Mr. Mondo

Didn’t he, Neville Keighley, have quite a few hit singles around in the Top 75 after that hit? Like the single ‘Some People’ (He also released some in 1993 on ‘Arista’ that sounded quite ‘Britpop’ and ‘Beatle-esque’, do you remember those as well?)

Simone Angel might have appeared performing her record on something like ‘Dance Energy with Normski’

I guess ‘The JAMMS’ could be seen as one of those acts that operated in different area of dance music depending on who they were that week. They could be put in a group alongside early ‘Pop Will Eat Itself’ for their cut n’ paste, ‘hip-hop’ sampling ethos (the infamous ‘1987’ album), whilst some pre-chart tracks made under the nom de plume of ‘The KLF’ could be seen some of the earliest examples of trance, especially since records such as ‘Last Train to Trancentral’ came from the ‘Pure Trance’ series of releases by ‘the JAMMS’. On the other hand I think ‘Stadium House’ was an ironic joke that was developed from their video proposals. By the way has anyone else remember the Jimmy Cauty - June Montana – Youth group ‘Brilliant’?

I thought his house record was better: “Let’s Get Together (Create)…a better world to live in, get together (create)”. However ‘Money’ is still a great record and it was a pity he chained direction and went slightly more ‘funk-rock’ for the follow up singles as that alienated many of the fans of ‘Money’. I liked ‘No More Tears’ too, that should have been a big hit as well as ‘Let’s Get Together (Create)’.

I never really went out my way to watch James Whale’s show. I remember seeing the show only on a couple of occasions (I think it was broadcast on a Friday night/Saturday morning). On the other hand, I have seen many more clips from these series, on shows such as ‘It’ll be Alright on the Night’, which liked to play that infamous Wayne Hussey interview, where he is absolutely ‘bladdered’. Can you remember if the show was networked or was it just shown in the Northern regions (‘Granada’ / ‘Yorkshire’ etc.). I think ‘The Hitman and Her’ may have also been limited to a Northern regional transmission area as the show seemed to be broadcast from ‘Mr Smiths’ in Warrington almost every other week, however I think there was one occasion when the show did actually venture below Stoke to a town somewhere along the lines of Croydon or Basildon. I generally watched more of the pop music programmes, especially Casey Kasem’s ‘America’s Top Ten’ and programmes from the Toronto based ‘Much Music’ channel (where you might be lucky to get an interview with ‘the Dream Warriors’, ‘BNL’ or ‘Snow’ but for most episodes it was just ‘Narwhall’ messing about in the streets again). There were a few other types of shows that I watched such as ‘In Bed with Medinner’, but here in ‘Granada-land’ we did not get ‘Gaz Top Non Stop’ which was also one of those shows that became a running joke in one of the music weeklies (‘Record Mirror’ maybe).

‘Omega’ ‘Andy’s’ ‘Megahertz’ ‘Harry’s’ ‘Sam Goody’s’ ‘4play’: Record stores we have loved and lost. With the news that ‘Virgin Megastores’ are going to be ‘re-branded’ by the management team into a new store group called ‘Zavvi’, I thought it was a good opportunity to look back on some of the great record stores we have loved and lost. Whether it was ‘Andy’s’ or ‘Omega’, ‘Our Price’ or ‘4play’, ‘Music Junction’ or ‘Music Zone (Trade Direct)’ or even the record departments of ‘John Menzies’ and ‘Boots’, which record stores did you like visiting on the high street and which stores do you miss the most?

Yes, great song. Good that you have remembered them too. I always thought that they were always one of those ‘stuck at Number 88’ type of bands during the late 1980s (along with bands such as ‘the Indian Givers’ and ‘Win’). I was always hoping they would do much better sales wises, especially since their albums always got reviewed well. It was always a bit saddening to see all these great records stuck in Record Mirror’s ‘No Man’s Land’ between Number 76 and Number 100 as they had come ‘so close but so far’ from getting a place in the ‘Hit Singles Book’.

