Now That's What I Call A Music Blog

Tag: The Housemartins

  • Now That’s What I Call Music 10 – Designed to satisfy your soul

    Now That’s What I Call Music 10 – Designed to satisfy your soul

    Now_10Like your first kiss, the first time you got drunk, or the first 18-rated film you see (or X-rated if you’re a tad older than me), your first NOW album is special, and never forgotten. It may not be the best one (unless you’re very lucky) but it’s yours, and that makes it special. Of course the fact that probably around 50,000 also think it’s special is by the by. Since I’ve been writing this blog I’ve spoken to a few people about the NOW series and the one thing people always want to tell you about is the first NOW album they owned. They will then go to talk about the best ones (and sometimes the worst), but they always start with the first one, the important one. Mine was, you may have already guessed, NOW 10. Trouble is, I’ve got no idea why.

    I’d been a music fan for years building a steady collection of LPs and singles procured as presents or when big brother forgot to send back the recommendation of the month to Britannia Music (one of the least lamented casualties of the record buying slump), but never a NOW album. My other other brother, who has far too many Simply Red CDs to have any taste in music, was always bringing home Hits Albums that he’d borrowed off schoolmates for home taping (which killed music, kids), but even as a pre-teen, I could tell they were an inferior product. Honest. To be fair this was probably down the fact that they didn’t have Duran Duran or Culture Club on them, and little else.

    So, it’s odd that around Christmas 1987, a TV ad for NOW 10 suddenly got me excited…

    Why this particular ad piqued my interest I’m not sure. MARRS and The Communards were definitely draws, but maybe, at the delicate age of 12, it was Carol Decker. Now, I should add Ms Decker never held a position in my affections like Debbie Harry, and later Belinda Carlisle did, but at the time I liked China in Your Hand. So a few nudges when the ad came on (as they did relentlessly in the run-up to Christmas) and that cold, and no doubt very damp, Yuletide morn, I was the owner of my first NOW album. Or rather, NOW tape… Records were still the order of the day for me and my brothers, though the parents had long since abandoned them for the magnetic strip, all the better to terrorise us with endless Kenny Rogers and Crystal Gayle in the car. But this was also the year of my first Walkman. Well, unbranded personal stereo at any rate. But unlike today’s youth who go bawling to Twitter on Christmas morning declaring their life ruined because their latest piece of £500 technological wonder is the wrong colour, I disappeared to my bedroom to absorb the wonders within, and my dad wouldn’t even have to tell me to turn that racket down… (The bloody thing did, however, require six (6!) batteries, which were quickly worn out by tea time.) Ironically, NOW 10 was the first to be released as a double CD, containing all the same tracks as on the album and tape. It was released in what is now referred to as a ‘fatbox’, rather than the double folded CD cases of today.

    now-10-tweet

    NOW 10 is a curious beast, and as you’ve already seen by me prattling on for three paragraphs and barely mentioning it, it’s very difficult for me to review. There’s a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in every track, so even some of the awful songs (and there are a few) still generate that giddy excitement from back in the day. Others still sound amazing, while others still must have been skipped to the point of breaking the tape, so unmemorable that they are.

    Fabulous was the first word that sprang to mind listening to side one again for the first time in what must be two decades. Freddie Mercury, The Pet Shop Boys and The Communards carry on camping for an opening salvo of brazen bravado. All three still sound wonderful; Barcelona particularly has an amazing timeless quality that makes it sound like it could have come from any time in the past 60 years. That horrid 80s production of The Great Pretender is successfully ditched in favour of sweeping, Cinemascope strings and a couple of truly lung-busting performances.

    Rent is not one of the Pet Shop Boys better remembered tracks, and it’s surprisingly seedy for them, at least as a single (although that fits in with the very odd,  sleazy backwater motel sign design used for the cover). This was of course all lost on a young me who was just confused as to why it had been included over It’s A Sin, or the then chart-topping Always On My Mind. I’ve already mentioned my preference for The Communards version of Never Can Say Goodbye over Don’t Leave Me This Way, when discussing NOW 8, and that still remains.

    From there, the sheer brilliance of NOW 10 continues with the first of its three number ones, the simply amazing Pump Up the Volume. I think this could be released today, in exactly the same format, and it would still be a massive hit, even if, at the time, it was simply a chart friendlier version of what other people (notably Cold Cut) were doing. It still sounds incredibly fresh today, maybe because this kind of cut and paste sampling has died out, in favour of stealing one hook and building a song around it. Whereas, say, Jack Your Body from NOW 9 sounded like it had been beamed in from the future, Pump Up The Volume sounds like it’s ALWAYS been here, no matter when ‘here’ might be, or when you first hear it, similar to I Saw Her Standing There, or Groove Is In The Heart. These songs were new once, but they sound like they’ve always been with us, and everybody knows and loves them.

    Pop perfection continues with another of my all time favourites, Labour of Love. Hue and Cry never achieved massive success (despite the record company’s efforts to plug them on every NOW album, as we’ll see in due course) and this always baffled me. Now, I see it may have simply been bad timing: the image of soulful, jazzy pop groups was being tarnished by fly-by-night pretty boys and the ‘alternative scene’ that rejected people like Level 42 or The Blow Monkeys. So to be a new act in that milieu (no matter how good) was always going to be a tough challenge.

    For a NOW album to begin strongly and then tail off is nothing unusual, but NOW 10 struggles to recover for the next 20 odd tracks.  Once Hue and Cry were out of the way, I would generally be done with side one, and fast forward to the end to indulge in the hair rock on side two. Unfortunately I can’t do that now, and instead I have to talk about how bland and forgettable Jellybean (who?), Johnny Hates Jazz and The Style Council are.

    For the record, Jellybean was a producer for the likes of Madonna and Whitney who somehow snagged himself a record deal, where he brought in guest vocalists to perform his turgid, appallingly bland New York disco soul tunes, all of which have that weird ‘bubble’ sound and synthesised hand claps all over them. I think the arrogance of producers crediting themselves as the main artist, with a “featuring” credit for the singer is appalling. It’s like Never Gonna Give You Up being billed as Stock, Aitken and Waterman featuring Rick Astley. But then I suppose sleeping with Madonna does tend to give people an inflated sense of self-worth. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? He appears on the next two NOW albums too, but I may not mention them as they are sooo tedious, you won’t even notice. And he’s got crap hair.

    Jellybean... insert your own joke here
    Jellybean… insert your own joke here

    Johnny Hates Jazz next (representing everything bad I was talking about in relation to Hue and Cry) singing some weak soul-jazz pop tune about Vietnam, two years after everyone else had got bored of the whole thing. And speaking of boring, there’s The Style Council, with their most tedious tune ever. It’s actually so tiresome, I’d forgotten it was on the album. As a kid I hated The Style Council for the simple reason that they weren’t The Jam, but listening to Wanted in adulthood, I feel I was perfectly justified (with the exception of Walls Come Tumbling Down). Maybe out of sympathy, NOW 10 omits the tracks’ subtitle Waiter, There’s a Soup In My Fly… this is the man who wrote Town Called Malice for Christ’s sake.

