1992 Snap!: Rhythm Is A Dancer

And now to drive a coach and horses through all my previous 'Eurodance one hit wonder acts' comments, here come Snap! with a second number one to prove me wrong. Though still in the dance genre, 'Rhythm Is A Dancer' is a different proposition to 'The Power', and rather a less interesting one at that. Based around the ubiquitous (in the early nineties anyway) bouncing piano riff, 'Rhythm' is classic Italian house crossed with a Europop mentality that, lacking the chorus drop-out gimmick of 'The Power', relies on its own rolling internal rhythm and Thea Austin's repeated "Lift your hands and voices, free your mind and join us. You can feel it in the air" message of nightlife hedonism.

It makes 'Rhythm' a tune for the clubs rather than pop for the bedroom and that's fine, but it's a style over substance product that was everywhere in the nineties - any Fantazia DJ would have played ten hours of this solid on a nightly basis and the only thing that makes 'Rhythm' stand out from the herd is another pedestrian Turbo B rap that stamps on the brakes with a "I'm serious as cancer when I say Rhythm is a dancer", a line so jarringly bad it ought to stop any rave in its tracks, switch on the lights and help the DJ pack away his turntables.

I'm pretty sure my comments on all this will draw howls of protest from those with fond memories of the era, and maybe they will have a point - I was no dedicated club goer at that time (too busy listening to Pixies and Throwing Muses in my bedroom for any of that) and so, having no such memories to pin it on, I'm forced to take 'Rhythm Is A Dancer' on its own merits. And on those it has to be stamped 'ordinary'.

1992 Jimmy Nail: Ain't No Doubt

From Vic Reeves' comedian turned singer to an actor turned singer - Nail is best known to the UK as Geordie brickie 'Oz' in TV's 'Auf Wiedersehen Pet'. Best known to me anyway and to the extent that in 1992 I found it next to impossible to separate the two - as far as I was concerned, it was Oz up there singing this in the same way as it was Bart singing 'Do The Bartman'. Which meant I couldn't take it seriously. Unfair maybe, but it wasn't my fault that Nail had typecast himself to such an extent, and anyway time the leveller has since done much to put enough distance between the two for me to tackle 'Ain't No Doubt' on its own merits.

You can tell an actor is behind all this - Nail opens with a spoken moan about a woman giving him the runaround ("She says 'it's not you - it's me. I need a little time, a little space. A place to find myself again, you know?"), but when she tries to re-assure him with an "I don't want nobody else, I love you", Nail can only respond with a stage whisper "she's lying" aside to the listener before setting out his main beef on the chorus: "Ain't no doubt, it' plain to see, a woman like you's no good for me". Questions as to why he just doesn't dump the brazen hussy aside, there's a pleasingly neat roundness to the song's narrative structure but it's execution ties its laces together so that it falls flat as soon as it tries to run.

And that's because 'Ain't No Doubt' aims for the soulful satisfaction of other sung/spoken tales of lost love like (for example) The Chi-Lites' 'Have You Seen Her?' Which is a lofty enough aspiration to be sure, but 'Ain't No Doubt' instead sounds as provincially low rent as the horrid sung/spoken tale of lost love that was Driver 67's 'Car 67'. Nail can carry a tune, but he carries it in a mouth that clogs fall out of whenever it's open, and to compound the gulf between aspiration and reality,the music has a tinribs thin eighties production of a Level 42 B side coming down a telephone line. Which is all a bit of a shame really because there's potential here, the raw material to fashion something of a gem. Shame then its been wasted by mounting it on a plastic locket hung on a toilet chain.

1992 Erasure: Abba-Esque

I can tell you from memory that Abba's UK stock circa 1992 wasn't at a premium. The recent past really was another country, and whilst it's fair to say that they'd never really gone away completely, their name was only there to be dropped in an eyebrow raising 'look how funny they were' dismissal of seventies kitsch culture that saw them lumped in as part and parcel of tartan trousers, kipper ties, Ford Cortinas and lava lamps. Not everybody of course, but popular culture and mass acceptance had moved on without taking Bjorn and the gang along with it and it left them stranded as a tolerated memory rather than a genuinely fond one, and something that UK folk were as keen to put behind them as post war Germans were of the Nazis.

