut and peak at No 9 thus becoming Crow’s last ever UK Top 10 hit. The lead single from her third studio album “The Globe Sessions”, it ostensibly was more of the sound we’d become used to over the previous four years but was it? Apparently, Sheryl had agonised over the writing of the album to such an extent she thought about cancelling the release of it but in the end its release was deferred instead by six weeks. A change of narrative voice in her lyrics had been the issue with Crow struggling to come to terms to writing in the first person. “My Favourite Mistake” was a point in case with it being about an unfaithful ex-boyfriend (rumoured to be Eric Clapton) which created a whole “You’re So Vain” vibe to it. Crow dismissed the speculation saying she was very private about her relationships though, in 2003, she began dating cycling superstar Lance Armstrong in a very high profile and public romance.

As for “My Favourite Mistake”, it’s not my favourite single of Sheryl’s though it has an understated intensity to it but it is, apparently, Crow’s pick as her favourite song of hers and in 2023, The Guardian voted it their favourite Sheryl Crow track out of a list of 20 so maybe I should reconsider my opinion.

Next we find the Foo Fighters in a reflective mood with their hit “Walking After You”. Very much a melancholy tune, it was originally a track on the band’s “The Colour And The Shape” album but was subsequently re-recorded for inclusion on the soundtrack to the first X–Files film. I can’t say it does much for me; it’s very one paced and dare I say it, a bit dull. Maybe in the right setting or environment it might make more sense but performed in the TOTP studio it failed to make much of an impact on me but then I was rather distracted by Dave Grohl’s eyes. They must be coloured contact lenses that he’s deliberately wearing presumably to tie in with the X–Files connection as they do rather make him look alien-like. The TOTP cameramen seem to be in on the ruse given how much they focus on Grohl’s eyes in the lingering end shots.

The discography of The Corrs is a complicated thing, full of rereleases, remixes and special editions. Take this hit “What Can I Do” for example. Originally released in the January it struggled to a peak of No 53. However, after the subsequent success of the Todd Terry remixed Fleetwood Mac cover “Dreams”, it was given a second chance though not before it too was remixed, this time by Tin Tin Out. Replacing its original doo wop sound with dance beats and a guitar riff that was very reminiscent of Eddie Brickell’s “What I Am”* and lyrics half inched from Elton John’s “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word”, it debuted at No 3 on the charts.

*Tin Tin Out clearly had a thing for that song as they released their own version of it with Emma Bunton the following year.

As Jamie Theakston said in his intro, all of this success has helped propel the group’s album “Talk On Corners” to No 1, one of 10 weeks at the top of the charts. It would spend two whole years (!) inside the Top 40, its presence presumably helped by the release of a special edition of it in the November which included those remixed singles including subsequent ones by K-Klass (“So Young”) and another by Tim Tin Out (“Runaway”) both of which were big hits. We’ll be seeing a lot more of The Corrs in forthcoming TOTP repeats.

Right, what’s going on here? Why are Jamie Theakston and Robbie Williams (dressed like James Bond) having a stilted, on screen conversation whilst seemingly being unaware that the cameras are rolling? Well, presumably this was a pre-planned skit (something about who’s got the best girlfriend?) as a way of introducing another new single that wasn’t even out yet – “Millennium”. I’ve made cases before in this blog that pinpoint sliding door moments in the career of Mr. Williams. “Angels” obviously but also “South Of The Border” and “Let Me Entertain You” but this, I think, is another one – Robbie’s first solo No 1. Interpolating the Nancy Sinatra Bond song “You Only Live Twice”, it sounded impressive right from the very first listen and if there had been any doubt that we were all in it for the long haul with Williams, this was surely the clincher. Yes, it was a bit cynical by being released in between two Bond films (Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997 and The World Is Not Enough in 1999) and also by naming it “Millennium” with one eye on the rapidly approaching end of the century but it just worked. Even the potentially annoying ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’ yobbish football chant seemed to fit. At this point Robbie Williams could do no wrong. Even the video for “Millennium” won the BRIT Award for British Video Of The Year.

But wait…now what? He’s doing another song? Theakston plays along by protesting that he’s not allowed to despite the running order clearly having been pre-agreed. For the second song, Williams performs “Man Machine” which was never released as a single but was an album track off “I’ve Been Expecting You” which seems an odd choice in retrospect. Surely he would have been better off doing a long tail preview of a future single like “Strong”? Had they not already chosen which songs were earmarked for release as a single by this point? “Man Machine” is OK I guess but it’s not particularly memorable with some lyrics that don’t make much sense but which seem to be a list of rhyming non-sequiturs. Are they vaguely about how the press perceived Williams at the time based around a space theme (“I’ve heard they’re not very well in the sun”)? Robbie throws in a quick arms-behind-the-back Liam Gallagher stance at one point but it all seems a bit too cocky. Maybe he should have left it as just a one song-performance? After all who did he think he was? The Jam? Oasis? Well, there was that Liam Gallagher moment…

