Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #46 (Part 1): 17th December 1987 – Mission Accomplished, Agent King Cole

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: why didn’t they let Simon Bates do Top Of The Pops USA?We're out of the Critics' Choice series, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, so it's time to grasp the fly-encrusted and whiffy end of the Eighties Stick. It's a Thursday evening one week before Xmas in 1987, and your panel are a) in a Soho pub, chucking their musical-journalistic weight about, b) trapped in a bingo hall in Nottingham being handled like a piece of meat by randy octogenarians, and c) sprawled out on a rug in Yorkshire, with a garter snake wrapped around their glasses, waiting to be dazzled by the life-affirming beauty of Pop. Two of these people made the right choice that night.Musicwise, this is a heavily adulterated, gelled-up, suity, unwiped arse of an episode, with only a couple of standouts. Mike Read and Gary Davies pretend to be mates. Wet Wet Wet attempt to do True and fail. Mel Smith's attempt to encourage kids to hide in fridges is denied by the BBC. Mick Hucknall - leader of the Kennyist band in Pop - reminds us he can sing a bit. Nat King Cole cock-blocks Rick Astley. We finally get to see a bit of Top Of The Pops USA. And Kirsty and Shane and Neil and Chris ride in to save the day. None of these people are The Young Gods.David Stubbs and Sarah Bee join Al Needham for a rummage through the Quality Street tin of Xmas 1987, and - as always - the detours and tangents are manifold, including what it was like to work at Melody Maker in the Laties, how to buy a shark in Yorkshire, the lack of a decent wine cellar at Dingwalls, the pointlessness of CD Walkmans, the annual F-word debate, how Marti Pellow ruined Stars In Their Eyes, and an open apology to the Pogues for a 33 year-old LP review. Now available in Fun-sized portions, and full of rich, chunky swearing. Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | TwitterSubscribe to us on iTunes here. Support us on Patreon here. This podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. 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. Chart music. Hey!

You pop-crazed youngsters, and welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music, the podcast that shoves its hand up the arse of a random episode atop of the pubs and then wipes its hands down the front of its trousers. I'm your host, Al Needham, and with me today are Sarah B. Hello. And David Stubbs. Hello there. Oh, my dear people, how are we? Tell me now of all the pop and interesting things that have occurred of late.

Well, I went to see some synth pop or synth goth or such like from... The goths still have all the best pop music, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, from France and Iceland. Oh, really? Some sort of wave. I don't know, there's all kinds of waves now. There's dark wave and cold wave and warm wave and haunted wave,

some mornji wave, some combination of those. None of them a heat wave, though. No. But there was... So it was Hunter and Solveig Mathildur from Iceland, who rambled very adorably in between songs in a very beguiling voice. And I enjoyed the music, but I could have listened to her talk for many hours. David, how have you been, Dukka?

Yeah, not too bad. A little bit of a cold, so if I sound slightly roomy um then um you know pardon me but um yeah not be too bad i took a tumble off my bike yesterday yeah i heard about that facebook nobody it was all right you know as i said you know it's think once think twice think bike i thought once and i thought twice but unfortunately on matters unrelated to the road right ahead of me and um and i didn't think about you were on the bike though. Yeah. It's not you who's supposed to think twice. You should be thinking car and bus.

I should, the bike I should have been thinking about was the bike coming towards me. I had to swerve to avoid it, hit some wet leads and went sort of, you know, base over tip. But yeah, you know, surprisingly, I mean, you know, I could have been. Why am I laughing? That's terrible. Because you're a terrible person.

Yeah, that's true. Don't worry, It was a comedy. It was a comedy one. It was like Kenneth Collar falling off his bike or something like that. It was a comedy tumble. So, yeah, you're all right to laugh. Yeah. I mean, if I'd have been sort of stretched out.

You should have a chopper, David. A chopper, yeah. Yeah, that would be all right, wouldn't it? See, with choppers, it was harder to go over the handlebar. It was trying to pull wheelies that fucked you up on a chopper. You've sown a seed there, yeah. Yeah. A chopper.

Yeah, that could really work, yeah. So, as you can tell, because of the fucking adverts that have been on before, we are in a new era of chart music. We're down with Great Big Owl. And, yeah, I hope the adverts weren't too brutal on you. And if one of them was for Brexit let me just say now fuck Brexit up the arse with a stick with a nail in it twice a thrice and of course the other thing we're doing now is uh instead of uh giving the general public one big splurge of chart music

we've chopped it up a bit very exciting I prefer to use the term fun-sized. And you're getting part one now and the other parts will be going out over the course of the week. So yeah, new era, chaps. Fun-sized. The size of fun. Yes. Do you think that you know the way that things go with chocolate bars is that they make them a bit smaller and then they jack the price up and then

they make them a bit smaller and they jack the price up. Do you think that one day all chocolate bars will be what used to be known as fun size? Or they'll be pills, won't they? But with loads of packaging. Yeah. It is true. It isn't just like, you know,

I mean, one does grow twice the size of, you know, what the size one was when one was a child. But Curly Whirlies were definitely about a yard long, you know. You could climb up one to your bedroom window. You could, couldn't you? Or to your treehouse, yeah. Yeah. No, they're nothing, are they? No. When's the last time you had a curly whirly, though? I mean, they're hard on your teeth as you

approach middle age, aren't they? Yes. Definitely, yeah. It's been a while. I've just looked at them at the confectionery counter with disgust. Do you now? Well, you know, I just curl my lip and just say that the diminution of them. Do you think that we were robbed with curly whirlies because there were massive holes in them?

That is true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you could say that about Crunchy, though, as well, can you? Crunchy, the best chocolate bar, bar none, which has millions, millions of holes in there. Yeah. Like Eero as well.

It's just a cod, isn't it? Brexit now. I suppose this really should be a new listener episode because we're uh we're expecting a few people to cock a tab at us and uh i just thought you know what fuck that i ain't gonna explain what we do i've already said you know we do exactly what we say on the tin we take a random episode of top of the box and we break that shit down baby yeah they'll catch up we've got a swathe of back catalog you can uh peruse it you will so yeah let's carry on fuck it but before we do that very thing we need to bend the knee once more to

the real pop craze youngsters who have shoved a handful of dollar down our g-string this month and those people are in the five dollar category thea bolstad michael pryor robin jade bowyer $5 category. Thea Bollstad, Michael Pryor, Robin, Jade Boyer, Barry Davis, Ian M. Spillane, Padraig Reader, Martin Baker, Nathan Ratcliffe,

Andy Mullen, Jim McNellis, Ali Lowe, Stuart Wharf, Dezo Clockron, Suleyman Banyan, Big Chimp, Barnaby Davis, Dezo Clockron, Suleyman Banyan, Big Chimp, Barnaby Davis,

Don Whiskerando, Mike Innes, Mike Ratford, Jamie Brown, Stephen Devine, Ari Stevens and Arlene Finnegan. Oh, we fucking love you. We do. Great names, great people. Yeah, and in the $3

department we have John Lynch, Mike Innes, Martin Young, Faceless Man, Neil Comfort, John Nicholls, Michelle Bee, Chris Gilbert, Andy Arclay, George Schilling, Matt D, Chris Stanley, Neil Ponton, Mark Harrison and Artie Morty. Oh, baby, you want wee and you can have this lap dance here for free. Oh, I'd wipe me fanny on those trousers all day long if I had one. And they had some. A lot of Pop Craze youngsters upgraded this month.

That's why we've got such a big amount of people because they know what's coming and they prepared. Oh, bless them. Yeah. Thank you. So don't forget Pop Craze Youngsters. We're now chunkified an advertorialist, but if you want the full advert-free episode

on the day it comes out, just slip $5 down this G-string right here and you can have it all, baby. And the $3 Patreon people, they get it on a wednesday oh we're not letting them down so if you've been dithering about supporting chart music now is the time to climb off the fence and chuck us some pence yeah go on money isn't real anyway no of course, if you're down with the Patreon posse You can vote on the brand new chart music top ten Are we ready, babies?

Yeah Hit the music We've said goodbye to Sera B and Rakim Chicken Steven And bummers like Duran Duran Which means four up, two down two new entries and a re-entry

a new entry at number ten for working class youth of Newcastle down five places from number four to number nine Pig Wanker General no change at number 8 For Here Comes Jizzum

A re-entry at number 7 For Taylor Parks' 20 Romantic Moments Last week's number 7 This week's number 6 Bomber Dog Last week's number 1 Drops all the way down to number five, Quo Waddy Wadder. It's a one-place jump for this week's number four,

Dave D, Creeper, Twat and Cunt. Hey. Yes. Into the top three, and this week's highest new entry Is in at number three B.A. Conterson Could it be next week's number one Up from number three to number two For Lesbian Dwarf Factory

Which means Britain's number one He's back at the top From number two to number one, Jeff Sex. Yes. There is some justice. Fucking yes. There is some justice.

