Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #21: May 11th 1995 - Lisa's Dad Is Well Brexit

Episode Date: March 20, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: er, can you spare us a few quid so we don't have to do these through shitty microphones any more? Please? This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, couldn't be more Nineties if it started off thinking England were a lock for the 1994 World Cup, and finished having a bit of a roar about Lady Di. We're smack in the middle of 1995, two-thirds of the panel were hammering out dispatches from the very frontline of Cool Britannia (while the other third was locked in a glass box, rummaging through bin bags filled with pictures of fannies), and one of us was actually in attendance when this very episode was filmed, sitting around with mopey young musos and slipping away for a crafty pull on a jazz fag when Celine Dion comes on. Yes, there are a couple of Britpop acts on this episode, but it's a timely reminder that there was far more going on than that in '95, and most of it thick with of the tang of Hip-Hop. Montell Jordan rocks that urban Bully out of Bullseye look, Jonathan King introduces his latest proteges The Black Eyed Mushy Peas, some band we've never heard of drops an unexpected N-Bomb, Manchester United play Run-DMC to Status Quo's Aerosmith, and, er, Scatman John pitches up. And St Simon of Mayo emerges from the darkness every now and then like a Shakespearean ghost with some rib-tickling, cutting-edge 'burns' of the English Rugby Union and Bob Geldof's marital woes. Naturally, because it's a Nineties episode, there's a chunk of blather about working in the music press, but the inevitable tangents include the death of the NME, the floppy-headed rubbishness of David Seaman, being sneered at by Menswe@r's roadie, an entire shopping centre being rammed out to see a radio presenter dressed up as a monk, Richard Desmond: Champion of Homosexual Media, and a plug or two for our new Patreon account. As always, there's swearing, swearing and more swearing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do you like listening to? Erm... Chart music. Chart music. Hey! What's up you pop-crazed youngsters and welcome to the latest edition of Chart Music. My name's Al Needham, but that is not important.

What is? On my special guest for this episode, David Stubbs. Hi. And Taylor Parks. Afternoon. Good to have you back, chaps. So, has there been anything pop and interesting

happening in your little lives? You must be joking. Okay, moving over to David. david you've just finished your book haven't you um yes i have i finally um um sent in the um yeah the proofs um and yeah just weeded out like half a dozen little howlers from a sort of discography i did shameful howlers putting really yeah anything i mean you know just i think i just done it in haste this little kind of um um sort of um not discography what's the what's the what's the word playlist type thing at the end yeah i i put fascist groove thing instead of fascist groove get off my fucking podcast now telex moscow disco i left a w off the disco just i mean it's just ranking competence but fortunately is it your fault though that these people couldn't spell well they didn't Disco. I left a W off the disco. Just, I mean, it's just rank incompetence. But fortunately... Is it your fault, though, that these people couldn't spell?

Well, that's one way I could sort of, yes. I mean, this is it. I think that my kind of... You were trying to correct him, David, which was the right thing to do. Well, yeah, this is it. I, you know, it was terrible. That was Slade, of course, you know.

I mean, I really missed the point there. Yeah, good at synthesizers, shit on word processors, weren't they? Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah, so when is the point there. Yeah, good at synthesizers, shit on word processors, weren't they? Yes, yes. Yeah, so when is the book coming out, David? It's coming out in autumn, I think. Unless they push it slightly forward. Ooh. Well, we'll earmark that,

and we'll try and find a very synthy chart music for you when that comes out. Lovely. And you can shill the book like fuck. Lovely. But for now, the only thing we're going to shill like fuck for now, Paul Craig's youngsters, is the fact that we've got a patreon account oh yes like every other podcast we're on the fucking air roll for your money and there's a good reason for that isn't there chaps i mean we've done we've let me just do the pitch here and now right we've done 20 of these right

we like doing them you like listening to them them. And we feel that now is the time that the money exchanges hands. Just want to say right off the bat, it's not a give us some money or we won't do any more of these chart musics. That's not going to happen. We're still going to do these. We just want to give you the opportunity to show your appreciation. But more importantly, we want you to help us get decent equipment. I've got a fairly decent microphone at the moment, which no doubt is going to be fucked up in the edit by me. But, you know, just listen to David.

David, tell the people what you're using at the minute. That's terrible. No, yeah, I'm using a phone. I might as well be using one of those. It's fucking disgusting, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It's not good enough disgusting isn't it yeah yeah it's it's using your phone yeah like a like a bloody correspondent in angola in 1975 yeah that's

right like there should it should be a little box underneath your uh underneath the screen in the bottom corner of you holding your phone to your ear yeah like the 1972 cup winners cup commentary you know it's yeah It's no good. It's not good enough, is it? It's not good enough for us, and it's certainly not good enough for the pop-crazy youngsters. You deserve to hear your smooth tones. Yes, yes, they do, yes. Velvet.

Yeah, exactly. Taylor, what are you using at the minute? Because you had a decent setup, but it's not there anymore, is it? No, I'm using a Zoom R8 recording machine, but the good mic I had was borrowed and it's had to go back, so have a heart. Yeah, it's terrible, isn't it?

I'm using the built-in mic. Can you believe it? The built-in internal mic on a Zoom R8. But what's happened is we launched the Patreon account a week or so ago. We've already got 75 people willing to lay the money down for chart music. And oh, God, we want to thank each and every one of them. I mean, I did set up a tier where I said if you chucked in $3, you'd get mentioned on chart music.

And yeah, looking back on that now, I really undersold that because loads and loads of people have piled in. Just want to thank a few of them right now. So Jake Anthony Eder, Patrick McNally, Gareth Parkinson, Jeff Rideout, Richard Connell,

Roberta Donda, Spencer Kelly, Stephen Wilshire, Barry Davis, Neil Downer, Stephen Dow, Samantha Veal. You all laid your money down

on behalf of Chart Music and we love you for it, don't we? We do. Yeah, it's like being at a kind of cenotaph of 40-something misfits. Paul Putner, Simon West, Paul Williamson, Keith Aue, Satchmo Distel, Neil Killam, Paul Todd, Alan Fisher, Philip Bentley, Scott Murray, Graham Smith. Those names will live on forever in chart music history.

Go to patreon.com slash chart music. Make the pledge. Sign it in blood. Put yourself down. Be a pop craze youngster for life. I'm excited now. This is only the beginning. We've got special bonus tears

that are in the works at the minute. And, you know, before too long, there'll be some very, very special chart music news. Let me tell you. It's going to be like Dennis the Menace fan club. I can sense it. So before we pile into the latest episode, we must make mention of the death of the NME. Chaps, were you

lighting a candle in your window that night? It feels like it's about the fifth time it's died in some ways. All these kind of obituaries have been trotted out, every single one of them including the words, hit young gunslingers. I actually wrote a piece like that and pointedly did not once mention hit young gunslingers in it,

which I think is the first ever time that's happened. Well played, David. But, I mean, you know, even now it's still technically alive. You know, perhaps, you know, it's on this kind of... It's online, so eventually maybe they'll shut off that live support system for it, and then there'll be a further round of obituaries. But it does feel like every single time there's some sort of...

I think, you know, it had the same thing when it went... when it shifted down size or whatever, and then when it became a free sheet, there were more obituaries then. So, yeah, I feel, you know, it's died several times and it's possibly got at least one more death to come. I mean, obviously you read it. We've already spoke about it, haven't we, David?

You devoured it as a youngster, didn't you? Absolutely did, yeah. Yeah. You know, and it was a great time for reading the magazine at that point because it was almost like they had readership to burn. You know, they could do really provocative things and bring on new people, you know, like Paul Moore and Ian Penman. And, you know, readership would kind of fall away like, you know,

like sort of, you know, like melting icebergs. But they finally felt this was the right thing to do. We can't just pander to Grateful Dead fans, you know, for the rest of our lives. We've got to evolve as a magazine, and they felt they could afford to do that. And it was really, really good in that respect. I actually wrote for the NME in the late 90s. Yes, you did, yes.

Yeah, and as I may have mentioned, it was a bit like when Dennis Law went to Man City at the end of his career, you know. I don't really remember much about it, but that was in the late 1990s. And things were just generally quiet, getting quieter and quieter. I mean, I think there's two things, really. I mean, you could, some people sort of fasten the blame onto individuals,

you know, for the decline of Enemy at a certain point. But really, I think there's two things. The fact that it's owned by a corporation means that they don't really know what to do when, you know, the magazine goes into a kind of decline and, you know, appeals of things like that become more selective. And just the general abstract force, you know, the magazine goes into a kind of decline and, you know, appeals and things like that become more selective. And just the general abstract force, you know, of music. I mean, rock music became kind of ecologically exhausted. There were more and more places to read about the stuff.

And then, of course, the internet came along. So I think, you know, it was inevitable it was going to go into a sort of steep decline. But if it weren't owned by somebody like IPC, if it'd, say, been bought out the way that the wire was bought out by the people that actually worked for it, then it might have had a chance. Yeah, the first inky music paper that I bought was the NME in 84 or 85.

And I didn't know who any of the groups in it were, apart from the Smiths. And I didn't understand a word of what I was reading. And it was great. There was like, I think the first one I got at an interview with Swans by Biba Kopf. I was reading this stuff about sadomasochism and God knows what.

It's like the most opaque prose imaginable um and i was hooked on it straight away right um which meant that when i eventually was working at melody maker i got into so many arguments with people the kids won't understand this no that's the fucking point that's the kind of weirdos that buy music papers uh it's aspirational, right? It's like when girls used to buy that magazine, Just 17. Like no one who was 17 bought it. The point is they were 13 or something.

That's why it was called Just 17. Because you always have to aim a little bit above the heads of the audience and signal to them that this is not for you, this is for someone better than you, or a bit older than you or a bit more sophisticated than you. That's how you get those people in.

But yeah, I mean, this is the thing. There was nothing that anyone could do to save the NME anyway because it wasn't just a matter of a magazine going shit. The death of the NME is a consequence of the death of a particular part of our culture right i mean commercially it's down to tech making making print unviable and stuff like this but when you look at the real death of the enemy the spiritual death of the enemy which was in the late

1980s you understand that the enemy couldn't exist anymore as it was not within the mainstream because that moment had passed um it belonged to a particular moment to a post-war moment when a lot of things aligned improbably uh that whole generation of of of pop it's people in britain were rich enough to spend time thinking about non-essential stuff but poor enough to be dissatisfied um there was enough tech to enable mass communication but not enough to enable complete withdrawal from culture uh and suddenly almost anything was permissible because we lived under threat of the bomb and we'd just beaten hitler and capitalism took a while to catch up with pop culture. So after a few twists and turns,

you end up with this situation where something like the NME could be something as illogical as a music industry journal and consumer guide whose primary purpose was to undermine the whole concept of the music industry and of consumers, though not the concept of guidance. of consumers though not the concept of guidance um and then yeah after about 1986 87 they became too frightened of being pretentious and it's true the old enemy was pretentious and sometimes absurdly so and could probably have done with being a bit less pretentious but that pretentiousness was a waste product right it was a

it was an inevitable consequence of letting bright young people overflow with ideas so it could be ridiculous but you also got all this other great stuff which was amazing and once you clamp down on any possibility of being pretentious you lose all that stuff too so all you're left with was this kind of shortling you know well i liked it approach to criticism which was pointless in the truest sense and padded out with student whimsy and you know eventually kind of pseudo objectivity which of course is much more arrogant and pretentious than anything from the enemy circa 1981 because it's lost the saving grace of honest subjectivity um yeah and it makes perfect sense that once that happened uh the secondary paper melody maker took up the slack

and became the place where people had unusual ideas and wrote in unusual ways and did it very well for a few years then a bit less well for a few years uh then not at all because that's the way that spirit went and it went it was in the mainstream went out of the mainstream into the darker corners of culture then dimmer then dimmer then out yeah but about 1970 it's interesting that we such searching this piece. That's when NME made the transition, you know, via people like Charles Sean Murray. You know, it took a lot of people from the underground press and became the kind of NME that people sort of understand when they hear, you know, that particular acronym.

But it was extraordinary at that point that IPC said they were going to close the paper in six months' time, in about 1970, because it was only selling 150,000 copies. Jesus. And the reason it was in decline, I think, is that I think that the music had actually moved on and NME hadn't. NME was still very show-busy.

And when they reviewed Sgt Pepper, the last lines are something like, and in conclusion, the Beatles have furnished us with an album that will not only make you tap your toes, but make you think a bit as well yes that was the kind of critical language that they had even so the music was way ahead of the enemy for a few years yeah but then when people like nick kent and charles john murray were brought in then it sort of developed a kind of a language and a discourse and outlook that matched the music but it lived off that for so many years i mean, even when you look at some of the articles

about the print edition closing, they're still talking as if, you know, like 18 months ago, it was the same as it had been in 1979 or something. You know, it'd been the same paper. It hadn't been the same paper for 30 years, you know. I mean, like when I started at Melody Maker, when my generation of writers started at Melody Maker, we chose Melody Maker, you know.

There was always this slightly sneering thing where people would say, oh, I bet really you wanted to work for the NME. No, we didn't. Because by this point, Melody Maker had taken over. It was the generation that David was a part of, right? Like Simon Reynolds and Chris Roberts, Stud Brothers, David.

They were the people who'd put Melody Maker, positioned Melody Maker as the paper that did what the NME used to do because the NME couldn't do it anymore. And yet we were there and it was like, you know, you'd read anything in the mainstream media and it wouldn't, they would use the term NME rather than the term music press

right that was the only music paper that ever existed as far as they're concerned so uh we lived our lives in the shadows being completely ignored uh which continues to this day I always thought there was always a sad thing is that NME was able to be kind of um you know abbreviated it was it was a much better kind of you know acronym it was otherwise it'd been a new musical express but NME trips nicely off the tongue NME you try to do the same with Melody Maker MM MM it just doesn't so we were stuck with the kind of the full-term Melody Maker with all the kind of attendance statements of like what seemed like a good title for a music paper in 1926. So I always think that little phonetic quirk

actually was part of Melody Maker's undoing. And as Simon said before, you know, just better layout as well. Covers always look better. Yeah, what it was, the NME was, even when it was awful, it was professionally run, right? And boring, but it was very careful uh and it was subbed and tweaked to the point where every article met a baseline standard of journalism right even if it was

stupid or wrong or a tedious chore to read or you know however badly written it had been in the first place when you read it you felt that you were reading something competent. It was like, this was the paper of record. Whereas Melody Maker was not professionally run, at least not in any conventional sense. Like by the time I was there, we had a hands-off editor. Some of the section editors you suspected had got the job,

partly because they were the ones who could be trusted to be there at 10 in the morning and not turn up drunk and half insane you know and we had subs who just did nothing all day or would occasionally take a correct fact or spelling and change it into an incorrect fact or spelling so on the one hand this gave us this tremendous freedom to write anything we wanted and on the other hand we had no direction and no guidance. And there was very haphazard quality control, which is why in the 90s, we published all the best and most original

and most daring music writing. But on the other hand, a lot of the paper was unreadable shit that no other publication in the world would have dreamt of printing. And the funny thing is, quite often, the good stuff and the bad stuff was written by exactly the same people. It was chaos. It was complete chaos. But sometimes that's good, you know. Sometimes it's good to have that there.

And I can completely understand why a lot of people wouldn't want to read a paper like that, you know, a paper that's that haphazard and which is always pushing, you know, pushing at the readers and pushing the boundaries of what it's allowed to get away with. But I wanted to read it and clearly a lot of other people did at the time. So it was not of no value. So, I mean, I was going to ask you if we're going to miss the NME,

but that's a stupid question because the NME we we disappeared decades ago didn't it definitely yeah that's that's really all you can say yes i mean it's effectively been dead for a long time as taylor says you know that kind of particular culture is dead and it was partly was inevitable that it was going to decline like that but partly i think just because of the ownership and the directions in which it was pushed by desperate marketing people who were absolutely clueless about what they were dealing with. Always the way. Fuck them.

OK, well, Pop Craze youngsters, it's your lucky day because this episode takes us all the way back to May the 11th, 1995. Oh, my God. This is the most recent one we've done, isn't it? Mm-hmm. Yeah. This episode of Top of the Pops,

it's got a lot of special guests on, a lot of exclusives, but one special guest in particular, Taylor motherfucking Parks, was in the building. In the area, if you will. Oh, yeah. Taylor, why? Why?

