Manic Street Preachers | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 29 JUL 1993

Posted on September 24, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s late July 1993 and the BBC’s musical output has gone stale. The seismic changes of the TOTP ‘year zero’ revamp happened twenty-two months ago and many are no longer with us most obviously the majority of the slew of new presenters that were introduced. In fact, the only two remaining are Mark Franklin and Tony Dortie who have been presenting solo on alternate weeks since October 1992. The show’s audience has plateaued at a level of 6.5 million which was less than it was attracting pre the revamp.

Meanwhile, over at Radio 1, whilst it seems like the ‘Smashie And Nicey’ image propagated by the likes of Simon Bates, Dave Lee Travis and Gary Davies will carry on forever, change is a-comin’. The era of Matthew Bannister as controller of Radio 1 is nearly upon us and he will action a root and branch transformation that will strip away the old, rotting wood. The culture of change would prove to be contagious. Within months, TOTP would also change head producer and the incoming Ric Blaxill would reverse most of the ‘year zero’ changes. For now though, it was the calm before the storm. Let’s see who was afloat before the sea of change appeared over the horizon…

We start with an act that was having some success under the current regime but who would flourish under the new. “Unforgiven” was D:Ream’s third of four consecutive Top 40 hits in 1993 though none would get any higher than No 19. Solid but not spectacular. Come early 1994 though they would go off like a rocket with the re-release of “Things Can Only Get Better” soaring to No 1.

Like most people I’m guessing, I don’t remember “Unforgiven” but on listening back to it, I was pleasantly surprised. It’s OK. A bit more grit to it than their most famous tune, the most impressive part of it is the bridge into the chorus which Peter Cunnah almost growls – quite the feat in a dance record. Linda Perry from 4 Non Blondes seems to have started a trend for tall hat wearing given the millinery of one of the backing singers. Where will it all end? Well, I’ll tell you where it won’t end – with me making the almost obligatory reference to Professor Brian Cox on keyboards…oh shit.

“Unforgiven” peaked at No 29.

“Show Me Love” by Robin S was not just one of the biggest dance tunes of 1993 but of the whole decade and beyond. How do you follow a hit line that? Easy! Just release virtually the same song again but change its title. “Luv 4 Luv” is “Show Me Love”, not just sonically but linguistically with the same three syllable title and chorus but with a slight change of spelling. Money for old rope? This was, to reference the film maker Stanley Kubrick, money for pieces of string too short to be useful*. Even Tony Dortie can’t resist a jibe by stating tongue-in-cheek that it’s “nothing like her first single”.

*Kubrick was a massive hoarder and when his family were sorting through his estate after his death, they found a box labelled ‘pieces of string too short to be useful’. His archives now reside at the London College of Communication .

Amazingly, enough people bought the single to send it to No 11 in the UK charts. I don’t get this. Presumably if a punter liked it enough to buy “Luv 4 Luv” then said punter must have felt the same about “Show Me Love” and also bought that so essentially you have the same record twice. Surely there can’t have been people who only bought “Luv 4 Luv”?! “I wasn’t bothered about “Show Me Love” but this new one by Robin S is great and I must have it”…said no-one ever.

When Freddie Mercury died in November 1991, Queen’s most iconic song “Bohemian Rhapsody” was rereleased and almost inevitably became that year’s Xmas No 1. Four months later, The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness took place at Wembley Stadium with the remaining members of Queen all involved. Such was Freddie’s popularity though, there was still a clamour for his recordings and so the band’s label raided his back catalogue as a solo artist. For a name as big as Freddie’s, there wasn’t actually that much solo work to raid. He only recorded two studio albums (and one of those was the “Barcelona” collaboration with Montserrat Caballé) plus the standalone single “The Great Pretender”, a couple of tracks for the Dave Clark musical Time and “Love Kills” from Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. That didn’t stop Parlophone coming up with the unimaginatively titled “The Freddie Mercury Album” compilation in 1992 which included elements of all those recording projects. That album had already seen the release of “In My Defence” from Time and a rerelease for the aforementioned “The Great Pretender” which had both charted.

What came next though, nearly two years after Freddie’s death, was a surprise. A posthumous No1 record with a single that had stumbled to a peak of No 50 when originally released eight years prior? How did that happen? Well, it was all down to a team of remixers called The No More Brothers who took the track “Living On My Own” which had been on Freddie’s 1985 solo debut album “Mr Bad Guy” and that 1992 compilation and turned it into a dance hit. A chart topper all over Europe including the UK, it was a sales sensation. Me though, I didn’t get it. I hadn’t been aware of the 1985 original but this 1993 version didn’t make me want to seek it out. It just sounded so bland and I hated the lines ‘Dee do de de, Dee do de de, I don’t have no time for no monkey business”. What?! Written down, the first part looks like a script for a Harry Enfield’s The Scousers sketch whilst the monkey business bit was just hackneyed. How was this a No 1 record? The video is the same one used for the 1985 release and uses footage of Freddie’s 39th birthday party in Munich where he recorded the “Mr Bad Guy” album.

The general perception amongst the fanbase of Manic Street Preachers is that their second album “Gold Against The Soul” is also their worst. There is also an agreed opinion that the one stand out track on it is “La Tristesse Durera” which was released as its second single. I disagree on both counts. I love this album and though “La Tristesse Durera” is a fabulous track, it’s not my favourite from it. That honour switches between “Roses In The Hospital” and “Life Becoming A Landslide” on a regular basis.

Actually, I need to correct myself here and give the song its full title which is “La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)”. No brackets, no points. I make this clarification not just for the sake of accuracy nor to be a pedant but to highlight a peculiar oddity about the track that has a tie in with another song I love that has brackets in the title. For some reason, when released in the US, the the song’s title was changed to “Scream To Sigh (La Tristesse Durera)”. Why? I have no idea but nearly a decade earlier, The Icicle Works’ single “Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)” had its title changed to “Whisper To A Scream (Birds Fly)” for the US market. What was it about US record labels and brackets and the word ‘scream’?

As for the performance here, would there have been outrage at Nicky Wire wearing a dress? There shouldn’t have been. It’s not as if we hadn’t seen it before. There was Bowie on the cover of his “The Man Who Sold The World” album and that bloke from Mud who wore one on the actual show.

“La Tristesse Durera (Whisper To A Scream)” peaked at No 22.

“Live from the Dominion Theatre in London’s West End…” Don’t get too excited it’s just Craig McLachlan in a revival of Grease the Musical and I have to say that, based on this short clip of “You’re The One That I Want” he doesn’t seem too convincing as Danny Zuko. Maybe it’s his curly hair, or his average singing voice or maybe it’s just that he’s not John Travolta which is not his fault of course. Debbie Gibson on the other hand belts it out and wears that iconic leather outfit well.

As Tony Dortie says, the cast included Shane Richie who played the role of Kenickie but as for him being “very funny” – if he performed anything like he did when on 3–2–1 in 1987…Perhaps he should have changed his name to Shame Richie…

Five Breakers again this week (bastards!) starting with Juliet Roberts and “Caught In The Middle”. I had no idea at the time but this wasn’t Juliet’s first Top 40 record – she was the vocalist on “It’s Over” by Funk Masters way back in 1983. She then joined smooth jazzers Working Week whose single “I Thought I’d Never See You Again” I quite liked though nobody else seemed to much when it peaked at No 80. Fast forward eight years and Juliet finally had a hit in her own right.

There’s a couple of parallels between Juliet and Shara Nelson who was on the show the other week. Both were having success under their own names after supplying the vocals for other artists (Shara sang on Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy”) and both were on the Cooltempo label. Also like Shara, Juliet’s solo career seemed to peter out rather. “Caught In The Middle” made No 24 though a David Morales remix the following year peaked ten places higher. A couple more Top 20 singles followed before the decade was out but that didn’t translate into album sales with her debut long player “Natural Thing” only making No 65. She continues to be in demand as a backing singer though.

The first of two huge stars now who are experiencing a drop off in singles sales as their latest offerings fail to tempt UK record buyers. After her last single “That’s The Way Love Goes” went to No 2 over here, Janet Jackson might have expected the follow up to perform similarly. It didn’t. “If” was the second single from her “Janet” album which I thought was meant to be a more smooth, sensual sounding soul record but this single could have been on the more strident previous album “Rhythm Nation 1814” with its hard beats and rock guitar riff. Yes, the lyrics aligned with the album’s sexual theme touching on fantasy and voyeurism but sonically it was nothing like the previous single.

The video plays on the voyeurism subject with scenes involving touch screen monitors and web cams, seemingly jumping on the bandwagon of Sliver, the erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone that was popular at the time. Maybe the racy video worked against the single’s commercial potential – was it too racy for anything other than a short Breaker spot on TOTP? Whatever the reason, “If” only made it to No 14 in the UK.

Oh crap! It’s “River Of Dreams” by Billy Joel. Now I like Billy and some of his back catalogue (especially the earlier stuff) is great. Even his last album prior to this (“Storm Front”) had some good singles on it. This track though rivalled “Uptown Girl” for sheer, undiluted awfulness. The title track off his only studio album of the 90s and the last to be comprised of pop songs*, it was and remains shockingly bad.

*His 2001 set “Fantasies & Delusions” contained only classical compositions.

Not everyone agreed with my assessment though. It was a huge global hit and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year for 1994 losing out to, by coincidence, the next artist to feature on the Breakers. Why couldn’t I stand it? It was just so twee and I hated that harmonised intro that goes “In the middle of the…I go walking in the…”. I think ultimately though it reminds me of a time when I wasn’t that happy at work but that’s for a post in the near future.

