Massive Attack

TOTP 19 JAN 1995

Posted on by 80stastic

Well hello there! It’s been a while hasn’t it? The Summer was one of inactivity at the towers of TOTP Rewind due to the enforced break caused by BBC4’s decision to pause their broadcast schedule for TOTP repeats. Having rampaged through 1994 at breakneck speed, the channel came to an abrupt stop just two shows into 1995 and commenced on a two month sabbatical from the chart hits of that year. Some immovable events took precedent like Glastonbury weekend and then there was The Proms but what seemed odd was that the programme schedulers found space to re-show TOTP episodes from the archives we’d already seen previously. Why didn’t they just allocate those slots to the 1995 shows? They’d clearly put some thought into it as the shows chosen for another airing were those that were broadcast on or near to the current date in 2023 – sort of like an ‘On this day in TOTP history’ mini series. I didn’t really get it but I was quite glad of the break from writing if I’m honest. All I had to do each week was tweet a link to my blog archive for my corresponding review of said shows. Brilliant!

Now, given the time elapsed since the last post, a quick catch up might be in order to remind myself about what I was up to in January 1995. Well, work wise I was still with Our Price and had spent Xmas ‘94 in the Market Street, Manchester store where I’d begun my retail career four years earlier. However, times they were a-changin’ and that shop had been sold on to a travel agents. Obviously the company had waited until after the busy Xmas sales period to pull the plug but once that had been and gone the countdown until the end was on. We had the ‘everything must go’ sale but I was focused on what would happen to the staff. As I recall, every full time member was offered alternative employment in another store (probably the Piccadilly shop) but my own future had yet to be decided. A return to Piccadilly wasn’t the most attractive option for me as I’d hated my five months there and to be fair to the company management, they didn’t send me back. All portents seemed to advise that another stint at the Stockport branch was on the cards for me and so it proved when I returned there to spend the next three and a half years in the Cheshire shop.

Before all of that though was the task of closing down the store. Once the shop had shut its doors for the last time, most people moved onto their new locations leaving just a skeleton staff to deal with the remaining stock etc. Come the very end, there were just two of us left – myself and the manager. It was a weird feeling turning up to work in those final few days with the shop basically a hollowed out carcass. My main memory of this period though involved the store’s fire alarm system. I can’t remember exactly why but there was a need for it to be turned off while some work by the shopfitters was carried out. The manager and I believed this had been done successfully but as soon as the work began, the alarm sprang into life. The realisation then hit us that the alarm was linked to the fire station and that a team of firefighters would have been immediately deployed to attend the scene. This wasn’t a pre-planned fire drill exercise after all. As the store was part of the Manchester Arndale shopping centre, we legged it down to the loading bay area below us so that we could be there to head off the firemen and reassure them that the shop was not ablaze. They duly arrived to find me and the manager looking very sheepish and apologetic. They were NOT amused and rightly so though we firmly believed the whole incident wasn’t our fault per se. Once again though, I apologise to the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service.

Back to the music though and it’s time for the nose to become reacquainted with the grindstone so let’s crack on with 1995. Here’s hoping there were some hot tunes burning up the charts! Before the titles roll though we’re reminded that the show still has that direct to camera piece from an artist appearing that week advertising their forthcoming presence. This week it’s ‘The Walrus of Love’ himself Barry White who is back on the show for the first time in eight years. I can’t think of Barry White without thinking of this which I know is very disrespectful to his legacy but I can’t help how my brain works…

However, we start with those little scamps Ultimate Kaos who are back with their second hit single “Hoochie Booty”. Yes, despite having an average band age of 14 as detailed in the TOTP caption, Simon Cowell’s protégés were considered old enough to be singing a song about a sexually promiscuous woman’s bottom. At least I think that’s what the title refers to. I’m not completely clear on the lyrics but at one point they seem to be singing “she’s hangin’ out wit Judy Judy with the big ol booty” and then banging on about taking her home. Blimey! I didn’t know my arse from my elbow sexually speaking when I was 14 and certainly nothing about women’s bottoms! Maybe Ultimate Kaos were trail blazers though, paving the way for All Saints to have a No 1 in 1998 with “Bootie Call” and Destiny’s Child to score big with the track “Bootylicious” in 2001, a phrase that is now so immeshed in popular culture and language that it is listed in all the English language dictionaries and didn’t show up on spellcheck when I typed it earlier in this sentence.

