Stereo MCs

TOTP 27 MAY 1993

Posted on August 25, 2022 by 80stastic

When I started doing this TOTP blog five and a half years ago I never imagined it would last this long. My starting point was January 1983, the year that saw music competing as my chosen interest alongside football. I was 14 years old in January 1983 and by the time of this TOTP show in late May 1993, I was just about to turn 25. Funny how the gap between those ages seems like a chasm in terms of maturity and growing up and yet the same ten year period between the ages of say 44 and 54 (how old I am currently) doesn’t seem anywhere near as seismic.

And what if you look at those ten years in terms of the charts comparing 1983 to 1993 – how different were the Top 40s? Sure, the names will have changed but how about the music trends and movements? I guess the biggest difference is the predominance of dance in all its myriad forms within the charts but in terms of quality? Well, I’m not getting into that in one short intro to be honest. Suffice to say, I have watched, listened to, dissected and given verdict on hundreds of artists, songs and genres after rewatching these old TOTP shows and the whole thing has been frankly bewildering. Let’s see if anyone on this episode can make sense of it for me…

I don’t think I’m going to get any answers from the opening act. Stereo MCs are one of the most mystifying bands ever. A platinum selling No 2 album that yielded four Top 20 singles and then nothing for nine years. The gap until “Deep Down & Dirty” meant that the album gained almost mythical status about whether it would ever come out (see also “Chinese Democracy” by Guns N’ Roses). And yes I know that their career didn’t start with “Connected” and that they had released two albums before it but unless you’re a really committed fan of the band, surely they don’t register with most people.

“Creation” was the fourth and final of those “Connected” singles and it’s of a very similar vein to its predecessors but I have to say I don’t recall it. To be fair, I bet I’m not alone. I kind of like the way that they found a formula that worked and just stuck to it – no mixing things up with a slower ballad for this lot.

“Creation” peaked at No 19, the same position as its immediate predecessor “Ground Level” and one place lower than “Connected” – they were pretty consistent you have to admit. And then they weren’t in terms of releasing music at least. Why the nine year wait for “Deep Down & Dirty”? Well, the band toured “Connected” until 1994 and had gone back into the studio after finishing the dates but inspiration failed to strike. Instead of recording they busied themselves by forming their own label and signed and released music by new artists. They also did remixes for the likes of U2 and Madonna and then things like starting families were also a factor. Basically, life got in the way to paraphrase John Lennon’s famous quote. However, a small part of 1992/93 will always belong to Stereo MCs.

Are you kidding me?! Tina Turner with “I Don’t Wanna Fight” again?! Is this the third week on the trot?

*checks BBC4 schedule*

It is! Seriously, what am I supposed to say about this record for a third consecutive time? Well, supposedly the song was originally offered to Sade but I really can’t imagine what a version of it by the makers of “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love Is King” would have sounded like. This had happened before with another of Tina’s biggest ever hits and the title of the biopic from which “I Don’t Wanna Fight” was taken. Here’s Bucks Fizz with the story (no really – Bucks Fizz!)

What else? Oh yeah, it was written by Lulu more of whom later. The What’s Love’s Got To Do With It soundtrack would give Tina two further hit singles and she would return in 1995 with the theme tune to the James Bond film Goldeneye.

If it’s 1993 then Suede must be along in a minute and, right on cue, here they are with their new single “So Young”. The bright new hope for British music were confident enough in themselves to release a fourth and final single from their debut album that had already been out for two months and to be fair to them, they were right to have faith in the track. This was pure anthem, so sky-scraping in its stature that the press didn’t seem to notice the ‘chase the dragon’ heroin reference in its lyrics (wonder what The Shamen thought given the fuss over “Ebeneezer Goode” the previous year).

Watching this performance back, the band don’t radiate zeitgeist other than via Brett Anderson’s effortless other worldliness. Matt Osman’s enormous frame was always an obstacle to the notion of cool whilst Bernard Butler shakes his mane vigorously whilst rocking back and forth in away that suggests he might benefit from being sedated. Two years later though, he would let rip in similar fashion whilst performing “Yes” with David McAlmont on Later With Jools Holland and I would think it was one of the greatest things I’d ever seen. Such are the vagaries of music, taste and opinion.

“So Young” entered the Top 40 at No 22 and exited it the following week suggesting that they were a fan base phenomenon but by 1996, they would release the No 1 album “Coming Up” which would generate five Top 10 singles. The moral of the story? Don’t believe the hype but do trust the process.

Back to the aforementioned Lulu now as we find Louchie Lou & Michie One with their version of the Scottish singer’s most famous tune “Shout”. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again – I despise “Shout” and have little time for Lulu. As such a ragga version of the song was not going to enthral me. Retitled as “Shout (It Out)”, I would have placed this as being released years earlier, say 1986, if asked but I think that’s my brain playing tricks on me again as that’s when a re-release of Lulu’s version was a hit all over again. If I’d thought about it and indeed listened to the track again then surely I would have come to the conclusion that 1993 was the optimal year for the Louchie Lou and Michie One version to have been a hit seeing as it was a ragga/rap restyling of it. Ragga had a grip on the UK charts in this year thanks to the deadly three ‘S’s of Shaggy, Shabba and Snow. In fact, it was probably a bit of cynical marketing from their record label – jump on the bandwagon but use a well known record to get a head start on the rest of the field. Or maybe I’m being too harsh on Louchie Lou and Michie One, casting them as record company puppets. After all, I don’t know anything about them and how they came to be on TOTP with a hit record. Wikipedia just says they met at a Rebel MC concert in 1991.

What I did find out though was that their album was full of similar ragga-fied treatments of well known songs with versions of Kool And The Gang’s “Get Down On It” and “Somebody Else’s Guy” by Jocelyn Brown. Their only other major hit though was when they appeared on Suggs’ hit cover of Simon And Garfunkel’s “Cecilia”. It might have been crap but it did give us this rather memorable TOTP intro from Chris Eubank:

I’m still in pursuit of some insight into how the musical changes over the course of the ten years of these TOTP repeats came to be but I’m not sure I’ll get any sense out of Lenny Kravitz given the psychedelic tip he seems to be on with his latest single “Believe”. This is a full blown, trippy wig out with Lenny channelling his inner “Hey Jude” and singing about the power of positive thought, self belief, God and, of course, love. The BBC producers have picked up on the vibe and added some kaleidoscope effects for good measure.

Lenny’s really thrown the kitchen sink at this one with strings and a lush orchestration all in the mix. It’s not that it doesn’t work or isn’t a decent tune but for me it just fails to be the soaring anthem it strives to be. Maybe I wasn’t the only person to think this judging by its chart peak of No 30. I’m guessing that wasn’t the high that Kravitz was hoping for given the effort and time that seems to have gone into its creation. Still, the whooping studio audience seemed to enjoy it but maybe that was less organic and more at the floor manager’s direction.

Three Breakers this week starting with the second cover version on the show tonight. Bryan Ferry wasn’t averse to doing his own version of other people’s songs – his first ever solo album “These Foolish Things” was a collection comprised entirely of covers – and in 1993 he returned to that blueprint with his “Taxi” LP. After lead single “I Put A Spell On You” had made decent head way up the charts by peaking at No 18, the follow up would surely have been expected to do the same. It nearly did when “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” made it to No 23.

It wasn’t the first Gerry Goffin /Carole King song Ferry had covered. The aforementioned “These Foolish Things” album contained his take on their song “Don’t Ever Change” and he revisited their canon of work for this single. The Shirelles scored a No 1 with it in 1961 but the version I prefer is Carole King’s herself as it appeared on her iconic “Tapestry” album. And Bryan’s take on it? Yeah, he does it justice I think.

