Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #12 - March 16th 1994: No Wonder Northern Uproar Had To Happen

Episode Date: October 16, 2017

The dozenth episode of the podcast which asks: were Senser any good at Laser Quest? This episode – another pop-blather behemoth – sees us stepping right out of our comfort zone and looking at an episode from the mid-Nineties. A golden era when, as we all know, the charts were weighed down with young men with guitars and Paddington coats that made us all proud to be British again. The episode we examine, however, sees The Greatest Pop TV Show Ever at the beginning of its death throes as it begins its run of celeb presenters with Tetley Tea Folk-soundalike Mark Owen and Robbie Williams, who is already starting to get on all right-thinking peoples’ tits with his endless mugging. The charts – our precious, beautiful, immaculate charts! – are treated with the utmost distain while we’re constantly reminded of an exclusive premiere of a Madonna video, which is an advert for a film we’ve never heard of. Yes, Blur are on at the beginning, but that’s your Britlot. What follows is a parade of people we thought we’d safely left behind in the Eighties, loads of Euro-acts both good and bad, Alison Moyet being forced to submit to an unrelenting biff-boff beat and a No.1 that left us hankering for the days of Jive Bunny. On the upside, Roachford manages to get through a song without shitting himself (allegedly). Luckily, Al Needham is joined by Neil Kulkarni and Simon Price – who both worked for Melody Maker at the time, and take the opportunity to offer invaluable advice for anyone looking to break into the music press a quarter of a century ago and trade war stories about riding bikes on a dancefloor with the Sugarcubes, finding a message on their answering machine from lead singers threatening to break their legs, apologising for being gingist in the past, and having a potential fight being broken up by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. (swearing a-plenty) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do you like to listen to? Erm... Chart music. Chart music. Hey up, you pop-crazed youngsters, and welcome to the latest edition of Chart Music, the podcast that gets its hand right down the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, and as always I'm joined by two people who know more about stuff than this twat here talking to you right now.

That first person is Neil Kulkarni. Hey up Neil, how are we mate? Hello Al, fine. Much like the citizens of Sheffield in the first 20 minutes of Threads, I'm kind of busily going about my mundane day-to-day activities whilst keeping an eye on the news. Good man. Just in case I might need to put a hand to my mouth

and piss in the pre-tink any time soon. Yeah, but other than that, fine. Good, good, good. Our second guest is none other than Simon Price. Hey up, Simon. How are we, mate? Hey, I'm not bad al good so is there anything to relate to us since we last got together around the the chart music

stove or whatever yeah i've moved house a stove yes yeah you're cooking up fat beats on the i don't know anyway um yeah yeah um and i'm i speak to you now from my vinyl dungeon which is very very exciting at the moment i'm just surrounded by boxes and boxes um of cds and lps but um gradually it's taking shape and it's going to be the ultimate man cave and sort of you know late night party room and um i can't i've basically been reunited with my own record collection because i've been living in absolute kind of squalor and chaos for the last five years where i literally could not reach my record shelves and just the sheer joy the sheer joy of being able to sort of like look at the spines of those records and you know i'm finding them way enough better claudia and think hang on a minute i think i'll play that one as i go i mean i don't need to tell you what

a joy that is you guys yeah definitely but i had my all my uh music in storage for about four years and and when i got it back it was like just getting about you know 200 christmas presents in one go exactly uh even though even though i haven't got a record player um but all the vinyls are anyway and uh i've got bags and bags of cds but it's like oh fuck them they can stay where they are i don't give a shit seriously i'm the same i've got the boxes of cds probably will just stay in the corner as kind of yeah uh um insulation against the kind of nuclear war that neil alluded to with his threads comment earlier there'll be good ballast i think you know protect and survive

simon protect and survive duck and cover cds cds they're. CDs they're just unlovely objects aren't they really? I find it very difficult to be warm or affectionate about them. So all of mine are just in boxes and kind of ignored. Yeah I mean I sort of cling on to them with the vague idea that they have some lingering monetary value which believe it or not, I mean you think they don't but in enough quantities

they do. But yeah they were unlovable things, weren't they? Yeah. Those bits in the middle that held the disc in place, that always shattered, and you open it up and you've got these tiny little fucking pissy bits of clear plastic falling everywhere. And trying to get out the fucking insert on the bus home.

Oh, God. And we sound like proper old cunts here, but no, we're right. No, but we're... We are right. We we are right we're right we're right alice the children are wrong i mean um cd well the children don't know what a fucking cd is the people who the people like cds are people about 38 years old and they can fuck off as well yeah they're the most deceitful format cds um yeah with a record it starts skipping

around you can do something about it. With a CD, you can't do fuck all. It's all hidden. Hidden behind laser beams and stuff. I hate it. My CD collection is just a reminder of getting pissed up on Friday nights and going to Tower Records. Because Tower was open late, wasn't it? That's deadly. No joy from them whatsoever.

Ah, the 90s. Good old days. Yes. How have you been, Neil days yes how you been Neil so what you been up to anything poppy and exciting

and fizzy well sort of because I did a thing that I don't do very often anymore and I think Pricey alluded to this

actually on Facebook I went to a gig I went to a pop concert by Sparks God how was it oh they were amazing they were brilliant I went to see them at Rock City out. God, how was it? Oh, they were amazing. They were brilliant.

I went to see them at Rock City, Al. In Nottingham, yeah. About 10 minutes walk from me. Did you knock on the door and say hello? Did you fuck? Al, you know, travelling to gigs it used to be, oh, let's see if I can crash on somebody's floor. This time it was just like parking Talbot Street,

walking to Rock City, walk out of Rock City, back in the car and home in my Jim Jams, watching Match of the Day by about 11. Well, you've got to beat the clock, got to beat the clock. But they were fantastic. They were really, really good. You know, I couldn't have seen you anyway, because that was the same night as Simon's birthday party.

Of course. Which I didn't get invited to. So the two of you spent that night avoiding me. Well, I kind of brushed over that big development since we last spoke. Yeah, I did have a big birthday. Oh, and one of the presents I got, by the way, was a DVD of Protect and Survive that we just mentioned. Oh, lovely.

Public information films, you know, telling you to sort of drape a blanket over your kitchen table and cower and everything will be fine. Yes. To some farty Yes. Yeah. To some farty sins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all this information may be newly important and useful to us.

Who knows? Yeah, who knows indeed. Cheerful times. Yeah, hooray. Now then, chaps, this episode takes us all the way back to March the 17th, 1994. Yes, I did say 1994. By chart music standards, this is fucking last week, isn't it?

The pop-crazy youngsters have been telling us why haven't we done any 90s ones yet, and I think it's down to me to explain, because it's my fault, because, to be honest with you, I couldn't give a toss about charts of the 90s. And consequently, when I started hoovering up old episodes of Top of the Pops, when they appeared on the old Torrent sites,

I had a strict rule, which was nothing after 1985. But the third and probably the most important reason is that Top of the Pops episodes from the 90s are fucking thin on the ground. A lot of the episodes I've got are ones from the actual 90s when UK Gold started repeating them. I mean, particularly the ones featuring the DJs that we do not mention anymore. And nobody seems to be arsed about recording Top of the Popsers in the 90s

like people used to do in the 80s. So they're quite hard to track down. But we've found one and uh that's what we're going to talk about for this episode maybe that in itself maybe that fact in itself tells you um a little bit about how um that the show had fallen from its sort of pinnacle of uh you know its place in in british life by by the 90s and you're right about it's incredibly recent i mean i think i still owe people phone calls from 1994 i think i've got items in my fridge that are older than this episode so chaps what were we doing in march of 1994 right well um i was working at melody maker

which was the greatest music magazine in the world at that time and had been for several years i believe um and uh i was uh i was living in a tiny bedsit in holloway in north london and having pretty much an amazing time because the low rent uh from living in a little bedsit meant that i had a relatively large amount of disposable income and i was moving up the ladder at melody maker i'd been a freelance writer i joined uh in 1988 um as a sort of correspondent from paris where i was studying at the time um and by this by this point i become a section editor um i uh i edited the kind of arts and media section then i became the reviews ed and um it was a time as if i felt as if in some way i was involved in shaping the culture

rather than just observing it from the from the sidelines and it was probably the last time when being in the music press gave you that feeling when the music press did actually have that kind of power to make or break things and make things happen and um appearance wise subculturally i'd been a goth for about seven years at this point um i started 1994 with long black dreadlocks and a bandana leather biker jacket heavy makeup like a cross between boy george and al jurgensen um but um i i kind of midway through uh 94 maybe around the time this episode even i lost faith in all that i was i just sort of got sick of it and um i shaved my hair off i started wearing hip-hop gear and skatewear neil will probably remember this um and uh and i was

this when you was known as price cube price cube i was indeed price cube um and i became obsessed with kind of east coast versus west coast rap you know the whole wu-tang thing versus g-funk and all that as well as the beastie boys and their whole kind of grand royal aesthetic and i was going to hip-hop clubs i was traveling back and forth to la quite a lot for the maker interviewing rappers and bringing back records no one had heard of um so yeah it was quite an exciting time for me in a time of transition let's say yeah i was i mean sartorially i was similarly transitioning between i could i tried to be a b-boy i tried to dress in hip-hop clothes but i could never afford them and my mum the versions

my mum bought from asda were just crap and just made me look simple so i was kind of getting into slightly trying to look like my dad looked when he arrived off the boat in about 63 trying to look like an immigrant in a way um and trying to wear suits and 60s stuff um i similarly was working at melody maker um i was a freelance so i'd started in like late 93 after i'd written him a letter and the letter was basically to their letters page just moaning about things that i thought were wrong with the paper because it was a paper that i'd deeply loved since about 86. I'd been an obsessive reader of it, cover to cover, for a good six years, and I certainly had my favourite writers and everything else. By then, I think I'd stopped... It sounds pretentious, but I'd started finding out

what it was I had to say about pop that was a bit unique, and a kind of unique way of saying it and under the kind of I mean Pricey as my reviews editor was was massively important to this because Pricey I mean I'm not saying Pricey let stuff through other people wouldn't there were certain reviews I wrote that I can't I can't imagine anyone else not only letting them run, but also interjecting kind of in the pieces and stuff in a really entertaining way. But just kind of, no, it's a good habit. And just letting me say what I wanted to say. I can't imagine any other reviews editor perhaps who would have said,

I remember doing a Ned Atomic dustbin review at the time that was kind of, it was just two lines and it was kind of like just pure invective, and just structurally and kind of everything else. I mean, looking at record reviews now, it seems astonishing to me that this even ran. But Melody Maker felt like that. It felt like we were a kind of, not a pack of freaks, but no, yeah, a pack of freaks.

I've got to say, can I just interrupt there a second? I'm going to interject yet again and say the review that Neil's talking about, the Ned's Atomic Dustbin one, and I think there was another one, was it? Yeah. But these two reviews, it is pure venom and hatred and invective. And it's basically about 500, 600 words of calling the readers a bunch of cunts, which is an extraordinary thing for a music magazine to do.

I teach music journalism now at B&M in Brighton and I make my students read those two reviews as examples of the kind of extremes and crazy shit that was going on in the 90s because it was exemplary.

The thing is about those reviews, they were good record reviews I think because they were about the wider culture um the trouble is now too many music reviews seem to be about kind of the music in a way and they don't no do you know what i mean they don't extend out to actually criticize the culture or where the things are coming from or question the motivation behind music which i think is all important when it comes to things like that they're more about filing and categorizing than they are about kind of rhapsodizing or ripping something apart i would say it's the last sort of gasp of the golden age of melody maker i would say um at that stage we were edited by alan jones and then everett true

and by the by a few years from this episode melody Melody Maker, I think Pricey had gone and a lot of people had gone and it was on its way out. And, you know, I think what we'll see a lot of, and this applies to Top of the Pops and the music press and everything else we'll be talking about in the night, is this feeling that suddenly

people wanted to fix things to maximise the audience and care about the audience more than make it reader responsive. And what they ended up doing was fucking destroying so much oh yeah they focus groups basically destroying a critical culture that i think is essential to the health of any culture and so it's no accident that with the death of these kind of voices in in the press the i'm not saying the music went down

the tubes but a good critical culture benefits everybody, not just critics, but it benefits musicians and everyone else as well. And this was on its way out by this stage. The kind of writing was on the wall a little bit. And, of course, Taylor and David, our other chart music chums, they were there at the same time as well, weren't they? Yeah, well, David was one of the kind of precursors. He was, I don't know about neil but certainly for me um david stubbs along with his sidekick simon reynolds

and and chris roberts another one of their contemporaries those three were the three guys that i wanted to be like they're the reason i wanted to join meldy maker in the first place and they kind of came through in about 86 87 and that's it was exactly at that time and because of those guys that melding makers seized the initiative from nme in terms of really sharp intelligent groundbreaking writing melding maker been kind of floundering around a little bit before that and nme kind of held sway but in the late 80s enemy lost its way melding maker very much found its way. And yeah, that's certainly why by late 88, I just couldn't wait to get something printed in the Maker. And to my amazement, it happened.

Yeah, I mean, I'm still amazed by it. Taylor was actually the person who plucked my letter out of the sort of backlash letters pile and said that it should be Letter of the Week. I think he suggested it to somebody and they made it Letter of the Week. And then wasn't it Jim? It might have been Jim. Yeah, and Jim passed it on to Cathy Unsworth. Cathy Unsworth made it Letter of the week I think he suggested it to somebody and they made it letter of the week and then wasn't it Jim it might have been Jim

and Jim passed it on to Cathy Unsworth Cathy Unsworth made it letter of the week and then at the bottom of it they said do you think you can do any better Mr Clavin

because I'd actually signed it Clifford C Clavin after my favourite character in Cheers and being a cocky arrogant little git as I was back then I did phone up Melody Maker

and said actually I do think I can do better and they asked me to do a couple of sample articles I did one that was like a 10 000 word review of fucking miles davis or something it's nuts you know because all i was obsessed with was literature and music but that was how i was hired and looking back it is staggering that i was hired that way that would just not happen now at all people were hired not necessarily by being at the right party at the right time but really by just having something to say you know and being being able to string a sentence together and you know people

were hired and being a leery bastard well yeah that helped as well but um you know i just don't think that would occur anymore you'd have to prove how many clicks you've got and how many twitter followers you've got and all the rest of it um to put to be to be taken on and that's a real shame i think so march 1994 what was going on in the uh in the offices what was a well what were you talking about because i mean we're we're a week or so away from kirk cabane um overdosing in italy i believe yeah well the whole grunge thing uh was still quite a big deal um Everett True who Neil just mentioned was um obsessed with that stuff and he was good friends with Kurt and Courtney Love and various of the other artists so um that was quite I mean it wasn't something I was into personally

but it sold us a lot of a lot of copies the whole grunge thing it was a if we had Pearl Jam or Nirvana on the front particularly uh we would shift a lot of issues that week so um yeah basically all kurt had to do was trip over a flight of stairs or something and you know he would be in the news pages do you know what if you really want to know what's in the melody maker this week i've got three cardboard boxes full of um every every melody maker in the 90s in chronological order get them so it wouldn't take me too long. Get them out. You talk to Neil for a bit

and I'm going to take my earphones off. I'm going to find the fucking exact Melody Maker from this week. All right, give me a second. Carry on. You go ahead, man. Right, okay. Here goes.

You carry on amongst yourselves. I was going to say, in terms of what was going on in the office, the office was a scary place to me. I was still living in Coventry and so I rarely went down. People like Pricey were still stars to me i was i was still living in coventry and so i rarely went down people like pricey were still stars to me so i used to goggle them and kind of uh pick up the singles for reviews and stuff and that was about it fucking 1992

all right neil talk us through an average day an average day for an average day for me too much night at melody maker i don't, but as a freelancer, I can talk you through that. An average day as a freelancer was... This is pre-email, don't forget. This is 1994, and it's pre-internet as well. So it was all about the daily post, and it was all about fax machines, not email.

I used a... I'm not entirely sure I even used a word processor. Now, I have in my hands uh meldy maker 12th of march uh 1994 so it'd be the one that was in the shops at that time right um and amazing you should mention this on the front cover kurt cobain drugs drama oh we're giving away um a free bjork and evan. Ooh. There's a big splash across the top. Apex Twin, Ambience First Superstar. And along the bottom in small letters,

Morrissey, Eddie Izzard, I think that was me who wrote that, Wonderstuff, Soundgarden, Echo Belly, Manix, 2 Unlimited, and Courtney Love. Wow. Oh, yeah, and massive double-page new story as you turn the cover about Kurt Cobain being rushed to hospital in coma. And I'm going to go through and see if there's anything by Neil.