It’s a third and final week at the top for Boyzone and “No Matter What” and it’s a third separate studio performance. Unlike week one, Andrew Lloyd Webber hasn’t flown in to be on the piano – presumably he was too busy unlike in 2015 when he flew into the UK on a private plane to vote in the House of Lords in favour of Tory proposed tax credit cuts, the bellend. A lifelong Conservative, in 2021 he said he would never vote for that party again no matter what due to their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and their treatment of the arts sector during that time.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1SweetboxEverything’s Gonna Be AlrightNegative
2KavanaSpecial Kind Of SomethingNah
3AldaReal Good TimeNever happened
4Spice GirlsViva ForeverNot for me
5Sheryl CrowMy Favourite MistakeNope
6Foo FightersWalking After YouNo thanks
7The CorrsWhat Can I DoI did not
8Robbie WilliamsMillennium / Man MachineNo
9BoyzoneNo Matter WhatAnd 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/m002l6rx/top-of-the-pops-28081998

TOTP 04 APR 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

Four days before this TOTP aired, my beloved Chelsea lost an FA Cup semi-final to Manchester United who were on their way to the ‘double double’. I was crushed. After waiting my whole life to see them play in a proper cup final, they’d got humped 4-0 by United two years before. In 1996 though, I was sure that we would get revenge and turn the reds over to reach the final again. We nearly did. Leading 1-0 at half time we looked good until an early second half equaliser and a catastrophic misplaced back pass to set up a young David Beckham for the winner meant that we fell to defeat. I had no idea at the time but a year later, my anguish would be fully cleansed by our cathartic victory over Middlesbrough in next season’s final under Ruud Gullit and his ‘sexy football’. There are no football songs on this edition of TOTP but maybe there are some sexy ones? Let’s see…

Well this guy clearly thinks he’s sexy but…As with last week’s show, we start with a dance tune by an act that’s probably just the pseudonym for a DJ or producer or both. Kadoc were from Spain according to tonight’s host Dale Winton and that’s all there is to say about them or at least that I can be bothered to find out about them. I did try but there wasn’t much coming up other than I recognised the generic design on the cover of the single that was the mark of the Positiva record label who must have licensed it in the UK.

As for their track “Night Train”, it sounds to me like another one of those tracks that owes a lot to “French Kiss” by Lil Louis. A repetitive beat based around a one line lyric – it might have made sense on a sweaty dance floor down your nightclub of choice but it all looks a bit silly in the TOTP studio despite throwing a trio of backing dancers at it to try and raise the temperature of the performance. Look, if you’re going to do a song called “Night Train” on TOTP, let the late, great Steve Strange and co show you how. Backing singers missing their cues, jerky, unrehearsed dance moves from Steve and all cloaked in enough dry ice that wouldn’t be out of place in John Carpenter’s horror classic The Fog. Lovely stuff.

I’m not sure if Ocean Colour Scene have ever been described as ‘sexy’ (maybe they have by the strong devoted in their fan base) but it’s not the first word you would use to describe them is it? That’s not a criticism – they always seemed like a band that were more about their art than air brushed photo shoots anyway. Having scored their first Top 40 hit with previous single “Riverboat Song”, they followed it with an even bigger one in “You’ve Got It Bad”. This is yet another single that I haven’t retained in my memory banks. I could have bet money that the magnificent “The Day We Caught The Train” was the follow up to “Riverboat Song” but yet again these TOTP repeats delight in revealing to me how my memory is failing me. In my defence, “You’ve Got It Bad” isn’t one of the band’s better tunes – I think I would describe it as ‘competent’ which isn’t really how you would want your craft to be categorised.

Dale Winton mentions in his intro that the band’s next live gig is supporting Oasis. Would that be the Maine Road gigs at the end of the month? I think it might be. As I confessed in a previous post, I was at the Saturday concert with some friends but missed seeing Ocean Colour Scene as we were still imbibing some pre-gig drinks when they were on stage. In August this year I will be rectifying that wrong when I will see the band along with Embrace and Cast at an outdoor gig in Hull. Incidentally, Cast were also meant to be in that Oasis bill but had to pull out as their drummer had broken his arm. Couldn’t they have borrowed a replacement from someone like when The Beatles subbed in Jimmie Nicol for a tonsillitis struck Ringo for some gigs on their 1964 world tour? Maybe Oasis could have given them Tony McCarroll’s number whom they’d recently sacked? By the way, it’s taken a while but I’ve finally worked out who lead singer Simon Fowler reminds me of here…

Now, I’m not sure that Dave Grohl is the sexiest man in rock but he has been described as the nicest and that’s got to count for something. His band Foo Fighters were in the charts this week with the fourth and final single taken from their eponymous debut album called “Big Me”. It’s a very radio friendly song definitely at the poppier end of their range and to reflect that, they made a video to promote it that parodied the well known (in America) series of adverts for Mentos Mints. It was based around a narrative that people could solve day-to-day problems by outside-the-box thinking if they ate a Mento Mint to inspire their creativity. The actors in these ads performed in mannered and exaggerated ways (camping it up some might say) against an insanely catchy jingle. The Foo Fighters video apes some of the scenarios in the Mentos adverts scene for scene (the boxed in car for example) with the band also lampooning the acting style. It works pretty well if you know those adverts which of course we didn’t in the UK so we might have appreciated that it was an attempt at being light hearted but the parody element surely escaped us.