As for the song itself, the newly adopted swing beat direction was clearly an attempt to extend the appeal of Ultimate Kaos to a wider (more mature) audience but it just comes across as inappropriate to me. I think the youth of today might describe it as “giving me the ick”.

Come 1995, the UK trip hop scene appeared to have a new poster group to spearhead it in the form of Bristol’s Portishead who’s debut album “Dummy” would climb to No 2 in our charts. However, anybody writing off OG act Massive Attack were hugely wide of the mark*.

*As a numerical demonstration of this, Massive Attack are at No 14 in this particular chart whilst Portishead are below them at No 15.

Although it had taken the band three and a half years to release a follow up to their iconic debut album “Blue Lines”, sophomore effort “Protection” was worth the wait. Sure, lead single “Sly” hadn’t set the charts alight but when the title track was released it couldn’t be ignored. As with their classic tune “Unfinished Sympathy”, “Protection” benefitted from the talents of a guest vocalist. In 1995, for Shara Nelson read Tracey Thorn from Everything But The Girl. In many ways, Tracey wasn’t an obvious choice. Despite realising a string of great material over the previous decade, their only charting singles since 1984’s “Each And Everyone” had been cover versions – “I Don’t Want To Talk About it” (No 3 in 1988) and their “Covers EP” (No 13 in 1992). However, despite the record buying public collectively cockn’ a deaf ‘un, Tracey’s voice remained and indeed remains to this day both beautiful and immediately recognisable. The song itself is effortlessly and elegantly melancholy yet has a stunning, haunting melody. Tracey herself contributed to the lyrics using her experience of caring for partner Ben Watt through his rare autoimmune condition Churg–Strauss syndrome as inspiration. I read Ben’s account of his recovery from the condition in his auto biography Patient many years ago and it’s a wonderful book. It was out of print for a while but is now available again via Bloomsbury. Worth seeking out. I wasn’t expecting to see Tracey with a guitar strapped to her for this performance and it seems to accentuate her tiny frame but then it does help with the song’s themes and she even sings at one point “Sometimes you look so small, you need some shelter”. Indeed.

“Protection” the single would make No 13 whilst the album peaked at No 4 and would go double platinum. Possibly off the back of this collaboration, Everything But The Girl would be reborn as electronic dance maestros after the Todd Terry remix of “Missing” sold over a million copies in the UK alone. The original version had peaked at No 69 when released six months prior to this TOTP performance.

The problem with having this massive gap time wise between 1995 episodes is that when you return to them, it creates the false impression that the songs featured must have been hanging around the charts for ages when in reality they haven’t. Take “Here Comes The Hotstepper” by Ini Kamoze for example. Even though it was only in its third week on the UK Top 40, it feels like it must be into double figures by now. Something about the progression of time in the present bleeding into the past maybe? Time really can bend your head if you think about it too hard. Having said all that, “Here Comes The Hotstepper” did plant its soles in the charts for weeks including nine within the Top 10 and four consecutively at No 4.

Famously, the track’s lyrics refer to a “lyrical gangster” but what exactly was/is a lyrical gangster? Well, the Songfacts website suggests that although the Jamaican term ‘Hotstepper’ signifies someone on the run from the law, in the case of Ini’s protagonist, he’s guilty of metaphorical murder as opposed to the literal stories of murder contained within the material released by gangsta rapper artists at the time. So that’s metaphorical not literal – got that? Good. Presumably the distinction between the spelling of gangster and gangsta was important too. Well, we’re back to dictionaries again as the Oxford English Dictionary does distinguish between them with the former referring to membership of organised crime groups and the latter as belonging to an urban territorial gang. Not sure that distinction supports the Songfacts metaphor argument to be honest. I think that’s enough of the semantics for now to be honest. One thing I am in no doubt about though is that the film that the song featured in – Prêt–à–Porter– was absolute garbage.

