Picture the scene: it’s March 1984, and freshly imbued with the success of Now That’s What I Call Music, the suits at Sony Music and Universal Music decided there were more bucks to be made from this compilation mullarkey, and so they lobbed out Volume 2 in the series.
Let’s see what pop singles they considered to be worthy of flagging to us this time around, shall we? And don’t be shy, ‘fess up to those atrocities you bought back in the day via the Comments section; trust me, you’ll feel free from the burden of embarrasment if you do. I’ll be ‘fessing up, and also dropping any I remember my brother owning too, jusy to annoy him.
A song, written by drummer Roger Taylor, which mourns the passing of time and the progress of technology. Still, we can all do a synchronised communal clapping, which should distract us all from noticing how thin Freddie’s starting to look.
Named after the the two bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson in the Tin Tin series of comic novels, they were in fact a three-some, although this number had been stripped down from at least seven members before they found success. My brother, much as he may protest, bought their Into The Gap album and I’m pretty sure briefly joined their fanclub. Doctor, Doctor, indeed.
You know where I’m going with this. The thing that Matt Bianco are best remembered for is not their *reads notes* “irresistable blend of jazz and Latin-flavoured music”. it’s for this moment when they appeared on a Saturday morning kid’s show in 1984, engaged in a phone-in, where fans could call in and ask their musical heroes anything they liked:
And that’s why we now have wall-to-wall cookery shows on TV on a weekend morning.
This lot were a bunch of between-jobs actors, who got together to record some a capella versions of popular songs, and scored a surprise Christmas #1 with this, their take on Yazoo’s #2 hit single from 1982. Given that he has written so many catchy electro-pop singles, it must stick in Vince Clarke’s throat that the only two #1s he achieved were The Pickets’s version of this, and an ABBA cover when he was one half of Erasure.
The main bloke from The Flying Pickets was a chap called Brian Hibbard. Shortly after finding success in The Pickets, he landed a role in Coronation Street. He used to drink in a pub in Cardiff I occasionally frequented, The Royal Oak.
I’d often see him there, sitting at the bar. Normally, when I see a celebrity out in the wild, I’ll leave them be, decide not to bother them, and that’s probably because of the one time that I actually approached one. Him. I asked him this: How did it feel to steal Mike Baldwin’s Jag? (I had, of course, neglected to take into account that this was the point when he was written out of Britain’s top soap). His answer, predictably, rightly, was this: “Fuck off, mate.”
Bloody hell, we all fancied Nena when we were young, hairy German armpits and all. Shame she never released anything else that bothered the charts here in the UK.
The soundtrack to a billion awful hen do’s. God I hate this record. She made many better, less succesful songs, hopefully one of them will come up later. My brother bought the She’s So Unusual album this sits on, which I’ll admit has it’s moments (She Bop and the later single I bought by her…)
Since I started posting streaming links to songs rather than an mp3 download from my own collection, it’s rare that I come across a song which none of the main streaming platforms are able to offer. But such is the case with this one. Read into that what you will.
This was the theme tune to the hugely popular TV series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, which, written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (authors of Porridge and The Likely Lads, to name just two), told the story of a bunch of (mostly Geordie) labourers, working in Germany. It kick-started the acting careers of Jimmy Nail (thanks for that!), Kevin Whateley, Tim Healey and Timothy Spall, to name but a few.
Many years ago, at a gathering at mine and Hel’s flat, I promised a Geordie friend of ours, Jo, that I had a song which would make her happy. I played her this. I cannot repeat the profanities which came from her mouth. Brian Hibbard would’ve blushed.
Terence Charles “Snowy” White used to be in Thin Lizzy, and a backing guitarist with Pink Floyd. Neither of which has any bearing on this record, except we can safely say he is musically competent. This is a perfectly nice record, but nothing that would, or indeed did, set the world alight.
Thank you all for the comments left for me after last week’s first instalment of this series, where I go through all of the tracks on each volume (that I own) of the long-running compilation album series Now That’s What I Call Music.