Jeff Sex is back where he belongs with a Christmas single, probably called Stuck in Your Chimney. Ooh. Yeah, good top ten, that is. The new entries, Working Class youth of Newcastle. What are they sounding like? I think they're posh lads from Buckinghamshire. Yeah, I think that's almost certainly the case, yeah.

Definitely, yeah. Trying to be ironic. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, quite sort of worthy and... Being wry about their privilege. Yeah. And, of course, B.A. Cunterson. He's just B.A. Cunterson, isn't he?

The original. So, if you're not down with Patreon yet, you know what to do. You take them little fingers over to the keyboard and you tip and you tap patreon.com slash chart music and you donate a bit of cash right down this G string. I wonder how many people are going to do that just to get some idea of what the fuck we've just been on about. If you knew knew you'll

learn or you might just go oh i can't stand that bloke's voice i'm turning it off now but you know thanks for the download anyway we're definitely in the deep end of that metaphor aren't we so we finished our critics choice series last episode and it was lovely wasn't it yeah we really were treated to some outstanding episodes atop of the pops but um i think it's now for a bit of thin gruel to balance out the diet so we're going back pop craze youngsters to the wrong half of the 80s because this episode takes us all the way back to december the 17th 1987 oh dear we've walked this way before haven't we Sarah we have yeah the journey wasn't all that scenic was it not not especially even even I who I think there

is something to love in every 80 for me but this is it does it does test one it's like it's like the kind of difficult adolescence of the 80s when, you know, they're just being a complete prick and it's like, how the fuck did I, how am I going to deal with you without just throwing you out on your ass? Yeah. So yeah, we're having another pick at the scab of 1987 here.

Not a vintage year for pop music, I contend. But, you know, let's give it another go. Let's see what comes out this time i mean the biggest thing that happened to the charts in 1987 had nothing to do with the bands or music or anything like that it was that cd singles were finally registered in chart returns and uh by this point at the end of the year we can really detect the influence can't we because this episode is uh it's it's adulterated isn't it and not in a good way it's like when everyone's mum got on facebook yeah it's like someone has a theory someone i know has got a theory about brexit and why that's

happened it's like oh it's because uh you know it's all the all the boomers got on facebook and and started uh started having their brains massaged by by the russians it's a little bit like that. You know, it's like, oh, everyone's mum who's got a CD player in their car. I don't know, you could get CD players in your car by then, couldn't you? Yeah, sort of, if you had an expensive car. Well, I must have been a late adopter to CDs. I don't think I really got going on

CDs until about 88 or even 89. Jesus. I remember we was at Michael Rod's smearing one of them with ketchup. Jam, yeah. Yeah, or jam, whatever it was. And, you know, on the side, yeah. Yeah, it's not that side you have to worry about.

It's the other bloody side, you know. I think 80, yeah, 88, 89, I started getting into CDs. And I must admit, at the time, I really kind of appreciated them, you know, because you got more space and what have you. And I never really, I'm not one of these vinyl buffs because I never cared for vinyl. I played the fuck out of vinyl. I was a hard, talk about hard user.

And I mean, they said, oh, you've got to change your stylus every 80 sides. Well, that'd be like once a bloody day. I mean, I can't afford that. So on my old, my violet, like towards the end, you know, it's like a sort of, you know, the stylus is like chalk, sort of grinding out, you know, these kind of end of side one tracks. And, you know, the stylus is like chalk, sort of grinding out, you know, these kind of end-of-side-one tracks. And, you know, they're barely listenable.

So, yeah, and of course, you know, the old bit of Blu-Tack and the two pence on the needle as well. You know, I just thought, very, very primitive indeed. So I've never really got on board with this whole kind of vinyl mania. I didn't have a CD player until 1994. Yeah, none by that series. And only because it came with a music center i bought them a mate who did a massive discount on because he worked at dixon's yeah i didn't give a fuck about

cds because by this time the only thing i was pretty much buying apart from a hip-hop were which you couldn't really get on cd anyway was um secondhand record shop uh stuff so yeah didn't give a fuck about cds gave slightly a bit of a fuck when I had one and then went back to not giving a fuck about them. As discussed before, I have got all my vinyl out even though I haven't got a record player at the minute. I've got the wherewithal to play CDs, but they're all in bags.

I don't give a fuck about them. Yeah, I mean, mine's in no fit state to be played anyway because I was such a kind of, you know, I used to let the cats scratch them and stuff like that, you know, like all these LPs stacked up. I think a whole bunch of them got stolen from a garage once, whatever, or I left about 612 inches with a friend and then never bothered to get them back.

Yeah, you know, I don't know, I'm just indifferent to material things, you know, I mean, call me spiritual, perhaps. Yeah. indifferent to material things you know i mean call me call me spiritual perhaps yeah now i was still very much into cassettes at this point so um yeah i don't know when i got i don't know when i got cds i'm sure i was suspicious of them at first what are these shiny bastards nothing nothing turns on them or anything yeah what the fuck so uh yeah and and also didn't have a lot of money so don't know when i got a CD player but I had an excellent CD Walkman

when they came out I wish I hadn't got rid of that you had to kind of carry it around like a tray though like a tray of food because otherwise it'd get upset you couldn't hold it at your side so actually it wasn't better than a cassette Walkman

which is quite hardy and robust I had one of those in the late 90s, and I was, instead of holding it like a tray, I'd have to lift my bag up and tuck it under my arm, which completely defeated the object of straps. Yeah. Early CD Walkmans were terrible. I mean, they're just, you know, like I say, you know,

if you're sort of jolted, you know, like half a millimetre or whatever, you know, they'd sort of pop around all over the place like a prawn on a hot plate. Yeah, it was more a CD stand man Yeah, really, to be honest it was It's alright if you're sitting down you just hold it in your lap on the bus or the tube or whatever

Yeah, it's there to serve us we're not there to serve it But anyway, yeah, I mean who was buying CDs in 1987? They were the, I don't know, the people with money Millionaires Yeah, well it is buying CDs in 1987. They were the, I don't know, the people with money, I suppose. Millionaires.

Yeah, well, there's quite a lot of millionaires music in this episode, I would say. All those formats, all these new formats, and there were a lot of them over the years,

it was always the first sort of test, it was always like Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms, wasn't it? That was always the one that would be the first

in all these various mini discs and all these kind of things and laser discs and various formats which have all gone to the Betamax grave. 1987 though, music-wise, chart-wise, it's not been a good year, has it?

I mean, it's a sort of an in-between time in lots of ways. I mean, it's been a steady decline since, I think the early 80s, you had like all of these sort of post-punk pop entrists, you know, like your Simple Minds and Scrutipoliti and The Associates and ABC, etc, etc, etc. All of which would have sounded fucking mint on CDs, wouldn't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

But then there's a sudden sort of collapse of all of that in about 83, 84, and then by now it's just really before things like Acid House is about to sort of transform pop and dance music, et cetera, et cetera. It's weird. There's a sort of glaze that's settled over everything. It's almost like Phil Spector's wall of sound.

It's like Phil Spector's wall of pork pie jelly or something. You know, you just, whether it's like everything's sort of boxy and it's got a sort of gelled feel about it, which oddly enough is the way that like people wore their suits and they wore their hair or whatever, you know, it's an exact parallel of the way everything was produced.

And it's kind of, you know, it's suffocating at times, you know, everything has got this kind of unwanted sheen to it, you know, this sort of like three inch thick slickness. And you know, whether it's, you know, it doesn't matter what it is, whether it's heavy metal or whether it's sort of neo-soul or whatever, it's all the same. I remember it was just oppressive, and I suppose it started in the earlier 80s when John Martin, who made all those fabulous albums from the sort of early to mid-70s,

by 1981, Phil Collins has got his snares into him, and he starts producing John Martin, and it's just all sounds, you know, Su-Su Studio-ish. You know, it's got that kind of, again that big, boxy, snare-y sort of feeling it's just like, fuck off Yeah, it is mostly like that, but like I said I mean, there is always something good

isn't there? There is no one year that is just like that year is 100% toilet, you know I've got to admit a fondness for Tango in the Night, which came out this year Fleetwood Mac's extremely shiny, outrageously shiny and sort of punchy album. Is that the one with Everywhere on?

