Gloria Estefan

TOTP 30 NOV 1989

Posted on July 14, 2020 by 80stastic

There is only one month left of the whole decade that was the 80s! Nowadays when you get to the end of a decade, there is a whole raft of nostalgic revisiting of the previous 10 years in terms of TV scheduling with documentaries and various countdown shows of the greatest songs, sporting moments, and erm…live TV cock ups of the decade. I don’t remember anything like that in late ’89 but then the world was a different place back then and the media a different beast I guess. There probably were such shows (I’m pretty sure there was a TOTP special on New Year’s Eve itself) but there can’t have been anywhere near as many as the deluge that there are now.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself as we haven’t got to Xmas yet and what does Xmas mean? Well, yes presents, Farther Christmas, carol singers and all that but also parties! Could the first act on tonight’s show have been a big Xmas party favourite this year? Not at any parties I went to (to be fair I didn’t go to any) but I’m sure works dos across the country will have seen its labour force doing the “Lambada” as more and more alcohol was consumed. Lucky for them mobile phones with cameras had yet to be invented. Kamoa‘s version of this Bolivian folk tune is supposedly the biggest selling single in Europe of the whole of the 80s and so on the back of its success, a whole album of versions of the song were issued as a compilation album. In fact, I’m sure there were loads of them out there.

As for Kaoma’s version, to answer presenter Gary Davies’s query of whether it will get to No 1 in the UK as it had done in every other country in Europe, the answer was no as it peaked at No 4. Good old British exceptionalism eh?

Here come Inner City with “Whatcha Gonna Do With My Lovin”. Not only was this their last hit of the decade but also their last Top 20 hit for 10 years before a remix of “Good Life” made the Top 10 in 1999. In the intervening period, they clocked up a further three Top 30 singles but there were a fair few flops as well.

However, they are still a going concern and founder Kevin Saunderson has been joined in the ranks by his son Dantiez. There can’t be that many examples of a group featuring both the parent and their offspring can there? Off the top of my head, I think the current incarnation of Big Country features Bruce Watson’s son on guitar. Clearly I’m not counting The Partridge Family as they were a fictitious family (although Shirley Jones was the step mother of David Cassidy in real life).

“Whatcha Gonna Do With My Lovin” peaked at No 12.

A second visit to the TOTP studio for unlikely pop stars 808 State now with their tune “Pacific 707” though I doubt they considered themselves as pop stars. Or did they? In an article in Smash Hits magazine, band founder Martin Price was asked to bust some myths about house music. This was Myth No 5:

Smash Hits: People who make house records don’t want to be stars

Martin Price: That’s just rubbish. I do. I could cope with stardom and being on the cover of Smash Hits…

For the record and unsurprisingly, they never did make the cover of Smash Hits although “Pacific 707” was named as the 5th best track of 1989 in an NME poll. I’m guessing it wouldn’t have featured very high in the Most Played Tracks at a Xmas Party in 1989 had such a poll existed though.

After her last release of the Latin dance track “Oye Mi Canto (Hear My Voice)”, Gloria Estefan should really have been putting out a ballad next as per her usually set in stone release schedule of an uptempo dance number followed by a big sloppy love song. However, “Get On Your Feet” was more of the same (clue was in the title I guess). I never gave it that much attention but supposedly its lyrics are actually about much more than just cutting some rug on the dance floor and are actually a call for action to do something with your life and to not let inertia smother you…or something. Well, I suppose you could read that into “get on your feet / get up and make it happen / stand up and take some action” in a very cheesy ‘let’s do the show right here’ type of way.

The song also inspired the title of Gloria’s jukebox musical On Your Feet! The story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan. Could it have also been a mainstay of that 1989 Xmas party play list? Well here’s a man who certainly would have enjoyed it had it been…

…that was Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer at his company’s 25th anniversary event in 2000. Steve looks like a fun guy don’t he?

“Get On Your Feet” peaked at No 23 in the UK Top 40.

Just like 808 State, here are Jimmy Somerville and June Miles Kingston back for a second TOTP studio appearance as they perform their single “Comment Te Dire Adieu”.

Having not listened to this song very much at all in the intervening 31 years since it was on the show the other week, it’s been a bit of an ear worm. I can’t quite work out why to be honest. Is it the disco beat backing or that annoying keyboard riff? Could it even be those unwieldy French lyrics? It’s an unlikely concoction but it all comes to the boil nicely.

June seems to have lightened up a bit since her first TOTP outing and actually seems to be enjoying herself second time around whilst Jimmy just can’t stop wiggling his tush. He would follow this hit up with his take on the Sylvester disco classic “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” in early 1990 which went Top 5. Whilst parent album “Read My Lips” could only make it to No 29 in the album charts, the UK record buying public had much more appetite for his first compilation album “The Singles Collection 1984/1990” which was released the following year and was a No 4 hit and a huge seller in my first Xmas working for Our Price.

In last week’s TOTP repeat, we saw an all female presenting team of Jakki Brambles and Jenny Powell and I posited the thought that wouldn’t it have been better if Jenny had spelt her name Jenni and then they could have formed a cheesy pop duo. Well, my desire for some snappy alliteration and 80s style spelling in pop names has been sated this week as we see Rob ‘N’ Raz featuring Leila K with their hit “Got To Get”.

Unlike Salt ‘N’ Pepa, Rob ‘N’ Raz were actually a duo, a pair of Swedish DJ / producer types in fact who teamed up with 17 year old wild child Laila El Khalifi to create “Got To Get”. The song’s ‘der-der-dah’ hook sounds almost Prince-esque but the rest of it is definitely hip-house or whatever they were calling the genre that week.

This was their only hit together (although Leila K managed another on her own in 1992 called “Open Sesame”) and it reached No 8

I have to admit that I always get “Got To Get” mixed up with fellow purveyors of Eurodance tosh Culture Beat who had this hit in 1993 with a remarkably similar title….

I was working in Our Price Stockport when this was out and when a young girl asked me for the Culture Beat song, I replied “Got To Get It?”. Her response was “I just really like it”. Bless.

Two Breakers now and we start with Kate Bush and her second single from her ‘The Sensual World” album. Now I didn’t know this at all until now but “This Woman’s Work” was actually written for the soundtrack of the film She’s Having a Baby starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern. It’s even included in the film’s climax when Bacon’s character is awaiting news of his wife and unborn baby as their lives are in danger due to a complicated birth. I’ve never seen the film in its entirety but the clip below demonstrates how well the song works within this scene. Perhaps not surprising as Kate wrote the song specifically for this scene with the latter playing on a monitor as she composed at her piano at the same time. Even so, it’s a very affecting piece I think.

Kate’s own promo video (and I mean her own as she also directed it) for the song is also very dramatic depicting a husband having dinner with his wife (Bush) who then collapses and is rushed to hospital. As with the She’s Having a Baby scene, there follows lots of flashbacks of their life together as the husband agonises. All very heart wrenching but completely undermined by the fact that the actor playing the husband is Tim McInnerny aka Lord Percy Percy and I’m half expecting him to make the following announcement at any time….

Oh, Edmund, can it be true, that I hold here in my mortal hand a nugget of purest green?

“This Woman’s Work” peaked at No 25 and was also the name of her 1990 box set “This Woman’s Work: Anthology 1978–1990”.

From a woman at work to a “Woman In Chains”. This was the second single from Tears For Fears‘ third album “The Seeds Of Love” and featured someone other than Roland and Curt. Lending her soulful vocals to the recording was Oleta Adams who two years later would score a massive worldwide hit herself with her version of Brenda Russell’s “Get Here”.

On first hearing it would appear to be about a woman trapped in a damaging relationship with a dominant male partner but Roland Orzabal is on record as saying that it is also about how men traditionally play down the feminine side of their characters and how both men and women suffer for it. Musically, the key change as the song enters its final lap must be up there with one of the greatest of the decade.

I was amazed to discover that this single could only get as high as No 26 in our Top 40 but then realised that I hadn’t bought it either. I blame being skint at the time (probably). It was re-released in 1992 to promote the band’s “Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82–92)” collection presumably specifically selected to cash-in on Oleta’s aforementioned early 90s success. I didn’t buy it then either but I did by their collection CD.

Back in the studio we find Tina Turner with the follow up to her recent Top 10 hit “The Best”. Also taken from her “Foreign Affair” album, “I Don’t Wanna Lose You” sounded just like “What’s Love Got To Do With It” to me and there was good reason. It was co-written by Graham Lyle who had also penned “What’s Love….”. It’s very slickly produced and all but it’s as empty as a Tory promise in terms of having anything approaching vital about it.

Tina seemed to have a liking for songs that included the words “I Don’t Wanna…”in the title as she recorded one called “I Don’t Wanna Fight” from the soundtrack to her 1993 biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It which was also released a single and reached No 7 in the UK charts which was one place higher than “I Don’t Wanna Lose You”.

As Gary Davies advises, Tina had just turned 50 here which must have seemed ancient to the 21 year old me watching at home. I am now older than Tina was here (52 if we’re counting!). FFS!

Top 10

10. 808 State – “Pacific 707”

9. Big Fun – “Can’t Shake The Feeling”

8. The Stone Roses – “Fool’s Gold”

7. Kaoma – “Lambada”

6. UB40 -“Homely Girl”

5. Phil Collins – “Another Day In Paradise”

4. Jeff Wayne – “The Eve Of The War (Ben Liebrand Mix)”

3. Lisa Stansfield – “All Around The World”

2. Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville – ‘Don’t Know Much”

1. New Kids On The Block – “You Got It (The Right Stuff)”: So who exactly were these guys who had appeared from nowhere to wrestle the No 1 spot away from our Lisa (Stansfield)? Well, they included two guys with the same surname but unlike Duran Duran before them who had three Taylors in their ranks, these two were actually related being brothers Jon and Jordan Knight. Then there was the obligatory cute one called Joey who wasn’t even 17 by this point (but even he is 47 now – ha!). The guy who looks familiar but whom you can’t put your finger on it as to why is Donnie Wahlberg aka acting royalty Mark Whalberg’s elder brother. Apparently Mark was in the group’s original line up but quit only to reappear as the Calvin Klein wearing Marky Mark (and his Funky Bunch) in ’91 with his hit “Good Vibrations” before becoming a world famous actor. Talking of rears, bringing up the group’s was the Andy Taylor of NKOTB (i.e. the one nobody fancied) – Danny Wood.

OK? You …erm… got it? Good ‘cos you’ll be seeing plenty more of them if these TOTP repeats go on into the 90s.

The play out video is “Homely Girl” by UB40. The start of this sounds like the lift music version of their ’84 hit “If It Happens Again” to me and the way Ali Campbell sings it sounds like he’s serenading some bloke called Miguel …”Oh Miguel”…

“Homely Girl” peaked at No 6.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Kaoma	Lambada	I’d have rather had a lamb tikka – no
2	Inner City	Whatcha Gonna Do With My Lovin’	I have no idea but I don’t want it
3	808 State	Pacific 707	I didn’t
4	Gloria Estefan	Get On Your Feet	Nah
5	Jimmy Somerville and June Miles Kingston	Comment Te Dire Adieu	No but it’s on my Somerville / Bronski Beat / The Communards Best Of CD
6	Rob ‘n’ Raz featuring Leila K	Got To Get	I really didn’t need to get this – no
7	Kate Bush	This Woman’s Work	No but I think my wife has the album
8	Tears For Fears	Woman In Chains	No but it’s on their Best Of CD which I have
9	Tina Turner	I Don’t Wanna Lose You	I’m quite prepared for that eventuality though – no
10	New Kids On The Block	You Got It (The Right Stuff)	Hell no!
11	UB40	Homely Girl	Nope

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.

Whole Show

Since we’ve all been on lockdown, there are people out there with time on their hands some of whom have recorded the whole TOTP show from the BBC4 repeat and made it available on YouTube. So if you did want to watch the whole thing over…

Some Bed Time Reading?

http://likepunkneverhappened.blogspot.com/2019/11/november-29-december-12-1989.html

TOTP 28 SEP 1989

Posted on June 10, 2020 by 80stastic

The word ‘unprecedented’ has been much overused in recent times but this particular TOTP show really was worthy of such a description. This was the first time that the programme had been presented by two female hosts with no men in evidence at all. That the show should be in its 26th year before such an occurrence is probably not one of the BBC’s proudest moments. The two hosts given the honour were Sybil Ruscoe and Jenny Powell. Let’s hope they had some decent tunes to introduce…

….hmm. Not a great start in my book. I could never see the appeal of “If Only I Could”. It was musical wallpaper to me – I barely registered that it was playing if it came on the radio. Also pretty anonymous at the time was its singer Sydney Youngblood. So little was known about him that when Smash Hits ran an article, it was entitled ‘Great Sydneys Of Our Time” and lumped him in with Sid Vicious, Sydney Australia and Carry On legend Sid James!

