Top of the Pops 15 June 1989

 

Words: Chris Arnsby
Mark Goodier: “Hello. Welcome to Europe's top TV and radio pop show. With stereo sound on Radio 1FM. And making his debut on the Pops, Simon Parkin.”
Simon Parkin: “Thank you, Mark. What a programme we've got for you tonight. REM, Jason Donovan... in the studio, as are Fuzzbox at seventeen with Pink Sunshine."

[17] FUZZBOX: pink sunshine. Lead singer Vix is still waving her giant pin around. It looks lethal and could have someone's eye out.
“The gossip is there's going to be a cartoon series based on Fuzzbox.” Oh, really Mark? I must have missed it.

 

 

Also, Simon who? Well, according to his website (the vain man) he is “an award winning TV & Radio Presenter.” He seems to have started out as the holiday relief Broom Cupboard presenter on CBBC. The first BBC Genome record is for Tuesday 22nd December, covering the Christmas week morning shift. He was trusted to read out birthday greetings but doesn't seem to have been allowed to do the prestigious afternoon slot until Monday 27th June 1988 (Andy Crane is away). There's footage on Youtube of him in the Broom Cupboard with Bros, if you can bear it.

[28] R.E.M.: orange crush. Bands wot I didn't expect to see on Top of the Pops. 1) Bob Marley and the Wailers (09/06/1977 and 22/06/1978). 2) De La Soul (27/04/1989) and now R.E.M.

Michael Stipe performs via the medium of a megaphone. This has the advantage of obscuring his mouth when he sings. A low key protest against being forced to mime, or just a stupid display for the cameras? If you see Michael, please ask him.

“Especially nice on a hot day,” suggests Simon Parkin. To be fair, I also didn't know the song was about the use of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange but I'm not presenting Top of the Pops.

For the first time in... ooh... ages... (13/04/1989, Ten City with Devotion. I think you'll find)... the second slot of the show is given to a studio performance rather than a video, sorry, Promo VT. In fact by recent standards this is a very video light edition. Just two, not including the Breakers.

CHARTS FROM 40 TO 31

[22] DONNA ALLEN: joy and pain. Simon Parkin is excited. Donna Allen “has flown in from Germany especially.” That's like a two hour flight at most. I'd be more impressed if she'd got the ferry from Zeebrugge to Hull. That takes 14 hours.

BREAKERS

[31] BANGLES: be with you

[30] CLANNAD WITH BONO: in a lifetime

[33] PLACIDO DOMINGO AND JENNIFER RUSH: till i loved you

[16] DOUBLE TROUBLE & THE REBEL MC: just keep rockin'. Woo! Yeah!

Normally at this point I'd credit the Vision Mixer with an inventive use of Quantel but I've just read an interview with Carol Abbott (who is steering the vision mixing desk on this edition) at http://www.creativesgo.com/carol_abbott_vision_mixer_interview_media_careers.html

She says of Top of the Pops: “we had DVE effects operators who would work on shows alongside the VM if the programme required more complicated effects, Top of the Pops for example.” So it's actually Dave Chapman, credited with Video Effects who deserves praise for this next bit.

There's a complicated double window visual going on; on one side of the screen a direct feed from the camera and, on the other, the new(ish) effect that looks like a rotating box with a picture on each side. As the cube rotates there is a point where the output of one camera would be on both windows at the same time. Rather than having this potentially boring visual, Dave Chapman horizontally inverts the pictures on the rotating box to add a pleasing mirror effect to the picture. Woo! Yeah!

Later, the cube rotates vertically instead of horizontally. What a time to be alive.

Woo! Yeah!

At the end, watch out for Mark Goodier dancing like a Stingray puppet.

CHARTS FROM 30 TO 11

[8] CYNDI LAUPER: i drove all night. Promo VT.

[4] SINITTA: right back where we started from. Last time, (01/06/1989) Sinitta was surrounded by dancers dressed as cowboys. This week her dancers are dressed as, I don't know. Simon Cowell's mid-life crisis? The dancers appear to do exactly the same routine as last time and the saxophonist appears on cue as well. This time you do get a better look at him lurking along the side of the stage.

Derek Slee is on Lighting this week. He turns out all the studio lights apart from the main stage. Watch out for the tracking shot across the studio in which the column of the Record Needle stage becomes a weird silhouette moving across the screen.

TOP 10.

[1] JASON DONOVAN: sealed with a kiss. A repeat of the 08/06/1989 performance.

[29] TOM PETTY: i won't back down. Promo VT. Gary Davies and Simon Mayo next week.

 Performance of the week. R.E.M. Orange Crush.