|
Post by raliverpool on Dec 1, 2019 16:53:51 GMT 1
Two interesting things about the Salt N' Pepa cover of the Isley Brothers classic (memorably covered as the final track on The Beatles debut album Please Please Me): Firstly, I'd never seen the video before, but I can now see where Outkast got the idea for the video to "Hey Ya" from with "Salt", "Pepa" & "Spinderella" playing all the key female parts in the retro looking video (although you could argue that concept all stems back to Paul McCartney's Coming Up video from 1980):
But perhaps of more interest is if you look at the video between 1:47 & 1:50 you will see a pre-fame Anastacia in the white dress, ponytail and glasses.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,427
|
Post by vastar iner on Dec 7, 2019 10:03:25 GMT 1
Anastacia looks cute in that get-up.
24/11. Weird map at the start showing who can get Radio 1 in FM and where. May wearing a Christmas jumper and Crane wearing the Mick Jagger outfit from "Dancing In The Street".
Tiffany starts with something that sounds almost identical to "I Can Hear Music" by The Beach Boys in the verses. Chorus is sh*te. Bit cruel to send her out there without a band given that there is a sax break. This might be the laziest song ever written.
Bomb The Bass with Maureen. Tim Simenon is behind bongos for no evident reason. Not a good cover. Trying to be all epic and it does not work.
Chartamundos. Angry Anderson with Scott & Charlene's wedding theme. People really are thick. Deacon Blue, at last some light in the darkness.
Breakers. Jackson. Hype over reality. Pet Shop Boys going back to the talk-through-the-song-and-sing-the-chorus. This is at 7 yet only gets a breaker, but Tiffany gets a full performance? Mental. But this is their best for quite a while. Iron Maiden are in at 6 and ALSO only get a breaker. Why is the BBC favouring Septics over British acts?
Mayo: "The biggest woman's band is..." The Bangles, obviously. "Bananarama." Oh, I must have missed when they played their instruments. Cretin. Pointless cover of "Nathan Jones". The SAWmill evidently getting this on TOTP at the expense of Iron Maiden. Just release the f***ing original.
Chartinos. Chris de Burgh, f*** off, Robin Beck, f*** off, and Hithouse, on the playout rather than the main show with a track that is 1988 but the video is 1978. Haircuts included. It's OK for what it is.
|
|
Robbie
Member
*Funky!*
Posts: 24,826
|
Post by Robbie on Dec 7, 2019 14:16:32 GMT 1
'Mistletoe & Wine' by Cliff Richard is at number 1 on the edition from 08/12/88 which was shown last night. One interesting fact about 'Mistletoe & Wine' was that it was produced by Cliff himself - a first. Reading between the lines it looks like his then-usual producer (Alan Tarney) wasn't convinced by the song. Cliff said in a Record Mirror interview in December 1988 "Alan and I have always agreed that I should sing only songs I like and he should only produce songs he likes". From that comment I'm assuming Alan Tarney didn't like the song. Cliff also mentions that the song was first sung by Twiggy in a TV programme called "The Little Match Girl". The song was sung by Twiggy in a Dickensian Inn and included lines such as "Snow and smoke, a smile and a joke" which Cliff considered inappropriate and so made some changes which the writers agreed to.
Here's the Twiggy version:
I have no recollection of the TV programme which it appears was shown on (I presume) ITV on Sunday 28 December 1986.
|
|
vya
Member
Posts: 8,776
|
Post by vya on Dec 8, 2019 11:00:02 GMT 1
Hmm.
On the charts, but thankfully not on the show, I think "Love House" by Sam Fox might just qualify as the lamest, weakest, most pointless top 40 hit of the year. (Marillion's "Freaks (Live)", also new this week, is also ultra-insipid).
Top 10, but only in the breakers, but Iron Maiden's "The Clairvoyant", easily their best single from this album, towers over pretty much everything on the show, but this will be all we hear from it here.
The Bomb the Bass cover of "I Say A Little Prayer" - not something we'd have envisaged when faced with the revolutionary onslaught that was "Beat Dis" a few months, but a cultural age, earlier - I find surprisingly appealling. Clearly of its time, but its simple reworking of an ageless song is done with grace and flair and really brings something to the song. The Nanas' take on "Nathan Jones" not so much.
