Cookie Crew: "Love Will Bring Us Back Together" / Bomb the Bass: "The Air You Breathe"

2 October 1991

"I like it."

— Rob Manzoli, quietly

Is it 1988 already???

The rise of house music in the late eighties proved to be a boon to rave culture and for teens/young adults who liked to go clubbing. What frequently gets ignored, however, is that many of the acts that came about during this period appealed to kids as well. Kids who weren't dropping acid in abandoned warehouse but who were getting into music via Top of the Pops, Radio One and Saturday morning telly and Smash Hits.

Following the chart topping success of "Pump Up the Volume" by M|A|R|R|S in the latter part of 1987, there was a sudden rush of house music in the pop charts. While these organizations had hardcore club DJ's behind them, several had pop backgrounds as well. M|A|R|R|S had been descended from indie soul act Colourbox, while the members of Freur would eventually evolve into influential nineties group Underworld. Those who hadn't been part of the UK's indie scene were young and had an eye on the charts while the other was focused on the clubs.

Tim Simenon's Bomb the Bass project was one the first beneficiaries of Britain's house music revolution. Made up entirely of samples, debut single "Beat Dis" was simply astonishing. Boring old rock types would start to moan about how this kind of thing wasn't real music (something which fans of classical, jazz and Tin Pan Alley used to say about rock 'n' roll itself) but the rest of us new better. DJ's could be annoying at weddings and roller staking rinks but when they cut their own records they'd perform the tasks of musician, producer, engineer, pop star and fan all at once. They wore so many hats that no one else was even needed. Simenon had time for appearing in the pop press though he wasn't as willing to shill himself the way S'Express' Mark Moore had been. Still, he seemed a pop fan and not just a mix desk snob with a strict love of obscure 12" singles from clubland.

The Beatmasters, on the other hand, never quite seemed cut out for the pop game, which maybe explains their desire to have the likes of Cookie Crew, P.P. Arnold, Merlin and Betty Boo fronting their records. They even produced Yazz's number two hit in the autumn of '88 "Stand Up for Your Love Rights" as if knowing that their group name wasn't even needed for the singer who had just topped the charts that summer with "The Only Way Is Up". Where people like Simenon and DJ/production duo Coldcut seemed to require certain kinds of vocalists to suit their material, the trio of Paul Carter, Manda Glanfield and Richard Wamsley were adept at switching themselves up in order to service whoever they were working with.

