Strip Off the Pops
19/02/87 (Gary Davies)
Westworld – “Sonic Boom Boy” (22)
Getting this giddy show off to a hillbilly start are Westworld with their debut and biggest hit, which peaked at number 11.
Carly Simon – “Coming Around Again” (14) (video)
Became her fourth and final top ten hit when it peaked at number 10. I remember buying this single at the time, but mainly for the cute B-side ~ Itsy Bitsy Spider!
Curiosity Killed The Cat – “Down To Earth” (3)
In the studio once again but the song would go no higher.
Man 2 Man Meets Man Parrish – “Male Stripper” (6)
Teasing all the screaming ladies in the audience into a frenzy, this dance floor filler went up two more places.
Duran Duran – “Skin Trade” (25) (breaker)
Peaked at number 22.
Simply Red – “The Right Thing” (23) (breaker)
Peaked at number 11.
Mental As Anything – “Live It Up” (19) (breaker)
Their only hit and it peaked at number 3.
The Jets – “Crush On You” (18) (breaker)
Not the same Jets we saw doing Yes Tonight Josephine back in 1981, but a different group and this became their only top 40 hit when it peaked at number 5.
Eric Clapton – “Behind The Mask” (15)
In the studio for the first time since his Cream days, but this song was now at its chart peak.
Ben E. King – “Stand By Me” (1) (video)
First of three weeks at number one.
Europe – “Rock The Night” (17) (video/credits)
Went up five more places.
Next up is February 26th but it is another Mike Smith edition.
Gary is back and fast becoming the most accomplished presenter. Proper 80s clothes horse as well. Nice Tie
ReplyDeleteWestworld first. Not a dystopian future but some punks revived from the 70s with a funky square guitar. Rather cool song though and a great opening to the show. Boom.
Carly Simon with a few home movies to show off. Wonder if they are actually her? Probably not,. Any other songs we can think of which mention a toaster? Can't think of any.
Curiosity back again. Is this the third time? Nice song but bored with it now.
Wow a load of chart entries this week at the bottom of the chart. Don't recall any of them.
Man To Man. Well this is a touch camp. Probably went down a storm in the clubs but this is awful in the studio. Is there any chance of a tune here. I think this has to be the worse song we've had for a long time. Can we have Anita Dobson back please. . My son thinks it should even be in the Top 40 and I agree.
Breakers:
A lesser Duran Duran hit up first. Quite like this. Nice video.
Simply Red with a song I do really like. One of their best efforts.
Mental As Anything "from crocodile dundee". Love love love this record. Hope we see this again.
Jets. Never heard of them. Is that a US version of Five Star. Or do we have a UK version of the Jets.
Eric Clapton. A legend. A brilliant song, and quite a coup getting him in the studio. Big fan of this one as well. Although Eric himself seems thoroughly bored by the occasion.
New Number One. Stand By Me. Huge jump to the top. 86/87 record buyers really loved their classics didn't they. This is a great song though.
Europe plays us out (no sign of Percy Sledge yet).
Air guitar from me and JT around the lounge...
Man To Man Meets Man parish - what a mouthful for anyone, and what exactly is Man Parish? This tune had shades of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and sounded like a hybrid of Relax and Two Tribes, which seemed to be the only highlight of this so-called tune.
Deletehey morgie, what's going on? usually you're the last regular to contribute a rewiew - not the first!
Deletewas the toaster carly simon mentioned wanking woger (as jonathan woss would say) from the beat?
DeleteI know. I watched it live as well.. 😀
DeleteAn ecelectic show, Gazza helming proceedings very ably as usual. Westworld start us off with what sounds, as Morgie suggests, like a bit of a punk/new wave revival. I don't recall the band at all, though the song is familiar, and puts me in mind of the kind of thing Transvision Vamp would be doing a couple of years later. It's a good anthemic chorus, but in truth that is really all there is to the song and the band themselves, boxy guitar apart, are a pretty nondescript bunch.
