We’re well into 1990 now with these repeats now featuring March/April now. Again I like to start with what’s good then gradually critique the bad and ugly!
We’ll kick off with Primal Scream’s ‘Loaded’.
Completely reconstructed/remixed by the late Andrew Wetherall from the Primal’s original Indie/Rock song ‘I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have’ ‘Loaded’ came out at the right time and place. It’s not a Indie Rock song nor is it a straightforward House/Techno/Dance record either for me what it makes it special is it has that ‘What is this?’ thing about it when you hear it for the first time and using the ‘Just What Is It You Want To Do?’ ‘We Wanna Get Loaded!’ samples of sample of Frank Maxwell and Peter Fonda from the film The Wild Angels it captured the shift from the way pop and music in the 80’s was dominated by image and personality to the way the Dance/Rave/Indie scenes of that time were all about the music and the party (and being honest drugs) in the post Acid House atmosphere the Primal’s had become a part of and had would have so much influence on over the years with Screamadellica on too.
For me ‘Loaded’ just shows how much things had changed by 1990 as before this came out the Primal’s were considered more a Post Punk/Gothic Rock Indie band with roots/connections to The Jesus and Mary Chain, didn’t really have much success with the singles they put out prior to ‘Loaded’ and didn’t really engender much positive coverage from the music press either. In an instant ‘Loaded’ put them up there with say The Stone Roses as one of the most essential Indie bands of that period and over the years the Primal’s haven’t simply stuck to one sound or wallowed in the nostalgia of Screamdellica as their sound has taken them on the Dance/House adventure with Screamadellica then onto diverse sounds like Country/Blues, Dub/Trip Hop, Industrial/Electronica and Psychedelic Rock and few would have touted them – with a fair few wobbles along the way, as one of the most essential bands from the Indie scene of the last couple of decades when they emerged in 1987?
‘Loaded’ captures that period and the time very well and just shows what a good remix can do both to a song and even a band for that matter which very easily could have fallen through the cracks (like many did) in this period. It’s part of my soundtrack as much as anyone into the 60’s scene would tout Beatles/Stones/Who songs in a similar way!
Inspiral Carpets ‘This Is How It Feels’ is a track I liked a lot at the time and still do. The Inspiral's were a bit of a odd band to come out of the general Madchester scene, from Oldham so not as such part of that South Manchester/Salford scene and not really influenced by the Dance/House inspired sounds that Happy Mondays and to a slightly lesser extent The Stone Roses had successfully broken out with from the summer of ’89 the Inspirals’ were more of a straight forward Indie Rock band but they had been building a profile – their ‘cow’ logo etc. and fan base at a similar time. Glad they got two performances and arguably the peak position for ‘This Is How It Feels’ of No. 14 was a decent run for them, still being biased it should have got higher than that LOL!
One Noel Gallagher was the roadie for the Inspiral’s and has gone on record he learned things from them… I wonder if he was in the TOTP studio with them thinking/dreaming Oasis would be the success it was 4-5 years later. Simply put ‘This Is How It Feels’ is a good song regardless of it being considered a ‘Indie Anthem’ and all the labels that get lazily put on things and it’s certainly a track you could play today with pride and no embarrassment.
Yes I’m going to be
very biased here and I have seen them play live many times but Orbital’s ‘Chime’ was the performance I was
most interested in from these recent episodes.
Part of the Acid House and M25 Rave scene brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll soon began making music in a similar House/Techno style while taking in their other influences (not always musical) they’d subtly add to their sound over the years – particularly so from the mid ‘90’s on. ‘Chime’ is one of those examples of a DIY approach working brilliantly. Made on a cheap 4 track recorder and recorded on a normal domestic cassette deck it built a big profile on the Dance scene when released independently in 1989by London DJ Jazzy M’s ‘Oh-Zone’ label. This brought Orbital to the attention of Pete Tong/FFRR (London Records) who would go on to have a very long term relationship with the duo and continued success oddly for a ‘Dance’ act with albums for more than a decade.
