Jesus Jones

TOTP 15 JUL 1993

Posted on September 17, 2022 by 80stastic

The day after this TOTP aired, Jurassic Park opened in UK cinemas. A ground breaking film both in terms of box office receipts and its revolutionary use of CGI, it’s hard to explain to people who weren’t there at the time quite what a big deal this film was. The hype and sense of excitement around it was palpable. I was working in the Rochdale Our Price at the time and there was only one other record shop in the town. The manager of it used to come into our store all the time and I recall him telling me that he’d been to see Jurassic Park the night before and how blown away he’d been by it. He specifically went on and on about the scene where the T-Rex has a torch light shined in its face and the pupil in its eye dilates. Like I said, it’s hard to explain now how advanced the film seemed to an audience like me who had been brought up on the special effects of Ray Harryhausen in the likes of Jason And The Argonauts and Clash Of The Titans. Of course, that original film spawned a whole franchise with the latest film coming out just this year. I wonder if any of the artists on this TOTP could be described as dinosaurs back in 1993?

I don’t think Dannii Minogue would have qualified as a dinosaur back in 1993. She was still only two years into her fledgling pop career. However, things weren’t going quite as well as they had been in 1991 for Dannii. After scoring two Top 10 successes and a couple of Top 20 singles from her debut album, the hits had dried up rather. Her version of The Jacksons’ “Show You The Way To Go” had spluttered to a high of No 30 whilst follow up “Love’s On Every Corner” had missed the Top 40 altogether. However, 1993 afforded an ideal opportunity for Dannii to kickstart her career as a disco revival was in full swing. Now bearing in mind that she’d already scored a disco styled hit with a version of Stacy Lattisaw’s 1980 hit “Jump To The Beat”, it made perfect sense for Ms Minogue to go there again and so she did with a cover of Melba Moore’s 1976 hit “This Is It”. It did the job too easily being the biggest of the five singles taken from her sophomore album “Get Into You” when it peaked at No 10. The album itself though bombed, vastly underperforming when it peaked at No 52 after her debut “Love And Kisses” had gone Top 10. It would be another ten years before she would return there with “Neon Nights”.

Dannii gives her usual energetic performance to sell the song backed with some equally perky dancers though why they have a backdrop of a sprawling metropolis lit up at night and some palm trees I don’t know. Even more confusing is what Dannii’s then fiancé is doing on the show. Host Tony Dortie introduces him at the end of the song with news of the couple’s impending nuptials. Julian McMahon was his name and he met Dannii on the set of Home And Away. According to Wikipedia, he appeared in the video for “This Is It” but sadly their marriage only lasted eighteen months. It can’t have been his dance moves that first attracted Dannii – in his brief time on screen here he looks like a pissed uncle at a wedding and even after the song has stopped continues to bob up and down like a pigeon’s head when walking. All very odd.

https://youtu.be/2BkYJ5g8kE4

Ah, Tony Dortie has joined me on the Jurassic Park references. “We’ve got no dinosaurs on the show tonight, just Paul Weller’s prehistoric haircut” he chortles to himself. Blimey! If he thought the 1993 version of Weller’s barnet was bad, what would he have made if its current incarnation?

Anyway, this felt like the point in Weller’s solo career where he achieved full lift off. His debut solo album had reminded people of his abilities as a songwriter after it had looked like the 90s might just pass him by. However it was his second album “Wild Wood” which would go platinum in the UK and show that Weller was a force still to be reckoned with. It’s worth remembering that he was only 35 at the time so we shouldn’t have been surprised at his re-emergence and that reports of his musical death were greatly exaggerated.

“Sunflower” was the lead single from the album and I’d forgotten what a strong song it is. It whipcracks away with a spiky rhythm and rapier like guitar riff – mesmerising stuff. It reminds me in parts of a song that Weller himself covered whilst in The Jam – “Big Bird” by Eddie Floyd.

The simple yet effective video with its quick cutaways and a camera revolving around Weller imbues it with even more urgency and energy. “Sunflower” peaked at No 16. It should have been higher.

OK, no real dinosaur connections with 4 Non Blondes other than to say on the soundtrack to Wayne’s World 2, the running order has “Out There” by Dinosaur Jr. followed immediately by “Mary’s House” by – yes – 4 Non Blondes. Tenuous I know.

I can’t find a clip of this particular performance of “What’s Up?” so I have had to use one from a previous week but Linda Perry has swapped her rastacap style headgear for something that Slash might have worn. It hasn’t affected her vocals though as she belts the song out. Whatever you thought of the song (and many didn’t like it), Linda had some pipes on her. Her performance here has echoes of Shakespear’s Sister “Stay” in that Perry has a touch of Siobahn Fahey about her. Not her voice as I’d have to say that is superior to the ex-Banana’s (sorry Siobahn!) but for her twisted, almost demonic delivery especially when she opens her eyes wide amongst all that eye shadow.

https://youtu.be/U-65MrNIWos

Now there’s some I’m sure who would have been happy to describe Deacon Blue in 1993 as dinosaurs (not me obviously). How did they fit into a dance obsessed chart with their well crafted pop songs about hardship, hope and heartbreak? Well, the truth is that they did try to fit in with fourth studio album “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” being co-produced by legendary dance DJ Paul Oakenfold (somebody I once worked with told me I looked like Oakenfold – I don’t). This new musical direction received mixed reviews and commercially underperformed compared to all three of its predecessors.

Now I would count myself as a fan of the band and have a few of their records but I really don’t remember a fourth single from “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” but here it is. “Hang Your Head” was the lead song of a four track EP and was very un- Deacon Blue like with its driving beat and rock guitar licks – it was no “Dignity” – but actually it sounds OK to me. Not enough of the wonderful Lorraine McIntosh in this performance though.

A Best Of album came out the following year but the band split after that before reforming five years later. They continue to record and perform live with their last album being as recent as 2021.

This week’s Breakers start with Jon Secada who’s chart career wasn’t quite extinct in 1993 but surely that dinosaur-destroying asteroid was on its way. Having scored an unlikely Top 5 hit with “Just Another Day” the previous year, Jon stalked another hit raptor like and came up with a trio of them though none got any higher than No 23. This one, “Do You Really Want Me”, was the last of them and from the few seconds afforded it on the show sounded like a lost squawking seagull. Where’s an asteroid when you need one?

Ah, now. Here’s an interesting one and an example how quickly the pop world can turn. Back in 1991, Jesus Jones bestrode the charts T-Rex* like, the dominant species of the Top 40. Then that aforementioned asteroid hit in the form of the music press who decided that the band had been the inkies’ darlings for long enough and that they were crap after all.

*I’m meaning the dinosaur here but I guess my point would also work with Marc Bolan’s band.

To their eternal credit, the band carried on regardless and are still together today. Back in 1993 though, “Zeroes And Ones” was the final single to be lifted from their “Perverse” album and would prove to be their last ever UK Top 40 hit. It also provides the title for an upcoming Best Of album due out in October 2022. As for the track itself, it’s pretty standard Jesus Jones fare and I must admit it passed me by at the time.

Also on the end of a music press backlash were Blur who had experienced a slump after the success of debut album “Leisure” and a poorly received US tour. Unlike Jesus Jones though, Blur were able to evolve from their dinosaur state to become one of the 90s (and beyond’s) biggest bands. Enabling that leap from the thrills of “Leisure” to the glories of “Parklife” was inbetweener “Modern Life Is Rubbish”* from which “Chemical World” was the second single to be released. Although it didn’t pull up any trees at the time sales wise, it has retrospectively been labelled as one of the defining albums of Britpop with its Small Faces and The Kinks influences and lyrics that spoke of the experience of British life.

Immediately though, it didn’t appear as if Blur’s fortunes had been reversed. These were the chart peaks for every single release since “There’s No Other Way” made the Top 10 in 1991 until “Girls And Boys” did the same in 1994:

24 – 32 – 28 – 28 – 26

“Chemical World” was responsible for the penultimate entry in that sequence but it probably deserved better. If Paul Weller would come to be seen as one of the Godfathers of Britpop then Blur (alongside Oasis of course, where else would they be?) were its pin up boys. Blur’s and our own worlds would look very different just twelve months later.

*I actually picked up the “Modern Life Is Rubbish” album whilst on holiday in New York. Naturally it was in the bargain bin.

Being a musical dinosaur was the last thing that you could accuse Utah Saints of in 1993. They were at the cutting edge of making groundbreaking, mainstream dance music with their penchant for sampling pop records from the likes of Eurythmics and Kate Bush and repurposing them. However, after three consecutive Top 10 hits, was the writing on the wall for them when fourth single “I Want You” only made No 25? All of them came from their eponymous debut album but apart from a couple of stand alone singles, there was nothing then until 2000 – the equivalent of the Jurassic period (56 million years) in the world of pop.

Why did “I Want You” fail? Well, maybe sampling thrash metal band Slayer’s “War Ensemble” was just a little too niche to secure the band a fourth massive crossover hit. Just a thought.

Like Jesus Jones and Blur before him, Kenny Thomas was facing the challenge of following up on initial success with more hit-worthy material. Even host Tony Dortie talks about the soul crooner being under pressure to do so in his intro. “Stay” was the song that was chosen to relaunch Kenny but unlike the aforementioned Shakespear’s Sister and their track, it wasn’t a resounding success peaking at No 22.

Kenny’s music left me cold at the best of times but this one made me fell like I was locked in a freezer. Sorry Kenny but if this song was a scene from Jurassic Park, it would have been the bit where the guests on the island take a tour in those electric vehicles and none of the dinosaurs appear prompting the two kids to say “I don’t see anything. Do you see anything? There’s nothing there.”

Now, in much the same way that the dinosaurs were wiped off the surface of the earth by that asteroid, the next act seem to have been expunged from the history of 90s music in that you hardly hear them mentioned at all nowadays. In 1993 though, Oui 3 were bona fide chart stars with three Top 40 singles to their name. OK, none of them got any higher than No 17 and two of them were actually the same song (one single was re-released eight months after it initially came out) but that’s three chart hits all the same. That re-release was their Buffalo Springfield sampling song “For What It’s Worth” which, as he told us in his intro, was Tony Dortie’s favourite single of the year to that point. What he didn’t tell us was the name of Oui 3’s new hit which was “Break From The Old Routine”. Bet their record label weren’t too impressed by that. Schoolboy error Tony!

I liked both singles and my wife enjoyed them so much she bought their album “Oui Love You”. Not many other people did though as it peaked at No 39. A second album was never released and after one final minor hit (“Facts Of Life” – No 38) and a couple of stand alone singles that flopped, it was all over – Oui 3 were no(n) more. What I hadn’t realised until now was that one of the band was Blair Booth who was one third of late 80s collaboration Terry, Blair and Anouchka featuring Terry Hall and who were responsible for the marvellous non-hit “Missing”:

Oui 3 though were nothing like Terry, Blair and Anouchka, coming on, as they did, like Stereo MC’s cooler, more laid back cousin. The rapping was on point (though I’m no judge of what makes a good rapper to be fair) and they had what I can only describe as some good grooves. I would have been interested to see what that second album would have sounded like.

Despite having been around for the best part of a decade by 1993, Madonna was nowhere near being a dinosaur what with all the controversy over her “Erotica” album making her still seem exciting and contemporary. Fast forward to 2022, and Madge is plodding around the music landscape like a ponderous brontosaurus desperately seeking ~~Susan~~ validation that she is still relevant.

Anyway, “Rain” was her latest single and the last to be released in the UK from “Erotica”. I’ve said before that when I first heard the album that was the track that stood out to me as a potential hit single. I was right as well but it took a while. As it turned out it would make No 7 meaning that all five of the singles from “Erotica” made the Top 10 over here. Well, there was the evidence if you needed any that Madonna wasn’t a dinosaur back then.

Compared to the other singles, “Rain” felt like it didn’t really belong on the album. It was in many ways a very standard, though lushly produced, big ballad. The lyrics are based around that well worn literary (and indeed cinematic) metaphor of rain being a cleansing agent and washing away previous sorrows to be followed by the sunshine and redeeming warmth of a new love. Or are they? This was a track from “Erotica” remember so were lines like “I feel it…It’s coming…Rain…Feel it on my fingertips” actually referring to something rather more sexual? Does the video give us any clues? Well, it’s much safer than something like “Justify My Love” being a sort of film within a film with the plot depicting Madonna as the star of a promo being directed by composer Ryuichi Sakamoto no less. There is a scene of her kissing a man behind a glass screen while water falls but it’s pretty tame stuff. What do I know though as it won two MTV Video Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography.

Take That are straight in at No 1 with “Pray”. Straight in! To think just a couple of years before when Gary Barlow popped into the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester where I was working, my colleague Craig followed him round the shop floor mouthing “nobody buys your records” behind his back!

To say that the group were very much seen as five individuals with each one having a devoted fan base (I’m guessing!), what comes across in the performance here is that the other four very much look like Barlow’s backing dancers. The lead vocals were shared out more equally over subsequent releases. As I recall, Mark Owen took centre stage on “Babe”, Robbie Williams did “Everything Changes” and Howard Donald got the job on “Never Forget”. Did Jason Orange ever get a go to show us his vocal talents? I’m not sure he ever did. No wonder the poor lad ended up leaving the band.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Dannii Minogue	This Is It	Not likely
2	Paul Weller	Sunflower	No but I had the Wild Wood album
3	4 Non Blondes	What’s Up?	No but I found a copy of their album behind a filing cabinet when shutting down the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester
4	Deacon Blue	Hang Your Head	No
5	Jon Secada	Do You Really Want Me	As if
6	Jesus Jones	Zeroes And Ones	Nope
7	Blur	Chemical World	No but I had the album Modern Life Is Rubbish
8	Utah Saints	I Want You	I didn’t actually
9	Kenny Thomas	Stay	Never happening
10	Oui 3	Break From The Old Routine	No but my wife had their album
11	Madonna	Rain	Nah
12	Take That	Pray	And 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/m001c1qq/top-of-the-pops-15071993

TOTP 07 JAN 1993

Posted on June 7, 2022 by 80stastic

1992 has bitten the dust and to celebrate the dawning of 1993, there are a glut of new songs on the first TOTP of the new year. Traditionally a time when singles don’t have to sell that many copies in the post Xmas sales slump to bag a Top 40 placing, let’s see if we can spot any examples of that here….

