Tag: Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

NOW 20 – Giant Floating Letters in Space

One of the fun things about this blog is the amount of misremembering I’ve been doing; you know that weird feeling you get when you are utterly convinced of something from your past despite all the evidence to the contrary. Like me thinking the NOW pig lasted for years rather than just three albums, that Bros’ I Owe You Nothing was on NOW 11, or that NOW 16 was any good. The biggest mis-memory (if that’s a real word) on my journey so far is the 1990s changing of the guard at Radio 1, that glorious time when Matthew Bannister came in and did away with the Smashie and Nicey brigade. He decided that the station that’s y’know, for kids, should really appeal to, y’know, kids and it was time for The Hairy Cornflake to pack up his Quack Quack Oops and Batesy should concentrate on his video certificate introductions (which are there to help you make the right choice, thanks for listening). Regular readers may have noticed I’ve been building up to it for quite a while, the first mention coming way back on NOW 8, and the inclusion of Queen’s Innuendo as the last track on NOW 19 seemed to perfectly dovetail in my mind with the changing of the guard over at NOW Towers as well, with the GIANT FLOATING PERSPEX LETTERS IN SPACE replacing whatever you called that abomination that had adorned the previous two covers.

But it transpires I was wrong. TWO YEARS wrong. It wasn’t until 1993 that the axe was swung and Radio 1 changed forever. So, for at least another two years, the charts, and consequently NOW, would continue to lead strange pot pourri lives, despite the best efforts of Belgian techno producers eyeing the charts like so many Bond villains eye killer missiles.

NOW 20 is nothing if not eclectic. Dance is not as prominent as it had been on the previous few releases, there’s some absolute corking tunes, and there’s no Bryan Adams. This may not seem like a big deal to younger viewers, but 1991 saw the Canadian axe man take the number one slot hostage for four months. Yes, MONTHS. As a Warner Brothers release it would have needed licensing, but for whatever reason it was not included (maybe they were aware that by Christmas that year how utterly sick of the thing the public were, a trick sadly not repeated with Wet Wet Wet’s Love is All Around a few years later). So for once the Christmas NOW release would not feature the biggest hit from its release window and not one person cared.

As with the previous couple of releases, the opening is a bit of a surprise given the calibre of acts on show, but it’s great to have Vic Reeves and the Wonder Stuff kicking things off with their spirited version of Dizzy. As a huge fan of both at the time this was one of the best singles of the year as far as I was concerned and it’s still a great party record. It is however not the best version of the song with that honour falling to Kurt Russell. Yes, that Kurt Russell.

NOW stalwart Belinda Carlisle contributes Live Your Life Be Free, coming soon to a cruise liner advert near you. The song I mean, not Ms Carlisle. It’s an odd beast; repetitive, with a throat ripping vocal which Carlisle is clearly not enjoying and a strange, seconds-long, hip-hop breakdown towards the end for no apparent reason other than to make it sound a bit more immediate. A bit like U2’s The Fly. The song which finally ended Bryan Adams top spot occupation it divided listeners more than probably any song of the period. It’s difficult to imagine the commotion this thing caused on release. U2 had become every Dad’s favourite band, and The Joshua Tree was almost as ubiquitous as Brothers in Arms had been a few years previously. Then The Fly happened. I think the fact that it pissed off so many Dad’s made it more appealing to teenagers than it would have been otherwise. It certainly did for me. It doesn’t sound like much else that was around at the time (though their time in Berlin had obviously been spent listening to a great deal of Industrial music). It could be argued (as I have done) that the seeds had been sown for this kind of thing with Simple Minds’ Kick It In back on NOW 15, but U2 made it commercially successful and, more importantly, listenable. It heralded a gear change for the then biggest band in the world and would prompt similar about-turns from acts like INXS in the coming years. Reinvention for the 90s became de rigeur.

Except possibly for the Pet Shop Boys. They decided to once again prove themselves as masters of the cover version with their wonderfully wry mash up of U2’s pompous Where The Streets Have No Name and the standard Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. If this had come out after The Fly you could have made a case for it being a brilliant pastiche of U2’s new direction (also arguing from the benefit of hindsight that it looks forward to the ridiculousness of the Pop-era of Discothèque and The Edge’s Village People moustache). But it came out six months before, making it the oldest track on the album. It had, however, been double A-sided with How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously, a critique of pop stars jumping on the charity/humanitarianism bandwagon at the drop of a cowboy hat. The Pet Shop Boys themselves are no strangers to this kind of thing themselves of course, but Bono is a particularly loathsome example, worthy of their ire.

All that silliness if followed by Erasure’s brilliant Love To Hate You, probably my favourite track of theirs, but one which never seems to get its dues. OMD’s Sailing on the Seven Seas marked something of a comeback for them and continues the knob twiddling mini-theme. It was a huge hit but listened to now it’s pretty weak tea, with a pink wafer on the side. Andy McClusky would apparently become disillusioned with the pop industry shortly afterwards and decided to get his revenge by creating Atomic Kitten.

Breast — **“Are these whole again chicken fillets?”**

Then it gets weird. Simple Red’s Something Got Me Started contains the most chilling intro to a song I’ve ever heard, especially if you know how about the randy exploits of the ginger-bonced one (or you would if your parents bought the News of the World as mine did). It’s not a bad tune for Hucknall, but it’s still Hucknall, and that’s still an issue. Lisa Stansfield is far more palatable (and like Hucknall, a buy-in from the currently AWOL Hits stable). Change is a beautiful song, and I rate it far higher than the all-conquering All Around The World, but it makes the fatal error of being low-key with a less memorable chorus. She acts now. Been in Miss Marple and everything.

(At the time of writing, I’ve just seen her on The One Show. I don’t know what she was plugging because it was The One Show and I’d rather pour concrete into my eyeballs than actually pay it any attention.)

Also lovely on the ears is Zoe’s Sunshine On A Rainy Day. The echoed drums and incessant hi-hat date it slightly, but it’s one of those irresistible “punch the air and sing along” tunes, guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Less lovely are the next two tracks, as NOW 20 goes all sexy. Well, not sexy exactly. Just um… sex, really. Just talking about sex isn’t particularly sexy, is it? As with the earlier Push It, on NOW 12, what was once considered sexy and daring now comes across as crass and sleazy, and sadly for Salt n’ Pepa once again, Let’s Talk About Sex is a bit like a kid who has learned a new swear word. There’s none of their former sass and attitude on show here. I’m not sure if Color Me Badd ever had attitude as such, but they certainly had suits based a packet of Opal Fruits. Frankly they look a child grooming gang. They hit number one with the foul I Wanna Sex You Up, and they all must be in their late 20s, if not older, singing a song that would only have ever appealed to teenage girls who probably felt equally threatened and excited at the same time by those green suits, styled facial hair and Vanilla Ice quiffs. It just turns my stomach. Have a listen to Faith No More’s Edge of the World and tell me that’s not an intentional sound-a-like.

Oddly, the other ‘sex’ song on offer here, Prince’s Gett Off is bumped a track further on, to make way for the oddly inoffensive Kenny Thomas. You might remember he had a couple of hits, but don’t worry if you don’t; you are missing nothing. Gett Off itself is pure filth, but you already knew that. Prince knows it too which is probably why he wrote it. The man just has so much sex coursing through his body he has to channel it somehow. Rozalla’s Faith In The Power of Love is not as well known, or as good as, Everybody’s Free. She played at my work’s Christmas party a few years back performing all (both) her hits. I don’t think many people knew who she was.

