Sydney Youngblood 'I'd Rather Go Blind'

Chart Peak: 44

YouTube

Looking through the list of tracks, I wondered how an almost entirely dance-oriented second disc would run into a version of this famous ballad standard. Hearing it for the first time on YouTube, I got my answer: Mr Youngblood (not his real name, you know) had in fact squared the circle somewhat by dancifying the song a bit, recalling the style of his first two hits 'If Only I Could' and 'Sit And Wait'.

Unfortuntely, this is a song I've never been fond of in any form, which protects me from hearing this as any sort of sacrilege, but also would demand a brilliant version to impress me. And that's not what we have here, although it's passable I suppose. The record-buying public weren't impressed either (or if they were, they'd already bought this album, which was released before the single) and his Top 40 career was over.

Also appearing on: Now 16
Available on: Feeling Free

Electribe 101 'Talking with Myself'

Chart Peak: 23

YouTube

'Talking With Myself' is such a famous record that I was mildly surprised to see how small a hit it was. At least, I was surprised until it occured to me that I didn't really know the song either, though of course I was aware of Billie Ray Martin from her later solo career. I didn't know the rest of the band were from Birmingham though.

Actually, I think I quite like this, but it may take longer to grow on me than the exercise allows. It's a song that encourages words like "moody" and "sultry" more than references to dancing.

Available on: Sunset To Sunrise

Tongue 'n' Cheek 'Tomorrow'

Chart Peak: 20

YouTube

Tongue N' Cheek could safely be filed among the acts whose names I remember hearing more than any actual music. Extensive research tells me that they were a British soul/dance act who were big on the club scene but only managed three Top 40 singles, of which this was the biggest. Even the Wikipedia article doesn't seem sure exactly when they split up.

Once I finally managed to hear a version of 'Tomorrow' without radio jingles played over it, it proved to be a rather decent slice of upbeat late-eighties-style RnB, the sort that goes down nice and easy without touching the sides. Probably sounded rather good in a club, and it's perfectly acceptable outside one too, but not the kind of thing I personally would cross the road for. Minus a few points for that lame rap in the middle.

Orbital 'Chime'

Chart Peak: 17

YouTube

Supposedly recorded for less than a pound on their dad's cassette deck, 'Chime' was the first hit for Orbital (picked up by a major label after a limited release the previous year) and might at the time have seemed like just another rave hit; and yet somewhere down the line the Hartnoll brothers became one of the most enduring and well-regarded acts in dance music, as well as being one of the first electronic acts to really conquer the live arena. It's tempting to say that this single marks all that out, but I'm not really qualified to account for that.

In fact, instrumental music is difficult to write about at the best of times, but what I can tell is that there's more complexity to the sound than in a lot of dance music; the main figure is repeated throughout, but there are shifting details revealed on closer inspection. It doesn't really stay with me after I've heard it the way some of their tracks did, but there's something strangely addictive about the experience. It doesn't literally say anything at all, since there are no lyrics and the title is generic, but it generates more of a feeling than a lot of the dance tracks on these albums.


Also appearing on: Now 37
Available on: Halcyon: The Platinum Collection

Adamski featuring Seal 'Killer'

Chart Peak: 1 (4 weeks)

YouTube

The song that first introduced Seal to a grateful nation (he's not billed on the front cover, but this was a big launchpad for him)and perhaps the best argument for his career. Although he's undoubtedly a talented man, a lot of his music is too bland for my liking, whilst Adamski was prone to novelties and not much of a singer. Between the two of them, though, they had one outstanding moment of creativity, and one of the few songs associated with rave that really seems to mean something. I'm not sure what, admittedly, but there's more to think about in here than the rather inane rebellion of a lot of that music. Apparently that section at the end which I found utterly incomprehensible at the time says "Racism in among future kings can only lead to no good", which suggests a reading of the song as a lament for predjudice and the human tendency to divide ourselves.

Of course, it loses a lot of this credibility with that rather silly bit in the middle that goes "the way you wanna bi-bi-bi-bi-bi-bi-bi..." but perhaps that helps to make it more memorable, along with the distinctive and slightly off-the-wall sounding bassline. Seal obviously became the bigger star of the pair, but the relative dullness of his later solo version (one of four Top 10 readings of the song in ten years) proves how genuine a team effort this was. Maybe if it were widely available as a download it would sell quite well.

