K7 & The Swing Kids: "Hi De Ho"

16 March 1994

"If you're not into K7 then get with it grandma/grandpa! (delete as applicable)."

— Pete Stanton

The St. Louis Blues are a club in the National Hockey League. They are best known to me as the organization that seemed to always get fleeced in trades with my favourite team the Calgary Flames but they also always used to be perennial dark horses, the sort of club that you would predict to do well in the playoffs because you were sick of it always being Colorado or Detroit or "Jersey", the hockey team which is evidently based in the tax haven Channel Island.

Another thing I know about this hockey team from Missouri is that a number of years ago they were struggling with choosing a new theme song for when the players skate onto the ice or score a goal or win a game or whenever a streaker runs across the ice. Yes, that's right: a club named after a classic blues number by W.C. Handy and recorded by the likes of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong (among others) needed a new theme song. You just can't make this stuff up.

This is where Cab Calloway is especially missed. He would have thought nothing of recording a fresh and contemporary version of "St. Louis Blues" for the mid-western hockey team just as he had with his signature "Minnie the Moocher" for a disco audience at the end of the seventies. Just as, in his frail state in the last months of his life, he made a cameo in the video for "Hi De Ho", the latest single from hip hop combo K7 & The Swing Kids.

Already having scored a Top 5 hit with "Come Baby Come" which was catchy and loads of fun, K7 seemed like the sort of hip hop act that would be one and done — and they just about were. The only thing that prevented them from being forever remembered as one-hit wonders (aside from the fact that it's a category that is only ever reserved for groups on the American Hot 100; anyone who only managed that solitary smash in another country need not apply) was the British being such unabashed suckers for the novelty song. Plus, there must have been a curious nostalgia for olde school jazz beats at the time: "Hi De Ho" was released hot on the heels of "Doop" and several months' before Scatman John's uber-annoying hits "Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)" and "Scatman's World".

Yet, it would be wrong to accuse K7 of bandwagon jumping. He had already put out album Swing Batta Swing, which included "Hi De Ho", in the latter part of 1993, so he couldn't have been aware of those Dutch DJ's who looked to revive the charleston in techno form. (The real inspiration may have been Guru's Jazzamatazz Volume 1, though it was a much more classicist work right down to the sleeve aping those "iconic" Blue Note covers) More to the point, there's nothing remotely gimmicky about this single. It's as if scat had been a predecessor of rap or something. Oh wait! That's exactly what it was!

This was a point which eluded the Cosby kids whenever Cliff Huxtable would admonish Denise, Theo, Vanessa and Rudy for their penchant for hip hop over jazz. What they should have told them (aside from insisting that he refrain from drugging and sleeping with so many women) was that the scatting that he no doubt loved was not unlike like the verse from the streets that they enjoyed. It may not have been quite as improvised — at least not by the nineties; early rap was built on MC's being able to cut impromptu vocal poetry — but then again, scatting itself had become a neutered art form with recording technology. Do you really think Dizzy Gillespie's jibber-jabber varied much from night to night?

Just a week on from listing off the various rap numbers that have come up on this blog and we've already got another (it's almost as if hip hop was becoming more popular or something). I'm in no hurry to provide an update but I will say that "Hi De Ho" takes a deserving spot alongside the likes of Run-DMC, Dream Warriors and Arrested Development — and it's streets ahead of the do gooder nonsense from Credit to the Nation. I'm not sure I'm quite as taken by it as Pete Stanton but he's not wrong. Spirited, oodles of panache and just the sort of thing that might have encouraged a few kids out there to dig out their dad's copy of Dave Brubeck's Time Out or their grandpa's Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall? My dad and grandpa didn't have those records, mind you, but I wasn't really into K7 either. More fool me.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Bruce Springsteen: "Streets of Philadelphia"

This powerful film was beginning to draw to an end when I realised that virtually everyone else I was with was in tears. Sniffs and sobs surrounded me. Is there something wrong with me that I'm not so similarly overcome by emotion? What a heartless beast! And then the thing ended with that great song "Philadelphia" by that old greybeard singer...whatsisname...Neil Young. Oh wait, I was meant to be writing about the supposedly superior track that opened that unforgettable Tom Hanks film! Yeah, it's all right but I could never understand why it got all the love when Winnipeg's favourite son had a much more moving and heart-stopping piece in the same bloody movie! Who could possibly take the one about being battered and broken over the one about love and healing and those last moments of life. Maybe I'm not quite as heartless as all my friends thought.