And then… Holy shit…

The intro is misleading, probably you haven’t heard it very often. Oddly, the exact same intro was heard on Jesus Jones’ bizarre cover version of Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile a year later. But once that deceptive few seconds have passed there is no denying what you are listening to. You could almost Name That Tune in one. It’s cheap, nasty, repetitive and nausea inducing. It’s the musical equivalent of a four year old bouncing on your head and feeding you Tootie Frooties, whilst a mysterious black suit and shades sporting gentleman injects heroin into your ankle. Your brain gets confused; the signals are all distorted and crossed. Am I angry? I want to die but this is soothing, this is warm, this is pop. You submit, just momentarily, and that’s it. You’re caught, like a fly in a web, you can do nothing but struggle. But struggling only makes its grip tighter. So you resign yourself. Wait. Maybe the end will be painless. You half hope it won’t be, and it will be so quick you won’t feel anything at all. Your head is being torn off by a big fluffy kitten; it strips your limbs from your torso one by one, like a team of ants with tiny scissors. And as you finally go into convulsions, your brain can’t quite shut off the incessant noise. A few more seconds more as you finally fade away into nothingness. Then, relief. You catch the final beat and it disappears, echoing away into the distance. It’s over. You made it. You listened to an entire 2 Unlimited track. Then, horror, as you realise it wasn’t No Limits and you still have to deal with that another day…

Side two rounds off, thankfully, with 3 very listenable tracks. Moby’s Go is a one trick pony, taking a sample from the Twin Peaks soundtrack, adding someone shouting “Go! Yeah!” and occasionally “alright”, but it is good at what it does. As are The KLF, this time appearing as The JAMMS, with Its Grim Up North. A brilliant attempt to get any old crap into the charts, this runs off a list of northern towns and cities over a heavy industrial noise-based musical arrangement. The whole thing is, once again, a massive joke, and no doubt a pun on the then emerging industrial music scene coming out of Europe), even finishing with a synthesised version of Jerusalem mixed with a cacophony of noise. I love it.

One trick pony samples continue with PM Dawn’s massive Set Adrift on Memory Bliss, which would be extremely dull without its Spandau Ballet nugget. That sample makes the tune memorable and listenable. This idea of building a whole track out of one seconds long sample from somewhere else would eventually become a goldmine for lazy producers, with many people not knowing that tunes like Groove Is In The Heart, then later monsters like Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love, would be nothing without those snippets of genius from elsewhere.

So, the first half has been quite a mixed bag, and part two struggles to fill a whole CD with enough tracks and as a result includes a few rum suspects indeed. Things start blandly with Paul Young’s long forgotten cover of Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over. Young hadn’t darkened a NOW album for a while but the single did manage to broach the top 20. Recorded as the token ‘unreleased’ track on his greatest hits album, it’s no doubt included to increase sales of that album, though quite why NOW would want to plug the Greatest Hits of an artist on a rival label is unclear (Young was signed to CBS at the time). Perhaps some negotiation was involved to get other artists included? If you want those you have to take this too?

Also unclear, to me at least, was the success of Enya, whose dreamy soundscapes I’ve never understood. But at least her Caribbean Blue is in good company (relatively) sitting alongside such dull ballads as Paula Abdul’s Rush Rush and Mark Cohn’s Walking in Memphis. Cathy Dennis and Alison Moyet also contribute tunes no one remembers either. Any Dream Will Do demonstrates how weak Jason Donovan’s voice was when removed from the SAW production grinder, and then there’s Glass Tiger’s My Town. I saw this in the track listing and had absolutely no idea what it sounded like, but recognised it instantly as soon as it started. A rugby club anthem in the making with guest vocalist Rod Stewart, this was a favourite of the old guard Radio 1 DJs at the time, but not with the public, as it only limped to number 33. The Canadian diet rockers only had one other top 40 hit, in 1986, with the aptly titled Don’t Forget Me When I’m Gone. We can’t make any promises, guys.

Then there’s the perennial problem of Julian Lennon. I’ve always felt a bit sorry for the older Lennon Jr because he had to work a lot harder for himself (younger Lennon Jr, Sean, was always daddy’s favourite) and Julian has been picked up, dropped, praised, ridiculed, loved and despised perhaps more than any other rock star spawn. I’ve no idea why his 1989 single Now You’re In Heaven wasn’t a hit, but I suspect its scary ventriloquist doll video kept it off the telly, and the lack of a proper chorus kept it off the radio. With Saltwater, the track up for display here, he took the easy option and finally caved in to do what everyone wanted him to do: he ripped off his dad. And, it pains me to say, the results are absolutely tragic. It makes so many mistakes it’s almost a test case in bad song writing. Lennon was, it’s fair to say, a committed environmentalist who has used huge amounts of his own cash to fund projects and causes; that doesn’t mean we want a heart-tugging, guffaw-inducing song about how everything makes you cry. With the ‘worthy’ box tick, let’s move onto the lyrics: rhyming ‘crying’ with ‘dying’ is as hackneyed as using sub-George Harrison guitar noodling for your instrumental break. Oh you did that too. Harrison did in fact scribble some chords for Lennon but declined to actually appear on the record making him the only Beatle to maintain a modicum of dignity come the 90s. Anyone familiar with The Rutles will recognise Saltwater under a different title, Cheese and Onions, just with nonsense lyrics of a different kind. “What will life think of me the day that I die?”, he asks. Sadly this will be the soundtrack to the epitaphs, which will no doubt contain the phrase “failed to reach the heights of his superstar father”, which is a genuine shame. Saltwater, however, is just shameful.

"Imagine all the dolphins, eating all the fish... oo-oo..." — **“Imagine all the dolphins, eating all the fish… oo-oo…”**

Shameful heart-tugging kicks off the final terror that is side four of NOW 20. The Scorpions are probably now more famous in the age of the interwebs for their dubious 70s album covers (NSFW) than for their music. The sexist German rock that made them millionaires with drink and drug problems was forgotten as they attempted to dethrone Bryan Adams from number one, with a hymn to the newly reunified fatherland. It comes across as a little odd, to say the least. This kind of thing had not troubled the upper reaches of the charts for a few years, so why this struck a chord in 1991 is anyone’s guess. It was stuck behind Adams for weeks so the record company even launched a press campaign to get people to buy it and topple the Robin Hood botherer, but to no avail. Thank Christ, because it’s bloody awful. Yes, even worse than Bryan Adams.

It does set the tone for the rest of the side though, being the usual odds and sods that don’t fit neatly anywhere else, but with a definite lean towards your Dad’s side of the market (maybe manoeuvring itself into a potential last minute Christmas gift for Dad for a change). There’s two good songs still to come. James’ Sit Down, finally a hit on its 47^th re-release, is the sound of 1990s student common rooms and indie discos. It’s still a good tune despite that sentence, though far from their best. Also great is the surprise return of Voice of the Beehive. I hinted on NOW 12 that they would return but I’m sure many would have struggled to remember what with. Their cover of I Think I Love You is fun pop, just what they did best. It doesn’t pull up any trees, but is a perfectly fine cover version of a throwaway bubble-gum pop hit, that puts a smile on your face and doesn’t outstay its welcome. In pure pop terms, I suppose Roxette’s Joyride delivers too, but it’s not very memorable and hasn’t aged well.