    The imposter, left, who stood in for Paul Weller for several years in the 1980s
    The imposter, left, who stood in for Paul Weller for several years in the 1980s

    Side two takes us into the Soft Metal arena. Soft Metal was all the rage in the late 80s, even acquiring their own compilation series, but it seems oddly alien now being one of the few genres that hasn’t been revived over the past decade or so. Or has it? Thinking more about it I think Soft Metal lives on, but not in the obvious places. Surely the children of T’Pau and Heart are the X Factor winners and, even more disturbingly, the so-called alternative acts who regularly fill Wembley Stadium (Clodplay (sic), Snow Patrol and their sordid, twisted demented inspirations)?

    China In Your Hand is clearly the titan of side two, a massive hit, and still loved by drunken women, and a few men, country-wide. I have a preference for the earlier hit, Heart and Soul, but as we’ve previously seen, that’s probably just because I’m awkward. Heart’s Alone is also a skyscraper of a song, which can still generate fist-pumping impressions given the right amount of alcohol. When watching this on The Chart Show, I had no idea they had been successful in the USA for a full decade before their break in the UK, and the same goes for Kiss. Crazy Crazy Nights was their biggest ever UK hit (equalled by God Gave Rock n Roll To You a few years later) and listened to now, it’s got a wonderful touch of nostalgia to it, far removed from where heavy metal was going at the time. Kiss had been the wild men in the 70s, but by the late 80s that crown had well and truly passed onto to the likes of Megadeth or our own Iron Maiden. Lyrically, Crazy Crazy Nights is pretty good, but musically there’s more than a whiff of fromage about it. They’re not even wearing the make up on the publicity shot on the album!

    Billy Idol’s Mony Mony was, I should confess, a favourite of mine in my youth, and was the only track on side two I’d regularly listen to. The version here is the live version, which was a re-release in 1987. He’d originally recorded it in 1981 in an attempt to break America, but it didn’t fare very well. That version is now more common, but is incredibly insipid compared to the live version on offer on NOW 10. Incredibly insipid in ANY version is Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again, another track re-recorded after an initial airing  earlier in the decade. Whitesnake’s brand of leather-trousered, big-haired (not to mention big-shouldered) rock has never appealed to me. They are the kind of band that should have disbanded in shame, once Spinal Tap had come out. At least with Def Leppard you never felt they were taking themselves too seriously. Whitesnake take themselves VERY seriously. And when you release albums called things like Slide It In, Slip of the Tongue and Lick My Love Pump, you really shouldn’t.

    The cast of Dynasty, circa 1987
    The cast of Dynasty, circa 1987

    (Lick My Love Pump is, of course a Spinal Tap album, but I bet you didn’t notice straight away…)

    The surprise, for me at least, on side two is The Alarm’s Rain In The Summertime. Often dismissed, by lazy bloggers like me, as the Welsh U2, The Alarm are remembered now pretty much as one-hit wonders, with the floor stomping, and still great, drunken shouty classic, 68 Guns. Rain In The Summertime is much mellower than that, but it’s also really good. Even the blurb on the album expresses surprise that it only reached number 18. It does sound like good U2 though.

    I don’t know why NOW persisted with Marillion, but they did. Here Fish talks his way through something called Sugar Mice. We’re all just sugar mice in the rain, apparently. What are sugar mice anyway? Does he mean chocolate mice that you used to get in 10p mix ups? Who knows what goes on in his poisson brain?

    We’re back in the pop zone on side three, and that’s pretty much where we will stay for the duration, as the collection ends on a surprisingly upbeat note compared to the usual slow crawl to the end of side four.

    Wet Wet Wet’s legacy, sadly, will be that bloody Four Weddings song, but they were always better than that. Sweet Little Mystery is a great pop tune, though they would end up doing better. Curiosity Killed The Cat continue to disappoint me though. I thought I loved this tune, but it is in fact only slightly less boring than Down To Earth, even if that keyboard riff is a killer. And all I can see when I hear it is a smug bloke in a beret in an alleyway. Try that round my way mate and you’ll end up in a wheelie bin being identified by dental records.

    frank_spencer
    “Misfit, freak out on the street. I can see sorrow in your eyes…”

    If you’ve seen the track listing before reading this, have you guessed what the third number one is, after Pump Up The Volume and China In Your Hand? Well if you saw the track listing but couldn’t work it out, it should surprise you not one iota that it’s the next track on side three. Yes, long forgotten now, but Los Locos’ La Bamba hit number one for a fortnight in that long hot summer of 1987 (was it a long, hot summer, or do people just say that about summer’s when they were a kid?). Even less remembered now than the track itself, is the fact that it was from a film version of Richie Valens’ life, who had the original hit with hit. Lou Diamond Philips did a good job as Valens, but the film is a TV movie with added boobs and swearing. The tune is  like all those horror film remakes littering up cinemas for the past few years: efficient, well-done, pointless.

    I thought I’d hate Wipeout, the Fat Boys’ first UK hit (yes, they had more than one). I don’t get on with comedy records at the best of times, so the idea of a comedy rap record, and one featuring the Beach Boys no less, adding lyrics to one of the finest instrumental surf epics of all time… let’s just say, it’s not as bad as that sounds. The Fat Boys can clearly rap (though I’m no expert) and it’s got the same raucous energy that The Beastie Boys were currently sending shockwaves round Middle England with, but much more friendly. Teaming with a Brian Wilson-less Beach Boys obviously helped their credibility somewhat and probably did the Beach Boys’ credibility no harm either. It’s fun. Pop is supposed to be fun. Also fun is Bananarama’s Love In The First Degree, but it’s an absolute pop puff that vanishes as soon as it’s finished.

    I wish I could say the same for Cliff Richard. The man is like the Terminator: it can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with, and it absolutely will not stop… ever. My Pretty One has probably been forgotten by everyone except Cliff and his accountant, and just as well, despite Cliff briefly showing the kind of emotion not seen since Carrie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

    Words cannot express how this picture is making me feel. You can feel it to, can't you?
    Words cannot express how this picture is making me feel. You can feel it too, can’t you?

    Also probably long forgotten is Karel Fialka. His Hey Matthew is the curveball of NOW 10, a truly odd sonnet to his young son, featuring his young son, about what his son sees on TV, and what he wants to do. I’m not sure what the purpose is, beyond showcasing his son, but it’s not unpleasant. Just odd. Hearing a kid repeating “I see the A Team” is an experience never forgotten. Thanks to my boyhood experiences of NOW 10, Hey Matthew will forever be associated with Crockett’s Theme. usually played in Miami Vice when Don Johnson was speeding his Ferrari round Miami after seeing another girlfriend gunned down by bad guys. It’s a marvellous piece, and did even better in the charts than the Miami Vice Theme. For future generations after mine, it’s after the music from them bank adverts, or the best song to just drive around to in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

    For the first time since Ghostbusters, NOW 10 found itself sharing a song with a rival Hits album, as Nina Simone’s rereleased My Baby Just Cares For Me appears here and on Hits 7. I had to check why this had been released, and it turns out it had been used in a perfume advert. This completely passed me by as a kid, being more enamoured with the Aardman-directed stop motion video of a stray cat nightclub. Of course, the song is brilliant. Also brilliant is Erasure’s The Circus, which gives me the sense of being one of their few overtly political songs, a feeling I get with the Housemartins’ Build as well. Maybe it’s the timing of this review (Thatcher has just been buried) but I feel there were a lot more sly songs about the times than outright protest songs, and I’d put both these songs in that bracket.

