Jennifer Rush

TOTP 22 JUN 1989

Posted on April 10, 2020 by 80stastic

Simon Mayo and Gary Davies are our hosts for tonight’s TOTP and they seem to spend the majority of the show in very close proximity to each other (almost leaning into each other’s necks at one point) and start the show by brandishing their bare legs together. I think it was to make a point that the Summer of 1989 was a hot one but if they were trying to promote themselves as the new Wham! they failed dismally.

Opening the show tonight are Living In A Box with the title track of their second and final album “Gatecrashing”. It must have been a lean week for booking acts as they’d only moved up two places from No 39 to No 37 and yet still managed to bag themselves a studio appearance. The extra exposure made little difference as the single moved up just one place the following week before tumbling out of the Top 40 altogether. In its defence, it was probably doomed from the start. It was initially scheduled for an April release to consolidate on the success of previous Top 10 single “Blow The House Down” but had to be pulled after the Hillsborough disaster (in their hometown of Sheffield) due to its unfortunate title. By the time an acceptable amount of weeks had been deemed to have passed, all momentum had been lost. That’s one theory. Mine is that it wasn’t much cop as a song in the first place.

Undeterred, the band would return with their joint biggest hit ever later in the year, the polished ballad “Room In Your Heart”.

Next the last great Bond theme in my opinion. Licence To Kill was the second and final film to feature Timothy Dalton as 007 and Gladys Knight‘s theme tune has all the classic hallmarks of a Bond song. Yes, that’s probably because it was based on the horn parts from the Goldfinger theme but for me that doesn’t detract from it and it deserves a high place in the list of Best Bond songs ever. I’m assuming there is one….

*checks internet*

…OK, I found this list from Esquire magazine which ranks all 24 James Bond tunes (including the latest by Billie Eilish) and “Licence To Kill” comes in at No 13. Respectable but I would have thought it would be higher. “Live And Let Die” is of course No 1.

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/g26729930/james-bond-theme-songs-ranked/

Maybe I just an old giffer but some of the songs that have been recorded by today’s artists just don’t even sound like Bond themes to me. Even when I was a younger man and the likes of Madonna, Sheryl Crow, Tina Turner and Garbage took on the chalice, I didn’t like any of them either. So that for me is why Gladys Knight (sans pips) remains the last great Bond song. You are free to disagree of course.

“Licence To Kill” peaked at No 6.

Simon Mayo goes all intellectual next when he makes reference to Italian film maker Federico Fellini and his movie La strada whilst introducing the new video from U2. Bloody pseud! Anyway, the video is to promote “All I Want Is You” which was the fourth and final single to be released from their “Rattle And Hum” album and was probably the best of the four in my opinion.

Supposedly written about his wife, the quiet verses are Bono talking to her whilst the guitar refrains (which are archetypal The Edge creations) at the end of the verses are her reactions. Bloody pseud!

The video (which barely features the band) caused some debate amongst the band’s fans as to who is supposed to have died at the culmination of it. The dwarf or the trapeze artist. You’ll have to watch it yourself to form your own opinion*

“All I Want” peaked at No 4 making it the second highest placed single of the four released from the album.

*Spoiler alert! The Edge is quoted as saying it is the trapeze artist who dies.

Ooh! The Bangles are live in the studio! After being on video for every one of their TOTP appearances for “Eternal Flame” of which there were many, they have finally made it to London to perform follow up single “Be With You”. Despite not being on lead vocals for this one, Susannah Hoffs still manages to steal the limelight in her sparkly mini dress.

This was pretty much their last single release as a band first time around (they split in 1989 before a reunion in 1998). Their discography tells me that there was one final single released from the “Everything” album called “I’ll Set You Free” but it did nothing and was not really anything more than a goodbye to the fans. Talking of which, it is now time to say goodbye to The Bangles in this blog as I don’t think we’ll be seeing them again. Thanks for everything!

Clannad and Bono next with “In A Lifetime” and its one of those studio performances intercut with parts of the video appearances. This seemed to be a family thing with Clannad as that format was used previously for sibling and one time band member Enya when they combined her sat at the piano in the studio with her official promo for “Orinoco Flow”. Back then I assume it was either because the show’s producers thought Enya on her own would be too boring or because her record label wanted to get the most for their money out of the rather expensive looking video. Or both.

In the case of Bono and Clannad, I think it was just because Bono was too busy to join the folksters in the studio so they had to shoehorn him in via the video otherwise it would have looked weird. Which raises the question of why didn’t they just show the video again anyway? What did having Clannad in there in person add to the performance? I may be being harsh here but they don’t look the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen on stage. That said, Maire Brennan does have very piercing eyes.

Over the course of this blog, I’ve found many examples where a song taken from a film soundtrack has ended up being far more enduring than the film itself. Off the top of my head there’s “Against All Odds” and “Together In Electric Dreams”. I’m sure there are others. In the case of Prince and the very first Batman film (if you discount the film made out of the Adam West TV series), it’s a case of the opposite I’m afraid. I could never understand the appeal of “Batdance”. It doesn’t even sound like a cohesive song in that it seems to be a load of riffs, grooves and bits of film dialogue all spliced together and just shoved out there to promote the film rather than being a properly composed song. It doesn’t even feature in the film itself.

Oh yes, the film. Starring Michael Keaton as Batman and Jack Nicholson as The Joker, the hype around it was enormous but for me it was just about justified and certainly the movie did the business at the box office taking in over $250 million in America alone. It didn’t come out in the UK until August, so long after “Batdance” had been and gone. Given the interpretations of The Joker that have come since (Joaquin Phoenix and Heath Ledger for two), it seems strange now to think that we were all in awe of Nicholson’s rather cartoonish portrayal.

Despite being a No 2 in the UK and a No 1 in the US, I’m guessing that “Batdance” is not one of Prince’s most fondly remembered tunes, not even by diehard fans, and only features on the most comprehensive of his compilation albums.

In the long running serial of rappers with not very ‘in the hood’ real names, we have another entry in Rapper KG Demo of the London Rhyme Syndicate who D-Mob collaborate with on “It Is Time To Get Funky” who are up next. The name he was given at birth? Basil Reynolds.

I hated this track then and I still hate it now. Bloody rubbish as my Dad would say. And yes, I do realise I have actually become my Dad when talking about today’s music as that’s bloody rubbish as well.

“It Is Time To Get Funky” peaked at No 9 (somehow).

The Beautiful South released a total of 34 singles over the course of their career but only achieved one No 1 record – there should have been many more including this their debut “Song For Whoever” that fell just short at No 2. Paul Heaton’s vocals are so distinctive. I can’t imagine anyone could ever have impersonated him on Stars In Their Eyes for example.

*checks to make sure*

WHAT! Someone did in 1997 singing “One Last Love Song”. I can’t find a clip on YouTube but I can only assume it sounded nothing like him!

Someone who rarely gets any accolades for his voice is fellow band member Dave Hemingway whose vocals I have always found to be very pure and perfectly pitched.

There’s a great video compilation of their first ten or so singles called “The Pumpkin” that I used to own on VHS that included some very funny bits in between the songs that’s well worth looking out for. My own personal Beautiful South claim to fame is that I used to work with bassist Sean Welch’s partner up until recently. I think he’s into photography now.

Top 10

10. Madonna – “Express Yourself”

9. Guns N’ Roses – “Sweet Child O’ Mine”

8. The Beautiful South – “Song For Whoever”

7. Cyndi Lauper – “I Drove All Night”

6. Cliff Richard – “The Best Of Me”

5. U2 – “All I Want Is You”

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

3. Prince – “Batdance”

2. Jason Donovan – “Sealed With A Kiss”

1. Soul II Soul – “Back To Life”: They’ve knocked Jason Donovan off his perch (no mean feat in 1989) and are set for a long Summer of ‘A happy face, a thumpin’ bass, for a lovin’ race!’.

The iconic ‘Back to life, back to reality’ line was used as the inspiration by the aforementioned Paul Heaton to base one of his songs around, the rather wonderful “My Book” whose lyrics include ‘Back to bed, back to reality’. Sadly it only made No 43 in the charts unlike Soul II Soul’s blockbuster of a tune.

The play out video is that weird combo of Placido Domingo and Jennifer Rush with “Till I Loved You”. I thought I recognised the song title but not the pairing of Domingo and Rush (almost Liverpool’s front line in the 80s there) so I checked it out. I was right! A version was also recorded and released by another bizarre duo, this time Barbara Streisand and Don Johnson (yes Miami Vice‘s Don Johnson).

Hang on…Wikipedia says then girlfriend Barbara Streisand. Don Johnson went out with Barbara Streisand?! I never knew that!

