The B-52s

TOTP 21 JUL 1994

Posted on April 29, 2023 by 80stastic

After one ‘Julian C’ on the show last week in the form of Julian Cope, we have another tonight as Julian Clary takes on the role of presenter. Now, I’m wondering if this was quite the controversial choice on behalf of head producer Ric Blaxill as just seven months before, Clary had caused a furore at the British Comedy Awards when he had compared the set to Hampstead Heath and joked that he’d just been fisting former Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont backstage. The uproarious audience reaction meant that his punchline “Talk about a red box!” went largely unnoticed. However, the damage had been done for The Daily Mail and The Sun who campaigned to have Julian banned from TV. Haven’t moved on much in 30 years have we?

Anyway, was seven months a big enough time gap for all that media outrage to have died down? Ric Blaxill must have been hoping that the public were at the stage where the opportunity for offence had dissipated but the potential for a return to the public consciousness moments of “did you see that on TOTP last night?” was still very much alive. I’m thinking the debut of Boy George on the show in 1982 or Nirvana in 1991. Julian was, no doubt, a big name by 1994 and not just because of his Lamont moment. I think I was first aware of him (and Fanny the Wonder Dog) in the 80s on Friday Night Live and then his game show Sticky Moments With Julian Clary. He’d even released a single in 1988 – a cover of “Leader Of The Pack” under the name of The Joan Collins Fanclub. I wonder if Julian’s turn on tonight’s show would have caused a bulging Points Of View post bag or not?

Well, Julian has certainly come dressed for the occasion in leopard print cat suit and a feather boa accessory and he gets us raving (his word) straight away with Clubhouse and “Living In The Sunshine”. Bizarrely, despite working in record shops whilst these Italian house merchants were having a couple of hits in 1994, the only single of theirs I can remember is their Steely Dan / Michael Jackson mash up “Do It Again” from a decade earlier. There’s a scientific term for this phenomenon which is the ‘reminiscence bump’ – people tend to disproportionately recall memories from when they were aged 10 to 30. Well, I was 26 in 1994 and 15 in 1983 so does that prove the theory or not? Maybe 30 is pushing it a bit. Maybe 10-21 is more like it? Or maybe I don’t recall “Living In The Sunshine” because it’s utterly forgettable crap? The only notable thing about this performance is the Punch and Judy show. Not sure that would be allowed these days or are they just dancing together in which case maybe it would? Is this is the one and only case of a Punch and Judy prop being used on the show? I think there’s one in the video for “Look Of Love” by ABC and Mud had that ventriloquist dummy for “Lonely Thus Christmas” didn’t they but not a Punch and Judy. Even Marillion didn’t gave that and they had a song called “Punch and Judy”!

Julian is getting into his stride now (literally) as he walks across the stage in front of the next artist whilst they have already started their song, salaciously referring to testosterone and pectorals but then it is a boy band he’s talking about and as he says, “what else is there?”. Bad Boys Inc were onto their fifth of six hit singles by this point and this one – “Take Me Away (I’ll Follow You)” – would prove to be their second biggest when it peaked at No 15. Dearie me though, this was so depressingly average, even by boy band standards. They really were the dregs of that particular genre and that’s allowing for the fact that the 90s were full of sub par, wannabe hopefuls looking to be the next Take That. The song is so piss weak and sounds like it was written in about the same amount of time it’s taken Julian Clary to get his make up touched up which we playfully get to see whilst Bad Boys Inc are on stage. Apparently Bad Boy Ally Begg (the one in the white long sleeved shirt) went onto become a sports TV presenter and doesn’t really like to talk about his time as a boy band member – his website glosses over that period of his life saying if you want to know about it then just Google Bad Boys Inc. He’s right to be ashamed.

Oh god! This is yet another song that takes me right back to the Summer of 1994 when I was selling loads of it during an unhappy stint working at the Our Price store in Piccadilly, Manchester. Even just seeing the single’s cover in its Wikipedia entry is giving me the fear. “Regulate” by Warren G and Nate Dogg spent eight consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 peaking at No 5 and was taken from the soundtrack to the film Above The Rim. Part of the emerging West Coast G-funk scene, Warren G hung with his hounds Snoop Doggy Dogg and Nate Dogg and was also the half brother of Dr. Dre so I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised that he would bag himself an enormous hit before too long. What was a surprise though, given all those rap connections, was that his hit was predominantly based around a classic soft rock track. “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)” had been a No 4 US hit for yacht rocker Michael McDonald in 1982 (not that anyone was using that term back then) but somehow it was able to be recycled for a classic gangsta funk track. Just to make it stand out even more, its intro samples some dialogue from the 1988 film Young Guns, specifically around the Lincoln County Regulators, a deputised posse that fought in the Lincoln County War in the late 19th century and from which the track took its name. The video shown here includes clips from Above The Rim which featured Tupac Shakur just to up the content on the rapper-o-meter for this track as if it needed any more.

“Regulate” was a smash all around the globe leading to Warren G cranking out another five hits in the UK alone including a couple of No 2s before the decade was out. He missed a trick though by not forming a supergroup called G-Force alongside Ali G, Kenny G and Stevie G.

As announced at the top of the show by the lead singer in that direct to camera slot, The Grid are back on the show for a third time I believe with their mega hit “Swamp Thing” As with their previous appearances, they’re doing exactly the same performance with the banjo player stuck under a space age hairdryer or something. They could have thought of a different staging for a third appearance couldn’t they?

Some 29 years on from this huge track, another dance phenomenon has entered social parlance but this time around it’s not The Grid but ‘The Griddy’*

*With thanks to my teenage son for alerting me to this.

The profusion of reggae fusion chart hits that started in 1993 with the likes of Shaggy and Bitty McLean was still going strong over 12 months later. One of its least worthy proponents was this guy – C. J. Lewis – who’d already had success with his No 3 cover of “Sweets For My Sweet” some months earlier and now he was at it again by desecrating the classic Stevie Wonder song “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”.

C.J. (real name Stephen James Lewis so shouldn’t that be S. J. Lewis?) tries to make the song his own (to quote Louis Walsh) by reordering the words in the title to read “Everything Is Alright (Uptight)”. Yeah, that’s worked a treat mate. This is just a horrible abomination. C.J. spends most of his time toasting “Ribidibidoo-badey” to a bemused looking studio audience who shuffle about pretending to dance for the duration of the song. Compare it with this TOTP performance of the original by Stevie and…well, there is no comparison.

Two years on from this, the song was in the news again when Oasis recorded “Step Out” and were asked for 6% royalties by Wonder due to its similarities to “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”. The Manc lads didn’t want to do that so removed it from the track listing for their second album “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?”. When it did appear as an extra track on the “Don’t Look Back In Anger” single, it included a credit for Wonder alongside co-songwriters Sylvia Moy and Henry Cosby.

I think Julian Clary has kept it the right side of respectable so far given the restrictions of the 9 o’clock watershed but he can’t help himself when doing the link to The B–52’s and their “(Meet) The Flintstones” single banging on about sniffing loincloths and having a gay old time. Well, I guess that was what he was invited on for. A second Flintstones film came out in 2000 called The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas but none of the stars of the 1994 original reprised their roles. The brand new cast couldn’t replicate the success of its predecessor and it completely bombed at the box office. In a nice (if tenuous) little connection to this edition of TOTP, the second film featured Joan Collins in the supporting cast. Joan Collins? Julian Clary? The Joan Collins Fan Club? Oh, please yourselves!

It’s time for some rockin’ next courtesy of Skin. What was it with all these British rock bands of the 90s that they all wanted to be the next Led Zeppelin? That certainly seemed to be the case with the lead singers who were all intent on doing their best Robert Plant impression (I’m ignoring Julian’s comment about all that hair in show making them look like Tammy Wynette!). “Tower Of Strength” was the band’s second Top 40 entry of the year following “The Money EP”, it was also the second hit in 1994 to have the title “Tower Of Strength”. The first had been the rerelease of The Mission’s single that had originally been a No 12 hit in 1988. It made No 33 the second time around.

It got me thinking about the phrase and its origins which are religious in nature with it usually being reserved for God in the Bible. Its usage changed to referring to religious faith in general when Tennyson used the phrase to compare the Duke of Wellington to God. However, it was Shakespeare who changed its meaning to the one we understand today when he used it in Richard III. Blimey! Bit of culture there! Musically, there have been two other chart entries of a song called “Tower Of Strength” and both were in the charts at the same time in late 1961 so I’m guessing they were different versions of the same song – one by somebody called Gene McDaniels but by far the bigger hit was by Frankie Vaughan who went all the way to No 1. As for Skin, it sounds to me like they’ve pinched the melody from “Lean On Me” by Bill Withers which I suppose makes some sort of sense. “Tower Of Strength”? “Lean On Me”? Same sort of thing isn’t it? Oh please yourselves (again)!

Before Ant and Dec were the TV behemoths that we know today, they were of course PJ & Duncan, characters from BBC teen drama Byker Grove who went on to be actual pop stars after performing as the fictional band Grove Matrix in the show. It was almost Monkees-esque. The song they performed in the show was called “Tonight I’m Free” and was the duo’s first actual single release in 1993 but it failed to chart. Second single “Why Me?” did crack the Top 40 but it was third single “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble” that will always be what people remember about their career as pop stars. Ridiculous and, indeed ridiculed, it was also catchy as hell based around the catchphrase of US boxing and wrestling ring announcer Michael’s Buffer. The addition of the ‘h’ in ‘Rhumble’ was to avoid copyright issues as Buffer had trademarked the phrase. The lyric “Watch us wreck the mike PSYCHE!” far outlives anything else they released and they released a lot of stuff – three studio albums and fifteen singles! There’s also a line that gave a big indication as to their future careers though we couldn’t possibly have known at the time. “I’m Ant (I’m Declan), a duo, a twosome” they…erm…rap? They would eventually rebrand themselves as Ant & Dec whilst still recording music (specifically thejr third album – “The Cult Of Ant & Dec”) before giving it up in 1997.

There were two different versions of the CD single so to differentiate between them in the Piccadilly Our Price, the singles buyer wrote on the masterbags “Twat” (Dec/ Duncan) and “Twat in a hat” (Ant / PJ). When I got transferred to the Our Price in Stockport in the new year, it turned out that the album the staff had played most on the shop stereo had been PJ & Duncan’s “Psyche” and that their favourite track was one called “She Scores A Perfect Ten”. Want to hear it? Sure you do…

Hmm. It’s got a bit of an East 17 “Deep” vibe so better than I would have expected. Also better than expected are the lads moves in this TOTP performance – talk about in sync! PSYCHE!

We’ve reached eight weeks at the top for Wet Wet Wet with “Love Is All Around”. By this point they had drawn level with Shakespear’s Sister and The Archies in terms of length of time as the UK No 1 knowing that one more would see them replicate Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Wings and John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. The sixteen weeks of Bryan Adams was still a way off though. Were we thinking it could be challenged at this point or did we believe that common sense must kick in soon?

The play out song is “Trouble” by Shampoo. Now they might seem like a small footnote in the history of pop music and they may have only had five Top 40 hits none of which got higher than No 11 and their four albums didn’t sell anywhere except Japan but…there is still so much love for this pair online and I know people who swear by them.

Jacqui Blake and Carrie Askew were school friends from Plumstead, London who ran a fanzine for Manic Street Preachers and somehow became pop stars themselves. The TOTP producers managed to get them as the last act on this show but the first on the next so I’ll keep my powder (and hair) dry for the moment before delving into the Shampoo story in the next post.

So how did Julian Clary do as host? I think he brought something different to the show and I liked how he shook up the presenting format with his walks across stage and shots of him ‘dancing’ and the pretence of him having his make up retouched mid song. However, it all seemed a bit tame on reflection. I guess he was never going to do a Norman Lamont pre watershed though.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Clubhouse	Living In The Sunshine	No
2	Bad Boys Inc	Take Me Away (I’ll Follow You)	As if
3	Warren G and Nate Dogg	Regulate	I did not
4	The Grid	Swamp Thing	It’s a no from me
5	C. J. Lewis	Everything Is Alright (Uptight)	Never
6	The B-52’s	(Meet) The Flintstones	Nope
7	Skin	Tower Of Strength	Nah
8	PJ and Duncan	Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble	Negative
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	Didn’t happen
10	Shampoo	Trouble	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/m001l56h/top-of-the-pops-21071994

TOTP 07 JUL 1994

Posted on April 22, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s the middle of the Summer 1994 and the UK singles chart is stagnating. Of the ten songs on tonight’s TOTP, we’ve already seen seven of them on a previous show. I’m pretty sure that was nothing out of the usual though as record companies kept huge releases back for the Autumn schedules and the Christmas sales period. They probably also figured that the public was spending its money on holidays rather than CDs and cassettes. The only beneficiaries of this would be those annoying hits that the travelling hordes had heard whilst holidaying in Europe that would inevitably end up being huge sellers in the UK. 1994 was not immune to this phenomenon but we won’t get to that particular record for a while yet.

