Gary Clail/On-U Sound System: "The Emotional Hooligan"

4 September 1991

"If Gary would only adopt a more pop star moniker — Tarquin, perhaps — I'd give this one 11 out of 10. As it is, 9¾ out of 10."

— Caroline Sullivan

Well, what d'ya know? A flop. We haven't come across a chart not factor in some time. Singles of the Fortnight failing to crack even the lowest positions of the UK Top 75 or 100 occurred fairly often in the early days of Smash Hits but it became much more of a rarity in the late eighties and early nineties. In 1979, for example, eleven SOTF ended up missing the charts; a year later, there were nine failures. By 1990, however, only Sly & Robbie's tepid "Dance Hall" and the brilliant Ben Chapman remix of Monsoon's "Ever So Lonely" managed to miss out on the hit parade — and until the first week of September, 1991, this trend would only continue.

For Gary Clail to fail to hit the Top 100 must have been surprising. He and his On-U Sound System organization had enjoyed a breakthrough when their single "Human Nature" managed to make the Top 10. Not bad for a former roofer from Bristol in his mid-thirties. The presence of charismatic LGBT singer and dancer Lana Palley (aka Alan Palley, aka Lanah P, aka quite a few not-so-secret identities actually) must have paid off; she didn't return for follow-up "Escape" which ended up just missing the Top 40. Between the two, there's a gulf that's much wider than more than thirty chart positions: "Human Nature" is unique, catchy and fun in places (though still not exactly my cup of tea) while "Escape" has superfluous backing vocalists and a tune that appropriately continues to escape me.

But Clail had more left in the tank. "The Emotional Hooligan" is such a good title that it also managed to be the name of his debut album, released following the success of "Human Nature". Perhaps his darkest record to date, it didn't have the commercial potential of its predecessors but there's enough going on in it that it's not difficult to picture it returning him to the Top 30 or so. But the fact that it couldn't even manage to make number sixty is shocking. Radio One must've stayed away. The Chart Show clearly didn't want to have anything to do with it. No one decided to take punt based on Caroline Sullivan's recommendation. Oh, how wrong the populace got this one.

Sullivan describes Clail as a "caring, sharing sort" with concern for people being "nicer to each other". He doesn't quite look the part though. He appears distant in his videos for one thing. He also looks like the sort who could've found himself caught up in lad culture had he emerged five years later. The early nineties ended up being a critical time for English men. The working class had been altered dramatically by Thatcherism. Football hooligans had become so notorious that English teams ended up getting banned from playing on continental Europe. Clail wishes to lift these sorts up while Britain at large looked to reduce males to the lowest common denominator: rather than working class types aspiring to becoming middle class, the middle classes looked to lower themselves by becoming ironically working class lads.

Sullivan also notes that a "ridiculous sample of a baking dog, a big one by the sound of it, rounds things off". Indeed, there hadn't been such an arresting sound of howling canines on a record since the Pet Shop Boys' remarkable "Suburbia" (especially in its "Full Horror" extended form). (With all due respect to the memories of Louie and Banana, it clearly beats out the rather pointless barking which closes out The Beach Boys' classic Pet Sounds album) While white boys were clamouring for Public Enemy and NWA records loaded with urban decay, other genres were being ignored if they looked to examine what might be wrong in the 'burbs. Odd, since the supposedly facile eighties had room for crappy English new towns while the authentic nineties apparently had more pressing matters.

Few had time for "The Emotional Hooligan". Being something of a grower, this is understandable. Nevertheless, the punters missed out on a fine record with a message that ought to have been more commonplace back then. And Gary Clail missed out on being sufficiently rewarded for his efforts. Such is the way in the fickle world of pop. You sometimes hit, you sometimes miss but at least there are those who may feel its impact — they're Singles of the Fortnight for a reason, you know.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Wet Wet Wet: "Make It Tonight"

