Holly Johnson

TOTP 29 JUN 1989

Posted on April 15, 2020 by 80stastic

Tim Smith anyone? I don’t remember this guy at all. He’s (sort of) co-hosting this TOTP with the dependably over excited Anthea Turner and has got the gig presumably to introduce him to the UK’s pop fans as he’s just joined the Radio 1 roster of DJs as their latest recruit. I say ‘sort of’ because Anthea proceeds to do all the links after Smith is formally introduced at the top of the show. He’s finally given something to do when he runs through this week’s Breakers for us. A quick search of the internet reveals that he presented the weekend early show from 5 to 7 am on Radio 1 for about a year before hosting the UK Top 20 Chart Show on the BBC World Service for nearly 14 years! He’s co hosted the Steve Wright In The Afternoon show as well apparently. I wouldn’t know as I can’t stand Steve Wright and haven’t listened to him on the radio since about 1987. Let’s see how Tim’s TOTP debut went then….

Now I know that there was a third hit from Holly Johnson in 1989 and I also remember it being called “Atomic City”. Could I tell you anything about what it sounded like without watching this latest TOTP repeat first? Not a chance. Time to correct that then. See you in about three minutes…

…hmm. Well, it ain’t no “Love Train” (nor “Americanos” for that matter). Where was that easy flowing, lush pop production of those first two singles? It’s all a bit frenetic and desperate sounding to my ears and, dare I say it, comes over like a poor man’s Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The bass line (written by Dan “Instant Replay” Hartman apparently) seems to borrow very heavily from “Livin’ In America” by James Brown whilst Holly’s lyrics are still very preoccupied with game shows although I think the song’s main theme is some sort of anti-pollution, pro -environment message so probably ahead of its time. Presumably that’s why the guy on keytar is wearing a bio-hazard hazmat suit. Noble sentiments but the whole thing just comes across as a bit of a mess to me.

Also in a bit of a mess were Holly’s chart fortunes. After the double No 4 salvo that were his first two singles, “Atomic City” only made it to No 18. Worse was to follow. a fourth single from his “Blast” album called “Heaven’s Here” failed to make the Top 40 at all and Holly’s solo career was pretty much dead in the water. He would return to the UK charts once more time in 2012 as part of the Justice Collective single “”He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” which was a Xmas No1.

Queen are back in the charts with a second track pulled from their “The Miracle” album. Whereas previous single “I Want It All” had been of a much more traditional rock sound, to me, “Breakthru” was much more like the Queen style that the band had been pedalling since “The Works” in 1984. In fact, it reminded me of the “It’s A Hard Life” single from said album in that both start with a slow vocal harmony before the rest of the track kicks in. In the case of “Breakthru”, that intro was actually from a different song altogether called “A New Life Is Born,” an unreleased piece written by Freddie Mercury whilst the rest of the song is a Roger Taylor composition.

I recall a lot of fuss about the video at the time and I suppose it is quite memorable with the steam engine bursting through that brick wall with the band onboard atop it. According to Wikipedia:

‘The group was dissatisfied with this part because polystyrene could not stand the enormous air pressure buildup in the tunnel from the incoming train and the wall started breaking before the physical impact’.

If you watch it closely you can see why the band were miffed with the effect but I don’t recall anybody pointing it out at the time.

For me though, the band seemed to be treading water with “Breakthru” (which peaked at No 8) but then, in retrospect, it was astonishing that the band were releasing any new material let alone putting the effort into making visually memorable videos given the deteriorating state of Freddie Mercury’s health.

“Well we like these guys. It’s their third time on TOTP…” warbles Anthea as she introduces Double Trouble And The Rebel MC next and their single “Just Keep Rockin”. A third time?! And the song still hadn’t even made it into the Top 10?! Something doesn’t seem right about that. Their record plugger must have been very persistent. “And the single is still climbing..” protests Anthea just a little bit too much methinks. They should have been renamed ‘Triple Trouble And The Treble MC’.

Despite this over exposure, “Just Keep Rockin” failed to improve on its No 11 position where it found itself this week and never did crash the Top 10. I blame the white guy on keyboards who looks ridiculous with his pieces to camera*. I assumed he was saying ‘riddim’ but the official lyrics have it as ‘breathed in’. Hmm. Not sure about that. Undeterred, they did breach the Top 10 when follow up single “Street Tuff” did the business for them by peaking at No 3.

*This, from @TOTPFacts, explains everything…

Double Trouble's Leigh Guest (on the left) previously worked as a children's magic entertainer. Yeah, he looks the type. #TOTP

— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 10, 2020

Talking of three-peats, is this the third time that Donna Allen has been on the show? I think it is if you include her spot in the Breakers. Unlike Double Trouble, Donna’s appearances did the trick in terms of bagging her a Top 10 hit although it was a close run thing as “Joy And Pain” peaked at No 10.

I’ve got nothing left to say about this one except that it was heavily sampled by nineties electronic dancesters Strike for their 1995 No 4 hit “U Sure Do” …which I despised.

Finally it’s time for Tim Smith to have his moment in the spotlight as he introduces the Breakers starting with Monie Love and “Grandpa’s Party”. This then 18 year old was briefly a rap / hip hop sensation when she racked up a handful of Top 40 singles as the decade closed and the 90s opened. The ‘Grandpa’ of her single was apparently Afrika Bambaataa, “The Godfather” of hip hop…err…so not actually a grandfather but a godfather and I’m guessing not strictly speaking her grandfather either. Genealogy aside, was it any good? Well, I quite liked it but it wasn’t really my ~~thang~~ thing.

Monie described hip -hop at the time in a Smash Hits article as being “a school – the teachers are Public Enemy, my classmates are the likes of The Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, Boogie Down Productions, MC Lyte, MC Mellow…”. Nah, you’ve lost me now Monie.

“Grandpa’s Party” peaked at No 16.

Now I would have sworn that this lot were just a couple of ‘here today gone tomorrow’ purveyors of limp, anodyne pop like but it turns out that Waterfront were a much bigger deal than that but mainly in the US. This Welsh duo had been knocking on the door of the charts for a while with a couple of single releases that the likes of Smash Hits magazine had carried adverts for but which had failed to dent the Top 40. The release of “Cry” hit paydirt for them though. It was a respectable but medium sized No 17 hit in the UK but over the water (front) it was a much bigger deal. The single went Top 10 there and they became the first Welsh duo to achieve this feat in the US. At performing rights organization Broadcast Music Inc’s 50th Anniversary Celebrations, “Cry” was recognised as one of the ‘most played singles on US radio’ with nearly one million plays clocked up. And I just thought it was a pretty feeble, soppy pop song.

After Stock, Aitken and Waterman had done the seemingly impossible by making certified chart stars out of two unknown teenagers in The Reynolds Girls, we might have been forgiven for thinking that the whole Hit Factory phenomenon couldn’t get any more ridiculous but then we hadn’t bargained on Sonia. Appearing from nowhere, this diminutive Liverpudlian took the whole ludicrous story onto another chapter and this one included yet another No 1 single. The story of how she got her big break is well known – rocking up unannounced at a Radio City show at the Liverpool Hippodrome and insisting that Pete Waterman hear her sing and then being invited onto his radio show and given the chance to perform live. She did though already have an Equity card and had appeared in the sitcom Bread which she informed Waterman of according to Sonia so “he knew I wasn’t messing or a lunatic or anything like that…”. Well, quite.

As was their way, her debut single was written and recorded in a matter of hours and then before we could process who this bouncing, red haired, giggling Scouse lass was, “You’ll Never Stop Me From Loving You” was bounding its way up the charts on its way to No 1. More (but less successful) hits followed and Sonia became the first female UK artist to achieve five top 20 hit singles from one album. These were very strange times indeed.

Next up is yet another re-release of an old song that I don’t remember being in back in the charts nor why. I remember the song “Pop Muzik” by M of course as it was played constantly on the radio it seemed when it was originally a No 2 hit back in 1979. I would have been 11 or so and not fully converted to the weekly ritual of TOTP and therefore couldn’t have told you exactly what Mr M (or Robin Scott to give him his real name) looked like before his return to the TOTP studio 10 years on. On reflection, he looked a bit like John Waite but I’m guessing the “Missing You” singer never performed in a suit made of CDs. It probably seemed very decadent back in ’89 as I’m not sure what CD penetration levels were like in UK households at the time. Seen through 2020 eyes it all looks a bit naff with the then cutting edge format now reduced to an historical artefact almost.

The whole performance is a bit naff actually. Not sure what the deal with the woman in the day-glo pink and yellow swim suit and tutu skirt was all about whilst the giggling backing singers seem to be doing their own thing entirely somewhere left of stage. As for the song itself, I’m not sure that this ’89 remix sounded much different to the original and in any case, the latter was am almost perfectly formed illustration of how pop music could be. I think it still stands up as a marker in the timeline of pop.

“Pop Muzik ’89 Remix” peaked at No 15.

A confusing link from Anthea Turner now as she introduces Guns N’ Roses by saying “They’ve managed the hat trick. They’ve got two singles in the charts in the same week…”. Eh? A hat trick with two songs? How does that work then? I’m assuming she means that this is the band’s third hit single in a row after “Paradise City” and “Sweet Child ‘O Mine” had both made No 6 but even then, to be strictly accurate, “Patience” was their fifth hit single on the spin if you include “Welcome To The Jungle” and the original release of “Sweet Child ‘O Mine” back in ’88. Or does she mean their third in ’89? Oh FFS Anthea, you could have made your links clearer for the pedantically inflicted amongst us.

As for “Patience” itself, this was quite a departure after the all out ‘rawk ‘n’ roll’ sound of their previous hits. Taken from the mini album “G N’ R Lies”, its acoustic nature showed that the band had a sensitive side (sort of!) as well. I found this all a bit confusing, not just this softer sound but also the band’s release timeline.I’m guessing that the record company wanted to capitalise on their huge profile at the time and were keen to get any product into the market place but I’m not sure I was aware of the “G N’ R Lies” album so wondered where this track had come from. To add to my disorientation, they then went back to the “Appetite For Destruction” album for one final single release (“Night Train”) before the calendar year was up. Two years later they kept up the release schedule shenanigans by putting out two albums on the same day!

Apparently “Patience” is a karaoke favourite but maybe shouldn’t be. Here’s the songfacts.com website:

“Kimberly Starling of The Karaoke Informer says it’s one of the top 5 songs that tends to bomb: “It just eludes the average ear and when you get off key on this one it sounds to the ear like a turd in a punch bowl looks to the eye.”

How do you follow up an unexpected Hi-NRG Euro disco hit? Well if you’re London Boys you just put out the same song out again with a different title and bingo! Seriously though, “London Nights” was just about exactly the same as their first hit “Requiem” wasn’t it? Not content with recreating their formula sound, the duo then rocked up at the TOTP studio and did a near identical performance from the outfits to the dance steps. What a swizz as Smash Hits might have commented. Inevitably the UK record buying public fell for this shit all over again in their droves despite the fact that “Requiem” had only just fallen out of the Top 40 and it did even better than its predecessor by peaking at No 2. For the love of God!

Top 10

10. Donna Allen – “Joy And Pain”

9. D-Mob – “It Is Time To Get Funky”

8. Gladys Knight – “Licence To Kill”

7. Cyndi Lauper – “I Drove All Night”

6. Sinitta – “Right Back Where We Started From”

5. Jason Donovan – “Sealed With A Kiss”

4. U2 – “All I Want”

3. The Beautiful South – “Song For Whoever”

2. Prince – “Batdance”

1. Soul II Soul – “Back To Life”: In a bizarre quirk of fate, the band at No 3 in the charts this week would go on to have female vocalist in their line up with the surname Wheeler just as Soul II Soul owe a massive debt to the uncredited Caron Wheeler on this track. Alison Wheeler joined The Beautiful South in 2003 after the departure of Jacqui Abbott and stayed with them until they disbanded in 2007. She is currently a member of “The South” (formerly “The New Beautiful South”).

Caron Wheeler on the other hand left Soul II Soul in 1990 to pursue a solo career and released her LP “UK Blak” and semi successful single “Livin’ In The Light” in 1990. However, she returned to the fold in 2007 just as her namesake Alison’s time in The Beautiful South (original version) was coming to an end. None of this is especially interesting but I’m running out of things to write about “Back To Life”!

