Belly Button Stance
Big Hits 1988
Yazz & the Plastic Population ~ 'The Only Way is Up'
Our new blog title, the second biggest seller of the year, and Yazz's only number one hit.
Prefab Sprout ~ 'The King of Rock n Roll'
The band's only top ten hit peaking at number 7.
Neneh Cherry ~ 'Buffalo Stance'
Peaked at number 3.
Tanita Tikaran ~ 'Twist in my Sobriety'
Peaked at number 22.
S-Express ~ 'The Theme from S-Express'
Became their only number one hit at the end of April.
Kylie Minogue & Jason Donovan ~ 'Especially For You'
A number one of course! But didn't get there until January 1989!
Tiffany ~ 'I Think We're Alone Now'
Singing her only number one live in February.
Maxi Priest ~ 'Wild World'
His biggest hit peaking at number 5.
Ofra Haza ~ 'Im Nin' Alu'
Peaked at number 15.
Everything But the Girl ~ 'I Don't Want to Talk About It'
The duo's joint biggest hit peaking at number 3.
Bros ~ 'When Will I Be Famous?'
Became their first of eight top ten hits when it peaked at number 2.
Womack & Womack ~ 'Teardrops'
The duo's only top ten hit peaking at number 3.
Eurythmics ~ 'You Have Placed a Chill in my Heart'
Performing it live and it peaked at number 16.
The Proclaimers ~ 'I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)
Perhaps their most famous song and it peaked at number 11 in 1988.
Bomb The Bass ~ ' Beat Dis'
Peaked at number 2.
Enya ~ 'Orinoco Flow'
Became her only number one hit at teh end of October.
Fairground Attraction ~ 'Perfect'
With their only number one hit, which got there for one week in May.
7th January 1988 is next Friday!
This is Joe King OH YES. I predicted Yazz the only way is up to open Big Hits 88 I was right, I predicted Jason & Kylie Especially For You to close the show I was a little bit out. I did predict Fairground Attraction, S Express and Tiffany. I was also looking forward to Morissey Suadehead and Sinead Oconnor and Mandika. But to no avail
ReplyDelete1988
ReplyDeleteSo we enter one of the formative years of my life 1988.
This year I turn 14 to the sounds of The Timelords, welcome back the Daleks to TV and celebrate 25 years of Dr Who with a full on Xmas of Dr Who goodies. My love became an obsession.
The family holiday to beautiful sunny Devon, to the sounds of Yazz on my walkman and my one and only Radio 1 roadshow on Plymouth Hoe with Peter Powell.
The year dance music swept me up and pop music ruled my life.
The year the Top 40 took over my life, every show taped and replayed all week and I even put together my own Top 20 each week so I could record my favourite songs for posterity.
Can't wait to rediscover all this through TOTP and I am sure my love for the tunes this year will be matched by a lot of contributions from people who hate a lot of 88. 😀 😀 😀
The only way is up…..
88 was the year when I got back into music properly so I am looking forward to the shows massively too!
Deleteso noax: presumably as a middle-aged guy now, you were into pop music in your childhood/teenage days before you got back into it in 1988? if so, then why did you lose interest in it, and for how long for?
Deletei was always obsessed with pop music (even though i didn't like a lot of it!) from the age of about 10 until my mid-30's (which was the mid-90's). after that i realised that (to paraphrase a band from the late 80's that may appear on the show shortly?) pop was beginning to eat itself!
I don't think I'll bother watching this lot! Out of the above, only Enya, The Womacks and Yazz really pique my interest. The song title 'Perfect' conjures up a completely different artist these days. This show selection in my view would have been better if it had included the following 1988 no1 hits:-
ReplyDeleteHeart - PSB
Doctorin' the Tardis - Timelords (Can they show that now I wonder due to the 'Glitter' connection?)
Nothing's gonna change my love for you - Glenn Medeiros
A groovy kind of love - Phil Collins
He ain't heavy he's my Brother - Hollies
The First Time - Robin Beck
Glen Madeiros was my memory of the summer of '88, as a student mid-way through my university days, and who could forget the romantic video of the somewhat mature 18-year old on the beach with his Lovely. Definitely my record of the year, as a 20-year old myself that year, and found it to be the perfect summer holiday tune:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLxTEV5vpyg
sct - definitely agree that Heart would have been a great inclusion in Big Hits. We will probably still get Doctorin' the TARDIS - after all, BBC4 recently showed Shaky's Glitter cover - but I assume the performance of it on the Christmas Day show will be out of bounds as Glitter apparently makes an appearance...
