All I mask of you
05/02/87 (Janice Long & John Peel)
The Blow Monkeys – “It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way” (11)
Getting John Peel's penultimate show underway with their only top ten hit, which peaked at a floppy haired number 5.
Randy Crawford – “Almaz” (4) (rpt from 22/01/87)
At its peak.
The Smiths – “Shoplifters Of The World Unite” (12)
In the studio and despite Morrissey specially oiling his hips the song stole no higher up the charts.
Curiosity Killed The Cat – “Down To Earth” (5)
It didn't make it to number one but it did go up two more places.
Five Star – “Stay Out Of My Life” (24) (breaker)
Became their penultimate top ten hit when it peaked at number 9.
Eric Clapton – “Behind The Mask” (23) (breaker)
Became his first top 20 hit with a new recording since 1975 when it peaked at number 15.
Michael Crawford & Sarah Brightman – “Music Of The Night” (19) (video)
This Halloweeny song became Michael's only top ten hit, and despite her not singing a note (although she did look wonderully other-worldy in the video) it also became Sarah's fifth of six top tenners, when it peaked at number 7.
Aretha Franklin & George Michael – “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” (1) (video)
The first of two weeks at number one for Aretha's only chart topper, but for George it was already his third of seven outside of Wham.
Hot Chocolate – “You Sexy Thing” (remix) (14) (video/credits)
It had peaked at number 2 in 1975, this time around this gallopy version made it to number 10.
February 12th is next.
The Blow Monkeys - although the song was no great shakes, the lead singer had an awesome jumper, where I actually felt like having one. He probably still has it as a momento for future generations of his family to say that he wore it on TV in front of millions of TV viewers on TOTP.
ReplyDeleteThe Smiths - the title lyrics would not stand up today, as there is CCTV in every shop nowadays, and is mandatory for opening a retail outlet, to the point where it is not worth running a shop with all these extra costs, and I feel sorry for the flailing retail sector having to shell out for expensive running of security cameras, which was not traditionally a mandatory cost at the time of this Smiths number.
Michael Crawford & Sarah Brightman - the chart rundown caption had no listing of Sarah Brightman, only Crawford, yet both artists were credited on the caption at the start of the video later in the show. I guess the initial omission was because Brightman didn't actually sing on the record, as Angelo correctly points out. Anyway, I thought once again that Brightman's striking looks in these Phantom Of The Opera videos was superb, making her perfect for such glamourous melodramatic videos, like mini movie classics!
So for the first time ever I actually watched this go out "live" which meant I watched with my 12 year old son (JT) who is the same age I was when this was first shown. Bizarre.
ReplyDeleteGood to have JP back for one last hurrah. I am a massive fan of his and it's been great watching him on these repeats. Laughed out loud tonight at his "they gave one to Mike Smith" line and his dig at "Knew you were waiting " (although I disagreed, I like the song)
Farewell John
Kicking off the Blow Monkeys. Smart jumper and terrible miming from Dr Robert. This is a great pop song to start what turns out to be a npt particularly great show.
Randy we have seen before.
The "Teen terrific" Smiths then churn out one of their tuneless dirges that made me hate them as a teen (their earlier stuff I have discovered through these repeats was much better)
Chart countdown next and JT wants to know how they decide what number each song gets. Had to explain the whole single-buying chart-revealing thing. Today's kids have no interest in the chart at all it seems.
Curiosity back for a second visit.
Breakers :
Five Star with the least palatable single yet. Stay Out Of Life also having on the B-Side the theme to "How Dare You" a reworking of the A side to accompany a gunge filled kids tv show that Cheryl Baker even presented at one point although Carrie Grant was one of the permanent hosts.
Eric Clapton with a great song. Hopefully we will get this in full soon.
Michael Crawford leading to a full discussion on Musical Theatre with JT.
Aretha and George at Number One followed by an abysmal remix of You Sexy Thing. ..just NO
A disappointing show tonight that went rapidly down hill after the Blow monkeys.
I wonder if it was JPs decision to bow out or if he was asked to leave...maybe to make way for Mr Mayo next week.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hE8F7VVUPXw
DeleteFor anyone brave enough to listen to the How Dare You theme.
Peel claimed it was his own decision to step down from TOTP, because he didn't want to become a TV personality. However, I would have thought his obvious disdain for a lot of late 80s chart music was also a factor.
DeleteI don't remember How Dare You at all - then again, it was an ITV show and I normally watched the Beeb.
Appears I am a show early in my JP lament. Will still miss him though. ..
ReplyDeleteAs John G says, Peelie returned for one night only in 1995, purely so they could spring a surprise This Is Your Life on him.
