I can announce that my podcast, HIT THE NORTH, has reached the landmark of being broadcast into the internet’s ether for a whole month!
This podcast is simply based around my talking to a range of special guests with at least some connection to the North about their lives and experiences and about Northern representation. The North is defined inclusively, and subsequent series may well eventually venture beyond British shores… It is a non-profit podcast, so thankfully I can promise: no ads, it is purely done as a labour of love. No AI is used, as it is a profoundly overrated and absurd Ponzi scheme – one that is consuming our water and electricity at an unseemly rate, to boot.
Here’s a trailer with a decidedly low Average Shot Length! :
And here are the episodes themselves so far on YouTube as embedded videos:
#001: Introduction
#001: Matthew Kelly (NORTH WEST)
“If I were to choose one [finest ensemble cast], it would always be the one I’m working with…”
#002: Ruth-Ann Boyle (NORTH EAST)
“There was a few moments of intrusion, like the press doorstepping me mother…”
#003: Justin Lewis (WALES)
“I could hear the guy who was doing the pub quiz reading out some of the questions that night. And I thought: these are very familiar questions…!”
#004: John Howard (NORTH WEST)
“Who’s been licking the library steps then?”
You will also find it on most of the mainstream podcast platforms, like Apple Music and Spotify.
Here too is a link to the Hit the North musical playlist, containing all the songs featured in the series, alongside exclusive IT’S ONLY A NORTHERN SONG OF THE WEEK selections shared to Hit the North‘s Facebook group. If you want to join that group, please do so here.
It has been an absolute blast, and a delight, so far to talk to these fine people; enjoy the podcast! Please spread the word, give it five-star ratings (or don’t bother!), or indeed get in touch to suggest a guest or correspond about any Northern places or stories. Email: HitTheNorthNE41@proton.me
The Wednesday Play (1964-70, or 1965-70) was a landmark BBC drama series, following ITV’s lead with Armchair Theatre (ABC & Thames, 1956-74) in amplifying working-class voices. Canadian migrant Sydney Newman, from a working-class background, spearheaded both initiatives. After completing a Ph.D. on The Wednesday Play’s successor, Play for Today (BBC1, 1970-84), It’s time to grapple with the legacy of its predecessor in greater depth.
This series of posts commemorates the sixtieth anniversary of The Wednesday Play while exploring its diverse output beyond justly celebrated works like Up the Junction (1965) and Cathy Come Home (1966). I plan to watch and reflect on all Wednesday Plays up to the end of 1965, supported by research. Missing plays will still be covered, but without textual analysis. A selected number of plays from 1966-1970 will be covered.
03.06: The End of Arthur’s Marriage (BBC One, Wednesday 17 November 1965) 9:30 – 10:40 pm Directed by Ken Loach; Written by Christopher Logue and Stanley Myers; Produced by James MacTaggart; Designed by Robert MacGowan; Songs sung by Christine Holmes, Long John Baldry, Samantha Jones and Rita Williams
Two weeks after the crucial Up the Junction, came another Ken Loach-directed Wednesday Play, again with much music, but this time a foray into the musical genre!
The first announcement of this play I’ve found is in TelevisionToday on 17 December 1964, trailing a ‘musical written by Christopher Logue and Stanley Myers’ (p. 9). The same paper noted next summer that Christine Holmes, an 18 year-old pop singer from Solihull, who had recently starred in Gadzooks – It’s All Happening, was to play a mod girl in The End of Arthur’s Marriage (8 July 1965, p. 11) – the character Lily. Holmes is quoted, saying she is playing “Myself in fact […] A mad teenager – speaking, singing and dancing”, in a play recently recorded (ibid.). Songs are sung not just by Holmes, but by Long John Baldry, Samantha Jones and Rita Williams.
Story editor Roger Smith in the Radio Times explained he knew of Logue’s ‘bizarre’ work for Private Eye, songwriting for Annie Ross and his stage musical, The Lillywhite Boys hence, ‘the combination of his wit, lyricism, and critical eye was just what I was looking for’, implying, like Garnett at this stage, that he had a more hands-on role in enlisting writers than MacTaggart (11 November 1965, p. 41). Smith claimed that Logue had come up with ‘a True Story that looked a great subject’, and how they achieved locate footage at Fortnum and Mason’s and ‘a strange gas-works in the East End of London’, extolling that, ‘we have certainly come up with something that television has never tried before’ (ibid.). Smith emphasised that The End ofArthur’s Marriage ‘is about a man who loves his daughter more than security, prefers spending time saving, and a few hours’ happiness to a life-time’s boredom’ (ibid.).
Most of the coverage centred on 12-year-old Maureen Ampleford, with an interview feature and several pictures. She was a pupil at the Royal Soldiers’ Daughters’ School in Hampstead, and Jack Bentley laboriously details how, no her chance at stardom was not through cutting a ‘hit disc’ but playing the lead role in a play where she would ‘act and sing for practically the whole of the screen time’ (Sunday Mirror, 7 November 1965, p. 29). A friend of Ken Loach who was a coach to school drama clubs specifically recommended Maureen, who fitted the remit of ‘natural dramatic talent’; without an audition, ‘a star was born’, in the words of writers Christopher Logue and Stanley Myers (ibid.).
Logue claims that using the usual child acting schools would have yielded actors who knew the lot, which is exactly what they did not want (ibid.). Ampleford’s father was a warrant officer in the RAMC and had died c. 1962, her mother was a state-registered nurse in Scotland*; Maureen herself is said to shy, not at all precocious, finding the six week shoot ‘great Fun’, with most of it on location, including the West End (ibid.). Maureen recounts how Mrs. Manifold, the RSDS headmistress, is allowing all except the little children to stay up late to watch it, while her next role is said to be as Mary in the school nativity play (ibid.). (*The Daily Express later had this as Essex, not Scotland)
Philip Purser described the forthcoming play as an ‘off-beat musical’ in a preview, beneath a close-up still of Ampleford (Sunday Telegraph, 14 November 1965, p. 13). The Daily Express stated Ampleford was 13, and implied viewers may be shocked by a play with ‘Adam and Eve’ appearing ‘in the near-nude’ and rockers singing about ‘Heaven being too “square,” partly because there is no dope to smoke there’ (16 November 1965, p. 21). Ampleford herself is not shocked, finding the Adam and Eve sequence funny, though does say she wouldn’t have liked it so much had she not been in it, preferring scary murder stories (ibid.).
Ampleford notes how there was a scene of violence between her and a boy which she and the male actor had wanted to make mild, but director Ken Loach told her ‘to really hit him. I did – twice. The boy burst into tears.’ (ibid.). This interestingly anticipated Loach’s practice of directing scenes where real cruelty was enacted to serve bleak narratives, as in Kes (1969).
Columnist James Green felt that ‘a new broom’ had swept away the BBC’s ‘clean’ image as a national ‘Auntie’: shifting, in his memorable phrase, to become ‘a Roguish Uncle’, now chasing ratings ‘even more shamelessly than its ITV opponents’ (Liverpool Echo and Evening Express, 17 November 1965, p. 2). After the ‘old roue […] kicked over the traces’ with Up the Junction, Green notes the Corporation wasn’t playing safe with The End of Arthur’s Marriage, ‘a rough-slice-of-life treatment’, which he predicted may activate the switchboards again (ibid.).
In the Daily Mirror, James MacTaggart is quoted, defensively emphasising how the Adam and Eve scene was done with discretion and how in the foreground, ‘there are always branches in the right places’, while Loach stressed art student Ashling Rayner’s ‘really tremendous face’ (17 November 1965, p. 18). This article notes that the BBC was allowed by Fortnum’s to film in the Fortnum and Mason’s luxury store in Piccadilly; while Loach is said to have used hidden cameras to capture many of Arthur and Emmy’s London adventures, so many Londoners might unexpectedly see themselves on screen (ibid.).
