Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #30: November 23rd 1989 - Hulk Get Jheri Curl!

Episode Date: August 31, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: if Bummerdog was a band, what would they sound like? This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, is one of the absolute landmark moments of the long and storied history of The Pops - the week where all the rubbish of the Laties is finally driven into the sea by streetwise lairy youths with a malevolent shuffle and a drug-induced attitude. And as well as Big Fun, the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays are on too. Those of you who remember this episode as a full-on Madchester takeover - with 808 State on as well, and Vera Duckworth gurning away in the audience in a Joe Bloggs top - are going to be sorely disappointed, however, as the supporting cast is the usual Neighnties rubbish. Jakki Brambles and Jenny Powell come off like the Philadelphia Cheese Advert women. Bobby Brown thrusts his groin at a shockingly young girl who's probably wondering when Tiffany is going to come on. Aaron Neville comes dressed up as a character in a Sega beat-'em-up. The Fine Young Cannibals get bum-rushed by the cast of Dance Energy. The Martians pitch up to blare some Housey rubbish at us. The #1 is cat shit. And Holy Horrible Soundtrack LPs, Batman, it's Prince. Al Needham is joined by Sorted Simon Price and Top Lad Taylor Parkes for a trawl through the car boot sale of 1989, breaking off to discuss such important matters as Top Hatting, raiding your Dad's wardrobe to look suitably 'Double Good', Ian Brown shutting down a bar, sniffing silage, and the introduction of the Chart Music Top Ten. Get on some swearing, matey!    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Tax is extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. What do you like listening to? Um... Chart music. Chart music. Chart music Chart music

Hey up you pub craze youngsters And welcome to the latest edition of Chart Music The podcast that says Fucking hell tomorrow's world, hurry up and end now. I'm your host, Al Needham, but I'm just a space cadet. These two people are the commanders. They are Taylor Parks. Hello, nice to see you there. And Simon Price.

Hello. The peace squad in the house, if you will. Sat here in a lovely cleansing thunderstorm. Well, I say cleansing. I mean, it's London. In London, petrichor tends to be decomposing rats and rehydrated dog shit. It's not a pleasant smell. That word, right?

I'd never heard it before in my life until this last month, and suddenly it's everywhere. Yeah. What word's that? Petrichor? That's the first time I've heard it. So what is it? It's like the smell of hot stone under rain.

Yeah, it's when you've just had a thunderstorm, and the air is charged with positive ions, or whatever it is. And it's supposed to smell beautiful, which it does in the countryside, a little bit less so around my part of the world. Well, never say we're not educational. Yeah. Anyway, has there been anything pop and interesting happening in your lives, gentlemen?

Fuck off. No? Okay, fair enough. It's always worth asking, isn't it? You never know. Well, I'm feeling like a bit of a gent because I just got paid for something that I did for the first time in ages. And I don't want to say too much, but I can confirm it was a two-figure sum.

So pretty soon this flat's going to be saying, hello, new towel, and come on in, unscuffed frying pan. Exciting times. It's a glamorous life, being a music journalist. So, before we move any further, let's stop what we're doing and let us look at the brand new names which have been carved upon the monolith of pop-crazed youngsters

who have started to do the right thing and have put a few dollars our way this month. Those people are John Daly, Stevie Jackson, Dr. Beat, Stephen Devine, Simon Perrins, Keith Bayliss, Tom Bradley, Stuart Nash, Conrad Muton, Blood and Mud, Jamie Ansell and Rupert Gilbert. Oh, so anyway, thank you so much to those brand new pop crazy youngsters and if you'd like to join them, you know what to do. You get them little fingers working on the keyboard, you type in www.patreon.com slash chart music and you pledge and you pledge and you pledge some more so before we get stuck into this week's episode of top of the pops it's time to introduce a brand new feature and you don't know anything about this do

you chaps oh my god the chart music top 10 okay yeah basically i put up a load of names of bands that were inspired by the last 29 episodes of Chart Music onto Patreon. And I invited those pop craze youngsters to vote. And they've compiled a top 10. And we'll be running with it from here on in. So, hit my music. A new entry at number 10 this week for Crisp Sacrifice. In at number 9, next gary neville a new entry at number eight

for the hadley fist in at number seven dad is faction climbing all the way to number six the beak of sex yes shooting all the way up to number five here comes jism new entry at number four for seven days jankers all the way to number three for b.a. entry straight in at number one Bummer Dog yeah and can I just say at this point right that Bummer Dog seems to become the new hello to Jason Isaacs

because when I'm about when I'm out and about in Brighton it just happens on a regular basis now there's hardly ever a night out where someone doesn't come up to me and say I just want to say bummer dog. And then, you know, without fail,

I go, I'm gone. I just, it's still funny to me. I am someone who finds the same joke funny over and over. Good. Even so. Um,

I mean, I'm not going to name those people cause I, I know I did once, but I thought, nah, we've got to be crafty about this. So, um,

it's not enough to come up to me and say bummer dog at me. You've got to put your money where your mouth is if you're going to get a mention. Yes. But yeah, I love the fact that it seems to have caught on and that bummer dog seems to become the kind of unofficial mascot and catchphrase of the podcast. You know how David's going around at the minute promoting his book Mars by 1980? Yeah, he is, yeah.

Can't we get someone to dress up in a dog costume and hump him on stage? Christ. While he's not talking about orchestral manoeuvres in the dark? Which, by the way, we know he isn't anyway. They're the one band. Yeah, exactly. They're the one band. He's left out.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Can't we pay Andy McCluskey to dress up in a dog costume and then hump David and then take the head off at the end? As long as you pay for the oven gloves and peanut butter. I don't know about you chaps, but I just can't shake the feeling that Bummer Dog is going to be Candle in the Wind 97 plus Everything I Do I Do For You

plus Relax times two tribes. It's going to be there forever, isn't it, at number one? It's the bat out of hell. It's the bummer dog out of hell. Yeah, then in two years' time, when bummer dog releases his more percussive second album or his more song-based third album, all those old bummer dog says relax T-shirts,

you just won't see them. Bummer dogs say relax. I'm going through these bands now, and obviously Crisp Sacrifice, they're kind of like early thrash metal, aren't they? Yeah, and they're palm death kind of style. The Beak of Sex, I've got them as quite a late 80s goth band in the style of Christianian death or something like that

i was thinking uk garage bummer dog though what because i initially thought bummer dog sounds a bit like a like canned heat or you know some kind of late 60s yeah sort of folk blues band yeah if it was two words you could see it on you know when you see the old music papers from the early 70s and there's adverts and it's like, man plus string-driven thing plus bummer dog, you know? Yes! At the Lyceum. So, this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, comes at us all the way from November 23rd, 1989.

And before you ask, yes, it's that episode. The Mad Chester episode, where the sons of Mancunia rise up and change everything forever, according to legend. Chart music, on the other hand, wipes Analsation's arsehole with legend. We want facts.

So somehow we've managed to get hold of a copy of this episode can't tell you where i got it from whoever it was though they know who they are thank you very much um we're going to go through it and we're going to pull the facts out of it we're going to hold it up to the light and and all that shit so first question chaps this is seen as one of the landmark episodes of top of the pops isn't it almost Almost up there with David Bowie putting his arms around another man in 1972. Can you think of any other episodes which have that kind of like, that cachet to them, if you will? Yeah, I had a think about this and I picked out another four. One of them's really obvious, we've kind of dealt with it recently, is Oasis and Blur.

So you've got is Tubeway Army appearing for the first time doing Our Friends Electric which for me that is where the 80s actually begin even though it was 79 Culture Club Do You Want To Hurt Me which was kind of the Starman moment for the next generation along

and Nirvana doing Smells Like Teen Spirit me which was kind of the starman moment for the next generation along and Nirvana doing Smells Like Teen Spirit and doing that sort of fist tape thing of doing it an octave load up on drugs and kill your friends yeah so those would be the ones I'd mention I don't know if Taylor's got any well at my school it was that one where Stakes

Quo were drunk and Rick Garfitt fell over the drums yeah margarita time Quo were drunk and Rick Carfitt fell over the drums yeah margarita time but you know I went to school in the West Midlands so I will chuck in the performance of Young Guns Go For It

by Wham! every now and again there's an episode on Top Of The Pops where a band just fucking has it and just puts themselves over the top on the strength of this one performance on top of the pops and you could say that this happens not once but twice in this episode yeah i was quite shocked when i went through this episode for the first time in you know nearly 30 years because i always thought that 808 state was on as well and it was a completely

manchestered up episode but they were on the week before so yeah that kind of like took a little bit away from me but it's still a very interesting document isn't it this episode it certainly is and i think it works as a kind of epochal moment because the rest of the episode is so anti all that you know it's not as if there's some other sort of slightly cool stuff going on the rest of the episode is so kind of conventional and mainstream and everything that supposedly manchester was going to deliver us from that's why it works and that's that's that's pure good fortune really because if it had been like a couple of weeks earlier a couple of weeks later those bands might not have been so anomalous.

What strikes me looking at this is not really anything to do with Stone Roses or Happy Mondays. It's just, as a whole, here we are in the 90s. Oh, God. The 90s, like it. Which is a real thing. A real thing. Because the 80s had and they're part of it they're part of it the 80s had a stigma before it was even over yes right and by this point people were desperate to move forward but what we now think of as the 90s hadn't really formed yet

although there are you know a few pointers in this episode so you get another brief cultural interregnum and it does have its own little enclave historically in which it exists because of course a lot of things happened in the world your fall of communism end of apartheid end of thatcher the supposed end of history. And in culture as Acid House and Eid up football fans, the 1990 Broadcasting Act, which is an extremely significant and under-discussed thing,

in bed with Chris Needham. Yes. I think in terms of music and clothes and cultural mood, this is a more sharply defined era in itself, even than the event is which is saying something yes roll with it simon it's a thing all right i mean me sarah and neil have already done an episode from the summer of 1989 and we were quite shocked by how much it stank

of unwashed cock that episode it was fucking horrible because we all remembered 1989 as an absolutely glorious year for music and it and it was wasn't it uh well it was but you had to know where to look this is the thing in terms of the pop charts we're equidistant in 89 from um 84 which is probably the last time things were really exciting with Frankie and all that stuff and then 94

where you've got the kind of Britpop bands making inroads and making that a bit lively this is bang in the middle

of that and we're in this kind of even just looking at the crowd with their big sort of Debbie Gibson

Tiffany hair and all that it looks like that stuff is going to be and that's just the blokes. It looks like that stuff is going to be in charge. And that's just for the blokes. It just looks like, you know, that kind of dismal conformist slurry

is going to be in charge forever. Obviously, as a music lover and a music journalist, you've got to go digging. And if the charts aren't providing the good stuff, you go looking for where it is. And I'm not saying there's always an equal supply of great stuff. That would be insane. But there's usually enough for any one person to, you know,

have their tastes satisfied. And, yeah, it just so happens in certain areas that stuff is underground and other times it's overground wambling free and uh this was one of the times where um it was underground and this is why um a paper like melody maker was so fucking vital to me you know in the same way that a lot of people say oh well the charts were shit so i listened to the john peele show um yeah i mean the charts were pretty shit at this time so i was reading melody maker Maker. Other people would say, oh, well, I was going to raves. And there's plenty of that stuff in this chart.

So, yeah, it was just a bad time for chart music, but that doesn't mean a bad time for music. I think one of the great things about 1989, as far as I could see, is whatever you were into, it was there. And it was quite easily accessible. If you were into it was there and it was quite easily accessible you know if you were into hip-hop there was so much shit going on if you were into rock you know this sort of thrash and speed metal was starting to to kind of like take root um if you're into dance music raves and all that kind of stuff yeah and if you're an indie boy or girl you know there's there's plenty of that

knocking about yeah i mean my favorite times in pop are always when the good stuff is taking set stage stuff that has a bit of life of the mind about it stuff that's somehow um challenging and maybe a little bit transgressive and and just just pushing things forward in some way yeah um whether that's in the persona of the pop star or in the actual physicality of the music itself, either one, ideally both, that's when I'm happiest with pop. Yeah.

And what Taylor would call the Aventis were probably the best era for that. And I think the mid-90s were also pretty good. But this episode we're looking at right now is one of the worst eras in human history for that stuff I'm talking about. Radio 1 News. So, in the news this week. TV cameras are finally allowed into the House of Commons for the first time in history.

Transport Secretary Cecil Parkinson announces plans to sell off bespoke car registration numbers. Maybe he could have had cheating cunt before anyone else could got to it. A poll commissioned by the Washington Post claims that 47% of Americans feel that the USSR is more of a force for peace than a threat. Witches in Dorset have danced naked around a rock covered in runic symbols in an attempt to put Prince Charles under their influence and make him change his mind about building a new village there. But the big news this week is that smash Hits have just had their poll winners party shall we play a game chaps?

go on best group? New Kids on the Block Bross living in the past best male singer? Jason Donovan Taylor? yeah Jason Donovan.

Taylor? Yeah. Jason Donovan. Best female singer? Kylie Minogue. Kylie Minogue. Kylie Minogue. Best single? Especially for you. Was that that year? I don't know. Too Much by Bross. Bloody hell.

How does that even go? Exactly. Best LP. No fucking idea. 10 Good Reasons by Jason Donovan. 10 Good Reasons, yeah. Of course it is. Most Promising New Group.

Big Fun. Big Fun. Big Fun. Oh, right. Most promising new artist? Reynolds Girls. Sonia? I don't know. American artist.

Oh, fucking hell. New Kids on the Block. American Artist. Oh, fucking hell. New Kids on the Block. Bobby Brown. Best DJ. Simon Mayo. Steve Wright. Bruno Brooks. The Ever Popular.

And the best TV show? Top of the Pops. Top of the Pops. That's fucking grim, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, Stock Akinwartman have got their stranglehold well and truly on the throat of pop this time. I think all this says a lot more about Smash It and what it's become than it says about music of 1989. Well, yes and no no I think you can

trace that there's a great website called Like Punk Never Happened it's a blog by a guy called Brian McCloskey where he's uploaded every copy of smash hits and if you just scroll through the front covers God bless that man if you scroll through the front covers

you can pretty much see the decline of 80s pop visually unfolding before your eyes. So, you know, it's chicken and egg, isn't it? You know, was Smash Hits responsible for that? Or was the state of pop responsible for the decline of Smash Hits? But either way, it's really visible when you scroll through.

And depressing, actually. On the cover of the NME this week, the beautiful South. On the cover of the NME this week, The Beautiful South. On the cover of Smash It, Wendy James of Transvision Vamp. The number one LP in the country, The Road to Hell by Chris

Rea. Over in America, the number one single is When I See You Smile by Bad English. And the number one LP in America is Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 Hang on a minute, Bad English?

Who the fuck are Bad English? Ironically enough, considering their name they're one of those few American bands of the period that just did not cross the Atlantic So me boys, what were we doing in November of 1989? this was two months before i was politely asked to leave school um and that was that was smart privilege in action you see

they wouldn't expel me because they didn't want to jeopardize my future work and educational opportunities which is a courtesy is a courtesy they did not extend to the kids who were equally troublesome but slow as molasses and i'm not sure whether that's fair or not um so were you like a kind of lovable rogue like tucker rather than gripper stebson or what you know what was the deal no i was an unlovable you you're more of a danny kendall were you they've just worried that you you were going to end up dead in Mr Bronson's car. Yeah, no, I was just... Basically, I was just a bit druggy at this point.

Or trying to be. Because I was living in the middle of nowhere and it wasn't that easy to get the drugs, you see. No. Depended on whether the local New Age travellers were out on the road living the agrarian dream in a lay-by in Bletchley or back in their six-bedroom family homes on the outskirts of town. And if it was the former, it had to just be substance abuse,

you know, like substances like ProPlus or Dodo's, the bronchitis tablets. It's like a whole packet of those and a bottle of red wine and you at least feel weird enough to not have to worry about being alive so this is why drugs should be legal in it because uh being an adolescent is so unbearable that if kids can't get proper drugs they just take something worse oh mate i used to live in ludlow in shropshire and some of the kids there would, if they couldn't get a hold of any weed, they would do

pig tranquilisers or sniff silage. Yeah. Silage. Yeah, that's what they got on. They got on an S. Go and speak to that bloke over there. He's in with the young farmers.

The magazine I was working for at the time was based in Ludlow and it was a mixture of kind of like media professionals and farm lads who could write. And a couple of the editorial assistants came in one morning and they just got facial burns

down one side. And we said, you all right? What the fuck went off there? And he said, oh no, we're all right. We just did some pig tranquilizers and then went in a barn to play WWF.

Didn't know it had just been sprayed with chemicals. So, yeah, so that's how the youth of rural England got down in the late 80s and early 90s. Never mind Crocodile. We had Free Jeanne Cow. Yes. If only you'd gone to one of those forward-looking schools like that fictional one depicted in The Day to Day

where all the teachers and all the pupils are on drugs and openly selling them to each other. So what were you like at school then, Taylor? Did you play up or were you just not interested in it? Yeah, I'm afraid I was the teacher's worst nightmare because I was like sort of kind of near the top of the class but incredibly disruptive and lazy and sarcastic. You wouldn't believe it listening to me now.

No. But looking at how my life's gone since. But yeah, that was my problem. What was the worst thing you ever did at school then? Borrowing my mate's roughbook where he had written the first bit of a short story and for a joke, completing his short story with the most horrifically violent and obscene stuff I could think of.

And then later that day, he got his rough book confiscated because he was reading it and laughing and they recognised my handwriting and got my parents into school and everything because they thought it was real because teachers have got no sense of humour right in those days

so they thought it was like when you find a 7 year old and they've been drawing you know people with their heads cut off and stuff and people getting stabbed they didn't realize that i wasn't actually a psychopath it's just when you're 14 right putting a story about you know someone's mum cutting their bollocks off or you know whatever it was it's just funny you just you put you make people laugh you know This was an alien concept to them. So they thought there was something terribly wrong with me,

as opposed to actually being a completely normal 14-year-old kid. Yeah. Simon? I'd just come back from Paris. Bit of a sort of geographical name drop there, Clown. That summer, because I'd been studying for a year at the British Institute in Paris, which was jointly owned by the Sorbonne and the University of London,

where I was. So I was just back from there, and it was great, by the way, over there. I was basically just studying French culture, which meant that we were just reading comics and watching old Jacques Tati films and stuff like that. It was brilliant. And so I was now doing my final year in London. But during that year in France, I'd started writing for Mouselmaker.

