When I originally started this series, many moons ago, I promised ten songs I hated when I was a kid but don't mind as much now. This is excellent news because it means I only need to think of two more.
8. Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Relax!
What did I object to the most about Relax! when it dominated the UK singles chart in 1984?
Was it Paul Morley's contrived, controversy-baiting PR campaign?
Was it the fact that the BBC (spearheaded by moral bastion* Mike 'tennis racket' Read) chose to ban it, thereby making the song far more desirable to teenagers everywhere?
Was it the fact that the band continually denied - against all evidence - that the lyrics were explicitly sexual and instead claimed it was "motivational"?
I suppose the answer is all of the above... and yet, none of them.
I was 11 in January of '84, when this record was at Number One. And the think that irked me the most was the among my peers, loads of other 11 and 12 year olds were walking around wearing Relax! T-shirts and shouting "When you want to COME!" even though they really didn't have a clue what they were on about. Arguably nowadays your average 11 or 12 year old would have more of an idea - sadly - but we were (mostly) blissfully ignorant / innocent back then. We just knew it was a bit mucky, and that made it cool.
Why did I hate Relax!? For the same reason I hated Baggy Trousers a couple of years earlier... because everyone else my age loved it. That was really all the reason I needed.
Nowadays, I hear Relax! in a totally different way. It's a Trevor Horn masterpiece really, as perfect in its own way as Video Killed The Radio Star or Owner of a Lonely Heart. The fact that Holly Johnson is the only member of FGTH to actually appear on the final track (apart from the sound effect of the rest of the band jumping into a swimming pool) only seals that.
Frankie enjoyed a couple more moments of pop genius (both much better than Relax!) before imploding in the glorious way all over-hyped bands do. The BBC relinquished its ban on the song and everyone forget it was mucky. George Michael did the whole thing again with a lot more class a few years later. Then Ross from Friends wore a Relax! T-shirt and killed its cool credentials forever. Paul Morley is still an arse.
Back in the 80s, as previously discussed, while all my cool mates (wait... should that read: my one cool mate? Or: my one "cool" mate?) told me I should like the Smiths, I remained resolutely uncool. That same "cool" mate was also a huge fan of the Pet Shop Boys and New Order. I'm afraid the less said about New Order, the better. I know they're adored in many corners of the blogosphere, but I never got them, and also have an unpleasant teenage memory directly connected to them which has always prevented me from giving them a try. Also, they crossed the line too far into dance music for me, 'nuff said.
The Pet Shop Boys, though, I did actually like when I was a teenager. I remember being very excited by their early singles (West End Girls, Opportunities et al.) and even splashing out on a 7" copy of their smashing Dusty Springfield collaboration, What Have I Done To Deserve This? Yes, they trod the line between pop and dance, and I suspect if Chris Lowe had had his way, they'd have veered much more towards the latter, but Neil Tennant's arch, Noel Coward-esque lyrics always kept me interested...
Except on Paninaro.
Paninaro was the b-side of Suburbia, another cracking PSBs single, albeit one I didn't actually own until I finally bought their Greatest Hits collection many years later... so I wouldn't have even heard Paninaro if it wasn't for my "cool" mate. The song is ostensibly about the European youth culture movement of the early 80s in which Italian teenagers dressed in trendy fashions like those illustrated above (Timberland, Levis, Armani etc.) and swore an oath of allegiance to consumerism. They even had a fast food hamburger as their mascot!
The thing that really stuck in my craw about Paninaro though wasn't the Patrick Bateman style obsession with brands ("Armani, Armani, ah-ah-Armani") nor was it the robotic Blackpudlian delivery of Chris Lowe on the non-chorusy bits (this was one of the few PSBs songs where Lowe was allowed near a microphone... for obvious reasons). No, what really got my goat was the sample from an old Pet Shops Boys interview in which Lowe states...
"I don't like country and western. I don't like rock music, I don't like rockabilly or rock and roll particularly. I don't like much, really, do I? But what I do like, I love passionately."
In the context of the song, in the context of the fashion, in the context of the entire ethos of Paninaro, that quote works well. But I didn't get any of that when I was 14. All I got was my "cool" mate parroting this quote endlessly to justify his own teenage obsession. It was particularly galling because I liked C&W, I liked rock, I LIKED rock 'n' roll. Plus, 6 months earlier he'd been a massive Queen fan just like me. Where had that old friend gone? And then came the New Order incident... well, a story for another time, I think.