Their first commercial attempt was one of their finest. Cookie Crew members MC Remedee and Susie Q rapped on "Rok da House" with a delightful mix of charm and ferocity, the sort of girls I could imagine myself being in terrifying awe of at school. Those sweet smiles of their's hid a "don't you dare mess with me, mate" attitude that lurked just bellow the surface. Subsequent singles recorded free of The Beatmasters — including party anthem in waiting "Got to Keep On" — kept the momentum going. While up for a laugh, they had more depth than Derek B or the Wee Papa Girl Rappers and didn't seem to take themselves as seriously as fellow Beatmaster collaborator Merlin. 

~~~~~

"I like it."

— Rob Manzoli, whispering

Where's the fun in '91?

(Actually, there plenty of fun pop back then but it was generally being made by dummies like Right Said Fred, this fortnight's guest reviewers. They'll be coming up soon with a Single of the Fortnight of their own (hint: it isn't "I'm Too Sexy"; fingers crossed that it's something as daft as "Wonderman"; hint: it isn't) so I'm leaving aside my distaste for them for a few weeks).

The house and hip house acts of the late-eighties had begun to disappear with the arrival of the nineties but some were trying to hang on. Staying relevant is the toughest task to master in all of pop, especially in an environment of "back to basics" rockist nonsense and a sudden dearth of independent, dance-orientated labels to foster advances in techno music. Possibly reacting to the Top 40 performances of Enigma that year as well as the rise of trip-hop, Bomb the Bass took a much more mellow approach for second album Unknown Territory. The Gulf War harmed the chances of first single "Love So True" (the name Bomb the Bass was considered objectionable, even though the activities of the IRA hadn't managed to make the name problematic three years' earlier) but follow-up "Winter in July" gave Simenon a fourth Top 10 hit. Sadly, singer Loretta Heywood (who seemed to wear the same dress in all their videos) was all over the place, giving a tiresome sameness to their singles output. "The Air You Breathe" was almost exactly the same as "Winter in July", which hadn't been all that different from "Love So True".

Cookie Crew come out of this a good deal better than Bomb the Bass. They didn't deserve Single of the Fortnight either (in my book it's either Mariah Carey or Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine who should've taken it: now that would've been a nice odd couple pairing for co-SOTF) but "Love Will Bring Us Back Together" is a fine attempt at keeping their output current. The obvious connection is with De La Soul, The Jungle Brothers, Monie Love and Dream Warriors.

Remember what I said above about "back to basics" nonsense? Well, the upside of this was samples of killer soul and funk records on current hip hop singles. Roy Ayers' iconic seventies' jazz-funk sound forms the basis of "Love Will Bring Us Back Together" to the extent that he often get's an artist's credit. Though happy to pilfer, they aren't as brazen as many of their hip hop contemporaries, resulting in this being a bit of a let down. More could have been accomplished. 

The Crew's popularity had fallen off since 1989. According to Wikipedia, their record label FFRR looked to have them be more of a pop-rap outfit while they were intent on going more in the direction of pure hip hop. There's the feeling here that they've found a happy medium but compromise renders it more toothless than it ought to have been. Good fun but empty and quickly forgotten — and, indeed, little regarded enough (even by some of Right Said Fred, who don't seem any fonder of it than non-SOTF by Carter, PM Dawn and Kim Appleby) not to get itself a chart position of any kind. The future had once been bright but the present had suddenly become dark. Makes sense since 1991 was an awful year, though I would say so since that was when I turned fourteen.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Mariah Carey: "Emotions"

Mariah in not-a-slushy-love-song shock! While she was busy reeling off number ones back home in the States, her records didn't manage to take hold of the British charts in anywhere close to the same way. This meant, however, that those of us who weren't fans or were neutral towards her wouldn't have been overexposed to her unique brand of birdsong. For some reason, I liked "Love Takes Time" back in the day and didn't mind this one and that was the extent of my Mariah Carey fandom. But now it's clear that "Emotions" is her at her very best. The tune is pretty damn glorious, the high notes were still a novelty by this point and I liked her more when she still had frizzy hair. Let's have this soundtrack out next Christmas instead, okay? Okay???

Pink Industry: Forty Five

18 February 1982

"A four track 12 inch EP from former Pink Military frontperson Jayne and new playmate Ambrose. (Ambrose?)"

— Red Starr

I've written about several EP's in this space and they'll be a few more before long but this time I thought I'd do a little piece about how they're put together, according to someone who has no idea about how to do so. Here are my do's and don't's for compiling the perfect extended play with additional notes on how Liverpool's Pink Industry measures up with their first too-long-for-a-single, too-short-for-an-album release Forty Five.

~~~~~

DO try to spread out the highlights. You know when there's a killer A side and you flip the bastard over only to discover that the B side sucks something awful? Well, you risk doubling the folly if you place the choice cuts back-to-back in a clever attempt to hook listeners. But just wait till they put on the second side and realise that there's nothing of note spread over two tracks.

✓ Forty Five begins with "Is This the End", the record's bleakest track. Ian Cranna Red Starr's fave is "Don't Let Go" over on the flip side.

DON'T make it a glorified single. This is what I will call the Crackers International problem. Erasure's bid for the 1988 Christmas Number One was a value-for-money four cut EP which excited enough people to give them their biggest hit to date. Yet, opener "Stop!" hogged all the airplay and it's doubtful anyone played the other three tracks more than the once. A genuinely strong set of tracks would've covered up "Stop!" being so damn repetitive. Ideally, every selection on your EP ought to be good enough to become the single

✓ No danger of this happening here, even though ver Pinks did eventually issue "Don't Let Go" as a single in its own right. But it was five years later so we'll let that one slide.

DO pad out your EP with an instrumental that you have lying around if you're struggling with . Three track EP's are a certainly a thing (there are even EP's with two tracks for some reason) but they're best avoided. Four's your optimal number. Even if you've got little more than a dismal two minute jam session, use it. Placed strategically at the end of side A it might even raise the odd eyebrow or bring a degree of delight to your hardcore fanbase who will doubtless feel convinced that this is the "real" you.

