Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #22: July 4th 1985 - A Horrible Time For Crisps, And For Pop

Episode Date: March 30, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: have you got crabs? In this edition, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, we decided to give you the opportunity to watch our selected episode of Pops along with us (providing you keep a finger on the pause button, as we're over five times longer). It's just come out on BBC4, giving you an invaluable opportunity to tut to yourself and say; "God, they didn't even mention that Richard Skinner keeps saying "It's the way you tell them" to Simon Bates, the thick twats." Yes, we're smack in the middle of the Eighties, and a mere nine days away from Live Aid - and no-one realises yet what a massive fault-line it's going to create in Popland, when the dinosaurs come marching back and cram everything around them into their gaping maws. Least of all us, as we're too busy skulking around in a post sixth-form haze, sitting through a Saturday detention due to Tipp-Ex-related obscenities, and pitching a Pants Tent to George Michael in Barry Island Butlins.  Musicwise, however, this episode veers all over the shop, from Pete Burns taking the last stand for Pop Weirdness to Tears For Fears poncing about in Montreux to Paul Weller in his Pants to Oompah Reggae to Mick Hucknall annoying people trying to play pool to Roland Gift singing like he's got a hot bit of potato in his mouth to Ian Astbury dressing up like someone who reads palms in a caravan off Blackpool Pier. It's actually better than expected, although the No.1 is depressingly rammel. And as luck would have it, one of us - who was a Hip Young Cockleslinger at the Barry and District Times - has pulled out his scrapbook and treats us to his original reviews.  Neil Kulkarni and Simon Price join Al Needham for a solid pick at the scab of 1985, veering off on the usual tangents, which include having to go to school with the Topless Lovelies, the correct procedures of cock-drawing, trying to dress like Paul Weller and ending up looking like Eric Morecombe, Quincy Punks, and the Treacherous Steph of Basingstoke. Naturally, swearing is deployed. Often. [audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/chartmusic/22_-_July_4th_1985_-_A_Horrible_Year_For_Crisps_And_Pop.mp3] Download  |  Video Playlist |  Subscribe  |  Facebook  |  Twitter Subscribe to us on iTunes here. Support us on Patreon here.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do you like listening to? Erm... Chart music. Chart music. Hey! Up you pop-crazed youngsters and welcome to the latest edition of Chart Music, the podcast that gets its hands right down the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops.

I'm your host, Al Needham, and I am flanked with the pulsating musical brains of Simon Price and Neil Kulkarni. Hello there. How are we chaps? Very well, thank you. Spring is in the air. It is, yeah, it is. I'm sort of, at the moment, hoping the Russians love their children too. Yes.

Because I'm sure a lot of people are. Although faintly alarmed, actually. You know, previously we mentioned that Coventry is city of culture. I'm alarmed at the news that both Liam Gallagher and the fucking Stereophonics are coming to Coventry for something called the Radio One Weekend, whatever that is. If this is what the increased attention given to Coventry by the City of Culture means, I think we should send it back, to be honest with you. Give it to Paisley instead.

You'd rather languish in anonymity than attract that kind of attention. Well, the thing is, I live well near the park where this is going to happen. So it's going to be, you know, it's going to be audible from my back garden, which is, so I'm going to have to seal myself off for that day, I think. Can't you have a massive bonfire or something? Yeah, I think it's time to do the run through.

Bonfire and fans. It's time to do the run through for the, you know, the zombie apocalypse, basically, and seal all borders. So before we get stuck into this episode and the episode of Top of the Pops we're going to pull apart with our little hands this week, it's another reminder

that we have now got a Patreon account. Patreon.com slash Chart Music. Yeah, I remembered it. Good for me. Basically, chaps, as we said in the previous episode, we need your money fast. We've got shit equipment and we're poor writers previous uh episode we need your money fast we've got shit equipment and we're we're poor writers aren't we man we're scuffling it's a hard knock life for us yeah it

really is i mean and as a quick reminder simon tell tell the good folk tell the pop crazy youngsters if you will what you're recording through at the minute well i'm recording through an iphone which i think comes from where tony Tony Blair was still in power. So, yeah, that gives you some idea of the vintage of equipment. It's not kind of cool vintage, the kind of stuff that, you know, the White Stripes might make an album with. It's just shit vintage.

Yeah, it's terrible, isn't it? Because you did have a $10 Chinese microphone, didn't you? I did have a $10 Chinese microphone, but we need at least $11 to replace it unfortunately Neil, tell the world what you're recording through at the minute I mean to be honest with you, my penury has forced me to a life of crime

I'm recording through a stolen microphone yeah, well this is, you know, I work at a media college and we have a few of these things knocking about but they're well old so I'm, I'm, open quote marks,

borrowing this. But, no, I need better. It is terrible. Look at what you've forced me to. So hopefully the Patreon account will enable me to

leave behind this life of crime. Well, we've got plenty of people who have already pledged a bit of money, kicked in a bit of cash for, for us, for us poor people here at Chart Music.

I just want to run through a few names. Friends of the show, if you will. So Darren Williams, Otter Lee, Neil Denner, Richard Coppin, Richard Ogood. Oh, you've all kicked in some dollar for us. David Sperry, Darren Hubbard, John Skillbeck, Anthony Greggner. They all laid the fucking money down for chart music, as did Tim Jones, Greg Palin, Russell Cope, Chris Adams, Jason Brooks, Andy Mullen, Lee Pelletiero, Martin Baker,

Fletcher Wilkinson, Michael Burke, and Alan McGregor. That's all I'll say for now. Those people, thank you very much. You really care about us. You really love us. Legends, legends, legends. It's all blokes, isn't it? Why is it all blokes who listen about us. You really love us. Legends, legends. It's all blokes, isn't it? Why is it all blokes who listen to us?

I don't know. Come on, ladies. Dig into your pocket, into your purses. You know you like our sexy, sexy voices. Don't be shy, girls. Kick a bit of dollar in the G-string. We need Geldof to start shouting. We need Geldof to say, fuck the address and all that kind of stuff.

Yes, we do. Yes, yes, yes. So, anything pop and interesting to talk about? That's all bollocks, isn't it? Who listens to modern music? What kind of loser listens to modern music? Seriously. You know, all right, Janelle Monáe's new two tracks are absolutely phenomenal.

They've blown my mind. But apart from Janelle apart from you know it's all a load of bollocks as as coventry's own specials would have put it yeah indeed and bollocks to it all so pop craig's youngsters let's not fanny about let's get stuck into this episode and this episode comes at you all the way from july theth, 1985. Oh, eh? Reason I picked this one is because I thought, you know what? All the pop craze youngsters are watching the repeats of Top of the Pops on BBC4. Yeah.

And I thought, you know what? Let's select an episode that's either just about to turn up on their schedules or have just been. Yeah. So this one was the nearest one to hand. So hopefully by the time you hear this, you'll be able to watch along as long as you watch it really

slowly because obviously we go on a little bit longer than they do. Yeah, basically all those blokes whose names you just read out will be sat there with a kind of pause button on BBC4 really pissing off their other halves. No, no, hang on a minute. I've got to see what Neil Karkar's got to say about this.

Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, definitely. So, yeah, 1985, summer of 1985, July of 1985, early July of 1985. We are only about nine days away from Live Aid, which is the absolute brick wall that runs through the pop music map, if you will. Yes. So, you know, we've discussed before, you know, I always used to say that when I was taping Top of the Pops and pulling them down from the various torrent sites, my cutoff

point was this very month. Anything after this time, I'm not interested in. So before we go into it, chaps, let's refresh everyone's memory and tell us why Live Aid is that thing. You know, it's weird. I only see it as that in retrospect because at the time, nobody knew the sort of malign effect it was going to have. And I associate the day of Live Aid with a taste of cheesy Wotsits and orange aid because I was babysitting for my mum's mate's toddler.

And I was sat there eating the snacks that had been laid off for me and hovering over because I didn't have a video recorder. Jesus. I was hovering over a cassette recorder with a Memorex tape in it, waiting to record my favourite bits, my favourite bands. And I was really into it. I mean, a few months earlier, I'd run a band-aid disco at the local nightclub, Tramps, to raise a few quid for the appeal. Yeah. So, you know, I kind of bought into the good intentions of it,

big time, back then. But it's only in retrospect that you do see this kind of dividing line. And it was basically the day that the dinosaurs came marching back in yeah and um i talk about my favorite bands i i i maintained in in the face of all uh sane evidence that the style council were the best band of the whole day yeah um just because they were my favorite band he played that day second band on one though yeah yeah and evidently they were not. So it was essentially, it coincided with the CD revolution. And it was a time when dads,

well, mums and dads were watching TV all around the world, but particularly in Britain. And suddenly not feeling that pop had shut them out and alienated them. It was all their old heroes uh coming back and basically wiping the floor with the younger generation has to be said that people like uh queen and david bowie and so on uh put on the old guard wiped the floor with the likes of

jiran jiran adamant and pains me to say at the style council yeah um and suddenly it was okay to go out and uh well a buy the new albums by these artists but you know reinvest in greatest hits and it changed music forever because um essentially record companies realized that uh there was money to be made with almost zero outlay in just reselling back catalog um and also it it did it it led to kind of the real kind of megastar culture of the second half of the 80s it it led to you know these these kind of giants bestriding the earth like springsteen and madonna and prince and jacko and all i mean jacko was already huge but yeah but you know what i'm saying and uh um all the kind of weird freaky interesting stuff was pushed to

one side and also it imbued pop with this new sense of moral responsibility that pop was there. That the reason pop was there was no longer transcendence or rapture. It was just to, you know, do the decent thing, do the right thing. And everything got very boring. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, but like Simon, for me, all of those things that Simon said are absolutely spot on. But I, likewise, only felt that in retrospect.

At the time, I was excited about it. And the reason being was that our school actually banned Live Aid. No. What? Well, we were not allowed. Because, you know, there was so much talk about Live Aid and the Ethiopian famine. You know, we were not allowed to actually do anything for charity for live aid we were actually called into an assembly and we were told the ethiopian regime is a communist regime and we are not allowed to support it and that's yes that's the kind of fucking school i went to um so

you know that that forbidden sense of it. I was actually really, really tremendously excited about Live Aid. And as a kid, you accept things at face value. It was only kind of two years later, really, when I started reading The Melody Maker, to be honest, and it's people like David Stubbs and Simon Reynolds who still refer to Live Aid as this kind of zenith of, yeah, the pompous kind of sanctimony of pop, that I sort of twigged that, yeah,

something actually pretty horrible was going on there that was less about helping people and perhaps more about shoring up other people's egos and actually really look thinking of the music around that period um you know the last time me and pricey i think we're doing chart music we were talking about 83 and we could already see the signs that music was getting this way live age useful as a kind of you know perfect middle point but things were getting shit for a quite a while before that in terms of the pomposity of pop stars the sort of wrong sanctimonious pomposity of pop stars and things stuck around being terrible for some time afterwards so live aid i think is a really useful central marker but at

the time like anyone else i was suckered by it and i was excited by it i mean you weren't here for it were you neil no i wasn't so i was massively annoyed about the fact that i was flying to bloody india um when i when i wanted to be at home you know obviously watching status quo but um you know, I wasn't here and it annoyed me for some time afterwards it was lovely when Melody Maker gave me a sort of righteous reason for actually missing it. And also, it was a bit like

FA Cup Final Day. It was exactly like FA Cup Final Day. Because, you know, Match of the Day being the football equivalent to Top of the Pops basically we were rationed our music in these weekly instalments of Top of the Pops, basically we were rationed our music in these weekly installments of Top of the Pops in the same way that football fans were rationed

these little snippets of matches on Match of the Day. And, you know, pretty much FA Cup final day was the only day you had a whole day of, you know, the build-up and the aftermath and the whole game itself. Yeah. It was like that. You sort of sit back and luxuriate in live music being on TV for a whole day it was extraordinary

yeah that was quite the thing wasn't it I mean they'd been all day kind of like whistle well all evening whistle tests and a Midsummer Night's Tube and stuff like that but the actual day and evening going into the early hours

of the morning oh man man, it was amazing. It was like having MTV before the event. Yeah, and so rare back then. Whereas now, you know, I actually actively avoid the television when it's Glastonbury weekend. Oh gosh, yeah. So what was in the news this week? Radio 1 News So, what was in the news this week?

Well, Reagan and Gorbachev have announced a summit in Geneva later this year. The Liberal SDP Alliance are about to win the Brecon and Radnor by-election. Arthur Scargill becomes the NUM president for life. John McEnroe is knocked out of Wimbledon by Kevin Curran. But the big news this week is that Prince Charles has revealed that the Queen really likes Wham. Yeah, she heard one of their tunes on the telly and said she liked it.

I wonder which one it was. It couldn't have been Wham rap. No, or Young Gun today. That's quite an achievement for Wham to be down with the Chinese Communist Party and the House of Windsor. That takes some doing. So on the cover of the NME this week is R.E.M. On the cover of Smash Hits, Howard Jones. The number, again, the number one LP is Misplplaced childhood by marillion jesus fucking out yeah

in america the number one single is heaven by brian adams and the number one lp is the soundtrack to beverly hills cops so me boys what were we doing in july of 1985 um in 85 well i was i just turned well i was 12 i was about to be 13 when this episode came out i think i was just basically starting to properly um hate school um i was sort of a year into constantly being on report as i was for four years and i was just constantly in the shit for really stupid stupid stuff yeah um not because i was yeah it's not because i was particularly naughty it's just i got caught for everything that I did. So I think, I remember 85 as being the first year I got a Saturday detention.

Oh, no. Oh, yeah. Nine till 12, right in the morning, I had to go into school. Serious punishment, that. And it was for a silly thing. I added spunk, not real spunk, Tippex spunk. Tippex spunk to a Tippex cock on a teacher's um bum you haven't changed um no i haven't changed he had been he was a teacher called gaz morgan who stank of fags and kind of sour defeat much like i do now um and he used to go around the

class sort of looking at people's work bending bending over to do so. And people have been progressively creating this cock on his ass. Like one person had done a bollock and then another person had done another bollock. You know, somebody had added the hairs and then somebody had done the shaft. And I just added a couple of dots of spunk. Like you should do. Yeah. As is the law. It is the law.

And that, you know, obviously I'm a bit cack-handed and I wasn't gentle enough or something. Like you should do. Yeah. As is the law. It is the law. And that, you know, obviously I'm a bit cack-handed and I wasn't gentle enough or something. And he noticed. Straight Saturday detention. So, yeah, I was really starting to properly hate school in 85. Was it you, Neil, when there was the recent blizzard in the UK and people were doing snow cocks? It was complaining that there aren't enough

droplets of jizz coming out the top. Well, piss poor. To be honest with you, I've let the lack of hair in recent cocks, pictorial cocks, pass. People shave these days. I've accepted

that. That's been going on for years and I think it's something that can't be resisted now. But the lack of spunk, it's a sad indictment, I think, of kids' imaginations. Yeah. Because this reminds me, I mean, the last time Simon spoke

was the Mike Reid episode. And I didn't bring up that when Blue Tulip was writing those letters to Mike Reed, the camera panned across one of the envelopes. Oh, yes. And she'd drawn the worst cock and balls ever. It was awful, man. It was absolutely just anatomically wrong.

