The Rolling Stones

TOTP 06 FEB 1998

After a few weeks hiatus due to the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury and Wimbledon, we’re back with the 1998 TOTP repeats again. I can’t say I missed them which might sound a perverse thing to say from someone who has devoted over eight years of their life to blogging about them but hear me out. Firstly, after publishing over 700 posts in that time, I welcome any break from the relentless writing. Secondly, I have the feeling that 1998 wasn’t a vintage year for the UK charts and that we might be about to endure some hits of dubious quality at best (i.e. some right old shite). Let’s see if my fears are realised in this episode…

Tonight’s host is Zoe Ball who I’m not the biggest fan of but she seems like a safe pair of hands here. Someone who wasn’t exhibiting safe hands was Executive Producer Chris Cowey who has brought back that crap idea again of featuring the song that was last week’s No 1 as the first song of tonight’s show meaning that effectively the same hit is played back to back seven days apart. I might have fallen for what Cowey no doubt thought was a clever ruse back then but watching these repeats nearly 30 years on it seems plain daft. The fortunate recipient of this additional exposure this time is Usher whose “You Make Me Wanna” track lasted just a solitary week at No 1 before being deposed by…well, we’ll get to that in due time.

As for Usher, he’s determined to take off as many clothes as the BBC censors will allow pre-watershed although he maybe should have practiced a bit more first as he struggles to remove his silver padded jacket which he then flings to the floor. What happened to said jacket as it’s nowhere to be seen as the performance progresses – presumably it was snaffled away by a studio audience member. Did they get to keep it or did security make them return it to Usher. I mean, they didn’t even ask for it nicely with one of those annoying ‘Can I have your shirt?’ placards that are ubiquitous at elite football matches these days. By the end of the performance, Usher is naked from the waist up although, as Joe Cocker and, indeed, Tom Jones nearly sang, he did keep his hat on. That’s alright then.

Some proper music from a proper singer next. Much was made back in the day of Carleen Anderson’s musical family heritage* (Zoe Ball even makes a reference to it here) but Carleen’s own personal musical career took in many a familiar name. She’s worked with Omar, on Guru’s “Jazzmatazz: Volume 1” album, Incognito, Brand New Heavies, Jocelyn Brown and yes Zoe, Paul Weller. Of course, she came to prominence with acid jazz pioneers Young Disciples in 1991 with their Mercury Prize nominated album “Road To Freedom” before striking out in her own with solo album “True Spirit” which sold 60,000 copies in the UK and supplied her with four Top 40 singles.

*Carleen’s family tree included:

Her Mum was Vicky Anderson, a singer with the James Brown Revue.
Her stepfather was Bobby Byrd, the R&B, soul/ funk legend and James Brown band mate.
The ‘Godfather of Soul’ himself was Carleen’s actual godfather

Leading the way for her second album was a cover of Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” which I hadn’t realised until now had never been released as a Macca single (though a live version by Wings was a minor hit in 1977). This is a fantastic track, perhaps one of McCartney’s best, and Carleen does it justice with her version complete with soaring vocal (is it live in this performance?). However, on reflection, it doesn’t have the feel of a single in 1998 somehow. A highlight of Later with…Jools Holland yes, or even his New Year’s Hootenanny show but just not a Top 40 single. The trippy graphics behind Carleen give it the feel of a performance on Channel 4’s notorious late night show The Word but surely Carleen was too classy to have appeared on that (I haven’t checked by the way).

This would prove to be Carleen’s final UK hit and she now has followed a different direction pioneering a new cultural form called “Opus Griot”, a blend of singing, poetry, storytelling and the use of MI.MU Gloves, a new gesture-controlled digital instrument developed by Imogen Heap. As for “Maybe I’m Amazed”, it continues to be covered by artists such as Marc Cohn, Thomas Lang and Billy Joel. Oh and if you play it backwards, you’ll hear a recipe for a really ripping lentil soup…

How does one describe Saint Etienne? It’s a legitimate question I feel as they certainly embraced the eclectic ethic more than most. It’s also a question that will be revisited this year I’m guessing as the band have announced that their forthcoming album “International” will be their last. No doubt this will usher (no, not him!) in retrospective articles in the music press reassessing their career. Indeed, there is one in the latest edition of the excellent Classic Pop magazine which has an interview with the trio at its heart.

My own personal experience of the band started…well, at the start I guess with their dance version of Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” which was perfect for coming-down play lists with its aching sorrowfulness. It wasn’t a massive hit (No 39) but many of my hipper Our Price colleagues at the time loved it and it was heavily played on the shop stereo. Indeed, my wife liked it so much she bought the band’s debut album “Foxbase Alpha”. The natural progression from this was to see them live which we did in Manchester Academy but it wasn’t a fulfilling experience. Heavily reliant on backing tapes, they played for just 43 minutes and left the stage with Sarah Cracknell delivering the line “We’re not a rock band. We don’t do encores” and they were, indeed, gone. It wasn’t all bad though – the support band were Pulp who were excellent.

As the 90s progressed, Saint Etienne were almost prolific in their output which the stat of four albums in seven years attests to. They’d even accrued enough material for a Best Of album by the midpoint of the decade. Although some of their best known songs seem to be infused with an overt pop sensibility (“You’re In A Bad Way”, “He’s On The Phone”), they truly did span the musical genres. 1994’s “Tiger Bay” explored folk electronica whilst last year’s “The Night” was all about the understated and ambient. Then there’s their actual soundtrack albums. It really is wide ranging stuff. By 1998, they were back in that pop groove with the album “Good Humor” albeit of a more acoustic variety. Lead single “Sylvie” returned them to that classic Saint Etienne sound though – a stylish and catchy tale of sibling love rivalry. Some of its lyrics were a bit trite though rhyming ‘September’ with ‘remember’ and ‘person’ with ‘flirtin’. It would peak at No 12 thus maintaining their record of never having had a Top 10 hit. That run would remain unbroken*, something that Sarah Cracknell admits in that Classic Pop magazine interview remains a regret.

*I’m not counting 1991 No 8 hit “7 Ways To Love” under the guise of Cola Boy nor 2000’a collaboration with Paul van Dyk on “Tell Me Why (The Riddle)”

That last album should arrive in September this year and features guest appearances from the likes of Vince Clarke and the Greatest Living Englishman Nick Heyward so it should be well worth checking out.

By the end of the 90s, it felt like Will Smith was permanently in the charts with a succession of catchy, dance/rap numbers that were based on samples of classic hits from back in the day. Starting with “Men In Black” in 1997 (and omitting the outlier minor hit “Just Cruisin’”), he had a run of six singles that peaked at either No 1, No 2 or No 3. “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” was the second in that run and was primarily based around Sister Sledge’s 70s disco classic “He’s The Greatest Dancer”. The lyrics, which, incidentally, some people believe were written by rapper Nas and not Smith, include the line:

“Met Ali he told me I’m the greatest”

Written by: Bernard Edwards / Joe Robinson / Nile Rodgers / Samuel Barnes / Will Smith.

How prescient. Smith would play the boxing legend in the 2001 biopic Ali. Anyway, “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” was a perfect example of the successful formula that Smith had hit upon and he would run with it for all it was worth. However, what did it actually mean to ‘get jiggy with it’? I presumed it was a euphemism for the sexual act but according to Wikipedia, the term was originally a description of sexy fashion or style that was expanded to include dancing skills. As for Smith himself, he saw the use of ‘jiggy’ in the lyrics as an opportunity for racial empowerment as he associated it with the ethnic slur ‘jigaboo’ which popularised the folk-myth of an innate sense of rhythm in people of colour. In essence, it was claiming the phrase back.

The video was suitably grandiose being filmed at various Las Vegas hotels with scenes including Ancient Egypt imagery, volcanoes and ultimately a Statue of Liberty replica. The money and effort put into the promo was rewarded with an MTV award for Best Rap video. We’ll be seeing a lot more of Mr. Smith before these 90s TOTP repeats are through.

I’m totally out of my comfort zone on this next one as TOTP goes freestyle…literally. Freestylers are a British electronic group whose sound is so eclectic it makes Saint Etienne seem like fuddy duddy, dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists. Encompassing elements of breakbeat, big beat, trip hop, acid house and electro house, they are the trio Matt Cantor, Aston Harvey and MC SirReal. Looking at that list of sub genres of dance music, you may understand my comment about being out of my pop/rock comfort zone. I wasn’t the only one though. Zoe Ball was as well although she tries to convince us that she knows what she’s talking about in her intro where she refers to them as the “freesty-laaas”. That faux patois is undermined though by her pronunciation of the word “dancing” as “darncing”. And I thought you were a safe pair of hands Zoe!

