Lisa Stansfield: "The Only Way"

28 October 1982

"Nominating this as star single isn't going to win me any credibility points."

— David Hepworth

Having been at Smash Hits for over three years up until this point, it's odd that David Hepworth thinks he had credibility points to begin with. This wasn't the Melody Maker or the NME he was working for (thank god for that), he was writing and editing a magazine whose primary mission was to publish songwords for young music fans. Credibility points? Seriously, Dave?

Of course, few in pop and rock journalism carry as much cred as Hepworth nowadays. A lot of people love the podcast he hosts alongside fellow erstwhile Hits, Q and The Word scribe Mark Ellen. (I was just think about the two of them the other day and something struck me: their ideas about music are really no more considered than my own) His books are also popular. UK musicology owes a great deal to the seventy-something Hepworth which is all the more remarkable considering he never indulged in lengthy philosophical rants about the influence of Sartre on Sheffield's post-punk scene nor did he use his position at one of the inkies to get high with the subjects he was meant to be critiquing.

In any case, what's the point of credibility when your throwaway Single of the Fortnight is the clear best new release here? "The Only Way" is anything but groundbreaking and remarkable but it is surprisingly sturdy for a club hit. There's something sweet about guiding a sixteen-year-old talent show winner towards the dance clubs of the time, rather than in the direction of tried and tested balladry. The Lisa Stansfield who would finally achieve mass success around the world at the tail end of the eighties didn't resemble the one who was struggling to make it seven years' earlier and her voice wasn't even all that similar but launching herself through the medium of contemporary dance trends would be something she would stick to, (Until she promptly abandoned it in an attempt to be more of a mainstream, all around vocalist with her third major label "effort" So Natural)

No doubt Stansfield oozed promise, which is more than can be said for the tiny label that had signed her up. While there's no doubt that string vest is indeed fetching, the sleeve is ruined by the headache-inducing Times New Roman uppercase 'L' and 'S' followed by lowercase lettering in italics. Worse still, the title, which for some reason is buried at the bottom left-hand corner, typed as 'The Only way'. Bloody hell, Devil Records, you really spared no expense! I guess your vast roster of young, up and coming artists made you drop the ball on...(checks notes) the only singer on your bloody label. You had literally one job to do.

This was the downside of these small indie record labels moving away from new wave and post-punk and on to club music. Youngsters who happened to be interested in a local band they'd heard about — and possibly even saw — could pop into the record shop to see if they had their latest single or the E.P. they cut from the year before but dance artists didn't get the same exposure that led the curious to investigate further. If a popular discotheque happened to play a record like "The Only Way" then it might have gone over well but what good would it have done the next day?

It was in this environment that enterprising blokes Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman could step in. They didn't write songs that were any better than "The Only Way" or Stansfield's other early singles but they had the business acumen, the pluck, the eye for talent and the instincts for marketing that gave them a massive edge over the competition. They even had sufficient club credibility (the kind David Hepworth didn't have while at ver Hits) that would aid them right up until, coincidentally, Stansfield's long-awaited breakthrough. It's all connected.

Nevertheless, Lisa Stansfield needed the experience of producing quality product that very few were interested in or even knew about. Self-righteous indie rock types are always on their high horse about struggling and dues paying seem unaware or unconcerned that everyone trying to make it in the music industry is trying to do the same thing. Plus, they don't have addictive and instantly listenable material like this one. Stansfield would better it with her first Top 40 hit "People Hold On" but it's not too far off. The moral of the story? Keep at it, kids. You may be in fetching vests on a label with no ideal about packaging but there's always the chance you'll one day be on the charts anyway. You might even hang on to that credibility which seems to matter to some.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Heaven 17: "Let Me Go"

What if B.E.F. had been the intended day job of Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware while Heaven 17 was just their fun little side project? It kind of makes sense but the record buying public had different ideas as they bought a handful of copies of the latter's releases to the former's none. "Let Me Go" isn't a patch on "Anyone Who Had a Heart" and only serves to further reinforce the question of why they left The Human League in the first place. Phil Oakey and the others may not have had the musical training of Marsh and Ware but they could've taught their old bandmates a thing or two about crafting glorious pop. Heaven 17 still have their fans to this day but I can't say I'm one of them. I'll always be a sucker for both sophisti-pop and synth-pop but it's obvious the two do not belong together. Sorry Hepworth, it didn't grow on me but maybe I ought to give it at least a second listen before I'm sure.