The play out video is by Monie Love’s teachers otherwise known as Public Enemy with “Fight The Power (Do The Right Thing)”. Have I already used my Flavor Flav story up? Damn I think I have. OK, different tact then…

I was a white UK kid just finishing three years of higher education at the time of its release so I’m not going to try and make out that Public Enemy spoke to or for me at the time but there is no denying the irresistible force that they were and continue to be. “Fight The Power (Do The Right Thing)” was as it sounds from the soundtrack to the film Do The Right Thing and indeed features prominently in the film. Written at the request of director Spike Lee who wanted an anthem to reflect the racial tensions of the time in the US, it is publicly acknowledged by Chuck D as “the most important record that Public Enemy have done”. And you have to say its power is blistering. An incredible song in any age.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Holly Johnson	Atomic City	No but my wife had his album
2	Queen	Breakthru	Nope
3	Double Trouble and the Rebel MC	Just Keep Rockin’	Nah
4	Donna Allen	Joy And Pain	No
5	Monie Love	Grandpa’s Party	Negative
6	Waterfront	Cry	No but I think it was on some Radio 1 Mark Goddier compilation album that I had.
7	Sonia	You’ll Never Stop Me From Loving You	Of course not
8	M	Pop Muzik	I did not
9	Guns N’ Roses	Patience	Not the single but I think I’ve got it on CD somewhere
10	London Boys	London Nights	Hell no
11	Soul II Soul	Back To Life	No but I think my wife had their album
12	Public Enemy	Fight The Power (Do The Right Thing)	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/m000h3d6/top-of-the-pops-29061989

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/2019/06/june-28-july-11-1989.html

TOTP 01 JUN 1989

Posted on April 3, 2020 by 80stastic

June 1989 is amongst us here at TOTP Rewind. By this point I was switching on a daily basis between soiling my pants at the thought of having to leave my student bubble and go out into the real world and become a fully functioning adult and…well… getting pissed most probably. What songs were in the charts during this decidedly odd period of my life I wonder?

Well, Sinitta is still holding on grimly to her time as a genuine pop star, a career that she fashioned from out of pretty much nothing in the second part of the decade. As the 80s finishing line comes into view, she has given her faltering status a shot in the arm of pure chart elixir by doing what any failing pop star always does by releasing a cover version. “Right Back Where We Started From” was originally a hit for Maxine Nightingale some 14 years earlier peaking at No 8. Sinitta managed to top that chart placing by taking her version all the way to No 4 – I had no idea she’d had such a big hit with it.

Clearly thinking she was on to something (“Right Back Where We Started From” was the joint second biggest hit of her career after “So Macho”), she released a further two cover versions from her album “Wicked” in “Love On A Mountain Top” by Robert Knight and Vanity Fare’s “Hitchin’ A Ride” but neither got anywhere near the Top 10. Sinitta’s time as a pop star was coming to an end and “Right Back Where We Started From” was not only a temporary reprieve but its title was also a portent of where she would find herself as the new decade dawned.

Yet another run out for the video to “Miss You Like Crazy” by Natalie Cole now. I think the reason that this song was such a big hit is that the songwriters and the producer absolutely nailed the timings of the key changes to produce the optimum emotional response whilst remaining just the right side of being overwrought.

Apparently there is a Filipino film of the same name which unsurprisingly is a romance and which features not one but two cover versions of “Miss You Like Crazy”. One of them is a pretty faithful run through of the original whilst this one by Aiza Seguerra at least has some nice strings on it…

Fresh from the controversy of the video for her “Like A Prayer” single, Madonna follows it up with “Express Yourself”. Very much an anthem to female empowerment, a lot was made of this song at the time in terms of its message and its Metropolis themed video and that would have been just what the record company wanted given that it had a total budget of $5 million which made it the most expensive music video in history at the time it was made.

I liked it from the first time I heard it with its sonic similarities to “Open Your Heart” which to my ears was no bad thing. Visually, Madonna had creative control over everything we saw in the video including finding the right cat that we see early on in the promo. There’s a line to be had about Madonna’s pussy in there but I’m not going anywhere near it probably because Madonna already beat me to it when exclaiming that the cat represented the concept of “pussy rules the world” in a 1990 Omnibus interview.

Madonna’s muscular physique, pinstripe suit and monocle caused much discussion around notions of gender and subverting traditional roles. Did I pick up on this at the time? Probably not but it’s all too evident watching the video back some 30 years later.

“Express Yourself” was a No 5 hit in the UK and reached No 2 in the US.

I’m hardly the first to comment on this but Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” single of 2011 is a complete rip off of “Express Yourself”.

Ah…Double Trouble and the Rebel MC. This lot were briefly tipped as being the next cool thing to hang your hat on, especially when they followed up “Just Keep Rockin'” with “Street Tuff” that went Top 3. Actually, thinking about it, I’m pretty sure most of the hype came courtesy of Simon Mayo who seemed to bang on relentlessly about them on his Radio 1 show. So, I’m assuming the Rebel MC was the guy doing the rapping out front and Double Trouble were the fellas on the keyboards in the background.

I probably should have liked this one more than I did as it samples “The Liquidator” by The Harry J All Stars which is used as the soundtrack to the players running out at my beloved Chelsea’s home matches but it never really caught my imagination. I preferred “Street Tuff” but neither track was really my bag in truth.

OK – what was the deal here? I’m assuming that one of the TOTP producers was a massive W.A.S.P. fan. How else do you explain how many times this lot were on the show?! “The Real Me” was their take on the classic track by The Who and came from their album “Headless Children”. This was their fourth studio album and the first to not feature overtly sexually explicit songs (according to Wikipedia). Well bully for them! They still called their album “Headless Children” so I’m not entirely sure that they had retreated fully from their shock rock tactics. What?! Wikipedia says that the album displayed “a new level of maturity from the band compared to their previous three albums” with the themes of politics and social issues running throughout. Oh do fuck off!

Here’s an eyeful of Neneh Cherry now (ahem!) with “Manchild”.

I think @TOTPFacts sums this whole performance up quite succinctly…

Bit cold in the #TOTP studio, I see.

— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 27, 2020

In a Smash Hits interview, Neneh described the aforementioned Madonna as:

“…one of the few women in the 80s who has taken control of her own sexuality and her own person.”

In the same publication, the also aforementioned Sinitta had a different view:

” I think that Madonna’s video for “Like A Prayer is insulting for people who are deeply religious and who lead a deeply religious life. I think it’s bad”.

I think I’m team Neneh on this one.

Right – Cyndi Lauper next with “I Drove All Night”. I always get confused about this song. I know it has something to do with Roy Orbison and that he also had a hit with it but over the years all the details of the origin of the story have been buried in an inaccessible part of my brain (probably under 30 years worth of football results) and I can’t quite recall what it was all about. So I looked it up….

It turns out that it was written by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg who had already written Cyndi’s last UK hit (1986’s “True Colours”) for her and were also responsible for one of the year’s biggest songs in “Eternal Flame” by The Bangles. It had been written deliberately in the style of something Orbison would have sung and even before Cyndi got her vocal chords around it, a fortunate set of circumstances had led to a meeting with The Big O who had recorded a demo of it in 1987. However he was without a recording contract at the time and his version lay idle for a while and remained so throughout his subsequent phoenix from the flames renaissance with the “Mystery Girl” album. Inevitably the song found its way to Lauper who recorded it for her “A Night To Remember” album and released it as the lead single which became a Top 10 hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

The video has Cyndi in a number of different looks starting with Madonna circa “Who’s That Girl” before moving onto a cross between Cruella de Vil and Gwen Stefani. By the time she’s just naked with only movie projections to cover her modesty all bets are off.

A few years later, and after his death, Roy Orbison’s version finally surfaced and was given a commercial release as part of the posthumous “King of Hearts” album which was a collection of remastered demos of songs left over from the “Mystery Girl” album. “I Drove All Night” was released as a single from the album and matched Lauper’s chart performance by peaking at No 7.

Which version did I prefer? Probably Orbison’s although it wasn’t my favourite song by either artist by a long way.

Enjoying the most successful year of their career are Fuzzbox who have gone and gotten themselves another bona fide chart hit in “Pink Sunshine”. The follow up to “International Rescue”, this was more of the same in that it was exuberantly silly with a killer chorus hook.

Showing their musical versatility, keyboardist Magz is on guitar for this one thereby giving evidence to the claim that they are the UK’s most successful instrument-playing-all-female band. Not sure if that clam has ever been substantiated but what is certainly true is that they were on the now legendary NME C86 cassette compilation which writer and broadcaster Andrew Collins has described as “the most indie thing to have ever existed” so there was more to them than just lead singer Vickie Perks and her provocative midriff.

For a short while Fuzzbox (or their label’s marketing department at least) seemed to have struck upon a winning formula and were here to stay. Sadly there was only one more Top 40 it after this and the band spilt in 1990 due to that old chestnut ‘musical differences’. They reformed a couple of times and have been a going concern again since 2015. Tragically, founding member Jo Dunne died of cancer in 2012.

Top 10

10. Madonna – “Express Yourself”

9. Bobby Brown – “Every Little Step”

8. Edelweiss – “Bring Me Edelweiss”

7. Donna Summer – “I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt”

6. London Boys – “Requiem”

5. Neneh Cherry – “Manchild”

4. Kylie Minogue – “Hand On Your Heart”

3. Lynne Hamilton – “On The Inside”

2. Natalie Cole – “Miss You Like Crazy”

1. The Christians, Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney and Gerry Marsden – “Ferry Cross The Mersey”: The football season has been and gone but the aftermath of the Hillsborough tragedy is still brutally fresh in the conscience of the nation so “Ferry Cross The Mersey” retains its place at the top of the charts.

Twenty three years on from this, Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson and Gerry Marsden alongside a huge amount of other artists including Robbie Williams, Melanie C and Paul Heaton (all organised by Peter Hooton of The Farm) released a version of “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” by The Hollies to raise money for the various charities associated with the Hillsborough tragedy. It would go on to be the Xmas No 1 of 2012 beating that year’s X Factor winner to the coveted title. For once, all was correct and aligned in the world of pop.

The play out video is “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses. This was one of those unusual cases of a single being re-released despite having been an authentic Top 40 hit already. It was a No 24 hit in the UK when originally released in September of the previous year but was given a second commercial release after the success of “Paradise City”. There are myriad examples of songs being hits the second time around following a re-release after flopping initially but a single being re-released despite having already been a hit just 9 months earlier? I’m saying that there are much fewer examples of that.

There seem to be two videos for the song which are essentially the same depicting the the band rehearsing but one version is filmed entirely in grainy black and white whilst the edit that TOTP show is this one which includes colour shots.

“Sweet Child O’ Mine” (the ’89 re-release) peaked at No 6 in the UK. It had already been a No 1 in the US on its original ’88 release.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Sinitta	Right Back Where We Started From	Of course not
2	Natalie Cole	Miss You Like Crazy	Nope
3	Madonna	Express Yourself	No but my wife had the album
4	Double Trouble and the Rebel MC	Just Keep Rockin’	Nah
5	W.A.S.P.	The Real Me	And no
6	Neneh Cherry	Manchild	See three above
7	Cyndi Lauper	I Drove All Night	I did not
8	Fuzzbox	Pink Sunshine	No but I easily could have
9	The Christians, Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney and Gerry Marsden	Ferry Cross The Mersey	Yes! Finally a single that I bought!
10	Guns N’ Roses	Sweet Child O’ Mine	No but I have the album somewhere I think

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000gp1d/top-of-the-pops-01061989

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/2019/05/may-31-june-13-1989.html

TOTP 25 MAY 1989

Posted on March 31, 2020 by 80stastic

It’s very nearly Bank Holiday weekend in May 1989. I’m fast approaching the end of my time as a student at Sunderland Polytechnic and I’m guessing that I might have even been in the middle of my final year exams. I may have even finished them as on the Friday of that long weekend, a load of us went on a big night out so it may have been some sort of end of exams celebration. Why do I remember this so clearly? Well, that was the day that the most dramatic denouement to a football title race ever (yes I am dismissing Man City’s thrilling 2012 title win) played out to a massive, disbelieving UK TV audience…and I missed it all.