So back to Dave Grohl and whether he’s sexy or not. I’m not sure he did himself any favours by styling his long hair into bunches in parts of the video. It gave me real Bill Bailey vibes from that episode of Black Books where they drink the guy’s really expensive wine cellar dry.

Now, was this next hit a blatant and deliberate attempt to cash in on a TV sensation or something that grew organically from the clubs before finally getting an official release? The truth is out there (yes I’m using that tag line again!) but I’m not sure where it is. Apparently, some club DJs had been playing the X Files theme as a chill out track for ravers to come down to after a hard night on the dance floor and all that entailed (ahem) but had then also used it as a basis for making unlicensed dance remixes causing Warners to release the official single by Mark Snow in an attempt to kill off the practice. However, it didn’t prevent a retaliatory official release of “X-Files” by DJ Dado whose version had been one of the most popular in the clubs. Dado was an Italian DJ and producer (weren’t they all?) who took the dream trance sound of Robert Miles’ “Children” and combined it with the haunting melody of the TV show theme to come up with this hit that would spend time residing alongside Snow’s original in the Top 10. It would turn out to be DJ Dado’s only UK hit.

If innuendo is all about sex then “Ooh Aah…(Just A Little Bit)” is indeed a sexy song. Gina G’s Eurovision entry has crashed into the charts at No 6, instantly topping the chart high of the previous year’s contestant Love City Groove. Whether this was a portent that it could sweep all before it and take the Eurovision crown for the UK for the first time in 15 years was debatable but it was indisputable evidence that it was going to be a major hit on our chart. Not since Bardo (remember them) in 1982 had a UK entrant been so high up the Top 40 and this is as with the actual contest still being six weeks away when, whatever its fate, the song would surely get another sales boost due to the promotion and coverage of the event. As it turned out, “Ooh Aah…(Just A Little Bit)” would enjoy a spectacular chart run spending a solid ten weeks inside the Top 10.

This particular TOTP has gone backing dancer mad with Gina’s gals being the third set to feature after those behind Kadoc and DJ Dado. Despite a bit of over enthusiastic thrusting of chests, their moves are playful rather than suggestive I would…erm…suggest whilst Gina gives a winning Kylie-esque smile throughout. I have my own personal story about this song but I’ll keep it warming the bench for now as guess what? Gina is the opening act on the next show!

Hmm. Despite his large collection of ballads and love songs in his back catalogue, I’m not sure that the words Lionel Richie and sexy belong together in the same sentence. He’s here anyway to promote his latest single “Don’t Wanna Lose You” but judging by the fade away segue, it’s just a repeat of his studio appearance from the other week. Truly, it’s not a very good song and surely can’t be talked about in the same breath as some of his classic hits. In Lionel’s defence, he’s definitely trying out his best approximation of Lenny Henry’s Theophilius P. Wildebeeste’s character (he’s even cultivated a carefully coiffured beard) and looks longingly straight down the camera but you can’t really get away for the fact that he is, despite everything he’s trying, still Lionel Richie.

Next to a guy who may have been an unlikely sex symbol but his picture was surely on more teenagers walls than Lionel Richie’s. Jarvis Cocker’s national treasure status was never bigger than at this point. Not only had his band Pulp completely crossed over into the mainstream following the success of their “Different Class” album but he’d become front page news after his protest against Michael Jackson at the BRIT Awards a few weeks before this TOTP aired. “Something Changed” was the fourth single lifted from that album and I recall thinking that the band were pushing it releasing a single from an album that had already been out for six months by this point. However, it’s such a good song it deserved its own moment in the spotlight. An observation on the randomness of life and how monumental events in people’s lives occur. Cleverly, it doesn’t eulogise the concept of fate as so many songs do but rather tries to examine the ‘sliding doors’ notion of how your life would have gone in a completely different direction if you’d literally arrived somewhere one minute earlier or later. That idea really intrigues me and I’m sure we can all think of our own personal ‘sliding doors’ moments. I hadn’t realised until now how old the song was in that the band had played around with it as early as 1984 but returned to it for the “Different Class” sessions and worked it into the track we know today. Maybe if they’d persevered with it originally then fame and fortune might have come to the band much earlier than it did. A ‘sliding doors’ moment indeed.