Listening back now, I have nothing against Paninaro, other than it's not very good. It's dated far worse than any of the band's A-Sides, but it was bound to do, being so linked to a fleeting fashion of the time. Unlike the other songs in this series then, I'm not going to post the video... but here's the link if you want it. Instead, here's a much better song by the Pet Shops Boys: one of many. They were - and still are - an excellent British pop band.
Since Martin brought this one up in the comments a couple of days back, it seemed a good enough excuse to bring back this particular series which I've let slide a bit in recent months.
6. Roland Rat - Rat Rapping
I had no problem with Roland Rat. I was 11 when he made his TV debut and although I didn't really have time for Breakfast Television (still a relatively new innovation in those days), I found myself drawn to his humorous shtick, laughing along with Kevin the Gerbil, Errol the Hamster and Glenis the Guinea Pig. I was just the right age. So when Roland released his first single, I was up for singing along...
Except...
Except...
My name is Rol. In case you think that's a pseudonym I adopt for this blog, it's not. Although it's my middle name, Rol is the name I've always been called... by family, friends and even teachers. Except when I went up to High School and one particular teacher took umbrage at me telling her my name was Rol, saying she wouldn't be addressing students by their nicknames, and insisting I use the longer version.
The longer version being...
Well, it's not Roland.
However, as Roland Rat made his way into the pop charts with his familiar Fonzie-like cry of "Eyyyyyy", I soon found myself the butt of lots of rat jokes at school. My first year at high school, and suddenly I was "Roland - like the Rat: Eyyyyyyyy!"
But worse was yet to come: much, much worse, as the number one TV show for our genration, Grange Hill followed soon after by introducing its very own Roland... or should that be Ro-Land... in the shape of tubby miseryguts Ro-Land Browning.
What a gift to the playground wits... and what a dilemma! What would they shout as I walked by now? They were torn between a cheeky "Eyyyyyy!" and the far more unpleasant, "I only want to help you, Ro-Land" (the catchphrase of Roland's only real friend on the show, the wimpy and annoying Janet St. Clair). Ultimately, Roland Browning won out, and the cuter, cooler Roland Rat impersonations were dropped in favour of the much more cutting Roland Browning jibes. Things got so bad for the fictional Roland Browning that he chucked himself under a car. I missed that episode because I had a piano exam. This was in the days before even video recorders. How did we live!?! I had to tune in the following week and work out what had happened while Roland lay recovering in hospital, wimpy Janet at his side.
1983 was not a good time to be called Rol.
Even if Rol isn't even short for Roland...
(It's short for Rolston, but that really isn't important to this story.)
I've not done one of these for a while, mainly because I've been struggling to think of any more songs I hated back when I was a kid but don't mind now. I can think of plenty I hated then and still hate now - I'd Rather Jack (Than Fleetwood Mac) by The Reynolds Girls always comes to mind, even though I really should have got over that by now. I mean, the Mac obviously had the last laugh on that one, didn't they? I'm sure there are other contenders I haven't thought of yet, and I'll get to those when I think of them, but here's one I couldn't possibly hate now as much as when it came out... I may even have developed a soft spot for it over the years.
5. Vanilla Ice - Ice, Ice Baby
All right, stop: collaborate and listen! My main reason for hating Ice, Ice Baby is plain to hear. The sample. Under Pressure. Queen AND Bowie. I mean, that's friggin' sacred, man! (Or it was when I was 18.) You don't mess with Queen AND Bowie! Even worse, old Robert Van Winkle (you can't make this stuff up) didn't even pay them for the sample at first and even tried to claim it WASN'T a sample and that he'd added an extra note (he didn't) which changed the bassline (it didn't) enough to avoid plagiarism (it didn't). To be fair, he later changed his mind on that, claimed his original quote was a joke, and paid up. (I suspect Queen AND David Bowie's lawyers might have had something to do with that.)
For a few precious weeks towards the end of 1990, nothing could stop Vanilla Ice. During that time, I hated this record. It put me off rap music (which I'd been tentatively dipping my toe into through the likes of Run DMC and the Beastie Boys) for a long time. Ironically, it'd take another white rapper - Eminem - to finally lure me back in, but that was almost a decade later.
Ice, Ice Baby was such a big, big hit that RVW wasn't ever going to be able to match it. As time went by, it became seen as a novelty record, leading the cool kids to turn against it in droves. In just over a decade, it went from being the first hip hop single to top the mainstream chart in America (and much of the rest of the world) to being voted fifth in a countdown of the 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever.