Could this be a contender? Now admittedly there was a time when Jesus Jones were one of the hottest properties on planet pop but that was back in 1991 and we all know that the old adage about a week being a long time in politics can also apply to the music industry. Would they still have an audience nearly two years on? Well possibly but one big and committed enough to send their new single “The Devil You Know” straight into the Top 20?

This was the lead single from third album “Perverse” which was one of the first albums ever to be recorded entirely on computer and the concept behind it according to rock journalist Stephen Thomas Erlewine was “to make techno palatable for the pop masses”. A worthy ambition or a pointless pursuit? The music press of the time couldn’t make their minds up and reviews were mixed. The album has been revisited more positively retrospectively so maybe Mike Edwards and co were just ahead of their time?

As for the single itself, I think I can hear the sound they were trying to meld but I’m not sure that it was any good. There’s an Eastern influence to it at the beginning (an Iranian instrument apparently) and a bit of a panel beating techno riff where the chorus should be. All a bit of a mess really. The single went to No 10 and I’m stating for the record that chart peak would not have been achieved at any other time of the year.

Having just been pipped to the best selling single of the year title late doors by Whitney Houston, Snap! have followed up “Rhythm Is A Dancer” with their ode to the daleks “Exterminate!”. Not as gigantic sounding a tune as its predecessor, it was hardly understated either though. There some Enigma “Sadeness” vibes thrown in the mix but the biggest change is the omission of rapper Turbo B from proceedings. I’m not sure of the exact timeline but he left the Snap! family around this time and so it was left to ex-Madonna backing singer Niki Haris to do the vocals and be the public face of the whole project. Given “Exterminate!” achieved an ultimate chart peak of No 2, you’d have to say she did a pretty decent job. And yet, asked to name a song by Snap!, how many of us would opt for it? “Exterminate!” you say? By Snap!? Like Kajagoogoo having hits without Limahl, it just doesn’t compute.

Something else that didn’t compute was this next performance by a band making their TOTP debut. More specifically it was their look that didn’t make any sense.

The Frank And Walters (not Frank And The Walters Tony Dortie!) hailed from Cork, Ireland and “After All” would turn out to be their only UK Top 40 hit when it peaked at No 11. A couple of EPs got them noticed by the Go! Discs label who released their debut album “Trains, Boats And Planes” from which “After All” was taken.

I liked “After All”. It was quirky, catchy and blazed its own little trail for unlikely pop stars. Listening back to it now, it seems to have a sliver of “Sit Down” by James about it. However, it did seem to divide opinion. I once worked with someone who absolutely detested it though I could never quite work out why.

So getting back to their image, my use of the word ‘unlikely’ doesn’t rally cover what was happening in front of our eyes with this performance. Bright orange roll necks and hideously patterned trousers?! Really?! Here’s singer Paul Linehan (courtesy of @TOTPFacts) with some more detail:

Paul Linehan on this #TOTP performance. “We bought the polo necks in a charity shop on Castle Street [Cork] and we got the trousers in Leaders on North Main Street – I think they were there since the ’70s." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 3, 2022

And the hair? Here’s Paul again:

“My mam did my hair. I had tried to get the same cut in the barbers, but he couldn’t do it. My mam had a bowl that fitted my head perfectly and she just cut around it.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 3, 2022

None of the above explains why though? Were they influenced by the Trevor and Simon ‘Singing Corner’ characters from Going Live? Or were they the influencers? Was Mike Flowers watching this show and taking hairstyle notes for launching his tilt at the charts with that bizarre cover of “Wonderwall” in 1995?

The Franks came close to a second hit when follow up single, the wonderfully titled “Fashion Crisis Hits New York” stalled at No 42. A gap of five years until their next album was never going to be good for maintaining momentum and the charts would never make their acquaintance again though they have continued to release material with their last album coming in 2016.

https://youtu.be/4_Hjw7bcA5k

After that portal into a possible parallel world where the charts weren’t full of nasty, homogeneous dance hits, that wormhole is firmly shut by the arrival of next act Slipstreem and their hateful single “We Are Raving”. A rave version of “Sailing”?! What in the name of Rod’s beard? Who were these people and just what the f**k was going on here? Actually, I couldn’t care less who they were and I know what was going on. This was cashing in pure and simple. Jumping on a bandwagon and then bastardising it for a shit hit and a quick buck.

And what a dog’s dinner of a performance to promote it. There’s the obligatory two guys on keyboards because hey! This is a dance hit you know. Then there’s two dancers in wet suits (obviously) and the ‘singer’ in a de rigueur puffa jacket. And then there’s the other two. A Captain Birdseye lookalike is behind a ship’s wheel bedecked with a tartan scarf but for any viewers who hadn’t quite cottoned onto the Rod Stewart connection there was the shittest Rod lookalike you’ve ever seen stumbling about the stage ramming the point home. He’s definitely not wearing it well.

“We Are Raving” peaked at No 18.

After that unedifying spectacle, it’s time to chill out, with some come down music and that must be the first time rockers Little Angels have been described as such. Let’s face it, they’re hardly Röyksopp are they? We do, however, find them in reflective mood at least with new single “Womankind” which would prove to be their biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 12.

Taken from their No 1 album “Jam”, it’s a decent rock ballad and singer Toby Jepson has some pipes on him for sure. I could imagine it being used to soundtrack some dramatic scene in a big Hollywood blockbuster. They’ve even got some orchestra strings thrown into the mix to give it a big, epic feel. Plus, I always quite liked the phrase “desperate proclaimer” in the lyrics. Yeah, not a bad effort all round.

Are you kidding me? FIVE Breakers?! This better not be how it’s going to be for the whole of 1993! There had better be some decent tunes amongst them then. We start with…ah…a decent tune from Prefab Sprout. How can anyone not love Paddy McAloon? As the 2018 song he wrote for the aforementioned Rod Stewart “Who Designed The Snowflake” says in its lyrics, he’s a genius work. So many great songs and yet, like XTC who I referenced in my review of 1992, so little commercial success.

“Life Of Surprises” was a new track taken from the previous year’s Best Of album of almost the same name and its peak of No 24 meant it became only the band’s fifth ever Top 40 hit. Indeed, in their whole career they only had six all told. Compare that to, oh I don’t know, Snap! who were on earlier who had fourteen UK Top 40 entries. More than double! Where’s the justice?

That Best Of album actually supplied three of their six hits as new tracks “Sound Of Crying” and “If You Don’t Love Me” had earlier achieved chart highs of Nos 23 and 33 respectively. “Life Of Surprises” was actually an older track from fourth studio album “Protest Songs” from 1989 and had already been released once as the B -side to “From Langley Park To Memphis” single “Nightingales”. It’s typical McAloon fare with a fine melody allied with Paddy’s almost whispered vocals. Lovely stuff.

Paddy is still writing and recording with his most recent release being 2019’s “I Trawl The Megahertz”. He suffers from tinnitus which makes his output even more remarkable and has grown a massive Gandalf like beard in later life, far removed from his clean cut image in this video.

Hasn’t this one been out before? I’m sure “Love See No Colour” by The Farm has already been a hit once hasn’t it?

*checks internet*

OK, so not a hit (it peaked at No 58) but it had been released 12 months previously. Why was it given another promotional push? Well, I’m guessing that sales of their second album of the same name had been a massive disappointment after their debut “Spartacus” had been a No 1. After they’d finally got a hit single out of it by resorting to a cover of The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”, record company Sony must have wanted to consolidate on that bit of success.

Their solution was to get the band to re-record “Love See No Colour” with an emphasis on a synth sound and gospel feel. They even commissioned a new video to help promote it. None of their strategies really worked though as the single got no higher than No 35. Sales of the album didn’t improve and the band were dropped. Quite a fall from their “All Together Now” peak, a 2.0 version of which they were presumably trying to recreate by re-recording “Love See No Colour”.

You wait for ages for one band from Cork to have a hit and then two turn up at once! Yes, unbelievable as it seems, The Sultans Of Ping FC, like The Frank And Walters earlier in the show, were also from Cork. It’s not quite up there with that bizarre phenomenon of The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin all hailing from Stourbridge in the West Midlands as Cork is three times the size population wise but it’s still quite a thing. There was a third Cork band around at this time called Stump who achieved a minor chart placing with the gloriously eccentric single “Charlton Heston” but for now it was all about The Ping.

Having released a trio of singles on independent label Divine Records during 1992 (including the marvellous “Where’s Me Jumper”), the band had been picked up by Epic through which their debut album “Casual Sex In The Cineplex” was released. Trailing it was the single “You Talk Too Much” which had much more of a punk vibe than their fellow Corkonians The Franks and their simultaneous hit single.

Around this time I was visiting my mate Robin in London and wandering around Piccadilly Circus we arrived at the Virgin Records store just in time to catch a p.a. and set by the band. Robin has reminded me that there were some hecklers in the audience and the lead singer came back with “we’re No 27 in the charts. Have you ever been in the charts?”. Excellent.

The album included the track “Give Him A Ball (And A Yard Of Grass)” which was inspired by a remark from his Brian Clough when talking about brilliant Nottingham Forest winger John Robertson. Here’s his quote in full:

John Robertson was a very unattractive young man. If one day I was feeling a bit off colour, I would sit next to him. I was bloody Errol Flynn compared to him. But give him a yard of grass and he was an artist. The Picasso of our game.

The legendary Brian Clough there. Still sadly missed. As for The Sultans Of Ping FC, they went through a few name alterations dropping the FC, then removing the Ping part before finally restoring it to Sultans Of Ping in 2005.

Another cover version now but an unlikely one. The decision process behind Sunscreem‘s choosing of a 1980 Marianne Faithful single that flopped takes some fathoming. “Broken English” was the title track from her comeback album after years of health and addiction problems. It is widely regarded as her ‘definitive recording’ and Faithfull herself described it as her “masterpiece”. I was surprised to find out then that it bombed in the charts peaking at No 57. The title track from it sank without trace. I have to admit to not knowing it at all so I gave it a whirl…

Hmm. It doesn’t (Sun)scream techno anthem to me I have to say. The Essex groovers version adds a few interesting squiggles in the background but I can’t imagine it being that easy to dance to but then I wasn’t spending much time in the clubs around then. It would become the band’s highest charting hit when it settled at No 13 and they would follow it up with a rerelease of early single “Pressure.

The final Breaker is a bit confusing. In my head, Arrested Development followed their huge hit “People Everyday” with another big seller called “Mr. Wendal” so what was this track “Revolution” all about? Well, both tracks were released as a double A-side. “Mr. Wendal” was from their “3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…” album whilst “Revolution” was from the soundtrack to the Spike Lee directed biopic Malcolm X starring Denzel Washington. In the US they were released as separate singles but in Europe they were doubled up. I have zero recall of “Revolution” but “Mr. Wendal” was a tune. Hope we get to see that in future TOTP repeats.

A real taster next of the direction the charts would be going in this year although in truth, Apache Indian was actually ploughing his own furrow. Real name Steven Kapur, this guy grew up in the multicultural metropolis that was Birmingham in the early 80s listening to reggae and dancehall music. Creating a stage name for himself, Steven set about fusing those influences with the cultural sounds of his own Indian background. That fusion of ragga and Bhangra drew positive reactions from audiences of both genres and so bhangra ragamuffin was born or bhangramuffin as it became known.

Picked up by the legendary Island Records, Apache Indian recorded his debut album “No Reservations” in Jamaica’s Tuff Gong studios and from it came the single “Arranged Marriage”. The controversial track dared to take on the normally taboo subject of its title and provoked negative criticism from some of the Indian community. This guy was no ordinary pop star and was determined to do things his own way.

The performance here is great and nothing like we’d really seen before. There were no sitars à la Monsoon and “Ever So Lonely” from the early 80s. “Arranged Marriage” would make No 16 and was nominated for an Ivor Novello award for Best Contemporary Song. However, Apache Indian will surely be best remembered for his later single “Boom Shack -A- Lak” which took him to the Top 5.

In the Story Of 1993 BBC documentary, Kapur opened up about his experiences of this year and he explained that he was good buddies with Shaggy, one of the year’s other big reggae fusion/dancehall movers alongside Shabba Ranks and Snow. The charts they were a-changin’..,

https://youtu.be/HealqMJzu_M

From someone brand new to one of the biggest artists in the world. Paul McCartney hadn’t released any new material in the 90s so far but delivered on his fanbase’s hopes of a new song with “Hope Of Deliverance”. Taken from his ninth solo studio album “Off The Ground”, it was hardly the stuff of legend. Yes it was bright, breezy and positive but it was also the wrong side of predictable and ever so slightly annoying.

The album achieved gold status but didn’t furnish any further hit singles (“Hope Of Deliverance” peaked at No 18) and surely can’t be any Macca fan’s favourite album of his? This phase of his career very much reminds me of his mid 80s era when his “Press To Play” album was commercially and critically received in much the same way and the singles from it were only minor hits. He would return four years later with “Flaming Pie” which got his best reviews since 1982’s “Tug Of War”.

https://youtu.be/eSokJcERbuY

If we were thinking that Whitney Houston’s reign at the top would be over when the Xmas decorations were put away for another year then we were completely and utterly mistaken. Any of us under that illusion hadn’t factored in that the film “I Will Always Love You” was taken from, The Bodyguard, wasn’t released in the UK until Boxing Day therefore instantly giving the single another impetus of sales. Whitney’s run at No 1 still had plenty of legs left yet.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jesus Jones	The Devil You Know	Nah
2	Snap!	Exterminate!	Nope
3	The Frank And Walters	After All	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Slipstreem	We Are Raving	NO!!!
5	Little Angels	Womankind	No but I had a promo copy of their album
6	Prefab Sprout	Life Of Surprises	No but I had the Best Of album it was taken from
7	The Farm	Love See No Colour	Nope, neither time it was released
8	The Sultans Of Ping FC	You Talk Too Much	See 3 above
9	Sunscreem	Broken English	No
10	Arrested Development	Revolution	No my wife had the album though
11	Apache Indian	Arranged Marriage	Interesting though it was, no
12	Paul McCartney	Hope Of Deliverance	Very weak – no
13	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	I did not

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0017wtw/top-of-the-pops-07011993

TOTP 18 JUL 1991

Posted on September 2, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s mid Summer in 1991 as July stretches out before us but it’s not the consistently warm weather that is setting UK temperatures rising. No, it’s our pre-occupation with all things Robin Hood. Not only is Bryan Adams at No 1 with that song from the latest celluloid take on the legend but said film is set to open in the UK the day after this TOTP aired. In all honesty, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was just the latest in a long line of adaptations of the Robin Hood story in film and television which have engrossed us as a nation down the years. From the classic 1938 film starring Errol Flynn in the title role, through the 50s TV series starring Richard Greene with its ‘Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Riding through the glen‘ theme tune and onto the 1973 Walt Disney re-imagining of the tale with the lead characters as animals. It didn’t stop there though as we progressed into the 80s with the supernatural themed TV series starring not one but two different Robins and finally arriving in the 90s with the BBC sit com Maid Marian and her Merry Men with its role reversal re-writing of the story. Hell, even in 1991, the year of Robin, there was another film of the legend in addition to the Kevin Costner one starring Patrick Bergin which was a much more gritty retelling of the tale than its more commercial competitor. So, with a seemingly inexhaustible demand for tight-clad merry men and archery, I wonder if TOTP followed the trend?

