Blimey! There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Sybil Ruscoe! Wasn’t Sybil on the Radio 1 Breakfast show with Simon Mayo? Or was that Jakki Brambles? Hold on…
*checks Wikipedia*
Yeah she was the weather and travel reporter on the breakfast show (Brambles took over from her). She progressed into news and sports broadcasting on Radio 5 live and Channel 4 and now runs her own media company. But before all of that, she was drafted into present TOTP a few times such was the level of her popularity on the breakfast show. As well as not hearing the name Sybil Ruscoe much these days, how many Sybils have you ever heard of? I think there are officially just three in the world – Ruscoe, Basil Fawlty’s wife and that singer who had a hit with a cover of “Walk On By”. That’s it.
Let’s see what songs the Ruscoe Sybil had to present on her debut TOTP appearance…
Oh dear. Brother Beyond are first up with “He Ain’t No Competition” the follow up to their No 2 hit “The Harder I Try”. Like its predecessor, this was more of the same Stock, Aitken and Waterman produced bilge. Insanely catchy pop confection with an ever so slight Motown sheen to it, written at exactly the right tempo to allow lead singer Nathan Moore to wiggle his backside profusely to excite the teeny boppers. Utter, utter garbage. I mean just look at them. Look at the gormless way the guitarist and keyboard player are moving. How did anybody fall for this crap?
“He Ain’t No Competition” made it to No 6 which seemed to suggest this lot might be around for a while but it all soon went downhill very shortly after this. Thank you the gods of pop music.
A second airing of the Bryan Ferry video for the re-release of “Let’s Stick Together” next. I never knew there were so many versions of this song until now. There’s the Wilbert Harrison original, the Canned Heat version (retitled “Let’s Work Together”), a Bob Dylan version, a Dwight Yoakam countrified redesign and this blistering take on it by KT Tunstall….
I guess it will always be Ferry’s treatment of the song that will be seen as the definitive version though. The plundering of his back catalogue as a promotional tool for “The Ultimate Collection” retrospective album continued into the following year with the release of “The Price of Love ’89” but it failed to make the Top 40.
Here’ future No 1 Robin Beck in the actual TOTP studio hoping to change people’s perceptions that her hit “First Time” is not just a Coca Cola advert jingle and is in fact an actual proper song. Well, yes it was – but not a very good one. Coming on as some sort of sub-standard filler track for a Heart album, it’s really not up to much to my ears.
She seems to be channelling her inner Slash in this performance with her choice of head gear. Either that or she looks a bit like Noel Fielding if you squint. And did Robin drink Coca Cola herself? Yes she did according to a Smash Hits interview. Every day. Maybe every day was like the first time.
Just the two Breakers this week with the first being another song (just like “Let’s Stick Together”) that has been covered many times. From probably the best known version by The Beatles to the downright weird by Alvin and the Chipmunks, “Twist And Shout” has been recorded over and over again by a legion of artists since it was first written in 1961 by Phil Medley and Bert Berns. Surely everyone knows this song? The 1988 take on it came from Salt ‘N’ Pepa and was from their “A Salt With A Deadly Pepa” album. From the opening lines ‘Yo Salt your mic, Yo Pepa your mic, Yo Spin you hype, We’re def you’re right’ you knew this wasn’t going to be a completely faithful rendition. However, the sepia tinted video combined with the 60s style suits they wore were a definite homage to the song’s past.
Apparently reticent about recording it at all, they must have been glad they did as it went all the way to No 4 in the UK charts. Reggae duo Chaka Demus and Pliers took Salt ‘N’ Pepa’s concept of applying a different musical genre to the song and ran with it all the way to No 1 in 1993. It was a load of bollocks though.
As with Guns ‘N’ Roses track “Welcome To The Jungle”, here was another rock act that needed two attempts at getting one of their songs to finally be a hit. And what a hit. INXS had originally released “Need You Tonight” in 1987 but it failed to break into the Top 40. Following the global success of their “Kick” album and the singles “New Sensation” and “Never Tear Us Apart”, it was given another chance and it went onto be their biggest hit either side of the pond (No 2 in the UK and No 1 in the US).
The song is quite beguiling I’ve always thought. It slinks along from start to finish without seeming to have a conventional verse – bridge – chorus structure. It just sort of plays out against a continuous funky riff. No doubt the more musically schooled of you out there would be able to advise me otherwise but that’s how I perceive it.
