Top of the Pops 25 Aug 1988

 

Words: Chris Arnsby
Gary Davies: “Hi. We're very glad to see you. Welcome to another Top of the Pops. On the show tonight it's all the Bs, we have Breathe, Brother Beyond, and Baz and the Plastic Population.”
Nicky Campbell: “Er... but we don't have Princess Beatrix quite yet but what we do have is a brilliant British band, Big Country.”
Gary Davies: “Yeah!”

 [16] BIG COUNTRY: king of emotion. Let's take a moment to admire the opening view of the studio. Gary Davies and Nicky Campbell are both together on one of the studio bridges and a handheld camera is used to grab a shot of the pair with the studio and audience in the background.

Paul Ciani is away and it's interesting to see Stanley Appel quietly ditch the elements of the show he doesn't like. Paul Ciani's first week off was 11/08/1988 and instantly gone was the (admittedly daft) insistence on splitting the two hosts to introduce the show from separate parts of the studio. Bruno Brookes and Liz Kershaw were allowed to get together, whereas the previous week Janice Long and Mark Goodier were on different stages. Gone also, Paul Ciani's tendency to treat the video played over the closing titles as an extended Breaker.

 

Starting with Aswad, the 10/03/1988 show played out to the video for Don't Turn Around and the band were in the studio the following week. The same for Jellybean featuring Adele Bertei, and many more including (oh god) Star Turn On 45 Pints. Stanley Appel is having none of that. He applies the Top of the Pop rules rigorously and if your video is featured one week then you're not in the studio the next. Which is a bummer because the Superfly Guy video ended Paul Ciani's most recent show, and I like to think we might have got one more studio performance out of S-Express if he'd delayed his hols for another week. Paul Ciani has also tended to cut videos short. It's harder to tell if Stanley Appel has reversed this decision. The video for Iron Maiden's The Evil That Men Do certainly felt as if it went on forever.

Hello Big Country. Sorry I don't have anything to say about your song.

[21] JANE WIEDLIN: rush hour. I remember the song. It's great. I have no memory of the singer. Nicky Campbell does try to put Jane Wiedlin's career into context, mentioning “ex Go-Go Belinda Carlisle,” but halfway through his introduction he's distracted by person standing next to him who is wearing stupid glasses. They have pictures of eyes over the lenses. They look hilarious!

I'm going to disagree with Stanley Appel's running order for a second week. Rush Hour should have been first up. I wonder if it was because Jane Wiedlin appears solo, rather than with a band, that she was exiled to second place.

The lighting and camerawork is really good, as can be seen in that first shot of the hosts. Dickie Higham keeps the edges of the studio lit so you can see the boundaries of the studio and Vision Mixer Priscilla Hoadley chooses camera angles that show this off to great effect. There's some fantastic sweeping shots around Jane Wiedlin that make the space of the studio look amazing.

“It's a great song. She's really cute isn't she?” is Gary Davies' verdict.

TOP 40 FROM 40 TO 31.

[3] BROTHER BEYOND: the harder i try. “There could be a little bit of screaming going on now,” warns Gary Davies. Why? It's Brother Beyond and apparently they are scream-worthy.

Lead singer Nathan Moore's dancing certainly makes me want to scream in fear. I've never seen someone so uncannily animated. His arms, legs, torso, head, neck, shoulders and feet are all moving at the same time, and yet are somehow never synchronised.

BREAKERS: [20 BOMB THE BASSE megablast/don't make me wait]; [18 WOMACK & WOMACK teardrops].

[17] STATUS QUO runnin' all over the world. On video.

TOP 40 FROM 30 TO 11.

[4] BREATHE: hands to heaven. I am irritated by the blazer worn by the lead singer of Breathe. The cut is all wrong. It's too big at the shoulders and the material bunches up all down his arms but then the bottom of the blazer is cut too high and sits right on his waist. It looks out of scale with the top section. The balance is all wrong. If it's going to be big at the shoulders it should be cut so his hangs further down his legs. This makes him look like a crummy waiter.

TOP 10.

[1] YAZZ AND THE PLASTIC POPULATION: the only way is up. A repeat of last week's performance. Priscilla Hoadley pulls of an imaginative mix into the repeat. On the chart she crossfades from the slide of Yazz into the start of the performance, still in the smaller frame used by the chart photos, this footage is then zoomed to fill the screen with the power of Quantel.

[10] TANITA TIKARAM: good tradition. Mark Goodier and Steve Wright next week. Ouch. Meanwhile, next to Nicky Campbell is a young woman who gazes adoringly at him. She stands out from the crowd because she's the only one not clapping and waving at the camera. Ahh! Someone's got a crush. Well actually... It turns out there's a reason for her to be there. She's Nicky Campbell's fiance. We learn this when Gary Davies breaks off from waffling about stereo (as if anyone cares about that) to say to Nicky “and you're getting married next week!” Nicky then turns to the woman and kisses her. The perfect lead in to Tanita Tikaram.

 PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK: Jane Wiedlin, Rush Hour.