As it’s Ferry, there is of course a glamorous model in the video with not many clothes on whilst he mooches about the set. This particular model was Anna Nicole Smith. If that name rings a bell it’s probably due to the 1993 Playmate of the Year’s controversial marriage aged 27 to 89 year old billionaire J. Howard Marshall who died just eighteen months after their wedding. Smith herself would die aged just 39 after an accidental drug overdose.

Yeah, look I’m behind with these reviews so I haven’t got the time to ponder about Megadeth and their “Sweating Bullets” single OK? I will say this though. If you’ve ever wondered what might have become of Ed Sheeran had he been into trash metal instead of his stultifying brand of pop music, here’s your answer.

We arrive now at the seventh and final* Guns N’ Roses single to be pulled from their “Use Your Illusion” albums a whole 22 months after the first single “You Could Be Mine” appeared. Amazingly, all six singles to this point made the UK Top 10 and this final one only missed completing the set by one place. “Civil War” was that track although it was actually the lead song from a UK only EP.

*The song “Estranged” from “Use Your Illusion II” was released after “Civil War” in January 1994 but not in the UK

“Civil War” had been in existence for a while initially featuring on the 1990 charity album “Nobody’s Child: Romanian Angel Appeal”, but it would also be included on the track listing for “Use Your Illusion II”. An anti war protest song, it features a sample from the film Cool Hand Luke starring Paul Newman in the titular role in its intro:

Feeling that the song still needed more embellishment, Axl Rose whistles the tune from American civil war song “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” in the intro and coda. In a presumably unintentional but rather neat act of symmetry, this final “Use Your Illusion” track was originally made available as the B-side to the aforementioned “You Could Be Mine”, the very first single released from that double album project.

The song itself is another epic sounding rock track which almost leaves you exhausted by the end of it. The spare, whistled opening could deceive on first listen that this was going to be a wistful, acoustic affair akin to “Patience” but it’s actually more in common with “November Rain” or “Don’t Cry”. Yes, you could level accusations of being overblown, bloated and lyrically naive at it but it works pretty well for me, even the corny, dumb closing line “What’s so civil ‘bout war anyway?”.

The band would release an album of punk covers called “The Spaghetti Incident” in November of 1993 and then there was precisely nothing (bar their much derided cover of “Sympathy For The Devil” from the Interview With A Vampire soundtrack) until that aforementioned “Chinese Democracy” album fifteen years later.

Look out Suede! You might be the hip, young band for disaffected youth in 1993 but here come the original purveyors of angst flavoured, doom pop who recorded the album for miserable, misunderstood and introspective teenagers in 1983 with “The Hurting”. Well, here they come sort of anyway. It’s not quite the Tears For Fears we knew and loved on show here for this is TFF without Curt Smith who left the band acrimoniously in 1991. I guess he was burnt out after the mind numbingly laborious process that was the recording of the “Seeds Of Love” album.

Left to his own devices, remaining member of the duo Roland Orzabal decided to carry on under the band’s banner and delivered the “Elemental” album and its leading single “Break It Down Again”. In direct contrast to the song and album titles, Roland didn’t break it down into elements, he threw everything at it including…what…is that five cellos being played on stage up there? And, unlike Lenny Kravitz earlier, he pulled it off. In fact, not having listened to “Break It Down Again” for a good while, it’s actually a far better tune than I remember. It’s got an interesting, choppy structure (shame the producers used it as a marker to cut the song off in mid flow in this performance) and Roland’s voice is bloody good. I don’t think he gets the credit probably for his vocal talents. Back in the 80s, I always preferred the softer, purer voiced Curt Smith to take on singing duties but I think he’s won me over finally here. As an aside, conversely I liked the idiosyncratic tones of Andy McCluskey’s voice to the angelic sounding Paul Humphreys’ in OMD.

Ah yes, that phrase ‘back in the 80s’ brings me full circle to the question in the intro as to how chart music had changed in the decade between 1983 and 1993. Maybe Tears For Fears encapsulate the whole discussion. Ten years on from “The Hurting” they were still going out to bat and knocking it out of the park. All that had really changed was the personnel and hairstyles. Too simplistic a view? Yeah probably.

“Break It Down Again” made the Top 20 (just) and the album went Top 5, a good enough return to convince Orzabal to carry on and release another Curt-less album, the much less well received “Raoul And The Kings Of Spain” before Smith returned to the fold in 2000. Their current album “The Tipping Point” is possibly my favourite of 2022 so far. And yes I think that’s the ubiquitous Gail Ann Dorsey up there on bass who was on the show with the aforementioned Bryan Ferry the other week.

1993 was turning out to be quite the year for Lisa Stansfield. She started it with a Top 10 hit in “Someday (I’m Coming Back)” from The Bodyguard soundtrack, scored a No 1 as part of the “Five Live EP” duetting with George Michael on “These Are The Days Of Our Lives” (still in the Top 5 at this point by the way) and now here she was with another hit from another soundtrack.

“In All The Right Places” was the song chosen to promote the film Indecent Proposal, an erotic drama starring Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson and Robert Redford. Erotic dramas were all the rage at the time with Basic Instinct and Sliver also doing the business at the box office in this period. It’s rumoured that Lisa Stansfield herself was considered for the Demi Moore role but that could be cobblers I suppose.

Certainly not cobblers was Lisa’s performance here as she just dons her stylish black dress and gets on stage alone to belt out the song. She appears to have copied Brett Anderson’s Bob haircut though (or is it the other way round). The song is an accomplished, sultry ballad that suits Lisa’s voice perfectly. As well as appearing on the soundtrack, it also made it onto her third studio album “So Natural” which was released in the November.

Oh and was there some actual thought put into the running order for this TOTP? Bryan Ferry’s version of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” was also on the Indecent Proposal soundtrack.

Ace Of Base are at No 1 for the second of three weeks with “All That She Wants”. Just like the TOTP producers who seemed to have planned their running order this week, I’ve also put some thought into this post and not just thrown it together. Ace Of Base recorded a song called “Cecilia” (which I referenced earlier) for their third album “Flowers” which was written by them as a deliberate continuation of the Simon And Garfunkel song. Want to hear it? Nah, me neither.

The show ends with a weird outro from host Mark Franklin. Why on earth is he sat at a table with a random woman whom he does not introduce, both with a glass of red wine poured out before them whom he ‘cheers’ just before the credits roll. Wait. What? How? Why? Etc etc…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MCs	Creation	I did not
2	Tina Turner	I Don’t Wanna Fight	No
3	Suede	So Young	No but I had the album
4	Louchie Lou & Michie One	Shout (It Out)	Never happening
5	Lenny Kravitz	Believe	Nope
6	Bryan Ferry	Will You Love Me Tomorrow	No but I had a promo copy of the album
7	Megadeth	Sweating Bullets	Sod off!
8	Guns N’ Roses	Civil War EP	No but I have a Greatest Hits album with it on
9	Tears For Fears	Break It Down Again	Didn’t but probably should’ve
10	Lisa Stansfield	In All The Right Places	Negative
11	Ace Of Base	All That She Wants	See 7 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/m001b6p1/top-of-the-pops-27051993

TOTP 18 FEB 1993

Posted on June 27, 2022 by 80stastic

I write this as the 2022 Glastonbury festival has just taken place the previous weekend which garnered large viewing figures and reviews a plenty off the back of some massive performances by the likes of Billie Eilish (I didn’t get it) and Paul McCartney (marvellous stuff). It got me thinking about what the festival was like back in the day. Now, I have to fess up straight away that I’ve never actually been to Glastonbury – the myriad bands and music you could see and listen to was appealing but the thought of all that scuzziness was less so. So my recollections of it are all based on radio, TV and press coverage.