We're not supposed to have guilty pleasures anymore which is both liberating and also a bit depressing. A part of me misses the days when music listeners had those people it was okay to like as well as a handful that we'd never be caught dead admitting to liking. One of mine was Wet Wet Wet. They had a pair of horrible cover versions that I always wanted found myself singing along with and those early soulcialist hits were shameful delights. Somehow or other their third album High on the Happy Side is actually quite good, just about pulling them out of the guilty pleasure hellhole — at least for a little while. Marti Pellow could never hope to match Al Green and it's here that it sounds like he's accepted this hard reality — and all the better for it. "Make It Tonight" is more Nashville than Memphis which seemed to be a more appropriate home for rootsy Scots. No, ver Wets weren't the rootsy types but this shows that they had it in them. Just as they were with Gary Clail, however, the public wasn't interested; "Make It Tonight" only just scraped the bottom of the Top 40. Follow-up, the Celtic folk-tinged "Put the Light On" performed even worse despite also being a fine song. Things looked bleak for Wet Wet Wet until they served up a dismal ballad for the people to lap up. But at least I had my guilty pleasure back.

Banderas: "She Sells"

1 May 1991

"Verily, a song amongst songs."

— Caroline Sullivan

Though very much a product of the eighties, synth-pop at the beginning of the nineties did not appear to be slowing down, especially when it came to the big names of the genre. Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys both released their finest albums that year (Violator and Behaviour respectively), New Order recorded their sole UK number one single and Erasure were still riding the wave of hit singles from their Wild! album issued late in 1989. Sure, The Human League were faltering with the patchy Romantic? but it had been a while since they'd been at their best anyway.

As 1990 turned into '91, there seemed to be an even greater thirst for angsty, doomed electro pop. Erasure handed in their best album yet (happily, it won't be long before I can go on about the magnificent Chorus in this space), OMD were back and as good as ever and supergroup Electronic were more of a going concern with their self-titled LP and single "Get the Message". Greatest hits albums by the Pet Shops and Soft Cell proved popular, as was the collection from synth-adjacent Eurythmics. Fueled by a mix of irony and genuine interest, eighties nostalgia was already setting in and nothing said 'eighties' more than synth-pop. (It really says it all that eighties nostalgia commenced almost as soon as the decade ended whereas nineties nostalgia took over twenty years to become a thing)

One worrying aspect, however, was that no one new seemed to be stepping up. Late-eighties acts such as Information Society, Kon Kan and When in Rome all had their moments but soon began to fade. It took former members of another synth-pop group to give some fleeting hope to the idea that it was a genre with a future.

Caroline Buckley and Sally Herbert had been in the backing band of The Communards, a synth duo in a world of synth duos. Jimmy Somerville and Richard Coles decided to go their separate ways in 1989 and this opening left Buckley and Herbert to form a pairing of their own. But where The Communards, Pet Shops, Sparks, Yazoo, Eurythmics, Blancmange and Erasure all had at least one male — if not two in most cases — Banderas was an all-female two-piece. (Had anyone been worried that this arrangement would affect the classic synth duo dynamic, keyboardist Herbert fitted in perfectly with the moody Chris Lowe-Vince Clarke other member type)

With an arresting image (Buckley in particular really pulls off having a shaved head) and unique status as all-female, Banderas looked like a promising part of synth's next generation. (Though, in truth, they were no younger than pop veterans Erasure) Though it deserved a bit better, debut single "This Is Your Life" gave them a Top 20 hit in the early part of '91 and they looked to follow its success with more of the same on "She Sells". Not that the latter was just a redo of the former: where their first record happened to be dreamy, soaring and beautifully sung by Buckley, the follow-up proved to be darker and more aggressive.

Sounding not unlike something Propaganda would have come up with back in '85 — either that or a more sinister take on Swing Out Sister's hit "Breakout" — "She Sells" ought to have been a decent-sized hit. Sadly, in spite of Caroline O'Sullivan's glowing write-up, it just came up short of the Top 40. Had they been around four years earlier, it's easy to imagine it getting to a respectable chart position like number twelve ("This Is Your Life" would've been a sure fire Top 10 smash in this reality) with a Top of the Pops performance to go with it as well as appearing on a Now That's What I Call Music compilation. But timing is everything in music: the two-pronged onslaught of trashy Euro-house and earnest indie rock meant that new comers to the world of synth-pop didn't have the staying power of the core acts. By 1993, all that remained were the big names — and even they (Depeche Mode, New Order, Pet Shop Boys) would never be as popular from that point on.

