MC Hammer

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 18 JUL 1991

Posted on September 2, 2021 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tenuous? Me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sounds Of Eden” peaked at No 35.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000z2j2/top-of-the-pops-18071991

TOTP 21 FEB 1991

Posted on June 21, 2021 by 80stastic

As I write this, the England national football team have just turned in a turgid performance in the Euros against bitter rivals Scotland deflating pre -tournament talk of them finally ending the now 55 years of hurt since winning the World Cup in 1966 (and all that). It really was poor stuff from Gareth’s men and he will find the media turning on him very quickly if they don’t improve. Here’s a thought, if they don’t qualify and Gareth gets the blame, will the press have a ‘Southgate-gate’ on their hands? As for Scotland, they now have a chance of getting out for the group stages but will need to do something they haven’t done yet which is score a goal. They could do with Kenny Dalglish in his pomp in their side. Ah yes, King Kenny, Back in 1991, he shocked the football world by resigning as Liverpool manager the day after this TOTP was aired pretty much handing the title to Arsenal in the process. A tenuous link I know but while we’re here, let’s review the VAR and decide whether the charts of 30 years ago were any good or not.

Now, before we start, I should say that I was never a TOTP studio audience member but my mate Robin advised me this week that he was in attendance at this particular show – he worked for the BBC at the time – and described the whole experience as ‘f*****g tragic’. Him and a mate had gone along expecting to see Morrissey having read in the music press that he was due to appear and indeed Mozza was a new entry at No 26 that week so their hopes were high. However, having asked a cameraman which stage he would be on so that they could position themselves in anticipation, they received the reply “that miserable git isn’t on” and realised that they had made a terrible mistake and could not escape.

We’ve come to TOTP by mistake

They decided that their best plan of action, as the rest of the mainly teenage audience was herded around like cattle, was to hide from the cameras and stay well away from host Mark Goodier and his banana coloured flight jacket. Robin described the whole experience as ‘like being trapped in Willy Wonka’s factory clapping umpa lumpa everywhere’. Excellent!

So with no Mozza on the running order, who did Robin and his mate get to see instead. Well, we start with Chris Rea – or as Robin described him Chris diarRhea which is a beautiful put down which works on at least two levels possibly more. The man from Middlesbrough was on a roll at this point after 1989’s six times platinum selling album “Road To Hell” and he followed it up with another No 1 album in “Auberge”. The title track was released as the lead single and is pretty standard Rea fare finding a comfortable place to reside somewhere between the upbeat “Let’s Dance” and the more sombre “Road To Hell”. Chris himself never looked comfortable when on appearing on TOTP though. He looks as convincing a pop star as Gavin Williamson does as Secretary of State for Education. The cameraman (possibly the Mozza dissing one) doesn’t seem to know what to do with him and decides to focus on the rather unusual sight of a tuba being played on TOTP just when Chris starts some slide guitar action making it look like the sound is actually coming from the tuba. A case of umpa lumpa stick it up your tuba maybe?

“Auberge” the single peaked at No 16.

From Kenny Dalglish to another Kenny. In a recent post, I admitted to my totally irrational dislike at the time of the next artist and apologised to him. My aversion to Kenny Thomas though was nothing compared to Robin’s who described him as simply “Kenny F*****g Thomas”. Well, he was no Morrissey I suppose and with 30 years of hindsight, thank God he wasn’t. The world really doesn’t need two of him right now. As for Mr Thomas, despite having been a pop star for about two weeks at the time, he looks far more suited to the job than the more experienced show opener Chris Rea. Just give him a microphone, a backing singer, some bloke to play the bongos and a groove and let him at it. Actually, far from being ‘some bloke’, isn’t that M People’s Shovell on bongos duties? I think it is – the hair was making me doubt myself though.

“Outstanding” was actually a cover of an old single by The Gap Band and having checked, it seems that three of the four singles taken from Kenny’s debut album “Voices” were cover versions with “Best Of Me” being a Booker T. Jones song whilst “Tender Love” was the old Force MDs hit from 1986. It’s not occurred to me before but, given the above, Kenny Thomas was almost a 90s version of Paul Young in terms of being a soul singer who made it big with covers of fairly unknown songs from the past. I say a 90s version but Paul himself was still churning out cover versions into the new decade and indeed we’ll see him back in the charts in this year soon with another song that he didn’t write – albeit he does perform “Senza una donna (Without a Woman)” with its writer Zucchero.

I’ve no idea what Robin made of the next hit but I certainly don’t remember it. “Think About” by DJH featuring Stefy? I’ve got nothing. Let’s have a listen then…

…oh God it’s just some wanky Italian House track based very loosely around a sample from Aretha Franklin’s “Think”. Apart from gyrating around in not many clothes, Stefy’s input is limited at best with even the rap bits done by one of the two blokes on keyboards in the background. I mean, two bloke on keyboards to the rear of the stage was standard practice for Italian House outfits but they usually remained anonymous throughout, leaving the female singer to front the song. The woman from Black Box became a star on the back of miming vocals that weren’t hers – I think Stefy missed a trick here.

Watching this performance back, Robin must have wondered what sort of place he’d got himself into when Stefy appeared in that outfit.

“Think About” peaked at No 22.

The first video of the night is from Thunder who were onto their fifth consecutive Top 40 hit by this point. Like the previous four, “Love Walked In” was taken from their debut album “Backstreet Symphony” which proved to be reasonably enduring spending a combined total of 16 weeks on the album chart over five different periods between March 1990 and March 1991. Presumably every time a single was released from it, the album experienced another spike in sales. However, it never got any higher than its No 21 peak on its first week of release. The band’s singles chart stats followed a similar trend. Five hit singles but some pretty unremarkable peaks (see below):

32 – 25 – 36 – 34 – 21

Despite being the final single to be taken from “Backstreet Symphony”, “Love Walked In” was also the most successful which was a bit weird. Maybe it was something to do with being more of a ballad than all the other singles which were all fast paced rockers. I didn’t mind their sound – I had a soft spot for a bit of soft rock – but it was very similar to lots of other UK rock acts that were experiencing commercial success at the time. like The Quireboys and Little Angels. They would return with sophomore album “Laughing On Judgement Day” in 1992 that would be the apex of their success when it peaked at No 2.

Oh and when host Mark Goodier said they were a terrific live band? Guess how many live albums are listed in their discography? 32!

The Breakers are back this week and we start with a man who we hadn’t seen in the Top 40 in nigh on two and a half years. Julian Cope‘s solo career was…well….more interesting than commercially successful I think it’s fair to say. Apart from “Word Shut Your Mouth” back in 1986, all his other singles failed to make the Top 20. I’d always been intrigued by him though – his 1984 single “The Greatness And Perfection Of Love” remains one of the greatest non hit songs of the whole decade.

1991 saw him release *”Peggy Suicide” which was already his seventh solo album. Despite its heavy lyrical subject matter (the poll tax riots and anti police sentiments, organised religion, women’s rights, the occult, paganism, animal rights, and ecology), lead single “Beautiful Love” was a lovely, lilting piece of pop perfection. It really should have been a bigger hit than the No 32 peak it achieved. Subsequent singles released from the album failed to dent the Top 40 (including the brilliant “East Easy Rider” in which Julian does a passable Jim Morrison vocal) but undeterred, the following year would see two albums released under his name -studio album “Jehovahkill” and compilation album “Floored Genius: The Best Of Julian Cope And The Teardrop Explodes 1979–91” the latter of which I duly bought.

Cope has continued along his personal life journey of a rejection of the mainstream to pursue his interests in occultism and paganism. He is also a published author on the subject of British megalithic sites with specific reference to stone circles. His antiquarian researcher credentials stretched to him giving two talks at the British Museum about the norse divinity Odin although he did then rather undermine said credentials by wearing five-inch platform shoes and setting off the fire alarms with his hairspray forcing an evacuation of the building. A few years back, I read both volumes of his autobiography Head-On/Repossessed – it was a fascinating read about a true maverick and eccentric character.

* It took me ages to realise the title was a pun on Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue”. Doh!

Now, if like me, you remember Stevie B as a one hit wonder (if you remember him at all that is), then we are both wrong. Yes, he technically he only had the one hit in this country but he had this whole other career in his native US. Apparently he was a prime move in the ‘freestyle’ movement. This was a form of electro funk which (according to Wikipedia) was characterised by ‘a Latin American-based rhythm with a heavy syncopated drum sound’. Supposedly the first ever ‘freestyle’ hit was “Let The Music Play” by Shannon but I always thought that was a Hi-NRG track. Look, I’m not going to get bogged down in musical sub genres which I know little about – suffice to say Stevie B was a big deal and had already racked up a string of US dance chart hits before he crossed over into the mainstream with “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” which was an American Billboard Hot 100 chart topper. This was nothing like “Let The Music Play” though. No, this was a big soul ballad. What was the deal? Well, apparently this was the route a lot of the ‘freestyle’ acts took around this time to achieve crossover success with the likes of Exposé and Sweet Sensation doing there same. I had no idea about any of this at the time of course. It was just a soppy love song with a daft title to me.

“Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” didn’t quite replicate its US success in the UK but it did go Top 10 spending three consecutive weeks at No 6 which was quite apt seeing as it was the Devil’s work.

If you think of the Rocky franchise, what springs to mind musically? “Eye Of The Tiger”? Yes, definitely. “Gonna Fly Now” (otherwise known as “Theme from Rocky”) when he’s running up those steps? Absolutely. “Burning Heart” from Rocky IV? Well, yeah maybe, just about. How about “Go For It (Heart and Fire)” by Joey B. Ellis AKA MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare? Pretty sure that’s a jackpot winning answer on Pointless.

This was actually from Rocky V, a film I’m not sure I even knew existed until I saw it in a hotel room in New York in 1994. For me, it’s easily the worst film of the whole franchise with a ludicrous plot peppered with holes and no actual boxing match featuring Rocky. Instead we get a crazy street fight. Originally planned to be the last of the Rocky films, it was a poor way to bow out. Thankfully, the much superior Rocky Balboa came out 16 years later to right this wrong. In keeping with Rocky V‘s lack of quality, its soundtrack was also a poor effort. For a start Bill Conti hardly features on it at all and it is subject to the dominant market forces of the music world of the time. For example, MC Hammer has two tracks on it, Snap! are on there and then there was “Go For It (Heart and Fire)”. This was a cynically calculated rap number that recycles the “Eye Of The Tiger” riff and adds a hackneyed ‘Go For It’ chorus over the top of it. It sounds like a C + C Music Factory cast off. Somehow it got to No 20 in our charts. And I thought that the Bond themes had gone off the boil once the 80s ended!

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

Right, that’s the Breakers done with. What’s next then? “Move Your Body (Elevation)” by Xpansions? Doesn’t ring any bells yet. Let’s have listen to it…

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

…oh yeah. I remember this. It was bloody awful. I’m pretty sure that this lot did nothing to improve the mood of my mate Robin. This was less a dance hit and more a work out routine. Who did the singer think she was? Mad Lizzie? It turns out she was actually called Sally Anne Marsh and had been in a girl group called Faith Hope & Charity with The Word presenter Dani Behr. She went on to work with Mike Stock from SAW and released a dance version of “Windmills Of Your Mind”. What that song from The Thomas Crown Affair by Noel Williams? Oh I quite like that but a dance version you say? I have to listen to this…

…oh what did I expect?! Seriously though. Why do I do shit like this to myself?! A total abomination.

“Move Your Body (Elevation)” peaked at No 7 whilst a new mix of it took it back into the charts in 1995 when it peaked at No 14.

Did somebody say MC Hammer before? Well, here is the main man back with a new single called “Here Comes The Hammer”. This was his fourth consecutive hit single (all taken from his “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em” album) and would peak at No 15 in the UK. Curiously, although it was released in the US and despite a trio of Top 10 hits over there prior to it, this stalled at No 54. Nevertheless, in spite of its poor chart placing, It was nominated for a 1991 Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance at the 34th Annual Grammy Awards. Spooky.

Talking of spooky things, the video for it was based a round a storyboard of Hammer and his dancers getting chased through a haunted house (a Hammer House of Horror if you will). It cost more than $1 million to produce and was one of the most expensive music videos ever made at the time. It was almost 15 minutes in length (MTV had a shortened 9 minute version) and was panned by the critics. It does sound like Hammer’s ego was maybe out of control at this point. “I want a horror video like “Thriller” and it has to be a long one. None of that 3 minute crap” you can imagine him saying.

Someone else who wasn’t impressed with “Here Comes The Hammer” was one Kevin Abdullah who sued Hammer claiming he had stolen the hooks from his own song “Oh Oh, You Got the Shing” for it. His story was that he had sent Hammer a demo tape of it which Hammer rejected. Hammer settled the lawsuit for $250,000. Hmm.