Somewhere along the line, I stopped hating it... and it started making me smile. I'm not going to claim it's a great record: it's not. But it's stood the test of time better than a lot of music from 1990. And when Robert's big ice-skating comeback show - Vanilla Ice On Ice (I'm still not making it up) - was cancelled last year due to poor ticket sales, I felt genuinely bad for him. I guess he must have killed my brain like a poisonous mushroom...
When I started this series, I knew I'd have to write about this song... and I knew it would involve confessing to something I'm now pretty ashamed of.
I was a homophobic child.
There's no getting away from this fact. Like many of my age in the 80s, I viewed gay people with suspicion and said some pretty horrible things about them, through blind ignorance. It was only when I started working in radio (at 16) that I ended up meeting a lot of gay people, some of whom would become close, long term friends (three of the best friends I've had over the last 30 years, in fact) that my eyes were opened and my prejudice washed away.
But before that, there was Boy George.
I was 11 when Karma Chameleon hit the top of the charts and I hated it. Because there was George, a Boy dressed like a girl, and I really didn't like it. I can't take full responsibility for that: it was the attitude of the times, and only through the outspoken work of openly gay pop stars like George and Jimmy Sommerville did people's attitudes finally start to change. It would be a good few years before George Michael or Freddie Mercury (both of whom I adored back then) officially came out. And it took Barry Manilow till LAST WEEK to finally admit it. I realise now the horrible irony of hating a song which is essentially about accepting people without prejudice... because I was prejudiced myself. But at 11, it's hard to see the forest for the trees,
Having just listened to Karma Chameleon all the way through for the first time in ages, maybe the song has finally grown on me, as well as the message. Love that harmonica...
No Top Ten today - I'm saving this week's till Sunday. You'll find out why then.
In the meantime, another one of these...
3. M/A/R/R/S - Pump Up The Volume
Can you pinpoint the moment when you fell out of love with the Top 40? If you want to say, "This week, with Ed Sheeran taking up 9 places on the Top 10", then good on you... you've stuck it out far longer than most. There is a point in everyone's life when the singles chart switches from being a treasure chest full of dazzling pearls to a bucket of clams you have to sift through to find an occasional oyster. When that happens varies - it might be in your late teens, it might be in your 20s. Chances are if you're still in love with the Top 40 in your 30s, your taste just ain't that discerning. But it comes to us all in the end.
For me, it was 1987. And I was only 15 years old. Ironic, really, considering that was the year I actually started buying singles...
Here's how you can tell the moment the charts stopped being perfect for you. A quick google search and you'll find a Top 100 best selling songs for any year of your choice. If I pick a random year from the late 70s up to the mid 80s, I could sing you virtually every song from that hundred. Even the ones I don't really dig, like Jennifer Rush - The Power Of Love; or Elaine Paige & Barbara Dickson - I Know Him So Well... the two best selling songs of 1985. They were both very annoying at the time, but now they fill me with nostalgia. (There was a brilliant version of I Know Him So Well on last week's episode of Inside Number 9 which made the memories come flooding back.)
But as soon as I hit 1987... the clams start gathering.
Stock Aitken & Waterman. Steve 'Silk' Hurley. Sinitta & Spagna.
Man 2 Man Meets Man Parrish. Five Star. Taffy. House Master Boyz & The Rude Boy Of House.
Worse was yet to come, in '88, '89, '90... the years when music should have meant the most to me, and the charts kept kicking me in the balls. And I can trace it all back to one track, a novelty Number One by a group who never released another record (not under this name, anyway).
Thirty years later, I can listen to Pump Up The Volume without hating it. Certainly not in the way I still loathe Technotronic, S-Express, Bomb The Base, Krush, D Mob... and all the others that would slither through the doors M/A/R/R/S kicked open. They said nothing to me about my life.
But M/A/R/R/S... I can recognise its influential place in the history of pop... it's an audacious mish-mash of samples over an infectious beat with some cutting edge / extremely dated sfx sprinkled over the top. When I hear it, it can't help but take me back to 1987. Childhood's end...
That's not to say you can't fall back in love with the singles chart later in life, by the way... I did again in the mid-90s. But it didn't last, and ultimately I had my heart trampled all over once more. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson...
I was 8 years old when Madness released the single that defined their "Nutty Boys" image. And at my junior school, the tough kids loved it. They'd jump up and down in their junior DMs, pulling your hair and encouraging you to eat dirt in honour of their favourite song. I've always hated bullies, so it follows that I'd hate their music too... especially when they were ramming it down my throat. Along with their fist.