(Click here to see my original review)

Dina Carroll: "This Time"

17 February 1993 (with plenty of spillover here)

"This girl's gonna be massive — wicked voice, wicked mouth."

— Tony Mortimer

It could have been the circles I travelled in at the time but 1993 felt like a year in which the Venn diagram of generational music tastes spilled over a great deal. Of course, in a year with Nirvana's In Utero and Dr Dre's The Chronic, there was still plenty of pop that didn't crossover but they were starting to seem like the exceptions to the rule rather than the rule itself. The mainstream was trying to suck in as many people as possible — and all they had to do was be as bland and formulaic as pop could be capable of.

One of the big albums of the era was Diva by Annie Lennox. It came out in 1992 but it seemed to make a greater impression a year later. Some kids bought it, others borrowed it from their parents and then there was the Margach household which was free of it on any format — but it was this two-pronged Boomers/Xer's approach that helped give it a prolonged chart stay. My family wasn't so fortunate when it came to Genesis. 1991's We Can't Dance brought the former pro rock giants back in a big way, especially in my native Canada. I never gave serious thought to buying anything of their's but I didn't hold them in any contempt either. Then, during the '92 Christmas break, a friend in Britain sent me a copy of The Way We Walk, Vol.1: The Shorts, a live album of their hits from the past six years or so. I didn't mind it so much even if there was the gnawing feeling that this was middle-class, middle-age music that I should be keeping my distance from. (My two big albums of the period were The Clash's London Calling, which made me feel like I ought to be going the rebellious route — even though I wasn't interested in doing so — and the Barenaked Ladies' Gordon, the sort of vaguely naughty Canadian comedy pop which had the pretense of having indie cred but which appealed to older generations because of their zaniness and cornball humour)

People like Dina Carroll never seem to go out of fashion. Perhaps that's why they come and go so easily since there's always someone else to take their place, no matter how promising they seem or how many people of influence like Tony Mortimer predict how "massive" they'll become. And they often aren't wrong either. As many British artists of the nineties regardless of genre had begun to discover, American success proved elusive but she had some hits in the UK and around Europe and I'm sure she can pop up on a stupid reality TV show to this day and cause some buzz. Yet, I suspect Mortimer figured she'd be bigger than someone who would go on to rack up four Top 10 hits plus ten more spread throughout the Top 40.

Still, going only by singles success can be deceiving. Her smooth MOR sound wasn't initially being picked up by curious kids on CD single or cassingle but by grownups purchasing her album So Close. Though not quite a number one, it debuted in the runner-up spot and then remained in the LP charts for the next year and beyond. By the time she had become a "proper" pop star with the Top 5 hits "Don't Be a Stranger" and the Andrew Lloyd Weber penned "The Perfect Year", So Close was back at number two, held off only by the similarly cross-generational Bryan Adams and his best of So Far So Good. In the short-term, Mortimer was correct but this proved to be a high point she couldn't quite get back to.

In the meantime, Dina Carroll was one of those stars who would only place modestly in the singles charts while reigning supreme on the album listings. Not unlike Sting who never did much in the Top 40 after the demise of The Police and who was also doing very well for himself in 1993 with his Ten Summoner's Tales album. Kids, such as myself, really liked "Fields of Gold" but we weren't buying it. We didn't need to since so many mums and dads had already picked it up. (Though not in my case; that same friend who sent me the Genesis live album gave me a copy on cassette that summer when he came to visit) "This Time" sounds like it has big hit written all over it but it only managed to bounce around the Top 30 for three weeks until it fell out of the charts. Not much of a hit but it was building on the foundation of previous singles which also placed respectably. The parents weren't going to be buying any of these singles, they were just going to wait for the album. (Also, I can't be bothered to look it up but I get the feeling that So Close was the sort of album that kids were gifting their mums, either for birthdays, the following Christmas or that spring for Mothering Sunday)

I would argue that "This Time" is a woeful excuse for Single of the Fortnight Best New Single but it doesn't even seem worth the effort to try. It takes a hell of a torch song to make my insides crumble to pieces and this isn't one of them. Nevertheless, it passes the time pleasantly enough: I don't feel resentful or even bored when it's on and then I can happily forget all about it as soon as it's done. When people talk about disposable pop I'm not sure they're necessarily alluding to a record like this but that's precisely what it is.