Yes. Yes. Yeah. So like those singles were like my, you know, my introduction to them. And although I'm afraid I think Christine McVeigh has one of the blandest voices in popular music. I mean, especially compared to Stevie Nicks.

Stevie Nicks was basically recovering from all the coke and just did a bit on this album. But it still is so great. And yeah, those singles I'm really, really fond of. Also Faith, George Michael's Faith, one of my most beloved albums, that's this year. Both of those are, you know, they have the shiny sheen on them, but they've also got all sorts of bonkers ideas and, you know, just loads of imagination and charm.

Yeah. There was still some of that here and there, despite the general kind of in-between time malaise. Kind of nothing much going on, nothing much to recommend it. It's after some exciting stuff and waiting for the kind of, you know, bins full of ecstasy to come across from the States and hit this country. And then stuff was going to get more interesting. And then Stone Rose is to become mystifyingly massive as well. Another story. This period is an era that time's pretty much forgot, hasn't it?

I mean, when people go on 80s nights, this isn't the 80s that they have a night dedicated to, either musically or dress-wise. I mean, it's interesting, though, because Pricey, I think, did that, I don't know what it was called, something like a kind of minicab club night. I think the idea was all those tracks that you only ever hear at about four or five in the morning, either coming very late back from a club

or very early to get to an airport or something like that. And, you know, it's the sort of graveyard slot into which a lot of these... And a lot of 87 stuff, you know, gets into that. And sometimes, although I was kind of complaining about that sort of production, it sometimes has a sort of weird headiness that reminds you of coming back from, you know,

being in a minicab very late at night or first thing in the morning, that weird sort of headiness of, like, being kind of very tired or whatever, and, you the morning that weird sort of headiness of like being kind of very tired or whatever and you know and the sort of neon lights flashing by along the kind of you know um a63 or whatever you know um so you're basically saying watching this episode's like you know you you just come home from a club and you can't get to sleep you just put on bbc4 and it's like oh this shit's on oh fuck it yeah i can't be bothered to

reach over for the remote yeah it has a sort of strange i don't know almost sort of narcotic effect or whatever but uh but yeah i mean if pricey was here there's there's things that we're going to hear and i think that pricey would be kind of praising to the skies i suspect possibly on that minicab basis yeah i, you know that I like to watch these episodes as if they were on telly and so I like the surprise of what's coming up. Yeah, trying to make it 1987 again.

Yeah, yeah, and I do my hair and you know. I think I might take that up actually for future episodes is before I watch it, I'll watch a half hour episode of Tomorrow's World the next time I watch Top of the Pops. And that's one thing. Also, I might hire a very old man

to sit in a sort of adjacent armchair. Yes. To replace my dear old granddad in making murmur seven days jankers every 10 minutes. I could do that for you now, David. But yeah, this one, I was just like, oh, fucking hell. Oh, fucking hell.

And I was like, yeah, this is genuinely, this is a real wasteland of an episode and and then and then it got better so i don't think is there an episode of top of the pops where that it's completely there's nothing to recommend it at all oh wow i don't think there is i don't think there's a year that i mean that would that would be nonsense you know it's just not how these things work but it it is, yeah. I mean, 1987, sort of a fallow year, but still with some good shit in it. Let's get stuck in, eh, kids? Radio 1 News.

So, what's in the news this week? Well, unemployment in the UK falls under the 3 million mark, he said, putting his hand to his chin and stroking it. The digging of the Channel Tunnel has just begun this week. The Nasdaq Stock Exchange shuts down for a day when a squirrel gnaws through a telephone line. The captain of the Herald of Free Enterprise loses his appeal to clear himself for being responsible for the ferry disaster. The BBC have announced that they are dropping

Miami Vice from its New Year schedule in the wake of the Hungerford massacre. Thanet Council allow a sex shop in Margate to open late for Christmas. I am no lover of sex shops, and if I had my way, I would close them altogether, said Councillor John Brench. But as other shops will be opening late, we have to let this one follow suit. We can't have the meat without the gravy.

Man United have bought Steve Bruce from norwich for 800 000 pounds mick hoeknell has been signed up by itv to present a daytime vegetarian cookery show which sadly doesn't happen the pet shop boys have started legal proceedings against jonathan king for claiming in his son column that it's a sin is a complete rip-off of Wild World by Cat Stevens. And King has responded by covering the latter, set to the music of the former. But the big news this week is that Smash Hits has just released the results of their 1987 Reader's Poll.

Shall we play a game? Best group. I'll give you a clue, David. It's not the Young Gods. No. The Pogues. Duran Duran. Five Star.

Oh, cool. Oh, hooray. Best male singer. That's probably Michael Jackson, isn't it? George Michael. Oh, Terence Trent Darby. Michael Jackson. Oh, God.

You see, I thought there'd be a bit... Well, I mean, to be fair to him, he could carry a tune. I thought that was too obvious. Best female singer? Annie Lennox. No, are they that worthy? It could be on standby answer for all of these. Yeah, are they that worthy? The odd standby answer for all of these. Yeah, yeah.

Madonna? Madonna. Madonna! Madonna? Yeah, she... Madonna can sing. She's not the greatest singer, but she can sing while spinning around a pole on top of a nun, so I'd say that's, you know... Most promising

new act. Rick Astley. It's a group. Wet, wet, wet. I was going to say wet, wet, wet. I was actually just going to say wet, wet, wet. You didn't say fast enough, David. I was just going to say it.

Best single. It was a number one. Is it Never Gonna Give You Up? Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley. Hey! Best LP. I'm going to have to say Rick Astley's Greatest Hits. Bad.

Bad by Michael Jackson. I was just going to say, I thought... Yeah, yeah, I was just going to do this. Well, you know, yeah. Also voted as the worst LP. Oh, yeah, used to get a lot of that. Worst single. Another number one.

Was it some dodgy bit of Stock Ape and the Watermen? Is it also never going to give you up? No, they like McCasley, don't they? Star Trek in by the firm. I had that. I had that. I probably still have it somewhere. It's terrible.

Unbelievable. And number two, Pump Up the Volume by Mars. You know what I mean? They probably thought all that sampling was just horribly gimmicky. Well, they just weren't ready for it yet. They weren't ready. Worst group? Mars.

By that logic. Hugh and or Cry? The Beastie Boys. No! It's a whole narrative about how Smash Hits, it was this kind of repository of wit and irony and a sort of like, the music press was rather kind of grey and sort of patronising and sluggish by comparison.

Not a bunch of clueless idiots. Well, the readership anyway. Oh, well. Most fanciable male. Morton Harkett. Terence Trent Darby. Morton, Morton. Michael Jackson. Philip Schof Darby. Morton, Morton. Michael Jackson.

Philip Schofield. For fuck's sake. Philip fucking Schofield. Oh, he's all right. I mean, you know, if it was 2am and you were tired, you know. Most fanciful female. Kylie? Had Kylie Okay had Kylie discovered sex at this point

When was Best of the Devil You Know Okay she hadn't been given The gift of sex By Michael Hutchence Madonna Best DJ It's not going to be Spinderella Although it should be

Mike Reed Pat Sharp Mike Smith And the best TV show Well of course it's Top of the Pops Top of the Pops Yeah of course Still number one.

I know. Fucking hell, man. Smash Hits has gone well off the boil, hasn't it? No justice for Morton. Yeah, Pop is in decline. Possibly permanent decline. Pop as we knew it. Smash Hits type Pop is in decline, I think. The best years of Pop are always when you could take the cover of the enemy.

You could take the cover of Smash Hits you could take whoever's on it and swap them round and no one would be surprised so on the cover of the NME this week, Crush on the cover of Smash Hits Rick Astley and Philip Schofield with the Smash Hits

award stuff, the number one LP in the UK at the moment is That's What I call music 10 hit seven is number two and whenever you need somebody by rick astley is number three over in america the number one single is faith by george michael and the number one lp is the original soundtrack for dirty dancing so me dears what were were we doing in December of 1987? Kind of drawing a blank to be honest on what I was doing when I was nine.