That would be a laugh. Hang on a second. Yes, yes. Or me, for that matter. The first podcast to bring you a man reading an old copy of Melody Maker. Oh, you lucky, lucky pop-crazed youngsters. Fuck Top of the Pops, this is the future. Oh, so there's...

There's Catelyn Moran interviewing Miles Hunt from The Wonderstuff. I was in very sporadically at that stage, I think. I was still just a freelancer. But, I mean, I was still... It was still a case of going in to Goethe Smith's every Wednesday

and still floating on air seeing the name in print and not quite believing er er nothing go to the record reviews

Simon just getting to that what single of the week here's the preview section which is er it's the arts media bit, edited by me, and I am indeed

interviewing Eddie Izzard. Yeah, I'll find out single of the week for you now. Just getting to that. David Stubbs interviewing the Apex Twin over a double page. Ah, single of the week, reviewed by Courtney Love and Everett True. Oh God, it's a load

of fucking horrible Everett True music. They've actually done five singles of the week, and they are Lou Barlow of Sebado, Palace, which is what's his name, isn't it? You know, Will Holden, is that right? Madarose, Evaporators, who I've never fucking heard of, and Compulsion, who are like a new wave of new wave band. Right.

Or as Andrew Collins said it, there's Catlin Moran reviewing the new Morrissey album, which was Vox All In I. Right. Blah, blah, blah. Any Kulkarni, any Price going on here? I think we had a quite... Oh, here I am.

I'm into... Oh, this is great. I'm really pleased about this. One of my favourite albums of all time. I'm reviewing Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral. Right. That's the lead review there. I'm quite excited to see that.

Cathy Unsworth interviewing Tool. Oh, At Home with Tool Unlimited. Great. We were nothing if not a broad church at Melody Maker. Absolutely. And, yes, sadly sadly no kulkarni action oh neil but i think i think this is a this is a nice new um kind of a feature for the podcast anything god if i could myself because you know i always feel guilty when i'm talking to a load

of melody maker journalists and i go oh on the cover of the enemy this week and you know it's offensive isn't it you was was fucking me, man. But the thing is, is that Wikipedia's got every Enemy cover section and they haven't for Melody Maker. Sort that out, Simon. Well, I am now the living archives, just ask me. Excellent. I'm sure culturally the Melody Maker is kind of banded together with The Enemy,

but to me, i could never even consider writing for the enemy it was it was a spiritual thing almost that it had to be yeah you make it because you know melody just melody maker had that voice throughout it that i trusted and that i loved and the enemy didn't the enemy just seemed like a sort of um the enemy seemed like a music magazine melody maker was just about so much more than that and melody maker just made you laugh like tv times you're saying yeah exactly i think um the pitch i give it would be at this point enemy was very i mean they they got rid of any kind of pretenses to intellectualism and it was all very kind of happy-go-lucky um it was all kind of um i don't

know i guess the wedding present the wonder stuff vick and bob right all that kind of business and it's all don't take anything too seriously it's all a bit of a laugh whereas we i think we were funny we were fucking viciously funny but that was the key we were vicious with it and also there was definitely an intellectual edge to what we did there's also a very childish kind of scatological swearyary edge to what we did. There's no getting around that. But, you know, I think ours was a paper of extremes and they were quite middle of the road. The thing is, because the NME was the kind of

iconic, and I hate that word, but it was, even down to its logo being, they just had a better logo than us, there's no getting around it. And everyone associated NME with punk, and they associated it with Julie Birchall and Paul Morley, Danny Baker, all that stuff. It meant that if you had a job on the NME with punk and they associated with Julie Birchall and Paul Morley, Danny Baker, all that stuff.

It meant that if you had a job on the NME, even by this point, um, you had a job for life in the media. Yeah. So all these guys, uh, you know,

David Quantick, Steve Lamac, um, Andrew Collins, Stuart McConey, they've all gone on to very successful jobs, uh, in the media. Hardly any of us,

I mean, Captain Moran, obviously being the exception, but the rest of us, you know, we were not fast tracked. There was no fucking track, slow or fast. You know what I mean, Catlin Moran, obviously, being the exception. But the rest of us, you know, we were not fast-tracked. There was no fucking track, slow or fast. You know what I mean?

So that's the one fatal kind of tactical error I made by picking Melody Maker. But I still think, you know, we had righteousness on our side. At this time, Simon, was it round about this time that you, that Melody Maker and NME were practically next door to each other? Oh, yeah, it had been for some time. Fucking hell. Certainly by the time I joined, so late 88, 89, we were on the 26th floor of King's Reach Tower,

massive tower block on the south bank. And NME was on the 25th floor, so literally upstairs, downstairs. We'd run into them in the lift, in the canteen, in the pub. And, you know, there was very childish kind of segregation, shooting each other evils across the bar and that kind of thing. And we wouldn't drink with them and all that kind of thing. And it was quite childish, it really was. Because at the end of the day, they were in the same boat as us.

They were freelance journalists pretty much getting screwed over by a major corporation we had so much in common but we thought they were the absolute enemy well enemy to you know going the phrase it's funny that isn't it yeah we hate that i still do i still do hate the enemy you know what i still fucking hate the enemy i'm like that guy who was the last japanese soldier still thought that um world war ii was going on in 1975 whatever it was um i i still have this ridiculous unjustifiable loathing of of the enemy at that time and even now i i'm very territorial and very kind of um partisan about about the maker long after the maker ceased to exist i think I'm one of the few who feels that way although I did, I DJ'd

David Quantick's wedding he's a mate of mine and I was privy to the speech and during his own wedding speech he started slagging off Melody Maker and I liked him for that, I thought fair dues mate good for you that you still carry that hatred with you

because it's mutual is there anything else you want to say and get over? what do you want to know? ask us anything you want to ask us there's a question you've asked here was working in the music press in the 90s all it's cracked up to be even in my most dismal moments at Melody Maker

I would have still said it was the best fucking job in the world writing about music what's not to like and yeah i mean free records free gigs that's all good yeah it was always a fucking total dream job and i was i was utterly devastated when the melody maker finished which which which and the fact that the brand leader was allowed to carry on is it actually still with us which astonishes me yeah but it's fucking shit now isn't it it is fucking shit but it sticks in my craw still um a little bit and the fact that

when that happened in 2000 um you know those who were at the melody maker uh sorry at the enemy and who'd been bought upstairs to save the melody maker they were all okay they just went back downstairs we were all fucked. And I'll never, ever forget, the very last day I went to King's Reach Tower, this was after they'd shut the whole thing down, actually. I went in the office just to pick up my mail and Zane, who worked at Melody Maker at the time, was there. And he had tears in his eyes, you know,

and he passed me the last ever issue of Melody Maker, which I think fucking had a limp biscuit on the cover it did yeah and yeah and i remember strolling to waterloo station strolling strolling stroke sorry go on to waterloo to get the train back to cove and and reading this last issue of melody maker you know thinking oh this is a little bit of history i should keep it and of course by the time I got to Waterloo I dumped it in the fucking bin it was an absolute shadow of what it had been it was a sort of stain on the history if you like

so in a sense we'll probably end up talking about successive editors of Melody Maker and what went wrong with the music press but yeah I won't mourn the end of Melody Maker in a sense that the paper by the time it had, was not the paper it had been. I mean, I'm lucky because I missed out on all this.

I'd already quit in 97 because I had a book contract to write a book about the Mannix. And I could see the way things are going. A new editor would come in. I didn't like the way he was taking the paper. And I just thought, oh, fuck this. I've got my life raft to get out i'm getting out but certainly for the i was there for um nine years altogether and it was just a sort of dream it's just wish fulfillment i i started out as a music journalist when i was still at school uh in what i probably mentioned before but in in south wales in in 84

writing for the barry and district News the local paper and that was just by chance, similar to Neil in a way I wrote them a letter complaining there was nothing in it for young people and it was all Lady Skittles results in obituaries and they indeed wrote back to me and said can you do any better and offered me my own singles column which

they called Simon Says but yeah I mean it gave me a kind of taste of that power to stir up controversy and to piss people off. And I did that for two years, even before I got to London. Went to London, got involved in student journalism at the University of London Union, London Student. And through that, I basically stalked Simon Reynolds of Melzie Maker.

We had this issue where we uh interviewing people behind the scenes in the music biz like a kind of uh there'll be a plugger and a live agent and blah blah blah manager and i thought right fuck it i'm gonna interview a journalist and i and simon reynolds was my absolute hero by this point so i interviewed him and obviously he he you know must have took a shine to me thought i had some promise or potential and he introduced me to some of the guys at the maker and it turned out i was going to go and live in paris for a year as part of my french course and they said well why don't you send in a few reviews and i i did they ignored the first couple then they printed the third one

which was nick cave and the bad seeds elise monmartre and um i've just seen it in print open i can remember where i was i was on i was on a bus uh going through archway in north london with my then girlfriend and just opening the paper oh my fucking god look it's me it's me it's me and it wasn't just my name it was a it was a lead review with a photo and a black box around it and all of that and that just blew my mind so even though i'd gone to london supposedly to do a degree in french and philosophy um my my head was turned and it was there's only one thing I really wanted to do and my mind went off my studies big time not that I was ever the most diligent of students I'd I kind of carried on seamlessly through and and you know the maker

was my life until I sadly had to quit because well I think the maker quit me that's what I'm going to say the multi-maker it quit all of us didn't it but it was it was just the most brilliant job in that you it was quite all quite casual you you turn up at about 11 a.m and nobody batted an eyelid and then the pub would be open already a lot of people would sort of decamp down there for the rest of the day and it's not just that kind of fleet street lunchtime oboes thing of red-nosed journalists drinking all day but it was genuinely creative in that you would fire ideas off each other when neil came down from coventry he's always quite exciting because you know uh he no it was just he's such a bright mind and there was me and him and taylor and caitlin and pete buffides and dave bennett and that whole generation of writers and um just

to sometimes we just sit in the review room at the maker where I think was the room you're allowed to have a cigarette and, and, and just stick something on the CD player and we just be sort of chatting shit back and forth, but you would bounce ideas off each other and it would spur you on to greater creative heights. Whereas nowadays I think that's really hard to do.

I guess you could say Facebook fills that role a little bit, but I don't know if it really does um i think once june once journalists got kind of farmed out to the end of a email connection at the end of a phone line and they no longer meet each other in the flesh face to face something was lost absolutely and and you know i i can completely identify with simon reading his first piece on the bus and it just blowing his mind I've said in print before that your whole life as a writer can be seen as a kind of downward spiral from that moment. Yeah you're chasing the first

high aren't you? It is so addictive and I never got bored of it I went from being a freelancer to actually being on staff at Melody Maker because of Everett in a monumental act of perversity made me gossip editor for three years.

You know, I was a kid from Coventry. I didn't go to fucking parties. And yet I'm meant to be in London, you know, slamming my hand on the table saying, yes, I know where Rialto were last night or something. You know, I did that for a few years and the office early on was exactly as Simon describes it, a really warm and friendly and encouraging place. What happened was what I've seen fatal in everywhere I've worked is that when that bit of trust breaks down between bosses and workers,

and in the case of Melody Maker, between editors and writers, it all fucks up. And before you knew it, by about 97, 98 98 by which time pricey had gone and a lot of people had gone that office was like a load of cubicle kind of worker drones tapping away and we get these memos market research led which is always fatal i remember the the the final editor of melody maker pulling me into his office and saying we're going to change things because we've done a bit of market research and we found out all of our readers were born in 1982 or most of them were 16 years old and this was in 1998 he said from now on any band that you're mentioning in your copy before 1982 has to be explained and for me that showed such a fundamental misunderstanding of

what was so great about the music press. The music press, you followed things on your own reconnaissance. You followed references on your own reconnaissance. And you built up this knowledge. It was my school, the music press, to a large extent. Not just in music, but in film, politics, literature, everything. In one fell swoop, they kind of killed that in about 97, 98. And by the end, it was horrible.

It was absolutely horrible. But whilst it was good, it was probably the happiest period of my entire life. And I think most people who worked at Melody Maker will probably say the same thing. Right, a few quick questions then. Are music journalists frustrated musicians? No. No, a lot of us are musicians. We're not frustrated in the slightest.

Okay. Sorry. Number two, do you regret not being a music journalist in the 80s or the 70s? Do you know what? There's this kind of golden age-ism. And at whatever point you turn up in the music press, people will always tell you, oh, it was better before you got here. And in some ways, they were absolutely right um we would hear these stories about melody maker in the 70s and 80s having an apartment in new york where you could just go and stay for as long as you wanted just rent free to go and stay in new york and just live a bit of that life which is just mind-blowing and we all know the stories about people being flown to the States and back

just to do one live review on some kind of junket with everybody in first class drinking champagne. We all know the stories of ripping open album mailers and there'd be just cocaine falling out and all that kind of stuff. We missed all that. At least I never got sent any of that stuff. But nevertheless, I still think we were there when some of that was left. There was money, a lot of money sloshing around the music biz,

particularly during Britpop. A lot of money flowing around. If you've read the book Kill Your Friends or seen the film, that is pretty accurate to how things were. There seemed to be a party almost every night uh being paid for by a record company you could um pretty much live a whole week without paying for a drink or even paying for food if you were clever and that's on top of your cds and your gig tickets so um from it was it was a genuinely great lifestyle it it was kind of proximity to glamour and showbiz and celebrity without having

the downside obviously without having the upside of monumental riches but it it really was quite an enviable job at the time i think and crucially i don't think we ever felt or i certainly never felt i'm sure pricey didn't either we didn't feel like we were these kind of sad spods on the sidelines watching we we did feel like we were part of the culture and that our reviews had been read. Not that necessarily bands had act on them or anything, but that we were a part of it. That we weren't just at the kind of teat end getting fed. That we were a part of the culture. And yeah, if you're low maintenance and if you've got a nice smile, you could go out and get out your tree with lots of people and have lots of parties and um have a lot of fun the good thing about the night is for me is

i have memories but they're all kind of a bit foggy and a bit foggy and a bit fucked up because of the substances that were knocking around of alcoholic or otherwise through that period i was having a ball i was having a really good time in that period what review or what thing out of all the stuff you wrote in that time would you love to have

expunged from the from the memory ooh god I gave some terrible shit really good reviews such as I

well I gave Limp Bizkit's album 10 out of 10 oh for fuck's sake get off my fucking podcast now Jesus Christ Neil oh no man I don't know what was going on that week it was I don't know what was going on but yeah I gave Significant Other by Limp Bizkit

to my eternal shame 10 out of 10 but this is what I say to people whenever they say oh you're a music, you're supposed to have good taste. I say, well, hold on a minute. I did say that. I must have felt it at the time. Can't fucking believe I did that now. So if that could be removed from the record,

I've now put it back on the record. Yeah, you have. You really have. If that could be removed from the record, that'd be great. Simon? There's one thing. There's one review I wrote that I still flinch about to the extent that I can't even bring it up on here.

But I will tell you about a funny thing that happened. Do you remember the band Sultans of Ping FC who had a minor indie hit with Where's Me Jumper? Yes. They were dreadful. And they brought out an album. And there was a thing in the office. I guess the ringleaders of it were the Stud Brothers

of writing incredibly vicious, brutal reviews about what should be done to these crappy little indie bands acts of violence that should be perpetrated upon them and as a joke, I wrote one of these

reviews in that style about Sultans of Ping FC and handed it in to Andrew Muller, who was the reviews editor at the time. And it involved things like tearing them limb from limb and doing unspeakable acts to the bleeding sockets, let's say. And he fucking printed it. It was a joke. It was a joke. i expected him to come back

to me said hi a nice one pricey where's your real review but he didn't he fucking ran it and then i had um the mothers of readers of the paper ringing in to complain and i had to sort of feel these phone calls from distressed parents of melody maker Maker readers saying, well, I've never read such filth in a music magazine. Oh, man. And me, and it didn't really make it any better when I said, oh, look, it was just a joke. It wasn't meant to be printed. So, yeah, I think that was an episode that I would rather had not happened.

I was always surprised at kind of legal reaction because I remember writing a Britney Spears review where I called the record company. I think it was Child Molestingesting mafia Nazis or something like that and I just thought you know a throwaway kind of line but before you know it then down the faxes you know we we will take you to court I got that again from Patsy Kensett's lawyers when I was the gossip editor for an unfortunate caption that I put on a photo of her arriving with her children at an airport. She was hiding her child's face with a hat.

And I captioned the photo. Innocently enough, I thought, Patsy Kensett with horribly disfigured bowler hat-headed child arrives at Heathrow or something like that. And within the hour, I think of that hitting the stands, yeah, lawyers were involved. So I should never have been gossip editor, man. And who's the biggest bell-end you came across round about this time?