Pearl Jam: "Go"

27 October 1993

"Don't play this near any posh pottery, it won't stand a chance."

— Pete Stanton

David Hepworth and Mark Ellen, along with producer Alex Gold, were recently discussing Pearl Jam's upcoming concert at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. They seemed astonished that the quintet with members who are approaching the age of sixty would be able to sell out a show for around 70,000 people. Gold then made the helpful comment that they were all that was left of the grunge scene so where else was everyone to go?

Like the still-emerging Britpop, grunge didn't have a great deal of depth. You had Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. I know there's Mudhoney and Screaming Trees and a bunch of other bands I've totally forgotten about but those were the four groups that everyone was aware of. People either liked them or were at least aware of them. Being that it was meant to be a D.I.Y. movement, bands of even the highest quality were bound to slip through the cracks while the lucky few got signed up to big contracts. But just how lucky were they? Kurt Cobain's suicide naturally brought Nirvana to a halt and addiction derailed both Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. But Pearl Jam kept chugging along, something they continue to do to this day.

Respect to them, particularly when it comes to how they've stood up to corporate greed (even if this still hasn't stopped them from charging outrageous prices for tickets to their shows), I just wish I could enjoy their music on some level. Having not really heard them in probably a quarter century, I was struck by how timeless my disinterest in them is. I couldn't stand "Jeremy" when it came out back in 1992 and I still find the vast majority of their stuff impossible to get into.

I wouldn't say, however, that Pearl Jam's music is unlistenable. I've quite happily put on The Residents, Yoko Ono and Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz and listened to them. A piece of music would have to go an awful long way before I had it down as "unlistenable". As such, "Go" is perfectly listenable, I would just rather not have to do so. The problem is it's so lacking in enjoyable qualities as to make it unplayable.

Jazz purists like Philip Larkin used to assert that the genre lost something when it ceased to be a style of music people would dance to. (The very idea of Larkin dancing to anything is laughable) For some reason, young people sitting and snapping their fingers to a Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie record didn't constitute a sufficient level of enjoyment to count. I do not dance and didn't even like doing it back during that very brief period of my life in the late nineties when I would get dragged to clubs like The Embassy. I knew that the act of boogieing down wasn't the only way to show appreciation for a pop song. We may snap out fingers, nod along, tap our toes or do a sad little airband routine. We may sing along to either to the correct lyrics or whatever we've come up with in our minds.

In short, there are hundreds and perhaps even thousands of ways to express our enjoyment of music — and I can't think of a single way to do so with Pearl Jam's "Go". I'm willing to acknowledge that it must sound great in a mosh pit even though still somehow doubt it. The super aggressive grunge rock isn't exactly ear candy but it's the utter lack of a melody that really holds it back. Kurt Cobain was going through his most extreme period with Nirvana's third album In Utero and even it has plenty of hooks and tunes to stay with you. But that's the easy part. I like Nirvana but what of a band like Soundgarden, a group I've never thought much of? Well, at least they grew up on metal which always put some stock in dynamics and choruses and that shit. "Black Hole Sun" isn't exactly my thing but at least it might float around the back of my mind from time to time.

Due to grunge and MTV Unplugged, the nineties really revived guitar rock — and, with it, a self-righteous defense mechanism that bordered on the absurd. "At least they're not (insert name of pop phenomenon/boy band here)" was the common refrain from fans of alternative music if you so much as questioned the quality of a band like Pearl Jam. Sorry, not good enough. I may despise what a plastic pop princess stands for but there's always a chance I might dig one of her records; if the best I can say for Eddie Vedder is that I empathize with his politics then there's not a whole lot more to be said. I'm don't doubt that he would be a swell guy to have a beer with but I'm not in a position to experience this. And, anyway, what would we have to chat about after having admitted to him that I think his music sucks?

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Paul Weller: The Weaver EP

Not quite yet the embarrassing Modfather, Paul Weller was already being feted for his supposed phoenix-like rebirth on second solo album Wild Wood. Looking back, it seems like an over-correction from those final days of The Style Council as it led to a number of increasingly lifeless recordings that all sounded the same until he gradually began finding his way once again in the early 2000's. While previous hits from '93, "Sunflower" and "Wild Wood", are both pretty strong, if a tad underwhelming, "The Weaver" needed the padding of a value-for-money EP just to make it worthy of singlehood. "This Is No Time" is no less forgettable than the title track but things come to life on third track "Another New Day" which brings to mind some of ver Council's overlooked instrumentals such as "Blue Cafe", "Our Favourite Shop" and "The Little Boy in the Castle / A Dove Flew Down from the Elephant". Proof that Weller didn't need his garbled voice to carry a recording and that he was always at his best when he was at his most ambitious. He just had to get this bizarre need to be boring out of his system before he re-discovered it.