It's a weird in-between age. You know, it's not like a very formative year. What pets did you have Sarah? Because you know, you mark your life out by animal, don't you? You do. I think I was probably had a very elderly guinea pig and was because I'd read The Witches by Roald Dahl,

I really wanted a pet snake. So I ended up with a pet snake. Snakes are brilliant, but don't get one because they're also quite difficult to look after. And sometimes they insist on, they, if they don't,

if they don't like what you give them to eat, then they'll just go, fuck you then. You know like cats and how picky cats are. Snakes are'll just they'll just die they'll just be like no i i disdain all of this i i welcome death so yeah so don't get them this was in halifax uh yeah sort of sort of halifax huddersfield kind of thing yeah there's a snake shop in halifax then yeah you could get snakes there yeah um i had because i had, and the one that I had later on, I got sent to my house. What?

I just turned up the postman and brought him. Because you can put them in a... Yeah, you can... Again, don't just stick a snake in a jiffy bag. But they like to be in little confined... No, one of them long tubes. Like a poster tube. Yeah, it was...

You put them in a sort of... Like in a pillowcase, and you put them in a box with holes in it. And they're quite happy. So I got a, you know, special delivery of a snake. It was brilliant. It was quite surreal. The only time I was in the world of cartoons, really, and I remember Wizarding Chips. Slippy's a snake, and his chum, and the various adventures.

And then the snake was, like, about the size of a boa constrictor or something like that in this particular instance. But quite a cheery, you know, cheery sort of slippy. I didn't really, especially not up north, you know, I didn't really think that there were snake shops

and the opportunities to avail of reptiles in this particular way. No, there was one that was a horrible one. You shouldn't get them from shops. You should get them from breeders but there was like a ridiculous sort of pet petto mart uh somewhere somewhere in the region and they had a crocodile snakes are us but they had a they had a crocodile and they had sharks and things it's like who's gonna come in here and buy this shark they had a little shark in there yeah

because sharks are amazing because when they're small they just look like mini sharks they're perfectly in proportion so it's like is that smaller am i far away or what the fuck it's a shark so uh yeah and it's like who's who's gonna buy that i suppose the same people who are buying cds at this point yes millionaires yeah you know that's going down the toilet after a couple of weeks basically yeah all of television history is contained in the Box of Delights. I've climbed up Nelson Scotland once before. These are small. And put it down in front of Bagpuss.

I'm Julia Rayside. Join me and my guests as we dip into our favourite TV memories. Supposedly mustn't hesitate bashing our head like this. You can't tell me what to do! You ain't my mother! I love when a plan comes together.

Come and tell us what yours are too. We've all been told we can't discuss nominations. It's a bit of car air. Shut up. We're the normal logger talk. I think I like you, Lovejoy. Find us on Twitter at Box Delights Pod.

And listen wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Music-wise, we know you're into Michael Jackson at this time, Sarah. Anything else floating in your boat?

I was, yeah. Well, yeah, it's interesting to look back on these years and go all these things came out that I wasn't really into at the time but got into later like you know Music for the Masters came out this year also Frank's Wild Years by Tom Waits

which I you know subsequently came to love Pet Shop Boys I was definitely into Pet shop boys at the time it's only their second album actually and it's so it's so great it's so complete and and every every track is just a perfectly turned pop tune that no one else would have thought to do well i was still at college and i was still loving it um but i i've got a feeling that I missed this episode of Top of the Pops because I probably would have been working at the Adelphi Bingo Hall in Bulwul

where I was a change giver and a runner around old women who shouted, Eeyah! When they got a full house or a line. Really hateful job. Basically had to wear this horrible tight black waistcoat and even tighter black staples trousers. Getting my arse mauled by assorted randy

old women. And there was one in particular, she must have been about she must have been pushing 90 and every time I had to go past her she'd just grab me and pull me onto a knee. And I used to get really flustered about this because it's like, you know, she's an old woman.

You know, she's got fragile hips and everything. And I just said, I'm a bit too big for you to be doing this, aren't I? And she just looked at me and just said, I've had bigger boys than you, duckhead. That's terrible. You were objectified, weren't you? I was.

You were a bunny boy boy i was just a bit of meat in a bit of stay pressed and uh you know i i didn't get the chance to be the bingo caller because that was a very prestigious job and that was bagged by this lad called mark yeah it was all hair sprayed up he fancied himself as a bit of a gary davis sort and he you know used to bang on that it wasn't his real job he was a dj and he was making remix tapes and some of the other lads said oh well bring your stuff in then let's hear it and uh it got to the point where he'd play the fucking music every at the end of every shift and all he'd done is just basically got a tape to tape player and he did everything really stuttery so the intro to um never gonna

give you up would last about 30 minutes because it was just no no no no no no no no no no no it was just that man he just did your fucking head in so i round about this time i'd be you know serving the needs of the elderly yeah um thinking about you know where I'm going on to afterwards because as soon as the shift finished I would have probably gone into town to see me mates from college really hoping that we'd go to the garage uh which was a a little club in Nottingham which unbeknownst to me at the time was one of the crucibles of Acid House because Graham Park had a had a regular set on Thursday nights upstairs. But I wasn't interested in that.

I stayed downstairs because, you know, every now and again they'd play hip-hop, you know, a bit of Beastie Boys or Run DMC. But knowing in my heart of hearts that everyone else had insisted we go to Rock City because there was more girls there. So I'd be sitting there having to listen to fucking Love Cats and R.E.M. and all that stuff that I hated

simply because it was just forced down my throat every Thursday night. So, yeah, that was me. You should have been the bingo caller, shouldn't you? But they obviously decided they needed you out there on the floor being groped. Yes. Yeah, that's it. My place was on the streets of bingo. It's the way of the world, isn't it?

I eventually did become a bingo caller, but that was in another town and another decade. But I'm only one of two people on Chart Music who have worked as a bingo caller, and I'll just leave that hanging in the air. Have a think about who else in Chart Music could have been a bingo caller. Taylor, obviously.

Yes, Taylor would be a fucking amazing bingo caller. Bringing in the cheer. Like nihilist bingo. I could see that taking off in these times, actually. David. Yes, 1987, yeah, December. I make no bones about it. I was absolutely on top of the world.

Yes. I was a staff writer at Melody Maker. I'd just turned 25. 18 months earlier, I'd kind of given up any prospect of kind of working in this kind of industry, and I'd become a trainee chartered accountant. Oh, mate. And I was absolutely shy.

You know, my heart wasn't in it. My brain definitely wasn't in it. And I'd been doing this miserable course for about three months. And then it was actually an odd enough guy called Frank Owen who worked at Melody Maker. Simon Reynolds was already there. But Frank Owen rang up and said, do you fancy doing a bit who worked at Melody Maker. Simon Reynolds was already there. But Frank Owen rang up and said, do you fancy doing a bit of stuff in Melody Maker?

And I went, yes. And on the basis, on the strength of a single live review, I resigned forthwith from Arthur Young, the accountancy firm. And they accepted my resignation and advised me that I was probably doing the right thing. And then it sort of kicked off from there. What was the review, David? James Blood Ulmer.

Right. Live in Camden, somewhere. And I remember I coined the phrase, the wider the flares, the badder the funk. Oh. A little aphorism there. He was sporting some pretty luminous strides, it has to be said. little aphorism there he was sporting some pretty luminous strides it has to be said

but yeah and that was it very daring for 1986 so I got 20 quid which is you know about 20 quid is what you get for the same thing today yes if you look at it yeah that's right but you know people were sort of melting away Melody and Make had gone through this phase of trying to be,

and it did it right at the end as well, a thing no one in the world wants is an inky smash hits. If people want smash hits, they'll buy smash hits. People buy music press, they want some ink, you know, they want writing, they want it to be the music press. But for some reason, you know, there was, it was, and sales were beginning to sort of tangle, because it was a stupid idea, you know, to sort of try and pop it up in that way.

But people involved in that, that idea, I think, was just kind of melting away because I think pop music, Frank, was kind of melting away at this point. And it was all getting a bit redundant and there was all this stuff, the Patsy Kensick corn and stuff. But various writers came on at the same time. So Frank Owen, who's specialised in hip simon reynolds of course who everything um the stud brothers um you know um chris roberts um various people like that myself and it coincided with the time in which the music was changing and there was definitely a shift things like rock had been a dirty word in the early 80s we talked about rockism as if rock was kind of a pejorative thing and i was down with all of that you know the enemy and all that i was i was a great i was a little pop ironist and me white socks and all that you know um sort of prancing around to abc but clearly you know you know what happens all the dialectical

wheel shifts or whatever and then by 8687 rock you know you need it was the return of rock as some of us put it husker do and um the merry chain and um all these other groups hlk and the young gods of course um but um you know it sounds we're getting kind of big and expansive and pop was just become this kind of sort of diminished post-modern inferior thing i'll talk a little bit about more about that. But it was just an absolutely fantastic life. It was, you know, it was like the beginning of 10 years of just decadence. Well, take us through a day in your life

round about this time, David. A day would start about seven in the morning. I'd kind of wake up. Where am I? And I'd be like, you're in your own room, you idiot. Oh, yeah, yeah. So you're in your home. Okay, and then we just got 3,000 words of deathless prose due by midday.

