Credit to the Nation: "Teenage Sensation"

2 March 1994

"The nearest approximation thus far to the whistly weather-report thing that's on before Richard and Judy — at last!!

— Sylvia Patterson

My mum, lonely and bored stiff stuck at home while the rest of us were at school, once wrote to Richard and Judy. They — or someone on their behalf at any rate — wrote back. She also may have been acknowledged on their popular This Morning program when they spoke to someone in charge of tours of the Coronation St set who mentioned that they had recently had visitors from Canada (and guess who just so happened to have taken a walk through Weatherfield at that same time?).

I relate the above because (a) Sylvia Patterson seemed to have had Richard and Judy on the brain in this her twelfth bash at the Smash Hits singles and (b) I don't have any other idea how to commence this review of a single which inspires nothing more than profound indifference in me. Bloody hell, now I'm just going to have to pad out this piece a little more. Let me see if I can think of some more Richard and Judy anecdotes...

The Incredible T*H* Scratchers starring Freddy Love: "Hip-Hop-Bommi-Bop"

Kurtis Blow: "I'm Chillin'"

Run-DMC: "Mary, Mary"

De La Soul: "Say No Go"

Redhead Kingpin & The FBI: "Do the Right Thing"

Redhead Kingpin & The FBI: "Superbad, Superslick"

Salt 'N' Pepa: "Expression"

The Jungle Brothers: "What U Waitin' 4"

Monie Love: "Monie in the Middle"

MC Tunes: "Primary Rhyming"

Dream Warriors: "Ludi"

PM Dawn: "Set Adrift on a Memory Bliss"

Cookie Crew: "Love Will Bring Us Back Together"

Hammer: "Addams' Groove"

Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch: "Music for the People"

Kris Kross: "Jump"

PM Dawn: "I'd Die Without You"

Arrested Development: "Mr. Wendal"

Monie Love: "Born 2 B.R.E.E.D."

Apache Indian: "Boom-Shack-a-Lack"

Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince: "Boom! Shake the Room"

Credit to the Nation: "Teenage Sensation"

This is a list of every Smash Hits Single of the Fortnight/Best New Single that qualifies as hip hop from 1979 up until the early part of 1994. There are obvious shades of grey present. For example, I don't think I can quite justify why PM Dawn is present while I chose to leave Neneh Cherry off. Plus, I disqualified Tom Tom Club's "Wordy Wrappinghood" due to, well, being a novelty song produced by members of clever clogs Talking Heads. Then there were the pop songs with guest raps mostly involving Scritti Politti alongside Roger Troutman and Shabba Ranks. Toeing the line, sure, but not full on hip hop.

As I think I have no doubt mentioned in every single blog post on the genre, I am not a fan of rap. With that (once again) out of the way, allow me to acknowledge just how impressive the above list is — even if Redhead Kingpin being on here twice is at least one too many. Varied as well. It's a bit of a crime against suspense that my favourite remains "Hip-Hop-Bommi-Bop", one of the greatest finds I have made since I began this blog (checks notes) six years ago. Nevertheless, I'd defend the inclusion of roughly 75% of them.

One of the trends this list highlights is rap which the critics approve of. This being a blog all about best new singles, this is about the most obvious statement I could make but what I'm referring to is the through line that connects De La Soul, Redhead Kingpin, The Jungle Brothers, Monie Love, Arrested Development and, yes, Credit to the Nation. Groups with a "message" of one kind or another. Groups with something positive to say. Groups who may have enjoyed the approval of rock critics but who often weren't nearly as loved by the kids out there.

As if out to show just how much ver Hits approved of Credit to the Nation, they put out a feature in the following issue profiling the 'Five Hardest Rap Acts in the World'. The first four were and/or are superstars: Ice Cube, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Ice T (though I must confess that his hip hop career has become something of an afterthought to all those years of him playing Fin Tutuola on the telly) and Cypress Hill. This quartet, Mark Sutherland points out, were all massively popular but problematic. There's sexism in their lyrics as well as homophobia, drugs and violence. He doesn't bash them entirely but the bulk of his praise is saved for fifth entry MC Fusion, leader of Credit to the Nation, a group who he reckons "looks likely to be the first real UK rap star". (Are Derek B's ears burning?)

While I'm happy that MC Fusion (real name: Matty Hanson) is a good bloke who respects women and is against fascism and homophobia, much of Sutherland's write up feels like code for 'actually he's rather boring but I'd rather not say so'. With trusty old Sylvia Patterson in the reviewer's chair, there's less of a concern that she'll go with someone due to having good values and all that nonsense but it's still shrouded in 'I'm an adult and I'll straighten them kids out when it comes to rap they ought to be listening to' vibes.

Yet, despite the indie cred and the thumbs up from reviewers, "Teenage Sensation" only managed to peak in the twenties. Not a bad showing but not great either and it ended up being their only scrap of Top 40 action. Intelligent rap always appealed to the journalists but their enthusiasm wasn't echoed by the public. Thrilling and vaguely dangerous hip hop will always win out. You could watch your average weather man or woman with a green screen of Europe or North America behind them or you could be transfixed by This Morning's Fred Talbot as he jumped all over a map of the British Isles on Liverpool's Albert Docks — but you can't have both.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Blur: "Girls and Boys"

For a group who still have yet to nab a Single of the Fortnight Best New Single of their own, Blur sure seem to be coming up a lot in this space. I was going to blog about "Doop" but I couldn't be arsed and chose this candidate for song of the year instead. It's surprising to read contemporary reviews mentioning the roots of "Girls and Boys" in eighties' synth-pop, something that had never really occurred to me despite a Pet Shop Boys' remix that appeared as a bonus cut on their seminal Parklife album. What I always heard was the next step up from Madchester: roaring and relentless indie-dance to appeal just as much to football fans chanting in a terrace as it would to moody and spotty youths in their bedrooms. While it's easy to coat down Hits critics for making the "wrong" top single pick, I can't for the life of me imagine how anyone could give this brilliant record a spin and not be convinced it wipes the floor with Credit to the Nation. I'm not saying I'm right even though I am.

Leila K: "Ça plane pour moi"

23 June 1993

"Phew! Ruck and Rool! (Or whatever it is in French)."

— Sylvia Patterson

This is the second consecutive Single of the Fortnight Best New Single which is a rather unnecessary though endearingly naff cover version. Last time it was "I Am the Walrus" recorded by an entrepreneur-turned-crowded pleasing doofus in hippie garb; now it's "Ça plane pour moi", a new wave/pop classic of the late-seventies transformed into a something on the thrashier side of Eurodance.

Being in her mid-twenties, Leila K was a much more marketable figure than Mike Fab-Gere so she ought to have been pumping out the hits. To some extent she did but in the UK the chart hits were more modest. The catchy pop-rap of "Got to Get" took her into the Top 10 in 1991 but her only other Top 40 entry was "Open Sesame" from early '93 which reached a respectable but ultimately nothing special number twenty-three. What did both of these records have in common for the Swedish model-turned-pop princess? She rapped and/or sang in English on both of 'em.

