The ones that got away

The Guardian recently compiled a list of the 100 greatest UK number one singles. As a Pet Shop Boys fan I was pleasantly surprised that West End Girls was chosen as the chart-topper but of course it's all circumstantial; had Vienna by Ultravox, Common People by Pulp, God only knows by the Beach Boys, Born slippy by Underword (all number twos), not to mention Blue Monday by New Order (a wonderful record and I think still the best-selling 12-inch record of all time, the list would look very different. Or would it?

I was actually more intrigued by the bottom end and my first thought was, well, we've had a lot of shit number ones, maybe we are dipping into best of the worst territory. But Whigfield? Well, she was the first debut act ever to enter the charts at number one back in 1994 but other than that, er... Craig David, Justin Bieber? Really? In fairness you could argue that it's actually quite a refreshing list - no straight bats, a mixture of classics stretching back to the 1950s flirting with frantic beats post millennium - but I quickly realised that there were some significant omissions, ranging from 'brave' (Britpop) to shameful (in my opinion, obviously).

So here it is: a top 10 of what could have and/or should have been in that top 100. Admittedly it's a difficult criteria to break down. Should I go with 10 songs that people in general would likely go with and say 'oh yeah' or just songs that I particularly like and say 'screw you'. In the end I thought, sod it, just pick 10 songs and see what happens...

10. Olive: You're not alone (1997)

A classic from the eerie drum and bass, trip hop scene in the mid-1990s that spent two weeks at the top. Behind the ravey synth stabs is a touching song about longish distance love. It's been covered many times, the most recent being one of those annoying, 'tear-jerking' versions that appear in an advert or a charity plea (think also Everybody wants to rule the world by Tears for Fears, True faith by New Order, and Rick Astley's Together forever as three examples) to make people think it's the original version. Give me hands in the air every time.

9. Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: Back to life (1989)

A very weird omission, to the point where I kept having to read the top 100 in case I'd missed it. Quite an influential act, given their unique drum programming that led to commentators and musicians alike calling it 'the Soul II Soul beat' for a while. The perfect transition into the 1990s and a four-week spell at the top. They pulled out of Top of the Pops with this song after the producers insisted that Wheeler had to mime. She refused and that was that.

8. The Beautiful South: A little time (1990)

A difficult choice because people tend to associate the Beautiful South with Song for whoever (another number two hit) so would they remember this one? Well they bloody should...

I've had a slightly awkward relationship with the Beautiful South over the years. Their Carry on up the charts greatest hits album is one of the best collections of songs around but I went off them after seeing them at the Birmingham NEC back in about 1995. The songs were great but Paul Heaton came across as a bit of a twat, smoking on stage, talking smug bullshit and doing some unnecessary vocal gymnastics. Even worse, in the row in front were endless grinning couples swaying left and right and I thought, do I really want to be like them?

Ironically this is a rare song where Heaton isn't involved (other than writing it). He takes a backseat while the other two vocalists, David Hemingway and Breanna Corrigan, duet in a heartbreaker detailing the break-up of a relationship due to non-commitment. The final verse is particularly touching with Corrigan walking away with a 'here's what you could have had' type of narrative. Anger, sadness and defiance in less than three minutes. Just one week at the top. 

7. Shakespeare's Sister: Stay (1992)

 

A shocking omission for this classic and slightly disturbing duet, which sounds like a straightforward love battle but the video suggests it might relate to a life or death situation. The first two gentle verses sung by Marcella Detroit gradually build before being gatecrashed by Siobhan Fahey's explosive entrance in verse three to bring this song fully into life. I first wondered whether it may have been omitted due to its length at number one (8 weeks) and the subsequent listener fatigue factor but Believe by Cher (7 weeks) and Queen's Bohemian rhapsody (14 weeks in total over its two separate releases) were there so no excuses.

6. Simply Red: Fairground (1995)

 

Once upon a time, Simply Red burst out of their coffee table cosiness and made an interesting record, a floorfiller sampling the thumping beats of Give it up by The Goodmen with an ambient soundscape. It's a shame this was more or less a one-off (the other candidate being Sunrise in 2002, which shamelessly but brilliantly sampled I can't go for that by Hall & Oates to create a fresh soulful pop song) because there was potential Everything But The Girl-esque reinvention there. Fairground shot straight in at number one (the first of four weeks) on the day I arrived at the uni digs in Nottingham.  

5. Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds: Three lions (1996)

Just a year later Simply Red were at their worst with We're in this together, the 'official' Euro 96 song, so bland that chances are you've forgotten that fact; certainly the song anyway. Thank goodness for Three lions: a rare football song that - unlike most England anthems over the years - reflected the real mentality of most England fans: hope and idealism rather than expectation. 'Three lions on a shirt, Jules Rimet still gleaming, thirty years of hurt, never stopped me dreaming.' Perfect. 

