The Prodigy | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 09 JAN 1992

Posted on January 12, 2022 by 80stastic

Well, we’ve finally made it into 1992 and the first thing to say is that we’re not starting at the very beginning. No, we’ve missed a week because of the Adrian Rose issue so we start a week later on the 9th of January. In my prologue post for 1992 I was very negative about the prospects for the year but having checked the running order for this show, there’s some artists on that are distinctly removed from the mainstream’s usual suspects. None more so than the opening act tonight who are Iceland’s finest The Sugarcubes.

Now I have to be straight up about this with my cards firmly on the table and admit that I’m no fan of Björk – in fact I pretty much can’t stand her ‘singing’. All that straining and shrieking which I’m meant to find spellbinding but which actually just grates on me? No thanks. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate her record as an artist though. Her longevity alone deserves respect – 9 albums, 2 soundtrack albums, 39 singles just as a solo performer plus another 3 albums and 14 singles with The Sugarcubes. Then there’s her acting career, she’s written books of poetry and been involved in charitable endeavours such as the “Army Of Me: Remixes And Covers” project to raise funds for those affected by the Asian tsunami of 2004. Plus you couldn’t accuse her of standing still creatively. Starting with the punk of early band Spit And Snot, she moved through the avant garde indie rock of The Sugarcubes onto her solo career beginning with the dance beats of “Debut” then the experimental eclecticism of follow up “Post” through to the voice only recording of 2004 ‘s “Medúlla” and finally the folktronica of her most recent album “Utopia”. She’s a female version of David Bowie in terms of reinvention. I still can’t stand her voice though.

The only thing I really knew about The Sugarcubes in 1992 was their 1987 single “Birthday” which had been Melody Maker‘s single of the year. It had been far too out there for me though and I certainly hadn’t been tempted to find out more of their work via their first two albums “Life’s Too Good” and “Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week!”. The single “Hit” though found them at their most accessible (to me at least). The track has an almost funky back beat and the bridge into the chorus is actually quite melodic. Even Björk has toned down on her vocal stylings although I’m not sure about the Icelandic version of Bez in the cap in this performance nor his dodgy rapping skills. The album the single was taken from called “Stick Around For Joy” did reasonable business peaking at No 16 in the UK charts but the band broke up at the end of the year despite massive exposure from supporting U2 during the US leg of their Zoo TV Tour in October and November playing to a total of 700,000 people.

By the way, tonights hosts are Mark Franklin and Claudia Simon and its the latter who describes the next song as a “seriously hard dance tune that makes you want to get up and dance”. Ooh! Who could it possibly be?! Well, it’s an ensemble that went by the name of Isotonik. Now back in the early 90s, the only use of the word ‘isotonic’ had come from the lips of John Barnes in his infamous Lucozade advert – “it gets to your thirst…fast” and all that….

…until this lot turned up. Who were they? According to Mark Franklin, they were formed by one Chris Paul who was an ex copper turned DJ / producer who also dabbled in nightclub promotion – he was behind the Orange Raves brand operating out of London. Using his entrepreneurial nous, he used this TOTP appearance for a bit of free advertising (the BBC didn’t notice/care apparently) by having his mate dress up as an orange and jig along on stage with the rest of the dancers in front of an Orange Rave logo backdrop. I have to say that:

a) The costume comes across more like a tomato than an orange under the studio lights

b) It looks absolutely shit.

As for their track “Different Strokes”, it seemed too be a mash up of a load of samples (I know not which ones and I care even less) and there’s a definite flavour of 808 State and “Charly” era The Prodigy that’s been half inched and added into the mixer. Just horrible.

“Different Strokes” peaked at No 12.

We’re onto our first video of the night and it’s “Too Blind To See It” by Kym Sims. Claudia Simon gives her album a plug in the intro to it by saying “if it’s anything like her single, it’s gonna be BIG!”. So was it? Big I mean. I remember the cover to it and we certainly stocked it in the Our Price I was working in but how well did it actually sell? Hmm. Well, according to he officialcharts.com database, it spent just two weeks in the UK charts peaking at No 39 before dropping to No 50 and then slipping out altogether. I think you could find a number of words to describe its commercial track record then but ‘BIG’ would not be one of them.

Kim did have a further two hits released from her eponymous and only album but that didn’t inspire a rejuvenation of its sales and she would not trouble the chart compilers ever again despite continuing to work within the music industry, writing for both herself and other artists. Having said all that, there does seem to be a lot of love out there online for the track “Too Blind To See It” being variously described as ‘a tune’ and ‘an absolute banger’. Indeed.

Blimey! First The Sugarcubes and now Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine! TOTP was really starting the new year with an indie bang! To paraphrase Chris Tarrant from his Tiswas days, this is what the kids wanted! Having broken through the chart barrier that prohibited Grebo rock from infecting the youth of the day in 1991 with not one but two hit singles in “Sheriff Fatman” and “After the Watershed (Early Learning the Hard Way)”, Jim Bob and Fruitbat strode confidently into 1992 with some right old “Rubbish”. Or was it “R.U.B.B.I.S.H” as I’ve seen it alternatively spelt online. Either way, it was more of the same from the duo but although it undoubtedly kicked the rest of the charts squarely in the Schofields, it did sound a bit “Sheriff Fatman”-lite to me. Fair play though to them for getting Mother’s Pride bread into the lyrics a good decade before dreadful boy band Blue managed the same feat in their hit “One Love”.

The performance here seems to channel a Mad Max post apocalyptic industrial world setting with Jim Bob spending most of his time on the roof of a battered old car. Oh and that bandage on his arm? Here’s the man himself with the story behind it:

I had my arm bandaged up because I'd punched a concrete lamppost on New Year's Eve after climbing over the fence at Crystal place station and landing on a waiting policeman. https://t.co/h4lK1ChhOi
— Jim Bob (@mrjimBob) January 7, 2022

As you do. 1992 was the peak of Carter’s commercial powers and saw them score a No 1 album (no really) with “1992 – The Love Album”. “Rubbish” itself though was a stand alone single although it did get added as a bonus track to a 2011 re-release of “101 Damnations”.

