Habit: "Get Back" / Scritti Politti featuring Roger Troutman: "Boom! There She Was"

2 November 1988

Welcome to yet another in an on-and-off series of pop groups reviewing the singles in Smash Hits and failing to agree on a favourite. We previously saw both The Communards, who did well in the task and picked a pair of absolute bangers, and Bros, who made the whole thing about themselves and picked perhaps the two most boring records on offer. For all the differences in quality between the two, there was a commendable effort on the part of both groups to go for records with some stylistic differences — and not just from each other but even from the groups themselves. Richard Coles and Jimmy Somerville didn't opt for hi-NRG synth-pop and Matt, Luke and Ken didn't choose perpetually cranky and entitled boy bands. This time things are somewhat different. The members of Brother Beyond end up dividing into two camps on the Single of the Fortnight but both records share more than a little in common with each — and, indeed, neither of them is a million miles away from what the 'Yond aspired towards. Whether they were able to achieve the "heights" of either a fellow up-and-coming pop group tipped for big things or an eighties' stalwart that was beginning to slow down is another matter altogether.

~~~~~

"I'd really like to see them have a hit."

— Nathan

"Can I hear the B-side?"

— David

"I wish he wouldn't write lyrics like he's swallowed a whole dictionary though."

— Carl

"This is my sort of happening drum groove."

— Steve

It was November of 1988 and the UK was getting cooler after a fairly mild October. Snow was almost nowhere to be seen (though I did wake up one Saturday morning to a very brief flurry that had passed before I was able to get myself together enough to go out in it) but a dense, bone-chilling cold I had never experienced in back in Canada began to settle in. Our place had no central heating, hot water wasn't limitless and the space heater in the living room wasn't even adequate for drying our clothes. School, too, was freezing, with portable classrooms for both English and Science being especially frigid. It was at this time that PE class went from the cool enough indoor swimming pool to the frosted-over rugby pitch. A rugger scrum was not my idea of larks in gym class but at least the combined body heat of two dozen first years provided some warmth. My family took overnight weekend trips to both York (still one of my favourite cities in Britain) and Norwich (nothing to do though I would eventually "warm" to it) which were both somehow even colder than Essex. All this discomfort but at least it got me thinking about Christmas early — and I wasn't alone.

The race for the Christmas Number One was already getting going nearly two months early. This fortnight's new singles aren't exactly stacked and it wouldn't be until later in the month that some real contenders would emerge but there are signs of a preemptive push nonetheless. Annie Lennox and Al Green's "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" is here albeit without mention of it being from the (overrated) Christmas movie Scrooged ("Sounds a bit seasonal, y'know?" points out a perceptive 'Yond drummer Steve Alexander). So, too, are chart topping singers from earlier in the year Glenn Medeiros and Tiffany, both with brand new material. Salt-N-Pepa go the double A-side route with a fun version of "Twist and Shout" to put them in a better position chart-wise than its disappointing predecessor "Shake Your Thang (It's Your Thing)" (though, oddly, the 'Yond only discuss the single's flip side "Everybody Get Up", a tune I have no recollection of). And then there's the slushy bar-band power ballad below.

These would all be Christmas Number One longshots but at least one can imagine record label execs thinking otherwise. Elsewhere, we have the true also-rans. Groups like Habit and Perfect Day were highly regarded by the pop press at the time but neither had anything distinctive about them which did them no favours at this time of the year. On the other hand, Black and Scritti Politti were both sliding down the dumper and more of the same wasn't going to rescue them. 

That said, Green's "Boom! There She Was" is easily the best single going this fortnight. No, it isn't close to the Scritti of old but even when they were treading water they were still way ahead of the pack doing pop-soul. The hallmarks of their mid-eighties' switch to a much more radio-friendly sound are still there, even if they're a little less inspired than the likes of "Wood Beez" or "Absolute". Crafted by a Habit or a Perfect Day — or, indeed, a 'Yond — and "Boom!" would've been astonishing; done by Green and co. and it's a case of "oh, another brilliant, understated Scritti Politti record, so what else is new?"

And, yet, the 'Yond's keyboardist and main songwriter (when they weren't relying on Stock Aitken Waterman, that is) Carl Fysh longs for Green to write lyrics that aren't as if he "swallowed a whole dictionary". You know what else would be nice? Joy Division songs that aren't so damn depressing, Queen songs that aren't so over-the-top and Ramones songs that aren't such a bloody racket.  Green was — and probably still is — a master of complex wordplay and deconstructionism in his recordings while masking all of it in gooey arrangements and it's possible to love the songs without getting too far into the weeds of post-modern French philosophy. Fysh being a songwriter himself, it's curious that he would nevertheless point out Green's wordiness as a flaw. After all, as Brian Eno once said, only 10,000 people bought those early Scritti Politti EPs but everyone who did formed a band and began quoting Derrida. And despite some charitable things I've said before about Brother Beyond, it's a shame they wanted Green to descend to their level rather than them aspiring to rise to his.

If Green's not-so-hidden depths annoyed Fysh so much he should've followed bandmates Nathan Moore and David White on the Habit bandwagon where there would no intellectual pretenses. More on the dancier side of sophisti-pop, they emerged onto a crowded scene that already had the likes of Matt Bianco and The Blow Monkeys and they struggled to stand out. They had their champions (Tom Doyle gave their single "Lucy" an encouraging review earlier in the year and added that "rumour has it they have lots of better songs too..." Uh, no) but no amount of radio play, TV spots and Singles of the Fortnight could hide just how inessential they were. You might well have liked "Get Back" but no one needed to own it and kids weren't rushing to their VCRs to record them playing on Going Live (assuming they did).

Back to Scritti Politti, "Boom! There She Was" gave them a second chart flop on the bounce when they deserved at least a nominal Top 40 spot. Yet, there was no escaping that they weren't as good as they had been three or fours years earlier. Perhaps sensing that changes were in order, Green began drafting in guests for one off spots. Famously, Miles Davis appeared on the Top 20 hit "Oh Patti" and this time it's talk box master Roger Troutman who got the call. Nothing against the man but it's not a particularly noticeable performance with his robotic voice relegated to the background as if mocking Green's falsetto. Still, he got a "featuring" credit and this marks a turning point for Scritti Politti in which they went from being a group to a solo act with a revolving door of guests. This in turn wasn't ever remarked on because of the less-than-productive decade ahead for Green. He will reappear on this blog at least one more time (and with something that Carl Fysh would have doubtless approved of) but if you thought that three albums in the eighties was a slothsome workrate, just wait till you see how he fared in the decade that rediscovered earnestness: he would be missed.