    Level 42’s It’s Over is in no way political, but what it shares with the 80s is its cold, hard cynicism and downright callousness. I’m not a huge fan of Level 42, but I like them. But this… this is unbelievable stuff. From the first line of “I won’t be here when you come home…” it’s intended to be an 80s version of By the Time I Get To Phoenix, but this is on another level entirely. “I would never leave if I thought you couldn’t stand the pain” sings bass thumper Mark King. Well, if that’s the case sunshine, why then admit that not only are you breaking her heart, you are also tearing her world apart? This is really harsh stuff, and frankly, it’s not a pleasant listen, particularly as King’s co-conspirator, Mike Lindup, is the son of David Lindup who wrote some of the most glorious library music of all time, including this. And don’t give me any of this “I can feel the tears” bollocks either. It just isn’t gonna wash now.

    Thankfully, ABC make a triumphant return to the charts with When Smokey Sings, which, shockingly, failed to make the top ten. For shame. A glorious tribute to Smokey Robinson, even cheekily nicking a few riffs from his hits, this is the kind of pop pomp that Martin Fry can pull off in his sleep, and it’s amazing to me it didn’t happen more often. The version here is the single version, now rare, with a different instrumental break, and no shout outs to other artists found on the version on the album, Alphabet City, and their various greatest hits compilations. Similar great pop is provided by Squeeze’s Hourglass. It’s unusual for a NOW album to sequence tracks like this so close to the end of the album, preferring to slow things down, or include some lesser known, or less successful tracks. Not here.

    They do finish the album with, simply, one of the greatest songs ever included on a NOW album, if not one of the finest songs ever, Fairytale of New York. Released the very same day as NOW 10, they couldn’t possibly have known how well the single was going to do, or the legacy it would have. Neither The Pogues or Kirsty MacColl were regular chart botherers, and Christmas songs were never included on NOW albums, at least not up to this point. As I discussed with reference to the Hits albums, including Christmas songs on a NOW album, could potentially impact on the single’s sales, as people plump for the value for money option. It’s easy to speculate that maybe Fairytale…  (or A Fairy Tale… as it’s incorrectly named here) may have done better than a very respectable number three had it not been included on NOW 10, so I will. Including it on NOW 10 buggered up its chances of Christmas number one. Yes, it was beaten by a better song (Pet Shop Boys’ brilliant cover of Always On My Mind) but it’s the better Christmas song, as countless polls annually tell us.

    Legend
    Legend

    For once the final track doesn’t send you to sleep, it instead makes you realise how odd it is to listen to Christmas songs in April. And why including Christmas songs on NOW albums is a bad idea. I’ve spotted a couple more on a brief recce of the first fifty albums, but they are still very rare. It’s a fine send off for the album too. For half a side at either end it’s absolutely spot on. There’s few actual duffers (except maybe Marillion and Cliff) but the good stuff just goes to highlight how bland and slightly embarrassing most of the rest is.

    But it’s mine, dammit, and you can’t take that away from me.

     

    NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 10

    Release date

    23rd November 1987

    Biggest tracks

    China In Your Hand – T’Pau

    Pump Up The Volume – MARRS

    The Final Countdown – Europe

    Lost gems

    Rain in the Summertime – The Alarm

    Hey Matthew – Karel Fialka

    Forgotten tracks

    Wanted – The Style Council

    Sugar Mice – Marillion

    What’s missing

    True Faith  – New Order

    What Have I Done To Deserve This? -Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield

    It’s A Sin – Pet Shop Boys

     

    Track listing

    Side one
    Barcelona Freddie Mercury And Montserrat Caballe
    Rent Pet Shop Boys
    Never Can Say Goodbye The Communards
    Pump Up The Volume M/A/R/R/S
    Labour Of Love Hue And Cry
    The Real Thing Jellybean Featuring Steven Dante
    I Don’t Want To Be A Hero Johnny Hates Jazz
    Wanted The Style Council
    Side two
    China In Your Hand T’Pau
    Alone Heart
    Crazy Crazy Nights Kiss
    Mony Mony Billy Idol
    Here I Go Again (USA Remix) Whitesnake
    Rain In The Summertime The Alarm
    Sugar Mice Marillion
    Side three
    Sweet Little Mystery Wet Wet Wet
    Misfit Curiosity Killed The Cat
    La Bamba Los Lobos
    Wipe Out The Beach Boys & The Fat Boys
    Love In The First Degree Bananarama
    My Pretty One Cliff Richard
    Hey Matthew Karel Fialka
    Crockett’s Theme Jan Hammer
    Side four
    My Baby Just Cares For Me Nina Simone
    The Circus Erasure
    Build The Housemartins
    It’s Over Level 42
    When Smokey Sings ABC
    Hourglass Squeeze
    Fairytale Of New York The Pogues Featuring Kirsty MacColl

      

    Video version

    This is the first NOW video edition where every track is from the accompanying album.

    Barcelona Freddie Mercury And Montserrat Caballe
    Rent Pet Shop Boys
    Never Can Say Goodbye The Communards
    Pump Up The Volume M/A/R/R/S
    China In Your Hand T’Pau
    Here I Go Again (USA Remix) Whitesnake
    Sweet Little Mystery Wet Wet Wet
    Alone Heart
    Misfit Curiosity Killed The Cat
    La Bamba Los Lobos
    Love In The First Degree Bananarama
    My Pretty One Cliff Richard
    My Baby Just Cares For Me Nina Simone
    The Circus Erasure
    It’s Over Level 42

     

  • Now That’s What I Call Music 9 – Taking your breath away

    Now That’s What I Call Music 9 – Taking your breath away

    now 9In 1987, for the first time since they had co-existed, NOW released its first compilation of the year in the Spring, leaving Hits 6 to take over for the summer, presumably because it gave NOW the opportunity to produce a selection containing no less than seven number ones, the most on a single release since their first collection. And we’re not just talking of fly-by-night chart toppers like Jack Your Body, or Everything I Own. There were HUGE number ones, that are still listened to and loved (by someone, surely) today like Take My Breath Away and The Final Countdown. Iconic, monster hits which etched themselves into the collective memories of generation after generation of music lovers. And love or hate them, these songs help to make NOW 9 one of the strongest collections so far in the series, providing a winning mix of great pop and iconic rock. The dance scene takes a backseat here (with a notable exception) as the UK fell in love with Soft Metal and rediscovered hair-rock.

