It's just a simple 22nd of June 1990 edition of Top of the Pops!
Number one hat
22-6-90: Presenter: Jakki Brambles
(35) MAGNUM – Rockin’ Chair
Getting the show off to a sparkly start with their fourth and final top 40 hit and it peaked at number 27.
(4) ROXETTE – It Must Have Been Love (video)
Went up one more place.
(19) BIG FUN & SONIA– You’ve Got A Friend
Sitting in their chairs like a prototype Westlife, this was to be Big Fun's fourth and final top 40 hit and it peaked at number 14.
(8) WILSON PHILLIPS – Hold On (video)
Went up two more places.
(29) RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS – Taste The Pain (video) (Breakers)
Their first of 22 top 40 hits but this one got no higher.
(32) BRUCE DICKINSON – All The Young Dudes (video) (Breakers)
Peaked at number 23.
(37) DOGS D’AMOUR – Victims Of Success (video) (Breakers)
Went up one more place.
(30) YAZZ – Treat Me Good
In the studio tonight and the song went up ten more places.
(20) CRAIG McLACHLAN & CHECK 1-2 – Mona (video)
Another singing Nieghbour and this was his first of four top 40 hit and it peaked at number 2
(3) LUCIANO PAVAROTTI – Nessun Dorma (video)
This Italia 90 World Cup theme tune bacme his first of five top 40 hits when it peaked at number 2.
(12) M.C. TUNES versus 808 STATE – The Only Rhyme That Bites (video)
Went up two more places.
(1) ELTON JOHN – Sacrifice
Here tonight to celebrate his first of five weeks at number one.
(25) M.C. HAMMER – U Can’t Touch This (video) (and credits)
Became his first of four top 10 hits when it peaked at number 3.
June 28th is next
Jakki seemed slightly tired in this edition, not projecting as clearly as normal and tripping over a few words. Pretty good show she's presenting though.
ReplyDeleteMagnum; Which flavour is this one then? A post G'N'Deff'R'Smith flavour and not long for the uk chart world thanks to the scruffy saviours from Seattle. I find this sort of stuff quite endearing actually but not this particular example. At least they seem to be enjoying it.
Mick Fleetwood trying his hand at guitar. Thought he was taller.
Roxette; Stylish video and with its artful clips from the movie throughout this just couldn't fail. It Must've Been stuck at No.2 only because someone as huge as Elton was around. Jakki seemed to momentarily get confused over where it had been No.1! Just say America if in doubt.
Big Fun and Sonia; That's right. Keep the sax player at a good distance if you want to sound meaningful. I've always liked this song and it's meant very well but I still can't take Big Fun's falsettos I'm afraid. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. I always want to listen to Eddie Kendriks after hearing them.
Wilson Phillips; Another showing for the explore California advertisement. It is a nice one and does bring back alot of family memories but those lyrics! Some very tough love there! Intriguing. You know. Considering.
Red Hot Chilli Peppers; Nanosecond appearance for the soon to be massive band. Doing the shamanic thing they did again for 'Give It Away'.
Bruce Dickinson; Great song with a riff made for him. Can't really go wrong. I really don't know how Bowie wrote this and Ashes to Ashes and Life On Mars and Let's Dance. He must've had three separate brains.
Dogs D'Amour; The singer looked exactly like Bonnie Tyler in the last frame.
Yazz; Not very memorable but she did 'Fine Time' so I'm unable to dislike her.
Craig Maclachlan; It's always been a mystery that the guy who played Henry would get a single out after the bloke who played Paul Robinson. But here he is, sounding pretty musical too. I herd this far too much that summer to like it much now but it was thanks to this that I picked up on a version by Quicksilver Messenger Service on an Uncle's compilation LP and which led me to a whole world of late '60s underground music. So thanks,slightly annoying dude.
Luciano Pavarotti; I had a school friend who had a curious idea that if he sang the final section at the top of his voice in the library, in isolated passages, the librarian wouldn't notice! She did and he got barred from the library for about a week.