Chris de Burgh - "Missing You": infectious drivel that becomes a vapid, poisonous earworm with only limited exposure. Should be locked up safe out of harm's way, and only let out when the approach of a vicious enemy is imminent.
"Real Gone Kid" may just be Deacon Blue's most overrated track. At least, so far. Too much pressure to get a hit, not enough encouragement to pursue the more subtle and introspective flavours than were all over "Raintown"
Difficult to imagine Tiffany making it as a pop star any more recently than this. A singer of limited talent ("no discernable talent" would be a little too harsh - I'm sure there are small towns that would appreciate her taking part in their talent contests), with mediocre material (like "Radio Romance": although, the atrocious Beatles cover apart, her other top 75 singles had their moments), who is presented like the girl next door, way beyond the imaginings of any of the stars of "Neighbours". Normal, not a star. (Probably a sign of a more healthy cultural age that this was possible then this is the case now. ) In retrospect, much better than Debbie Gibson, still.
"Jack To The Sound Of The Underground" (not yet the theme of a leading "alternative" BBC comedy show) is quietly epic - not up the standards of Simon Harris's unjustly forgotten "Here Comes That Sound" - but rather a lesson - above all to the producers who hide behind names like Mirage - in how to do a megamix that incorporates chunks of all the epochally defining dance tracks of a period. The five seconds nicked from Krush's "House Arrest" bring back that gem's warmth and genius - as well as reminding, like Bomb the Bass's transformation, of what a radical musical trajectory this year has taken, while it seems clear that we'll be hearing more and more of Kelly Charles' "You're No Good For Me". And how can a video that begins like this one does - with the DJ mouthing over-repetitious sampled platitudes being silenced by being pecked in the face by a descendant of the Disco Duck while a sythesised voice lets out "phooey, you bugger!" - not think, wow, this guy is much better than the Funky Worm.
And the bloody Coke Ad (in an inferior version to that actually used on the ad) is still number one, after all that. Huh.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,427
|
Post by vastar iner on Dec 8, 2019 12:22:02 GMT 1
Pinch and a punch. Brooks and Read, the latter trying to look like a Blues brother. On commence avec Rick Astley, they didn't say he wrote this. Perhaps he did and doesn't want the credit for what is a truly atrocious offering.
Charts. Beach Boys at the US no. 1. Michael Jackson, how weird that the BBC has a hissy fit over Glitter but not over Jackson.
Breakers. George Michael, going all 1920s. Terrible. Angry Anderson, wholooks nothing like you'd expect from the song (was thinking Michael Bolton lookylikey rather than bald metal midget). Cliff Richard, who has amazingly never had a Christmas no. 1, pitching for it with something aimed at the older market. Surprisingly OK. Phil Collins, doing the same "I'm everyone in the video" thing as he did a few years ago. Dull sixties pastiche. More an exercise in creativity than an actual song.
PSB. So, that's two of the breakers from last week being given a full play. Is it basically a cartel to prevent less obvious songs being played? Look at the show this week, all big names with no. 1s behind them. Other than someone who is getting a fuckload of airplay in Neighbours.
And as if to prove the point, Bros. To be fair, entering at no. 2 deserves a play. But nobody is buying this for the song, are they? It's awful. A distinct step down from their earlier efforts. But there is e.g. Humanoid that did not get a play. Whereas Breakers do.
Top 10. Let's skip to the playout. Oh, here's Humanoid. Although nobody seems to be sure how to credit it. But surely this should have been the main show and the paedo should have been the playout? Funny dancing.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,427
|
Post by vastar iner on Dec 8, 2019 12:50:52 GMT 1
Ochty twelvety. Campbell and Keating. And Ver Quo. There seems to be something off with the sound, as it's much quieter than one would expect. Well, as far as three chords go, this is surprisingly appealing. Not Christmassy. Maybe releasing it in the New Year would have done a "Down Down".
Charts and we cut to Angry Anderson at no. 3. Actually I've not got anything against the song, it is what it is, supposedly heartrending ballad that might go a bundle in the States. Anderson looks not so much angry as intensely bored. Intensely Bored Anderson. That's a decent name.
