TheThorne
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*Hillside, slip and slide, feel the pain, it's no surprise!*
Posts: 27,613
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Post by TheThorne on Aug 21, 2011 7:17:48 GMT 1
I'm not so sure...when I was 7 or 8 most people at school liked acts that would be considered extreme by today's standards but were mainstream at the time (Madness, Specials, Adam & The Ants...imagine today ska and African drumbeats being given airplay room). . Oh yeah imagine if Radio played Vampire Weekend,Friendly Fires, Givers,King Blues and Foster The People and we would still hear ska and African drumbeats
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Post by evansabove on Aug 21, 2011 7:22:54 GMT 1
Strange here the love of the London Boys. I didn't think enormously of London Nights but Requiem peaked at NM #2. Sorry, what is NM?
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Post by Earl Purple on Aug 21, 2011 11:43:59 GMT 1
as in the NM charts.
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Gezza
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Posts: 7,846
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Post by Gezza on Aug 21, 2011 13:31:21 GMT 1
26TH AUGUST- POISON- Alice Cooper (1 week)I'm not a rock fan, and certainly in the 80s commercial rock was all about perms, spandex, and OTT video's where PC didn't exsist. That said there is something endearing about Cooper, normally sincerity in a record is essential to selling a track but in Cooper's case I think the opposite is actually true, precisely because, in interviews, he comes across as affable, as very knowing about the cliches within his genre, in almost laughing at the OTT- ish qualities of rock, it actually makes his music more enjoyable. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that he treats it all as a joke, just that he understands it fully and doen't get wrapped up in the mythology of "rock" like say Bon Jovi certainly were circa late 80s. For that he is an endearing pop star, and because of that it makes "Poison" a very good song. The basics are of course there, a cracking tune with a guitar lick to hook you in, the sneering vocal, the attitude, but it's a very hard record NOT to like even if you don't like "Rock". At a time when rock was the preserve of Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and Bon Jovi (chart wise), Cooper's resurrection was very welcome, this was his first top 40 hit in over 15 years. It's one of the few songs I actually like in the field and that is no small part to Cooper himself, "Poison" has charm by the bucketload and in a year of artificial pop this is a lost jem....
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Gezza
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Posts: 7,846
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Post by Gezza on Aug 21, 2011 13:56:53 GMT 1
16TH SEPTEMBER- EVERYDAY (I LOVE YOU MORE)- Jason Donovan (1 week)Meanwhile back in the S/A/W land eveything was still rosy. We haven't met Jason Donovan yet in this thread- that's because he was too busy racking up No 1 hits (3 chart toppers in a row in 1989), and by September 89 he was confirmed as the top teen scream of the year with the best selling album of the year under his belt too. Donovan was essentially sold to the great british public much in the same way as Kylie was, everything Australian was by this point glamourous and a host of Neighbours star were hitting the charts in 89/90 including the twins, Craig McLachlan, Stefan Dennis in addition to the big two mentioned already. Sure Donovan was a good looking lad but as a 13 yr old the allure of Donovan as a pop star escaped me (being a S/A/W artist naturally I bought all his 89 singles), Waterman revealed later that Donovan always wanted to be a "serious" musician playing more rock orientated music, but he certainly made his money with S/A/W so there's little room for him complain. "Everyday" is rather S/A/W on autopilot however, daytime pop at its brightest, bland, ineffectual, and uncontroversial, in truth little more than a promo for the album as if to prove that it only spent 4 weeks in the entire top 20, it was a step up from "Sealed With A Kiss" admittedly, but if that's your benchmark then pretty much anything is......
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Post by Earl Purple on Aug 21, 2011 16:20:46 GMT 1
I had a problem with Jason Donovan. He seemed a very likeable guy but his music was terrible, even by Stock Aitken Waterman standards. He couldn't sing like Rick Astley, and was pretty much marketed simply as the guy from Neighbours, in particular as in the soap his character was married to Kylie's character, and because the UK was showing the series so far behind, this was happening on TV whilst they were making music.
I didn't have any problems with him as an actor and did go and see Joseph with him starring in it.