✓ Side A's closer is "47" (stylized as "~47~" though I'm not convinced the tildas are there for anything more than cosmetic purposes) which is your classic post punk tune with no lyrics because no one in the band could be arsed. Right they are too. On your standard single instrumentals smack of laziness (see the otherwise fine "Oscillate Wildly" by The Smiths); on an EP they provide depth — even if they do know such thing.

DON'T resort to including a remix, re-recording or live version of an old hit to bring your EP up to the optimum number of cuts. In this instance you're better off with fewer tracks. (NB: this rule does not apply to EP's that are geared specifically towards recycling material, such as Teenage Fanclub's Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It)

✓ (It's almost as if this study has been designed simply to make Pink Industry seem like geniuses)

DO try your best to get the running order as spot on as possible. Deacon Blue's Ricky Ross described placing the key opening and closing tracks on each side an album as the "four corners"; with an EP, you're looking at nothing but that dynamic. If you were decorating your living room, you could get away with leaving one or two corners empty; but what if it's all corners we're talking about? Think about it.

X I dig Forty Five (it's second only to the mighty Spiral Scratch in terms of EP's covered so far on this blog) but the running order is as baffling as Rubber Soul (seriously, how does "What Goes On" merit a more prominent placement than "In My Life"?). Kicking it off with "Is This the End" must've seemed dead clever (dead clever) but it belongs at the end. I mean, for god's sake, look at the title of the freakin' song!

DON'T cheat by putting out a standard two song 7" single and an "EP" with a pair of extra cuts for the 12". This is a sure-fire way of ensuring that you'll have yourself a Crackers International of your own. Make up your mind, buddy!

