The ice-cream of the crop
05/05/88 (Bruno Brookes & Adrian John)
Joyce Sims – “Walk Away” (24)
Joyce gets the show off to a frilly dress start but the song got no higher.
New Order – “Blue Monday ‘88” (10) (video)
It only seems like yesterday that this song was first in the charts, and then once again, and now here it is for a third time! This remixed version actually did best of all, and peaked at number 3.
Magnum – “Start Talking Love” (29)
Making their debut next are Birmingham's answer to Bon Jovi, performing what becam their biggest hit, and it peaked at number 22.
Harry Enfield – “Loadsamoney (Doin’ Up The House)” (17) (breaker)
On its way to number 4!
The Adventures – “Broken Land” (30) (breaker)
Their biggest hit, peaking at number 20.
Narada – “Divine Emotions” (22) (breaker)
Peaked at number 8.
Prince – “Alphabet Street” (18) (breaker)
Peaked at number 9.
The Christians – “Born Again” (26)
They were studio regulars by now, and this song went up one more place.
Primitives – “Out Of Reach” (25)
Also in the studio tonight but this one got no higher
S-Express – “Theme From S-Express” (1)
A new performance tonight for their second and final week at number one.
Star Turn On 45 Pints – “Pump Up The Bitter” (15) (video/credits)
Er.... this comedy medley peaked at number 12.
12th May is up next.
New boy Adrian John doesn’t ring a bell at all. Big glasses.
ReplyDeleteJoyce Sims – Walk away – I did. FF
New Order – Blue Monday – Ah! Absolutely fabulous. Loved seeing and hearing this again. Was it really a picture of them on the chart rundown?
Magnum – Start talking love - …or ‘sweet talking love’ as announced by our debut host (although he got it right on the chart rundown). This is really quite good. Sort of Heart (the group, not the PSB song) without the female vocals. Nice to see a member of ZZ Top in the ranks too. Debut performance for the group although they had been releasing singles since 1975 when their first single was the Searchers no1 hit ‘Sweets for sweet’.
Breakers – Harry Enfield did some great sketches but I found the loadsamoney pretty unamusing and irritating. For me the one-off ‘Joey’ sketch featuring Michael Kitchen and Amanda Root is one of my all-time funniest Enfield sketches. The Adventures deserved more with their anthemic ‘Broken Land’. Nothing to say about the other two.
Christians – Born again – Ah! The Christians releasing a single called ‘Born again’ – the irony. Nice laid back sound remixed from the debut album.
Primitives – Out of reach – Gosh this is short! Sort of Blondie sound again and the lead singer is wearing the same outfit as on the single sleeve.
S Express – Last week at no1 thank goodness! How many no2’s can you think of that should have made it to the top spot? ‘The Air that I breathe’, ‘Vienna’, ‘Right here waiting’, ‘Somebody to love’….zzzzz
Star Turn on 45 pints – Pump up the Bitter – Couldn’t bear to listen to this, so didn’t.
i remember falling about watching harry enfield's "norbert smith: a life" when it was first shown on the telly. i also loved the "smashy and nicey" special when that was broadcast. i have seen both since and they weren't quite so funny the second time around, but i would say still well worth a look to anyone interested in comedy from that era
DeleteThe Adventures were the feature of the Breakers this week. Just love this tune, but it gotta leave a tear in the eye when you think of a gloomy song title like Broken Land. Hardly upbeat title, but somehow very appealing sounding tune. Could hum this one all week long and feel good. Strange how a title and its associated sound can give totally opposite effects.
DeleteAfter a couple of cameo appearances during the Hurll years, Adrian John is given the opportunity by Paul Ciani to host a regular show. He isn't terrible, but does come across as a strange mixture of intense and cheesy, peering into the camera as if he is scrutinising some curious specimen under a microscope. He also has zero chemistry with Bruno (who does an efficient enough job here), and so it's not surprising he would not be seen again.
ReplyDeleteJoyce Sims hasn't brought her piano with her this time, and I don't like her fussy skirt, but this is still a confident performance of a decent, upbeat tune which nevertheless is not as memorable as her previous hit. I don't know what excuse New Order had at the time for reissuing Blue Monday again, but it paid off handsomely for them; though a remix, this doesn't sound much different from the original to me, just a bit faster. There's a very busy video to go with it, but the dog easily outshines the band.