Yes, while the nation watched the gripping action at Anfield where title contenders Arsenal and Liverpool were duking it out, I was in the local bars and pubs of Sunderland with no clue as to what was occurring on Merseyside. In 1989 of course there was no football being shown on big screens in the pubs like today. In fact, the game itself was only being shown live on TV at all because the original date of the game had been postponed following the Hillsborough disaster. Rearranging the fixtures, the Football League realised they had a potential title decider on their hands, so switched Liverpool’s showdown with Arsenal from April 22 to Friday May 26 allowing the final act to be screened live on ITV. There were no live score apps for me to follow events on my mobile phone (which didn’t exist). The first time that I even got to know the score was around 11.00 pm when a friend’s boyfriend told me in the club we were finishing the night in. When he told me that the crucial second goal had been scored in injury time, I was incredulous. I wonder what current chart hits the nightclub DJ may have been playing that night were….

…well I’m pretty sure that “Bring Me Edelwiess” by Edelweiss wouldn’t have been one of them. Or maybe it was actually. I can well imagine some Austrian style arse-slapping as demonstrated in this TOTP performance being enacted by the local populace down at Rascals nightclub. Unsurprisingly, this single went to No 1 in their native Austria but also five other countries globally and was Top 5 just about everywhere else (including the UK). It sold 5 million copies worldwide! Just nuts!

For all the band’s (and I use that term very loosely) daft studio antics here, they were just amateurs when compared to the great King Kurt who tarred and feathered their lead singer when they performed their hit single “Destination Zululand” on the show back in ’83.

“Well we’re all one happy European community after all” says presenter Simon Mayo at the song’s conclusion. That statement hasn’t aged well at all!

Next up is Tone Loc with “Funky Cold Medina”. Last seen in our charts with his 1988 single “Wild Thing”, this latest release was also from his “Lōc-ed After Dark” album and was in pretty much the same vein as its predecessor probably because they were both written by Young MC. Our ‘Tone’ had certainly caught the zeitgeist at this point with “Wild Thing” being the first ever platinum-certified rap single and “Funky Cold Medina” being the second.

So what was a “Funky Cold Medina” anyway? The lyrics seem to suggest it was some kind of love potion designed to make even the most “no-name chump” irresistible to women. Here’s @TOTPFacts with another theory:

Flavour Flav: “Tone Loc, one day, said, 'Yo Flav, what's 'Cold medina', man?' I said, 'It means cold pumpin', no slumpin', it's the bag you wanna be jumpin.' I said, 'Yo, you should use that in one of your records, man, I'm tellin' you.'” #TOTP

— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 20, 2020

Ah Flavor Flav. of course. I met him once. Well, not really met but was in his presence. I was working in Our Price in Manchester in the early 90s when U2 were playing a concert there. They were supported by Kraftwerk and Public Enemy (quite a line up) and on the afternoon of the show Flav appeared in the shop with a huge entourage wanting to see what rap records we had in stock. Word quickly got around and a large crowd (including me) had assembled that just followed him around for a bit to see what he would do. He didn’t seem to know where he was or what he was doing to be fair.

As for Funky Cold Medina”, I always quite liked it and to this day it always reminds me of a lovely guy that I worked with again whilst I was at Our Price called Paul Manina who of course became ‘Funky Paul Manina’.

It’s the Sam Brown video for “Can I Get A Witness” again next which features that bloke who was in The Bill forever in the dock and her Dad Joe Brown as the judge. Joe’s bogbrush hair has hardly ever changed in over 60 years in show business and was recently proven by the scientific world to be indestructible and capable of withstanding a nuclear fall out.

In later life, Sam became a ukelele aficionado and currently runs the International Ukulele Club of Sonning Common, the North London Ukulele Collective and the People’s Ukulele Brigade (PUB). I found this rather odd treatment of a rock classic on YouTube…

Two pop hits that feature yodelling on the same show! What are the chances of that?! After Edelweiss comes Robert Palmer with another track of his “Heavy Nova” album “Change His Ways”. After the brooding class of previous hit “She Makes My Day”, this was a big disappointment. If Palmer ever covered “The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine” it would have sounded pretty similar to this. It’s all over the place and the yodelling makes it sound like a novelty record. Even the effortlessly cool Bob can’t rescue this stinker that somehow still managed to be a No 28 hit.

It reminds me of that other well known stinker by an otherwise credible* artist…

*”Uptown Girl” also stank the place out of course.

The next link includes an appearance by man of the year Jason Donovan in a very obviously Aussie themed intro to surprise hit “On The Inside” by Lynne Hamilton. This of course was the theme tune to cult Australian soap Prisoner: Cell Block H which despite originally being an Antipodean hit in 1979, found itself in our charts a whole 10 years later due to the sleeper success of the show when it was broadcast in late night slots across the various ITV regions towards the end of the decade. I was sure that I had started watching Prisoner: Cell Block H before I even arrived in Sunderland as a student which would have been around 1986 but Wikipedia tells me that my hometown’s ITV region (Central) didn’t start screening it until 1987 so maybe my memory has shifted and re-edited that particular detail. Either way, I certainly was aware of the show before “On The Inside” re-surfaced in 1989 and its blockbuster characters like Vera “Vinegar Tits” Bennett, Bea “Queen Bea” Smith and Lizzie Birdsworth.

Despite her Australian connections, Hamilton was actually born in the UK and had been in a 60s group called The Desperadoes sharing the bill was acts such as The Who and The Animals before emigrating to the other side of the world in the early 70s. She seems to have pinched the aforementioned Donovan’s hat to top off her outfit for this performance.

Boosted by the popularity of the show, “On The Inside” made No 3 on the UK Top 40 but this new found fame doesn’t stop Simon Mayo getting Lynne’s name wrong at the end of the performance when he refers to her as Lynn Anderson. He was probably thinking of Lynn Anderson of “Rose Garden” fame whose own profile had been raised by the sampling of her big hit by recent chart act Kon Kan in their single “I Beg Your Pardon”. Still, that’s no excuse. One job Mayo, one job.

It’s that hateful dance track “Helyom Halib” by Capella next. There are samples of songs by the excellent Yello (“Goldrush”) and Propaganda (“Jewel”) in the mix (amongst others) so quite how it ended up such a pile of dog shit I really don’t know. They repeated the trick of sampling on future hits “Take Me Away” that was based around “Love Sensation” by Loleatta Holloway (as was Black Box’s massive smash “Ride On Time”) and “U Got 2 Know” which featured the riff from “Happy House” by Siouxsie and the Banshees. And they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Donna Summer’s late 80’s renaissance continues at pace with a second consecutive Top 10 hit in “I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt”. Another Stock, Aitken and Waterman production (as was the whole album it was taken from “Another Time And Place”), it was very much in the same vein as its predecessor “This Time I Know It’s For Real” but then what did we expect from a project managed by The Hit Factory? The album is supposedly the production trio’s favourite that they were ever involved in whilst Classic Pop magazine retrospectively described it as “a pop masterpiece” and the best album they ever produced. I’m not really having that at all. I mean, I only know the singles from it which are all highly polished examples of that SAW sound but let’s face it, they all sounded the same didn’t they?

Apparently a second Stock, Aitken and Waterman album with Donna was planned but as she never got back to the UK to record the planned songs, they were given to Lonnie Gordon instead. Remember her?

Top 10

10. Chaka Khan – “I’m Every Woman”

9. Queen – “I Want It All”

8. Neneh Cherry – “Manchild”

7. Roxette – “The Look”

6. Bobby Brown – “Every Little Step”

5. Edelweiss – “Bring Me Edelweiss”

4. London Boys – “Requiem”

3. Natalie Cole – “Miss You Like Crazy”

2. Kylie Minogue – “Hand On Your Heart”

1. The Christians, Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney and Gerry Marsden – “Ferry Cross The Mersey”: Unsurprisingly still at No 1 given that the emotion fuelled Everton v Liverpool FA Cup final had just taken place on the weekend before and that the climax of the title race was still to take place with Liverpool on the verge of a second double in three years.

Whilst we all know that this was originally a hit for Gerry and the Pacemakers, I didn’t know until now that there was also a film of the same name featuring the group. Widely acknowledged as the group’s “A Hard Day’s Night” moment, it has never been shown on television since its theatrical release nor was it released on video. I couldn’t even find the whole film on YouTube just the trailer below and a couple of the songs from it. Apparently Jimmy Saville plays himself in it so maybe its just as well that it seems lost to the archives.

Seriously?! Yet another W.A.S.P. song that managed to somehow infiltrate our charts back in the day?! I say W.A.S.P. song but “The Real Me” is of course originally by The Who from the rock opera Quadrophenia. Quite why W.A.S.P. thought that the world needed a version of it by them I genuinely cannot fathom but enough willing punters thought that they did to send it to No 23 in our charts.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Edelweiss	Bring Me Edelweiss	I’d rather you didn’t – no
2	Tone-Loc	Funky Cold Medina	I did not
3	Sam Brown	Can I Get A Witness	Nope
4	Robert Palmer	Change His Ways	No – it wasn’t even deemed worthy enough of a place on my At His Very Best CD compilation
5	Lynne Hamilton	On The Inside	Nah
6	Capella	Helyom Halib	Definite no
7	Donna Summer	I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt	Nor me – no
8	The Christians, Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney and Gerry Marsden	Ferry Cross The Mersey	Yes! Finally a single that I bought!
9	W.A.S.P.	The Real Me	And no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000gg2q/top-of-the-pops-25051989

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/2019/05/may-17-30-1989.html

TOTP 18 MAY 1989

Posted on March 27, 2020 by 80stastic

We’re finally back to the two presenter format this week and it’s Mark Goodier and Anthea Turner. Aren’t we lucky? The word vacuous barely covers it. Anyway, we’re up and running with Shakin’ Stevens and “Love Attack”. This is all kinds of wrong. Firstly, why on earth was this man still having Top 40 hits as late as 1989?! Who was buying his stuff?! Secondly, the song itself – as far as I can tell this wasn’t written by Shaky himself but it is still utter garbage. It sounds like a cross between an Alvin Stardust B-side and a Status Quo album filler. Then there’s the decidedly dodgy lyrics:

“So much love inside, no way I can stand the tide

Don’t go holding back, I’m ready for a love attack”

Yikes! Do you think when Shaky sings about love he really means jizz?

Finally, there’s Mark Goodier’s intro when he proclaims that this is Shaky’s 31st hit. I’ve checked his discography and counted them up three times and “Love Attack” was his 28th. That’s 28 Goodier not 31. Why would you bother going to the trouble of trying to comment on this stuff if you’re going to get it wrong?! Even if you count releases that didn’t make the Top 40 (surely not the definition of a ‘hit’?) then 31 would still be the wrong number!

By the way, why does Shaky’s backing band seem to include former Wimbledon manager Dave ‘Harry’ Bassett and Radio 1 DJ Mike Read in their number?

After Shaky has done his thing (i.e. the same old cobblers he’s been peddling since 1981), we get another knacker in Bobby Brown who returns to the chart with his third consecutive Top 40 UK hit “Every Little Step”. Another cut from his “Don’t Be Cruel” album, I thought that this one at least had some melody to it. That said, it’s still a right load of old bollocks with Brown busting (is that the right word?) some ridiculous rhymes like “I’m rockin’ it steady, and when I’m on the mic don’t you dare call me Freddy”. Freddy? It wasn’t Freddy you should have been worried about but former New Edition band mate Ralph Tresvant who rumour has it actually did the vocals on this track as Brown was off his tits on drugs at the time of recording,

The video showcases Brown’s dance moves (it all looks a bit MC Hammer lite to me) and his signature haircut (it’s called a high-top fade apparently). This piece of New Jack rap (or something) made No 6 on our charts and No 3 in the US.

Unbelievable as it seems, for a very short while Roxette were almost hip (that’s a big almost by the way). Think about it though. They were not, at this time, encumbered with a legacy of catchy rock/pop tunes that positioned them the wrong side of the naff boundary with “The Look” being their only song that the UK knew – indeed nobody really knew that much about them at all outside of their native Sweden so they were almost no preconceptions about them. In a Classic Pop magazine interview, the band’s Per Gessle said:

“I think one of the reasons Roxette was successful was that we weren’t American or British, so we didn’t sound like anything else on the charts at the time.”

Plus they were an unusual group in terms of their line up. One man and one woman who both play guitar and both sing. Can’t think of many similar successful group structures. Everything But The Girl maybe but without the guitars?