MC Hammer would release another single from “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em”, a remix single, a new album (plus two singles from it) before 1991 was done. “Here Comes The Hammer” indeed.

That nice song by Oleta Adams is next but Robin wouldn’t have got to see her perform “Get Here” as this is just a reshowing of her studio performance from a couple of weeks ago. He was probably relieved – I don’t think this was his bag at all. As with MC Hammer before her, Oleta’s version of “Get Here” (it was originally written and recorded by Brenda Russell) was nominated for a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

The song has been covered by loads of different artists apart from Oleta down the years including Will Downing, Sam Smith, Johnny Logan (ahem) and gloriously fictional singer Michelle Coffee from Phoenix Nights. Also there was a danced up version by Q featuring Tracy Ackerman in 1993. Right, remember what happened last time with Sally Anne Marsh. You don’t have to play it, you don’t have to play it…oh shit…

Ooh that was a bad one! Tracy Akerman’s Wikipedia page tells me that she is also a songwriter as well as a singer and has penned tracks for the likes of Cher, Tina Turner, Kylie, B*Witched, Darius of Popstars / Pop Idol fame…erm…Sonia….S Club Juniors…I’ll stop now.

To counteract Tracy’s nasty dance cover, here’s The Beautiful South’s song called ‘Get Here” which isn’t a cover but does make reference to Oleta’s song in lyrics like these:

You can get here by crossing sea or desert
I can barely make Blackpool Sands
Railroad, caravan, save it for the mad man
Lets see if love just stands

Excellent!

The Simpsons are still at No 1 with “Do The Bartman”. “You can see why it’s No 1” says Mark Goodier at the song’s end. Can we Goodier, can we?! Like Matt Hancock’s evidence to the Select Committees on the government’s response to the pandemic, I don’t think that remark stands up to any sort of scrutiny.

The play out video is “Love Rears Its Ugly Head” by Living Colour. I didn’t know anything much about this band at this time but I recall there being a lot of talk about how they had fused lots of different musical genres together to come up with their sound. They were broadly categorised as ‘funk metal’ alongside Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dan Reed Network and were expected to go onto massive things but although their album “Times Up” achieved Gold status sales in the US, they seemed to fall away after that. The band have only released six studio albums over the course of their career which began in 1984 (albeit with a five year hiatus between 1995 and 2000) with the last one being released in 2017.

In the UK, we had our own example of a band fusing musical styles together around this time in And Why Not? who fused pop with reggae on hits like “Restless Days (She Screams Out Loud)” and “The Face” but they withered away pretty quickly as well.

“Love Rears Its Ugly Head” peaked at No 12.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9PYBeBPNXE

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Chris Rea	Auberge	Nah
2	Kenny Thomas	Outstanding	It’s a no – sorry Kenny
3	DJH featuring Stefy	Think About	No
4	Thunder	Love Walked In	And out again…no
5	Julian Cope	Beautiful Love	Not the single but I have that Floored Genius Best Of with it on
6	Steve B	Because I Love You (The Postman Song)	I’d have returned this one to sender – no
7	Go For It (Heart and Fire	Joey B. Ellis AKA MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare	Absolutely not
8	Xpansions	Move Your Body (Elevation)	Hell no
9	MC Hammer	Here Comes The Hammer	and that’s my cue to exit – no
10	Oleta Adams	Get Here	Nice enough but I never considered buying it
11	The Simpsons	Do The Bartman	Away with you!
12	Living Colour	Love Rears Its ugly Head	No but it was on that first Q magazine compilation album that I bought

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/m000wvlz/top-of-the-pops-21021991

TOTP 10 JAN 1991

Posted on May 29, 2021 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and

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

What did they think Travolta was singing about FFS?!

“Grease Megamix” peaked at No 3.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“International Bright Young Thing” peaked at No 7.

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

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

There were numerous remixes of this track including:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“All This Time” peaked at No 22.

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

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

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

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000w6t9/top-of-the-pops-10011991

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

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

TOTP 20 DEC 1990

Posted on May 18, 2021 by 80stastic

Xmas 1990 is upon us meaning that we are just days away from finding out that year’s festive No 1 record. This also means that there is precious little time for record companies to stimulate enough sales to get their particular act to the coveted top spot. Activity is frenzied and to paraphrase David Bowie, you can almost see the record pluggers sliding down chimneys.

As for me, I’m working my first Xmas at Our Price and am just longing for some time off after day after day of huge queues of customers all needing serving. Back then, Our Price still had what must now been seen as an archaic ‘masterbag’ system where the contents of a CD, tape, VHS etc were kept filed behind the counter with just the empty case on the racks. This meant serving someone could be quite labour intensive as you had to go and find what they wanted behind the scenes first. If you were on the counter all day, it felt like a long shift.

Added to this was the impending pressure that all the temps felt which was who (if any of us) would be kept on after Xmas was over. As it stood, I had nothing lined up work wise if I wasn’t kept on and we had the rent on our flat to make. My wife was also in temporary employment at a toy shop but we knew that was definitely ending as the store was to close after Xmas. This was proper adult stuff. It came to pass that I did end up being offered a permanent job by the store manager whist I was out for a drink one night in the achingly trendy Dry bar with my wife one evening. I think it was the first time we’d been in there as we were skint most of the time. The manager (Greg) happened to be there as well and he just sidled up to me and said did I want to stay on after Xmas. I immediately accepted and that was that. The biggest phew of all time (or at least it felt like it)! Was it just a case of serendipity that secured my employment (and our rent)? That I just happened to be in the right bar at the right time? I guess I’ll never know now but I will always be grateful to Greg. It turned out that only a couple of us got permanent jobs so the relief was even bigger once this became apparent.

Back to the music though and we start with “Mary Had A Little Boy” by Snap! The fourth and final single to be lifted from their “World Power” album, it extended their run of Top 10 singles by peaking at No 8. Although superficially based around the Mary Had A Little Lamb nursery rhyme, there’s not actually much of the source material on display save for the chorus the lyrics of which paraphrase its opening couple of stanzas. The rest of it seems to be about Turbo B working up the courage to chat up the titular Mary. It’s all pretty nasty stuff as well with him rapping about Mary’s ‘fantasy body’ and describing himself as a ‘ruthless chiller’ and a ‘ladies killer’. Was there a more objectionable pop star this year than this guy? Oh yeah, there was Timmy Mallett of course but even he wasn’t sure about this track, describing it in Smash Hits (as the guest singles reviewer) as sounding “as though they’re scraping the barrel by doing what is basically a nursery rhyme.” Having your music dissed by Timmy Mallett? Ouch!

Three songs now that were all Breakers on the previous show starting with The Carpenters and (They Long To Be) Close To You”. Although their songs are instantly recognisable to us, I hadn’t checked out their chart history before nor realised quite how many of their songs had actually been hits over here. I was thinking it would resemble Barry Manilow who, for all his fame, only ever had one Top 10 record in the UK. Not so Richard and Karen. Although not as successful as in the US where they had three No 1 singles, a haul of seven Top Tenners (of which two were No 2 hits) in this country is pretty impressive.

Oscar Wilde famously said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and that is true of many a music artist. Perhaps the biggest indication of your standing is if you are so well respected that you have your own tribute album. The Carpenters achieved this in 1994 when “If I Were A Carpenter” appeared featuring covers of their songs by artists including Sheryl Crow, The Cranberries and Sonic Youth. This one was my favourite though…

Some INXS now as “Disappear” does the very opposite by climbing three places to No 21. This was peak INXS in many ways, consolidating on the staggering commercial success of “Kick” by pretty much repeating the formula and thereby keeping the record company and fans alike happy. This was pre-grunge and before the mainstream emergence of Nirvana that overnight seemed to make every other contemporary rock band irrelevant. Things were pretty sweet in the band’s world. Michael Hutchence even had a nice, steady girlfriend in Kylie Minogue.

In a review of “Disappear” on the songmeanings.com site, there is a comment by a user that says the song sounds like the theme tune to a kids TV show called Super WHY!. OK then, lets’s see if there’s anything in this….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkDe5ZMy72E

…no, that claim is just utter nonsense.

Enigma now and there’s no disputing it that “Sadness (Part 1)” is going to be massive as it rises from No 27 to No 6 in one week prompting ideas of it even being No 1 for Xmas. It didn’t quite achieve that but it did rise to the top spot eventually in the New Year for one week whilst spending an impressive seven whole weeks in the Top 10. I have to admit that I thought it was at No 1 for much longer than that. This Gregorian chant inspired piece of ambient, new age pop (if there is such a genre) was soon seen as a massive cash cow by Virgin records who proceeded to flood the market with a series of ‘mood’ music compilations, the most successful of which was “Pure Moods” featuring artists like Vangelis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Enya and, of course, Enigma. Included in the comments on YouTube for the video to “Sadness (Part 1)” was this lovely little observation:

If you’re here because you remember this from the Pure Moods CD as a kid – I regret to inform you your parents definitely were banging to this song

Dear me! Thankfully this statement does not apply to me. I must stop reading these user comments!

Oh, I neglected to mention that the host for this one is Bruno Brookes who displays some shocking musical ignorance by declaring “The 80s return and remember this film…” before introducing the “Grease Megamix”.The 80s Bruno? The pissing 80s?! Are you out of your mind?! Grease came out in 1978 you cretin! It was based on a musical that opened in 1971 depicting life in a US High School in the 50s – what on earth is 80s about Grease?! What’s that?! Bruno also says it was mixed by Pete Waterman so maybe he was referring to him? No, not having that. Let me listen to his intro again…

…no he’s clearly referring to the film Grease. Just unforgivable. Oh and on checking , it wasn’t remixed by Pete Waterman but by Phil Harding and Ian Curnow of PWL.

Enough of Brookes and his inaccuracies though. Why were John Travolta and Olivia Newton John back in the charts in 1990? It was to celebrate / promote the release of the film on home video. OK, that makes sense but why, if it’s a megamix, does it only feature one song? The actual record featured three songs from the soundtrack ( “Summer Nights” / “You’re The One That I Want” / “Greased Lightnin'”) but TOTP just showed “Summer Nights”. I’m guessing it was a timing issue as the full megamix is 4:46 in length so maybe they just showed the end of it which happened to be solely “Summer Nights”? It does look odd I have to admit.

“Grease Megamix” peaked at No 3. Xmas party anyone?

Back to the songs we’ve already seen now as MC Hammer brings us “Pray”. Taken from his album “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em” which went diamond (note, not platinum but diamond) in the US. Now either I didn’t know or I had erased from my memory but in conjunction with the album, there was a film imaginatively entitled Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em: The Movie. Ye Gods! I looked it up on IMDB and the storyline is listed as:

MC Hammer returns to his hometown and, with the help of some funky tunes, defeats a druglord who is using kids to traffic his stuff.

WTF?! That sounds…no, I’ve got no words. And of course, you know what’s coming next…user reviews! Yes, I had to go there again didn’t I? Now these reviews were either deeply ironic or deeply insane. I’m not sure which. Here’s one…

“This movie is clearly about the epic, nay, cosmic struggle of good and evil, that films like Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now can’t even begin to address. Even though Hammer is a rapper, and generally that would be a bad thing, this film depicts him as the sword of justice fighting the evil drug dealers of Oakland with his “posse”. Hammer plays dual roles in this film: one as himself (i.e. MC Hammer) and another as the Reverend Pressure who is known for his jaw dropping performances. This leitmotif is similar to the star turns of Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall in films like “Coming to America” where they play multiple characters except that Hammer is clearly better. This film also has a really important message: say yes to Jesus and Hammer, no to drugs and violence. I cannot imagine a film that does a better job of capturing the essence of the nineties, except perhaps Cool As Ice. Sadly, however, this film was overlooked by the Academy.”

Wow! A lot to unpack there but basically Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em: The Movie is better than Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now according to somebody called cindi0724. Not only that but it can only be eclipsed by the film Cool As Ice which of course was Vanilla Ice’s acting debut. Starting to see a theme in cindi0724’s thinking yet? I like the way she notes that the film was ‘overlooked by the Academy’. Overlooked?! Completely disregarded and ignored and with good reason more like.

Want to hear another review? Here’s someone called Pilgurn’s take on MC Hammer’s film:

“Without a doubt sending out an inspiring message to the youth of all our great cities around the globe. Just to free your legs and to dance and rap your way through disputes and even into a girls heart. Absolutely fantastic bombastic, watch it any time you wanna get jiggy.”

As a mantra for life, it’s hard to argue against freeing your legs and dancing and rapping your way through disputes isn’t it?

“Pray” peaked at No 8.

After the “Grease Megamix”, we now get another 50s inspired medley, this time courtesy of Status Quo. Unlike Enigma who took 26 years to record “Sadeness (Part II)”, the Quo only took 80 days to release “The Anniversary Waltz (Part II)” as the follow up to Part I. To put this in context, Michael Palin managed to circumnavigate the world in 80 days back in 1989 whilst it took Rick, Francis and co the same amount of time to come up with some money for old rope, Jive Bunny style medley bullshit. Quite the achievement.