Who was known in the office for being a right twat? Oh, man. Writers or musicians? Musicians. Fucking hell. Oh, God. i can wait i mean you know that the i don't i don't know if it's fair to call him a bellend but the worst interviewees i had were uh um what's his name jay mascus from

dinosaur junior who i went all the way to new york and barely got three words out of him. Oh, God, who else is really hard work? I'm trying to think. You know, normally people were usually pretty personable when you interviewed them because at least for 45 minutes they can pretend to be functional human beings and give you the time of day because they know that ultimately you're in charge of how they're going to look. So, you know,

I don't know. I had people physically confront me, but I probably deserved it. Go on. I was probably asking. So, Chaz? Oh, Pop Elite itself, they didn't do it themselves, but they sent somebody over, one of their crew, to pour a pint over my head. Right.

Senseless things, Ned's Atomic Dust all that lot all those bands those cunts yeah yeah fuck them there was a weird incident

where there was a weird incident where that lot were held back from attacking me by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine who I also thought

was shit but Carter Carter could take it Carter were a bit older and they could take the criticism and they were like oh come on just fucking it's not worth it and they were a bit older, and they could take the criticism. And they were like, oh, come on, just fucking, it's not worth it. And they basically saved my skin.

And I, you know, a bit of sneaking respect for Carter USM for that. Because they were bigger than that. They had to go to Philip Schofield, but they protected you. Oh, they did. That's a good point. Yeah, yeah. I interviewed quite a few arseholes. Jay Roo, the Damager, do you remember him?

Yeah, yes. Yeah, the rapper he was a racist dick to me as soon as he figured out that I wasn't a black male

he started being a complete racist cunt and I'll never forget that interview it's a very story

very disappointing because I really liked his stuff the only other the only one I kind of came to conflict with played himself

yeah exactly the only one I sort of came into conflict with was Ian Brown out of Stone Roses. The only one I sort of came into conflict with was Ian Brown out of Stone Roses who left death threats on my phone.

But I believe that was quite a common thing with him threatening people. Really? Yes. Really? What did you

piss him off? Well, I went to see him when he went solo. There was a junket as Simon was talking about. A junket, unfortunately not to America. It was the fucking

bus to bloody Cambridge or something no it was Oxford actually went to see a solo show which was inevitably awful because it was Ian Brown and the only good thing about it

was that Sanjay for me Stenders was in the crowd which was great but was he now I reviewed the show slagged it off

went away I think I went to America that week and I think I was interviewing Public Enemy or something like that. Come back, and this was the weekend before Glastonbury, come back to Cov, play my answer machine, because this was the year of answering machines and fax machines.

But yeah, played my answering machine and there's Ian, who had been given my number presumably by his PR officer, massively unprofessional I think, with his usual, hey Mr Melody Maker, I'm going to break your fucking legs and all this sort of stuff. And I'm just going to make you kill me. I'm going to leave you walking like me. Well, exactly. And then I got to Glastonbury the next week,

not really thinking much about it. And an aforementioned press officer legged it up to me, looking really worried, saying Ian's on site and he knows you're on site and he's going to batter you and all this sort of stuff

which didn't concern me until I realised he is a black belt that's a fucking school playground isn't it it is it is but he is a black belt

in karate so I just kind of went and hid for a week oh yeah but you don't know karate but you know Karazer Neil just reminded me of something that happened

at Glastonbury where I was at the bar on the VIP bit and somebody pushed me in the back in a really pathetic, girly way. And I turned around and it was Evan Dando out of the Lemonheads pretending he hadn't done it. And he's doing that thing of, oh, it wasn't me. And all it was was that I slagged off his girlfriend,

Juliana Hatfield, her band. Go on. No, you know what that reminds me of? Juliana Hatfield always used to, I think, make points in interviews that she was a virgin or something. And so consequently, she was called Julianna Hatfield never had a twatfield, which I thought was great.

It was a different time. I was on the dole. Radio 1 News. In the news this week, then. The London Gender Clinic is under fire for announcing a designer baby scheme where you can choose your baby's sex. There's been a failed IRA bomb attack on Seven Oaks

railway station. Michael Jackson's mum has been forced to appear in court in his molestation trial. Sarah Ferguson has announced that she's still married to Prince Andrew and isn't slapping it about with anyone else that week. Tonya Harding admits to trying to cover up her role in the attack

on Nancy Kerrigan. I love that story. Yeah, me too. It's great, isn't it? Carry on, sorry. Not if you're Nancy Kerrigan, obviously, but everyone else. And the best bit of the story is that neither of them won, which was fucking hilarious, wasn't it? Liverpool FC have announced that the Kop is to be demolished

and sold off in pieces in the summer. But the big news this week is that Rod, Jane, Fred Eyre and Geoffrey have been axed by Rainbow. Fuck's sake. End of an era, chaps. Absolutely. It's like when Matthew Bannister came to Radio 1 and got rid of all the old farts,

which is probably something we'll talk about in this episode. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure we will. So, on the cover of The NME this week is Paul Weller. On the cover of Smash It this week is EYC. Anybody remember them? Um, no.

They were... Oh, were they Michael Jackson's cousins? I don't know. Well, one of them was white, so probably. They had mad eyebrows. And I think they claim to be Michael Jackson's cousins or something like that. Really? Yeah.

EYC stuff, express yourself clearly. And they're currently down to number 16 in the charts with The Way You Work It. And I'd never heard of them until I saw this, until I was researching this episode. So, yeah. The number one LP at the moment in the UK is Our Tan, Greatest Hits by Deacon Blue. Over in the US, the number one single is The Sign by Ace of Bass.

And the number one LP in America is Music Box by Mariah Carey. Fucking hell. What else was on telly tonight? Well, BBC One has already screened Newsrand, Blue Peter, Neighbours and the National and Local News. No Tomorrow's World because it's 1994 and there is no tomorrow to worry about.

No, Top of the Pops has been moved by this time to seven o'clock. The first thing, the first change it's made at this period, which was wrong. Was this where it was up against Coronation Street no that was later that was later it got moved to Friday night didn't it and that was a fucking stupid move and they

lost loads of viewers because of that it's another fucking market research led load of bullshit yes BBC 2 has broadcast okay to talk feelings about sexual jealousy, the Cheltenham Festival, a Welsh drama series called People of the Valley, the Sixth Form quiz show...

Popolakum. Sorry, Simon? Popolakum. Oh, is that what it's called? Well, yeah, I mean, unless there was an English language version. It was building BBC Two as People of the Valley. Maybe it was subtitled. Brilliant. OK, carry on. It was, yeah, it was. Popolak2 as people of the valley maybe maybe it's subtitled brilliant okay carry on it was yeah it was yeah uh right in wales it's like a jury service that like pretty

much everybody has to be on pablo come so i'm amazed i've not been on it myself yet seriously if you if you throw a stone in cards if you hit somebody's been on pablo come anyway carry on the six form quiz show all in the mind and is currently screening the 1952 Anthony Quinn film East of Sumatra. ITV has put on Shortland Street, A Country Practice, Tots TV, Animaniacs,

Funhouse, Garden In Time, Home and Away and is currently showing Emmerdale. And Channel 4 has screened Sesame Street, Countdown, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Wonder Years and is currently showing Channel 4 News.

Let's get stuck in. Right then, pub-crazy youngsters, it's time to go back, back, no, just back, back, not back, back, back, to March of 1994. Don't forget, we may coat down your favourite band and artist, and might already have done so before we've even started, but we never forget they've been on Top of the Pops more than we have. It's Thursday, March 17th, 1994, and Top of the Pops is still recovering from its year-zero revamp

that it underwent in 1991, when the Radio 1 DJs who presented the show were replaced by younger and relatively unknown and relatively shit presenters. They added interviews and out-of-studio performances, and they started to demand that the acts perform live. A lot of that had been junked over the side by this time, and this episode is the first of the new era to feature celebrity presenters. This week, it's Mark Owen and Robbie Williams of Take That, who scored three number ones on The Bouncer the year before,

and are about to release their first single of 1994, Everything Changes. Other guest presenters this year would include Meatloaf, Jack D, Alice Cooper, Julian Clare, Kylie Minogue and Gary Glitter. So chaps, is this

proof that Top of the Pop still has a lot of clout or is it a symptom of Radio 1's current line-up being a bit shit? At the moment they've got Steve Wright in the morning then it's Simon Mayo, Lynn Parsons then it's Mark Goodyear, then it's Nicky Campbell, Steve Lemack

Joe Wyler, Mark Radcliffe surely one of them could have done a job on Top of the Pops Well the thing is, you mentioned that so-called Year Zero revamp 91, which was stanley apple wasn't it the producer at that time um and that was analogous to what was happening at radio one at that time so as you mentioned it was it was the same time yeah matthew bannister was eradicating all the old farts at radio one uh he'd replaced johnny beerling who'd been in

charge of radio one like forever since it launched in 1967. And I actually interviewed him. I mentioned earlier the arts and media section preview that I ran at the Maker. I interviewed Bannister around this time because it's very controversial. Made a lot of headlines that he kicked out DLT. He kicked out Simon Bates, that whole generation. Gary Davis, Adrian Just, Bruno Brooks, Steve Wright. All of them either jumped or were pushed um in fact i tell you what there's there's a great blood on the carpet documentary

on the iplayer about this at the moment you can find um featuring trevor dan and his perfectly conical head um and even at the time i thought bannister was right to do what, what he did, but inevitably they shed, I don't know, nearly half the listenership. Danny Baker was, was meant to be the bright new hope. And I think he lost about 7 million listeners from what DLT had had. But it was necessary to do that,

to turn it around. And it did turn around. but so I, I suppose with all this turmoil going on, it meant that for Top of the Pops, which had previously drawn upon Radio 1 presenters, there weren't the people there with that kind of experience yet.

So I guess it was Rick Blacksill, wasn't it, at this point, with 94? Rick Blacksill had just died. A bit of a slide backwards um from the year zero thing because in a way you know his innovation being bringing in these celebrity presenters the ones you mentioned angus dean frankie detore was what julia carling julia carling for fuck's sake yes you meant you mentioned meatloaf and i read about this there's a book uh about top the pops by by Ian Gittins,

another former Melody Maker writer. That's the one with every celebrity paedophile ever, apart from Len Fairclough on the cover. Yeah, bottom left corner, you've got DLT and Savile, and bottom right corner, you've got Rob Harris. Unbelievable. But in that book, he mentions, this is brilliant, when it was Meatloaf's go of being the uh celebrity presenter

the script said intro terror vision and uh meatloaf didn't understand that terror vision was a band name so he just went because because he thought he thought he was meant to terrify the viewers i absolutely love that i don't think they did nothing i mean i radio one obviously needed changing but that year zero thing was always going to be a fatal thing for top of the pops because it kind of it cut that umbilicus to radio one that link between the shows in a sense between top of the pops and the radio by the time we're watching this episode 94 it doesn't feel connected in the same way that shows used to feel with the DJs

and with the Radio 1 family however dubious that might be and to be honest with you although reading today yeah it had celeb presenters and then it went back to normal presenters I don't remember that change I remember it just suddenly realising

it's fucking celebrityas all the time. And not not watching it because of that. I think most of us at that time weren't, you know, religiously watching Top of the Pops. No, I wasn't either. I mean, unless there was a tip-off that one of our bands was on.

I mean, I was usually, I mean, I was usually at a gig. I was down the pub at this point. Although I did actually go to an episode um not long after this it was on the 30th of june uh in 94 i was i was smuggled in in these animal men's car in the boot of their car uh because they only had i think they had five passes for l street and there was six of us so i had to hide in the boot of the car which um considering what previous punky bands like the stranglers had done with journalists in the boot of a car i was taking my life in my hands but it was a shit episode then it was um shaker maker by oasis

that was on um swamp swamping by the grid that was all right and right reel to reel featuring the mad stuntman but it wasn't even i like to move it, move it. It was go on, move. Slightly lesser follow-up. But at least... Neil, did you ever go? I went really, really late, and I think that was towards its dying days, and it was with a fucking terrible band

called Linkin Park, you probably heard of. Oh, yeah. This was really late, 2001, and this was, you know, it was the Elstree Studios, wasn't it? I seem to recall. It was like right next door to EastEnders and stuff like that. So I seem to recall with the photographer

jumping over the fence or something, getting into Albert Square and all that sort of stuff. Yes. But being in those corridors in the BBC studios that were just so familiar from years of watching British television was still utterly utterly magical the thing is you can see throughout this episode that what mattered about top of the pots in a sense and I'm not saying the rundown

mattered or the chart mattered but it bloody did man the chart did matter in this episode the chart doesn't really matter the rundown is kind of shown wasn't isn't that a video going on the ups and downs and kind of an irrelevance to most people we're not yet at the point that we're probably at now where what is number one really doesn't matter at all. But there's an increasing sense in 94 that the producers of

Top of the Pops don't really care about chart movement as such. They just really care about getting the biggest names on the show and stacking it full of that. Yeah. By the way, what about the theme music fucking hell i don't i mean it's grim in it now get out of that by tony gibber or jibber i don't know and nor do i care but it's shit isn't it it's the eighth top of the pops theme and uh the only

thing i can find out about tony jibber was that he co-wrote new beginning for books fizz in 1986 oh okay now get out of that was used from 1991 to 1995, and the opening credits consist of people dancing on some stairs in a warehouse with a spinny mechanised logo. The logo's terrible as well. Yeah, isn't it? It's an awful logo that reminds me of one of the greatest artefacts from this age that Pricey made me aware of,

the inside CD insert To Jamie Oliver's Compilation Cooking apostrophe Isn't that it, Jamie Oliver's compilation That's it, yeah But no, it could not be Any more 90s, but it's a horrible logo

The actual opening credits They've got people dancing It's in a warehouse, which is, you know, it's very 1988, but it comes across like one of the gay exchange adverts, doesn't it, really? It's like, he's shut up and he's on some step. There is, not only in that kind of warehouse thing, but also in the way that the audience are treated in the episode. I think an attempt to kind of get a Hitman and her style yeah well yes environment going you know

yeah um it well i'm sure as we'll discuss later um it's not entirely successful hello good evening and a welcome to britain's largest music show of course that's top of the pops this is robbie and i'm mark and coming up now we of course, that's Top of the Pops. This is Robbie and I'm Mark. And coming up now, we have a song that went straight into the charts at number five. It's Blur with Girls and Boys. I'm following the herd Down to the graves I'm holidaying Robbie Williams and Mark Owen

are stood on a balcony as the show begins. There's no groping from them and neither are the surrounding girls going mangle at them, which is very odd because, you know, they were pretty much at the peak round about this time, take that. What was the general opinion amongst the panel here about Take That circa 94?

I tell you what, right, I was quite amazed when they finally took off because I remember then when they first appeared and I thought they were doomed because the lead singer had kind of very dated Billy Idol hair, Gary Barlow, and it took several attempts to get them off the ground. I think they had three, well it took them four attempts to have a hit. The first three singles flopped completely. And they finally made the top

ten with a Tavares cover version. They were always on Saturday morning TV. And it takes a minute, Gil. Yes. They were always on Saturday morning TV. They did tours of gay clubs and school assemblies and all that kind of stuff you've got to do if you're a boy band

but boy bands themselves this is what it worked, it was tried and tested but boy bands at this point well not in 94 but by about 92 seemed really passe and there's nothing about them to suggest that they'd be

any more successful than big fun or bad boys inc um two bands who god yeah ian levine also had a hand in all of them by this point as you say 94 amazingly it's happened and uh by doing the really old school thing of uh having the lads with their hair slicked back, bare-chested in a waterfall, just using all that kind of homoerotic imagery that also appeals to teenage girls. They just went really route one with it, and it did work.

But, yeah, I don't know. I don't think we hated Take That. I think our readers did. I think our readers would have been that kind of grumpily alternative they would have thought oh fucking hell commercial pap but i think we saw it's this kind of parallel universe didn't really matter to us we weren't against it we weren't necessarily for it i remember when robbie left take that there was a huge debate in um a melty maker editorial meeting because i strongly strongly felt that we should cover it that it was a massive story robbie leaving take that was just the biggest thing

in music that week um even just from a sort of pop cultural phenomenon of the kind of phone lines and people in in hysteria having breakdowns and you know people calling the samaritans and that kind of stuff i thought it was just a huge story and there was another contingent of the maker who like no this is nonsense this kind of chart pap it's not our territory it's really quite quite heat debate about it i think i lost on that occasion um but yeah it wasn't our world and so they weren't worth hating i think we probably hated cooler shaker and we hated uh ned's time at dustbin more than more much more than we would hate to take that yeah we were we were much more likely to avowedly hate rock music than hate pop music if pop music was kind of if pop music was inoffensive enough i guess and wasn't doing us

any harm we kind of left it alone um and in some cases we celebrated i mean i remember we had we had people like betty boo in the paper we had k we had Kylie I amazingly managed to get two Unlimited on the front cover which, yeah, we actually lost about three or four thousand readers that week but we picked them up next week and I still feel that was valid but yeah, that was

an example of the sort of crazy atmosphere at the paper where if you presented a case for something strongly enough, Jonesy would just wave it through and say, all right, okay, go on, put it on the cover and see what happens. I think Price is right that in the few years before this, from 92 onwards, boy bands were sort of back and resurging in a sense.

