Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #14: September 24th 1987 - A Grey and Pink-Flecked Gelled-Up Nightmare

Episode Date: November 20, 2017

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: how bad would your war have to get before you start thinking of calling up Johnny Hates Jazz? This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, sees the Chart Music gang trapped on the wrong side of Eightiestown, surrounded by a faceless herd of blandos in shitty suits with the sleeves rolled up, goaded into action by a wizened Don mincing about on top of a balcony. Bottom line: this episode of TOTP is absolute cat shit. Because it’s co-presented by Mike Smith, who refused to have anything to do with Top Of The Pops after he left the show, you can rest assured that The BBC Won’t Show This when they get round to 1987 on their repeat run. And you’re not missing much, to be honest. Fucking Madonna Again gets all butch on a moving walkway in Turin, ABC turn into one of those bands of the era who want to be ABC in 1982, Jan Hammer looks extremely pleased with his brand new keytar, Mick Jagger holds children to ransom in an attempt to get his rubbish new single into the Top 40, and what the fuck is Gary Numan doing here?   Al Needham is joined by Taylor Parkes and Sarah Bee for a wince-inducing gaze into the open wound of the late Eighties, veering off on tangents including the CM verdict on Sounds Like Friday Night, how the hair gel of the era made it feel that you had a crusty tissue on your head, being forced to listen to Shakin’ Stevens on the school bus every day, discovering your def new high-tops are actually Bay City Rollers trainers, and more information on selling dirty knickers than anyone really needs. A colossal amount of swearing in this episode. Obviously. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 for the small coffee, all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. What do you like to listen to? Um... Chart music.

Chart music. chart music chart music hey up you pop craze 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 are not me. The first is your friend and mine, and I mean that most sincerely, Taylor Parks. Hey up, Taylor, how are you? Yeah, I'm alright. I've just had a mild case of pneumonia.

Lovely. Yeah, I'm better now, except that my chest is still rogered. So if I speak even more slowly than usual, it's because I can't breathe. Also, if my voice seesaws between sounding like Isaac Hayes and sounding like Enoch Powell in his later years,

sort of high and tremulous and breathless. That's why it's because I can't fucking breathe. But apart from that, I'm just fantastic. Lovely. My second guest was Dan with Chalk Music from day one, Sarah B. Hey up, Sarah. Welcome back to the Chalk Music settee. Hello, Sarah.

How are we? Not not too bad I've been employed as a job of work today making making some words sound better for amazing luxury holidays that I'll never go on yeah I know I've done a bit of that it's uh it's yeah interesting isn't it are the other half live yeah Yeah, it really is. It's proper 1% stuff. Lovely. So what else have you been up to? Well, I did a Kickstarter recently,

which involved just bothering all my mates for a solid month, going, go on, give us money, go on, give us money. And I felt so bad, but it worked. It worked. So that means that there's going to be a book out in March, which is a satirical picture book about Brexit, which I think we can all agree that is desperately needed. We can't go any further without making mention

of Sounds Like Friday Night, the BBC's newish music show, which was originally billed as the new top of the pops. Now, there's been three episodes now, and I asked, some might say forced, your two to have a look at it, seeing as we're so down with the youth them. Taylor, why don't you start us off? Yeah, I only skim-watched the most recent one as, like I said,

I did have pneumonia, and I didn't want to waste my few available breaths screaming abuse at someone whose name I'm not 100% sure of. The best thing you can say about it is that it represents the sort of the tatty end of youth pop culture about as well as Top of the Pops did. But we're in 2017, so, you know, what that actually means is sort of these ugly tattoo sleeves

and vile haystack beards and posh lads with these little wazzy shirt collars done right up to the top like a spoilt three-year-old. Yeah. I mean, if this is a reflection on youth culture today, then fuck being young. What a bag of wank it is. It's the commercial light entertainment end of it, isn't it?

You know what I mean? Yeah. It's exactly the same, except that the presentation is stiffer and more old-fashioned than it was in the 70s and 80s top of the pops. Half an hour and four songs. I mean, that's not so bad, considering that the four songs are usually cat shit.

But, I mean, fucking hell, surely you can do a bit more with a music show in 2017 than this. Sarah, you're younger than us. You understand that for kids. I'm not much younger, but still, I was kind of uh yeah i didn't i didn't really think much for either way i mean now i'm clearly i'm not the target audience any

more than than you are but um you know i thought oh look it's um it's i'm it kind of looked a bit more expensive than i expected i mean i know they just kind of got like a warehouse and put some lights in it but i i kind of i did get a bit of a a kind of a ping of nostalgia just from like the camera swoops, you know, just this kind of, we're so excited. I mean, just that, I know that it's always false, but just the sort of,

it's a really good idea of them to anchor it to a night like this. Cause I thought, oh, it's such a weak title. But it's like I said before, you know, Thursday night, I still get a bit of a, I still have a bit of a frisson about it because it was Top of the Pops night.

So it's a really nice idea to go, it's Friday night and it's this, you it's a really nice idea to go it's friday night and it's this you know yeah but i mean i yeah it's it's um it's pretty weak source but um the thing the thing is that i noticed as well is that the top of the pops was always like fantastically awkward like the audience always looks so awkward and now it's like this is an audience of people who are of of youngins who are totally comfortable with being filmed being looked at whatever and just seemed there was a particular that you know and they they were all so excited and it seemed sort of quite natural i was quite surprised i was like they're all going to be

really cynical they're all going to be standing around going oh but actually it was like you know they they kind of you know there was some sort of i mean studios are always weird you know they're always really weird but there was some sort of an atmosphere about it. It's like if I was 16, I'd probably be all over it, but I'm not, and I'm quite glad of it. I think if I was 16, I'd hate it as much as I hated its equivalent when I was 16. Oh, my God.

I wonder what you were like when you were 16. Sorry, I just had this horrible thought. 16-year-old Taylor. We'll find out as this episode progresses. you were like when you were 16 sorry i just had like this horrible thought like 16 year old taylor we'll find out as this episode progresses i mean it's i mean the one thing i got out of it as i finally learned out who charlie pooth is and uh i discovered he's a cunt the best thing was when they the one i saw uh the of, the one before last, they had Dizzy Rascal on it. Oh, he did a swear. Yeah, but they said to your new album,

it seems like a return to form. No, you don't say that to somebody's face. You might write that in a review, but if you say that to someone's face, what you're saying is, I thought your last album was shit and so did everyone else. Yeah.

That's true, actually. There was the other thing about this programme, which is they break up the music, of course, which you have to, because, hey, music, right, boring. So they go out in the streets and they do little bits and skits, which I actually found quite charming, trying to get people to sing along with them in a lift. You know, what's his name?

Put on a stupid moustache, try to get some people to sing along in a lift in a shopping centre. And it was... I thought that was great when it was on That's Life. You know, maybe you could get someone to be Cyril Fletcher and read out fucking typos in the NME for this week or something like that.

He would be a great addition. We all know that at this point, I think we can agree that humanity is out of ideas, never mind, you know, the culture. So it's like like you tell what you can but also they flagrantly stole a bit from jimmy kimmel where uh they went around and although it still it worked you know they went around and made up genres at people and went what do you think about this genre then and you know filmed people bluffing and blagging it and going yeah no i think slime is is going to be the sound of 2018 definitely definitely 100 it's like twat so that was quite that i was in i was impressed by the

fact that that they put um liam pain out of one direction who looks he looks like a cute a cardo delivery boy right like if you brought your shopping right you go oh wow if i was gay but the thing is they put him in a wig and a tash people still knew who he was that's how famous he is i'm looking at this thinking what i didn't even recognize him when he didn't have it on his name written on his forehead i still won't know who he was uh but what i wasn't impressed by is when they're trying to do little comedy bits right they did it that was shit wasn't it they got um what's the name demi lovato into a thing this week and they were trying to do some sort of under rehearsed comedy bit so he was just sort of looking like what what i don't yeah what you're doing it's it and it's this idea which has been going around for about 10 years now,

that people who aren't comedy writers can write comedy or just come up with funny ideas. It's all right. You don't have to get... It's just another manifestation of this increasing contempt for writers, whether it's gag writers or journalists or novelists. Writing is valued less than ever before at a time when there are more words

being generated and consumed every day than at any point in history. And almost all of them are bad because writing, professional writing, has become, it's no longer a profession, it's an additional task for people who already have other jobs and think that they're funny or think that it doesn't matter.

And, you know, for every stupid new made-up word that enters the language, ten good words effectively disappear because it's contracting as a result of being left entirely in the hands of people who aren't writers. And that's what gets my back up. Hey, ho, eh? Never mind. Yeah, never mind. I've had a lot of time to think over the last couple of weeks

in my sick bed. Not all of it positive. No, fancy that, eh? I don't need some twat whose name I don't know doing something unamusing you know what I mean that's quite right yes and if they

and if they want to do these skits and everything well just send some fucking runner out with a with a bloody camera phone and do it

and and shut the fuck up about it yeah or hire a fucking comedian yeah what's Mark me words doing nowadays? He could do a job on this.

What about Dapper Laughs? I miss that guy. That was a more innocent time, wasn't it? He's a card, isn't he? But I mean, the thing is, by looking at it, I think, alright, I would actually like a show where you could see nine or ten or twelve

examples of what's in the charts at the minute. Even if I could just sit there with my nephew and just go, well, this is shit, this is shit, look at him, what a twat. You can still do that nowadays. I mean, the thing, if you're going to do a chart show, you could do it miles better than Top of the Pops ever could by simply having it when the charts come out.

And you could actually have the chart results live on this TV show. I mean, Christ, you wouldn't have to have bands lined up. You wouldn't have to worry about booking or anything like that. Just stick the video on. Or because you know throughout the week what the sales are like, apparently you can fucking see them by the minute, there's got to be an obvious, oh, Well, that's obviously going to be number one. Let's get them in.

I think, is it that difficult? Maybe we should do this. Maybe we should do this. This should be our next thing. Can we do like a public access telly thing? Yeah. Yeah,

we should. I don't know. I don't know if we're, I don't know if we're posh enough to be trusted with this. No, that's, that's the, that's the problem,

isn't it? Yeah. I don't know. I can, I can, i can like posh up but you know not when uh yeah i can't i can't really sustain it for very long and i just start saying bollocks you know yeah and i can't really do a beard my beard's a shit and i'm not having any tattoos so i know we've got we had it we tried though didn't we i'm now old enough that if i grew a beard um i'd look like ken baits so no you know we've got the title though um this is shit look at him what a twat yes i would watch that i would i would tivo that and we won't probably won't talk about this ever again, but I just want it put on the record

that I would sooner watch my dad shitting into a glass bucket in the market square than another episode of Sounds Like Friday Night. What, again? Again. Right then, let's go back to the fucking old school, me ducks. This episode takes us all the way back to September the 24th, 1987. Oh, and there's some proper music here, isn't there, Taylor?

Yeah, well, you know. It's universally known to most of us as chart music, as the era of bad 80s and a period of time that we pretty much avoided whenever we can taylor am i right in thinking that you're of the opinion that 1987 is is even worse than 1975 yeah you said to me uh didn't i once say it was the absolute low point of chart music and i say no it's the absolute low point of Western civilisation. Oh, sorry about that. I just wanted to sell it. Yeah, get it right.

I mean, we're talking about the period that led to me becoming so alienated that I blew out school, never went to university, just ended up working for the council and taking acid, and it got me where I am today. So what were you doing for the council and taking acid. And it got me where I am today. So what were you doing for the council in 1987? And it wasn't the style council, was it? Alas, no. I worked for the courts and I worked for the DHSS, as was.

Which was beautiful because it meant that when I went for a Dole interview after that, they said, you have to sign a form saying how much you're prepared to work for. Like, what's the minimum that you would accept as a wage? And I said, well, what can I put, you know, 50 grand a year? What's the and they said, well, what's the lowest wage you've ever worked for? And I said, 75 quid a week. And they sort of went, oh, Christ, where did you get that? I said, here, upstairs. That's what the people working one grade below you are earning.

So that showed him. Yes. Oh. Yeah, where is he now? Probably not a three-bedroom house and two cars. But is he up there? Probably, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, fuck him. Music-wise, though, Taylor, let's make it all about the music, baby. This is the low point of pop cultural history from the Second World War right up to the moment where the internet blasted all these considerations into oblivion. This is the absolute nadir. The fucking 90s

was a step up from this which is really saying something. This is a grey and pink flecked gelled up nightmare of fucking vacuous consumer junk and an aesthetic where

cocaine and turbo capitalism were the only influences and everything else was opposed and this is where i spent what should have been the best years of my youth this is why i'm bitter i was 15 in 1987 right uh the last years of the 80s uh with you know thatcher rampant and everything turned into dust. Those are my late teenage years. And this was the... Well, no, this wasn't the soundtrack, because outside of the charts, it was a sort of a last hurrah for rock,

and hip-hop was really good. And I was a couple of years too young for Acid House, but I knew it was happening. But, yeah, the charts, and as a result, mainstream youth culture in this period it doesn't get any lower than this i mean we're dumbing it already before we're examining the evidence but let's not fuck about why why was chart music so fucking awful in 1987 i'm gonna suggest that um it's uh i mean i i can't i can't completely agree with you because you know i was

nine years old you've got to forgive me for, you know, I was nine years old. You've got to forgive me for this. You know, everything was still really exciting to me at this point. And, you know, stuff. This is your end point, isn't it, Sarah? Well, you know, I was I was kind of aware of, you know, it's I was I was aware of things for, you know, quite a few years before this. But this is kind of when when you start to sort of really form your taste and stuff. So, you know, I'm unlucky me. I mean mean i always thought i was born under a bad sign anyway because um the uh the number one when i was born was match stalk men and match stalk cats and dogs oh oh god i thought it was uptown top ranking and then i realized i got it wrong and it's like come on like how that's yeah that's like me. I narrowly missed Metal Guru

and instead I got Amazing Grace by the pipes and drums of the Scots Chagoo. I think astrologically that actually makes us twins. Mine was What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. And yeah, it kind of was now I was in it, I think. Yeah, that's fair enough. But yeah, I would posit a theory that at this point a lot of stuff had gone down. I think you know that's fair enough but yeah I would uh I would posit a theory that um at this point a lot of stuff had gone down I think the decade was knackered it was really it

was tired and it's like it had to have a little disco nap before before acid house kicked in you know something was coming something was just around the corner that's absolutely huge and you know maybe this was like the fallow period before before that you know before that happened because you know if you just think of everything that came before it, and it's like it just fell over a little bit. Yeah. But the trouble is that fallow period was my youth. It's like mum and dad got married in late 1962.