ReplyDeleteSome sheer class next from Carly Simon, one of the greatest of all female singer-songwriters. This excellent, whistful tune marked a bit of a comeback for her following a quiet spell after her messy divorce from James Taylor, and it is up there for me as one of her best. That really is her in the old home movies, which also afford us glimpses of her siblings and her wealthy publisher father, the Simon in Simon & Schuster. It's a shame we don't get to see the funny ending of the video, where young Carly bashes her head accidentally while posing for the camera. It was rare by this time to see an act perform the same song in the studio more than twice, but here are Curiosity again. Ben tries tentatively at one point to do some Jacko-style dance moves, but wisely thinks better of it...
I agree with Morgie that Man 2 Man is the worst of '87 so far, a thuddingly repetitive Hi-NRG beat in search of a song. The performance was also underwhelming - I wasn't expecting them to strip to their underwear in the TOTP studio, but I thought they might have disrobed a little more than they did! I don't think the Chippendales were quite a "thing" at this point, but I guess this record played its part in popularising that whole scene.
More of the breakers next time, so on to Eric Clapton and an unexpected studio appearance which, as Gazza says, was his first since the Cream days. I have always thought the erstwhile Mr Clapp was fortunate to be first through the door, so to speak, when the British blues boom began, as I think his guitar playing has always been vastly overrated and that many of those who followed in his wake, not least Peter Green, were far more talented. Be that as it may, this bouncy pop-rock tune is eminently listenable, and gave him his biggest UK hit for over a decade. He seems to me to be enjoying himself here, perhaps because it was at about this time that he was finally getting his life back together after years of alcoholism - that recent documentary about his life laid out in very grim detail what an extremely unpleasant piece of work he became during that period. Europe play us out, with some harmless metal-lite which, while nowhere near as memorable as their number 1, at least ensured they wouldn't be one-hit wonders - they did in fact manage another couple of Top 40 entries after this. The video is silly, but at least they aren't taking themselves too seriously.
That Westworld opener to the show I remember at the time fancying the female lead singer with the cap, and thinking she was the real deal, but now all these years later as a crusty 50 year old, I'm thinking this is too noisy on the ears, and that I wouldn't want to be anywhere near those speakers in the TOTP studio, with all that drilling in the ears. Enough already.
DeleteI agree that it was followed by sheer class in Carly Simon, and suddenly this crusty 50-year old now feels in paradise with a perfect relaxing tune for a Thursday night. I always liked Carly's voice, and the video was really good too on a cold winter's night.
Not sure about Westworld's music, but singer Elizabeth Westwood has aged very well.
DeleteThanks for clarification on the Carly Simon vid and the Simon and Schuster fact, I don't know that before.
DeleteThe Breakers this week had some interesting stuff.
ReplyDeleteSimply Red were back after a long break, with the first song of theirs I really liked. The Right Thing is a brilliant dance record, and probably their best one, as most of their career stuff was (too) deep ballads, apart from Wonderland on the 1991 Stars album, which I think was the ballad of all ballads.
Mental As Anything was such a feelgood track at the time, with a fantastic video to boot, that I remember thinking to play that song anytime I was feeling down, as I was a university student in 1987, and boy did that track make me feel good in the midst of some stressful times, trying to get assignments done in time.
I was warned by a friend that this was a bad edition. However, aside from a few aberrations I quite enjoyed it, along with my favourite host in the driving seat.
ReplyDeleteWestworld – Sonic Boom Boy – ‘World’ as opposed to ‘Life’ this is a fairly lively opener and I kept looking at the lead female singer thinking if this was out now she’d surely be wearing ripped jeans.
Carly Simon – Coming around again – You’ll all have gathered this was one of my 1987 highlights. How could they cut it at that rousing and moving high note?! Didn’t realise it was young Carly in the home movies so that was a nice nugget to hear. Carly seemed to have a big UK hit every five years – 1972 with ‘You’re so vain’, 1977 with ‘Nobody does it better’, 1983 with ‘Why’ and now 1987 with this.
Curiosity killed the Cat – Down to Earth – Third studio outing and this was a real slow burner of a hit quietly selling more copies than certain no1s I could mention, and ending up at no22 on the year end chart. No saxophonist turned up again!
Man 2 Man Parrish – Male Stripper – What on earth (I could say stronger). Awful doesn’t suffice really.