The influence of the Continent had been all over the pop charts in 1993. Eurodance duos like Culture Beat, 2 Unlimited, Capella and The Good Men (aka Chocolate Puma) all scored major hits. Solo artist Haddaway was also a player in this movement. While they hailed from different countries, they all shared more than just their pumping beats: their vocals were done in English. The same applied to Swedes Ace of Base at the same time though they were much more of a "proper" group. They may have performed in the mother tongues when they were back home but once they'd gone international it was the world's lingua franca all day.

To do a cover of "Ça plane pour moi" in the context of early nineties' Eurodance must have seemed like a timely move. Not only does it capture that Eurotrash aesthetic of runway models and fast fashion and tanned guys with ponytails cruising around in their Lamborghinis but it manages to undermine the original by Plastic Bertrand by shoving it into the similarly lowbrow culture from its own time. Where it was once a fresh bit of catchy pop-punk, it was now transformed into a theme for endless rail strikes, trashy holiday spots on the Costa del Sol and pathetic bands representing Yugoslavia at Eurovision. Eurotrash wasn't a recent phenomenon, it had always been around.

Plastic Bertrand's original managed to survive if only because Leila K's interpretation wasn't as big as it deserved to be. While said to have been something of a big deal in the newly established Czech Republic, it came up well short of the UK Top 40. Sylvia Patterson's assessment is bang on but this had little effect on its chances. She would have been well-advised to have done it in English (or just covered its Anglo equivalent "Jet Boy, Jet Girl" instead) since Britain in '93 had very little time for foreign languages on their charts.

It probably isn't quite as fun and mad as the Plastic Bertrand original but Leila K's rendition has charms of its own. As Patterson suggests, it's updated for the nineties and the Eurodance scene while still retaining some crazy guitar work. Speaking of how it managed to undermine Bertrand's '78 hit, isn't it strange that it hadn't been a disco floor filler until '93? Sure, it's punk and/or new wave and/or post-punk (the very fact that no one can seem to agree on a genre or subgenre tells you all you need to know about how unique it is) but at it's heart it's always been a dance track. We just never knew it until Leila K set us straight.

With the completion of the Channel Tunnel imminent, it looked as if Britain was becoming much more European as the nineties progressed. Voices like that of that great French resident Nigel Lawson that the European Union was fast evolving into a 'United States of Europe' were being rightly ignored. Yet, the British wanted nothing more than to be British: the sort of people who spend about half their time worshiping America and the other half despising their godforsaken friends on the other side of the Atlantic and who typically didn't want to have that much to do with Europe itself. The coming lad culture wasn't expecting to help bring about Brexit but they should take some of the credit for having done so.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Blur: "Chemical World"

The vendetta against Blur continues. I guess it's easy to see in retrospect but why didn't these pop critics recognize a talented quartet when one was right there in front of them. Patterson has never hid her distaste for Damon Albarn but I have to wonder if that's more to do with his unwillingness to reciprocate the friendship she desired rather than him being the utter git she long claimed him to be. Still, at least she's big enough to admit that "Chemical World" is  ace. But why the surprise? Well, she (rightly) didn't think much of "Popscene" from a year earlier but "For Tomorrow" had already been released nabbing them their customary number twenty-eight spot and that should have signaled to all that they had arrived. Yet, some were still in denial. But it wouldn't be long before the bulk of the critics began to give it all a big rethink.

Sex Pistols: "Pretty Vacant"

25 November 1992

"It will make your head fall off. It will also make you depressed because it will make some bigwig a pile of money."

— Sylvia "Bitter and Twisted, Moi?" Patterson

"Blistering guitar". "The Sex Pistols created some of the greatest pop in history ever". "This is their finest". "It will make your head fall off". (That one is already quoted above but it bears repeating) Sylvia Patterson is so taken by a re-release of this Top 10 hit from 1977 that she forgets the most vital piece of information: the Sex Pistols are hugely important.

The earliest days of Smash Hits coincides with the lingering after effects of punk. Though it has often been said that the Pistols broke up on the evening of January 14, 1978 at the end of a turbulent show at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom, it was only John Lydon who wisely chose to bring this chaotic clown show to a halt. The remaining core of Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Sid Vicious carried on recording singles that would keep the Sex Pistols as a relevant chart concern well after punk had gone past its shelf life.

Singles reviews of this Lydon-free Pistols aren't entirely dismal but they don't do a hold lot to make anyone want to reconsider this period. Cliff White considered "Silly Thing" to be "unsensastional but commendable, no-nonsense punkarama" but he was more than happy to coat down their cover of Eddie Cochran's "C'Mon Everybody" ("If I'm deeply suspicious of most Pistols 'product' that's precisely because I'm pro Punk") though even then he's willing to once again use the term 'commendable' to give props to Sid's performance. (Still, if 'commendable' is the best thing you can say about someone then it can't be all that brilliant, can it?) David Hepworth was on hand for the release of "The Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Swindle" [sic.] whose review concludes with a firm slam ("about as revolutionary as The Dooleys and not as well made"; it's notable that his proto-Single of the Fortnight went to fellow punks The Undertones) Finally, Deanna Pearson rips into their version of "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone" ("THERE IS NO SONG TO LISTEN TO — don't be swindled again!") indicating that there would be "No Pistols, No Bee Gees, No Zeppelin in '80". The Sex Pistols continued to have hits but the critics weren't having it and they weren't influencing anyone anymore.

But this would eventually turn around once a whole new generation with no memory of late-stage Pistols began turning fourteen. Grunge didn't even stand in its way. The mid-nineties would see the rise of No Doubt who should have encouraged a second wave of interest in Two Tone ska. Gwen Stefani may have worshiped The Selecter but her fans clearly weren't as keen. By contrast, getting into Nirvana almost seemed like young people were then obliged to explore the Pistols, Ramones and Clash. While I bought London Calling, my best friend Ethan got Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. Influential? Sure though mainly so we could explore other bands; moving on from the Pistols didn't take long. The most shocking thing about hearing their one and only album for the first time was just how slow it all was.

With "Anarchy in the UK" and "God Save the Queen" being the Pistols' best remembered singles, "Pretty Vacant" has taken on the status as one for the more than casual fans. This is a little curious when you consider that Glen Matlock admitted the influence of ABBA's "S.O.S.", which ought to have rendered it a de facto persona non grata (or, more accurately, a singula non grata) in the eyes of devotees. That said, the Swedish foursome wasn't considered the enemy in the eyes of the punks which may have kept it safe.