And I always think it's like that. If you're just a couple of years out, you miss out on a whole load of experience. Really selfish of them. I mean, you know, what were they thinking? But the worst thing about being that age at that time was the seeming impossibility of all the things that being that age is meant to be about, like rebellion and self-expression. There was nothing to, there was no, nothing to tie a flag to you know like communism had failed hippie libertarianism had failed punk was a joke social democracy was being crushed um and i had moved down south and suddenly i was stuck in this sort of middle class world

where i didn't really fit and i tried to embrace it for a few years and got a bit tweedy, which was a disaster. And really, I was nowhere. I was cut off from the one good thing about being white trash, which is that you can live your life in a natural, direct kind of way, which I no longer could. But I didn't have the comfort and the confidence of being properly middle class so it just ended up with me and my mate drinking black coffee and smoking

millions of filterless fags in turtlenecks in Woolworths Cafe because we didn't know any good ones like it was the 1950s because in a sense it was it really was absolute beginners yeah and that was shit and all wasn't it yes Because in a sense it was. It really was. Absolute beginners. Yeah, and that was shit and all, wasn't it?

Yes. Radio 1 News. So, what was in the news this week? Well, Alan McCoy has been fined £150 for beating somebody up in a disco in East Kilbride. The Court of Appeal in New South Wales has lifted the ban on the Peter Wright book Spycatcher, leading to it being imported into the UK. The inquest into the Hungard Massacre begins. North Korea offers to co-host next year's Summer Olympics, but South Korea tells them to fuck off. The Thatcher government attempts

to outlaw sex education in schools, which treats homosexuality as normal. Joe Biden's dropped out of the Democratic presidential candidate race for nicking speeches off Neil Kinnock, but the big news this week, according to the tabloids,

is that Michael Jackson is planning to build a replica of buckingham palace and has asked the queen if he could have a nose round her gaff to see what's what and where everything goes possibly not true that last one not sure oh it's it's well everything around that time though it was just like any um that you could you could just have a whole museum of stuff you know michael jackson stories that were or were not true. And we'll probably, you know, something we'll never know. On the cover of the NME this week is the motorcycle boy

who was slapped on the cover at the last minute after a feature on censorship was pulled as it featured H.R. Giescher's penis landscape, which was being used as a poster that was inserted into the Dead Kennedys LP, Frank and Christ, and was the subject of an ongoing obscenity trial in America. On the cover of Smash is Wet, Wet, Wet.

The number one LP in the country at the moment is Bad by Michael Jackson. Over in America, the US number one single is I Just Can't Stop Loving You by Michael Jackson. And the number one LP in the USA is the soundtrack to La Bamba oh you Americans when will you ever catch us up you know they're using that now as uh there was a a counter protest to a white supremacist march and they played they played La Bamba at them did they which I don't know there's

something really beautiful about that they were all sort of um having a having a lovely party and these there's this horrible you, this horrible fat Nazi going, yeah, you can party all you like. And they're like, yeah, yeah, we've got La Bamba on, everything's great. Yeah. Oh, if only they put on the gay Cavaleros by Steve Wright afterwards,

that would have fucked with their heads. So what were we doing in September of 1987, me dear? Sarah, you go first. What was I doing? I was at, yeah, yeah well i was still at primary school i was nine and uh yeah god i was eating a lot of jam sandwiches um and yeah um obviously my uh favorite album was um songs about fucking by the big black no actually no to be fair it was probably scum by Napalm Death. No, music-wise, what were you into?

Or are you still in the pony stage of your life, if you had one? That was really patronising, I'm sorry. That was incredibly patronising and sexist, and I demand that you take it back. No, I was into... Well, the thing is that Fuzzbox, who had recently rebranded from We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Going to Use It, they kind of came back as in a sort of pure pop incarnation in 1987 and put out two singles, Pink Sunshine and International Rescue.

And they were basically, they were my Spice Girls, effectively. You were watching Top of the Pops, obviously. Watched Top of the Pops, listened to the charts. That was pretty much it actually i mean that's like what an immense responsibility uh you know that these these two shows had on on my early development did you read smash it yeah i was starting to read smash it yeah yeah because i i still read smash it at this point even though i was a sort of uh 15-year-old miserablist, because it was still really good.

It was the last period when Smash Hits was written by early 80s people with principles before it sort of dissolved into a big ha-ha of camp whimsy, you know, and nothing else. Yeah, I was in the second year of college after dropping out and having years off and all that kind of stuff, and absolutely loving the second year of college uh after dropping out and having years off and all that kind of stuff and absolutely loving the shit out of it uh i got to meet a load of people from outside of my state for the first time and they chucked loads of music at me and i chucked loads of music back at them at the time i was massively into james bryan uh loved sly and the family stone

i was mencle about them and i I was pretty much into Rare Groove before I even knew it was called Rare Groove. It was just music that I liked and I bought from all the second-hand record shops in town. And the only modern music I listened to was hip-hop, which I fucking loved. I'd been into it for about a year. I'd seen Run DMC and the Beastie Boys

a couple of months earlier in Birmingham. And I already had my ticket for public enemy eric b and rachim and our local j at rock city that was that was happening next month so yeah fucking a good time for me and a very good time for music but not in the charts yeah i mean i really thought that that's the thing i'm really good in my life at just kind of missing just catching the very very tail end of a thing when it's good and then just you know because this is exactly what i did with melody maker i turned up in uh mid like midsummer 99 and then christmas 2000 it folded and it's like oh man mate

and of course you know it was already i mean it was it was already complete bollocks by them but you know i kind of hadn't quite uh you know yeah mean, what are you going to do? You know, by the time you get to, you get to write to me, you go, Oh great, this is good. And then it's, it's like a few months in, it's like, yeah, this whole, this, this ship is definitely sinking, but you know, what can, what can you do? I think Taylor actually, actually was there for the last gasp of when it was good. And that's what got me into it you know then by the time i've managed to drag my ass to london it was basically all over but the vomiting yeah i'd gone i'd gone by the time you arrived i only met you socially didn't i but the i felt this way about pop culture that's the thing i felt that all the things that I'd been waiting for since I was 11 or 12

had just evaporated as soon as I'd got to 15, 16. It was like, you know, rebellion was silly, and beauty was a branch of economics, and sex was sexist, and besides it gave you AIDS. Yes. And all this stuff had just gone, and I was just standing there

what am I supposed to do what am I supposed to do and drugs were smack and nothing else yeah I got in the lower six the word got round that I'd smoked a joint

in lunch break or I'd skived off games or something and me and a a mate of mine had had a joint in the back of the playing field and my nickname

for the next six months was Druggie. This is in the sixth form, right? That's the environment that I was in. All the girls used to dress like Tipper Gore. Oh, nice. Pretty much think like Tipper Gore. And all the boys were just sort of wandering around like with nothing. They didn't know what they were supposed to be doing

or who they were supposed to be. Yeah. And the attitude was, you know, if your music that you like, like, you know, what, ha, the Pixies, ha, ha, ha. If it's so good, why isn't it in the charts? Yeah. Because everyone was into, what are they like?

Deacon Blue. Oh, right. Hot House Flowers. Oh, fucking hell. It was that sort of stuff. That sort of like faux Celtic rock, you know. Real music. Yeah, like people doing songs called Dignity and stuff like that.

Yeah, that's what everyone liked. And if I tried to put on, you know, I remember putting on old music in the sixth form, right, in the common room on the tape player. Put on, I think it was Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd, which is like one of the greatest albums ever. No, it was the Velvet Underground and Nico,

that's what it was. And it was just off within two minutes. What the hell is this? Get it off. What is this stupid music? Get it off and put fucking Hot N' Sperm back on. Yeah, yeah, Simply Red.

It's really fun, because I used to get loads of shit for being into hip hop, and it was like, okay, I am the whitest person in Nottingham, and I fucking love this music. You know, finally there's some music that's in the here and now that I fucking love. And, you know, it took me ages to work out how to dress for it, and I eventually went for kind of like a black denim jacket and black jeans,

light run DMC, but more of a very high contrast shaking Stevens. And it took me ages to get a pair of trainers that I liked, but I also could afford. And I somehow managed to find some shop that was selling Adidas basketball boots, canvas basketball boots. And they were white, but they had blue stripes and I wanted black stripes.

But it's like, no, they're 20 quid. I can afford them. And I'm walking around with them and I was moving a load of shit out of my bedroom and I had a load of old annuals. And I looked at this photo of the Bay City Rollers and they're wearing my fucking trainers. Oh, no.

And I got a pair of Bay City Roller trainers. Yeah, but you were wearing them box fresh. That's right, yeah. So what else was on telly this day? Well, BBC One has screened Racing From Ascot, Whiz Bit, Batty Adventures. Sarah, do you know what Batty Adventures is? It sounds like a Shabba Ranks album.

Surely this would have been Outlawed under Section 28. And then there's Beat the Teacher, Thundercats, Newsround, Blue Peter and has just finished screening local news in your area. BBC Two has repeated Finger Mass, the British Professional Darts Championship from Redcar, a documentary about British people pissing off to Spain, Battlestar Galactica, and is currently showing the second and final episode of Starshot,

a clay pigeon shooting tournament featuring Lindsay DePaul that was stopped after the Hungerford massacre. Oh, what a shame. Wow. ITV has put on The Sullivans, That's My Dog with Derek Hobson, Storybook International, Professor Lobster.

Again, another one I don't know. Sarah, Professor Lobster? No, I've got nothing. Sounds like a grime artist. Fucking hell, Sarah, you've wasted your nine-year-oldness not knowing all these TV shows. What are you doing? Reading?

Finger mouse? Got your nose in a book? I love the finger mouse. Yeah, I probably did. I was one of those, yeah. Yeah. Then, Blockbusters, and it's currently screening Emmerdale Farm. Channel 4, on the other hand, has screened the film

Mr Smith Goes to Washington, The Gong Show, a documentary about pigeon fanciers and has just started Channel 4 News. All right then, Pop Craigs youngsters, it's time to get down on the time settee and chuck a send 30 years backwards. You know the drill by now. We may coat down your favourite band or artist,

but we never forget they've been on Top of the Pops more than we have. And now, Gary Davies and Mike Smith with Top of the Pops. The seventh Top of the Pops theme, The Wizard, was composed by Paul Hardcastle, best known for the 1985 number one hit, 19, and was used from April of 1986 to September of 1991. That song got to number 15 in October of 1986. So he's kind of bedded in by now.

So, panel, where does this song stand in the Top of the Pops canon of theme tunes? I don't want to criticise Paul Arcastle after his service in Vietnam, but the music and the title sequence just immediately tells you everything that's wrong with this era. This sort of smeary, wiggly aesthetic. You've got the top of the Pops logo that's now a complete mess, with about 20 different fonts crammed into four short words.

Yeah, oh, it's so awful, isn't it? But that was the style at the time, I believe. It really was, yeah. Wiggly lines, asymmetrical squiggle. Yeah. And then, you know, and you've got, like, Gary Davison's soft fabrics and a thin leather belt and pleated Cheetos. Nothing is sharp.

Nothing is focused. Nothing's pointing in any direction, right? It's just a triumph of a sort of cocaine mind splurge over symmetry and humanity. And that's just what's good about it. Don't get me started. And you can hear it in the sound. There's these amorphous belching fairlight sounds or whatever they are. It's very much a Happy Shopper rocket by Herbie Hancock, isn't it?

But those sounds aren't exciting and they don't evoke anything no it just sounds like expensive machines chattering to each other um sarah this though is must be the pavlov's bell for you it is yeah absolutely it is i just start i start salivating i just can't help myself um but yeah no no, I mean, it's looking at it now and experiencing that now and just going, yeah, this is kind of a squirdly, kind of crumpled cellophane audiovisual mess. Yeah.

And the credits, I mean, they feature saxophones, vinyl and cassettes spinning around. And as Tommy Vance would say, not a guitar in sight. Oh, because, yeah, there's a lovely, the lovely spinny cassette. There's a lovely spinny cassette, which means, you know, music is about to happen. Yeah. It's the international sign language. Well, people are about to tape it.

Yeah. Illegally. Yeah. This episode of Top of the Pops is hosted by Mike Smith and Gary Davis. We've already covered Gary Davis in Sharp Music's number two and number seven. And the only thing to say about him is at the moment, he's not doing anything on Radio 1, but he has appeared on Blankety Blank this year. So it's not been a total waste.