Funnily enough, the two songs in some senses reflected Euro 96. As great as the atmosphere was throughout the country, the football itself was average. No real classic matches and the documentaries relating to the tournament were over-romanticised with what-ifs, if-onlys and whys. There's a poem about that somewhere. Having said that, England's defeat to Germany coincided with the end of the first year at uni so there was a sort of correlation in sadness. The country out of the competition and us students knowing that the campus was no longer ours. 

Of course you might be asking about the equally brilliant World in motion, which was also ignored by the Guardian, but I decided to stick to one football-based song. 

4. Backstreet Boys: I want it that way (1999)

If you are allowed to include Will Young, Justin Bieber, Take That and East 17 (I do like the latter two) in the top 100 then there's no excuse for leaving this song - a guilty pleasure classic - out, to the extent that I had to check whether it actually made number one. It did, albeit for a solitary week. I actually quite liked them in general, with Quit playing games, As long as you love me and Shape of my heart being other, er, favourites. I also remember singing along to Show the meaning of being lonely every day on the way to work (alone in my car obviously). The one problem with the Backstreet Boys was that - a bit like Stock, Aitken and Waterman - the production was very similar on each song, so small doses and all that. 

3. Oasis: Don't look back in anger (1996)

It's always fascinating writing these sorts of blog posts because sometimes you discover stats or information you were unaware of. For example, none of Oasis's eight chart-toppers stayed there for more than one week, which is absurd given that they were probably the biggest band in the world at that point. Chart behaviour had changed by then and there was a rapid turnover in terms of number ones but even so... 

It's a good song but was always playing in some shape or form during my first year at uni and it drove me bonkers. But post-uni I once sang it, and two other Oasis songs, with a live band that included at least two of my friends in a pub owned by my best mate's family. The first two songs were disastrous, largely because the speaker monitors were facing in the wrong direction so I couldn't hear myself sing and was spending too much time fiddling around with the microphone. The reaction of the crowd was silence. This song, despite being arguably the most difficult, went bizarrely well and actually received some warm applause. We leapt off the stage: leave when you're sort of winning...

2. Ace of Base: All that she wants (1993)

In a top 100 filled with a bias towards pop gems rather than predictable singer-songwriters, the absence of this record, a three-week chart topper that is basically the dictionary definition of 'Europop' with its bouncy synth reggae beats, is another puzzle wrapped inside an enigma, etc. 

I first discovered this song on MTV, which was at that point a European feed, and this and many other songs - What is love by Haddaway and 74-75 by the Connells being two other examples - were out long before the UK release. And this meant I was often bored of them by then. But in the battle of the Swedes (discounting Abba), Whigfield got the nod. Never mind.

1. Madness: House of fun (1982)

To prove I did listen to music before the 1990s, here is the biggest miss of the lot. Regarded as the best 'singles band' by some - despite this song being their only chart-topper (two weeks) - Madness were the sort of band everybody liked in some shape or form, whether the tunes, the wacky videos, or their Top of the Pops performances, my favourite being Our house, which featured a stage setting as a living room. And Madness had a darker side too with songs like Embarrassment, which confronted the issue of mixed race prejudice.

I was only five when House of fun came out and although I'm not going to pretend to analyse it in talking head format, when you are that age and a song called House of fun comes on the radio, you aren't going to ignore it are you, just like I didn't ignore Hit me with your rhythm stick. Weirdo.

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That time has come and gone, my friend

Back in 2004 when I lived in Watford, me and a group of friends went to see The Day After Tomorrow, a US disaster movie about Earth entering a new Ice Age following the neglect of global warming. Great film and all of us were quite giddy by the time we left but hey, that sort of scenario would never happen in our own lifetime would it? Anyway, you can probably guess where this is going…

My previous blog post focused on the hustle and bustle of Central London in a positive manner; barely a month later and we’re experiencing something so eerie, frightening and unprecedented that it’s the sort of thing you wake up to and think, wow, why did I dream that and why didn’t I think it was rubbish and wake up? But you don’t, do you. The only time this has happened – and it’s still vague and probably doesn’t count anyway – is when I had one of those naked in public dreams (yeah I still get those) and at a public gathering I felt so humiliated that I actually remember saying or murmuring, ‘this had better be a bloody dream’.

I guess one of the issues with coronavirus is the ‘not knowing’ aspect and the helplessness of it all. But why did the UK dither for so long? Right at the beginning of 2020 my partner called it; she told me about a disease escalating at a rapid pace in China. She said, how would you feel if we stocked up with food, drink and other essentials, isolate and work from home. What, really? She warned that it would spread to Europe within weeks and yep, she was right. Now, admittedly she is a virologist/bioinformatician, so has good knowledge of how diseases spread but surely there are senior figures who work with the government who would be on top of this.