But before that, they were considered really passé. And I think what you can possibly detect is that the industry uh 92 93 94 is reasserting its kind of traditional ways of doing things to a certain extent they were perhaps a little bit scared by the fact in the late 80s and the early 90s you had an awful lot of people in the charts and getting popular who were dance acts who who were very anonymous, who didn't provide the kind of, the things that traditional pop music did. So bands like Blur and Oasis and bands like Take That that very much fitted into traditional models were going to be loved by the industry

and marketed really carefully to make sure that they got somewhere. But like you, Al, I was... Because take that, I think... I was slightly surprised that the audience were going a bit more crazy around them. Maybe the teenage girls of the 90s were a bit cooler and a bit savvier

and a bit more aware than their 70s and 80s counterparts because you'd assume that, oh, fucking hell, they're going to be ripped to shreds. But no, you know, I mean, the girls there are glad to see them, but I don't think they're pissing themselves. Now, Mark Owen, right? Mark Owen's really good at football. I actually saw him play a celebrity five-a-side game at the Phoenix Festival, maybe around this time. He's really good.

And it's worth noting that you never see him and former arsenal and czech republic player thomas rosicki in the same room he's definitely the davy jones member of the band isn't he yeah yeah yeah and you can see how fucking tiny he is because i don't think robbie williams is very tall either particularly but stood next to him yeah he's up to his armpit is um robbie william Williams an annoying cunt yet? I don't know, you know. I think we can say in hindsight, oh, yeah, the signs are there. But I think at the time we all found him quite likeable.

I think these two were the two likeable members of Take That. I mean, nobody liked Barlow. And you had Jason Orange and the other one, I can't even remember his name. What's his name? Ken. Ken, right? Jason Orange and Ken who were just interchangeable. Nobody knew what they looked like. You just couldn't, you know, pick them out of a police line-up. But these

two were the, you know, fairly likeable and I don't know, but he is he's mugging to camera the whole time, isn't he, Williams, in this? I mean, we'll probably come this as we go along, but... For me, Robbie got to be an annoying cunt when he went solo.

And when he started hanging around with Oasis and all that. And then he revealed himself. I remember seeing him live, actually, about 97. I think he'd been solo by then at Wembley, of all places. And he was fucking appalling. It was like being entertained for two hours by a Butlin's fucking redcoat who'd just got a bit above his station, you know, and somehow sold out Wembley. was fucking appalling it was like being entertained for two hours by butlin's fucking red coat who just got a bit above his station you know and somehow sold out wembley

he was appalling but at this point yeah they just look like a pair of young lads having fun williams does an impersonation of alan wicker doing an impersonation of david frost and points out that top of the pops is britain's largest music show. The weird thing is, Williams doing that impression there, that is, even at that point, that's an impression that's 20 years old. It's the sort of thing that probably Mike Yarwood would have done, and maybe Robbie Williams heard his dad doing an impression of Mike Yarwood, doing an impression of Wicca, doing an impression of, you know, it's David Frost, isn't it?

So it's weird how that that kind of thing gets handed down from generation to generation and there's a disconnect i bet robbie williams didn't have any idea that you know what is he 20 years old who the fuck david frost was you know yeah yeah weird so owen introduces the opening act, Blur, with their latest single, Girls and Boys. Formed in London as Seymour in 1988, Blur were signed by Food Records in 1990 as a post-Madchester band and were quickly lumped in with the clique of bands known as the scene that celebrates itself. Am I right there? Yeah.

Because I know fuck all about Blur. Yeah, basically Blur straddled awkwardly the scene that celebrates itself, which is better known as shoegazing, and the kind of second wave of baggy. So their early songs are quite kind of dreamy and psychedelic, but they did have that kind of shuffling beat behind them. There's No Other Way being probably the most famous early single, which was their first appearance on Top of the Pops. And there's a story about that in the biography by Stuart McHoney of Blur that Dave Balfe, who was a former Teardrop Explodes and all of that,

who was the co-founder of Food Records, he gave them all a pill each before they went on Top of the Pops. So Blur's first appearance on Top of the pops, they're all completely out there. I was watching all the tinsel come down from the ceiling going, wow. Dave Balfe's a mate of mine now, actually, weirdly. He's got a Brighton Mafia. But yeah, so that's where they were to begin with. They were kind of these middle-class, druggy, southern boys

making vaguely danceable, vaguely psychedelic indie music before they had a complete rethink. That's right. Although their debut LP, Leisure, got to number seven in late 1990 and their second single, There's No Other Way, got to number eight, the band's next four singles failed to break the top 20 and they were on the verge of splitting up after a fractious US tour. However, this single, the

lead release from their forthcoming third album, Park Life, which was written after Damon Albarn went on holiday in Magaluf, was picked up on by Radio 1 and it's this week's second highest new entry at number five. Is this the beginning of Britpop? No.

To be of pedantic about it uh brit pop as a phrase and an idea had been around for at least a year before this um there was the infamous select magazine front cover yanks go home yeah which was april of 93 which had brett anderson as suede on the front, superimposed on a Union Jack. And the idea of Britpop had been around for maybe a year before that even. I suppose Saint Etienne would have been the precursors of it for me. They were the first band who came along in the midst of not only grunge, but Manchester and baggy. And they were writing very kind of um anglo-centric songs songs

that dropped um cultural references that were specifically british and then suede come along and suede a very very english um almost a glam rock revival band but it was quite pluralistic to begin with britpop was a quite a wide umbrella uh and it had it included anything from from denim to um corner shop or the manic street preachers or the auteurs or pulp and there's all and it hadn't yet solidified into lads lads lads you know what I mean um it was quite quite varied to begin with I. But I think maybe you've got a point, the girls and boys is that turning point. It's where it suddenly goes massively overground.

Well, it'd be the point where someone like me would start to be aware of it, put it that way. Yeah. Blur is kind of like the marker where I start to part ways with the charts because a few months later, I remember sitting in a pub with my mate and Parklife comes on the radio

and we just look at each other and just say, what the fuck is this dog shit? Fuck, fuck the charts. And I just stopped taking interest in the charts then. It was just like, right, okay. They seemed like a band that for the first time here was a band that I perceived to be the generation below me. And it's just like, oh, if that's what you're doing,

I can't be fucking arse with it. I mean, because at this time, music-wise... Even though they're exactly your age. Were they the same age as me? Yeah, I think they're probably born in about 68. Right. Something like that. Well, that's me proven wrong but there's

still shit anyway i can't be doing with blur i really do i mean i can see that they are a proper band and as we'll discover in this episode of top of the pops you know proper bands appear to be very thin on the ground at the minute and i can see their references and i've heard you know i've read about them before i'd even heard them but the thing that does it for me is that Damon Albarn's got a cunt's voice I just hate his fucking voice he sings like a cunt

he's in a feeler top but the logos appear to have been covered over basically you know when Blue Peter was on and they used to cover up Birds Custard and stuff like that with stickers or the logos on people on Jeremy Kyle. So yeah, there's that. Did you have any dealings with Blur?

I did, yeah. But I think I've ranted on enough. So I'll let Neil have his say. Well, I was never allowed to review Blur. Because I think it was kind of understood that I really hated him. And I was continually banging on about how much I hated him in print looking back though it's it's odd you know being young the the way the narrative goes these days is being young is cutting loose and all about pleasure and having fun well hold on a minute being young can also

be about denying yourself pleasure for really important reasons I mean blur when I listen to this song now, I have to admit there is pleasure to be got from this song It's not a bad song, but at the time in 94 And like pricey said I think this is round about the year with a Britpop really starts proudly calling itself that Starts draping itself in the flag a little bit. And I just found that all just hugely sort of objectionable. I also kind of, at the time, was listening to things that just made the idea of just basically rejigging the kinks

seem a bit, you know, not enough, really. So at the time, I was kind of denying myself pleasure in a sense. I refused to listen to Blur, I just would not listen to them. And I just really, really. So at the time, I was kind of denying myself pleasure in a sense. I refused to listen to Blur. I just would not listen to them. And I just really, really hated them. But looking back, there is pleasure to be had in this song. And I also suspect that part of the reason that I didn't like Blur was that Damon Albarn, like me, is a middle-class boy.

And there was a bit of reflexive self-hatred going on there. You know, but anyone who kind of wants to know about brit pop i'd suggest a couple of things one read an article it's i think it's in the telegraph and it's one of the worst articles i've ever read um called 10 reasons why brit pop changed modern manhood it's fucking appalling and it's all about us recovering our confidence and and that was something i was massively resistant to at the time. This whole idea that we should be proud to be British and we should be, you know, this whole kind of jingoistic kind of notion of Britpop that was around at the time.

But for a converse kind of thing, read Taylor Parks' piece on Britpop, which is on The Quieters. Hell yeah. I mean, I disagree with some of it, but it's a fantastic look at that era. I felt that Britpop was my as a writer brit pop was what i had to write against this idea that music had could had to always be so in hock to the past and also only a certain type of britishness seemed to be being celebrated and that was either a kind of larry lad rockness or a kind of Tommy Steele clicking your heels in the air jazz handness which I kind of got from Blur

but looking back I can't deny they were good songwriters they produced their music really well and there were doubtless joys to be had but I was too frowny too serious and basically not getting any so I just kind of had a reason to hate Blur

that was far more important to me than the music. And it was really for political reasons and cultural reasons rather than just the music. I think it's interesting what Neil says there about being in hocks of the past, because when I'm teaching my students about Britpop, and God, they weren't even fucking born, which is terrifying. Lucky bastards. Britpop and god they weren't even fucking born which is terrifying lucky bastards the one thing

yeah the one thing one thing that occurred to me is that it's the first youth culture movement I can think of that was completely retro and even I mean blur a case in point because on their previous album modern life is rubbish they were dressed like two-tone rude boys um which they were the right age to probably been that um 10 years earlier and by this point girls and boys they've moved on to mid-80s soccer casuals in in fila and tacchini and lacoste and stuff like that um and yeah certainly uh um for tomorrow which was the great great single on the previous album did sound like The Kings just a wonderful record

probably their best record and by this point they've moved on to kind of 80s synth pop there's something quite human league about girls and boys the comparison's always been made to Duran Duran on this song isn't it definitely it's got that kind of planet earth I think

I don't know to me it you know from a DJ point of view it blends nicely to Don't You Want Me it's almost got exactly the same beat and there's a brilliant Pet Shop Boys remix I think it's on the 12 inch where Neil Tennant or I guess

probably Chris Lowe focuses completely on that high pitched that bit just loops it over and over Neil Tennant, or I guess probably Chris Lowe, focuses completely on that high-pitched... That bit. Just loops it over and over. But lyrically, I think all the things that are awful about this song are also what's good about it. I quite like the callousness.

We didn't have the word chav in those days. It wasn't a thing that anyone said. But it's kind of chav hate isn't it um but it's also this weird kind of fascination they're having it both ways they're having it both ways in this song they're they're looking they're peering with horror and fascination at the lads um they're aware that the lads are having all the fun and they're kind of taking the piss and this kind of sarcastic uh middle class voice the the voice that you know you mentioned damon singing like a cunt um but i i don't know all the things yeah i can't really put any better than that the callousness of it is actually something that

in a weird perverse way it does appeal to me that it is completely nihilistic. And the way in which they clearly despise the working class, but also kind of envy them, is what makes it an interesting record to me. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that this song directly inspired Designed for Life by the Mannix. You know that line, we don't talk about love, we only want to get drunk. It almost seems like a kind of um uh backhanded

piss take of blur girls and boys and in the video there's there's actually been in that manix video which is very similar to um the blur video blur video was directed by kevin godley and it's got you know it's got people having the time their lives on holiday and um uh i i think that that that in itself is is what what gives it some kind of value, some kind of traction to me. That almost accidentally, you know, it's almost revealing more about Blur than it attends to. And I think that's what makes an interesting record.

Plus it's just a great song. I used to play football with Damon Albarn every Sunday through the Britpop period with a bunch of other music biz people he wasn't very good but neither was I but I think

he genuinely was interested in football, he's a Chelsea fan all this kind of stuff Oh he's even more of a cunt than I thought he was So you know at least there was some sincerity in his fascination with that kind of culture by the way do you know the argument that girls and boys is about anal sex this this is the only thing that uh it comes it comes up in uh stuart mcconnie's book, just the whole chorus.

Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls who do boys like their girls. That's the bit that supposedly is kind of coded and a lot of people in the gay scene love the song because of the line, do boys like their girls. I didn't know that. It's the start of something. It feels like the start of the first alternative culture, if feels like the start of kind of the first alternative culture if you like or you know alternative bit of music that is it starts to be judged now from here on in by

success by chart success and that and that's why you know oasis come along in a year's time and what is what was previously called you know our bands to a certain extent or alternative bands, alternative culture, has now become entirely about success. Probably in a reflexive kind of shame about the 80s. This was an attempt to leave the 80s behind to a certain extent. But this is the start i would say 94 definitely is the time when brit pop starts becoming starts sticking in my gullet a little bit yeah as a and i agree with

simon that before then i think it was way more pluralistic than it becomes in a in 94 95 times so by 95 you really are just talking about you know big white male bands to a large extent yeah yeah i mean the thing about i think about brit pop for me it was it was just rammed down my throat i mean when i moved back to london i was working for richard desmond on his wank mags and it was an open plan office and you know there was a good mix of different people there you know male and female but the uh the stereo got absolutely dominated by younger lads who wanted to hear park life. Then they'd put on,

uh, what's the story morning glory or whatever it was. And so I just equate that with looking at gaping arseholes and finding, you know, I was, I was looking, I was, I was looking at tits and listening to arseholes.

And I was just there sitting, well, can I put Ready To Die on now or Illmatic? Girls and Boys, it's a song that's secreted a ton of significance it might not have otherwise got. Basically because it's been so used. Do you know what I mean? In football highlights, in any documentary that is going to mention the 90s

the opening to Girls and Boys will just come on as just that instant signifier so honestly until I saw this episode just now I haven't heard that song

in decades because I haven't sat all the way through it do you know what I mean it's just always been there perhaps because of the general indiness

of people who decide on the music for football highlights or something but that is what it's become an instant night is signifier yeah it's a relatively forward looking record compared to what brit pop became and blur were a relatively forward looking band if you listen to the album park life as a whole um there are more ideas going on there musically than you'll hear in the entire back catalogue of Oasis even though they you know

Blur did definitely have their kind of retrogressive moments like Tracy Jacks or whatever and the song Parklife which is absolutely unconscionably awful yeah but I you know if if I was forced at gunpoint to choose between Blur and Oasis I'd always choose Blur I mean the answer to that question it would it would always be the answer to that question, who do you feel Blur or Oasis, it would always be, the answer to the question would always be Pulp, actually, or Saint Etienne, or Suede, or the Manic Street Preachers, or Tricky, or fucking anything,

you know, anything but those two. But if you absolutely had to choose, then it's Blur all day long for me. And you'd read about the both of them slagging each other off and it's just like, like my dad used to say when he used to watch Question Time on the news it's like cat shit having a go at fucking dog shit for stinking as

shit. But the actual performance, we've got to make mention of the performance because the two things that grab your hair is that even though even though the have to sing live rule has been dropped Damon Albarn singing live, it's the first time we've seen the Elstree studio.

And it looks absolutely massive on the telly, doesn't it? It looks like there's loads of people there. Yeah, there's fire escapes everywhere and all this kind of stuff. I actually, I mean, this becomes more apparent during the rest of the episode, but the crowd are too much front and centre for my liking. I know that there have been some periods of Top of the Pops history that we've looked at where the crowd almost gets shunted out of view. Other times where they're more, you know, to the forefront and louder.

In this episode, they're insanely loud, I think. They're just, you know, right in your face. The whole presentation of it, there's no moments really of intimacy and closeness with anyone who appears on this episode, the bands are usually seen from above and a distance so are the audience and the camera is

swooping around them, it's all very slickly done but there's none of those sort of, I don't know, special little odd moments that made Top of the Pops kind of what it was you don't really get the feeling when you're on stage with these bands, you get the feeling that yeah, you're witnessing a video being made. In one way, we're seeing more of the audience.

