Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #19: June 15th 1989 - Remember Double Trouble’s Shirts? They Were Really Stylish

Episode Date: February 6, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: what’s the difference between a Cartoon Time and a Cartoon Club? This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, sees the world’s No.1 authority on old episodes of a long-gone pop show casting its eyes and ears toward the summer of ’89 - but if you're expecting to see some Acid House tomfoolery or a full-on Madchester takeover, you're going to be massively disappointed: the only Acieeed references are on Sinitta's ears, and the only Manc in attendance is, er, Simon Parkin, who's been let out of the Broom Cupboard for his TOTP debut. And he looks like he's shitting himself throughout. Still, this episode is a definite sign that things are getting better, as long as you avoid looking at the appalling shirts that men chose to wear in that era: Brit-Hop pitches up in the shape of the Rebel MC. REM finally escape from Student Discoland into our hearts and charts. Fuzzbox get all saucy with a massive pin . And Stock Aitken and Waterman finally admit defeat with the worst No.1 of the year that didn't involve a grown man in a rabbit costume. Al Needham is joined by Sarah Bee and Neil Kulkarni for a ram of the critical arm up the cow's arse of '89, veering off to discuss being coated down by middle-aged Crusties, Mams who go into town wearing your favourite band t-shirts, suitable replacements for Africa pendants if you happen to be white and don't want to get battered, being stared at by Cyndi Lauper, and the disgusting lack of train etiquette displayed by second division pop stars. And - of course - all the swearing you could possibly need.    Download  |  Video Playlist  |  Subscribe Follow us on Facebook here. Link up with us on Twitter here. Subscribe to us on iTunes here.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do you like listening to? Erm... Chart music. Chart music. Hey! Up you pop-crazed youngsters and welcome to the latest edition of Chart Music, the podcast that gets its hand right down the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, and as always, I'm joined by two people who know loads about everything. My first guest, Sarah B. A-up Sarah.

Hello, how are you? Very well, very well. Yourself? Yeah, pretty good. I've got the biggest mug of tea that I could fit in my hand, so everything is tickety-boo at this end, thank you. Lovely. And my second guest is your old chum, Neil Kulkarno. Ayup Neil. Hello, how are you, mate? Very well, I've already said I'm very well. Of course you are. i'm knackered and i've been a long week i clearly need to plug myself into um noel edmunds new positively happy radio fucking hell yes i've been i've been listening to that as well it's fucking mental in it it is mental i'm annoyed by the fact that healthy is actually misspelt on their website yeah and um i'll try some of the networks out later i'm particularly interested in their jazz network and to a perhaps larger extent their horse network

have you noticed radio horse i don't know what that's about you're basically being asked to choose between horrible banks and noel edmonds and it's like well whose side can i be on in this but there is one of them isn't it where it's just him ranting on with his usual ukip style nonsense so well they all do all of them are pretty much all of them just him ranting on with his usual UKIP style nonsense well they all do, pretty much all of them are him ranting on so is there anything pop and interesting that we've been up to since we last spoke

no not at all winding up the levelers on twitter yes I saw that Neil you were just bring us up to speed on that one you were you were banging on

about the next Levellers record being a load of shit yeah and they came back at you but this is it but who am I

why are they noticing this stuff unless they're constantly on Twitter sort of searching themselves yeah I said I was

going to vomit in a bin if I heard their new single and they got back to me saying you're going to need a bigger bin because we've made a whole album

and of course that was followed by a ton of Levellers fans doing various variations of the kind of boom you've been owned type memes afterwards but yeah why should they care it was a bit strange that I should realise that

when you put stuff on Twitter these people will notice. Yeah. Yeah, it's awful, isn't it? You are a man who loves a scrap. I don't love a scrap. I mean, this is it. I'm throwing these comments out innocuously, I think.

I'm not doing it to vex or annoy anybody, but they notice. Twitter's different from Facebook, obviously, because you can't put settings on it. But they've got better things to do they've got a new album coming out they haven't though mate it's it's it's 20 years since trust me i'll say no i fucking hate the levelers all i can remember all i can remember is about them is mid-90s working in a really shitty office in newton abbott the stank of chip papers and fags

in a really shitty office in Newton Abbot, the stank of chip papers and fags, doing a magazine that no one would read, having a cunt of a boss who looked like Donkey Kong, and Virgin Radio playing that Levellers song about some girl who always felt alone in a crowded

room. And I used to think, well, of course you feel alone. You've probably got a fucking Levellers t-shirt on. It's like, oh, I'm not talking to her, man. She's got shit-tasting music. No, the Levellers is for me they're synonymous for me with a dance which is linking arms with somebody and doing a kind of sailor's hornpipe type thing oh they did that horrible fucking get pissed song didn't they as well yeah cunts too good for them that's yeah oh i hate him even more now man i was being really reserved when I said they were a bunch of cunts. I've got to think of something that's even more, you know.

Nah, fuck them. Anyway, let's talk about even more past-related stuff, because this episode, Pulp Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to June the 15th, 1989. Oh, yes, the last flag has been binned, and all the remaining balloons have been popped with a nub end in the top of the pop studios and things are starting to change and

things seem to be getting better don't they? Weren't things getting better in the late 80s? They were getting, I mean in terms of like thinking about music I'd suggest they were getting a bit better by the late 80s than they were before um so but certainly i mean in in the music that i was interested in it was kind of

the golden age of hip-hop in a way we were well into the daisy age by 89 and it was the golden age of death metal and there was lots of weird pop being made in the uk and us that i was very into so things were getting better the rise of dance music clearly affected everything for me 89 in particular this year that we're talking about was the summer of do the right thing and fight the power by public enemy um they were really important to me at that time so yeah things were getting better and consequently things were getting better outside of the charts so my interest in the charts are kind of veered off by this point I'd kind of stopped caring I kept an eye on them but more in the interest of kind of getting annoyed than

finding enjoyment and and I'd crucially stopped making those chart tapes that kind of accompanied me through my early 80s for me now it was all about Annie Nightingale Peely and Janice Lennon you see that's when you that's when you become a man is when you you you you put aside you put away childish things and and your tape deck and your uh you lose that muscle of the kind of the play the play and record simultaneous ka-chunk yeah it's a sad yeah my pause button skills yeah went in this period oh alas but it's good no it's good you know you've got to move on haven't you see i was still see i was 11 and um i still um i was thinking about this and i thought yeah i had some kind of you know the charts were still sort of this this kind of you know cultural anchor for

me um of a of a sunday night and um i think i thought of the charts as this kind of ecosystem where everything was kind of ultimately imbalanced and everything had its place like even the bacteria that you that you really hated was there for a reason you know and it balanced even like the the kind of the wasps and the jellyfish and the you know stinging insects like well what the fuck is this doing here but it all had its place in the you know and it all would find its balance you know so i think that was what the charts were were still for me at this time in my uh in my calla youth i feel like my calla youth lasted a really long time but that's because we've been doing i've done this one and then the last one which was another 80s one so you know that's uh that's that's how it's going

to shake out yeah but i mean that last time you were on sarah it was 1987 and it was it was fucking awful wasn't it it was a low point i think even i had to admit that yeah this was this was the johnny hates jazz which you know i don't know if they even qualify as an adair are they even sort of you know seems too exotic a word for them really really. Yes. Yeah. So, I mean, even as an 11-year-old, you've realised that things are getting better? I think so, yeah. I mean, there were... So by the time you're 16,

the Chotsby go be absolutely fucking amazing, aren't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there was definitely, there was more of a... Yeah, like you said, there's, you know, dance music was kind of, was shifting everything and hip-hop was shifting everything and everything, there's this fantastic cross-pollination going on that you couldn't help but get excited by, really.

And outside of pop music, things seem to be getting better as well. You know, we're having all this Mather over the pole tax, you know, Nelson Mandela, Berlin Wall, all that kind of stuff. You know, it looked like everything was going to be brilliant in the 90s, didn't it? Well, I think, Al, it depends upon how old you are.

I mean, I was 16 when this episode came out. And as you can imagine, I was utterly unbearable. I was a pain in the arse teenager. And it coincided with me taking my A-levels. All my mates had left school. I was taking my A-levels. And I remember just scowling a lot at this age I started going out at night

I started clubbing at this age So music was now a thing that was also sort of You know, out there where I could bring my annoyingness To a wider audience So I was kind of getting used to scowling in clubs You know, getting annoyed that my music Wasn't being played by the DJ Very much like the Six form sort of center stereo,

where I tried to put Public Enemy on or stuff like that. And I was told to turn that shit off because it's not proper music. Yeah. Somebody put The Mission or The The on or something. So I was, things were perhaps getting better, but because of my age, I was becoming really intolerable and intolerant. And my style, in terms of what I was wearing and stuff, was a mess. I don't think I looked as bad as I did then at any other point in my life.

I was wearing some atrocious clothes at that time. Well, I was confused, basically. One night I'd be a goth the next night so god knows I was kind of a cheap rubbish looking b-boy I was simultaneously obsessed with hip-hop but also all the kind of glamorous alienated bands that I was reading about in Melody Maker so I had the hip-hop thing going on but also tons of makeup and right and and also my dad at the time he wasn't working in Coventry he was working in Port Talbot at a chemicals plant and he he bought home this really thick orange jacket that could repel all hazardous materials right and I thought this was

fantastic and I started wearing that and I combined that with um kind of lots of nail varnish lippy and mascara and and a telescopic cigarette holder that I was really fond of right you know christ knows what I look like um it really was get the butterfly net out type you know attire so yeah my clothes and everything else are kind of reflecting my slight confusion and just my general ragginess at that age um so so watching this episode it did kind of recall that sense of confusion it's all about how old you are 16 17 i'm not saying every 16 17 year old is unhappy but i mainly teach 16 and 17 year olds and they are just basically very anxious confused and kind of figuring out who the fuck they are

and I think that's where I was at that point fun times everyone so what was in the news this week well Labour would go on to win two by-elections this day and batter the Tories in the European elections.

Oh, it can't be long now, surely. Mikhail Gorbachev finishes his tour of West Germany by stating the Berlin Wall may not last forever. Ayatollah Khomeini has to have a second funeral after the first one ended with his body being dropped on the floor as people went mental around him. That was, yeah, that wasn't good. I wish Thatcher's funeral had been like that.

That would have been fucking great, wouldn't it? David Beckham donkey kicking her corpse into the coffin at the end with Brian May playing a guitar solo in the background. That would have been great. But the big news this week is that Jar Jar Gabor has been arrested in Beverly Hills for slapping up a copper.

Oh, fuck the police. Wow. What a woman. And I love that, of course, she played that out in the opening credits of... Is it Naked Gun 2? Yeah, something like that. And she just goes and smacks the camera.

And I saw that before I realised that it was actually a thing she'd done. And then I found that out and I was just like, oh, goals. On the cover of the NME this week, Danny Wilson. On the cover of Smash It, Sunita the number one lp in the uk at the minute is 10 good reasons by jason donovan over in the us the number one single is wind beneath my wings by bet middler and the number one lp in the us is the raw and the cooked by the fine young cannibals so me dears what were you doing in the summer of 1989?

Oh, my God. Did you get your first real six string from the five and dime? I think I had a pet snake at this time, actually. Really? Yeah, it was brilliant. What was he called? Eric. Oh.

Eric, he was a garter snake. Those are very common in America, but you don't get that. There's sort of black ones with the yellow stripes. Oh, Eric, he's a garter snake. Those are very common in America, but you don't get that. There's sort of black ones with the yellow stripes. Oh, lovely. They're really cool looking snakes and he used to wind himself around my glasses and go to sleep. I mean, it's kind of hard to tell when a snake goes to sleep

because their eyes are always, you know, they've got the blank killer stare. But yeah, he would... Yeah, so that's what I was doing. I was a... How big were your glasses? It was only a little snake, you know. I didn't have, like, the full Deirdre Barlow going on.

Also, I didn't go out... I must say, I didn't go out around the town like this or anything. I wasn't that weird. No? No. But I probably played the clarinet. I didn't, like, try to pick up a guitar until much later than this. So, yeah, that was me.

Wow. What did your snake eat? Bits of fish and worms. We had to dig up worms from the garden, and he would, like, hunt the worms down in his tank. Snakes are boss. They're amazing. Yeah. I was going the full Deidre Barnett at this age. yeah I was going the full Deirdre Barlow at this age um and and um my life because my mates had left school and they kind of moved away and I didn't bother making any new mates my my life was

I mean I loved it on a Saturday because all I did I used to get the bus up to Warwick University Library and I used to sit in there for hours reading books that I couldn't get anywhere else and the place was like NASA it was like all really white and beautiful and nowhere else in Coventry was like that really so I was yeah I was a geek really I was just reading and listening almost obsessively and then kind of going out and getting into

not trouble as such but getting myself into a bother about other people and about music. Music was starting to seriously wind me up at this stage. So, yeah, that's what I was doing. And I have to say, obsessively reading Melody Maker. I mean, by now, you know, it was the highlight of my week, was getting Melody Maker on a Wednesday,

reading people like, yeah, Chris Roberts and Simon Reynolds and all of that. And also Simon's Price, I think, had just started at Melody Maker there. So yeah, I was just an obsessive reader and listener at this stage. I wasn't really doing much. I was just kind of, in a sense, vegetating, but it all proved useful later, I think. I had big glasses as well, man. The curse of being short-sighted in the

80s means you're brainy though doesn't it that's what that's what glasses are it's like no it means you don't get laid for ages because because also there were reactor light repeats because i thought i've got to do something to fucking make myself look slightly cool but oh man they were so they were they were glass um lenses at the time so consequently like most people of my age i've got i've got sinuses like rick parfitts man they've just caved in due to the fucking weight that explains so much i never thought of that yeah um yeah because i have this ability right and it's not like a superpower or anything but i can i'll be the judge of that no i with a small trick that i do with my nose i can unblock and block my ears at will oh yes it's just really handy when you when your job especially is

going to loud gigs and standing next to massive speakers and I never thought of glasses doing that I was well into my blindness by now because I've been wearing glasses since the 70s so anyone else trying them on it was a semi-drug experience I mean at the time I was I think my first proper job

which was I was working at the Stacky Chevalier which was a casino in Nottingham City Centre, I was working at the Stacky Chevalier, which was a casino in Nottingham City Centre. That sounds really classy. Working as a crew PA. Basically, the job involved standing there in a shit waistcoat, being told to fuck off in 17 different languages, man. It was fucking horrible. I mean, the best thing about that job was it made me realise the futility of

racism because everyone's a fucking cunt honestly it was just like a Benetton poster of cuntishness oh man I'm going to start using that I think I was the one person there who didn't get beaten up during the time I was there

is this place still there Al? no it isn't. It isn't. But it was fucking horrible. It really was. Happy memories, then. Because it was, you know, night shifts and stuff like that, I'd stop seeing Top of the Pops by then, because if I was working on a Thursday night, obviously I wouldn't be

able to see it. And if I had a night off, there was no fucking way I was staying in. I was going out and getting hammered and going clubbing with my mates. So, yeah, this was a brand new experience to me, this episode. What threw me? You know, at the very beginning of this episode, it's got a list of the viewing and stuff. Top of the Pops and then EastEnders at 7.30?