Undeterred, Sydney did develop some notoriety when he was accused of plagiarising the sound of Soul II Soul for his use of soul vocals over hip-hop rhythms. He responded by releasing a remix of his earlier hit “Feeling Free” (featuring Elaine Hudson) called “The Jazzy Who? remix” in reference to Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B. The track featured a piano lead that sounded similar to the UK soulsters’ “Happiness” and used a beat identical to “Jazzies Groove”. Was there anything in it? Judge for yourselves….

Now here’s someone we haven’t seen around these parts for ages! Not since 1985 had Kate Bush released an album of new material and she hadn’t been in the Top 40 singles chart since 1986 when “Experiment IV” was released to promote her “Whole Story” Best Of album. “The Sensual World” was the title of not only her first single since then but also of the parent album and was originally intended to be just the words from the closing soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses put to music. However, Joyce’s estate wouldn’t give permission for their use at the time so some original lyrics were written based upon the book’s character Molly Bloom.

When I was a wet behind the ears first year at Sunderland Poly I tried to impress my new found course mates by making out that I had read Ulysses, all 730 pages of it. I hadn’t at all but it had been name dropped by Stephen ‘Tin Tin” Duffy who I considered to be a massive intellect at the time (I know!) so I thought I’d try it. My gambit failed when my friend John asked me what it was like. What could I say ? I didn’t have a clue. I opted, of course, for ‘It’s alright’ and John seemed to accept that. Phew! I still haven’t read it 34 years later.

Anyway, back to Kate and “The Sensual World” – the single would peak at No 12 whist the album would go platinum in the UK and achieve a chart high of No 2. I quite liked the song. The celtic instrumentation on it sounded intriguing and I liked the bells at the beginning of the song although it’s not my favourite track to begin with the sound of pealing bells. That would be this….

A new look for The Beautiful South next who have recruited vocalist Briana Corrigan to their ranks. Also adopting a new look is Paul Heaton who is sporting some very peculiar optical eyewear. Whilst “You Keep It All In” wasn’t one of my fave tracks of theirs, watching this performance back I am struck by the fact that the band employs three different singers to deliver solo spots within the song’s structure which strikes me as pretty unusual.

Corrigan stayed with the band until 1992 when she left to pursue a solo career. There were also reports that she fell out with the band over the lyrics to “36D” which criticised British glamour models. Dave Hemingway later admitted that “We all agree that we should have targeted the media as sexist instead of blaming the girls for taking off their tops”.

“You Keep It All In” peaked at No 8.

This next song was once described by Bob Stanley (he of Saint Etienne and DJ-ing fame) in Melody Maker like so:

“not only was it a compelling dance track with a chorus so contagious it could keep you awake at night, it also formed part of the best Top Three in years when it was sandwiched between Black Box and Sidney Youngblood.”

He was of course referring to “Pump Up The Jam” by Technotronic and he was also of course wrong as it was and remains a terrible record…in my humble opinion of course.

P.S. I’m guessing that Top 3 sandwich is due very soon in these TOTP repeats as this weeks’ chart has Black Box and Technotronic enduring a sandwich with Richard Marx as the filling. Yuk!

Having been absent from the charts for nigh on 12 months, Wet Wet Wet are amongst us again. “Sweet Surrender” was the lead single from new album “Holding Back The River” and I was very….underwhelmed by it I have to say. It’s always seem like a bit of a throwaway, nothing of a song to me. I was perpetually waiting for it to get going but it never really did. In a Smash Hits feature at the time, even the band themselves said of it:

‘It’s not the obvious one is it. But it’s a nice wee number, we wanted a sort of… lovers rock feel’.

Wet Wet Wet and lovers rock?! Really?! Retrospective wisdom suggests that “Holding Back The River” should really have been the band’s third album and not their second*. “Holding Back The River” was quite a leap in terms of a more mature sound from its much poppier predecessor. With a the title track that was supposedly about alcoholism for example, were their fan base struggling to appreciate this more grown up sound? Certainly the singles released from it achieved rather disappointing chart showings:

SINGLE	CHART PEAK
Sweet Surrender	6
Broke Away	19
Hold Back The River	31
Stay with Me Heartache	30

You could tell the band were clearly taking themselves more seriously as some of them had grown their hair long whilst Marti Pellow had grown a little beard as displayed on the front cover of that Smash Hits issue under the tag line ‘Och Aye Jock McKay! Look at the state of the Wets!’

In hindsight, third album “High On The Happy Side” with its lush No 1 single “Goodnight Girl” was a more logical choice of sophomore album with “Holding Back The River” being perfect ‘difficult third album’ material. Ah well, I guess it all turned out alright in the end

* I’m dismissing any claims that “The Memphis Sessions” was their second album despite its chronological release date claims. on the grounds that it was just a collection of initial recordings and demos for their first album “Popped In , Souled Out” which were subsequently aborted.

Just the two Breakers this week starting with “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel a song that is routinely panned as utter shite but which is still worthy of more discussion than that I propose.

For the defence:

Yes it’s one of those ‘list’ songs (see also “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” by REM, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Bob Dylan and even “Nothing Ever Happens” by Del Amitri) which seems to be the main complaint that people have about it in that it’s perceived to be a very lazy genre of songwriting. ‘We could all do that!’ they cry but could they? Could anybody just cram a sizeable list of world events / figures into a three minute pop songs structure and get them all to make some sort of rhyming sense? Not sure I could. And there is a structure. Until the final stanza, every two lines represents a year with the song opening in 1949, the year Billy was born.

Then there’s the accusation that the majority of the events listed are very American based. Where are all the UK references? Well, there are some including:

England’s got a new queen
British Beatlemania
British politician sex

In any case Billy is an American so it seems reasonable for him to write about his own country’s history.

And it’s educational. The fifth grade class at the Banta Elementary School in Menasha, Wisconsin used the lyrics of the song to select topics for their history reports. Joel’s record label responded by issuing cassettes containing the song and a 10-minute talk by Joel to 40,000 students.

For the prosecution though, I call….Billy Joel. Yes, Billy himself isn’t a massive fan. “It’s terrible musically. It’s like a mosquito buzzing around your head.” he has said of the song.

I’m somewhere in the middle – I don’t mind it but I can see why it bugs the hell out of some people.

“We Didn’t Start The Fire” peaked at No 7 over here and was a No 1 in the US.

Hans up who thought Curiosity Killed The Cat were down the dumper when their last single “Free” in 1987 did’t even make the Top 40?

*Your blogger raises his hand*

Well, we were all wrong as here they are two years later back in said Top 40 with a new single called “Name And Number”! And according to the band they were never down the dumper in the first place. No, according to guitarist Julian Brookhouse “We didn’t go down the dumper”. See I told you. He carries on… “We’ve only been away for 16 months and to us that didn’t seem like a very long time”. 16 months not a long time in the world of pop music?! Come off it mate! Anyway, they’d actually been away recording a second album to follow up their No 1 debut “Keep Your Distance”. However, “Getahead” was a huge commercial disappointment peaking at No 29.

I always quite liked the only hit single from it though. Yes, it was immensely cheesy with that answer machine message motif but it had a good beat and you could dance to it. No! That’s far to middle aged Dad like. Strike that from the post. It was …funky? No, that’s no good either. Look. I just liked it OK. I wasn’t the only one either. De La Soul sampled it for their 1991 Top 10 single “Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)”…

Whatever you may think of Erasure ( I like them) you cannot deny how prolific they were in the 80s (and beyond). “Drama!” was their twelfth single release since 1985 of which nine were Top 40 hits. It was also the lead single from forthcoming album “Wild!”, their fourth studio album of the decade! Like I said, prolific.

But was it any good? While it has to be admitted that “Drama!” was hardly a radical new direction for Andy and Vince, it was still a solid enough tune to my ears. Building slowly and atmospherically (with Andy’s vocals very low key) before bursting into the usual snappy dance track that includes an almost neurotic chorus. The shouts of ‘guilty!’ were supplied by The Jesus And Mary Chain who were recording in the next door studio. Top trivia!

The video isn’t up too much although it’s one which includes the rarely spotted sight of Vince Clarke sporting a relatively standard haircut. “Drama!” peaked at No 4 whilst the “Wild!” was another No 1 album for the duo producing four Top 20 hits and ensuring Erasure started the next decade in the same successful fashion as the one they left behind.

Officially a solo Gloria Estefan effort, you could have been forgiven for thinking “Oye Mi Canto (Hear My Voice)” was made with her usual collaborators Miami Sound Machine given that it sounded very much like some of their other Latin tinged efforts like “Conga”, “1-2-3′ and “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You”.

This one was a huge hit across Europe but fared much less favourably in the US. I could imagine it featuring heavily in a film directed by Pedro Almodóvar and possibly starring Penélope Cruz. Oh, there is such a film and it’s called Volver.…which I’ve seen….and “Oye Mi Canto (Hear My Voice)” isn’t in it. Yeah, doesn’t really work that previous comment does it?

Top 10

10. Tears For Fears – “Sowing The Seeds Of Love”

9. Beautiful South – “You Keep It All In”

8. Damian – “The Time Warp”

7. Madonna – “Cherish”

6. Erasure – “Drama!”

5. Tina Turner – “The Best”

4. Sydney Youngblood – “If Only I Could”

3. Technotronic – “Pump Up The Jam”

2. Richard Marx – “Right Here Waiting”

1. Black Box – “Ride On Time”: How many weeks is this now? Did Sybil say four? We all know about the scandal, behind who actually sang the vocals on “Ride On Time” but I didn’t know until now that the guys in the band haven’t seen front woman Katrin Quinol since about 1992 but they did some sort of deal that allowed her to do PAs under the name of Black Box in Europe but not in the UK. Guess that means a trip abroad if you want to see her perform this song again. Given the current state of the world, I’ll pass thanks.

The play out video is “Secret Rendezvous” by Karyn White. Apparently this track was written by hitmakers Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds and Antonio “LA” Reid to sound like Prince and I can kind of hear what they were trying to do I guess although it sounds more like Janet Jackson to me.

“Secret Rendezvous” peaked at No 22.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Sydney Youngblood	If Only I Could	But I really couldn’t – no
2	Kate Bush	The Sensual World	No but I think my wife had the album
3	The Beautiful South	You Keep It All In	No but I had the album
4	Technotronic	Pump Up The Jam	Techno-bollox more like – no
5	Wet Wet Wet	Sweet Surrender	Nah
6	Billy Joel	We Didn’t Start The Fire	No but I bought another single from his album Stormfront which had it as an additional track
7	Curiosity Killed The Cat	Name And Number	Nope
8	Erasure	Drama!	No but again I think my wife had the album
9	Gloria Estefan	Oye Mi Canto (Hear My Voice)	I do hear it Gloria and I don’t like it
10	Black Box	Ride On Time	I didn’t
11	Karyn White	Secret Rendezvous	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/m000jqyf/top-of-the-pops-28091989

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/2019/09/september-20-october-3-1989.html

TOTP 21 SEP 1989

Posted on June 5, 2020 by 80stastic

One day after this TOTP was broadcast, the film Dead Poets Society was released into UK cinemas causing the Latin phrase carpe diem (‘seize the day’) to be circulated into the nation’s vocabulary.

A further day after that, it seemed that newly promoted Manchester City employed a bit of their own ‘carpe diem’ and seized their day back in the big time by thrashing neighbours United 5–1 at Maine Road in one of the most infamous football matches of the decade. I wonder who were the acts on TOTP seizing their day to be chart stars?

Well, London Boys were nothing if not committed in their performances and they threw everything at trying to maximise their short time as pop stars including some twinkle -toed dance moves, back flips and handstands. Also a fair mount of sweat if their glistening torsos are anything to go by. Ugh!

“Harlem Desire” was their third and final hit and would no doubt have been one of the songs they performed on the Coca-Cola Hitman Roadshow tour that they were part of in October and November of this year. Yes, according to Smash Hits, they were one of the roster of SAW acts doing their thing in some ‘prestigious’ venues around the UK like Mr Smith’s in Warrington, Goldiggers in Chippenham and the oxymoron that was Japanese Whispers in Barnsley. They even played in my adopted city of Hull at Romeos and Juliets or ‘Rermiers’ as the locals would have pronounced it. What a night that must have been (ahem).

What on earth is going on in this video for “Love In An Elevator” by Aerosmith? Yes, there’s a basic core of the band performing the song live but it’s all the other elements that are woven into the promo that are a bit disturbing. Set in a department store, there seems to be some sort of homage to the film Mannequin going on with showroom dummies transforming into living, scantily clad women. There’s a topless Joe Perry getting down to it with his equally topless real life wife. Then there are numerous characters included for no obvious reason such as a woman with dwarfism, a butcher, a lion tamer and even the Tin Man and Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz. The basic message seems to be sex anywhere, anytime with anyone. Well, as NIcky Campbell said in his intro “Aerosmith have been playing the epitome of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle for twenty years now…”

“Love In An Elevator” peaked at No 13.