In one way, we're not. We're seeing more of them there. But, you know, we're not seeing one or two of them picked out. They're just a bit of a faceless herd, aren't they? Yeah, totally. So the following week, Girls and Boys dropped one place to number six and slid out of the chart. The follow-up to the end would only get to number 16,

but the LP went straight in at number one in May of this year. Girls and Boys will be voted the single of the year by both the NME and Melody Maker. This was your favourite song of the year, chaps. Hang on. Fuck all to do with me. Hang on. Is that the readers or the writers?

Got to be clear about that. It's apparently it's the writers. Well, the top five, the critics' choice, top five was Girls and Boys, then Live Forever by Oasis, Aftermath by Tricker, Regulate by Warren G, and Connection

by Elastica. At least Warren G was in there. How much say would you have in the end of year list? Do you know what? Did you get a little ballot like Eurovision or something? Yeah, we would all

scribble it down in good faith and give it to Jonesy. Alan Jones, the editor, he was a fascinating character. He was this kind of bit like Aslan from C.S. Lewis or mixed with the Cowardly coward. He was a bit like Aslan from C.S. Lewis or mixed with the Cowardly Lion. He was a very leonine, hairy guy who'd been around since the 70s.

He was a sort of genial, avuncular figure, although you didn't want to get on the wrong side of him because he's hard as nails as well. But he was quite hands-off, it's a polite way of putting it, which would be to say that he did spend a lot of the day and the week in the stanford arms so he let us kids get on with running the paper to a large extent but when it came to things like the readers poll he would be quite hands-on and

he would kind of massage and tweak the results you'd always notice yeah you'd always notice things like even though probably nobody in the office had voted for it that the latest album by neil young and bob dylan would make it make a surprise showing in the top 20 for example and um he also i think he had this idea that we shouldn't alienate the readers too much so we should kind of acknowledge what they're into so i think things like live forever by oasis getting such a high showing there was partly that i i would imagine yeah it's all a fucking good isn't it it is yeah but the end of year issue of the music press christmas wasn't christmas

without the christmas melody maker it was like really important and seeing the top 30 albums of the year top 30 singles of the year and also getting to see photos of the writers that was that was really really important you did get to see photos of the writers when they reviewed the singles but just getting to see them all kind of um in one issue the end of year issue it was i didn't think christmas could start in my house until that was there and i cannot emphasize enough I'm sorry to bang on about this but Wednesday morning when you're a kid and the music papers were coming out it's the best day of the fucking week I'd like it put a little skip in your step it really really did

La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la When she said she was through I thought there was nothing that I could do So at the end of Girls and Boys, the camera swings round to Owen, on his own amongst some people who can't be bothered to respond to Blur. As he moves closer to the other stage, boasting of the two exclusives on this episode, a burly man gets behind him as if he's about to pick him up or look at the writing on the back of his Playboy t-shirt and how he nearly walks smack into a girl wearing glasses as he introduces Whispering Your Name by Alison Moyet. in 1961, Alison Moyet spent the late 70s working as a shop assistant and piano tuner and then became involved in the Essex pub rock and punk scene when she was invited by Vince Clark to start a duo with him when he left Depeche Mode in 1982. As Yazoo, they scored three top five hits and recorded two LPs, one of which got a number one in July of 1983, but by that time they had already split up. She launched her solo career in the summer of 1984,

and her debut LP, Alf, made it to number one, and she scored five top ten hits in three years. After a four-year hiatus, she returned in 1991 with the LP Hoodoo, but none of the three singles made the top 40. This is the second single from the yet-to-be-released LP Essex, a cover of a 1983 tune by Australian singer Ignatius Jones, which has been remixed from an acoustic ballad to a dance tune by Ian Browdy, and it's her first top 40 hit since Week in the Presence of Beauty in 1987,

and it's up from number 31 to number 27. Well, who'd have thought Alison Moyet would be popping up here fancy seeing you in a place like this eh Chas yeah I mean I was genuinely surprised to see this I had no memory of it at all before watching the episode and

it's interesting hearing you describe the kind of back story of the song because when I heard it it sounds like a kind of classic torch ballad it's got a touch of melodically it's got a touch of something like smoke gets in your eyes about it but but given a horrible remix a horrible kind of kind of thing going on yeah which it turns out from what you've told us is more or less the truth you know it what basically what it sounds like is a great song ruined um and and

it and the particular way in which it's ruined reminds you that we're only two or three years past the high point of kws and all that all that shite you know kind of remixes of doobie brothers songs and stuff like that um so yeah i i think um it's i'd i'd like to have heard Alice Amoy do the acoustic version. Presumably it's out there somewhere. Yazoo were absolutely amazing. They were just a brilliant, brilliant band. I saw them on their comeback. Wonderful band.

I think she's really likeable as a person. You can tell she's singing live. It's a bit rough around the edges, but she really commits to it. But the audience really bugged me in this everyone's clapping on every beat clap clap clap clap hands in the air and it's just awful um and when when we complained about you know previous episodes about the audience being marginalized that seems like a golden age compared to what what we're seeing here where the audience are fucking ruining it. With Alison Moyet, I've got a real fondness

and a kind of residual defence mechanism with Alison Moyet, because I remember I loved Yuzu when they came out, and I remember the playground kind of hostility she'd get from just arsehole people in my year at school, just jokes about her appearance and stuff, and I really loved Yuzu. And even the thing is, research... I was trying to find out what album this was from, this song, at school just jokes about her appearance and stuff and i really loved you too and and even the thing is research i was trying to find out what album this was from this song and it does

turn out doesn't it that she um recorded quite bare bones acoustic version the record company sent it back and just said re-record you know yeah recorded it with ian broody i believe um but reading about trying to find out what album this was from you know you're tapping Alison Moyer into Google and first article that comes up

the first quote at 50 Alison Moyer is unrecognisable from the scary fat punk of her early Yazoo days with Vince Clark

do you know what I mean this is still acceptable to fucking say and then it goes on to say she is now lithe and elegant with perfect posture

and dark wavy i mean have we progressed have we progressed or Jesus Christ you know what i mean so and and she and it's implied that she's meant to be grateful for that absolutely you know absolutely and the last one i saw was at 48 the honey blonde who was once operatic sized now looks so amazingly slinky it's just the bigotry that is still acceptable in pop writing staggers me and would never have fucking passed the mark at melody maker not in a million years yeah there's an interview with her that i watched earlier today uh that that danny Danny Baker tweeted today and it's Alison Moyet talking to Australian TV and

in that she reveals that at some point not that long ago she was so sick of her past that she trashed all her gold discs and burnt all her memorabilia just smashed it up and threw it in a skip and just wanted to start again and when you come out with quotes like that that you know neil just came out with

from those interviews you can see why you can see why she just thinks oh fuck that you know but where is she in 1994 then apart from being on a stage well this one amazes me i was i was surprised that she even had a hit this year i didn't have a hit and it's kind of where she's at is being pushed around by a record company and you know i think i think there is a really good song here um but it's kind of blanded out a bit by the production of it and and and and you know it is a song which this audience can clap along to and it shouldn't be actually the lyric is a little bit more interesting than that yeah i mean i mean she's on a massive stage, and she's wearing a leather knee-length coat,

and she's got dyed blonde hair, and she's backed up by a woman on a synth. And the kids are going mental for this, but you have to ask yourself, are they going mental for the song or going mental for the beat? You think they're loving the beat? I think the beat is everything round about this time

and they don't care what's been sung over the top of it exactly yeah it's almost but you know what the the way in which they clap on every beat is actually a bit naff it's a bit like granny claps you know like when you see like old people's homes and they're they're probably the way that uh in a previous episode uh people in in a retirement home were clapping to dollar to uh you know david van day uh clapping on the on beat uh not not the offbeat and there's there's something really lame and naff about that but but then again were a lot of records of this period granny claps well i i don't know well there's there's quite a few there's quite a few basically what will happen uh over the course of the episode i think is, is that if, like you say,

I mean, I don't necessarily want to call it this, but a dance beat comes on, then what do we do to the dance beat? We clap and we go, whoop, whoop, whoop, and this is what the audience do at Top of the Pops. And it's almost expected of them. There feels that there's no actual connection between the crowd. You don't really know whether they're into any of this music.

Are they into any of these bands or these artists at all? I don't know. It just seems like a Cracker Jack style party. It has to happen. The connection between the people playing and the audience is a little bit gone because of the spectacle and because they've got it a bit too slick. So the following week

Whispering Your Name jumped up to number 18, its highest position but she would never trouble the charts again. She wouldn't record for another 8 years after falling out with Sony Records due to the way she was pissed about on this album but her greatest hits compilation singles

got to number one in 1995. It's quite a loss, someone like her, having to, feeling they have to drop out of the music scene. Yeah, but I also quite respect people who just, like I say, think, fuck that and just walk away. She lives in Brighton, not far from me. And, you know, I don't think she's got any any interest whatsoever in uh being recognized walking around being a celebrity any of that stuff she's going

on tour and um the uh the reason she gave what in this australian interview that i watched was that she thought that her tour in australia uh in the 80s was just really shit and she wanted to go back and do a better job it's not as if she's not going to promote an album or to raise her profile, she just for her own kind of psychic well-being wants to sort of right a wrong I quite respect that, yeah

Oh, good on her Now this next tune's from a film called Philadelphia. If you haven't been to see it, go to see it. We'll take a box of tissues with you. Also, you might learn something at the same time. It's by Bruce Springsteen. It's called Streets of Philadelphia. Williams on the balcony advises us to go to the pictures to see Philadelphia as we might learn some at.

Oh, and take a box of tissues as well. Maybe. Well, we won't go there. But he also... I didn't know it was that kind of film, I've got to be honest. He also introduces the video for Streets of Philadelphia by Bruce Springsteen. Born in New Jersey in 1947, Bruce Springsteen got his start as the lead singer of the Castiles in the mid-60s before joining a power trio called Earth in the late 60s.

He was signed to CBS in 1972 and was dubbed the future of rock and roll by John Landau in 1974 but the only UK chart action he got in the 70s was as the writer of Blinded by the Light which Manfred Mann's Earth Band took to number 6 in September of 1976. It wouldn't be until late 1980 that he

grazed the UK top 40 with Hungry Heart but he scored 10 UK chart hits throughout that decade. Up until now, the nicest have seen him fall out of favour, with Human Touch being his only hit of the decade when he got to number 11 in March of 1992. This is a follow-up to the live cover of Lucky Town, which only got to number 48 in April of 1993,

and it's taken from the Tom Hanks film Philadelphia and it's the highest new entry this week at number 4. Now we can talk about the video but I think the thing that I want to bring up before that is the fact that while this video is going on they're absolutely chonked through the chart countdown from number 42 to number

11 as if it doesn't mean shit It annoys me massively that the rundown is simultaneously shown with the video depriving us of the chance to hear Mark Owen say in at number 19 Pantera with I'm Broken I want to

hear that and the rundown is important it's the chart it's not just the graphic to be ignored you know it's part of the kind of degrading of the show, I think, that would lead to its demise a few years later. It's funny, actually. I got a real sense of 1994 by seeing those names on the rundown.

Because the first three names were very Melody Maker acts. You've got Suede, Censor and the Charlatans. Yes, fucking Censor. I went laser questing with Censor and the Charlatans. Fucking Censor. I went laser questing with Censor once. Because that was the kind of crap that we ended up doing at Melody Maker. Yeah, in the shameful final years.

Were they any good? What, as a band? No, laser quest. No, we all got our arses kicked by loads of nine year old kids. It was humiliating. I bet Rage Against the Machine were fucking far better at Laser Quest as well. Everyone at Melody Maker at that time

had to take a band to a stupid location. I remember I went paintballing with Ride as well. So, yeah, it's a bit of a running theme. It sounds like you're pitching at Tony Hayes, Simon. It does. I took ultrasound to lego land um no hilarity did ensue it was uh i remember with censors um on the way to the laser quest uh stopping off um to go to late night garage to get some snacks and um they came back with with loads of chomps because chomps were only 10p yeah so clearly they they didn't have a massive record company advance i don't

think chomps were better than fudge though yeah i've got to take that off to them for that fair dues but also there's loads of these kind of um pop house or soul house um artists like alice limerick wendy moten moten zane and so on in the chat a lot of that going on yeah um but also yeah i was surprised to see pantera in the top i had no idea yeah pantera made the top 20 well we need to talk about the charts now i think because by by the time 1994's rolled along things are very different in chart, aren't they? We don't see the slow progression of a single making its way up the charts. I mean, this week, the previous highest new entry,

Rocks, by Primal Screamer, dropped 10 places down to number 17. And Morrise, the more you ignore me, the closer I get, new entry at number 8 last week. This week, it's number number 31 what did he say to to make that happen what's he done this time the stupid cunt was was he expressing skepticism about the the exchange rate mechanism or some other probably yeah minor detail of the european union yeah oh fucking hell i mean we we speak on a day when, you know,

we're recording this on a day when Morrissey, appearing live at Six Music, has expressed support for Anne-Marie Waters, the failed UKIP leadership candidate, who also is a director of Sharia Watch and was a founder of Pegida UK with Tommy Robinson of the EDL. This is what Morrissey has become now.

Have I said Morrissey's a cunt in this episode yet? No, okay, yeah, sorry. Let me sort that out. Morrissey's a cunt. He is. What you're seeing, by the way, Al, with what you were talking about, with the chart, it's singles coming in

and being in the chart it's about two three weeks now and then going there's not the slow build up to the no there isn't

or the slow leaving either they're coming in and going out very quickly apart from annoying records like the number one

records usually that do stick around for fucking ever everything else moves about a bit but much faster than it has done in the past but the number one record usually. Yes. That do stick around for fucking ever. Everything else moves about a bit, but much faster than it has done in the past. But the number one, annoyingly, which is usually pretty poor,

stays there for a while. Yeah. Is it because it's only a hardcore fan base of a band that's buying the record and no one else is bothering? Because, I mean, like we've seen Blur. You know, this is like the coming out party of Blur. You know, one of the biggest acts of the 90s,

whether you like them or not. And I was absolutely shocked to discover that the next week it had dropped down a place. Well, I think what happened was that major labels who had indie bands on their books had figured out how to get them in the charts. They hadn't quite figured out how to get them to stay there. Because I think in the years after this,

they would format the fuck out of everything. So the single would come out and the following week you'd have the CD 2 with extra B-sides and maybe even a third one so they'd figure that out eventually but certainly by this point they'd managed to sort of nail everything to

one date, you know these days they call it impact date, you know now that we don't have physical product anymore rather than release date but i think the major labels had sort of got their game pretty tight in terms of getting hit records and there was something quite retro as well about that because the jam used to do it didn't they the jambles were boom number one straight in number one yeah so um i think for a band like blur to go boom into the top 10 like that did have, for them I would imagine, quite a pleasing throwback quality.

I found out who the band was, by the way. The band was called Acacia, who did the cover of The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get. And they are now better known for people like Guy Sigsworth and Talvin Singh and Imogen Heap, who were associate members or members who went on to bigger things but they were led by a black guy

I don't want to get this wrong but I think a gay black guy so the fact of him recording this you know this Morrissey song The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get seemed particularly at the time when Morrissey was surrounded by accusations of racism was pretty powerful

anyway sorry are we avoiding trying to talk about Bruce Springsteen by the way oh yeah we were talking about him well we haven't started talking about him no we haven't no shall I is that alright yeah please I'm sort of resistant to the boss

for a few reasons that name for a start off I don't mean Springsteen, I mean The Boss. I don't like that. Makes you sound like a fat old manager, doesn't it? Well, yeah. I've just never particularly liked bosses, so it's not really a name that appeals. Born in the USA, I've got a big problem with. Basically, because when it came out, I didn't understand it.

