Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #53 (Part 1): May 12th 1988 – Boing! Boing! Boing!

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Chart Music #53: May 12th 1988 – Boing! Boing! Boing!The latest episode of the podcast which asks: if the first girl that Prince met on Alphabet St happened to be Blunder Woman, would he jerk his body like a horny pony would? This episode – THE LONGEST EVER, Pop-Crazed Youngsters – finally sees us slipping the surly bonds of this rubbish century to touch the smiley face of 1988. We’re on the very cusp of the Second Summer of Love, but your panel are a) leafing through Athena posters and avoiding Neighbours, b) Gothed up to buggery and living with elderly Greek widows, and c) sifting through their own vomit in the Market Square. And Top Of The Pops is reacting to the Acid House and Hip-Hop explosion by, well, playing the shittiest examples of it they could find, hosted by two people going in opposite directions. Simon Mayo: hungrily eyeing the alpha-male position of Radio One. Mike Read: he grows old, he grows old, he shall wear the sleeves of his leather jacket rolled.Musicwise, it’s a Pic ‘N’ Mix of the late Eighties – The Lateies, if you will – speckled with not one, not two, but three joke dance records. Harry Enfield and Star Turn On 45 Pints remind us what a progressive and hardcore act Jive Bunny was. Bill Shankly assumes the Malcolm X role. Derek B gets paid in pounds, not dollars. Belinda Carlisle slinks about on a beach. Ringo Ringo Ringo pass round the hat for Esther Rantzen. The Asda advert is Number One. And Prince and Prefab Sprout rush in to save the day.   Sarah Bee and Simon ‘Sorry, Girls – He’s Engaged’ Price don their Sun Bizarre Acid House t-shirts and dance around the abandoned warehouse of 1988, veering off on such tangents as knowing people off Withnail and I, Tony Blackburn’s face on a stick, how to cross our palm with Bummerdog, and Tony of Sneinton’s secret longings, painted on a living room wall in 1968. GET ON SOME SWEARING, matey!    Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Justin. And I'm Lucy. And together we are the hosts of Plenty Questions. It's a very straightforward general knowledge quiz. We ask you 20 questions, one after the other, five second gap in between, and you shout the answers out. And then you tweet us to let us know how you got on. See if you can get 20 out of 20. No one has so far, but that's because we haven't started doing it yet. But we will. And there's also going to be some fiendish brain teasers, so join us for Plenty Questions. 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? Chart music. Chart music. Hey! Up you pop-crazed youngsters and welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music,

the podcast that gets its hand right down the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, and standing by my side today are Sarah B. Hello. And Simon Price and Simon Price hello hello hello just by the look of you I can tell you simply bursting to tell me of all the pop and interesting things that have happened come on well I mean what what is that I mean where to where to start um I have mostly last time we spoke to youah it was pre-lockdown we were having a right old chuckle about it weren't we yeah it was for so long ago i mean time has just done some insanely bendy things yeah the thing is that i think i think we sort of realized that it was going to be quite but i wasn't like shocked by i don't want to do the whole like oh i wasn't

shocked by this at all who was shocked because of course it was a massive shock but i got a fair inkling of like oh this is going to be big and bad yes and i kind of had to get my head i had to like face into it and go okay this is what's happening now and it really was like somebody at the time wrote about being in a huge crisis as she was uh she'd like worked in war zones and stuff and she's like look this is the really scary bit because you're at the top of the roller coaster and you have no control and you're going far oh shit and i definitely felt like that i was you know it was really i mean we went into sort of self-imposed lockdown a week early which is what we thought everyone should be doing but of course there was this period of fateful fucking dithering that happened you know yeah and uh so we just stayed in our we just stayed in like the previous week and tried to get our heads around it and it's like

oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck and you know you do get your head around it because you have to because yeah what you know you really have to and so there is part of your brain that is just like cool bloody hell i because i guess that's where where maybe your britishness kind of comes into its own which is like oh blimey that you know that enables you enables you to get through it yeah you're all right though you're all good yeah i'm all right yeah more or less you know a lot of time it's been perfectly nice i'm very very lucky to have a nice man that i live with and a lovely garden and i've been i try to maintain gratitude all the time for things not being half as shit as they could be yeah so yeah i mean obviously done fuck all really um i it's great if other people have managed to like you

know get loads of shit done i have not but that's fine i've watched my garden grow i've watched my ass grow and i've just kind of held on to my sanity really just sort of cuddled my my sanity every day you know and it's like it's hard sometimes it's hard every day not to turn into a flaming misanthrope when you see you know just how just how, just the kind of low level, you know, on the news. And if you go out, which I've been out very, very little, I mean, let alone going on fucking holiday or going anywhere that is, you know, the furthest I've been is South London once. Yeah. To see some friends.

And yeah, you see people acting a twat all the time and it's very hard not to blame them completely for everything. But they're more of a symptom. You have to keep reminding yourself. It's difficult because they're incredibly, they are being selfish and oblivious, and you can't be like that. But let there be no doubt whose fault it is that things are so bad. And it is the big fucking viciously useless floundering arsehole in charge

and all his surrounding fucking I have no words for them but especially him, by the way everyone should get used to calling him Johnson at this point if they haven't already, get in the habit of not referring to him by his cuddly

fucking overstuffed teddy bear first name and you immediately feel your brain click over into a certain type of seriousness. Yes. You know. That's good. Simon. I mean, in some ways,

the answer to pop an interest in is fuck all, you know. Just like most people, I suppose. I mean, as the second lockdown looms, my club nights feel like a weird dream from the distant past, which is never going to return, which is a big problem. I'm hardly getting any writing work, and I'm not doing any teaching till next year. So I am fucked financially. So hooray for podcasts, at least there's that.

Podcasts are kind of COVID-proof, I suppose. It's been a bit of an emotional roller coaster since we last spoke uh highs and lows um i won't go into the lows on here don't want to bring everyone down but the good news is i got engaged yay congratulations yeah she said yes she said yes the fool uh whether the wedding will actually happen in the full-scale way we want is very uncertain because it's meant to be in April. But if we're allowed to have a big party by then, obviously you guys are invited. Oh, I love that.

What's your first dance going to be, Simon? Oh. Killis Whisper. Do you know what? It actually ties into chart music. Does it now? Two months sound, please. Two months sound.

I kind of... I was going to keep this under wraps but fuck it i i think the crossover between sharp music listeners and people attending the party is pretty small um so yeah i was inspired by the episode not long ago that sarah and neil did in which you guys discussed dead ringer for Love. Oh, come the fuck on, yes! Right? And during the height of lockdown, when you just couldn't go anywhere or see anyone, me and Janie, my fiancée,

I've got to get used to saying that, not girlfriend, and a few of our friends, had a Zoom fancy dress party, which sounds twee and ridiculous, but it was a lot of fun. And we reenacted, we fucking reenacted the dead ringer for love video me as meatloaf as share um for for the uh delight of our friends and i think we might uh reprise that uh on the big oh fucking hell yes oh man i cannot wait who are we gonna be sarah um i don't know just some some of the sort of

background heavies and heavy you've got to be the posse yeah yeah yeah you know the sort of posse behind sort of like you know walking behind me love going going yeah meatloaf yeah go and talk to her yeah chew gum and roll my eyes and i'm gonna i'm gonna try to get my hair is a bit um i've i've got uh i've got slightly less hair than I had but I'm going to grow my hair starting now so I can back comb the fuck out of it Can I be that bloke who comes up to you to talk some shit and you just put the hand to his face? Please be that guy

that would be amazing You've been doing some podcasts haven't you other podcasts Simon your big oral slag you? Well you know, so's Taylorlor you know yeah yeah it's all good yeah i did i did a manic street preachers thing and i did this um this thing called get into this which is a liverpool based music podcast and uh if i'm on the subs bench i've got to get some

football somewhere haven't i so yeah spray your musk around simon i say exactly it's been a while because it yeah it has been a while since I did a chart music. I think my last one was episode 50 back in May. But here's the thing. I still get bummer-dogged in the street. Yes! Yeah. Shout out, right? Shout out to the man who pointed at me

outside Sainsbury's the other day and said, bummer-dog. Yeah. That's it. Nothing else. Just bummer-dog. I mean, do the rest of you get this? I've never got bummer dogs.

No, I've remained bummer dog free, thankfully. I don't know where to be flattered or what, that I'm the one who's chiefly associated with bummer dog. It's not even my anecdote. It's Al's anecdote. It's your story and I get associated with it. No one bummer dogs me, Mum. That's fucking wrong. I think, Simon, you're probably the most recognizable out of all of us as well so you know you're kind of i mean i suppose it is that but

al's al's never off the telly that's i mean come on right people have not in them just pull your finger out and bum a dog him next time you see him around i i'm quite happy to not be bummer dog at any point but also i will i will i will take it in good humor if it does happen but i hope the guy was wearing a mask i mean you don't want to die because somebody shouts from a shout of bummer. No, you really don't. What a way to go. I care now. This is all my fault that we're so late, Pop Craze Young says.