In the meantime, we start the show with a single that I think had only featured so far as the play out song a couple of shows back but was now residing in the Top 10 and so qualified for a studio appearance. I mentioned Gun in my last post when discussing my peculiar superpower for missing the zeitgeist completely and lumping my affections on the wrong horse. The Stone Roses or Gun? Well, I quite like the sound of those Scottish rockers and I’m not sure about all this ‘Madchester’ stuff…dear oh dear. Anyway, whilst King Monkey and co would release one of the most iconic debut albums of all time, Gun did have a few hits the biggest of which was their cover of Cameo’s “Word Up”. Pretty much just a straight up rock treatment of the original stone cold 1986 classic track, it still worked pretty well I thought. Nothing fancy, just a load of squealing guitar riffs where the funky Cameo bass was, a standard rock vocal instead of Larry Blackmon’s idiosyncratic voice and a Genesis “Mama” style cackle when the “W.O.R.D. UP” bit comes along. The lead singer had undergone quite the image change since the last time we saw him. Gone are his long, pony tail locks and in their place a short, spiky peroxide blonde hairdo. He also seems to have taken up the singing with your arms behind your back style which would become Liam Gallagher’s trademark. In fact, I don’t recall Liam striking that pose when Oasis made their TOTP debut on the last show. He couldn’t have copied it off the bloke from Gun surely? Maybe I was ahead of the zeitgeist for once!

One of the few new tracks on the show next and I’m guessing this was one of those dreadful holiday hits imported from Europe that I was talking about before. “Everybody Gonfi-Gon” by Italian dance outfit 2 Cowboys is just an abomination but sadly would prove not to be a one off as there was a flurry of these…how would you describe them? A techno-hoedown? A Eurodance square dance? How about pure, unadulterated shite? Where did all this start? Was it with the line dancing phenomenon driven by Billy Ray Cyrus and his “Achy Breaky Heart”? We certainly seemed to stock a load of cheap line dancing CDs on budget labels in the Our Price store where I was working (we even had to create their own section in the racks). Surely you couldn’t line dance to “Everybody Gonfi-Gon” though? Not without breaking your neck anyway. So, was it with Doop and their Charleston gimmick No 1 from earlier in the year? How about The Grid and their banjo fuelled dance sensation “Swamp Thing” that was riding high in the charts at the time? Or even Bravado and their “Harmonica Man” single? Whoever was responsible for it needed a kick in the Gonfi-Gons. This abhorrent nonsense would lead to one of the worst No 1s of the decade in 1995 when Rednex took “Cotton Eye Joe” to the top of the charts. Shocking stuff. And one final thing, what does ‘Gonfi-Gon’ even mean? I assumed it was Italian for ‘do-si-do’ but according to Google Translate it means ‘swollen swollen’. Nobs.

It’s The B–52’s next (or The B.C. 52’s if you’re being pedantic) with “(Meet) The Flintstones” from the live action film version of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. The post-punk art rockers from Athens, Georgia are finally calling it a day this year when they play a residency in Las Vegas starting in May with their final ever show in September bringing the curtain down on nigh on half a century of adventures in American kitsch culture and bubblegum punk beats. And no I’m not sure if those are the right words to describe what they did but how would you describe their career and legacy?

To be honest, I don’t come at that question from a position of much authority nor knowledge. I was hardly aware of anything much about The B-52’s until 1986 when a re-release of “Rock Lobster” made No 12 in the UK charts and the track was played at my nightclub of choice Images On Glass (wanky name) in downtown Worcester. My ever more hip wife already had a copy of “Planet Claire” I think. Then “Love Shack” made them mainstream pop stars in 1990 (though I always hated that song) and then this…let’s face it…truly awful Flinstones single that really didn’t do their legacy justice. Apparently. they were an influence in convincing John Lennon to return to making music with the “Double Fantasy” album. That should be how they are remembered. If you really need a Hanna-Barbera cartoon theme sung by a band in your life then there’s always The Dickies…

Aswad are back in the TOTP studio again performing “Shine”. This was one of those records that refused to conform to the growing trend that would come to dominate the mid to late 90s that saw singles in and out of the charts within two to three weeks. “Shine” completely bucked this trajectory by spending twelve weeks in total on the Top 40, six of which were consecutive within the Top 10 where it made steady progress to a peak of No 5, even going back up the charts when it had fallen the week before. Maybe it was the seasonal thing I mentioned earlier because there were a few singles that hung around the charts for what seemed like the whole of this Summer – “Crazy” by Let Loose, “Swamp Thing” by The Grid and “I Swear” by All 4 One spring to mind. Or maybe the public just really liked these records?

“Shine” would be Aswad’s second biggest hit after “Don’t Turn Around” and they would only grace the UK Top 40 twice more with two minor hits one of which was a cover version of “You’re No Good” which was a big hit for The Swinging Blue Jeans amongst others. Aswad were pretty keen on cover versions in their later career. The aforementioned “Don’t Turn Around” was a cover of a Tina Turner B-side and they also did a version of Ace’s “How Long” with Yazz. They also took part in a reggae tribute album to The Police recording their take on “Roxanne” which Sting must have liked as he subsequently teamed up with them for a version of “Invisible Sun”. I’ve listened to it so you don’t have to and it doesn’t do anything for either artist’s credibility or legacy. It certainly doesn’t ‘shine’ but then what do you expect from an ‘invisible sun’?

Here’s yet another song we’ve already seen courtesy of Elton John with “Can You Feel The Love Tonight”. Apparently, this was the most played song on radio and TV in the US in 1994. Want to take a guess at who held that position in the UK? Yes, Wet Wet Wet’s version of “Love Is All Around” of course. DJs just couldn’t resist sticking it to us despite the fact that it bored everybody to death by being at No 1 for 15 weeks. Interestingly, the rest of the Top 5 airplay hits of this year included three that were all in the charts around this time – Let Loose, Big Mountain and the afore discussed Aswad. Presumably all that exposure goes some way to explaining their chart longevity. The only one that really surprised me was the second most played record which was “Seven Seconds” by Neneh Cherry and Youssou N’Dour but then it was a huge hit around Europe including here where it peaked at No 3 spending four and a half months on the Top 40 and six weeks inside the Top 10.

I sometimes wonder if The Pretenders get the credit they deserve. Their back catalogue is full of good tunes and in Chrissie Hynde, they have a charismatic lead singer with a unique voice. Their chart stats stand up to scrutiny – 13 UK Top 40 singles of which 5 made the Top 10 plus, of course, a chart topper in “Brass In Pocket” (the first new No 1 single of the 80s). It strikes me though that they never really get talked about as one of the great rock/pop bands. Yes, their eponymous debut album regularly appears in Best Of polls and Hynde was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005 but do you hear their music much on the radio these days? Sure, “2000 Miles” gets airplay every Christmas and “I’ll Stand By You” gets a spin every now and again. I guess you’ll hear “Brass In Pocket” on one of those 80s themed radio stations. It doesn’t seem like much though. Clearly, I haven’t done any statistical breakdown of this theory (it’s all just based on my own perception) so I’m at risk of being shot down in flames but I’m pretty damn sure that this hit – “Night In My Veins” – you will not hear on any station any time soon. And that’s a shame as it’s a good song. The almost forgotten follow up to the aforementioned “I’ll Stand By You”, it’s a nice slice of melodic rock that should have got higher than No 25.

Chrissie looks cool as in leather trousers and high heels in this performance but sadly I fear this might be their last ever appearance on the show as they only had one subsequent Top 40 hit when “Human” got to a lowly No 33 in 1999. They have continued to release new material though with their last album “Hate For Sale” released as recently as 2020.

And yet another song that was huge over the Summer of 1994. I’m pretty sure this is the third time for All 4 One with “I Swear” on the show so to shake things up, they’ve gone for a live by satellite set up from Malibu as opposed to the two previous TOTP studio performances.

This optics in this with the four members of the group walking along the beach with microphones in hand looks completely mad. They’re fooling nobody. Was it to try and keep in line with the show’s live vocal policy? They’re surely miming?! I’ve not seen anything so unconvincing since Jason Donovan wandered along that mountain range strumming his unpowered electric guitar in the video for “Too Many Broken Hearts”! They should have just embraced the completely ludicrous nature of this and gone full New Order on Venice Beach, California performing “Regret” in the company of the cast of Baywatch, David Hasselhoff and all.

Hold the front page! Take That release a single that doesn’t go straight to No 1! Yes, after four consecutive chart toppers, the lads have to settle for the relative failure of a No 3 hit in “Love Ain’t Here Anymore”. Now you could make a reasonable case for this outcome as being down to the song being the sixth single released from their “Everything Changes” album (who did they think they were, Michael Jackson?). However, it is my firm belief that it missed the top spot on account of it not being very good. A big, sloppy ballad deliberately written to make their teenage female fans swoon, it’s basically a rewrite of “A Million Love Songs” but with some awful lyrical rhymes. I mean “It’s gone away to a town called yesterday”? Please.

Two questions about this performance occur to me. What the hell are they wearing and what on earth was that squeal that Gary Barlow let out at the song’s…erm…climax?! Might be a poor choice of word that on reflection.

Wet Wet Wet clearly disagree with Take That’s assertion that “Love Ain’t Here Anymore” as they are still No 1 with “Love Is All Around”. As with All 4 One earlier, the TOTP producers have tried to alleviate the monotony of a persistent chart botherer by getting in a guest presenter just to introduce this one song. Consequently, alongside regular host Mark Goodier, appears Reg Presley on his shoulder. Reg, of course, was the guy who wrote “Love Is All Around” back in 1967 for The Troggs. He does a nice little turn as well, not fluffing his lines and seemingly well chuffed to be back on TOTP. If you listen carefully, as the camera cuts away to Wet Wet Wet, you can hear Goodier call Presley a star to which Reg replies “Thanks”. Obviously, he’s also on the show to plug a Troggs Greatest Hits album that has been released in the wake of the success of the Wets’ cover version but let’s ignore that.

Marti Pellow, alongside his two guitarists, look like they belong in 1967 and its Summer of Love that Reg references in his intro with their hippy length hair. I recall a headline on the front cover of Smash Hits when they first started growing their hair that said “Och aye Jock McKay, look at the state of the Wets!”. Not sure that would be allowed these days. Sadly, Reg Presley died from lung cancer in 2013 aged 71.

The play out song is another cover version but an unlikely and rather heinous one – “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Abigail anyone? What? Sorry…who?! Well, her full name is Abigail Zsiga who, despite the exotic name, hailed from Warrington and she supplied the vocals for a minor hit called “I Feel You” by Love Decade in 1992 (no me neither). After that, she carved out a rather niche career of recording Hi-NRG versions of popular songs including k.d. lang’s “Constant Craving”, REM’s “Losing My Religion” and this Nirvana classic. It’s all rather nasty but at least you can hear far more clearly what the actual lyrics were as opposed to the original. It’s not much of an endorsement though is it?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Gun	Word Up	Liked it, didn’t buy it
2	2 Cowboys	Everybody Gonfi-Gon	As if
3	The B-52s	(Meet) The Flintstones	Nope
4	Aswad	Shine	No
5	Elton John	Can You Feel The Love Tonight	I did not
6	The Pretenders	Night In My Veins	It’s a no from me
7	All 4 One	I Swear	No chance
8	Take That	Love Ain’t Here Anymore	Nah
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	And no
10	Abigail	Smells Like Teen Spirit	Certainly 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/m001kyvr/top-of-the-pops-07071994

TOTP 23 JUN 1994

Posted on April 15, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s the final week of June 1994 and the World Cup is well under way. Republic of Ireland have already pulled off an unlikely 1-0 win against Italy and Diego Maradona had shocked the world with that bulging eyes goal celebration. Two days after this TOTP aired, he failed a drug test after the Argentina v Nigeria group game and was expelled from the tournament. He never played for his country again. The England team were watching at home like the rest of us after failing to qualify for the first time since 1978. Did we not like that! The World Cup provides the perfect opportunity for tonight’s host Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo to play to the camera by wearing a different country’s football shirt every time he does a link. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – what a nob!

We start with a band who had history when it came to rustling up a big hit out of nowhere. In 1988, Aswad bagged themselves a No 1 with “Don’t Turn Around”. There previous highest chart peak had been No 70. They would spend the next six years as infrequent visitors to the Top 40 clocking up a handful of medium sized hits. By the Summer of 1994, their last chart entry had been a rather desperate career reviving attempt – a cover of Ace’s “How Long” with Yazz. I, for one, did not see them plundering a Top 5 single any time soon but that’s what they did with the release of “Shine”. Why did this particular track spark with the record buying audience? If I knew the answer to that, I’d be a super wealthy songwriter rather than an impoverished blog writer. For what it’s worth, “Shine” (to me) seemed much more aligned with their reggae roots than the likes of the out and out pop of “Don’t Turn Around” and given the then recent trend for ragga/dancehall songs and reggae-fied pop classics in the charts, maybe this was the apposite time for an Aswad comeback. Whatever the reason, “Shine” certainly had some legs – it spent three months in the Top 40 of which half of that time was in the Top 10. I’m sure we’ll be seeing Aswad again on these repeats.