Thinking back to the 80s, I don’t remember much being made of it at all in the media, probably because it wasn’t broadcast live until 1994 when Channel 4’s 4 Goes To Glastonbury programming made it available to the masses at home. If I think about say, 1983, when I was first becoming obsessed with pop music, I don’t recall it appearing on my radar at all. A quick search on Wikipedia tells me that the big acts that year were UB40, Marillion, King Sunny Ade and his African Bests and, rather implausibly New York singer-songwriter Melanie who once had a hit with a cover of “Ruby Tuesday”. Hmm. It didn’t cater for my admittedly chart-centric tastes at the time and that would continue for a couple of years although the line up would become progressively more of a broad church as the decade worn on. By the end of the 80s, I was just finishing being a Poly student and was aware that some of my peers were going to Glastonbury but a jaunt to Somerset was never high on my list of Summer priorities somehow.

By the mid 90s, I was working in record retail and therefore much more aware of Glastonbury as just about everyone I ever worked with seemed to have either been or was planning to go. The TV coverage was much bigger with the BBC taking over from Channel 4 and so we all got to see those iconic sets from the likes of Radiohead, The Prodigy and Massive Attack. But what of 1993? That is the year we are up to in these BBC4 TOTP repeats after all. Well, at least a couple of tonight’s acts appeared at the festival that year but the headliners included The Black Crowes, The Kinks (replacing Red Hot Chili Peppers), Suede and The Orb.

Before we get into the nitty gritty , I should note that we have skipped the 11 February edition of the show as it featured the now taboo Rolf Harris doing his version of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven”. Incidentally, Harris was also on the bill at Glastonbury that year.

Right, that’s enough preamble. Let’s blog! We start with a rather incongruous and improbable five second message from Sting and Take That from New York saying that their both on the show later. Erm…OK. Cheers for that guys. The first performing act tonight are Stereo MC’s with a single that seems destined to forever remain in the shadow of previous hits “Connected” and “Step It Up” despite being a hit of a comparable size. “Ground Level” was the third release from the band’s “Connected” album and although it’s a decent track, it lacks the immediacy and urgency of its two predecessors.

Such was the visual impact of the spectacle that is/was frontman Rob Birch, I’d almost completely forgotten that they had three female singers complementing him but they are very much to the fore in this performance. For all of them though, their time in the spotlight was coming to and end. There would be one more hit single pulled from “Connected” and then nothing for eight long years until follow up album “Deep Down & Dirty” appeared.

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? Yes, their only appearance thus far

1993 was a massive year for Whitney Houston as she released multiple singles from The Bodyguard soundtrack. Her cover of “I’m Every Woman” by Chaka Khan was the second of those and would peak at No 4 both here and in the US. Although the chart topping reign of “I Will Always Love You” was brought to an end in the UK by *spoiler alert* 2 Unlimited, over the pond it remained No 1 even while “I’m Every Woman” ascended and then descended the charts.

Chaka Khan features in the video and even receives a shout out from Whitney on the record at the track’s coda. Chaka’s original was a hit twice; first in 1979 when it reached No 11 and a decade later when a remix of it peaked at No 8. Duran Duran singer Simon Le Bon once admitted that he initially misheard the song’s lyric as ‘climb every woman’ – the dirty dog!

Played Glastonbury? No but the video features TLC who played this year’s festival

Not seen in our charts for nearly two years, 1993 brought us the return of Lenny Kravitz with his new album and title track single “Are You Gonna Go My Way”. Whilst his last hit was the almost sweet sounding “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over”, this was a full on, all out rocking scorcher of a song fuelled by a heavy guitar riff and powered by the spirit of Jimi Hendrix. This really was the point when the Hendrix comparisons were out in force. I couldn’t tell if they were valid or not on account of not being a big Jimi fan. I don’t think I could hear him…

…an argument that’s kind of nonsense sure but it makes for a good scene in the movie. Anyway, all I knew was that Lenny looked every inch the rock god up there on stage and he was killing it. I’m not sure that I fully appreciated the track at the time but it’s a belter. It peaked at No 4 here instantly making it his biggest UK hit at the time but curiously it was released as an airplay only single in the US meaning it didn’t qualify for the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Apparently this was a common practice back then in America to increase album sales as buying the parent album was the only way to get that groovy tune you’d heard on the radio. What was it about though? Here’s Lenny himself courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Lenny Kravitz explains "Are You Gonna Go My Way?: "I thought the subject matter was really interesting, because it's coming from the mouth of Jesus Christ… So basically, 'Are you gonna go my way?' meaning 'my way of love.'" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 17, 2022

I liked these two reply tweets to this explanation…

Ephesians – Chapter 5 – Verse 23
— 🎨 ∟ ∪ ∨ 🎶 (@fkaPLuv) June 17, 2022

By the way, I’m currently watching Lenny’s daughter Zoë starring in the TV series of High Fidelity which is based on the book by Nick Hornby and the film starring John Cusack and Zoë’s mother Lisa Bonet. It’s pretty good too. In it, Zoë’s character Rob is involved with a young, up and coming Scottish rock star who, in the story, has just bagged himself a slot at Glastonbury. I love it when a blog post comes together!

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? Yes and again in 1999

My god! TOTP were really pushing this latest Sting tune! After last week’s studio appearance he’s back just seven days later with another full performance of “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” this time live from New York. Thankfully he’s lost the ridiculous Witchfinder General outfit from the previous week but maybe he should have kept it – at least it might have livened up this dreary run through. This was a classic example of why these live by satellite link ups were ultimately disappointing. Look at the setting for it. I don’t know exactly where he is but Sting is singing against a back drop of literally a brick wall. I’m guessing it might be a rehearsal room or sometimes it was an empty theatre venue neither of which worked for me.

I’ve told my Sting tale before haven’t I? The one about how a friend of my mate Robin, who was a guitar player who toured with some major artists, was at a dinner party at Sting’s house and in the middle of the dinner the host made all the guests stop eating and go and watch a documentary…about Sting.

“If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” peaked at No 14.

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? No. One and only appearance in 1997

There’s three Breakers on this show starting with REM and “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite”. I think I’m right in saying that despite the popularity of parent album “Automatic For The People” (a No 1 and seven times platinum seller in the UK alone) and despite all three singles released from it to this point making the Top 20, TOTP never featured any of them for more than the few allotted seconds in the Breakers section. A travesty really.

One of the lighter tunes on the album, there’s quite a lot to unpack about this one. Firstly, what the hell is Michael Stipe singing about? Indeed, I could just rephrase that question as ‘What is Michael Stipe singing?’ as the lyrics in the chorus topped a 2010 poll as the most misheard lyric ever. The official words in the chorus are ‘Call me when you try to wake her’ although that doesn’t seem to scan right to me. It is commonly misheard as ‘Calling Jamaica’ or ‘Only Jah waker’ and even ‘Call me Tom Baker’! OK, that’s the line sorted but what is the song about exactly? Well, as you would expect there’s various theories to be found online ranging from a couple being in rehab to a homeless woman sleeping in a phone box to a gambling addiction and finally, inevitably about drugs. Even the band themselves aren’t sure with bass player Mike Mills on record as saying “Half the song is about somebody trying to get in touch with someone who can sleep on his floor. The other half – you’re on your own”.

The song’s opening and title borrows heavily from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” made famous by The Tokens in the 60s and Tight Fit in the 80s. Apparently REM paid for the rights to use the song and part of the deal was that they had to record their own version of it. They duly did and it appears as an extra track on the single.

According to Wikipedia, despite the song’s popularity, “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” is one of a very few songs the band has never played live. Is that right? It seems an odd decision. Is it a technical thing that it’s hard to reproduce out of the studio environment? Maybe Michael Stipe himself doesn’t know what the words are that he should be singing?