MC Tunes; The video. Not the end bit sadly. Ooh don't they look hard.
Elton John; Good to see it and I prefer the song in performance than on video although it looks like his manager has asked a 12 year old to knock up the sort of hat that Chris Lowe wears. I don't remember the little interview.
MC Hammer; Four words: Mark Lamarr The Word.
Never mind Eddie Kendricks, Big Fun's next single was an abysmal cover of Eddie Holman's falsetto classic "Hey There Lonely Girl". Also a bit ironic as it turned out all three lads were gay. Their turkey spent one week in the chart at number 62, and tonight's the last big fun they have in the TOTP studio (see what I did there?).
DeleteYes indeed, Roxette were denied the no.1 spot only by the great Elton John, but in America it was No.1 for two weeks in the second half of the same June 1990 month, where Elton was not in the picture there.
DeleteBruce Dickinson I found surprising to be covering a Bowie tune now that he went solo for a while as a break from Iron Maiden. Was this solo venture an opportunity to pay tribute to his pop heroes, whereas with Iron Maiden it was straight-up no-nonsense heavy metal stuff?
Mic, I had to look up MC Hammer's appearance on "The Word" where Mark Lamarr kept interrupting MC H with his punchline like a prize tool. I didn't watch "The Word" much (I certainly missed when one of female rock band L7 took her necessary monthly accessory out from its place live on air), but I remember an edition where a woman from the audience took part in trying to eat 2 kg of steak as quickly as possible and broke the women's record of 38 minutes - and she'd been out for a curry before the show!
Deletebig fun should have covered the tams' "hey girl, don't bother me"!
DeleteBoom boom tish!
DeleteOh my life! Can't imagine how bad that must be! I'm not going to find out on youtube either. There probably aren't that many falsettos on record that are truly great. Actually I've always loved Neil Finn's one. Used very sparingly but when he uses it it's gorgeous. 'Nails In My Feet' he does it.
ReplyDeleteCurtis Mayfield had the best falsetto in soul, I think.
DeleteYes I think you're right. So good.
DeleteJimmy Helms ("Gona Make You An Offer You Can't Refuse") and Russell from The Stylistics might be in with a shout of the podium.
Deletei nominate philip bailey of earth, wind & fire fame, although i also always loved the falsetto vocals on the ohio players recordings
Deletei also throw a couple of whiteys into the ring: hamish stuart (average white band) and barry gibb (the bee gees)
DeletePaul Da Vinci 'Your Baby's not your Baby any more' or more famously 'Sugar Baby Love' as a session singer with the Rubettes.
DeleteHey, Black Lace are back! My mistake, it's the big Tom Selleck fans with a song where they looked around for a phrase including the word "rock" and settled on a type of chair. Sadly, the follow up Swivel Chair was not a hit. Anyway, pretty identikit stuff, could have been one of a hundred bands.
ReplyDeleteRoxette with the "Prostitution is Great" theme tune, then on with a charity record that sounds like SAW wanted them to cover Junior Walker and the All Stars' What Does It Take, which is a million miles better than what they threw together here. If only Big Fun could sing - this would be preferable as a Sonia solo.
Philson Willips again on video, then into the Breakers. We see Bruce next time, but the Red Hot Chili Peppers are a bit shy of getting out the socks for this video, so loincloths have to suffice. Yeah, yeah, Flea's a great bassist, but they loved themselves too much for me to warm to them. Meanwhile Dogs D'Amour love their title so much they repeat it about ten times in the chorus - lyric writer's day off?
Yazz makes a comeback after a baby (who will be 30 now!), but she seems to have forgotten the reason she did well before was those singles had an actual tune, something notably lacking in this.
I think we can hear Craig now because he was cleared of being a sex pest recently, but never has the Bo Diddly riff sounded so anaemic. Exactly the kind of record you'd expect a 90s Aussie soap star to make, for what that's worth.
Pavarotti, well, it's a great piece of music, but I'm not sure I feel qualified to discuss its finer points. Maybe it needed a Hooked On Classics beat underneath to really set it off. Or, as this was 1990, a rap two thirds of the way through.