Why? Why? I was there to write a flimsy cover story for Melody Maker on Supergrass, which turned out to be a bit dishonest in the end because it read like a good old bull session with these crazy, wisecracking kids, whereas in fact they were a bit unfriendly and boring to teach.

No! But that's how it was in those days. You didn't go on tour with the Rolling Stones for four weeks and then write up an 8,000-word report when you'd sobered up. You had 45 minutes on a lawn around the back of the canteen talking to some uncommunicative lads with no real artistic purpose that they could articulate. Oh, that's terrible.

Because I've got the article right in front of me right now. It's been preserved on the internet. Yeah, it's not very good, is it? No, no, no, no, Taylor, don't do yourself down. I read it now and I'm getting the impression that you and them are just the bestest mates ever. You do spend quite a considerable chunk of this article deciding over which members of Supergrass you'd have sex with.

Yeah, for a 100% heterosexual man is quite go-ahead, I thought. Different times. The thing about that article, what you have to do is locate whatever's diverting about the music and write the piece up in that style, like painting the group into the picture, which I got sick of doing really fast because it felt like dishonestly mythologising people who were too daft to do it for themselves, you know.

And your reward was that they treated you like scum, like an inferior species, despite the fact that in most cases you could do their job better than they could do yours. And it gets depressing quite quickly. But it was a lovely day um they were filming top of the pop star elstree at this point yeah uh the the former atv london studios uh prior to that one of the minor british film studios and subject of the best buggles song. Yes. But it was good. We saw the cast of Grange Hill wondering about

and strayed off into the set of EastEnders, which is what everyone used to do when they were at Elstree for Top of the Pops. The big standing set of Albert Square. Is that what it's called? I don't watch it. Yeah. Yeah, and all the streets.

It wasn't gated off or anything. You could go there and just walk straight into yeah and all the streets it wasn't gated off or anything you could go there and just walk straight into it and prod the queen vic it was squashy because it wasn't made out of bricks it was made out of some space age waterproof material um yeah and in the end we got chased off but fuck about i never watched it anyway but it was yeah, yeah, being in the Top of the Pops studio is exactly what you would expect it to be like as a cynical adult. I mean, being 22 or whatever at the time, I stood at the back like a grown-up. So unfortunately, you can't see me in this episode

with my forehead of shiny dark hair and cool suede jacket. But it was a bit of a group experience because, of course, the kids aren't really an audience. They're set dressing. And they're shifted around as coldly as if they were fake walls or potted ferns. They're flown, as you'd say. Yeah, yeah.

But really, it's like watching one man and his dog, you know. It was a bit disappointing. You'd come to the studio complex down this long road off Boreham Wood High Street or whatever, and you'd see all the kids queuing up in the open air like the least important people, you know, left until the last minute. And then once it's a wrap, they're just ejected.

And all the stars drive out past them with their heads down. But, you know, it's still Top of the Pops, isn't it? Was it the first time you'd been in Top of the Pops, Taylor? Yeah, it was, yeah. Yeah. Was it the last? It was the last as well, yes. Were you bothered?

Nah, nah. What I will say is that it was better than the word. Was it the last? It was the last as well Were you bothered? Nah What I will say is that it was better than The Word Yeah Which really was a grim slog to get through a filming of that So how long did it take from start to finish then? I don't know because I think I nipped out for a joint or something halfway through because that was just the crazy 90s wasn't it um i've i was watching this and there's a few acts on it that i've got absolutely no memory of watching right like without wanting to spoiler

this for the listeners uh there's a certain French Canadian singer on this episode that I'm fairly sure I would have remembered having to suffer that and I didn't so yeah I think I might have used my journalistic privileges to nip outside in the piece you wrote for Melody Maker

you and the chaps told her to shut up oh really I haven't reread this for yeah she shouted at them yes oh really i tried to sniff out some amusing top of the pops related anecdotes for you but i was unsuccessful sorry oh except that celine dion was walking up down the corridors practicing her high notes and we all shouted at her to shut up right that's about it how loud did you shout that, I wonder? Yeah, yeah, that's what I want to know, yeah.

Yeah, it was just, it was punk rock, wasn't it? David, you ever been to Top of the Pops? No. Around this time, I interviewed Jarvis Cocker after the Smash Hits Awards, and I sort of sat through some of that. And that was extraordinary, and that was probably a very antithetical experience to Top of the Pops I've written about it quite a few times but just the sheer volume of noise that kids were making at this thing you know they absolutely

it was it was like 10 times my bloody valentine you know the absolute sheer screaming keening you know kind of thing it's just a sort of like phenomenon in itself. Not an awful lot would have gone on at the Top of the Pops studios, I'm sure. Well, the difference is with those sort of things, it's younger kids who really go for it. The trouble with the Top of the Pops audience is that they're too old to scream and faint, but too young to be rowdy.

So they just kind of tend to shuffle around looking a little bit awkward. But there was always a long tradition at Top of the Pops of the audience just looking kind of immensely sullen. Understandably, probably the kind of day that you get put through in the filming of any kind of show. But yeah, there seemed to be some sort of rule against even... Well, I mean, occasionally you would get somebody

in a pair of Dealey Boppers who would, like, you know, sort of, like, whip up a bit of manufactured enthusiasm. But by and large, I think that the kind of long-standing tradition of sullenness is definitely kept up in this particular show. And one thing I will say for this particular top of the pops, although it didn't bring back too many vivid memories of actually being there, it did bring back a lot of vivid memories of actually being there uh it did bring back a lot of vivid

memories of 1995 because if nothing else this episode is very representative so what was in the news this week well an, an Ebola outbreak kills 170 people in Zaire. The government begins talks with Sinn Féin for the first time in two decades. John Major predicts that he'll lead the Tories to victory in the next election. Mark Furman is suing the New Yorker for $50 million for calling him a racist twat. for $50 million for calling him a racist twat. An Exeter University study claims that almost 50% of 16-year-old boys have tried marijuana or Exeter.

But the big news this week is that Rail Zaragoza have beaten Arsenal in the final seconds of the Cup Winners' Cup final the night before. David, you must remember that. Bollocks. Where were you, David? Sat in front of the television on my own,

just head just slowly arcing into my hands the way that ball arced over bloody David Seaman and his stupid floppy head. It was the fact that Steve was sort of grinning about it afterwards as if to say, well, you know, we'll have a laugh about this later, won't we? No, never. Naive. Yeah. I mean, I can't remember where I was

when it happened, but I can remember where I was about 30 seconds later, under a hand dryer, getting the piss out of my trousers through laughing. Oh, right, yes. By the way, David, it's a bit late in the day, but happy Nottingham to London one day. Yes, yes, thank you.

Yes. Yes, the annual celebration we have in Nottingham, well, I have in Nottingham to London one day. Yes, yes, thank you. Yes, yes. The annual celebration we have in Nottingham, well I have in Nottingham, never mind anyone else. When the last London club's been knocked out of the Champions League. On the cover of the NME this week, Paul Weller. On the cover of Smash

It's, fuck knows. Probably some lads with their shirts off as was the style. The number one LP in the UK is Nobody Else by Take That. The number one single in the USA is This Is How We Do It by Montel Jordan. And the number one LP in America, Throwing Copper by Live. So, chaps, what were we doing in May of 1995? And we've only been talking about it for the past fucking half hour,

but let's restate our positions. I was working at Melody Maker. I was on the staff. People like Taylor were probably thinking, when is that old fucker ever going to leave that cosy little signing career of a staff job he's got and move on? Well, with his incremental pay rises. Exactly, yeah, all of that that i'm sure it was a subject of bitter discussion down the pub when i wasn't actually in the pub you know because nobody

was ever it was very nice to me you know obviously but um yeah i mean um just i mean i was very disaffected with the kind of slide into kind of brick pop and stuff like that and the whole kind of laddism of culture at that point and the kind of retro perma stuff like that, and the whole kind of laddism of culture at that point, and the kind of retro, perma-retro nature that indie guitar music was about to kind of settle into. But in one respect, I was very much of the times, and that is that I was kind of basically marinating in lager from pretty much midday to midnight every day. Chaps, could you possibly remember

what was in that week's issue of Melody Maker? No, not... No? Oh, wow. possibly remember what was in that week's issue of melody maker no not not not no oh well fortunately i asked our good friend simon price to go through his uh collection of old melody makers and he's reported back to me with this week's issue of melody maker so on the cover is sean rider actually black grape but only only Sean Ryder's mentioned in big print on the front under the banner, Manchester strikes again, oh

chaps, leave it alone and in the sub headline, Sean Ryder on Smack, Crack, Coke Fame, Fuck Ups obviously asterisk housed and his fantastic new band Black Grape, the other Manc based cover lines were True Confessions of the Stone Roses obviously asterisk sounds and is fantastic. New band, black grape. The other bank based cover lines were true confessions of the stone roses.

The second coming of the charlatans and joy division. Ian Curtis remembered the non-man CUNY and names at the bottom of the cover were McCormick and Butler super grass food fighters, PJ Harvey, the verb shaker maker one, which was a Melody Maker-sponsored tour, and Paul Weller. In the news, that issue was that Neil Young will be playing Redding, Oasis have a new drummer, Alan White,

brother of the Style Council, Steve White, the Mannix James Dean Bradfield is about to join Therapet, a story that turned out to be bollocks, Snoop Doggy Dogg was in court regarding his alleged role in a murder case. And Courtney Love is being investigated by the Los Angeles Child Welfare Bureau with a view to possibly taking the two-year-old Frances Bean Cobain away from her. What our contributors to chalk music were doing. Well, Taylor, you must have been on holiday that week or something because there's nothing of you in there but neil has reviewed a gig by my life

story drugstore goya dress and shtum which was the maker shaker gig in bristol he hated shtum he liked goya dress he loved drugstore and he gave my life Story a pass for their self-belief, even though they're backward-looking. Neil also reviewed the album by Dog Eat Dog, which began with him moaning, oh, fuck, guys, why do you always lumber me with the rap rock shit? And Simon says that would be my fault, as I edited that section. David Stubbs reviewed The Simpsons Volumes 13 and 14 on video, and he said they are the least childish programmes ever made.

The singles page is reviewed by David Stubbs. Oh, wow. And do you remember what you made single of the week, David? Absolutely no recollection. Some might say, even though it had already been renewed two weeks earlier why why did you do that oh no because i thought it was good and i still do and i think that an acquiesce on the b side is even better um yeah i was definitely not i mean this is you know this is only 95 a few months later i would have slagged off what's the story more in glory which i thought was deeply disappointing

compared with this single you know i genuinely i sawasis, I didn't really think of it in terms of retro and Britpop at this point. I saw them as a kind of continuum of like big guitar bands, you know, like people like, I don't know, Swerve Drive or wherever, or some of the kind of more kind of raucous shoegazery type bands. I was, you know, like a lot of people, I think the first Oasis album is very good. So yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not, I, yeah, I remember it now that you say it but

um yeah yeah I'd stand by that some might say is definitely one of the good Oasis records people there's too much of this binary stuff going on these days I got asked recently when it was the anniversary of uh Be Here Now which I had to review for my yeah there's people asking me about this and people like why didn't he say it was the worst album of all time? It's not even the worst album Oasis made. Single of the Week 2 is by the more stereotypically Stubbsian Tortoise, and he also has kind words for The Orb,

Earthling and Pinky McClure. However, he describes Green Day as corporate grunge bollock sweat. Yeah. Oh, nice. Yeah. Oh, nice. I put sweat. I didn't just say corporate grunge bollocks that I kind of put in. Yeah, good. Yeah, nice little twist there.

Yeah, I see. David Stubbs also reviews Paul Weller's new album, Stanley Road, comparing Weller to Joe Cocker, disapprovingly, and his fans to camera. Yeah, I bet you regret saying that now, don't you, David? I think I did take a little bit of a flat for that one.

But, you know, nothing I can handle. Yeah. In the comedy section, Talk, Talk, Talk, which we can exclusively reveal, was written by Stubbs. Fucking hell, David, you're all over it. Yeah, Talk, Talk, Talk, which we can exclusively reveal, was written by Stubbs. Fucking hell, David, you're all over it. Yeah, yeah, busy issue. Well, considering he was making 150 grand a year,

I should fucking hope so. Oh, yeah, there's something like that, yeah. In the comedy section, Talk, Talk, Talk, there's a parody Victorian-style drama called Lord Damon and Lady Justine of Notting Hill. Yes, with Phil Daniels as the butler. Yeah, yeah. Meanwhile, Simon Price reviews TLC's Crazy Sexy Cool album

and says it's fucking amazing, concluding, if you only buy one Swing Beat album this year, well, let's face it, you won't, because you're all oasis and loving indie pond life but if okay in the gigs for the flavor of the gig listings in nottingham that week you could have seen wolf's bane smile baby reef chaos uk fuguazi and a mega dog night featuring banco de gaia children of the the Bong and Dread Zone. What a time to be alive.

Yeah. There's a full-page advert for Blur's upcoming Mile End Stadium show, also featuring the Boo Radley, Sparks, Dodgy and Cardiacs, compared by John Shucklemuth. Simon and Taylor were there. We met Joe Strummer at the after show in York Hall, an old East End boxing club

where drummer said the thing about Elvis Costello being a cunt, previously mentioned in chart music. Oh, and on the back page, there's an advert for Loaded, which also has Sean Ryder on the front. I must have probably taken the rest of the month off after that load. Yeah, you put some serious work in there, David.

I'd forgotten about those shaker-maker tours. It was always a bit embarrassing because it had nothing to do with us. They'd just hire these groups. And a lot of this, I think they did a few of them. And a lot of the times it would be like, who the hell are these groups? I've never heard of them.

Yeah, who we've got to write about now. It's like they were literally under our banner and they were supposed to be representing us. And it was like, we didn't know who they fucking were. They were shtum. I'd never heard of them. For fucking, what a Brit prop name though that is. Oh, Jesus.

Yeah, I'm surprised they didn't call me Kushdet and Lovely Jubbler. Well, while you were living your dreams out in Popland, I was working for Northern Shell, Richard Desmond's wank factory, as picture librarian for 20 wank mags. So that'd be Penthouse, Electric Blue, Reader's Wives, Real Wives, Asian Babes, Big and Fat.

Yeah, all the greats. My role consisted of kind of like basically being in a tiny glass office in the Docklands with 30 bin bags full of transparencies of fannies and whatnot and having to piece them all together into sets like a big pornographic jigsaw puzzle. So yeah, I was literally up to the fucking armpits in grot at this time. Not paying the slightest bit of attention to the charts at all. I was still massively into hip hop.

My only contact with BBC Radio would have been Westwood at this time. I think he was on on Friday nights. And yeah, into my hip hop, listening to Jungle, Pirate Stations. I definitely didn't see this because I'd either be commuting back home or I'd be in the pub getting hammered. So yeah, there we go. Happy times.

So what else was on telly this night? Well, BBC One has run Kilroy, Good Morning with Anne and Nick, Pebble Mill, Neighbours, Going for Gold and the Mario Lanza film for the first time before piling into Pingu, Why Did the Chicken, Speed Racer, The Ant and Deck Show, Newsround, the sci-fi series Escape from Jupiter and then Neighbours, the 6 o'clock news

and regional news in your area. the sci-fi series Escape from Jupiter, and then Neighbours, the 6 o'clock news, and regional news in your area. BBC Two has screened Westminster Online with Andrew Neil, the clip show The Hollywood Collection, Westminster with Nick Ross, the history show Today's the Day, the Benton & Hedges Golf International, Quantum Leap, and are currently screening a repeat of the Mrs Merton show

with Mandy Smith and Ken Livingston. ITV has broadcast win, lose or draw, the time, the place, this morning, Home and Away, Emmerdale, A Country Practice, Vanessa, Battle of the Sexes, then The Riddlers, Wizardora, Garfield and Friends, Riddlers, Wizardora, Garfield and Friends, Samson Super Slug, Animaniacs, After Five with Karen Keaton, Home and Away again, and he's currently screening Emma Dale again.