Just to prove my point about the proliferation of reggae and its various sub genres in the charts at this time, here’s Dawn Penn with “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)”. And if that wasn’t enough evidence to prove how parochial the charts were becoming and this TOTP in particular, here’s @TOTPFacts with a further tidbit:

Aswad later sampled "You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)" for their track "You're No Good" a no 35 hit in 1995: https://t.co/XYmjep0ptK #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 7, 2023

If Aswad’s comeback was surprising then what can be said about the success of this single? Originally recorded in 1967 and based around a Willie Cobb 1960 song (which itself relied heavily on a 1955 Bo Diddley track), somehow in 1994, it was deemed essential Summer listening. NME put it at No 24 in their list of the 50 best songs of the year. However, it was a case of ‘yes, yes, yes’ for the single and ‘no, no, no’ for the accompanying album which was received much less favourably and it got no further than No 51 in our charts.

Oh this is just getting silly now. How much more Aswad can one blog post take?! The next act is Ace Of Base whose latest single is a version of the aforementioned “Don’t Turn Around”! Why?! Why did they think this was a good idea? Well, apparently it wasn’t the band’s brainwave but their record label Arista’s who wanted some extra tracks laid down for the release of the US version of their debut album. One of those tracks had been previous single “The Sign” and now it was the turn of a song written by songwriter extraordinaire Dianne Warren and Albert Hammond. It was originally recorded by Tina Turner as the B-side to her 1986 single “Typical Male” before Aswad got their hands on it. Six years later it resurfaced in the hands of Swedish hitmakers Ace Of Base who wanted to give it a makeover and reworked it in a minor key to lend it an air of melancholy. I guess they should be given some credit for trying to do something different with what was clearly a straight up and down, uptempo pop song but it’s still a big, steaming pool of piss. I think it’s the nasally vocals on it (and indeed all their records) that grate. That plus the god awful rap in the middle. Oh, and the nasty, tinny production. Yeah, I think that covers it.

Arista clearly knew their markets though and “Don’t Turn Around” went to No 4 in the US and No 5 in the UK as well as being a hit all around the world. Ace Of Base would return with yet another cover version in 1998 with their take of Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer”.

Pretty sure there’s no Aswad association with this next artist. Whilst the UK was experiencing the second coming of Bryan Adams in the form of Wet Wet Wet being No 1 for weeks on end, America also had its own version of chart purgatory in the shape of All 4 One whose single “I Swear” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for eleven consecutive weeks. Inevitably, it became a massive success over here as well and surely would have risen to the summit were it not for Marti Pellow and chums. It got wedged in at the No2 position for seven weeks unable to dislodge “Love Is All Around”. I think this was my sister and her then boyfriend’s song as I recall. No doubt it held that status for many a couple in 1994.

Not quite a one hit wonder in the UK (they had a No 33 single in 1995), they had more success in the US though no chart entries there either past 1996. Despite that, the group are still together with the original line up with their most recent album coming in 2015.

Well before Yorkshire rockers Terrorvision were singing about ‘whales and dolphins’ on their 1996 hit single “Perseverance” there was Shed Seven and their first foray into the Top 40 “Dolphin”. I seem to remember there being a lot of fuss about the emergence of this lot (who were also Yorkshire lads hailing from York itself) and the release of their debut album “Change Giver”. I hadn’t been an early adopter of the Shed buzz though. I hadn’t noticed their debut single “Mark” (to be fair, it only made No 80) and this one also seemed to have passed me by. Not sure why as it’s a decent tune and I was open to the idea of a guitar band playing a form of jangly pop. The music press seemed open to it as well, at least initially. Comparisons with The Smiths and an article in the NME describing them as ‘the UK’s brightest hopes’ alongside positive gig reviews fuelled expectations. Within months though the press had turned and the band were even criticised for their names. Not the band’s name but their actual names. Look at this:

“Do they really expect to make it big with a singer called Rick Witter?”
Sullivan, Caroline. “Feature: Blurred Vision”. The Guardian G2 (Thursday 10 November 1994): 5.

Ridiculous. Anyway, the album made a short lived but significant splash reaching No 16 but only spending two weeks on the chart. It was a start though and within two years they were cranking out some quality tunes like “Getting Better” and “Going For Gold” both of which were used to soundtrack some BBC montages of the England football team during Euro 96 at the height of lad culture. Perhaps their pièce de résistance though was “Chasing Rainbows”, the lead single from third album “Let It Ride”. They were up there with the big boys of Britpop briefly. Ah yes, Britpop. Blur Vs Oasis and all that. Except for a while it was Shed Seven Vs Oasis, a rivalry which I must admit to not being aware of at the time but which seems to be heightened by both bands releasing debut albums within a week of each other. The rivalry became a feud that was played out in the music press with comments like this from Noel Gallagher:

“If we’re The Beatles, where are The Rolling Stones… it’s not f***ing Shed Seven’.”
Simpson, Dave. “Feature: More Songs About Puberty And Power”. Melody Maker (10 September 1994): 32–34.

Ultimately, “Change Giver” couldn’t compete with the record breaking “Definitely Maybe” but it wasn’t for a lack of confidence. Rick Witter is wearing a Shed Seven T-shirt in this TOTP performance with a picture of himself on the front! “Dolphin” peaked at No 28.

Live action films that use cartoons as their source material are rarely a good idea in my book. As far back as 1980 when Robin Williams took on Popeye, they never seemed to work. Leslie Nielsen’s turn as Mr Magoo in 1997 didn’t live long in the memory and neither did Matthew Broderick’s as Inspector Gadget in 1999. And then there’s The Flintstones. A staple of many a child of the 60s and 70s televisual schedule, the live action film starring John Goodman as Fred Flintstone actually did pretty well at the box office but it was still awful. With songs from films being big business in the 90s (think Bryan Adams / Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Whitney Houston / The Bodyguard and Wet Wet Wet / Four Weddings and a Funeral), it was no surprise that Universal Pictures wanted a huge hit to promote the film. Enter The B–52’s to record a version of the cartoon’s well known theme tune.

In many ways they were the perfect vehicle for a reworking of “(Meet) The Flintstones” having an almost cartoonish image themselves and being at the kitsch end of New Wave but on listening back to this today, it sounds horrific. Renamed as The B.C. 52’s (how amusing), they put their trademark stylings to the song like the over emphasised vocals of Kate Pierson and some wah wah guitar but it just doesn’t work for me. Shoehorning in some of the sound effects from the original into the mix like the canned drum roll that accompanies ‘Fred’s two feet’ in the cartoon sounds completely incongruous. What did I know though as the single went all the way to No 3. It would be the band’s final UK and US chart hit.

Some more pissing Eurodance next. I’m so fed up of this now. At the risk of sounding like my Dad when he used to pass judgment on the music of my youth, it all sounds the same and the bigger the crap the longer it goes on. Cappella seemed to be a poor man’s 2 Unlimited but with an obsession with inserting ‘U’ instead of ‘you’ in their song titles. “U & Me” was the third of their singles to follow this trend after “U Got 2 Know” and “U Got 2 Let The Music”. I can’t remember how they went but I’m guessing they sounded pretty similar to this one. Do you think Eurodance is just a dead form of music now? Like Latin is a dead language that nobody speaks anymore, is Eurodance a genre of music that nobody makes nor listens to any longer? We can only hope. “U & Me” peaked at No 10.

The 90s had been pretty good to Elton John so far. The decade had furnished him with his first ever solo UK No 1 in “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”, his album “Sleeping With The Past” (1990) was also a chart topper whilst “The One” (1992) went to No 2. Meanwhile, his collaborations album “Duets” had given him two Top 10 singles on the bounce. I hadn’t liked any of it though. In fact, I’d thought it was all terrible pretty much. However, that period’s success had lifted Elton out of his late 80s malaise when everything had gone a bit awry post “Too Low For Zero” and its radio friendly singles like “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” and “I’m Still Standing”.

What came next in 1994 some would say was his best work in years and it was all due to a Disney film. The Lion King would become an international phenomenon becoming the second highest grossing film of all time at one point behind the original Jurassic Park but also spawning a musical, sequels, a prequel and TV series. The man behind its soundtrack though was Elton and he fashioned a record that would go diamond in the US alone, achieving 10 million sales. The two big singles from it were “Circle Of Life” and this one, “Can You Feel The Love Tonight”. Both were heart strings tugging ballads the like of which Elton was more than capable of composing once he’d weaned himself off the overly saccharine which he was want to indulge in. I could appreciate the musicality of both hits from the soundtrack though I preferred “Circle Of Life” if I’m honest as did Elton who is on record as stating it’s the better song. It was “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” though that won an Oscar for Best Original Song in 1995.

The single was also a big hit in the US where it made No 4 though the reception to it in this country was somehow only worthy of a chart peak of No 14. Elton would return in 1995 with the platinum selling “Made In England” album.

It’s week four for Wet Wet Wet at the chart summit. What can I say about it this week? How about our perception of what exactly was going on here at the time? Did we have any idea that we were witnessing the genesis of a 15 weeks run at No 1 for “Love Is All Around”? Four Weddings And A Funeral was pulling in huge numbers at the box office to help promote the song in much the same way that Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves did for “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” so maybe we should have seen it coming? Or had we consigned the whole Bryan Adams debacle to history as a one off and therefore in our minds there was no way such a run could happen again or at least certainly not within three years?

And what of chart rivals? Were there any records that looked likely to depose the Wets in those early weeks? Was it inconceivable that someone like Big Mountain (with their own song from a film) could get to No 1? How about Dawn Penn or US chart toppers All 4 One? Or even Ace Of Base who’d already scored a chart topper of their own the previous year and whose current single was a song that had been No 1 for Aswad just six years before? Marti Pellow and co would see them all off to achieve fifteen weeks atop the charts before getting bored themselves and deleting the record so that sales would eventually and inevitably decline. At least that put them marginally above Bryan Adams in the credibility stakes.

The play out song is “Night In My Veins” by The Pretenders. I’d completely forgotten that there was a follow up to “I’ll Stand By You” but here it is and it’s not bad if nowhere near as memorable as its predecessor. A catchy, melodic rock work out, it would make No 25 and was the band’s penultimate UK Top 40 entry.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Aswad	Shine	Nope
2	Dawn Penn	You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)	No and indeed no, no
3	Ace Of Base	Don’t Turn Around	As if
4	All 4 One	I Swear	No but I bet my sister did
5	Shed Seven	Dolphin	No but I have a live album of theirs with it on
6	The B-52’s	(Meet) The Flinstones	Never happening
7	Cappella	U & Me	Negative
8	Elton John	Can You Feel The Love Tonight	Nah
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	I did not
10	The Pretenders	Night In My Veins	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/m001krc9/top-of-the-pops-23061994

TOTP 02 JUL 1992

Posted on March 8, 2022 by 80stastic

We’re jumping about in two week increments at the moment at TOTP Rewind. We’ve only had two consecutive ‘92 shows in these repeats since BBC4 reached the end of April editions. This is of course due to ‘year zero’ presenter Adrian Rose who decided not to sign the waiver paperwork for the shows he featured in. Given the abuse he regularly gets from the online TOTP community, I wonder if he still stands by that decision. He probably doesn’t give a toss does he?

Talking of decisions, a huge one had been made at the BBC which resulted in an event that took place the day after this TOTP aired. Yes, Friday 3rd July 1992 saw the last ever episode of the Wogan talk show broadcast. Its ten year tenure was finally brought to an end and saw it replaced by new BBC soap Eldorado. Remember that? It was god awful and beset with problems not the least of which was that the producers had cast some totally inexperienced actors in the roles. It lasted just 12 months before being axed. Oh and it was nothing to do with this bunch of monstrously haired pop hopefuls who were big in the mid 80s in Italy but absolutely nowhere else on the planet…

Anyway, back to Wogan and that final show. His guests included Frank Bruno, Michael Crawford and Jason Donovan who provided one of the musical interludes. In a recent article in Classic Pop magazine, regular columnist Ian Peel made a case that the Wogan archives were a treasure trove of great pop performances. Unlike TOTP, artists promoting their latest singles didn’t necessarily have to have already cracked the Top 40 and in some cases never did. This led to some wonderful footage that otherwise might never have existed. I bet Drum Theatre were on the show at some point! Anyway, might be worth a look on YouTube for some lost performances if you have too much time on your hands like me.