But it's what she imagined. But she's got the droplets, yeah. It's what she imagined Mike Reed's cock looked like. You know, one can only assume. Like the one Lynn does on that teacher's back in that episode of Iron Man and Partridge. The one that looks like a mouse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Finger pops.

Is this why you had to go away to India? By the way. No, no, no. They weren't hiring me out of the country. It's just, yeah, it was just I was always caught. I never got away with anything. Yeah, I was like that. And that was that was what was annoying but i mean obviously the explanation i had to give to my mum for this

saturday detention that was a tricky thing but um yeah saturday detentions our school did them and speaking to other people i think that's quite a rare thing yeah they detention yeah it's outside their jurisdiction you think like what it is yeah it is yeah but it was one step away i mean that that was the kind of one step away from suspension and then obviously expulsion i mean i wasn't a bad kid but um i had a few saturday dts a teacher when i left told me i broke the record for detention wow it wasn't that bad i wasn't setting fire to anything no i was just a silly sod a pure isle and i remember one of my reports actually in 85 the headmaster kind of

wrote at the end, neurosurgeon or dustman, the choice is his so I'm quite glad that as a music journalist I kind of went for the middle path you're fixing our brains while throwing the bad stuff in the dumper yeah

this was the summer holiday between lower and upper sixth for me um heady days you know kind of delirium of hormones and angst um typical for that age defined for me by standing against the wall at teenage house parties while everyone else got off with each other and i didn't and walking home alone and that's how i remember it um my two my two main obsessions musically were the Smiths, who I'd seen in Cardiff on my 17th birthday, and Prince. And I'd sort of begun dressing as a dandy retro hybrid of the two.

Oh, fucking hell. I know. What, are you a bollock naked with some gladioli over your cock or something like it? Love sex, eh? Pretty much. There's an image. We wonder why no women listen to us no it was no basically i'm i'd go into this place called jacob's market in cardiff uh which is that sort of uh vintage antiques uh indoor market and

i buy up um vintage uh granddad shirts and brooches and dinner jackets and and put that sort of retro look together and then and it was it was basically it was the year that i really discovered old stuff you know old culture meaning stuff like james dean and oscar wilde both morrissey approved obviously and natalie wood films and motown and eddie cochran and t-rex and and all that stuff um and i was financing this by by working at barry island butlins um yeah i was i was doing a summer job selling seafood um and uh i i couldn't even steal any of it because i just turned vegetarian no i know um and um it was a time of um ankle bracelets and rara skirts and choose life t-shirts that's how i remember butlins but in my case I know. And it was a time of ankle bracelets and rah-rah skirts and choose life T-shirts.

That's how I remember Butlins. But in my case, Frankie say, I'm the unemployed in big letters, which I thought was amazing. But, right, my uniform as a seafood seller was a very uncool white coat and trilby and a blue pinstriped apron over the top of that. Sexy, right? Yeah. and trilby and a blue pin striped apron over the top of that sexy right and um yeah and right and i i was wearing that um the previous summer doing the same job when i had my first kiss right um it was it was it was over the seafood trolley um i know already i'm painting quite a scenario here

um with a girl called steph from basingstoke um and it was probably to the sound of jerry and the pacemakers performing live in the background because it was a festival of the 60s weekender um and i remember her mouth tasting of cigarette smoke and to this day i have a profound erotic association with ashtrays because of that so i, for me to have waited until the age of 16 before kissing anyone shows what a late developer I was. I was very naive. So to put in context how naive I was, I remember a load of blokes from the valleys

turned up in a sort of cabaret bar at Butlin's, and I was walking around with this basket trying to sell seafood to them, and they all asked, Oi, mate, have you got crabs? Yes, that one, yes. Have I told you this one before? Because I... No, no, mate, have you got crabs? Yes, that one, yes. Have I told you this one before? No, no, no, no, no, no, you haven't.

I began telling them that I had crab sticks and they were already falling about laughing before I could get my answer out. And I didn't know. I didn't understand why that was funny. I didn't get it. That's how naive I was. So only this year, 85,

Steph from Basingstoke turned up again. And one night after I'd finished my shift, I met up with her in the Butlins Disco. Oh, fucking hell. Yeah. Hey, listen, exciting times. And my main memory is that we had a slow dance to Careless Whisper by George Michael.

And the problem was that I was wearing a pair of fashionable pleated trousers. And when our bodies parted, I was visibly showing my enjoyment. Oh no! Oh, she felt your cockle! In what fans of Curb Your Enthusiasm will know as a pants tent.

And I turned to... That's really vividly stayed with me. I turned up the next night, hoping to run into her again. But, you know, what did I see? The treacherous Steph from Basingstoke snogging someone else. And that was the end of that. But to be fair, I did stink.

You're never going to dance again, are you now? I'm never going to dance. Guilty pleated trousers, I've got no rhythm. But to be fair to her, I did stink of cockles, probably. but to be fair to her I did stink of cockles probably the other the other big the other big development in my life was that I'd become a music journalist um I think I've mentioned this before but the previous year in 84 I've written a letter of complaint to the Bowery District News moaning that there's nothing for young people and they they wrote back to offer me my own column. So for two years, I was writing this singles reviews column

called Simon Says. And you'll be delighted to hear that I've found a scrapbook containing these columns, including, yeah, including several of the singles we'll be talking about in this episode. Ah, fantastic.

Which I shall refer to as we go through and compare my opinions now with my opinions then. That's, oh. There's something really important about Simon's priapic memories. In that, what he said earlier about this was the year that I started investigating stuff that was old. Oh, no!

No, no, sorry, that sounds wrong. But, I mean, what we'll see later, I think, in a lot of the things on this episode, is precisely that, that an awful lot of bands and an awful lot of artists in 85 were kind of disgusted with 85 and had started exploring what was out there in a big, big way. And it's a kind of common thread that runs through 85, a kind of horror with what's going on and a desire to disappear into the past. Yeah, definitely. I can say that as well.

I mean, I just finished sixth form and failed all my O levels again I was thinking about well what do I do now do I go on the dole or do I have another go at failing my O levels so I was just aimless disaffected youth personified possibly because I was

skin I'd start buying up old records as well I used to go to this place called Rob's Records, which still exists in Nottingham. And it was just like a vinyl landslide. And you'd go through it and you'd be able to pick up amazing shit for 20p. And I'd already bought... I remember when the 12-inch release of Sex Machine

and Get On The Good Foot had come out. I think it was the year before, so I was full into James Brown at the time and just getting into Sly and the Family Stone and just buying loads of old shit, I mean not interested in hip hop just yet so yeah, just

old shit all the way for me For me it was similar in that you know, I got my pop from my sister really and in 84 she was a full-on wham fan and she was you know practicing dance routines to wham records with the mates in the front room but by 85 she changed and she started bringing home records by the velvet underground and the doors and all these other people and consequently that's what i started exploring as well i think wham's all over the place isn't it just as well you didn't have a slow dance with a queen to

careless whisper eh Simon yeah so you'd have felt my scepter and orb then yeah off with his head then you would need a Tippex cock oh the other thing I want to chuck in I'd start going to gigs I think

not this week but I think the week after I went to see the redskins and the three johns at the garage in nottingham yeah so very jealous you saw the redskins i never did i saw them loads of times redskins played nottingham every fucking other week at one point it was them and them and new model army new model army seemed to be at rock city all the fucking time yeah pretty much lived there i think yeah so what else was on telly today? Well, BBC One has run Play School, Chock-A-Block,

the ladies' semi-finals from Wimbledon, then Gran, Stop, Go, Lasse, John Craven's news round, a repeat of Dr Kildare, then the six o'clock news, regional news in your area, then EastEnders and Tomorrow's World at large where Judy Thand joins the Met

office for the day and tries to predict tomorrow's weather. Top of the Pops is on at 7.55. What the fuck is that all about? 7.55? Yeah, that's not right. That's too late. It's summer though. You know, everyone's had a late tea. BBC 2

has pages from CFAX until 4pm and then they take over the Wimbledon feed into the early evening. At the moment, they're running Victoria Comes West, a documentary about the first year of a Russian musical genius who's defected. ICV has broadcast Alfie Atkins, Mooncat, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Take the High Road, Sons and Daughters, Inspector Gadget, Dramarama, the not-quite-blockbusters Quiz Connections, then the news at 5.45, Crossroads, Emmerdale Farm

and Lynette Newman and Kenneth Williams in the quiz show Who's Baby. While Channel 4 has transmitted Abbott and costello meets the mummy two divorced canadian women in the magazine show female focus then television scrabble a repeat of the winds of war and they're just finishing channel 4 news mention a moon cat there really brought it back to me that obviously i was too old for kids tv but i used to come home from school you're never too old for kids tv son but i come home and switch the telly on and I remember Beryl Reid looking as if she'd been at the Sherry's I'm sorry

I don't want to slander her memory but she always looked pissed on that show fair play to her who's baby wow I've forgotten about that I remember they ran out of babies really so it ended up with being I remember an episode where Phil Linnerton forgotten about that and and i remember they ran out of babies really yeah they're directly related

so it ended up with being like i remember an episode where phil linnet turned up because he was related to leslie crowther or something that's right yes yeah that's the crowd was his father-in-law yeah oh right i see yeah of course whose baby now is known as the jeremy kyle show Jeremy Kyle show. All right, then, Pop Craze youngsters, it's time to go way back to July of 1985. Don't forget, 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. You see one, it's time for Top of the Pops.

Your hosts this week are Simon Bates, who we've already covered in Chart Music No. 8. At this moment, he's on Radio 1 at 10am with Simon Bates' Golden Hour as the Radio 1 Roadshow is in full swing. Today, they've been at the Picky Pool Arena in Bangor with Gary Davis. Your other host. Born in Portsmouth in 1951, Richard Skinner was a journalism student who worked at the local paper before joining BBC Radio Solent in 1971 as a newsreader and the host of the local pop show Beat and Track.

What do you think of that one, Simon? That's a good one, isn't it? Jesus, I thought Simon Says was bad. in it. Jesus, I thought Simon Says was bad. In 1973, he joined Radio 1 as the first presenter of their new strand, Newsbeat, a position he held until 1980. One of his last

tasks in this role was to ring up Paul McCartney in the early hours of December the 9th of that year to break the news to him that John Lennon had been shot. It wasn't a prank call, it actually happened. What a drag. In 1981 he presented the Saturday afternoon slot Rock On and the Friday night review program Round Table. He also became one of the hosts of Whistle Test in 1983 and then became

the presenter of the Top 40 show making him the only person to present that, Whistle Test and Top of the Pops. Not only was he the interviewer when Bob Geldof broke the news that he was organising the recording of Do They Know It's Christmas, he's also getting ready to be the opening presenter of Live Aid. So yeah, important man. What do we remember about these two? Well, the thing withard skinner is you can really tell that he comes from a journalist uh journalism background rather than yeah rather than that kind of pilot radio emperor roscoe hey everybody mr personality kind of thing because he was deeply boring and i suppose in some ways you might say that kind of default voice is

preferable to some of the egotistical excesses of DLT or whatever. The thing with both Skinner and Bates is that they're both men who cannot ever possibly have been young. They seem to arrive into the world age 30, which in those days meant 50. Skinner is

merely boring, but there's something and we've talked about it before, but there's something actively unpleasant about Bates. they both have the hair the hair partings and glasses and the smart casual clothing of maths teachers going to pub for a quick pint at the end of friday afternoon yeah yeah yeah i mean there's kind of nothing to say about skinner he's so dull um except those shades that he's wearing in this episode are they kind of like to say about Skinner. He's so dull. Except those shades that he's wearing in this episode, are they kind of like a piss take of baits? Is that what he's

trying to do? I couldn't quite tell. I hope so. God, I hope so. I just think that they're sort of bosom buddies. They're soulmates like Alan Partridge and Dan, Dan, Dan in that episode. They just converged without realising it. That they're wearing the same stuff.

Like Barry and Moxie of Vida's Own Pet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of like friends by default. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Simply because no one else wants to knock about with them. Bates gets, for me, more sinister as time goes on. At the time, I actually think he had a voice that, in a way, comforted me.

It's a professional voice. I mean, for me, Bates was never a big part of my radio listing. It was more of a school holidays thing because I always missed his show, obviously. Yeah. Or illness. Yes, yes. And I remember sort of in 85, it was kind of my first apprehension that the general public and the man in the street was a cunt you know because um they had a poll in 85 because i remember listening to our tune because of the summer holidays and just being horrified by it i remember they had a poll as to whether

to get rid of it or not and it was overwhelmingly the public wanted to wanted to keep it um but you know as time goes on you find out more about bates you realize he was a bit of a shitster and a bit of a troublemaker at radio yes and you know he's got a bit of a stormy career and you know he's one of those one people who quit a radio station on air do you know i mean because he quit radio devon on air um and he reminds me physically and this is quite a midlands orientated thing but he reminds me physically and in the sense that he wears kind of estate agents gross aviator react to light type shades of do you remember i don't know whether he's an east midlands thing or west midlands things but alan towers used to yeah he used he used to read the news on the mid on the mid on midlands today and and you know he

he famously quit on midlands today um with the line the bbc used to be run by giants now it's run by pygmies with checkbooks and yeah he reminded me um massively of him but of course simon bates at this time for me was more prevalent in my in my life as um the deliverer of those vsc warnings before videos of course um talking about you know the sexual swear words you might you might see in an 18 certificate film and he always seems faintly disapproving that you were watching an 18 film when delivering those things so that's my i mean that's my most powerful powerful memory of bates as i didn't think he was creepy at the time because he's got one of those comfortable professional radio voices but the further I get away from that time,

you realise he really is Partridge. I mean, he really is one of the bases for all those smashy and nicey and Partridge characters. I've got to say, I do like a good quitting on air, though. I think it depends who's doing it, but if you listen to Danny Baker quitting BBC Radio London a few years ago, and it's out there on YouTube. It is extraordinary. It's beautiful to listen

to. I can imagine that I didn't hear Bates' on-air resignation, but I can imagine it was done with a lot less panache and style. Absolutely. I mean, there's odd little facts about Bates, isn't there? That he was an artificial inseminator when he was in New Zealand. Yes.

We mentioned that. Of course we did. How, we mentioned that. Oh, did you? Of course we did. But he's also on that Ferry Age record, isn't he? I didn't know that. And he wrote a thriller. He wrote a book. He wrote a thriller. When he was destitute

he says he wrote a thriller. But I can't find it on Amazon. I bet it's appalling. How thrilling is Simon Bates' idea of a thriller going to be? Let's face it. It's an action-packed show, too. We've got Tears For Fears, The Damned, Fine Young Cannibals and Sister Slay.