Are they all in multicoloured bin bags on the cover?

Which (pre-ITV plc) region are you in? Did you get ‘Night Network’ or all the ‘Much Music’ and ‘Music Box’ shows instead?

Do you also remember these two beauties from Holland? Simone Angel from ‘MTV Europe’/’Atomic Records’ dance single fame and Simone Walraven from that dubbed late night Dutch film that ‘Granada TV’ always used to show called ‘Donna Donna’.

Do you remember the ‘Def II’ show with Magenta DeVine (also from Network 7’s ‘Pink Caravan’ and that ’Sigue Sigue Sputnik’ video). ‘Rough Guides’ outlasted ‘Def II’ by many years and if you can remember the theme, well that’s ‘Big Pig’.

Is that ‘Top 75’ or ‘Top 40’?

25 YEARS OF RECORD COLLECTING: MUSICAL MEMORIES 1982 - 2007 6. 'Big Pig' “It’s a hungry town” Now if you were a ‘Smash Hits’ obsessed teenager in the 1980s, you may have been thinking about Rick Astley’s seminal ode to porcine walkabouts ‘A Ruddy Big Pig came down our street’ once you had read the topic title. However this ‘Big Pig’ comes from the country that gave the world ‘walkabouts’, a country where pigs are probably outnumbered by kangaroos, koalas and wallabies, from a land down under “where beer does flow and men chunder”. Well if you are from that continent and at least 30 years old then you might remember ‘Big Pig’ but I wonder, does anyone here in the UK remember this Australian group? Although never making it big over in the United Kingdom, they still might be fondly remembered if only from the band providing a brilliant record as the theme tune to the long running ‘Def II’ travel show ‘Rough Guides to the World’. In addition to the ‘Rough Guides’ series, you might know this band’s tunes from such films as ‘Young Einstein’ and ‘Bill and Ted’ (‘Breakaway’), whilst imagining an (approximately) 8 piece male/female band all dressed in workman’s aprons might reboot a few memories of this band’s work such as the single ‘Hungry Town’. Unfortunately as I only have their songs recorded onto old VHS and C90 tapes it is a band whose album I am always looking out for in second hand record stores and as I haven’t yet found a copy at ‘Mr. Sifters’ maybe it is time for a trip to Australia.

Sorry, but ‘T.Rex’ were a bit before my time. However I thought that ‘Baby Ford’ did a great dance cover of ‘Children Of The Revolution’ (‘Rhythm King Records’ circa. 1989). It is a record I still play a lot to this very day.

TELEVISION MEMORIES 2. Get Stuffed! Was anyone here a clubber or a student in the pre-phone-in-quiz-show days of late night ITV? If so does anyone remember the early hours schedule of ‘Granada TV’ (ITV1) in the late 1980s - early 1990s and especially that bizarre schedule filler called ‘Get Stuffed’? You might have been waiting to watch ‘The Hitman and Her’, ‘America’s Top Ten’ or (if you lived in HTV-land) ‘Gaz Top Non Stop’ but first squeezing itself into the late night line up was one of the most infamous ‘student attracting’ shows of our time. With graphics and a soundtrack that may have influenced Nizlopi’s ‘JCB’ song, ‘Get Stuffed’ was not only a cookery show but a masterpiece of ultra-ultra-low budget television making (this compared to some of the shows that you may have found at the time on BSB or ‘Manhattan Cable’). It may have only taken up 10 minutes of the late night schedule each night, but for the shear volume of episodes created, there must have been enough brainstorming in the production department to have produced up to four seasons of ‘Floyd’ or ‘Nigella’. However, whereas Nigella’s shows are targeting a more luxurious end of the cookery market, ‘Get Stuffed’ would feature all the recipes a student would ever want to make at 4am in the morning after coming in from ‘50p a pint’ night at ‘the Venue’. So endless ‘Burger’ and ‘Chip Butty’ recipes would be cooked in the show’s kitchen, whilst cartoon inserts and footage of ‘the Mystery Chefs’ would be spliced throughout the show to increase the show’s ‘wacky’ content. Even though it was the ‘Quality Save’ of all the cookery shows ever produced, ‘Get Stuffed!’ had enough bizarre charm to make it such a cult among students and the student targeted rock press of the time.