~~~~~

Also Released This Fortnight

Angry Anderson: "Suddenly"

"It's topical though", a once again helpful Steve Alexander notes, "because I saw Scott propose to Charlene the other day". First, good on the 'Yond's drummer for not pretending that he didn't watch Neighbours. Second, I don't remember this rotten song soundtracking the moment that Scott Robinson got down on one knee and popped the question to Charlene Mitchell, who was doubtless dressed in overalls at the time. Timely and them some because it would be more well-remembered for being the theme to their wedding later in the month. There are lots of sickly "ballads" that I can happily listen to but this is not one of them unless it's for nostalgic purposes. Glenn Medeiros never recorded anything so vile. Habit deserved better, didn't they?

Brother Beyond: "He Ain't No Competition"

19 October 1988

""It's always been a mystery why Stock, Aitken & Waterman never wrote songs for a group of boys and now, of course, they do."

— Chris Heath

I had now been in the UK for two months. I had by this point adjusted well enough to my new school, Mayflower Comprehensive in Billericay. I had quickly sussed that Drama was my favourite class, Religious Studies was somehow worse than I'd been expecting and Information Processing was useless without computers. I did really well in French and Geography, I sucked at Art and General Science and was just sort of all right in everything else. Along the way, I picked up a group of friends who I remained tight with for the rest of the year and had even master tying the tie I was required to wear every day. Every Friday my dad (a Maths teacher at Mayflower) gave me a pound to buy lunch and I typically used it on a slice of pizza, chips and an iced bun, washed down with something approximating cola from a machine. I missed Canada but that longing to be back was fading.

At home I began watching Grange Hill, Neighbours and Top of the Pops but the Saturday morning telly with all the music-focused programming would be something I would only know of rather than get into fully since we were going away almost every weekend. Overnight trips weren't quite a part of our routine (something that would begin just a few days after this issue of Smash Hits came out when we took the train to Scotland for half-term break with my grandparents who were visiting; I spent much of the journey up to Edinburgh engrossed in this very issue which my sister was already finished with) but we were already into day trips into London as well as visits to Colchester, Oxford, Southend and some hit-and-miss Essex villages. Getting away from out depressing little hovel as much as possible was a priority but I wish it hadn't been at the expense of just a little bit more telly.

When in the room I shared with my sister, I was happiest reading Smash Hits (or the pop bits of my sister's Just Seventeen mags) dreaming about one day forming a group of my own and listening to Radio 1's Sunday evening Top 40 countdown with Bruno Brookes. It was at this time that I began to experience my first (and strongest) bout of pop fandom rage. Not everyone seemed to share my opinion that Kylie Minogue's latest single, "Je ne sais pas pourquoi", was the greatest song in the world and I couldn't take it. For three consecutive Sundays I sat by the radio awaiting the results and for three consecutive Sundays I ended up bitterly disappointed. Enya's "Orinoco Flow" (my bête noire) didn't lodge itself at the top spot for long but it was nevertheless painful to be me for the better part of a month. Kylie then began to fade (the forgettable other side of the single's double-A "Made in Heaven" did "Je ne sais pas pourquoi" no favours) and my anger shifted to Robin Beck (and with good reason), Yazz and other usurpers. A pop injustice had occurred!

Blame? Oh there was a fair amount of it to go around. I thought people were stupid for buying Enya's dreadful record and not picking up Kylie's instead (this ire was not directed in part at myself since I didn't vote with my wallet, records being embargoed from out house because we didn't have a record player — at least not yet). I got annoyed whenever they'd play the naff video for "Orinioco Flow" on TV. But I reserved most of my wrath for Chris Heath for inexplicably trashing what I reckoned to be the best single I'd ever heard. His "clumsy, plodding ballad" was something that had gripped my eleven-year-old heartstrings. He found it "horribly dull" but I couldn't get enough of it. And I was certain that there were pop kids out there who'd refrained from buying it because some know-it-all writing in Smash Hits told them that it would be a waste of their hard "earned" bob.

(I would remain furious with Heath throughout the course of November but I eventually got over it. He soon became one of my favourite Smash Hits writers and I would eventually read his very fine books Pet Shop Boys, Literally and Pet Shop Boys Versus America, a pair of works that expertly dissect the the genius, insights and grumpiness of my favourite group)

What I didn't do, however, was target my derision in the direction of Brother Beyond, the band behind Heath's Single of the Fortnight. A Stock Aitken Waterman composition just like "Je ne sais pas pourquoi", it followed the near-number one success of "The Harder I Try", a single that was peaking two months' earlier when I arrived in the UK. It wouldn't be for a few weeks that I started following the charts and if I did hear the 'Yond's breakthrough hit it meant nothing to me. Thus, "He Ain't No Competition" became my introduction to the one legitimate alternative to Bros. And I was impressed — though not as much as my sister as it quickly supplanted Erasure's "A Little Respect" as her favourite song. (She never took to Kylie) It was only when I finally heard "The Harder I Try" proper on a compilation album that I got for Christmas that I realised that their second hit wasn't quite as good as their first and that maybe, just maybe, it had rode its coattails into the Top 10.