✓ Again, no danger of this occurring, even though it easily could have with the beloved "Don't Let Go". It's possible that more than two dozen people would've gone out and bought it had the catchiest, most likable track appeared first. (On the other hand, as Brian Eno said, only twenty-five people bought the first Pink Industry EP but everyone who did formed bands and had their charismatic female singers shave their heads)

~~~~~

To sum up, Pink Industry did very well with Forty-Five. It's an excellent EP. I don't know if it deserved a bigger audience but those of us who have been pulled into its orbit have very much appreciated the experience. To quote that chap Red Starr's closing remarks of his review, "more of this sort of thing please". Well, quite.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Talk Talk: "Mirror Man"

DO manage to somehow be both critically acclaimed and underrated. This is a square that isn't easily circled but (a) you don't have to worry about doing so yourself and (b) your fans will refused to acknowledge the contradiction.

✓ Nick Drake aside, no one has ever toed the line between strong reviews and the air of being ignored like Talk Talk. The fact that they hardly ever had hits seems reason enough to consider them underrated despite the fact that music critics have done nothing but praise them.

DON'T bear a passing resemblance to any popular comedians: no one will ever take you seriously.

X Actually, it's to the late Mark Hollis' credit that he managed to be a serious artiste despite being Eric Idle's doppelganger. Still, he'd have never gotten away with it had he looked like John Cleese.

DO try latch yourself on to a genre with fans that don't get so damn uppity about being a purist.

✓ Whereas folk, jazz and punk fans will revolt if you stray ever so slightly, synth-pop demands only that you employ a Casio keyboard, even if it's drowned out by guitars and horns and orchestras. Hollis had the freedom to roam in part because his band wasn't overly successful but also because he was involved in a genre that was more about what you stood for than the style of music you happened to play.

DON'T fret too much if the public aren't as receptive as the critics.

✓ Hollis went his own way, the punters be damned! And, hey, those royalty checks from that lame but successful No Doubt cover must've come in handy.

DO try to get yourself a Single of the Fortnight of your own so I can write about you in more detail.

X Well, at least that No Doubt cover might crop up...

(Click here to see my original review)

Vic Reeves & The Wonder Stuff: "Dizzy"

18 September 1991

"It is, of course, not advisable to go over the top about these things, but one suspects genius is at work here."

— Mark Frith

In the September 4, 1991 issue of Smash Hits Caroline Sullivan had positive things to say about stellar pop luminaries like Bros ("it really is your proverbial startling departure"), Chesney Hawkes ("you'll either adore this or go into insulin shock from its sugar content" — okay, this one wasn't entirely positive but she certainly didn't crap all over it) and Heavy D & The Boyz ("I like it"). A good fortnight for people who were never much cop to begin with and who were now faced with irrelevance.

But not everything Sullivan reviewed was able to put that winning smile on her face. Among those that displease her most is "Sleep Alone" by The Wonder Stuff. Describing it as "typical Stuff 'n' nonsense", she lists its "zestful" guitar, "weed-filled" singing (does she mean "weedy" or is she implying that Miles Hunt had smoked up prior to the recording session?) and a "hey-nonnyish folk feel" as some of the qualities that make it just another lame record in their catalog. Did Caroline listen to "Sleep Alone" though? It's a rare love song for them and as such refuses to ramrod over its audience. It's nothing like your average Stuffy fare, Carrie.

To be fair, it isn't much of a single. I didn't even know it had been released in 45 form until I got the Stuffies' compilation Had The Beatles Read Hunter...The Singles for Christmas in 1994. It was one of my faves from their third album Never Loved Elvis but it wasn't the sort of thing that was able to stand on its own. As such, it is probably for the best that it would end up being sacrificed. Faith in "Sleep Alone" was such that it was released in direct competition with The Wonder Stuff's brand new collaboration with comedian Vic Reeves on their cover of the 1969 Tommy Roe bubblegum pop hit "Dizzy". Or was it? While the former was promptly released only to fail to make the Top 40, falling off the charts completely in just two weeks, the latter didn't end up being coming out until a month after this issue of ver Hits appeared in ver shops. I wasn't there at the time but I imagine promotion of the first record was kept to a minimum, (despite the production values of the video which makes them look like a combination of The Cure and Jellyfish) while little was spared on the second.

With "Sleep Alone" rid of it was time for the main event. An indie band at their peak with one of the most popular comedians of the age doing a pop hit from the sixties that no one could remember seemed like gold. Perhaps thinking of the 1989 Bananarama/French & Saunders team up on the Comic Relief interpretation of The Beatles' "Help!", I assumed it had to be a charity single. Turns out, Vic fancied himself a serious recording artist with a Top 10 hit — and (undeserved) Single of the Fortnight — with the frankly boring cover of "Born Free", a record of interest only to gauge if it was meant to be funny all along (it wasn't and it isn't). Having a proper band to work with here may have been good for the former James Moir. With Miles Hunt spitting out backing vocals like he was attempting to take over the recording ("Di-Zay!"), Reeves had to be at his best. He can't really sing but happily he didn't need to here. Just to bellow out some impassioned and ferocious sandpapery vocals is more than enough.

