Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #66 (Pt 3): 15.3.90 – De La Stoke

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Sarah Bee and Taylor Parkes realign with Al Needham and – like the dog that returns to its own vomit – proceed to tuck in on this episode of The Pops. There’s a wodge of Breakers to wade through, followed by a chance for the Dads who were outraged by Candy Flip to have a good laugh at the absolute state of Bobby Omnishake…Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language, which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to?

Um... Chart music. Chart music. smash hits march the 7th to the 20th 1990 page 20 lyric sheet 1990s time for the Guru by Guru Josh. 1990s Time for the Guru. 1990s Time for the Guru. 1990s Time for the Guru. 1990s Time for the guru. Uh, uh, uh.

Well, I don't know about that, Pop Crazy Youngsters, but what I do know is that it's time for chart music number 66, part three. And Sarah B, Taylor Parks, and my good self Al Needham are not in the mood to fanny about. Forward! Do you know something? That's going to be a top five hit. What a great performance. I think they enjoyed it as much as everybody else. That's Candy Flips, Strawberry Fields

Forever. Here's another record of the week. The B-52s have a charted at last. Love, Shag. Mayo, back on the balcony behind a massive Radio 1 logo and in the middle of a line of much older members of the audience, appears so enraptured by the flared four that he predicts a top five placing for them,

before pivoting to one of his former records of the week, Love Shack by the B-52s. Formed in Athens, Georgia in 1976, the B-52s were signed to the local label DB Records in 1978 and when their debut single Rock Lobster sold 20,000 copies in the Georgia area and they were invited to play at CBGB's and Max's Kansas City in New York, they were picked up by Warner Brothers in the US and Island in the UK and whisked over to Island Studios in the Bahamas to record their first self-titled LP. They made the first dent on the UK charts in 1979, when a re-recorded version of Rock Lobster spent two weeks at number 37 in August of that year, while the LP got to number 22 in the same month.

Although they weren't as successful in the American charts, their influence was such that when John Lennon was interviewed by Andy Peebles the day before he died, he said that hearing Rock Lobster was the spark for getting him back into the studio and recording Double Fantasy. Although they were an intermittent fixture on the UK LP chart throughout the early 80s, diminishing returns set in singles-wise, and when guitarist Ricky Wilson died in October of 1985 after the band had recorded their fourth LP, the band shut up shop and refused to tour.

However, when Island re-released Rock Lobster and their second single, Planet Clear, as a double A-side in May of 1986, it rocketed up to number 12, which, combined with a guest appearance as hosts of a PETA fundraiser in Washington, where they were cheered to the rafters, convinced them to get their thumbs out their arses

and start again. This single, the follow-up to Channel Z, which failed to chart in America and hasn't been released here yet, is the second cut from their comeback LP, Cosmic Thing, which was released last June and was co-produced by Don Woz, on the advice of the record label and Nile Rodgers on the advice of Kate Pearson's mam Psychic. It's based on the cabin where the band recorded Rock Lobster and it's already been and gone in America getting to number three last November. It entered the charts at number 33 at the beginning of the month then Then soared 19 places to number 14. And this week it's jumped eight places to number six.

And here is the officially allotted two minutes of video. Amazingly, chaps, this is the third cut release from the LP in America, which is fucking mental because if there was ever a nailed on hit in the spring of 1990 it's this bastard right here yeah don't you think i i always felt a bit weird that i don't really like this much i fall in and out with it myself because like love shack by the b-52s we all have to get right with the fact that we're going to be hearing this off and on for the rest of our lives oh god yeah hopefully it won't be the last thing you hear before you depart this mortal coil i'm not sure that would be you know sort of drifting through the hospice so yeah i

fall in and out with it sometimes i want to slap it in the face because it's so fucking cheery and you know and other times i think no no come on this is a great record and I just want to smack it on its arse in a friendly hijinx sort of way it's very zesty isn't it it's not it's not quite zany but it's very zesty yes and it's it's filled with colour and texture and made to delight and amuse that's the point of this I mean let's not fanny about it. This is, by a country mile, the best tune on this episode so far. Yeah, yeah, yeah. By a Georgia mile. And to hear it in this context will be like opening a window in a festival toilet and letting the sun in. But, yeah, you're right.

Age and repetition has worn it somewhat. I mean, they are a good, fun band. They've been going for a long time. They do have other songs. Yeah, they're in acceptable doolies, aren't they? The B-52s. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, the thing is, I kind of have to like them

because I live with a man who will break into rock lobster at the drop of a hat, or indeed the drop of a matching towel. You can't say narwhal in this house without all hell-breaking loose. But you have to be in the right mood. I don't think there are some tunes where it's like, you can't be sad while this is on. I wouldn't file this among them. I think if you're sad, this is going to just piss you off more.

Oh God, yeah. But it really creates a world in the kind of three minutes. Like we've spoken before, haven't we, on this podcast about what parties we'd go to and which nights out in pop. Yes. I would go. I would go to the Love Shack. I don't know about that.

Oh, God, yeah. You would. It's like a sort of day-glow speakeasy just secreted in the middle of the lush forests of Georgia. Yeah. It's one of the great mythic party places of pop, and they've set it out right. Yeah. Guaranteed no fools. Yeah, that's good.

Semi-naked people. Yeah. The jukebox isn't free but i maintain that's good because people will care about what they're putting on if they have to pay for it yeah hugging kissing check dancing and loving double check all of these things the music and the vibes are great the drinks are terrifying it's a lawless health and safety nightmare it's it's great i love that there's such a great mental image um that they've conjured up that the whole shack shimmies when everybody's grooving around and around and around and around yeah like

the glittery dust falling from the ceiling into your beehive i mean the instant reaction i always have to this it's always oh it's this again so they'll be playing groovies in the heart next and that'll be the early 90s taken care of and possibly step on yeah whenever you hear this record you know you will find ordinary people dancing yes which is you know on the whole a good thing i just don't appreciate how if you say that you don't really care for this record or group people respond as though you said you don't like happiness you know what i mean yes i can see that you would probably have to be weirdly over sour or have a very specific b in a very specific bonnet to actively hate them or this and you know people have got great memories of dancing to this at donna's hen night or whatever you know which is all great and totally

valid it's just that for me the b52 i don't know they sort of exist in the in the mysterious unlit gap between me and happiness you know and they don't run a ferry service it's a representation of a certain kind of happiness or at least camp amusement which just isn't necessarily contagious and it probably should be because it's you know sort of smart but undemanding and there's a reasonable arrangement of simple ideas all of which are potentially appealing but it just doesn't connect with me and i think because i'm never in quite the right state of relaxation and acceptance but i mean i know there's a queue of reasonable people who love this record stretching from barbary to here and

i don't say that i know any better than any of them yeah you can sort of grudgingly appreciate the craft can't you even if you can't get with the mood that's been very forcefully created in this very, very American way. Yeah. I mean, I do get it. This could not have been made by British people, I would posit. Oh, God, can you imagine? I mean, when British people try to do this,

you get bomb ballerina, don't you? Yeah. That's what you get. It just doesn't work. And there is often, as I have remarked upon before, this sort of uncomfortable contrast on top of the pops between the super snappy sexy whizzy cool kid americans and the kind of slumpy slouchy sloppy blundery brits you know i mean that doesn't mean this is the only way to to do this it is quite an obnoxious record, but you know that there are Americans in control.