And Channel 4 has run The Big Breakfast, You Bet Your Life, Schools Program, Sesame Street, Channel 4 Racing, 15 to 1, Ricky Lake, The Cosby Show, and has just started channel four news oh god so much television

four whole channels so much bill cosby there didn't you do you bet your life as well yes i think he did yeah samson super slug that sounds like a fucking band from 1995 doesn't it they're probably on the Shaker Maker tour alright then pop craze youngsters it's time to roll deep on 1995 and know this we may coat down your favourite band or artist but we never forget they've been on top

of the pops more than we have although Taylor's been on it once oh shit, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, you didn't actually see me. I went through that thing looking closely to see if I could see myself anywhere, but no.

I seem to remember I was keeping out of the way of the cameras. I don't know why. Hello UK, I'm Celine Dion. Live and exclusive on Top of the Pops tonight. It's 1995 and there's been another change around on Top of the Pops with the introduction of a new head of light entertainment for the BBC, David Lidderment. There's a new set, a new logo, a new theme tune and an emphasis on exclusive

live performances. And the show begins with a long shot of Celine Dion slorming about on the new Top of the Pops set like she fucking owns the place, telling us that she's live and exclusive on Top of the Pops tonight. Oh, spoiler alert, Celine. Yeah, she says, hello, UK. This is Celine Dion. This is a time when UK was like a term that only people who weren't from the UK would ever use, right? You know, like America's going, is it like that in the UK? But we've got a brand new theme, chaps.

The ninth and last original Top of the Pops theme, Red Hot Pop, has been in effect since february of this year and was written and performed by vince clark of eurasia chaps where where does this stand in the top of the pops canon i mean he doesn't exactly put his back into it does he's uh he's a bit perfunctory it has to be said and i can imagine him doing it with one hand while he's rolling a fag or something and tucking it behind his head i imagine that there's a bit perfunctory, it has to be said. I can imagine him doing it with one hand while he's rolling a fag or something, tucking it behind his ear. I imagine that there's a touch of sarcasm about Red Hot Pop, the title. It's like, yeah, rock till you are hot.

Yes, yes, Bibi Lipunk, yeah. Well, we don't hear a lot of it, do we? No, no, that's it, that's right. It's a bit kind of, you know, it's almost like there's a silent will this do at the end of it. Yes, definitely, this is it. That's right. And that's probably, it's a bit kind of, you know, it's almost like, you know, there's a silent will this do at the end of it. Yes, definitely. Yeah, but your host for this evening is Simon Mayo. Born in Enfield in 1958,

Simon Mayo originally wanted to be a radio studio manager, but failed the hearing test and had a go at being a DJ instead. After a spell in hospital radio, he joined BBC Radio Nottingham in 1981 and worked in the mid-morning slot for five years until he pitched a show format at Johnny Bearing, the then head of Radio 1, and was duly poached. He started in the Saturday evening slot at Radio 1 in 1986, was moved over to weekday early evenings in January of 1988,

and five months later usurped Mike Smith as the breakfast host, a position he held for five years. At this point, he's in the Simon Bates slot at Radio 1 between Chris Evans and Lisa Lanson, and according to the listeners of the day, he's announced his regular God of the Week. Woody Allen. He's also currently

presenting a TV version of his Radio One slot Confessions, which is running on Saturday evenings. Did you say he was born in 1958? Yes. So, in this Top of the Pops, he's pushing 40. Yeah, he's 37.

You've got to say, he does look good for his age. It's like Ned Flanders. It must be all that praying. Yes. Yes, always known as the religious one at Radio 1, wasn't he? Yeah, yeah, it's creepy. I mean, one thing you can say for Simon Mayo is that

he's a very natural and relaxed presenter and by the standards of Radio 1 DJs he's quite intelligent and articulate but his actual presence is not much more than a better educated Mike Smith

and it's just that knowledge that behind the scenes he's not much more than a better educated Mike Smith. Yes. It's just that knowledge that behind the scenes he's a Christian nut, you know. I don't want to see that on TV, especially Top of the Pops. It's just, I can't stand people who are bright and religious because it's not natural, right? It's not God's way. They're always the most dangerous people as well.

I mean, apologies to my handful of Christian friends. But yeah, there I said it. But it's like, right, there's a clip, which I know you've heard, Al. Yes. For a programme that he made for Radio 1, which was Simon Mayo's Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Yes.

There's a trailer for that, which i've had for years and if ever i need cheering up i'll put it on because it's it's the perfect test of character right if you can hear this clip and you don't laugh out loud you're not right spiritually i don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh involuntarily as soon as they hear it yeah but oh god if there's ever a time we needed simon mayo in the holy land it's now isn't it he could unite the the jews and the palestinians with uh you know with with some wet wet wet and some free t-shirts yeah and a sort of slightly schneidy remark about the week's news. Mm, yes, he's very good at that, isn't he? He's a bit of a strange presence in this show for various reasons.

He's not exactly in the thick of it, is he? I mean, you know, maybe it's considered sexist by this point to have, like, male DJs, especially ageing ones like himself, to be having, you know, young women draped all over them trying to get into camera. But it's something a little bit odd. He doesn't seem slightly kind of aloof from the fray. And it's almost as if he's been photoshopped in or he's invisible.

You know, he's like one of these kind of like more invisible characters in Shakespeare or whatever, you know, deliver prologues and stuff. He's extraordinary. He doesn't seem as if like no one else there is acknowledging his presence nor, you know, not even aware that he's there. It nor, you know, not anywhere that he's there. It's, you know, it's just some sort of feat of camera trickery that he's able to kind of be projected into the studio and be making all these kind of...

Yeah! It's very odd indeed. Yeah, because he springs. I mean, David, you always say about the darkness above the stage. Now, in 1995, the darkness is below the stage and Simon Mayo emerges from it. He does. I'll tell you what's a bit like that. Or it's a bit like Randall and Hopkirk deceased.

It's fucking terrifying, isn't it? He's like a ghost. It's like Randall and Hopkirk deceased, where he's kind of lingering on the side there, unseen by the people about whom he's talking. And then he suddenly leaps out. Mm. Mm. Oh, yeah. Disturbing.

Wasn't he brought in in the Bannister reforms? He was brought in just before, wasn't he? But he'd worked with Bannister and Trevor Dan at Radio Nottingham. Yeah, there was a very sort of brief Kerensky-like phase, an interim, where people like, I think they were trying to kind of Emma Freud Radio 1, didn't they? And they tried to kind of give it a little bit of a slightly more intelligent sort of thoughtful lift. And I suspect simon mayo is a little bit part of that then along comes chris

evans just to squelch all that into oblivion yes i thought that was all bollocks at the time anyway you were supposed to you're supposed to oh it's great matthew bannis has got he's a new broom i thought it was crap it was he was just swapping one outmoded kind of clueless shit for a more modern kind of clueless shit that was worse in some ways because it thought it was clever. At least the old DJs were grotesques and the channel bosses were just going in there and doing a job. The problem is when the boss thinks he's cool,

that's when you've got a problem in a way chris evans is a synthesis of that he's kind of a grotesque but it's also melded with his kind of half-arsed irony yeah i mean i mean the thing that struck me was you know 1988 uh mike smith was dropped as the host of the breakfast show and sim Mayo was put in. Did anyone notice? I mean, it's like Peter Davidson coming out of Doctor Who and Peter Davidson going back in again with a wig on. It's like, this transformation's shit. Yeah. What it is, Mike Smith is like...

You imagine Simon Mayo looking back at Mike Smith is you imagine simon mayo looking back at mike smith is like someone of about 30 looking back at themselves at about 19 and thinking that's recognizably me but i was a bit more of a wanker hello good evening could i interest you in some super grass could i really Supergrass? Could I really? Mayo, in a fawn-coloured suit with black T-shirts and adopting the suits you, sir tone, which was so popular in the early 90s introduces the first act supergrass with lenny formed in a harvesters in oxford in 1993 where two of the band were working supergrass were a three-piece who released their debut single caught by the fuzz on an independent label in mid 1994 after being signed up by Polarfern Records, Caught by the Fuzz was re-released,

became single of the week in Melody Maker and The Enemy, but just missed out on the top 40. But the next single, Man Size Rooster, got to number 20 in February of this year. This is the follow-up, a Melody Maker single of the week, and it's a new entry this week at number 10. So Taylor, these are the people who brought you to the dance. Yeah, and embarrassingly, this is not one of my favourite records of theirs. I did like them, and their first album, I think, still sounds quite good.

But the thing is, one of the defining features of Britpop is that it was small music, right? It was loud, but small, and unserious, and unoriginal, which don't have to be terrible things, but often were. And this record, I mean, basically, this is just the Groundhogs, but miniaturised, like musically and physically, which is a bit pointless really and i think this was this was the beginning of the end for supergrass already their artistic

downfall starts here because that smallness and lack of seriousness and lack of artistic weight and lack of originality they don't matter much when you're doing pure pop, right? When you're doing like sort of speedy bubblegum transistor radio rock, which is what their earlier records were. And in a way, it's better to be like that and to sound like that. It works for the music. But they were determined to move into heavier, more traditional mojo type music really early on. more traditional mojo type music really early on. And doing that without either the necessary heft to your sound or any new ideas to make it your own.

I mean, that really is the bore of bores. That's how you end up with stuff like the stereophonics. You know what I mean? It's bland and retro. And the lack of new ideas is almost the point of the music. And you can't even achieve your own limited goals because on those terms you're clearly and hugely inferior to the music you're copying you know uh i don't know i mean this is all right and it gets enough right that

it stands out from most of the bands that they were competing with but it's it's not an a-side and as you listen to it you keep hearing them ignoring possibilities as it goes along you keep hearing them ignoring ways to make this record more interesting uh there's enough going on that stuff keeps coming up that could have been made into something startling but it just sort of shuffles along it's the middle class stoner band disease really you know like you however good you are you you never really break out and do your own thing uh yeah and i like that first lp but i do remember seeing them live around this time and seeing what was happening uh it was like classic rock fans from oxford in their dream, you know. And their best stuff was obviously early material from when they were

a bit looser and sillier. But they wanted to get pseudo-serious really fast. And this is where it starts. I mean, I didn't know who Supergrass were by now and I certainly didn't watch this episode of Top of the Pops. I mean, All Right is my point of contact with them.

But to be honest with you, this is the first time I'd ever heard this song. And my initial impression was what a very apt title it was because to my mind, this is shaking Kravitz. It's biker music, but like, you know, biker mice. Yeah. And the verse sounds like a sort of indified steelers wheel you know it sounds like it's kind of you know some sort of color version

stuck in the middle with you i mean i agree with taylor it kind of clatters along fairly effectively but kind of uncertainty really so it's not quite sure you know where are you know are they sort of neo-grunge or are they sort of proto rip-hop it's sort of caught in between there somewhere and you know it's it's somehow it's not nondescript. There's enough energy, there's enough sort of dynamism about it, enough understanding of the dynamics of that kind of music to make it just about work. But I think what I was most aware of throughout this performance, though,

is actually the lights. You know, they're almost like... I mean, I've always talked about the lights and the kind of zones of darkness, but they're bizarre. It's a bit like you've been kind of caught escaping from prison or war camp or something like that. These kind of flashlights coming right at you from all angles. Yeah, there'll be a lot of epileptics at home not really appreciating this. Definitely, you know, it's as if it's kind of sort of trying to, you know, really kind of project an energy that may not necessarily be there in music circa 1995.

Yeah, it feels a bit sort of ungenerous, like having a snipe at this. Because this is an OK record. It's all right. And one thing you can say for this is it's got a not bad production for a British 90s guitar record, right? It doesn't sound cheap. It's not just a sludge.

There's not too much echo on it, which was the curse of guitar music in that time. And the rhythm section sounds a bit raw, which is nice and very unusual for British music. And compared to their peers, this is a good sound, even though it's tinny as fuck compared to older, better records. But I know and understand this kind of music too well to be generous. And like David says, they clearly know and understand this kind of music too.

But that's the best and the worst thing about this record, in that they know what they're doing, but they can't break out past it. I mean, in your piece for for melody maker at the time you described it as uh the deep purple jam with the muppet babies what yeah that's that's pretty good man yeah see i don't want to sound you know i sound like an old man griping but i was just the same at the time the thing is just because i spent the mid 90s uh flying around the world and other people's money uh drinking too much taking drugs and sleeping with beautiful young women and going out every night until dawn when london was still a living city uh and only having to work three days a week. That doesn't mean I enjoyed it.

It was a very frustrating time to be young and a very frustrating time to be writing about pop music because enough of the old world was still in place that you could almost make it work. It was like you could see the outlines of old possibilities just as they faded away well there you are yeah i mean i think that this is probably what was casting a shadow over all that sex and drugs and partying and wassailing is that perhaps that sense that you know rock's

reaching a kind of a terminus it's it's it's got to the point now i think rock music post my brother valentine post nirvana where rock music like this, can either go in two directions, either go backwards into the realms of retro or auto-extremes, which make it kind of, you know, unlistenable in the context of something like Top of the Pops, you know, as they go into The Wire or something like that. I mean, the same thing happened with jazz at the Ornith Coleman stage, you know, post-Bebop, and I think that's the stage

that rock music in India has reached about this time. I think probably, I'm not going to be clear as we go along, that part of the appeal of this time is the idea of this music representing an authenticity in a kind of music scene that's increasingly produced. It's a bit unfair on Supergrass to take out this stuff on them because they were one of the better groups. And there's something coming up later where, you know, which is much more deserving of this.

But, yeah, you know, they could and did do better. So the following week, Lenny dropped 21 places to number 31. Fucking hell. That's terrible, isn't it? Yeah, that's a shock, yeah. We're still in that phase where records just go up and down dead quickly don't they i don't think that was to do with being such a lackluster performance or anything like that it's probably just the nature of the

way that light music was being fairly swiftly bought and then not bought the week after yeah top of the pops really isn't doing much for putting people over. It's become more of a reward for getting into the charts as opposed to a spurring on to get higher in the charts. But that quick peaking and fast dropping chart performance has always been typical for indie records because it's bought by the fan base. Everybody goes out and buys it in the first week because they read music papers or listen to it. They know it's coming out so they all go out and buy it at once

was that reflected in your coverage in the melody maker you knew you knew that that when something was coming out you had to jump on it quick or it would go out the charts yeah everything was based around yeah everything was based around releases it's astonishing i used to think i was a sophisticated reader of like the music press and it didn't occur to me until I actually started writing for the music press that the interviews were actually tied in with album releases. I thought, oh my goodness, are they? I just thought that interviews were conducted on a much more kind of random basis than that. Oh, just met them in the streets or something, yeah?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. However, their debut LP, I Should Coco, entered the chart at number three the same week, eventually becoming number one. And the follow-up, All Right, jumped straight into the chart at number two in July of this year and stayed there for two weeks, held off the top by Boom Boom Boom by the Out Here Brothers. And they'd have ten more top ten hits before splitting up in 2010.

What's their legacy? and they'd have 10 more top 10 hits before splitting up in 2010. What's their legacy? Supergrass are kind of seen nowadays as one of the also-rans of Britpop, which seems a bit uncharitable from where I'm standing. Yeah, they're sort of like the Tottenham Hotspur of Britpop, like sort of just at the bottom end of the top tier. They're all right, you know, but yeah, this is it. I mean, they don't have a legacy because they're the sort of band that tier. They're alright. But yeah, this was it. They don't have a legacy because they're the sort of band that can't have a legacy

because nothing they did broke any new ground. Something for everyone on tonight's show. Unless you're a rugby union administrator. Shed 7 are on, Celine Dion is on, Scatman John is on. And at 6 foot 8, here is Montel Jordan. This is how we do it. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na

Come on. Na, na, na, na, na, na. This is how we do it. Oh, oh, oh. Shake it, Mayo. Mayo points out that there's something for everyone in this week's show unless you're a rugby union administrator. This was the week that

Will Carlin was removed and then reinstated as England rugby captain after he called the RFU 57 old farts that Mayo he's a proper Millicent Martin isn't he he is isn't he also there's as he does

that introduction there's a girl standing behind him doing that nervous 90s thing of putting her hair behind one ear with one hand, right? Yeah. Do girls still do that? Why am I asking you? I don't know.

As if you two hang around outside schools or something. But it's just, that's my memory of a sort of 90s nervousness that i don't perceive as existing in young people anymore now nowadays uh girls of that age kind of like get all the hair and then just fucking lob it over one shoulder like kate does because they're all fucking sheep so he introduces this is how we Do It by Montel Jordan. Born in Los Angeles in 1968, Montel Deshawn Barnett was a college graduate who worked on infomercials in the early 90s until he was spotted performing in a showcase by Janet Jackson.