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Living In A Box	Gatecrashing	Nah
2	Gladys Knight	Licence Top Kill	Don’t think I did
3	U2	All I Want	No
4	The Bangles	Be With You	No but I assume it’s on their Best Of album which I have
5	Clannad and Bono	In A Lifetime	No but I think my wife bought it first time around in 1986
6	Prince	Batdance	Nope
7	D-Mob	It Is Time To Get Funky	Negative
8	Beautiful South	Song For Whoever	No but I had the album it was from
9	Soul II Soul	Back To Life	No but I think my wife had their album
10	Placido Domingo and Jennifer Rush	‘Till I Loved You	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/m000gx1t/top-of-the-pops-22061989

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-14-27-1989.html

TOTP 15 JUN 1989

Posted on April 9, 2020 by 80stastic

The middle of June 1989 saw me cacking my pants about what I was going to do when I finally left the life of a student I’d blissfully been living for the past three years. The end was now very nigh. Someone else possibly cacking his pants was Simon Parkin as he made his TOTP presenting debut alongside Mark Goodier. Simon Parkin….was he one of the ‘broom cupboard’ people on Children’s BBC alongside the likes of Philip Schofield, Andy Crane and Andi Peters? I think he was. The only thing I really remember him for though was being the brunt of a jokey Steve Wright jingle that went “I wanted to be Simon Parkin but I wasn’t Simon Parkin enough” in a deranged mid Atlantic drawl. It wasn’t that funny but then neither is Steve Wright.

Back to the music though and first up are Fuzzbox riding the crest of their own personal wave with “Pink Sunshine”. Lead singer Vix has decided that what she really needs to make a point on tonight’s performance is a massive fucking pin that she’s wields around the stage. You could mistake it for a mike stand at first glance but it definitely has a point to it. Ahem. And….they did release a single called “What’s The Point” earlier in their career….oh this is pointless….

At the end of the song, Goodier says that there is a rumour that there will be a cartoon series based on the band. I have trawled the net but cannot find any reference to this anywhere. It reminded me that there was a story that Haircut 100 were going to have their own Monkees style TV show when they were the latest pop sensation but that never happened either although they did get their own comic strip in Look-In magazine which my younger sister used to buy. Bizarrely though, years later there was a BBC3 show called Fuzzbox which featured a cast of delinquent puppets voiced by real teenagers.

“Pink Sunshine” peaked at No 14.

Quite a moment next as REM make their TOTP debut with their first ever UK Top 40 hit “Orange Crush”. My chart obsessed ways of the early to mid 80s had meant that REM had not been on my radar at all before I came to Polytechnic. However, once there, I was introduced to them by a guy on my course called Roy who I would go onto share a house with when he played me “Fall On Me” from their “Lifes Rich Pageant” album and their 1983 debut single “Radio Free Europe”. By the time “Orange Crush” was out, I was also aware of the trio of intermediate near miss singles – “The One I Love”, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” and “Finest Worksong” – all taken from their fifth studio album “Document”.

The release of sixth album “Green” saw the band fulfil their contact with I.R.S. Records and decamp to major label Warner Bros amid accusations of selling out from their fan base. The sales of the album seemed to justify their decision though as it went platinum in the UK easily beating the numbers of previous album “Document”. “Orange Crush” was the only Top 40 hit to be taken from it though in this country. I actually liked follow up single “Stand” better but then I’d become very familiar with it as my girlfriend (now wife)’s flat mate used to play it very loudly whenever she was annoyed about something.

And what was “Orange Crush” all about? Well it wasn’t about an orange flavored soft drink as the hapless Simon Parkin would have us believe (“Mmm, great on a summer’s day. That’s Orange Crush.”). No it was about the Agent Orange, a chemical used by the US to defoliate the Vietnamese jungle during the Vietnam War. I had no idea but Roy knew. He always was more of a deep thinker than me.

“Green’ would pave the way for REM to become the biggest band on the planet for a while when 1991 follow up album “Out Of Time” went five times platinum shifting a million and a half copies in the UK alone. “Orange Crush” peaked at No 28.

Parkin’s not having the best of TOTP debuts. At the end of the next song “Joy And Pain” by Donna Allen, he says “great song and a nice hat too… that’s Donna S…Allen!”. Clearly he was going to say Summer but caught himself at the last moment. As for Allen herself, I haven’t got a lot to say about her really. I barely remember the song and it sounds pretty soporific to me. Apparently it was actually a cover of a 1980 track by the confusingly titled soul group Maze. Confusingly? How? Well, they are known as Maze but also Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly and sometimes even Frankie Beverly & Maze. Good job they weren’t on the show. Simon Parkin couldn’t distinguish between Donna Allen and Donna Summer – imagine the mess he would have made of Maze / Frankie Beverly!

Three Breakers this week starting with The Bangles and the follow up to their monster hit “Eternal Flame”. It was always going to be hard to eclipse such a huge smash but “Be With You” made a particularly poor fist of it being a No 23 and No 30 placed song in the UK and US charts respectively. It’s a serviceable mid tempo pop song but for me it doesn’t have any of the stardust of say “Manic Monday” nor the kookiness of “Walk Like An Egyptian”. The middle eight bit sounds a bit like Madonna’s “Dear Jessie” and therefore like it doesn’t really belong in the same song at all.

It was co-written by drummer Debbi Peterson who also takes on the lead vocals, only the second time this ever happened on a single release (the other being their cover of “Going Down To Liverpool” by Katrina and the Waves). “Be With You” was also their last single release of the 80s as the band split soon after before reforming in 1998.

Hang on. Wasn’t this one out in 1986 or something like that? What was it doing back in the charts in 1989? Well, it’s a pretty simple explanation as “In A Lifetime” by Clannad and Bono had indeed been a hit in early ’86 (I was right!) when it was originally released from the album “Macalla” peaking at No 20. However , it was re-released three years later to promote Clannad’s first Best Of collection called “Pastpresent”. when it made it to a peak three places higher at No 17. Simples.

According to Clannad’s vocalist Maire Brennan, Bono “just walked in the studio and improvised his vocal in two takes, making up a lot of lyrics on the spot. The whole thing took about ten minutes. It was one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen in a studio.”

I always quite liked this (although I don’t remember it being a hit all over gain in ’89). When I worked in Our Price a few years later we would have specialist music mornings during weekdays so one day it would be jazz, the next easy listening etc. The times “Pastpresent” would get routinely shoved on when it was folk morning….

Right, what the devil is going on here? Jennifer Rush and Plácido Domingo? Together? On the same record? What the..? Yes, this unlikely duo recorded “Till I Loved You” for a musical about the life of Spanish artist Francisco Goya called Goya: A Life in Song though it was never staged. That probably explains the artist and live model set up for the video concept I guess. The part where it looks like Plácido appears to be about to get down and dirty with Ms Rush prompts one of the few semi-funny lines Mark Goodier ever made on TOTP when he quips “Well, lucky old Jennifer eh?”.

It turns out that Plácido also recorded this with Dione Warwick and a Spanish-language version with Gloria Estefan – the old dog.

Here comes trouble….Double Trouble and the Rebel MC to be precise with their hit “Just Keep Rockin”. Actually, apart from that rather lame intro, I haven’t got much else to say about this one. However, check out Mark Goodier’s energetic moves as the camera cuts back to him as the song finishes! Parkin on the other hand looks totally furtive. ‘Should I be dancing? What if I dance and I look like a git?’ you can almost hear him thinking.

“Just Keep Rockin” peaked at No 11.

Parkin then attempts to make himself appear interesting by starting a debate about how to pronounce Cyndi Lauper‘s surname correctly, advising us that it used to be ‘Lawper’ but now it’s ‘Lowper’ (as in ‘Ow! That f*****g hurt!). What?! I don’t recall there being any big debate about this. I mean, it’s hardly up there with the the whole David Bowie argument* of “Boh-wee”(to rhyme with Joey) or “Bow-ee” (to rhyme with Towie) is it? Or is it? I found this on YouTube….

…well now you know. Anyway, Cyndi was up to No 8 in the charts with “I Drove All Night” which would also be her last UK chart hit of the decade. She would return to our Top 10 one final time in 1994 with “Hey Now” which was an alternate version of her debut hit “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”.

*We all know the answer to this one don’t we but if not watch this…

This next performance by Sinitta of “Right Back Where We Started From” is pure pantomime. That ridiculous sombrero style hat and those over eager, cut off denim wearing backing singers doing the Brotherhood Of Man thumbs in the waistline dance…it looked retro even back then in that it seemed more appropriate for the mid 80s era of the show when a party atmosphere was promoted by the TOTP producers.

A Smash Hits interview with Sinitta ran around this time with the headline ‘I’m bigger than Kylie’ and she was right. Sinitta is 5’4” while Kylie is 5’0”.

Top 10

10. Neneh Cherry – “Manchild”

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

8. Cyndi Lauper – “I Drove All Night”

7. Natalie Cole – “Miss You Like Crazy”

6. Guns N’ Roses – “Sweet Child O’ Mine”

5. Madonna – “Express Yourself”

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

3. Soull II Soul – “Back To Life”

2. Cliff Richard – “The Best Of Me”

1. Jason Donovan – “Sealed With A Kiss”: A second and final week at the top for Jase. This was peak era Donovan in that I don’t think he was ever bigger in the UK than at this moment….and then he left Neighbours and the spell was broken. Without the daily exposure that the soap brought him it all started to fade. Sure, the hits kept coming for a while (including an unlikely No 1 two years later with “Any Dream Will Do” from Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat) but really his popularity started to drift as the last days of the decade played out. His hits into 1990 were far smaller with his final Top 40 hit limping to No 26 in 1992. But for now…

The play out video is “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty. Almost unbelievably this was Tom’s biggest ever UK hit despite only just piercing the Top 30 at a peak of No 28. Did I find it quite so unbelievable at the time? Probably not as I didn’t actually know that much about Tom Petty. I knew his 1985 single “Don’t Come Around Here No More” from listening to the American chart show on a Saturday afternoon with Paul Gambaccini which I learnt years later after reading his autobiography was co-written by Dave Stewart form Eurythmics. I also knew that he was one of The Travelling Wilburys but of Tom’s 70s career with his band The Heartbreakers I knew virtually nothing though I have since discovered it.