I had a bit of family mither that had to be attended to, which meant I was out the house away from a computer for a couple of weeks. Everything's sorted out now. So, yeah, it's all good. But I do apologise. It's sorted out now, so yeah, it's all good, but I do apologise. It's been a long while. We shouldn't have kept you without a new episode to step to. Think of how many weak podcasts you've slept through.

Well, time's up. I'm sorry I kept you. Let's move onward, shall we? Because you know what comes next, Pop Craze Junkers. We stop, we drop, and we bow the knee to the latest batch of Pop Craze Junkers stop, we drop, and we bow the knee to the latest batch of Pop Craze youngsters who have padded out the chart music g-string with lovely, crispy dollars that chafe so good. In the $5 section, we have Gerontophile, Hannah Blarwood, James Merton, Dave Nicholls, Sean, Russell Brill,

Ricardo Autobahn, Blake Norton, Ben Squires, Stuart Brown, Ivan Scheel, Otter Lee, Thickly Punshard, Rob Burns, Alexander Clement, Nick Dempsey, Julian McIlh hatton stephen jackson phil hatley peter and phil your hand oh fill your hand you son of a bitch respect to ricardo autobahn for a fantastic handle yes well that's um if if that's the same ricardo autobahn, I don't want to reveal his identity, actually, but if it is him, then hi, Rick. And in the $3 section, we have Humphrey Plug, Calvin Stewart, Phil McGuire, Johnny M, Christopher and Andrew Nemeth. Oh, thank you, you pop craze youngsters. Thank you.

Yeah, we love you. Oh, and Alan McGregor, Miles Jackson, Karen Watson and Owen Hughes. You pushed it real good this month, didn't you? Thank you. Anyway, one thing those people do when they do give us money on Patreon is they get to tinker with the latest chart music top ten. Shall we? Yeah.

Hit the fucking music! We've said goodbye to Dave D, Creeper, Twat and Cunt, Lesbian Dwarf Factory, Romo Ralph Wiggum, Flaky Pastry, Frumpy

Pumper and Jeff Sex. Which means two up, two down, five new entries and one re-entry down eight places from number two to number ten Dusty Shelbyville a re-entry at number nine

for Taylor Parks' 20 Romantic Moments the first new entry at number eight, it's the posh grebs from the nice estate. Swelling up out of nowhere, a new entry at number seven, Priapic Price. What the fuck?

Last week's number seven, this week's number six, here comes Jism. Yes, get in. Into the top five. And last week's number one has dropped four places. Spiteful Armoured Bollock. New entry at number four.

The Treacherous Death. Oh my God. Yes. Into the top three, and it's a new entry for Mr. Neil Kulkarni's stomach. Oh, no. It's a one-place jump all the way to number two for Bomber Dog, which means... Straighten's number one.

The highest new entry, straight in at number one, Suicide featuring Donna. I know I say this all the time, but what a chart that is. Fucking hell. We've lost some classics this month. I might not have seen any of them. I was sad about Jeff Sex. Yeah, Jeff Sex, man.

That's upset me. Romo Ralph Wiggum. Will we ever see him again? I don't know. So let's talk about those new entries. I mean, the posh grubs from the nice estate. That sounds to me like one of those kind of festival bands, those sort of hippie bands with names like Afro Celt Sound System

or Dub Pistols. Yeah, yeah. Definitely a daylight band. Yeah, yeah. Probably our pick price. You know what? I open my heart to you. afro-celt sound system or dub pistols yeah there's definitely a daylight band yeah yeah prior pick price well you know what i open i open my heart to you i i open my diaries to you i tell you my secrets from my dim and distant past and this is what i get yeah i just get the piss ripped out of me not once but twice in this chart i noticed fuck you all fuck you and fuck the listeners no prior pick price he's the modern day pj pro bear you know but instead of splitting his kind of like his trousers every time he performs this

swelling just emerges from underneath his pleated trousers jesus and people just watch the telly just waiting for it to happen it's like it's like the inverse of uh kenny everett doing rod stewart all right if that's how you want to imagine it if that works for you al you go ahead and imagine that the treacherous steph well obviously you know a rapper yeah got into a diss war with roxanne shanti back in the mid 80s yeah and uh mr neili's Stomach. Well, that's obviously late 60s kind of band, isn't it? Yeah, sort of noodling. A bit psychedelic. Yeah, just kind of jazz noodling.

Yeah, San Francisco. Yeah. Kate Ashbury, kind of third division band, yeah. You know what? Listening to these charts, quite often, and maybe I don't pay enough attention when I'm listening to episodes of chart music that I'm not on, but it's great how just the out-of-context phrases

can just slap you upside the head. Like, sorry, can you explain to me, what the fuck? What was it? Spiky armoured bollock? Spikeful armoured bollock. That's Taylor's. Oh, right. Spikeful armoured bollock.

You know that thing? You heard of that, Simon? Coronavirus? Spikeful armoured... Oh, right, yeah, yeah. Been in the papers. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. God. coronavirus spiteful all right yeah yeah in the papers yeah all right yeah yeah yeah god no that was taylor saying that he was sick of seeing a drawing of the coronavirus yeah yeah right papers all the time yeah it's all coming back to me now like my name was sleep down yeah okay yeah suicide featuring darna well there you go man you know together at last that is a pairing so if you want to get involved in all that sexy chart action pop crazy youngsters you know what you do you jump on that keyboard and you mash out patreon.com slash chart music and you pledge if you feel like it there's no obligation as they say in the adverts it's not obligatory but if you don't you're an arsehole we no but we do we do very much appreciate it like even more than ever given like your god yeah

given the fucking you know we appreciate that everyone's skin i mean i've thought this for a while even pre-pandemic the the problem with the sort of economic model of a lot of creative stuff now is is everyone everyone who's skin saying to all their mates who are also skin please buy my shit and then everyone resenting each other for it. And it just goes on and on like that, when actually, you know, you have to kind of look upwards to where the actual kind of ozone layer of arseholes sits above us all. And, you know, that's the real issue.

Yeah, that's a fair point. Maybe I went in a little bit too hard with my arsehole material there. Yeah, a slight, slight. So, you know. Simon Price's arsehole material. Oh know simon price's arsehole material lockdown your aerial i'll be a bit more meek and gentle and say yes if you can spread it around and share the love and chuck us a few quid then i feel this is it now i mean i'm in the same boat as you simon i mean you know my other revenue streams have withered and dried. A bit of business I want to mention, right?

You'll probably remember that ages ago, I mentioned that I owned a doll of the Fonz from Happy Days. Yes. But he didn't have any boots, right? Poor Fonz, man. He couldn't go to Owls without stepping on gravel and hurting himself. That was so wrong. Exactly right.

All he could do was repeatedly jump the shark, sort of naked. wrong exactly right um all he could do was repeatedly jump the shark in like sort of naked um but um um so i i put out a plea on the podcast for a pair of boots that might fit the fonz doll well um a pop crazed youngster over in belfast um called mark hunter manix mark on twitter uh went one better than that he sent me right a complete Fonz doll with the boots on. What a legend. Oh, that's outstanding, man. But what about the other Fonz? Well, that's it. Of course, I now still own

another Fonz doll without boots, but I guess that's a problem I'll just have to live with. Can't they share a pair of boots? I suppose they can share one. And it goes to show, if you want to have... I mean, if you had your Fonz in a three-legged race, that would work out, wouldn't it? I mean, you could do all kinds of things that...

No, let's not go into that. Can you give him a different outfit? I mean, you know, he did kind of wear the same thing for like, you know, 10 years or whatever. It's probably... No, that's when Happy Days really jumped the shot, was when the Fonz became a teacher and started having a beard

and not wearing a leather jacket anymore. No, no, no, no, no. He had a windbreaker or something, didn't he? a leather jacket anymore. No, no, no, no, no. He had a windbreaker or something didn't he? I seem to recall. It's like, no! Yeah. Fonz don't wear that shit. No, Fonz is like Einstein. You know Einstein just had seven of the same suit that you wore every day? Yeah. Yeah, that's

the Fonz, totally. But yeah, this whole anecdote about the doll and the boots goes to show, if you want to have your name read out on chart music, you can sign up to Patreon and let Al do it. But you can to have your name read out on chart music you can sign up to patreon and let al do it but you can also just bypass that process just by giving me stuff right i mean some some journalists say they can't be bought i can fucking yeah i'm fucking cheap as well what you have to know then simon what's what's oh i don't know if anyone's got a copy of

i don't know um the vinyl of the rhythmhythm Killers album by Sly and Robbie, for example, just stuff like that. Just, you know, bung me stuff. I might read your name out. I might not. I might keep you guessing. Sarah, do you want to join in this shameless bit of begging? I've got to check my Christmas list.

I don't know. I've got enough plants. You know, that's one thing I've done. It's like what everyone's done in lockdown is just buy plants. So I don't need any plants. There's a kind of arrangement of succulents that is quite... Like cacti type things. No, they're like benign cacti.

They're like the non-spiky cacti. Although I also have a teeny, tiny, tiny cactus. It looks like something out of Toy Story. It looks like if you pull it up, there'll be a little face underneath it. But yeah, this is... So your living room's looking like a kind of Anton Corbin video for U2 song or something like that. Maybe The Killers. Yeah, basically.