Breakers – Duran Duran – one of my favourite tracks from the underrated ‘Notorious’ album. Simply Red – Don’t recall this and doesn’t sound that good. Mental as everything – Surely only a hit due to the film, and what we all wanted to know at the time was, were Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski an item? Jets – Not the ‘Yes tonight Josephine’ gang but a somewhat lesser bunch with this forgettable single.
Eric Clapton – Behind the Mask – Great PC produced song. PC must have been busy producing someone else or making the next solo album or something, as he’s not on drums here. I liked the ‘egg’ picture superimposed in the corner at one point.
Ben E King – Stand by me – A good song, but surprising no1.
Europe – Rock the Night – Just not as memorable as their big hit.
sct ripped jeans had already been and gone the first time around at this point - i remember going to a beach with a couple of friends in 1983, and one of them couldn't put his jeans on afterwards as they had so many holes in them! i do feel quite sorry for all the young women whom it seems have to wear them to be accepted as part of the crowd they want to hang out with these days. come on girls, don't follow the pack - make your own statement!
Deletesct - The Right Thing to Do was also a hit for Carly in 1973, though admittedly it only reached 17.
DeleteThe other problem with girls and ladies jeans nowadays is that they are made very tight to the legs, that you have to peel them off, instead of take them off. In effect they are blue leggings. Not camp in my opnion, and I prefer the wider fit on the legs. Just as well that mens jeans have not gone the way off ripped and leggings style!
DeleteI have seen some young men wearing very skinny jeans in recent years...
DeleteSorry that should read 1982 with 'Why'.
ReplyDeleteI was intrigued by that reference to the word “toaster” in a hit lyric. A quick scan on the net reveals a number of rap songs used the word years after Carly Simon. Carrying the theme further, we had the hit “Toast” by Streetband (where, frustratingly, the lyrics have the bread cooked under a grill), the singer in Nu Shooz fixing a toaster in the video for “I Can’t Wait”, and we’ve had a number of Jamaican toasters (singers) on TOTP.
ReplyDeleteTheatre of Hate sang “Do You Believe In The Westworld” (the first song John Peel introduced on his fabled comeback). Someone obviously did, ‘cause here they are!
Nothing exotic to report about Man Parrish’s moniker – “Man “ is just a shorter version of his name, Manuel!
Steve Hackett recorded a song called 'The Toast' on his top7 album 'Defector'.
Deletewestworld: following in the footsteps of the already-forgotten sigue sigue sputnick with their mix of eddie cochran licks and 80's production tricks. and not much better to be frank either. and i hate baseball caps as well, which doesn't help. btw i've just finished watching the first series of the "westworld" reboot with anthony hopkins, and sadly i felt it started off promisingly but lost its way by the end with needlessly over-elaborate time-jumping going on
ReplyDeletecarly simon: having experimented with dance with the likes of will powers and chic in the early 80;s carly goes back to her usual humdrum AOR. watching her video, i can't help but think she looks like mick jagger in drag!
man 2 man/man parrish: not looking quite so camp as the pictures of them i've seen on discogs, but i would still liked to have seen how gary davies introduced them. the girlies might have screamed when the main singer took his coat off, but somehow i don't think he was too bothered about that. musically much more now-outdated hi-nrg rather than the new house sound that was starting to take over the dancefloors
europe: perhaps if they had been english or american rather than swedish then they might have got a bit more credit then they deserved in terms of being metal practitioners. well it doesn't sound obviously inferior to the likes of maiden or metallica to my ears anyway
Westworld has to be one of the most humourlessly boring popular TV shows around, if you thought season 1 got pointless, wait till you see season 2!
DeletePerhaps Carly was providing her own backing vocals on You're So Vain, in that case!
Deleteif old rubber lips was the subject of her signature song (that she still refuses to confirm even now as far as i know), then given their facial similarities it's no surprise (jagger and bianca weren't exactly opposites either). although one can imagine them pushing each other out of the way in order to preen themselves in the mirror ha ha
Deletei've just received an email from google, saying that they are planning to take down all google+-related content from the internet in april due to "low usage"!! persumably that includes this blog? if that's right, then is there any way it can be hosted elsewhere, rather than just disappear into the ether (along with all our views and comments posted for the last several years)?