Back in 1994 I was working in the Market Street Manchester branch of Our Price and whilst the chart CD buyer was on holiday I covered for them. For some reason best known to myself, I decided that the most likely biggest seller of the week that we would need loads of copies of was “Crash! Boom! Bang!” by Roxette. I ordered in the CD in copious amounts the vast majority of which sat there in the filing not just for that week but for the album’s whole chart life until we mercifully got a recall instruction from Head Office to send back our excess. What was I thinking?! Maybe I had been hoodwinked by their “Joyride ” album of three years previous that went twice platinum in the UK with sales of 600,000 copies. “Crash! Boom! Bang!” sold just a sixth of that amount. If you’re reading this Daryl (my manager at the time), I’m truly sorry.

The return to the two presenter format also means the reappearance of the Breakers section and that starts with Alyson Williams following up her recent “Sleep Talk” hit with a track called “My Love Is So Raw” featuring somebody called Nikki D whom Wikipedia tells me is credited as being the first female rapper signed to the legendary Def Jam Records label. Apparently Alyson started her career doing backing vocals for a number of artists including the aforementioned Bobby Brown and was renowned for her love of towering hats. She should have got one that said dunce on it as this is just awful.

Another female artist following up a previous hit is Sam Brown who has released a cover of “Can I Get A Witness” to consolidate the success of “Stop!”. Originally recorded by Marvin Gaye and covered by the likes of The Rolling Stones and Dusty Springfield, Sam’s version certainly doesn’t seem out of place in that exulted company – indeed Jools Holland describes her as “without question, one of the greatest singers I ever worked with”. She probably doesn’t get the recognition that she deserves in that most people know her for “Stop!” and nothing else. This hasn’t been helped by the fact that she has been unable to sing (and therefore record new material) since 2007 due to vocal chords and cyst issues which are yet to be resolved.

“Can I Get A Witness” peaked at No 15 and was her final hit of the 80s.

The final Breaker this week is Diana Ross with “Workin’ Overtime”. I might be wrong but I don’t think we had seen Ms Ross in our charts since her unexpected No 1 “Chain reaction” in 1986. Probably not surprising as she had not released any new material since 1987 as she had been kind of busy giving birth to one son and becoming pregnant with another. By 1989, feeling the call of music once more, Diana wanted to return to the studio to do a contemporary album after being inspired by watching TV and seeing, in her own words, “the kids doing the hip-hop and so on… and, you know, I’m a risk taker”. The hip-hop?! From the moment she made that statement, her new album was doomed and so it turned out as “Workin’ Overtime” peaked at number 116 in the US charts thereby becoming the lowest charting studio album of her entire solo career.

Somehow the title track single managed to squeeze into the UK charts at No 32 despite being, you know, just awful. It sounds like a very poor Janet Jackson tribute act. Diana would return to our charts somewhat more triumphantly in 1991 with another unexpected hit in the No 2 song “When You Tell Me That You Love Me”.

“Paul McCartney‘s new album will be out on June the 5th” Mark Goodier informs us next. “It’s a critical album” he goes on. Hang on! What?! It’s a critical album?! What the fuck does that mean? That entire countries’ economies were reliant upon it? That the planet’s very future was dependent upon its release? I’m assuming Goodier mean that it has been critically well received in the music press reviews. And what was this ‘critical’ album? Well it was “Flowers In The Dirt” which while being seen as a return to form for Macca after his panned “Press To Play” long player and being a No 1 album, could hardly be described as essential.

Lead single “My Brave Face” was written with Elvis Costello and therefore completes the circle of creativity which saw the pair co-write the Costello hit “Veronica” from his “Spike” album. I always thought it was a pleasant sounding little ditty, very much in the type of upbeat, shiny, perfectly formed three minute pop song that McCartney specializes in. I think I preferred the more languid feel of follow up single “This One” though.

“My Brave Face” peaked at No 18 in the UK and No 25 in the US being McCartney’s final hit over there and marks a watershed moment by also being the last Billboard Top 40 hit with any former Beatle in the lead credit. He has not performed the song live since 1991 apparently.

Anthea Turner’s turn for some odd commentary now as she introduces Neneh Cherry performing her latest single “Manchild”:

“The last time Neneh Cherry was on TOTP she had a bump, she was 7 months pregnant. She’s back now she’s looking slim, she’s looking beautiful…” chirps our host. Why not just say she’s had the baby Anthea? In fact, why say anything at all? It’s completely obvious to every viewer what has happened in those intervening two months.

Anyway, back to “Manchild” which I think was the song that confirmed Neneh Cherry as a genuine popular recording artist. That sounds ever so slightly pretentious but it can’t be denied that “Manchild” wasn’t just a “Buffalo Stance” 2.0 which we might have expected. Rather it was a much more reflective and mature sound of which Neneh herself says:

“I think ‘Manchild’ was the song where I kinda found my style. I think that song, the style of the song, the feeling and the spirit of the song, has reappeared along the way in other songs that I’ve written. Therefore, it became the most significant song that I ever wrote.”

At the time I was kind of disappointed by the song after the infectious silliness of “Buffalo Stance” but over the years I have come to appreciate it much more than I once did. It was also a brilliant promotional tool for the concurrently released debut album “Raw Like Sushi” in that it became a No 5 hit meaning that its parent long player now had two Top 5 smashes to its name making Neneh was one of the biggest break out stars of the year.

Oh shit! It’s Stefan Dennis again with his (thankfully) only Top 40 hit “Don’t It Make You Feel Good”. I can only assume that Neighbours mania had temporarily rendered the UK population tone deaf – how else can you explain this atrocity becoming a hit?! Either that or it was our desperation to own anything Neighbours related or, more likely, some very focused charts manipulation by the record label at foot. His vocals are just weird and the track is completely weighed down in late 80s sound effect gimmicks. How did we fall for this nonsense?

BBC Radio 6 Music DJ Shaun Keaveny used to use the chorus as a jingle on his breakfast show to highlight some usually nondescript occurrence that was a highlight of his listeners humdrum lives. Shaun would have been maybe 15 years of age at the time of the record being in the charts and would totally have seen it as the definition of uncool to someone of his age back then I’m guessing. I’m hoping this is the last time we ever have to discuss Stefan Dennis and”Don’t It Make You Feel Good”.

Hot on the heels of their last single comes “Fergus Sings The Blues” from Deacon Blue. The third single to be released from their “When The World Knows Your Name” album, it was yet again perfect Radio 1 daytime playlist material and helped fuel sales of the album to the extent that they knocked Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” off the top spot. Quite a feat for a little Scottish rock / pop outfit.

Due to my long lasting obsession with male pop stars hairstyles, I would no doubt have noticed that since their last appearance on the show Ricky Ross has had a rather drastic haircut with his long locks shorn off to reveal a very prominent short back and sides effect. On reflection, I would probably been more interested in Ricky’s partner and fellow band member Lorraine McIntosh who was fast becoming one of my favourite people on the planet at the time.

I always wondered who James and Bobby Purify were, as in the song’s lyrics “Tell me why, James & Bobby Purify”. Finally looked them up. Turns out they did that “I’m Your Puppet” song.

“Fergus Sings The Blues” peaked at No 14 on the UK singles chart making it the second biggest hit from the album after “Real Gone Kid”.

Top 10

10. Roxette – “The Look”

9. Midnight Oil – “Beds Are Burning”

8. Chaka Khan – “I’m Every Woman”

7. The Bangles – “Eternal Flame”

6. Edelweiss – “Bring Me Edelweiss”

5. Queen – “I Want It All”

4. London Boys – “Requiem”

3. Natalie Cole – “Miss You Like Crazy”

2. Kylie Minogue – “Hand On Your Heart”

1. The Christians, Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney and Gerry Marsden – “Ferry Across The Mersey”: Kylie’s reign at the top is over after just one week but it’s for a very good reason. This version of “Ferry Across The Mersey” was of course released in response to the awful Hillsborough tragedy of the previous month. Originally a hit for Gerry and the Pacemakers (though not one of their No 1s), Marsden and his old pal McCartney are appropriately on this version alongside fellow and then current Liverpool artists Holly Johnson and The Christians. Johnson had already committed a version of the song to vinyl as a track on the “Welcome To The Pleasure Dome” album by his former band Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

The track was produced by Stock, Aitken and Waterman who would be at the mixing desk for another charity record before the year was up with the second coming of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas”.

Having witnessed the scenes unfolding at Hillsborough on TV, I, alongside millions of others, found myself deeply affected by the tragedy and I felt compelled to purchase the single. On reflection, it was possibly to help make sense of what had happened as well as the obvious consequence of the money from the record going to help those families affected by Hillsborough.

Two days after this TOTP aired, the all Merseyside FA Cup final between Liverpool and Everton took place with the reds prevailing 3-2. I watched the game in my student house with a few mates and a load of Ace Lager*. At the end of the game we all went out to play footie at the local park to recreate the final as if we were still 10 years old.

*This was a spectacularly cheap lager that was also exceptionally piss weak. It could be found in vast quantities in the Sunderland area where I was a student as it was manufactured at the Dunston Brewery in Gateshead. It was immortalized in the Viz comic character 8 Ace.

The play out video is “Helyom Halib” by Capella. I don’t remember this track at all but the name Capella rang a bell. When I checked it was of course the Italian house act who were responsible for some hateful dance hits in the 90s which I will have sold in bucket loads to the great unwashed of Stockport when I was working at the Our Price store there.

Still can’t place them? here’s there biggest ~~shit~~ hit from 1993…

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I buy it?
1	Shakin’ Stevens	Love Attack	Seriously?!
2	Bobby Brown	Every Little Step	Totally not
3	Roxette	The Look	Nope
4	Alyson Williams	My Love Is So Raw	Huge no
5	Sam Brown	Can I Get A Witness	I did not
6	Diana Ross	Workin’ Overtime	No
7	Paul McCartney	My Brave Face	Nah
8	Neneh Cherry	Manchild	No but I think my wife had the album
9	Stefan Dennis	Don’t It Make You Feel Good	No Stefan it really doesn’t! NO!
10	Deacon Blue	Fergus Sings The Blues	Not the single but I bought the album
11	The Christians, Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney and Gerry Marsden	Ferry Cross The Mersey	I did! Finally a single that I bought!
12	Capella	Helyom Halib	Negative

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000gg2n/top-of-the-pops-18051989

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/2019/05/may-17-30-1989.html

TOTP 20 APR 1989

Posted on March 11, 2020 by 80stastic

I’ve said it before in this blog but it’s hard to think of Nicky Campbell as a Radio 1 DJ and all that meant when you consider how his broadcast career panned out. I very much see him as a broadcaster of some gravitas thanks to his Radio 5 Live time breakfast programme with its focus on news and current affairs. I have to admit to not recalling listening to him when he was at Radio 1. Wikipedia tells me that he presented both late night and early morning shows which possibly explains why I don’t remember catching him – I was a student doing my best to uphold their lazy good for nothing stereotype at the time after all. Anyway, he’s one of the TOTP hosts for this show alongside Sybil Ruscoe who was at the peak of her fame as part of Simon Mayo’s breakfast show crew.

Also at the height of her fame is Wendy James who, as part of her band, Transvision Vamp, are the first act on tonight. “Baby I Don’t Care” was the band’s biggest hit (No 3) and Wendy herself was rivaling the likes of Kylie Minogue in pulling in column inches in the press. Within the calendar year that was 1989, her band had racked up a No 1 album and four Top 40 singles to their name. Fast forward two years and their label MCA, unsure of the band’s sound and direction, wouldn’t even release their third album “Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble” in the UK preferring to see how it was received in other territories. By the time they had decided to give it a full commercial release, the band had already split. I’m sure that we had an import CD of the album at the Market Street, Manchester store and we actually sold it to a guy who was still very much obsessed with Ms James.

That’s all in the future (past) though. For now, Wendy is the ultimate bundle of peroxide, attitude and glam pop tunes and she’s selling it for all her worth. There’s an awful lot of flesh on display here which Wendy is quite happy to tantalize the audience with via some revealing glimpses of shoulder. Literally nobody is watching the guys in the band at this point. This was real peak of her powers stuff. Inevitably there was a backlash. The press turned on her viciously with headlines like ‘Wendy James is a woman everybody loves to hate’ (The Face) whilst Time Out magazine had her on the front cover of their ‘Hated 100’ issue. And we think Meghan Markle gets a rough deal!