It's very Roy Walker, isn't it, the video? Instead of say what you see, it's film what you hear. So there's a shack and it's filmed with people getting together and people are getting to it via a highway and a car as big as a whale but there's no need to bring your jukebox money because there's a band on tonight.

And it's the B-52s, fancy that. The video is very very literal but it goes with it very well they painted a picture with words they didn't necessarily need to do it in the video but but they did and it works really well um the one thing that i noticed is that stood out in this little clip is um the bartender is shaking a cocktail shaker so laconically yeah like that's not how you do it put your pack into it i can only assume that the contents are so volatile that he has to baby it yeah you've got to be careful you go to the love shack you drink things that no man of woman born should drink and you wake up three

days later half out of a creek wearing only another man's pants it's it's dicey it's probably one of those 1950s cocktails that are now illegal they've got lead in it it's dicey it's probably one of those 1950s cocktails that are now illegal they've got lead in it it's fine that it's literal but there are some preposterous theories kicking about that how really it's not literal it's actually about getting knocked up in a brothel and uh the chrysler is a somebody's dick no obviously there are loads of vehicles in pop that are actually penises but in this case i don't buy it sometimes a car is just a car yeah even if it is as big as a whale and i didn't see any stars or bananas over that car in the video so hell no i think the really disturbing lyric in love shack is glitter on the highway because it sounds like a fucking breakout at hm prison the verne well there's nothing good

that ends with glitter on the highway oh yeah or glitter on the mattress i mean yeah okay if you stretch you can see that as you know something other than actual glitter but oh my not spunk what are you going to know oh imagine ejaculating glitter oh well you'd never get you'd never get rid of it that's the thing no and again it's another example of the uk falling behind america because you know this has been our fucking ages in america we're even behind australia on this one it was their christmas number one last year don't you know uh well it might just be that it's taken a bit of time for this aesthetic to make any sense in britain right because i think a couple of years ago i'm not sure anybody would really have got it you know because it's very american it's like a sort of cutesy

cramps in it it's like a sort of neo-americana the twingers but this is it like all reluctant critics the problem i have is when i don't really like something i usually know exactly why and then i can't stop thinking about that which makes it even harder to relax in its presence and just go along with it which might sometimes be a better course of action but this is it the b-52s just hit me in the same way as those things to which they are aesthetically similar right like john waters films or fridge magnets with a picture of a 1950s american housewife you know and a caption about drinking gin and all that they just pass through without pinging any symbols, you know. I think because they feel like the work of people who have some brains and talent in a shape that doesn't necessarily fit into the culture of their time,

but for whatever reason they don't have the gumption or the genius to create their own culture or their own space within a hostile culture. So it's just this kind of atomic age kitsch you know which wants to make peace with its own irrelevance and almost revel in it i might be overthinking this but you know what else can i do taylor i i feel like there's a struggle going on here that you don't need to have like there's no shame in being a person who doesn't like love shack by the b-52s even if you know the only person or one of a very few it's fine it's all right you don't have to it doesn't cause me any mental strife in my in my personal life you know it's just a just a

professional consideration i don't know i think it's just a character thing like i don't really want to dance to this record same as i don't really want to apply to be on a game show you know what i mean actually i did apply to be on a game show i applied to be on uh sas who dares wind but they they turned me down they said i was too hard i'm the same as you taylor if it comes on it's like oh this yeah and that's the wrong reaction to have to any single yeah yeah you know i mean i think that annoyed me about it at the time is it it's one of the most prominent singles about being in a club that's a million times better than the sticky flawed stale beer reeking provincial shithole that i was currently in

right you know i'd just be there lumbering about to it and thinking oh god i wish i was there instead of here it's like the polar opposite to nightclub or friday night and saturday morning isn't it yeah but if somebody said to me hey come with me it's we're going deep into the forest in georgia to a shack it's gonna be great i'd be thinking yeah gimme gimme, gimme, deliverance. Yes. So the following week, Love Shack moved up four places to number two and camped out there for three weeks, held off the summit of Mount Pot by this week's number one and the power by Snap.

The follow-up, Rome, got to number in june and then their chart appeal became more selective but they'd have one last hurrah in 1994 when they temporarily renamed themselves the bc 52s and took their cover of the flintstones theme tune to number 43 for three weeks in July of that year. Yeah. Oh, man. Why did they bother remaking the Flintstones, stupid Americans? Still going, just about. Last month, they announced their farewell tour, supported by Nobhead, Cunt, and whatever remains of the Sunshine Band. So, good on them.

Yeah, that's great, isn't it? Yeah. Well, Kate Pearson, who, I mean, I still don't believe she's real. I'm sure she's a Tim Burton character, you know. Yeah. She was about my age in the Love Love Shack video and she looks about you know she looks about 20 so she looks amazing in this video yeah yeah yeah I mean she is truly ageless I think but I mean she for years has also had um I don't think you can call it a side hustle it's probably her main hustle which is to have rented cabins right she had a whole compound in the

Catskills just outside Woodstock which she's now sold really but she still has several of those like cabins and airstream trailers and stuff for holiday rents the airbnb 52s indeed um and they look just well the the website for them is so beautiful it's all so kind of like i said about you know you when when you throw a party and when you have a compound of of kitschy cabins you just the the intent filters through right to the last detail you know and they look exactly like you expect in the best way um my my pal and uh fellow ex-maker guy um stevie chick said that he stayed in one and it was brilliant there's a beat-a-max machine and like a library of 80s comedies and slasher movies it's just that's lovely nice yeah oh did you notice the black

woman in the white outfit yes do you know who that is no it's the first appearance on british tv of a 28 year old pole dancer from a club in atlanta called rupaul charles yeah dang yeah if your dad fancied her go and see him now and tell him Atlanta called RuPaul Charles. Yeah. Dang. Yeah. If your dad fancied her, go and see him now and tell him. It's a great song. B-52's Love Shack.

Okay, here come the breakers this week. We have the Wets at number 31. We have Fish at number 30. And kicking it all off at 29.

This is big fun. Let's start the breakers this week. Mayo, still on the balcony. Spoilers this week's breaker section before pitching us into Handful of Promises by Big Fun. We last covered Human Sop in chart music number 30 when they danced like they were trying to get dog shit off their trainers in an attempt to promote Can't Shake the Feeling, which got to number 8 in December of 1989. This is the follow-up and will be the third cut from their debut LP, A Pocket Full of Dreams, which is due out at the end of next month. It came out last week and it's a new entry this week at number 29. And here's a chance to see the video.

And here's a chance to see the video. And oh, dear chaps, it appears that by March of 1990, the hit factory is in recession. Kyla doing films and trying to move away from her Charlene image. Jason diminishing returns are setting in. No more Mel and Kim. Rick Astley's moved to RCA. And even Sunita's fucked off. All that's left at the moment for stock a

kilham waterman is sonia and these twats some boys in a baggy shapeless faded bag isn't it very much so they are quite hearty lads yes they're quite ruddy cheeks they look like volunteer firemen but it is like a strange parody of a boy band video yes it's it's like a sketch isn't it a little bit and it's like what anyone is doing behind or in front of the camera is beyond me yeah well they are the pioneers of what we see as boy bands nowadays aren't they group of lads who don't play instruments and do a bit of a dance and look at us girls you fancy us yeah it's such there's such alchemy behind boy bands and whether it works or it doesn't, you know,

and obviously a lot of craft and hard work goes into it as well. This is hard, thankless work. It's a bit like, I don't know, it's a bit like being a server in an American restaurant or something. Yes. Where you have to bid everyone have a nice day and smile whether you feel like it or not. You have to feel sorry for the poor Sos.