Our host for tonight is Jakki Brambles who’s had her hair done like Debbie Gibson and the opening act is Cathy Dennis with her single “Just Another Dream”. This track was on its third attempt at being a hit by this point after getting no further than No 93 in 1989 and No 95 in 1990. However, as Jakki intimated in her intro, Cathy was doing the business over in the US where the song had gone Top 10 so that, allied with her recent Top 5 hit “Touch Me (All Night Long)”, meant that it was shoved out into the market place one more time where it would sell enough copies to reach No 13 in the UK. It’s pretty bland stuff though to my ears with one of those choruses that seems to have too many words in it.

There’s little evidence of a Robin Hood theme to Cathy’s outfit tonight which is more space cadet than Maid Marian, not unlike something Betty Boo would have been wearing at the time but her song is nowhere near as catchy as something that the Boo-ster would have come up with. A month after this, Cathy’s debut album “Move To This” was released and it was a huge success selling 100,000 copies in the UK and she would consolidate that success by following that well worn path of releasing a slowie after two fast tracks when sugary ballad “Too Many Walls” went Top 20.

It would be stretching it to try and make a connection between Robin Hood and the next act but I’ll give it a go. Well, for starters they both feature a gang with a leader at the head of it. Erm…that’s it. Yes for Robin Hood and his Merry Men read Heavy D And The Boyz. Their cover of “Now That We Found Love” was by far their biggest ever hit peaking at No 2 although Heavy himself did feature on hit singles by Janet Jackson (“Alright” a No 20 hit in 1990) and Michael Jackson (“Jam” a No 13 hit in 1992).

The album it was taken from (“Peaceful Journey”) has some song titles on it loaded with sexual innuendo such as “Do Me, Do Me”, “The Lover’s Got What U Need” and the C+C Music Factory soundalike “I Can Make You Go Oooh”. I’m pretty sure that Robin Hood woulds never have been so course in his wooing of Maid Marian.

Jakki Brambles goes a bit fattest in her commentary on Heavy D though when she says “Turning cellulite into success, that’s Heavy D” and then compounds the insult by saying “I like that” clearly giving away the fact that she was reading from a script. Let’s just hope she was cringing her face off if she was watching these BBC4 TOTP repeats back.

Next is an English rock band ploughing their own furrow in amongst all this dance music and doing quite nicely thank you very much. Little Angels had already racked up five Top 40 singles by this point (though none of them had progressed past No 21) and “I Ain’t Gonna Cry” kept the run going by peaking at No 26. This was the last single to be released from their third album entitled “Young Gods” and the band were just 18 months away from the pinnacle of their success when fourth album “Jam” would go to No 1. I had a freebie CD of that album (one of those advanced copies that the record companies sent out to record shops to promote ahead of its official release) and it was pretty good. Don’t know where it is now mind.

For me what set them apart from all those similar bands like Thunder, The Quireboys, The Dogs D’Amour that were around at the time was their brass section called The Big Bad Horns who would play live with the band as well as record with them. I saw Little Angels do an instore appearance at HMV in Manchester at the time of the “Jam” album and they also played a mini set and they could make a decent noise live. The band seemed to split right at the height of their success in 1994 and have only reformed briefly for a nine date UK tour in 2012 and an appearance at the download festival in 2013.

What’s this? Jakki Brambles advising that we can have a party for a group of friends at TOTP and she’ll tell us how later. What?! Really? How would that work? My friend Robin, who was in the TOTP audience by mistake earlier in this year (he thought Morrissey was appearing, he didn’t), said it was a awful experience and he was just part of a small group of people being herded around the studio and being asked to whoop and holler inanely by the floor staff now and again. Doesn’t sound like a top night out to me? Did your party get access to the legendary BBC bar as well? I think I would have wanted a full breakdown of what was included in the deal before booking!

I can’t actually work out what this next single is? “(Hammer Hammer) They Put Me in the Mix” by MC Hammer (obvs) sounds like one of those medley remix singles that the likes of Black Box, Technotronic and Snap! had released around this time but I can’t hear any of his previous hits in the mix (as it were). His discography says it was a non-album single (remix) not listed on either “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em” or the follow up “Too Legit to Quit” so what exactly was it? Well, I have the answer for you….it was absolute shit that’s what it was.

“(Hammer Hammer) They Put Me in the Mix” peaked at No 20.

Ah… I wasn’t expecting to see Kim Appleby on the show again as I’d pretty much written off her chart career the last time she appeared. Consequently, I’ve very little left to say about this one. Kim seems so nice and her song “Mama” is so inoffensive. OK, how about this. Whilst recording tracks with Stock, Aitken and Waterman at the Hit Factory studios, Mel & Kim were prone to staying the phrase “F*****g lovely mate”. So often did they say it in their strong London accents that it inspired Pete Waterman to come up with the song “FLM” which in the press for the single stated it was an acronym for ‘Fun, Love and Money’ although the truth was a lot more base. And the link to Robin Hood? Here’s Christian Slater as Will Scarlet swearing in a very non-English sounding accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves…

Tenuous? Me?

“Mama” peaked at No 19 and was Kim’s last ever Top 40 entry.

It’s that duet from Nat ‘King’ Cole and his daughter Natalie Cole now and their virtual version of “Unforgettable”. The track won four Grammys in 1992 – Record of the Year, Traditional Pop Vocal Performance, Song of the Year and Arrangement Accompanying Vocals whilst the parent album won Album of the Year and Best Engineered – Non-Classical. OK, some of those categories sound a bit confusing and possibly made up – what’s the difference between Record of the Year and Song of the Year (no, I can’t be bothered to look it up) for example? Anyway, I guess it was a very big deal in the US and indeed went seven times platinum over there.

Oh, and a Robin Hood tie in? “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” won Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television grammy that same year.

Just the two Breakers this week starting with Altern 8 and “Infiltrate 202”. If I hear the name Altern 8 I don’t hear any of their tunes (which all sounded a bit the same to my non raver ears) but I do get a mental image of face masks and hazmat suits. Yes, clearly ahead of the game by 30 years, I don’t think I saw a TV appearance by this Staffordshire duo when they weren’t wearing their distinctive outfits with the ‘A’ logo on the masks.

Although I didn’t get their appeal, they were a pretty big deal for a while in the early 90s and scored two Top 10 hits in “Activ 8 (Come with Me)” and “Evapor 8”. Apparently, as well as their face masks gimmick, they also employed the trick of ensuring that just about all their tracks had the figure 8 in their title. Other singles included “Hypnotic St-8” and “Brutal-8-E”. So why didn’t they call “Infiltrate 202” “Infiltr-8 202” then?

Another dance tune now from Shades Of Rhythm who, as Jakki Brambles said, hailed from Peterborough. I remember the name but that’s about it and have no recall of “Sounds Of Eden” at all. Apparently they were signed to legendary label ZTT Records (Frankie Goes To Hollywood and all that) and they were stalwarts of dance compilation albums of the day such as “Deep Heat” and “Hard Fax” but this was never going to be my bag at all.

“Sounds Of Eden” peaked at No 35.

“The world’s most pleasant pop stars” are up now, well at least according to Jakki Brambles they are. To be fair, the general consensus seemed to be that Londonbeat were indeed an extremely amiable bunch. Their single “A Better Love” had been originally released as the direct follow up to the band’s surprising No 2 smash “I’ve Been Thinking About You” at the end of 1990 but it had failed to get above No 52 then. A cover of Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry” was then sent out to restore chart fortunes in March of ’91 but failed abysmally spending just two weeks in the charts peaking at No 64. For some reason (maybe because it was a Top 20 hit in the US?), “A Better Love” was given another shot at redemption just a few months later and bingo! Another Top 40 hit and a slot on TOTP.

I’m not really sure why it didn’t take off first time around. It’s a very melodic tune with some lush vocals that wash over you making it perfect for daytime radio playlists. I have to say though that the lyrics were on the wrong side of jarring. “I’ll never find a better love not in a minute” they sang in the chorus. Well, yeah. Obviously. How would it even be possible? For a start you’d have to wake up to the fact that you weren’t happy in your relationship to begin with and that there was someone better for you out there. Then you’d have to break up with your current squeeze and got through all that. That’s before you’ve even thought about how you go about finding a new (better) love. At work? Down the pub? Online dating? All this stuff takes time and is certainly not achievable in 60 seconds!

As with many a single in 1991, its belated success caused a sudden surge of demand for the parent album (“In The Blood”) which had been released some 10 months prior meaning not many record shops had copies of it in. When more were ordered in our store, we found that the delivery note had those dreaded words ‘Temporarily Withdrawn’ against the album meaning it was going to be re-promoted but the record label wanted all the old copies still knocking around sold first before they would make it available again. I hated that practice.

As for Londonbeat, they were never as popular again and even resorted to that last chance saloon tactic of entering in the Song For Europe competition in 1995. Want to hear it? Tough, here it is…

Hmm. Not sure I have to say. Do you remember who they were beaten by to being the UK’s official entry in that year’s Eurovision Song Contest? How could you forget the year we went rap with Love City Groove? The song finished 10th leading Terry Wogan to famously comment that “the experiment has failed”.

What was it with 1991 and re-released singles?! After Cathy Dennis and Londonbeat before them came Jesus Jones with “Right Here, Right Now” a single that had not only been released once already but had actually also been a hit before! Back in October ’90, it went to No 31 in the UK charts paving the way for bigger successes in “International Bright Young Thing” and the album “Doubt” that made the band a huge deal briefly.

Their success was not restricted to just over here though. As Jakki says, they were also a doing the business in the US where “Right Here, Right Now” topped the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and reached No 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Presumably that was why it was re-released in the UK. The US success didn’t translate over here though as it peaked at, yes you guessed it, No 31 again. Reminds me of when I retook my Maths ‘O’ level in ’84 and got the same ‘C’ grade again. Still, there’s not many song’s that can boast that it was used in not one but two US presidential election campaigns which was what happened to “Right Here, Right Now” when it was appropriated by Bill Clinton in 1992 and then again by his wife Hillary Clinton in 2008.

And so we arrive at the main protagonist of all this Robin Hood mania. Bryan Adams is No 1 for just the second of 16 weeks with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. As I said earlier, the film the song was taken from, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, was released in the UK the day after this TOTP went out but was it any good? I don’t think time has been kind to it. Let’s start with its star Kevin Costner. His box office pull was not in doubt after his run of hits like The Untouchables, No Way Out, Bull Durham and Field of Dreams and that’s before we mention the Oscar winning Dances With Wolves. However, the anomaly of his accent (why didn’t he even try to do one?!) and his dreadfully wooden performance as a whole should be enough on their own to condemn the film to eternal bad reviews.

Then there was Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham. Don’t get me wrong. I love Alan Rickman’s body of work and even his monstrously over the top performance here is enjoyable but it detracted from the film. It almost made us want to root for him instead of stuffy old Robin despite the badly misjudged scene where he forces Marian’s legs apart after a coerced wedding ceremony. In fact, the whole tone of the film was incredibly dark and nothing like the Errol Flynn version of yore. It didn’t stop audiences rushing to see it though. It was the second highest grossing film of 1991 beaten only by Terminator 2: Judgment Day whilst Smash Hits magazine predictably called it “probably the best version of Robin Hood ever made”. The critics weren’t keen though and Costner won the Worst Actor Golden Raspberry Award whilst Christian Slater received a nomination for Worst Supporting Actor (that clip earlier in the post was surely enough ammunition for the nomination).

So, in answer to the question was it any good, I think my answer is a resounding no but I must have seen it multiple times as it always seems to be on the TV year in year out.

The play out video is “Monsters And Angels” by Voice Of The Beehive. Having taken a whole three years between the release of the debut album “Let It Bee” and the follow up “Honey Lingers” (yes, there was a deliberate double entendre style play on words in the title), there must have been some trepidation about whether the pop world remembered who they were and indeed if they were welcome back into it. Sisters Tracey Bryn and Melissa Brooke Belland needn’t have worried as lead single “Monsters And Angels” brought immediate chart dividends when it rose to No 17, their second highest ever Top 40 placing. The album also achieved the same chart position and their comeback was complete. However, a further five years until the next album “Sex & Misery” was a gap too far and it failed to chart at all and the band broke up soon after. Despite Tracey and Melissa now living lives outside of music, there have been a couple of reunions to play a handful of gigs in 2003 and 2017.

I took part in a recent music Twitter challenge called #PopInjustice where Twitter users posted songs that had failed to make the UK Top 40. By far the biggest reaction to any of my suggestions was for this Voice Of The Beehive track…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cathy Dennis	Just Another Dream	Nope
2	Heavy D And The Boyz	Now That We Found Love	No
3	Little Angels	I Ain’t Gonna Cry	Negative
4	MC Hammer	(Hammer Hammer) They Put Me in the Mix	Hell No!
5	Kim Appleby	Mama	Nah
6	Nat ‘King’ Cole / Natalie Cole	Unforgettable	Another no
7	Altern 8	Infiltrate 202	Nothing here for me
8	Shades Of Rhythm	Sounds Of Eden	See 6 above
9	Londonbeat	A Better Love	Pleasant but no
10	Jesus Jones	Right Here Right Now	No, on neither release
11	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	I did not
12	Voice Of The Beehive	Monsters And Angels	See 9 above

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/m000z2j2/top-of-the-pops-18071991

TOTP 14 MAR 1991

Posted on July 1, 2021 by 80stastic

Right, we’re about 10 weeks into reviewing the year that was 1991 here at TOTP Rewind so how’s it going do we think? Personally, I think it’s been a bit all over the place. We’ve had a No 1 from Iron Maiden, some years old hits back in the charts from the likes of The Clash, Madonna and Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, some truly vile Grease and Bee Gees themed mega-mixes, some TV show cartoon characters topping the charts in the form of The Simpsons, some non mainstream acts sneaking into the charts like Pop Will Eat Itself, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and The Railway Children, established rock and pop royalty still surviving into the 90s like Queen and Sting, some monks chanting their way to No 1, some classy dance tunes from the likes of Massive Attack and The Source and most unbelievably of all, a second hit for Gazza. Phew! Totally bonkers! The Top 40 was off its head!

