I seem to have spent a lot of time recently talking about 90s American sitcoms. There was Cheers and its memorable theme tune one week and then Blossom the next thanks to tonight’s opening act. There’s a connection to yet another one on this show as well but we’ll come to that in due course. For now, it’s that Blossom star Joey Lawrence who is in the studio to get teenage girls’ hearts racing as he performs “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix”. I suppose there was a tradition of young male US teen idols making a splash in the UK that proceeded Joey. I’m thinking David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, Michael Jackson of course…OK, I’m not making a case that Lawrence had anywhere near the success of those guys but maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised that he did translate over here. Good looking lad, de jour pop tune, hit TV show to his name. Look if Leif Garrett and Glenn Medeiros could have huge hits over here why not Joey Lawrence?

Looking through his film and TV credits, he seems to have played characters called Joe or Joey six times. Talk about being typecast. Still, he sells his song well enough here though his sleeveless leather jacket (very “Bad Boys” era Wham!) seems a bit dated and I’d have to say that Blossom herself had the better dance moves…

It’s Debbie Deborah Harry’s birthday so host Tony Dortie tells us. She was 48 then which makes her 77 now! I suddenly feel older than usual and I feel ancient most of the time anyway. We get her video for “I Can See Clearly” tonight after that nonsense with the magician in the studio the other week which sees her cavorting around in a field at night during a storm complete with lightning strikes. Not sure how that would help her see clearly unless the video director was using the illumination from the lightning as a metaphor? As for that song title, do you think she deliberately left the word ‘now’ off despite the chorus including it just so people wouldn’t think she’d done a Johnny Nash cover?

“I Can See Clearly” peaked at No 23 and remains her last UK solo hit.

Well, what a disappointment! After the sparkling and sprightly tune that was “Regret”, New Order followed it up with the completely dreary “Ruined In A Day”. The intro promises so much more but then it just flatlines as soon as Bernard’s vocals come in. Sometimes Sumner’s lo-fi singing is the perfect foil for the track but here it’s just a drone. Surely there must have been better options on their “Republic” album than this for a single? Yes, yes there was as the third single from it, “World (The Price Of Love)”, was a much better choice which makes you wonder why they didn’t just go with that instead seeing as they released it anyway.

“Ruined In A Day” peaked at No 22.

The first of two women in very large hats on the show tonight next as we get a 90s take on a70s disco classic. I think she’s called Yvonne Shelton and the guys behind her are Barry Jamieson and Jon Sutton. Together they were Evolution and, mixing in the same circles as A Guy Called Gerald and 808 State, they would go on to be huge names in the world of dance music, known for creativity and innovation working with the likes of UNKLE, Sasha and Jon Digweed. There doesn’t seem to be anything very innovative about adding some Italian House piano to Chic’s “Everybody Dance” to me though. Hadn’t we seen this sort of trick dozens of times before already in the dance era? We all have to start somewhere I suppose. Oh and Yvonne? Worzel Gummidge says he wants his hat back.

Four Breakers again this week (seriously, 1993 TOTP – give me a break won’t you!) and we start with The Smashing Pumpkins and “Cherub Rock”. To say I spent almost the entire 90s working in record shops, I seem to have ignored many a band who others swear by. These Chicago indie rockers are a case in point. Even today, I probably only know about three Smashing Pumpkins songs most notably “Tonight, Tonight” their highest charting UK single. This track passed me by completely though I do recognise the cover of the album it came from (“Siamese Dream”) so I must have sold a few copies.

Weren’t they a bit like a US version of The The (who I do like)? Not in musical style so much as in the structure of the band which is basically Billy Corgan as The The is essentially Matt Johnson? Apologies if I’m outraging any Pumpkins fans here but in my defence, I don’t really know what I’m talking about!

Billy Idol on the other hand I do know something of though not so much this period of his career. The Billy Idol I knew about was the 1984-85 vintage when the UK finally welcomed his style of rock with reactivated singles “White Wedding” and “Rebel Yell” finally becoming Top 10 hits alongside his more toned down side as shown on “Eyes Without A Face”. I kept tabs on him through 1986’s “Whiplash Smile” album and again with more re-released hits in the late 80s like “Mony Mony” and “Hot In The City” to promote his “Vital Idol” Best Of.

As the 90s dawned though, I lost sight of him. “Charmed Life” passed me by and then came 1993’s “Cyberpunk”. A concept album no less (no really) which was inspired by Billy’s desire to embrace emerging technology and the digital world in order to create music. Idol combined this with his interest in the sci-fi sub genre of cyberpunk following a comment by a journalist about an electronic muscle stimulator on his leg which was part of his recovery process after a motorcycle accident. The album included spoken word narratives between tracks and was created in Idol’s home studio on his Mackintosh computer.

Reaction to the album amongst critics was overwhelmingly negative but I wonder if there’s some snobbery at play. David Bowie’s 1999 interview with Jeremy Paxman about the role the internet would play in our future lives has seen him lauded as a visionary retrospectively. Rightly so of course.

However, shouldn’t Billy be afforded a bit more credibility for his own observations six years prior to Bowie’s?

“Shock To The System” was the album’s lead single written about the Los Angeles riots of 1992 with a video that seemed to be a mash up of Judge Dredd meets Robocop. Despite the kudos I’ve given Billy above, it’s a poor song which explains its peak at No 30 in the UK charts.