It’s the return of Mark Morrison now as he continues his protracted journey to the No 1 spot with his hit “Return Of The Mack”. He’s up to No 4 this week after spending three consecutive weeks at No 6. Him topping the chart after that run must have seemed unlikely but the two place move upwards was followed by a week at No 3 before he finally got to the summit in week six of release. Whilst we were seeing a new No 1 record going straight to the top virtually every week around this time, it’s worth remembering that there were still some songs that climbed steadily like in the good old days of the 80s. As well as Morrison, there was the aforementioned Gina G who took eight weeks to get to No 1 plus, of course, there was the outlier that was “Think Twice” by Celine Dion that took an incredible sixteen weeks to rise to the top. Totally predictably, Morrison adds to the backing dancer count for this TOTP with a further four in this performance. There was clearly a trend for showing your bra during this period!

The Prodigy remain at No 1 with “Firestarter”. I talked about the video for this one in the last post so now it’s time to focus on the song itself. Well, it couldn’t be more in your face – the musical equivalent of the face hugger from the Alien franchise. A blistering assault on your aural senses. I guess you can’t underestimate the input of Keith Flint to it in what was unbelievably his first vocal contribution to a Prodigy track. It would be like Bez doing lead vocals on a Happy Mondays single and it going to No 1. A remarkable achievement. Sure, Flint didn’t have a technically good voice but what he did do, he did brilliantly. As for the musical composition of the song, there are a few samples in there that I’ve never picked up on before. I’m going to pardon myself for not spotting The Breeders and “Devotion” by Ten City but how on earth did I miss the ‘hey’ chant from Art Of Noise’s “Close (To The Edit)”?! It’s metaphorically been under my nose and literally in my ears for 28 years!

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1KadocNight TrainNever
2Ocean Colour SceneYou’ve Got It BadNo
3Foo FightersBig MeI didn’t
4DJ DadoX-FilesOf course not
5Gina GOoh Aah…(Just A Little Bit)Nope
6Lionel RichieDon’t Wanna Lose YouNah
7PulpSomething ChangedNo but I had the Different Class album with it on
8Mark MorrisonReturn Of The MackNegative
9The ProdigyFirestarterShould have but didn’t

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/m0020540/top-of-the-pops-04041996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 14 SEP 1995

Posted on by 80stastic

After last week’s nadir of content, things aren’t much better this week I have to say with a couple of honourable exceptions. It’s another ‘golden mic’ presenter slot again though unlike last week, I’m not expecting much. The double act of Jo Brand and Mark Lamarr were two of my favourite holders of the chalice but the bar is seriously lowered as this time it’s Robbie Williams. Not long departed from Take That, the cheeky Stoke-on-Trent lad probably seemed like a decent shout for the role given that he was headline news even before his solo career had begun* due to the fall out from the Take That split.

*He wouldn’t release his first solo single until July 1996

However, he must also have been a considerable risk given his appearance at that year’s Glastonbury Festival when he was clearly under the influence of…something. He was a loose cannon. He jokes early on that he’d even stayed sober for the show. Well, let’s see if he can live up to one of his song titles and entertain us…

We start tonight with D:Ream who were starting to run out of steam (and sales) some eighteen months after their No 1 song “Things Can Only Get Better”. Having taken the opportunity afforded by such a big hit and run with it by releasing a flurry of further singles to almost constant diminishing returns, the party was entering the past-midnight-talking-shite phase. Take “Party Up The World” for example. The second single from sophomore album “World”, it sounds like it was written to order to supply a middling sized hit with an equivalent sized amount of quality. The song is not aided by Peter Cunnah’s live vocal here – he definitely hits a bum note early on. “Party Up The World” would give D:Ream a No 20 hit but after that it was a case of reliving the glories of “Things Can Only Get Better” which was most famously utilised by the Labour Party for their 1997 General Election campaign. I wonder if Howard Jones ever sits at home and in a quiet moment of reflection thinks “What was wrong with my song?”

Oh, one last thing. The chorus from “Party Up The World” is surely ever so slightly influenced by this Erasure tune which is ironic as D:Ream also released a single called “Star” which didn’t sound anything like the synth pop duo’s track…

Some Eurodance next courtesy of Cappella who have changed their singer since the last time we saw them. After Kelly Overett departed, a replacement was found in the form of Alison Jordan who was initially discovered via the Search For A Star competition on BBC’s That’s Life show in 1992.

After their last few hits all had titles that were variations of the usage of the word ‘move’ and the letter ‘U’ (meaning ‘you’), the group returned to an earlier hit for the inspiration for this latest one. In 1992, they made it to No 25 in our Top 40 with “Take Me Away” and in 1995, they achieved their final UK hit with “Tell Me The Way” – it’s clever stuff no? No, not really and neither was this tune. It sounds like they’d cut and pasted the most obvious and shittiest riffs and beats from every Eurodance hit ever and just glued them altogether – the musical equivalent of a patchwork quilt but one covered in excrement.

Capella never had another UK Top 40 hit but the project is still a going concern albeit with a totally different line up and they performed on the 90s nostalgia circuit. They even released a single as recently as 2023 called “Happy Phonk” but nobody really noticed.

