- Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)
- The Beautiful South: Song for Whoever
- London Boys: London Nights
- Prince: Batdance
- Pet Shop Boys: It's Alright
- Gladys Knight: Licence to Kill
- Queen: Breakthru
- U2: All I Want Is You
- Cyndi Lauper: I Drove All Night
- Guns 'N Roses: Patience
- Double Trouble & The Rebel MC: Just Keep Rockin'
- Sonia: You'll Never Stop Me from Loving You
- Sinitta: Right Back Where We Started From
- Jason Donovan: Sealed with a Kiss
- M: Pop Muzik '89
- D Mob featuring LRS: It Is Time to Get Funky
- Donna Allen: Joy and Pain
- Rufus & Chaka Khan: Ain't Nobody '89
- Clannad featuring Bono: In a Lifetime
- Guns 'N Roses: Sweet Child o' Mine [remix]
- Karyn White: Superwoman
- Monie Love: Grandpa's Party
- The Bangles: Be with You
- Madonna: Express Yourself
- Holly Johnson: Atomic City
- A Guy Called Gerald: Voodoo Ray
- Waterfront: Cry
- Fuzzbox: Pink Sunshine
- Public Enemy: Fight the Power
- Bette Midler: Wind Beneath My Wings
- Donna Summer: I Don't Wanna Get Hurt
- Danny Wilson: The Second Summer of Love
- De La Soul: Say No Go
- Natalie Cole: Miss You Like Crazy
- Cliff Richard: The Best of Me
- Kirsty MacColl: Days
- Placido Domingo & Jennifer Rush: Til I Loved You
- Norman Cook: Blame It on the Bassline / Won't Talk About It
- LA Mix: Get Loose
- Neneh Cherry: Manchild
~~~~~
Twelve-year-old Paul didn't care so much but thirteen/fourteen-year-old Paul would have been envious - and, indeed, forty-year-old Paul is pretty impressed. Just to look upon the high end of the chart and note the presence of my two favourite groups of all time leaves me feeling good about the time but also somewhat despondent about the hit parade that awaited me back home. The nineties beckoned and North Americans were becoming more parochial than ever. It was about this time that I recall first hearing about a rash of kids falling down wells and the media circuses that resulted. This was my first exposure to the kind of sickening US freakshow TV news that would dominate the next decade - and gave birth to my one real phase of anti-Americanism. Female teachers sleeping with fifteen-year-old students, a woman cutting her husband's dick off, a Ford Bronco being chased by police on an LA highway: somehow this all - and much, much more - made for compelling news coverage and it was something we foreigners couldn't avoid. I hated the USA back then but I also despised Canada for buying into all this crap. The American music scene of the time attempted to belittle this craziness while at the same time being every bit as parochial - while insisting that they deserved an audience internationally as well. Kurt Cobain came along and demanded that someone, somewhere "entertain us" since he had no intention of doing so - and then he went to Britain and insisted that no lame "limey bands" share a stage with them on the same day at the Reading Festival. A class act to the end.
Rant over, back to the charts. Yes, there they are, Pet Shop Boys and The Beautiful South, in the Top 5. I wasn't to know it then but I was soon to confront a music scene that had no room for my sort of stuff - "limey bands" being as welcome on the North American charts as they were in the mind of a strung out grunge god. Upon our return to Canada I found myself almost immediately alienated from the pop scene and all that synth-pop, sophisti-pop, acid house, Celtic rock and throwaway pop that had been my jam over the previous year had suddenly vanished. It would be a long time before I would begin to come across some new music that I could get behind.
It's Alright is by no means a major Pet Shop's work but it is a bit of a turning point for the duo. While earlier hits were listened to and discussed, this one just sort of entered the charts, stayed for a bit and quietly disappeared. It was their first fanbase hit: a single that their following snapped up but the general public probably wasn't even aware of. Most big groups with a sustained level of success eventually get to the point where their core audience becomes, in effect, their entire audience and Pet Shop Boys were no exception.
It's strange, then, that their first single few cared about was one that touched upon topics related to despotic regimes and the environment coming undone. I've mentioned before about how late-eighties/early-nineties political pop was something of a bug bear of mine but I've always been fond of It's Alright. It certainly helps that it only masks itself as a protest song when in reality it's about just how helpless we are. (I came this close to giving a presentation on it the following year in my Language Arts class in a project about protest songs. I opted instead for Silver and Gold by U2 which gave me extra points for talking about Mandela and Apartheid and some malarky about how Bono taught F.W. de Klerk a lesson) Like The Beach Boys' infamous Student Demonstration Time, it's basically trying to convince kids to stop caring and, instead, turn that mother out: the earth may be dying but the music will last forever so everything will be fine. It's facile (not to mention naive: we're less than thirty years on and no one cares about music anymore) but that works in its favour. Not to mention that Tennant and Lowe's pop instincts were at their peak and they has a knack for spinning so-so cover versions into gold.