And Dead Or Alive over here with their new single, M2D. So Bates, in a cream geography teacher jacket, and Skinner, in an open-necked rolled-up blue shirt, are both wearing Reactolite repeat sunglasses, making them look a bit like middle European sex tourists. After consulting their notes to tell us who's on tonight, they point at the opening act, Dead or Alive with In Too Deep. Formed in Liverpool in 1980, Dead or Alive were fronted by Pete Burns, a former member of the Mystery Girls with Julian Cope and Pete Wyler,

who played one gig in 1977. Originally called Nightmares on Wax and adopting a gothic post-punk sound, Burns changed their name to Dead or Alive and recorded a string of singles which registered on the indie charts throughout the early 80s, leading them to sign to Epic Records in 1983. By this time they had Wayne Hussey as guitarist, they were starting to dip a toe into the then new genre of high energy and Burns was starting to be portrayed in the music press as Boy George's evil sister. After Hussey left to form the mission they went full on dance and first entered the top 40 with a cover of That's The Way I Like It, which got to number 22 in March of 1984. Later that year, though, they teamed up with Stock Aitken and Waterman

and put out You Spin Me Round Like A Record, which got to number one for two weeks in March of this year. This is the follow-up to Love'll Come Back To Me, which got to number 11 in April of this year, is the third release from the LP Youthquake, and it's up this week from number 34 to number 11 in April of this year is the third release from the LP Youthquake and it's up this week from number 34 to number 19. Oh, and the 12-inch version of this song is known as the Off Your Mong Mix.

Yes, it is. Pete Burns, we've mentioned him before, haven't we, chaps? I think it was you, Simon, or possibly Neil that mentioned him as the last weird one standing at this point. Yeah, the last of the freaks, pretty much. I mean, along with Martin Degville of Zeke's Exploding It, Pete Burns was the last of those glorious 80s weirdos who was allowed to become a pop star

before the clampdown really kicked in and dragged us into this dismal conformist world of Curiosity Kill the Cat and Johnny Hates jazz and brother beyond and Rick Astley and all that. So yeah, he's one of the last great eighties freaks and last, the sort of flamboyant gender bending pop stars to break through before pop got boring again.

Um, in my Simon says column, uh, which I found on a bit of yellowing old Barry and district newspaper, uh, not reviewing this single, but reviewing another one. I described him as this year's lovable bisexual.

The thing is, he was bisexual and he was androgynous in his appearance. And this was obviously known at the time. Yeah. In Baryon anyway. But the thing is, for all his androgyny, I don't think he was ever effeminate

i think there's a difference i think he was very masculine in his voice and in his persona he was quite sort of yeah he had a sort of predatory lion-like quality to hit his voice and his stage persona and he was kind of unapologetic he didn't take any nonsense from anyone you wouldn't mess with him um john john klein of the Banshees once showed me the scar from when he got into a fight with Pete Burns and Burns has stamped on his head in stilettos. No! Yes, it was horrible.

It's just like a little three-pronged scar on his head that he showed me. Shit. I know. Yeah, you wouldn't mess. And customers in Probe Records in Liverpool, of course, famously, where he used to work, were terrified of Pete Burns because of his wit and his sharp tongue. And I've got a strange personal connection to Pete Burns because two reasons.

When this record came out... I had a slow dance with him, George Michael. You can laugh, but it's nearly that close. There are two things. Pop up the that close. There are two things. There are two things. First of all, my on-again, off-again girlfriend of the time, not treacherous Steph, was obsessed with him and had his posters on her bedroom wall.

But my current girlfriend, and she just walked through when I was doing the last bit, is actually Pete Burns' cousin wow no yes um yes good lord yes um and uh she may well be listening upstairs right now um so it's funny how these things come around and how the the facial features of Pete Burns one way or another have been quite present in my life what she told you about Pete Burns then come on well just that it was amazing growing up because she's a lot younger than him, but growing up in a family where you had somebody like that

to look up to as this kind of freakish icon of individualism, which I can totally imagine. And yeah. What was it like at Christmas Dews? I don't know about that, but they've definitely got

similarities in dress sense, let's say that. Find out, Simon. So, this song anyway, right? It's not one of Dead or Alive's best, but it's on the album. I think it's there. I think it's the best song.

I love it. Every time that we do chart music, there's always one song that just yanks me. You know, it just reaches its hand out of the speakers and just grabs me by the neck and goes listen to me over and over and over again and it could be a good song and it or it could be a bad song and it for this episode it was this song that i just couldn't help but listen to over and over and over and i just thought no i like it yeah this is good 80s and i think to be honest

with you i was never asked about you spin Me Round never liked it. Really? No it was a bit of a Barry Noble's Astoria song to me but just with a weird singer I could see very little difference between this and all the other rubbish that my sister would go and dance to and That's almost as controversial as me saying I wasn't

bothered about Heart of Glass by Blondie Yeah well that's alright we've all got it in us to be a bit controversial every now and again, Simon. It's just how it is. But this song, I just think this is good 80s, particularly 1985, good 80s. Yeah, I mean, it's on Youthquake,

a word which, of course, has entered the Oxford English Dictionary this year for unconnected reasons. But the way I look at it is, in much the same way that Trevor Horn used The Lexicon of Love by ABC as a kind of showcase for his abilities, Stock Haking Waterman used Youthquake by Dead or Alive as their calling card.

And at this point, Stock Haking Waterman hadn't yet become a completely horrific force in pop. No. There is this really kind of enjoyable, shuddering, shimmering, electro-pop sound all over that album. And even though, all right, you don't like You Spin Me Round,

but I'm saying that because there were four singles released from it and In Too Deep is the best of the post You Spin Me Round releases from it. And the Off You Among mix, which you mentioned, it's brilliant, actually. It's an absolute joy.

I've not heard it yet. Seriously, check it out. I wrote a roundup of the best of dead or alive um after pete died last year for the guardian and i described it as the sound of poured sunlight so there you go check it out beautiful off your mong mix it's brilliant the thing is spin me around i think it dominated my perception of dead or alive at the time because mentally, like most listeners, they were the spin-me-round hitmakers. And the oddity of the sound of that record, it almost had a novelty status, that record, great how I think that record is. Mentally, I would have put it in the same place at the time,

and I remember doing so, as you think you're a man by Divine because of that Aitken Waterman sound. So I wasn't listening much to dead or alive in in 85 but i was constantly reading pete burns in smash hits just being hilarious um you know describing lionel richie's having an ironing board for a chin and calling calling helen terry a crowd yes and stuff like that and i remember there was a great feature in smash it's very close actually to this single's release called may the best man win and it was basically boy

george marilyn um pete burns and tasty tim i think just slagging each other off um boy george saying um pete burns and marilyn are definitely in my shadow there's another quote really i think pete Burns had just come out with the line about him wanting to have a night with 65 sailors or something. And Boy George said, it's one thing being honest,

it's another being disgusting. I think the thing is with Pete and Boy George, and I do think Boy George was getting messianic delusions at the time they were clearly so close in a way and so similar in a way

and it's sweet how they kind of came back together but that rivalry between Pete and Boy George was a really entertaining constant thing in the music press and Pete just always looked amazing I mean I distinctly remember the

double page spread where the lyrics for this song were in smash hit and the lyrics were just you know shoved to the corner and the whole thing was dominated by pete's image because he just looked looked so great and always gave such good quotes i remember him describing i still remember him describing wham as two toothpaste ads with microphones and things like that i i just always thought he was a i wasn't listening too much but i was massively entertained by him the thing is yeah neil's right he uh pete did look amazing and i think he looked amazing twice because everyone says oh it's tragic how he ruined that beautiful face with plastic surgery i think he looked amazing when he had all that work done.

He was just extraordinary. He was this kind of self-created entity. And I really don't see it as any kind of tragedy. The tragedy is what happened to him medically, that it went wrong and he ended up on all kinds of painkillers and caused him great ill health. But I thought he looked phenomenal. And I'm all in favour of body mods.

You know, it's your body. You only live once. Do what you want with it. Exactly, yeah. And can we all agree, by the way, I think he's the best reality TV star ever. I've never seen a better one. He was absolutely hilarious.

Yeah. But, you know, the performance on Top of the Pops, I mean, obviously they've got a new set and everything and there's lots of squiggly neon knocking about. It's quite spacious, isn't it? It is. And it's a bit tame in a way. The band are all wearing success coats, aren't they?

Yes, they are, yes. They've got those very long jackets, which, you know, when bands had a few quid in the bank, they always seemed to get around that time. I think there's a desire in the performance after the slight artifice of You Spin Me Round to prove that they can do it live

it couldn't be more 80s in terms of the instruments that they're playing, those horrible headless guitars and those hexagonal East Ender drums yeah those hexagonal old school satellite dish drums you know there was a live advert actually in that week's Smash Hits for the Dead or Alive Youthquake Tour where it says,

it's your last chance to see the band they said couldn't play live. So clearly that had been said a lot about Dead or Alive, that they were just kind of, you know, a confected thing and they couldn't actually do it live. And there's a desire here, I think, in this performance to calm things down a little bit and prove that they are a proper band. Yeah.

Yeah, and the really weird thing is, with the performances we're going to see tonight, there's a lot of space on the stage, but also a lot of darkness. You know, and the cans of the band are, you know, we can pick out their hairstyles and what they're wearing but we don't really see them that well do we I mean there's a lot

of really bad mullets and success coats as Simon pointed out but there is they are varying alarmingly towards the white pyjama look aren't they? I guess so maybe because he was such a transgressive,

freaky character, there's almost a sort of a desire to not scare the horses too much. You know, once he's finally broken through and had this massive number one hit, it's like, okay, well, let's try and stay on this horse for as long as we can before people find us out as being these, you know, degenerates.

I don't know. Wasn't there some comparison that that you you come across of what pete looks like yes well i've just thought well with his kind of like his lion-y hairstyle and his eye patch it's i it just occurred to me that he looks like a like the the bastard son of rory and boots off animal quackers he's got he's got rory's hair and he's got boots as eye patch. That's a niche reference, but Google him as a kid. It really is, yeah.

To the two people out there who got that, thank you. Thanks for staying with us. Can I just say one more thing about this performance? I mean, I could say it about any bit of this show, but the audience, right? I'm sorry, but I want them all to die, all of them. They're horrible. Glitter boaters, balloons, jumpers pushed up to the elbow. to die all of them, they're horrible glitter boaters, balloons

jumpers pushed up to the elbow they're just so boring we can get on to why they were boring and why culture had gone that way but I just wanted to flag that up already that in this very first clip I'm like oh god what a horrible audience

and you can't really see their faces you just see a kind of sea of three-quarter length jackets and and sort of subversion as wearing a sleeveless t-shirt it's it's a horrible audience isn't it so the following week in too deep jumped five places to number 14 its highest position the follow-up my heart goes bang get me to the doctor only got to number 23 in October of this year and they hung it out as a band all the way to 2011. Alas, Pete Burns died in 2016. I can see the car and I can drive away But I'm in too deep, there's no getting out of it In too deep, no doubt about it In too deep, there's no getting out of it

In too deep, oh yeah I can see the car and I can drive away I can see the car and I can drive away Yeah 19 this week up to number 12 and filmed at the camera, introduces Head Over Heels by Tears For Fears. We've already covered Tears For Fears in chart music number 16, so we'll just say that since we last met them in December of 1983, they got to number 5 over here with Shout, allowed the introduction of their song The Hurting to be sampled on Do They Know It's Christmas, and released the LP Songs From The Big Chair,

which is currently number 9 in the LP charts. This is the follow-up to Everybody Wants to Rule the World, which got to number two in April of this year, was held off number one by We Are the World by USA for Africa, but it got to number one for two weeks in America. And it's up this week from number 14 to number 12. And as Skinner points out, this is a recording of their live performance of the song in Montreux, which doesn't sound all that live to me.

Strokey chin. I mean, even the fact that it's taking place in Montreux, it's just it just says everything about the rise of this new pop aristocracy that, you know, we're supposed to watch them playing to this audience of incredibly privileged, you know, the rich kids of the Vaux Canton raised on Nazi gold, spending, you know, 20 Swiss francs on a small bottle of horrible beer, and shouting woo at these fucking Colgate-faced, toothy,

boring bastards in front of them. Yeah. Where's the stupid with the flare gun when you need it, eh? You know what? It's been a bit of revelation to me doing these podcasts because I thought I quite liked Tears for Fears, but no, it's all right. It's good to find these things out.

And when I actually have to sit and watch them and analyse what they're about, I'm finding I'm kind of veering towards hating them. I'm getting close to that. I mean, I've not changed my opinion at all and i still wouldn't eat a sandwich made by these people at all and they look awful um that yellow fucking shirt he's got on um apparently he had four of those yellow shirts but really yes what you can hear here is that they're being anthemic and being anthemic in this way is nearly always fucking

horrible for me it's analogous to the kind of moves that simple minds were making at the same time the big sing-along the stadium directed thing it's a calculated attempt to crack into america yeah of course all they're talking interviews at the time it's about how it's all about good songs but this is anti-pop music yeah and um to me it's like a headache in musical form. That's what I kept thinking. It's that particular kind of headache when it's Sunday morning and your mum is steaming the veg, but she hasn't opened the windows. And do you know what I mean?

It's just kind of real. You know, the chorus goes, something happens and I'm head over heels. But have you ever heard a song sound less giddy? It doesn't sound giddy at all. Yeah. Oh, by the way you mentioned headless basses in the dead of life kurt smith's headless bass is just so i don't know it's there's something if an instrument can be smug that instrument is smug yeah and i'm wondering if

they ever bequeathed us anything good and and the weird thing is i really liked the 90s indie band manson that mansun that is and um they're the only band I can think of who really really sound like Tears For Fears and somehow that works I'm fine with it but Tears For Fears themselves here's what I reckon if Tears For Fears were your favourite band

you were doing the 80s wrong yeah it's an unpleasantness that's really cemented by the fact it's from montreux as well because montreux whenever it appeared you know montreux jazz festival montreux pop festival it always they always said this as if we were supposed to know what the fuck those things were yeah and these things why was it always so bloody dark in montreux's pop festivals and jazz yeah dark stage dark audience and it just yeah i was always always thought the montreux's pop festivals and jazz festivals. Dark stage, dark audience. And it just, yeah, I always thought the Montreux pop festival

seemed scary and horrible and not something I wanted to go to. Well, when I was a kid, I thought it was Montreux's in Scotland. Because, you know, because of the football results. Well, if you're going to be pedantic, it's Montreux, not Montreux's. Not Montreux, but anyway, yeah. Again, Top of the Pops, it's already 1985, and they're desperate to stare away from videos, aren't they? They don't like the idea of videos being on for some bizarre reason.

Because, you know, the video of this, I actually bothered to look at it, and it's, to be honest with you, much rather them poncing about in Montreux than the video, because it's just them arsing about in a big library with a monkey which sounds about ten times more interesting than it actually is there's an instance

of something I absolutely fucking hated in 80s videos which were the outtakes and the bloopers being kept in to show hey look at us we're just regular guys like everyone else, having a bit of a laugh and making some mistakes. It's like, oh, fuck off.