With that context set, let’s get on with the show. There’s only one presenter tonight (Tony Dortie) and I think this tweak of the format comes to be the standard in the weeks to come. We begin with something from the US charts and it’s Arrested Development with “Tennessee”. With the gangsta rap genre on the rise, this hip hop ensemble took rap in a different direction with a more melodic approach. They combined that with lyrical themes that espoused spirituality and freedom rather than the misogyny and street gang culture of gangsta rap. It helped to create a winning formula that propelled their debut album “3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days In The Life Of…” to sales of over 6 million copies worldwide.

Initially though, they weren’t an immediate hit in the UK. This single “Tennessee” missed the Top 40 on its original release though it would become a hit here when rereleased the following year. It took next single, the Sly & The Family Stone copying “People Everyday”, to break the dam allowing success to flood in when it hit No 2 in the charts towards the end of the year. My wife was so taken with them that she bought the album.

More a collective than a band, the project spilt in 1996 after declining sales but reformed in 2000 and have since released twelve albums. They’re currently on tour and playing a gig in my neck of the woods in Cottingham in April. There’s even talk of us going.

I can’t find a clip of the TOTP performance online so the official promo video will have to suffice.

The sound of Staffordshire rave now as Altern–8 bring us their latest dance floor banger that has the figure 8 in its title, that being their trademark and all. Well, that and the face masks and hazmat suits. “Hypnotic St-8” is their latest offering but this performance isn’t about the track at all. No, the only thing to concern us here are the two fully adidas trackied up geezers throwing some shapes behind the singer. They look proper mental. Totally off their tits. Surely that couldn’t have been faked could it? There must have been some chemical substances involved. I wonder who these guys were? Mates of the band or just some random clubheads that they picked up off the streets? The latter looks more likely given the state of them. Wow!

“Hypnotic St-8” peaked at No 16.

Due to the missed Adrian Rose shows, this is the second post running that I have to find something to say about Def Leppard and their almost unspeakable single “Make Love Like A Man”. This week it’s the promo video but it might as well be the band in the studio again as it’s just a straight performance promo intercut with some old time movie footage possibly featuring stars like Harold Lloyd or Lillian Gish though I’m no cinephile of that era so I could be wrong on that score. The song is all tongue in cheek, knockabout fun according to the band so I don’t suppose we should read too much into the film clips.

Although “Make Love Like A Man” was a big hit on the US Rock chart, the band’s ability to cross over into the US mainstream Billboard Hot 100 – as they had done in the late 80s with the “Hysteria” album – had diminished by 1992 and it only made No 36 there. UK fans were more loyal taking it to No 12.

This is more like it! Electronic hadn’t been seen on the show since “Get The Message” made the Top 10 over a year earlier but now they were back but, as Tory Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Brandon Lewis might say, in a very specific and limited way. It took five years for Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr to record a follow up album to 1991’s eponymous debut and in the meantime the only new material we got to hear was this one off single “Disappointed”. Taken from the soundtrack to absolutely rotten live action/animation hybrid film Cool World, it featured the vocals once again of Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant who sang on their debut hit “Getting Away With It” in 1989. It’s a perfect bit of pop confection that would prove to be their biggest hit when it peaked at No 6.

Given that it’ll be years before we see them once more, I might as well tell my Johnny Marr story again. It was November 1999 – I was working as Assistant Manager at the Our Price store in Altrincham and Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G character is taking UK TV audiences by storm. It’s Monday morning and the Ali G ‘Innit’ video has just been released. The demand for it is very high. Our store has sold out its initial allocation by lunchtime. My colleague Lisa takes a phone call from a member of the public who is enquiring if we have any of the video in stock. She tells the caller we do but crucially without checking our stock levels. Fast forward to late afternoon and who should walk into the shop but Johnny Marr! He comes straight up to me on the counter and asks for the Ali G video. I inform him that we have sold out unfortunately. This information gets Johnny very agitated. “I rang up earlier and was told you had it in. I left the recording studio early to come and buy it” he informs me. I’m not getting given down the banks by Johnny Marr for something that’s not my fault I quickly surmise and so ring upstairs to the stockroom to find out who had taken the phone call. Lisa comes on the line and admits it was her. I ask if she checked stock levels before telling Marr we had it in and she says no she didn’t. To my utter shame I tell Lisa that she has to come downstairs, apologise and explain to Johnny Marr no less exactly what happened and why he can’t buy the Ali G video. To Lisa’s eternal credit she does exactly that. I still feel bad to this day.

By the way, this wasn’t the only single called “Disappointed” from 1992 that I liked. I even bought this one…

Just two Breakers this week and yet again neither would end up being on the show in its full form. We start with The B52s and a track which was both their new single and title track of their next album. After achieving massive unexpected (and possibly unwanted?) commercial success with the “Cosmic Thing” long player, did the band feel the pressure to come up with an equally successful follow up? It seemed like it when they released “Good Stuff” with the track itself sounding like a rewrite of their biggest hit “Love Shack”. It wasn’t that it was awful just a bit uninspired and obvious. The big difference between “Cosmic Thing” and “Good Stuff” was the crucial missing ingredient of Cindy Wilson who had taken time out from the band to start a family. Now reduced to a trio, it just didn’t work as well despite the presence of uber producers Don Was and Nile Rodgers. The album did pick up an alternative Grammy nomination but lost out to “Bone Machine” by Tom Waits which incidentally includes one of my favourite ever Waits tunes in “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”.

Despite steady sales the album didn’t do nearly as well as its predecessor and the band would not release any new material for 15 years. “Good Stuff” the single peaked at No 21 in the UK and No 28 in the US.

Incidentally, as there are only two Breakers tonight they’re getting what seems to be double the air time that artists on this section get when there are four. Both The B-52s and second Breaker Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine get at least a minute’s worth of exposure when 30 seconds has been the norm. So to CTUSM who are really making the most of their annus mirabilis. How many hits in ‘92 have they had now? They seem to be on every other week! It’s actually the third but if you count everything since the “Sheriff Fatman” re-release in June of ‘91 then it’s five Top 40 hits in just over a year. This one is “Do Re Me So Far So Good” and was another track from their “1992 – The Love Album” long player. It’s good and all that but their tunes were all starting to merge into one a bit for me by this point.

Now, this story about Jim Bob and Fruitbat not being able to perform live as planned due to being taken ill in rehearsals. Was that true? Here’s Tony Dortie with a different version of events to the one he gave in show 30 years ago plus a retort from Jim Bob himself:

Every week with the soap dodgers stuff. And none of what you’ve said is true.
— Jim Bob (@mrjimBob) March 4, 2022

And there’s more. Here’s Jim Bob again with his own version of what went down:

#totp pic.twitter.com/OVBRpDMcs0
— Jim Bob (@mrjimBob) March 4, 2022

So who do you believe? “Do Re Me Do Far So Good” peaked at No 22.

And so to the second biggest selling single of the year in the UK. Did anybody see a Snap! revival coming in ‘92? I’m pretty sure I didn’t. After four Top 10 hits (including a No 1) in ‘90 from their “World Power” album, I thought the (ahem) ‘Cult of Snap’ was over. How wrong could I have been? I mean it’s not as wrong as Priti Patel being Home Secretary but still. Suffice to say I hadn’t read the room (or pop landscape anyway).

“Rhythm Is A Dancer” was a huge tune spending six weeks atop the charts over here. It was also No 1 all over Europe and was Top 5 in America. Of course, you can’t mention this song without reference to that lyric about being serious as cancer but it’s origins may lie with Eric B. and Rakim. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the story:

Snap weren't the first to use the dire lyric "As serious as cancer". Eric B & Rakim got there first in their 1987 track "I Ain't No Joke" ("I got a question as serious as cancer/Who can keep the average dancer…?") #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 4, 2022

OK, well if it’s going to No 1 for six weeks, I think I’ll leave it there and keep my powder dry.

Blimey! The TOTP producers loved “Hazard” by Richard Marx didn’t they?! Is this the third time it’s been on? This time it’s one of those satellite live link up jobs. Coming direct from LA, Richard is joined by a band of five very serious looking musos whilst he’s decided to come dressed as if he’s got a stint presenting Play School to do after he’s finished singing. Again I’ve drawn a blank on YouTube as this satellite performance isn’t listed so the official promo video will have to do.

Marx would eke out two more Top 40 hits from the “Rush Street” album that Tony Dortie mentions (both with the word ‘heart’ in the title) but neither came close to replicating the success of “Hazard”. A bit like when Eden Hazard never came close to replicating the form of his time at Chelsea when he moved to Real Madrid.

Now if Snap!’s comeback was unforeseen then the return of the next act must have been a 1,000,000-1 bet down at Ladbrokes. Jimmy Nail had one brief stint as a pop star in ‘85 when his version of Rose Royce’s “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” was a No 3 hit almost certainly off the back of his success as Oz in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Presumably his second assault on the charts was initiated by his successful TV show Spender. That had just finished its second season in February so Jimmy’s profile was high. As such, maybe it was considered to be the optimum time to give that pop lark another whirl.

Nail’s pop career mark II was to be launched on a different record label. First time round he’d been signed to Virgin but this time he was with EastWest home of Simply Red. Well, they certainly knew about massive selling albums having ‘91’s best seller in “Stars” so maybe Jimmy and his management thought they could do a job for him too. Surely though nobody involved in the project could have predicted a No 1 single which is what “Ain’t No Doubt” delivered. So long had it been since his first pop incarnation that when “Ain’t No Doubt” first started receiving airplay, people didn’t know who the singer was. This was no more evident than on Simon Mayo’s Radio 1 breakfast show. Mayo decided to play the single to the rest of his Breakfast crew to see if they could recognise the singer. Nobody could although the late Dianne Oxberry made a decent guess at The Kane Gang. Dianne was from County Durham so at least would have recognised the North East accent.

“Ain’t No Doubt” would end up as the eighth best selling UK single of the year. Not bad for a glass factory worker who’d served time in prison and who had never acted professionally until his break in Auf Wiedersehen Pet when he was already nearly 30.

A triple helping of Erasure is served up to end the show. We’ve only seen their version of “Take A Chance On Me” from the “ABBA-esque EP” so far on the show but now we get to see videos for two of the other tracks on it in “Lay All Your Love On Me” and “Voulez Vous”. Not all of the videos you understand – all three are squeezed into just over two minutes Breakers style. This was no Oasis performing “Don’t Look Back In Anger” and “Cum On Feel The Noize” or The Jam doing both “Town Called Malice” and “Precious” on the show. Still, it was an attempt to do something different or as Tony Dortie tweeted:

#totp trolling The Chart show back in day !!! Erasure hat trick
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) March 4, 2022

As for the videos themselves, “Lay All Your Love On Me” has a Little Red Riding Hood motif which then morphs into Vince and Andy riding motorcycles through a forest background which reminded me of Star Wars Return Of The Jedi. You know that bit on the planet with the ewoks where there’s a chase scene between stormtroopers and…whoever it is (Han Solo?) on hover bikes (or something) against a forest backdrop? That one. All a bit odd.

I commented on the video for “Take A Chance On Me” in the last post so…

…onto “Voulez Vous” which is a behind-the-scenes take on the making of a pop video with lots of footage showing the staging that goes into a basic promo of Andy and Vince performing on a revolving circular stage. It’s OK but not the best concept I’ve ever seen for a pop video.

In response to the “Abba-esque EP”, Abba tribute act Bjorn Again released their own single of cover versions…of Erasure songs. Genius! The “Erasure-ish” featured “A Little Respect” and “Stop” and reached No 25 in the charts.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Arrested Development	Tennessee	No but my wife had the album
2	Altern-8	Hypnotic St-8	Nah
3	Def Leppard	Make Love Like A Man	Never
4	Electronic	Disappointed	Nope
5	The B52s	Good Stuff	I did not
6	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	Do Re Me So Far So Good	Negative
7	Snap!	Rhythm Is A Dancer	Not for me thanks
8	Richard Marx	Hazard	No
9	Jimmy Nail	Ain’t No Doubt	Undoubtedly a decent enough tune but I couldn’t bring myself to buy it
10	Erasure	ABBA-esque EP	No but I thought my wife might have

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/m0014zvn/top-of-the-pops-02071992

TOTP 24 MAY 1990

Posted on December 24, 2020 by 80stastic

The 24th of May 1990 was not a slow news day as England football manager Bobby Robson chose this day to inform the media that he would not be renewing his contract after the Summer’s World Cup competition in Italy. Sir Bobby had a job lined up with Dutch club PSV Eindhoven which led to accusations from the tabloid press of him being unpatriotic. Hmm. It seems we haven’t progressed much in 30 years.

That year’s World Cup would become inextricably linked with the music world thanks to New Order’s “World In Motion” song but that’s for the next repeat’s post. For now though, we start with The B-52s and their follow up to their No 2 hit single “Love Shack” called “Roam”. I’d loathed “Love Shack” so probably wasn’t expecting that much from “Roam” but it it turned out to be vastly superior to its predecessor to my ears.