Yeah, I don't know. I can only think of really profoundly middle-aged things like that. So, you know, I don't know. Surprise me. Oh my God, or don't know i'm just i can only think of really profoundly middle-aged things like that so you know i don't know surprise me oh my god or don't i just realized who i'm talking to under no circumstances you're allowed to surprise me don't surprise sarah no i don't like it can i just say by the way i should have said this right at the start because i was like oh i'm just i'm having to expend so much energy every day i mean all of us are expending loads of energy just being at this time just living through it and you have to accept that it's not like oh i've learned 20 new languages okay great but it's fine also if you do fuck all because it's exhausting but you

know and i i have been doing this thing of just going you fucking twats you fucking assholes what are you doing going to the pub what you're doing hugging stop it yeah you know it's like there are so many people who would not lift an ass hair to stop me from dying and it's a horrible feeling however right yes there are those people there's loads of them but there are loads more who actually do give a shit it's just that they're mostly giving a shit by being away from other people so you don't see them. And you have to remember that. So if there's any pop-crazy youngsters who've been feeling this kind of rage against the worst of humanity that we're now seeing, that's... Ian Brown.

Ian Brown. Ian Brown, Noel Gallagher, Van Morrison. Yeah, they've all said... Having said nothing about Black Lives Matter or any of these other extremely important matters, they're suddenly like, oh, no, masks and muzzles, oh, freedom. And it's like, oh, hi. Hi, guys. What's the matter?

What's all this then? Not been in the papers for a bit, have you? Oh, dear me. But yeah, Ian Brown has just gone off the map now, hasn't he? But anyway, I just wanted to voice a small note of positivity before we get into it. There are still people who get shit. Before we get into this episode.

So, this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to May the 12th, 1988. A mere three years on from the last episode we covered. But, it's fair to say though chaps that a lot has changed since then. So obvious first question because it's a year we've not covered

yet in child music. When I say to you the music of 1988 what is automatically flaring up in those keen musical minds of yours? I guess Acid House uh on a lower level the kind of avant-garde rock music that meldie maker was covering at that time but yeah mainly acid house and hip-hop yeah and um sort of weird candy floss american pop like tiffany and debbie gibson and uh new kids on the block bless them yeah i mean according to legend and also according to people who were there who really should know better, you know, we are on the absolute cusp of the second summer of love here. Yeah.

You know, 1988 is supposed to be the year that we're all in a warehouse feeling the rush and stroking each other's faces. But as this episode of Top of the Pops shows, there is a dance element in this episode, but it's not that kind, is it? Well, it wasn't the... it was a subculture. It was still an underground thing and it hadn't... It is fascinating, this episode, because there is a lot of reference to Acid House, but it's like really ham-fisted attempts to kind of take the piss out of it or satirise it.

Yes. Which is so odd and, you know, I mean, understandable, I suppose, but it was, it did just, people think that it was a sudden thing and it was, there was a sudden explosion, but it was the result of, you know, a congruence of elements that go back years and years. And it did bewilder people, you know, so they knew it was going on and it was, you know, it was being reported in a certain way.

I think at this point it was still being kind of indulged as a sort of quaint new kids thing by most of the media because the moral panic didn't kick in for another, you know, another while. I think it's fair to say that as far as it goes in May of 1988, mainstream dance culture is still all about the jacking. I mean, we're about five months away from The Sun offering its readers a bizarre acid house t-shirt yeah on the same page on the same page by the way it's a story

about the horrors of ecstasy having it both ways on the same page that's yeah yeah yeah and a month later of course is that franklin cartoon where someone in a smiley face is offering kids pills as they go into a house and there's doorm doormat that says, welcome to Acid House. And then the next panel, he pulls a lever and takes his mask off. And the kids descend down a fiery pit. And all fucking hell, wouldn't you know, he's the devil. Hail Satan. No one's scared about this new music yet.

I think everyone had a view on it. It was mainstream enough. Even though it was an underground phenomenon, it was so huge that everyone had an opinion on it, at least. And we're about to find out in this episode what the prevalent opinion of a lot of people was. Well, yeah, that's the thing. It wrong-footed a lot of people

because they kind of didn't have the set of reference points for it as a as a british phenomenon like it seemed quite un-british it was not that it was american even though you know it's obviously it's it's um the the music and the drugs kind of came that's where they originated um but i think it was such a kind of un-british thing and it was very uh you know it was very there wasn't class wasn't really an in that it was very, you know, it was very, there wasn't, class wasn't really an element and it was very sort of relaxed and extroverted and purely sincere without any sort of qualifying, sarcastic, diffident, ironic offsetting. The thing is that the music stands on its own and you can enjoy it straight, but if anybody tries to sort of tell you, well, the drugs were sort of a, parallel thing,

they're kind of inextricable. It's sort of a double helix of a situation. The nation doesn't really love to love yet, but our nation loves to dance. It wants to dance. It needs to dance. It's got to dance. I mean, people were dancing throughout the 80s,

but it was a bit more either flouncing or lumbering about yeah it's funny my experience of this personally was mostly as a spectator um in that i really liked some of the records but the idea of going to a club full of sweaty people with their tops off all hugging each other was repulsive to me i mean i'm not a i'm not a people person at the best of times but and everyone said oh yeah but you haven't tried ecstasy which i hadn't um it would be many many years until i tried it but they they said oh yeah but that will change you you'll turn into a person who wants to hug other people but i didn't want to turn into that person in the first place you see i didn't have the desire to uh you know lose my

inhibitions I I was nothing but my inhibitions right um I love my inhibitions I've tended them for years like basically you know you know how covid has made everybody scared of just the physicality and the physical realness and proximity of other people you just want to stay away from other people I was like that in the 80s I was way ahead man i just didn't want to go near people you were self-pricelating in other words yes i was yes i was al i was working on a building site um during the summer of 88 at the old billingsgate fish market um i was working for flooring company putting the floor panels down and mostly the people working there were a lot older than me

and that was their trade but they hired in a few youngsters sort of students to be sort of dogs bodies and you know and there were a couple of guys my age who would roll in on a Sunday morning having been up all night

eyes like saucers they'd been partying hard at an acid house club and just carry on working and i was kind of i was sort of eyeing these people with fascination thinking well you know good for you but that that is so not me i went to shoom um you know one of the big acid houses just what yeah but only once because i wanted to know what the fuss was about yeah i mean and and it was i i i was kind of stood like a fucking balcony looking down thinking, you know, I could dive in and get involved, but I don't want to.

And, you know, I'm glad I saw it just from a sort of subcultural point of view, but no part of me wanted to dive in and get involved. I just thought I'll stay at home with a few bleepy records that I enjoy listening to and And that'll do me. No, I'm sorry to kind of to do the thing. But it really is. It does make everything make sense. Obviously, I was not.

I was not going to shoo him, regrettably. I was 10. They probably wouldn't let me in. But, you know, it is the kind of it is a thing that unlocks the like I said, you can enjoy you can enjoy the music. It's very it's it's very powerful and amazing music but this is like it it does unlock a whole other dimension of it and it unlocks another dimension of of people and i'm not i'm the same i do not like to be i'm one of those people who will leap out of their skin if you come up behind me by the way if you're going to bummer dog me don't come up behind me and tap me on the shoulder i don't care if you then leap

leap away to two meters i will turn i will swing around and and no i won't swing around and clock you in the jaw i'll just i'll just scream and then get embarrassed and it will just be just don't do it okay but i don't i'm not a very huggy person i i need you know i need my physical contact to be on my terms and stuff but i've been to festivals and I've been high and I have hugged sweaty strangers. And I've not felt like not myself. It's not like, oh, no, what has become of me? You know, what happens in your brain is that a certain kind of expanded knowledge comes upon you. And a lot of it isn't even in the form of it's not it's not in the form of words or anything.

You just go, oh, yes, I get it. And it's just, you know, it's like it's not in the form of words or anything you just go oh oh yes uh i get it and it's just you know it's like that about everything and everyone else is you know in the same state as you i mean i've been to festivals where you know some people kind of get a bit over enthusiastic and wreck themselves on the first night but generally by the sort of saturday night you know there's there's some festivals where everyone and you know everyone is all in the same thing they're all of a mind and people are respectful it's not like people are completely sloppy and just pouncing on you when you don't want it everyone is you know there's a lot of stuff that that happens in your brain that is extremely good the thing with the sort of the bpm of like you know uh 118 120 or something it's like sort of

elevated heartbeat and it just kind of somehow confirms and affirms for you this new expandy brain knowledge that you have. It's just like, yes, yes, yes, yes. And that's why everyone went so mental for it is because it's absolutely amazing. Because Simon, after me, Taylor and David did that 1975 episode recently where we covered Wiggins of Asian and talked about Northern Soul. You kicked right off at us, didn't you? Oh God. We were talking about how white British people take ages to latch on to black music and you were like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Drugs. I disagree with David about his interpretation. You always disagree with David but what's a we are? You're two. Need your bloody heads knocking together. Yeah, I'm just really into the whole subculture of Northern Soul as much as the music.

