04 APR 1996
Four days before this TOTP aired, my beloved Chelsea lost an FA Cup semi-final to Manchester United who were on their way to the ‘double double’. I was crushed. After waiting my whole life to see them play in a proper cup final, they’d got humped 4-0 by United two years before. In 1996 though, I was sure that we would get revenge and turn the reds over to reach the final again. We nearly did. Leading 1-0 at half time we looked good until an early second half equaliser and a catastrophic misplaced back pass to set up a young David Beckham for the winner meant that we fell to defeat. I had no idea at the time but a year later, my anguish would be fully cleansed by our cathartic victory over Middlesbrough in next season’s final under Ruud Gullit and his ‘sexy football’. There are no football songs on this edition of TOTP but maybe there are some sexy ones? Let’s see…
Well this guy clearly thinks he’s sexy but…As with last week’s show, we start with a dance tune by an act that’s probably just the pseudonym for a DJ or producer or both. Kadoc were from Spain according to tonight’s host Dale Winton and that’s all there is to say about them or at least that I can be bothered to find out about them. I did try but there wasn’t much coming up other than I recognised the generic design on the cover of the single that was the mark of the Positiva record label who must have licensed it in the UK.
As for their track “Night Train”, it sounds to me like another one of those tracks that owes a lot to “French Kiss” by Lil Louis. A repetitive beat based around a one line lyric – it might have made sense on a sweaty dance floor down your nightclub of choice but it all looks a bit silly in the TOTP studio despite throwing a trio of backing dancers at it to try and raise the temperature of the performance. Look, if you’re going to do a song called “Night Train” on TOTP, let the late, great Steve Strange and co show you how. Backing singers missing their cues, jerky, unrehearsed dance moves from Steve and all cloaked in enough dry ice that wouldn’t be out of place in John Carpenter’s horror classic The Fog. Lovely stuff.
I’m not sure if Ocean Colour Scene have ever been described as ‘sexy’ (maybe they have by the strong devoted in their fan base) but it’s not the first word you would use to describe them is it? That’s not a criticism – they always seemed like a band that were more about their art than air brushed photo shoots anyway. Having scored their first Top 40 hit with previous single “Riverboat Song”, they followed it with an even bigger one in “You’ve Got It Bad”. This is yet another single that I haven’t retained in my memory banks. I could have bet money that the magnificent “The Day We Caught The Train” was the follow up to “Riverboat Song” but yet again these TOTP repeats delight in revealing to me how my memory is failing me. In my defence, “You’ve Got It Bad” isn’t one of the band’s better tunes – I think I would describe it as ‘competent’ which isn’t really how you would want your craft to be categorised.
Dale Winton mentions in his intro that the band’s next live gig is supporting Oasis. Would that be the Maine Road gigs at the end of the month? I think it might be. As I confessed in a previous post, I was at the Saturday concert with some friends but missed seeing Ocean Colour Scene as we were still imbibing some pre-gig drinks when they were on stage. In August this year I will be rectifying that wrong when I will see the band along with Embrace and Cast at an outdoor gig in Hull. Incidentally, Cast were also meant to be in that Oasis bill but had to pull out as their drummer had broken his arm. Couldn’t they have borrowed a replacement from someone like when The Beatles subbed in Jimmie Nicol for a tonsillitis struck Ringo for some gigs on their 1964 world tour? Maybe Oasis could have given them Tony McCarroll’s number whom they’d recently sacked? By the way, it’s taken a while but I’ve finally worked out who lead singer Simon Fowler reminds me of here…
Now, I’m not sure that Dave Grohl is the sexiest man in rock but he has been described as the nicest and that’s got to count for something. His band Foo Fighters were in the charts this week with the fourth and final single taken from their eponymous debut album called “Big Me”. It’s a very radio friendly song definitely at the poppier end of their range and to reflect that, they made a video to promote it that parodied the well known (in America) series of adverts for Mentos Mints. It was based around a narrative that people could solve day-to-day problems by outside-the-box thinking if they ate a Mento Mint to inspire their creativity. The actors in these ads performed in mannered and exaggerated ways (camping it up some might say) against an insanely catchy jingle. The Foo Fighters video apes some of the scenarios in the Mentos adverts scene for scene (the boxed in car for example) with the band also lampooning the acting style. It works pretty well if you know those adverts which of course we didn’t in the UK so we might have appreciated that it was an attempt at being light hearted but the parody element surely escaped us.
So back to Dave Grohl and whether he’s sexy or not. I’m not sure he did himself any favours by styling his long hair into bunches in parts of the video. It gave me real Bill Bailey vibes from that episode of Black Books where they drink the guy’s really expensive wine cellar dry.
Now, was this next hit a blatant and deliberate attempt to cash in on a TV sensation or something that grew organically from the clubs before finally getting an official release? The truth is out there (yes I’m using that tag line again!) but I’m not sure where it is. Apparently, some club DJs had been playing the X Files theme as a chill out track for ravers to come down to after a hard night on the dance floor and all that entailed (ahem) but had then also used it as a basis for making unlicensed dance remixes causing Warners to release the official single by Mark Snow in an attempt to kill off the practice. However, it didn’t prevent a retaliatory official release of “X-Files” by DJ Dado whose version had been one of the most popular in the clubs. Dado was an Italian DJ and producer (weren’t they all?) who took the dream trance sound of Robert Miles’ “Children” and combined it with the haunting melody of the TV show theme to come up with this hit that would spend time residing alongside Snow’s original in the Top 10. It would turn out to be DJ Dado’s only UK hit.