Unable to resist the lure of tomfoolery any longer, the previously staid and sensible persona Robbie Williams had adopted tonight until now goes out of the window as he goes into skit mode. The premise of said skit is that he’s going to reveal the truth behind what Take That are really like but the only rehearsed line he gets out before an extra dressed as a security guard drags him off camera is that they drink camomile tea. Are you entertained yet? As comedy routines go, it’s hardly up there with the “Don’t tell him, Pike!” scene from Dad’s Army is it?

The first video of the night comes from Foo Fighters for their second ever single “I’ll Stick Around”. It’s another pretty nifty, driving rock tune though not as strong a track as their debut single “This Is A Call” to my ears. Dave Grohl looks so young here but then I guess we all did 29 years ago. I used to work with a guy called Dave at Our Price who looked a bit like Grohl though on reflection I’m wondering if the lookie-likie claims were purely based on the fact that Dave had long rock hair and his name was…well…Dave.

And suddenly, from out of nowhere, a man who hadn’t had a UK Top 40 hit since 1988 and hadn’t been on TOTP for a decade. That appearance had been as part of Lloyd Cole and The Commotions performing their single “Lost Weekend”. If you’d told the 17 year old me back then that Lloyd wouldn’t be on the show for another 10 years, I would have dismissed you as a crackpot completely divorced from musical reality and yet that is exactly what happened. But how did it pan out like this? Well, after “Lost Weekend”, things quietened down for Lloyd and the Commotions. Follow up single “Cut Me Down” barely scraped into the Top 40 and then the band disappeared for nigh on two years recording their difficult third album “Mainstream”. When it did finally come out, it seemed that the world had moved on from their crafted, intelligent jangle pop and despite achieving gold status, the three singles from it could only muster these chart peaks:

46 – 31 – 59

The writing was on the wall and the band read it. They split in 1989 leaving Lloyd to pursue a solo career that somehow never seemed to chime with commercial trends. Three albums were released in quick succession in the early 90s but to limited sales. Not one of them produced a Top 40 single. And then, something finally stuck with public opinion. “Like Lovers Do”, the lead single from fourth album “Love Story” made No 24 in the charts and a TOTP appearance was warranted. I don’t know why the stars aligned between Lloyd and the record buying public on this particular single and no other – maybe it was just good marketing and promotion but it’s a nice enough song I guess.

I always liked Lloyd right from “Perfect Skin” though I can’t say I followed his solo career in too much detail. However, I saw him and the Commotions on the “Mainstream” tour when he failed to say more than two words to the audience and years later on his own in New Mills when he wouldn’t stop talking. His opening line in the latter gig to the crowd was “I know you’re all sat there thinking Lloyd Cole has let himself go a bit. Well, you should have a look in the mirror”. Excellent!

Next a song that I do remember but which I don’t recall so much fuss being made about it at the time as seems to have been written about it online since. “Fantasy” was the lead single from Mariah Carey’s fifth studio album “Daydream”. Her previous one “Music Box”* had been a monster selling 28 million copies worldwide.

*Technically her third album but I’m disregarding her 1994 Christmas collection

So how do you follow that? You just churn out a copycat album don’t you? Based purely on lead single “Fantasy”, it sounded to me like she’d done just that – it didn’t seem a whole lot different to something like “Dreamlover”. But then, I hadn’t heard the Bad Boy remix by Puff Daddy. This was the evidence of Mariah’s new direction. Featuring rapping from Wu-Tang Clan’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard, it was seen as a milestone recording by many for the fusion of urban/hip hop with mainstream pop with an emphasis on rap as a featuring act. Alongside “I’ll Be There For You / All I Need To Get By” Method Man and Mary J. Blige, it was designated as an early recording of the “Thug-Love” sub genre.

Apparently, the rest of the album was of a more R&B flavour which caused much concern and consternation at her label Columbia who really didn’t want to mess with the formula that had brought her and them so much success. The head of Sony Music (and Mariah’s husband at the time) Tommy Mottola was especially vexed. Mariah knew best however and the album was another huge seller shifting 20 million copies worldwide with “Fantasy” going to No 1 in the US and No 4 over here.

I’m not sure that this live by satellite performance from New York was worth the effort though. Is that the official video playing on the huge tv screens behind Mariah? Wouldn’t they have been better off just showing that?

Inevitably, Robbie Williams has gone there and resorted to chatting up a female audience member for his next link. Obviously, it’s all staged (he puts on a silly fake American accent) but it’s still not a good look especially 29 years on.

OK, so back with the music and it’s another showing of the studio appearance by The Rembrandts from the other week. Watching it back, I’ve noticed that in the version of “I’ll Be There For You” the band perform here, the iconic handclaps at the end of the first line seem very low in the mix and nowhere near as prominent as in the opening credits for Friends. That seem a little odd as although the addition of them wasn’t the band’s idea and they didn’t actually record them (they were done by the show’s creators who wanted to be on the record in some way), supposedly The Rembrandts thought the clapping was the best part of the song. There’s only four claps after that first line (though it sounds like more) but apparently it took loads of takes to record as the aforementioned show’s creators just couldn’t get the hang of it. I wonder if their mothers warned them that there’d be days like these?