The record, cassette and CD collections of our parents used to be plundered for The Beatles, a band who I happened to become seriously interested in back in 1993. But a lot of people's folks were still buying up albums well into the nineties and they weren't just re-purchasing old favourites on the still new and novel compact disc format. Older artists were back in '93 and some were even doing well for themselves. (Mind you, Paul McCartney wasn't one of them: his album Off the Ground is perhaps his weakest since Back to the Egg; to be fair, he hasn't made a poor album since) There were also a number of younger acts with competent songwriters and producers in their corners and studio pros and management and all that good stuff to make well-made and forgettable recordings. They get on the radio and you either listen to it and hopefully get into the artist in question or you tune it out and get on with your life. And if you miss out on someone like Dina Carroll then there's always going to be someone else just like her coming right around the corner.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Ugly Kid Joe: "Cats in the Cradle"

Since we're on the subject of music for Baby Boomers that was also intended to appeal to Generation X, why don't we discuss how there were so many wretched metal bands who chose to cover classics from the sixties and seventies. Tesla did a crappy version of the Five Man Electrical Band's "Signs" and Guns N' Roses did "Live and Let Die" and The Lemonheads (who weren't metal but probably liked it just to be ironic because that's the sort of dipshits they were) gave us a cover of "Mrs. Robinson" which no one wanted. (Also, wasn't metal supposed to be dead by this point? It's like grunge never happened) Ugly Kid Joe just about did comedy on "Everything About You" but getting all dark and serious was well above their pay grade. Yet, the public liked it enough to give them a second hit that people might just about remember them for. It was around this time that my mum began to scoff at updated covers and remark that people just can't write their own hits anymore. She may have had a point.

Saint Etienne: "You're in a Bad Way"

3 February 1993

"They should be encouraged in their admirable search for the perfect pop moment."

— Mark "Tall" Frith

I am not much of a musician. My parents made me take band in grade 7 so I chose the trombone and immediately came up with a catchy slogan ("never leave home without your bone!") but I seldom practiced and didn't care. Though I was a moody youth and had only myself to blame for my apathy, my folks could have encouraged me to sign up for band rather than ordering me to do so. Then I took up the bass out of my own accord and liked it but didn't make much progress. How little did I develop? Well, I recall hearing about how I was going to learn about playing chords and it's now thirty-two years since my first bass lesson and I still don't know what a chord is.

I was about to say that my inexperience as a musician keeps me from fully appreciating Saint Etienne until I realised this is utter nonsense. Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs were lifelong pop obsessives who formed with very little technical skill behind them — though I imagine they figured out what a chord is along the way. The former had been a music journalist while the latter was a DJ. Indeed, it was the skills Wiggs learned spinning records that put Saint Etienne into the position of being an outfit that used hip hop-style samples in order to put together pop records. If someone told me tomorrow that the pair never played anything on their recordings and had instead relied entirely on samples of obscure Northern Soul discs and BBC Radiophonic Workshop tapes I wouldn't bat an eye.

So, they're amateurs at heart and I ought to appreciate that. Plenty of people who are much more knowledgeable about music than I am love them (and they also no doubt know what a chord is!) so what's stopping me from fully embracing them? Which brings me to not being much of a music critic. Reviewers are damn near unanimous in their praise for the 'Tienne which must involve Stanley's role as a pretty great writer. I know what it's like to plan out a band in advance: I basically spend the majority of my early teen years working out the musical direction of the group I would one day take to fame and fortune. But having done so

Here I am knocking a group I do like at times in a blog post involving one of their very best records so how's about I get down to why "You're in a Bad Way" is so brilliant. Well, it can't really be the lyrics since they don't exactly read well. Sure, Mark Frith's observation that the line about "crew cuts and trainers" being "out of style again" is funny and does indeed qualify it for Single of the Fortnight Best New Single honours alone. Yet, the narrative is slim and does it really convey deep depression all that accurately? Nevertheless, if your group is lucky enough to have the flinty vocals of Sarah Cracknell then words don't need to be your biggest priority.