Long after I’d finished working in record shops and stopped listening to Radio 1, I found myself at the radio home for the newly middle aged and listening to Terry Wogan’s breakfast show and he used to play this constantly. It nearly broke me.

“River Of Dreams” peaked at No 3.

Now to that second artist (alongside Janet Jackson) suffering an unexpected downturn in sales of their latest single and also the winner of that 1994 Grammy for Record of the Year. “Run To You” was the fourth single released by Whitney Houston from The Bodyguard soundtrack and was basically a retread of the third single “I Have Nothing” in that they were both towering ballads executed with precision by Whitney over a shiny production. So similar were they that Natalie Cole performed a medley of them at the 1993 Academy Awards (I’m guessing Whitney was indisposed).

Presumably due to the fact that the so many people already had the song due to buying the soundtrack album, “Run To You” failed to work itself into a sprint up the charts peaking at No 15 in the UK and No 31 in the US.

The video looks a bit crap by today’s high CGI standards with Whitney running against a backdrop of clouds although maybe it was a homage to the film of the aforementioned Grease when Danny and Sandy’s car takes off into the sky and they fly off into the clouds?

Neither “Run To You” nor Janet Jackson’s “If” were shown in full on TOTP which you maybe wouldn’t have expected for two such huge names.

Another huge name who had already had her video shown in full on the show is the final Breaker this week. Madonna is up to No 7 with “Rain” from her “Erotica” album. The tickets Tony Dortie refers to are for the two concert dates in September that Madonna played at Wembley Stadium as part of her The Girlie Show world tour.

“Rain” ended the first act of the show and was interspersed with “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” by The Temptations and “Singin’ In The Rain”. Want to hear it? Here you go but having sat through the whole thing myself, I must warn you that you won’t get these 9 minutes and 48 seconds of your life back…

Back in the studio we find Dannii Minogue performing her rendition of Melba Moore’s “This Is It”. You know I said earlier about Juliet Roberts being an in demand backing singer after her solo career ended? Well, she must have been moonlighting back in 1993 as she provided backing vocals on Dannii’s previous single to “This Is It” which was called “Love’s On Every Corner”.

Twenty years after she had a hit with “This Is It”, the track supplied the title for a Best Of Dannii album which included a duet with sister Kylie of the ABBA standard “The Winner Takes It All” – I wonder which of the two of them that was then?

“This Is It” peaked at No 10.

https://youtu.be/2BkYJ5g8kE4

There’s only one Bee Gees song I remember from 1993 and it ain’t this one. “For Whom The Bell Tolls” was a surprise Top 5 hit over Xmas that year that just seemed to keep on selling even when you thought it must have run out of steam. “Paying The Price Of Love” though? Nah, I’ve got nothing. Their previous hit to this had been the shameless rewrite of “Chain Reaction” that was “Secret Love” in 1991. Did this one sound like any of their other songs? A slight hint of “You Win Again” maybe? Maybe not.

Barry Gibbs’ falsetto here is quite remarkable. That’s not a compliment though – a better descriptor would be ridiculous. I know it works somehow on most of their back catalogue especially their disco era peak but taken in isolation it’s quite mad. If he turned up on a talent show like The Voice for example and did that, would the judges turn around or would they look at each other and break out into a fit of uncontrollable giggling? What if they did turn around and then saw his mane of hair?! I can only really think of Barry Gibb and Queen’s Brian May that have always maintained the same hairstyle throughout their careers. Honourable mentions should also go to Rod Stewart and Paul Weller for sustaining comedy haircuts but they have tweaked them down the years.

“Paying The Price Of Love” peaked at No 23.

You can’t really argue with Tony Dortie’s assessment that Take That were “simply the biggest pop band in the UK” at this time as “Pray” notches up a third week at No 1. The boys are back in the studio this week and what I’m noticing from this performance is the clear division of hairstyles between them (and yes, I know I seem to be obsessed with pop star barnets yet again this week). Mark, Howard and Robbie all have that classic mid 90s long at the the sides curtains style while Jason and Gary have a more classic crew cut. I think I know which has aged the better.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	D:Ream	Unforgiven	Nope
2	Robin S	Luv 4 Luv	Never
3	Freddie Mercury	Living On My Own	I did not
4	Manic Street Preachers	La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)	Not the single but I had the album
5	Craig McLachlan and Debbie Gibson	You’re The One That I Want	No
6	Juliet Roberts	Caught In the Middle	Negative
7	Janet Jackson	If	Nah
8	Billy Joel	River Of Dreams	Hell no!
9	Whitney Houston	Run To You	No thanks
10	Madonna	Rain	It’s a no
11	Dannii Minogue	This Is It	No it isn’t
12	Bee Gees	Paying The Price Of Love	I didn’t pay the price
13	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/m001c948/top-of-the-pops-29071993

TOTP 10 JUN 1993

Posted on September 3, 2022 by 80stastic

June 1993 saw the demise of two big names in the world of comedy – one a performer and one a TV show. The former was comedian Les Dawson who died on the same day this TOTP aired aged just 62. The latter was US sitcom Cheers which ended this year after 275 episodes over 11 seasons. Channel 4 broadcast the final three shows over the weekend following this TOTP. Both had a musical element to them. Dawson included his wonky piano playing in his act whilst Cheers had one of the greatest theme tunes of all time…

Let’s see if any of the tunes on this TOTP are anywhere near as good as Gary Portnoy’s famous song…

Certainly not this one! As I said in the last post when confronted by Eurodance merchant Haddaway opening the show, I’d totally had enough of that particular genre of music by this point. This time it’s the turn of Snap! to be the first act on with their new single “Do You See The Light (Looking For)”. The TOTP producers often seemed to top the show’s running order with a dance act. In recent weeks we’ve had Stereo MCs, Felix and 2 Unlimited in addition to Haddaway. I guess it made sense to try and begin proceedings with a bang. The year zero revamp hadn’t quite let go of the party atmosphere era of Michael Hurll. Having said that, the performance here of Snap! featuring Niki Harris seems to suggest a soirée rather than a massive rave-up. I have to say that as objectionable as his views were, the group seemed to lose something when rapper Turbo B left. The performance here seems very lacklustre. Maybe if the set hadn’t been so sparse it might have sparked things into life a bit. And why do the backing singers resemble water nymphs?

This track was taken from “The Madman’s Return” album and the album version of it is quite different with vocals by Thea Austin instead of Niki Harris, a rap by the aforementioned Turbo B and even a (slightly) different title in “See The Light”. The single version peaked at No 10 and No 14 in 2002 when it was remixed and rereleased.

Spin Doctors are still going up the charts? Checking its stats, “Two Princes” remained on the chart for 18 weeks so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a pretty nifty tune all said and done and there was a brief moment in time when the band seemed to be the next big thing. Parent album “Pocketful Of Kryptonite” went to No 2 and achieved platinum sales in Europe and yet somehow it all seemed to stall and fall away on both sides of the Atlantic.

If I’m honest, the follow up singles just weren’t as good. “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” just didn’t capture the imagination in the same way as “Two Princes” although in the case of the latter, in a three way race of Superman themed singles, they definitely finish above Laurie Anderson and Black Lace.

“Two Princes” peaked at No 3 in the UK.

A proper pop moment next as TOTP brings us the return of Pet Shop Boys. Neil and Chris had been away for only 18 months or so but their last release had been their first official Best Of album “Discography” which on reflection felt like a line in the sand drawing to a close the first part of their career. What would the first material of their next phase be like? Well, not too dissimilar to their previous work to be fair. “Can You Forgive Her” didn’t feel like a massive departure from what had gone before but then Neil Tennant’s voice is so distinctive that it overrides sometimes any potential musical deviation on their behalf. Not always of course. For example, something like “Jealousy” or “Se A Vida É” sound nothing like “West End Girls” but in the case of “Can You Forgive Her”, it didn’t seem, to me anyway, like a radical new sound. Not that it wasn’t any good either though. It had a strident feel to it, enabled by a punchy chorus that demanded to be heard. And heard it was as it gave the duo their first Top 10 hit in two years after their previous three singles all failed to make that achievement.

Somehow though it always feels overshadowed by the second single to be lifted from parent album “Very” which was the enormous hit that was the cover of Village People’s “Go West”. Initial copies of the album came in an orange CD jewel case featuring raised bumps which resembled Lego. In those days, the Our Price chain I worked for didn’t use security tagging and so the CDs we sold weren’t ‘live’ on the shelves as it were. The actual CDs were filed away behind the counter so the cases were empty. However, the manager of the store I was working in when the album came out thought the Lego case so nickable that we kept those behind the counter as well and had a dummy case on display that used the inner back sleeve to say what it was. Genius! Except it was a pain in the arse to put together when selling it to a customer and we also had a few people ask if our dummy sleeve was somehow a different version of the album. It would be another five years before I worked in an Our Price that displayed CDs live.

Anyway, back to the show and this performance really does give us the pop moment I referred to earlier. There’s so much to unpack here. The over exaggerated pointy dunce hats, Neil Tennant in a high chair, the cricket bat wielding space cadet backing dancers, a huge egg on stage for no reason but most of all there was Chris Lowe. The perennially motionless man moved more in that one performance than in all his previous ones added together. What had got into him? There were even what passed for dance moves! Maybe I was wrong. Perhaps this really was a different Pet Shop Boys to what had gone before.

1993 really was the year ragga/dancehall took over the charts. After Shaggy, Shabba and Snow came the ludicrously named Chaka Demus And Pliers. Opening themselves up to all sorts of tool related jibes, this pair of toasters joined forces in 1991 and released “Murder She Wrote” the following year in America to great acclaim. The follow up was “Tease Me” and the hordes lapped it up sending it to No 3 in the UK Top 40. The lyrics were fairly clear about the song’s subject matter with references to ‘reaching climax’ and its title of course. There’s also that shout out line which seemed to encapsulate the whole movement – “Number One In The World”. I’m sure that seemed to feature on every song of this type after that.

