I’ve said it before in this blog but it’s hard to think of Nicky Campbell as a Radio 1 DJ and all that meant when you consider how his broadcast career panned out. I very much see him as a broadcaster of some gravitas thanks to his Radio 5 Live time breakfast programme with its focus on news and current affairs. I have to admit to not recalling listening to him when he was at Radio 1. Wikipedia tells me that he presented both late night and early morning shows which possibly explains why I don’t remember catching him – I was a student doing my best to uphold their lazy good for nothing stereotype at the time after all. Anyway, he’s one of the TOTP hosts for this show alongside Sybil Ruscoe who was at the peak of her fame as part of Simon Mayo’s breakfast show crew.
Also at the height of her fame is Wendy James who, as part of her band, Transvision Vamp, are the first act on tonight. “Baby I Don’t Care” was the band’s biggest hit (No 3) and Wendy herself was rivaling the likes of Kylie Minogue in pulling in column inches in the press. Within the calendar year that was 1989, her band had racked up a No 1 album and four Top 40 singles to their name. Fast forward two years and their label MCA, unsure of the band’s sound and direction, wouldn’t even release their third album “Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble” in the UK preferring to see how it was received in other territories. By the time they had decided to give it a full commercial release, the band had already split. I’m sure that we had an import CD of the album at the Market Street, Manchester store and we actually sold it to a guy who was still very much obsessed with Ms James.
That’s all in the future (past) though. For now, Wendy is the ultimate bundle of peroxide, attitude and glam pop tunes and she’s selling it for all her worth. There’s an awful lot of flesh on display here which Wendy is quite happy to tantalize the audience with via some revealing glimpses of shoulder. Literally nobody is watching the guys in the band at this point. This was real peak of her powers stuff. Inevitably there was a backlash. The press turned on her viciously with headlines like ‘Wendy James is a woman everybody loves to hate’ (The Face) whilst Time Out magazine had her on the front cover of their ‘Hated 100’ issue. And we think Meghan Markle gets a rough deal!
Why is Nicky Campbell referring to Simple Minds as The Simple Minds?! Surely nobody at any point in history has ever done that before?! What was he thinking?! Anyway, the definite article * less band are back with the follow up to surprise No 1 record “Belfast Child” with another cut from their “Street Fighting Years” album called “This Is Your Land”. I don’t think I realized at the time but the album was produced by Trevor Horn but instead of taking the band back to their arty synth pop origins, he went off on a tangent turning them into folk rockers (albeit ones that could fill a stadium). That album was a watershed for many fans. Some loved the overtly political nature of the songs and the new folk direction but for others it was a massive turn off. In America especially, a lot of their fan base just didn’t get it and the album languished at a lowly peak of No 70. It was also a landmark for the band personnel wise as the recording of it cost two group members including original keyboards player Mick MacNeil who left their ranks shortly afterwards.
As for this particular track, it didn’t sound as strong to me as “Belfast Child” but it had an intriguing and engaging enough melody and a serious eco message in the lyrics to boot. The topless guy on the horse at the very beginning of the video looks a bit like Oliver Tobias in a TV series that was on when I was a very small child called Arthur of the Britons – it’s not him is it?
“This Is Your Land” peaked at No 13.
*Got me thinking – has there ever been a band called The Definite Articles? Yes there has and they are (were?) an orchestral rock outfit from San Francisco.
After previous singles “Big Gun” and “Good Life” had both been Top 10 hits for Inner City, their third release “Ain’t Nobody Better” maintained this sequence (just) by peaking at No 10. Sadly it wasn’t a cover of the Rufus and Chaka Khan tune but was in fact just very much more of the same to my ears. I just didn’t get that Detroit techno sound at all. I was much more likely to get my rocks off on the dance floor to the likes of Transvision Vamp than this lot….err if you know what I mean. OK – for the sake of clarity I meant enjoying dancing and nothing else. Honest.
Inner City would go on having hits into the new decade but never again returned to the UK Top 10.
Just the two Breakers this week and we start with an act with a huge legacy in De La Soul. Now I wasn’t and have never been a huge hip hop fan but even I could appreciate the genius of these guys. Hailing from Amityville, Long Island NY, these three high school friends came up with possibly the most influential debut album ever in “3 Feet High and Rising”. “Me, Myself And I” was the lead single from it and established their own take on hip hop with its pioneering use of samples and positive messages of peace and harmony in direct contrast to the prevalent and violent gangsta rap. Their style and the ‘Hip Hop in The Daisy Age’ artwork of their debut album led to them being described as hippies in the music press which the trio didn’t take kindly to. “Me, Myself And I” was their very articulate response to that. The video in which the group rally against having to endure a class given by Professor Defbeat promoting an image-driven, mainstream style of hip-hop just adds to their resistance to being labelled.