    But first, this cover. I had no idea what this was supposed to be. For years I thought it represented a photo album, or possibly a white wallet (it was the 80s, stranger things have happened). The inner gatefold confuses matters further by featuring a ring binder in the centre. Just what the flip is going on here? Then I saw the advert… oh dear.

    “Your own personal Hits file…”

    It’s a bloody Filofax! But of course they can’t say that as it’s a brand name, so instead, they have a little pop at their rival (probably). Only two albums in, and it looked like Quick on the Draw had dropped the ball already. But, I am looking at it from 25 years remove; I’m sure in 1987 this would have been at contemporary, and finger-on-the-pulse, as the shiny flying CD’s and liquid silver of NOW 8’s advertising. Personally, I think it’s pretty dreadful.

    The peerless Reet Petite kicks things off in style, but sadly, it would signal a turn that pop in general would take over the next few years, thanks to the success of Levis use of classic tunes in their adverts. But before we get ahead of ourselves, despite what you may read on other websites, Reet Petite was never used in any such commercial for any product. Its rerelease was the result of an animated video, featuring a claymation Jackie Wilson, made for the song for an episode of the BBC Two arts series, Arena. The specially-commissioned video was such a success, and generated a renewed interest in the song, that it was rereleased, swiftly hitting number one in the process.

    Carry On... Don't Lose Your Head
    Carry On… Don’t Lose Your Head

    NOW 9 features two other songs which had previously been hits, one of which, Ben E. King’s Stand By Me WAS used in a Levis advert, becoming the first, but certainly not the last, to be included on a NOW album on the back of the denim manufacturers’ campaigns. I’ve no idea why Hot Chocolate’s You Sexy Thing was remixed and rereleased in 1987, by the then ubiquitous Ben Liebrand, but that too appears here. Silentnight mattresses, my first thought, didn’t start using it until 2001. The remix is one of the worst I’ve ever heard. In fact, I’ve no idea why Liebrand was so popular at the end of the decade, as every song he touched ended up being ruined.

    Most NOW albums from this point on would feature at least one old tune, that was dragged back into the charts on the back of an advert, or a film. In some cases this would also tie in with a Greatest Hits package (good news for the record company) and would often see songs from previous NOW albums appearing again (such as Simple Minds Alive and Kicking, or Hue and Cry’s Labour of Love) as we will see as we delve further through the albums.

    For now though, our focus is fully on NOW 9. Mental as Anything, sadly, never fulfilled the promise of the wonderful Live It Up. Massive in their native Australia, they never travelled well, with this being their only breakout hit anywhere else in the world (it made the top ten almost everywhere). It still sounds wonderful today. Simply Red’s The Right Thing also sounds good (I hate to say). Something about Mick Hucknall just makes me think he’s a bit of a mucky character (a fact maybe not helped by tabloid revelations about his private life during the nineties), and every original song he sings seems to be about sex, like a red-haired Mancunian Prince, without the humour. The Right Thing is one of his more listenable songs, but it still has the whiff of slimy guy on the pull at the wine bar about it.

    Not an accusation you could level at Erasure. Making their first appearance, with many more to come, Erasure managed to create a hybrid of Yazoo (Vince Clark’s former chart conquering outfit), Pet Shop Boys and the hi-energy dance of Bronski Beat, to create a wonderfully commercial slice of electro-pop which dominated the top ten for almost a decade. Sometimes, their first hit, was huge, but was kept off the top by The Final Countdown, of which more later. It, oddly, is one of several tracks on NOW 9 from the previous year (albeit, the tail end of 1986) when many of the acts, Erasure included, had released further songs. No chance of including a further song by Robbie Nevil though. His C’est la Vie was his only big UK hit (though the long-forgotten Dominoes would scrape the top 30 later in 1987), but it was a belter.

    Surprisingly, It Doesn’t Have To Be That Way was The Blow Monkey’s only top ten hit (lead singer, Dr Robert would hit the top ten with Kim Mazelle on the criminally underrated Wait in 1989, one of the best songs on the 80s) but their jazz-pop noodlings (somewhere between ABC and Level 42, but a tad more pretentious) makes their sound quintessentially “87”, and it’s probably the most ‘of its time’ track on show here, at least until we get to side three.

    blow-monkeys
    Kids, this was NEVER acceptable in the 80s

    The Housemartin’s Caravan of Love was the song that stopped Reet Petite from being Christmas number one, and would prove to be their sole chart-topper, and I think it’s often forgotten that it was a number one. Many people cite Reet Petite as being Christmas number one in 1986, but sadly not. Caravan of Love is nice, but not a patch on some of their other tunes (The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death remains their best for me) and is pretty inconsequential.

    NOW 9 avoids a problem many of its predecessors have of trying to crowbar a collection of dance tunes onto one side. Perhaps because there were so few around in the period covered by NOW 9, we instead get a scattering of loosely defined dance tracks throughout sides two and three. There’s reggae from Boy George’s cover of Everything I Own (his first solo release which unfortunately did not lead to a particularly successful second coming) and, of course, there’s bloody UB40 again, this time with Rat In Mi Kitchen.

    The Gap Band’s Big Fun, is not a particular favourite of mine, but I think it’s worth mentioning how closely it resembles a track of the same name by Inner City, which was released the next year (and turns up on NOW 13). None of the writers are credited on the Inner City track, which I think is unfortunate as, while it’s not a direct cover, it is certainly influenced by The Gap Band track.  Maybe the fact it was so forgettable explains why.

    Dance-pop kicks in with Five Star and Bananarama showcasing lesser known tracks. I swear I had never ever heard Trick of the Night by the Nana’s, their first track to really betray the sound of Stock, Aitken and Waterman while still retaining their earlier sound, particularly Cruel Summer. Included here in anticipation of being a hit, it failed to reach the top 30. Between these two we find Pepsi and Shirlie, who until recently had been backing up George and Andrew in Wham, but now found themselves unemployed. It’s a mystery why they never sustained their early success, as Heartache (the track included here) and Goodbye Stranger are both fantastic pop tunes, and they had the sexy image to go with the tunes. Sadly, it was not to be, and, according to Wikipedia at least, the last gig they had was singing backing vocals on Geri Halliwell’s Bag It Up!

    The pop dance party is brought to a shuddering halt by Berlin’s Take My Breath Away. As I said at the start, it’s a truly iconic piece of 80s music, straddling soft rock and pop in a way only non-English European acts seemed to be able to do. I can add nothing to the discussion about this song other than I absolutely despise it to its very core, and I’d gladly have my ears surgically removed if it meant I’d never hear it again.