Anyway, back to the Freestylers who are joined on this their debut hit “B-Boy Stance” by Tenor Fly who brings some ragga stylings to the mic (or something). It’s all very frenetic with the three breakdancers on stage twirling around on their arses adding to the spectacle/ looking ridiculous (delete as appropriate). To me, it seems very retro even in 1998 with the scratching of records and those “Brrrrrrrrrr” noises from Mr T. Fly. I love the fact though that the pasty, ginger haired bass player looks as un-hip-hop as it’s possible to be.

As with Will Smith’s earlier hit, the track’s title raised the question of what it actually meant (for me anyway). Apparently, it’s that arms-crossed, feet apart pose employed by breakdancers at the end of a routine which represents strength, defiance and the legacy of hip-hop (according to AI Overview anyway). “B-Boy Stance” would peak at No 23 but did it pave the way for an enormous hit later in the year that would become the UK’s third biggest selling single of 1998? I refer, of course, to “It’s Like That” by Run-D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins.

From out of my comfort zone to totally confused now as we get The Rolling Stones and their hit “Saint Of Me”. Before we get to my confusion though, a couple of points of order. What’s the deal with the little message to camera from Mick Jagger apologising for not being in the TOTP studio in person? Did anyone really expect them to be? Seems a bit unnecessary. Maybe it was part of the ‘Still No 1’ campaign whose tagline the hosts were made to trot out each week – “see, we can get names like Mick Jagger to do stuff for us because we’re still, you know, No 1”. Secondly, what was with the shot of the studio audience watching the promo video on a big screen? How did that help the watching millions at home have a better experience or indeed the song’s chances of increasing its sales?

Anyway, to my confused state of mind. I don’t recall this single though I remember the album it came from “Bridges To Babylon” – its cover at least. Consequently, I’ve had to rely on the internet for some info about it and everything I’ve found seems to suggest that this track was remixed by dance remix duo Deep Dish. This seems possible as the first single from the album – “Anybody Seen My Baby” – had been given the remix treatment by Armand Van Helden. Listening to it though, it doesn’t sound very dance influenced at all. Presumably there was a remix of it as an extra track on a CD single or the 12” format? This can’t be it surely? As for the song itself, it’s pleasant enough blues rock, the kind of which the Stones made their legend on with lots of religious imagery in the lyrics – a companion piece to “Sympathy For The Devil” maybe? To be honest though, it sounds like they were doing their best “Give Out But Don’t Give Up” era Primal Scream impression. Or was it the other way round? Ahem.

Wait…what?! Why are OTT back in the show?! I thought we’d done with this lot for the final time the other week? What? They’ve climbed one place from No 20 to No 19 with “The Story Of Love” after debuting at No 11 in its first week? That was enough to warrant another appearance? Damn you Chris Cowey!

Hands up who thought Aqua would be a one hit wonder?

*Blogger sheepishly raises his hand*

It was a fair assumption though. “Barbie Girl” was just about a novelty song so how could a career be carved out from that beginning? How wrong we all were. Not only did they have more hits but they completed a hat-trick of consecutive No1s. The second of those was “Doctor Jones”, another insanely catchy bubblegum pop track. The whole boy/girl cutesy thing was starting to get really annoying second time around and the “Ah-yippie-yi-ooh, ah-yippie-yi -yeah” lyric was brain rotting. Sadly, we would fall for it hook, line and sinker just as we had done for its predecessor. The UK record buying public was sick. Somebody should have called the doctor. Wake up now!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Usher	You Make Me Wanna	I did not
2	Carleen Anderson	Maybe I’m Amazed	Negative
3	Saint Etienne	Sylvie	No
4	Will Smith	Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It	Nope
5	Freestylers	B-Boy Stance	Not my bag at all
6	The Rolling Stones	Saint Of Me	Nah
7	OTT	The Story Of Love	Of course not
8	Aqua	Doctor Jones	Away with you!

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/m002fzc7/top-of-the-pops-06021998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 09 NOV 1995

Posted on April 3, 2024 by 80stastic

Tonight’s TOTP sees yet another ‘golden mic’ host at the helm. I find Lee Evans an interesting guy not because I especially liked his physical brand of humour but more because he took the unusual to retire from stand up comedy and retreated from the world of celebrity at the age of just 50 to spend more time with his family. Apart from a couple of stage roles, he’s rarely been seen since. Anybody who walks away at the height of their fame makes for a fascinating case study in my book just because you don’t see it that often. In the world of music, off the top of my head there’s Rick Astley though he subsequently came back to the world of pop music with a level of success that must have surprised even him. I guess you could also include Take That in this category who split in 1996 whilst still wildly popular though again they came back to the charts with a vengeance. How about Syd Barrett? The co-founder of Pink Floyd withdrew from public life completely in 1972 though to be fair, he’d already been fired from his band over concerns about his drug taking and mental health but he did release two solo albums before disappearing to concentrate on his gardening.

Anyway, Lee Evans had been pulling in huge crowds on his stand up tours playing to a record breaking 10,108 people in 2005 at the Manchester Arena. His 2008 “Big” tour was the biggest selling comedy DVD that Christmas. In 2011, he was honoured by the British Comedy Awards with the Channel 4 award for Special Contribution to Comedy. In short, he was huge. And then, in 2014 he announced his retirement from stand up comedy. Presumably, he could have carried on with the massive grossing tours but he quit at the top and fair play to him. I wonder if there’s any acts on tonight’s TOTP that also went out at the top?

Well, I don’t think the opening turn tonight could be put into that category. One No 13 hit could hardly be described as being at the top! Who the heck were Ruffneck featuring Yavahn anyway? Having listened to their hit “Everybody Be Somebody” they appear to have been the creators of one of the worst dance tracks of the 90s. This is just horrible! Totally repetitive with Yavahn basically singing the title over and over with some bloke screeching it back to her somewhere in the mix. Seriously, this was awful. And yet, incredibly, in one chart – the US Hot Dance Club Play chart – this Swedish act were actually at the top as this track went to No 1 for three weeks. Ruffneck? I’d rather have Rednex and that’s saying something!

Talking of dreadful Swedish pop groups, here’s another one right on cue. Ace Of Base had first entered our lives in 1993 with the odious chart topper “All That She Wants”. The hits kept coming with no upturn in quality – “The Sign” was as bad as its predecessor whilst their cover of Aswad’s “Don’t Turn Around” was execrable. “Lucky Love” was the lead single from their second album “The Bridge” and was more of the same turgid, insipid euro-pop that they made their name with. And the lyrics! They must have taken all of the time it took for Lee Evans to start sweating to write…

Lucky love belongs in teenage heaven

Whoa, whoa, yeah
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: – Joker / Billy Steinberg
Lucky Love lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

What the hell does that mean?! Pure gibberish. The track was so insubstantial and unmemorable that even the TOTP caption person couldn’t remember its title and so we got a graphic declaring it was called “Lucky Cove” which sounds like a location on a pirate map where ‘X’ marked the spot where the treasure was to be found. “Lucky Love” was less treasure and more cheap baubles and despite it being a No 1 in their home country and Finland, it rightly stalled at No 20 in the UK.

Next, a true legend of popular music who potentially could have gone out right at the top of their game but, unlike their erstwhile rivals The Beatles, chose to carry on…and on…and on…and on. By 1995, The Rolling Stones had been on the go for 33 years – the fact that they are still an ongoing entity a further 29 years later is utterly remarkable. A career lasting 62 years and counting? It’s just mad, crazy and probably never to be repeated. Sure, there’s versions of other bands still touring but they’ve had so many line up changes that you’d have to apply the spade law* to them. The fact that The Stones have only ever had eight official band members in all those years surely marks them out as unique from everyone else. Ronnie Wood is the youngest of the current band line up at the age of 76!

*If you replace the handle of your spade and then subsequently its blade, is it still the original spade or a different tool entirely?

Anyway, in late 1995 the band had not long finished The Voodoo Lounge Tour. Instead of taking a well earned break, they released “Stripped” which was an acoustic album made up of a mixture of live tracks from the tour (including rehearsals performances in some cases) and studio reworking of songs from their back catalogue. I’m guessing that new label Virgin had their eyes on the upcoming Christmas market and took inspiration from the then in vogue MTV Unplugged show to come up with the idea for “Stripped”. To promote the album, a single was needed and in a move that seems so calculated yet obvious you can’t believe they hadn’t done it before, the band released a version of the Bob Dylan classic “Like A Rolling Stone”. It’s a great song and a decent enough version but come on! Dylan has always been a conundrum to me – a great songwriter but I don’t like his voice. I suppose it’s all subjective. The same could be said of Tom Waits but I really like Tom’s vocals. The Stones’ version of “Like A Rolling Stone” made No 12 giving them their biggest UK hit since “Undercover Of The Night” twelve years earlier. Ah, the power of a cover – and in this particular case, that cover by this band.