Yes, yes. That ain't right. Top of the Pops at 7. I only remember EastEnders being an eight o'clock thing no no no no no wait as soon as eastenders came in top of the pops got nudged back oh man yeah maybe that's why i stopped watching it because i'm probably annoyed by the change the change in time you're used to seven o'clock top of the pops aren't you sarah yeah i seem to um i mean it was just whatever time it was it was top of the pops time you know it's like your evening would kind of uh revolve around that you know but yeah and it always seemed to it always

seemed to go by really quickly as well um so so yeah but at seven i mean i i wasn't paying that much attention i didn't get um i definitely i don't recall getting any sense of rising injustice about the moving around the uh it that's it I was 16. It's a five-year difference. All those hormones raging around and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it sends you kind of doolally for about five years of your life, basically, doesn't it? Pretty much.

And do you even, you know, do you even ever get over it? I'm not sure I'm over it now. BBC One has run Neighbours, the Wraith Richardson film School for Secrets, Simon and the Witch, Ernie's Incredible Illucinations, Newsrand, Blue Peter, Neighbours Again

and The News. Ernie's Incredible Illucinations. That's Illucinations. Sarah, explain it to me. Come on. I'm not sure I'm in a position to. this vaguely rings a bell but you've kind of

caught me on the hop with this one okay well you're going to have to help me out because I can't, I vaguely remember Simon and the Witch I don't remember Eric's hang on, Ernie's Ernie's what? Incredible Illucinations that's I-L-L

Illucinations why, was I-L-L, Oocinations. Why? Was he ill every week or something? I mean, what's going on here? Maybe he just has hallucinations when he's ill. That sounds awesome, though. It's fucking grim, isn't it?

That couldn't have been on... So what time was that on? That would have been on after Simon and the Witch and just before Newsround. So we're talking about, I don't know, half four? Right. The thing is, the 80s kids telly. I mean, I've, you know, I had, you know, there's pros and cons to growing up in the 80s. But this was definitely, you know, they would let kids watch all kinds of stuff.

Just incredibly harrowing and mad, you know. And then I think after that, they kind of went, oh, my God, all these kids are growing up a bit weird. We better damp it down a bit. So, I mean, that could have been anything that could have been like a full on kind of psychedelic experience. You know, like the, that, that thing when the Simpsons go to Japan and the kind of seizure robots cartoon, that was the eighties basically. It's like this stuff will actually, that was the 80s basically it's like this stuff will actually you know reroute your neural pathways bbc2 has broadcast schools programs the queen's club tennis championships a repeat of film 89 and is currently showing deadline at dawn an old crime film itv has screened the medical show Food, Fad or Fact. Well, I've just eaten some earlier, so it must be fact. Richmond Hill, a repeat of Fresh Fields, Duck Tales,

Rolf's Cartoon Club, Home and Away, Emmerdale Farm, and is currently showing Where There's Life, where Dr. Miriam Stoppard looks at some frozen embryos. Mmm, lovely. Channel 4 has run Sesame Street, a documentary about Vikings, another documentary about growing up on a space base in the 60s, 15 to 1,

a film about an ice skater, The Survivor's Guide, a series for young people on how to survive the 90s, and is currently showing Channel 4 News. Rolf's Cartoon Club being on ITV, that's all kinds of wrong for me. Why?

I didn't even know that it crossed the line, you know, that it crossed the floor. Well, Rolf's Cartoon Club was never on BBC. It was always on ITV. It was on BBC, Rolf's Cartoon Club. Was it? Yeah. Are you sure about that?

Yes. Okay. Well, Rolf's cartoon. Was it? Yeah. Are you sure about that? Yes. Well, Rolf Harris introducing cartoons. Are you sure this is the hill you want to die on? No, I'm standing there. I reckon it was always on ITV. There was a Derek Griffith show that was similar, wasn't there? Set in a cinema

where Derek Griffith played all the different people in the cinema and they showed cartoons.iths played all the different um people in the cinema and they showed cartoons and yeah but i'm sure that was an itv job as well i don't think bbc had a show like that although i could be totally wrong now now that i think about it you know do you know what it is i think it's because it wasn't long enough to have a break so it's i think it was like a was it a 15 minute thing? So it was, it didn't. And in those days you could actually have a 15 minute show without three breaks in it. So yeah.

Yeah. I think that's what I like about Mastery of the Heart. Thanks to the internet. The original BBC show was Rolf's Cartoon Time. And this was Rolf's Cartoon Club. Maybe he just got shifted because, I don't know, Tony Hart got pissed off um that he was stealing his kind of audience because that the whole slow drawing um something amazing happening

at the end that was that was kind of tony hart's bag so maybe he got shifted because of that tony hart was a powerful man and it's terrible isn't it they were having a five minute conversation about rol ferris and the one thing we're outraged about is him moving from BBC to ITV alright and Pop Craze youngsters it's time to go all the way back to June of 1989 don't forget we may coat down your favourite

band or artist but we never forget they've been on top of the pubs more than we have. Although the theme tune is still Paul Hardcastle's The Wizard, now over three years old and already showing its age, we're treated to an updated opening credit sequence which places the viewer in a 3D maze encrusted with flat screens and pipes and throws numbers at them. Wizard would last two more years. The camera pans up from the kids to a balcony where we meet this week's hosts mark goodier and simon parking born in rhodesia in 1961 mark goodier started his career as a mobile dj in scotland before working his way up the ladder in scottish local radio he joined radio one in 1987 when he co-presented the

weekend breakfast show with liz kershaw, is currently on the early evening slot and has been a host of Top of the Pops since 1988. His co-host, making his debut, is Simon Parkin, a former hospital radio DJ who moved to Radio Tees in 1987 but was immediately drafted in by BBC TV to fill in for Andy Crane in the broom cupboard, the children's BBC link department. He's 23 at this point and looks about 13.

I mean, they've actually got someone who looks young to present Top of the Pops. But is this the most uninspiring duo presenting Top of the Pops has ever been? It's not great. And the whole thing about getting kids presenters in, which they increasingly started doing, I think, at that time, because I remember Andy Crane doing it

and Simon Parkin and Karen Keating and Anthea Turner and Jenny Powell and all these people made that move from kids telly over. And they even had people like Sybil Rusko, you know, the newsreader of Radio 1 presenters and stuff like that. I mean, when you think like 10 years previous to this, it would have been bizarre having kids' presenters

on top of the Pops in the early 80s. Can you imagine Brian Kant being on top of the Pops? Yes. That would have been brilliant, though. It would have been brilliant, but really strange. But I think it's a kind of prefiguring that that umbilicus between Radio 1 and Top of the pops was becoming difficult to maintain this got severed later on because obviously um emma freud when bannister bought in the whole set of new djs

emma freud is probably not going to do top of the pops this is the last era really of that small link between radio one and Top of the Pops. But you can already see, because Parkin's there, that fragmentation's starting to happen, that breakup of that relationship between Radio 1 and TOTP. Parkin, I think he has a mare, actually. He doesn't do well, I don't think, in the episode. No.

There's a few cock-ups. And I was actually trying to remember Simon Parkin and what he did I found a wonderful quote from an interview with him where he was giving advice and I think this is advice that all chart music contributors should take on he said with radio

it doesn't really matter whether you smile or not though it sounds better if you do so we should I'm going to do that now yeah it doesn't really matter whether you smile or not though it sounds better if you do so I'm going to do that now yeah I've got a big beaming grin on me and I feel a total

cunt and I'm finding it quite hard to speak but you look really fucking menacing so Simon Parkin it just seems wrong to have children's presenters doing top of the pops it really does it's it's saying oh this is this is more kid stuff isn't it yeah it's not right is it really i mean to be honest i didn't i didn't really i didn't really notice him being there he's very sort of unobtrusive, you know, and very, yeah.

I mean, Mark Goodyear I have a certain affection for because he sort of was the voice of the charts quite a lot. And you get that really weird, do you ever get that weird thing when you see one of the presenters and you're so used to hearing them on the radio that even though you're quite familiar with their face, it's still really, there's an odd thing about hearing that voice come out of, you know, come out of a human face.

I'm more used to it coming out of a radio. But yeah, Simon Parkin, I don't know, I had no frame of reference for him. I think probably at the time I was a bit suspicious. You didn't watch kids' TV at all, did you, Sarah? As you made quite clear. No, I'd watch Children's Telly, but I don't really, I don't have

fond memories of Simon Parkin. I mean, what's, you know, I don't think i would know him if he stood up in my soup really i think this was probably the shape of things to come where it's like the less personality you have the better it is you know for some shows yeah which is quite an insult to top of the pops really it's like it's okay you can handle it this is quite a robust format just put someone you know it's like don like, don't pull attention from the talent. And it's like, no, it's fine. Get some idiots in there who are going to mess about a bit.

Yeah. I mean, this is an era where Philip Schofield was voted the world's most fanciable man by Smash Hits. Which is, it just makes no sense to me at all I do like I mean I was never that much of a fan of Goodyear but I do like the kind of he seems almost protective in this episode

towards Parkin you know he's practically holding his hand guiding him through this first I mean must be hugely intimidating experience because i mean parking only got the job at on children's tv it was like a lot of us um you know got hired via a phone call and chancing his arm to a certain extent and before he knows it you know he's presenting top of the pops which to somebody his age you know was the biggest biggest show out

there yeah but i think you're right out Al, in that getting kids presenters on, there's not essentially a problem with it, but it does kind of say, Top of the Pops is kids stuff. It's not the nation's show. It should be seen as kind of an adjunct to youth programming or something. And I think that's a little bit fatal.

I see all the signs of what we'd see later in the you know 90s whereby you just didn't fucking know who was going to turn up week by week could be a DJ could be a weather person you know I mean I remember John Ketley doing Top of the Pops

it kind of got you know it just became a kind of free-for-all and this is perhaps the first sort of signs of that and also sorry you know you just became a kind of free-for-all and and this is perhaps the first sort of signs of that and also sorry you know you mentioned the wizard yes the poor hardcastle tune um you can sense that top of the pops here it started to fray at the edges of kind of just being really uncool not only in good year's suit but also in the theme tune the wizard Wizard was spot on in 86, I think, when it came in as top of the pop's theme tune. But in 89, you know, post Pump Up The Volume,

and this is year of S-Express, the year of Ride On Time and stuff. Yeah. It's kind of weedy scratches, and it sounds, already sounding quite dated. Yes. Yeah.

Totally agree with you. So, flanked by two women who look like they've just stepped out of a hairspray advert, Goodyear and Parkin look like the sales manager of Richer Sounds and his new YTS lad. And unfortunately, in the case of Parkin, the wearing a T-shirt under a suit look is still prevailing. They don't look good here, do they? A T-shirt under a suit can look good.

Not just if you're Sam Malone out of Cheers, but it't look good here do they a t-shirt under a suit can look good not just if you're sam malone out of cheers but it can look good if the t-shirt is loose enough and um you can see a bit of neck and a bit of chest not necessarily medallion chest but a bit of chest with parkin he's got a really nice it's a tight neat fitting t-shirt that goes all the way up to his neck with a nasty hoop around it yeah and yeah he looked he yeah he looks he looks like he's been dressed by Goodyear in a hurry basically yeah and Goodyear's got he can't really speak for himself either because he's he's not wearing a tie but he's got one of those horrible late 80s shirts which which has got kind of like what would you

call it piping or something like that that goes all the way down the shirt front. So it looks like a tie until you're in close up and it's like, oh, it's just a shit shirt, mate. We'll doubtless discuss shit shirts as the episode goes on. Hello, welcome to Europe's top TV and radio pop show with stereo sound on Radio 1 FM and making his debut on the pops, Simon Parkin. Thank you, Mark. What a programme we've got for you tonight.

REM Jason Donovan in the studio as our Fuzzboxer 17 with Pink Sunshine. Pink Sunshine Like all good managers, Goodyear gives the new lad a nice easy pitch and he just about memorises two of the bands that are on, as well as introducing the first act, Fuzzbox with Pink Sunshine. Formed in Birmingham in 1985, We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It were named after a distortion pedal and not a fanny.

After signing to Vindaloo Records, their debut LP, Rules And Regulations, just missed out on the top 40 in the spring of 1986. However, the follow-up Love is the Slug got to number one in December of that year. After signing to WEA and drafting in Bangles producer Liam Sternberg to work on their second LP Big Bang Bang. They went all popper. And in April of this year, they got to number 11 with International Rescue. This is the follow-up, and it's

up this week from number 22 to number 17. And I turn round to Miss B, and I say, you know, Sarah, you mentioned that Fuzzbox were your band round about this time when you were last on Nurchalk Music. Explain why.

Yeah, they really were. So I watched this. I didn't like check ahead to see what, you know, I like to be surprised by these episodes. And so I didn't know that this was coming. And I just wrote, I am so happy. Fuzzbox. Yeah, they really were. They were my thing um and i do distinctly remember

um being around at my my best friend's house and she had two older brothers who were sort of who were um so we were 11 and they were uh 11 and 10 probably and uh they were like 15 16 something like that and i do remember um us being into it and then walking by and just going, ugh, and going, oh, God, this is terrible, which made me like them even more because I thought, okay, it's not that, despite the fact that she's basically wearing a sort of, you know, she's wearing extremely little, is Vicky Perks. But it's not for, it's not necessarily for blokes. I mean, maybe it's just that they were teenagers

and they were doing that kind of grumpy, I hate everything, or they were trying to cover up that they actually really fancied her and just didn't want to admit it. But I thought, yeah, it was like a Spice Girls kind of thing. And obviously the Spice Girls were sort of kind of passed me by later on. So, yeah, I mean, I had the album Big Bang, which I completely rinsed. i had the album big bang which um which i completely rinsed i had the cassette of that and uh it was it was just my thing i mean i listen to it now

and you know it's not it's not the uh it's not the great album that i felt it was at the time but that's not you know when this is the kind of age where stuff just goes into your brain in a particular way and i had no sense of their um previous incarnation you know they're they're kind of um how they started out um they just kind of appeared to me as as all the best music does as if beamed from the stars you know and they have these uniforms they had a different uniform for each song which i just thought was the most amazing they all had kind of slightly different variations on vicky's was like a third the size of everyone else's but they all had you know so for this one they had the kind of this amazing blue and black with like massive epaulets and just stuff dangling off it and a nautical theme yeah and just kind of the

sort of you know loads of embroidery and like embroidered words all over it and they didn't look like anyone else and they were just um extremely daft and extremely fun and lovely and I just loved to look at them and they were so... They were just these brilliant dickheads, just like, you know, what are you doing here? And I thought they were the greatest thing. If there were any males in the band, would that have tempered your feelings towards them?