Opening with a sitar (an instrument that had a brief resurgence in British pop near the end of 1988: Hue & Cry also used one on their near-hit "Ordinary Angel") and a quick instrumental sneak peak of the chorus (a SAW trademark), "He Ain't No Competition" is from the off a much faster-paced number than its predecessor. Indeed, one of the charms of "The Harder I Try" was in its soulful, laid-back sound that flirts with lovers rock. 'Yond members Carl Fysh and David White might have even written it themselves; its follow-up has more in common with SAW, seemingly the sort of thing they had lying around in need of an artist or group to give it a good home. It resembles one the deep cuts on the second side of Kylie's debut album, such as "I Miss You", a track that Heath wishes had been the single instead of "Je ne sais pas pourquoi".

Nathan Moore got to play the vulnerable lad who made a million girls cry on "The Harder I Try" but his overlooked talents as a vocalist aren't needed as much here. There are verses where he gets to play the feeble little lamb but the chorus is all about strutting. Fair enough, he was a handsome guy with a champagne smile who clearly enjoyed the adulation of pop life and his confident vocals reflect this. It's likely that Pete Waterman had designs on Moore playing the roll of the teen heart throb even though this had already been achieved. Waterman was beginning to see himself as a pop svengali who molded his stars to suit his vision but he should have remained on the course previously set when SAW catered to the talents of their acts rather than the opposite. "The Harder I Try" had been tailored to Brother Beyond; "He Ain't No Competition" would be the vision that Waterman had for them. The fact that it's still a pretty good record is indicative of SAW not having quite lost their grip though it wouldn't be long.

Brother Beyond would move away from SAW following "He Ain't No Competition". Their debut album Get Even would be revamped to include their two Top 10 hits and would get a very favourable review in Smash Hits a month later. In the meantime, ver Hits also gave them that year's Most Promising New Group award (that the fans may not have actually voted on). Things were looking up for a band that hadn't had much luck until that summer. Riding the wave of their chart success, the 'Yond started off 1989 with their first self-penned hit "Be My Twin" (remixed to sound as much like a SAW number as possible) but the law of diminishing returns was already starting to affect them. A fourth hit, a remix of old flop "Can You Keep a Secret?" failed to reach the Top 20 and the bloom was off the rose. They would end the year outside the hit parade, right back where they had been at the beginning of '88.

The hits dwindled (though they did manage to fluke an American hit in 1990 with "The Girl I Used to Know", a better song than most of their non-SAW material) but Brother Beyond made the most of their fleeting time near the top.They did the media rounds, were always on the telly (probably even more than I was aware since, as I already said, I seldom got the chance to enjoy the Saturday pop shows) and were up for the Smash Hits program. They would even give reviewing the singles a go — and they even managed to do so without making this young pop kid cross.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

INXS: "Need You Tonight"

I still quite like both SAW contributions this fortnight but neither of them comes remotely close to this re-release of "Need You Tonight", a global smash in 1987 that the UK initially chose to spurn for some crazy reason. Subsequent singles "New Sensation" and "Never Tear Us Apart" managed to nab Top 30 spots — that were still way lower than they should been — so their sole American chart topper got a second chance a year on from its previous failure. This time, the British public almost made up for the injustice by taking it all the way to number two, a triumph that was dulled by finishing behind the horrible Coke-shilling "The First Time" by Robin Beck. Still, it got people talking and INXS would eventually become bigger in the UK than across the Atlantic. Sexy, unsettling, irresistible and one of those songs that cleverly manages to sound fresh in spite of how derivative the Aussies were. One of the singles of the year, just as it had been in '87. Amazingly, it was their only Top Ten hit in Britain.

The Teardrop Explodes: "When I Dream"

18 September 1980

"Further upstream from their once sombre, sparser sound, Liverpool's Teardrop devise a richly textured tuneful keyboard ballad (that's the word!) that's bursting its sides with lightness, depth and ingenuity."

— Mark Ellen

What I previously said:

Reviewer Mark Ellen described this as "bursting its sides with lightness, depth and ingenuity" and it's not difficult to see why. Julian Cope and his old Teardrop mates leave nothing on the table for this, even if it does go on a bit long — although there could be a single edit that I'm not aware of, I used the version that closes the kind-of-dated-but-also-kind-of-timeless Kilimanjaro. A cracker.

Pop music in the seventies had been all about mega-successful albums. Rockists will obviously cite Led Zeppelin's fourth LP and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon but it wasn't just at the long haired metal bands and prog rockers who dominated with the 33⅓ format. David Bowie, Elton John, Joni Mitchell and (see below) Stevie Wonder built their hall-of-fame careers on the string of extraordinary albums they released over the decade. Bob Dylan returned to the top with Blood on the Tracks, his best work in a decade. Marvin Gaye broke out of his Motown straight jacket when he delivered the hugely influential What's Going On. Even disco artists got in on the act: with 12" singles still in their infancy, Donna Summer released LP's with extended cuts on the label Casablanca Records that captured to sweaty ecstasy of Studio 54. Some of theses individuals also did well on the singles charts at the same time but it was no longer a requirement and 45's were typically neutered to more radio-friendly running times.

There were holdouts to this trend, however. Paced by punk, British acts of the late-seventies began to focus on singles. Now, a lot of musicologists will go into all that stuff about the crippling recession of the time but this big picture explanation leaves out the realities of the everyday person and the towns they were living in. The economy may have been suffering but music was thriving. Clubs were all over the place and there were eager bands aplenty to play them every night. Independent record labels also began springing up.