Incidentally, they recorded a version of tonight’s opening song, “Hit” by The Sugarcubes, as the B-side to their 1993 single “Lean on Me I Won’t Fall Over”. I love it when a post comes together all by itself.

I think they’ve moved the Breakers section to its more traditional spot of being in the middle of the show. It seemed to be positioned just before the No 1 in recent weeks which seemed odd. Mark Franklin does the intro for it and during it, a weird thing occurs. He name checks all the acts featured in the Breakers except for one which he refers to instead as just “another great song”. Did he just forget who was on or was it some sort of indirect slur?

Anyway, the first Breaker (Franklin did name them) is The Stone Roses who despite it now being 1992 are still releasing singles from their debut album that came out in May 1989! What was going on?! Well, the band was still in a state of transition. Having removed themselves from their restrictive Silvertone recording contract and signed with US big hitters Geffen, they’d also just sacked their manager, the colourful character that was Gareth Evans. Their was precious little new music being laid down though. They mostly seemed to be following Manchester United around the country or hanging out in the bars of Chorlton shooting the breeze.

With no new material forthcoming, I’m guessing Silvertone saw a window of opportunity to make the most of the tracks they had licenced to them and put out just about every song from the first album as a single. The latest track to receive this treatment was “Waterfall”, no doubt a great song (I especially liked the line ‘so good to have equalised’) but surely we all knew it by then. Even so the band still had a loyal enough fan base to send it to No 27.

Next the one act that Franklin didn’t mention in his intro and it’s Kiss. Why the omission? Did he have beef with the US rockers? It seems unlikely. Anyway, Kiss hadn’t featured in the UK Top 40 since 1987 brought us “Reason To Live” and more memorably “Crazy Crazy Nights” but they were back via the trusted method of having a song featured in a hit film. That film was of course Bill And Ted’s Bogus Journey for which Kiss had recorded a version of Argent’s 1973 hit “God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You”. It wasn’t a straight cover though as they rewrote the lyrics in the verses to pay tribute to their drummer since 1982 Eric Carr who appears on the track but who died of cancer in 1991 aged 42. The rewrite also caused them to retitle the song “God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You II”. Carr was too ill to play drums on the track but he sings on the a capella break before the song’s finale. He also appears in the video wearing a wig as his chemotherapy treatment had caused him to lose his hair.

I don’t think I knew that it wasn’t a Kiss original at the time but I did always have a soft spot for it. I wasn’t the only one as my work colleague Justin also did specifically that a capella bit. The song’s appeal stretched beyond Justin and I though – enough people bought it to send it all the way to No 4. I liked the film as well. Stupid as mud but good fun all the same and the song works well positioned over the ending.

Yay! Another nice bit of serendipity! After the Carter USM / The Sugarcubes connection comes another link in between two artists on the same show. We saw Kym Sims earlier and I noted that after her brief fame as a chart star she ended up writing for other artists. Well, one of those was Ce Ce Peniston who is the next Breaker with “We Got A Love Thang”. No that isn’t a mistake. Ce Ce really did gave hits that weren’t “Finally”. It’s just that it felt like that was her only song. To be fair to those of us who felt like this, we could be forgiven when you consider that the release before “We Got A Love Thang” was “Finally” and the one after it was… yep…”Finally” albeit the 1992 remix. The original release in October ‘91 peaked at No 26 whilst the remix went all the way to No 2. In between came “We Got A Love Thang” and it also did the business chart wise peaking at No 6. For me though, it didn’t have any of the hooks and charm of its predecessor (and successor) and I always found it quite bland.

The final Breaker comes from The Prodigy. After being the main protagonists in initiating a brief musical sub genre of rave tunes which sampled children’s programming with their debut hit “Charly”, the pressure was on to come up with a more credible follow up. They did it and then some with “Everybody In The Place”. An instant rave classic, it would go all the way to No 2. It would be included on their debut album “Experience” which we sold loads of in Manchester (I guess due to the massive club scene there) but which I am surprised to learn didn’t even make the Top 10, peaking outside of it at No 12. It did eventually go platinum for sales of 300,000 mind. Even though “Everybody In The Place” consolidated the band’s initial success, I don’t think many of us could have foreseen the impact The Prodigy would have over the whole of the 90s nor their legacy beyond that.

Next a track that is so wicked that it will melt your boots according to presenter Claudia Simon. Who could she possibly be talking about? It turns out she’s waxing lyrical about Blue Pearl. Yes, that Blue Pearl who scored a huge hit back in 1990 with “Naked in The Rain”. So, hands up all those who thought that this lot were a one hit wonder?

*blogger raises his hand*

Well, we were all wrong for they actually had four Top 40 singles (although two of them were both “Naked in The Rain”). This one, “(Can You) Feel the Passion” – no brackets, no points – peaked at No 14 but wasn’t include on there only album called “Naked”. If it sounds familiar, that’s probably because it features samples from Bizarre Inc’s “Playing with Knives.” The spoken word delivery from singer Durga McBroom (not a character from the The Worst Witch but her actual name) does make it out stand out rather but clearly not enough to commit it to my memory first time around.

As with Carter USM before them, the staging of the performance has a Mad Max feel to it with those industrial looking drums being struck by some rather sinister looking guys with intimidating black stripes across their eyes making them look like Adam Ant’s evil twin brothers. Durga would go onto tour with Pink Floyd providing backing vocals for “The Great Gig In The Sky” thereby proving that she could also sing as well as speak.

Senseless Things (no ‘The’ for you pedants out there) were probably a band I should have got more into. Pedalling an energetic brand of punk pop and with a name pinched from a Shakespearean phrase, I could have gone big for this lot. Somehow I didn’t and now my main memory of them is that they were signed to Epic, a subsidiary of Sony – damn all those boxes of albums that I opened during my Our Price years and their delivery notes that I perused!

