11 June 1989: This Heat Has Got Right Out of Hand

1. Jason Donovan: Sealed with a Kiss
2. Cliff Richard: The Best of Me
3. Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)
4. Sinitta: Right Back Where We Started From
5. Madonna: Express Yourself
6. Guns 'N Roses: Sweet Child o' Mine [remix]
7. Natalie Cole: Miss You Like Crazy
8. Cyndi Lauper: I Drove All Night
9. Donna Summer: I Don't Wanna Get Hurt
10. Neneh Cherry: Manchild
11. The Beautiful South: Song for Whoever
12. D Mob featuring LRS: It Is Time to Get Funky
13. Lynne Hamilton: On the Inside
14. Gerry Marsden, Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson & The Christians: Ferry Cross the Mersey
15. Transvision Vamp: The Only One
16. Double Trouble & The Rebel MC: Just Keep Rockin'
17. Fuzzbox: Pink Sunshine
18. Kylie Minogue: Hand on Your Heart
19. Tone Loc: Funky Cold Medina
20. Bananarama: Cruel Summer '89
21. London Boys: Requiem
22. Donna Allen: Joy and Pain
23. Bobby Brown: Every Little Step
24. Paula Abdul: Forever Your Girl
25. Edelweiss: Bring Me Edelweiss
26. Cappella: Helyom Halib
27. Sam Brown: Can I Get a Witness?
28. R.E.M.: Orange Crush
29. Tom Petty: I Won't Back Down
30. Clannad featuring Bono: In a Lifetime
31. The Bangles: Be with You
32. Roxette: The Look
33. Placido Domingo & Jennifer Rush: Til I Loved You
34. Karyn White: Superwoman
35. Malcolm McLaren & The Bootzilla Orchestra: Waltz Darling
36. Vixen: Love Made Me
37. New Model Army: Green and Grey
38. The Bangles: Eternal Flame
39. Living in a Box: Gatecrashing
40. Gladys Knight: Licence to Kill

~~~~~

More perceptive, trainspotterly followers of this blog will note that this is the second Top 40 go round for Sweet Child o' Mine. Nowadays something of a classic from a fondly remembered group, it's easy to forget that Guns 'N Roses were slow to grab the public's attention. Appetite for Destruction, their breakthrough, is now recognized as a landmark of sleazy, dirtbag hard rock but it spread more through word of mouth than immediate critical acclaim, especially in Britain. The original Sweet Child was enjoying a brief run on the hit parade at the time we were just getting settled in the UK and its follow-up, Welcome to the Jungle, fared little better. Then, suddenly, Paradise City was released and they had a smash on their hands (this despite some terse reviews: I can distinctly recall Chris Heath's sniveling write-up in Smash Hits in which he dismissed the group as the sorts who claim to be tough by staying out all night and drinking lots of beer). There was no rational reason why the third single would outperform its predecessors but people had clearly seen something by this point and GNR had arrived.

There was room, therefore, for a second kick at the can for their best song, though it wasn't quite the same. While the original clocks in at about five minutes, the rerelease cut close to ninety seconds of material. (It was dubbed a remix but it was in fact an edit) Slash's (unnecessary) solo following the first run through of the chorus is excised completely while some of his second, more prolonged riffing is, well, slashed - and that, in effect, is the difference and it's all the better for it. Purists will doubtless shudder at the reduced axe work but there is still ample opportunity to appreciate Slash at the top of his game. In the end, the original is great but the condensing here makes it that much better. (A pity no one got round to doing similar cup up work on the nine minute November Rain)

Of course re-do's were nothing new at the time, although the vast majority of which fall into the it-pales-in-comparison-to-the-original camp. We've already seen - though I didn't bother to write about - inferior remixes of classic pop such as Petula Clark's Downtown '88 and Chaka Khan's I'm Every Woman '89 but perhaps the most grievous example is Bananarama's lifeless, tepid Cruel Summer '89. Originally a blistering yet sinister synth-pop/new wave number, it beautifully captures everyone's favourite season in all its tedious, oppressive glory, as anyone who ever experienced summer teenage heartbreak or wasted yet another gorgeous day watching re-runs and game shows over the holidays can identify with. Cruel Summer ought to have soundtracked the punishing heatwave of '89 but this new version ended up undermining it if anything. The beat was too jolly and bouncy while the vocals lack its predecessor's downcast tone. There's a kind of smarmy pointlessness to the whole endeavour which is only boosted by the dreadful mash up video. Cheap.

"There will be no summer uniforms".

There had been whispers for a while that the higher-up's at Mayflower were going to acquiesce to some sort of alteration in the dress code but here was the stern Mr. Shaw to well and truly quash them. I was downcast but not particularly surprised. These people were so damn uptight about the bloody uniforms that it was amazing the subject was even brought up in the weekly assembly. I was resigned to another month or so of being draped in my big black heavy blazer.

"There's going to be a summer uniform".

It was soon after that assembly - as early as the very next morning, though I could be off by a day or two - that my dad informed me of what was really going on. Britain's summer heatwave was showing no signs of relenting and we were cooking in our black suits. No formal announcement was made - indeed, they had just gone out of their way to tell us that we weren't going to be changing uniforms - but everyone showed up for school the following Monday without blazers, jumpers and ties. The summer uniform experiment was on.

(Quite why old Shaw bothered to tell us there wouldn't be a summer uniform before immediately going back on it has always puzzled me. At the time I figured he was simply being emphatic so we didn't somehow misinterpret "summer uniform" to mean "wear whatever the fuck you want" but now I wonder if he was playing mind games on us. Talk was so rampant about some kind of reduced dress code that the Mayflower authorities may have wanted to take control of the situation by immediately dashing our hopes. Then again, perhaps this was just Shaw being Shaw: an old codger of an educator who believed he had more authority than he did, telling students about an issue he had no actual say in)

The summer uniforms were popular but not without problems. We had yet another assembly soon after in which Mr. Lawrence berated students who were apparently ignoring the rules. Four boys were invited on the stage so he could make an example of them. My mate Richard was among them. I hadn't thought anything of the stitched labels on the breast pockets of his white shirt but Lawrence seemed to think otherwise. Lawrence ripped into Richard and his parents while my friend stood stone-faced. I'm pretty sure the experience traumatised me far more than him. It's an anecdote that I'm sure doesn't read especially 

The following weekend we went up to Cambridge and met up with fellow exchangees John and Debby and Theo and Darlene for the two-in-one of Mum's birthday and Father's Day. The heat was still oppressive and perhaps this was why everyone chose to try some punting. This was no my proudest moment: Dad and John did well pushing our narrow boat down the canal and even my sister made a game attempt but I gave up about swiftly enough that our punt didn't even budge an inch. Photos of the experience capture me in all my lazy, good-for-nothing shame: posing next to John with a wry grin as my dad was giving it his all, looking utterly useless as dad relaxed while John tried his hand at the punt, kicking back as Julie gave it a go. Unmotivated, uncaring teenage Paul begins here. Either that or it was the heat.

