Deee-Lite: "Runaway"

10 June 1992

"And it's about running away, so lots of people in the midsts of emotional quagmires will warm to its "theme" of "escape". So! Fling off your hobnails! Yup, you know it makes sense."

— Sian Pattenden

HOROSCOPES

How tomorrow looks for the pop stars of today! (But don't check back in, say, a year from now just in find out what we might have got wrong. Just because we predict the future doesn't mean we know exactly what's going to happen!)

WHAT'S IN STORE FOR

LADY MISS KIER

STARSIGN: LEO

AGE: 28 (born August 15, 1963)

LOVE: It's tempting to burn everything down, runaway and start all over for a passionate Leo but there's always a place for a stable mate to be the voice of reason. Consider hanging on to that geeky blond boy who's happy to drive you around — he may surprise you yet!

FAMILY: Some of Miss Kier's extended family have been wondering when she's going to have another hit song. The pressure is getting to her so some time away from them might be just the thing she needs.

CAREER: The Lady's elastic voice has been put to good use over the years but she's in danger of using it in a much more conventional manner as Deee-Lite's success continues to wane. Try to keep in mind what made you popular in the first place.

BEWARE OF... having to choose between staying the same or changing far too radically: either approach can be problematic.

~~~~~

WHAT'S IN STORE FOR

TOWA TEI

CHINESE ZODIAC: DRAGON

KOREAN AGE: 29 (born September 7, 1964)

LOVE: Dragons are often perfectionists which can lead to unrealistic expectations in the world of love. Ideally, he should try to find a Rooster so he can tell him or her what to do all the time or a Rat in the hope that their influence will get him to lighten up from time to time.

FAMILY: Aunts never stop asking about when Towa is going to get married — but that's what aunts are for! The promise of a new relationship come September ought to keep them at bay (for now).

CAREER: Hard work and success can come with a price. Dragons are prone to tuning out the advice of others. Towa should embrace other styles of music, collaboration with a variety of talented individuals and consider a change of scenery. It could do him a world of good.

BEWARE OF... breathing fire over those who stand in your way.

~~~~~

WHAT'S IN STORE FOR

SUPA DJ DMITRY

STARSIGN: ???

AGE: ?? (born ??? ??, 19??)

LOVE: Since his date-of-birth is unknown, it's impossible to know how his love life will turn out. But if you must know, he is best suited to someone born at some other random time of the year.

FAMILY: Dmitry has a family. He has to since he was born and all that. He may or may not be close to some of all of them but that depends on if the Moon is in whichever house it should be in depending on the sign from the Zodiac he has been allotted.

CAREER: Dmitry is the DJ for a trio called Deee-Lite. They once had a hit with "Groove Is in the Heart" but now they're in danger of fading away into oblivion. (NB: This is not from any kind of astrological chart: I looked it up in his bio)

BEWARE OF... not revealing any private information. How can a tenth-rate gossip columnist guess about the future of someone they don't know if basic info about when they were born and their starsign isn't provided? What do you expect, me to actually get to know the people I yammer on about???

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Tori Amos: "Crucify"

WHAT'S IN STORE FOR

TORI AMOS

STARSIGN: LEO

AGE: 28 (born August 22, 1963)

LOVE: People tend to be in awe of the strong-willed Leo so it isn't difficult to find prospective partners out there. Whether they are able to communicate and forge a proper relationship going forward is a whole other matter.

FAMILY: Having a strong familial bond is important even for a free spirit who feels they are holding her back. Breaking free can be necessary at times but it is always important to find your way back.

CAREER: For those who stubbornly follow their own path, there will always be critics who needn't be listened to. But Tori shouldn't let the praise of her followers get to her either. She should try surrounding herself with level headed types with a more measured response to her recordings and performances. It can't hurt finding out your latest album is just okay, can it?

BEWARE OF... becoming a victim even as she sings about them.

Wham!: "Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)"

24 June 1982

"Brilliant words, real excitement, hundreds of ideas, built-in participation and maximum humour."