The rest of the side is frankly shocking. INXS toss away the live-album-flogging Shining Star, surely little more than a B-side beefed up to single status to help shift Live Baby Live (where it appears as a studio track in the middle of a concert album!). There’s the basis of a song here, but we only get one verse and one chorus, yet it still lasts over three minutes. Slade’s final top 40 hit (bar endless re-entries for Merry Xmas Everybody) has the indignity of featuring Mike Smash, sorry, Mike Reid making an appearance doing a dreadful American DJ accent. Radio Wall of Sound is utter bilge with only Noddy’s bellowing over the chorus to rescue it. He hated the thing apparently.

Monty Python’s Always Look On The Brightside of Life got a re-release thanks to Simon Mayo continually playing it on the Radio 1 breakfast show after hearing it at a Tottenham football match. It probably helped that there was a Monty Python compilation album that needed flogging too. You all know this so I’ll just leave you to consider how on earth the most chillingly bittersweet comedy moments in cinema history has now been reduced to Eric Idle’s pension plan, and a cheap gag to roll out for the Royal Variety performance. Of sole interest is the fact that NOW 20 includes the radio version (not commercially released) which features a re-recorded outro by Idle. That might make it worth one more listen if you can be bothered.

NOW 20 contains 35 tracks, the most in the series so far. What is odd is that it could have had at least two more but for the fact they decided to close the album with a song lasting a ball-busting eight and a half minutes! And it’s not even a good song. Well, it’s one of those that people say they like, and occasionally drunkenly bellow out at karaoke (always forgetting how long the bloody thing is and getting bored halfway through). I hate American Pie. I hate its pomposity. I hate its length. I hate the slow intro, the jaunty middle and the ridiculously protracted ending. I hate Don McLean’s stupid stars and stripes thumb. I hate the fact that Don McLean has the same name as a 70s comedian and Summertime Special stalwart. I hate Madonna’s cover version, I hate that it’s never explained what the bolloclks lyrics are all about. (Yes, I know it’s about Buddy Holly, but how? Why? Where?). And I hate the fact it got re-released in a full version for no good reason in 1991, reached number 12 and ended up on NOW 20.

So the second half of NOW 20 has hit a quite stunning low. But no one cares. No one cares either that NOW 20 was the last NOW album with an accompanying VHS release. All anyone cares about when it comes to NOW 20 is it was the first album to feature the still-going GIANT PERSPEX LETTERS… IN SPAAAAAACE!!!! Design. And in a single stroke any sense of innovation, charm and individuality that the series had was lost forever.

I’m fully aware that for anyone buying a NOW album between 1991 and today this is what a NOW album looks like; that doesn’t make it right. Maybe Don McLean was right after all: 23^rd November 1991, the release day for NOW 20, really was the day the music died. Moving into 1992, my NOW odyssey is getting harder.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 20

Release date

18th November 1991

Biggest tracks

Dizzy – Vic Reeves & The Wonderstuff

The Fly – U2

Wind of Change – Scorpions

Lost gems

It’s Grim Up North (Part 1) – The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu

Love to Hate You – Erasure

Forgotten tracks

My Town – Glass Tiger

Shining Star – INXS

Worst Tracks

I Wanna Sex You Up – Color Me Badd

Get Ready For This – 2 Unlimited

What’s missing?

There’s No Other Way – Blur

I’m Too Sexy– Right Said Fred

More Than Words – Extreme

NB: Last NOW release to have an accompanying VHS release

Track listing

CD 1
Dizzy	Vic Reeves & The Wonderstuff
Live Your Life Be Free	Belinda Carlisle
The Fly	U2
Where The Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)	Pet Shop Boys
Love To Hate You	Erasure
Sailing On The Seven Seas	Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
Something Got Me Started	Simply Red
Change	Lisa Stansfield
Sunshine On A Rainy Day	Zoe
Let’s Talk About Sex	Salt ‘N’ Pepa
I Wanna Sex You Up	Color Me Badd
Best Of You	Kenny Thomas
Gett Off	Prince & The New Power Generation
Faith (In The Power Of Love)	Rozalla
Get Ready For This	2 Unlimited
Go	Moby
It’s Grim Up North (Part 1)	The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu
Set Adrift On Memory Bliss	PM Dawn

CD 2
Don’t Dream It’s Over	Paul Young
Caribbean Blue	Enya
Saltwater	Julian Lennon
Rush, Rush	Paula Abdul
Any Dream Will Do	Jason Donovan
Too Many Walls	Cathy Dennis
This House	Alison Moyet
Walking In Memphis	Marc Cohen
My Town	Glass Tiger
Wind Of Change	Scorpions
Shining Star	INXS
Joyride	Roxette
Sit Down	James
I Think I Love You	Voice Of The Beehive
Radio Wall Of Sound	Slade
Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life	Monty Python
American Pie (Part I)	Don McLean

April 2, 2014

Now That’s What I Call Music 8 – Not perfect, but perfect for you

Welcome to the future!

For Christmas 1986, NOW would deliver a lovely shiny package for its fans, because the future is always shiny, isn’t it? NOW 8 is fit to burst with number ones, top ten hits, legendary tracks and a team up between Dr and the Medics and Roy Wood that nobody remembers. It was also bursting with extras too, boasting a competition and the opportunity to purchase official NOW merchandise! NOW was big business and they were going to take you for everything you’ve got.

But it was still better than Hits 5.

NOW 8 was the first of the series in which European music giant Polygram was involved; it was the first to be designed by Quick on the Draw (who still design the albums today) and it was the first to be released on a regular CD (after the false start with NOW 4), even if it only featured half the tracks. The idea of a full, double CD release must surely have been contemplated, but given that the core audience for the albums was still teenagers, the thought of them being able to afford such a thing must have been a key factor in delaying their releases for a further two albums. In the mid-to-late 80s a double CD could set you back anything up to £20, depending on where you bought it. That sounds an obscene amount today, let alone 27 years ago! So, clearly, a single CD selection was deemed the preferred option with which to test the water. So four years after a re-issue of an old Billy Joel album became the first commercially available CD (in Japan, at least) NOW finally decided that the time was right, the public was ready and a CD had to be part of their package.

Not only did they produce artwork to represent this monumental decision, as if the CD had been forged in the artwork itself, the silver, shiny new dawn was also plastered all over the TV ad, featuring, for the first time, the unmistakable tones of David “The now very far from a kid” Jensen.

Ironically, NOW 8 would have been a great choice with which to launch a full CD release, as the line up is a very strong one, including three number ones. They even got lucky anticipating the hit songs they included before they were released (with one very notable exception). It’s perhaps the purest pop selection so far in the series. Side one is wall-to-wall pop goodness from the leaner, funkier Duran Duran, right through to OMD’s bouncy (Forever) Live and Die, not, as I briefly thought at the time, the theme to a Bond movie I’d heard of but not seen.

The Duran’s Notorious is simply brilliant and, maybe surprisingly for a lifelong Duranie, I now think it’s their best single. You’ve got to admire their balls, frankly, for going back to the bear pit of the pop charts, no longer the biggest band in the world, and with their tails between their legs after two satisfying, but hardly earth-shatteringly successful side projects, short two members, one of whom is openly malicious and dismissive about you, and carrying a sound unlike anything you’ve done before. Those screaming teenagers didn’t know what hit them, losing both Wham and Duran in a matter of months. Spandau Ballet and the withering Culture Club just didn’t compare.

Disco king, Nile Rodger’s production adds a whole new level to their sound, sensibly playing up John Taylor’s amazing bass work in the wake of losing a regular lead guitarist. the fact that Notorious made number two in the USA, but struggled to scrape into the top ten here in the UK is a travesty to which, I think, we all should feel a little ashamed.