Chaka Demus and Pliers have bought all their mates with them to the TOTP studio for a jolly up whilst the camera man seemed very intent on giving us multiple views of the gyrating female backing dancers. Ahem. We’ll also be seeing lots more of CD and P before 1993 is out.

And the fascination with all things erotic thriller continues. I’m guessing Indecent Proposal must have been performing well at the box office to generate this much of a profile. It’s another outing for “Ordinary Love” by Sade which was featured heavily in the film but was not actually on the soundtrack. After last week’s glimpse of the mermaid promo video, we get a live by satellite performance from New York this time. Sade Adu looks stunning as ever but it’s the two guitarists in the background who have caught my eye. They spend the first half of the performance not even bothering to mime playing their instruments but doing the nerd shuffle together whilst clicking their fingers in unison. It doesn’t really seem appropriate for an artist as sophisticated as Sade. Bet they got a bollocking when the cameras were turned off.

Therapy? were enjoying a huge breakthrough year in 1993. After the “Shortsharpshock EP” featuring lead track “Screamager” made the Irish rockers bona fide Top 10 artists in March, the follow up was also an EP. “Face The Strange” featured four tracks of which “Turn” was chosen to promote it. Clearly the EP’s title is a David Bowie reference being a lyric from his song “Changes”. I learned recently that I know someone who met Bowie and not just met but took him out for a drink around about 1972 just as he was launching his Ziggy Stardust era. I know! There’s a few Bowie super fans that I know who would be blown away by my friend’s recollections. What’s that? The Therapy? song? Oh, I didn’t like it much. Sorry.

The Breakers are their usual eclectic/bonkers mix of artists starting with the evergreen Cliff Richard. Despite being 52 at the time and having had his first hit 25 years ago, Cliff was showing no signs of slowing down in 1993. In fact, the decade was going pretty well for him so far. He’d already clocked up a No 1 in “Saviour’s Day” and four other Top 10 hits. Also having a fine old time of it around now was Maxi Priest who’d had a hit twice with Shabba Ranks (albeit with the same song in both cases) and who’d supplied the ‘Shabba!’ sample for the massive selling “Mr Loverman” single. To add to his collection of chart connections came “Human Work Of Art”. You see, Maxi had released this as a single from his “Bonafide” album three years prior but it had failed to chart.

It was recycled for Cliff’s 1993 album called…erm…”The Album” and this time made No 24. It sounds every inch a Cliff record and you’d be hard pressed to guess at its reggae-fied earlier incarnation. It’s also utterly awful under his guardianship. Yes, it’s a polished production but then you can polish a turd of course.

I can’t find the official video online so here’s it being performed on Surprise Surprise.

From the despair of another banal Cliff record to…where? Well, fortunately it’s Manic Street Preachers with their new single “From Despair To Where” (ahem). OK, firstly weren’t they have meant to have split up by now? Wasn’t that their mission statement to make one blow your socks off, anarchistic album then dissolve the band? Clearly that was just bravado then. What they actually did was to record second album “Gold Against The Soul” which I liked enough to buy but which the fan base has always dissed as the worst album in their back catalogue. I’m sure I heard an interview with James Dean Bradfield once where he was asked to rank the band’s albums in order of merit and even he put it bottom of the list.

Maybe debut “Generation Terrorists” had raised the bar and expectations too high but the music press gave it mixed reviews at best. Maybe fan favourite and third album “The Holy Bible” would have been a more acceptable choice with its themes of human suffering and bleakness. Was “Gold Against The Soul” seen as too radio friendly, too (gulp) corporate rock? It sounded alright to my ears with the lead single ticking all my aural boxes. It swoops and soars but bites as well with lines like ‘there’s nothing nice in my head’. It had all of that and yet wasn’t even the best track on the album for me. I liked this version of the band a lot but then I’m not a paid up member of the Manics army who could shoot my opinion down in flames I’m sure.

What I’m not sure about is the video which is basically some moody shots of the band (Richie looks especially cool) intertwined with some sepia tinted clips which seem to suggest a sci-fi /horror film but it’s all a bit blurry to make a clear judgement although that look like an alien autopsy in the thumbnail below.

The Manics of course did do a TV show theme tune when they covered “Suicide Is Painless” – the theme tune from M*A*S*H. Better than the theme to Cheers? It’s a tough call but yes possibly.

The Sister Sledge revival bandwagon continues apace with a rerelease of their 1984 hit “Thinking Of You”. Remixed as the (RAMP Radio Mix), it was the last of three singles taken from the Greatest Hits compilation “The Very Best Of Sister Sledge 1973-93” following “We Are Family” and “Lost In Music”. It would peak at No 17 just six places lower than its 1984 counterpart. However the song dated back to 1979 when it was a track on the “We Are Family” album and issued as the B-side to the initial release of “Lost In Music”.

Reading that paragraph back it seems like the group made a 40+ year career based around just three songs that have been recycled over and over again. Lead singer Kathy Sledge even did her own cover version of “Thinking Of You” with house duo Aristofreeks in 2015. OK look, I know there’s also “He’s The Greatest Dancer” and “Frankie” in their repertoire but the former is very similar to the “Family/Lost/Thinking” trilogy and the latter is one of the worst recordings of all time (and I’ve just had to listen to Cliff Richard’s “Human Work Of Art”). I doubt even the Sledge sisters want to be remembered for that one.

Sister Sledge have only released one more single since this. And guess what? It was a rerelease of “We Are Family” in 2004 which made No 93 on our charts.

Who? The Time Frequency? Sounds like a phrase Dr Who might say. Have we seen this lot before? Can’t remember now. So many of these dance acts about. Anyway, “The Ultimate High” was a track off their “Power Zone EP” and sounds very much like a knock off version of “Insanity” by Oceanic to me but then, as I’ve said many times before, I’m no dance music aficionado.

The Time Frequency were from Scotland so I wonder if they knew fellow Scottish dance acts Primal Scream and The Shamen or is that a bit like an American, who on meeting someone from London, asks them if they know their cousin who lives in Notting Hill?

Lisa Stansfield? Again? It can’t be! She seems to be on every week at the moment. Given the high level of exposure it got, I’m surprised that “In All The Right Places” didn’t get higher than its No 8 peak. She’s back in the studio this time and has gone full on Louise Brooks with her haircut. No messing about like the other week with that half hearted Brett Anderson-esque wedge style. The way the stage has been set up with her first name and first name only in lights gives it a feel of a residency at Las Vegas. In fact, I could just imagine Liza Minnelli up there belting this one out.

Lisa will be back in October with her “So Natural” album and single.

UB40 have made it to the top spot deposing Ace Of Base in the process. Were they on tour at this time as it’s the video for “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” yet again this week? I’m guessing that the director got the band to perform emerging into a tight corridor to link in with the themes of claustrophobia and paranoia that the film it was taken from (Sliver) clearly was based around. Ironically, a few years down the line, the band fractured into two different identities due to internal arguments and there’s no way that Ali and Robin Campbell would ever be in such close proximity to each other like that again.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Snap!	Do You See The Light (Looking For)	Never happening
2	Spin Doctors	Two Princes	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	Pet Shop Boys	Can You Forgive Her	No but I have it on their Pop Art Best Of
4	Chaka Demus And Pliers	Tease Me	As if
5	Sade	No Ordinary Love	Nope
6	Therapy?	Face The Strange EP	Nah
7	Cliff Richard	Human Work Of Art	Of course not
8	Manic Street Preachers	From Despair To Where	No but I bought the album
9	Sister Sledge	Thinking Of You	No
10	The Time Frequency	Power Zone EP	Not likely
11	Lisa Stansfield	In All The Right Places	Negative
12	UB40	(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You	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/m001bdx3/top-of-the-pops-10061993

TOTP 26 MAR 1992

Posted on February 6, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve missed another TOTP repeat broadcast due to the Adrian Rose issue and so find ourselves at the fag end of March 1992. So who is this guy enraging the community of TOTP repeat completists and why won’t he let the shows he presented in be re-shown? I have touched on this subject before when it first became apparent it was an issue at the end of the 1991 programmes. This is the seventh of fifteen that we will miss because of it so a recap feels in order.

It seems Adrian Rose now goes by the name of Adrian Woolfe and is the founder and co-CEO of Studio 1, an international production, distribution and licensing company. His bio on their website shows that he was part of the creative team at Celador that developed Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and was responsible for implementing a brand and marketing roll out strategy for it and managed the show’s intellectual property rights into 107 countries. All this wanky business jargon are the words in his bio not mine by the way! OK, so he’s now a big shot in the entertainment business. Still doesn’t explain his reluctance to have his TOTP past repeated. Apparently ‘he has his reasons’ which is the only rather cryptic explanation emanating from his camp. Whatever they are, it all happened 30 years ago and he’s clearly made a success of his post show career so what’s up with this? Of course, it is Adrian’s prerogative and his ‘crime’ of upsetting some music nostalgia enthusiasts is hardly one to trouble the Met (mind you nothing seems to be worthy of the Met’s due diligence these days) but still. It all seems rather unnecessary.