I didn't understand it as an anti-war song. It just seemed like a big screaming bit of Americanism, which I didn't understand it, I didn't understand it as an anti-war song it just seemed like a big screaming bit of Americanism which I didn't particularly like much and finally, that's his fault for you know, people say oh it's the audience's fault for not picking up on the subtleties, no, he's an established pop artist, he knows what he's doing

so he's having a rough way there anyway go on, carry on no you're right, the video for Born in the USA is kind of unproblematically you know jingoistic and that and finally the final reason I'm resistant to him Uncut Magazine that's it Uncut Magazine

and their fondness for this kind of Americana it's just it kind of bores me Bruce Springsteen is one of the few people that I've lied about in print

in that I reviewed a gig of Bruce Springsteen that I was only half at but he I've always

resisted him but I like him on two songs this one and Dancing in the Dark I really like

Dancing in the Dark but those moments move me those songs move me a little bit and it's usually when he's at his most poppiest but i like him i don't really have time for the serious side of springsteen let alone the three and a half hour live sets right yeah i've i've been to a few of those three and a half hour live sets uh in my job as a live reviewer for the independent on sunday um and um yeah they can be a bit of an ordeal but i i i quite i quite like i think i think i like bruce springsteen more than i like um his back catalogue of music to be honest i think he comes across as a decent

guy he was on the desert island discs recently and i really really warmed to him and um yeah i just think he's he's one of one of the good guys in in rock music but yeah i i couldn't sit down listen to a whole album's worth of it i think the song born to run is absolutely phenomenal just this huge towering um specter-esque drama uh i think i prefer the frankie version really oh man um uh but yeah what about this song just do you know what it is with this song it's the thing that puts me off about it is the whole atmosphere of makes you think doesn't it about about this song you know that that it's important and it's got an important message because obviously it's from the film philadelphia um which was a groundbreaking about the age yeah with tom hanks

as a sympathetic character you know that said can you imagine sitting down and playing this for fun can you imagine somebody thinking um i approve of this message so much and i respect what it's trying to do yeah that i'm gonna put that record on and i'm gonna put it record on and I'm going to put it back on and I'm going to listen to it again. I don't know, man. It's clearly, it's, in inverted commas, good. It's, you know, it's well produced. It's got a quite sort of dignified backbeat to it, which is like his sort of halfway house acceptance of dance culture without going overboard with it. The video, lots of walking, lots of chicken wire.

Yeah. But I don't know. I was shocked that it went straight. Was it straight to number four? Is that where it's gone this week? Yeah, ice new entry, yeah. Wow. And this can't be on the back of his superstar status because as we've established,

that ship had sailed a while ago. I just remember it getting a lot of radio play this song at the time, a lot during the day, because he's got this habit of making records that probably sound good on the radio, but you don't actually want to hear at home, like you say. I wouldn't want to sit around listening to this, but on the radio when it comes in, it creates a certain mood.

It's a bit different to other stuff that's in the charts at the time in terms of just its mood and its kind of pace um so i think that's why it was a success oh did you see the movie i saw the movie and it was pretty good but yeah i mean i i would prefer something like like dancing i had a real epiphany about dancing in the dark recently one of these things that you know these songs that you're staring in your face all your life and And just suddenly, it just gets you and grabs your heart or something. I think it's wonderful. But this, I think, yeah,

I'd say it's quality. But it's hard to love. It's decent. Not even Top of the Pops can respect it because they whack the charts over it. So the following week, Streets of Philadelphia edged up to number three, then number two, but no further,

becoming the highest placed Bruce Springsteen single ever on the UK charts. The follow-up, Secret Garden, only got up to number 44 when it was released in April of 1995, but then got to number 17 when it was re-released in 1997, his last top 40 hit in the UK. Streets of Philadelphia, the song would win one Oscar and four Grammys. Four fucking Grammys and an Oscar.

I hope he's got a big teller. Okay, coming up next next looking sweet as ever I must say She just picked up two awards at the recent bridge ceremony and here she is, it's Bea Hart with Violently Happy So inside What? My shoes I met you This small town Hasn't got room

Mark Owen wearing a t-shirt that looks like someone is dropping a bayonet or a fountain pen or a syringe on the Playboy Bunny's head. Does anybody clock that? No. I spent much of the time looking at it. It's obviously a knocked-off Playboy Bunny because it's got its mouth wide open and the sun about to drop on its head and it was doing my head in all episode what was going on there.

But anyway, he does a pretty rubbish job of introducing the next act, which is Bjork and her latest single Violently Happy. Born in Reykjavik in 1965, Bjork Gudmundsdottir rose to national prominence at the age of ten when a teacher sent a tape of her singing Tina

Charles' I Love to Love to Iceland's only radio station, which led to her first solo LP in 1977. After forming an all-girl punk band called Spit and Snot, a jazz fusion group called Exodus, and a post-punk band called Tipi Tikurás, Icelandic for Cork the Bitch's Ass. Oh, why do they have to grow up? She formed the Sugar Cubes in 1986 after a run of singles, of which only one made the top 40, hit in 1992, the band split up

and she pursued a solo career this is her 5th release from her LP debut, which we all know is a fucking lie because it's her 3rd solo LP, and it's a follow up to Big Time Sensuality which got to number 17 in December of 1993 and it's a new

entry at number 13 now the one thing I noticed is that Top of the Pops have started lumping in factoids with their titling and this one is Double Platinum Album Seller, fascinating some focus group would have... I mean, not even a focus group.

Who makes these fucking decisions? It's probably the same twat who did the titling on Top of the Pops 2. Fiddling with things. Fiddling with formulas. It's, yeah, it's something that happened in the 90s and it affected the music press as well. Yeah. It's like, oh, she sold loads of records.

Well, yeah, she's on top of the pop she twat things just getting led to us i'm probably just sounding like an old fart but things getting led by marketeers and kind of accountants too much i think across the board but bjork i mean a lot of uh a lot of indie sorts uh used to bang on about how they had a dance element to the songs and uh and this one did uh she kind of changed up her style and she got with the electronic dance thing how did it work out for her chaps in your opinion?

Do you know what, I reckon this record is the opposite of the Alison Moyet record because the house influence is integrated into this not bolted on and yeah I used to really like Bjorker and i still do like her i think i think she's great um i went around the house once actually oh really it would have been around this

time yeah around the time this album i interviewed her for the melody maker um for for debut and um did you nick anything did i nick anything no what happened was uh um we were meant to meet in a in a bulgarian um patisserie in in uh finchley road near where she lived right the taxi driver took me to east finchley instead of finchley road so so by the time i got there uh it was way late and she had to pick up her kid from school so we ended up doing the interview at her house but i already knew her i was i was the third person in the uk to interview the sugar cubes um this was after uh Melody Maker and NME had their go. I just found the single, Birthday...

What, for the Barry News? No, this was for the London Student. And the single, Birthday, was just completely enchanting and seemed to fly in out of a clear blue sky and just an astonishing record to this day I didn't necessarily like all the Sugarcube stuff after that they had the kind of downside that the B-52s also had

of a man shouting wacky stuff over the top too often but I think Debut is one of the sort of defining albums of this era and Violently Happy is a brilliant track

I used to kind of knock around with them I didn't finish that story I remember I went to a warehouse rave run by the Mutoid Waste Company who were this kind of collective of crusties who used to make sculptures out of just bits of detritus so there'd be a kind

of giant wasp made out of a motorbike and a chainsaw hanging from the ceiling and all this and um so uh yeah i went and there'd be bicycles on the dance floor that people would cycle around and then you know health and safety just went out the window that's terrible yeah yeah yeah. But there was a massive vat, a big kind of brazier-type oil drum of magic mushroom soup, which me and the sugar cubes went and partook of that and cycled round

to crazy techno music while these metallic wasps loomed overhead. So I kind of associate Bjork and the sugar cubes with this kind of slightly surreal, industrial, hallucinogenic experience. I love the Sugar Cubes too. I remember especially the song Birthday.

But I love the fact that Life's Too Good, that album, has some real great moments on it. But even early on then, you could sort of tell she was going to, I know she'd done solo albums, but she was going to go fully fledged solo. And although, I loved Bjork at this time, although this sounded at the time quite timely because dance music and, you know, that kind of techno music was quite a thing at the time,

it sounds incredibly dated now, but it still works. It still works really well, especially through big speakers. That template of a dance track with a big belt in vocal over it is still kind of being mined to this day but crucially she's still startling to look at and a real presence on stage um you know part of the reason all of us are into pop i think um like we're into football in a sense you're into football because you don't have to be a certain physical type to be a footballer you can have you can be slight of frame you know you can be you know not conventional in the way and be a football and it's the same with pop it's not

about necessarily being a great musician it's about being a presence and bjork always had that and she has that in this performance on top of the Pops. I think the best performance of the whole show. You know, pop is a kind of refuge for slightly freaky people. I'm not sure whether post-Gaga we've got anything similar to Bjork. No. Maybe Lorde, do you think? Maybe Lorde, yeah. But I don't know.

A bit thin on the ground at the moment. That kind of presence. Because she's startling always when you watch her and she really draws the eye um in a really interesting way um and unlike i think everyone else on this show yeah the idea of be all being on top of the pops would have been a bit weird a few years previous to this wouldn't it yeah it would it would i don't know weren't the sugar cubes on top of the box? I think there were with Hit. But certainly, I think when Debut came out, it struck a chord with the kind of people who weren't necessarily reading the indie press. It was almost a kind of coffee table album

in the same way that people would buy Dummy by Porter's Head. And it was a way of displaying you you had good taste but that that that's not a way of talking it down i think it's a fantastic record but it certainly um did cross over to um people who had it's a very sort of tasteful lifestyle accessory so the following week violently happy dropped 12 places to number 25. Look again. Ridiculous. The follow-up, Army of Me, got to number 10 in May of 1995, and she'd have two more hits that year. I mean, the fact that these records are dropping down

as soon as they make the charts, that kind of detracts from the music of the time, doesn't it? Because you're simply not getting the chance for them to seep into you like you did before. I mean, there'd be certain songs that, you know, enter the charts in the early, late 30s, and, you know, five weeks later, they're at number one because you've heard them so many times,

and you get to like them. What we've lost is the concept of a consensus hit record that everyone from grannies to little kids is into. We're seeing the beginning, I suppose, of the fragmentation of culture even before the internet was a thing where if you were into indie music you'd buy this record all in the first week or if you're into metal you know you buy the pantera record or whatever and that's it it's done and it yeah you're right it never becomes a thing that everyone's talking

about in the workplace or the playground it's very much uh you know kept to your own little um enclave of humanity rather than becoming a unifying force which you know pop used to be you know it's like what you said earlier you you didn't give a fuck about the charts at this point and i think that was increasingly increasingly happening for most of us that this was the kind of period where we kind of stopped caring about the charts and consequently stopped watching top of the pops and and only as pricey said earlier watch top of the pops if we had been tipped the wink that some band was going to be on that we liked yeah so if i knew that i don't know whale with hobo slump in sobo babe we're going to be on top of the pops which they might have been because they were at number 40 in this week's chart, fucking amazing record

and you know that needs stressing as well by the way, just a general theme through this chart is how great the European records are and the records that aren't from Britain apart from the number one unfortunately but you know there's a lot of great Eurobeat stuff in there and things like

Whale which are just amazing records you know it was when I knew people were going to be on that it was kind of an event so if you knew that Pulp or Supergrass or a band like that

were on you did watch it because you wanted to see how that band did on Top of the Pops because you know it still was an oddity getting one of our bands

quote unquote onto Top of the Pops but other than that no I wasn't religiously watching this program anymore and i don't think i was listening to the charts on a sunday night either in fact that had probably stopped a long time before that so a cursory look at the chart certainly probably in the pages of the music press but it wasn't exactly something i stared at that much it was kind of like you'd look at that look at the indie chart and then you'd be

on to actually the actual reviews the charts were massively less important to me at this stage what's more important in 1994 then albums or singles the great singles are still important in terms of my listening albums is way more important at this time because a lot of the stuff i was into in 1994 you know they didn't release singles or if they did release singles you didn't get them over here. And kind of, you know, it was albums that you relied upon, especially with things like hip hop. And, you know, the singles that you might have liked were probably not getting in the charts at all. It's odd that that divide came in, but it did.

I was still keeping an ear out. But, you know, when you listen to some of the mediocrity in this episode, you can understand why at that period, the charts were not really something that bothered me that much thank you and now from one lovely lady to another lovely lady this is tori amos and she's having a pretty good year better believe that Williams does a shit Icelandic impression and then introduces to another quote lovely lady

Tori Amos and a song Pretty Good Year born in North Carolina in 1963 Tori Amos taught herself to play piano from the age of three and started studying classical piano at the Peabody Conservatory of Music from the age of five. After signing to Atlantic Records at the age of 20, she formed the band Why Can't Tori Read, who released one flop LP, and she went solo in 1990 1990 this is the solo single from her third solo LP Under The Pink

and it's the follow up to Cornflake Girl which got to number 4 in January of this year and it's a new entry at number 7 my notes here some woman on a piano with a bit of dry ice my notes here

I was a racist about Tori Amos, for which I can only apologise. Oh, why? How? I wrote a review that I think... I can't remember if Pricey was the editor of it, actually. An album review of Tori Amos' Boys for Pele or whatever that album was from 95,

which basically, looking back on it was a stream of kind of racist ginger comments with You were a gingist? Yeah I apologise to Tori Amos. I apologise it was fear of a ginger planet stuff

it was out of order and I apologise. On behalf of ginger people everywhere Neil Neil, I forgive you. Thank you, Simon. That means a lot to me, man. Come by, oh my lord. Oh, the power of chart music, people. With regards to Tori, I like Kate Bush.

I like Joni Mitchell, but I hated Tori Amos. It used to anger me. Why? Well, it used to anger me if a band or artist simply agglomerated things without giving it something unique and she never did her songs were dull

I remember reading an interview at the time that I think majorly put me off which was full of quotes like this album is about finding my internal fire and things like that I now understand my matrix fire and things like that. And I now understand my matrix. I didn't like the slight new ageness of her vibe.

I seem to recall it being Chris and Tampax Rock at the time by somebody. No, not my cup of tea at all, I'm afraid. My notes simply say, Shakin' Bush. I mean, I can go on. I've had a look at... Please don't. I've had a look at the lyrics, and they're just nothing.

They're just vague waffle. I don't know what we're meant to take away from this. I mean, okay okay she can play piano right um but here's the problem she's talented but she has no genius and some of the most some of the dullest music known to humanity is made by talent without genius and that's her um it makes me angry actually not just that she rips off Kate Bush so blatantly but just

the sheer it's like a vapour this song but not in a good way like a fart under a quilt there's something really self important about the fact of her sitting there with a grand piano amid all this dry ice

singing this kind of um ostensibly dramatic and important sounding song but when you look at it closely it is just nothing and um i you know after watching this episode i you know just i went away went for a walk and thought about it and i i started finding myself getting quite cross about it you know 23 years remove like how dare how dare this be a hit record how dare it absolutely that's my thought i've just i i found um i found the review i wrote and um oh wow if i could just see seeing us seeing us we're talking about melody maker this will be one of the reviews that pricey doubtless way through so you're blaming him i do quote her no i'm not blaming him at all um i i am i do quote that quote i quote her her interview actually throughout

and from this quote i'll just read the last paragraph of the review um i quote her this album is about finding my internal fire and then i say this well i went on a tia maria and cronenberg bender at the godiva balty house last night and my internal fire fell out of my ass this morning and it's a damn sight more and it's a damn sight more profound than this grotesquery this kooky mugging this arrogant self-absorption, this monstrous solipsism, this insistence on individual integrity, music as detergent therapy. Tory is the middle-class, bored, lazy retreat from political responsibility and urgency

into the dead end of introspection so characteristic of the, quote marks, American artist. So that was my review of her album. And I think I'd still stand by that really it's very self-absorbed yeah dull music and you didn't go on about being ginger at that point so that's that's fine that's earlier on in that yeah yeah all right so yeah it just seems to be seems to be a bit of a weird one for this to be on top of the post doesn't it i don't know why it got to be a hit presumably radio play still mean, it's still really important.

Who the fuck is buying this shit? Fucking mongy girls. I mean, even Cornflake Girl had a bit of something about it and I suppose at least there was a certain novelty to it at that point. But then she brings out this

which has got less of a tune, less of a reason to exist. Yeah, fuck it. And the charts were absolutely awash with American female singers like this wasn't it like Edie Brickell

and Lisa Loeb well of course I think we're only a little while away from the absolute nadir of this which is Alanis Morissette I think she's yet to appear at this point but yeah this is the precursor this is the gateway drug for that horror

so the following week I don't, the following week... Oh, I don't care. The following... So... So the following week, Pretty Good Year dropped 22 places. 22 places! Fuck's sake!

That's not enough. It's not enough. Just drop more. That is ridiculous. I mean, what has happened to Top of the Pops' ability to ram a song of the arse of the charts? Well, with the charts meaning less and less, Top of the Pops means less and less, you know, so it just becomes a music highlight show.

And that's why, you know, at the end of Bjork's performance that has just been on before Tory, there's no ending to it. It just splish and then into the next bit. There been on before Tory there's no ending to it it just splish and then into the next bit there's no kind of drawing of an end to it or a start of another thing it's just crushed together because it's just you know it's just trying to pack it all

in yeah because you read all these you know articles about Top of the Pops and they go oh yes you know if you got on Top of the Pops you were made and by this point no it's just I mean probably after seeing this performance on Top of the pops, you were made. And by this point, no. It's just... I mean, probably after seeing this performance on top of the pops, people were taking their fucking singles back

and wanted a refund. The follow-up, Past the Mission, only got to number 31 in June of this year, and she spent the next few years scraping the top 20 before a remix of Professional Widow got to number one in January of 1997. Yeah, whatever. Good for her. Pretty good.