    Side three presents the greatest mix of styles on the album, from Freddie Mercury’s torch song version of The Great Pretender (sung brilliantly, but let down by some cheap-sounding production, it proves Freddie alone is good, but it’s not Queen) through Stand By Me and into Curiosity Killed The Cat’s Down to Earth. Somehow this remains their biggest hit (equalled by a cover of Hang On In Their Baby in 1992), proving more popular than their better-known hits Misfit and Name and Number (“Hey, how you doin’? I’m sorry you can’t get through…”). I always found this track incredibly dull, and Ben Volpeliere-Pierrot to be indicative of a lot of what was wrong about late 80s pop. Like many other acts at the time, it seemed to be style over substance, working out your look and your back-story before thinking about the tunes. When earlier acts like ABC or Frankie did the same, they at least had the tunes to back it up. People like Curiosity, Johnny Hates Jazz, Breathe and the like never did, and were swiftly dumper-bound. Though Curiosity would continue to pop up, using another of their cat’s lives, throughout the 90s.

    The Communards So Cold The Night is the oddest track on here, being a strange mix of middle eastern sounds (played on a synthesiser, natch) and Jimmy Somerville stretching his falsetto to the max. As a follow-up to Don’t Leave Me This Way, it was a nailed on top ten hit, but I wonder how many people actually liked it. NOW waste no opportunity to plug NOW 6 in their blurb, mentioning that it contained the original version of You Are My World, which had been remixed and rereleased in the wake of their new success.

    We’re back in dance party mode next with two wildly different tracks. Jack Your Body was astonishing on first listen back in 1987, sounding like it had been transported through time from the next century. Lyric-less (beyond the repeated urge to “jack your body”, whatever that meant), amazingly, it reached number one despite not being played on Radio One, which seems outrageous looked back on today. What is Radio One there for if not to play pioneering, exciting music like this (or rather, as this was, in 1987)? It would be unthinkable today for such a track to slip under their radar. But it probably shows up the regime that was running the show back then, the Smashie and Nicey brigade so brilliantly sent up by Harry Enfield, and so ruthlessly sent down by Matthew Bannister. When you’ve got DJ’s who’d rather play Status Quo and Phil Collins, than scorching hot, bleeding edge stuff such as this, something was clearly very wrong.

    These two ruthlessly led to the sacking of loads of old men from Radio 1. And they regret nothing. NOTHING!
    These two ruthlessly led to the sacking of loads of old men from Radio 1. And they regret nothing. NOTHING!

    Taffy, probably didn’t mind, declaring her love for her radio (her midnight radio), with a piece of candy floss dance-pop that had managed to escape my brain until I heard it again.

    Nick Kamen is a name which will mean nothing unless you were around in the 80s, much as the names of Big Brother or X Factor winners only resonate with those who actually saw them in their triumphs. An Essex model who hit the big time after stripping to his boxers in a launderette (another success for Levis!) someone decided this boy could sing, and he found himself courted by none other than Madonna, and top hits and worldwide fame was inevitable. Though, you wouldn’t know this if you were British, as, his first single apart, he was derided and considered something of a joke. Each Time You Break My Heart, written by Madge, hit the top 5, but he would never scale such dizzy heights again in his homeland. In Europe, he was huge. Loving You Is Sweeter, a cover of a Four Tops single, hit number one in Italy, and a later hit I Promised Myself, went top ten everywhere, except in the UK. Maybe he was just too pretty. In retrospect, there’s a bit of a comparison with the stuttering munchkin Gareth Gates. Pretty boy, weak but not unpleasant voice, courted by large bosomed, sexually confident, ladies (Jordan in Gates’ case, though she never wrote a song for him… maybe that might have helped). The track is a surprisingly pleasant, but not earth-shattering diversion before the sheer oddness of a-ha’s Manhattan Skyline.

    They had already shown that they were not adverse to tearing up the pop chart hit rulebook with things like Hunting High and Low, but this is from another level, seemingly three different songs all fighting each other with a cacophony of synths, strings, drum machines and perhaps Morten Harket’s finest vocal performance. I bet Radiohead used this as  a template when they prepared Paranoid Android. I love it, though it’s not as good as I’ve Been Losing You, their great forgotten track.

    Speaking of forgotten tracks, side four kicks off with a song that made me grin like a loon when I heard it again, and could be the finest gem this whole exercise has unearthed so far: Sonic Boom Boy by Westworld. An amazing mix of rockabilly, dance and pop, it’s everything that made music exciting in the 80s, at least if you were in your teens. Listening to it now, it’s strangely similar to Aztec Camera’s brilliant Good Morning Britain, from 1990. Westworld are another band who never achieved anything near their potential, with this being their only big hit. The follow up, Ba-Na-Na-Bam-Boo, is more rocky but has a horrible 80s production that is nowhere near as polished as Sonic Boom Boy, and barely made the top 40. Shame.

    Sonic boom... a-boom boy
    Sonic boom… a-boom boy

    Rediscovering tracks like this is what this whole thing is about. I’ve been lucky so far, in finding at least one track on every album that I’d either never heard, or had forgotten about, that still sounds amazing today. But this is the best one so far.

    Side four continues familiarly with Livin’ On A Prayer (the first of only a few Bon Jovi tracks in the series), Land of Confusion and The Final Countdown. Much as with Take My Breath Away these are all far too well-known to warrant too much attention here except to say, astonishingly, I think the Genesis track is the best of the three. Maybe the video helps.

    Gary Moore continues to be, bafflingly, included on NOW albums, with Over The Hills And Far Away, not a track I was familiar with, to the point where I actually thought it was Big Country. It’s got a big, rousing chorus, but it’s not memorable except for the use of what would now be referred to as ‘that Riverdance sound’ but is, of course, a traditional Irish sound. Very rare at a time when anything Irish was considered dangerous in the minds of many Brits.

    The Ward Brothers mean nothing to me. Cross That Bridge means nothing to me. It will mean nothing to you either. Somebody at NOW obviously thought quite a lot of it though, including the tune despite the fact it only reached number 32, and would ultimately prove to be their only dalliance with the charts. It’s an extremely bland, pop-rock tune, sounding like any number of other songs from the same period. This, no doubt, would have been the most skipped song on the album.

    Thankfully, the final track, for once, is lovely, rather than a song that makes you want to slash your wrists, and forget all the great pop you’ve listened over the past two hours. The Pretenders’ Hymn to Her is a great showcase for Chrissie Hynde’s voice and, while it is yet another album-closing ballad, it at least has heart to it, and is not as ordinarily pointless as most ‘slow dance’ tunes which normally occupy the final track slot.

    Overall, NOW 9’s line up is strong. Some artists may appear with lesser tracks than may be appreciated, but its hit list of seminal tracks is indisputable, as is the amount of variety. Rock is definitely the prevailing mood on this one, but a change was on the horizon, as evidenced by Jack Your Body, and the continuing rise of Stock, Aitken and Waterman.

    Things were about to change for me to… the next NOW album, would be my ground zero.