DeleteAngelo is technically correct that this was Peel's penultimate show, as he would make a one-off return in 1995, but this edition marks the end of his five-year stint as a regular. I don't think I will miss him much - although his style was refreshing in the early part of his tenure, and his partnership with Kid was often hilarious, later on I think his disdain for much of the music he was presenting became a bit too obvious, and there was less wit and more out-and-out rudeness. The too-cool-for-school criticism of Music of the Night is a good example of that here, though I must admit the subsequent dig at Smitty was amusing - I'm surprised BBC4 left that in. Janice was generally on good form (her slagging off of the Lloyd Webber tune excepted)and she clearly approved of much of the line-up this week, but by this time her chemistry with Peel seemed to have waned a bit and I didn't detect very much spark between them.
ReplyDeleteThe Blow Monkeys ensure a lively start with a polished piece of pop, and the band members are out to show that Curiosity Killed the Cat did not have a monopoly on headgear - the saxophonist also had a natty cravat, not an accessory you see too often on TOTP. The singer's jumper was intriguing, and appeared to have Russian words printed on it, but I've no idea what it was supposed to be representing. Randy evidently didn't have a video, hence the repeated studio appearance, so on to The Smiths with a musically forgettable number enlivened a bit by some amusing lyrics. Mozza seemed more restrained here than normal, though was obviously keen to out himself as an Elvis fan.
Curiosity return, accompanied by a completely unnecessary ghetto blaster and some shades for Ben to whip off early in the performance, presumably to make the girls swoon. The breakers will both be back in full, so on to what for my money is the best song from Phantom, and one of Lloyd Webber's finest compositions, so put that in your pipes and smoke it, Janice and John! The complex lyrics are extremely well crafted too, and it's a great vocal from Mr Crawford. I remember watching this candle-heavy video at the time and being amazed that the Phantom was Frank Spencer, though as I have said before I think Sarah Brightman comes over as far more scary thanks to her toothy, spaced out looks!
Peel gets in one final dig at the new number 1 (in fairness, there was some wit in that one) and then You Sexy Thing makes its first, but most definitely not last, return to the charts. This pointlessly remixed version sounds very nasty indeed, though I am tired of hearing this song anyway. The lazy video, featuring some ancient footage of various lovelies of a bygone age, wasn't sexy at all...
Just wondering what Crawford is doing with Brightman in the picture frame above from Angelo?
DeleteAh, a bit of class to start with, with The Blow Monkey's other big hit, an extremely slick effort that wisely made sure to have the tune to go with the production. Still think Dr Robert suits a suit better than his fashion victim jumper, though.
ReplyDeleteSeeing Randy again reminds me of why I got sick of this song back then. Slightly unsettling to see her trademark grin disappear into a scowl in the last few seconds.
The Smiths, possibly why Peelie and Janice were presenting, and one of their forgotten singles, though I do like its menacing rumble and stick up for the underdog lyrics. Johnny's guitar solo is top work too. Moz seems smug he got to mention Channel 4 on the Beeb.
Curiosity back too, good stuff but home taping is killing music, Ben.
The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town obviously putting the wind up Sarah Brightman judging by her glaikit expression. This felt like it went on forever, but I was watching live and couldn't fast forward to speed up the boredom. Michael Crawford was officially proven to be a better Briton than Margaret Thatcher in a TV poll at the turn of the millennium. Eh, fair enough.
George and Aretha, are they in the same studio? They seem so far apart, watching each other on the Jumbotron! But yes, here they are together! Saints be praised! Anyway, a very decent number one.
Bleh, this Hot Chocolate tastes awful! Another horrible remix of a perfectly fine song inflicts itself on the charts. The Full Monty never felt so far away...
Bye, John, you always made me laugh, you grumpy old man...
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ReplyDeleteDory - Michael Crawford's hit was actually a double A-side with the former Mrs Lloyd-Webber's solo rendition of 'Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again', from the same musical.
ReplyDeleteI remember Curiosity well; lead singer Ben Volpeliere-Pierrot was regularly impersonated by comedian Mark Walker on TV variety shows of the day. To paraphrase Mark's father Roy, it was a good impression, but it wasn't right. As I mentioned some time ago, Randy Crawford was likewise a firm favourite with Gary Wilmot - who, like Mark, was a member of ITV's 'Copy Cats' team.
Some of these repeats make you think, don't they? Who would have thought, 7 or 8 years earlier, that The Artist Formerly Known as Frank Spencer would conquer the West End and Broadway, with Hot Gossip's main talent as his leading lady - or that Slowhand himself would venture into slick synthpop? The latter performer's outstanding 'Behind The Mask', originally recorded by Japanese electro-pop pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra, was composed by that band's Ryuichi Sakamoto, with English lyrics by Jacko and New York-based British poet and author Chris Mosdell. Fast forward another half-decade, though - and Eric hits the road to multi-Grammy glory by going completely acoustic, even using a kazoo on a frame! HUM-MM-MM!!