With an image of Ken Jones and Ampleford, the Wolverhampton Express and Star noted this was the first musical presented in The Wednesday Play strand; while Three Clear Sundays clearly had elements leaning that way, it was more Brechtian folk song commentary rather than classic characters bursting into song approach (17 November 1965, p. 13). This article explains that Emmy (Maureen Ampleford) is Arthur’s (Ken Jones) daughter; Arthur ‘takes a close look at the not-too-pretty Emmy and decides to spend the money [£400] intended as a deposit on a house on her’ (ibid.). A wild shopping spree and a visit to the zoo ensue, with Arthur buying Emmy and elephant ‘as one last absurd gesture’; dryly, Bill Smith notes:
From this little rundown on the story what other title would have been appropriate ? (ibid.).
It’s worth noting also Charles Greville’s interview with Ken Loach after the play was broadcast, in which an ‘excited’ Loach explains,
You see, television drama has created its own conventions. The way people acted wasn’t really any nearer earlier than was 19th-century drama.
What I try to do is mix the actors up with actuality. I encourage improvisation, within limits. I just try and make things happen, and then photograph it while it’s happening – you get me? (Daily Mail, 19 November 1965, p. 4).
Rating ** 1/2 / ****
This felt like a curio, exploring, in a revealingly narrow way, men’s attitudes: dreaming, wanting out of existing marriages or relationships. Caught up in the fantasies of a world that they think might be opening up to them: sexual frankness, gorgeous women making themselves available.
The key moment is the woman, blonde-haired and bikini clad, Bond girl like, singing on the boat during the nocturnal canal cruise. We are just as much shown Ken Jones’s reactions, a performance of besotted, enraptured glee – anticipating the whole “one for the dads” vein of mainstream 1970s TV, where Louise Jameson in Doctor Who was clad in bodily revealing tribal skins to play Leela. So, in this era, male sexual urges were gradually being openly indulged, rather than repressed; the equivalent for women was, of course, Beatles fandom, or Pete or Dud, say, the difference being that, culturally, the wit and camaraderie of these men was also celebrated. The Bond girl archetype tended to be just there as an exotic fantasy.
Myers and Logue’s song, ‘Kinky Dolly’ is, I believe, sung here by Samantha Jones, as her version was released as a single . Liverpool-born Jones (1943- ) had been in the notable Vernons Girls who had supported The Beatles on tour, and who went onto a diverse solo career, working with Mark Wirtz and recording some songs popular on the Northern Soul scene. Musically, ‘Kinky Dolly’ has some of the period charm of 1965 spreading its wings, yet its lyrics are just dire, I’m sad to say.
Other songs here are rather better, by and large, the climactic canal tune being a raver which literally includes the verb, to swing. The zoo song sounds like an offcut from David Mercer’s AndDid Those Feet? while several earlier songs, set against identikit suburbia and an urban industrial street, respectively, felt like a caustic English Sondheim take on Manfred Mann’s ‘Semi-Detached Suburban Mr Jones’ and a wistful approximation of Bacharach and David.
There’s also a fine moment of colliery brass amid the gleaming Fortnum and Mason’s store (occupied by Nicholas Courtney, no less!).
We also have the involvement of Christine Holmes (who worked with Cliff Richard and was in The Family Dogg) and Long John Baldry. I felt it echoed some themes of The InteriorDecorator, but had less dialogue. The talk here was invariably non sequitur monologues, with nobody communicating in a mutually understood way, barring the halcyon rapport between father and daughter. I think the moments of jarring cuts to random characters or animals who aren’t there would have worked in a surreal comedic way back in 1965, and it’s all definitely following Troy Kennedy Martin’s anti-naturalism polemic, ‘nats go home’.
But it’s all a bit diffuse and just silly much of the time, and not in a powerfully free manner. AndDid Those Feet? had much of the same experimentalism, but for me, that broke through more into the strange and illuminated, in its vanguard way, what now clearly are both non-conformist and neurodivergent perspectives. This is all too much of another Walter Mitty story, with an older, trapped equivalent of Billy Fisher: not really all that fresh in the context of 1965…! The family he desires escape from is etched in a predictably limited way.
Yet, this has to be highlighted as a key flawed emanation from the new spirit of 1965. The fantasy and counterculture against the straight world, with most contempt held for the admen and salesmen – ironically, themselves who would co-opt and sanitise so many elements of the counterculture over the next six decades. If you can put yourself into the shoes of 1965 people, that Regent’s Canal sequence on a barge full of raving teenagers, has a definite frisson, one made all the typically mixed up and kaleidoscopic by how it seems to blur the lines between the worlds of The Beatles and James Bond – thus, a worthy subject for the fine cultural historian John Higgs to explore!
Best performance: KEN JONES
While I think John Fortune gives an especially good satirical turn, I do think Merseyside actor Jones anchors it with a low-key decency and affable aversion to staid respectability.
Best line: “Yesterday, the police arrested a man in Kensington Gardens. He was naked, and shouted at the passers by: “I am the economic situation!” (Arthur)
Audience size: 6.78 million
Share of overall TV viewing audience: 46.1%
The opposition: BBC2 (The Vintage Years ofHollywood: The Great Moment), ITV (Ku Klux Klan / Professional Wrestling)
Audience Reaction Index: 36%
Reviewed in London press publications consulted: 38.5%
Reception: This play was largely well regarded by most critics, as a refreshing experiment, though a few were very critical of its haphazard structure. By contrast, most viewers took strongly against this play, with only a very small vanguard who went with the positive critical tide admiring its freer, experimental style as a play.
Gerald Larner eloquently extolled Logue and Myers’s play as being ‘what television drama out to be […] absolutely free, careless of plot and convention, making its points in pictures, casting a fresh eye on the everyday scene by contrasting its own view with the medium’s clichés’ (Guardian, 18 November 1965, p. 9). So far, Larner saw it very much in Troy Kennedy Martin’s ‘nats go home’ terms. Matching my own view more, Larner termed it imperfect, but ‘refreshing’ in being governed ‘by fantasy rather than formula’, admiring Logue and Myers’s imaginative ability (ibid.). He saw the theme as overly familiar in its anti-materialist romanticism, but loved ‘the way it was communicated’, seeing some of its ‘extravagant flights’ as ‘often very funny’ (ibid.). Larner saw it as a ‘breakthrough’ from MacTaggart and Loach, with ‘unstudied performances’ from Jones and Ampleforth; this is characteristic acclaim:
In that one day of abandon by Arthur […] there was so much spontaneity, so much pleasure in the shedding of acquisitions, so much sheer joy that there was no more than a hint of affectation. (ibid.)
Peter Black, assessing it side by side with Up the Junction, pointing to how they had ‘sent the TV play off in an exciting new direction’: ‘Suddenly drama is out in the street, alive and kicking and making idiots of old fools like me who have been prophesying its death’ (Daily Mail, 18 November 1965, p. 3). Black noted its plot’s proximity to one of Private Eye‘s ‘damp, sadly funny True Stories’, while the aesthetic was also ‘mostly filmed’, like Dunn’s play (ibid.). Black seemed to have preferred Logue and Myers’s play, casting its ‘eye wider’ and having a ‘much lighter’ attitude, though leaving us aware that ‘all the Arthurs, so ill-equipped to look after themselves, are gullible wanderers among cannibals’ (ibid.). Black loved how it threw ‘everything in’, the editing and how ‘Myers’s songs hit you right behind the ears’, acclaiming the ‘vigour’ of Loach’s film sequences and his use of sound being ‘the secret’ (ibid.). Entirely accurately, Black felt an ‘important’ directorial ‘talent is finding its feet’ and he wanted to join the champions of this ‘interesting’ new direction in TV drama (ibid.).
