— 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?
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