Stan: "Suntan"

21 July 1993

"There's no poncing around with a band called Stan. Coppertone-tastic."

— Pete "Ladeez" Stanton

We're now more than halfway through the batch of '93 Singles of the Fortnight Best New Singles. Considering this was the first year in quite a while in which I all but gave up on current music, it's not been half bad so far. Saint Etienne's "You're in a Bad Way", New Order's "Regret" and R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming" have been the obvious highlights but Arrested Development's "Mr. Wendal", East 17's "Deep" and Terence Trent D'Arby's "Do You Love Me Like You Say?" are also very good. The rest aren't really to my taste but I understand them all being selected. But they can't all be winners, can they?

As they say, timing is everything in pop. It's easy to imagine the duo behind Stan figuring they had a sure-fire smash since Right Said Fred had been such a cog in British culture. "I'm Too Sexy", "Don't Talk Just Kiss" and "Deeply Dippy" had all reached the UK Top 3 in 1991 and '92 so why not do something that taps that same well — and have it be about summer to boot! A licence to print money, surely. UK record buyers, meet Stan.

There were only two problems with this. First, the novelty of RSF had already begun to wear off on a public that needed an interlude before embracing Mr. Blobby the following Christmas. That February they put out Comic Relief single "Stick It Out" which, despite being neither funny nor particularly tuneful, gave them a fourth Top 5 hit but it happened to be the last gasp of Fred-mania. (Further singles failed to make much of an impression including a sad and shameless "tribute" to Sonic the Hedgehog called "Wonderman") So, things didn't look up for a less talented, less charismatic equivalent. Which leads us to the other major issue affecting Stan: they sucked something awful.

Yet, Smash Hits scribe Pete Stanton found something to like in "Suntan" when he could have selected one of the many superior offerings among the new releases. ("La Tristesse Durera" would have been a good choice, even if there have been more than enough Manics records as it is; failing that, any of Michelle Gayle (see below), Janet Jackson, Kim Appleby and a duo known as Ali & Frazier with a brave and surprisingly good cover of the Althea & Donna classic "Uptown Top Ranking" would've sufficed) He helpfully offers a few reasons for his oddball selection.

1) "A lively pop beat that would get grandad off the sofa and on his feet"

My granddad would never have got on his feet for this. He would get up for several things (a bologna sandwich for one) and he was on his feet quite a bit. He went for walks every morning and was willing to stand put at the sink do the dishes even though he came from an era in which men weren't expected to help out with the housewife's duties. I don't know about you but if a pop record had been able to entice a grandpa up for a gig around the rumpus room then I'd be suspicious. But not only were the elderly not interested, nor was the rest of the human race.

2) "Perfect seasonal timing"

Is it though? The Mama's & The Papa's "California Dreamin'" is about living through a miserable winter and dreaming about being in the sun. We don't need to hear about sunshine and suntans and bikinis in the summer because we already have them at that time of the year. On the other hand, the weather in '93 was pretty horrible. It was one of those god awful El Nino years in which it rained a lot but that only makes "Suntan" even worse. The thought that there could be others out there enjoying their summer when the rest of us were stuck inside with bugger all to do is too much to take.

3) "An original and quirky band name"

I suppose I'll give Pete this one. There is something comically mundane about 'Stan'. You can't just take any old Christian name and use it for your group. Take Ricky, a British band from about twenty years ago. It matters not that they got their name from the Rickenbacker guitar since all the rest of us can think of is that weedy kid in school who somehow was part of the popular crowd in spite of lacking the looks, style and athletic prowess which somehow made him even worse than those who did possess sufficient looks, style and/or athletic prowess. Guys called Stan aren't especially cool but they aren't dweebs either. Housemartins' guitarist Stan Cullimore is the prototypical Stan: he sports glasses and isn't much to look at but he still made Hits writer Sylvia Patterson's heart go all gooey. Those Stans, eh? They got it going on and they don't even know it!