“Easy To Smile” was the first of two Top 20 hits that they achieved in 1992. Listening back to them now, what strikes about them is that they sound very American, like a US Green Day even. Though they never amounted to that much hit wise (they never troubled the Top 40 after 1992), they would demonstrate their musical chops in their careers after the band broke up in 1995. Lead singer Mark Keds (sadly now deceased) became a member of The Wildhearts and also has a co-writer credit on The Libertines’ 2004 hit “Can’t Stand Me Now”, which took a line from the 1998 single “Hey! Kitten” of one of his post Senseless Things bands called Jolt. Rhythm guitarist Ben Harding went on to join charting band 3 Colours Red whilst Morgan Nicholls performed with Muse, Gorillaz, The Streets and Lily Allen. Talking of Gorillaz, one other thing I recall about Senseless Things was the amazing artwork on their album covers and which is seen in the backdrop to their TOTP performance. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the lowdown on it:

You may recognise the art behind Senseless Things as the work of Jamie Hewlett of Tank Girl (and later Gorillaz) fame. Isn't it fab? #TOTP pic.twitter.com/9QKZehlZG0
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 7, 2022

“Easy To Smile” peaked at No 18.

Due to the Adrian Rose effect, missed episodes and me not bothering to review the 1991 Xmas TOTP, I think this is the first of my posts that includes Queen at No 1 with “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Re-released off the back of Freddie Mercury’s death on 24 November, its ascent to the top of the charts and 5 week stay there not only secured it the Xmas No 1 spot but also meant that it became the only song to hold that accolade twice by the same artist.

Unlike its initial release in 1975 though, the 1991 version was a double A side which saw “Bohemian Rhapsody” paired with “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”, the fifth and final track to be taken from the “Innuendo” album. I guess I can understand that the fans wanted something to mark the passing of their idol, something to hang on to and what better choice than their best known and most successful song ever? Or was it pure, cynical greed by EMI to cash in on a tragic event and while they were at it, they added a song from the latest (and now last) album to try and flog that as well? A bit of both maybe.

I think at this time, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was one of those songs that I’d heard so many times that it had become unlistenable. I may still be at that stage now. As for “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”, it sounded like very untypical Queen fare to me, a lilting ballad whose title sat perfectly as a goodbye to Freddie. I suppose similar claims of appropriateness could have been made for “Who Wants To Live Forever” and “The Show Must Go On” but I think the chosen track was the most respectful. Interesting that the TOTP producers chose to show the full 6 minute video of “Bohemian Rhapsody” – was that really necessary?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Sugarcubes	Hit	No – that voice…
2	Isotonik	Different Strokes	Hell no
3	Kym Sims	Too Blind To See It	Nah
4	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	Rubbish	I did not
5	The Stone Roses	Waterfall	No but I have the album though don’t we all?
6	Kiss	God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You II	Guilty pleasure but didn’t buy it
7	Ce Ce Peniston	We Got A Love Thang	No we don’t
8	The Prodigy	Everybody In The Place	Nope
9	Blue Pearl	(Can You) Feel the Passion	No
10	Senseless Things	Easy To Smile	Should have but didn’t
11	Queen	Bohemian Rhapsody / These Are The Days Of Our Lives	Nah

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/m001349m/top-of-the-pops-09011992

TOTP 06 SEP 1991

Posted on October 6, 2021 by 80stastic

CORRECTION: In the post relating to the TOTP broadcast on 22 Aug 1991, I mistakenly reported that this was Bruno Brookes’ last ever appearance as a host on the show as he was removed along with all the other Radio 1 DJ presenters in the ‘year zero’ revamp. I also stated that we would see valedictory appearances by Mark Goodier, Jakki Brambles, Simon Mayo, Nicky Campbell and Gary Davies in the following weeks. Whilst it was true that the above names were replaced by a batch of new presenters from Oct 1991 onwards, it has been brought to my attention that four of those six would return to the TOTP family in 1994 as the year zero revamp was reversed. Only Gary Davies and Jakki Brambles did not reappear. Consequently, my claim about the show not being presented again by Bruno Brookes, Mark Goodier, Simon Mayo and Nicky Campbell is not true although we won’t be seeing them for over two years. Thank you to Matthew James for pointing this out.

Right, now that’s cleared up, I can say that this show was Jakki Brambles final TOTP appearance. Jakki always gave off the impression to me that she was quite disinterested in all this pop music lark and I never found her that convincing as a host. She also seemed to have an issue with the temperature in the TOTP studio with many a Winter coat being worn when surely it must have been boiling under those hot studio lights. She emigrated to the US in 1994, changed the spelling of her name to ‘Jackie’ and stayed there for eleven years as a news radio morning anchor and occasional television news anchor for the CBS network. She returned to the UK in 2005 and presented Loose Women until 2009 and owns her own digital media business called Broadstance Digital Media Production. She currently works on Greatest Hits Radio which seems to be some sort of retirement home for ex Radio 1 DJs as their roster also includes, yes you guessed it, Simon Mayo and Mark Goodier alongside other ‘star’ names as Andy Crane (has no brain) and Pat Sharp.

Right on with the show as we have 14 (FOURTEEN) songs to get through in this one. We start with Oceanic and “Insanity”. I’m pretty sure that this one would have been labelled as a ‘banger’ back then (and maybe even today). A huge anthem, it started life on a short run promo 12″ sending crowds of North-West ravers erm…insane.. whenever it was played. Inevitably, it was picked up for a wider commercial release by Dead Dead Good records and would go on to spend four months on the Top 40 and three months in the Top 10 including three weeks at No 3. Could it have made it to No 1 if that Bryan Adams song had never been released? Possibly although it would probably have got stuck at No 2 behind Right Said Fred. We’ll never know. What I do know however, is that around this time, rave music seemed to be taking over the world or at least the UK anyway. Just about anything that was a ‘dance’ track seemed to attract the ‘rave’ label. Oceanic obviously came under that umbrella but there were also Bassheads (from the same neck of the woods as it happened), K-Klass, Bizarre Inc, Altern 8 etc. Predictably, the scene became homogenised when all these club anthems started to be lumped together on compilation albums like Virgin’s “The Ultimate Rave”. Was that the point where it all started to go wrong? Look, when it comes to dance music, I freely admit that I don’t really know what I’m talking about despite having spent the majority of the 90s working in record shops.