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? No in 1999 and finally in 2003

There’s a few comparisons I think between REM and the next Breaker artist Metallica. Not sonically but in terms of career trajectory and intense scrutiny from fans about their songs and their meanings. Both bands had been around for years and been very successful but both, it seems to me, went to another level globally with the release of an album quite some time into their career. For REM it was seventh album “Out Of Time” (though a case could also be made for their sixth and major label debut “Green” I guess) and in the case of Metallica, their eponymously titled fifth also known as ‘the black album’. Again I’m sure hard rock fans could argue that earlier albums were also seminal but I’m talking purely sales and “Metallica” sold three times as many copies as any of its predecessors.

In terms of fathoming what their songs were about , as with “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” before it, Metallica’s “Sad But True” had lots of fans dissecting the lyrics. Many theories can be found online and many concern the same subjects as REM’s tune – addiction and drugs – but also the concept of religion and the duality of good and evil. It’s pretty heavy stuff but then three members of the band were going through divorces at the time of its writing and recording so…

Predictably, “Sad But True” did little for me. It’s those crunching guitars and the shouted vocals that always put me off. The single peaked at No 20 in the UK charts.

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? No. Only appearance came in 2014

Did someone mention “Ruby Tuesday” earlier? Well, yes it was me (obviously). It turns out that Melanie would not be the only artist to take on The Rolling Stones classic. If you were to place a bet on somebody doing a cover around this time then Rod Stewart would surely have been the bookies favourite. In recent years he’s carved out a new career for himself of interpreting classic standards via his “Great American Songbook” series but even back in the day, Rod wasn’t averse to a cover version. Just look at some of the singles he’d released leading up to 1993:

“Downtown Train” by Tom Waits
“It Takes Two” by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston
“Broken Arrow” by Robbie Robertson
“You Are Everything” by The Stylistics
“Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)” by Tom Waits (again!)

Plus he’d done a version of “Your Song” for the Elton John / Bernie Taupin tribute album “Two Rooms”. Then, in early 1993, came the “Lead Vocalist” album. This was an odd release which seemed to have been cobbled together by record company Warners just to cash in on the fact that Rod had just been given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the recent BRITS. The album was a mixture of five newly recorded covers and a random collection of material from Rod’s past including tracks from The Faces and his solo career. Those covers included the aforementioned “Tom Traubert’s Blues”, “Stand Back” by Stevie Nicks and of course “Ruby Tuesday”.

Let’s be fair, Rod’s version is horrible. Mechanical of sound and cynical of conception, it has none of the charm of The Rolling Stones original nor the emotion of Melanie’s cover.

Look I don’t mind the odd bit of Rod but there’s an awful lot of crud in his back catalogue as well and this one certainly deserves that description. He would return to covers later in the decade with his album “When We Were The New Boys” which included his take on “Cigarettes And Alcohol” by Oasis and “Rocks” by Primal Scream. Dear God!

Played Glastonbury? Yes

In 1993? No, Rod’s only appearance came in 2002

We swing back over to New York now for a performance by Take That with what surely must be one of their least remembered songs. After the dynamic fun of “Could It Be Magic”, “Why Can’t I Wake Up With You” was a turgid, lifeless affair and I can’t understand why they would have gone with this as a choice of next single. Was this a one off release or was it from the album?

*checks Take That discography*

Huh. Well, it was on “Take That And Party” (surely one of the worst album titles ever by the way?) but it wasn’t the version released as a single. Here’s the album version which is a bit of a weepy ballad:

The single version was eventually included on the sophomore album “Everything Changes” and it’s had a dance back beat applied with an annoying, repetitive bleep noise in the mix. Apparently, the lyrics were changed as well but frankly who cares?! We’re they already trying to look for a mature audience less than a year after finally getting some proper chart action and were therefore pushing the whole Gary Barlow as talented singer-songwriter schtick? I thought this was completely yawn inducing. Bore off!

By the way, their live by satellite performance here is as underwhelming as Sting’s with the lads performing against a backdrop of some draped material and a smoke machine. What was the point? Then again I wasn’t a teenage girl desperate for a look at my heroes. Maybe the idea of them being ‘live’ as it were was more appealing than the video?

Played Glastonbury? As if

Ah well now, this is timely. The hero of this year’s Glastonbury is on the show! The 90s however weren’t peak era Paul McCartney. He didn’t manage one Top 10 single and the three albums he released that decade are hardly amongst his most cherished by fans. “Off The Ground” was the first of those three and, as host Mark Franklin states, had given him a chart entry in “Hope Of Deliverance” but it was all very underwhelming. The follow up was “C’Mon People” which I don’t recall at all, possibly because it didn’t even make the Top 40 despite this TOTP performance. Was it meant to be some sort of anthem of unity? It’s all a bit drab sounding to me. Interesting how they’ve staged Macca’s performance here with members of the studio audience crowding around him and his piano. It’s a bit “All You Need Is Love” isn’t it?

Those audience members in shot seem unsure what to do with themselves. It’s a difficult tune to dance to though the guy in the sleeveless denim jacket gives it a go. He’s got his thumbs inside his waistline at one point. He needs to go some to beat these guys dancing with Mud though…

Seeing some of the reaction on social media to Macca’s Glastonbury set list made me wonder what would have happened if he’d included “C’Mon People” in it. A Twitter meltdown I’m guessing and possibly the breaking of the internet.

Played Glastonbury? Played it? He rocked it on Saturday night. Amazing. Oh and he also performed there in 2004

In 1993? No

Finally a new No 1 but careful what you wish for as Whitney is toppled by one of the most annoying chart toppers of the whole decade. Widely (and perhaps rightly) pilloried for its lack of lyrics (“No no, no nuh no no, no nuh no no, no no there’s no lyrics”) 2 Unlimited’s “No Limit” also had an inane hook that lent itself to many a moronic football chant. I think my favourite was for former Bolton Wanderers forward Mixu Paatelainen. You can work out how it went for yourselves easy enough.

Supposedly there was a controversy over this week’s chart as to who was actually No 1 – Take That or 2 Unlimited – so close were the sales but I don’t remember any such stories in the press and certainly nothing to rival the Deee-Lite vs Steve Miller Band battle of 1990.

Played Glastonbury? Ha! Ha! Never!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MC’s	Ground Level	Nah
2	Whitney Houston	I’m Every Woman	I did not
3	Lenny Kravitz	Are You Gonna Go My Way	No but it’s a good tune
4	Sting	If I Ever Lose My Faith In You	Nope
5	REM	The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite	No but I had the album it was from Automatic For The People
6	Metallica	Sad But True	Happy to say no and that’s the truth
7	Rod Stewart	Ruby Tuesday	Never happening
8	Take That	Why Can’t I Wake Up With You?	Hell no!
9	Paul McCartney	C’Mon People	No
10	2 Unlimited	No Limit	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0018b84/top-of-the-pops-18021993

TOTP 03 DEC 1992

Posted on May 19, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve clicked over into December 1992 here at TOTP Rewind which means that the population would officially have been starting to get into Xmas mode. Working at the Our Price store in Rochdale, my own days were getting busier and felt very long as sales got brisker. So what were some of the albums that were doing the business as Xmas loomed 30 years ago? The Top 10 albums were made up of eight Best Of / compilations from the likes of Cher, Erasure, Genesis, Gloria Estefan and Simple Minds. Only two were proper studio albums which were “Automatic For The People” by REM and “Stars” by Simply Red which was still in the Top 10 after being the best selling album of 1991! Now I’m all for a good Best Of album but 1992’s Xmas offerings did seem quite cynical on behalf of the record companies.