Philip Purser reflected that it was ‘sometimes’ able to use film as effectively as Up the Junction had, especially liking the Fortnum and Mason’s sequence and the ‘atmospheric one in an overgrown gasworks’ (Sunday Telegraph, 21 November 1965, p. 13). Like Black, Purser perceived Loach’s skill with the ‘hand-held camera’, already to him what ‘the quarter-inch drill is to the handyman’, though he didn’t feel the material was in the same class as Dunn’s play (ibid.). Purser’s moralistic side comes out in criticising newsreader Robert Dougall for appearing: trifling ‘with his reputation like this’ , while he critiqued the whole as like ‘a hurried collage, from whatever was lying around, by a Pop artist in need of a quick 500 guineas’ (ibid.). Yet, fairly, he ended, like Black: ‘Mr. Loach remains a revolutionary to be watched with expectation’ (ibid.). Purser later reflected back on 1965 with a claim that ‘two hectoring seasons of drama from James McTaggart [sic] at the B.B.C. were mostly – though not wholly – justified by Kenneth Loach’s use of film’ in the two November 1965 Wednesday Plays (Sunday Telegraph, 2 January 1966, p. 9).
Adrian Mitchell began by highlighting the play’s excellent line: ‘Why talk when you can sing?’, feeling the pictures sang at times here (Sunday Times, 21 November 1965, p. 30). Mitchell admired the ‘sardonic kick’ of Logue’s script and lyrics, ‘especially when howitzered from the mouth of Christine Holmes’, alongside Myers’s ‘inspirational big store music’ and John Fortune’s ‘super-eloquent’ watch salesman (ibid.). Mitchell observed key details like a mother beating her child on the carpeted stairs of Fortnum and Mason’s and the overriding force of the love Jones and Ampleford conveyed for each other: ‘It was happy. It made me happy.’ (ibid.)
Frederick Laws called it a musical ‘impudently roughly cobbled together’, feeling it was ‘fun’ at times but ‘they hardly even pretended to fit the pieces together, letting an elephant drop out of the script without a word of apology’ (The Listener, 2 December 1965, p. 931).
Outside London, Argus rather perceptively stopped the usual self-questioning of ‘What’s it all about?’, expressing themselves able to stop asking questions and ‘enjoy’ it (Glasgow Daily Record, 18 November 1965, p. 19). While they saw it as an ‘exercise in self-indulgence’, the writers were ‘worthy’ and the production ‘skilful’, so it could all be accepted (ibid.). Thus, unusually, a fantastical Wednesday Play was acclaimed as ‘one of the best pieces of B.B.C. drama there has been for months’ (ibid.). W.D.A. saw it as reflecting an ode to ‘insecurity’, exploring the non-conformist’s ‘love affair with Life’ (Liverpool Echo and Evening Express, 18 November 1965, p. 2). Yet, they felt Arthur’s dreaming was futile and didn’t add to offering ‘an alternative’, perceiving that the little girl ended up frightened and ‘wanted to go home’: ‘a happy medium’ being achieved by Logue’s script (ibid.).
Rodney Tyler felt Logue, a ‘master of weaving skeins of the everyday language of civil servants or admen around simple subjects like the description of a house, or the sale of an elephant’, was not a serious attack on this but ‘a gentle send-up’ of materialism (Reading Evening Post, 18 November 1965, p. 2). Tyler caustically anticipated Whitehouse-inspired attacks on the play, yet notes how ‘It was all highly moral, yet very offensive to the sensitive unimaginative ear, and wrongly the unimaginative will complain that it was immoral’ (ibid.). Departing from the crowd, Peggie Phillips regarded it as ‘an interesting enough experiment’, but one ‘too shapeless to hold the attention’, rationally questioning: ‘whatever became of the elephant?’ (The Scotsman, 22 November 1965, p. 4).
The audience research report revealed a very negative reaction, on the whole: 19% rating it A+/A compared with 53% C/C-. 28% gave it the lowest of the five ratings (BBC WAC, VR/65/651). The score overall was 24% below the current average for TV plays, with a Technical Teacher finding ‘The general discord which Raj throughout was intensely annoying’ and an Industrial Chemist found it ‘very weak’: ‘I gave it up and read a book’ (ibid.). The report documents many ‘caustic expressions of dislike’, evincing irritation and boredom (ibid.). It was felt to be silly and disjointed and bewildering, yet a few did like it up to a point, like the Engineer who admired the scene where the prestige watch was sold, as ‘it guyed the glossy magazine advertisements perfectly’ (ibid.). A very small number loved it and wanted it repeated, including a priest and a teacher, the latter ”went to bed more light-hearted than usual’ after what he regarded as ‘a gay bit of entertainment in praise of irresponsibility’ (ibid.).
In a rare reflective comment developed out of these responses, the reporting MB/CMD claim ‘The play has the sure recipe for success – ability of the viewer to identify himself with the central character. Many men must have said: “I would like to do that, but wouldn’t dare”‘ (ibid.). This highlighted, and rather endorsed, the play’s deeply androcentric nature. Others felt it was a good production doing the best possible with, well, ‘futile’ [Nathan Barley!] material (ibid.). While there were some typical criticisms of ‘jerky, gimmicky’ Wednesday Play visuals, others loved Loach’s ‘most interesting variety of pictures’, which provided ‘so much to see’ (ibid.).
There is some really evocative imagery here!
Letters published in the press tended towards the negative and bemused. A Mrs E. Hayes of Forty Hill, Enfield, Middlesex, termed it ‘crazy’, feeling it was ‘bogged down by cynical dialogue mixed with isolated comments’ (Sunday Mirror, 21 November 1965, p. 22). Wryly, Mrs Hayes felt a soft-shoe shuffle would be on the way next at one point – clearly not having seen The Interior Decorator! – ending off: ‘Easy to follow? A computer would have been rather useful !’ (ibid.).
Two Scottish readers were non-believers in Logue and Myers’s play. A Mrs H. Palmer of 5 Clydeview Road, Port Glasgow, wished there had been a power cut during it: ‘Oh for a good old fashioned kitchen comedy, or are we all too high brow these days?’ (Glasgow Sunday Mail, 21 November 1965, p. 17). Similarly, Mrs M. Inglis of 24 India Street, Montrose, saw it as ‘THE END all right. I couldn’t make my mind up whether it was a play, a documentary or the Goon Show’ (ibid.).
Ken Loach now became a talent recognised by industry peers, winning the Craft Award for Production in the Drama category, for his collective work on Up the Junction, The End of Arthur’s Marriage and TheComing-Out Party – held on 25 November 1966, just nine days after Cathy Come Home was screened (Television Today, 1 December 1966, p. 11).
Overall, The End of Arthur’s Marriage is another worthwhile Wednesday Play which, again, like all November 1965 entries, did not rest on laurels or just present more of the same. That sets it apart from most TV of its time, and while there is much to criticise in it, its anti-materialist spirit has much to say to us in 2025, and, at times, this collaboration between Logue, Myers and Loach, such varied figures, comes off and produces unique moments.
If you worked on or remember watching this play on TV, please email me at thomas.w.may@northumbria.ac.uk as I’m gathering oral history memories and would love to hear from you.🙂
Like Lewis’s previous book Don’t Stop the Music: A Year of Pop History, One Day at a Time this isn’t simply discrete nuggets of trivia, but is constructed in a way that enables the informed reader to spot patterns, make connections and gain a deeper sense of 1980s music history as a result. Lewis has extensive knowledge, curiosity and open-mindedness about music of all kinds, and his love for the art form shines through in a book which is precise and detailed, while being fervently passionate.
The more linear structure, from 1 Jan 1980 to 31 Dec 1989, works well, and the first and last entries form a wonderful bookend, especially as they pertain to perhaps my favourite UK #1 single of all time. Trends perceivable include the gradual rise of hip hop, house from Chicago and Detroit, music videos and the interrelation of adverts and popular music.
Lewis’s book reveals how, in the UK, Northerners did great work: in the North West, The Durutti Column, The Teardrop Explodes, The Fall, Half Man Half Biscuit, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Mighty Wah, Paul McCartney, The Smiths, New Order and Electronic, who Lewis understandably argues produced the culmination of Eighties music with ‘Getting Away with It’. The North East forces included Trevor Horn, Pet Shop Boys and Prefab Sprout, with Newcastle also inspiring The Dream Academy’s superb ‘Life in a Northern Town’. Key Yorkshire and Humberside acts included Everything But the Girl, The Housemartins, ABC, Heaven 17, the Human League and Warp Records, while Scotland delighted us with Aztec Camera, Orange Juice, Altered Images, The Proclaimers, Strawberry Switchblade and The Blue Nile. The Eurythmics, a Lewis favourite band, of course, blend Scottish and North East roots. Some crucial Black British artists emerged and thrived, like Imagination, Linx, Sade and Neneh Cherry, all given their due. What a decade!