As for Oceanic, despite two further Top 40 hits, they were never able to move on from the success of “Insanity” but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for the band. Back in 2012, in an interview with The Liverpool Echo in a piece about the reopening of a Liverpool nightclub called The State where the band were due to play a set, singer Jorinde Williams said:

“I love getting the metaphorical rave horn out now and again and singing Insanity. It still gives me shivers to see a crowd of grinning, dancing strangers singing back these words I wrote 20 years ago, and that it means something to them.”

The metaphorical rave horn?! That either sounds like something very rude or a band that did a session for John Peel in 1993.

Talking of rave, this next lot were also one of the acts that must have featured on that “The Ultimate Rave” compilation. The Prodigy were up to No 3 by this point with their Public Information Films themed hit “Charly”. Famously sampling the 1973 cut out animation warning children of the dangers of strangers, falling in the water, matches etc via the characters of a boy called Tony and his ginger cat, I notice that the spelling of the cat’s name originally was ‘Charley’ but The Prodigy dropped an ‘e’ (ahem) for the title of their single. That must have been deliberate and an in joke within the band surely?!

Sonia was still having hits into the Autumn of 1991?! That was over two years since her Stock, Aitken and Waterman produced No 1 single “You’ll Never Stop Me Loving You”! In the intervening period she’d eked out a further six hits all of which had gone Top 20. Clearly Sonia wasn’t going to give up on this pop star lark easily. “Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy” however would break that run of Top 20 singles when it peaked just outside at No 22. Our Sonia’s got a band of seven up there on stage with her to deliver the song but no amount of hired hands can distract from the notion that this seemed so incongruous with the rest of the contemporary charts acts. A rave anthem this was not! However, it was a firm favourite amongst the Northern Soul scene – no not Sonia’s version obviously but the version by The Tams which was a minor UK hit in 1970.

Looking at Sonia’s discography (not something I would have thought I would ever be doing) I can see that she still has another three Top 40 entries stretching into 1993 to get through before her well of chart hits finally ran dry. However, two of those were more cover versions and the final one was the UK’s Eurovision entry – so much for Jakki Brambles comment about ‘self-penned tunes’ on Sonia’s second album called …erm…”Sonia” that was released a month after this TOTP appearance. Jakki also refers to her as ‘a good old girl’ at the song’s end. She was 20 when this show was broadcast!

It’s the video for “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt ‘N Pepa next. In a Rolling Stone magazine article in 2017, Salt (Cheryl James) made the distinction that:

“The song was about talking about sex. The song was not about sex. The song was about communication and talking about a subject that nobody wants to talk about”

Pepa (Sandra Denton) added:

“It wasn’t a dirty song. It was an enlightenment song”

So powerful was the song’s message that it was re-worked in 1992 to help promote discussions about AIDS and HIV. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

At the suggestion of ABC News anchor Peter Jennings (who heard his daughter listening to the song), Salt-N-Pepa later reworked "Let’s Talk About Sex" as "Let's Talk About AIDS" for 1992 ABC special Growing Up In The Age Of AIDS. Watch it here: https://t.co/fq1Qt9wbXx #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 1, 2021

However, the song has also been used in a much more light hearted way. After Liverpool had secured their sixth European Cup when winning the Champions League in 2019, manager Jurgen Klopp was so overjoyed that he couldn’t help bursting into a rendition of it with the lyrics altered to reflect his club’s achievement. Someone then mixed it with the original track and….

In direct contrast to Sonia earlier with her seven piece backing band packing out the stage, here’s Zoë with with just a sole guitarist for company as she performs her hit “Sunshine On A Rainy Day”. Was Zoë’s style of dancing a thing back then? You know, feet rooted to the floor with the arms supplying all the movement? I guess Susanne and Joanne from The Human League made a 40 year career out of a similar thing.

As the track is coming to an end there’s a shot where you can see Jakki Brambles in place to do the next link in the gantry. What surprised me was that she isn’t even looking at the stage as Zoë is still performing. Look I know she had a job to do but it’s a good 20 seconds before the camera actually comes to her. Remember earlier when I said Jakki always seemed disinterested in the whole pop music thing…? “Good to see that one in the charts at long last” she tells us as she segues into the next act. Well, you didn’t see it Jakki, you weren’t even looking in the right direction! “Sunshine On A Rainy Day” peaked at No 4.

So that next act is Martika with the video for “Love…Thy Will Be Done”. As Jakki tells us, her latest album “Martika’s Kitchen” (terrible, terrible title) has four songs on it that were co-written with Prince including the current single which I think we were all meant to take on board as meaning that she was leaving her pop past behind and becoming a serious artist.

We also knew this because the accompanying video was shot in black and white, that classic trick to ensure that we understood what we were watching had some gravitas to it. No pop fluff this you know. When I was a student at Sunderland Poly we had to make a video short for one of the modules and my group employed the black and white tactic for ours. The point we wanted to make though was that black and white meant dull and boring before the film came alive with the introduction of colour. Out of our way Federico Fellini! Our video was entitled Wet Dream but it’s not what you might think. The black and white footage had a guy called Ian falling asleep in a particularly dull lecture before he went into a dream in colour where he is kidnapped and thrown into a swimming pool. As he awakes from his dream back in black and white he is soaking wet. Genius! We were all do pleased with ourselves! Ah, the folly of youth. I must get around to uploading it one day. “Love…Thy Will Be Done” peaked at No 9.