There seems to be a lot of discussion online about the true meaning of the song’s lyrics. On there surface an innocent message about freedom, travelling and seeing the world, the online conspiracy theorists would have you believe that it’s all just one big double entendre and is actually about the sexual act with lines like ‘Take it hip to hip, rocket through the wilderness, Around the world the trip begins with a kiss’ clearly being about cunnilingus! What?! Mind. Blown.

Moving on swiftly, for me the performance here and indeed the sound of the song is all about Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson and their rousing vocals which are just perfectly weighted for the song. So dominant are they visually that Fred Schneider, who had been so high profile in their performances of “Love Shack”, is relegated to shaking his tambourine almost absentmindedly throughout. I wonder if he was OK with that? Reminds me of a story I once heard about the single “Nobody’s Fool” by Haircut 100. When percussionist Mark Fox first heard it, he complained that there weren’t enough parts in it for him and he wasn’t going to just stand their on TOTP with a bloody tambourine thank you very much!

There’s a parody of “Roam” called “Comb” which was a skit on Australian comedy sketch show Fast Forward about Pierson’ and Wilson’s hairstyles. There’s also a COVID-19 parody that I found on YouTube featuring lines like “No more hip to hip, keep your social distances” but now doesn’t seem the time to be dwelling on that.

“Roam” peaked at No 17 in the UK but went all the way to No 3 in the US.

The first video of the night comes from Mantronix featuring Wondress with “Take Your Time”. I have zero left to say about this one so I’ve had to plunge into the internet to come up with something. What I found chilled me to the bone. This single was taken from an album called “This Should Move Ya” the title of which alone should have been enough to set my warning bells ringing but nothing could have prepared me for what I found out about that album. It includes a version of “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll” by Ian Dury And The Blockheads! Obviously then I had to give it a listen and I’m not yet sure I have recovered. If you are brave, or possibly a masochist, listen to this….

Just horrible. Anybody involved in this heinous crime should hang their heads in shame.

“Take Your Time” peaked at No 10.

En Vogue are up next and actually in the studio for their very first visit to TOTP as presenter Anthea Turner advises. She also tells us that they have style and you have to admit she’s not wrong. They give a mesmerising performance including that a cappella intro which is actually a song within a song as it is a treatment of “Who’s Lovin’ You” by The Miracles.

I was amazed to see a filmography section in the band’s Wikipedia entry but they have actually appeared in three films – Aces: Iron Eagle III, their own Christmas movie and this fleeting cameo in Batman Forever whichI had no idea was them until now…

Four Breakers this week and Anthea Turner perversely announces them in the reverse order to the one that they actually appear. The first one then is actually Movement 98 featuring Carroll Thompson with “Joy And Heartbreak”. I had no recall of this at all before hearing it on this repeat at which point it did sound familiar but that’s probably because it is based on the melody of Erik Satie’s “Les Trois Gymnopedie”. No really. Listen to just a few seconds of Satie below…

and then play the start of the Movement 98 track….

…see? That classical music trick would be repeated later in the year when The Farm scored a huge hit with “All Together Now” which was based on Pachelbel’s Canon but that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Back to Movement 98 though and Wikipedia informs me that this was a Paul Oakenfold project with input from Rob Davis, the earrings and dresses wearing guitarist from Mud who would go onto write such huge hits as “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)” for Spiller and “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” for Kylie. As for vocalist Carroll Thompson, she has quite the musical pedigree. An award winning reggae singer, she was also a member of Floy Joy briefly and also sang on Aztec Camera’s “One And One” track from their “Love” album. She has also worked as a session singer with the likes of …deep breath…Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Natalie Cole, Pet Shop Boys, Robbie Williams, Boy George, Maxi Priest, Sting, Billy Ocean, Chaka Khan, Aswad and M People. Phew!

As well as Satie’s influence, “Joy And Heartbreak” also reminds me of something else which I can’t quite put my finger on. Is it Shanice’s “I Love Your Smile”? A Janet Jackson track maybe? It’ll come back to me …probably in the middle of the night.

“Joy And Heartbreak” peaked at No 27.

Right then, the era of Betty Boo is upon us. Having introduced herself to UK pop fans the previous year as the vocalist on Beatmasters’ single “Hey DJ / I Can’t Dance To That Music You’re Playing”, she was signed to Rhythm King Records on the strength of demos that she presented to them for “Doin’ The Do” and “Where Are You Baby?” with the former becoming her debut solo single. Mixing her hip hop roots with some irresistibly catchy pop hooks, the track was an immediate hit taking Betty (real name Alison Clarkson) to No 7 in the charts. She was a bona fide pop star in her own right.

The video worked well in promoting her cartoony rebellious image as she revisits her old school in a leather jacket and hot pants to take issue with the teachers who said she would amount to nothing. In a 2019 Classic Pop Magazine interview, Clarkson related the origin of the song:

“When I left my A-Levels I did have my tail between my legs,” she reflects, “in that [after the She Rockers split] I did go back to the head of sixth form and say, please may I come back and do my A-Levels again, and she said no. I was so annoyed with them. So I thought it’d be great if I just channelled that. I was sticking two fingers up, basically.”

For a while back there in 1990, Betty Boo was hot news. Her debut album “Boomania” went to No 4 in the charts and contained four hit singles. However, inevitably the hits dried up after taking two years to come up with a second album and she retired from the music world after losing her Mum to cancer. As with the aforementioned Rob Davis though, she would carve out a career as a successful songwriter penning hits for Girls Aloud, Dannii Minogue and the No 1 single “Pure And Simple” for Hear’Say.

In a recent TOTP repeat we saw British rock act Thunder on the show and this week we get another of the acts of that early 90s UK rock scene in Little Angels. Having been in existence since 1984 after forming in Scarborough, the band had released four singles up to this point that had all failed to make the Top 40 but they rectified that with the release of “Radical Your Lover” which was their first chart hit peaking at No 34. If you check out the details of the release, it’s actually credited to Little Angels and The Big Bad Horns with the latter being a trio who provided the brass parts to complement their out and out rock sound.

Listening back to this now, it seems almost interchangeable with that of Thunder but then I’m not a die hard fan. Having said that, I did own a copy of their No 1 1992 album “Jam” at one point which was a freebie from Our Price – record companies would often supply the chain and its shops with a promo copy of their artists’ albums ahead of official release date to play in store to ‘create a buzz’ about it. Not sure what happened to my copy though. I also once saw them do a PA at Manchester’s HMV store to promote that “Jam” album. They performed a short set and they sounded pretty good to be fair.

More interesting than any of the above though is the fact that the band’s guitarist was called Bruce Dickinson. Yes! Exactly the same as Iron Maiden’s lead singer! What are the chances?!

Talk Talk in the charts in 1990 with a re-release of a single that flopped when originally issued in 1984? What gives? Well, “It’s My Life” had been reissued by EMI to promote the band’s first ever Best Of Collection called “Natural History: The Very Best of Talk Talk” which the band themselves had disproved of. It performed surprisingly well commercially given that the band only ever achieved three Top 40 singles despite much critical acclaim. So well that EMI released a remix album the following year called “History Revisited: The Remixes” which angered the band so much that they sued EMI claiming that material had been falsely attributed to them. Talk Talk won the case with EMI agreeing to withdraw and destroy all remaining copies of the album. I would have been working in Our Price at that point but I must admit I can’t remember having to take that album off sale.

It seems that the band were never on that good terms with their record company. As far back as the single’s original release six years previous, EMI had interfered with the band’s creativity when, disliking Tim Pope’s original video showing Mark Hollis with lips sealed and covered by animated lines (a statement against lip synching), they insisted on another video which was basically the band performing against a back drop of said original promo. The band’s exaggerated movements suggest that they weren’t totally on board with EMI’s idea!

As for me, back in 1984, I’d liked “It’s My Life” on its original release and also subsequent singles “Such A Shame” and “Dum Dum Girl”. I’m pretty sure I had plans to purchase the parent album also called “It’s My Life” but somehow that purchase never materialised. The 1990 re-release peaked at No 13.

Two songs we’ve already seen on the show before are up next starting with “Won’t Talk About It” by Beats International. Featuring Lindy Layton on vocals, I’m pretty sure this would have been the band’s last ever TOTP appearance as they never made the Top 40 again after this single.

Although Lindy attended stage school in the 1980s and appeared as an actor in TV shows such as Casualty and Press Gang alongside numerous adverts, she did not, contrary to rumours, appear in Grange Hill. Apparently the press reported at the time that she had been in the long running school drama but they had confused her with the actress Lindy Brill who played Cathy Hargreaves. Maybe the reason for the confusion was that Brill did seem to have some musical chops. Witness her here in a story line about her school band who were rehearsing for a scout hall dance gig in the school’s music room at lunchtime….

The scout hall dance gig was small fry though compared to actually being on TOTP itself, a feat which Brill achieved as part of the St Winifred’s School Choir backing singers on Brian and Michael’s No 1 hit “Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs” some 12 years before Lindy Layton fronted Beats International on the show. Lindy Brill – only the woman Lindy Layton could have been.

“Won’t Talk About It” peaked at No 9.

Oh come on now! Seriously?! Michael Bolton on again?! How many times is this? Three? Four? It’s just the same old clip of that original performance of “How Can We Be Lovers” recycled again and again to boot. OK – let’s look on the bright side. Despite a haul of 17 chart hits in the UK, we won’t see Bolton on the show again for at least another year as his next three single releases didn’t make the Top 40 and he would only make the Top 10 twice more; once with a cover of Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman” in 1991 and secondly with the creepily titled 1995 No 6 hit “Can I Touch You…There?”. Bolton also had a hit with a song called “Said I Loved You But I Lied” – I’m starting to think Michael might not be all that nice a guy.

A song next which seemed to be the go to track if you wanted to cover it for a hit. Like most people, I knew “Venus” from the Bananarama version of it in 1986 rather than the Shocking Blue 1969 original. However, it’s also been covered by the likes of Tom Jones through to Weird Al Yankovic via Sacha Distel. Weird is certainly the word. In 1990, it was revitalised once more by Italian / German dance project Don Pablo’s Animals who took it all the way to No 4 in our charts. It’s a horrible instrumental version though with that omnipresent ‘whoo, yeah’ sample all over it. Just nasty.

And that name? What was that all about? Here’s @TOTPFacts with a decent guess:

Why the name "Don Pablo's Animals"? Here's my (unconfirmed) theory: it's a reference to "Don" Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drugs baron, who notoriously built a zoo on his estate, stocking it with antelope, elephants, giraffes and hippos. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 18, 2020

Oh OK. So Don Pablo was basically a prototype Joe Exotic of Tiger King notoriety. Joe, of course, liked a sing-song (before was sentenced to 22 years in prison for hiring someone to murder his nemesis Carole Baskin) . Here he is with “I Saw A Tiger”…

Wikipedia advises me that it wasn’t really him doing the singing though. Say it ain’t so Joe.

Back to Don Pablo’s Animals, I think my wife had this on a “Smash Hits Rave” compilation album which, after a quick google search, shows me that it also included Betty Boo’s “Doin’ The Do” from earlier in the show. I have never played said album in my life.

In a very static Top 5, Adamski (featuring Seal) comes out on top for a third straight week with “Killer”. It’s the video this week rather than a studio performance. It’s pretty basic looking stuff by today’s standards with Seal’s body less, spinning head enhanced by some flashing graphics. Adamski himself also features as some sort of Dr Frankenstein figure with Seal portrayed as his creation.

The song has been covered numerous times most famously by George Michael and by Seal himself but there are other versions too. Witness Sugababes who recorded it as a B-side to their 2003 single “Shape”:

Four years before that, there was this vile version from German trance act ATB in 1999 which I must have voided from my memory banks and for good reason:

The play out video is “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by Was (Not Was). I would have had no clue as to when this was a bit. I’d have maybe gone for later in the decade to be honest but this cover of The Temptations classic by David and Don Was (not their real names) was the lead single from their fourth studio album “Are You Okay?”. It didn’t do much for me I have to say but I did like the other two singles lifted from the album which were “How the Heart Behaves” and “I Feel Better Than James Brown” neither of which made the Top 40.

In a neat bit of symmetry, Don Was produced four tracks on The B-52s album “Cosmic Thing” from which opening song on tonight’s show “Roam” was taken (although not that track itself but he did produce “Love Shack”).