Somebody who definitely has been hanging around for ages is tonight’s host Bruno Brookes who was one of the Radio 1 DJs brought back into the fold at the beginning of 1994 by new TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill when the ‘year zero’ revamp of 1991 was consigned to the dustbin. Don’t fret though, his charmed run on the show will be over soon. Before then though, he advises us about the new TOTP magazine that was due to appear on the shelves of your local newsagents imminently. Initially earmarked for the spot left vacant by the demise of No 1 magazine (of which I was a reader in the mid 80s and which BBC Magazines took over in 1990), its biggest claim to fame was surely coming up with the nicknames for a then fledgling Spice Girls in 1996.

Anyway, back to the music and here come a band that were inextricably connected to the Britpop movement whether they liked it or not. It could be argued that Sleeper only had themselves to blame having opened for Blur on their Parklife tour but the origins of the band lay way before that when guitarist Jon Stewart met Louise Wener at Manchester University in 1987. Following the familiar route of playing in various bands they finally morphed into Sleeper and were signed to Indolent Records (a subsidiary of RCA) in 1993. A handful of singles were released to critical acclaim but underwhelming sales before they broke through with “Inbetweener”. You can understand why as it’s a real ear worm with some great hooks. Watching Louise up there on stage for this performance she looks so confident and, well, powerful. Inevitably, as with Blondie in the late 70s / early 80s, Elastica rather more recently just twelve months prior and No Doubt three years later, the focus on the band centred around the female lead vocalist, certainly in terms of the media anyway. Louise had that girl next door look but with a glint in her eye and it worked for many a young male fan – I may have even been a bit taken myself. Erm…anyway, Wener was suddenly everywhere; NME front covers (and placing high in the publication’s rather laddish ‘Sexiest Woman’ poll, TV appearances on TFI Friday and The Word and even a turn in the ‘golden mic’ presenter slot on TOTP. All this attention was taken in good humour by the guys in the band who, unlike the aforementioned Blondie, didn’t seem too put out even when the music press coined the term ‘sleeperbloke’ to describe the anonymous other group members who faded into the background when faced with the harsh lights surrounding their more photogenic (and therefore deemed sometimes incorrectly more important lead singer).

As Britpop raged, Sleeper’s profile rose in parallel. 1996 brought a platinum album in the shape of “The It Girl” and four hit singles. They were an undoubted success. I caught them live around this time at the Manchester Academy. They were pretty good too as I remember. However, just as Britpop faded away, so too did Sleeper (thus adding to the perception of the band’s connection to the movement). 1997’s difficult third album “Pleased To Meet You” failed to hit the commercial highs of its predecessor and the band would split in 1998. Wener carved herself a successful career as a writer having four novels and an autobiography published and the band reconvened in 2017 playing live gigs and releasing new material for the first time in two decades.

By the way, if you Google the term ‘inbetweener’, once you’ve got past all the results for the antics of Will, Simon, Neil and Jay, you might see the Urban Dictionary definition of the term which refers to a sub group of people who are not cool enough to be popular but are not nerdy enough to be geeks. That’s a perfect description of my schooldays right there.

R Kelly’s misdemeanours mean that he’s been edited out of this show so it’s straight on to The Human League and their surprise comeback hit “Tell Me When”. The last time they were in the show I remarked on their curious decision to perform in a line rather than in the classic band formation and damn me if they haven’t done it again here! However, this time I’m more drawn to the idea that James frontman Tim Booth has seemingly invented a Time Machine and travelled back from present day to 1995 to be The Human League’s bass player. Complete dead ringer.