Pretty good. She's good. She's very good. As you can see, my mum was very excited because we have now got the preview of Madonna's new video and it's called I'll Remember I Forgot this we are told is the highlight of the show

an exclusive performance of the new video by Madonna called I'll Remember. We've already covered Madonna in Child Music number 2 and number 7. So let's just cover the 90s side of Madonna. She's already had 12 top 10 singles in the 90s, including the number 1 with Vogue. And even two top 5 hits with the re-release of Crazy For You and Holiday in 1991. What the fuck was going on in 1991 that people wanted Old Madonna?

This is the follow-up to Rain, which got to number seven in July of 1993 and has been recorded for the Joe Petsche movie with honours and it's not been released yet. And yes, this is a premiere. Not a world premiere, but a British premiere apparently. And yes, this is a premiere. Not a world premiere, but a British premiere, apparently. And the video consists of... Well, Simon, tell us.

It consists of Madonna with short black hair and lots of clips of a film that I've never fucking heard of until we did this episode. Have you heard of it? No. With honours, without you. Yeah, no, fucking no. I looked up the plot and it

sounds like the most sentimental bollocks ever um comedy drama about you know role reversal about a a rich student swapping places with a homeless guy bloody blah um right and and yeah here we have the ironically named i'll remember, because I don't remember it. And even having heard it once, I'll never remember it again. It's fucking nothing to... Right, I hate Madonna. I despise Madonna for so many reasons, but I'll just rattle through some of them. Pioneer of celebratorial,

that is the editorial interference of celebrities into the printed word. You know, she would demand copy approval and change things before articles went out. Pioneer of super expensive gig tickets. She was, as far as I'm aware, the first pop artist to break the £100 barrier for tickets in the UK. Shooter of grouse. Wearer of dead chinchillas. I once saw her perform wearing a coat made of 40 chinchillas Espouser of

She's like Mr Burns with tits Espouser of Reaganite Thatcherite values in Material Girl And I don't care if anyone tells me it's ironic Yeah, I could probably come up with 8 Madonna songs I like But she's a fucking awful human being just a dreadful woman and this song is completely boring where's where where is madonna in 1994 because she's gone through this this sex thing with uh you know with lenny kravitz and uh all that kind of shit and she's she's ripped off gay people in inogue. I mean, where does she stand now in 1994?

Well, now she's kind of trying to behave herself a little bit and do a really, really dull song for a film that, like Pricey says, none of us have seen. She is, for all the reasons that Pricey listed, the pop star I find it least easy to like at all. Like I've said before i think on chart music she is the musical equivalent of thatcher in that we're kind of asked to basically admire the ambition no matter what she does just admire the ambition and the drive and i fucking hate that um the

lyrics are kind of objectionable to this song for a start off but the thing i thought mainly objected with this video in particular is the i for me the best sort of video soundtrack from a film um tie-in was luther van dros give me the reason because he's totally intrusive into the film which i think is ruthless creatures ruthless people rather um he he invades the kind of film in a sense and walks in on stills and stuff like that with Madonna watching it politely as if she's soundtracking the actual film and really thinking about it that kind of wound me up

so yeah a pass as ever with Madonna to be honest with you she's glammed herself up a bit for a day in the studio hasn't she which I'm sure she doesn't do in real life what you say now that people put makeup on to be in videos and I'm not quite sure I follow your point well no because she's supposed to be in the studio recording this thing and she's looking at it and she's soundtracking it's like no madonna you don't

fucking dress like that when you're in the studio i bet all right i bet you i bet you've got your fucking dressing gown on and a fag on and oh i just felt lied to, Simon. The thing is, you know, take that kind of build it up before it comes on, like it's a big moment, a new Madonna video, and I'm sure at this point she was totally irrelevant. Yeah, I'm sure Tate that really gave a fuck. Yeah, I don't think anyone really cared about what Madonna did. Although apparently still having top ten hits,

which is just bizarre. Oh, yeah, ridiculous. She seems about as far from the zeitgeist in 94 as maybe she's ever been. But still having top teners. Weird. This was also up for the same Oscar that Bruce Springsteen

won. And Elton John's song from The Lion King, I think, or was it from... It was second. Madonna's song came King, I think, was second. Madonna's song came third, I think, in the vote. But yeah, they were all nominated, but Bruce won it. Rightfully so, I guess. Yeah.

So two weeks later, I'll Remember was the highest new entry at number 10 and then moved up to number seven, its highest position. The follow-up, Secret, got a number five in October of this year, and the follow-up to that, Take a Bow, only got to number 16,

breaking Madonna's streak of 36 top 10 singles since Like a Virgin in late 1984. Fucking hell, that's astounding. Particularly if I was on Pointless and the question was name a madonna song from the 90s i'd be fucked rain and secret this one i'm talking about top 10 hits never heard of him yeah but somebody's buying that stuff she must have just had a strong enough fan base for just the fan base to buy it and it get to get in the charts i guess big enough yeah like

with michael jackson i bet there's loads of 90's Michael Jackson songs you've never heard or sort of, you know, that familiar with because he kept on having it but most of us don't know those songs because, you know, they're not that good I'll remember Okay

this next song is definitely worth a listen unfortunately it's just outside the top 40 at the moment but it's a great song by a great guy Rocheford, Only To Be With You Dit is een mooie liedje, maar het is een mooie liedje van een goede man. Rocheford, Only To Be With You. MUZIEK MUZIEK MUZIEK Right down to the bone, I was a rolling stone Just wanna be free Performed in 1987 in London, Roachford took their name from their singer, Andrew Roachford.

Their debut single, Cuddly Toy, got to number 61 in July of 1988, but when it was re-released six months later, it got to number four. This is the follow-up to Get Ready, which got to number 22 in May of 1991, and has just entered the charts at number 41. Now, the only thing I can add to the conversation about Rocheford, and I'm getting it in now so I can just, I don't know, just sit back and have a fag or something, is that I actually saw Rocheford in Rock City in 1988, and the only thing I can remember about it was my mate being trapped behind

some really fat lad who kept jumping up and down so he was just basically frotting him throughout the whole gig and he shouted cuddly toy cuddly toy over and over again for an hour. Like Homer Simpson when he sees Batman Turner Overdrive

he's going play you ain't seen nothing yet play you ain't seen nothing yet no Play, you ain't seen nothing yet. And, no, no, no, no new crap. No new crap. And I was just stood there just laughing. I thought it was very entertaining. So, has anybody else got something constructive to say about this performance?

First of all, what do we all know about Rocheford? What's the one thing everyone knows about Rocheford? That he shat himself on stage. Yes, he shat himself on stage. We can't not talk about that, right no and and and the proof of this is that there's a website uh called roachford shat himself on stage.blogspot.co.uk so that's all you need to know um yeah apparently he shat himself on stage no maybe we need to know a bit more simon do explain well i mean it might be a myth,

but why let the truth get in the way of a great story? So, yeah, supposedly Rocheford shat himself on stage while wearing light-coloured or white trousers. But he's not the only one. I've looked into this. Ed Sheeran's done it. Lily Allen. Lily Allen's done it.

And, of course, Fergie out of Black Eyed Peas pissed herself on stage yes but Rocheford was the pioneer of shitting himself on stage I think well him and Gigi Allen yeah yeah yeah you beat me to it but

by the way do you notice this is what they ought to do Rocheford should have just rolled about in it and said look this is my new direction do you know the audience should have said this is our new direction getting the fuck away from you you dirty bastard

he could have smeared it all over himself and he'd look like the slits on the cover of their first album or something it would have been amazing but do you notice in the intro to this that Robbie has to roll his eyes and mug behind Mark's back because

he cannot abide somebody else being the centre of attention that's something I really noticed about that little intro there he's starting to get on my tits by this stage during this song everyone in the audience is doing that inane clap clap clap thing again which is fucking do my head in

um the the song it's it's it's nothing isn't it the what what cracks me up though is uh i looked at the lyrics i thought there's got to be something to this got to be something to take away from this song and the opening lines are i used to live my life just fast and free and do as i feel right down to the bone i was a rolling stone oh really? Roachford? and then I shat myself the greatest I mean apart from the story of him shitting himself which you know is worth Roachford existing

just for that, the other thing of course is the opening sequence of Alpha Papa, the Alan Partridge film, we've all seen that right? where he's driving to work and playing cuddly toy in his car and really committing to it really going for it so just just for that scene and for the shit in himself it's worth roach would exist in but fucking hell this song it's just you know um an empty car pulled up and

this song got out oh well it's not like pricey said it's an utterly mediocre record and and by 94 that i i was surprised to see this um like i was surprised to see alice de moyer but it just proves out of my place tricks i was more shocked to see uh roachford on this top of the pops than there was alice de moyer to be honest yeah but in both cases i thought this is the stuff weren't we past this stuff you know was this still going on roach was such an early 90s thing a really really early 90s thing, late 80s thing. But these people still haven't shifted. You know, when you look at the charts, the people that Pricey was talking about earlier,

like Carter and Sensor, they've been around for a few years by then. So things took, you know, a while to shift. They didn't disappear so quickly. Oddly enough, I probably did exactly the same Google search that you guys did, looking for who else had shat themselves on stage. But all I found was a headline that really stuck with me for some reason.

And this has nothing to do with pot people who shat themselves on stage. It's just the first thing that came up for some reason. Tomatoes pictured growing in human excrement flushed onto a railway track by train toilet. That's a great band name that's the daily mail that's their headline tomatoes oh well there you go then very strange but yeah an utterly mediocre song we've got quite a few of those in this episode yeah um yes you know giving the light i mean i remember on the i know we're all saying kind of fuck the 90s and

it's pretty horrible i remember having a good time in the 90s, but I don't remember the charts being this bloody awful. No. They really are. Terrible, isn't it? A lot, a lot, a lot of dross. I mean, you're kind of waiting for him to shit himself just to pick the show up a bit, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. So the following week, only to be with you, entered the top 40 at number 22 then stayed at number 22

then moved up to 21 then back down to 22 the follow up lay your love on me got to number 36 in June of this year and his last chart hit was the way I feel in October of 1997 he's still out there doing it though I've seen him in the gig

listings yeah you know wearing an adult nappy. Good on him. I don't know. Yeah. Now here's the band with a definite fetish for cars. Not so long ago they were joyriding in them. Now they're slipping in. It's Roxette slipping in my car.

I tell you what I love, I tell you what I do I've been riding all night just to get close to you Baby, baby, I'm moving so fast Formed in Hallstatt, Sweden in 1986, Roxette, Marie Fredriksson and Pia Gessel were named after a Dr. Feelgood song. They first entered the UK charts in 1987 when The Look got to number seven in May of that year

and recorded two top five singles in the early 90s with It Must Have Been Love and Joyride. This is the first single from the new LP, Crash Boom Bang, and the first rock set chart single since the re-release of It Must Have Been Love, which got to number 10 in October of 1993, and it's a new entry at number 14 there was a lot

of re-releasing of 80s stuff in the early 90s wasn't there yeah ridiculous what was going on why did people suddenly crave 1983 i don't remember that the 80s coming back in the 90s i recall that happening in the early noughties but in the 80s i mean the thing is bands like rock set are kind of 80s ish and hanging around for a long long time and transparently mediocre though they are i do think that they have yes i do think that they've had an influence in a way in a weird way because when listen to this song on this episode of top of the parks and listen to the way the band sound and then go and listen to a record by i don't know the enemy or biffy cliro or somebody like that and that kind of polished rawness that kind of really dull kind of rock

production that's exactly what those bands sound like i'm not they won't admit to listen to rock set of course but there's an uncanny kind of but then again we wouldn't admit to listening to the enemy would we no no we wouldn't but i mean there's an uncanny kind of... But then again, we wouldn't admit to listening to The Enemy, would we? No, no, we wouldn't. But I mean, there's an uncanny similarity of sound. Although actually, I suspect if you went to see Rockset, they'd probably rock harder than any of those bands. But it's another boring song in, you know, with the audience going utterly crazy, even though at the end there's a massive howl from the audience,

even though nobody's actually shouting. So they're not only just sort of taping the the noises the crowd are making they're adding more just to add to the sense of mayhem i guess i wonder sometimes when i watch this episode of top the pops whether they were starting to feel the pinch i guess from the word and they were trying to get some of that kind of you know when the word had balance on and the kind of camera be out in the audience spinning around a little bit more and kind of trying to get some of that kind of you know when the word had balance on and the kind of camera be out in the audience spinning around a little bit more and kind of trying to get it a bit crazy i get i wonder if they were aiming for that kind of thing in the presentation of stuff but um what asking asking roxette to get the fannies out and stuff like that no no but you know just kind of trying to compete with that um a little bit more and make the show make the show

cool in a way that Top of the Pops never really was. Top of the Pops wasn't about being cool necessarily. It was about entertainment. You know what, right? It tells you something about this record that my main notes are I like the backdrop.

The Bridget Riley style off-art backdrop they're performing in front of and I think I used to have a shirt like that. That's all I've got. Their greatest hits album famously was called Don't Bore Us, Get to the Chorus, which is a brilliant title. And they obey that rule in this song, but to no great avail. The lyrics, though, Living in Your Car car it's a bit grim really, it's like being

destitute like Murray in Flight of the Conchords in that one episode. It goes I will undress you, I will caress you yeah, right, try doing that gracefully in a fucking car without getting your suspender belt caught on the gear stick or something.

Was it even a hit by the way? What are the stats on this? We'll find out in a moment, Simon, when we've finished. Oh, you big tease. Just because you know. You know how it goes. So, yeah, I mean, who the fuck is buying this kind of shit? Roxette have always been one of those bands

that I've always thought, who are your fans? Who are your fan base? Oh, yeah, but do you know what? I think it's on a song-by-song basis. I don't think they had fans as such but their songs had fans and i don't think you can you can argue with joyride that's joyride hello you fool i love you that's a fucking chorus right there that's brilliant and they smack you in the face with it straight away don't they like like a lot of great songs yeah yeah okay and i'll put my hands up on that one so the following week

sleeping in my car stayed at number 14 and then slid down the charts i mean that was that's pretty good by this uh this chart standard isn't it you know oh we didn't go up but we didn't go down is there so much movement in the chart because singles aren't selling as much or because they're selling more i don't know it must be it must be that they're not selling as much or because they're selling more. I don't know. It must be. It must be that they're not selling as much. And that's why they're formatting the fuck out of everything to make collectors buy it all. Well, maybe. Maybe what it could be

is that people aren't treating a record shop as a smorgasbord anymore. You know, where you go in, you go, oh, I'll have this, I'll have that. And, oh, yeah, I'll have that as well. Maybe people are just going in to buy that one record. Maybe the kind of, like, fan bases are hardening and there's not a lot of slippage.

I don't know. So it's not that people are anymore going to go and buy a record, necessarily, by a band that they're not already into, to a certain extent. Maybe. You know, the whole thing that you're going to ask at the certain extent it's it may be you know the whole thing that you're going to ask at the end what are we buying this week it's you're just going to be buying what you're already into in a sense and you it's going to be with a collector's mentality

it's not it's going to be with i want everything by this band not necessarily are that pop record really i love that pop record i want to go and buy it I mean that was still happening obviously but I just think that's less to do with it now and it is more about those fan bases it's the whole

you know it's kind of in a similar way to the way that football starts getting treated here that businesses pretend that

they're doing it for the fans and they're providing the fans with more stuff whilst ruthlessly exploiting the hell out of them basically and let's and let's remember that round about this time there are a lot of record shops about but there's going to be loads of them that's going

to have absolutely no connection to the chart return network you can have a record shop that's devoted to hip-hop you've got loads of um kind of like house um record shops you've got you kind of like your jungle and your reggae kind of uh record shops so yeah i mean i think i think music has diversified so much right about this time that that a lot of um people's record buying is it is it shops that have got absolutely nothing to do with chart returns and they won't have a chart return machine so yeah a very very strange time all are precursors to where we're right now really in certain ways but yeah most of my time spent in record shops at that time although of course i loved going in the big whenever i was down in london one of the things i loved doing was going in the big hmv in the big virgin megastore on tottenham court road i used to love doing that but an awful

lot of times also spelt in a lot spent in a lot you know smaller shops and specialist shops by that age anyway i was no like the record shop was no longer a collected place especially in where the whole city went for music there was just there was four or five record shops and yes there was one main one but you kind of you didn't really go in there that often you were more likely to go in and go to a certain section of that record shop rather than look at what was in in the charts if they even bothered having what was in the charts up on the wall in order that was becoming just more of a thing that you saw in supermarkets not record shop yeah and of course you didn't you know

everything was more it was far more diversified you know you saw in supermarkets, not record shops. Yeah, and of course you didn't, you know, everything was far more diversified. You know, you had your pirate stations, and, you know, of course you had, MTV was a thing then. MTV had stopped being a luxury item and was just a staple, you know, thing. Yeah, it didn't really arrive in the UK till the 90s. It wasn't a cultural force in this country until then. You know, in the 80s, sure, maybe in the States,

but I remember doing a piece for Melody Maker where I had to go and... I stayed in a hotel room that had MTV and I subjected myself to 24 hours of MTV to see what it would do to me. It's, yeah, mate me yeah mate yeah yeah yeah I don't know if I've still recovered so the follow up

Crash Boom Bang only got to number 24 in June of this year and they wouldn't have another top 20 hit until 1997 with Wish I Could Fly Roxette would go on to be the first group since Wham to perform in China and were asked to change the lyrics of this single, but they didn't.

