Doctor And The Medics with Roy Wood 'Waterloo'

Chart Peak: 45
YouTube

Roy Wood was No.1 with The Move ('Blackberry Way') and with Wizzard ('See My Baby Jive' and 'Angel Fingers'), Doctor And the Medics were No.1 with 'Spirit In The Sky'. 'Waterloo' was originally No.1 and a Eurovision winner for Abba... So this new version should get to No...

To nowhere in the Top 40, as it turned out, making this the third and last non-hit on Now 8. Again, though, the Doctor and his Medics weren't really a one-hit wonder because they'd had a Top 30 hit with 'Burn' as the immediate follow-up to their chart-topping cover version. Still, somebody obviously thought there was demand for more novelty covers from the Seventies and so this version of Abba's Eurovision winner arrives, sung by the group's (female) backing singers The Anadin Brothers. You could argue this was a little ahead of its time, six years before Erasure's Abba-Esque EP, but you could also argue that Erasure put more of their own spin on the track whereas this a fairly straight re-run of the original without the thorough finesse of genuine Abba.

Roy Wood makes his only appearance in the main Now series (though he has of course appeared on several Now Christmas albums) on saxophone here, though he probably attracted more attention in the video. He also provides a tenuous link back to It Bites, since Francis Dunnery's late brother played in Violinski, a spin-off from Electric Light Orchestra and of course Roy Wood was also a member of ELO. The video also features cameo appearances by Lemmy, Captain Sensible and some other people I don't really recognise but they're filmed as if they're famous.

The Medics don't really impress too much with their Now tracks, which feel more like cabaret than something for sound-only. However Andy Partridge produced their earlier single 'The Miracle of the Age' which hints that there was something slightly more interesting going on once upon a time.

Doctor And The Medics also appear on: Now 7
Available on: Keep Thinking It's Tuesday

Doctor And The Medics 'Spirit In The Sky'

Chart Peak: 1 (3 weeks)

YouTube

Originally a No. 1 for Norman Greenbaum in May 1970, the Doctor (real name Clive Jackson) and his band took 'Spirit In The Sky' back to the top on 3rd June 1986 for three weeks.

Another one I could hardly fail to remember from those days, although I don't think I've ever heard another Doctor And The Medics song. Not unlike Amazulu, they found themselves stuck in a circle of covers; whilst they never seemed like they were trying hard to be taken seriously, their fans will claim that they started out as a group with slightly more to offer than novelty hits. I'm not going to take a position on that but I will say that now this is older than the original was at the time, it's hard to see the point - aside from the fact that it's the only one of the three chart-topping versions of this song ever to appear in the Now! series.

They make surprisingly little alteration to the song and whilst that saves it from sounding utterly of its time now, it's at the expense of making the Doctor's Kiss-like make-up the only distinctive feature. I was never that fond of the song anyway.

Also appearing on: Now 8
Available on: Laughing At The Pieces