Seal also appears on: Now 19, 28, 31, 53 (with Jakatta)
Available on: Killer - The Best Of

D Mob featuring Nuff Juice 'Put Your Hands Together'

Chart Peak: 7

YouTube

Fourth and last Top 20 for Dancin' Danny D (or Daniel Kojo Poku), which seems a fairly impressive achievement for a dance act of this time. Indeed I can remember several of his/their tracks, including this one, but I can't remember who Nuff Juice was.

Still, whoever did it, 'Put Your Hands Together' is a decent enough slice of commercial dance. The lyrics are decidedly stupid, but the energy is enough to make this pleasant for the four minutes it lasts, though not to make much difference to your life in the long run.

D Mob also appear(s) on: Now 13, 15, 16
Available on: 90 Club Hits From The 90's

E-Zee Posse featuring MC Kinky 'Everything Starts With an 'e'

Chart Peak: 15 (69 in 1989)

YouTube

Maybe I'm reading a bit too much into this, but I think there maybe some references to drug use on this track...

One of the most successful releases on Boy George's More Protein label (he also contributes backing vocals), this is a track that I definitely wasn't hearing on the radio at the time, thanks to the controversial title. I'm not sure it was much of a loss though, as this seems to sum up a lot of the sort of things I dislike about this era of dance music, not least the slightly annoying Jamaican/Yorkshire accent adopted by Kinky. There's also a definite smugness about the record that I find deeply annoying - if they want to take drugs, that's up to them, but it's not really all that interesting to me. And it's not as if they've snuck the allusion in subtly enough to claim they're being subversive either.

Available on: Lucky for Some

Bizz Nizz 'Don't Miss the Partyline'

Chart Peak: 7

YouTube

Apparently Bizz Nizz were a precursor to 2 Unlimited, conceived by Belgian producers Jean-Paul DeCoster and Phil Wilde. Before that world-beating success, though, they made this, which I thought of as a rave record; feel free to laugh at my twelve-year old ignorance here. It does try to cash in on the atmosphere, though, with the dubbed on crowd noises and the echo.

And maybe I'm just writing this post in a generous mood, but I think it's OK. Certainly not a weighty piece of music by any means, but in its wholehearted silliness it's actually quite enjoyable; better than a lot of songs that try and fail to say more than this. Even if I now have suspicions as to exactly what sort of partyline they might be referring to.

Mantronix feat. Wondress 'Got to Have Your Love'

Chart Peak: 4

YouTube


Don't remember this video at all. Maybe it was a bit too racy for TV back then, although it is an early example of 90s videos where they're not really sure what to do with the producer and he just has to stand around looking moody.

The song itself is much more like it though. A track I particularly remember liking at the time, probably because of the bassline (which actually isn't that bassy) and the way the track is built around it. I always rather liked the way it appeared at the start and let the rest of the arrangement saunter along when it was good and ready. Although a lot of the rest of the song is a bit by-the-book, there's something remarkably skilful about it and I can't help enjoying it. I've even laid down another 99p for the download, which raises my total spend on this blog towards the ten pound mark. My favourite on Disc 2 so far.

Available on: The Best Of 1985-1999

JT & The Big Family 'Moments In Soul'

Chart Peak: 7

YouTube

Dance records I remember but could never have named, part 2.
'Moments In Soul' is a sort of junior 'Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel', patching together various samples from recent tracks (well, 'For The Love Of Money' wasn't very recent, but something had probably sampled it around that time).
Unfortunately, it's not a brilliant advert for anyone's mixing abilities, and sounds rather sluggish; even more so now than at the time. I'm glad I listened back in case it ever crops up in a quiz, but otherwise it's an unfortunate relic.

Jam Tronik 'Another Day In Paradise'

Chart Peak: 19

YouTube

I know just what you've been thinking about this album: not enough Phil Collins songs on it. Well, I probably don't need to remind you of the original, which seems to have eluded the Now albums, but it's likely to be a while since you've heard the German techno version that followed hot on its heels.

Had this version been recording in the English-speaking world, it might have seemed an attempt to satirise the pomposity of the original (which I have to admit liking at the time) but realistically, it's more like a straightforward effort to make a danceable version of a popular song you couldn't otherwise dance to - in which context, perhaps this is rather too tame a version, not actually that much faster than Collins played it, and with much the same drum machine pattern.

Available on: Italo Rarities

Cliff Richard 'Stronger Than That'

Chart Peak: 14

YouTube

Cliff's first new hit of the 1990s, although his duet with Van Morrison was still in the chart at the turn of the decade (and if you want to be really pedantic, this was available on an album in 1989). It was the follow-up to his Stock Aitken Waterman collaboration 'I Just Don't Have The Heart' (on Now 16) and whilst this was helmed by long-serving collaborator Alan Tarney, it sounds like an attempt to follow the fashions of the time - if not a full-on SAW pastiche, it certainly wants to sound somewhere near contemporary, which must be about a last hurrah for Cliff trying to be fashionable before he turned into the slightly pathetic nostalgia act he is today - he certainly didn't try to go baggy or grunge or two-step, and yesterday I heard the world premiere of his new single. It's a version of 'Singing The Blues'!