— Neil Tennant

With New Pop really starting to heat up, it's rather unexpected that some of Britain's major musical talents were nevertheless hiding in plain sight. This review of "Wham Rap!" was published the day before its chief composer, George Michael, turned nineteen. It wouldn't be long before his pop duo Wham! began to take off but it's of no little significance that one of the first people to recognize his musical gifts was a Smash Hits editor and critic named Neil Tennant. Perhaps the two most dominant forces of late-eighties' UK pop and one had released a little-known, little-heard debut single on an obscure label and the other had just given it his thumbs up in a top pop mag.

The future Pet Shop Boy wasn't the only one with praise for Wham!'s first single. While they would become an object of scorn for the much more serious inkies, Adrian Thrills of the NME is pleasantly surprised by them, who he describes as "one of the least jaded groups I have heard all year". He also detects an "uncontrived freshness" about them ("call it naivety if you will") and concludes that they are "one to watch on the side". "The best white rap poor money can buy," exclaims someone in the Melody Maker; a bit of a backhanded compliment but I'll let it slide. (On the other hand, Mike Gardner from the Record Mirror is less impressed, taking up his entire review with a short rant about how much his dislikes rap, especially in the hands of a group like Wham!)

Yet it's Tennant's review that resonates. "I'd be lost in admiration if I could find time to stand still" is the quotation I used the previous time I blogged about "Wham Rap!" but it applies much more this time round. Tennant's love for the song's irresistible dance-pop is evident but I have to wonder if the aspiring pop star in him wasn't also somewhat jealous. As stated above, Michael and Ridgely were both still in their teens and they had already cut such an impressive maiden single. Meanwhile, Tennant was nearly a decade older than the duo. He had spent the bulk of his free time in the seventies writing songs but it was only the previous summer that he met Chris Lowe, his longtime partner in Pet Shop Boys. Writing for Smash Hits may seem like a dream job to a particular contingent of sad types on social media — and I should know being one of them — but the modest compensation and having to interview and write about acts of dubious musical merit might have rubbed this pop genius the wrong way.

This raises an intriguing question: who should he have have felt jealousy towards, someone of genuine ability (like George Michael) or someone lacking in sufficient talents (like Bardo and Bucks Fizz, both also reviewed this fortnight by Tennant who is sympathetic towards both). Considering he admits to (almost) being "lost in admiration", he doesn't seem to be bitter and it could be argued that Michael's British raps triggered him into doing something not dissimilar, albeit in his own deadpanned and restrained style. Nevertheless, it must have gnawed at Tennant that others were thriving while he struggled — and it couldn't have helped that Hits colleagues like Mark Ellen considered his early musical efforts to be hopeless and felt that 'Pet Shop Boys' was a useless name for a band.

For George Michael's part, he may have failed the first time round to secure a hit but getting positive write-ups in Smash Hits, the NME and Melody Maker must have been encouraging. The fact that "Wham Rap!" was a teaser to a rap career that never happened is of little importance. Like other left-leaning acts who would eventually go unashamedly commercial in the coming years (Bananarama, Simply Red, UB-bloody-40), it's easy to overlook the fact that Wham! once had a certain hipster cred about them. With Duran Duran shooting promos in far flung exotic locales and Spandau Ballet dressed so as to get laid as much as humanly possible, is it any wonder that an energetic rap about unemployment and living life to its fullest caught the ear of so many. What's more surprising is that it was the critics who recognized something special well before the public had any similar inkling.

Being as young as they were, Michael and Ridgely may have been expected to head for the dole queue had this pop lark not worked out. Thatcherite Britain may have deemed the nation's millions of unemployed to be a burden but that was irrelevant to the existential hedonism that gives life to "Wham Rap!" Adrian Thrills, in his review mentioned above, admits as an aside that he thought that the "demolition of the work ethic was last year's thing" but Michael was smart to add a "Get stuffed! I'm going to enjoy myself either way" spirit. Knowing what we know now, however, is there more to lines like "I am a man, job or no job, you can't tell me that I'm not" and "I have a good time, with the boys that I meet down on the line..." than what we would have initially guessed?