Not just because of who they are and what they're not capable of. And not just because they're the vanguard of Arsene Stockakin and Waterman and they've just landed a disappointing chart position. But, you know, you have to remember, this is an all-gay boy band who are still being forced to keep it on the down low by Pete Waterman. And they're on the cusp of an era where every single boy band that's going to come down the pike is going to be encouraged to do a gay. And they can't. They're not allowed.

They've just got to stand there, togged out in their young person's railcard advert outfits. Yeah, they've been dressed by some straights, haven't they? It ain't right. And what makes it even worse is the location they've put them in, which is an empty warehouse with a sprinkler system and a steam machine, which is, you know, if you were going to build a trap to attract and snare homoerotic acting males,

that's what you'd make if Take That were in this video a year later. You know, their shirts are coming right off and there's going to be some horseplay. Oh, yeah. Possibly with some jelly. But because Big Fun aren't allowed to express themselves, all they can do is throw some unconvincing shapes and interact with some models who are pretending to be their girlfriends.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're not going to see members of Big Fun taking their pants off and swapping them and putting them on again in a video, are you? To us, it is a warehouse, but to them, it's just a huge closet. As people of the future, we know what big fun wants a handful of and it's not promises but back in the day when big fun were a concern on the playground there would have been no inkling that you know about what they like to get up to oh no absolutely not i mean obviously everybody knows that no 11 year old boy has ever known he

was gay that only happens when you turn 16. Like, literally, on your birthday, you wake up, and that's the first thing that occurs to you. Hmm, maybe I like guys. Yeah, because it is a decision, isn't it? It depends how much homosexual propaganda you've come into contact with in your teenage years. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, despite the fact that they must have been feeling pretty bad at this point,

they must have watched this episode bad at this point they must have watched this this episode of top of the pops and by the time it rolled around to their little clip it'd be like jesus you know what we are old cunts on the block it'd be like when you do some talking head shit for some documentary and you just peel off perler after perler you just think well there's no way they can't use that and then it comes on and you've got 10 seconds talking about something that you you did as a fucking aside that was shit you just think oh that's who i am ama i'm just the big fun of this documentary ama yeah well i don't know i mean what he's left to say about big fun oh plenty taylor because big fun are the whipping boys of pop at the moment

they encapsulate everything that needs to be gotten rid of from the 80s and you know they're the yardstick that all these new bands that are coming along are railing against to that end i direct the pop craze youngsters to an interview conducted by stephen wells in the enemy a month ago with birdland whose latest single sleep with me has just entered the charts at number 32 which has encouraged them to go about thinking their summit when asked if being in magazines like the face and on top of the pops compromises selling out lee. Lee Vincent says, no, no, no, we're going to be there rather than Big Fun with their conditioned hair.

And when Swells asks them if they really hate Big Fun, Lee replies, yeah, it makes you want to puke. The whole thing about these bands is that they're in it for money. Money and girlfriends and wearing designer things and being in the face, right? Number one, girlfriends, don't think so. Number two, this interview was conducted while Birdland

were actually in a studio doing a fucking photo shoot for the face. And then Swells asked Robert Vinson if he would chin Big Fun if he met them. I wouldn't go anywhere they go. But then Swells asked, what about if you met them in the top of the pop studio and they came up to you and said, hi, I think you guys are really great and we really like the single. Robert comes back with, I'd just say, yeah, it is, isn't it?

I think your record's crap. Why don't you make a record like that? Actually play something. Can you do that, you wankers? Oh yeah, real tough guys there. Wow, what an extremely hard target. That's so edgy. Ooh, you hate the boy bands, do you? Gosh, you must be amazing.

You're such a free thinker. Your music must be the most brilliant music if you hate the boy bands please tell me more at some point we'll get to birdland's whole 30 seconds on top of the pops can't wait yeah a mate of mine had a bootleg video of something once can't remember what it was and at the end it finished and then you know it went and then you saw what had been on the tape beforehand underneath and it was a birdland gig oh no and it was the climax of this birdland gig which was just a load of feedback and noise and the bloke out of birdland was uh on his knees on the stage shouting into the microphone and he

was going baby you could drive my car baby you can drive my car baby you can drive my car and he said it about 10 times and there's a pause and then he went my fucking car and so for about the next uh three years on the rare occasions that uh you saw a mention of birdland in the press or on tv everyone would just start shouting my fucking car you wouldn't get away with that now either would you because like that's hate speech well it kind of yeah but wells was clearly goading them into you know making threats and whatnot but more importantly big fun versus birdland i know with my money you'd be on yeah there was a a new metal band whose name i now forget who actually did they call their album kill all boy bands and the tour was like the kill all boy bands tour i had to go and do a little backstage interview with them after a gig and the

guy was so fucking pleased with himself about his entire concept and she's like you know that it's the chart right and if you deign to be in it, you can share it with some people. Sometimes they'll sell more than you, but that's okay. It's all right, mate. It's okay. It's like when Peter and the Test Tube Babies did a song called Beat Up The Mods. And the chorus was, Beat up the mods, beat up the mods, beat up the mods, beat up the mods,

beat up the mods, beat up the mods, beat up the mods, beat up the mods, beat up the mods, beat up the mods, beat up the mods, beat up the mods, beat the mods up! My fucking mods. So the following week, Handful of Promises jumped eight places to number 21, but would get no further. In panic mode, Stock Aitken and Waterman teamed them up with Sonya in the summer with a view to recording a cover of You've Got A Friend for Childline but for reasons unknown, they ended up recording a single with the same name written by Saw and it got to number 14 In a last throw of the dice, they released their karaoke version of Eddie Holman's Hey There Lonely Girl in August of this year.

And when that only got to number 62, they were dropped by Jive and Soar, reforming as Big Fun 2 in 1993 to put out a cover of the Johnson Brothers' Stomp. But when that did nothing, they split up in 1994. Get it inside your head I'm tired of dancing Fornindale Keith Midlovian in 1958 Derek Dick was a former petrol pump attendant and gardener Who picked up the nickname Fish From a landlord who complained about the amount of time he spent in the bath He relocated to Aylesbury in 1980 Becoming the lead singer of Marillion a year later and after a session on Tommy Vance's Friday Rock Show, they were picked up by EMI in 1982.

number six there but the follow-up he knows you know got to number 35 sparking a run of 12 top 40 singles on the bounce peaking in the mid-80s with kaylee getting to number two in june of 1985 and misplaced childhood entering the lp charts at number one in the same month by late 1987 however marillion's ridiculously excessive touring schedules caused a row between Fish and the band's manager, who told the rest of the band to choose between the two. When they opted for the manager, he quit the band in July of 1988, took the songs he'd already written for their fifth LP, and embarked upon a solo career.

This single, the follow-up to Big Wedge, which got to number 35 in January, is the third cut from his debut LP, Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors, which came out at the end of that month and featured a pickup band which featured a 23-piece orchestra, Hal Lindes of Dire Straits, Mark Brzezinski of Big Country and Carol Kenyon. Yes, the Temptation Woman with Heaven 17. It's entered the charts this week at number 30

and here's a snippet of the video which is dead Marillionaire. And the Backroom Boys are having a right good fuck about with their new graphics package, aren't they? They've mashed the title of the song together to form a fish, would you believe, which swims across the screen before breaking up and falling into place. Really nice touch, but it makes you wonder what they'd have done for snivelling shits or anal cunts.