And now a young man entered the fray who would add yet another unexpected element to the musical meting pot. Who saw Chesney Hawkes coming?! Well, if you had watched the film Buddy’s Song then maybe you did predict Ches-mania. This comedy-drama flick told the story of one Buddy Clark and his struggles to make it as a pop star whilst dealing with the issues of entering adulthood, separated parents and a burgeoning romance. Hawkes was, of course, the titular Buddy whilst The Who frontman Roger Daltrey played his Dad. I’m sure I’ve seen this but I don’t think it was at the cinema. Maybe it was shown on TV subsequently. It was pretty insubstantial as I recall but it was a perfect vehicle to launch Chesney’s real life pop star career. It was kind of like The Monkees all over again when the fictitious pop band from a TV show become actual pop stars or as Micky Dolenz famously said ‘like Leonard Nimoy becoming a real life Vulcan’. Cleverly, the film featured 11 songs performed by Chesney which were then released on a soundtrack album which could then be marketed basically as a Chesney Hawkes solo album. Added to all of this promotion, Hawkes even had a pop music back story as his Dad was Chip Hawkes from 60s hitmakers The Tremeloes.

Despite all this and Hawkes’ clean cut, pretty boy pop star looks, his rise to stardom still didn’t seem a given. Firstly, teenage girls already had a clutch of pop pin ups to scream at in the shape of New Kids On The Block. Secondly, there was his song. “The One And Only” had been written for him by faded 80s pop star Nik Kershaw whose last chart hit had been back in 1985 and was surely now unknown to 90s pop fans but it was, nevertheless, plucked from the album to be Hawkes’ debut single. Now here’s the thing for me about “The One And Only”; yes it sounded a bit dated (being written by a pop star from an earlier decade and all) and it had some cheesy, 6th form style lyrics but…but…it was and remains a bloody good pop song! No f**k you, it is! Whatever you may think about Kershaw, that’s what his strength was – writing decent pop genre songs. He knew how to do that. What he wasn’t so comfortable with was actually being the pop star which he always struggled with. This was an almost perfect arrangement for him. He gets all the royalties and kudos from a chart hit but he doesn’t have to front or promote it. Once more there was a tie in with The Monkees story as when music publisher Don Kirshner was asked to provide hit songs for the group and he presented them with the song “Sugar, Sugar”, they hated it and rejected it out of hand at a tense meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Kirshner took his song and got some session musicians to record it and put it out under the name of The Archies who were a fictional band that featured in the animated TV series The Archie Show knowing that a bunch of cartoon characters couldn’t give him any grief. For Nik Kershaw see Don Kirshner (sort of). OK, the analogy doesn’t quite hold as a parallel to the Kershaw/Chesney story but you get my drift.

This TOTP performance helped propel Chesney to the top of the charts within a matter of weeks and for a while he was everywhere. I have my own (not especially interesting) Chesney Hawkes story but I’ll keep that back for another post as he will be at No 1 for FIVE weeks!

Next the sound of a band transitioning from being critically acclaimed and with a sizeable devoted fanbase to probably the biggest band in the world at the time; all courtesy of one unusual song. REM were certainly not a secret by the time 1991 rolled around. Their last album “Green” had sold a few million copies world wide and they had undertaken their biggest ever tour to support it. I was certainly aware of them having been introduced to their work by a pal at Polytechnic and had loved their “Stand” single. Yet, I wouldn’t have said they were up there with the ridiculously famous bands like, I don’t know, U2 or Queen or The Police.

“Losing My Religion” changed all that and brought them into the world of mainstream, global success. The lead single from their seventh studio album “Out Of Time” (yes seventh, they were hardly an overnight success), it wasn’t your typical rock/pop song featuring as it did a mandolin as the principal instrument and no recognisable chorus. Record company Warner Bros had some reservations about the band choosing it to promote the album but it would prove to be the biggest hit of their career. I say that but UK audiences didn’t quite embrace it in the same way as the rest of the world. A No 4 in the US and Top 10 just about everywhere else, it only made it to No 19 in the UK charts. However, sales of “Out Of Time” in this country were off the scale. It went to No 1, was the sixth best selling album of the year and would go five times platinum here. We sold that album in the Our Price store I worked in again and again and again. And they we sold it some more. By comparison, it sold five times more than previous album “Green”.

There’s loads of stuff online about the video for “Losing My Religion” in terms of the director, the concept behind it etc so you can look all that stuff up yourself if you like but here are the things that I have noticed about it:

Is the actor with the bald head and white beard who takes the wig off the angel character the same bloke who played Socrates (So-Crates) in Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure?
Supposedly Michael Stipe’s chaotic dancing style is based on a mash up of Sinead O’Connor’s moves in her “The Emperor’s New Clothes” video and David Byrne’s “Once In A Lifetime” freaky cavorting. However, to me, it looks more like Roland Orzabal wigging out in the Tears For Fears video for “Mad World”.
Michael Stipe has hair!

Seeing as REM were making a bid for global domination, it fell to Oxford’s Ride to be this week’s non-mainstream artist on the show. Apparently this was their TOTP debut but I think we had seen some of their videos on before (probably in the Breakers section). “Unfamiliar” was actually just one of four songs on an EP called “Today Forever” Indeed all of their previous chart entries had actually been tracks from an over arching EP – I don’t know, those indie bands and their EPs!

Ride seemed to gain a lot of critical appreciation and indeed commercial success very quickly after their formation as the poster boys for the ‘shoe gazing’ movement. The following year would see them at the pinnacle of their powers as they would score a Top 10 single in “Leave Them All Behind” and a Top 5 album in “Going Blank Again”. My particular fave of theirs from that time was “Twisterella” so I hope we get to see that on a future TOTP repeat.

As brightly as they burned, their flame was also quickly extinguished and by 1995 they were in crisis following the recording of the “Tarantula” album and broke up quickly afterwards. However, they reformed in 2014 and have released two successful albums since then.

The “Today Forever EP” peaked at No 14.

After seeing their 70s canon bastardised into an horrific megamix by The UK Mixmasters a couple of weeks earlier, The Bee Gees themselves were back for real with some new material. Despite their incredible run of success in the 70s, the 80s had been a much quieter time for The Bee Gees apart from one notable exception. Their surprise No 1 single “You Win Again” in 1987 was their only Top 40 entry of the entire decade. In an attempt to reverse this trend, they pulled off a trick most commonly known as money for old rope. Yes, they just took one of their old songs, made a few tweaks and shoved that out into the marketplace. So not really new material at all then. The song that they refashioned was “Chain Reaction” which had been a No 1 for Diana Ross back in 1986 and it re-emerged in 1991 as “Secret Love”. It proved a simple act to deceive the UK record buying public as they sent it all the way to No 5. However, the album it was taken from called “High Civilization” severely underperformed.

They appeared to expend as little effort on the video as they had done on the song. This was stultifyingly dull following very much in the footsteps of the promo for “You Win Again”. They could have at least pulled out some Travolta -esque Saturday Night Fever moves.

What can only be described as a poignant video next. Due to his worsening condition caused by advanced AIDS, Freddie Mercury was in very poor health come 1991. He had wanted to keep working as long as possible which allowed for one final Queen album to be released before his death in “Innuendo”. “I’m Going Slightly Mad” was the second single to be released from it following the title track and was also the last promo in which he contributed significantly to the creative process. By this point, stories of his ill health were rife in the press and so as not to fuel the rumours, he wore heavy make up to his the blotches on his face and a big coat to disguise the heavy weight loss his condition had induced. An over the top wig was also in play to cover up his receding hairline. The fact that it was almost entirely shot in black and white may also have been designed to throw people off the scent. That and the penguins. Definitely designed to throw people off the scent was the gorilla suit which allegedly housed one Elton Hercules John.

After the full on bonkers “Innuendo”, “I’m Going Slightly Mad” did little to return the band to the Queen sound that had served them so well for the previous two decades. Very understated with some truly daft lyrics (“I think I’m a banana tree”), it never seemed to get going to me. Maybe that wasn’t the point though. Many an online theory suggests that the lyrics reflect the mental decline Mercury was experiencing as one of the effects of AIDS. It didn’t seem to strike an emphatic chord with the fans as after the album’s title track had gone straight in at No 1, “I’m Going Slightly Mad” peaked at No 22.

By late November, Freddie would be dead but his end would usher in a posthumous No 1 when a re-release of “Bohemian Rhapsody” backed with another “Innuendo” track “These Are the Days of Our Lives” claimed the Xmas No 1 spot.

After a brief cameo from Lenny Henry to plug Red Nose Day which was happening the following evening, we have another showing of the Massive Attack studio performance for “Unfinished Sympathy”. So what was the story behind that pithy song title? Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

The title's a pun on Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. 3D: "[It] came up as a joke, but it fitted the song & the arrangements so perfectly, we had to use it." Shara Nelson: "My working title was something like 'Really Hurt You Baby', but they wanted something more abstract" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 25, 2021

Shara Nelson would go onto have a clutch of hit singles in the mid 90s as a solo artist and she gives a heart felt performance here but the TOTP cameraman seems more interested in the guy in the backing orchestra with the pronounced comb over giving 70s footballer Ralph Coates a run for his money. Who was Ralph Coates? This was Ralph Coates…

A hat trick of rock and pop legends on the same show is completed. Following Queen and The Bee Gees earlier is Rod Stewart whose “Rhythm Of My Heart” single was the first from his “Vagabond Heart” album. That album would perform very solidly commercially(exceeding expectations even) and gave Rod the Mod his highest charting long player since 1976’s “A Night On The Town”. The single also did well for him peaking at No 3 at a stroke becoming his biggest hit since 1986’s “Every Beat of My Heart”.

If “Rhythm Of My Heart” sounded just a teeny bit Scottish in flavour, then there was a good reason for that. The melody is an adaptation of centuries old Scottish folk song “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond”. Yes you do know it; it’s the one that goes:

O ye’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland a’fore ye

Yes, that one. Rod’s pride in his Scottish ancestry is well known of course (although he was born in England and his Mother was English, his Dad was Scottish) so I suppose we shouldn’t have been surprised about him mining it for a hit record.

On June the 7th of this year, as part of his world tour in support of the “Vagabond Heart” album, Stewart played Old Trafford football stadium and, as core stock CD buyer at the time (oh the responsibility), I had my eyes on the ball for this happening. Predicting a spike in interest, I ordered in a load of his 1989 Best Of album which sold like billy-o’ the day after the gig which happened to be a Saturday. Or was it my manager (a big Rod fan) who told me to order them in? In the face-off a lack of definitive evidence, I’m going to take the credit for this one.

Host Simon Mayo blows his own trumpet (he did that quite a bit I’ve noticed) when introducing Happy Mondays and their latest single by saying it was a chart beater on his Radio 1 Breakfast Show and that he was playing it everyday. “Ooh check me out with my hip tastes; I’m no brainless DJ like Steve Wright, I’m into the music” you can imagine is what he really means.

“Loose Fit” was the third and final single to be lifted from the “Pills ‘n’ Thrills And Bellyaches” album and I recall our store having loads of it in stock but although it sold steadily peaking at No 17, it didn’t reach the heights of the first two singles “Step On” and “Kinky Afro” which both made it to No 5. Like many I think, I always thought it was something to do with Madchester fashion and all those baggy flare jeans but it wasn’t. Here’s Shaun Ryder courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

“It’s about your approach to life, how you approach everything: from your work, or whatever you do to make money, to relationships. For me, particularly back then, it had to be a loose fit.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 25, 2021

Oh OK but the lyrics did include this rhyming couplet…

Don’t need no skin tights in my wardrobe today
Fold them all up and put them all away

…so, as with the Rod Stewart Best Of story, I’m going to give myself the benefit fo the doubt on this one.

Watching this performance back, it’s hard to remember that Shaun used to look like this. Still, I guess we all look a bit different to how we did 30 years ago… apart from Sinitta of course who doesn’t look much different from her “So Macho” days.

It’s a second and final week at the top for The Clash and “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”. Given the renewed interest in the band, record label Epic went to work on raiding their back catalogue to try and spin to out some more hits. They released a Best Of album called simply “The Singles” despite their already being a superior collection called “The Story Of The Clash” from just three years earlier. The public weren’t taken in by that and it struggled to a high of No 68. They had better luck with a re-release of ‘Rock The Casbah” (like “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”, also from the “Combat Rock” LP) which went to No 15 in the singles chart. However, a second re-release of “London Calling” (it had already been re-released once in 1988) missed the Top 40 altogether and brought the whole early 90s revisiting The Clash project to a close.

The play out song is “Who? Where? Why?” by Jesus Jones. It’s not the official promo video though but rather a re-showing of their studio performance from the other week. If you google Jesus Jones, the first result that comes up is a link to their official website (good work from their website creator) and the link says ‘Jesus Jones. No, we didn’t split up’. Yes, in spite of everything, the music press backlash, the decline in their popularity, being dropped by EMI, the band remained together and are still touring and releasing new material to this day. Apart from a spell when original drummer Gen was replaced by Tony Arthy before rejoining the fold in 2014, thew original line up has remained intact. Quite the achievement.

“Who? Where? Why?” peaked at No 21.

For the sake of posterity, I include the chart rundown below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP5r_Uz-FOg

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	I did not
2	REM	Losing My Religion	Not the single but I must have it on something
3	Ride	Today Forever EP	Nah
4	The Bee Gees	Secret Love	Definitely not
5	Queen	I’m Going Slightly Mad	Negative
6	Massive Attack	Unfinished Sympathy	No but I had the album Blue Lines
7	Rod Stewart	Rhythm Of My Heart	And no
8	Happy Mondays	Loose Fit	No but I had the Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches album
9	The Clash	Should I Stay Or Should I Go	Not the re-release but I have it on something surely?
10	Jesus Jones	Who? Where? Why?	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/m000x8p7/top-of-the-pops-14031991

TOTP 28 FEB 1991

Posted on June 25, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s the end of February 1991 and the world breathes a collective sigh of relief as a ceasefire has been declared in the Gulf War. Two days before that though, another news story broke which I don’t recall seeing much coverage of and indeed, even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have understood what it was about anyway. If I had any reaction to the fact that British scientist Tim Berners-Lee had unveiled WorldWideWeb, the world’s first web browser, it would probably have been this…

Little did we know that this announcement would come to change and shape the world as we know it. Is there a case for saying that the digital revolution has been every bit as pivotal as the industrial revolution? I think so. Certainly it would come to have industry shaking ramifications for the music business and record retail though I had neither the vision nor brain capacity to have realised this at the time. No, it was seemingly life back to normal (how little we appreciated that phrase back then) for me as I continued to work in the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester. I wonder what records I might have been selling at the time?