One single lower down the chart that deserved to climb higher was Rosie Vela's exquisite 'Magic Smile'. At that time, she was being mentored by Steely Dan mainstays Fagen and Becker, with their producer Gary Katz overseeing her only album 'Zazu', from which the single was extracted. Much later, she had a spell in ELO, whose leader Jeff Lynne was her significant other for some years.
Aretha's raw Southern style may well have restricted her Top 10 activity in this country, but at least she scored one chart-topper - and in the company of another all-time great, to boot. Both she and George are still sorely missed.
I’m also a fan of Magic Smile, and knowing it was written about her late husband gives it an extra layer.
DeleteMichael Jackson also covered Behind The Mask, but it wasn’t properly released until after his passing. It’s worth a listen, as it’s commercial enough to have been a huge hit in his heyday.
blow monkeys: i thought they'd already had their 15 minutes before passing on the smooth pop-dance baton to curiosity killed the cat. but here they are, back for a second and final bite of the cherry before wending their way to "where are they now?" territory. dr robert seems to completely forget what are presumably his own lyrics at one point
ReplyDeletesmiths: they were like the jam and gary numan at this point i.e. the committed fans rushed out and bought their singles, but no one else was faintly interested. hence their brief relatively-high entry before plummeting down the charts again. i'm surprised with an agitating title like that, that this wasn't banned? the title reminds me of when i lived in bournemouth in the early 80's, and scouse dolies migrated en masse there - where not surprisingly in a town full of affluent coffin-dodgers, they found supplementing their handouts via shoplifting to be easy pickings to start with!
clappo: the first version i heard of "behind the mask" was by greg phillanganes (making a rare solo act appearance, having spent several years as a sideman/session regular). i'm pretty sure it was on the j*nathan k*ing US chart roundup on the show a year or so prior to this. i also presumed that he wrote it, and was'nt aware it was originally by the yellow magic orch until many years later. i also remember thinking it was alright to start with, but got boring very quickly. i'm also sure that greg played on this copycat of his own version as well, with clappo contributing nothing other than his usual limited vocals and tiresome one-dimensional blues licks. as for YMO: they are of course remembered for their own cover of exotica king martin denny's "firecracker" (which again i didn't know about until decades later), but when it comes to their own stuff then i think "tong poo" and "perspective" far superior to this
crawford/brightman: why couldn't the middle-class/aspiring yuppie types with little interest in music have just gone to the shows themselves to listen to this shit? or at least just bought the albums, so the rest of us proper pop-loving folk wouldn't have to suffer it? and just how exactly did ms brightman get the gig again? the depths some people are happy to plumb (in more ways than one in her case i suspect) to get on in showbiz. as for mr crawford, between "some mothers" and his theatre renaissance he was cast in an itv comedy series as an intellectual layabout (thus pre-dating the very similar "shelley" by a couple of years), which consequently sunk without trace as the viewers just saw him as frank spencer with a straggly beard!
hot chocolate: like the recent real thing re-hashes, something very much to be avoided like the plague
Dr Robert had a pretty sizeable hit with Kym Mazelle, singing Wait, later on. Don't know if that counts as The Blow Monkeys.
DeleteThe day after the Smiths were on, Mike Smith's breakfast show was inundated with outraged shop owners demanding he not play the song.
ah yes, i had forgotten about that. dr robert's duet i meant, not angry radio listeners complaining about the smiths. i would imagine it got very little airplay on radio 1 anyway, other than on the peel show
DeleteThe Blow Monkeys - I prefer this to 'Digging Your Scene' but their late 80s stuff is even better (Not too many agreeing with that I don't expect...)
ReplyDeleteThe Smiths - Their least interesting single by some margin. I can never remember how it goes. Yet it's one of their bigger hits!
Breakers - I only recently heard the earlier versions of 'Behind The Mask' that wilby mentions, and I have to say that I like all of them, but the Phillinganes version probably shades it.
Michael Crawford - Following 'Behind The Mask' with this? You can imagine the mirth at the production meeting. Sadly this is musical tedium, though I can imagine he must have been good in the role because our school went to see him in 'Barnum' and he was excellent. That stage show was about 1000 times better than the massively over-rated 'The Greatest Showman' btw.
Hot Chocolate - Madly, I liked this remix at the time. It's by Ben Liebrand, who would apply his 'talents' to a fair few more old songs before the decade was out...
Well on a week where music returns to the top of the charts, we have a pair of hosts seemingly hell-bent on deriding a song that they clearly don’t like at all. The irony is, some 30 years later, that same song and show is pulling in packed audiences every night at Her Majesty’s Theatre (I’ve seen it about five times and would happily go again). Hard to think of many other songs on this show (Hot Chocolate aside) who are similarly so popular to this day.
ReplyDeleteBlow Monkeys – It doesn’t have to be this way – Nice song and contrasting choice of clothes for the band members with the fetching jumper for the lead singer.