Musically it must've sounded fresh to many thirty years ago but old observers with tastes as catholic as Stanley and Wiggs would have known that it was an obvious nod to the sixties. With Madchester and retro dance pop a thing of the past and Britpop still more than a year away from exploding, there wasn't much call at the time for sounding old but this was a Saint Etienne special. Boring old power pop groups like Teenage Fanclub and Sloan could have The Beatles and The Beach Boys and The Byrds, Cracknell, Stanley and Wiggs made the best use of their love for old school Northern Soul and Joe Meek productions and ye-ye pop. (Appropriately for a band named after a legendary French football club, Saint Etienne was always the most Continental English group) One YouTube comment noted that "You're in a Bad Way" is the "Telstar" of the 90s and how can anyone possibly disagree?

This pursuit of the "perfect pop moment" as Frith puts it is a good summation of both why I like a lot of Saint Etienne's music and why I have reservations towards them at the same time. I admire them aspiring to such lofty heights and I recognise that with both "Avenue" and, yes, "You're in a Bad Way" they reached them. Yet, it all feels a little too perfect. While their output isn't wall-to-wall greatness, very little of what they have recorded together feels like a stumble on their part, like they had this vision that they've resolutely stuck to. As I wrote above, I look back at my teenage obsession with planning out the trajectory of my fantasy pop group with fondness but listening to Saint Etienne makes me feel sort of glad that none of it came to pass. Whether or not a band hits it big, there's usually little that can be predicted but it's almost as if Cracknell, Wiggs and Stanley managed to work out the formula for pop success which makes loving them a lot harder than it ought to be.

With the emergence of Bjork, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Suede and Wu-Tang Clan, 1993 is no doubt a year many look back on with fondness. Big names like Nirvana, Sting and U2 released albums while others such as New Order and Paul Weller, who many had written off, were back with respectable releases of their own. Longtime faves of mine Pet Shop Boys and The Wonder Stuff had returned as well. Yet, it was the first time since '87 in which I couldn't have cared less about the music scene. It also happened to be the first time in six years in which I went through a serious Beatles phase. I was glad to be looking back at another era so it's too bad I hadn't yet discovered Saint Etienne to guide me through the past, present and future — especially at a time when I wasn't so jaded and could identify more with a band that planned every step of their progression just as I had. Oh why did I have to age out of that way of thinking?

 

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

R.E.M.: "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight"

I'm just going to run with writing about every possible single from Automatic for the People because I want to and anyone who follows this space is just going to have to deal with it.. I was initially immune to R.E.M. but a chance listen to Top 20 hit "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" got me to rethink them. An unexpected choice for converting me over to the Athenians but it was the first record of their's which I was genuinely able to appreciate instead of feeling annoyed by. Frith likes the fact that Stipe laughs at one point but I hope it's just a bit of a crack up in the studio that they chose to keep rather than finding his own lyrics about "a reading from Dr. Seuss" to be for whatever reason amusing. Yet again, I mishear the words differently than you do: I always thought it was "don't even try to wake her up" which is closer to the real thing than that silly "calling Jamaica" shit that others are convinced of. (Bloody hell, I'm not particularly smart but it sure seems like a lot of people are much thicker than me) The second best song about this type of rattlesnake after Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder" and one of about eleven highlights from R.E.M.'s masterpiece ("New Orleans Instrumental No.1" is the closest thing to a duff track and even it belongs). See you when we get to "Everybody Hurts"; it won't be long.

Kim Wilde: "Child Come Away"

14 October 1982

"Add Kim's strong vocal performance plus a piccolo-headed arrangement that nudges into the realms of folk-rock and you have a Rak track that will ensure standing room only throughout Kim's current tour. Outstanding."

— Fred Dellar

A little girl is growing up in a small town. Everything about her life is normal: she goes to school, plays with her friends, argues with her brothers and sisters and refuses to eat anything with onions in it. She spends her pocket money on sweets and is disappointed that her parents still won't relent and get her a puppy. Then she learns about the abduction of a girl close to her age and her world is turned upside down.

