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Post by Whitneyfan on Nov 12, 2017 16:17:21 GMT 1
Probably not forgotten, but I had forgotten just how great it was until it randomly just came up on my ipod.
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vya
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Post by vya on Nov 12, 2017 18:57:01 GMT 1
This is a track I remember hearing, frequently, on Kiss FM in London when it was newly operating as a legal station in late 1990 - there was a period when it was exciting and dynamic, introducing new artists and kinds of music to a potentially much wider audience than they had ever had before. And how exciting and btilliant Kiss FM was in those early legal days. How very much unlike what it later became... Seems unimaginable now how limited the choice of radio stations in the UK was right up until the early 1990s too...
Anyway - the track almost made the top 40 in October 1990, and then did so (even making it up to no 7) on re-release, under a more obvious name ("Move Your Body") a few months later. While a remix again briefly made the charts a few years later. But how remembered is it now? I still rather like it.
"Elevation" by Xpansions
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Nov 13, 2017 0:42:19 GMT 1
There were 2 reasons for remembering Xpansions.
1. They were at the time the most successful charting act beginning with X.
2. One of them used to be in a group with Dani Behr.
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Post by raliverpool on Nov 13, 2017 20:06:25 GMT 1
Everybody remembers Elton John duet with George Michael on the former's reworking of Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me, and yet his first "duet" with George Michael which peaked at UK #12 & USA #20 again remains snubbed by yet another Elton John Greatest Hits compilation (perhaps because in hindsight the lyrics are rather ironic):
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Post by thehitparade on Nov 16, 2017 0:43:12 GMT 1
If we didn't know what we now do about George & Elton, Wrap Her Up would be a bit of a creepy song. As it is it's just rubbish.
Of course, George didn't have chart credit at the time, I presume for contractual reasons or something.
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Tom
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Post by Tom on Nov 16, 2017 21:29:20 GMT 1
There was a time when you could easily score a hit by just taking a kids' TV theme and aciding it up. It gave top 10s to The Prodigy, Smart E's, Urban Hype and Shaft. Got to the point where it had a genre name, of kiddicore, which sounds sooooo wrong. Yet easily the best of them all was this one, which barely made the top 30. Video misses out the ITMA opening but this was a splendid and sympathetic take on the Magic Roundabout theme - not the routine that the Carrott turned into a top 5 cut. What I remember most about this is that whoever was doing the top 40 at the time (Brookes/Goodier) must have positively hated it. Hardly played it in the era when outside the 20 was voluntary. It took Tommy Vance standing in to give it a spin when it stalled at 27. Think it got about four seconds on Top Of The Pops... Just having a catch up with the thread. It was Goodier doing the chart at this point and by then they were playing all 40 songs. I've got that Vance chart and the Magic Roundabout bit is the only part I seem to remember from the time, and I heard it on the chart more than once and maybe on the ITV chart show as well.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Nov 16, 2017 23:08:35 GMT 1
Play this song to someone without any visual clues...
...and I bet they'd never guess it was The Rubettes. Their last hit, and a top tenner at that, it sounds very country soft-rock to me; none of the falsetto glam that had taken them to the top of the charts.
Also means that the band is one of the few to have had three different lead vocalists on top ten singles (Paul da Vinci, Alan Williams, and, on this one, Tony Thorpe).
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vya
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Post by vya on Nov 16, 2017 23:45:24 GMT 1
One of the pleasures of watching the Top of the Pops reruns from 1984 (not to my mind a great year for chart pop music) has been discovering or rediscovering what were to me some forgotten singles of Spandau Ballet. "Only When You Leave" (which I never had forgot) apart, none of their releases that year are among their finest work, but they are immediately recognisable as the work of the act, and some dubious aspects (like rhyming "diplomat" with "laundromat") notwithstanding they are far from objectionable....
....which got me thinking of their big rivals, Duran Duran, who somehow managed to wangle out a much longer career as a band than the Ballet. Certainly some ups and downs quality-wise (some major downs too), but likewise quite a few decent singles that escaped the attention that their earlier stuff had got, and which in some cases are very good indeed.
This one, though, which failed to make the top 20 in 1987, making it in contemporaneous Duranie terms a commercial flop, is surely up there among their very best. Maybe more serious and a bit angry than their earlier more frivolous stuff, maybe that's why it flopped, re!actively. Maybe it also showed the first signs of a more adult touch that enabled them to evolve and develop though, whereas the Ballet spent the !ate 80s churning out increasingly pale rewrites of their big hits and really had nowhere to go. Whereas their rivals could go from " Girls on Film" to the brilliant "Do You Believe In Shame?" and beyond. But this track is the one that marked the turning point....