And obviously it's a forerunner of Acid House, kind of by accident. It's like two species, which you get the kind of evolutionary convergence where nature finds the same answer to the same problem of how to survive in a certain ecosystem without the two creatures being one being the ancestor of another so yeah

I just love the idea of great masses of people sort of arranging through underground networks to meet up in a certain place and dance like lunatics to a fairly underground type of music all night and in those in those ways northern soul and acid house are kind of

identical yeah i mean because you were saying that the the reason that they liked fast music because they like the drugs there's this tinkling top line that you get on certain soul records which um in no way was it deliberately placed there to have this effect but i do think that it chimes with the kind of high that people were getting from amphetamines which were of course stolen largely from pharmacies like the famous scene in quadrophenia um and and uh it's it's just one of these wonderful things of music being useful, you know. I think this is what I was disagreeing with David about. David thought that British people being into Northern soul music was about some kind of fondness for the retro,

fondness for the vintage, you know. I think, and he made what's generally a very good point, which is that that white people sadly um often only come to appreciate black music at a chronological distance it's got to be 10 15 years old at least before people will really take it on board whereas actual black people by that point have usually moved on to something else right and he saw northern soul as being in an example of that phenomenon i disagreed because i think that northern soul was a continuity thing it was a subculture that existed in britain in the north of england particularly since the late 1960s it kind of partly came out of mod culture but it was people dancing firstly

in quite small clubs to obscure black soul music and they just carried on right through and it's because the music was useful because it had that driving beat to it that kind of passionate yearning in in the vocals and the chord structures but also quite often that kind of beautiful tinkling top line it's like that thing you know um white lines don't do it by uh grandmaster flash meli mel sorry grandmaster and meli mel because flash wasn't involved it's one of those records that's having it both ways and it's giving you an anti-drugs message but it's got that delicious tinkling sound on top of it that just makes and it's even got snorting noises like you know someone doing a fucking line of cocaine on the record while

telling you not to do it um that is clearly not accidental but i think that a lot of northern seoul purely by accident has that feeling that just chimes with uh the the feeling of being up all night taking amphetamines and i think it was music that was useful and and i think you you find that with a lot of things like the balearic scene that kicked off in the late 80s which was all about digging up flop records like record company rock bands that tried to have proper hits and failed but somehow by accident made something that had a certain rhythm that chimed with the feeling of being off your tits in ibiza the the intention behind the makers of the music isn't necessarily the end use the it ends up being used in a completely

different way it's all there for the taking and i think that that's something that uh became prevalent in the 80s particularly with hip-hop hip-hop understood that music can be decontextualized it can be taken from from absolutely anywhere and it can be repurposed and that's what was going on i think that there's there was a something deliberate in the acid house which which came out of its roots in Chicago and Detroit techno. There's this sense of purpose about it. It's like, this is your life's purpose and the idea of work. Obviously, that's something that always comes up in all kinds of dance music, is the idea that this is your job,

is that you go to the dance floor and you you do you know eight hours or whatever and you don't know what to what end it is but it's an end in itself it's like this is your this is what you're supposed to be doing i've definitely had that feeling really strongly in the music like i said just kind of reinforces that it's like this is it isn't it yes this is what you're supposed to be doing yes yeah can i just clarify i completely agree um uh acid house was made with that intention it was made to sound that way. It was made for that purpose. That's the way in which Acid and Northern Soul are different. Yeah. I've never done Exorcist. Never. And I was there in the late 80s. It's ridiculous, isn't it? But the reason I didn't do Exorcist is because I fucking hated house music.

Yeah. I thought it was shaking hip hop. Oh, mate. house music yeah i thought it was shaking hip-hop oh mate and people would go oh what you going on about you you want to fucking do an e then you'll understand it it's like well what i've got to take drugs to understand this music no fuck off do you still feel that way though have you have you softened a bit on that there's one or two i really like i mean rave music i was never into rave i've never been into techno or rave or or any of that stuff there's one or two tunes that you just can't deny are fucking brilliant but i've never felt the need to put a bandana on

so i mean acid house stopped me from a life of class a's so you know thanks acid house honestly i'm just the the sadness that has come upon me just hearing you two like you were there and yet you you were not because you didn't want to be. That's the story of pop music, isn't it? Loads of people who were there who didn't do what they did. But then, unlike other people, we don't fucking lie about it. It's like when the Simpsons have a flashback to Homer missing out on the moon landings because he's listening to Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I've Got Loving Ones.

on the moon landings because he's listening to yummy yummy yummy i've got love if it didn't move me then i'm not gonna lie about it now yeah no no anyway onward this is the first radio ad you can smell the new cinnabon pull apart only at wendy's it's ooey gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. So what's in the news this week? Well, Francois Mitterrand batters Jacques Chirac in the French presidential election, becoming the first French politician to win two elections on the bounce.

Donald Reagan, the former White House Chief of Staff, reveals that Ronald Reagan's presidential schedule is determined by Nancy Reagan's personal astrologer who put off the original date for a summit with Mikhail Gorbachev because the stars weren't right. Fuck's sake. He also claims that every utterance made by

Reagan in public throughout his presidency has been scripted apart from the one where he said, oh, I've been shot. The British Geological Survey announces that the route of the Channel Tunnel, which will be started on next month, will go through an earthquake zone which has never been monitored from the UK, and in its last occurrence in 1938,

knocked down 14,000 chimneys in Belgium. Celine Dion has just won the Eurovision Song Contest for Switzerland, beating Scott Fitzgerald in the United Kingdom by one point. Fitzgerald's song was written by Julie Forsyth of Guys and Dolls, and one of the backing singers was Des Dyer of Jigsaw, the hero of the first ever episode of chart music do you remember him sarah no with a d for ducky around his neck is this jigsaw as in sky high yes what a tune yes i've got obsessed with that tune this year i've never had it on vinyl but i bought it and i've

just been playing it non-stop and it's such a fucking earworm amazing track zola budd has announced that she's retiring from international athletics and going back to south africa after being threatened with a 12-month ban and missing out on the sole olympics after she made an appearance in a race in south africa last year kim philbert the third man has died in moscow at the age of 76 david steel has announced that he won't be running for the leadership of the merged SDP and Liberal parties currently known as the Democrats.

The Icelandic government announces the legalisation of beer overturning 73 years of prohibition. An auction in Birmingham sells off 300 lots of furnishings and effects from the set of Crossroads, which broadcast its final episode five weeks ago, including a clover-shaped bath for three people, pampas grass in a vase, and an appointment book for one of the cast with an entry for one day reading,

9am, hypnotist, 9.30, psychiatrist. 10 o'clock, dentist. 10.30, plastic surgeon. 11 o'clock, gynecologist. A very busy day for Amy Turkle, that was. Based on the previous two items you mentioned, I thought it was going to be 7pm, car keys in a bowl, you know.

Mmm. But the big news this week is that a novelty company in Australia has offered Mick Jagger 20 million dollars for his ashes which they intend to use to fill 1000 egg timers

which will retail for a million dollars each the trend connection company state that as Jagger has spent his life writing so many perfect three-minute pop songs he could spend his death helping his ridiculously minted fans cook the perfect boiled egg a spokesperson for jagger deems the proposal preposterous on the cover of melody maker this week swans on the cover of smashody Maker this week, Swans. On the cover of Smash It, Tiffner.

The number one LP in the UK is Tango in the Night by Fleetwood Mac, so you can shut the fuck up, the Reynolds girls. Over in the US, the number one single is Sign Your Name by Terrence Trent Darby, and the number one LP is the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing. So me dears, what were we doing in May of 1988? I was 20 years old still a kid really

just coming to the end of my second year studying French and philosophy, University College London not yet writing for Melody Maker for another few months yet um but very much writing for the london student newspaper uh where i was the music editor um i'd spent most of the year living in a tiny bedsit in camden town 50 quid a week um and this was when impoverished scum like me could still just about afford to live in camden was it like

with nell and i oh more than you can imagine actually in fact i think it might even have been on the same street or maybe the next street along where they filmed that for you he stood for embrication okay i haven't seen that film for a long time so you can make all the jokes you like rub on us you fool i i actually know um one of the guys i know um Danny the drug dealer. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The actor, he's a lovely guy. Fucking hell.

Yeah, Ralph Brown. Yeah, so I was living in this tiny bed set in Camden. The only cooking facilities were an electric camping hob, which I stupidly placed on the carpet on the floor. So, yeah, it melted two lovely circular holes in the carpet which when i moved out i had to hide to get my deposit back oh how did you do that um it came in a battered old cardboard box and i just put the cardboard box on top of the holes and put the um the cooker on top of the cardboard box and just prayed just had my fingers crossed and i got i got away with it oh you've reminded me my mate did something very similar but with an iron on a patterned carpet but what

he did was this was genius he went off to the sort of corner of the room and he clipped off bits of carpet bits of tuft if you will yeah and arranged it in in a pattern over the iron burn wow and you can imagine how much work went into that and yet he got away with it they didn't notice it obviously the next poor fucker who moved in first time they got the vacuum cleaner yeah yeah you know but it was their problem not his but it was it was very basic very grim i had no um no bedclothes um blankets or anything i i had to sleep under a big overcoat, like a big student overcoat,

till my auntie heard about this and gave me some blankets out of pity. The only other resident in the building I saw was this elderly Greek widow who wore full black morning attire, you know, Greek widows do. And she was the mother of the landlady and she spoke no English.