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blashey
Member
my baby patsy :)
Posts: 2,935
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Post by blashey on Aug 22, 2011 0:38:09 GMT 1
6TH APRIL- WELCOME TO THE PLEASUREDOME- Frankie Goes To Hollywood (2 weeks)It was an attempt to break a 22 year old record, back in 1963 a fellow Liverpudlian band successfully placed their first three singles at No 1, no not the Beatles, but a group called Gerry & The Pacemakers. Their fourth Single "I'm The One" peaked at No 2 in early 64, and so too FGTH's fourth single (that record wouldn't be beaten until the Spice Girls did it in 1997). However that didn't stop FGTH promoting this record as "Their 4th No 1", now you may think that's big headed but the truth is that they promoted "The Power Of Love" as their third No 1 and it actually turned out to be just that. Another expensive video was commissioned to promote the song featuring the band hijacking a car and driving to the "Pleasuredome" where they all come a cropper after being enticed into various traps. The song is essentially a re-telling of the "Canterbury tales" with a bit of Coleridge thrown it "Using my power/ I sell it by the hour/I have it so I market it/ You really can afford it-yeah" it's a song which mixes the dizzy highs of modern capitalism and consumerism with a warning that all is not as it seems (the "Vanity Fair" angle). In message it's a curiously subtle tale in comparison to their first three hits which bludgeoned with the message, but the same bombastic production carries it through. It's all heady stuff, but remember FGTH were on a roll with a cracker of a debut album and a period where they could do little wrong, but within just 2 years of this the band were on their last legs with a poorly received second album and a split imminant, still though a great record with a funk beat and as good as anything produced in 1985.... I THOUGHT THE SINGLE WAS CALLED ESCAPE ACT ?
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Gezza
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Posts: 7,846
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Post by Gezza on Aug 22, 2011 0:58:03 GMT 1
You thought "Welcome To The Pleasuredome" was called "Escape Act?" How so?
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Post by evansabove on Aug 22, 2011 10:52:02 GMT 1
No sorry, no idea what NM is an abbreviation of
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Post by evansabove on Aug 22, 2011 10:53:26 GMT 1
I had a problem with Jason Donovan. He seemed a very likeable guy but his music was terrible, even by Stock Aitken Waterman standards. He couldn't sing like Rick Astley, and was pretty much marketed simply as the guy from Neighbours, in particular as in the soap his character was married to Kylie's character, and because the UK was showing the series so far behind, this was happening on TV whilst they were making music. I didn't have any problems with him as an actor and did go and see Joseph with him starring in it. H e was even better in Priscilla. Every Day is a decent enough song but it was clear SAW were saving the best songs for Kylie by then
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Gezza
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Posts: 7,846
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Post by Gezza on Aug 22, 2011 18:29:51 GMT 1
23RD SEPTEMBER- RIGHT HERE WAITING- Richard Marx (2 weeks)Readers, reader, readers, I'm torn on this one. Part of me considers this late 80s balladry by numbers, full of that angst and earnestness that just makes my skin crawl, but then there is part of it that is actually quite touching. On the whole the fomer wins out, i'm not actually anti Marx and 1992's "Hazard" was one of my fave records of that year but I could have done without "Right Here Waiting", truly a song that didn't grab me back in 1989. He'd been a star in the US since 1987 and one export that took a while to make it over here, and had co-written Cliff's 100th hit for him so wasn't completely unheard of her over here but this was his first and sole top 20 hit prior to 1992. Written whilst on tour as a love letter to his wife actress Cynthia Rhodes to whom he remains married some 20 odd years later, there is therefore a personal element to the record, and perhaps it's this that stops me being too harsh on the track, there is a better US Ballad on its way before 89 leaves us, and so perhaps I'm damning it a bit unfairly and only in comparison, see I'm changing my mind again! Certainly in an era of power ballads there is an understated charm to the song, having said all that it isn't "Hazard".........still can't decide.....
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Gezza
Member
Posts: 7,846
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Post by Gezza on Aug 22, 2011 18:46:44 GMT 1
7TH OCTOBER- PUMP UP THE JAM- Technotronic Featuring Felly (2 weeks)THIS however, I have never been in any doubt about. It's an evil record, dull, repetitive, annoying, irritating, hated at the time, and I hate it now. I've no idea what "Jam" is (I'm assuming it's not of the toast and Jam kind) and I'm not sure why it is required to be "pumped", what I do know is that as a 13 yr old this was probably my least favourite record of 1989. Critiics may point out that that may be because I wasn't old enough to "Enjoy" it and hear it in the proper environment and that may be true, but then neither was I old enough to enjoy, say "Ride On Time", but yet I loved that (probably it was much more innovative and had more variety in the track than this) so I don't buy this theory. In any eventuality I can't think of anything positive to say about this song, and should you remain in any more doubt about the song's merits or otherwise then this was one of the songs chosen by the Crazy Frog for his debut "Album......
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Post by evansabove on Aug 22, 2011 19:04:51 GMT 1
Absolutely love Pump Up The Jam. It marked the start of dance music's domination of the top of the charts in the early 90s.
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vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 22, 2011 19:04:58 GMT 1
The main theme I got from "Hazard" was that Boss Hogg and Rosco P Coltrane had taken a rather darker turn after their failures to nail the Dukes.