With two dodgy singers on form, "Dizzy" delivered. While popular and well-remembered by many Britons of a certain age (it meant absolutely nothing in North America where Reeves was even more of an unknown than the Stuffies), it isn't without its critics. Tom Ewing gave it a four out of ten when he reviewed it on his Popular blog, though it's likely he would've scored it even lower at the time ("listening to it now it's better than I remember"). Basically, the whole thing steamrollers over you, without a single second wasted on subtlety or humour. And I agree, only I absolutely love this song.

Being that I've never had anything to do with Reeves beyond this and that time I blogged about his other fluke hit, I can only hear it as The Wonder Stuff. They're not guesting on a Vic Reeves record, he's MC'ing for them. In retrospect it's convenient to say that the momentum had been building for Hunt and co. but is that necessarily the case? I had been unaware of them when they made their first appearances on the UK singles charts with positions that kept improving but they were a volatile act that could have easily disappeared as Madchester began its ascent. A key single is the stand alone "Circlesquare" which introduced the group's new sound and lineup while seemingly having a go at this baggy sound of the day.

Though Hunt would tell ver Hits' Richard Lowe that "we could never make a dance record", "Circlesquare" came close dancefloor fave but it only ended up making number twenty. A respectable spot that they'd never previously reached but nevertheless an indication that they weren't quite as capable as, say, The Farm at jumping on a bandwagon to score an easy mega-hit. Contemporary bands they were often associated with (Pop Will Eat Itself, Ned's Atomic Dustbin) had a pop chart ceiling and ver Stuff looked like they were no different. They spent the summer of 1990 touring with Canadian folk rock group Spirit of the West, for god's sake.

A year later and they were one of the biggest groups in the country. Madchester was already fading and shoegaze was never going to light the charts ablaze so it was left to grebo to fill the void. Proving yet again that the best student bands aren't made up of, well, students, they were huge in the student union bars (as well soulmates Spirit of the West back in Canada). I've heard their Top 5 hit "The Size of a Cow" referred to as a nineties "Come on Eileen" (no source on that one but I've heard it nonetheless) but I don't imagine impressionable kids were buying it like they had Dexys a decade earlier. I was fourteen at the time and probably among the youngest Wonder Stuff fan you could find (I certainly was at my school where no one else knew who the hell they were).

Regardless, they'd had a pair of hits (the follow-up to "Size of a Cow" was "Caught in My Shadow", which deserved to be the teen angst anthem of its day; the song was my entree into the Stuffies and is still a big favourite of mine) and a Top 3 album. They were also doing good business on the road. "Dizzy" sounds like an account of the experience. For any hard-hearted, moaning students who refused to get up for "Cow", we'll dare you to try this same with this one. Tommy Roe's original is very much a product of its time and a bit uncertain of itself (it sounds like it could've been a country hit had it just been tweaked a little) but the singer does indeed sound like he's dizzy. In this case, it's as if they're attempting to make everyone else feel this way. Kids my age even caught on.

Audiences felt dizzy enough with joy that they took Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff to number one in November of 1991. The Reeves & Mortimer comedy duo became bigger (or so I hear) and Stourbridge's finest returned to the Top 10 in the new year with Never Loved Elvis cut "Welcome to the Cheap Seats", yet another studenty singalong, which managed to buck the law of diminishing returns. They even headlined the first night of the 1992 Reading Festival. (The Sunday bill was designed to be free of the "lame-ass limey bands" that Kurt Cobain was against: somehow or other Hunt faced a lot more blow back for his anti-American statements than that sensitive soul who led Nirvana)  Things looked up even though The Wonder Stuff would never be as big as they were during that year when the stars aligned and students everywhere got drunk to them. Oh, to be young again...

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Paul Young: "Don't Dream It's Over"

If you've ever wondered if your favourite song has been covered by anyone of note, there's a reasonably good chance that Paul Young has had a crack at it. Some have worked and they tend to be of the soul music "persuasion". "Don't Dream It's Over" isn't a soul song which might be why he made it so bland. Frith mentions that it's a cover of "one-hit wonders" Crowded House, a group that would become "thirteen-hit wonders" by the time of their initial split five years later. In fact, "Fall at Your Feet" would give them their second Top 40 hit just a couple weeks after Paul Young took this into the listings. Coincidence? Probably but at least Neil Finn was getting some credit and royalty checks. Too bad we probably won't be seeing them in this space. So, to sum: Paul Young isn't very good but Crowded House are. Not the most illuminating commentary of my part, is it?

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.

Diana Ross: "Mirror Mirror"

4 February 1982