And the only word she said to me, if I asked her anything about, know getting something sorted out she just said nit nit which i think is greek for yes right if i if i was a monty python fan right i would have found that fucking hilarious i'm i'm not i'm not though um some of the year my best mate tony moved into this tiny room with me slept on an inflatable lilo on the floor. And if he brought someone back, I had to lie there and listen to them shagging. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. That wasn't ideal. But to make things worse, not long after this episode of Top of the Pops was aired, I think, we had to leave. And for a couple of weeks, we

actually slept in the photographer's dark room in the offices of London Student which was in the basement of the University of London Union living on pasties and crisps from the student shop and if I needed a piss in a night I had to piss in the sink of the dark room and anything more solid than that you had to creep around the corridors of Yulee and hope security guard didn't catch you so it was yeah it was a weird sort of sofa surfing quasi homeless time I was a massive goth at the time this is peak goth pricey we're talking about uh so I've got photos from this era which show me having what I swear was the tallest hair in London um oh man people have thought that Greek widow was your girlfriend I know right I mean you know she's a bit younger. She could just wear

that outfit and talk, yeah, totally. We'd have been matching. Yeah, so I had like a black biker jacket with a frilly white musketeer shirt underneath and shit loads of makeup and all that. My life was all about going, it was a nocturnal life, going out to the Kit Kat comedy store on a Thursday,

full tilt at the Electric Ballroom on a Friday, catacombs in Manor House on a Saturday, and probably drinking at the Intrepid Fox or the Ship the rest of the time. And I was so fussy about never leaving the house looking less than perfect that I ended up missing loads of lectures at uni, which I'm not proud of, but there was this one time I burst into a tutorial french tutorial and 15 minutes late and i i sat down i out of breath panting and then my nose started bleeding because

i i i i used to get just um kind of random nose bleeds uh all the time it sort of stopped happening now but i used to just have that and so i sat there having hardly said anything just out of breath 15 minutes late and suddenly my nose starts bleeding. I had to run out again. So, I mean, God knows what they thought of me. The rumours that must have been going round about me, the French department. But I wasn't on drugs. In those days, to quote the Smiths, I swear to God, I swear, I never even knew what drugs were.

But this sort of perfectionism of my look actually helped me stay thin by accident because I wouldn't even go to the supermarket down the road without getting fully dolled up first and by the time I got there it had closed so I couldn't buy any fucking food I know right yeah you've got to establish these very early on in your life and it's funny um hearing you mention terence trent darby there um i that was a rare example of me getting into a pop thing i thought he was amazing right but generally speaking i was probably as estranged and distant from popular culture as i've ever got in my life probably maybe excluding the present maybe now is the other time when i'm really quite estranged from popular culture i didn't have a tv um so i i couldn't have watched this top the pop scene if i wanted to but i wouldn't have wanted to would i because i was a bloody goth

on your night's art time did you talk about i'm going off to the dark room now and i'm thinking fucking hell that's an exclusive goth club yeah or that i was some kind of you know um arty photographer when really i just needed a piss yeah sarah well i i mean i was 10 i didn't really have a life yet you know so um i think at this point i had um um acquired a stepdad and two step siblings and uh a new bedroom which unfortunately my stepbrother still considered his bedroom so he would just kind of walk in whenever he felt like it um yeah i'm i don't know it it's there's there's really not much to say about this time my life it was um what was on your wall what was on the wall of your bedroom um all kinds of shit i mean

i definitely had um you know the, hang on while I was 10, maybe I didn't, but I, this was when Athena was a big thing and I just used to go to Athena and just pick stuff that I liked. And I definitely had that, you know, the, the, the scary black Panther coming out of the, uh, of the darkness. I had that on the back of my wall. I had that on the back of my door. Not tennis woman scratching her ass. Yeah, definitely her. Yeah. Just on the ceiling or a hunky man holding a baby. I had yeah just on the ceiling or a hunky man holding a baby i had a hunky i had a hunky man holding a baby at some point yeah but not the one that everyone had i had like or holding up two massive tires no i not not at this point no but um

no i never had the guy with the tires but i had but yeah i was really sad when athena closed down because it was just a really good place to go and just because they had those big flippy flippy board thing and all the posters were in the flippy boards and you could just flip through them and it was um just a really soothing activity you know picking those enemies like a massive book yeah like or like the argos laminated book of dreams which which has has now been discontinued which i'm i haven't looked at the laminated book of dreams for you know um i was i i had occasion to do that a couple years ago i had to get a doorbell and so i went to argos and look through the thing and i was like oh this is such a a lovely soothing thing that i used to do much more when i was when i was younger and it's like

i'm quite sad that that's now not a thing but um there's so little say my life was very boring and you know it was about to get more interesting but in bad ways i think because you know high school hooray everyone loves high school music though sarah what, what's, what's, what's freaking you up there? Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I was definitely listening religiously to the charts and just picking my favourites from that. And, you know, religiously watched Top of the Pops as well. I was definitely into the Pet Shop Boys by now. I really love George Michael. God, I miss George Michael, fucking fucking hell like he was um he just popped up on a thing the other day and i was just like oh and i felt it i was like george

the more time goes on the better george michael gets i find the more you know you know the more we sort of i can't speak for everyone but sort of appreciate him you know yeah yeah totally yeah and it's just it is a it is a real sadness um yeah aha I really loved them at the time um and I think it was just not quite I was I was looking up when um like Roll Like Sushi didn't come out until 1989 but Buffalo's Dance was out later this year and that really sort of exploded my brain um and uh Salt and pepper as well i was um yes i was getting into yeah all my posters came from this student union sale you know somebody would turn up with shit loads of posters and lay them all out on the floor and you have to go in and buy them and it was just the

most predictable things you could probably you could probably just come up with a list and guess what posters i had but it was i'll tell you anyway, it was The Cult, The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Cure. I think, A New Order, I think they were the main ones. Not the Gone With The Wind thing with Reagan and Thatcher. No. Or the one with a soldier dying and the word, Why?

Nah, nothing political or satirical, just miserable indie goth bands. Well, I'm the same age as you, Simon, and I'm busy failing my a levels the last day of college is is coming up pretty soon and i'd spend that day by necking 12 pints of stellar artois when it was still you know a vaguely cool drink uh passing out in the market square uh coming to and then puking so hard that one of the lenses on my reactor light repeats popped out someone's got a photo of me on my hands and knees uh attempting to pick the lens of my

sunglasses out of my own vomit yeah this is a time where i um i discovered b for beer and uh a lot of the the nights out involved me mistakenly drinking more alcohol than i was used to and uh yeah bad shit happening but it's nice that you have a photographic record of the lowest you sank the worst things yeah well i don't know i know it's out there somewhere so if there is anybody out there listening who has got a photo of me as a 20 year old vomiting in the middle of the market square and trying to pick my own lenses out of my puke uh burn it now my luck at the time um i'm kind of like still in run dmc double black denim uh but i've got a cycling top back in the days when i could actually fit in a cycling top it was the um it was the stephen roach carrera one, which I bought in London. So I'm either wearing that or a Public Enemy T-shirt or an LA Lakers T-shirt or a San Francisco Giants T-shirt

because I had a mate at college who went to America for the summer holidays. And I gave her a load of money and said, just get me some American T-shirts. Or I'm wearing a Viz T-shirt. So it's either Billy the fish or the one of rude kid uh where he tells his mom to fuck off which i would wear in town on a saturday and kind of like i trained myself to lift my arm up to cover the fuck off every time i went past the police music wise i am happy as a pig in shit i'd finally discovered music that was being made in this era that i fucking loved i'm working all the nights i could at the local bingo hall as a change giver and just spending

that money on old james brown lps all that stuff that was became known as rare groove but i didn't know it was called rare groove i just fucking loved it and just chucking money at selected disc and arcade records for all their latest hip-hop lps on import i mean to me this is the high watermark of hip-hop because next month we get strictly business by epmd long live the cane by big daddy cane by all means necessary by boogie down productions and it takes a nation of millions to hold us back by Public Enemy. Greatest album ever made. Yes. I've already seen the Juice Crew tour at Rock City a few months ago

where the audience actually booed Roxanne Shante for dissing Scott LaRock. Next week, I'm going to see Public Enemy again. So, yeah, this is extremely good times for a young al needham like to hear it so as is the style at this point in every chart music it's a time to rip open a crate or two and go through an Liverpool in the news Elvis Costello has played a surprise acoustic benefit gig in Aberdeen for the National Union of Seamen who are currently on strike after approaching a picket line who were barring musicians from getting to

the Shetland Folk Festival last week and negotiating a pass-through. Paul McCartney has announced his new LP, a collection of rock and roll covers that will only be available in the USSR on the Melodica label. According to Macca, the new spirit of friendship opening up in Russia has enabled me to make this gesture to my Russian fans and let them have one of my records first for a change. Meanwhile Scorpions have announced an

8 gig stand in Leningrad and have already sold 120,000 tickets. Fucking hell. Prince has won the first round of his legal battle with his half-sister after a judge ruled that he didn't nick big chunks of lauren and elson song what's cooking in this book for his hit with

sheena easton you got the look while his half-sibling intends to lodge an appeal rumors are swirling that the uk will be left out of his next world tour with no dates announced as yet. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson has announced his support act for the European leg of his Bad World tour, Kim Wilde. According to the NME, Jackson became a fan after hearing a cover of the Supremes hit, You Keep Me Hanging On. Over in the US, Tanday have announced the development of the Thor CD, a compact disc player that can also record. According to the company, Thor CD won't be available until 1990 at the earliest, but will retail in the UK for approximately £300 and will allow users to kill music up to 40 times per disc. to kill music up to 40 times per disc.