Born in Romford in 1955, Mike Smith attended King Edward VI Grammar School and was the DJ at the Sixth Form Discos. I bet he wouldn't have approved of the Velvet Underground and Nico either, Taylor. I strongly doubt it. After failing to break into the motor racing career his dad wanted for him, he started working at Chelmsford Hospital Radio in the mid-70s and was invited to freelance for the BBC doing interviews on the Radio 1 Roadshow. In 1978 he joined Capital Radio in London and became the Breakfast Show presenter

in 1980 but he returned to Radio 1 in 1982 in the early evening slot. He took over the lunchtime slot a year later and at the time of broadcast he's been the Breakfast Show presenter, lot a year later and at the time of broadcast he's been the breakfast show presenter taking over from mike reed in may of 1986 and was known as lady diana's favorite dj puts over the impression of being a nice enough bloke and i can't you know haven't found any dirt on him or anything but 1987 he's the kingpin of radio one really oh he's just he's just a bloke. The thing is about so many, history is littered with just blokes. It's not even, you know, it's just, yeah, if you're just a bloke,

and this is something that stubbornly endures now, you know, kind of in the form of, like, James Corden or whoever. It's like, just blokes. I have so little to say about him. He's just a bloke. He's had loads of TV experience, of course, because he's been a regular on BBC's Breakfast Time. And he's been Noel Edmonds' henchman in the late, late breakfast show.

Yeah, he was an Edmonds enabler. Very much on the wrong side of history. But no, Sarah's right. He's just another straight with a shit haircut and a big ego without even the basic decency to be a freak or a weirdo or, you know, like his predecessors you know give us something to talk about it's like when the most positive thing you can say about someone is that they didn't fuck kids you know you're not in the presence of greatness right

the only unique thing about mike smith and it's really unpleasant is um the sort of and it's really unpleasant, is the sort of unearned distance that he has from what he does. He's never quite into what he's doing. He seems to have nothing but contempt for pop music. When you listen to him introducing it, he seems to have nothing but contempt for pop music and the people who make it, and clearly considers himself

somehow above this absurd clattering circus of top of the pops but he doesn't even communicate that directly which might at least have been interesting um but rather through this sort of smirking smug little purse-lipped cynicism and it's really wearing and it just makes you think hang on what exactly have you ever shown to justify this snootiness and furthermore why then are you a daytime radio on dj well to do this sort of thing oh yeah it's like um you know it's this sort of attempted yeah you're right it's this sort of attempted ironic distance and sort of loftiness but it's like the thing is you are not cool it's like you're if you're presenting top of the pops chances are you're you're not actually you're not cool i mean whatever cool was in 1987 you're probably not it he couldn't drop it for a second this sort of

snootiness and smugness um i'm pretty sure i remember him going off-piste and playing Suzanne by Leonard Cohen on his radio show once. Fairly sure it was him. And it was the first time I'd ever heard Leonard Cohen, right? I always thought it was some sort of joke. And I was thinking, this is amazing. I was sat there

transfixed. And then when it finished, he came on and said, that's for all you hippie bank managers oh fuck off you know and and yet he was a humorless puritan at the same time you know he was responsible for um radio one banning some candy talking by the uh but i was gonna say by the velvet practically was by the Jesus and Mary chain that was him because he was

hip enough to realise that the lyrics were a thinly veiled hymn of praise to heroin and yet unhip enough to go to teach it and say you can't play you can't play this no but the idea that this is the man

who's captaining the good ship Radio 1 at the minute, you know, he kind of even makes Gary Davis seem a bit cool. Yeah, you look at Gary Davis in this, standing next to him, and for the one and only time, he seems like almost a bit of a cool guy, because he's not going in for this sort of, it's only pop music. He's, you know, at least he guy because he's not going in for this sort of, it's only pop music.

At least he seems like he's into it and as far as he's concerned, hey, it's still the 80s and so everything's peachy. He's got some champagne on ice and a tanned moose-haired lady on the rug and no one cares that he looks like a camel.

It's all good. It's as peachy as his polo shirt, isn't it? Yeah, and the unmatching jacket that he wears over the top of it with the sleeves hoiked up to the elbow. I mean, one thing I am going to say in Mike Smith's defence that he and Sarah Green were fucking brilliant in Ghostwatch. Yeah, is this not why he now doesn't... Right, because you know he doesn't let the BBC repeat his Top of the Popses.

That's right, yeah. And it's because in his lifetime he refused to sign the form to extend the license. Yeah, the license extension, yeah. And after he died, Sarah Green said she was going to respect his wishes and not sign it on his behalf. And I heard a rumour that this is because of how the BBC chucked the two of them under the bus post-Ghostwatch. But I don't know if it's true.

Yeah, I don't know if it's true. This is sort of chatter amongst TV enthusiasts. But I don't know whether it's true. But what I do know is that he was on top of the pops all the bloody time in the mid to late 80s, so this is going to do more damage to the repeats than you tree. So, yeah,

thanks for that. So, yes, consequently you are not going to see this episode or any other episodes that he's in in the BBC4 repeats. And, you know know I think we're going to find out as the show goes on why that's such a good thing

Hi good evening and welcome to another Top of the Box we've got a star-studded show tonight Madonna, Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson all coming up. We start off with Johnny H. Jazz, I Don't Want To Be A Hero. I Don't Want To Be A Hero. Smith in a rumpled dark suit with a white shirt and no tie and Davis in a peach polo shirt and jacket made from the carpet as a job center introduced the first

act of the evening johnny hates jazz formed in london in 1985 johnny hates jazz consisted of a songwriter called clock dachshund who was the front man of hot club an early 80s band a studio engineer called mike nascito and a producer called calvin hayes they signed to rack records and their debut single me and my foolish heart was Hayes. They signed to Rack Records and their debut single, Me and My Foolish Heart, was the second to last single to be released by the label. They immediately signed with Virgin and their next single, Shattered Dreams, spent three weeks at number five in May of this year.

This is the follow-up and it's up from number 15 to number 11 and I think we're seeing here the dawn of the suit bands. Oh, dear. Oh, Clark, he's got this belted-off Bolero jacket rig out. Yeah, very pleated. And his two mates have as well. Very man at C&A. Well, don't say that to them,

because the thing that I remember most about them at the time, aside from the fact that they struck me as the absolute personification of everything i despised about the moment is that they were in smash hits and smash it said to them so uh what do you think is new or different or exciting about your group the clear implication being that the true answer was nothing and one of them said uh oh well in the past uh groups would maybe get a jacket from here and a pair of trousers from here whereas we're the first group to really present a high fashion image fuck's sake see pop music just keeps moving on It's like there's always progress if you know where to look.

Yeah. But in fact, they look shit. Aside from the fact that their shit faces are simultaneously smug and sour in their evident prosperity. They're like these sort of pure Docklands, like a Building Society advert, bland, ape-ish car, non-people. And that's what they seemed to me at the time, and they even more so now.

They might as well have called themselves Sales Team. That would have been a much better name. Yeah, it is kind of, I mean, there is a certain purity of it in its absolute blandness. So it's kind of like every song that has ever rejected by every boy band in fact there is the bit um there's a little kind of half-assed trumpet stab and it's like what's that and it kicked off something in my brain it's like what's that and i spent the remainder of of the of the song as it as it

trailed along trying to remember what it was it's like, oh, it only takes a minute if I take that. And then I just kind of played that in my head over the remaining seconds. But it's like homeopathic pop. It's like if you told a glass of water about the Blow Monkeys, this is what you'd get. Yes, but what a song it is. I have to say that, you know, being a British band and claiming you're not going to fight in a war in 1987,

it's not exactly the most provocative of statements, is it? No. Yeah, they might as well sing a song about how they're going to refuse to undergo female circumcision. And also, you look at this bloke, and it's like, he said, no, send me out to war with a gun in my hand. Well, before he even goes on, you think, oh, God help us, right? It's like you can just imagine him in his pleated uniform

telling his sergeant, I won't pull the trigger. The news gets to the enemy's field marshal. He claps his hands together and says, now our victory is assured. Without the one they call Clark Datchler, the Allies do not have a prayer. I feel like I need to point out at this point, just for my own, you know, just for my integrity with you, even as a callow youth of nine,

I had no particular feeling for Johnny Hayes jazz like either way which i think is probably the correct response um and the worst response anyone of that age could have against any band yeah yeah yeah sorry sorry mate that's terrible i mean i no no no don't apologize you were right i mean you're on the right side of history here sir thank god but no i feel i i there is a there is a way in which I feel bad for them because it's like this is the best that they could do. I always feel there's always that twinge of sort of like the melancholy of mediocrity.

It's just like that's it. That was your best shot. And there it is for everyone to see. And, you know. In fairness to them, Shattered Dreams was the best that they could do, which is about, you know, two degrees better than this. Yeah, that is correct. Also, what pisses me off about this war business, right?

Assuming that he didn't join the army voluntarily, which going on the lyrics about how he won't pull the trigger he will not commit that murder it's a pretty safe bet um therefore that means that this hypothetical hypothetical war is probably pretty fucking important yeah if they've had to call up the singer out of johnny h jazz would you war have to get before you consider conscripting Johnny H's jazz? In the event of war, they are class 9H. But the thing is, he's not... You listen to what he says,

he's not even going to be a conchie. He's, you know, making himself useful cleaning toilets for four years. He's going to go all the way there and then refuse to pull the trigger when some mad fascist is bearing down on him, right? That's actually the

act of an enemy agent, the agent of an enemy power. So really he should have been arrested for this song. And shot. Yeah, yeah, court marshaled. Put him on the wheel. Basically this isn't an anti-war song, right?

If there's a war going on, and it's a bad war, and somebody does this song, okay, it's an anti-war song. No, it's a pacifist song. And there's nothing worse than a high-fashion pacifist. I don't know. I think, though, he was probably kind of ahead of his time in some way. It's like, this is a very 21st century, this is a very 2017 attitude. It's like, no, no, no, you have to debate the fascists.

You have to defeat them with your words. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but also he's got the worst possible rationale because he says, you're sending me off to this war, quote, in a faraway land I never knew existed. Well, that's the giveaway because that's the worst possible reason to not want to fight in a war, right? I've never heard of it, so fuck them, right?

It's an isolationist sort of America first type argument. It's the bad, this is the real seedy underbelly of anti-war sentiment. Yeah. And you notice that there's three of them, but they've got backup musicians, and there's a black guitarist wearing one of those baggy overcoats that people did at the time,

which looked even shitter than the suits. And he's particularly keen, because he knows that he'd be the first one to die after imploring Johnny H's jazz to go on without him. They're trying to emulate black music, but what they end up with is the most anemic albino music that you've ever heard. It's entirely without grain or sex or new sounds

or anything you would ever associate with funk or soul. It's like a loping jingle of a song with these little side-kicking trumpet fills and these emulator bell sounds. And if you want to hear the only influence that this music has ever had on anyone, ring up End Power and sit there on hold

for half an hour all the notes are so close together as well when you listen to the arrangement, there's no space in this, there's no scope it's just a clatter, it's just a little neat clatter and I hated it then and i hated it

now wouldn't it been great if the u.s military heard this song and go you know what this is just what we need to play at fucking general noriega at really high volume for three days oh my god yeah that has sought him out what is it that they um what is it they used in guantanamo wasn't it like white snake or something acdc yeah Yeah, I mean... You can imagine Noriega sat in there like doing devil odds with his tongue out, like just banging his head. Fucking brilliant.

So, the following week, I Don't Want To Be A Hero dropped to number 14, then went up to number 13 and then slid out the charts. Their one and only LP, Turn Back the Clock, was the first virgin LP to enter the charts at number one since Nevermind the Bollocks.

That was me just banging my head on the table. But the follow-up single of the same name only got to number 12 and Diminishing Returns set in until the band split up in 1992. Is there anything else anyone wants to say about this? Yeah, I hate the singer's face. I always have.

I remember just as a kid taking an instant massive dislike to him. He looks like his head is made out of Botox. He looks like his head is made out of Botox. It's like he's sculpted out of a block of botulinum toxin. He looks like he's never been outside in his life. And yet, he's deeply discontented. He's got that turned-down mouth. Like it's the wrong year of champagne in the dressing room or something.

And the fucking keyboard player looks like a young Ray Stubbs and he's not not cut out for public appearances and the bloke on the bass who he looks like a an oiled gary davis and he's playing a maca style hoffner violin bass as if this tv appearance was a bit like the Beatles on Ed Sullivan like the starting pistol for a new age of freedom and expression there's going to be kids around the world being sent home from school for having that

haircut that looks like a bowl of custard's been tipped over I don't want to die for you I don't want to be a hero I don't want to die for you Our thanks to Johnny H. Jazz who flew in specially for Nice to be with us tonight. Britain's top pop show brings you Mick Jagger's first performance on Top of the Pops for 17 years. Right now, here's ABC, The Night You Murdered Love.

It's cold outside, night, night, love time. On the night you murdered love. Smith thanks Johnny Hates Jazz for flying in from Nice, with a presumably hiding out to avoid the draft, and continues to hype the impending performance of Mick Jagger before introducing ABC and The Night You Murdered Love. Formed in Sheffield in 1980 when the synthesiser band Vice Versa were interviewed by the editor of the fancy modern drugs, Frye, and invited him to form a new band. ABC's debut single Tears

Are Not Enough got to number 19 in November of 1981. They spent 1982 with a run of three top 10 singles and the LP Lexicon of Love which entered the charts at number one in July of 82 and spent four weeks there. After a year off they came back in November of 1983 with the LP Beauty Stab which only got to number 12. After various lineup changes, disappointing chart returns and Martin Fry being sidelined with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, ABC, now a duo consisting of Fry and Mark White, roared back with the LP Alphabet City and the single When Smokey Sings

which got to number 11 in July of this year. This is the follow-up and it's up this week from number 39 to number 31. It's quite sad to see, isn't it? Yeah. It's like they were one of the greatest groups of the early 80s and you sort of think, oh, what we have lost.

