- Marc Almond featuring Gene Pitney: Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart
- Mike + The Mechanics: The Living Years
- Roy Orbison: You Got It
- Holly Johnson: Love Train
- Roachford: Cuddly Toy
- Morrissey: The Last of the Famous International Playboys
- Robert Howard & Kym Mazell: Wait
- Ten City: That's the Way Love Is
- Bobby Brown: My Prerogative
- Fine Young Cannibals: She Drive Me Crazy
- Yazz: Fine Time
- Michael Ball: Love Changes Everything
- Simply Red: It's Only Love
- Then Jerico: Big Area
- Sheena Easton: The Lover in Me
- Kylie & Jason: Especially for You
- Erasure: Crackers International
- Adeva: Respect
- Will to Power: Baby I Love Your Way/Freebird
- Samantha Fox: I Only Wanna Be with You
- Brother Beyond: Be My Twin
- Milli Vanilli: Baby Don't Forget My Number
- Hue & Cry: Looking for Linda
- Neneh Cherry: Buffalo Stance
- Mica Paris & Will Downing: Where Is the Love?
- Rick Astley: Hold Me in Your Arms
- Boy Meets Girl: Waiting for a Star to Fall
- Raze: Break 4 Love
- Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock: Get on the Dance Floor
- Inner City: Good Life
- Def Leppard: Rocket
- Texas: I Don't Want a Lover
- Poison: Every Rose Has Its Thorn
- Luther Vandross: She Won't Talk to Me
- Natalie Cole: I Live for Your Love
- Debbie Gibson: Lost in Your Eyes
- Sam Brown: Stop
- Level 42: Tracie
- Big Country: Peace in Our Time
- Monie Love: I Can Do This
~~~~~
It may not have been the mid-sixties or the early seventies but the late eighties had its fair share of pop-rock giants. Of course I knew of the likes of Michael Jackson, Madonna, George Michael, Prince, Bruce Springsteen and U2, even if I had mixed feelings towards all of them. I was less aware, however, of major figures on the periphery. Of course growing up in heavy metal-crazed Calgary it was difficult to escape Bon Jovi and Def Leppard but their harder-edged, harder-living compatriots Guns N' Roses and Metallica were slower to break through. The American alternative scene was in its infancy and it would be a long time before I would hear The Pixies and Sonic Youth. Rap was clearly becoming a thing but I was largely indifferent to my initial exposure to titans Public Enemy (while I never managed to hear N.W.A. at all and am not sure I ever have). And I was still a year or two away from seeing schoolmates sporting t-shirts of Britain's indie heroes: The Cure, Depeche Mode, Morrissey.
Morrissey. Of all the acts mentioned above he would make by far the biggest impact on me. They say that if Elvis hadn't existed then we would have had to invent him; had Morrissey never been conceived, however, no one would ever think to create such a person. Seemingly deliberately negative, opposed to absolutely everything, luxuriating in misery, he nevertheless penned incisive and funny lyrics. Some singers I'd aspire to be like. Others, I'd envy the lives they were living, even if their music meant nothing to me. Morrissey, however, was someone I didn't want to meet, didn't dream about seeing live, didn't make me want to be a similarly judgmental vegetarian and didn't point the way forward to me discovering new horizons. His music did, however, manage to help me find my way through this world and woke me up to my issues. Maybe not someone to love but someone to be deeply grateful for.
So, it must have been exciting to see Morrissey flouncing around the Top of the Pops stage with most of his erstwhile bandmates from The Smiths as they mimed this week's highest new entry The Last of the Famous International Playboys then? Well, no. I was on my way to Ireland for half-term break and missed that week's TOTP, thereby ruining my prior claim to having never missed an episode of Britain's seminal music show. The grinding, devastating paean to gangsters was something that managed to pass me by completely at the time but when I finally heard it a few years later I was floored. A year on from his first two solo singles, the equally sublime Suedehead and Everyday Is Like Sunday, Morrissey was on a roll and used his latest release as an excuse to begin self-mythologizing, a task he hasn't shied away from in the quarter century since. Looking back at the thugs he worshiped, he's also looking ahead to a time when he'll be similarly immortalized. Always one for iconography, The Last of the Famous International Playboys marks the beginning of Morrissey himself as the icon. It's a mixed blessing for while the record itself is nothing short of remarkable, it wasn't something he could simply move on from and his music from here on in begins to take a noticeable step down from which he would never recover.
In much the same way we spent the previous half-term break visiting Scotland with Grandma Ella and Grandpa Bill, we had travel companions for our jaunt to Ireland. My aunt Cookie and cousin Meghan had arrived earlier in the week. Unfortunately, their luggage failed to turn up with them and my nine-year-old cousin was reduced to wearing some over-sized, none-too-flattering jogging suits which belonged to me. Their suitcases were eventually found but the contents of which failed to impress us. My mum had asked her sister-in-law to bring a few things that we were missing from home and she happily obliged with tiny, multi-coloured marshmallows and unsalted soda crackers. It was a disappointment at the time but now it seems kind of endearing that she managed to get everything we requested just a bit wrong.