A future superstar hadn't quite arrived but he was certainly on his way. Another one was lagging a bit he was taking inspiration from many of the bands he was been paid to interview and review — and he was even going to use his position to allow him to forge relationships with people who would help him get to the top. He was just going to have to wait a good deal longer than Wham!, a group who would be all but broken up by the time Pet Shop Boys were ready to hit the charts. Neil Tennant had been astute enough to see a budding pop genius in George Michael but when was someone going to recognize it in him?

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Brotherhood of Man: "Lightning Flash"

I've already mentioned Bucks Fizz and Bardo but Brotherhood of Man are yet another act present who add to the Eurovision flavour of this issue's singles review. (David Essex never had a Eurovision entry? Really?) ABBA were busy divorcing and about to go on a thirty-eight year hiatus but their influence on British pop was never greater than at this time when the two girls-two boys group dynamic was rapidly becoming the norm would quickly be replaced by the charismatic singer-surly keyboardist synth-pop template. (Gee, who could I be referring to?) To be precise, Brotherhood of Man (I can think of at least two things wrong with their name) had long been this way and likely would've had much the same career path had those Swedes never bothered to leave Scandinavia. I like this a little more than Tennant but I can give or take it at the end of the day. It could be suggested they were capable of better but is that really so?

(Click here to see my original review)

Manic Street Preachers: "Motorcycle Emptiness"

27 May 1992 (with the actual Single of the Fortnight here)

"This finally proves that the Manics are much more than simply a punk parody and that they are capable of occasional brilliance. Deserves to be No. 1 for weeks."

— Tom Doyle

"Our manifesto is, 'Don't do it, kids, never get past the age of 13'."

This was the message that Richey Edwards (aka Richey James, aka Richey Manic) communicated to Sylvia Patterson in the 1 April 1992 issue of Smash Hits. It would have been so easy for the songwriter/mediocre guitarist to evoke The Who with his own take on "I hope I die before I get old" but he was acknowledging that he was already cooked at the age of twenty-four. Given what would play out about two-and-a-half years later, this adds weight to Richey's tragic story though it also reinforces his status as an all-time pop one-off.

I've only ridden on motorbikes a handful of times in my life, mostly in Thailand and Indonesia. Given that I'm uncomfortable enough behind the wheel of a car and I even feel nervous on a bicycle, it will surprise no one who knows me even a little that I was a passenger. A very jittery passenger who took no pleasure in the speed and abandon that is supposed to come with being on the back of a hog; my sole wish was to be off these death traps as soon as possible.

With this in mind, I feel I have a worthy perspective on "Motorcycle Emptiness". They may be symbols of freedom to some but in my mind they only provide the freedom for me to kill myself. Of course, this doesn't have that much to do with the song itself beyond it's most basic level but the best pop is meant to be something we can identify with so that's good enough for me. Where I align with Richey, James Dean Bradfield, Sean Moore and Nicky Wire is in recognizing the illusion of this supposed freedom people evidently get from gunning it well over the speed limit, recklessly weaving between vehicles, running red lights and riding down sidewalks whenever the mood strikes (this is what I observe motorcyclists doing on a daily basis). One might expect these throwbacks to glam rock, punk and metal to be sympathetic with the biker element but this was a quartet of Welsh lads who went to university and were keen to opine on anything they felt like and hated rock 'n' roll cliches. Like motorbikes.

Tom Doyle expresses some surprise that Manic Street Preachers have something so accomplished in them but if we go back to the Patterson interview, it's clear they were deep individuals who liked to cosplay as moronic rock stars. The piece starts with an anecdote from the Irish Music Awards in which they behaved so boorishly that a rep from their own record label denounced them, the irony of which wasn't lost on them ("They signed us up for loads of money for being what we are and now they expect us to start dressing like them and looking as chronically ugly and boring as them with their crap haircuts and no brains," reckoned an ever perceptive Richey). Their manifesto of kids remaining kids for life free from "wanting things, acquiring things" and the fallacy that "your life will be better if you get a new video game or a new bike, etc, etc".