OK. Enough of Mr Rose/ Woolfe. Onto the shows we do have access to and we start this one with TOTP stalwarts Erasure who are now into their seventh year of appearances on the show. “Breath Of Life” was the fourth and final single from their “Chorus” album and I have to say it’s not the single that immediately comes to my mind when I think of Erasure in 1992. No, that honour would go to their “Abba-esque” EP that would provide them with their first and so far only UK No 1 single. Still, “Breath Of Life” was a bona fide Top 10 hit peaking at No 8 so maybe it doesn’t deserve to be so overlooked. Having said all that, it’s not one of their stronger efforts for me. It seems to have pinched the title of that Squeeze single “Take Me I’m Yours” for its chorus and has a keyboard riff that sounds like it could have been from an early Depeche Mode single; not surprising I guess given Vince Clarke’s musical origins.

As for the performance, usually Erasure seemed to put a lot of thought into the staging of their TOTP appearances but here they seem to just have a mock up of the surface of the moon behind them and some backing singers in very glittery dresses. Also, what was the deal with Vince’s massive synth?! It looks like Cape Canaveral back there.

After their mention in my last post surrounding the hirsute Fred being in the audience of a play I saw whilst visiting my mate Robin in London, Right Said Fred are on the show in performance mode. Not in the studio though as we get the “great” (as presenter Claudia Simon describes it) video for latest single “Deeply Dippy”. The release of this track saw the band at the peak of their popularity when it went to No 1 in the UK.

I have to admit that the first time that I heard this, I found it vastly underwhelming though it’s actually infinitely better than “I’m Too Sexy” which is ultimately a novelty song. Some perspective is needed here obviously. This is Right Said Fred we’re talking about but “Deeply Dippy” does sound quite accomplished in comparison. It actually builds nicely to an uplifting (fair)brass section emboldened climax courtesy of the Average White Band. There’s even some shades of subtlety in there with some shifts of tempo and some gentle guitar noodling. To be fair(brass), the Freds were professional musicians with the brothers having played with the likes of David Bowie and Bob Dylan. They weren’t just some stooges brought in to front the act.

The video is the usual montage of Right Said Fred japes with the band generally just arseing about in various locations surrounded by various leggy models (“see those legs man”). According to an interview with Richard and Fred Fairbrass on the Songfacts website, the promo was deemed too ‘gay’ for US audiences and their American label made them shoot another one. They might as well not have bothered as it sank without trace and the band are still known as a one hit wonder (for “I’m Too Sexy”) over there. Apparently the woman in the green dress is the wife of the Fred who was in the audience of that play I saw down in London a couple of weeks before. I wonder if she was with him.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, we find Annie Lennox who looks like she nipped in on her way to a red carpet event such as the Oscars so sparkly and glamorous is her dress. Never afraid of messing around with gender roles and appearances, Annie’s hair and make up are designed to challenge with their nod to the gothic. After her ‘exclusive’ performance two weeks ago of her debut solo single “Why”, she’s back on the show after crashing into the Top 10 with it. By the way, I’m not counting her 1988 hit single “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” with Al Green from the film Scrooged on account of the fact that…well…she wasn’t solo was she?

Annie doesn’t need any backing musicians nor singers (not even Al Green) up there with her and does the whole thing on her own with just some studio lighting and a smoke machine for company. The audience come in with their applause a tad too early though (presumably on instruction from a floor manager) so that they drown out Annie’s final “You don’t know how I feel” line. Boo!

As with most celebrities, there is a Half Man Half Biscuit song that name checks Annie called “Paintball’s Coming Home” but it took me many a listen to hear the reference. If you don’t know the song, maybe you’ll get it first time…

Next, one of the most ridiculous songs of the whole decade in my book. Def Leppard had not been in the 90s at all up to this point. Presumably they had spent the first two years of it trying to write a follow up album to their monster hit “Hysteria” from which they released just about every track as a single. What they came up with was “Adrenalize” the lead single of which was “Let’s Get Rocked”.

This song was just an appalling waste of everyone’s time. The band’s for recording it, the radio stations for having to play it and the public for having to listen to it. What’s so wrong with it? Well, it’s just dumb ass, bombastic, cliched rock for one but it’s most heinous crime are the lyrics. Yes, I know that lead singer Joe Elliott is assuming a role within it and isn’t singing in the first person per se but it’s still ludicrous to hear a then 31 year old Sheffield man singing about being asked by his Dad to take out the trash and tidy his room and also refer to himself as a ‘dude’. I just couldn’t take it seriously. He then goes on about trying to get his ‘baby in the mood’ before coming out with a double entendre Finbar Saunders would have baulked at “ I suppose a rock’s out of the question”. Good grief!

Just like a Tory minister defending Boris Johnson’s latest gaff, the band had a go at justifying it. Here’s Joe Elliott courtesy of @TOTPFacts.

"We ended up writing this song, lyrically, which summed up the character of Bart Simpson – but [also] the character of any 16-year-old kid that's going through one of those phases with his father." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 28, 2022

Nice try but I wasn’t buying it (metaphorically and literally). As if the song wasn’t bad enough, the video looks like a nasty knock off of the promo for “Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits. Back in 1985 that video had blown our minds but by 1992 we’d all seen Michael Jackson’s “Black And White” which made “Let’s Get Rocked” look like caveman scribblings.

The follow up single was the equally risible and bad taste “Make Love Like A Man”. Oh come on now! None of this seemed to bother their fans though who sent “Let’s Get Rocked” to No 2 in the UK and the album “Adrenalize” to the top of the charts both sides of the pond. Well if people can accept and believe Boris Johnson’s lies then buying this shit is hardly a great leap.

This week’s ‘Exclusive’ performance comes from the current US No 1 act Vanessa Williams. Just like Shanice a few weeks before her, Vanessa seemed to appear from nowhere with the song that she will always be known for even though technically she isn’t a one hit wonder. “Save The Best For Last” was No 1 in the US at the time of this TOTP performance even though it had only just sneaked into our Top 40 which I guess was the justification for its ‘exclusive’ billing. A tale of two people having made eyes at each other over the years without acting on it and then finally getting it together, it was a decent ballad but oh so boring. The twee lyrics didn’t help. Whenever I hear it now I’m still convinced that she’s going to sing “sometimes the cow jumps over the moon”.

Vanessa is also an actress and has appeared in loads and loads of film and TV projects like Eraser, Perry Mason, The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, Ally McBeal and possibly most famously as The Queen Of Trash in The Adventures Of Elmo In Grouchland. Alright alright. That last one should be as Wilhelmina Slater in comedy drama Ugly Betty. Oh and that comment about Vanessa technically not being a one hit wonder? She also had a UK No 21 hit in 1995 with the song “Colors Of The Wind” from the soundtrack to the Disney animation Pocahontas. “Save The Best For Last” would miss the top spot over here when it peaked at No 3.

A happy face, a thumpin’ bass for a loving’ race! Soul II Soul are this week’s “mega exclusive” as co-host Mark Franklin describes it and they are back with new material which to my ears was a lighter, more uplifting sound than their previous work. “Joy” was the lead single from their third album “Volume III Just Right” and their trademark thumpin’ bass was replaced by a ‘new vibration rocking the nation’. Other changes included new vocalist Richie Stephens and the addition of a gospel backing choir and a prominent brass section. Jazzie B was still there of course but there was no sign of Caron Wheeler who had embarked on a solo career as the new decade began although she did contribute vocals on one track on “Volume III Just Right”.

It seemed like a solid return for the band when “Joy” peaked at No 4 but subsequent singles from the album failed to even pierce the Top 30. Whilst the album sold steadily, its gold status compared very unfavourably to the triple platinum high of debut “Club Classics Vol. One” from just three years before. The Our Price I was working in had a promo cassette single of “Joy” which I snaffled away for my wife who liked the song. No idea where it is now though.

Now then, to the Breakers of which there are four this week and also of which none of them will feature on the show again. I’m seriously starting to doubt the wisdom of this feature. First up are, like Soul II Soul, another band who are returning with new material after a significant break. The Cure’s last studio album had been 1989’s “Disintegration” with the gap between that and its follow up being plugged by the remix album “Mixed Up”. Come 1992 and they returned with their very first and so far only chart topper “Wish”. Prefacing the album was the single “High”.

It sounded like very traditional Cure fare to me. Good but hardly anything we hadn’t heard before. We played the album in store and my memory of it was that it was pretty gloomy. And then came track 7. “Friday I’m In Love” was joyous and would become one of the best loved and most played songs of their whole back catalogue. However, that’s all for another post. The video for “High” was probably better than the song for me with its cloud imagery giving me very strong Monkey vibes. Not sure what I’m talking about? Watch this…

As he did the other week, Mark Franklin fails to name check all of the artists in this week’s Breakers section. He only refers to three of the four that appear. This suggests to me there wasn’t an autocue so was it scripted like this? If not, was Mark just incapable of holding four names in his head at once? Anyway, the act he doesn’t mention is this one. “Do Not Pass Me By” would be the very last of eight UK Top 40 singles that Hammer would have. I never knew this but it’s actually a reworking of a 19th century hymn called “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior”. Interesting. I maybe shouldn’t be surprised given the career that Hammer (real name Stanley Burrell) went on to have as an ordained preacher. In all, if we’re just looking at the UK, Hammer’s reign as the forefather of ‘pop rap’ lasted just 18 months or so. The largest part of his legacy remains his pants. “Do Not Pass Me By” peaked at No 14.

How do you follow up an unexpected No 1 hit? Well, if you’re Wet Wet Wet, you release a better song than your chart topper which they duly did in “More Than Love”. Previous single “Goodnight Girl” had gloriously returned the band back into mainstream success and so they weren’t about to waste their shot at being pop stars all over again. Instead of re-releasing one of the two singles preceding “Goodnight Girl” from the album “High On The Happy Side” that hadn’t been massive hits, they went with another album track that was a solid, mid tempo, singalong pop song. If Gary Barlow had written this, it would have been regarded as an instant pop classic. As it is, it’s one of the Wets least remembered hits not helped by its unspectacular No 19 chart peak.