“Tell Me When” came from the band’s seventh album “Octopus” which gave them their highest chart position since “Hysteria” in 1984. Despite being around in one form or another for forty-five years, there have only ever been nine Human League albums or rather nine studio albums. There have however been thirteen greatest hits collections. Given the legacy left by 1981’s “Dare”, that hardly seems right but Phil, Joanne and Susan are much more of a live act these days regularly playing gigs and festivals. I caught them myself a few years ago at an open air venue in Hull. They were fine but the audience were not – too many people old enough to know better off their heads and being loud and lairy. In short, I didn’t like the sound of the crowd. I’ll get me coat.

And so to Barry White and I have to admit that, unlike Bruno Brookes who admits to owning all his records in his intro, I never really got his appeal but then I don’t think I was his optimum target audience. Was it just the unfathomably deep voice? Anyway, I don’t recall “Practice What You Preach” at all but it seems to be in keeping with his usual come-to-bed-and-make-sweet-music style. In fact, he actually seems to be in rather a hurry, exhorting his sexual partner to quit with the claims of how pleasure inducing the experience will be and to just get on with it. Heavens! I was rather surprised to discover that the single got as far as No 20 in the UK but then it was a No 1 record on the US R&B chart.

Now according to Bruno Brookes in his next intro, TOTP was a very important show to all the big stars, so much so that the next artist cut short her honeymoon to appear on it. Said star was Celine Dion who is on the verge of bagging herself a No 1 with her hit single “Think Twice” which is currently just one place off the chart summit. Was this true? Well, it could be I suppose – the chance of a No 1 and all that. I can imagine her record company stressing the importance of another bit of promotion on the UK’s premier music show to give the single that extra push. However, one thing doesn’t ring true – I checked the date when Celine got married. It was the 17th December 1994. Now given that this TOTP aired on 19th January 1995, that meant she’d been on honeymoon for over a month by this point! Really?! Well, she did marry one René Angélil who was her manager so I guess nobody was better placed to authorise an extended holiday for her than him!

And so to this week’s No 1 and it’s the same record as the last time I posted on this blog – “Cotton Eye Joe” by Rednex.

Look, I’ve got nothing left for this one so here’s Beavis and Butt-head’s take on it…

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Ultimate KAOSHoochie BootyNah
2Massive Attack ProtectionNegative
3Ini KamozeHere Comes The HotstepperNo but I think my wife may have
4SleeperInbetweenerLiked it, didn’t buy it
5The Human LeagueTell Me WhenNope
6Barry White Practice What You PreachNo
7Celine DionThink TwiceNo thought required – no
8RednexCotton Eye JoeAs if

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 agre

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001qgbk/top-of-the-pops-19011995

TOTP 13 JUN 1991

Posted on by 80stastic

We’re just about slap bang in the middle of 1991 here at TOTP Rewind and I have just had my 23rd birthday. I’ve been married for just over 8 months and am working at Our Price in Manchester (the Market Street store). Life has settled down into a routine after the huge changes of matrimony and moving to a new city. However, things are about to get a little nerve racking as around about this time (I could be wrong on the exact timings as its 30 years ago) the staff were all called into a early meeting one Saturday morning and we were told that the company were looking to sell the shop off. Oh shit! What did that mean? Was the company in trouble? What would happen to all us guys and gals that worked there? FFS! I’d not expected anything like this when we were told the Area Manager would be coming to inform us of something. I gullibly thought it would be about some new promotion or other (though why that would have required Area Manager’s input I don’t know).

From the little info that we were given that morning about potential redundancies, I had worked out that I might just be safe by virtue of having joined a week before the other Xmas temps that were kept on. It was a precarious position which could change at any moment but obviously there were people who I worked with in a worse position than me. However, our finances were threadbare and we were living month to month with just enough to pay the rent on our flat but precious little else to cover for anything going wrong that would have financial implications let alone a budget for a social life. As I remember this threat of store closure hung over us for sometime and obviously was all the staff could talk about for a while. It didn’t make for a happy atmosphere. In the end, the company couldn’t find a buyer and the decision was taken to keep the store trading which it did for another four years before it was finally sold off and became a travel agents (I think). For now though, these were scary times so I hope that the music in the charts and on TOTP would have given me a lift.