‘Chime’ is arguably one of the best British examples of House/Techno from this period and captures the initial spark of the Chicago Acid House and Detroit Techno scene’s very well but has something different, something original about it than simply a rip off of what has gone before and showed many of us into that scene at that time regardless of whether you had musical skill/were a traditional musician with some good ideas and knowledge of how to apply these to the technology available at the time you could do it yourself and you could do something new and interesting and I feel Orbital and many others from that period did do that and did it very well.
It also certainly doesn’t sound anything like the previous British attempts at “House” from ’88 on which sometimes we’re good and sometimes… and it’s one of my favourite songs end of, although it’s not my favourite Orbital song LOL! It certainly paved the way for them to develop simply from a one off “Dance Anthem” single act that so many of their contemporaries from that period could only manage.
Orbital with a few splits in recent years are still around today and since ‘Chime’ have gone on to release 9 studio albums, successfully play this music in an improvised and live setting – Glastonbury ’94 being an example of how they took the House/Techno/Electronic revolution of the ‘90’s finally and established it in a live setting beyond the Rave and nightclub and was influenced by and influenced traditional Indie and Rock audience too. Notably they’ve also contributed original music to movie and film soundtracks sometimes beyond the confines of Dance/electronic music and most notably Paul Hartnoll has composed music for the successful BBC drama Peaky Blnders too.
For me Orbital have been an
essential part of my soundtrack and it’s a valid point without them or the success they had acts like Leftfield, Underworld, The Chemical Brothers etc. may not have emerged let alone had the success they’ve had over the years too. Also unlike many ‘Dance’ acts from that period I also like some of their earlier material like ‘Belfast’, ‘Satan’, ‘Lush 3.1/3.2’, ‘Halcyon’ as much as some of their later stuff like ‘Are We Here?’, ‘The Box’, ‘Style’ ‘Straight Sun’ etc. and they have progressed and come up with new and interesting stuff more than 30 years later.
As for Orbital’s TOTP performance, superficially it isn’t all that as it’s mere playback from the backing track with a bored ‘in house’ dancer nothing to do with the brothers adding the usual TOTP decoration. However the Hartnoll’s were lets say didn’t quite get on the right side of the production team at TOTP wanting to perform live – even back in 1990 they IMO could have easily done this, and against the TOTP rules wearing anti Poll Tax T-Shirts which pre-empted the infamous riot by a few weeks too. Cheekily and probably sticking two fingers up TOTP they deliberately had their equipment unplugged and with the plugs blatantly on show too. I know other acts rubbed TOTP’s production team up the wrong way back then so not surprisingly Orbital weren’t back on TOTP for almost 7 years when 'Satan' was re-released in early ’97 and became No. 3 hit and they’d built up so much momentum as one of the more credible Dance and alternative acts by that time!
‘Chime’ is probably my favourite track of these 1990 repeats but I do appreciate it’s probably not of the taste of everyone here and it certainly doesn’t fit in with what you’d consider classic TOTP either.
What more can you honestly say about Happy Mondays Step On? It’s simply one of the anthems of that Madchester period and probably captures the Monday’s at their best before let’s say the wheels came off and Factory them in a big way after about 1991.
A (sort-of) cover of ‘He's Gonna Step on You Again’ by John Kongos it naturally became a big hit for the Mondays in the late spring of 1990 hitting No.5 by the time we get to these repeats. The Mondays like The Stone Roses looked to have the world at their feet at this period and certainly followed things up well with the less than subtly titled album ‘Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches’ and singles ‘Kinky Afro’ and ‘Loose Fit’.
But let’s say their extra curricular and specifically drug activities caught up with them and Factory’s inaction and car crash approach to things after 1990 which to a different and lesser extent would affect New Order too caused things to implode after this brief moment in the sun.
1992’s follow up album ‘Yes Please’ recorded with infamous exploits and at great expense in Barbados bombed and they all looked washed up until Shaun and Bez somehow managed to reinvent themselves as Black Grape in 1995!