Still, there is a question that must be asked about that ABBA influence: what ABBA influence? Though much has been made about the way Benny and Bjorn impacted Glen and Johnny, you'd never know it if you hadn't already told about it umpteen dozen times. Pop fans talk about how Matlock "stole" from "S.O.S." but more "informed" sources will claim that it's the guitar part borrows from it or the bass line is similar. But I don't hear it and not because I can't see how perfect pop could possibly be source material for punk rock. I just don't hear anything of ABBA in it. Given that it's not as good as I remember it being the last time I heard it (which I'm pretty sure was when I was twenty or twenty-one; Never Mind the Bollocks is one of those supposed "essential" albums that has remained inessential enough for me to have never purchased it), maybe it ought to have been more like ABBA.

But enough with dumping on the Sex Pistols. I'm sure plenty of people out there consider them to be "overrated" (though their later stuff sure as hell isn't) without me having to weigh in. For my part, I'm just well past the age in which I can listen to something like "Pretty Vacant" and enjoy it. It wasn't part of my youth so it doesn't conjure up nostalgia. I was much more of a Clash and Jam fan as a grumpy teen exploring old punk. I wouldn't have liked much of what Patterson had to review this fortnight (barring the record below) but I'm not so sure this would have blown me away either. But, hey, it influenced everybody! If you can't enjoy a song yourself, at least you can be happy that other people whom you may or may not care for did. What more could matter?

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Deacon Blue: "Your Town"

U2 went indie and so did INXS and I'm sure Then Jericho did or would have. The results varied for other eighties' dinosaurs but it worked fairly well for Deacon Blue. A half-hearted stab at a genre they either didn't care for or knew nothing about (or both) but Ricky Ross and co. brought in impressionist elements, hints of sophisti-pop from their debut album, a touch of stadium rock from their second and some Pet Shop Boys-esque dramatics so it hardly seems alternative at all. They started off the decade going in the direction of miserable blues and folk and roots rock so this change of pace is especially gratifying. One of their top flight singles right up there with "Dignity" and "Real Gone Kid" and a welcome return to Scots singing about miserable industrial towns which no other nationality does as well.

If?: "Saturday's Angels"

1 April 1992

"Cancel that trip to Maccesfield...everything's going to be Ooooooh Kaaaaay!!"

— Sylvia Patterson

If You Don't Mind?

If? is the name of the latest pop sensations who are set to take over the charts with their danceable pop explosion "Saturday's Angels". But who are If? and why do is their name also a question?

The band known as If? are made up of four blokes from London. Two of them were once in a group called JoBoxers who had a hit about 76 thousand years ago called "Boxerbeat". It was bloomin' marvellous and Smash Hits even put them on the cover! But then their next single flopped and so did the one after that. But now they're back with another "kick" at the "can". One member of the Hits staff reckons its ace while the rest think it's quite good.

No one was able to find out much about this If? lot so we present some notable If's from the world of pop and beyond...

If....

An ancient film starring a younger, far less crusty Malcolm McDowell. Older lads in a public school are menacing the younger boys and everything erupts into violence because there wasn't any custard for their cornflake pie one day or something. Even the adults are naughty, as seen when everyone else is at chapel and the housemaster's wife wanders about the boys' dormitory starkers. Rather than leaving paper bags with poo on their doorsteps as any right-thinking schoolboy would do, the lads resort to shooting everyone with guns

"If"

A horrible old song by a horrible old band from the sixties called Bread. It was then covered by a horrible old bloke called Telly Savalas who had no hair and couldn't sing. Everyone claimed to like it and bought up enough copies to fill several thousand seaside chalets in Eastbourne which were then chucked off Beachy Head when everyone came to their senses.

"If You Don't Know Me by Now"

Another hoary old chestnut originally done by an American group called Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes only to become the umpteenth cover in the Simply Red catalog. It's about how a lass ought to get to know her beau pronto or else she'll never, never, never know him which overlooks love being a journey and how you're supposed to never stop learning about that special someone.

"If I Fell"

A weepie by The Beatles from their first film A Hard Day's Night. They were all about being jolly back in those days but this one of their first heartfelt songs. John Lennon opening his heart and soul to the world was undermined quite a lot by him pulling cripple faces while singing it in the movie, the clot!

Iffy Onuora

Striker for third division side Huddersfield Town. Iffy also happens to be the state of the club he plays for.

Iftody Uppingham-Jones, esq.

A foppish, dim character in a P.G. Wodehouse story no one ever got round to reading. Probably.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

SL2: "On a Ragga Tip"

Hold on, this has nothing to do with the word if! Or does it? What about if everyone in the land buys a copy of this then it will go straight to number one and stay there well into the summer. Or if SL2 can have a second hit to follow "DJs Take Control" then they might not go down the dumper. Or if you play "On a Ragga Tip" enough times then you might actually work out what the bleedin' heck they're going on about. Or if an impressionable spotty youth happens to give it a listen then maybe it will convince them to get out of the bedroom they share with their older brother and create something of their own. And if you can't be bothered with it then you'll find another record to go all gooey over instead. So many possibilities. If only we had more time.

The KLF: "America: What Time Is Love?"

5 February 1992

"Get stuffed, Grandad — The KLF, The Voice Of God!"

— Sylvia Patterson

When your pop group philosophy is based on (a) getting maximum value out of minimal talent and (b) constantly retooling of the same half-dozen songs, you're probably not going to have a lengthy run in the charts. While this would no doubt disappoint many, those who lean towards "bird-watching and the countryside" might have found an upside in it.

On the surface, The KLF seemed like ideal pop stars. While their music was rooted in the clubs and the raves of the era, their innate pop sensibilities lent themselves to a world of Smash Hits and Top of the Pops. They even created this fictional universe of themselves being the Justified Ancients of a country called Mu Mu whose capital city was this place called Transcentral. It was like Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars only they didn't have to create a concept album around it: they were the concept. Though they were both in their mid-thirties at the time, they seemed to immature with age, fawning upon the Pet Shop Boys, writing songs that name checked Kylie and Jason and getting into a minor pop star squabble with EMF, accusing the Forest of Dean indie rap rockers of stealing the 'F' in their name.

Relying on samples so heavily that they barely had to play any instruments, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty showed how punk values could be transferred over into the nineties — but then again, so did plenty of others. It was irrelevant that DJ's couldn't play the guitar or keyboards: they had their turntables to "play". But what set The KLF apart was the fact that they had no more training on a deck than on "proper" instruments. This meant that their love of pure pop as well as a myriad of other genres could augment their sound more easily. It also ensured that they never got clever with their mixing. Updates of older JAMMs tracks managed to be improved upon whereas other house music boffins tended to get it right on their first try. Remixing may have been the bread and butter of DJ's yet few of them ever managed to get it right.

"America: What Time Is Love?" was yet another re-working of a chill out track that had evolved into a stadium house number and had now become a rock anthem. North America had mostly ignored the UK Top 5 hit "What Time Is Love?" when it first emerged in late 1990 and the title suggests that they were intent on belatedly breaking it into the US market. The video (a considerable departure from the group's previous promos) even hints at them leaving Britain in order to conquer America. Perhaps coincidentally, this was also the time in which "cracking" the States had become an increasingly daunting task for bands from the UK.