You're watching a group as smart and capable as ABC effectively trying to be as much like Johnny Hates Jazz as possible. Yeah, yeah. Because their aesthetic involved, or part of it, involved being up to date and of the moment. But they no longer have enough in the tank to help define the moment. And so the moment has sunk them.

And here they are. And the only sign of their mischievous intelligence is they got some of the backing musicians dressed as Cub Scouts. And if that's all you've got, it's 1987 and you're wasting your time. Yeah, because, I mean, if you wanted to say, you know, what was the difference between good 80s and bad 80s, you could just take this song and compare it to The Look of Love, couldn't you?

Yeah, all the drama and fever and life has just drained away. Sarah, what did ABC mean to you at the time? Oh, um... Anything? They kind of... Not really, no. I hadn't kind of clocked them. They sort of passed me by at this point. So, yeah, I didn't...

I mean, they were actually one of the first gigs that I saw when I moved to London and started being a music journalist in 1999, so a long time later. And that was... Yeah, I saw them at the Embassy Rooms on Tottenham Court Road, a venue which is... The last time i looked was a strip club which oh lovely i guess that's the same this is uh that's kind of a beautiful metaphor for what we're talking about really it's like uh yeah this is that was then this is now this is the way of things you know it's there is there is invention and beauty and then there's just knickers yeah or not actually i don't know just

i haven't been to a strip club in a long time i don't know what they do now yeah so fry and white in suits of course are backed by female singers in yellow head scarves and gloves looking a bit like magenta divine and as taylor's pointed out an assortment of musicians dressed as cub scalps what's wrong with this performance is it is it the song or is it the actual you know performance the song just goes around in circles it's like it's it sounds like abc but if you sort of took out the good bit um and yeah martin fry's hair is so bad and his suit is so 1987 and yet his soul is so 1983

it won't hold together and I mean it's another reason why I hate the late 80s actually because I used to go to a hairdresser asking for a haircut like WB Yates or something and they'd do it like this they'd do it like Martin Fry's hair

here because at any given point in history, hairdressers only know five haircuts. And they take your instructions. They do a quick calculation to see which of those five seems closest to what you want. And then they just do that one. Also, it's daring of Mark White to turn up with that National Resophonic guitar. Because in 1987 that was practically the corporate logo of Dire Straight

wasn't it? I mean he's playing with fire there really and we get a sweep of the audience at one point and all I could see was a lot of nasty perms all fusing and tangling together really bad, bad time to be a woman in 1987 i think

yeah you can really sort of smell the smell the um the l'oreal l net can't you it's just kind of like a thug of it um kind of yeah caught by the lights yeah and the the crispiness of the gel as well. Yeah. I think a couple of years previously, I was trying to gel my hair back like Paul Weller, and it would last about like an hour and a half in the hot sun before it just started uncurling itself and just sticking up. Yeah.

Yeah, well, Paul Weller probably bought some expensive product from, you you know some London or use Brylcreem exactly or Brylcreem was what were you using like studio line yeah and it's yeah it's basically turns your hair into like you know like a a masturbation tissue it's that that awful texture Yeah. I should have gone with Brylcreem because that's what Paul Weller probably used but I just didn't want my head to smell like my dad.

But Martin Frye once again is returning to his old theme of taking a relationship break up really fucking badly. He never says oh me and me girlfriend have decided to go on a break or we've decided we're not right for each other. It's, oh yeah, she shot a poison arrow

through my heart or she's murdered love. Yeah. You okay, hon? Yeah. Yeah, he goes around with some really violent girls, Martin Fry. If he keeps having these relationships that crash and burn, maybe he's the problem. Yeah, sooner or later,

you have to look at this pattern and uh ask yourself some difficult questions you know at some point we all have to do this and i would say convalescing after a bout of hodgkin's lymphoma would have been the ideal time to do that um but no. He was just reading comics. So the following week The Night You Murdered Love stayed at number 31 and would go no further. The follow up, King Without a Crown stalled at number 44 at the end of the

year and they would have one more top 40 hit before breaking up in 1992. Martin Fry of course continues to tour and record under the ABC name, hopefully in a better suit. ABC on top of the bars with The Night You Murdered Love. Now, if you missed Madonna on a recent tour, here's a chance to see her in action again recorded live in Turin she's at number

four in the charts with causing a commotion Davis, on a balcony surrounded by an assortment of girls who have been lacerated with a bad 80s stick, and a gormless lad with a private pike side-parting who mouths the words, wow and fab, offers comfort for us who missed Madonna's recent UK tour as he introduces Causing a Commotion. Madonna. This woman again. We've already covered Madonna in Chart Music's 2, 7 and 12, so we'll just say that this is a follow up to Who's That Girl

which became a 5th number 1 hit in July of this year and is another cut from the soundtrack of the film of the same name it was the highest new entry last week at number 7 and it's nudged up this week to number 4 as Davis has pointed out we're being treated to a clip from the

Turin performance of the Who's That Girl tour which was recorded three weeks previously. Yeah, Madonna. She's kind of like, she's up there with the three degrees and show waddy waddy in the people we fucking talk about every fucking episode. So thankfully... Did you notice Shakey's in the charts as well this week?

Yes, he is. Yeah, we managed to dodge him. Yeah, with the cover of Come See About Me. He's dropped Elvis. He wants to be Diana Ross now. Sarah, you were a nine-year-old girl. Madonna. Yeah, I mean, she was...

Must mean a bit more to you than it did to us. Yeah, I mean, you know, like I said, you know, Fuzzbox were kind of my... I felt like they were, you know, they were sort of British and Larry and stuff, so I felt a bit more of a connection i mean madonna was just sort of a this this incredible american alien creature you know and especially i mean there was always a kind of a double-edged thing when uh top of the pops showed you a bit of a bit of a concert because they couldn't get the person in the studio it's always you know it's a little bit

disappointing because you you want to see them you want to see them kind of awkwardly um flapping about in the in um in the in the studio under the neon and the spotlights but it's also really see the video yeah yeah yeah um yeah exactly but it it's a bit i mean this is not you know this is an extremely forgettable madonna song and not the most spectacular bit of footage but it's still and I don't remember seeing this episode when I when when I was nine but it's that kind of who you know it is like they've kind of that it is like a sort of portal into another dimension where everything is um more exciting and more something so I think at the time I mean I because I I knew her already from you know sort of her early stuff I really loved um I really loved Into the Groove and I loved Borderline

and I really loved Live to Tell what album is that I don't know um but I still find like I there's stuff some of her early stuff I still find so kind of mysterious and kind of haunting it's like wandering into Marilyn Monroe's bedroom or something. But yeah, I mean, I don't remember being, you know, a big fan of her at this point. But, you know, she was definitely, I really love the fact that, you know, she was a mononym as well. It's like this is the only, just having that awareness

that it's somebody so famous that they only have one name. Like Bungle. that awareness that it's somebody so famous that they only have one name. Like Bungle. But, I mean, she was known as being all about the sex. So was that a problem to your parents? What did they think about Madonna? I mean, my mum was, you know, she was a young mum.

I don't think she really, she didn't really have a problem with it i do i do distinctly recall the the jiggly boobs controversy over the uh papa don't preach video because she like didn't have a bra and she's sort of leaping about jiggling but i i don't recall it being i mean you don't you don't have you don't have a map at that hd you know it's like it's it's um you you don't you kind of you don't know what you're looking at i just that there is just that slight sense of something being a bit naughty and a bit diverse you know a little bit um you know so there is that sort of exciting thing when you realize that people around you are sort of getting a bit perturbed about something it's like yeah this is great and i just thought you know i i liked you know she made

herself um she made herself interesting all the time you know she changed her hair all the time she changed what she was wearing all the time. And she was this very powerful presence. And like I said, there was this sort of alien element to her because she wasn't from here. You'd get short shrift down the pub looking like that. So, yeah, you know, I was pro. So Madonna's wearing a gold lamé jacket over a black corset

and Sinbad trousers combination with gold trim edging. And she's essentially arsing about on a travelator and chucking herself about a bit, isn't she? Yeah, the stage set looks like Mario Brothers. No, it looks like the second stage of Donkey Kong. Because there's different layers of girders and one of which is a conveyor belt. So she should have had giant custard pies moving along it. Barrels. Yeah, and a couple of big handbags.

Yeah. This was the age of things, though, the 80s. If it was one thing the 80s were good for, it was girders. Just fucking girders everywhere you looked. Yeah. It's great. It's a nice industrial aesthetic, you know, that had survived even into the kind of wastelands of 1987 yeah she carried that into her image as

well because this was the point that i remember at the time she stopped being sort of glamorous and and sexy and she changed her image to be quite butch with the sort of cropped hair and baggy pants and the muscles and stuff and you know that's pretty cool but it went with a change in the music where all the voluptuousness and sensuality that was in her best records and i don't think there were that many of them but there were a few was sort of lopped off along with the the long hair you know and all the melody went with it and it all became quite functional and hard and grinding. And there was nothing sort of confrontational or transgressive

to justify the change. It was like our old records without the tune. It's like a lot of records from this period. It's just a rhythm track with a sort of like a chanted tune over the top of it. And the rhythm isn't bad, you know. It's quite routine. If you're going to make a record that's just about the rhythm track, it has to really move or it has to sound fresh and startling

or it has to sound like pure sex or something. Whereas this is just busy and empty at the same time. Yeah, Hulk's back quite a lot into the group, doesn't it? Yeah, like without the lovely tune that makes that probably her best record. And also the singing is terrible because she's dancing and singing at the same time. And a fair play to her for not miming,

but it's not a very nice result. She should have just mimed because who would have cared? Who was her crowd? Gay men and kids, basically. And two groups of people who don't give a shit if you go out there and mom as long as you put on a good show um i don't know who she was trying to impress she does actually um invoke into the groove it's it's there in the lyrics um she she just yeah which is which is probably not the right idea if you're going to do a forgettable song and mention your one of your most memorable ones like people are just going to think of it go oh i'd like to be listening to that right now but i'm not you're just saying the words there's some really bad lighting decisions

as well because at one point she's swathed in a sort of green cast like the late grot bags it's not a good look at all there's a bit where she's in front of a curtain and the curtain is like snagged on something it doesn't come all the way to the ground and if you look at the gap between the curtain and the ground you can see these feet uh and it's what looks like a bloke's bare leg with a white sock and a brown shoe like she's got a hiker like there's a hiker playing keyboards but she's had to put him behind a curtain because he keeps upstaging her like the the lasers keep reflecting off the tin cup that's hanging off his belt but the lyrical content uh of this song uh unsurprisingly yeah there's a bloke

uh presumably with a quiff with his shirt off uh who madonna's taking a fancy to and she's uh yeah she's putting the moves on on him but to be honest causing a commotion right it's 1987 what commotion is this well by 1987 the only commotion was a dopey husband thumping photographers yeah and all the accountants running around because of the the terrible losses made by all those shit films that she was in. In 1987, Lloyd Cole and the commotions were causing more of a commotion. It's quite prim for Madonna. It's like, oh, a bit of a couple of faults. Oh, set the apple cart.

What would causing a commotion mean to you at the time, Sarah? I don't know. They'd be kicking bins over in the shopping centre or something. Probably, you know, having some sort of nice party where they might make slightly too much noise. I don't know. I don't know. You know, something might get knocked over a bit, but, you know.

Put their new CD player on. Yeah. Or maybe they would run through. There was a lot of running through the streets in videos at the time. Just, you know, there would be the amazing sexy people running through the streets and then the non-amazing, non-sexy people kind of peering out of the doors and making faces at them, you know. So probably that sort of thing, really.

Has anyone seen the film Who's That Girl? Literally no one, I think. Yeah, that was the problem at the time, I think. Yeah, no. no no me neither i'm sure it's tough i'm sure if we did see it there'd be even more to slag off so yeah by the way the funniest bit in this clip i almost forgot is right at the end where it goes uh she says i've got the moves baby and then there's a little break while she does this sort of spasming idiot dance. Like as if somebody's tased her.

Yeah. It was terrible. It was like your dad having a go at body popping at Christmas or something. Yeah, it wasn't very savoury, was it? Anyway, I'm really grateful to you guys. I only wish you'd been there at the time to tell me that everything that I liked was really not worth bothering about. I could have saved myself much time.

You've got to learn for yourself, Dom. You've got to learn for yourself. Next time, can we get into what Taylor liked when he was nine? Actually, sorry to disappoint you. It would have been Adam and the Ants and madness. Fuck off, Taylor. So, yeah, sorry. 13, though. Merillion marillion so the following week causing a commotion dropped

one place to number five fucking hell top of the pops is doing no one any favors this week is it and it's not doing us any favors actually so fuck it the follow-up the look of love got to number nine in december of this year and she wasn't seen in the charts again until March of 1989 when Like a Prayer got to number one. The film Who's That Girl? made $10 million less than even Shanghai Surprise and won Worst Picture and gave Madonna her second of three Worst Actress Awards

at the Golden Raspberries. and Raspberries. Madonna in concert, that sounds slightly better when it's in key. And now let's have a look at this week's top 40. Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram somewhere out there down to number 40. A new entry at 39 for Heart and Who Will You Run To? There's a funky town at number 38, it's Pseudo Echo on the way down. And down to 37, Michael Jackson, I Just Can't Stop Loving You.