Well, we start this TOTP with what host Jakki Brambles describes as ….oh no hang on a minute… why is she wearing gloves? Poor Jakki did have some temperature issues whenever she presented the show. She always seemed to be wearing her Winter wardrobe whatever the time of year. Surely it was warm enough under those hot studio lights surrounded by gurning audience members? That whole two tone outfit makes her look ever so slightly clerical in tone. Not sure that was the look she was going for? Still, what did / do I know about fashion? Anyway, what I was going to say is that Jakki describes the opening number as a “groover” but for me it was anything but that. To my ears, this was just noise. Horrible, repetitive, nausea inducing noise at that. N-Joi were a dance outfit from Southend who would feature Samantha Marie Sprackling as a regular vocalist on their tracks. Who you ask? If I said aka Saffron would that help? Saffron would, of course, find fame as the lead singer of Republica later in the decade. Not sure she was on this track called “Adrenalin” though mainly because there aren’t any vocals to speak of. There’s a voice saying “We gonna get this place…” but that’s just a sample from a live Kiss album apparently.

This performance really highlights the problems that TOTP had with how to present dance tunes and acts from the late 80s onwards. They clearly couldn’t have just had the two guys in black on keyboards – that would have looked weird and dull at the same time. The solution? Throw some dancers into the mix. Well, they were more just wigging out than dancing I would say but they were a distraction, I give them that. The male dancer looks like Jim Carrey as Edward Nygma before he transforms into The Riddler in Batman Forever.

Gif image courtesy of Warner Bros

Look, I’m sure if you were a massive clubber in 1991, this tune was really important to you but this really wasn’t my bag at all. Sorry

“Adrenalin” peaked at No 23.

Nothing here for me either as we segue into Stevie B and “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)”. This is just terrible, stinking schmaltz. It features some of the most vapid, insipid and downright uninspired lyrics ever. Just look at this:

I got your letter from postman just the other day
So I decided to write you this song
And just to let you know Exactly the way I feel
To let you know my love for real

Because I love you, and I’ll do anything
I’ll give you my Heart, my everything
Because I love you, I’ll be right by your side
To be your light to be your guide

Just vile. And if that wasn’t enough, he does that thing that’s always guaranteed to set off alarm bells, he refers to himself in the 3rd person:

If you should feel that I don’t really care
And that you’re starting to lose your ground
Just let me reassure you that you can count on me
Stevie B will always be around

Gruesome stuff.

Thankfully “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” was Stevie B’s only UK chart hit peaking at No 6.

The first of two oldies next that are back in the charts on the back of TV adverts. “Alright Now” by Free had been used by Wrigley’s gum to soundtrack a campaign to promote its spearmint flavour which led to its re-release and an inevitable Best Of album (the one that Jakki refers to). A Best Of album? Hmm. How many Free songs can you think of that aren’t “Alright Now”? Without checking, I came up with “My Brother Jake” but their discography shows two others. There were 14 tracks on that Best Of though so the rest were….albums tracks? Singles that weren’t hits? You’d rightly feel unlucky if they came up as a ‘3 in 10’ artist on Popmaster to be fair! Thinking about Free has made me realise that there must be loads of artists that you just take accept as a given once you become aware of them without really knowing too much about them.

Me: Free? Oh yeah, I know them . Alright Now and all that.

Ken Bruce (for the want of a better inquisitor): OK, anything else you know about them?

Me: “My Brother Jake”

Ken: Yes. Anything else?

Me: erm…Paul Rodgers? Or was he in Bad Company?

Ken: Right on both accounts. Is that it?

Me: Does anybody know anything else about them?

*Blogger immediately losers any Free devotees that may have been reading this post*

OK, a stone cold 90s classic incoming….I had never heard the name Massive Attack before and I still hadn’t when their “Unfinished Sympathy” single was released. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why:

Massive Attack's label decided to release "Unfinished Sympathy" under the name Massive, because of the Gulf War. Circa Records' MD Ray Cooper: "With some records not being played on the radio because of their titles, we didn't want to be banned." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 18, 2021

Yes, the curious BBC Gulf War banned list was at it again despite the fact that a ceasefire had been called by the time of this broadcast. Two be fair to their label, the single was released on 11th Feb and had spent the first week of its life outside of the Top 40 so, to eliminate any unwanted obstacles in its way of being a hit, they temporarily renamed the band as Massive.

Routinely named in multiple music polls as one of the greatest records ever, it was also lauded at the time being named the Single of the Year in The Face and Melody Maker. It was hard to argue with that assessment. It just sounded so cool and timeless on its very first hearing. Those clipped trip hop beats with a full orchestra overlaying it allied to Shara Nelson’s ethereal vocals, it was such an accomplished work. They even managed to incorporate a sample from the Mahavishnu Orchestra in it (the ‘hey, hey hey, hey’ bit). Yes, the Mahavishnu Orchestra whom I had once dismissed as ‘weird shit’ to a colleague who was a fan and I still liked it. And yet, it only made No 13 in the charts! There were 12 songs that people wanted to buy more at its commercial peak? And I bet one of them was The pissing Simpsons! Seriously people?! Have a f*****g word with yourselves eh?

Bizarrely the same fate awaited parent album “Blue Lines” in that it, like “Unfinished Sympathy”, is consistently named towards the top of the 100 Greatest Albums of all time polls and has an iconic status and yet it only reached No 13 in the album chart. It has gone double platinum sales wise over time though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emnc5YLmI4Y

And so to the second song back in the charts this week in 1991 due to its inclusion on a TV advert. The infiltration of the Top 40 by Levi’s Advertising campaigns had been happening for a good five years or so by this point but there seemed to be a definite change of direction as to the choice of song once we arrived in the 90s. Back in the 80s, Levis adverts had been soundtracked by a flurry of 60s soul standards by the likes of Marvin Gaye, Percy Sledge and Ben E. King with the odd 50s track (Eddie Cochrane, Muddy Waters) also making appearances. As we advanced into a new decade though, so too did the advertising guys at Levis as they turned their back on all that and sought out tunes from the 70s. In 1990, we’d had “Can´t Get Enough Of Your Love” by Bad Company (1974), “20th Century Boy” by T. Rex (1973) and “The Joker” by the Steve Miller Band (1973). 1991 saw us move even further forwards with a song from the 80s.

“Should I Stay Or Should I Go” by The Clash had of course been a hit back in 1982 as a double A-side with “Straight To Hell” with both songs being taken from their “Combat Rock” album. I was aware of the song from its original release although I think I had preferred the album’s other single “Rock The Casbah”. That album had been a divisive one in a number of ways. Critical opinion splintered into on the one hand it being lauded for its new danceable sound (especially on those two singles) and, on the other, it being a commercial sell out that ushered in the end of the band. Secondly, the fabric of the whole band was starting to disintegrate as well. Drummer Topper Headon was asked to leave the band just before the album’s release because of his heroin addiction whilst Joe Strummer And Mick Jones’s feuding continued to escalate leading to Jones being sacked from the band in September of 1983.

Despite all of its woes though, “Combat Rock” is very much a date stamp of this era of The Clash. The video for “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” includes some iconic images of the band; Strummer’s Mohican haircut, riding around in an open topped Cadillac car but my favourite is the Shea Stadium footage where they opened for The Who and in particular the band’s walk to the stage with Strummer’s jacket draped around his shoulders and Mick Jones’s Che Guevara style beret.

The manager of the Our Price where I was working when “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” was back in the charts (a guy called Rick) was a massive Clash fan but I’m not sure how he felt about them *spoiler alert* being at No 1 off the back of an advert for jeans. I did ask a really dumb question of Justin our singles buyer about how well it was selling to which he replied “Well, it’s No 1 so its selling rather a lot” or words to that effect.

As for Levis, after using The Clash, they reverted back to the 60s for their choice of song for the next two campaigns in “Mad About The Boy” by Dinah Washington (1961) and “Ring Of Fire” by Johnny Cash (1963). By the mid point of the decade they would be using the likes of Freak Power, Stiltskin (yikes!) and Bablyon Zoo (double yikes!) but we’re miles away from the TOTP repeats for all those just yet.

This week’s Breakers start with Quartz featuring Dina Carroll and their danced up version of “It’s Too Late”. Despite this being the first time most of us had been made aware of Dina, she had in fact been recording and releasing material for years before this although none of it made much of an impression on the charts. Her collaboration with dance production duo Quartz was engineered by Dennis Ingoldsby of First Avenue Management company who spotted Dina not long after she singed to record label Jive and paired her with his act who has similarly been putting out singles for a couple of years to mainly deaf ears. And what is one of the written-in- stone commandments of the music industry that I have learned from years of writing this blog? Yes, if you need a hit, release a cover version! Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” was duly chosen. I knew about Carole King as my wife had played me her milestone ‘Tapestry” album (from which “It’s Too Late” came) when we were students together. This version by Quartz though sounded ghastly to me. Dina could certainly sing but I just couldn’t see the point of it. I hated the tapping a milk bottle effect that they used as a riff throughout it and the whole thing just seemed lazy and cynical. What did I know though as it was purchased in enough quantities to send it to the Top 10.

Off the back off its success, Dina was signed as a solo artist to A&M Records and would achieve substantial success through 1992/92 with a string of singles all taken from her debut album “So Close”. For a while she really looked like the real deal and that she would dominate the charts for some time to come. Her album eventually sold 1.5 million copies and was the highest selling debut album by a British female singer in UK chart history, a record it held until 2001 when it was overtaken by Dido’s “No Angel”. A gap of three years between “So Close” and follow up “Only Human” seemed to break the spell though. “Only Human” sold healthily but much less than its predecessor and she has not released a new studio album since.

The next two songs barely rated a flicker in the grey cells of my memory. After two Top 10 hits the previous year with vocalist Wondress Hutchinson, Mantronix were back again with a new single called “Don’t Go Messin’ With My Heart”. Apparently this and the album it was from (“The Incredible Sound Machine”) was a move away from their usual sound towards this new fangled New Jack Swing which would become quite a thing in 1991. I wouldn’t have had a clue about any fo this at the time I’m pretty sure but it would soon be popularised by, heaven help us, Color Me Badd. I’m sure there will serious R’n’B fans out there that will be horrified at the thought of Color Me Badd being name checked as the main protagonists of New Jack Swing but that’s how I remember it.

“Don’t Go Messin’ With My Heart” would prove to be Mantronix’s last UK chart hit before splitting with main man Kurtis Mantronik leaving the music business entirely for seven years. He got the itch to return in the late 90s producing some house and techno dance tracks.

Similarly under represented in my memory banks are The Almighty. I think I could have told you that they were a heavy rock band but that would have been the limit of my data. Wikipedia tells me that “Free ‘n’ Easy” was their first Top 40 hit (though not their first single release) and they were from Scotland. Seven chart hits followed though none of them got any higher than No 26. Maybe they were more of an album band as their long player “Powertrippin'” went Top 5 in 1993 whilst follow up “Crank” was also a Top 20 album.

“Free ‘n’ Easy” sounds a bit like Alice Cooper to me and this makes some sense as they supported him on a European tour in this year.

Back in the studio now and if it’s 1991, there’s a good chance it’s Jesus Jones. Here they are back again with their new single “Who? Where? Why?” which was the fourth single to be released from their No 1 album “Doubt”. Their record label Food was clearly going for optimum level saturation of their act at this point. Once “Who? Where? Why?” had been and gone they would re-release earlier single “Right Here, Right Now” but, just as with my Maths ‘O’ Level which I took twice and got a C grade both times, it would peak at No 31 just as it has the first time around. Added to this promotion schedule – as Jakki Brambles informs us in her intro – they had just completed a UK tour and were then off to Europe and the States to play some more gigs.

I have to say, I think this was possibly the weakest of the “Doubt” singles. It sounded too repetitive and like it was written in a rush. It just didn’t have that much substance to it for me despite its metaphysical sounding song title. It also includes that band name referencing sample at the start which probably seemed like a good idea at the time – some more self promotion, why not? – but which possibly became something with which the music press could beat them.

“Who? Where? Why?” peaked at No 21.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3oqNm_l9bQ

I’m not sure the Jakki has done her research properly for the next act who are The Source featuring Candi Staton and who are on the show for the third time I think with their “You Got The Love” single. Her intro says that “Candi Staton’s recently taken time out from her Emmy award winning gospel singing to join forces with The Source..” Recently Jakki? “You Got The Love” was initially recorded and released in 1986! To put that into a modern day time frames, by your reckoning, the EU referendum (which had its 5 year anniversary recently) happened just the other week!

The journalist, broadcaster and author Miranda Sawyer started her career at Smash Hits magazine and did a tongue in cheek piece concerning the “great dance swizz up” about who really did sing on the current crop of dance hits including “You Got The Love”. Her ‘investigation’ included acts such as Xpansions, N-Joi (who opened this show), DJH featuring Stefy and the aforementioned Quartz featuring Dina Carrol. It also shone a light on The Source. Miranda’s conclusion was that, in the case of the latter, that this one was “complicated’ in that, clearly, the people you see on the video (the various singing heads for want of a better expression) are not the the creative force behind the record. However, neither were The Source according to Miranda who claimed that the only parts of that original record that were retained in the release we heard in 1991 were Candi’s vocals. The rest was supplied by a record called “Your Love” by Chicago house producer Jamie Principle. Whomever you choose to believe about “You Got The Love”, one thing is clear – Jakki Brambles was talking out of her arse.

Next up is the latest Madonna re-release to promote her “Immaculate Collection” Best Of compilation. “Crazy For You” was originally a No 2 hit in the Uk back In 1985 and was taken from the soundtrack to the film Vision Quest (I am still, 36 years later, yet to meet anyone who will own up to having seen this film). Now I will have reviewed “Crazy For You” in my 80s music blog so I don’t propose to regurgitate all of that again. However, suffice too say that although tis is supposed to be a Shep Pettibone renames, I can’t hear any difference between the 1991 incarnation and its original.