Saint Etienne have always been a band who do things on their own terms it seems to me so they had it in them to quit while they were ahead as it were but chose to carry on a career which has been going 34 years now. Never let it be said that it hasn’t been a diverse one though. 60s pop, house music, electronica and even folk have been influences incorporated into their sound. The very definition of eclectic. With support from the ‘inkies’ press, they really should have had bigger hits but they’ve never even had one Top 10* hit.

*If you don’t count “7 Ways To Love” under the guise of Cola Boy which I don’t.

Their lack of huge selling singles makes the decision to release a singles collection album literally called “Too Young To Die: Singles 1990-1995” seem a rather odd one. A Japan only Best Of called “Fairy Tales From Saint Etienne” had been released earlier in the year so maybe they wanted a more official documentation of their work so far? Whatever the reason, the album did OK sales wise reaching No 17 in a crowded pre-Christmas market place though failed to match the chart highs of previous two studio albums “So Tough” and “Tiger Bay” which both went Top 10.

To promote the album, the single “He’s On The Phone” was released. The song’s origins were rather convoluted. A remix by producer Motiv8 of their track “Accident” from the band’s “Reserection” EP (and no that’s not a typo) that they made in collaboration with French singer songwriter Étienne Daho, “Accident” itself was a reworking of Daho’s 1984 French language hit “Week-end à Rome”. That’s Daho in this TOTP performance, the bloke who wanders on stage towards the end of the song to mumble some words in French. I’d forgotten what how much of a dance track this one was. I think I was confusing it with “You’re In A Bad Way” which was much more pure pop. There seems to be an awful lot of PVC on show here with the overly energetic backing dancers kind of jarring against the smooth delivery of Sarah Cracknell who’s very good at looking straight down the camera. “He’s On The Phone” became the band’s biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 11.

A proper One Hit Wonder now (in the UK at least) as Whale get their fifteen minutes of fame. Can such an artist that falls into this category be able to quit at the top? I suppose it depends on whether they carry on in search (unsuccessfully) of more hits. I’m guessing that most do. In Whale’s case, they pushed really hard just to have the one. “Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe” was on its second mission to seek out the strange new world of the UK Top 40 having peaked at No 46 on its first release back in 1993. Its second incarnation beamed down into the Top 20 at No 15. And what a curious, almost alien life form it was. The music press tied itself up in knots trying to define it. Many tried to describe the song by referring to it as a hybrid of other bands, usually Beastie Boys/Dee-Lite/ Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Sugacubes. Others just made shit up like Stephen Dalton from the NME:

“A monstrous saga of sexual slumming perched atop a toxic tidal wave of scuzz–metal riffola”
Dalton, Stephen (12 August 1995). “Long Play”. NME. p. 42.

“Scuzz–metal riffola? Anyways, what did I make of it? I suppose I have to give you my attempt to describe it now. Well, I liked it – let me say that for starters. An otherworldly, wailing (no pun intended) vocal from the female singer on an undulating, almost hypnotic verse before the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” like chorus not just kicks in but kicks the door down. There’s even some death-metal-esque random shouting in there. How’s that for a description? I seem to recall a fair bit of discussion about what a ‘slobo’ was so here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

What is a “slobo”, exactly? Er, a misunderstanding. Whale’s Henrik Schyffert: "I heard that 'slobo' was a nickname for Chelsea girls. 'Hobo Humpin' Sloane Babe' would have been right. So there's a cute Swedish misunderstanding for you.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 22, 2024

I like the way singer Cia Berg pops up beside Lee Evans in his intro before joining the rest of the band on stage. I thought she was a cheeky, inventive studio audience member at first. Whale would have one more (even bigger) hit in their native Sweden but after two albums they were done and split before the end of the decade.

Having described Saint Etienne as the very definition of eclectic earlier, where the hell do I go to talk about Everything But The Girl? Their Wikipedia entry uses the following categorisations of their music:

Sophisti-pop
Electronica
Drum and Bass
Trip-hop
Folk pop
Jazz pop
Indie pop

Pick the bones out of that lot. However you think of them, perhaps the first song of theirs that will come to mind is “Missing” or rather the Todd Terry remix of it. Already inside the Top 10 by this TOTP appearance and therefore their biggest ever hit even at that point, it would spend 14 weeks inside the Top 10 peaking at No 3. The success of the single saw them head off to explore more possibilities of a dance sound with 1996’s album “Walking Wounded” embracing electronica and finding acceptance amongst the record buying public by going platinum in the UK. Not everyone was in favour of their new direction though. I recall Tracey and Ben in an interview talking about a crowd reaction to a gig they did around the time of “Walking Wounded” and recalled that one disgruntled punter had said of the music on the way out “Well, that was a load of techno bollocks!”. Can’t please them all I suppose.

Now here’s a band that probably should have called it a day long before they did but in 1995, there was no bigger name in British music than Oasis. After losing out in the Battle of Britpop to Blur, the lads from Burnage would go on to win the war when it came to album sales. “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” would go 17 (seventeen!) times platinum in the UK alone becoming the second best selling album here of 1995 despite only being out for three months. Fast forward 13 years and the band’s final album “Dig Out Your Soul”, whilst still selling well and going to No 1 would go just double platinum with some parts of the music press accusing the album of being “generically Oasis”. I have all their albums bar one (2000’s “Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants”) but even I as a fan, could see that they had gone on about two albums two long.

Back in November 1995 though, they were unstoppable. Well, almost. In fact, they were stopped twice around this time and on both occasions by the same act. More of that later though. The third single to be released from the album was “Wonderwall” which has become possibly their most well known hit. I say possibly as it’s maybe a toss up between that and the following single “Don’t Look Back In Anger”. Fine margins and all that. Sadly for me, “Wonderwall” was so ubiquitous that it’s become one of those songs that it’s hard to listen to anymore. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good song or that I didn’t enjoy it at the time but merely that, for me, it’s suffered from overexposure. However, I have to also say that it sounded like a classic from the get go. Spare and brittle yet perfectly conceived and executed. It would become a staple of the busker’s repertoire. Apparently bass player Guigsy didn’t play on the actual recording of the track with Noel taking on bass duties instead. He also didn’t feature in the official promo video for “Wonderwall” as he had temporarily left Oasis due to nervous exhaustion with his place in the band and promo briefly being taken by Scott McLeod. I’m sure that’s Guigsy in this TOTP though. Maybe it was a case of timing as this performance looks pre-recorded so maybe it was done a bit before the single was released.

The song’s title was inspired by the 1968 film Wonderwall and its soundtrack album called “Wonderwall Music” by George Harrison, the first solo album by a member of The Beatles. Sometime in the early 2000s, I was working and living in York and used to attend a pub pop quiz on a Tuesday evening. One night, one of the questions was ‘What was the 60s film whose title is also the name of an Oasis single?’. I confidently wrote down “Don’t Look Back In Anger” but soon discovered I’d got confused with the 1959 kitchen sink drama Look Back In Anger based on the John Osbourne play of the same name. I’ll never make that mistake again.

As confident as I was in my incorrect answer, so was Lee Evans in his false prediction that “Wonderwall” would be No 1 soon enough. It never made it though it has sold 3.6 million copies making it the biggest selling Oasis single in the UK. As for the Mike Flowers Pop version, I’ll get to that all in good time.

After Madonna in the studio last week, seven days on TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill had pulled off another coup – that of getting David Bowie on the show in person! OK, 1995 wasn’t peak Bowie but still; David Bowie! As much as it’s generally accepted that the 80s weren’t The Thin White Duke’s finest years, I’m not convinced that the 90s were much, if any, better. Before I go any further, I should state that whilst I like Bowie (who doesn’t?) that I’m no aficionado and so my opinions come from a place of limited knowledge – if you are a mega-fan and are offended by anything else I may write from this point, it was not my intention to irk you. So…in my humble opinion, of the four albums he released during the 90s, I would venture that none of them rank highly in the Bowie canon. His fanbase ensured that four of them went Top 10 including a No 1 in “Black Tie White Noise” but none achieved massive sales. In fact, I think I’m right in saying that Bowie’s biggest selling albums of the decade were both compilations – 1990’s “Changesbowie” and 1993’s “The Singles Collection”.

