After the gibbering fool that was Steve Wright last week, we have Gary ‘safe pair of hands’ Davies on presenting duties for tonight’s show. Up first and making their TOTP debut are Then Jericho with “The Motive”. This lot thought they were going to be huge and for a while so did I. Coming on like a rockier version of Duran Duran and with a lead singer in Mark Shaw who looked liked John Taylor, how could they fail? Apparently they’d been around for a couple of years by 1987 and had already released five singles before finally cracking the charts with “The Motive” but I hadn’t heard of them up until this point. I have strong memory of them being on The Roxy which was ITV’s ill conceived weekly music show that was supposed to rival TOTP but only lasted one series. Quite why I recall them on that show but not TOTP I really don’t know.
Back to the music though and the chugga-chugga rhythm guitar builds slowly until the urgent sounding bridge which leads into the almost frantic chorus that includes some hysterical whooping vocals from Shaw….and I loved it. Their brand of tuneful, guitar driven rock/pop really was right up my street back then. A very respectable No 18 placing boded well for future chart glories but the re-released follow up single “Muscle Deep” flopped for a second time so the band retreated to lick their wounds and regroup. They returned two years later with their biggest hit “Big Area” and a moderately successful album of the same name before splitting in 1990.
When I worked in Our Price in the 90s, one of my colleagues was obsessed with Mark Shaw so I’m guessing she wasn’t very impressed with his (fleeting) appearance on the 2003 reality TV show Reborn In The USA. The premise of the show was that ten faded British pop stars would perform in America where they were unknown in the hope of revitalising their careers. Mark Shaw was one of the contestants but he only lasted a few days on the show which ran for eight weeks. As I recall he spent most of that time drunk, belligerent and upsetting his fellow contestants. I’m pretty sure he picked up a hooker at the airport as well, something like that anyway. Deciding he didn’t need the hassle, he quit the show but that wasn’t the last we ever saw of him. He is still performs on the 80s retro circuit under the name of Then Jericho to this day.
Next up it’s the video again for “What Have I Done To Deserve This” by Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield. Up to No 2 by now, I have to admit that I find the video a bit dull to be honest despite the over the top stage costumes for the chorus line extras. The most interesting thing is when the normally static Chris Lowe throws a few shapes in slow motion. I think it’s meant to be arty and interesting but it doesn’t do it for me. The song was included in the full-length Pet Shop Boys musical film It Couldn’t Happen Here which I must admit I have never seen but having read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, it sounds like sub The Prisoner style nonsense.
Dusty’s career was revitalised by “What Have I Done To Deserve This” though and she would go onto have two more Tennant and Lowe produced hits in “Nothing Has Been Proved” and “In Private” before the end of the decade.
And now we find Wet Wet Wet who are two for two in terms of Top 10 hit singles with their second ever release “Sweet Little Mystery” now at No 6. The Wets have an interesting discography I think, certainly in the earlier stages of their career. Struggling to find their sound after being signed to Phonogram, they decamped to Memphis to record with Al Green’s producer Willie Mitchell. What they came up with was a set of eight songs, five of which were the initial versions of tracks that appeared on debut album “Popped in Souled Out”. In an interview with http://www.udiscovermusic.com, bassist Graeme Clarke had the following to say about that time:
“What we made was a discovery record, and we do feel it would have been a hard album to sell. It was a fairly dark record. We loved it, but we needed a more pragmatic approach. The advice we were given was that we needed to do a more commercial album.”
Nothing unusual about the existence of early / demo versions of songs that are quite different to their commercially released counterparts of course. Indeed, record labels are now actively trawling their vaults to unearth previously unreleased tracks to be included in their ever expanding deluxe box set re-issue campaigns. Back in 1987 though, such a practice was unheard of so when the Wets Memphis sessions songs were released as a bona fide album in 1988, well that was unusual. Despite the band having been in the public’s consciousness for just one year, so high was Phonogram’s investment in and expectation of the band that they thought it appropriate and necessary to release “The Memphis Sessions” as a stop gap between their debut and second albums. The album was a success and went to No 3 in the UK charts and included the early alternative version of “Sweet Little Mystery”…
They finally released their official second album “Holding Back The River” in late 1989 and this was unusual as well. Why? Well, it was a very mature sounding record compared to the pop appeal of predecessor “Popped In, Souled Out” dealing with themes such as alcoholism in the album’s title track. Although it was commercially successful, the singles from it performed moderately on the charts to say the least. They returned with their third album “High On The Happy Side” in 1992 which was much more radio-friendly and included No 1 single “Goodnight Girl”. It would have made much more sense to have released “High On The Happy Side” as the follow up to their debut album and then tried to experiment with a more grown up sound on the historically difficult third album. Essentially what the band had done was to release what should have been their third album second and vice versa. Still, it didn’t work out too bad for them after all did it?