We look at famous and/or wealthy people and often take pity on them for only caring about their riches and their possessions but this mindset affects many of us living on far more modest means. Richey was probably even being naive in implying that we're done for by the time we hit our teens; kids, too, get obsessed about getting more toys or treats or getting to go to a movie theatre rather than renting a video or having dessert even when they barely touched their dinner. Sure, kids aren't as corrupted as adults but the majority of them are well on their way before they even start going to school.

I'm not the biggest Manics' backer but I will admit that they're strength was in ideas that are seldom broached. Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker are lauded for capturing youthful tedium but the greater achievement is in making a point that transcends the diary entries and school poetry journals. The very idea of "Motorcycle Emptiness" would never have occurred to me at the time and I daresay I wasn't alone in that regard. This is how to become the voice of a generation.

With soaring melodies, crunchy guitars, those subtle strings Doyle alludes to, Moore's powerful drumming and Bradfield's trademark voice you can't quite sing along with, "Motorcycle Emptiness" was quickly identified as a classic and a big step forward for a band who many had been quick to underestimate. They only ever got it right some of the time but when they were on no one could touch them. Manic Street Preachers: easily the best band that I'm not a fan of.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Crowded House: "Four Seasons in One Day"

There were a lot of those bizarre El Nino summers back in the nineties. We'd get afternoon showers at ten in the morning. It could be warm and pleasant one day and then be wet and miserable the next (though it never seemed to go the other way). Songwriters Neil and Tim Finn likely didn't have this in mind, even though it had been written in Melbourne, a city notorious for weather that can throw everything at a person in just a few hours. Crowded House sure had the market cornered when it came to songs about meteorology as this followed "Weather with You" into the UK charts and they even carried it forward somewhat a year later with "Distant Sun". Doyle isn't keen, thinking it sounds like the kind of thing "your long-haired hippy art teacher" would enjoy. (I'll have you know, Tom, that Mr. Coutts had really good taste in music) Granted, "Four Seasons in One Day" isn't one of their bangers but it's nice all the same and reliably good fare from the band you quite like but really ought to love. 

Kris Kross: "Jump"

13 May 1992

"Jump up and down with Daddy Mack and Mack Daddy and you'll never be bothered by bullies again."

— "Bunny" Sawyer

In an episode of the brilliantly written though sometimes overacted comedy-drama Sports Night, the character Dan Rydell has found himself in some trouble due to singing "Happy Birthday" to his co-host Casey McCall without clearing it with the holders of the song's copyright, representatives of Mildred and Patty Hill. When he tells station manager Isaac Jaffe of the situation, his boss asks incredulously, "it took two people to write that song?"

Inside the pullout lyrics section of the 27 May 1992 issue of Smash Hits are the words to "Jump", a recent number one smash in the US which was now climbing the singles charts in Britain. As was standard practice, the songwriter credits are included. One Jermaine Durpi is listed as being responsible for its words and music; he must've done well from a single that had spent eight weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 (and certainly better than the two boys who did the rapping and all that jumping in its video).

But if you take a look on the Wikipedia page for "Jump", it gets much more extensive. Durpi's name is still there but so are Joe "The Butcher" Nicolo, Alphonso Mizell, Berry Gordy, Deke Richards, Freddie Perren, Marshall "Rock" Jones", Leroy "Sugarfoot" Bonner, Ralph "Pee Wee" Middlebrooks, Gregory "Greg" Webster (I realise a lot of these people have nicknames but "Greg"?), Clarence "Satch" Satchell, Bruce Napier, Walter "Junie" Morrison, Marvin "Merv" Pierce, Roy C. Hammond, Louis Freese (aka B-Real; a little on-the-nose with that whole 'keeping it real' hip hop philosophy, isn't it?), Lawrence Muggerud (aka DJ Muggs), Senen Reyes (aka Sen Dog), Lowell Fulson, Jimmy McCracklin, James Brown, J.B. Weaver Jr. (aka Schooly D), Anthony Criss (aka Treach), Keir Gist (aka KayGee), Vincent Brown (aka Vin Rock) and Herb Rooney. Bloody hell, I've even heard of a couple of these people!