After a mixtape of his was passed on to Russell Simmons, he signed a deal with Def Jam Records, of his was passed on to Russell Simmons, he signed a deal with Def Jam Records, making him the second R&B artist to be signed by the label after Tayshon in the mid-80s. This is his debut single, which is a crafty nick of the 1989 Slick Rick single Children's Story, which itself was a crafty nick of the 1974 Bob James tune Nautilus. It's a new entry at number 11. It's been number one in America for four weeks and he's here in the studio for the first time. Notice that there's a weird little feature that got here. It's very perfunctory that in the top right-hand corner

they announce where each act is from, don't they? Yeah. From Oxford. That's my job. Bastards. From LA. It reminds me of referees. They always tell you, like,

in the match referees days Mr George Johnson From Redford Or Bishop Stortford Yeah It was with insistence That that tells All we need to know really

He's from LA They're from Oxford I'm assuming They'll say From Manchester Presumably But the thing about There was a lot

Of this kind of stuff On top of the pops Where they couldn't Really bring in The whole kind of Rig of on top of the pops where they couldn't really bring in the whole kind of rig of like instruments and machines and little boxes or whatever that um that required to kind of you know put this music together and so and but you know that that all that was kind of a bit awkward really so i think you always have a troop of dancers there because then people think well it's all cheating you know we want to see some hard work like you know like

you saw yeah they're working hard on their instruments and they're sweating we want to see evidence of hard work so they're bringing dancers well dancing that's hard work you know there's got to be some spectacle of effort yeah a lot of this and there's a lot on on this on this particular edition um and that's how they kind of cope it wasn't really quite. The music now comes from the sky or somewhere like that. There's no sort of connection between the production of the music, the physical production of the music, and the resultant sound. Yeah, hip-hop's spoiled everything, hasn't it, to these people's minds? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Because we're not going to see any proper rappers on this episode and there aren't that many in the charts. But hip-hop's fingerprints are all over this episode, aren't they? Yeah. I mean, this is sort of hip-hop, really, isn't it? So Montel Jordan, who Mayo points out is dead tall, is doing his thing in a stripy Tommy Hilfiger top. Or, as my dad used to call him Timmy High Flyer

yeah it looks like he's got some sort of midnight Sheffield United kit or something yeah well I saw him as a more urban bully out of Bullseye rest in peace Jim Bowen but it's that really crass thing

of wearing clothes with words on them you know what I mean? Especially other people's names. If you've ever seen Mr. T's motivational video for kids, Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool. Yeah, which is a stunning tour de force of totally empty Reagan-era positivity. The one really good bit of advice he does give is to avoid designer labels

because he says, would Calvin Klein, Bill Glass or Gloria Vanderbilt wear clothes with your name on them? No, of course not. No. Table the label, I remember he said. I don't exactly know what that means, but it rhymes. And that's all that mattered in the

mid 80s didn't it although of course in the early 80s Coventry City did wear shirts with his name on them although that gag might be a little arcane for some listeners the other great bit of advice from that excellent video

as you point out is if you're walking along the street and you fall over, stop breakdancing. Yeah, people will think you did it deliberately. I'm pretty sure that would just make matters worse, really. Well, it depends, doesn't it? So anyway, this song, it's your usual R&B lyric, isn't it? You know, all un-'m minted all all the girls

want to shag me uh we're all dead poor but we're all dead rich at the same time and yeah everybody's getting pissed up and nobody's killing each other is it great i mean this song i i gotta i gotta admit to me this is the highlight of the show Didn't really like it at the time because it was such a blatant nick of Slick Rick. But, you know, if this came on in the club, I might, you know, bust a move with da honeys and make a right cunt of myself and get laughed at. Yeah, I was quite into this stuff in the high summer of Britpop. And a lot of us were because

we were sort of desperate to get away from the Britpop, you see. Because you'd walk down the street, like where I lived, and all you'd see was endless kids in charity shop Adidas tops and old corduroys with long hair, you know, hanging around smoking and stuff. And if you had to spend time around that stuff for work, it just became an extension of the rainy streets and dog shit. You know, you started looking for a bit of an escape.

So at home, I wasn't listening to any of that stuff. I was listening to old stuff and pirate radio, which was huge in London at the time, and loads of reggae and stuff. But a lot of this west coast stuff because it was less musically interesting than what was happening on the east coast but um it was so much further away from london in atmosphere so you could listen to it and mentally drift away a bit right like i know that pricey got obsessed with this la stuff at the time oh price cube yes yeah i didn't quite so much because i don't really like the city but i got hooked on that that weird open sound you know um and it's like dead commercialized and all of that

stuff but it's like it's fine it's fine it's good it's just uh a sort of a pure sensual experience uh but when you like this you said you like this stuff people thought you were joking you know It's fine. It's good. It's just a sort of a pure sensual experience. But when you like this, you said you like this stuff. People thought you were joking, you know. If you worked on the press, people expected you to like pinched indie rock. Yeah. And it's weird.

It's a cliche, but most people in the music business had no ears, had no feeling for music at all. It's not they didn't like it. They just didn't get it. You know, they didn't trust themselves. We've got to mention the dancers because there's fucking loads of them in this episode isn't there? There must have been

a whole annex of Elstree devoted to, you know, keeping the dancers somewhere. Well this is it, they're there to provide evidence of exertion and effort and work. And it kind of works with Montel Jordan because you know the dancing's going to be of a

standard. Yeah, also speaking of work, pretty much everyone's doing live vocals on this Top of the Pops. This was like part of the thing at the time. Now you can't really tell with Montel Jordan because that sort of vocal style you know, you can just you can

you can just do it you don't there's no worries about hitting wrong notes or anything because it's like uh but yeah again that's a another example of like so no you've got to be seen to be earning your corn you know yes um and all it does is it means the vocals sound worse on everything yeah they did on the record you don't get what you want because you can't actually generate live excitement uh when you're singing live vocals to a pre-recorded backing track it's not possible anyone who's ever made music knows this the the excitement in a live vocal comes from, you know, the entire music being created live. You can't basically karaoke it and expect to improve on the record.

It's weird. It's all right, though, isn't it, this? I mean, what happened to the West Coast? It's like you listen to this or any of the other good records from that year, like Regulate by Warren G or Freak like me by adina howard was that a west coast record it certainly sounded like one you can hear what's coming already right like here as well yeah this good music uh contains the launch code for its own destruction you know what i mean it's so thin and sort of translucent it's like one more joint or one more line of coke or one more 40

ounce it all falls to pieces because there's nothing to it but i mean that's what happens when you live somewhere like that isn't it i mean hip-hop start already starting to devour itself isn't it yeah and this is not technically hip-hop but it kind of is yeah well it's r&b with a bit of rapping on it isn't it but yeah that's what a lot of west coast hip-hop was like at the time but this is what happens when you live somewhere like la and you get money it's like you can't be anything other than complacent because it's a terrible city that's too hot and too empty you know and even listen to this already it's just about money it's the only subject that he's got.

Happiness comes down to money. Sex comes down to money. Self-worth comes down to money. It's like you've got no pride at all. And it's patronising to say, oh, it's just the background that these people come from. You know what I mean? Because it's like, no, it hasn't always been like that. And it doesn't have to be like that.

That was always what used to piss me off about it partly because i didn't have any money so the following week this is how we do it dropped three places to number 14 jesus and then clambered up and stayed at number 13 for two weeks the follow-up something for the honeys would get to number 15 in sept September of this year and he'd have three more hits in the UK before falling out with Def Jam and becoming the lead

worship minister at Victory World Church in Atlanta. Oh, Simon would approve of that, wouldn't he? It's the month of May and it's the season for football records. And here at 15, Manchester United. And we're going to do it again. What comes second? Surely not.

Welcome to the Old Trafford Show. Some say it's better, the devil's you know. Coming at you from the top of the tree. not. Mayo mentions that it's that time of year for football records and gets a dig in on the following team. Manchester United, featuring Stryker, and we're gonna do it again. Formed in Manchester in 1878, Newton Heath had little success in the charts for most of their career, even after a name change in 1902 as Manchester United. In fact, it wasn't until 1976 that they signed with Decca

and released their debut single, Manchester United, which only got to number 50 in May of that month. After several line-up changes, their follow-up single, Glory Glory Man United, got to number 13 for two weeks in 1983, and they followed that with We All follow man united in may of 1985 when we will stand together only got to number 93 in may of 1990 after more lineup changes it looked like it was all over for the group but they had a number 37 hit in june of 1993 with united we love you however after teaming up with Status Quo in 1994,

they went to number one for two weeks in May of that year with Come On You Reds. This is the follow-up in collaboration with a rapper called Striker, who I absolutely know fuck all about. And it's a new entry this week at number 15. Manchester United, they're like rappers, just banging on about themselves all the time and how great they are. Most unseemly. Yeah, terrible.

Just for a bit of perspective, Mayo says what they're going to do again come second. The previous night they'd beaten Southampton 2-1 ensuring that the league would go down to the last game of the season. So, yeah. Simon Mayo, though though there's no

it's like there's no better way to fit in with the lads in 1995 than to make a Man United joke you know it's like he should have said none of their fans come from Manchester that would have been a good one also Wimbledon play long ball

and Chelsea have got all foreign players there you go top bants. Yeah. Proto bants. I mean, it was probably an inauspicious time, really, for Man Utd to be releasing a sort of hubristic record. And there's certainly definitely a large dollop of hubris on this particular platter.

But it's their FA Cup single, isn't it? If I'm right, it was the time when Eric Cantona had that prolonged period out of the team, wasn't it? Following the Crystal, yeah, the assault on the old Crystal Palace fan. Yes, that beautiful beautiful assault. You know, he was talismanic for them and so, you know, yeah, they lost the league and then

of course, you know, they did indeed, ultimately, they did not do it again. No. Against Everton in the following May. We're going to do it again by Man United or all together now by Everton. It's one of those Hitler-Stalin ones, isn't it, really? Yeah. But, you know, at least this wasn't a cover of the farm.

But on the other hand, at least the other record didn't have Stryker on it, who, it has to be said, brings a whole new meaning to the word whack um yes it's like if you watching this as a as a manchester united fan you'd have heard striker and thought fucking hell man you're letting the side down here but the truth is that you also think that when you watch this as a human it's like you have to do this it's bad enough as it is it's no unfilled rap is it no I mean obviously this record

is not for G's and B boys and it's not even for most Man United fans it's entirely for the kids in Gloucester with old Trafford bedspreads which is why it sounds like the tweenies but still it wasn't it wasn't

necessary for this record to be this bad right you couldn't walk down whitworth street in the 90s without bumping into a rapper and they were mostly bad but they weren't this fucking bad you know um but it's so you end up with this bottle blonde scarecrow and it's yeah i mean it's just uh it's the first sign of manchester united's achilles heel which is that as a corporate entity it has no sense of style like on the pitch they were always associated with flair and personality you know whatever regardless of what any neutral might think of those personalities but this is a club series being ground into the dirt by the powers that be.

It's like one minute it's a harmless shitpot record. Next minute you're selling the club to Scrooge McDuck and appointing poisonous dinosaur managers and having an official air carrier, which is Aeroflot, you know. But these seem like innocent days now when Man United, you know, seem to people to be the most toxic presence in English football just because they were big and they were run by breadheads, you know.

It's like nowadays, Man United, Arsenal, Liverpool. I mean, they don't endear themselves to the neutral, but, you know, you say, well, at least they attained their status by being football teams, you know, and winning football matches. Yeah. But this period, obviously, you know, there's a sort of catenalessness about this whole thing, really, because, you know, they use a lot of...

Oh, he's kept well out of it isn't he he's having nothing to do with this shit Yeah absolutely there's one sort of short clip of it as if it's been explained to him I think by Steve Bruce and he's looking on slightly kind of with Gallic horror at the whole Paul Inglis He's got to be in this video for at least

two seconds But yes it's really you know what he did bring was a certain hauteur a certain panache and you know all qualities conspicuously lacking in this particular musical exercise there's a sort of adjunct to this i think it might have been around this time that and andy or andrew coles i think he tried to restyle himself i was also tough to he did a version of the gap bands outstanding yes he did and Yes, he did. And it wasn't. It wasn't.

And I was supposed to interview him. But then at the last minute, the whole thing was pulled. And it was pretty much pulled because he just lost all enthusiasm for the project. I think, you know, as if he'd sort of decided, look, this is just a waste of my time, a waste of the public's time, a waste of everybody's time. I can't really be a party to pushing this. I think, why doesn't that happen more often yeah yeah definitely so who do we see in the video well this is it normally football records or prior to this football records were usually sung by those beefy sweeney villain type footballers who looked old beyond their years and who were so pissed they could barely stand up

and yeah in jumpers yeah they saw making this record the same way they saw doing 50 laps of the training pitch you know it's like just or opening the supermarket yeah you do it and you forget it um but this man united side's got all those young lads in it right like lee sharp and the class of 92 people people they must have been boiling with embarrassment their mates must have had a fucking field day you know what i mean do we not see mark hughes getting particularly involved in this song well he sort of does a funny face to camera yeah i think it's gary pallister who's the most enthusiastic about this yeah pumping a fist in the air and all that sort of stuff.

It was somewhat erotically, I suspect. But yeah, you're right. There's almost no Cantona in this, is there? It's like they just... Eric, do you want to... No! That was it. That was the end of the matter.

I think it was better. Like I said, there's definitely something a bit unseemly about this record. It really was better in 1970 with Back Home. And think that the the squad conduct that song in an audit spirit basically they are under orders to do this and they're carrying it out as a professional duty as if it was singing the national anthem something like that and i think that anything sort of less than that it's a bit embarrassing really and i think it's certainly on this you certainly don't get the feeling it's been done in that spirit it's all it's all wrong yeah and the musk of status quo is all over it again isn't it yeah yeah yeah yeah they sample again and again in the chorus what photos of alex ferguson does rick parfitt have in his uh in his

drawer i wonder the other weird thing about this record is it's about 60 b. It's one of the slowest rap records I've ever heard in my life. Yeah, it's very old school, isn't it? It's a bit run DMC pace. Yeah, yeah. Well, when it's that slow, you don't have to write, you can just shout.

Yeah, I know. So have there been any good football songs? Because everyone says World in Motion, but I ate New Order, so that can fuck off. In that case, no. There have never been any good football songs? Because everyone says World in Motion, but I ate New Order, so that can fuck off. In that case, no. There have never been any, no. I must say, Anfield Rap,

I've got to hold my hands up. I do like it. It's not taken seriously. It sounds like hip-hop, and it sounds like a load of people having a laugh while they're doing a song, and it kind of works. I have to say, yeah, Anfield Rap.

What about You Can't Win Them All by Brian Clough? Oh, well, yeah, there we go. I mean, obviously your own team songs. You must have a place in your heart. Your own team songs. You've always got to like them. You know, we've got the whole world in our hands, mate. That's a tune.

I can't wait to do that on Chalk Music. It will happen, won't it? When that comes up on Chalk Music, I'm just going to mute your microphones. I'm just wait to do that on Chalk Music. It will happen, won't it? In fact, when that comes up on Chalk Music, I'm just going to mute your microphones. I'm just going to bang on about how brilliant it is. I won't have a word said against it. It's just going to be ten minutes of you singing, We All Agree, Nottingham Forest and Magic. Yes, yes.

Yes. Definitely. But there was loads of Forest songs. There's a whole album of Forest songs of varying quality. Magic in Madrid, that's the one I suggest you go and listen to. With the local Radio Trent DJ, Chris Ashley, who hated Brian Clough and hated Forrest and was such a hate figure in Nottingham

that he bet that Forrest wouldn't beat Leeds in the semi-final of the 1978 League Cup. And he said, if Forrest gets through to the final, I will shave my head like a monk. And the entire Broadmarsh Centre was rammed out with people watching him do it. And he only took a few hairs off the top of his head, but he was dressed up as a monk. And everyone told him to fuck off and laughed at him. So, you you know mission accomplished but he did a song and it is

it is quite spectacular. I think on balance my favourite football record is You Know We're Gonna Win by Bradford City which is understated but worth a listen it's just the the sheer blankness of the mass vocal delivery

is a bit special. It goes, Bradford City, you know we're going to win. And then music stops and then they go, I never give it. Yeah. It's magnificent. It's like they've already given it. Off the top of my my head i can't think of one hot stuff hot stuff oh yeah yeah yeah i i'm sorry i i can't i can't muster even like the kind of the irony to kind of um have any any of these records i just just just don't hold them. I'd have to say Back Home, really.