Meanwhile back in the studio we find some more ravers in Utah Saints with a guy up front on bass guitar looking like what I’m sure Boris Johnson (but not me) would describe as a ‘crusty’. Their performance of “What Can You Do For Me” illustrates perfectly the issues TOTP was facing with showcasing this new fangled rave music. There are no vocals apart from the short samples from Gwen Guthrie, Eurythmics and an intro from a Kiss concert. That leaves the four members of the band having to fill the time somehow. So we have the aforementioned bass player strutting about, a drummer, someone on keyboards and a DJ scratching like his life depending on it. No wonder the show’s producers decided to pad it out with some images from the promo video. To be fair, the track was good enough to not be undermined by the performance and would go up the charts the following week.

Jakki Brambles’ comment on Utah Saints? “They’re a good bunch of lads”. Hang on didn’t she say something similar about Sonia? Yes she did (“ a good old girl”). Presumably this was her default style of phrases she would go to to fill time. A bit like a Tory politician being asked a difficult question and replying “I don’t accept your characterisation of ***”.

Kylie Minogue is up next adding to the female pop star count for this show. We’ve already had Sonia, Zoë, Martika, Salt ‘N Pepa plus Oceanic fronted by Jorinde Williams and now here’s Kylie with her latest single “Word Is Out”. As Jakki says it was her fourteenth consecutive hit but it was also the first to fail to reach the Top 10. Were UK pop fans getting bored of her? No I don’t think so – it was just a shit song. Really weak. It was the lead single from her fourth and final album with Stock, Aitken and Waterman and she seemed to be a bit lost in this stage of her career. Maybe she was just finding her feet in the creative process (she shared song writing credits on six of the tracks). The album had a mixed reception both critically and commercially (it also failed to make the Top 10, her first album to do so). Very much a forgotten Kylie single (when was the last time you heard it on the radio?), its failure to rack up massive sales wasn’t due to a lack of effort on Kylie’s part as she gives the usual energetic performance here, crammed full of more dance moves than Zoë could wave her arms at. That would all be gone come her next single though which (psst… pass it on) was a big R’n’B ballad with Keith Washington. The word was out.

This is totally unfair! Just six minutes left of the show and they cram in another six songs in that time! My poor fingers! This is due to there being four Breakers this week starting with Mötley Crüe with a song called “Primal Scream”. What? I’d rather that sentence read Primal Scream with a song called “Motley Crue”.

This blog appears to have gone umlaut crazy. After the nonsense of the Marc Bölan story the other week and the appearance tonight of Zoë, we have the LA hair metallers with a single to promote their first Greatest Hits album. Hang on, what hits? They’d had just three Top 40 entries before this in the UK and none had hit higher than No 23. To be fair, they were more successful in the US where they’d had six including two Top 10s but I’m not about to let something like the truth get in the way of a petty swipe at them! According to the band’s Nikki Sixx, the song was written about Arthur Janov’s 1970 book The Primal Scream. Yeah, maybe or maybe they just stole the idea off Tears For Fears who named themselves after said book. “Primal Scream” the Mötley Crüe song kept their run of UK singles that failed to breach the Top 20 going when it peaked at No 26.

Another dance anthem now. Sabrina Johnston may only be known for this single “Peace” in this country but she’s not without musical pedigree. She toured with The Sugar Hill Gang in the 80s and was signed to Sugar Hill Records as part of West Street Mob so you know…respect and all. “Peace” was just a huge, uplifting chunk of positivity in the form of a gospel -ish dance track that was written during the Gulf War as an antidote to the feelings of dread and horror that conflict engendered. It was a tune! Peaking at No 8, it returned to the charts the following year as a double A-side with a remix of “Gypsy Woman” by Crystal Waters to promote the “Red, Hot + Dance” charity album.

Talking of whom….now I would have laid money on Crystal Waters having been a one hit wonder but no as here she is with the follow up to No 2 hit “Gypsy Woman” with a song called “Makin’ Happy”. I didn’t much care for her first hit and this one wasn’t going to do it for me either seeing as it was very much in the same mould – indeed it was described as ‘Gypsy Woman, Part II’ in some of the music press. Even in this short clip it just seemed so damn repetitive. Her discography tells me that she had nine Top 40 hits in this country. NINE?!! Don’t panic though, I don’t think we’ll be seeing her again until these TOTP repeats hit 1994 (assuming that they carry on that long).

Roxette complete the Breakers with the third single from their third studio album “Joyride” called “The Big L.” (no punctuation after the ‘L’ , no points). It’s a bit bland this one and it really reminds me of another song (who said anything else by Roxette?!) but I can’t put my finger on it. An ABBA song maybe?It wasn’t released in the US for some reason – not sure why their American record company wouldn’t have had faith in it given their last seven singles released there had peaked at:

1 – 14 – 1 – 2 – 1 – 1 – 2

Now, remember that guy who interviews Jurgen Klopp in that ‘Let’s Talk About Six’ video. Well, his name is Jan Åge Fjørtoft (the theme was umlauts Jan not…whatever they are) who is an ex-professional footballer who turned out for Swindon Town, Middlesbrough, Sheffield United and Barnsley in this country but that’s neither here nor there. Look at him again. He could be the guy in Roxette surely?

OK, what week are we onto now with Bryan Adams and “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”? Nine? Ten? I’m struggling for any more content on this song now. What has @TOTPFacts got for me…

Sorry, I'm now considering this part of the show a tea break until the 16 weeks are over. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 1, 2021

Oh, great, thanks very much! Balls! Well, in a Smash Hits interview (Bryan was not only in the magazine but on the front cover -who’d have thought it?!) he was asked:

Are you mightily chuffed with the single then?

His reply was:

“You could say that”

Bryan Adams there with a magnificently downbeat show of being chuffed about something that has only been matched by David Batty when he was interviewed in Lee Chapmans’ house in Boroughbridge when Leeds Utd won the league in 1992. Asked how he felt about the achievement he replied:

“Well, it’s a bonus”.

Who’s this? Runrig? Oh yes, I remember them. Like a celtic Dire Straits weren’t they? Too glib? OK, well “The Hearthammer EP” was their first Top 40 hit despite having been around since 1973 and as I recall they were a very popular live draw. Indeed, there are almost as many live Runrig albums as studio albums. To prove the point, the video shows the band playing what seems to be a massive outdoor gig. The single was taken from an album called “The Big Wheel” which went gold in the UK. This really does sound like Dire Straits though.