The Pet Shop Boys continue to produce wonderfully overblown fluff masquerading as social commentary with Suburbia, which is followed by the still toweringly good Walk This Way, which suffers the same fate as it does on the radio – when should it be faded out? Here they settle for around 3 minutes 30, though officially it can go on for almost another two minutes.

While Walk This Way is probably the biggest track on offer, in legacy terms, the ACTUAL biggest track here is in fact the biggest track of 1986, as The Communards finally got the success they deserved as they rework, reinvent and rejuvenate Harold Melvin’s Don’t Leave Me This Way. I recently saw a list of “Songs You Didn’t Know Were Cover Versions”, which featured Soft Cell’s Tainted Love. Well, if that’s on there, then this surely should have been included too. This was the sound of late summer 1986, and it still sounds great today (though, as I’m a contrary bugger, I prefer their version of Never Can Say Goodbye, which found itself on NOW 10).

Swing Out Sister were a new band on the scene in 1986, and newly insurrected Polygram were obviously keen to plug them, including the single Breakout just two weeks after its release (this was back in the days when singles could take weeks to reach their highest position; going straight in at number one, or even in the top ten, was considered a rarity). Luckily for them Breakout‘s mix of pop, jazz and electro was perfectly timed. Despite that description, they never had the feel of the kind of ‘yuppie pop’ tag that ended up tainting people like Sade or Level 42. Swing Out Sister were fun, the way all the best pop is. The same is true of OMD’s (Forever) Live and Die, perhaps not one of their better-known tracks, but still a good pop track.

Also, surprisingly good (although given his history, perhaps not) is Steve Winwood’s Higher Love. It’s a track I often dismiss as the kind of Dad-rock which became so prevalent as the 80s went on; the alternative scene in the 80s was so far underground, people like Phil Collins, Rod Stewart and Status Quo just kept on having hit after hit. I bracketed Winwood into that camp. I always had a fondness for Roll With It, but maybe because I’m older now (and have a new appreciation for his earlier work) I can now accept something like Higher Love with a new maturity. Genesis’ In Too Deep smells of poo though, something even its association with American Psycho can do nothing about.

I dread to think what Larry Blackmon’s cod piece smells like, but it’s back on display with the now legendary Word Up. Hard to believe this is the same band who produced the frankly dreadful Single Life on NOW 6 (where I incorrectly stated that it had the same intro as Word Up; turns out, it was the other way around). Both feature samples from Ennio Morricone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly soundtrack, back when sampling was still in its infancy.

And so we find ourselves in the dance zone, this time taking over side two, where it feels a bit more at home, keeping the party going following on from all that pop malarkey (almost ruined by smelly old Genesis). In a touch of creative compiling, Larry Blackmon’s flattop is immediately followed by the same haircut in the shape of Grace Jones’ I’m Not Perfect. It’s a got a similar sound to Notorious, unsurprising given the involvement of Nile Rodgers, but fails to capture that wonderful otherworldliness she can bring to music, as on Slave to the Rhythm. That track could only have been performed by Jones. This could be a Eurythmics b-side. Another track included on NOW 8 before its actual release, it would prove to be a notable flop, failing to make the Top 40. Much better, and more successful is Mel and Kim’s Showing Out, their first single, and the first of four top ten hits (with their only four singles!) before Mel’s tragic illness. Yes, it’s a cynical Stock, Aitken, Waterman production (and they’ll be much more of that over the next few NOW albums) and, surprisingly for that production team, it’s very rough around the edges. Stuff isn’t quite cut together as cleanly as it should be, with notable jerks and slices through the song which once you know they’re there can’t be unheard. Shame as it’s a great dance-pop tune.

As is Jermaine Stewart’s We Don’t Have To … It’s fluff, but it’s fun. I’m not sure what’s happening with the title here though. At first I thought NOW were being a tad coy with their titling, but there is genuine confusion as my two source books list it differently (The Guinness British Hit Singles as We Don’t Have To… Take Our Clothes Off and The Guinness Top 40 Charts as We Don’t Have To…). The single sleeve shows it as one sentence with no ellipses. I don’t know…

Jaki Graham is back, for her fourth appearance in a row, and her last. Step Right Up hadn’t been released when NOW 8 hit the shops, but it is pretty forgettable, and would prove to be her final top 40 hit. In contrast Janet Jackson was celebrating her first hit with the still awesome What Have You Done For Me Lately. So different from what her big brother was selling trillions of records doing, it still sounds like it’s about six months ahead of its time, even though, oddly, it was the oldest track on NOW 8, having been released in March 1986, eight months previously.

The dance side then slows it down for some smooching, with Human League’s Human (which on closer listen is a pretty horrible song about a couple who keep cheating on each other because they’re “only human”…) and Boris Gardiner’s I Wanna Wake Up With You. This wasn’t the guy who parachuted out of a spaceship last year; this is a guy who somehow managed to have a massive number one with a dreary, repetitive love song that sounded like it was recorded in his bedroom with a Casio keyboard. He may also have been a reggae pioneer in the 70s, but on this showing I think that’s a lie.

Things get a bit serious on side three, as we enter Dad territory. In fact, with the exception of Huey Lewis and the News’ Stuck with You (another song that on closer listen doesn’t sound like the lovely song you always thought it was) this is all very low key and moody. Don’t Give Up and Think For A Minute were clearly only included because of the success of Peter Gabriel and The Housemartins’ previous singles, as neither screams “Top Chart Hit”. Madness’ Waiting For The Ghost Train was a disappointing end to their golden period (it’s billed here as their farewell single), and Status Quo’s In The Army Now snatches the worst song on the album title from Boris Gardiner’s clutches. What was the country thinking sending this to number two (kept off the top by Every Loser Wins, which I’ll deal with in a moment)? Big Country’s One Great Thing is not one of their better tunes.

status_quo — **In The Army Now got to *WHERE* in the charts?**

The side closes out with a surprise: Billy Bragg’s single NOW appearance with the wonderful Greetings to the New Brunette. Obviously hoping it would repeat his top 30 showing with Levi Stubbs’ Tears, this equally good tune was included pre-release, but sadly (unbelievably) it failed to dent the magic 40. Not that I’m sure Mr Bragg gave a monkey’s about things like that. Just as I’m sure he wasn’t bothered about being followed by Cutting Crew’s (I Just) Died In Your Arms (it must have been something I ate). Don’t know what happened with them or why the public fell out of love with them so quickly. Maybe the appearance of the near identical Then Jericho the next year had something to do with it.

From all that doom and gloom, we are firmly back in pop wonderland with side four. Kim Wilde’s You Keep Me Hangin’ On is in the same vein (and is arguably as good) as The Communards, in re-visiting classic soul for an 80s audience. Respectful, but also great on its own terms. It Bites would join Cutting Crew in the dumper soon after their only major hit Calling All the Heroes, which, to a kid like me, sounded like the future of pop, but now I realise is a massively pretentious piece of prog-rock, synth, jazz, pop blancmange nonsense. It’s massively over-produced, much like their Wikipedia page, which is bursting with such choice bon mots as ” a band composed of voracious pop fans with a parallel taste for progressive rock.” No… stop it. That’s just silly. For a band who only had one hit, it’s pretty comprehensive stuff.

