Redhead Kingpin & The FBI: "Superbad, Superslick"

29 November 1989

"Look, He's got a CD round his neck."

— Ben

"I like that brring bit."

— Nick

"Energy without violence is just great too."

— Julian

"We'll all choose different records from this as our favourites but this is the one we all agree on."

— Migi

Over the last several months I have looked at bands doing guest spots as Smash Hits singles reviewers. Wet Wet Wet were the first group in some time to take on the task together (and certainly the first quartet to do so), with lead singers or prominent musicians handling said duties for the most part. The Scottish foursome came to a consensus, as did fellow Caledonians Hue & Cry a few months later. Erasure and Aswad also managed to agree on a Single of the Fortnight but this harmonious situation changed when Communards Jimmy Somerville and Richard Coles went with separate picks. Members of Bros, Brother Beyond and T'Pau followed suit. None seemed interested in compromising.

But that is what the members of Curiosity Killed the Cat have done in this issue of ver Hits. As drummer Miguel "Migi" Drummond says above, they each have their own personal faves but they decided to present a solitary SOTF in a show of unity. I have included my thoughts on each of their individual picks before I get to the one they all agreed on.

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Kate Bush: "This Woman's Work"

Julian, the "Kate Bush authority", opts for the dramatic second single from the highly anticipated The Sensual World LP. He makes the faux pas of referring to her as 'Katie' but he's bang on in every other respect. A Top 30 hit though it deserved to do better but I suppose Katie's thirtysomething fanbase had all been happy to snap up the album instead. Nevertheless, "This Woman's Work" is outstanding. Also features a captivating video starring British actor Tim McInnerny, who played Lord Percy and Captain Darling in Blackadder, as Katie's devoted but brokenhearted husband. He even touched her once.

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Glen Goldsmith: "One Life"

Easily the worst of the individual picks. Ben doesn't exactly come right out and say it but it's either this or the hopeless new single from Curiosity Killed the Cat and we're not going to go there. Sounds like generic R&B pop from about three years earlier and its chart prospects were even bleaker than the hopeless new single from Curiosity Killed the Cat.

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Van Morrison with Cliff Richard: "Whenever God Shines His Light"

A clear Christmas number one contender pretender. Nick is very taken with it and Ben is right there with him but, tellingly, the other two don't bother to chime in. I thought it was lame Jesus nonsense as a youth but now I just find it a bore. Van was capable of much better and, indeed, so was Cliff. Amazingly, it was Van's biggest Top 40 hit since all the way back in 1965 when he was a grumpy young man in Ulster group Them.

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Soul II Soul: "Get a Life"

They last had a hit with Single of the Year "Back to Life" and followed it up with "Get a Life" — what the hell was Jazzie B playing at? (I'm still waiting for their cover of Opus' "Live Is Life") Not as immediate as their earlier hits but but the kids chanting "what's the meaning" and the (possibly) sampled flute sticks with the listener. The Bee's raps on Club Classics Vol.1 were a bit more effortless but this is easily the most commercial thing featuring his voice. A near Christmas number one that was only held off by some charity wretchedness and a horrific Jive Bunny megamix. Soul II Soul had managed to tap into the zeitgeist earlier in the year but their luster was soon to slip a bit.

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As for "Superbad, Superslick", it's a solid compromise choice. I wasn't fussed by Redhead Kingpin's "Do the Right Thing" that I covered on this blog a while back but this is a marked improvement. As I think I have said before, hip hop artists could get caught up in the "message" of their records that they'd often forget about trivialities like hooks and melodies and, you know, crafting a sturdy song. It was easy at the time to be down on boastful rappers but nine times out of ten they bested the irritating positive types.

Relying heavily on an organ part that may or may not have been played by David "Redhead" Guppy and a stuttering guitar part in the chorus, "Superbad, Superslick" is largely free of rap cliches. Even the use of a James Brown sample towards the end is a little used "get into it" bit and not one of the Godfather's grunts nor that "Funky Drummer" part that was absolutely everywhere at the time. The Ginger even raps more forcefully on this. His style isn't particularly unique but he's a more than adequate rapper.

The single is superior to its predecessor is every way but this made little difference to the British public as it had a two-week stay in the lower reaches of the charts at the end of 1989. Happily, there was a new form of hip hop that had been emerging over the course of the year and it was soon to really take off. Redhead Kingpin & The FBI might've found a home in this subgenre of jazzy, quirky hippies who opted out of either boasting about themselves or the plight of the streets. I am very much looking forward to the Daisy Age as this blog moves into the nineties.

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Also of some cop

Jason Donovan: "When You Come Back to Me"

With three number one singles and an album that was massive, 1989 was Jason Donovan's year. (His records spent just under seventy percent of the year on the Top 40 but I was expecting it to be higher) His fortunes were to fall off somewhat the following year and "When You Come Back to Me" gives a taste of his imperial period drawing to a close. Not only did it fail to hit number one (which Jase made up for by appearing on Xmas chart topper "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid II) but it's duff even by his standards. The members of Curiosity despise it but they do admit to a bias due to their overall distaste for Stock Aitken Waterman. Well, I loved SAW at the time and still like some of their records and I can confirm that this is beyond horrible. Jason sounded lost on debut single "Nothing Can Divide Us" but he's probably the best thing about this. Kylie would be going strong for some time but Jason's fans wouldn't be coming back to him for much longer.