ReplyDeleteOh dear, I hope that's not true! I suppose there's always Wordpress? They wouldn't get rid of all those blogs, would they? That's a heck of a lot of content.
DeleteIf it really is happening, hopefully Angelo will have some way of transferring all the blog content to a new home, but I guess time will tell.
DeleteThis blog should be safe. Google+ was launched as Google's answer to Facebook but didn't really take off.
DeleteAngelo's blog runs on Google's blogging platform Blogger, which Google has no plans to close (yet).
That's reassuring, thanks!
DeleteAw, yeah, Westworld, a jaunty little ditty with sort of sci-fi rockabilly sound and a memorable lead singer (though I was trying to work out what was up with her jeans). Infectious, and you can see why it was a hit, though Silver Mac should have been a hit follow-up too, but mysteriously stalled. The other thing I recall about them is when they were on Network 7 and the fat guitarist revealed his phobia of celery. It was like Les and the chives on Vic Reeves' Big Night Out.
ReplyDeleteSteven Tyler and his big solo hit - oops, my mistake, it's Carly Simon (but have you ever seen them together?), and it's this week's first song from a film, though at least this was specifically written for Heartburn. Chiming synths carry it along in its reflective manner, helped by the home movie footage, but it's a bit middle of the road, like a Nora Ephron movie I suppose.
Curiosity again - that song's not going any higher, guys - then Man to Man meets Man Parrish, filling out the dancefloors with a spot of high camp Hi-NRG. The repeated electronic refrain "I was a male stripper in a go-go bar!" is highly amusing. They were obviously told to keep as many clothes on as possible! Camp as Christmas, a lot of fun.
Glossing over the Breakers till next time, Eric Clapton getting over the bad times with a catchy version of a tune that was pretty darn catchy in the first place, though I prefer the YMO recording because it doesn't have the guitar noodling and Eric's groaning vocals over it. Still, far from the worst thing he's ever been associated with.
Ben makes it to the top, then Europe make it to the middle. They reminded me of The Muppets in this video. Joey was miming into a ketchup bottle, but it should really have been a hairbrush.
I think it was a sign of the times around 1987 when icons like Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger, now in middle age, were appearing in the TOTP studio, when they had not been in it since the 60s as young adults. The TOTP success or no success following the show would be a good benchmark for them to see if they are still popular as 40-somethings with the record-buying public, which I guess is the reason they were coming back now after superstardom in the last 20 years, where they would just send their videos instead of appear on TOTP.
DeleteI read somewhere else recently that the BBC increased the size of its appearance fees around this time, which may help to explain the increase in big names coming to the studio in '87.
Deletepaying someone to promote themselves is utterly absurd - the acts in question should have done it for nothing. but of course the problem was that by then practically every hit single had a video made for it, so without that extra "incentive" many of the bigger names would have just phoned them in
Deletethe above gives me an opportunity to also remind people if they don't know already of the ludicrousness of the likes of radio 1 paying the PRS a fee of at what is probably about a hundred quid these days every time a chart single is played.. .even though it's in effect a free plug for potentially thousands of sales that might not happen otherwise!
Thanks to 45cat, I discovered that Man 2 Man Parrish single was released on the Bolts label, which was the own brand label of a gay club in North London.
ReplyDeleteSome good songs in this show, and Curiosity yet again - someone booking the acts really did love them, didn't they?!
ReplyDeleteWestworld - I always forget that this somehow didn't make the Top 10 (though admittedly only just) as I think I deserved to. Something that passed me by at the time is that Elizabeth Westwood is very attractive indeed!
Carly Simon - Dull, and I used to get endless requests at University Radio for the supposedly charming but actually hideous B side which has put me off the single for life!
Man 2 Man Meets Man Parrish - I'm one of the few here who seems to like this. Surprised he didn't chuck his hat at the (incredibly loud in the mix) crowd at the end. I think I have the 12" of this somewhere. Insert your own joke here.....
Eric Clapton - As I said before, I like this and also the earlier versions of the song before.
Europe - Have we had this on before? I might have said how crap it is if so. If not - it's crap.
The Europe playout I thought on the contrary was very good, because it was one of those rare videos where the pop group were interspersed with the audience in that restaurant/bar, like an all-night party.