MC Tunes and 808 State we've heard, though this is the rather sparse video, not in the studio, and other way around, we've seen Elton's video so he's in the studio, raising funds for his AIDS charities, a noble cause, but I'm just waiting to hear Healing Hands instead. He seems oddly reticent in the brief interview with Jakki.
Then America's answer to MC Tunes, MC Hammer. Remember that cartoon Baggy Pants and the Nitwits? Just thought I'd mention it. Anyhoo, impossible to avoid that summer, and the Rick James sample served him well, it is infuriatingly catchy, I'll give him that.
You'll Here Healing Hands When They Restart Doing The Album Chart.
DeleteIt would have been great to have a collaboration between MC Hammer and MC Tunes, as I think it would have come off very well, as their rap styles are very similar on this show, judging by their videos.
DeleteYou're not far off with Big Fun there, THX. The bespoke TV Cream website pointed out SAW wanted them to cover the James Taylor track "You've Got A Friend" but ran into copyright / permission problems, so wrote a song with the same title for the purpose!
DeleteThe thought of Big Fun mangling James Taylor is enough to give you a cold sweat.
DeleteOnce again and TOTP could never see through their faults, as the show comes off badly by cramming in far too many tunes, and in a video-heavy show, every video got only one-and-a-half minutes play. When you consider classics like Roxette, Wilson Phillips, Pavarotti (and MC Tunes?) being rolled over like this, I can't help but think that the producers of the show lost the plot ages ago, and it was obvious why the ratings were so low compared to the peak viewing audiences of the 70s and early 80s.
ReplyDeleteThey would have been far better off to go back to the winning formula of just sticking to a top-30 chart (not 40), and do away with the tired Breakers slot, and give the videos their 3-4 minute play/glory. I mean did the show really think that the likes of Magnum, Dogs D'Amour, Bruce Dickinson had top ten potential in order to show them at all while in the 30-40 section of the charts? Really? I prefer to only have a top-30 chart rundown as in the 1970s hey-day, so that the viewers can enjoy less tunes but fuller flavour!
I agree Dory, when the show went to half an hour they should've gone back to a top 30 rundown to save a bit of time. In the final years of the show they just did the top 20. And if they ever brought the show back they'd probably only show the top 10! Or maybe the BBC would be better off ditching the Official Charts and compile their own instead, so trashed they have become now by streaming.
DeleteYes, I forgot to mention the reduction to a 30-minute show in 1985 which was the kiss of death for the programme considering it was always 40 minutes in the 1970s and sticking to a top 30 only.
DeleteI agree about the sad chop of the show length, but remember we had many 'new release'/ top 50 songs in shows back then and now, at least, it's mugshot songs apart from the odd Eurovision entry. No room for a Glamourpuss or Contempt in these times.
DeleteContempt. Did anybody ever find out anything about them???
DeleteSorry for deviating!
Our first TOTP website host (Simon?) found out Contempt's appearance was for a single released the next day! Unfortunately for the lads, the record compnay ballsed up the distribution and it got nowhere.
DeleteSome discussion about Contempt here...
Deletehttps://www.45cat.com/record/2058862
Thanks sct
DeleteJakki doing strange hide and seek stuff (mainly hide) with her left hand while wearing tatty trews and a T-shirt advertising a yacht club near Elgin in the Highlands.
ReplyDeleteThe first half of the show may as well have been renamed “Rock of the Pops” – not “Top of the Rocks”, though, as none of the four heavy songs in the edition’s first seven were higher than 29 in the chart, starting with Magnum. Not quite a case of sofa so good, generic midtable metal from blokes not exactly at the spring chicken phase.
The film plot tied in with Roxette’s smooth MOR reminded me of an indie band called The Pop Group who once released a single called “We Are All
Prostitutes”.
Next it’s the ultimate collaboration. And our final glimpse of The Funners. Panel interview seating (so, Sonia, how do you see your career in five years’ time?) with the Funner to our left looking even more like Harry Enfield’s Loadsamoney character than ever. Bye, lads, and thanks for all those classic dance routines.
