Top of the Pops 18 February 1988

 

Reviewed by Chris Arnsby. Gary Davies: “Hi, good evening. Welcome to another mega Top of the Pops. In the studio tonight we have Billy Ocean, T'Pau, Was Not Was, Coldcut, and making his first appearance tonight, Nicky Campbell.” 
Nicky Campbell: “And also making their first appearance on Top of the Pops, with Beat Dis, the highest chart new entry, Bomb The Bass.”

 [5] BOMB THE BASS: beat dis. Straight in at [5] that's impressive. Bomb the Bass also deserve praise for not calling their single [something] the House; Beat Da House, possibly? This is an episode of firsts; first appearance of Bomb the Bass; first time hosting for Nicky Campbell; and the first time Paul Ciani has gone solo, Michael Hurll doesn't take the Executive Producer credit this week. The episode is Produced and Directed by Mr P alone. So how does he do? Not bad.

Bomb the Bass have packed the main stage with people, to avoid this just being three and a half minutes of record producer Tim Simenon playing with his sampler. The three keytarist/dancers obviously draw the most focus because they are doing most of the work, but there's also a guitarist who gets to mime some of the samples (she also probably gets to (probably) pretend to play the guitar -I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure you don't routinely play the guitar by clapping your hands above your head). There's another bloke fussing over a pair of record decks, and Mr Simenon himself who is wearing a luxurious hat.

Paul Ciani defaults to long sweeping wide shots of the stage which lose some of the energy of the performance. It's frustrating when the crowd start whooping at something the dancers are doing but the viewer at home can't see because the dancers are small figures in the middle distance who keep getting lost behind the heads of the audience. It's much better when he allows Vision Mixer Hilary West to cut between low-angled hand held camera shots.

 

[4] BILLY OCEAN: get outta my dreams. A repeat for Billy Ocean with the title corrected. This performance comes from the 04/02/1988 show when the song was captioned Get Out Of My Dreams. The caption is changed for this week's repeat but there's obviously not enough screen space to fit in the full title; Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car.

[9] T'PAU: valentine. Gary Davies tries out a high concept introduction. “OK, here's a sad story for you now.” Audience, “aahh.” Davies, “a girl fancies a boy but the boy doesn't fancy her.” Audience, “aahh.” Davies, “and that's what this next song's about...” Unfortunately the audience are not really seem to into the gag. Only the three girls around Davies join in and even they do it in a pretty half-hearted way. Aahh. (John- I’m assuming Carol is, as usual, flame haired?)

TOP 40. New bug Nicky Campbell is given the chart countdown. How does it go? Not well.  It's entirely possible this would have been the first thing he recorded after arriving in studio for rehearsals and his delivery is just too slow. Energy, Nicky, energy. And lose the comedy voices. We don't need a new Steve Wright.

[21] WAS (NOT WAS): spy in the house of love. Pretty good. The problem is, this song belongs to Hillard "Sweet Pea" Atkinson and not Harry Bowens, the lead singer on Walk the Dinosaur. Bowens is, as far as I'm concerned, the star player for Was (Not Was) so anything which diminishes his screen time is not great. You can often catch him dancing away on the edge of shots but he's often edged out because of his slightly offset and back position on stage. (John - `Sweet Pea` isn’t a very inspiring nickname, like someone called Adam `Broccoli`Jones or something!)

TOP 40 BREAKERS: scrolling caption alert; no29 VANESSA PARADIS joe le taxi; no27 MICHAEL JACKSON man in the mirror; no30 BANGLES hazy shade of winter.

[25] COLDCUT FEATURING YAZZ & THE PLASTIC POPULATION: doctorin' the house. Bomb the Bass showed one way to present a dance record. Here's another method. Hilary West uses Quantel effects as part of the performance, rather than as transitions between songs which is how they are normally used. This is only the second time out for this trick, Paid In Full by Eric B. and Rakim 05/11/1987 was the first. It looks great and it gives a whole different feel to the performance. At the risk of coming over all pseudo-intellectual, the obviously electronic nature of the effects matches the song and the result is a performance which looks more appropriately television. Out of the way Mark Lawson, I'm coming through. Adam McInnes nabs the credit for Video Effects so presumably this is his doing.

The Quantel box is used to layer the camera output as smaller pictures across the screen. There's only ever one moving picture, so when a new one appears the previous one freezes. Is this a limitation of the technology? Is it literally not possible to have more than one moving image on screen at a time? Or is Paul Ciani worried about overstimulating his audience until they explode, à la Max Headroom.

Also, the background for the Quantel images appears to be a really dirty old slide with spots of dirt and a hair stuck to it. The slide is used as the background to all the Quantel transitions on this edition so you get a good chance to get an eyeful of how grotty it is.

Quantel!!!

TOP 10.

[1] KYLIE MINOGUE: i should be so lucky. “We went over to Australia to film an exclusive video for Top of the Pops,” says Gary Davies. Yes Gary, we know. Mike Smith told us the same thing a couple of weeks ago.

[26] ALEXANDER O'NEAL & CHERRELLE: never knew love live this. Oh Christ it's a funnee bit. Gary and Nicky are both wearing hats with corks dangling from the brim and they're waving cans of lager. My sides!

“You know, you slow that record down she sounds like that bloke Rick Astley,” says Gary, making an early reference to a persistent conspiracy theory. Peter Powell and Mark Goodier next week. Meanwhile, here's Alexander O'Neil and Cherrelle on video. Best bit, the pair sit about one foot apart and loudly sing at each other's faces.

 PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK: Beat Dis is the better song but Doctorin' the House is the better performance so it's Coldcut featuring Yazz and the Plastic Population, Doctorin' the House.

The Roxy Playlist, 16/02/1988: Studio Performances; Was Not Was, Spy in the House of Love; T'Pau, Valentine; Eddy Grant, Gimme Hope Jo'anna; Bourgeois Tagg, I Don't Mind At All; Jermaine Stewart, Say It Again; The Communards, For a Friend. On video; Kylie Minogue, I Should Be So Lucky.