“I Won’t Back Down” was from nominally his first solo album “Full Moon Fever” although many of The Heartbreakers played on it and indeed this track was co-written with fellow Wilbury Jeff Lynne. The song was in the news again in 2015 when it was revealed that a royalties agreement had been reached between Petty and Lynne with the singer Sam Smith over the similarities between “I Won’t Back Down” and Smith’s massive hit “Stay With Me”. Apparently it was all very amicable but you can hear the influence of Petty’s song on Smith’s I think.

The Sam Smith case could easily have been proceeded by a much earlier one in my book…. One of Tom’s best known songs must be his 1976 release “American Girl” (despite only peaking at No 40 in the UK). Years later, one of my musical heroes Pete Wylie recorded a song called “Spare A Thought” which appeared as the B-side of his single “Diamond Girl”. I was struck by the similarities between the two. Have a reminder of Tom’s tune…

…then listen to Pete’s…

What do you think?

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Fuzzbox	Pink Sunshine	No but I easily could have
2	REM	Orange Crush	No but my friend Roy had the “Green” album
3	Donna Allen	Joy And Pain	Nope
4	The Bangles	Be With You	No but I assume it’s on their Best Of album which I have
5	Clannad and Bono	In A Lifetime	No but I think my wife bought it first time around in 1986
6	Placido Domingo and Jennifer Rush	‘Till I Loved You	NO
7	Double Trouble and the Rebel MC	Just Keep Rockin’	Nah
8	Cyndi Lauper	I Drove All Night	I did not
9	Sinitta	Right Back Where We Started From	Of course not
10	Jason Donovan	Sealed With A Kiss	No but my younger sister was obsessed and had his album
11	Tom Petty	I Won’t Back Down	No but it’s on his Best Of album which I have

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000gx1r/top-of-the-pops-15061989

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-14-27-1989.html

TOTP 02 JAN 1986

Posted on July 25, 2018 by 80stastic

Christmas presents are yet to be put away and that New Year hangover has still to shift but TOTP waited for nobody in 1986 and the first new show of the year was upon us on Jan 2nd. The show’s presenters are the now firmly established double act John Peel and Janice Long and tonight’s first act are a band who would come to be firmly established pop stars seen here cementing their reputation with their second hit “The Sun Always Shines On TV” – it can only be A-ha! Having achieved huge success at the third time of asking with “Take On Me”, Morten, Mags and Pal were not about to let the momentum wane and chose this barnstorming tune as a follow up.

I have to admit that I wasn’t sure on first hearing – it wasn’t as incessantly catchy as its predecessor but just a few listens in and I was on board. Building slowly as opposed to “Take On Me”‘s immediacy, it grows into a dramatic synth pop classic, full of highs and lows, stops ands starts like a roller coaster ride. It hints at the band’s potential to write a Bond theme which they duly did just two years later with “The Living Daylights”. My very favourite bit though arrives right at the very end with that final flat chord change after Morten sings “Give all your love to me” before heading into the final “to me” refrain. A small detail that really just works (for me anyway).

“The Sun Always Shines On TV” would go to No 1 for 2 weeks and was their only UK chart topper. And yes, I was still very much wanting Morten’s hairstyle for myself at this point.

As Smash Hits used to say it’s time for a whacky thumbs aloft! Yes it’s Paul McCartney with his long forgotten single “Spies Like Us”. The mid 80s proved to be a difficult period for Macca. After this No 13 single, he released the “Press To Play” album later on in the year which didn’t pull any trees up commercially and then he disappeared until the end of the decade (save for a couple of charity record appearances and a stand alone single to promote his “All The Best” collection) when he returned with the critically acclaimed album “Flowers In The Dirt”.

I never caught the “Spies Like Us” film (and I still haven’t). Had I done I may have understood the reason that I would spend three years at Polytechnic being called Dan after one of its stars Dan Ackroyd.

I could have sworn that this song was in the charts a good few weeks earlier than this as I always associate it with Christmas but it seems not. Here are Level 42 with “Leaving Me Now”. I always liked this – it was an uncharacteristic slow number from the band and it sounded quite sophisticated to the 1986 version of me. I particularly enjoyed the twinkling keyboard bits supplied by Mike Lindup and his also his “Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” counter vocals.

By the way Janice Long, its not called “Leave Me Now!” as you would have us believe in your intro. Honestly, the amount of times that the Radio 1 DJs got the title of the songs they were introducing wrong was shameful, it really was.

“Leaving Me Now” peaked at No 15 on the charts but they would be back with a bang a few months later with their monster hit ‘Lessons In Love”.

And now, another repeat studio performance for a song we only just saw the other week – Bronski Beat with “Hit That Perfect Beat”. Their record label must have been putting in the hours to promote this single as not only are they back on TOTP but I remember it the song being a staple of Radio 1 daytime playlists. They played the Hell out of it – and why not ? It’s a good song. However one thing has always niggled me about it. “Them beat boy blues seem out of place” sings John Foster early on in the song. It’s ‘those’ John! ‘Those’ not ‘Them’!

Here come the Breakers but only two this week due to the static nature of the first chart of the new year and first up is Jennifer Rush proving that she is no one hit wonder. Who remembers “Ring Of Ice” (apart from saddos with an 80s pop addiction like me)? If you don’t then I’m not surprised as it is one of the most unremarkable pop songs ever committed to vinyl. With lyrics as lazy and lame as…

Ring of ice
Ring of ice ’round your heart
Ring of ice
Ring of ice, break apart

…how could it ever be anything but unremarkable? Somehow it managed to get all the way to No 14 which was nothing compared to the business “The Power Of Love” did but still so much more than it deserved to. Surely she should have just done another power ballad?

The quip from John Peel about her scoring more than Ian Rush was a reference to the mid season slump his beloved Liverpool FC were suffering from at the time. They would recover to win the double in May. Imagine that.

Here’s an interesting one – Sting with “Russians”. This was the fourth single taken from his album ‘The Dream Of The Blue Turtles” whose attendant singles had a very uneven success rate in the charts. Debut single “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” had been a hit but then singles two and three had both missed the Top 40. “Russians” would go onto make No 12 but a fifth and final track issued in single format was another miss.

So why had we taken to “Russians” so much? It really is an unconventional pop song especially for the mid-80s. The composition incorporates the Romance theme from Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé Suite (I looked that up obviously!) which made for a very chilling and dramatic musical backdrop to its rather sombre subject matter of the tension of the Cold War. The lyrics are very heavy albeit contemporary for 1985 (the Cold War was not resolved until 1989). For example:

“There is no monopoly on common sense
On either side of the political fence.
We share the same biology, regardless of ideology”

Maybe it was the Live Aid effect which seemed to fuse the power of pop music with the will for political change that somehow made it sound so appealing. Whatever the reason behind its success, it remains a stand out track from the Sting back catalogue for me.

As for that bit in Janice Long’s intro about Sting being one of the Top 20 men who men would like to be according to a recent poll? Nah, he’s still a bit of a knacker in my book.

One hit wonder alert! Hailing from Jamaica, Sophia George scored her one and only UK hit with “Girlie, Girlie” but she was a much bigger star in her homeland. On reflection, she was kind of like an 80s version of fellow Jamaican one hit wonder Millie of “My Boy Lollipop” fame. To my immature ears, this sounded like a novelty hit but she was in fact a much more credible artist than the 17 year old me gave her credit for – she even had a compilation album released on legendary UK reggae label Trojan Records. John Peel seemed very enamoured with her in his intro (“Watch her go!”). Never seen such enthusiasm from Peel for a TOTP act.

There’s not much movement in the Top 10 so close to the festive season just finishing hence four Christmas songs in the countdown. These require very little further comment and neither does anything else in the list…

10. Dee C. Lee – “See The Day”: Just about top drop out of the Top 10, Ms Lee would never the day when she was back there.

9. Phil Collins / Marilyn Martin – “Separate Lives”: Christmas can be a lonely time for some people and Phil and Marilyn would have done nothing to cheer them up with this sob-athon.

8. Wham! – “I’m Your Man”: The first of two entries in the Top 10 for George and Andy. Within 6 months Wham! would be no more.

7. Madonna – “Dress You Up”: Not content with complete domination of the pop charts in 1985, she would do exactly the same thing again in 1986. You have been warned.

6. Wham! – “Last Christmas”: It’s Gorgeous George and Randy Andy (as the tabloids often referred to them) again with their re-released festive ditty

5. Aled Jones – “Walking In The Air”: It works well if you are actually watching The Snowman but did we really need a version that we could buy sung by a nausea-inducing chorister who didn’t actually sing the bloody thing in the actual film? The people who bought this should take a long hard look at themselves not least for playing a part in unleashing bloody Aled Jones onto the world.

4. Band Aid – “Do They Know It’s Christmas”: Were the people buying this record feeling guilty for not buying it first time around or were they buying a second copy?

3. Pet Shop Boys – “West End Girls”: Creeping ever closer to being No 1, the song also hit top spot in the US, won Best Single at the BRITs in 1987 and received an Ivor Novello award.

