Ear we go
09/06/88 (Simon Mayo & Peter Powell)
The Timelords – “Doctorin’ The Tardis” (4)
Tonight's show gets underway with the record that will be number one next week.
Five Star – “Another Weekend” (18) (video)
Looking and sounding like five Michael Jacksons, but the song got no higher.
Voice Of The Beehive – “Don’t Call Me Baby” (23)
Making their debut on the show and the song peaked at number 15.
Mica Paris – “My One Temptation” (7)
Making a second studio appearance but the song got no higher.
Fields Of The Nephilim – “Moonchild” (28) (breaker)
Their biggest hit but it got no higher.
Sabrina – “Boys (Summertime Love)” (24) (breaker)
This bouncy number peaked at number 3.
James Brown – “I’m Real” (31) (breaker)
Got no higher.
Maxi Priest – “Wild World” (15)
Singing a live vocal in the studio, this Cat Stevens cover became his first of three top ten hits when it peaked at number 5.
Morrissey – “Everyday Is Like Sunday” (12)
In the studio to perform his second single from his number one album Viva Hate, and it peaked at number 9.
Wet Wet Wet – “With A Little Help From My Friends” (1) (rpt from 12/05/88)
Fourth and final week at number one.
Erasure – “Chains Of Love” (19) (video/credits)
The second single from their number one album The Innocents, and it peaked at number 11.
June 16th is next.
The asbestos emergency was evidently over by this point, as we are back in the studio. Not sure why PP felt the need to wear a tie for every TOTP appearance he made in these closing stages of his tenure, but he's got one on again here - perhaps he felt he needed to live up to his elder statesman role? He is also very much playing the square in this edition, claiming Doctorin' the Tardis is hilarious when his body language suggests otherwise, and getting all prudish about the Sabrina video. There didn't seem to be all that much chemistry between him and a garishly attired Mayo either, but the latter comes over as far more relaxed and likeable here, even if his "Mozza for number 1" prediction was way off beam.
ReplyDeleteThe future KLF are first out of the traps this week, showing us how to have a number 1 the easy way, as their subsequent book would put it. This melding of Ron Grainer with Gary Glitter and The Sweet is facile and repetitive, but enjoyable enough in a mindless way, and Cauty and Drummond do their best to sell it with an energetic performance featuring one of their boxy Daleks from the video. Ironic in some ways that this topped the charts just as Doctor Who itself was limping towards cancellation by the Beeb. Five Star attempt to go all raunchy, and the girls are so desperate here to be Janet Jackson that it must have hurt. The song is essentially more of the same from the siblings, and would be their last Top 20 hit.
Voice of the Beehive next, featuring Madness drummer Woody Woodgate. If Five Star had pretensions to be like the Jackson family, this lot definitely wanted to sound like The Bangles, and they succeed admirably here with this jaunty, melodic slice of 60s-influenced pop. The two Californian sisters who fronted the band scrub up nicely, though that puffball-like skirt was a big mistake. Mica Paris is back, and despite not being American she has decided to come dressed as the Stars and Stripes - still a good song, though.
Both our hosts struggle with how to pronounce "Nephilim", the band's turgid goth rock proving a lot less memorable than their name. We'll be seeing more of Sabrina and her, ahem, assets, but thankfully no more of this latest forgettable attempt to make James Brown "relevant" and down wiv da kidz, as Soul Brother Number One does his thang with various young pretenders.
You have to admire the length of Maxi Priest's dreads, while wondering at the same time how he kept them from being caught in doors. Not sure why this lightweight cover of the Cat Stevens classic did so well, but reggae-lite was popular at the time, as already demonstrated by Aswad. If you want to hear this song performed by a reggae singer, the Jimmy Cliff version is a much better bet. Mozza's also in the studio for his pleasant, tuneful effort, moving his body around as much as you can when rooted to the spot. After yet another repeat of the Wets' solitary studio turn for their chart topper (wasn't there a video they could have shown instead, for a change?), Erasure close proceedings with one of their less notable records, poppy enough but not one that lodges in your brain. They try to make up for it with lots of chains and Kirby wire action in the video, with Andy donning a top that makes him look like a giant bird of paradise...