Lewis has managed to mention all key popular acts of significance. Geniuses like Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush and Prince all rightly take a central place throughout, while it gave me more appreciation of Madonna’s developing role, leading to the vast ‘Like a Prayer’, on a par with ‘It’s A Sin’ in its magnificence. I’d personally have liked inclusion of somewhat more obscure propositions like New Musik, This Heat, Camberwell Now, Cabaret Voltaire, The Passage and Sudden Sway, not to mention indie disco pop delights from The Bodines and The Wake. And the tragic Marcel King should be part of the story. Viv Stanshall’s album Teddy Boys Don’t Knit (1981) is an omission, as is Lee Scratch Perry and Adrian Sherwood’s Time Boom X De Dead (1987)… But as with his previous book, Lewis’s efforts to detail music from around the world are impressive and commendable, and clearly not everything can be included in a book of under 300 pages!
Like Don’t Stop the Music, there is a rightly an unapologetic – and also non-didactic – inclusion of music’s political reach and impact. There is much of interest about the Cold War here – and Soviet and American abuses of human rights – and the dismal impacts of Thatcherism on the UK, unemployment and the Falklands (‘Shipbuilding’ is mentioned). But, towering above all else is the popular movement against apartheid in South Africa. Page 137 alone details the callous (Queen) and righteous (Microdisney) responses of musicians. Lewis details how Jerry Dammers’ uplifting Special AKA song ‘Nelson Mandela’ (1984) exceeded its creator’s intentions, making people ‘do much more about it than think’ (p. 100). In terms of personal, domestic political life, ‘The Boiler’ by Rhoda Dakar with the Special AKA and ‘Luka’ by Suzanne Vega stand out as two of the most crucial songs of the decade, in communicating the evil men do: rape and domestic abuse.
Overall, reading this, you will learn and laugh. You will need to exercise your noggin to see the historical narrative it is constructing of Eighties music and culture, and that’s no bad thing. Lewis is a careful, incisive chronicler of music lore, revealing a kaleidoscopic web of connections that made the 1980s a formidable and adventurous decade. (Oh, and I’m delighted to have listened to excellent early Run DMC albums as a result and to discover just how much of a neglected banger Chris Rea’s unlikely Balearic deep cut ‘Josephine’ is!)
Thanks to the publisher for an advance copy of this book that I’ve fully read before its 2 October publication. I’m looking forward to listening to the inevitable Spotify playlist!
Over the past few months, I have compiled and then listened to a Spotify playlist of around 880 hit singles that charted in the UK Top 75 singles chart during 1993. To plug the gaps of those not on that platform, I also constructed a playlist of 200 or so YouTube videos and watched those. Even with all these, there were a few not accessible anywhere, if maybe as few as 10-20.
What was the point of all this listening? Well, David Lichfield asked me to pick a year I could focus on and appear on his STORMERS podcast, introducing my four or five main picks. The only proviso being that they were, objectively, bangers or stormers, even! The said podcast appearance is upcoming, including my top five choices of favourite 1993 singles. This blog post features the overall Top 75 of my selected favourites from what was on Spotify. This is presented as a loose list, in a very vague order of preference from. It is simply music I liked very much or loved, that charted in 1993. Part one presents #75-26 of the main list of those Spotify-resident singles. Part two will present the all-important Top 25, plus a Top 25 consisting of my favourite singles not on Spotify, but on YouTube.
Why 1993? Well, I loved living through it as a year. Over halfway into my junior school years and both teachers I had in Year 5 and Year 6 were amazing in different ways. Yet, I was barely cognisant at all of popular music at the time. Starting, just about, to realise quite liked some ABBA songs via the prominence of ABBA Gold, both at home and elsewhere, but I don’t think I was consciously listening to music in any particularly interested way. Reading books and watching television were more typical pursuits.
So, this can’t truly be described as nostalgia so much as a discovery of older material that slipped through my perceptual net. An attempt to partially but empathetically listen to all songs that reached some level of popularity in the UK. My word, yes, even including Michael Bolton, though he didn’t produce the very worst song of the year, funnily enough! Of course, the years 1988 to 1992 are often said to mark the height of house, rave and dance influence, but I was interested to see what 1993 had in its vaults, given just how brilliant a musical year all round 1994 was. Of course, the Chemical Brothers, 808 State, the Prodigy et al were a key strain in late 1990s music, prefacing some tremendous bursts of popular dance music from acts like Basement Jaxx in the years of my youth, the early 2000s.
There was far too much heavy metal for my tastes in 1993, a kind of periodic element that keeps cropping up in BBC Four’s Top of the Pops reruns. I just don’t feel an affinity with or get that particular genre, though certainly have liked individual songs by Metallica and Def Leppard. There was something of a clash between that better more expansive “Britpop” before its time – Pulp, Saint Etienne, The Auteurs, no Denim sadly – and American grunge. All of which sounded more various and interesting than most guitar band music from, the last twenty years.
Consistently sonically adventurous and uncompromisingly direct in lyrics, hip hop was gravitating towards the gangsta, but there were also continued rhizomatic branching out from the Daisy Age tree, or oddities pointing the way to OutKast, Cannibal Ox, the Wu Tang Clan or Clouddead. New Jack Swing was in perhaps surprisingly rude health, clearly not being mainly a 1987 to 1991 phenomenon as I had presumed. It runs in parallel to the forgotten continent of women-led RnB, with the likes of SWV – and several girl groups featuring in my list – pointing the way to later works by TLC, Aaliyah, Lumidee or Destiny’s Child.
The one most annoying tendency – along with seemingly endless appearances by the overgrown laddish Rod Stewart – was the use of unsubtle, “smooth” or “passion”-signifying saxophone solos. These must have appeared in at least thirty tracks across the year. That may seem small, but 3 per cent is a far higher proportion than there are out-there oddities or bemusing novelties.
I have consciously not aimed to regurgitate the received wisdom or my own preconceptions of the key tracks of 1993, but I rather aim to reveal neglected delights and celebrate the less-remembered. #72, #75 and #27, for instance, are long-time favourites where my enthusiasm is cooled somewhat by various ill-advised media pontifications by their vocalists – in order: dissing Abba; going in for tiresome anti-PC/”woke” diatribes and trolling by endorsing Trump; endorsing anti-Vaxx and other Conspiracy Theories. I do think these songs’ musical power transcends the contemporary foibles of their key creative figures – so, it wouldn’t be true to my genuine feelings if I excised them all together.
Of the first fifty (#75-26) I have picked, all charted in the Top 75: 28 outside of the Top 40, 16 from #11-40 and a mere 6 reached the Top 10. The records below deserve recollection, rediscovery and will provoke thought or dancing in 2021.
I embed YouTube videos below, but you can also listen here to the Spotify playlist of the tracks featured here, in descending order from #75. This will be updated once Part Two has been published.
#75: Leftfield Lydon – OPEN UP (13/11/1993, #13, 5 weeks; Hard Hands, HAND 009CD)
Opening up is London duo Leftfield and John Lydon’s ace techno track: every bit unreasonable and anarchic, even if we know that the singer’s unruly libertarianism now trends ever rightwards rather than being in any way righteous.
#74: Kim Wilde – IN MY LIFE (13/11/1993, #54, 1 week; MCA, KIMTD 19) This is cool, heavily Fairlighter-led (Fairlit?) dance pop. Kim Wilde is a reliably lively and attractive pop star, born in Chiswick, London in 1960. I love how she wittily wields a guitar in the video when no guitar is in evidence – quite right too!
#73: LL Cool J – HOW I’M COMIN’ (10/04/1993, #37, 2 weeks; Def Jam, 6591692) East Coast gangsta stuff from the then 25-year-old Queens, New York rapper. Dynamic music and production, with vivid sirens and incendiary bustle. Sultry vocals from women backing singers among LL’s braggadocio; it isn’t going to be regulated!