Following Part 1’s formula to the letter, this was some rock ‘n’ roll standards from the likes of Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry all cobbled together but unlike Jive Bunny – and this was the band’s crucial differential – they were all recorded live. There was even a a small sketch of a rabbit on the record sleeve to make the point. You weren’t fooling anybody boys – this was unmitigated shite. Even so, their army of fans still bought enough of it to send it to No 16 in the charts proving you can actually fool all of the people all of the time if they are Quo fans.

OK so this was the last TOTP to be broadcast before the Xmas Day show (which I won’t be reviewing as there’s nothing in there that I haven’t already passed comment on) but when did we actually find out the Xmas No 1 for 1990? Well, it was officially announced on Sunday 23rd December 1990 meaning the chart run down featured in this programme did NOT tell us who it was. All of which was just as well for Cliff Richard as he was only at No 2 by this point with “Saviour’s Day”. Was it this this TOTP performance that ensured he got enough last minute sales to get over the line? Possibly. We know that he also did The Des O’Connor Show in the run up to Xmas which Andy, the singles buyer at the Our Price store where I was working, put great stock in and predicted it would win Cliff the race.

Aside from being his 13th No 1 record, “Saviour’s Day” was also the single that meant that he was the first recording artist to achieve a chart topper in five different decades – a fact that was much trumpeted at the time I recall. He would only last one week at the top due to some dastardly, cunning ploy by Iron Maiden to manipulate the singles sales in the slowest week of the year after the Xmas rush but that’s all for a future post.

Close but no cigar time for Vanilla Ice as “Ice Ice Baby” will fall just short of becoming the Xmas No 1 by one week despite it spending its fourth week at the top here. He would follow up that single’s success by releasing a cover of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” in the new year which would make the Top 10 but it was all down hill from then on in with no subsequent releases even making the Top 20 over here….until that Jedward mash up thing in 2010 but let’s not go there again.

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

Inevitably after two megamix singles already on the show, we end with the most famous medley transgressors of them all. “The Crazy Party Mixes” was the seventh (!) hit for Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers who couldn’t resist the lure of Xmas and just had to release a festive party single to delight us all. It was taken from an album called “It’s Party Time” (of course it was) and, like all their releases, it was hateful.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM5pmNpxCxw

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Snap!	Mary Had A Little Boy	Nope
2	The Carpenters	They Long To Be (Close To You)	No but we all have a Carpenters Greatest Hits CD don’t we?
3	INXS	Disappear	Not the single but I have it on something somewhere I think
4	Enigma	Sadness (Part 1)	No
5	John Travolta and Olivia Newton John	Grease Megamix	Negative
6	MC Hammer	Pray	Nah
7	Status Quo	The Anniversary Waltz (Part II)	Are you joking me?
8	Cliff Richard	Saviour’s Day	Hell no!
9	Vanilla Ice	Ice Ice baby	No No baby
10	Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers	The Crazy Party Mixes	And once again Hell no!

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000v4b8/top-of-the-pops-20121990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 06 DEC 1990

Posted on April 23, 2021 by 80stastic

We’ve finally hit December 1990 here at TOTP Rewind and that can only mean one thing, the Xmas rush is on and I don’t just mean that scramble to find presents for family and friends – there is also the race for the Xmas No 1 to consider. This was definitely still a thing back then before it was hijacked and devalued by X Factor winners and latterly some bloke going on about sausage rolls every Yuletide. As such, the Top 40 is awash with new songs frantically looking for those all important sales that could make them a festive chart topper. As host Mark Goodier says at the top of the show “Tonight we may well see the song which is the Xmas No 1 so stay tuned”. Eyes down then (or should that be prick up your ears) as we find out who’s in the running…

…well surely not this lot?! Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood had been Top 10 in our charts with their single “I Can’t Stand It” just a couple of months prior to this but their chances of being the Xmas No 1 with a song that was just some more Eurodance pap were slim to non existent. The performance of their single “Are You Dreaming” here is….excruciating frankly.

The three lads in the group bounce on stage and start jive talking about dreams of cars, money and girls until one of them adopts the moral high ground when he interjects with “Yo wait a minute man, you better think about the world”. WTF?! What’s that supposed to mean? The world is a pretty big subject really don’t you think? Care to narrow it down a bit? Are we talking the environment here? Or politics? World peace maybe? What?! The whole thing reminds me of this image on Twitter that went viral a few years ago…

The rest of the song seems to be a jumble of influences and steals. The ‘oaah oh oh oh’ chant in the chorus is very similar to “Montego Bay” by Bobby Bloom (and later covered by Amazulu) whilst the lyrics seem to have stolen from Kajagoogoo (‘Eye to eye from you to me …eye to eye from me to you”) and there is a zeitgeist moment when an obligatory Vanilla Ice theme emerges (“(yeah) dreams can be very nice (yeah) Sometimes hot sometimes ice cold (yeah)”). Just pants. Get off!

“Are You Dreaming” peaked at No 17 – miles away from the Xmas No 1 title.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c212wkz9ixk

Now this next song had a better chance of…ahem…pulling off a Xmas No 1 as it were (Fnarr! Fnarr!) although it would have been a controversial one. In its favour, it was by a genuine pop music heavyweight, a superstar of the genre in Madonna. Against its chances were its sexually provocative sound and lyrics. “Justify My Love” was one of two new songs released from Madge’s first ever Greatest Hits album “The Immaculate Collection” (the other was “Rescue Me” which I mentioned in the post for the previous week’s TOTP). Written with Lenny Kravitz and Ingrid Chavez, the lyrics didn’t hold back and Madonna’s almost total delivery of them as a spoken word whisper created an almost threatening vibe to the song:

I want to run naked in a rainstorm
Make love in a train cross-country
You put this in me
So now what, so now what?

I don’t want to be your mother
I don’t want to be your sister either
I just want to be your lover
I want to be your baby
Kiss me, that’s right, kiss me

OK, OK steady on. We haven’t even got to the video yet! Ah yes, that video. Clearly the promo film that TOTP uses was not the official video for the single which was deemed far to explicit for pre-watershed broadcast so instead we got a compilation of scenes from her previous hits. To be fair, there did seem to be some attempt to co-ordinate the scenes chosen with the music (Madonna cavorting about in the waves from “Cherish” for example) but it was nothing compared to the banned video. Shot entirely in black and white, it had a European, art house feel to it and included imagery of sadomasochism, voyeurism and bisexuality alongside some actual (albeit brief) nudity, all designed to push back the barriers of what a pop promo could /should be. All very deliberate and yet designed to be defensible as well as controversial – Madonna would argue that all the women characters in her videos are sexually in control.

The film would be released as a stand alone video single (imagine that all you kids brought up on YouTube with instant access to anything ever recorded) and would sell over one million copies world wide. I certainly recall the Our Price I was working in stocking it and it being quite a big deal as it had an 18 certificate.

In a 1991 interview with Q magazine, Lenny Kravitz had this to say about “Justify My Love” and working with Madonna:

“I think it’s a classic of its type, like an old Donna Summer song. And I like Madonna a lot. She’s the best; the queen of what she does. She’s very articulate, elegant, and she has taste up the ass. It’s unbelievable.”

‘Taste up the ass’?! Oh give it a rest Lenny!

“Justify My Love” would peak at No 2 – close but no cigar Madge.

Oh this is just a great song and one that will always remind me of this time of my life. The Farm were already bona fide chart stars by this time courtesy of their previous Top 10 single “Groovy Train” but “All Together Now” completely sealed the deal. But this was more than just a chart hit, more than just a catchy pop song. Written about the unofficial truce in 1914 during WWI when British and German troops came out of the trenches to play football with each other for Christmas, it also combines a piece of classical music in its structure via its use of ‘Pachelbel’s Canon’ by the German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel. Once I realised this, Pachelbel would be my go to classical artist for those specialist music mornings that Our Price insisted upon during the week when I was first working there.

Going back to the lyrical subject matter, we were all now familiar with the truce story thanks to Paul McCartney’s “Pipes Of Peace” single but The Farm had actually beaten him to it in terms of writing a song about it when they recorded a very different version of the song (called “No Man’s Land”) for a Peel session back in 1983.

Fast forward 7 years and with Suggs of Madness as their producer, they returned to that Peel session track and turned it into “All Together Now”. It even had the brilliant fellow scouser Pete Wylie on backing vocals. What’s not to like?!

The song is very closely associated with football having been co-opted by many a team (including Everton FC) and to promote both the Euro 2004 and 2006 World Cup tournaments. Beyond that though, it has soundtracked charity work like Operation Shoebox which sends gifts in shoeboxes to soldiers serving in Afghanistan. When lead singer Peter Hooton returned to his former school in Bootle, Merseyside in later life, the children there sang his song and read out WWI poetry. Like I said, more than just a pop song.

At one point, it looked like “All Together Now” with its unity and anti-war themes might have a genuine tilt at being the Xmas No 1 but would eventually run out of steam peaking at No 4. Perhaps the ultimate Xmas No 1 that never was?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6q7RekP-mI

One of the biggest break out stars of the year next. Did MC Hammer have a serious shot at the Xmas No 1 spot? “Pray” was the third single to be lifted from his “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em” album and after pinching from Rick James for “U Can’t Touch This” and the Chi-Lites for “Have You Seen Her”, this time Hammer picks the pocket of Prince for a prominent sample of “When Doves Cry”. I say pickpockets but Prince did actually authorise the use of the sample, the first in fact of just a handful that he would allow.

This was very much in the mould of “U Can’t Touch This” but I found it all a bit dull and repetitive. Repetitive? Yes, check out this piece of trivia I found on Wikipedia:

The word ‘pray’ is mentioned 147 times during the song, setting the record for the number of times a song title is repeated in an American Top 40 hit.

I wasn’t alone in my thinking. Reviewed in Smash Hits by no less a musical authority than Timmy Mallett, the annoying little git described it as ‘awful’ and a ‘messy noise’. Of course he couldn’t resist the open goal that was MC Hammer’s name:

“I think he’s got a great name though. MC Mallett would be even better than MC Hammer but I’m MC Mallett”.

Timmy Mallett there, the dickhead’s dickhead.

“Pray” was never a serious Xmas No 1 contender peaking just inside the Top 10 at No 8 although it was a No 2 record in the US.

And just like that the game was up. After correctly predicting that The Farm would have a Top 5 hit with “All Together Now” earlier, Mark Goodier amazingly managed to be right twice in the space of a few minutes as *spoiler alert* we do get to hear the Xmas No 1 for 1990 on this very show. Of course, it had to be Cliff Richard didn’t it? This was peak Cliff wins Xmas time. After securing the festive chart topper just two years before with “Mistletoe And Wine”, here he was again with another mawkish, horrible effort in “Saviour’s Day”. In some ways it was a hat trick of Xmas No 1s as he’s appeared on the Band Aid II record in 1989. If pressed, I would have to say it was marginally less annoying than “Mistletoe And Wine” but again, it would be a case of splitting arse hairs.

He’s, of course, backed a by a choir of extras including that bloke from Modern Romance (again) and can’t resist doing that weird arm waving thing he always does. The gaelic whistle bit (which sounds like an attempt to mimic Simple Minds take on Irish folk song “She Moved Through the Fair” when they released “Belfast Child”) prompts Cliff to stand next to the whistle player and attempt to ‘play’ his microphone in the same way. Oh God, my eyes hurt. Also, what is he wearing? That silver jacket makes him resemble that Honey G woman who tried to convince us (and herself) that she was a rapper on X Factor a few years ago. This is just all kinds of wrong.

In the run up to the Xmas chart, a TV news crew (Granada?) visited our shop to talk to the people on the front line selling the records about who we thought would be the Xmas No 1. They interviewed the singles buyer who was Andy (another Our Price legend) who loved all the attention. He once just about pushed me out of the way to get to serve actress Barbara Knox who played Rita Fairclough in Coronation Street so he wasn’t going to miss out on this opportunity! Andy correctly predicted that Cliff would be the Xmas No 1 on account of the sales he would generate from appearing on The Des O’Connor Show. I so wish I could find the interview on line but despite extensive searching, I have turned up a blank.

TOTP were still sticking with the Top 5 albums feature that they had started in the Summer and so here are the best selling albums for November 1990:

Elton John – “The Very Best Of Elton John”

2. Phil Collins – “Serious Hits …Live!”

3. The Beautiful South – “Choke”

4. Paul Simon – “The Rhythm Of The Saints”

5. Madonna – “The Immaculate Collection”

A couple of things to note here. Madonna’s “The Immaculate Collection” was already starting to show its huge sales potential and sure enough, it would end up being the best selling album of the whole year in the UK despite having only been released on Nov 9th.

Secondly, can anyone make sense of Mark Goodier’s comment here?