All changed now - nostalgia became big business with the turn of the century with the BBC's series of 'I Love' programmes that brought some sun to what were previously regarded as winters of discontent and the seventies/eighties came to provide a rich seam of cultural touchstones and shared memories that, once regarded as straw, could now be spun into the gold of cash. Abba's corpse was as fair game as anything else and it was given the initial kiss of life via tribute acts like Bjorn Again spreading the word while later, the musical 'Mamma Mia' unfroze hearts, removed stigma and cemented Abba as everybody's favourite singalongaseventies band, even if some still feel the need to caveat their liking with the defence of irony. A simplistic analysis true, but accurate enough for my purposes.

Erasure's EP played no small part in kick-starting this re-juvenation. In some ways it was a brave move - a successful pop act at their peak risking potential career suicide by rewinding the clock to revive four songs from a discredited band. But then on the other hand, not that brave at all - Vince Clark was a man born with a ear for a good tune and he knew that, when stripped of all the glam and glitter, Abba came stuffed full of them. Over the course of the four songs on this EP, he unpicks their backbone so that each is driven by a core synthesiser bounce that spotlights the main melody inherent in each. Yet despite their back to basics execution, the four songs on offer here are rendered curiously flat and impersonal, reduced to their lowest common denominator with the emotional core so important to the best of Abba's songs removed until they're plucked out as a karaoke backing track with an unwanted vocal. And 'unwanted' because what's also sorely lacking are the dynamic sparks that flew from the clash of Anni-Frid and Agnetha's ice and fire vocals. Put simply, Andy Bell's nasally whine can't compete and it adds little to the tunes, least of all personality.

Take the opening lines of 'SOS' as a case in point - "Where are those happy days, they seem so hard to find" - Agnetha's vocal was heartbreaking in its resignation, a sense of human fragility underpinning the juggernagught of a chorus that made it something more than a simple pop tune. In contrast, Bell's disinterest lights no fires and his overly respectful approach vacuums out all the joy to render it a flat plain carried by the tune, itself served up on the same low key keyboard tricks Clark learned back in his Depeche Mode days. The same goes for the remainder - 'Voulez Vous' former icy glide gets fitted with snow tyres to cramp its style, and while 'Lay All Your Love On Me' aims for trance anthem status, it's brought down to earth by Bell's disinterest. The only real addition of note is an MC Kinky rap over 'Take A Chance On Me' that's as unexpected as a black cloud in a clear blue sky and it fires a shotgun blast into the face of the tune's jovial bounce to kill it dead.

In fairness, Erasure always saw this project as a diversion with nobody trying to re-invent the wheel and on that level the EP is pop fun and perfect fodder for a provincial nightclub playlist on a nineties Saturday night. But there's a strain about the songs that tarnishes their efforts, of trying to take the songs to a place where they really don't want to go. Like your dad showing he's still got 'it' at the disco, appreciation borders on humouring toleration and is in any case firmly on a camp and ironic level only (though when something is as formulaic, predictable and ordinary as this then there can be no surprise that it finds its own level).

1992 KWS: Please Don't Go

I mentioned back on 'The Power' about how the early nineties were a fertile ground for one hit wonder Europop dance merchants to ply their lightning in a bottle trade before fading back into obscurity. KWS are a case in point......to a point - 'Please Don't Go' was originally a 1979 KC and The Sunshine Band ballad given a dance makeover to get it moving with a purpose. There's no great art to layering a 4/4 dance beat over an existing piece of music to 'dance it up'; after all, anyone can do it* but in this case 'Please Don't Go' actively benefits from the spark the beat provides by giving a firm boot in the pants to the lethargic self pity of the original (KC was never that convincing on the slow stuff) that puts a twinkle in the eye of the plea of the title. Never too busy or brash, there's enough going on without going any hardcore dancecore throwing the baby out with the makeover (if you see what I mean) and KC's song provides a touchstone that's never far below the surface.

All in all, it's pure nineties Eurodance that's endured/dated as a guilty-ish pleasure the way most of them have. Which is interesting, seeing as KWS were a duo very much from the UK. But they remain an example of my observation in that their version of 'Please Don't Go' is straight re-tread of Italian act Double You's dance version released early 1992, faithful to the last beep and close enough certainly for the Italians to take legal action and win. Which makes this a rip off of a cover. And KWS a pair of very bad eggs.