Breakers. Petula Clark, yay, that's one for the teenagers. Great original record utterly ruined by some **** vomiting sh*t beats all over it. New Order's "Fine Time", which is also not very Christmassy but has a Christmas video. Appealingly weird. Inner City with a superior take on Chicago house, this has every chance of becoming an earworm, mix of pop with garage. Erasure in at 7 with a video that looks 3D. Great tune, but needs more lyric. Also reminiscent of "Then He Kissed Me".
Phil Collins with a sixties pastiche. Oh look, he's doing the "let's play everyone in the band" bit again. Dull.
Chartybites again. A-ha are still going. Beach Boys, Four Tops, Petula Clark. An indictment of the utter lack of any imagination in the modern pop world, and the lamestream media's refusal to give promotion to the alternative acts. Humanoid at no. 17? Hm.
Minogue and Donovan at 2. God, record-buyers are MONUMENTALLY thick. Indeed they seem to revel in being sheeple. Proud to do what everyone else does. Proud to have the individuality of a bacterium. Proud to be f***ing cannon fodder of no use to the world whatsoever. We need a f***ing bubonic plague to wipe out their useless asses. This "song" has not one redemptive factor whatever. Minogue's horrid soul-lacerating nasal whingey c*ntstain of a voice being computer-tricked into Dalekesque tones WHICH ACTUALLY IMPROVES IT. And Donovan has the singing ability of a dead hedgehog, and they give him the high notes. Nobody can be buying this for the record because it is not just scraping the bottom of the barrel. It has gone through the bottom and has gone via the earth's core to emerge at the other side. And has carried on going right through the entire universe to find a bottom that physicists thought was theoretically impossible. And somehow gone through that barrier to find hitherto unimaginable depths. EVERYONE WHO BUYS THIS RECORD BECAUSE THEY THINK THEY LIKE IT SHOULD BE EXECUTED. FACT.
I never thought I'd say this, but THANK f***ing GOD FOR CLIFF RICHARD. A proper Christmas record as well.
And the playout is Bananarama because we haven't had enough f***ing SAWmill on this episode.
Is this the most morally repugnant episode ever? Manipulation, payola, bias, utter sh*te, and song-wrecking. Horrible show.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,427
|
Post by vastar iner on Dec 15, 2019 10:52:45 GMT 1
Exactly 31 years ago today . Goodier and Davies. Bon Jovi starting, they're slumming it, Jon BJ wearing a Guardian Angels t-shirt, they were a thing around that time, vigilantes guarding the New York subway. The song is appalling. The sort of thing even Europe (the group, not the continent) (on second thoughts, the continent too) would have rejected as being substandard.
There's a really cute and enthusiastic girl in red on the gantry with Davies. Petula Clark singing live. She must be cringing inside at the utterly useless remixing work that has shat all over the glorious original. Who the hell thought "yeah, this will make the original better"? Whoever did needs to be forced to feed his entire family into a woodchipper before having his genitals dissolved in acid, so that we can remove his useless genes from the pool.
Chart my bitch up. Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra in at 40, heh. Goodier suggests watching Rattle & Hum is the next best thing to seeing U2 live. Set the bar high, why don't you? Although I will concede "Angel Of Harlem" is very decent.
New Order completely live. Emphasized by Hooky standing there doing eff all. There's a lot of programming going on. This is also rather brilliant. Complex and offbeat.
Chartinos. Erasure. "Stop", which sounds like it hasn't been finished, needs another verse or two rather than just da capo. Shame as there's the makings of a minor classic there.
Breakers. Four Tops, not as good as their sixties peak. Kim Wilde, with something rather lovely and sweetly melancholic. Londonbeat, almost a cappella. This stands out a mile, very different.
Highest climber is Inner City, up 16. At non-Christmas this would be looking good for the top spot. Paris Grey is VERY attractive without flaunting it. Class.
Top 10. U2 vs Inner City for the post-Christmas no. 1? Bros have flopped hard by the standards suspected. Top 3 are non-movers. As I said before, thank God for Cliff Richard. Playout is A-ha, because, well, no f***ing idea.
|
|
SheriffFatman
Member
Been spending most our lives living in the Cheshire countryside
Posts: 10,930
|
Post by SheriffFatman on Dec 18, 2019 21:53:27 GMT 1
Yeah, was it Humanoid by Stakker Humanoid or Stakker Humanoid by Humanoid? I was never sure, and I bought it on 7”.