~~~~~
young Paul's favourite: Back to Life
older Paul's retro pick: Back to Life

4 June 1989: Where Do We Go Now?

1. Jason Donovan: Sealed with a Kiss
2. Cliff Richard: The Best of Me
3. Gerry Marsden, Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson & The Christians: Ferry Cross the Mersey
4. Natalie Cole: Miss You Like Crazy
5. Madonna: Express Yourself
6. Sinitta: Right Back Where We Started From
7. Lynne Hamilton: On the Inside
8. Guns 'N Roses: Sweet Child o' Mind [remix]
9. Neneh Cherry: Manchild
10. Donna Summer: I Don't Wanna Get Hurt
11. Kylie Minogue: Hand on Your Heart
12. Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)
13. London Boys: Requiem
14. Bobby Brown: Every Little Step
15. Edelweiss: Bring Me Edelweiss
16. Tone Loc: Funky Cold Medina / On Fire
17. Cyndi Lauper: I Drove All Night
18. Double Trouble & The Rebel MC: Just Keep Rockin'
19. D Mob featuring LRS: It Is Time to Get Funky
20. Cappella: Helyom Halib
21. Sam Brown: Can I Get a Witness?
22. Fuzzbox: Pink Sunshine
23. The Beautiful South: Song for Whoever
24. Roxette: The Look
25. Transvision Vamp: The Only One
26. Paula Abdul: Forever Your Girl
27. The Bangles: Eternal Flame
28. Deacon Blue: Fergus Sings the Blues
29. W.A.S.P.: The Real Me
30. Stefan Dennis: Don't It Make You Feel Good
31. Queen: I Want It All
32. Chaka Khan: I'm Every Woman '89
33. Bananarama: Cruel Summer '89
34. Robert Palmer: Change His Ways
35. Tom Petty: I Won't Back Down
36. Vixen: Love Made Me
37. New Model Army: Green and Grey
38. Donna Allen: Joy and Pain
39. R.E.M.: Orange Crush
40. The Jacksons: Nothin' (That Compares 2 U)

~~~~~

I didn't think about it at the time but Jason Donovan was the king of number one chart battles. He and his on and off screen love interest Kylie Minogue lost out on the Christmas number one to Cliff Richard, he then beat out Michael Ball and Andrew Lloyd Weber in March and now here he is taking out revenge on his nemesis from the previous December by copping the top spot. I've written before that I admired Donovan at the time due to his looks, his nice guy image and way with the ladies but what I neglected to mention was that he was always being thrust into the position of taking on the purveyors of music that I loathed. He was, therefore, easy to root for.

Sealed with a Kiss, however, tests one's loyalty. An already limp song when it was first made popular back in the sixties, Donovan's sluggish vocal does the slight material no favours. Now, his previous hits weren't exactly examples of classic pop but there was something to Especially for You and Too Many Broken Hearts that seemed exciting and cool, even if I can't possibly fathom why or how when I hear them today; Sealed with a Kiss was boring and made worse by its creepy video that managed to make the singer look like an eighties computer graphic.

Poor now and even blasse then, Sealed with a Kiss was still a marked improvement on The Best of Me, the pretender from Cliff Richard. Hyped as his one hundredth single, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that it would be taking the top spot. Curious then that I have no memory of it and it makes me wonder if I tried to go out of my way to avoid it. Much as I tried, as I always have, being open minded about music, this was a record that I knew I'd despise and had no desire whatsoever to have anything to do with. Listening to it today I can see why I was so keen to boycott it, the song being little more than a twee country-ish ballad

Of course if it was quality you were looking for then you had to go just outside the top ten for a new entry that wasn't drawing too much attention but was soon to be unavoidable. Soul II Soul's Back to Life (However Do You Want Me) built upon the success of their previous hit Keep on Movin' - to the extent that that it was easy to assume that the former was nothing but a copy of the latter. They certainly are similar - both feature Caron Wheeler on vocals, as well as some gently unobtrusive strings which may or may not have been sampled - but in terms of spirit that couldn't be more different. Keep on Movin' was appreciated by many of us at the time - and still is - but it's hard to see it as anything but a message to their own crowd; Back to Life, by contrast, was something that they seemed to be trying to communicate to the world. And, yet, when people look back on the music of '89 they'll mention The Stone Roses, Pixies, De La Soul and Madonna but few acknowledge the merits of Soul II Soul and their two great singles and excellent debut album.

We're now just two months away from our departure from the UK - a moment that couldn't come quick enough for some members of my family (though not me). You might think that my memories of these waning weeks would be much more vivid than earlier times but I've been drawing a blank on the first week of June following our return from our week in Paris and Amsterdam. It could be explained away by a lull in our quest to visit every scrap of British soil but there were things still going on. The big news that week was that my grandparents were back for their second visit. Trouble was, we didn't see them so much this time round. I recall them showing up at our place on the Sunday, we chatted with them for a while and then my mum and dad took them up to the north part of Essex to see some relations. We would see them on an occasional basis over the next three weeks but it wasn't quite the same as their October visit.

The following Saturday we were back on the road for a day trip to Bath. It had been a while since we'd checked out a new city or town in England and my parents couldn't have chosen a better place. I wasn't in much of a mood at first and prefered to spend the day happily in front of the telly, however, and this would remain a blot on my memories of our last few weeks in Britain. The drive was long which did little to arouse my interest but the destination was well worth all the time and reluctance. The Roman baths were fascinating and not so big that I eventually grew tired of them. From there, we moved on to a short Avon river tour before winding down the afternoon in the sleepy environs of Burnham-on-Crouch. A day, then, of water: the slime-green baths were cool but by the time we were sitting by a glorified brook in a slow moving village I was done with all this and ready to head home.

This particular day trip seemed to take its toll as I recall arguments on the way back and soon after we got home. Maybe it was a combination of things that began to do us in: the small house, the cramped car, the constant traveling. It began to feel like this year away needed to wrap itself up. We'd all just had enough. (Though, again, not so much for me: I just wanted to spend my weekends watching the telly, listening to music and having some fun outside - but I was more than happy to do so in England)

The doorbell rang just as we were finishing dinner. Some local kids were at our door asking if I could come out. I didn't especially want to join them but Dad prodded me and I was soon outside kicking a football around with two boys and a girl I'd never spoken to. I'd seen them many times and they were among the urchins who stared at us the previous August when we wearily moved into our place at 44 Mellow Purgess. (During that interregnum prior to school starting it seemed like I saw them out of the corner of my eye virtually every day) Maybe they'd been plotting a course of action to strike up a conversation with me for months. Maybe they'd been knocking at our orange-coloured front door during every weekend and holiday in which we happened to be away. Or maybe they just decided that ten months' silence was more than sufficient and that they should finally break the ice - and, indeed they figured I was not about to do so.

So there I was on the field behind our place playing football and chatting with the local kids. Doing what I wanted to be doing on weekends. In England, where I wanted to be.