And I think they're probably... Yeah. You know, and that should have been the first and the last in the genre. The great thing about Back Home was they weren't singing about them and how great they were and how they were going to win. They were singing about us.

Yeah. You know, they'll be cheering us on and watching us. Yeah, exactly, yeah. You know, really low expectations. That's what you need in a song, in a football song, isn't it? We'll give all we've got.

So you don't make a knob of yourself when you lose. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the following week, we're going to do it again. Jumped nine places to number six, its highest position, but they were pipped to the post by Blackburn Rovers in the league and then lost 1-0 to Everton in the FA Cup final. However, they spanked the Toffees in the charts because their cover of the Foms altogether now only got to number 24.

The follow-up, Move, Move, Move, the Red Tribe, got to number 6 for two weeks in May of 1996 and then have one more hit in May of 1999 when Lift It High, All About Belief got to number 11. In a Channel 4 documentary about football songs a few years later, Stryker

revealed that he was actually an Arsenal supporter. Yes. There you go, industrial sabotage. Yes, it really really is isn't it he's the enemy with it get right behind us

and keep it up we'll leave you with a message man you for the car it's Manchester

United with striker on vocals and Eric Cantona on your solar plexus. And now at number six, it's a new entry. Here comes Mr Scatman John. Scatman John. I'm a Scatman. Born in California in 1942, John Larkin suffered from a severe stutter as a child, which drove him towards music therapy and learning to play the piano.

He became a professional jazz pianist in the 70s, incorporated scat singing into his repertoire and released a solo LP in 1986. After moving to Berlin in 1990 he picked up a Danish agent who suggested he should try some dance orientated songs. After his wife suggested that he should talk about his experiences in overcoming his stutter he changed his name to Scatman John and put out his debut single in November of 1994. Five months later, and here it is in the charts, this week's highest new entry at number six. And, Taylor, this is it now, isn't it?

The lie about Britpop turning everything around has been properly exposed by this bloke. Yeah, I'd rather have this bloke, to be honest. Yeah. I've been looking into options for my middle-aged image. This is very interesting. The thing is, I remember Scoutman being a sort of genial, avuncular figure. And it's a bit...

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. And it's a bit weird to see him now and realise he was actually this slightly unsalubrious Austrian porn director dressed up for the awards ceremony. The funny thing is, if you'd asked me to picture the kind of person who would be into scat, more or less what would appear in my head? He's a deeply seedy air. And that sort of suggestion that 10 years previously you wouldn't have wanted to get on the wrong side of him, you know. But in fact, when you read his interviews, he's not like that at all. He's really fucked up from his stutter.

Seems to have destroyed his life right up until this moment where he suddenly, you know, went from the ugly duckling to the swan. It's quite sweet. And like all solo artists of the era, Scatman's got backup dancers, but they're not the live gymnastic dancers we're used to on Top of the Pops. They look like a sales team doing a review

in the office for Red Nose Day, don't they? They're really overdoing this particular trope, as you say, in this episode of the backing dancers. And it doesn't, you know, with this particular one, maybe it's the sort of bit of legs and co, whatever, that's still in the DNA of the show. You've got to, you know, there's no particular need for them on this occasion. I would have liked to have seen legs and co's literal interpretation of this song.

Six girls, one cup. I was waiting for you to say that, yeah. You knew it was coming. But the song, I mean, this song got on my absolute tits round about this time. I can see that. I can see that, yeah. It's funny, in the Melodymaker offices at the time,

Everett True, for some reason, took a great shine to this record and he'd be sort of scatting constantly, all day long, and he'd introduce scat motifs gratuitously into his pieces and his features or whatever. He was deeply taken with it. He found it very infectious. That's my main memory of this, is actually, you know, that it had such a deep impact on Everett True.

Did you stab him at any point? No, no, no. The thing at this point is I had to sort of zone out what was happening in the office. I was sitting next to Marcia, who just blasted out Capital Radio all day long, unapologetically. So the only respite I would get is sort of at some point in the mid-morning, whenever, when she and her friends disappear and watch jerry springer for an hour um so i just love jerry springer

she was absolutely fine here a kind of peeling guffaw was coming out of the telly room while she was watching it um um but yeah i think i actually had to kind of zone out a great deal at that point and i learned the art of zoning out. Yeah. Because, you know, we're going on about, oh, here's hip-hop and oh, here's Britpop, but there's a lot of dancey techno rubbish still going on, isn't there? I mean, this song could have been done at any time

between 1988 and 1999. Yeah. I like the actual scatter... I mean, I think it's a lovely backstory, but it's attached to an absolutely terrible vehicle. This is a sort of joke record but there is a sense

in which he's cool. I'm sorry there is. And when you look at what this actually is it's amazing that it's this enjoyable because even though there's some Euro pop coming up that makes this look like the crap it sort of is. I quite like this just for that gorgeous Eurobeat neon wistfulness in the background, you know.

I mean, you know, this won an award as the best rock and pop single of 1995. But in Germany. Yeah. It was the German version of the Brit Awards God bless them if there wasn't that side to Germany

there wouldn't have been the other side you would never have had Krautrock, it would have been as tasteful and sterile as Italian or French pop culture so I say God bless him but the terrible thing is

he only had about four years to live at this point and you look into his eyes and you can almost see it he's got that tired broken look in his eyes that people get when they're just beginning their descent you know or that might just have been because he'd been up

all night with three models and eight grams of coke i don't know because you know the thing about middle-aged people getting out of their head is that you can still do it but you look fucking awful right yeah it's like when you're 23 you could get completely out of your face you look exactly the same except your eyes are a bit pink um but you know a middle-aged man who's been up all night caning it you you know you you look like ed RM or whatever he's called have you ever seen him he's I shouldn't like because he is a sex offender but he was that guy who went on he was like he was a an aged sex offender who when he got out of prison put a load of videos of himself on YouTube miming creepily to pop records. If you go to YouTube, E-D-A-R-E-M,

his version of Pretty Woman is once seen, never forgotten. But yeah, no, I got a bit of sympathy for Scatman, you know, getting this sort of golden sunset to his life. You know, good for him. Especially when you read the interview with him and he says, we stutterers have experienced what black people have experienced. So, you know, at least he was keeping it in perspective. And where are you when this is going on, Taylor?

Do you remember seeing it? No, I just was at the back. You know, I had my back against the back wall of the studio because, you know, I didn't want to look like some sort of paedophile, you know. So the following week, Scatman nudged up to number four and would eventually get to number three. One of the few singles that's actually gone up from this performance at Top of the Pops. The follow-up, Scatman's World, got to number 10 in September of this

year, his last bit of chart action, and alas, Scatman John collapsed on stage in Cleveland in November of 1999, and died a few weeks later. And now it's time for our first exclusive tonight, and they're playing Totally Unplugged. Yes, they are. Welcome into your heart, the blessed union of souls. And I believe. Yes. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Walk blindly to the light And reach out for reason

Don't ask any questions And don't try to understand mayo introduces the first exclusive of the night who are playing totally unplugged which was quite the thing at the time thanks to mtv even though they're not it's i believe by blessed Union of Souls. Formed in Cincinnati in 1990 and named after an episode of MASH, Blessed Union of Souls were an alternative rock band who signed with EMI in 1992. This is the first single from their debut LP, Home, and is currently in the American Top Ten

but hasn't been released here yet. So why the fuck are they on? Why? Who are they? I hate these kind of, it's a bit like that kind of human thing recently, you know, every now and then, Pop has had this kind of pious moments of just sort of earnest soulfulness and

what have you, and in a funny kind of way, this faintly reminded me of when Barbara Dixon came on on the two Ronnies, you know, we had to have a mantry pause from all the kind of malapropisms and puns about, you know, la rude remorse in Paris and all that kind of stuff. Elkie Brooks with all her looks. Yeah, and all these kind of grotesque sentiments about love

and how love will find a way and love will kind of provide the answer. Love doesn't do any of those things. You know, love is rubbish. No, love's pretty shit at that, isn't it? Love is crap at stuff like that. It doesn't do any of those things. Love is rubbish. Love's pretty shit at that, isn't it? Love is crap at stuff like that. It doesn't do those things at all. It's just this pious, vacuous nonsense. And it's, yeah,

I mean, obviously, then it goes on a little bit and it turns out that there's a bit of a kind of Brother Louie vibe to the whole thing. He's going out with Lisa and all that kind of stuff. Lisa's dad is well Brexit. Yeah, thanks to love. Perhaps his dad will stop being such a racist.

But, yeah. Oh, and it's this unplugged thing. And, of course, it was huge at the time. And, again, it's that kind of obsession, this fixation on authenticity and light, the organic, the real, whatever, and this sort of antithesis towards an increased mechanisation production of popular music.

It's just crap. You can really hear the song, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fuck off. Pay your fucking electricity bill. You'd never guess that they were a Christian band, would you? No, not at all. They don't even mention Jesus,

but it's just fucking obvious right from the start. It's pretty obvious because of the keyboard player's shirt. Have you seen that? Yes. It's got a bloody massive Jesus on it. And this churchiness is, it's like poison to British sensibilities. You know what I mean? That's the one thing that does make me proud to be British, right?

Any other country in the world, a significant portion of the public will see this and even if they don't like it they'll feel they have to respect the sincerity of the message and the earnestness of the performance right yeah at least in Britain it's just an instant unanimous fuck off you creepy cunt to the point where even Simon Mayo is slightly taking the piss in the introduction yeah he's a bloody christian yeah and this is what i don't like about the x factor right like normally i don't give a shit about the x factor it's a talent show you know whatever but what i can't forgive them for is normalizing this american style of schmaltz you know what i mean it's had a terrible effect

on british culture um that this sort of stuff now seems totally totally normal and acceptable but i tell you what i do like how you get halfway through this stupid song and it's slimy and cringing and knock need and and whiny and feeble and then suddenly this n-bomb goes up. Yes. Completely unexpectedly. Yes. It's like, what the fuck? And American radio banned this, of course, but it must, Blessed Union of Souls must have been really pleased to arrive in England

to find that nobody gives a shit. You say what you like, mate. I say it all the time. And worse. Yeah. Yeah, they probably got the taxi from me throw and probably heard it about eight times from the driver before they before he realized he was in the band but yeah i mean uh you know according to the song we're selling drugs to children

um well keep me out of that mate i'm just making wank mags here. And we're eliminating our future with the things we do today. Yeah, well, they certainly were. But yeah, you know, he dropped the M-bomb. So, I mean, all this whinging is basically because, oh, my girlfriend's dad doesn't like me. Well, fucking deal with it. Be proud of it. You know, your girlfriend's dad's supposed to hate you.

You're knobbing his daughter. I wonder what they're even doing. I've never heard of these people. No. I just wonder if they were brought on perhaps at Simon Mayo's behest. You know, has he kind of smuggled them in? They're so obsessed with getting exclusives that they'll take any old fucker on. Yeah.

You know, if I went on banging a saucepan and howling, that would be an exclusive because I've not done that before, ever. Anyway, put me on top of the pops. Yeah, it's the way it comes up and says exclusive. Yeah, massive letters, yeah. Eat shit, MTV. We've got it. But this is a fucking terrible record.

It is, isn't it? It is the corrosive effect of religion. And apologies again to the good egg believers that I know. But unless you're making gospel music, there has to be the same wall of separation between the church and pop as between the church and the state. Because pop music needs an empty sky

to be silhouetted against. Because pop music in a godly world is like having your parents sitting in the kitchen at your 18th birthday party. It's like in a universe with a purpose, pop music is a waste of time. In a way, I think that football songs are actually more appropriate marginally

than religious songs, basically. So two weeks later, I believe entered the uk charts at number 36 and would eventually get to number 29 the follow-up let me be the one only got to number 74 in march of 1996 and they were done here but i believe was the fourth most played single on American radio in 1995. Fucking hell, America, what are you like? Ten million Netslanderses. I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe That love is the answer, I believe

The Blessed Union of Souls, which reminds me, I believe The Blessed Union of Souls which reminds me confessions BBC one Saturday night 7 o 5 5 past 7 Thanks very much. Now a new entry at 23 from shed 7. It's Bob Geldof's favorite. Where have you been tonight? Mayo gets a plug in for his TV show before getting in a dig at Bob Geldof about his impending divorce from Paula Yates as he introduces Shed 7 and Where Have You Been Tonight. Formed in York in 1990 from the ashes of Broccoli Haven, Shed 7 was signed by Polydor in 1993 and released their first single Mark in March of 1994 which got to number 80. They'd go on to have three top 40 hits later that year and release their debut LP

Changegiver in September. This is their first single of 1995 and the follow-up to Ocean Pie, which got to number 33 in November of 1994 and it's a new entry this week at number 23. Just one

question, chaps. Shed 7, the whipping boys of Britpop explain why because to me they're just another whitey boy band with their guitars and that yeah but you're a pure hip hop lad you see

the point is if you exist in this world it's like if you live in the hollowed out tree stump and just look at the same patch of sky, you find infinite variation in that movement of clouds. Well, before you say anything, I'll let you collect your thoughts. I'm going to read a review of their single On Standby, written by Neil Kulkarni in Melody Maker magazine.

In York, there's a nightclub up Micklegate called Ziggy's, which I used to frequent of a Tuesday night. One night, people were pointing and crowding this rather simian chap at the bar, whose lolling and overtly large head made him look like an orange on a toothpick. I ambled over for a drink and found myself standing next to him, and notwithstanding the attention he was receiving, he smelt like an incontinent tramp. Stank, in fact. I had to back away the stench was that bad.

He's now a minor star, while I sadly share this anecdote whenever I hear his band's dreadful music and smile with a purient glow of misplaced satisfaction. But at least I don't smell like a festival toilet. That, I feel, is a victory. Why the hate? I mean, we talked about Enemy earlier on, and one of the best headlines they ever came up with

was you can't get thicker than a shit-ridden witter. And I think they actually contrived the story just to fit the headline, actually. It was very much of a nun story when you read it. And what it was doing, dominating half a page of the enemy newspaper, I'm not quite sure. I just think it was the headline. And for then Rick Whitter to say or do something

remotely kind of fatuous. I don't know. There was just something eminently whippable and punctual about them. But, I mean, this is a dreadful, dreadful piece of music. I mean, it's just inexcusable. It's got a faintly kind of subsmiths thing going on. You can sense that they're the kind, you know,

well, it's the sort of rotten out crop of it. It's like eating genes. It's like, it's landfill before there was land to be filled. I mean, it's just almost like an inauguration of, like, you know, I mean, it's just almost like an inauguration of, like, you know, this long, perma sort of winter of indie shite. You know, it's trudging predictably, you know, from one change to the other. What kind of people listen to this?

You know, people who hate surprises. I mean, what, you know, I absolutely don't get it at all. I mean, yeah, I'm now becoming red with rage, in fact, just thinking about it. And I'll tell you the worst thing of all. I used to get sent 100 singles every week, and 90 of them were just like this, but significantly worse. And that's how bands like this get successful. They're the best smelling pigs in the pigsty, you know.

Right. But it's like, compared to normal music, it's fucking appalling. It's like, I mean, it's like they heard the Smiths and no other music ever and thought well let's do this but gormlessly and on a much much lower level

and it won't achieve anything it will just be effectively a chimney pumping filth into the atmosphere but it will get us on the stage and we can get some you know we can con some drunk first year student girls into thinking we're impressive enough to fuck i mean 30 years prior to this there were hundreds of bands like that millions of bands like that you know like local groups and stuff but they were forced to play so much uh in dance halls

for audiences who wanted to to dance or have a rave those bands were forced to be exciting even if they couldn't be original whereas this is not the case when you're playing indie clubs to undiscriminating way-faced teens know, standing there with no facial expressions, swaying vaguely from side to side, clinging onto a plastic beaker of cider. You know, you can just get on the stage and make a pathetic exhibition of yourself like this and get away with it.

Not just get away with it, get a top 30 hit. You know, it's awful. You look at him with his Britpop singer's stagecraft, which is like walk two steps backwards, then walk two steps forwards, repeat. And he's like rolling his eyes back into his giant head, like, you know, like a faked orgasm. It's like, what?