Also very silly is the big boo-boo by the compilers. We’ve noted a couple of early inclusions which proved to be a bit wide of the mark, but Dr and The Medics with Roy Wood just make them look very foolish. I know that everyone reading this has just gone “Wha…?”, I did too when I first saw the track listing, and saw their inclusion with a version of ABBA’s Waterloo. I’ll just repeat that, as it may have trouble settling your brain: Dr and the Medics (as in Spirit in the Sky), with Roy Wood (as in Wizzard, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday), covering ABBA’s Waterloo… NOW certainly thought it was a guaranteed winner, and I shall quote:

“Roy Wood was number 1 with The Move (Blackberry Way) and with Wizzard (See My Baby Jive & Angel Fingers. Dr and the Medics were number 1 with Spirit in the Sky. Waterloo was number 1 and a Eurovision winner for ABBA. So this new version should get to…”

That’s the actual blurb on the sleeve, word for word, including the cheeky ellipses. That is utterly ludicrous confidence. And since you’ve probably never even heard it, I should tell you it managed to get to the dizzying heights of number 45.

More successful was Debbie Harry’s French Kissin’ in the USA and Robert Palmer’s I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On. Oddly not as successful was Paul Hardcastle’s The Wizard, which stalled at number 15 despite weekly advertising as the then theme for Top of the Pops (replacing the epochal Yellow Pearl by Phil Lynott).

In contrast to the brilliant 80s versions of 60s classics we’ve already seen, Gwen Guthrie’s remodelling of (They Long To Be) Close To You is everything that’s wrong with 80s cover versions; sludgy synthesisers, over-confident crooning, wildly inappropriate backing singers and arrangement, mention of “I love your sexy sexy moves”… it’s a mess. And that’s coming from someone for whom The Carpenters make me want to staple my ears shut. Still at least there’s Nick Berry to look forward too.

**Do you know how much of a disappointment you are to your mother because you are not him?**

Everyone who slags off The X Factor or The Voice should be forced to listen to this (along with Anita Dobson and The Banned (Sharon and Kelvin)) and realise that hearing people who can actually sing is a bit of a novelty compared to when any old stage school hack who manages to snag a part in a soap opera managed to get to number one. It wasn’t just Eastenders either (though they were the main culprits). Neighbours of course would provide half of all the top 40 hits between 1988-90, and then there were the hits from Malandra Burrows, Martine McCutcheon, Adam Rickitt and The Cat From Corrie’s Opening Titles; unwanted chart botherers the lot of them. So next time you look at the charts and think “who are these talentless idiots?”, remember they are only following a time-honoured tradition of milking your 15 minutes for all it’s worth. And at least it kept You’re In The Army Now from getting to number one.

But wait! There’s more!

With NOW 8 there is also the amazing opportunity to own a piece of pop history! Yes you too could own an official Now That’s What I Call Music sweatshirt! Light in weight but heavy in warmth, they were available in ‘Chinese Jade’ (green) or ‘Electric Blue’ (oo-er!). Made by Le Coq Sportif, they were advertised as being for a limited time only. But then they were still available when NOW 9 came out due to “exceptional public demand”. Not because “we’ve still got a warehouse full of the things”. Not at all. And at £20 a pop I’m not surprised; that’s about £50 in new money. And they were worried about people forking out for a double CD at the same price?

NOW 8 also featured a competition, which handily also doubled as a plug for all the other great NOW albums still available (and no doubt would make great last minute Christmas gifts). Note that alongside NOW 7, the re-released Christmas Album, and the latest NOW Dance, there’s an anomaly on show: NOW That’s What I Call Music ’86. I’ll come to this in due course, as it is an oddity and one which requires its own post. The CD version of NOW 8 is intrinsically linked with NOW ’86, so I’ll discuss that in more detail there too (everything on the CD is on NOW 8 as discussed above, so you won’t miss out on me being sarcastic about any of the songs, it’s more to do with how the selection of tracks for NOW 8’s CD and NOW ’86 are interlinked).

NOW had embraced the future and was now selling itself to a new market, the upwardly mobile of society. No longer the sole preserve of bedroom-ensconced, pop-loving, but probably spotty and grumpy, teenagers, the CD age was taking NOW to the mobile-phone buying, Porsche-driving, Filofax-touting nouveau riche. NOW 9 would model itself in their image.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 8

Release date

24th November 1986

Biggest tracks

Walk This Way – Run DMC (Aerosmith are not credited)

Don’t Leave Me This Way – The Communards

Word Up – Cameo

Lost gems

Greetings to the New Brunette) – Billy Bragg

Forgotten tracks

I’m Not Perfect – Grace Jones

(They Long To Be) Close To You – Gwen Guthrie

Waterloo – Dr and the Medics with Roy Wood (fair play, the video is fantastic, unfortunately the sound on this is very ropey)

What’s missing

All I Ask of You – Cliff Richard and Sarah Brightman

(I don’t like it, but it was a huge top ten hit)

Track listing

Side one
Notorious	Duran Duran
Suburbia	Pet Shop Boys
Walk This Way	Run DMC
Don’t Leave Me This Way	The Communards
Breakout	Swing Out Sister
Higher Love	Steve Winwood
(Forever) Live And Die	Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
In Too Deep	Genesis

Side two
Word Up (7” Vocal Version)	Cameo
I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect For You)	Grace Jones
Showing Out (Get Fresh At The Weekend)	Mel & Kim
We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off	Jermaine Stewart
Step Right Up	Jaki Graham
What Have You Done For Me Lately	Janet Jackson
Human	The Human League
I Wanna Wake Up With You	Boris Gardiner

Side three
Don’t Give Up	Peter Gabriel / Kate Bush
Think For A Minute	The Housemartins
(Waiting For The) Ghost Train	Madness
In The Army Now	Status Quo
Stuck With You	Huey Lewis & The News
One Great Thing	Big Country
Greetings To The New Brunette	Billy Bragg
(I Just) Died In Your Arms	Cutting Crew

Side four
You Keep Me Hanging On	Kim Wilde
Calling All The Heroes	It Bites
Waterloo	Doctor & The Medics with Roy Wood
French Kissin’ In The USA	Deborah Harry
I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On	Robert Palmer
The Wizard	Paul Hardcastle
(They Long To Be) Close To You	Gwen Guthrie
Every Loser Wins	Nick Berry

CD track listing

Notorious	Duran Duran
Suburbia	Pet Shop Boys
Walk This Way	Run DMC
I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect For You)	Grace Jones
Showing Out (Get Fresh At The Weekend)	Mel & Kim
Step Right Up	Jaki Graham
Breakout	Swing Out Sister
You Keep Me Hanging On	Kim Wilde
Calling All The Heroes	It Bites
Waterloo	Doctor & The Medics with Roy Wood
French Kissin’ In The USA	Deborah Harry
Stuck With You	Huey Lewis & The News
Don’t Give Up	Peter Gabriel / Kate Bush
(Waiting For The) Ghost Train	Madness
(Forever) Live And Die	Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
In Too Deep	Genesis

Video version

Venus had previously appeared on the album of NOW 7. Sometimes by Erasure would later appear on Now 9.

Four other tracks do not appear on any NOW album (marked with *)

Duran Duran – Notorious
Pet Shop Boys – Suburbia
Orchestral Manoeuvres in The Dark – Forever Live and Die
Erasure – Sometimes
The Communards – Don’t Leave Me This Way
Mel & Kim – Showing Out (Get Fresh at the Weekend)
Bananarama – Venus
Jaki Graham – Step Right Up
Swing Out Sister – Breakout
The Housemartins – Think For A Minute
Madness – Waiting for the Ghost Train
The Damned – Anything*
Big Country – One Great Thing
Ultravox – All Fall Down*
Status Quo – In the Army Now
Glass Tiger – Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)*
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Warriors of the Wasteland*
Kim Wilde – You Keep Me Hangin’ On
Boris Gardiner – I Wanna Wake Up With You

April 9, 2013

Now That’s What I Call Music 4 – Hello, is it twee you’re looking for?