I didn't notice that. I think probably because I have my fingers over my eyes when this came now as all true pop craze youngsters know it is the law on chart music that we always have to point out that taylor fucking loved marillion back in the day yeah so yeah in 1990 telly you must have been as excited about fisher's solo career as I was in 1983 about the Style Council, yeah? It's hard to believe, but by 1990, I'd kind of lost interest. Well, by 1987, I'd kind of lost interest in it, really. It's hard to believe, though, listening to music of the calibre of

Gentleman's Excuse Me. I mean, you'd look at him in this video. He could get drunk just inhaling his bo the clip we see consists of fish sat in a ballroom with loads of people behind him having a bit of a slow dance emoting to the camera about a failed relationship we don't see him from the waist up in this clip thankfully but i'm suspecting he's wearing a kilt. Don't you? What, because it's a formal occasion? Yes. Well, I mean, it is a kind of ballroom-themed video,

so it might be a full ball gown. Yes. For all we know. And he's essentially telling us that he don't want to dance, dance with you, baby, no more. So, yeah, they're kind of, there's a ballroom inside, and then there's another bit of video where they are outside, for some reason, on, like, a cleared site, and they're all kind kind of clustered up dancing in a corner of it yeah and there's like a

grand piano but they're not even like in the rubble because the rubble has been cleared maybe they meant to film it in some rubble but then it's like oh no the builders have cleared it oh well let's do it anyway yeah you know that's going to be a summer field or a gateway in six months time yeah or a crossrail station he does have that kind of lower league football manager look with this sort of wispy mullet and his scraggy chin hair and and his it's kind of kinder egg yolk head but he does he does have beautiful eyes like a weimaraner i know there's a filter on everything but those are lovely kind eyes so that's fine nothing else about your face matters if you've got lovely eyes.

Well, this is it. I've been looking at loads of interviews for research for this. He seems a really nice bloke. You know, you can imagine sitting down and having a pint with him and having a good chit-chat and getting on, you know, as long as you didn't tell him that you knew Taylor, of course. And the other thing is, us lot, you know, the so so-called experts we've always seen fishers shaking gabriel 10 years out of time and a bit ludicrous but to the general public is that

bloke who pops up every now and again with the really nice sad little love songs and here's another example well i mean what that was my experience of marillion you know when i was a kid i always had a soft spot for kaylee, which I always, as a kid, I found it really devastating. There was just something about the whole tone of it that was just like, oh, it's really heart-rending. It's a sort of mythic lament. It's almost like Jim Steinman experimenting with a more straightforward, low-key kind of narrative song structure. I have to say, as well, in the context of 1990 especially can you get it inside your head i'm tired of dancing is quite a beguiling little line yes and it's delivered with some real

feeling in this slightly wobbly voice yeah and it did make the hairs on my arms go up i mean the follicles don't lie you know yeah particularly during an episode at top of the pulse where they're practically going dance dance dance now now yeah especially after big fun doing a kind of sad forced frog yeah in the disused industrial prison of suppressed sexuality for their sore overlords yeah fish was never going to be the fourth member of big fun was it big fish i think fish probably thought dancing was a bit shallow yeah the song's based mainly on his marriage, which had been falling to bits almost immediately

after it occurred three years ago. And then he discovered that she was having an affair during the recording of this LP. And he had to record this in Abbey Road with an orchestra in the same room as him in an extremely tight recording window, having all that on his mind. So you've got to feel for the poor sod.

But, you know, you can also draw comparisons with his marriage and subsequent divorce with marillion because he was marillion wasn't it to us sorts who weren't that interested in marillion yeah if you've got a band of like four or five i don't even know how many it was four or five blokes who look like they work in a guitar shop yeah there's like a six foot six inch lunatic with his face painted in the front going yeah that's he tends to be the one who draws your attention i mean doing songs about other people it's it's a tricky thing isn't it because you know they can't answer back in song unless they're britney spears or justin tim blake i mean the only recourse mrs

fish would have in this case would be to appear in an advert dressed as a mermaid and say fish thinks he's hung like a whale but his performance in bed gave me much to carp about and i'll tell you all about it only in the sun but it turned out reasonably all right in the end because she actually appears in this video as herself and they had a kid a year later and they stayed married for another 13 years so you know doing this song and video was a lot more helpful to them going to relate so you know if anyone out there is in a bad marriage at the moment go make a pop video with your partner anything else to say about this no no so No. So, the following week, a gentleman's excuse me dropped one place to number 31

and slid out of the charts. The follow-up, Internal Exile, made it to number 37 in September of 1991 and a slow and prolonged series of diminishing returns set in across the rest of the 90s. I'm taking two steps back Can you get it inside your head? I'm tired of dancing Somebody gotta hold back the river Somebody gotta get through We've covered Marty and the McKens a couple of times on Chart Music,

and this, their eighth single, is the follow-up to Broke Away, which got to number 19 in the last week of 1989. It's the third cut from their third LP, Holding Back the River, which got to number two in the LP chart of November of 1989. It entered the chart at number 34 last week, and this week it's moved up three places to number 31. Hardly a breaker, but Top of the Pops, in a move to keep Mam Happe, has lumped it in with the others.

So here's a flash of marty pello doing that smile he does at an enormous gig marty pello he's essentially les mckeown recalled by the manufacturers and repaired and modified and sent back out again isn't it you know the cockiness has become cheekiness the level of professionalism has been radically upgraded. And it's fair to say that he's not going to run grannies over in a big car or shoot his fans in the face with an air rifle. They've got it right, haven't they, with Marte? Yeah, and it just feels like it would be genuinely impossible to stop him smiling. But I think most people would take that as a challenge. It is a shit-eating grin, isn't it?

So, yeah, by this time, wait, wait, wait, they've made a conscious decision to step away from their teenage fan base. You know, the minute that Bross encroached upon their patch, they took a move away, probably with relief, and concentrated on being musos. And in recent interviews, they're revelling in the fact that people, all right, women of all ages are turning up to their gigs but you know there's going to be a short-term price to pay for that

which is a period of rubbish chart placings and only getting 28 seconds on top of the pops by this point if you sat down and looked at this episode of top of the pops you'd see that band and go god they're on their arse then yeah well it's hardly surprising when you hear the the deep soulful sound of hold back the river if i get out it's like this got that 80s drum clatter on it and that's like the only audible thing on the record it might as well have just been that because when you hear it that's the only thing that you notice just this it's a horrible horrible sound the least rich and soulful sound you could ever imagine it does sound like they've taken a sort of big classic big band sound and put it in a breville yes a sort of easy popping into the chart i'm assuming that you've both seen some of the sopranos at some point tony soprano gets gifted a big mouth Billy Bass,

this sort of weird fishy gift. And it sings, take me to the river in this horrible tinny voice. And when it gets to the chorus, it sort of turns and looks at him. And it violently triggers the memory of how he killed his best friend and dumped him in the sea. Spoilers. And I was thinking like, what water related tune could a big mouth billy bass sing to a new jersey mob boss that would be more disturbing than that and i think this could work

yes is that kind of slow creeping dread masquerading as swing isn't it marty pello seems like an all right sort of bloke yeah i'm happy to see him doing okay in his life and still getting work why are you glad to see that because you know it's nice sometimes i mean i i throw my casual hate around the place a lot and sometimes i go no it's all right it's nice when people aren't suicidally miserable sometimes you know go in peace marty pello he's overcome lots of adversity in his life you know the addiction and the death of his brother and stuff but i cannot delighted as i am to see that he's he's all right i i can't in all honesty say i was happy to see him in the 40th anniversary of the musical version of jeff wayne's war of the world no god when did that worst thing well on the 40th anniversary of you know well we are but he's been he's been