Whilst the record shops were getting prepared for a frenzy of activity, something else in the world of music was coming to a full stop. Cult TV programme The Hitman And Her broadcast its final show two days after this TOTP went out. It seems odd to recall now but there was a time when TV stations didn’t broadcast all night, when there weren’t any late night schedules and when if you suffered from insomnia then there were no old episodes of Come Dine With Me to keep you company during the wee small hours. So when Pete Waterman’s nightclub based show appeared in our screens in 1988, it felt truly transformative.

Filmed on a Saturday night in various clubs throughout the UK but with a definite North/Midlands bias, it would be televised in the early hours of Sunday morning. Performing hosting duties alongside Waterman and securing her cult status amongst the UK’s young male population was Michaela Strachan. Ever the businessman, Waterman ensured that the programme showcased a number of his PWL artists as well as showcasing some of the acid house tunes that he loved. The clubbers themselves were as much the stars of the show as the hosts, with many a punter, eager to get themselves on TV, happy to embarrass themselves by participating in some ‘hilarious’ games. Some of the regular dancers on the show included a pre-Take That Jason Orange and the two blokes who weren’t the singer in naff 90s boy band 911. I wonder if any of the tunes on tonight’s TOTP made the Hitman And Her playlist?

Well, possibly this one. If you’ve finally had a hit after years of trying, what’s your next move going to be? Yes, release a very similar sounding follow up of course! OK, “Step It Up” isn’t an exact replica of “Connected” – its got a faster bpm for one thing – but it didn’t fall far from the tree.

Stereo MC’s were on a roll by this point. Their third album “Connected” missed the top of the charts by one place and would go on to sell 420,000 copies. “Step It Up” was their second consecutive Top 20 single after the album title track. They were the bomb (or something). This performance is surely the mental image that most people who were around at the time would conjure up when hearing the name Stereo MC’s. The main protagonist of course is the Catweazle-esque Rob Birch. With his oversize trousers and glimpse of a bare chest, he was a Frankenstein’s monster mash up of MC Hammer and Peter Andre. Then there were his moves. The knees bent, hip swivelling action that Birch brings to the party surely influenced Vic Reeves and his thigh rubbing antics on Shooting Stars. In fact, the whole thing reminds me of our Maltese puppy rolling on his back exposing his bits when being sniffed by some of the local neighbourhood dogs. Yeah, sorry about that mental image. Anyway, you have to give it to Rob; he certainly left it all out there as it were. Here’s his take on his performance courtesy of the ever excellent @TOTPFacts:

Rob Birch on this Stereo MCs #TOTP performance: "You know you've only got three minutes to try to get the crowd going. You're like, 'I've got to go at it like hell for leather. And because you're buzzing on nerves, your voice starts jumping out of your body."
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

Rob Birch: "I could just be a bit like some kind of plant in a gale and just, like, let it all hang out… That #TOTP wasn't a pretend performance. it had a fluidity to it."
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

Letting it all hang out indeed. “Step It Up” peaked at No 12.

If it’s TOTP in 1992 then there must be a Michael Jackson video due and here comes the latest. “Heal The World” was Jacko’s fifth single released in the UK during the year and the sixth from his “Dangerous” album overall. I’m guessing this was always going to be the track released for the Xmas market given that it’s a huge, saccharine drenched ballad with oh so worthy lyrical subject matter. So about the song’s sound – you can’t ignore its similarity to “We Are The World” which Jackson co-wrote with Lionel Richie. I mean it’s essentially the same song. Supposedly though, it is the track that Jackson was most proud of. It even inspired him to create the Heal The World Foundation, a charity dedicated to improving conditions for children throughout the world. You can’t deny the philanthropy but it doesn’t make the song any more palatable.

I really remember the rather clunky and obvious design on the cover of the single of a plaster covering a crack across the globe which is held between the hands of a black child and a white child. It was one of those fold out sleeves that turns into a poster as I remember that were awful to refold once opened to its full extent.

Sensibly, the video for the song doesn’t include Jackson himself only children set against a backdrop of images depicting war, guns and even the Ku Klux Klan. The theme of healing is portrayed by the final scene of a candle lit vigil of children coming together as one. That restraint was not in evidence at the BRITS in 1996 when Jackson celebrated the receipt of his Artist Of A Generation award with a performance of “Earth Song” that depicted him as a Christ like figure surrounded by children. Thank God for Jarvis Cocker!

In any other year, the mawkish song would surely have gone to No 1 but this was 1992 and it was up against the all conquering “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston and had to make do with the runners up spot.

Next we have another studio performance of the reactivated “Temptation (Brothers In Rhythm remix)” by Heaven 17. There’s a couple of differences between this and the previous 19th November show turn. Firstly, Carol Kenyon has a proper name check in the title graphics this time and secondly, she’s up there belting it out alongside Glenn Gregory without the two blokes on keyboards (the titular brothers presumably) for company. Still conspicuous by his absence though is Martyn Ware. Carol and Glenn don’t really need anybody else though certainly not the former who gives a masterclass in doing a live vocal performance for TV.

The original recording of “Temptation” featured a 60 piece orchestra and I’ve heard the aforementioned Ware say in an interview how mad it was back in the early 80s that they would just say to their record label that they required the services of an orchestra to play on one track and the label didn’t bat an eyelid at the cost. The 80s really were a time of excess within the record industry it seems.

The Brothers In Rhythm remix of “Temptation” peaked at No 4.

The curious case of Dina Carroll next. Curious? Well, just in the respect that her success seemed to come in stages rather than via the classic overnight sensation mode. Sort of the musical equivalent of that ref who went down in stages when pushed by Paolo Di Canio back in the 90s…

Anyway, Dina had first come to national attention as the vocalist on Quartz’s dance version of Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” in 1991. Despite that flush of success, the Quartz project fizzled out and Dina disappeared from view. Behind the scenes though, a decision by her management company to launch Dina as a solo artist led to her being signed to A&M and the following year she returned to the charts with “Ain’t No Man”. “Special Lind Of Love” replicated its predecessor’s success exactly by peaking at No 16 before this single “So Close” made it a hat trick of Top 20 hits in 1992. Pretty impressive stuff which led to host Tony Dortie describing in his intro that Dina had enjoyed “an amazing year” and that she was “definitely in contention for female vocalist of the year”.

Come January 1993 her album was released and debuted at No 2 staying in the Top 20 for six months. And yet, it seemed to me that the album only really went into hyperdrive sales wise when the sixth single “Don’t Be A Stranger” was released in the October. I’ll type that again. The sixth single which was by far the biggest of the lot taken from the album when it peaked at No 3. Now surely that is curious?! We sold loads of the album in the wake of that single. Did A&M have it up their sleeves all the time, holding it back until the optimum moment? The single was different from the album version in that it was re-recorded with added orchestra strings to give it a dramatic feel. When was that decision taken? Either they got lucky or they had a long term strategy all along. Her success in 1993 led to Dina being named Best Female Artist at the BRIT awards in 1994 – again a marker that her success came in stages with her becoming award winning a whole year after Tony Dortie’s prediction.

As for “So Close” the song, it’s pleasant enough but never had the capacity to rival the sales of “Don’t Be A Stranger”. Maybe it was meant to just keep Dina‘s profile ticking over until the album was released? Surely the clamour for the album would have increased if “Don’t Be A Stranger” had been the third single anyway? Oh I don’t know. The bottom line is that it all worked out pretty well for Dina in the end unlike Paolo Di Canio who received an eleven match ban for his shove on ref Paul Alcock.

We’re back to cramming in the Breakers again this week with four of the little blighters in total. We start with one of REM’s best known songs I’m guessing which makes me wonder why these few scant seconds are all that were ever shown of it on TOTP. “Man On The Moon” was the second single to be released from the “Automatic For The People” album and is one of those songs that just works. Beautifully.

