Old TOTP (BBC4)

I only every liked one Dodgy song and it wasn't "Good Enough" but I do wonder if it marked the only appearance of Haile Selassie on Top Of The Pops...
 
Me Me Me. On the plus side - it put Stephen Duffy on Top Of The Pops, it was their only single and it was, arguably, the song that out an end to Britpop but shoving all its cliches into 3 minutes. One the negative side - everything else.

It's slightly odd to think that Blur were about halfway through recording the handbreak turn of their fifth album at this point. It's almost as if Alex James had to work the last of his mid 90s energy out before he could slip into his new role comfortably.
 
"Trash" is so, SO fucking good. It's lost nothing in the intervening 28 years. They really looked amazing too - Richard Oakes had lost that awkwardness and they had Neil Codling to stand there looking pretty; he famously could not be arsed when they weren't actually playing live so, when miming, he tended to just stand there pouting to tremendous effect.
 
I don't remember Cher doing "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore". And I probably still won't by the time I go to bed tonight. Love The Walker Brothers version.
 
"Walking On The Milky Way" is actually pretty good. It must have been round about now that Andy McClusky was thinking about getting someone else to sing his songs because I can absolutely see why he heard this as a huge hit.
 
Se A Vida E is one of the very best things the Pet Shop Boys ever did. It does that thing that have such a grasp of where a song can be utterly joyous but still have that twinge of melancholy. An absolute beauty that would have been #1 for a month if they'd released it 6 or 7 years earlier.
 
R.E.M.'s E-Bow The Letter. An absolute masterpiece that killed their career. Still one of my top 10 R.E.M. songs, although, like most people, my top 10 R.E.M. songs has about 35 songs in it.
 
octophone said:
"Walking On The Milky Way" is actually pretty good. It must have been round about now that Andy McClusky was thinking about getting someone else to sing his songs because I can absolutely see why he heard this as a huge hit.
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The start sounds like it could be in an ad for a bank or building society (that’s not a slight)
 
Another Bear Van Bears episode tonight :disco:

It really speaks to how massive the Manic Street Preachers were at this point that they could get something as weird and spiky as 'Kevin Carter' into the top ten.
 
If Spain had managed to win and host a Eurovision in the 00s, this Jeremy Healy & Amos track is EXACTLY what the interval act would probably have looked and sounded like.
 
Still find Beatiful South's Rotterdam deeply sinister in its utter, glassy-eyed blandness. I'm convinced if you played it backwards you'd be compelled to climb a tall building and hang yourself in the name of Satan.

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Other than the Bunton association and a vague memory of Ghetto Romance, Damage draw a complete blank for me.
 
Wasn't the Babybird story that he was some eccentric art-rock type who decided to write an infuriatingly earwormy radio song just for shits and giggles? (And money, presumably).

You're Gorgeous certainly sounds like a pop song written by somebody coming from a place of utter contempt for the genre.
 
Say You'll Be There was such a great follow-up to Wannabe. They could so easily have just done Wannabe mark 2 and had the predictable diminishing returns, but instead the look and sound has a total glow-up and now they look like the world beaters they quickly became.

Victoria still holding the mic as though it was thrust into her hands by a shifty looking man in a trenchcoat 5 seconds before the performance, mind. :D
 
VoR said:
It really speaks to how massive the Manic Street Preachers were at this point that they could get something as weird and spiky as 'Kevin Carter' into the top ten.
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Proper b-sides helped. One of the CD singles was a 4 track EP with 3 actual new songs so the fans came out for it. Fantastic record too.
 
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VoR said:
Wasn't the Babybird story that he was some eccentric art-rock type who decided to write an infuriatingly earwormy radio song just for shits and giggles? (And money, presumably).

You're Gorgeous certainly sounds like a pop song written by somebody coming from a place of utter contempt for the genre.
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Not really. The early "lo-fi" albums contained many a pop nugget but the label that signed him/them picked out You're Gorgeous as a hit from the stacks of available material. They were right.
 
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Many episodes ago, but Donna Lewis was THIRTY SEVEN when I Love You Always Forever was a hit.
 
Of all the bands in the last 15-20 episodes, you wouldn't have put money on Shed Seven being the one still having #1 albums and playing the big sheds. Fair play.
 
Ah, E-Bow The Letter again. One of Michael Stipe's best lyrics. I love the line "I wrap my hand in plastic to try to look through it". Couldn't tell you what it means but it's so evocative.
 
I wonder if anyone's ever written a book about being a jobbing musician hired to mime on records that are quite clearly entirely programmed. De'Lacy's record clearly doesn't have real drums, real bass guitar or real percussion on it and yet, there's 4 guys miming away like absolute pros. Not in any way a diss, by the way, it's just a curious choice.
 
Jamiroquai might be a wank but Virtual Insanity is a banger, musicially speaking. I mean, it should be, it's what you get when 4 musicologists construct a Stevie Wonder song from 1975 carefully enough that he couldn't sue you.
 
Oh What A Night did not need covered, especially not in such a sterile way. Clock? Cock more like it (ho ho).
 
I have a clear memory of seeing the Smurfs video with my sister and the two of us absolutely losing it to the "poopeeeeeeer, pooper scooper" backing vocals.
 
There's never a bad time for a spot of prime Soft Cell but it was a bit of a choice - got an extra 5 minutes on your pop music show about the charts? Let's show something old that isn't in the charts but used to be.
 
The Charlatans. One To Another is actually great but worth remembering that this is less than 2 months after Rob Collins died so it's no wonder they look a bit off-colour. Jon Brookes barely looks up for the whole performance. He's away now too, as is their stand-in keyboard player Martin Duffy who got completely ripped off by world-beating arseholes, Primal Scream and died broke. Sheesh.
 
Trying to remember how that Rocket From The Crypt record happened? Was in Mark Radcliffe who picked up on it? Either way, you can guarantee that if they showed up where you were drinking, you'd ask for a lid for your drink.
 
Hang on, where's the top 40 countdown? They usually show it over a video early in the show...did they stop doing it around this time??
 
God, Dennis Pennis was so unfunny. That late 90s "lad" humour has a LOT to answer for.
 
Belinda Carlisle's ability to elevate thoroughly mediocre material to being listenable simply by singing it is quite remarkable really.
 
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