~~~~~
young Paul's favourite: Sweet Child o' Mine
older Paul's retro pick: Back to Life

28 May 1989: Waar Niemand Bij Stilstaat

1. Gerry Marsden, Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson & The Christians: Ferry Cross the Mersey
2. Natalie Cole: Miss You Like Crazy
3. Lynne Hamilton: On the Inside
4. Kylie Minogue: Hand on Your Heart
5. Neneh Cherry: Manchild
6. London Boys: Requiem
7. Donna Summer: I Don't Wanna Get Hurt
8. Edelweiss: Bring Me Edelweiss
9. Bobby Brown: Every Little Step
10. Madonna: Express Yourself
11. Cappella: Helyom Halib (Acid Acid Acid)
12. Roxette: The Look
13. Tone Loc: Funky Cold Medina / On Fire
14. Guns 'N Roses: Sweet Child o' Mine [remix]
15. Sam Brown: Can I Get a Witness?
16. Deacon Blue: Fergus Sings the Blues
17. Chaka Khan: I'm Every Woman '89
18. Queen: I Want It All
19. Sinitta: Right Back Where We Started From
20. Double Trouble & The Rebel MC: Just Keep Rockin'
21. Stefan Dennis: Don't It Make You Feel Good
22. Cyndi Lauper: I Drove All Night
23. W.A.S.P.: The Real Me
24. Fuzzbox: Pink Sunshine
25. D Mob featuring LRS: It Is Time to Get Funky
26. Debbie Gibson: Electric Youth
27. The Bangles: Eternal Flame
28. Robert Palmer: Change His Ways
29. Paul McCartney: My Brave Face
30. Paula Abdul: Forever Your Girl
31. Midnight Oil: Beds Are Burning
32. ABC: One Better World
33. The Jacksons: Nothin' (That Compares 2 U)
34. Tom Petty: I Won't Back Down
35. The Beautiful South: Song for Whoever
36. Fields of Nephilim: Psychonaut
37. Stevie Nicks: Rooms on Fire
38. Holly Johnson: Americanos
39. Vixen: Love Made Me
40. The Beatmasters with Merlin: Who's in the House?

~~~~~

Pet Shop Boys, Deacon Blue, The Wonder Stuff: we've so far encountered on this blog groups that would make up the backbone of my taste in music as I entered my awkward teen years. There's a nice symmetry to this triumvirate: the Pet Shops I liked a bit before we came to the UK, the Deacs I got into while we were there and the Stuffies would have to wait until I was fourteen and ready for them. Only one major group was left though they don't fit in with the above - then again, when your favourite groups are a camp synth-pop duo, a Scots bar band and a pack of mouthy Brummies, how could one be expected to fit in? 

The Beautiful South enter this story in a different situation than the other members of this quartet. Whereas the Pet Shop Boys/Dusty Springfield duet What Have I Done to Deserve This? was a big a favourite of mine back in the autumn of '87 and Deacon Blue's Real Gone Kid became the song I could never stop singing along with and The Wonder Stuff's Caught in My Shadow was the soundtrack for my teenage angst, my first impressions of The Beautiful South and their hit Song for Whoever were not favourable. One factor was that the Hull quintet seemed mean, looking very much like those thuggish youths who taunted me outside Laindon Station for wearing a Spurs scarf: even the most trivial indiscretion would set this sort off. Around this time there were reports of ugly confrontations with fans at gigs who seemingly hadn't got over the demise of forerunner group The Housemartins - and this only added to my dubious view of them.

Song for Whoever was itself pretty nasty and hateful. Probably my first exposure to a knowing irony - a redundancy of sorts, I know, but I think it's worth distinguishing between irony that I was aware of and irony that escaped me - and I wasn't terribly impressed. It was clear there was a joke going on in there, it just wasn't terribly funny. I've since come round to it though only up to a point. I'm glad they wrote and recorded it, the tune is nice enough and it works as a statement of intent: whispers that they were the "Pet Shop Boys you can't dance to" were likely being uttered right from the start. Still, it doesn't come close to their best work - I'm Your no.1 Fan is an especially wonderful number of their's and ought to be recognized as an In My Life for Generation X - and, as such, I can't bring myself to anoint it as my weekly retro pick. Besides which, Neneh Cherry and Guns 'N Roses are just too damn strong.