doing it for the last 10 years actually it's been you, it's a musical version has been doing, you know, obviously they had a pandemic break and then they came back like last year or whatever. Good to see that the Martians survived the pandemic, though, when they usually keel over at the first sniffle. So they must have been wearing masks and self-isolating and, you know, complying. Obviously, the Martians didn't go to any bloody McCluskey gigs. It's the worst thing ever made by humans i mean i'm i'm not a musical person anyway but you know with with some notable exceptions but fucking hell he's doing the sung thoughts of the journalist so basically what's going on in the head of the hologram of liam neeson as humanity faces extinction

and actually not smiling during during that's not right and look quite weird yeah yeah he still looks like marty pello but he doesn't smile so no so it is possible sometimes he doesn't he's in a cream suit and like everything about it is worse than every other thing about it like i happened upon it like one morning when i was feeling really crappy and i just kind of hate-watched it. I just decided to punish myself with a horrible work of bad popular art. But yeah, they're very keen to put over how big and popular they are. These kind of videos is, look at us, aren't we brilliant?

Loads of people like us. Maybe you should too. Come to one of our gigs, buy a T-shirt and a tour programme. I don't think there's necessarily anything dirty about making a video like that i think it's legit it's cheap way to do it i suppose save a few quid so the following week hold back the river dropped six places to number 37 and fell out of the chart the follow-up a double a side consisting of stay with me heartache and a cover of The Beatles' I Feel Fine, not with a funky drummer beat on it, thank fuck, did slightly better, getting to number 30 in

August. Yeah, it's their fault for fucking Candyflip, isn't it? Wait, wait, wait. They had an absolutely cat shit 1991 with a live LP that failed to chart and two singles from their next LP which got to number 37 and 56 respectively but the third cut, Goodnight Girl, spent four weeks at number one in January of 1992 and the LP High on the Happy

Side entered the album chart at number one the following month. And that was the breakers fucking hell. Yeah. When tim buckley sang well should i stand amidst the breakers i should i lie with death my bride i know i understand this dilemma Somebody like you. Yeah! with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, well, they're the breakers, but this is already broken. It's our second debut performance at number 24 this week.

Performing loaded, would you welcome to Top of the Pops, Primal Scream. Mayo on the balcony next to a girl in an insane black bra top that's been wrapped around her forearms, which makes her look as if her breasts are wearing sunglasses. Tells us that those were the breakers, but this single has already broken. It's Loaded by Primal Scream. Formed in Glasgow in 1982 by Bobby Gillespie and Jim Beie, two youths from the Kings Park Secondary School, Primal Scream began their career Mary Brennell Boys Murder Style,

with bedroom tapes where Beattie played guitar and Gillespie banged on two dustbin lids. After trying out a few Birds and Velvet Underground covers, they moved on to writing their own birds and velvet underground inspired songs started gigging and were picked up in 1984 by another classmate alan mcgee who signed them to his london-based label essential records although sessions for a single were aborted and the deal fell through gillespie was immediately recruited as the drummer of the jesus and mary chain keeping primal scream as a side project and turning it into a proper band who were signed to mcgee's new label creation in 1985 just before the release of their debut single all fall down

gillespie was given an ultimatum by the re brothers to either join the Miri chain full-time or resign, and he chose the latter. After myriad line-up changes, they finally made a dent on the UK chart in 1987, when Jenkle Tuesday got to number 86 in July of that year, but was stuck in a retro rock rut for the rest of the decade, destined to give good interview in the Incas, but ultimately being slagged off in the reviews pages. And by the time their second LP, Primal Scream, came out in September of 1989 and failed to get anywhere near the LP chart, they were teetering upon the rim of the dustbin of history. However, after being taken out to raves by McGee throughout 1989,

the band were introduced to the fanzine writer and DJ Andrew Weatherall, who had just finished working with Paul Oakenfold on the club remix of Hallelujah by the Happy Mondays. In a last row of the dice, they gave him a copy of the LP track I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have, with instructions to completely gut it. Keeping nothing but the horn section at the end of the track, he larded it with a mix of what i am by edie brakel and new bohemians the horn blast from freestyle the 1975 library track by john hawkins and vocals from the 1976 emotions track i don't want to lose your love and after gillespie added a couple of lines nick from robert john Johnson's Terraplane Blues, the single and the band instantly became non-more 1990.

After being rinsed in the clubs, it entered the charts of Fortnite to go at number 47, then soared 15 places to number 32. And this week, it's up another eight places to number 24 and here they are finally at the promised land at the top of the pop studio oh well well well where to start with this me dears well i'd like to just read out a quote if you don't mind go ahead from seeing bands such as Suicide, The Pop Group and The Fall, I had developed a love for confrontational performance, the fuck you attitude that these bands possessed. Audiences are sometimes like cattle, grazing idly in the field, waiting to be herded to another field, shepherded all their lives, unthinking, unknowing. Artists have to be brave. As the old saying goes, pioneers take the arrows.

It's lonely out there on the perimeter, on the edge of consciousness, the dark, unknown regions of soul dread and psychic derangement where the straights are too scared to go. The great herd gather around each other, take safety in numbers and all move together in the same direction,

safe in the knowledge that the farmer will feed them regularly. They know their place in the great or not so great scheme of things, while the lone wolves go hungry. Always searching for the meagre, unwanted scraps that society has forgotten and seen no use in. But the lone wolves use this cultural garbage as soul food and through a kind of feral alchemy create powerful art. To use Kipling's well-worn but true maxim, he who travels fastest travels alone. Thus spake Bobby Gillespie in his recent autobiography, Tenement Kid.

Wow, imagine having that much talent. It must be a bit terrifying for you. Let's start off with you, Taylor, because in that Q&A that we did fucking ages ago, one of the Pop Craze Youngsters asked you who were the shakiest band of all time, and you immediately came back with you can't get past the omni shake of primal

scream yeah what the poor man's candy flip uh i mean at least candy flip have that ingenue quality which you might at least mistake for freshness or charm no i mean this is clearly a better record than Candy Face's record, but it's even more contrived, more desperate, less free, and ultimately less like what it thinks it is. Yes. Because what kind of person could look at poor old Bobby Gillespie flailing and flouncing and, you know, knock-kneed in his meaty finery and not laugh. It's just self-evidently hilarious. That determined frown of his, just utterly without humour or self-awareness and furious with everyone who isn't. I think probably the other Bobby Gillespie,

star of ITV's Keep It In The Family, would have been a sexier dancer yeah i mean the dads who were outraged by the desecration of strawberry fields are now just pissing themselves laughing and throwing the remains of their tea up in the air with glee because as my mum would say bobby gillespie he looks a bastard doesn't he i've related before my very brief encounters with Bobby Gillespie, the briefest of which was when we both happened to be at the Barbican seeing Spiritualised.

I was coming back from the loo and he almost laid me out by crashing through some double doors and almost into me. Really? Yeah, he's a man with what I might describe as a threatening aura. He's like a recently redundant witch's familiar. Can I share my brief encounter with Bobby Glaspie before you go on? Oh, please do. I went to see Primal Scream in about 1987.

And after the gig, he came out to mingle with the audience and... Commune with the sheep. Precisely, yeah, to offer us a little bit of guidance. Yes. And he went around lifting up girls' skirts and peering underneath. Oh, did he now? Yeah, knowing that nobody was going to say anything to him. No.