#72: The Auteurs – LENNY VALENTINO (27/11/1993, #41, 2 weeks; Hut, HUTCD 36) Unquestionably Luke Haines (born Walton, Surrey, 1967)’s most undoubtedly topper tune, though the peak of his career has to be Black Box Recorder, where Sarah Nixey sings (much more recently, he did a tuneful and eccentric concept album about 1970s British wrestling). The Auteurs formed in 1992 in London and Haines remains a kind of metropolitan art school curmudgeon par excellence, who gets it right sometimes.
#71: Jade – DON’T WALK AWAY (20/03/1993, #7, 8 weeks; Giant W, 0160CD) RnB girl group from Chicago, IL consisting of Joi Marshall, Tonya Kelly and Di Reed. This is mint New Jack Swing from a great city. Their ‘I Wanna Love You’ is also good. Jade recorded two albums in 1992 and 1994.
#70: Jonny L – OOH I LIKE IT (ORIGINAL SIN) (28/08/1993, #73, 1 week; XL Recordings, XLS 44CD) A tail end of summer hit, here, if just for a meagre week. The vocal is ran through a vocoder, and feels very pre-Daft Punk or Modjo. Jonny Listers was born in 1970 in the UK. He later did a highly-regarded Drum N’ Bass album Sawtooth (1997) and even was even part of the True Steppers who recorded ‘Out of Your Mind’ in 2000 with Dane Bowers and Victoria Beckham. Good fast but slightly melancholy dance tune age. As Jonny L, five years later, he reached 7 places higher with ’20 Degrees’.
#69: Squeeze – SOME FANTASTIC PLACE (11/09/1993, #73, 1 week; A & M, 5803792) They are a London band, of course, formed as far back as March 1974, surely the only band in this list to date from the Harold Wilson era of British history. This is one of my favourite songs of theirs, I recall hearing it on the satellite channel VH1 long ago. Lilting, circling and plangent stuff.
#68: Sven Väth & Ralf Hildenbeutel – AN ACCIDENT IN PARADISE (06/11/1993, #57, 2 weeks; Eye Q, YZ 778CD) This is the first of two appearances in my list from German electronic ace Sven Väth. Hildenbeutel is a Frankfurt producer, born in 1969. It’s an obscure stormer, apparently perhaps ‘trance’ music, which I know little about.
#67: Kingmaker – 10 YEARS ASLEEP (08/05/1993, #15, 4 weeks; Scorch, CDSCORCHS 8) Jaunty stuff! This Kingston Upon Hull lot are very much an old favourite band of my wife Rachel. Vocalist Loz Hardy was born in Manchester in 1970. “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer planet […] So don’t pretend to care when you don’t care”. Incredibly catchy indie pop.
#66: 2 Unlimited – FACES (04/09/1993, #8, 7 weeks; Continental, PWCD 268) Very good euro dance stuff, actually! Funnily moody posing in the decidedly garish video. ‘No Limit’ should perhaps be in here but is too familiar to need promoting. This lot were, of course, from Amsterdam in the Netherlands. You can get there on the ferry from North Shields, why-aye.
#65: Altern-8 – EVERYBODY – 2 BAD MICE REMIX (03/07/1993, #58, 1 week; Network, NWKCD 73) Fine techno from far-sighted mask-wearers from Stafford, Staffordshire in the West Midlands. “Everybody… EVERY-EEEEEE-BODY!” Helium oddity shifts to wistful minor-key chords, to see in the – as far as I recall – hot summer of 1993.
#64: Lena Fiagbe – YOU COME FROM EARTH (24/07/1993, #69, 1 week; Mother, MUMDD 42) Released and charting for a sadly solitary week in the heart of summer, this is tasteful symphonic soul. There is a laudably universalist, anti-racist message. I rather like it… Lena was born in Ladbroke Grove, London in 1972; her song here points forward to Emeli Sande or even the more orchestral Little Simz tracks on her new album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. Watch here Simz’s mint performance which opened the excellent, overdue Tonight With Target BBC Three series which features British hip hop, grime, RnB and so much else. Of course that British-Nigerian rapper was only born in February 1994…
#63: Roach Motel – AFRO SLEEZE (21/08/1993, #73, 1 week; Junior Boy’s Own, JBO 1412) There are wistful 1970s echoes here, with minor-key inflections. Roach Motel was UK-based duo Pete Heller and Terry Farley’s house project, which predated many remixes of well-known electronic dance tunes. Heller was born in Brighton and is now London-based, which presumably this was. This record label later released Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy (Remix)’ in the summer of 1996. This feels close to X-Press 2’s ‘Say What!’ but edges it out in its layered hedonism.
#62: Aaron Hall – GET A LITTLE FREAKY WITH ME (23/10/1993, #66, 1 week; MCA, MCSTD 1936) In 1987, Hall had co-founded the crucial group Guy with Teddy Riley in Manhattan. Hall was born in the Bronx, NY, USA in 1964. This is a storming tune musically, properly improper New Jack Swing. There’s a Rick James or Prince element to it: ’nuff said.
#61: Tina Turner – I DON’T WANNA FIGHT (22/05/1993, #7, 9 weeks; Parlophone, CDRS 6346) I never really “got” Tina’s music back in the 1990s itself, just recalling ‘The Best’ being endlessly played at Sunderland AFC’s Roker Park at the instigation of chairman and Darlington furniture magnate Bob Murray. I didn’t know Tina’s horrific life story and how all these later hits were such a triumphant thing. Turner was born in Brownsville, TN, USA in 1939, making her the elder statesperson of this list. There are parallel readings of this as: ending a relationship or ending heated ideological battles in politics and coming to pluralist accommodations!
This is hands down the most baffling 1993 hit single on Spotify! Freaky Realistic were Aki Omori, Justin Anderson and Michael Peter Lord: a band formed in Peckham, South London in the early 1990s. Oddly, they link to Saint Etienne through an engineer Gerard Johnson and Hearsay through a 16 year-old Kym Marsh doing backing vocals somewhere on their only album Frealism. This is just tremendously odd: catchy, 1970s-revivalist disco yet up-to-date. The name of the venerable Trekker actor’s name is chanted in the chorus, alongside winsome vocals by Aki and Lord rapping. Delightful, yet forgotten! Recall it. Play it!
#59: Sinclair – AIN’T NO CASANOVA (21/08/1993, #28, 5 weeks; Dome, CDDOME, 1004) A slow-burning, late-summer into autumn hit here from Mike Sinclair, born in West London, UK. Slightly jazzy New Jack Swing with significant humility and no braggadocio in evidence. This has an unassuming urban conviviality to it; is there a Paul Gilroy in the house?
#58: Ace of Base – HAPPY NATION (13/11/1993, #42, 3 weeks; London, 8619272) This song from Gothenburg band Ace of Base seems to reflect on social democratic Sweden, so long gradually less so from 1976… Singer Jenny Berggren (born 1972) intones generally incisive lines: “That no man’s fit to rule the world alone”, ideas won’t die et al. Interesting, good tune, opening with Enigma-like Gregorian elements, but which are more melancholy, accompanying the band’s patented – and unique – musical signature of moody Nordic reggae. This re-entered the chart in 1994 for another 3 weeks, reaching #40.
#57: Slowdive – ALISON (29/05/1993, #69, 1 week; Creation, CRESCD 119) Lovely dream pop, which charted ridiculously low. ‘Souvlaki Space Station’ is also on this Outside Your Room EP, from the Reading, Berkshire band who formed in October 1989. Luton, Bedfordshire-born Neil Halstead (1970) and Fareham, Hampshire-born Rachel Goswell (1971) sing celestially among the haze of reverb-drenched guitars and drums. This band are underrated besides My Bloody Valentine. Oddly, it almost feels it could be an ode to Alison Cooper (Charlotte Ritchie) of the tremendous BBC sitcom Ghosts!
