jive bunny

Recap: #631 – #660

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

And so, to recap…

The past thirty #1 singles have thrown the charts into a state of flux. We last recapped in July 1989, and the song that kicked off this latest section was Sonia’s ‘You’ll Never Stop Me Loving You’. Back then, Stock Aitken Waterman were responsible for what felt like one in every two chart-toppers, their brassy synths and predictable melodies the sound of the late 1980s…

And then, suddenly, they weren’t. After Sonia, SAW had just two number ones left in the tank – Band Aid II, and Kylie’s cute cover of ‘Tears on My Pillow’ – and neither of those were classics of their kind. No, it seemed that as dance music took over, people realised that there was a world beyond SAW. Black Box’s ‘Ride on Time’, for example, that autumn’s monster hit, and the record I claimed as the first modern dance #1.

From then on, we slipped into a dance groove as we began the final decade of the 20th century. Beats International, Snap!, Adamski, even New Order with the finest football song of all, and Madonna with another of her famous shapeshifts. It was dance music of a different sort: not one hundred manic samples all smashed together; but cool, confident music that, to be honest, wasn’t always that easy to dance to.

Yet to claim that this recap is solely about the dance hits is to airbrush a lot of what makes this period in chart history so interesting. For while the dance hits were trying to hold everything together, the rest of popular music was going ever so slightly mental. We caught glimpses of the decade to come, with the first modern boyband (NKOTB), some lilting indie from The Beautiful South, and the first movie-soundtrack monster ballad of the ‘90s in ‘Show Me Heaven’. It won’t be the last.

Then there were the continued random releases of golden oldies that have been a feature of the charts since 1986, thanks to Levi’s adverts (‘The Joker’) and movies about ghosts with a fetish for pottery wheels (‘Unchained Melody’). And then there was the long-awaited arrival of hip-hop as a genuine chart force, with the genre scoring three out of the past thirty number ones. (Though, as those raps were either about animated turtles, or delivered by cartoon children, or Liverpool midfielders, or… oh yeah… Vanilla Ice, it’s safe to say that it’s a genre still finding its feet. Its time will come soon enough.)

And then it’s almost too easy to pass over the fact that Elton John scored his first ever solo #1, and that Cliff Richard went all Christian-contemporary to ensure he managed a chart-topper in each of the singles chart’s five decades, and his 3rd Xmas #1 appearance in a row! Because all that pales into insignificance when we hit the run of number one singles that came in the deep midwinter of 1990-91. Iron Maiden brought the heavy metal. Enigma brought the Gregorian chanting. Queen brought the Spanish guitars (not to mention the end of the world). And the KLF brought the house down with their industrial dance banger ‘3AM Eternal’, complete with machine guns.

Anything else…? Oh, but I’d almost forgotten. At least, I’d tried to forget. Jive Bunny. J-J-J-Jive Bunny. He was a thing that happened. And he didn’t just ‘happen’. Three #1s, ten weeks at the top, in barely four months. For a brief moment it was the Bunny’s world and we were just living in it (and I’ve only just realised quite how much these past few months have been dominated by cartoon characters…) To tell the truth, I quite enjoyed his first two hits, with their perky mash-ups of rock ‘n’ roll classics. By the 3rd, Christmas-themed, hit however the joke had run out of steam…

Which brings us on to the awards. The ‘Meh’ Award is hard to decide, as so many of the past thirty records have been anything but dull. I could give it to Lisa Stansfield’s ‘All Around the World’, but that was a bit too classy. I could give it to NKOTB’s ‘Hangin’ Tough’, but that was entertainingly lame. So, I’ll have to give it to Band Aid II, for their completely faithful, but nowhere near as iconic, attempt to recapture the magic of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ At least it raised some money for a worthy cause.

There have rarely been as many rich pickings for our next award, the The WTAF Award for being interesting if nothing else. Where in God’s name do we start? Partners in Kryme? Timmy Mallet and his scantily clad young ladies? The Simpsons? Iron Maiden? Vanilla Ice?? J-J-J-Jive Bunny?? No, I think it’s between two back to back #1s from January 1991. ‘Innuendo’, and ‘Sadeness Part 1’. And as much as I grew to enjoy Queen’s 3rd chart-topper (or perhaps because I now like it so much…) I’ll have to give it to the one with the chanting monks, and the lyrics in French about a perverted literary genius.

Finally, then, to the main events. The Best and, before that, our 22nd Very Worst Chart-Topper. I listed so many weird and wonderful hits above, but I’d be loath to give it to any of them. No, this one’s cut and dried. I’m giving it to the record which confirmed that the Jive Bunny joke had ceased to be funny: ‘Let’s Party’. Cheap covers of Slade, Wizzard and Gary Glitter, stitched together with the subtlety of a charging elephant, do not a classic record make.

