We had The Beatles in 65/66, ABBA in 76/77 and Blondie in 79/80. Top singles bands captured at the very peak of their powers. Erasure were showing this kind of form at the back end of the 80s, unable to stem the flow of startlingly good pop songs. ‘Drama!’ doesn’t even have a CHORUS, not really, but it’s no-sweat Top 10 gold dust.
And I’m nothing if not a sucker for sparkly pop music with killer hooks, squelchy noises, shouts of “GUILTY!” at various pitches and legions of battling synths – always have been. Junior’s going to go this way too, if I have to frogmarch her. She looked pretty sanguine about the whole thing, anyway, her arms propelling her ceilingwards on Vince Clarke’s 303 skyrocket.
Ol’ Vince, eh? 80s pop’s ubiquitous eminence grise. His dread hand will appear twice more in this chart, actual and implied. Oooooo.
The Sundays take the coveted award for Highest Placed Indie Single (that’s neither Madchester-related, nor on Mute). I would say it’s been closely fought, but you could never imagine this gossamer band in a scrap.
Not to say there isn’t an iron fist here somewhere. The song’s pretty, and the vocal childlike, but the lyric is wry. What’s wrong with wanting something? Harriet Wheeler will chase her desires, even if she’s not quite sure what she’s after. It doesn’t amount to much, but there’s wit and bite, and her voice swoops and soars around guitar that’s both jangly and choppy. It’s a beautiful keepsake of a debut single.
The album came out the following year, to eventually tedious Smiths comparisons. You can see it, but the music’s brighter and sweeter. It’s one hell of a record. One of those pithy, 10-track gems we’ve been looking for.
Junior listened carefully, lying on the new rug, teasing us with crawling poses. She showed off with a fierce Wheeler impression – a bit harsh almost – and slapped the floor as the drums burst into the middle eight. She’s not settled on an instrument yet. It’ll come to her later.
Now, this wasn’t strictly originally released in 1989, but then techno stuff took so bally long to get from Detroit to London that it’s a moot point. Not to mention the final leg up the A41 to some Hemel Hempstead garage. That’s a garage with tools and half-used pots of paint, not a genre-forming hotbed of soul-infused house music.
It says 1989 on the label of the 12” slapped down on the right-hand wheel of steel this morning, for Junior’s listening pleasure and hardnosed assessment. The vinyl’s a bit worn now, so she hardly noticed the subtle piano washes before the beat made her jump. Then she sat and chewed the kangaroo that looks worryingly like one of those soluble bath soaps. Ah well. She wouldn’t be the first person to foam at the mouth while dancing to impeccable acid-tinged techno.
This record’s a sacred cow, Derrick May a revered pioneer. Which is why it’s so obvious that a bunch of troglodytes called Soul Central should decide a year or so back that what the song needed was to be beaten to death with bland, and then desecrated with a pointless vocal track. Cool.
Today’s digression: Virgin Radio just played Bowie’s ‘China Girl’ for at least the second time this week. It was one of the first couple of dozen singles I bought, so I’m warm towards it, but it’s hardly some canonical classic that deserves frequent airplay 23 years later, is it? I’ve noticed this trend on stations like Heart and Magic. They’ve decided, say, that Atlantic Starr’s ‘Secret Lovers’ is one of the all-time greats – kind of an alternative to the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is the Greatest Single Of All Time universe. Dunno who’s right; I suspect it’s neither, but at least ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ has some kind of sales/polling pedigree, usually lacking in the Heart and Magic faves.
Jukebox Junior FM coming soon, playing wall-to-wall Prefab Sprout. It’s What The Public Wants.
Tell you something, though: of all bands, we weren’t prepared for a bloated 14-track tunefree-a-thon from the normally short and snappy Strokes. Avoid.
Anyway, ‘Know How’. No sag or bloat in this tightly plotted, witty, slickly sampling ego trip. Junior sat on her mat, neither chillin’ nor illin’, but trying to get in crawling positions again. God, the place is going to be decimated. She seemed chirpy; that’s what this record does.
Hearing Young MC reminds me of those American girls we met on our school Ancient History trip to Greece. Down the disco one night, they impressed us by knowing all the words to ‘Bust A Move’. Our response? All the Big Fun dance moves to ‘Blame It On The Boogie’. USA 1 England 0.
Finally, one of 1989’s biggest hits was ‘Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart’. RIP Gene. Your tortured vocal mannerisms were a true pop pleasure.
Just what was stuck in Roland Gift’s throat? Maybe he’d sniffed too hard at the Like A Prayer sleeve. And what happened to this lot, anyway? The Raw & The Cooked album was the year’s most unexpected must-have, which must have made them shedloads of cash and stored up a cache of goodwill for whatever they wanted to do next. Nothing.
A catchy single, this, snaring soul, rock, pop and funk fans all at once. Junior is all of these. It was slyly released into the no-man’s land of early January – when the record buyers are sick to the back teeth of Cliff and Slade, and will even propel a sub-par washed-up Duran Duran single into the Top 10 – and what do you know, the first memorable hit of the year.