Not enough of Wendy Wilson in that video clip for my liking. Harumph.
Three metal tracks for the breakers. In order, a piece of self-important arrogant metal funk, a decent karaoke version of a great track which included a mention of The Beatles and The Stones reminding me of the title of that recent House Of Love track we didn’t hear, and a right old mongrel with the lead singer’s face paint making him look like one of Animal Kwackers.
I hope Yazz’s waist chains weren’t too heavy for her after recent childbirth. Sadly, her gear had more substance than the track which sounded like something Lisa Stansfield might have tried if she fancied doing a faster song for a change.
Next a smiley, partly sunny Oz vid for a turgid cloudy cover. If Jason’s next single entered the chart lower than this it must be bobbins.
Being a big football fan, “Nessun Dorma” still leaves a tingle down my spine. Trying to catch lightning in a bottle, Brentford ran out to this piece for a few years after Italia ’90.
A bit of a sea change for the next track, where MC Tunes does at least manage to namecheck fabled US label Def Jam in the lyrics.
Nice ‘hat trick’ reference by Jakki for the former chart topping football track, before we get a slight mistake (it’s Elton first solo number one, he was top with Kiki Dee), the worst hat in his wardrobe and a sadly mimed chart topper when, surely, Elton could have done it live given his talent. Then we get the first time I’ve ever seen a woman kiss a man’s hand.
Wahay! We end with old Tent Trousers. The most vibrant, technicolur and joyous track of the show. Break it down indeed!
Yeah, I was a little to surprised to hear from Jakki that Sacrifice was Elton's first No.1, probably because his 1976 No.1 with Kiki Dee was there throughout the summer of '76, although I was only 8 then and don't remember it. I think duets should count as a No.1.
DeleteELO's only No.1 was their combo with Olivia Newton John in 1980, but most people would associate it with ONJ solo!
Jeff Lynne recorded a version of 'Xanadu' for one of the ELO boxsets, but it sounds pretty tame to me. Definitely ONJ's hit, but Jeff's backing vocals shine through pretty well.
DeleteI remember his solo version of Xanadu which was made for a new greatest hits album in 2005, but I think he was always better on backing vocals for this particular tune, cos its virtually impossible to better ONJ's class act on the original in 1980!
DeleteMagnum - 4th hit? Really? Don’t remember the earlier ones. Fairly steady soft rock ditty. I’ll give it 5 but I wouldn’t buy it. (Michael Caine moment - did you know that Slade Merry Christmas started out as a song called Grandma’s Rocking Chair? Not a of people...) [re comments - I thought that they were British, and mr wiki agrees]
ReplyDeleteBig Fun - slight change from the usual SAW fare - I assume that it is written by they - but a bit nondescript.
Breakers are back:
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - forgot to write a tune for the verse...
Bruce Dickinson - fairly straight (and hence unnecessary) cover of the Mott hit
Dogs DAmor - crikey a lot of long haired chaps this week. What we heard was ok...
Yazz - and another one with no tune in the verse...
Craig McLachlan - a fairly pedestrian cover of bo diddley - Rolling Stones did it better (and the Troggs) [re comments - I had forgotten the Quicksilver version - that makes three better]
Pavarotti - not my cup of tea, but I can hardly criticise the tune or singing...
(Elton - isn't that a PSB hat?) [re comments - Mic1212 agrees :-) ]
MC Hammer - ashamed to say that I have always liked this, helped somewhat by the Superfreak sample. [re comments - and this time it is THX that I am agreeing with :-) ]
I think Superfreak was by Rick James, who never really got going in the UK charts, but seemed to be a regular in the top 10 over In the US.
DeleteFun fact - superfreak and Party All Night Long (eddie murphy) were the first two tracks I downloaded on Napster. Took about 40 minutes each.
DeleteOops party all the time :-)
DeleteAll Night Long was by the Mary Jane Girls - written and produced by Rick James.