2. Whitney Houston – “Saving All My Love For You”: She could have done the decent thing and returned to No 1 thereby knocking Shaky off top spot. Jan 2nd is not Christmas time.

1. Shakin’ Stevens – “Merry Christmas Everyone”: Oh do piss off Shaky!

Play out music is Elton John with “Wrap Her Up” which was his uptempo follow up to “Nikita”. I thought it was OK, nothing special but I think my sister bought it as she was a big Wham! fan and George Michael is very prominent on backing vocals.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	A-ha	The Sun Always Shines On TV	No but my sister was going through an A-ha phase (don’t tell George and Andy!) so she had it.
2	Paul McCartney	Spies Like Us	Nope
3	Level 42	Leaving Me Now	No but I have a soft spot for it
4	Bronski Beat	Hit That Perfect Beat	No but I easily could have
5	Jennifer Rush	Ring Of Ice	Why did anyone buy this?!
6	Sting	Russians	No – good song though
7	Sophia George	Girlie, Girlie	Not for me thanks
8	Dee C. Lee	See The Day	No but I did like it
9	Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin	Separate Lives	Hell no!
10	Wham!	I’m Your Man	No but we all have Wham’s Greatest Hits album…don’t we?
11	Madonna	Dress You Up	No but my sister has the album on cassette
12	Wham!	Last Christmas	See 10 above
13	Aled Jones	Walking In The Air	Below, below, below….NO!!!
14	Band Aid	Do They Know It’s Christmas	First time around yes, second time no
15	Pet Shop Boys	West End Girls	Thought I did but can’t find it. No matter I have it on CD
16	Whitney Houston	Saving All My Love For You	I preferred this to D.C. Lee but still didn’t buy it
17	Shakin’ Stevens	Merry Christmas Everyone	Merry Christmas Yer Arse! NO!
18	Elton John	Wrap Her Up	No but again I’m sure my sister bought it

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bb2ttg/top-of-the-pops-02011986

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/2016/01/january-1-14-1986.html

TOTP 07 NOV 1985

Posted on June 15, 2018 by 80stastic

It’s late 1985 here in TOTP Rewind world and a new group is taking the UK and indeed the rest of the globe by storm. The name of this new phenomenon? Why it’s A-ha of course! Or is it a-ha? Or a-Ha? Never did get to the bottom of that one. After knocking our collective socks off with their ground breaking video for “Take On Me”, the band are in the studio this time and the sight of them in the flesh seems to be whipping up a right storm with the TOTP audience. Of course, most of the attention is reserved for singer Morten Harket. Those cheekbones! That hair!

About six years after this performance, I saw them live at Manchester Apollo. They were on the way down from their pop idol peak by that point but they still were able to generate some swooning in the crowd that night. Despite being No 1 in five countries (as Peter Powell tells us), somehow they never quite got to the top spot in the UK being denied firstly by Jennifer Rush and then (improbably) by that geezer from the Undertones. Pop music eh?

So who remembers Far Corporation? I’m not surprised if you don’t. Their only claim to fame is this cover version of the Led Zeppelin classic “Stairway To Heaven” and who in their right mind would think covering the most holy of revered rock songs was a good idea? Frank Farian that’s who! If the name sounds vaguely familiar it’s because he was the guy behind Boney M and (the disgraced) Milli Vanilli. I know what you’re thinking because I thought it too. The man behind hits such as “Brown Girl in the Ring”, “Hooray! Hooray! It’s a Holi-Holiday” and …err…(tries to think of a Milli Vanilli hit)..err…”Girl You Know It’s True” (phew!) took on “Stairway To Heaven”? What? How? Why? I do not have those answers. All I know is that it was one of the craziest one hit wonders of the decade.

It starts off faithful enough to the original but then goes full on air guitar-tastic with a nasty back beat and the throng assembled on the stage go at it full throttle. Exactly how may people were in this band by the way? To quote Life Of Brian, “there’s a multitude out there!”

Oh and you didn’t think I wouldn’t be mentioning the front guy’s hair did you? Dear readers, I give you the worst mullet of the whole decade. His name is Robin McAuley and my research of the internet shows that he still has fully functioning poodle rock hair to this day.

Toning it down slightly are Level 42 next with “Something About You”or “Something About You Baby” as Peter Powell insists on calling it (he did the same the other week). In his intro, Pete suggests to us that if we want to “get a new album, put it in your record collection and be proud of it then ‘World Machine’ is the one to get.” Brave words. Wonder if the music press agreed at the time…

This from No 1 magazine:

“They claim to be exploring beyond their jazz funk roots, I fear they’ve simply mellowed into a sort of mediocre pop -rock.”

Hmm…not the best endorsement ever. Still, the album does include their next single “Leaving Me Now” which I always liked so it wasn’t all rot in my book.

Into the Breakers we go and first up is a TV theme tune from the BBC’s waterways soap opera Howard’s Way performed by the Simon May Orchestra. Not content with launching one soap already this year in Eastenders, the BBC inflicted this upon us which concerned the lives of the rich and wealthy boating communities down on the south coast. It proved to be hugely popular and hearing the theme tune immediately takes me back to Sunday nights and back to school blues after the weekend off.

This is the instrumental version but such was its popularity that Marti Webb recorded a vocal over it, called it “Always There” and took it to No 13 when it was released the following year. I can’t find the montage that TOTP show so here’s the opening credits instead…

Massive tune incoming! Despite having secured their first and only No 1 single with previous release “There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)” , Eurythmics follow up “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves” is arguably as well known despite only grazing the Top 10. Widely regarded as a feminist anthem, the song is ostensibly a duet with Aretha Franklin although apparently Tina Tuner was the original choice of partner.

The third single from the “Be Yourself Tonight” album, I hadn’t realised until now that it also featured on Aretha’s LP of the time “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?”. Annie Lennox’s biography revealed that she hadn’t actually got on that well with the ‘Queen of Soul’ but the video doesn’t betray that.

In a twist of coincidence, one of the musicians who performed on the track was one Benmont Tench who was discussed in the last post as the writer of Feargal Sharkey’s “You Little Theif’ in response to Maria McKee’s “A Good Heart”.

As with so many of the songs from around this time, I’m pretty sure that this got played down my teenage nightclub of choice ‘The Barn” on a regular basis. I liked it enough but it’s nowhere near being one of my favourite Eurythmics songs.

And so we arrive at a truly great song that I never tire of hearing – “Road To Nowhere” by Talking Heads. All I knew of the band at this point was “Once In A Lifetime” from back in 1981 and that had sounded pretty out there to my early teenage self. Fast -forward four years and I am a mature music fan (ahem) who can now appreciate the more leftfield artists and their ouevre and “Road To Nowhere” certainly fell into that category for me. The lead single from their album “Little Creatures”, this song just grabs you by the ear lobes from the first second and never lets go. From the gospel choir opening that segues into the military drum driven main body via David Byrne’s kooky style vocal delivery, the song is a perfect concoction of hooks and weirdness. Apparently, that gospel choir intro was added as an afterthought as Byrne considered the initial draft of the song too simple. Whatever the reason, it was inspired.

A year later at Poly, I fell in with a guy from Liverpool who was a big fan and he turned me onto other elements of the Talking Heads catalogue including the best live album ever “Stop Making Sense”. I would also became a big fan of their next project the True Stories film and soundtrack.

Around this time, I started going out on a weekend with a previously unseen commitment and regularly attended the aforementioned Barn nightclub. I even started to meet girls and ended going out with one (albeit very briefly) called Alison who loved this song. I resolved to buy her the single as a present but alas we broke up before I had the chance to. I still love the song though.

Back to the studio now for UB40 with “Don’t Break My Heart”.

Not a lot else to say about this one on the back of last week’s post. However, looking back at the band in their pomp here, it makes the fate of this once group of family and friends look all the more sad. There are currently two touring versions of the band, UB40 and UB40 featuring Ali, Astro and Mickey. They fell out over the band’s finances and the rift is so bad that the two factions no longer speak to each other. Shame.

And now…the Top 10…

10. Arcadia – “Election Day”: Curiously, the chorus refers to a “Re-election day” rather than” Election Day”. I guess it just added to the general feeling of artiness.

9. John Parr – “St.Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)”: Wait…What?! St Elmo’s Fire is a weather phenomenon created by a coronal discharge from a sharp or pointed object in an electric field?! So it’s not just an 80s soft rock tune by a guy from Doncaster? You live and learn don’t you?

8. Madonna “Gambler”: To say this is one of her least remembered tunes, it certainly hung around the Top 10 long enough.

7. UB40 – “Don’t Break My Heart”: Just seen ’em

6. Level 42 – “Something About You”: And them

5. Colonel Abrams – “Trapped”: Anyone remember what the Colonel’s follow up single was called? No me neither so I’ve looked it up for you. It was a ditty called “I’m Not Gonna Let You” and guess what? It sounded exactly the same as “Trapped’!

4. Feargal Sharkey – “A Good Heart”: We saw him in the studio last time but here’s the video. It’s pretty simplistic being mostly a run through of the song in a live concert setting. Are the two female drummers the same ones that featured in the Communards line up for “Don’t Leave Me This Way” a year later? Maybe not but I bet Jimmy and co nicked the idea.