This bloke thought he could be a rock star. It's so weird. It's just like an idiot doing what he thinks you should do, you know. Was there anyone at melody maker who actually liked shed seven it was probably probably yeah because you know there are always a few dullards hanging around but um i'd no one that i socialized with that's for damn sure you see what i one thing i really objected about this record as well is something i always hated in these kind of songs these horrible looming

long notes like it's a bit gothy on the quiet like there's a whole sub genre of trash indie rock from the 90s that's like this, like Strange Love and the Long Pigs and people like that, just genuinely

worthless music because it pushes out the only thing which could ever have saved it, which is the inherent trashiness. And it replaces that with this sort of dreadful, failed seriousness because that's easier, you see. If you're not very talented, easier than generating excitement

is to hit a minor chord and let it ring and base the song all around semitone intervals and try to create some spurious atmosphere, you know, to cover up for the lack of melodic invention and originality. I mean, one question I've always wanted to know, do you all get together and decide, oh, we don't like that band, we're going to slag them off all the time? Or is it an organic hatred?

No, it's purely organic because the majority of people who end up doing that job are sort of discerning music fans. So, you know, even within that horrible little world, you can tell that Shed 7 are not as good as you know Oasis right it's like Oasis did you know three or four really great records and Shed

7 did this and this was their best shot. They're the lambrettas to Oasis as jam if you will yeah it's a fitting tribute it must have been really galling to have to keep writing about bands like this. Because obviously someone was still buying their records. I mean, did you get a lot of hate mail for slagging them off?

Not for slagging off Shed 7 particularly. No? But generally. The thing is, if you were on a music paper during Britpop, the music paper would sort of nail, by this point, both music papers had nailed themselves to the indie mast, so you couldn't get away from it. What you had to do, if you weren't that into these groups, you had to find what other music

you could get away with writing about because there'd always be a couple of token features about something else, you know, like hip-hop or avant-garde music or something. And then find out which Britpop groups you did quite like and write about them, like Supergrass or, you know, Boo Radley's. And then the other Britpop groups, you would slag off as much as you could, you know.

But you still had to write about them because otherwise you weren't going to eat right because unlike david the rest of us were freelancers and uh being paid by the word so you had to hustle right you had to hustle for work and it was like do you want to go and review uh shed seven at the sheffield lead Mill and you kind of had to say yes but the nice thing about Melody Maker is at least when you got back you were allowed to be honest about what you'd seen. Because in your article

with Supergrass you do make mention of Shed 7 drifting over to your table while you're doing the interview did they recognise you? I mean they must have done. Well, they didn't recognise me. No, I'm pretty sure they recognised Supergrass.

You've got to understand the affected contempt that bands had for music journalists at that point, right? Despite the fact that you're talking about bands that if it hadn't been for the music press would effectively not exist. Yeah. Would never have got anywhere. They felt that they had to see the music press as parasites and, you know, bastards and stuff, or else they weren't cool.

The general impression I got as a reader of the music press is that you were all in it together and having such a wonderful time. Are you telling me that's not the case at all? We certainly weren't in it together because, no, no, no, no, bands didn't want you around, ever. I remember sitting in a hotel bar once with

menswear, right, who, menswear, God bless them, knew exactly what they were and were quite happy to socialize with journalists because you know yeah they were sound lads when it all came down to it and they were having a bit of a laugh um i was sat in a hotel bar about three in the morning menswear's fucking roadie that they'd hired from some agency came over and sat down he's like oh you're a journalist are you and And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, alright, what's the next

scoop then? And it's like as if you work for the Daily Star or something. It's like what? Just being really aggressive and overbearing. So you're being looked down upon by a fucking roadie? Yeah, absolutely. Of menswear?

Yeah, I know. It's like... Fucking hell. So the following week, where have you been tonight? Dropped 22 places to number 45. But the follow-up, Getting Better,

would get to number 14 in January of 1996 and they'd go on to have five top 20 hits that year. Jesus. After diminishing returns set in, they split up for the first time in 2003. So Saturday, BBC One, not just confessions, not just the National Lottery, but also the Eurovision Song Contest.

And without a bing, a bang or a bong anywhere in sight, we wish them all the best. This is the Love City Groove. Formed in Manchester by the producer Stephen Beans Rudden in 1993, Love City Groove were a loose collective of songwriters whose first single was scheduled to be released in late 1994 until it was chanced upon by Jonathan King at the BBC.

King had approached David Liderman earlier this year and offered his services as producer for Top of the Pops, but was offered the task of landing Great Britain its first Eurovision Song Contest winner since 1981. After deciding that the tunes were more important than the performers, King got in touch with Rudden and advised him to hold back the tune for the Song for Europe, where it absolutely hammered the competition, including London Beat and Samantha Fox. Upon entering the chart in early April, it peaked at number 12, dropped down to number 17, but then nudged up one place this week

to number 16, just in time for this year's Eurovision, which is due to be held in Dublin two days from tonight that's a bit suspicious isn't it it suddenly nudged up in the charts just before you know it was going to be on the Eurovision Song Contest and allowed to be on top of the pops just saying

absolutely you know we're not averse to the odd conspiracy theory but but yes. Yeah, definitely. Tell you what, I mean, I've got to ask, we haven't really asked you about your experience on the set of Top of the Pops. When we're watching it, it's a seamless transition from one band to the other. Is it like that in real life?

I think they've quickened it up a bit by this point. Yeah. that in real life uh i think they've quickened it up a bit by this point um because they don't they no longer have to use the top of the pops applause wash that you get on the 70s and 80s ones right you can always tell when there's been a slow transition between bands in the old days because you hear that recording of an audience clear uh cheering clapping, which is not the audience in the studio, which they put on as a wash as they fade to, you know, Kid Jensen standing next to some awkward-looking underage girls. Yeah.

That wash is always weird, isn't it? Because you can always hear just one bloke who's just been a bit too excitable and just goes, and you hear that all the time. When you tune your ear to it like we've done as connoisseurs of Top of the Pops, you can't not hear it, can you? Yeah, once heard, you can't miss it.

I don't know what happened by this point. Maybe the tape had snapped, but this is no longer there. As I recall, it was fairly slick. But what you don't see, of course, is the 45 seconds of silence with people in earphones with clipboards shouting at children and shooing them into a different corner of the studio. How many people are actually there, are actually being employed to herd the to herd herd the the kids um it's not that many

um it's just because they just assume that people are going to respond to the sight of somebody uh with a clipboard and earphones and uh and a bloke in a camera shouting you know get out of the way or you're going to be decapitated because i'm rolling towards you. Yeah, it's slicker than it used to be. But, yeah, there's always, you know, obviously they tied it up with TV magic. Yes. The first time I ever experienced anything like this was in 1975 when I was 12.

My school, St Michael's in Leeds, we're entered the top of the form. We all got the coach down to London. And I remember, you know, during the recording at the beginning with the applause, you know, I thought, you know, it's a pretty straightforward thing to applaud, but no, they insisted on having a sort of OC, a chap in the corner who would like to hold up

a couple of times saying applause and then he'd kind of like keep raising his hands, keep going, keep going, keep going and stop. Yeah. And it was such a disillusioning moment that actually you know to realize that you know that the art of this that tv is a lie you know i think that's stuck with me the thing that's always uh funny is on comedy shows we're at the start they say well we're just gonna test the mics yes we're just gonna check what you sound like let's have a really big laugh and everyone does a big fake laugh and it's like they don't realise this is being recorded

and stored in case it's required a bit later Is there an equivalent of a warm up man on top of the pops? Not that I recall I think it's just the idea of being in the same hangar like room as your pop favourites and Celine Dion is just considered to be, you know, just enough of a warm-up in itself.

Yeah. So anyway, let us turn to Love City Groove, who to my mind are pretty much the black-eyed mushy peas, aren't they? Yes. By this time, we're starting to get a bit ranched about Eurovision, aren't we? You know, for many years, we used to look down our noses at our Euro chums. And now we seem to be getting quite offended that we're not winning every year. Yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely a sense of that.

Why aren't we winning every year? You know, the idea is in the 60s and 70s, Britain was so great, we could send out Sandy Shaw, Lulaw, Cliff Richard and still knock spots off these Euros, you know, and all Buck's fears and Brotherhood of Man. But now, yeah, it's all kind of getting shunted, you know, we're getting shunted to one side. And I think this is almost a real attempt

to kind of reassert the Britishers. Look, you know, we are the country now, soul to soul and and nena chair, we've got a groove going here, you know, that puts your kind of overheated power ballads into a cot hat. But I

don't think they really kind of understand, I mean, I think that ultimately, Eurovision is a schlager thing, which in schlager, the German thing, which essentially means pop music, but it's a certain kind of pop music that's very European and has its own sort of rules and protocols. And it isn't really anything to do, you know,

and it doesn't... Britain's never really been a kind of a part of that. You know, Britain is kind of an island apart when it comes to this kind of schlager thing. It doesn't really understand it. It doesn't understand that it's kind of, you know... And also, I think, by the mid-'90s,s you know you're going to get a bit more you know there's a bit more infighting in Europe and stuff like that

a bit of like you know sort of disturbance in the Balkans and what have you and I think this is the beginning of the end you know you think right we're going to pull out all the stops here we're going to sort of like you know and it does feel like that they're going to sort of crowd 20 or 30 people on stage you know we're going to sort of funk it up and they come 10th don't they

you know and it's the to sort of funk it up and they come 10th don't they, you know, and it's yeah, the game's up at this point really I agree with what you're saying David but you know, Ireland geographically, even further away from Europe, and they're caning it in this decade aren't they, in Eurovision Yeah, they get something, yeah

What's that all about then? Maybe, I don't know, maybe they're sort of slightly more kind of canny and they're slightly more sort of playing by the rules and observing it but um yeah it's um i don't know yeah maybe it's just that maybe it's a sort of more of a sense of modesty maybe there's a kind of slightly kind of imperial pop sense about britain that you know that we are so good um that um you know that um sorry Sorry, I'm completely there. It's all right. It's not like we're putting out really shitty songs.

I mean, it was... The previous year was Francis Ruffell, which wasn't that bad. It was a decent enough song, but it didn't do anything. Taylor, your thoughts? On a subject that must have, you know, resonated around the Melody Maker offices at the time.

Why? Why are we not caning it in Eurovision? People forget now, but there was a lot of pro-European feeling in Britain in the 90s, right? It was like we were out of those years of being insular and, you know, waving our little Union Jacks, and now we were a modern European nation,

and it's easy to forget. I think that's why people thought the Eurovision Song Contest was worth taking a bit more seriously. But of course that killed it, because obviously the Eurovision Song Contest is ruined now. For the same reason a lot of mainstream camp is ruined now because it's full of people who get the joke and don't realise that spoils it.

So you lose that fascinating, unintentionally subversive thing of talentless and irredeemably tacky people doing their best and failing and creating something grotesque and bizarre in the process now you have equally tacky and talentless people giving you a wink and doing something self-consciously and almost whimsically shit um which means it can't be camp in the true sense of the word it can only be silly and authentically bad. But this halfway house is much worse. It's like trying to make Eurovision as boring and unconvincingly trendy as youth TV or a fizzy drinks advert.

So you get all the crapness and none of the weirdness. There's not even a Croatian bloke with eagles flying out of his arse, you know. It's like, it's all so cynical and it's worse than that. It's cynical and half-arsed. But it was an inevitable nightly thing because we were all cool now, right?

See, everybody was cool. So everything had to be proper. And knowing. Yeah, no more of that old world cheesiness. And of course, nothing is less interesting than untalented people trying to be cool. Like no hopers keeping a straight face and keeping it real.

Yeah. Fucking purgatory. This is part of the offensive conceitedness of this thing. This is a very mediocre song, but it's almost like when David Brent quotes bits, chunks of Fawlty Towers and Two Rollies and thinks that he's being funny in his own right by osmosis or by association because it's British comedy. They're trying to get that soul-to-soul thing going

or get that Nanny Cherry thing going. But that's soul-to- of Sol and Nene Cherry. It's not this bunch of herberts. No. Yeah, they're like a musical version of Poochie the dog from the Sims. And they look like him as well. Yes, yes. Recycled to the extreme. Also, this is a bit of a rip off of Love Town

by Booker Newberry which I might not have noticed if they hadn't put the words Love City in the fucking title it's not covering your tracks yeah and again the subject matter

is you know it's not your standard I can't imagine Cliff singing lyrics like, you know, we're really making love now. Thank fuck. But, you know, why are they sexing it up? There's no need for it. They're very relaxed about this sort of thing on the continent. Yeah.

True. As we're trying to get with them. But yeah, this is, you can sort of, there's a faint odour of Jonathan King left on this. Not that it sounds like one of his records, but it has that sort of, you know,

calculated feel to it. There's some Britskool contamination as well. I think it's the bloke in the horribly clashing Czech shirt and tartan truce. That's where he comes from. And they edged out QT, right? The female British rapper QT

who appeared on a couple of St. Etienne tracks co-wrote this and was originally the female rapper on it. Right. female British rapper QT, who appeared on a couple of St. Nettie N tracks, co-wrote this and was originally the female rapper on it. Right. She's not on this. She's been replaced with this MC Reason, who's like a sort of proto-Cardi B, like overdoing the head wobbling and the facial expressions. MC Reason.

My God. Yeah, yeah Reason DJ Rational yeah yeah but the every time I hear Jonathan King I always think of when I met this bloke who worked for his magazine

the tip sheet I was in Manchester doing something at some event a few years ago. This is when he was in jail. And this bloke was talking to me about, oh yeah, I work for Jonathan King's magazine. And I just made an offhand remark of, the prisons would be even more overcrowded

if all the people who did what Jonathan King did but were heterosexual were banged up in jail. And about two weeks later, I got an email from this bloke saying, I told Jonathan what you said and he wants you to write to him in prison. I have to say, faint odor of Jonathan King, you know, worst selling male perfume ever

yes yeah yeah it didn't go down well when i bought that me dad for christmas that year let me tell you but yeah i mean again again hip-hop hip-hop is is amongst us but it's not it's not the real deal is it it's homeopathic hip-hop, isn't it? It's been diluted a trillion times. Yes, very much so. I think essentially overall there's a non-threatening dose of blackness. Yeah. Anything else to say about this?

Yeah. I love the ticker going across the bottom, by the way, that says... Of course. Top of the Pops predicts top 40 entries for... Yes. And it's all the people who are going to be in next week's chart. And it's like as if they were

soothsayers or, you know, world experts. It's the last point in history where that naivety was assumed in the audience, right? That they'd never heard of the midweek charts. And it was like, how do they know this? They must be amazing.

So two days later love city groove finished joint 10th with malta in the eurovision song contest which was won by secret garden of norway however the following week it jumped up nine places to number seven its highest position after two singles which failed to chart in a flop LP, they split up in 1996. As for Jonathan King and Eurovision, the UK's next entry, Ooh Ah Just A Little Bit by Gina G, finished 8th in 1996. That's ridiculous. That's perfect. Nailed on Eurovision winner that is. But the next year, Katrina and the Waves won with Love Shine A Light.

As King said in 2015, after that I got caught up in the early stages of the false allegations industry and had to give up my position as boss of the UK Eurovision campaign but I remained quite a hero amongst Eurovision fans not least because of the head of the BBC at the time Alan Yob, had come very close to dropping the contest and it was my involvement and success that had kept the show alive. The BBC need me back to find us another winner. Sadly unlikely. Vile perverts, in capital letters, are not encouraged as employees by establishment media outlets,

despite rumours to the contrary. Modest, modest as always. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Self-effacement to the contrary modest modest as always absolutely yeah yeah self-effacement she is canadian she is a number one artist she is exclusive to this show She is Canadian. She is a number one artist. She is exclusive to this show. There's only one road, but remember, there's only one Celine Dion. APPLAUSE on this highway. Memories, they'll lead up to this one day. Born in Quebec in 1968, Celine Dion wrote and recorded her first song at the age of 12,

which led to her being discovered by her manager, Rene Angélil. In 1981, her new manager remortgaged his house to fund her first album, and a year later she won the Yamaha World Popular Song Contest in Tokyo. But she first came to our attention in 1988 when she won the Eurovision Song Contest for Switzerland. She began the 90s with her first UK chart hit, a duet with Peebo Bryson on the theme tune to Beauty and the Beast, which got her to number nine in May of 1992. But her first big solo hit was a cover of Jennifer Rush's The Power of Love, which got to number four in February of 1994, by which time she revealed that she was knobbing her manager. This is a follow-up to Think Twice, which stayed at number one for seven weeks in the spring of 1995, and is still in the chart at number 67.