Whitney Houston, Didn't We Almost Have It All? She did, but she's down to 36. Down to 35, David Bowie, Never Let Me Down. Second new entry is for Shaky, Come See About Me is in at 34 New entry at 33, Full Metal Jacket, Abigail Mews and Nigel Goulding Then Jericho with The Motive, that one's down 10 at 32 Up 8 at 31, ABC, The Night You Murdered Love You Got The Look, Prince and Sheena Easton at number 30 going down. Call me. Down at 29, it's Spania. Those happy house Martins, me and the farmer, they are going down at 28. Down at 27, it's Squeeze and Hourglass. Jokeable Gary Newman, Cars

and Our Friends Electric, that one's going up at 26. Down at 25, Stop to Love, Luther Van Gros. Wax Have a Bridge to Your Heart, and they're on the way down at 24. Up to at 23, The Communards, Tomorrow. Jacques Lafrique, That's Chic. They're going up at 22. Down at 21, Wet, Wet, Wet, and Sweet Little Mystery. There's a deaf leopard hanging around at number 20, Pour Some Sugar On Me. Up 17 to 19, Yan Hammer and Crockett's Theme.

Still at number 18, Jonathan Butler with Lies. Down to 17, Wonderful Life from Black. Up 10 at 16, I Need Love, LL Cool J. Down to 15, Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield, What Have I Done To Deserve This? And look at this, a toy boy at number 14 with Sunita. Down at 13, U2, Weather, Streets Have No Name. And there's a Casanova at number 12, that's Lovett. And up 4 to number 11, Johnny Hates Jazz, I Don't Want To Be A Hero.

Here's a guy who's got a big part in Miami Vice, not as an actor, but he writes the music for the series. In fact, so far he's written over 100 original songs for Miami Vice. One of those songs is the biggest climber on the chart this week. At number 19, here's Yan Hammer, Crockett's Theme. Smith takes time to point out that Madonna is pretty ropey live and cowers behind Davis, who introduces the first three quarters of this week's top forte. That was a bit catty of him, wasn't it? Yeah.

Well, the problem isn't that he said that sounded like cat shit, which is, you know, fair enough. Yeah. But it's the fact that he then put his arms up and did that sort of, what, no, don't attack me. I can't help the fact that I'm so controversial. Yes. You know, like... The Top 40 rundown, which is from number 40 to number 11.

The quality of the band pictures have improved since last we spoke about this, haven't they, Taylor? Yeah, well, they're using proper publicity shots now in their original aspect ratio, uncropped. Yes, well done. Well done, BBC. It wasn't hard, was it? And as we always do at this time of the show, Taylor, any songs in there that you didn't know?

Pseudo Echo. I only remember their name because I saw it at the time i thought that is the worst name that i've ever seen um and i've probably seen worse since but it's bad isn't it pseudo echo that is that is pretty bad i think it's bad also the thing is whenever you encounter a really bad band name uh you imagine that the when they hit on it, don't you? And you imagine their little faces kind of going, that's so good and so clever. I'm sure that happened with Johnny Hates Jazz as well. God, yeah.

You just imagine they went, oh, my God, guys, I got it. And, you know. Yeah. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but it's just like, yeah, you know that somebody thought that was clever. Yeah, you imagine Suda Echo sitting around going well we're soody and we're a pale echo of music that's gone before it's it's perfect and the rundown i think the thing that jumped out at me was what was mike smith saying about gary newman jokable gary newman was it i couldn't make head or tail of that either i thought

at first listen joker right yeah I thought it sounded like he was saying Gary Newman is a joke, which in 1987 he sort of was. But he clearly didn't say that word for word. So yeah, I played it over

and over again, which was something I never thought I'd ever do. I listened to Mike Smith saying the same thing about 10 times. And I had no idea

what he was talking about. Born in Prague in 1948, Jan Hammer studied piano at the Prague Academy of Musical Arts, but then fucked off out of it in 1968 when the Russians sent tanks in. After recording a jazz LP in Munich, he settled in America, finished his studies in Boston, and joined the original lineup of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, becoming one of the first keyboardishnu Orchestra, becoming one

of the first keyboardists to get stuck into a moog. He commenced a solo career in 1975 and then formed his own group and closed out the 70s working with Jeff Beck, where one of his tracks, Star Cycle, became the original theme tune for The Tube. After knocking out soundtracks for three films in the early 80s, he approached the TV producer Michael Mann with a track that he'd been working on and suggested it might work for his next production, Miami Vice, and in October of 1995,

it got to number five in the UK charts. This is a follow-up to that theme and was used whenever Sonny Crockett was having a bit of a sulk on his yacht, feeding chunks of meat to his pet alligator Elvis and thinking about what a fucking waste of time and resources the war on drugs was. And it's up this

week from number 36 to number 19. Now, this isn't what you'd expect someone called Jan Hammer to look like, is it? He looks like Sam Kinison if he took his hat off. Yes, he does. And chilled out a bit, well a lot He's actually the spit

of my ex-boss who was the editor of Penthouse and Reader's Wives who was obsessed with white cotton M&S drawers and was the last British person to ever use the word panties Oh the stories I've got about that man

I was basically sitting next to somebody uh this woman who i just got to know and we're working together and uh yan hammer came up to her with a pair of knickers and said oh there you go uh i'll see you in 10 minutes and she she went all right then and then she went off and then she came back you know about 10 minutes later um kind of walking with some difficulty with a different pair of knickers in her hands and uh yan came over and took them off over and went oh that's lovely i'll get them sent off right away and i looked at this this other bloke on the table i said what the fuck was that about and uh he told me that yan

hammer had put an advert in one of the magazines where if you sent in £10 and a clean pair of knickers and a stamped address envelope, you'd get a dirty pair of knickers back. Man alive. I think actually we should probably clarify for legal reasons that you're not actually talking about Jan Hammer. No, I'm not talking about Jan Hammer. I'm talking about the bloke who looks like Jan Hammer, whose name I'm not going to mention because I don't want to get sued by him either. But yeah, there was one day that a couple of days later, he came in waving a wad of £10 notes out of the mail and making the loads of money gesture.

And it turned out that his latest advert got so many responses, he couldn't get enough knickers in time. So he actually went home and raided the laundry basket, took his wife's drawers, sent them off. Who would ever have thought, reading those old dirty mags, that there was anything up with any of these competitions, that anything in the magazine was not actually 100% true. It's shocking.

But yeah, and so consequently, while watching this performance, I half expect Jan Hammer to fucking pull a pair of drawers out from under his keyboard and hold them to his face. Can we talk about Jan Hammer now? I'm kind of getting slightly... Yeah, I think we need to. I'm sorry.

Sorry, Vaud. Sorry, everyone. I had to get it off my chest. So I was going to say the thing this was a top of the pops thing is that you'd get somebody

who was doing an instrumental or doing and you just feel immediately sort of tense and you feel sorry for them because like oh no what are you going to do

you're just going to have to and this is exactly how I felt watching this it's just like oh no look at poor old Yamhammer standing there looking like Al's ex-boss

just kind of you know being awkward behind the keyboard. And then and then he starts getting really into it. And he looks so happy. Look at him. He's like, I'm getting two keyboards. I've got a really lovely kind of 1987 monitor with, you know, a green display on it. And I'm going to turn around now. Listen, I'm going to press this key and it's going to sound like a guitar. on it. And I'm going to turn around now. Listen, I'm going to press this key

and it's going to sound like a guitar. Check it out. I have blown my own fucking mind. This is brilliant. I'm Jan Hammer. I'm on top of the pops. I mean, you could say that is a man. That is a man who loves his work.

I mean, you might go, look, you might say it's shit work. But I mean, haven't you seen, you know, a man whose work is unblocking drains, walking along along with a spring in his step having just pulled a fatberg out of a sewer you know doesn't your heart soar to see someone in their element like that and you know also i don't hate this either i mean this is like it's very soothing to me i do remember this when it when it came out i'd never seen my i think my advice probably was on too late at night for me or whatever. Oh, you wouldn't have been allowed at nine.

Yeah, I don't know. Definitely, I don't remember seeing it. It was on stupidly. It was on about half ten at night, wasn't it? But yeah, it's funny because I put in my notes, this is soothing to me. It's like pan pipes. And then I realised actually it does sound quite new age.

Just imagine this on pan pipes with a bit of mandolin. It's basically, it's like a relaxation track. It's probably what he did it as. He probably did it to, you know, just to kind of send himself off to sleep. You know, going, I'm at the end of another great day as Jan Hammer. And now I put my head on the pillow. What will tomorrow bring? Everything's great. Yeah.

The terrible, the terrible thing about this is that this is the best record that's been on so far by quite some distance. Yeah. And it's true. The sounds on it are really dated, but they're, they don't sound like the worst sounds

of 1987 that are so cold and and remote they sound chunky and warming and it's a genuinely nice tune uh except for the bit where it goes a bit too scottish it's like little yan with his this fife and drum but But the sound of this record makes me warm to the aesthetic of Miami Vice much more than the progo ever could. With all those silhouetted palm trees and, you know, pink skies. But it's also very Euro.

When you divorce it in your mind from Miami Vice, it's got a real Euro sound to it you can really hear his roots which i think is is is why it's quite good in a way although to me really i know this better from the uh nat west advert from 1991 or something with that little guy who looked like Owen Jones working in NatWest and he says of course we do it's not all work work work

you know yes and also you know Oasis ripped this off I only realised when I was listening

did they yeah you know Supersonic by Oasis that bit where it goes fucking hell yes it's the tune from this is it? it may well have been a

subconscious steal or at least one that he was going to keep quiet about but it's almost exactly the same tune I hate Miami Vice. I mean, I fucking hated it at the time. One of my all-time favourite TV shows is The Professionals.

Yes. And Miami Vice is basically The Professionals shunted ten years forward in time and relocated to sunny Florida, which I think is why I hate it so much. Oh, man. Even at the time, I just thought, no, they look like cunts. We were supposed to think that these fucking coppers,

basically, it's a couple of coppers dressed like the mid-80s Roger Waters. We were supposed to think they were cool guys. No, look, they're Americans, and they bust drug dealers. I was 15 years old. I'd been waiting half a decade to get my hand on some drugs, you know. And these cunts were taking them away. And I was supposed to be like, yeah, nice Ray-Bans, dude.

No, fuck them. I was reading The Doors of Perception and trying to work out new flight paths out of straight society. And I turn on the telly, these fucking narcissistic authoritarians setting the standard for what's now cool and and sexy and it's like no and also i tried to watch one a few years ago to see if with the you know diluted with nostalgia or anti-nostalgia, maybe it would be entertaining. And it's not.

It's not. It's just, it's all pastel and fuzz, like everything else from this period. The theme tune's the best thing about it, isn't it? Yeah, Jan Hammer was by far the most talented person associated with that programme. The only positive influence that programme ever had is on certain instalments

of the Grand Theft Auto series. Yes. And beyond that it can just get fucked forever. So the following week, Crockett's theme soared up to number six and got as high as number two, held off the top spot by You Win Again by the Bee Gees. However,

the follow-up, Tubbs and Valera would only get to number 84 in December of this year. Jan Hammer's next score was for the advert where Bob Geldof has a morning jog and robs a pint off a milk float. And his biggest hit was Solid in 1991

when it was used in a series of adverts by Nat fucking West. I just love that piece of music. That's Yan Hammer with Crockett's Theme. I always wondered what a Yan Hammer was. Now I know. And now, this week's Top of the Pops, Top 40 Breakers.

Let's go, Gary. And up nine places to number 26, remixed and re-released, here's Gary Newman and Cars. Here I come. Remixed and re-released, here's Gary Neumann and Cars. After practically saying, fucking hell, Yan Hammer looks like Al Needham's pervy ex-boss, Smith introduces the Top 40 Breakers, essentially a device to bung in some videos from acts

who can't be arsed to pitch up at the top of the pop studios. First up is Cars by Gary Newman. Born Gary Webb in 1958, Gary Newman picked out a new surname from the Yellow Pages in 1978 and formed Tubeway Army with his uncle on drums. Their second single, Our Friends Electric, got to number one for four weeks in the summer of 1979 and his next release was this song, Cars, which spent a week at number one in September of that year. He then embarked on a run of 10 top 40 hits until 1983, but it would be another three years before he made it again with

This Is Love and I Can't Stop in 1986. This is a remix of Cars, known as the E-Reg Model Remix, which was put out to coincide with the release of his first official Greatest Hits compilation exhibition, but we're getting the original video here, and it's gone up this week from number 35 to number 26. Now, is this me or is this the most modern sounding tune on the whole show?

Yeah, it's, again, it's Oh What We Have Lost but also this, just to spoil it a bit, this remix is like, it's actually a de-mix and it sort of thaws out the sound and yeah and it adds a sort of snap and a thump which it didn't really need um no but even so we're still just seeing even seeing this old dope you know in his strip light pyramid and his uh his hair his hair made out of man-made fibers is you're still reminded of how recent it really was. Yeah.

That time when genuine madness and apocalyptic awkwardness and non-neurotypical distance could still be number one and celebrated and embraced just like anything else. and celebrated and embraced just like anything else. The only problem with Newman is that he was always so unconvincing as an alien. Just physically, that's his trouble. Because you look at him and there's only one place in the universe he could possibly have come from, which is somewhere just outside London. He's got that look about him.

Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of remix nonsense going on at this time wasn't it I mean we've got Sheik and Jack Le Freak in the charts at the moment which I was going to listen to but I just my hand hovered over the fucking play button and God stayed my hand I just thought no nothing good's

going to come from me listening to this yeah I do remember yeah when people could uh people kind of discovered that remixes were a thing and they went a bit they went a bit daft as kind of shep pettibone remixes of everything and uh it was just a lot of it was just like the same it was just this great childishness about it where you would just get we'll put that in for the sake of putting it in and i don't know if um and and we'll distort this we'll bend this a bit and then we'll bend it back again and uh it's it's like are you you know it's like so you're so preoccupied with whether or not

you could you didn't stop to think if you should yes exactly don't you think though the best thing about newman like apart from the keyboard sound on his early hits, is the way that he sort of takes his own tiny anxieties and paranoias and pumps them up to an absurd, near-operatic scale, which is like the essence of one particular kind of rock and roll. It's like Chris Needham is the version that grows wild. You know, Manslaughter, 1992 version. That's what grows in the wild. Whereas Newman is like a laboratory version of that.

You know, they took that tree bark and went into a lab and made it into aspirin. And it comes out perfectly round and perfectly white and 100% purified. It's the same process on this right i had a mate who was a pneumonoid when i was at school um and when in the 90s uh there was a gary newman tribute album came out there was a launch party for it that gary newman went to and i thought well i've got to take my mate so I rang him up and you know he wasn't quite such a new midoy as he used to be but I said you got come come to Gary Newman's launch and he was yeah yeah yeah so he went along got

really drunk on the free booze and then he saw Gary Newman stands in the corner and he went over to carry human and he said Gary Gary I've got to tell you you were you were a really big part of my youth. Gary Newman said, oh, thanks very much. And he said, but I don't hate you. Wow. So the following week, Cars jumped up to number 16, where it stayed for two weeks. His biggest hit in five years.

It was his last solo top 28 until March of 1996 when he got to number 17 with another remix of Cars. Hey, hey now, what do you say? It's Xtine this week, LL Cool J. I can't believe that I found a desire for true love floating around inside my soul. Because my soul is cold. One half of me deserves to be this way till I'm old. But the other half needs affection and joy. And the love that is created by a girl and a boy. I need love. So, tell me how your tour is going.

Tour is doing good, you know what I'm saying? It's real successful, you know. We're selling a lot of tickets. It's just, it's real hectic, you know what I'm saying? It's real successful, you know, we're selling a lot of tickets. It's just real hectic, you know what I'm saying? Interviews, girls calling me all the time. Yo, hell, we gotta go, man. See what I mean? How's my little girl today? Listen, what'd I tell you about these rap guys, huh?

Look, I'm not taking any more out of her, man. Born James Todd Smith in New York in 1968, LL Cool J was the second rapper signed to Def Jam at the age of 16. He appeared in the film Crush Groove and he released the label's first LP, Radio, in 1985. Despite putting himself about as the archetypal MC who was living kind of foul, who went about thinking it was summer, he was also not shy in bringing out his sensitive side. And against

the wishes of label owner Rick Rubin, he put this song on his second LP, Bigger and Deafer. This is the second release from that LP and the follow-up to I'm Bad, which got to number 71 in July of this year. And it's up from number 26 to number 16.

Men have feelings too. May LL share his with you. So Mike Smith, the insufferable cock, chooses to introduce this by doing what he thinks is a rap. But it's just a smooth black voice and it's really the cringe is hard to

put into words this is a hilarious record but it's not made any funnier by some middle class cunt from Romford trying to ridicule it and not even getting the style right yeah because to people like Smith rap rap is just some American lad's talking and it's a bit of a cod, isn't it?

It's like, well, hey, baby, baby. Yes. Oh, God. Yeah. That's what they do, isn't it? No. Yeah. My style is keen.

I'm shagging Sarah Green. Do you know what I mean? style is keen i'm shagging sarah green do you know what i mean well this is this is kind of a low point for just everything isn't it though i mean i i um you know because i had some uh i think i had some vague whiff of what hip-hop was at this age but but yeah so it's like even then i thought you know with my my scant knowledge it's like this ain't this isn't right you know this is not really how it's supposed to be this isn't really the idea this isn't yeah you know i mean it's like bless them there's just the most amazing couplets in there you can scratch my back we can get cozy and huddle i'd lay down my jacket so you

can walk over a puddle yeah yeah like you fucking would ll that's bullshit it's not going to happen he's lying no um no what i do isn't um there's i really i really do enjoy this type of epic video which is basically a short film that dips in and out of the track and kind of uses the track yes but it is not a good example of that no it's quite disturbing I don't remember this, there's actually like a horrible domestic that happens you know there's like

this couple having a horrible fight or is it, I don't know that's the dad that's the dad, yeah it's not the couple but yeah so and he's like ripping the poster off the wall and it's quite jarring actually, it's like oh my god and then wall. And it's quite jarring, actually. It's like, oh my God. And then, you know, obviously she goes and kind of runs away with him.

Yeah, well, her dad's not having that shit on the wall. Her dad's going, look, I like Rock the Bells, but this is just pure shit. Yes, this is whack. I fucking hated this song. It went against my hardcore ghetto sensibilities. There was this girl at college who I was kind of flirting with, and it was all going really well until she came up to me one day and said,

you like hip-hop, don't you? And I said, yeah. And she says, oh, I've got this really good... J. Cool. And I just had to walk away. I remember when this came out and all the hip-hop... Because there was a load of hip-hop fans at my school and they all tried to pretend that he was still hard as hell.

Yes. As if, like, this was actually really good. Battle anybody, he don't care what you tell. Yeah, as if, like, you must be missing something if he don't care what you tell yeah it's like as if like you must be missing something if you don't like this record um but i mean you know i loved those early ll culture because i had radio on tape and i liked it yeah precisely because it was so unmusical and pure yeah and sort of amoral in every respect, including musically. This stuff, it's just the same as that. It's not smooth like a soul record.

It's just as basic and unsophisticated as Rock the Bells. But on Rock the Bells, that's the record's main strength. Whereas on this, it just makes it sound kind of infantile. This sounds like that sort of semi competent stuff that um weirdo amateurs put up on youtube you know what i mean yeah is that

after all these years yeah also i could never get over the kangol hat which whichever way you slice it looks fucking stupid it's like a village idiot hat, right? Or Windy Miller. He looks like he's about to drink a flag of cider and go to sleep behind a barn. I was so desperate to have one of those at this time. And I actually found one in a shop and I thought, I've got to try this on.

And I couldn't even bring myself to do that because I knew I would look such a cock. Like a wicket keeper. Yeah. But the video is LL being tempted with all the things that a rap career can offer, which is basically loads of booze and big cars and fat arses. No, take your arse away.

Yes. I don't want any ass today but in various ways all his all his videos are trying to do the same thing which is to present him as a superman right either as a superman who's harder than everyone else or a superman and in this case a superman who's more sensitive than anyone else and it's his least convincing effort yet yeah it really is isn't it but the interview section

which is the best part isn't it even in this scripted interview he's got fucking nothing to say he's going oh yeah well you know I'll go around you know people want to do interviews and all the girls trying to go, yeah, okay, yeah. Yeah, I've got to go now. Yeah, and then there's people, the thing is I got like a flashback from,

I don't know about you, Taylor, but I just got a flashback from that of every, like, horrible hotel interview about nothing that I'd ever done where somebody would just stomp in and go, right, that's your lot now, fuck off. Yeah, after having said nothing of any interest. Yeah, you really know your place. It's like, yeah, I have to go now. I have to go now and do another 10 of these. And it's like, oh, I've never felt so insignificant in my fucking life.

How many words could you get out of that interview that woman had with LL Cool J? Not just that bit. How would you do it? No, come on. Here we go. Here we go. Here's your test, right?

You've got an interview with LL Cool J, and he says, yeah yeah i'm on tour and it's kind of crazy and there's loads of girls and i've got to go to the record shop and do a signing and all you see i've got to go now you've got to turn that into 400 words yeah no problem yeah i could do that i'm a pro go on how'd you start i don't know i would do some kind of i i would i'll just go really kind of high concept and just i would just do like a kind of deconstruction of of uh who was it who was thinking vanity fair recently, where it was like,

it was an interview that had hardly any quotes at all. And it's like, is it just that the journalist didn't get anything good or is it just the journalist is a bit, is a bit mad and just wants to, you know, has got a platform who is some actor or other. I can't remember,

but yeah, I just, I just pull one of those really. I'll just go on. I kind of did that one, interviewed the Cardigans, and they were so fed up. And it was obvious, and it's like, they've been the Cardigans for ages.

They don't want to do any more of these interviews. They're already pissed off. And also, you know, Nina Pearson's perfectly lovely, but, you know, there's a weird vibe between her and the rest of the band. And so I just went on about that, really, for, you know, and it was one of the better things I ever wrote. So, apparently. But I don't know.

God, it's all such a long time ago that I used to, I used to do these things for pennies. As opposed to now where we do these things for free. Yes. Quite so. The following week, I Need Love jumped up to number nine or would eventually get to number eight. The follow-up Go Cut Creator Go would only get to number eight. The follow-up, Go Cut Creator Go,

would only get to number 66 in November of this year. And in the same month when LL toured the UK with Public Enemy and Eric B and Rakim, he performed the song with a routine that went down a treat when he did it in America, which involved him doing the song while knobbing a sofa, which got him buckled off stage in Hammersmith Odeon.

LL would further explore his sensitive side with a single's Big Ol' Butt, where he keeps dumping his girlfriends whenever he sees someone with a fatter arse than them.

And their jingling, baby, which is about the noise his partner's massive gold earrings make when he's giving them a seeing-to. The highest new entry on the chart this week, straight in at number five, the title track from his new album, here's Michael Jackson and Bam.

Born in Gary, Indiana in 1958, Michael Jackson is Michael fucking Jackson. This is the second cut from the LP of the same name and the follow-up to I Just Can't Stop Loving You, which got to number one only last month. which got to number one only last month. The video, which was premiered in the UK by Channel 4 over three weeks ago, cost over $2.2 million to make, was directed by Martin Scorsese, and is 18 minutes long, and involves Michael studying at a posh school,

and then going back to his mams in the projects, only to be accused by Wesley Snipes and his mates of not being Dan anymore, whilst they're silently wondering what happened to his nose and skin tone, and ends with him displaying his masculinity through the medium of dance. It's this week's highest new entry at number five. Now this is a this is a fucking massive deal, isn't it?

Yeah. So why is it being wedged into the breakers section? I wondered that. I thought it being wedged into the breakers section i wondered that i thought it might have been because the video was premiered on channel four and they might have had some sort of exclusive deal but if that was three weeks prior to this uh i have no explanation is this a forerunner to the you know hype up a song months and you song weeks and months in advance before they release it like it was in the 90s, which is why we got so many songs going straight and a number one at that time.

Yeah, but if Michael Jackson's got an album coming in 1987, it's just, you can't not do that, can you? Just, you mention that it's going to come out and the hype snowball starts there. Is this top of the popsicle cocking its nose up at videos in 1987? And music videos themselves

being not seen as much of a big deal anymore? It's a bit previous of them to do that, isn't it? I mean, this is a fucking bad video. It's directed by Martin Scorsese. It's 18 minutes long. It's amazing. What do you think you're fucking doing? I mean, it's directed by martin scorsese it's 18 minutes long it's amazing like what what do you think what do you think you're fucking doing yeah i mean it's like well yeah i mean you know there's ll cool jay's there's uh you know had a go at doing something and then it's like you know which

which is which is very regrettable for all concerned and then it's like this kicks in it's like my you know i wasn't i wasn't expecting it my heart my my heart just pressed against my ribs this is the only way I can describe it and I've seen it a hundred times but after that kind of you know incredibly, it's like the sort of dishwater dregs of hip hop

and then it's like your bird is mine and it's like oh my Christ the thing is that if you're going to expect any objectivity from me about this record then you you're not going to get it because you know this is like this was like the album of my childhood this was definitely when i you know um i don't think i did i get this album this year i probably got it i had a cassette of it and i probably got it the year after but it's do you know what I mean but I would I would listen to it um I would listen to it all day long even now I think it's a it's a pop monolith and

was it a big deal at your school then well this is the weird thing because I knew that he was the biggest pop star in the world and uh he had you know presumably millions of fans none of them at my school none of them in West Yorkshire it was like you you know, it was something that I shared with no one, basically. Wow. I don't know. Maybe I was, yeah, I don't know what they were all into, but it was not my direction.

But I loved, you know, I loved the ridiculousness of this. And it was like, you know, this kind of West Side Story gangster panto in New York. Again, it's this kind of... I just love the idea of gangster panto man motherfucker goose

there was quite a bit of disrespect uh being thrown at the american stars at the time i mean madonna was seen as a bit of a slapper um prince was just fucking mental. Michael Jackson was even more mental. Uh, only Bruce Springsteen was seen as, oh yeah, he's all right. He's proper music. But yeah, it was, um, they were always slapped down. I think we're seeing it here. You know, this is the fucking epochal event of, of this month. And it's like, oh yeah, here's michael jackson oh isn't he a bit mad

look at what he's doing now but the thing is in america big stars were really big stars and people hadn't quite worked out yeah what we now know which is that fame and fortune on that scale um destroys the mind and soul or corrupts the mind and soul at least. And it has exactly the same effect on you as mental illness in that whatever is bad in you will rise to the surface and that becomes you and what you do.