It was only after "Justified and Ancient" came close to giving them a third UK number one that "America: What Time Is Love?" came out in Britain. Americans had been immune but Drummond and Cauty's countrymen once again fell at their feet, with this new version actually outperforming the original's chart peak of number five. This is partly due to the mini-imperial period they had been enjoying but one should never underestimate the power of the US to get the British all giddy. They may have altered the song in order to sway the Americans but this only managed to reaffirm just how beloved they were in their homeland.

And, yet, it was all coming to a close. "America: What Time Is Love?" proved to be their swansong. Sampling Motörhead's iconic "Ace of Spades" and having former Deep Purple/Black Sabbath vocalist Glenn Hughes screaming all over it put them in harder, thrashier territory (additions which happen to give it the edge over the more standard house version from a year and a half earlier), something that they clearly used to the extreme when they performed an almost unrecognizable rendition of "3 a.m. Eternal" at that year's BRIT awards alongside Ipswich hardcore metal band Extreme Noise Terror just a week after this issue of ver Hits hit the shops. They closed out the show by announcing their retirement from showbusiness. Not long after this fiasco, they had their entire back catalog deleted.

There we have The KLF. They would have preferred to have gone bird-watching but their reluctance to embrace the spotlight only made them more intriguing. When they did try to pursue publicity it was in aid of firing machine guns loaded with blanks at those same BRIT awards or infamously setting a million pounds on fire. They crafted brilliant pop records with unusual methods and then fled while still on top. They boasted of the fact that they could have hits with cover versions of their own work. They don't make bands like this anymore. Hell, they didn't make 'em like this back then either.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Massive Attack: The Hymn of the Big Wheel (aka the imaginatively titled Massive Attack E.P.)

Last week I argued that Primal Scream's Dixie-Narco E.P. was a more than adequate replacement for the group's not-especially-thrilling album Screamadelica. Massive Attack also released a big LP in '91 and they too decided to start the new year off with an extended play — but in this instance it is a poor facsimile of debut Blue Lines. The KLF were good at remixing and retooling older numbers like "What Time Is Love?" but this is something most who worked within house music struggled to match. The Paul Oakenfold remix of "Be Thankful" is rather good but the other two tracks from Blue Lines are pointless. New offering "Home of the Whale" is as dreadful as Sylvia Patterson reckons, so it's obviously not just remixes that they could get wrong. Not a great sampler for what made Massive Attack special but a useful reminder that they were a lot more hit-and-miss than many would care to admit.

Erasure: "Chorus"

12 June 1991

"More power to your perv-tights, "missus"!! (P.S. And it made the household cat jump out of the first floor window, nearly, and you can't say fairer than that.)"

— Sylvia Patterson

Gracing the cover of this fortnight's issue of Smash Hits is The Twins, an Australian sister act of Gayle and Gillian Blakeney. The not-entirely-ugly pair had been on the popular soap Neighbours which led to them getting signed up for a music career in the UK. While the likes of Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan (see below), Stefan Dennis and Craig MacLachlan had all enjoyed some degree of chart success, Gayle and Gillian flopped. They flopped hard in fact. In a steady decline for nearly a year-and-a-half, the songwriting/production team of Stock Aitken Waterman had been hemorraging acts and Kylie was really their last vestige. Figuring they needed to roll the dice, SAW handed the single "All Mixed Up" to The Twins. Unfortunately, the combination an uninspired composition, a Euro-pop sound the once-powerful trio struggled with and some ghastly singing torpedoed its chances.

With The Twins getting an undeserved Hits cover, Erasure were once again denied the chance to finally grace the front of the magazine themselves. In the five years since "Sometimes" broke them in the UK, the likes of Nick Kamen, Nick Berry, Pepsi & Shirlie, Philip Schofield (three times!), Sinitta, Halo James, Candy Flip (twice) and Gazza all graced the front of the top pop mag. Between them, these seven acts had nineteen Top 40 hits; Erasure had have thirty-five. (The duo would remain a top pop act for the next three years but coming changes at ver Hits meant that Christian Slater and the cast of Beverly Hills, 90210 would become preferred cover stars at the expense of actual pop groups)

I've written before that Erasure were the last major synth-pop group but this depends on how one would go about defining the term 'major'. They had seventeen Top Ten hits and five of their albums went to number one in the UK so they were hardly a minor act. Yet, they had trouble avoiding the 'also-ran' tag. Pet Shop Boys, their closest competitors, were bigger around the world and they seemed to matter to people more. Label mates Depeche Mode weren't hit makers on nearly the same level but they, too, outstripped them internationally and they had indie cred. So did New Order, whose legacy was already immense. All three synth acts had also been seminal at some point, as were The Human League, OMD and Soft Cell. But Erasure? They just never seemed as important as their synth-pop brethren.

There was also the problem of consistency — specifically, their lack of it. Though mostly a singles band (it's still hard to believe they had so many chart topping albums considering what a mixed bag their LP's are), their 45's didn't always hit the mark. On 1989's very patchy Wild!, for example, there's one absolute belter ("Blue Savannah"), another one that's quite good ("Drama") and two more that just go through the motions ("You Surround Me", "Star"). '88's mighty The Innocents produced two bangers ("Ship of Fools", "A Little Respect") and another that was just all right ("Chains of Love").

Returning swiftly in '91, Andy Bell and Vince Clarke were back (BACK!!) with some of their strongest material to date. The four singles were all top notch and the Chorus album would prove to be one of their better long players. (Ver Hits' Johnny Dee was less impressed, arguing that much of it sounded like "frightening techno muzak they play in McDonald's to make you eat your cheeseburgers quicker") Overall, it's probably a notch below both The Innocents and their self-titled 1996 release (ie the first one in ages not to got to number one) but it's still a quietly brilliant work. But even Erasure's best albums weren't especially essential affairs: you could always enjoy the hits if you couldn't be bothered with the LP.

First up was the title track and it's as great as anything they've ever done. The song's first half is seemingly as repetitive as "Stop!" until the bridge kicks in ("Holy Moses, our hearts are screaming...") which then gives way to another bridge ("The sunlight rising over the horizon..."). If the standard verse-chorus was thrilling enough (and it is), its these sections that put it over the top. And then there's Clarke putting away his acoustic guitar. I don't know, sometimes that strumming can be just the thing an Erasure song needs it's not what we were there for. "Chorus" opens some computerized notes and electronics are what the listener is treated to throughout — and it paid off. At last they had a single that was as good as "Don't You Want Me", "Tainted Love" and "West End Girls". (Sadly they were unable to repeat the chart topping success of those singles; the public, as ever, was much more willing to take a punt on drippy love songs)

Sylvia Patterson suggests that "Chorus" might have something to do with the environment. Its chorus does go on about covering up the sun, birds flying away and the fish going "to sleep" so she may be on to something but who's to say? Bell has always liked spouting indecipherable philosophical lyrics; the more difficult to pull apart the better, in fact. It could be all about their ecological concerns or about some of Bell's patented overwrought heartbreak or it could be just yet more or his nonsense set to a blistering techno-pop tune. Whether meaningful or meaningless, Bell had the voice to pull it off

Erasure always seemed like a group that everyone 'quite liked' but was nobody's favourite. While they may not have inspired the devotion that fans had for Depeche Mode, New Order and Pet Shop Boys, they managed to avoid the backlash that the others occasionally faced or were visible enough that they weren't easily forgotten about. They somehow toed the line between prominence and obscurity into over a decade of hit singles and best selling albums. They weren't as big or as important or as seminal as their contemporaries but they continued to be Erasure, a band who were sometimes great, typically reliable and seldom boring. What more could they have done?