“No 1 artist album in November, Elton John The Very Best Of Elton John …a sort of greatest hits collection”

Yes, thanks Mark. An album called ‘The Very Best Of…’ really didn’t require the qualifying statement ‘a sort of greatest hits collection’!!

RIght, where are we up to with the Snap! single release schedule of 1990? One of the most dominant charts acts of the year were onto their fourth hit with the release of “Mary Had A Little Boy”. This was the last single to be lifted from their “World Power” album and was based around the ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ nursery rhyme but now I’m wondering if this track was specifically chosen as Xmas approached with one eye on a “Mary’s Boy Child” Boney M vibe. Maybe not.

This didn’t do anything for me and after a Megamix single early the next year had been and gone, I would have bet money that would have been the last we would have seen of Snap! but I hadn’t reckoned on rhythm being a dancer two years later.

Much like MC Hammer earlier, their run of Top 10 singles was maintained when “Mary Had A Little Boy” made it to No 8 but it was never going to seriously trouble Cliff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9e43sm1xMA

Right, if it’s 1990 then there must be a New Kids On The Block record in the charts and indeed there is. “This One’s For The Children” was their eighth (!) Top 10 hit of the year and was clearly aimed at the Xmas market being a track from their “Merry, Merry Christmas” album and all. It is also possibly the most saccharine, schmaltzy dollop of shite it has ever been my misfortune to hear. It’s as if “We Are The World”(hardly a lyrical masterpiece itself) had been re-written by a six year old. Look at these lyrics:

There are some people living in this world
They have no food to eat, they have no place to go

or these…

Many people are happy and many people are sad
Some people have many things that others can only wish they had

For the love of God! Actually, God does get a name check later:

This one’s for the children
May God keep them in His throne

Just unbearable.

They must have thought they had a genuine chance of being the Xmas No 1 with this but even Cliff would have baulked at this sentimental crap. “This One’s For The Children” peaked at No 9 and would see out not just 1990 but also T’KNOB’s imperial phase. They would never be as popular again. Phew!

After Goodier does a spoonerism in his Top 10 countdown when he says “Kinky Boots” is up 5 at No 9 (it’s the other way round Mark, up 9 at No 5), we get to Vanilla Ice who is not only still at No 1 but also “rapping totally live” in the studio! Would this have been a big deal back in the day? I think it might have been you know. Ice does a good job of performing “Ice Ice Baby” as well alongside his trio of backing dancers plus a DJ. Pretty nifty moves and rhymes. Right, I can’t be seen to be endorsing Vanilla Ice so to even it up, here is his atrocious rhyming message for all the readers of Smash Hits back then :

“Yo, this is Vanilla Ice, Just chillin’ like Bob Dylan, And maxin’ like Michael Jackson on Smash Hits Baby!”

Oof!

Still, Vanilla Ice looked a good bet for staying at No 1 until Xmas and he would prove to be Cliff’s stiffest competition. The race for that coveted spot would go right to the wire.

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

The play out video is “24 Hours” by Betty Boo and is surely the least remembered of her trio of hit singles in 1990. Nowhere near as good as either “Doin’ The Do” or “Where Are You Baby” it would stall at No 25. Betty’s profile didn’t take an immediate nose dive though as she was voted that year’s best British Breakthrough Act at the 1991 BRIT Awards. However, a lip-synching scandal whilst on tour in Australia combined with caring for her mother when she was diagnosed with cancer meant a pause would have to be inserted into her pop career, a pause from which she would never really recover as a recording artist.

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

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Twenty Four Seven featuring Captain Hollywood	Are You Dreaming	Not dreaming, having a nightmare more like – no
2	Madonna	Justify My Love	No but I have that Immaculate Collection CD it’s included on
3	The Farm	All Together Now	I was sure I had but the singles box says no
4	MC Hammer	Pray	Nah
5	Cliff Richard	Saviour’s Day	Hell no!
6	Snap!	Mary Had A Little Boy	Nope
7	New Kids On The Block	This One’s For The Children	See 5 above
8	Vanilla Ice	Ice Ice baby	No No baby
9	Betty Boo	24 Hours	No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000ty1q/top-of-the-pops-06121990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 04 OCT 1990

Posted on March 16, 2021 by 80stastic

We’re really out of sync with these BBC4 TOTP repeats. In the real world in 2021 we are entering Spring whilst in TOTP Rewind land we are are well into the Autumn of 1990. Like a busted clock, even allowing for the two repeats a week schedule, there’s usually a couple of times in a calendar year when TOTP of yesteryear and real time are in harmony but the delay between the end of the 1989 shows and the beginning of the 1990 broadcasts has thrown everything out. Oh well – in a world of lockdown, time seems to have shifted from its axis anyway and no longer seems to function as it once did. The days are so much longer and the lack of anything to do means they all blur into each other anyway. When I was working in record shops in the 90s, I’m sure Mr Our Price used to mess with the space-time continuum so slowly did some of the afternoons pass.

The first act on this week’s TOTP ought to know something about the workings of time given their name – Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood. OK, the Captain Hollywood bit doesn’t add anything to the theme but you can see where I was going. This lot seemed to be a prototype 2 Unlimited with their template of a male rapper and female singer (plus both acts were Dutch) and yet, unlike the latter who terrorised the charts for a good few years in the early to mid 90s, they never seemed able to capitalise on the success of “I Can’t Stand It” in the UK. There was a follow up single that made the Top 20 but after that, time stood still for them.

In the rest of Europe however, it was a completely different story where they remained popular and successful despite the departure of the Captain himself in 1991. By the way, Hollywood’s real name is Tony Dawson-Harrison and after leaving the band, he went a bit off the rails…

Talking of time as we were…it’s HAMMER TIME! Yes, MC Hammer is back and for the second time this year, there is a cover of a song originally recorded by the Chi-Lites in the UK Top 40. Back in July, Paul Young released his version of their “Oh Girl” track and now MC Hammer has followed suit by covering “Have You Seen Her”. As a follow up to “U Can’t Touch This”, it was quite a departure bpm wise. With it being a Hammer production though, he changes the lyrics significantly with pretty much the only one kept the same being the ‘Have you seen her, tell me have you seen her’ chorus. I’m not sure that all of the rewritten words have aged that well. Check these out:

Hammer, you know I’m looking
Calling all my friends all around the place
Guy, Levert, or my homey Rob Base

If you’ve peeped her out, tell me
Yo, veo on the phone
Ted, Dre, or Ed Lover
Fab Five, homeys won’t you help a young brother

Peeped her out?! Plus he refers to himself in the third person at least twice – a clear sing that success had gone to his head by this point. Apparently Hammer would inflict fines for breaches of discipline by any of his touring party for such crimes as making mistakes on stage! Lost. In. Showbiz. “Have You Seen Her” didn’t quite match the heights of “U Can’t Touch This” but was a solid follow up, peaking inside the Top 10 at No 8. The third single released from the album, “Pray”, would further consolidate his success by duplicating that chart position. We’re not done with Hammer time just yet!

One of the most consistently, commercially successful bands of the 80s next who, despite by their own acknowledgement had realised by this point that their imperial phase was over, nevertheless continued to produce work of substance into the new decade. “So Hard” was the lead single from the first Pet Shop Boys album in nigh on two years. When it was released later in the month, “Behaviour” would go to No 2 but would sell substantially less copies than their “Actually” and “Introspective” albums. However, despite my persistent blogging about a TV show format that insisted the opposite and made a competition out of music, creativity cannot be measured by units shifted and chart positions alone. “Behaviour” is now very much seen as a maturing of their writing and routinely named as one of their finest works by their fan base. A melancholy classic dealing with the weighty subjects of friendship, loss and, in the case of the track “Being Boring”, speaking to and for the LGBT community of the heartbreak and tragedy of AIDS.

Coming back to “So Hard”, apparently it was the first track finished for “Behaviour” but Chris Lowe has subsequently acknowledged that it could and possibly should have been left off the album so incongruous was it to the rest of the songs it contained. Even if you only know the singles taken from the album like the aforementioned “Being Boring” and “Jealousy”, it’s easy to see what Chris was getting at. Not that it isn’t a good song, I think it stands up well and I initially preferred it to the subsequent single releases but over time I have come to appreciate more the power of the song writing on those other tracks.

I once got into a Twitter row with the Absolute 80s radio station about “So Hard”. How so? Well, it was all to do with the subject of time again, or more specifically the delineation of it. What am I going on about? Well, it’s simple really. Absolute 80s played “So Hard”, a song released 10 months into the 90s. It offended my sense of musical eras. Here’s the spat in full:

@Absolute80s Sure but you just played So Hard by Pet Shop Boys released Oct 1990. Hardly 80s is it? #getyourdatesstraight
— Richard Bayliss (@Dickiebliss) October 9, 2013

@Dickiebliss Some tracks are on the cusp of a decade but fit more the style of the previous or next one… so we exercise creative curation!
— Absolute 80s (@Absolute80s) October 9, 2013

@Absolute80s Hmm..I see. So it's out with the creative shoe horn is it? Not sure how PSB will feel about being pigeon-holed as an 80s band.
— Richard Bayliss (@Dickiebliss) October 9, 2013

@Absolute80s Ridiculous! If you segregate music as you have done then stick to your own branding rules. #getyourdatesstraight
— Richard Bayliss (@Dickiebliss) October 9, 2013

Yes, I am a complete pedant. “So Hard” peaked at No 4 in the UK Top 40.

Oh come on! Who in the whole wide world needed a Technotronic “Megamix”?! This was weapons grade shithousery by the act’s record label as they basically had their first four singles (that had already been hits) mixed together and shoved that out into the market to get people to buy them all over again. Thankfully, this act of gross manipulation turned out to be the tipping point and record buyers rejected their poisonous product after this. They would achieve just one more Top 20 hit in the UK. In early 1991, fellow Eurodance snake oil salesmen Snap! would pull the exact same shit when they released a single called “Mega Mix” which was a remix of their first four singles and just like Technotronic’s effort, it also went Top 10. Would we ever learn?

The TOTP producers are still persisting with this best selling albums of the previous month nonsense. For the record, the best selling albums of Sep 1990 were:

1. Three Tenors – In Concert

2. George Michael – “Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1”

3. Elton John – “Sleeping With The Past”

4. Michael Bolton – “Soul Provider”

5. Deacon Blue – “Ooh Las Vegas”

A couple of noteworthy things here. Firstly, the weird, DIY looking clip to reflect the George Michael album. What the Hell was that?! Well, George had refused to shoot a video for the album’s lead single “Praying For Time” due to tensions with his record company Sony and seeing as there wasn’t yet another single taken from it, seemingly somebody (Sony? TOTP?) put together some stills against a back drop of the “Waiting For That Day” track. It looks odd to say the least.

Secondly, that Deacon Blue album was a compilation of B-sides and unreleased tracks so the fact that it was such a big seller says much for their popularity at that time. I’ve got “Ooh Las Vegas” and there are some great songs on there and no I don’t care what you think of that statement.

Back in the studio we find MC Tunes and 808 State with “Tunes Splits The Atom”. This was the second consecutive hit for Tunes after “The Only Rhyme That Bites” earlier in the year and while it’s crammed with his rap lyrics like its predecessor, it has a more mellow vibe to it. This was the last single to be officially credited to ‘MC Tunes versus 808 State’ – “Primary Rhyming”, the next single lifted from his debut album “The North At Its Heights”, had that wording removed from its cover credits. That act seemed to break the spell as it peaked at No 67 and MC Tunes never graced the charts again. There was no chain reaction of subsequent hits after this one (ho ho).

He made the most of his time in the spotlight though including being the guest singles reviewer for Smash Hits around this time. He chose “So Hard” by Pet Shop Boys as his single of the fortnight but he hated MC Hammer’s “Have You Seen Her” describing it thus:

“This is the sort of tune that gets played in nightclubs called ‘Mr Smiths’ wear people go wearing their nice suits, drink brown ale and chat up women. Crap.”

Quite. Smash Hits subsequently ran a competition to win the very copy of the MC Hammer single that MC Tunes damaged! “Tunes Splits The Atom” peaked at No 18.

Some Breakers now…what? Four of them?! Oh great. Lots more typing to do yet then. We start with the Adventures of Stevie V who I had no idea managed two chart hits! “Body Language” was that second hit but was nowhere near as successful as his No 2 hit “Dirty Cash” peaking at No 29. The reason why? It was a load of old cobblers! Give me The Adventures of Tin Tin over Stevie V anytime. Hell, I’d even settle for some Thompson Twins (see what I did there?).