It manages to combine genuinely eccentric lyrics with ear worm producing hooks. Nominally about surrealist performance artist Andy Kaufman with references to his Elvis impersonations and work with wrestler Fred Blassie, it also seemed to be asking the listener to open their mind to multiple different realities. What if the moon landings were fake? What if Elvis wasn’t dead? Ultimately it returns to Kaufman and the conspiracy theory that he faked his own death. It’s a heady concoction.

The black and white video with the image of Michael Stipe wearing a cowboy hat walking nonchalantly down a desert road before hitching a ride with a truck is in turns memorable and befittingly random.

The original demo without lyrics was known by the band as “C to D slide” due to the opening which includes that shift of chords. When I attended a guitar class a few years ago, this was one of the songs we learned including that slide. It’s actually OK to play but does have some quick chord changes. By the way, I’m really not much of a guitarist. Just a chord strummer really.

“Man On The Moon” peaked at No 18.

Another huge band that we only got to see a glimpse of as a Breaker were U2. To be fair they were promoting a fifth single from “Achtung Baby”, an album that had been released almost exactly a year ago so maybe they were pushing it a bit. Did the TOTP producers think that a fifth single from a year old album wasn’t a big enough story? It hardly qualified as an ‘exclusive’. Indeed, perhaps the real reason that a fifth single was released was to complete the last piece of the jigsaw that formed a picture of the band driving a Trabant car when you put all five single covers together. A nice bit of marketing by record label Island there.

The single in question was “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” which I always quite liked. Apparently the gestation of the song had been quite laboured and the band had several failed attempts before they laid down a version they could live with. I always presumed that the song’s title was inspired by The Rolling Stones track “Wild Horses” but I haven’t seen anything online that comes anywhere near confirming that.

The singles from “Achtung Baby” achieved the following chart positions:

1 – 13 – 7 – 8 – 14

It’s not a bad haul for an album that was seen as a gamble in many ways with it being a definite shift in musical direction from where their success had led the band. It remains their second biggest selling album after “The Joshua Tree”.

Think of Xmas and then think of Cliff Richard. What song is currently running around your head? “Mistletoe And Wine”? How about “Saviour’s Day”? Bet it isn’t this one. It tends to get forgotten given the success of those aforementioned festive chart toppers and their ubiquity in Xmas playlists but Cliff didn’t just do those two Chrimbo tunes. There was “Little Town” in 1982, “We Should Be Together” nine years later and this one – “I Still Believe In You”.

This completely passed me by despite me working in a record shop at the time and despite it going Top 10. That’s probably because it had about as much staying power as wrapping paper come mid morning on Xmas day. In fact, it hardly even qualifies as a Xmas song with the only reference to Yuletide in the lyrics being one mention of Santa Claus. Just terrible.

Cliff didn’t give up on the concept of making festive records though. In 1999, he scored an unexpected No 1 with “The Millennium Prayer”, in 2003 went Top 5 with “Santa’s List” and in 2006 got to No 2 with “21st Century Christmas”. There have also been numerous chart re-entries for “Mistletoe And Wine”, “Saviour’s Day” and even “I Still Believe In You” down the years when December rolls around once more.

The final Breaker comes from Rod Stewart and his cover of “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)” by Tom Waits. We saw this the other week as an ‘exclusive’ live by satellite performance and the video here looks very similar to that as it’s just Rod wandering around an empty stage with a solitary piano player for company.

I defy anybody to watch the video in full and be able to look at anything other than Rod’s beard for the whole four and a half minutes.

What on earth was this all about?! Boney M on TOTP?! In the 90s?! Well, it’s a straightforward answer. It was clearly another case of money for old rope. Record label Arista released this “Megamix” single with an eye on the Xmas party scene figuring the UK’s work force, pissed up and ready to party, wouldn’t be able to resist these 70’s tunes all over again. And so it came to pass that the single – a medley of “Rivers Of Babylon”, “Sunny” and “Daddy Cool” – returned Boney M to the UK Top 10 for the first time since 1979.

I say Boney M but was this really them? Where was the guy with the mad Afro (Bobby Farrell) who used to leap about all over the place like he’d sat on an ants nest? Yes, there was a guy in the line up doing his best impression of Farrell but it’s clearly not him. In fact, there’s only the lead singer up there on stage that looks vaguely familiar. A bit of research tells me that it’s original member Liz Mitchell doing the singing but the rest of the group were just some randoms that were drafted in to promote the single. In an act of utter shamelessness / good business practice depending on your point of view, a cash-in “Greatest Hits” album was released early the following year which made the Top 20.

Apparently there were a number of different touring line ups of Boney M after the original line up was finally disbanded in 1986. I know! Boney M we’re still a thing in 1986! They were not alone in this of course. There are plenty of examples of concurrent versions of groups following the disintegration of the originals. Off the top of my head there’s been The Temptations, Bucks Fizz, The Bay City Rollers and more recently UB40. All three female members of the original line up are still with us though sadly Bobby Farrell died of heart failure in 2010 while on tour with his version of Boney M. Unbelievably, he died on the same date and in the same city (St Petersburg) as Rasputin who was of course the inspiration behind one of the band’s biggest hits and whom Farrell used to dress up as when performing the song.

1992 had been a busy old time for Madonna. She starred in a well received film in A League Of Their Own and wrote a hit single for its soundtrack. She founded her own entertainment company called Maverick with production arms in records, film, music publishing, book publishing and merchandising. Not content with that, she released her controversial coffee table book Sex and her fifth studio album in “Erotica”. She was only 34 at the time and yet still had been a global superstar for nearly a decade.

“Deeper And Deeper” was the second single taken from “Erotica” and seems to have undergone some retrospective critical revisionism. It seems to me at the time that it didn’t create much of a fuss – how could it compete with Sex and the “Erotica” single for fuss to be fair? It now though seems to be recognised as one of Madonna’s better tracks. Indeed some may even say a banger. Certainly it was a return to that more mainstream dance sound on which she made her name but also embracing the house music movement. I have to say it never did that much for me though. At least the Andy Warhol inspired video with Madonna playing an Edie Sedgwick style character isn’t laced with whips and dominatrix style imagery like those for her recent singles “Erotica” and “Justify My Love” though there is some very loaded and deliberate peeling of bananas.

“Deeper And Deeper” peaked at No 6.

This seems like a bit of overkill on behalf of the TOTP producers. This is the second time Simply Red have been on the show with two different tracks from a live EP recorded at a jazz festival. Really? “The Montreux EP” had four songs on it and after “Drowning In My Own Tears” was on a couple of weeks ago, this time we get “Lady Godiva’s Room”. Apparently this song had originally been released as the B-side to the band’s 1987 single “Infidelity” which kind of makes sense as it really sounds like B-side material to me. Uninspiring and a bit of a dirge, I was surprised that the EP got as high as it did (No 11). Make the most of this appearance though as we won’t be seeing Hucknall and co again for nearly three years (hurray!) when they will return with 1995’s “Life” album including No 1 single “Fairground”.

Right, strap in for a ten week run at the top of the charts for “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston. Not quite Bryan Adams but still ten weeks of having to find something to say about this song. I’m going to start off by not talking about the song but about the film it was taken from. The Bodyguard seems to get quite a bad rap from critics but I don’t mind it actually. My theory is that the negativity stems from perceptions of Kevin Costner or more specifically his lack of acting ability. OK, he’s done some turkeys like Waterworld and The Postman but he’s also been in some decent films. His run of four films in the late 80s of The Untouchables, No Way Out, Bull Durham and Field Of Dreams is impressive and then there was Dances With Wolves which won seven Oscars including Best Director for Costner. Not too shabby. I actually think he’s decent in The Bodyguard too.