It's the fifth single from her LP, The Colour of My Love, and it's not been released yet. Oh, it's a special treat. And did you notice that Simon wasn't jibing and a-bantering when he was introducing this? This, to the mind of Top of the Pops, is the main event, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, you know,

she's in the studio there, so, you know, we're kind of effectively doing it to her face. Yeah, there's a lot of people pointedly not watching Emmerdale just for this performance, I feel. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so there's obviously a little bit of kind of, you know, sucking up has to be done in that respect. It's difficult, I mean, like Shed 7, I mean, there is so obviously a little bit of kind of, you know, sucking up has to be done in that respect.

It's difficult. I mean, like Shed 7, I mean, there is so much. They're kind of this kind of scrofulous sort of mass of a huge target. There's so much that you can kind of throw at them. They're kind of classic Aunt Sally's from a critical point of view. It's just like, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. But with Celine Dion, she's this massive blank.

It's almost like she's so sort of evaporated that it's hard to actually get any kind of handle on you know why this is awful I mean it's just this she is white near Houston isn't she yes very good indeed you know there's this barrage of

MLR nothingness to live with this kind of nauseating competence you know these just these austere vocal gymnastics you know live with this kind of nauseating competence, you know, these austere vocal gymnastics, it's, you know, again, it's kind of, I suppose it's for the kind of the vast numbers of people who go to musicals or whatever, this is the stuff, you know.

It's, you know, it's like, I don't know, it's like Tory Vos or people like Andrew Lloyd Webber or whatever, we know they exist in their millions, you know, it's like you never ever meet them, you never see them, you never come across them or intersect with them. No. And I think they kind of don't really want to be kind of, you know,

they kind of keep it to themselves that they are Tory voters, Andrew Lloyd Webber fans or Celine Dion fans as well. Yeah. You know, they subsist in their, you know, they exist in their millions, you know, like sort of millions and millions of badgers, you know, in some sort of subterranean shame. It's, yeah, it's bizarre. Taylor, were you enraptured

in the very presence of Celine Dion? I think this might have been when I nipped out. I like her look, I have to be honest. I think it's a good retro lesbian image, like Dua Lipa or someone, right? It's like what Justine out of Elastica was trying to look like. She was like a version of this that had just clambered out of a dustbin. But I don't...

Yeah, there's trouble with her singing. I mean, in fairness, she's not terrible because she actually sings the tune instead of obscuring it with, you know, ugly, pointless melismas like a modern singer. And she's got a set of pipes and a book. It's like she's not a pure singer and she isn't raucous. It's like this unconvincing mixture which just...

And it sounds like an acting performance rather than a real performance. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It's like uh elaine page or exactly that intersection with like theater and musicals or whatever yeah that is not that like yeah it puts it to remove from kind of pop music and that kind of sort of direct sort of passion whatever that you'd hope for yeah and you see the the kids sort of desultory sway.

I mean, the swaying is like, I mean, I got the impression there's somebody holding up a cardboard sign saying sway, sway, sway. And this is like, they're just thinking this is what we're busting for. No. No, it's terrible. I mean, it's quite nice for me to see some of the female fashions of the day for tragically nostalgic reasons. But otherwise, it's a depressing sight. They look a bit stiff and glum. And now I think about it, these will be the kids that I saw queuing up outside looking bored and tired, you know.

Now they're in the studio and Top of the Pops is happening around them right now and yet in a sense they're still hanging around waiting although you can tell they're London kids, you can tell they're from London and in Viron because they're wearing the clothes of 1995 and this is

something you often forget I mean I remember in 1995 I got sent up to and I'm sorry for to residents of Wolvo who've heard me bash their town on at least two previous occasions but I got sent up to Wolverhampton to review Black Grape in the late summer of 1995 and this was a point where we were all starting to get a little bit sick and tired of Britpop and everybody wearing those clothes. So I turned up at like Wolfenhall or wherever it was, walked in, and the audience is a sea of dreadlocks, stripy tights, big DM boots,

and cart of the Unstoppable Sex Machine teams in late August 95. And you think, no, but it's quite sobering we were there trying to sort of push things on and it's like no it's still 1991 up here yeah that timeline it's very easy to lose track of that when you're

in the cauldron but again it does seem to me extraordinary that and I've been to other recordings of TV shows or whatever and they're a grueling affair and sometimes people are sort of like locked in these hangers and actually made to stay in their seats for several hours it's grueling stuff and yet at the end of it they managed to kind of give an air of like you know manufactured enthusiasm like you know when you actually view the program and people actually look you know they you know they're kind of applauding euphorically or whatever there's a

lot of energy but it was it's a strange honesty about top of the pops look, you know, they're kind of applauding euphorically or whatever, there's a lot of energy. But it's a strange honesty about Top of the Pops is that, you know, you see these people kind of standing there and they look as sullen and as pissed off and as bored as you would expect, you know, after a sort of full day's recording. For some reason they choose to preserve that on Top of the Pops

of all things. I thought that was very strange. You know, I used to watch Top of the Pops and think, why are these people so sad? Isn't it funny? This is a dream thing. They're on Top of the Pops. They're adjacent to Jimmy Savile. What is their problem? It's their teenagers. That's their problem.

Maybe it's a sheer kind of adolescent misery, kind of, you know, proving indomitable, even in the face of, you know, pop. Yeah, I think what Top of the Pops is trying to go improving indomitable even in the face of um you know pop but yeah yeah i think that what what top of the pops is trying to go for here is you know they want these these these kids to be to be beholding this fantastic beast called celine uh who's who's you know emoting and you know singing properly and doing proper music but the overall effect you get is

it's like the end of term assembly and Miss has got a guitar out and she's going to do her version of Space Auditor The other effect I sometimes used to get when I watched it is that basically they're in the presence of such immense talents that they're cowed

and they're overcome by a sense of their own mediocrity and insignificance. Yes, yeah. That too. I'll tell you what's weird, though. People at the time thought this was a throwback, right? This record, it seemed like a throwback. We're in this fab new world and it was almost a shock that middle-of-the-road stuff like this could still outsell everything else but in fact

this is you look at this now and this is more like the future than any amount of Britpop or whatever people in the 90s were so proud of themselves for not being from the 80s and

that misplaced optimism and complacency, that's what they screwed us with in the end. It was just assumed that somehow everything was going to be all right. That's what opened the doors to the horrors of the present day. And it's quite unpleasant to look back and think that to some small extent you're a part of that.

So the following week, only one road entered the chart at number 11 and would eventually get to number eight. The follow up to Meme Encore would get to number seven in September of this year. And she just wouldn't fuck off for the rest of the 90s. Inspired by her trip to Canvey Island, only one road, that's Celine Dion, and now the charts. As a new entry at number 10, you've already seen Supergrass doing Lenny. Number 9, Don't Stop, Wiggle Wiggle from the Out Here Brothers. 8, Bobby Brown. Two can play that game.

7 is Tina Arena and her chains. New entry at number 6, you've seen Scatman John and Scatman. Number 5, Boyzone and Keita, My Life. Number 4, it's Take That and Back For Good. John and scat man number five boys own and key to my life Number four, it's take that and back for good Three guaglione signing for Rangers Perez Prado and his orchestra and down to number two some might say For the first time ever three consecutive number ones straight in at number one. And for now, live in joy our top of the pops. Mayo drops references to Canvey Island and Glasgow Rangers while running down the top ten.

I didn't get the Glasgow Rangers one, did you? I think it's just an Italian word and they were signing a lot of Italian players at the time. It's more of his footy bants, you know. Yeah. Because of course we're all interested in football all of a sudden, aren't we now?

Yeah, even Simon Mayo. In the mid-90s. Oh yeah, absolutely. It's all part of the same thrust of things Euro 96 Oasis it's all there's a kind of confluence now gone are the days where John Peel got booed when he announced the football results at Reading Festival. And he introduces the third number one in a row to enter the charts right at the top, Dreamer by Living Joy. Formed in Italy by Paolo and Gianni Visnade, two brothers who had also formed Alex Parte, who had just had a number two hit with Don't Give Me Your Life,

Living Joy were fronted by Janice Robinson, a singer-songwriter from New Jersey. Although Mayo claims that this is the third single in a row to go straight in at number one, he's failed to mention that this is actually a re-release, as it was a number 18 hit in August of 1994. I mean, many things to talk about here before we get to the band. I mean, the top ten rundown is pretty much

your only bit of video action in this episode isn't it yeah yeah well i mean there's been this kind of strong sort of recording of like live and this authenticity and yeah videos are obviously the whole terrible artifice of yeah yeah i mean they they're all pretty non-descript videos i think the only thing that i took away from it were boyzone we're all in flat caps trying to be, you know, rough and rural and Irish and everything, but they just look like the Tetley T-folk. Fuck Boyzone.

Anyway, living joy. The thing that's interesting to me is the fact that it's essentially it's a follow-on from like High Energy. I mean, what strikes me about the 80s and it's because we thought is how you know is how gay how queer you know as it were the the charts are you know the numb you know the the the blatant you know everything from man parish to sort of bronski beat um george michael whatever i mean it's you know the gayness of of 1980s pop is

an absolute given and evident and then by the 90s everything suddenly starts getting very laddish and hetero and I think that's actually been the case ever since really it's bizarre you know that like there's been this kind of thankfully upward sort of trajectory in terms of like acceptance of like gay rights etc etc

but it's almost like pop meanwhile you know that you don't get this kind of as it were queer presence anymore frankie or whatever where the frankies are where where you know where the village peoples and people like that this is obviously this would have been i'm sure popular in the gay clubs or whatever it's essentially it's a sort of modern piece of high energy whatever but it's almost like quite discreet almost kind of coded in that way that like gay pop had to be it's always fronted by a kind of, you know, pretty sort of loud, brassy female or whatever.

So, and I guess that's what it was. And it's possible that like, so yeah, number 18, I imagine it had a bit of a boost in the clubs or whatever. And then thought, yeah, let's fucking, let's throw it out again. And yeah, and that's number one. No, it crossed over by this point. I mean, this was, you know, you'd have heard this in Ministry of Sound

and places like that on their less niche nights this is one of the best singles of the 90s and it's not even the best of these records right like You Sure Do by Strike was just dropping out of the charts at this point

and Let Me Be Your Fantasy by Baby D was six months previous. And I've got them above this, but it is almost the pure essence of that sound. It's just a thin, bright strip of pure elation. And it's so clean with the suggestion of sex and so basic with the suggestion of complexity. And with the exception of mock subversion, there's not much you can ask for from a pure pop record, which this doesn't give you. There's not a hint of personal pretension or preening banality.

or preening banality and I wish I'd been a dancey type and lived in this 90s world rather than having a visit on day release. What I do remember is that at the time people were incredibly dubious of this Euro music because it's like everyone thought they were a little bit European

in the 90s, right? But they could only accept euro culture when it was classy or arty because that was its role within the brit defined pop aesthetic nobody liked the vulgar euro aesthetic like you know when you go to germany and there's like sort of 40 foot billboards by the side of the road and a shocking pink with like a chicken with a fucking baby's head on it you know and it's completely gross and it's like you know it's like an advert for for a supermarket or something it's ultra direct visual sense and when euros did the same thing in music everyone turned their nose up even though these records or the best of them have this

tremendous undertow of poignancy and magic and to me just about everything about this clip makes me feel that there's a point to living rather than shed seven which just makes you want to die after killing them and then turning the gun on yourself um and every time i ever heard a record like this at the time i felt such a burk for ending up stuck on what was effectively a brick pot paper uh not that there was any kind of paper where you could write about living joy with any kind of thought or intensity that that forum didn't exist and in fact melody maker was probably the closest you could get uh but you know you didn't interview these in fact Melody Maker was probably the closest you could get but you didn't interview these groups

maybe Attitude would have covered them they were on our floor at Dickie Desmond's Wank Factory they were the cool corner and oh man the shit they got, fucking hell they just started working there around about the same time as me

and they were having their first meeting and they basically They just started working there around about the same time as me. And they were having their first meeting. And they basically poached all these top writers in the gay magazine community. And all of them said, no, I'm not working for Desmond. He's a smut peddler and all this kind of stuff. Managed to get all these people in. And they have their first editorial meeting like editorial meeting and halfway through Desmond bursts in with all of his henchmen

and he's introducing some he's you know showing someone around the building and he looks at them and he goes oh these are my puffs, say hello puffs there was one bloke who used to do well he used to do odd jobs

all over the place. He'd work a little bit here, work a little bit there. Seen as a bit of a twat. And he'd fucked up on something. And his punishment was to sit next to Attitude. They moved his desk and put it next to Attitude. He says, oh, you've fucked up. You're sitting next to the puffs.

And a week later, he'd kind of like got his shit together and sorted out a to Attitude. He says, oh, you've fucked up. You're sitting next to the puffs. And a week later, he kind of like got his shit together and sorted out a couple of things. And then all of a sudden, we're all sitting there on the big open plan office and the lift doors open and it's Desmond and his right-hand man. And they're rubbing their hands and laughing and everyone's going, oh, fucking hell,

because all the desks were pointed towards the lift door so everyone could see who was coming in and who was coming in late and who was leaving early and if you know if desmond had arrived on the floor and they're rubbing their hands together and they're going over to uh his desk and he says right you've done really well we're moving you away from the puffs they got either side of his desk they lifted it they moved it one inch away and put it down again and went right if you're good next week we'll move you another inch and they all you know they walked off pissing themselves laughing and we're all just sitting there just just thinking oh my god what what my so poor that's a surprising story because i always thought it's doesn't have to be a nice bloke. Yeah, exactly.

As opposed to absolutely the world's crassest man. Fun times. But anyway, this song. It's strange to me, like I say, that despite the kind of leaps and bounds and gains and understanding of whatever and rights acquired by gays in 1990 and

onward, that it's almost like everything's gone back to, I mean, this is almost like very coded, you know, you kind of, oh yeah, this is a gay record, isn't it? You know, it's all male dancers and stuff. And it's all gone back to being something, you know, you're not getting the kind of... Very good male dancers as well, aren't they?

They're the best dancers, I think, on top of the pops. But you're not getting that kind of explicitness that you had 10 years earlier with Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It all now has the influence and code represented by strong, brassy women, you know, and all that kind of stuff.

And it's stayed like that ever since, you know. Kind of black women were the kind of like substitute homosexual men of the 90s, weren't they? Yeah, that's right. But you know, Teddy makes a very good point about it. It's absolutely direct. it doesn't fuck about it's to the point

and yeah it's it deserves its number one status yeah I mean it's clearly an ecstasy record as well like unmistakably

and like maybe poppers as well like unmistakably and like maybe poppers as well and like most records that directly parallel the effects of a particular drug you know it only does one thing but it's good and it works I mean I probably feel closer to happiness listening to this record

than at any other time except when I'm karate chopping dogs in the face. But, you know. I mean, I don't understand how anyone could not be transported by this record. Could not just be filled with delight. So what's the difference between this tune in 1995 and its equivalent in 1990 or 1988 because to these untrained ears i'm not hearing much of a difference i think well in the

late 80s like i say the predecessor that was high energy was just kind of big sort of electro funky sound slightly more kind of mechanical whatever this is more of a sort of happy house type kind of vibe really i guess it's you know slightly more sort of you know slightly more kind of elastic sound i guess if you look at the the sort of italian house stuff i mean this is a clear development from that it's just um when you go from the 80s into the 90s it just gets stripped down and sped up and becomes more direct which is like the opposite to what happens to most musical styles as time goes on where they get slower and looser

and more complex So the following week Dreamer dropped down to number two, usurped by Robson and Jerome's massacre of unchained melody, fucking hell we dodged a bullet there didn't't we, chaps? The follow-up, Don't Stop Moving,

got to number five in June of 1996, and they'd have three more top 20 hits before calling it a day in 1999. That's a pretty good run for a 90s dance band, isn't it? Yeah. Usually had the career span of mayflies. Yeah. Yeah, but when you go to the root, the Italian producer sat in a windowless bunker, as usually

had a 30-year career. Okay, that's it. I'm a dreamer After telling us what's going to be on next week, Mayo signs off by shilling his programme and introduces the live version of Can't Stand Losing You by The Police. This version of The Police's first chart hit, which got to number two in August of 1979, was recorded at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston in November of 1979 and was the sole single released from their LP Live,

a double CD set which is due to be released at the end of the month. And it's a new entry this week at number 27. Well, we're 15 and a half years removed from this, and it might as well be fifth day. It feels like it's the other side of the sun, really, doesn't it? Yeah, it's strange at this particular point that people should have been sort of, you know, harking back to this.