Alas, the project will be pushed back throughout the 90s due to steep manufacturing costs and will be driven into the sea when the CD-ROM format kicked in. And Grace Jones has had a $1 million tax bill off the IRS and her New York restaurant, Le'Veon Rose, has just gone out of business due to lack of punters not surprised i don't think i want to go to a grace jones restaurant are you kidding you wouldn't want to argue you wouldn't send anything back would you no you wouldn't features section well the main feature is a four-page special on in their words the newly blossoming love affair between soccer and pop.

The main bit sees Adrian Thrills booking an away day to Anfield to interview Craig Johnson and John Barnes about their FA Cup final record Anfield Rap. Johnson contends that he hates football records and wanted to do something different for theirs before laying out his credentials by racking out a top 10 which includes Ocean Rain by Echo and the Bunnymen, Bad Young Brother by Derek B, Inola Gay by OMD, Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits

and Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen before giving Thrills a tenner and asking him to pass it on to Pete Wyler who he owes it to. Bonds who has just been made to dress up as a wizard for Fleet Street photographers and is not happy about it claims that he's been down with hip

hop since 1982 went to see Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and claims that they were a real team just like Liverpool Meanwhile Danny Kenley explains why Vinnie Jones should be named player of the year and does a list of the best and worst football singles with sharp as a needle by Barmy Army at the top of the former and you can't win them all

by Brian Clough and JJ Barry at the bottom of the latter. David Quantick has been dispatched to Dublin to witness the full horror of the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest and discovers that it's impossible to actually get into and ends up watching it in the press area, which is a room that stinks of horse shit with one television. After discovering that the video interlude, which features hothouse flowers arsing about all over Western Europe, has cost £150,000 to make, he concludes that the entire

country is praying that they never win it again. Irish taxpayers are paying good money to see Icelanders mime, he writes. Ofra Hazza is in town to promote her latest single, Im Nin Alu, which has just entered the charts at number 38, and is still bemused that she is one of the hippest names to drop amongst the pop craze youngsters, thanks to her participation in Cold Cut's remix of Paid in Full by Eric B and Rakim. She tells James Brown that back in his role,

she's seen as a mixture of Cliff Richard, Sheena Easton and Samantha Fox. Her national service consisted of arsing about with tanks, but she didn't kill anyone. Talks about her plane crash last year and finishes by having an argument over whether elderly Nazi war criminals should be executed or not.

She's very pro on the matter. I don't know if James Brown tried to argue about how stylish they looked, but never mind. Terry Staunton nips up to Liverpool to sit in a car in Albert Dock with two-thirds of Icicle Works to discover if they can finally break the top 40 again with their new single, Little Girl Lost, as it's been four and a half years since Love Is A Wonderful Colour. We've had a lot of singles that have scraped into the top 50, but if you don't get 10 places higher, you're cut off from a large section of the public, says Ian McNabb. The top 40 is the important area, because then you're automatically into Smiths and Woolies, and you get on local radio

playlists. We're always knocking on the door which is bloody annoying. By the time of publication Little Girl Lost has dropped from number 59 to number 67. Back in Dublin Sean O'Hagan knocks about with Hothouse Flowers who've spent the weekend being watched by up to 800 million people on Eurovision and driving around in John F. Kennedy's limo. He notes that they're fucking massive in the old country as a Vox Pop session at a pub reveals that they're quote fucking brillo no messing well-dressed hippies manageable looking pop stars and sex symbols for the young'uns and an unnamed hack pays a visit to new order in the wake of the release of the quincy jones remix of blue monday which has just soared 10 places to number three they discussed the rumor that they've re-recorded it as a jingle

for sun-kissed orange juice in the USA. Peter Hook told Spin magazine that they were offered megabucks but ended up rolling about on the studio floor in laughter and never committed anything to tape. But manager Rob Gretton confirms that Bernard Sumner did record a vocal. The deal never came off in the end, but they would go on to record a mock-up for the 1993 documentary New Order Story. Single reviews. Jack Barron is in the chair this week and his single of the week, quite rightly, is My Philosopher by Boogie Down Productions. Here is a rapper who pays lip service to nobody but just says what he means and means what he says writes baron the antithesis of spade city

pimpton krs1 just lays it on the line to some funky funky music it's in your shops no excuse or i'm fucking clamming for that album the runner-up places go to you gots to chill by epmd and parents just don't understand by Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. The former sounds like the tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai, only a great deal more psychotropic. While the latter, which has been on top of the hip-hop import chart for weeks, contains a hip-bone quaking bass and horns that blow harder than a hurricane baron approves of the remix of blue monday by new order it would be hard to ruin such a strong piece of music quincy jones hasn't no matter how hard he has tried however it's a coat down for film star kiss by scarlet fantastic somewhere along the line this band and their record company must be blushing this stinks period and that's not even taking into account

the stonking boogie mix on the flip fucking hell he notes that the duo have made their tour free to students and the unemployed and believes that's because of their inability to get bums on seats and claims that the sleeve is the worst he's seen this week mills and boone meet roger dean in a toilet uncleaned walk away by the newly titled kevin roland of dex's midnight runners gives baron the chance to point out that some of his NME colleagues are still misty-eyed about the glory days of Dex's, even though he beat one of them up for being unkind to him in print.

Barron speculates that music journalists are going to have to queue up for another biffing because his debut solo single sounds like a deaf person looking for a melody. And even though, quote, his squealing pig voice, the bit that was always mistaken for passion, has smoothed out,

this single is limp. Orpheus by David Silvian, on the other hand, is a groovy ballad full of twisting moves, which puts him on the same critical pedestal as Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker, and all the other great dreamers. Joni Mitchell has teamed up with Peter Gabriel for her new single My Secret Place but Barron doesn't reckon it. Joni goes through a million key changes but fails to crack the lock on the door to her secret place. Given the calibre of the people involved this is very disappointing

baron notes that lost in you the latest single by rod stewart has been co-written by andy taylor and is therefore not surprised to discover that it sounds like juran juran trying to be simple minds but luckily they found a simple mind in Rod. Give a Little Love, Aswad's follow-up to Don't Turn Around, is a featherweight Sokating song and a crushing disappointment, while Tomorrow People by Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers is alright, but nothing new, with Barron concluding that the prediction that reggae would wither on the vine with the death of bob marley has been sadly proven correct do you know um ziggy marley was once interviewed in melody maker and he he thanked the journalist for naming the magazine after his band

yeah yeah yeah hell oh mate nothing but a good time by Poison is anything but. They sound like a heavy metal parody with Bernard Manning on vocals, Big Daddy on guitar and Giant Haystacks on bass. Fucking hell, there's a power trio. I'll go and see them. Strange Fruit have punted out a swathe of Peel and Janice Long sessions on vinyl and it's a mixed bag. The Cure's Peel session from 1978 is a reminder that they weren't always a bloated stadium acting bad trainers gay bikers on acids long session sounds contrived from a

distance extreme noise terror and napalm deaths peel sessions are an excellent primer for the burgeoning thrash movement but the flatmates quote merely squat in the grey caravan site of directionless indiedom in their long session and i want to by the irresistible force is an explicit gay s&m love song mostly dealing with how much the singer loves the other chap's cock and where he likes it most or have you heard that one no sounds great yeah play at your wedding yeah you can see where here comes jizz and got their influence from they just popped it up a bit that singles page by jack baron would have absolutely infuriated half of the enemy staff because this was at the height of what were known as the hip-hop wars at NME where um there was a faction

uh who would have totally agreed with with Jack um giving sort of you know single of the week reviews to Boogie Down Productions and EPMD and people like that and would have and and uh there are also people I guess you know sort of Andrew Collins type wing of the paper who would have been enraged that he slagged off the flatmates and would have thought that you know the wedding present with the dog's bollocks that we all ought to be listening to and it really kind of tore the paper apart for a while it was um kind of fascinating little period in music press history in the end um IPC did some um market research where they found out that uh whenever there was a black face on the front of one of the music papers,

that sales went down. And shamefully, rather than just sort of riding that through and thinking, you know, fuck it, we've got to educate the readers, they buckled and sort of stopped essentially putting black faces on the cover and of course this is all quite reminiscent of what happened in the dying days of Melody Maker which Sarah Neill spoke about so brilliantly

in a previous Chart Music. This didn't put John Barnes on the bog for this issue But yeah, I mean it's really funny you say that Sam because if i had to pick between the enemy and melody maker that week it would be who's hip-hop on the cover yeah so i'd end up buying the enemy more than i would melody maker yeah yeah sure because for a while it's such a shame i spurned you all yeah in the lp review section the lead review this week is given over to Love Sexy by Prince. And Sean O'Hagan, after making the inevitable comparison to Sly Stone and banging on about the cover,

points out that while he's more of a singles artist than an LP one, he's still the most important thing in pop. Love Sexy finds new ways of saying the same things, Love Sexy finds new ways of saying the same things, and only occasionally does it reflect life outside Prince's emetically sealed world of fetishistic love and attendant guilt. Playful and perverse, he remains a willing sinner whose purple prose and indulgent pop still triumphs over the best of the rest. Eight out of ten. Even though he thinks that the opening track is called Oh No.