Randy Crawford – Almaz – So it’s ‘on video’ now when a previous ToTP video is repeated? Presumably there was no official video which was unusual?
Smiths – Shoplifters of the World unite- Truly awful title and song not much better.
Curiosity killed the Cat – Down to Earth – I always think of Rainbow when I hear this. Lead singer certainly likes his berets. Not sure what the picking up of the portable stereo was during the instrumental break; presumably to distract from there being no saxophonist?
Breakers – Five Star – ugh! Yet another forgettable single from ‘Silk and Steel’. Who bought this flippin’ stuff? Eric Clapton – Another album produced by Phil Collins during his ‘workaholic’ period and yep, it’s him on drums. Good song though.
Michael Crawford – The Music of the Night – Just Michael Crawford. A bit like saying ‘Private Investigations’ by Dire Straits is ‘Dire Straits and Cherry Gillespie’ as Sarah looks wonderful but sings not a word (like Cherry). As Julie points out above, the second part of the double A Side is the very moving ‘Wishing you were somehow here again’ by Sarah Brightman. Wonder if Long and Peel liked that more?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z8bBQmbXRk
Aretha Franklin and George Michael – I knew you were waiting for me – More sarcastic comments from Peelie but I love this hypnotic bass-driven song along with its video.
Hot Chocolate – You sexy thing (remix) – I expected more of the video, but the 40s/50s women just don’t look particularly sexy. Great to see this iconic song back in the charts though, albeit somewhat jazzed up.
In at no38 is Carly Simon with certainly one of my favourite records of 1987 ‘Coming around again’ and one of the first CD singles that I ever bought. Look forward to seeing Carly soon….ah no, can’t wait, just watched the video on YT! Goosebumps at 3:13 on that top note!!!
most of the film clips being played over the hot chocolate remix are in fact from the 1920's "flapper" era... which was probably considered unsexy even in the 1940's, never mind now. there is only one clip that is obviously from the 1940's, where well-heeled women in silly little hats are watching a model parade the then-latest in what they used to call foundation garments!
DeleteSo we still suffer Shitty and Nodding Dog, but we now lose my fave presenter and top choice duo. Bugger.
ReplyDeleteIt’s the Blow Monskis first, with a weirdly gyrating bassist who should have been in The Beat and singer Robert Howard reenacting the Phil Oakey ‘over one eye’ fringe and graduating from the Iggy Pop School of Miming. Never mind the jumper, where’s the guitarist?
So, Randy recorded a second studio version in the expectancy of going further up that chart? Cheeky.
Not one of The Smiths’ best by any means but one of their higher chart hits. Go figure. There used to be a shop close to the train line at Vauxhall with a neon sign which said ‘ shopfitters’ but actually looked like it said ‘shoplifters’.
Mugshots. Oo, five in China Crisis? Is Carly Simon playing ‘heads shoulders knees and toes’ there? Those Man 2 Man Meets Man Parrish lads look shy types.
FF that Cat, followed by Five Star with eye make-up better than the song.
Eric Clapton with a song which was a zero score on “Pointless”, probably due to the title being tucked away in a verse. Usually it’s the drummer on a riser. Bluesy guitar by numbers but impassioned vocals.
If Michael got a frisky feeling fondling Sarah, would that make him the second randy Crawford on the show?
Good knock about those awards, Peelie. It’s all Janice can do to stop laughing and just say “Charts”.
Hot Chocolate with an awful remix nit just off the boil but stone cold.
You never said “Goodnight” or “Goodbye”, Peelie, but thanks for everything. I’ll miss you.
To have two Crawfords on the same show, one randy by name and one randy by video performance, is quite unique, but also having Pepsi & Shirlie and George Michael in the top two chart positions was in itself like two chart positions from Wham, so another double on the same show you could say!
DeleteMale Stripper by Man 2 Man meets Man Parrish is a great fun tune, and I was dismayed to hear the recent cover version - they're really digging deep to find stuff to rip off these days.
DeleteArthur - that Randy Crawford performance was the same as the one we saw before!
DeleteOops! I didn't recognise the start of Randy's second studio stint, thought it was a new version and FF'd after watching a few seconds.
Deletedoes anyone else think that man 2 man might possibly have been gay by any chance?:
Deletehttps://www.discogs.com/artist/48686-Man-2-Man
as for man parrish, i got him mixed up with mantronix who were also making dance music in the late 80's. like early 20th century artistic polymath man ray, mr parrish's name sounds rather cool. but when you know it's short for "manuel" then that no longer applies!
Man 2 Man Meets Man Parrish evolved from a glam / punk band? Blimey!
DeleteGreat to see this show repeated again in Feb 2023, and still could only highlight the superb Music Of The Night video with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman. Superb viewing.
ReplyDelete