Was it important that they were all female? I think it was, yeah, definitely. Because, you know, it's like, yeah, you've got a girl drummer, you've got a girl guitarist. And it is still like a thing where, you know, you note this and go, oh, that's a thing. That's a thing girls can do. Obviously, they weren't the first women to do this,

but it's really nice, especially because they're a, also they're a pop band, but they have, you know, they have guitars as well. So, or they're, well, they're, you know, they're a um also they're a pop band but they have you know they have guitars as well so um or that well they're you know they're a guitar pop band they're a pop punk band so um yeah it was just a real shot of you know like i said i got this i got this proper like just seeing seeing them opening top of the pops and it put me straight back to how i would have felt seeing this for the first time i don't know know if this would have been, if this Top of the Pops would have been my introduction to them. I'm not sure when the album came out, but yeah, I knew them.

And I knew them for irritating other people, which of course is great. Neil, I think the one thing that springs out of that little pod of history I did was they've taken on the producer from the Bangles yeah well I mean it is kind of I mean it reminds me I remember it reminded me

at the time a lot of the kind of Go-Go's, Bangles, Voice of the Beehive it reminded me of as well at the time but I was familiar with Fuzzbox from listening to Peel in the mid 80s and I remember when they came out with this incarnation in 89 with a much poppier sound,

some people did get a bit arsey about it. And, you know, for me, it was always ridiculous getting arsey about it because if they, you know, even back when they were being played by Peel in like 85, 86, if they were some avant-garde outfit, you know, making noise odysseys or something, that'd be one thing. But they were always about fun, fuzzbox outfit you know making a little noise odysseys or something that'd be one thing but they

were they were always about fun fuzzbox you know and they were signed after their second gig and they had that kind of everything that happens now is a bonus and and i love that that um that went and and what was great i think about 89 for fuzzbox is that when they did get signed by major they proved they could write and craft really great pop songs. Pink Sunshine's wonderful. I actually preferred International Rescue, I think. And the thing about Vix, because obviously she draws the eye, they didn't oversell Vix.

The rest of the band were always, for me, featured sort of too. And on the actual cover of the single of Pink Sunshine, it's of too yeah and on the actual cover of the single um of pink sunshine it's mags who's on the front cover um and she was actually the one i think i fancied at the time um but the thing is you know fuzzbox only really got grief from from male rock fans when they got popular it became a whole thing of oh they can't play and they just look good it's you know that was bullshit then

it's bullshit now these are great songs and they were going they always went for it with a real spirit of fun that's not arrogant and it's not over ambitious they

I think they were aware that this wasn't going to last forever so you can see them enjoying it while they can I was I was actually quite pissed off when they split up in the early 90s. I think the 90s would have been much better with Fuzzbox in it. Yeah, I totally agree with this.

I mean, they just kind of, yeah, it just kind of, they didn't have the momentum by that point. And, you know, which is a real shame because, you know, it was just, you know, it's always a timing thing. But they did have this great, you blast in uh in the in the late 80s and yeah you do always get that camera real dreary authenticity thing coming from a certain sort of bloke don't you who you know and what's it and also there's there's that very patronizing thing where um you kind of have it both ways where you're ogling you know it's like oh look at this

but also it's like oh how disgusting and you know you're just how did what a disgusting sellout you are with with your midriff all over the place but the thing is and there's this kind of patronizing assumption that um women in bands who uh display themselves in this way don't have any say in it it's like it's fame or something and it's like go on go on, go on, take a bit off. Go on, you look great. Oh, that's lovely. Oh, look at that. And, you know, it's like, who is to say that's, you know, just because, you know, yeah, she looks completely different

if you look at her like a year before this. And yet she's so confident. And that really, that's definitely a thing when you're, you know, when you're a girl kind of staring down the barrel of what's going to be your teenage years. This is what you need. You need to you need somebody who makes you understand that you can inhabit your body in a particular way. And she's having so much fun just being gorgeous and messing about.

And she's got this incredible midriff that she just shows off all the time which you know it and it's just like look look at her look she looks so and she's just really saucy and and she's got this so um i think it's a basically it's a giant pin that she's wielding because in the video where they're wearing the exact same clothes oh by the way um about the um yeah each of them i knew each of them as well. It wasn't just her. They were definitely a gang. Yeah. And they each had... It was like a proper...

I knew all their names and I knew all about them. But yeah, the video has a load of balloons in it. Ah! Because she hasn't got a microphone. For popping. Yeah, which is great. I love it. I wonder what it was.

I thought it was a portable kind of like pole. Because every now and again again she just puts it down and does a bit of what would be seen nowadays as preliminary pole dancing moves. You know, where you just grab the pole and shake your head about a bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be, I think, which is the only pole dancing move

that I would be able to do. But I haven't got any air, so it would just look shit. It looked as if I was having a fit or something. I have actually, I took a couple of pole dancing lessons. It's great. It's, you know, it's really hard work. You've got to be able to like hoik your body weight up a sort of, you know, slippy pole.

It's a bit weird. Yeah, that's me out there. I could do the kind of backwards thing. You sort of hook your ankle around and go around backwards and it's like, wee! It's actually really fun. It's a very, that's the thing. It's a very playful thing. and you always get this like oh women are doing pole

dancing for fun they don't realize that they're being sluts and it's like no it's it's there is a there is this great you know joy in that sort of thing and i think that's what that's what vix was for me is it's like well she's obviously being sexy but she's not necessarily doing it at anyone else she's not doing it for anyone you know she's doing it it pleases her and you know of course it's of course it's like yes get out there and and sell some records of course that's an element of it but people are so extremely cynical about this and it's like there's just because it's calculated doesn't necessarily mean that it's cynical and it's like she's you know she's gonna look back at that now and just go

wow i looked awesome it's like in titanic you know wasn't i a dish you know and i mean she's still i was gonna say she's still she still looks great now i went to see them they had a second reunion they they had a reunion in 2010 um and did a a cover of um a cover of pop music um which i mean i have i have so little time for the original that i've really enjoyed the cover you know i thought i've got nothing to lose on this. But yeah, I saw them at the 100 Club in 2015. And it was just, yeah, it was just so, so joyous. And she's very sort of burlesque-y

and very kind of naughty. So it's great. It's just a bunch of naughty women who were really inspiring to me. And crucially, I mean, Vic's looking amazing. Like Sarah says, it always felt that she was in control of it it never felt that that it was kind of insisted upon by the record company or they were pushed into things that they were uncomfortable with bands that are made out of females like bands that are made out of males i i think to be honest

it's natural sometimes that the best looking person is at the front yeah um i think that's kind of natural i think what happens later and i think what we see now especially with solo artists is you don't get that sense of comfort with it you don't get that sense of somebody necessarily enjoying it you do always get the sense of of somebody being pressured to make those moves to wear as little as possible and to do certain things i'm sure most female artists would say that that you know they are in control and i hope they are but fuzzbox are emblematic of a way of doing something where you you just look amazing but there's no sense that you're prodded by the record company to do this you're just being naturally exuberant and looking fantastic and of course

the other thing to mention about fuzzbox is that they were involved in one of the great miming fuck-ups of uh of our time weren't they on the on the kids tv show ghost train where uh they're doing pink sunshine and all of a sudden the tape rewinds and uh instead of uh trying to go with it they just look at each other and piss themselves laughing. And when the sun comes back on, they carry on. They completely styled it out. And I think that sums up Fuzzbox to me. They deal with it so well.

It's hilarious. And they deal with it so well. And they have, they have, this isn't an insult, but what I mean is they have these wonderfully cartoonish expressions, Fuzzbox, that aren't tutored,

are totally natural. Just girls laughing having a laugh and even by the time the Spice Girls come around later in the 90s that kind of

wackiness and humour started getting a bit more controlled in a sense yeah and sort of almost suggested as a good tactic

whereas with Fuzzbox it's all totally natural because you know they're coming from the Birmingham music they were mates with Napalm Death and natural because, you know, they're coming from the Birmingham music. They were mates with Napalm Death and people like that, you know.

So, I mean, I remember them being featured on Midlands Today. Yes. You know, and a big interview with Fuzzbox when they were getting big. And then it was straight from them to, yeah, Napalm Death screaming in a basement. They were part of that. So, you know, they took it all in a really good sense of fun i remember reading in the in the smash hits yearbook um an interview with vicky perks um and the questions were great like you know the usual what have you got in your fridge

but also have you ever pissed in a bus shelter and things like that and her responses were great just in case you're wondering no she hasn she hasn't. There's still time. There was a smash hits from this year, which actually, which I had. I had this, I had a pile of smash hits from like the late 80s. And this is why I do not hold with the whole Marie Kondo, throw away all of your shit and be an adult program.

Because I can't, I still miss, I was like, I'm going to have a clear out. I'll get rid of my smash hits. I miss them. I miss them terribly. be an adult program no because i can't i still miss i i was like i'm gonna have a clear out i'll get rid of my smash hits i miss them i miss them terribly but there was this there was this spread of fuzz box it was just like tell us about some of the things that you own and they were all so so just lovely and hilarious was so witty and you know what's your mental age about three and you know um i love my point you know what's your favorite item of clothing and vicky's like yeah i've got these pointy boots i like them because they're hard

and if any men get out of order they'll get this right in their ujama flips that's not no what service just said reminds me i had a bit of a traumatic thing this year i went on holiday with my two mates who'd left school and I come back and my mum had chucked out all of my melody makers. Oh, fucking hell. She got rid of them. And I said, why? She said, they were a fire risk.

Oh, for fuck's sake. I've never forgiven her for that. Parents are fucking terrible for that one there. A year later, I went to university and I came back a month or so later um and my bedroom had been turned into the freezer room and i went i went downstairs i went mankling my mom and i said mom you know if i'd have been like 10 and got killed in a car crash you would have preserved my bedroom and left everything on touch the minute I fucking

the minute I leave the door you've put fucking half a dead cow in my bedroom it's not right man it's just can I just say one more thing about Fuzzbox just yeah and then I'll stop

but yeah the whole I mean you know you you have to not pay attention to uh the kind of people who will get really mardy about um you know the authenticity of of uh you know somebody who you know if you look at the youtube comments under any fuzzbox video now you can get oh they're sold out and everything it's like well i don't i don't really buy that it's like for me How dare our pop bands go pop? Well, yeah, but also I think a pound of pop is worth the same as a pound of punk, really, when it comes down to it, you know.

So the following week, Pink Sunshine moved up three places to number 14, its highest position. The follow-up, Self, got to number 24 in August and was their last bit of top 40 action because they split up for the first time in 1990. Actually, the gossip is there's going to be a TV cartoon series based on Plus Box, which sounds like a good idea. And I wake in at the same time as Christmas Flanked by two different women from that Hairspray advert I mentioned earlier, one of whom is sporting that haircut where it all billows out at one side like the Elephant Man, Goodyear mentions some goss about the possibility of a TV cartoon series about Fuzzbox,

something that we're still waiting to see. Can you imagine? Oh, where is my Fuzzbox cartoon? I did, I made, when he said that, I made this kind of keening sound. Why don't I have, my life would be so much better. Because throughout the 80s, there was always one rumour on the go

that there was going to be a cartoon series about somebody. It was madness for a lot of the early 80s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah i mean that's but that's because it's like the real ghostbusters and stuff isn't it it's a really yeah what what a lovely uh you know a lot of these things would turn out to be terrible but it's just yeah there was uh a lot of a lot of the pop stars when you're when you're uh when you're a kid and you kind of they're almost uh they're like a sort of uh the really spectacular pop stars kind of like they're like humor you know they're almost like toys to you they're like because you

you bring your own imagination to it and you almost uh you know when you read about them and you um they especially in smash hits they they were sort of cartoonish they had the they would bring this sort of persona and they just um fuzzbox were really great in interviews where they'd just tell loads of lies and just you know create this entire fantasy world where they were like a bunch of mad old women you know and uh so yeah cartoon would have been great it would have been perfect i mean there was there was the beagles there was the osmonds there was the jackson five and then i think there was a huge gap until New Kids on the Block and MC Hammer had a cartoon as well.