Amazed Petula Clark sang live to that remix, you’d think she’d have wanted nothing to do with it, maybe she was skint. It had the original version on the b-side, I bought that one too. Phillip Schofield had been playing Downtown in the Broom Cupboard on Children’s BBC, I don’t know why but I guess that’s what inspired the remix and reissue.
Anyway, is the Christmas Day edition not being shown? The next thing I can see in the schedule is a Story Of 1989 documentary on Friday 3rd January, am I missing anything? How many episodes are they skipping?
|
|
SheriffFatman
Member
Been spending most our lives living in the Cheshire countryside
Posts: 10,930
|
Post by SheriffFatman on Dec 30, 2019 10:22:59 GMT 1
Confusingly, although I couldn’t find them in the schedule, there’s episodes from 22/12/1988 and 25/12/1988 on the iPlayer. Do they now put episodes on there without broadcasting them, or did my Sky+ and I both miss them?
|
|
ad1
Member
Posts: 293
|
Post by ad1 on Jan 5, 2020 20:31:47 GMT 1
Confusingly, although I couldn’t find them in the schedule, there’s episodes from 22/12/1988 and 25/12/1988 on the iPlayer. Do they now put episodes on there without broadcasting them, or did my Sky+ and I both miss them? The 25/12/1988 episode was on BBC4 on 20/12/2019 @ 2000 and the 22/12/1988 episode on 20/12/2019 @ 2100. No idea why they showed them out of order.
|
|
SheriffFatman
Member
Been spending most our lives living in the Cheshire countryside
Posts: 10,930
|
Post by SheriffFatman on Jan 13, 2020 19:51:05 GMT 1
Confusingly, although I couldn’t find them in the schedule, there’s episodes from 22/12/1988 and 25/12/1988 on the iPlayer. Do they now put episodes on there without broadcasting them, or did my Sky+ and I both miss them? The 25/12/1988 episode was on BBC4 on 20/12/2019 @ 2000 and the 22/12/1988 episode on 20/12/2019 @ 2100. No idea why they showed them out of order. Thanks! Weird how Sky+ didn’t pick them up, I had it set to record the late night repeats though, maybe they weren’t repeated. The 1989 documentary was great fun, I remember the music of that year all too well, looking forward to reliving all of the Top of the Pops. I doubt I missed any first time.
|
|
SheriffFatman
Member
Been spending most our lives living in the Cheshire countryside
Posts: 10,930
|
Post by SheriffFatman on Jan 14, 2020 23:13:49 GMT 1
Oh my God, Milli Vanilli’s trousers! That was obscene! 😮
|
|
vya
Member
Posts: 8,776
|
Post by vya on Jan 26, 2020 11:32:28 GMT 1
These restyled 1989 ToTPs are editing the tracks really brutally. Those appearing on video, especially, but those appearing "live" (or occasionally, semi-live), too. Not good. (Also, the new non R1-DJ presenters are making loads of verbal slips that make it too patently obvious they don't know what they are talking about.)
But what a cracker of a track Sheena Easton's "The Lover In Me" is: looks like new jack swing (as I'm not sure we ever really called it in the UK) has been one of the break-through styles of the past year: Keith Sweat's "I Want Her" had paved the way ages earlier, but this, and the final, belated, entry of Bobby Brown to the higher echelons of the chart, seem to suggest that it's reaching a wider audience. Surely Karen White can't be far behind?
|
|
Tom
Member
*Of Royal Blood*
Posts: 15,419
|
Post by Tom on Jan 26, 2020 17:02:47 GMT 1
These restyled 1989 ToTPs are editing the tracks really brutally. Those appearing on video, especially, but those appearing "live" (or occasionally, semi-live), too. Not good. (Also, the new non R1-DJ presenters are making loads of verbal slips that make it too patently obvious they don't know what they are talking about.) I'm surprised how often we've seen Sybil Roscoe in the past year. She doesn't seem the most natural/comfortable TV presenter, although having googled her twitter account yesterday she does at least tweet about her appearances and offer some insight which the other presenters don't usually do. In fact they don't often make reference to the show at all, memories too embarrassing maybe?!
Without saying too much, when Gezza was doing his 1989 thread I discovered some shows from much later in the year and there's a non R1 presenter that I think looked even more uncomfortable than Sybil does.