Tonight’s host is Jakki Brambles and she gives a strange intro to the first act on tonight.

“We have probably the only ever artist to score five Top 20 singles off her debut album and still got dropped by her record label. You can’t keep a good woman down, here’s Sonia…”

That all seemed a bit personal and unnecessary Jakki. A case of damning with faint praise even. It was true though. After becoming the first female UK artist to achieve five top 20 hit singles from one album, she did leave Chrysalis Records and moved on from Stock, Aitken and Waterman though the reason why doesn’t seem clear. Maybe she felt sidelined by Kylie and Jason? Anyway, Sonia proved to be more resilient than we might have suspected and returned to the charts with new record label IQ Records and a new single called “Only Fools (Never Fall In Love)”. Supposedly written for Diana Ross (it’s close to being exactly the same title as her 1981 cover of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers!), it was pinched for Sonia by her A&R man, one Simon Cowell. And guess what, it was a horrible Motown pastiche! What a surprise! Still, the UK’s pop fans decided that the hadn’t had enough of Sonia yet and sent it to No 10 in the charts. Have that Pete Waterman!

I was at Polytechnic with someone who was bit like Sonia, except that she didn’t have red hair, wasn’t Scouse and wasn’t annoying so nothing like her at all really!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6JB01AnMec

They’ve messed round with the chart run down again! Why?! They’ve gone back to having it run along the bottom of the screen rolling news ticker style whilst a video plays. I’m sure they tried this at some point back in the 80s and gave it up as a bad job. I bet they went back to it to try and fit in more videos because they were worried about the competition provided by ITV’s The Chart Show. Jakki gamely tries to promote this new convention as “incredible value for money, two for the price of one. Yes, not only do we give you the sight and sound of Amy Grant, we also reveal in vision only, the UK Top 40”. What a crock of shit! Maybe the producers thought that the traditional countdown with the stills of the artists set against the TOTP theme tune was a bit old hat going into the 90s and so needed a revamp complete with that green screen presenter effect. Maybe it did look cutting edge back then but it looks awful now.

Anyway, as for Amy Grant, she was up to No 2 with “Baby Baby” although the TOTP graphics team have it down as a new entry. Maybe it was teething troubles with all this new technology? A more wholesome song and performer it would have been hard to imagine as Amy was ‘The Queen of Christian Pop’ whilst “Baby Baby” was inspired by her then six week old daughter Millie’s face. By way of contrast, we’ll be seeing a few songs about the sexual act and even masturbation later on. Ahem.

Nothing unsavoury here though as the squeaky clean Gloria Estefan brings us “Remember Me With Love”. I recall reading an article in the early 90s about an obsessive Madonna fan who bought anything and everything to do with Madge but when she released her “Erotica” album and that ‘Sex’ book with the nude photos and simulations of sexual acts…well, it was all to much for him and he turned his back on Madonna and instead turned his attentions to someone much purer. Yes, of course, he chose to devote himself to Gloria Estefan. Not that the dichotomy of pop stars and their sexual image hasn’t been around before this. There was Michael Jackson v Prince, The Beatles v The Rolling Stones and maybe even Paul McCartney v John Lennon?

“Remember Me With Love”peaked at No 22.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHxzmUTE0d0

Blimey! I thought we’d done with All About Eve back at the end of the 80s but here they are with yet another Top 40 single in “Farewell Mr. Sorrow”. Julianne Regan and co have one of the more bizarre chart histories going – 9 Top 40 singles but only one of them got any higher than No 29 which of course was the infamous “Martha’s Harbour” which peaked at No 10.