Come 1995, the latest Bowie album was “Outside” and as with any album by The Master (as Lee Evans refers to him in his intro), there’s a shit load of words written about it online which I couldn’t hope to summarise in this post. Suffice to say, the main themes are that it was inspired by Twin Peaks (and possibly Cluedo) with a concept narrative about the murder of a 14 year old girl being investigated by a detective Nathan Adler. The album (though I talk about it in the surety that I’ve never heard it) features a bewildering mix of styles including rock, jazz, electronica, industrial rock and ambient. This single – the second taken from it – “Strangers When We Meet” – was originally a track on Bowie’s soundtrack album to the BBC series The Buddha Of Suburbia based on the novel by Hanif Kureishi. That album did the sum of naff all sales wise though has retrospectively come to be regarded as a ‘great lost album’. I don’t know how much the original version of “Strangers When We Meet” differs from its later incarnation (if at all) but for what it’s worth, I quite like what we get in this performance. I don’t remember it at all but it’s a good tune if a little pedestrian for Bowie and though it will certainly never be regarded as one of his classics, it probably deserved a better UK chart placing than No 39. As ever, Bowie looks effortlessly cool here and is the natural opposite when juxtaposed to the upcoming act at No 1.

P.S. I’m saying that Bowie was still at the top of his game when his final album “Blackstar” was released in 2016. Obviously, his premature death wasn’t the same as him calling time on his career. He surely would have released more albums post 2016 had he lived on.

And so to the act that not only kept Oasis from scoring a No 1 single with “Wonderwall” but also pipped them to the accolade of having the best selling UK album of 1995. How did the abomination that was Robson & Jerome happen? Well, as with most musical abominations, it was all Simon Cowell’s fault. It was him who pursued the Soldier Soldier actors Robson Green and Jerome Flynn to release a version of “Unchained Melody” after their characters had performed the song in a plot line in the show and the phenomenal public response to the record (it sold 1.8 million copies) meant that more would follow. Cowell wasn’t going to let this cash cow go out to pasture without milking it dry first. And so, the inevitable follow up arrived and of course, it was another cover version. “I Believe” had been a massive hit in 1953 for Frankie Laine – no, like really massive – it went to No 1 on three different occasions registering 18 weeks at the top of the charts in the process. The Bachelors also had a big hit with the song when their version got to No 2 in the UK in 1964. Cowell would have known this and also that the age demographic who would buy a Robson & Jerome single would also know the song from years before. It smacks of cold, calculating strategy. R&J’s take on “I Believe” would top the charts for 4 weeks though they were unable to last the extra 3 weeks that would have been required to become the Christmas No 1. Ha! You got that calculation wrong didn’t you Cowell?! Thankfully, the song is only just over 2 minutes long so the performance here is mercifully short.

Talking of mercifully short, Robson & Jerome at least had the good sense and self knowledge to understand when to cut short their pop career. A second album and third single followed in 1996 – all of which went to No 1 in their respective charts – but these were their last releases (if you don’t count a couple of subsequent compilations shoved out by their label RCA). This means we’ve finally found an act on this TOTP that went out at the top just like Lee Evans!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ruffneck featuring Yavahn	Everybody Be Somebody	Never happening
2	Ace Of Base	Lucky Love	No
3	The Rolling Stones	Like A Rolling Stone	Nah
4	Saint Etienne	He’s On The Phone	I didn’t
5	Whale	Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	Everything But The Girl	Missing	No but I must have it on something surely
7	Oasis	Wonderwall	This was one of the few of their singles I failed to buy for some reason
8	David Bowie	Strangers When We Meet	Nope
9	Robson & Jerome	I Believe	As if

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/m001xhzf/top-of-the-pops-09111995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 14 JUL 1994

Posted on April 26, 2023 by 80stastic

Following this TOTP, the BBC broadcast the 1000th episode of EastEnders. Earlier in the day they aired the 2000th edition of Neighbours. It was quite a day of milestones at the Beeb. I’m not sure what number of TOTP shows we were up to here but it was north of 1,500 as that particular landmark occurred in the Autumn of 1992. What I do know is that the presenter is that berk Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo again. In the dark corners of my mind dwelled this feeling that I once knew someone who was friendly with Mayo so I checked with my wife and she explained that one of her ex-work colleagues did indeed have a friend who knew him. It turns out she even went to his wedding and get this – there was some sort of two tier system for guests; one for celebrities and one for regular folk so that the former wouldn’t get bothered by the latter! Dear oh dear.

Anyway, I’m afraid he’s back again tonight and according to some comments on Twitter, in an edgy mood. Heaven help us! The running order for this edition is a bit out there I have to say and not what I would have expected in the Summer of 1994. It starts with a band that were certainly uncompromising and making an unlikely return to the UK charts for the first time in nine years. This was actually the second TOTP appearance of 1994 for Killing Joke following one for their single “Millennium” a few weeks earlier. The follow up was “Pandemonium” (confusingly known as “The Pandemonium Single on the cover of the sleeve). I don’t recall this at all but it’s better than I was expecting, full of crashing, crunching metal guitars and a memorable chorus. Jaz Coleman’s delivery in the verses puts me in mind of Ian Dury (no bad thing in my book) and, of course, his full repertoire of disturbing facial expressions and bulging eyeballs are to the fore. He really could have had a side career as the go to actor for playing vampires. What’s that? He played a fictional version of himself in a 2002 mockumentary film called Rok ďábla (Year Of The Devil)? Well, there you go then. “Pandemonium” made No 28 in our charts.

Mayo goes all Ben Elton in his next segue with a little bit of politics mentioning the Labour leadership contest by referring to Tony Blair, John Prescott and Margaret Beckett as the “the short one, the fat one and the tall one”. Simon, of course, is the hilarious one (but only in his mind). Back to the music though and the next artist on the show are a band I don’t remember at all maybe because they only had one hit. Unlike their contemporaries SWV, Jade and En Vogue, BlackGirl only troubled the UK chart compilers once with this single “90’s Girl”. It doesn’t really do anything for me but I’m sure it’s a very competent example of the genre.

https://youtu.be/AM2RDt3g-JY

Not competent though is Simon Mayo’s comments about the silhouette figures on the backdrop scenery behind BlackGirl. Blake’s 7 extras? Surely they’re more reminiscent of the titles to Tales Of The Unexpected?

Right, why is this on again? Surely Mariah Carey’s single “Anytime You Need A Friend” peaked a few weeks ago? A quick check of the official charts database shows that it did indeed reach its chart high of No 8 a few shows back and had dropped down the charts on two consecutive occasions since. However, a climb of just one place from No 22 to No 21 this week was enough cause for TOTP producer Ric Blaxill to have it back on the show. It seems a bit of a flimsy reason to me. Weren’t there any other records climbing the Top 40 that week that could have had that slot? Helpfully, Mariah’s video is used to soundtrack the chart countdown from 40 to 11 so let’s have a quick gander and check…

Well, there were a lot of singles going down the charts but there were either climbers or new entries from the likes of Diana Ross, DJ Duke and Crash Test Dummies – wouldn’t one have them done (especially the latter who were following up on a huge hit single in “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”)?

OK. This appearance is deserved as it’s a new entry at No 17 for a new artist. “Searching” by China Black was yet another of those Summer of 1994 songs that hung around the charts for ages. Thirteen weeks in the Top 40 of which seven were in the Top 10, it certainly had legs. The single was actually a rerelease. It originally came out in 1992 on independent label Big One and although it topped the reggae charts, it failed to crossover into the mainstream, not being helped by the label going bust. Interest in the track remained though and it was picked up by major Polydor and put out again but this time with the reggae influences toned down and the soul-o-meter turned up to make it more radio friendly.

It always sounded like a strange concoction to me. The slick intro that made it feel like something huge was about to emerge from the radio gives way to a jaunty, reggae-pop melody. It’s almost like it’s two different songs stuck together. That switchover is repeated when the bridge leads into the chorus. The lead singer’s high voice exposes the join even more. Seamless it was not. Neither was Simon Mayo’s link in which he crow bars in the lamest line taking a swipe at the band’s logo that hangs behind them during this performance saying it was painted by his 3 year old. What a snarky git!

China Black were unable to replicate the success of “Searching” though they did knock out a couple of medium sized follow ups and also collaborated with Ladysmith Bkack Mambazo on England World Cup song “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in 1995. One last thing, I wonder why they chose to call their song “Searching” and not “Searchin’” without a ‘g’? Presumably to make it clear they were not Hazell (two ‘l’s) Dean I guess.