The day after Canada Day we were heading to Sandringham in Norfolk to wander around the Royal Family's cherished property. After Brighton, the Medieval Experience outside Colchester, the Christmas market in Lincoln, touring Harrow, the Norwich City football match and trips to Northern Ireland, Jersey and the Isle of Wight (and, I daresay, a few I've forgotten), this was our final Teacher's Exchange event. While my sister and I always wanted to meet up with some of the kids we got to know on the earlier outings, by this point we'd given up. We got to see Andy and Kelly the second time but maybe that was it. For us, then, to be greeting Allison and Jessica was a pleasant surprise - the one time we didn't expect to see them.
Allison and Jessica were sisters from somewhere in Ontario and who, just like us, were fresh off the boat when we first encountered them back in September in the University of Sussex student dining hall. We liked them a lot and they felt like kindred spirits. We shared stories about leaving Canada and saying goodbye to our friends and feeling disenchanted with England. It was more than a little strange, then, to find ourselves with them just as our time in the UK was wrapping up. I didn't find myself connecting with them like we had previously. Maybe they were still miserable in the UK and were relishing heading home, while I was perfectly happy and dreading going back to Canada. But it was probably also the fact that one - Allison - seemed too old all of a sudden while the other - Jessica - I once fancied but now seemed just like a child: I was just finishing of my first year in a comprehensive but she was still in primary school. No, this wouldn't do.
My real companion around Sandringham that day was David, a gentleman from Norfolk we'd stayed with the weekend we went up to see Norwich play Manchester United. David was one of those kindly older fellows who respected me enough to actually talk to me and I thought he was the bees knees. I no doubt talked his ear off that day but he had the patience and thoughtfulness to remain interested as I elucidated about the state of pop music, Neighbours, Mayflower, living in Basildon and all the places we'd visited since I last saw him. Mental note for middle-aged Paul: be as kindly to kids who never shut up as David was to me.
~~~~~
young Paul's favourite: It's Alright
older Paul's retro pick: It's Alright
It's strange, then, that their first single few cared about was one that touched upon topics related to despotic regimes and the environment coming undone. I've mentioned before about how late-eighties/early-nineties political pop was something of a bug bear of mine but I've always been fond of It's Alright. It certainly helps that it only masks itself as a protest song when in reality it's about just how helpless we are. (I came this close to giving a presentation on it the following year in my Language Arts class in a project about protest songs. I opted instead for Silver and Gold by U2 which gave me extra points for talking about Mandela and Apartheid and some malarky about how Bono taught F.W. de Klerk a lesson) Like The Beach Boys' infamous Student Demonstration Time, it's basically trying to convince kids to stop caring and, instead, turn that mother out: the earth may be dying but the music will last forever so everything will be fine. It's facile (not to mention naive: we're less than thirty years on and no one cares about music anymore) but that works in its favour. Not to mention that Tennant and Lowe's pop instincts were at their peak and they has a knack for spinning so-so cover versions into gold.
The day after Canada Day we were heading to Sandringham in Norfolk to wander around the Royal Family's cherished property. After Brighton, the Medieval Experience outside Colchester, the Christmas market in Lincoln, touring Harrow, the Norwich City football match and trips to Northern Ireland, Jersey and the Isle of Wight (and, I daresay, a few I've forgotten), this was our final Teacher's Exchange event. While my sister and I always wanted to meet up with some of the kids we got to know on the earlier outings, by this point we'd given up. We got to see Andy and Kelly the second time but maybe that was it. For us, then, to be greeting Allison and Jessica was a pleasant surprise - the one time we didn't expect to see them.
Allison and Jessica were sisters from somewhere in Ontario and who, just like us, were fresh off the boat when we first encountered them back in September in the University of Sussex student dining hall. We liked them a lot and they felt like kindred spirits. We shared stories about leaving Canada and saying goodbye to our friends and feeling disenchanted with England. It was more than a little strange, then, to find ourselves with them just as our time in the UK was wrapping up. I didn't find myself connecting with them like we had previously. Maybe they were still miserable in the UK and were relishing heading home, while I was perfectly happy and dreading going back to Canada. But it was probably also the fact that one - Allison - seemed too old all of a sudden while the other - Jessica - I once fancied but now seemed just like a child: I was just finishing of my first year in a comprehensive but she was still in primary school. No, this wouldn't do.
My real companion around Sandringham that day was David, a gentleman from Norfolk we'd stayed with the weekend we went up to see Norwich play Manchester United. David was one of those kindly older fellows who respected me enough to actually talk to me and I thought he was the bees knees. I no doubt talked his ear off that day but he had the patience and thoughtfulness to remain interested as I elucidated about the state of pop music, Neighbours, Mayflower, living in Basildon and all the places we'd visited since I last saw him. Mental note for middle-aged Paul: be as kindly to kids who never shut up as David was to me.
~~~~~
young Paul's favourite: It's Alright
older Paul's retro pick: It's Alright
No comments:
Post a Comment