The rather basic video seems to have been storyboarded purely to allow Marti Pellow to show off his luxurious locks. In fact the whole band have gone in for the very long hair look except drummer Tommy who seems to be almost bullied by his hirsute band mates given his thin head of hair. Tommy always strikes me as being very much in the same mould as Blur’s Dave Rowntree. The member of the band that garners the least attention but is the most dependable. Drummers. They aren’t all Keith Moons or John Bonhams.

Manic Street Preachers? Again? Weren’t they on just the other week performing “You Love Us”? Yes they were but with momentum building and their reputation preceding them, here’s another single called “Slash ‘N’ Burn”. Released exactly two months after its predecessor, this was another track from their “Generation Terrorists” album, the fourth of six in total. Its strident guitar riffs were inspired by Guns ‘N Roses apparently who also seemed to inspire the song’s title given the inclusion of that ‘n’ instead of ‘and’. It got me thinking how many other times ‘n’ has been used in music history. Obviously there’s Salt ‘n’ Pepa but any others? Erm…Jack ‘n’ Chill?

It’s a sixth week at the top for Shakespear’s Sister. As it’s parent album “Hormonally Yours” is coming up to its 30 years anniversary and is getting a deluxe 2 CD re-release, there was a Guardian article about “Stay” over the weekend. In it, Siobhan Fahey says that the look she was going for in the video was “an unhinged Victorian heroine meets Suzi Quattro meets Labelle!”. Well, obviously. She also admits that she’d been on the vodka in the shoot and was half cut by the time her scenes were being shot. That might explain her maniacal grin as she descended the stairway.

I recall that when their album was released it was heavily discounted in Our Price so that the CD was just £9.99 which was pretty cheap for a chart CD back in the day. Why do I remember this stuff when I can’t remember where I’ve just put my glasses? F**k knows.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Erasure	Breath Of Life	I did not
2	Right Said Fred	Deeply Dippy	Didn’t mind it, certainly didn’t buy it
3	Annie Lennox	Why	No but buy wife had the album
4	Def Leppard	Let’s Get Rocked	C’mon get real!
5	Vanessa Williams	Save The Best For Last	There was more chance of the cow jumping over the moon
6	Soul II Soul	Joy	No but I had that promo cassette single
7	The Cure	High	Nope
8	Hammer	Do Not Pass Me By	Nah
9	Wet Wet Wet	More Than Love	See 3 above
10	Manic Street Preachers	Slash ‘N’ Burn	‘N’-egative
11	Shakespear’s Sister	Stay	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/m0013vgg/top-of-the-pops-26031992

TOTP 30 JAN 1992

Posted on January 19, 2022 by 80stastic

As with last week’s show, all the songs on tonight are ones we haven’t seen in these TOTP repeats previously bar the No 1. All the congestion in the bowels of the Xmas charts has been evacuated and there are new entries galore in the Top 40. Talking of new entries, the world of football was days away from a player making an explosive entrance into the English league who’s legacy is still remembered to this day and not always for how well he could play the beautiful game. I talk, of course, of Eric Cantona.

The day after this TOTP aired, King Eric rejected the offer of a contract at Sheffield Wednesday and 24 hours later signed for Leeds United instead. His galvanising arrival and goals helped power them to the final 1st Division title before the Premier League began and the first for Leeds since 1974. A move to Manchester United followed where he would become a legitimate legend. Then came the 25th January 1995 and the ‘kung fu’ incident where he launched a kick at Crystal Palace ‘fan’ Matthew Simmons leading to a lengthy ban and that “when the seagulls follow the trawler” press conference. His rehabilitation into an Old Trafford idol was astonishing. All of that though was still to come. For now, I, like most football fans, had no idea who he was.

Unfortunately, I did know who the first group on the show tonight were. The Pasadenas burst onto the UK music scene back in 1988 with their Top 5 hit “Tribute (Right On)” and Top 3 album “To Whom It May Concern”. Briefly they were going to be the next big thing in UK R&B though they did absolutely nothing for me. In their TOTP performances, they seemed more interested in doing back flips than singing – they were the JLS of their day in that respect – and so I wasn’t arsed in the slightest when they seemed to have disappeared completely by the end of the 80s.

A change of musical direction however saw them return to the charts for a short stay with 1990’s “Love Thing” but when the follow up single stiffed and their second album’s release was delayed for a year, I really thought it was the end for The Pasadenas.

However, if we have learned one thing from these TOTP repeats it’s that when an act is in need of a career rejuvenating hit, just record a cover version. So what did this lot do? No, they didn’t record a cover version, they made a whole album of covers! “Yours Sincerely” included their takes on songs by such legendary names as Bob Marley, The Beatles, Marvin Gaye and…erm…Steve Arrington. Oh and “I’m Doing Fine Now” by 70s US R&B group New York City. I mean it was a canny choice in terms of getting them played on the radio and by logical extension back in the charts but if they’d played it any safer they might as well have called themselves Steve Davis and be done with it.

To be fair to them, they’ve cut down on the dance moves for this performance and concentrated on their harmonies – presumably the TOTP live vocal policy had forced a rethink on back flips!

“I’m Doing Fine” lived up to its name by becoming the group’s biggest hit reaching No 4. Three more Top 40 hits followed but by the mid 90s, their story had reached the final chapter. The epilogue came in 2005 when they appeared on ITV show Hit Me Baby One More Time. They lost to T’Pau’s Carol Decker. Pop careers eh? Like china in your hand.

By the way, the presenters tonight are Tony Dortie and Claudia Simon who are literally serving up the most banal, hackneyed and embarrassing gibberish in their segues. For example:

TD: We are cool rockin’ down here with just an unbelievable collection of happening tunes

CS: We are gonna be movin’ and groovin’ live down here bringing some hot sounds to your ears

Was this stuff scripted or was this how they really spoke in normal life?! Claudia compounds the crime by shouting every line as loud as she can.

Now when I mentioned Eric Cantona earlier it wasn’t with one eye on an act that was on the show that would make a nice little link with him however fortuitous it may seem. Still, Cantona’s taking out of Matthew Simmons could have easily been described as him being someone who Kicks Like A Mule and no mistake.

So who were these guys? Apparently they were Richard Russell and Nick Halkes who both worked at the XL Recordings label who were responsible for recent successes by The Prodigy and SL2. The label would become a huge player in the dance scene but would also diversify to sign artists like Badly Drawn Boy, Super Furry Animals and Electric Six. Having said all of that, their single “The Bouncer” wasn’t on XL Recordings but came out on Rebel MC’s independent Tribal Bass label. Talk about contrary!

This sounded like so much peripheral nonsense to me – almost a novelty record of the ragga genre with all that ‘Your name’s not down, you’re not coming in’ bullshit. There was meant to be an album of this stuff but thankfully it never materialised. They have continued as an occasional project though, their most recent incarnation as K.L.A.M. supported The Prodigy on a 2010 tour. In their day jobs, Russell is still the owner of XL Recordings whilst Halkes left to form the Positiva label that brought us Reel 2 Reel, Bucketheads and The Vengaboys. Yeah, cheers for that mate. Halkes also goes in for a spot of lecturing on the music industry at University of Westminster. I don’t think any of my lecturers at Sunderland Poly were ever that cool.

“The Bouncer” peaked at No 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5JE7InPMSw

Some proper music now courtesy of James who are back in the charts with their new single “Born Of Frustration”. Having finally become bona fide chart stars when a re-recording of “Sit Down” went to No 2 the year before, the band followed up on that success with a Top 10 hit in “Sound” (which we didn’t get to see due to the Adrian Rose issue) in the November. “Born Of Frustration” followed soon after with both tracks being forerunners of new album “Seven” which was released two weeks after this TOTP appearance.

Now if you google ‘James Born Of Frustration’, one of the things you’ll find out about the song which I never knew until now was the criticism it attracted in the music press for sounding like Simple Minds, specifically “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”. I’d never made that connection in my life before but now I know of it, I can’t unhear it. It’s the ‘la, la, la, la, la’ refrain. God, it is the same isn’t it?! Tim Booth swears down that he’d never heard “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” before writing the song (really?!) so any influence must have been unconscious. This didn’t satisfy the press though with the inkies accusing the band of selling out after becoming commercially successful after years of being indie darlings. For me, it wasn’t that it sounded like Jim Kerr at all but that it sounded like…well…James in that it sounded a bit too like “Sound”. When “Ring The Bells” came out in the March, that sounded like its predecessors as well. I did like what I was hearing but was it all becoming a bit too samey?

Regardless of all of those accusations, their performance here is still pretty convincing. I’ve always thought of Tim Booth as a UK Michael Stipe somehow and seeing him in his youth here is quite startling with his fresh facedness and hair. He looks like a Bond villain these days. It’s a similar story with Stipe if you see images of him in REM’s early days with all his hirsuteness. I also like the guy who’s come in his nightshirt (or is it a dress) on trumpet.

“Born Of Frustration” peaked at No 13.

The first video of the night is from The Wonder Stuff with “Welcome To The Cheap Seats” Now as I recall, this was an EP wasn’t it?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yes it was. In fact it was two EPs, one of which featured this rather straight version of The Jam’s “That’s Entertainment”:

As for the title track of both EPs, it was another song lifted from their “Never Loved Elvis” album and of course featured the wonderful Kirsty MacColl on backing vocals. I’m guessing that its release stemmed from a rather cynical decision by record label Polydor to cash in on the success of their recent No 1 collaboration with Vic Reeves on “Dizzy”. The album had been out for eight months by this point and the last single from it called “Sleep Alone” had been released in the August of ‘91 and hadn’t even made the Top 40. Surely they weren’t thinking of plucking another track from it for release as a single until “Dizzy” happened? And weren’t Polydor The Jam’s record label which would explain the “That’s Entertainment” cover. The whole cynical operation is being exposed. It did the trick though as “Welcome To The Cheap Seats” went Top 10 peaking at No 8.