As Junior bounced her chair along the floorboards, I had a gander at the tracklist for the R&TC. It reminded me of Jukebox Junior Theory 2c: no one makes tightly-edited, quality-controlled, filler-free 10-track albums anymore. We’re assailed with “added value”, bonus tracks, unfunny skits and will-this-do?-isms, and it’s all a load of crap.
She’s snogging a BLACK CRIMINAL JESUS. Shocking, I’m sure, but Madge didn’t need to whip up a storm here. Her power pop peak sold itself. It came out of nowhere too: the Who’s That Girl film and soundtrack had underperformed, the singles were shoddy and sales had diminished; the You Can Dance remix album had met a public rapt with indifference. Blonde Ambition to Blonde Ambivalence.
So, she went brunette and found some songs. The Chameleoness of Pop.
Junior’s a brunette already, but she’ll never be a successful chameleon until she discovers colours that aren’t pink. The song was a hit – she smiled and bounced as she put her pink-sleeved arm into her pink anorak.
I remember buying the album along with Soul II Soul’s Club Classics Vol. One and The Stone Roses’ debut, a solid burst of purchasing in Virgin Milton Keynes. Then, of course, I took it home and sniffed Madonna’s patchouli-scented crotch.
I forgot to upload the mp3. Ah, you know how it goes.
Deliriously exciting intro, punchy message, the first of many* appearances on this chart for the ‘Funky Drummer’ backbeat, that “ELVIS was a hero to most…” line: this ROCKED DA HOUSE, man. Junior pivoted the highchair on its front legs and flipped out like a b-girl.
Back in ’87, I nearly bought a Public Enemy jacket in Watford Market, but left with nothing except regrets and that sawdusty aroma of pet cages. I could’ve been the flyest hip hopper in the Herts commuter belt. Instead, by 1989, my shirts were flowery and my fringe was long.
Junior won’t miss any trends, I promise. I’ll have her in a Gnarls Barkley sleepsuit by the end of the week.
You know the drill: just-missing-the-boat acid house with a load of moaning over the top. Yep, Dad was late with Junior’s Weetabix again.
Like taking a bite of acieeed-laced madeleine, this brings me back to a low-rent nightclub in Corfu in August ’89. Junior’s Uncle Neil and I are trying to dance with a bunch of German girls who’d been admiring our pale, skinny torsos on the beach a few hours earlier. Couldn’t really tell where their eyes were looking behind the sunglasses, I suppose, but we certainly gave off a glare.
Halfway through the record, of course, as the orgasmic groans creep in, everyone looks awkward and stares at their shoes (purple Converse here, I reckon; with jeans and paisley shirt, if I was a betting man). The moment passes, and Neil and I return to necking as much lager as our teenage frames will take.
Back in 2006, Junior just thinks the poor iDog’s crying.
3 Feet High & Rising, the soundtrack to a summer spent at Berkhamsted’s late, lamented outdoor swimming baths. A girl called Nova came over one afternoon and asked me what I was listening to – “De La Soul,” I said. She was nonplussed and I didn’t pursue it.
Junior’s more hip to Mase, Pos and Trugoy – rocking with the best and putting in a brave effort to overbalance her highchair. We dotted around the album after this song, and ‘The Magic Number’ sent her loopy, but we’re here for ‘Eye Know’, where the magic number is two and Junior can wriggle with delight when she spots her favourite Steely Dan samples. She can only take them in small doses.
It’s a cutely formed little gem; the sweetest moment of De La Soul’s fresh take on hip hop. A fresh take fired, I suppose, by acid house and E and the Cold War thaw and Arsenal’s slaying of the Liverpool monster and the break-up of Microdisney and the first inklings of the demise of Thatcher – all fusing together to bring a new hippy era. Daisy this, daisy that.
Trip hop invented here. Should Neneh go up against the wall for paving the way for Morcheeba? Or should we thank her and her cohorts for Blue Lines, Dummy and Maxinquaye? Whatever, she co-wrote this with Massive Attack’s 3D and their producer Cameron McVey, and some arrangement duties were taken on by Nellee Hooper, so an early sign of things to come.
Or, as my big sis put it at the time, it’s a nice song until she tears the towel off her head and then you’ve got this banshee rapping in your face. And she’s PREGNANT. Big sis wasn’t wrong, but I like the rap – I can even perform it for Junior, who remains unmoved. She’s used to seeing her dad act the goat, fortunately. Let’s face it: she’ll have to endure years of it.
Can’t stand that trip hop label, and I’ve only gone and perpetuated it. Needs a new name. Slow hop, maybe. Marijuanabore hop. Was-quite-promising-until-it-got-diluted-by-chancers-bereft-of-ideas-and-concepts-of-melody hop. More?
Jukebox Junior 