DeleteThis was reminiscent of Meat Loaf's Deadringer For Love in 1981/82, where he and Cher were part of the bar fabric and getting to know each other among their pals in the bar, and sang and danced their way through the video as ordinary bar-goers, rather than as performers on a stage.
Also there were some shades of this same houseparty/barparty type antics and happiness on Joan Jett & The Blackhearts with I Love Rock & Roll in 1982, and Ashford & Simpson's Solid in 1984. I much prefer videos like these, than the customary ones where the performers are facing their audience by being on a stage, so big thumbs up from me for the Europe video Rock The Night, cos that certainly was what they were doing in it, even though the song itself was average.
I can't enjoy a video if the song itself is terrible though Dory!
DeleteAngelo, interesting comment up top from you, regarding buying the Carly Simon record, more for the 'B' side Itsy Bitsy Spider. In those days, well before the internet arrived, I don't know how people would have known what the 'B' side of a record was, before buying the single for it's A side, as the B sides of records were not played on the TV or radio.
ReplyDeleteI guess what you meant to say was that after you bought the single for its A side, you liked the B side more, or someone you knew who bought the single had played you the B side, and only then you bought the record!
I think 'Itsy Bitsy Spider' was played a lot on the radio as it incorporated the 'Coming around again' melody. Here's Carly getting a little windswept but performing the two sequed in wonderful style.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9cidpLcPgA
It sends shivers down my spine.....
Gosh it is very good in that style, I never knew this existed in incorporated form
DeleteOur most accomplished host guides us through another edition.
ReplyDeleteWhoever did that song outro caption, it’s Westworld, not West World! What had Square Guitar Man done to his forearm? You with the other guitar, are you chewing? For some reason, rockabilly was huge in the next town east to me, Feltham. The best known local practitioners, whose name has sadly eluded me, used a double bass shaped like a coffin.
A sweet nostalgic ‘nothing stays the same’ video for Carly Simon, that old tree hugger. Never mind ‘toaster’, are there any other hits featuring the word ‘grocer’?
It’s Ben and the other three. I’m an animal lover, but I’d gladly put this cat down.
I wonder what market Man 2 Man meets Man Parrish were trying to tap into? Those deluded girls didn’t quite get it. ”Well, it’s different”. Beautifully put, Gaz!
Thin, anaemic and awful – this applies to both Duran Duran’s song and the singer.
The return of Simply Charlie Drake with some horrible delayed frame video effects.
What do ‘Ste’ and ‘Outi’ on the wall of that Mental As Anything video actually mean? A variation there on the celebrated Adelaide Pie Floater, a dish with pea soup so thick a ketchup topped meat pie doesn’t touch the bottom of the plate.
It’s Eight Star. Decidedly Polynesian looking, with sharp dance moves way better than the thin yoghourt song.
Who was Eric Clapton checking out on the balcony repeatedly? Nice to see him not peering into the camera, mind you. That’s a drumkit and a half.
Ben E King lipped up to the top, Gaz? Never mind lips, Ben E’s lower jaw has a life of its own.
I liked the “What do you want?” Europe lyric combining with the lads pointing to the menu, plus the waitress serving Joey a Big Mic.
Re the grocer question, there is poor old Grocer Jack from Keith West's Excerpt From a Teenage Opera...
Deletei thought someone had released a song called "she was only a grocer's daughter". it turns out to be "current" act the blow monkeys, and was presumably a snipe at the witch thatch?
DeleteDuh...Grocer Jack. Of course!
DeleteA fun episode with hardly any FF
ReplyDeleteWest world come in on Sigue Sigue Sputnik coat tails. Fun tune.
I loved Male stripper when it came out - nasty edit in the middle of the track. Mr Parrish Seemed to struggle to get out of the leather jacket :-)
I have a vague memory that the mental as anything track was an old single. I think I first came across the band whilst visiting Australia in 1984...
Eric Clapton very uptempo for his later stuff.
Well remembered, Charlie. A quick look at the 45cat website shows "Live It Up" Was originally released in early 1985 in Australia then early 1986 over here. They also released a single with the wonderful title "If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?".
Delete