British pop at the close of the seventies marked a return of the single as the preeminent format and many of the best albums of the time are almost like greatest hits collections. XTC's Black Sea, Madness' Absolutely, Dexys Midnight Runners' Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, The Jam's Sound Affects, The Specials' More Specials all still sound like compilatinos of singles and b-sides and they're all the better for it. (Elvis Costello took it to an extreme with Get Happy!! which was designed to look like an obscure old album and was packed with twenty soul/Motown-esque tracks)

But no one did this as well as The Teardrop Explodes. With a background in the psychedelic garage rock of Love and The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, more prog tendencies on their second album Wilder and Julian Cope's subsequent career releasing sprawling LP's of thrilling nonsense, you might assume that they'd be a more album-oriented group like Joy Division or Talking Heads but you'd only be half-right. Debut Kilimanjaro has up to six singles on it (depending on which version of the album you have) but the group worked out a running order so expertly that you'd never know it was effectively a compilation album. Imagine if the numbers for, say, the classic Forever Changes had been culled from more than two years' worth of material while still sounding as coherent as it always has.

Initially a part of Liverpool-based indie label Zoo Records (co-run by David Balfe, who also happened to be their keyboard player, which is certainly a good way to get yourself signed), The Teardrop Explodes released a pair of well-regarded singles — "Sleeping Gas" and "Bouncing Babies" — that nevertheless failed to make much of an impact. Being on a tiny imprint, this hardly mattered: the records probably sold well enough around their Merseyside base while the group played gigs all over the place. An album was earmarked but didn't materialise in time. "Treason (It's Just a Story)" became their first single of the eighties and did well enough to become a sizable indie chart hit. Things were going well enough that they signed with major label Mercury and "When I Dream" became their first real shot at the mainstream.

Ellen is impressed that they've moved on from their former "sombre, sparser sound" which is something I'd never thought of until this week. It was only when I sequenced the Kilimanjaro album to play the first four singles in chronological order that I began to see his point. "Sleeping Gas" and "Bouncing Babies" are both spirited affairs but they were both produced with that clean, skeletal post-punk sound: chugging guitars, primal beats and some organ playing that could easily have been played by Steve Nieve of The Attractions — and with little else in the background. "Treason" is a turning point, with greater emphasis placed on dynamic effects courtesy of the famed Langer-Winstanley team. With major label backing, there was more of an opportunity to explore to the fullest extent, which sort of belies the punk ethos (one that is notably echoed by Julian Cope) that D.I.Y. values are best.

"When I Dream" wasn't the most obvious single in their repetoire. The closing track on Kilimanjaro, it is over five minutes long and really feels like the sort of deep cut that committed followers swear by while remaining obscure to everyone else. (Ellen calls it a "ballad" which is only really accurate in the realm of Teardrop/Cope numbers) They could've gone with "Poppies" or "Brave Boys Keep Their Promises" and no one would've blamed them. Yet, "When I Dream" deserved to have the privilege of headlining its own single. Less dense than earlier efforts, there's a pleasant bubbliness to the tune which lightens the song that Cope is singing. A much more restrained performance from Balfe on the keys ought to have been in order but that would have weighed it down. Cope is at his best when he sings profound material in as comical a style as possible and his Teardrop associates seem to understand this.

We tend to keep compilations at a distance from so-called studio albums (unless they happen to be one of those few accepted collections like Hatful of Hollow). Listeners like to think that groups craft their LP's in a similar fashion to the way The Beatles did with Please Please Me. Yet, "proper" albums may take months and years to record and they are frequently compiled just like a greatest hits. Either way, it doesn't matter; a sense of end-to-end unity is what we all crave when we sit down to listen to an album of any kind. Plus, it doesn't hurt to have some killer singles to put out at the same time. The Teardrop Explodes did more than enough in both respects, regardless of how it all came together.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Stevie Wonder: "Master Blaster (Jammin')"

Ellen is pleased that Stevie is back crafting lovely pop rather than whatever it is he was trying to do on that Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants thing. That said, he seems aware that the glory days are gone ("Three years ago his music was a celebration in itself. Now...who knows?"). Like Miles Davis, The Beatles and Bowie, Wonder had been leading music by the collar but now he was the one doing the following. "Boogie on Reggae Woman" was the closest thing to Jamaican music that I ever wanted from him but I'll take this as a bonus. Hotter Than July would be the first Stevie Wonder album in ages that no needed to have but at least the fumes he was riding on were from his incredible peak. Being a shadow of himself would have to wait a bit.

Deacon Blue: "Real Gone Kid"

5 October 1988

"Scottish popstrels Deacon Blue are a bit of a mystery. They've had one medium-sized hit with "Dignity", a minor one with "Chocolate Girl" and now they're about to have a huge one with this."

— Graeme Kay

In the early part of 1988, Ricky Ross, singer, chief songwriter and leader of Glasgow's Deacon Blue, was just getting to work on his band's second album when he went to a record company meeting. Just two songs — "Real Gone Kid" and "The World Is Lit by Lightning" — had been completed but things already looked promising for a group that had enjoyed critical acclaim a year earlier for their debut album Raintown but had little in the way financially to show for it. An A&R rep for label CBS enthused that the struggling group had at least one big hit forthcoming. "I was quizzical", Ross would later claim, "which one? I had no idea".

Ross must have had poor commercial instincts since it's easy to see which of the two was the potential hit. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that the (sort of) "title track reaches for the skies and falls flat", it certainly isn't an especially notable song and wouldn't have been good enough for Raintown. "The World Is Lit by Lightning" has its place on second album When the World Knows Your Name (as you will no doubt see, it isn't the title track at all but it does contain the line "when the world, when the world, when the world knows your name" repeated several times so I suppose it qualifies) as respectable filler but there's not much to recommend it beyond Lorraine McIntosh's angelic backing vocals.

