Top of the particles
29/06/89 (Anthea Turner with Radio One's Tim Smith!)
Holly Johnson – “Atomic City” (18)
Dressed in his best ppe and getting the show underway with what was his final top 40 hit but it got no higher than number 18.
Queen – “Breakthru’” (13) (video)
Peaked at number 7.
Double Trouble & Rebel MC – “Just Keep Rockin’” (11)
Third time on the show but this tune was now at its peak.
Donna Allen – “Joy & Pain” (10) (rpt from 15/06/89)
Also at its peak.
Monie Love - "Grandpa's Party (37) (breaker)
Peaked at number 16.
Waterfront - "Cry" (33) (breaker)
Peaked at number 17.
Sonia - "You'll Never Stop Me Loving You" (38) (breaker)
Will be number one in three weeks time.
M – “Pop Muzik ‘89” (20)
It had peaked at number 2 ten years earlier, this time round it made it to number 15.
Guns N’ Roses – “Patience” (22) (video)
Peaked at number 10.
London Boys – “London Nights” (19)
Leaping about the studio once more with what became their biggest hit when it peaked at number 2.
Soul II Soul – “Back To Life (However Do You Want Me)” (1) (video)
Second of four weeks at number one.
Public Enemy – “Fight The Power” (30) (video/credits)
Went up one more place.
Next up is 6th July.
Anthea Turn-off is teamed with Tim nice but dim from Radio One! Who you ask? Well you'll have to ask someone else as I have no idea.
ReplyDeletePersonal Protection Equipment at the ready it's Holly Johnson with his end of the world anthem “Atomic City”. Full version is over 5 minutes long so we only get a part of this. Another quality pop song from Holly and he always put an effort into his TOTP appearances and videos. Not sure why he suddenly disappeared again after this one, I guess he couldn't find a decent second album. I've had a "Blast" watching these performances though...
Queen with a video I remember quite clearly from the time. “Breakthru’” not quite in the same league as previous singles.
Double Trouble & Rebel MC “Just Keep Rockin’”.
I wish they wouldn't.
Donna Allen back again. Never realised “Joy & Pain” went Top Ten. fair play.
Breakers:
Monie Love - What an odd title for a hip hop record. Don't fancy an invite to "Grandpa's Party" based on this evidence.
Waterfront - Now this is more like it. Great tune, a bit of a Bros vibe in the video.
Sonia - "You'll Never Stop Me (FROM) Loving You" Not sure you'll ever start with this one love. One of SAW weakest songs with their shittiest video.
Just awful but I'll be signing along by the time it gets to Number One as it's so bloody infectious. Some of Holly's PPE may come in handy.
M is back! A double-header as the single had “Pop Muzik ‘89” on one side and the original version on the other. Pocket money well spent. Clearly in the charts as Robin has been and bought all the CD singles from his local Woolworths to attach to his jacket. The CD not quite invented the first time around of course, maybe he should have performed with 7" records attached to himself!
A decent remix as well (take note Bananarama!)
Guns N’ Roses with a hat-trick of two hits in the Top 40 (well done Turn-off) “Patience” definitely required to get through this one..
It's party time with the London Boys. “London Nights” has a catchy post chorus bit, but the rest of it is not up to much. Number 2 for this one..well I guess that's because it was all over the radio in 89. There was no getting away from it.
Soul II Soul rightly still Number 1.
Public Enemy “Fight The Power”. Never got them really but I'm not their target audience. I'll pass..
perhaps holly johnson disappeared shortly after this as a result of having HIV?
Deleteof coures it was around this time that the AIDS epidemic very much became the global health scare of that era. if only it was as easy to avoid the current virus i.e. by avoiding unprotected sex and contimated blood transfusions!
Morgie - Tim Smith has for years been Steve Wright's second banana on his Radio 2 show.
DeleteNever realised Holly had been that ill. That explains it then.
DeleteSo Tim is one of Wrightys posse is he. Must admit haven't listened to Steve Wright for many years. He's been doing the same show since the 80s and it wasn't particularly good then..
I remember seeing the video played a lot by The Chart Show, and was the best of Holly Johnson's solo career videos following the Frankie era. It's definitely one of my favourite videos of 1989, and worth a look, as he plays a pied-piper sort of character collecting ordinary people to lure them into his atomic city lair:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaqsTzZndkQ
I was dreading Anthea's solo debut, but she was actually reasonable here, almost professional in fact. For some reason perennial Wrighty sidekick Tim Smith is along for the ride, but despite introducing the breakers competently enough he wouldn't be added to the roster.