Whilst NOW 3 may have given us the wonderful NOW! balls logo, it also gave us another, less welcome taste of 80s design: wacky, wavy neon lines. So 80s, so Max Headroom, so The Roxy, so ‘bank advert trying to ensnare teenagers paper round money when they should be spending it on compilations of top chart hits’. That rather ghastly theme continues on the cover design of NOW 4, and no doubt onto the bed linen of many teenagers who bought the thing. NOW 4 adopts a slightly less obvious, but more vomit inducing, green background, over its predecessors’ standard black background. Sadly, vomit-inducing is the order of the day for 1984’s NOW! swansong, released just in time for the Christmas, last minute panic present buying market.

From Boy George’s local chicken shop promotional outfit on the cover and the first stirrings of Arthur Baker’s utterly dreadful “Special Dance Mix” of Paul ‘Macca’ McCartney’s No More Lovely Nights, you get the distinct feeling this is not going to be a particularly comfortable ride. And to make matters worse, the only number one on offer here is Lionel Ritchie’s plasticine head singing the turgid Hello. Incidentally, Lionel, no, it most certainly not you that we were looking for.

Most of the good stuff on show here are songs that are usually remembered for their 80s kitsch value, rather than an inherent ‘greatness’. A good example of this is displayed early on side one with the appearances of Together in Electric Dreams and Never Ending Story, two theme songs from mildly successful films (even if Electric Dreams is now long forgotten, that whole boy-meets-computer rom-com sub-genre never did catch on). To be fair, Electric Dreams is a much better song than Limahl’s last hit, and deserves more credit. Both Phil Oakley and Giorgio Morodor are too talented to be dismissed, it’s just unfortunate that so much of their art is based around 80s synthesisers, an area which doesn’t travel well.

Staying with the synthesisers, Oakey’s former cohorts Heaven 17 (born from an early incarnation of Human League) also appear with the now forgotten Sunset Now. The Thompson Twins make their ubiquitous appearance with Doctor, Doctor, a song released a whopping ten months before NOW 4, and before the band’s track that had appeared on NOW 3. The Twins current release, Sister of Mercy, appears to have been snagged by the incoming Hits Album, so NOW! must have figured an old Thompson Twins track was better than none at all (tellingly, a glimpse of the video appears in the TV advert, but the song doesn’t).

This raises the question of what impact The Hits Album was going to have on NOW!, particularly this edition. I’ll cover Hits in more detail in another post, but in short the creation of the rival series would see the end of NOW! being able to feature artists from the CBS and WEA labels, two of the biggest labels in the world, and home to such legends as Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Wham and soon George Michael. It seems almost a massive two fingers to Hits that Jacko appears here, his only NOW! showing, with a track recorded over a decade earlier. Part of a series of ‘lost tracks’ found in a dusty vault at his old label, Motown, some bright spark decided to dust them off, remix them to sound more 80s and release the album in the wake of the phenomenal success of Jacko’s Thriller album. The album did OK, but hardly matched its big brother, probably as the public started to smell a rat that this wasn’t an official release. The single Farewell My Summer Love is a lyrically suspect tale of meeting a girl who’s on summer holiday and maybe meeting her again next year when school is through, or some such nonsense. Compared to Thriller or Billie Jean, this is pretty ropey stuff, but somehow scraped into the top 10. NOW! were obviously not going to turn down the opportunity to have the world’s biggest artist appear, no matter how crap the material, as it was the only chance they were going to get.

Still, despite losing a couple of their more reliable fillers, NOW! still had a couple of aces up its sleeve: EMI still had Duran Duran, the biggest band in the world, who were two singles away from splitting up, and Virgin had the unstoppable Culture Club, here showcasing the song that Boy George described as a ‘stupid’ and that probably killed his career. Oops. Despite reaching number 2, The War Song would be Culture Club’s last big hit until their late 90s reunion. (And to add insult to injury, it was kept off the top by Stevie Wonder’s I Just Called To Say I Love You and seems to have been the inspiration for the ITV Schools music which would appear later in the decade.)

Speaking of stupid songs, there’s a fair few on show here: there’s Elton John’s deeply annoying Passengers, the Eurythmics over-produced, and near unlistenable mess Sexcrime (1984) and Julian Lennon’s irritating Too late for Goodbyes, yet another example of the trend for horrible white boy reggae pop fusion which blighted the charts for far too long during the decade. Culture Club and maybe (maybe!) The Police were the only acts who ever managed to pull it off successfully.

At least side three looks like it might rock things up a bit. Queen appear for the third album in succession, and are backed up by The Quo, Big Country and the first appearance from a little Irish band who were pulling up trees in America, U2. It would not be their last. Yes, it might all be a bit stonewashed jeans and white t-shirt (or leather vest in U2’s case) but the guitar-fest is a bit of respite from the endless bleeps and bloops of the first two sides. It’s short-lived.

808 — **“Without you I’m nothing”, said the Now albums of the 80s**

Fergal Sharkey’s silly Listen to Your Father bridges the gap between axe-wielding and a return to the 808s, with OMD’s ludicrous Tesla Girls. But before the album disappears into the vacuum of nothingness that is Nik Kershaw’s dreary Human Racing there is a treat, supplied by the lovely Kim Wilde. Not a massive hit, The Second Time is a bit of a corker, and not a little bit rude. Or rather, suggestive. It’s pretty bloody obvious what Ms Wilde is singing about, and most blokes at the time would find it hard to resist a line like “Look in the mirrors and see the heat of something new, Why don’t we do it, just do it once again”. Oh my. I think it’s better than Kids in America.

The first track on Side Four is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, Ray Parker Jr’s Ghostbusters not only appears here, but was also on The Hits Album. Arista, the label concerned (and also home to The Thompson Twins), were not tied to any of the major’s responsible for the compilation albums, so were technically free to license their tracks to whomever they saw fit. The fact that Ghostbusters appears on both would suggest a desire from both camps to have one of the biggest hits of the year on their records (though surprisingly, it never made number one, stuck for three weeks behind that immovable object that was the bloody Stevie Wonder song. The second notable fact is that the track is incorrectly credited. The title is listed as Ghostbusters (Searchin’ For the Spirit). Oh, thinks I, maybe that is in fact the full title of the track. Bracketed suffixes are often left off song titles for space, or simply because they are pretentious toss and are best forgotten. In this case however neither is true; Searchin’ for the Spirit is in fact the subtitle given to an extended version of the track which featured on an alternative single release (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWMEncznDvI). But not here. This is your common or garden single and radio version, identical, bar fading out a few seconds later, to the version on The Hits Album. Was this a deliberate attempt to deceive purchasers into thinking the version on NOW 4 was a different one to that on The Hits Album? Was the incorrect version used on the album, and the extended version was meant to be included? Or was it just a mix up over the title? We will probably never know. And you probably don’t really care.