A possibly forgotten single next from S’Express. Having burst into the charts 18 months previously with a No 1 single in “Theme from S-Express”, Mark Moore and co followed it up with two more Top 10 singles and a Top 5 album in “Original Soundtrack”. “Mantra for a State of Mind” was the first single from their second album “Intercourse” but here’s where it all went decidedly constipated. That album would not appear for another two years and yet four singles were released from it over a period of three years! Check their discography out:

Single	Release date
“Mantra for a State of Mind”	1989
“Nothing To Lose”	1990
“Find ‘Em, Fool ‘Em, Forget ‘Em”	1991
“Let It All Out EP”	1992

All taken from the same album! I can only assume that Mark Moore had lost interest in the whole S’Express project come the new decade but that his record label were determined to squeeze every last penny out of it with multiple single releases. Talk about flogging a dead horse.

“Mantra for a State of Mind” peaked at No 21.

After Nicky Campbell’s too clever by half introduction where he references Karl Marx and Groucho Marx, we finally get to Richard Marx and his song “Right Here Waiting”. Marx was unable to follow up on this success until he unexpectedly returned to our charts in 1992 with the fairly creepy story song “Hazard”. Despite pretty much just being known for these two songs in the UK, Marx has released 12 studio albums and 54 singles in a career spanning over 30 years. And yet would you recognise him if you bumped into him in the street?

“Right Here Waiting” has been covered by all the music greats like err…Cliff Richard and …oh yes Barry Manilow and…hang on…this guy….

…like I said, all the music greats.

Some proper music now with The Wonder Stuff and “Don’t Let Me Down Gently” and not ‘Let Me Down Gently’ as Nicky Campbell introduces it. Kind of changes the meaning completely Nicky don’t you think?

Hailing from my original neck of the woods the West Midlands, they were a part of the ‘grebo’ scene along side other Black Country acts Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin but were by far the most commercially successful of the three.

My mate Robin had been into the Stuffies whilst we were at Sunderland Poly together so I was aware of a couple of their earlier minor hit singles “A Wish Away” and “It’s Yer Money I’m After Baby” but this was their first ever appearance on TOTP. They didn’t like it much either. Here’s lead singer Miles Hunt courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

"From the moment that we arrived at the BBC the production staff gave the impression that simply by us being there we were inconveniencing them in some way… I hated every minute of it." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 29, 2020

Hunt also admitted that it felt like selling out but that he was compelled to comply otherwise record label Polydor would withdraw their touring and recording budgets. I think you can tell from watching their performance back that they weren’t having the best time. Hunt doesn’t look directly at the camera once and indeed seems to be trying to obscure his face with his hat pulled down low over his eyes. He even tries to cover his face with his arm deliberately at one point.

“Don’t Let Me Down Gently” is a great, high-speed almost folk -pop workout. Some of the tracks on the album “Hup” featured fiddle and banjo especially follow up single “Golden Green”.

What I always liked about The Wonder Stuff was their brilliant song and album titles such as “The Eight Legged Groove Machine”, “Construction for The Modern Idiot”, “Welcome to the Cheap Seats” and “Change Every Light Bulb”.

After hitting the big time with the Top 3 1991 album “Never Loved Elvis”, the band split in 1994 before reconvening in 2000 and are still a going concern today although Hunt is the only remaining original member.

“Don’t Let Me Down, Gently” peaked at No 19.

Four Breakers this week! I wish they were a bit more consistent with this feature. Some weeks nothing at all, this week four (which means four extra songs that I have to write about). First out of the traps are The Beautiful South who have acquired a new member since we last saw them in vocalist Briana Corrigan. I was never that fussed about “You Keep It All In” I’m sorry to say. I’d loved “Song For Whoever” but I couldn’t get on board with this one. It just sounded too chirpy and knowing. I get that it had interesting lyrics and all that but it just didn’t do it for me. I much preferred the final single from their debut album which was “I’ll Sail This Ship Alone” but that didn’t do nearly as well as “You Keep It All In” with the former peaking at No 31 whilst the latter was a No 8 hit.

If there was no consistency within the Breakers section, Gloria Estefan was a model of regularity in her choice of single releases. Her golden rule was fast dance number followed by a slow ballad then repeat ad infinitum. So after big drippy love song “Don’t Wanna Lose You”, we got the samba beat of “Oye Mi Canto (Hear My Voice)“.

Gloria was pretty canny as she did an English language version, a Spanish version and loads of mixes with an eye on the club scene with a Pablo Dub Mix, a Def Dub Mix and a House Mix. Talk about spreading your bets. None of these versions appealed to me I’m afraid and this one wafted past me like one massive bout of flatulence.

“Oye Mi Canto (Hear My Voice)” peaked at No 16.

Nope – don’t remember this one at all. “It Isn’t, It Wasn’t, It Ain’t Never Gonna Be” should have been a marketing dream. The Queen of Soul paired with a solid gold chart breaking sensation and yet it didn’t really come off. Whitney Houston was still at the top of her game in ’89 although she hadn’t released a single since last year’s Olympic anthem “One Moment In Time” nor an album since ’87’s “Whitney”. Aretha Franklin meanwhile had spent the second part of the 80s recording duets with some major artists like Eurythmics and George Michael. She followed that up with an album called “Through The Storm” released in ’89 which included collaborations with the likes of Elton John, James Brown, The Four Tops and of course this track with Whitney.

However, “It Isn’t, It Wasn’t, It Ain’t Never Gonna Be” peaked at a lowly No 29 in the UK and fared even worse in the US where it stalled at No 41. So what went wrong? My diagnosis? It was a crap song.

Finally, we find Deacon Blue still ploughing a rich seam of hits from their “When the World Knows Your Name” album with this one, “Love And Regret” being the fourth of five. I really liked this one. Yes, it has a soft rock, chuggy guitar -ness to it and it does plod a bit, but it’s a nicely crafted song and suits Ricky Ross’ vocals perfectly. The fourth single from the album was pushing it a bit though and “Love And Regret” limped to a peak of No 28.

I met Ricky Ross once at an playback event for his first solo album. It was at some bar in Manchester and the whole of the Our Price shop where I was working got invited via some record company rep or other. Pretty sure I was the only member of staff remotely interested in Ricky. The others all just went for the free bar and I have never seen so many people so monumentally drunk in one place. It was carnage. Anyway, Ricky was a lovely fella and we chatted about Deacon Blue and football for a good few minutes. Hopefully I was still coherent by that point.

I say this every time W.A.S.P. are on but how else do you explain their flood of appearances on TOTP other than one of the show’s producers must have been a big fan. According to officialcharts.com, “Forever Free” is their last UK Top 40 hit of the 80s peaking at No 25. Yes! We are forever free of them in this blog!

Top 10

10. Alyson Williams – “I Need Your Lovin”

9. Tears For Fears – “Sowing The Seeds Of Love”

8. Jason Donovan – “Everyday (I Love You More)”

7. Damian – “The Time Warp”

6. Sydney Youngblood – “If Only I Could”

5. Tina Turner – “The Best”

4. Technotronic – “Pump Up The Jam”

3. Madonna – “Cherish”

2. Richard Marx – “Right Here Waiting”

1. Black Box – “Ride On Time”: Blimey, this is getting to be like an episode of Play School! Which window will we look through today? Or for Black Box, which studio performance will it be this week? OK, so it’s the dungarees one…

The play out video is “Miss You Much” by Janet Jackson. Like her brother Michael, Janet wasn’t averse to releasing nearly every track off her album as a single. “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” had seven globally released singles lifted from it (plus one that was only released in Australia) of which “Miss You Much” was the first. However, whilst in the US, all seven were huge hits including four No 1s and two No 2s, in the UK the highest any of them made was No 15 for “Black Cat”. Why was that? How should I know? I spent weeks of my life writing a dissertation on the subject of why some songs were hits and others not and I didn’t come up with any sort of answer.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	London Boys	Harlem Desire	Big no
2	Aerosmith	Love In An Elevator	Going down I’m afraid – no
3	S’Express	Mantra For A State Of Mind	Nah
4	Richard Marx	Right Here Waiting	Nope
5	The Wonder Stuff	Don’t Let Me Down Gently	Didn’t I buy this? Why not?!
6	The Beautiful South	You Keep It All In	No but I had the album
7	Gloria Estefan	Oye Mi Canto (Hear My Voice)	I do hear it Gloria and I don’t like it
8	Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin	It Isn’t, It Wasn’t, It Ain’t Never Gonna Be	And indeed it wasn’t – no
9	Deacon Blue	Love And Regret	Not the single but I had the album
10	W.A.S.P.	Forever Free	Forever shite more like
11	Black Box	Ride On Time	I didn’t
12	Janet Jackson	Miss You Much	Another no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000jjjc/top-of-the-pops-21091989

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/2019/09/september-20-october-3-1989.html

TOTP 27 JUL 1989

Posted on April 30, 2020 by 80stastic

It’s the ultimate pairing of nice but dull co-hosts for this episode of TOTP. Mark Goodier and Simon Parkin – not a shred of personality between them. One of the things I have noticed from reviewing nearly 7 years worth of TOTP 80s repeats is just how appalling the presenters were. From those who thought the show was all about them and whose egos could hardly be contained within the studio like Simon Bates, Steve Wright and serial offender Mike Read through to the sickeningly over enthusiastic like Anthea Turner and onto the thoroughly dull like this pair. And I’m not sure there is one of them that hasn’t cocked up a link somewhere along the line. Look, I’m not saying I could have done it any better (I would have been hopeless) but it was kind of their job wasn’t it, presenting, broadcasting and all that? I’m a bit sick of the lot of them after three and a half years of writing this blog.

Also “Sick Of It” were the night’s opening act The Primitives (see what I did there? Maybe I could have done the links in between acts after all!). Yes, proving that there was way more to them than just “Crash”, this was the band’s fourth and final visit to the Top 40. What has happened to Tracy’s hair though? Where have her peroxide blonde locks gone? Helpfully, here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer…

Obviously the big talking point here is TRACY'S HAIR. Why did 1989-model Tracy dye it? "I've been bleaching my hair on and off for eight years, and I was just sick of it… The condition of my hair was going downhill, so I had to choose – I could either be bald or red." #TOTP

— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 24, 2020

“Sick Of It” was pretty standard Primitives fare I thought but that’s not a criticism. Listening back to it now, it could easily have been a massive BritPop anthem by the likes of Echobelly (again not a bad thing at all – I loved Echobelly). As it was, in 1989, it peaked at No 24.

Here’s Gloria Estefan with her latest hit “Don’t Wanna Lose You”. Taken from her “Cuts Both Ways” album, its ten tracks were split between the only two types of song that Gloria ever produced – the huge ballad and the Latin influenced uptempo dance number. “Don’t Wanna Lose You” was definitely in the former category. Estefan earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance with this track but lost out to Bonnie Raitt’s “Nick of Time.” You can make up your own minds whether the judges made the right decision. Bonnie….

Or Gloria…

There then follows a very weird link shot of Goodier and Parkin from the legs up (nobody needed to see that) before going into the first part of the chart rundown before Parkin gets the title of Inner City‘s latest hit single wrong. What did I say about there’s always a cocked uplink somewhere in the show?! For the record Simon, it was called “Do You Love What You Feel” and Not “Do You Love The Way You Feel”. I’m not surprised he couldn’t recall the title though as the song is instantly forgettable. I certainly didn’t remember this one either.

Wikipedia advises me that another of this week’s chart acts also released a song called “Do You Love What You Feel” namely Rufus and Chaka Khan but I don’t know their song either.

Inner City peaked at No 16 with this one.

There’s a woman stood next to Mark Goodier in the next link into Kirsty MacColl who seems to have been the inspiration for the Kathy Burke character in Gimme Gimme Gimme. I really shouldn’t be making such comments about looks but it really is a striking image that the lady in question went for. Anyway, back to Kirsty and her Kinks cover “Days”. Seeing her perform in the TOTP studio reminds me how infrequently she was actually on the show. Yes there are the evergreen performances of “A Fairytale Of New York” with The Pogues and memorable cameos with the likes of Happy Mondays and Jona Lewie but performances in her own right? Not that many I would suggest. Her voice sounds brilliant here and the track was a canny choice of cover version fitting in with her own cannon of caustic, melody heavy songs.

Kirsty was a long time sufferer of stage fright and tried many different solutions to combat it including hypnotism but the best remedy she found? Touring with Shane Magowan and the lads!

“Days” peaked at No 12.