I was thinking that I didn't know Five Star were still at it in 1988, and I thought that their 1986 joyride was all there was from them, but thanks for letting us know that this was their last 20 hit. Thank goodness they are on the way out.
DeleteActually I very much liked the puffball skirt on Voice Of The Beehive, which made a change from some of the dreary outfits recently on TOTP.
I typed this when there'd been no comments posted so, with apolgies for repeating / confirming some of John G's comments, here goes...
ReplyDeleteA year after John Humphrys started hosting “Today” (and retired from the show only this morning), we get this 1988 show with two fine jovial hosts (Pete looking smart again) and one of the best lineups overall for ages.
I think Showaddywaddy, The Glitter Band, Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow did synchronsied drumming beforehand, Si. Still, The Timelords (complete with Mud “Dyna Mite” synchronised bass and guitar moves) were stupid but brilliant fun. Loved the Homebase Dalek with feet. One of the best intro acts on the show ever.
Five Star’s hilariously ’raunchy’ image gets plugged again. Don’t make me laugh. There were even some Jacko hiccups in this mush. I half expected to hear “Jam roll, hee hee” as well.
Gold medal tune next with our first act on the show with “of the” in their name. Voice of the Beehive temporarily put The Bangles in their place with a wonderful track. Tracey (tall, guitar, loadsa hand jewellery) and younger sister Melissa really enjoyed being there. Very pleased that, early intro drumbeats apart, we got the entire song and quite right too.
Mica Paris wearing the single sleeve jacket, looking more relaxed and not so scary this time, and a fine song to boot.
Fields of the Nephilim were usually covered in flour so I assumed they were sponsored by Homepride. Not exactly a cheery disco number, is it?
Hmm, I wonder how Sabrina got a big hit with this? More “Boing Boing Boing” than “Boys Boys Boys”! Just as Sam Fox disappears from view chartwise over here as well. Pete wasn’t wrong about the liberal video. I think Sabrina’s top slipped down in the original version. Erm, allegedly!
Talking of tits, it’s James Brown again with another ‘all about me’ shuffle. Yawn. Get off, little man.
Nice mellow live performance from Maxi Priest there. Very assured. Decent rearrangement of Cat’s hit too while I’m at it.
“Morrissey, your song didn’t make the top ten, get in the studio to plug it!”. A bit of a coup there as our Smiths LP T-shirt wearing friend gives us his solo classic in my opinion.
There’s always one, isn’t there? WWW FFF.
Very clever ‘sit still at first then throw yourself into the void’ intro for Erasure. Andy should have taken Vince’s lead and worn a hard hat as he got clattered a few times by those chains – and that’s just the takes we got to see. I hope neither of them were scared of heights. Good to see the full outro played for once.
Agreed on the intro act spectacularity of it. They seemed to be tall geezers, and just loved this Dr Who original soundtrack exerpts from the original TV series where the first few notes I remember sent a shiver down my spine as a young boy growing up in the 1970s and before my teenage years in the 1980s.
DeleteThe current Dr Who soundtrack present-day has of course been diluted down so that it does not sound as scary as the original. How naff of the Beeb to change it! I did't know that The Timelords evolved into the KLF as John G mentions, but come to think of it, the KLF did a similar performances in the TOTP studio in 1990-1991 for their various chart releases.
I quite like the current Doctor Who theme's version, it's pleasingly chunky. I was never totally convinced by Murray Gold's versions, though some were better than others.
DeleteThe only version I really like outside of the Delia Derbyshire version is the Peter Howell reworking used in the early-mid 80s, which for me is the most dynamic and exciting interpretation. The less said about the two subsequent versions used in the final few years of the old series, the better...
DeleteAs TOTP fans, we should be championing Mankind's prog version - we heard it on the show enough.