Oh, my God, yeah. Never seen that. A Fuzzbox one would have been awesome there, especially if they'd have done the voices themselves. Yeah. Brummie accents are underrepresented in that. It would have been Lance Percival again, wouldn't it, like the Beatles one? Finally, Goodyear introduces a band who are making their debut on Top of the Pops,

who he claims are dead good live. Why? It's R.E.M. with Orange Crush. Formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980, R.E.M. had released six LPs and 12 singles without a sniff of the top 40. However, Orange Crush, the first single released from their latest LP and the follow-up to Stand, which got to number 51 in February of this year, has finally put them over the top

and it's up this week from number 39 to number 28. I can't believe that it took this long for R.E.M. to get in the charts. Yeah, they were... Because they were that band you would just hear all the time in a club. Usually when you were going for a piss

or going to the bar because it's R.E.M. and Ajay danced to them. And you'd probably in the club hear their worst songs. That's the thing. Because I remember hating End of the World As You Know It,

which I think was from the previous album. For me, it irritated me in exactly the same way that We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel did, those sort of list songs just bugged the fuck out of me but I actually like this performance I wasn't ever really asked

about R.E.M but I did start sort of digging him round about now because Green is a great album and this is a good song. The groove kind of reminds me of Party Hard by Pulp. And what I like about the performance is that they're going for it. There's no sense of them being better than Top of the Pops

or cooler than Top of the Pops. They mime properly as if they're playing the song. And Michael Stipe really goes for it. Very much in the David Byrne mould of just throwing yourself about and it looks good. It looks good. I mean, you say the mime improperly,

but Michael Stipe's in a grey suit with no shirt and he's singing into a megaphone and to my eyes, was essentially fucking about. Yeah, that is how you do Top of the Pops properly, though. I mean, we have had Vicky, you know, one of the greatest,

Vicky Perks, one of the greatest women ever to go on Top of the Pops, you know, not even pretending to have a microphone, just a giant prop. And then you've got Michael Stipe, yeah, singing into a megaphone, which I think it doesn't mean that you're not taking it seriously. I think that was part of the kind of spectacle of top of the pops is that it would allow you to um to sort of to to dick about like that but um yeah he does it's slightly alarming to see him in this uh the young michael stipe in uh in this suit looking kind of like

morrissey's chunky uncle yes He's got a really good voice, I think. He's able to do sort of, he's able to rock out, but he's also able to do intimacy. If he was that close to the audience, yeah, it wouldn't have worked because, I mean, the audience is doing

that whooping thing that Top of the Pops audiences do from about 87 onwards. Although, actually, I do detect a few indie kids in the crowd who I think are there for Michael Stipe but really it's weird thinking back

because remember in previous episodes we've talked about Freddie Mercury and Boy George and the way they couldn't reveal their sexuality Michael Stipe although was in the same boat, didn't really reveal his bisexuality until the night is and at this point he was in the same boat he's it's the ponytail

that i keep coming back to as well that that kind of that carries my attention ponytails are always interesting in men um yeah they say you know i own an interesting pet and they say at night I practice karate in front of a mirror and you know I don't really want a ponytail in 89 but god I wanted the confidence to have a ponytail because at the time I was getting well frustrated with my inability to grow long hair

all of my heroes kind of had long straight hair and when I grow my hair exactly but no when i grow my hair exactly but no when i grow my hair it just grows up into a stupid big afro um a big bouffant my life could have been so much better and different if i could grow long straight hair because i would have joined the death metal band that i wanted to and um i would have been happier but um i this performance. I think they really go for it. I'm not going to

say I'm an R.E.M. fan and everybody hurts is kind of enough to put anyone off, isn't it? I quite like this performance. I quite like this song. One thing that caught my attention was Michael Stipe was wearing his watch kind of like

turned round to the underside of his wrist like wankers do. Well spotted, Al. Bloody hell. he was wearing his watch kind of like turned around to the underside of his wrist. Like, uh, like wankers. Well spotted out. Bloody hell. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, this is,

this is our fighter pilots do it and race drivers. Yeah. I've got to say you have, I'm very impressed with the close reading that I know that's the, that's the point of the, of this, but you've got, you've got seriously granular about this in a way that,

that is, that is kind of, it's, this is, this is some next level shit. I must must say i've been doing this too long but but you had to take your crumbs where you could get them in this age this is peak stike and waterman age for pop so you know things were very dominated by a certain sound a little bit of indie rock on the show i think at the time i probably would have really

appreciated it and i would have liked that um now less so but at the time it was just something a little bit different from from what you've been like yeah good on them yeah totally this is like what i was saying about the uh the the delicate ecosystem of the charts and it's like i don't know what rem would be they would just be a sort of, I don't know, I don't know, sort of indie tundra bit of the system, which is, you know, which is fine, which is a bit of that is probably what you need. But also I've got to ask you though about,

you were saying I detected a couple of indie people. What, are they sort of lurking? They're sort of near the front and and and unlike the kind of whoopers and shouters they're actually doing quite a vintage thing they're looking for the camera and they're looking back over their shoulder and that's why they're noticeable the people who are following the orders in a way because you do get the sense that people issued with orders when they when they became in the audience and the people who are following orders and kind of waving their hands about and just whooping that you don't actually see any of their faces what you actually see is just their backs really and their arms

swinging in the air the indie kids they're kind of slightly freaked out by being there at all i think they're freaked out by by rem being on there because at this point rem had had a hit but they hadn't done that thing where they stepped up to stadiums, you know, and sort of became like a U2 type thing. They were still fairly, fairly small scale.

So it was still surprising getting a band like that on. And I detected like one or two kids, and you can tell they were the kids because they were dressed like it was 30 years previous to this. But yeah, you can see

one or two kids which is a really strange and startling relic of a previous time because that kind of gets erased from top of the pops um yeah from from the mid-80s onwards when you watch old episodes it's just startling the kids they let on and they let these kids do what they wanted to do which was dance to their favorite pop music not be be frog-marched into kind of compulsory hysteria. I mean, we've spoken about wearing a T-shirt under a suit jacket, and here we have Michael Stipe wearing nothing under a suit jacket. It's a strong look. Which...

Yeah, it is, but it's going to leave really nasty sweat stains in the pits of your jacket isn't it it is it's not well that's that's privilege for you see that's a wearing wearing uh you know wearing a suit jacket over your of your bare torso really says i'm a man who can go straight to the dry cleaners after this and not worry about the cost depending on the lining of the jacket as well it's gonna really chafe your nips. It has commitment then to the look. So the following week, Orange Crush dropped five

places to number 33. Oh man. The follow up, a re-release of Stand would only get to number 48 in August and they'd have to wait two more years before losing My Religion got to number 48 in August and they'd have to wait two more years before losing my religion got to number 19 and establish them as a regular chart fixture Orange Crush REM great record now here's our first look at the chart from 40 to 31.

There's a new entry of this week's footy for Gladys Knight with Licence to Kill. Brand new at 39, it's Living in a Box with Gate Crashing. At 38, The Bangles with Eternal Flame. And no change at 37 for Green and Grey by New Model Army. Another non-mover at 36, Vixen, Love Made Me. And a new entry at 35, Walt Starling, Malcolm McLaren with the Boots in the Orchestra. Karen White has a new entry at 34, Superwoman. And at 33, Till I Loved You, a new entry for Placido Domingo and Jennifer Rush.

The look from Roxette is at this week's 32. And here's another Bangles song, a new entry at 31, Be With You. She's on top of the pups. It was back in 1987, but tonight she's flown in from Germany. Especially, she's at 22, it's Donna Allen! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Remember when you first fell in love How you felt so good At the end of the R.E.M. performance, why has Mark Goodyear got his arm around the girl next to him? Yes. For me, it felt like a real relic of Top of the Pops past.

Yes, it really did. And it's not altogether convincingly done. He looks uncomfortable. Yeah. She looks kind of uncomfortable as well. Yeah. A really odd moment. There's a lot of balls-ups in the presentation of this show.

Because after the rundown, I mean, you might be going on to talk about this, but after the rundown that then occurs, there's a total mic cutout for parking. I bet he was gutted about that on his first ever Top of the Pops. Yeah. It was not good. Yeah. I mean he was gutted about that on his first ever Top of the Pops. Yeah. It was not good yet. I mean, the camera swings round from REM and Goodyear's really helping himself to one of the ladies.

But he doesn't look... He looks like he's been told to do it. Yes. Because it's the Top of the Pops thing. It's what happens. By then, it shouldn't have been happening, to be honest with you. By then, I thought thought that era was over but it's an odd little relic that yeah she she should have been doing it to him yeah just just you know grab a friendly just but piggyback that would have been great if that actually

jump on it i bet they were i wonder if there were any you know these are the conversations that happened in the audience go on go on go on i'll give you a fiver if you just oh yeah oh definitely yeah i mean goodie and parking should have had their arms around each other and that would have been good that would have been really right on so goodie helps himself to one of the ladies in the crowd and then runs down the top end of the chart while Parkin legs it back up to the balcony to introduce Joy and Pain by Donna Allen. Born in Key West, Florida in 1959, Donna Allen became a cheerleader for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the mid-70s before becoming a singer in a Tampa funk band called Trauma. before becoming a singer in a Tampa funk band called Trauma. She then spent nine years as Gloria Estefan's backing singer,

but in 1987, her debut solo single, Serious, got to number eight in April of that year. After releasing four singles that didn't make the charts, this record, a cover of the 1980 Frankie Beverly and Maze tune, is up this week from number 38 to number 22. Serious. That's a brilliant song, that is. Yeah, it really is.

And a brilliant video as well. He's just heard just looking absolutely panther-like, just getting really angry at a photo of this bloke who looks like he's in a Soul Glow advert. And then she goes down to the uh to the basketball court and has it out with him he's fucking brilliant yeah it's amazing she has on also she's doing all of this while wearing a kind of neon yellow lycra jumpsuit yeah like a shiny jumpsuit and a massive belt and a leather jacket and her hair is massive and she just has this incredibly fierce like pissed off

face because she fancies this bloke so much it's like i was reading recently about um apparently like your brain you know the whole thing like if you find something really cute you just go oh i just want to i want to i want to eat you and apparently it's because your brain just kind of shorts out when you when you are you know and you and and just some sort of really violent impulse flashes across your across your frontal cortex. And that's basically what she is displaying here, is it's like, I fancy you so much, I'm going to actually do you a mischief, you know.

And she's sort of throwing him up against the... And then they have a kind of, you know, in the midst of this, it's like, you go, God, what's going to happen here? She's actually going to consume him. And then they just have a dance- of this it's like you go god what's going to happen here she's actually going to consume him and then they just have a dance off and it's fine um but yeah she's like a sort of chaka khan um and they also this is the song that um that they uh used as the hook for uh you sure do in 1994 which is also a banger um but yeah it's a shame really that given yeah why can't we be talking about that song?

This is, well, we just, well, I just did. So, you know, but yeah, this joint paint, it's quite forgettable. It's quite a sort of flat performance. I think this is something that Top of the Pops could do sadly, is kind of flatten people out a bit and kind of sand them down. And she's obviously a pro, but you would not, you know, cause I and and looked up this

um looked up serious and was like wow i can't believe it's the same person she's really you know it's just a very much more downplayed thing i would have loved to have seen her kind of you know rampaging around like a lioness you know but um yeah but this is this is just it was it was not to be so she has on um she has on kind of cycling shorts, as some of us did at this time, kind of like thigh-length black cycling shorts and a suit jacket, which is an interesting look. And a little hat,

a little saucy kind of cabaret, like bowler hat. She looks like a cross between Judy Finnegan at that awards ceremony and Mr. Ben. Or one of the Home Pride guys, yeah. Yes, yes. I mean, before we get into the song, I've

got to mention that, you know, Parkin's not, he's not having the rub of the green with this episode of Top of the Pops because, you know, there's all the technical problems, but also he's had to the rub of the green with this, with this episode of Top of the Pops, because, you know, there's, there's all the technical problems, but also he's had to present this latest one with some bloke who's wearing sunglasses indoors and doing that whistling thing where you put your fingers in your mouth, which is just always annoying.

It's doing, it's, it's almost like, you know, how police horses get trained up where they have people just like whistling in the rears and banging things and stuff. He is coping man. And he's,

he's, he's trotting on and he hasn't shit on the floor yet. So yeah, he's doing very well. Yeah. And, and, and actually there's a,

there's a load of good soul things in the charts in the summer of 89. I remember it has been the summer of, um, uh, looking for a love by Joyce Sims, uh, which was another great soul tune. Um um but the trouble with this one is um well the maze original is way better um but but yeah what i hear it's not really the trouble with it but what i hear massively with this is the influence of um janet jackson yes because it's forgotten what a massive album control was and how it like

exerted an influence for several years afterwards Jammin' Lewis's productions on it um so I was I was reminded of Janet Jackson and not just because I was worried about her boobs popping out um because the influence of that that album and Janet's look in general I think is big, the hat, the moves it's very Jacksonite I would say I've got to say, you mentioned Judy Finnegan, I was basically on the edge of my seat, not because I wanted to see Don Rallon's boobs

but because I was just concerned she was just doing it with sungust though and you just never know what's going to happen, do you? but I think you're right though um and you just never know what's going to happen do you um but um yeah i i think like you're right um the previous single was was way better way better it's it's one of the um i mean obviously you know pop is a a and solar kind of rich there's a rich seam of kind of banality there but this really is you know joy joy and pain are like sunshine and rain there's plenty more fish

in the sea chill Chill Out Love, Might Never... It's not... There's not... I kind of... It's like, what's your point, Corla? It's not very... It doesn't make you feel a lot of feelings, this song.

So the following week, Joy and Payne moved up seven places to number 15 and would eventually get to number 10. However, the follow-up, Can We Talk?, would only get to number 80, but she'd have two more top 40 hits in the mid-90s. Alan, it's a great record. Now here comes the Breakers on top of the pops. And the first Breaker is the follow-up to their number one. It's the Bangles, Be With You.

Up from number 51 to number 31. God, they were so massive then. I loved Susannah so much. Yeah, they were pretty amazing. They were... Yeah, I loved them at the time. Again, there's just so many... There's all these amazing women around at the moment and looking back on this now, it's just like...

Yeah, I was set up pretty well, I think. And Susanna Hoffs was incredible and they were all really great. Yeah. It's a stadium rock video, though. It's like a heart thing. Yeah. And that bloke holding up the fucking licence plate with bangles and all really great. It's a stadium rock video though. It's like a heart thing. Yeah. And that bloke holding up

the fucking license plate with bangles on it. What a knob. You wouldn't be let in. They wouldn't let you in with that now, would they? No. Here's a beautiful song at number 30

It's Clannad with Bono in a Lifetime Fucking hell It's from number 48 to number 30 Bono at this point in his hat looks like it looks like Guy Gisborne from Robin Hood

Prince of Thieves yes I deserve the pleasure of your name there's more to Ireland Dendis now here's an

interesting combination Jennifer Rush and Placido Domingo till I loved you at 33 Placido Domingo Till I Loved You at 33 Placido They look so awkward They do

It's so awkward This was an 80s thing wasn't it It was like awkward couplings Up from number 42 to number 33 I never like two people singing Right in each other's face like that Because I just think of bad breath and stuff It's just unhygienic It's not right is it and imagine if they had oh if they had bad breath

as well you know it's just like no oh no don't go there jennifer oh it's like the fucking red shoe diaries in it Whoa, like the old Jennifer, eh? Radio 1 in stereo on top of the pops on BBC 1 as well. You're going to love this next band. They've got such good style and a brilliant performance. Double Trouble and the Rebel MC just keep rocking. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Now back on the balcony with his jacket buttoned up is now surrounded by what appears to be an IT department

works do with whistling twat number one still in shot but also a fat lad in a shirt and tie clapping like a seal and going whoa to try and get his voice on camera also stops whistling as Goodyear introduces Just Keep Rocking by Double Trouble and the Rebel MC. Formed in London in 1988, Double Trouble were a collective of record producers who linked up with the Islington rapper Michael West. This is a follow-up to Cockney Rhythm which failed to chart earlier this year and it's up from number 18 to number 16 let's rewind uh and go back to that balcony scene and and you know we're we're presented with the youth of uh of 1989 and they look shit don't they it's like hitman and her isn't it it's that you know or you ain't got a

tie you're not coming in yeah very much so well all the blokes have got on you know shirts and and things and i know that i understand that there are um you know uh troubles that men have to face that women don't and vice versa you know because you do have to you have to you have to have a suit don't you and you know um but um and not so there's a bloke there with um with sort of um yeah with his denim jacket and his sunglasses because that's's how you have fun. That's how you demonstrate you're having fun, is he wearing sunglasses like a crazy person. But the only bit of colour in that balcony... I bet he reckons he's Ferris Bueller there, doesn't he?