Side Four then sort of drifts away. Jump remains a fun, feel-good song, we get the first of many appearances for the slap bass of Level 42, Rockwell’s attempt to be both Ray Parker Jr and Michael Jackson at the same time on Somebody’s Watching Me, and Malcolm McClaren’s Madam Butterfly is a great musical experiment (of a kind which would become ubiquitous in the charts towards the end of the century) once he stops wittering on over the first minute. The final track by Eugene Wilde is a now forgotten piece of fluff of the “ooh baby, let’s go have sex” variety, the inspiration here being Sexual Healing, but looking forward to people like R Kelly and Keith Sweat. Take away the 80s production and this could have been released at anytime in the past 30 years.

It’s a disappointingly bland finish to an album which has an air of going through the motions about it. With Hits already in the shops consumers weighed up the pros and cons, and went with Hits. NOW 4 is the only album in the series not to reach number 1, and it’s easy to see why. There’s one serious problem with NOW 4, and that’s, ironically, a lack of hits. Take away Ghostbusters, Jump and Hello, and this is a very dull, uninspiring collection. Brian Glover does his best in the advert but you suspect even he thinks this is all a bit thin.

Historically, NOW 4 is important for one reason (and without it, it would probably have been forgotten altogether) being the first of the series to be released on CD. It wasn’t a conventional CD release however, containing just 15 tracks, and being a mix of tracks from the three albums released in 1984. (The cassette version makes reference to The Best of Now 1984 Compact Disc, but the record makes no reference to the CD at all.) The experiment must have been far from a success as it wasn’t attempted again until Now 8, two years later. The CD itself is considered a rare collector’s item now. At the time of writing one copy is on eBay for over £300, with 19 bids, and rising…

Now that NOW! wasn’t the only game in town, and its compilation crown had been toppled, it seemed a serious re-think was in order, and it be a long nine months before NOW! would return.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 4

Release date

26th November 1984

Biggest tracks

Hello – Lionel Ritchie

Ghostbusters – Ray Parker Jr

Jump – The Pointer Sisters

Lost gems

The Second Time – Kim Wilde (a truly bizarre video in which Ms Wilde battles an exploding hotel room, a multi-coloured Mummy, and some of the worst 80s fashion ever seen in a music video)

Sunset Now – Heaven 17

The stinker

No More Lonely Nights (Special Dance Mix) – Paul McCartney

Forgotten tracks

Warning Sign – Nick Heyward

Gotta Get You Home Tonight – Eugene Wilde

What’s missing

Wild Boys – Duran Duran

(possibly not ready for inclusion, the track was released two weeks before NOW 4, but seems in retrospect to be a massive omission)

Blue Jean – David Bowie

Track listing

Side One
No More Lonely Nights (Special Dance Mix)		Paul McCartney
Together In Electric Dreams		Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder
Why?		Bronski Beat
The Never Ending Story		Limahl
Warning Sign		Nick Heyward
Missing You		John Waite
Farewell My Summer Love		Michael Jackson
Hello		Lionel Richie

Side Two
The War Song		Culture Club
Passengers		Elton John
Too Late For Goodbyes		Julian Lennon
Shout To The Top		The Style Council
Doctor Doctor		The Thompson Twins
Sunset Now		Heaven 17
Respect Yourself		The Kane Gang
Private Dancer (Single Edit)		Tina Turner

Side Three
It’s A Hard Life		Queen
The Wanderer		Status Quo
East Of Eden		Big Country
Pride (In The Name Of Love)		U2
Listen To Your Father		Feargal Sharkey
Tesla Girls		Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
The Second Time		Kim Wilde
Human Racing		Nik Kershaw

Side Four
Ghostbusters		Ray Parker Jr
If It Happens Again		UB40
Jump (For My Love)		The Pointer Sister
Hot Water		Level 42
Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)		Eurythmics
Somebody’s Watching Me		Rockwell
Madam Butterfly (Un Bel Di Vedremo)		Malcolm McLaren
Gotta Get You Home Tonight		Eugene Wilde

CD Tracklisting

Duran Duran – The Reflex

Ray Parker Jr – Ghostbusters (Searchin for the Spirit)

Culture Club – The War Song

John Waite – Missing You

O.M.D. – Locomotion

UB40 – If It Happens Again

Tina Turner – What’s Love Got to Do with It

Bronski Beat – Why?

The Style Council – Shout to the Top!

Phil Colins – Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)

Giorgio Moroder & Philip Oakey – Together in Electric Dreams

Julian Lennon – Too Late for Goodbyes

Status Quo – The Wanderer

Thompson Twins – Doctor! Doctor!

Queen – Radio Ga Ga

Video edition

The video version this time around did feature mainly tracks from the accompanying album. Only four tracks were not on NOW 4 (indicated with a *).

Meatloaf’s Modern Girl and The Thompson Twins’ Sister of Mercy did feature on The Hits Album, further muddying the waters over the various licensing deals that were needed to put these albums together.

Queen – It’s a Hard Life

Tina Turner – Private Dancer

Giorgio Moroder & Phil Oakey – Together in Electric Dreams

UB40 – If It Happens Again

Limahl – Never Ending Story

Culture Club – The War Song

Julian Lennon – Too Late for Goodbyes

Ray Parker Jnr. – Ghostbusters

Thompson Twins – Sister of Mercy*

John Waite – Missing You

Nik Kershaw – Human Racing

Meat Loaf – Modern Girl*

Kim Wilde – The Second Time

Malcolm McLaren – Madam Butterfly

Nick Heyward – Warning Sign

OMD – Tesla Girls

Iron Maiden – Aces High*

Fergal Sharkey – Listen to Your Father

Heaven 17 – Sunset Now

Depeche Mode – Blasphemous Rumours*

March 24, 2013

Now! That’s What I Call Music 3 – Can U Pig It?

NOW! continued its first full year in the summer of 1984, with the release of NOW 3. And it’s a porker! It’s the pig one! Compilations don’t get much pigger than this! It’s so big I may need a ham with this review.

Sorry, I’ll stop being silly now.

It’s just that the pig made his triumphant debut as a cover star, advert leading man (voiced, of course, by Brian Glover) and general ‘face’ of NOW! As we’ve already seen, the pig has an important role to play in the glorious history of NOW!, but it’s still a bit… odd. There’s no obvious connection between a walking bacon sandwich and pop music. Maybe someone at the design agency thought it was a nice way to honour the origins of the name (see here). Maybe someone over a lunchtime beer thought it was hilarious to put sunglasses on a pig. Google “pig sunglasses” and you’ll see a great number of the world’s population think it still is. For whatever reason, the pig was here, and for a while, he would remain. Though he would remain in the subconcious of a great many pop fans for a lot longer.

Definitely not odd is the first appearance of the ‘classic’ NOW! logo. I say classic in inverted commas deliberately because it’s really only classic for anyone who remembers the albums from 3 to 17 in the series. To be fair, 15 albums using the same logo not only shows tremendous faith in the brand, but also the ingenuity of the various designers who would work on the series.

After the legendary balls logo (and an almost suicidal rebrand at NOW 18, which we’ll come to in due course) NOW! has relied on the other classic design of bloody big blocky text in some abstract landscape. It works, otherwise they wouldn’t have continued with it for over 20 years. But back in the 80s, bright colours and lightning bolts were where it was at.

Red, blue, green balls, Impact font (a design classic, if one that’s sadly overused) and a yellow lightning bolt. For my generation it’s as iconic as the Coke ribbon, the Nike swoosh or the Apple…er…apple. Within the design, ‘NOW’ remains the focus, with ‘Music’ secondary but still important. I think it’s clear, and the spines of the albums back this up, that at this point, the marketers were happy for us to approximate the unwieldy full title to the more compact ‘Now Music’. The public, of course, would soon have their own ideas in due course.