And that’s it from Jakki Brambles. Her comment at the show’s end “Right, I’m off to the Darby and Joan Club” suggests maybe she knew she was for the bullet?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Oceanic	Insanity	I didn’t
2	The Prodigy	Charly	Nope
3	Sonia	Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy	As if
4	Salt ‘n Pepa	Let’s Talk About Sex	Liked it, didn’t buy it
5	Zoë	Sunshine On A Rainy Day	See 4 above
6	Martika	Love…Thy Will Be Done	Nope
7	Utah Saints	What Can You Do For Me	See 4 above
8	Kylie Minogue	Word Is Out	Nah
9	Mötley Crüe	Primal Scream	Never happening
10	Sabrina Johnston	Peace	See 4 above
11	Crystal Waters	Makin’ Happy	Soundin’ crappy more like – no
12	Roxette	The Big L.	F******g ‘ell more like – no
13	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	I did not
14	Runrig	The Hearthammer EP	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/m00103fv/top-of-the-pops-06091991

TOTP 22 AUG 1991

Posted on September 29, 2021 by 80stastic

Welcome back to TOTP Rewind where I’m pretty sure we are about to witness the very last time that Bruno Brookes hosted the show. Yes, that annoying little git that seems have been hanging around forever is about to be deprived of one of his regular gigs and it’s come not a moment too soon as far as I’m concerned. I wonder if he knew this would be his last appearance at the time? Obviously it wasn’t just Bruno who was being ousted though. The great TOTP ‘Year Zero” cull that happened in October 1991 would take out all of those Radio 1 DJs that had been inviting themselves into our sitting rooms every Thursday for years in one fell swoop. We will see valedictory appearances by Mark Goodier, Jakki Brambles, Simon Mayo, Nicky Campbell and Gary Davies in the weeks to come. I wasn’t particularly a fan of any of them but Brookes was such an irritating little runt (yes that’s ‘runt’ although it could easily have been another word ending in ‘-unt’) that I think it’s his removal that pleases me the most. Despite his TOTP dismissal, he still had his Radio 1 post that he had been in since 1984 and somehow he would survive for another four years there before new Head of Radio 1 Production Trevor Dann axed him with the infamous words “…Why is Bruno on? You know, he seems to have a charmed life, because if the view was ‘we must get rid of the dinosaurs’, you know we’ve got this behemoth striding the airwaves of dawn”. Anyway, lets see if Brookes makes a decent fist of his last show or if he makes a few howlers like always…

He starts off with zero controversy (even his usually elaborate wardrobe has been toned down) as he introduces someone else making their final TOTP appearance on the show in Midge Ure. I was listening to some Ultravox on Spotify earlier and some of their Ure-period stuff was pretty good. I’m thinking about the likes of “All Stood Still”, “Hymn” and “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes” rather than the pompous “Vienna” (which I never liked that much) and the frankly ridiculous “We Came To Dance”. A lot of Midge’s solo stuff paled in comparison to his Ultravox high points. Some of it was OK but even his most successful stuff like surprise 1985 No 1 “If I Was” I found laborious and uninspiring. “Cold Cold Heart” was hardly electrifying and could be filed under the category of ‘meh’.

Although he’s got rid of his horrid ponytail, Midge still has a cracking pair of sideburns on display here. Pretty bold stuff as I don’t remember them being an essential male fashion accessory back then. Of course, these days Midge is actually bald rather than bold. The rather ham fisted attempt to show off the song’s Celtic credentials at the end via the use of three tympanum drums looks a bit daft to me. “Cold Cold Heart” peaked at No 17.

Oh, here we go…what’s Bruno on about now? There are two records at No 21 in the chart run down? What?! For once, Brookes hasn’t made a right ricket as there were two No 21 records that week. Apparently Oceanic and Sophie Lawrence had pulled in the same amount of sales and so, after the furore the previous year surrounding the Dee-Lite / Steve Miller Band debate about who should have been No 1 after sharing the exact number of sales, Gallup had made the policy not to try and separate artists in these circumstances but would instead grant them equal chart billing.

The soundtrack to this unusual countdown was supplied by The Prodigy who were having a huge hit with their debut single “Charly”. Infamously sampling the 1970s BBC Public Information Film Charley Says, I for one did not see them becoming such huge players in the dance scene of the 90s and beyond off the back of it. That mining of vintage Childrens TV programs as source material for dance tracks would become a thing of sorts . Following in the steps of “Charly” came amongst others Smart E’s “Sesame’s Treet”, Urban Hype’s “A Trip to Trumpton” and “Roobarb & Custard” by ShaFt. This short-lived genre even had a name which I was unaware of until now which was ‘Toytown Techno’.

I would come to appreciate The Prodigy much more as the decade wore on and their Glastonbury performance of 1997 remains spectacular. For now though, I think I almost dismissed “Charly” as a novelty. Maybe I just didn’t like to be reminded of those 70s public informations films, of which none were more scary than this one:

“Rave on!” exclaims Bruno at the end of the Prodigy video sounding like he was auditioning for a part in Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights. The turd. Right, here’s somebody new even if the song had been out before. Nothing to do with Elkie Brooks (that was “Sunshine After The Rain”), this little pop nugget was called “Sunshine On A Rainy Day” and was written by legendary producer Youth for his then girlfriend Zoë but it failed to find an audience when originally released in 1990 when it peaked at No 53. However a remix by Mark “Spike” Stent earned it a second shot at the charts and this time it powered all the way to a high of No 4. Youth seemed to be preoccupied with writing songs about rain back then as he also co-wrote Blue Pearl’s 1990 hit “Naked In The Rain”.

Zoë’s hit song though captured something of the essence of 1991 it seemed to me. Was it the mix of hypnotic dance beats with a folky song structure or just that uplifting, sing-a-long chorus pre-fixed with a shout of ‘Yay!’ from Zoë that so beguiled? Or was it just that Zoë herself cut quite the pop star figure in this performance? I seem to remember a few male work colleagues being quite taken with her.