Oh, sure. The House Martins are split up, and their parting shot, now that's what I call quite good, is a horribly packaged double album of their greatest, worst, and indifferent moments, and not your conventional celebration of a band's demise. But then the House Martins were never a conventional pop band

according to jane solanas who calls their outputs a ragged cross between the monkeys and madness and commends them for knowing when to call it a day eight out of ten fairground attractions debut lp the first of a million kisses is out and and David Quantick takes the opportunity to big up the Caledonians. In England, ugly boys with long greasy hair pretend to be Hell's Angels with electric guitars. In Scotland, gentler spirits prevail, doubtless calmed by socialism and a curious belief that Glasgow is Philadelphia or something. belief that Glasgow is Philadelphia or something. Fairground attraction channel West Coast jazz indulgence into a streamlined, accessible oddness. Like all debut albums, this sounds fresh and unstrained. 8 out of 10. Bullet From A Gun, the debut LP by Derek B, is as crisp and clean as a noodley minted 50 pound note and an Esperanto of English manners and New York braggadocio the first cautious step towards a global language of rap

according to John Tague if LL Cool J is the Jimi Hendrix of rap Derek B it is worst is it's eric clapton polite routine and cold eight out of ten again however it's a coat down for raise your fist and yell by alice cooper a tedious meat and potatoes hmlp with no blood bones or bowels only pulp and a thin, weak juice says Richard North 2 out of 10 and the new Bonnie Tyler LP Notes From America has been given to Stephen Wells, who listens to the title track and another song at random

before deeming it pretty trad fair, competently delivered by a person blessed with a beautiful voice kill all session men bonnie 10 the lads zero the songs one mox out of 10 melody maker didn't do that at this time no and i'm quite proud that we held out for as long as we did um it it came in in the mid 90s where um we started having a kind of star system.

But even then, it wasn't out of five. If we thought something was particularly good, it would have a star next to it. And if we thought it was just genius level, it would have a star with a circle around it. But even that felt like a bit of a concession, really. I like the fact that we were trying to force people to actually fucking read the reviews. Yes. Not just to look at a number. Sorry to be sort of Mr. Music Press historian again, but all of this goes back to...

No, go ahead, Simon. This goes back to Robert Criscow, the veteran American critic, who basically brought in the idea of commodifying music rather than seeing it as art. And basically, he started giving albums academic scores like a minus b plus and stuff like that yeah and uh um at the time this kind of um went very much against the grain of people in the late 60s early 70s who were trying to write about music seriously and treat it as a serious art form and he was just sort of treating it very much as a thing that you might buy when you go shopping and might add a little bit a little bit of pleasure to your life or might

take a bit of pleasure away and um obviously in the in the end he won we're living in his world now um you know and pretty much uh all um reviewing is done in that kind of capsule style very short reviews and almost everything you read has um you know a mark out of five or a mark out of ten um but yeah i think we at the maker uh saw it as a sort of badge of our superiority over nme that they did that and we didn't yeah because you would read it and you go oh is this band i'm not really asked about and you your eye immediately goes to the number and unless it's massively high or massively low you just won't read it well i just think it's important to credit the readers with some intelligence which is where meldy maker went wrong in the end that it assumed that the readers were

cretins and treated them as cretins but um certainly in my day uh we tried not to do that and tried to at least um credit them with the attention span to actually sit through a few paragraphs and figure out what the person is saying rather than just this kind of which cd approach to you know to reviewing music i mean i don't completely loathe the start i quite liked it it kind of gave opportunities for subversion you know you could kind of give something you know you could you could play with it a bit, but it is quite limiting. It's true. And the thing is also, it is meaningless unless you have an idea of the writer's taste. Somebody's five-star review is going to be... That was the way that you would

read it, is you would go, okay, well, Swells has given this one star maybe i would like it you know because you could and you know that that was the way you would sort of gauge it but otherwise it is a bit tawdry isn't it and also having a rating system whether it's numbers or stars does that mean that the right is going to get lent on by the record labels so yeah we could really do with an eight at least well in reality um you know i i was writing for q for quite a while until it shut down um everything gets a four or a three you know nothing gets less than less than a three because they would think well why are we even putting in the paper and uh they'd be scared of sort of putting their neck on the line by giving something

a five which uh the world turned out to hate so you know it's it's completely fucking pointless anyway i used to send things in just routinely it had four stars unless i sort of edited it oh shit no actually this is more of a three do you know i mean it's it's it became so futile in the end yeah and you would feel mean giving things like one or two stars you know because you you could you know uh i as i've said before, I probably didn't realize the power that I had at the time when I could actually just, you know, just casually destroy somebody's entire career, you know, by giving them one star. And, you know, it's, I don't think I ever gave anything a five. I definitely wanted to, but you know, being being the sort of overenthusiastic slobbering puppy that I was at the time, but I don't think I was actually allowed. I think you had to sort of clear it, you know, because the sort of over-enthusiastic, slobbering puppy that I was at the time. But I don't think I was actually allowed. I think you had to sort of clear it, you know, because it was like a five was something that was dished out very, very seldom. And it had to be, basically, you had to be a senior writer

to do a five on anything. Yeah, and the editor would shave it down to a four quite often, you know, something like that. But I was quite pleased hearing the Alice Cooper album there get two out of 10. I don't know if I've ever heard that Alice Cooper album, but I just liked the fact that enemy in those days would just routinely just dismiss or destroy something like that. Cause those are the days when the music press could be quite cavalier,

and devil may care about that. It wasn't in hock to the advertisers, i.e. the music industry. Yeah. But at least you didn't have to do what I used to do when I was working on video games magazines, which was a percentage on playability, graphics, sound, all that kind of shit. Oh, and it's all 90 plus, isn't it? Like, nothing gets below a 90. A lot did when I was doing it.

I was quite brutal at times. But I did give Sensible Soccer 100% on the Mega Drive. But fuck it, I stand by that. It's the fucking best game ever. That's kind of, there's the sort of uberification of things now, isn't it? Where everything has to be five. Because if you just, that's the sort of uberification of things now isn't it where um you everything has to be five because if it's if you just just that's the minimum like um no the the cabbie did not steal my wallet and throw me out on the motorway so they kept five that's just what you have to do

and i think there's loads of people didn't realize that at first and so they were kind of giving people yeah four he was a bit surly you know know, and it's like, oh, shit, two more four ratings. And that guy's lost his gig completely. So I feel like people have got it into their heads now that everything has to be, if you don't hate a thing, give it the top mark. I feel like that's the way it's going. There's a great bit in the new Alan Partridge podcast from the Oast House where he takes an Uber and he challenges the driver to tell him what score he gave Alan last time he picked him up. And he doesn't want to tell him,

but in the end he goes, all right, on the count of three, we will say what score we gave. And the driver gave him five. Alan gave him four, right? Because Alan goes, I never give anyone five. It has to be exceptional service to earn a five from me. And of course, you know, we all know that that means Alan is a complete cunt.

You know, the routine thing is unless something terrible has happened, you give everyone a five. I'm not even going to mention that you can give us a review. Because the thing is, you've got to say, oh, yeah, you know, go like this, share that, all that kind of stuff. Well, give us a review, you know, and you're told. Five stars or don't bother. I want detailed, detailed reviews from everyone listening.

Everywhere. That's the only way we're going to survive. In the gig guide, well, David could have seen Whitney Houston at Wembley Arena. Saxon at Hammersmith Odeon. It Bites at the Astoria. The Steve Gibbons Band at the Putney Half Moon fucking hell he's still going the Junior Manson Slags at

Club Dog Finsbury Park Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell at the Royal Albert Hall and Pia Gunt, the number one hard rock band in Finland at the Marquee but probably didn't Gunt probably meant something different back then as well

taylor could have nipped over to the nec to see fleetwood mac real sounds of africa and bongo go at mosley dance center the sugar cubes at the birmingham diamond suite icicle works at the powerhouse billy ocean at the birmingham hippodrome and Megadeth at the Hummingbird. Neil could have seen Condemned 84, Close Shave and Vengeance at the Heath in Coventry but definitely didn't as they're all skinhead bands. Sarah could have seen Tanita Tickerum at the Leeds Astoria and fuck all else. Al could have witnessed Fields of the Netherland at Rock City, Faith No More at Rock City, Steve Hackett at the Royal Centre and the

Bodines at Leicester Princess Charlotte and Simon could have seen Napalm Death at the Cardiff Transport Club, the Bible at North Wales Pollair, Bonnie Tyler at Cardiff St David Centre the Joan Collins Fan Club at Traforest Polle,

and Tammy Wynette at the Presthaven Holiday Camp in Prestatyn. Well, two things there. First of all, I wasn't living in Wales, so I couldn't. My younger brothers could have. And secondly, have you got any idea how far North Wales is from South Wales? It's not Wales, is it? Hey, mate, if I've got to go to fucking Leicester to see the Bodines, you can go to Prestat and see Tammy Wynette.