The unusual event next of a Breaker tune becoming a No 1 record. Despite the TOTP hosts usual claims that this section featured the most ‘happening’ records on the charts, they rarely were and the whole premise of the feature was presumably just a ploy to be able to cram in a load more tunes on the show. “A Little Time” by The Beautiful South was a welcome exception. Whilst not my favourite song of theirs by quite some distance, compared to the likes of The Adventures Of Stevie V, it was chart nectar. Entering the charts at a lowly No 30, it progressed steadily to the Top 10 the following week, then the Top 5 and finally No 1 for a solitary week.

Yet another bittersweet tune from the pens of Paul Heaton and David Rotheray, the use of a male and female vocalist in Dave Hemmingway and Briana Corrigan helped to emphasise the opposing sides of the lyrics with the sting in the tale that while ‘Dave’ had been off enjoying himself before committing himself to the relationship, by the time he had decided, ‘Briana’ had pulled the plug on it and wanted nothing to do with him. The memorable video full of flour, feathers, kitchen knives and a decapitated teddy bear with its head on a spike won the 1991 Brit Awards for British Video of the Year.

“Red Hot + Blue” was a compilation album from the Red Hot Organization, a not-for-profit international body dedicated to fighting AIDS through pop culture and featured interpretations of Cole Porter songs by contemporary pop artists. It was a fairly eclectic roster of artists who contributed from Tom Waits to U2 and from Salif Keita to k.d. lang. It sold over a million copies worldwide and there was an accompanying TV special featuring specially created videos for the songs, alongside clips highlighting the effects of AIDS.

I remember the album used to get a regular airing in the Our Price store I was working in by the end of the year and my favourite track from it was David Byrne’s treatment of “Don’t Fence Me In” closely followed by Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop’s cover of “Well, Did You Evah!”. However, the official single released from the album was Neneh Cherry ‘s take on “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” which, whilst very important in terms of helping to promote AIDS awareness, I didn’t like that much at all musically. Looking back ,and given the subject matter of “Being Boring”, I’m surprised that Pet Shop Boys weren’t contributors to the project whereas the aforementioned Thompson Twins were. Not that I know anything about how such projects are put together of course. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” peaked at No 25.

As with the first of this week’s Breakers The Adventures of Stevie V, I had no idea this lot had a second hit but they did. “Heaven” was the re-released follow up to The Chimes‘ cover version of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. It was a No 1 song on the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart but struggled to a high of No 24 in the UK Top 40. Listening to it now, I can appreciate Pauline Henry’s vocal prowess but the song doesn’t do anything much for me at all I’m afraid.

Who on earth was Bobby Vinton and what was he doing in the charts? Well, you only had to hear “Blue Velvet” once to realise that he was a singing star from back in the day but apart from that I knew very little. Oh hang on, was he the guy that sang “Dream Lover” and “Mack The Knife”? No, that was Bobby Darin. Oh. Well, Wikipedia tells me that Vinton was a US singer-songwriter who, get this, released 38 studio albums, 67 compilation albums and 88 singles over the course of the 60s, 70s and 80s. However, he’d only ever had two minor Top 40 hits in the UK back in the early 60s.

So why was he riding high in our charts in the 90s? I don’t really have to spell it out do I? No, it was nothing to do with the David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet (although the song does feature in it as sung by its star Isabella Rossellini). OK, it seems I do have to spell it out. It was used in an advert. Of course it was! Everything in the charts in this year seemed to have been in a bloody advert. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

This re-release of "Blue Velvet" came about thanks to its inclusion in an ad for Nivea cold cream (which came in a blue bottle!). https://t.co/iqkvkhWjCl #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 12, 2021

Nowadays of course, Nivea have turned from blue to red and got Liverpool FC footballers to advertise their products. Thankfully, this hasn’t led to a re-release of the “Anfield Rap” yet. “Blue Velvet” would rise all the way to No 2.

Maria McKee is still at No 1 with “Show Me Heaven” but instead of that live vocal studio performance that they’ve been showing, we get the official promo video this week. As it’s from the Days Of Thunder film, it’s not long before we see Tom Cruise’s fizzog (mostly kissing co-star and later wife Nicole Kidman) although to be fair, Maria does get plenty of screen time too.

I’ve never seen Days Of Thunder but I’m imagining it’s like Top Gun but with racing cars instead of jets. Hang on, it says in Wikipedia that Cruise’s character was called Cole Trickle? Cole Trickle? Wait! It gets better (or worse). The character’s name was a reference to real life American race car driver Dick Trickle! That’s DICK TRICKLE!! Once more…DICK TRICKLE!! That’s up there with Biggus Dickus…

Just in case you hadn’t had enough Technotonic in the last 30 minutes, here they were again as the play out video but under their pseudonym of Hi Tek 3 along with Ya Kid K with “Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)”. Like Partners In Kryme before them, this was from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles soundtrack and was actually a re-release having made No 69 back in January but was propelled to No 15 this time around on the back of the fuss/success surrounding those infernal turtles.

Ya Kid K always makes me think of “Our Kid Eh” by Mark and Lard’s spoof group The Shirehorses which of course lampoons Radiohead’s “Kid A” and features songs such as “Why Is It Always Dairy Lea” (a take off of “Why Does It Always Rain On Me?” by Travis) and “Feel Like Shite” (their take on “Alright” by Supergrass). Lovely stuff.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood	I Can’t Stand It	…and therefore I didn’t buy it
2	MC Hammer	Have You Seen Her	Nope
3	Pet Shop Boys	So Hard	No but it’s on my Pop Art retrospective of theirs
4	Technotronic	Megamix	As if
5	MC Tunes / 808 State	Tunes Splits The Atom	No
6	The Adventures Of Stevie V	Body Language	Negative
7	The Beautiful South	A Little Time	Not the single but I have it on their Best Of album
8	Neneh Cherry	I’ve Got You Under My Skin	It’s a no
9	The Chimes	Heaven	And another one
10	Bobby Vinton	Blue Velvet	Not for me thanks
11	Maria McKee	Show Me Heaven	Nah
12	Hi Tek 3 featuring Ya Kid K	Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)	Hell no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t132/top-of-the-pops-04101990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 09 AUG 1990

Posted on February 15, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s the height of Summer in 1990 here at TOTP Rewind so that can only mean one thing – nasty, tacky novelty records! Previous years had seen the charts flooded with some of the most brainless musical ditties ever committed to vinyl from the likes of Black Lace (“Agadoo”), The Tweets (“The Birdie Song”) and Spitting Image (“The Chicken Song”). Surely this sort of thing wouldn’t continue into the new decade? Oh yes it would (sorry went a bit pantomime there although that might actually be appropriate). I’ve been dreading this moment ever since I started posting about 1990. I knew it was there, waiting in the wings ready to ambush the nation – a heinous, wicked entity. Shield your eyes as we have arrived at the time of Bombalurina and “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini“!

In 1990, was there a more annoying choice to front a horrible novelty record than the guy who actually did? Timmy Mallett was known to most of us as that berk with the giant, pink foam mallet from children’s morning TV programme Wacaday and he was the most irritating twat that TV had seen for years. Everything about him was vexatious from his ‘bleugh!’ catchphrase to his boundless energy for leaping about on screen. And now here he was with stinking out the pop charts! Whose f*****g idea was this? Well, it was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s actually. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Timmy Mallett: "[Andrew Lloyd Webber] invited me round to his house for tea although I'd never met him before, ever. He said, 'I've got this idea for doing a record – would you like to do it?' I said, 'Yeah, you bet!'" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 5, 2021

Unbelievably, the Bombalurina project (named after a character from his musical Cats) wasn’t even the biggest crime on Lloyd Webber’s charge sheet. Twenty five years later he would outdo himself by flying into the country from abroad on his personal plane to vote in the House of Lords over proposed cuts to tax credits – he voted with the Government in favour of the plan. Wanker.

Back to Mallett though who was clearly having the time of his life playing at this pop star lark. In a Rick from The Young Ones moment he declared to Smash Hits magazine that:

“I’m going to be the most utterly, utterly famous pop star ever”

And yet, unimaginable as it may seem, Mallett did have a more credible music background than the utter embarrassment that Bombalurina was. I clearly recall him as a presenter on the Oxford Road Show pop music magazine show back in the mid 80s. Here he is trying to interview the ever evasive Terry Hall…

OK, he was fairly useless and unconvincing but still. Fast forward five years and all credibility has been flushed down the khazi – the performance here is like the pantomime from Hell. Excruciating doesn’t come anywhere near describing the horror on view. It sounded horrendous back in 1990 and yet, in an occurrence that seems to be against all auditory science, it sounds even worse today. I wonder if any of the ‘proper’ pop stars that he interviewed on Oxford Road Show caught this performance and thought to themselves “Yeah, not surprised. I always knew he was an arsehole”.

Mallett will be at No 1 soon enough. FFS!

Some proper music next…or is it? “Tom’s Diner” by DNA and Suzanne Vega sounded otherworldly to me back then and still unsettles me now. The lolloping Soul II Soul backbeat that Bath duo DNA added to the original a cappella song that Vega recorded for her 1997 album “Solitude Standing” sparked a mass of covers and re-interpretations of the song. So many were there that Vega’s record label compiled some on an album simply called “Tom’s Album” including a live version from Michael Stipe with Billy Bragg beatboxing and incorprating Madness’s “Baggy Trousers” and EMF’s “Unbelievable” into the mix…

More recently, Giorgio Moroder recorded a version of it for his 2015 album “Déjà Vu” featuring Britney Spears on vocal duties…

Back in 1990 though and DNA’s treatment of the track struck a massive chord with music fans who sent it to No 2 in the UK and No 5 in the US. The single’s B-side was Vega’s a cappella original – I wonder how many people who bought it actually listened to that version though? Someone who really did listen to it was one Karlheinz Brandenburg, a German electrical engineer, who developed the widespread MP3 method for audio data compression. Brandenburg used “Tom’s Diner” (the a cappella version) as a template for refining the sound quality of MP3 audio, a tale which has earned Vega the informal title “The Mother of the MP3”.

Not “Naked In The Rain” again? Is this the third time Blue Pearl have been on the show? I’ve covered all the Pink Floyd connections, the fact that legendary producer Youth was behind the project and the implausibility of singer Durga McBroom’s name – what else is there left to say? Well, apparently Durga’s favourite ever album is “Court And Spark” by Joni Mitchell. There – that’s it. That’s the comment. I’ve got nothing else.

Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 were still in the Top 40 with “Mona” when their next single “Amanda” followed it into the charts. They were on a roll! I always thought this was a passable attempt at a soft rock ballad although you could argue that the world already had quite enough of that sort of thing courtesy of American rockers Boston. So who was the titular Amanda? Why, it was a girl called Rachel of course! Eh? Well, Rachel was actress Rachel Friend who McLachlan had met on the set of Aussie soap Neighbours when she played a character called Bronwyn Davies. Rachel? Bronwyn? Where the Hell does Amanda fit into all this?! Easy really – Amanda is Rachel Friend’s middle name and her and Craig were married in 1993. They were divorced in 1994. Ah. The break up shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise to the two of them though – they wrote a song together for the debut Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 album called “Can’t Take It Any Longer”. Ahem.

By the way, Check 1-2 is a terrible name for a band isn’t it? Well, originally they were called The Y Frontz so I guess it was an upgrade on that. In 1996, in another act of predicting the future via song title, Craig released an album called “Craig McLachlan & The Culprits”. This was unfortunate as in 2018, he faced sexual harassment allegations from several actresses during his performing career. Craig was however acquitted of all charges in 2020.

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

Three Breakers next and for once, they are all from some very established artists. Roxette were riding the crest of their commercial wave having just scored a huge global hit with “It Must Have Been Love”. As that single had come from the soundtrack to Pretty Woman and the band were in between albums, EMI needed to revisit their back catalogue to unearth a follow up. “Listen To Your Heart” had been originally released back in October of 1989 from the”Look Sharp” album and although it had been a No 1 song in the US, it had failed to dent the Top 40 over here. Indeed, both it and “Dressed For Success” had failed to capitalise on the success of their UK breakthrough hit “The Look”. With Pretty Woman pulling in the crowds at the box office though and “It Must Have Been Love” receiving massive airplay, “Listen To Your Heart” couldn’t fail this time.

Much more of a traditional soft rock ballad than their previous more poppy output, the change of direction was entirely deliberate. In the liner notes of their 1995 greatest hits compilation “Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus!”, Per Gessle described the song as:

“This is us trying to recreate that overblown American FM-rock sound to the point where it almost becomes absurd. We really wanted to see how far we could take it.”

They absolutely nailed that sound (absurd or not) – you could easily imagine that when listening to “Listen To Your Heart” you were actually listening to…erm…Heart. Following Elton John’s “Sacrifice / Healing Hands” lead, the single was actually a double A-side with the other track being something called ‘”Dangerous”. I have no idea how that one went though as daytime radio hammered the crap out of “Listen To Your Heart” and totally ignored ‘”Dangerous”.

The re-release of “Listen To Your Heart” peaked at No 6 in the UK.