Why is Nicky Campbell referring to Simple Minds as The Simple Minds?! Surely nobody at any point in history has ever done that before?! What was he thinking?! Anyway, the definite article * less band are back with the follow up to surprise No 1 record “Belfast Child” with another cut from their “Street Fighting Years” album called “This Is Your Land”. I don’t think I realized at the time but the album was produced by Trevor Horn but instead of taking the band back to their arty synth pop origins, he went off on a tangent turning them into folk rockers (albeit ones that could fill a stadium). That album was a watershed for many fans. Some loved the overtly political nature of the songs and the new folk direction but for others it was a massive turn off. In America especially, a lot of their fan base just didn’t get it and the album languished at a lowly peak of No 70. It was also a landmark for the band personnel wise as the recording of it cost two group members including original keyboards player Mick MacNeil who left their ranks shortly afterwards.

As for this particular track, it didn’t sound as strong to me as “Belfast Child” but it had an intriguing and engaging enough melody and a serious eco message in the lyrics to boot. The topless guy on the horse at the very beginning of the video looks a bit like Oliver Tobias in a TV series that was on when I was a very small child called Arthur of the Britons – it’s not him is it?

“This Is Your Land” peaked at No 13.

*Got me thinking – has there ever been a band called The Definite Articles? Yes there has and they are (were?) an orchestral rock outfit from San Francisco.

After previous singles “Big Gun” and “Good Life” had both been Top 10 hits for Inner City, their third release “Ain’t Nobody Better” maintained this sequence (just) by peaking at No 10. Sadly it wasn’t a cover of the Rufus and Chaka Khan tune but was in fact just very much more of the same to my ears. I just didn’t get that Detroit techno sound at all. I was much more likely to get my rocks off on the dance floor to the likes of Transvision Vamp than this lot….err if you know what I mean. OK – for the sake of clarity I meant enjoying dancing and nothing else. Honest.

Inner City would go on having hits into the new decade but never again returned to the UK Top 10.

Just the two Breakers this week and we start with an act with a huge legacy in De La Soul. Now I wasn’t and have never been a huge hip hop fan but even I could appreciate the genius of these guys. Hailing from Amityville, Long Island NY, these three high school friends came up with possibly the most influential debut album ever in “3 Feet High and Rising”. “Me, Myself And I” was the lead single from it and established their own take on hip hop with its pioneering use of samples and positive messages of peace and harmony in direct contrast to the prevalent and violent gangsta rap. Their style and the ‘Hip Hop in The Daisy Age’ artwork of their debut album led to them being described as hippies in the music press which the trio didn’t take kindly to. “Me, Myself And I” was their very articulate response to that. The video in which the group rally against having to endure a class given by Professor Defbeat promoting an image-driven, mainstream style of hip-hop just adds to their resistance to being labelled.

The first time I heard about this record, I foolishly believed it was something to do with the Joan Armatrading hit “Me, Myself, I” but it doesn’t even sample it! Once I finally heard it, it was a definite ‘well, this is different’ moment. As ever though, it was my much cooler girlfriend (now wife) who actually had the album!

From the sublime to the ridiculous…London Boys were actually based in Hamburg although they originally met at school in Greenwich hence the name. They were kind of like a camper version of Milli Vanilli with their gymnastic dance routines as prominent as their sound.

Ah yes, that sound. Quite why the UK decided what it really needed in Spring ’89 was some over the top, Hi-NRG eurobeat nonsense cannot be explained by rational thought. “Requiem” with its over the top intro that borrows heavily from Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” made previously sane people lose their heads completely and buy it in enough quantities to send it to No 4 in our charts. It seemed to be a peculiarly British phenomenon as the song only performed moderately across the rest of Europe. Did it not have a Europe wide release? Not content with that, the duo released a follow up single “London Nights” that did even better peaking at No 2. When parent album “The Twelve Commandments of Dance” also made No 2, all bets were off. What on earth was going on?!

Tragically, the London Boys story didn’t have a happy ending as both Edem Ephraim and Dennis Fuller were killed in 1996 when their car was hit head on by a drunk driver on a mountain road in the Austrian Alps.

Heeeere’s Holly! Yes, Holly Johnson is back again with his latest hit “Americanos”. I say back but it’s actually just the same performance from the other week re-used. As such, I’ve already reviewed this once so I’ll have to resort to tenuous links of which there are two between Holly and other artists on tonight’s TOTP. The first is to do with Holly’s name. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the background story on that…

Holly Johnson was christened William. He took the name Holly from transvestite Holly Woodlawn, part of Andy Warhol’s “Factory” crowd (the “Holly from Miami FLA” in Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side”), after seeing a Warhol film. #TOTP

— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 6, 2020

…and of course , as Nicky Campbell informed us earlier, Lou Reed sang backing vocals on “This Is Your Land” by Simple Minds.

Secondly, around this time Holly was the guest singles reviewer in Smash Hits and one of those records that he had to make a judgement on was “Lullaby” by The Cure who we will see later in the show. Holly wasn’t that complimentary about Robert Smith and co stating that it reminded him of Mantovani and that he would have expected the band to come back with a much stronger song. Given though that he refused to comment at all on singles by Texas, Kylie Minogue, Bon Jovi and Cher as they were so awful (in Holly’s opinion), that actually sounds like a glowing, 5 star review in retrospect! OK that’ll do…next!

Metallica?! I don’t remember them being in the charts in ’89. Curiously the first line of their single “One” is ‘I can’t remember anything’. Metallica’s heavy metal sound really wasn’t my thing back then (and indeed still isn’t) so I probably hadn’t noticed that they’d already done four albums by this point.

When I think of Metallica, I think of their “Enter Sandman” single from 1991. Why? As well as being one of their biggest hits, it reminds me of when I was working as Assistant Manager in Our Price in Altrincham during Xmas 1993. One late night opening I was trying to talk to the manager about something in the back office upstairs but could still hear what the rest of the staff were playing on the shop stereo. This was right up against Xmas so we should have been hammering a Xmas album or a big selling mainstream chart title. What I heard was some awful heavy metal so I rang down to the counter and told them to change it. After a couple of equally dodgy choices, they put on “Enter Sandman” to wind me up which was the final straw – a third phone call down was withering enough to convince the team to put on something more appropriate. Not my finest hour but it is my first thought when I hear the name Metallica.

A magnificent entry into the cannon of 1989 next in the shape of Australian rockers Midnight Oil. Although we had never seen them in our charts before in their Antipodean homeland they had been a pretty big deal for quite a few years by this point. Indeed, this hit, “Beds Are Burning”, was a massive hit all around the world.

As a rather solemn Nicky Campbell advises in his intro (after he’s made a crappy boomerang joke of course) the song was about aboriginal land rights but that doesn’t really tell the whole story behind it. In 1986 the band had toured outback Australia playing to remote Aboriginal communities and seeing first hand the seriousness of the issues in health and living standards in those communities. Deeply affected by this, they wrote about their experience in the songs for their next album “Diesel And Dust” which promoted the need for appreciation by white Australia of the injustices in Aboriginal history and the band’s desire to put them right. Did I realize all of this at the time? I don’t think so although I think I was aware that there was some depth to the song without knowing all about the subject matter – at the very least I knew that this wasn’t another “I’d Rather Jack”.

As for the sound of the song, its verses and bridge structure are actually pretty pedestrian but its that which makes the song as it builds up perfectly to its unrestrained chorus. The little percussive interlude just before the chorus kicks in was a genius touch. The lyric ‘The time has come to say fair’s fair, to pay the rent now, to pay our share’ always reminded me of that famous and rather odd David Coleman line in the 1974 FA Cup final when Kevin Keegan scores the first goal for Liverpool (‘Goals pay the rent and Keegan does his share’). I think I was probably missing the point though.

“Beds Are Burning” peaked at No 6 in the UK Top 40.

Next up is ~~Mantovani.~~ Sorry, it’s that single by The Cure that Holly Johnson reviewed actually. “Lullaby” was the lead single from latest album “Disintegration” and would prove to be the band’s biggest ever UK hit peaking at No 5 – the only time they ever made the Top 5 which seems incredible given their the band’s catalogue of work. The album was also a huge commercial success as well as critically well received. “Lullaby” was typical of a conscious decision to move way from their more poppier side of the likes of “The Love Cats” and “Inbetween Days” to a more introspective and gloomy sound.

As with Simple Minds earlier in the show, the recording of the album had incurred band casualties with founding member Lol Tolhurst fired from the band due to problems with alcoholism.

I have to admit that my knowledge of The Cure’s discography timeline gets a bit foggy towards the end of the decade and if I’d been asked before this TOTP repeat had aired when “Lullaby” had been released, I’m not sure I could have answered ‘1989’ with any confidence despite knowing the song.

Top 10

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

9. Fine Young Cannibals – “Good Thing”

8. Madonna – “Like A Prayer”

7. Paula Abdul – “Straight Up”

6. U2 – “When Love Comes To Town”

5. Kon Kan – “I Beg Your Pardon”

4. Holly Johnson – “Americanos”

3. Transvision Vamp – “Baby I Don’t Care”

2. Simply Red – “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”

1. The Bangles – “Eternal Flame”: Still burning bright at the top of the tree I wonder if any of the band used to object to the amount of attention that Susanna Hoffs got / gets? Although they didn’t have a lead singer technically with vocal duties equally shared out, Susanna’s profile was by far the biggest of the group so did it cause any friction? Wikipedia seems to suggest that was the reason behind the breakup in 1989. Indeed, history records that “Eternal Flame” was the straw that broke the camel’s back with the rest of them being cast as backing band to Hoff’s superstar status. There was a happy ending though with the group reforming in 1998 and still a going concern to this day albeit without original bassist Michael Steele.

The play out video is “Who’s In The House” by Beatmasters featuring Merlin although that promo appears to be blocked on YouTube so here’s a copyright avoiding reversed version.

We’d already seen Beatmasters score hits with Cookie Crew and P.P. Arnold previously but this one was with someone called Merlin whom I really don’t remember. At the time I thought it was a lazy cash in on the whole ‘house’ phenomenon but apparently it had more of a back story than that. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

“Who’s In The House?” was a response to American producer Tyree Cooper's claim that he'd released the first "hip-house" record. Hence the lyric "Watch out Tyree, we come faster." Not sure that's a proud boast, lads. #TOTP

— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 6, 2020

This one never did much for me although I did like their next and final hit which was released later in the year with Betty Boo called “Hey DJ!/I Can’t Dance (To That Music You’re Playing)”. “Who’s In The House” peaked at No 8.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I buy it?
1	Transvision Vamp	Baby I Don’t Care	It’s on their collection CD that I own
2	Simple Minds	This Is Your Land	Nope
3	Inner City	Ain’t Nobody Better	A definite no
4	De La Soul	Me, Myself And I	No but my wife had their ‘3 Feet High And Rising’ album
5	London Boys	Requiem	Of course not
6	Holly Johnson	Americanos	No but my wife had his album ‘Blast’
7	Metallica	One	No
8	Midnight Oil	Beds Are Burning	Thought I did but I didn’t apparently
9	The Cure	Lullaby	Don’t think so
10	The Bangles	Eternal Flame	Presume it’s on their Best Of CD that I have
11	Beatmasters featuring Merlin	Who’s In The House	As if

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000fzly/top-of-the-pops-20041989

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

Some bed time reading?

http://likepunkneverhappened.blogspot.com/2019/04/april-19-may-2-1989_19.html

TOTP 06 APR 1989

Posted on March 2, 2020 by 80stastic

download Well here’s a thing. This is the 250th post of my blog. Two hundred and bloody fifty! Three years ago I started this nonsense of reviewing every TOTP show from 1983 onwards. I nearly gave up after the first year but stuck with it and now as the end of these 80s repeats gets ever nearer, I have the resolve to complete this mammoth task. To put some context to this, the number of reviews I have written is now more than the total amount of studio albums, singles and EPs released by Sir Cliff Richard combined! In terms of my 80s self, I was a 14 year old schoolboy back at the start of ’83 and by April ’89, I was a few weeks off my 21st birthday and also from finishing my three year polytechnic degree course. Musically speaking, the blog has covered a lot of musical changes from the rise and demise of the classic pop superstars such as Duran Duran, Culture Club and Spandau Ballet through the Frankie Goes To Hollywood phenomenon and then onto Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s production line pop and the emergence of house music. And that’s just a very simplified overview. Finally in the last year of the decade we have….well what do we have? Let’s see…

….talk about a let down! The first act of my 250th post is bastard Brother Beyond! Of all the swooning girl inducing pop acts that we have seen in these last 250 posts, this lot are surely one of the worst. Horrible, insipid music, dreadful image and at least three of them you wouldn’t have looked twice at if you’d passed them on the street were they not in a band. “Can You Keep A Secret” was typical of their woeful sound. High on pop sheen, non-existent in terms of anything of substance.