Yeah. I started sending them live reviews. I'd been introduced to the reviews editor, Everett True, by my hero, Simon Rannells. And they ignored the first couple but they published the third one which was Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at Elie Zemarmard and I can still remember where I was when I first saw my name in print in Maldi Maker I was on the 41 bus going through Archway during a visit back to London and I literally screamed with excitement and then I

just kind of continued then during my final year at uni I was carried on writing for Melody Maker when I got back mostly small stuff just like little live album reviews new band pieces but I was gradually getting established as a junior member of the team so it's fair to say that my head was already turned by this and I wasn't really concentrating on my studies I knew what I wanted to do after uni which was just kind of sort of seamlessly merged into being a journalist and I was living in Camden Town which was the sort of real heart of where stuff was going on in music at the time I was in a hall of residence on Camden

Road and it was right next to the legendary grotty pub The Falcon which was the home of the Camden lurch scene which involved DIY sludgy punky bands like Silverfish, Faith Healers Whipping Boy, Milk some pop crazy youngsters

might remember some of those names so that was it I was just sort of finding my feet in the world of music journalism and kind of sort of sacking off my studies really, quite shamefully. But I did complete my degree, but not with any great distinction. So that was where I was at. Nice one. I was still working at the casino, which I've mentioned before,

which was a fucking horrible job. Basically involved being shouted at and called a cunt in 17 different languages. I do remember watching this episode, so it must have been my day off. And I believe this was the time when the riot happened at our casino, which I was really upset about because I was off for two days. So I missed it all but but basically what happened was uh there was an argument that developed over one of the roulette tables over top hatting do you are you aware of the uh of what top hatting means no

sounds obscene okay well let me explain right so imagine taylor that you are dealing roulette and you're there with a horrible Wesker and a dicky bow and you hate life. And me and Simon come onto your table, but we're on either end of the table, so it looks as if we don't know each other. I've got a big stack of plastic chips that I've paid for and all that kind of stuff. And when you spin the roulette wheel,

just before it's about to drop, you say, no more bets. But I, just after the ball drops into whatever hole it is, I put my stack of chips on the winning number. Obviously, blatantly

not allowed to happen because it's come after you've said no more bets and i try it a couple of times and you know i get asked not to uh but you know i'm a cunt so i'm going to carry on doing it now after a few times of doing that what happens is is that i with my stack of chips on the bottom um out of sight i have now placed a cash chip uh these these chips you can just buy and they'll say 10 pounds 5 pounds 25 pounds or whatever i've got i say a 25 pound chip right at the bottom of my stack and i do that cuntish thing again of putting my stack of chips on when the ball's dropped you You take the chips off, and lo and behold, there's a £25 chip on the winning number,

and Simon punches the ear with glee because he's making out that that was his chip. Right. There was these two Chinese blokes that were trying that on all night, and the pit bosses and the dealers were getting more and more pissed off with them. And by the end of the night, this bloke did it again.

But this time, he just slapped the chip on as soon as the ball dropped. And he just pointed at the dealer and said, you pay me or, you know, I'm kicking off. All this argument was going off. And the manager, he basically looked like Sandy Richardson with a moustache. He saw what was going on. He actually ran back into his office he took 500 pounds out of the safe and tried to stick it into this bloke's pocket to just to shut him up yeah um and he just lumped him and then everything went mental so all the dealers ran a

gauntlet back into the dressing room were gettinged. And apparently six of the clientele managed to overturn a roulette table. And that is fucking impressive because they are heavy as fuck. Wow. And they all boycotted the casino for like two weeks. So you just stand there playing roulette and no one was playing.

I was turning around to the pit bosses and the inspectors saying, what the fuck am I doing this for? No one's playing. He says, look, keep spinning the wheel. It's's like but there's no one in the fucking casino and they play shaking stevens as well on the uh on the tape yeah gambling music yeah probably yeah because it was november time then it's all the christmas music kicked in so it'd be merry christmas everyone and simply having a wonderful christmas time and you're just standing there thinking

all my James Bond fantasies have just been pissed up the wall it's not in the Bond books is it you're playing like Chimamda Fair and it's like Bond smiled as the first bars of simply having a wonderful Christmas time came over the speakers

so music wise I was happy as a pig in shit because this was the month done by the forces of nature by the Jungle Brothers, All Hail the Queen by Queen Latifah and the Cactus album by Third Bass

came out so I was just basically taking my money and just throwing it at Selectactor disc saying give me some of that proper fucking lovely ear pop but i i do remember watching this episode because i was still it was really weird because you know because i was working ridiculous night shifts the only music i was listening to was the music i was buying for myself but i was still reading the music press so i'd heard a lot about the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays. And, you know, particularly the reports in the NME

that these were the saviours of music and they were the greatest band since, you know, the fucking Rolling Stones or Sex Pistols or something like that. You'll never have heard anything like the stone roses in your whole life i was in a sort of weird place musically because i was a goth you know culturally i was going out to goth clubs and i had that kind of look and all of that but i was sort of secretly into quite a lot of the sort of manchester and rave stuff i sort of like a solitary groover to that stuff. I hated the idea of raves. I hated the reality

of raves as well. But I loved a lot of their music. So I was sort of locked, I locked myself away in my room on Camden Road listening to

Voodoo Ray or the 808 State album and stuff like that. Yeah. And also quite a bit of hip hop, you know, Takes a Nation of Millions by Public Enemy.

Of course. And that was all mixed in with the, you know, weird Melody maker avant-garde rock music that i was into like my buzzy valentine and loop and the young gods and pixies and all that kind of business yeah so um even though people see me walk down the street would assume i'm just some kind of massive sisters of mercy fan there was always a little bit more to it than that i just didn't let on simon was the fact that you were kind of like merging and and kind of sort of transmogrifying into a music journalist did that basically kick you up the arse to investigate different stuff to to your comfort zone yeah i suppose it did a little bit i thought um if people i respect

are making great claims for this new stuff i I at least owe it the respect to find out if they're talking bollocks or not. Sometimes they were. I mean, there are albums I bought on the strength of a recommendation by David Stubbs that I still think he owes me some money for. Oh, come on, let's listen. Well, there's one called 69 by a band called AR Kane,

which is fucking unlistenable. It's an amazing album. It's an amazing album it's an amazing it's one of the greatest albums of the late 80s just giving you my alternate perspective the weird thing is I was the right age I was the same generation as the baggy bands

a little bit younger in quite a few cases but just culturally it repelled me I hated it, I hated flared trousers yeah that's the thing isn't it I hated it. I hated flared trousers. Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? I hated tie-dye loose tops and all of that. I hated their hairstyles, all of it. And so I just had to engage with it purely on a musical level

and think, well, actually, this is a fucking brilliant record, but I am not going to get in the back of a transit van with my mates and go to Spike Island to see the Stone Roses. Bollocks to that,ocks you know what i mean so yeah i i kind of had a love-hate relationship with the whole thing what was quite funny around my way was it was quite rural uh you couldn't just go into a shop and buy a big pair of those flared jeans no you couldn't like affleck's palace or whatever uh so people would like go in their dad's closet and try and find his flares from the 70s and stuff. But of course they

were like sort of crumpling with a crease down the front. It's not quite the same. Jarvis Cocker or something. So what else was on telly this day? Well, BBC One kicks off at six in the morning with a Flintstones, BBC Breakfast News

Eamon Holmes and Jane Irvine in open air then Kilroy then a repeat of yesterday's going for gold then Playbus the family nest daytime live with Alan Titchmarsh and Judy Spires the one o'clock news Neighbours today's episode of going for gold then the 1978 film Summer of My German Soldier followed by Poddington Peas the French-Canadian cartoon Ovid and the Gang Lasse, Maid Marian and Her Merry Men Newsround, Blue Peter more Neighbours than the 6 o'clock news and regional news in your area

Top of the Pops is now on at seven o'clock wrong wrong wrong bbc2 starts at 8 a.m with the news followed by highlights of the second day of the queen's debate in westminster and then 45 minutes of pages from cfax yes then it's non-stop schools programs until 2 15 then it's live coverage from the House of Commons with David Dimbleby until 5, when Tony Sopa talks about migration in Go Birding. Then it's a repeat of Film 89, and they're now two-thirds into the 1956 Robert Mitchum film Bandido. ITV has screened The Riddlers, Home and Away, ITN News, a repeat of This Is Your Life,

The Other Australian Soap, Richmond Hill, Bugs Bunny, The Panel Show Tell The Truth, The Young Doctors, Dog Tanyan and the Three Musker Hounds, Woof, Scooby-Doo, a repeat, fucking so much dog shit going on in ITV, man. What's going on? A repeat of the Prunella scale sitcom after Henre, the news at 5.40, Home and Away again, Police 5, and they're just about to start Emmerdale Farm. Channel 4 starts their day with the Parliament programme, Business Daily and Sesame Street,

and then screens the 1934 film Riptide, then a short documentary about Peter Bruegel before the religious series Not On Sunday, then after an episode of 15 to 1 it's the 1937 film Cheer Up, then a cartoon from Ungre and then a repeat of Club X with all the tits and swearing edited out and they just started Channel 4 News. Fucking hell, BBC are going big on the live Parliament stuff, aren't they? Do you remember when that started?

You know, when that all started up? Yeah. Wasn't it House of Lords first? House of Lords first, yeah. A couple of years previous I believe. Oh, right. Well, I didn't have a telly, so, you know, it was just a few records. Oh, Simon.

I remember the nation was glued to its screens following the progress of the Dangerous Dogs Act. Yeah. Whatever the fuck it was, yeah. Yeah, I mean, in a way, because the 80s, to that point, had been so exciting for politics, for better or worse, the 80s to that point had been so exciting for politics, for better or worse.

This, you know, finally seeing what the actual sort of day-to-day procedure of politics was like, may have contributed to boring an entire generation away from politics. That and, you know, the fact that Thatcher giving way to John Major

who, you know, he didn't really get any fireworks with him. And I just think right up until probably as far as, you know, the second Gulf War, the entire 90s was a sort of apolitical time for the young people. And that's because it becomes so boring. And yeah, I wonder if showing it on TV,

showing how kind of unsexy it was, was part of it. Yeah, at least before that you could imagine they were all riding around on unicycles. Yes. No, but you can imagine there'd be some sort of verbal fireworks of these kind of imaginary left-wing

firebrands that you read about from the old days really tearing to Thatcher when really they're just kind of mumbling yeah alright then Pop Craze Youngsters it's time to go way back to November of 1989 always remember 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. Hello, welcome along to the UK's top music show. Amongst others tonight, we've got three great British bands and Jenny Powell. Yeah, pleased to meet you, Jackie. As the ever more dated The Wizard by Paul Hardcastle plays,

we're introduced to our host for the evening, surrounded by assorted, massively awkward-looking late 80s twats. Why? It's Jackie Brambles and Jenny Powell. Born in Harlow in 1967, Jackie Brambles grew up in Ayrshire and began a radio career on local station West Sound at the age of 19. In 1987, she became Capital Radio's youngest DJ and a year after that she was poached by the BBC, becoming Radio 1's early morning weekend presenter, before moving to the same time slot at weekdays, where she currently remains at the moment. She'd later go on to take over Sybil Rusko's job as Simon Mayo's weather and travel reporter on The Breakfast Show,

and would eventually become the drive-time host, making her the first woman to hold down a daytime slot at radio one jackie brambles did did that mean anything to you at the time no it was just one of those names that i mean i was stopping listening to radio weren't around this time i guess you know and yeah there's no way i would have been awake at the time of day that she was on she reminds me inescapably of a lot of the girls in my sixth form at the time uh having moved from the black country to the middle class shires i mean my comprehensive was very very mixed but once you got into the sixth form it was like as middle class as you can possibly imagine it was like watching watching Richard Osman's House of Games.

You know what I mean? And it was full of these sort of blandly pretty, slightly horsey girls with magnificent manes of long hair and nice understated clothes, none of whom had anything to say for themselves or any kind of purpose in the world. And, you know, the male equivalents tended to be loud and obnoxious and sort of wanted to push themselves as cool in some way, even though they were just, you know, unquestioning consumers

and chuckleheads with no imagination or self-awareness. Tragically born too soon for the Fyre Festival, you know. But at least you could write them off as twats. It was something that wasn't neutral. Whereas the Jackie brambles is were sort of human music you know without the decency to even be annoying because they weren't they were sort of blandly okay you know yeah just mike smith with tits really isn't it yeah but to make it worse i always knew that if they had wanted to kiss me which they absolutely never would, I absolutely would have done, just for the sort of Lady Jane, uptown girl experience.

As a sort of novelty, slightly eroticised by the air-sat sexual role play of the English class system. She's an uptown, uptempo woman, and you're a downtown downbeat guy. You can say that again. Born in Ilford in 1968, Jenny Powell was a graduate of the Italia Conti Theatre School, who began her career voicing over

adverts for the Now That's What I Call Music series in 1985. A year later, she was taken under the wing of Jonathan King and became the co-presenter of No Limits, a part music, part British travelogue show on BBC Two, which ran until 1987. In 1988, she became one of the presenters of Up To You, the summer Saturday morning fill-in for Going Live with Tony Daugherty and Anthea Turner

and yes the only thing people can remember about that show was that clip where a motorcycle pyro accidentally explodes in Anthea Turner's face as we've discussed earlier Peter Powell may or may not have had something to do with that she also co-presented

four episodes of Top of the Pops in 1989 and this is the last one she did She also co-presented four episodes of Top of the Pops in 1989, and this is the last one she did. Jenny Powell, she used to get slagged off quite a lot for being shit at presenting. Yeah. Can't imagine where they got that idea from. I think I resented her for reasons that weren't entirely fair and weren't entirely to do with her as a presenter,

but the fact that she was doing that No Limits thing, which was following on... It's a Jonathan King thing, wasn't it? And following on from Entertainment USA, I saw Jonathan King and anyone who worked for him at that time as essentially Lord Hawthorne, because they were just disseminating American propaganda and just forcing horrible sort of Reaganite American pop culture on Britain,

non-consensually, but eventually it kind of worked and we as a nation gave in. So I saw it as part of that, really. And she's only just, you know, she wanted a job in broadcasting. She took it, fair enough. But I just thought, I just thought, fuck the hell out of them, to be honest. It was a weird programme, that No Limits. Like limits like for a start why was it called no limits because it had a very strict limit that it was a american aor only on a program that was you know in a youth tv spot you know and it made no sense to me but the weird thing about jenny powell is she comes across as

such a dim bulb and so sort of untogether on camera and she's got this sort of grating voice and she can hardly read her lines and you think oh well okay at least they got some kid off the street no she went to the italia conti stage school they didn't do a very fucking good job did they and it's so weird because it's like the only thing she's got going for her is that she comes over as a human being but a human being entirely unsuited to the job they're doing which is one thing if you're like a poet in a call center or a buffoon in government the path you've trod to get there is easy to understand but presenting television programs is specialized work and there's only going to be a limited number of vacancies so you think that barely being able to speak would disqualify you

almost immediately um but it was her whole shtick you know and if you remember she was paired with an equally gormless bloke on No Limits who did rather illustrate the point that there's no way a male presenter would have been able to get away with this because he didn't get away

with it and no one could even remember his name or anything he ever did was Jenny Powell still has some sort of career doesn't she in the media it's very strange. There are a weird couple these two, Jackie Brownballs and Jenny Powell because it's not

just they don't have chemistry together they don't have English, maths or history together, they don't even have home economics or general studies together yeah, they've got studies together yeah they got nothing they got nothing between them at all and never mind under rehearsed you get the feeling they've never even met before the camera started rolling yeah it's really odd well there's that very awkward introductory handshake isn't there at the beginning of the episode yeah i mean do you think they got

on because were this a sitcom obviously obviously Jackie would look down on Jenny for being a bit thick and Jenny would resent Jackie for being a bit stuck up and snooty. There is a bit of that comedy dynamic working in this episode or not working in this episode at various points.

But you just wonder how true to life that was because occasionally Jackie Brambles does look at jenny powell in this episode with an expression that says you have absolutely no idea what you're doing and i am demeaned by standing next to you yes but you know you i think top of the pops is probably slapping itself on the back uh over this episode because you know they've actually managed to find two women who can be janice long for a bit do you think that's literally it do you think

that was the thinking they thought well they don't get on or they don't even know each other but hey they're both women so let's jam them together and see what happens i mean the talent pool for top of the pops presenting ran about this time it was not the best, was it? Bruno Brooks is still hanging in there. I think Mike Reid did his last one this year. Steve Wright is still available. But they're trying to draft in lots of new presenters. I mean, Simon Parkin was one of them, and he had an absolute mare.

And yeah, it's not... No one's taking Top of the Pops by the throat in the manner that Mr Travis and his ilk did. Traditionally, they relied upon Radio 1 presenters, and those old farts were still hanging around. You wouldn't want them on your screen anymore in the late 80s. And this is before Matthew Bannister swept his new broom through Radio 1 and cleared out all that lot.

So really, who do they have? Yeah, they basically had these kind of jobbing youth TV presenters who would turn their hand to anything, but they're not really music specialists. Not that being a music specialist, you know, was a real requirement of being a TOTP presenter by any means, as we've seen. But yeah, barrel scrapers for definite. Yeah, and I think one thing about this episode that's a little bit different from some of the ones we've seen. But yeah, barrel scrapings for definite. And I think one thing about this episode that's a little bit different

from some of the ones we've seen before, we get to see the audience straight away, don't we? And it's not a good look, is it? There's a lot of slightly odd characters in this audience as well. In there. Yeah. Like, not odd in the sense of eccentric,

or, you know, just weird just i was around at this time you know i was uh yeah 17 and and i don't remember seeing people walking around like stilt walkers at barn dances there's this bloke there's about seven foot tall and he's wearing dungarees um it's yeah there's some really odd likes of anachronistic uh looking people as well it's a really strange assortment in the studio i don't know where they got them from yeah you've got people who look like sort of basically debbie gibson or tiffany with that big 80s hair but you've also got people with very pale sour faces who look like they've been dragged reluctantly

out of the nearest art school and they wonder what they're even doing there. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it's really peculiar. It's not like the old days of going to some kind of cool club in Soho and picking out the sharpest dressed kids. It's almost random.