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The B-52s	Roam	I didn’t
2	Mantronix featuring Wondress	Take Your Time	I could take all day but I won’t change my mind about this – no
3	En Vogue	Hold On	Nah
4	Movement 98 featuring Carroll Thompson	Joy And Heartbreak	Nope
5	Betty Boo	Doin’ The Do	No but my wife had it on that Smash Hits Rave album
6	Little Angels	Radical Your Lover	No
7	Talk Talk	It’s My Life	No but I have it on a compilation CD of theirs (not Natural History though)
8	Beats International	Won’t Talk About It	No but my wife has their album with a version of it on
9	Michael Bolton	How Can We Be Lovers	NO!
10	Don Pablo’s Animals	Venus	See 5 above
11	Adamski	Killer	No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on
12	Was (Not Was)	Papa Was A Rolling Stone	No but I have it on their Best Of compilation Hello Dad…I’m In Jail

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/m000qcx2/top-of-the-pops-24051990

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 15 MAR 1990

Posted on November 17, 2020 by 80stastic

After weeks of watching aghast at the state of the charts back in early 1990, there seemed to be some online optimism that we were finally embarking on a run of episodes that promised to turn the tide of disappointment. Even the usually disparaging @TOTPFacts seemed to have caught the good times vibe:

It’s a good one tonight. Set an alarm. #TOTP https://t.co/l8RVvPF0nO
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 13, 2020

And yet…be warned for despite the undoubted presence of some decent tunage on display tonight, there is an awful lot of shite to have to wade through first. Simon Mayo is the host for tonight’s show who is usually nondescript enough to be considered as a safe pair of hands so let’s get into it…

…hmm. Now which camp do The Mission fall into? Decent or shite? I’m going to go for the former but with the caveat that it’s a risky choice. I definitely like some of their stuff (“Stay With Me”, “Wasteland” and “Tower of Strength” for example) but there was only so much of it that I could handle in one go. “Deliverance” was the second single from their “Carved In Sand” album and I have to say it doesn’t really ring any bells with me. That may be to do with the fact that it was only in the Top 40 for three weeks and was already at its peak of No 27 by the time of this TOTP performance. If I didn’t watch this particular episode (and I’m not sure that I did) then maybe it was just in and out too quick for me to have heard it. Having caught up with it some 30 years later, it doesn’t strike me as one of their better efforts. A rousing enough chorus but the rest of it is a bit of a dirge don’t you think? Well, Norman Cook agreed with me. In a Smash Hits article reviewing the charts back then he stated of “Deliverance”:

” I hate all this macho rock business and The Mission came from a punk new wave background and they really ought to know better“

Ouch!

OK, after a debatable start to the show, I’m nailing my colours to the flag straight off the bat with this one by saying “I’ll Be Loving You Forever” by New Kids On The Block is utter excrement, a complete jobbie of a song. After two uptempo dance pop singles broke them in the UK, it was pretty obvious that they would go for a weepy ballad for their next choice of release. Not obvious enough for Simon Mayo though who declares that T’KNOB have gone “exceedingly early” for a big *hand gesture* ballad *follow up hand gesture*. What’s with the gesticulating Simon? He comes across like he’s giving a paper at some academic conference – it’s not rocket science Mayo!

The song itself is so insipid as to hardly be there at all. Jordan Knight’s reed thin vocal is barely audible (except maybe to dogs). If you want falsetto vocals allied to love songs then The Stylistics had already been there and done it (much better) in the 70s.

“I’ll Be Loving You Forever” broke their run of UK No 1 singles after “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” and “Hangin’ Tough” had scaled the summit by peaking at No 5. It was the opposite trend in the US where it was their first ever Billboard Hot 100 chart topper.

Ooh, now then. Here’s one to split the nation. After I blithely stated in a recent post that the name Candy never caught on as a popular choice for newborns despite the rise to fame of Candy Dulfer, bizarrely there was another Candy in the charts almost immediately afterwards. Candy Flip, as I recall, were briefly hailed as ‘the next big thing’ when they gave The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” the ‘rave’ treatment. This caused huge division around the duo; for some this was utter musical blasphemy while for the nation’s clubbers, it was bringing rave culture to the mainstream. In all honesty, and I say this as someone who has never been to a rave, I’m guessing that Candy Flip could have been seen by some in the rave community as betraying the whole movement by becoming pop stars off the back of it. Just a thought.

So who exactly were this pair of chancers? Well, they were Richard “Rik” Anderson- Peet and Daniel “Dizzie Dee” Spencer who had met whilst studying music and recording technology in Manchester where they moved in social circles that included the likes of A Guy Called Gerald and The Stone Roses. Clearly not ones to miss a trick when it came to burgeoning trends, they jumped on the ‘Madchester’ / ‘baggy indie’ bandwagon for their look and bingo! Ready made pop stars! They even made it onto the front cover of Smash Hits!

Apparently they did actually have some musical ability as in later life, Peet became a producer for the likes of The Charlatans and Muse whilst Spencer worked with erm…Robbie Williams…on his least well received album “Rudebox”. Yeah, maybe keep quiet about that. They also had some serious musical heritage in their locker. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

According to Smash Hits, Candy Flip singer Daniel Spencer's dad played guitar for Sandie Shaw and wrote songs for Petula Clark, while keyboard player Ric Peet's mum was in The Vernons Girls, who sang backing for the likes of Cliff Richard and… George Martin! #TOTP pic.twitter.com/OWf0mFyFjr
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 13, 2020

Mind blowing stuff. Talking of which they were named after ‘candyflipping’, the slang term for the practice of taking ecstasy and LSD at the same time. So definitely not Candy Dulfer then.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” peaked at No 3 and was their only chart hit. Their was an album which, gazumping Madness by two whole years, was called “Madstock…The Continuing Adventures of Bubblefish Car”. I don’t think a Candy Flip revival will be happening any time soon.

Is this the third consecutive week that “Love Shack” by The B-52s has been on the show? The TOTP producers must have loved this one. It’s the video yet again (I presume the band were too busy touring or something to pop by the studio) and as such, I’m out of comments so I’ll hand over to Homer Simpson for this one:

“Love Shack” peaked at No 2.

So the Breakers are back but at 1 min and 26 seconds to cover three whole songs, it barely seems worth it! The first of these stretches the description of ‘song’ to be fair. “Handful Of Promises” was the third hit on the bounce by Big Fun and was taken from their “Pocketful Of Dreams” album of which this song gave the album its title. Clearly it’s horrible. Nasty, cynical and lacking of any sort of tune, it somehow scrambled to a No 21 peak. Smash Hits magazine did a Big Fun v Yell battle of the bands piece which Big Fun won by 23 and a half points to 11 but it was a hollow victory – a bit like trying to work out which member of the Tory cabinet is the biggest wanker.

The good news is that I think Big Fun only have one Top 40 hit left in them before they will plague the charts and us no further.

I have to admit that Fish‘s solo career completely passed me by. “A Gentleman’s Excuse Me” is yet another of his recordings that I don’t think I have heard before now. The second of three singles taken from his “Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors” album (incredibly all three were Top 40 hits) it’s actually a pretty little thing (to quote Bing Crosby from his Xmas chat with David Bowie)

It puts me in mind of “Home Thoughts From Abroad” by Clifford T. Ward. In fact, it almost seems like Fish was deliberately trying to rewrite it. In the shite v decent poll, I’m marking this one down as up to snuff.

There is a theory that Wet Wet Wet‘s second studio album (if you discount their demoes / early recordings album “The Memphis Sessions”) “Holding Back The River” should have been their third whilst their actual third album (“High On The Happy Side”) should have been their second. Confused? Don’t be because it does make sense. After their debut “Popped In Souled Out” established their blue eyed soul / pop amalgam sound, the obvious move would have been to follow it up with something very similar. What the Wets did however was to throw caution to the wind and write an album that was much more mature that dealt with more heavyweight subject matters. For example the near title track from their sophomore album “Hold Back The River” deals with alcoholism I believe.

Whilst certainly not a commercial failure (it was a No 2 and went double platinum), it didn’t perform as well as “Popped In Souled Out”. When their career was looking decidedly dodgy two year later, they returned to a more accessible sound and found their way back to the very summit of the charts with “High On The Happy Side” which also furnished them with another No 1 single in “Goodnight Girl”. Did they go for that grown up sound too early (maybe we should ask Simon Mayo – he seems to have an opinion about these things!)? I doubt it. Things worked out pretty well for the band ultimately. “Hold Back The River” remains one of their lowest charting singles though peaking at No 31 but then there is a jazz break down half way through it so what did they expect?!

OK, now we get to the big guns which all the pre-show ‘ooh this is a good one’ fuss was all about. Not just one of the biggest tunes of the 90s but one of the biggest tunes ever – it can only be “Loaded” by Primal Scream. I’m pretty sure I didn’t know anything about Bobby Gillespie and co before this point but then, I don’t think that many people did. Yes, they had been around since the early 80s and had already released two albums by 1990 but they hadn’t got anywhere near mainstream success. Enter Andy Weatherall (who sadly died in February) to alter forever not just the career of Primal Scream but also that of music culture period.

I can’t recall for sure the first time that I heard “Loaded” but I’m pretty sure I didn’t get it straight away. What were all those sampled voices at the beginning and what was with the structure of the track that seemed to be all over the place? And why did it take so long for the singer to come in? Thirty years on and hundreds of plays later, it’s hard to believe I once thought like that. I’m nothing if not consistent though. Having not immediately swooned at Morrissey’s feet as The Smiths broke and then resisted the charms of the emerging Stone Roses, this was par for the course for me. I’m glad to say that I got with the programme in time and own both “Screamadelica” and an import CD single of “Loaded” (purchased some time after the initial single release I have to admit).

For a while I was convinced that those disembodied voices at the start of the track were The Monkees but I subsequently learned that they are actually Frank Maxwell and Peter Fonda from the 1966 biker movie The Wild Angels. I’ve never seen the film but if you ever wondered what was the scene that they were sampled from, here’s the answer:

Bobby Gillespie stated in an February 2011 NME interview about the samples used in the remix:

“Imagine if we hadn’t got the Fonda one though. We wouldn’t be sat here now. I don’t know where we’d be but we would not be sat here talking to you. The gods were smiling on us that day.”

I can’t quite describe what it is that those clipped pieces of dialogue add to the track are but I totally agree with Bobby.

The original track that Weatherall remixed was of course “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have” from the band’s second album which was on that CD single I bought as an extra track and I have to say, I think that stands up pretty well on its own merits as well…

I managed to catch Primal Scream live at an open air gig in Hull in 2017 and they were belting. Bobby Gillespie definitely has a portrait in an attic at home where he looks absolutely decrepit though.

“Loaded” peaked at No 16.

The second big gun of the evening now as the TOTP TV audience gets its first sighting of Inspiral Carpets with their hit single “This Is How It Feels”. Instead of Simon Mayo blathering on about the sporting exploits of the band’s hometown of Oldham that year, I would rather have seen the current Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle introduce the band in that game show host style that he employs to command Prime Minister Questions… “and now, we travel north to Oldham where we find Inspiral Carpets – Inspiral Carpets everyone!”.

To be fair to Mayo, Oldham Athletic had a monumental season that year (I’ve no idea about the basketball and rugby teams he also mentions). Despite finishing 8th in Division 2 and missing out on the play-offs, it was in the two domestic cup competitions that they excelled. The day before this TOTP aired, they had beaten 1st Division title hopefuls Aston Villa 3-0 to reach the FA Cup semi finals and had already secured a place in the actual League Cup Final. A guy called Frankie Bunn scored SIX goals in one game on the way to the final. I distinctly remember what a big deal all of this seemed at the time. Sadly Oldham would go onto lose that final and also the FA CUp semi final after taking Man Utd to a replay.

Back to the music though and Inspiral Carpets seemed to be promoted in the press as part of some ‘Madchester’ Holy Trinity (despite not actually being from Manchester) alongside the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays. I’m not sure if that’s how they actually saw themselves having been in existence since 1983. I didn’t know this until now but they had an almost Fall like number of personnel changes in the years leading up to this commercial breakthrough.

As for the song itself, I thought it was great with its prominent, swirling organ sound and heavyweight lyrics. Bizarrely, my elder brother and Paul Weller disciple seemed to be going through a ‘Madchester’ phase at the time and had a mix tape featuring all the aforementioned bands on it (including Inspiral Carpets) which he was fond of blasting out of our shared bedroom at the time. He was also a big Man Utd fan and had been going to the matches for a few years back then and went to all the FA Cup games that season including that semi final. Maybe his fleeting association with the ‘baggie’ was more to do with the football than the music. Incidentally, Man Utd used to serenade their Man City counterparts with a chant based on “This Is How It Feels” with the words changed to :

This is how it feels to be City, this is how it feels to be small

This is how it feels when you club wins nothing at all

I think that one got consigned to the dustbin of terrace chants sometime around 2011.

Lead singer Tom Hingley had a very striking look back then. It was sort of Mr Logic from Viz meets Red Dwarf‘s Dwayne Dibley. Most disconcerting. I’m pretty sure I saw him do a solo gig at the tiny York venue Fibbers after he subsequently left the band but I can’t recall whether he still had the same hairstyle or not. Mind you, Clint Boon’s Stooges cut isn’t much better.

“This Is How It Feels” peaked at No 14.