"Child Come Away" is a song about two girls: the one who gets snatched and left for dead and the one who is privy to the unraveling of everything around her. Innocence ends up being yanked away from both. Obviously the former is put through so much more but the lingering affects are left as a burden on the former: not knowing quite what happened (much less how or why), learning little snippets of detail but being denied the full story by parents and a town that doesn't want to discuss it, living in fear that she could be next. Fred Dellar mentions a "town filled with terror" but I suspect there's more to it than that. The community is in denial as to what's been going on — or perhaps it was somehow even complicit in the crime.

That the Wilde family was able to come up with this gripping four-minute thriller is absolutely remarkable. Having already trotted out a pair of sorrowful yet superb singles with "Cambodia" and "View from a Bridge", they were well positioned to deliver yet another tragic piece and "Child Come Away" is their zenith. Kim seems to have toned down the vocal frostiness that worked such a treat on her early records but which wasn't appropriate for this type of song, leaving room for a sweetness that captures the childlike wonder and confusion going on. I don't know if I agree with Dellar that the "piccolo-headed arrangement" moves the song into the "realms of folk-rock" but it is effective nonetheless. I have to wonder if it's intended as a Pied Piper-esque tool to symbolise a child being lured away, while other children are being shuffled off to the side and told to go and play and stop asking so many bloody questions.

It's as a piece of writing, however, that "Child Come Away" truly shines. The lack of clarity in the story may seem strange at first but that's precisely the point. What exactly happened to this girl in the sand? What kind of appalling state was she left in that everyone in town — including the judge at the trial — turns away from her now? Has she been cast aside by the community as much as her captor/torturer ("I saw her face in the back of the car / As they were speeding out of this town")? We aren't to know, just as the other young girl in this song isn't to know. And we can look at this situation and gasp the heartlessness of the townsfolk but that's how close-knit communities often deal with these situations. Had it been a bigger hit it could easily have gone on to be used as the theme for the David Tennant-Jodie Whittaker mystery-thriller TV series Broadchurch.

So, all that said, how did it fail to catch on, falling short of the Top 40? Being her third single on the trot dealing with dark subject matter may have turned people off, especially DJs who were content around this time to spin sunny reggae-pop by the likes of Musical Youth, Culture Club and Eddy Grant instead. (Hopefully it did indeed manage to grip audiences during Wilde's tour; I like to think that she still occasionally floors her fans with it at shows to this day. If I ever get the chance to see her I'll holler in delight if she happens to dust this one off) In retrospect, it's a shame it wasn't released as a double A-side with its jauntier — though still appropriately angsty — flip "Just Another Guy": come for the whiplash pop-rock, stay for the searing devastation.

The Wilde trio of Kim, Marty and Ricki had quietly become one of the most formidable ensembles in early eighties' UK pop. Five Top 20 hits and a pair of well-received albums showed that they were onto something. Yet, this remarkable sixth single sputtered. Looking to change things up, they would hit upon a finger-clicking, toe-tapping jazz number that poked fun at Kim's reputation as a bombshell but long term this led her in the direction of uninspired and forgettable dance-pop. She would enjoy a commercial and critical renaissance by decade's end but those brilliant narrative songs had been sacrificed. Too bad that the Wildes didn't keep it going and that the public didn't appreciate them more.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Philip Lynott: "Old Town"

No doubt old school rock 'n' rollers hated the ex-Thin Lizzy leader going by the name of 'Philip' and had this record written off even before giving it a listen. Granted, catchy pub rock in the spirit of Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe and B.A. Robertson wasn't the most original path Phil Lynott could have taken to revive his fortunes but it's a bouncy effort and his Ferry-esque vocals go down surprisingly well. He even manages to imitate Billy Joel pretty well. An effortless stab at "aiming for a bit of class" as Dellar says which only makes me admire Philip Lynott even more than I already did. No mere boozy Irish rocker, the man could stumble his way into any genre he saw fit. Much missed.

(Click here to see my original review)

East 17: "Deep"

20 January 1993

"Like all great pop records, and make no mistake, this is a great pop record, Deep is about "getting it on"."