3. Elton John – “Nikita”: Did this plodder really get all the way to No 3? Don’t remember it being quite so big a hit.

2. A-ha – “Take On Me”: Around the turn of the century, I decided to try and learn to play the guitar and went to some group sessions with a proper teacher. He was keen on us doing solo spots which I quite liked. For one such spot I prepared an acoustic version of “Take On Me”. I’d decided to slow it right down and finger pick the chords and I’d got it down pretty well. Unfortunately on the night of the class, nerves got the better of me, my fingers froze and I cold hardly pick a string at all. Some years after that non-performance, A-ha released an acoustic album including “Take On Me”. I think I must have been ahead of my time. This is what I wanted my version to sound like….

1. Jennifer Rush – “The Power Of Love”: A fifth and final week for Jenny from the block (Queens, New York in fact). I’m pretty sure that TOTP have just used the same studio performance for each week meaning she probably only actually appeared on the show once in person.

Jennifer wasn’t quite the one hit wonder she’s made out to be. Her follow up single “Ring Of Ice” made No 14 and at the end of the decade she hit the Top 40 again with a duet with Placido Domingo called “‘Till I Loved You”.

The play put music is Paul Hardcastle with “Just For Money”. For his follow up to No 1 smash “19”, Paul recorded a musical tribute to The Great Train Robbery of 1963. An odd choice of subject but the track features a voice over from Bob Hoskins and Laurence Olivier which was entertaining. The video features both actors but it is Hardcastle himself who does a great cameo as an East End gangland mobster.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	A-Ha	Take On Me	No but I have it on CD somewhere
2	Far Corporation	Stairway To Heaven	Let me think….NO!
3	Level 42	Something About You	Nope
4	Simon May Orchestra	Theme From ‘Howard’s Way’	A definite no
5	Eurythmics	Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves	No but I have it on a Best Of CD
6	Talking Heads	Road To Nowhere	No but my wife has the “Little Creatures” LP
7	UB40	Don’t Break My Heart	Seems I didn’t
8	Arcadia	Election Day	Call the singles police! Where’s my copy of this?!
9	John Parr	St Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)	Guilty pleasure or no, it’s not in my singles box
10	Madonna	Gambler	No
11	UB40	Don’t Break My Heart	See 7 above
12	Level 42	Something About You	See 3 above
13	Colonel Abrams	Trapped	Not really my bag
14	Feargal Sharkey	A Good Heart	The singles box says no
15	Elton John	Nikita	I think my Dad had it?
16	A-Ha	Take On Me	See 1 above
17	Jennifer Rush	The Power Of Love	I think somebody in our house bought this for my Dad. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it
18	Paul Hardcastle	Just For Money	Cor blimey guvnor – what two and eight. That’s a no by the way

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0b61x50/top-of-the-pops-07111985

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/2015/11/november-6-19-1985.html

TOTP 31 OCT 1985

Posted on June 12, 2018 by 80stastic

Happy Hallowe’en! Its All Hallows’ Eve in 1985 which is where we are up to in TOTP Rewind world. Not that anybody really noticed back then. Hallowe’en wasn’t the big deal it is these days. There was no roaring trade being done in the supermarkets on pumpkins and all things ghostly. It just wasn’t the big business that it is now. I can remember dunking apples maybe one time growing up and that was it. Bonfire night was a much bigger deal but those dates seem to have swapped places in terms of profile these days. As it’s Hallowe’en though, the BBC have chosen one of their most terrifying presenters to co-host the show. Yes, it can only be Simon Bates. Trying to keep him from scaring the kids is the definitely more palatable Janice Long.

Now if you’re thinking that we jumped to the end of October pretty quickly then you’re right as we’ve skipped a week due to the Mike Smith issue (see @TOTPFacts tweet below)

We’ve skipped the 24 October 1985 Top Of The Pops, co-presented by Mike Smith. Here’s a reminder of why: #TOTP pic.twitter.com/TZvFx5xFfc
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 7, 2018

Up first tonight is a future No 1 and like Midge Ure before him, I don’t think many people saw this one coming. This is Feargal Sharkey with “A Good Heart”. After previous band (and John Peel faves) The Undertones split in ’83, Feargal decided to have a go at that solo artist malarkey with varying degrees of success before “A Good Heart” made him a bona fide pop star for a short while. A good start (see what I did there) was made when he contributed the vocals to Vince Clarke’s The Assembly project and its No 4 hit “Never Never”. Things slowed down a bit with his next two releases “Listen To Your Father” and “Loving You” which only reached Nos 23 and 26 respectively. So a No 1 with his next release must have been beyond both his and his record label’s wildest dreams.

The song’s story has been told many times before but in case you’d forgotten, it was written by the then unknown Maria McKee (who would score a No 1 herself five years later with “Show Me Heaven”) about a failed relationship with Benmont Tench of Tom Petty’s band, the Heartbreakers. Bizarrely, Sharkey’s next hit single (“You Little Thief”) was the riposte by Tench to “A Good Heart”. Quite how both songs came to be recoded by Feargal, I don’t know.

I don’t think I knew about any of the song’s backstory when “A Good Heart” was tearing up the charts. All anybody was talking about at school was Feargal’s miraculous hair. Having had it punky short throughout his time with The Undertones, he decided on a new image for his solo career and let it grow…and grow…and grow. Long hair on men was of course the fashion back then but not the peculiar style that Feargal had cultivated. His luxurious locks had taken on a life of their own and he seemed engaged in a constant battle with them as they bounced around his bonce. No amount of flicking and head shakes would keep them from obscuring his face though. In all my life, the only person whose hair has come close to this creation is the comedian Ed Byrne on the occasions that he grows it long.

As for the song itself, I liked it. It had a warm appeal to it (even of the lyrics were a bit spiky) and was a pleasant sound. Again it’s one of those songs that instantly transport you back to late ’85 when you hear it and we shall be hearing it a few more times I’m guessing over the next few repeats.

The first video of the night is “Nikita” by Elton John. Directed by controversial film maker Ken Russell, its plot revolves around a relationship between John and a female East German border guard that can never happen because he cannot enter the country. This despite the fact that Elton is gay and ‘Nikita’ is actually a man’s name. To be fair, I don’t think he was out at the time as he had married a woman (Renate Blaue) the year before but even so. The fantasy sequences of them dancing together, bowling and watching a Watford FC match are just dreadful. I’m thinking that Ken Russell phoned this one in.

Time now for one of those sporadic chart appearances by Latin jazz pedlars Matt Bianco. This time they’ve gone for the old record label trick of doing a cover version in order to score a much needed hit and it worked for them peaking at No 13 in the UK. The song in question is “Yeh, Yeh” which was a hit in 1965 for Georgie Fame.

The group has gone through a few personnel changes since we last saw them with the major casualty being female vocalist Basia. Front man Mark Reilly is still there though and I always thought he looked pretty cool in a retro kind of way. I seem to remember my pal Neil really liking this one which was a surprise to me as he was a committed Spandau Ballet fan.

At the song’s end, Simon Bates tries to stir up some Hallowe’en goriness by telling the viewers an anecdote about the keyboard player having been ravaged by his pet rabbit on his way to work. WTF?!

Here’s the Breakers…

First up are Siouxsie and the Banshees who are back on the show for the first time since the previous year’s frankly disturbing single “Swimming Horses”. This time they give us an apocalyptic song detailing the destruction of the city of Pompeii by a volcano in 79AD. This is “Cities In Dust”. I never clicked at the time that’s what the subject matter of the song was about (although the title was a massive clue) but checking out the lyrics about petrified bodies etc it seems pretty clear to me now. For example:

“Hot and burning in your nostrils
Pouring down your gaping mouth
Your molten bodies blanket of cinders
Caught in the throes”

yeah…think I’d rather have Matt Bianco given the choice.

The song’s sound is the usual doom-laden stuff we would expect from the band, all tortured vocals and twisted electronic sounds. I wasn’t really having it as you’ve probably guessed by now although supposedly it is one of Brett Anderson of Suede’s favourite songs. “Cities In Dust” made No 21 in the UK charts.

In a year of memorable videos, here’s another one – Kate Bush with “Cloudbusting”. The second single from her comeback album the “Hounds Of Love”, this was based on the real life story of Wilhelm Reich and his son Peter’s close relationship that Bush had read about in the latter’s 1973 memoir “A Book of Dreams”. Wilhelm had designed a device that he claimed could precipitate precipitation (oh OK make rain then!) – the titular cloudbusting. The video features Donald Sutherland as Wilhelm and Kate herself as Peter (in a rather unconvincing wig) trying to get a reproduction of the ‘cloudbuster ‘ machine to work. It’s all rather affecting I always thought and the song itself is really quite unusual with its prominent cello driving it along throughout. Very (ahem) atmospheric.

I’m pretty sure this got shown (without the sound) on the video screen down at The Barn nightclub in Worcester and my memory is backed up by Wikipedia telling me that the video was shown at some cinemas as an accompaniment to the main feature so that kind of links up.

The other thing to mention about this track is of course Utah (U-U-U- Utah) Saints who sampled the lyric “I just know that something good is going to happen” for their 1992 hit “Something Good” which is just great. Forgotten how it goes? Remind yourself….