Oh FFS! Seriously! We hadn’t all had enough of Jive Bunny by the time that the new decade had come around?! No, we hadn’t because they racked up another four hit singles before they finally fucked off sometime around 1991. “That Sounds Good to Me” followed the same cut and paste formula that these idiots had already used to mug off the UK public three times previously and featured tracks including “Everybody Need Somebody To Love”, “Long Tall Sally” and “Roll Over Beethoven”. I’m pretty sure that the version of “Everybody Need Somebody To Love” recorded for the Blues Brothers film was re-released not long after this Jive Bunny abomination

*checks http://www.officialcharts.com*

Yes! I was right. It was released about a month or so after this and peaked at No 12. Inexplicably, Jive Bunny peaked 8 places higher at No 4!

Beats International still claim the No 1 slot with “Dub Be Good To Me”. In a Smash Hits interview entitled ‘How To Make A Hit record In Your Bedroom’, Norman Cook admitted that putting together “Dub Be Good To Me” from the initial sampling he did in his bedroom to the finished record took just three days and £400. Wow! £400 for a record that was innovative and well…pretty good actually. By those standards, Jive Bunny, using similar techniques, must have spent about 40p to produce their steaming heap of shit.

The play out track is “You Don’t Love Me” by the 49ers which was their follow up to “Touch Me” and which I don’t remember at all. Apparently it samples Jody Watley’s 1987 hit “Don’t You Want Me” which I also have zero recall of. I’m putting this one in the shite pile which means, by my reckoning, the final tally for tonight’s show is:

Shite Music 7 v 5 Decent Tunes

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The Mission	Deliverance	Nah
2	New Kids On The Block	I’ll Be Loving You Forever	Good God no!
3	Candy Flip	Strawberry Fields Forever	Nope
4	B-52s	Love Shack	Couldn’t be doing with it – no
5	Big Fun	Handful Of Promises	…and a pocketful of shite, NO!
6	Fish	A Gentleman’s Excuse Me	No
7	Wet Wet Wet	Hold Back The River	No but my wife liked this one
8	Primal Scream	Loaded	Yes but some time after the event
9	Inspiral Carpets	This Is How It Feels	No but I’ve got their Greatest Hits I think
10	Jive Bunny	That Sounds Good To Me	Oh this is an open goal….That sounds shite to me..No!
11	Beats International	Dub Be Good To Me	No but my wife had their album
12	49ers	Don’t You Love Me	No I don’t

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000p9v2/top-of-the-pops-15031990

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?

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is imgres-2-1.jpg

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

TOTP 08 MAR 1990

Posted on November 13, 2020 by 80stastic

Right then, here we are…again. It’s yet another TOTP review. For the record, if you combine all of the posts from my TOTP 80s blog – https://.80spop.wordpress.com – with this 90s version then this particular post is No 301! Three hundred and one!!! I have written three hundred posts up until now on this nonsense! God only knows how many hours of my life that adds up to?! Is it nonsense though? Well, yes clearly it is but it’s also something else I hope. During these dark times music can provide a glimmer of light I believe, something to briefly lift our mood. Maybe these tunes from long ago can provide some blissful retreat from the harsh realities we are all facing. Having said all that, it is 1990 so don’t hold your breath…

Tonight’s host is Bruno Brookes whose real name, apparently is Trevor. You don’t get many Trevors to the pound these days do you. In fact, how many famous Trevors can you think of period? Trevor Francis… Trevor Brooking…’Clever Trevor’….but these are all 70s references. Oooh…Trevor Bayliss (no relation) who invented the wind up radio. And there’s an ex-Aussie cricketer called Trevor Bayliss. OK, my point is though that there have never been that many. Maybe that’s why Brookes decided to change his name. Trevor wasn’t deemed ‘trendy’ enough (to quote the vernacular of the time). Nobody says ‘trendy’ any more do they? It’s all ‘on trend’ or ‘trending’. Sorry, I’m babbling…which leads me neatly into drawing a line under this courtesy of one David Paul Booth:

Thought it was Babbling.
— David Paul Booth (@DavidPaulBooth1) November 6, 2020

The first act tonight is Guru Josh with his dance anthem “Infinity (1990’s… Time for the Guru)“. Apparently this nearly wasn’t a hit at all. The legend goes that Mr Josh (real name Paul Walden) came up with the tune when a friend asked him to create a track for a club night of the same name. 500 white label copies were pressed of which 480 were thrown in the bin according to Walden because you couldn’t have a saxophone in a dance anthem. One of the 20 who didn’t was Hacienda DJ Mike Pickering who played it regularly at the venue and the rest is history.

The performance of the track here looks thoroughly bonkers. However, Bruno Brookes seemed to like it as he says at the song’s conclusion “Lots of energy, lots of theatre, that’s good”. Hmm. The music journalist Max Bell once described him as:

“He looked like a chap who didn’t go to bed very often, dragged himself through hedges backwards, and nibbled rare species of fungi not usually sold in Sainsbury’s” which seems fair comment to me.

Sadly Walden committed suicide in 2015.

Right then, here we are (woah – massive deja vu rush!) with the first video of the night from Gloria Estefan and her latest single …erm…“Here We Are”. I’ve written about this many times in previous posts but it’s as much of a constant in life as death and taxes and that is Gloria’s rigid single release schedule. It’s pretty easy to get your head around as it’s basically this:

Release a ballad
Release an uptempo number (preferably with a Latin beat)
Release a ballad
Release an uptempo number (preferably with a Latin beat)
Repeat ad finitum

With her last single being the dance song number “Get On Your Feet”, this next one had to be a ballad and indeed it is. Here we are (again) indeed.

The third single from her “Cuts Both Ways” album, it’s pretty much standard fare from Gloria if a little more laid back and less excitable than some of her other big love songs. It peaked at No 23 in the UK but went Top 10 in the US.

Here come one hit wonders JT And The Big Family next with their sample heavy track “Moments In Soul”. Having seen their video in last week’s show, we get the ‘in the flesh’ experience this week and what a visually odd bunch they were. The Jerry Sadowitz lookalike on keyboards is Mauro Ferrucci while the lanky haired guitarist doing the ‘Ah Yeah’s is Christian Hornbostel. The vocalist was known simply as Chicca while the Bez wannabe throwing some unconvincing shapes at the back is Jumbo (as in jumbo-sized twat).

In a Smash Hits interview, Ferrucci stated:

“It’s not really the words that are important, they didn’t take too long to write. They don’t mean much, there is no story“.

No shit mate! These are the lyrics (if you can call them that):

Life, life, life
Come on and
Life, life, life

Life, life, life
Come on and

One
What you’re doing back?
Two
I really mean that much to you?
Three
What’s going on? (What’s going on?)

Oh yeah

But then the song does sample The Art Of Noise’s “Moments In Love”. That’s The Art Of Noise who wrote these memorable lyrics:

That’s The Art Of Noise there making JT And The Family look like Bob Dylan. “Moments In Soul” peaked at No 7.

Three of the next four songs were all featured in last week’s show as Breakers so I may struggle to find anything else to say about them. First up are Innocence with “Natural Thing”.

These jazz funk / quiet storm / ambient chill out dudes (delete as appropriate) should not be confused with the band Innosense who were an American girl group formed in 1997 whose main claim to fame was that a young Britney Spears was one of their original members. They were managed by the mother of Justin Timberlake and listed bands such as NSYNC and Backstreet Boys as their inspirations. Wanna hear them? Nah, me neither.

Excellent! 75 words or so without really talking about Innocence at all.

Right, I wasn’t really expecting to see Marc Almond again either to be honest. How many places did he go up in the Top 40 that week?

*checks chart rundown video*

Three. Well, I guess it adheres to the TOTP rules of having to go up the charts to get on the show but even so. Maybe I’m being harsh. I read an article online recently by Paul Laird (@mildmanneredmax on Twitter) where he reviewed all the pivotal albums of 1990 as he saw them picking one for each month of the year. Marc’s “Enchanted” album, from which “A Lover Spurned” came, was chosen with Paul writing of it:

“More of the usual unusual from Almond. “Enchanted” is violently modern and defiantly retro at the same time and, often, at exactly the same moments. With an orchestra of traditional musicians and Almond’s show stopping, showtime, show me the money vocals it is a deeply layered album filled with treats and tricks“.

Well, that’s me told. I do like Marc Almond. I’ve even read his autobiography and have at least one Soft Cell CD but this one doesn’t really do it for me. Still, you can’t fault the drama in both the song and Marc’s performance here. See Brookes. That’s how you do theatre – not all that arm waving nonsense from Guru Josh earlier that you enthused over!

“A Lover Spurned” got no higher than this peak of No 29.

Oh hello – a new song. One of only three on this week’s show and it’s “Blue Savannah” by Erasure. This was the third track to be lifted from the duo’s “Wild” album and was also the biggest hit of the four singles that were ultimately released from it. Bearing in mind the album had already been out five months (including over the crucial Xmas period) by the time of “Blue Savannah”s release, its No 3 chart position is pretty impressive. It’s far more lilting and understated than the other “Wild” singles I think. Maybe that was the key to its success. Or maybe it was just a decent song in amongst a chart full of shit.

The video for it is a bit weird though. Slightly disturbing actually with that disembodied blue hand floating about before it takes a brush to Vince and Andy. It’s like that Peter Lorre horror film The Beast With Five Fingers meets the promo for The Human League’s “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” with its completely painted red ‘You are Here’ house. Odd.

Back to the name game now and following on from my musings about the popularity of the name Trevor, here we have ~~Trevor~~ Bruno Brookes pondering whether there will be a glut of baby girls being called Lily in the wake of Candy Dulfer and David A. Stewart’s hit single “Lily Was Here”. So was Bruno right? Did Lily become a really popular name for newborn girls around this time? As far as I can tell the answer is no. The most popular name back then seemed to be Jessica but certainly the rise of Lilly has been quite the phenomenon since the turn of the century. As high as No 2 around 2012, it is still in the Top 10 for 2020.

Say again? What about the song? Oh, erm…I was hoping all that name talk would have distracted you. Well, I kind of liked the oddness of it all but I was never going to buy it. As for Candy Dulfer, despite a career that spans 30 years and 12 albums, she never returned to our charts after “Lily Was Here” peaked at No 6. I’m pretty sure that there weren’t loads of newborn baby girls named ‘Candy’ in the early 90s either.

A couple of posts ago I commented on the incongruity of seeing Adam Ant in the charts in the 90s, so tied to the 80s are his glory days. I could make the same observation about Bros. I’d almost completely consigned them to the pop bin by this point but here they are, three months into 1990 with a genuine, bona fide Top 40 hit. “Madly In Love” was the fourth single lifted from their album “The Time” and, on reflection, it seems an unwise choice. Firstly, a fourth single from any album is pushing it but when it is from the second album of a teen sensation on the wane, it seems positively deluded. Secondly, for the life of me, I cannot hear a discernible tune in “Madly In Love”. It’s like some sort of jam session that got ideas above its station and all those extra bodies up there on stage with Matt and Luke just seemed to over egg the pudding. Oh, and what the heck was Matt wearing?! A jacket and tie combo topped off with a baseball cap? A fan wrote into Smash Hits to ask if Matt was going bald after seeing the video for “Madly In Love” – maybe the cap was strategically placed?

“Madly In Love” peaked at No 14, the duo’s first single to fail to reach the Top 10.

A second week at No 1 for Beats International with “Dub Be Good To Me” and this week (for the first time I think) we get the promo video instead of a studio performance. They might as well not have bothered as it’s a straight run through of the song with a sepia tint added over the top. Where did all the fun of those Housemartins videos disappear to Norman?

The play out video is “Love Shack” by The B-52s. I said last week that I found this one to be a marmite tune and judging by the online reaction to its recent airing on BBC4, I stand by that. Personally, I can’t really be doing with it – to my ears it’s the sound of a band trying too hard. I especially find the breakdown near the end of the song when the music stops and Fred Schneider asks ‘You’re what?’ especially excruciating. Ever wondered what it is that Cindy Wilson replies with? Apparently it’s ‘Tin Roof, Rusted’ and not ‘Hennnnn-ry, busted’ as I have always believed.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Guru Josh	Infinity (1990’s …Time For The Guru)	Nah
2	Gloria Estefan	Here We Are	Negative
3	JT And The Family	Moments In Soul	I’d rather have to watch John Terry miss that penalty on an endless loop – that’s a no by the way
4	Innocence	Natural Thing	No
5	Marc Almond	A Lover Spurned	Not for me
6	Erasure	Blue Savannah	No but It must be on their Greatest Hits collection that I own.
7	David A. Stewart and Candy Dulfer	Lily Was Here	Nope
8	Bros	Madly In Love	Huge no
9	Beats International	Dub Be Good To Me	No but my wife had their album
10	B-52s	Love Shack	Couldn’t be doing with it – no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000p3bp/top-of-the-pops-08031990

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 01 MAR 1990

Posted on November 10, 2020 by 80stastic

It’s the very start of March in 1990 and apparently the UK is windswept. Well, that’s according to TOTP host Jakki Brambles anyway and I really can’t remember the weather from over 30 years ago I’m afraid so we’ll have to take her word for it. Jakki (still spelt with two ‘K’s at this point) gives credence to her claim by wearing a ginormous duffle coat while she presents the show from the BBC studio. Her choice of outfit prompted many a ‘she won’t feel the benefit’ type comments on Twitter as this repeat aired on BBC4 last Friday.