Yes, it apparently took twenty-six people to write something as simple as "Jump". By comparison, "Happy Birthday" being co-written by a pair of sisters isn't so crazy. The royalties can't be great when you have to share them with more than two dozen others. It might be understandable if Dupri had forgotten or neglected to give credit to a mate who collaborated with him but this is clearly not what happened in this instance. Instead, we've got a case of attempting to cash in on the sample craze.

Sampling is one of those musical trends that's much older than people might think. If you had asked me when I was in my teens or even well into my twenties I would have guessed that it started in the mid-eighties with the rise of hip hop and house music. In truth, the practice had been going on for close to a decade prior to that and there were even earlier examples. Few cite The Beatles' better-than-it-has-any-business-being "Revolution 9" as a pioneer in sampling and this is the Fab Four we're talking about, they're frequently credited with innovations that they had little to nothing to do with (the music video, the double album, the concept album). Besides what about musical quotations as a form of proto sampling? To go back to The Beatles, when Roxy Music's Graham Simpson played a solo cribbed straight from "Day Tripper" on the remarkable opening track "Re-Make/Re-Model" on their debut album, no one demanded reparations or a Lennon/McCartney/Ferry writing credit and they were by then being managed by the notorious Allen Klein, a shyster who leapt on the chance to bilk someone — anyone — out of their earnings. But apparently borrowing the actually drum beat or guitar riff is just going too far.

(Whatsomore, this was the very same year that Canada's Barenaked Ladies released their debut album Gordon which included the track "Hello City" with lines pinched from The Housemartins' 1986 hit "Happy Hour". As far as I can tell, songwriters Paul Heaton and Stan Cullimore have never received royalties and not even a thank you for allowing us to pass off your words as our's)

So with all these individuals claiming their piece of the "Jump" pie, the song much use a lot of samples. More musically-minded individuals out there can probably spot at least half-a-dozen bits swiped from other tunes but I am only able to pick out the one — and it happens to be the most obvious of the lot. Those three piano notes from The Jackson Five's brilliant "I Want You Back" are repeated throughout "Jump" so maybe The Corporation — a Motown team up of Gordy, Mizell, Perren and Richards — deserves their share of the credit. As for the rest, I have no idea and no opinion.

Being a burgeoning indie kid in the first half of 1992, I ought to have had no time for something like Kris Kross. The two boys were only a year or so younger than myself but they still managed to look like babies. Plus, wearing their clothes backwards was stupid and something that they couldn't even be consistent about (I don't think they ever wore their hoodies the wrong way round). Yet, I liked "Jump". Evidently putting all those samples to good use, it was fantastically catchy. Friends who were also into indie or swayed towards rock in general didn't care for it but neither did those annoying guys at school who were so hung up on rap having a "message". Without having to make it sound like they were "keeping it real", "Jump" managed to seem far more authentic than increasingly irrelevant acts like Public Enemy and NWA. 

In some ways, the Kris Kross story mirrors that of Musical Youth some ten years' earlier. Both had memorable number one hits in their respective homelands while mastering genres that had normally been reserved for much more senior acts. Both, rather depressingly, caught the attention of Michael Jackson. Both struggled to replicate the rapid success that greeted them early on. Both would eventually see members pass away decades before they should've been contemplating the end. A shame that Chris Smith and Chris Kelly weren't as fortunate to cash in as all those "songwriters" who somehow managed to get a writing credit for something they had next to nothing to do with.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Lightning Seeds: "Sense"

Miranda Sawyer seems to think that "tuneful weediness" is a bad thing. Huh. Ian Broudie's rather faceless unit had been busy inventing Britpop with their nifty singles like "Pure" and "The Life of Riley" and they had more of the same with "Sense", a co-write with the late Terry Hall. 'More of the same' would be a hallmark of a group that couldn't bring itself to record anything other than perfect indie pop but what else does one need? But I would say that since I'm such a sucker for all that tuneful weediness.