There’s two ways to consider the next hit on the show – either it’s a clever updating (by 1995 standards) of a classic disco track or…it’s an heinous abomination of an idea that should have been dismissed as soon as it crystallised in the originator’s brain. I think, rather predictably, I’m of the latter opinion. N–Trance had started the year with one of the biggest dance anthems of the decade in “Set You Free”. Featuring vocals from Kelly Llorenna, it was a genuine, credible Hi-NRG, rave track. I, for one, didn’t see them following it up by going the tacky cover version route.

“Stayin’ Alive”, of course, was originally by the Bee Gees and was part of the soundtrack to the movie and indeed cultural phenomenon that was Saturday Night Fever. A huge global hit, it was an American No 1 song and UK No 4 in 1978. Fast forward 17 years and it was given the rap treatment by Ricardo da Force whose previous credits included some of The KLF’s biggest hits. Now, given those credentials, I would have hoped for a better outcome than what N-Trance served up which seemed to me to be calculated and cynical to appeal to the cattle market disco crowd.

The performance here goes big on all the 70s disco motifs including the obligatory geezer in the white John Travolta suit. It all seems a bit naff. However, the part where he removes his jacket and twirls it around and throws it into the audience before it is slung back landing on his arm is choreographed quite well. And that’s as positive as I can be about this one. Nasty stuff.

Despite being trailed as the play out track on last week’s show and still not to be released for another four days, Simply Red are back on the show to perform their new single “Fairground”. Not wishing to be outdone by Capella’s costumes earlier, Hucknall has turned up in his own full PVC outfit. For the love of God man! Why?! This was clearly his full on, decadent pop star phase. Check out his overflowing ginger locks as well!

I’m reminded of my own Mick story which I’ve told before but which seems appropriate here. When I first worked in Manchester at the Our Price store in Market Street as a Christmas temp, there was a young woman on the staff called Natalie who was very attractive (I think she’d done done some modelling). One morning she came into work and told us that Mick Hucknall had chatted her up in a bar and wanted to see her again but she wasn’t sure what to do about it. A bit later that day, I answered the work phone and the person on the other end asked to speak to Natalie. When I asked who was calling he simply replied “Mick”. It was Hucknall! In the end, Natalie told him she wasn’t interested I think. That’s not quite the end of the story though. One morning, Natalie turned up to work in a skin tight, black catsuit. I’m not sure she’d been home from another night out. She turned to me and said, “Do you think my outfit is a bit much?”. I didn’t know where to look! Fast forward five years though and I certainly didn’t want to look at Mick Hucknall in his own version of a catsuit!

What’s that?! What about the song? Oh look, “Fairground” will be No 1 soon enough and for 4 weeks so there’ll be plenty of time to discuss it in a future post!

Michael Jackson is No 1 with “You Are Not Alone” for the second and final week. Jackson, like Mariah Carey, recorded for Sony and just as the Songbird Supreme’s (© The Guinness Book of World Records) relationship with the company’s CEO Tommy Mottola deteriorated to the point of divorce, so The King of Pop (© erm…Michael Jackson?) also had issues with him. Big issues. In a 2002 press conference, he called him a racist and held up a picture of Mottola depicted as the devil. Sony refuted the claims and refused to renew Jackson’s contract. In 2020, Kanye West even suggested that Mottola had something to do with Jackson’s death in 2009 in a since deleted tweet though I’m not sure Kanye is the most reliable source of information.

The play out track is “Let’s Spend The Night Together” by the Rolling Stones which was played to advertise the return of TOTP2 as highlighted by Robbie Williams in his final piece to camera but I’m not spending the night or any other time reviewing that one.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1D:ReamParty Up The WorldNope
2CappellaTell Me The WayNever
3Foo FightersI’ll Stick AroundI did not
4Lloyd ColeLike Lovers DoI didn’t as it goes
5Mariah CareyFantasyNah
6The RembrandtsI’ll Be There For YouYes for my wife but she gave it away to our Friends obsessed goddaughter
7N-TranceStayin’ AliveAs if
8Simply RedFairgroundIts a definite no
9Michael JacksonYou Are Not AloneAnd 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/m001wc3t/top-of-the-pops-14091995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 29 JUN 1995

Posted on by 80stastic

We arrived at an unusual episode of TOTP whereby the executive producer Ric Blaxill incorporated what might now be called a ‘heritage’ slot into the show but which I’m sure wouldn’t have been labelled as such at the time. Host Mark Goodier refers to it only using the generic, catch all term of ‘exclusive’ which is the description that was used for just about any non standard performance on the show around this time. The band featured in this slot are pretty special though and retain a huge legacy – it’s only the bloody Ramones!

