Hello Zippy, I just love your wonderful ramble of a post.

 

Too many points and too little time to answer them all, but I used to religiously buy Smash Hits from early 1984 with Nik Kershaw in a blue snood on the cover to the last one I bought early in 1988 with Tiffany on the cover and Erasure on tour in Germany or Austria wearing some classic traditional German Lederhosen.

 

So I distinctly remember the Howard Jones / Ade Edmondson cover, and vaguely remember Fuzzbox band names which I took at the time as a spoof of them rechristening themselves in Smash Hits nicknames such as "The Mighty Bush" (Kate Bush); "Sir Macca Thumbs Aloft" (Paul McCartney); "Madge" (Madonna); Craig "Ken" Logan (ex-Bros); Lord Frederick Mercury of Lucan; Morten "Snorten Forten" Harket (A-Ha); Andy "Ding Dong" Bell (Erasure); and my favourite Mark Unpronounceablename From Big Country (Mark Brzezicki).

 

As for The Bangles they did write a few of their own hits "Walking Down Your Street"; "Be With You" and the Led Zeppelin Kashmir rip-off "In Your Room" as well as the best song Debbie Gibson never wrote "Eternal Flame".... which is a quite poor strike rate really.

 

I also agree with your views of Virgin records that Richard Branson non music business activities have hurt that record labels reputation compared to Chris Blackwell's Island records; and David Geffen's Asylum Records and later Geffen Records.

zippy .... theres no simularity between the fuzzbox brand of pop and s/a/w so im not so sure why you would assume that 'we' in general wouldnt like them! fuzzbox were just a 'traditional' pop group who played guitars and sang, s/a/w created 'stars' out of nonentities, mass producing 'kiddy pop'. in a nutshell, thats why many of us dont like nor respect s/a/w.

I wouldn't say there was any similarity at all with SAW either - I'm sure the girls would rather commit suicide than be likened to Waterman's cheesefest.

 

In SAW defense - they started off pretty well - excellent singles for Divine, Dead or Alive and Bananarama... it all seemed to go tits-up for them as soon as Mel and Kim and Kylie slithered onboard....

 

Anyway, Fuzzbox...

 

a new single and album are due May / June, with the girls touring the UK in May:

 

MAY

13 - The Joiners - Southampton

14 - Fleece & Firkin - Bristol

15 - Academy - Manchester

16 - King Tut's Wah Wah Hut - Glasgow

17 - The Duchess - York

19 - The Bodega Social - Nottingham

20 - O2 Academy [Formerly Carling] - Oxford

22 - O2 Academy - Birmingham

23 - Colchester Arts Centre - Colchester

24 - Engine Rooms - Brighton

25 - Academy - Islington - London

Hello Zippy, I just love your wonderful ramble of a post.

 

Too many points and too little time to answer them all, but I used to religiously buy Smash Hits from early 1984 with Nik Kershaw in a blue snood on the cover to the last one I bought early in 1988 with Tiffany on the cover and Erasure on tour in Germany or Austria wearing some classic traditional German Lederhosen.

 

So I distinctly remember the Howard Jones / Ade Edmondson cover, and vaguely remember Fuzzbox band names which I took at the time as a spoof of them rechristening themselves in Smash Hits nicknames such as "The Mighty Bush" (Kate Bush); "Sir Macca Thumbs Aloft" (Paul McCartney); "Madge" (Madonna); Craig "Ken" Logan (ex-Bros); Lord Frederick Mercury of Lucan; Morten "Snorten Forten" Harket (A-Ha); Andy "Ding Dong" Bell (Erasure); and my favourite Mark Unpronounceablename From Big Country (Mark Brzezicki).

 

As for The Bangles they did write a few of their own hits "Walking Down Your Street"; "Be With You" and the Led Zeppelin Kashmir rip-off "In Your Room" as well as the best song Debbie Gibson never wrote "Eternal Flame".... which is a quite poor strike rate really.

 

I also agree with your views of Virgin records that Richard Branson non music business activities have hurt that record labels reputation compared to Chris Blackwell's Island records; and David Geffen's Asylum Records and later Geffen Records.

 

I may buy “Bostin’ Steve Austin” if I saw it for a few pounds in the local record store, but I would not go out my way to purchase it as I know I would probably only end up listening to it once. These days I do not have the time or patience to become overly familiar with a lot of ‘new’ albums, unless I have heard many of the tracks quite regularly before.