It's almost like they've put a roadblock in the middle of the high street and forced everyone off the nearest bus. Say, right, come on, you do. This is one bloke who's got a fawn waistcoat and brown trousers. And there's this other woman who's got this kind of Russian-y kind of hat on

with a big sort of white skirt. And they just, all of them look so fucking case catalogue. You can't imagine, these are not the people who are going going to raves in fields or

you know hanging out in warehouses yeah the only warehouse they were going to was B&Q pick up some fucking shelves and Jenny Powell

yeah pleased to meet you Jackie put it in there first things first three lovely lads They're called big fun songs called can't shake the feeling and they're a number 27 this week After promising us three great British bands while holding the microphone right up to her mouth like John Motsen and Barry Davis

Bramble's hands off to, who introduces Can't Shake the Feeling by Big Fun. Formed in London from the ashes of 7th Avenue, a dance troupe produced by Ian Levine, Big Fun were a proto-boy band who were picked up by Stock Aitken and Waterman in 1988 in an attempt to create a male Bananarama. After being put on the Hitman and Her circuit, and touring Japan with Mandy Smith and Hazel Dean, their debut single, a cover of the Jacksons' Blame It On The Boogie, got to number four in September of this year,

and as we've just discovered, they've been voted most promising new group in the smash hits readers poll however what the pop craze youngsters don't yet know is that all members of big fun are gay and two of them phil kresick and mark gillespie have been in a relationship but pete waterman has locked them firmly in the closet upon pain of death. This is the follow up to Blame It On The Boogie and it's a new entry this week at number 27

Big Fun named after the Miles Davis double album from 1974 featuring 28 minute tracks with titles like Quote Expectations slash Orange Lady Now probably named after the Inner City song aren't they? Yes I think they are, yeah. Three eunuchs in Timberlands and cow print bomber jackets.

Awful, awful, awful. I thought they were the death knell of the boy band, actually. Really? Actually, I was badly wrong. Yeah, the precedent of Big Fun was why I thought Take That were doomed when they first surfaced. Yeah, right, yes. Because I genuinely thought

that whole thing had played itself out forever. Apart from anything else, they couldn't sing particularly well. They didn't have anything to add to the corpus of pop. Mostly what they did was cover versions. All right, this song wasn't a cover, but if you look at all their other singles,

their album was nearly all covers as well. Although there's a song called fight for the right to party which i'm disappointed to find out is not a beastie boys cover oh man um but yeah um their whole sound um it was stock naked woman at their most end of the pier if you know what i mean Yes. It was that end of disco that's kind of Tina Charles rather than Donna Summer. And it's all upper body, isn't it? Everything they do. All those bizarre rapid arm movements. It reminds me of the Shrub Rocketeer in Brass Eyes Peter Geddon episode. Yes.

Signalling to a fellow paedophile there's an unguarded six-year-old in a shopping centre. Pipe to Pipe Bushman. Yeah. Because they don't move their feet at all. It's really hard for a boy band not to move their feet. They do that really weird dance at the beginning where it looks like they're trying to get dog shit off their boots. Oh, just slap

their feet with one hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the record is all upper body as well. It's no ass, no bass to it. And they're just not sexy. You know, it's traditional with boy bands to say, oh, they're aimed at girls and gays. Well, I can't imagine any girls I know or knew,

nor any gays I know or knew at the time, being attracted to them. Yeah. The whole thing stinks of, will this do? And I guess it sort of did do for a bit, because they had a few hits. Yes. The album went top ten. But, yeah, it just feels like an entire genre of pop

running out of steam and just fizzling out like a fucking pierced balloon before your eyes yeah it's a weird one with big fun isn't it because they are they do seem to me like a very early mission to get the concept of the boy band off the ground and you know it kind of explodes on takeoff uh from where i'm standing yeah they're the apollo one of the british boy band yes they are on well i'll tell you what this wasn't as bad as i was expecting but i also said that after my endoscopy um i mean it's this this is their best record but it's just that it's just really shit luck for them that they are them and this is the their best record um also on the file that we're watching

the bass frequencies are very strong uh like they've been boosted and i don't know if that was done at the time to cut through the tinniness of an old-fashioned tv speaker or if it's something that's happened with the file being digitized but it gives this record an unearned push because simon says there's no natural bass on it at all um it does have these really nice filly soul chord changes in it and Italian house piano roots it firmly in the time period which is good because it means it doesn't feel like it's trying to bust out into my time period and spoil it um and also it's very slightly faster than it should be, which is a producer's trick. I don't know, in this case it might just be

because they wanted a specific BPM to fit some kind of commercial preference, but upping the speed of a pop record just very slightly from what's on the tape is a tried and trusted way to create a bit of instant, spurious excitement. But it's nothing more than what it is and when you try and discuss this record you do find yourself thinking in those sort of dry technical

terms because there's no spirit to it there's no character to it um it's not it doesn't seem to have any life of its own it's got the laziest and least imaginative instrumental break i've ever heard in my life um which just goes through the chords with a synth string setting playing about three notes um and yeah obviously they're the Christopher Wenner of the Stock Aitken and Waterman stable they're not they don't do you know like my great-grandmother who I never met because she died but my mum told me she would say when she was little to her gran what do you want for your tea gran and her gran would say we'll have some sop because sop is what peasants used to eat right and it's uh basically stale white bread

soaked in milk uh to moisten it up and it's good if you've got no teeth and stuff which she didn't um and they're they're human sock you know what i mean it's like someone has gone all out to find a group of lads as wetly anglo-saxon and custard like as, with no funk and no hint of darkness, just sort of plucked out of the ground in the dead centre of England and put into a cylinder and fired through the barley straight into a recording studio.

And I didn't even need to look them up to know that they had names like Phil Krezic and Mark Gillespie you know i mean like like under 21s footballers who never quite make it and stuff and i mean they look quite nazi but they also provide an explanation of why the nazi dream was doomed which is quite a lot of aryans are like this. Like they're not noble Nordic warriors. They're pale and undistinguished and lacking substance. It's like them and Jackie Brambles strolling down Unterdain Linden.

Oh, Jackie, look at them columns. Oh, yeah, big, aren't they? A bit of alternative history. Yeah, they are profoundly British in the worst possible way that that could mean, aren't they? And by which I mean cheap as much as anything else. They just look really like, you know, no money's been spent on this whatsoever. No. And there is a comparison, which we'll come to later on in the show,

for an American version where a bit of money's obviously been thrown at it at least yes as loathsome as it may be um yeah it just it makes you embarrassed to be a pop fan really and the thing is even though i was at the height of my kind of scowling goth face i was never one of these people who thinks that pop is inherently evil there was always i always kept the door ajar for something great to come along that was mainstream. But it was fucking hard work when the reality of pop was this kind of stuff. Jenny Powell says

at the end, they're going to Spain tomorrow and you're just like, fucking who cares? Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, guys. Yeah. This is definitely stock Aitken and Waterman as cowboy builders. Yes. You know what I mean?

It's like they could do a better job if they wanted. We've seen them do it. But, no, just... Yeah, these are the tools and bags of sand they've just dumped in your front garden. Yeah. And then they fuck off to Sunita for six months. Work on her. But, I I mean this is really weird because it is this is proto boy band stuff

the idea that you know that you could just throw some people together and not even pretend that they're playing their instruments I mean the predecessors to Big Fun are Bross aren't they who were you know actual musicians and were very keen to put that over. So Big Fun's the beginning of something.

But it is very strange to have a boy band who looks so boringly straight who are actually gay. And then a couple of years later, you get a load of straight lads and you try and make them look as gay as humanly possible yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean I guess in terms of white pop you're correct that they were the first of their generation not to even pretend to play instruments but in terms of sort of R&B pop you had New Edition

before them of course yes of whom we'll hear again in this episode funny enough but yeah they were kind of Like you say the sort of failed prototype For Take That and then For E17 but it wasn't long before you had Bands like Let Loose who were also

Pretending they could play their instruments Yeah we're a boy band but we're kind of Somehow real which also meant We're kind of ugly It's weird though isn't it looking back at the sort of non-existent gaydar that people had in those days. That it's like people just, you know, you know nothing at that age.

I don't know if it was that age or those days or a bit of both. Oh, come on. You didn't get the big fun with that. Not at the time. But at the time, I mean, I remember being slightly put out by So Macho by Sunita because I thought it was a glorification of overbearing heterosexuality.

Yeah, me too, yeah. But, I mean, the thing is, Big Fun Art, they're not really even convincing. When they do that choreographed arms around each other's shoulders thing at the end, and it doesn't look saucy. It's like they've had one too many glasses of Taboo. It wasn't the Bowie Ronson moment

for that generation. No. There were dads putting their foot through the TV screen saying, I can't believe it, there's a man hugging another man on my telly. Of course, in real life, they were outrageously living it up yes um as i found an

interview online with them which is extremely entertaining isn't it yeah basically about them doing bongs with sinita yeah taking acid with the she rockers which would have been post betty boo who i do not believe ever took acid in her life. No. And yeah, having it off with all the lads who came to their personal appearances and following George Michael into the toilet to look at his dick and all this sort of stuff.

Which apparently was very hair-er. I thought he'd been a bit more into the grooming, George. Mind you, he was the 80s. Design a stubble on his cock probably you know nice and abrasive for his partner yeah sandpaper effect the other great thing about that interview is the transcript of an altercation in a corridor with jimmy somerville yes shouted at them why don't you come out of the closet, you faggots? And Mark, out of big fun, replied, fuck off, Mr Potato Head. Actually, when I found out that they were gay, it was like,

oh, there's something actually interesting about big fun all of a sudden. Well, I think it's more the fact that if three straight lads had been big fun, it would have been unforgivable because there would have been no level on which you could sort of sympathise with them. Whereas if it's three gay lads, you think, well, OK, at least they will have been laughing their balls off the whole time. So the following week can't shake the feeling, soared 18 places to number nine, but stalled at number eight, their last top ten hit.

The follow-up handful of promises got to number 21 in March of 1990, by which time they'd been outed in the tabloids. And after they got to number 14 when they teamed up with Sonya for the single You've Got A Friend, they never troubled the top 40 again and eventually split up in 1994, but are still paying off a six-figure debt to stock Aitken and Waterman. Oh, it ended badly, didn't it, for them? Big fun there, they're off to Spain tomorrow to start their European tour

Now for somebody who's big, beautiful and Bobby Brown The song's Roni and he's straight in this week at number 29 She's a sweet little girl If you treat her right, real nice, then you hold her tight How? How? On a Balcony informs us that Big Fun are pissing off to Spain tomorrow before introducing us to a video of someone who's big, beautiful and Bobby Brown. Yeah, it's Julia Fordham with Woman Of The 80s.

Do you remember her? She put out a record called Woman of the 80s in autumn 1988 that's the fucking stupidest thing it's like that sort of as risky short termism goes that's up there with those blokes who support championship football teams who get a tattoo

of their 25 goal a season striker who's 22 and it's like yeah he'll never leave he'll never leave the other thing is she uh stumbles just a bit intro which suggests that it was written for her right although i looked at the credits and there's no one listed as a script associate or program associate which you know means gag writer for the talentless face up front. So I guess it might have been one of those people simply listed as production team,

which is an early example of what people do now, of hiring and paying professionals for every task except the words and jokes you actually hear from the person up front because, hey, it's only writing. How hard can it be? I mean, there's no personal bitterness here of course but so just some kid in the office does it and it's terrible it's like uh spending millions developing an airplane and then when you get to the engine it's like stick an outboard motor in it will be all right no it's the most important bit born in boston massachusetts in 1969 bobby brown started his career by singing in his local church choir in 1978 he started a vocal group with friends ricky bell and michael bivins and a few

months later they were spotted at a local talent show and given the name new edition three years later they entered a talent show in in Boston where the first prize was $500 and a recording contract. Although they came second, the organiser of the show, Marie Starr, put them in the studio the very next day to record their first single, Candy Girl, which got to number one in the UK in May of 1983. After their first nationwide tour in 1984 they were shocked to open their first wage packets to discover that they had been paid $1.87 each which led to them knobbing off Mr Starr but more about him later. After serious chart success in the US the group realised that they were not actually signed to their record label MCA, got into proper debt and Brown started to get knocked at the girly attention foisted upon drafting member Rolf Tresvont.

So he'd regularly push himself to the front of the stage out of turn and in the words of our chart music colleague Sarah B, would start doing a sex. chart music colleague Sarah B would start doing a sex. This led to him being kicked out of the band in 1986 and immediately signing a solo deal with MCA and while his debut single Girlfriend got to number one on the US R&B charts he'd have to wait until the beginning of this year to score a UK hit when My Prerogative got to number six for two weeks in february since then he's had three top 20 hits on the bounce with every little step on our own and a re-release of don't be cruel and this the follow-up to rock witcher which only got to number 33 last month is the fifth release from the lp don't be cruel and it's a new entry this week at number 29. He's quite the thing isn't he Bobby Brown at this time? Yeah and he did

some good stuff you know. I mean My Prerogative I thought was a great single. He did. On Our Own I quite. Yeah Don't Be Cruel that's brilliant. Was that from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something like that? I think it was from a soundtrack anyway. And much later on Two Can Play That Game I thought was a banger. Yes. But this

is one, every time we do chart music, there's one song that I have no memory of whatsoever, and this is the one. And it's one of those R&B ballads where I can't even hear the tune. I'm trying to latch on to the melody, and it's not coming. Because they're in one. Yeah, yeah. It's weird, because this is because this is a LA and Babyface

production and I loved LA and Babyface's work later on with TLC for example. But they're phoning it in here. They really are. The name, I mean

Roni is the title but it's about his tender Roni right now. Tender Roni to me is a trap by the awesome Canadian electro funk band Chromio.

But I've never heard this song before. I don't think the word ever crossed the Atlantic as a term of affection for your loved ones. It's a bit weird for British people. Yeah, I do remember a year or so later, Vanilla Ice doing a gig in the UK and he was being slagged off in the papers for going on about wanting a tenderoni because

they got it into their head that that meant a virgin oh my god okay maybe they thought vanilla rice was going to sacrifice one of the pop craze youngsters on stage it's a it's a live clip in it and he doesn't sound very good and uh no he's he's wearing these kind of indigo harem pants like he looks like he shat himself yes but the jacket looks like a kind of um paj harem pants like he looks like he's shat himself yes but the jacket looks like a kind of um pyjama top in the same material

that the buttons have just fallen off and he's got a gold chain around his neck and the weirdest moment yeah is where

he does it's a really weird moment in the clip he does this sort of sexual lunge yeah um with his knee

and he rolls his eyes and flickers his eyebrows in a suggestive way and then at that exact moment the video cuts to what looks like an eight-year-old girl screaming with excitement isn't that a weird moment yes obviously we're meant to assume that within those baggy harem pants there's some kind of monster swinging in there that's just just dying to you know lunge itself as he's just lunged his knee at one lucky member, or maybe more than one lucky member, of his audience.

And then the camera cuts to this child. It's really odd. He must have been supporting someone like Tiffany or something like that at the time. Must have been. He's got that sort of ski-jump hair, like recently revived by Cristiano Ronaldo. Like sort of asymmetrical.

Yeah, De La Arsehole. Yeah, it's done as a kind of high top fade and he's got his Jim fixed it for me medallion. Yes. What a dope, what a dope. Prior to this, I knew almost literally nothing about Bobby Brown. I knew he'd been in new edition I knew he'd got with Whitney Houston and I knew he'd been as they say involved with drugs um and that

was it I could have named about three of his records I don't think I could have hummed any of them uh which I think makes him the most famous person at least from the old days, about whom I knew nothing. Or if you like, the famous person about whom I knew the least. It's just this weirdly total lack of interest. Yeah. And after watching this, that made a lot of sense. It's almost inconceivable that someone so fucked up who originally made it so young could be so

fundamentally uninteresting and i may be missing something i don't know but this is just the suggestion of a record do you know it's not horrible it's just hardly that i mean the studio version sounds better but even that has a forbidding coldness and sort of like a lack of motion to it. Partly because of the sort of clinky clonky 80s backing, but also because that's what it actually is. That's the true nature of the record. It's cold and dead. And trying to watch this is a little bit nauseating

because everything's just very slightly out of tune. You know, we saw madonna clip a while ago and it was madonna live causing a commotion yeah in some sort of gigantic high-ceilinged warehouse with dreadful acoustics uh and she was trying to leap around and sing at the same time and because she was the star of voices by far the loudest thing in the mix. And we get all the same problems here, right? The musicians are all very slick, but I think the keyboard has gone slightly out of tune and the backing singers are all struggling a little bit.

And it means that if you're at all musically inclined, it's almost physically painful to listen to. Like the verses are okay, but as soon as the chorus comes in, it comes in like a wave of nausea um and you know you're just meant to be distracted by him cavorting on the floor with his abs out you know back in the days when people barely knew that abs existed you know yes like fit people just used to have flat stomachs that was the thing um and nobody even knew that there was this quite unpleasant looking sort of brain-shaped belly muscle hidden underneath i think it must have freaked a lot of people out when they first saw it like uh

especially if they'd seen alien it was like the the early stages of some sort of emergence. Yeah. I hate him. He stinks. So the following week, Rone jumped eight places to number 21, its highest position. The follow-up, the freestyle megamix produced by Ben Lebront,

got to number 14 in June of 1990. Don't you fancy Bobby Brown, Jackie? No, Jenny. Here's Jenny from 40 to 31. At number 40 this week, we didn't start the fire, Billy Joel.

At 39, the alarm in the Morriston Orpheus Choir and New South Wales. At 38, I Know, De La Soul. And Tears for Fears with a new entry at 37,

Woman in Chains. Tetrotronic featuring Feli at 36, Pump Up the Jam. And Shares at 35, If I Could Turn Back Time. A new entry at 34, Get On Your Feet, Gloria Estefan. And at 33, Rhythm Nation, Janet Jackson. At 32, The Road to Hell, Chris Ria. And Prince with Sheena Easton.