The hit that both a record company flunky and Smash Hits scribe Graeme Kay foresaw, however, was everything that those admittedly top notch 45's from Raintown — the classic "Dignity", "Loaded", "When Will You (Make My Telephone Ring)", "Chocolate Girl" — could only dream of being: it grabbed the listener's attention. If you already happen to be paying attention, then it does so effortlessly; if you happen to be daydreaming or thinking of something else, it still hooks you in via involuntary toe-tapping or singing along without you even noticing it. You may not swoon the way I do whenever I put it on but that's okay.

A common trait of Scottish bands in the eighties and nineties was that they tended to look west rather than south. Wet Wet Wet were all about Marvin Gaye and Al Green. The members of Texas favoured Ry Cooder and, later, Motown. Greg and Pat Kane from Hue & Cry were Sinatra fanatics. Teenage Fanclub and other groups in their circle who never made it (yes, I'm thinking of you, BMX Bandits) were all obsessed with The Byrds and Big Star. Jim and William Reid had a little more interest in English pop and rock but the foundation of The Jesus & Mary Chain was built on The Velvet Underground. Deacon Blue were much the same — they were named after a Steely Dan song for god's sake — only they had much broader influences, particularly when held up against some of their sophisti-pop contemporaries.

This musical catholicism made them harder to compartmentalise. While Raintown had been the child of The Blue Nile's first album A Walk Across the Rooftops (a seminal record, particularly for a generation of Scottish groups), When the World Knows Your Name was all over the place when it came to sources of inspiration. Opener and eventual single "Queen of the New Year" and deep cut "Your Constant Heart" borrowed from country music, while "Circus Lights" is not unlike an anthemic Simple Minds number. Side one's closer "This Changing Light" had guitarist Graeme Kelling doing his best impression of U2's The Edge. "Fergus Sings the Blues" is their own answer to Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing" with a pasty Scotsman fronting an "authentic" soul group. (Their influences are even more pronounced on some of their b-sides: the 12" release of "Real Gone Kid" includes covers of both Sam & Dave ("Born Again") and Hüsker Dü ("It's Not Funny Anymore"); the 12" of follow-up "Wages Day" had a surprisingly sensitive take on Julian Cope's "Trampoline")

"Real Gone Kid" itself is low on roots rock beyond a bit of honky tonk piano played by Jim Prime but it is able to condense stadium rock of the time into something with pop hooks. While U2 were tripping on Americana and the sixties, Deacon Blue were managing something not dissimilar without shoving it down people's throats or pretending what they were doing was somehow still contemporary (I always say that the problem with the John Lennon tribute "God Part 2" is that the line "don't believe in the sixties, the golden age of pop / if you glorify the past, your future dries up" is that it's irreconcilable with the rest of the Rattle & Hum album). While ver Blue had a sizable adult following in Britain from this point on (while the 1988-89 batch of singles performed much better than the earlier bunch, they still weren't megahits, implying that older fans in particular were holding out for the album which wouldn't be released until the following spring), they also appealed to a section of pop kids: those of us who didn't care for metal and weren't ready for indie but still liked guitars. Then Jerico weren't far off from this either but their lyrics weren't as good; Transvision Vamp were in the mix too but Wendy James made it difficult to take them seriously.

Quite how many young people got into them is another matter. The Smash Hits letters page (aka Black Type) would field the odd bit of correspondence from readers inquiring about them and they did all right in the magazine's '89 Reader's Poll coming in seventh and tenth for best group and best album respectively. That said, I knew a lot more people who disliked them than counted themselves as fans (it was basically just me and two other people, one of them being my sister). My friends in the UK at that time, the lousy pals I would return to in Canada that summer, a much nicer group of chums I would cultivate in the subsequent years in junior high and high school, people I have discussed music with here and there, the bulk of Music Twitter, hip and cool music critics: they shared little in common beyond not thinking much of Deacon Blue and wondering what on earth I saw in them. Their young fans must have been out there but I never met any of them.

But that is a vital part of a young person's musical development: finding an artist or group we like that everyone else seems at best indifferent towards. Sure, there was that girl I'd see in the hallways of my junior high who wore a Bauhaus shirt but there's always that person: she just had to find those other alternative rock outsiders and she'd have a community (at least in theory); but in opting for Deacon Blue I might as well have been a Cab Calloway enthusiast in the late-eighties. I tried getting friends and classmates into them ("But I liked it", said an unhelpful Mr Coutts as everyone else in art class demanded it be turned off, even though it was my turn to play a tape), then I used the group's anonymity in Canada to my advantage by keeping them to myself. I would be made fun of for liking lots of music (you weren't even allowed to like the Pet Shop Boys where I went to school) but not Deacon Blue because no one knew who they were. Then I got older and some of the bands I used to be teased for being into were suddenly cool. But, yet again, my favourite Scottish group wasn't part of that revival either.

Still, "Real Gone Kid" was the Top 10 hit that some record label dude predicted and they would go on to have a chart topping album six months later. Hit singles and albums would follow so there were people out there who liked them just as much as I did, if not more so. Quite where these people are, I don't know and at this point it doesn't much matter. I've lived with being just about their only fan I know and if someone cooler than me doesn't like them then that's their loss. Or not.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Hue & Cry: "Ordinary Angel"

Kay's runner-up for Single of the Fortnight and he's spot on here too, even considering the solid competition of Prince, The Human League, Jane Wiedlin, Public Enemy and Tanita Tikaram, who would happen to nab a nomination for Best Single at the notorious 1989 Brit Award along with Deacon Blue. There is the often legit claim that Pat Kane oversings but I think he gets it just right here (though I only just now discovered that he tried to be a "daily genius" rather than a "dilly genius", something I always puzzled over) The tune is sprightly and the addition of a sitar to get it started is one of those chef's kiss things people talk about. A great pop song that just missed out on the Top 40 but they'd have hits the following year with "Looking for Linda", which is every bit as good as "Ordinary Angel", and "Vi-oh-lent-ly", which isn't. An injustice in failure leading to an injustice in success, or something like that.