Unless you’re a massive fan, I’m guessing most of us could only name one House Of Pain track with that being “Jump Around” of course. They did, however, have five UK Top 40 hits in total though of which this one, “On Point”, was the third when it peaked at No 19. So apparently, this was the band’s very first time on British TV which Mayo tries to big up but to be honest, it’s all a bit of a letdown as “On Point” sounds like a poor man’s “Jump Around” to me.

https://youtu.be/puGu55qVk0w

The lyrics aren’t what you’d call beautiful poetry either. I mean look at this:

Don’t start me up like a rolling stone
Or I’ll leave ya sulking like Maculay Culkin in home alone
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Erik Schrody / Larry Muggerud
On Point lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

The Rolling Stones (more of them later) and Macaulay Culkin aren’t the only people name checked. There are also (not so) honourable mentions for Calvin Klein, Steven Tyler and Ronnie Dio but for me, no one betters this as a track that features Dio in the lyrics:

Mayo continues with his attempt to become Ben Elton in his next link as he references the Neil Hamilton cash-for-questions scandal as he introduces The Three Tenors performing “The Brindisi”. Tenors? Tenners? Get it? Yeah, it’s up there with the ‘sick squid’ joke isn’t it? Why did he bother? To nobody’s surprise, this was all to do with The World Cup and was to promote the concert by Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras which was to be broadcast live on BBC2 from Los Angeles the night before the World Cup final. I didn’t see it as I was down in my hometown of Worcester for my sister’s 21st birthday but I’m guessing my wife’s parents did as they’d loved the Italia ‘90 one (“Nessun Dorma” and all that). They’d taped it off the TV onto a VHS (this was 33 years ago remember) but somehow my mother-in-law had taped EastEnders over it at some point and was desperate that my father-in-law didn’t find out. Every time he asked about watching it again, he was told that the tape couldn’t be found until the concert was officially released commercially and a replacement was purchased.

As for The ‘94 World Cup final between Brazil and Italy, it was an awful match, ended 0-0 and was decided on penalties for the first time ever meaning the competition that started with Diana Ross missing a penalty in the opening ceremony then ended with Roberto Baggio doing the same on the final.

It’s Let Loose again with another one of those hits that seemed to be around the charts for the whole of the Summer. “Crazy For You” would end up selling 400,000 copies. Now, I was under the impression that this lot were a trio but there’s five of them up there on stage with the two unknown extras being the keyboard player and the bass guitarist. So what gives? Well, there are cases of ‘unofficial’ band members that seem to litter pop history. When Andy Taylor left Duran Duran for the second time in 2006, he was replaced by Dom Brown who continues to be the band’s guitarist to this day but who never appears in any promotional material and is not considered a full member. Similarly, Wet Wet Wet’s lead guitarist Graeme Duffin has been with the band since 1983 but has never featured in official photographs nor interviews. And then there’s the A-ha bass player who appears in the background for the video for “The Sun Always Shines On TV”. If you’ve never seen comedian Greg Davies’s routine about this guy, please do search it out.

And now for something completely different…he may not be to everyone’s taste but I’ve always liked Julian Cope though I have to say I haven’t kept up to date with anything he’s done in over 30 years. Whatever your opinion of him, you can’t deny his prolific output. He must be part of a very select club that has released more albums than singles (35 to 24) with most of them being on his own Head Heritage label. And that’s not even counting his time with The Teardrop Explodes!

I think the first solo material of his that I was aware of was his brilliant 1984 single “The Greatness And Perfection Of Love” which should have been a big hit but which failed to make the Top 40. Then came the pop star era of ‘86-‘87 when Julian had his most commercial success with the “World Shut Your Mouth” single and the silver selling “Saint Julian” album. The next few years saw him occasionally pop up in the lower end of the singles chart with under appreciated tracks like “Charlotte Anne” and “Beautiful Love” before releasing his first compilation album in 1992 “Floored Genius” which I bought. By 1994, Cope had been dropped by his record label Island after their relationship disintegrated – the material he was supplying wasn’t what they thought they had signed him for (presumably they wanted endless retreads of “World Shut Your Mouth”). In order to get his songs out there, he signed a one album deal with Def Jam subsidiary American Recordings for the “Autogeddon” album from which the track he performs on TOTP – “I Gotta Walk” – was taken. Even allowing for the fact that the album had entered the charts at No 16, it seems a strange decision to have invited him on the show. What did the youth in the studio audience make of him? Did they know who he was? Two Top 40 singles in seven years meant he was hardly a household name at this point. And then there’s his image. Never one to comply with fashionable trends, Julian is way out there in this performance. The Mohawk hairstyle, the Wee Willie Winkie nightshirt and that’s before we get into his vocal. This really is Vic Reeves club singer territory. At the end, Julian starts flexing his body which really puts me in mind of the Spike character in Notting Hill…

Julian remains a character who operates outside of the mainstream. An enthusiast of and author on Neolithic culture with an interest in paganism and occultism, he’s also a political activist (he took a prominent role in the Poll Tax demonstrations) and counter-culturalist. The arch Druid some have labelled him. Above all though, he is interesting. If you get a chance, give his two volume autobiography Head–On / Repossessed a go. It’s a fascinating read.

At the end of Julian Cope’s performance, Simin Mayo finally comes up with a line worthy of the name. “I know what your Dad’s thinking…and he’s wrong”. And then he goes and spoils it all with some pathetic gag about Reg Presley raking it in and crop circles. Really weak. As for Reg’s song, “Love Is All Around” has reached the halfway point (almost) of its tenure at No 1 as we arrive at week seven. What can I say about this record that I haven’t already said? How about what Wet Wet Wet did next?

Well, even after deleting the single, there were still enough copies in record shops to ensure it stayed in the Top 10 for another three weeks and then another four within the Top 40 after that before it eventually dropped out of the charts. We didn’t see the band again until March the following year (probably wise to have left it a bit after their over exposure in ‘94 – the musical equivalent of “I’d give it five minutes if I were you”) when they released the No 3 single “Julia Says” and parent album “Picture This” in April. Despite the album going to No 1, selling 900,000 copies and being well received by the critics, the band couldn’t seem to escape the shadow of “Love Is All Around” and they only recorded two more albums as the original line up. After a few exits and returns, Marti Pellow left the band for good in 2017 and was replaced by ex-Libery X singer Kevin Simm and the band recorded an album with him and continued to tour. However, in 2022, founder members Tommy Cunningham and Neil Mitchell both left the band leaving bass player Graeme Clark as the only original member.

The play out song is by the aforementioned The Rolling Stones who are back with an album of new material, their first for five years since “Steel Wheels”. The only thing I really remember about “Voodoo Lounge” is the distinctive artwork on the cover. That and the massive marketing campaign that accompanied it courtesy of the band’s new label Virgin. I guess the campaign worked as it did go to No 1 in the UK and sold reasonably well but the press reviews were mixed with it being seen as inconsistent and a rather calculated attempt to recreate the classic Stones sound. Lead single “Love Is Strong” was not a massive hit though, peaking at No 14 over here and a lowly No 91 in the US albeit that it made No 2 in Canada. Interesting that we get the actual promo video shown here rather than the usual montage of clips from the show we’d just watched. Presumably, that’s the power of being rock legends at work.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Killing Joke	Pandemonium	No
2	BlackGirl	90’s Girl	I did not
3	Mariah Carey	Anytime You Need A Friend	Nope
4	China Black	Searching	Nah
5	House Of Pain	On Point	Negative
6	The Three Tenors	The Brindisi	Not for me
7	Let Loose	Crazy For You	No but my wife succumbed to its charms
8	Julian Cope	I Gotta Walk	Bless him but no
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	It’s a no
10	The Rolling Stones	Love Is Strong	And one last 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/m001kyvt/top-of-the-pops-14071994

TOTP 05 NOV 1992

Posted on April 30, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s Bonfire Night in 1992 which that year happened to be a Thursday so there’s a TOTP on TV as well. I wonder if the show was a festival of fireworks or a sad, lonely sparkler?

OK, getting the party started are Little Angels who are about to enter the most commercially successful period of their career. Having already lit the fuse on some Roman Candles in the shape of a string of minor Top 40 hits, they would light the blue touch paper on a rocket of a third album called “Jam” that would fly all the way to No 1. That album would appear in January of the following year but was trailed by lead single “Too Much Too Young” which was nothing to do with The Specials but was a punchy, brass section animated rock romp that leapt out at you from the radio. Not that their previous hits hadn’t had any hooks but this felt like a definite decision to go for the commercial jugular. No messing about with the gentle whooshing of a fountain firework, this was a firecracker!

I think I’ve mentioned this before but I caught the band doing a small set in a PA at the Manchester HMV megastore to promote the album and they were pretty good. The album wasn’t bad either and I took home the promo copy of it that we got in the Our Price store I was working in.

Although I’ve droned on and on in this blog about how the UK charts were dominated by dance music at this time, there was also a vibrant British rock scene in the early 90s. Besides Little Angels scoring a No 1 album, their pals Thunder took “Laughing On Judgement Day” to No 2 this year whilst The Quireboys also had a No 2 album with “A Bit Of What You Fancy” in 1990.