I was listening to Magic radio today (don’t judge, I’m 53!) and the DJ was playing “Come On Eileen” (for the eighth time this week probably) and she started going on about what a floor filler it was at wedding discos. She then tried to name other such tunes and came out with (and I swear to God this is true) “Size Of A Cow” by Dizzy! Excellent product knowledge! Not sure I’ll listen again.

Did someone mention Steve Arrington before? Well, yes that was me obviously and it was on purpose as I needed the “Feel So Real” hitmaker for a nice link into the next act who are Dream Frequency with their single…yes of course…”Feel So Real”. Despite their vocalist Debbie Sharp being an American, the rest of the combo were actually from Preston, Lancashire. Founding member Ian Bland (chortle) had this to say about writing the track:

Ian Bland: "I remember listening to Sylvester’s disco hit 'You Make Me Feel So Real (Mighty Real)' on the radio, and bingo I’d got the chorus for the song.' #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 14, 2022

So influenced by the Sylvester song was Ian that he would eventually record a cover version of it as a subsequent single in ‘94 but it failed to chart. As for “Feel So Real”, it would be Dream Frequency’s biggest hit when it peaked at No 23 but for me it was just another house track on the endless conveyor belt of house tracks with nothing to distinguish it from any of its peers.

The Breakers are back this week starting with an artist who only has two Top 40 hits to her name but that statistic doesn’t tell anywhere near her whole story. Back in 1988, Julia Fordham was going to be the next big UK female singer-songwriter off the back of a gold selling debut album and hit single “Happy Ever After”. She’d even been on Wogan, a sure fire sign of having made it back in the 80s. Sophomore album “Porcelain” came just a year later and consolidated her profile with sales of 60,000 units despite the lack of any hit singles.

1991 would deliver her second and final hit single “(Love Moves In) Mysterious Ways”. Nothing to do with the recent, similarly titled U2 single, it was actually from the soundtrack to a film which I can’t remember at all called The Butcher’s Wife starring Demi Moore. The film was a flop but Fordham’s song sustained. In a twist of irony for an artist who has 18 albums to her name, her biggest ever hit (it peaked at No 19) wasn’t actually written by Julia. Its success led to her third album, 1991’s “Swept”, being re-released in 1992 with the track cobbled onto it. Even with that re-promotion, the album struggled to a high of No 33.

Julia continued to release albums throughout the 90s to diminishing returns but has continued to record material to this day and is a popular live draw having toured with Judie Tzuke and Beverley Craven under the Woman To Woman banner.

I just about remember this next lot, their band name anyway, though what they sounded like I’m not sure. The Blessing released an album called “Prince Of The Deep Water” as their debut long player and such must have been the buzz around them that it was promoted as a Recommended Release in the Our Price chain where I was earning a living at the time. It featured guest musicians such as Toto’s Jeff Porcaro, Ricki Lee Jones and Bruce Hornsby. OK, I’m getting a feel for how it might have sounded now. Let me have a listen to the single “Highway 5 ‘92” and I’ll come back to you. Talk amongst yourselves….

OK. A few points to note:

As the No 92 in the single’s title implies, this was a re-release. It originally came out in ‘91 and peaked at No 42. I’m not convinced that addition was really necessary.
It did finally ring a few bells with me. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you who it was though if I’d stumbled across it in the radio without resorting to Shazam.
The initial vocal sounds like Chris Rea. The verses sound like “Ain’t No Doubt” by Jimmy Nail.
I thought it was unspectacular but OK. Presumably that was the judgement most people came to as it only got as far as No 30 despite being remixed and repromoted.

The album sold 125,000 according to Wikipedia. We’re they a bigger deal in the US? Their sound was very American though the band actually hailed from London. The cost of that album and restructuring at record label MCA, The Blessing we’re considered commercially unviable and disbanded soon after.

Right. Who’s this bloke then? Well it’s Cicero and against all odds, it turns out that was actually his real name and not some pretentious affectation involving the Roman philosopher. David John Cicero was born in Long Island, New York but relocated to Livingston, Scotland in his youth. A big Pet Shop Boys fan, he got to live out his dreams when, after seeing them live and giving a demo tape to their personal assistant, found himself being offered management and a recording contract by Chris and Neil themselves!

His debut single on their Spaghetti label failed to find an audience despite his idols patronage but second single “Love Is Everywhere” did the trick taking Cicero into the Top 20. This one must have passed me by completely at the time as I’m sure I would have remembered that distinctive Scottish brogue in the spoken verses followed by the uplifting chorus. If The Proclaimers were ever to record a song inspired by “I Beg Your Pardon” by Kon Kan (unlikely I know), it might sound like “Love Is Everywhere”. It also conjures up images of Ewan McGregor and Trainspotting. Maybe it should have been on the soundtrack.

Sadly for Cicero, it never got any better for him than early ‘92. Subsequent singles failed to crack the Top 40 and even a Pet Shop Boys produced album and a support slot on a Take That tour couldn’t save him from the ignominy of appearing in the identity parade on Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

Now, is this the debut studio appearance on TOTP by Manic Street Preachers? I think it is. It’s quite a thing even 30 years on. James Dean Bradfield stripped to the waste with “You Love Us” emblazoned across his naked chest, Nicky Wire with an intimidating black stripe painted across his eyes and Richey Edwards with his Andy Warhol / Marilyn Monroe print T-shirt making a statement that they weren’t just some dumb rock band but that they had a whole creative agenda to push (probably). I’m guessing the incongruous use of a bubble machine was not the band’s idea though maybe the controlled explosions later were.

As with The Blessing before them, the single had actually already been out once before in May ‘91 on the Heavenly label but had been re-recorded for Columbia and released as the third single from debut album “Generation Terrorists” after “Stay Beautiful” and “Love’s Sweet Exile/Repeat”. It would end up achieving the highest chart placing of all six singles released from the album (a peak of No 16) and became an anthem uniting the band and their fan base.

And me? What did I make of it all? Well, I’m afraid my reliable instinct for dodging the zeitgeist when it came steaming down the road that had already seen me fail to fall in life with The Smiths and The Stone Roses was at it again. I knew there was a band out there called Manic Street Preachers and that the music press was getting very excited about them but I seemed to ignore them. It wasn’t until “Motorcycle Emptiness” was released six months later that I finally cottoned on. I even bought their next album “Gold Against The Soul” (generally considered to be their weakest amongst the fans) and have seen them live twice (albeit that one was supporting Oasis at Maine Road) though I don’t think I have bought an album of theirs for myself since “Everything Must Go”. I did listen to their latest “The Ultra Livid Lament” on Spotify the other week and liked it if that’s any form of redemption. I even watched a documentary about them the other day. And enjoyed it.

DNA? They were the people who did they remix of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” weren’t they? Yes they were and here they are again, this time teaming up with soul star Sharon Redd for a remix of her minor 1980 hit “Can You Handle It”.

I’m not sure I understand the criteria for the differentiation between those tracks they just remixed and were credited for by the application of the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin suffix ‘DNA remix’ (e.g. Kylie’s “Shocked”) and those that they released with themselves as the artist like this one. Oh well.

Sharon has come dressed as a cross between a zebra and Jay Kay from Jamiroquai (or is it the Mad Hatter). Nice. As for the tune, if asked before this TOTP repeat aired, I would have said this was by somebody like Incognito or The Brand New Heavies. Clearly I would have been wrong.

“Can You Handle It” – the DNA version – peaked at No 17.

Wet Wet Wet are No 1 again with “Goodnight Girl”. On the surface this seems to be a fairly straightforward love song but there is plenty of intrigue online as to what the lyrics mean. Some think it’s a tale of forbidden love, some about a man who can’t express his true feelings whilst at least two people thought it was about prostitution! I’m not sure but I do know that although my wife really liked this song and I bought the album for her off the back of it, she had (and still has) an issue with the line “It doesn’t matter how sad I made you” because…well, in a relationship, it does. Wise words from my better half.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Pasdenas	I’m Doing Fine Now	Nope
2	Kicks Like A Mule	The Bouncer	I’d rather have been kung fu kicked by Eric Cantona
3	James	Born Of Frustration	No but I have it on a Best Of CD of theirs
4	The Wonder Stuff	Welcome To The Cheap Seats	I did not
5	Dream Frequency	Feel So Real	Of course not
6	Julia Fordham	(Love Moves In) Mysterious Ways	No but I think my wife may have a Best Of CD with it on
7	The Blessing	Highway 5 ’92	Nah
8	Cicero	Love Is Everywhere	But not here for this song – no
9	Manic Street Preachers	You Love Us	No
10	DNA featuring Sharon Redd	Can You Handle it	I couldn’t – no
11	Wet Wet Wet	Goodnight Girl	No but my wife had the album

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/m0013cfk/top-of-the-pops-30011992

TOTP 07 NOV 1991

Posted on November 15, 2021 by 80stastic

After last week’s Halloween themed show, the TOTP producers have passed on celebrating Bonfire night as well (it was two days before this programme aired to be fair) but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any fireworks on offer. Not literally of course (Health & Safety and all that) but metaphorically beginning with a performance kicking off the show that must be up there as one of the weirdest in TOTP history. The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu (aka The KLF aka The Timelords aka Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty) are ripping up the rule book here (year zero revamp or not). The performance is certainly inextricably linked to the nature of the track “It’s Grim Up North” it’s true. A Scotsman reading out a list of towns and cities in the North of England against a backdrop of a pulsating industrial techno beat was hardly your standard Top 40 material so you could argue that inevitably any promotional appearance to support it would end up being unconventional at the very least. I think Drummond and Cauty delivered in spades though with a pragmatic reading of the lyrics juxtaposed with that most bizarre yet intrinsically English of art forms Morris dancing. What f****d up psyche devised this?