Jermaine Stewart: "Don't Talk Dirty to Me" / Fairground Attraction: "A Smile in a Whisper"

21 September 1988

This is the second in an occasional series in which pop groups review the singles and fail to agree on a favourite. The Communards did pretty well for themselves in spite of their disagreements, picking a pair of top level pop records for joint Single of the Fortnight. Not up to the task as well, Bros sift through the new releases and wind up choosing a pair of nondescript numbers. And fair enough, they're hardly the first "critics" to pick a mediocrity and they're far from the last. But not only are the songs not up to much but Matt, Luke and Ken don't have much to say about their picks either. No, there was only one review present in which they contribute anything worth writing about more than thirty years later and it's about their bete noire The Wonder Stuff. So, for this post I'll be focusing on the supplementary post (as always, filed under Also of some cop) with their respective SOTF only being touched upon briefly. A one-off roll reversal, then. Enjoy!

~~~~~

"The b-side's called "Astley In The Noose" is it? Presumably they hate us as well, right?"

— Matt

"The thing that annoys me is that we play as much live as they play live, exactly the same instruments except with a different style and different music so I don't know what they're on about."

— Luke

"Sick."

— Ken

Also "Reviewed" This Fortnight

The Wonder Stuff: "It's Yer Money I'm After, Baby"

"It's Yer Money I'm After Baby" was The Wonder Stuff's fifth single. Their debut album The Eight Legged Groove machine had been released a month earlier to positive reviews (even in Smash Hits; it wasn't just the "serious" music press that championed them) and previous single "A Wish Away" had only just missed the Top 40 so things were starting to look up. They were still a few years away from being one of the biggest groups in the country and it would've difficult in 1988 to imagine them getting that big but there was something to them. In Miles Hunt they had a charismatic frontman who was equal parts Noddy Holder, John Lydon and Robert Plant. They looked a state but they could play and had already cultivated a loyal following. All they needed was for the media to start paying attention. Good thing they had a song called "Astley in the Noose" to do just that.

It was only a b-side but it was getting attention. The song is actually discussed twice in this fortnight's issue of Smash Hits. Rick Astley sat down with Hits scribe Tom Doyle to look at some questions that fans had sent in. Among some very Hitsian queries — Have you ever had the urge to run into Tescos and shout "Sainsburys!"?, Which Muppet from The Muppet Show do you think resembles you the most — one pop kid wrote in to ask, What do you think about The Wonder Stuff writing a song called "Astley in the Noose"? (The record had only just come out and it was already coming up in a Q&A so clearly there was a buzz surrounding it)

Perhaps surprisingly, Astley took it in good humour. He wasn't overly familiar with them ("are they some indie band or something?") but seemed impressed by the sentiment ("I suppose I'm quite honoured in a way. Good on you The Wonder Stuff. I'd like to meet them someday..."). If his feelings had been hurt by the imagery of him being hanged he didn't express it here. Rick Astley understood how to be the bigger person and how to take a slight and make light of it.

Flip over to the singles review page and you'll note that Bros reacted differently. Now, they could have fired back by standing up for the singer. Matt Goss could've said "Rick Astley's a good bloke and doesn't deserve to be treated this way", Luke could've said "Rick's a performer just like them and should be treated with respect" and Ken could've said "Yeah" and all would've been fine. They would've missed the point of the song either way but at least they would've been nobly defending the honour of a fellow pop star.

But they went a different way by making it all about themselves. Having shot to fame that year with mega hits "When Will I Be Famous?", "Doctor Boy" and "I Owe You Nothing", they quickly developed a thorny relationship with their critics. They delighted in having the tabloids cover their every move until it came back to bite them and they often felt disrespected by other bands. Though they hadn't really paid their dues, they still expected to be treated like any other group and would eventually claim that they were "about longevity", which fascinated that great observer of all things pop Neil Tennant (to the extent that he used it in "How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously", one of the Pet Shop Boys' great ironic numbers). So to have a shouty Miles Hunt lay waste to Astley them was just not on.

Their "review" begins with some guarded praise of "It's Yer Money I'm After Baby". It isn't really their thing (no big shock there) but they do have positive things to say, with Ken admitting that it has a "good melody". Then, they take note of the song on the flip side and suddenly all bets are off. Matt says that they would never be so crass as to have a song called "The Wonder Stuff In The Noose" while Luke admits that he doesn't know "what they're on about". (Giving it a spin would've helped)

Had Bros given a listen to this song with the title that offends them so much, they may have discovered a thing or two. First, they likely would have been even more horrified by the "I wouldn't kill you even if you paid me" line ("Presumably they wouldn't kill us even if someone paid them too..."). More significant, however, is the reveal that he they "shouldn't take this to heart / it's all to do with art and entertainment". Rick Astley Bros aren't the target, it's their crappy music. Somehow I don't think this would have placated the Goss twins and the other one.

Ultimately, "Astley in the Noose" is a good tune but the lyrics are a little too on the nose and speak more to Hunt's rage than to crafting great pop of their own. Significantly, The Wonder Stuff would channel more or less the same sentiments into their following single. "Who Wants to Be the Disco King?" is just as pointed an attack on the state of current pop but with subtler imagery and Hunt shifting between anger and wistfulness. While "It's Yer Money..." only just dented the Top 40 with a single week at the very bottom of the table, "...Disco King" peaked at no. 28 and was the highest new entry that week. Slow, modest steps but encouraging and a sign that maybe there were more potential Wonder Stuff fans out there. I happened to be one of them but not for another two or three years.