Lead singer Toby Jepson’s live vocal in this performance is convincingly strong though I’m not sure what those sidebar graphics were meant to be adding just before the guitar solo halfway through. I can’t find the TOTP clip on YouTube though so the official promo will have to suffice.

“Too Much Too Young” peaked at No 22.

The nostalgia section is still with us and this week is filled by one of the biggest rock bands of all time. Yes, it’s The Rolling Stones with one of their most iconic songs “Honky Tonk Women”. Iconic and pivotal. It remains their last No 1 single in the UK and the recording sessions that were part of its gestation (when it went by the title of “Country Honk”) would be Brian Jones’s last with the band before his death. The final version that we all know was actually released on the day after he died. It also marked the first appearance on a Stones recording of his replacement on guitar Mick Taylor who also featured in this clip.

An unlikely choice of Rolling Stones album from my Dad

“Honky Tonk Women” was released as a stand alone single initially although a version called “Country Honk” made it onto their “Let It Bleed” album. It has been included on many a Best Of album and this was how I initially thought I first heard it as a child as my Dad had a Stones album called “Rock ‘N’ Rolling Stones”. However,Wikipedia tells me that it’s not on the track listing so I’m guessing my Dad must have had the single as well. That album in his collection was an odd one. It was released in 1972 by Decca post contract as the band had left them to form their own label.

Essentially it was Decca squeezing what they could out of the band’s recordings that they owned. It features five Chuck Berry covers and the only Jagger/Richards composition on it is “19th Nervous Breakdown”. One for the completists I think which my Dad certainly isn’t so I’m not sure how he came to possess a copy.

1992 really was an extraordinary year for Shakespear’s Sister. A Top 3 album in “Hormonally Yours”, an eight week run at No 1 with “Stay” and a further three Top 40 hits all in a packed twelve months. The final of these was “Hello (Turn Your Radio On)”. I have to say I’m not sure I could have told you how this one went before hearing it again but it’s quite a tune. The very last track on the “Hormonally Yours”, it’s clearly meant to be a towering finale to the album and it just about achieves it. Clocking in at just under four and a half minutes, it was a bold choice for a single. Would that have been too long for daytime radio playlists? Or maybe they were just relying on that old adage that DJs generally couldn’t resist playing a record with the word ‘radio’ in the title?

You can tell that we’re meant to understand this is a tune with gravitas as opposed to the poppier end of their catalogue like say “You’re History” as Marcella and Siobhan are sat down for the entire performance. Yet again the latter’s live vocals aren’t quite up to it though they obviously sound OK on the studio recording. Listening to the lyrics it’s a sort of existential, meaning of life ballad that I could imagine on a film soundtrack. It hasn’t been yet though it has been covered by both a German girl group and German punk band. The original made No 14 in the UK charts.

Another band having an annus mirabilis in 1992 were The Shamen. If anything they outperformed Shakespear’s Sister as they also had a No 1 in “Ebeneezer Goode” plus they had three Top 10 singles. The second of these was also the title track off their fifth and most successful album “Boss Drum”. Released in September, it made No 3 on the charts securing their place as one of the year’s top acts. I’m not convinced though that time has been kind (or possibly fair) to this era of The Shamen. Firstly, there is the theory that mainstream success somehow diluted the creativity of the band and made them less worthy. It’s not an original idea of course – off the top of my head Simple Minds have come under similar scrutiny – but is it true? Well, possibly though it’s easy and maybe lazy to draw a line between band eras based around the death of Will Sinnott. I’m probably guilty of that myself though I stand by the opinion that “En-tact” is much more interesting than “Boss Drum”.

Secondly, there’s peer comparison. Released almost simultaneously with “Boss Drum” was “Experience” by The Prodigy which seems to have aged much better whilst The KLF’s “White Room” has also received some retrospective love. The Shamen’s “Boss Drum” though? Not so much. Maybe it suffers from the length of the shadow cast by the all encompassing “Ebeneezer Goode”. Maybe.

“Boss Drum” the song though deserves better. Far more accomplished than its headline grabbing, masses baiting predecessor, it’s much the better track to my ears. It came close to emulating “Ebeneezer Goode” but in the end settled at a high of No 4.

What on earth was this? Well, the short answer is that it was a charity record but that doesn’t really cover it. It was the brainchild / fault of Heavenly indie label bosses Martin Kelly and Jeff Barrett who got three of their acts to record versions of the Right Said Fred singles released to that point. Calling it the “The Fred EP”, it featured Saint Etienne taking on “I’m Too Sexy”, Flowered Up putting “Don’t Talk Just Kiss” through its paces and this one; The Rockingbirds doing “Deeply Dippy”. Maybe they got the idea after the recent “Ruby Trax” album of covers to celebrate the NME’s 40 year anniversary. After all, it featured one of their previous artists Manic Street Preachers whose first two singles had been released on Heavenly. Or maybe the stimulus was of a different nature altogether. Here’s Jeff Barrett courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Heavenly boss Jeff Barrett: "I’d be lying if I said the idea of doing the ‘Fred’ EP – getting the bands on the label to cover the entire musical output of Right Said Fred – didn’t come out of drugs." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 29, 2022

That might explain it. Drugs or no, they’ve gone full commitment on the idea even getting in Liam from Flowered Up (who seems to still be suffering the effects of that original idea conversation) and Sarah from Saint Etienne onto TOTP to introduce The Rockingbirds. Quite why did they go with them and not either of the other two artists to promote the record? Presumably to raise the profile of their charges whilst also rising some cash for the Terrence Higgins Trust. Here’s Rockingbirds guitarist Andy Hackett:

Rockingbirds guitarist Andy Hackett on The ‘Fred’ EP: "[It] was probably not, in retrospect, one of the greatest promotional tools for The Rockingbirds…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 29, 2022

"It was the beginning of the end of the band in a lot of ways. I did actually campaign against it vehemently at the time, but Jeff was convinced it would go to number one." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 29, 2022

It’s not a great performance it has to be said. More deeply drippy than dippy. The whole thing puts me in mind of this:

Never realised before that was Nicola Walker of Unforgotten and The Split fame up there. Talking of which, The Rockingbirds never did recover from this and did in fact split in 1995 though they did reform in 2008.

“The Fred EP” peaked at No 26.

Four Breakers this week one of which went onto be a No 1 record but we start with Metallica who are still releasing singles from their eponymous ‘black’ album that came out 15 months earlier! “Wherever I May Roam” was the fourth single lifted from it but still there was one other to be released after it a whole 18 months after the album. Metallica – the heavy metal Michael Jackson. The track gave its name to the Wherever We May Roam tour in support of the album, a mega 224 shows whopper which began on the first day of August 1991 and didn’t finish until the week before Xmas the following year. Given that, I suppose the band (or record company) were always going to carry on releasing singles off the album in a reciprocal support of the tour.

“Wherever I May Roam” peaked at No 25.

What a song this next Breaker was! Possibly my favourite of theirs, “Free Your Mind” by En Vogue was taken from their “Funky Divas” album and combined hard rock guitars to their R’n’B harmonies to come up with an anti prejudice anthem that still resonates today. After the spoken word intro which was adapted from US sketch comedy show In Living Color, it’s straight in with a crash, bang and wallop to a tune with definite attitude. I guess R’n’B / Rock hybrids had been done before by the likes of Janet Jackson on her “Rhythm Nation 1814” album but that didn’t detract from what En Vogue achieved here. It peaked at No 16 in the UK. It should have been Top 10 at least.

From one extreme to the other. I always hated Charles And Eddie though I’m not entirely sure why. I mean their song was a fairly inoffensive number that fused modern production with a retro soul sound and a dash of Motown pastiche but I absolutely loathed it from the get go. I think I believed the duo to be talentless chancers though I knew nothing of their musical backgrounds. Fortunately @TOTPFacts has the lowdown on that and it has an unexpected link to another of this week’s Breakers:

When he was 12, Charles & Eddie's Eddie Chacon had a garage band with future Faith No More drummer Mike Bordin and future Metallica bassist Cliff Burton. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 29, 2022

Hmm. Who knew? Anyway, back to me and maybe it was the pathetic name they went by which sounded like something you would hear at the X Factor open auditions. Even Jedward changed from their original moniker of John And Edward to something slightly more interesting. See, someone was even tweeting about it the other day:

I sometimes feel sorry for John from Jedward. Not in a personal way but the fact their name Jedward consists of 100% of his brother's name And only 25% of his own name. JOHNWARD makes more sense.
— Listen, Steve… 😡🗯 (@anon_opin) May 4, 2022

I have a friend who called her two dogs Charles and Eddie which is kind of appropriate as I thought the “Would I Lie To You” hitmakers were proper dogshit. This pair wil be at No 1 soon so I’ll leave it at that for now.