But you’ll not put me off, oh no. And if you thought, like long-time reader George did, that last week’s serving was “…the worst set of songs I’ve ever read on a blog. Teeth-grindingly bad…” (It’s nice to have such a devoted fanbase), well buckle up because Side 1 of the second disc of Now That’s What I Call Music, where we’re heading today, is, in my opinion, even worse.
Let’s see who wants to admit to having bought any of these back in their more youthful days, shall we?
What did New Edition ever give us? Well, they gave us this utterly irritating UK #1, sung by annoying little pipsqueaks and featuring a horrid squelchy bassline. What else? Well, they also gave us three further UK Top 20 singles; the first, Mr Telephone Man, came two years later, in 1985, and then two more, Hit Me Off [I’m sorry, do what to you, exactly…?] and Something About You but they didn’t scrape the lower regions of the UK Top 20 until 1996 and 1997 respectively, some 13 years after Candy Girl hit the top of the charts. Presumably by then they had all matured into hunky looking young men who danced with their shirts off, or, more likely, in a precursor to the Sugababes’ method of keeping things fresh, an entirely different line-up.
Safe to say, then, that they did not exactly capitalise on their early succeess, and praise be for such small mercies.
But what about in between, in what has become known in Dubious Towers as ‘The No Second Edition Years’? Well, after the follow-up single Popcorn Love [which conjures up horrid images of young men taking their dates to the cinema, buying a massive carton of popcorn, making a hole in the bottom, resting it on their lap and inviting their beau to ‘grab a handful’] limped it’s way to #43, it was followed swiftly – probably more swiftly than their record company had anticipated – by Is This The End to which we as a nation chorused “We fucking hope so!” as we booed it to it’s triumphant peak of #83.
What else did New Edition give us? Well, they also gave us Bobby Brown, and therefore, by extension, dead in a bath tub Whitney .
Here’s the compilers of Now… breaking that well-known rule one should always bear in mind when putting together a mixtape/album/playlist/whatever: Thou shalt not include two tracks by the same artist. Fair play, by the time this came out the Kajas (The GooGoos?) had kicked that prick Limahl out, and lead vocal duties were now taken over by bass player Nick Beggs.
You know how many people’s go-to-reference for awful 80s haircuts is A Flock of Seagulls? Well that overlooks the godawful barnet Beggs had:
Several years later, a mate of mine at Uni inexplicably tried to revive this haircut. He dyed his hair peroxide blonde and then got white hair extenstions put it in. He had them all cut off less than 24 hours later when he got fed up with people baa-ing at him.
Anyway, Big Apple is about life in New York, which is also named The Big Apple. I don’t know how they came up with such a complicated concept to sing about. Imagine: living in a city! In America!!
Ably assisted by Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware of Heaven 17 fame on backing vocals and production duties, this. a cover of the Al Green classic, was the first of Tina’s great comeback singles. Before this, which reached #6 in 1983, she’d not had a hit in the UK since 1973’s Nutbush City Limits, and that was with her ex-husband and all-round-not-a-nice-guy Ike.
To open the doors on the amnesty of admission: Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession. Whilst I didn’t buy this as a single, I did buy Private Dancer, the album it appears on.
Join me in ‘fessing up via the Comments. It’ll be a laugh, I promise.
Or rather (Keep Feeling) Fascination as the band called it, but the Now… compilers refused to. They probably had a cap on brackets policy in place. And on the number of times they could use the word The on one set of packaging.
Anyway, by April 1983, The Human League were on a roll. This was their 5th Top Ten UK hit in a row, if you ignore The Holiday ’80 EP which re-entered the charts in February 1982, having been originally released in – you guessed it – 1980. This, remember, long before the days of downloading, where 10,000 clicks can get you a #1. No, back then you had to go out and find the record you wanted, flick through the racks of your local vinyl emporium, scour through the ads at the back of the NME to see if you could buy one with a postal order or a cheque. So that re-entry – only at #46, but in the charts for 5 weeks, is indicative of just how massive The League had become.
Or, to put it another way (Dad joke incoming!): it meant Phil Oakey could now afford to get the other side of his hair cut.