So he fucking hell got onto the title rather than clacking away at a sheet. It's all sheets, you know, because this was before word processor, computer, and all that kind of thing. So, you know, you just clack out 3,000 words, interview with whoever, butthole service or whatever. And then, you know, by 11 o'clockclock then you'd have to sort of like go out get the train south london into um high holborn where melody maker was at the time whack it on the table at five to midday you know and um oh you know catchy breath back whatever you know 10 minutes later the editor comes out

lovely work again david well done yes. Oh, yes, it's nothing. And then about five past midday, it was kind of, anyone fancy a pint? And, yeah, and then you stroll down to the Porto on the corner there, which was only open, unfortunately, it was only open until, do you remember the time when pubs didn't open in the afternoon? Yeah, the Dark Ages. Yeah, the Dark ages. So what

happens, you have quite a few, obviously, and then about three o'clock you think, what are we going to do till 5.30? So we had to get some carry-outs, swan lager, rancid stuff, just to sort of see us through. Then of course, five, 29, 59 seconds, hammering at the door again, and all the way through again. And then

next morning, seven o'clock, it was mostly like that, really. It was, you know, we felt like we owned Soho. We were in High Hoban. Yeah. Opposite the Shaftesbury Theatre there. And so we were just prowled around Soho. It was like, you know, a very different Soho

from the one parody of Soho we've got today. Yeah, it was more Charlie Endell's Soho. It was. And, you know, all these, like, little haunts that, you know, like the Apollo, you know, bar for pasta and stuff like that, which might, I think, be the only place that's actually left of the old Soho. I was walking around there recently, and it's just, God knows what's happened to the place.

But, you know, we felt like we owned it. We felt like kings of the world. We felt like we were in the absolutely right job. A lot of people might be thinking, oh, this could be a stepping stone to writing for the Sunday Times. Fuck that. Who wants to write for the Sunday? You know, this is the job.

This is the place. What we're doing right now, we felt we were just absolutely at the absolute leading edge of everything, of culture, whatever. You know, we really, you know, we were kind of fairly sort of humble and wouldn't say boo to a goose about it,

but secretly we kind of thought we were absolutely the dog bollocks, the absolute ghost gonads. We really did. And, yeah, we did feel that. We adopted a group of young gods and we did feel like we were ourselves young gods.

And I think a lot of our music criticism was informed by these particular things. We slagged things off because they weren't the young gods, essentially, was the right subtext of a lot of what I was writing. You know, basically, we had a very sort of strict agenda about where music ought to be, and anything that was going off in some other direction or whatever,

you know, there was none of this kind of, oh, well, it is what it is, spiritual, not my cup of tea. It was, no, no, it was, we crushed it, you know, like steamrollers. And we were pretty, you know, also pretty fearsome in the pub, you know, people like me and Jonesy or crushed it you know like steamrollers and we were pretty you know also pretty fearsome in the pub you know people like me and jones or whatever you know i'd like to think of myself as one of these nice people you know people always a bit of an intimidating atmosphere you know i was probably the one doing a lot of the intimidating frankly you know people weren't there for months before they even dare pluck up the courage to talk to me you know

and then when they did they found out they in fact in reality are a pathetic white sponge. Just a big cuddly teddy bear, aren't you? Exactly, exactly. David, tell us about how you actually got into music writing though because, you know, what's your background? Well, I was at Oxford with Simon Reynolds and towards the end there, this other guy, Paul Oldfield

and another guy, Chris Scott, co-founded a magazine called Monitor. I think... Was it a magazine or was it a fanzine? It was somewhere in between. It was a kind of rather better produced... A fagazine. Yes, exactly, yes.

And, you know, we'd write sort of reviews and think pieces and what have you and manifesto-type things. Simon Reynolds, I think, had the most developed voice. I was writing a thing about the profile of a fake group called William Wilson or whatever and going into sort of detail about this imaginary group with Paul Daff nonsense like that. But I did do one article about Melody Maker

sort of deconstructing some survey they'd done of like indie scene or whatever and particular bands that they recommended. And I just sort of savagely deconstructed it line by line, word by word or whatever, and pretty much implied that if Melody Baker were ever thinking of offering me a job, well, they were just going to have a whistle. I wouldn't demean myself.

I'd rather work in chartered accountancy than have anything, I don't even truck with this nonsense. And it was only a few weeks later that they said, well, do you want to do some work for Melody Baker? Yes, please. chartered accountancy than neither. I don't even truck with this nonsense. And it was only a few weeks later that I did it. They said, well, do you want to do some work for Melody Maker? Yes, please. So you go just like Neil. All you had to do to get a job on Melody Maker was to slag off Melody Maker.

Correct. Fucking hell. Who knew? Exactly. Inside the tent, pissing out, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And it just went on from there. And it all happened pretty quickly. I remember thinking at the time, Iing out, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And it just went on from there. And it all happened pretty quickly.

I remember thinking at the time, I remember like eight months, when am I going to be a staff writer? And then finally, finally, I think it was about April, Brian Case, the eminent jazz writer, who was still probably shouldn't really have been a melody maker at that point. He was at the ancient age of 48. Good Lord. And then finally he moved on to Time Out and then, you know, went, you went you know um and then of course i roosted there for years and people like pricing

tenor parts you know which is saying when is that when that old fucker gonna go off and write for the sunday times or something you know no chance looks like a bloody chartered accountant yes yeah yeah um yeah so yeah that was sorry but But no, absolutely glorious times. But it was all about rot. And I just felt that everything was happening at a sort of subterranean level. Everything that was interesting, whether it was hip-hop, Eric B. and Rakim, all that kind of stuff. Guitar, Noisnik music, Big Black, and all that kind of stuff. And the difference was...

Tell us the Eric B. and Rakim story, David. Come on. Oh, yes. In the... Yeah. and the difference was tell us the Eric B and Rakim story David come on oh yes you just put up an amazing photo of Eric B and Rakim on your Facebook feed the other day please tell the story to the Pop Craze youngsters it was the photographer Richard Bellier who was kind of accompanying me on the job

and he took this superb photo of him in the back of a London cab now the reason we were in the back of a London cab. Now, the reason we were back in the back of a London cab was that... All gold medallions up to fuck. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, it was like, you know, Mark Spitz's. You know, they were Mark Spitz's. Yes, they were.

Absolutely, they were. And they were supposed to be running very, very late in the duo over in Amsterdam. So, well, the only way you can do it is just get in the cab to Heathrow. You'll just have to do the interview in the cab with them. So there's this great photo of them sort of looking disdainfully out the window and then in those little fold-up seats opposite, there's Richard Bellier sort of snapping away

and there's me, sort of trying to elicit an interview about them. I mean, the fact that, like, when we got into the cab to join them, Eric Beard already got his feet up on the opposite seat did suggest that they weren't expecting us to be joining them. Thanks, press officer, doing your liaising job as ever. It was a kind

of an alright interview, I suppose. They were just quite taken with Eric B. was just loved. He saw a little Ford Escort and said, man, that is cute. What kind of car is that? I don't know anything about cars, but I can tell a Ford Escort. Ford Escort. I want me a Ford Escort. Ford Escort. I want me a Ford Escort.

And we also went past the Natural History Museum and he said, that is some mansion. I think I'd like to buy that mansion. You have to talk to the Natural History Museum people about that. I did have, I'm into the sad thing, and my daughter was,

I did have a briefcase with me. You showed the photo to your daughter, and know some props and i was getting some serious props but then when she realized i'd taken a briefcase to a hip-hop interview those props collapsed in a heap like the kind of great high wind of 1987 it was a weird like hangover from i don't know my kind of natty smart days from the early 80s. But I lost it. I lost it shortly afterwards. But I was briefcase wanker, unfortunately. Well, me dears, let us rip open a packing case or two and pull out the issue of Melody Maker from this week, shall we?