DeleteDefinitely a glittery Christmas. https://youtu.be/CzxCLMjnmRU
DeleteCan't see why they shouldn't show the Timelords, BBC 4 did show The Human League & Rock And Roll featured on the 08th May 1980
Deleteyes that's right. but maybe gg wasn't actually doing any bird for fresh pedo crimes at the time, as i believe he is now?
DeleteAs I mentioned above, BBC4 were happy to show Shaky's Glitter cover as part of the 1987 repeats, so I am confident we will get the Timelords - except on the Christmas show.
DeleteFor me, 1988 was the year that the wheels began to come off the charts, with rap and acid house becoming ever more prominent and SAW, now into their decadent phase, acquiring a seemingly unbreakable grip on the record-buying public. There were some gems about, and I was pleased to see that a few of them made it into Big Hits, though the compilers slightly overdid the number of cover versions and that obscure Ofra Haza song was a strange inclusion, especially as it wasn't that big a hit. It will be interesting to revisit the shows from '88 and see if I end up enjoying them more than I did at the time.
ReplyDeleteThe Story of 1988 was mostly enjoyable, despite the presence of Anthea Turner, though I glazed over slightly during the sections on the Second Summer of Love and the Wee Papa Girl Rappers. The best bit was when that bloke from The Mission said he thought at the time that All About Eve had deliberately refused to mime in order to stick to the Man...
John – you and I are on entirely the same page here. I was musing on this very point whilst doing the garden today and listening to a CD recording of a Tom Browne Top20 show from (sigh) 44 years ago. Yes, June 1975. A guy sells these shows on Ebay regularly and I’ve bought quite a few as it was the only way then to guarantee to hear the entire top20. He must have recorded an awful lot and kept them safely; the quality is really good, and it’s great to hear all these records in their proper context.
DeleteAnyway, I can honestly say that I enjoyed practically the whole of this top20. Lots of great tunes that you can sing along to. No boring monotonous noises with repetitive rhythms. 1988 is gradually morphing into the latter genre with the real tunes few becoming less prominent (although 1988 does still mercifully have some highlights). I just feel that my 1988 reviews are going to be come predominantly negative and ‘FF’ oriented.
Back to the 1975 chart, and I can call out ‘Stand by your Man’ by Tammy Wynette, ‘I’m not in love’ by 10cc, ‘Send in the Clowns’ by Judy Collins, ‘Autobahn’ by Kraftwerk and ‘Let me try again’ by Tammy Jones as particular timeless favourites of mine. I even like the no1 record ‘Whispering Grass’ by Windsor Davies and Don Estelle, despite it being a novelty TV tie-in hit.
I have to agree with John G that the 'second summer of love' thing pretty much passed me by at the time and it was only in retrospect that I became aware of it - although, as a thirteen year old living in a sleepy Gloucestershire village at the time, I suppose it's hardly surprising. The BBC asbestos scare was also notable for featuring a hold up in the recording of the (also 25th anniversary) series of Doctor Who. Having been evacuated from the studios, the filming of 'The Greatest Show In The Galaxy', was moved into a large tent erected in the BBC carpark. Seeing as (owing to a huge stroke of luck!) most of the interiors were set within a 'psychic' circus, it added an air of authenticity to some of the sets that Doctor Who was more usually known to receive more than its fair share of criticism for!
ReplyDeleteThat season of Dr Who featured the story 'Remembrance of the Daleks' where some locations were filmed just down the road from where I worked - Theed Street near Waterloo. Every time I walked past the large green gates I thought of 'Ratcliffe's Yard'. Apparently some of the explosions were quite loud too. Best Sylvester McCoy story in my view.
DeleteThe Second Summer of Love passed me by too, but I was only 8! The big event for me that summer was a pageant, that I took part in, organised by my school to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Spanish Armada. There was some traditional dancing involved, but definitely no raving!
DeleteRe Doctor Who, the show did seem to have a knack of turning unfortunate situations to its advantage. Twenty years earlier, it had looked as if recording of The Mind Robber would be derailed by Frazer Hines contracting chicken pox, but because the story was set in a world where anything could happen, it was easy enough to tweak the script and have Jamie change his face for a couple of episodes, so that another actor could cover.