One of the keyboard players or something, he has to catch a book and he misses it and they show him missing it about four times. It's like, fucking hell, here we are, 1985, we're watching someone being unable to catch a fucking book that someone's thrown at him great thanks I think that

they're doing it for Montreux they're getting this bit of footage they're still trying to resist I think the rise of MTV in a sense they haven't totally surrendered to it like they do like by the time we get to 89 90 there's episodes at the top of the pops where there's like you know five full-length videos basically being shown um at this stage

they're still trying to resist and cling on i guess to what's unique about top of the pops but via montreux or montreux it that's that's bullshit yeah well it's a compromise isn't it because we get shitload of video clips in the countdown, but they're very brief. So the following week, Head Over Heels stayed at number 12. Ha ha, it's highest position. The follow-up, Suffer the Children, only got to number 52 in September of this year and their chart career petered out until the re-recorded Everybody Wants to Run the World got to number 5 in June of 1986, yeah another thing to

thank Bob Geldof for there flies Bates, flanked by the two most 80s-looking women ever, all white skirts and blonde streaks, introduces a band who he points out have been together for nine years, The Damned, with The Shadow of Love. Formed in London in 1976, The Damned accredited with releasing the first punk rock single in October of 1976, but they didn't make an impression on the charts until May of 1979 when Love Song got to number 20. They hung around throughout the early 80s and when

original member Captain Sensible left to go officially solo in 1984, the band were left to pursue a more gothic image. This is the follow-up to Grimley Fiendish, which was their first top 40 single in six years when it got to number 21 in April of this year, and it's up this week from number 29 to number 25. Let's talk about them later, but let's talk about them women, because seriously, you could not get

more 80s women. They're very shak-a-tak. Very, yeah. And, you know, to my mind of the year, know in 1985 they would have been dismissed as sharon's i'm afraid they remind me very distinctly of a girl who was in my school who was in the sixth form with my sister at the time called debbie ashby who became sort of notes oh yeah debbie ashby went to my god uh notorious uh pastry model and other things you know don't move on neil let's go let's go let's go back there because remember there was that infamous

appearance she did when she's with mad lizzie and they put her into a uh they put her into a leotard that was about two sizes too tight. And she was obviously very uncomfortable about it. I felt really sorry for her as I furiously masturbated before going off to school. Sorry, it had to be said. She got expelled from my school for, you know, what she did. And I remember the day after she got expelled. What did she do, Neil?

Well, she appeared in various pornographic publications but the thing that got her expelled was the page three thing with her mom and she was underage to do that i think but um i remember the day after in the coventry evening telegraph there was a great photo of her outside my school next to the sign wearing a kind of sexy mortarboard and black gown you know doing the typical local paper face of just kind of looking a bit shocked um but it was odd because she bought a bit of celebrity to Coventry that we were lacking at that time because I remember there was a terrible nightclub in Coventry called Park Lane um and she went there when she was dating Tony Curtis um Tony Curtis

went out with Debbie Ashby uh so even though I wasn't there, I was far too young, it astonishes me that in that poxy, horrible nightclub, Park Lane in Coventry, Tony Curtis would have been in there in 1985 with Debbie Ashby. But yeah, I was given big Debbie Ashby flashbacks by those two ladies.

Damn. Anyone of that ilk at your school, Simon? No. Oh, man. The nearest I can get your school, Simon? No. Oh, man. The nearest I can get to that, there was a girl in my class at comprehensive school who I saw about nine years later on the cover of the News of the World in stockings and suspenders

riding the former Chelsea footballer Alan Hudson around like a horse. It was great. And I actually ran into her earlier this year and we had a we had a good old discussion about it she looked fucking amazing so yeah big up to her fame then for people that were in your school was just fucking amazing we had a kid who you might remember I don't know if I've mentioned this but there was a bachelor's soup advert um where it was set no it was set in a medieval banquet. And you might not remember it, but this kid, he was in the advert

and he had a line, actually. He said so much nicier in this advert. And we were constantly fucking asking, how much did you get paid? How much did you get paid? And the cunt, he always said, enough. Wanker. Shall we talk about the Damned now then? Yeah, well, funnily enough, talking about people from your town,

two of the Damned in this line-up were from Barry. Oh! Yeah, yeah. Bryn Merrick and Roman Jug from that mid-'80s line-up were from Barry. And it was really exciting because I can remember vividly being in the piss-stinking BT phone box around the corner because we did have a phone, and seeing one of them walk past.

It's like, oh, my God, one of the dam just walked past. So, yeah, that's as good as it got in Barry in the mid-80s, any kind of connection to real pop music. And were they covered in your local newspaper, Simon? They were. One of the cuttings I've got here, there's a lovely big photo of them saying that they're going on tour and their tour includes Cardiff.

And I really just put it in there to mention that, you know, Bryn Meryk was from Barry. So, yeah, full of local pride I was at that. But this is shit, isn't it, this song? Well, it's not really a song, is it? What it is, is the equivalent of a dad trying to scare a child by cupping his hands and doing ghost story sound effects.

Whoa, that thing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It did remind me a lot of Camouflage by Stan Ridgeway. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I quite quite like which obviously came afterwards so you know they they ripped he ripped them off i do quite like that kind of gothic period of the damned but this is kind of goth by numbers um there were there were two mates of mine called screwy and pete um who were massive damned fans and i always associate the dam with them they

were the ones i've mentioned in previous podcasts one of my mates' dad had a speedboat and we used to use the speedboat fuel for making Molotov cocktails, that was Pete of Screwy and Pete so in the very unlikely chance that one of them is listening, you know, hey guys

but I remember just always hanging around their houses and listening to Damned albums and smelling Damned albums because one of them called Strawberries. They had a Scratch and Sniff album called Strawberries. Oh, yes. Yeah, which is amazing. I just think Dave Vanian looks so fucking cool in this performance.

Amazing hair, amazing clothes, that kind of Regency jacket and the frilly shirt and and the dickie davis street going through the hair yes he just looks fucking amazing i would love to look like that it does yeah this is this is goth by numbers and and i do think that the the kind of ambience that top of the pops are trying to give it with the smoke and the green lights and all of that is somewhat undermined by the crowd members and their glittery boaters down the front. It kind of ruins it a little bit. Simon, I have to ask,

is Dave Vanian the patient zero of goth? Is he the first goth? He might be, you know. It's him or Susan Sue, isn't it? Because, you know, even in 1977, he's not that far removed from the kind of like the standard image of goth. He was going for that kind of thing wasn't

it sort of hammer horror thing and even in the 70s yeah you've got you've got a fair point there and when he got together with patricia morrison or the sisters of mercy that made them the ultimate king and queen of goth the sort of goth's first couple valiant does look awesome here i think that duochrome bouffant he's got like like Elsa Lanchester. He looks fantastic. But the weird thing about The Damned is, as time's gone on, obviously I've gone back to the early stuff. And the first album, the first Damned album,

is just one of the greatest records ever made in any genre. It's just fucking fantastic, fantastic record. But for me at the time, for me, the first memory of The Damned is, of course, them doing Video Nasty on Young Ones.

And that was the most powerful image I had of The Damned. V of course, them doing Video Nasty on the young ones. And that was the most powerful image I had of the Damned. And Vanian had that look at that point, didn't he? Yeah. He did. He did massively. And what you can hear here is that because Captain Sensible's out and he's gone to pursue his pop career, out of the picture, Dave Vanian is kind of dominating it,

dominating the sound of the band with with this gotha billy kind of rumble that they've got on and the songwriting of that album but for people of my age i think yeah nasty was the intro and the phantasmagoria album was the first damn thing we heard um so that's what's going on it's not a great song but i like the kind of i like the sound of the song but not what the song actually does the gotha billy textures of it and the bass are fucking fantastic but there's not actually a song behind it. I actually see Captain Sensible quite a lot around Brighton because he lives

around here and he's just this is really not going anywhere but he's just a brilliant bloke. Just such a lovely man and yeah like I said that goes nowhere but yeah top bloke. And he's back in the dam now of course. The dam's basically him, Vainian,

and whoever else they can get in. Yeah. Nice. Should apply. So the following week, the Shadow of Love stayed at number 25 and sank from Trace. The follow-up, Is It A Dream,

only got to number 34 in September of this year, but they hit the jackpot when the follow-up to it a dream only got to number 34 in september of this year but they hit the jackpot when the follow-up to that eloise got to number three in february of 1986 skinner and bates are obsessed with the damned haven't been around for nine years aren't they because yes they are yes they mention it straight afterwards as well yeah it blows their mind that a punk band a punk band can last for nine years yeah of course, those thrusting young bucks, they can't believe it, can they? They might think, well, we might have a career just like that.

Why are they doing Top of the Pops? I mean, you know, surely by now, mid-80s, surely there's time for a new generation to come along. But who would it be? Well, I think they say at the end that Janice Long and John Peel are doing the following episode, but Peel's not exactly a new generation either, is he? No.

I mean, what have you got around that time? Woo Gary Davis, I suppose. Yeah, because, I mean, all the Radio 1 lot, they pretty much clung in, didn't they, throughout the 80s? There was no shifting. No. Yeah.

No. It was like, you know, deeply ingrained shit on the toilet bowl of a public toilet but you know no amount of swarfiga or domestos would shift Well, you're part of the world You're part of the world There they go, those veterans of punk music. Those are the damned at 25.

And it's not bad for a punk band to be together for nine years, is it? It's true. OK, let's take a look at the top of the pops. Top 40. At number 40, icing on the cake, Stephen Tintin Duffy. Jackie Graham's got a chart entry at 39, Round and Around. Number 38, An Act of War, Elton John and Millie Jackson. 37, it's a new entry for the Eurythmics, There Must Be an Angel Playing With My Heart.

Walking on Sunshine at number 36, Katrina and the Waves. At 35, Out in the Fields, Gary Moore and Phil Lynott. Bring It Down, This Insane Thing, the Redskins at 34. Simply Red, a chart entry at 33, money's too tight to mention. Five Star, all fall down to number 32. Stings at 31, with If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free. Up to number 30, She Sells Sanctuary, The Cult. Propaganda and Duel at 29 this week.

Up 10 places, Smuggler's Blues, Glenn Fry at 28. Highest new entry for the Style Council at 27, come to Milton Keynes. At 26, Live Is Life, up 11 for Opus. The Damned and The Shadow of Love at 25. 19 is 24 for Paul Hardcastle. Duran Duran's A View To a Kill is at 23 this week. The Conway Brothers turn it up to number 22. The Purple Pose is at 21, Prince and Paisley Park.

Number 20, King in a Catholic Style, China Crisis. At 19 this week, In Too Deep by Dead or Alive. At 18, Obsession from Animocean. Huge leap of 19 places for Denise LaSalle, My Toot Toots at 17. Up to 16, Tomb of Memories, Fall Young. Scritti Politi, The Word Girl at 15. Up eight places, Light in One Day, Howard Jones at number 14. The Commentators, 19, not out, a leap of 10 places to 13.

And up to number 12, Head over heels, tears for fears. At number 11, fine young cannibals, and here they are in the top of the pop studio with Johnny Come Home. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Do you notice on the chart rundown that the images of the bands are flanked by these kind of clip art images of a saxophone and a guitar either side? It's really cheap. But just, you know, always on top of the pops, you get the here's what you could have won factor.

But just zooming through some of the photos that you see, some great modern pop singles in the lower reaches. Tin Tin, Icing on the Cake, Propaganda, Duel, An Em yes and emotion obsession and squitty plitty the word girl but the one that gives me the biggest proustian rush out of all that lower reaches the charts round and round by jackie graham and i remember i had a facebook discussion about this not long ago that i'd recently heard it after not hearing it for 30 odd years and i never really liked it at the time and i still don't but it's those records the kind of mediocre ones that are often the most evocative with the passing the time and I still don't but it's those records, the kind of mediocre ones that are often the most evocative with the passing of time

precisely because you haven't bothered to listen to them and they more than anything else allow you to kind of breathe the air of a lost place in time which funnily enough for me is sort of Barry Ireland in the summer of 85 quite a lot of the time we also see Gary Moore and Phil Lyner

dressed as the Libertines. Here's the bit I really want to bring up. We hear Simon Bates say the purple poses at 21, Prince and Paisley Park. Oh, just fuck off and die, Simon Bates. I'd just like to say, yeah, Simon mentioning Propaganda Jewel,

I think out of the entire rundown and the entire chart, that is the greatest record in there. It's a fucking fantastic record, that. There still is a lot of good shit in the charts, isn't there? It has to be said. Yeah, this is something that surprised me.

We've come across a lot worse than this. It surprised me, this episode, actually, that I was all prepared for it to be very Live Aid era, dinosaurs and really boring, but it's not. There is still loads of really cool stuff in the top 40. But really though, who the fuck

does Simon Bates think he is? The Purple Posers at 21. Piss off. Prince, more talented than anybody in the entire top 40 that week, or any week. And he's got the fucking nerve to say that. Anyway, alright, okay. Move on.

Formed in Birmingham in 1984, the Fine Young Cannibals consisted of two former members of the beat, David Steele and Andy Cox, who'd spent eight months listening to over 500 demo tapes before settling on a lead singer, Roland Gift, who was the lead singer in a whole ska band called The Acrylics, who had supported the beat in a whole ska band called The Acrylics, who had supported the beat in the early 80s. While Dave Wakelin's new band, General Public,

immediately got signed, Fanyan Cannibals was still without a deal when they featured on an episode of The Tube performing this song in early 1985. They were immediately besieged by labels, signed with London Records and put out their debut single. And it's nipped up this week from number 12 to number 11. Now, Simon, being a fan of the beat, you must have had your beady little eye on this. Yeah, because I loved David Steele and Andy Cox's work with the beat. And they brought some of that kind of fidgety, restless, rhythmic sense with them here to Finding Cannibals. As well as the weirdest dancing on top of the

plastic side of OMD's Andy McCluskey now the thing here is I've actually got my original review of Johnny Come Home from Barry District News so I can read it out

I mean first of all I'm going to say what I thought now watching it was that Roland Gift with his Ray Riordan slash Danny Murphy widow's peak. He's singing like he's swallowing a hot potato

and trying to blow a fool without spitting it out. Yes, he really is. But I did like it enough at the time to give it a 9 out of 10. So let me just find that review right here. Here it comes. Right, okay. And I quote. nine out of ten so let me just find that review right here here it comes right okay and and i quote find your cannibals are andy cox david steel x bass and guitar partnership of the beat not leader of the liberal party yeah and new vocalist roland gift and what a vocalist he is

exclamation mark the music provided by the two x beat boys is sharp and minimal with a hint of the old two-tone days soaring over the top is a wonderfully dirty sinister saxophone but as i said the real revelation here is the vocalist looking like a young marvin gay and sounding like otis redding i think i am not exaggerating if i say he is is one of the finest British vocalists to emerge in many years, and it is in his hands, along with the likes of The Untouchables and Big Heat, that the future of soul lies, and not with Loose Ends, Five Star or Debarge.

The future is the past. Just ask Paul Weller. Wow. There we go. I do like the fact that you've name-checked probably the only two soul singers you knew at that time as well. There's a bit of that, isn't it? Yeah, like the top of the shop,

the most obvious ones you could possibly go for. But it goes back to the thing that we were talking about at the start of the show about digging back into the past. And I think Finding Cannibals appealed to me at that age because they had that kind of classic 60s soul vibe to what they were doing, to the way he sang, the way they dressed, kind of to the music, although you can't really imagine a record like that

coming out in 1967. But, yeah, I mean, I clearly liked it at the time. I don't like it so much now. It's ironic in retrospect that the chorus goes, what is wrong in my life that i must get drunk every night because um when i lived in holloway in north london i used to see roland gift quite a lot and he was always in the local off-line oh no um or or he was he was out jogging so i you know swings and roundabouts i guess health-wise um but they they brought out um an

anti-thatcher single called blue right this, which was much, much better. It wasn't a hit, actually. It's a colour so cruel. Yeah. I love that one being the sort of, you know, right on teenager I was. That was much better, as was, I reckon, their Prince rip-off, She Drives Me Crazy. But this one, in retrospect, I'm not really getting anything out of it,

despite my excitable 9 out of 10 review at the time. He had a right to be excited, Simon, because, you know, when it did come out at the time, this was like, oh shit, this is a bit different. I loved this. I loved this when it came out. And it's still kind of saved from pure retroism by the kind of little bubbly elements in it.