At 31, With Arms of Orion. They've just completed a very successful UK tour after touring for two months in the States. They're back at number one in the album charts in the States and they're at number 21 in the UK. Will you welcome the Fine Young Cannibals? We cut back to Powell and Bramble's back on the balcony surrounded by the sort of lumbering and garish neon that was still in vogue in 1989,

and which caused Powell to campaign against the threat of heavy electricity on behalf of Gaffaf Wisp eight years later. Do you know she actually brags about that on one of her bios? What, like she meant it all along? She was in on the joke? Yeah, she said she appeared as a guest on Brass Eye. And it's like, no, you were taken in by Brass Eye, you thick woman. And meanwhile, Jackie Brambles is now holding a microphone

so close up to her mouth that when filmed from underneath, as she is for this intro, the foam bulb on the end, which is black, looks like a clown nose that's gone septic. Yes. My favourite bit, though, is at the end where Jenny Powell goes, don't you fancy Bobby Brown, Jackie?

And Jackie Brown goes, no, Jenny. And it's total tumbleweed. I'm not sure if it was actually meant to be funny, then fair play to them, but it's even funnier if it wasn't yeah don't you fancy Robbie Brown Jackie no Jenny look at me

obviously I fancy investment bankers finally Bramble still with a mic right in front of her mouth like she's in an advert for cold sore cream introduces I'm not the man I used to be by the fine young Cannibals. We've already discussed Fine Young Cannibals in Chart Music number 22 and since then they've released their second LP, The Roar and The Cooked,

had three top ten hits on the bounce and, more importantly for their bank balances, scored number ones in America with She Drives Me Crazy and Good Thing. This is a follow-up to Don't Look Back, which only got to number 34 in September of this year. It's the fifth cut from The Roar and The Cooked, and like many singles of the era, has been supplemented by the Clyde Stubblefield break from Funky Drummer, the 1969 James Brown single,

which was first sampled by Public Enemy for Rebel Without a Pause, and is on every other bleeding hip-hop record of the era and it's up this week from number 43 to number 21. Simon let's start with you. You were well up for a fine Young Cannibals when they first came out when we discussed them on that chant music so how do you feel about them by the time the Royal and the Cook came out? Yeah I mean five earlier, they did seem like a real kind of bright hope to me. I mean, I was younger and it was a different time, but by now they meant nothing to me. I mean, socialism was over and they couldn't have been less relevant to me.

Having said that, this song, it's very skeletal. There's not a lot to it, but I don't mind it. It's all right. It's obviously a song about alcoholism. It's not exactly The Bottle by Gil Scott Heron, but it's okay. No. I recently interviewed Dave Wakelin from The Beat. And, of course, the two guys in the background in the FYC are Andy Cox and David Steele from The Beat.

And Dave Wakelin told me this really funny story about he'd moved to America by this point. And he was in general public, him and Rankin Roger. And they'd had a little bit of success. They were doing okay. They had a song called Tenderness, which wasn't a hit in the UK. But in America, it was actually the most played song on CMJ College Radio of the 80s. And Dave Waitling was doing all right with film soundtracks.

He'd done the John Hughes film, She's Having a Baby. And, you know, life's going okay for me. But then Finding Cannibals start really taking off worldwide. And you can't escape them. And everywhere it goes, every time he walks into a nightclub if the DJ knows who he is they try and troll him by playing She Drives Me Crazy

and he just had to front it out, style it out so he'd be on the dance floor he wouldn't leave the dance floor he'd make a point of dancing to She Drives Me Crazy even though it was fucking killing him as soon as it finished he'd walk off. But yeah, they all expected him to storm out.

But people would come up to him and say, oh, what do you think about your old colleagues there having this massive success? Because it was, I don't know, number one in 17 countries or whatever it was. And Dave Wakeman used to say, oh, I prefer Al Green to Al Jolson. Because the implication being that Al Jolson

is what Roland Gift sounds like. But then, right, he couldn't even make that joke anymore because Finding Cannibals went on to produce Al Green.

So he couldn't even say that anymore. Shit. I didn't hate Finding Cannibals by this point but they were just irrelevant to me.

The thing that got me about this performance is no one is allowed to be still on top of the pops yeah because it's quite a still song like i say there's not a lot to it and roland gift stands very still behind the microphone but by law he has to be flanked by these dancers who are going absolutely crazy it was um i think a phrase the time was getting busy everyone had to get busy on stage that's

what they were doing and at the end one of the dancers does this kind of victory thing with his fists in the air as if it's his fucking song not finding yeah they're doing that stamping on balloons dance yes that's popular of poppy uh hip-hop tunes yeah yeah which was all right but you know for certain songs but it doesn't fit this does it it's just a weird editorial decision by top of the Pops to look at that song and think, we can't have this brief oasis of stillness. There has to be motion on screen. Oh, so you think Top of the Pops did this and not the band? Yeah, I do.

I mean, I may be wrong, but I just don't think that Finding Cannibals were thrilled about those dancers being there. Yeah, I mean, the guitarist must go, well, I can't do that funny walking about, like a wind-up doll thing. He can't do his rubber legs thing. Yeah.

Taylor, I was absolutely shocked to go over the notes of this and be reminded that Fine Young Cannibals were fucking massive. Yeah. Particularly in America. Two number ones in 1989. Yeah, but there's two things

I can never get past with them. And first is the guitarist's disgusting rubber legged waddle dance which it's one of those things there's no coming back from do you know what i mean like if sonny rollins had done that i'd hate the miles davis quintet you know what i'm saying it's just an immediate deal breaker and the second is that i hate their name. But it struck me years ago when Fun Loving Criminals came out that I hate their name too. And yet if you switch the words in their names around, you get two quite good band names.

Like Fine Young Criminals is quite a good name. And so is Fun Loving Cannibals. Oh, yes. Remember in the days before internet pornography, much time could be wasted attempting similar switches with other band names in an attempt to improve them. This is all right, though. I mean, there's nothing wrong with this record.

There's always been a dance element to their music. Do you remember people used to say that all the time? It's one of those things when that funky drummer beat became like De Rigueur. It's what people people used to say that all the time? It was one of those things when that funky drummer beat became like de rigueur. It's what people always used to say when they were accused of jumping on the bandwagon. But in fairness, they're very quick to jump on this bandwagon, really.

Much quicker than all the indie bands. And they actually do something sort of halfway interesting with it in that the beat is very quick and busy and everything else on this record is very slow and widely spaced like roland gift's eyes you know um and that contrast it's basically what bruce springsteen did isn't it with philadelphia yeah yeah it's the same thing yeah and it and it does work quite well you, and the flat organ sound is nice and all this sort of stuff, but it's still got the rubber-legged sod on it

and it's still got someone singing like a boiled lamb. So, you know, it is hard to love. Also, I really hate that archetypal sort of dressed-down, unobtrusive, don't-mind-80s look which they've still got even though it's that time has gone you see a lot of blokes about 50 or so now who's still dressed like that and i think it was originally a gay look but it spread to almost every sort of nothingy semi-trendy urban bloke in the in the mid-80s and you'd see people in adverts for like you know young person's rail card and stuff like that with that look like you have a a crisp white

t-shirt or an old-fashioned hooded boxing top with a sort of soft tracksuit top thing over it faded 501s maybe basketball boots or bowling. And you'd wear that with your hair very short at the sides and a little sort of mini flat top on top. Norman Cook. It's basically the Norman Cook. Yeah. And you just sit there sort of looking pensive at a railway station with a zip-up holdall, you know,

and it's like to signify that you were a young man with soul. But, you know, your's like to signify that you were a young man with soul but you know your soul was hidden away under this passive uniform like this urban but you were too late to join dexes yeah yeah it's like it was like dexes with all the actual meanings sucked out of it yeah and you look at them dressed like this now and you think no it's you're gone it's it's time for young men to start dressing like three-year-olds as they would for the next couple of years they look like relics you know they look like relics I mean the funky drummer thing

I remember when this song came out and I liked it simply because it had funky drummer to use the polo at the time I thought it was top yeah you thought it was double good yes double good yes thank you Taylor I think the nadir of my love for Funky Drummer was not buying it, but dancing to it on my own at Rock City.

Strawberry Fields by Candy Flip. Oh. I actually saw Funky Drummer done live in a uni refectory, funnily enough. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, because we booked the JBs to come and play. So it was like Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker. And I'm pretty sure Clyde Stubblefield playing it live.

So the following week, I'm Not The Man I Used To Be nudged up a mere one place and stayed at number 20 for two weeks before dropping out the Chops. The follow-up, I'm Not Satisfied, only got to number 46 in February of 1990, and they split up in 1992. Most up there my man Wonder what I'm thinking The fine young cannibals are 21 there. Now for something Dutch, from a Dutch engineer in fact. It's Ben Liebrand's remix and it's called Eve of the Wall and it's in at number 24. No one would have believed in the last years of the 19th century that human affairs would be watched from the timeless world of space.

No one could have dreamed we would be scrutinised as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply and drop water. Powell, still on that balcony, decides it's time for something Dutch from a Dutch engineer. No, it's not a windmill or a canal lock system. It's Eve of the War by the Ben Lebront remix. That's not actually the artist's name, surely. Yeah, it's weird, isn't it?

The late 80s came late to Top of the Pops because Jenny Powell seemed slightly confused on this issue, amongst many others. Jeff Wayne has been wiped off his own record. I'm sure this should be credited as Jeff Wayne, Eve of the War, Ben Lee Brand remix. Yeah. But that's not how it's presented

on this programme. No, it's not. I'm on Discogs right now and yeah, it's written by Jeff Wayne, obviously, but it's credited just to Ben Lee Brand and here's what it is. Ben Lee Brand, The Eve of the War, then in brackets, Ben Lee Brand remix. So his name appears

twice. If you go on the official chart website it's down as jeff wayne so but i don't think it is because it's not it's it's not a remix of you know the original 1970s jeff wayne thing is it like musically it's just not it's different keyboard sounds and everything see nobody understands the new ways of pop we wonder why there's almost no dance music on these top of the pops is from too much of a fap this is why it's it's too complicated born in the netherlands in 1960 ben lebron became a mobile dj in his hometown before graduating to dutch and german nightclubs when he was old enough in 1983 he joined the dutch station radio veronica and produced a

weekly show called in the mix and two years later he had his first sniff of the charty arse when he produced holiday rap by compatriots mc micah g and dj sven oh ring danger dong however he became best known as a remixer for hire when his version of heaven must be missing an angel by tavari's got to number 12 and a year later his remix of you sexy thing by hot chocolate made it to number 10 he followed that up a year later with a number four hit with bill withers lovely day and another number four hit with Phil Collins' Coming In The Air Tonight. This is the follow-up to his remix of the Art of Noise single Paranoia 89 which only got to number 88 in April of this year and it's an interpretation of the Jeff Wayne single from War Of The Worlds

which got to number 38 in September of 1978 and it's a new entry this week at number 24. And apparently the record label wanted the remix to be done by the people who did pump up the volume. But they were told that the group had split up, meaning that the chances of anything coming from Mars were a million to one. Oh, God. There's people on Patreon paying for this. And we get treated to another video. I mean, we've seen top of the popsers of the mid-80s, and they're

very averse to videos. At this point, they're not as arsed, are they? It is said that the broadcast of the video of Eve of the War Ben Lee brand remix on BBC television on Thursday, 23rd of November, 1989, was so realistic that it caused an outbreak of mass panic.

Phone lines lit up, mobs rampaging the streets. People who owned horses killed those horses, chopped them up and froze them for food in the coming Martian winter. Many fled their homes and attempted to sail to France in a flotilla of small craft like a one-way Dunkirk. And the BBC's Jackie Brambles was obliged to interrupt the broadcast after two minutes to reassure us that it was just a bad Dutch pop record.

It's hard to be scared of the tripods in the context of this because it seems as if they just want to come to Earth and play shit techno at us for a couple of minutes you know like like a kind of passing boy racer stuff you know they'll be off in a minute it's fine is this video not just the illustrations from the booklet out of that jeff wayne album yeah that's what it looks like a sort of uh animated collage yeah but i But I mean, I don't know. I can imagine at the time it may have looked truly Ted-ifying. I mean, there's something quite creepy about it

in that it's long before CGI and just before that sort of crappy interactive CD-ROM type graphics that you got in the 90s. It's like a last gasp for the paper and glue aesthetic. You know what I mean? All the better for it, I reckon. Like school's programmes on Halloween where you'd get a crash zoom into a scary cardboard face

and the camera's wobbling. And just the sort of immediacy of it inspired a bit of a chill, even though it wasn't technically impressive I quite like this video I don't like the record, it's sort of it's almost like it's playing up to British stereotypes of continental pop musicians, you know, in that

it really, it's a version of what at the time would have been the most uncool record imaginable, with a sort of stars on 45 beatbox over it yeah and i mean after 90 seconds it goes a bit more acidy and uh gets a little bit more interesting but they chop it off so you never get a chance to hear what happens so i looked it up and listened to it and what happens is it just does that for a bit and then goes back to the main theme and then it

stops so there you go you never have to listen to it but it's a sign of less interesting times is it just does that for a bit and then goes back to the main theme and then it stops. So there you go, you never have to listen to it. But it's a sign of less interest in times because we've had Dutch acts on here before quite a few times now. And however good or bad those records have been they've had something unique and unusual about them. And we've been able to see... Even if it's only Danny Mirror's jacket.

Yeah, because we said loads about Danny Mirror. We did, yes. We fucking did. I mean in a way there's more to say than if they'd been British because they were doing it in a slightly different way. Whereas with this chump it's harder than if he'd been

British because he's doing something dull and commonplace but it's just unfamiliar enough in its specifics that you can't really get your critical teeth into it because you're not quite sure what he's doing. It's like everything's moving closer together in the world. The world's getting smaller. It's like a ham and cheese roll of a record.

I don't know. Were either of you guys fans of the original Jeff Wayne album? Because I've got to say I loved it. You know, Phil Liner, David Essex, Richard Burt and all that. I acquired a CD of it. I think it was like a double or quadruple CD that came out in the 90s

of it. And I sat down and properly listened to it. And I've got to admit, I loved it. You think it's really uncool? Well, they used to play it at our school and pass it around as if it was a as if it was a real work of art. Yes, my school too.

Assembly filing and music. Resistant to it because I remember thinking that's not going to happen is it? A couple of years ago in the sea off Brighton they started building the Rampian Wind Farm, it's about 10 miles offshore and it always made me think of War of the Worlds because

at night all through the day, particularly at night you'd notice it they'd have this unearthly clanging sound of these pile drivers knocking the sort of foundations into the sea floor and then you'd look in the daytime and there'd be these columns

with, I guess, the windmill head on them or sometimes not. And there is something really spookily alien about them. And they're in a kind of formation. It's like a kind of chessboard formation that's tilted

so you're seeing diagonals of them. And it does look like a tripod invasion. It's kind of cool. And at night time they flash now. They've got red lights across the top

to, you know, I suppose avoid light aircraft crashing into them. And then they flash in sequence and, well actually no,

they don't flash in sequence, they flash in unison. And I thought that is such a missed opportunity. Some of the other just like, queueing up so they flash

like disco lights, you know, just some kind of awesome pattern across the English channel. It's so fucking cool. But I actually started noting down

what the sequence is and it's Morse code for something like RWF, Ramping Wind Farm or something like that. Anyway, going way off topic there.

That's what pop does to you, man. That's what pop music does. It fires the imagination in all these different directions. We've got to the point now where house music in 1989 has become like disco in 1979. It's just a beat that you can whack over any old tune that you like. Oh, absolutely. And, of course, in the disco era,

you had the Close Encounters theme and the Star Wars thing. So that whole thing of getting a sci-fi theme thing and sort of discoing it up a bit, that's way old by this point. But I think it's a missed opportunity here by showing a video because you watch it and you just think,

yeah, it's all right, but what would the actual stage performance be? And then you start thinking oh fucking hell imagine if legs and co were dancing to this with an extra leg you know with a tripod sexy tripod costumes yeah this was made for them so the following week eve of the war soared up 20 places to number four and would get as high as number three. The follow-up, a remix of the Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight, would get to number 58 the following month,

but he'd have top 20 hits in 1990, with remixes of Black Betty by Ram Jam and An Englishman in New York by Sting. Well, I hope he's very proud of himself. Ben LeBron and Eva, the war originally hit in 1978 for Jeff Wayne. The Stone Roses are one of two Manchester bands playing on top of the Pops tonight. They've just finished their Japanese and European tour, and they have a new entry at 13. Rambles, out on the floor amongst more really badly dressed young adults, introduces the first of two Manchester bands on this week,

the Stone Roses with Fool's Gold. Formed in Manchester in 1983 from the Ashes of the Patrol, a Clash-influenced group which had John Squire on guitar and Ian Brown on bass and The Waterfront which featured Gary Manning-Mountfield on bass and Ian Brown on vocals after he met Gino Washington at a party and he told him that he had something about him and would achieve great things The Stone Roses finally came together when Alan Wren joined as drummer in late 1984. They played their first gig supporting Pete Townsend

at an anti-heroine gig after Brown had sent him a demo with a note that read, I'm surrounded by skagheads, I want to smash them, can you give us a show? After bagging their first interview with Sounds a few weeks later, they signed a one-shot deal with Thinline Records and worked with Martin Hannett. By 1988, the band was signed to an eight-album deal with Silvertone Records and spent the latter part of the year working on their debut LP. Their first single, Made of Stone, only got to number 90 in March of 1989 but the next single, She Bang The Drums, scraped into the top 40 at number 36 in July. which ended with a power cut and Ian Brown chomping off at the crew in September, led to them building a huge momentum and playing Alexandra Palace only last Saturday.

This is the follow-up to She Bangs The Drums, a double A side with What The World Is Waiting For, and it's this week's highest new entry at number 13. Well, this is iconic, as people tend to say nowadays yeah wrongly yeah one relevant thing here i think is the wisdom of crowds right when you have a genre that is largely small scale and easy to ignore and one act rises to the top and makes it big, they're almost always the best act in that genre. Not necessarily the most interesting, but the best, as in the least cheap and nasty and the most assured and the most appealing on some basic level

which goes beyond specific genre concerns. Or the most musical, perhaps. And you see this with indie music a lot like in the grim years like the the arctic monkeys are bigger than any other band it's because they're better than any other band they do nothing for me but they're better than all the other bands that were like the arctic monkeys um and in that context the stone roses, right? There were hundreds of jangly 60s influenced guitar bands in the second half of the 80s. And if you're into detail more than large scale effect,

a lot of the others have more to offer. But compared to the Stone Roses, they sounded amateurish and cheap. And they didn't have the same sort of dumb, absolute conviction and confidence that you need to sway people and make them play along and for better or for worse the stone roses had those things this is the first radio ad you can smell the new cinnabon pull apart only at wendy's it's ooey gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long taxes extra at participating wendy's 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 that's why they went as far as they did and anything critical we say about them and i'm sure we will we should at least acknowledge that doing that successfully is a talent in itself. And if you don't believe me, take a look at Embrace and what little happened there. So whatever I say about this lot, there's at least one thing they can do that I can't, either in their field or in my own. So, you know, I have a certain amount of admiration for that.