Much more tricky to decide is this recap’s Very Best Chart-Topper. I started off with a longlist but, as much as I enjoyed ‘Vogue’, Beats International and the KLF, I pretty quickly refined things down into a shortlist. Black Box’s ‘Ride on Time’, and a song I haven’t even found time to mention yet… Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. Two very different records, two worthy winners. Black Box set the sound for the decade to come, whereas O’Connor’s take on Prince’s original would sound, yes, iconic in any decade. ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ for the win.

To recap the recaps:

The ‘Meh’ Award for Forgettability

  1. ‘Hold My Hand’, by Don Cornell.
  2. ‘It’s Almost Tomorrow’, by The Dream Weavers.
  3. ‘On the Street Where You Live’, by Vic Damone.
  4. ‘Why’, by Anthony Newley.
  5. ‘The Next Time’ / ‘Bachelor Boy’, by Cliff Richard & The Shadows.
  6. ‘Juliet’, by The Four Pennies.
  7. ‘The Carnival Is Over’, by The Seekers.
  8. ‘Silence Is Golden’, by The Tremeloes.
  9. ‘I Pretend’, by Des O’Connor.
  10. ‘Woodstock’, by Matthews’ Southern Comfort.
  11. ‘How Can I Be Sure’, by David Cassidy.
  12. ‘Annie’s Song’, by John Denver.
  13. ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, by Art Garfunkel.
  14. ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ / ‘The First Cut Is the Deepest’, by Rod Stewart.
  15. ‘Three Times a Lady’, by The Commodores.
  16. ‘What’s Another Year’, by Johnny Logan.
  17. ‘A Little Peace’, by Nicole.
  18. ‘Every Breath You Take’, by The Police.
  19. ‘I Got You Babe’, by UB40 with Chrissie Hynde.
  20. ‘Who’s That Girl’, by Madonna.
  21. ‘A Groovy Kind of Love’, by Phil Collins.
  22. ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, by Band Aid II.

The WTAF Award for being interesting if nothing else

  1. ‘I See the Moon’, by The Stargazers.
  2. ‘Lay Down Your Arms’, by Anne Shelton.
  3. ‘Hoots Mon’, by Lord Rockingham’s XI.
  4. ‘You’re Driving Me Crazy’, by The Temperance Seven.
  5. ‘Nut Rocker’, by B. Bumble & The Stingers.
  6. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, by Gerry & The Pacemakers.
  7. ‘Little Red Rooster’, by The Rolling Stones.
  8. ‘Puppet on a String’, by Sandie Shaw.
  9. ‘Fire’, by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
  10. ‘In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)’, by Zager & Evans.
  11. ‘Amazing Grace’, The Pipes & Drums & Military Band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guard.
  12. ‘Kung Fu Fighting’, by Carl Douglas.
  13. ‘If’, by Telly Savalas.
  14. ‘Wuthering Heights’, by Kate Bush.
  15. ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’, by Ian Dury & The Blockheads.
  16. ‘Shaddap You Face’, by Joe Dolce Music Theatre.
  17. ‘It’s My Party’, by Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin.
  18. ‘Save Your Love’ by Renée & Renato.
  19. ‘Rock Me Amadeus’, by Falco.
  20. ‘Pump Up the Volume’ / ‘Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance)’, by M/A/R/R/S
  21. ‘Doctorin’ the Tardis’, by The Timelords
  22. ‘Sadeness Part 1’, by Enigma

The Very Worst Chart-Toppers

  1. ‘Cara Mia’, by David Whitfield with Mantovani & His Orchestra.
  2. ‘The Man From Laramie’, by Jimmy Young.
  3. ‘Roulette’, by Russ Conway.
  4. ‘Wooden Heart’, by Elvis Presley.
  5. ‘Lovesick Blues’, by Frank Ifield.
  6. ‘Diane’, by The Bachelors.
  7. ‘The Minute You’re Gone’, by Cliff Richard.
  8. ‘Release Me’, by Engelbert Humperdinck.
  9. ‘Lily the Pink’, by The Scaffold.
  10. ‘All Kinds of Everything’, by Dana.
  11. ‘The Twelfth of Never’, by Donny Osmond.
  12. ‘The Streak’, by Ray Stevens.
  13. ‘No Charge’, by J. J. Barrie
  14. ‘Don’t Give Up On Us’, by David Soul
  15. ‘One Day at a Time’, by Lena Martell.
  16. ‘There’s No One Quite Like Grandma’, by St. Winifred’s School Choir.
  17. ‘I’ve Never Been to Me’, by Charlene.
  18. ‘Hello’, by Lionel Richie.
  19. ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’, by Foreigner.
  20. ‘Star Trekkin’’, by The Firm.
  21. ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You’, by Glenn Medeiros.
  22. ‘Let’s Party’, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers.