— Johnny Dee

"Guitar groups are on their way out, Mr. Epstein."

Decca Records executive Dick Rowe not only squandered the opportunity to sign The Beatles but he also sealed it with an oft-remembered quote. While people like American chart analyst Chris Molanphy have pointed out that there was some truth to the statement at the time (even though Decca ended up signing guitar group Brian Poole and the Tremeloes that very day) it no doubt stung. (Parody film The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash even sent up Rowe with a very un-British Dan Ackroyd as a chain smoking down-on-his-luck A&R guy being interviewed by Eric Idle asking him in a very un-British fasion "what's it like to be such an asshole?") The lesson that should have been learned (but wasn't): when the popularity of something in music dips, there's every reason to expect that it will come back.

New Kids on the Block were everywhere in 1989 and 1990 — so much so that it seemed like they'd be around forever, until they suddenly weren't. Yet from their rapid demise rose the British boy band movement of the the mid to late nineties, as well as its companion girl group scene. NKOTB had been something of a fluke with no successful copy cat bands emerging Stateside but audiences in the UK had been much more receptive to a bunch of pretty boys prancing around on stage and mugging for the teen music press. Stock Aitken Waterman's massive run of addictive but disposable pop no doubt helped (even though boy bands didn't exactly thrive under their auspices) but the big trigger had been Bros. Fans of Michael Jackson and Bon Jovi, twins Matt and Luke Goss and school friend Craig Logan were one of the first big eighties' acts not to be informed by punk to any noticeable degree. They were teen idols and made no apologies for being that way.

The downside of both Bros and NKOTB was that they couldn't stop being prickly toward their critics. In these days of scorched-earth social media, Matt Goss or Donnie Walhberg acting like a victim might have played well but the press eventually turned on the teen heartthrobs and it would be the beginning of the end for both. As if learning the lessons of those who had been to the top only to see their fortunes dashed, a more media-savy generation of pop pin-up came into being. In the case of Take That, it no doubt helped that chart success had been more gradual than that of the brothers Goss: early singles "Do What U Like", "Promises" and "Once You've Tasted Love" weren't very good and as a result only did modest business; it was only with their cover of the 1975 Tavares single "It Only Takes a Minute" that the Mancuian quintet could say they had a genuine hit — and even then their imperial period was still a year off.

Though Robbie Williams' laddish, party boy side would eventually emerge, Take That had the image of kindly lads who would hold the door for grannies and be active in the UK chapter of the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Their chief competitor, East 17, wasn't modeled along similar lines. On the surface, the foursome from Walthamstow appeared to be cut from the same cloth as boy band predecessors Bros and NKOTB. Brian Harvey sang like fellow Michael Jackson wannabe Matt Goss while group leader Tony Mortimer rapped like he'd been on a strict diet of Walhbergs Donnie and Mark (aka Marky Mark). They also had a New Kids-esque fashion sense as well as aspiring towards trying to look tough. To be fair, they pulled it off better than the Bostonians ever could (Walhberg aside, the others didn't look the part). 

East 17 deftly played Rolling Stones to Take That's Beatles (or, looking ahead a year, they played Oasis to their Blur) but the two groups had their similarities as well. Biggest of all was that they each had fantastically talented leaders. Mortimer and Gary Barlow were as outstanding in the songwriting department as more vaunted individuals like Noel Gallagher, Damon Albarn and Brett Anderson with each possessing a gift of melody well beyond the boy bands of previous years. Plus, they played the press far more adeptly than Bros and NKOTB. Not bad for the bad boys of East 17.

While Take That took a while to take off, East 17 managed to hit the ground running yet early efforts "House of Love" (somehow or other a Top 10 hit) and "Gold" weren't much good. Both rely too heavily on Euro-dance beats in order to stand out. By contrast, "Deep" is the first real East 17 number, cool and laid back with much more emphasis on their vocals (something you'd think all-singing boy bands would tend to focus on). Mortimer's raps aren't always to everyone's tastes but they work in this instance; similarly, Harvey's slick falsetto is used just enough not to get on the listener's nerves — at least in the case of this listener.

