Johnny Hates Jazz 'I Don't Want To Be A Hero'

Chart Peak: 11

YouTube

The thing is, I do remember Johnny Hates Jazz. I remember a few of their singles (especially their biggest hit 'Shattered Dreams', which curiously failed to find its way to a Now album) but somehow I have no memory of ever hearing this one at the time. It seems to be the one you hear the most often now, for some reason.

Not that I really took any group that seriously when I was nine, obviously, but I could tell that there were some you were supposed to think of as important, and Johnny Hates Jazz never seemed to be one of them. It's mildly surprising to hear an anti-war sentiment, even a vague one like this, coming from a teen-friendly pop act; even if that's not what they wanted to be, that seems to have been how they ended up. That doesn't make this a very subversive record, though, partly because it wasn't released during, say, the Falklands or Gulf wars, when radio might have banned it, and partly because the lyrics tend rather towards the hackneyed. Also, the tune is a bit too much like 'I Can Make You Feel Good' for comfort.


Also appearing on: Now 11, 12
Available on: Turn Back The Clock

John "Jellybean" Benitez featuring Steven Dante 'The Real Thing'

Chart Peak: 13

YouTube [12" version]

Six tracks in and this is the first one I don't remember. Even when I watched the video it didn't sound especially familiar, although it is a fairly typical record of its type, a pre acid-house club anthem. As such it sounds well made and well performed, but not especially original and full of things I'd heard many many times before. It's the sort of thing I feel more positive towards than I would have a few years ago, but still find it hard to get excited over, because I'm not part of the scene it belongs to. Had I had this album when it was new, though, I doubt I'd have given this track a second thought.


Also appearing on: Now 11 [Jellybean with Elisa Fiorello], 12 [Jellybean with Adele Bertei]
Available on: Greatest Hits of the 80's

Hue And Cry 'Labour Of Love'

Chart Peak: 6

YouTube

Now here's a potentially clever bit of sequencing: M|A|R|R|S were a collaboration between members of Colourbox and AR Kane [although in practice 'Pump Up The Volume' is almost entirely the work of Colourbox] and the surname of the brothers who made this record was of course Kane. I never did work out which one was meant to be Hue and which one was Cry though...

I suppose this one has something in common with the Communards record, although one big difference is that I remember liking this at the time. Not that I knew what it was about, or even knew what the words were, but it was sort of catchy. It's part of the trend for vaguely political, post-new-wave blue-eyed soul in the mid-to-late eighties, and now sounds very much of its time - you certainly wouldn't expect to hear the phrase "withdraw my labour" in the chorus of a Top 20 hit nowadays. And that's even before you see the video, with a load of white paint being thrown at the band and their backing musicians.
Listening to it as an adult, I did wonder whether it was intended as some sort of comment on the direction of the Labour Party in 1987. Wikipedia suggests that it was instead aimed at Margaret Thatcher, from the perspective of a disillusioned working-class voter - and that's certainly a plausible reading, if we assume that addressing Thatcher as "baby" is just part of the metaphor. A solid record, I'd say, if no classic.

Also appearing on: Now 13, 14, 15, 24 [a remix of this track]
Available on: The Collection

M|A|R|R|S 'Pump Up The Volume'

Chart Peak: 1 (2 weeks)

YouTube

I'd never heard anything like it. The only thing was, I didn't know I'd never heard anything like it. Of course, now I recognise that this was a landmark record in pop history, a mainstream breakthrough for dance music and sampling and the only Number One single on the legendary 4ad label, a record that spawned countless imitators and parodies - who could possibly forget 'Pump Up The Bitter' by Star Turn On 45 (Pints)? When I was nine years old all that was beyond my ken, though, and it was just another hit.

When the time came to write this, I approached it with some trepidation. One reason is that it is such an important track that it's difficult to supply any fresh insights about it. The other thing is that, well, I love it; it's always easier to pick holes in a record than identify what's truly impressive about it. As anyone who reads the last half-dozen or so Now 44 post will probably guess, I wouldn't describe myself as a dance fan, but I'm not averse to it either. Records like this and 'Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel' can really impress me because I don't wholly understand them; sure, I couldn't have written 'My Generation', but I know how it was done. The inspiration to find samples that work well together is all the more remarkable to me. In this case I especially like the screeches that bounce over the stereo spectrum, the dubby echo sounds that are a bit like somebody using a bathroom on the other side of the house and the way they use the sound of the record stopping as a percussion effect. But none of that really gets to the heart of why I find this so compelling. Some of the credit really has to go to the simple keyboard riff that guides the listener through the track, almost as if you're following a path with the vocal samples on either side of it.

Ah, but the samples... Apparently, not all the samples we know and love are part of the first 12" mix, but they're really what caught people's attention, and not always to the good. Hence the video I've linked to is the original 7" version with the Stock Aitken Waterman sample that they were forced to remove in what many perceived as an attempt to prolong Rick Astley's spell at the top (does this make them the first people ever to be Rickrolled?), and even this may not match the version that appeared on Now 10 itself. That's presumably why it's so hard to track down as a legal download: when I wanted to get it onto my MP3 player the best I could do was a version from something called 90's Dance Hits - Retro Dance Party where it turns into 'Please Don't Go' by KWS after three and a half minutes. Still, I suppose the very album title is quite a compliment to a record released as early as 1987.

Oh, and I've never heard 'Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance)' which as the listed flipside of this surely becomes one of the most obscure Number One singles of all time.