All this is moot during the final week of May '89 because our half-term trip to France and Holland meant we were on a brief chart embargo. We didn't hear Bruno Brookes' Sunday night Top 40 rundown on Radio 1 nor did we get the chance to tune in to Top of the Pops that Thursday - it was as if the charts were on hold that week. We just had to make due with visiting Paris and Amsterdam.

I tend to thumb my nose at people who try to avoid touristy spots. Sure, it's cool to take in some less renowned areas of a famous city but so too is checking out the so-called tourist traps. I've spent enough time in Bangkok to know that a tour of the Grand Palace or the Jim Thompson House is just as pleasant as aimlessly wandering around a quiet neighbourhood or crouching on a milk crate to tuck in to a plate of basil chili rice. Still, I can kind of see their point when it comes to Paris. Our second morning in the French capital was a Monday and we left our hotel just as everyone else was heading to school or work - and I enjoyed passing by all this bustle. We seemed to be soaking in the local culture everywhere we went: open-air cafes, posters shilling French films and bathroom products, working class urchins blowing showers of snot from their nostrils: yeah, Paris had it all. What it seemed to lack was destinations that were equally worthwhile. The Louve was crowded and everyone was there to catch a glimpse of a painting that isn't even very good, Notre-Dame might have been impressive if not for the fact that I had no interest whatsoever in taking in another damn church and the city parks were all devoid of even a solitary blade of grass. Only the Eiffel Tower proved well worth a visit, especially since we were there at dusk and my dad and I descended most of its stairs.

I've always looked back at our four day sojourn in Paris as something I was a little too young for but now I realise that there just wasn't enough time to get all the sight seeing out of our systems allowing us to better appreciate the lovely city. But then, that's only something I've learned to appreciate as I've grown older and travelled around Asia. So maybe I was too young for Paris all along.

From there we were off to Amsterdam by train. Having seen a very lengthy slide show of photos from my grandparents' visit to the Netherlands in 1984, I was expecting to see nothing but canals. It was, therefore, a surprise to be greeted by an endless stream of bicycles almost as soon as we alighted. I was quickly smitten and I hadn't found a city I took to so immediately since our trip to Edinburgh the previous October. The Dutch city seemed better at blending its tourist traps with the local flavours. (Amsterdam was also a city that surprised us. Everyone seemed to speak flawless English ("better than the English," as my dad later remarked), they all seemed to enjoy pouring mayonnaise all over their chips and we only witnessed one gentleman using the canals as a toilet)

As opposed to Paris, however, it's not the sort of place that I feel like I was too young for. I didn't scarf down a plate of hash brownies nor did I explore the notorious Red Light District and I didn't later wish I'd been an unwashed hippie backpacker indulging in such Dutch delights. Instead, I was won over by the superb crepes and the city's relaxed vibe. It seemed like a cool place for a twelve-year-old.

We returned to England on the Saturday for a long ferry journey to Harwich before taking a train into London's Liverpool St. Station only to double back from Fenchurch St. back to Laindon. It was during this final leg that my dad discovered that he didn't have his keys - he must have left them back in our hotel in Amsterdam, he reckoned - and we were locked out of our house. Now, normally we might have welcomed the chance to not have to have gone inside our inhospitable, uncomfortable abode but we were all beat from the long day and it was getting late. My parents were thus forced to knock on the door of our neighbours who kindly invited us to relax in their living room as my dad and the bloke who lived there plotted a strategy for getting in. Happily, our miserable home provided the in we needed: one of the bedroom windows had proved impossible to close which allowed my dad the chance to climb up and sneak in. Breaking in to the home we didn't want to live in: this is what we were reduced to.

