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?

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/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?

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