This one was their 8th consecutive chart hit and quite a pleasant little ditty it is too – most unlike a lot of their other work. It was taken from their third studio album “Touched By Jesus” which was their first recording without guitarist and sometime Mr Regan Tim Bricheno and it didn’t do nearly as well as their first two albums leading to the band leaving record label Vertigo and signing with MCA for their last album “Ultraviolet” by which time nobody was interested anymore. I always quite liked them though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohiBAoEKgG8

Some of that smut next with a band who Jakki Brambles tells us have never had a hit not even in their native Australia. Really Jakki? Is that actually true? We are of course talking about Divinyls and their hit “I Touch Myself” and handily, someone on Twitter has already checked this claim out and debunked it:

Oh dear Jakki. Anyway, this is that masturbation song which is obviously what it’s about. Or is it? Well, yes it is. Here singer Chrissy Amphlett from a 2013 Cosmopolitan interview:

“In a world where female sexuality and masturbation is still widely feared and demonized, we need to pay some major respect to the brave women who empower us. ‘I Touch Myself’ is not just a party song, but also an emboldened call-to-action. Amphlett reminded us that we are in control of our own bodies and pleasure, and there is no shame in that game.”

Well quite. Now I didn’t know this until a friend told me years after the event but “I Touch Myself” wasn’t the first song on the subject of female masturbation. No, that was Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop” from 1984. Well, the lyrics are stacked with innuendo to be fair:

Do I want to go out with a lion’s roar
Huh, yea, I want to go south n get me some more
Hey, they say that a stitch in time saves nine
They say I better stop – or I’ll go blind

Hey, hey – they say I better get a chaperone
Because I can’t stop messin’ with the danger zone
No, I won’t worry, and I won’t fret –
Ain’t no law against it yet

Gulp! So indecent was it deemed to be that it earned a place on the Parents Music Resource Center’s Filthy Fifteen list which led to the creation of the Parental Advisory sticker. Most of the songs on that list were by hard rock bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and Black Sabbath. Oh and W.A.S.P. but then if you call a song “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)” then what do you expect. Obviously the aforementioned Madonna was also on the list for 1985’s “Dress You Up” but that guy who was the obsessive fan who rejected her for Gloria Estefan must have missed that news story.

At the time, the name Lenny Kravitz was new to me but he had already released one album back in 1989 called “Let Love Rule” but it had completely passed me by. Fast forward two years and he was back with another collection of songs called “Mama Said” from which this single, “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over” was taken. This was the second track to be lifted from the album after lead single “Always on the Run” had just missed out on being a hit by peaking at that most unfortunate of chart positions No 41. Its follow up though did the trick. Dripping with Motown and Philadelphia soul vibes, it went all the way to No 11 in the UK and just missed the top spot in the US where it peaked at No 2.

The album was pretty good too. How did I know? Well because around this time I was taking part in my first ever Our Price stocktake. I’d been warned about these mythical events that might go on until past midnight where all the staff took part and had to count at price point every single item in the shop. I’d warned my wife on the big day that I could well be home late but I think we were all done reasonably early at 9ish. Whilst counting, and possibly to stop us all gossiping about the impending shop closure, we were allowed to put music on the shop stereo and someone out on “Mama Said”. That album stayed on most of the night I think as we just kept pressing repeat so as not to waste time looking for/arguing over what the next album for playing should be and who got to choose it. I liked what I heard enough to buy the album and especially liked opening track “Fields Of Joy”:

A huge tune next as Massive Attack (now allowed to have the second word of their name included as the Gulf War had needed) return with “Safe From Harm”. After the mesmerising “Unfinished Sympathy”, surely they couldn’t pull another corker from out of their hat but yes they could. Inspired by the film Taxi Driver, this was equally as hypnotic as its predecessor with Shara Nelson’s vocals to the fore and rapping from 3D that managed that difficult feat of not being intrusive but understated and yet integral to the track.

Like “Unfinished Sympathy” and indeed the “Blue Lines’ album itself, “Safe From Harm” wasn’t as big a hit as you remember or indeed it deserved, peaking at just No 25.

