- Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)
- Prince: Batdance
- The Beautiful South: Song for Whoever
- U2: All I Want Is You
- Jason Donovan: Sealed with a Kiss
- Sinitta: Right Back Where We Started From
- Cyndi Lauper: I Drove All Night
- Gladys Knight: Licence to Kill
- D Mob featuring LRS: It Is Time to Get Funky
- Donna Allen: Joy and Pain
- Double Trouble & The Rebel MC: Just Keep Rockin'
- Guns 'N Roses: Sweet Child o' Mine [remix]
- Queen: Breakthru
- Cliff Richard: The Best of Me
- Madonna: Express Yourself
- Fuzzbox: Pink Sunshine
- Clannad featuring Bono: In a Lifetime
- Holly Johnson: Atomic City
- London Boys: London Nights
- M: Pop Muzik '89
- Donna Summer: I Don't Wanna Get Hurt
- Guns 'N Roses: Patience
- The Bangles: Be with You
- Natalie Cole: Miss You Like Crazy
- Karyn White: Superwoman
- Placido Domingo & Jennifer Rush: Til I Loved You
- Bananarama: Cruel Summer '89
- Transvision Vamp: The Only One
- Neneh Cherry: Manchild
- Public Enemy: Fight the Power
- Malcolm McLaren & The Bootzilla Orchestra: Waltz Darling
- Tone Loc: Funky Cold Medina
- Waterfront: Cry
- Tom Petty: I Won't Back Down
- Kylie Minogue: Hand on Your Heart
- Living in a Box: Gatecrashing
- Monie Love: Grandpa's Party
- Sonia: You'll Never Stop Me from Loving You
- Joyce Sims: Looking for a Love
- A Guy Called Gerald: Voodoo Ray
~~~~~
This week's Top 40 is bookended by its best - and, probably, most influential - songs. Back to Life was enjoying its first fortnight at number one and it was an exciting single to have on top. It was everywhere and everyone seemed to love it - and there simply wasn't an alternative tune to get behind. These factors, however, made it ubiquitous and I was soon too go off it, particularly after the kids in the place attached to our's acquired a copy of the single and set about playing it to death. The tissue-thin walls of Mellow Purgess conspired to ensure that my sister and I would have had more than enough of the great summer hit of '89 while everyone else was still captivated by it.
I could well have been similarly overexposed to A Guy Called Gerald's Voodoo Ray but for the fact that it completely passed me by. I only began hearing about it two or three years later as a key single in the evolution of Acid House into both Rave and Madchester but I was never curious enough to give it a listen. Only now, with this blog, have I bothered to give it a go. It's an impressive piece but one that can't possibly be as fresh as it would have been twenty-eight years ago. Clinging to the already outdated squelching sounds that defined Acid House a year earlier, it introduces a trance-like vibe that would become commonplace in nineties house. I would later go through a brief phase of digging a trio ravy tunes, namely Move Any Mountain by The Shamen, In Yer Face by 808 State and The Roof Is on Fire by Westbam - all three of which benefited heavily from making a deep impression on me with one and only one listen. Voodoo Ray kick-started this movement but I guess you had to be there - and be listening - to fully appreciate its scope.
The year attending Mayflower Comprehensive was slowly coming to a close - indeed, my parallel universe-self that had remained in Canada would have been just gearing up for a summer of game shows and reruns at about this time but my actual world-self in Britain still had the first half of July to go - and it was one almost completely bereft of field trips. A staple of Highwood Elementary School as much as hot dog day and white elephant sales, class excursions to spots around Calgary were often enjoyable and sometimes pointless but were always a welcome break during the long school year. School trips at Mayflower, however, were few and far between and the already modest number was reduced further by my skipping out on a pair of them.
As early as October or November, Miss Mitchell, our form teacher, had organised a Friday night outing to a disco roller rink in Basildon or Wickford. (The fact that it took place outside of school hours already diminished its stature as a field trip and it's only included here just to pad the numbers a bit) I kinda, sorta fancied two or three girls in my class at the time and this type of excursion would have been just the sort of place I could have awkwardly thought about holding hands with one while taking a lap around the rink to the strains of When Will I Be Famous by Bros - while ultimately, inevitably chickening out in the end - but all such hopes were dashed by a conflicting weekend trip with my family. I'm sure I didn't miss much.
Then, in the early part of May, my form room was set to take a day trip to Calais but I had to pass on due to my now curious status of not having a passport. (I was young enough at the time to be on my dad's passport, a practice they've since done away with) So, while my classmates were getting up early for a long day of coach trips, ferry rides and probably not a whole lot to see in France, I stayed at home and took a nice walk with my mum to Eastgate, Basildon's main shopping complex, where I enjoyed a Big Mac. Again, I probably didn't miss a whole lot.
So, aside from our January trip to London to see a childish - but still enjoyable, at least to my immature brain - panto, I'd had no field trips that year (and even that one doesn't even really count seeing as how it was for all first years; one of the things that made field trips back home so enjoyable was knowing that other students were stuck in the classroom while we were out). This was all to change with our trip to Pleasurewood Hills on the last school day of June.
Several classmates of mine had been badgering Miss Mitchell into taking us to a theme park for a while by this point but this was something I never thought would happen. Field trips may happen to be fun - the Zoo was always wonderfully chaotic and Safety City was brilliant; the Engergium, not so much - but they all had a basis in learning. An amusement park, however, was little more than an admission that our teacher had given up.
Not that Pleasurewood Hills was an especially fun place itself. I didn't know it was possible to be a theme park and not have at least one merry-go-round, one ferris wheel, one bumper car pen. (Certain that my memory was playing tricks on me and that it couldn't possibly have had only two rides, I looked it up and can now say that I stand corrected: there were in fact four rides; I had no idea they even had a roller-coaster at the time) It did have one saving grace: Shiver m' Timbers, their version of the swinging boat ride, an attraction which never has the same name at any two amusement parks or fun fairs. (It was known as Ocean Motion where I grew up and simply Viking at a place near where I live) I had to talk my friends into joining and none of them followed me as I stood with my arms aloft as the ship went fully vertical. I went on it several times that day.
The lack of amusements and funds - I only had enough pocket money to buy a snack and a souvenir key chain, which promptly fell apart as all souvenir key chains do - meant we had to amuse ourselves and my friend Richard and I made do with spitting off the chairlift ride. Cliched juvenalia aside, the highlight of this trip to an otherwise nondescript theme park was hanging out with my pack of friends. It's only when I look back at it now that I realise just how disappointing the quality and quantity of the rides was; at the time, I was having a laugh with my mates and that was all that mattered. I'm glad I didn't miss this one.
~~~~~
young Paul's favourite: Back to Life
older Paul's retro pick: Back to Life
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