Last of the Breakers tonight is the appropriately titled “Don’t Break My Heart” by UB40 or “Don’t Smell My Fart” as it was renamed in playgrounds up and down the country. Talking of farts, after the utter stinker that was “I Got You Babe” this was a real return to form for the Brummies (in my book anyway) as they seemed to mine a very deep dub feel with this one. Similar in a way to “Cloudbusting” – not in musical style of course – but in terms of a hypnotic almost mantra vibe, this sounded …well…authentic I guess to my reggae innocent ears. I’m sure there are lots of reggae aficionados screaming at the screen after reading that but I can only call it as I heard it.

The black and white video added to the feel and the stuck juke box gimmick in the middle is well played. “Don’t Break My Heart” would go all the way to No 3.

Meanwhile back in the studio here’s King with their 4th hit of the year “The Taste Of Your Tears”. Eschewing the tried and tested two fast numbers then a slow one record label strategy, King went for three fast tracks and then a ballad. On the face of it, “The Taste Of Your Tears” is a fairly straightforward, unremarkable song with a standard musical structure and obvious lyrics…but somehow, it just works (for me anyway). I think it might be the prominent keyboard riff throughout that is its main appeal. That and the final guitar flourish as it comes round the bend into the final straight.

You can tell that this is the designated slow song as Paul King’s performance is vastly toned down. No jump kicks, no over elaborate prancing about just some understated tambourine slapping and twirling.

“The Taste Of Your Tears” made No 11 and would be their penultimate chart entry before they were banished to a kingdom far away never to return.

Here’s the Top 10…

10. Simple Minds – “Alive And Kicking”: Still just in the Top 10 but no amount of ressucitation will stop them sliding down the charts

9. Level 42 – “Something About You”: Bass slapping his way into the Top 10 it’s Mark King and pals

8. Jan Hammer – “Miami Vice Theme”: Season 2 is on our TV screens but the guy behind the theme tune is going down the charts

7. Arcadia – “Election Day”: The second of the Duran splinter groups of ’85 is amongst us! After Power Station earlier in the year, Arcadia was the other three having a go at branching out. The other three were of course Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor although Roger doesn’t feature much on the promotional side of the project (he’s not in the band’s videos) and restricts himself to the recording of the songs.

Arcadia had much more of an art aesthetic than Power Station’s all out rock manifesto. Nick Rhodes is on record as saying he wasn’t into the Power Station vibe at all and its no surprise that the Arcadia project was a complete rejection of that.

The album (“So Red The Rose”) was supposedly the most expensive album ever recorded at the time and with that amount of expectation was bound to fail. Although lead single “Election Day” made No 7, subsequent releases “The Promise” only reached No 37 and final single “The Flame” didn’t chart at all.

Personally, I loved this new direction and thought “Election Day” was great (complete with Grace Jones talk over interlude). I think I am right in saying it was the first song I ever danced to at a nightclub. I distinctly remember getting up to the dance floor after being inspired by a guy from school called John really getting into it and nearly pulling off his actual shirt at the “pull my shirt off and pray” line.

My old Poly pal Andy reviewed all the Duran and off shot project albums on his blog and believed this was the direction the band should have stuck with. You can read all about it at:

http://andysrockodysseys.blogspot.com/2014/

6. John Parr – “St.Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)”: The man in motion has stalled at No 6

5. Madonna – “Gambler”: She’s lost her gamble and gone down the charts….

4. Elton John – “Nikita”: Elton dirges his way up to No 4

3. Colonel Abrams – “Trapped”: Still sticking around at No3 (well he is trapped after all)

2. A-Ha – “Take On Me”: So close to top spot. Don’t worry lads, you’ll be there soon enough with the next single

1. Jennifer Rush – “The Power Of Love”: Still there. still belting it out, still wowing the UK hordes.

The play out music this week is Shakin’ Stevens with “Lipstick, Powder And Paint”

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Feargal Sharkey	A Good Heart	The singles box says no
2	Elton John	Nikita	I think my Dad had it?
3	Matt Bianco	Yeh Yeh	Nah Nah
4	Siouxsie and the Banshees	Cities In Dust	No thanks
5	Kate Bush	Cloudbusting	No but I have her Whole Story Best Of with it on
6	UB40	Don’t Break My Heart	Seems I didn’t
7	King	The Taste Of Your Tears	Pretty sure my sister had this one
8	Simple Minds	Alive And Kicking	No but I have it on a CD somewhere I’m sure
9	Level 42	Something About You	Nope
10	Jan Hammer	Miami Vice Theme	No – I wasn’t that big a fan of the show
11	Arcadia	Election Day	Call the singles police! Where’s my copy of this?!
12	John Parr	St Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)	Guilty pleasure or no, it’s not in my singles box
13	Madonna	Gambler	No
14	Elton John	Nikita	See 2 above
15	Colonel Abrams	Trapped	Not really my bag
16	A-Ha	Take On Me	No but I have it on CD somewhere
17	Jennifer Rush	The Power Of Love	I think somebody in our house bought this for my Dad. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it
18	Shakin’ Stevens	Lipstick, Powder And Paint	Of course not

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0b61wt4/top-of-the-pops-31101985

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?

01-smash-hits-23-october-5-november-1985-226x300

TOTP 17 OCT 1985

Posted on June 9, 2018 by 80stastic

We’ve skipped a week here at the 80s music time machine that is TOTP Rewind and find ourselves rushing headlong into the middle of October 1985. Manchester United are top of the old First Division after winning their first 10 games of the season and look a certainty for the title (spoiler alert – they didn’t, finishing a distant 4th to Liverpool – that’s right kids, Liverpool used to win the league title back in the 80s!).

But never mind the football, tell us about the tunes! First up tonight is someone who was as consistent at racking up hits as Liverpool were at winning football matches back then – here’s Shakin’ Stevens with “Lipstick, Powder And Paint”. Amazingly, some four years after Shaky went mainstream and scored a No 1 single with a cover of an old Rosemary Clooney song in “This Ole House”, the guy was still able to regularly get into the charts by just repeating the same old (or should that be ‘ole’?) trick of releasing a cover of a 50s hit. “Lipstick, Powder And Paint” had originally been a hit for Big Joe Turner and his orchestra in 1956 so it was prime fodder for the Shaky treatment.

In this rendition, the Welshman seems to be performing on a mini trampoline but it’s just a small circular stage. It doesn’t stop him bouncing around on it though and pulling out his trademark Shaky moves. Said moves must have been second nature to him by this point and indeed it does look like he’s phoning it in a bit. The single made No 11 in the chart which was the second consecutive release to miss the Top 10 but if you thought his appeal was on the wane, just wait until Christmas comes along.

From something old (Shaky was 37 at this point which was pretty old for a pop star) to something brand new and well, let’s have it straight, cutting edge. This is A-Ha with “Take On Me” and that video. By 1985, pop music videos had become pretty established as a marketing tool for artists (MTV had been launched back in 1981) and we had become used to the likes of Duran Duran cavorting about in exotic locations in the name of self promotion. We had also become accustomed to the videos becoming bigger and bigger productions with massive budgets and special effects. Indeed, 12 months earlier we had witnessed the mini movie that was Duran’s “Wild Boys” and earlier in ’85 had been left open mouthed at the technical wizardry of the “Money For Nothing” video for Dire Straits.

Nothing though had prepared us for the onslaught of our senses that we were about to experience. It was just incredible! The combination of the pencil sketch animation with the live footage of Morten Harket and his leading lady was inspired. Apparently the technique is called rotoscoping and took 16 weeks to make. In his introduction, presenter Peter Powell advises that “it’s reputed that £100,000 was spent on the video” which seemed like an enormous amount of money at the time but now would be seen as a pretty average weekly pay packet for a top Premier League footballer.

Of course this wasn’t the first release of “Take On Me” but actually the third and as well as the original video being pretty different so was the song. Over to @TOTPFacts:

The first of 18 top 40 hits for A-Ha, “Take On Me” peaked at 2. When first released in 1984, it bombed. It was re-recorded for its 1985 release, with Alan Tarney, producer of “Wired For Sound” and “Disco 2000”. Here’s the ‘84 version: https://t.co/OkOGfPo3ZV #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 1, 2018

The original release sounds so tinny and struggled to No 137 in the UK. It wasn’t until the US arm of their record company Warner Bros saw the potential of the band and the song and ploughed money into the rotoscoped video and a beefed up production of the song by Alan Tarney that things took off.

Had I been aware of them before October ’85? I don’t think so. There may have been an advert for the original release in Smash Hits perhaps but that would have been it. They emerged looking like a fully formed pop phenomenon. I soooo wanted Morten Harket’s hair (I still do to be fair) and spent many months cultivating my version of it. It started a run of 13 Top 40 hits (including 7 Top Tenners and a No 1) over the next 5 years so we will be seeing much more of these Norwegian lads in future repeats.

Moving from the brand new to the established pop royalty now – here’s Elton John with “Nikita”. This was the lead single from a new album (“Ice On Fire”) and I recall there being a big fuss in the press about what a return to form it was. Since “Passengers” over a year previously, Elton had suffered some singles failures and his only Top 40 entry in ’85 up to this point had been a duet with Millie Jackson (“Act Of War”) which only made No 32. Listening back to it now though it sounds like a bit of a dirge to me. A lot was made of the Cold War imagery in the lyrics and the accompanying video and I think my Dad liked it which said it all to the 17 year old me really.