The glossy pop press like Smash Hits loved them as they could shove their fizzogs on the front cover and be guaranteed some decent sales as the ‘Yondies would rush to buy anything with their heroes on it. Me, I couldn’t stand anything about them even down to the ridiculous way they mimed on TOTP. Look at them! There’s only the drummer who seems to be on even nodding terms with his instrument. The guitarist and keyboards guy look as convincing as those models in the Robert Palmer “Addicted To Love” video. I’m really hoping this might be the last time we have to endure these berks on the show.

A decent tune next from Kon Kan and their Lynn Anderson sampling hit “I Beg Your Pardon”. This Canadian duo were briefly a pop sensation with a Top 10 hit around Europe and even a Top 15 place in the US. A follow up single called “Harry Houdini” which mashed up “White Lines” by Grandmaster Melle Mel and Blondie’s “The Tide Is High” was released but it pretty much bombed and they never troubled our charts again.

I said in a previous post that I think my Dad had the Lynn Anderson record but thinking back to when I was a tiny child, I believe my first introduction to “Rose Garden” wasn’t via Lynn but by those porcine puppets Pinky and Perky. A quick check of YouTube and my theory was confirmed. That album cover definitely looks familiar and “Rose Garden” kicks in around the 7:40 mark. The kids today really wouldn’t understand!

Proving that “Love Train” was no fluke, here comes Holly Johnson with his second solo hit single “Americanos”. Very much in the same sonic style as its predecessor, it was once more perfect Radio 1 playlist fodder. In a Smash Hits interview, Holly admitted that he had taken to listening to the station to keep a check on how many airplays he was actually receiving and that his promotions team weren’t lying to him about the figures.

Lyrically, the song takes a swipe at consumerism and the American dream and includes the line “everything’s organised, from crime to leisure time” with Holly choosing to use an American emphasis on the word ‘leisure’. That always stuck me as a nice little hook.

Holly does his best US game show host impression in this performance, full of little tics and winks while the song itself mooches along very nicely with its little perky stabs of synth brass and throaty backing vocals doubling up on the chorus.

“Americanos” matched the chart fortunes of “Love Train” by peaking at No 4 but Holly would only have one more Top 40 hit in his own right although he did make two separate appearances on charity records for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster.

Paula Abdul is still in the ascendancy with her “Straight Up” single. I don’t think we’ve seen the video before as the show has used the same studio performance on both of her previous appearances. The promo received high rotation on MTV to help propel it up the charts and would go onto win the station’s Video Music Awards for Best Female Video, Best Dance, Best Choreography and Best Editing. Strange then that TOTP chose to air less than two minutes of it in this show.

To be fair, I’ve watched it back and cannot for the life of me see what all the fuss was about. Yes there are some nifty dance moves on display but seeing as choreographer was Paula’s previous chosen profession, surely that was a given?

“Straight Up” peaked at No 3 in the UK and was the best selling single of the year in the US.

Here’s the Breakers and it turns out that Cookie Crew had more hits than I remember. This one is “Got To Keep On”. Nothing to do with “Keep On Keepin’ On!” by York -based agit-popsters The Redskins but actually a track very heavily based on “Twenty Five Miles” by Edwin Starr although he doesn’t get an official credit despite appearing in the video. Truth be told, I’d rather just listen to the original version. MC Remedee and Susie Q’s tacked on rapping doesn’t do anything for me at all.

“Got To Keep On” peaked at No 17.

A bit of off the wall electro-pop now with Swiss oddballs Yello and their single “Of Course I’m Lying”. I’d forgotten that this track was actually a Top 40 hit and was taken from the same album (“Flag”) as their Top 10 hit of the previous year “The Race”. As was their way, this track was nothing like its predecessor with its slow tempo and breathy, atmospheric vocals.

The video looks like a very cheap version of the BBC adaptation of His Dark Materials to me whilst the spoken word bits in the song sound like “Somewhere Down The River” era Robbie Robertson doing “Ain’t No Doubt” by Jimmy Nail. Wonderfully bonkers, “Of Course I’m Lying” peaked at No 23.

A second posthumous single from Roy Orbison next as “She’s A Mystery To Me” was released as the follow up to “You Got It”. Not quite the title track from his “Mystery Girl” album but clearly inspiring it, I was surprised to find out that this wasn’t a much bigger hit than its No 27 peak. Co-written with U2’s Bono and The Edge, it’s a tender and affecting ballad which I much preferred to its predecessor. I can’t recall if I ever asked him at the time but I always thought that my Dad (a big Orbison fan) must have liked this one.

T’Pau were still having chart hits in 1989? Yes they were. Some nice segueing from the TOTP production team has them coming after Roy Orbison with a track that has the same title as one of his biggest hits. Sadly “Only The Lonely” was not a Big O cover version (which would have been infinitely more interesting) but a Carol Decker / Ronnie Rogers original. This was the final single to be lifted from their sophomore album “Rage” and their only release of 1989. In fact, it was their last release of any kind for two years before they returned in 1991 with “The Promise” album by which point the UK had gone Madchester mad and nobody could remember who T’Pau even were.

Whilst the track was reasonably well received by the music press (especially Carol’s vocals), it always sounded a bit T’Pau by numbers to me. “Only The Lonely” peaked at No 28.

‘Is this woman the new Yazz?’ asked Smash Hits magazine in response to the emergence of Lisa Stansfield and her collaboration with Coldcut “People Hold On”. Understandable after the latter lit the touch paper on Yazz’s career I guess. Lisa still looks like she can’t believe her luck at being in the charts. On her last appearance on the show, she didn’t seem to know where to look as the track started and it’s pretty much the same this time. She almost seems embarrassed until her vocal kicks in and then she’s in the groove.

In that same Smash Hits article it describes Lisa in a fairly patronizing way as being from ‘oop north, like’ and originating from ‘picturesque Rochdale’. I spent a year working in the Our Price store in Rochdale in the early 90s. I loved my time there but I’m not sure I would ever have described the place as picturesque but then I never saw much more of the place than the bus station and the shop itself in all that time so maybe I was missing out. I certainly did miss out on the day that Lisa herself came into the store as it was my day off. She never came back in whilst I was there although I did once serve fellow Rochdale native and renowned actress Ana Friel.

“People Hold On” peaked at No 11.

Fancy some Simply Red? No, neither do I but here’s Hucknall anyway with a cover of the Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes standard “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”. This was the second single to be taken from third album ” A New Flame” following the turgid “It’s Only Love” (itself a Barry White cover version) and I thought this was just lazy, cynical money for old rope stuff from Ginger Mick. Like his version of Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” (yet another fucking cover!) at the back end of ’87, it reeked to me of deliberate exploitation of the record buying public to ensure a big hit after the modest success of “It’s Only Love” which failed to make the Top 10. Write some songs of your own Hucknall!

As ever this performance is all about Mr H and it got me thinking – can I name any other member of Simply Red (past or present) other than the ginger one? The best I could come up with was that bloke who was also in the death knell version of The Stone Roses briefly.

There was no way “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” wasn’t going to be a huge commercial success and so it came to pass that it went to No 2 in the UK and was an actual No 1 record in the US.

After last week’s appearance in the Breakers section, teenage boys up and down the country presumably got very excited by this week’s studio performance by Transvision Vamp or more accurately Wendy James. The highest climber on this week’s chart with “Baby I Don’t Care”, the band were about to enter their regal phase with a No 1 album and four hit singles within the calendar year.

If we thought Simply Red’s turn was all about Mick Hucknall, we were a out to get a master class on how to dominate a performance from Ms James. The camera hardly seems to deviate from her throughout the entire duration of the song with just the occasional 2 second cut back to the guys in the band. She does a damned good job of being captivating though, I’d have to say.

Right, let’s apply the Simply Red question to Transvision Vamp – how many other people in the band can I name apart from Wendy? Well, there was the stupidly named Tex Axile (see what he did there?) but I’ve no idea what his real name was and wasn’t her songwriting partner called Christian Sayer or something. Conclusion? Transvision Vamp were more memorable than Simply Red. QED.

Top 10

10. Reynolds Girls – “I’d Rather Jack”

9. Pat and Mick – “I Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet”

8. Kon Kan – “I Beg Your Pardon”

7. Guns N’ Roses – “Paradise City”

6. Soul II Soul – “Keep On Movin”

5. The Bangles – “Eternal Flame”

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

3. Paula Abdul – “Straight Up”

2. Jason Donovan – “Too Many Broken Hearts”

1. Madonna – “Like A Prayer”: Still there at the top it’s her Madgesty. The video for “Like A Prayer” routinely tops countdowns and critic lists. It was number one on MTV’s “100 Videos That Broke The Rules” in 2005, and MTV viewers voted it as the “Most Groundbreaking Music Video of All Time”. In a 2011 poll by Billboard, “Like a Prayer” was voted the second best music video of the 1980s, behind only “Thriller” by Michael Jackson. Clearly she knew what she was doing when she started down this road of controversy. The song’s legacy is enormous.

The final song on tonight’s show is “Mystify” by INXS. Of all their back catalogue, this track still seems to receive the lion’s share of their airplay to this day despite it being the fifth single to be released from the “Kick” album. It certainly feels like their most played ’80s song at the very least. Quite odd really to say that it was only deemed worthy of a release towards the end of the album’s life and that it only made No 14 on the UK charts. So why is it still played so much? For me it’s that it’s remains a great song although still not my favourite from the album.

The video is just a straight forward concert performance of the track but it is rescued from anonymity by the start and end shots that give a glimpse of Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss in creative mode as they put the song together.

As with T’Pau earlier, this would be the band’s last release of the whole decade.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I buy it?
1	Brother Beyond	Can You Keep A Secret?	Jeez no!
2	Kon Kan	I Beg Your Pardon	Why didn’t I buy this?!
3	Holly Johnson	Americanos	No but my wife had his album ‘Blast’
4	Paula Abdul	Straight Up	Straight up? No
5	Cookie Crew	Got To Keep On	Nah
6	Yello	Of course I’m Lying	Don’t think I did
7	Roy Orbison	She’s A Mystery To Me	Nope
8	T’Pau	Only The Lonely	And no
9	Coldcut and Lisa Stansfield	People Hold On	Negative
10	Simply Red	If You Don’t Know Me By Now	Simply NO
11	Transvision Vamp	Baby I Don’t Care	It’s on their collection CD that I own
12	Madonna	Like A Prayer	No but it’s on my Immaculate Collection CD
13	INXS	Mystify	Sure it’s on the Greatest Hits CD which I have

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000fjbt/top-of-the-pops-06041989

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

Some bed time reading?

http://likepunkneverhappened.blogspot.com/2019/04/april-5-18-1989.html

TOTP 02 FEB 1989

Posted on January 31, 2020 by 80stastic

We’ve reached February ’89 in these BBC4 TOTP repeats and already we’ve witnessed some changes to the show in terms of presentation and indeed presenters with a whole raft of new faces replacing some of the old guard Radio 1 DJs of yesteryear. Unfortunately, one of them has slipped through the net though and is still inanely grinning his way onto our screens. That person is, of course, the abominable Steve Wright. He’s paired up with Simon Mayo for this one so hold onto your hats, pathetically weak humour incoming….

Talking of hats, check out Holly Johnson‘s! Well, I suppose it’s a crown rather than a hat but you get the point. Simon Mayo does and uses it to make…guess what? Yes, a pathetically weak joke about checking out the hat parade. Hat parade / hit parade – geddit? Awful.

Anyway, Holly’s back to promote his debut single “Love Train” which is turning out to be a very sizeable success indeed. Up to No 5 already (it would peak one place higher), I wonder if Holly and his new label MCA had anticipated such a hit straight off the bat? After all it had been five years since Frankie Goes To Hollywood owned the charts after which their appeal fell away pretty quickly so I’m guessing that nobody was expecting a guaranteed hit. Sensibly I think, Holly decided to go in a different direction from that of his previous band with this all out pop tune as opposed to the cutting edge Frankie sound that cut a swath though the chart fodder in ’84. Of course he didn’t have Trevor Horn at the mixing desk for his solo stuff so it was always going to be a different beast I guess.