Released at the end of July, just as the school summer holidays kicked off, natch, NOW 3 would have an extra month of chart hits to plunder over its sadly disappointing predecessor. Although only containing 3 number ones, it’s a significantly stronger line-up, and don’t forget, had Two Tribes not dominated the top spot for an astonishing nine weeks (!), there could have been a few more chart toppers to choose from (though as many of the number two’s from the period later turned up on the first Hits Album later in the year, maybe the rival record companies were a bit more reluctant to license their hits to the NOW! boys, despite appearances here for some of those same labels’ hottest artists like Wham and Howard Jones).

Even given that, the track listing, at least for the first half is top drawer, and chock-a-block with winners, kicking off with the biggest players in town at the time, Duran Duran. Amazingly, in hindsight, The Reflex was only the Durans 2nd number one, and it would be their last too. Sales were no doubt helped by the fact the single version was massively re-worked from the version on their album, Seven and the Ragged Tiger, from which this was the third single. It is brilliant though. Also benefitting from new versions was Frankie Goes to Hollywood, with Two Tribes being released in about 4,675 different formats and remixes, which no doubt helped it squat in the top spot for so long (its predecessor, Relax, would later join it by returning up the charts to number two). The third number one, and along with the Durans and Frankie, vying for the title of chart kings at the time, was Wham’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, kicking off Side Four. When you factor in seminal tracks from Queen, Bananarama, Nik Kershaw and Tina Turner, this is getting on for one of the strongest line-ups in the series. And Ashley Abram does a brilliant job compiling it too, keeping the mood up for the first half of each side, before slowly mellowing out towards the end. Look at the track listing at the end and you’ll see, only a master of his craft could get you seamlessly from The Reflex to Against All Odds before you’ve even noticed. This is textbook stuff, and this style would continue through the series.

Added to this is the fact that there’s no attempt at a themed side this time out. Everything is in the mix, but perfectly pieced together: who would have thought Sister Sledge would sit so comfortably between the synth noodlings of Nik Kershaw and OMD, or that The Weather Girls would be so cosy next to (whisper it) Gary Glitter. Or that the frankly bizarre (in NOW! terms) Dr Mabuse by Propaganda would be included at all.

Now, I have nothing against avant-garde German synth acts, but this is perhaps the strangest thing to ever appear on a NOW! album. Looked at from a modern perspective it makes little sense: the track had made the charts months before, so was not included in the anticipation of it being a breakout hit; it was not Propaganda’s biggest hit either, that honour falling to the much-more chart friendly Duel, which oddly didn’t make the cut for NOW 5 a year later .(If there was any justice it would have been a massive hit too, but their label, ZTT, were using their meagre promotional resources for the unexpected success of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.) Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that more esoteric stuff like this did make it onto the albums, and this is probably the best example of a decent tune that didn’t make the grade chart-wise, but was still considered worthy of inclusion. This must have been a personal choice for someone…

Also filed in the ‘Huh?’ category, and conveniently finishing off the final side, we find the aforementioned Mr Gadd, with the dreadful Dance Me Up, sounding like a poppier version of Public Image Limited (his only NOW! appearance beyond a sampled appearance on Doctorin’ the Tardis on NOW 12), some rather painful, Dutch white reggae courtesy of one hit wonders, The Art Company (real name, the slightly more unwieldy, VOF de Kunst, and yes I checked the spelling there). There’s a brief respite with one of Madness’ serious tracks (and therefore one of their least successful), their ode to London’s homeless, One Better Day, before finishing up with Japan lead man David Sylvian’s first solo single (in credit at least), Red Guitar. It’s a lovely, smoky, 80s jazz tune completely out of place with anything else on the album. And like Propaganda, it seems a slightly off-kilter inclusion.

In this respect NOW 3 does a much better job of balancing the massive chart hits with the slightly more left-field choices. It’s also probably the first album in the series to truly know its target market: kids and teenagers. Every self-respecting pop fan is going to welcome Duran Duran, Wham and Nik Kershaw into their record collection. The cooler kids will be happy to proclaim that they’ve also loved the post-Kraftwerk Kraut-Synth (I just made that up, but I think I might stick a copyright label on it) and the jazz stylings of former New Romantics.

Dad rock is kept to a bare minimum, the initial stirrings of rap get a look in, good and bad reggae pop up, and, interestingly, British music dominates. If there’s an over-riding feel it’s of Roland synths and those god-awful electronic drums. It is definitely a snapshot of a moment, but thankfully it was a pretty good moment. And the public agreed, keeping NOW 3 at number for a staggering 8 weeks, long after the summer holidays had given way autumn. This was a record that would never be topped by a NOW! album while they were still permitted on the regular chart (they would be turfed out to a ‘Compilation Top 20’ after NOW 13). They didn’t call it “The Pig One” for nothing…

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 3

Release date

23rd July 1984

Biggest tracks

The Reflex – Duran Duran

Two Tribes – Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Wake Me Up before You Go-Go – Wham

It’s Raining Men – The Weather Girls

Lost gems

Dr Mabuse – Propaganda

Red Guitar – David Sylvian

The stinker

Susanna – The Art Company

Forgotten tracks

Don’t Tell Me – Blancmange

Love Wars – Womack & Womack

Dance Me Up – Gary Glitter

What’s missing

The Lebanon – Human League

Absolute – Scritti Politti

Track listing

Side One
The Reflex	Duran Duran
I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me	Nik Kershaw
Thinking Of You	Sister Sledge
Locomotion	Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
Dancing With Tears In My Eyes	Ultravox
Pearl In The Shell	Howard Jones
Don’t Tell Me	Blancmange
Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)	Phil Collins

Side Two
Two Tribes	Frankie Goes To Hollywood
White Lines (Don’t Do It) (Furious Five)	Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
Nelson Mandela	The Special AKA
Love Wars	Womack & Womack
You’re The Best Thing	The Style Council
One Love	Bob Marley & The Wailers
Smalltown Boy	Bronski Beat

Side Three
I Want To Break Free	Queen
Time After Time	Cyndi Lauper
Love Resurrection	Alison Moyet
Young At Heart	The Bluebells
Robert De Niro’s Waiting	Bananarama
Dr Mabuse	Propaganda
What’s Love Got To Do With It	Tina Turner
When You’re Young And In Love	The Flying Pickets

Side Four
Wake Me Up Before You Go Go	Wham
You Take Me Up	The Thompson Twins
It’s Raining Men	The Weather Girls
Dance Me Up	Gary Glitter
Susanna	The Art Company
One Better Day	Madness
Red Guitar	David Sylvian

Video edition

The video version featured just 8 tracks from the accompanying album, and 12 additional tracks (marked with *) none of which were even top 10 hits.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – Locomotion

Simple Minds – Up On the Catwalk*

Thompson Twins – You Take Me Up

Madness – One Better Day

Farmers Boys – In the Country*

Helen Terry – Love Lies Lost*

Loose Ends – Emergency (Dial 999)*

Working Week – Venceremos*

Tina Turner – What’s Love Got to Do With It

Phil Collins – Against All Odds (Take a Look At Me Now)

Talk Talk – Dum Dum Girl*

Kajagoogoo – Turn Your Back on Me*

Gary Glitter – Dance Me Up

The Mighty Wah – Come Back*

I-Level – Our Song*

Limahl – Too Much Trouble*

The Flying Pickets – When You’re Young and In Love

Thomas Dolby – I Scare Myself*

Blue Nile – Tinseltown In The Rain*

David Sylvian – Red Guitar

March 20, 2013