Yes. Good skill. So, yeah, the one I've got here is Melody Maker of December the 12th, 1987. Yep. On the cover, Sinead O'Connor. Mm-hmm. In the news, a week-long festival organised by Action Against AIDS has been announced for May of next year,

culminating in a worldwide satellite-linked mega-gig. For contractual reasons, no acts have been named so far, but the organisers claim they will be along the lines of the Elton Johns and George Michaels of the world. Sinead O'Connor has been rushed to hospital in Liverpool after getting into a fight with a bouncer at the Adelphi Hotel after being refused entry to the hotel disco for wearing jeans. Her bassist, former Smith Andy Rourke, got chinned as well. CBS have announced that they'll be releasing the next Terrence Trent Derby single, Sign Your Name, in six different formats

at the end of the month. A 7-inch, a 7-inch with a limited edition picture bag, a 12-inch, a 12-inch picture disc, a 10-inch single remixed by lee scratch perry and a cd single cbs are also releasing the first four cd discs with actual pictures on them this month george michael's faith michael jackson's bad bruce springsteen's tunnel of love and introducing the hard line according to terence trent darby oh man what what times we live in terence trent darby mr 1987 i think the only

one of those things in that format would be the lee scratch perry 10 inch and uh and the more mix the better yeah but what a thrill to be able to see pictures of your fave pop act through that little porthole in the CD player as it whizzes around 20 times a second. Mel Smith and Kim Wilde's video for Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree has been censored by the BBC due to viewer complaints after it was premiered on Wogan with the offending scene mel smith inside a fridge being cut out you know just in case people still have those really old 60s fridges that you had to lock yeah or as i say yeah i thought it was some sort of obscene thing about him surging himself

in the butter or something no no and peterringfellow has banned paparazzi from his club in an attempt to coax back celebrities who have been staying away. Terrible. Interviews this week. Well, Crush, this week's NME cover stars, are given three quarters of a page, but Caroline Sullivan can't get much out of them, bar the fact that they're not that keen on publicity.

There aren't any recognisable house stars at the moment because no one is consistently good at it and they really like them trainers with the Mercedes logo on them. Sinead O'Connor's interview is given two pages, most of which is taken up by the Stubb brothers going on about how much they adore her and how brilliant she is.

Yes. Simon Reynolds gets possibly the last ever interview brothers going on about how much they adore her and how brilliant she is yes simon reynolds gets possibly the last ever interview with dinosaur before they change their name to dinosaur junior and discovers that it's all because of a group consisting of former members of quicksilver messenger service country joe and the fish and jefferson airplane who've called themselves the dinosaurs, who have threatened to take them to court. Hmm. I thought that was me. No, because David Stubbs has a chat with Annie Anxiety Bandez and wangs on about how great her latest LP, Giacomo, is. You're right. You're quite right.

Do you remember that, David? Yeah, you're quite right. I've just got my scrapbook in front of me, my trusty scrapbook. Oh, you don't believe me, do you? Yes, indeed. No, no i do believe you i do believe you i've got you're right i'm wrong um but i did basically i did interview dinosaur around that time myself and it wasn't the name dinosaur um it was the era of like bands who were a bit kind of sort of sleepy-eyed sort of a bit sort of catatonic and you know lost in their own sort of psychedelic blur and consequently...

Boring as fuck. Absolutely boring as fuck. Hang on, I've got it here. It's just one extract. I've talked to Jay Maskis. And it's just like, I'm just trying to get anything. I just ask them, what do you do with yourself? Where do you drive the will to live?

Do you sit around all day and watch TV? Do you drink? No. Will you sit around all day and watch TV? Do you drink? No. Do you do drugs? No. Are you miserable? No. And that's some of the choice of quotes.

Matt Smith nips down to an intersection in South London and interviews the justified agents of Moo Moo as they deface an advertising billboard for the new statesman. David, weren't you there for that? Ah, no, I was there for a different one. So obviously they tried to do this kind of thing before. With me, it was 1991 and it was defacing a billboard for the Times about the Gulf War. And it said the Gulf, the coverage, the action, the fact. It was the first Gulf War. So this is about 1991.

And they got arrested by plainclothes police officers because what they did, they painted out the GU and put a K in it. You know, the KLF, you see. Right. Yeah. So I had to accompany them to the NIC and wait around while they were kind of given a stern ticking off. Well, this time they talk about their forthcoming single, Downtown,

which samples the Petula Clark record and claims that this time they've got permission off Tony Hatch. Ah. Yeah. David Stubbs takes the train to Newcastle to have a chat with Chris and Simon Donald, the creators of Viz, and gets them to explain their obsession with shaking Stevens and why they have such a downer on old women.

Yep. Do you remember that, David? I do remember it very well, yeah. Yeah, it was all right. At that point, they were selling about 60,000 copies an issue. The next time I interviewed them, they were selling a million copies. But, yeah, the first time I just went up, yeah, I went up to Newcastle, so their little sort of office come sort of living space.

Simon Donald gave me a lift back to the station and all that. And, yeah, you know, they were all right. But I just got the impression that everything they were saying was kind of semi sort of made up. And at one point I did that trick of leaving the tape recorder on while I went to the toilet to see if they said anything sort of interesting behind my back. And all I'd said was, he looks a bit like Butch Wilkins, doesn't he? He looks a bit like Butch Wilkins.

I bet he gets that a lot, but he does. Definitely Butch Wilkins. And that was it. Not much use. And Control Zone, the music spot section, gets dead excited about the BBC releasing its sound effects collection on CD and poses the question, portable CD players, yuppie toy or musician's tool? In the singles column this week, the Stud Brothers are manning the page

and their single of the week, or at least the first one they review, is Blind Hearts by Zymox, which was already reviewed two weeks ago, but it's a quiet week for new releases and they think you have to own a copy as it sounds like a heart covering the cure hearts are described as rock's second greatest soul band after you too welcome to 1987 everyone but their latest single, There's The Girls, is not up to snuff. Meanwhile, the Paul Hardcastle remix of Never Never Gonna Give You Up is completely uncommented on as they take up the space to forward the opinion that Barry White is actually a virgin. Last night, I dreamed that Somebody Love Me,

the final single by the Smiths, is also completely ignored as they say to Morris there, farewell then creeper, lord of the train spotters, emperor of the inconsequential, potentant of the impotent. We salute you.

Now sod off Jesse. Oh dear, yeah. On the Turning Away by Pink Floyd we salute you now sod off Jesse oh dear yeah on the turning away by Pink Floyd is compared to a dildo advertised in the Sunday Sport for being hollow extra thick and unrealistic Megadeth's Wake Up Dead reminds the reviewers

of Crockett's theme by Jan Hammer Pack Jammed with the Party Posse by Stock Aitken and Waterman is better than Roadblock because it's got scratching in it. And Stutter Rap by Morris Minor and the Majors is described as three East End

twats take the piss out of the Beastie Boys exactly a year too late. In the LP section, the lead review, or at least the one with a photo, is Huevos by Meat Puppets. Paul Mathieu appreciates the fact that they're awkward bastards who will have a go at anything and have created a strange pleasure. However, it's a coat down for the two-ring circus by Eurasia. Andy Darling accuses remixer Little Louie Vega of stretching what amounted to very little in the first place

into a macabre wake. It's a thumbs up for Bucky Fellini by The Dead Milkman, Heavens by Big Dipper, Body Beat by Yago, Skinny and Proud by The Skinny Boys, and Rubber Legs, the reissue of the Stooges' 1974 mini-LP. But Chris Roberts describes The Damned's The Light at the End of the Tunnel as an appallingly packaged best-of double album,

which contains all six of the songs they did that were any good. And the final rip-off by Monty Python gives the Stubbrothers the opportunity to point out that they've become everything they used to despise and are no better than a surreal Terry and June. Ooh. Yes, skinny boys, remember them? Yes, skinny and proud. Yeah, what time is it?

Yeah. Yeah, they're just basically the fat boys, but flip-versed, weren't they? In the gig guide, well, David could have seen John Cale at Dingwalls, the Sugar Cubes at the Town and Country Club, Simply Red and Hue and Cry at Brixton Academy, The Cure at Wembley Arena,

The Man from Del Monte, Pete Shelley and Frank Sidebottom at London Central Polytechnic, or Buster Blood Vessels All Stars and Sex Bitch Goddess at Dingwalls, but probably didn't. I certainly didn't. No, I always say, but probably didn't at the end. I got that off Simon. What's he getting up there, David? You're not a gig goer?