Yeah, he's definitely... Without the car. But there is a girl there, so they're all in various shades, have kind of washed out all of them on that balcony, look as if they've put their shirt in, like this is the first time they've used a washing machine themselves and they've put their shirt in like they've this is the first time they've used a washing machine themselves and they've put it in with um with a with something black and so it's all gone that kind of shade of dishwater yeah and then there's a girl who's

actually like you know made a bit of an effort and she has on pink um you know she's got pink jeans and a blue off the shoulder top with a yellow vest underneath it which i think is a which is um which is a look I probably would have gone for myself. 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.

You know, it was a bit of that. Before I just threw out everything that wasn't black in my wardrobe, you know. I mean, what were you wearing at the time, Sarah, on your night's act, being all pop-tastic and that? Well, not at this point. You know, if we're talking about 1989, then I

wasn't, I was, you know, I had not yet begun to sneak into it. I was really boring. I didn't start going out until I was, you know. Do you not have any banned T-shirts or anything? Oh, well, I would have had, well, not quite yet. I had, well, I had Michael Jackson T-shirts. I have one of those I still have, actually, that I didn't, you know,

one of the things that I didn't, you know, get rid of in a frenzy of throwing stuff away that I would later regret. So yeah, I had Michael Jackson t-shirts. I had a brilliant, this is something I did throw away that I wish I still had, is a Roger Rabbit t-shirt, but it wasn't Roger Rabbit. It was one of the weasels. It was like the head weasel, you know, the head gangster guy had him on it. I really miss that t-shirt. I would wear that now. I miss a lot. I was wearing a lot of band t-shirts at that time i have to say the t-shirts that my mum would later nick um yeah well yeah and kind of really annoying i mean in the in the

late 90s basically if you're walking around the town center in coventry you'd have seen a sort of old asian woman walking around with like a skinny puppy t-shirt and you know like young gods t-shirts on and stuff like that because she just nicked them all off me as soon as i was out the house um but yeah it was all about band t-shirts me in 89 um the the t-shirt shop which was called poster placing cough was just a a point of reference that i went to every saturday to see see what they had I loved band t-shirts my mum never nicked my t-shirts but I had

a public enemy t-shirt and every time I wore it and I was just about to go out my mum would say oh I love that t-shirt on you it looks so nice and I'd say mum it's got four black American blokes on it and paramilitary uniforms brandishing machine guns it's because yeah i like the colors that's that's the mummest

thing i've ever heard that's like so um double trouble they're wearing those jumbo trainers, beloved of Freddie Mercury and Axl Rose. And I must admit, me, by this time, I graduated to a larger pair of trainers, Adidas basketball boots. Neil, did you partake? No, not Adidas. Couldn't afford them. Asda. Asda trainers.

I mean, bless my family. They did try and get me the clothes I wanted. But yeah. Asida. Yeah, but it was always like cheap knockoffs. I never got my look right at all. And I borrowed my sister's clothes sometimes as well. And wear like girls stuff.

So yeah, I was a confused lad lab like i said um double trouble and rebel mc at this time are wearing atrocious shirts that kind of reflect um their state in a sense in that they i remember the hip-hop in 89 was just amazing yeah um from the singles that double trouble rebel mc bought out i preferred street But even then, you could tell they were getting a lot of criticism at the time for selling out, basically. Because hits like this would, you know, this is a song more akin to Technotronic than hip-hop. It's a song that you'd likely see on one of those innumerable hip house comps

that used to come out at the time. But even in British hip hip-hop even at my removing coventry i could tell that in 89 it developed to the point where it had an underground and an overground and rebel mc was definitely trying to to cross over so hits like this would get in the charts but you also at the same time had westwood you had dave pierce on glr you started getting really big hip-hop shows over in the UK Public Enemy and LL Cool J and Beasties

and Ice T and Run BMC they were all coming over and some of those shows were just massively inspirational I think to like a whole generation in a way

89 was the first year that I started getting into British hip hop so it was the first year I was kind of hearing Derek B and Hijack

and Gunshot and We Papa Girl rappers and She Rockers it was really strong with I was kind of hearing Derek B and Hijack and Gunshot and Wee Papa Girl rappers and She Rockers. Because it was really strong with female rappers, actually. Yes, it was. She Rockers and Wee Papa Girl rappers in particular. And people like Caveman. And those shows, that explosion of hip-hop interest in 89

had a massive influence onwards, I'd say. Because a lot of those hip-hop artists in 89 would migrate over to rave later. Because hip-hop was... UK hip-hop in 89 was very breakbeat orientated it was really fast so it suited later on when it sort of mutated into drum and bass and other things um and it was still controversial hip-hop at this time associated with violence at gigs and violence lyrically so for me this is the kind of starting where we'd end up now really with with grime but at the time double trouble and rebel mc were hated by hip-hop community the hip-hop community if you like for basically selling out and making these kind of hip house

songs um yeah that were pretty weak um but but i keep back, yeah. The shirts they're wearing are fucking disgusting. Yeah, they're awful, aren't they? And shirts in the late 80s, you were talking about the people up on the balcony earlier. You know, I think to a large extent, fashion for kids then was about belonging rather than standing out. So that was happening.

But I think shirts like they're wearing, they're rather awfully sort of becoming statements in a way that you were a bit of a character. Yes. If you had some sort of like horrible design on it. So, yeah, I love British hip hop in 89. It's a really important year, but this is the nadir of it. This is one of the worst sort of examples of it.

There were better examples. And already I sound like a snobby cunt, but I was a snobby cunt then. So this is the way I felt about it. This is the way I felt about Double Trouble and Rebel MC. I mean, the one thing I'll say in their defence is that, I mean, yeah, British hip hop was, you know, we'd only just got used to the idea that you could be a legitimate hip hop artist, even if you didn't live in New York.

You know, we were accepting of West Coast artists. And then, yeah, all of a sudden it was. If you went to a gig like Public Enemy in 88, 89, and somebody British was on, the crowd were just waiting for them to fuck up. And it was, the general vibe was, oh, you know, how dare you think you can do this? Because you're British, you know, you're not allowed. I remember seeing MC Duke supporting Public Enemy

and absolutely working his tits off and just you know he got a tune out called free which is to me is one of the great hip-hop records right ever you know regardless of britain or or or whatever and uh he's just working his tits off and trying to slap hands and and people are just staring him out. And it's like, you know, and this is a load of people from Nottingham for fuck's sake. And oh, look at this bloke. Oh, he thinks he can do hip hop and he's only from London. And then there'd be this DJ called, I think it was called 2000 AD.

And he was scratching and, you know, doing all that kind of stuff. And the minute he fucked up in the slightest, he just got absolutely booed off. And it was like, oh, you're not American. You don't count. And all of a sudden, you get people like the Rebel MC and all this kind of stuff.

And yeah, you know, it's a pop song. I'm a bit less militant about this than you. For the simple fact that it was doing what British hip hop should have done, which was taking inspiration from elsewhere. You know, they were sampling all the old Trojan stuff. I mean, in this one, it's Toots and the Maytolls and it's Liquidator, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I mean, later on, Rebel MC would reflect his kind of reggae roots a little bit more in what he did and he kind of moved away from the hip hop. But I mean, supporting Public Enemy is always going to be a tough gig, isn't it? I remember in 87, I think, Pot Will Eat It self-supported them

and just got bottled off within about 27. Oh, and I would have thrown a fucking crate at them. I wouldn't have had that. Yeah, we're back to the,

the, the, selling, the issue of selling out, which has come up, which came with Fuzzbox. This is just a perennial thing, isn't it?

As you do get this, this kind of resentment. It's like's like no i insist that you only have the precise level of success that makes me feel comfortable in in in this you know in the landscape which is which is always shit but i do you know i do understand of course it's like you're going to feel protective of your thing and if you think that somebody's going out and presenting that they're they're appointing themselves an ambassador of it or they're like the front face of it all of a sudden you're going to be like hey well this is not this this guy does not represent me you know so i think yeah but also then it's like well what what that is then is you have to take advantage of that it's

like look they have kicked open a door in a certain way and whether or not you want to you want to follow through that door you can you know has, you know, brought people bringing things to a mainstream audience. Yeah. I think it's a real double-edged thing, but you have to take advantage of it instead of kind of sitting back and going, fuck you guys, you've brought our name into disrepute. Yeah.

But it's this horrible thing as a teenager that you see pop and you see all the shit that's popular and you see all the stuff that you love that isn't popular. And at that point, of course, you should want that stuff to get popular. But actually, you're caught in this horrible kind of elitist trap where you're annoyed about what's popular, but you damn well don't want what you love to get popular. You don't want everyone to be into it because it will lose its specialness to you because you're a snotty little fucker you're 16 um you know and you want to protect your things because when you're 16 and 17 you pop music you you are almost defined by what you own in a way and what you listen to. You kind of exist in the space between everything that you're into.

And so I remember this is a perennial thing that used to come up that I wanted the music I love to be popular, but if it did get popular, I got really pissed off because it meant more people were into, you know, intolerable situation because I was an intolerable person at the time. Yeah, no, I don't think you're alone in that. I think that's quite,

that's a kind of human condition thing, isn't it really? Yeah, Neil, if it was just the rebel MC on his own performing and not these three blokes in shit trainers and horrible shirts, would you be a bit less militant towards it? Yeah, I possibly would have

been at the time i mean i kind of i also with hip-hop at the time i resisted its attempts to kind of um look like it was proper music in a sense there's a guy on stage isn't it i think he's played a double bass or something yeah and and what i wanted because i was listening to things like eric b and rakim which was just to me it was really futuristic music it didn't sound kind of like it was a throwback to jazz or anything else at all it sounded completely futuristic I kind of wanted hip I would have loved to have seen a hip hop act whereby there was a rapper and there wasn't even a DJ just a guy with a small silver card and he'd press a small button on it or something just just you know something completely non-musical I prized hip-hop's I'm not saying it's non-musical

of course it requires so much talent to be able to put a good hip-hop track together but I I liked the fact at the time that people were still calling hip hop not proper music. You know, it's just some bloke talking. But I wanted that accentuated to piss those people off. So their attempts to kind of make it look like a kind of happy good time band type scenario would have rubbed me up the wrong way. But, you know, I'm not going to apologize for my former self. But I was hugely intolerant i had really definite ideas about what i liked what i didn't like at the time and and and this probably um yeah would have bugged me uh if anything because yeah i mean i love

technotronic don't get me wrong now but at the time it for me this was just on the edge of just being another kind of crap pop house record. Massively ungenerous of me. But at the time I was listening to, there's an album that came out, I think that year, by a British rapper. And it's kind of been forgotten about. It was called The Undiluted Truth. And it's by a rapper called Black Radical Mark II. And it's incredibly militant. Very public enemy influenced. And for for me it was all about that

that year, 89, so this kind of stuff, which I know man, I was a miserable bastard but this kind of stuff which was sunny side up a little bit more just didn't suit and another thing about 89, I'm sorry to go on but

another thing about 89 was I think this go on but um another thing about 89 was i think this was the first time in my life where music came out of the home not only because it was in clubs but because i could walk around with music for the first time in my life walkmans i know they're an early 80s thing but we certainly couldn't afford one until the late 80s a walkman was a really important part of my my kit at the time if you like so i would walk around town i would walk around coventry soundtracking it with with this with this music in my ears on a constant basis so because i was yeah because i was a miserable frowny sod and it was mainly that kind of music that was soundtracking those walks and this track would have been yeah like a bit too

a bit too totally tropical for my tastes and of course could possibly be the first sighting on top of the pops of the africa pendant yeah did did we partake because i really really really wanted an africa pendant but i also really really really wanted not to have to walk home with my face in a bag as being a hip-hop fan you realize being a white hip-hop fan you realize that there were lines that you just couldn't cross yeah even even at the time you were that you were that woke i'm quite impressed with this yeah well well because you I mean, this was the thing. I bought the first Public Enemy album the week it came out before I'd even heard one of the songs,

simply because I'd read about them in Melody Maker and just thought, yes, that band, I fucking want. I want it in my ears. And so, yeah, I bought it. It's like, oh, fucking hell, this is amazing. Bought the T-shirt. And, you know, I'd be aware of being at college in a Public Enemy T-shirt and getting some interesting looks off people of both races.

Yeah, it felt like there were certain elements of the culture that I just couldn't take on for myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? So what I did was I'd got for Christmas I'd got a bubble bath in the shape of Dennis the Menace and so I just put some leather

strapping through that and wore that you know that's my heritage yeah that would have looked amazing man yeah I mean the further you got into British hip hop you actually realised it was way more inclusive than I think American hip hop was heritage yeah that would have looked amazing man yeah i mean the further you got into british hip hop you actually realized it was it was way more inclusive than i think yes it was it was and there was a lot of there was a lot of white rappers and fundamentally british hip hop was really an expression not perhaps of um a racial struggle but more of a class struggle i would say it was it

it was it was more inclusive certainly than-hop, which seemed prohibitively just something for African-Americans. Yeah, and the reason for that was because, unlike American hip-hop, the main influence in British hip-hop at first was reggae. Yeah, absolutely. You know, London Posse, Asher D and Daddy Fred, all that lot. Exactly.

It's all coming out of the whole Sax of Saxon sound toasting kind of, kind of thing from the early eighties. Yeah. And that argument over whether you could be white and listen to reggae, that, that argument had been decided, you know, decades previous.

You've taught me around that. I should be more charitable to this song. Well, I mean, I listened to this song and I think, okay, you know, I'd rather listen to this than, you know, 80% of the other shit that's in the charts. Yeah.