We may bemoan the lack of prolonged success for Banderas but it's likely that they coped well it. The two were very down-to-earth with neither craving fame and fortune ("...I was walking around Sainsbury's yesterday and thought that if anyone recognised me then I would have to hit them," Herbert admitted to Smash Hits). Hopefully there remains a loyal following of Banderas backers to preserve the legacy of an unfortunately overlooked act, one that ought to have been held in similarly high esteem as all those angsty and moody synth-pop groups that came before them.

~~~~~

Not Reviewed This Fortnight

The Wedding Present: "Dalliance"

Reduced to the Also Released This Fortnight sidebar down at the bottom of the page, Caroline O'Sullivan for whatever reason didn't review this outstanding single from Dave Gedge and his Wedding Present chums. She really ought to have especially considering how subpar most of the new releases are in this issue. Nevertheless, "Dalliance" is a first rate banger, the sort of song that feels like it has existed forever even if it could only have come from the mind of Gedge. Starting off quietly, it gradually builds into a racket. They say rock music ought to be played at maximum volume but rare are those tracks that seem to get louder even as you turn it down. Gedge can't really sing as such but his voice is a thing to behold. There's desperation, desire, heartbreak and I can even detect some humour and irony present. I always forget how brilliant The Wedding Present were but being reminded of it is always a welcome (re)discovery. Not for everyone though I can't imagine why.

EMF: "I Believe"

9 January 1991

"Forest of Dean's biggest — nay, only — pop personages follow up "Unbelievable" with another just-back-from-the-rave-up classic."

— Caroline Sullivan

As a fourteen-year-old I thought that EMF were clever. Dead clever. They had first become popular with "Unbelievable" and then they eventually followed it with "Lies". Finally, they completed the trilogy with "I Believe". See what I mean? They had shown skepticism, had determined that everyone else was full of shit and then professed that in the end there were truths that they believed in. They couldn't have planned the release of their first three singles better. Clever, clever, clever. (And even cleverer four years later when they did a cover of The Monkees' "I'm a Believer" along with Vic Reeves, who we'll be encountering in this space before long, and Bob Mortimer, who we won't)

Only later did I discover that this was not the order in which they came out. "Unbelievable" — seemingly the only song of their's anyone remembers anymore — did indeed arrive first but it was "I Believe" that followed it into the UK Top 10. Then "Children", a track I had only known as a deep cut until very recently, gave them their third hit single. It was only then that "Lies" came out as the diminishing returns began to take their toll. In North America we got "Lies" right after "Unbelievable" which led me to believe it had been that way back in Britain.

"Lies" had been a key track on EMF's debut album Schubert Dip. While others, particularly my fellow North Americans, had only got the CD for "Unbelievable", I was pretty heavily into the whole thing for a short period. (I got it from my sister for Christmas; by February I had lost interest in it in favour of The Wonder Stuff's Never Loved Elvis even though I hadn't given up completely on "Epsom Mad Funkers") I had heard that early copies had been deleted due to the use of Mark David Chapman quoting from the opening lines of John Lennon's "Watching the Wheels" ("People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing. They give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin...") which Yoko Ono had objected to. It was, therefore, much to my surprise that the forbidden sample was included on my disc as a lead in to "Lies". The song was already unsettling enough but to have it open with the ghostly, southern drawl of Lennon's assassin made it even more disturbing. Yet it was gripping for me at the time. Its piano part is house-influenced (in fact, it's probably nicked from a rave tune) but for it to appear on a deeply disturbing indie record was something I had never experienced before. ("Fun" fact (those inverted commas are doing some awfully heavy lifting): "Lies" would soon lead me towards reading J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and, eventually, Albert Goldman's The Lives of John Lennon, both due to curiosity surrounding Lennon's killer and his obsessions)

But I only stayed for "Lies"; I came for "Unbelievable". While fellow Canadian youths undoubtedly heard it as a white boy reaction to hip hop, for me it was the next logical step in Madchester. EMF weren't directly associated with baggy groups like The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays but from my vantage point across the Atlantic they seemed like much the same thing: dance music with guitars — or, better yet, guitar rock with a DJ along for the ride. Everyone I liked was into "Unbelievable" and everyone I hated loved it too. We may have loved it for different reasons but at least there was a detente.