Okay, fuck that guy. I was feeling a little bit bad about, you know, just the terrible things I was thinking or going to say. Now I don't, so that's very freeing. He's free what he wants to do, Sarah, come on. Look up girls' skirts. And that's what we're going to do sarah come on look up girl skirts and that's what we're gonna do um he's deeply deeply awkward for a rock star and not in the david byrne neurodivergent kind of way

absolutely unselfconscious in some ways or possibly the most self-conscious man who's ever lived i can't quite figure it out the thing about this this, kind of brilliantly, is that it's not actually a Primal Scream record. It's an Andrew Weatherall record. Because obviously, as you said, they gave it to him and just said, just fuck it up completely. Make it good. Which is great, which you have to say that's a hell of a thing for. I'm sure a lot of people are very precious about their remixes

and it's credit to them for just going, just make it sound not like us at all. Make it sound like it could be a hit. But it's being presented on Top of the Pops as a song by a rock band with their rock instrument yes but they're just like the front it's like it's a rock band made up of samples of individual members of primal scream playing the instruments they play and some other stuff and loads and loads of space around all of that it's like it's rock band as sound palette which is much more drugs than candy flip to my mind it's about as authentic as when one of the Reynolds girls mimed playing a guitar to heavy metal rock and roll music of the past.

And I'd rather Jack. It does make Bobby Gillespie kind of the equivalent here of the bird from Black Box. Yes. In his little leathers doing his little knees together shimmy but it i kind of i have to hand it to them in the sense that like even more obviously going on top of the pops and miming and then going away again must be a curiously unsatisfying experience for anyone gotcha but like this is kind of turning that on its head he doesn't take the mic for a good two minutes no you know like in um my second gangster reference of this episode in goodfellas where they let, is it Goodfellas or Casino? Anyway, it's the thing where like they have to let their wives talk shit about nothing for two minutes.

And then the FBI have to, who are listening in, aren't allowed to listen for any longer than two minutes on any given calls. They have to hang up. But as soon as they do, the guys take over. It's like, so we're going to go kill that guy. Yeah, we are. So he doesn't take the mic for two minutes and just kind of shimmies about and then says about 11 words, two of which are either woo or hey, and then call it a night.

Yeah, Al, you should have said at the start, he drops in a few lines lifted from Robert Johnson's Terraplane Blues and a few lines lifted from Peter Powell. So, yeah, so the music's going on, and then occasionally he just shouts, Woo! Hey! Come on! I think he should have ad-libbed a few more of those, like, Comb your hair! Yes!

Now ski! Spray! Macho man! I think it could have improved this performance immeasurably there really should be a loaded superman mash yes they've got this loping beat going on as was the style in 1989 slash 1990 but it's fair to say that the performance is less soul to soul and more arse to mouth they've got tiny tim on slide guitar someone in the manchester uniform of a white long-sleeved t-shirt with something hippie-ish on it and billy smart jeans on the

keyboard uh there's someone who's turned up looking like an extra in the video for calling the kaftan on guitar and a couple of members are serving suggestion i mean for all i know those chaps could be you know some of the back end of the mission and i wouldn't have fucking noticed any difference but how is bobby omni shake deploying his feral alchemy to create powerful art chaps i contend it's by looking like justin bennett out of grangell in a heroin screws you up advert i mean you do have to feel sorry for him and them waiting all their lives to go on top of the pops and when they do it's to pretend to play a song that he contributed about five percent to but

you know it allows top of the pops to put a dance record on where people are standing there with actual instruments like they were real musicians when you know what they should have been doing was sitting around Andy Weatherall who's in a big gold throne in a in a nice white robe and cutting his toenails and feeding him grapes and just bowing to him for saving their career he should be on this he should be on there just sitting there just waving to go i made this song isn't it meant that would actually have been brilliant wouldn't it yes as a kind of situation is top of the pops moment just have andy weatherall with his lovely flowing beard just sit there and drink from a goblet but you see this is why you've got what you described as

the chap in the manchester uniform it's the bloke out of ride is it yes it's the lead singer out of ride um i think this was a last hurrah for mu rules right because the band we see here are quite clearly not the musicians that we hear on the record so somebody decided that well what is it it's that's it's synthesizers or something yeah so you have to see somebody playing a synthesizer so i think they were forced to draft in somebody to mime a synthesizer part and it turned out the only person they could get on the phone at short notice was their label mate this bloke out of right really and it's kind of funny because it really spoils their big moment it's like because he's just wearing a t-shirt right and they're all dressed up like you know extras from black adder and he's there in his baggy top from the 1990 Topman Raver collection, you know. And it's like the theatrical costumier ran out of Elizabethan leatherware.

And it's like, no, you're just going to have to do it in your pants and vest, mate. It's like if one of the black and white minstrels had forgot to put his makeup on. It'd just ruin it, wouldn't it? Yeah. I mean, I think it's kind of cool in a way that they're barely on this record and in fact the pattern of their music generally tends to be that the more primal scream there is on the record the worse it is and the less primal scream the better now that's potentially a great thing yeah right as is the fact that the most contrived band in musical history chose to call themselves

Primal Scream. I mean, these could all be positives, right? Because the key to Primal Scream is that they're fetishists to an almost creepy extent, and not in the good way. You know, it's like they're cut off from their own individuality and they're incapable of really connecting with imperfect reality so they end up like this just sort of locked away grasping at precious objects and discarded clothes and memories and accessories in lieu of actually fucking anything themselves musically speaking you know it's like things that the everyday folk leave behind well it's like a religious and sexual act of worship and displacement you know they really mean it yeah but they don't mean anything and this is why this is possibly their best record because it sounds like what it is it sounds like them twirling and posing in this huge, empty, echoing space

where their music should be. Yes. I kind of like that. Yeah, yeah. It's such a peculiar thing, isn't it? Even now, you just kind of go, what the fuck, you know? Like, I know at the time,

like, it makes sense on its own terms, but I couldn't really put it together in my head. I was like, what am I supposed to make of this? Which has to be a good thing, you know? And it's just so funny that it's come from this imperfect vessel. But also, I mean, Denise Johnson, who did a lot of incredible vocal work on Primal Scream records and just didn't...

That's the kind of uncomfortable side of this, is that she really didn't get enough credit for her work on making Primal Scream sound good. We've been swerved somewhat in this episode of Top of the Pops, haven't we, chaps, by Strawberry Fields forever, because the real dominant influence over this era wasn't the Beatles at all. It was the Rolling Stones, because, you know,

this single is feelings of pity and sorrow for the horned one. Oh, yeah, people picked up on that. There was a club where andy weatherall first laid it and um said that everybody you know was doing the woo woo bit over the top of it so they obviously yes maybe ironically or maybe just in in great enthusiasm but you know yeah apparently sympathy for the devil was played out quite a lot in acid house clubs in the early days simply because they didn't have enough records to pad a night out with also round about this time i bought let it bleed from rob's records and the first time i heard monkey man i thought fucking hell this is so madchester yeah why don't

you do a remix of that mick come on anyway fuck primal scream let's talk about the real artist in this andrew weatherall yeah so there's this excellent book, Acid House, The True Story by Luke Bainbridge, which is like a sort of very entertaining oral history of Acid House. Yeah, so Andrew Weatherall had plenty to say about a lot of things, including this. Yeah, it was Innes who said, I've got this great sample you can use,

which was the Peter Fonda sample from Wild Angels. I'd love to claim that was my idea, but it wasn't. It was Innes. I played at a Primal Scream gig at Subterranea under the Westway, and the whole place went mental, all singing the woo-woos, that sympathy for the devil thing over the top. I think Bobby was double pleased because all the Schumann Spectrum kids there loved it, and all the Faye Indy kids were trying to get into the dressing room to ask,