Johnny Dee goes on about the perviness in "Deep" but they could've easily been a lot more explicit. There is some innuendo but there's also intimacy and sweetness present. These oiks from London's East End could easily delve into talking women into some fun in their bedroom upstairs while their parents are round the pub but there's more to it than that. "Deep" is a double entendre, one which we might ignore the matter of two people connecting on a deep level while focusing on another type of penetration going on. Whatsmore, it's a pretty great song all things considered. The key to its success is perhaps in Mortimer's tastes and willingness to incorporate a variety of styles. A bit R&B, some trip hop, hip hop shuffle: a very early nineties pop record which happens to be by a boy band but free of the NKOTB cliches. Having a group of hunks dancing around on stage may be the the template but this generation of all-vocals acts did away with such nonsense in order to put together some wonderful pop music that managed to be far more diverse and current than much of the indie rock we were all so enamoured with at the time.

1991 had started with New Kids on the Block as still the biggest act in America and ended with virtually everyone having forgotten about them. Boy bands had been thought to have been rendered extinct by all this alternative music (the death of metal as the result of grunge was something that only got talked about later). Yet, by '93 they were already back and in prime position to run away with the British Top 40. The first big girl group of the era, Eternal, was also on the rise, while teen girls Victoria Adams, Melanie Brown and Melanie Chisholm were auditioning to be members of an act that would eventually be known as The Spice Girls. Sensing that they had some waiting to do back home, a Florida-based ensemble called the Backstreet Boys began plotting how they might first go about conquering a European market that was ready for them. Just as Dick Rowe had predicted guitar bands being on their way out, so too did many in the music industry who saw doom for the teen idols: they were somehow even wronger than his nibs been way back in 1962.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Belly: "Feed the Tree"

It was around 1993 in which being in an indie band became justification enough for having rather boring records. "At least they aren't a manufactured pop group!" they'd say. Sorry, not good enough. Tanya Donelly had done some good work in Throwing Muses and The Breeders had their moments but Belly had been a step too far. Donelly hadn't become more adventurous with each subsequent project, rather she seemed to lock herself into alternative rock hell. Dee reckons it's a grower and I suppose it's all right after the forty-third play but I'm not fussed either way. Better than almost everything else on offer here (bloody hell, The Lemonheads sure sucked but, depressingly, I'll be getting to them soon enough) but not a patch on East 17. So-called manufactured pop stars don't always top insufferable indie types but they sure did this time round.

Arrested Development: "Mr. Wendal"

6 January 1993

"Suffering from the excesses of the season? Fed up with it raining all the time?"

— Mark Sutherland

In the summer of 2003, the now defunct American music magazine Maxim Blender published their list of the '50 Worst Bands of All Time'. There's not much to see here really. Most of the acts (they weren't all bands) represent the low hanging fruit of music types everyone likes to belittle: Michael Bolton, Kenny G and Yanni are all present and correct. So are a fair number of prog rock groups from the seventies (The Alan Parsons Project, ELP) and middle-of-the-road nineties/early-two thousands bands who liked to pretend that they were "alternative" (Goo Goo Dolls, Toad the Wet Sprocket). On precisely ninety-four percent of this list you'll get no argument from me.

Thus, there are three selections here I took/take issue with. The most obvious is The Doors. Damn, that Jim Morrison biopic of Oliver Stone's really did a number on their legacy, didn't it? And I'm guilty of it too. I saw that film — in which Q Magazine would later hilariously quip that Val Kilmer had been "more Van than Jim" — and went from sort of liking them to not wanting to ever have anything to do with them for the rest of my life. (I was more charitable to the late Beatle after reading Albert Goldman's The Lives of John Lennon for god's sake) People went from revering Morrison as a poet and seeker to disavowing him as a drugged up, drunken and debauched dirtbag. Yet, he was all of these things. I can only take so much of The Doors but I rate their self-titled debut, Morrison Hotel and LA Woman highly and they released some top notch singles that weren't called "Hello I Love You". Best of all time? Not close. One of the worst ever? You're even further.