Having said that it’s this colourful past which makes the Mondays so interesting and fondly remembered all these years on and bands like say Northside, Jesus Jones etc. from that period may have been better musically and not come with the same baggage but are they remembered?
Looking forward to seeing them ‘perform’ ‘Kinky Afro’ from the autumn of 1990 too and I wonder whether they actually have any real memory of these TOTP performances at all? LOL!
These four acts I’ve seen live over the years and it was good to see how they (or didn’t) fitted in to the TOTP setting. We now get into the diminishing returns now.
Snap!’s ‘The Power’ was a monster hit that year and it’s a half-decent Euro/Dance number which at the time I probably liked a lot more than I would now. A sort of US/German collaboration in the right setting – i.e. a commercial crowd/club, it will work with it’s cheesy samples and rap’s from Trurbo B. Maybe a notch above say Technotronic it
isn’t the worst example of this Eurodance scene but I’ve heard the thing to death over the years and it certainly isn’t a Orbital in the terms of offering something new and progressive to the Dance scene at that time. Heard worse, heard better but it’s not the worst example of Eurodance from the ‘90’s for me!
Likewise Bizz Nizz’s ‘Don’t Miss The Partyline’ was for me fairly
similar, another cheesy Eurodance number from Belgium this time which probably back then I liked more than I do now. That Belgium/Dutch Dance scene always seemed to tread a very fine line from the Hardcore underground to the cheesy dirge of the likes of 2 Unlimited. Bizz Nizz’s effort is certainly
not as bad as 2 Unlimited but it’s not the same as what notable Belgian label R&S Records – with CJ Bolland, Joey Beltram etc. was putting out around that time either. Nice to hear again but it was not D-Shake’s 'Yaah' now was it!
Candy Flip’s ‘Strawberry Fields’, hmmm… I suppose they made it with the best intentions but it’s one of those songs/pieces of music you simply can’t really improve upon.
As much as I like/liked that Rave/Indie-Dance/Madchester scene this sort of fits in with I always got the feeling Candy Flip were a bit of a bandwagon jumper onto the coattails of the Roses and Mondays etc. without the talent or things that were special (i.e. Happy Mondays) which for me kind of makes them not essential. Don’t get me wrong it’s not the worst thing to come out of 1990, it’s not even the worst thing here but it’s feels a bit of a cash in again a bit bandwagon jumper for me when arguably there were better things around back then. I always thought this made No. 1 but only No. 3 and Candy Flip themselves never troubled the Top 40 with their follow-up singles and split by ’92.
Queen Latifah and De la Soul’s ‘Mama Gave Birth to the Soul Children’ was a decent Rap outing but only shown as a promo so no real performance aspect to speak of here. Not really my thing but decent enough.
The Family Stand’s ‘Ghetto Heaven’ was a decent soul/R&B outing and is probably sort of similar to what En Vogue were doing around that time, maybe with a slightly harder edge. It’s not really my thing but it was okay and if it was on the radio I’d listen to it but it’s not really my thing and I wouldn’t go out my way to hear it lets say.
Don’t know whether to love or hate They Might Be Giants ‘Birdhouse In Your Soul’… more in the latter camp with it as it does get a bit irritating after a while but it’s something totally different from the pop stuff and prevailing winds of what was around at that time. They deserved a performance of it on TOTP in my opinion.
The Mission were back with their usual Gothic Rock stuff on ‘Deliverance’. On the whole not a bad Rock tune but they’ve always felt much of the same thing for me and not really something I can get too excited about. Likewise Fish who by then had left Marillion was doing his adult Rock thing on ‘A Gentleman's Excuse Me’ but like so many of those mid-80’s rock acts the stuff they were coming out with by 1990 just felt bland and boring, easy to forget after watching the promo.
As I’ve mentioned before never really taken on Jimmy Somerville’s solo material and ‘Read My Lips’ didn’t do anything for me either. Similarly felt the same about Erasure’s Blue Savannah, something doesn’t really work for me to like them nor see their (at the time) mass appeal.