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Jason Donovan: "Any Dream Will Do"

Some broke away from the Stock Aitken Waterman hit factory in order to assert their creative independence; Jason Donovan wasn't one of them. No one leaves one restrictive media empire for an even bigger restrictive media empire thinking that their artistic vision had any kind of hope. Then again, Jase never gave anyone the impression he had an artistic vision to begin with. You would at least expect the jump from SAW to Andrew Lloyd Weber's inner circle would've resulted in better "sounding" records but "Any Dream Will Do" is as cheap as they come. As Patterson says, it's distressingly superior to the detritus Pete Waterman had been flinging his way (possibly his best single since "When You Come Back to Me") but this wasn't saying much. Though it would spent a fortnight at number one, it would quickly become overshadowed by the single which would usurp it. It's one you might know.

Dream Warriors: "Ludi"

6 March 1991

"If you can't dance to this, your name is John Major."

— Sylvia Patterson

When it came to board games, it always seemed like everyone else had a better selection of them than we did. We had an ancient edition of Monopoly in which the bank notes had all turned brown with everything kept in a box that had been taped up. We also had Scrabble which no one ever played (my parents would eventually become enthusiasts but not until they got a much nicer set), Trivial Pursuit which no one ever played and Mille Bornes which I could never understand (or even pronounce correctly — and I did French immersion in school!). One year someone gave us Sorry! for Christmas which we played once and then never touched again. No, we weren't a game night kind of family. (When we did, we generally just played cards; I seldom got anyone else interested in joining me for a few rounds of the Canadian cult game Crokinole which I still love)

Sorry! apparently goes back to India, along with several similar games. Parcheesi, which always seems to get mentioned in American movies and TV shows in spite of the fact that no one seems to play it, is descended from it, as is the British game Ludo, something I had never heard of until reading this review of Sylvia Patterson's. And so, it seems is Ludi which inspired this typically wonderful, silly and pointless tune from Toronto's Dream Warriors.

Now, by 'pointless' I do not wish to disparage it. (The fact that I also described it as 'wonderful' in the same sentence should've been the first hint that I wasn't knocking it) "Ludi" just doesn't have much to do with the game. There's not even all that much to it, with the opening verses being about Dream Warrior Capitol Q's mother ("or is it the other one?" as Patterson asks on behalf of everyone) and how this song is dedicated to her and everyone else in his family and the good people of every Caribbean nation and/or territory which he proceeds to list. He later tries to go into the details of the game but quickly gets sidetracked by giving a positive assessment of his rap skills and how much he misses his mum back home. To the extent that it's about anything at all, it certainly isn't about playing Ludi.

Patterson's review of "Ludi" represents a refreshing change of pace for the way ver Hits dealt with hip hop. I have discussed at length about the way other critics took great pains to praise a rap single by emphasising what wasn't there. The obnoxious, boastful rappers of the past had been supplanted by a new generation of much more thoughtful types like De La Soul, Redhead Kingpin and Monie Love. This is something that would have made me roll my eyes even if it had only been brought up the once but for it to have used repeatedly was really straining the point. To be certain, Dream Warriors were very much aligned with the new school (musician and writer Bob Stanley included their brilliant Top 20 hit "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style" on the Ace Records compilation The Daisy Age which also includes many of their colourful hip hop contemporaries) but they weren't above bragging about how wonderful their raps were. While I initially had them pegged as a welcome antidote to both the admittedly tiresome 'aren't I great?' branch and the self-righteous 'rap has a message' gang, I now am able to recognize that there was more than a little of both in them. Luckily, they also had humour, playfulness and a way with jazz and reggae influences to make them stand out.

It's a pity that "Ludi" lacked the hooks of predecessors "Wash Your Face in My Sink" and the aforementioned "My Definition..." since its charms weren't quite sufficient to give them a third nice-sized hit in the UK, only just nudging its way into the Top 40 for just a week. Nevertheless, their debut album, And Now the Legacy Begins, quickly followed and it sold well. (It's strange to think that there was a time in which a group could put out three singles before even releasing the LP that featured all of them) They even had critical acclaim with a ten out of ten review for And Now... in the NME.

The success they had in Britain contrasts with how they were received back home. While "My Definition..." and "Ludi" were played a lot on Canadian cable channel MuchMusic (I have no memory of "Wash Your Face..." getting much attention at the time, though that may have been down to us not having cable in the first half of 1990), they were taken as a comedy act with none of their singles managing to make the Top 40. With all that hip hop coming from down south, Canadians had trouble recognizing that some of their own were capable. Maestro Fresh Wes proved to be relevant enough but he never seemed quite like the real thing. Kish's "I Rhyme the World in 80 Days" was cringey and he seemed to lay the groudwork for Snow's huge but ghastly "Informer" at the end of 1992. Barenaked Ladies were gaining traction in the early part of '91 and it seemed like Dream Warriors were the rap equivalent.

That Canadian sense of self-loathing isn't as strong as it used to be so it's high time my fellow citizens appreciated Dream Warriors and even acknowledged them as a point of pride. Where else are you going find a rap duo with odes to tissues and West Indies board games? Name another country that would produce an iconic gameshow theme that would be sampled for an iconic hip hop single, one that would later be adopted for the iconic Austin Powers movies? (And I had always assumed that Mike Myers had borrowed it from Dream Warriors, that's the kind of silly young Canadian rube I was)

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Dannii Minogue: "Love and Kisses"

Kylie had a nice smile, Dannii had a nice smile. Kylie played the tough but lovable Charlene in Neighbours, Dannii played the tough but lovable Emma on Home & Away. Kylie was rolling along with some of the finest pop hits of the era, Dannii...well, she was also a pop star of sorts. With her big sister going all pervy, it probably seemed like a good idea for young Danielle to be a girl-next-door but it mattered little when her pop songs were so pitiful. Just like Kylie's stuff from three years earlier only much worse. It says a lot about the state of the charts in 1991 that there was an appetite for such awfulness. And so the Dannii era had begun: lots of Smash Hits covers, loads of exposure she didn't deserve and a metric ton of horrible music. And to think people thought that Kylie wasn't much of a singer.