I've never heard of Magnum before, and on seeing and hearing them automatically assumed they were an American AOR outfit at least four or five years behind the times. As Angelo says, they were in fact Brummies and had been around for the best part of two decades by this point, with only modest success to show for it. This song isn't bad, but sounds like many others in the AOR genre and doesn't stand out, unlike the guitarist with his impressive beard! All the breakers will be on again next time, so on to The Christians, making what feels like their umpteenth appearance in the studio but still searching for that elusive first Top 10 hit. They would have to wait until their next single before they finally achieved that, but this effort is pleasant enough; as with so much of the music on this show, however, it is fundamentally bland. The Primitives are more lively, and it's great to hear a bit of jangly guitar pop in an era when such sounds were thin on the ground. Not quite as good as the previous hit, but still the best song on the show for me, and Tracy Tracy was looking very foxy here. S-Express serve up a new studio turn for their final week at the top, but there is precious little difference to the previous one. We then close with a one-joke parody of Pump Up the Volume, by a bunch who had actually been going since the medley craze of 1981, hence their name. It briefly raised a smile, and the video has some nice moments where it parodies the M/A/R/R/S promo, but overall it's thin comic gruel. Was Vic Reeves inspired to do his Shooting Stars club singer turn by this lot, I wonder?
It's quite interesting regarding Joyce Sims. Unusual to put her first up as the show opener, where TOTP usually uses a dance group rather than a soloist. And then it was not really what I was expecting from Sims, considering her iconic tune Come Into My Life with that famous video with ballgown, sitting and playing the piano while singing.
DeleteHowever, I do admire her fashion style with evening (ball) dresses which were becoming a theme across all her singles, whether on video or in the TOTP studio, especially her penchant for the sleeveless evening dresses showing her fine figure, and whether or not people liked the music. She's becoming quite a regular on these reruns of late, and growing in my estimation with every appearance on the show.
The pub singer parody was a bit of a "thing" for a while, before Vic there was, er, The Pub Singer on the Steve Wright in the Afternoon show who I think was Adrian Juste putting on a funny voice. Or a funnier voice.
DeleteDory - I think this may be the last time we see Joyce Sims, as she only managed one more Top 40 hit after this, and that only made it to 39. She's still performing though, and turned 60 last week.
DeleteHappy 60th Joyce! Love your dresses, especially the one in the Come Into My Life video.
DeleteFrom memory, at least on "Shooting Stars", Vic Reeves's club singer was inspired by Paul Shane's incredible take on "You've Lost That Loving Feeling On "Pebble Mill At One". Babay babe-EHHHH!
DeletePaul Shane wasn't alone in that dubious sound, surely the granddaddy of the style was P.J. Proby who is still performing, I think.
DeleteMy memory is that Vic was already doing the club singer thing on Shooting Stars before that infamous Paul Shane performance, but I might be wrong. They certainly used a clip of it on SS later on!
DeleteNot a fantastic episode, but a few highs.
ReplyDeleteJoyce Sims - tuneless, not helped by vocals way down the mix (but loud enough to hear the bum notes)
New Order always good for a wired video. Interesting remix.
Someone forgot to switch on the Magnum guitarist’s mike...
Skipped Bored Again after first 30 seconds...
And hit number two for the Prims. Up pace track, so cameras have to fly around - how original.
Pump Up The Bitter didn’t really work, I’m afraid.
I quite liked this Primitives follow-up to their last single, and agree wholeheartedly with John G, about the lead looking very foxy on this appearance, and far from primitive, so I wonder why they chose such a name for the band, considering a foxy lead singer!
DeleteI remember Adrian John trailing this presenter appearance for ages on his early morning Radio 1 show, it was a big deal because he was usually on so early that he was never able to present - he had to go to bed to be up for the next day's morning show. They accommodated him for this episode, and, um, never asked him back. But while he was a very nice man and had an engagingly daft radio persona, he wasn't really suited to TV, alas.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, on with the music, and Joyce Sims gets us off to a tune-free start, as if this one needed a couple more run throughs to get some kind of melody sorted out. Ditching the piano this time, she remains a bright, smiley performer, but this one makes her voice sound whiny.
Next, one of the most overplayed records known to humanity, it is a classic but I could go through the rest of my life happily never hearing it again. Very well-trained dog in the video.
Magnum, legs akimbo, with what sounds like a parody of hair metal, and indeed it looks like that too. But there was always something of the panto about this stuff, and credit to them for plugging away for so long and finally having a hit single to show for it. Very much not a trendsetter, though, they failed to blow my head clean off.