The Bible: "Mahalia"

19 November 1986

"This is highly wistful and contains a wonderfully swoonsome melody — even though the singer is no great "shakes" and I haven't the foggiest what he's going on about."

— Ro Newton

Fifteen singles are up for consideration this fortnight and there are some pretty big names as the UK music industry was gearing up for another Christmas number one chart battle. Artists who have already featured on this blog — The Human League, Alison Moyet, Paul Young, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, The Communards, Cameo — are joined by Paul Simon, a-ha and Amazulu, making the competition pretty fierce, even if hardly any of them were doing their best work. All but one of these new releases ended up making the charts, with even the Wendy Richard/Mike Berry cover of the already hideous "Come Outside" managing a very modest "hit". It seems swoonsome melodies weren't selling so well.

Big names deserve big record labels and many of them are present here too. The punk-era rise of the independents seems to be on the wane a good decade later. Smaller labels disappeared, others got absorbed into one of the larger competitors and many of the prominent indies that were left had strong acts to keep them afloat. On the other side of the Atlantic there may have been some noise about these alternative acts (although I think at the time most of it was known as 'college rock') but the likes of Depeche Mode, New Order and The Smiths all had major label backing in North America which somewhat undermined their indie status. There's only one truly independent release in this issue's singles page and it was on a small label based in Norwich. The Bible were signed to Backs Records in the Norfolk city. Being on a such a small label undoubtedly contributed to the lack of chart success for "Mahalia", even though preceding single "Graceland" did manage to sneak into the listings. In any case, it is by some distance the best record on offer here and Ro Newton is right to make it her SOTF.

"I sing God's music because it makes me feel free. It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues".

Newton admits that she doesn't understand what's going on in this song and I might be right there with her if not for the internet — the quote above having been pinched from the introduction to Mahalia Jackson's Wikipedia page. I don't know if Boo Hewerdine had heard or read this statement but the sentiment feeds into his tribute "Mahalia". Her music brings one closer to a kind of salvation, though not necessarily the heavenly kind. It brings people up ("sing my joyfulness") while the Delta blues of Robert Johnson only manages to drag one down, something Hewerdine isn't having ("I can't understand, I won't understand").

With a name like The Bible and a loving tribute to a gospel great, there's a reasonable expectation that these guys may have been into Jesus. Still, Hewerdine doesn't state his or his group's religious beliefs one way or the other so they're none of my business — and they're irrelevant. Gospel music is great because it can appeal all kinds of people — black and white, young and old, religious or humanist — which typically alludes the bulk of Contemporary Christian music, whose practitioners are playing to their own crowd and busy sucking up to Jesus to be too concerned about making great music. But great gospel transcends the pulpit and the pews and reaches people. The devotional and secular come together to the extent that Aretha Franklin's extraordinary "I Never Loved a Man" isn't simply either a hymn to the Lord or a sexual awakening but might as well be both. Jackson's work isn't as aroused but much of it was as politically-charged as it was religious and her music became part of the Civil Rights Movement.

With Newton's comparison to Haircut One Hundred (perhaps she's thinking of it as a less bouncy "Love Plus One"), a prominent saxophone and an obvious debt to black music, "Mahalia" isn't a million miles away from the slickly-produced UK sub-genre that would eventually be dubbed 'Sophisti-pop' (aka 'Soulcialism'). While forerunners such as ABC, The Blue Nile, Prefab Sprout and Avalon-era Roxy Music are still regarded fondly to this day, it was quickly hitting a creative nadir even if it was still a commercial goldmine. The Bible, however, managed to avoid lapsing into smooth jazz-pop territory. It helps that their musical palette was much more diverse than your Blow Monkeys or Climie Fishers (the rest of their excellent debut LP Walking the Ghost Back Home touches upon indie rock and, appropriately given Hewerdine's subsequent career path, folk). Also, while Newton isn't crazy about Hewerdine's voice (personally, I like it), it has character and he clearly isn't concerned with how his Sinatra impersonation is coming along. There's even a sense that the sax solos aren't studied to death. And they weren't on a major record label with oodles of cash at their disposal and pressure to dish up the hits. There's something to be said for being on the fringes.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Curiosity Killed the Cat: "Down to Earth"

The Bible were on the outside but how were mainstream sophisti-pop acts doing? On paper, there should be every reason in the world to dig Curiosity Killed the Cat. Ben Volpeliere-Pierrot can really sing, the group can really play and "Down to Earth" is even kind of catchy. Yet, it's unlikable. There's too much confidence in this lot, too much of a sense that they know what they're doing. Ben isn't asking Mahalia to sing his joyfulness because he'll do so himself, thank you so much. The sophisti-poppers all seemed to have phenomenal record collections yet their scholarship seldom translated into the kind of passion and intensity they loved in their soul heroes. Some mucking about on an indie label would have done them a world of good.