Deletei would have said mankind's recording of the "dr who" theme was more disco than prog! other cover versions i have of it are by eric winstone and an uncredited one that i think came from a "stereo gold award" album. also have a 3 minute version credited to the bbc radiophonic workshop that sounds like a different recording to that used as the theme in the tv series
DeleteFirst time I heard The Timelords was when Gary Davies played it on his lunchtime show, and I basically thought, oh, fancy that, never predicting it would be a number one hit. Watching this again, it's a spectacularly stupid record by a couple of too smart for their own good blokes, but it's so daft it succeeds in a kind of grandeur. Jon Pertwee should have rereleased I Am The Doctor in 1988, to cash in. He's the only musical Doc I can think of, apart from Sylvester McCoy playing the spoons and Peter Davison composing and singing the theme for Button Moon. Incidentally, there's a documentary about Bill Drummond out soon where you get to see him naked. Try and contain yourselves.
ReplyDeleteOn video, it's Janet and the Michaels, a brand new band who - oh, wait, we know this lot. This is so derivative it's a wonder they didn't get sued. Doesn't Steadman claim to have been Whackson's best pal at one point? Something like that, sort of a Uri Geller thing.
Voice of the Beehive bring their pop rock to the show and one of the brightest singles acts of the year to boot. For some reason I remember the sisters on a Radio 1 sex education show telling the listening millions (after the watershed) that a woman's nipples are extremely sexually sensitive. Erm, anyway, apparently Don't Call Me Baby was about Zodiac Mindwarp (remember him?), and the lyrics sure are spiky to offset the catchy tunesmithery.
Mica's back, trying to break the U.S. market despite being stuck in Blighty, or that's what it looks like. Nice enough, I suppose, but I wasn't bothered about hearing it twice on the show.
To the Breakers! Fun fact: Fields of the Nephilim were once arrested by the police while on tour because the cops thought the flour the band doused themselves with was cocaine. Do they sound like they're on cocaine, for heaven's sake???!!! Oh, and these Goth rockers were named after a race of Biblical giants. Sabrina we will see again, oh how will we see her (and nice edit on the video so we don't see too much), then James Brown trying to go hip-hop with as much success as he went disco ten years before. Oddly enough, I did remember this one.
Maxi Priest really serious about staging his assault on the British charts with a live vocal on this Artist Formerly Known as Cat Stevens cover. As with all his hits, it's inoffensive lite reggae that sounded fine on a summer radio, but you can understand why he's not much revived.
Morrissey with one of his finest three minutes of gloom pop, as it's the 80s it's about a nuclear attack on a boring seaside town, beats the knobbly knees competition or a donkey ride I suppose. Sadly, like Andy Partridge recently it's kind of difficult to enjoy Moz's back catalogue now. Blame the internet.
The Wets perform With a Little Help from Myself for the final time on the show (we hope), and then it's the Peter Pan of Pop, er, Andy Bell? He's in top principal boy form in the video, and this is one of Erasure's better ditties, a propulsive, tuneful slice of dance pop from their golden era.
I remember seeing the Sabrina uncut video on one of the late night ITV shows I think, where she shows her nipples coming out of her white bikini top when leaning on the swimming pool edge. An eye-popping sight no less!
DeleteI managed to get the full unedited video on a VHS pop video compilation at the time, which I still have, and which also includes the video for House Arrest by Krush, and the hilarious video for Wipeout by The Fat Boys featuring The Beach Boys.
totp 14/07/88 (thanks to AcerBen) is here:https://we.tl/t-tGXF2rwwgr
ReplyDeleteWow some great stuff here from Simes and Pete!
ReplyDeleteTimelords – Doctorin’ the Tardis – Well we are lucky to not have this snipped out given who wrote most of it. Nice little bit of ‘Blockbuster!’ at the end also. I think the ‘We obey no-one…We are the superior beings…’ line comes from the very end of ‘Genesis of the Daleks’. I may be wrong. Nice to see the two drummers there. Reminds me of classic bands like Adam and the Ants and um, Dr and the Medics….and maybe Phil and Chester made an industry out of it.