Maybe a lot of the anti-Costner stuff comes from his lack of an English accent in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (which is ludicrous) and Madonna sticking her fingers down her throat in reaction to him describing her show as ‘neat’ in her documentary In Bed With Madonna. Seems a bit unfair.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MC’s	Step It Up	No
2	Michael Jackson	Heal The World	Nah
3	Heaven 17	Temptation (Brothers In Rhythm remix)	No but my wife has the Luxury Of Life album
4	Dina Carroll	So Close	…but no cigar. No
5	REM	Man On The Moon	No but I had the Automatic For The People album
6	U2	Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses	No but I had the Achtung Baby album
7	Cliff Richard	I Still Believe In You	…but I don’t believe in you Cliff. No
8	Rod Stewart	Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)	No but I think my wife has the Tom Waits album it’s from
9	Boney M	Megamix	No but one of the first albums my wife ever had was Night Flight To Venus
10	Madonna	Deeper And Deeper	Nope
11	Simply Red	The Montreux EP	Never!
12	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	I did not

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001772z/top-of-the-pops-03121992

TOTP 01 OCT 1992

Posted on April 6, 2022 by 80stastic

The new ‘year zero’ TOTP format isn’t so new anymore as this show marked its one year anniversary. Host Mark Franklin makes reference to this in his off screen intro and also mentions the shift of location from Television Centre to BBC’s Elstree base in Hertfordshire. All of the changes involved in the new format were meant to reconnect the then nearly 28 years old TOTP with its traditional youthful audience who were embracing a dance revolution that the show was struggling to showcase. In a case of perfect symmetrical timing, the first act on tonight is performing a song called “Connected”. I refer, of course, to Stereo MCs.

Along with Suede from last week’s show, for a short while this lot were the epitome of hip. Not the same sort of hip that Brett and the boys exuded though. No, this was a more grubby, deep down and dirty type of hip. Not that I’m suggesting that Suede were a bunch of Mummies Boys. No, it’s just that the face of Stereo MCS, Rob Birch, had the look of someone who’d seen some things that you definitely wish you hadn’t. Well, that and Catweazle (Google him if you’re too young to know who that was). I wrongly assumed that they were a Manchester band due to their image and sound and although they had toured with Happy Mondays, they were in fact from Nottingham. They’d also been around since the end of the last decade and had already released two albums before they came up with “Connected”. The lead single and title of their third album, it hit a chord with both the dance heads and the indie crowd with its skanking beat and ‘aa-aa-ye-ah’ chant. It was perfect for lumbering around the dance floor Ian Brown / King Monkey style.

Just like Sade before them on last week’s show, the band were prolific at releasing material early in their career (three albums in three years) but then took nine years to record a follow up to “Connected”. The world felt like a very different place by then (9/11 was only a few months away from happening) and it didn’t sell nearly as well as its predecessor which went platinum, won a BRIT award and peaked at No 2 in the charts. They have released another three albums since with the last coming in 2011.

Some Antipodean rock/pop now as Crowded House continue to mine the wealth of tunes from their “Woodface” album with the release of fifth single “It’s Only Natural”. The LP had come out 15 months earlier but sales of it only really took off after “Weather With You” was a Top 10 hit in February /March of ‘92. I loved this album and got a signed copy when the band did a PA at the HMV megastore in Manchester. I think they did a small set before playing a gig at Manchester Academy on the evening (which I also went to). It was a fine show, probably one of the best I have ever witnessed.

As for this TOTP performance, clearly the producers didn’t know what to do with the band and so they’ve ended up playing against a completely white backdrop with the only concession to props being the dry ice machine being put into top gear. Or maybe it was a deliberate statement that said these guys are all about the music and don’t need any cheap gimmicks getting in the way?

As for the song itself, you have to admire any song they gets ‘this mortal coil’ and ‘circumstantial’ into its lyrics but what was it actually about? Could it be that Neil Finn was singing about his hair? Neil’s barnet must be one of the most odd in music. Not flashy odd (Billy Idol) or designed to shock odd (Sigue Sigue Sputnik) but naturally odd. It’s got a life of its own, stubbornly growing at odd angles and generally behaving in an unruly way. Neil of course has previous in the hair stakes. He was in art rockers Split Enz (get it?) and his hair was even more mental then.

“It’s Only Natural” peaked at No 24.

There have been a few changes to the ‘year zero’ format over the past 12 months one of which has been a return to a chart countdown (sort of). They started off just listing the Top 10 but over the last few weeks they’ve expanded that to include the rest of the chart. Here we get Nos 20 to 11 over a video by Chaos for their cover of “Farewell My Summer Love”. Who were these guys? Well, they were Sinitta’s backing dancers who were put together into a pop group by her then boyfriend Simon Cowell and included a 9 year old in their ranks, Don’t remember them? You can forgive yourself as firstly, just like with Omar’s “Music” single that soundtracked this feature last week, their song never actually made the Top 40 peaking at No 55. Secondly, their name. Does Ultimate Kaos ring any bells? That’s what they changed it to two years on from this and it worked as they clocked up six Top 40 hits. The power of the word ‘ultimate’ and some misspelling in evidence there.

If the staging for Crowded House was minimalist, then the producers have gone all Laurence Llewelyn- Bowen for the next act. Hear that noise? That’s the sound of the bottom of the music barrel being scraped. Or possibly it’s the annoying sound of one of the most iconic computer games of the decade. Tetris was that descending blocks puzzle game that was Nintendo’s top selling title and that came as the default game with their Game Boy console bundle. OK, so who’s idea was it to release a song based on the game? Nintendo themselves? Oh no. If you thought about it for long enough I reckon you would come up with the scoundrel’s name. The aforementioned Simon Cowell? Good guess but no. Need a clue? OK – Bombalurina. No, not Timmy Mallett but Andrew Lloyd Webber. The good lord (!) released a Eurodance version of the “Tetris” theme under the name of Doctor Spin and the idiotic British public bought it in enough quantities to take it to No 6.

Obviously the ex-Mr Brightman wasn’t going to perform this atrocity himself so for the sake of TOTP some dancers have been drafted in and dressed in costumes resembling blocks from the game. The absolute state of this. Unbelievably, this wasn’t the only record that was a hit based on this ludicrous idea as simultaneously in the charts came “Supermarioland” by Ambassadors Of Funk. What a time to be alive!

Some Breakers now starting with The Sundays. This is a band I really should have massively been into but yet again somehow they slipped under my radar and through my grasp. I eventually cottoned on when they released their (so far) final album “Static & Silence” five years on from this point but I really should dive deeper into their back catalogue. “Goodbye” was taken from their second album “Blind” and marked their first release on the Parlophone label after Rough Trade had entered receivership leading to the band relocating labels. Their debut album “Reading, Writing And Arithmetic” had been released with the indie legends and had been a huge success going Top 5 despite the lack of a hit single. That statistic was amended in 1998 when “Here’s Where The Story Ends” was covered by London dance act Tin Tin Out and taken into the Top 10. Somehow I always get that confused with Electribe 101’s “Tell Me When The Fever Ended”. Damn my fading memory.

I can name the first three singles from Neneh Cherry with no prompting whatsoever but ask me for anything after that and I’m struggling. There was “7 Seconds“ with Youssou N’Dour and…something on the “Red Hot+Blue” album? I remember the front cover to her second album “Homebrew” but nothing else about it and certainly not this lead single from it called “Money Love”.