Now then, I said these Breakers were all from established artists and they are but this second one is actually the debut single from the act in question. How so? Well, it’s a Jon Bon Jovi solo single of course. “Blaze Of Glory” was the title of both the lead single and parent album that included songs from and inspired by the movie Young Guns II. With Bon Jovi (the band) on hiatus after touring the world twice to promote the “Slippery When Wet” and “New Jersey” albums and with no firm plans for further recordings at that time, Jon was open to other projects. Star of Young Guns II Emilio Estevez had approached him about using Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead Or Alive” song for the film’s soundtrack. You can see why – its cowboys theme title a seemingly perfect fit for the second instalment of the Young Guns story that was breathing new life into the Western film genre. However, Jon didn’t think the track’s lyrics were fit for that type of usage – the cowboy stuff was all a metaphor to describe the life on the road of a touring rock band (‘steel horse’ = tour bus, geddit?). Instead he wrote Estevez and the film’s screenwriter John Fusco a brand new song. I say ‘brand new’ but I actually mean ripped off / just re-wrote “Wanted Dead Or Alive”. It’s basically the same song for heaven’s sake! And that was fine by me. Bon Jovi had been a guilty pleasure of mine for a few years by this point and “Blaze Of Glory” fitted in perfectly with their previous catalogue.

The video is absolutely epic with Bon Jovi strutting around atop thousand-foot cliffs outside Moab, Utah. I always liked the way he threw his guitar around when he was really going for it in the chorus. See Jason Donovan, if you’re going to wander about of cliff tops with a guitar, this is how you do it and not as you did with your shallow attempt in the “Too Many Broken Hearts” promo.

As for the film itself, Young Guns II never really lived up to the appeal of its predecessor for me. The new characters just weren’t that likeable whilst Alan Ruck’s Hendry William French seemed completely pointless. Without that same sense of camaraderie that was a feature of Young Guns, it just didn’t work for me. Whilst watching the first film as a student in Sunderland, somebody in the audience actually stood up and shouted “Charlie!” when Charlie Sheen’s character got shot.

“Blaze Of Glory” peaked at No 13 in the UK and was a No 1 in the US.

Definitely an established artist was Sting although he hadn’t had a Top 40 single since “Russians” in late 1985. His second solo album, 1987’s “…Nothing Like the Sun”, had though been a platinum selling No 1 record but none of the singles from it had been hits. One of those was “Englishman in New York” which had stalled at No 51 on its original release. Fast forward to 1990 and for some reason, Sting’s record label A&M allowed Dutch DJ and producer Ben Liebrand to remix the track and it finally became a chart hit peaking at No 15. I’m not sure what the reasoning behind this decision was other than to raise Sting’s profile ahead of the release of his third solo album, “The Soul Cages”, which hit the shops six months on from this.

I’m not entirely convinced that the 1990 remix is that different from the 1987 original to be honest but its an intriguing tune all the same. Famously written about eccentric and gay icon Quentin Crisp who features in the video, it’s possibly one of Sting’s most well known solo efforts I would suggest and even inspired this 1993 version by reggae singer Shinehead.

Enough with all these old fogeys though, what the kids wanted back in the Summer of 1990 was….a load of bleeps set to a heavy bass sound? WTF? Yes, for all 1990 is remembered for ‘Madchester’ and the baggy movement, there was also a significant invasion of the Top 40 by a genre called ‘Bleep ‘n’ Bass’ – or was it ‘Electro Bleep’? Look, I don’t know; it wasn’t my bag at all but I do know that there was a dance compilation series called ‘Breaks, Bass & Bleeps’ that showcased this sort of thing. And just as ‘Madchester’ had its holy trinity of The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets so ‘Bleep ‘n’ Bass’ had its trio of chart stars in LFO, Together (more of whom later) and this lot, Tricky Disco. Behind the name were husband and wife duo Michael Wells and Lee Newman who used a plethora of aliases to release their music the idea behind which was that the press would not write about so much material all coming from the same act but they would review releases by supposedly distinct artists with completely different names. Some of their other identities included GTO, John + Julie, Church of Extacy, Signs of Chaos, Salami Brothers, Killout Squad and Technohead the last of whom gave them their biggest ever hit with 1996’s “I Wanna Be a Hippy”.

To me though, the bleeps in “Tricky Disco” sounded like my Binatone video game from when I was about 11 and I couldn’t be doing with it. What? Binatone? It was a huge clunky piece of hardware that, when plugged into your TV, allowed you a choice of 10 game including football, hockey, tennis and something infuriating called gridball.

This was what passed for hi spec computer game graphics in the 70s kids

However, they were all based around very limited graphic capability so pretty much all you got on screen was a paddle and a dot for a ball…and I loved it…for a while but eventually all the fuss around setting it up on the TV (there were no separate monitors back in the 70s) kind of squeezed all the excitement out of it.

Anyway, the sound of the paddles continually hitting the dot ball back and forth was just like the bleep noises on “Tricky Disco” and the like and that wasn’t music to me. Sorry.

This was though! By my reckoning, this is the third time that “I’m Free” by The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid has been on the show but the first time we have seen the video. The promo is basically a straight band performance but set against spiralling, fluorescent psychedelic colours and was directed by someone called Matthew Amos who went onto work with artists as diverse as Blur, Elton John and erm…Slipknot.

It reminds me of the old 60s sci-fi series Time Tunnel or when late night Channel 4 magazine show The Word had live bands on. Look, like Stereo MC’s here…

So after Blue Pearl and The Soup Dragons earlier in the show, here’s yet another track which has been on TOTP multiple times now. I think this might be the fourth occasion for MC Hammer and “U Can’t Touch This” but to enable these repeat performances to be squeezed onto the show, their air time has been vastly reduced. The Soup Dragons got about 1minute 20 seconds on screen whilst MC Hammer came in at 1:10!

Such is the legacy of “U Can’t Touch This” that it has been parodied time and time again. The obvious suspects like lampooner-in-chief Weird Al Yankovic have gone there but it has also been sent up by NFL American football team the Miami Dolphins, in an episode of Family Guy and to promote social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Oh and this one as well…

We’ll be seeing more of MC Hammer before 1990 is done with I’m sure.

Finally a song we haven’t seen/heard before! Well, sort of. “I Can See Clearly Now” was well known to music fans from the Johnny Nash original which hit No 5 in 1972 but it was reactivated here by Irish rockers Hothouse Flowers. The second (and most successful) single to be taken from their album “Home”, was its release just and open and shut case of needing a cover version to secure them a hit? Possibly. Lead single from the album “Give It Up” had peaked at a lowly No 30 so it could have just been a cynical record company move. I have to say that they did a nice job of it, injecting some gospel vibes and before letting it rock out in the song’s finale. However, if they were hoping to break the Top 10 with it, they were to be disappointed as it struggled to No 23. A third and final single taken from the album called “Movies'” didn’t even make the Top 40 and we would not see the band for another three years when they returned with the “Songs From The Rain” album.

In November 2016, their version of the song was featured in the premiere episode of the Amazon Prime Video motoring show The Grand Tour which was the new (ahem) vehicle for massive bell end Jeremy Clarkson after he had been sacked by the BBC from his previous show Top Gear. The exposure for the song sent it to No 1 on the iTunes’s Top 40 UK Rock Song chart in late 2016.

It’s the third of four weeks at the top for Partners In Kryme with “Turtle Power“. So popular were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that they actually went on tour! A proper concert tour playing live gigs! The Coming Out of Their Shells tour premiered at Radio City Music Hall in August of 1990 and featured live-action turtles playing music as a band. In case you were wondering, this was the line up:

Michelangelo – guitar
Leonardo – bass guitar
Donatello – keyboards
Raphael – drums and saxophone

Like I said, a proper band! Never mind the story of The Monkees starting out as a fictional band and becoming real pop stars, this was next level stuff! To be fair, The Banana Splits had kind of beaten them to it with the performing as a band schtick by a good 20 years but I’m not sure if they ever went on tour! What I am sure about is that their tune was infinitely more funky than the one those turtles were playing…

That’s all my turtle trivia for another week. Spare a thought for me though as I’ve got another week of this nonsense to have to comment on!

So back to that bleeping ‘Bleep ‘n’ Bass’ stuff for the play out video which is the aforementioned Together with “Hardcore Uproar”. I have no recollection of this at all, so much so that I assumed that the name of the act was Hardcore Uproar and the song was called “Together” when I came to review it. I think I was getting confused with Stockport based indie imps Northern Uproar on reflection. Together on the other hand were a pair of Hacienda regulars whose white label recording of “Hardcore Uproar” was so popular that hit qualified for an official release and climbed to No 12 in the charts. Supposedly the tracks title was the inspiration for a series of compilations featuring house, techno and rave tunes released on the Dino Entertainment label. I do remember that compilation series from my time in Our Price if not the band Together.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8GhXrT2qPE

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Bombalurina	Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini	How does f**k off sound as an answer?
2	Suzanne Vega featuring DNA	Tom’s Diner	No but my wife had the original version of the song on Suzanne’s Solitude Standing album
3	Blue Pearl	Naked In The Rain	It’s a no
4	Craig McLachlan and Check 1-2	Amanda	Nope
5	Roxette	Listen To Your Heart	I did and it said don’t buy this record
6	Jon Bon Jovi	Blaze Of Glory	No but it’s probably on my Bon Jovi collection CD
7	Sting	Englishman In New York	No
8	Tricky Disco	Tricky Disco	Tricky Disc-NO
9	The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid	I’m Free	Thought I did but singles box says no. I did however by the follow up single Mother Universe
10	MC Hammer	U Can’t Touch This	And I didn’t – no
11	Hothouse Flowers	I Can See Clearly Now	But I couldn’t see my way clear to buying this – no
12	Partners In Kryme	Turtle Power	This as a crime…against music. No
13	Together	Hardcore Uproar	Harcore! You know the score! Erm…no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rxpk/top-of-the-pops-09081990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 26 JUL 1990

Posted on February 5, 2021 by 80stastic

We are still in the middle of Summer here at TOTP Rewind, Summer 1990 that is. I haven’t dropped in on the 22 year old version of myself for a few posts so let me give him a bell and see if he’s there….oh yeah, affordable mobile phones are yet to flood the market so I didn’t have one in 1990 – indeed I spent most of the decade without one. Never mind, I know where he’ll be – working at Kingston Communications on that temporary VDU input contract. What’s that? The contract finished a couple of weeks ago? So where is he now then? Try Queen’s Gardens? OK, thanks. Not having any work again, the 1990 me used to often spend my time idling the hours away wandering around Queen’s Gardens in Hull, usually with my trusty Sony Walkman for company.

Queen’s Gardens, Hull – yes they do look nice don’t they?

I’m guessing my girlfriend / wife must have had a job at this time as I have no recollection of spending anytime with her shooting the breeze in the gardens in the sun. I think my period of free time didn’t last that long as Kingston Communications asked me to come back for a further couple of weeks work later on in the Summer so impressed were they by me as the master of VDU input. For now though, I’m busy doing nothing and listening to? What was I listening to on that Walkman? The only thing I can recall is that I had purchased the cassette single of the latest World Party single called “Put The Message In The Box” so I was probably playing that on repeat.

Enough of me though and back to TOTP. Tonight’s host is Jakki Brambles who appears to have undergone a dramatic image restyle with her hair now up but with some cascading ringlets framing her face. From cascading ringlets to cascading rain as we join opening act Blue Pearl who are still “Naked In The Rain”. As well as the unlikely named Durga McBroom on vocals, the band also featured Youth, the well known record producer and musician. His is an interesting story with notable career moments including being founding member and bass player in gothic rockers Killing Joke and going on to produce pretty much everyone from Art Of Noise to The Verve via Crowded House, James, Erasure and Bananarama (more of whom later). One of his less heralded projects but one which I always quite liked were funk pop-rockers Brilliant who included future KLF masterminds Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond as their keyboardist/guitarist and A&R manager respectively. Drummond didn’t share my like of the band though stating in an interview on Norwegian radio station NRK P2 that:

“I signed a band called Brilliant, who I worked with, we worked together, and it was complete failure. Artistically bankrupt project. And financially deaf. We spent £300,000 on making an album that was useless. Useless artistically, useless… commercially.”

Ouch! Well, I disagree Bill. What say you reader?