Frazer's cousin Hamish Wilson no less!
DeleteI'd no idea he was Frazer's cousin - that story was quite the family affair in that case, as Frazer's brother Ian is in it too, playing one of the clockwork soldiers!
DeleteActually, this is a myth that has only recently been debunked. Whilst it is true that Hines' brother played a clockwork soldier, Hamish Wilson is not actually related to him at all - how this myth started seems to ave been lost in the mists of time … https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Jamie_McCrimmon
DeleteWell, that would certainly explain why Hines and Wilson don't say they are related on the Mind Robber DVD commentary! My favourite fan myth is that Harold Pinter appeared in The Abominable Snowmen. One of the guest cast was called David Baron - which Pinter had formerly used as a stage name...
DeleteA good show this one, with the following highlights for me:
ReplyDeleteYazz & The Plastic Population - how tall was she, Good Lord, it sent my head into a spin with her acrobatics, and to see such a tall lanky hourglass type of figure, as she must have been a size 6 even at the age of 27 in that clip.
Prefab Sprout - I was trying to find out who the female backing singer in the tight dark green minidress on this was, but it doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere. Anyone in the know? Oh, and the song was not bad either.
Bomb The Bass - my favourite clip on the show, as I remember the start of the tune as "the names have been changed to protect the innocent", and I quite liked the hottie backing singer with the nice minidress, singing "everybody in the street, get down to the funky beat". I also can't find anywhere as to who this cutie is, so again, anyone in the know, please enlighten me.
Yazz was over 6ft I think and rather attractive with it...
DeleteThe Prefab lady is Wendy Smith ~ she left the band in 2000.
Deleteto my recollection wendy smith was paddy macaloon's other half, although presumably by the year 2000 they'd split up, so was given her marching orders? she did get a bit of stick back then for being the "bez" of the band, although i personally always felt her ethereal vocals added something to their sound
DeleteCorrect, Wendy Smith was the Linda McCartney of Prefab Sprout. For my sins, I looked like Paddy's bassist brother Martin when I was younger...
Deletei'd like to think i looked a bit like paddy when prefab sprout were at their peak in the early 90's. however the reality probably was that i just had the same floppy bob cut that was popular at the time. apparently these days he wears an enormous zz top-style beard - certainly not something i'd like to emulate now!
DeleteAs there seems to be a lot of affection for Doctor Who here I'd like to big up my anorak credentials by pointing out that the journalist Sian Pattenden who popped up (not for the first time) in the documentary played the young Tegan Jovanka in Mawdryn Undead.
ReplyDeleteAnd young Nyssa went onto Eastenders as one of Phils many wives
DeleteThe vintage car used in 'Mawdryn Undead' is the one in my 'sct353' picture.
DeleteHi Anonymous. Have you got 27/12/71, which is the last one from '71 that hasn't been asked for? Also have you got 11/07/85 in higher res that you have previously uploaded? Finally have you got 5/01/84, 2/02/84 and 9/08/84, none of which have been requested before and all had cuts when shown by BBC4. Cheers!
ReplyDeleteHI brie here's what i can find, all of them, 050184 has mute links though however i've included bbc4 version with links intact maybe someone can restore them,
Deletehttps://we.tl/t-NaNIuPPoyn
Thanks Anonymous for these. Great stuff!
ReplyDeleteI quite enjoyed the brave choices in this show - the Ofra Haza track being included was a real happy surprise as it's one of my favourites from the year. Going for the lesser known Tanita Tikaram song was also welcome.
ReplyDeleteI just knew that two of my least favourites - Perfect and Teardrops - would show up though.
Please can someone invest in a course to teach the caption writer how to use punctuation though.
RE: The Story of 88... I was reading about vintage kids TV today and found out that the producer of Rentaghost was... Paul Ciani! I suppose it did have a very catchy theme tune.
ReplyDeletedespite his name, wasn't paul ciani that scottish guy that used to introduce the programmes on channel 4 in the 80's? also, didn't he marry that model-turned presenter debbie greenwood who was hot around that time? of course i could look all this up on wiki now, but i'm just testing my memory!
DeleteYou're thinking of Paul Coia, of Catchword "fame".
Deletethanks thx - close, but no cigar!
Delete