The Very Best Chart-Toppers

  1. ‘Such a Night’, by Johnnie Ray.
  2. ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’, by Perez ‘Prez’ Prado & His Orchestra.
  3. ‘Great Balls of Fire’, by Jerry Lee Lewis.
  4. ‘Cathy’s Clown’, by The Everly Brothers.
  5. ‘Telstar’, by The Tornadoes.
  6. ‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles.
  7. ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, by The Rolling Stones.
  8. ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, by Procol Harum.
  9. ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’, by Marvin Gaye.
  10. ‘Baby Jump’, by Mungo Jerry.
  11. ‘Metal Guru’, by T. Rex.
  12. ‘Tiger Feet’, by Mud.
  13. ‘Space Oddity’, by David Bowie.
  14. ‘I Feel Love’, by Donna Summer.
  15. ‘Heart of Glass’, by Blondie.
  16. ‘The Winner Takes It All’, by ABBA.
  17. ‘My Camera Never Lies’, by Bucks Fizz.
  18. ‘Relax’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
  19. ‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’, by Dead or Alive
  20. ‘Stand by Me’, by Ben E. King (Honorary Award)
  21. ‘It’s a Sin’, by Pet Shop Boys.
  22. ‘Theme from S-Express’, by S’Express.
  23. ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, by Sinéad O’Connor.

637. ‘Let’s Party’, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers

/ UK #1s blog / 9 Comments

Shhh! Be very very quiet. We’re hunting wabbits…

Let’s Party, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers (their 3rd and final #1)

1 week, from 10th – 17th December 1989

Blunderbusses at the ready, for surely you knew it was coming. With a chart-topper in the summer, and one in the autumn, Jive Bunny and his Mastermixers set their sights on the Christmas number one.

And after two rock ‘n’ roll medleys, he’s skipped forward a decade or so, to the glam Christmas classics of the seventies and early eighties. A Noddy Holder soundalike is on C’mon everybody! duties, as well as his classic It’s Chriiiisstmaaaass… line from ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. This version sounds muted by comparison to Slade’s raucous original, but it only lasts for a verse and a chorus, before Wizzard take over.

Yes, ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ finally assumes its rightful position atop the charts. It’s just a shame that it took this crap to get it there. Unlike Slade, Roy Wood endorsed this sampling, and even re-recorded his vocals for the occasion. That done, the 3rd song is announced: Ok Gazza, take it away…

And it’s ‘Another Rock and Roll Christmas’, Gary Glitter’s 1984 comeback hit. Given that he was also involved in last year’s ‘Doctorin’ the Tardis’, it’s easy to forget just how big a part of British popular culture he was before his trip to PC World. Presents hanging from the trees, You’ll never guess what you’ve got from me… (We’d rather not find out, Gary.) Apparently he’s been replaced with Mariah Carey in more recent versions of ‘Let’s Party’, though who exactly has listened to this song at any point in the last thirty years is beyond me.

The thumping beat that holds this whole mess together is called ‘March of the Mods’, which I don’t think has anything to do with Christmas. Why didn’t they try something from ‘The Nutcracker’, at least? And while I complained about some of the mixing on JB’s earlier #1s, at least attempts were made to stitch those songs together. Here the three Christmas songs and the filler beat slam together like dodgems. I found some cheesy, madcap charm in the previous chart-toppers, but here my patience runs out fast. (The sleeve above lists the record as a double-‘A’, alongside a version of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Thankfully the Official Charts Company only lists ‘Let’s Party’, so I’ll follow their lead and pretend the Bunny’s desecration of Rabbie Burns never happened…)

What in the hell is going on…? a voice demands towards the end, a sentiment I wholeheartedly echo. J-J-Jive Bunny! someone else replies. Meanwhile the fake Noddy Holder aggressively bellows Let’s Party! It’s a mess, and not a hot one. Yet it entered the chart at #1, and meant that Jive Bunny joined Gerry & The Pacemakers and Frankie Goes to Hollywood in making top spot with their first three releases (the fact that Jive Bunny did it quickest is another feather in his cap).

He and the Mastermixers still had two Top 10 hits to come, and would continue releasing singles until well into 1991. But, thankfully, they won’t be troubling this blog again. And, despite the clear demand for this single, it was never going to be 1989’s Christmas Number One. We have Bob Geldof to thank for that.

(This is the original video, but with the Gary Glitter verse edited out and replaced with the second verse of ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’.)

(This sounds to me like a re-recording – with slightly more modern production values – but with he-who-shall-not-be-named left in…)

634. ‘That’s What I Like’, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

He’s back! The biggest chart star of 1989, the hottest medley-maker of the decade, the most successful rabbit in pop history, returns!