 

It is most likely that “Bostin’ Steve Austin” will be a better album than “Big Bang”, but personally it means nothing to me, as for nostalgia purposes it is all about those big chart hits. I have not heard those records too many times in the last twenty years and therefore do not mind hearing them again. Some people may think that they are ‘cheesy’ but to me I would prefer to hear them instead of a record that I once thought was brilliant, but now has become annoying due to the over-familiarity of the tune. I would probably class “Vienna” by Ultravox as being annoying now, though I am not going to think too hard about what record would fit this description at this point in time [i have used another Midge Ure reference here, after the initial comparison between Fuzzbox and his daughter’s group, because I have just bought an updated ‘Best Of Ultravox’ record to finally get the ‘U-Vox’ singles onto a digital disc format].

 

For many years I did not bother playing the “Big Bang” album as it was a record that I very nearly dumped sometime in the mid 1990s. At this time I would have been at University and as you can imagine, I was going through an ‘alternative-indie’ phase and therefore had no time for many of the pop records that I had previously purchased in the late 1980s.

 

Whilst I did not bother sorting out my cassettes or my vinyl collection, about a quarter of my CDs were given away. I could have taken the discs to the local second hand record shop but I did not bother, as I thought that most of the ones that I had selected to go, were now worthless [including a D:Ream album that was only a few months old, an album which would be interesting to have in my collection now, if only to see to what extent Professor Brian Cox was actually involved].

 

Whereas a number of albums that I had given away to my siblings have now found the way back to me, including the Halo James album “Wanted” which was definitely ‘not wanted’ by me and was found in a box by my father ten years after it was ‘dumped’, the Fuzzbox album was ‘saved’ because it was an American release housed in one of those cardboard long-boxes, that CDs used to come packaged in over there.

 

I have still a lot of those American long-boxes in my collection, even though over the years they have been troublesome to file. My collection of long-box CDs includes many acts that a lot of people on here will have heard of before, such as Cud, Ride, That Petrol Emotion and Throwing Muses; and a lot of random pop acts like Norwegian singer Orup and a Warners signed act called Colours. Orup had a song out in about 1990 called “Earth Angel”, whilst the last act were a duo whose album I have not bothered with for so long, that I cannot remember if they were supposed to be like an American Wang Chung or an Austrian 2 Brave [2 Brave were also from Norway and were a duo from the late 1980s who were supposed to be the ‘new a-ha’].

 

In addition to my long-boxes, I have kept all of my old Smash Hits from the late 1980s, though some are not in the best condition now, as the ‘gift tape’ that held the ‘freebies’ in place has become ‘gluey’ resulting in some issues sticking together .

 

I remember many of the Smash Hits names and to this day, still think of the drummer in Big Country as being called ‘Mark Unpronounceablename’. I think that Neil Tennant came up with a couple of the names whilst he was at Smash Hits including the one for Billy Idol [i think it was either ‘Sir Billium’ or ‘Sir William of Idol’]. I remember that Tennant was also initially responsible for adding ‘pur-leeeze’ to a lot of the text [which is also a reason why the debut Pet Shop Boys album was actually titled “Please”] but I do not know if he would have come up with ‘Swiiiiingalent’ or ‘back Back BACK!’

 

As for ‘Ken’ out of Bros, I saw a picture of Craig Logan in Music Week last month as he has set up a new ‘entertainment unit’ of Sony called 247/Logan Managed Entertainment. It will be one of these companies like Simon Cowell’s Syco, that will sign acts to one of those ‘360° deals’, which means that Logan’s sub-division will not only release records but will also be involved in their act’s merchandising and touring, perhaps developing TV shows as well [for example, a comedy show featuring The Hoosiers]. At first I did not recognise Logan and quickly rushed through the stories on that page to the main feature of the week. It was only when I went to read the magazine again that I noticed it was him.

 

I remember reports of the time saying that Logan had been quite sickly and this was the reason given by him for leaving Bros [rather than his diagnosed illness of ‘exhaustion’, I guess the real reason could have been the opportunity to manage Kim Appleby]. I do not know why Smash Hits choose the name Ken for him and I do not think it was because he looked anything like Barbie’s boyfriend. I would guess that Ken was seen as being a ‘non-popstar’ name by the Smash Hits staff of the time and as he was always portrayed as being quite ‘weedy’, in comparison to the Goss twins, maybe the thought of somebody like Kenneth Williams had crossed their minds when this in-joke was started. I cannot be sure and to be honest, I can only think of Ken Bruce as being another famous ‘Ken’ of the ‘pop world’ who has not used another variation of Kenneth like ‘Kenny’ [Thomas, Everett and the band that did “The Bump”, whilst Ken Dodd might be stretching the definition of ‘pop-world’ far too much even with his hits]. Looking at the picture of Logan now, as the former head of RCA, I do not think that he fits the name ‘Craig’ let alone ‘Ken’, so maybe he should change his name, to ‘Simon’ perhaps?.

 

Loz