The final Breaker is “Who Needs Love (Like That)” by Erasure. This was the 1992 Hamburg remix of their debut single from 1985 rereleased to promote their first Best Of album “Pop: The First 20 Hits”. As far as I can tell the video shown is the original 1985 promo or at least I can’t find a separate one for the 1992 remix but I could be wrong.

The album went to No 1 (their fourth consecutive chart topper at that point) and was the 11th best selling album in the UK for 1992 even though it wasn’t released until mid November and yet my abiding memory of that Xmas working in the Our Price in Rochdale is that we didn’t sell as many as I expected. Maybe we just ordered too many copies and I was therefore looking at a major overstock for the whole of the festive period and it’s skewed my memory of how many we did actually sell. I do recall thinking it would fly out and it just didn’t feel like it did. Again, I could be wrong.

Meanwhile, something definitely selling well is “People Everyday” by Arrested Development which is up to No 2. Like Charles And Eddie, this record was distributed through EMI and the cassette version of both singles had those annoying cardboard slipcase covers rather than a proper moulded cassette case. These were a real pain as you had to put them in cassette cases anyway to display them. This could well be another reason for my dislike of “Would I Lie To You?” but then I didn’t mind “People Everyday” so that kind of debunks that theory. Oh look, I just didn’t like it OK?!

It’s time for the finale of the fireworks display, even if it is one song too early. Taking the role of the sky rocket and making their TOTP studio debut are INXS with “Taste It”. Seems crazy that in the five years that the band had been having UK Top 40 hits, they’d never been on the show previously.

I’ve said before that their “Welcome To Wherever You Are” album was one of my favourites of 1992 and this was a solid track from it. Not the best but solid. Straying from their usual rock sound ever so slightly, “Taste It” channels a more soulful vein but is still unmistakably INXS.

Michael Hutchence looks like he hasn’t slept nor washed for a week in this performance but then when did he ever look any different? A fourth and final single was released from the album in the UK early the following year in the shape of “Beautiful Girl” (the bewitching “Not Enough Time” was only released in the US and Japan territories) before the band went straight into recording their next album, the not altogether well received “Full Moon, Dirty Hearts”.

Sadly, as with Little Angels, I can’t find a clip of their performance on the show so here’s the official promo instead.

Bonfire night ends on a bit of a damp squib. I think this is maybe the fourth appearance on the show for “End Of The Road” by Boyz II Men and it feels like it really has outstayed its welcome now. I mean in the real world back in 1992 it hadn’t outstayed its welcome as it was still selling enough copies a week to top the charts but on these TOTP repeats it’s a bit much. It’s such a slow and laboured sound as well. Hardly the equivalent of the final flourish to a firework spectacular.

Two years on from this, Boyz II Men would return with an exact replica of “End Of The Road” called “I’ll Make Love To You” and had a massive hit all over again. There’s a reason why fireworks have to have safety instructions all over them as some people just won’t listen. Or rather they do instead of standing well back.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Little Angels	Too Much Too Young	No but I had a promo copy of the album
2	The Rolling Stones	Honky Tonk Women	Not in 1969 when I was one but it’s on my Hot Rocks compilation
3	Shakespear’s Sister	Hello (Turn Your Radio On)	No but it’s a decent tune
4	The Shamen	Boss Drum	Nope
5	The Rockingbirds	The Fred EP	Nah
6	Metallica	Wherever I May Roam	No
7	En Vogue	Free Your Mind	No but maybe should have
8	Charles And Eddie	Would I Lie To You?	Hell no!
9	Erasure	Who Needs Love (Like That)	No but I had Pop: The First 20 Hits with it on
10	Arrested Development	People Everyday	No but my wife had the LP
11	INXS	Taste It	No but I bought the album
12	Boyz II Men	End Of The Road	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/m0016spl/top-of-the-pops-05111992

TOTP 28 MAR 1991

Posted on July 8, 2021 by 80stastic

Sibling rivalry. Healthy competition or the bringer of long lasting family fractures? I have siblings and, as a football obsessed youngster, grew up knowing that my elder brother was so much better at the game than me. I could barely get into my school team whilst he had scouts from professional clubs sniffing around. It was….character building. There are of course many examples of sporting siblings but how many of them attain an equitable level of success and fame. My theory would be that one is always more successful / well known than the other. Off the top of my head…

Serena Williams vs Venus Williams? Definitely Serena
Andy vs Jamie Murray? Andy surely
Anton vs Rio Ferdinand? Easily Rio
Gary vs Phil Neville? Hmm, I’d have to go Gary

OK, I’m sure you could all come up with anomalies to debunk my theory but I’m sticking with it. More than that, I’m going to try and extend it to musical siblings. Who have we got? Ray and Dave Davies from The Kinks, The Gibb brothers of the Bee Gees, Noel and Liam Gallagher, the three Wilson brothers in The Beach Boys, Hanson(!)… I’m beginning to see a problem with this in that these siblings were in bands together so it’s harder to make a definitive judgement. OK, some of them pursued their own solo careers so you could assess those I suppose but I’m not sure that’s a fair yardstick and yes, you could make a case for Brian Wilson over Dennis and Carl but then what about the twins Charlie and Craig Reid of The Proclaimers? They were tied to each other biologically and musically. So we’re am I going with all of this? In a very clunky and laborious way to the the first act on tonight’s TOTP who is Dannii Minogue – Kylie’s sister. And those last two words go straight back to my original point. Was Dannii always destined to be in the shadow of Kylie? Or as author Kathy Lette put it that there was always a perception that Dannii was the B-side to Kylie’s A?

It wasn’t how it started though. Dannii, despite being 4 years younger than her sister, was the most well known of the two in the beginnings of their careers as she appeared on Australian TV variety show Young Talent Time and indeed it was Dannii that got Kylie invited on the show to perform with her. After that, their careers seemed to run in tandem. Kylie became known to us in the UK as Charlene from Neighbours whilst Dannii took the role of Emma Jackson in Home And Away. Crucially though, Kylie had met Stock, Aitken and Waterman and beat her sister to chart stardom with her No 1 single “I Should Be So Lucky”. Was that the moment that their paths separated and Kylie was fused onto the nation’s consciousness ahead of Dannii?

By the time that Ms Minogue junior was releasing her “Love And Kisses” single, Kylie had already racked up 3 hit albums and 12 Top 10 singles including 4 No 1s in the UK. Dannii had a lot of catching up to do. She wasn’t helped by the fact that “Love And Kisses” wasn’t released in the UK until a whole year after its Australian release. When it finally did arrive, it performed pretty well rising to No 8 over here despite it being a fairly insubstantial, Janet Jackson style bit of pop fluff. Its parent album of the same name (it had been changed from its original “Dannii” title in Australia) also clocked up enough sales to achieve gold status and provided Dannii with a further four Top 40 singles.

1991 was Danni’s highpoint of the 90s though. The rest of the decade saw mainly dwindling sales (with the odd exception) and by around 1995/6, she was peddling her calendar that included naked shots of her. We definitely sold a few of those in the Our Price store I was working in (ahem). However, 2003’s “Neon Nights” dance album was well received and went Top 10 and she followed that up by appearing as an X Factor judge on our TVs every Saturday night from 2007 to 2010.

Did someone mention The Bee Gees before? Here are the Brothers Gibb with their “Secret Love” video. I’ve been sat here at my computer for a good five minutes now and I can’t think of anything else to say about this record other than it really wasn’t one of their finest moments. How about I just pad it out with some sales stats? Yeah? OK, well even their US record label had lost faith in them by this point and subsequently didn’t do that much promotion for the parent album ‘High Civilisation” in the States. Consequently, it didn’t chart at all over there though it did struggle to a high of No 24 in the UK. It was more popular in the rest of Europe specifically in Germany (No 2) and Switzerland (No 6). No further singles from the album were big hits anywhere on the planet.

We wouldn’t see The Bee Gees in the charts for another two years.

Right, who’s this fella? He looks like a scaffolder or something rather than a pop star. What’s that Bruno Brookes? He used to be a scaffolder actually? Oh right. Presumably that’s why you’re dong this link from the studio gantry and with the camera pointing up at you to give the impression of height – not something you were ever very good at eh?

This fella was, of course, Gary Clail (and his On-U Sound System) with “Human Nature”. I was never quite sure what the On-U Sound System bit was all about but it was a nod to the On-U Sound Records label which specialised in dub music. Clail himself had been releasing record since 1985 (presumably when he wasn’t atop a scaffold somewhere) and also worked with legendary hip hop artists Tackhead but I have to admit I hadn’t heard of him before 1991.