     

    NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 9

    Release date

    23rd March 1987

    Biggest tracks

    Take My Breath Away – Berlin

    Livin’ On A Prayer – Bon Jovi

    The Final Countdown – Europe

    Lost gems

    Sonic Boom Boy – Westworld

    Jack Your Body – Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley

    Forgotten tracks

    Big Fun – The Gap Band

    Loving You Is Sweeter – Nick Kamen

    Cross That Bridge – The Ward Brothers

    Trick of the Night – Bananarama

    What’s missing

    Real Wild Child  – Iggy Pop

    Skin Trade – Duran Duran

    Running in the Family – Level 42

     

    Track listing

    Side one
    Reet Petite Jackie Wilson
    Live It Up Mental As Anything
    The Right Thing Simply Red
    Sometimes Erasure
    C’est La Vie Robbie Nevil
    You Sexy Thing Hot Chocolate
    It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way The Blow Monkeys
    Caravan Of Love The Housemartins
    Side two
    Everything I Own Boy George
    Rat In Mi Kitchen UB40
    Big Fun The Gap Band
    Stay Out Of My Life Five Star
    Heartache Pepsi & Shirlie
    Trick Of The Night Bananarama
    Take My Breath Away Berlin
    Side three
    The Great Pretender Freddie Mercury
    Stand By Me Ben E King
    Down To Earth Curiosity Killed The Cat
    So Cold The Night The Communards
    Jack Your Body Steve “Silk” Hurley
    I Love My Radio (Midnight Radio) Taffy
    Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever Nick Kamen
    Manhattan Skyline A-Ha
    Side four
    Sonic Boom Boy Westworld
    Livin’ On A Prayer Bon Jovi
    Land Of Confusion Genesis
    The Final Countdown Europe
    Over The Hills And Far Away Gary Moore
    Cross That Bridge The Ward Brothers
    Hymn To Her The Pretenders


    CD track listing

    Reet Petite Jackie Wilson
    Live It Up Mental As Anything
    The Right Thing Simply Red
    C’est La Vie Robbie Nevil
    You Sexy Thing Hot Chocolate
    It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way The Blow Monkeys
    Everything I Own Boy George
    Rat In Mi Kitchen UB40
    Stay Out Of My Life Five Star
    Heartache Pepsi & Shirlie
    Take My Breath Away Berlin
    The Great Pretender Freddie Mercury
    Stand By Me Ben E King
    Down To Earth Curiosity Killed The Cat
    Land Of Confusion Genesis
    Hymn To Her The Pretenders

     

    Video selection

    For once, the video version contains all tracks from the accompanying album, with only one exception, for some reason substituting Gary Moore’s track for a different one.

    As with the CD, it’s top heavy with tracks from the first two sides for some reason.

    The Great Pretender Freddie Mercury
    Reet Petite Jackie Wilson
    Down To Earth Curiosity Killed The Cat
    So Cold The Night The Communards
    Heartache Pepsi & Shirlie
    Everything I Own Boy George
    Rat In Mi Kitchen UB40
    You Sexy Thing Hot Chocolate
    Caravan Of Love The Housemartins
    Wild Frontier Gary Moore*
    Sonic Boom Boy Westworld
    Jack Your Body Steve “Silk” Hurley
    Stay Out Of My Life Five Star
    Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever Nick Kamen
    It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way The Blow Monkeys
    The Right Thing Simply Red

     

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

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

    now 8Welcome 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).

    ian-hislop
    Ooooooh…. baby!

    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.

    A codpiece yesterday
    A codpiece yesterday

    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?
    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-sweatshirt

    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-8-competition

    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

     

  • Now That’s What I Call Music 7 – Let’s make lots of money

    Now That’s What I Call Music 7 – Let’s make lots of money

     

    now 7To talk about NOW 7, you have to have a copy to hand. And I don’t mean a digital copy, or a playlist made from the track listing. You have to have an actual physical copy that you can listen to at your disposal. There are two reasons for this, the second I’ll come onto later, but the first is because of a cheeky decision made in the song selection that would be lost if you only had the track listing to hand rather than actually hearing the album.

    A friend recently told me that as a kid he had NOW 6 on tape, and when side one started with Queen’s One Vision, he was convinced the tape was being mangled in his cassette player. Well, I’m sure a similar problem occurred in teenage bedrooms across the country with NOW 7 following the unusual, but very welcome, decision to include the album version of Sledgehammer as side one, track one. You see, most people think Sledgehammer starts with that killer, loud, saxophone sting, because that’s how they would normally hear it on the radio, on VH1 or on some 80s compilation (a sting, incidentally, borrowed from John Coltrane’s Chronic Blues). But the song actually starts with around 30 seconds of barely audible synthesised shakuhachi flute, which no doubt prompted many to turn up their stereos, thinking there was nothing on their shiny new record, only to find when the sax did kick in they’d probably buggered their speakers and/or jumped back across the room in fright.

    Sledgehammer, somehow, didn’t get to number one, but it’s probably the biggest track here, in terms of longevity. In fact, despite containing four number one’s (one of which, Lady in Red, hadn’t even reached the top when the album went to press) they are among the least well-remembered of the decade. Or in the case of Lady in Red, among the least well-liked. Many of the other tracks here are far more fondly remembered. You have to wonder about a nation which sends Spirit in the Sky to number one rather than Bananarama’s Venus.

    Now 7 picks up where NOW 6 left off and is pretty much a carbon copy; for the most part it’s a solid pop compilation with an acceptable number of duffers and a disappointingly bland final, dance-orientated, side. There’s few outright classics but for the most part it’s impressively solid and would have satisfied the contemporary buyer.

    Things take an early wobble after Sledgehammer, with the ubiquitous appearance from UB40, this time with the particularly dull, even by their standards, Sing Our Own Song. The light was going out on the Brummie boys, and this would be their last original top ten hit, relying for success for the rest of their careers on collections of karaoke cover versions to keep them out of the dole office. I believe they released Labour of Love Volume 62 last year.

    Improvement comes next with Sly Fox’s Let’s Go All The Way. An odd combination of a former Parliament-Funkadelic member (Gary ‘Mud bone’ (eeew!) Cooper) and a Puerto Rican vocalist (Michael Camacho), brought together by a British producer to basically create a prototype boy band, with only two members. The idea of two coke-head New Yorkers singing songs about ‘going all the way’ to wet-knickered teenage girls should have been a licence to print money, but after the success of the first single they never again recaptured the brilliant cross-over potential that made this such a hit. It’s one of those songs that you’ll remember if you were there at the time, but looked at now it has all the hallmarks of an 80s cash-in. Which of course it was, and that’s why it was a hit, it sounds like everything else successful at the time, but all in one song.

    Things continue to get better with Level 42 (a sentence I never saw myself writing when I was in my youth) and The Pet Shop Boys wonderful soundtrack to a million 80s documentary montages, Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money). This was their first NOW appearance, but they would become reliable regulars for the next decade and a half. Pete Wiley’s Sinful! is a welcome addition to what is traditionally the pure pop side of a NOW album. His first single without the Mighty Wah, it’s no Story of the Blues, but it’s still a bit of a corker despite the horribly dated 80s production. he’s also got one of those voices I love: not flash, no messing about, just a bloke bellowing from the bottom of his very soul.