Not only was she prone to feeling the cold but Brambles was also prone to exaggeration as she declares that tonight’s first act is “a man whose had more hits than I’ve been on diets; we’re into the thousands here”. What?! Who the hell can she mean?! It is of course Shakin’ Stevens who despite Jakki’s claims was actually on his 29th of 33 Top 40 hits with this one called “I Might”. Yes, unbelievable and indeed unbearable as it may seem, Shaky was still a visitor to the charts in the 90s exactly 10 years on from his first appearance. Unlike the 80s though, this decade was not kind to the Welsh hit maker and he was reduced to farting out Xmas hits in order to maintain his status as a chart act after this single.

“I Might” was the usual toe -tapping, rock ‘n’ roll revivalist number that Shaky had made his name on. Do you think he genuinely thought at the time that he could just carry on serving up this tripe forever more? Or was he secretly terrified that the game might actually be up considering that the UK was on a massive rave tip that made Shaky look even more like the anachronism than he already (and always) was? “This Ole House” seemed like forever ago and now house music was going to put Shaky on the dole. At least he didn’t try to jump on the bandwagon – “This Ole Italo House” anyone?

“I Might” peaked at No 18.

Oh God! It’s Rod Stewart! Don’t look! He might not see us! Too late. Brambles has given the game away and here he is in full on Rod mode with his awful version of the Tom Waits song “Downtown Train”.

Look, I can’t be arsed to write anything else about this one. It doesn’t deserve any more attention. Seek out Tom’s original instead or even Everything But The Girl’s take on it from their 1992 “Acoustic” album. Infinitely superior. Apparently Ben and Tracey’s version plays over the end of the final scene in the long running US sitcom How I Met Your Mother. I’ve never seen the show but I’m guessing that the ending is much more effective with EBTG’s soothing sounds than croaky Rod honking away in the background.

More exaggeration from Jakki Brambles next as, during the chart run down, she refers to the “cast of thousands” in the lyrics of “Hello” by The Beloved. I make it 38 actually Jakki. Right, up next is a complete howler of a song. Like “Downtown Train” before it, it’s another cover version but this one makes Rod Stewart’s seem heavenly in comparison. Jamie J. Morgan is the perpetrator of this crime against music and he should be eternally ashamed for the obscenity that he inflicted upon Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side”.

When we saw the video for this in last week’s show as one of the Breakers, I made the comment that this track was almost a parody and that it could be Sacha Baron Cohen performing it. It seems I wasn’t alone in my thinking for when the Twitterati got a load of this studio performance, they made the same connection. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Expecting Sacha Baron-Cohen to trend, judging by the #TOTP timeline.
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 6, 2020

Oh and the two versions of “Walk On The Wild Side” that were out at the same time that Jakki references? Well, I tracked the other one down and it was this by Beat System. Still nowhere near as good as the original but infinitely preferable to Jamie J. Morgan for me. It spent three weeks in chart peaking at No 63.

To put the final nail in the coffin of this sad state of affairs, Brambles reckons that “Lou Reed should be a very proud man”! Ye gods woman! Nobody could be proud of that, not even Jamie J. Morgan’s mother!

Some Breakers next starting with Innocence and “Natural Thing”. Anybody remember this lot? They were kind of like a chilled out Soul II Soul and were briefly the height of sophistication as I recall. They racked up six Top 40 singles over their short career (1990–1992) with “Natural Thing” being their biggest hit at No 16. They also released two albums in that time with the first one (“Belief”) making it to No 24 in the charts.

It all sounded a little bit insubstantial to me although I did quite like their “A Matter of Fact” single from later on in 1990.

After his surprise return to the top of the charts with his duet with Gene Pitney on “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” as the 80s came to an end, Marc Almond returned to his day job of cultish solo artist as the 90s began. “A Lover Spurned” was his first release of the new decade taken from his album “Enchanted” which was already his sixth solo album in six years. Excluding the aforementioned No 1, the single was his fourteenth of his solo career but only the fourth to make the Top 40 after. Cultish indeed.

I have zero recall of this one but it seems quite brooding and foreboding and spiky of intent. Marc’s solo output always mined this dark seam to my ears and some of his song titles support this opinion. Here are just a few of them:

“Melancholy Rose”
“Tenderness Is A Weakness”
“Tears Run Rings”
“Bitter Sweet”
“The House Is Haunted By The Echo Of Your Last Goodbye”

Wow! That last title! Cheery soul Marc isn’t he? “A Lover Spurned” peaked at No 29.

The next Breaker seems to be a marmite song and certainly split the opinion of the Twitterati the other day. Where do you stand on “Love Shack” by the B-52s? Me? I can’t really be doing with it. It’s just so….joyful and upbeat that it comes across as insincere. Lots of people both agree and disagree it seems. Taken from their “Cosmic Thing” album, it is easily their most well known and commercially successful song but I always preferred the follow up single “Roam” which was much more classy I thought.

“Love Shack” brought the band to a mainstream audience, many of whom had never heard of them before. I have to say I had only limited knowledge pretty much only knowing “Rock Lobster” and “Planet Claire” at that point from the double A-side re-release in 1986. My way cooler wife had one of their early albums I think.

In a nice bit of serendipity, it turns out that the horns on “Love Shack” were provided by The Uptown Horns, a New York-based section that played on Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs album which includes the track “Downtown Train” that we saw Rod Stewart murder earlier in the show.

“Love Shack” peaked at No 2 in the UK and No 3 in the US.

Something sultry and atmospheric now as the charts welcomes that rarest of commodities into its arms; an instrumental. I have to admit I’d never heard of Candy Dulfer before “Lily Was Here” but she had already performed as the support act for live shows by Madonna and been on stage with the likes of Prince and Pink Floyd by this point. The daughter of a Dutch jazz saxophonist, she hadn’t actually released any of her music commercially until this collaboration with Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart or David A. Stewart as he is credited here. The song was included on the soundtrack for a Dutch crime thriller flick of the same name and shot Dulfer to stardom off the back of it . The single was No 1 in the Netherlands for five straight weeks and a No 6 hit over here. It even broke the American market peaking at No 11.

I seem to recall there was a lot of fuss about Candy’s looks as much as her musical ability at the time (see also British violinist Vanessa-Mae) perhaps not helped by the fact that her debut album was called “Saxuality”. Incidentally, the single didn’t feature on that album in some territories including I think the UK. Cue lots of disgruntled customers returning it for a refund because they didn’t read the track listing.

Meanwhile back in the studio, we find Electribe 101 performing “Talking With Myself”. Is it just me or do singer Billie Ray Martin’s dance moves not seem to fit the song? It’s quite a downbeat, low key smooth sound and Billie’s all rotating arms, gyrating hips and 70s disco finger pointing. It’s like she ‘s got a Jane Fonda workout video playing in her mind’s eye. There’s even a bit of twerking going on.

Maybe she took her inspiration from the dance moves of another famous Billie…

Later in the decade another Billie appeared who also seemed to have been similarly inspired…

OK, enough of the Billies as we move onto…something called The Brits 1990 Dance Medley which took some of the biggest dance hits of recent times and slung them all together into one continuous mix. The video shown on TOTP includes footage from the actual performance of this heap of shit from the 1990 BRIT awards show which took place at the Dominion Theatre in London the previous month.

That video is bad enough but if you watch the live performance from the actual awards show it looks even worse…

Maybe we all just have choreographed dance routine fatigue now after having had our eyeballs blasted in the intervening years with every type of production imaginable. Maybe we’re all tuned in to the slickness of Strictly Come Dancing? Whatever it is, that just looked shit. And what was the point of having The Cookie Crew come on for 10 seconds right at the end?

If you were counting, then the tracks featured are:

Double Trouble & Rebel MC – “Street Tuff”
A Guy Called Gerald – “Voodoo Ray”
S’Express – “Theme From S’Express”
Beatmasters – “Hey DJ I Can’t Dance”
Jeff Wayne – “Eve Of The War (Ben Liebrand Mix)”
808 State – ” Pacific State”
D Mob – “We Call It Acieed”
Cookie Crew – “Got To Keep On”

At least two of the tracks featured were hits in 1988! How is that anything to do with The Brits 1990?! As for the show itself, if I tell you that Phil Collins won Best British Single of the Year and Best Male Solo Artist then I think that tells you all you need to know.

The Brits 1990 Dance Medley single (because let’s not forget that’s what it was, something you could actually buy and not just a performance on TV) peaked at No 2. No 2!

After all that frantic dancing, here comes Michael Bolton to calm us down with his soporific ballad “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You?”. I’ve already spilled my shaming Michael Bolton story the other week so I have no intention of going there again so what else to say about old Bollers? The hair! Of course the hair! I mean, just look at it! If you google ‘Michael Bolton’s hair’, there are so many articles, posts and interviews about his monstrous locks that it’s almost as if they had a life of their own. Well, maybe they do because there is a Michael Bolton’s Hair twitter account. It only has 36 followers and hasn’t posted since 2017 but it’s there. Here are some example tweets:

I have this fear of loosing my keys. I dread locks. #michaelbolton #hair
— Michael Boltons Hair (@BoltonsHair) May 8, 2014

How about?

How can we be lovers if we have split ends? #michaelbolton #hair
— Michael Boltons Hair (@BoltonsHair) May 3, 2014

And inevitably…

I can't believe he cut me off. What will I do with my life now. I guess I'll have to mullet over. #MichaelBolton
— Michael Boltons Hair (@BoltonsHair) April 30, 2014

Yes they’re painful but so is watching Michael perform here on TOTP and I had to do that for this blog so think yourselves lucky.

There’s a new No 1 as Beats International topple Sinéad O’Connor after four weeks with “Dub Be Good To Me”. Do Beats International get the retrospective credit they deserve? OK, sure the whole project was overshadowed by the reach and success of another Cook alter ego Fatboy Slim later in the decade and yes they are mainly only remembered for this one song but for me, it was a glimmer of light in a sea of hopeless No1 records in 1990.

*Spoiler alert*

Elton John? Awful song. Cliff Richard? More Xmas ghastliness. A song about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? WTF?! Bombalurina aka Timmy Mallett? Aagghhhh!

Come on, given that cesspit of shite for company, “Dub Be Good To Me” was solid gold and I for one will always think fondly of it.

Right, what’s this we’ve got to close the show? JT And The Big Family? Who? There’s only one JT in my book and that’s Chelsea legend John Terry! Well, it turns out this JT were Italian house DJs Mauro Ferrucci and Christian Hornbostel and they were the JT part of the equation as JT stood for ‘Jockers Team’ – at that time, DJs in Italy were referred to as ‘jockers’. Hmm. ‘The Family’ were a female singer called Chicca and a dancer called Jumbo. Look , I’m not making any of this up! The whole thing was meant to be a ‘fluid concept’, a collective if you like. Basically they were the Italian Beats International if that makes things easier! Their only hit was “Moments In Soul” which sampled amongst many other things the melody from Art Of Noise’s “Moments In Love” and the drums from “Back To Life” by Soul II Soul.

I don’t really remember this one at all. I don’t think I missed much.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Shakin’ Stevens	I Might	There was no might about it – a big NO
2	Rod Stewart	Downtown Train	God no
3	Jamie J. Morgan	Walk On The Wild Side	Negative
4	Innocence	Natural Thing	Nah
5	Marc Almond	A Lover Spurned	Not for me
6	B-52s	Love Shack	Couldn’t be doing with it – no
7	David A. Stewart and Candy Dulfer	Lily Was Here	Nope
8	Electribe 101	Talking With Myself	I did not
9	Various Artists	The Brits 1990 Dance Medley	Definitely not
10	Michael Bolton	How Am I Supposed To Live Without You	Quite easily Michael…oh except I saw you in concert. Oh God the shame!
11	Beats International	Dub Be Good To Me	No but my wife had their album
12	JT And The Family	Moments In Soul	I’d rather have to watch John Terry miss that penalty on an endless loop – that’s a no by the way

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000p3bl/top-of-the-pops-01031990

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?

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is imgres-2.jpg

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

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 21 JUL 1994

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TOTP 07 JUL 1994

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TOTP 23 JUN 1994

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TOTP 02 JUL 1992

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TOTP 24 MAY 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 15 MAR 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 08 MAR 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 01 MAR 1990

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Some bedtime reading?