But also, you know, watching this, when I saw this, it was like, shit, this is the birth of Jungle. Yeah. And the future that included Jungle was being mapped out at this time. With these shows that you're talking about, with Public Enemy coming to England and things future that included Jungle was being mapped out at this time with these shows that you're talking about with Public Enemy coming to England

and things like that that I think that blew so many people's minds and those people who wrote you know the old thing that they used to say about the velvet on the ground

not many people heard them but everyone went out and formed a band I think you know only so many thousand people went to see Public Enemy or Eric B. and McKim or Cool J

in the late 80s but I think virtually all of them will have followed music in some way in the early 90s and these are the people who end up being the first you know jungle djs and being the first jungle artists the people who were massively into hip-hop in 89 so the following week just keep rocking nudged up three places to number 13 and would spend two weeks at number 11. The follow-up, Street Tough, got to number three in October of this year and Rebel MC and Double Trouble went their separate ways. Rebel MC went all junglist, changed his name to Congo Natte and got married to Page Three girl

Maria Whittaker. So hot in here, here come the charts from 40 to number 11. At 30 is this week's highest new entry from Clan Adam Bono, In A Lifetime. 29, climbing six, it's Tom Petty with I Won't Back Down. Up 11 at 28, R.E.M., Orange Crush. And Sam Brown's song, Can I Get A Witness, is this week's number 27 At 26, Helium Halib from Capella And at number 25, it's Bring Me Edelweiss by Edelweiss Up two at 24, Paula Abdul, Forever Your Girl This week's 23 is Every Little Step by Bonnie Brown

Donna Allen has this week's highest climber She's up 16 at 22 with Joy and Payne. And at 21, Requiem, the London Boys. Bananarama up 13 at 20, Cool Summer 89. This week's 19 is Funky Cold Medina by Tone Loke. Kylie Minogue, Hand On Your Heart

is at this week's 18. Climbing 5 at 17, Pink Sunshine by Buzzbox. Double Trouble in the Rebel MC is up 2 at 16, Just Keep Rockin'. At 15, Up 10, The Only One, that's by Transvision Vamp. Former number 1 at 14, Ferry Cross the Mersey. And this week's 13 is Lynn Hamilton, On The Inside. D-Mob featuring LRS, up 7 at 12, It's Time To Get Funky.

And at number 11, Climbing 12, The Beautiful South, and Song For Whoever. Now here's an interesting one. Up to last year, it was always Cyndi Lauper. Now it's Cyndi Lauper. She's on video in the charts at number 8. Here is I Drove All Night. I had to escape. She's on video in the charts at number eight here is I drove all night

After running down the middle section of the charts, Parkin tries to get his interested in the Lauper-Lauper debate as he introduces the video of I Drove All Night by Cyndi Lauper. There, Parkin, I've decided it for you. Shut up. Born in New York in 1953, Cyndi Lauper started her music career in the early 70s as a cover singer with various bands before forming the new wave group Blue Angel in 1978. After releasing one LP in 1980, the band split up, their former manager sued them into bankruptcy and Lorpa, who by this time had developed a cyst on her vocal cords, ended up working in clothes shops until she got picked up by Epic Records in 1983. Her first solo single Girls Just Wanna Have Fun got to number two in America and the UK in early 1984 and the follow

up to that time after time got to number three here. After a number 12 hit in October of 1986 with True Colours her next two records failed to make the top 40 here. But this one, a cover of a song originally written for Roy Orbison, and the first single from the new LP, A Night To Remember, is up this week from number 17 to number 8. Did you notice, in the rundown, you know the way the arrow flashes to indicate whether it's going up or down? That reminded me of that little square

that used to appear in the corner of the screen warning that ads were about to commence, the Q dot, which has now completely disappeared from British television. Yeah. You don't see it anywhere. Anyway.

Because everything's an advert on telly nowadays, isn't it, Neil? Exactly. Well, you might be right. But with regards to Cindy Lauper, it is Lauper, I think you're right. I always thought it was Lauper, but I don't know i

mean some people really care about these you know i used to because i before i changed my name i had a name that was that was awkward to pronounce and people used to get it wrong and i used to fume all the time which is partly why i changed it because it just really pissed me off every day so hopefully she's not i would not want to piss off cindy lauper or lauper um but she strikes me as not because not because she's hard as not because not because she's hard or anything just just because she's lovely and brilliant and i wouldn't want to do anything that would make her life worse um but she's probably not going to listen to this so uh you know we're probably all right um you don't know that sarah cindy if you're out there gives it

gives a tweet i've had some i've had some terrible pronunciations of my surname. I've been called Cock-army. Are you sure that wasn't just the levelers trying to get it? I remember a letter arriving one day for Neil Kumsani, which I think was entirely deliberate, actually. That's good, though. which I think was entirely deliberate actually anyway Cyndi Lauper while eating breakfast pulled her glasses down her nose and looked at me once

no this was in Los Angeles it was at a hotel called the Sunset Marquee which is an astonishing hotel a hotel where deaf leopards used to live. And so did Bruce Springsteen, I think. But anyway, I had interviewed Tommy Lee in the morning.

And he'd got me stoned. He'd got me absolutely wankered. Because you know the way Americans roll joints. It's just insane. And you take one pull and you're fucked. And then he'd driven me back to this hotel. insane and you take one pool and you're fucked and then he drove me back to this hotel and i walked into the glass door of my balcony three times in a row and and the the the balcony was overlooking a pool where la's you know uh entertainment people power breakfast quite a lot

and i'll never forget the third time i felt my forehead hit the glass I noticed Cindy Lorper push her glasses down her nose who she was power breakfasting at the time and stare at me um so yeah I've had I can't exactly call that having dealings with her but I like to think that's a little connection there um because I love Cindy I think she's great i know i know that in previous chart music episodes i've moaned about madonna and i know sarah i think loves madonna um but cindy for me is everything i'm not going to say everything madonna could have been but she's just she's just fantastic um i totally forgotten about this version of this song because I only remember the Big O version the Roy Orbison version but this is

a great version and it's better I have to say in an era now where we're used especially perhaps to female stars sort of hollering the hell out of songs and melismaring everything it's a really clipped

vocal she doesn't sing everything she could sing and consequently it's like really suggestive and i love the video i love this video um going from a sort of barefoot kate bush red slip to bride of frankenstein elsa lanchester haircut to a ghost to having a film projected on the back i love this video because it's you can tell it's hella expensive but you can still see the joins you can it still gives hints at how cack it must have looked on set um but but i love the song and i love the video and i love cindy i've always just thought she's a she's got a good almost sense of humor about herself but has crafted some fantastic pop records and you know that first couple of debut albums are wonderful wonderful pop records it's no

accident that her songs have been covered by you know Miles Davis covered Cyndi Lauper you know time after time and things like that are great records I know that she was going through a bit of a breakup at the time with both her husband and the recording process itself. So the album this is from, which I think is called Wicked or something, it wasn't as successful. It was a bit of a failure. But in terms of a version of this song, it's probably my favourite

version of this song. Yeah, it's just really great, isn't it? And also, it's a bit less... it just puts a slightly different angle on it. You just imagine if it's a you just imagine if it's a if it's bloke turning up and waking you up in the middle of the night going look i drove all night are you gonna put out or what whereas when it's a when it's when it's cindy lauper in her with her amazing uh you know with with her amazing sort of puff of of black and

white hair and um and just and just being being lovely because there was that she was like the other madonna but she was much more kind of there's this vulnerability and sort of emotional thing that you didn't really get with with madonna and she had this kind of glorious glut of talent and charisma but just and that kind of really that italian american thing but um but also just this kind of real sweetness about her and a sort of mischief as well and a slight a slight sort of scruff scruffy scruffy outsidery edge to her which madonna kind of dispensed with quite early on i think yeah yeah but she's doing the kind of so she's um she's incredibly feminine and very kind of you know she's sort of ultra feminine but she's also got

this was this was her thing is that she just had like a slightly crazy a slightly crazy look a slightly sort of you know glitter bag lady look but then she's kind of she's she's doing this she's she's doing this bit she goes from like barefoot running down the road in a tiny red dress to um being on stage and kind of pulling like elvis moves and so she's she's sort of offsetting her and she's playing around with with um with her own kind of femininity and kind of you know and then just doing doing an Elvis and kind of curling a lip and stuff and it's all completely natural but it's this kind of um it's an offsetting of of the uh yeah just just her whole the way in which she kind of

um held her femininity so lightly and just messed around with it was so great. Yeah, yeah. Because I think you spot on with the way she sings it right. I think you're right. Any man singing this, and I'm thinking of the Roy Orbison version, of course, it sounds kind of pleading and it sounds kind of needy. Whereas Cindy's version, because she's not deadened her vocal but it's not florid or big the vocal it's very very

clipped and consequently it sounds she drove all night and and now she's going to kill you she there's a kind of almost psychopathic thing to it that she plays with um that's just wonderful it just makes it a much much more affecting and suggestive record because the scene the record is setting you know those long american highways somebody driving on their own is an enormously kind of it's beautifully cinematic kind of stuff um and she populates it brilliantly she but she gives it a real performance and a real kind of suggestiveness. So you can make up your own stories around it. It's without a doubt way better than the big O version.

Yeah, we're as if when Roy Orbison's singing I Drove All Night, he sounds a bit like the bloke in the Yorkie advert, doesn't he? This is the thing. There's a lot of women around this time. It's like they weren't aggressive, but they weren't apologetic either. And it's not pand not pandering and i think i mean the thing is that i've

um i uh the the video for time after time which obviously i mean how can you not i i practically well up every time i hear that you know it's it's it's the most incredibly emotional song and in the video she's there um with her bloke who is embarrassed by her because of the way she looks and she takes off her crazy hat and she has like you know it looks like she's um she's got this kind of bright ginger copper hair and like kind of just this kind of mad undercut with with like a sort of waffle waffle undercut and and they all and all of his mates are laughing at her and um and it just it really this this kind of really brings it home that it's like you're not these these women are not dressed like this for men

and they're not yeah you know and that really kind of gives them the credibility then if they do want to um show a load of flesh then it's not like they've they've kind of gone all right this hasn't worked i better do this it's like yeah they they have of gone alright this hasn't worked I better do this it's like they have control over this, this is actually what they're about and it's for women, that's the thing, it is for women as much as it is for men it's like the idea that

belly dancing arose because it was women performing in the kind of it's women performing for each other it's a communal female thing rather than a performance for men, you know. So the following week, I drove all night, nudged up one place to number seven, where it stayed for two weeks.

The follow-up, My First Night Without You, only got to number 53 in August of this year, and she'd have to wait until 1992 for her next chart hit with The World Is Stone. Not just sadly good Top of the Box tonight but looking good too. Remember Double Trouble's shirts? They were really stylish. Check out Sunita's hat on this right back where we started from number four

Oh, it's all right and it's coming on We gotta get it right back to where we started from Goodyear and Parkin are joined on the balcony by three women who can hardly be arsed to turn round for the camera as the two busy chatting to each other. Goodyear points out that if you thought Double Trouble shirts were stylish, wait till you see the hat of the next artist sanita with right back where we started from born in seattle in 1963 as the daughter of the high energy singer mikhail bran and the niece of amy stewart sanita malone first rose to prominence

when she started a relationship with david essex when they were appearing in the stage show Mutiny. In 1986, she teamed up with her ex-partner Simon Cowell to release her debut single So Macho, which got to number two in August of that year. After a dalliance with Stock Aitken and Waterman, she released this song, the Maxine Nightingale hit, which got to number eight in November of 1975, number 2 in the USA in 1976

and featured throughout the 1977 Paul Newman film Slapshot. It's up this week from number 6 to number 4. Oh, and Sunita's wearing a sombrero. It's kind of one of those things that sitcom

characters of the 70s and people in adverts used to wear when they came back on the plane from the Spanish holiday, usually with a stuffed donkey. It is a bad hat. It's an orange and gold sombrero, which really should... It's always kind of shorthand for wacky, isn't it, a sombrero, which is quite an... Yeah.

Yeah, or it's where a Rick Mayall in Bottom comes in wearing a giant sombrero which is quite yeah yeah or it's it's um where a rick male in bottom comes in wearing a giant sombrero with his with his pants sort of pulled right up to his to his armpits and he's really happy because he's been on holiday for once and just comes striding in and goes he battled his maracas close to me and yeah that's that's what i think of now i have fond fond memories of rick male in a sombrero but otherwise you know i don't know what she's doing but i have to give her credit for her, her smiley face earring, which is, I guess would have been, I don't know. Well, it wouldn't have been subversive at this point because.

No, it's a year gone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not like it's a kind of throwback to like, oh, this is a bitchy. No, it's just, but I, I would probably, to be honest on, on some nights, if I wore, if I wore earrings, those would probably be the earrings that I would wear. Other than that, you know, it's not, it's not, it be honest, on some nights, if I wore earrings, those would probably be the earrings that I would wear. Other than that, you know, it's not a very strong look, really. And it's not a good song.

It's not that the song is bad. The version is bad. No. It's just it's very weak. Oh, it's catchy, isn't it? It's like, what is the point of this? Yeah. It's like a sort of watery, it's like if you're expecting, you know,

it's a sort of watery Angel's like if you're expecting a watery angel delight version you know that it's a dessert it's a confection but there's just something a bit wrong about it, something really unsatisfying about it all of a sudden the Pasadenas are looking remarkably authentic aren't they

they are and wet wet wet that's going too far that's going too far but yeah you're right sombrero chat

I won't let sombreros in the house no no because I have a serving hatch Al and I envisage difficulties

yeah you know so no I won't let sombrero but with regard how often do you use your serving hatch on a daily basis Al

love using it respect yeah I mean yesterday I had my dinner passed to me use your serving hatch? On a daily basis, Al. Love using it. Respect. Yeah, I mean, yesterday I had my dinner passed to me through the serving hatch. And of course, it's also a disciplinary thing that you shut the serving hatch when you want to stop the cats bloody getting on the kitchen top and stuff.

So I love my serving hatch. But anyway. You see, if I had a serving hatch, I would carry on like they're doing, Rowan and Martin's Laughing. Or that advert for Marathon with Keith Chegwin in it. Yeah, yeah, but with a sombrero. How could you not?

Well, but with a sombrero, that will pose difficulties, of course. So I just avoid that difficulty by not having them in the house. Well, I mean, when the novelty of bringing one back and wearing it wears off, where do you put it? Where do you put it where it's not just going to gather loads of dust? I mean, you can put it on the wall, but it'll be an absolute dust trap. You can put it on top of your wardrobe, but it's going to fall.