It’s the Breakers now and I have realised something truly shocking. There was a choice to be made here about the acts featured in this section that was seismic and I got it wrong. I made a bogus decision. I could have nailed my colours to the flag post of a band that would become iconic in terms of the impact that they had on the UK music scene with a legacy that would still be discussed some 30 years later. And me? I plumped for the wrong act entirely. Given the choice of Gun or The Stone Roses, it seems to me that I chose the former. Jesus what was I thinking?! In my mind’s eye, The Stone Roses were a phenomenon that occurred much later in 1989 but here we are in late July and they are on the BBC’ s flagship music show. It should have been my moment. I’d already chosen to ignore The Smiths some 6 years earlier but here was my shot at redemption. The Stone Roses! I was ripe for their influence. This was their time. This was my time but no. I chose to overlook them in favour of Gun, some Glasgow rockers whose fame was as fleeting as their band name was ordinary.

And yet “Better Days” sounded like a quality song to me. Smash Hits (albeit rather tongue-in -cheek) described them as ‘new rock sensations’. They even toured with the The Rolling Stones! These guys could be big I thought.

Their sound was definitely rock with strident guitars and heavy drums aplenty but there was a lot of melody in there as well. The lead singer’s vocals sounded authentic and seemed perfectly matched to the music (it turns out that his cousin is Sharleen Spiteri of Texas so singing was in the family genes). Somehow though it didn’t really happen for them. “Better Days” was a Top 40 hit (peaking at No 33) and did its job as a calling card for the band but subsequent single releases from their album “Taking On The World” failed to really consolidate on that initial success. The band drifted on for a bit before scoring a surprise comeback Top 10 hit in 1994 with a hard rock cover of (seemingly every artist’s favourite go to song when in search of a hit cover) “Cameo’s “Word Up!”.

Despite numerous line up changes along the way, the band celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2019 with a new best-of album titled “R3L0ADED”.

In the middle of my Gun v The Stone Roses sandwich comes Paul McCartney who was then enjoying a late 80s renaissance after some pretty poor output earlier in the decade with the critically well received album “Flowers In The Dirt”. The second single to be lifted from it, “This One” was OK and I preferred it to the rather more urgent sounding “My Brave Face” but it’s fairly unremarkable as well. I mean its got a nice, lilting melody and flows over you with a nice feel to it but….it’s that word nice that’s the problem here I think. McCartney will always (perhaps unfairly) lose out in the John Lennon comparisons with accusations that he was comfortable and erm…nice compared to Lennon’s edgy rock spirit.

The video is quite fun though with Macca’s simple yet effective painted on eyes trick. Do you think it was a gentle retaliation against his portrayal by Spitting Image?

I fell like I’ve already written about this one (and I don’t mean McCartney!) but I guess I haven’t really – not fully anyway. Where do you start with The Stone Roses? So much has been written about them over the last 30 or so years that what insight could I possibly have to add to the discussion? I didn’t even ‘get them’ initially for heaven’s sake! Well, all of that is true but I have certainly come to appreciate them much more in the intervening three decades to the point of even owning their albums – well the only two that really matter anyway (i.e the two studio albums). More than that though, I’m going to wheel out my personal Stone Roses story early doors and probably keep referring to it every time they are on TOTP from now on…back in the 90s, I used to work alongside the band’s original bass player. An absolutely top bloke called Pete who was my manager for a couple of years during my Our Price days. Pete wasn’t keen on talking about his time with the band that much but every now and then (usually on a staff night out) he would let slip some little snippets….

…anyway, as for the music, “She Bangs The Drums” was the band’s first ever Top 40 hit peaking at No 36 but was re-released early the following year as part of the Madchester explosion which the band were firmly at the forefront of topping out just two places higher. It was never really about chart placings with them though was it?

Still enjoying a successful year are Simple Minds with their third Top 40 hit of the calendar year with “Kick It In”. The track was also their third release from their album “Street Fighting Years” after “This Is Your Land” and surprise No 1 single “Belfast Child”. It’s not a great song though to be fair. It’s all a bit half hearted and sounds like something they cooked up at a loose jamming session or in a soundcheck before a show. It was reviewed in Smash Hits magazine at the time by all three members of Danny Wilson and they didn’t like it either….

Gary: That’s the weirdest record I’ve ever heard in my life – that weird jerky rhythm.

Kit: It actually sounds like it was jumping all the way through. I would take it back to the shop if I’d bought that.

Ged: I used to love Simple Minds but this…er…

Gary: It sounded like a Billy Idol record that somebody had spilt their tea on.

Ged: That record makes me feel uncomfortable.

OK – so they really didn’t like it. So what? Well, the Ged responsible for the above comments is Ged Grimes who is currently ,and has been for the last 10 years, the bass player for Simple Minds! Ha! I wonder if Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill are aware of Ged’s opinion of “Kick It In”? Do the band still perform it in their live sets? If so, does Ged have to grit his teeth while playing it?

“Kick It In” peaked at No 15.

The teen sensation of 1988 finally reappear in 1989 but Bros were a very different beast from the last time that we saw them. At Christmas they were coming to the end of a wild year which had seen them become the biggest pop band in the UK and possibly Europe. Then the rumours about bassist Craig’s health started to circulate and finally a statement from the band’s management company stating that he no longer wishes to be in the band was issued. Was it as big a deal as Robbie Williams leaving Take That? Well, I don’t remember there being any dedicated telephone lines being set up to counsel bereft teenage girls for Craig’s departure, put it that way.

The statement described Logan’s demands as unreasonable and the whole thing went down pretty acrimoniously with Luke Goss stating that “You can take it from us that Craig will never be in Bros again”. Ouch! He continued that Logan didn’t have the sufficient stamina to be a pop star and that “I think Matt and I have always had this in our blood but Craig really was going to be something like a bank clerk. That’s what he would have been if he hadn’t been in Bros”. Just vicious.

Anyway, Craig disappeared to become a songwriter and ultimately set up an artist management company (so not a bank clerk) whilst the Goss twins continued on with new single “Too Much” their first post Craig offering. Would the fans accept the duo as a well…duo? Would the new music be the same as before or would it seer the twins branch out in another direction? I guess the answer to both questions would be ‘sort of’. Yes, they continued to have chart success (“Too Much” itself was a No 2 record) and in August of ’89 they played to 77,000 people (including my wife!) at Wembley stadium at the Bros in 2 Summer concert. But the hits became smaller and smaller and by 1991 their third album only made No 18 in the charts. The game was up.

As for the sound of their new material, I guess “Too Much” had a harder feel to it than their previous releases. Matt Goss described their new direction as ‘FRP’ meaning Funk, Rop, Pop whilst labelling the old stuff as just pop but, for me, they hadn’t re-invented themselves that much. It was hardly a Bowie-esque transformation. That guitar solo sounds suspiciously like Nik Kershaw but that definitely isn’t Nik up there on stage in this TOTP performance!

A weird take on chart positions next from Simon Parkin as he introduces Simply Red. Making reference to the band’s previous hit “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” which peaked at No 2, Parkin reckons that follow up single “A New Flame” is ‘hurtling towards that position’. Eh? It went up three places to No 17 Simon! No 17! That’s 15 away from No 2! And going up 3 places does not count as hurtling in anybody’s book! And guess what! “A New Flame” didn’t even get any higher than this week’s No 17 peak! In fact it was also the band’s last chart hit of the decade (they did release one last single from the album but it failed to make the Top 40). They would reappear two years on though with the commercial zenith that was the “Stars” album.

Top 10

10. Lil Louis – “French Kiss”

9. Soul II Soul – “Back To Life”

8. Bette Midler – “Wind Beneath My Wings”

7. Rufus and Chaka Khan – “Ain’t Nobody”

6. Glori Estefan – “Don’t Wanna Lose You”

5. Bobby Brown – “On Our Own”

4. London Boys – “London Nights”

3. Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers – “Swing The Mood”

2. Bros – “Too Much”

1. Sonia – “You’ll Never Stop Me From Loving You”: A second week at No 1 for our Sonia but watching this performance back, was she really tiny or is her male dancer a giant? I think its probably the former.

After her Eurovision exploits and a spell in a stage production of Grease, Sonia was tempted back into the limelight by the ITV show Reborn In The USA in 2003. This was a British reality television show in which ten British pop acts from the past toured the US where they were supposedly unknown in the hope of revitalising their music career. One of the show’s most memorable moments was the feud between Sonia and Dollar…

…all pretty pathetic stuff but if you’re not sure whose side to be on, just remember that David Van Day had previous for feuding given his part in the Bucks Fizz legal wrangles at the turn of the decade and he did dump his girlfriend live on air on the The Wright Stuff...

1989 wasn’t just about sample heavy house music and Stock, Aitken and Waterman though. It also saw some very surprising comebacks from a batch of iconic names from music history. We’d already seen Roy Orbison (posthumously) and Gene Pitney score huge hits earlier in the year and now here was Alice Cooper having a monster smash with “Poison”, his first UK chart entry since 1973.

I didn’t know much about Alice Cooper other than his youth freedom anthem “School’s Out” but suddenly here he was with a pretty decent impression of 80s pop metal that wouldn’t have been out of place being sung by Bon Jovi. In fact, it could be argued that the main motif of the song was just a retread of the Jovi’s recent hit “Bad Medicine”. None of these comparisons are made idly though as “Poison” was written by Desmond Child who also penned “You Give Love A Bad Name” and “Livin’ On A Prayer” for the New Jersey rockers.

Did I like it? Not that much. I never really caught the boat going to Alice Cooper island although I’ve always found his interviews very watchable. Both “Poison” and its parent album “Trash” reached No 2 on the UK charts.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The Primitives	Sick Of It	I wasn’t but I didn’t buy it
2	Gloria Estefan	Don’t Wanna Lose You	Nah
3	Inner City	Do You Love What You Feel	Big no
4	Kirsty MacColl	Days	No but its on my Best Of compilation of hers called Galore
5	Gun	Better Days	No but I bought a later single called “Shame On You” which had a live version of Better Days on it
6	Paul McCartney	This One	Nope
7	The Stone Roses	She Bangs The Drums	No but I have the album
8	Simple Minds	Kick It In	No
9	Bros	Too Much	I did not
10	Simply Red	A New Flame	It’s a no from me
11	Sonia	You’ll Never Stop Me From Loving You	Of course not
12	Alice Cooper	Poison	And finally…no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000hjm1/top-of-the-pops-27071989

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/2019/07/july-26-august-8-1989.html

TOTP 13 JUL 1989

Posted on April 22, 2020 by 80stastic

It’s mid July in the long, hot Summer of 1989 and TOTP has a new co-host making her debut on the show. Jakki Brambles had actually been a Radio 1 DJ for a whole year before she got her shot on TOTP having presented the weekday early evening show initially before progressing to the drivetime show and finally replacing Gary Davies in the lunchtime slot. I also have definite memories of her working with Simon Mayo on his breakfast show after replacing Sybil Ruscoe as the weather and travel reporter.

I wasn’t a fan possibly due to her conscious decision to brand herself as Jakki with two ‘k’s and an ‘i’. Could she have been any more 80s?! At the end of her time at Radio 1, she relocated to San Francisco to try her hand at American broadcasting and decided to adopt the rather more mature and professional looking Jackie spelling of her name. Following a move to Los Angeles, she became GMTV’s showbiz reporter and eventually returned to these shores to become one of the Loose Women.

She’s been paired with Bruno Brookes for her TOTP debut, let’s see how it went….

…ah, the lesser spotted Danny Wilson are in the studio. Probably very much seen as being of the same ilk as The Kane Gang, Love & Money and Deacon Blue (sometimes rather lazily labelled as ‘sophisti-pop’), the Dannys also had a bit of quirkiness about them I always thought which ensured that they didn’t take themselves too seriously. Take for example “The Second Summer Of Love”, written on a short break between promotional interviews by Gary Clark as a joke after some friends of his had gotten into the acid house rave scene that the press had given the label the second summer of love. Originally just a-minute-and-a-half long, the band’s US label bosses heard something in it that they thought would make an airplay hit and asked the trio to expand it. A bridge and harmonica solo were added and suddenly they were back in the charts (though not in the US where ironically it was never released as a single). My point remains though that the track wasn’t consciously composed as a hit single, they were a bit more organic than that.

I stated in my last post that parent album “BeBop Moptop” was most likely to be found in charity shops these days but I’ve just checked and it is now on Spotify (it wasn’t until very recently) so fill your boots. All it requires now is the deluxe re-issue treatment on Cherry Red Records…

As for their performance here, I’m not sure why the other two guys (Kit Clark and Ged Grimes) were instrument less and wearing white gloves but, not for the first time in this blog, it reminded me of this…

Some weird segue shit from Bruno Brookes next as he thanks the audience at home for staying in to watch their ‘favourite rock show and all that’….’favourite rock show’ Bruno? I’m pretty sure to was a pop music show – the clue’s in the title. Yes you could sometimes get rock acts on like Guns N’ Roses and Bon Jovi but the premise of the show was that it was based around the national charts that were a broad church to say the least and certainly not just rock orientated. Ok, well let’s test Bruno’s theory and see how many genuine rock acts are featured on the show then starting with…

…Bette Midler with “Wind Beneath My Wings”! Well, you can’t get much more rock chick than Bette can you?! Apparently ‘The Divine Miss M’ wasn’t too jazzed about the song initially. In a Times interview from 2009 she said:

“It’s really grown on me. When I first heard it, I said, ‘I’m not singing that song,’ but the friend who gave it to me said, ‘If you don’t sing it I’ll never speak to you again’, so of course I had to sing the damned song. Whatever reservations I might have had I certainly don’t have any more.”