Five Star – Another Weekend – Another one to skip. Ugh! New image or not these lot have outstayed their welcome. This may be the last time we see them (here’s hoping) but a quick look shows that their minor hits continued until 1990 when they finished up with ‘Hot Love’. Not *the* ‘Hot Love’ surely (Kelly Marie I mean….not).
Voice of the Beehive – Don’t call me Baby – After getting Madison Avenue out of my head (“you and me we have responsibility…”) this struck me as remarkably similar to ‘Manic Monday’ by the Bangles. That’s not a bad thing.
Breakers – Fields of the Nephilim – Who? Never even heard of them! Sounds very gothic. Not surprised it got no higher. Sabrina – Phwoooaar!!! Can’t wait for the legendary ToTP appearance. A remarkable piece of music. James Brown – Why?
Maxi Priest – Wild World – Wow! ‘Tea for the Tillerman’. Cat Stevens early album featuring *that* song. This is good from Maxi. A really nice cover of a great song. Look forward to seeing Boyzone performing *that* song!
Morrissey – Every Day is like Sunday – I bought this! I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was singing about but after endless releases with the Smiths etc. I thought this was a great melodious piece of music with nice changes of chords. Not surprised that Simon thought it would make no1 (let’s face it, would have been more worthy than the current no1 and some recent abysmal stuff that had got there).
WWW – Little help – FF
Erasure – Chains of Love – Curiously underwhelming. The biggie is just round the corner and is one of my favourites of 1988 – can’t wait.
...actually in case anyone thinks I'm being sarcastic about Boyzone, cop a listen to this withe volume turned up. Audience participation...that guitar solo. A truly great cover..
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54IV2rOi3CU
Five Star being a feature video slot on this week's show, did not help their fortunes as they went down three places the following week, and so appearing on TOTP while supposed to help a group climb the charts further, clearly had the opposite effect for the Romford group.
DeleteSpot on with your Dr Who story there. The Dalek quotes indeed come from the BBC LP "Genesis of the Daleks" which chopped the story down to an hour with a new cliffhanger and narration form Tom Baker.
DeleteWell, I suppose if someone writes a song about you and you have a time machine, you'd want to check it out … Is that Matt Smiths Doctor (dancing very badly) on the far left of the line of people holding torches in the background of 'The Timelords' performance …?
ReplyDeleteOne word description if this weeks show - pleasant enough (ok then two word)
ReplyDeleteTimelords - great track. People have mentioned KLF, but does anyone remember the Timelords fore-runner, The JAMMs aka Justified Ancients of Mumu? Their album is worth a pretty penny as they sampled ABBA much to their displeasure and it got recalled.
@#£&*ing Five Star still??? FF
Then the bangles... oops sorry, Beehive. Joking apart, I liked this.
Ahhh, Sabrina. That lower white strip was convenient. Peter Powell was talking as if he was watching the unedited version...
Not a fan of Reggae covers, but Maxi Priest version of Wild World quite pleasant - its a, its a, its a, its a win.
Morrissey - can’t stand the man’s views, but he had some quite catchy tunes. Interestingly, a trip to mr wiki says it written by producer Stephen Street.
Skipped cr*p, cr*p, cr*p...
Erasure pleasant enough.
I always thought that the Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu was a KLF production, and not a separate outfit before The Timelords and The KLF. Totally confused now.
DeleteKLF did a song call Justified etc, but originally it was the name of the band https://www.discogs.com/artist/21753-The-Justified-Ancients-Of-Mu-Mu
DeleteVoice Of The Beehive 'Don't Call Me Baby' - a cue for a 'Hello' from a blast from the past! It's good to see so many of the old names still here and still enjoying things! The TOTP re-runs have now completed their journey through the grimmest years of my life and have popped out of the tunnel into the sunny uplands of the early years of my previous job (11 years in that job and 20 in my present one - and, following relocation, my present employer is just 400 yards from my old one!). For me, 'Don't Call Me Baby' is synonymous with this time (I actually started on Monday 6 June 1988).