Yes I think you may be right, even though I think ’Dr. Robert’ features on the ‘Revolver’ album. On the other hand I do not know what his ‘profession’ would be in relation to this album’s song. Actually I only found out about a connection much later on and did not know about this at the time of ‘The Blow Monkeys’ biggest success, even though in 1987 ‘She was Only a Grocer’s Daughter’ was one of my best tapes and at the same time there was a massive ‘Beatles’ re-issue campaign going on (when all the albums where re-issued onto CD for the first time). I think it was due to ‘the Beatles’ being a band from my father’s generation that I tended to ignore their ‘presence’ in the charts and in ‘Record Mirror’ articles, plus there were many more pop bands to record off ‘the Chart Show’ and read about in ‘Smash Hits’ or ‘Number One’ magazine.

'Toto Coelo', do you remember them and their 'outfits'

Well I must have been mixing it up with something from the ‘Brothers In Arms’ album or even ‘Private Investigation’ (from my ‘Kodak Video Hits’ collection circa. 1982). I was never a big fan of Mark Knopfler and his band as I always preferred Chris Rea (and if you would like to print that infamous joke go ahead, be my guest).

Yes, that will be the show then as 84 – 85 sounds about right. However did I get the title right? I didn’t know if it was ‘Once Upon A Time…Life’ or ‘Once Upon A Time…Man’.

I would love to but it will be only the 1960s and 1970s shows that were shown again in the 1980s and 1990s (Irwin Allen, 'Get Smart', 'Batman' - have you noticed the show is back on the BBC this week).

With 'Simply Red' and 'Jamiroquai' it is hard to say whether all the band were signed or just the front man with extras on wages (for example I think 'Del Amitri' were actually a duo with hired hands). I don't know if the frontman was singled out due to marketing or if there was still a unit there. It could be like 'Adam Ant' where it is still the same duo behind the hits solo and band, or like 'OMD' and 'ABC' where at one point only the singer remained (the former had anywhere from 4 to 7 members in the 80s and then just Andy with help from Stuart Kershaw, whilst 'ABC' went down to Martin in the 1990s, and are a duo now)

I guess those two records are more pop than hip-house, though it would be interesting to hear what she was like when she was ‘MC Betty Boop’ and doing harder edged rap material.

Wow. Do you remember 'The Pale' as well?

Yes Ruth Joy, whatever happened to her? I thought that she would become as big as 'Saffron'. Also can anyone remember the vocalist with 'The Funky Worm'. I can remember 'Parrot' and 'Ping Pong'. However there are so many records so little time to go through them all. Saying that I think the first house record I ever heard was Farley ’Jackmaster’ Funk & Darryl Pandy’s ‘Love Can’t Turn Around’ in about 1986, and I guess that record would sound nearer in style to all those ‘1980s Soul Weekender’ tunes like ‘the Fatback Band’ and ‘Frankie Beverley’ than to modern dance records as house music was still very soulful at that time. Also from 1986, I wonder if anyone else remembers or indeed owns Stylus Music’s ‘Hit Mix 86’. I think that album was one of the very first dance mix LPs to become commercially popular, I think all those ‘Street Sounds’ albums were more underground and mostly were focused on ‘Electro’ whilst ‘Now Dance’ just had extended mixes of the Top 40’s pop hits. ‘Hit Mix 86’ on the other hand mixed 86 tracks on to four sides of vinyl and had a good range of records from ‘pop-dance’ to ‘Eurobeat’ to ‘soul’ and ‘house’. I think the albums mix was created by the DJ Les Adams (of DMC and the group ‘L.A. Mix’) and could be seen as an 80s version of all those ‘Ministry of Sound’ collections.

I liked the 'Hangover' video with the Wild West theme.