There's little odd kind of 80s textures in there that save it from just being an act of retroism. I remember buying this on 12-inch. I was that excited by it because I think I saw it on the tube, that appearance that you mentioned and being blown away by it. And the B side of this is fantastic,

by the way. It's an instrumental that's really, really good. I actually did part company with FYC by the time of She Drives Me Crazy, but I loved them and I loved Gift's look. I loved the high waisted trousers.

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 and everything and just the way he did look like he'd been yeah teleported in from the 60s um and i kind of i think this was roland gift oddly enough because yeah the ray reardon widow's peak is unmistakable but oddly enough i think i slightly fancied him it was one of the first pop stars that kind of sexually confused me um at the age of 12 i was confused sexually at the time um it was rolling gift and um romano from tj hooker did that to me as well um but but you know i remember buying this on 12 inch and absolutely loving it and and i remember gift they were amusing in interviews fine young cannibals so i remember gift getting in trouble for saying that

second homes owned by englishmen in scotland and wales were fair targets for arsonists and i think that got him on the front cover of the sun um you know getting slagged off and stuff in a sense like you've said that um you know the the anti-thatcher single they were the not the last of the sole lefties that's not entirely true but they were kind of they're important because eventually I think Fine Young Cannibals ditched all of that and just got greedy and kind of were happy with the stardom. And by the time we're through to 87 and we've got people like Wet Wet Wet doing that soul thing, the British soul thing, those bands were only too happy to trouser shitloads of cash for what they did and not really care about anything else. They were the kind of among the last of the kind of sole lefties in a sense but i love this record um i still like it i'm not sure i love it anymore but it was it's precisely the tension between the 60sness of his voice and the 80sness of the textures the bubbly little bass and the kind of weird little synth things that

come through that save it from just being an act of an act of sort of pastiche and the late 70s of the uh the guitar as well it's very um cheeky isn't it it is and the and the dance moves as simon mentioned by the guitarists um were really important as well i mean they look daft now but i remember at the time watching the video just thinking that's a really cool way of playing guitar because normally when you have a guitar tucked under your chin in that way you're gonna look like i don't know freddie and the dreamers or something but they they managed to find a way of moving their legs about and playing guitar and a kind of i mean simon bates finds it amusing doesn't he but i actually thought he's pretty cool at the time they look a bit like you know those toy giraffes you get where you press your thumb up in the base and they collapse

and then you let go, because it's all made out of beads and elastic. It's a bit like that, that their feet stay rooted in one place, but they're kind of wobbling around in this weird elastic way. I like it. Oh, well, one thing I've got to say is the clapping of the fucking audience is getting right up my...

It's at its absolute worst at this point it's a sign of things to come in it because that really did you know that was a thing of the future Top of the Pops yeah we've had it all the way through 80s Top of the Pops but now it's just can you just shut the fuck up it removes any funk that there might

be in the record and makes it and just makes it sound like something that's played for ice skating or something granny claps yeah yeah fucking white people the following week Just makes it sound like something that's played for ice skating or something. Granny claps. Yeah. Yeah. Fucking white people. The following week, Johnny Come Home jumped up to number eight, its highest position. The follow-up, Blue, would only get to number 41 in November of this year,

but the follow-up to that, A Cover of Suspicious Minds, got to number five in February of 1986, and they would peak in 1989 before splitting up in 1992 By the Young Cannibals, their lead singer, Roland, will be joining me on Roundtable Radio 1 tomorrow. Just looking at it, I reckon that's the only lead guitarist who's totally made of rubber. It's the way you tell them.

It's the Top 40 Breakers. And this is the first chart hit for a brand new band, Simply Red at number 33, Money's Too Tight to Mention. After some rubbish joke about rubbery guitarists, Bates and Skinner launch into the breakers section, starting with Money's Too Tight to Mention by Simply Red. Formed in Manchester in 1985, Simply Red were formed out of the ashes of the Frantic Elevators, a punk band started by lead singer Mick Hocknell after seeing the Sex Pizzols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976.

after seeing the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976. After signing with Elektra Records a few months ago, they released this debut single, a cover of the 1982 Valentine Brothers song, and it's a new entry this week at number 33. Now, before we talk about this song, chaps, here's where the videos are. They're tucked away in the breakers section, aren't they?

They don't like showing videos. I wonder if it's partly because the bands are. They're tucked away in the breakers section, aren't they? They don't like showing videos. They don't, and I wonder if it's partly because the bands are in complete control of the content of a video, because there are some that we'll come to where it's probably not very on message or not the sort of thing the BBC want to be putting on primetime TV. Certainly not. Yeah, yeah. By the way, I noticed that Skinner and Bates,

before they go into the rundown, they're standing in front of what looks like a giant Def Jam record sleeve. It's this kind of mural of a Technics deck with the arm. So it's as if, just a slight hint that hip-hop culture is on its way. I thought it was kind of interesting. We've looked at

the whole video, as we have for all the Breakers ones, because interestingly enough, they do run the videos for quite a while, don't they? They get about a minute each, don't they? The first thing you see is some proper Peaky Blinders nonsense. Micklepool's running about with his gang of urchins. And then they end up playing a gig in a pool hole, which is just fucking stupid because no one benefits from it.

I mean, if you're playing, you know, if you're playing fucking, you know, £10 a pocket in the pool hall, you don't want Mick Uchnall screaming at you. And, you know, if you're in the band, all that clicking and clacking is going to get right on your tits. It's just stupid and impractical. Yeah, never the twain should meet.

They don't play that kind of music in pool halls. In my experience, it's always fucking Bon Jovi or something. Oh, man. So, I mean, it's a revealing video because there's more black people in the video than you'd ever see at a Simply Red show. Yes. You know, obviously a big part of the history of British pop

is about white British response to black America. And I'd include the Stones and the Beatles and actually, thinking about this episode, you know, Hucknall and the Style Council to this. But crucially, it should be about the imparting of something unique and kind of British to the take. Hucknall doesn't do it. He simply blams stuff out.

The thing it reminds me the most of, not just because it's kind of set in a pool or environment, is an advert that was congruent with this. cronenberg had a new kind of strength where a white saxophonist gets tuted in how to have soul and natural rhythm by an elderly you know it's a repeated thing there's a there's a kind of there's an interview in the nme in 86 where hocknell talks about when he went to went to Jamaica for the first time and how disappointed he was with the music because they weren't playing any Lee Perry or Keith Hudson and stuff and and you know because dancehall was obviously going on um he's mining

soul music but but he can't abide he's similar to Morrissey in a sense in that he can't abide it when black music gets modern um so so he's got that vague northern soul snobbery about the contemporary that's always kind of annoyed me so this is soul music that no black people would listen to and it's soul music that's anti-american in a way um there's a lot of problems with Mitt Hucknall that are kind of for me really emblematic of the treatment of black music by white culture in that there's this avowed kind of love of it and he set up blood and fire records you know to reissue some fucking great stuff but together with that with blood and fire none of the original musicians kind of got paid

properly um so there's that kind of thing with it and the problem with hooknall the deep problem with him is that there's something un-british about him in that he really delights in himself when he's hitting the kind of notes in this video that are kind of you know quite high and and and and complex he looks so bloody pleased with himself and he was always so smug about himself he said didn't he i am one of the best singer songwriters this country's produced i mean no sorry and and and and for me yeah simply red are i know there's there's been movements of late to rehabilitate simply red i'm not having it i i think they are absolutely um you know sort of everything that is wrong especially about a british response to black american i mean the song it the song, it's a cover version, isn't it? It's the Valentine Brothers.

And I didn't know that at the time, which I'm going to come to that. But his look that you said, the Peaky Blinders thing, I think I quite appreciated that at the time because he had that Baker Boy cap with these ginger curls hanging out. Because as a ginger person, I felt it showed a way forward for a ginger kid.

That sort of Dylan Thomas style and I nearly adopted it but I thought I quite liked this song at the time but in my Simon Says column I gave it four out of ten shall we read it? yes please

alright yes simply read it money's too tight to mention this band have been saying a lot in the press recently, proving themselves to the anti-establishment lefties, but guess what?

I don't care. If the music's no good, forget it. The words are aimed at the White House, and especially America's interior policy. So how does the rate of VAT on condensed milk in the USA affect the British public? If songs are all we can aim at number 10, then let's. The song is also aimed at the American market.

Monstrous white dance music trying to sound like all Stevie Wonder's worst records. It's been on the radio incessantly for weeks and though the tune is catchy, it's nasty. In the same way as Mai Tai's history, I wish it would go

away. You were good, good Simon at that age well I was 17 but I tell you what I agree with myself the bit about why is he singing about America this is like a British left wing band and they're singing about Reaganomics

I don't care there's more pressing things to be singing about right here anyway yeah the mid 80s such a quest for authenticity I don't care. You know, there's more pressing things to be singing about right here. Anyway, yeah. The mid-80s, such a quest for authenticity. Or what British white lads thought was authenticity. Yes. You know, it's like, yeah, we really like black culture, but not your black culture or this black culture.

Yeah, absolutely. No, and I was clearly guilty of that. Yeah, you know, shamefully, really, I was quite a lot like that. Although I was also obsessed with Prince, who was, you know, the most forward-looking musician of his generation.

Yeah. So I'll give myself that. But yeah, I totally bought into, you know, I wanted black soul singers to exist in black and white. I didn't want them to be in colour. Do you know what I mean? Because I was that insufferable

sort of teenage indie snob. I think there's a commonality to a lot of the music on this episode. Simply Red, Cult and Style Council, they all seem, yeah, disgusted that it's 85 and consciously looking back. But Simply Red are

the worst kind of example of it, I'd say. And I think what they were resisting was perhaps a sense not what live aid was but i think the big bands had got a bit repellent to a lot of people by then one of the common sort of enemies that all of these bands would attack would be jiran jiran who just who just seemed to sum up what was wrong and what they wanted to resist going back to something with soul and authenticity and grit um but what that does it reduces it you know we're talking about Prince think about what Prince brought out that I mean Prince wasn't all about artifice but you know he was a complex pop

star and his music was was all kinds of different things and futuristic and also looking back there's an attempt there to sort of we simply read to to sort of suggest that black culture is still in touch with its root and and there is without a shadow of a doubt a natural rhythm um sense to that feeling um that simply simply read as summing up whereas black pop itself amongst young black pop makers was forward looking always and and always had been and and you know i don't think i don't think simply red were listening to prince in 85 i think they were stuck with their own shredding records and their kent stop dancing compilations which is fine so was i i was listening to kent stop dancing and all of that i was loving all of that

me too i used to love those compilations were amazing and and just an amazing introduction to so much. I think they changed a lot of people's minds about all kinds of things. Yeah. Can't stop dancing comps. But, yeah, to listen to that and to make an almost decision not, or to ignore contemporary black pop and not be listening to, I don't know, 85. You should be listening to fucking Schoolie D.

Do you know what I mean? I know it's easy in retrospect, but to make that decision, it's a very telling decision to make in Simply Red making. Sorry, Al, can I just say one more thing? With the attempt at rehabilitation with Simply Red, one thing I've heard a lot of

is that Fairgrounds by Simply Red, you know that song? It's actually a really good song. I'd just like to know, what do you think? I think it's still shite. I think it's good. I am one of those people, yeah. It's got that kind of hustling Latin rhythm to it

that N.E.R.D. used on She Wants To Move, and I really like that kind of feel to it. That's from the only Simply Red LP that I ever owned. It was joint ownership. I was in a relationship. It was like that or the fucking Lighthouse family. Give me a break. I bought a few of their records from time to time. I think I bought

Do The Right Thing. Do you remember that one? Quite like that single. But yeah, I'm not particularly proud of it. They don't mean much. They made some horrible old shite. I was that kind of pop fan that I would dip in and out of bands. If they brought out a good single i'd give them that i said oh fine i'll have that one but you know it didn't mean i was committed to them in any way so the following week money's too tight

to mention leapt 12 places to number 21 and would get as high as number 13 the follow-up come to my aid would only get to number 66 in september of this year and they'd have three straight flops before a re-release of Holding Back The Years got to number two for two weeks in June of 1986 and they became an ongoing chart concern until they split up in 2010. The cult may have lost a drummer, but they gained a hit, She Sells Sanctuary. The fire in your eyes Gives me a life And the fire in your eyes

Gives me a life Formed in Bradford in 1983, when lead singer Ian Asprey split up his previous band Southern Death Cult and linked up with former theatre of hate guitarist Billy Duffer, the cult, originally known as Death Cult, pinged around the lower reaches of the top 100 until they signed a deal with Beggars Banquet Records. This is the follow-up to resurrection joe which got to number 77 in december of 1984 and it's up five places this week from number 35 to number 30 well simon here he is ian aspirate with his with his trousers up on this occasion yeah i believe i've told that

story before uh go go back to previous podcasts if you want to hear it. Yeah, Simply Red, Finding Cannibals and the Redskins, whose photo we saw in the rundown, and the Star Council, who we'll come to, were all part of what someone in the music press called socialism. You know, the idea that Thatcherism could be resisted by white or mostly white guys digging into vintage black soul music for inspiration to imbue their political lyrics with some sort of dignity or integrity and that was the thinking behind red wedge tour and all these other bands

like the cane gang and the blow monkeys and i bought into that big time but i was also i've been pulled in two directions there was all that stuff that i was into but i was being drawn to the dark side i was being torn into like natalie and Brulia I was being torn between the opposing forces of wanting to be committed to changing the world for the better and withdrawing into this kind of selfish solipsistic vanity represented by goth and

the latter one so in other words you were being a 17 year old yeah exactly I can remember being sat on a train to Cardiff on a Saturday with my best mate at the time, Andrew Hammond, talking about exactly this thing. I don't know which direction I'm going in.