For a while in the early-80s, if you wanted a solo male UK pop star, it was either Howard Jones or Nik Kershaw: them’s yer choices. I’ll admit, in time, to buying a couple of Kershaw’s singles, but never anything by Jones. His were just a bit too Casio-toned for my rock-loving ears. And, he had that annoying twat Jed – Roy Jay (look him up) meets Marcel Marceau meets Bez – accompanying him in the videos and TOTP performances for this single:
Oh go on then: Roy Jay. This passed as entertainment in the 80s. Slither!:
No, go on, do make him cry. At least he won’t be singing this interminably dull sub-snoozing reggae then.
And if you’re short of practical ideas about how to make him cry, well a very young Danny Dyer has some suggestions intended for Peter Andre but which I’m sure could easily be transferred over:
Oh Jesus wept. Ordinarily, this sort of schlocky slop would have featured on a smash-hit movie soundtrack, and that would explain how it got to #2 in the UK Charts. I mean: there’s only one explanation for (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life‘s inexplicable popularity: it’s in Dirty Dancing. People – by which I mean, women, like Dirty Dancing. (I’m sure they exist, but I know of no men who like Dirty Dancing. Not any straight ones, anyway.) But Tonight I Celebrate My Love didn’t feature in any blockbuster movie. And back in 1983, just like now, Steve Wright’s Sunday Love Songs wasn’t a thing. So the only place this would get played would be in the last ten minutes at your local disco, when the DJ slllooowwwweedddd tttthhhhhhhiiiiinnnnnnggggsss dowwwwwwwwwwwwwn for ‘all the lovers out there’.
Wake me up when the erection section’s finished will you?
That’s more like it! I’ve written about this, and Tracey’s brief pop career before, here, should you fancy having a read.
Suffice it to say: They Don’t Know is a damn-near perfect pop record. And therefore, I didn’t buy it at the time, though I have subsequently availed myself of a vinyl copy of You Broke My Heart in 17 Places, the album it lives on. Kirtsy MacColl’s original version is probably the song that appears most in my iTunes library. It’s 100% skip-proof: I’ve never gotten tired of hearing it and I doubt I ever will.
Blimey, two absolute crackers in a row. Things are looking up.
Let’s see what wiki has to say about it: “Kissing with Confidence” is a song by Will Powers (the stage name/persona of photographer-turned-singer Lynn Goldsmith) from her 1983 album Dancing for Mental Health. It was written by Goldsmith, Jacob Brackman, Nile Rodgers, Todd Rundgren, and Steve Winwood. Goldsmith used a voice recorder to sound like a man. Carly Simon is the uncredited lead singer”. I mean, c’mon: that’s not a bad set of artists to be working with. Although that voice recorder needs chucking out: I have never for a moment thought it was man providing the central advice on this record.
I’ve posted this before and extolled its’ virtues, and it was met with a decidedly lukewarm reaction. I bloody love it. But of course, I didn’t buy it at the time, although I sponge-like absorbed every word of advice it offered. Y’know…just in case….
Anyway, no, I didn’t buy that, but, I did buy this:
Yes. That’s right. I bought this. In fact, I bought the album, not the single. And I bought the album because it had this on it.
Look. I know we all know what Phil Collins is now. But those were different times, back then. We had no idea how he would turn out. The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing. I also had no clue that Genesis used to be some adored arty prog-rock band, fronted by Peter Gabriel dressed as a chrysanthemum; no idea what Collins had converted them from and into.
And you know what? Now I do know, and I’ve listed to Gabriel-era Genesis, and I’d rather listen to Collins-era Genesis than that old shite anyday.
I’m sure they’ll crop up again in this series, if they haven’t already appeared on these pages. There are other Collins/Genesis songs that I like. And when the time comes, I will hold my head up and confess: I. Like. This. Song.
Not now, obviously. I don’t want to expose myself uneccesarily.
There I’ve said it: there are other Collins/Genesis songs that I like. I’m not sure why so many find this such an alien concept. Just because I – we – like the occasional record that someone makes, but dislike them and much of their other recorded output, that does not make me – you – a fan of theirs. That makes me – you – honest enough to give credit where I – you – think credit is due.