“Human Nature” though was a great track and deservedly went Top 10. Despite his dub roots, the sound on this seemed like The Shamen meets The KLF to me but then I knew very little about dub music so I was probably way off. It was the lyrics though that I noticed most – their themes of intolerance and social divisions and the inability of mankind to empathise sound as relevant today as back then which doesn’t say much for the progress of society in the last 30 years. I say it was the lyrics I noticed most but you couldn’t fail to catch an eyeful of Lana Pellay (aka Lanah P aka Alan Pillay). Wow! Now Ru Paul’s Drag Race might well be seen as mainstream these days but back then, drag queens weren’t on your TV that often. I don’t think even Lily Savage had cut through to the masses by this point so Lana’s performance seemed to imbue the whole act with an element of outrageousness it seemed to me. It may have even outraged some viewers I guess.

However, Bruno Brookes seemed more taken with Clail himself as he referred to him as ‘Mr Cheeky Face’ at the end of the track. Well, I suppose he did have a glint in his eye that reminds me a bit of Robbie Williams . No? Maybe? Gary would have one further Top 40 hit in 1991 but has continued to release material as recently as 2014.

Oh please. Not again. Not another Eurodance mega mix single! After Technotronic and Black Box pulled off the same cheap stunt of releasing a single made up of all their other previous hits mixed together because…well just because they could, here were Snap! getting in on the act. Theirs was called “Mega Mix” – as opposed to Black Box’s “The Total Mix” and Technotronic’s “Megamix” – they were so imaginative with their titles weren’t they?

“Mega Mix” peaked No 10 which seems remarkable given all the tracks on it had all been Top 10 hits themselves in the last 12 months (including a No 1). How did people keep falling for this shit? Was it a club DJ thing? Thankfully, we won’t see Snap! for another 12 months or so but when they do return it will be as serious as cancer.

Finally, finally James are in the TOTP studio. After having three (albeit smallish)Top 40 hits in 1990 without being invited onto the show, the producers could ignore them no longer when the re-release of “Sit Down” went straight in at No 7. Originally released on Rough Trade in 1989 when it peaked at No 77, the band were convinced by new label Fontana to re-record it with Pixies producer Gil Norton and, propelled by a major marketing campaign (which even included appearing on Wogan before the single was released), it became a huge hit spending three weeks at No 2 behind Chesney Hawkes (sorry Chesney lad but there’s no defending that).

In a way, the song is the total antithesis of Gary Clail’s “Human Nature”, reassuring us that we are not all alone in the world with our worries and anxieties and to reach out (sorry, hate that phrase) to our fellow human beings and sit down next to each other to succour some comfort. When played live in Paris before it was released, the Mancunian element of the audience spontaneously sat down on the floor eventually triggering the whole 1000 strong crowd to do the same. This communal sitting down was repeated at a show at the G-Mex, Manchester in December 1990 thereby setting a trend tho be repeated at every show for the last 30 odd years. And yes, I’ve seen James live and sat down with them.

“Sit Down” success would pave the way for the band to become a huge mainstream success. The time of James had arrived.

It’s Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks up next with their horrendous treatment of The Beatles song “She’s A Woman”. Having watched it back, quite what is it that Shabba Ranks adds to the record? There’s a mini rap breakdown towards the middle of it when he blathers on about ‘crazy music lovers’ or something but it only lasts a few seconds. Other than that he seems to be making some indecipherable noises in the background throughout -presumably he was extorting us to ‘wind it up’ or some other such nonsense.

I’ve always sided with Mark Lamarr when it comes to Shabba Ranks. Apart from his repulsive views, I’ve always viewed him as ridiculous for his tendency to shout out ‘Shabba’ in what felt like all his records which was beautifully lampooned in Phoenix Nights…

…Ray Von there who, like James before him, was also asking for people to “Sit Down”.

“She’s A Woman” peaked at No 20.

Now then, Bruno Brookes in a half way decent segue shock now as he finds a way to bridge the gap between Shabba Ranks and the next act Definition Of Sound. “Shabba Ranks who once said of himself I’m not a star I’m a galaxy. There you are that’s the definition of self confidence…” I don’t need to join the dots for what comes next do I?

Definition Of Sound were Kevin Clark and Don Weekes although they went by the monikers of Kevwon and The Don. That’s Kevwon not Rayvon. As well as the single “Wear Your Love Like Heaven”, they also had an album out called “Love And Life: A Journey With The Chameleons” which was a bit confusing as there was also the Manchester band called The Chameleons. Anyway, I looked up the album on Amazon and saw some customer reviews of it. One was positively brimming with enthusiasm for it:

There is not one bad track on this excellent album. It sounds as fresh today as it did back in the early nineties and is a real feel good collection of songs.

There was also this courtesy of marinegirl who simply said:

Dreadful

Well, you can’t please everyone.

I’m guessing that the lucky number seven the chorus is linked in with the title of the track given its significance and the regular occurrence of it in the New Testament. There’s also some nicely squeezed in reference to drug taking in the lyrics:

Oi, I change my angle and my point
(Oooh) In fact it’s time to roll up a joint.. venture

There also seems to be a lot of talk about women and the pursuit of them and yet Kevwon told Smash Hits magazine that he was “as sexy as a wet stamp”. Well, if you’re a philatelist …wet stamps…just saying.

The start of the 90s had seen The Rolling Stones on the road with their Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour but recordings wise, they would not release an album of new material until 1994’s “Voodoo Lounge”. To fill the gap between that and 1989’s “Steel Wheels”, a live album of the tour was released. Entitled “Flashpoint”, it featured 15 live tracks and two new studio recordings one of which was the single “Highwire”. Supposedly written about the international arms trade and the events that led to the first US war with Iraq, I have no recollection of this at all but I don’t mind it actually but then I’m hardly a Stones aficionado. The song’s first line (“We sell them missiles, we sell them tanks, we give them credit, you can call up the bank”) was considered far too politically sensitive by the BBC and duly the video shown on TOTP begins with the second verse. However, it wasn’t on their list of banned songs presumably because it was released after the conflict had ended.

“Highwire” peaked at No 29.

He’s done it! Chesney Hawkes is No 1! Yes, Chesney mania is in full swing as people can’t seem to get enough of his “The One And Only” single. He’s back in the studio tonight with his band although, they’re not quite the same people that adorned all the covers of the pop press. By the end of its five week run at the top, the band line up had changed to include that guy who looked a bit like Lou Diamond Phillips on bass and the black guy on keyboards who gets very over excited during this performance had been replaced by a white dude. Also, the drummer has been changed so that it’s Chesney’s brother Jodie up there on the sticks.

Ah yes, Chesney’s drummer. I promised you a boring Chesney story last time and here it is. I was once in the same room as Chesney’s drummer! It was for an album playback event at a bar in Manchester (I think it was for Ricky Ross) and the record company rep had got a load of us from the Our Price store I was working in on the guest list. It was a free bar and a very messy do. I didn’t speak to Chesney’s brother though I did manage to grab a few words with Ricky. That’s it. Thats’ my Chesney story…

…ooh, and I’ve found another example to support my musical sibling rivalry theory that I posited at the start of the post. Whatever you might think about Chesney (and James fans clearly hate him) he was, is and will always remain more famous than his brother.

See, this post should really be over now what with that final bit of sibling theme tying it altogether nicely but sadly, there is still one ‘song’ left. The play out video is “Over To You John” by Jive Bunny. FOR F***’S SAKE! The end of March 1991 and these pillocks are still in the charts. Thankfully it is the last time we shall ever see them. Yes, it is finally all over.

“Over To You John” reminds me of the 1983 single by Pink Floyd called “Not Now John”. Thankfully, there isn’t a Jive Bunny style Pink Floyd mega mix. Or is there…..yikes!

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Dannii Minogue	Love And Kisses	Not likely
2	The Bee Gees	Secret Love	If I’d wanted Chain Reaction (which I didn’t), I’d have bought back in 1986
3	Gary Clail and O-Nu Sound System	Human Nature	No but I easily could have
4	Snap!	Mega Mix	Hell no
5	James	Sit Down	Not the single but I have their first Best Of album with it on
6	Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks	She’s A Woman	Horrendous stuff – no
7	Definition Of Sound	Wear Your Love Like Heaven	No but I think I downloaded it off iTunes years later
8	The Rolling Stones	Highwire	Nah
9	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	Nope
10	Jive Bunny	Over To You John	Now please f**k off John and never come back

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/m000xh7c/top-of-the-pops-28031991

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 06 FEB 1998

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TOTP 09 NOV 1995

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TOTP 14 JUL 1994

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TOTP 05 NOV 1992

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TOTP 28 MAR 1991

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