ReplyDeleteIt's time to say goodbye to Holly, with a weak effort that sounds a bit like a Frankie cast-off. The performance plays up the "atomic" element of the title to the max, though inevitably, as Angelo alludes to above, other associations come to mind seeing those protection suits at the moment - the drummer and the keytarist must have been boiling. The lovely guitarist is back, but I preferred her without the wig. Queen next, with a distinctive video that I remember well from the time, filmed on the Nene Valley Railway near Peterborough. The song does have the rhythm of a moving train in parts, which probably helps to explain the video concept, but it's a mediocre offering.
Double Trouble and the Rebel MC return to an enthusiastic audience, and once the breakers are out of the way we see the return of Robin Scott and his wife Birgit with their hardy perennial of a song. If this is a remix, it's hard to tell, but to be honest my attention was on Robin's CD suit and Birgit's colourful attire - their dress sense seems to have become more flamboyant over the decade since we last saw them. G N' R are on video, breaking out the acoustic guitars in a bid to show their more sensitive side. Not a bad attempt at a slower number, though it cut off before I could really make my mind up about it.
The London Boys return with essentially more of the same, in terms of both song and performance. This may have been the bigger hit, but Requiem was the better record. We close with some in-yer-face rap from Public Enemy, taken, as the clapperboards in the video make abundantly clear, from Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing. The late Danny Aiello, Madge's dad from the Papa Don't Preach promo, features prominently here.
That's why the guy in the Public Enemy video looked familiar. 😀
DeleteThanks. That was bugging me.
John, Anthea wasn't solo on this show, as she had Radio 1's newest DJ Tim Smith joining her throughout the show.
DeleteDouble Trouble & The Rebel MC were in the studio for the third time in the last few weeks to perform the same song, and three different studio appearances, which was a rarity when a single only gets to No.11 at its peak. Usually TOTP would repeat one of the studio performances during its rise up the charts, or slip in the video on playout on the third occasion, but clearly Double Trouble got the full open door with TOTP for fullest promotion and no playouts. As we don't get to see the video, and it is something like a cross between The Selector and The Specials from the late 70s Ska era in style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAJ37ZYsg4k
Holly does return to the studio many years later, performing a horrendous dance remix of The Power Of Love.
DeleteDouble Trouble and Rebel MC getting close to the Jesse Green award for multiple studio performances of a non-top ten hit. Anyone else remember when "Nice And Slow" seemed to be on the show every other week for a couple of months?
Deleteyes of course arthur - back in the "good old days" when we started our critiques of this programme!
Deleteone assumes that as jesse was a london-based singer without a proper band, then whenever the show's producers wanted someone to fill a gap then his name was top of the list? also as one of the few black artists signed to the EMI label, they might have been using their influence in that regard?
Dory - Anthea was solo here to all intents and purposes. Tim Smith was just a guest invited to introduce the breakers, but did nothing else apart from saying hello and goodbye.
DeleteAnthea and one and done Tim tonight, the latter always seems to be looking for antiques in a celeb show when I switch on BBC2 about 7pm.
ReplyDeleteHolly Johnson with a heavily overproduced but largely unmelodic single, surprised this got as high as it did, though there was probably a lot of goodwill after two stronger singles were hits (three if you count the Hillsborough one). Was that a Larry Blackmon-style codpiece Hol was wearing?! To go with the self-isolating theme, he looked as if he was out of hair product too. As mentioned above, he was very sick from AIDS for some of the 1990s and wasn't able to capitalise on his solo success, but he's much better now.
Someone who didn't get better from AIDS was Freddie Mercury, and Breakthru was one of his last hits. I'm in the minority in that I really like this, in fact it's one of my favourite Queen singles, it has a hopeful air that's quite poignant in light of Freddie's health problems. I think he really sells this.
Dub Trub and RMC back again for an improbable third time, and with audience participation to boot, though their enthusiasm runs out pretty fast.
Donna's not in the studio, we're not fooled, stop doing this! Leggings and stockings, just noticed. Didn't catch on.
Breaker, breaker, then M back for an unlikely second bite at the cherry given that this "remix" is practically imperceptible to most ears. So that's who bought all those copies of Brothers in Arms. They missed a trick not training a spotlight on him.
GnR with the de rigueur "we're big softies really" acoustic ballad that all hard rockers had to do around this point, and sounding weirdly similar to Take That's song of the same name, different vocal styles apart. Not for me.
London Boys with LONDON NIGHTS!!!!!!, another shouty, top of the voice dance ditty from them, though without the flip this time, I am disappointed to say. Their two big hits are more or less interchangeable, I don't mind either, but you can hear why they were a flash in the pan.