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blashey
Member
my baby patsy :)
Posts: 2,935
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Post by blashey on Aug 23, 2011 0:27:28 GMT 1
i have 7" and its called escape act by frankie goes to hollywood
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Post by evansabove on Aug 23, 2011 8:46:22 GMT 1
I think Escape Act was the name of one of the remixes of it
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Gezza
Member
Posts: 7,846
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Post by Gezza on Aug 23, 2011 17:35:26 GMT 1
28TH OCTOBER- GIRL I'M GONNA MISS YOU- Milli Vanilli (3 weeks)Nowadays Pop has a good few pariah's- Jonathan King, Gary Glitter, Chris Brown for a while- but back in 1990 there was only one- Milli Vanilli. Yes they had just been sprung after winning grammy awards and had to hand them back when it was discovered (shock horror) that they DIDN'T actually sing on their records! The real villan of the piece was Frank Farian who got the project together recorded the tracks before realising that the singers he had used really weren't marketable. Step forward Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus who were models and dancers that Farian spotted in the clubs of Munich in 1988, he asked them to front the records, they agreed, and the seeds of the destruction of Milli Vanilli were sown. They first hit it big with 1988's "Girl You Know It's True" which made No 3 here before going one better with this track "Girl I'm Gonna Miss You", a piece of pleasing, if rather unremarkable, reggae lite piece of pop. Though Britain was duped it could have been worse, at least we never gave them a No 1 hit unlike the great USA where the band scored a hat-trick of chart toppers including this one, now pushing the controversy to one side and just focusing on the single I actually bought it at the time (there was only one No 2 hit of the last four No 2 hits of the decade which I didn't buy at the time and that's the one that I like the most now), and I recall it's three weeks at No 2- I never really giving a second thought to the fact that it would ever get to No 1, it just never seemed like a chart topper to me, but then with Jive Bunny's selling power in 1989 that was never really gonna be on the cards, you never hear them on the radio now, it's like Pop has tried to erase them from the collective memory, that's a shame, they are a cautionary tale and i'm sure a few acts both before them and after them have used pretty much the same deception. An ill advised press conference where they "sang" live and an album with their genuine vocals on were both derided by the press and the public who never really forgave them, Pilatus being found dead of a drugs overdose in 98 reputedly he never really got over the incident either....
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Post by Earl Purple on Aug 23, 2011 17:52:07 GMT 1
The man who fronted Boney M also never actually performed the male vocals (e.g. on Rasputin). The women you saw in Boney M did also sing.
They were in good company at the time. Blackbox also used a front-woman who wasn't Loletta Holloway who mimed to Ride On Time. And Pump Up The Jam was credited to Technotronic ft Felly but Felly didn't rap it, Yah Kid K did. And with Jive Bunny's music being a medley of samples, this was pretty much the entire top 4 wasn't it?
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Gezza
Member
Posts: 7,846
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Post by Gezza on Aug 23, 2011 18:02:56 GMT 1
18TH NOVEMBER- ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE- Phil Collins (1 week)It's a tricky one isn't it? On top of that you're never really gonna be thanked for it! Just how much should popstars attempt to be social commentators? This is another lesson in pop that subsequent popstars never learned, Madonna, George Michael, Simply Red to mention a few, and it's a curious truth that as as a rule of thumb the bigger the artist in terms of popularity or being further into their career they are, the more the concerns for the "common man" ring more hollow. It seems condescending really to be preaching to the public how we should all thinking and acting when you're rolling in money yourself- well that's the theory it would appear- "Another Day In Paradise" was the lead single from the phenomenal million selling "But Seriously" album, it's not a bad song if you strip Collins out of it, certainly it detailed a great social ill of the decade which had seen the problem of homelessness spiral ever upward, and so its placement on our rundown in the dying weeks of the decade is perhaps rather fitting (it was also the final No 1 single of the 80s in the US). The accompanying black and white video is actually quite effective in communicated theme and it's not a song that I mind at all, that may be in part to the fact that it less heard or covered than "Against All Odds", hey I guess homeless doesn't really make for a cheery makeover, well unless you're Crystal Waters but ah I get ahead of myself!......
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vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 23, 2011 18:24:03 GMT 1
Nowadays Pop has a good few pariah's- Jonathan King, Gary Glitter, Chris Brown for a while- but back in 1990 there was only one- Milli Vanilli. Yes they had just been sprung after winning grammy awards and had to hand them back when it was discovered (shock horror) that they DIDN'T actually sing on their records! The real villan of the piece was Frank Farian who got the project together recorded the tracks before realising that the singers he had used really weren't marketable. See, I don't think they should have had to hand back the Grammys. They should have presented them to the actual singers. Because if one listens to the records themselves, there is an act of Milli Vanilli - the sessionistas who recorded afterwards as The Real Milli Vanilli - and they amounted to as much a new act as New Kids On The Block were. It's like saying the Wombles would not be eligible for a Brit on the basis that the songs were not sung by Wimbledon-domiciled recycling furballs. And I would not call Farian a villain; I would call him a hero, for proving that the music industry is all about presentation and not talent. The promoters were not interested in The Real Milli Vanilli, only in miming models. For some reason The Saturdays have just entered my mind.
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