Good on them. Last week, Top of the Pops got all the predictions correct for the top 40. And you can see all this week's predictions during tonight's number one. But here is the top ten. At ten, Breathe Again by Toni Braxton. At nine, I like to move it reel to reel featuring the Mad Stuntman. Falling two to eight, we have Enigma

with Return to Innocence. At number seven, it's a pretty good year for Tori Amos. And at empty, number six, Reclinations. At number five, a new entry, Girls and Boys Blur. Sorry, earlier, Bruce Springsteu at number 6, Rupert Nacys. At number 5, a new entry, Girls and Boys, Blur. Saw it earlier, Bruce Springsteen at number 4, Highest Entry. And at number 3, The Sign, Ace of Base. Scrolling 1 to 2 is Mariah Carey, Without You. Here's the band that stands themselves all the way to number 1,

The Fresh from Holland, and they're here in the studio tonight. It's Doop with Doop. Williams and Owens stand in front of a shopping trolley filled with balloons and mock soap powder packets for the number one single Doop by Doop. Formed in 1994 by Ferry Ridderhoff and Peter Goneski, Doop were a techno duo from Holland. And that's all I fucking know about them. This single was last week's highest new entry at number three

and is Not Without You by Mariah Carey off the top of the charts. You know, it's got that in its favour at least. What a fucking awful song that is I don't want the song I'm not I don't want the song I don't like that version of it particularly

I hate the song and I hate that version of it as well it's a double whammy of shitness for me but yeah I do believe that song all the ills of the music world

nowadays can be pinpointed to that song the idea that the idea that you know to be a good singer you've got to all the ills of the music world nowadays can be pinpointed to that song the idea that the idea that you know to be a good singer you've got to do the same kind of um gymnastics as a as a heavy metal guitarist yeah yeah yeah oh yeah hate it hate it hate it you can blame mariah for that a little bit you can blame whitney for that as well oh yeah whitney big time yeah so this song, where do we start? Let's start with the performance because, I mean, it's the nearest

thing we're going to get to a bit of daddisfaction in this episode, isn't it? The two blokes have been wisely pushed off to the side and we've got some kind of flapperage going on, if you know what I mean. That sounds far worse than it actually was.

Lots of girls dressed up as flappers and dancing the Charleston. Yeah, I had a mad old auntie who was an original flapper in the 30s, and when she'd had a few... Wow! Yeah, and when she'd had a few sherries at Christmas, she'd get up and do the Charleston,

and she loved this record, so I do feel quite fond of it just because of that um this record is no fair enough this record is is proof if proof be need be that electro swing was actually invented 10 years earlier at least than is usually claimed people think people think electro swing peaked with we know speak americano by yolanda be cool and d cup or dcp whatever it is in 2010 but this is 94 and this is basically where it starts isn't it and i know a lot of people fucking hate electro swing and i can see why why they do find it so so annoying but there's something about i don't know i i don't even know what drug you'd need to be on in order to fully enjoy it. Maybe it's like Haribo or something.

Or Sunny Delight. But a fucking bathtub gin. Yeah, but if you're in a very specific mood, this record does kind of work. You maybe only need to hear it once or one and a half times in your entire life. But there's something initially appealing about it and that's probably how you get a number one record and then people buy it and then they never fucking play it again

but it doesn't matter because they parted with their money yeah but this has been in charts for two weeks already and it went up that blows my theory out of the water then I mean it's gone where Blur and Tori Amos have failed to go upwards well that's because it's gone where Blur and Tori Amos have failed to go, upwards.

Well, that's because it's a useful record. Although you wouldn't want to sit around listening to it, it's kind of bouncy castle music. I think people bought it for kids' parties and stuff like that. It would drive any kid mental, and it would just make them jump up and down until they're exhausted. And it's a kind of useful record in that respect and if you're a crap dj um you know playing awful awful records this is a record you need um this will start the party off this will get the kids on the dance floor etc um so i i think it was just a useful record that people that people needed

um i only need to sort of hear it once there were better eurobeat things in the chart when you think that reel to reel is in there and two unlimited are in there as well this is more i say they were better dutch records in the chart you know two unlimited let the beat control your body which is for me their best single yeah fantastic song i mean that golden era of um that stuff i remember pricey's cover feature of 2 Unlimited and I remember Eurobeat being one of the things that Melody Maker were always, it was always lovely praising pop knowing that it kind of

wind up the more mouth breathery lad rocky elements of our readership so plus some of those records were the greatest records of their time Mr Vain, Culture Beat and if you remember you know the early night is properly and don't believe the lies that have been said as these anniversaries come by that it was all about nevermind or fucking screamadelica or part life you know it was also about let me be

your fantasy and things like that and and it was all you know it was about records like that for me those are those 90s records that really get me in the heart those kinds of um eurobeat tunes far more than any brit pop um certainly any blur record yeah i had a bit of a night of that recently a bit of a sort of a youtube rabbit hole of just playing stuff like live in joy and yeah live in joy all that yeah grace and all that kind of stuff yeah it's still fantastic music when you're in the right mood

for it yeah whereas Dupre kind of more the Joy of Bunny rednecks end of things to a certain extent

yeah it's more pastiche yes fun performance but yeah I'm sure anyone listening to this now

would think this is Electro Swing 10 years before it's time absolutely Top of the Post for some reason has got a ticker

running underneath the actual performance of their number one single where they predict the new entries for the next week Bon Jovi D-Ream, Sands of Blackness Brand New Heavies Rockset and The Wonderstuff

and what do you know they all came in as new entries what was the fucking point of that? It's almost like the whole thing's a fix. Yeah, that's what it feels like, doesn't it? And we are mere, easily duped pawns, gaping with our mouths dribbling at this spectacle that's put before us like peasants at the Roman Colosseum.

We're duped while listening to dupe. Hey. It's like Top of the Pops is shit in its own nest there, isn't it? We used to be a chart show, but now we're this. And we give you video exclusives. Yeah, I hate that. I mean, it's

been a sort of recurring thing throughout Top of the Pops history that they'll have records on there that aren't in the charts. And I've never felt right about it. In whatever format that that may be i always think you should earn your place on the show not not just sort of fluke your way into it by either being in reception as they say or by just dint of being a massive megastar so dupe would stay at number one for two more weeks before being usurped by everything changes

by take that the follow-up, Huckleberry Jam, only got to number 88 in March of 1995 and then they rebranded as Hocus Pocus. They were never heard of again in the UK. Bye. Okay, that's just about it for this week. Tune in next week when Sam Romeo is live in the studio. Plus, we've got some celebrity friends doing an exclusive on next week's show.

Who's that then, mate? Us. Oh, yeah. It's Doreen and Jared. Thank you very much. See you. Bye-bye. So, what's on TV afterwards?

Well, BBC One is showing EastEnders with Grant and Phil Mitchell throwing their weight around on Tricky Dick. David Attenborough follows some gazelles about in Wildlife on One. There's an episode of the sitcom Nelson's Column, which was the happy shop of hot metal. And then Crime Watch and Question Time. BBC Two is running Life With Fred about the childhood of Fred Dibner Jeremy Clarkson is arsing around in a Fiat Punto in top gear

the Dawn French sitcom Murder Most Horrid is on and then a documentary about South Africa preparing for its first democratic elections ITV is screening an episode of The Bill followed by a repeat of the first ever episode of Minder, a documentary about commandos, and goes right through the night with heavy metal show Noisy Mothers, Prisoner Cell Block H, Get Stuffed, and Job Finder, while Channel 4 has The Royal Collection, The Great Outdoors, a Chinese drama series called Beyond the Clouds, The Rector's Wife, Vickers and Sex Talk.

So, my dears, what are we talking about in the office tomorrow? I'm probably not talking about Top of the Pops tomorrow in the office. Oh, playground, that's the thing. It had lost all import by then. And it was only occasionally threatening to be interesting in kind of moments of controversy and the thing is you know that list of tv programs that you read out normally when you do that of course on the other chart music things it's it's a thing of wonder hearing what else was on but

listening to that list of programs it was like well that could be on tomorrow night you know i mean it there's a continue there is a continuum from this time, from the 90s to now. I don't remember Noisy Mothers. Do you remember Noisy? Was it Noisy with a Z and Mothers, M-U-T-H-A-S, by any chance? No. I remember Noisy Mothers. It was just a bloke on his sofa,

and occasionally bands being interviewed and occasionally playing live. Oh, right. Like Rothschild and whatnot. I don't even think it was bands that big. It was like a local thing, almost, Noisy Mothers. But, yeah, same time slot

as Hitman and Herb as I recall. But, I mean, we're already now into the period where telly doesn't go off at midnight and telly, you know,

it doesn't start up at five o'clock in the afternoon or four o'clock in the afternoon or whatever. We're sort of near to where we're at now. i know it's a long time ago but but we're sort of near to where we are we are now and where we are now is we don't have a weekly pop music

show about the charts um on telly because it doesn't matter to enough people and i think that has already started here if you're literally asking what were we talking about in the office and going back to the start of the chat when we're talking about Melody Maker, yeah, I think if I'd happened to catch Blur on Top of the Pops, we'd all be saying that in a very kind of cold, calculating business way. Ah, right, Blur on Top of the Pops last night, you see that? They're number five. Okay, we should probably get them on the cover next week.

Have we got an interview with them? No? Okay, well, let's cobble something together. Because they're obviously making their move. Blur are obviously on the ascendant. That's what we'd be doing. There wouldn't be anything mind-blowing. There'd be nothing like, oh, my God, did you see that? It would just be like, okay, I can see that the pieces on the board are shifting

and Blur are making their move. Sorry, I'm trying to think, were there any exciting 90s Top of the Pops moments that have really stuck in my mind? And I can't really think of many. I remember Pops' performances massively, but perhaps that's just because I was fond of that band.

I don't remember anything major other than that for the rest of the 90s. Yeah, I mean, I'd say the Mannix, because, again, I'm fond of that band. But James appearing with his supposedly IRA-style balaclava and all the fire going off and stuff like that. The one we're supposed to talk about, obviously, is Blur vs Oasis, isn't it?

But I wasn't that bothered about that. No, it's concocted. And that was played out more in the tabloids than it was on any pulp shows. Yeah. But that particular episode where it's concocted and that was played out more in the tabloids than it was on any pop shows yeah but that particular episode where it's who's going to be number one and all of that so what are we buying on saturday uh well i'm not buying anything off top of the pops no you know it's such a brilliant yeah it's kind of we're deflating watching this episode because 94 was was a fantastic year for music it was it was a fucking brilliant year for music it was a great great year for music and what i'd be

buying i don't know subpulchra royal trucks um mob deep i don't know i'll be buying all kinds of different things at the weekend there's shit loads of amazing music in 1994 um this episode gives not even a glimpse of any of it yeah i completely agree i think 1994 was probably the peak quality wise of 90s music um if you just uh look at the uh well for example the end of year melody maker that neil was talking about you would just see um dozens of albums that are just absolute classics um but from this episode well if you're going to be pedantic and literal about it i wouldn't buy anything because i was getting all my records sent to me for free because i was a disgusting privileged music journalist but um if there was one that

i'd be hoping to get in the post it would be girls and boys by blur because um as annoying as they may have become and whatever else you want to say about them, I still think Girls and Boys is a great pop single. I mean, I look at this episode, and I really wasn't looking forward to doing a 90s one, and I was right not to, because I'm looking at this and thinking, oh, fucking hell, no wonder Northern Uproar had to happen. The thing about this episode,

it's a lot slicker, it's a lot more professional, people are better dressed, and it's boring as fuck. Yeah. No sense of event, even though they're trying to create it by saying, oh, we've got, you know,

exclusive of this and exclusive of that. Well, it's like, you're top of the pops, you should be, you know. Everything you do should be a fucking exclusive. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure we're going to do the 90s again but i fucking hope we get a better one than this one this is the least this is the least enjoyable chart music i've done so what does this episode tell us about 1994 well for me i just get this sense of lots of kind of hustle and bustle lots of the kind of outward signifiers of excitingness and action but nothing underneath to justify it and whether that's purely uh you know whether that's purely uh this episode or it says something about the wider culture i don't know um i think you could extrapolate and say that we needed blah, blah,

whether it's Britpop, we needed something to happen. And I think, you know, to say we needed Britpop to happen would be limiting because Britpop became quite a limited movement. But we certainly needed more acts like Bjork and like Blur um to to break through and to yeah boot out the Roachfords and Madonnas and from from the show and and from the charts we needed people like Tricky and Underworld and um you know so you know basically not not not purely guitar bands we we needed just acts who were in any way trying to push things forward to actually get get the their deserved recognition and actually sell enough records to break the top 40 and before long that did start

to happen i think there's a there's a combination in this episode of like you say the slickness but also like you say the neediness of top of the pops it's kind of so pleased that we've got this exclusive video from a big star i mean it and it should be an honor to be on top of the pops it's kind of so pleased that we've got this exclusive video from a big star and it and it should be an honor to be on top of the pops and bands should act like it's an honor and and put on a show and i just don't really get enough of this from this episode apart from bjork actually um if all of the artists on this had songs as good as that and a presence as good as that maybe i'll be thinking completely differently but with this episode i'm thinking that this is the start of just yeah the takeover of pr and the kind of takeover of i don't know an over control an over sort of heavily heavy-handed control of things

just squeezing all the joy out of it it's functional it's slick but it's got a precious little pleasure to it there's no pleasure to it and too many shit songs do you know what really struck me is that over the closing credits we've got D Ream doing not Things Can Only Get Better

but the other song that no one remembers and it's over a montage of the show as a whole because of the show because because the show has been so fucking forgettable that they've got to rattle through this montage just to remind you what the fuck has been on true isn't it you know next time we slag off dave lee travis i'm gonna have to think very hard no i'm not actually i'm lying about that one no partly it's perhaps to do with the producers becoming TV producers and nothing really

to do with music choose the good fucking records there are round about 5 or 6 good records in this chart that would have made for a great show but it's so fucking dull because of people like Tory Amos and people like fucking Roachford

it's an aggravating episode and consequently it does remind me of the 90s. I spent most of the 90s scowling. I'm sorry, Neil. And I am again. It has left me in exactly the same way. But I'm, you know, like I say at the weekend, I wouldn't be buying fucking anything on this episode.

Yeah, and the other thing, of course, is that everyone's cool, but the cool people are always the most boring people and that's all i gotta say about that that's a great final word the cool people are always the most boring people cut so pop crazy young says that is the end of this episode of chart music all that remains for me is to um give the usual promotional bullshit out. So that is www.chart.com.uk. You can find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com.com. Or you can join us on Twitter at ChartMusicTOTP.

Thank you very much for your time, Simon Price. You're welcome. A pleasure talking to you, Neil Kulkarni. Thanks, Al. My name's Al Needham. I have not shit. You're welcome. A pleasure talking to you, Neil Kulkarni. Thanks, Al. My name's Al Needham. I have not shit myself on stage, ever. Chart music. Give it a name, brothers and sisters, Simon Rhodes, putting the sound into your head.

Tonight Indie Club brings you Colon, the most talked about new act since Kurt Cobain did some interior decorating with a gun and his brain. Already the corporate whores of the new sick biz are on their backs with their legs wide open voting for Colon to show them just how dangerous music can be. Like a one-hand grenade going off in a convent, no one's heard anything like this before. But by Christ, it's loud and it's dangerous. See them tonight at the Dublin Castle. £3.50 on the door or £3 concessions, which is the only concession Colon will ever make because they would rather die than compromise. Everything you know is wrong because Colon are here.

Give it up for Colon with Kick In The Sun. MUSIC PLAYS See, I'm falling in love with you. I hope you understand. I just want to hold your hand. The world is such a big, big place. And you make it a little bigger. You've got such a nice face. And you've also got a nice figure. And you've also got a nice figure.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.