DeleteA great pop quiz answer here as the complete artist credit for the Childline single is actually Big Fun And Sonia Featuring Gary Barnacle, the latter the go-to sax player in UK contemporary music for decades. The charity track was written by Pete Waterman and his two mates, surprise surprise.
ReplyDeleteRipped Jean Jackie out tonight and the BBCiplayer is downloading in HD all of a sudden. Much sharper looking show. It amazes me how BBC4 can present these 80/90s videos so beautifully and the picture quality on the NOW Music channels is so poor.
ReplyDeleteMagnum wheel out their rocking chair and they do have the look of a tribute Bon Jovi. Song is standard Quo/Jovi fare. Average.
Roxette US Number One. Gorgeous tune. Wanted much more of this.
Now this is all in a good cause and Childline was and is much needed so fair play to SAW.
The song however is awful. Both Sonia and the boys are just phoning in the performance. Cheese of the highest order.
A full family tree from Jackie to introduce WP.
Breakers:
RHCP: start of an awesome career for them and this is OK. Certainly different.
Bruce: Poor cover Dude.
Dogs D'Amour: more average rock music. Show is full of it tonight.
Mummy Yazz with a tune I had completely forgotten about. Thought we'd seen the last of her. Decent little pop tune. If the baby isn't Rio Plastic Population I will be very disappointed.
Everyone's favourite Neighbour Henry up next with a proper song (you watching Stefan?). This was such a massive radio hit. Everywhere in summer 90. I like it.
Pavarotti up next. Why couldn't they have got him playing football in the video? Possibly the best theme to any sporting event ever! That voice, that ending! Class.
MC Tunes enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. Video is crap. Still remember this tune fondly though.
Elton John in the studio and he's found an old PSB hat in the dressing room. Still prefer the other side. National treasure status awaits...
Stop!
Hammer Time!
Big improvement on the last show and with Jakki at the helm, even better. I see she was in to yachting.
ReplyDeleteMagnum – Rockin’ Chair – Heavy stuff, but the title was always going to hark back to ‘Grannys Rocking Chair’ from the series ‘Here come the Double Deckers’.
Roxette – It must have been love – Even less shown of this wonderful track. Still sounds great.
Big Fun and Sonia – You’ve got a Friend – Pleasant enough but no Carole King or James Taylor.
Wilson Phillips – Hold On – Also brutally cut short like Roxette. I wanted more!
Breakers I can do without RHCP and the Dogs but I thought Bruce’s version of the Bowie/Mott classic sounded pretty good actually.
Yazz – Treat me good – The only way is down
Craig McLachlan – Mona – If Jakki hasn’t mentioned he was from Neighbours then I would never have known. Was the girl in it too? I was thinking ‘Bo Diddley’ as I listened.
Pavarotti – Nessun Dorma – Brief excerpt from this track which I recall being on my parents ‘Your Hundred Best Tunes’ album…the very same version…so recorded some years prior. Amazing what can propel a song into the charts as it certainly feels out of place. Kiri Te Kanawa repeated the trick some years later with ‘World in Union’ (as opposed to ‘motion’) which was used in a Rugby World Cup.
MC Tunes – Rhythm that bites – FF
Elton John – Sacrifice – Jakki sums up what I was thinking about all those great records and no (solo) number ones (don’t forget Kiki). Amazing really but this was so well deserved. Nice to see Reg turn up in the studio and give a brief chat.
MC Hammer – Can’t touch this – Now this ‘MC’ I do like. I recall stopping at a traffic lights during the Sunday evening chart rundown when this came on. Two girls in the car adjacent to me started freaking out so they were obviously listening too.
If Magnum appeared on TOTP performing songs from The Double Deckers, they would be my new favourite band!
DeleteYou'd end up with a very sweet tooth!
DeleteNot long to wait for "World In Union" as it was the 1991 World Cup in England.
DeleteI bought the Wilson Phillips video a few years ago from iTunes for a value £1.89, and one of best purchases I must say!
DeleteNot long to wait for "World In Union" as it was the 1991 World Cup in England.
ReplyDelete