Heart’s ‘’ All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You’ is as per usual US inspired/marketed soft/sexual Rock. I can see why it has it’s fans but it seems like I’m watching a soundtrack to a dodgy US TV commercial – not for me!
49ers and Madonna’s ‘Vogue’ were promo’s so not much to really discuss or add about them – especially in the terms of ‘Vogue’.
Now we get into the
nasty stuff. Jam Tronik where do I begin? Phil Collins original of ‘Another Day In Paradise’ was IMO bad enough but a worse Eurodance cover of this only a couple of months after the original was released complete with crap ‘Are Yeah!’ samples is absolute pony and sadly for as much as I liked House/Techno/Electronica over the course of this decade you’d get 10-20 cheesy crap acts like this for every Orbital or Underworld you’d unearth. PUSH OFF!
S/A/W cheese now with Jason Donovan’s ‘Hang On To You Love’… I cheated didn’t even bothering watching that just know it’s the usual
S/A/W shite! The same applies for Big Fun who featured in a couple of these recent episodes too! Do you know anyone who actually
bought that back then?
I certainly don’t!
New Kids On The Block enter crooner ballad territory with ‘I’ll Be Loving You Forever’. Generally I was pretty indifferent to the NKOTB thing back then but pass the sick bag with this one!
Last but not least we have the deaththrow’s of Jive Bunny to contend with long after the joke stopped being funny.
‘That Sounds Good To Me’ (sic) not to my ears and interestingly the producers were starting to ‘appear’ in the promo videos now signifying they’re onto the ‘next thing’ probably some cheesy Dance record which came out a few months later. FFS again like the S/A/W stuff who the hell bought or liked this stuff back then thought it was shite then and it’s
STILL SHITE now!
Still we get one more surprise which is as bad as this!
Eurovision raises it’s head and 1990’s entry Emma maybe insincerely titled ‘Give A Little Love Back To The World’ gets an airing… hmmm! This was bad, if you’ve ever seen Father Ted’s ‘Song For Europe’ you’ll know exactly what I mean it’s the sort of things Simon Cowell would unleash to devastating effect with his sick inducing ballads for the likes of Westlife and more specifically Susan Boyle over the years. Being honest saw 5-10 seconds and changed channels for a couple of minutes…
IT WAS THAT BAD! Did we win that year? LOL!
Hope I’ve not bored you too much with my review but this wraps things up for the last few weeks of these repeats – some good/some bad, some interesting/some mind numbingly boring. The next few weeks should bring Jesus Jones, The Cure, Adamski (Killer), Faith No More and some erm stuff we don’t need to mention in the mix too. Again I know most of you have given up on TOTP by now but these repeats still unearth some interesting stuff whether you love it, like it or hate it – enjoy!
Yes in the terms of the pop-Dance stuff from this period yes I fully agree with you, but for the more underground/obscure stuff from back then, '88-98 is exactly what I'm after! 
Jimmy Somerville’s cover of Sylvester’s ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ was bad. I don’t think he set out to do it that badly and let’s say he is a gay/camp artist on that scene but as much as this may have seemed a good idea at the time looking at that 30 odd years later was a painful experience and sometimes the original is the best and NOTHING can improve that! 
Bronski Beat/Communards/Jimmy Somerville I’m fairly indifferent too… but this wasn’t one of his finest moments or for anyone else doing covers like this around this time. 
) back then. Stupidly I never got it (and ‘Killer’) on 12” which I wished I had 
, yes it’s all playback which was an issue – and bone of contention, see Orbital, for Dance acts back then and I’m not quite sure how a ‘live’ performance of this would have worked on TOTP. It would either have been a car crash like when New Order did Blue Monday or rocked like The Prodigy’s live performance’s of a year or so later did, but it’s as worthy of a slot on the show as say Halo James or Del Amitri in that period and was probably more representative of what was going on back then. Looking forward to the ‘Killer’ performance in the next few weeks too. 