Bob, what's the fucking disco shit? So Bob was doubly pleased because in one sweep, it had managed to please the cool kids and ditch all these fae indie kids. What did surprise me was it was quite a slow record. It's about 95 BPM. I'm surprised it's that much. So to get a reaction like that at peak time

really surprised me. The tempo in London was maybe slower than elsewhere, but it wasn't that slow. I remember a review that one certain northern DJ gave it when it came out. I can't remember who it was, but it was someone who worked at the Thunderdome or one of those proper full-on clubs he sent back his reaction sheet and it just said soft southern shandy drinking shite so you know there was a mixed

response to it at the time i've got to say this right now i actually like this single at least i don't hate it because at time, it gave students something to lumber about to without getting on my tits, which was really important at the time. You know, when a DJ chose to put this on at a fucking student disco, he was also choosing not to play The Wonder Stuff or Birdland or any of that shit. So while it was on, I had a comfort zone. I mean, I grew up listening to primal scream

when they were a birds revivalist band you know in 85 86 doing these endless sped up rewrites of she don't care about time the record which should have ended that kind of jangly pop because you're not going to improve on that ever um no but in fact they were quite good at it and if you listen to their old peel sessions and stuff like that they still sound all right i mean they sound better and more charming than the stone roses who massively ripped them off um well documented if you do a side-by-side comparison of made of stone and velocityocity Girl by Primal Scream. You know, yeah. But that version of Primal Scream were kind of likeable. They had a tambourine player in the band,

just a bloke who stood on stage with a tambourine. That was all he did. He played the tambourine while wearing black leather gloves. You can't complain about that sort of thing, you know what I mean? Unless you were a cow. But what happened to them they ended up on alan mcgee's uh new label that he did uh elevation which was a subsidiary of a major trying to make it by putting out an album of these lovely songs with a big 1980s major label indie production oh Oh, dear. And like all those bands, it killed them. The Make It Sound Shit button.

Yeah, so the 12-string guitarist left, the one who was mostly responsible for creating the sound. So, yeah, they had to carry on for a bit as a sort of crappy barroom rock band until they tripped over Weatherall and tumbled into a goldmine. But the thing is, in a way, this is the most interesting thing about

them they're a band with a a hole in the center they've got no identifiable talented one to hold it all together do you know what i mean yeah they just find ways to get along like a three-legged cat and of course andrew weatherall and kevin shields and all the different people they've worked with down the years are talented. And as a result, they've made music or they've made at least bits of music that's not that bad. It just never quite feels right because what pours out of Primal Scream is not a sense of gleeful mischief and delight at getting away with it or a sort of graceful passivity as they are used as a vessel but this kind of arrogance and entitlement yeah which is perfectly appropriate for the band that they're pretending to be but in this reality can't help

but feel a bit charmless and a little bit embarrassing and i really get it because it's part of their holy aesthetic you know you have to commit right you there are no half measures you mustn't ever smile you mustn't act like anyone can reach you you know you have to believe that you are the rolling stones and all this is really happening yeah uh but the thing that they've missed the one thing that they've missed in their extensive study of of rock and roll mythology is that even in rock and roll that sort of arrogant shithead attitude only passes as cool when there's a spark of genuine credibility, you know, something to mark you out from all the other kids with tennis rackets

in front of their mirrors, you know. And without that, you just are going to look ridiculous and I don't make the rules. I'm sorry. I think the most prominent thing about Primal Scream at the time was they were putting themselves over as the biggest custard gannets in pop. There's an interview in Q a year later, which reads as follows.

Upstairs, Andrew Innes is strutting his dance floor stuff with his own mother. Gillespie is up there too, signing autographs for his skinny disciples and looking up girl skirts. Nearly all of the Scream Creation tribe end up punching the air beneath the mirror globes at some point during the next two hours of andy weatherall's djing but for the moment all attention is keenly focused on what's happening downstairs the entourage mill bizzler rub their hands and grin gleefully the reason the drugs et erive tonight's menu includes glug, methadone, ecstasy, magic mushrooms,

amphetamine sulfate, cocaine, and the backstage staple of hash. The varied and various mood alterants are liberally distributed amongst the tour regulars. You know, muses Bobbitt, it was a love of music that brought

us all together and that's what we really get excited about but we also get excited when the drugs turn up really excited nom nom nom yeah it was a bit like uh what's that you smoking a joint there oh yeah i see you smoke hash guess what i do i take crack they are the real old twats of drugs aren't they primal scream like glug a fucking glug i've never heard that before it's like yeah we bit a night nurse yes i did experience an oh what wow moment during this song after hearing it for the first time in ages i always thought the women singing, I'm going to lose your love, was them singing, I'm going to loosen up.

Which was aided by seeing Bobby Omnishake clearly loosening up in those leather trousers. It's a weird one. Look, my response to Primal Scream is always going to be weird and conflicted in some ways because I'm a music critic with a speciality in late 60s, early 70s, psychedelia and underground rock,

and a subspeciality in 80s indie music. So on the one hand, that means I can see through these people like air. This song is your mastermind subject, isn't it, Taylor? Yeah, but at the same time, there's a kind of deep, unshakable empathy. Unshakable, perhaps not the choicest word um so it feels like i get this group at the deepest level it's possible to get something this shallow but i can't admire them um so you know the old cliches about music writers like the the first one being uh writing about music is like dancing about architecture,

which sounds clever for about 10 seconds until you think, actually, no, hang on. What it's a lot more like is writing about architecture. And if you've got anything to say about Ian Nairn, my friend, you should step outside and say it to me there. Yeah, fuck off, Zappa. But the other one is that music journalists are failed musicians, right, which I wish was more true,

because then music journalism might be a little bit better informed and a bit more clued into musicians' tricks and what is and isn't cheap and hackney, you know. But it's also meaningless, partly because a lot of the best musicians were also failed musicians. And because success and failure as a musician isn't linked to insight or, you know, understanding or writing ability or anything else you need as a critic or used to. But the point is, you'd rather have a music critic who's a failed musician than a musician who's a failed music critic either literally like morrissey or spiritually like primal scream because they

know everything they get everything they feel everything right down to their tingling little souls but ultimately they don't really have anything to add and i mean look i've always hated being a critic and in a lot of ways i wish i'd never fallen into this particular pothole i mean despite the perk of entry into the latter day algonquin round table that is the chart music collective partly because it's intrinsically frustrating and demeaning but also because you need too many ideas it's like being a comedian where you go on tv or radio and everything you say has to be a new idea and once you've said it bang it's gone you can't just say it again over and over for the rest of your life whereas if you're a musician or a painter or a film director or even a novelist you can get by for 20 or 30 years on one idea

just retouching it and refining it and exploring it from different angles you know and at the lowest level you don't even need that you can get relatively rich and relatively famous and have a relatively large amount of fun without ever having to think of anything and it's fine if you do that with charm and grace and a certain style even a sort of snotty kind of style. But if you do it snootily with a deluded sense of your own seriousness and this much ironic self-regard, that's just hard to love, right? So as a responsible critic, I can't abide primal scream