As the years went by, I grew to like and respect Madness, although their greatest moment was a Labi Siffre cover, and I still find Suggs annoying. Listening to Baggy Trousers now though, I can appreciate the witty observational detail of the lyrics, particularly, "all the teachers in the pub, passing round the Ready Rub". But it still makes me feel a little of that 8 year old's anxiety, the fear of the school bully. Ironically, I got off lightly at junior school: I suffered far worse at high school, by which time Baggy Trousers was a distant memory.
Oh what fun we had But at the time it seemed so bad...
As previously discussed, I didn't get into buying pop records until I was 15. Before then, my musical education was filtered through (much) older siblings and parents who were firm Radio 2 listeners. Growing up, I did encounter some of the more contemporary, chart-bound songs of the day that my friends were into... and I would often rebel against them. Actively dislike them, no, HATE them, just because everyone else was raving about them (or because CERTAIN people were).
Anyway, I thought I'd start a new (occasional) series featuring and trying to explain why I hated these songs back in the day. And why, in many cases, I came to love them.
There was only one song I could kick off with...
1. The Smiths - Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
(Oh yeah, I thought I'd count upwards, 1 - 10, for these posts. It made more sense.)
The Smiths' most famous song was released in 1984, when I was 12 years old, still in the first year of high school. I hadn't started retuning the dial to Radio 1 yet, and I certainly wasn't watching Top of the Pops regularly... still, I very much doubt many of my fellow First Years were aware of The Smiths at this point either. Let's fast forward a year or so to be on the safe side...
OK, now I've just started the Third Year. I'm definitely listening to Radio 1 now, because I remember being very fond of Janice Long's Selectadisc on a Friday tea time. I liked this show a lot because girls (and sometimes boys) would phone up and request songs for people they fancied and I was very much into the idea of fancying and being fancied (though there was far too much of the former and bugger all of the latter going on). I know it's 1985 when I was listening to this show because I remember hearing There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart) getting requested a lot and I loved Annie Lennox's vocal gymnastics at the start of that song. I also remember that quite frequently someone would call up and request a song by THE MOST MISERABLE BAND ever, The Smiths. And often they would request the one song that proved this, without a shadow of a doubt: Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now.
Now I was one of those annoying kids who liked to make people laugh. I didn't muck about in class, but I did do a half-decent line in celebrity / teacher impressions outside the classroom. I must have been half-decent as the drama teacher got me to introduce a school performance. I was the link man for this evening, coming on stage in between each little play and filling while they rearranged the sets behind me. I remember I did a Rod Serling Twilight Zone spoof as one of my intros, but I can't for the life of me remember what any of the others were. I'm sure they were excruciating for anyone over the age of 15 (and quite a few people under that age too) but I digress...
One of my favourite impressions soon became this MISERABLE BASTARD "POP" SINGER who kept getting played on Selectadisc.
"Moan moan moan, I hate my life, I'm so miserable, I wish I was dead, moan, moan, moan..."
My impression went something like that, and involved the sticking out of my bottom lip for added emphasis. I had friends - a couple of very good ones by this time (though there's a part of me that always feels I struggled to make friends in school: hence why I was so desperate to make people laugh) - who loved The Smiths, and kept trying to turn me on to them. It didn't work. I resisted their efforts well into the Sixth Form, and persisted with my Moz-mockery. (One of those friends went to a 6th Form Fancy Dress disco wearing National Health glasses and gladioli in his back pocket. I went as the Jack Nicholson Joker. All that face paint played havoc with my acne. No way I was going to pull that night.)
I mentioned on Facebook a couple of weeks back how I didn't get into The Smiths until I was 19 (there's a story behind that, John Peel is involved, another post for another day) and an old school acquaintance and longtime Smiths fan replied I "just wasn't ready for them" until then. There's a truth in that, but it's not the whole story. One of the reasons my friends kept trying to change my stubborn opinion is that in many ways The Smiths were made for me as a teenager. I had a dark sense of humour, a cynical outlook on the world, and was prone to bouts of morose depression. I was also incredibly lonely in that epically sad teenage way that stops you from enjoying the friends you do have and making the most of that most difficult time.
In my life Why do I smile At people who I'd much rather kick in the eye?
Morrissey was there for me throughout my 20s, when I really needed him. Ironically, I became one of those people who argued vociferously whenever anyone dared to call The Smiths "miserablists" and defended Morrissey through some of his dumbest attempts at verbal self destruction. (Nobody opens his mouth and inserts his foot like Moz.) But even after I'd learned the lyrics to every obscure Smiths b-side off by heart, there was still a part of me that refused to fully embrace Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now. It would take a long time to lift that self-imposed stigma.
I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was terrible...*
(*Yeah, I know that's a different song. It just seemed a very appropriate line to finish on.)