Not surprising really as it gave her a US No 1 record and the country’s 7th best selling single of the whole year.

Eighteen years later, some tosser from London’s Burning jumped on the Robson and Jerome bandwagon, released his own version of the song and bagged himself a no 3 hit…

OK, eyes down for a Bruno Brookes rock act….and we have No 22 which is De La Soul with “Say No Go”. Hmm, I’m not sure a hip hop trio who were a driving force behind the jazz rap movement could really be described as rockers do you Bruno? Oh and look at him gurning and saying “Real funkyyyy!” behind Jakki Brambles as she introduces them. Dickhead.

Parent album “3 Feet High and Rising”, with its fluorescent flowers artwork and cartoony text, introduced the world to the group’s concept of ‘D.A.I.S.Y. Age’ which was meant to symbolise a withdrawal from the prevalent gangsta rap image of the times. And what did ‘D.A.I.S.Y. ‘ stand for? According to Wikipedia it was an acronym standing for “da inner sound, y’all” which sounds far more hip than Bruno Brookes’ “Real funkyyyy!” description.

“Say No Go” peaked at No 18.

This is a really bizarre video and probably the wrong side of creepy as well. Unbelievably, Michael Jackson was still releasing tracks from his “Bad” album as singles some two years after it first came out! Indeed, “Liberian Girl” was the ninth to be pulled from it (although it wasn’t released in the US). For me, it was an absolutely nothing song, devoid of any substance or interest. Even the Swahili phrase at the song’s beginning is a load of baloney as Swahili is not spoken in Liberia. The star studded video only substantiated my opinion as, for me, it was just one almighty distraction from what was basically a substandard song.

I’m not going to list all the celebrities included in the video (I’m sure you’ll be able to name most of them yourselves) but there is something distinctly unsettling about the fact that Jacko essentially cast himself in the role of voyeur, especially given everything we now know about him subsequent to 1989. I hate all the sycophantic applauding and “Michael , we love you!” shouts from the ensemble as he reveals himself (as it were) at the denouement. Just excruciating.

“Liberian Girl” was Jackson’s final single of the 80s and peaked at No 13 in the UK.

My friend Robin described the next act to me recently as a ‘quintessential 80s coffee table wankfest’. I make him right on this one. Waterfront were just paint-by-numbers pop pap weren’t they? “Cry” was their only UK chart hit (it was a much bigger deal in the US as Jakki advises in her intro) but thankfully for all our sakes, despite releasing a string of other singles, none of them got anywhere near the Top 40.

Oh and doesn’t the lead singer look like the flashy, male chauvinist Kirk St Moritz character from 80s sitcom Dear John? See him at 0.45 seconds into the clip below and judge for yourself…

The never ending saga of Gloria Estefan’s nomenclature trundles on until the very end of the decade it seems. I’ve written many times about the convoluted tale of quite when and how Gloria lost her Miami Sound Machine without ever really getting to the bottom of it and now another twist. Apparently “Don’t Wanna Lose You” was the first official solo release by Gloria being the lead single from her also debut solo album “Cuts Both Ways”. I’m sure some of her previous recent releases didn’t have the Miami Sound Machine brand attached to them though. Certainly when she performed “Can’t Stay Away From You” on TOTP she did so entirely solo and without backing. Oh whatever. All I do know is that there is no way that Gloria could be considered a rock act therefore denying any grist to Bruno Brookes and his rock mill nonsense.

“Don’t Wanna Lose You” is a nice enough ballad I suppose but for me it didn’t stray too far from the original blueprint of Gloria’s catalogue of romantic love songs. Previous hits “Anything For You” and “Can’t Stay Away From You” sounded just the same to me. They even all included ‘you’ as the last word in the title! Talk about formulaic! Her fans around the world didn’t seem to mind though. “Don’t Wanna Lose You” was a No1 song in the US and a Top 10 hit over here with the album going platinum in both territories.

So we all knew what Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway had been doing since the demise of The Housemartins due to The Beautiful South’s immediate impact on the charts with “Song For Whoever” but what about Norman Cook? The cheeky faced bassist reappeared with one MC Wildski (not to be confused – as I did – with Janet Street Porter’s ex-boyfriend Normski) and a very danceable tune called “Blame It On The Bassline”.

Norman was taking his new career in a totally different direction to his old bandmates with samples a plenty woven into the basic premise of “Blame It On The Boogie” by The Jacksons. For me, it worked pretty well but could any of us have foreseen the career in dance music that would take off for Cook at this point? He would of course go onto huge success under an army of aliases and band names including Beats International, Freak Power and most famously Fatboy Slim. Indeed, it was reported in 2008 that he held the Guinness World Record for the most Top 40 hits under different names! Makes the whole Gloria Estefan / Miami Sound Machine saga look like very small fry indeed. “Blame It On The Bassline” was the only release to be promoted under his own name and yet confusingly, it turned up on the debut album by his collective Beats International called “Let Them Eat Bingo”. It peaked at No 29.

The video was a bit of knockabout fun with some very random famous faces in it including Janice Long, Tom ‘Lofty’ Watt and most bizarrely Arsenal footballer Paul Davis.

Despite her wonderful, critically regarded legacy, Kirsty MacColl only ever had seven Top 40 hits …and three of those were “Fairytale of New York”! “Days” was the fourth of those and was of course a cover of The Kinks 1968 track. I remember being surprised that this was a hit at the time, not because it wasn’t any good (it certainly was) but because, ignoring her Xmas renaissance moment with The Pogues, she hadn’t been anywhere near the charts for over four years. Her lack of commercial success is absolutely criminal – so many good songs, so few sales.

The video is very Mary Poppins but kind of suits her wistful treatment of the song. “Days” peaked at No 12, exactly the same position that the original achieved. A Smash Hits article of the time led with the headline ‘So who is this woman who looks like Madge from Neighbours?!?’. It’s not the first time that the publication had been less than reverential to a huge talent but this really did show a lack of knowledge, if not by the editorial team but at least on behalf of their readership. Not a headline that has aged well.

Right, a check on how Jakki B’s TOTP debut is going. Is it me or does that not seem to be an awful lot of chemistry between her and Bruno? The Kinks reference at the end of Kirsty’s video seems a bit frosty to me. Onwards though and from Jakki B to Jazzi P who is the featured artist on the new LA Mix single“Get Loose”. I’ve got very little to say about this one, mainly because I can’t remember it. Not my thing at all but I did learn the other day that apparently the ‘LA’ part of the act’s name is nothing to do with Los Angeles and is actually the initials of founding member Les Adams. You can see why they didn’t go with Les Adams Mix which sounds like the resident DJ at a working men’s club disco night.

A non sensical intro from Bruno Brookes next….

“All this running around we’re doing here like nobody’s business but there’s a very good reason for it now because we’ve got the best view of the new entry at number 33, here comes Simply Red‘. OK, I’ll go with it Bruno…yet instead of cutting to Hucknall et al in the studio, we get the official video! Eh? Why would you need to run about in the studio to get to the gantry to watch a pre recorded video? Yes, it is essentially a basic performance of the song on a stage but it’s not the TOTP stage. Weird.

“A New Flame” was indeed the title track of the band’s latest album as Jakki Brambles informs us and of all the singles released from it, I thought this was the best for what it’s worth. When I say ‘best’ I of course mean ‘least objectionable’.

I have a distinct memory of this song which involves the first job I finally managed to get having left Polytechnic a few weeks earlier. Having dejectedly gone to the Job Centre one Friday morning expecting very little, there was a job as an insurance clerk for AA Insurance Services going. I asked for details and was told to get myself to their office that afternoon for an interview. To my amazement I got it and was told to start the following Monday. Some time later as I was walking to work one day, my boss pulled up and gave me a lift to the office. The song that he was playing on his tape deck? “A New Flame” of course. In fact he had the whole album as I could see the cassette case on his dashboard. I knew then that a career with the firm was not for me.

“A New Flame” the single peaked at No 17 but the album was a massive success going 7 x platinum in the UK and being the second best selling album of the whole year.

Top 10

10. Prince – “Batdance”

9. Bette Midler – “Wind Beneath My Wings”

8. Bobby Brown – “On Our Own”

7. Gladys Knight – “Licence To Kill”

6. Chaka Khan – “Ain’t Nobody”

5. Pet Shop Boys – “It’s Alright”

4. The Beautiful South – “Song For Whoever”

2. London Boys – “London Nights”

2. Sonia – “You’ll Never Stop Me From Loving You”.

1. Soul II Soul – “Back To Life”: A fourth and final week at the top for Jazzie B (any relation to Jazzi P?) and the gang. It tuns out that my aforementioned friend Robin (the Waterfront hater) used to know one of the women dancing in the video. They worked together at the BBC. The one in the red top in the jungle setting maybe? That’s nothing though. I was once in the same room as Chesney Hawkes’ drummer.

The play out video is Bobby Brown‘s fourth consecutive hit of the year. “On Our Own” was taken from the soundtrack to Ghostbusters II and was a No 2 smash in the US and a No 4 hit over here. I’ve been very uncomplimentary about Mr Brown in this blog in the past but I have to say I didn’t actually mind this one. I always quite liked the opening lyric ‘Too hot to handle, too cold to hold’.

As with the Michael Jackson and Norman Cook videos earlier, the promo for “On Our Own” features several guest appearances by celebrities including Donald Trump alongside scenes from the movie and of course it means a second appearance on the same show for Dan Ackroyd. Its his third TOTP outing in total though as he was on the USA For Africa “We Are The World” video in 1985. I spent three years at Polytechnic being called ‘Dan’ due to my resemblance to Mr Ackroyd at the time. I can think of worse people to look like I suppose, like Mick Hucknall for example.

P.S. That final count on rock acts on tonight’s TOTP? I’m saying zero.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Danny Wilson	The Second Summer Of Love	No but I bought the album Bebop Moptop
2	Bette Midler	Wind Beneath My Wings	Nope
3	De La Soul	Say No Go	No but my wife had the album 3 Feet High And Rising
4	Michael Jackson	Liberian Girl	A big no
5	Waterfront	Cry	No but I think it was on some Radio 1 Mark Goddier compilation album that I had.
6	Gloria Estefan	Don’t Wanna Lose You	Nah
7	Norman Cook and MC Wildski	Blame It On The Bassline	I didn’t but it I had the Beats International album it’s on
8	Kirsty MacColl	Days	No but its on my Best Of compilation of hers called Galore
9	LA Mix featuring Jazzi P	Get Loose	Get real more like. No
10	Simply Red	A New Flame	It’s a no from me
11	Soul II Soul	Back To Life	No but I think my wife had their album
12	Bobby Brown	On Our Own	No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000hbdw/top-of-the-pops-13071989

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/2019/10/july-12-25-1989.html

TOTP 16 MAR 1989

Posted on February 19, 2020 by 80stastic

We’re back to the usual format after last weeks Comic Relief special and it’s another outing for the Radio 1 Breakfast Show team of Simon Mayo, Sybil Ruscoe and Rod McKenzie as joint presenters.

First on tonight are New Order whom we find in the middle of their balearic period. Latest single “Round And Round” was not an unlikely cover of the Spandau Ballet track but was taken from their “Technique” album and is supposedly written about the band’s increasingly fragile relationship with Factory Records owner Tony Wilson. Indeed, the band didn’t even want “Round And Round” released as a single; they preferred the track “Vanishing Point” but were overruled by Wilson.

In this performance, we see lots shots of the studio audience which, as mentioned in a previous post, seemed to be part of the new staging and look of the show. It was as if the TOTP producers were trying to create the impression that we were actually witnessing a concert rather than a pop music show.

This period in New Order’s history didn’t so an awful lot for me – maybe because I wasn’t likely to find myself out clubbing in Ibiza till all hours. “Round And Round” has all the New Order sonic trademarks but it just doesn’t seem to go anywhere to me.

Now I never knew this before but “World In Motion” wasn’t the first time that New Order had attempted a football themed song. No, the B-side of “Round And Round” was a song called “Best And Marsh” which was the theme tune to a Granada TV show hosted by the aforementioned Tony Wilson called Best And Marsh – The Perfect Match. The show was pretty much as it sounded with Wilson interviewing ex-footballers George Best and Rodney Marsh about their 1970s glory years. As for the track, it isn’t much kop in my opinion.