Elton’s performance here is pretty pedestrian as well He’s grown his hair long at the back as was the fashion at the time but hides the top of his head with a trademark hat. Was he in the middle of one of his hair transplants? Can’t remember. There’s that baroque style synthesizer bit in the middle and apparently George Michael did background vocals whilst Nik Kershaw played guitar on the track but none of that rescues it from being a plodder in my book. “Nikita” would make the Top 3 though so what did I know?

Breakers time….first up are Level 42 with “Something About You” and they are about to enter their most commercially successful period ever that would peak with the release six months later of their biggest hit “Lessons In Love”. In many ways “Something About You” was the precursor to that song showcasing the band’s very obvious decision to go for a more mainstream sound with an eye on bigger sales. It was very Radio 1 friendly and, as ever, Mark King’s slap bass is to the fore supplemented by Mike Lindup’s falsetto vocals which provide the counterpoint to King’s more lower register delivery. The single made No 6 which at the time was their highest chart placing. There’s also a nice cameo in the video by Cherie Lunghi who I recall I was rather a fan of. Err… let’s move on….

…to Grace Jones with “Slave To The Rhythm”. What a monster this was! The song wasn’t just a single but a whole concept album produced by Trevor Horn and featured radically different re-workings of the same track. Apparently the whole idea had been earmarked for Horn’s protegees Frankie Goes To Hollywood as a follow up to “Relax” but ended up with the rather unique Ms Jones. The single we all know has the customary Horn production values and positively shimmers with effects.

I already knew of Grace via her near miss single “My Jamaican Guy” from ’83 but this was a different thing altogether. The single seemed destined to me to be massive but it only got to No 12 on the UK chart. Maybe it was just too much for people and certainly the utterly bonkers video, complete with the huge recreation of Grace’s head with car emerging from her mouth as used in the Citroen CX advert, only added to the madness. The video incorporates footage from her previous videos and includes many of her iconic and very extreme looks.

I must admit that I’ve never sought out any of the other versions of “Slave To The Rhythm” from the album but they might be kind of interesting don’t ya think?

1985 will be remembered for many things including Live Aid, the rise of Madonna and lest we forget Miami Vice. The TV show that convinced a generation of young men to wear their jacket sleeves rolled up (that was me) and loafers without socks (I drew the line there) also made its mark on the music scene mainly due to this guy. Jan Hammer was the man responsible for not one but two hit singles from the soundtrack of the show and this, the “Miami Vice Theme” was the first. It’s a dramatic piece, all tumbling synth drums and spiky keyboard parts and is one of those songs that instantly transports you back to this very year whenever you hear it.

I can’t say that I was an avid watcher of the show itself although I used to catch it occasionally and certainly knew who Crockett and Tubbs were though. The exotic setting was miles away from the gritty realism of The Sweeney that I’d been brought up on in the 70s but you can’t deny the influence that Miami Vice had.

Oh great! It’s Colonel Abrams.…again. Because we skipped a show, this is the second repeat on the bounce in which the good Colonel has featured. He’s still got the epaulette-heavy jacket but he’s dispensed with the roll-neck top in favour of a garishly yellow conventional shirt with casually unbuttoned collar. He looks like he’s arrived late and got straight on stage. Maybe he was… ahem…“Trapped” in the studio toilet. More likely it was just hot under the studio lights though.

Here’s the Top 10…

10. Jan Hammer – Theme From Miami Vice”: We’ve already seen him in the Breakers section. What was it in 1985 with anonymous men playing theme tunes from cop films and TV shows? We’d only just had Harold Faltermeyer with “Axel F” and now Jan Hammer. Wonder if the’ve ever been seen in the same room together? Just a thought.

9. Billy Idol – “Rebel Yell”: On it’s way down, we won’t see Billy back in the UK charts for another year when he returned with his “Whiplash Smile” album and lead single “To Be A Lover”.

8. Simple Minds – “Alive And Kicking”: Let’s ignore Peter Powell’s frankly unforgivable intro where he calls them “The Simple Minds” (*gets out “you had one job” face again*). Jim and the boys are back in the charts with a huge sounding song that seemed to me to very similar in style to their previous hit “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”. Curious then that the band tried to disown that song at the time and then, with their very next release, ushered in their ‘stadium rock’ era that “Don’t You” seemed to suggest was coming anyway.

Whatever, I thought this was great back in ’85. It sounded so epic and had that full, rich sound to it, almost like a Phil Spectre wall of sound but for the 80s. On reflection though, I don’t think it’s aged as well as it might have. It’s all bluster and bombast and a bit too knowing. Fair play, the band took a decision to go in a very commercial direction and it paid off – a No 7 hit over here and a No 3 hit in the US – but for some people it was a step too far and the inkies of the music press weren’t impressed. Pretty sure it got played down at The Barn nightclub in my hometown of Worcester on a Saturday night though.

7. Madonna – “Gambler”: If it’s 1985 then it must be Madonna and his her Madgesty with yet another hit song. This one must surely be one of her least well remembered singles though. Like “Crazy For You” before it, “Gambler” was featured in the Vision Quest film and it fairly rattles along. There’s not much to it though and its all pretty repetitive. The single went all the way to No 4 in the UK but oddly wasn’t released as a single in her native US.

6. John Parr – “St Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)”: The man in motion is moving up to No 6

5. A-Ha – “Take On Me”: On their way to No 2, it’s those Norwegian gods of pop. Enough with the “one under Parr, one over Parr” lines though Mike Read, deeply unfunny man that you are.

4. Red Box – “Lean On Me”: They’ve peaked!

3. Colonel Abrams – “Trapped”: And so has he! No no 1 for the Colonel. No 3 would be as high as he got.

2. Midge Ure – “If I Was”: Holding at No 2. Presumably it would have had a couple more weeks at the top spot if he hadn’t been up against Jennifer Rush having the biggest selling single of the year.

1. Jennifer Rush – “The Power Of Love”: Talking of whom, here’s the lady herself being interviewed on American Bandstand by Dick Clark. Her speaking voice wasn’t what I was expecting in comparison to her powerful singing….

…told you!

The play out music this week is Madonna with “Gambler” despite it already having featured in the video Top 10. I say once more – Madonna in 1985? Overexposed? Surely not.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Shakin’ Stevens	Lipstick, Powder And Paint	Of course not
2	A-Ha	Take On Me	No but my sister did
3	Elton John	Nikita	I think my Dad had it?
4	Level 42	Something About You	Nope
5	Grace Jones	Salve To The Rhythm	No – wish I had now
6	Jan Hammer	Miami Vice Theme	No – I wasn’t that big a fan of the show
7	Colonel Abrams	Trapped	Nah – not my bag really
8	Jan Hammer	Miami Vice Theme	See 6 above
9	Billy Idol	Rebel Yell	Turns out I didn’t but I have his Greatest Hits on CD somewhere
10	Simple Minds	Alive And Kicking	No but I have it on a CD somewhere I’m sure
11	Madonna	Gambler	No
12	John Parr	St Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)	Guilty pleasure or no, it’s not in my singles box
13	A-Ha	Take On Me	See 2 above
14	Red Box	Lean On Me	Don’t think I did
15	Colonel Abrams	Trapped	See 7 above
16	Midge Ure	If I Was	Glad to say I didn’t
17	Jennifer Rush	The Power Of Love	I think somebody in our house bought this for my Dad. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it
18	Madonna	Gambler	See 11 above

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0b5bj2g/top-of-the-pops-17101985

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/2015/10/october-9-22-1985.html

TOTP 26 SEP 1985

Posted on May 31, 2018 by 80stastic

Hello and welcome to TOTP Rewind where I, a man rapidly approaching his 50th birthday, try to relive my youth by reviewing each of the TOTP repeats being aired on BBC4. I try to be as honest as I can and add some personal recollections of my life as a teenager growing up in the 80s. It is Sep ’85 and I am 17 years old.

First up is Depeche Mode with “It’s Called A Heart” which is a single that I’ve always thought of as the ending of the first chapter of the band’s story. How so? Well, for a start it was written as a brand new track to promote their first singles retrospective “The Singles 81→85”. Secondly, their work subsequent to this moment always seemed so much darker to me beginning with their next album “Black Celebration”. It was as if they were drawing a line under their synth pop beginnings and sending a clear message that they wanted to mature as artists. Normally this is a very risky career move but you have to say that with the band now in their 38th year and still as relevant as ever – no nostalgia circuit for these guys – that they pulled it off and then some.

Having said all of that, “It’s Called A Heart” is and always has been pretty weak in my book. It has the feel of a track specifically written for a commercial angle – to sell their greatest hits collection in this case – and despite bearing all the trademark Depeche hooks and sounds, it felt mechanical and calculated. It didn’t stop me from asking my brother to get the greatest hits LP for me for Xmas though!

Supposedly band member Alan Wilder fought to release the B-side as the single instead so much did he not like “It’s Called A Heart” which was a track called “Fly on the Windscreen”. Wonder what that sounded like? Let’s find out….

Well that was hardly a barrel of laughs was it? With lyrics like…

Death is everywhere
There are lambs for the slaughter
Waiting to die

…it’s not hard to see why it finally made it onto the “Black Celebration” album alongside tracks such as “Stripped”, “A Question Of Lust” and “Dressed In Black”. Alan, you needed to get out more mate.

“It’s Called A Heart” made it to No 18 in the singles chart.