Yet, their name can't save this lousy stinker of a record. I've spent the past few days trying to think of a worse entry on this blog and I'm not sure there is one. Limahl's "Love in Your Eyes" may be the closest but the only thing there is that Tom Hibbert almost certainly gave it his seal of approval just to troll the Smash Hits readership. Patti Smith's version of "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll" star is a mighty misstep for the punk icon (even if she's kind of overrated to begin with) but I wouldn't be so quick to turn it off. Fidelfatti featuring Ronette's "Just Wanna Touch Me" isn't great but it suffers mainly due to it being selected by Miranda Sawyer over "Fools Gold". Oceanic's "Wicked Love" is another one I didn't care for but at least I've gone on to forget all about it. No, "Suntan" is really a step up in terms of SOTF wretchedness.

It could've been worse though. "Suntan" might have caught on and subjected more of us to its non-existent "charms". Stan could've had a Fred-like run of hits to get on the public's wick. This proved to be the upside of Top of the Pops and their new policy of giving more time to established hits: sleeper singles such as this one stood little chance since they would pop in for a lowly Top 40 cup of coffee only to disappear the following week. The punters really didn't get a look in. This proved disadvantageous to up and coming indie bands who could've used a hit but at least we were spare this shite. Small mercies.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Michelle Gayle: "Looking Up"

Formerly of the north London secondary school duo Fresh 'n' Fly with chum Ronnie Birtles, the former Fiona Wilson moved from Grange Hill to Albert Square under the assumed identity of Hattie Tavernier (yes, it sounds made up probably because it was) before embarking on a full time pop career that should have amounted more than a handful of hits for a young woman now known as Michelle Gayle. While "Sweetness" from the following year is quite a bit stronger, "Looking Up" has its charms. The opening sounds like every American R&B tune of the age but it doesn't take long to get going. Gayle's voice is tremendous though she is in need of better material. "Looking Up" is a fine debut but it does have the ring of a diminishing returns fourth single or album cut that wasn't deemed strong enough to be released as a 45. Still, it sounds great after listening to nothing but bloody "Suntan" all week.

R.E.M.: "Man on the Moon"

11 November 1992

"A shimmering diamond amongst a sack of dirty socks."

— Pete Stanton

Only once since becoming an adult have I found myself convinced that there was a hidden conspiracy. It was the last day of August, 1997 which had been something of a golden summer. I had been working at a Calgary-area liquor store and on the drive back there came the news of a serious car accident involving Diana, Princess of Wales and her new lover Dodi Fayed. Not being a royalist, the initial shock quickly wore off and I forgot all about it. That evening, however, the news came in that the former future Queen of England had passed away from injuries sustained in said crash. Almost immediately, a thought flashed through my mind that I must have felt was going to rock the very foundation of the British monarchy: they must have faked it.

We're conditioned to believe in conspiracies from infancy: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. The simple prospect that it could be our parents who were behind these childhood misdirections didn't even enter into it. Then there's God, who I had mercifully avoided hearing about until my parents put me into a Baptist church-run playschool when I was four. (Even then, Santa still seemed vastly more plausible) Fictional givers of gifts, chocolates and/or money and that twisted nutcase up in the clouds were all handed to me to accept or reject but the only thing I was prepared to believe in due to my own personal creed was wrestling. There were whispers that it was fake but I wasn't having it. Rotten Ron Starr once smashed a bottle of champagne over his head while being interviewed by Ed Whalen on Stampede Wrestling: was it fake when Starr screamed at the camera, his face now a mask of crimson? "Macho Man" Randy Savage once crushed Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat's windpipe with the ring bell: was it fake when Steamer was stretchered off as he gasped in agony?

In preparation for this blog post, I thought about immersing myself in the unique works of Andy Kaufman. Note my use of the phrasal verb 'to think about' because that's basically all I did. I didn't binge watch all five seasons of the classic US sitcom Taxi. I didn't watch hours of Kaufman's material on YouTube. I only made it about five minutes into My Breakfast with Blassie before deciding it made for pointless viewing — which was at least a useful reminder that the great man didn't always hit 'em out of the park. I didn't even bother with the 1998 Jim Carrey biopic Man on the Moon though I did watch most of its companion documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond — Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton.

Having been such a big wrestling fan as a boy, I was especially drawn to Jerry "The King" Lawler's appearances in Jim & Andy. The Memphis legend had been in cahoots with Kaufman when they did their infamous spot on David Letterman but no one knew for sure at the time that they were friendly behind the scenes. Such was the world of kayfabe. (Kaufman's untimely passing at the age of thirty-five did not sway Lawler, who was a good guy in the Memphis territory, into saying anything positive about his old adversary) Taking this on, Carrey refused to break character while on the set of Man on the Moon, much to the annoyance of director Milos Forman and many others. Lawler, for his part, seems baffled and even at times disturbed by Carrey's behaviour. But give credit where it's due: it takes a special kind of talent to out-kayfabe an old school pro wrestler.