~~~~~

young Paul's favourite: Sweet Child o' Mine

older Paul's retro pick: Manchild

21 May 1989: Coffee and Toast, You're Back from the Dead

1. Gerry Marsden, Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson & The Christians: Ferry Cross the Mersey
2. Kylie Minogue: Hand on Your Heart
3. Natalie Cole: Miss You Like Crazy
4. London Boys: Requiem
5. Edelweiss: Bring Me Edelweiss
6. Bobby Brown: Every Little Step
7. Roxette: The Look
8. Neneh Cherry: Manchild
9. Queen: I Want It All
10. Chaka Khan: I'm Every Woman '89
11. The Bangles: Eternal Flame
12. Cappella: Helyom Halib (Acid Acid Acid)
13. Lynne Hamilton: On the Inside
14. Deacon Blue: Fergus Sings the Blues
15. Debbie Gibson: Electric Youth
16. Stefan Dennis: Don't It Make You Feel Good
17. Midnight Oil: Beds Are Burning
18. Paul McCartney: My Brave Face
19. Donna Summer: I Don't Wanna Get Hurt
20. Transvision Vamp: Baby I Don't Care
21. Sam Brown: Can I Get a Witness?
22. Stevie Nicks: Rooms on Fire
23. Hue & Cry: Violently
24. Holly Johnson: Americanos
25. The Beatmasters with Merlin: Who's in the House?
26. Tone Loc: Funky Cold Medina / On Fire
27. W.A.S.P.: The Real Me
28. Simply Red: If You Don't Know Me by Now
29. Shakin' Stevens: Love Attack
30. Poison: Your Mama Don't Dance
31. Robert Palmer: Change His Ways
32. Yazz: Where Has All the Love Gone
33. Fuzzbox: Pink Sunshine
34. Bon Jovi: I'll Be There for You
35. Fields of the Nephilim: Psychonaut
36. Cyndi Lauper: I Drove All Night
37. The Jacksons: Nothin' (That Compares 2 U)
38. Double Trouble & The Rebel MC: Just Keep Rockin'
39. Public Image Limited: Disappointed
40. ABC: One Better World

~~~~~

I've been down on the charts recently - and with good reason - but I feel distinctly more well-disposed to the listings this week. It feels like a turnover is slowly taking place as the Top 40 begins to right itself. There are still more than enough duff tracks filling space - Lynne Hamilton's On the Inside is an especially rotten culprit - but some of the new entries and climbers have given me sufficient hope. In any event, having just turned forty, I'm just doing whatever I can to stay positive.

Leading the charge is Neneh Cherry's Manchild. The follow-up to her smash Buffalo Stance, it was a mild let down at the time when a lot of people wanted more of the same; a track I quite liked but failed to be bowled over by. It's also a jarring number, its blissed out, proto-trip hop vibes clashing with a burst of furious mid-song rapping. In retrospect, however, Cherry's toasting actually pushes it from good to great and it's a healthy reminder of what an excellent all-round vocalist she was (and probably still is). Far from being a decent follow-up to a classic, Manchild is a huge step forward from Buffalo Stance but one she couldn't manage to better; even the powerful 7 Seconds with Youssou N'Dour wasn't in its league. 

Speaking of follow-ups that I was initially a bit disappointed by, Fuzzbox's Pink Sunshine made its chart debut this week. The Birmingham foursome - previously known as We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It from their punk/indie period - caught my attention with International Rescue, a hook-heavy absurdist romp replete with a terrific video paying homage to Barbarella and The Thunderbirds. Its follow-up doesn't capture the imagination but Pink Sunshine was equally catchy (both have those addictive, ear-wormy choruses that deftly manage to sound great while failing to grate), spirited and packed to the brim with nonsense lyrics. At a time when many stars were going to increasing lengths to revive the sixities, Fuzzbox pulled off their own pseudo-psychedelic hit without sacrificing the demands of current pop. Strange, then, that this was almost the end of their chart ride: I didn't hear from them again until a couple years later when Simon Evans played one of their earlier punk videos on Much Music's City Limits, bitterly dismissing their subsequent work as a commercial sellout. Typical indie purists.

A lot of memories of this year seem to centre around things I heard about but didn't witness. This could apply as much to where we were as it did to where we weren't. I mentioned several months ago about how my favourite hockey team, the Calgary Flames, were having a fantastically good season and it was about to culminate during this week in May. In this pre-internet/skype world, it could be difficult to follow a sport that that no one else gave a damn about and the news we received about the Flames' progress was scattered. The Independent did carry ice hockey scores on occasion but the many victories that Calgary racked up meant little without league standings to provide perspective.

But we knew they were now in the Stanley Cup Final against Montreal. My friends could only put up with a smattering of hockey talk but, luckily, there just so happened to be another Canadian first year student attending Mayflower with me and he, Owen, got my daily feed of updates/thoughts. As the best four-games-out-of-seven series progressed, long distance phone calls began to increase. The Flames were up three games to two with game six - for us - in the early hours of the 26th and some family friends had promised to call if they were triumphant. Apparently they were and they did, although I wouldn't know myself having slept through the numerous calls from home that we received. I had to settle for finding out the next morning. I was elated and Owen and my non-hockey watching, non-Canadian friends could see it on my face before I'd even said a word.

Mocking sports fandom, Jerry Seinfeld once observed that people will say "We won! We won!" when it should be "no, they won, you watched". In this instance, however, I didn't even watch. I did watch, however, a year later when they got bounced out of the playoffs promptly by a vastly inferior team - and, then, a year later when the same damn thing happened. (And so into Flames fan oblivion) Fast forward to 2004 and I was trying my hand at English teaching in Indonesia just as Calgary was at last making a return trip to the Finals. Just my bloody luck. (Then again, it's only sports. I had always wanted to see Canada win gold in hockey in the Winter Olympics. Then, in 2002, they finally did it and it was the ultimate anticlimax; maybe I was better off when I just dreamed of my team winning)

The day after the Flames snagged their first - and still only - Cup was a Friday which also happened to be the final games of the old English First Division season - and the key match between Arsenal and Liverpool was going to decide who would be champions. This, too, was something I knew about but didn't bother tuning in for. (It didn't even occur to me that it could've acted as a surrogate match to make up for missing the Stanley Cup Finals) Liverpool seemed destined for victory, the Hillsborough tragedy still very much on the minds of the nation, for once rendering the usually despised Reds into a sentimental favourite among many. But the football gods weren't having any of it as Arsenal won in the dying seconds of the game. It's the sort of thing I wish I could recount in vivid detail but I was too busy listening to music to concern myself with football.

It was now time for the third and final half-term break. We took in Scotland back in October and then followed it up with a short jaunt to Dublin in February and now we were off to Paris and Amsterdam for our first trip to the Continent. Saturday was all about getting there. We made our way by train and tube to Victoria Station where it seemed like we waited an awfully long time for our train to Dover. Actually, everything seemed to take a long time: the train from London was slow, the ferry to Calais was slow and our train to Paris for the final leg of the journey was so slow that we were stopped completely for an hour or two. When we finally pulled into Guerre du nord it was late and little of Paris could yet make an impression. We trudged with our suitcases for several blocks and picked up omlettes on baguettes for a late-night bite to eat before bed. Paris would have to wait until morning.