There’s some very odd camera work in this performance. As the song goes into the guitar solo in the middle and the guitarist readies herself for her moment in the spotlight, instead of focusing on her, the camera pans away and takes us for a trip around the back of Holly and shows us the rest of the band including the drummer and keyboard player. The close up of the white be-gloved hands of the keyboard player reminded me of this…

Some more issues with the new staging changes next as Simon Mayo appears at the side of the stage in amongst the studio audience to do the next link. Unfortunately for Simon, some yuppie looking herbert has managed to get himself a prime spot right behind Mayo as he starts his intro and as the camera focuses on the presenter it makes them look like, as Mick Convey on Twitter remarked, some sort of terrible pop duo. He’s behind you Simon!

If this was a group, even without hearing their music, you’d know it would be terrible. #totp pic.twitter.com/x6DvtaSs3b

— Mick Convey (@nalaknip) January 24, 2020

Back to the music and it’s Roy Orbison again! He seemed to be on every week back in ’89 with “You Got It”. Whilst Roy has retained his classic look, the rest of his band could not have ever existed in any time period other than the 80s with mullets aplenty. It makes for a quite a jarring visual image as if Roy has time travelled from the 60s and been deposited on stage as the lead singer of a contemporary 80s band.

This footage was actually shot just a few days before the Big O sadly passed away.

Someone who definitely does not have a mullet is Robert Howard (aka Dr Robert of The Blow Monkeys) whose had a very smart short back ‘n’ sides cut that wouldn’t look out of place today. He’s joined by Kym Mazelle for their duet “Wait” which was a bigger hit it seems than I remember. Maybe I’m confusing it with another Dr Robert collaboration with lovers rock singer Sylvia Tella called “Choice?” w hwas included on their first singles collection album. That track only made No 22 whilst “Wait” peaked at No 7.

I like the fact that the good doctor chose to do perform the song sat at a piano the whole time despite it being a dance track. What with his hair and pristine suit and a feather boa prop, it somehow puts me in mind of a performance from a much earlier era as if they were having a good old sing song around the old Joanna as TV hadn’t been invented yet. Kym’s shelf stacking dance moves do rather ruin that image though.

Here comes Sheena Easton with a backing band so large it can hardly fit on the stage. I’m sorry two keytar players on the same stage? There is surely safeguarding legislation in place to stop this sort of thing happening nowadays.

At this point in her career, Sheena still had some of her native Scottish accent intact. See her interview on the Tonight Show from 1989…

…now listen to her interview on This Morning from 2017…

I guess that’s what a two year stint in a Las Vegas residency does to you. None of this though can distract from the fact that “The Lover In Me” was beyond dreary.

Here come the Breakers starting with Michael Ball and “Love Changes Everything”. Not a cover of the Climie Fisher hit but in fact taken from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Aspects Of Love, I hated this. What had this got to do with pop music? Also my Mum loved it and Michael Ball which only strengthened my resolve to despise it. For those like my Mum who may have been expecting a Michael Ball album, it took another three years for it to come out on the back of his turn as the 1992 UK Eurovision entry which included both that song (“One Step Out Of Time” ) and “Love Changes Everything”.

I’ve softened towards Michael Ball in the intervening years – not about his singing but he was good in the TV adaptation of the Victoria Wood musical That Day We Sang and his Radio 2 Sunday show is actually reasonably listenable.

“Love Changes Everything” peaked at No 2 on the UK Top 40.

So there was more to Yazz than just “The Only Way Is Up” it seems. Indeed, there was more to her than “The Only Way Is Up” and its follow up “Stand Up For Your Love Rights” for here was a third hit single (not including her Coldcut collaboration) in “Fine Time”. Perhaps wisely, she deviated from the dance anthem formula of those two previous hits and went for a ballad with a reggae lilt – you know, to show her versatility like.

The video is all arty black and white footage of Yazz walking around London intercut with her performing the song in colour in some sort of jazz club setting. Again, I think it must have been to try and establish her as a credible artist and not a one trick pony. For me though, none of that mattered as the song was interminably dull and I lost interest in it immediately.

“Fine Time” peaked at No 9.

Right, so what exactly did Steve Wright mean by his comment “the new heroes of bedsit land” when introducing Hue and Cry? That they were a student band? I’ve never thought of them as that. I’m really not sure what he means but then the guy seems to know very little about music for someone who was a national DJ so why am I surprised.

That “Looking For Linda” was a hit kind of bucked the band’s trend and was slightly unexpected. Since their breakthrough hit “Labour Of Love” in ’87, they’s released a further three single all of which had stalled outside the Top 40 including the lead single from their new album “Remote” which must have been a concern. Undaunted, a second single was out out into the market place and this time it did the trick peaking at No 15.

Why did “Looking For Linda” make it and not the others? Maybe there was something intriguing in the title. Who was Linda and why was she being looked for? The answer was just about in the lyrics which seemed to tell the tale of a woman fleeing an abusive relationship by saying she was nipping out for a packet of fags and then jumping on the first available train out of town. Yes, it was one of those story songs like “Come Dancing” by The Kinks or “Disco 2000” by Pulp or (gasp) “Copacabana” by Barry Manilow.

I liked it (still do) – it was tuneful with a great chorus and a serious message. Perfect for my student tastes. Oh shit! Maybe Steve Wright was ..err..right about Hue And Cry!

Some three years after her debut single “Touch Me (I Want Your Body)”, somehow, and this defies all known logic and parameters of taste, Samantha Fox was still having hit records. However, the game was nearly up and her cover of the Dusty Springfield classic “I Only Want To Be With You” was her last of the decade and the last of her entire career bar a one off comeback single in 1998 that made No 31 called “Santa Maria” – I’ve no idea.

For some reason, Fox’s version was re-titled “I Only Wanna Be With You” – one in the eye for linguists everywhere. It’s a thoroughly weedy rendition and the Stock, Aitken and Waterman production does it no favours whatsoever. In any case, the definitive cover version had already been made some 10 years previous by The Tourists.

“I Only Wanna Be With You” peaked at No 16 at a stroke becoming Fox’s biggest hit for two years.

Next, the return of Mick Hucknall. Wait! Come back! It’ll be over soon! I think this may have been the point when Simply Red went big league. Yes, they’d had some major chart success before this point (“Holding Back The Years” had been a No 2 hit and their first two albums had been platinum sellers) but this had been tempered with some moderate chart success single releases and even some that flopped altogether.

With the release of third album “A New Flame” – from which “It’s Only Love” was the lead single – it felt like they had moved onto a higher level. For a start, “A New Flame” was their first UK No 1 album and it would eventually go seven times platinum paving the way for the peak of their popularity with the 1991 album “Stars” which eclipsed even that figure by being an incredible twelve times platinum seller.

To my ears though, “It’s Only Love” sounded incredibly dull. One paced and with some distinctly seedy lyrics, it felt like a stinker to me. It turns out (and I never knew this) that it’s actually a cover of a Barry White song (originally titled “It’s Only Love Doing Its Thing”) which kind of explains the sleazy sounding lyrics I guess. Look Mick, the walrus of love can get away with lines like “Don’t be afraid to touch me babe” but you mate, nah. Especially not in that shirt.

“It’s Only Love” peaked at No 13.

Another man making a fashion statement is Roachford who seems to have single handedly invented the ‘man bag’ a good ten years before the rest of the world caught on. Check out what he’s got draped over his right arm in this performance of “Cuddly Toy”. This may have been a southern thing as there definitely were not loads of young men in Sunderland where I was a student at the time sauntering around the Crowtree Leisure Centre with a man bag accessory.

Seven years on from this and possibly inspired by Roachford, one of those dreary 3T lads took it a stage further by wearing a proper back pack for this performance…

Absolutely ludicrous. Another dreaded Steve Wright moment arrives when he can’t resist whooping it up at the end of Roachford’s performance. He looks and sounds like a twat to be blunt.

The Top 10…

10. Robert Howard and Kym Mazelle – “Wait”

9. Erasure – “Crackers International EP”

8. Ten City – “That’s The Way Love Is”

7. Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan – “Especially For You”

6. Fine Young Cannibals – “She Drives Me Crazy”

5. Holly Johnson – “Love Train”

4. Roachford – “Cuddly Toy”

3. Roy Orbison – “You Got It”

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

1. Marc Almond and Gene Pitney – “Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart”: God I’m bored of this already. Let’s see if the video was any more interesting that their TOTP performance…

…hmm well, I suppose it was a nice concept to film it in the Neon Junkyard in Las Vegas to create an unusual backdrop of discarded neon signs but then Marc and Gene just stroll around the set doing a straight performance of the song. There’s very little narrative or plot and it all seems very underwhelming to me.

The play out video is “My Prerogative” by Bobby Brown. The inclusion of a word like ‘prerogative’ in the lyrics of a pop song was probably pretty out there but there have been a few other examples of unlikely words that have been used similarly. For example we have the wonderful “Juxtaposed with U” by Super Furry Animals. However, you’d have to go a long way to find a more bizarre use of words than in Faith Hill’s “That Kiss” which manages to get ‘centrifugal motion’ in the chorus.

“My Prerogative”peaked at No 6 in the UK charts.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Holly Johnson	Love Train	No but my wife bought his album
2	Roy Orbison	You Got It	Actually I didn’t get it
3	Robert Howard and Kym Mazelle	Wait	Not the single but I have it on a CD I think
4	Sheena Easton	The Lover In Me	Nope
5	Michael Ball	Love Changes Everything	Not a prayer
6	Yazz	Fine Time	Nah
7	Hue And Cry	Looking For Linda	No but again my wife had the album
8	Samantha Fox	I Only Wanna Be With You	Jesus no!
9	Simply Red	It’s Only Love	It’s only crud more like – no
10	Roachford	Cuddly Toy	No but I think my wife may have. She should probably be writing this blog not me!
11	Marc Almond and Gene Pitney	Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart	But it wasn’t this record – no
12	Bobby Brown	My Prerogative	No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000dl2d/top-of-the-pops-02021989

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/2019/01/january-25-february-7-1989.html

TOTP 19 JAN 1989

Posted on January 23, 2020 by 80stastic

At the start of the week, I woke to the news that the San Francisco 49ers will play the Kansas City Chiefs in this year’s Super Bowl. It put me in mind of the first time I ever watched a Super Bowl and coincidentally the 49ers were also in that one. Why do I mention this in a blog about 80s pop music? Well, it was in January 1989 and was played three days after this particular TOTP aired.

Why did I watch it? Mainly due to the influence of one of my student housemates called Ian who was obsessed with American culture (he ended up emigrating there six years later where he still resides). His American football team were the 49ers whilst another housemate Dave followed their opponents that day who were the Cincinnati Bengals. Needle and arguments had been ongoing all week as the two of them wound each other up over who would win.

Somehow I allowed myself to get involved with all of this and booked myself in to watch the game which aired very late in the night and early hours of the morning due to the UK / US time difference. With just 3.10 left on the clock, the Bengals were up 16-13 and Dave was looking pretty smug. In a dramatic finale, the 49ers advanced 92 yards down the field on what Springsteen would surely have described as a ‘last chance power drive’ and won the game with a touchdown with just 34 seconds left to play. There was uproar in our student house as Ian whooped with delight whilst Dave took the result so badly that he ripped apart the TV remote in total frustration. I was particularly annoyed about that as it meant I couldn’t use teletext to check the football scores on a Saturday without it ( a detail that so dates this recollection). In his defence, Dave did go to the TV rental company the next day and got a replacement by lying out of his arse that it had been run over in the street by a passing car. (How Dave? How?).

So what were the songs in the charts that Dave and Ian would have been hearing on the radio as they looked forward to the Super Bowl? Let’s check in with TOTP to find out…

Tonight’s presenters are Bruno Brookes and Richard Skinner who I find it hard to believe was still considered ‘happening’ enough in ’89 to present the show. Apparently it was the last time he ever did so after a nine year stint in the post. I’m pretty sure his hairstyle never changed once during those nine years. At what point on that timeline was it ever considered a decent haircut?

The first act tonight is Roachford with “Cuddly Toy”. Despite a 30 year career in the music industry and a string of chart hits to his name, Andrew Roachford is still best known for this one song I would wager, especially after it was revived by the Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa film the other year.

When interviewed in 2017 by freelance writer Malcolm Wyatt, Roachford had this to say about “Cuddly Toy”:

“I guess what resonates about that song is that musically it had something going on. It wasn’t just manufactured pop. And people can tell the difference.”