I live in Korea where many people take laughably short holidays, which is what this trip to Ireland felt like, particularly considering that the bulk of both our first and last days were spent on trains and ferries. Luckily I had my trusty walkman and my ever growing collection of tapes to provide adequate entertainment for the boring train journey. (With the occasional lull courtesy of dead air on cassettes whose sides had uneven playing time; my dad had once told me that hitting the fast forward button would chew up precious battery power so I made a habit of patiently waiting as several minutes of empty, useless tape would spool to its end) The ferry from Holyhead to Dublin was where I discovered the wonders of a movie theatre on a ship but the Irish Sea's anger rather spoiled the otherwise hysterical A Fish Called Wanda.
Dublin looked very much as it did in the brilliant 1991 film The Commitments: hard, rough, a more depressed London. It did have a certain glamour among the grime and I found it half-thrilling, half-unsettling to wander down dark and empty, puddle-laden streets, past boarded up homes and decaying artifacts of industry. It didn't have that comfy, homey feel that we so enjoyed about Scotland and was a far cry from those orderly English cities and towns we'd been visiting but it had something. (Something that clearly needed more than just a couple days)
The Irish capital's dark side - the dark side I saw, not some unseemly world of cock fights, pimps, hard drugs and petty crime - left an impression on me that tends to romanticize run down, decrepit districts that may have once thrived. Here in Korea, I enjoy wandering around horribly narrow streets lined with hardware stores, hair salons and repair shops that look like they haven't been a going concern since the seventies. It's a world that's dying as the Korean government plans to erect modern apartments and new towns. I'm probably waxing poetic about a world I never knew and never even existed. I probably sound like Morrissey.
~~~~~
young Paul's favourite: Love Train
older Paul's retro pick: The Last of the Famous International Playboys
So, it must have been exciting to see Morrissey flouncing around the Top of the Pops stage with most of his erstwhile bandmates from The Smiths as they mimed this week's highest new entry The Last of the Famous International Playboys then? Well, no. I was on my way to Ireland for half-term break and missed that week's TOTP, thereby ruining my prior claim to having never missed an episode of Britain's seminal music show. The grinding, devastating paean to gangsters was something that managed to pass me by completely at the time but when I finally heard it a few years later I was floored. A year on from his first two solo singles, the equally sublime Suedehead and Everyday Is Like Sunday, Morrissey was on a roll and used his latest release as an excuse to begin self-mythologizing, a task he hasn't shied away from in the quarter century since. Looking back at the thugs he worshiped, he's also looking ahead to a time when he'll be similarly immortalized. Always one for iconography, The Last of the Famous International Playboys marks the beginning of Morrissey himself as the icon. It's a mixed blessing for while the record itself is nothing short of remarkable, it wasn't something he could simply move on from and his music from here on in begins to take a noticeable step down from which he would never recover.
In much the same way we spent the previous half-term break visiting Scotland with Grandma Ella and Grandpa Bill, we had travel companions for our jaunt to Ireland. My aunt Cookie and cousin Meghan had arrived earlier in the week. Unfortunately, their luggage failed to turn up with them and my nine-year-old cousin was reduced to wearing some over-sized, none-too-flattering jogging suits which belonged to me. Their suitcases were eventually found but the contents of which failed to impress us. My mum had asked her sister-in-law to bring a few things that we were missing from home and she happily obliged with tiny, multi-coloured marshmallows and unsalted soda crackers. It was a disappointment at the time but now it seems kind of endearing that she managed to get everything we requested just a bit wrong.
I live in Korea where many people take laughably short holidays, which is what this trip to Ireland felt like, particularly considering that the bulk of both our first and last days were spent on trains and ferries. Luckily I had my trusty walkman and my ever growing collection of tapes to provide adequate entertainment for the boring train journey. (With the occasional lull courtesy of dead air on cassettes whose sides had uneven playing time; my dad had once told me that hitting the fast forward button would chew up precious battery power so I made a habit of patiently waiting as several minutes of empty, useless tape would spool to its end) The ferry from Holyhead to Dublin was where I discovered the wonders of a movie theatre on a ship but the Irish Sea's anger rather spoiled the otherwise hysterical A Fish Called Wanda.
Dublin looked very much as it did in the brilliant 1991 film The Commitments: hard, rough, a more depressed London. It did have a certain glamour among the grime and I found it half-thrilling, half-unsettling to wander down dark and empty, puddle-laden streets, past boarded up homes and decaying artifacts of industry. It didn't have that comfy, homey feel that we so enjoyed about Scotland and was a far cry from those orderly English cities and towns we'd been visiting but it had something. (Something that clearly needed more than just a couple days)
The Irish capital's dark side - the dark side I saw, not some unseemly world of cock fights, pimps, hard drugs and petty crime - left an impression on me that tends to romanticize run down, decrepit districts that may have once thrived. Here in Korea, I enjoy wandering around horribly narrow streets lined with hardware stores, hair salons and repair shops that look like they haven't been a going concern since the seventies. It's a world that's dying as the Korean government plans to erect modern apartments and new towns. I'm probably waxing poetic about a world I never knew and never even existed. I probably sound like Morrissey.
~~~~~
young Paul's favourite: Love Train
older Paul's retro pick: The Last of the Famous International Playboys
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