Jakki Brambles decides to break free from her paymasters for this one and denounces the re-release as ‘money for old rope’….except that she even screws that up as her withering comment at the vital moment comes out as “old money for rope”. Ah, unlucky Jakki. I take your point though.

The 1991 version of “Crazy For You” peaked at No 2 thereby equaling the chart performance of its 1985 original.

Ah shit. The No 1 is still The Simpsons and ‘Do The Bartman”. How do you explain this record? I don’t know but here’s somebody on Twitter who owns up to having played a part in its heinous success…

I had a t-shirt (I think it was the one below) and the Sing the Blues tape when they came out, but didn't watch it until it was on the BBC. I still have the tape. pic.twitter.com/OhL9ZZnbQx
— Frances the Firefly (@JMarriott8) June 18, 2021

Yeah, Nice one fella.

The play out video is that Rocky V nonsense “Go For It (Heart and Fire)” by Joey B Ellis Aka MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x36_GZgoAIc

Although the film’s soundtrack album includes 11 tracks, only 4 of them were actually used in the movie. “Go For It (Heart and Fire)” was one off those 4 and here’s the bit in the movie where it featured…

…not the most convincing piece of celluloid I’ve ever witnessed. The plot theme about how Rocky is neglecting his son to concentrate on the career of his protégée Tommy Gunn is about as subtle and deft as a Harry Maguire clearance. And all that chat from him about volcanoes and exploding all over Tommy’s opponent sounds quasi sexual. Ugh!

“Go For It (Heart and Fire)” peaked at No 20.

For the sake of posterity, I include the chart rundown below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Kjq56VeY4

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	N-Joi	Adrenalin	God no
2	Stevie B	Because I Love You (The Postman Song)	And indeed Hell no
3	Free	Alright Now	Nope
4	Massive Attack	Unfinished Sympathy	No but I have the Blue Lines album
5	The Clash	Should I Stay Or Should I Go	Not the single but I’m sure I have it on something
6	Quartz featuring Dina Carroll	It’s Too Late	Definitely not
7	Mantronix	Don’t Go Messin’ With My Heart	Yikes No!
8	The Almighty	Free ‘n’ Easy	No
9	Jesus Jones	Who? Where? Why?	Nah
10	The Source featuring Candi Staton	You Got The Love	Good dance track but no
11	Madonna	Crazy For You	No but I have The Immaculate Collection Best Of with it on
12	The Simpsons	Do The Bartman	Do the barf man more like – no
13	Go For It (Heart and Fire)	Joey B Ellis Aka MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare.	I did not

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000x2h1/top-of-the-pops-28021991

TOTP 10 JAN 1991

Posted on May 29, 2021 by 80stastic

Already 10 days into the new year of 1991 here at TOTP Rewind and yet tonight’s host Jakki Brambles still takes the opportunity to wish us a Happy New Year. Keep up Jakki! This show mainly features songs that were ‘new’ to us back then and we start with one from Bananarama and “Preacher Man”. Not to be confused with Dusty Springfield’s “Son Of A Preacher Man”, this was the second single to be released from the nanas fifth album “Pop Life” but actually came out a whole six months after lead single “Only Your Love” due to Sara Dallin contracting meningitis which delayed its release. Despite its difficult birth, it would end up being the most successful of the four singles released from the album when it peaked at No 20.

The single was well received critically as being a strong, hooky pop song but for me it doesn’t stand out as being one of their most memorable tunes. I think it’s the reedy sounding vocals that let it down. The “Karma Chameleon” style harmonica solo in the middle doesn’t help either. As ever with Bananarama TOTP performances, Keren and Sara mark themselves out as the power couple of the trio by wearing the same outfit while Jacquie is still very presented as the new girl and odd one out three years on with her alternative togs. This sartorial separation was also evident even when Siobhan Fahey was still in the group and the signs had been there for some time that she was not on the same page as the other two – it wasn’t the biggest shock ever when she departed.

Bananarama would not return to the Top 20 for another 14 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV0sQB8xyRQ

Here’s Whitney Houston next with one of her trademark power ballads. After the uptempo “I’m Your Baby Tonight”, it wasn’t a surprise that she reverted to this genre and indeed, “All The Man That I Need” didn’t seem that different to the likes of “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”. Oh, check this out – on the The Bodyguard World Tour of 1993–94, she performed the song as part of a love song medley that included …yep…”Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”. Well there you go – identikit Whitney. You have to admit though that she had the pipes to be able to pull it off.

In the US, it gave her a 9th No 1 single from 11 releases but it stalled at No 13 over here. Maybe we didn’t like the video which is as dull as a night down the pub with George Eustace. It’s just Whitney mooching around various rooms in a big house (one of which includes a John Lennon “Imagine” type white piano) before she is joined by a gospel choir for the climax.

The song had already been recorded by Sister Sledge and someone called Linda Clifford before Whitney got her mitts on it and then, in 1994, Luther Vandross preformed a gender swap on it by recording at as “All The Woman That I Need”. There can’t be that many songs where that has occurred can there? Top of my head I can think of “I Saw Him Standing There” which was Tiffany’s version of The Beatles “I Saw Her Standing There” and sticking with the Fab Four, there’s The Carpenters take on their “Ticket To Ride” when Karen Carpenter changes the lyrics from ‘the girl that’s driving me mad’ to ‘the boy that’s driving me mad’. Oh and Tracey Ullman converting “My Girl” by Madness to “My Guy’s Mad at Me”.

This is more like it! This is what the kids wanted! Some grebo rock! Or were they a hip-hop/dance/rock sample heavy hybrid? Whatever, “X, Y & Zee” became Pop Will Eat Itself’s biggest ever hit up to his point when it peaked at No 15. It was also their fourth Top 40 hit as well after “Can U Dig It?”, “Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina” and the delightfully entitled “Dance Of The Mad Bastards”. Oh and I make it their 10th single Jakki, not their 13th as you suggest in your intro.

Part of the extraordinary story of how the West Midlands market town of Stourbridge became the epicentre for…whatever we’re calling this genre…when it spawned not one, not two but three bands in The Wonderstuff, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and Pop WIll Eat Itself. How did this happen? I’m not sure but there’s surely a film to be made out of this phenomenon (if there hasn’t been one made already). There is definitely a book on the subject in existence – the rather wonderfully titled of The Eight Legged Atomic Dustbin Will Eat Itself.

Back to “X, Y & Zee” and I always quite liked this wistful track with a twist and its brilliantly quirky lyrics like:

Mother Nature and Father Time
Used to be good friends of mine
But now we’ve put them in a home
Filed them under “uses unknown”

Apparently, lead singer Clint Mansell went onto become a Hollywood film score composer creating soundtracks for the likes of Requiem For A Dream and Black Swan. I haven’t been that surprised since a lovely lad I used to work with at Our Price called Scott ended up being a bank manager. Scott was a right laugh and the most unlikely future bank manager I could ever imagine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taX4YvL-sXI

We’re back with that “Grease Megamix” by John Travolta and Olivia Newton John next. Presumably its sales had been helped by Xmas and New Year’s Eve parties across the nation. The last time this was on TOTP, they only played the “Summer Nights” section of the mix but this time they feature the other two tracks in “You’re The One That I Want” and “Greased Lightnin'”. Now of course, the latter song has some lyrics that probably wouldn’t be suitable before the watershed and indeed the following line has been edited out.

You know that it ain’t shit, we’ll be gettin’ lots of tit, greased lightnin’

However, the censors clearly didn’t know what they were doing as they left in:

You are supreme, the chicks’ll cream, for greased lightnin’

and

You know that I ain’t braggin’, she’s a real pussy wagon

What did they think Travolta was singing about FFS?!

“Grease Megamix” peaked at No 3.

Right, don’t remember this one at all. “I Can’t Take The Power” by Off-Shore anyone? Even the ever reliable @TOTPFacts could only come up with this info about it.

Off Shore was the project of German DJs/producers Jens Lissat and Peter Harder. A couple of other DJs/producers were involved in this single release: Eric Kupper provided some keyboards, and Justin Strauss remixed it. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 21, 2021

Oh and apparently the titular sample is from “Love’s Gonna Get You” by Jocelyn Brown. Was it supposed to be some sort of response record to Snap!’s “The Power”?

Whatever. “I Can’t Take The Power” peaked at No 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR-z7QdskBc

Yes! TOTP on it tonight with what the kids like! After Pop Will Eat Itself comes Jesus Jones and although not from Stourbridge, they were definitely in the same musical universe. “International Bright Young Thing” ushered in an era of a band at the peak of the powers.

No doubt about it – Jesus Jones were big…for a time

Taken from their forthcoming second album “Doubt”, it would become their biggest ever hit whilst said album would go to No 1. It had, without… erm…doubt…been one of the most enquired about albums over Xmas (along with “Spartacus” by The Farm) in terms of when it was coming out. The world really did seem to be at their feet. Sadly, the band suffered a press backlash (maybe the ‘International Bright Young Thing’ tag was too much for some publications) and they would wind up being seen as very irrelevant very quickly especially after grunge happened.

For the moment though, they are leading the gang of dance/rock groups who are in the charts with their long, flicky hair and wayward keyboard players – look at the state of the Jesus Jones ivories tinkler here; a total dereliction of playing duties and clearly under the influence of something.They’d have been banned from the show back in the early 80s for much less (Pigbag were for a very similar offence).

“International Bright Young Thing” peaked at No 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxj1AoxxbFk

A couple of videos we’ve seen before next starting with MC Hammer and “Pray”. I’m sure this has been on a couple of times already but it’s a climber of two places within the Top 10 to a peak of No 8 so I guess its presence again could be justified by the TOTP producers.

There were numerous remixes of this track including:

Slam The Hammer Mix
Slam The Hammer Piano Dub
Jam The Hammer Mix
Hit ‘Em Hard Mix
Nail ‘Em Down Chant

The titles of the remixes sound like they more belong to an Iron Maiden track than the pious Mr Hammer. Check out this from @TOTPFacts again:

Speaking of praying: MC Hammer was previously in a Christian rap group called The Holy Ghost Boys. He became a preacher in the late '90s, with a Christian ministry programme on Trinity Broadcasting Network. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 21, 2021

The second previously seen video is for “Sadness (Part 1)” by Enigma. This is up to No 2 and will be top of the heap soon enough. Watching the video back, it’s all a bit Wicker Man. For a start, the scribe encounters Auguste Rodin’s The Gates of Hell (depicting a scene from Dante’s Inferno) which kind of relates to Police Sergeant Howie’s discovery of all the pagan Celtic imagery on Summerisle. Even more of a parallel though is the fact that the scribe seems to be being tempted by the undressed woman on the other side of the gate who whispers all that ‘Sade, donnes moi’ (‘Sade, give it to me’) Marquis de Sade malarkey to him. Remember that scene in Wicker Man when the Britt Ekland character tries to seduce Edward Woodward through the walls of his room in the pub? Come on! It’s the same thing! Well, almost.

The ever suave Robert Palmer is up next with his Marvin Gaye mash up single “Mercy Mercy Me / “I Want You”. It was a brave move to cover not one but two Marvin Gaye tracks (Palmer himself admitted to being very nervous when he debuted the song on US Television during an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show) but I think he gets away with it.

Palmer was becoming quite the regular hit-maker by this point. This would be his second consecutive Top 10 hit following his UB40 collaboration on “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” at the back end of 1990 and would help propel parent album “Don’t Explain” into the Top 10 as well. It would be the last time he would have either a single or album in such upper echelons of the charts though.

Oh, and is that Boon Gould from Level 42 on bass up there with Robert? Could be.

The aforementioned Iron Maiden are still at No 1 with their sneakily released “Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter” single. I’ve commented before on that book that Jakki Brambles mentions at the end of the song written by Bruce Dickinson (Lord Iffy Boatrace) – it’s complete bawdy filth including a character who invents the ultimate sex machine. Didn’t mention that did you Jakki?

A musical heavyweight is the play out video. For all his success with The Police, Sting‘s solo career had not resulted in anywhere near the size of hits that his band had generated. By the 90s, he had yet to achieve a Top 10 hit and in fact, of the 10 solo singles he released in the 80s, only 3 of them made the Top 40. However, he had begun the new decade in better shape when a Ben Liebrand remix of “Englishman in New York” made the Top 20 in 1990 to be followed by this, “All This Time”, the lead single from his new album “The Soul Cages”.

I remember the release of the album being seen as a big deal and the Our Price store I was working in certainly had lots if stock of it. Big sales were expected but although it went to No 1, I don’t recall selling many. It would achieve gold status for 100,000 copies sold but was far less than his previous solo albums “…Nothing Like the Sun” (platinum – 300,000 sales) and “The Dream Of The Blue Turtles” (double platinum – 600,000 sales).

For all that talk of disappointing sales figures, I quite liked “All This Time”. Despite its dark lyrics referencing the recent death of his father, it had an uplifting melody and although he can be a complete knacker at times, I’ve always quite liked Sting’s voice. Interesting that he’s only the play out video though, not deemed worthy enough of kicking off the show or having his own little premiere moment in the middle of it. Sting would regroup and return in 1993 with the much more successful “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album when he would also finally get that Top 10 hit when “All For Love” from The Three Musketeers soundtrack went to No 2 in the charts…but it was with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams so I’m not sure if that actually counts.

“All This Time” peaked at No 22.

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

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Bananrama	Preacher Man	Nah
2	Whitney Houston	All The Man That I Need	Nope
3	Pop Will Eat Itself	X Y & Zee	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	John Travolta and Olivia Newton John	Grease Megamix	Negative
5	Off-Shore	I Can’t Take The Power	Buy it? I don’t even remember it!
6	Jesus Jones	International Bright Young Thing	No but it was on that first Q magazine album that I did buy
7	MC Hammer	Pray	It’s a no
8	Enigma	Sadness (Part 1)	No
9	Robert Palmer	Mercy, Mercy Me / I Want You	No but it’s on my Robert Palmer Best Of CD I think
10	Iron Maiden	Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter	Definitely not
11	Sting	All This Time	I did not

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/m000w6t9/top-of-the-pops-10011991

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

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

TOTP 26 APR 1990

Posted on December 8, 2020 by 80stastic

Welcome to the UK in late April 1990. We’ve just had the poll tax riots, the Strangeways prison revolt and in politics, Labour now have a 23-point lead over the Conservatives in the latest MORI poll – however, it would count for little when the next General Election rolled around in 1992 with the Tories winning a reduced but overall majority. Musically, we are in the grip of dance music and in particular ‘rave’ culture with massive gatherings taking place in fields and warehouses around the country. The 80s and its pop stars seems like a long time ago with the likes of Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran and Culture Club all either defunct, missing in action or struggling to remain relevant. Indeed, the day after this TOTPM aired, The Krays film opened in UK cinemas starring Spandau’s Kemp brothers as the notorious East End gangsters – being pop stars was no longer on their agenda it seemed.