~~~~~

The late Jermaine Stewart had hit it big around the world with "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off" in 1985 but his fortunes dipped by '88. UK success, however, had continued with the Top 20 hits "Say It Again" and "Get Lucky". "Don't Talk Dirty to Me" is more of the same, a throwback to the NY clubs that was still clinging to relevance. Yeah, there were still popular records just like this at the time but they were beginning to fade away. Luke and Ken love it because it's their type of thing and that's fine but in the end it's just another R&B disco tune in a world packed to the brim with 'em.

~~~~~

The buskers from up north had surprised many when they went to no. 1 with "Perfect". Riding the momentum, follow-up "Find My Love" (which this blogger maintains is the superior single) got itself a Top 10 spot but the hits were running out for Fairport Fairground Convention Attraction. "A Smile in a Whisper" is a fine opener to their album The First of a Million Kisses but it has no business being a single — and, indeed, the same goes for everything else on their LP. Scraping the bottom of the barrel tends to go a lot deeper but maybe this is less a barrel and more a sugar bowl on the kitchen table. And there's nothing like trying to dislodge an encrusted clump of the sweet stuff just to make your bowl of Special K that bit less tasteless, is there?

XTC: "Generals and Majors"

4 September 1980

"Two singles for the price of one — and the freebie isn't a flexi-disc or musically anything less than high quality."

— Deanne Pearson

What I previously said:

Old Farters Parters may not have had great taste in records but he and his chums knew a little about pumping out ace stuff of their own. Seemingly as much attracted to this due to its value-for-money two record set as for its infectious synthesized whistling and all-around jauntiness, it's interesting to note just how much emphasis reviewers placed on B-sides and extra tracks in making their evaluations. It's commendable of them to do so but in the case of "Generals & Majors" they needn't have bothered as it fizzles with energy and is a perfect launch pad for their sublime album Black Sea — and a taster for what a live powerhouse they were supposed to be at the time.

It was the early part of 1979 and Swindon's XTC were struggling to break through in a big way. While their sound of "Roxy Music's Editions of You on diet of a cheap white powder" proved popular on the live scene and their first two albums from a year earlier sold well, they had yet to land on the singles chart, a trend that would continue to blight them for much of the next twenty years. Records like "This Is Pop" and "Statue of Liberty" are still top notch and they don't seem out of place alongside other new wave/post-punk 45's of the time but for whatever reason they failed to make an impact. Well schooled in Beatles-Beach Boys-Kinks recordings, Andy Partridge nevertheless lacked strong commercial pop instincts, especially around this time. What they need was for their less productive songwriter — a young man with a penchant for Uriah Heep and prog rock — to step up.

"Life Begins at the Hop" introduced the second phase of XTC, in which the wild organ bits of Barry Andrews were jettisoned in favour of the stellar fret work of Dave Gregory. It also launch Colin Moulding as a formidable songwriter to rival the much more prolific Partridge. Less ragged and stuttering than their earlier work, it has a classic, clean sound and told the tale of young kids spending time at this local joint where they could enjoy nuts and crisps and "co-co-co-cola on tap". The lyrics seem naive but the single got them on Top of the Pops for the first time and it delighted enough buyers to give them a modest chart entry of 54. Progress was being made. Confident, Moulding delivered another single that would also open their third album Drums & Wires. "Making Plans for Nigel" is still the number they are best remembered for in the UK as it tapped into Thatcherism and ludicrous Tory job placement schemes. It also happens to be utterly brilliant and it took them all the way into the Top 20. Not bad for a secondary, George Harrison-esque songwriter. 

For his part, Partridge was beginning to feel the heat. A third Moulding-composed single on the bounce ("Ten Feet Tall") came and went while his mostly excellent Drums & Wires contributions were destined to become deep cuts. He did pen the non-album single "Wait Till Your Boat Goes Down" but it quickly disappeared. Stressed but far from discouraged, Partridge offered up nine outstanding pieces for follow-up album Black Sea but Moulding once again got the ball rolling with "Generals and Majors", their breakthrough smash that never was.

XTC's fourth album was all about power. They now had a pair of ace guitarists who would were both adept at lead and rhythm parts and in Terry Chambers they had perhaps the hardest hitting drummer of his generation. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in a period in which they were receiving rave reviews for their concerts. North Americans started paying attention and this resulted in fans across the Atlantic thinking of them as a power pop group and they ever began to get lumped in with British groups who otherwise didn't want to have anything to do with them. (Elvis Costello had to keep their influence on his composition "White Knuckles" from the Trust album a secret from his bandmates or he "risked a rebellion") Critical praise, a growing reputation, some chart momentum: this ought to have been their chance.

I don't know if I'd go so far to say that "Generals and Majors" was a failure. Sure, it underperformed but this was already nothing new for them. It didn't help that they didn't perform the single on Top of the Pops and the promo that was made was naff and was described by Partridge as "the worst video ever made by man". All things considered, 32 isn't bad and it kick started a modest run of three Top 40 hits on the bounce, a feat they never came close to replicating. (Amazingly, it is the highest charting single of the twenty-one new releases reviewed this fortnight by Deanne Pearson; the crop being a collection of has-beens, and no-names)

Yet, it wasn't the hit it deserved to be. The public may have been turned off by the material and probably didn't understand the satire involved. Britain was still a couple years away from the Falklands War when there may have been more of an audience for making fun of hawks and blind patriotism. Quite why the outstanding tune and band performance didn't wow more people is a bigger mystery. While Pearson is delighted by extra tracks "Don't Lose Your Temper" (one of thebetter b-sides by a group that didn't typically excel in this particular area), "Smokeless Zone" and "The Somnambulist", it's a iron-clad rule that XTC never did themselves any favours with the punters when they tried stretching out a little. So much for value for money.