    Then before we get to the odd but enjoyable Paranoimia (Art of Noise featuring Max Headroom!), there’s a problem, by the name of Stan Ridgeway. Well, I say he’s the problem, that may not be entirely fair, as he sounds like a genuinely talented and interesting guy. He’s worked with people like Stewart Copeland, Roger McGuinn, and even Frank Black, so he can’t be all bad. But, he sadly also wrote and recorded Camouflage. And it’s bloody awful. I hated it when I was kid (just as nobody’s Dad did) and I hate it even more in adulthood. I never understood (and still don’t) the 80s obsession with all things ‘Nam. There were the endless films, the songs (19, I Wanna be Your Drill Instructor), even a bloody magazine, Nam!, which built weekly into your own personal journal of the ‘Nam experience.  It was inescapable. It’s been suggested that some people didn’t take kindly to Paul Hardcastle cut-and-pasting genuine Vietnam veteran interviews into a trendy dance track for 19, but to fair, for a lot of kids it was the first they’d ever heard about Vietnam (bar the introduction to The A Team, obviously) and they may have learnt more from it than any history lesson on the subject. But somehow, Camouflage gets away scot-free, and I’m not sure why.

    Camouflage is the tale of a ghost (or zombie) soldier rescuing another who has been mortally wounded in battle in Vietnam. Chuck in a few racial references as well, and you’ve got yourself an honest to goodness flag-waving, patriotic winner. OK, so big hit in the States, I can accept, despite what my overturning stomach says, but top 5 in the UK? That’s just a bit odd.

    Amazingly though, Camouflage isn’t the song I dislike the most on NOW 7. That accolade is reserved for Chris de Burgh, kicking off side two with the thoroughly unlikeable, and downright creepy, Lady in Red. “Unbelievably,” goes the blurb “this is Chris de Burgh’s first top 40 single”. Why was it unbelievable? He writes insipid, dull and creepy songs which no one likes. People pretend to like them, or buy them for people they think like his music. No one buys Chris de Burgh for themselves. The same goes for all those tedious ballads that hang around the charts like bad smells (Everything I Do, Love is All Around, My heart Will Go On), they are always bought for other people, who no doubt send them to the nearest charity shop when they split up with that person. No one chooses to listen to songs like that… ever.

    chris de burgh
    The public are urged NOT to approach the man if they see him, and to alert their nearest police station immediately

    Anyway, once he’s whispered his last, in one of the most unnerving fade outs in recorded history, side two gets good. Bowie’s Absolute Beginners is one of his all-time best (and another song you can’t believe wasn’t a number one), whilst Invisible Touch and All The Things She Said are listenable enough tracks from bands capable of better. Happy Hour is still brilliant (though The Housemartins best stuff was always less successful) and I amazed myself by enjoying Big Country’s Look Away. I never got Big Country as a young ‘un, but they’re attempt to create a truly unique, Scottish kind of rock is really interesting and it’s easy to see why they were so successful during this period.

    One band who were very far from successful during this period was Furniture, who fill the “token left of centre slightly alternative track” slot. I’ll admit I knew very little about Furniture beyond this song. turns out they were the victim of record company shenanigans, and ultimately bankruptcy, internal differences and general bad luck. Brilliant Mind remains their only hit single (not another single or even an album made the top 75 despite gathering popularity) before they eventually split in 1990. Several members went on to form the more successful Transglobal Underground.

    Call of the Wild closes out side two, one of the most forgettable tracks on any NOW album. Who was that by again?

    The big guns are out for side three, with NOW licensing tracks from three of the Hits album’s stable, Wham, a-ha and Simply Red. Wham in particular was  bit of a coup being as it was Wham’s farewell single (no concurrent Hits album was out at the time to snag the track for itself).To be fair, Edge of Heaven is a bit bland for a much-promoted final single; the previous release, I’m Your Man, is much better, and much better remembered. It’s certainly better remembered than Owen Paul, whose My Favourite Waste of Time may have been a massive top three hit, but it would prove to be his only hit. Apparently he gave up a promising football career (he was on Celtic’s books) after seeing the Sex Pistols, and decided to become a singer. He’s probably best known now for an embarrassing appearance on TV where he (and, to be fair, his band) completely failed to mime along to the track. Things like that can completely damage someone’s career, and so it was for Paul, who was seen performing backing vocals for Mike and the Mechanics.

    Amazulu’s fun cover version Too Good To Be Forgotten still sounds good, and it makes a nice change to hear pop reggae sound by someone black for a change, rather than a nice middle-class boy.

    And then we come to Spirit in the Sky. What is it about this bloody song, that whoever records it, it goes to number one? Three times by three different artists: Norman Greenbaum, Dr and the Medics and Gareth bloody Gates and the bloody Kumars. George Osborne could probably record it and hit the top. It seems the only version which didn’t get to number one was the best one, by Fuzzbox,  which unfortunately was released around the same time as The Medics’ version. It never stood a chance.

    Bananarama’s Venus is just pop genius, I don’t need to add anything about that. a-ha’s remix of Hunting High and Low is infinitely better than the version which appeared on the album of the same name, but it’s still a bit dreary, enlivened somewhat by some over-dramatic production on this single version. They were huge enough at the time to warrant inclusion if they just released a version of the alphabet, but this doesn’t show them in their best light. Holding Back the Years continued Simply Red’s run of hits, but it would be another five years before they had a top ten single with an original hit despite massive album success. I’m not a fan.

    Which leaves one track on side three to discuss, and it’s a doozy. New Beginning by Bucks Fizz does not immediately get the blood pumping. Yes, for a year or two at the start of the decade, they were pop royalty, with a string of fun, pure pop hits, and a couple of number ones along the way. If you only know Making Your Mind Up or Land of Make Believe, you literally will not know what hits you when you hear New Beginning. It’s not perfect, but as one of those songs by a band desperate to change its image it’s right up there with U2’s The Fly or Duran Duran’s Notorious. Reportedly it took months to record, and cost quite a bit too, but the band were determined to try something grown up, as they saw it. It’s got a lush, rich production sound to it, rather than the then-omnipotent 80s synth sounds; whereas everyone seemed to be using drum machines, this sounds like it’s got proper drums on it. And not just one set either, a whole town full of drums. It also uses African influences, of a kind that would become de rigueur after Paul Simon made them commercial. It reached a very respectable number eight, their biggest hit for four years. Sadly, the accompanying album flopped (as did the subsequent singles) and the band fell into a spiral of holiday camps, coach crashes, splits, lawsuits and endorsing diet plans.