#56: D:Ream – U R THE BEST THING (Originally, 04/07/1992, #72, 1 week. Did 9 weeks in 1993, reaching #19, re-entering 24/04/1993. Also 1994! Magnet MAG 1011CD)
This is a truly excellent dance-pop song from the Derry, Northern Ireland band. I had no idea – or had forgotten – that BBC presenter Brian Cox (born 1968 in Manchester) played keyboards for them. He does a good job. The one co-opted by New Labour is also good, but this far exceeds it in its grace. ‘I Like It’ is also very good, with fine house piano presumably played by Cox. As Channel Four’s Derry Girls makes well clear, Northern Ireland was in need of uplift and cheer in the 1990s.
#55: dada – DOG (04/12/1993, #71, 1 week; IRS, CDEIRSS 185) Joie Calio, Michael Gurley and Phil Leavitt’s well-named band were a complete discovery to me when listening to the Spotify 1993 singles. The Los Angeles, CA band released five albums from 1992 to 2004. ‘Dog’, from the first, Puzzle, is winsome, tuneful and fittingly surreal.
#54: DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince – BOOM! SHAKE THE ROOM (11/09/1993, #1, 13 weeks; Jive, JIVECD 335) This is definitely a case where my taste accords with that of the 1993 crowd! This West Philadelphia, PA duo had formed in 1986 and Jazzy Jeff (1965) and Will Smith, aka. “The Fresh Prince” (1968) are both Philly born. There’s some quite weird stuff on the verse leading into the chorus. Evidently, this reflects the pop end of hip hop and very effectively so.
#53: Aphex Twin – ON (27/11/1993, #32, 3 weeks; Warp, WAP 39CD) Not really his best but a grower on each listen and still evidently very good stuff. Richard D. James was born in Limerick, Ireland in 1971 but grew up in Cornwall. The excellent video to ‘On’ is directed by Jarvis Cocker there and seems to use “super” 8mm film to experiment in Salvador Dali-esque fashion. This is also, I gather, Aphex’s second biggest singles chart hit too, after ‘Windowlicker’.
#52: Good Girls – JUST CALL ME (Remix) (24/07/1993, #75, 1 week; Motown, TMGCD 1417) Los Angeles girl group – Shireen Crutchfield, Joyce Tolbert and DeMonica Santiago – on Motown, working in a New Jack Swing vein. This sultry urban tune plays on voice and technological communication means, linking back to Jade.
#51: Orbital – LUSH 3-1 (21/08/1991, #43, 2 weeks; Internal, LIECD 7) Very good stuff per se, if not totally top-drawer Orbital, I’d say… This electronic duo, formed in Otford, Kent, were active from 1989. Nah, actually it is top-drawer, having played it more!
#50: Rotterdam Termination Source – MERRY X-MESS (25/12/1993, #73, 2 weeks; React, CDREACT 33) This is mental. A truly unique Christmas offering from the year of Saint Etienne and Tim Burgess, from this Gabber and hardcore group who, as you might expect, were from Rotterdam in the Netherlands. ‘Poing’ did well in 1992 charts. Maurice Steenbergen, initially with Danny Scholte, erm, programmed!
#49: Aimee Mann – I SHOULD’VE KNOWN (04/09/1993, #55, 2 weeks; Imago, 72787250437) This, Aimee Mann’s first UK hit, is excellent and overlooked. Mann was born in Richmond, VA, USA in 1960. There is even a tangential telephonic link back to #52. In the video, Mann holds a 1940s detective novel she is reading before she starts singing.
#48: Mary J. Blige & The Notorious B.I.G. – REAL LOVE REMIX (28/08/1993, #26, 4 weeks; Uptown, MCSTD 1922) Expansive urban soul from Blige, a Bronx, NY, USA artist (born 1971). This originally surfaced in late 1992, reaching #68 and spending 2 weeks in the chart, before this remix, with added Biggie Smalls (born Brooklyn, NY, 1972, died in Los Angeles, CA, 1997). Also good from MJB in 1993 is ‘You Remind Me’: fine harmonies and low-key synthetic synth work. And in the elegant ‘Reminisce’, is that a harpsichord?
#47: American Music Club – JOHNNY MATHIS’ FEET (24/04/1993, #58, 2 weeks; Virgin, VSCDG 1445)
This is inimitable sad-sack storytelling from Mark Eitzel (born Walnut Creek, CA, in 1959), whose band had formed in San Francisco, CA in 1982. Wonderful! Wonderful!
#46: Martine Gerault – REVIVAL (30/01/1993, #37, 5 weeks in total; 2 weeks in 1992, charting lower at #53; ffrr, FCD 205) Lavish urban soul, like trip hop in its sensuous cool: predating such great bands as Portishead and Bows. Girault hails from Brooklyn, New York. Ray Hayden produced this downtempo delight; he runs the Hackney-based Opaz Records label.
#45: Sade – KISS OF LIFE (08/05/1993, #44, 3 weeks; Epic, 6591162) This is similarly mint. From the same album, the other single ‘Cherish the Day’ is ace, drifting serene soul. Sade were a comparatively veteran band, formed in London in 1983, while Helen Folasade Adu was born in Ibadan, Nigeria in 1959. This is a music which is continually underrated, absurdly derided by some, though Marcello Carlin and Lena Friesen on Then Play Long have never made this mistake.
Great urban interior photography in the video; evoking Fassbinder or Scorsese cinematography?
#44: Ice Cube – IT WAS A GOOD DAY (27/03/1993, #27, 4 weeks; 4th & Broadway, BRCD 270) What a sublime main guitar loop on this! It is from Ohio’s finest, the magnificent Isley Brothers’ ‘Footsteps in the Dark’ (1977). O’Shea Jackson was born in Crenshaw, CA in 1969 and was a key figure in West Coast hip hop. From ’93, ‘Wicked’ is also excellent, with a ragga guest vocalist and an atmospheric siren. That one day in the neighbourhood where no one died from guns.
#43: The Juliana Hatfield Three – MY SISTER (11/09/1993, #71, 1 week; Mammoth, YZ 767CD)
Forceful, sassy, tuneful stuff from Wiscasset, Maine’s Hatfield. Born in 1967, this isn’t the last time we hear this defiant, powerful voice in this story of 1993.
#42: East 17 – SLOW IT DOWN (10/04/1993, #13, 7 weeks; London, LONCD 339) Excellent strings! Good production, sense of space and dynamics for this track from the Walthamstow boy band who are on a different planet, quality-wise, to the vast majority of later 1990s boy bands. Other great slow tracks of 1993 are Debbie Harry’s ‘Strike Me Pink’ and Madonna’s ‘Rain’.
#41: Freddie Mercury – LIVING ON MY OWN (31/07/1993, #1, 13 weeks, 16 including its 1980s debut; Parlophone, CDR 6355)
Born in 1946, Mercury features as an elder statesman here, his great, vital scat vocals anticipating a certain mega hit of 1995.
#40: Baby D – DESTINY (18/12/1993, #69, 1 week; Production House, PNC 065) Not in this instance a magnificent epic of British history from David Edgar, but a first hit from a vital cutting edge dance pop act. This seems the closest here to jungle and DnB so far, coming late in the year. Dee had been a former member of Phil Fearon’s Galaxy…
This seems to be the somewhat tamer pop version:
Whereas this is the one I listened to via Spotify: ’tis the vastly more dynamic breakbeat hardcore bizness:
#39: Janet Jackson – IF (31/07/1993, #14, 7 weeks; Virgin, VSCDT 1474) There is that Jam and Lewis power to this, with a gorgeous RnB drift… As producers, they defined the ‘Minneapolis sound’, alongside Prince. This is high octane and high calibre. See other singles from janet. (1993), including ‘That’s the Way Love Goes’. Janet was born in Gary, IN in 1966, while Jimmy Jam was born in Minneapolis, MN in 1959 and Terry Lewis in Omaha, NE in 1956.