Back in 1989 she’d been a huge breakout star with her “Raw Like Sushi” album achieving platinum status for sales of 300,000 units. Three years in pop music is a long time though and by the time “Homebrew” came out though, her era of glory felt like a long time ago. Did she still have the ear of pop fans? Sales of the album suggested no. It crawled to a high of No 27 despite the inclusion of a track featuring REM’s Michael Stipe. The single “Money Love” fared little better not even making the Top 20. Not that it wasn’t any good but how could Neneh expect to compete with a single based around the music used in a hand held computer game? Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber – you truly are an arse sir.

We had an ‘exclusive” performance of “Sentinel” by Mike Oldfield just last week but that hasn’t stopped the TOTP producers including it in the Breakers seven days later. I’m really not sure the video which seems to be a montage of various different takes on the “Tubular Bells” graphic warranted another outing. If you Google Mike Oldfield some of the entries in the People Also Ask section include ‘How long is Mike Oldfield on Tubular Bells?’, ‘How much is Mike Oldfield?’ and ‘What did Mike Oldfield?’. Eh?

By the end of the fourth of tonight’s Breakers we will have achieved optimum capacity for shoehorning the most songs into the smallest amount of time. Eight songs in less than 12 minutes! I really think this was TOTP trying to compete with ITV’s entirely video based music vehicle The Chart Show. This last track really deserved more airtime.

REM had gone truly global with the previous year’s “Out Of Time” album. Not resting on their laurels, they released their third album in four years “Automatic For The People” with the lead single being “Drive”. For me this is one of those songs that leaves an impression on you after just that first listen so heavy is its sound. A dark, brooding, menacing track, it’s marked out further by its odd structure- it doesn’t really have a chorus.

There’s various online theories about what the lyrics mean especially around who Ollie is but according to Michael Stipe, one of its influences comes from an unexpected source. The line “Hey kids, rock ‘n’ roll” was inspired by David Essex’s “Rock On”. Actually, I’m sure there’s a scene in his film Stardust when his character Jim MacLaine is doing a gig with his band The Stray Cats and he shouts out “Hey, rock ‘n’ roll!” during it now I come to think of it.

As good as “Drive” is, for me it’s not best track on the album with at least three or four other songs ahead of it. It peaked at No 11, the band’s second biggest UK hit at that point in their career yet, unusually for an album’s lead single, it doesn’t feature on subsequent Best Of albums.

Right who’s next? Oh great, it’s Dr Alban who’s up to No 2. Look man, if I need a song called “It’s My Life” in my…erm…life then I’ve got that wonderful song by Talk Talk. Hell, at a stretch I’ve even got the cover version by No Doubt. I have zero need for this Eurodance-ified house track with some terrible rapping tacked onto it. Apparently the track was re-recorded in 2014 by the good doctor and some bloke called Chawki and retitled “It’s My Life (Don’t Worry)” but I really can’t be arsed to check it out not even for the purposes of this blog. Look, it’s my life OK?

Another song now that totally transports me back to this era when I had just started working at the Our Price store in Rochdale. “Iron Lion Zion” was the third posthumously released single by Bob Marley following his death in 1981. We’d already had “Buffalo Soldier” in 1983 to promote the “Confrontation” album of unreleased recordings which went to No 4. A year later came “One Love/People Get Ready” to promote the “Legend” compilation album. Fast forward to 1992 and “Iron Lion Zion” was put out to advertise the “Songs Of Freedom” box set. Like its two predecessors it went Top 5.

Espousing Rastafarian beliefs of Zion as the Promised Land of Ethiopia and the Lion Of Judah representing Haile Selassie, it also featured legendary jazzer Courtney Pine. Appealing to both daytime radio and the clubs via its 12” mix, it was a timely reminder of Marley’s talent and legacy. Apparently his final words to his son Ziggy on his death bed were “Money can’t buy life”. A wise man indeed.

If it’s the early 90s then there’s always room for one more dance tune and here it is – “I’m Gonna Get You” by Bizarre Inc featuring Angie Brown. This was the third hit on the spin for these Staffordshire techno ravers following “Such A Feeling” and “Playing With Knives” and it would prove to be the biggest of the lot when it peaked at No 3. This time they had roped in a female soul singer with the surname of Brown to help but it wasn’t Jocelyn. Nope, but Angie Brown had been recruited to sing like her namesake. “I’m Gonna Get You” featured lyrics from Jocelyn’s song “Love’s Gonna Get You” and rather than pay to sample the original, Angie filled in and re-recorded that part of the track.

So who is Angie Brown? Well, she’s worked mainly as a backing singer with some huge names like The Rolling Stones, Happy Mondays, Kate Bush, Chaka Khan and the aforementioned Neneh Cherry. She’s also on Mark Morrison’s 1996 No 1 “Return Of The Mack” but her first taste of chart success in her own right came in 1992 with Bizarre Inc.

Despite having Angie to front the record, there are five blokes up there with her on stage (two dancers and three keyboard players) at least half of which have the regulation ponytail for these times. For all that, I didn’t mind this one.

As it’s an anniversary show, it’s a perfect opportunity to squeeze in a mention that Radio 1 celebrated their own 25th birthday the day before this broadcast. Fair enough so how to mark this event on TOTP? Bit of a video montage of clips featuring past and present DJs perhaps. Maybe back in the day when Radio 1 and TOTP were so inextricably linked you couldn’t see the joins that would have been what happened. This was a new era though where Radio 1 ties had been severed so just a three second clip of all the DJs together on the steps of Broadcasting House (?) saying “Happy Birthday Radio 1 FM!” was deemed more than adequate.

Also celebrating 25 years of existence (just about) were the next act Status Quo. Hang on! Weren’t they on the first show of the ‘year zero’ era? Yes, they were playing a horrible version of “Let’s Work Together” from their “Rock ‘til You Drop” album. One year on almost to the day and they’re still seen by TOTP producer Stanley Appel as the go to party band when you’re having a knees up. Had he learned nothing from the past year?!

So what are they playing this time? A medley of course! Just about everything they released around this time was a medley wasn’t it? This one was called “Roadhouse Medley (Anniversary Waltz Part 25)” and featured tracks including “The Wanderer”, “Marguerita Time” and “Living On An Island”. Bigging up the performance by it being live from Amsterdam was neither here nor there as the band were just in a room that could gave been anywhere. What a horrible, pointless waste of everyone’s time!

The Shamen still rule the roost with “Ebeneezer Goode”. Remember when Wet Wet Wet deleted “Love Is All Around” after 15 weeks at No 1 because they were bored of the whole thing by then? Well The Shamen did the same thing two years before them with this single but you don’t hear much about it. There were rumours it was because of the constant press attention about the supposed drug references in the track but the band themselves said it was that its prolonged run at the top was mucking up their schedule for subsequent single releases. Naughty naughty!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MCs	Connected	Don’t think I did
2	Crowded House	It’s Only Natural	No but I had the Woodface album it was from
3	Chaos	Farewell My Summer Love	Hell no!
4	Doctor Spin	Tetris	I’d rather have eaten my own arm
5	The Sundays	Goodbye	No
6	Neneh Cherry	Money Love	Nope
7	Mike Oldfield	Sentinel	Nah
8	REM	Drive	Not the single but I bought the Automatic For The People album
9	Dr. Alban	It’s My Life	Definitely not!
10	Bob Marley	Iron Lion Zion	I did not
11	Bizarre Inc featuring Angie Brown	I’m Gonna Get You	Didn’t mind it, didn’t buy it
12	Status Quo	Roadhouse Medley (Anniversary Waltz Part 25)	Are you joking?!
13	The Shamen	Ebeneezer Goode	It’s a 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/m0015x90/top-of-the-pops-01101992

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 27 MAY 1993

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TOTP 18 FEB 1993

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TOTP 03 DEC 1992

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TOTP 01 OCT 1992

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