Next up is Crash Test Dummies, a band I'm still hoping to have the chance to write about in this space in the near future. I guess they paid the price for having a worldwide smash that got on people's nerves. It's now been a good while since they were last relevant so they probably don't have as many haters but there used to be plenty of them. Almost all of them despised "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" and I'm sure they still do. (Those much more perceptive critics hated their cover of XTC's "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" which is admittedly atrocious) I guess if we can judge a band based on one single then I'll counter with follow-up single "Afternoons and Coffeespoons" which is brilliant. Not so bad now, huh?

Finally, and most surprisingly, there's Arrested Development who did well for themselves for a short period of time and were critically acclaimed for their first album 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... What could they have been doing on any Worst of All Time list?

Nothing about Single of the Fortnight Best New Single "Mr. Wendal" suggests they secretly sucked. I will say I struggled to remember it so it clearly didn't have the staying power of fellow hits "Tennessee" and "People Everyday", although that says more about my ambivalence towards hip hop back than anything else. As I have said before, I was always into that quirkier brand of rap that grew out of De La Soul and The Jungle Brothers so Arrested Development ought to have been just my thing.

While "People Everyday" is them at their best, "Mr. Wendal" isn't too far behind. While songs about homelessness may vary from empathetic (Madness' "One Better Day") all the way to exorcising white, middle class guilt (Phil Collins' "Another Day in Paradise" obviously) few tackle exploring bums from their own perspective. Mr. Wendal has freedom and he's wise. This all could make for a naive take on the matter but Arrested leader Speech makes it convincing. There's no tough talk about how this could "just as easily be me or you", just a screed on someone of above average intelligence, someone who is somebody regardless of his state, could be in such a situation. Not a celebration, not a tear-jerker, just an encounter with an old man, a gentleman who could well be someone's grandpa.

Being from that alternative hip hop movement mentioned above (though they hailed from Atlanta which makes them the missing link between De La Soul and Outkast), it would be easy to picture a single like "Mr. Wendal" garnering sufficient interest to give Arrested Development a number twenty-five hit (or thereabouts). This was the sort of chart placement normally reserved for groups of this ilk. Yet, while "Tennessee" would initially fail to crack the Top 40, "People Everyday" got to as high as number two, held off only by Boyz II Men's "End of the Road". Riding this momentum, "Wendal" managed to make it all the way into the Top 5. It wasn't simply kiddies, white guys and novelty songs that got rap into the upper echelons of the charts, even those hip hop types with good taste and subtlety and hooks could have a hit or two.

Wikipedia claims that "Mr. Wendal" had been paired with "Revolution" as a double A-side which is confirmed by the sleeve which has them marked as A and AA. Yet, the cover of the single puts one prominently over the other so I'm sticking with Mark Sutherland and focusing on the track that everyone cared about. Listening to the two back-to-back, there's no question which one sounds like a hit and which one is a passable filler for a film soundtrack. Arrested Development excelled at doing engaging little numbers about people going through difficult circumstances and "Revolution" is way too on the nose for them. Leave the sloganeering to Public Enemy and stick to what you're best at gang.

So, again, what made the people at Maxim Blender hate on Arrested Development a decade on from their heyday? Did they think their lineup featuring a "spiritual adviser" (the late Baba Oje) was too ludicrous to take seriously? Did they object to their use of dungarees and barnyards and the rural setting of their videos? Did they get cross by their appearances at various Folk Festivals around the world? Pick one or think up something else. It sure as shit couldn't have been their music.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Frank & Walters: "After All"

I read somewhere (in an old issue of Q Magazine, I think) that The Frank & Walters got their name from a pub. It sounds true and I've certainly heard dumber names for drinking establishments in my day but this isn't in fact the case. Apparently, Frank was an old grouch in their part of Ireland and Walter (or Walters) was also something of a crank as well. Those horrible old men that everyone deems a "character". I guess that's nice but I prefer the pub explanation. Either way, the mythology surrounding their name is easily the most fascinating thing about them. I'm usually a big sucker for sunshine jangle pop but I can't possibly get behind this example. Stale and slightly pitiful. I'd suggest them as a replacement for Arrested Development (or The Doors, or Crash Test Dummies) on a 'Worst Bands of All Time' list but the editors at Maxim Blender no doubt forgot that they ever existed — and who could blame them?