“Round And Round” peaked at No 21.

Talk about getting your money’s worth! This is the third time that the show has used the same clip of Gloria Estefan performing “Can’t Stay Away From You” in the TOTP studio. Maybe its usage was linked to the song’s length. Certainly in this version (which may well have been edited for the show) it clocks in at a just under two minutes. No wonder they showed it a few times!

“Can’t Stay Away From You” was at its No 7 peak.

Yet another song (and performer in this case) that I just can’t recall at all. Chanelle? Did she do a couple of singles with Alexander O’Neal?

*checks internet*

Nope – that was Cherrelle apparently. I can’t actually see much about Chanelle online at all. All my searches keep finding Chanelle Hayes from Big Brother who was one half of the ‘Chiggy’ couple and who also confusingly had a go at being a pop star in 2008.

The 1989 Chanelle is in the charts with “One Man” which sounds like it could easily have been a Ce Ce Peniston hit from the early 90s. Apparently it got to No 16 but it clearly passed me by.

The Breakers are back and start off with Alyson Williams and “Sleep Talk” and guess what? I don’t remember this one either! I know her name (probably because of the unusual spelling of her first name) but this track? Nada. Did she have another hit?

*checks internet again*

Yes she did with something called “I Need Your Lovin” in 1990.

*plays “I Need Your Lovin”*

OK – That one sounds familiar but “Sleep Talk”? I must have (ahem) sleep walked through it.

This next one I do remember as my wife (girlfriend in ’89) is a big Elvis Costello fan and she bought the album that “Veronica” is taken from (“Spike”) on the day of release. Now she won’t like me saying it but in my opinion, this was still a period in his career when Elvis wrote proper songs with discernible melodies before it all went a bit too earnest and he forgot to add a tune to his lyrics.

Around this time, there was also a big fuss made about the collaboration between Costello and Paul McCartney who co-wrote a number of tracks on the album including this lead single. In return, Elvis helped write three tracks on McCartney’s next album “Flowers In The Dirt” including his lead single “My Brave Face”. It was a symbiotic relationship that bore fruit for both parties. “Veronica” saw Elvis return to the Top 40 for the first time in three years whilst “Spike” achieved gold status sales. Meanwhile, McCartney’s album did even better going to No 1 in the charts and going platinum with sales of 300,000 units.

I quite liked this era’s material from both these musical giants. In 1994, I saw Elvis live in concert at Manchester (alongside my wife obviously) and he put on a great show I have to say.

Kim Wilde‘s purple patch that had lasted since the Summer of ’88 and included three Top 10 hits and a platinum selling album was just starting to over ripen by this point. It was probably pushing it a bit for label MCA to have released a fifth single from that album (“Close”) and therefore its peak position of No 32 shouldn’t have been a big surprise. “Love In The Natural Way” isn’t a bad pop tune with its almost euphoric chorus but it didn’t have the immediate appeal of something like “You Came” to my ears. Although probably one of Kim’s least remembered hits, it does have its own little unique place in her career as it was her last release and hit of the 80s, the decade that launched her and saw her become the biggest selling British female solo artist.

Another New Model Army single?! Weren’t they in the Breakers just the other week? Well I’ve checked and they were with the “Stupid Questions” single. Like its predecessor, this one (“Vagabonds”) was taken from the “Thunder And Consolation” album and also like its predecessor, it peaked outside the Top 30 (No 37 if you’re counting). In a case of remarkable consistency , the album would spawn one further single release and guess what? That did exactly the same chart wise peaking at No 37 as well (I did say exactly).

As with “Stupid Questions”, I don’t recall “Vagabonds” at all and whilst not really something I would have been listening to back then, it sounds pretty good to me now. I may have mentioned this before but I have a friend who met her husband via a New Model Army fan forum. I’ve also got a friend who met their partner via a shared disliking of ex Man Utd midfielder Paul Scholes. However, I don’t know anybody who loves New Model Army and hates Paul Scholes.

How about this for a transformation?! Not only have this next lot had a complete image overhaul but they’ve even changed their name (well shortened it anyway). I first became aware of Fuzzbox back in ’86 when they went by the name of We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Going To Use It and their single “Rules And Regulations” somehow found its way onto Radio 1’s playlists. I say somehow because it was quite an anarchic sound with its punky guitars and Poly Styrene style vocals. Then there was their image – all day-glo coloured , gravity defying hair and DIY dress sense. They were very unlikely pop stars which may explain why they’d only breached the Top 40 once before this point with their “Love Is The Slug EP”.

Fast forward a couple of years and they looked and sounded unrecognizable in this performance to promote their new single “International Rescue”. Where were the crazy haircuts and what was with the co-ordinated outfits? Yes, I got it that it was in keeping with the Thunderbirds theme but even so. They looked so groomed and stylized. Plus, there had obviously been a deliberate decision to promote singer Vickie Perks as some sort of sex symbol, pushing her out front with a distinct amount of flesh on display. When asked in Smash Hits magazine if the rest of the group got fed up with her getting all the attention, Vickie replied “Um, well, I don’t think so. I think they prefer it” before telling the readers that the rest of them weren’t arsed about having their photos taken and anyway, she wanted to go on and do solo stuff and acting so it was good practice for her. Perhaps an insight here into why the group never lasted.

As for their new sound, it was so polished compared to the rough and readiness of their earlier material. It seemed liked a very conscious decision to finally make them into the proper charts stars that their newly signed to major record label WEA clearly believed that they could be. It all seemed to be panning out swimmingly as well. “International Rescue” missed the Top 10 by just one place and follow up single “Pink Sunshine” went Top 20 as well. One further chart hit and a Top 5 album (“Big Bang!”) were achieved before their time in the (possibly pink) sunshine was over.

Watching this performance back, whilst Vicky seems to have taken to her new role effortlessly, the rest of the band seem a bit bemused by it all and unsure of what they should be doing to me. Eventually though they relax a bit and certainly drummer Tina O’Neill has got her countdown cameo down to a tee.

I liked this new version of the band and thought they probably should have got even more success than they did. The new music was definitely poppier but with an edge to it as well. Sybil Ruscoe describes the band at the song’s end as being “Possibly the best thing to come out of Birmingham since Aston Villa I think”. One in the eye for all Birmingham City fans there then.

After a year’s sabbatical throughout the whole of 1988, Madonna finally re-emerged and brought a shitload of controversy with her. In a previous post I mentioned that the Pepsi sanitized commercial to promote her comeback single “Like A Prayer” had aired around the world one day before the release of the official promo for the track on MTV. The multinational corporation had been pleased with the viewer response and all boded well for their commercial tie in with Madge. Fast forward 24 hours and they found themselves caught up in a worldwide backlash against the singer and were forced to drop their entire association with her. Madonna was accused of blasphemy and looking to sell her music on the back of it. Even the Pope got involved and urged fans to boycott her shows scheduled for Italy.

I’m not sure where I was when I first saw the “Like A Prayer” video (it may have been on this very episode of TOTP) but whenever and however the circumstances, the video itself was unforgettable. That’s not to say it was good but the imagery used in it and the controversy it evoked have stayed with me these past 30 odd years.

Watching it back from that temporal distance, it strikes me as what my old Poly friend John would have described as a ‘confused mess of a film’. Quite what was it trying to say? There’s so much going on in the video that it’s hard to process it all. You’ve got all the religious imagery, racial tension and stereotyping themes and of course possibly the most controversial element of all, the burning crosses.

The song – yes there was an actual song in among all this which tends to get overlooked – indeed it was Madonna’s first new material in nearly three years so should have been a big enough deal anyway – would quickly go to No 1 here and in the US so there’ll be ample more opportunity to dissect it all but for now I’ll let the people at Everything Wrong With give their take on the video…

‘A happy face, a thumpin’ bass, for a lovin’ race!’ Yes! It’s Soul II Soul time. At the forefront of the UK soul funk scene, the band would leave a legacy of ground breaking work that it still revered to this day. I say band but they were more of a collective really with Jazzie B and Caron Wheeler its two most recognizable faces. “Keep On Movin” was actually their second single (though the first I had ever heard) and took them direct into the mainstream with a Top 5 hit. Debut album “Club Classics Vol. One” would become a No 1 seller whilst also achieving critical plaudits as well. Indeed , in 2004 Q Magazine voted the album No 28 in its list of the 50 Greatest British Albums Ever.

I wasn’t a big Soul II Soul fan though I have to admit. I quite liked follow up single and No 1 hit “Back To Life” but I would be lying if I said I was really taken by them. Just being honest.

Top 10

10. Living In A Box – “Blow The House Down”

9. S’Xpress – “Hey Music Lover”

8. Michael Ball – “Love Changes Everything”

7. Gloria Estefan – “Can’t Stay Away From You”

6. Paula Abdul – “Straight Up”

5. Sam Brown – “Stop!”

4. Donna Summer – “This Time I Know It’s For Real”

3. Bananarama and Lalaneeneenoonoo – “Help”

2. Madonna – “Like A Prayer”

1. Jason Donovan – “Too Many Broken Hearts”: Right, I’ve double checked the facts with my friend Robin and his/my Jason Donovan story is cleared for take off. So, I’ll begin…

Robin worked for the BBC for many years and in that time came to know the CBBC presenter Andi Peters. When Peters left the BBC to take charge of music and youth programming at LWT, one of the shows that he made in that role was called The Noise which aired in the Autumn of 1996 for 12 episodes in the slot just before ITV’s The Chart Show. The Noise was a pop music show featuring live in-studio performances, interviews and features and Peters invited my mate Robin to help out on the show behind the scenes.

On one show, Robin happened to walk past the green room and saw a guy looking very perplexed at the coffee machine, tapping the sides of it, frustratingly pushing buttons etc. Actually managing to get some coffee out of it seemed beyond him. Robin went over to help him and it turned out that the confused individual was in fact Jason Donovan who had been booked as a guest on the show. Jason was not in the best of states as he’s been out on a ‘bit of a bender’ the night before* and had turned up at the LWT south bank studios with sick still in his beard. Robin decided the best course of action was to escort Donovan to make up where they de-fooded his stubble and made him presentable for national TV. Apparently it wasn’t his finest TV appearance – he couldn’t remember the names of any of his hit singles and didn’t realize when the live broadcast had actually finished. Oh dear.

*On a serious note, Donovan admitted to having had a drug habit in the mid to late 90s but has been drug free since the birth of his first child in 2000.

Fortunately for Jason, there doesn’t seem to be any footage of his appearance available on the internet. Fortunately for Robin, neither is there any footage of him doing the conga with The Spice Girls who also appeared on a later show. Indeed, all I can find is the show’s title sequence below:

Including his duet with Kylie, Jason would notch up four No 1 singles during his pop career whilst his debut album “Ten Good Reasons” was the biggest selling LP of 1989.

For me, “Paradise City” was the point where Guns N’ Roses really became a big deal in the UK. They had already long since achieved this status in the US but over here, we had a been a bit slower on the uptake. Previous singles “Sweet Child O’Mine ” and “Welcome To The Jungle” had both been Top 40 hits but both had only managed a peak of No 24 (with the latter song needing to take two attempts to achieve even that). “Paradise City” changed all of that as it went Top 10 (No 6 to be exact). Supposedly Slash’s favourite Guns N’ Roses song, it would kick start a run of 13 UK Top 20 hits (including 11 Top 10 and 4 Top 5).

Having been previously impervious to the band, I have a memory of seeing the video on ITV’s Chart Show and thinking ‘OK, I get it now. These guys are in it for the long haul’. I think it was the double time finale to the track where it all goes a bit apeshit that finally convinced me.

In the aftermath of the single’s success, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” was duly re-released in the UK and it matched the success of “Paradise City” by also peaking at No 6. Guns N’ Roses were here to stay …until they weren’t but that’s a whole other blog in itself.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I buy it?
1	New Order	Round And Round	Nope
2	Gloria Estefan	Can’t Stay Away From You	But I could stay away from you Gloria – no
3	Chanelle	One Man	Never heard of it
4	Alyson Williams	Sleep Talk	Yawn – no
5	Elvis Costello	Veronica	No but my wife had the album
6	Kim Wilde	Love In The Natural Way	Nah
7	New Model Army	Vagabonds	No
8	Fuzzbox	International Rescue	Don’t think I did
9	Madonna	Like A Prayer	No but it’s on my Immaculate Collection CD
10	Soul II Soul	Keep On Movin’	That would be another no
11	Jason Donovan	Too Many Broken Hearts	No but my younger sister had his album
12	Guns N’ Roses	Paradise City	Not the single but I think I had the album

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000f8x5/top-of-the-pops-16031989

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/2019/03/march-8-21-1989.html

TOTP 02 MAR 1989

Posted on February 12, 2020 by 80stastic

We’ve made it all the way to March 1989 in this journey through the TOTP archives. I’m a 20 year old student at Sunderland Polytechnic approaching the final few months of my time there and in complete denial that my three years in the higher education bubble was coming to an end. I had no idea what I would do once it all finished; I had no career plan, no temporary job lined up even and as it stood, I would be returning to my parental home in Worcester once my student house contract was up.