So, their first single hooked me and the second made me such a committed fan that I would eventually purchase EMF's second album Stigma (it's all right or at least it was all the way back in early '93 when I last gave it a listen). But "I Believe" slipped through the cracks somewhat. "Lies" had piggybacked off of the success of "Unbelievable" but the momentum wasn't strong enough to eek out a third hit in Canada and the US. But even as a young fan, it was a song that failed to make much of an impression as I got into the album. For one thing, expressing that they were not nihilists didn't do them any favours in my book as an angsty teen. More importantly, it was too much of a poor cousin to "Unbelievable". Obviously inferior but not even distinctive enough to lend them credibility. It was as if they knew they couldn't possibly ever follow their breakthrough hit and decided to phone in some shit that was kind of like it but nowhere close to as addictive or appealing.

Finally, it should be mentioned that this is the first singles review from 1991. Veteran pop critic Caroline Sullivan made her debut "doing" the singles in ver Hits and she proves to be right at home alongside your Chris Heaths, William Shaws and Sylvia Pattersons. (It only begs the question why she was bothered being at the Melody Maker for so as long as she did) Making her maiden voyage easier is the loaded selection of singles she had to deal with. Eschewing the notion that January is a dead month for new releases, some big names are on board here. Very few have their best material on offer but that's beside the point. 

Some were longtime chart favourites while others were emerging but the majority in either case were just about done. Rick Astley was back (and soon to be gone again), Gloria Estefan had returned from a horrible bus crash injury to a pop scene that had used her convalescence to move on from her, Bananarama had left the Stock Aitken Waterman stable but managed to sound tied to them more than ever before. The Go-Go's had returned with faculties intact and raging but hardly anyone remembered them anymore. Brother Beyond had just enjoyed an American breakthrough but the decision to go in the direction of a boy band doing new jack swing wasn't going to help them in the long run.

And yet, the new blood didn't have it any better. Vanilla Ice's novelty had mercifully vanished. Lindy Layton had milked her success from singing on Beats International's "Dub Be Good to Me" a year earlier but the udders were now dry. Oleta Adams' "Get Here" remains magnificent (it would've been my co-Single of the Fortnight along with the number below) but she was even more unable to follow her smash than EMF were with their's. Ultra cool acts A Tribe Called Quest ("Seriously, isn't rap getting a bit boring?") and Pop Will Eat Itself ("Pretty good, really": I beg to differ) had breakthrough hits with their offerings but how far were either of them going to go? As for Maureen, who? (Fun fact which is a good deal more fun than the supposed fun fact above: every act reviewed this fortnight by Sullivan had at least one Top 40 hit in Britain at some point which must be a first)

And back to EMF (I know I said "finally" about three paragraphs ago but bear with me). The Madchester urchins were all pushing thirty so it must have been nice to see some young groups take up the mantle. There's always room for some thrilling, youthful pop and EMF were the right sort of act to provide it in '91. It couldn't hope to last but at least they weren't as insufferable as fellow English alt-dance-rockers Jesus Jones, another younger group but one that seemed ready and willing to enter a premature middle age. I'm very happy to report that we still haven't had to deal with them in this space.

Yeah, about that...

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Queen: "Innuendo"

Whenever I think that Queen are massively overrated a song of their's comes along to remind me that they did have their moments. Operatic hard rock was their specialty which ensures that "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Somebody to Love", "Who Wants to Live Forever" and "Innuendo" are probably the best songs they ever did and I can give or take the rest. (All right fine, "You're My Best Friend" is a banger as well but that's it!) '91 looked to be yet another good year for Freddie Mercury, John Deacon and the other two: "Innuendo" gave them a number one smash and the album of the same name repeated the feat the following month. By the end of the year, however, Mercury's death would overshadow everything else, quickly rendering this single a forgotten gem. One that is definitely worth revisiting from what is still an overrated band.