No, it's a bole. Go somewhere on holiday where they have smaller hats, like, I don't know,ria or or turkey i always um i always associate sombreros as well with like a clanging lack of self-awareness because i used to um when i lived in camden in kind of the late 90s early noughts and i um i wore pvc trousers quite a lot um and i could pull them off you know i'm not saying like oh how embarrassing i've kind of gone i I hope you could, Doug. You've got to be washed at some point.

So this was, you know, Camden was, you know, still fairly full of freaks at this point. And I really didn't consider myself to be, you know, to be standing out that much. And I was coming out of Camden Town Tube one night and a skinny bloke, skinny white bloke in a massive sombrero went past me looked me up and down and went oh cunt and i just kind of it stopped me in my tracks and i kind of watched him kind of saunter off into the station in his giant ridiculous hat and i and i was like what just happened yeah but did he forget that he was wearing a sombrero he must have done i mean maybe you know what did someone else just did someone else kind of gently place it on his hat when he on his head when he was

distracted you can't forget you're wearing a sombrero they're heavy things they're like gladstone small with your neck all pressed down. But anyway, Sinita. Yeah. The thing is, like you say, it's a crap version, isn't it? It is. The thing is, it's a crap version because it's pretty much exactly, it's not the same as the old versions, but it doesn't try anything different. It shows no real traces of modern dance music.

Stotterkin and Walkman Productions, you know, usually had a bit of Italo piano on it or something or they'd kind of techno it up a bit but this is a very very straight version with the kind of same kind of disco beat yeah I mean at this time it needs to be stressed that she's away from the clutches

of Stock Aitken and Waterman here we can't blame them for this yeah because the album this is from I think it has no Stottic and Walkman on it although I think it's produced by Static and a woman's engineer but yeah the performance is full gusto but there's too much

screaming from the audience way too much screaming and there's reason for that because we need to state straight away that you know we've just described what a knob Sunita looks, but she's the least knobbiest looking person on, on the stage because she has four hunks in cutoffs and ripped shorts and

baseball caps who were really trying too hard to be a bit, you know, kicking. Yeah. I think it's because of them that the screaming is kind of happening. Well, that's it, isn't it? Because, I mean, let's go through the T-shirts they're wearing. I noticed two T-shirts from the Bulldog Bar in Amsterdam.

One lad's got a cut-off basketball vest, and there's one with this kind of like Nino Ferretto kind of like bouffant with a red t-shirt with the word kick it on it. And he's just like, yes, I so want to. In the bollocks. Yeah. And the screaming that accompanies every single thing those guys do, they take it too far. They've obviously been told this audience, you know, scream, but it sounds like it sounds like a victorian asylum in there it sounds it sounds so um yeah i mean it's i don't get it though because it's not it's they're not being they're

not sexy and i know you know sunita would i'm sure at some you know when she did so much and everything and there's like properly like rippling basted torsos cavorting all around her. Basted. What a description. That's lovely. You know what I mean? They've had a good, they're oiled up and ready to go.

But these guys are just, they're very kind of, there's this weird sort of very weirdly inoffensive kind of almost sub-frat boy asexual thing about them. It weirded me out a little bit because it's like, it's not like you know, here comes the kind of the beefcake.

They're not that far removed from the second series of Alveda's Ape Pet where they're on the building site in Spain you know, they all look like a load of wains they do a bit but yeah, there is a tone, you're right

there is this slightly hysterical tone it's almost as if they've been slightly starved of jigging masculinity at this point it's like, where are the boys? Could I just say, I'm not saying,

I'm not name dropping here, but I've had dealings with Sunita as well. Similarly vague. Oh, have you now? No, similarly vague and absolutely, she of course wouldn't remember it. But it's just something I remember. I was on a train in the Midlands.

That's all I can remember it was between coventry and wolverhampton i know that um and i remember sitting down and somebody behind me had their feet like up against the the seat and was kicking it you know what i mean and prodding and i was getting really really wound up but i didn't look around until I needed to go to the toilet and then I went to the toilet it was fucking Sunita she oh no

and I was staggered by this went to the toilet and came back she carried on I've got to say because I wanted to see if it was just a normal person

I would have sat somewhere else but I wanted to see Sunita the pop star would continue with her rudeness and I have to say she did she had headphones on she was listening to music so she was jigging slightly to that um but yeah i just i had sunita's feet in my back all the way to wolframpton oh man you should have you should have just put your foot down man you should have

had a go at her you know she she she was tired of taking the lead she wanted a man to dominate her i have always been scared of pop stars so yeah i just kept you done but yeah so i just wanted to note that she's not got good train etiquette i suspect she'd put her bag on the seat next to her etc oh definitely and she'd have a she'd she'd have a cough there and not drink half of it and leave the lid off with the danger of spillage at any time. Fuck, Sunita. Fuck, Sunita. Anything else you need to say about this disgusting woman?

No, she doesn't deserve it. After that, Neil, she doesn't deserve to be spoken about a moment longer. One thing I do need to get in, Neil, you were talking about your indie boys beforehand. Yeah. And right at the end of this song, one of them in the audience with quite lank hair turns around, faces the camera, and mimes the chorus right at us.

I love that. Because it's a song everyone knows, no matter what you're into. Yes, it is. Because of Slapshot. Oh, I don't know if it's because of everyone knows, no matter what you're into. Yes, it is. Because of Slapshot. Oh, I didn't... And I... I don't know if it's because of that film, Al.

I just think it was a big hit. I just think everyone knows that song. Yes, it was, yeah. But it weighed steady on our mind throughout the 80s due to the many repeats on Central late night of Slapshot. Central late at night, man. I remember they used to run horror movies at about two in the morning under the heading, central late night of Slapshot. Central late at night, man. I remember they used to run horror movies at about two in the morning

under the heading, under the heading, Let's Fret Together. Yes. That's the lamest catchphrase ever. And of course, the other central connection to this week's charts

is of course, the theme tune to Prisoner, So Block H, which we got in central long before anyone else. We knew the score. We knew about the freak and all of it before anyone else. Always ahead of the game in the Midlands. Totally, yeah.

Totally. I remember being in London in the early 90s and watching episodes of Prisoner, Cell Block H I'd already seen three years previously in Central, just thinking yeah this shitty little backwater and it's and it's poor knowledge of Australian soap operas

you just reminded me of that, that is a song that I now want my band to cover I love that song, you've heard the Lovers Rock version of it haven't you, I haven't mate, no put it on the playlist Judy Boucher yeah it'll be on the video playlist. Oh, it's amazing.

It's amazing. I'm so upset that that song isn't on this chart music. But then again, you know, it would be, it would have to be a six hour long podcast. I could talk for hours upon the majesty of Priz. So the following week, right back where we started from, stayed at number four, its highest position. The follow-up, a cover

of Robert Knight's Love on a Mountaintop got to number 20 in October of this year, and she'd ply her rut of 70s soul covers into the early 90s. And be a bastard on trains. Love is good, love can be strong We gotta get right back to where we started from

It's alright and it's coming on We gotta get right back to where we started from I reckon she might be a bit hung with that scarf on. Sunita, right back where we started from. Okay, here's the big numbers this week's top ten. And this week's number ten, Nano Cherry with Man Child. Climbing one at number nine,

I Don't Wanna Get Hurt, that's Donna Summer. Cindy Lauper is up nine at eight, I Drove All Night. And at number seven, it's Natalie Cole with Miss You Like Crazy. Guns N' Roses up two at six,

Sweet Child O' Mine. No Change at number five for Madonna, Express Yourself. At four, up two for Sunita, right back where we started from. At three, up nine, Back To Life, that's Soul To Soul. No Move at two for Cliff Richard, The Best Of Me. And so for the second week, Britain's number one is Jason Donovan, Sealed With A Kiss. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE For the summer Darling, I promise you this I'll send you all my love

Every day in a letter Born in Victoria, Australia in 1968, Jason Donovan was a child actor who landed the part of Scott Robinson in the soap opera Neighbours in 1986. After his on-screen bride Kylie Minogue signed a record deal and linked up with Pete Waterman, Jace followed suit and his debut single Nothing Can Divide Us got to number five in September of 1988. After bagging the Christmas number one in 1988 in a duet with Kylie Minogue,

especially for you, he scored his first solo number one in 1988 in a duet with Kylie Minogue, especially for you, he scored his first solo number one with Too Many Broken Hearts and this is the follow-up. It's a cover of the 1962 Brian Hyland record and it went straight in at number one last week. Fucking hell. Indeed. Fucking hell.

Neighbours at the time was a really big deal for me i mean i don't mean i pinned my life on it as such but this was when i could go home for lunch at school yeah because i live quite near my school so you know it was always the routine of watching neighbors at 1 30 and then legging it back to school after it had finished yeah so neighbors was a real regular thing for me i hated neighbors i watched it i'm not sure i liked it but i watched it yeah it provided a few moments of of pleasurable oddity like bouncer's dream but not as many moments of oddity as home and away yeah where the summit of course was reached when bobby morphed out of the fridge in front of ailsa if you if you've never seen that clip from home and away in the

early 90s yeah i highly recommend it. This song is a great song. I really like the four voices and the Brian Hyland version that you mentioned and even the Bobby Vinton version in the 70s. It's a really bleak, blank song in a way. It's a spooky song. It's quite a spooky song. It reminds me of Johnny Remember Me. Jason sings it okay,

but the backing could not have been more bland and karaoke-ish it sounds like preset library music yeah start aching and waterman was shit at ballads yes they were much better at high energy pop um it has none of the kind of your affiliate if you like because they were very into european music all the funk that made things like mel and kim work. And I remember objecting to Star Trek. Massively at the time. Not just. Not really for their production line nature. Of what they made.

But because by 1989. They'd sort of stopped bossing things in a way. They'd got less cheeky. I liked the way that the Reynolds girls. Things seemed to provoke rock boys. I liked their brazenness in a sense. Here they're getting a bit more polite. Convention simon cowlish in a way um they did cater for a massive pop market which was there and was only really catered for by americans and dull old british bands and and

mel and kim and stuff like that i loved it was achievable fun and it was it was lovely lovely records but this cover it seems really careless it seems like they they thought about you know they thought about it for five minutes yeah knocked out a really identikit backing track jason tries his best bless him but it's it's a great song let down by a really shit boring arrangement i think yeah it's really insipid, isn't it? It's like really tinny and wishy and washy and yeah, nothingy. It's really, these are things that always make me think of David Stubbs' Immortal Line.

It's like punk never happened. It's like nothing ever happened. I mean, Jace was being kind of like promoted as, you know, as top pop hunk at the moment and you just look at this and go fucking hell is this is this what you're supposed to aspire to yet another pop star masking their sexuality

another one allegedly allegedly I'm sorry gotta get that in I mean it's an important record in a sense this in a weird way because it's the first non charity single to debut at number one since Two Tribes, which is years before this, you know? That is depressing, isn't it?

It's really odd. And also you'll notice in the rundown before this, the top ten rundown, it's an amazingly female-dominated top ten. It's mostly female artists and female bands but you'll notice at number two cliff richards 100th single yes um which was heavily promoted as such and went straight in at number two yeah what happens the week after i mean this actual performance from um jason is from the week before isn't it it's not actually from this week it's from the

previous week's episode where he was on with like transvision fam the beautiful south and d mob and other people nicky campbell hosted it this is cut in from that but but you'll notice both cliff's record which went straight in at number two and this that went straight in at number one start dropping almost immediately after yeah and i might be reading too much into it and then maybe the charts have always been kind of a marketing tool but you know by the mid 90s a first week number one entry is mandatory if you're a big artist you go in straight to number one that slow climb is is starting to go and the charts are really becoming what they eventually became not an index of the nation's taste but a kind of endlessly rotating index of what a few thousand

people are into um not the nation and and it this record's appearance tells you a lot suddenly at number one but its swift disappearance also tells you quite a bit about the way the charts are going at that time and i have to say that the following week well you know we'll actually know we'll one but it's swift disappearance also tells you quite a bit about the way that you're going at that time and i have to say that the following week well you know we'll actually know we'll get to that later i mean jason is in an awful baggy flowery shirt that probably cost a fortune tucked into his jeans and looking like he just looks like the saturday lad at tony and guy doesn't he he seems sweet but he seems apologetic do you know i mean like he knows it's crap He just looks like the Saturday lad at Tony and Guy, doesn't he? He seems sweet, but he seems apologetic.

Do you know what I mean? Like, he knows it's crap. Yeah. And, you know, he's got to do this. Yeah. He knows it's shite as well. Yeah, I mean, because Stockade and Waterman used to brag on about how many hundreds of songs they've got in reserve and they'll dominate the charts for a decade to come and everything.

And all of a sudden, like, ooh, why is this a cover version then? Yeah. they've got in reserve and they'll dominate the charts for for a decade to come and everything and all of a sudden like the oh what's this why is this a cover version then yeah what's going on here but that's why stock eight can award them always slightly resist any kind of co-option by music journalists in a way we love pop right and we love pop people and and people who are into pop but they were also they had a they had a really brutal commercial sense to them as well um where they they could at some point stop caring about the music and know that putting this person this song with this singer would be would be an immediate hit and they do it in this case in the laziest way possible it genuinely does sound like a really

shit karaoke backing it doesn't sound like a really shit karaoke backing it doesn't sound like any thoughts gone into it at all yeah that's you see that's cynical you know if you if you're gonna that is purely single that's nakedly absolutely jason was this um you know he'd been on the cover of smash hits a lot and he had his his lovely hair and he had this you know massive i mean it's it's kind of the equivalent now of when somebody like you can't get anywhere it's like you can't get a book published unless you've already got like a unless you're on telly you know it's like you've got a public profile or if you're a youtuber with you know a million a million subscribers it's like that's you know those are the people who are going to be

at the front of the queue it's not about and it's it's kind of like that it's like well he had the profile already because he was on this massive soap opera so you know he's going to um but he's a very wholesome he's a wholesome lad isn't he in a way that you can't possibly and i know that girls you know i know girls fancied him and and screamed and stuff but you know at the time i just i didn't get it at all it was it was like there's you know i he looks he looks like a nice, friendly chap who you'd, you know, a very friendly, trustworthy chap. But he's not, there's nothing of the pop star about him. No. There's no edge. There's no edge to him at all.

No. It comes to something when Craig McLaughlin is made to look like a rock god by somebody. Craig McLaughlin and or check one, two. Yeah. I mean, it's got four very saucy backing dancers. You can't backing dance. Okay, this is, I have beef with this, right? Yeah, you go ahead, Doug.