All in good time though and we start with the antithesis of the legendary punk rockers with one of the worst examples of naff dance music that the 90s spewed forth. Clock (even their name was terrible) followed the classic Eurodance blueprint of a female singer and male rapper even though they were actually from Manchester as opposed to Holland or Germany like many of the acts of that genre. Where they did divert from the template was in their decision to pursue chart hits via that well trodden route of the cover version. After a couple of minor hits with their own compositions in 1994, they went Top 10 with a cover of Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F” and that success convinced them to carry on in that direction. Next up was their version of Tag Team’s 1994 No 34 hit “Whoomph! (There It Is)”. Now this track has quite the backstory which I’ve already discussed in the post covering the TOTP featuring Tag Team so I don’t propose to go over all that again. What I will say is that when Clock first started releasing singles and I wasn’t aware of who they were despite working in a record shop, when I was asked about them by a customer I presumed they were asking about Clock DVA, the experimental industrial pioneers from Sheffield who formed in 1978 and were contemporaries of Cabaret Voltaire. I might as well have been talking a different language trying to explain Clock DVA to the young punter who just wanted to buy his favourite Eurodance tune.

Depressingly, we’ll be seeing lots more of Clock in these TOTP repeats as they went on to (ahem) clock up a further nine UK Top 40 hits throughout the 90s including covers of “December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night)”* by the Four Seasons, “You Sexy Thing”* by Hot Chocolate and “Blame It On The Boogie” by The Jacksons. You lucky people!

*They truncated the titles to differentiate them from the originals though.

https://youtu.be/KFgx-LYmuyc?si=3ZT2klDM_SLD44YI

I think my patience with Jamiroquai wasn’t so much wearing thin by this point as had completely perished to reveal an embarrassing hole in its pants. To my ears, everything single they’d released by this point sounded the same as the one before. “Stillness In Time” was a case in point. It meanders along with the promise of breaking into this really cool groove but never actually goes anywhere. Do you think Jay Kay, when laying down these tracks, would say to himself “Yes! We really nailed it there!”? And yet, this single entered the chart at the highest position (No 9) the band had ever achieved so maybe it was me that was out of step with public opinion? The performance here is sooo muso – there’s even a man wearing an oversized poncho for Chrissakes! Nah, not for me thanks.

And now…a single that has gone down in the annals of time as one of the very worst ever laid down in a recording studio from an album that Q Magazine decreed as the worst of all time in a 2006 poll. It is now received knowledge that Duran Duran made the biggest career misstep ever by releasing their covers album “Thank You” as the follow up to 1993’s career reviving “The Wedding Album” but is that a fair take on the reviled collection of songs? I mean, Lou Reed said that their version of “Perfect Day” was the best cover ever of one of his songs. Indeed, “Thank You” wasn’t even the commercial catastrophe we might have expected from the worst album ever – it made No 12 in the UK album charts and sold half a million copies in the US. So what’s the deal with it?

I think the answer lies in the track listing and the songs the band chose to cover. Some of them were seen as sacrosanct and untouchable and certainly by some faded 80s pin up pop stars. How dare Duran Duran take on the back catalogues of Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Elvis Costello etc! The ultimate act of heresy though appears to be their decision to cover Public Enemy’s “911 Is A Joke” and Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel’s “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)”. The latter was released as the second single from the album and like Clock earlier, they changed the title slightly to “White Lines (Don’t Do It)”.

So it’s cards on the table time – I don’t mind the Duran Duran version. I think it’s alright in the same way that I thought Gun’s rocked up cover of “Word Up” by Cameo was OK. Is it better than or even as good as the original? No, I don’t think so but that doesn’t make it utter shite by default. I even think the black and white video works and adds something to the track. What didn’t work though was the album’s standing both critically and within the band’s own oeuvre of work. In fact it derailed them. A follow up album (“Medazzaland”) wasn’t released in the UK and by the end of the decade, the band had lost both their record label Capitol / EMI and bass player and founding member John Taylor. They would not have another hit album until 2004 when the original line up reformed to record “Astronaut”. And yet…I wonder if it’s time for “Thank You” to be revisited and reappraised. There are surely worse albums out there. Surely?

Who remembers All–4–One? “I Swear” yeah? Sure. Great. Who remembers their other hit though? Not so many hands up now are there? Well, they did have one and it was called “I Can Love You Like That” and remarkably, just like “I Swear” before it, this was a song originally recorded by country singer John Michael Montgomery. I guess if it had worked once, why wouldn’t it work again? And it did, in America at least where it was a No 5 hit. Over here though, we decided that one huge song from All-4-One was quite enough thank you very much and it struggled to a high of No 33 despite this live TOTP performance (which I can’t find a clip of by the way). The group would never return to our charts though they are still together to this day and last released an album in 2016.