because every disparaging thing that can be fairly said about my old profession is far truer when applied to them right when applied to this group who live in a world of refractions and reminders and whose relationship to the thing they love most is largely parasitical because all rock bands are derivative and in hock to some extent but the best of them inhabit their favorite music and they use it as a language with which to communicate something but the problem with primal scream is that we're kind of given nothing it's almost like just an instruction to worship you know it's like these lads are so touched and moved by music that maybe they can't accept that perhaps their place might

be just to consume that music on their headphones while delivering uber eats and and i admire the determination and the lengths they're prepared to go to in order to deny that destiny. But alas, it's not quite that simple. They're not very important in my musical life, but I'm kind of fond of them in the way that you would be of, you know, the sort of the guy that sleeps in the doorway of your apartment building and kind of swears at you every day as you go as you go to get your post but the problem is i can't hate them because we come from the same place in terms of musical revelation and what hooked us and in fact so i sympathize with this this sort of deep love that sets in and how it can affect you i remember in about 1986 or something bobby gillespie write an article in the nme about late 60s psychedelic music which today would probably make you wince or or yawn because it's the same old psych manifesto you

know but at the time it was kind of beautiful to read someone rhapsodizing about all this music that i love like the birds you know 13th floor elevators sid barrett chocolate watch band uh love all this stuff that still lives in the deepest and most sensitive tunnels of my heart to the point where i'm still toying with the idea of forming a love tribute band called like the single cleverest thought i've ever had in my entire miserable life but the care all the other response mechanisms in facebook oh yeah angry yes by the way you should know that there has been a band called the like so there is a danger you'll have to share a spotify page with them yeah happy to piggyback but it's just that this particular kind of music and i say this

particular kind of music not meaning the actual sounds that we're hearing here but the sounds that are in primal screams head as this music is played behind them it means something special to those of us who were young in the 80s that's the thing and who took the 60s as an escape from the 80s musically and culturally right an inversion of the 80s but the danger is always that you're going to disappear into that past because like that love and that sensibility is not transferable into the 80s there's no way to make a blend of now and then so the glories of the past become an alternative reality which you disappear into you know and every time you're forced to snap out of that and face a repulsive tuesday morning you cling on to that alternative reality

a little bit tighter and before you know it you're cut off from everything other than your own internal dream reality right and it's fucking terrible it's a terrible mistake trying to inhabit the invisible structure of this dead world you just become ghostly and even as primal scream are miraculously rescued from their self-imposed predicament right when andrew weatherall like a a giant charitable bird flies overhead and takes the collar of their leather jackets in his beak and lifts them out of the rotting corpse pit of revivalism into the blue sky they're still twisting and writhing in their old time clothes you know in the empty air still in front of their bedroom mirror still trying to match each new experience to somebody

else's old experience but the trouble is because of that shared formative experience i'm looking at this absurd scene of a failed necromancy and despite myself and despite my laughter i am feeling the intensity and the seriousness of that love and devotion to a particular tradition and aesthetic, even though I kind of don't want to. It's a bit like a religion. It's like being a lapsed Catholic. You know what I mean? I'm out here living my life, but it's never completely let me go and i still get a feeling when i see the stations of the cross you know or rather a bunch of fellow victims dressed up and reenacting the stations of the cross andrew other all he did

give them the keys of the kingdom and they used it to make get your rocks off yeah yeah they did yeah look can i tell you one more story quickly, right? Years ago, an old Melody Maker colleague got a job as a commissioning editor for a book company and started getting loads of us in for boozy expense account lunches and trying to think up projects and stuff and try and match writers to projects that were already in the works. And one of the things that was coming up was the book that eventually became My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry hungry for the prize right history of

creation records by the late david kavanagh um but at this point it was still at the stage of meetings with alan mcgee and all that stuff and this bloke mentioned to me that he'd given mcgee a list of all the writers that were on the books and he'd gone down at crossing people off and so on and apparently when he got to my name mcgee said he's an okay writer but i don't think he really understands the label and i still laugh every time i think of that because of course the real problem the real reason i ended up not liking half the stuff that came out on creation and was absolutely not the right person to write that book is that i understand the label far too well i mean i'd

only written nine chapters on ghost of a young man by the jasmine minks and half a paragraph on teenage fan club precisely as it should be so i think they chose well in the end so after this performance in spiral carpets were carrying their organ and whatnot out of television center and saw bobby gillespie storm out of the dressing room run smack into a full-length window thinking it was the exit and then getting on the tube and going back to his girlfriend presumably thinking to himself fucking hell i've waited all my life for this and all i did was play the bastard maracas even so the following week, Loaded jumped another eight places to number 16 and stayed there for two weeks.

I mean, this is the thing about the mythology of this era. You know, all these massive hits by Stone Roses and Happy Mondays and Primal Scream. 16 for two weeks? That's fucking shit, mate. Yeah, entered the charts lower than Candy Flip. Yes. That doesn't necessarily mean anything, mate. Yeah, entered the charts lower than Candy Flip. Yes. That doesn't necessarily mean anything, ultimately, though, does it?

Oh, it does to chart music and the charts. Oh, what, you big nerds? It's like there's loads of classic records that didn't make it to number one and stuff. Who gives a shit? Yeah, there's loads of classic records that still made it in the top ten. Yeah. Yeah, if they were so good, why aren't they in the charts? Yes.

So I should just pay a double's abacus. Yeah, if they were so good, why aren't they in the charts? Yes. They should just pay doubles up and cut them. The follow-up, Come Together, completed their transformation into the Shaking Stones, and they'd shake around for the rest of the 90s and beyond, scoring 10 more top 40 hits, three of which made the top 10. Can we do one more quote from his book?

Yes, please. I've been going through it like gripped by the horrific realization that in lots of ways this is the book i'd have written when i was 15 there but for the grace of god i'm turning the pages thinking fucking hell if i hadn't got myself together i could have ended up as a wealthy and widely loved rock star. Shudder. But look, of all the memorable moments in this book, so far this is the one that's really stayed with me. It's an early Jesus and Mary Chain gig. Right. And if you remember, they used to have sort of so-called riots

at early Jesus and Mary Chain gigs where people would start smashing everything up and fighting and all that. And people are throwing bottles at the band. And one of them hits Bobby Gillespie's girlfriend on the head to which he responds with appropriate outrage and his response is i quote i proceeded to pick up any bottle that had landed on the stage and started throwing them back at the audience fucking sheep so afterwards they go to a and e to get his girlfriend seen to and bobby remembers the scene there were people who had attended the concert in the waiting room who started screaming abuse at us because they'd been bottled too joe foster and i

went over to them and told them all to fuck off that they deserved it for being part of that audience of fools. Now, if you pick apart that sequence of events and Bobby's reactions to his own actions and to the actions of others and their relative consequences, not just on one furious night when he's pissed off that his girlfriend got bottled, but almost 40 years later in a book all I'm saying is psychologists

have a word for that oh fucking hell Paul Craig's youngsters after that performance I'm afraid we're going to have to retreat to the chart music chill-out room and untwist our melons, if you will, and come back hard tomorrow for the final part of chart music number 66. Hey, don't forget, we've got a massive video playlist. So if you want to dip your head into the bucket of 1990, get your arse over to youtube.com slash chart music podcast and never forget if you want

this episode in full without adverts days before it goes on general release patreon.com slash chart music so on behalf of sarah b and taylor pox this is Need Em. See you tomorrow. Stay Pop Craze! Chart Music Pull apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Tax is extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.