Stevie Wonder: "Do I Do"

10 June 1982 (with more over on the next page)

"Uptown, uptempo Wonderware and a zillion times more commendable than Stevie's recent pal-up with Paulie."

— Fred Dellar 

It is generally accepted that Wonder's classic period began with 1972's Music of My Mind and saw him through a fab five L.P. run up to Songs in the Key of Life four years later but I think it ought to be extended a little in both directions. 1971's Where I'm Coming From acts as a dry run towards his artistic independence but it is mature and individual enough to qualify. Post-'76, there's the eccentric Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants (imperial periods inevitably come with at least a small dose of hubris) and the hit-packed Hotter Than July from 1980. Despite the strong quality of the material, it tends to get left off of the "classic period" since he was no longer as prolific as he had been in the first half of the seventies and it may not have helped that it was his first long player lacking in a silly and/or slightly pretentious title since Signed, Sealed & Delivered a full decade earlier. For certain, his output had slowed down and this was just the beginning. ("Fun" fact: Stevie Wonder has only released four studio albums over the past forty years)

As if acknowledging that the creative peak was over, Stevie Wonder's Original Musiquarium I (a welcome return to form in the daft album title stakes) collects some of his choicest cuts from the previous ten years. Of note, the "recent pal-up with Paulie" is absent, possibly due to record label shenanigans, as are those fantastic early Wonder hits like "Fingertips", "Uptight" and "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours". A comprehensive career collection it isn't. Presumably, this is the stuff that the man himself was proudest of. I have trouble overlooking the decision not to include the sublime "Another Star" but it's a strong compilation all the same.

Possibly in an effort to get more people to shell out for yet another Stevie Wonder double album set, a generous four new tracks were included. Each one was placed strategically at the end of each side of vinyl with each newbie meant to fit in perfectly with their companion cuts. Side one of the first disc closes with the rocking "Front Line", a song about a Vietnam vet struggling with his post-war existence which fits the political tone of "Superstition", "You Haven't Done Nothin'" and "Living for the City". Flip the disc over and you get the sweetly "Ribbon in the Sky" which matches the loving and warm "Superwoman", "Send One Your Love" and "You Are the Sunshine of My Life". Put on the first side of disc two and there's the moody R&B groove of "That Girl" which hangs with "Higher Ground", "Sir Duke", "Master Blaster" and "Boogie on Reggae Woman".

The only trouble is, these closing tracks all pale in comparison to everything else. They can't even hope to come close to any of them. For example, "Front Line" might have made a fine deep cut but it lags when having to follow the mighty trio of numbers preceding it. "Ribbon in the Sky" comes across as just a cheap facsimile of some of Wonder's gorgeous love songs. "That Girl" feels flat held up against four of the catchiest tunes you'll ever hear.

Side four is a different matter. There are only three cuts, two of which are well-known selections from Songs in the Key of Life. Nothing against "I Wish" and "Isn't She Lovely" but they aren't quite standouts the way "Contusion", "Sir Duke", "Ordinary Pain", "As" and "Another Star" are. In fact, removed from Wonder's second album masterpiece and they don't manage to hold up as well. Thus, "Do I Do" closes out Original Musiquarium on something of a high note.