The album that has this on it that I bought, the wittily-titled Genesis is, as you would expect, rubbish apart from That’s All.
I mean, this is just magnificent, isn’t it? I didn’t buy it at the time, of course, but fear not! My days of buying Cure records were just around the corner. Redemption is nigh.
I hated Simple Minds back then. I think it was partly because Jim Kerr reminded me of Michael Myers from the Halloween horror movie franchise:
Spot the difference
Anyway, time and age has mellowed me, and I can now appreciate the shimmering magnificence of some of those early Simple Minds records, this one included.
To round off what’s actually turned out to be a pretty decent fourth side, given some of the shite they could have picked, another band making their second appearance on the same compilation album. Tut, tut, compilers.
But having mentioned how much I hate Karma Chameleon last time out, I woudn’t want you to think I was some homophobic twat who hated Culture Club unconditionally because of Boy George. Quite the opposite, I really like Mr O’Dowd, and some of the band’s other singles – Church of the Poisoned Mind, Time (Clock of the Heart), It’s a Miracle, this and…er…well, that’s about it really. So, the ones Helen Terry was involved in, pretty much.
Anyway, that’s it for this week. Hopefully we’re ending things on a positive note this time.
Next time (which should be next week, all being well), we’ll move on to Now That’s What I Call Music Vol II and see what delights that has in store for us, shall we? No peeking!
I’d say there are four things that Tracey Ullman is known for here in the UK:
Being a very funny comedian;
Having a very busy 1980s where, in reverse order, she had her own TV show in the States in the late 80s which gave birth to The Simpsons;
Appearing in Three of a Kind, a sketch show in the UK in the mid-80s, in which she starred with Lenny Henry an David Copperfield (not that one);
Having a brief but wonderful pop career in the early 80s, which included 3 Top 10 and a further 2 Top 40 hits in the UK.
It is of course the pop career we’ll be looking at this morning. And just in case you’re already turning your nose up and thinking “novelty hits” well…you’d be partly right, for all of her hits were cover versions.
But these were novelty hits with some artistic weight behind them, for they were released on the legendary Stiff Records label, home at some point or another to such luminaries as Nick Lowe, The Damned, Lene Lovich, Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, Devo, Madness, The Pogues, The Belle Stars, and, most importantly, Kirsty MacColl.
MacColl actually wrote the title track for Ullman’s debut album, You Broke My Heart in 17 Places:
I mean, it’s got early Kirsty written all over it, hasn’t it?
The first of her hits was a cover of an old Irma Thomas tune, written by Jackie DeShannon and Sharon Sheeley, and was probably the least well-known as a cover when it was released in March 1983, peaking at #4 in the UK charts:
I have two things to say about that; firstly, when she first released that, it was called Break-A-Way rather than Breakaway; and secondly, if you’re of a similar vintage to me, and if your brain is wired the same way as mine (and heaven help you if it is) then you too will have seen the word Breakaway and immediately thought of this, and are now feeling a bit peckish:
But I digress.
You may have noticed a recurring theme when looking at Ullman’s album and single sleeve; Ullman dressing up in various guises. This is something which she carried over into her videos; here she is in the Breakaway promo, where, when not dressed as a go-go dancer with an array of beehive hair-do’s, she demonstrates the art of singing into a hairbrush:
This is entirely in keeping with Ullman’s background, for truth be told she very much stumbled into her pop career: “One day, I was at my hairdresser,” she once recalled, “and Dave Robinson’s [head of Stiff Records] wife Rosemary leant over and said, ‘Do you want to make a record?’… I went, ‘Yeah I want to make a record.’ I would have tried anything.”
Before she embarked upon her brief life as a popstar, she had won a full scholarship to the Italia Conti Academy at the age of twelve, attended a dance audition at sixteen, which resulted in her landing a contract with a German ballet company for a revival of Gigi in Berlin, then joined Second Generation dance troupe on her return to the UK, before branching out into musical theatre where she was cast in numerous West End musicals, such as Grease, and The Rocky Horror Show.
Now, if you thought having written the title track of Ullman’s first album, that Kirsty McColl’s work here was done, then you’d be very much mistaken, for the second single was a cover of Kirsty’s ruddy marvellous They Don’t Know, which reached #2 in the UK charts in September 1983.