One comment on the Breakers: on Mastermind last night, a contestant mixed Pete Waterman up with Dennis Waterman too - only he wasn't joking!
Smoooooth crooning from The Christians, not my favourite from the album, and they were really milking it for singles by this stage, but nice to hear nonetheless. Ironically, despite all the hard work on the original material, their biggest hit would be a charity cover.
Hey, short and sweet, it's The Primitives, great to hear something that's not Crash and one of the highlights from the Lovely album. Excellent mix of the aggressive guitars and Tracey's trilling. Bruno seems almost caught off guard.
You know it's 1988 because the No.1 mentions a ghetto blaster in the lyrics. Aside from that, much as before, and again they cut off the "Ha! Ha! Ha!" bit at the end.
Then to end on, proving the novelty record had some life in it yet, Star Turn on 45 Pints (which is a funny name in itself) with one of their working men's club parodies. If you get the joke, this is pretty amusing, and I must admit it does make me laugh in places. Would someone help Mrs Patel out?
Magnum nowadays is better known as the nation's favourite ice cream on a stick, very chocolatey and good value if purchased as pack of 4 from the mainstream supermarkets. The pop/rock group of the same name passed me by in the 80s, as I can't remember them ever charting before this one.
DeleteS-Express seemed to be a jovial eclectic and strange mix of people on that stage. I wonder who got them altogether, as it looked like someone had picked random people off a London street with its diverse multicultural components. Anyway, I particularly liked the cute keyboardist with the red leotard and red headscarf just in front of the mainstage videoscreen, wearing disctinctive DexysMR-style jeans/dungarees. Awfully cute that girl. I wonder what she is doing now, in her fifties I would think, and looking back at this TOTP rerun?
thx i know exactly what you mean about "blue monday" - although i wouldn't head to the hills if i happened to hear it in a public place, unlike most of the early new order stuff i would never play it out of choice now thanks to the over-exposure
Deletei don't know if this was mentioned when the original was heard in these re-runs, but the legend was despite probably out-selling the rest of their stuff put together the band supposedly lost money on every copy that was sold as manufacturing the fancy sleeve apparently cost more than the royalties they were getting from it!
@Wilberforce: That's true, the 12" original of Blue Monday did lose money, another example of Factory Records' blasé (or non-existent) business sense.
DeleteDory, back in the day Magnum was also Tom Selleck!
DeleteGood Lord, it seems that we are back to only one show next week, thanks to the Sky At Night on Thursday slowing us down (thankfully) a bit. The one show that we will get on Friday will have Star Turn On 45 Pints appearing in the TOTP studio, unusually as a main slot, considering their main slot last week on the playout, so I'm surprised they will be on two shows in a row as main slot, as a playout usually counts as a main. Also we get to see Kylie Minogue second ever single. Ooerr!
ReplyDeleteLooks like there will just be the one show the week after as well, due to the Proms. I imagine after that we will be back to two shows per week generally, otherwise we will never get through '88 by Christmas, now we are no longer skipping shows.
DeleteDon't know why we need to complete 1988 by Christmas??
DeleteWell, we don't have to, but I'm assuming that BBC4 will be sticking with what they have done ever since these repeats started and finish up one year in December before moving on to the next in January.
DeleteHi folks. Life getting in the way again (followed by a much needed break on the Norfolk coast), hence I’ll critique this show first (as I saw it at about 1 a.m. this morning) and work backwards for the shows I missed recently if I get the chance.
ReplyDeleteA real meat and potatoes hosting by Adrian John and his oversize shades, who I thought wasn’t very funny then I realised I’d mistaken him for Adrian Juste! The very essence of forgettable, but I’d rather have seen The John constantly instead of Anthea Sodding Turner. Bruno’s Bruno as usual. Can’t stand him but, at least, Trevor’s agreed to let his appearances be shown.
Smiley Sims is back, with a dress more palatable than that Hazell Dean thing but with a through-the-ears effort, I’m afraid.
I hate that New Order re-mix with the “Ay-yah”s. Horrible and not needed. Arty and enjoyable video, though, which I’m sure Paul Chinstroke Morley would have nodded at in approval.
Next it’s Mivvi, er, Magnum with a Fab attempt at poodle metal which didn’t exactly Zoom up the charts. Respect for the lads’ (lolly)stickability. Ahem!
Harry Enfield with an effort I found way inferior to our outro track. Loadsacack.
The Adventures, once booked for “Crackerjack” would you believe, with a wonderful bittersweet song. Political and heartfelt with a killer chorus. This peaked at 20? Shame on the record buying public.