Just when you thought they wouldn’t shoehorn in any Breakers this week, here they are with only *10 minutes of the show remaining. We start with Rod Stewart and “The Motown Song” which was the third single to be released from his “Vagabond Heart” album. This really did seem like money for old rope to me. He’s already done a version of “It Takes Two” with Tina Turner on that album and this seemed like more of the same corny, obvious shite. A bit like when The Rolling Stones finally released a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” in the mid 90s. As with “It Takes Two”, Rod collaborated with a legendary act in The Temptations for this one but even their presence couldn’t save it from being a steaming pool of pish.

If anything, the animated video for it makes it even more corny. Made by the same company responsible for “Dear Jessie” by Madonna, it features some ‘hilarious’ comic mishaps befalling cartoon versions of stars like Vanilla Ice (who gets buried under a truckload of ice cubes) and Sinéad O’Connor (who slips while shaving her head and has to wear plasters over the resulting nicks). Like I said, hilarious. Rod himself appears in the video both in human and cartoon form of which the latter looks more like him than the real thing.

“The Motown Song” made No 10 both in the UK and US singles charts.

*Plus the repeat edited out a video of “Light My Fire” by The Doors for copyright reasons.

Some funk/glam/metal rock or something next as Extreme make their first appearance on the show. Despite having been around since 1985, I’d certainly never heard of this lot before but suddenly there was huge interest in them thanks to their “Get The Funk Out” single. This energetic workout of a track was getting a lot of airplay on MTV (I think) and suddenly we were getting lots of enquiries about their second album “Extreme II: Pornograffitti” from which the single was taken. That title caused quite bit of confusion with many people (me included) thinking the band were actually called Extreme II. It didn’t help that Extreme II was what a member of staff had written on the master bag for the band’s name. The record company (and this seemed to happen a lot in 1991) immediately withdrew the album which had been out nearly a while year by this point so that they could re-release it later on when the single had peaked with some extra advertising for it.

Guitarist Nuno Bettencourt was getting a lot of press attention at the time not just as the latest guitar noodling prodigy but also as a bit of a heartthrob. To be fair, their lead singer (and normally the visual focus of a band) lead singer Gary Cherone was a bit more….erm…awkward looking. The album would spawn another four UK Top 40 singles including the the soft rock ballad “More Than Words” that made No 2 over here and No 1 in the US. For a while, Extreme looked like they could be the next big rock act.

Next a song that had been a hit just 8 months earlier albeit performed by a completely different artist. “From A Distance” was originally recorded by country legend Nanci Griffith (though she didn’t write it) for her 1987 album “Lone Star State of Mind”. Despite being many people’s definitive version of the song, it failed to chart. Then, in 1990, it was recorded and released as a single by both Cliff Richard (his was a live version and was also that which was a UK hit) and Bette Midler whose take on it lost out to Sir Cliff and finished up outside the Top 40 at No 45. However, in the US, Bette’s version was a huge success and won a Grammy for Song of the Year in 1991. Presumably that was why it was re-released over here. As with Extreme, there was suddenly a big demand from punters for their album that it featured on (“Some People’s Lives”) but yet again it was withdrawn by the record company so that it could be re-released and re-promoted. I was getting truly sick of explaining this phenomenon to customers by now.

I could see why Midler had chosen to record it. It was in the same ball park as her recent US No 1 “Wind Beneath My Wings” and indeed scored her a No 2 hit in there home country. In the UK, it would peak at No 6.

Some more filth now as we get “People Are Still Having Sex” by LaTour. This was like “Kissing With Confidence” by Will Powers meets “French Kiss” by Lil’ Louis. It originally included the lyric ‘This AIDS thing’s not working’ but was changed to ‘This safe thing’s not working’ to ensure it got some radio play.

I couldn’t really be doing with this at all – the track that is not sex per se. It just seemed sensationalist for the sake of getting some press. It was a minor hit globally peaking at No 15 in the UK.

And to round off this episode of smut and obscenity, the No 1 record is still “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd. So that’s two records with ‘sex’ in the title and one about masturbation on the same show. Mary Whitehouse must have been apoplectic. Just to crank up the sex-o-meter, the band are in the studio in person! Everything about this performance is so wrong. From the suits to the dancing (the three lads at the back seem to be doing ‘ring a ring a roses’ at one point) to the actual song.