Yeah. But, you know, I mean, it has to be said, look, we don't know what a golden age reggae was in the mid to late 70s, you know, from Kate Bush,ennessee c elvis costello paul nicholas and of course the police um yeah and um what happened to reggae well you know but um you know what i have to confess it though i i love the police and actually i find it i think the police first two or three albums are absolutely impeccable i thought it was excellent what they did that's funny because in a previous chart music

when we covered the police, a certain Mr. Price pulled out your comment that you were comparing them unfavourably to Nirvana, or vice versa. Yes, fair enough. So I heard the on Smells Like Teen Spirit and being a kind of jaded

old rock hack, you know, to whom, you know, basically there's nothing new under the sun and everything's happening for us. I thought, well, this is just basically the police, isn't it? And I probably said something that was affecting the review or whatever. Guilty as charged of doing that, you know, because Nirvana were something in their own right and not merely police copyists. But, I mean, this song, I mean, when you compare the police

to Supergrass and Shed 7, I think they come out of it quite favourably. They come out of this quite favourably, I think. They sound a bit sinuous and a bit punchy. And they don't sound like Shed 7 is what I'm trying to say.

They don't, indeed. They look wankerish, especially like Stuart Cotland and Sting. There's strong hints of the wanker. They may well have been, you know, certainly one of those two turned out to be. But no, musically, actually, it's unimpeachable. I don't know about that. You get 31 seconds of this, and it feels like it goes on for hours. And it sucks all the energy of the last few minutes down its long

drain and you know i mean i'm not going to deny that the police made a couple of all right records but i mean you think is it possible to give less of a toss about anyone than was given about the police in early 1995 but again it's this dark shape under the water like this reminder that the circles were growing smaller and the day was almost done and you know a few years down the line it would just be back to this you know back to this but it was nice to see that video with them larking around trying to look at mates. It's pretty nauseating when you think about what was actually going on in that burn.

It's definitely very odd that this should have appeared and also the fact that it's live also there's a certain kind of roughness that is going to potentially suffer by comparison with the kind of mild and more immaculately produced mid-90s fare. What's happened to make them want to release this?

I mean, was it time for Sting to go, oh, yeah, well, it's time for me to start banging on about my old band because my solo career is not really doing much at the minute? I think this is what happens when you go back to these kind of, like, when you do these kind of retrospectives, and it's surprising, the whole schedule of reissues or whatever doesn't seem to make an awful lot of sense. And, you know, so you realise that something by the Beatles is at number five in 1981 or whatever.

And you think, what was that all about? And it doesn't seem to kind of be particularly logical. It doesn't seem to particularly chime in with what was happening in the mid-90s. But, you know, the police were huge. And if they were to reissue a live album, I suppose it was sufficient heft, it would warrant at least, you know, a kind of glancing appearance on top of the pops. But also remember that if you were in the police when you were at university, when they

were current, at this point, you'd only be in your mid 30s. And this is the beginning of people over 30 continuing to be pop consumers. They don't feel that they have to stop. Like now, even old gits like us feel like somehow we're still part of the pop audience. There's another thing as well. It's to do with the nature of pop consumption. I mean, it's funny watching this episode. One of the notes I made is this like

everything seems modern beyond repair, but this is pre-internet. And at this point, there was such a phenomenon as what people call 50-pound man. Yeah. And I was one of them, you know, who went out and shopped and spent about 50 quid. What you might get for your 50 quid is not much more than a kind of a CD.

I mean, a Steptoe and a VHS video, Steptoe and some with three episodes for £9.99 or something. You'd come away with not very much at all. You get all that stuff, you know, for about sort of 10 or 15 quid now, or just download it. But yeah, and I guess that like, you know,

this album would have been an artefact and people have gone out and bought it and felt it was money well spent, you know, such as the pop economy yeah i mean sting um he's two years removed from his last solo album and a year away from his next one so yeah it's uh yeah he'd have he'd have waved it through wouldn't he but i mean of course you know we're talking about 1995 which is you know the supposedly the apex of brit pop but you know it's also the same year when all the old, you know, supposedly the apex of Britpop.

But, you know, it's also the same year when all the old shit comes back, because at the end of the year, we're going to have Beatles anthology and Free as a Bird and all that kind of stuff, aren't we? That's right. And this was the year in which the Beatles sold the most records. Right.

In their career. Yeah. Yeah, and also as well as people who are slightly older than usual, still buying pop and rock records. Yeah. Yeah. And also as well as people who are slightly older than usual, still buying pop and rock records. Yeah. You had a new generation who liked old stuff and felt no pressure to reject old stuff.

And it was just accepted now that if you were 21, especially if you like guitar music, just accepted now that if you were 21 especially if you like guitar music that the guitar music of 30 years prior would be something that you would worship and revere rather than something that you felt needed to be smashed yeah but of course yes a strong inferiority complex in terms of like you know rock and pop past definitely yeah and a justified inferiority complex, it has to be said. It's not just that these kids were all backwards looking. It was that, you know, they listened to Shed Seven

and then it's like, you know, have you ever heard of this group, The Smiths from 10 years ago? It's like Shed Seven, but about a thousand times better. But I mean, we are, you know, we are seeing a lot of bands who are looking back to the late, to the British rock bands of the late 70s. But, you know, you seeing a lot of bands who are looking back to the late to to the british rock bands of the late 70s but you know you wouldn't think the police would be one of the

bands they'd be looking at was anybody trying to copy the police at this time in 1995 well apart of nirvana of course um yes i don't think they were doing that in 1995 to be honest I'm talking broadly about the 90s of course no, no they weren't, no, the police like I say, it was the other side of the sun it was like Joy Division or whatever I mean 1995, Joy Division couldn't seem further away

from the spirit of the times and yeah, anything like that post-punk era or whatever but I think, sadly yes, it's certain people of a certain age, you know, probably got a little bit of disposable income and this would have been an essential £20 purchase. So, the following week, Can't Stand Losing You dropped 22 places to number 49. Anyway, what is on TV afterwards? Well, BBC One is now showing some chameleons on Wildlife on 1,

then Paul Merton's Life of Comedy, the Nine O'Clock News, the last ever episode of Absolutely Fabulous, a repeat of men behaving badly, then Question Time and the Elizabeth Montgomery film Sins of the Mother. BBC Two is showing a documentary about child anorexics, then the documentary series Minders, Crying for Help, about psychiatrists in East London, Top Gear, the film Blind Judgment, and finishes off with Newsnight and Late Review. ITV is now screening Julia Somerville looking at wild bird egg snatchers in 3D, The Bill, Heartbeat, then some walruses are chopped up and fed to foxes in Animal Detectives, News at Ten, the Frost programme,

and the London Monarchs versus the Scottish Claymores in the World League of American Football. Channel 4 is running the sports programme Fair Game, then Brookside, the Animal documentary series The Tool Users, then a documentary about Locker Bear, then a debate about that documentary, then The Kids in the Hall, Dispatchers, and then Cho-Che out of Happy Days

plays a teenage alcoholic in the TV film The Boy Who Drank Too Much. Fuck Cho-Che, fucking Donald Trump supporter. Kids in the Hall was good. ITV's got a lot of crime and animal shit

and even animal crimes but that was the last ever episode of absolutely 1995 my god yes I mean it probably was the last

I'm sure they came well they did a few specials afterwards yeah yeah wow yeah so me boys

what are we talking about in the Melody Maker offices tomorrow? Or the pub next to the Melody Maker offices? Yeah. Taylor, did you come in and brag on about your lovely day out? Yeah, yeah. I went to the Top of the Pops being filmed. And it was skill! I do remember Taylor coming into the office at this time

and talking about how he'd just seen Living Joy on Top of the Pops the previous night, and it made him feel so alive. Did he come in on roller skates pulled by a couple of dogs in some white trousers or something? Yeah, that was another day. I don't know. You see, the trouble with this Top of the Pops,

there's not a lot there to stimulate playground or workplace chat the next day and there wasn't that much at the time, I mean it took a fire starter to do that you know what I mean, by this point and it's the problem with everyone thinking they're cool it's that they think they don't really

have to try or they don't have to you know, put a flaming headdress on or something it's a bit of a shame. I think what's good about this episode is it's a solitary reminder of a certain kind of reality. One reality for instance about the 1990s is that one of the biggest acts was the Lighthouse family.

This was, you know, 1995 people look back it was the year of it was the year of all of this stuff actually. I mean the closest I think that you get to a sort of sense of the rumble of the times is actually the Supergrass thing, to be honest, I suppose. And I guess, you know, this particular selection,

probably be just talking a little bit about that, because in 1995, it's still a rumble. We don't even quite know at this point. I still think Oasis are good, you know. I mean, it's not, you know, the whole Britpop thing hasn't sort of happened there isn't a sort of aftermath of that recognition of it all it still seems like an emergent energy even at this time yeah I mean how much of the Britpop stuff was actually just

whipped up by your lot in order to sell a few extra copies I think it was just for me it was just the fact that like new guitar bands had nowhere to go except to be slightly kind of retro or whatever. And there's some sort of very kind of modest flotilla among all that lot. You know, your Jeans and your Recobellis and people like that. But I think there was a definite drift, and it was sort of guitar music that was kind of like just replete with reminders of the past. And Britpop is obviously a very kind of, you know, nostalgic thing.

It's a very sort of heritage kind of thing. It's almost like, you know, this is what we're about. This is the tradition we've established. I sort of said all I had to say about the 90s and I wrote a massive article, which is probably still on there. Which you must read. If you've not, Pop Crazy Youngsters, if you've not read crazy youngsters if you've

not read this taylor parks brit pop whack them into google and read it's fucking it's an amazing article still on the quietest you see the thing is uh i spilled my guts out in that and it's i mean i didn't just want to repeat myself but it's um but it is strange looking back because this is my youth. And I think that's partly why I haven't thought of that many funny things to say this week. I've just been, you know, ranting on about stuff because this is my youth. And there's a sense that doing this now is like the big end of a day in the life piano chord that just closes that chapter, right? Like I lived it, then I talked about it. Now it's just middle age illness and death lying ahead.

So that's why I've been a little bit sober this week, that and the cold. But if we plug in, I mean, I did write this book called 1996 and the End of history and i was going to write this whole in australia about the 1990s but then i thought no that's just you know we um that's just too huge a project really for the you know the money i was getting whatever so i switched i just focused specifically on the year of 1996 but i suppose one of the broad things and

it was you know like 1995 is the the word it was this unique decade, the 1990s. People talk about, everyone always says, you know, we live in troubled times. And people were saying in the 1990s, oh, these are troubled times. But these were news you've got to untroubled times. And that's not likely to be revisited at any point in the future. You know, it's a combination, I suppose, of like being post, you know, the end of the sort of collapse of the Berlin Wall, pre 9-11, you know, it's bookended by those two things sort of geopolitically. But also it was a relatively, there was actually relative prosperity post 1992.

There'd been a bit of a recession in the late 80s, early 90s, and it produced all kinds of phenomena. It produced this kind of euphoria, you know, that's manifested in anybody from sort of like, you know, Chris Evans, you know, to Oasis. But it's a strange kind of euphoria. It's not like the 60s euphoria, which is very future-looking, you know, we're on the verge of the age of Aquarius. It's very much almost like kind of harking back to the spirit of 66 that's only going to be manifested in Euro 96 and whatever.

It's not particularly future-looking, you know, it's all averting its gaze to the future. Right's going to be all right again, like it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it was a very odd mood in the 1990s. And so I was looking at it. It's interesting that I see certain things like supergrass or whatever are part of the thing that's kind of building towards the crest of that or whatever. And then later there's a realisation of how slightly staid and disappointing

the Conservatives is. And what are we buying on Saturday? Do you know what? I'd be tempted by... I think the old Scatman thing is... I mean, it's a terrible sort of like chassis to the record or whatever. But there's something I have sort of like great softness for, you know,

a soft spot for Scat. It's a of like great softness for, you know, a soft spot for Scat. It's a lovely backstory. And Scat, you know, was obviously something that Louis Armstrong developed in the 1920s when he was at the Hot Five.

And the story is that like he was singing, it's the Hebe Jebes, I think it is the record. And the story is that he dropped his lyric sheets and so he had to kind of vocally improvise,

you know, on the spot. And this is considered one of the great innovations of the 20th century. You know, it's like vocals that depart from the verbal, you know. And so scat is actually an enormous kind of thing, you know, potentially in the 20th century. And so, you know, obviously it's a bit kind of gimmicky and retro here, but I have a tremendous spot for it.

And, you know, he does some lovely scatting, you know. I think that, you know, I think the scat man, especially to And, you know, he does some lovely scatting, you know. I think that the, you know, I think the scat man, especially to say, you know, his eventual fate and all that, it's probably the most affecting thing for me, actually, of all the things that we listen to tonight. What does this episode tell us about 1995? In terms

of the charts, it tells me what I remember to have been the case, which that the british charts were mostly split between three styles which was american r&b euro dance and a bit of brit pop and almost everything else had to fit in around that and take on that form whether it was eurovision or boy bands because take that are in the chart with their sort of Gallagher-like ballad. Even Football Records up to a point, but they always drag behind a bit.

But there's not much in this show that doesn't fall somewhere in that triangle. Britpop is kind of represented quite strongly in this episode, but it's not dominating it. Well, it never dominated anything, that's the thing, except for the bloody music papers. I mean, it was, like I say, it was like most of these groups were, you know,

scraping in at number 35, you know. For me, it's there is the sense that, as I say, even before the internet comes along and has this kind of ruinous effect on the music that, as I say, even before the internet comes along and has this kind of ruinous effect on the music industry, music writing, all that kind of stuff, you know,

people are suddenly... You know, I mean, there was a lot of money around in the industry at this particular point, but, I mean, obviously, post the internet, when that really kicks in in the 21st century, broadband or whatever, all that money disappears and that creates a terrible crisis. But even at this point, it's almost like,

even if the internet had never been invented, there would have been a crisis because the cupboard of the new is getting a bit bare, basically. And I think you see all kinds of stuff here. I mean, you know, it's almost like, you know, there's a strong sense of the sort of the retrograde, I think, that you're getting throughout this episode, that there aren't, there isn't going to be,

and people still, people still imagine blindly that the detonation that was Punk, it was one of these things, it was like a kind of Icelandic geezer. It was just like in another, you know, in a certain period of time, it will happen again. You know, these eruptions appear, there was one in the 60s, there was Punk,

and there'll be another one soon, don't worry. But I was thinking, no, there won't be any more eruptions are periodic. There was one in the 60s. There was punk. And there'll be another one soon, don't worry. But I was thinking, no, there won't be any more eruptions like this. And there actually weren't. And I think that by this time, you really get the sense of that, that in both rock and pop, you're facing this sort of ecological crisis, basically.

I think the one thing you can take away from this episode, looking back from two decades later, is never trust an optimist. And that, Pop Craze Youngsters, is the end of this episode of Chart Music. All that remains for me to do is the usual shit, www.chart-music.co.uk, facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast.

You can join us on Twitter at chart music t-o-t-p and of course you can chuck us some money at patreon.com slash chart music before we go let me just thank some more people who laid the money down for chart music james retter robin goad tim casey ian gray michael gale gareth murden, Matthias Recker, Steve Parsons, Tim Robinson, Conrad Mewton, Mark Brennan, Blake Norton, Frith Tiplader and Char. They all stepped up to the pay window. They all slapped the dollar on the counter. They've all been snogged by us behind the bus shelter. They're in the chart music gang

so thank you very much Taylor Parks thank you very much David Stubbs thank you our privilege is ever my name's Al Needham and skidididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididid on first take excellent shark music hosanna to the son of david blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Simon Mayo's Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, tonight at 7, on Radio 1. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's.

It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.