* Jonathan Peters/Luminaire even managed to do as much to 'The Flower Duet' from Delibes' 'Lakme' in 1999, a re-mix that's as effective as it is unexpected.

1992 Right Said Fred: Deeply Dippy

Always a curious proposition, Right Said Fred's 'I'm Too Sexy' 1991 debut had all the hallmarks of a novelty, Europop one ht wonder. Nothing that could be logically followed up anyway so they didn't try to, which is why the lush 'Don't Talk, Just Kiss' came as a delightful curveball that confounded expectation. Another year on and 'Deeply Dippy' switches track yet again to a chunky bounce of sunlit bubblegum that's a close cousin to The Lovin' Spoonful's 'Daydream'. With an inbuilt grin to deliver its feelgood 'I love you' message, 'Deeply Dippy' is bedrock pop of no pomp or substance that's refreshing in its total lack of pretension. Only Richard Fairbrass's flat Surrey vocal, lonely in its isolation, spoils the party with a stiffness that seems unable to join in the fun. But nevermind that; the song is strong enough to compensate and by the time the horns blare up, everybody should be smiling - after all, who could bear too much malice to any song with 'dippy' in the title?

1992 Shakespears Sister: Stay

"wasn't expecting that second bitch.. i may have nightmares now" - not a comment of mine, but one I saw posted in response to the 'Stay' video on YouTube when I looked it up today. And it made me smile because it more or less sums up my own reaction to this when I first heard it way back when. 'Stay' is very much a song of two halves; the first being an ambient meander led by an impassioned vocal from Marcella Detroit. But at precisely halfway through, other sister Siobhan Fahey barges in on the back of a violent change of key and tone to croon her sinister warning ("You'd better hope and pray that you make it safe back to your own world") over a fuzzy guitar that panics Detroit's earlier plea of 'stay' into a scream.

Unexpected certainly, but so is walking into a lamppost and both jar in their unexpectedness - not to the point of ruinous, but it didn't make much sense to me and it took seeing the video to set this house in order; Detroit is pleading those 'stay with me's to a dead/comatose male body on a gurney, wrapped up in her anguish until wicked witch Fahey appears, all wide eyed and grinning, intent to drag the poor chap to hell. As a visual compliment, the two catfighting over the body is striking and it brings the duality of the song to life with some satisfaction.

But then it also makes that satisfaction dependant on those images. That's not to say that 'Stay' isn't an enjoyable piece of nonsense in its own right, because it is - a low calorie Diamanda Galas workout of pantomime wailing and moaning with enough of a toehold in pop sensibilities to keep it on course despite that handbrake turn, it's the closest we would ever get to a Goth number one (not that I'm saying that's a desirable thing you understand). As a package of pop music as theatre though it's far more striking, a film short with accompaniment that packs wallop enough to get a reaction out of anyone. Even if they are just nightmares.

1992 Wet Wet Wet: Goodnight Girl

'Goodnight Girl' is often set up as a calculated attempt by the band to develop a more mature sound from their poppier eighties work and tap into an older market. I'm not so sure about that myself - lead Wet Marti Pellow may have drawn a line in the sand by growing a Bono mullet, but the band's young following always seemed to have sought them out rather than vice versa via any blatantly pop output. But the observation is a useful one for my ends here because whilst there is an effective 'grown up' ballad trying to break free in 'Goodnight Girl', it's never allowed to.

And that's because like an over-concerned parent clucking around their offspring on their first day at work, 'Goodnight Girl's overly fussy arrangements smother it in a gloop of strings, a harshly struck, migraine inducing piano and some multitracked 'ahhhhhh's that sew in the nametag marked 'cheese' that dogged much of the band's output. And the weightiest albatross is Pellow and his vocal - despite possessing a perfectly serviceable white soul voice, he wraps his tongue around 'Goodnight Girl's lyric like an oversized gobstopper, force lolling it into Dairylea before it oozing it out through his ever fixed grin. No, 'Goodnight Girl' is too restless, too overstated and too busy to be the heartfelt ballad it craves to be; it meanders and races like water on glass when at heart all it really wants to do is pull up a chair to chat. It's mores the pity that nobody lets it.