The film Man on the Moon got its title from the 1992 hit single by R.E.M. I assumed there must have been a Kaufman sketch about an oddball astronaut landing on the Moon or one involving Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descending from the Apollo 11 craft only to meet a character like Latka who was already there. But no, the title simply refers to Moon landing conspiracies and how they relate to rumours that Kaufman engineered his own demise in 1984. But also, his commitment to the characters he played. The wrestling heel he portrayed in Memphis in the early-eighties came out of legit grappling exhibits he would put on with any woman who was willing to challenge him. He wasn't able to apply the figure-four leglock, couldn't execute a drop kick and probably didn't even know how to throw a realistic-looking punch. When he and Lawler finally met up in the ring, the King invited him to put him in a headlock, only for his opponent to get out of it with a minimum of effort. Lawler the proceeded to give him two dangerous piledrivers which led to Kaufman wearing a neck brace in public for the next several months.

Hailing from Athens, Georgia, which isn't too far away from the professional wrestling hotbed of Atlanta, southerners Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry fashioned a good old country-rock number in an appropriately unexpected way of paying tribute to Kaufman. While the three instrumentalists may shine in other R.E.M. tunes, it's the singer who takes centre stage. Stipe has never been noted for his humour and he wisely steers clear of the understandable but misguided approach of being funny as a way of tipping his hat to the great man. Instead, we get some of his finest cryptic lyrics with references to board games (because of the randomness of a roll of the dice can generally override any actual skill), historical figures (mythology) and the seventies band that did "All the Young Dudes" (I have no idea on this one; I always used to think the song's opening line was "Martin Luther and the Game of Life")

Reading Pete Stanton's review I'm struck by how little he's aware of all this stuff about conspiracy theories and wrestling and Elvis; his prime concern is with "Man on the Moon" being "so beautiful you could snog it". (Not snog to it, you can do that to damn-near any record but it takes a really potent song for you to stick your lips to the vinyl and smack away; if you happened to have a North American 7" with the giant hole pressed through the middle you could get up to some kinky stuff if that's your thing; I'm not advocating being a record fetishist, I just think great songs have a way of getting you to do things you wouldn't normally do is all) Whatever meaning there is underneath would be for nothing if it wasn't so brilliant. But it is and then some. Even held up alongside the likes of "Radio Free Europe", "Talk About the Passion", "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville", "Driver 8", "The One I Love", "You Are the Everything", "Losing My Religion" and on towards future greats like "Tongue", "Leave" and "I've Been High" (hey, I don't care if it sounds like Chris de Burgh!), "Man on the Moon" stands tall. It may not be the best track on the mighty Automatic for the People but it's hard to argue that they bettered it at any other time in R.E.M.'s long and storied career.

When right-leading types who complain about political correctness and cancel culture have a tendency to play what Cody Johnston of YouTube channel Some More News calls the "Carlin card". Comedian George Carlin would never have put up with these snowflakes crying about being offended, they seem to be saying (though they never acknowledge that he was able to change with the times and refused to punch down). What's forgotten is that it's Andy Kaufman who would have found more of a home in this era of social media and conspiracy theories. While it's easy to think that we've all become more like Kaufman as we push vaccine skepticism and fake news and all that nonsense, the reality is that we only would've ended up as fodder for more of his shenanigans. Oh the fun he could have had. (Or is currently having?)

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

INXS: "Taste It"

Is it just me or did INXS have a lot of singles that got to number twenty-one in the UK charts? I'm sure they only had two or three but coming in just shy of the Top 20 seems like the optimum chart position for your average XS' hit. 1992 saw the release of the strong Welcome to Wherever You Are, an album that helped get them through their early-nineties' wilderness of good songs that all sounded the same. Self-parody was avoided (at least for the time being) but this was still very much INXS and only INXS. The touch of R&B — not, mind you, the same R&B that had been taking over the charts, more that vaguely laid-back style of groove-heavy dance rock that pops up every so often — proved to be a nice addition as the guitars were scaled back except for in the chorus where they suddenly explode. Yet another top INXS single though it would be more memorable if it wasn't quite so forgettable. Funny how that happens, isn't it?