The day before this particular TOTP aired, Paul Gascoigne scored his very first international goal against Albania. Within 18 months amid scenes of ‘Gazzamania’, he would be a chart star appearing on TOTP with his version of “Fog On The Tyne”. They were truly strange times. Back to April ’89 though and we’ve returned to the single presenter format that we saw a couple of shows ago. This time the solo host is Gary Davies and again there is no Breakers section. To emphasize his solitariness, Gary has got two female audience members to stand with him on the gantry and even gives them some lines. Lazy sod!
Whatever, the first act tonight are London Boys with “Requiem”. Now if we thought the performance of “Male Stripper” by Man To Man meets Man Parrish a couple of years previous was daring, these two guys were just putting it all out there straight from the get go. The outfits! A decision about which specific market to appeal to had clearly been made!
There is a fan website dedicated to them my research revealed and it says that they sold 4.5 million records which seems unbelievable. It also revealed that they made four albums of this stuff! And what does the website say about the music itself? Well it says this….
“London Boys music is very optimistic upbeat Eurodisco at its best, with a roots going to back to High Energy Disco. People who like Modern Talking, Bad Boys Blue, Joy, Silent Circle and other similar bands are sure will not be left indifferent to its appeal.”
Hmm. Not sure I was part of that market that they were trying to reach. I thought it was all a gimmick at the time in that the record company had just found two guys who could high kick and back flip to promote a one off song. Did they even sing on the record? Four albums and a career that lasted six years before their tragic demise seems to suggest I may have got that wrong.
A huge ballad incoming! Natalie Cole’s last hit (“I Live For Your Love”) had also been a big old sentimental love song but if anything “Miss You Like Crazy” was an even more epic example of the genre. Coming from the pen of the songwriting team that included Gerry Goffin and that were responsible for “Saving All My Love For You” and “Greatest Love Of All”, it was always going to be one of those tracks designed to tug at the heart strings and wring every drop of emotion out of the listener. It pretty much succeeds in its objective I think being a serviceable ballad (although I doubt ‘serviceable’ is the adjective the songwriters would have hoped for when writing the song).
“Miss You Like Crazy” proved to be Natalie’s biggest UK hit peaking at No 2 and was also a Top 10 song in the US.
A Breaker last week but worthy of a studio appearance now are De La Soul with “Me Myself And I”. In a 2016 retrospective of their career, The Guardian described the trio as having ‘allied an Afrocentric, boho bent with a nerdy, recording room exuberance’ to create their sound. I’m not sure about any of that but as Gary Davies rightly said, “Me Myself And I” was a knock out song.
However, if you want to check out the track and its parent album “3 Feet High And Rising” on Spotify you’ll be disappointed. Apparently it all to do with the many samples that they used in creating their songs. – there are more than 70 on “3 Feet High and Rising” alone. Their record label secured clearance for most (but not all) of them in 1989 but their technology crystal ball was misfiring and they failed to predict the rise of the internet and online services so their contracts on those early albums said specifically ‘vinyl and cassette’. Oops! “Say No Go” indeed.
Fine Young Cannibals with “Good Thing” next and the cut away intro means that it’s just a re-showing of the last studio performance clip. Maybe they were busy ‘taking America by storm’ as Gary Davies advises. So did any of us actually refer to the band as ‘FYC’? I know I didn’t but to be fair the acronym is emblazoned in huge letters on the album’s cover so….
I do recall Peter Powell referring to Tears For Fears as ‘TFF’ on his show and on TOTP err…Top Of The Pops but I didn’t think it really caught on. Was it the same with ‘FYC’…damn! I mean Fine Young Cannibals? For me, it certainly wasn’t a case of FYC being just like OMD. You know what? I think that’s enough pop acronyms for one post. Moving on…
…to Morrissey! The title of this one – “Interesting Drug” – didn’t ring any bells with me and neither did I recognize the song when I when I watched this back. As with previous single “The Last of the Famous International Playboys”, Mozza is backed by an all Smiths line up bar Johnny Marr and is even augmented by the wonderful Kirsty MacColl on backing vocals. It seems like pretty standard late 80s era Morrissey fare to me and is definitely listenable but doesn’t have enough hooks to become any sort of ear worm.