I remember sitting in my dad's chair because he'd gone to the pub, watching Top of the Pops, didn't know that they were going to come on. Ears immediately pricked up, got, oh, this is them that I've heard about. And my first three reactions were, what the fuck is this?

Why is Damon Grant of Brookside singing? And fucking hell, this is mint. This took my fucking head off this song when I heard it for the first time. Because it was like, oh my God, this is funky as fuck. And it's lads who look like me doing it. My age, my haircut. And I just thought, oh my God, this band are fucking amazing. They're all about 10 years older than you, of course, but you didn't realise that.

No, no, I didn't, no. Were you then a bit disappointed when you... Oh, we'll come to that later, Taylor. Yes. To me, it was just like, oh, my God, people of my generation from my part of the world are doing it for themselves. Well, Taylor's already touched upon the fact

that they were very trad. Because the interesting thing is that the way that Manchester was pitched to the public was meant to be this amazing collision of acid house and indie rock. But the Stone Roses always had more in common with the Hollies

than with a guy called Gerald. I'd say they had more in common with fucking Freddie and the Dreamers or Herman's Hermits than with a guy called Gerald. They're very much the traditional four men with a guitar, bass, drums and a singer. Well,

a singer. The fact that Ian Brown is probably the worst singer in a successful band that I or anyone else can think of may have actually added to their appeal in a weird way because being able to sing properly is effeminate.

And just kind of honking along the way he does to Stone Rose's records makes him one of the lads. And the lads can think... As you said yourself, Al, that could be me. Pretty much, yeah. That's what the audience were thinking., as you said yourself, Al, that could be me. Pretty much, yeah. That's what the audience were thinking. You know, that bloke up there, he's not really trying to sing in tune, but who cares because that's not what it's about.

And I think, in a way, that trad aspect was why the press, one of the reasons the press loved them, because it was nothing that journalists couldn't understand because we've been thrown into this scary world prior to this I mean it's noticeable when they do the chart run down on this episode of Top of the Pops that 808 State are one

place higher than the Roses now 808 State musically are far more radical I fucking love that album but nobody knew what 808 State looked like or what they thought about anything. I think people vaguely knew one of them was called Graham or something and that was it.

And when they did appear on Top of the Pops, bands like that, it was just two or three blokes behind synthesizers or drum machines and nothing much to look at. The thing with the Stone Roses is they gave good rock band. They, you know,

did all the things you're meant to do. They had a funny way of dressing, you know, they had their fucking Wicked Keeper hats and their big flared trousers and their action painting guitar and drum skins,

you know, the old Jackson Pollock thing. The fact that they were a little bit art school made them palatable to journalists as well. They weren't entirely just lads, lads, lads. They had a certain veneer of intellectualism to them. They had some opinions.

Even on the most basic level of like they didn't like the Queen and all of that, they were a little bit gobby. And there was the fact that the sleeve of their album could be decoded um to to be about situationists in 1968 the slices of lemon were meant to represent what you put in your gob when you're being when you're having tear gas fired at you and um that stuff is a little bit ironic as well in that ultimately, culturally, what the Stone Roses achieved was almost the polar opposite of what Situationists would hope to achieve. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And this was the first gasp of that kind of mighty lad culture. It kind of faded away for a little bit before Oasis took off and then you had the real second coming of it, if you pardon the pun there. But even at this time, I noticed a lot of people pretending to be more proletarian and more northern than they really were.

You'd hear people putting on Mancunian accents because it was cool. It was kind of hilarious. Like Perry in Harry Enfield. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly like, yeah like yeah yeah and it's all right this it's i mean it's a groove no one can deny that it's like mercury yeah mercury tricking through your fingers you know it's not a song as such um and it's one of the best things they did i wouldn't say it's the best it's fucking miles better than uh sally cinnamon which here's the thing, their second

single, Sally Cinnamon, what a fucking murderously twee title. You just want to slap whoever came up with that. And that is it's like one of those cutesy C86 bands, those sort of fey, jangly indie bands from 1986. And that is

still in their DNA. They still are coming, essentially, from that pathetic pathetic knock-kneed NME indie background. But they've added a twist to it and the twist is to have a functioning rhythm section. Ian Brown in this clip looks like he's been doing a bit of cultural appropriation down the local wholesalers for Indian restaurant staff with that smock top he's got on. Yeah, so it's a Jean-Paul Gaultier top, and it was also worn in the Top of the Pops studio

by the drummer of the Happy Mondays who bought it as well. And apparently they tossed a coin to decide who was going to be allowed to wear it on Top of the Pops. It's based on an original by Melchester Rovers. It looks like Melchester Rovers have ended their association with Gola and they've signed a kit deal with the local sorry centre. Yeah, yeah. I don't know.

The thing with Ian Brown, right, and I don't imagine it's much of a spoiler if I mention that Happy Mondays are on later, right? And, of course, people are always laughing at Bez because he does nothing in that band and it's true but at least that has zero negative impact on the band or their records and the problem with the stone roses and i know this isn't an original point but they've got a good drummer a pretty good guitarist and an okay bass player, all of which were astonishing things to have in the indie world of 1989.

No other British bands, or virtually no other British indie bands had any of those things. Then up front, they've got this sort of, this kind of imbecile who can't sing a fucking note, whose performance looks ridiculous, and who doesn't say or do anything interesting. And he's the front man and the focal point.

Like, dancing like a farmer and trying to look like he's above it all. And the two things don't really go together. There's a clip of Neil Sedaka on the Midnight Special doing the song Bad Blood. And if you want to know where Ian Brown got his performance style from, it's all there, flared jeans and all. It's worth checking out.

But, no, as Simon said, 808 State are a place above them in these charts. And not only is that a better and more effective and more forward-looking record um it was more authentically popular that sort of music despite being mute and weird uh was more authentically popular than this sort of music and that in itself is a vastly more interesting and significant thing than a rock band getting on top of the pops. And yet, historically, this is what we talk about. And there they are coming on like a big noise. And, you know, there is no tongue in this bell.

Nothing is communicated at all. And nothing has changed. And that's what I never really understood at the time and still don't I understand why they were popular I don't understand why they were anything more than that I'll tell you one reason why I think um they caught on in the press and a big deal was made is that they were quite a rare thing at that time to be a guitar band who didn't come from the press so you know to quote the riot girl movement a few years later this was happening without our permission they already had a groundswell of you know um an audience locally and it was you know it was growing and growing

and they were already a thing before the press even noticed and and weirdly paradoxically masochistically almost journalists loved that yeah it was actually it made a change to write about something that already had some traction in the real world um as opposed to the usual thing for writing about indie rock at that time which was that oh god somebody who's doing press for creation records would send you their new band and you were supposed to get excited about it and uh tell the eager readers that it was the best thing that they were going to have heard in their lifetimes well you know it it makes a change to actually not be the person huffing and puffing and blowing up that hype balloon it makes you know it would have made a change at that time, I would imagine, because I was

only just dipping my toe in the water of the press, for half the jobs already to be done, you know, and for there to be this idea that there was this kind of runaway phenomenon that was going to happen whether we liked it or not. Yeah. And also, probably, you know, they were so distinctively manchester at the time you know even the way they looked the fact of um bringing back big trousers as opposed to narrow trousers was yeah it was a sort of um fashion um 180 degree turn yes and bringing back completely unforgivable for our generation yeah yeah but. Yeah, yeah. But bring about the colour white to rock as well,

which hadn't really been seen since The Who, I suppose. Yeah. And this then in turn had a massive effect on many street preachers a few years later. Yes. So they were quite distinctive about what they were. They were quite distinctive about where they were from

and all of that. Even if you said, it's not where you're from, it's where you're at and all that bollocks, they were very much a Manchester thing and I think that's why they were able to inspire such fierce loyalty in their early fan base, not the

fan base that they eventually acquired but just that first few thousand that were following them around were so proud that this is something that the London press hadn't invented. Yeah, and I think we probably should make quite a distinction between their early fan base and their current fan base,

as I suspect they don't have that much in common. Yeah, I mean, you know, now the kind of people who you're going to see in these massive open-air gigs that Stone Moses is doing, it's very Brexit. Very fucking Brexit as well as Dad's talking about this particular record though

you can see why they wanted to put it out as a single obviously because it's a new direction and they're obviously really proud of, you know rightly, of being able to move beyond that sort of you know, ecstasy-blasted version of the birds.

Jingly, jangly bollocks. Yeah, like a less musical version of the birds, and create a different sound, which would absolutely have been beyond their peers. I mean, credit where it's due. I don't think any other jangly guitar band of the late 80s could have made this record. What about the Soup Dragons, Taylor? Well, there we are.

The trouble is, it's not really a single, is it? No. When you look at it, it doesn't go anywhere. No. It doesn't really, it just sort of trundles along for a bit. Yeah. And then fades out. I mean, let's not pretend this is not one of the better records

on this programme, but even so, you know. You could say that about a lot of house music, Taylor, at the time. Yeah, true. Just trundles along, doesn't go anywhere and fades out. Right, but the people making that music were kind of, you know, consciously faceless, weren't they? Consciously standing in the shadows. Whereas this is, you know, we're supposed to bow down

and worship these new rock gods. You'd think they'd come and meet you halfway a bit. I don't know. But also, the way I see it, when it comes to funk, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. And if you're like a super bad funk combo and you can play four notes and strip the paper off the walls, that's great.

And if you're a bunch of awkward punks and you can hardly play and you're sort of copying the structure and the technique of funk records to use that as a framework for your anti-rock ideas well okay that's great too but this to me is a bit of a warm shandy thing it's a bit sort of middling there's a nice brooding atmosphere to it but that's the easy bit right any crappy garage band you play a bit of funk or a bit of reggae you can do that that's really simple the trouble is they're not slick and funky enough to make a proper funk record but at the same time they don't sort of take it anywhere else and do anything different with it so in a way it sort of depends on their audience never having heard any black music from

the 1970s but luckily that was pretty much the case it basically meant there would be something to actually dance to yeah at the shitty student night discos i've been going to for the past three years i was going to go out and buy this and um i went out with my mate and he ran into one of his mates in town ended up going to his flat with a few cans and everything and i was going through his record collection it was like oh my god you got the stone roses album he said yeah he says oh oh what's it like oh shit i'm going what really he says yeah it's shit i fucking ate it you can have it for 20p oh yeah yeah gave him 20p took it home didn't have fool's gold on it of course and i'd realized

i'd just bought the kind of music i fucking hated and i never forgave the stone roses for it and i never bought fool's gold thing is al that album does have i am the resurrection on it yeah which um the first few minutes of that is a bog standard birdsy in the rock song but then it does go into that long kind of funk section at the end and in a way fool's gold is just the kind it's making good on on that promise it's making good on the promise of i'm the resurrection i'm a resurrection got played a lot in nightclubs because it's 8 minutes long and it meant that a DJ could go for a piss, go buy a pint whatever, but people seem to respond

to it and they got a lot of praise for it it's like, oh wow, look, this proves these guys can actually play, so I think they thought alright, well, you know, let's do a whole 12 inch that's like that and that's where Phil's Gold came from I think, because the album comes out in like, what, May of that year?

It comes out in the spring of 89, anyway. Yes. And everyone's been wetting themselves over Iron Resurrection, so it's like, oh, you like that? See, I'm sort of biased, because, I mean, about two months later, The Fall and Cold Cut got together and did Telephone Thing, which to me is a genuine white Northern British semi-funk record, which understands that if you're white and British and you're doing this,

you have to use what you have, which is unique, which is a sort of aggressive raw edge, which the Stone Roses can't or won't do for whatever reason. Although again, I think that record is superior to this record in almost every respect but it makes perfect sense that this was the bigger hit and this was the bigger group and of course we've not mentioned that it's a double a side uh with what the world is waiting for which i'd never heard until this week and uh if they'd have done that on top of the pops uh we 20p richer.

Yes, exactly, yeah. And 20p was a lot of money in them days. They sent me to Bridlington to review the Stone Roses once for Melody Maker. This was, what, 95 or something? And it annoyed me in the end because, first of all, I had to write it on the train home the next day, which was always deadly. And also because something got mangled in the edit.

So it went into print with me saying the Stone Roses were as good a blues band as Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. No. I absolutely guarantee you will not have been what I actually said in the original sentence. They just used to throw those things at you occasionally, like terrible manglings of your original copy, actually said in the original sentence. They just used to throw those things at you occasionally, like terrible manglings of your original copy,

as if to remind you that this is tomorrow's chip paper and you shouldn't start thinking of yourself as a real writer. In fact, I think Simon was the only section editor who never did that. So editing shit in those reviews, I have to accept responsibility for. But they sent me to Bridlington. And it's like, you know, the second album was out and everything and you know so I went there with a perfectly open mind as I had perfectly mixed feelings about the band and they came on and they opened with the first three songs from the first album in order right I couldn't believe it and I was standing there laughing you you know,

and everyone else around me was in raptures because that's exactly what they'd come to see. Yeah, that's what they wanted, yeah. Yeah, a heritage act, you know, or a legacy act who'd just released their second album, you know. And this was a band that you were supposed to, like, believe in, man. Yeah, to be real.

Something more than a group. And, in fact, it was something less than a group it was like a nostalgia you know uncommunicative and incapable of surprising you except with the extent of their complacency so early in their career and you know i understand they weren't bouncy pop stars and they didn't smile and they sort of looked surly and suspicious all the time and for some people that's enough you know and it could pass as attitude or something oppositional um but to me really that's that was just the way in which they pointed forward to the 90s and beyond and i don't think it's a positive contribution.

Like I said earlier, Ian Brown becoming a singer is all down to Gino Washington. Yeah. Going up to him at a party and saying, you know, there's something about you. I can see great things in you and all that kind of stuff. And apparently Gino Washington had a bit of a habit of doing that Washington had a bit of a habit of doing that because

in the at the Hippo Club in 1986 after one of his gigs he said exactly the same words to Al Needham of Chart Music Really? Seriously. Wow. Yeah.

I'll leave it up to the Pop Crazy Youngsters to decide how much of a percentage he was right. But yeah. He's like the Pele of soul music. You know, like when there's a World Cup coming up, Pele travels around the world. And wherever he is, you know, if he's in like the Czech Republic, he'll say, I think the Czech Republic will win the World Cup. And if he's in England, he says, I think England will win the World Cup. Yeah, yeah, that's what he is.

I think England will win the World Cup. Yeah, yeah, that's what he is. Maybe Gino just had a nose for people whose singing is like Les Dawson's piano playing. He could just sense them from a mile away. What are you saying about my singing, Taylor? You right. I wonder what he sounds like in his own head. You know what I mean?

Because when most people who can sing, no, in fact, just most people, they can tell if they can sing or not. You can hear it in your own head. And what does Ian Brown sound like inside his own head? What does he think when he hears it played back in the studio? Yeah. You know, just think, oh, yeah, he's good, that.

Vocals are really pushed back in the mix. We found out why very quickly, didn't we? Well, that's one of the saving graces of this track, that he's mixed quite low. Yeah, if you mix him... If you get him to do 100 takes and you pick the best one and you mix it low and you swathe it in echo, he's got a nice enough voice, you know.

Yeah. If you're in a rock band, you can't really get away with that forever. And apparently the band nearly pulled out of the performance, according to legend, because they weren't allowed to have amps on stage to make their miming look real. Also, they were warned by their management

to be wary of the Happy Mondays because the drinks might get spiked. So the following week, Fool's Gold jumped five places to number eight but would drop one place the following week, Falls Gold jumped five places to number eight, but would drop one place the following week. The way people go on about this song and the Stone Roses, their chart positions were pretty cack, weren't they? Yeah, but this was still when indie rock didn't sell.

You know, so number eight was like number one about five, six years later. It re-entered the charts in September of 1990 and would get as high then as number 22. The follow-up, Elephant Stone, entered the charts at number 8 in March of 1990 but immediately slid down. And after the next single, One Love, got to number 4 in July of that year, they tried to get out of their deal with Silvertone claiming they were being skanked, which led to a paint attack on the record company officers, a trial, an injunction from the label to stop the band signing with anyone else,

eventual overturning of that injunction, the band signing with Geffen Records in 1991, counterbuying appeal from Silvertone, which stopped them recording for a year, and a second LP five years later after the first one, which died on its arse and eventually ended up with Ian Brown bellowing like a sick

cow at the 1996 Reading Festival. Taylor, you were there, weren't you? Yeah, well I was backstage. Simon, were you there? Were you reviewing it or something? Yeah, well I wasn't reviewing the Stone Roses but I was reviewing

I think it was the melody maker tent actually at the time um which if you know the layout of the relling festival is at the far end from the main stage so um in order to get to the vip bit after i'd done my duties in the tent you had to walk through the field and i stood and watched the stone roses or you know the arse end of the Stone Roses for a bit more with more with pity than with glee at how fucking awful they were it's not just that this thing was bad we all know that but um just the whole thing was just so half arsed and you just wanted somebody to come put them out of their misery with a shotgun. But we have to be grateful to them because they pulled out of the Glastonbury Festival,

which allowed Pulp to have their big moment as surprise headliners, and that was one of the most amazing festival performances I've ever seen. So there is that. Yeah, I was sat backstage at that Reading, and I wasn't bothered. I didn't go out the front to watch them until people started flooding back in to the backstage area with these kind of shell-shocked expressions,

like, oh, my God, oh, my God. It's like, what? I could hear them sort of coming through the air, but I wasn't really listening. They were like, you've got to go out there and listen to this. You've got to go and hear this. Didn't really surprise me, you know. It's like we all knew that the the guy can't sing but yeah it was i'm not sure what people were

expecting really i think it reached that point where the stone roses were already a part of people's childhoods do you know what i mean it was like what was it sort of uh seven years that's long enough to go from being you you know, 18, 19, to feeling like a bit of a jaded adult. I think people were going out there, yeah, expecting to relive the summer when they were 18. You know what I mean? But, I mean, that's just what they sound like.