Back to Blue Pearl though and after “Naked In The Rain” peaked at No 4, the house duo seemed to be set to ride the dance wave into the early 90s and beyond but follow up track “Little Brother ” only made it to No 31 whilst the album “Naked” was caught with its pants down at a lowly No 58. The project was disbanded in 1993 but “Naked In The Rain” returned to the Top 40 in 1998 as…erm… “Naked In The Rain 98”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBiABXbcLBQ&pbjreload=101

Oh knackers! It’s going to be one of those dance dominated shows isn’t it? The second act tonight are Technotronic featuring Ya Kid K with “Rockin’ Over The Beat”. I really can’t think of anything else I want to say about this lot. C’mon man think! Ok, how about a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles connection? They’re all the rage aren’t they? Brilliant (no not them)! Here goes…Technotronic contributed the song “Spin That Wheel” to the soundtrack album of the film under the pseudonym of Hi Tek 3 and Ya Kid K ‘featured’ on that as well. n some territories it was released as “Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)”. The track was released as a single twice in the UK, peaking at No 69 in January 1990 but making No 15 when re-released nine months later. That do you? No? Well, Ya Kid K seemingly couldn’t get enough of those turtles so she released her own solo single called “Awesome (You Are My Hero)” from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II soundtrack in 1991. Cow and indeed abunga!

OK, so the next one is another dance track but an interesting one for all that. I already knew of the song “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega as it had been the opening track on Suzanne’s 1987 album “Solitude Standing” which my girlfriend/wife had bought. Being an a cappella song, it was quite striking on first hearing (and pretty much every one after that too). It had been released as a single but it was too out there for our tastes back in 1987 and it stalled at No 58.

The idea though that it could be converted into a dance track? Well, I for one never saw it coming. And DNA, who were they? They were a production duo from Bath who added a Soul II Soul backbeat to the original and released it as a bootleg. None of this was done with either Vega or her record label A&M ‘s approval and the former wasn’t initially keen on the idea. However, on hearing the DNA remix, artist and label decided not to sue but to get on board with the idea and give it an official release. The rest is history. Its rise to No 2 in the UK charts was still a surprise though, to me anyway. Could you actually dance to it in a club? It put me in mind more of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” more than a dance floor banger.

Seven years later, DJ and producer Armand van Helden pulled off a similar trick when he remixed American singer-songwriter and pianist Tori Amos’ “Professional Widow” track as “Professional Widow (It’s Got to Be Big)” and scored a No 1.

Oh good. Here come The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid with “I’m Free”. This still sounds good to me. Unfairly labelled as the polythene Primal Scream in some quarters – both bands had seemingly moved away from their jangly guitar roots to make indie-dance records come the new decade – somehow the moment for The Soup Dragons to become massive stars slipped through their grasp. Despite a marvellous follow up single in the re-issued “Mother Universe” and a critically well received Top 10 album in “Lovegod”, momentum was lost and by 1995 they had disbanded. Maybe chart success was never really the plan though. Singer Sean Dickson stated in a Smash Hits article that:

“I could bloody write a record to get in the charts tomorrow – I’m not that dumb. But it doesn’t appeal to me at all – that’s for nerds and assholes and idiots who want to ruin their lives.”

Well quite.

“I’m Free” peaked at No 5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGpSZjfU66I

The Breakers are back! We start with Bell Biv DeVoe who were of course previously all members of “Candy Girl” hit makers New Edition. Once Bobby Brown left the band and embarked on a successful solo career, the other vocalists in the group wanted in – Ralph Tresvant will turn up in our charts again with his “Sensitivity” single soon enough whilst Johnny Gill scored big with his eponymous 1990 solo album before forming R’n’B supergroup Levert.Sweat.Gill. That left the other three guys (Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins and Ronnie DeVoe) who had pretty much always been the backing vocalists and weren’t sure what to do once New Edition splintered. Encouraged by producer Jimmy Jam, they joined forces and gained immediate success with their “Poison” single and album. The title track in particular, though only just scraping into the Top 20 over here, was huge in the US and has taken on a life of its own in the subsequent years being used extensively in film, TV and computer games soundtracks.

Unsurprisingly, it did sound very Bobby Brown to me which was like kryptonite to Superman for my pop sensibilities although I always thought that the elongated ‘poison’ hook was effective. At the song’s end, they give name checks to their ex New Editions band mates with these lyrics:

“Yo’, wassup to Ralph T and Johnny G
And I can’t forget about my boy, B. Brown
And the whole NE crew“

New Edition – the most amicable band break up ever.

Now is this the biggest ever gap between the release of a huge No 1 single and its follow up? Sinéad O’Connor‘s all conquering “Nothing Compares 2 U” was initially released on January 8th in 1990 before hitting the top of the charts in early February but its follow up, “The Emperor’s New Clothes“, wasn’t released until six months later! Why the big wait in between releases? No idea. Could it be that her record company hadn’t banked on the extraordinary success of “Nothing Compares 2 U” and the weight of expectation for more chart glory that it ushered in? Maybe they’d an original single release schedule but it was totally skewed by her rise to superstardom? Whatever the reason there certainly seemed to be some indecision before “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was plucked for single release. I don’t know parent album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” well enough to know if this was a wise choice of track or not but it was always going to suffer in comparison to its predecessor. It’s much more “Mandinka” than “Nothing Compares 2 U” and is a pretty solid effort but it was doomed from the start to fall short commercially. It duly peaked at No 31.

As the 80s ended, Bananarama could reflect on a decade that included 18 Top 40 hits (including 10 Top Tenners) and the status of being the UK’s most successful all girl group. As the 90s dawned though, the future looked less certain than their glorious past. Their fanbase was still coming to terms with the leaving of Siobhan Fahey and her replacement by Jacquie O’Sullivan whilst original and now principal group members Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin were contemplating which direction to go in next. Their fifth studio album “Pop Life” saw them lose faith with the Stock, Aitken and Waterman formula, go back to their beginnings with producers Steve Jolley and Tony Swain before finally settling on Sara’a ex-boyfriend Youth (him again!) to produce the album.

“Only Your Love” was the lead single and despite pinching ‘woo woo’ vocals from “Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones, didn’t really tear up the charts and after gathering some moss along the way, came to a standstill at No 27. The video featured the usual rabble of half dressed male hunks for the girls to cavort around and the whole thing looked and sounded a bit half arsed to me. Bit ironic considering that they left SAW behind because they said that the tracks they offered to them showed a complete lack of progression with accusations from the Nanas that the production trio had stagnated and were spending all their time working on tunes for Kylie and Jason Donovan.

The album fared even worse peaking at No 42 but then the group were never really an album act were they? The harsh truth is that there are more Bananarama compilation albums in existence (16) than studio albums (11). Pretty telling I think.

At the end of the promotion for the album, Jacquie O’Sullivan jumped ship and swapped a ‘Pop Life’ for a career as a yoga teacher leaving Keren and Sara to carry on as a duo.

Back in the studio we find Paula Abdul and her latest single “Knocked Out”. In a totally predictable turn of events, Paula has taken to the TOTP stage backed by four dancers dressed as boxers. I’m guessing Ms Abdul came up with the routine herself – I thought she was meant to be an award winning choreographer? The boxing theme was surely too lame and obvious though? She must have been so preoccupied by the routine though that she forgot to include any sort of tune in her single which really is nothing more than some beats to soundtrack her dance moves rather than a piece of music in its own right.

“Knocked Out” peaked at No 21.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2_xrb_vBPQ

Jakki Brambles fluffs her lines in the intro to MC Hammer‘s “U Can’t Touch This” by announcing that his album is called “Please Hammer Hurt ‘Em” when in fact it was entitled “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em”. Come on Jakki – this is easy stuff surely? Pretty sure I would have been docked points for that answer when asked the name of MC Hammer’s album in my Our Price interview a few months on from this broadcast.

Famously sampling “Super Freak” by Rick James, unlike the aforementioned Suzanne Vega and DNA, Rick routinely turned down requests from rappers to sample his music but his lawyers authorised the “Super Freak” sample without his permission. Despite the royalties it brought in, James claimed he wouldn’t have done the deal had he been asked.

The video to “U Can’t Touch This” became the most-played of 1990 on MTV as well as winning a clutch of awards. It has been viewed 601 million times on YouTube which is mind blowing when you consider that it’s basically Hammer in some comedy oversized pants doing some cheesy dance steps. Somehow the single only made it to No 8 in the US Billboard Top 100 which seems rather implausible given its profile.

Hammer’s run of hit singles continued for a couple of years before his star started to wane. A relaunch with a harder, gangster rapper image was unsuccessful and by the late ’90s, he became a TV preacher.

A second studio performance for River City People next with their cover of “California Dreamin'”. This lot seemed such an anachronism in the charts of 1990 though not necessarily an unpleasant one. So did their hit spark a revival of The Mamas & the Papas music? It seems not. I was expecting their to have been a quickly put together, TV advertised Best Of album rushed out on the back of the River City People’s chart success but their discography doesn’t show one. There had been one in 1977 but there wasn’t another released until 1995. Do I own one? Not exactly though my wife bought the soundtrack to the film Beautiful Thing which was basically the same thing. If you’ve not seen the film, it’s worth a watch about two young lads coming to terms with their homosexuality and slowly building relationship. Kind of like an It’s A Sin for the 90s. Kind of.

“California Dreamin’ / Carry The Blame” peaked at No 13.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyd64afymW8

King Elton of John has been deposed and we have a new No 1. Unfortunately it’s “Turtle Power” by ~~Technotronic~~, ~~Hi Tek 3,~~ ~~Ya Kid K~~….Partners In Kryme. In my mind, this was only at the top of the heap for one solitary week but in actual fact it was there for four whole weeks! Oh joy!

Not wanting to miss any opportunities, the promotions team behind the phenomenon get two guys dressed in Turtle outfits to stand beside Jakki but I’m not sure starting to touch her inappropriately was in their brief. By the time we return to Jakki at the song’s end, she’s got them back under control and the whole show is rounded off with a resounding cry of ‘Cowabunga!’ although I think Jakki cocks that up too and says ‘Carrabunga!’ which sounds like some sort of bribery attempt involving Jamie Carragher.

There is still the ‘any other business moment’ of the play out video which is “LFO” by LFO. I was not frequenting any nightclubs at this time and so this passed me by completely. I do recall their ‘Frequencies” album coming out on the achingly hip Warp label about a year later as I was working in Our Price by that time and some of the dance heads at the shop got very excited about it.

“LFO” peaked at No 12.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLwLB47jpFc

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Blue Pearl	Naked In The Rain	It’s a no
2	Technotronic featuring Ya Kid K	Rockin’ Over The Beat	This beat is…shit. No
3	Suzanne Vega featuring DNA	Tom’s Diner	No but my wife had the original version of the song on Suzanne’s Solitude Standing album
4	The Soup Dragons featuring Junior Reid	I’m Free	Thought I did but singles box says no. I did however by the follow up single Mother Universe
5	Bell Biv Devoe	Poison	Nope
6	Sinead O’Connor	The Emperor’s New Clothes	Nah
7	Bananarama	Only Your Love	No
8	Paula Abdul	Knocked Out	Negative
9	MC Hammer	U Can’t Touch This	And I didn’t – no
10	River City People	California Dreamin’ / Carry The Blame	Nope
11	Partners In Kryme	Turtle Power	This as a crime…against music. No
12	LFO	LFO	LF…NO

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rpmq/top-of-the-pops-26071990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP 05 JUL 1990

Posted on January 27, 2021 by 80stastic

It is Thursday the 5th of July 1990 and it is less than 24 hours since the England international football team bowed out of Italia ’90 in the cruelest of circumstances. Just four days earlier, a 3-2 quarter final win over unexpectedly tricky opponents in Cameroon had unleashed emotions and hopes not witnessed since 1966 (and all that). But football is a cruel business – just this week my beloved Chelsea have sacked our greatest ever player – and by the time of the usual TOTP broadcast on the following Thursday, England were out, denied at the last by a penalty shoot-out defeat to West Germany. It hurt, so close but yet so far. Buoyed by the feel good factor that the team’s progress (if nor performances ) had instilled, we allowed ourselves to believe we were back and there would be many more tilts at the big prize to come. Little could we have imagined that it would be another 28 years and 7 tournaments before we would get to the World Cup semi final again.

Two days after this TOTP, England would lose again in the pointless third place play off match to hosts Italy whilst the final itself a day later was one of the worst games of football I have ever had to endure. After Gazza’s tears in the semi-final, we had Maradona’s as his Argentina team, who barely deserved to be there, lost a bad tempered match 1-0. The England team were hailed as heroes on their return (despite Gazza’s ‘hilarious’ fake breasts outfit) and a country’s appetite for football was rekindled after the dark days of the mid to late 80s.

Just in case you haven’t seen this enough times in the intervening 30 years…and who the hell is ‘Christopher’ Waddle?

Enough of the football though, this is supposed to be a music blog isn’t it? Yes, you’re right – it is. Let’s get to it then and tonight’s host is the ever snarky Nicky Campbell and the first act on tonight are Inspiral Carpets with “She Comes In The Fall”. This was their follow up to breakthrough hit “This Is How It Feels” and for me, it wasn’t anywhere near as captivating as its predecessor. I mean, compared to some of the utter dross inhabiting the Top 40 at the time it was like musical ambrosia but it seemed a bit…I don’t know….conventional? No, not conventional… erm…unexceptional? I think maybe they peaked too early with “This Is How It Feels” for me. “She Comes In The Fall” has all the right ingredients – Clint Boon’s swirling organ sound, driving back beat and Tom Hingley’s no frills vocal stylings but it just didn’t grab me in the same way.