#38: David Bowie feat. Lenny Kravitz – BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA (04/12/1993, #35, 3 weeks; Arista 74321177052) After largely thin material with Tin Machine, the Bowie resurgence continued apace with this, following the decent Black Tie, White Noise (1993) LP. This is the title song from the contemporaneous BBC Two drama adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s novel, directed and co-scripted by Roger Michell (1956-2021; RIP). Also from 1993 it is worth mentioning that track with Al B. Sure! and Timar: ‘Black Tie White Noise – Urban Mix’ which has some good jazz chords. Bowie never lost touch with the urban; while, in this recording, proving an evocative voice of ambivalence regarding suburbia.
#37: New Model Army – HERE COMES THE WAR (20/02/1993, #25, 2 weeks; Epic, 6589352)
Here is a curiosity: a tangibly political Bradford, Yorkshire band led by a guitarist and vocalist called ‘Slade the Leveller’ (Justin Sullivan, born 1956) who were on two major labels, EMI from 1984 and Epic Records from December 1991. They were staunchly anti-Tory through the Thatcher era, writing a song called ‘Spirit of the Falklands’ and a haunting lament, ‘A Liberal Education’. As Discogs also says: ‘The group’s championing of traditional working-class ethics saw an unexpected boost for a dying art and trade – that of the clog.’ They appeared on Top of the Pops at one stage with the slogan ‘Only Stupid Bastards Use Heroin’ which attracted derision from anarcho-punk traditionalists Conflict who replied with their own motif: ‘Only Stupid Bastards Help EMI’. Surely there is a way beyond such purism into recognising that putting out left-wing material out on major capitalist labels isn’t a bad thing. No levelling up here: short shrift for that cynical slogan! This is trenchant, expansive and very well produced. The lyrics remind me of Band of Holy Joy but with a decidedly political edge.
#36: Apache Indian – MOVIN’ ON (23/10/1993, #48, 2 weeks; Island, CID 580) They had a strong of varied hit singles including this impassioned, defiant response to the BNP victory in the Tower Hamlets, London local election. Their singer-songwriter Steven Kapur was born in Handsworth, Birmingham in 1967. Far-right candidate Derek Beackon won the seat, was Councillor from 16 September 1993, but was to lose in May 1994 despite winning more votes. We should never be complacent about Nazism and need to keep heeding Apache Indian’s articulate message here.
#35: Sven Väth – L’ESPERENZA (24/07/1993, #63, 2 weeks; Eye Q, YZ 757) Väth was born in 1964 in the city of Offenbach, Germany (though others sources say Obertshausen, also in the state of Hesse). This is gently elegiac electronica dance or ambient techno, according to your predilection. He was later to record a version of the Gainsbourg-Birkin sensual belter ‘Je t’aime’ with Grenoble, France-born electroclash force Miss Kittin. Eye Q was a Frankfurt-based label that Sven co-founded.
#34: Culture Beat – GOT TO GET IT (06/11/1993, #4, 11 weeks; Epic, 6597212) Eurodance from Frankfurt, Germany, adjacent to Sven, but which caught on way beyond the technohead connoisseurs. Their singer, by this stage, was Tania Evans, born in Edmonton, London in 1967. Fine stuff. Enough said.
#33: The Breeders – DIVINE HAMMER (06/11/1993, #59, 1 week; 4AD, BAD 3017CD) They were formed in 1988 by Kim Deal of the Pixies and Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses in Dayton, OH – though by this stage it was Deal, Kelley Deal, Carrie Bradley and Josephine Wiggs. ‘Cannonball’ is magnifique, of course, but too obvious, so I am opting for this other single off their Last Splash (1993) LP. 4AD was started in 1980 by Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent, financially assisted by Beggars Banquet. The significant label has bases in London SW18 and NY 10012.
#32: Ultramarine – KINGDOM (24/07/1993, #46, 2 weeks; Blanco Y Negro, NEG 65CD) This is an amazing folktronica single, with the great Robert Wyatt, born in 1945, on vocals and featuring as a King in the video! The video reminds me somewhat of a more assured Winstanley-reminiscent precursor of Jah Wobble’s promo for ‘Songs of Innocence’ (1996). While I prefer their earlier LP Every Man and Woman is a Star (1991) to United Kingdoms (1993), both are essential listening and this is a rare UK hit single that is intelligently Utopian, grounded yet inspiring, dissecting power relations and social class hierarchies. This Essex band later had a top 75 hit ‘Hymn’ featuring David McAlmont. They were clearly moving in circles with people who made some of the best music past and present: touring with Bjork, Meat Beat Manifesto and Orbital and working with Canterbury legends Kevin Ayers and Lol Coxhill.
#31: Malaika – GOTTA KNOW (YOUR NAME) (31/07/1993, #68, 1 week; A & M, 5802732) Malaika LeRae Sallard was born in 1972 in Seattle, WA. It’s an undoubtedly hip and vivacious vocal performance, Malaika opening with the “hey!” shout. This feels like a softer New Jack Swing: somewhere between Prince and TLC. Malaika had links to Steve “Silk” Hurley and Todd Terry.
#30: The Goats – ‘AAAH D YAAA’ (29/05/1993, #53, 2 weeks; Ruffhouse, 6593032) Great stuff this. Jazz hip hop from The Goats: founded in 1991 in Philadelphia, PA. They were the rappers OaTie Kato (James D’Angelo), Madd aka. ‘the M-A-the-double-D’ (Maxx Stoyanoff Williams), and Swayzack (Patrick Shupe). Its flipside is ‘Typical American’ which is also good and vastly different, both to ‘Aaah D Yaaa’ and to much other music. Yes, there is the terrain of Guru, A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, but The Goats were charting their own course.
Here is ‘Typical American’ too, with, impressively, a t-shirt of Belfast left-wing punk band Stiff Little Fingers in evidence.
#29: Belly – FEED THE TREE (23/01/1993, #32, 3 weeks; 4AD, BAD 3001CD) This is a fabulous blend of Pixies-type song and bass sound with a vocal which has Polly Harvey-like intelligence, strength and vitality. Belly were formed in Newport, RI in 1991 by former Throwing Muses and Breeders figure Tanya Donelly (also born there in 1966).
#28: Sabres of Paradise – SMOKEBELCH II (02/10/1993, #55, 3 weeks; Sabres Of Paradise, PT 009CD) Andrew Weatherall (1963-2020): a top man born in Windsor, Berkshire, who we haven’t heard the last of here… The Sabres were comprised of Weatherall, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns: a London band extant from 1992-1995 and later responsible for the astounding ‘Wilmot’ (1994). Intriguingly, the band’s name seems to based on Lesley Blanch’s 1960 book The Sabres of Paradise, a biography of Tsarist Russian rule in early 19th century Georgia and the Caucasus. This sublime tune – later featuring in longform on their third LP for Warp Records, Sabresonic II – is based on ‘The New Age of Faith’ (1989) by The Prince of Dance Music and L. B. Bad, which had been released on a New York label. Unoriginal, sure, but when is that necessarily the point of dance music which is surely all about sharing? This is JUST magnificent.
While on Spotify, I have had to go for the ‘Beatless Mix‘ version on their debut LP Sabresonic (1993), this is the full original version, in ‘Entry’ and then ‘Exit’ forms:
#27: The The – SLOW EMOTION REPLAY (17/04/1993, #35, 3 weeks; Epic, 6590772)
Another alternative’ act on a major label, The The are Matt Johnson (born 1961 in East London), a follicly-challenged singer-songwriter who gradually shifted from bedroom electronica with a post punk attitude to stadium rock a tad edgier than most. Most of the The The albums from Blue Burning Soul (1981) onwards remain excellent, though you trust his presentation-of-self as truth-telling seer less as time passes and he opens his gob more. This is an unquestionably powerful song, though; featuring one of many stratospheric Johnny Marr contributions to 1990s music: see also everything Marr recorded with Kirsty MacColl, Billy Bragg and Electronic.