I got an amazing bootleg of the Stone Roses in japan from recently when they did some gigs recently and you know the band still sound pretty good um bit heavy-handed but that's what it's like when you're doing those sort of gigs um and ian brown has has given up there's no not even an attempt you know to do anything other other than just make a horrible noise into the microphone. It's amazing to listen to. It's truly amazing. It makes that Reading performance sound really musical. Yeah, and that Reading performance isn't even my worst Ian Brown live experience. There's actually a worse one.

I was at the NME Awards. Yeah, the exciting life of a music journalist in the early noughties. And it was at the Hammersmith Palais. And Ian Brown was receiving some kind of, I don't know, God-like genius inspiration award or something like that. And that meant that he had to do a little mini gig

at the end, three or four songs. and that meant that he had to do a little mini gig at the end three or four songs and um he had insisted that the bar be shut during his performance i don't know if that's just because he wanted everyone's attention or because he decided he's a rastafarian or something god knows did any menstruating women have to leave the building as well i think of their own free will yeah um uh so he comes on stage and immediately i you know zoomed the bar thinking fuck this i'm getting a drink and as i approach the bar i can see the shutters there is bible shows physically coming coming down in front of me it was like the start of Porridge, you know, Norman Stanley Fetch. The look shut down on my dreams. And I just had to,

I was stood there, like, with my face, you know, almost against the shutters, waiting for them to reopen. Meanwhile, right, as well as doing his own fuck-awful material, he decides to do a cover version of Bob Marley and the Wailers' Three Little Birds.

Oh no! Can you imagine it? Just take a second to imagine being starved of alcohol, desperately needing a pint, and in the background, Ian Brown is singing Three Little Birds. I'll leave you with that. Have you had any personal dealings with Mr Brown? Because, of course, our good friend Neil has had death threats put on his phone.

No, I haven't. Yeah. No, I'm sure he's a lovely bloke, you know. I've been ladded at by Manny. No, I interviewed John Squire once. He really was an ignorant, uncommunicative sod. Really? Was that Sears?

Well, it's like, if you look at a lot of their interviews, it was like they were trying to be above the press. Do you know what I mean? It's like they'd seen Bob Dylan in Don't Look Back and thought, oh, that's the way to do it. No, but Bob Dylan can do it in Don't Look Back because he's smarter than the journalists who are interviewing him.

It's not the same thing as just sort of being an ignorant twat and just shrugging when people ask you a perfectly reasonable question. Oh, dear. He had nice shoes, though. Yeah, he had a nice pair of sort of black-soy desert boots. They were really nice, probably very expensive. And, of course, Fool's Gold was sampled in 1990 by Run DMC for the track What's It All About

and was later used in an advert for Ritz Crackers in Indonesia. It's the same roses and fools gold and we've got a new album out next spring. Here comes Jackie with a chance to number 11. And Fool's Gold, and we've got a new album out next spring. Here comes Jackie with a chance to number 11.

And there's a brand new entry at 30 for the Happy Mondays and Hallelujah. Another new entry at 29 for Bobby Brown and Roni. The Eurythmics are at 28 with Don't Ask Me Why from the LP We Too Are One. And another new entry at 27 for Big Fun, Can't Shake the Feeling. Black Box is still in there at 26 with Ride on Time. And Debra Harry's at 25 with I Want That Man. A new

entry at 24 for the Bentley Brand Remix of Eve of the War. And Belinda Carlile's at 23 with Leave a Light On. At 22 it's the Never Too Much Remix 89 styling for Luther Van Dros. And at 13 to 21, I'm Not The Man I Used To Be, The Fine Young Cannibals.

At 20, Come On To The Ardure, Jimmy Summerhill and June Miles Kingston. And at 19, Room In Your Heart, Living In A Box. Welcome back, Morrissey, a new entry at 18 with Ouija Board, Ouija Boards. And up 11 to this week's 17, What You Gonna Do With My lovin' in a city?

Still street tough at 16, the Rebel MC and Double Trouble. And no move at 15 for D-Mob and Kathy Dennis, come on and get my love. At 14, that's what I like, Jive Bunny and those master mixers. And a new entry at 13 for the Stone Roses and Fool's Gold.

At 12, it's Pacific 707 for 808 States. And up 16 to this week's number 11, doing the Lambada, Keola. Thanks very much, Jackie. Now for a band that's come all the way from Manchester. They're called Happy Monday, featuring a very special guest, Kirstie McColl. The song's A La Julia, and it's number 30! Thank you! Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, we're here to pull you back into the new world of the same. After Brambles runs down the charts from 30 to 11, Powell introduces Hallelujah by Happy Monday. Of course she means the Happy Mondays and Hallelujah. Formed in Salford in 1980, Happy Mondays was signed to Factory Records in 1985 after a demo tape was passed to a market trader in the Arndale Centre who passed it on

to a DJ at the Hacienda who passed it on to Tony Wilson. They then landed a support slot with New Order but got kicked in by bouncers in Glasgow when they were discovered breaking into New Order's dressing room in order to get at the rider. Their debut LP Squirrel and G-Man 24-hour party people plastic face can't smile white out was released in 1987 but their first scrape with the chart came earlier this year when a re-recording of lazy itis with cold denver got to number 85 in may of this year and the vince clark remix of rope for luck got to number 68 only last month this is the follow-up and it's from from the Manchester Rave On EP, which was released on the same day as Fool's Gold, and it features Kirstie McColl,

and it's a new entry this week at number 30. Apparently the first time they ever met Kirstie McColl was actually on the stage of Top of the Pops. Yeah, it looks like it as well. For this performance. Yes, it does, doesn't it? Yeah, with her reserved rave dancing and double denim. I mean, God bless her, she's no Rowetta, with her reserved rave dancing and double denim.

I mean, God bless her, she's no Rowetta, but you feel for her because she has to shrug off or sort of dance off an extended hug attempt from Sean Ryder late on in the set. Yes. Looks a bit awkward. She looks a bit like she's just come out of prison, actually, in that get-up. Yes, she does.

She looks extremely Wentworth, doesn't she? Talking of denim, there's a guy in the audience that I really like he was there before the Stone Roses and he's back for this one the only word for it is Wally really in dungarees. He's in dungarees and a woolly jumper underneath which is quite

a look. He looks like he's been dressed by his mum like Forrest Gump or something and I first noticed him before the Stone Roses but like he's been dressed by his mum like forrest gump or something and i i first noticed him uh before the stone roses but now now he's back this this dunga retard he's back um yeah oh very good son very good and and sort of giving his nod of approval to this so you know when there's this idea that this was the music for the cool people uh in britain at the time but this guy is yeah he's absolutely loving it. Dungarees kind of did come back in the early 90s, didn't they?

Yeah, because it's kind of utility clothing, isn't it? It's loose and it's kind of non-gender specific. So yeah, it was kind of very much in tune with the times. I quite like the fact that Jenny Powell gets the band name wrong and the song wrong, by the way. Because it sort of shows what gatecrashers they were. That they were

interlopers on the show. That the presenter has her head fucked by them so badly she can't even say what they're called properly. This and Fool's Gold came out on the same day. But it was no blur-asis situation, was on the same day but it was no blur aces

situation was it no because there was no expectation that it would be you know a chart face off exactly yeah yeah and they

got on with each other didn't they did they I mean I don't know no idea yeah yeah there's photos of Chum Rider and

Bears hanging out at Spike Island and all that kind of stuff. I think Happy Mondays were thrice the band the Stone Roses were. Yes. Although their performance here doesn't necessarily back that up. No. For a start, the track sounds terrible.

How thin does this sound? Like echoing around the studio, like a fish slap. This really sort of bad track. And again, it's a record that just sort of shuffles along for a bit and then stops because they weren't really a singles band apart from Step On, which was a cover, and Kinky Afro, which was practically a cover. So, yeah, you're not going to see them at their best on Top of the Pops,

except in the sense of being these authentically dissolute characters surrounded by people pretending to be dissolute. Nail on the head there, because they were, with or without inverted commas, real Mancunians they were the sort of people you'd be a bit wary of in the pub because you didn't know which way it's going to go and they're the sort of people that people who jumped on the manchester or the manchester bandwagon and you know got got the got the train up to piccadilly station uh would actually be a little bit frightened of rather than trying to slap them on the shoulder. Do you know what I mean?

I like the fact that the guitarist is going bald, the drummer's got a bad kind of mullet ponytail deal. Not one of them looks like they've been to an art college or set foot inside an indie disco. After seeing the Stone Roses, it was like, oh, this is that other band I've heard so much about. And my reaction was, oh, this is more like the indie rubbish that I cock my nose up at at various Thursday night discos. And it's like, oh, I thought you were going to be better than that.

For a long time, I was very anti the Happy Mondays. I always thought that they were essentially Frankie Goes to Hollywood, but everyone in the band was ped. Well, yeah, it isn't one of their best tracks by any means, but I would say that them on this show feels more like a moment than the Stone Roses does to me. You can imagine with this, people at home thinking, what the fuck is this?

You know, you've got Bez, Bezing. Yeah, that's true. You've got Sean Ryder leering at the camera going, Sean William Ryder will lay down beside you and fill you full of junk. It's chaotic. It's slightly shambolic. It feels like it could spiral into just pieces at any second. But it really is a moment.

And the thing with the Happy Mondays is they were, I don't know if it's patronising to say that they were avant-garde by accident. Because maybe, I'm not sure, to this day I can't decide if they were a bunch of guys who wanted to form a funk band and weren't quite good enough and were getting it wrong in a really interesting way. quite good enough and were getting it wrong in a really interesting way. Or if they took funk and kind of deliberately unscrewed a few of the, you know, nuts and bolts and made it sound weird. I still don't know what that is, but lyrically I'm very wary of comparing Ryder to Marky Smith, particularly in the presence of Taylor.

But I do think that there's some genuinely weird Northern trash poetry going on. Um, when, when he could be, when he could be bothered when he was at his best. Um, and you know, going a year or two later,

I do think, um, for, you know, on Kinky Afro, son, I'm 30. I only went with your mother cause she's dirty.

It's one of the greatest opening lines in any song ever. Do you think the fact that Kirstie McColl's on there is to the detriment of the performance? It just makes it a bit weird. It's like, what the fuck is she doing there? Yeah, nothing against Kirstie McColl, but she looks deeply out of place, yeah. Yeah.

I'm not sure she knows what she's there for. She's like their social worker. See, I was thinking the other day, you remember that legendary NME cover where Sean Ryder has climbed up onto the hotel roof and he's had his picture taken, hanging off the hotel sign, off the letter E, you see, out of hotel.

So, see, that might have looked innocuous to Mr and Mrs Straightworld in their buttoned-down suburban hell, but the very hip will almost certainly have looked at that picture and spotted the reference and thought, ah, eee, it's his social class. Now, it's my social class too, so I'm allowed to make that joke. If anyone else does, I will be delighted to get angry about it.

But this is the key to it, in that they were a genuine English working class band, but sort of not like The Jam, where everything was sharpened and polished. I mean, The Jam were an authentic English working class band, but they were an authentic English working class showbiz band. I don't mean that as a criticism. Just everything was sharpened and polished up. It was like the mod tradition. You fit in in order to,

like as a form of entry. And also not like Oasis where the supposed sloppy edge was carefully presented and sold. But they're also not a kind of generic lumpenproletariat thing, that sort of insulting stuff, you know, because they're atypical. The point is, like, even in the Northwest, not all the kids off the estate were listening to those records

and wearing those clothes, and they didn't have that kind of wit, you know. Ultimately, they're only representing themselves which is a privilege that's usually reserved for the privileged do you know what i mean it's like if you're from a well-to-do background you can do anything you want whereas if you're not you somehow have to be like a a perfect avatar of your background and that's not how it works because the most interesting groups that's the big connection with the fall to me in that they uh were just unaffectedly themselves uh i mean and of course everyone always talks about how the sort of the mostly middle class music press couldn't deal with a Happy Mondays,

or they sort of patronised them. Then when it turned out they had some not very nice opinions on certain issues, everyone turned on them, right? Which is okay in some ways, except that group after group had terrible opinions on things, or were complete horrible twats in one way or another. But music journalists didn't care about that because they pissed their knickers over the happy mondays yeah until they because they did they would doubt drugs and did all this naughtiness right and then they dropped

the word faggot in an interview or whatever it was and all hell broke loose and as i say you know i'm not saying you should go oh you know, well done and wave it through. But the point is band after band come along who were horrible twats in a way that music journalists could sympathise with and understand and got a free pass. Whereas, you know, and had horrible opinions and stuff, right? But they were artists. So it was sort of, you know, people wouldn't make excuses.

It was Happy Mondays were twats in a way that scared and unsettled them. Also, the other thing is that those bands were secure in their own perception of themselves as moral and virtuous, which I strongly doubt the Happy Mondays were, you know. Yeah. See, if Bez calls someone that word, people kick off. But when Jimmy Somerville uses it at Big Fun that's alright

what's going on with this hideous double standard because that was the interview with Stephen Wells wasn't it in the NME in about 91, 92 or something I don't know where it was Bez that was saying all this shit

and Sean Reilly says yeah he'll say faggot this, faggot that, but he will sit and have a drink with Boy George. I mean, people criticise Bez because he does nothing, but that's what he's best at. He Bez's, yes. So why shouldn't he make a career of it? Exactly. I think of plenty of people whose contribution to pop music

would have been far more worthwhile if they'd been more like Bez. What do they think they should have got Bez to do? Made him the keyboard player? No, you'll be sorry. This was the role he was born to play. Yeah, he was in the Davy Jones role, wasn't he? Yeah, but he also

is the only one who comes through this performance with flying colours because he's wearing a really nice outfit. He never lets up with his dancing and his crazy face. And he's by far the most charismatic person on the stage. Well, you know the question we ask at the end of every episode.

We already knew the answer before we even fucking started doing it. Bez. Yeah. That bloke with Juan Maraca. The dancing of Bez. Yeah. That bloke with the one maraca. The dancing of Bez in this episode isn't as fluid as it becomes later on.

It's basically the dance you do in this era to any kind of dancey indie music which is pretend that you're walking along a bouncy castle with two pints in your hand, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Have you seen that clip from some kind of reality TV show from a year or two ago where they take Bez to some kind of long-lost tribe in South America

and introduce him to them and he does his dancing at them. And they're all absolutely fucking pissing themselves laughing and doing impressions of him back at him. It's one of the greatest things. Go on YouTube for that. It's better than what they make Sean Ryder do. You know, Sean Ryder, you know Sean Ryder these days he's just this person who

goes on programmes about UFOs and stuff just talking rubbish and it's like you know he's there for everyone to laugh at

and at the same time he's laughing at them and taking the money you know and everyone's happy except me has it been on one of those kind of

ghosted programmes with Derek Accor or something like that yes you've seen that haven't you the Happy Mondays haunted house thing with Yvette Fielding but sadly not Derek Okora when Derek Okora and Yvette Fielding parted ways part of the country was

lost I think yeah it was all over just the repeat fees as Derek would say it's just residuals here now Ev Evie. Well done. But it does upset me a bit to see Sean Ryder doing this because he was never a world-class lyric writer, but when he put a bit of work in,

he had a genuine talent for writing bits and pieces which rang true without being just boring reportage. Do you know what I mean? It's like all those songs were full of really dark corners and really sort of genuine English filth, you know? And it wasn't, again, it wasn't like Weller doing Saturday's Kids, you know, which is fine, but it just tells you what you can see around you, you know?

There's a sort of, there's a hallucinogenic grimness to Sean Ryder's stuff, like Tart Tart and Kinky Afro and that. And also Black Grape, the Reverend Black Grape, all that stuff about the Catholic Church helping the Nazis hide their gold and all that kind of stuff

and put on your Reebok man, go play fucking tennis and all that. And he can't sing, can he? He can't sing any more than Ian Brown can but he does something with it you know

there's something about there's something much more deliberate about his way of singing isn't there like

how old are you are you old no you know it's almost like a sort of Johnny Rotten type sneer

it's deliberate as opposed to you know just fog on brown there he's not even in the vicinity of a melody. No. Yeah, and those early Happy Mondays records,

they do sound dated, but sort of in a good way because they feel like that weird time that they came out of. Because people do forget what a shithole this country was as late as the 90s, you know. Yeah. I mean, a lot of it's slid back now but um you know it but these days at least affordable technology yeah has killed the one true horror of the old days which was nothing to do right nowadays there's always something to do even if

it's just looking at a little screen um and what that has done has changed the nature of the desperation that people feel right if you're in an unlucky corner of the country and it's sort of made it easier to live with but also in a way more toxic yeah and arguably less creative not that there's necessarily less creative activity going on than there used to be but you know it's like the there's not as much depth to it do you know what i'm saying yeah it's like uh it's easier and i don't know you don't have to delve as far into yourself in your miserable life to come up with something you know that people want to listen i don't know but yeah so this is a successful record, but the performance is a failure. But as you say, it's a mark of their, I hesitate to use the word authenticity here,

but it is because they weren't showbiz. No. They genuinely were messy drug heads who were not reliable or in any way disciplined. So here they are on top of the pops and it's an underwhelming mess, which makes the roses look like sly and the family stone but that's because they're not playing around and as with so much else in their career a little bit more concentration and application would have really helped yeah but you know sometimes that's the

price you pay for something that's genuinely fucked up yeah and of course round about this time the idea that um drugs could be something used by working class sorts that was uh quite a new thing wasn't it yeah it was i mean i spent the summer of 89 working on a building site um just to make ends meet between university terms. Price the hod. Yeah, seriously. Well, I was putting floors down in the Billingsgate market that was being turned into offices. And if you went in on a Saturday or Sunday morning, there would be young guys who'd been out all night at Shoom, the Acid House Club, and they'd come in with eyes like saucers.

Even two years earlier, they wouldn't have been doing that. They'd have been coming with fucking stinking hangovers. Yeah. People working on sites and stuff had been killing their hangovers with speed for like 30 years. I guess so. It wasn't anything new. No, it's just a different drug.