For all the suggestive lyrics such as ‘slide over here’ and ‘there’s something about you girl that makes me sweat’ that Michael Hutchence imbues with such innuendo, I seem to remember that a lot of my female friends at the time had a thing about the band’s drummer. Maybe they preferred a clean cut young man, something that Hutchence definitely wasn’t.
I am always conflicted by Chris De Burgh. Some of his early work is actually good but his mainstream success with the heinous “Lady In Red” and his suspect extra marital activities have made him a rather odious character. Chris obviously decided that he liked the idea of chart success once tasted and wrote the schmaltz ridden ballad “Missing You” to enable his return. Fair play to him I guess because it worked. The single went all the way to No 3 whilst parent album “Flying Colours” went straight in at No 1 on the UK album chart. Well I never.
As with the Brother Beyond stooges, Chris has no idea what to do with himself up there on stage and ends up doing some weird, jerky arm dancing and some running on the spot. It is the epitome of uncool. His bass player’s hair doesn’t help the cause either.
The chart run down sees the BBC sticking to its guns about not being seen to promote the Acid House craze. There’s no mention of the offending song titles for Jolly Roger (“Acid Man”) nor D Mob (“We Call it Acieed”).
Another outing for Deacon Blue this week as “Real Gone Kid” continues to climb the charts. I always liked this song enough but for me there were loads better tracks on the album (“When The World Knows Your Name”). In fact, I would go as far as to say that “Real Gone Kid” was one of the weakest songs on there. It still beat the pants off most of the chart fodder around at the time of course.
As ever, I would have been monitoring the hairstyles of any male performer on TOTP to see if there was anything I should be trying to recreate on my own head. The overgrown floppy middle parting look that Ricky Ross was sporting here was never going to persuade me though. In later years Ricky would write for a number of artists including KT Tunstall whom I mentioned earlier. I don’t just throw this thing together you know.
The Top 10:
10. Deacon Blue – “Real Gone Kid”
9. Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine “1-2-3”
8. Brother Beyond – “He Ain’t No Competition”
7. Art of Noise with Tom Jones – “Kiss”
6. Robert Palmer -“She Makes My Day”
5. Robin Beck – “First Time”
4. Milli Vanilli – “Girl You Know It’s True”
3. Yazz – “Stand Up For Your Love Rights”
2. Kylie Minogue – “Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi”
1. Enya – “Orinoco Flow”: Enya’s album sales have been phenomenal with an estimated 75 million records sold worldwide. Curiously though, for all that commercial success, she only had a further two Top 10 singles in the UK after this. Indeed, if your life depended on it, how many Enya song titles could you name other than “Orinoco Flow”?
What the fuck is Donny Osmond doing on the show?! Well yes, obviously it’s to plug his latest single but that little cameo at the show’s end is awkward in the extreme. For the record, I checked and that single (“If It’s Love That You Want”) never did make it into the Top 40 as it peaked at No 70.
The play out track is “I Wish U Heaven” by Prince. This was from his “Lovesexy” album (the one with him nude on the cover) and followed previous singles “Alphabet Street” and “Glam Slam” into the charts peaking at No 24. Not sure if I remember this one (there were so many to be fair). Let’s have another listen….
…yeah it does ring a bell now but it wasn’t one of his most memorable tunes for me. According to Wikipedia, the B-side was a little ditty called “Scarlet Pussy”. Now I wonder what that could have been about?
| Order of appearance | Artist | Song | Did I Buy it? |
|
1 |
Brother Beyond | He Ain’t No Competition | Emphatically no |
|
2 |
Bryan Ferry | Let’s Stick Together | Not the single but it’s on my compilation LP Street Life |
|
3 |
Robin Beck | First Time | And the last time – no |
|
4 |
Salt ‘N’ Pepa | Twist And Shout | No but it was on my wife’s Now 13 cassette |
|
5 |
INXS | Need You Tonight | No but I have the album I think |
|
6 |
Chris De Burgh | Missing You | Missing you? Are you shitting me? NO |
|
7 |
Deacon Blue | Real Gone Kid | Not the single but I had the album on cassette |
|
8 |
Enya | Orinoco Flow | No |
|
9 |
Prince | I Wish U Heaven | Nope |
Disclaimer
OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000bhfr/top-of-the-pops-10111988
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/2018/11/november-2-15-1988.html
TOTP Rewind - the 80s 