If innuendo is all about sex then “Ooh Aah…(Just A Little Bit)” is indeed a sexy song. Gina G’s Eurovision entry has crashed into the charts at No 6, instantly topping the chart high of the previous year’s contestant Love City Groove. Whether this was a portent that it could sweep all before it and take the Eurovision crown for the UK for the first time in 15 years was debatable but it was indisputable evidence that it was going to be a major hit on our chart. Not since Bardo (remember them) in 1982 had a UK entrant been so high up the Top 40 and this is as with the actual contest still being six weeks away when, whatever its fate, the song would surely get another sales boost due to the promotion and coverage of the event. As it turned out, “Ooh Aah…(Just A Little Bit)” would enjoy a spectacular chart run spending a solid ten weeks inside the Top 10.
This particular TOTP has gone backing dancer mad with Gina’s gals being the third set to feature after those behind Kadoc and DJ Dado. Despite a bit of over enthusiastic thrusting of chests, their moves are playful rather than suggestive I would…erm…suggest whilst Gina gives a winning Kylie-esque smile throughout. I have my own personal story about this song but I’ll keep it warming the bench for now as guess what? Gina is the opening act on the next show!
Hmm. Despite his large collection of ballads and love songs in his back catalogue, I’m not sure that the words Lionel Richie and sexy belong together in the same sentence. He’s here anyway to promote his latest single “Don’t Wanna Lose You” but judging by the fade away segue, it’s just a repeat of his studio appearance from the other week. Truly, it’s not a very good song and surely can’t be talked about in the same breath as some of his classic hits. In Lionel’s defence, he’s definitely trying out his best approximation of Lenny Henry’s Theophilius P. Wildebeeste’s character (he’s even cultivated a carefully coiffured beard) and looks longingly straight down the camera but you can’t really get away for the fact that he is, despite everything he’s trying, still Lionel Richie.
Next to a guy who may have been an unlikely sex symbol but his picture was surely on more teenagers walls than Lionel Richie’s. Jarvis Cocker’s national treasure status was never bigger than at this point. Not only had his band Pulp completely crossed over into the mainstream following the success of their “Different Class” album but he’d become front page news after his protest against Michael Jackson at the BRIT Awards a few weeks before this TOTP aired. “Something Changed” was the fourth single lifted from that album and I recall thinking that the band were pushing it releasing a single from an album that had already been out for six months by this point. However, it’s such a good song it deserved its own moment in the spotlight. An observation on the randomness of life and how monumental events in people’s lives occur. Cleverly, it doesn’t eulogise the concept of fate as so many songs do but rather tries to examine the ‘sliding doors’ notion of how your life would have gone in a completely different direction if you’d literally arrived somewhere one minute earlier or later. That idea really intrigues me and I’m sure we can all think of our own personal ‘sliding doors’ moments. I hadn’t realised until now how old the song was in that the band had played around with it as early as 1984 but returned to it for the “Different Class” sessions and worked it into the track we know today. Maybe if they’d persevered with it originally then fame and fortune might have come to the band much earlier than it did. A ‘sliding doors’ moment indeed.
It’s the return of Mark Morrison now as he continues his protracted journey to the No 1 spot with his hit “Return Of The Mack”. He’s up to No 4 this week after spending three consecutive weeks at No 6. Him topping the chart after that run must have seemed unlikely but the two place move upwards was followed by a week at No 3 before he finally got to the summit in week six of release. Whilst we were seeing a new No 1 record going straight to the top virtually every week around this time, it’s worth remembering that there were still some songs that climbed steadily like in the good old days of the 80s. As well as Morrison, there was the aforementioned Gina G who took eight weeks to get to No 1 plus, of course, there was the outlier that was “Think Twice” by Celine Dion that took an incredible sixteen weeks to rise to the top. Totally predictably, Morrison adds to the backing dancer count for this TOTP with a further four in this performance. There was clearly a trend for showing your bra during this period!
The Prodigy remain at No 1 with “Firestarter”. I talked about the video for this one in the last post so now it’s time to focus on the song itself. Well, it couldn’t be more in your face – the musical equivalent of the face hugger from the Alien franchise. A blistering assault on your aural senses. I guess you can’t underestimate the input of Keith Flint to it in what was unbelievably his first vocal contribution to a Prodigy track. It would be like Bez doing lead vocals on a Happy Mondays single and it going to No 1. A remarkable achievement. Sure, Flint didn’t have a technically good voice but what he did do, he did brilliantly. As for the musical composition of the song, there are a few samples in there that I’ve never picked up on before. I’m going to pardon myself for not spotting The Breeders and “Devotion” by Ten City but how on earth did I miss the ‘hey’ chant from Art Of Noise’s “Close (To The Edit)”?! It’s metaphorically been under my nose and literally in my ears for 28 years!
Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
1 | Kadoc | Night Train | Never |
2 | Ocean Colour Scene | You’ve Got It Bad | No |
3 | Foo Fighters | Big Me | I didn’t |
4 | DJ Dado | X-Files | Of course not |
5 | Gina G | Ooh Aah…(Just A Little Bit) | Nope |
6 | Lionel Richie | Don’t Wanna Lose You | Nah |
7 | Pulp | Something Changed | No but I had the Different Class album with it on |
8 | Mark Morrison | Return Of The Mack | Negative |
9 | The Prodigy | Firestarter | Should have but didn’t |
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0020540/top-of-the-pops-04041996?seriesId=unsliced