Apparently this No 9 peaking hit was a stand alone single not featuring on any studio album although it is on his compilation LP “Bona Drag”. Interesting.
Back in the studio are The Beatmasters featuring Merlin performing their hit “Who’s In The House”. Merlin was lucky to make it at all as he was serving a six month sentence in a youth custody centre for burglary at the time*. Talking of sentences, he was given the nickname Merlin on account of his “ability to change words, to make anything out of a sentence” according to the man himself. Did Merlin make something out of himself after his own (custodial) sentence? No idea. Wikipedia says he released his own solo album later in the year and then a follow up in 1992 but shows nothing else after that. To be honest I don’t remember him at all although I do recall the track “Who’s In The House”. As for its title, I’ve checked a few times and despite my gut feeling that surely it was actually called “Who’s In Da House” it seems it wasn’t.
*It turns out that Merlin’s uncle was actually Smiley Culture of “Police Officer” fame – oh the irony.
Ooh Yazz looks a bit different to the last time we saw her! Are they dreadlocks on her head and what’s with the bow in her hair? According to a Smash Hits article at the time, she had been warned to stop bleaching her hair and wanted to grow it long. The dreads were actually something called ‘sticks’ (no idea).
“Where Has All the Love Gone” was the fourth and final single to be lifted from her album “Wanted” and I much preferred it to her last effort (the sultry jazz ballad “Fine Time”). I think it was the sound effect that producer Youth seemed to have blatantly nicked from Pet Shop Boys No 1 song “Heart” from 12 months previous that hooked me in. On reflection, the rest of the song is actually fairly uneventful.
As it was the fourth single from an album that had been out for six months by this point, the logic of diminishing returns kicked in and it was the smallest hit from “Wanted” peaking at No 16. Although there were a couple more moderately sized Top 40 entries into the next decade, for me this really was the watershed moment for Yazz when the orbit of her fame started to decay. Maybe there was too much of a gap between releases and the subsequent lowering of her profile was the reason for her demise? We’ll never know I guess.
Top 10
10. Inner City -“Ain’t Nobody Better”
9. Morrissey – “Interesting Drug”
8. Beatmasters featuring Merlin – “Who’s In The House”
7. Fine Young Cannibals – “Good Thing”
6. Kon Kan – “I Beg Your Pardon”
5. The Cure – “Lullaby”
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”: A third week at the top and I’m running out of things to say about it. I’m not going to have to resort to the which one was your favourite Bangle am I? A stupid question anyway as it’s obviously Susanna Hoffs…or is it? I always had a soft spot for bassist Michael Steele actually. She always seemed cool and aloof – she had been a founder member of The Runaways so her credibility credentials certainly pass muster. Michael is not in the current Bangles line up having officially left the band in 2005.
Proving there was more to Poison than just “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”, here are the hairy US glam rockers with “Your Mama Don’t Dance”. Apparently this is a cover version (I had no idea) with the 1972 original being by Loggins and Messina as in Kenny ‘Footloose’ Loggins.
This always sounded really lame to me and decidedly weak compared to what the likes of Guns N’ Roses were doing at this time*. Apparently written about Jim Messina’s mother and step father’s very different relationships with music – his Mum loved Elvis and Rock ‘n’ Roll whilst his step father didn’t and thought the Beatles were just “screaming, long haired idiots” – Poison’s version reached No 13 in the UK and No 10 in the US.
*Apparently Poison once poured ice water over Guns N’ Roses’ publicist – must have been their Chumbawumba moment!
| Order of appearance | Artist | Song | Did I buy it? |
|
1 |
London Boys | Requiem | Of course not |
|
2 |
Natalie Cole | Miss You Like Crazy | Nope |
|
3 |
De La Soul | Me, Myself And I | No but my wife had their ‘3 Feet High And Rising’ album |
|
4 |
Fine Young Cannibals | Good Thing | No but my wife had their album The Raw And The Cooked |
|
5 |
Morrissey | Interesting Drug | No |
|
6 |
Beatmasters featuring Merlin | Who’s In The House | As if |
|
7 |
Yazz | Where Has All The Love Gone | Nah |
|
8 |
The Bangles | Eternal Flame | Presume it’s on their Best Of CD that I have |
|
9 |
Poison | Your Mama Don’t Dance | Very poor – 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.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000fzm0/top-of-the-pops-27041989
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 