Still, it isn't quite grade 'A' Wonderware. The version on the compilation is a rather over-long ten minutes that doesn't quite justify its length the way both "As" and "Another Star" did on Songs in the Key of Life" (having said that, it doesn't get quite as tedious as either "Maybe Your Baby" or "Love's in Need of Love Today" so it does have that going for it); the single edit is more than enough with all the high spots covered. Yes, Dizzy Gillespie's solo has been axed but it's a disappointment so it isn't missed. (Jazz greats like Wayne Shorter, Walter Brecker, Victor Feldman and Jaco Pastorius had been appearing on a lot of pop and rock records in the late-seventies and their contributions vastly outstrip Diz's rather lax playing here) The one real issue with "Do I Do" is that it's clear Wonder was no longer leading the way. Bassist Nathan Watts was one of his secret weapons and here he plays the kind of frenetic scales that made Chic's Bernard Edwards into a star. And really, it could easily have been produced by Edwards and cohort Nile Rodgers in the midst of their post-disco boom period. Wonder's time as a leading light of pop and R&B was coming to an end.

Luckily, this did little to halt his success rate. The much maligned "Ebony and Ivory" had been a worldwide number one smash earlier in 1982 which seemed to launch Stevie Wonder as a more middle-of-the-road entertainer. His notoriety was such that even something rotten like "I Just Called to Say I Love You" was a megahit. The pleasant but inconsequential "Part-Time Lover" was probably the best he was capable of at the time. And there you have it with an imperial period: it may encompass a remarkable creative roll but it can even include shoddy work so long as it proves popular. And if you happen to be a national treasure, it can even carry on indefinitely long after the hits have dried up. When did classic Stevie Wonder come to an end? It's still chugging along.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Modern English: "Life in the Gladhouse"

Band that did one famous song in 'I-Didn't-Know-They-Had-Other-Hits!' shock. "I Melt with You" has managed to take on such a life of its own over the past forty years that it's surprising it wasn't a lot bigger at the time. But it wasn't even their first go in the Top 40. As the late Fred Dellar states, "Life in the Gladhouse" is dominated by its percussion. It's also loaded with key changes and Modern English seem content to show off their generally overlooked diversity of sound. The downside is there isn't much of a song to go with their vigourous performance. Lots of fun and a sure-fire fan fave live but not the sort of thing that will be remembered in the future. That's where "Melt with You" comes in.

(Click here to see my original review)

Saint Etienne: "Join Our Club" / "People Get Real"

29 April 1992

"Cool, lush and a thing of great beauty. Readers, love these people."

— Mark Frith

For whatever reason, the term indie has come to imply music that is made with a heavy reliance on the guitar-bass-drums dynamic, a trio of instruments that have a much richer heritage with music that is very much not independent. I suppose the idea is that garage rock thrived under these conditions, as did punk and indie was merely a continuation of this trajectory. 

The trouble is, D.I.Y. is meant to grow out of what we have around us. When the British skiffle craze took off in the mid-fifties, bands such as The Quarrymen had youngsters on the washboard and tea-chest bass (a European variant on the gutbucket favoured in the American south) but drummers were scarce at the time. (Drum kits being prohibitively expensive would have been one reason for this shortage but you've got to think that issues of space inside tiny English homes would have also factored) By the synthy eighties, casio keyboards were more readily available and drum machines weren't beyond the means of budget-conscious musicians. Then there was the mixing desk, which was an extension of those same turntables that everyone had in their homes. No doubt many a home stereo record player got destroyed by youths who were keen to replicate that distinctive whooshing sound that came from DJ's on hip hop and house records. (Surely I wasn't the only one?)

Thus, Saint Etienne, who happned to be every bit as much a homemade outfit as The Jesus & Mary Chain. If Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs weren't musically gifted then they made up for it by being musically knowledgeable. A lot of eighties' English soul artists could boast of having record collections to die for while seemingly unaware that their pop craft suffered but Stanley and Wiggs were not about to fall into the same trap. They were also savy enough to figure out that the Madchester/baggy acts had been transformed by their producers and/or remixers so why not take on these tasks themsevles. Playing instruments had once been D.I.Y. but now so too was the process of recording and cutting discs.