I don't know if I'm going to be one of these loafer-wearing lefties or if I'm going to be this kind of vain, self-regarding goth type. And the thing that sealed the deal was probably this record. It really was. Really? She sells sanctuary, I remember hearing this on a Tuesday lunchtime I'd cycled home from school to listen

to the top four as I always did and being absolutely bewitched by it just from that kind of reverb at the start before the riffs even kicked in I'd read a piece about the goth scene in Smash Hits and of course Smash Hits being really underrated as a kind of conduit for telling people in provincial towns what's really going on goth scene in smash hits and of course smash it's being really underrated as a kind of conduit for

telling people in provincial towns yeah i mean you know i was aware of people like bow house and susan the banshees but i didn't really get that it was part of this whole kind of subculture i just thought it was kind of punk or something i didn't realize there's this whole other back cavey thing going on um so this record tipped me over into wanting a piece of that and then i'd already seen the cult supporting big country at the birmingham ec as we've established and uh i saw you and has to be shagging a groupie between two buses blah blah blah but i wasn't sold on them as a band yet there was nothing musically that really grabbed me but this really and i think it stands up as an absolute you know all-time rock classic

it really it really is and in the in the video they look fucking amazing i think they're almost as cool as dave anion looked uh in in that damn performance um asprey had the best jewelry probably duffy had the best hair um there's a hilarious close-up um in in the full-length video of ian aspie licking the microphone in a sexual way but on the cult's greatest hits video compilation Pure Cult they've edited that out he's obviously embarrassed by it because he looks a bit gay or something there was actually an interview with Asprey in the 90s I think where he completely sold out to rockism and he he was saying my my advice to young bands is don't wear any of that kind of puffy makeup stuff be a man so you know fuck that but at this point i i was completely

entranced by the cult and i went to see them in cardiff uni later in 85 as did i later found out as did the manic street preachers but but we didn't know each other at the time um and i i do wonder if the manic's white jeans were partly inspired by the cult in this video because you know ian asprey i've got to say something he doesn't look to my mind he looks a bit of a twat in this video he really he looks like a really he looks like a really manky pierrot doll in a charity shop oh you're breaking my heart here i think he looks so cool. Yeah. Just an opinion.

All right. I mean, I just thought... I don't know, the whole kind of 60s psychedelic thing... Well, yes, this is something that definitely needs to be spoken about, doesn't it? In retrospect, I can't really justify it, but I did kind of get into it a little bit. I remember my dad dragging me to Fairport Convention's

annual festival in cropperty in oxfordshire and i hated most of the music but um i loved the the stalls that were selling kind of earrings made out of a peacock feather or like um you know necklaces made out of bits of bone and all that and i bought all that because i wanted to be like ian asbury so i didn't yeah i quite i quite quite got into the whole cult uh hippie hippie goth vibe shall we say the sitar sound at the beginning would have been quite a revelation for 1985 because we're only a year away from Holding My Shoe by Neil

which was the absolute nadir of psychedelia and that kind of late 60s sound was absolutely fucking dead in the water and then all of a sudden this band have come along and they're bringing it back and you know i found that appealing because it was contraband it was not allowed yeah yeah i thought they were breaking a rule by having that kind of yes you know exactly by having all that kind of you could almost smell the sort of incense wafting around it at the start and i i really like that it's just 85 i think was the time

where british music listeners i think it was the peak moment of doors fetishism people were obsessed with jim morrison in 85 i think that's true books had come out about him and there was just a lot of listening to the doors and a massive massive influence on ian asbury's singing style is he's very very jim morrisonist yeah all of that the retroism that we've talked about in other bands massive influence on Ian Asprey's singing style. He's very, very Jim Morrison-ish. All of that, the retroism that we've talked about in other bands looking back to the 60s, it's forgivable for this because it's a thrilling record. It has a chug to it that's just fantastic. And it's out of time.

It's out of its decade and all the more cherishable because of it. There's no nasty 80s textures in this record. And actually, I think that the chug that they get going is something that, for me, was perfected by Rick Rubin on the following album, on Electric. I fucking loved Electric. I loved that album.

For me, Simon saying about being torn in two directions, I was kind of irving towards this side because I had a mate, everyone had a metal mate in the Midlandslands somebody who was kind of just heavily in the metal my one um whose name was steven he made his own samurai swords in in in school you know when he should have been doing cdt or whatever he had a scrapbook filled with pictures of sam fox and linda lucardi and he read karang and he listened repeatedly in his house i just remember sitting in his bedroom playing yee-haw

kung-fu on his commodore 64 um and listening to to venom's fuck off and die on a computer tape player that he'd hooked up to his brother's quadraphonic car stereo system in his room but the other thing he played was was love that the album that this is from i remember not liking the album that much but loving the singles loving, loving this and Rain and Revolution. But Electric was the one for me. They made more sense again the more press I read about them because Billy and Ian were a really hilarious double acting interviewer

I tended to find because Billy had this kind of idiot savant thing going on that was really good. It's a brilliant song. It's a brilliant video. It's a really, really good video. And for me, it's a brilliant song it's a brilliant video it's a really really good video um and for me it's just an everlasting anthem that reminds me of just dancing that dance you know the three steps forward three steps back dance that i would i would still dance to this

if drunk and when listening to it i can almost taste a bit of snake bite or red witch in the back of my throat it it it for me is a classic of its time you've got to come down to my club spell about you would love it i absolutely have it's that if i did that i'd crack out the old orange jacket the telescopic cigarette lighter and the eyeliner as well oh you must but yeah i mean i i've got a curious fondness for the cult um i i depart company with them after electric which is probably leaving out quite a bit. But Electric, I fucking love that album. And I love this single as well.

I wasn't ready for Electric yet, you know, because I bought into the goth thing so much. It's like, well, come on, you've only done two albums of that. Do one more. I'm not ready for this heavy metal shit yet. Because I really wasn't. I was very anti-metal at that age. But because they're one of my favourite bands,

like, oh, shit, I've kind of got to go with this. And yeah, I mean, Love Removal Machine was amazing. But actually, Wildflower was probably even better. Oh, amazing song. I did quite like this kind of delusional thing that Asprey had, that because he spent some of his childhood in North America,

that he was somehow a Native American chieftain or something. And, you know, there was a B-cycle. Yes. It's a B-cycle Wolf Child Blues where he goes, just call me Wolf Child because that's my name. It's like, all right, all right, Wolf Child, you know. Christ. Wasn't he called Little Plum, though,

in the music papers at the time? I think he was, but he's got one of those lovely voices that's easy to parody. If you go, like that, you are basically being Ian Asprey and I like that about him.

And I remember, I think Electric, when they played it live, it was one of those late night BBC One specials. Remember what Simon said about pop being rare on telly and that's why live aid was so important i remember taping that videoing it and just watching it re-watching it over and over again i could never say that the cult were cool now but at the time it it's a thrilling record

and there's something un-80s about it that's what's crucial um there's something there's something kind of it hasn't got any of those horrible textures that tears and fears or any of those other bands have got in them i mean and i don't want to be ripping on the man but the other thing i noticed in the video was some really awkward um mic stand work awkward i thought you looked quite confident come on ian imagine it's some kind of magic stick that was handed down by your forefathers or something but mic stand work was rare at that time i mean julian it really was julian cope had a mic he could sit on couldn't he it was like a chair combined with a microphone but most people who held mics were just holding small almost panatella sized microphones and while singing

whereas this is a reversion to your classic kind of swing of the mic stand around it might need a bit more practice but hats off to him for doing it coming back to prince prince was the only person at that time yes who could do anything with the mic stand like you know sliding on his ass from 20 yards and just hitting the mic exactly like sort of knocking it over um and then sort of running and doing a skid and catching it before it falls. Oh yeah, completely. All that kind of stuff. But those moments when you found

that the 60s music you were listening to was being listened to by bands and artists were absolutely thrilling. One of the most thrilling moments for me, although it's a year later, you know the Kiss video Prince, seeing as we're talking about it? It was simply the buttons he had on his trousers

and the fact that they were flared blew my mind because in in you know in stonewashed denim 86 that was that was just a that was a it's not not a subversive act but it was it was a style statement and i got this why has he turned into john travolta what the fuck but it similarly the cult's desire to kind of magic themselves back to 68 69 it was similarly a statement about the present so the following week she sells sanctuary jumped four places to number 26 and would eventually get to number 15 the follow-up rain would get to number 17 in october of this year i think rain's the superior He's good. I'll give you that. Yeah.

Here's the highest new entry. Mick Torbert and Paul Weller, the Style Council, come to Milton Keynes. Formed in London in 1983 after Paul Weller split up the jam, the Style Council were originally a collective of guest musicians who swirled around Weller and keyboardist Mick Tolbert. This is the second single from the LP Our Favourite Shop, which got to number one for a week the previous month,

and the follow-up to Walls Come Tumbling Down, which got to number six in May, and is based on an advertising campaign which tried to entice people and companies to relocate to the titular Buckinghamshire new town. Now, I've got a feeling that me and Simon are going to be blathering on endlessly about Star Castle. So, Neil, in you come first. Yeah, yeah, not a lot to say.

But I've got a strange relationship with Paul Weller in a way, because for ages my favourite Paul Weller thing, which seems trite, but it genuinely was my favourite Paul Weller thing, was that Council Collective single with Jimmy Ruffin, I bloody loved that Soldi, yeah, I loved that record, I couldn't figure out why he never did anything else, sort of, for me anyway, it's modern

sounding, I perhaps had a problem with Weller because of really shallow reasons he looked like a kid in my school and that's why I had a problem with Andy McCluskey as well, I didn't like pop stars I didn't like pop stars who looked like people I knew, in a way. Looking back at the Style Council, I obviously prefer them to the jam. And they're one of those acts where I just want all those clothes.

Do you know what I mean? I want everything that they're wearing. Because I think they look fantastic. I love the keyboard on this song. It's got a real Jerry Damersmore specials vibe. Lyrically really interesting and and but only one clunker line which i think is we used to chase dreams now we chase the dragon which is a bit embarrassing mine is the second the union jack on it's the next line yeah for me they were one of those bands that as i've said previous i kind of loved the singles

didn't bother investigating the albums because i was a lady lazy sod i love did you ever have it blue i love shout to the top um but it was clear that this wasn't new pop it was a bit harsher a bit more mournful um and um you know in talking about simply red style council and all the people looking back at the 60s there's a particular unity i think in simply red and style council because they're both kind of anti-american i mean this is what this song is really about isn't it um it's a popular motif among uk bands and one i'm nearly always suspicious about but at least style council seem kind of internationalist in their perspective they've got the song internationalists yeah yeah and they're trying to at least, in a sense, forge a future from the past rather than just endlessly mine it to sound like the past.

So I will defer to you and Alan Price's superior knowledge of the Style Council. I kind of like this song. I didn't know it at the time, but the more I investigate it, the more I like it. And I've obviously got to get off my lazy ass and investigate those Style Council albums because I think there's probably a lot of joy to be had there cafe blur cafe blues the one but anyway yeah do you think so i do but anyway um i kind of agree with you on that one but our favorite shop is a fucking brilliant album i actually went just a couple of weeks ago uh i went on my rare gig excursions nowadays, the rescue rooms in

Nottingham. There was a Stylecastle tribute band who did all of Our Favourite Shop. Were they any good? They were alright, actually. They were alright. I mean, the problem was, is that Mick Tolbert actually looked like Orson Welles in the Sherry advert era. And Paul Weller,

when he did this song, would kind of like lean away from the microphone during the high notes. Is this the Stylecounsellors? But when he did this song, would kind of like lean away from the microphone during the high notes. Is this the style counsellors? Just to hear this song was a revelation, the style counsellors. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if you're into that sort of thing,

go and see them. When Neil mentioned that there's a clunking line in the lyrics, I thought he was going to mention a different line actually. Yeah. Because it's noticeable that this clip on Top of the Pops carefully doesn't include the line may I slash my wrists tonight on this fine

conservative night, which some people think is terrible, but I thought was, yeah, I thought was admirably direct. I think it's a brilliant line It reminds me of that thing that Richie from the Manics wrote about hospital closures kill more

than car bombs ever will and I think that's the spirit of it, is that people are actually being wrote about hospital closures kill more than car bombs ever will. And I think that's the spirit of it, is that people are actually being driven to suicide by conservative policy of the 80s. And it was murderous, but it was murderous in a kind of hands-off, distant way. Yeah. So I love the message of that.

So we don't get that in the in the tlp bit but we do see scary ass clown mick tolbert at the uh at the greed burger concession um serving a small girl a burger that bleeds all over her dress um yes yeah you see the heavy symbolism there um no i i absolutely loved the style council i was a massive Style Council fan. Yeah, me too. For me, Weller's best period, if we're going to be strict about it, was late jam, early Style Council. And I just loved everything he stood for.

And you know there's that whole stupid myth about the Beatles that Paul McCartney was replaced, or Bob Dylan as well. People say he was replaced by a lookalike and all that kind of stuff. There were times in the 90s when Weller became this kind of, you know, the Stanley Rodeo, that kind of rockist bore, that kind of godfather of Oasis and all that kind of stuff. But I thought he cannot be the same guy because the Star Council stood against rockism. And I remember about 10 years ago, maybe a little bit longer, I went to see Weller for my job as a journalist in Wolverhampton. And he was sort of standing with his you know his knee in the air his foot up on on the monitor doing the rock hero poses i thought come on man that's everything he used to be

against but anyway forgetting all that going back to the star council um they were an education for me uh politically um the fact that their sleeves would have essays that put you onto obscure Swiss revolutionaries and stuff like that. Yes. And musically, they were drawing not just upon soul music, but upon jazz and French stuff. They were probably

a true mod band in that at least they were trying to somehow fabricate the future or a future from these bits of the past. And I think, you know, clothes have got such a lot to do with pop, and I do go on about this a lot. I've already said how various people in this episode influence how I dress, but previously I may have sort of gone out of this phase

by the time this episode was broadcast, but previously I'd written off to Melandi of Carnaby Street and ordered this long white trench coat just because I wanted it to look like Weller on the front of the Star Council's Money Go Round. Oh, man, I love that. I love that raincoat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the first gigs I went to was the Style Council in 1980.

Oh, God, it would have been about just a week after Café Blue came out. God, it would have been about just a week after Cafe Blue came out. And me and my mate went and we couldn't get hold of a white raincoat. So I borrowed my grandpa's raincoat, which I then kept, the lapels of which were signed by Paul Weller and Mick Tolbert. And then he dedicated a song to me. I asked him if he was going to play Mix Up. Yes. And he did. He said, but the problem was,

if there's any bootlegs out there, it will say that was for Ali because that's what I was calling myself at the time for some fucking Bizarre East. Bollocks. So me and my friend are all wearing overcoats, thinking we were really cool and everything. And I look back now and we looked exactly like,

you know, at the end of every episode of Morecambe and Wise where Ernie Wise is on his own and then Eric Morecambe walks across the back with a carrier bag that's how stylish we were. Well you know I had that white raincoat that I thought I looked the fucking business but my mate Neil Sparnon, hello Neil

because he does listen, brought me down to size by saying nice lab coat you got there It was hard to be stylish because he does listen, brought me down to size by saying, nice lab coat you got there. It was hard to be stylish on a council estate in the early 1980s. I remember one of my mates, he was going around saying, oh, I'm a stylist now. And I said, what does that mean? And he says, oh, well, you wear cravats.

And I go, oh, okay, yeah, which I did later on. But then the next time I saw him, he and his mate were sniffing glue in the sand pit in the infant school playground and saying that he was on Evo Moon and he's just spoken to the Evo men. And I just thought, oh, if that's what being a stylist is all about, I'm not interested, I'm afraid.

Crap drugs. But yeah, I mean, and at the time, I remember, he was really concerned about what people thought about that album. You know, he was just asking everyone, what do you think about it? What do you like about it? What don't you like? It pissed off jam fans, didn't it?