The first time I heard about this record, I foolishly believed it was something to do with the Joan Armatrading hit “Me, Myself, I” but it doesn’t even sample it! Once I finally heard it, it was a definite ‘well, this is different’ moment. As ever though, it was my much cooler girlfriend (now wife) who actually had the album!
From the sublime to the ridiculous…London Boys were actually based in Hamburg although they originally met at school in Greenwich hence the name. They were kind of like a camper version of Milli Vanilli with their gymnastic dance routines as prominent as their sound.
Ah yes, that sound. Quite why the UK decided what it really needed in Spring ’89 was some over the top, Hi-NRG eurobeat nonsense cannot be explained by rational thought. “Requiem” with its over the top intro that borrows heavily from Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” made previously sane people lose their heads completely and buy it in enough quantities to send it to No 4 in our charts. It seemed to be a peculiarly British phenomenon as the song only performed moderately across the rest of Europe. Did it not have a Europe wide release? Not content with that, the duo released a follow up single “London Nights” that did even better peaking at No 2. When parent album “The Twelve Commandments of Dance” also made No 2, all bets were off. What on earth was going on?!
Tragically, the London Boys story didn’t have a happy ending as both Edem Ephraim and Dennis Fuller were killed in 1996 when their car was hit head on by a drunk driver on a mountain road in the Austrian Alps.
Heeeere’s Holly! Yes, Holly Johnson is back again with his latest hit “Americanos”. I say back but it’s actually just the same performance from the other week re-used. As such, I’ve already reviewed this once so I’ll have to resort to tenuous links of which there are two between Holly and other artists on tonight’s TOTP. The first is to do with Holly’s name. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the background story on that…
…and of course , as Nicky Campbell informed us earlier, Lou Reed sang backing vocals on “This Is Your Land” by Simple Minds.
Secondly, around this time Holly was the guest singles reviewer in Smash Hits and one of those records that he had to make a judgement on was “Lullaby” by The Cure who we will see later in the show. Holly wasn’t that complimentary about Robert Smith and co stating that it reminded him of Mantovani and that he would have expected the band to come back with a much stronger song. Given though that he refused to comment at all on singles by Texas, Kylie Minogue, Bon Jovi and Cher as they were so awful (in Holly’s opinion), that actually sounds like a glowing, 5 star review in retrospect! OK that’ll do…next!
Metallica?! I don’t remember them being in the charts in ’89. Curiously the first line of their single “One” is ‘I can’t remember anything’. Metallica’s heavy metal sound really wasn’t my thing back then (and indeed still isn’t) so I probably hadn’t noticed that they’d already done four albums by this point.
When I think of Metallica, I think of their “Enter Sandman” single from 1991. Why? As well as being one of their biggest hits, it reminds me of when I was working as Assistant Manager in Our Price in Altrincham during Xmas 1993. One late night opening I was trying to talk to the manager about something in the back office upstairs but could still hear what the rest of the staff were playing on the shop stereo. This was right up against Xmas so we should have been hammering a Xmas album or a big selling mainstream chart title. What I heard was some awful heavy metal so I rang down to the counter and told them to change it. After a couple of equally dodgy choices, they put on “Enter Sandman” to wind me up which was the final straw – a third phone call down was withering enough to convince the team to put on something more appropriate. Not my finest hour but it is my first thought when I hear the name Metallica.
A magnificent entry into the cannon of 1989 next in the shape of Australian rockers Midnight Oil. Although we had never seen them in our charts before in their Antipodean homeland they had been a pretty big deal for quite a few years by this point. Indeed, this hit, “Beds Are Burning”, was a massive hit all around the world.
As a rather solemn Nicky Campbell advises in his intro (after he’s made a crappy boomerang joke of course) the song was about aboriginal land rights but that doesn’t really tell the whole story behind it. In 1986 the band had toured outback Australia playing to remote Aboriginal communities and seeing first hand the seriousness of the issues in health and living standards in those communities. Deeply affected by this, they wrote about their experience in the songs for their next album “Diesel And Dust” which promoted the need for appreciation by white Australia of the injustices in Aboriginal history and the band’s desire to put them right. Did I realize all of this at the time? I don’t think so although I think I was aware that there was some depth to the song without knowing all about the subject matter – at the very least I knew that this wasn’t another “I’d Rather Jack”.