But as a recreational thing as opposed to a cure. Yeah. The minute they finished this performance, Tony Wilson had gotten a load of champagne for the band, but Mark Day, the guitarist, had to leave that moment

to get back to Manchester to do his post round. He was still working as a postman. They're a man band. They're a bloke band. So the following week, Manchester Ravon jumped 11 places to number 19, its highest position. The follow-up, Step On, got as high as number 5 in April of 1990. And they had four more top 40 hits before splitting up for the first time in 1993.

The Happy Mondays, live on Stereo Radio 1 FM. Well, it's a good job that Linda Ronstadt managed to persuade Aaron Neville I Know the years are showing. Look at this life. I still don't know where it's going. I don't know of much. But I know I love you. And that may be all i need to know born in withershaw and fallowfield now i'm joking they're not from manchester

born in tucson arizona in 1946 linda ronstadt first came to prominence in the mid-60s as the lead singer of the folk trio The Stone Ponies. After she went solo in 1969, she spent the 70s as one of the biggest selling female artists in America and one of the top grossing concert draws of the decade. But the only bit of top 40 action she got over here was when Blue Bayou got to number 35 for two weeks in 1978. After spending much of the 80s dabbling with Broadway, Mexican folk and jazz she returned to more mainstream tunes in the latter half of the decade. This is the follow-up to Somewhere Out There the duet with James Ingram which got to number eight in August of 1987. And it's taken from the new LP, Cry Like a Rainstorm, How Like the Wind. It's a cover of the 1980 Barry Mann tune,

and is one of four duets with Aaron Neville of the Neville Brothers. It's already got to number two in America, and it's up three places this week to number three. What costume he's got on, if you can call it a costume. Yeah, it's like Hulk get Jerry curls. Yes. Yeah, he's got this kind of cut off denim and he's kind of sexy

in a tradesman way, like a Black Springsteen. Yeah. I think that's what he's gone for, what he actually looks like. He looks like one of the bosses in Fists of Fury or Final Fight or any other late 80s beat-em-up. And I think that Linda Ronstadt's got to hit him at least 12 times with a baseball bat in order to get to the next level.

They look an odd couple, don't they? Yes. Because she's a bit of a milf. She's got the hair of a Reaganite wife. And they just don't look like people who would be together in the real world. But, oddly, I do

buy them as a couple. The way they look into each other's eyes seems to have this real kind of tenderness to it. He's done well for himself. He's punched way above his weight. By the look of their moms, he could punch way, way above his weight. By the look of them arms, he could punch way, way above his weight.

Yeah. This is pre-creatine and steroid arms as sported by the youths of today. Yeah. See, there's this record that I'm obsessed with at the moment called Timothy by The Boys. B-U-O-Y-S. And it's about three blokes who are trapped by a mining disaster

and two of them have to kill and eat the third to stay alive. And it's a sort of like an Ardeen Taylor-ish driving pop ballad. And it goes goes Timothy, Timothy God what did we do? Now this was the first hit written by Rupert Holmes

who later did the Pina Colada song. No! If you like Pina Coladas and eating raw human flesh in a mouse. I'm not much into whole food. It's a sort of mock touching and divertingly morbid song and there aren't enough hits like that about unpleasant but comfortably

unlikely scenarios and predicaments um so how much better would it have been if, for this song, instead of all the slushy love stuff, it had been about how Aaron Neville was a scientist searching for a way to tap into the hidden strengths that all humans have until an accidental overdose of gamma radiation interacted with his unique body chemistry. And now when Aaron Neville gets angry or painfully sincere a startling metamorphosis occurs it would have been a lot better than the words we actually got in this song which are horrible look at this man so blessed with inspiration yeah you wouldn't like me when I'm modest. But the Nainty's was a strange little heyday for songs like this, wasn't it?

There was, you know, sometimes the sun goes round the moon, whatever that song's called. Oh, best to last. Yeah, and you can reach me by caravan across the desert like an Arab. Anita Adams. Yeah. It's always got that chimey keyboard sound and the bass has to go to the octave

on the last note and there's a sort of an almost admirable enthusiasm for the pure schmaltziness of those records. As if the people are thinking well this is all this record's ever going to be so let's just fucking go for it.

It's not going to be Mork-ish. It's just going to be 100% Mork. Too slimy to hold down, like an eel in vegetable oil, just slithering straight to the bag. I quite like some of Linda Ronstadt's records, but despite that big distinctive voice her presence on a record is absolutely not a bulwark against blandness or sentimentality so she does nothing here to hold that back um she's at that point where it's like music is all about the communication of

pre-packaged emotion because the communication of prepackaged emotion because the rest of it has sort of left her. So all she does is emote, you know. That's all she can do. And she's done her lipstick like a dinner lady. But having said that, her best work was still ahead of her at this point, though. The Plow King song in Spanish.

Oh, I was just about to say that yes what is it is that the simpsons it's the episode of the simpsons where homer gets a snowplow oh okay no sorry yeah our simpsons knowledge is very patchy yeah she's kind of interesting linda ronstadt she's one of those huge huge stars that really meant nothing over here in this country and um because i teach music journalism um i when i see them cheap or free i collect old copies of rolling stone and um there's one from 1976 uh where she's on the front cover and uh in the interview she talks quite a lot about how she you know wants to be appreciated for her music and taken seriously blah blah But in the photo, she's sort of like laying coquettishly,

semi-naked on the bed. And apparently she was tricked into this by a female photographer, by the way, Annie Leibovitz. Yeah, and when I was thinking about my own reaction to that, thinking, oh, well, you know, she kind of went both ways, I then thought of what Sarah was saying about fuzz box. Well, actually, you know, what's the problem here? But it...

You know what I mean? I feel like that as well, Simon. If anyone ever takes a photo of me on the phone and it ends up on Facebook and I just look so fucking sexy, I just think, oh, man, is that what I am to people? Just a bit of meat for people to gaze upon. But, you know, I can't help it. But this clearly became a bit of meat for people to gaze upon but but you know i can't help it but this clearly became a bit of an issue because ronstadt herself like later had to sort of backtrack and explain

that um she didn't realize the photo was going to look that way and all this kind of stuff yeah i don't know i just thought it's kind of funny and interesting throwback to the whole fuzzbox discussion that was being had a few episodes ago. An attractive white woman singing with a big chunky black man. Yeah, I mean... Would this have happened in the early 80s? I'm trying to think of examples. Yeah, I guess it's quite racially progressive, isn't it? Yeah.

In that sense. By this point, the only way in which that looks unusual is that they're both middle-aged. Yeah. So they're from a generation where that would have been less common. If they were young people, no one would have batted an eyelid at this point. The thing is, Aaron Neville's obviously a really good singer,

very distinctive singer, that's for sure. He's great for doing impressions of. You can't, you know, this record. You can't not do impressions of it. Yeah. Yeah, at the beginning, it sounds really weird weird the way he's singing but when the two voices come in it's like oh they're actually oh i've got you now she's much more kind of belter vocally isn't she much more kind of controlled and forceful but they blend they blend so nicely

and some of his old stuff's great by the way um debut single overview minute records 1960 starts off with the death march and then turns into this rhythm of blues banger it's brilliant written by Alan Tussaud because he was

part Aaron Neville was part of that whole New Orleans scene at that time and then in his back catalogue from the 60s obviously you've got tell it

like it is which just cannot be argued with just a brilliant song so you know I'll come in with a slack on this and this song yeah it's schmaltz um and it's not

aimed at me the me of the time a 22 year old goth but i think it's kind of nice what they should have done at the end instead of what they actually do which is sort of gently bump foreheads over the applause uh should have cut to a shot of a a thin introspective man sadly walking away with his jacket over one shoulder hitching a ride with sad piano music playing leaving us to ponder whether Aaron will ever find a way to control the raging spirit that dwells

within him so the following week I don't know much nudged up to number two and stayed there for two weeks, held off the top spot by this week's number one. The follow-up, All My Life, only got to number 96 in February of 1990, but I don't know much, ended up winning a Grammy that year for best duet performed by a Marvel character. Yeah, Spider-Man's version of You Can't Touch This was fucking shit.

And that may be all there is to know. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Grand Piano, Mixmaster. And at 9, I Feel the Earth Move, Martika. Milli Vanilli, Girl I'm Gonna Miss You at number 8. And UB40's Homely Girls up 17 places to number 7. Up 6 to 6, Infinite Dreams, Iron Maiden. And at 5, Never Too Late, Kylie Minogue. Phil Collins is at four, Another Day in Paradise. Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville, Don't Know Much, at three.

And all around the world, Lisa Stansfield is at number two. Which means that the UK has a brand new number one. They're managed by Maurice Starr, and he's the guy that took Bobby Brown to the top. Yeah, they've certainly got the right stuff as well. It's new kids on the block, and they're number one this week. Thank you. First time was a great time Second time was a blast Third time I fell in love Now I'm hoping that

Formed in Boston in 1984, New Kids on the Block were put together by Maurice Starr, who was looking for something to do after he rinsed New Edition and started thinking about putting together a white version. After spotting and signing up the 15-year-old Donnie Wahlberg and then his mates and his brother Mark, they were given a name, Nynuk. Fucking hell. When they were signed to Columbia Records in late 1985, the label demanded that they change their name to something less shit, so they settled on new kids on the block after a rap song that donnie walberg

had written their debut lp came out in april of 1986 and immediately flopped two years later they got around to releasing the single please don't go girl which performed so badly that the label were about to drop them until it suddenly started getting massive airplay in Florida and eventually got to number 10 in America. In September of this year, their second LP, Hanging Tough, came out and they landed a support slot on Tiffany's US tour. This single is the follow-up to Hanging Tough, which got to number 52 in the UK of September of this year. It's already got to number 3 in America.

It entered our top 40 at number 23, jumped 20 places to number three last week, and has just usurped all around the world by Lisa Stansfield as this week's number one. So yeah, we've seen one proto-boy band getting it wrong, and here's

one who are getting it right, I believe. I mean, they're terrible, but at least some money's been spent here. You know, the videos in this kind of violet-washed monochrome that's kind of cinematic. A bit Miami Vice-ish, isn't it? Yeah, and clearly they've been properly choreographed and all that. They're terrible, but they're professionally terrible.

Yes. I mean, they were hilarious to me already before the single came out because of Hanging Tough. Because you look at them and think, how tough are they hanging exactly? It was about as convincing as Michael Jackson being this scary gang member in the bad video, you know? Yes. And in this one, they're driving around sexually harassing some young woman

from their open-topped car. And it works. So that's an interesting message they're sending out there. Jordan and Jonathan Knight's parents were both Episcopal priests. So they are this kind of Christian-approved, weird kind of... In a way, they were the template for Backstreet Boys and Sync. In that they were this kind of slightly hip-hop inflected boy band, trying to look a little bit rough around the edges,

but really there's nothing that mainstream Christian America could seriously disapprove of. Yeah, they're the nice, beastie boys, essentially, aren't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah. If they had a party, they'd tidy up afterwards. Yeah, they wouldn't fight for their right too hard. They'd kind of back down. No.

And there'd be no porno mags for a mom to take away. And they'd already cut their hair. Yes. Except for that coat in the back with a baseball hat and a greasy long... Yeah. But, I mean, this is... Here's the difference between New Kids on the Block and Big Fun

America obviously wants a white Jackson 5 and Britain's hankering for Bananarama with cogs you know I think they're beaters on this occasion in the ways that don't matter commercially this is not as good as the Big Fun

record or you know worse than the big fun record but it sounds expensive and convincing and less old-fashioned and so it works far better for what it is because records like this when you really when you really boil it down it's not about being good as music it's about convincing as entertainment and i don't mean that in a snobby way because it's a thing in itself, right? It has to be convincing as a sort of pop event, which is totally different. And in the same way that the Stone Roses

understood how to do that within indie music, New Kids on the Block can do it within very commercial music. But of course, the glorious thing about the best manufactured pop is precisely that it's so much better than it needs to be. But if you want it to sell, that's not the most important factor. And what's also interesting is that the way that Maurice Starr felt the thing to do here is to get a white new edition. And that's possibly the last time

that anyone felt they had to do that in that way, right? That sort of, you know, like, not like new edition with the authentic voice of the street, you know, but it's like, even they were insufficiently old school showbiz to sell to the doughy centre of America. A bit too black. What about Louise Nerding being crowbarred into Eternal?

I don't know the backstory. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I thought she was basically drafted in so there was at least one white person in the band. But if so, that would have been a last gasp for this Pat Boone tradition because, you know, nowadays, obviously you don't have to whiteify things if you want them to be commercial. But I mean, that process was already underway here. And I think

it's significant that the one who came next was Vanilla Ice, whose very name and pseudo street image were like sort of semi-apologetic acknowledgements of what was happening, you know. Yes.

You know, obviously totally different from someone like the Beastie Boys who were attempting a genuine culturally valid white take on black stars, which millions of people have done before, you know. But within the purely commercial arena that was dying out at last you know and you could just be black and popular i think the thing that threw me about this video um while they're sitting in the cars in a very dangerous manner

uh that would you know you're off expecting a public information film style ending of mass death on the road. One of them's wearing a Bauhaus T-shirt. Yes, he is. And as a goth, that would have freaked me out and made me quite cross at the time, I'll tell you. Yeah, Jordan Knight is wearing the Bauhaus T-shirt that's got the still from the cabinet of Dr. Caligari on it.

And apparently Peter Satira of Chicago, t-shirt that's got the still from the cabinet of dr caligari on it and uh apparently peter satira of um of chicago uh he wears a bella lugosi's dead t-shirt in the video for you're the inspiration wow that was his message about her you know what i'm actually interviewing uh two members of bauhaus very soon so i'm gonna ask him about all this stuff. That'll break the ice, won't it? Yeah, definitely, yeah. It's like that whole thing of people wearing Ramones t-shirts now that probably couldn't name a single Ramones song or Guns N' Roses

or Motorhead or whatever it may be. Yeah, but how the fuck did someone in 1989 from America that young get a Bauhaus t-shirt? Do you think they were dressed? Absolutely, it was his dresser who got it for him. From America. That young. Get a Bauhaus t-shirt. Do you think they were dressed? Of course they were dressed. Absolutely.

It was his dresser who got it for him. No question. It was like, you know, getting some... But why would you do that? Because the other one's wearing a top that says rock and roll or something like that. And they're not a very rock and roll band either. It was just, you know, they wanted to look a little bit edgy. So they'll wear a band to a bit kind of punk.

Which, to people who don't know what they're talking about, they'll say, oh yeah, Bauhaus, that's one of these English punky bands that'll do. But also this is one of the things that marks out the 90s from just the late 80s, in that suddenly something like this becomes plausible for the first time. This sort of assimilation of uh fringe tokens by the mainstream you know and of course now nobody would even look up if taylor swift wore a scraping fetus off the

wheel t-shirt you know i mean but at the time it was a it was a new thing that that blurring of the lines had commenced you know in a lot of, New Kids on the Block are very representative of this period. Because, I mean, Americans had this look until about 1997, really. But it's a very specific style or non-style. And in this country, we saw it more on Coke adverts and programs like saved by the bell yes because um more than we did in pop music or in the high street because british and american pop culture wasn't aligned that closely in this period much less closely than it had been for the last seven or eight years so to us these burks just look like poochie the dog dog, you know. But this was really the look at the time, you know.

It really was. They're like the link between the Breakfast Club and that sort of, you know, dude, early 90s American thing. They haven't got the tie-dye shirts because the weed hadn't kicked in or, you know, not publicly. No. And they're still stuck in that 80s thing of a sort of basic classic americana with all the interesting stuff taken out but they're the first step along that road

because they're trying to be bad boys just a little bit and that was seen as the way forward at this point for young nothings like one of them's wearing a triumph t-shirt under a leather jacket so that's obviously george michael influenced but another one's wearing a Triumph T-shirt under a leather jacket. So that's obviously George Michael influenced. But another one's wearing, you remember them white shirts with the German eagle in the middle that they used to sell at Army in General. And I think Martin Gore used to wear it in the mid-80s. You know, the kind of thing that indie lads and ladies would team with a German army shirt.

I know the ones you mean, yeah. It's like Simon was saying about this obsession they have with toughness, right? Because they think it's the new way to go for the boy band. They're hanging tough, you know. Which, you know, looks tiresome enough from people who look like they could actually kick your arse, you know. Whose primary market is not small girls so what you actually get from them is this air of adolescent hopelessness you know like they're trying to be tough but you get this whiff of the musk of a single bed with a poster of a racing car above it and a dumbbell underneath you know like it's all body spray

and discarded socks like really unpleasant i am post of heather locklear on the walk yeah it's like i'm i'm i'm street tough it's like yes dear now it's time to take han solo for a walk uh it's a it's as if people are going to be whispering to each other in the playgrounds, you know those new kids on the block? I heard they were hanging tough in Budgen's car park last week. One of them was eating a light bulb

like it was an apple. He was eating marbles like they were grapes. Fucking rock. But what they don't realise is you don't have to try that hard if you're a boy band because toughness is signified by folding your arms and not smiling. And anything beyond that is over-egging the pudding and it ensures that you will be outgrown by your audience

as soon as they understand what's what in life in a way that, you know, Mark Bolan or A-ha or the Jackson 5 never were, you know. Anything else to say? Yeah, I hate their dancing, right? Because they do that sort of river dance thing, a little bit of that, crossed with that sort of, like that repulsive sailor's hornpipe thing

that Antoine Griezmann does for a goal celebration. Like handsome Pete. Not a quarter. He'll be dancing for hours. Sorry, I'll go in two Simpsons. But it looks so dreadful. You can never go two Simpsons, mate. But they might as well be wearing big nappies.

You know what I mean? It's humiliating and ugly, and it represents all the worst aspects of the great state of Massachusetts. Yeah. Like they look like they're being booted up the butt by the dropkick Murphys. And it's the centrepiece of this video, which incidentally has no reason to be in black and white at all. No. You know. It's like some director wants to be pretentious but he can't get away with any actual pretension

so he just has to go for the easy option just i'll do it in black and white yeah yeah they think they're making rumble maybe he's the one who slipped in the bar's t-shirt yeah yeah and the other thing about this video which leapt out at me is when the lyric says you made every one of my dreams come true there's a quick cut to a handheld shot inside a cemetery yeah what are they trying to say it's really creepy um that was the one thing that snagged my imagination uh they made every one of his dreams come true by doing what exactly and also come to think of it it's not a good thing to make every one of someone's dreams come true is it somebody like they hid his trousers and pushed him out into the street and he had a really important exam 15 minutes time on the other

side of town it's like you made every single one of my dreams come true you you sent kit and the widow to try and molest me in a isolated show home thanks i'll never forget it so you got it the right stuff would spend two more weeks at number one before it was usurped by some proper hip-hop let's party by jive bunny the follow-up a re-release of hanging tough got to number one for two weeks in january of 1990 and they'd have seven more top 10 hits over the next year in 1992 however they were accused of lip-syncing on stage and that their main vocals were sung by Marie Starr. What do you want, blood?