N/A

13 June 1990

"Due to the fact that there are absolutely no really ace pop affairs on display this fortnight, Single Of The Fortnight has been cancelled. Here is a picture of The Reynolds Girls instead."

— Sylvia Patterson, friend to the stars (in spite of her criticism)

So it has come to this in a down year for pop songs: a venerable Smash Hits critic has given up. There have been poor crops before and god knows there are going to be plenty more to come but this is the first time since all the way back in 1981 that a Single of the Fortnight has not been chosen. Not only that but Sylvia Patterson has actually gone out of her way to cancel the whole thing. I would have inferred a SOTF but for the fact that she makes it all too clear that she'd rather go without than have something substandard take the honour. I can't say I blame her since this is a wretched crop of new releases, quite possibly the worst to date. At best, I am indifferent to a couple of these but the rest all suck.

The reviewer photo for the singles shows Patterson with her head down next to a beaming, shiny-cheeked Christian James, leader of one-hit wonders Halo James. Given all of her encounters with the likes of Mick Hucknall, New Order, The Housemartins, Oasis and many others, she was indeed a "friend to the stars". The bulk of her very fine autobiography I'm Not with the Band deals with how chummy she could be with pop types. I read it a few years ago — not long after starting up this blog, in fact — and was initially turned off by all the name dropping until I realised that she was an excellent critic in spite of that. Though this would erode in the music press over the course of the decade, it was possible back in 1990 to rip a group or singer's single or LP to shreds one moment and then be enjoying a pint with them the next. And no one better balanced the two than the great Sylvia Patterson.

Here are my own thoughts on the eleven records that she couldn't find anything nice to say about.

Alannah Myles: "Love Is"

My junior high used to play cassettes between periods in place of a a traditional school bell. We were free to bring in our own tapes — something I did on a regular basis — but when no one bothered to do so they had to fall back on a pair they had in the principal's office. This horrible rocker was on one of them. It was as if school administration wanted to prove that having double math on a Wednesday could be made that much worse.

London Boys: "Chapel of Love"

I had never heard this song prior to this week yet I knew exactly how it would sound. Our Sylv reckons it's more of the same from the days of "Requiem" but it's more of the same but a lot worse. London Boys did banger after banger with their first two hits but that's sadly as far as it went. I wouldn't demand to have it turned off if it somehow came on the radio but I won't be in any hurry to willingly listen to it anytime soon either.

Del Amitri: "Move Away Jimmy Blue"

Another one I was unfamiliar with. Scots groups have a tendency to try to sound American (no doubt over fears that they might otherwise end up sounding English) and none more so than Del Amitri. Like a lot of their stuff, I don't hate it as much as I feel I ought to. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, I know. A band in dire need of some irony though it isn't the worst Scottish record up for consideration this fortnight. 

Craig McLachlan & Check 1-2: "Mona"

Wait, isn't this "Love Is" by Alannah Myles? Henry from Neighbours and basically the same character from Home & Away was looking to a carve out a music career not unlike Kylie and Jason, only Craig was going to prove that he was into real ale rawk. Far less convincing than SAW dreck on its worst day and a sad way for youngsters to be introduced to the great Bo Diddley. Somehow the only big hit of this sad bunch.

Kim Wilde: "Time"

Patterson doesn't dislike this one but she doesn't have a great deal positive to say about it either. Hard to believe this kind of thing was still being made in the nineties but it came up well short of the Top 40 so no one was convinced even then. "Time" to rediscover your dark side, Kim. Or get into gardening. Either way.

Wee Papa Girl Rappers: "Get in the Groove"

Had Sylvia held her nose, this would have been the SOTF but it's pretty lousy so I won't be taking her to task for the snub. The Wees had never pushed the envelope but this was still a considerable decline from "Wee Rule" and "Heat It Up" two years earlier. If Kim Wilde proved that doing the same old thing wasn't going to guarantee a hit then the Lawrence sisters were showing that trying to stay current wasn't always the best option either.

Glen Goldsmith: "On the One"

I'm sorry, this isn't the guy who was in Heaven 17? Oh, is that Glen Gregory? Can't say much about this one since it isn't up on YouTube at the moment. But at least that means I don't hate it.

World Party: "Message in the Box"

The anti-Del Amitri: a band I dislike more than I probably ought to. There's nothing remotely wrong with this only it's been done a million times before by better groups. It's strange that power pop can be so energetic but also so utterly boring at the same time. And, yes, its cause isn't aided by older types who claim this is "real music".

The Brat Pack: "I'm Never Gonna Give You Up"

Utter rubbish that went nowhere. In a sea of crap records, it's like a giant build up of toilet flushings poured into the ocean en masse. Except that at least bottom feeders like catfish and prawns could gorge themselves on that detritus whereas this record...

The Scottish World Cup Squad & Friends: "Say It with Pride"

First up in a special 'World Cup Fever Section' sidebar. With a pair of Top 5 hits and another one making number 20, Scotland's World Cup records have generally performed better than Scotland's World Cup teams. Not so much this time however: the Tartan Army's favourite side put up a solid effort against Brazil and Costa Rica only to come up short while this lame chant flopped and deserved to do worse. A great example of just how refreshing New Order's "World in Motion" was since this is what they were like prior to it. Plenty still sound just like this crap.

The Pogues & The Dubliners: "Jack's Heroes"