Talking of Clint Boon, I saw him live a couple of years ago when I caught the Happy Mondays play at Hull. It was an open air gig and the support were Peter Hook and The Light so a very Manc based line up. Boon, with his DJ hat on, provided the tunes in between acts and it seemed like money for old rope to me as he rolled out the most obvious of Manchester tunes. It was almost like a musical version buzz word bingo. Still, the crowd seemed to lap it up. Having said that, they were mainly middle aged men reliving their hedonistic youth by being of their tits on coke so they weren’t the most demanding of audiences.

“She Comes In The Fall” peaked at No 27.

What? Another Janet Jackson single? As with a lot of Ms Jackson’s output, it’s also another single I don’t recall at all. “Alright” was one of seven singles lifted from her “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” album and although the video shown here won a Soul Train Music Award for Best Music Video, I don’t remember that either. It starts off looking like Bugsy Malone before the inevitable big production dance routines kick in. The plot, for what its worth, resolves with it all having been a dream which is fitting as “Alright” is one big snooze*. It peaked at No 20 over here and No 4 in the US.

*Yes, I know the video was the inspiration behind Bill Bailey’s “Rapper’s Delight” routine on Strictly last year. I wasn’t arsed about that either.

Seven of the eleven songs on tonight’s show have already been seen before and here’s a run of three on the trot beginning with Poison and “Unskinny Bop”. Supposedly the title doesn’t refer to anything at all and was just a guide vocal that fitted phonetically into the song’s structure but having read the lyrics back, it’s pretty clear that it was all about having ‘A bit of How’s Your Father’. Check out these lyrics:

Like gasoline you wanna pump me, And leave me when you get your fill yeah

Still need convincing? How about these then:

You’re sayin’ my love won’t do ya
But that ain’t love written on your face
Well, honey I can see right through ya
Yeah, who ridin’ who at the end of the race?

I don’t think you need to be a cunning linguist to understand what was being sung about.

“Unskinny Bop” peaked at No 15.

As he introduces the next act who are Double Trouble with “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”, Nicky Campbell appears spooked by the studio audience member stood next to him. To be fair to him, her look does require a double take. She looks like she’s turned up for the Halloween show about four months too early. Dressed head to toe in black and white with a massive floppy hat and two tone hair, she’s not your regular TOTP attendee. Judging by her outfit, I din’t think Double Trouble would have been her musical act of choice. In all honesty, they’re not mine either. Their shiny R’n’B cover version of the old Rose Royce classic is functional at best.

After name checking Madonna and Jimmy Nails’s versions of the song in last week’s post, it got me thinking about just how many times it had been covered. It’s loads. The recently spied Yazz did a version for her 1997 album “The Natural Life” then there’s Seal who recorded it for his second album of Soul covers (“Soul 2”) in 2011. Of course , there are also the usual easy listening treatments of it by the likes of Michael Ball and Bill Tarmey (aka Jack Duckworth) but I think the one that really caught my eye was by “Pompeii” hit makers Bastille. Let’s have a listen then…

Hmm…I’ll stick with Jimmy Nail thanks. Double Trouble’s 1990 version peaked at No 21.

A third outing for Nicky Lockett now otherwise known as MC Tunes and his mates 808 State with “The Only Rhyme That Bites”. Fair play to the TOTP producer Paul Ciani I guess for really promoting an out and out rap sound so heavily. However, we only get 1 min and 20 seconds of the track which was again due to Mr Ciani who, in an attempt to shoehorn in more songs into the show’s half hour slot, restricted the duration of studio performances to three minutes and videos to two minutes. Not sure what MC Tunes, who looked like he could handle himself, would have made of his massively edited screen time.

“The Only Rhyme That Bites” would get no higher than its No 10 peak here.

I’m guessing that Paul Ciani was also responsible for this new segment of the show – the Best selling albums of the month. Why the new format? TOTP had always been based around the template of the Top 40 singles chart. This new feature seemed incongruous to say the least. And where was the sales info coming from? Gallup presumably. I have to admit to not recalling this bit of the show’s history so I have no idea how long it lasted. No doubt future TOTP repeats will have the answer. For the record, the Top 5 albums for June 1990 were:

1. Luciano Pavarotti – The Essential Pavarotti

2. Soull II Soul – Volume II 1990: A New Decade

3. Jason Donovan – Between The Lines

4. Talk Talk – The Very Best Of Talk Talk

5. New Kids On The Block – “Step By Step”

Back to that Top 40 singles chart though and we find an unusual new entry at No 12 in F.A.B. featuring MC Parker and “Thunderbirds Are Go”. Yes, after MC Tunes we got MC Parker, that bloke that drove Lady Penelope around in Gerry Anderson’s wonderful puppet adventures series Thunderbirds. I loved the Gerry Anderson creations when I was a small boy (Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons was my favourite) and, in retrospect, I’m not sure that he gets the credit that he deserved for what he achieved. I’m also not sure that this mash up of theme tunes from his shows given a then contemporary house dance sheen was a suitable tribute either.

The single was part of a bigger project that culminated in the “Power Themes 90” album that contained 12 tracks based around British TV show theme tunes – six were Anderson vehicles with the others made up from the likes of The Prisoner, The Saint and The Avengers. I remember the album from my first few weeks in employment at Our Price later in the year but apart from the Thunderbirds single I’m not sure I heard any of the rest of the tracks. I wonder what the Captain Scarlet one was like….

…well, that was horrible! Bloody Hell! OK, back to MC Parker and according to my Supermarionation book (yes I am that sad), Parker’s character was initially conceived as a simple dramatic support to Lady Penelope but his comedy value meant that he was often the star of the show. His incorrect use of the letter ‘h’ which would preface all vowels became his trademark. As such, I guess it made sense to promote the “Thunderbirds Are Go” single around him.

Two years after this single, The Thunderbirds TV series was rebroadcast on BBC and picked up a whole new generation of fans leading to a relaunch of a range of Thunderbirds branded toys, the biggest seller of which was the model for Tracy Island. So hard to get was the item that Blue Peter famously showed desperate parents how to make their own version out of cereal packets, pipe cleaners and washing up liquid bottles etc as demonstrated by one time TOTP presenter Anthea Turner:

In hindsight, was “Thunderbirds Are Go” a novelty record? I’m saying yes but then, we’d already had a dance record featuring samples of dialogue from Thunderbirds two years earlier when “Beat Dis” by Bomb The Bass was a huge hit and I don’t recall anyone saying that was a novelty record. Fine margins and all that.

“From plastic puppets to Australian soap operas” says Campbell as he gleefully puts the boot into the next act who are Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 with “Mona”. Craig won’t care though as he is up to No 4 in the charts and if anyone is getting a kick in the knackers it’s his ex Neighbours co-star Jason Donovan whose chart career is showing definite signs of starting to peter out. When asked about how he felt about having a bigger hit than Donovan in Smash Hits magazine, McLachlan replied:

“Ah look we’re over the moon. It’s fantastic…The music’s pretty Australian and we didn’t know how it would go down over there in a fairly techno chart. Our music is back to cranking the amp up and sweating a lot…“

Cranking and sweating? He sounds like my 11 year old when he’s playing Fortnite. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, being ‘sweaty’ in Fortnite means you’re a top player and ‘cranking’ refers to ‘cranking 90s’ which is a technique of building that is considered the fastest way to get high ground on a player. I feel so old.

Back to Craig though and although his music career fell away after the success of “Mona”, he remained inextricably (and some might say bizarrely) linked to Jason Donovan as they both played the role of Dr Frank-N-Furter in Rocky Horror Picture Show and also Caractacus Pott in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (I saw Donovan in the latter show – his performance was limited to say the least).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2ZW_uTlhEQ

What was it with the 1990 and soul dance re-workings of classic old tunes? After Double Trouble’s version of the Rose Royce song “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” earlier in this very show, we get some act called Massivo featuring Tracy and their interpretation of the Minnie Riperton hit “Loving You”. The other week we had Maureen doing Sister Sledge’s “Thinking Of You” and earlier in the year we had The Chimes giving an R ‘n’ B rendition of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” – now this. I’m not sure I recall this at all. Who was Tracy? Well she was nothing to do with the Tracys from Thunderbirds nor was she Tracy Tracy from The Primitives (despite her peroxide blonde hair). Who was she then?

Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

Tracy Ackerman previously appeared on #TOTP as long ago as 1981, when she fronted This Year’s Blonde's mash-up of Blondie hits, “Platinum Pop”. (That only peaked at 46, though.) https://t.co/razsNRMGrq
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 22, 2021

OK – still none the wiser to be honest. What? There’s more?

Tracy Ackerman went on to write or co-write tracks for the likes of Hear'Say, Geri Halliwell, B*Witched, S Club 7, Dannii Minogue and Will Young. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 22, 2021

So a bit like Betty Boo in that respect then. Watching this back, Tracy doesn’t quite nail the famous descending F sharp note for me – bit screechy (like I could do it).

Massivo peaked at No 25 but the seemingly endless conveyor belt of this type of thing (what was this genre called?) carried on into the 90s with Quartz featuring Dina Carroll (yes that one) giving us a danced up version of Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” in 1991 and The Fugees adding some beats to Roberta Flacks’ “Killing Me Softly” in 1996.

Stop! Hammer time! Shouldn’t that be MC Hammer time though? It’s the third ‘MC’ of the show and I’m sure at some point MC Hammer did actually drop the MC bit from his stage name (was it when he released “Too Legit* To Quit” in 1991?). Anyway, for now he’s got the MC prefix and he’s tearing up the charts with “U Can’t Touch This”. The single was taken from his Diamond (not platinum but diamond) selling US album “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em”. I’m glad I took notice of the title at the time as a few months later when I went for an interview for a sales assistant position with Our Price, one of the questions on the music quiz applicants had to take was ‘What is the name of MC Hammer’s current album?’. Boom! Back of the net!

Given that his commercial peak lasted only from 1990-92, Hammer’s name does still seem to resonate all these years later. Was it all about the trousers or did he actually have some good tunes in there as well? One thing is for sure, he never got so big that if you google the word hammer the first results that come up are not this:

* ‘Legit’ is another word that my 11 year old uses on a regular basis. I’m not sure what he would make of Hammer’s oversized pants though. On that theme, I once showed a younger colleague at work a video of the Bay City Rollers and she could not get her head round their tartan ~~trousers~~ troosers.

England’s World Cup may be over but Elton John‘s reign at the top of the charts carries on. What was it about this song that the nation couldn’t get enough of? Truly baffling. Well, here’s the aforementioned MC Tunes giving his verdict from a Smash Hits article on “Sacrifice”:

“I’ve always admired Elton John. He’s not my kind of groove if you get what I mean but I’ve always admired him because he’s a good writer. ‘Candle In The Wind’ is a fabulous song and the lyrics in his new one are really good so I’m into the Elton record, yer.“

Oh, it was the lyrics then. Let’s have a look at them again. This is the chorus:

And it’s no sacrifice
Just a simple word
It’s two hearts living
In two separate worlds
But it’s no sacrifice
No sacrifice
It’s no sacrifice at all

Hmm. Doesn’t seem to be a lot going on there except the repeated use of the word ‘sacrifice’. I’m not having it Mr Tunes – don’t tell him I said that though.

The play out video is “She Ain’t Worth It” by Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown. After his music career ended, Medeiros took up teaching and is now the president of St. Louis School, an all boys Catholic school in Honolulu. Sounds impressive doesn’t it…until you realise that he has a son called Chord and a daughter called Lyric. No, really.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFezRi_l2Fg

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Inspiral Carpets	She Comes In The Fall	Nope
2	Janet Jackson	Alright	All wrong – no
3	Poison	Unskinny Bop	No
4	Double Trouble	Love Don’t Live Here Anymore	No love for this one at my house
5	MC Tunes versus 808 State	The Only Rhyme That Bites	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	F.A.B featuring MC Parker	Thunderbirds Are Go	Loved Thunderbirds, didn’t love this – no
7	Craig McLachlan Check 1-2	Mona	I did not
8	Massivo featuring Tracy	Loving You	Nah
9	MC Hammer	U Can’t Touch This	And I didn’t – no
10	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
11	Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown	She Ain’t Worth It	And neither was this song

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rgm4/top-of-the-pops-05071990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

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

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 26 MAR 1992

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TOTP 18 JUL 1991

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TOTP 21 FEB 1991

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TOTP 10 JAN 1991

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TOTP 20 DEC 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 06 DEC 1990

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TOTP 04 OCT 1990

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TOTP 09 AUG 1990

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TOTP 26 JUL 1990

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TOTP 05 JUL 1990

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