“Sweet Little Mystery” would peak at No 5 in the Top 40.
Somebody else with a second consecutive hit single is Colin Vearncombe under the vehicle of Black. After “Sweetest Smile” had been a No 8 hit just weeks before, a re-release of “Wonderful Life” would duplicate that peak and simultaneously become Colin’s most well known song. The title track of his No 3 hit album, this performance features a live vocal from Vearncombe (which I think he also did with “Sweetest Smile”) and he does a fine job too. The song itself is undoubtedly melancholy in sound but with those intriguing lyrics searching for some sort of life affirming positivity, it was certainly an arresting song and one which leant itself to commercial hijacking – it has been used in at least three TV ad campaigns including Standard Life insurance, Emirates Airlines and Premier Inn.
A Top 10 hit all around Europe, I liked it. It had a more conventional structure to it than “Sweetest Smile” (it had a proper chorus!) and undeniable hooks. Did it become an albatross around Vearncombe’s neck? Possibly but then it was also responsible for turning his life around. He was homeless when he wrote it after the break up of his first marriage.
One last thing, is that Billie Piper stood next to Gary Davies in the intro to this one?
*checks Wikipedia*
No, she was only 4 at the time of this broadcast!
A first outing on the show for a new band next who would have a decent career at the latter part of the decade. As Gary Davies tell us, T’Pau had already had a hit with “Heart And Soul” in the US before the UK cottoned onto it after it was used to soundtrack a Pepe Jeans advert. It’s a great pop song with its slowly building intro leading into that memorable chorus with that throat shredding vocal from flame haired lead singer Carol Decker. I have to admit that I had quite a thing about Ms Decker for a while back there. Apparently so did Miami Vice’s Don Johnson as she was offered the role of his wife in the show but it eventually went to Sheena Easton (more of whom later).
“Heart And Soul” was a No 4 hit in the UK and the US.
The Top 10 looked like this…
10. Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram – “Somewhere Out There”
9. Def Leppard – “Animal”
8. Pseudo Echo – “Funky Town”
7. New Order – “True Faith”
6. Wet Wet Wet – “Sweet Little Mystery”
5. Spagna – “Call Me”
4. Sinitta – “Toy Boy”
3. Michael Jackson – “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You”
2. Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield – “What Have I Done To Deserve This”
1. Rick Astley – “Never Gonna Give You Up”: Rick hits the No 1 spot! Famously the tea boy at the Stock, Aitken and Waterman studios before he became a huge pop star, Rick was often mistaken for a black singer based purely on his voice before people realised what he looked like. As for those looks, I always thought he was an unlikely looking heart throb, and always seemed very boy -next-door to me but that didn’t stop a lot of the female contingent of my Poly course from swooning over him. It can’t have been his dancing that did it for them surely?!
The play out video is Prince and Sheena Easton with “U Got The Look”. Smash Hits magazine described Sheena as a “foxy temptress” in the video but argued that it must have been Prince and his pervy pals that had influenced her as she used to be “formidably straight-laced” and talked about liking “sweeties” but hating “lumpy custard”. “Now look at her – up there with all those pervs! Whatever next?” they end the article with. Well, as previously mentioned, next for Sheena was the role of Don Johnson’s wife in Miami Vice. She ended up getting shot and dying. That could have been you Carol Decker!
| Order of appearance | Artist | Song | Did I Buy it? |
|
1 |
Then Jericho | The Motive | I did didn’t I? Where’s my copy then? |
|
2 |
Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield | What Have I Done To Deserve This | No but it’s on my Pop Art CD of theirs |
|
3 |
Wet Wet Wet | Sweet Little Mystery | No but my wife had the album |
|
4 |
Black | Wonderful Life | Don’t think I did |
|
5 |
T’Pau | Heart And Soul | No but I had the album. I did – really! |
|
6 |
Rick Astley | Never Gonna Give You Up | No but I recognize the single sleeve from its image on Wikipedia so maybe my sister bought it |
|
7 |
Prince and Sheena Easton | U Got The Look | No |
Disclaimer
OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show as I can’t find the full programme on YouTube.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0004j84/top-of-the-pops-27081987
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.
Some bed time reading?
http://likepunkneverhappened.blogspot.com/2017/08/august-26-september-8-1987.html
TOTP Rewind - the 80s 