    But wait! There is actually one more song to discuss on side three, though you wouldn’t know it from the track listing, which finishes with Simply Red. It’s also the other reason why you have to have a physical copy of NOW 7 lying around to properly review it. Curiously, the front cover of NOW 7, at least in its original release, featured a sticker on the front proclaiming that it contained a bonus track, one A Kind of Magic by Queen. Why they would keep a top three hit, one of the most popular songs of the year so far, as a bonus track is unclear. It features prominently in the TV ad as being on the album, but it is not listed anywhere. Many sources say it was a bonus track on ‘some’ copies of the album, but those same sources list it as being the final track on side three, so what constitutes it being a ‘bonus’? That normally suggests it was only on certain copies, or on a certain format, but it seems to have been on the cassette as well. It’s all a bit baffling, and maybe, dare I say it, suggests a last minute cock-up on someone’s part, that the song was never listed, but was always meant to be there?

    now 7 bonus
    So when is a bonus track NOT a bonus track?

    Anyway, shall we dance?

    When the Going Gets Tough is the oldest track on here, having been released in January (NOW 7 itself came out in August) but was bound to be included as it was number one for four weeks and one of the year’s biggest sellers. Today it’s considered something of an 80s classic despite being horrifically dated, but it’s not for me. I much prefer Get Out of My Dreams, but we’ll have to wait for NOW 11 for that one. Jaki Graham makes her third consecutive appearance, this time with the track she’s probably best known for, Set Me Free. It’s pretty good too, easily the best of her NOW appearances.

    We then to three tracks so of their time, the only people who will have heard of them, let alone like them, would have had to have been avid chart listeners in 1986. Nu Shooz I Can’t Wait somehow managed to get to number two, though I’ve no idea how. It’s the sound of a wine bar distilled through a Roland 808 and onto vinyl. It’s dull, goes on forever and is thoroughly annoying.

    The complete opposite is (Bang Zoom) Let’s Go Go. Now, I’m no scholar of rap music, and I’m sure there are those out there who will dismiss this as chart-friendly pop trash compared to what Run DMC and the like were doing in 1986, but as far as introducing rap to the masses this is near perfect (horrible synth Fred Astaire breakdown accepted). The Real Roxanne was a respected New York hip-hop MC, who was involved in some nonsense over answer records (like all that Fuck You business at the start of the 2000s) which I’ve got no idea about. It’s on the internet if you need to know more.

    I’m sure you don’t want to know more about the incredibly ugly Lovebug Starski who for some reason thought the path to stardom involved recording a rap record based on a horror film released a decade before, and include loads of unfunny impressions of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Maybe it was the legacy left by Ghostbusters and Thriller, but forgetting that those songs were actually good.

    lovebug
    Come on, who really thought this would make a good publicity shot?

    Headlines and You and Me Tonight and just wisps of songs, stuck in the middle ground between the death of disco and the new emerging dance scene, which, to be fair, had yet to find a proper sound. Both are completely forgettable, by completely forgotten artists. We finish off with On My Own, a sugary ballad, that of course was a huge hit, lifted by Patti La Belle’s lovely voice, and Michael McDonald, an artist I can never listen to a straight face anymore since his contribution to the soundtrack for South Park: The Movie

    And so, yet again, the album kind of dissipates in a puff of undistinguished guff. But at least you now know what a  synthesised shakuhachi flute sounds like. It wasn’t what the advert had promised.

    That does, however, answer my query for years about what the hell that was supposed to be on the cover. Obviously the influence of the Clothes Show, and fashion culture in general, was being felt even in the hallowed halls of NOW Towers. The ‘Feel the Quality’ tagline would be dropped after NOW 7 as would the design team who created it. But that wouldn’t be the only change for the NOW series. Christmas 1986 would see them renew their battle with Hits, and this time it would take place in the future! And the future was NOW.

    Or something.

     

    NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 7

    Release date

    11th August 1986

    Biggest tracks

    A Kind of Magic – Queen

    Sledgehammer – Peter Gabriel

    Venus – Bananarama

    Lady in Red – Chris de Burgh

    Lost gems

    New Beginning (Mamba Seyra) – Bucks Fizz (sadly, this video will do nothing to convince you it’s a good song)

    Brilliant Mind – Furniture

    Forgotten tracks

    Call of the Wild – Midge Ure

    Headlines – Midnight Star

    You and me Tonight – Aurra

    What’s missing

    Rock Me Amadeus  – Falco

    I Heard it Through the Grapevine – Marvin Gaye

    The Chicken Song – Spitting Image

     

    Track listing

    Side one
    Sledgehammer Peter Gabriel
    Sing Our Own Song UB40
    Let’s Go All The Way (Short Blix Mix) Sly Fox
    Lessons In Love Level 42
    Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money) Pet Shop Boys
    Sinful! Pete Wylie
    Camouflage Stan Ridgway
    Paranoimia The Art Of Noise And Max Headroom
    Side two
    The Lady In Red Chris De Burgh
    Absolute Beginners David Bowie
    Invisible Touch Genesis
    All The Things She Said Simple Minds
    Happy Hour The Housemartins
    Look Away Big Country
    Brilliant Mind Furniture
    Call Of The Wild Midge Ure
    Side three
    The Edge Of Heaven Wham
    My Favourite Waste Of Time Owen Paul
    Too Good To Be Forgotten Amazulu
    Spirit In The Sky Doctor & The Medics
    Venus Bananarama
    New Beginning (Mamba Seyra) Bucks Fizz
    Hunting High And Low A-Ha
    Holding Back The Years Simply Red
    A Kind Of Magic Queen  (Bonus Track)
    Side four
    When The Going Gets Tough Billy Ocean
    Set Me Free Jaki Graham
    I Can’t Wait Nu Shooz
    Bang Zoom (Let’s Go Go) The Real Roxanne With Hitman Howie Tee
    Amityville (The House On The Hill) Lovebug Starski
    Headlines Midnight Star
    You And Me Tonight Aurra
    On My Own Patti Labelle And Michael McDonald

     

    Video version

    now-7-video_trimmedThe video version contained three tracks not featured on any NOW album (marked with #). Interesting that one of those tracks was by Culture Club, who just two years previously were one of Virgin records cash cows. They were obviously feeling they were not warranting the same kind of profile and promotion as before, or it was felt including them on NOW 7 would damage the sales of their current album.

    Two further tracks (marked with *) would later appear on NOW 8.

    Queen – A Kind of Magic
    UB40 – Sing Our Own Song
    Sly Fox – Let’s Go All the Way
    Level 42 – Lessons in Love
    Pet Shop Boys – Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)
    Pete Wylie – Sinful!
    Stan Ridgway – Camouflage
    Art of Noise with Max Headroom – Paranoimia
    Jermaine Stewart – We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off*
    Culture Club – Move Away#
    Simple Minds – All the Things She Said
    The Housemartins – Happy Hour
    Big Country – Look Away
    Midge Ure – Call of the Wild
    Sigue Sigue Sputnik – Love Missile F1-11#
    Doctor and the Medics – Spirit in the Sky
    Jaki Graham – Set Me Free
    Samantha Fox – Do Ya Do Ya (Wanna Please Me)#
    Genesis – Invisible Touch