Despite their success, Smash Hits magazine only had Color Me Badd on their front cover once throughout the whole of 1991. In comparison, Chesney Hawkes was on three times as was Dannii Minogue. Even The Farm, Philip Schofield and those twin sisters from Neighbours got a front cover!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rdg4kWDbIc

The play out video is “Monkey Business” by Skid Row. I get really confused by all these metal bands. Skid Row, Mötley Crüe, Anthrax, Megadeth… I couldn’t really tell you the difference between any of them. To differentiate this lot from the pack, their lead singer called himself Sebastian Bach though his real name is Sebastian Philip Bierk. The latter seems more appropriate.

Normally I include the chart rundown here but due to the new format, there is no clip I can include. Sorry.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1SoniaOnly Fools (Never Fall In Love)Only a fool would have bought this
2Amy GrantBaby BabyNo but my wife liked it
3Gloria EstefanRemember Me With LoveNah
4All About EveFarewell Mr. SorrowI did not
5DivinylsI Touch MyselfThought I might have but the singles box says no
6Lenny KravitzIt Ain’t Over ’til It’s OverNo but I had the album
7Massive AttackSafe From HarmSee 6 above
8Rod StewartThe Motown SongNo thanks
9ExtremeGet The Funk OutNot the single but I have it on something I think
10Bette MidlerFrom A DistanceNope
11LaTourPeople Are Still Having SexNo
12Color Me BaddI Wanna Sex You UpI should coco
13Skid RowMonkey BusinessI’d rather watch a monkey defecate

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/m000yhc0/top-of-the-pops-13061991

TOTP 14 MAR 1991

Posted on by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The “Today Forever EP” peaked at No 14.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh OK but the lyrics did include this rhyming couplet…

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

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

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

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

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

“Who? Where? Why?” peaked at No 21.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP5r_Uz-FOg
Order of AppearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Chesney HawkesThe One And OnlyI did not
2REMLosing My ReligionNot the single but I must have it on something
3RideToday Forever EPNah
4The Bee GeesSecret LoveDefinitely not
5QueenI’m Going Slightly MadNegative
6Massive AttackUnfinished SympathyNo but I had the album Blue Lines
7Rod StewartRhythm Of My HeartAnd no
8Happy MondaysLoose FitNo but I had the Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches album
9The ClashShould I Stay Or Should I GoNot the re-release but I have it on something surely?
10Jesus JonesWho? Where? Why?No

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000x8p7/top-of-the-pops-14031991

TOTP 28 FEB 1991

Posted on by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

Gif image courtesy of Warner Bros

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

“Adrenalin” peaked at No 23.

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

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


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

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

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

Gruesome stuff.

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

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

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

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

Me: “My Brother Jake”

Ken: Yes. Anything else?

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

Ken: Right on both accounts. Is that it?

Me: Does anybody know anything else about them?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who? Where? Why?” peaked at No 21.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, Nice one fella.

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Kjq56VeY4
Order of AppearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1N-JoiAdrenalinGod no
2Stevie BBecause I Love You (The Postman Song)And indeed Hell no
3FreeAlright NowNope
4Massive AttackUnfinished SympathyNo but I have the Blue Lines album
5The ClashShould I Stay Or Should I GoNot the single but I’m sure I have it on something
6Quartz featuring Dina CarrollIt’s Too LateDefinitely not
7MantronixDon’t Go Messin’ With My HeartYikes No!
8The AlmightyFree ‘n’ EasyNo
9Jesus Jones Who? Where? Why?Nah
10The Source featuring Candi StatonYou Got The LoveGood dance track but no
11MadonnaCrazy For YouNo but I have The Immaculate Collection Best Of with it on
12The SimpsonsDo The BartmanDo the barf man more like – no
13Go For It (Heart and Fire)Joey B Ellis Aka MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare.I did not

Disclaimer

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

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

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