Yeah, I mean, it's true. Frankly, I didn't really make much of a secret of it. I didn't like gigs. I didn't really see the point of it. You know, you just go along to some, you know, like Dingwalls or whatever or Break the the border and you get this you know you just get this slightly inferior version of what you're hearing on on the album it's uh you know you there was smoking of course back then so you'd sort of come home stinking of fag ash lager spilt down your neck sticky floors

herded around by sort of horrible churlish bouncers into these kind of like dark barns. And I just thought the whole thing, I'm trying to pretend that this is some sort of wonderful rock and roll experience when in fact you're just being treated like shit, you know. I wasn't having it. Also, you know, I like to have a glass of wine when I go out and frankly, Dingwall's didn't have good cellars, put it that way. And I say this with pride, actually. I was staff writer at Melanomaker in 1991. I went from January to May of that year without going to a single gig. Fucking hell. Some people would call that dereliction, pricey, for example.

I call it taking a stand. But we didn't have shushing problems, as we said back in those days. You know, butthole surfers, big black, you know, there was no... Shh, shh. you know butthole surfers um big black you know there was nobody do you think it's a shushing problem so much as a selfish twats talking problem oh yeah but it's the fact that gigs are at such a volume that people can be heard i mean you know this is the thing maybe it's the kind of gigs that used to go to but you know when um gibby haynes whatever is blasting away on his kind of you know loud on his loud hailer and whatever, you know, just doing these low-end, arse-quakey kind of bass riffs.

I mean, there's no option just to listen to it. So, I mean, it is an interesting... I mean, I think there's probably been an increase in selfishness and solstice and whatever, definitely, and I think that's true. And maybe people are less used to the idea of giving sort of passive, undivided attention also but i wonder if it's to do with like the set levels now at gigs or whatever i don't know yeah yeah it's

oh it's such a fucker sorry this is like you as soon as you mentioned the shooting i was just like because i can't yeah i i still i still go to gigs and i i go back and forth on whether or not it's worth it and then i'll go to one of course it's brilliant i'll go of course it on whether or not it's worth it. And then I'll go to one, of course, that's brilliant. And I'll go, of course it is. I'm not done with this yet. But yeah, people talk, people yacking all the way through. The thing is, I used to get annoyed about people taking pictures and blah, blah, blah. And now I don't at all because at least they're engaging with. I mean, I've done it.

I have done it myself. At least they are engaging with the work as opposed to just yammering about their own bullshit and their own stupid lives. As if the entertainment is just there to provide background. It's a problem. It makes me so angry. Definitely, it is a problem. The anger is the thing that is worse than once that is set off, and then there's the whole thing of like,

do I say something, do I not say something? I kind of occasionally, I've won by, it's easy when it's blokes, to be honest. I'll go up and go, hi, and make a lovely face at them and go, do you mind? And often they'll go, oh, oh, oh, oh. But I've seen them do that. And then five minutes later.

Gigs are like a new cinema, aren't they? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's now become a shushy thing. I agree, it's a real problem. I avoid it. I'm really not going to the kind of gigs where that's likely to happen. So I either go to some sort of massive mega sort of, you know, Megadome funk thing or whatever, or like Janelle Monáe or something like that.

All these kind of tiny little improv gigs where there's only about 20-odd people and everyone is just sort of schooled enough to sort of, you know, pay attention. Taylor could have nipped out to see Alison Moyet at the NEC, people and everyone is just sort of schooled enough to sort of you know pay attention taylor could have nipped out to see alison moyer at the nec to pow at the birmingham powerhouse the uk subs at the mermaid spaceman 3 at the censor terrier or the sugar cubes at birmingham burberry's sarah could have availed herself of budget at at Sheffield University, the wedding present at Leeds Polytechnic, then Jericho at Leeds University, in excess supported by Sinead O'Connor at Sheffield City Hall,

or the Mack lads at Leeds Duchess of York. Or you'd have loved them as a nine-year-old, Sarah. Beer and chips and gravy. No, no, I didn't. Sweaty Betty. I was faintly aware of them and I didn't get it at all. Neil could have checked out the Bundoo Boys at Warwick University,

Gary Glitter and Westworld at Wolverhampton Civic Hall or John Otway and Wild Willie Barrett at Coventry Parlay. Al could have investigated Dio and Warlock at the Royal Concert Hall, the Fatback Band at Rock City, Dinosaurs at Russell's or the Supremes at the Mansfield Oh, man.

Poor Supremes. To be in the same sentence as Mansfield. Not many listings for Wales at the minute in Melody Maker. In the letters page, well, Paul Lester of Sheffield thinks Melody Maker is dead good and their coverage is a return to the things that count the most. Sex, lust, jokes, fucking, fighting, dancing, flirty, flighty, possessed, obsessions, godlike genius.

Oh, David, that's just you in a sentence, isn't it? Oh, very much so. There was really much so. We were too drunk to lust even, quite frankly. So it was to fight. I mean, there was a lot of like verbal joshing and sort of sparring, whatever, you know, and I think there's, you know, people like me and Alan Jones or whatever were in the chair at the Apporto, you know,

scaring off like outsiders. They were no match for our untamed wit, you know. Yes, but, you know, nice buttering up there, Paul, and, you know, where you get a job in the music press. You do make it sound like a kind of fantasy club, you know, loose, new, blooms reset kind of deal. Was it really? Was it sound like a kind of fantasy club you know new blooms reset

kind of deal was it really was it really like that I mean as I've mentioned before yeah there was definitely a lot of drinking and that's where the real editorial meetings were yes in the pub like all good magazines yeah absolutely but I mean beyond that you know there was

a bit of drug taking and what have you there was a sort of drug taking and what have you. There was a strong element of decadence about it, I suppose. And maybe what Paul is driving at is that there was a kind of... Melanie Maker was more in a sort of getting back to the sort of, maybe the sort of debauched, freer spirit of rock as opposed to enemy, which was still a bit kind of, you know, sort of white socks socialist and all that kind of stuff and kind of a bit buttoned up in that respect and the melody maker represented this kind of riotous um you know riotous alternative to all of that uh yeah k williams of surrey has responded to the cries

of vengeance offered by alarm fans in the wake of a recent coat down of their new LP Eye of the Hurricane by Andy Darling. He advises them that if they want folk with real bollocks, they should investigate the men they couldn't hang who are coming to save the world. Later known as the men they couldn't sell.

This week's hate figure is John Wilde who slagged off the new David Silvian LP, Secrets of the Beehive, last week. David Sterling Frizzell of Northampton claims that Wilde has pressed his head up the arse of condescension, while Nigel Warwick of Salisbury accuses him of going off in a whirl of pathetic, damp convulsions

whenever he's confronted by something he can't understand and to quote a guest of honour of Portsmouth, not since the Hungerford massacre have I witnessed such stupidity tasteful Pepsi Zanuse

laments the general shittiness of music in late 1987 and claims that the last hope for it is the Rhythm Sisters. Tom Crean of London wants Melody Maker to have an index section so he can find the reviews he wants to read and Paula Valder of Eastbourne wants to know what happened to Bobby G of Bucks Fizz. Meanwhile, little Denise Timperlare is incandescent

with rage at Caroline Sullivan's review of a Frank's side-bottom gig, assuming that Sullivan is an advocator of all the po-faced, shitty goth bands that Melody Maker constantly champions. They were our bread and butter,

the goth bands. Frank, like the Smiths, has humour, she claims. Try listening to him before commentating on him. And yes, Frank does get groupies. I know, because my friend is one. Wow. Well, to be honest, if Caroline missed the humour in Frank's side bottom, she'd miss pretty much everything.

Frank's side bottom groupies, Mando. Do they give him papier-mâché head? Very good. And the Quo Arme describe the Melody Maker sheep as assholes and fucking wankers for daring to suggest that the only person who wants to hear about the band nowadays are pick-both-er.

If any of you... Listen to this, David. If any of you lot got the chance to join Quo, you'd be there like shit off a chrome shovel. Come on, David, deny that one if you dare. Well, probably not at the time. Come on, you would love to be sat in a hotel room in Dusseldorf having a group polish with your heroes.

Yeah. I mean, you know, with age, it does appeal a little bit more, yeah. So perhaps I would be that small piece of excellent sort of making off with alacrity from that shovel these days. But at the time, I think I would have spurned the author, definitely. Oh, and there's no centre spread this week. It's been given over to a massive advert for heroin and how it makes you flog your mum's wedding ring.