What are you doing with it? I mean, they are, they're giving it their best as people do, but it's like, it seems a bit unfair on jason as well to to kind of you you really are um pointing up how how bland he is when it's like it's a it's a ballad this is a this is a slow jam and you've got you've got like you know you've got like a pack of dancers behind you but they're doing the kind of proper legs and co acting out the song thing yes so you know um so they're waving goodbye i don't want to say goodbye but they're waving waving goodbye and i i have to you know it's like i mean they do you're

right sarah they're doing they're doing the actions so close that it gets to the point where you're watching it just to see how they mime the word September. And they just do another wave. That's a challenge for any dancer. Yeah, they puss it out of it. Yeah, but, you know, it's a bit, it's quite a difficult watch this because I do remember it leaving me cold at the time, but now it kind of leaves me,

it's weird going back to this, you know, the stuff of my childhood for this podcast. And the bright stuff, the good stuff, is kind of brighter and more, you know, and it really takes you back. And then the other stuff is, you know, you can really sort of see through it and hear through it and go,

wow, there's really nothing there. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think the point about cynicism is spot on. This is brutal naked cynicism. Because it's utterly unconcerned with the song. The song starts, it isn't the first line it's going to be cold lonely summer I mean it's a dark song

and there's no darkness in this it's completely sunny and bright and you know utterly unsuitable for the song so yeah one of the worst number ones perhaps of the 80s I think having an Australian say

it's going to be a cold lonely summer, no it's not you're in Australia, you're going to have loads of barbecues and you're going to run about on a beach with a dog and go surfing, you jammy jammy bastard, shut up Yeah absolutely, absolutely

and of course the other interesting thing is at this time, you know, Jason Donovan is fighting with the image of Scott Robinson, isn't it? Who's probably at this time still mulleted up to fuck on Neighbours twice a day. Danny was my hero in Neighbours. Do you remember a character called Danny early on? A bit of a bad lad.

And he had a Stooges poster on his wall, which always put him online. That was always a joy to see. Good lord. I mean because at this time during the 80s I really wanted to emigrate to Australia and watching Neighbours put me off. I've periodically had thoughts about Australia

but it is genuinely the creatures put me off. The animals. They're terrifying. There's too many ways to get killed by animals in Australia. That has always kind of slightly put me off moving there. I think Australians mech all that up, though, to put people off. What's put me off is that everybody seems so bloody happy all the time.

You know, this is the thing. Oh, not in Australia nowadays. They're just as miserably racist as everyone else is. No, but you can... Happy racist. Unapologetic racist. Yeah. Frawlish. Yeah, they're racist, but they say mate at the end

after they've slurred you. So the following week, Sealed With A Kiss dropped down to number two, knocked off the top spot by Soul To Soul with Back To Life. The follow-up, Every Day I Love You More, got to number two in September of 1989 and he'd have 11 more top 40 hits over the next three years, including a final number one with Any Dream Will Do in 1991. He spent the rest of the 90s returning to acting and not being gay at all. See you when we're gay. See you when we're gay. but you can hear it first on Radio 1 this Sunday at 5. That's it for tonight.

Play this out, Tom Petty, I Won't Back Down, from Simon and me. Good night. Thank you for watching. I won't back down No, I won't back down You can stand me up at the gates of hell But I won't back down.

Born in Gainesville, Florida in 1950, Tom Petty worked as a gardener and a grave digger before forming the country rock band Mud Crutch in 1970. After that band split up in the mid-70s, he embarked on a short-lived solo career before forming Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who skirted the outer reaches of the top 40 with anything that's rock and roll and American Girl in 1977. After a more successful career in America, Tom Petty was roped

into the travelling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne and he released his debut solo LP Full Moon Fever in April of 1989. This is the first cut from that album co-written by Jeff Lynne and it's up this week from number 35 to number 29 and we're treated to a minute or so of the video which features Petty playing with Lynne, Harrison and Ringo Starr on the drums, even though the latter didn't perform on the record. Tom Petty, of course, died last year. And I was quite shocked at the amount of British people who were kind of like a bit upset about it because he never really meant much in the UK, did he?

He didn't, but I remember this song coming out. I remember seeing it on Top of the Pops, and loving it, really loving it. And he's actually one of those people that I've still kind of stacked up as somebody I must investigate, because I haven't properly listened to the albums or anything like that. But I like the kind of groove he gets, and I like him. There's something about him I like.

And I like this song a lot. I mean, despite the fact... Oh, man, because he stood on a glass table in this, I wrote you and the Stuggs in my life and i like this song a lot i mean despite the fact i oh man because he stood on a glass table in this i wrote you and the dogs in my notes oh no but um but despite that fact i mean yeah i i must investigate tom petty and i i would like to know what i should be investigating because i quite like this song yeah i i i did uh i i did a bit of... He was someone who was quite sort of background for me. You know, I was kind of aware of him as a presence, you know, but I did a bit of investigating after he died,

like a lot of people. I think it kind of, you know, because everyone just kind of descends upon Spotify and, you know, kind of throws all the numbers out. But it was really... Yeah, I think it was a shocker. It happened, of course, the same... Basically the same night as the mass shooting in in vegas and i just remember people kind of going fuck everything

because there's a particular and i know that you you have to be really careful about conflating people will get on you about conflating you know it's the the death of one celebrity and you know and a hundred um um you know ordinary citizens yeah but you know, ordinary citizens. Yeah. But there was a very, it was such a shit day for America, for like American goodness and wholesomeness. You know, this was, and the idea of America as somewhere that has, that is great and...

Isn't full of mentalists. Yeah. Sometimes these things do align and there is kind of a, you know, a particular kind of cultural pain that is felt. And I think, you know, we kind of got a whiff of that because there was this very kind of warm, he's just very, you know, there's this real whiff of america that you get off of listening to tom petty's this real warmth and sweetness about the thing and it's kind of this relaxed

kind of confidence and so i think that kind of and and quite you know not actually as syrupy or as sentimental as people think you know so that's a real i've always got like a real wit and so listening to him after that and just thinking about everything just going yeah this this is this really sucks i mean it's what life at the moment does seem to be waiting for the next thing that will make us all say fuck everything um yeah there always seems to be one around the corner but i know what sarah was just saying really reminded me i think we had a discussion sarah actually remember when amy amy winehouse passed on and it was simultaneous i think with the bravik shooting in norway and immediately so many smart asses were piping what do you care about a singer when you know 100 people got killed this idiotic thing that you can't

because you can't you know if you can't feel compassion for a single person then your compassion for 100 people is totally fraudulent i think so i i remember that simultaneity with with tom petty in the vegas shooting um but yeah i didn't investigate his music afterwards but but i want to because i i think there's a lot of riches in there he's one of those he's one of those ones who passed who nobody had a bad thing to say about him and yeah i thought it was in the right place definitely yeah people i trust like his music so i must investigate it there's just a real kind of positive presence that he has and of course this is something that people find insufferable about kind of popular um american music you know or or americans themselves it's like god you know like i was

like i was just so uh so um rudely saying about us about australia it's the kind of it's the happiness and the positivity of course that is not something that's probably not the first thing that people think of now about america so there really is this kind of you know tom petty was one of those people who seemed to pass and take something with him yeah which we are going to miss well Tom Petty is is yeah he's very very American but without being jingoistic his songs and his music they're about American dreams it's a kind of American road that he's writing about you know what I mean it's always an American environment he's writing about at the time I probably would have been resistant to that as well but now um now the pickings are leaner yeah now i don't mind i wouldn't mind um exploring tom petty it's quite

it's quite generous as well it's quite it's not that kind of insular it's not yeah there's none of that kind of arrogance in there it's very kind of you know it's just the other it's just pitch just right because it's very it's it's quite self-effacing without being cringey or arch or any of that. I'm feeling sad even talking about it. It's a rotten deal. Oh, man. Noel Edmonds is banging it relentlessly on his radio station in his one-man battle against Lloyds Bank.

Oh, no. Why did we have to look back there? Yeah, sorry. You know, everything comes back doesn't it to Noel? And of course the video as well. That would have put me off because there's fucking Ringo thumping away.

It is a bit smug. The video is a bit smug. Yeah, look at me with my mates. They're famous. Yeah. I always did enjoy it though when you get it was like an extra treat wasn't it when top of the pops because sometimes they would they would really screw you over and they'd play you out and it would be like the credits would be going you'd be like oh no oh no i really like this and you only get a little bit of it and this was like yeah like you said it's like a minute and a bit and whatnot it's like that's a decent chunk

of you know i'm quite i'm quite happy with that that It's like, that's a decent chunk of, you know, I'm quite happy with that. That's a nice little put in. So the following week, I Won't Back Down moved up one place to number 28, its highest position. The follow-up, Running Down a Dream, only got to number 55. And the only other time he'd get some sexy top 40 action

was when Too Good to Be True with the Reformed Heartbreakers got to number 34 in 1992. Tom Petty died in 2017, but two years previous, him and Jeff Lynne successfully called out Sam Smith for being a thieving bastard when he ripped off I Won't Back Down for Stay With Me. Well done, Tom.

Well done, Tom. So, what's on television afterwards? Well, BBC One is now showing EastEnders, where Ali Osman is looking for some much-needed extra cash. The episode of Last of the Summer Wine, where the protagonists take up skiing with dinner trays. Alf Garnett finds out his daughter Rita is knocking about with a doctor in sickness

and in health. Phil Kool stars in Call It. Then it's question time and a by-election special. BBC 2 is halfway through round four of the Cardiff Singer of the World competition. David Mellor is interviewed in Who Cares?

Indeed. Then the documentary series Europeans talks to some Europeans about green Indeed. Then the documentary series Europeans talks to some Europeans about green issues. Then it's a travel show, a short documentary about bulimia, Newsnight, and the late show finishes off the evening focusing on the 50th birthday of Batman. ITV is showing Hitman,

the game show hosted by Nick Owen, followed by a bomb scare at Sunhill Police Station in The Bill, then this week, LA Law, News at 10, Prisoner Cell Block H, and What the Papers Say. Channel 4 is showing Hard News, with Raymond Snoddy looking at the tabloid witch hunt against Bobby Robson. Then Kazuko's Kara karaoke club features John Cooper Clark and Janice Long singing Leader of the Pack. Then the film The Company of Wolves

and finishes off with the documentary series Propaganda and the Russian film Private Life. So, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow, me dears? Well, I've sort of jotted down that I'd be talking about Rebel MC and what a sellout he is and how much I hate Jason Donovan. But you know what? I wouldn't be talking to anyone in the playground because all my bloody mates had left.

So I'd be, what I was mainly doing then, was sitting up in the library at school, which afforded good views of the school, wishing the whole place would burn down and i was i was there to see it and yeah it's horrible being 16 man or 17 you don't like fridays do you it's just a moody fucking time isn't it sarah um just fuzz box all day long really yeah yeah my girls and what we're buying on saturday i'd have been buying fuzz box i think um and i think that's probably maybe orange crush yeah you can you can probably

figure out yeah i mean i yeah i had um i think i still do have actually um my cassette of big bang i have to dig it out because i still have a tape deck as well that i can play it on so really i should that's what i should go and do after this So what does this episode tell us about 1989 and the summer of? I think it tells us slightly that the 90s have

in a sense already started i.e. kind of messy blanding out of the 80s in a way where the 80s seemingly had clothes and styles tied into subcultures this has kind of evaporated by now um on top of the pops we have to always say on top of the pops because of course out in the wider musical world amazing things are happening as we've talked about already in hip-hop and dance music and all kinds of different areas on top of the pops, people seemingly want to belong to the mainstream, it seems.

There's no, I mean, bar fuzzbox, there's no performance here that's kind of startling, surprising or in any way, you know, memorable in a way. So like the audience, pop is becoming pretty bland in 89. We're getting into the kind of the death throes of Stock Aitken and Waterman, really. Or it's like that is on its way out and it's going to be replayed. That doesn't mean that even though they tried to kind of co-opt Pop for themselves, you know, and it's like, we are Pop. And it's like, you're not completely, though, are you? You are at this point just phoning it in.

And, you know, something else gonna is gonna sprout after you i mean as far as music goes it is it is strange that we're we're kind of like one year away from the from the acid house boom and there's no house music on this episode yeah yeah perhaps and with all the names that are involved in this episode the most important word in all of Perhaps with all the names that were involved in this episode, the most important word in all of those names is the and that's in the middle of Double Trouble and the Rebel MC. That ampersand is important because in the early 90s,

the charts would become flooded with artists that would have an and in the middle because they were more anonymous. Or feet. Yes, exactly. Because they were more anonymous. Or verses. The industry, we we discussed in previous episodes when we talk about the 90s really didn't know how to cope with that started reasserting themselves in the mid 90s with the big bands like blur and oasis and things like that but we were about to enter quite an

interesting time in a sense precisely that fast movement in and out of the charts also meant that perhaps artists from genres and areas that weren't normally featured in the charts could get in, making basically dance music. We're on the cusp of that happening. This is the last clinging on, I guess, of the kind of traditional, here's an artist, here's Jason Donovan doing a 40-year-old cover. I'm not saying that disappeared, but it certainly started becoming less frequent and the charts started becoming more dominated by what people were actually listening to,

which tended to be, yeah, dance music. Yeah, and I think the other major event in this episode is the debut of R.E.M. because we're starting to see bands that you'd only hear about in the Inkys or at your student night suddenly appearing on Top of the Pops. I mean, we're about five months away from, you know, that episode of 1989 when the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays are on. So, yeah, we're starting to see things change. Well, Top of the Pops is losing its power to a certain extent.

You said that you watched MTV quite a lot of the time, and that's certainly starting to have an effect here. Top of the Pops is not now our only pop music show every week, as it was, our only window into pop. It's just one of innumerable amount of music shows that you could see, and that power of the program is going

so that is the end of another episode of Chart Music all that remains for me to do now is the usual shit www.chart-music.co.uk you can join us on Facebook facebook.com slash chart music podcast or you can get involved with us at Twitter at chart music T O T can get involved with us at twitter at chart music t-o-t-p

thank you very much Sarah B. Cheers love thank you very much Neil Kulkarni I think you'll find it's cum sardy thanks for listening punksters my name's Al Needham I've got a podcast and I'm going to use it chart music use it.

Chart music. I have just been told that the dance marathon is continuing despite the threat that a bomb is about to blow Wentworth Detention Centre sky-high. Four of the inmates, with no thought of the danger to themselves, are still in there dancing away. I miss you so bad Just need to see you You used to bring me roses And I wish you would again But that was on the outside And things were different then

On the air Bloody bastards!