~~~~~
young Paul's favourite: Fergus Sings the Blues
older Paul's retro pick: Manchild

14 May 1989: You Sell Your Soul for a Tacky Song Like the One You Hear on the Radio

1. Gerry Marsden, Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson & The Christians: Ferry Cross the Mersey
2. Kylie Minogue: Hand on Your Heart
3. Natalie Cole: Miss You Like Crazy
4. London Boys: Requiem
5. Queen: I Want It All
6. Edelweiss: Bring Me Edelweiss
7. The Bangles: Eternal Flame
8. Chaka Khan: I'm Every Woman '89
9. Midnight Oil: Beds Are Burning
10. Roxette: The Look
11. Transvision Vamp: Baby I Don't Care
12. The Beatmasters with Merlin: Who's in the House?
13. Holly Johnson: Americanos
14. Debbie Gibson: Electric Youth
15. Simply Red:If You Don't Know Me by Now
16. Stevie Nicks: Rooms on Fire
17. Stefan Dennis: Don't It Make You Feel Good
18. Poison: Your Mama Don't Dance
19. Yazz: Where Has All the Love Gone
20. Bobby Brown: Every Little Step
21. Hue & Cry: Violently
22. Paul McCartney: My Brave Face
23. Capella: Helyom Halib (Acid, Acid, Acid)
24. Bon Jovi: I'll Be There for You
25. Deacon Blue: Fergus Sings the Blues
26. Neneh Cherry: Manchild
27. Fine Young Cannibals: Good Thing
28. Shakin' Stevens: Love Attack
29. Swing Out Sister: You on My Mind
30. Lynne Hamilton: On the Inside
31. Sam Brown: Can I Get a Witness?
32. Diana Ross: Workin' Overtime
33. Kon Kan: I Beg Your Pardon
34. Alyson Williams featuring Nikki D: My Love Is So Raw
35. Robert Palmer: Change His Ways
36. Metallica: One
37. Inner City: Ain't Nobody Better
38. Public Image Limited: Disappointed
39. Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: Keep on Movin'
40. De La Soul: Me, Myself and I

~~~~~

Piano and violin soloists, ballet performances, card tricks that went way over my head: yeah, elementary school talent shows were a glum affair. Of course, it didn't help that I never took part in one: the only time I bothered trying to enter was with a plotless, lifeless play cooked up with three friends and which suffered the indignity of being one of only two not selected for a class talent show. (School-wide variety performances were out of the question) The only saving grace was airbands.

Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, The Final Countdown, Thriller, Walk Like an Egyptian: all were mimed with equal parts gusto and shodiness and they never failed to enthrall me. (Even the teachers who dressed up in drag for Islands in the Stream didn't completely warp me) But it was the Grade 6 class rendition of Band Aid's Do They Know Its Christmas? that proved especially memorable. Now it's possible that everyone in the class was supposed to be a specific member of the UK supergroup but it isn't as though we were able to pick out which kid was supposed to be Simon le Bon or Sting from the rabble on stage. Only one person was recognizable to all and "he" was sporting a white jump suit covered in colourful numbers and top hat. But if everybody knew Boy George, I was the only one aware that "he" was my sister.

Band Aid was criticized by many at the time and to this day it still has its fair share of detractors. But the Highwood Elementary Grade 6 class airband of Do They Know It's Christmas? seemed cool - and not just because I'd never felt prouder of my sister. It was the spring of 1985 - no one was clever enough to have remarked, "What do you mean Do They Know It's Christmas? Don't you know that it isn't Christmas?" - and the Ethiopian famine was still all over the news and the vocalists from Duran Duran, Wham!, The Police and Culture Club were all still superstars. It even seemed original but that was soon to change: even by the time of We Are the World - also lip-synched at a subsequent Highwood talent show (it sucked) - and Tears Are Not Enough (the Canadian one which no one bothered to immortalize with an airband) the whole thing already seemed tired.

Charity singles thus became predictable. It seemed like Hillsborough had only just happened and there was already talk of a benefit record. Venerable Scouser Gerry Marsden dutifully recruited fellow Merseysiders Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson and The Christians for a cover of his old Gerry & The Pacemakers hit Ferry Cross the Mersey. This was a far cry from the cool of Band Aid; this was a pair of aging stars (one I'd never heard of before and haven't had much interest in subsequently), a respected but unremarkable soul group (who I always suspected of being a Christian rock group in thinly-veiled disguise) and a current hitmaker (who was actually running on fumes from his period with Frankie Goes to Hollywood, somehow left off of Band Aid). Even the presence of McCartney wasn't enough - Macca's stock having depreciated over the course of the eighties to the point where his mimed gaff on Wogan was the only thing notable about his new solo single.