Sadly for Zoë, it never got any bigger or better than this for her as a singer. One minor Top 40 hit followed called “Lightning” but her album “Scarlet Red And Blue” disappointed commercially. She returned with a new rock sound in 1996 with a song called “Hammer” which seemed to be trying to ride on the Alanis Morissette bandwagon but nobody noticed nor cared. After its failure, she left the music business to become a sculptor and potter although she has since recorded material under the alias Hephzibah Broom.

So The Prodigy creating Toytown Techno proved to be a case of “What Can You Do For Me” and passed me by completely but an act sampling proper pop records and making them into dance anthems proved to be “Something Good” I could get behind. OK, enough for the puns but I have always had a soft spot for Utah Saints. Their ambition according to themselves was to get rock ‘n’ roll into rave and they achieved this by sampling Eurythmics’ “There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)” and Gwen Guthrie’s “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But The Rent” to outstanding effect.

Originating from the Leeds club scene where they hosted their own nights, their name was nothing to do with toothy 70s boy band The Osmonds who hailed from Ogden, Utah. No, here’s @TOTPFacts with the real story behind that name:

Utah Saints' name was inspired by the Coen Brothers film Raising Arizona. Jez Willis: "Near the end of it he mentions Utah and we just thought it was quite a nice word. We put the Saints bit on to make it sound like a football team or something like that." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 24, 2021

So now you know. Anyway, they hit big immediately with their debut single “What Can You Do For Me” making the Top 10. Now I’ve read both Dave Stewart’s autobiography and a biography of Annie Lennox and I don’t remember anything in either about there being a dispute between Annie and Dave about allowing Utah Saints to use a sample of “There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)” as Bruno Brookes suggests there is. “Annie Lennox wanted it banned but Dave Stewart thinks it’s a smash. What do you think?” he rambles in his intro. I can’t find any mention of it online either. In fact the only Utah Saints / Annie Lennox reference I found was that they did a remix of one of her solo singles (“Little Bird”) in 1993 so she can’t have been that pissed off with them.

Another song that made it to No 10 in the charts was this one from Jason Donovan although Brookes can’t resist one final incorrect chart prediction when he says that it’s “no doubt a future No 1”. Maybe he was basing his forecast on the fact that Jase’s last single “Any Dream Will Do” had gone to No 1. That song’s success though was backed up by Donovan performing it live twice a day all week at the London Palladium in the lead role of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. A little naive I think from Bruno to think that chucking out an unimaginative cover of “Happy Together” by The Turtles would repeat the trick. Not that there’s anything wrong with the song – I love the original version – but Donovan’s take on it brought nothing new to the table at all. It just seemed a lazy choice of song and indeed it had been cynically shoe horned onto his recent Greatest Hits album presumably with the intention of releasing it as a single all along.

Even Donovan can’t really be arsed to sell the record too much in this performance. At one point he does a Paul McCartney ‘whacky tombs aloft’ gesture for some reason and then his panicked facial expression immediately afterwards gives away that he suddenly thought what did I did that for?! “Happy Together” was Jason’s final UK Top 10 hit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icAj2qx3jvQ

It’s that song by Karyn White that was a Breaker last week next. It turns out that Karyn is quite the businesswoman. She started her own music label and entertainment company in 2011 called Karyn White Enterprise Inc and also runs a successful interior design and real estate business. Not content with that, she’s also tried her hand at acting and is still recording with her last release being in 2018. If only she had given video directing a shot as well – it may have livened up the video for “Romantic”. The ‘storyline’ for it as listed on the IMDB database is this:

The music video begins with Karyn White pulling up in a sports car. She sings as she wears pearl necklaces against a gray background. A group of dancers strike poses throughout.

Seruously?! Did somebody pitch that as an idea and got the gig?! “Romantic” peaked at No 23.

“Onto more rave” announces Bruno as we head into the No 21 hit (of which there are two of course this week) sound of Oceanic with “Insanity”. Now you know me, I could never be described as a dance head but after Utah Saints earlier, this is the second dance anthem of the show that I didn’t mind at all. I think it was that huge, euphoric chorus or maybe even the key change at the finale. There seemed to be much more of a traditional song structure to it than some of the other dance tracks of the time. Here’s David Harry of the band on that very subject courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Oceanic were morally opposed to sampling other acts, and big on hooks. David Harry: "I think there are a lot of similarities between Nirvana and Oceanic. We're into the same dynamics as a way of keeping the listener's attention." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 24, 2021

"The best rock music, like Nirvana, is really simple. You can't miss their choruses. It's a chorus, no two ways about it, and it's usually set in a different key from the verse, which is played down to emphasise the chorus even more." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) September 24, 2021

OK, well the comparison between Oceanic and Nirvana slightly undermines the point but I think you get the gist.

What? You want to hear about my Oceanic story? Oh OK. Well, I was once at a freebie record company do (possibly the Ricky Ross album playback) whilst I was working for Our Price and I’d arrived at the venue before any of my colleagues. I’m not great at parties anyway so I found myself mooching around feeling lost. I spotted someone else who appeared to be experiencing the same thing so I decided maybe we could help each other out by striking up a conversation. The person who I started chatting to was *that lady from Oceanic! It turned out she was feeling exactly the same as me and was glad of someone to talk to. Eventually my colleagues and her friends turned up and our time together was over – cue lots of questions from my contingent about who I had been talking to and what did we say to each other. All I remember is that she was very nice and that I learned that her friends she was at the event with were in the middle of some legal action about the songwriting credits to Gina G’s hit “Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit”.

“Insanity” peaked at No 3 and was the best selling dance single of the year and the ninth best selling overall outselling nine No 1 records in the process. Let’s hope whoever wrote it got their just royalties.