Duran Duran , " Skin Trade"
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Nov 22, 2017 0:40:17 GMT 1
A later single going top ten after being in a telephone advert means this little Dandy Warhol classic is sadly overlooked. Perhaps one of those where the title is wrong. Zia looks well hot in this video with her bored demeanour, although she could do without the tats.
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Post by thehitparade on Nov 25, 2017 23:43:52 GMT 1
Suspect the title of that Dandy Warhols song was a double-edged sword, it was more memorable and distinctive than if they'd just used the lyrics but maybe in the long run casual listeners didn't associate the title with the song.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 3, 2017 14:11:32 GMT 1
Talking of titles that are not referenced in the song...
...a Beatles no. 1 being a nearly forgotten hit? I would claim yes; because I have never, ever, ever heard this single being played on any mass media. Never. Never on telly, never on radio. Yet probably every other Beatles single has been done to death. Other than the Sheridan ones.
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Post by andrew07 on Dec 3, 2017 22:37:24 GMT 1
Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard the Fab Four's last UK No.1 on the radio either, maybe stations are afraid of offending Christians due to the use of the words "Christ" and "crucify". Hmm, speaking of censorship, I don't know if this song has been played much due to the swear words in it, but and I'm not joking, I do remember taping this off Virgin Radio one afternoon back in 1995 I think, uncensored and not a word got said afterwards, not even an apology funnily enough.
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Post by paulgilb on Dec 4, 2017 0:16:36 GMT 1
Talking of titles that are not referenced in the song... ...a Beatles no. 1 being a nearly forgotten hit? I would claim yes; because I have never, ever, ever heard this single being played on any mass media. Never. Never on telly, never on radio. Yet probably every other Beatles single has been done to death. Other than the Sheridan ones. Gold (formerly Capital Gold) have definitely played this song frequently (I have not listened to the station for several years, so I don't know if this is still the case).
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Tom
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Post by Tom on Dec 5, 2017 22:25:40 GMT 1
There seems to be a general assumption that "Respectable' by Mel & Kim was some sort of creative high point for Stock Aitken Waterman. I can only assume that those people do not remember Kim Appleby's self-co-penned debut solo hit. Which shows what a talent was hidden behind the SAWmill drek. So good I played it twice...
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 7, 2017 22:41:33 GMT 1
If there is any criticism that can be levelled at "Three Lions", it is that it overshadowed The Lightning Seeds' other works, most of which were utterly perfect pop creations. Gorgeous, uplifting, enervating.
"Life Of Riley" is well-remembered for its Grandstand-backgroundness, and it is surprising it was not a much bigger hit than it was (I'm sure most people would have thought it was a top tenner), but for me this was their absolute peak...
Fun video as well which gives the other Seeds their moment in the sun. The comments suggest the ice skater's name is Louise Blackburn but I can't find hide nor hair of her.
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Post by Laurence on Dec 7, 2017 23:02:25 GMT 1
That Mark Summers track is quirky but a struggle to listen too! Underrated gem from 1990 which I find incredibly beautiful. Made no. 34 in late summer at the same time that the Suzanne Vega collaboration ‘Tom’s Diner’ had just peaked at no. 2. No idea why there wasn’t a bigger gap between releases. This track is actually an interpretation of an early 80s Italian piece of music which they used to play randomly on TV to fill in some schedule gaps. Freemasons have also done their own version of this but prefer the DNA version.
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vya
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Post by vya on Dec 9, 2017 23:12:03 GMT 1
This came late in their (initial) career, and it seemed that no-one really cared for them much anymore. A pity, as I think it is close to being Echo and the Bunnymen at their very best - as well have having a similar feel to what became Ian McCulloch's first post-Bunnymen (and second overall) solo single, "Proud To Fall", which might well remain his best solo number. But back to this - a beautiful song, great instrumentation, charming vocals, taut structuring and closing; something that really ought not be anywhere near as forgotten as it is: from 1987, "The Game":
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Post by Wanderlust on Dec 10, 2017 13:10:51 GMT 1
Fat Les - Naughty Christmas
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 10, 2017 14:23:05 GMT 1
With Lisa Moorish, thoughts of whom must have filled a few sperm banks.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 17, 2017 20:01:37 GMT 1
Breakthrough hit single for the former Cliff Adams Singers, er, singer, and occasional Carry On star. Although Anita Harris was better known for her cabaret show. One of a number of singles that seemed never to leave the Record Retailer charts, spending 30 weeks in the top 50; odd as its chart run looked like it would reach a natural death after it went from 9 to 14 in its 13th week, but then bounced back up, and hovered around the high teens for a month, and the low thirties for two.
Written by Tom Springfield.
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