Never mind though, I’m still with my girlfriend of the last two years and I’m actually quite busy writing my final year dissertation which is all about the mechanics of the music industry and trying to identify the criteria that makes a pop song commercially successful. All that other grown up stuff can wait for now. Given my pressing dissertation deadline, I would probably have been taking a very keen interest in the pop charts at this time and no doubt TOTP would have been a part of that. Wonder if any of these acts made it into my final draft…

Tonight’s presenters are old pro Gary ‘Safe Hands’ Davies and the increasingly excitable Anthea ‘Line Fluffer’ Turner. Bet she can’t make it through the show without messing something up. There’s no errors in the intro to the first act though who are Living in A Box with “Blow The House Down”. When they first burst onto the pop scene I’m sure they used to wear suits but they’ve relaxed the dress code here with some absolutely horrible togs. The jackets they are all wearing aren’t quite as revolting as Bruno Brookes’ catastrophic creation of last week but they’re pretty nasty all the same.

Not that I gave it much thought at the time but lead singer Richard Darbyshire really had quite the voice. On the band’s official website, they describe him as ‘one of the greatest blue-eyed soul voices of all time’ – I assume they mean Darbyshire and not his replacement and current vocalist Kenny Thomas who I thought was dreadful – which may be overstating the case rather but there’s no denying the strength of his voice nor his range. Later in the year they released their big ballad “Room In Your Heart” which was a Top 5 hit and demonstrated that Darbyshire wasn’t all about stomping uptempo pop tunes but could also handle the slower stuff as well.

The band are still on the nostalgia circuit (sans Darbyshire) playing those 80s package tours where each artists gets three songs long slots and I’m guessing that their set list writes itself and is pretty much the same for every gig. Start with a bang with “Blow The House Down”, bring the mood down with the aforementioned “Room In Your Heart” and end with their biggest and most well known hit, the titular “Living In A Box”. Job done! If that sounds reductive and dismissive, it’s not meant to be. At least they have three big hits to play and a paying audience still.

“Blow The House Down” peaked at No 10.

Some studio trickery next as Gary Davies introduces Sam Brown performing “Stop!”. “At No 4 in the charts, over there …” he advises us as he points over his shoulder but I’m pretty sure this is just the same clip from the other week and that Sam is in fact not in the studio at all. The cut away from Davies to her gives it away rather as there is no long tracking shot from presenter to performer. Why did the TOTP producers feel the need to do that? To create the impression that every artists was desperate to appear on the show and would drop everything to do so? Maybe but we all know that wasn’t true.

I saw Sam Brown live a few years at legendary Hull venue The Adelphi as part of her group Homespun whom she formed with ex-Beautiful South guitarist Dave Rotheray and they were great. Of the two Browns in this week’s Top 10, I certainly preferred Sam. And how’s this for a musical peculiarity – the titles of all of her six solo studio albums so far partly spell out her surname:

Stop!
April Moon
(43) Minutes…
Box
ReBoot
Of the Moment

Sam says it was unintentional but vowed to continue the trend but has not released an album since 2007’s “Of The Moment”.

And there it is! Just two songs in and Anthea Turner makes her first cock up as she introduces Jason Donovan singing “Too Many Lonely Hearts”. Err, that’s “Too Many Broken Hearts” actually Anthea.

Ah yes, the moment we all knew was unavoidably coming has arrived. Jason Donovan, high on his Neighbours profile and that duet with Kylie, becomes a fully fledged pop star. Yes he’d already had one solo hit with “Nothing Can Divide Us” (originally earmarked for Rick Astley fact fans) but it was “Too Many Broken Hearts” that sealed the ~~kiss~~ deal. As with Kylie’s “I Should Be So Lucky”, the first time you heard this song you just knew it would be massive. That ridiculously catchy Stock, Aitken and Waterman sound meant that once heard, it was injected straight into your brain where it would remain as an ear worm for the rest of eternity whether you liked it or not. Resistance was futile.

My wife has always had a problem with the video for this one, specifically the part where Jase wanders around outside with that epic looking backdrop of mountain range and valley casually strumming a clearly unplugged electric guitar! Now whether he could actually play the damn thing or not is another matter entirely but who did the video director think they were kidding by making him mime with an electric guitar not plugged into an amp?!

“Too Many Broken Hearts” would not only go to No 1 but also end up as the fourth best selling UK single of 1989.

Anthea finally gets the song title right as we move into the next segue and we also see some rather unnecessarily insistent display of heterosexuality from Gary Davies in this exchange:

AT: “Too Many Broken Hearts” for Jason Donovan. Don’t you think he’s looking really hunky?

GD: I’m glad you think so, I don’t

Alright Gary! ! We get the picture! Look, I don’t know anything about Davies’ sexuality but thankfully, we now live in a world where TV presenters can out themselves on national TV and get masses of support from the public.

Before we get to the Breakers, if you were wondering what might have been on the other channels on this night back in 1989, you may well have seen this advert…

Yes it was just an advert for Madonna’s new single “Like A Prayer” but this was a very big deal at the time with a release being globally advertised before its actual release – the first time something like this had been done in the music industry. The Pepsi tie in was due to the fact that they were sponsoring her next world tour. An estimated 250 million people around the world viewed the commercial. The day after its premiere, Madonna released the actual music video for “Like a Prayer” and then the shit really hit the fan but that’s for another post…

Back to the Breakers and first up are Depeche Mode with a live version of their 1983 hit “Everything Counts”. How so? It was to promote the release of their live album “101” with the actual recording having been made at a gig at the Pasadena Rose Bowl as part of the Music for the Masses Tour in ’88. Whilst I recall there being a live album, I don’t really remember this version of “Everything Counts” being in the charts to be honest. Maybe it didn’t get that much airplay? It’s a great track though and I bought the studio version on its initial release when it made No 6. The live version didn’t sell as well peaking at No 22 in this country and it wasn’t a massive seller in the rest of Europe either although the album was.

I like the fact that played live, the band added some extras to the song like Alan Wilder, Martin Gore and Fletch interjecting ‘the graph’ and ‘the handshake’ backing vocals to counterpoint Gahan’s delivery. I think these were included on the original 12″ mix of the track six years previous. The huge crowd carrying on singing the song (which closed the set) long after the music has finished is really quite affecting.

Another Anthea gaffe next as she mispronounces “Wages Day” by Deacon Blue as “Wage Day”. One job Anthea, you had one job. Anyway, I much preferred this one to the band’s previous hit “Real Gone Kid”. It always sounded like a good, solid, proper record to me without all the distracting ‘ooo ooo’s of its predecessor. Although it only peaked at No 18, it paved the way for the release of No 1 album “When the World Knows Your Name” the following month which of course is what it was meant to do. I have a distinct memory of Annie Nightingale playing it as the first track on one of her Sunday night shows after the Top 40 chart rundown. The first song on her show was always a bit more mainstream than the rest of the playlist as I recall.

The special edition of the single included the band’s take on Julian Cope’s “Trampolene” which always seemed an odd choice to me but which works quite well I think.

Some more SAW treatment now as they turn their attention to disco diva Donna Summer. There’s a long standing perception that Mr Waterman and his mates resuscitated Donna’s career but in truth, the 80s hadn’t been a total washout for her. She’d had five UK Top 40 hits by this point in the decade one of which “She Works Hard For The Money”) had been also been a US Top 3 hit. However it is true that none of her hits in this country had gone Top 10. Enter SAW who not only wrote and produced “This Time I Know It’s For Real” for her but also all ten tracks on her album “Another Place And Time” (although Summer did have three co-writing credits as well).

As with “Too Many Broken Hearts”, you couldn’t get away from this song as it was played to death on radio. To me though, it was so safe and comfy compared to some of her groundbreaking material from earlier in her career like “I Feel Love” and “State Of Independence” that it did nothing for me. Revisionism has been kind to the SAW / Summer project though with Classic Pop magazine describing the album in 2018 as “a pop masterpiece”. Yeah, thanks but I’ll stick with her non Hit Factory (hot) stuff thanks.

“This Time I Know It’s For Real” peaked at No 3.

Not this lot again! Why were TOTP so keen to keep plugging god awful thrash rockers W.A.S.P.? They’ve definitely been on the show previously with one of their other singles (no I don’t remember which one and I don’t want to). This track is “Mean Man” and I’m sure that if I could be bothered to look it up, it sounded exactly the same as that previous hit.

What a weird intro from Anthea though! “Do you know a mean man?” she trills. WTF? Oh and is that the right pronunciation of the band name?

The final five songs have all been on before starting with Tyree featuring Kool Rock Steady and “Turn Up The Bass”. If you think that ‘boyeeee’ sample sounds familiar, it’s not just because you’ve heard it on reality TV soap Made In Chelsea where every annoying male cast member seems to say it constantly. No, it’s because, oh look here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why…

That's Flavor Flav saying "boyeeee", sampled from Public Enemy's "Cold Lampin' With Flavor" #TOTP

— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 7, 2020

“And you have just met the man who employs Mike Tyson’s hairdresser” advises Anthea at the track’s end. Cue Gary Davies trying his arm at comedy with a “Know what I mean Tyree” in a Frank Bruno accent. Did I say he was a safe pair of hands at the top of this post? He’s causing me to revise my opinion on that one. Yes, you could say he was trying to be topical as the famous Bruno v Tyson fight (the first one) had only just taken place five days prior to this broadcast against a backdrop of monumental media hype but it’s just not funny.

Some more studio sleight of hand next as Anthea introduces Gloria Estefan singing “Can’t Stay Away From You” (live no less) and points to her left but again it’s just a repeat of the performance she did the other week.

In 1992 Gloria released her first Best Of collection which proved to be a big seller at Xmas in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working at the time. So much so that we ran out of the cassette version on the day before Xmas Eve; a cardinal sin in the world of record retail. However, we knew we had some on order and we put our faith in Warren our Securicor delivery guy to deliver the goods…literally. Warren, who was a massive rock fan from Oldham (he probably liked W.A.S.P. actually) came through for us on Xmas Eve morning with the delivery we’d been hoping for. We were saved and the good people of Rochdale would not go Gloria-less that Xmas. Except…the bastards at Sony were out of stock so we got nishters from them. My manager Ian was stoical about it saying “Well, they won’t get it anywhere else in Rochdale today”. He was right as we turned away customer after customer in search of Gloria telling us that no retailer in the town had it.

If I felt any shard of sympathy for those disappointed souls it was knocked out of me by the end of trading as we got absolutely slaughtered by our customers who had clearly been sent insane by the pressure of Xmas and lost not just any semblance of manners but also their own sense of humanity as they cussed, swore and insulted all of our staff from start to finish. Peace and good will to all? What a load of bollocks!

Clearly the TOTP producers were putting a lot of faith in the attraction of artists performing live on the show around this time as here’s another one from Texas with “I Don’t Want A Lover”. If you watch closely you can see Sharleen Spiteri take a big intake of breath to compose herself before she launches into her vocal. She needn’t have worried as she nails it with this performance.

That “Southside” album that Gary Davies refers to in his intro would enter the charts at No 3 when released and achieve gold status sales but “I Don’t Want A lover” was the only hit single to come from it. Though not as strong as it’s lead single, I always quite liked “Everyday Now” which was the third single from it but peaked outside the Top 40 at No 44.

Anthea is still not finished with this awful example of presenting when she blunders in all over Davies’ link to lead us into the Top 10 countdown. To his credit, Gary just stops talking and tries to style it out but that look of surprise on his face gives him away,

Top 10

10. Gloria Estefan – “Can’t Stay Away From You”

9. Jason Donovan – “Too Many Broken Hearts”

8. Texas – ” I Don’t Want A Lover”

7. Bobby Brown – “My Prerogative”

6. S’Xpress – “Hey Music Lover”

5. Bananarama with Lalaneeneenoonoo – “Help”

4. Sam Brown – “Stop!”

3. Michael Ball – “Love Changes Everything”

2. Michael Jackson – “Leave Me Alone”

1. Simple Minds – “Belfast Child”: After affording them just two and a half minutes worth of airtime last week, the TOTP producers have given them the standard three minutes this time. When I was younger, as well as wanting to look like the obvious pop star candidates like Simon Le Bon (slim chance) George Michael (no chance) and Morten Harket (who the fuck was I kidding?!), I also had a more left field choice of pop star look that I would like to have achieved and that was Simple Minds guitarist Charlie Burchill. I know, I know but I still think he looks pretty cool in this video.

How many times has this one been on now? Three? For a song that peaked at No 13, that seems a bit like overkill.