So who were the pop stars of the day who had come in to replace those icons of yesteryear? Let’s find out shall we?….

…for f***’s sake! Well, the opening act tonight are not pop stars at all but Capital FM DJs blurring the divisions between presenters and performers by rebranding themselves as a bona fide chart act…it can only be Pat & Mick who are back with their rendition of “Use It Up And Wear It Out”. Look I know it was all for charity but this was just all levels of wrong. Having tormented us with “Let’s All Chant” in 1988 and “I Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet” in 1989, they didn’t see fit to leave the whole sorry debacle in the 80s but carried on into the new decade with their version of the old Odyssey hit.

I actually watched this repeat back with my wife which doesn’t usually happen and our reactions were to it were quite the contrast. I was appalled and sat there on the sofa picking massive lumps out of it while she freely admitted that she probably danced to this back in the day! While I guffawed at the atrocious dancing on display not only by Pat & Mick but also by the studio audience members, she said she thought some of the moves on display were pretty good! Whaat?! OK there are a few things to unpack here. Firstly, why were the dancers in the background TOTP audience members and not ‘proper’ dancers in the first place? Was it to create a more realistic party atmosphere? Secondly, what instructions were they given about dance moves by the producers? Just do your own thing but keep it clean? Thirdly, what was the girl on the extreme right of screen on?! Check out her mad, arm waving moves! She’s lost in a world of her own. Even Mick gives her a concerned look at one point. Oh yes, Pat & Mick themselves – why was Mick wearing a suit while Pat was sporting some sort of faux Adam Ant military jacket? Why does Pat jump when he mimes the word ‘shake’? Surely he should …erm…shake at that point? Why has Pat still got that ridiculous mullet hair into the 90s? Why….oh just…why? Why? Why ? WHY?

When I googled Pat & Mick, one of the suggested other questions that people ask was ‘What is the meaning of Pat and Mick?’ Well, I couldn’t agree more – what is the meaning of them? However, when I clicked on the link I discovered that ‘Pat & Mick’ is also Cockney rhyming slang meaning ‘sick’ or ‘out of commission due to being unwell’. Excellent! Couldn’t be more appropriate as having to watch those two berks again has made me feel proper poorly!

“Use It Up And Wear It Out” peaked at No 22 and thankfully was the last of their chart hits.

Having mentioned The Krays film above, we now find a song from another film that was out this year . “Wild Women Do” by Natalie Cole was, of course, on the soundtrack to Pretty Woman which the third highest-grossing film worldwide in 1990. This Disney re-telling of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts proved irresistible to cinema goers as did its soundtrack which went double platinum in the UK and triple platinum in the US. As well as Natalie’s track, it included the career-rejuvenating hit “King of Wishful Thinking” by Go West, the career-making single “It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette and the career-retrospective remix hit “Fame 90” by David Bowie that featured on a recent TOTP repeat.

Up against those mega-selling hits, “Wild Women Do” kind of got lost in the mix a little. Indeed, it was only a No 34 hit in the US (whilst a slightly more respectable No 16 over here). It’s actually used in the film itself in the scenes where Vivian goes window shopping in Beverly Hills….

It didn’t really register on my radar as something I should be concerned with I have to say although I did catch the film at the cinema. I recall Gere also had another film out simultaneously called Internal Affairs where he played a very different character indeed to his Pretty Woman counterpart. Worth searching out that film in my humble opinion while we’re all stuck in our houses over Xmas.

I have no memory at all of this next act although my wife reckons she remembers them. Unique 3 anyone? Oh hold on, did they also do that “Cantaloop” hit? No, no they didn’t – that was Us3 it seems. Unique 3 were from Bradford and, despite my lack of memory of them, are actually regarded as ground breaking in the field of UK hip-hop by those in the know (not me then obviously). Cited by the likes of The Chemical Brothers, Coldcut and Goldie, “Musical Melody” was their only Top 40 hit but hey were massive on the club scene (it says here) paving the way for the Jungle, Drum & Bass and Nu-Skool Breaks scene (I have no idea what that last one is). It sounds a bit like Dream Warriors of “Wash Your Face In My Sink” and “My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style” to my uncultured ears both of which I quite liked. Maybe I’m more dope than I realised!

“Musical Melody” peaked at No 29.

Bruno followed Pat Sharp’s lead with a military style look for tonight’s show

Time for some moronic behaviour from tonight’s host Bruno Brookes next as he tries to sound hip by saying “Yo! Unique 3 y’all” whilst perfecting an impression of Napoleon Bonaparte by having one arm inserted inside his jacket. WTF?!

When he finally does get on with introducing the next act, it’s Paula Abdul with her hit “Opposites Attract”. I couldn’t really be doing with this to be honest – the song was pretty unremarkable and then there was the pratting about with that cartoon cat in the video. I can imagine a conversation in the record label boardroom going something like this:

Label exec: “Look, we need to squeeze every last drop of sales out of the album so we’re going for one final, sixth (!) single but how do we market it?”. What’s popular right now?”

Marketing guy: “How about we get Paula to sing and dance with a cartoon rabbit like in that Who Framed Roger Rabbit film?”

Label exec: “Brilliant! Except let’s make it a different animal to ensure we don’y look like we’ve completely ripped off the idea.”

Marketing guy: “How about a ….cat?”

Label exec: “That’ll do”

It all just seemed very cynical to me. Apparently Izzy Stradlin from Guns N’ Roses once wrote a song for Paula. Not sure if she ever recorded it but a video of the wholesome Ms Abdul and rock ‘n roll casualty Izzy would have certainly been worth a watch.

Some Breakers now and we start with All About Eve and “Scarlet”. I’d sort of lost track of this lot by the start of the 90s and must admit this doesn’t sound familiar. It was the third and final single to be taken from sophomore album “Scarlet And Other Stories” and although pleasant enough, doesn’t really stand out from the rest of their folk goth rock twiddlings. The band notched up nine Top 40 hits during their career but curiously, seven of them all peaked somewhere between the Nos 38 and 30. Consistent I suppose though.

Surely nobody remembers this next one – Kid Creole And The Coconuts with “The Sex of It”? What that Kid Creole? The one who had that run of Top 10 hits back in ’82 with songs like “I’m a Wonderful Thing, Baby”, “Stool Pigeon” and “Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy”? It can’t be him? In the Top 40 in 1990? It surely is – let’s be realistic, there can’t have been two acts called Kid Creole And The Coconuts – and this song was written by Prince no less. Apart from the lead vocals being contributed by the Kid himself (August Darnell), everything else recorded on the track was courtesy of Prince and his band. It sounds like it as well. Amazingly, despite their European success, Kid Creole And The Coconuts only appeared in the Billboard Hot 100 chart on one occasion when “Hey Mambo” (with Barry Manilow bizarrely) peaked at No 90.

Someone else still having unlikely hits in to the 90s was Sinitta who was enjoying her penultimate Top 40 appearance with “Hitchin’ A Ride”. Having declined to work with Stock, Aitken and Waterman any further after her 1988 hit “I Don’t Believe In Miracles”, Sinitta embarked upon a run of three consecutive chart hits that were cover versions of songs that had previously been hits in the 70s – “Hitchin’ A Ride” had been a hit for Vanity Fare in 1970 whilst the other two were “Right Back Where We Started From” (Maxine Nightingale in 1975) and “Love On A Mountain Top” (Robert Knight in 1974). Though not exactly edifying stuff (let’s be fair, they were all hideous), she undoubtedly extended her chart life well beyond her natural talents with this strategy.

“Hitchin’ A Ride” peaked at No 24.

Right, what’s Brookes babbling on about now? “Next a real band with a fabulous cult following if it makes sense” he blathers whilst introducing Jesus Jones. Make sense? Not really Bruno but then that was never your strong point was it? He finishes the segue by pronouncing the last ‘real’ of “Real Real Real” with a growl. It looks and sounds odd at best and disturbing at worst.

I’m pretty sure that this is just a reshowing of their initial TOTP appearance from the other week rather than a brand new performance. The band are still together to this day 30 years later and with the original line up which takes some doing. How many other bands have the same line up and that kind of longevity? U2? The Rolling Stones (sort of)? Erm…A-ha?

The curious case of Jesus Jones and their rise and fall is quite the story. Look at these chart placings and then consider what a short space of time this commercial collapse happened within:

Album	Year of release	Chart peak
Liquidiser	1989	31
Doubt	1991	1
Peverse	1993	6
Already	1997	161

What happened? Was it the rise of ‘grunge’? The advent of ‘Britpop’? Or was it just that the music press, who had hailed them as the future of rock ‘n’ roll, turned on them and the whole ‘indie dance’ movement that the band were poster boys for. Check out this quote from the NME in 1993:

“There is something fundamentally wrong with Jesus Jones: they have no sense of the ridiculous. They are loathed by every man, woman and child in Christendom, because they are a plasticine pop group who refuse to accept the fact that they are the stuff of three-minute-flavoured pop sweets. They are The Monkees who want to be Emerson, Lake And Palmer; five Mike Nesmiths.”

Ouch! And anyway, what’s wrong with The Monkees? I love The Monkees!

“Real Real Real” peaked at No 19.

After Jesus Jones have finished, Brookes advises the watching millions that the band are a “wild bunch of fellas with a really dry sense of humour”. Yeah, thanks for that Bruno. As a piece of info worthy of broadcast, it’s about as useful as one of Viz character Roger Irrelevant’s musings and he once eloped with an armchair declaring it pregnant with his children.

Right, who’s next? Well it must be Jason Donovan or New Kids On The Block or someone similar as the TOTP audience are screaming and those yelps of excitement are for…Phil Collins?! Phil f***ing Collins?! Are you kidding me?! That’s a very low bar to instigate such a reaction. “Something Happened On The Way To Heaven” was the third single from Phil’s “…But Seriously” album and was a return to that uptempo faux Motown sound that he was prone to after the heavier sound of the previous two singles “Another Day In Paradise” and ‘I Wish It Would Rain Down”. It does skip and bounce along, I’ll give it that. It’s almost “Sussudio” Part II.

Apparently it was written for inclusion on the soundtrack to the film War Of The Roses but Danny de Vito, who directed and co-starred in the movie, didn’t like it and rejected it. Some excellent taste on display there from Danny. Someone else with good taste is the dog in the video who wanders around the set as Phil and his band rehearse the song and shits on stage near a backing singer and then pisses on the leg of the bassist who looks like cross between Yoffy from Fingerbobs and Gandalf. Someone give that dog a Scooby Snack – he’s earned it!

I once got into a Twitter row with the Absolute 80s radio station about this song when I pulled them up for it actually being released in 1990 rather than the previous decade so why were they playing it. Their retort was that it came from an album recorded and released in the 80s so it was legitimate. Well, all I can say is that it’s a good job they don’t have VAR for decade radio playlists as that is a clear and obvious error!

Yet another song and act I have no recall of next. Tongue ‘N’ Cheek arose from the ashes of Total Contrast (who I also can’t remember) who had a No 17 hit in 1985 with “Takes A Little Time” (Wikipedia tells me). “Tomorrow” was their biggest UK chart record peaking at No 20. They give an energetic performance with that jumping up and down dance move but I’m afraid the song doesn’t really do anything for me.

Apparently they had another hit a year later with a cover of Patrice Rushen’s “Forget Me Nots” but surely if we’re going to reference that song when it comes to 90s chart hits, we’re talking about it being sampled in George Michael’s “Fastlove” or Will Smith’s “Men In Black”. Unfortunately for Tongue ‘N’ Cheek, I’m being absolutely serious about that comment and not…erm…tongue in cheek.

It’s a third week at the top for Madonna and “Vogue”. It turns out that all 16 Hollywood stars name-checked in the song are now sadly dead after the last person still alive, Lauren Bacall, died in 2014. Meanwhile, the video for the song has now recorded 100 million views on YouTube thereby giving Madonna the title of the first female artist in history to have four songs from four different decades reach that milestone. What were the others? Well, they were “La Isla Bonita” from the 80s, “Hung Up” from the 2000s and “Bitch I’m Madonna” from the 2010s.

You can tell I’m struggling to think of anything else to say about this one can’t you?

Hands up who wants to see what a Bruce Dickinson solo career away from Iron Maiden looked like? Right, I can see one hand …from Bruce himself…anyone else? OK, that’s a bit harsh. I hadn’t realised quite what an extensive solo career the Dickster (ooh, went a bit Boris Johnson there) has had. I just thought it was limited to the “Tattooed Millionaire” album project but no. He’s released six studio albums and ten singles as a solo artist! Who knew? Put your hand down again Bruce!

I do remember this one and for my money it was just ever so slightly more melodic than your average Iron Maiden track but as with Phil Collins previously, that’s a pretty low bar. The album includes tracks with some very Iron Maiden sounding names though like “Hell On Wheels”, “Zulu Lulu” and the obligatory Spinal Tap -esque title “Lickin’ the Gun”. It also featured a pretty straight cover of David Bowie’s “All The Young Dudes’ which was of course made famous by Mott The Hoople who had a No 3 hit with it in 1972. Bruce’s version only reached No 23 – well, no point in trying to re-invent the wheel is there?