After giving the new format down the banks almost relentlessly these past few weeks, credit where it’s due – this was challenging in both a sensory and aesthetic manner. I can’t imagine the old guard of the likes of Steve Wright introducing this. Actually, who is that doing the disembodied voice over? It turns out that it’s one Elayne Smith. Who? Well, like Mark Franklin before her with his BBC local radio background, Elayne was plucked from the relative obscurity of pirate radio where she presented the breakfast show on the station London Weekend Radio. The internet suggests that she only made one more TOTP appearance after this debut. She doesn’t seem to get a fair crack of the whip from the start. It takes three performances and 10 mins 30 seconds before we actually see Elayne on screen and she gets a name check.

Back to The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu though and that performance. The Morris dancing – what point were they trying to make here? In my own, ill informed mind, I think of Morris dancing as a very Southern thing so my initial analysis was that it was a juxtaposition of North vs South imagery but that’s actually incorrect. The North West of England has a long history of Morris Dancing so it can’t be that. Was it a nod to the May Day celebration in legendary folk horror film The Wicker Man? That was set on a remote Hebridean island called Summerisle and Drummond and Cauty did infamously burn £1 million on the Scottish island of Jura in 1994 (or did they?) Anyway, as a jarring spectacle it’s up there with the likes of Pete Wylie and those nuns in 1986 for his performance of “Sinful”. Talking of whom, “It’s Grim Up North” was originally released as a limited edition “Club Mix” in December 1990 with Wylie on vocals and it was planned to be a prominent track on the JAM’s album “The Black Room” (a parallel follow up to The KLF’s “The White Room”) but the album was never completed.

Nevertheless, this 1991 version was put out into the market place due to The KLF’s huge success (as Elayne said in her intro, nobody had sold more singles than them in 1991). As for the towns and cities that are referenced in its lyrics, it’s very North West based (there’s no mention of Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough etc) and Cumbria is only represented by Barrow-in-Furness. The city where I live Hull creeps in but the rest of North Yorkshire is poorly represented. In fact, the cities and towns read out by Drummond reads like a list of Our Price stores in the North West area (I worked in a couple of them) mentioning as it does places like Accrington, Bolton, Burnley, Nelson and Rochdale. If Drummond wanted to have really courted controversy he should have included my mate Robin’s Cumbrian hometown…Cockermouth. When we were at Poly together, Robin was asked by a lecturer during a linguistic seminar to tell him where he was from for an example of a word he could break down into its component parts. Cockermouth came Robin’s reply prompting the lecturer to write this on his board…

Cock – er – mouth

Hilarity ensued.

Anyway, “It’s Grim Up North” finishes with a fully orchestrated arrangement of William Blake’s Jerusalem which was set to music by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916. I’m guessing this was to make use of the famous ‘dark Satanic Mills’ line and it connection to the Industrial Revolution? Somehow it works when it really shouldn’t. “It’s Grim Up North” peaked at No 10 and The KLF would tie up 1991 with the release of their collaboration with Tammy Wynette on “Justified & Ancient” which prompted many a customer to come into the Our Price I was working in to ask for that song about ‘an ice cream van’.

Now, new producer Stanley Appel’s live vocal policy has been the undoing of many a turn on the revamped show so far but here we have an example of how it can actually give the TV audience a better viewing experience – the ad lib. Second act on tonight are Crowded House for whom a live vocal was as natural as breathing and Neil Finn does a great job here but he was also able to indulge in a slight bit of off script free styling when he announces into the microphone ahead of beginning to sing latest single “Fall At Your Feet”, “It’s grim down South”. Not the funniest ad lib ever but at least it gave expression to some of the character behind the performer.

At this point, Crowded House were a one hit wonder in the UK having announced themselves in 1987 with “Don’t Dream It’s Over” (coincidentally also in the charts at this time courtesy of Paul Young’s cover version) before failing to chart with any of their subsequent (and rather excellent) single releases. Even this track from third album “Woodface” had been preceded by a flop in lead single “Chocolate Cake” (chart peak No 69) but finally the UK saw sense and bought “Fall At Your Feet” in enough quantities to send it to No 17. “Woodface” would prove to be their commercial breakthrough peaking at No 6 in the UK album chart and providing a further three Top 40 hits including Top Tenner “Weather With You”. That song would prove to be their biggest ever hit over here and helped the album to a slew of sales in 1992. I always saw that period of the band as portraying them as that year’s REM who had broken through in a big way commercially themselves in ’91 with their “Out Of Time” album.

Just to clarify co-presenter Mark Franklin’s announcement that they were an Australian band – I had to check as I wasn’t sure that was strictly true. Weren’t they from New Zealand? Both myself and Franklin were right (and wrong). The band formed in Melbourne, Australia in 1985 but Neil Finn is actually a Kiwi and was of course in New Zealand art rockers Split Enz before Crowded House. Plus at this point, Neil’s brother Tim was also in the band making it an equal Antipodean split (drummer Paul Hester and bass player Nick Seymour were Aussies).

I saw Crowded House play live at The Manchester Academy around this time and it still ranks as one of my favourite gigs ever. They’d done a PA at the HMV megastore earlier in the day when I’d got my copy of “Woodface” signed by the band and then caught them live in the evening where Nick Seymour did his infamous chocolate cake party piece. I saw them later on at the much bigger Manchester Apollo but it wasn’t as good a gig as that more intimate one in the Academy.

Like Brothers In Rhythm who were on the show a few weeks earlier, I’d kind of forgotten that the next act were actual chart stars in their own right rather than the ace face of remixers that they came to be known for in the 90s. K-Klass would go onto work with acts as major as Bobby Brown, Janet Jackson & Luther Vandross, New Order, Rihanna, Whitney Houston…the list goes on. Moreover, their remix of “Baby Come On Over” by Samantha Mumba was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2002 in the Best Remix category. And yet they started off in 1991 as another of those dance acts on the seemingly endless conveyor belt of artists who stuck rigidly to the template of anonymous blokes stood in the background fiddling around on decks of keyboards whilst a female singer belted out some sub-soul vocals front of stage. It wasn’t my bag at all but I didn’t actually mind “Rhythm Is A Mystery”. I think it was that rolling Italian House piano riff that made it tolerable.

So who were K-Klass? Well, the singer was the exotically named Bobbi Depasois and the other four blokes were …well…were literally just some blokes with regular jobs that happened to have a hit record. Russell Morgan (I went to school with a kid called Russell Morgan but it’s not him!) was a postman, Paul Roberts worked for BT, Andy Williams was a lab technician and Carl Thomas delivered fish in a fish van. Basically K-Klass were the musical equivalent of a non-league football team that have somehow got to the 3rd round of the FA Cup and drawn Man Utd generating newspaper articles about how the players are all part -time and the their ‘real’ jobs are being a plumber, electrician etc. “Rhythm Is A Mystery” peaked at No 3 after only making it to No 61 on its initial release just six months earlier.

In the ‘exclusive’ slot this week is Belinda Carlisle who, having been in the studio for the very first show in the ‘year zero’ revamp era just a month prior with her “Live Your Life Be Free” single, is back with follow up “Do You Feel Like I Feel”. This was almost an exact duplicate of its predecessor only not as good. The Our Price where I was working at the time were sent a sampler cassette for the album to plug ahead of the official release and I think (cringe!) that I may have signed that promo out for myself. It had four tracks on it including this one plus a track called “I Plead Insanity” which should have been a single but never was. “Do You Feel Like I Feel” would prove to be Belinda’s last ever US Billboard Hot 100 hit though she would keep going strong in the UK for a fair few years after that.

Oh and that first ‘year zero’ performance for “Live Your Life Be Free” which had Mark Franklin pointlessly ‘interviewing’ Belinda afterwards for about 30 seconds? Here’s Mark himself on that:

Can I please add to this. During my first show, Live Your Life Be Free. I was quite ill with food positioning. Belinda thought she had food poisoning too. By the time we met again for this episode, turns out I was ill but she was actually pregnant with @JamesDukeMason
— Mark Franklin (@MarkFranklin123) November 5, 2021

No wonder he kept the chat so short – he had to nip off camera to find the crapper pronto!

It’s that INXS video for “Shining Star” next. This was a Breaker last week and I didn’t have much to say about it then so quite what I’m expected to say about it this time I’m not sure. Well, what actually happens in the video? It’s a basic band performance set in a private club venue alongside a sub plot of some grotesque male characters being disposed of or humiliated by their female consorts. So we get a guy leaving down a chute after a lever is pulled, another fella being sent skywards on a see-saw plank and a geezer being sprayed with a bottle of bubbly as if it were a fire extinguisher. It’s all pretty daft and uninspired fare. It was directed by music video go to guy David Mallet who is responsible for some of the most iconic music promos of the 80s including David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” and “China Girl”, “I Don’t Like Mondays” by The Boomtown Rats and “Radio Ga Ga” and “I Want To Break Free” by Queen. Not sure what happened here though as he really phoned it in. “Shining Star” peaked at No 27.