Rumour has it that Ullman was unable to hit the high “Baby!” after the instrumental break, so Kirsty had to do it. It certainly sounds like her…:
Probably one of my favourite records ever, that. It’s certainly in the Top 10.
The video for Ullman’s version not only gave her further opportunity to dress up and show both her acting and dancing chops, it started a trend which she continued through her next few singles: the celebrity guest appearance.
Wait for it…..:
Single number three from the album was a cover of Doris Day’s Move Over Darling; released in December 1983, it peaked at #8 in the UK:
There were more guest appearances in Ullman’s video:
I should end this here, but the next single from the follow-up album You Caught Me Out is worth mentioning. Not because it was her final Top 20 hit (it wasn’t – it peaked at #23; the next single Sunglasses got to #18 and that was the last time Ullman bothered the Top 40)…
The rules I have in my head as to what does and what does not constitute a good cover version exist only in my head, are completely arbitrary, and subject to change.
It’s my game, I’ll do what I like with it.
For example, I’m fairly sure that I’ve previously argued on these pages that there’s no point in just making a cover which sounds exactly like the original. If you want everyone to know you really like a particular song or artiste, just make sure you bring it up in an interview sometime, don’t bother us with a dutifully faithful replication.
And yet…
Glastonbury 2004, I think. Our sizeable gang has landed in what became our usual rendez-vous position at the Pyramid Stage: right at the back, top of the slope, near the First Aid tent. We hadn’t planned on this being our staging post, but this is where, attending for the very first time the year before, we had ended up at the start of the first day, so it just became “our spot”. Plus, one of our group, Mark, was really tall, so this made him even easier to pick out in a crowd.
(I’m reminded of comedian, actor and human beanpole Steven Merchant relating a story about how once, as a much younger man, he had found himself standing with some friends in a similar crowd. As he stood, he noticed a couple of very pretty girls looking in his direction. Eventually, they approached him.
“Excuse me,” they said.
“Hello,” he thought. “I could be ‘in’ here.”
“Hi,” he said, as casually as he could muster.
“Are you going to be here for a while?” they asked.
“Oh, yes, you bet I am,” he thought.
“Yeh, I think so,” he replied, coolly. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh,” the girls replied, “me and my friends have just decided that if we got separated, we’d meet up near you, but if you’re going to move, we need to think of something else.”)
But I digress. On this Saturday afternoon, most of our group had gone a-wandering, and just Hel and I remained at base camp. We sat, people watching in between acts, the sound system booming out an advertisement for a clean water charity the festival was supporting that year, followed by You Only Get What You Give by The New Radicals.
These two seemed to be on a continuous loop, so when a different song came on, it caught both of our attentions. The song was a couple of lines in, when I let out a satisfied sigh.
“Ahh, I love this record,” I said.
“Me too”, Hel replied. A moment passed before a confused look played across her face. “But I can’t remember who sings it.”
Another couple more lines passed. “Me neither,” I conceded.
When I was younger, I was a serious vinyl junkie, much to my mother’s annoyance.
Every spare penny went on two things:
records, and
the bus fare into town and back so I could buy records.
And every time I returned home, square plastic bag clutched in my sweaty little hand, I would race upstairs to listen to my latest purchases, oblivious to my Mum’s calls after me that “money burns a hole in your pocket”.
Well, something happened this week which, when she reads this, will lead her to tut, roll her eyes and mutter how she was right and how nothing has changed.
I’ll explain. Wednesday evening, I’ve finished work and am waiting to catch the bus home. Just next to my bus stop is a charity shop which has fairly recently opened. I’ve no idea what charity it supports; I rarely check the benefactors of such establishments, just in case its one that I don’t like. You know, one of those notorious bad charities.
Anyway, the shop has closed but the shutters aren’t down yet so I thought I’d do a bit of window shopping. Truth is, I’ve done this quite a lot at this shop recently, ever since the chap who sits on the desk opposite me (also a vinyl junkie, also a lover of trawling round charity shops in the hope of unearthing a bargain) waltzed back into work after lunch, gleefully clutching a hardback copy “Alan Partridge: Nomad” that he’d picked up for £2.00 there.