Available on: The Best Club Anthems - 80s Classics

The Communards 'Never Can Say Goodbye'

Chart Peak: 4

YouTube

There's not quite so much ambiguity here as there was on our last entry - the first contemporary record I can remember really disliking was by The Communards, although I can't now remember why. By that I don't mean that it's now a record I find it impossible to dislike, just that I genuinely can't recall what I had against it - in fact I can't really remember whether it was this one or 'Don't Leave Me This Way'. Mainly I just remember hearing it on the radio and shouting "WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH!" for two minutes or so. Now seems a good time to apologise to the band, and indeed to whichever members of my family were at home at the time.

The obvious criticism to level at their two biggest hits as an adult is that they were both cover versions of cover versions: in this case, it's essentially a copy of Gloria Gaynor's disco version of the Jackson 5's hit. But I don't know whether I knew that then, and I wouldn't have cared anyway though I certainly remember grown-ups bemoaning an excess of old songs in the chart at that time. Maybe it was just the name I didn't like. I suppose in a way it's a bit of a rite of passage to realise that some records are more to your liking than others. Two decades later, I don't find it nearly so objectionable, just pointless. I suppose it could be argued that Jimmy Somerville is making a radical move in addressing the lyric squarely at another man, but it's not really all that noticeable in practice.

In response to the many YouTube comments suggesting that some of the people involved in this record might be gay (really?) somebody's said, "The 80's were all about excess, big hair, fun times, and just being yourself!" although even then Somerville wasn't what you'd call long-haired and there's not a lot of excess on display - Richard Coles looks like the Anglican priest he's since become and the whole atmosphere is more office party than decadent feast. Actually, that's rather endearing.

Also appearing on: Now 6, 8, 9, 12
Available on: Very Best of Jimmy Somerville: Bronski Beat and the Communards

The Pet Shop Boys 'Rent'

Chart Peak: 8

YouTube

Another slightly curious bit of sequencing: this isn't the most outlandishly dramatic record the PSBs have ever made and would seem to risk interrupting some of the momentum built up by the first track. 'Rent' was of course part of what Neil Tennant would call the bands's imperial phase, their seventh of seventeen consecutive Top 20 singles - in fact this was a bit of a blip in "only" reaching Number 8, when the four singles either side of it were all Top 3 hits.

I don't really remember whether I heard this song at the time. I certainly wouldn't have understood what it was about at that age. But the Pet Shop Boys were undoubtedly one of the biggest acts around at the time and this wouldn't have struck me as a big stylistic change. Now I'm older I can tell what they're driving at: this is obviously the song of somebody desperate for the affections of a "lover" who exploits them but supports them materially ie, "I love you, you pay my rent" - as the Wikipedia article astutely notes, this phrasing especially hints at the stereotype of a rent-boy. It's difficult to wade through all the layers of irony and detachment in a Tennant/Lowe song and discern where if anywhere our sympathies should lie, but it doesn't come across as a lament as such; not that our protagonist necessarily considers this situation ideal, but he (or possibly she) seems on the face of it to be dealing with it as the reality that's there: "Words mean so little and money less, when you're lying next to me". But of course, this could be merely a brave face.

Musically, the track is towards the more restrained end of their repertoire, although it's a relatively animated vocal performance from Tennant. What I can't tell you, even after all that, is whether I like it or not: this is why they were such a difficult act to approach here.

Also appearing on: Now 7, 8, 11, 15, 18, 20, 26, 28 [as Absolutely Fabulous], 35, 72
Available on: Pop Art: Pet Shop Boys - The Hits

Freddie Mercury & Montserrat Caballé 'Barcelona'

Chart Peak: 8

YouTube

It was just a chance remark, really, when a commenter mentioned that he was ten years old when Now 44 came out. With another birthday coming up (hint, hint) my thoughts turned to the current Now album at the time of my own tenth birthday, which rather symmetrically proves to be Now 10. And there's some minor historical import to it too, as the first album in the series to be given a complete CD release, as opposed to the truncated single-disc versions that had been toyed with before. As you can see though, the running time is still kept down to two hours so it fits comfortably on a double LP. I might get this one done within the month.

Anyway, they've picked a nice subtle track to start with here. Actually, it does seem a bit out of place as an opener - it has grand finale written all over it. Apparently 'Barcelona' was commissioned as a theme song for the 1992 Olympic games, hence the presence of native Barcelonan Caballe. 1987 might have seemed a bit early to be doing that but then again, it seems wise in retrospect since Mercury didn't live to see 1992 itself. This seems to have come as news to whoever placed the advert on YouTube to tell us we could get the latest news about him in The Sun. Certainly, he throws himself wholeheartedly into the idiom, but then that's no surprise from the man behind 'Bohemian Rhapsody': it's the dozens over overdubbed Freddies bellowing "Baar-ceLOna" that really grabs your attention, sounding almost more operatic than the actual opera singer on the record. In fact, when I read that the legendary unreleased, unbootlegged, unheard by anyone not massively off their faces (except George Martin, presumably) Beatles track 'Carnival Of Light' features repetitive shouts of "Barcelona", this is always what it reminds me of.
Still, there's something in here that doesn't totally seem to work; possibly it lies in the slight lack of chemistry between the two leads, or maybe it just seems to fall between two stools - as a pop record it doesn't have the same force as some of the operatic rock Queen used to make, and it obviously doesn't have the same weight as true classical music would. Also, if you don't want to deafen yourself during the loud bits you can't really hear the quiet sections properly.

On a totally irrelevant note, doesn't he look weird without the moustache?


Freddie Mercury also appears on: Now 9, 25. [This track is repeated on Now 23]
Available on: The Very Best of Freddie Mercury