Top of the Pops 25th April 1991

 Words: Chris Arnsby

Nicky Campbell: “Yes. Top of the Pops. Welcome to your weekly dose. Lewd gyrations. Hips swivelling and loud music. Oh! The youth of today. What a show. The greatest show on Earth in thirty minutes. What a start. Welcome, the amazing E.M.F.”

 [22] EMF: CHILDREN. This sounds to my tin ear like a very guitar and drum heavy song, with not a lot to do for the keyboard player. This might explain why he’s really hamming it up at one side of the stage dragging the keyboard around and battering the keys like he expects them to jump up and attack him. Or, has he been watching the keyboard player from Jesus Jones, and decided to nick his shtick?

Michael Hurll does his best to copy the copy the house style of Paul Ciani. Lots of fast moving handheld camera shots. He also uses some of the cranes to get big close up shots of James Atkin, who is moving so fast the even the crane shots. My one complaint, like Stanley Appel and Brian Appleyard, Michael Hurll seems to think Quantel effects should only be used for transitions between elements of the programme (from the host to the charts, or in and out of videos). I think that’s a mistake. Top of the Pops isn’t Whistle Test (within a year I’m going to need to update that reference to Later… With Jools Holland). It’s light entertainment not a serious music show, each performance needs to be appropriate to the song and electronic effects are as much a tool in that box as lighting, dry ice, and vision mixing.

[15] DE LA SOUL: RING RING RING (HA HA HEY). Promo VT, actually at [16].

[15] VIC REEVES/THE ROMAN NUMERALS: BORN FREE. Nicky Campbell does his best in advance to boil any humour out of Vic Reeves appearance. “Just once, once in a blue moon, an exceptional singing talent comes along with the phrasing of Sinatra, the pitch of Tony Bennett, the warmth of Bing Crosby. That talent is not Vic Reeves.” He said one thing and he meant the opposite! He went into so much detail that you thought he meant one thing but he didn’t! You thought he was going one way and he went the other! I hope your expectations were confounded.

I’m not 100% sure this performance works. The second series of Vic Reeves Big Night Out has just come to an end (17/04/1991, fans of facts) and so Vic Reeves is better known as a comedian but I’m not sure how well this jokey performance goes with a straight song.

"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested. And the frog dies of it”, as the old saying goes (although you do learn a lot and you end up with a neat collection of parts you can use to build your own frog).

Part of the problem is the direction. Like the bit where the picture cuts to the backing singers who have suddenly started tucking into a plate of sandwiches. It feels like someone has forgotten the audience at home can’t see what the camera doesn’t show, so the viewer is missing the setup of someone picking up the plate. Rather than laughing, there’s a brief moment of disconnect as the viewer has to get up to speed with what’s going on. That said, I like the bit where one of the singers politely offers Vic Reeves a sandwich, while he’s in full pop star mode, and he waves them off without missing a beat.

Oh, and it’s not a gag but there’s a health and safety breach when Vic twirls the mike stand in a circle and the entire base comes away and falls off down the side of the stage.

CHARTS FROM 40 TO 14

[14] ELECTRONIC: GET THE MESSAGE. No Neil Tennant this time. The Pet Shop Boys are on tour in Germany. If this show was recorded on Wednesday 23/04/1991 then they were between Dortmund, Tuesday, and Frankfurt on Thursday. (John- Actually Neil Tennant is not on this song though he would no doubt have described it as "imperial".)

BREAKERS

[36] ROACHFORD: GET READY

[34] AC/DC: ARE YOU READY

[32] FRANCES NERO: FOOTSTEPS FOLLOWING ME

[30] BANANARAMA: LONG TRAIN COMING

[20] BLUR: THERE’S NO OTHER WAY. Top of the Pops Facts, on Twitter: “Before playing "There's No Other Way" at the Reading Festival in 1999, Damon Albarn recounted Blur's #TOTP debut, saying "[Alex and me] both took an E before we went on stage.”

Alas, I am distracted from this seminal moment by noticing they have put the top back on the Film Strip stage, which is a shame because I liked the way it looked last week.

[26] GLORIA ESTEFAN: SEAL OUR FATE. Thanks to mumu03 who sent me an email pointing out this was a prerecorded performance, almost certainly done in the studio session for the 11/04/1991 edition. I’ve gone back and checked that episode and in the background of the Mike and the Mechanics performance you can see the Main Stage, lit red in the way it is here; the Main Stage doesn’t otherwise feature in that show at all. Prerecorded performances were often done after the main studio session so there’s a chance this is the last material directed by Paul Ciani (he doesn’t get a credit at the end of this edition).

TOP 10

[1] CHESNEY HAWKES: THE ONE AND ONLY. “Number One for five weeks. No record has done that for six years.” Big Brane Nicky Campbell, wrong again. He’s forgotten about Sacrifice from Elton John, five weeks from 22/06/1990 to 19/07/1990. Maybe he meant to say six months? Nope, he doubles down at the end claiming the last person to be at Number One for five weeks was Paul Hardcastle with 19. Nicky Campbell’s POP FACT is not a POP FACT. 

(John- Pop Fact- Ches' follow up single `Im A Man Not a Boy` peaked at number 27. Why? you ask. It did have big drums, a bit of  Springsteenesque sax, a similarly driving tune to `One and Only` plus a catchy enough chorus. However it was not penned by Nik Kershaw so perhaps that's why it didn't do so well.)

[32] QUADROPHONIA: QUADROPHONIA. Promo VT and actually at [24].

 Countdown to Year Zero revamp: 24

Ratings: Not printed in The Stage, or for the comparable week in 1990. Maybe that’s when BARB all went on holiday.

 Performance of the week: Blur, There’s No Other Way.