#26: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – DREAM OF ME (BASED ON LOVE’S THEME) (17/07/1993, #24, 5 weeks; Virgin, VSCDT 1461)
OMD formed in Meols, Wirral in Merseyside in 1978 with the lead singer Andy McCluskey born in Heswall in 1959. These were the days when a band being a going concern for 15 years was relatively incredible: in the next part of this story, we’ll encounter a band of Brummies formed the same year. This is directly inspired by Barry White’s ‘Love Theme’ released by Love Unlimited Orchestra in 1973 and is that rare thing: a loving, subtle tribute to black American music from Britain that works as homage and as its own unique thing. There’s an arty, popular concern with sensuality from the off in the video with the direct allusions to Busby Berkeley dance choreography.
In part two of this article, we count down my subjectively selected Top 25 singles of 1993! Plus, go through my favourite 25 singles only accessible via YouTube. Oh, and I go over some of 1993’s curios and oddities which are, as expected, mostly to be found on YT rather than Spotify…
So, the Brexit soap opera – series 4 is it, or 41? – has drawn to a close. Pleasingly, there has been much compelling television which engages with not just metropolitan London (the engrossing, zeitgeist-chasing Fleabag on BBC1) but also: down-at-heel Bognor Regis (the aptly discomfiting, sour Don’t Forget the Driver on BBC2), 1990s Northern Ireland (the magnificently refreshing Derry Girls, on Channel 4), 1970s-80s Yorkshire (Liza Williams’s astute, damning record of a society’s grim misogyny The Yorkshire Ripper Files: A Very British Crime Story on BBC4; why not BBC1?) and our very own Newcastle upon Tyne (David Olusoga’s A House Through Time, on BBC2, tracing a representative our-story of class, power, knowledge and culture).
It has also been a week when the Radio Times has proclaimed Connie Booth and John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers (BBC, 1975-79) as the UK’s favourite sitcom, which has also been interpreted as a warning about the isolated Little England mindset. One that wasn’t heeded. Somehow, many people have clearly overlooked Booth & Cleese’s encoding: laid-back liberalism and open-mindedness about women, the working class, the Irish, the Germans, black GPs and other professionals (not of the Bodie-Doyle kind!). Instead, they have aberrantly decoded Fawlty Towers as meaning that a besieged island mentality, angry paranoia and obsession with class status are desirable ends.
Speaking of Fawlty’s influence, what about that long-time MAY’S BRITAIN… favourite Mark Francois? This abuser of Tennyson and the English language (Europe will be “facing perfidious Albion on speed”, apparently), has not been tipped for the knacker’s yard of clapped-out Gammonry but for the Tory leadership…! By Telegraph columnist Charlotte Gill, who seems to have a latent desire for Tory oblivion, which would be just about the only positive by-product of an actual No Deal scenario. “A No Deal”, planning for which has been finally halted this week, is manifestly not the most popular option for the public, whatever IDS and Boris Johnson have claimed this week.
Gill’s unhinged punditry arrives amid inconveniently cautionary voices about the whole “Brexit” enterprise; not from usual suspects but from the Daily Mail‘s Peter Oborne on Open Democracy and James Kirkup in Brexiter-haven The Spectator. Oborne stresses the threat to the UK and regrets his lack of consideration for Northern Ireland back in 2016; Kirkup assiduously dismantles the myth that we would have ‘control’ or ‘freedom’ if we “go WTO”. Both reflect on actual scenarios we face now, not on the illusory fantasy Brexits that were hatched in many bonces in June 2016.
These were fantasies ludicrously indulged by the Prime Minister, as this January 2017 rhetoric captured on the front-page of The Times attests:
Somehow, the innate glory of Britain as a country put us in the driving seat, in a negotiation ‘against’ 27 other nation-states working in tandem and supporting each other… Somehow, for Brexiters, EU claims about not doing a trade deal without the backstop are bluff, yet a self-harming No Deal is not a bluff, but a desirable end!
As the second “Brexit Day” passed with barely a whimper; instead of mass public discontent, I sense rather tired annoyance and indifference. There was a whimper, an “off-grid”, “blackout” protest of maybe 3,000 (at best) social media diehards. Do they actually believe their propaganda that staying off work and sitting in the house with the TV off for one day could “bring the country to its knees”?
They exclaim: “No cars, no shopping, no TV, no phones!” Until we get our way and we get No free roaming on holiday, No EU food imports, No jobs from companies who have settled here over our 46 years of membership! No United Kingdom!
Well, I’m sitting in the house now, writing this and listening to house. Through the TV is playing ACID: MYSTERONS INVADE THE JACKIN’ ZONE, a compilation of Chicago Acid & Experimental House from 1986-93. A CD I bought in London two Saturdays ago. After having listened to Jens Lekman & Annika Norlin’s epistolary album Correspondence via the internet. I have played Mr Fingers’ ace ‘Washing Machine’ and also used a washing machine. Beat that! While they are free to listen to their Arthur Askey and Strawbs records on gramophone or vinyl and re-read Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech for the thousandth time without so much showing a leg… I think my activities will have as much effect on the world as theirs.
I seriously hope that this is my last Brexit post for a while, and the “Francois for PM” and “Blackout” incidents constitute an appropriately hapless, desperate damp squib with which to end this series of the Brexit soap opera. Sadly, I fear “Brexit” is going to be with us for at least the medium term. A nation has grown used to shouting at itself for three years, and, bizarrely, it likes it! Or, many do: especially those Leavers who like saying “get over it” and claiming to speak for “the 17.4 million”, but also that curious niche of Remainers who are desperate to rewind the clock to Cameron-Osborne’s neoliberal political programme of 2015/16.
As we enter a “Brexit Lull”, desired by all but those true believers in traitors and betrayals, there are other issues we might consider important. Greta Thunberg’s Friday climate change protests continue; David Attenborough is to broadcast on the subject on BBC1 next week. We might focus our minds on what happened one hundred years ago today in Amritsar, India, and while welcoming the fact that the Prime Minister raised the issue in Parliament, we should all urge her to apologise on behalf of the UK for what we did.
In writing about the 1978 Play for Today ‘Destiny’, I noted that the scene from David Edgar’s earlier stage play mentioning the killing at Amritsar of 400 unarmed Indian protesters by British troops ordered by Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer was excised from the television version. This showed a certain historical timidity in the BBC, which, while backing the play’s complex and even-handed dramatisation of many political voices, and showing the poignant death of Major Rolfe’s son in Northern Ireland, excised the historical facts concerning many more deaths in India in 1919.
We must remember, we must apologise. We must see ourselves as others see us, whether we want to do free-trade deals with India or Europe, or both or neither. I believe in the choice of a new generation and insist that we can leave Powell and Francois behind and heed the lessons of Fawlty Towers.
He was a transformational voice and exploratory musical modernist; no one has gone further into the ugly and beautiful. No other musical oeuvre has spanned ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ to the 22 minute-opus of oddity ‘SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)’. Only Bowie (and maybe Hollis) is remotely comparable, in making “the journey of a life” in music so fascinating. In the 1960s, he popularised Brel and chanson and produced some of the best music to listen to for heartbreak; I’ve lived through it with Scott 3 (1969), believe me…! Later, he detonated the ‘song’, culminating in the wondrous masterpiece Tilt (1995). His music is immersed in history and humanity, in its horror, ribaldry, melancholy and humour.
In addition to Bowie and Hollis, he stands beside Leonard Cohen, Robert Wyatt, Peter Hammill, Sun Ra, Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush as a musical force that will endure.
‘Bouncer See Bouncer’ is at the summit of where music can go. It will resound in 200 years’ time. ‘Cossacks Are’ is the avant-pop cut-up of our dreams, Burroughs in the age of the Iraq War:
“A rare outcry makes you lead a larger life” “You could easily picture this in the CURRENT TOP TEN” “Medieval savagery, calculated cruelty” It’s hard to pick the worst moment, it’s hard to pick the worst moment
Here’s a current top ten, nah twenty, of my favourites by Scott Walker. Bit pointless as you really need to listen to it all…
‘Jackie’ (1968)
‘Cossacks Are’ (2006)
‘The War is Over (Epilogue)’ (1970)
‘It’s Raining Today’ (1969)
‘The Old Man’s Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime)’ (1969)
May's Britain... 