— Miranda Sawyer
Vocals that are mostly a non-factor. The same notes and chords repeated ad nauseam. Formulaic in spite of the creators' best attempts to make it seem like anything but. Music that may or may not have been made by the people fronting the act in question. But enough about The Stone Roses.
Actually, no. A bit more on them for now, particularly in relation to how I didn't have the chance to discover them in 1989. It was November and it was beginning to dawn on me that I wasn't especially happy to be back in Canada. I had next to nothing in common with most of my friends (the one exception is still a good friend of mine), virtually everyone hated my music (though, in truth, that likely wouldn't have changed had I still been in the UK) and I had begun tuning out school. I would go to bed at night picturing as many details as possible about life a year earlier in Britain, conveniently leaving out the bad bits. Sometimes it would take hours to drift off to sleep as I tried to bring everything back.
I also began to picture an alternate reality in which we'd remained there for at least another year. I was convinced that I wouldn't have been as miserable there than I was in my current state. It was a life dreamed of with rose-tinted spectacles as a means of escape. It took a long time for me to acknowledge that it wouldn't have been any better over there. Except for perhaps on the evening of November 23, 1989.
Millions of Britons tuned in to Top of the Pops that night likely anticipating yet another hum-drum edition of an increasingly stale show. New Kids on the Block were at number one with a song that everyone called "The Right Stuff" but which was officially titled "You Got It" for some reason. Either way, the song sucked and so did the New Kids. The whole Top 5 was bland and this was the norm for the upper echelons of the hit parade during that time. And yet something was coming. A week earlier, indie techno group 808 State appeared on the show playing their extraordinary hit "Pacific State", which would open the door a crack for an eventual stampede of fellow Mancunian acts, which in turn would lead to bands from all over the country to emerge. But even that couldn't have prepared people for what was to come.
First up was Happy Mondays (or 'Happy Monday' as presenter Jenny Powell has it) with "Hallelujah" from their Madchester Rave On EP. A raucous performance, it introduced the nation to Shaun Ryder, an unattractive man (even then) with not much talent for singing but with charisma to burn. The whole band looked like a group of mates causing havoc at a party. They would soon record stronger material (as we'll see shortly in this space) so if "Hallelujah" hadn't been sufficiently eye and ear catching then it wouldn't be long before young people were going to give themselves over to Shaun, Bez and the rest. If you didn't necessarily aspire to creating music like their's then at least you'd want to be in a group with your pals just having a laugh.
Then came The Stone Roses. They'd only enjoyed minor hits up until this point so for their latest single to be that week's highest new entry was nothing to sneeze at. If ver Mondays looked like chums having a laugh, the Roses looked much more like a proper group. The British indie scene had yet to recover from the demise of The Smiths two years earlier but here were the saviours. And while the foursome retained some elements of alternative rock, they were something entirely different. Indie kids got into them but there was also room for dance music fanatics. "Hallelujah" is probably the slightly better song but the hooks on "Fool's Gold" were enough to ensure that The Stone Roses would be the short term beneficiaries of that landmark TOTP episode.
When I started this blog four years ago I vowed not to do a couple things in these write ups. One was not to get all hung up on discussing if a particular record hadn't 'aged well'. (And I think of stuck with it for the most part: aside from problematic lyrical content, I'm not even sure what being dated even means) The other was not to take Smash Hits reviewers to task for choosing lousy Singles of the Fortnight. (Pop star guest reviewers, however, are fair game)
So, I won't be bashing Miranda Sawyer for going with some Italian house music over a monumental Stone Roses single. It's not like she dismissed "Fool's Gold" or anything; she explicitly picked it as her runner-up and is very enthusiastic about a group that she would have a close connection with. Yet a single by the unfortunately-named Fidelfatti and a very uninvolved Ronette is her favourite and I respect her choice.
Nevertheless, "Just Wanna Touch Me" isn't up to much. Sawyer's raving isn't wrong exactly ("The only way to describe this one is Soul II Soul meets Black Box meets Enya. Really.") but it misses the point. It's far too much of a jumble to make for a truly good house record. The Soul II Soul bit gives way to the Black Box movement too abruptly while the touches of Enya aren't fleshed out enough. It works a bit better on the 12" mix but there is still far too many cliche samples getting in the way.
The record doesn't do anything for me but isn't Sawyer's review a wonderful piece of writing? She doesn't say a whole lot and doesn't need to. "Just Wanna Touch Me" is "berrrilliant" and that's all there is to it. Reading a lot of these singles reviews over the last few years, I am often struck by how often I'm feeling left out in the dark as far as the quality of the SOTF goes. Tom Hibbert seemed to actively dislike some of hit picks while other critics act like they were just choosing something simply because they were supposed to. They'd get through their pile of new releases, pick one that didn't get on their nerves as much as the others and then never listen to any of them again. Reading this, however, I am struck by the feeling that Sawyer not only loves this record but that she'll be secretly stashing it in her purse or under her coat as she exits that office that night. For all I know, she listens to it to this day. And good for her.
Addendum: Hardly anyone reads this blog so I'm probably safe but in case anyone misinterprets my point above — "Music that may or may not have been made by the people fronting the act in question" — let me explain. I do not wish to suggest that John Squire, Mani and Reni weren't playing on "Fool's Gold", merely that they may as well not have been. Mani's bass playing is effectively a loop while Reni's drumming is basically "Funky Drummer". A couple bars were enough for each of them to lay down. Squire's guitar part is much more extensive, particularly on the famed nine mimutes, fifty-three second 12" version, but I'm not sure he had to play the whole way through either. It wouldn't be for another year or so that I began getting into Madchester and I was initially puzzled by the supposed connections between acid house and rave culture and this new brand of indie. I eventually realised that it was down to the tricks of house music being brought into rock: vocals that are mostly a non-factor, notes and chords repeated ad nauseam, formulaic in spite of their best attempts to make it seem like anything but and, yes, music that may or may not have been made by the people fronting the act in question.
~~~~~
Also of some cop
The Stone Roses: "Fool's Gold" / "What the World Is Waiting For"
I've already gone on and on about bloody "Fool's Gold" so what about its companion on this double A-sided single? Their critically acclaimed debut album was released earlier that year and one of the first things people noticed about it was that these weren't humble people. "I Wanna Be Adored" opens the album and its last two tracks are "This Is the One" and "I Am the Resurrection". Hammering the point home, "What the World Is Waiting For" got an undeserved boost from solid if unspectacular B-side to woefully out of its depth lead co-billing. There have been plenty of double A's in which one side of the single vastly outperforms the other but there should be at least some semblance of equality between the two. The Beatles released a handful of double A's because they couldn't agree on a flagship side but The Stone Roses did it here to make a statement. A bit boring, as Sawyer says, and, in retrospect, a troubling sign of where they were headed. In that respect, at least, the two songs went well together: what the world was waiting for turned out to be little more than fool's gold in the end.
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