Heeeere’s Edwyn! Yes, the rather fabulous Edwyn Collins is back on the show to perform his brilliant but surprising hit “A Girl Like You”. Edwyn, of course, started his musical career as the lead singer of Orange Juice who criminally only had one UK Top 40 hit. However, alongside the likes of The Adventures, Icicle Works and It Bites, they really should have had more. “Flesh Of My Flesh”, “Lean Period” and “What Presence?!” were all great singles that were habitually ignored by the record buying public. Their back catalogue has been revisited retrospectively though including a six CD box set called “Coals To Newcastle” and a compilation called “The Glasgow School” the latter of which featured a cover of “I Don’t Care” by The Ramones. I’m guessing then that Edwyn would have been stoked to be on the same show as the Queens punk rockers. Except he wasn’t. The clip shown here was just a repeat of an earlier performance from a couple of weeks before. Bloody scheduling! Rip it up!

We now turn our attention to Menswear and I don’t mean that awful tank top that host Mark Goodier is wearing. It looks like an off cut of the rug in my dining room. No, I mean the poster boys of Britpop – they even had a Levi’s modelling contract – who are experiencing their first chart hit in “Daydreamer”.

More than perhaps any other artist of this era, Menswear’s is a cautionary tale of running before you can walk, going too far too soon and all those other advisory idioms. Being lauded by the press and courted by record labels whilst only having four songs inevitably led to egos bigger than their talent and it would all end in tales of drug abuse, mental health issues, a sacked drummer and a massively over budget sophomore album that only got a release in a Menswear obsessed Japan. Back in June 1995 though, the band looked like they had the world at their feet. A distinctive, Roxy Music infused single and a frontman in the modish, angular Johnny Dean who had perfected the art of looking right down the camera lens long before ex-Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg did it at the 2010 General Election live TV debates. God, even that is now 13 years ago! Oh to be young and watching Menswear on TOTP again!

Boo! Rubbish! Get off! It’s The Outhere Brothers again whom I referred to as “those two pricks” in a previous post. By way of contrast, Mark Goodier calls them “those naughty boys”. Yeah, I stand indubitably by my comment mate. Their single “Boom Boom Boom” is up to No 2 on its way to the top of the charts where it will stay for four weeks. It came from an album called “1 Polish, 2 Biscuits & A Fish Sandwich” which were not that subtle references to the penis, buttocks and vagina. They went on to release a Best Of album in 2002 called “The Fucking Hits”. It’s not big and it’s not clever is it? Like I said, pricks.

And so to the Ramones. Now I wouldn’t describe myself as a super fan but I certainly can appreciate the influence that the band had despite little in the way of commercial success. Their hi-speed, pop-punk sound would mobilise a generation of bands and shape their futures in a way that they surely couldn’t have predicted. That said, would the pop kids of 1995 have known or cared who the Ramones were? Maybe they did. Or maybe it was just that executive producer Ric Blaxill was a fan and wanted to get them on the show. I don’t know. On the show they were though and they were there to plug their fourteenth and final studio album “Adios Amigos” of which “I Don’t Want To Grow Up” was the lead single. Now, I already knew this Tom Waits song as my wife is a fan and had the “Bone Machine” album it’s taken from. It’s a great track, all raggedy, shuffling and shambolic but also captivating.

This version by the Ramones is pretty good too and the fact that the tempo of it can be ramped up so much shows the quality of the song. You could be forgiven for thinking it was a Ramones original.

Given the trademark brevity of the Ramones’ material, there’s time for another song from them so we get an album track called “Cretin Family” from them. Mark Goodier’s attempt at looking genuinely surprised that there was more doesn’t convince anyone. He must have known – there’s even a caption on screen that says ‘Yes more!’. It’s sobering to think that Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy are now all no longer with us.

From the Ramones to Robson & Jerome. That’s quite a leap! The duo are still at No 1 with “Unchained Melody” for a seventh and final week. When the dust finally settled, it would have spent 14 weeks in the Top 40 and 25 inside the Top 100. That’s just under half a year! Just as it finally dropped out of the charts, their follow up “I Believe / Up On The Roof” went straight in at No 1. 1995 – what a time to be alive!

The play out track is “This Is A Call” by Foo Fighters. I have a history of missing out on bands that I really should have been into and Dave Grohl’s post Nirvana vehicle was another to add to the list. I think because I’d never really got Nirvana either (although clearly “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is a monster tune), my musical antenna weren’t pointing in the Foo Fighters direction in the first place. That said, “This Is A Call” is a banger so why it didn’t lead me to investigate more of their stuff at the time I don’t know. Still, it’s much easier these days to explore music unknown to you what with the likes of Spotify and all so I really have no excuse. I’ve got until their next appearance in these TOTP repeats to report back…

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1ClockWhoomph! (There It Is)As if
2JamiroquaiStillness In TimeNo
3Duran DuranWhite Lines (Don’t Do It)Didn’t mind it, didn’t buy it
4All-4-OneI Can Love You Like ThatNope
5Edwyn CollinsA Girl Like YouLiked it, didn’t buy it
6MenswearDaydreamerI did not
7The Outhere BrothersBoom Boom BoomHell no!
8RamonesI Don’t Want To Grow Up / Cretin FamilyNegative
9Robson & JeromeUnchained MelodyOf course not
10Foo FightersThis Is A CallNo but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations

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/m001sx1h/top-of-the-pops-29061995