As for the sound of the song, its verses and bridge structure are actually pretty pedestrian but its that which makes the song as it builds up perfectly to its unrestrained chorus. The little percussive interlude just before the chorus kicks in was a genius touch. The lyric ‘The time has come to say fair’s fair, to pay the rent now, to pay our share’ always reminded me of that famous and rather odd David Coleman line in the 1974 FA Cup final when Kevin Keegan scores the first goal for Liverpool (‘Goals pay the rent and Keegan does his share’). I think I was probably missing the point though.
“Beds Are Burning” peaked at No 6 in the UK Top 40.
Next up is Mantovani. Sorry, it’s that single by The Cure that Holly Johnson reviewed actually. “Lullaby” was the lead single from latest album “Disintegration” and would prove to be the band’s biggest ever UK hit peaking at No 5 – the only time they ever made the Top 5 which seems incredible given their the band’s catalogue of work. The album was also a huge commercial success as well as critically well received. “Lullaby” was typical of a conscious decision to move way from their more poppier side of the likes of “The Love Cats” and “Inbetween Days” to a more introspective and gloomy sound.
As with Simple Minds earlier in the show, the recording of the album had incurred band casualties with founding member Lol Tolhurst fired from the band due to problems with alcoholism.
I have to admit that my knowledge of The Cure’s discography timeline gets a bit foggy towards the end of the decade and if I’d been asked before this TOTP repeat had aired when “Lullaby” had been released, I’m not sure I could have answered ‘1989’ with any confidence despite knowing the song.
Top 10
10. Donna Summer – “This Time I Know It’s For Real”
9. Fine Young Cannibals – “Good Thing”
8. Madonna – “Like A Prayer”
7. Paula Abdul – “Straight Up”
6. U2 – “When Love Comes To Town”
5. Kon Kan – “I Beg Your Pardon”
4. Holly Johnson – “Americanos”
3. Transvision Vamp – “Baby I Don’t Care”
2. Simply Red – “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”
1. The Bangles – “Eternal Flame”: Still burning bright at the top of the tree I wonder if any of the band used to object to the amount of attention that Susanna Hoffs got / gets? Although they didn’t have a lead singer technically with vocal duties equally shared out, Susanna’s profile was by far the biggest of the group so did it cause any friction? Wikipedia seems to suggest that was the reason behind the breakup in 1989. Indeed, history records that “Eternal Flame” was the straw that broke the camel’s back with the rest of them being cast as backing band to Hoff’s superstar status. There was a happy ending though with the group reforming in 1998 and still a going concern to this day albeit without original bassist Michael Steele.
The play out video is “Who’s In The House” by Beatmasters featuring Merlin although that promo appears to be blocked on YouTube so here’s a copyright avoiding reversed version.
We’d already seen Beatmasters score hits with Cookie Crew and P.P. Arnold previously but this one was with someone called Merlin whom I really don’t remember. At the time I thought it was a lazy cash in on the whole ‘house’ phenomenon but apparently it had more of a back story than that. Here’s @TOTPFacts:
This one never did much for me although I did like their next and final hit which was released later in the year with Betty Boo called “Hey DJ!/I Can’t Dance (To That Music You’re Playing)”. “Who’s In The House” peaked at No 8.
| Order of appearance | Artist | Song | Did I buy it? |
|
1 |
Transvision Vamp | Baby I Don’t Care | It’s on their collection CD that I own |
|
2 |
Simple Minds | This Is Your Land | Nope |
|
3 |
Inner City | Ain’t Nobody Better | A definite no |
|
4 |
De La Soul | Me, Myself And I | No but my wife had their ‘3 Feet High And Rising’ album |
|
5 |
London Boys | Requiem | Of course not |
|
6 |
Holly Johnson | Americanos | No but my wife had his album ‘Blast’ |
|
7 |
Metallica | One | No |
|
8 |
Midnight Oil | Beds Are Burning | Thought I did but I didn’t apparently |
|
9 |
The Cure | Lullaby | Don’t think so |
|
10 |
The Bangles | Eternal Flame | Presume it’s on their Best Of CD that I have |
|
11 |
Beatmasters featuring Merlin | Who’s In The House | As if |
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/m000fzly/top-of-the-pops-20041989
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/2019/04/april-19-may-2-1989_19.html
TOTP Rewind - the 80s 