After Brian May and Cozy Powell stank the studio out last week, here’s another rock royalty amalgamation – Whitesnake’s David Coverdale and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page together on a single called “Take Me For A Little While”. I called Brian and Cozy hoary old rockers in the last post but Tony Dortie refers to David and Jimmy as “two dinosaurs of rock” in his intro. I’m not sure which is the bigger insult.

As with The Smashing Pumpkins earlier, I remember selling the “Coverdale-Page” album due to its plain but distinctive cover and we sold a lot of it quickly as all the rock fans of Rochdale where I was working made a trip to their local Our Price to pick up a copy of this imagination pricking collaboration. I don’t remember it being played in the shop though and therefore I don’t know this track at all. I never got the boat going to Led Zeppelin island and my knowledge of Whitesnake is limited so I’m not the best judge of its merits but I don’t think I’ll be playing it again. I’d rather have Robert Plant and his “29 Palms” I think.

Taylor Dayne? What “Tell It To My Heart” Taylor Dayne? Her? In 1993? Wow! I had totally forgotten this! Well, in the intervening eight years since her last UK hit, Taylor had scored a US No 1 record with “Love Will Lead You Back” which stiffed over here so when she presented Arista label president Clive David with her third album, he suggested she cover the old Barry White hit “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe” to boost its chances. Whereas Debbie Harry earlier had knocked off the word ‘now’ from her “I Can See Clearly” single to ensure it wasn’t confused with the Johnny Nash song, Taylor removed the word ‘Babe’ from her song even though it was actually a cover version. Hardly the best way to “Prove Your Love” of the original (see what I did there?).

Anyway, Taylor’s version of “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love” was produced by C+C Music Factory’s Clivillés and Cole and was a US dance chart No 1 and made a respectable No 14 over here.

Time for that second big hatted lady on the show now and she’s singing a song that will always transport me straight back to 1993 – “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes. It’s one of those records that would become more well known than the band who made it (see also “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin and “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” by Cutting Crew). It’s also a song that, like it’s chart peer “Two Princes” by Spin Doctors, very much seems to divide opinion. Some seem to love it whilst others can’t abide it. I’m a bit more in the middle – I think it’s a good song but it probably suffered from bring overplayed on the radio. So much airplay did it receive that punters were asking for it before it had entered the Top 40. I recall we ordered a few copies in to see how it went (we didn’t normally buy in non chart singles) and they did indeed go straight away. The buyers at Head Office must have got wind and scaled out loads of it across the chain and…hey presto! With copies actually available in the shops, a huge hit ensued. It went to No 1 all over Europe (though No 2 in the UK) and would make the band almost perfect one hit wonders – one huge hit then nothing followed by the band splitting up. I say ‘almost’ as there was a follow up single called “Spaceman” but it tanked although their album “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!” did well going to No 4 in the UK.

Eighteen months after 4 Non Blondes had been and gone I was helping to shut down the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester as the company had sold the unit. I was clearing out the manager’s office and when moving a filing cabinet, found a CD of “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!” behind it. I took it home as I didn’t know what else to do with it (all the shop’s other stock had already been disposed of) but I’ve no idea where it is now.

Oh and that connection to another US sitcom that I mentioned earlier? Well, the woman in the big hat belting out “What’s Up?” is Linda Perry who was married to Sara Gilbert for five years and who is Sara Gilbert? She’s the actress who played Darlene Conner in Roseanne.

Tony Dortie had a bit of a thing for Jade didn’t he? “Now it’s time for me to break out into a hot sweat” he brazenly tells us as he introduces their live by satellite performance from Los Angeles. “I Wanna Love You” was actually the trio’s debut single in the US but which was released in the UK off the back of the success of “Don’t Walk Away”. Maybe it’s just the similarity of song title but it sounds very much like Color Me Badd’s “I Wanna Sex You Up” to me. It’s almost as if “I Wanna Love You” is the clean version of that 1991 hit with the word ‘sex’ being replaced by the more wholesome ‘love’. At least there’s some extra content to this satellite performance with some pre-recorded shots of the group arriving at a venue before we get the standard fare of the track being sung in some soulless setting.

“I Wanna Love You” peaked at No 13 in the UK.

Next the moment that Dortie has been bigging up all show – Take That are in the studio! “Pray” was the first of their twelve (twelve!) No 1 singles of which eight came within the group’s first incarnation up to 1996. Those eight chart toppers were almost consecutive with only “Love Ain’t Here Anymore” breaking the sequence halfway through when it peaked at No 3. They’re impressive figures whatever your opinion of Take That. I did have an opinion though and it was that “Pray” was really lame and throwaway. Yes, it has that gospel feel chorus (pray geddit?) but compared to their high octane rendering of “Could It Be Magic” for example, it seemed so pedestrian.

As for their performance here, well it didn’t need to be anything special to sell the record and it wasn’t. An obvious gospel choir in the background and some twisty – turning dancing from the lads whilst Gary Barlow (now minus his peroxide blonde hair – a true non-blonde as it were) does the actual singing. It was all very underwhelming but then I guess I wasn’t the group’s target audience to be fair.

Gabrielle gets a second week at No 1 with “Dreams” and in 2023 she’s touring to commemorate its 30 years anniversary! I feel very old for the second time in this post. She’s even coming to my current home of Hull. Will I be going to see her? Dream on.

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/m001btp0/top-of-the-pops-01071993