Know what you mean about the editing, they really are packing the songs in, noticed on Friday's episodes in particular that each seemed to end rather abruptly.
|
|
vya
Member
Posts: 8,776
|
Post by vya on Feb 1, 2020 11:45:13 GMT 1
16th Feb edition: more utterly, utterly brutal edits: unless I'm mistaken they even got Gloria Estefan (with the Miami Sound Machine seemingly now stripped from the credits), singing live, to give us only one verse of the re-released and in its way quietly brilliant (if obsessive, lyrically) "Can't Stay Away From You". On Sam's Brown's equally re-released and even more quietly brilliant (and nearly as obsessive, lyrically) "Stop" they let her get to the scream, but no further.
As for what they did to the songs played on video (apart from the play-out from S'Express, which will no doubt appear in full on the show next week, which got the full track), the cuts were utterly random: shall we have a small chunk from the middle of the song (even if, like "Belfast Child", it's a growing and complex number than really isn't amenable to being cut up like this)?, or from the end, or shall we throw in a short clip including an extensive instrumental section, or shall we just cut it at some emotionally and musically unresolved point (like numerous others)? Completely disrespectful - almost impressively so, if that was the point. But not the act of someone with any feeling for these kinds of music at all...
And the choice of tracks to make it to the show is - as always - sometimes slightly baffling, in some ways at least. (At least Junior Giscombe is not currently active, I suppose) The earthshattering, timeless classic, Raze's "Break 4 Love", on this occasion, I think on its third release (and first time in the top 40), being completely ignored over several weeks (OK, maybe it doesn't have a video, I'm not sure, and the act are clearly not local to Shepherd's Bush: a case for reviving Ruby Flipper or Pan's People maybe?) - it will feature, indirectly in another big hit later in the year, before getting re-released at least three times more [EDIT- at least five times more] - and getting in to the top 40 in a slightly different, and inferior version within the next 12 or 13 months; as well as presumably being a big inspiration for an enormous summer hit. But will it ever make TOTP in its own right? I'm not sure it ever did.
Although we do get the atrocious hamming up of "Promised Land", which in its Joe Smooth original version had been a thing of depth and wonder and meaning, that represents the Style Council's (Paul Weller's, even) lowest point, and that really marked their end as a functioning unit.
On the other hand, having acts who are up for it, and up to it, singing live, is a good move.
|
|
|
Post by o on Feb 1, 2020 12:18:06 GMT 1
Enjoyed Pop Will Eat Itself showing up, Sam Brown and that SExpress track I'd forgotten at the end
|
|
|
Post by raliverpool on Feb 1, 2020 12:55:29 GMT 1
From memory I do recall at the time the justification for the severe edits of tracks (both in the studio & especially on video) were to reflect the top 40 getting a faster turnover of new entries and songs spending less weeks in the charts, so they packed more in to reflect that.
But the edits to Simple Minds' Belfast Child is brutal whatever you think of the track. I have to say having watched both of last night's episodes, whatever you think of Andrew Lloyd Webber & the song in question, Michael Ball's vocals was mightly impressive. On the other side of the coin, The Style Council's take on the Joe Smooth Chicago House classic was the equivalent of your parents covering a Stormzy track today...
The thing is The Style Council were in the process of recording a new album for Polydor Records titled Modernism: A New Decade (the full album was eventually released in 1998 on The Complete Adventures of The Style Council box set; a separate release was authorised in 2001) where they really embraced the then contemporary dance club music scene. However, the record company rejected it, and the band subsequently split.
To give you a flavour of how it sounded here is the instrumental opening Deep House track:
|
|
vya
Member
Posts: 8,776
|
Post by vya on Feb 1, 2020 13:17:42 GMT 1
Give it a few months, and someone will be singing "kick out the Style, bring back the Jam"....
(I don't think that unreleased album is dreadful, certainly no worse than the imminent ABC album in a similar style: but, well, Ten City were doing this sort of thing so much more attractively and effectively...)
|
|
|
Post by o on Feb 3, 2020 11:03:08 GMT 1
Tone Loc - Wild thing
|
|
|
Post by Earl Purple on Feb 3, 2020 12:55:41 GMT 1
The strings / backing track on Stop by Sam Brown is so much copied from James Brown's "It's a Man's Man's Man's World"..
|
|