All right. In the letters page, Helen Mead is running the Anx page this week, and the main letter is from a very irate Patsy Kensett. Reading through last week's NME, I must say I was surprised to find an interview of myself nestling among its pages. Surprised because after two weeks of conversations between NME and my PR, I was under the impression that I was due to do a feature with your paper in the very near future. Instead, I find that you have resorted to what only can be described as fleet Street tactics by buying in an interview. I use the word

interview in its loosest context. It was in fact only part of a 20-minute chat with Barry Egan, who purported to be from an Irish magazine, and was one of 11 I had to do that day. Because of the busy schedule, all the interviews were informed of the fact that a quick coffee and a chat were all that would be possible is that all that is required for an interview with NME these days features head Danny Kelly responds by pointing out that the NME has spent the last two years even before 8th Wonder had a record out trying to get an interview with her and getting knocked back every time presumably because she wouldn't get her usual easy ride or poor show enemy i don't know man i mean buying interviews in is fairly standard practice um especially if it's you know a big star who you've

tried to go through the proper channels and they just won't we used to do that with people like fucking oasis or whatever in the 90s. Also, it's so bizarre imagining a world in which Patsy Kensett was that kind of hot property that anybody was even asked. And also, what was she implying there? The sort of 10 minutes and a cup of tea with an Irish journalist.

That's fine for Ireland. Fuck Ireland. They can have a shitty 10-minute interview. But the NME is supposed to get a better one well you know that's a bit disrespectful man the number of times that i've had to like stretch out 10 minutes into however much you know page space i mean it is just like you know it's like put a bit more flour a bit more water and a bit more you know yeah it's hard work yeah ke Simmons of London's enjoyment of Simply Red at Wembley Arena was marred by a security guard who, quote,

proceeded to lay his hands on my person in a way I found very improper. When he wrote to the arena asking why, he was informed it was to prevent professional-type cameras being brought into the arena by request of simply red's management if you know the arena you would know that i would have needed a camera with an eight foot lens to get any kind of picture from where i was sitting if you don't know the arena by now you will never never never know meanwhile matthew de flemme of Hull has read Richard North's review of Frank Zappa at Wembley Arena and wonders if he was even at the same gig.

Get this straight first, bizarre as it may seem, the Zappa shows at Wembley were one of the best ever performed pieces of musical extravaganza that this cruel world has ever witnessed. So why doesn't our dearest boy Richard agree? Because the nitwit has probably never listened to any proper music in his life. He is likely to be one of those appalling creatures who think the sex pistols deserve a place in history because of their supremacy over the grateful dead his former deities has the prickhead ever experienced anything else than total misery in his life you ever had that that were we even at the same gig yeah yeah yeah i miss it i really do

any any particular ones stand out? I think in my tenure At the Independent on Sunday It was usually when there was an orchestrated fan campaign Oh! The Kooks You got a lot of shit for that I recall Yeah, yeah

Pearl Jam and Guns N' Roses in particular And Connor Maynard Do you remember that? Who? Yeah, he was a sort of flash-in-the-pan boy singer from about six, seven years ago. But yeah, at Melody Maker, you get that stuff all the time. And you kind of wanted it.

It was almost as if you didn't have anything particularly big in the paper on a given week. You could at least scan through the backlash page and say, oh, maybe I've been been mentioned maybe someone slagged me off do you ever get that sarah um i don't think i did actually it's uh oh you you were at the same gig i was at this i was even at the same gig every time no i mean i'm sure I said controversial things and people got annoyed, but I don't think I had enough time to build up a good head of anti-fandom. The interview with Wendy James of Transvision Vamp in last week's issue didn't go down too well.

How can we take Wendy James seriously when she has a Wurzel gummage haircut, a toilet chain round her neck trying to detract from her cleavage and when the new single is rubbish? Asks Horatio Pomegranate of Twickenham. While Janis Joplin's empty whiskey bottle says, Wendy James, get this straight. You were slagging off the Minogues of this world because they perpetuate the old bimbo sex image and then you allowed the enemy to take photos of you leaning into the camera showing an oh so tantalizing glimpse of your tits you are full of crap and finally esther this letter dear enemy why is your musical express like WC paper? Asked Rene Rosenbach of Paris.

You never have good bands in. Always Michael Jackson, Tapao and George Michael. You pose. All journalists at NME are crap. I prefer Smash It's. So I will never buy NME until NME journalists are Smash It's journalists and Smash It's journalists at NME journalists. And cancel the crap tunnel.

Keep ugly Brits out of beautiful Europe. Wow, prophetic. That's my favourite one. 56 pages, 55p. I never knew there was so much in it. No. So what else was on telly today? Well, BBC One starts at 6am with a 30-minute CFAX data blast.

Then Edgar Kennedy stars in the 1947 short film Television Turmoil. After the weather, it's breakfast time with Jeremy Paxman and John Stapleton, followed by the Pink Panther show, Kilroy, Four Square, the quiz show presented by Michael Groth, Play School, and then two hours of county cricket in the Benson and Hedges Cup. After regional news in your area, it's the one o'clock news, a repeat of yesterday's Neighbours, Four Square again, and then All Well and Good where Suzanne Dando and Christopher

Lillicrap take a look at the burgeoning wellness movement and talk to Duncan Goodhue about his dyslexia. After a repeat of the latest round of Come Dancing it's Gardner's direct line Johnny Briggs, The David Copperfield Vehicle, Coppers & Co, Newsround, Blue Peter, Neighbours Again, the 6 o'clock news, and they've just finished regional news in your area. BBC Two commences at 6.55am with two and a bit hours of red-hot Open University action, followed by half an hour of thriller-minute CFAX excitement. After three hours and fifty minutes of school's programmes,

King Rollo becomes such a chatty bastard that his wizard forces him to have a bath. Then it's What's Inside with Floella Benjamin, possibly from inside a dustbin. After music time in the news, BBC Two picks up the crickety slack with the remainder of the fag cup and runs with it all the way up to seven o'clock.

ITV kick off at six with TV AM, then it's regional news in your area, Crosswits, Santa Barbara, the time, the place, my marriage, a repeat of the Krypton Factor The Sullivans The News

Regional News In Your Area A Country Practice Regional News In Your Area Again All Our Yesterdays With Bird Of Braden Take The High Road Even More Regional News In Your Area The Young Doctors Portland Bill

The Moomins Emu's Wide World, a chance to meet some posh kids at a music school in a class of their own, Winner Takes All, the news at 5.45, even more regional news in your area, Emmerdale Farm, and they've just started Love Me, Love Me Not, the romantic game show hosted by Debbie Greenwood and Nino Ferretto. Channel 4 starts at 8am with a quick flash of foretell and then closes down for an hour and a quarter

before plunging into a four and a half hour orgy of schools and college programmes. After the Parliament programme, it's over to york to channel 4 racing then count dan the 1953 biopic the story of gilbert and sullivan starring marie sevens and robert morlaire and they've just started channel 4 news anything leaping out at you there a lot of australian soap operas i didn't even have a telly so it's a foreign country to me of course all this but i'd imagine sarah being a child at the time, this must be quite Proustian here and all that. It is a little bit, yeah. I mean, I definitely

would have made sure to watch The Moomins, which I now know as an adult as a work of actual genius. Oh, God, what else? I never watched... I was familiar with Neighbours. I felt like Neighbours was on all the time. And I sort of disdained it because I was a

snobby little twat but what about the Young Doctors though what about them the only thing I can remember about Young Doctors is obviously the theme tune and the story arc about Georgie Saint who was a pop star so and it was late 17 it was Australian so you can imagine I have a complete blank on Young Doctors I don't think I must have been playing out at the time so anyway I do believe that the table has been well and truly laid for this

episode of Top of the Pops so we're going to break off and we're going to come back later to get stuck into it so thank you very much Sarah B thank you very much Simon Price my cheers thank you very much simon price you're welcome my name's al needham stay pop crazed sharp music great big owl.com welcome to all rather mysterious the podcast that aims to unlock the mysteries of the past Welcome to All Rather Mysterious,

the podcast that aims to unlock the mysteries of the past with the key of fact. My name is John Rain. My name is Eleanor Morton. My name is David Reed. Please join us as we present to you mysteries that have baffled the world. You heard any noises? What about a door creaking? No, you don't have to do this.

That weird ka-dunk that lights going off makes for some reason in films. All rather mysterious. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.