Ireland failed to qualify for Italia '90 Ireland qualified for Italia '90 and did well in reaching the quarter finals, still the country's best World Cup result. As for their theme, it's decent and leans on the piss up-singalong side of the things much more than the footie cliches. Patterson once "did" the singles alongside chief Pogue Shane McGowan but being a pro she doesn't let her friendship get in the way of giving this record a bit of a bollocking. It's not that bad and would've been my SOTF albeit by default.

~~~~~

Not Reviewed This Fortnight

MC Hammer: "U Can't Touch This"

Not reviewed by Patterson but included in the 'Also Released This Fortnight' section (described by Sylv as a "load of old tosh"), "U Can't Touch This" was one of the most memorable singles of 1990 even if its chart performance ended up being lower than what you might have expected. (Listen to this episode of the great Chris Molanphy's Hit Parade podcast to learn about why its American fortunes were torpedoed in spite of the fact that it would have likely topped the Hot 100 for several weeks) Better than any of the dismal efforts above, it no longer has that faint air of nauseating positivity to it that used to turn me off. It sure was overplayed back in Hammer's heyday but it's not so bad now that I give it a listen about once a decade.

Neneh Cherry: "Manchild"

3 May 1989

"There's loads of floaty "Pshoooo!" noises and curious keyboard wizardries and it's highly creepy and mesmerising and makes you go all funny in the head."

— Sylvia Patterson

1989 produced some nifty Singles of the Fortnight — for the moment anyway — but many have been lacking serious competition. With all due respect to the likes of Yazz, Chaka Khan and Elvis Costello, they weren't exactly up against a selection of stellar records. Which makes Neneh Cherry's "triumph" in this issue's singles review all the more impressive. Between Fuzzbox (see below) tapping into pop glory, the sound of Bobby Brown making the most of his imperial period, Paul McCartney happily doing what Macca does best, Sinitta with a throwaway earworm, Elvis Costello not letting himself get tripped up in his clever-clever wordplay and Tone Loc at his drrrty peak, there's some good stuff that came up short in the mind of review Sylvia Patterson. (Mind you, she picked the right song) Sure, there's some glum numbers from a duetting Aretha Franklin and Elton John, Sam Brown and Mandy Smith but the good stuff outweighs crap this fortnight.

For whatever reason, jazz is a style of music that hasn't produced a lot of dynastic families. The giants of the genre produced their fair share of offspring but a surprisingly small number of them followed their famous parents into Dixieland, swing, be-bop and fusion. Those few that did — Mercer Ellington, T.S. Monk, Ravi Coltrane, the Brubeck brothers — were destined to be stuck in the shadows of their renowned fathers.

Some, however, chose to spurn improvised music in favour of something closer to pop. Mike Melvoin toiled as a jobbing session pianist for the likes of John Lennon and The Beach Boys but his heart was in jazz, playing on some first rate recordings with Stan Getz, Milt Jackson and Leroy Vinnegar. His son Jonathon was an accomplish keyboardist in his own right and toured with Smashing Pumpkins prior to his untimely death in 1996 while twin daughters Susannah and Wendy were both involved with Prince in various capacities. Wendy would later form Wendy & Lisa with fellow erstwhile Revolution member Lisa Coleman and they appeared in this blog a few months back (and they'll be returning in a few weeks). Charlie Haden hailed from the midwest and, as such, had a background in country and folk but left them behind in order to pursue jazz. He eventually ended up as bassist for Ornette Coleman's influential piano-less quartet that released a series of remarkable albums including The Shape of Jazz to Come and Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. He would later spearhead the brilliant Liberation Music Orchestra and he would go to the grave in 2014 having recorded dozens of top notch LPs. His son Josh is a talented songwriter who formed the critically acclaimed slow core group Spain and their 1995 debut The Blue Moods of Spain rivals many of his father's masterworks. Triplet daughters Petra, Rachel and Tanya Haden have all had careers in music as well.

One of Haden's mates in the Ornette Coleman group was the trumpet player Don Cherry. His full time association with the saxophonist was prolific but short lived. He would subsequently go solo and release some superb albums on Blue Note such as Complete Communion and Symphony for Improvisers. He remained tight with his old bandmates and would join Haden on the 1970 Liberation Music Orchestra LP. From there, his recordings became increasingly wild and he began exploring so-called world music. Taking a page from his mentor, who would sometimes take a break from the sax by picking up the trumpet or violin, Cherry began playing a wide variety of instruments from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Indonesia. I've only tapped the surface of this period of his career but I can say that the first two Codona albums (the not-very-imaginatively-titled Codona and Codona 2) are masterpieces of free jazz, world beat and new age. Along the way, he married a Swedish woman and became one of many expat American jazz musicians who chose to settle in Europe. It was there that he raised a musical family of his own.

The Melvoins, The Hadens, The Cherrys. They're all outstanding musical families but no one emerged from the second generation like Neneh Cherry. Her father's name didn't carry a lot of weight (when Smash Hits would bring up her lineage it was meant to be just a fun fact — pop kids weren't heading out to explore Symphony for Improvisers or Codona 2...at least not yet) and she seemed to be making it on her own. Though only in her mid-twenties, she had been around for nearly ten years, first appearing as vocalist for post-punk jazzers Rip, Rig + Panic before branching out in the direction of dance and house music. She was linked with Bristol's the Wild Bunch (soon to become Massive Attack) and had chums in acid house (in addition to namedropping the Wild Bunch, solo debut "Buffalo Stance" also referenced Bomb the Bass). Yet her own considerable talents and musical pedigree led her to success before most of her associates.

"Buffalo Stance" had been her memorable first hit single. While its quality turned heads, few recognized something previously unheard of in it. It was a hip hop single and a great one at that and that's all there was to it. "Manchild", therefore, became the Neneh Cherry record that sounded like nothing else. Where she rapped the verses and sort of sang the chorus on "Buffalo Stance", she does mostly some nice R&B vocalisms here and strategically saves the spoken word bits: the track opens with a bit of a rap but you assume that's all there is to it once the song gets going proper. You float along with the laid back rhythm that would eventually come to be known as 'trip hop' only to be jarred by another aggressive Neneh rap. It probably shouldn't work but it somehow does. It isn't as well-remembered as "Buffalo Stance" these days but it certainly deserves to be.

"Manchild" became Cherry's second big UK hit on the bounce and it did similarly well on the Continent but it failed to get much attention in North America. The merging of R&B and hip hope was well under way on the other side of the Atlantic (led by Bobby Brown, also reviewed this fortnight) but there wasn't much room for women to break through. It was left to the poppy but unremarkable "Kisses on the Wind" to struggle along as a makeshift follow-up and this may have done her reputation in the US more harm than good. ("Heart" would be a similarly blasse single release in North America and it convinced no one) "Buffalo Stance" had been at the forefront of Cherry's musical revolution but "Manchild" had been right there with it and, if anything, it pointed the way forward much more. British and European hip hop had languished but it was poised to take its rightful place on the charts. Cherry had done her part but her chums the Wild Bunch weren't ready. It would be left to a London-based collective to further move the needle.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Fuzzbox: "Pink Sunshine"

Those of us who seldom bought singles really ought to have stepped up to the plate. (And I was one of them: buying bargain bin 7" records for 50p wasn't helping) The newly remade/remodelled Fuzzbox enjoyed a pair of Top 20 hits in the first few months of 1989 but they should've done much better. They had the tunes, choruses you just couldn't shake, excellent promos and they all looked great. (If Susanna Hoffs mastered the side glance, no one did the comedy eye roll quite like the Fuzzies) I actually liked "International Rescue" a bit more but "Pink Sunshine" became an anthem for those of us who were knocking on the door of the teens and we were the sort of fanbase that was happy to record their hits off of Radio 1 and/or to tape their vids off of Top of the Pops or Saturday morning kids telly. We put up posters of them, we dreamed of forming bands just like their's and some of us even dreamed of snogging them — it's just too bad we didn't get round to buying their records in sufficient quantity.