The problem is, this dithering action reflects the lack of leadership the UK has had over the past decade within the various governments and senior figures and you have to question why plan Bs have been so conspicuous by their absence, and why there is so much complacency. I could provide a timeline from 2010 that would put all parties to shame but I’ve decided not to, except to say that we as a whole are not stupid and predictions can never be safe: see Brexit, coalition governments, tactics that backfire, etc.

On 12 December 2019 it was the company Christmas party in Croydon. It was decent, much better than the previous one despite being at the same venue, with a spicy buffet rather than bowl food. I could have partied all night had it not been for the annoying generic DJ who played hip hop for most of the night when all of us wanted ABBA, The Beatles, anthems from the 1980s and 1990s and basically everything the guy wasn’t playing. Admittedly this is a guess but the average age at the party was somewhere in the region of 35 to 45, for god’s sake.

So at about 10 pm I gave up and took the short walk to East Croydon station. This was, of course, also the day of the General Election. I sat down on the train to London Bridge and checked the exit poll. I sighed and felt completely lost. For the first time ever I hadn’t voted for any of the top three parties for various reasons. The only consolation was that my constituency is one of the safest seats in the country, with the Labour MP securing more than 70% of the vote, so it didn’t really matter.

On the train some youngsters were sitting in front of me. They were Labour campaigners drenched in red and yellow and they looked so upset that I felt like crying myself.

Covid-19 may be the tip of a melting iceberg but for me this country has been in a transitional period for a while. There is anger but with an increasing feeling of unease, reluctant defeat and a desire to escape from it all. Pet Shop Boys songs Into thin air and Dreamland are examples, and when the usually fluffy pop act Saint Etienne write an angry song about moving to another planet, you know there’s a problem.   

Technology is becoming increasingly influential and humanised at a rapid rate. When you go to an airport as big as Heathrow and the gates open via scanning a passport, when you have GP appointments online or on the phone, and when you turn on various lights and equipment using speech rather than flicking a finger, you wonder what will happen next and why. Neil Hannon of Divine Comedy mocks this in a song about an appointment with a psychotherapist being conducted by a robot. Then there’s social media of course, although you could argue that the culture of bitching and yelling has always existed but been kept behind closed brains.

Not that I’m a technophobe of course. As I write there’s a laptop alongside me containing everything I need to work from home, and the web remains an essential tool, especially when you are doing research or fact checking. I wish I’d had that available when I interviewed the sadly deceased Gordon Kaye for a UK Gold TV digital listings project 20 years ago. I asked him a question based on him being best known for ‘Allo Allo’ and he seemed miffed that I didn’t know he was in Coronation Street way before that. And of course there’s the iPhone with the web at my fingertips; also essential for ideas for blogs and poems when I’m on the bog.  

The lockdown, self-isolation issues are horrible but maybe, just maybe, once we can get a grip of this virus, society can get the kick up the backside it needs. No more taking anything for granted for a start, no more complacency and maybe the realisation that we human beings need each other more than we think.

I’m as guilty as anyone. I don’t meet up with my friends and family enough and that’s based on my own complacency. That’s been taken out of my hands for the near future at least, as has football. I just assume that I can watch it or play it when its available but that has frozen, as has Euro 2020. Funnily enough the last time I took a proper journey outside was to a football session: a competitive game but ultimately about 15-20 people from a mailing list playing on a three-quarter-sized astroturf pitch at a school. As I journeyed to and from the game, it had the ring of one of those World War films where a pilot tells his family that he only has one mission left, then he would return home. And then of course…

Usually there is a lot of banter at these football sessions. For example, one week a player got absolutely panned when he mistakenly took his daughter’s trousers as his post-game change of clothes rather than his own. But the changing room was somewhat muted this time, other than post-match analysis of a 9-9 draw in which my team came back from 5-0 and 9-4 down with yours truly scoring a last-gasp equaliser with a belter from 30 yards tap-in from three yards out (sorry, had to mention that). No-one knew when we’d play again, although at least the playing behind closed doors option wouldn't be an issue. It was ‘see you mate’ rather than ‘see you next week’, which was reciprocated.

Now it’s about patience. Football doesn’t matter, it’s all about helping one another to survive, worshipping the NHS for the incredible work that doctors and nurses are doing to save lives while risking their own, and praying that scientific research and testing makes enough of a breakthrough to gradually restore relatively normal day-to-day life soon. Oh, and it would allow me to get a bloody haircut.

          

            

  

The journey to Hotspot

On 24 January 2020 Pet Shop Boys released their 14^th studio album, Hotspot. Don’t worry, I’m not going to bang on about being a long-term fan, especially given I did that 20 years ago during my MA Writing course as part of a collection of stories and poems. A guy reviewed the collection for the uni paper, Platform, and mocked my contribution with that sort of Steve Lamacq-esque sneer that people who consider anything beyond guitars as the devil give. It was something like it being pointless, “especially as it was about the Pet Shop Boys!” Ha ha, etc. But I recently came across my piece and he was actually right: it was boring.