Narada with not exactly the nadir of his career but, with lyrics such as “boing boing boing”, could’ve done better.
Prince with a cracking track and intriguing video. Alphabetically, song and visuals get an A-.
The Christians should really have had a crack at Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” as a follow-up to this earnest offering to the congregation.
Tracy Tracy loves the camera, doesn’t she? Hmm, I quite like her back. The Primitives’ tune was fizzy and bouncy and thrashy and bloody short. Enjoyable but well in the shadows of their big hit.
I liked the way Mark Moore was on the fringes of the S-Express ensemble and not hogging it centre stage like Simon Look-At-Me Harris. Still loving the ‘having to mime the samples’ era.
House called! Star Turn on 45 Pints would probably have sold more in the knowing working men’s clubs areas up North. I’ve heard far worse comedy parodies. I’m surprised The Barron Knights didn’t cotton on.
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ReplyDeleteAdrian John. Don't remember him on TOTP at all or Radio One either,
ReplyDeleteJoyce Sims. My word these puffy black skirts were popular weren't they. This isn't really a great song. Far too over produced. Her voice has been treated as well which doesn't need it as she's a decent singer. Disappointing follow up.
New Order. I like this remix of Blue Monday. Very peculiar video. That dog is the main talent I think. At least we are spared another live performance.
Ice creams at the ready it's heavy metal rockers Magnum. Nope, me neither. That's one hell of a beard on the guitarist. Never Gonna Give You Up...12 year old wants to know they are singing bits of a Rick Astley song.... Forgettable stuff really..next...
Breakers:
Harry Enfield. Novelty record alert. More of this to come,
The Adventures. Now this is a quality record. Big fan of this one,
Narada. A radio favourite. Haven't heard it in years though. Seems a bit light on production.
Prince. Alphabet street is one my favourite songs from Prince. Loved this at the time, great video as well.
Rob Base didn't get a look in did they?
The Born Again Christians. Oh very good. Remember this one and they had quite a good chart run didn't they. A nice mellow number that has improved with age.
The Primitives. Lucky to get an outing for this one I think, not a patch on their first single. In the mid 90s some friend of mine had a band called Cuckooland who made an album of these short punchy repetitive punk songs. It's like listening to them all over again.
Not much moving in the Top Ten this week and the we get a return of S-Express to the studio. Some great one note keyboard playing going on there from Bandana Girl.
Pump Up The Bitter. Housey Housey. Pile of Pants..as they'd say up t'north.
Just want to mention a song stuck just outside the Top 40 that I purchased at the time and loved but never quite hit the charts. Al B Sure got a lot of airplay with Nite and Day. As much a part of 88 for me as s-express. Just thought I'd give it a mention.
I remember this Al B Sure hit being played regularly on Paul Gambaccini's American charts on Saturday afternoons in 1988, as a top 10 (or possibly top 5 single) in America which is how I was introduced to it, and I liked the catchy line "How can I tell you how I feel about you nite and day...", that I bought the 7" single here in the UK, so it was actually released here also as a vinyl record, but I don't remember it charting, so must be cos it just missed out on a top 40 place as you say. Good shout.
Deletei seem to remember that al b sure was one of quincy jones's singers on his 70's/80's disco records? al b sure that's not his given name though!
DeletePoor Adrian John - clearly nervous, not the best presence for TV but he does a decent enough job and I'd rather see him again than Steve 'over there!' Wright that's for bloody sure....
ReplyDeleteJoyce Sims - A dreadful song that has dated really badly. Like all her other stuff basically.
New Order - I don't mind this remix. As a way of getting a 'radio edit' out of the original it does a pretty good job.
Magnum - I suppose I should stick up for the Brummie acts but...no...I just can't for this lot.
The Christians - Another one of their radio friendly pop tunes, pretty inoffensive but it has a certain charm.
The Primitives - A good follow-up to 'Crash' that deserved to go at least a bit higher up the chart.
Star Turn on 45 Pints - I still think this is pretty funny, certainly funnier now than Harry Enfield's effort. Since we were talking about radio censorship in an earlier thread, it's interesting to note that the BBC left in something I edited out when I played it on my show - the 'Gunga Din!' comment just after the Mrs. Patel bit (which in itself I thought fine since it's a parody of the Ofra Haza sample) but possibly they just didn't spot it, it's fairly low in the mix.
Unusual to see you later to the party than Morgie on this occasion!
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