Anyone notice there's a hair in the gate in the Soul II Soul video, right at the start? Bottom left hand corner. Pretty sloppy.
They finally feel brave enough to play Public Enemy, and it's the theme song from Do the Right Thing, memorably danced to by Rosie Perez over the opening credits. They had such a big sound for those first few years, thanks to Terminator X and Chuck D's booming voice, and this is one of their best. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is a fantastic album. Spike Lee directed the video too, and for some reason chose to spoil his movie multiple times in the course of it by showing the ending! Only one thing wrong with this: Elvis wasn't a racist. John Wayne probably was, so they can motherfuck him with impunity.
The return of M ten years after Pop Musik was a hit first time round, was somewhat of a surprise, and I don't know what prompted them to come back a decade later in 1989 to go over the same thing. Was there any TV advert at the time, or were they being played on the radio a lot on the oldies shows?
DeleteI was also wondering what the two teenage miniskirt girls on the left side stage were there for? It could be that one of them was the daughter of the lead singer or the female side vocalist on M being given a chance to join them on stage with her friend?
Also those CDs on the lead singer's suit were something revolutionary at the time, as they were quite expensive in their first year in the market, but I remember still buying 7-inch vinyl records even well into 1990 until you couldn't get them in the shops anymore which came at around the 1990-91 season. The first CD single I bought was in 1993 though.
I am struggling to recall the first CD single I bought. I think it might have been 'Land of Confusion' by Genesis. The first CD album I bought was 'Eye in the Sky' by the Alan Parsons Project (in 1987).
DeleteI have Eye in the Sky on CD, but I bought it a lot more recently! I didn't get a CD player till the mid-90s.
DeleteMe too, I got my first CD player in 1993, as I persevered with vinyl and VHS as long as possible, so as to use my existing machines to play them (record player and video recorder) before forking out for a CD player.
DeleteAnother Turnoff edition, more sitting down and Roland Rat “Yeahs” and ballsups as normal, but wait! Who’s this chiselled-chin mannequin in a bright shirt? It’s Tim Of Many Words, one of which is when he miscalls her “Anther”! “Anther” for God’s sake. You only had one job!
ReplyDeleteA dyed haired Holly Johnson with a Living In a Box-style groove rather than song whose backing track sounds like that of a Jacko album leftover. Hardly “Atomic” by Blonde, is it?
Health and Safety would have a field day with that Queen video these days. An earlier version of the scenario was undertaken by that there Susie Mathis (remember her?) with her troupe Paper Dolls, easily found on YouTube in black and white on a train’s cargo carriage whizzing somewhere through Europe.
“We like these guys”. Obviously, Turnoff. No amount of force will force me to watch that wooh-yeah pap.
No, Turnoff, Donna Allen isn’t here! I hope Andy Parkin didn’t watch otherwise he might not be able to control himself again.
Oh dear, lost my invite to “Grandpa’s Party”. I’d have passed on it anyway.
Waterfront with an oh-so-80’s and oh so forgettable effort. More like Paddling Pool to these ears.
The breakers aren’t even in chronological order! Ay up, it’s the female Mick Hucknall with an even lowel level (as if they could have managed it) SAW-by-numbers slab off the conveyor belt.
The highest climber goes in at 20, Turnoff? It either goes up if it’s a climber or goes in if it’s a chart entry. For feck’s sake! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Ostentatious CD Man and his sidekick Neon Ballerina. Nice to hear again but the jacket glare waa glaring (we’ve lost other episodes for less epileptic effects than this) and the re-issue seemed pointless.
A hat-trick of two hits? Jesus Christ! Let the mannequin have a go, he can’t be any worse. Ooer, William ‘Axl’ Rose actually has a decent voice when he’s not wailing, plus we get to see Slash’s face. Nice and unexpected, the archaeological find of the show by a Roman road.
London Boys next with “Requiem” part 2 except for a different chorus and a solo forward roll instead of an assisted backflip. Times are hard.
NO NO NO, Turnoff! The final rundown is 10 to 1, NOT 1 to 10! Could someone unplug her, please?
Public Enemy recently sacked long serving clock wearer Flavor Flav after nearly 30 years in the group. I wonder if they gave him a clock for his service? The ‘love’ and hate’ knuckledusters in the video remind me of a story I heard of someone who had those letters tattooed on his fingers (not thumbs), and lost a finger some years later, so his knuckles then read ‘love’ and ‘hat’!