One rule about my fandom is that I have to buy whatever it is on the first day of release, whether a CD single or an album. It used to be easy. In 1999, for example, I was doing a part-time job in a post room at a solicitors in Northampton, where I was based at the time. It was 6-10 am so once I got out I strolled into town, bought the then new album, Nightlife, at HMV, and drove home. Since then, however, it’s become more and more difficult. I’m now based in London so you’d think I’d be sorted; even though HMV had gone bankrupt a few years back, there were still plenty of stores left. But…

Let me take you back to December 2018. I was at work in Coulsdon in Surrey and planning to head to Central London afterwards to buy what was then the latest album by Florence and the Machine for my sister’s Christmas present. This, however, bounced forwards when I was spotted sniffling and making a Lemsip in the kitchen and told to go home and rest. The plan itself wasn’t really affected as I still had to go via central London to get home anyway. What could go wrong?

In the good old days I had three great options. I could go to Oxford Street, where there was a massive HMV store – one of the biggest in the UK – or take a short walk to the Bond Street branch, which was literally across the road from the underground station that housed both the Central and Jubilee lines. Equally I could just go straight to Stratford and go to a store in the Westfield Shopping Centre. On this day it had been reduced to two – the Stratford branch had recently closed – so I headed to Oxford Street. To my surprise that one had gone as well. So off to Bond Street and, er, no. 

I popped into a clothes shop and a member of staff said there was another branch about half a mile away. Sorted. Unfortunately it was a tiny store and stocked every Florence album apart from the new one. He recommended a bigger branch in Covent Garden and mentioned the name Fopp. I assumed he meant that Fopp was part of Covent Garden. I looked at one of those ‘You are here’ maps when I got there and there was no mention of Fopp in the F section. I looked confused enough for a member of staff at the station to ask if he could help. I mentioned Fopp and he gave me instructions. They were very good, to the extent that I walked straight past it; except I was still inadvertently oblivious to what I was looking for (hi, U2).

I found myself on Shaftsbury Avenue, near Piccadilly Circus, and looked at another ‘You are here’ map. Still no Fopp. I was getting irritated and sweaty. I’m at my worst when I get irritated – you could apply that to most people of course – but it’s even worse when I know that there is something obvious that I hadn’t worked out, whether it’s not remembering where the exit was after a blood test in one of the many hospitals I’ve had to visit (in fairness I usually laugh that off), or not being able to find something that I knew I’d filed away sensibly. The worst one was forgetting where the entrance to Fenchurch Street station was despite using the station several times. But this was close, particularly given that the instruction contained that horrible phrase, ‘you can’t miss it’.

Several minutes later and Mr Headless Chicken was still walking up and down Shaftesbury Avenue. Most people didn’t know what I was on about but thankfully a guy at a pop-up stall did and pointed me back to where I’d come from. About a minute later I looked across the road and there it was: a bloody shop with a trendy sign. Then I found out that the Florence album hadn’t been released yet. Only kidding.

Forward to 24 January 2020 and off to Fopp from home this time. I was recovering from more man flu so I was a little groggy, though probably because I hadn’t been outside for three days. Thankfully I’d done my homework and Fopp was still in existence. But what time did it close? Was I up against it? Er, of course not. This is bloody central London and in fact the store didn’t close until 10pm on a Friday. A 30-minute trip via the Jubilee and Piccadilly lines later and I arrived at Covent Garden station. I’d forgotten just how packed it is during rush hour; commuters are advised to use Leicester Square instead for a reason. The official exit is by lift and the very much frowned upon alternative is to climb the spiral staircase – 193 steps – with warning signs about it being the equivalent of climbing five storeys and only using it an emergency or evacuation. So obviously I chose that option. 

I wouldn’t recommend it but having done the same at Russell Square (an identical scenario) a couple of times I knew it wouldn’t end in tears. Besides there were others willing to take it on as well and when that happens it’s actually quite fun. Some were tourists who seemed to classify it as some sort of London bucket list achievement and they were laughing and urging one another on with fake breathing exercises.

I’d forgotten just how amazing this part of London looks when floodlit on a Friday night in the winter. And of course there’s the pre-weekend happy atmosphere so I walked into a pub to sample it; well, either that or because I desperately needed a piss. On to Fopp and I was in and out within a couple of minutes with Hotspot tucked away in my man bag. I wandered around like only I can when I deliberate over how to get somewhere or anywhere and returned home via Holborn on the Central Line. When I got in I placed the CD in the rack, put my headphones on and listened to the version I’d downloaded earlier.

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