And becomes celebrated. Depending on what it is. That's the thing. Because if you are you know a harmless eccentric at heart that will come to the surface if you're a killer or murderer or you're violent or whatever that will also come to the surface and you basically if you if you get that big you just have to hope that you're more of a paul mccartney than a john lennon you know or more of a roger daltrey than a keith moon or more of a bruce springsteen than a michael jackson

um because you don't have any choice over this whatever's inside you um that isn't nice will come out um and and the chances are you will be too young to handle it at the time. Yeah. Then again, Michael Jackson is a nasty little shit because... He's having a go at Michael Jackson now. You know, regardless of, you know, having to be a child star and brought up and, you know, never having any emotional grounding, you only have to look at the way he shafted his mate Paul McCartney with a Beatles copyright. Yeah. That's not because he was emotionally damaged by being a child star. You only have to look at the way he shafted his mate, Paul McCartney, for the Beatles copyrights.

That's not because he was emotionally damaged by being a child star. That's just because he's a bit of a wanker, you know. I love that this is where, that's what you go for. That's like the thing that, you know, that is really that grinds your gears the most. Yeah, but he was acquitted of everything else, wasn't he? So I don't want to go there. Yeah, all the dubs were released for him but i hate i hated this at the time right i'm sorry to get repetitive here but i hated this when it came out and i loved billy jean and and thriller and

off the wall just like everyone else did but as soon as this came out i thought this is pure shit some twerp on the school bus had the cassette of this and made the driver put it on every day going into school and it was a downgrade from the tape that the driver used to play of his own volition which was hot dog by shaking stevens so every morning it was like uh uh dirty diana and i could have lived with it i could have lived with it if he hadn't tried to act hard in the videos that was what really got me i mean he did it in beat it but beat it at least is a song about not having a fight and uh at least it's a great record whereas this just seemed so laughable and whereas now i'd look at the video to bad and i'd laugh a lot and think, well, it all adds to the gaiety of nations.

Back then, I didn't know which was worse, the macho posturing, which offended my sensibilities, man, or the knowledge that in reality, if he'd found himself in Aylesbury Town Centre at closing time on a Friday night, he'd have ended up looking like six tins of cat food. I mean, even more than he actually did end up looking like six tins of cat food I mean even even more than he actually did end up looking like six tins of cat food um that just turned me right off from the start you know this is not really much surely even in your callow youth you didn't you know

this is not actually macho posturing it's it's poncing about in a subway but really really good poncing about in a subway like if you watch the you knowcing about in a subway. Like if you watch the, you know, it's, it's, you see the making of the thriller video and they're like, look how rehearsed these, these dancers are. And when they jump, they all leave the ground, the exact same amount. They all, they're all like, you know, an inch and a half off the ground exactly together.

And it's the same in, in bad, you know, they must've drilled the fuck out of them. So it's, you know, it's not, and he looks, you know, he's, he's this incredibly pretty, you know, he's this sort of strange looking but kind of beautiful, slightly androgynous looking guy. So it's not, you know, there is never anything macho about him at all. He was kind of, he was obviously sort of fascinated by this because this kind of wasn't his experience of being a man.

So there was this kind of weird fascination with that. But there was this kind of subversion of it, you know. Well, accidental subversion of it. I mean, I'd like to like him a lot more than I do because you can't pretend Michael Jackson wasn't insanely talented, at least within his wheelhouse. But the problem was fundamentally he had no taste and no wit, which is fine when everything else is working working and it's all you know kept

minimal and cutting or when it's completely over the top like thriller but i don't know this just seems to me like he's trying to express some swollen fantasy idea of his own presence and his own importance which is what macho posturing is. So in that sense, it's no different from the real thing. And also, I mean, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to be too down on your favourite album, but to me, it's a turkey that even Quincy Jones can't roast. I've never liked this album, never liked this album. I thought it was where he just dropped off.

It's not for you, Taylor, this is dropped off. It's not for you, Taylor. This is the thing. It's not for you. It's for me, all right? So there. You're welcome to it. Yeah, well, no. I mean, look, come on.

There is no... I mean, look, I don't actually want to argue with you because I don't really give a fuck. But, I mean, you know, it's such a complete piece of work. Almost every song, you know, there is... Yeah, Dirty Diana is is obviously the dud you know and even I would probably fast forward to that on my on my cassette on my Walkman but you know it's like nine I know this was you know everyone got sick of it because nine out of the 11 tracks on

it were singles but even the ones that weren't singles could have been singles and it's like you can't whatever your thoughts about you know whatever your feeling for the album is it's like what albums can you say that about yeah none of those would have got chucked out of the charts you know if they turned up going is it all right it's like yeah no you're coming in please you'll you'll uh make it you'll you'll you know you glam up the place a bit so so in other words taylor she's tailing you you're doing wrong. Hee hee. No. So the following week, Bad nudged up to number three for two weeks. The follow-up, The Way You Make Me Feel,

also made it to number three in December of this year, and he's had to wait four years for his next UK number one with Black or White. And today you're right That you're so missing Selected Michael Jackson there Now coming up a guy who has not done Top of the Pops for 17 years And he wants to take over the entire studio with Let's Work Here's Mick Jagger, go Mick! Oh! Born in Dartford in 1943, Mick Jagger was the lead singer of a band called the Rolling Stones,

who had a number 26 hit in November of 1982 with a cover of Smokey Robinson's Going to a Go-Go. In 1985, he released his first solo LP, She's the Boss, and scored a number 32 hit with a single Just Another Night to the general dischufferedness of Keith Richards. After his cover of Dancing in the Street with David Bowie got to number one in September of 1985 Jagger and Richards had a major falling out during the recording of the LP Dirty Work which Jagger refused to tour and it appeared that the band was over. which Jagger refused to tour and it appeared that the band was over. Meanwhile, this is the first single from his new solo LP

Primitive Call and the performance was filmed in the Top of the Pops studio two weeks ago in anticipation of it getting straight into the top 40 but it didn't. At this time, it's only managed to get up to number 41 hence Top of the Pops pulling the trigger on it. And Mike Smith was talking a load of bollocks because it's actually 16 years

since Mick Jagger was in the Top of the Pops studio when the Rolling Stones did Brand Sugar in 1971. There's loads of busting child performers just like those countries in Eurovision that know their songs a bit shit, but they're hoping to get some sympathy votes off non-Oz. Sarah, what did Mick Jagger mean to you at the time, if anything? Probably not very much. I thought he was an old bloke. How old was Mick Jagger in 1987? 44.

44. He was younger than me. Just. But he's still got this full lustrous head of dark hair. And I was thinking, what a different and perhaps more interesting world this would be if Mick Jagger had lost all his hair by the age of 29. Imagine there's somewhere in the multiverse, you know, there is a universe in which Mick Jagger just went bald

similarly there's also another world where this is his first single and the Rolling Stones had never existed and he's 44 and this is his debut release with that face and that dancing and those vocals but it's all denormalised because it's heard for the first time and seen for what it really is.

Imagine living on that planet. I have to point out that he's wearing... What is it that he's wearing in this performance? It's a kind of slightly puffy, off-white shirt and I can't tell if he's wearing a waistcoat over it or if the waistcoat is actually built into the shirt. He looks like... It's 1987, you can't tell, can you?

You can't reliably, you can't tell. He looks like a sort of Regency painter and decorator. I mean, Taylor, I'm guessing, Sarah, that all you probably knew of Mick jagger was an impersonation that someone like i don't know fucking dustin g did on on the laughter show one night that's probably true actually i mean i don't i don't remember having any real cognizance of mick jagger or who mick jagger was or what his hair was about so you know taylor but i'm kind of assuming that if you're into Velvet Underground

and all that kind of stuff, you're probably into The Stones at this time, aren't you? Yeah, I was into The Stones. Because it's worth bearing in mind that at this time, Channel 4 had put out the film Sympathy for the Devil and Gimme Shelter. So, you know, kind of like late late 60s stones would have been you know quite a a good name to drop right about this time along with the doors yeah well let's leave the

doors to one side but i was well into the stones i uh i mean there's while there's much to dislike about the rolling stones if you're going to be strict about it, they were still one of the greatest bands of all time, at least for the first ten years. And Mick, for all his absurdity, was a big part of that because it was his strange blend of machismo and nerdiness and camp that made them culturally different from you know guns and roses or someone like that it was uh as well as just better um but yeah this is a production number

like top of the pops has given him the whole studio um and he's allowed to bring all these kids in and take over the whole studio for this performance uh based on the strength of who he was um and even though this is not how he became what he was like if mick jagger says to you i've got a whole new concept for presenting my new scene well you should be wary because he's not exactly the chameleon of pop, is he? I mean, fucking hell. No. How many times has Mick Jagger tried to deviate even slightly from the formula and the results were good?

Never. Not once. Never. So what you get is this. And one of the most interesting things about the 80s is the way that musicians of an earlier time responded to it and tried to get with it. But, I mean, Mick Jagger spent his whole career saying let's get loose and then suddenly now he's richer than caesar uh it's hey everybody

let's tighten up let's work yeah get your boots on you horrible little man yeah you know and he also he doesn't realize that the rest of pop music tightened up about 10 years ago while he was a tax exile in the south of france yeah and i mean i've always said to be one of the greats you have to combine your talent and imagination with being a bit of an idiot because you need that lack of self-consciousness and self-awareness just to fully own the fundamental absurdity of what you're actually doing and thereby transcend it which is why Leonard Cohen or Joni Mitchell are cult heroes whereas Mick Jagger and David Bowie were superstars well here we just see the idiot part of that formula with all the talent and imagination kicked away and it's

fascinating but it's also very short yeah it's awful isn't it he's frolicking he's frolicking about the studio like a like a lamb in a top of the pop studio and and you know and the play to you know to give him credit like the entire place is actually jumping but i guess they were all you know they were all sort of told to on pain of death also he's sort of capering about on the gantry which is like oh look he's up on the gantry i have to point out cindy lauper did that first she never gets credit for this she was she was the gantry pioneer i think she she never gets enough credit um but it doesn't have it's not it's not really a song of any sort is it it's like

i will you know you forget it as you're listening to it it just kind of goes it doesn't you know it's not even in one ear out the other it's not even really in your ear especially it's kind of no fussing about somewhere so dribbling down your neck somewhere around your chin and by this point his hips are so small and his head is so big he looks like he's wearing a mick jagger head you know what i mean and his dance is just to jump up and down it's just to put his hands on his hips and jump up and down yeah and how he's avoided a hip replacement after years of that that bonus weight crashing down on this balsa wood skeleton or just hammered himself into the ground like a nail it's really makes you really wince to see it and i'll tell you what it's the other thing about this

times have fucking changed when you see mick jagger making his way through a crowd of 13 year old girls looking paternal with stray cat blues hidden under his mattress yes and of course i mean it's just as well that it is a pre-recording because you know if they'd have said to him yeah mick you're gonna be on top of the pops yeah we're gonna put you on after the video of bad by michael jackson that would be like being of the pops. Yeah, we're going to put you on after the video of Bad by Michael Jackson. That would be like being at the fucking Tummy Show again, you know, when he had to follow James Brown. Also, I mean, I think the Keith Richards myth is a bit overblown, but what would you give to have been at home with Keith Richards when this came on top of the pops?

He was a mouthful of Jack Daniels spraying across the room. I remember he got a lot of shit for us at the time as well, this record, because this was when there was about five million unemployed. Mick Jagger comes out doing Let's Work. He said, I ain't going to cry for you if you're lazy. Now, in his head, he's talking about people who are genuinely lazy but it just didn't sound too good and I remember around the same time uh Gwen Guthrie brought out uh brought out Ain't Nothing Going On But The Rent which is a much better record a much

better yeah that's a tune with a much more obnoxious lyric. But she managed to get away with it because it was just so good. And, I mean, I love that record, but, I mean, I appreciate that she's a fly girl and therefore contractually obliged to skirt the broke ass. But it's that one line that kills me where she says, I've got lots of love to give, but I will have to avoid you if you're unemployed. Because especially at the time, unemployed was such an 80s word.

It makes you think of, you know, Nicholas Whitchell reading the news in front of like a one-colour graphic of a doll queue. And it's like in the video, they should have had Gwen Guthrie dancing around through like the kitchen of a 50-year-old father of four. And he sat with his head in his hands, crying in this empty, barren kitchen.

And then Gwen dances across the sparkly dress twirling her fingers going gwen guthrie if she'd have been british she could have said you know um i maybe might say yes if you're on the yts yes yeah but and also you know gwen guthrie yeah you say she's a bit of a fly girl and everything she's not a fucking multimillionaire tax exile. Yeah, that's the thing. And he just comes over as fucking Prince Philip here, doesn't he? Yeah.

As Paul Weller said, my hard-earned dough goes on bills in the larder, and that Mick Jagger tells us we've got to work harder. There's about 100% more Prince Philip in this episode than I expected there to be. Yes. See if you can cram him in one more time. As the Queen once said. Yeah. There goes my knighthood.

I bet Bill Wyman's thinking, well, oh, fucking hell, thank God, Mick. People might forget my fucking paedophile song now. Oh, yeah. He just reminded me of his pedophile song oh shit sorry bill i'd also forgotten his contribution to the uh the 1980s uh unemployment crisis where he said uh i've been in i've looked in a job center and there's loads of jobs what's the matter with these people so the following week let's work finally entered the top 40 at number

33 but would only get as high as number 31 the follow-up throw away didn't get anywhere near the chart and he wouldn't chart as a solo artist again until sweet thing got to number 24 in february of 1992 1992. Mick Jagger doing his audition for Graeme Schill there. Good stuff. And now here's this week's top ten. Good move into the top ten for level 42. It's over at ten.

Up 11 to number nine, Hey Matthew from Carol Fialca. We love the house nation with the house master boys. Up four at number eight. And down four at seven, the fat boys and the beach boys wipe out. A good run for Tapao comes to a close with Heart and Soul down two at six. The highest new entry straight in at five, Michael Jackson, a bad. Madonna causes yet another commotion, up three at number four. And up three, two, three, Cliff Richard, Some People.