"The 12" version has a lot going on, and may be worth paying more for."

— Charlie Gillett

"Not only is this Diana's first release on Capitol," states Bev Hillier in her November, 1981 review of the album Why Do Fools Fall in Love, "but also her first shot at producing her own material". They wouldn't introduce Album of the Fortnight to Smash Hits for a while but if it had existed at the end of 1981 she would have taken the runner up spot behind Fad Gadget's Incontinent. Among the LP's Diana Ross finished in front of in a pretty strong batch are Japan's Tin Drum (a very worthy 8 out of 10), Depeche Mode's Speak and Spell (a respectable 7/10), Earth, Wind & Fire's Raise! (also a 7/10 but surely it deserved better), The Bee Gees' Living Eyes, Adam & the Ants' Prince Charming (both with a deserved 5/10), Prince's Controversy (4/10 seems ungenerous but I'm not sure Hillier's wrong) and Rush's Exit...Stage Left (again, 2/10 is a bit of a chintzy score but Mike Stand's remark — "I would close with the standard attack on their interest in dodgy philosopher Ayn Rand if only I knew who the hell he was" — makes it all worthwhile). Bloody hell, this Fad Gadget dude must've been good...

For Diana Ross to have thrived up against such strong competition (and Rush!) is not such a big deal for someone with her pedigree but for her to have done so on an album she also produced is another matter entirely. One would think that a diva of her stature would have more pressing matters than sitting behind a grubby mixing desk with a sad, friendless engineer while barking orders at overworked, underpaid session musicians. Yet, she proved up to the task enough that she would go on to produce the bulk of the material that would make up her next three albums.

Not to take anything away from the legendary ex-Supreme but she did have a few advantages that your average first time producer wouldn't normally enjoy. First, she had use of the finest recording studios in the United States at her disposal. She also had a team of first rate musicians in her employ, including well-rounded guitarist Eric Gale and tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker, individuals who had played on her now overlooked 1979 album The Boss (her much better remembered Diana LP from '80 had been done with Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers who effectively made a Chic album with Diana Ross singing on top of it; Why Do Fools Fall in Love set the clock back by utilizing previous sessioners and is probably a more accurate indication of where she was creatively and professionally at the time). Finally, she had nearly twenty years of studio experience to rely upon; in my previous review of "Mirror, Mirror" I argue that years of working alongside Motown's studio wizards as well as Edwards and Rodgers must have rubbed off on her.

The one thing that Ross failed to account for was decent songs. Well played and sung by all concerned, "Mirror, Mirror" is nevertheless a flimsy composition. Time had not endeared it to me since the last time I wrote about it though I will acknowledge that Charlie Gillett was correct in favouring the 12" mix to its 7" counterpart. Disco tunes need time to settle in and, if anything, six minutes is probably not quite long enough. Eric Gale's hard rock guitar playing doesn't quite fit the shorter version while the lengthier mix allows for sufficient space. Seemingly stuck in a noble sixties' mindset of keeping albums down to thirty to forty minutes, Ross' album sacrificed dancefloor excellence for unnecessary brevity. Instead of "Mirror, Mirror" being the album's longest track it should have been the median. 

I love Chic as much as the next person but to give them the bulk of the credit for Diana Ross' success in the early eighties overlooks the fact that their team-up was short lived and that she was doing well for herself both before and after they worked together. With all due respect to their talents as ace musicians and producers it was their songwriting that likely benefited her most. Not since the heyday of Holland-Dozier-Holland had Ross worked with such a formidable team. Producing seemed to suit her so why didn't she take up songwriting while she was at it? She could've given it a go by collaborating with colleagues like Lionel Richie or Smokey Robinson a busy-but-always-willing-to-help-a-friend Michael Jackson. She could have even written a few songs on her own and it's not a stretch to suggest she would have been capable of something better than the cliche-ridden "Mirror, Mirror" or the dated "Why Do Fools Fall in Love". Why rely on covers and third rate nonsense when she could have done it herself? After-all, Diana Ross was no mere diva.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Fun Boy Three with Bananarama: "It Ain't What You Do..."

"Somebody should give these guys a lesson on writing dynamics into their records, with middle-eights and bridges and all that stuff," states Gillett in an otherwise complimentary review. He doesn't seem aware that Terry, Lynval and Neville, along with newcomers Sarah, Siobahn and Keren, didn't compose this record. Indeed, he seems unaware that it was already over forty years old and had been a jazz standard until the FB3 gave it an update. All things considered, the Boys and the 'Narns had a minor masterpiece on their hands. Lots of fun (I like the Fun Boy Three a lot but they didn't always live up to their name), catchy, addictive and a great way to introduce the world to the genius of Bananarama, who would soon overtake their male counterparts as regulars on the giddy carousel of pop for the remainder of the decade. Gillett concludes by wishing a poorly Lynval Golding well; I'll sign off with a regretful RIP Terry Hall. (And RIP Charlie Gillett while I'm at it)