It’s a fair point and I should probably check out some more of his back catalogue at some point but for now, I’ve got a load more songs to write about in this post so that’ll have to wait. Talking of waiting, Wikipedia informs me that Gary Barlow’s 1997 solo single “Love Won’t Wait” featured a version of “Cuddly Toy” on the flip side. Really? I must have sold loads of that single (well it was No 1) when I was working in Our Price but I don’t remember him covering Roachford. Oh God, I’m going to have to check it out now aren’t I…

…well that was all kinds of wrong. Barlow’s antiseptic vocal style takes all the feeling out of the song. Just horrible. Wait, there’s a Beverley Knight version as well? Oh, well in for a penny…

…oh that was much better. Knocks Barlow’s insipid version into a cocked hat. Much more authentic. Roachford’s original version would peak at No 4 in the UK and No 25 in the US where it was curiously re-titled “Cuddly Toy (Feel For Me)” perhaps to avoid confusion with the old Monkees hit of the same name.

Here’s ‘The Big O’ again with his posthumous hit “You Got It”. The parent album “Mystery Girl” was also a huge hit peaking at No 2 in the UK and No 5 in the US. Predictably, in the wake of Roy Orbison‘s death, there was a re-release campaign of the star’s back catalogue which some argued distracted from the genuine quality of “Mystery Girl” and cheapened its value. Would it have been such a success without Orbison’s untimely death? We’ll never know.

“You Got It” was followed up by the single “She’s A Mystery To Me” which was written by U2’s Bono and The Edge. Apparently, Bono woke up with the song in his head one day and assumed it must be an existing Orbison song but when he realized it wasn’t, played it to the rest of the band at the soundcheck before a concert. Supposedly, and this seems to be stretching reality a bit, Orbison paid the band an unannounced back stage visit post gig that very day where Bono played him the song and they agreed to work on it together. Seems unlikely.

Now here was a thing. Robert Howard was of course Dr. Robert of The Blow Monkeys, who we hadn’t seen in the charts for a couple of years following the success of their “She Was Only A Grocer’s Daughter” album and attendant hit single “It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way”. Subsequent single releases from the album hadn’t been hits though whilst a brand new track called “This Is Your Life” also failed to do the business commercially. The band seemed to be at a crossroads and their next step would be crucial. That step turned out to be recording a dance track with a then unknown Kym Mazelle called “Wait”.

I was confused though. Was this an official Blow Monkeys release? Had Dr. Robert gone solo? Who was Kym Mazelle? Well, yes and no was the answer to the first question. The band’s new album that was just about ready to be released and it didn’t originally include “Wait” but in the light of the single’s success the track listing was quickly edited to include it alongside a ‘danced up’ version of lead single “This Is Your Life”. So no, Dr.Robert had not left the band but had basically done a side project that was incorporated into the band’s new direction. And Kym Mazelle? She was/is an American singer /songwriter who had been making waves in the clubs with a couple of early singles until she went mainstream with the good doctor. She of course went onto have a successful career in her own right and as part of Soul II Soul. She is now known as the ‘First Lady Of House Music’ but I will always think of her as one of the random people name checked on The Beloved’s “Hello” single.

“Wait” peaked at No 7.

After last week’s Breakers appearance, Marc Almond and Gene Pitney are scampering up the charts with “Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart” and have gatecrashed the Top 10 already. So a huge hit in the UK and the rest of Europe but not so in Pitney’s native US where his record label refused to release it as they were afraid that young listeners who were not familiar with Pitney or Almond would think they were a gay couple! To combat this, they were very careful to perform the song without much recognition of the other on stage which is evidenced in this clip where they hardly look at each other. I guess not everything was better in the good old days.

Back to the dance tunes now as the first of the Breakers is “That’s The Way Love Is” by Chicago R’n’B-sters Ten City (it was a play on the word intensity apparently). I vaguely remember this one – it wasn’t really my cup of tea – but what I didn’t realize until now was that one of the band was the ridiculously named Byron Stingily who I do recall from my late ’90s Our Price days as he had a couple of hit singles back then one of which was actually a re-working of “That’s The Way Love Is”. The Ten City original made No 8 in the UK whilst the Stingily solo version only made No 32.

Oh and this is weird given the start of this post and which I had no idea of until literally seconds ago when I read it on Wikipedia – Byron Stingily’s son (the also ridiculously named Byron Stingily Jr) is a professional American Footballer having played for the New York Giants among others. I genuinely did not plan this post around an American football theme. Honest!

Wringing very possible sale out of her debut album by releasing a fourth track from it as a single is Mica Paris and once again she has teamed up with another artist (previous single “Like Dreamers Do” featured Courtney Pine). This time it’s “A Love Supreme” hitmaker Will Downing. Their cover of the old Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway hit “Where Is The Love” was an obvious single choice in that it was a song her new fan base would probably recognize therefore giving it a solid foundation in terms of its chances of success.

It’s pretty faithful to the original and never really did anything for me I have to say. It peaked at No 19 in the UK Top 40.

Here come New Model Army to remind us that they were still a going concern with a strong fan base in ’89 as indeed they still are to this very day. Not seen in the Top 40 at the time since 1985’s “No Rest”, “Stupid Questions” was taken from their most commercially successful album “Thunder And Consolation” which made No 20 in the UK charts. The LP featured Ed Alleyne-Johnson on electric violin whom I remember from my Our Price days when his 1992 “Purple Electric Violin Concerto” album became an unexpected sleeper hit and we had to order in a load of extra copies to cope with demand.

I have to say that I don’t remember “Stupid Questions” at all but then it only made No 31 in the charts and I’m guessing was not a regular play on daytime radio back in the day. Just listened to it now though and it sounds OK to me.

Despite having already peaked commercially (although they didn’t know that at the time) Brother Beyond continued to linger around the UK Top 40 like Laurence Fox at a …well…in fact, like Laurence Fox full stop. “Be My Twin” was their third consecutive hit peaking at No 14 following chart positions of No 2 and No 6 for the other two singles. Subsequent releases in ’89 would achieve chart placings of No 22, No 39 and No 43 thereby setting a perfect example of a case of diminishing returns. And yes, I did have to look those positions up – obviously I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of their chart record.

“Be My Twin” was clearly more of the same pop pap as their previous output being completely anodyne and lacking in any substance whatsoever. What was I expecting from this lot of chancers though? They were hardly The Smiths were they?

I think there must have been some very hard promotion going on for Natalie Cole‘s “I Live For Your Love” single by her label’s reps out in the record stores. The chart run for this one lasted 16 weeks all told and was as follows:

82 – 77 – 67- 56 – 46 – 46 – 40 – 34 – 40 – 34 – 30 – 23 – 26 – 35 – 54 – 67

It stayed still for one week and actually went down another before it reached its peak of No 23. The reps must have been doing some very hard selling and free product deals to turn it around. I guess the label must have had faith in the single to have kept up the promotion of it for that long. Was it worth it? Well, they got her a Top 40 hit (albeit a very moderate one) but I guess it was a launchpad for her next single “Miss You Like Crazy” which went all the way to No 2 and was basically the same song as “I Live For Your Love” in that it was another big, tugging at the heart strings ballad. The label must have thought there was an appetite for that sort of thing out there in record buying land.

Bruno Brookes with an incorrect chart prediction next as he reckons Mike And The Mechanics will be No 1 next week (it’s No 4 this week)with “The Living Years”. Sadly for Mike and Bruno, it stalled at No 2. Did any TOTP presenters’ predictions ever come to fruition? Simon Mayo made a couple that were well short of the mark including that Morrissey’s “Everyday Is Like Sunday” would be a No 1 record I recall. Look, just read the chart run down out and introduce the acts. We weren’t interested in what your actual opinions were!

“The Living Years” was co-written by B.A. Robertson and of course you can’t mention him without mentioning this…

Bloody hippy! Right, next we have the return of Holly Johnson with his first solo single “Love Train”. Not seen anywhere for two years since the demise of Frankie Goes To Hollywood due to an injunction placed against him by their record label ZTT, this was a much lighter and pop focused direction from Holly than maybe we had all expected. It had a great feel good factor to it with an irresistible singalong chorus and was well received both by pop fans and the music press. Record Mirror magazine described it as “the perfect commercial pop song” whilst Melody Maker though it was a “cute mini-masterpiece of pneumatic innuendo”. Also, my Poly mate John loved this and I once caught him scribbling the song’s lyric ‘stoke it up’ on his pad when he should have been taking notes from the lecture we were sat in.

Holly himself seems not only free of the legal shackles of ZTT but also of the Frankie persona in this performance. He still has his mannered gestures but he can clearly be seen enjoying a bit of soft shoe shuffle whilst his outfit seems to have been inspired by Batman’s enemy The Riddler. The guitar solo on the record is played by Queen’s Brain May although that’s definitely not him up here on stage. Right hairstyle mind but the wrong gender.

“Love Train” peaked at No 4 in the UK charts.

Scoring themselves the biggest hit of their career are Fine Young Cannibals with “She Drives Me Crazy”. I always found Roland Gift an arresting front man. He sometimes seemed like he had the crowd in the palm of his hand and that glint in his eye and wry smile suggested he knew it. Having said all of that, if you listen carefully to this particular performance you can definitely hear a TOTP floorwalker encouraging the studio audience to turn up the volume on their reaction as he shouts “Come On ! Get your hands in the air! Keep it going!”.

I saw Roland Gift playing the title role in a stage production of Romeo and Juliet in Hull many years ago and he gave a captivating performance. An acting career seemed likely at that point but despite some roles in high profile films like Scandal and Sammy And Rosie Get Laid, that never quite panned out.

As for the other guys in the band, I wonder how they felt about not being able to do their trademark rubber legs turn behind Roland on this one as it was markedly slower in tempo than previous hits. And why did they always seem to co-ordinate their outfits? And what was the deal with the dry ice waterfall engulfing the drummer? Who knows and frankly do we really need to know? To reference New Model Army, stupid questions indeed.

Top 10

10. Marc Almond and Gene Pitney – “Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart”

9. Boy Meets Girl – “Waiting For A Star To Fall”

8. Inner City – “Big Fun”

7. Roy Orbison – “You Got It”

6. Will To Power – “Baby, I Love Your Way/Freebird Medley (Free Baby)”

5. Fine Young Cannibals – “She Drives Me Crazy”

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

3. Neneh Cherry – “Buffalo Stance”

2. Erasure – “Crackers International EP”

1. Kylie Minogue And Jason Donovan – “Especially For You”: A third week at the top of the pile for these two. According to Pete Waterman, the original idea for the release of the duet between them came from retail chain Woolworths who guaranteed they would order 250,000 copies of the record if it was made. Not so sentimental about the demise of Woolies now are we?!

The play out video is Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock with “Get On The Dance Floor”. As with many an R’n’B / Hip Hop / Rap artist the duo’s real names were actually very ordinary sounding. Rob Base is actually Robert Ginyard whilst the now deceased DJ EZ Rock’s was Rodney Bryce.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Roachford	Cuddly Toy	No but I think my wife may have
2	Roy Orbison	You Got It	Actually I didn’t get it
3	Robert Howard and Kym Mazelle	Wait	Not the single but I have it on CD I think
4	Marc Almond and Gene Pitney	Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart	But it wasn’t this record – no
5	Ten City	That’s The Way Love Is	Not my cup of tea
6	Mica Paris and Will Downing	Where Is The Love	Again not my thing
7	New Model Army	Stupid Questions	No
8	Brother Beyond	Be My Twin	A definite no
9	Natalie Cole	I Live For Your Love	Nope
10	Mike and the Mechanics	The Living Years	Negative
11	Holly Johnson	Love Train	No but again my wife had the album
12	Fine Young Cannibals	She Drives Me Crazy	See 11 above
13	Kylie Minogue & Jason Donovan	Especially For You	Of course not
14	Rob Base and DJ E Z Rock	Get On The Dance Floor	Nope

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000db8c/top-of-the-pops-19011989

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/2019/01/january-11-24-1989.html

TOTP Rewind – the 80s

My memories of 80s chart music

TOTP 29 JUN 1989

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TOTP 01 JUN 1989

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TOTP 25 MAY 1989

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TOTP 18 MAY 1989

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TOTP 20 APR 1989

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TOTP 02 FEB 1989

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TOTP 19 JAN 1989

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