Despite doing bugger all, Tim made fewer mistakes than Anther. Can we ditch her and keep him? Please?
No Arthur, I prefer to keep Anthea, as I think she's quite cute, so her mistakes are excused. There's plenty of room on TOTP to keep both her and Tim!
DeleteOkay,provided she sharpens up a bit / a lot. :-D
DeleteHolly Johnson - weak track sounding like it neededTrevor Horn’s touch. Oddly abrupt ending
ReplyDeleteQueen - good (railway) track
Breakers: Monie Love, bog standard late 80s dance track; waterboys warety; sonia - bog standard SAW
M - another ridiculous remix record, but they appeared to be performing original, which was nice. Interesting outfits.
GnR - they could do no wrong at this time could they? I prefer their rockier tracks.
London Boys - well this was a surprise. I rather liked this. A flavour of non-po-faced Pet Shop Boys...
Being pedantic but not 1-10, but 10 to 1..
Public Enemy - eject...
I remember Mark Lamarr describing Public Enemy as being like Louis Farrakhan sharing the stage with Bugs Bunny jumping around. Shame they've fallen out, looks serious (for Flavor Flav, anyway).
ReplyDeleteI actually thought Anthea did quite a good job of hosting here. Yes Tim Smith was there but he was very much the junior partner. Actually I have known a number of Tim Smith’s in my life, but I don’t recall this guy, so I obviously wasn’t watching the show at this point in time. Content-wise, I found little to excite me.
ReplyDeleteHolly Johnson – Atomic City- A case of diminishing returns. After the great debut single ‘Love Train’ (with its Brian May solo) I was not so keen on ‘Americanos’ nor this.
Queen – Breakthru – Speaking of Brian May. This for me is the best single from ‘The Miracle’ album. Penned by Mercury and Taylor (although credited to Queen) it struck me just how good a live number this would have been. A real show stopper. Filmed on the Nene Valley railway near Peterborough which I have seen from the car many times, but not been on, it is the highlight of the show.
Double Trouble etc. – Just keep rockin’ – truly awful.
Donna Allen – Joy and Pain – Who? Didn’t think much of this for a top tenner.
Breakers - Waterfront – Cry – A mixture of Simple Minds and Godley and Crème is conjured up here, but it’s not bad I guess. Sonia – You’ll never stop me from loving you – Could have been recorded by Kylie this. Another ‘limp’ chart topper for me.
M – Pop Musik – Remix? Loved the song in 1979 and it doesn’t seem out of place ten years later. Robin’s Mrs doesn’t don the saree outfit this time but instead is a sort of ballerina. Good to see and hear this again.
Guns n’ Roses – Patience – I’ll always think of Take That when I see this song title but, unusually for G&R they are in sentimental mode here and I quite like what I heard of this, as well as the hotel corridor video.
London Boys – London Nights – Like Alvin Stardust, the boys second hit went higher than the first, but I much prefer ‘Requiem’ (and ‘My Coo-ca-choo’). Not a bad record all the same.
Soul II Soul – Back to Life – I didn’t get the memo for this at all. Went right over my head then and now.
Public Enemy – Fight the Power – Ughh… quick exit.
Much to my surprise, despite the usual errors, Anthea was much less annoying here than usual. Presumably Tim was being tried out but it's difficult to shine when you're only given one section of the show to helm. However, now I know he's one of Wrighty's 'posse', no great loss...
ReplyDeleteHolly Johnson - What a strange song this is, it seems a total mess even though individual elements are perfectly fine. About Thatcher, inevitably.
Queen - By far the best song on 'The Miracle', and the video is memorable too.
M - Nice to have this classic back, with a sympathetic remix that beefs the intro and backing track up considerably but leaves the melody and song structure alone. Great fun in the studio too, they're clearly enjoying themselves.
Guns'n'Roses - Yet another load of tosh served up by Axl and co, only slower than usual.
London Boys - This is a great pop tune, and I remember it being blasted out really loud at some party or other which was quite far away (which is how I knew the volume was high!) when I had the windows open during the Summer.
Public Enemy - Unlikely as it may seem for a fan of pure and sometimes cheesy pop, I think Public Enemy are excellent, and it was a pleasant surprise to get this at the end. I like the fact that for the most part (the odd 'n' word is sometimes there), they don't swear and actually rap about proper stuff rather than going on about how great their cars or women are etc.
Tim Smith dressed like the coughing major.
ReplyDeleteLondon Boys performance was like a Joe Wicks PE lesson.
M looked like Ken Barlow's son Linus Roache
https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/linus-roache-45037.php