Back in 1990, though, he was still trying to be a competitive pop star, and he had the camp backing dancers to prove it. I didn't think I remembered this track, but listening to it, it did come back to me. As that suggests, it's not a very memorable track but I suppose I can't really complain about it either. At least he was still trying then.

Also appearing on: Now 6, 10, 15, 16
Available on: Stronger

Jimmy Somerville 'Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)'

Chart Peak: 26

YouTube

We've met Jimmy Somerville on this blog before in his famous guise as a purveyor of dubious cover versions. 'Read My Lips', the title track of his first solo album, finds him in the more admirable form of aggrieved campaigner.

So far as I can deduce the subject matter is - not unusually for him - sexuality, and in particular the public response to AIDS. "What we need is money, not complacency!" he trills, before promising that "The power within, we can use it to win". Deeply admirable, and it's certainly a good thing that it got to be so widely heard (I remember it as a big radio hit, despite the surprisingly low chart position). But perhaps in places the desire to make it danceable undermines the impact. Sometimes I wish his obvious talent had found its home in a different musical style, but I guess he knew what he was doing.

Also appearing on: Now 16, 18, 31
Available on: Small Town Boy: The Best of Jimmy Somerville, Bronski Beat & The Communards (Which says For A Friend on the cover, but never mind).

49ers 'Don't You Love Me?'

Chart Peak: 12

YouTube

Well, since you ask...

It turns out that their other, bigger hit 'Touch Me' is actually a song I remember from my schooldays, although I'd never have been able to tell you who it was. For whatever reason, though, it eluded the Now albums and so we're left with this follow-up which went in one ear and out the other. Not the worst track on here, but a distinct nonentity, if that's not a contradiction.

Lonnie Gordon 'Happening All Over Again'

Chart Peak: 4

YouTube

This record sounds almost aggressively 80s, which isn't necessarily a good thing as late as 1990. No prizes for guessing (even if you don't read the YouTube description) that this is a Stock Aitken Waterman production; what I hadn't previously known was that the song was originally written for Donna Summer, but ultimately unused. It sort of makes sense though.

You don't need to read a lot of this blog to notice that this isn't the first sort of music I gravitate towards, and much of its charm remains opaque to me. I have to give it some credit for the fact that I remembered it after all this time. But nobody really seems to be that bothered about this and there's a sense of going through the motions about it, which even extends to the suspiciously cheap-looking video (and the remarkably poor miming, which is the other thing I remember from the time). There's a slightly annoying yelping sound all the way through I could have done without too.

Available on: The Pop Years 1990-1991

Technotronic feat. MC Eric 'This Beat Is Technotronic'

Chart Peak: 14

YouTube

Buyers who found the second side of the record a bit too alternative were doubtless reassured by this return to Europop at the top of Side 3. 'This Beat Is...' was the third UK hit for Technotronic, and each had had a different vocalist: even at the time I thought MC Eric was a bit of an odd name for a rapper, although I didn't realise at the time that he was Welsh. At the opposite end of the decade he attempted to be taken more seriously under the new stage name of Me One.

Anyway, back to the record. I remember hearing this a lot back then, and noticing that they were dropping their own name into the chorus, which I somehow imagined was intended to assume familiarity with their previous material; as if they were saying "We know you like Technotronic, so here's some more Technotronic." Indeed, I'm surprised to see now that it was so much smaller a hit than the ones that preceded it. And this despite its being popular enough in some places to inspire a rival version by Daisy Dee, released in the UK at the same time - it narrowly missed the Top 75.

Technotronic also appear on: Now 16, 18
Available on: More Greatest Hits of the 90's

The Quireboys 'Hey You!'

Chart Peak: 14

YouTube

And so the second side of the album, hitherto obviously dominated by "alternative" music, veers rather rockwards with these last couple of tracks. Although I obviously remember the Quireboys as a name, I don't think I'd actually heard this track before I looked it up on Amazon to provide the link below. The fact that one reviewer described them as "arguably slightly more talented" than Dogs D'Amour didn't instantly inspire confidence.

OK, now I feel like I have a better idea of why people liked Faith No More.