Not fair! They’ve only gone and done it to me again! Two on the trot! I could hardly muster 50 words about this lot when they were a Breaker last week and now here they are in the studio. What can I say about Control and “Dance With Me (I’m Your Ecstasy)”? I’ve pretty much got nishters. OK, I guess I have to try so yet again we have a dance act conforming to the tried and tested model of having some faceless blokes on assorted keyboards etc at the back of the stage fronted by a female singer (just like K-Klass earlier in the show) but… that poor woman doing the vocals! She looks and sounds like she just happened to be wandering past the TOTP studio on her way home on a cold November evening and was asked by the producers to literally come in off the street and perform this track. The singing is definitely ropey and why has she got a Winter coat on?! Supposedly, the original 12″ release of this had the lyrics “dance with me I’m on ecstasy” which was changed to “dance with me I’m your ecstasy” for the full release. Ah, the gnarly old head of potential media outrage is raised once more

“Dance With Me (I’m Your Ecstasy)” peaked at No 17 and was Control’s one and only Top 40 hit. That enough for you? Yeah, I think that’ll more than do.

Right, there’s a grand total of four Breakers tonight but none them would ever be played in full on the show. We start with Metallica and ‘The Unforgiven”. The follow up to their seminal single “Enter Sandman”, yet again this isn’t one that sparks any synapses of recognition in my brain but, having listened to it properly, it’s actually quite interesting. Having decided that they wanted to mess around with traditional song structures to see what happened, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich hit upon the idea of reversing the template of a standard verse leading into a huge, bellowing chorus and instead had strident verses and a softer sounding chorus. It doesn’t sound like it should work but it kind of does. So pleased with themselves were they that the band would record not one but two sequels in the form of “The Unforgiven II” from the album “Reload” and “The Unforgiven III” from the album “Death Magnetic” – heavy metal recycling; it might catch on. “The Unforgiven” peaked at No 15.

There’s more than one Chris Rea Christmas song?! There’s three actually but this one, “Winter Song”, doesn’t specifically make mention of the ‘c’ word in its title nor its lyrics. Even so, it was no doubt released at this time of year in the hope of being a hit at Christmas. Chris (or possibly his record label) had quite the cynical streak – his last single, released in June, had been called “Looking For The Summer”. Hmm.

“Winter Song” doesn’t sound a million miles way from the ubiquitous festive favourite “Driving Home For Christmas” especially the original 1986 version which is a bit more sombre than the sprightly re-recording that gets plated every Yuleltide. The lyrics seem to be about keeping his lover warm from the cold of Winter (he should have borrowed that woman from Control’s overcoat!) but then missed a Christmas trick with the video which seems to be based around rivalries between the various factions of Rea’s tour crew. So not Christmassy at all.

“Winter Song” made a respectable No 27 in a crammed Christmas singles market. Oh, that third Chris Rea festive song? He released something called “Joys of Christmas” in 1987 (“Driving Home For Christmas” was on the B-side). No, I’ve never heard of it before either.

Ooh – bit of a moment here. Is this the very first time that Manic Street Preachers appeared on TOTP? Although double A -side “Love’s Sweet Exile/Repeat” was already the band’s third single release of 1991, I must admit that I wasn’t really aware of these Welsh rockers until the following year when I couldn’t ignore “You Love Us” and “Motorcycle Emptiness”. I’ll rephrase that. I was aware of the name Manic Street Preachers at this time not least because of the Steve Lamacq / Richey Edwards incident in May when Edwards carved the words ‘4 REAL’ into his forearm with a razor blade when asked by the NME journalist how serious he was about the band, their music and ideals. However, I’m not really sure that I knew what they actually sounded like. Somehow I must have missed “Stay Beautiful” and this single despite the fact that they both made the Top 40 (their earlier non Columbia singles that were either self released or on indie label Heavenly hadn’t charted).

The band’s iconic debut album “Generation Terrorists” was released in early ’92 and would spawn six singles and achieve gold status for 100,000 sales. Its length (73 minutes and 18 tracks long) led to accusations of a lack of quality control and the band maybe regretted in retrospect their decision to make outlandish claims that it would sell 16 million copies and that they would split up after its release. However, its reputation remains intact nearly 30 years later and is celebrated and cherished by fans.

Oh and that video with Nicky Wire, Richey Edwards and James Dean Bradfield all supposedly naked and quite happy to be in close proximity to each other was probably deemed a bit too controversial for a before the watershed screening by the BBC hence it only belong on screen for less than 30 seconds. “Love’s Sweet Exile/Repeat” peaked at No 26.

We finish with yet another single that I managed to let pass me by despite my working five days a week in a record shop at the time. “Me. In Time” was a non album single for The Charlatans released between their debut LP “Some Friendly” (’90) and follow up “Between 10th And 11th” (’92) and was the third not to feature on an album in a row after “Over Rising” and a re-release of early single “Indian Rope”. Presumably this was a deliberate strategy on behalf of record label Situation Two to ensure their boys didn’t disappear from view and people’s minds as the Madchester phenomenon waned as 1991 came to an end.

Now I’ve listened to it properly 30 years after the event, I conclude that it’s not bad at all if a little lightweight. It seems to be a genuinely forgotten single of theirs as well with it not being on any of the band’s Best Of albums (as far as I can tell) and the only version on Spotify is from a live gig and not the studio single release. Also, what was with the errant punctuation in the song’s title? Weird(o).

And talking of weird….what the Hell was happening here?! Neil Sedaka on TOTP?! In 1991?! Look, I know he is a legendary singer, pianist, composer and record producer (I’m pretty sure my parents had one of his albums when I was growing up) but really?! He’s been squeezed in to the show courtesy of the album chart feature as he had a Greatest Hits album to promote called “Timeless – The Very Best Of Neil Sedaka”. Not sure why the world needed one as there must have been pushing about 20 Best Of / Greatest Hits / Collection Neil Sedaka albums by this point (and there have been many more since – check out his discography) but I do remember this one coming out. It was on the PolyGram TV label and therefore received its own TV ad campaign to promote it. Presumably the marketing team at Polygram TV had negotiated a spot for Neil on TOTP because how else do you explain Sedaka’s appearance here? It’s as confounding as a sudoko puzzle. Some of the acts on tonight only emphasise how incongruous he seemed – sadly Manic Street Preachers and Metallica were only on video but I would like to imagine that Sedaka met up with Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in the BBC bar afterwards and spent a while shooting the breeze over a few beers. Maybe not.

However, I do know of one person who caught up with Sedaka in a bar once. It was at the Midland Hotel (I think) in Manchester city centre. Neil was staying there as he was playing a show (Sedaka ‘plays shows’ rather than ‘does gigs’ don’t you think?) and my Our Price manager Pete (the original bass player with the Stone Roses) happened to be in there having a few drinks on a night out. On spying the great man himself, Pete (emboldened by a few ales) lumbered over to Sedka and expressed his gratitude to him for writing “Solitaire” as if he hadn’t, Karen Carpenter would never have sang it and Pete would never have heard it. Apparently, Sedaka’s reaction to his approach suggested that Pete had scared the bejeezus out of him.

Anyway, back to his TOTP performance and did Elayne Smith really describe Neil as being ‘back in full effect’? Or was she referring to The Charlatans? He gives us “Miracle Song” which was actually released as a single despite being promoted here as an album track. It sank without trace. Surely he would have been better suited to a spot on Wogan or Des O’Connor than TOTP? For all I’ve derided him a bit here, I don’t mind a bit of Sedaka and he has written some great songs – just ask my old boss Pete.

After 16 weeks of the same song at No 1, we now have two different chart toppers in consecutive weeks. With U2 only lasting seven days in pole position, they give way to Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff with “Dizzy”. They’re not in the studio though (shame – I would love to have known what Neil Sedaka made of Vic and Bob) so it’s the promo video which is basically a carbon copy of what they did when they were in the studio last time (including Bob sliding through Vic’s legs at one point). Apparently this single was a huge favourite down at nightclubs on a student night. I can imagine. Had I been born just a couple of years later I’m sure I would have been throwing myself around the dance floor at Rascals, my club of choice in Sunderland where I was a student in the 80s. I was once stood near to Vic Reeves in a queue for the Eurostar at Paris Gare du Nord. He was with his wife Nancy Sorrell. That’s as interesting as the story gets I’m afraid.

As a follow up to ‘Dizzy’, Vic released a dance version of the hymn “Abide With Me” which is traditionally sung at the FA Cup Final before kick-off. It’s was a bizarre way to follow up a No 1 record and it duly flopped when it peaked at No 47. Maybe that was what Vic wanted all along – maybe it was some sort of satirical comment on pop music and manipulating the charts. He should have joined in with that fictional chat between Bill Drummond, Jimmy Cauty and Neil Sedaka as the former two knew a thing about how to send up the music industry.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu	It’s Grim Up North	It’s not actually and I didn’t
2	Crowded House	Fall At Your Feet	Not the single but I had the album (signed by the band!)
3	K-Klass	Rhythm Is A Mystery	I did not
4	Belinda Carlisle	Do You Feel Like I Feel	No but I had that promo album sampler thing with it on – for shame!
5	INXS	Shining Star	Not the single but I have it on a Best Of CD of theirs
6	Control	Dance With Me (I’m Your Ecstasy)	No
7	Metallica	The Unforgiven	Nope
8	Chris Rea	Winter Song	No thanks
9	Manic Street Preachers	Love’s Sweet Exile/Repeat	I’m ashamed to say I didn’t but I do own a couple of their albums and have seen them live twice
10	The Charlatans	Me. In Time	Negative
11	Neil Sedaka	Miracle Song	Of course not
12	Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff	Dizzy	I 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/m00116fn/top-of-the-pops-07111991