It’s that man of the moment Billy Idol up next with the re-released and suddenly popular “Rebel Yell”. It’s a no show in the studio from Billy so it’s the video again that we saw in last week’s Breakers section. “Rebel Yell” was definitely played at The Barn (my hometown nightclub of choice) and I’m pretty sure that I would have ‘testified’ on the club’s stage area Billy style to the song more than once. Thankfully for everyone concerned mobile phones with cameras had not been invented back then so there is no video footage floating around. Some 18 years later I was at a party for my sister’s 30th birthday and, reinforced by drink, I decided to cut some rug on the dance floor. Little did I know that there was a video being made which I was made to sit through the next time I visited home which included me ‘dancing’. I always thought I was a pretty nifty mover back in the day. Clearly, video evidence would suggest, I wasn’t.

Ok – so now we have a gigantic hit that would turn out to be the biggest selling single of the year in the UK. It can only be Jennifer Rush with “The Power Of Love”. This epic sounding behemoth of a ballad swept all before it as the UK record buying public were reduced to quivering teary wrecks in the face of its force. OK – that may be overstating it slightly but it has sold 1.45 million copies in the UK alone and was a No 1 in 8 other countries and made the Guinness Book of World Records as “the best-selling single by a female solo artist in the history of the British music industry” until it was overtaken by “I WIll Always Love You by Whitney Houston in 1992. In short, it was a monster.

Jennifer was born Heidi Stern in Queens, New York and yet, despite her US roots, the single only reached No 57 on the Billboard Hot 100. So why did the UK go so overboard for the song? Well, 1985 had been the year of massive power ballads with No1s already that year for Foreigner with “I Want To Know What Love Is” and Barbara Dickson and Elaine Paige with “I Know Him So Well” and “The Power Of Love” certainly fell into that bracket.

There’s something so definitively 80s about Jennifer’s performance here. Maybe it’s the massive back combed hair or the leather skirt and top outfit. Watching it back I’m struck by her curious stage moves. They’re sort of jerky but in slow motion. At one point there’s an involuntary raising of her right leg for no apparent reason.

Much of course was made of the fact that this was the third hit in the space of 12 months by three different artists with three different songs that all shared the same title after Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Huey Lewis and the News. Jennifer would out sell them all and spend 5 whole weeks at the top spot. As such, we’ll be seeing plenty of Jennifer Rush in the weeks to come so let’s move on…

…to the Breakers. Oh dear. First up are Five Star with “Love Take Over”. Romford’s answer to the Jackson 5 are just on the cusp of what would be their year of chart glory in which they would rack up six Top 10 singles. …but not this one. “Love Take Over” would only make No 25 and when follow up single “R.S.V.P’ failed to chart at all, they may have disappeared without trace. Luckily for them (but not for us) they were redeemed by last chance saloon release “System Addict” which took them all the way to No 3 and the rest is yadder yadder yadder. I don’t mean to be unkind but Five Star were dreadful (in my humble opinion of course).

An act enjoying their third rather unexpected Top 40 hit of 1985 are The Damned with “Is It A Dream”. Like previous hits “Grimly Fiendish” and “The Shadow Of Love”, this was also taken from their album “Phantasmagoria” and of the three, this was always my favourite. Not to be confused with the song of the same name by one hit wonder new romantics Classix Nouveaux, “Is It A Dream” is actually a rather good pop song but delivered with that extra bit of menace that you would expect from The Damned. The piano intro that then runs throughout the song puts me in mind of “Shades Of Grey” by The Monkees.

The single would prove to be the smallest of their hits that year only making No 34 but they would be back with a bang in the new year with their cover of “Eloise” which would go Top 3. And yes Dave Vanian still looks ridiculous.

From a band enjoying their third hit of the year to one enjoying their fourth! This is Dead Or Alive with “My Heart Goes Bang (Get Me To The Doctor)”. Like The Damned, this would also be the smallest of Pete and the gang’s hits that year reaching just No 23. In truth, it’s by far the weakest of the quartet and was probably a single too far taken from the album. That album was of course “Youthquake” which brought us “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)” and “In Too Deep” and next to those, “My Heart Goes Bang (Get Me To The Doctor)” really is the runt of the litter. There’s not even a song in there really. It’s all scratched vocals and Pete B doesn’t lay off on the operatics at all. It’s all a bit much really and a poor end to what would forever be the band’s year in the sun.

After the Depeche Mode watershed moment comes another definite end of an era moment, behold the last truly decent Style Council single “The Lodgers”. Like The Damned and Dead Or Alive before them, Weller’s record label (Polydor) was happy to pull multiple tracks off the accompanying album (“Our Favourite Shop”) and stick them out as singles knowing that his loyal fan base (including my elder brother) would buy them anyway. It’s a good song though and an improvement in quality on previous single “Come to Milton Keynes”. The title had been shortened from the album version which was called “The Lodgers (Or She was Only A Shopkeeper’s Daughter)”. Given that bit in brackets, unsurprisingly it was another attack on Thatcherite politics. Good lad Paul.

Weller is still in his “internationalist’ phase judging by his choice of outfit which Dee C. Lee has chosen to replicate with the addition of a hat which gives the whole thing a rather nautical feel. To think that just 3 years prior to this, The Jam were still a going concern. Whilst early Style Council singles like “Speak Like A Child” and “Solid Bond In Your Heart” were logical extensions of The Jam sound, it’s hard to imagine Weller’s former band releasing anything like “The Lodgers” and shows how far his musical leanings had moved on.

After this though, it all started going a bit weird. A fourth track from “Our Favourite Shop” called “Everything To Lose” was re-recorded and renamed as “Have You Ever Had It Blue” and released as part of the Absolute Beginners film soundtrack early the following year but then the band hit hard times. Sales started to drop off and it was as if they started to seem like an anachronism as the decade progressed and dance music took a hold. Indeed, the band’s collapse came about following an ill judged attempt to keep up with the zeitgeist. They recorded a house influenced album which was rejected by Polydor and the band dissolved. Although clearly not as revered as The Jam by the Weller army (a view with which I concur), The Style Council will always have a small place in my affections.

Right it’s Top 10 time…

10. Mai Tai – “Body And Soul”: Really?! Still in the Top 10?! And like that though, they were gone….

9. Baltimora – “Tarzan Boy”: Ditto

8. Amii Stewart – “Knock On Wood”: She’s still knocking but the door to the top of the charts is now firmly shut

7. Marillion – “Lavender”: On its way down and therefore not quite replicating the success of “Kayleigh”

6. Red Box – “Lean On Me”: Is it on its way to No 1 asks Janice Long? No – it peaked at No 3

5. Madonna – “Angel”: Into the Top 5 for Madge but “Angel” would go no further

4. Midge Ure – “If I Was”: The public have fallen for this simple synth pop love song and Midge’s Dad dancing. It will be No 1 soon enough

3. Stevie Wonder – “Part Time Lover”: Still at No 3. Why?

2. Bonnie Tyler – “Holding Out For A Hero”: Unlike Billy Idol, Bonnie can be arsed to get down to the TOTP studio and who can blame her if she thinks it might get her to No 1 (it didn’t). Looking like she’s borrowed Midge Ure’s jacket from the other week, she belts it out whilst her band of hardened session musicians throw some serious rock moves in for good measure. Bonnie has never breached the UK Top 40 since.

1. David Bowie /Mick Jagger – “Dancing In The Street”: Still cavorting shamelessly in that video. If you’re going to Dad dance Midge Ure, then at least do it with some gusto like these two did.

The play out music this week is Maria Vidal with “Body Rock”

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Depeche Mode	It’s Called A Heart	No but I had the Greatest Hits LP that it was on
2	Billy Idol	Rebel Yell	Turns out I didn’t but I have his Greatest Hits on CD somewhere
3	Jennifer Rush	The Power Of Love	I think somebody in our house bought this for my Dad. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it
4	Five Star	Love Take Over	Hell no
5	The Damned	Is It A Dream	No but I think my wife may have had the LP
6	Dead Or Alive	My Heart Goes Bang (Get Me To The Doctor)	I’m surprised anyone did
7	The Style Council	The Lodgers	No but no doubt my brother did
8	Mai Tai	Body and Soul	Nope
9	Baltimora	Tarzan Boy	It wouldn’t have been a street credible purchase
10	Amii Stewart	Knock On Wood	Didn’t really see the need to
11	Marillion	Lavender	No but always quite liked it
12	Red Box	Lean On Me	Don’t think I did
13	Madonna	Angel	No – not one of her best
14	Midge Ure	If I Was	Glad to say I didn’t
15	Stevie Wonder	Part Time Lover	It’s a no from me
16	Bonnie Tyler	Holding out For A Hero	No
17	David Bowie and Mick Jagger	Dancing In The Street	Charity or not, I was never buying this
18	Maria Vidal	Body Rock	Nah

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0b3lnml/top-of-the-pops-26091985

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?

01-smash-hits-25-september-8-october-1985-226x300

http://likepunkneverhappened.blogspot.com/2015/09/september-25-october-8-1985.html

TOTP Rewind – the 80s

My memories of 80s chart music

TOTP 22 JUN 1989

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TOTP 15 JUN 1989

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TOTP 02 JAN 1986

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TOTP 07 NOV 1985

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TOTP 31 OCT 1985

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TOTP 17 OCT 1985

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TOTP 26 SEP 1985

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