Is there anything left to say about “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison? I got nothin’ (but a good time?) so I ‘ll leave it to Bill and Ted…

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Living In A Box	Blow The House Down	Don’t think so
2	Sam Brown	Stop!	No!
3	Jason Donovan	Too Many Broken Hearts	No but my younger sister had his album
4	Depeche Mode	Everything Counts (Live)	No – I bought the original version in ’83 though
5	Deacon Blue	Wages Day	Not the single but I bought the album
6	Donna Summer	This Time I Know It’s For Real	Nope
7	W.A.S.P.	Mean Man	Oh please!
8	Tyree featuring Kool Rock Steady	Turn Up The Bass	No chance
9	Gloria Estefan	Can’t Stay Away From You	But I could stay away from you Gloria – no
10	Texas	I Don’t Want A Lover	Don’t think I did
11	Simple Minds	Belfast Child	Not the single but I have it on one of their collection CDs
12	Poison	Every Rose Has Its Thorn	Not for me

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000f1lv/top-of-the-pops-02031989

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/2019/02/february-22-march-7-1989.html

TOTP 16 FEB 1989

Posted on February 7, 2020 by 80stastic

Airing two days after Valentine’s Day, this TOTP features…hmm…maybe four ballads and that’s not counting the two songs that actually have the word ‘lover’ in their titles as I’m not sure they count as love songs at all. Tonight’s presenters are Mark Goodier and Andy Crane who has a scarf around his neck in what appears to be Harry Potter gryffindor colours ( I could be wrong, I’m no expert).

Andy clearly likes his rock as he gets overly excited about first act Def Leppard. Props to him though as he actually gets a pop fact right – something that a lot of his fellow presenters seem unable to do – when he introduces “Rocket” as the sixth single from their “Hysteria” album. This would be the last single from The Lep* until a whole three years had passed and they released the execrable “Let’s Get Rocked” from their “Adrenalize” album.

To add some sparkle to the performance, the TOTP production team have got some pyrotechnics going off behind the band in time with the chorus but in truth nothing could enliven this piece of numbskull rock.

*Do people call them that like people refer to Led Zeppelin as The Zep? Actually does anybody call Led Zeppelin The Zep either?

This next song always struck me as an unlikely No 1 record although I always quite liked it. Unlikely? Well, there were a number of reasons. Firstly, we hadn’t seen much of Simple Minds for quite some time with just a live album (and Top 40 single lifted from it) their only product since the “Once Upon A Time” album in ’85. Was it possible that such a delay between new material may have lost some of their fan base?

Secondly, although their last two LPs had both been No 1 on the album chart they had never been anywhere near a No 1 single before with their previous best Top 40 placing being No 7 so they had no previous track record in that department.

Thirdly, the new single wasn’t a single at all but an EP (“Ballad Of The Streets EP”). Fourthly, the lyrical subject matter was decidedly political with the track that was getting all the airplay (“Belfast Child”) being a response to the Enniskillen bombing of ’87 when an IRA bomb killed 12 people during a Remembrance Day service. The other tracks on the EP were a cover of Peter Gabriel’s anti-apartheid protest song “Biko” and “Mandela Day” written in support of a then incarcerated Nelson Mandela- at a time when the charts were clogged up with SAW acts and house music tunes, this seemed very out of kilter with the prevailing zeitgeist.

Lastly, “Belfast Child” was 6:39 in length – hardly made to measure for Radio 1 playlists schedules. When it hit No 1, it was the second longest song in length to do so at the time after “Hey Jude” by The Beatles. Apart from all of that, it was a surefire chart topper!

As for the sound of this comeback, well it was unmistakably still Simple Minds in that it was epic, sweeping, dramatic…or….overblown, bombastic and shallow depending on your point of view. I tended towards the former. It famously incorporated the melody from Irish folk song “She Moved Through The Fair”which has been covered by loads of artists but the one I know best is probably this one…

Simple Minds followed up on their single success by releasing the album “Street Fighting Years” which was also No 1 and it spawned a further three hit singles (none of which made the Top 10 though).

The ‘is she solo now or still with Miami Sound Machine?’ debate is still in full flow next. Gloria Estefan is in the country for a studio performance of latest release “Can’t Stay Away From You” but she’s completely on her own up there on stage. Andy Crane introduces her just as ‘Gloria Estefan’ and the title caption also states the same. What say you officialcharts.com ?

* checks their database*

They’re showing it as being by Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine. I wonder if the confusion is down to the fact that this wasn’t the first time the song had been released. Initially it came out in May ’88 where it staggered to a high of No 88. This re-release made No 7 on the back of her recent breakthrough big hits such as “Anything For You”. Was a decision made in the light of that success to promote her as a solo brand? Does it matter 31 years later? Probably not.

To me, “Can’t Stay Away From You” sounded just like “Anything For You” and, whilst being a passable ballad, wasn’t anything that particularly held my interest. This personal studio performance though did help to propel it to No 7 in the charts.

Now another ballad to quote Mark Goodier and its glam metal rockers Poison again with “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”. There must have been an executive decision taken by the TOTP production team at this time to cram as many Top 40 hits into the show as possible as we get a paltry 1 minute and 30 seconds of this track before it is moved on. Of course, that may have been quite enough for some viewers.

Despite being best known for “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”, Poison actually accrued a further six Top 40 singles although I’m guessing most of us would be hard pressed to name more than one of them,

Here come the Breakers and we start with Edie Brickell & New Bohemians with “What I Am” although Mark Goodier rather lazily introduces this as just ‘Edie Brickell’ – no New Bohemians or song title being deemed to be required.

Edie seemed destined to be a huge star in the same way that Tracy Chapman had become a global success on the back of “Fast Car” just a few months before but somehow “What I Am” would prove to be her only hit in the US or UK.

I always quite liked this one – it was clearly very American but it also had that universal appeal so much so that 10 years later it became a much bigger hit in the UK thanks to the interpretation of it by Spice Girl Emma Bunton in collaboration with production team Tin Tin Out. The song actually became part of an unexpected chart battle with Bunton’s previous band member Gerri Halliwell for the No 1 spot. Ultimately Halliwell won that particular battle courtesy of her single “Lift Me Up” but it remains an episode of 90s music that is (understandably) overshadowed by the Blur v Oasis duke out.

Edie Brickell & New Bohemians peaked at No 31 in the UK Top 40 and No 7 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Here come the grebs, here come the grebs, here come, here come, here come the grebs…or grebos if you prefer. Yes it’s the fantastically named Pop Will Eat Itself with “Can U Dig It?” (not The Mock Turtles tune of course). I find the whole grebo movement really confusing as when I was at school, grebos were long, greasy haired heavy metal fans but somewhere along the way the phrase got re-appropriated by a scene that included The Wonder Stuff, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, Gaye Bikers On Acid and latterly (and perhaps tenuously Jesus Jones). And of course PWEI. Its sound was pretty diverse looking back featuring punk, hip hop, psychedelia electro-dance and multiple samples whilst the fashion revolved around long hair (often dreadlocks) and baggy shorts.

Now I was hardly a grebo (of either flavour) but I had at least heard of PWEI thanks to their cover of Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s “Love Missile F1-11” and nearly hit “Def Con One” from a couple of years previous but “Can U Dig It?” was the first time thy had breached the Top 40. A quick check of their discography shows that they had a lot more chart hits than I thought – 11 including “Can U Dig It?” which peaked at No 38 but only one Top Tenner. I quite liked their sound and certainly preferred their use of samples to all those house music hits that employed a similar technique.

Debbie Gibson was still having hits in 1989? Yes she was but not so much in this country. After her season in the sun that was 1988 she kind of disappeared from the UK’s view although she was still a big deal in her native US including this track “Lost In Your Eyes” which went all the way to No 1. Over here though we weren’t so sure and it struggled peaking at No 34. It’s an effective enough ballad but it has a paint by numbers feel to it to me.

At the time, we and probably Debbie herself couldn’t have known that the pop hits would soon dry up. Parent album “Electric Youth” would yield a further two UK Top 40 hits but there would be no further chart activity until her version of the Grease standard “You’re The One That I Want” with Craig McLachlan of Neighbours fame in 1993.

A debut TOTP performance for Texas next with “I Don’t Want A Lover”. As lead singer and the only female member of the band, Sharleen Spiteri was bound to attract a lot of attention in the same way that Debbie Harry did with Blondie, Annabella Lwin did in Bow Wow Wow and Tracy Tracy did with The Primitives (must be loads more examples too). However, she was adamant that she didn’t want to play on a feminine image and insisted on a very generic rock n roll wardrobe of jeans and jacket (often of the leather variety) for promoting the band initially. She looks great in this performance I think.

“I Don’t Want A Lover” peaked at No 8.

Sam Brown come on down! Your time in the spotlight has arrived! “Stop!” was Sam’s biggest hit by far making it all the way to No 4 but it had bombed on its initial release a year earlier – hence Goodier’s ‘try, try again’ comment in his intro to the song. It always felt like a very mature, accomplished sound to me (from a different era even) – maybe it was the accompanying strings arrangement.

Of course, you can’t talk about Sam Brown without mentioning that her Dad is chirpy cockney, feather haircut wearing rock ‘n’ roller Joe Brown and the press certainly made a big deal of that at the time. Apparently though, her Mum was also a singer and that’s her in this performance on backing vocals (on the left).

Sam would go onto have another hit from her album (also titled “Stop!”) with a cover of the Holland – Dozier – Holland song “Can I Get A Witness” and one final Top 40 entry in 1990 with her own composition “Kissing Gate” but nothing since then despite continuing to release material into the 90s and beyond.

As these TOTP repeats have gone deeper and deeper into the 80s, I have on more than one occasion been surprised that The Style Council were still having hits so close to the end of the decade. Consider me surprised once more as here they are in the Top 40 and on TOTP even as late as ’89 with “Promised Land”. This will be the final time that I am confounded by them though as this is their last ever Top 40 hit.

Apparently this was a cover of a house track by Chicago house producer Joe Smooth but I had no idea at the time so I presumably thought it was a Weller original. Either way, it never did much for me and I had long since stopped taking much notice of their output. What did my Weller disciple elder brother think of it? I’ve never had that conversation to be honest.

One thing of note though – I never knew that Mick Talbot had gone through a facial hair period! He’s gone full on beatnik with that jazz beard. Ironically, the camera man honing in on Weller sat at the piano looks like the previously clean shaven incarnation of Talbot to me.

“Promised Land” peaked at No 27.

Top 10

10. Robert Howard and Kym Mazzelle – “Wait”

9. Yazz – “Fine Time”

8. Morrissey – “Last Of The Famous International Playboys”

7. Roy Orbison – “You Got It”

6. Bobby Brown – “My Prerogative”

5. Holly Johnson – “Love Train”

4. Mike And The Mechanics – “The Living Years”

3. Michael Ball – “Love Changes Everything”

2. Simple Minds – “Belfast Child”

1. Marc Almond and Gene Pitney – “Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart”: Again! Look, I’ve literally nothing left to say about this one, other than I didn’t like it then, I don’t like it now and I’m glad this is the last time we’ll see it on TOTP.

The playout video is “Hey Music Lover” by S’Xpress. This was the dance outfit’s third consecutive hit single and the last to be taken from their debut album “Original Soundtrack” and was very much in the same mold as their previous hits but that worked for me.

Despite what it says in the embedded video below, this release saw a change of band name from S’Express to S’Xpress. This prompted much hilarity when radio interviewers would ask “…so why did you drop the E?” as the group would burst into uncontrollable laughter. Heh.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Def Leppard	Rocket	I certainly did not
2	Simple Minds	Belfast Child	Not the single but I have it on one of their collection CDs
3	Gloria Estefan	Can’t Stay Away From You	But I could stay away from you Gloria – no
4	Poison	Every Rose Has Its Thorn	Not for me
5	Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians	What I Am	Liked it but didn’t buy it
6	Pop Will Eat Itself	Can U Dig It?	I did dig it but not enough to spend money on it
7	Debbie Gibson	Lost In Your Eyes	No
8	Texas	I Don’t Want A Lover	Don’t think I did
9	Sam Brown	Stop!	No!
10	The Style Council	Promised Land	Nah
11	Marc Almond and Gene Pitney	Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart	But it wasn’t this record – no
12	S’Xpress	Hey Music Lover	No but my wife had their album on cassette

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000dt74/top-of-the-pops-16021989

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/2019/02/february-8-21-1989.html

TOTP Rewind – the 80s

My memories of 80s chart music

TOTP 30 NOV 1989

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Whole Show

TOTP 28 SEP 1989

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Some bed time reading?

TOTP 21 SEP 1989

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Some bed time reading?

TOTP 27 JUL 1989

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Some bed time reading?

TOTP 13 JUL 1989

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Some bed time reading?

TOTP 16 MAR 1989

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Some bed time reading?

TOTP 02 MAR 1989

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Some bed time reading?

TOTP 16 FEB 1989

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Some bed time reading?