Yeah. Which they partly admitted to while demonstrating that they really could sing honest on the Arsenio Hall show. After splitting from Starr in 1993 and changing their name to Nakotub, diminishing return set in and they split up in 1994. It's always the beginning of the end for a band

when they start to initialise their name, isn't it? But what a great move that is, though, to say, no, we can sing, we just don't. Yes, can't be bothered. It's the coolest thing they ever did. There you go, that was Matt, Mark, Luke and John No Jen, it was in fact America's equivalent to the Nolan sisters. Oh, talking of the Nolan sisters, Gary Davis will be here next week. And Philip Schofield is next on Radio 1.

We're going to play you out tonight with Prince and Sheena Easton. Arms of Orion, good night from us. Good night. Bye. I find my time to be I don't know where you are tonight I don't know where you are tonight Maybe time will tell me Till then I'll close my eyes After some appalling banter

which drags in the Nolan sisters and Gary Davis, Powell and Bramble sign off and introduce The Arms of Orion by Prince and Sheena Easton. Born in Minneapolis in 1958, Prince is fucking Prince. In early 1989, he was approached by the director Tim Burton, who wanted to use 1999 and Baby I'm a Star for his next film project, Batman. Instead, he offered to do an entire soundtrack LP. At one point, according to an interview with Rolling Stone in 2001,

the Batman soundtrack was to be a collaboration between Prince and Michael Jackson, with the former doing the dance tunes and the latter doing the soppy ballad nonsense. But Warner Brothers wanted the rights to everything and Jackson was too busy touring in any case. The first single from the LP, Back Dance, got to number two in July of this year,

Prince's highest chart position in the UK since 1999's Slash Little Red Corvette in 1985. This is the follow-up to Party Man which got to number 14 in September of this year and it reunited him with Sheena Easton who helped You Got The Luck get to number 11 in September of 1987 and it's up four places this week to number 31. Before we get into Prince, that fucking chat at the end between Jackie Brambles and Jenny Powell fucking awful, man. It is, and

I couldn't help noticing that all the women around them have exactly the same hair as them. Yes. It's just bizarre. Alright then, Simon, Prince, go! We wait 30 episodes of chart music for a Prince track and it's this piece of shit, isn't it?

Yeah. He is the greatest musical genius of the last 100 years, as far as I'm concerned. But this, it's like Picasso walking up to a dirty white van, licking his finger and drawing a cock and balls with a wet fingertip it's total will this do Batman the whole Batman project for me was the first

sign that Prince was fallible I hate the fact that he was even doing it I felt that Prince ought to be bigger than Batman he shouldn't even acknowledge he exists in the same universe as corny old commercial enterprises like batman he shouldn't have lowered himself to being bought out

to being bought by a film franchise yeah because all the rights went over to warner brothers didn't he was already on warner's but he signed over everything to warner brothers so he could do this already on warner's label of course but But yeah, I know what you're saying. Yeah. And throughout this whole Batman project, I wanted my prince back, you know. I wanted the prince that made Parade or Silent Times. Yeah.

He was doing it for the money. There's no question about that. He recorded it in Paisley Park. Yeah. But he had a massive debt to pay off, to pay for Paisley Park. Yeah. And the idea was that he would it in paisley park but he had a massive debt to pay off to pay for paisley park and the idea was that he would never be beholden to record label budgets ever again and so i understand why why he did it but it's it was it was the first prince album in his catalog

that i just can't listen to just can't can't bring myself to yeah um weirdly the lead single bat dance was his most successful single across the world um you know you might think it was yeah i don't know purple rain or when does cry or kiss or something no it was um it was actually bat dance which is it's hard that is not even a song it's just like a weird cut and shirt of odds and ends you had lying around it seems like to me and then you had Party Man which I know Prince wasn't a druggie type apart from the fentanyl

that killed him but he wasn't a coke fiend but that Party Man sounds like a total cocaine record in a bad way it's just shouting and banging and then this, this comes along you know scraping the fucking barrel of an already shallow album It's just shouting and banging. And then this, this comes along, this, you know,

scraping the fucking barrel of an already shallow album. It's really appalling. Well, the whole Batman thing was a huge disappointment, wasn't it? Because that was the thing of the summer of 1989. You know, well, the biggest, the most hyped thing anyway. Yeah, it was.

And I liked Batman as a thing. I was going through a brief comic nerd phase, actually. I got into Alan Moore, Watchmen and all that, and Frank Miller, The Dark Knight. And The Dark Knight, I think most people would agree, is the iteration of Batman, which most informs the reboot of reboot under Tim Burton. Yeah.

But I just didn't want Prince to have anything to do with it. I thought he was above it. He was not only separate from that, but separate from pretty much everything else in pop. And the fact that he's dueting with Sheena Easton on this sort of adds insult again. Again, yeah. Adds insult to injury.

He's weird with his Sheena Easton thing. I mean, I know he had this kind of fling with her, but so she's on You Got the Look. Yeah, him and Esther Anson. Yeah. And he'd recorded Sugar Walls with her, and then there's this. And actually, this is one of the...

Oh, yeah, of course. The Arms of Orion is one of the very few occasions when a Prince song has a co-writing credit other than The Revolution or Our Generation. Because Sheena Easter actually sent in the lyrics. So, yeah, it is genuinely a co-write. And I'm trying to find any kind of positive in this. The line, I've been searching for a lover on the sea of tranquillities,

is quite a nice little line. Well, except no one's been there since 1969, so good luck. And that was just short, tough, unemotional former test pilot. Simon, you said that he was doing this for the money but do you also think he was doing it because he wanted to get an in with the film industry again because Graffiti Bridge

came soon after this didn't it well you know that might be the case Under the Cherry Moon was a flop and yeah maybe he was trying to establish himself in the film industry. But I just think it didn't fatally wound him as a recording artist

because he did some brilliant stuff after this. But I think it may be true to say that after Batman, he never released an entirely satisfactory album from start to finish. And it's just so half-assed. The video is just clips from his previous videos, including Kiss and

Backdance. And... I watched this episode of Top That Pops at the time because I was tuning in to see the whole Stone Roses, Happy Mondays thing. And I'm getting this kind of echo of how my heart sank when I saw that awful Prince video at the end.

Even as a male-female duet, quite frankly, the Erin Neville and Linda Ronstadt one is better. Yeah. I've got to be honest. So that's my 2p worth on Prince sadly, finally it gets to do Prince and that's what it is

sorry about that yeah because I remember seeing the Batman film with all my mates one or two were absolute hardcore Prince heads and they were just frothing at the gash to see the film and see how Prince how the music could get involved and everything and I remember us standing outside afterwards

and it was the first night it came on in Nottingham at the ABC and was just standing out there and I remember my mate just just just standing there in just absolute disgust going, they've given Batman a plane and the Joker takes out a fucking tiny little gun and he brings him down. Oh, fuck off, sad day. And all this kind of stuff. And it was, it was a massive anti-climax. And, you know, I'm of the opinion that if it ain't Adam West,

then Batman can fuck off as far as I'm concerned. I quite like the film, to be honest. I did quite like it. Yeah. Taylor. Considering Prince was capable of chucking out can fuck off as far as I'm concerned I quite like the film to be honest I did quite like it Taylor considering Prince was capable of chucking out fabulously complex and elaborate

pieces of music in a very short space of time I'm guessing this one actually took less time to write and record than it takes to listen to because it really is a tossed off bit of crap not even as good as to become one by the spice girls which has almost exactly the same tune uh and the video is horrible you know i was talking

earlier about those sort of crappy cd-rom graphics that started to come in it's a bit of an early sort of yeah and that half batman half get up, right, that he's got it half and half it fits nicely with the themes of dualism and ambiguity which run through most of Prince's work, but there's two problems here firstly it looks shit

and secondly, at no point does he turn to one side and then the other and sing the Indian love song that's not what I'm calling imagine how great he could make that no point does he turn to one side and then the other and sing the Indian love song. That's not what I'm calling it. Imagine how great he could make that with Batman and the Joker. Yeah.

It's just a missed opportunity, isn't it? Yeah. I don't know. I'm not the Joker. I'm not Batman. I am someone that you'll never understand. But yeah, I mean, even now I was watching this and getting really angry because i was i was just thinking well fucking hell prince shouldn't want to be batman or the joker the joker of the joker and batman should want to be fucking prince yeah

prince is more of a fucking superhero than them two yeah here's an illustration of how i feel about prince right and i'm in no way a prince super fan in the way simon is but in terms of pure admiration there's a record by elaine smith old record called you've got to be a man which uh prince completely and utterly ripped off for kiss which is almost the same song now anyone can do that but the way prince did it um it's like you can imagine a conversation with him like uh prince saying well that's a fantastic record i'm going to do a song just like that but i'm going to top it uh oh really prince how are you going to do that well first of all i'm going to strip away all of the brass all of the organ

everything distinctive from the record uh the bass line what you're going to strip away all of the brass all of the organ everything distinctive from the record uh the bass line what you're going to get rid of the bass yes i'm going to get rid of the bass line so what's going to be left on the record well it's just going to be mostly a treated lindrum and me squealing in a falsetto voice and also i'm going to rewrite the lyrics so it's about watching dynasty it's going to be great. People are like, oh yeah, well, good luck. And he did it. He fucking did it.

And it was brilliant. And it was better than the original record. And it was a massive worldwide hit. But the key is that that's not all. That when you listen to that record, You've Got To Be A Man, itself, it's a rip-off of Papa's Got A Brand new bag by james brown

and in converting it prince removed every part of the arrangement that rips off the james brown record uh and then the last thing he did was take the one detail that's on the james brown record that isn't on the helen smith record which is the little guitar lick at the end of each verse that goes... And he put it in Kiss as an incredibly arcane musical game joke that also sounds fucking amazing, just as like a little spin on the heel, a little flourish and a little bit of flash, all while operating within the self-imposed demands of an extreme minimalism

and in a commercial context where he's one of the biggest artists in the world and to have that much talent coupled with an attitude that playful uh and to make them both work together this is something that none of us or anyone we know can even dream of you know what i mean this is the point where you just have to stand back you know this bloke's really good this bloke's really good so even though the level of self indulgence on most prince lps is a bit too much for me and i don't say self-indulgent because if he wasn't self-indulgent he wouldn't be that good but to me he's a bit too much for me. And I don't say he's self-indulgent, because if he wasn't self-indulgent, he wouldn't be that good. But to me, he's a bit like a funky zapper in that respect,

that I can't get through all those albums. But that's the way it has to be. And as far as I'm concerned, he can do whatever he wants. Well, not anymore, obviously. Simon, is this his worst single so far? It's his worst single that made the top 40, I think. I'm right in saying it, yeah. And I think Back Dance is his worst album.

It's his worst mega-selling album. Because I think everything he did from Dirty Mind in 1980 up until Love Sexy in 88 is perfect. It's as good a run as the famous David Bowie run of good albums, you know? But he blew it with this. So the following week, the Arms of Orion nudged up another four places to number 27, its highest position. The follow-up, Thieves in the Temple temple got to number seven in august of 1990

oh and this is the month that simple minds released the amsterdam ep with their cover of sign of the times yeah christ so what's on telly afterwards well bbc one follows up with east enders then the last of the series of the Les Dawson Show, with special guests Christopher Timothy, the all-female saxophone quartet The Fear of Sax, and The Old Sailor. And then an episode of Victoria

Wood, followed by the Nine O'Clock News, Smith & Jones, Question Time, Cagney & Lacer, and finishes off with the medical show Fight Cancer hosted by Martin Lewis and Lynn Perret Brian Tilsley's man, fucking hell

BBC 2 plunges into the Victorian kitchen then the documentary series The State of Europe, a Top Gear special from the RAC Rally the last in the series of Alexis Ailes Stuff, the 40 minutes documentary The Heart of the Angel about a day in the RAC Rally, the last in the series of Alexis Ailes' Stuff, the 40-minute documentary The Heart of the Angel,

about a day in the life of Angel tube station, and then the drama series The Staggering Stories of Ferdinand de Bargos, and finishes off with Newsnight, The Late Show, and more highlights from Parliament. Oh, they can't get enough, can they? ITV is now screening Wheel of fortune which jenny powell would be on in a few years time the bill then this week focuses on personal tragedies brought about by the housing crash then the equalizer news at 10 an argument between two

midlands mps in central lobby the medical show one small step then the jane fonder film clute and piles into night time with the hitman and her job finder and what the papers say and channel 4 kicks off the evening with at the mercy of the unscrupulous a documentary about insider share dealing the drama series blood red roses the true stories documentary love across the wall about a relationship in Berlin where the protagonists make their love on wasteland. Then Blood on the Screens, the story of how Britain's leading high street bank lost hundreds of million pounds and finishes off the night with sumo wrestling. Sadly not inner city version. So, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow, dear boys?

I think I'm running out into the street screaming and pissing down my leg like the woman from Threads because I think the Martians are coming yeah I'll probably be doing impressions firstly Bez with his one maraca doing his weird running dance and then Aaron Neville yeah

not the playground 6th form common room if you don't mind I think we were probably weird and silly enough even at that age to think there was something important in some unspecified way about Stone Roses and Happy Mondays

appearing on top of the pops I mean maybe there was a certain period of openness ahead but it didn't have much to do with, you know, bands getting into the charts again that students liked. You know what I mean? I think the real progress was genuinely weird electronic music becoming genuinely popular.

And I'm not thinking of a Ben Lee brand remix. What are we buying on Saturday? I actually did buy the Happy Mondays Manchester Rave on eBay. Yes, so did I. It was a good title that because it meant it was really funny a couple of years later when they were doing the, well we never saw ourselves as anything to do with that Manchester

stuff. It was just something the press made up. And what does this episode tell us about November of 1989? Nainties. Casted around for a new cultural direction while all around the world is changing in fundamental ways.

It's the nainties. And also, drugs are back or back out of the closet. Which is always good news in the short term and often less good news in the longer term. But here we are. so get on one matey i'm i'm gonna run with this 90s idea a little bit because it you know clearly is a distinct

cultural era um i i remember a little bit after the 90s so i guess the early 90s, early to mid, going to a massive car boot sale in Splott, the amusingly named area of Cardiff. And it was a time when people were getting rid of their 90s ephemeris. So it was kind of things like the Neighbours Board Game and albums by the people who've been on the show, but also Chuckle Brothers videos and loads of shell suits. Shell suits in that kind of lilac and aquamarine pattern as favoured by the couple from Ever Decreasing Circles. Yes, Howard and Hilda. Yeah. And when I think of that era, that tat is what i think of and i think

the music in the charts really uh it's it's the perfect soundtrack for that horrible cultural moment and then one thing we haven't mentioned yet in in this episode is the countdowns the chart countdowns and what else was in the charts and i i sort of i wrote it all down and um i i noticed that i mean all right you've got um a few pop stars who are kind of new kind of vibrant kind of off the moment like bobby brown big fun martica millie vanillie kylie lisa stansfield new kids on the block they're all kind of quite new quite coming through then you had a load of Dan stuff so you know to that extent

it genuinely was how we imagine the late 80s you had Black Box Mixmaster Inner City Rebel MC with Double Trouble

D-Mob featuring Kathy Dennis Technotronic featuring Feli and that Ben Libran thing right but dwarfing

all of that stuff you could combine the modern pop acts and the right? But dwarfing all of that stuff, you can combine the modern pop acts and the dance stuff. Outnumbering all of that are these big beasts who've been around forever. And there's, I can't wait, 16 of them. Tears for Fears, Billy Joel, Eurythmics, Jimmy Somerville, Cher, Gloria Estefan, Janet Jackson, Chris Rea, Prince,

Debbie, sorry, Deborah, Fionnuala Cannibals, Luther Vandross, Belinda Carlyle, Phil Collins, UB40, even Morrissey, right? And that's before you get to Linda Rockstatt and Aaron Neville. So it was just a time of these big beasts of rock and pop who just weren't shifting they were still there so it's yet another

example on Shark Music where we look back and it's not quite how we remember it so is this episode the the Tarin edifice

that people make it out to be I think it sort of is because the rest of the show does the Manchester acts the favour favour of being

so stereotypically crap that they had something to stand out from in fairness they do stand out don't they I mean I think that Stone Roses record is not all it's cracked up to be but you know it stands out and that Pop Craze Youngsters

is the end of another episode of Chart Music. All I need to do now is give you the usual flange, which is www.chart-music.co.uk. You can get involved with us on Facebook, facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast. And you can hang tough with us at Twitter, chartmusicTOTP. Thank you very much, Simon Price. You're welcome.

God bless you, Taylor Parks. Don't mention it. My name's Al Needham. I'm rough. Chart music. I knew a mongrel called Bummer Dog You could say he was a sex fiend I saw him on a council playground I knew a mongrel called Bummer Dog, you could say he was a sex fiend. I saw him on a council playground stalking youths in a manner obscene.

All the kids in the school went out of their mind and they pointed and screamed when Bummer Dog started to grind. Bummer Dog He bolted over to me with intention in his eyes A lolling tongue and something red and angry between his thighs I couldn't run away in time The lights went out and bummer dog started to grind ow bummer dog the playground started spinning or maybe it was me brain I can't tell you what it did to me But me flares will never be the same

Oh, the whole school's laughing at me Including the teachers As in, sure enough Sure enough taught me how to grind taught me how to grind Came to on the pavement to a sight I couldn't believe A long white nasty stain that ran the length of me parka sleeve

It read thank you for a funky time I'll come to school whenever I wanna grind a sleeve It read thank you for a funky time I'll come to school whenever I wanna grind AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Fuck off, bummers! Fuck off! My mum's gonna kill me! No, no, no! Fucking hell. It's me having a go at him, bruh.