*I should give the lady her proper name which is Jorinde Williams although to be fair to me they did call their album “That Album By Oceanic”.

https://youtu.be/Cb0y8y4MfLs?si=mooIp2zP7PsGoUhE

Martika is back! Yes, she of “Toy Soldiers” fame back in 1989 had returned and with a credible song. How so? Well “Love… Thy Will Be Done” was written by Prince of course and much was made of that at the time I seem to remember. It didn’t strike me as an obvious collaboration I have to say but then if you think about it, he has worked with / written songs for loads of different people. There’s even a Prince family tree online which lists them all. Under the section People who recorded songs written or co-written by Prince you’ll find Martika along with Madonna, (Chaka, Chaka, Chaka) Chaka Khan, Sheena Easton, Sheila E, Paula Abdul, The Bangles, Celine Dion, Kenny Rogers and of course Sinead O’Connor. If he could write songs for Celine Dion then Martika wasn’t that big of a stretch! As for the song, I quite liked it – a much more mature sound (that’s the word all the music press used anyway). Bizarrely its drums and bass backing do not vary at all throughout the song in terms of bpm yet somehow it just works.

“Love… Thy Will Be Done” was from Martika’s second album “Martika’s Kitchen” which performed well in Europe but poorly in her native US. The title track would be issued as a single and was a return to the more poppier fare that I would have expected from her.

“Love… Thy Will Be Done” peaked at No 9 on the UK Top 40.

Yet another dance tune as we start the Breakers section with “Lift” / “Open Your Mind” by 808 State. Like previous singles “Cubik” / “Olympic” and “In Yer Face”, this was taken from the band’s third album “ex:el” but unlike those tracks which both went Top 10, the spreadsheet formulas for chart success didn’t work for “Lift” / “Open Your Mind” and it stalled at No 38. I didn’t mind this but to my untrained ear were they all starting to sound a bit the same? Maybe it didn’t matter if you were on the dance floor with chemical substances coursing through you which I wasn’t at this time.

What?! Tin Machine?! F*****g Tin Machine are on TOTP?! In my mind, Bowie’s much maligned super group project had disappeared after their first album in 1989 but having checked out their discography on Wikipedia, I do remember the cover of the second album (“Tin Machine II”) from working in Our Price. I don’t recall this track (“You Belong In Rock n’ Roll”) though. Apparently it was released in a blaze of publicity (it clearly had no effect on me) but it struggled to a chart high of just No 33. Even that paltry chart placing for the musical legend that Bowie is/was turned out to be Tin Machine’s biggest hit. The band had to change labels from EMI to Victory Music to even get that second album released as the lack of hit singles on their debut album had freaked EMI out and they got cold feet about the whole project.

Apparently there’s a studio performance in the next TOTP repeat that involves a chocolate eclair but I’ll keep my powder dry on that one until next time….

Following “The Joker” by the Steve Miller Band and “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by The Clash into our charts comes the next vintage track to be reactivated for a Levi’s TV advert. “20th Century Boy” was originally a No 3 hit for T. Rex in 1973 but it was chosen to front the latest Lev’s ad campaign in 1991 and re-issued curiously as being by Marc Bolan and T.Rex.

The advert itself features a very young Brand Pitt and the single’s success in 1991 (it peaked at No 13) , just like The Clash, sparked the release of a T.Rex Best Of album called “The Ultimate Collection ” which, backed by a TV Ad campaign, went to No 4 in the album charts.

It’s a great song and as much as I had a weakness for them, is sooo much better than – “21st Century Boy” by Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

So it’s been a “healthy” chart Brookes advises us before we get to the No 1. Not sure what standards he’s applying to the nations’s pop choices there but it is still suffering from an extreme case of ‘Adamsitis’ as “(EverythingI Do) I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams is still at the summit of the Top 40 for the seventh week running. OK, what can I dredge up about this song that hasn’t already been said so far. My own personal opinion of it? Sure…

Question: Is it a terrible song?

Me: No, but it has a deservedly terrible reputation. No song should be No 1 for 16 weeks.

Question: Ah, so you like it then?

Me: It’s not up there with his best material but I didn’t mind it on first hearing. After the 10th, 20th, 100th time, it lost its appeal certainly.

Question: Did you buy it?

Me: No. I never even considered it. It was so inescapable that even if I’d really liked it, there would have been no point – you heard it all the time anyway.

The play out video is “Mind” by The Farm. It seemed as though this lot’s time in the sun was coming to an end by this point. After the glory of two consecutive Top 10 singles in 1990, impetus had been lost and subsequent singles “Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)” with Pete Wylie and “Don’t Let Me Down” failed to crack the Top 20.

Still, not to worry, they had lots of new tunes up their sleeve and “Mind” was the first of those being the lead single from second album “Love See No Colour”. Unfortunately that also failed the Top 20 test and also the Top 30 one as well when it stalled at No 31. In truth, it’s not a great song, lacking the groove of ..erm…”Groovy Train” and the hook of “All Together Now”‘s rousing chorus. It also had some seriously terrible lyrics:

Remember all the good times that we had
Remember those days they were never sad
All our hopes and all our dreams
All our crazy mixed up schemes

I’d have been embarrassed by those in 5th form.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Midge Ure	Cold Cold Heart	Mouldy old fart more like – no
2	The Prodigy	Charly	No
3	Zoë	Sunshine On A Rainy Day	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Utah Saints	What Can You Do For Me	See 3 above
5	Jason Donovan	Happy Together	Hell no
6	Karyn White	Romantic	Nah
7	Oceanic	Insanity	No but I didn’t tell Jorinde that
8	Martika	Love… Thy Will Be Done	Nope
9	808 State	Lift / “Open Your Mind	Guess what? No
10	Tin Machine	You Belong In Rock n’ Roll	This belonged in the bin – no
11	Marc Bolan and T.Rex	20th Century Boy	Not the re-release but I have it on a Best Of CD
12	Bryan Adams	(EverythingI Do) I Do It For You	I think we’ve already established the answer to that question
13	The Farm	Mind	Negative

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/m000zwqz/top-of-the-pops-22081991