Wow. Screws you up. 56 pages, 50p. I never knew there was so much in it. Got to ask, David, was it a really good time to enter the music journalism scene sort of 1986, 1987? Because to me, it looks like such a good training ground

because the bands are so fucking shit and boring that your lot have to wang on endlessly to fill pages. Well, there was an element of that. I mean, there was a lot of crap around and that gave you a chance to, you know, really kind of castigate this stuff and really develop those critical muscles, the muscles of derision and what have you.

But at the same time, a lot of new things were coming through that were really expansive. My Bloody Valentine, people still ran on the cocktails, Mary Chen, whatever, Sugar Cubes or Pixies later on. And you could really develop this kind of like willfully pretentious, like praise to the skies type, you know, lyrical version of music journalism. So you had these two opposites. You had the kind of derision,

and you had this kind of wonderfully kind of inflated take on what was going on. I mean, the thing about this, I mean, again, it's pre-internet. So I did a feature on Big Black around this time, and it was about, it had been about 3 000 words and it only contained one fact um and that was buried in the middle somewhere and it just said big black are about to split up because their basis is going to law school you know and it was it was you know and these days because of wikipedia i think everything has to be sort of like be based around this kind of skeleton of fact you know and it gets kind of fleshed out with a certain amount of elaboration or whatever. But then, I mean, it was just 3,000 words of just conversation,

adjectival frenzy, description, immersion or whatever, you know, just approaching it in a different way. I mean, there weren't really – facts just weren't that important. It was more about kind of simulating the experience of Big Black in lots of different ways. So you could write in a very different way. Nowadays, everybody just falls back on, you know, sort of press releases and stuff or some sort of, you know,

factual agenda or what's going on, whatever. And it's, you know, and it's tepid, by comparison, I think. It's kind of more appropriate, isn't it, to write about music and evoke the experience of music I suppose yes absolutely but I think as I say there was less emphasis in any case on facts because facts actually weren't easy to come by I mean you already really had was clippings of like you know previous interviews and things like that and quite a lot of the time you know that was pretty thin and a bit tenuous or whatever and possibly even fabricated or completely inaccurate. So writing just had a sort of different emphasis.

Maybe this is how we deal. Maybe we need to get back to this in these post-truth times. You know, we just need to go full post-fact and just embrace it. And then, you know, it's only music anyway. No one can, you know, it's fine. It's just people talking about, it's not, yeah, maybe we can lead the way. I mean, it really used to annoy me later on in career when, you know, fine it's just people to ask about yeah it's not it's yeah maybe we can lead the way i mean it really used to annoy me later on in career when you know when people would come sort of redrawn

they think if you've got a fact wrong then somehow that made your whole opinion wrong i think you'll find it was on a tuesday not a wednesday who cares you know the idea that there's some sort of correlation between facts and truth you know and the truth of the matter is that like big black were an absolutely essential group you know at the time i mean if i'd have said that steve albini was the drummer or whatever i mean that wouldn't have altered all material well i mean i i'm going to row back on it now i think it's probably it it does kind of it does it does nibble away at your credibility somewhat if you if you just can't be asked to get anything right particular one that particular one would but um but no what it is it didn't really kind of you know there was there was all kind of factual stuff you know that

i could have kind of gone into or referred to or made them kind of talk about and i just think that would have been very very dull but excellent experience just you hit the ground running don't you and it was a good time i mean it's very similar to me my first magazine gig was for a mega drive magazine and i was just chucked in at the deep end and had to write all the fucking I mean, it's very similar to me. My first magazine gig was for a Mega Drive magazine. And I was just chucked in at the deep end and had to write all the fucking tips and the maps and all that shit that nobody else wanted to do. But it was absolutely essential for the audience who didn't have an internet and would devour it.

So, you know, I'd look at a magazine from about 1993 and I can just go just go yeah i wrote about 75 of that magazine that's what you want when you start as a writer you want to fucking write that was the great thing i mean if there'd been nothing to write about i mean i remember in 1986 there wasn't really much around to write about i found at all whatever it was 87 though it's really been interchanging hip-hop whatever every, every people like, you know, Skinny Boys, Eric B and Rakim, Public Enemy,

all those kind of people coming through. And then this sort of underground rock, whether it was the UK or whether it was America, stuff coming in from Europe. I mean, it was,

you know, it couldn't invent all of that. It just all happened to be, you know, happening at the same time. It was a period of like... And it had to be explained, I suppose.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it was a case of, that was it. It was fastening onto that and like creating kind of be explained, I suppose. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it was a case of that was it. It was fastening onto that and creating a sense of the zeitgeist around it. Yeah, yeah. Imposing a narrative almost on it, in a sense, which sometimes the groups kind of rejected

because it wasn't what they considered their own narrative. But they were a bunch of mumbling idiots anyway. Do I know what anyone else likes? That's a bonus, really. So I sometimes felt that, like, we had to kind of verbally, in a sense, make up and overcommentate almost for the inarticulacy of a lot of the people

that we interviewed. So, what else was on telly this day? Well, BBC One starts the day at 6am with CFAX AM, followed by the 1938 short film Leon Errol and His Pest. Then it's Breakfast Time with Frank Boff, Sally Magnusson and Jeremy Paxman, followed by the TV discussion show Open Air with Eamon Holmes.

Then Regional News in Your Area, Neighbours, Kill Roy, Going for Gold, Play School with Floella Benjamin and Fred Harris, 5 to 11, The Grown-Up Jackanory with Martin Jarvis. After the 1 o'clock news, it's Neighbours, Going for Gold, and then part one of War and Peace, the 1956 King Vidor film starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda. Children's BBC kicks in at ten to four with Jimbo and the Jet Set, The Chuckle Hounds, Benje, Zax and the Alien Prince, Around the World with Willy Fogg, Newsround, Blue Peter, Master Team 87, the quiz show hosted by Angela Rippon,

the Six O'Clock News, and they've just finished regional news in your area. BBC Two commences at nine with three and a half hours of pages from CFAX and then hits us with a double bill from the Open University. Then it's Bertha, a documentary about Edward Muybridge in the series Pioneers of Photography. Then it's the news, a repeat of Sports Personality of the Year 1987. Fatima Whitbeard won it. Cameo, a short documentary about a bird refuge in California.

Then the news, then It's My Pleasure, the clip show where Des Lionham invites someone to pick out their favourite televisual moments. Then it's the Modern Alarm's Christmas Cracker Steaks from Olympia in International Show Jumping, a repeat of Floyd on Fish, Battlestar Galactica and they're halfway through the book series Cover to Cover where various authors pick out their favourite books of the year. ITV starts at 6 with TVAM, followed by Regional News in Your Area, then Runway, the air travel themed quiz show hosted by Chris Searle. Then it's Santa Barbara, The Time, The Place, Puddle Lane, more regional news in your area. Look good, feel great. The Sullivans, the news, a country practice,

even more regional news in your area. The game show Crosswits, hosted by Tom O'Connor. All Our Yesterdays, which looks at news clips from 1962. Short Story Theatre, The Young Doctors, The Telebugs, Chisholm Phipps, the programme about two golden gnomes who live behind a chipper, Garfield, Blockbusters, The News at 5.45, Regional News in Your Area Once More, Crossroads, and they've just started Emmerdale Farm,

where Joe Sugden receives devastating news, as he's about to take part in the Beckendale Panto. Something about the bowel problems of the person in the cow suit in front of him, I suppose. Channel 4 opens up for business at noon with Business Daily, then Just For Fun, Sesame Street, Their Lordship's House, Channel 4's blow-by-blow coverage of the House of Lords, the 1957 Kenneth Moore film The Admirable Crichton, Round the Island

a 1950s British rail film about the Isle of Wight Countdown, the 1938 Shirley Temple film Dimples The Sharp End and they've just finished Channel 4 news. All the Australian shit starting to pile in.

But you've still got Show Jumping and Frank Boff on the telly. It's still an age of innocence. Yeah, yeah. I think Sanyo Sound System's got a very good chance in that tournament this year. But also a lot of let the viewers have their say bits. That's where it started then. Yeah, this is where it all started going wrong, didn't it?

Let's not let them have their say. We are telling you this from the future. It can only end in tears. So that's going to encourage them to start chatting about stuff and having feedback to say, no, stop chatting. We don't want your say. Just sit there passively. Listen. Watch.

Conform. Conform. And that, me dears, lays the table for this episode of top of the pops and all we're gonna tuck into a proper bino style slap up feast of late 80s pop aren't we me dears absolutely we shall do that tomorrow but until then i'll say my name's i'll need them their names are david stubbs and sar B. And we'll see you very soon. Chart music. GreatBigOwl.com We'll be right back.