Needless to say, I hated it - and I was especially resentful of the implication that disliking the record meant I was being disrespectful towards the ninety-six unfortunate souls who lost their lives in the overcrowded pens of Leppings Lane. Plus, it entered the charts at number one, an unparalleled feat since we arrived in England, but which seemed to trivialize such a novel occurrence. A handful of singles had come in at number two and that seemed like the maximum for chart newcomers. Suddenly the artificial glass ceiling was shattered and it was courtesy of a bunch of has-been's and never-were's churning out some boring drivel whose sole virtue was charity.

The sandpit. I guess it was there for the long jump - maybe the tripe jump for all I knew - but for boys at Mayflower Comprehensive it was something you were thrown into. Occasionally you'd come across a poor lad furiously shaking grains of sand from his hair and brushing his blazer until it looked presentable. And all because it just so happened to be his birthday. Our good-natured but slow chum Grant had earlier been the victim of the sandpit and then the wrath of the staff. (Bloody teachers always jumping to conclusions and punishing whoever happens to be convenient)

I tried reasoning with the more troublesome boys in my class that my birthday was in fact on Saturday but they weren't having it: I was going to be thrown into the sandpit by the end of the lunch break (probably the only rule of the birthday sand ritual was that it had to be done before afternoon classes), no questions asked. But they were going to have to find me first.

Neil, Sean, Richard and Grant had been my regular lunchtime companions ever since September but today they stuck to me like glue. The most overly swotty of our group, Sean suggested we keep an eye on my pursuers and at one point I think we even began following them. Lunch began to wind down and I grew so relaxed that I sat down right next to my classmate Francis who was particularly keen on seeing me covered in sand. The bell rang signalling the end of lunch and I nonchalantly turned to my left and said "Hi Francis!" Sandpit avoided.

Neil and Sean came over for my birthday that night. We went to Mcdonald's at Basildon Town Centre and then came back to Laindon for some of my mum's excellent coffee cake with apple. It was a warm evening and so we played some hacky sack and frisbee in the backyard. At some point a neighbourhood urchin decided to join in and he somehow scaled the wall of our backyard. He didn't venture any further, however, and my lasting memory of that night is being taunted by a grubby shirtless boy precariously hanging over us. My sister came out to chat with us only to ask of our new  unkempt chum "Is he wearing any clothes?" While certainly annoyed, we were also bemused by the absurdity of this foul-mouthed kid who yearned for our attention yet seemed determined to be our antagonists. I did worry that this little shit would continue to make a nuisance of himself in my presence but he obviously had other kids in Laindon to bother. I never saw him again. Finally, we watched Beetlejuice; I don't remember anything about it.

But that was just Birthday Eve. Saturday was my actual birthday and it began with presents. Having squandered the hundred quid my grandparents sent me for Christmas, I had been under a cassette embargo for about a month so I was practically giddy to have Deacon Blue and S'Express to add to my collection. John and Debbie and their daughter Aimee arrived for the weekend later that morning and they presented me with a Liverpool FC poster. Here was a Hillsborough tribute I could stomach.

We spent most of my birthday in London. While I was humming a loop of Bobby Brown's Every Little Step, John and my sister were comparing notes on their own favourite record of the moment, Roxette's The Look (I stand by my choice for song of the day). Having enjoyed our previous visit to the Big Smoke's premiere Canadian watering hole, I was adamant about having lunch at the Maple Leaf Pub - and I wasn't the only one who thought so: my mum wrote to my grandma wistfully about their "real Canadian mustard". 

We were then off to Leicester Square to see the musical Blood Brothers. Seeing a West End production was not my idea nor was I disappointed that we weren't seeing Phantom or Les Miz instead. The Sherlock Holmes play back in January had been a monumental waste of time but I knew this had to be better - and it was. It also got me thinking about my friends here in England and back in Canada. My pals at Mayflower had helped me avoid the sandpit and we chatted constantly about girls and music. My friends back at Highwood, meanwhile, liked looking at cars and reading comic books; was I going to fit in with these people? They probably didn't even aspire to form an airband.