(Click here to see my original review)

Kylie Minogue: "Word Is Out"

21 August 1991

"You could listen to this 100 times and never get bored of it."

— Sophie Lawrence

So, a minor request, though one I don't see being fulfilled: I'd quite like to write about a Kylie Minogue record that I genuinely like.

The Australian sensation was first awarded a Smash Hits Single of the Fortnight back in the spring of 1988 when Richard Lowe gave the nod to "Got to Be Certain", the follow-up to Kylie's number one smash "I Should Be So Lucky". It's a song that has its fans (it had a four week stay at number two, a chart position she'd become very familiar with) but I'm not one of them. It isn't horrible, just nothing special. The song crops up as the last track on the first side of her debut album Kylie and falls a bit flat next to its companions. (It always seemed like the glorious "It's No Secret", a North America-only release, merited being a single more)

Hits reviewers would pass on Kylie's stuff for a while in spite of the fact that everything from "Je ne sais pas pourquoi" through to "Never Too Late" a year later is superior to "Got to Be Certain". (Incidentally, it must be said that Minogue's run of singles in the late eighties and early nineties is pretty impressive, making for one of the finer greatest hits albums of the era this side of Pet Shop Boys) It was only with her dramatic 1990 reinvention that Mike Soutar felt the need to give his due to "Better the Devil You Know", the lead off track from her third album Rhythm of Love. The ninth of her last ten singles to reach either number one or two, it also proved to be the end of Kylie playing the role of close friend or older sister offering sound advice to a love lorn youngster. Both "Certain" and "Devil" were about making the right choices; from here on out, the choice became simple: it was all about desiring Kylie or wanting to be just like her.

The fact that Minogue had by then put out three LP's, along with ten singles, in such a short time is impressive, especially since this was the start of an era in which artists would go longer and longer between albums. But where both Kylie and Enjoy Yourself were number ones, Rhythm entered at a disappointing number nine and dropped steadily from there. (Fourth LP Let's Get to It only got to number fifteen which only goes to show that the better the photo of Kylie on the cover, the worse the chart performance) She still had a few more Top 10 singles in her but clearly interest in Kylie was becoming more selective.

The British public had grown weary of the Aussie and they took out their newfound disinterest on "Word Is Out", a brand new single that was expected to keep her streak of Top 10 hits going. Instead, it entered at eighteen, rose two spots the following week and then tumbled down to thirty-three during its final spell of Top 40 action. A shockingly poor performance from such a reliable hit maker. Word Is Out That Kylie's Heading Down the Dumper, the headlines amazingly didn't say.

It's nice to think that ver kids had missed out on a gem as they clamoured for Mariah Carey or Dannii Minogue instead but they were right to give it a miss. Like "Got to Be Certain" and "Better the Devil You Know" it is just so plain; unlike them, however, Kylie's vocal doesn't stand out. Comparisons were constantly being made around this time to Madonna but Madge on her worst day wasn't nearly this generic. Fellow actress-turned-wannabe-pop-starlet Sophie Lawrence thinks it sounds a bit like "La Isla Bonita" but all I can hear is Stevie Wonder's 1976 hit single "I Wish" from his classic double album Songs in the Key of Life. Either way, it's not enough to pull Kylie out of mediocrity.

"Word Is Out" also marks the departure of Matt Aitken from the Stock Aitken Waterman songwriting/production empire. Kylie was by now their last remaining star and the now duo of Stock Waterman poured their energies into their cash cow. Unfortunately, they were in a no win situation: complaints that their work had become too formulaic were in abundance but there was little interest when they did try to depart from what had made them so big. Minogue going R&B was obviously the next logical step but it proved to be one that no one else wished for her to take. (The Let's Get to It album only ended up producing one big hit and — huh! — it ended up being her final stab at pure pop for quite some time...but we'll get to that soon)

Meanwhile, I continue to wait for a potential Kylie Minogue SOTF that I genuinely like. I was a big fan then and I continue to have some regard for her now; she did some great songs prior to "Word Is Out" and she'd put out quite a few more in the years to come. I'll just have to keep waiting.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Tin Machine: "You Belong in Rock n' Roll"

Response to the first Tin Machine album must have been so encouraging that David Bowie and his buddies just had to get together again for Tin Machine II. Lawrence suspects a guaranteed hit only because of Dame David which would be true but for a) Bowie lacked the commercial clout he once enjoyed and b) this hard rock side project of his had yet to yield a single Top 40 entry. Tin Machine II is the end of Bowie at his absolute suckiest but there are signs that he would soon pull himself up to being "all right, I suppose" before long. Still, this "you" in "You Belong in Rock n' Roll" can't possibly be about Bowie himself: I'd take him playing keyboards, sax and "Chamberlin" (whatever that is) over all these damn guitars. Mind you, there's some mad fret work on Ziggy and Heroes and even a bit on Low and that was Bowie at his seventies paradigm best so there you go.