Because it was so kind of mellow and jazzy and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, the jam lads were like, like where's the testosterone do you know what i mean but yeah and i wonder if that's why weller split the jam i wonder if that's why because people just weren't listening they hadn't taken on the message they had become a total lads band yeah yeah definitely and which is why it's so upsetting now to see videos of Paul Weller signing fucking Brexit scooters. You know, there's this one video of him going round and someone's done a scooter and he's just plastered it with Union Jacks

and he's sitting on it and signing it. It's like, oh, man, Paul Weller in 1982 wouldn't have done that. He's Daddly Wiggins now, isn't he? I think Weller's come out of the worst of that kind of lad rock phase, though. The last two or three albums and the last few gigs I've seen by him, he will actually revisit the Star Council now,

which for a while he wouldn't have. Well, he should. Well, yeah, they were brilliant. And this song is one of my favourites. To me, this is a song that Blur spent half their careers trying to make. The song and the video sums up what's going through Paul Weller's head in the mid-'80s. I mean, just flicking through it now, you see him and Mick at the beginning doing the Abbott and Costello routine.

And then we see, you know, the house with the Union Jack on it. We see the Death Burger thing. We see the game show with a cruise missile as a star prize, a statue of Liberty slashing its wrists. Um, you know, kids being skinheads or, and young girls doing heroin and all that kind of stuff.

It's quite a grim video, but of course what we mainly see is, uh, Paul and Mick Tolbert in their pants, which I'm sure he would have been really chuffed about, but not for the first time. Cause remember the long hot summer video where they're reclining by the side of a river of a canal touching each other up you know yeah we're not talking about that until that comes up fucking i like going for ages oh the shit that video caused oh yes oh i actually think uh wars come

tumbling down is a more powerful political statement than Come to Milton Keynes but certainly I was fully on board with everything they stood for, the whole thing of backing the miners and fighting apartheid and everything that Stark House stood for politically he was pretty much a god to me at the time I have to admit

still for another year or so but yeah and the clunky line for me in this song is uh you know i read the ad about the private schemes i like the idea but now i'm not so keen yeah yeah i mean he wasn't he wasn't the uh he wasn't the wittiest of songwriters but you know that didn't matter at the time it really didn't and it did cause a lot of aggro in the letters pages smash hits because a lot of people from Milton Keynes wrote letters but the thing was I'd been to Milton Keynes that year and it was a shithole so you know I was I

was totally on board with it you know and that was you know over 30 years ago people in Milton Keynes who were listening to this I don't know what you like now you're probably like everywhere else looking back it was an incredibly brave move of Weller to do the style council and I can't think of anything analogous since because I think what's often forgotten is just how big the jam got I remember you remember their last appearance on the tube yes that was a unifying tv pop movement because everybody knew that was going to happen and it was good and everybody watched it so for him to then cast not cast it aside as such but take such a changing direction i can't think of anyone in british pop who's really done anything like that since well i'd say terry hall and the fun boy three that was a bit of a departure from the specials wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah

I mean, yeah, exactly, yeah but yeah, you're right you're right, I mean Christ, we'll be talking about Star Castle many a time and often in chart music whenever we're covering early 80s ones so let's just leave it at that and say that the following week

come to Milton Keynes, nudged up four places to number 23, its highest position. The follow-up, The Lodgers, got to number 13 in October of this year, and the band eventually split up in 1989. I first came across this lot when Jonathan King said they were great on BBC Two.

They're actually Austrian. They've had a European hit with Live Is Life and now Opus are making it here. Life is life. La la la la. La la la la. Life. La la la la. Up in Graz, Austria in 1973, Opus were a rock band which slogged through Middle Europe for seven years before recording their first LP in 1980. After recording four LPs, including a concept album about 1984, and acting as the backing band on a Falco LP, they put this single out, which caught on across Europe,

getting to number one in Austria, Germany, France and Sweden. And it's up this week from number 37 to number 26. Oh, my God. Schlager Reggae. Anyone? It's for the granny claps, isn't it? It's perfect for the granny claps. I prefer the lie back version of this.

Yes. And actually, if I've got to listen to it, I'd rather watch that video where Maradona's doing keepy-uppies to it. Well, yes. Which is much more entertaining. You know what? I didn't know that they'd made this

sort of 1984 concept album because that sounds like the sort of thing that actual Lieback would have done. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I love the way that Lieback turned this into this sort of totalitarian umpire marching song and made it really sinister.

As if it wasn't already. It is quite sinister. It is quite sinister. The video as well, it's got a recurrent motif that happens in 80s videos i i guess inspired by the beat it video by michael jackson of you know roughnecks bought together by the power of music and this is the yeah hollywood punks i love hollywood punks in anything my favorite punks my favorite example of that i think is the ashford and simpson video

for for um solid which which has a lot of street punks meeting under a bridge but brought together by the beauty of the music this video as they would be as they would be yeah and this this video um attempts to do the same thing um but fails basically i think because the lead singer looks like terry sullside. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. I've got David Copperfield, the three-of-a-kind version, Trevor Eve and Bob Carroll Gs being the main guys. And this is how, at the time, Opus looked how I imagined all Europeans looked at this time.

This is really what I thought they all looked like. Well, they did, really. The whole Hollywood punks thing in the video, these sort of badass leather clad spiky head good for nothings looking around the back sneering at the band

but then finding themselves tapping their feet and nodding their heads and next thing you know they're really into it I've got this spiky thing on a rope or something

haven't I that they're going to throw at the band it's like well hang on a minute you're in an arena you've obviously paid to get in

already so what the fuck is that about oh there's this gig that we're really gonna hate so let's pay fucking i don't know 10 pound or something each to be in there and be really fucked off by it but then really like it no quincy punks that's what i was gonna ask you that i was gonna actually ask you what was that american tv show where it has the classic kind of hollywood punks in it? Well, there's two of them. There's Quincy, but I contend that the better one is the episode of Chips with pain in it.

Have you seen that one? Yes, I have, yeah. Oh, I dig pain. The pain in my brain. They're brilliant, they are. Can I read my review of Life is... Oh, please do. From 1985, from the Simon Says column.

And I must warn that it contains a factual error about where the band are from. Oh, no. Okay, here we go. Remember a record called Susanna by The Art Company? Well, this is exactly the same, and I, readers, seem to be the first to notice! They are, of course, Dutch.

And have used the same phony sing-along audience, Yamaha playing-a-day jumpy keyboards and acoustic I-failed-the-play-school-audition guitars. And who is responsible... Cutting your sive Simon Who is responsible? Yes, yet again it's Radio 1's Gary Davis I'm a peace loving person but

what with the lead singer's voice on this, the worst record of the year and the persistence of the lunchtime poser, I'm feeling near homicidal Rating Rating 0 of the lunchtime poser. I'm feeling near homicidal. Rating? Rating zero. Then in brackets,

and even less if I actually hear it again. There we go. Oh, man. So it makes me want to murder Gary Davis. Fair enough. Simon, did your reviews ever get spiked? Or did anyone ever have a word with you? It was remarkably uninterfered with. I think they just waved everything everything through they didn't know what i was on about half the time oh that's all right yeah yeah but who's buying this shit neil all

the people of barry oh sorry go on carry on all the people of europe all the people of europe i would say were buying this but this was a biggest hit in australia i think um really but i don't know i was watching the video for this on youtube and and it is proof that a lot of people have delusions of better paths i mean i was 13 12 13 uh when this came out and at the time i was already wondering if i was born in the wrong time you know and wishing i was born in another place or another time. But when you read the comments under this on YouTube, this makes me remember when the world was okay. Yeah. You know what I mean?

To have that thought from Opus, life is life. Yeah. It's good to prove. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. People on YouTube are fucking thick, aren't they? It's always, you look at stuff like that and you just wait, okay, how long? How many comments is it going to be YouTube are fucking thick, aren't they? It's always, you look at stuff like that,

and you just wait, okay, how long, how many comments is it going to be before someone mentions Muslims? Yeah, yeah, but the... It's like, oh, it used to be great here before the Muslims ruined everything. The Islamic infidels. It's like, no, no, we ruined everything quite nicely, thank you. The topmost comment that always gets loads of votes

that really bugs the fuck out of me, and it's under every video that's pretty uh of music before 1990 really is usually i'm only 13 but i really dig this music like they're expecting a slap on the back and also um i'm so glad my parents played me this when i was growing up so that you know i learned what good music was. You get comments like that and the opus, Live Is Life. Yeah. It's nuts. It's terrible, isn't it? Dutch bastards. Yes. I was expecting German, Simon.

I was way off. You really swerved us there. So the following week, Live Is Life. What does that even mean? It's about the power of live musicale. Aren't you feeling it? Is that what it means? I think that's what the song's about. The of live musical Aren't you feeling it? Is that what it means? I think that's what the song's about

The song apparently is a homage by the band themselves As to how great they are live And how powerful their live music is Don't they just demonstrate it in the video? Hang on, I've got to check this When we all give the power We all give the best Every minute of an hour don't think about arrest then you all get the power you all get the best when everyone gives everything and every song

everybody sings what the fuck are they going on about and it's weird because you know you know the bit the bit the beginning of the video where the kind of weedy folk band get bottled off and then they come on the way they're tooling themselves up before they come on stage you're expecting fucking motorhead to come out because they're taking away their big drumsticks and their guitars and then they come out with this weedy kind of umpire bullshit um. The following week, Live Is Life jumped 11 places to number 15 and got all the way to

number 6. However, it would be their only bit of chart action Opus ever got in the UK. But in 1990... However, it would be their only bit of chart music. Fuck them. That's it. I'm only bit of chart music. Ah!

Fuck them. That's it. I'm not talking any more about them. Maradona did the keepy-uppy bit to them. That's worth checking out. That is. Singing every song. Everybody sing. Live is life.

That's Opus. Do you reckon they can't say live is life without saying live is life as well? It's the way you tell them. It's the top ten. Number ten, this is Morellian. My time, history at number nine. One of Taylor's favourites.

Up to number eight, this is Bruce Springsteen. Tonight he's at Wembley, it's Independence Day. He celebrates at number eight, this is Bruce Springsteen. Tonight he's at Wembley. It's Independence Day. He celebrates at number eight. A friend of mine on Facebook today described I'm on fire as Bruce Springsteen with a hard-on, and he's quite excited about that. I can see his point. It's quite a good song.

Burning up the American charts, Billy Ocean, and a success here too. Suddenly he's at number 7 Oh Christ And number 6, a former number 1 It's The Crowd, You'll Never Walk Alone Oh The Crowd, oh my god Lemmy and the Nolans and Bruce Forsythe

Singing for the Ben Hardwick Trust Marty Webb is at number 5 Oh now Marty Webb Singing a song about a dead rat to a soft-focus picture of a toddler, which we're going to have to come back to because there's quite a lot to say about that. Sort of charity. Sort of charity, yeah.

It's all Esther Anson's fault. And moving up to number four, it's Kool & The Gang and the wonderful Cherish. And again, similar to Kool & The Gang is similar to Billy Ocean, a band who've done great things, just releasing absolute schmaltz. They look like we're wearing Quality Street wrappers. Here's Madonna hanging on to Sean Penn with number three hit Crazy For You. Oh, fuck off, Madonna.

This guy used to be Giorgio Moroder's studio assistant. It's Harold Faltermeyer at number two. And Harold Faltermeyer, right, he's German, but this, again, is big American culture dominators. Yeah. Some of the Eddie Murphy film. Yeah. Beverly Hills Cop.

Yeah. It's the squares. The squares are winning. It's music for squares. It's the squares the squares are winning it's music for squares it's the music you know what you remember that right guard

where the businessman starts breakdancing this is what he breakdances to I think they show way more of this video

than any of the others for some reason yeah well it's number two there's a couple of kids in my school who reckon they could breakdance

and this is the sort of thing they play they're awful but ladies loved it I'll say that Yeah, well, it's number two. There's a couple of kids in my school who reckon they could break dance, and this is the sort of thing they play. They're awful, though. But ladies loved it. I'll say that. There he is, Axel and Harold Fortemeyer. Okay, second week at number one.

It's Frankie and Sister Sledge. One. You can see how cheerful, right, Skinner and Bates are looking at this point. And I think the reason Skinner and Bates look so cheerful is because the culture has come back round to them again. Their smug grins are screaming, your revolution is over, Mr Lebowski, condolences, the bums last. It really is. Because I don't think we've seen any reggae

we're not seeing much hip hop Harold Falter might have been the nearest thing yeah yeah and Opus

being the nearest thing to reggae and the whole fucking thing that's terrifying that's the weird thing we were talking previously about

these acts looking back actually when you look at black pop that's in this top 10 Billy Ocean Kool and the Gang

and what we're going to talk about that's in this top 10 billy ocean calling the gang and what we're going to talk about that's number one they're all old acts ultimately revisiting sort of 70s balladry or kind of 60s thing it's a it's a world waiting for hip-hop it's waiting for jam and lewis it's waiting for control and things like that to have their effect going back to the whole bruce springsteen thing and indeed uh how Harold Faltermeyer to some extent, I was so, and we mentioned this talking about the Style Council, I was so anti-American at the time. I really felt that we were, in the cliche of the day,

the 51st state of the USA. And I actually recently re-found the Smash Hits Readers poll from 1985 that I'd filled in. Oh. And one of the things I put... Shall we? I haven't got it handy, but actually I'll tell you one thing that's in it. It says, non-event of the year, and I put Bruce Springsteen's tour, just because I was so against him.

Yeah. So I really had this feeling around this time that everything was becoming so American. People were going to see American films. People were going to see John Hughes movies and they were dressing like Americans. And another thing I put is like worst film of the year was Rambo First Blood 2. I hadn't even seen it.

I hadn't even seen it, but I just knew what it stood for. And everything that it stood for, I hated. And the other thing that we see happening to pop in this rundown of the top 10 is the profound influence of Live Aid and Band Aid because of the two charity records in it

so yeah you've got the crowd singing an awful version of You'll Never Walk Alone it's quite sobering to realise that they're all younger than me now all these people but they seem impossibly old at times really sobering to realise that they're all younger than me now all these people but they seem impossibly old at times really sobering thought

the weird rag bag of people who are in it the list of the actual participants in it it's just bizarre I won't read them all out but people from the boxer John Conte to the drummer from New Model Army, Black Lace, Motorhead,

Tim Healy out of Auf Wiedersehen Pair, which means that the youngish lad from the 1975 must be gutted that his dad's been on a number one record and he hasn't. There's people like Bernie Winters and Jim Diamond, the Baron Knights Keith Chegwin it's just this kind of

ragbag of light-headed personalities and you wonder who pulled that together there's two ways of making a record like that happen either you have this

massive wish list of all the biggest stars of the day and you sort of cross them off one by one when they say no or you just think

oh who have I got in my phone book and this must this has to be the latter but oh it's even got Ed stupot stewart in there whose breath stings fucking hell yes peter cook peter cook is on it what the hell shit so you just wonder whose phone book was that that is just really odd well fucking good phone book though and what with rolf harris and dave lee travis being on the same session i just i just hope the Nolans were all right.