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Pat & Mick	Use It Up And Wear It Up	What do you think?
2	Natalie Cole	Wild Women Do	Nah
3	Unique 3	Musical Melody	Not for me
4	Paula Abdul	Opposites Attract	I was repelled by this though – no
5	All About Eve	Scarlet	No
6	Kid Creole And The Coconuts	The Sex Of It	Nope
7	Sinitta	Hitchin’ A Ride	Shittin’ a turd more like – no
8	Jesus Jones	Real Real Real	Don’t think I did actually
9	Phil Collins	Something Happened On The Way To Heaven	It’s another no
10	Tongue ‘N’ Cheek	Tomorrow	Negative
11	Madonna	Vogue	Not the single but it’s on my Immaculate Collection CD
12	Bruce Dickinson	Tattooed Millionaire	And no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pz16/top-of-the-pops-26041990

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 APR 1990

Posted on December 1, 2020 by 80stastic

It’s nearly Easter already in 1990 where TOTP Rewind currently resides – the day after this TOTP was broadcast was the Good Friday – but the 21 year old me doesn’t have chocolate eggs or bunnies on my mind. No, I’m more concerned with finding a job as I am in my fourth month of unemployment. What’s more, this very day (12th April) is my girlfriend (now wife)’s birthday so I would have needed to get her a present. I seem to recall that I decided for some reason that a brass ornament of a vintage style camera (one of those ones where the photographer ducked underneath a black cloth covering to take the picture) would be just the sort of thing she would like. I saw it in a shop that specialised in that sort of knick-knacker but in truth, she would rather have had my original idea which was a VHS tape of The Beatles Help! film. She really wasn’t taken by the brass camera and I’d even haggled about the price with the shop owner to get it for her! Oh well, let’s see what tunes that the charts had to offer that week – there’d better be some good stuff in stock!

Not a bad start at all! In my head, Jesus Jones didn’t appear on the charts until much later in the year but I’m clearly getting my facts skewed as here they are in mid April with “Real Real Real” which was their first Top 40 hit peaking at No 19. Very much seen as being part of that indie /dance crossover movement, they were one of the first (alongside Happy Mondays simultaneously) to make the big commercial breakthrough and opened a gate to chartdom that acts such as EMF, The Shamen and Pop Will Eat Itself would also stride through.

I think I may have heard of Jesus Jones previous to this via their nearly hit “Info Freako” from the year before but I didn’t know much about them. By the start of 1991 however, they would be genuine chart stars and the future of rock ‘n’ roll according to some. When I did my first Xmas working at Our Price in 1990 there were two albums that we were asked for all the time that hadn’t even been released yet. One was The Farm’s “Spartacus” and the other was “Doubt” by Jesus Jones. I think they were delayed possibly to heighten the clamour for them to fever pitch and when they were finally released within a month of each other in 1991, they both reached no 1 in the album chart.

I always get a bit confused about Jesus Jones’s timeline in terms of their hits, possibly because they racked up a few in quick succession over the course of a year or so. After “Real Real Real”, they scored another four Top 40 hits including “Right Here, Right Now” being released twice and peaking at No 31 on both occasions. I hadn’t realised until now that the band had also briefly been a very big deal in the US with “Real Real Real” going to No 4 over there whilst “Right Here, Right Now” peaked at No 2. I had always assumed they were a peculiarly British phenomenon.

The band are still together having gigged throughout the years when they were being referred to as residing in the “Where are They Now” files. Indeed, I recall them receiving some very derogatory press about resorting to playing corporate gigs as the entertainment for big conglomerate firm events although I’m guessing such gigs probably pay pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhUT8IAz0_U

Like Gloria Estefan, Janet Jackson has always seemed to me to be capable of only two types of song. The big, lush soul ballad like “Let’s Wait A While” and “Come Back To Me” and the uptempo R’n’B dance tune like “What Have You Done for Me Lately” and “Miss You Much”. Completely unfair I’m sure but it’s my blog and that’s my opinion when I think of her (see what I did there? No? Oh forget it!).

“Escapade” was very much in the latter category and was one of seven (!) singles taken from her “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” album. As with all the other videos for her uptempo songs, it’s all about the choreographed dance routines. Whilst undoubtedly impressive as a spectacle, it always seems to me as if the tracks are written with a routine in mind rather than for any musical reasons. Yet again, this was a Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis production and they came up with the name “Escapade” as it was one of many potential song title ideas that they kept in a little notebook which sounds overly cynical and not very organic at all to me. Aside from Jam and Lewis, the track also features ‘finger snaps’ contributed by former New Edition member Johnny Gill. Finger snaps?! If you’re going to get an official credit for that, I should maybe have bigged up my triangle playing in my Junior school concert back in the day!

“Escapade” peaked at No 17 in the UK but was a No 1 song in the US.

“It’s hot in here” informs this week’s host Mark Goodier referring to the temperature in the studio – so why are you wearing a jacket, shirt and tie then Mark? I’m sure you’ve done enough shows by this point to be able to make informed wardrobe decisions surely?!

OK, the next act is Technotronic. When I was putting this post together, my wife (she of the unwanted birthday present!) remarked, “God, you haven’t got to review this have you?” referring to “This Beat Is Technotronic”. Yes, I’m afraid so. This was the third single from their “Pump Up the Jam: The Album” erm…album and saw someone called MC Eric take the mike while previously used vocalist Ya Kid K took a rest. It still sounded the same as all the rest to me though apart from perhaps even more annoying and repetitive if that were possible.

Apparently the two dancers up there on stage with him are his old school mates called Gary and julian who he plucked from being on the dole in Cardiff to come and be in Technotronic with him. If any of my old school pals are reading this, fancy joining me for another go at perfecting the triangle?

“This Beat Is Technotronic” peaked at No 14.

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

“It’s the way they move that makes you want to groove” remarks Goodier at the end of Technotronic’s turn in one of the cringiest segue ways ever which leads us into “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” by Heart. Again. Really? I think this is the third time this has been on the show in recent weeks. Look, I’ve talked about the ridiculous lyrics, I’ve commented on the nasty video…what else is there left for me to say about it?

Well, it was taken from an album called “Brigade” that managed to rise all the way to No 3 in our charts but the band would only achieve chart action one more time in this country when their 1993 single “Will You Be There (In the Morning)” made No 19 from the album “Desire Walks On’ which was also their last long player to make any impression on the Top 40. There. Now please go away.

The Breakers are back after being missing in action for the last two shows and we start with David Bowie and “Fame 90”. So why was a 15 year old Bowie track being released again? It was all part of the promotion for his “Changesbowie” retrospective album that was released in March of this year which included all his biggest hits from 1969’s “Space Oddity” to 1984’s “Blue Jean”. I remember the album being a staple of the ‘Core Stock’ / ‘Best Seller’ section when I first worked for Our Price which were titles that you should never sell out of (although I’m sure we did of course).

Bowie was also embarking on a career spanning greatest hits world tour called the Sound+Vision Tour in support of the album. In what was seen at the time as quite ground breaking, fans were asked to vote for which songs should be included in the set list by phoning a number to log their votes with proceeds from the calls going to charity. In a world where telephone voting for everything from The Eurovision Song Contest to Strictly COme Dancing is second nature to us all today, this seemed like a revolutionary idea back in 1990. I’m sure there was some sort of counter campaign to rig the vote by encouraging people to vote for “The Laughing Gnome” thereby forcing Bowie to have to perform it live but I think he twigged what was going on before committing to the idea.

The video for “Fame 90” featured clips of previous Bowie promos alongside the man himself throwing some shapes with a blonde female dancer which supports the idea of the Changesbowie retrospective but seems a little short of inspiration to me.

“Fame 90” peaked at No 28, 11 places lower than its original 1975 release.

The scouse Kylie next as Sonia is back with “Counting Every Minute”. This was the fourth of five tracks released as singles from her debut album “Everybody Knows” with each one making the Top 20, a feat that made Sonia the first ever British solo female artist to achieve this. Quite how she managed to do this remains a mystery though. “Counting Every Minute” in particular is especially weak. I’ve had dumps with more substance to them.

The video is as half-hearted as the song. Just Sonia and some backing dancers going through the motions in front of a clock face back drop. How long did the video director take to come up with that concept?! You can almost hear him saying “Right then Sonia. Just smile and do that rolling shoulders move you do and we’ll fill in the rest afterwards in post production. No, don’t worry – it’ll look great. Promise. ACTION!”

Right, so quite why was “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love’ by The Blues Brothers in the charts? It seems to be because the film of the same name was re-released on VHS for its 10th anniversary by MCA/Universal Home Video. The movie has garnered cult status over the years – the movie poster was a mainstay of student room walls when I was one of at Sunderland Poly back in the 80s. However, I was surprised to discover that it was also a sizeable commercial success. It was the 10th biggest film in the US in the year of its cinema release (1980) and is the ninth-highest-grossing musical of all time.

Where The Monkees had gone before and The Commitments would follow, the film spawned a real life band who toured in support of the movie. Its celluloid stars John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd retained their roles as front men / brothers Jake and Elwood with a supporting band of established musicians from the likes of Blood, Sweat & Tears and Booker T and the M. G.’s. The whole thing had started out as a sketch on legendary US TV entertainment show Saturday Night Live and spiralled once a film based on the characters was proposed. Here’s a 1978 clip from SNL showcasing the Blues Brothers:

Despite its legendary status and the stars it made of Belusihi and Ackroyd (thanks in part to those amazing dance steps of theirs), The Blues Brothers isn’t what I will forever associate the latter with – in fact I don’t think I’ve even seem the film from start to finish. No, I will always think of my time at Sunderland Poly where I spent three years being called Dan due to my resemblance to Ackroyd at the time.

Some more bpm nonsense now as we see Bizz Nizz and their hit “Don’t Miss The Party Line”. The phrase ‘party line’ is not associated with some crappy dance tune for many people who grew up in Hull in the 70s and 80s (of whom my wife was one). No, it referred to the type of telephone service you had and in the case of a ‘party line’, it was a local telephone loop circuit that was shared by more than one subscriber. Yes kids, this meant that there was no privacy on a party line! If you were chatting with a friend, anyone on your party line could pick up their telephone and listen in! Unbelievable! Think you’ve go a problem because you want to upgrade your phone and you’re still under contract for your existing phone? Try dealing with someone listening in while you’re exchanging tales of drunken exploits with your bestie! Or, heaven forbid, on a booty call!

What? The Bizz Nizz record? Oh, that was shit as well.

Despite all the fuss over Paula Abdul in the US (four No 1 singles and a No 1 album). reaction to her in the UK had been more muted. Yes, “Straight Up” had been a Top 3 single for her over here but that was 12 months back and her only chart entry since then had been the No 24 hit “Forever Your Girl”. What was needed was a gimmick to reinstate our attention – how about her duetting with an animated cat? Purrfect! (sorry). “Opposites Attract” would become her biggest ever UK hit charging all the way to No 2 and is probably her best known song.

So this cat business? What the f**k was that all about?! Well, there had been a big reaction to the Who Framed Roger Rabbit film at the end of the 80s with its live action / animation mash up so maybe that was an influence. The cartoon cat in question was MC Skat Cat who was voiced by a duo called The Wild Pair who get the official credit on the record as the collaborators. The guy who wrote the song, Oliver Leiber (son of legendary songwriter Jerry Leiber), came up with the title after browsing a second-hand bookstore after his car broke down and he had four hours to kill. He wrote down titles of a number of pulp fiction novels like A Bloody Moon or Midnight Mistress but the one he plumped for was Opposites Attract. Hang on, didn’t we see this method of songwriting earlier with Janet Jackson’s “Escapade”? Is that all it took to come up with a song title? What have i got on my book shelves I could use to inspire me as a song writer? Hmm. Chelsea: 100 Memorable Matches is probably a little niche in all honesty.

Back to Paula though and the song is basically a play on the Gershwin tune “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” made popular by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It all seemed very calculated and lacking in any authenticity to me and I couldn’t really be doing with it at all.

Ah, good to see that The Cure were still ploughing their own particular furrow into the new decade. “Pictures Of You” wasn’t a new song as such though as it was the fourth single to be released from their “Disintegration” album and was very much immediately recognisable as a Cure song. Doomy? Sure. Dark? Yep. Quality tune? Undoubtedly. I’ve always admired the way Robert Smith has never given a shit about following trends or chasing the zeitgeist, an attitude perfectly summed up by this clip of him at the ceremony where the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019…

“Pictures of You” peaked at No 24 and was voted No 278 on Rolling Stone magazine’s “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list in 2011.

So it took just two weeks for Madonna to hit the top spot once again with “Vogue”. I saw some online opinion criticising the lyrics of the song last week, specifically the name call section in the song’s bridge where Madonna references sixteen Hollywood stars from the 1920s to the 1950s. It seemed to be all about the ‘Harlow Jean’ line in that her name was reversed to shoe horn it into the lyrics to make a rhyming space for the following line ‘picture of a beauty queen’. I’m not sure that I agree with the negative opinions to be honest. After all, there is a precedent for this type of wordsmithery. Here’s the opening lines of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”:

“It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
There’s an old man sitting next to me
Makin’ love to his tonic and gin”

His tonic and gin?! Have you ever gone into a bar and asked for a tonic and gin as opposed to a gin and tonic? Well, if it’s good enough for Billy…Madonna could have avoided all of this if she used Norma Jeane as in Marilyn Monroe instead of Harlow Jean but she’d already used Monroe in a previous line to rhyme with DiMaggio. Oh I give up!

After two fast hits in “Seven o’Clock” and “Hey You” came the inevitable ballad from The Quireboys in “I Don’t Love You Anymore”. I’m not sure that I remember this one. Let me have a listen…

Hmm. Pretty nondescript stuff really. Reminds me a bit of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison. I can imagine it got lighters waving in the audience when they performed it live but it’s got as much longevity as lighter fuel.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDogcM_d7s

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Jesus Jones	Real Real Real	Don’t think I did actually
2	Janet Jackson	Escapade	Nah
3	Technotronic	This Beat Is Technotronic	No, this beat is metronomic and dull
4	Heart	All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You	It’s a no from me
5	David Bowie	Fame 90	Not the 90 remix single but I’m sure my wife must have the original somewhere
6	Sonia	Counting Every Minute	Huge no
7	The Blues Brothers	Everbody Needs Somebody To Love	Nope
8	Bizz Nizz	Don’t Miss The Party Line	Miss it? I gave it a massive wide berth!
9	Paula Abdul	Opposites Attract	I was repelled by this though – no
10	The Cure	Pictures Of You	No
11	Madonna	Vogue	Not the single but it’s on my Immaculate Collection CD
12	The Quireboys	I Don’t Love You Anymore	…don’t think I ever did

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pr1x/top-of-the-pops-12041990

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?

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

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 15 JUL 1993

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TOTP 07 JAN 1993

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TOTP 18 JUL 1991

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TOTP 14 MAR 1991

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TOTP 28 FEB 1991

TOTP 10 JAN 1991

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TOTP 26 APR 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 12 APR 1990

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Some bedtime reading?