Rather as I suspected, 'Hey You' is macho rock at its most dislikeable, all big hair, cliches and casual sexism. It's hardly surprising that none of the women in the video appear in the same shot as the band themselves. I'd go into more detail, but I'm unwilling to go back and listen to this rot again. Still, enough people disagreed for this to be one of five Top 40 singles for the band; their last chart appearance was in 2005, when they reached 88 with a version of 'Tears In Heaven' intended as a spoiler for a version by some actual choirboys.

Available on: A Little Bit of What You Fancy/Bitter Sweet & Twisted

Faith No More 'From Out Of Nowhere'

Chart Peak: 23

YouTube

Sort of an appropriate title, because this is only the second track on the record that I don't think I'd ever heard before. Not even heard of it really; my awareness of FNM (as people seem to call them) is basically one or two big hits and a couple of cover versions. I sort of realised that they're a really important band to some people, hence the excitement about their recent live comeback, but really I find it hard to even get started.

Of course, this is 1990, before Nevermind brought what I suppose they call Modern Rock into the mainstream, which is probably why their most famous original song 'Epic' was released twice within the year and never made the Top 20; in fact this song can claim a marginally higher peak position, even if it's made less impact on posterity. Granted that I'm listening to a low-quality YouTube upload, but apart from a decent bassline and a whiny vocal from Mike Patton (which some commenters evidently like, but I have to admit I don't) not a lot really stands out.

Also appearing on: Now 24
Available on: Very Best Definitive Ultimate Greatest Hits Collection

The House Of Love 'Shine On'

Chart Peak: 20

YouTube

I think I had a dream last night where somebody told me this song was rubbish. Me, I wish I could be so sure. Even as I sit down to write this post, I find it hard to work out what I really do think about this record. When I think of it in the abstract, I can easily deride the "She-she-she shine on" chorus, but then when I actually listened to it, it rather appealed to me. And equally, the way they drop their own name into the first line of the lyric ("In a garden in the house of love") is the sort of thing I tend to criticise, but I find it slightly endearing here. I feel like I should also mention the pretty lead guitar, which my limited knowledge of the band attributes to the perhaps-accurately-named Terry Bickers.

And yet it's not a record that I can imagine myself loving, much as I know some people do. I've never been impressed, or even interested, by any other House Of Love tracks I've heard, and nothing in this whets my appetite. I think I even heard a solo track by Guy Chadwick and it was really dull. The knowledge that this was their first single (three years before the chart appearance that brought it to this album) does add a certain tinge of sadness to the story.


Available on: The Fontana Years

Inspiral Carpets 'This Is How It Feels'

Chart Peak: 14

YouTube

It's a sad fact of life that the Inspiral Carpets are probably fated to be remembered chiefly for haricuts, having a stupid name and the fact that one of their roadies later formed Oasis; although on what seems the opposite end of the North-West indie spectrum, they were also the band who got Mark E Smith onto Top Of The Pops.

When they're remembered at all for their music, it's largely for this song (although the one I have the strongest recollection of is actually 'Saturn V'), their first and longest-running Top 40 single and the only one immortalised by Now compilers. I don't really remember when I first heard this song, except that it probably wasn't in 1990 and that I wasn't immediately impressed by it. It took years for me to appreciate just how effectively this record captures a despondent and dark mood, not the sort of extravagant rage or depression that's commonplace in music, but the sort of unfathomable stew of despair conjured by the key opening lyric "Husband don't know what he's done/Kids don't know what's wrong with Mum". She probably doesn't know either.

There are two different lyrics for the second verse "There's a funeral in the town/Some guy from the top estate/Seems they found him under a train/And yet he had it all on a plate" or "Black car drives through the town... Left a note for a local girl..."; presumably the latter is intended to be more radio-friendly by making the suicide references less explicit, but I think it's the version I prefer anyway because it seems to fit in with the vague quality of the rest of the lyric, which is really about what people don't - or can't - say, not what they do. The band support this brilliantly with a low-key soundscape, Clint Boon's keyboards avoiding the gimmicky use they're sometimes put to and adding to the doomy air. At the risk of sounding like a regional stereotype, you can almost feel the rain. And despite all the above, perhaps the most impressive thing of all is that I really enjoy hearing this track.

I can't claim to have been among the people who rushed to buy the first Inspirals album, Life (kept off Number One by The Carpenters) but I did later obtain a secondhand copy for the princely sum of 50p, textured sleeve and all. None of the rest matches this, but I'm glad I had it. It's claimed that Noel Gallagher is part of the chorus of backing singers on this track: if so contributing to this evocative piece might have some claim to be the greatest work of his career.

Available on: Greatest Hits