The book shelves are quite close to the window, and with a bit of squinting you can make out some of the titles: Dan Brown, Dan Brown, Russell Brand, Dan Brown. The usual selections one finds donated to charity stores.
But underneath that, I spied a new addition to the Entertainment Section: a plastic container full of vinyl, and there, right at the front, a copy of “Now That’s What I Call Music Vol II”. I determined that I would return there the following day to investigate further.
Thursday lunchtime. I’ve been out visiting one of the schools in the Borough and have caught the bus back to the office. I say the office, but actually I swung by the charity shop in question en route. (S’ok, it was my lunch break.)
The 80s compilation album was there, priced up at £3.75. Reasonable, I thought, as long as the vinyl itself was in good nick. I slipped both discs from their inner sleeves (reassuringly, the previous owner had placed them with the opening facing upwards so the vinyl couldn’t roll out or attract dust), held them both up to the light from the window and examined them. A tad dusty, but not warped and no obvious scratches or blemishes. I decided to buy it. As I turned to approach the counter, I glanced down at the plastic container, and there, now, after I had liberated “…Vol II”, at the front was….
“Now That’s What I Call Music”.
The first volume. They didn’t call it “Now That’s What I Call Music Vol I” for much the same reason, I imagine, as the First World War wasn’t called that at the time: they didn’t know there was going to be Second one.
I knelt down again, pulled that one from the container. And behind it was “Vol III”. And “Vol IV”. And “Vol V”. And “Vol VI”. And “Vol VIII”. And “Vol IX”. And “Vol X”. And “Vol XI”. And “Vol XIV”. And “Vol XVI”. That’s 12 volumes, all in pretty good nick, all, bar Vols I & II, priced at just £1.10 each.
Five minutes later, I left the shop, just over £18.00 poorer, but immeasurably happier. So, what if it’s two weeks until payday, I don’t need to eat every day.
At work, one of the girls asked me what I’d bought. She’s quite a lot younger than me, so I showed her, but started off by saying “You’re probably not old enough to remember these…”, meaning when the “Now…” series started. “Oh, I remember those,” she said. “My Dad used to own some records.” Bubble of joy duly punctured.
I’ve mentioned a couple of times how much I enjoy watching the reruns of old 80s editions of Top of the Pops on BBC4, as they bring back so many memories and the same is true of these albums, the first couple being from roughly the period those repeats are no now. Although, perversely, I didn’t buy a single one of them back in the day. (I say perversely, but I know exactly why I didn’t: Quo don’t appear for the first time until Vol VIII. Had they featured earlier/more frequently, the teenage me would have undoubtedly been unable to resist. And to save you checking, yes Vol VIII was amongst the ones I bought.)
So I thought I’d spread some 80s joy today, and every now and again on a Saturday morning, picking my favourite track(s) from each side of each one that I picked up.
Volume I was released in 1983, and the compilers of the album have made my task somewhat easier by picking two tracks by Kajagoogoo (no thanks) and, one by former Kajagoogoo singer Limahl (by far the worst record on here, and given the inclusion of UB40 – also twice – that’s really saying something. Bop bop shoo be doo wah.) Seriously, breaking the golden rule of mix-tapes and compilations by featuring the same artist more than once really didn’t bode well for this series of releases, but here we are, 24 years later, and they’re still going.
Anyway, front and cover art is below, so you can have fun guessing which tracks I’ve picked, deciding which you’d have picked, and trying to remember what the significance of the pig was:
(I love this. It was going to feature on my motivational Monday morning series sooner or later, but I can’t resist the…erm…temptation to post it here.)
(It’s nowhere near as great as the original, but it least it has Kirsty on it, performing the “Baby!” at the end of the musical bridge, as Ullman couldn’t hit the note.)
(If I’m pushed, that’s probably my favourite record by The Nutty Boys. But, I don’t understand why people call them The Nutty Boys. It takes longer to both say and type than Madness does.)
A History of Dubious Taste 