Yeah. Shit, you know, yes. Yeah, but there's that. And then Marty Webb. The toddler was Ben Hardwick, who was a child who died aged three after becoming the youngest person ever to undergo a liver transplant, which is obviously unimaginably sad for his family. But he became a national obsession when Esther Anson began featuring ever to undergo liver transplant which is obviously unimaginably sad for his family but

he became a national obsession when Esther Anson began featuring the story on on That's Life and she launched a charity appeal for which the Marty Webb single was was a fundraiser um now the way I looked at it at the time and and now indeed is that providing medical care to liver patients and support to their families that's what we have an nhs for that's what we have social services for now thatcher wanted britain to return to victorian values and charity is a profoundly victorian idea the idea that social problems can be solved by the voluntary benevolence of the rich by the goodwill the good nature of the rich rather than compulsory taxation and state

action and um my my thinking of this was actually profoundly influenced by the house martin's debut single flag day which which also came out in 1985 um that's right the first lines of which were too many florence nightingales not enough robin hoods and the chorus when it's a waste of time if you know what we mean try shaking a box in front of the queen so as well as distorting ideas about how problems should be solved i think band-aid and live aid also ruined pop and that's not a trivial matter um it changed people's ideas about what pop was for as i say i said it's at the top that it's it's there to be socially responsible and helpful rather than mind blowing so yeah

we're avoiding talking about fucking Frankie by Sister Sledge aren't we here? Before we get to Frankie by Sister Sledge can I just read out my review of Crazy For You by Madonna? Oh please do because we all know what I feel about Madonna anyway but

we do yes okay I feel about Madonna anyway. We do, yes. Okay. This is when I was 17 years old, remember. I'm becoming increasingly suspicious of whether or not Madonna is real. It's been said before, and I'll say it again, she set the cause of feminism back a good few years. So many men seem to need

some kind of superstar sex symbol to yearn for and in this respect madonna is stepping into debbie harry's shoes the music here is pop pure and simple commerciality and i don't care who buys it as long as there's lots of them i put in inverted commas um what happened to the to the uh achingly hip disco princess with the eccentric clothes and groovy, how's that for a word, dance tracks? That's the Madonna I remember. I gave it three out of ten. And basically the reason being...

Oh, Simon. Crazy Few by Madonna reminds me of those house parties that I mentioned earlier where I couldn't get a snog. So, you know, I was standing there watching other people Two by two, their bodies become one. Exactly. So that record... And you're there pitching a tent. Well, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, sod this,

I'm over the Butlins disco. So yeah, it can absolutely sod off. Alright. Alright, Sister Sledge. We've already covered Sister Sledge in Chart Music No. 4, but after scoring three top 20 hits in 1979, they dropped off All right, Sister Sledge. We've already covered Sister Sledge in chart music number four, but after scoring three top 20 hits in 1979, they dropped off the radar.

However, in 1984, Thinking of You, a five-year-old album track that had been the B-side to Lost in Music, was re-released in the UK and got to number 11. This was followed up by Lost in Music itself, and we are family both making the UK chart. This is the first cut from the new LP When The Boys Meet The Girls which was produced by Nile Rogers who said he absolutely hated it when it was first demoed to him but then he realised a week later that the tune was still stuck in his head so he demanded that they record it.

This is its second week at number one. after it knocked you'll never walk alone by the crowd off the top spot all right well you know like billy ocean and cool in the gang in the countdown um here was a once great funk slash soul act reduced to absolute shit i mean i i despise frankie by sister sledge more than pretty much anything else in the show um they'd fallen from Lost in Music one of the greatest pieces of music ever made to this and you know this kind of twee nostalgic bollocks and uh we have to talk about the live lyric yeah I looked into your big eyes and said to myself we could have had twins. Now, is that how fertility works? Largeness of eyes determines multiple births?

I don't know. It's just horrific. The other thing, and this has nothing to do with anything, that I noticed about this performance, they're performing on a stage with massive pink triangles all over it. But so I wondered, you know, were they meant to signify what Bronski beat meant by the giant pink triangle or is it yeah or maybe they thought oh frankie goes to hollywood's coming on they're gay on there i think the penis is a reflection of the day glow horror thing that is the video

to the song that i remember yeah because that got played quite regularly stayed at number one for four weeks didn't it and uh i i i have a month i mean the sleeve of this single was was that day glow pink which always i mean i wouldn't have bought it anyway because it's a terrible terrible record that you've got to be careful with pink records they really stand out in your collection like things like never mind the bollocks and um yes birthday by the sugar cubes as well i seem to recall having a really pink sleeve sleeve you've got to be careful of them because they stick out in your record collection this is as Pricey says a fucking awful record

Billy Ocean Kool and the Gang and Sister Sledge all old acts ultimately revisiting 70s balladry or in this case 60s do what the most telling thing is this went nowhere in the US charts didn't get anywhere but in Britain it was a monster

hit a bit like philip phyllis nelson's move closer did a similar move that year got nowhere in the us um was a big hit over here and i think the reason is you know one of the acts that we've talked about so much on um totp about tptp is shawadi wadi and you know i think this is not cashing in on shawadi wadi by any by any remote sense but it's cashing in on a similar market who want that kind of pastiche um retroism and i just remember at the time being annoyed by the video being massively annoyed by the bit when they go down down i just fucking hated that yeah yeah it's considering you know we're talking about big bold moves of paul weller moving on from the jam when as pricey said it's inconceivable isn't it that these are the people who did lost in music uh yeah you know just thinking

of you just a matter of a few years earlier to get to this um niall rogers initial assessment that it was shy and then doing it because it was catchy. I mean, catchy is kind of one of those words that gets attached to pop like it's always a positive thing. Well, you know,

Clivia's catchy, Krabs are catchy and this is that kind of catchy. It's a fucking horrible record. It is, isn't it? And, you know, they're doing a live performance and they just look like

a three-minute-long case catalogue advert, don't they? Just some fucking horrible mid-'80s fashions on display here. But anything else to say about this? Not really, no. No, there isn't, is there? Dustbin of history, please. Yeah.

So Frankie stayed at number one for two more weeks, keeping Axl F by Harold Fulton-Meyer off number one until it was usurped by There Must Be An Angel by The Eurythmics. It became the third biggest selling single of 1985. Do you want to take a guess what the top two were? So do they know it's Christmas is the year before? Yes. It could still be though, couldn't it? No, it's not. It could be.

Can I get a clue? Is it a charity single? No. Ah. Gold nose then. It's the women again. Is it Madonna? Is it? No.

Shall I put you out of your misery? Yes, please. Number two, I Know Him So Well. Number one, The Power of Love by Jennifer Rush. Oh, yes, of course. Yeah. That may not be, yeah. Oh, awful.

The follow-up, Dancing on the Jagged Edge, only got to number 50 in September of this month and they were denied any more top 40 action until Lost in Music Thinking of You and We Are Family were re-released again in 1993 fucking hell

we can't get enough of them songs can we in this country and rightfully so let us remember them that way do you remember Frankie do you remember me You want to know what's going on behind the scenes of Top Of The Pops, you could try this. It's Steve Blacknell's book, Top Of The Pops,

and it's available at your bookshop now. All the secrets, I'll tell you a secret now. Next week, Janice Long, John Peel, a live show. Enjoy it. We'll see you soon. There's trouble on the street tonight Like a feeling of bones I let them assume That it should not go wrong

I knew the gun was loaded But I didn't think he'd kill Everything exploded And the blood began to spill So just before we hear Smuggler's Blues, Simon Bates pimping the book of Top of the Pops, and he goes, if you want to know what's going on behind the scenes of Top of the Pops, yeah, right?

Yeah. I think CID might be quite interested in that. Born in Detroit in 1948, Glenn Frey was a founder member of the Eagles until they split up in 1980. He released two solo albums before coming to our attention when The Heat Is On, recorded with this week's number two artist,

Harold Faltermeyer, got to number 12 in April of this year. This is the follow-up, a song about dealing cocaine, which was picked up and turned into an episode of Miami Vice, in which Frey featured as a guest star, and it's up 10 places this week from number 38 to number 28. Now, we've discussed Miami Vice before. Well, Taylor thought it was a load of rubbish.

I was inclined to agree with him um cocaine wasn't still wasn't a thing in the words of Morrissey I swear to god I swear I never even knew what drugs were yeah I found the drug references in this inappropriate there weren't there weren't the sexual swear words that Simon Bates was so fond of but um I was quite shocked that cocaine and heroin and hashish were mentioned when like you say in Britain we were neophytes at this game we were still we had glue we had butane gas

and that's about it really it's definitely where I came from yeah and kind of really the only I mean it would be interesting to see the audience whilst this is playing but as ever with interesting to see the audience whilst this is playing, but as ever with these top of the pops from this era,

too many zoo wankers, um, pushing themselves to the front and doing the same dance that they do to every single record. Um, terrible clothes all round from those audience members that I can see. Um, this is not only,

um, depressing me. It's oppressing me. That's certainly how i felt at the time um i just felt like um it was it was just symbolic of uh american dominance over britain and then i've got i've got a review here this is the last time i'm going to do this obviously uh my review of smugglers blues sm. Smuggler's Blues, eh? I bet middle-class, secluded Californian Glenn has never heard a

blues record in his life. Oh, blimey. He will probably carry on playing the same self-satisfied pomp rock he first bored us with in the Eagles for the rest of his life. The only way he can get a recording contract these days is by making backing soundtracks for films, Beverly Hills Cop, or TV shows, in this case Miami Vice.

He could learn a few lessons from his former drummer, Don Henley. Boring AOR. Rating 1 out of 10. Boom. Oh, man. The hammer of Barry has struck again. What Simon said there in that review about the americanization it did feel in 85 85 some of my most powerful memories of 85 was going to see films like back to the future and ghostbusters and they dominated our culture to such a huge extent i just remember being in a heaving sweaty

mass of kids on the last day of term going to see back back to the future genuine hysteria about going to see these big american films they did have a real dominant kind of term going to see Back to the Future. Genuine hysteria about going to see these big American films. They did have a real dominant kind of thing going on in 85. And what we see when it's shown on Top of the Pops, you see the audience and it's basically the kids you hated. The kids who never had cool hair, but sometimes always had a girlfriend. And they're there with their sleeves rolled up,

on their jumpers rolled up to their elbows and basically um the wankers had won yeah that's what's going on here the wankers had won um and this this song i mean it's just it's made to be on endless kind of 50 greatest driving anthems conferences and it's total total dad music but um that's my kind of takeaway from this it's just it's the final track on this episode of top the pops and just this sort of crushing sense of disappointment that that's it we've lost we've lost so the following week smugglers blues moved up six places to number 22 its highest position the follow-up sexy girl would only get to number 81 in August of this year

and he was done as a chart act in the UK. So what's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One follows up with the little and large show, the nine o'clock news, more Wimbledon and then international athletics from the World Games in Helsinki presented by David Icke. BBC Two is shown an Osman Brothers special from the Silk Cut Festival in Sin Country,

where Ken, Ken and Ken Osmond introduce their new direction. Then there's a documentary about Tewksbury in Alec Clifton Taylor's English Towns, followed by Pity in Istra, a play about a stonem Mason battling to finish a sculpture before Oliver Cromwell's lads smash it up. And then news night and the open university. I TV is running the film version of love thy neighbor.

We've seen that one. Haven't we? No. Love thy neighbor. You know me. I wasn't an ITV person. Yeah. See the show, I yeah seen the show

but never seen the film so it just gave me just gave me a longer opportunity to be racist I guess yeah it was basically it's the one where

they they they put Eddie in a cooking pot when he's passed out and all the black workers

dress up as Zulus and dance around it and it's ever so funny. Yeah. 1985 everyone. Then an episode of TVI which focuses on the Bishop of

Durham not believing in the virgin birth. Then news at 10. Then the computer series Database presented by Simon. No idea. Tony Bastable. Yes. idea. Tony Bastable? Yes, get in the Bastable. And finishes off with Hammer

House of Mystery and Suspense. Channel 4 is screening Promise the Earth, another documentary about women, then the sitcom Tandori Nights, then the film Another Time, Another Place, where a Scottish woman on a barren island starts knocking about with the local Italian prisoners of war.

Then more athletics from Helsinki and the latest stage of the Tour de France. So, me boys, what are we talking about in the whatever stands for a playground in July tomorrow? Do you know what? Probably Opus. As shit as that record is, I'm pretty sure that me and my mate started taking the piss out of it all the time. La la la la la.

Just endlessly. So yeah, probably that. Yeah, it would be a thing of not actually talking about what was good on the episode, because there isn't much that is good. It would be a thing of taking the piss out of it, yeah. And what are we buying on Saturday? Record-wise, The Cult, and probably going to look for a shirt like Dave Venians.

Nice. For me, I'd be buying... Well, I did buy Finding Cannibals. Big 12-inch buying phase for me. That, West End Girls, I remember buying 19, and Road to Nowhere were my 12-inch purchases that year. But the noticeable thing about this episode, in a way, is that it doesn't really contain any of the pop that I think any

of us were listening to. For me, 85 is the year of the Cure's Head on the Door and Prince, Round the World and the Day. And these things are not mentioned at all in this episode. And what does this episode tell us about July of 1985, Simon? The war is over and we've

lost. The whackers have won. Yeah, that's it. I mean, we've gone beyond what we saw in the 83 episode. There we saw Pop sort of slightly getting colonised by the straight men, the Howard Joneses. Here we see it beyond that. These are album acts who happen to drop singles, but consider Pop a little bit beneath them. And the excesses of the Wham and Pete Durant era

are just shunned. We've got live aid on the way it's a horrible horrible time um i was looking at an ep a a copy of smash hits from 85 and actually none of the acts horrified me as much as the advert for sweet corn relish flavored skips do you fucking remember them it was it that it was a horrible time for crisps and for pop tonight thank god it's them instead of you and and you know what you know what i think the message that skinner and baits are giving us with their smarmy grins is they're telling us the kind of pop kid listeners that if you want anything

that's going to actually uh nourish your intellect or move your soul then don't come to Top of the Pops for it anymore. Don't come to the charts for it. You're going to have to dig underground to find the good stuff. They don't realise they're telling us that, but that's what they're telling us. And on that cheery note, we bring another episode of Chart Music to a close, but not before thanking some more people

who kicked some dollar into the Chart Music account. So, Mark Cowan, Martin Young, Ross Patrick, Adam Maluska, thanking some more people who kicked some dollar into the chart music account so mark cowan martin young ross patrick adam maluska nmc rob martindale abigail smith jack seal these are all names that will live on forever in chart music history along with david workmanenoff, Adam McCarty, Graham McCleary, Gav Shack, John Davis, Gareth Allen Hunt, Shane Galvin. We are the rain, you are the sun, and now we've made a rainbow. There'll be more bonus tiers coming soon,

so sit tight and listen keenly. Until then, remember you can find us on www.chot-music.co.uk, facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast and you can reach us on Twitter at chartmusic, T-O-T-P and of course, one last plug, patreon.com slash chartmusic.

So, thank you very much, Simon Price. You're welcome. Ta ever so much, Neil Kulcone. Toodlepipa. My name's Al Needham and I am this year's lovable bisexual. Shark music. Thank you. Right day, son The Winkle Man comes down our street And he serves all the ladies What do you know, nine months on

They all got cramps and babies Funny thing about it, he was a right little shrimp That's enough, had some cockle He used to sell them celery And I called him to the dirty talk He asked them what they liked the best The knobhead or the stoke I wonder why a woman used to come in with a smile on her face

And smash his face in We'll be right back.