The Housemartins: "Me and the Farmer"

26 August 1987

"This single proves — once and for all! — that The Housemartins have wit, intelligence, brevity, humour and the sparkliest nippy pop tunes ever created."

— Sylvia Patterson

With all due respect to the likes of Brian Wilson, Carole King, various members of Fleetwood Mac and Max Martin, none of them can write a song about relationships like Paul Heaton. During his time with The Beautiful South, he captured couples on the brink of breaking up ("A Little Time"), dealing with an unwanted pregnancy ("Bell Bottomed Tear"), being unable to communicate ("You Keep It All In"), growing old ("Prettiest Eyes") or sticking with loving but unfulfilling relationships ("Tonight I Fancy Myself", "We Are Each Other"). These traits would eventually descend into either grotesque pieces about dominance and S&M ("Worthless Lie", "Mini-Correct", a song so vicious that it prompted Brianna Corrigan to quit the group and she was able to put up with the controversial "36d") or self-parody ("Perfect 10") but these shouldn't gainsay how he was once able to craft work dealing with couples that was realistic yet imaginative, cynical yet romantic.

This quality was a marked change from when Heaton was leader of previous group The Housemartins. A common charge leveled at The Beautiful South was that they had become "soft", that the boozy Marxism of "Happy Hour" had been watered down to songs about cozy domestication. Yet, socialism and football terraces aside, there had always been the spirit of the individual buried in his material. "Happy Hour" is drunkenly sung along to in pubs all over the world to this day but this belies the fact that it's about being alienated by the jollity of crowds and the watering holes they frequent. The skiffle-drenched favourite "Sheep" deals with being baffled by the mentality of mindless mobs. Yet, they didn't really do one-on-one human interaction.

The very day that Heaton and the supposedly dishy Stan Cullimore (sorry, Sylvia, but I just don't see it) wrote "Happy Hour", however, the pair composed a song about a relationship. It wasn't about a miserable couple who may once have been in love but about an employer and his employee. "Me and the Farmer": workplace dysfunction in song. Though it was kept, it didn't make the cut for their first LP and would have to wait so it's possible they weren't as thrilled by it as they should have been. They weren't to know it then but they had a breakthrough on their hands.

It's hard to picture this song having a basis in reality. A peasant toiling the land wouldn't have had this kind of close contact with his feudal lord. In more recent times, a migrant worker or a penniless labourer wouldn't be so indentured to their boss to the point that quitting their job would be (at least technically) impossible. Nit picking? Sure but the song is so great that it retains its potency.

Heaton refuses to allow the song's narrator to feel too sorry for himself. The song opens with a line, "me and the farmer get on fine / through stormy weather and bottles of wine" that indicates a camaraderie. But if this farmer sometimes treats Heaton well, then he's still a ruthless land baron and has no qualms about using humans, animals and nature to his ends. Being very much of its time, it's clearly a parable for Thatcherite deregulation, albeit one told on the scale of a single individual.

I never knew The Housemartins when they were active. I was still a good decade away from entering university during their brief two years of activity so I was well outside their target audience. For me, they were primarily the group that Paul Heaton used to be in. Going from the 'Hooses' to ver South was hardly the most radical creative shift that a singer-songwriter has made (bassist Norman Cook's post-Martin career took a much more unexpected turn, even if he always had an affinity for DJing and house music) but it wasn't without howls of protest. Early South gigs from 1989 were marred "fans" chanting for Heaton's old act as well as demanding they play calling card single "Happy Hour" (the band, for their part, responded in kind with a barrage of rude words hurled back at the crowd).

As I mentioned earlier, critics, too, weren't always crazy about where Heaton was going as the nineties progressed. The Beautiful South's more MOR-friendly sound (as well as, implicitly, the fact that they always had a female vocalist) resulted in reviews that weren't always glowing. And the music journalists could never seem to get past what Heaton had previously done; by comparison, even Morrissey's hit-and-miss solo career wasn't as dogged by his days with The Smiths and only occasionally did New Order reviews bother to mention Joy Division. As a longtime fan of 'the Pet Shop Boys you can't dance to', I never understood this. It wasn't until after several years of South fandom that I turned to The Housemartins, and even then I did so reluctantly. The hacks were always trashing my second favourite band and I had little desire to discover that they may have had a point.

"Happy Hour" was their biggest self-composed hit and would cast an unwelcome shadow over both The Housemartins and Beautiful South. Well before the rise of laddish groups like The Stone Roses and Oasis, the Martins acted like a bunch of goons in their videos and looked like normal blokes who signed on every week, were regulars at the local betting shop and had wives who looked like barmaids. They enjoyed a pint and read The Sun. Their socialism didn't matter since you could sing "Happy Hour" with your mates on a bus and they looked just like their fans. All of this was completely true except for the fact that it was bollocks.

Heaton had been a longtime fan of Motown and Northern Soul and the influence of black music is all over his work. Added to the mix was some skiffle and indie rock of the age. All of these styles tended to appeal to working class types but it was a sound they began refining for their second album The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death. Just as the last Jam album could almost be the first Style Council LP, the use of a choir and horns on People... makes it a proto-Beautiful South record — at least in places. There's also a tougher sound with some rock guitar and pounding drums from new recruit Dave Hemmingway. This subtle change of pace might explain its lack of big hits and its lower album chart placing. Indeed, it would prove to be the lowest charting LP of Heaton's career until The Beautiful South's Gaze in 2003 (that said, it would also prove to be the last album of his to produce three top 20 hits for over ten years). But it's a better album than the very fine London 0 Hull 4 and there are hints that they were already keen to ditch what had made them successful.

"Me and the Farmer" was one of the rockier numbers from their forthcoming album. Predecessor "Five Get Over Excited" had the skiffle shuffle of old and a singalong chorus for the crowds to appreciate and the catchy "Bow Down" would prove to be a fan favourite album track but "Farmer" seems cut from a slightly different cloth. For one thing, the chorus is tricky to join in with due to the call-and-response (I can never decide if I should join in with his bandmates' backing vocals — "won't he let you go? — or with Heaton himself — "probably no"). And though the tune itself is yet another jolly number, the subject matter hardly seems fitting for a knees up round the pub. Fittingly, for an early piece about an individual, it appeals more to the solitary listener.

Much of this was obscured by the group's image, which remained steadfastly ordinary. It has a typically wacky video too. But people couldn't get behind it the way they did "Happy Hour", a song that they wrote ten minutes later but which sounds like it's from a much earlier age. Using up every second of its just-under-three-minute playing time to fullest effect, "Me and the Farmer" is simply wondrous pop, the kind of song that can easily hold up to repeated listens and which never fails to delight, as well as being a welcome reminder of just what an underrated group of musicians they were. You can have "Happy Hour" and I'll take this: a song they never bettered and which Heaton would struggle to equal.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Bros: "I Owe You Nothing"

Matt, Luke and Ken would soon be causing a stir by getting the British youth to start putting Grolsch bottle caps on their Doc Martens (though no one ever explained how they got the ruddy things to stick) but they were far from a sensation in the midst of 1987. "When Will I Be Famous?" is one of the great boy band singles and a perfect debut for a trio so keen to grab hold of the spotlight but, in truth, this ode to their well-documented grumpiness is probably just as much a part of their reality. "People think we're completely contrived," complains Matt in this same issue of the Hits, a high horse they would never descend from. No, they didn't owe anyone anything but they sure felt they deserved everyone's respect from the off.