With a clear understanding of what they liked and what they wanted to avoid ("Carter USM and Jesus Jones were the enemy"), Stanley, Wiggs and permanent vocalist Sarah Cracknell set about piecing together records from pop's vast history. In a way they were the audio equivalent of the brilliant modern German novelist W.G. Sebald, who wrote books — The Rings of Saturn, Austerlitz — filled with photos and seemed to place himself as a character in his stories. Are these books actually novels or are they history/biography? What's going on here? Does it even matter in the end? Similarly, while I can be sure that Cracknell is doing the bulk of the singing, what exactly do the two blokes do? Are they such music geeks that they've managed to layer tracks upon tracks of samples from all over the place without really playing anything? Again, does it make any difference either way?

Saint Etienne had already proven to be adept at the list song having done so on "Girl VII" from their magnificent debut Fox Base Alpha and "Fake 88", a cut that had been rejected for the album. But where these tracks present spoken-word segments in which exotic locales and various ills of the eighties are listed off, song titles stretching from the sixties ("Do You Believe in Magic", "I Want to Hold Your Hand") to the present ("Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Justified and Ancient") are integrated more organically into the lyrics. They are the lyrics in fact.

Though littered with references to Stevie Wonder ("Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" is one of many highlights from his Innervisions masterpiece; coincidentally, it would be covered in classy if inconsequential style by Incognito soon after), CeCe Peniston and so forth, this is surprisingly not remarked upon by Mark Frith. Given that he must have known at least some of the songs Saint Etienne had name dropped, this must have been deemed either irrelevant to the average Smash Hits reader to bother including or he was perfectly happy to go on about "Join Our Club" as an anthem for the coming summer. As an aside, it's nice to read a critique of Saint Etienne that doesn't focus on how clever they are and instead basks in what a fabulous pop group they've always been.

"Join Our Club" is the group's first truly wonderful pop moment — and how right it is that it became their biggest hit to date. (How it didn't get them a spot on Top of the Pops I'll never know) Their stuff from 1991 is outstanding in its own right but the downside is that much of it sounds like they were still working things out. Cracknell wasn't yet full time and their use of house music could be too overt at times. Not so by the following year, however. They had initially planned on releasing the Foxbase-ish "People Get Real" but their label Heavenly turned it down. It ended up coming out as a double A with "Join Our Club" which gives the record a nice heads or tails quality. "People Get Real" had been their attempt at slamming early-nineties' soul music and it ends up counteracting the positivity of "Join Our Club", a song which luxuriates in their love for pop of all kinds.

As I believe I have said before in this space, I was in a band at about the same time that Saint Etienne started to become critical darlings. Our jam sessions ("meetings" as we self-importantly dubbed them) were typically a fiasco but three of us wrote songs with some regularity. But what we really excelled at was planning Stereotype's path to stardom. We had discographies with titles that never had tunes to go with them but they all managed to be Top 10 hits in the US and UK. We even plotted out our solo careers. Stereotype never managed to live up to the hype we had built up in our minds but it was encouraging that elsewhere there was this trio called Saint Etienne who also seemed like big time music nerds and who also seemed like the types who had a pre-planned pop lifespan worked out but they managed to see it through. Is it too late to join that particular club?

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Creedence Clearwater Revival: "Bad Moon Rising"

1992 was proving to be a grim year for the rock 'n' roll cover — the year kicked off with Guns N' Roses' horrible version of "Live and Let Die" and was soon to see ghastly takes on "Mrs Robinson" and "Cat's in the Cradle" by The Lemonheads and Ugly Kid Joe "respectively" — so why not just go with the originals instead? The Temptations' wonderful "My Girl" had already been a big hit so the film of the same name tried to luck out a second time with this jaunty singalong from San Francisco swamp rockers C.C.R. It didn't work out but John Fogarty's band was well on its way to a sweet nineties, er, revival. The downside is that a lyric that a couple people misheard suddenly became one of pop's favourite mondegreens, repeated by many who had never previously got the words all wrong. Honestly, if you seriously think it's "there's a bathroom on the right" then why aren't you also convinced that its title is "Bathroom Rising" as well? Think about it.