Almost at the top but still at number two, pump up the volume from Mars. Well that's nearly it for this week, we'll be waiting here for you same time, same place next week. Yeah with an even deeper sun tan I suppose. I've not been on a sun bed, you've been on a white machine. It's very fashionable indeed. Here's a man who's been at the top of the charts for five weeks, will he still be there next week? That's entirely up to you. Rick Astley, number one. Bye bye. entirely up to you rick astley number one you click on a link expected to hear the number one single from the 24th of september 1987 and you get this. Those internet pranks. Well, just so long as that mischievous trolling spirit stays good. Yes.

After some skin tone related banter, Smith and Davies introduce Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley. Born in Newton-le-Willers, Lancashire in 1966 rick astley was a van driver for his dad's market garden business and a drummer in a soul covers band called fbi who graduated to frontman status when the previous one left to become a hairdresser after a while he was spotted by pete waterman who signed up the band and assigned Astley to the role of tape operator in an attempt to get him used to the recording process and overcome his natural shyness. His debut single When You're Gonna failed to chop but this follow-up recorded on New Year's

Day of this year and sat on by Pete Waterman for eight months took four weeks to rocket up to number one and this is its fifth week here fucking hell all these big guns being pulled out and here's the number one well this is this is the thing right is that i'm actually i i you know i realized that this was uh this was the number one in this episode and and i did i i did i've never you know i never i never really had um you know it's a sort of middling pop song which has become incredibly annoying but you know, it's a sort of middling pop song, which has become incredibly annoying. But, you know, I don't think I hated it at the time.

I mean, I found, I mostly found Stock Aitken and Waterman stuff a bit embarrassing. This was when it was like, you know, I really love pop music. And I thought, this is what people who don't like pop music think all pop is like. Do you know what I mean? And so it's like, I don't like pop music think all pop is like do you know what i mean and so it's like i i don't i don't like this i don't think this is you know um this is the right kind of face to be to be showing the world you know um but i didn't you know this was kind of the thing that i hated the least i think but i really um i thought i'd look up like you know rick rolling because obviously it was a thing for you know it's been a thing for like uh for many years on the internet and um and i thought well surely that's all died down now

it's not really a thing and also you know that this is a year where everything is sort of weird and mad and you know that's sort of too too much of an innocent thing and the first thing that pops up is an article from two days ago um from the uh cornellTimes for Cornell University, the Ivy League University in Ithaca in New York. Hundreds rickrolled in mysterious campus prank at Cornell. So some engineering students with too much time on their hands made some little tiny devices and all they do is play Never Gonna Give You Up in a sort of 8-bit version

and they just secreted them all over Cornell. So people were hearing it and going the fuck is that you go you go in the canteen in cornell and you're trying to discuss literature and it's like where is it coming from it's like he's hidden it in under statues and in on tops of shelves and they don't know who did it and just somebody went to all that trouble of using their engineering expertise to do that and i don't know considering that you know the thing with rickrolling is it's like it's such an innocent thing it's such an innocent prank you could just as easily make trick people into looking at a bit of pornography in which a man is doing something that he shouldn't with a donkey. But you don't. You just send them to this record instead.

And there's something, there is a purity about that that I celebrate. What I thought you were going to say is that two days ago, it was like Donald Trump tweeted, I have an important announcement about US relations with North Korea. Because he would. And then there's like a tiny Earl.

No, he'd never do that though it's too human it's a human thing and he's not capable of doing that he tried to own coffee fee and that fucked up in his face he tried to make out like he made a funny and it's like well this man doesn't have a sense of humour you don't reach that level

in this world if you've got a sense of humour yeah I don't know I watched this clip of Rick Astley, and two things struck me. First of all, for a man who at the time was sold entirely on his ability as a singer, he does begin this song sounding alarmingly like a cow that's been kicked in the udders.

It's not a pretty noise that he's making and the other thing um the first thing that struck me and i know this was remarked upon at the time was his incredible vocal physical and spiritual resemblance to max by yes now yes i i thought well look this sounds familiar i remember people saying this at the time. Is this just an old cliche that I've forgotten along with so much else? So I went to Google and I typed in Rick Astley, Max Bygraves. When you do that, the first result is a question on Yahoo Answers saying, is Rick Astley Max Bygraves' love kid? Astley, Max Bygrave's love kid. To which

to which the best what's been voted the best answer is Rick Astley makes me want to hit him in the face with a pine cone. I can't top it. And of course the other thing that was about at the

time was thick twats coming up to you and go oh god you never guess what rick castle is white and you listen to this and you go how much of a thick cunt was you have you have you how how did that get into your head what because he's got a deep voice so you know how did you feel when you found out that David Sylvian wasn't black? Also, because even though it's a pseudo soul record, I suppose, but if you took the synth strings off this and removed that sort of spurious, uplifting feel, you can hear how clanky and parping and British it really sounds, right? And in some ways you have to say that's it's saving

grace because there's nothing else going for it and at least that's a moderately weird sound but it's not a good sound and i feel now sometimes you're almost expected to like stock aiken and waterman stuff because it's factory made pop and yeah because because it was hated at the time but also because it's pure bubble gum and factory made pop which is like saying you should enjoy drinking the contents of condoms that you found on the adventure playground because you like sex you know it's like this is just taylor j've done it. I'm going now. I have gone. But most of their stuff really is just shoddy, space-filling paste.

It has to be said. And the fact that some of it isn't, and they actually did about three or four really great records, just highlights the general laziness and lack of inspiration with which they approach their work most of the time to me at the time i fucking despised this record this was this was gary and sharon music and and more importantly it was my sister's music you know um she was two years younger than me and you know this was the kind of this was the the fucking national anthem of her touching up a massive frothy perm necking halves of lager and

orange at new york new york where the staff all danced on the bar and then off to either barry nobles astoria or chivago's necking some pernos and then copping off with someone with a pencil tash in a suit from Clock Tower at C&A basically having a better time than I was yeah this is it to me now I just think that sounds like more fun than I've ever had in my life

you know and you tell the youth of today they refuse to believe you oh yeah you had to go to this club you had to wear a suit and a tie and have some Italian looking shoes or they wouldn't let you in oh yeah you had to go to this club you had to wear a suit and a tie and have some italian looking shoes or they wouldn't let you in that that the one nightclub givago's i mentioned earlier they had a strict you've got to wear a tie polo set and if you walk past it when the pubs were chucking out it was um it was built into the shopping center and next door to Zhivago's was, you know,

some clothes shops and, you know, market stalls that sold fabric and stuff. And you'd see blokes going through the bins, looking for a bit of fabric and ripping it up and fashioning it into a tie so they could get into this club. Bloody hell. Fucking ridiculous.

And I looked down my nose at the time, but then I would go to somewhere like Rock City or the garage and I would be turned away for not looking alternative enough oh you know i.e. not having a fucking James t-shirt on or something like that

were there like these sad marauding gangs of like everyone who couldn't get into either Zhivago's or Rock City yeah well you'd go home and watch Hitman and Her and take the piss out of Gary's and Sharon's. Because it was great, because you could take the piss out of them without them beating you up. I'll tell you what else I hate about this song is the lyrics.

The opening lines to this song are, We're no strangers to love. You know the rules and so do i a full commitment's what i'm thinking of you wouldn't get this from any other guy right now first of all um you know welcome to the 80s it's self-aggrandizement posing as decency yeah and the glorification of 1950s type straightness against uh you know this aggressive conformity and fucking pleated trousers again but also it's so dodgy what is he doing there is he like is he negging this woman so you wouldn't get this from any other guy it's like what you know what else you're going to get right who else is going to be interested in you you have to you have to

it's like i don't know it's i mean any man in the world and an increasing number of women can see through this stuff right and when you find it in lyrics from songs from the period it clangs like a fucking bucket it's like it's like he's messaging someone on a dating site saying hey you seem so unlike all the other girls on this site who are whores you know what i mean it's fucking terrible really horrible it's um all coming out of this doughy face prick. But this was a number one for five fucking weeks. Five weeks. And, you know, some of the people we've gone through,

some of the bands and artists we've gone through, this is a fucking enormous, iconic 80s names. And there's a lot of upcoming bands and artists we've gone through this is a fucking enormous iconic 80s names and there's a lot of upcoming bands and everything but and this this has been chosen to to to rule the charts for over a month never mind eh the following week never gonna give you up drop down to number two knocked off the top spot by pump up the volume by mars but he got to number one in 25 different countries including the usa a year later and it won the brit award for best single the follow-up whenever you need somebody got to number three in november of this year and he'd have eight top 10 hits on the bounce until his career petered out in 1993. is fancy. Peter Simon introduces a new trivia quiz. There's a press conference with Peter Howard from the hit series Bread

and this week's special pop guests are Living in a Box who join Sarah Green and Philip Schofield going live this Saturday morning at 9.30 on BBC One. So what's on telly afterwards? Well BBC One follows up with EastEnders where Lofty is

trying to get Michelle to fucking cheer up for once. Then Tomorrow's World looks at a car that does 100 miles to the gallon. Then it's the episode of Only Fools and Horses where Rodney starts knocking about with a female police officer. Followed by Black Alana III who has to rewrite Dr Samuel Johnson's

dictionary and finishes off with Question Time and the original TV version of The Untouchables. BBC Two is screening Ebony, a Black magazine programme, Call My Bluff with Angharad Rees, Sheila Stiefel and Ian Ogilvie, Ian Ogilvie, fucking hell, Top Gear, Moonlighting, the Leeds International Piano Competition and more darts. ITV has Only When I Laugh, Strike It Lucka,

a discussion about euthanasia in this week the a team and the final episode of connor and channel 4 has an episode of equinox which examines the conflict of interest between industry and the environment a mini series about the love affair between nelson and winnie mandela the japanese history history documentary Showa, and the John Gielgud film The Secret Agent. So, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow, me dears? I'd have been talking to my mate about Jagger, and oh dear, isn't it sad? It's not quite Gimme Shelter, is it? And my God, is there no hope?

And then we'll conclude that there isn't, and we'd be right um well i would say michael jackson obviously except not in that playground so uh yeah just in pure disgust rick astley and what he's still doing at number one and what are we buying on saturday quite honestly i wouldn't have bought any of these i would have been buying fucking strange ways here we come which came out this month and then and then thinking actually morris isn't it which i remember occurred to me around this time and what does this episode tell us

about september of 1987 we're nearing the end of it all and this really is the final shutdown of the most intense period of cultural change and artistic endeavor since the renaissance it's over just in time for me to come of age it tells us that um 1988 is going to be a lot more interesting than anyone thought it would be. Yeah, doesn't it get better in 1988, Taylor? A little, yeah. A little? No, it does. It's good to end on a positive note. Well, you know, it's the largest youth movement since punk, you know. But just that.

Well, this is the thing about this episode of Top of the Pops. There's no house on it, and there was already house in the chart. Yeah, this is the thing about this episode of Top of the Pops. There's no house on it, and there was already house in the chart. Yeah, a lot of house. Yeah. Other than that, this Top of the Pops is a good choice because it's very representative of 1987.

The only two things missing are that faux Celtic rock and house. But they haven't really worked out what to do about house yet. Well, this is what you've got to look forward to in a couple of years' time, people who watch the Top of the Pops repeats on BBC4. Sorry to break it to you like this.

But you won't see this one. We watched it so you don't have to. So, that brings us to the end of another episode of chart music all that remains is usual shit www.chartmusic.co.uk facebook.com slash chart music podcast and you can join the many celebrities on twitter including jay aston and dean friedman who recently followed us on chart music for for god knows why uh at chart music t-o-t-p i shat myself when i saw that i hate it you're gonna wake up tomorrow morning it's gonna say uh yan hammer followed you

no what's gonna happen is someday soon i'm gonna fucking get up in the morning and pad to the fucking bathroom and fucking up why has that toothbrush got Dean Friedman written on it? Anyway, Pop Craze youngsters, that is the end of this episode of Chart Music. All that remains for me to do is say thank you very much, Sarah B. Thank you. Please come back whenever you feel like it, Ducker. And thank you very much, as always, Taylor Parks.

It's been pleasurable my name's al needham and i drink the contents of condoms in adventure playgrounds because i like sex sharp music Chart music. I'm still quite junior, so I do a bit of everything, which includes keeping the cash machine loaded. No, it's easy. A bit like a photocopier, except the paper's more expensive. Oh, shut your pan, you bellend. Paper's more expensive. Ah, shut your pan, you bellend. Hope prays youngsters. On behalf of all of us here at the Champions League,

our tribute tonight. She was a fast machine, she kept them on her plate She was the best man woman that I've ever seen She had a sacred sign, telling me more lies Knocking me out with those American thoughts Taking more than my share, had me fighting for air She told me to come, but I was already there Cause the walls start shaking The earth was breaking My mind was shaking

And you knew that you You shook me all night long Yeah, yeah, you You shook me all night long Had to come around to take a run around Now I'm back in the rain to take a run and swim

Cause my heart starts shaking The earth was breaking My mind was aching We were making a move Took me all night long Yeah, yeah, yeah You took me all night long Baby, you took me all night long Don't forget

You should be all night long And your turn You should be all night long Yeah, yeah, you all up here All night long Knockin' me out, I said, you should be all night long Yeah, you should be All night long Long and long We are right by the bell in this school, and the bell in this school. I'm going to show you what I'm going to show. We've got a dance lesson next, and that floor's got Coca-Cola on it.

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