~~~~~

young Paul's favourite: Every Little Step

older Paul's retro pick: Manchild

7 May 1989: Let's Work, Let's Work, Let's Work This to the Bone

1. Kylie Minogue: Hand on Your Heart
2. The Bangles: Eternal Flame
3. Queen: I Want It All
4. London Boys: Requiem
5. Natalie Cole: Miss You Like Crazy
6. Midnight Oil: Beds Are Burning
7. Edelweiss: Bring Me Edelweiss
8. Chaka Khan: I'm Every Woman '89
9. Transivision Vamp: Baby I Don't Care
10. Holly Johnson: Americanos
11. The Beatmasters with Merlin: Who's in the House?
12. Simply Red: If You Don't Know Me by Now
13. Poison: Your Mama Don't Dance
14. Roxette: The Look
15. Debbie Gibson: Electric Youth
16. Yazz: Where Has All the Love Gone?
17. Fine Young Cannibals: Good Thing
18. Bon Jovi: I'll Be There for You
19. Inner City: Ain't Nobody Better
20. Metallica: One
21. Stevie Nicks: Rooms on Fire
22. Stefan Dennis: Don't It Make You Feel Good
23. Kon Kan: I Beg Your Pardon
24. The Cure: Lullaby
25. De La Soul: Me, Myself and I
26. Cookie Crew: Got to Keep On
27. Madonna: Like a Prayer
28. Swing Out Sister: You on My Mind
29. Hue & Cry: Violently
30. Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: Keep on Movin'
31. Paula Abdul: Straight Up
32. Morrissey: Interesting Drug
33. Diana Ross: Workin' Overtime
34. Jason Donovan: Too Many Broken Hearts
35. Donna Summer: This Time I Know It's for Real
36. Shakin' Stevens: Love Attack
37. Jody Watley: Real Love
38. Cappella: Helyom Halib (Acid, Acid, Acid)
39. Alyson Williams featuring Nikki D: My Love Is So Raw
40. U2 with B.B. King: When Love Comes to Town

~~~~~

I once worked at bookshop which, rather strangely, was dominated by music talk. The manager was a country music buff, my section head was into metal and the Scottish guy who was in charge of magazines was an old time punk scenester. It was like we all had wanted to work in a record shop but we had to settle on books due to sheer geekiness. Daniel, however, wasn't so much into music as he was into U2. He was absolutely fanatical about them. Once, he strode over to me while I was shelving travel books and proudly shared his latest theory about the Irish quartet with me: U2, he reckoned, are the world's biggest cult band.

I think I tried to look like I cared - and, considering I'm retelling this anecdote nearly twenty years on, I guess it left some impression on me. At first I didn't like it: U2 didn't need to tread on the territory of real cult acts like Pavement or Gomez, groups that enjoyed a small but devoted following that bought up every CD single and followed them around on tour. But then I thought about it and realised that Daniel was right - but that wasn't a good thing. Cults are exclusionary, cults alienate, cults foster mindlessness

Cult acts abound on the 14 May '89 chart: The Cure's Lullaby, Morrissey's Interesting Drug, U2 (Biggest Cult Band in the World) in cahoots with B.B. King on When Love Comes to Town. All were scooped up by loyal fans but largely ignored by everyone else - although it must be said that everyone was astonished by the deeply unsettling video for Lullaby - and they all made an initial splash in the Top 10 before quickly dropping. Which brings us to I Want It All by Queen.

I'm not much a Queen guy. I think this surprises a lot of people but it really shouldn't. I hate hard rock and I hate anthems so you can probably imagine how I feel about anthemic hard rock (their stock in trade) but I was never convinced by their dabbling in other genres either (Crazy Little Thing Called Love? Crap. Another One Bites the Dust? Garbage. Under Pressure? I'd sooner listen to Ice Ice Baby). I've often remarked that they might have been pop's most erratic group of all time but even that seems to be giving them too much credit: beyond Bohemian Rhapsody, the number of Queen songs I'm not against hearing - though I still wouldn't choose to listen to myself - is pretty thin (maybe Killer Queen? Somebody to Love? I guess those two are about as good as you can get in an I-couldn't-care-less kind of way).

I Want It All was the first Queen song I ever heard (or heard knowing it to be Queen, I'm sure their tunes appeared on reruns of WKRP in Cincinnati without me knowing) and it wasn't much of an introduction. I needn't go into too much detail as to why considering I've already mentioned my dislike for anthemic hard rock. But even in that realm it doesn't come across especially well. It has the feel of that ghastly and slick light metal you'd hear a lot of in the eighties, the sort of thing favoured by the likes of Heart and Whitesnake. But I'm sure I wasn't alone in my tepid assessment and it likely didn't win over any new fans. Queen were by this point a cult act - it's just that their cult seemed to be all over Britain.

The popularity of Queen in Britain seemed like something I couldn't quite grasp as a foreigner. I assumed that they were largely a UK curio which didn't translate abroad (little different from Cliff Richard) but how wrong I was. A little over two years later and Freddie Mercury had died of AIDS and Bohemian Rhapsody was in a stupid Mike Myers film I've still never seen and they were bigger than ever. Here in Asia where I live, they probably rank just below The Beatles and ABBA in terms of Western acts who simply refuse to go away.

Anyway, we're into yet another sub-par Top 40 and I'd rather not go into another rambling diatribe. (Too late) And why should I when we continued to take memorable weekend trips?

Continuing on from our recent practice of visiting places we'd never given any thought of going to, we ventured down to Southampton not long after school on Friday. This was yet another exchange teacher's event and my sister and I were hoping to meet up with some kids we might get along with. I've written previously about some positive encounters with fellow exchange kids but we also met a few that we didn't care for too much - and exchange events forced us into awkward, reluctant conversations. In (I think) Norwich we got into a hopelessly dull conversation with a large girl with long stringy black hair and her even more forgettable brother who couldn't stop going on about the US and how much they hated England. We really wanted to see some of our chums from early on who just never seemed to show up to the same exchange events as us.

We'd checked in to our hotel in Southampton and I think managed to get a peak at a list of people attending - either that or my mum or dad managed to find out about who else was going to be there. In any event, we knew that Andy and Kelly, our friends from the Medieval Experience in and around Colchester back in September, were coming. We greeted them as soon as they arrived and we were immediately thick as thieves again. While Julie and Kelly went off somewhere together, Andy and I based ourselves on the second-floor landing overlooking the foyer where we made cracks about guests and dared each other to spit on the front desk.

The next day, we took a ferry from Southampton for a day trip to the Isle of Wight. We sat with Andy and Kelly at the back of the tour bus and we were all so distracted by getting caught up that we doubtless missed some pretty choice scenery. At one point, we all got off and began a lengthy trek through a small forest and up some winding paths. Andy and I posed for a picture in the stocks that we came upon at one point - his feigned grimace did a decent job of looking like he was being tortured while my long face was probably more the result of the heat than playing up for the cameras. Pleasant though the Isle of Wight was, it was simply a backdrop for getting reacquainted: I can't remember anything else from our day there.

We never saw Andy and Kelly again after that weekend but I always expected to bump into them somewhere (I think I once thought I saw them at the Calgary Stampede but I think that was just my mind playing tricks on me). It's strange that people you encounter so briefly can make a mark. We bonded over being in the same situation and had a few laughs. They were the friends we never saw but that also meant they were they friends we never argued with and never neglected. I would try to look them up but I wouldn't want it to spoil our friendship.

~~~~~

young Paul's favourite: Electric Youth

older Paul's retro pick: You on My Mind