Partridge ended up penning the next three hit singles for his band (more on this in a few weeks) yet his insecurities proved difficult to shake. Record label Virgin considered the more photogenic Moulding to be their cash cow and they entered sessions for fifth album English Settlement (yet another one that would be tipped as their breakthrough) with both a hit maker and a challenging visionary behind their material. It was only when the reserved bassist put together the effects-heavy anti-hit "Fly on the Wall" that his star began to fade. And that would be XTC's unenviable path forward: breakthroughs that failed to materialise, expectations dashed, paltry sales and all from a band that was among the best in the world.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Leo Sayer: "Once in a While"

The "Old Sailor" doesn't impress Deanne Pearson much but he sounds in top form to these ears. 1980 may not have been a time for middle-of-the-road heartbroken balladeers to connect with music critics but things are a lot different forty years on. Sounding like a bit like a country singer, Leo is remarkably irony-free for a British vocalist but even that seems like a breath of fresh air considering the cynical pop world of the time being loaded with the likes of Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe and Paul Weller. But were the record buyers buying it? Were they 'eck! People didn't bother with XTC when they got more and more progressive while turning their backs on his nibs here because he was doing the same old thing. There's just no pleasing some people, is there?

The Sugarcubes: "Birthday"

7 September 1988

"Q. Why are The Sugarcubes' record company re-releasing this splendiferous waxing?

A. Because it's the best thing that Iceland's sole famous pop group have ever done and because this is actually a brand new version recorded with the help of Jim and William from The Jesus And Mary Chain."

— Josephine Collins

People had been trying to warn us for a long time that there was this fabulously talented chanteuse from the tiny nation of Iceland who was going to be huge. The Sugarcubes had only formed in 1986 but hipster critics from the NME and the Melody Maker were already praising them to death just a year later. Twelve months on from that and they were the musical guests on an episode of Saturday Night Live and they still hadn't had a Top 40 in either the UK or US. Their fanbase grew but for the rest of us they remained this group whose debut album was always in the discount racks of HMV stores. Then it was 1993 and Björk was everywhere. It only took seven years but here she was, an overnight success. (Of course, no one knew what was coming for her but it was easy to see that The Sugarcubes were going to be something else — and this wasn't all down to their unique vocalist)

Rock guitarists were on the defensive by the end of the decade. Most of them found the eighties to be a cess pool of fairlight synths, drum machines and, more recently, sampling. The "real" music they had grown up on in their bedrooms, basements and garages no longer had a place alongside all this "manufactured" junk that was dominating the charts. They seemed unaware that hip hop had been every bit as D.I.Y. as punk and were similarly ignorant to their beloved Beatles having been masters of studio trickery which clashed with rock 'n' roll mythology. The remix had long been a staple of dance pop but Coldcut's groundbreaking retooling of Erik B & Rakim's "Paid in Full" made it a much more commercially viable option. So, too, did the Quincy Jones remix of New Order's "Blue Monday", once a brilliantly dark 12" sensation that the legendary producer/jazz musician turned into a glorious pop song (one that this writer prefers to the original).

Remixes were anathema to rock purists so it was a good thing that Jim and William Reid were anything but classic rock snobs. Rather than rope in, say, The Beatmasters or Frankie Knuckles to twist their 1987 single "Birthday" into a rave up favourite (something Björk would not have been against a few years later), they got their drinking pals from Scottish act The Jesus & Mary Chain to drench their trademark buzzsaw guitars and slop buckets full of feedback all over it. The results seem unnecessary on paper but proved to be exactly what was needed. While there's no denying that the version from a year earlier is outstanding, it still sounds like they were struggling to hide the influence of the Cocteau Twins. By making "Birthday" more of a Jesus & Mary Chain single, it ended up sounding like nothing that had ever been made.

As I have said before about J&MC, the Reids had patented a method of burying their vocals beneath layers of distortion rather than screaming and shouting over the racket. While this would seem to be exactly what you shouldn't do, it somehow worked and fans had to force themselves to listen closely to whispers among loads of chaos. This is somewhat the case here as well only Björk is a much stronger singer than Jim and William Reid. While it is much easier to appreciate her range on the original mix of "Birthday" (especially the way her voice pierces and wails on the Icelandic version "Ammæli"), her vocal seems all the more extraordinary as she tries to push her way past all that Mary Chain noise. It's impossible to say which is better but the two compliment each other not unlike The Beatles' electrified "Revolution" and its acoustic companion "Revolution 1" — one may prefer one or the other but they're best appreciated in tandem.

In a fortnight teeming with Stock Aitken Waterman releases (no less than four reviewed by Josephine Collins and that's not including stable king Rick Astley with an early stab at creative independence), as well as plenty of solid yet unspectacular pop from the likes of Michael Jackson and even the Pet Shop Boys (big a fan of them as I am, "Domino Dancing" has never been a huge favourite of mine), "Birthday" stands out as a testament to The Sugarcubes as one of the finest groups of their time, the Reids expertly transforming someone else's work into something they could have created and Björk as a generational vocalist and performer. It even suggests what she might have done in the nineties had she gone in the direction of indie rock. The Top 40 wasn't quite ready for them but indie kids were starting to catch on. We can't say we weren't warned.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Pasadenas: "Riding on a Train"

Quite the contrast from a Sugarcubes/J&MC collaboration, it would be easy and understandable to dismiss "Riding on a Train" as derivative fluff. It's not especially profound or fresh but it's a highly enjoyable record nonetheless. All five Pasadenas have top notch voices and none of them resort to over-emoting the way R&B Romeos couldn't stop doing just a few short years later. (This was a time when people were still using the word 'soul' to describe this kind of music which I always felt was much more in line with top flight mainstream pop than the bulk of subsequent R&B acts who always seemed painfully concerned with 'keeping it real' and all that) I thought it was stupid when it began it's push up into the UK Top 20 that September but the earworm tune eventually won me over. We need more groups like The Pasadenas.