ReplyDeleteBut this style of harmony-based, electric guitar- and drumkit-driven 'classic pop' - the kind of music I had grown up with - was getting thin on the ground by 1988. I was losing interest in current chart music by this time. I still watched TOTP - indeed, I would continue to do so right through the 1990s and into the 21st century - but most of it washed over me. Sorry I can't be more positive, but I did have a blip of interest with the Britpop phase, which we should get to in a few years time!
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ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday to me...
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday to me...
Happy 14th Birthday dear Morgie
Happy Birthday to me...
14 today and lots of Dr Who novels and music vouchers for my birthday. My favourite TV show turns 25 this year..now what can I spend my birthday record token on....
Well HELLO KLF (aka The Timelords). What can I say about this 3 minutes of pop joy! Loved it, bought it, played it to death. Love every moment of this including the crappy Daleks. So good they wrote a book about it. So many memories from this year and this is one of the highlights. Happy Birthday indeed.
Five Star with their "new raunchy" Janet Jackson inspired image. Shame the songs have taken a turn for the worse. Nothing to stand out about this at all, and severely lacking in the chorus. A "Pointless" answer a couple of weeks ago in the final so thank you TOTP. The End is nigh...
Voice of the Beehive. Now this is a quality tune. The Bangles will surely sue but nobody seemed to notice at the time. Very catchy. Radio friendly. Fabulous.
Mica "One Temptation" Paris up next. Couldn't name another of her hits but this is a really good song. Do you think the cameraman enjoyed his close up?
Breakers:
Fields of The Nephilim. How do you say it Peter? Just noise this really. Crap.
Sabrina - Boys loved this video in my class. Can't think why? Is there a non-clean version of this video? Hmmm.
James Brown. Back again with another 88 style mixed track. Still rubbish.
Maxi Priest sings live. This is a belter of a summer song. Always pop this on my summer playlists. From Now 12 which was my first Now so I played this a lot! Great vocal as well. I wonder if that hair ever becomes annoying...
Morrisey. Now this was an interesting tune for me. Always hated The Smiths. However this song caught my interest and then my new English teacher decided in September that we should cover this in our GCSE English coursework. We had to analyse the lyrics and then we HAD TO WRITE AN EXTRA VERSE. Seriously the most fun I ever had in a school lesson. Shame the rest of it was shit.
Anyway this song ROCKS. I absolutely love it. Just as much as I hate nearly everything else Morrisey ever did solo.
This week really is pilling on the memories for me...
Who bought that bloody Tiffany record..my word.
Kylie is living at Number 2 isn't she.
WWW still at the top. Its better than the other side but I was sooooo bored of this by now.
Erasure get the playout. Was this filmed in the corridor last week. "Chains" of love..oh I get it...very good. Thank god the song is brilliant. will go as far as to say it's their BEST? Controversial. Maybe...
I think I had a good 14th Birthday
Surely all Five Star songs are pointless (I’ll get my coat)
Delete😁😁😁
Delete2 of my favourite songs of the year on this edition, so naturally my Sky box decided not to record it (or last Friday's edition) in a week when I was on holiday so had no idea. Grr....
ReplyDeleteThe Timelords - It's easy to forget now how much of a laughing stock Doctor Who was at the time, so to have a brilliant pop song using the theme tune was unbelievable, even if it was a deliberate attempt to get a novelty No.1. The fact that it actually topped the chart was even better. I lent my 12" single of this to a 'friend' and never got it back.
Five Star - Their glory days have long since passed, with this single their last to even have modest success. And quite rightly so, since it's not very good.
Voice Of The Beehive - A fantastic pop song that finally gave them a hit after several attempts.
Breakers - I remember that Bruno Brookes had just as much trouble pronouncing Fields Of The Nephilim. I have no recollection of the flour gimmick, but then this is very much not my kind of thing. Neither is the James Brown effort, with Full Force back yet again after the Sam Fox single they guested on which we sadly never saw.
Maxi Priest - I've always liked this version, though his live vocal doesn't add much to the experience.
Morrissey - His finest song, beautifully doom-laden yet somehow great fun to sing along to.
Erasure - Not one of their best singles, there were much betetr tunes from 'The Innocents' album that they could have picked instead of it.