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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Say No Go” peaked at No 18.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A non sensical intro from Bruno Brookes next…. 

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

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

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

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

 

Top 10

10. Prince – “Batdance”

9. Bette Midler – “Wind Beneath My Wings”

8. Bobby Brown – “On Our Own”

7. Gladys Knight – “Licence To Kill”

6. Chaka Khan – “Ain’t Nobody”

5. Pet Shop Boys – “It’s Alright”

4. The Beautiful South – “Song For Whoever”

2. London Boys – “London Nights”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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/m000hbdw/top-of-the-pops-13071989

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

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

Some bed time reading?

 

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