That’s What I Like, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers (their 2nd of three #1s)

3 weeks, from 15th October – 5th November 1989

C’mon everybody… Jason Derulo, DJ Khaled, Pitbull: all the biggest morons have their own call-signs by which to announce themselves at the start of a new record, and Jive Bunny is no exception… C-C-C’mon everybody! After that, we’re off on another double-speed tour around some golden oldies: ‘Let’s Dance’, ‘Great Balls of Fire’, ‘Runaround Sue’ and more… Bill Haley, Eddie Cochran and Little Richard have the honour of appearing on their second straight Mastermixers’ release. (I’ve just realised something truly upsetting – these are as close as Little Richard ever came to a #1 single…) Though, as in the first Jive Bunny record, a lot of the vocals are clearly performed by impersonators. The theme to ‘Hawaii 5-0’ does the job of ‘In the Mood’ here, and bookends the entire party.

As before, the whole thing is completely incongruous, and wholly ridiculous. And yet, I still can’t hate it. In fact, it gives you a new-found respect for what are already classic songs, that they can be dropped from a great height into this hot mess and still shine through. In the Mastermixers’ defence, the transitions between the songs are slightly smoother here than in ‘Swing the Mood’. They were clearly honing their craft.

And let’s be clear: the fact that this topped the charts just six weeks after their first #1 confirms that Jive Bunny fever was clearly sweeping the country in the autumn of 1989. They were just giving the public what they so craved – what they liked, as it were. (The title comes from the Big Bopper’s lascivious Oooh baby that’s what I like… in ‘Chantilly Lace’.)

As with ‘Swing the Mood’, ‘That’s What I Like’ was a huge hit throughout Europe (though returns were slowly diminishing, and the UK was the only territory in which it made #1). Even the US wasn’t immune to the rabbit’s charms, with this making #69 on the back of a very impressive #11 peak for ‘Swing…’ Twas, for a short time, Jive Bunny’s world, and we were just living in it.

632. ‘Swing the Mood’, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

Welcome to the second half of 1989, the final few months of the decade. We have twenty-three weeks’ worth of chart-toppers left to go. Nine of those will be taken up by a cartoon rabbit, peddling medleys of golden-oldies…

Swing the Mood, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers (their 1st of three #1s)

5 weeks, from 30th July – 3rd September 1989

First thing to establish is that, yes, this did indeed happen. I know April Fool’s is just around the corner but no – it’s real. I’m too young to remember it and I can’t recall the last time I heard Jive Bunny mentioned, in any context, so I imagine that those responsible for buying these records, and contributing to his short period of chart domination, regret it wholeheartedly.

‘Swing the Mood’ is a journey through rock ‘n’ roll history, bookended rather incongruously by Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’, which predates rock ‘n’ roll by a good decade. Still, it’s catchy, a great hook, and has even already featured in a #1 single … Yes, in the fade-out to ‘All You Need Is Love’. Then we’re off, off on a breakneck journey past Bill Haley & The Comets, Elvis, Chubby Checker, Little Richard, The Everly Brothers, and Eddie Cochran.

Three former #1s appear – ‘Jailhouse Rock’, ‘Rock Around the Clock’ and ‘All Shook Up’ – which is not something happens very often (in fact, the only #1 I can think of that features an earlier chart-topper is, again, ‘All You Need Is Love’, which had a snippet from ‘She Loves You’). The whole shebang was the brainchild of a father and son duo from Rotherham, John and Andrew Pickles, though the original ‘Swing the Mood’ had been created by a Doncaster DJ named Les Hemstock. Either way, it’s a South Yorkshire creation, though I could find no information on who wore the (genuinely quite terrifying) rabbit head for promotional activity.

Listening to the various versions of ‘Swing the Mood’ available to us on Spotify and YouTube, it becomes clear that not every song in the medley features the original vocals. Danny and the Juniors sound legit; but that sure ain’t Elvis. This was a problem that plagued Jive Bunny from the start: even as the record was climbing the charts they had to put out a re-recorded version with impersonators singing the bits they didn’t have the rights for.

I mean, I guess it’s fun. I can’t hate it, because I like all the songs featured in it, and the good thing about medleys is that they jump around so fast that you could never call them boring. (Though, for a much better medley of rock ‘n roll tunes, check out Status Quo’s ‘Anniversary Waltz 1 and 2’, which perhaps rode the Jive Bunny wave to reach #2 a year later.) Some of ‘Swing the Mood’s transitions are very clunky, though; and what they do to The Everly Brothers as they segue into ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ is borderline sacrilege. Calling themselves ‘The Mastermixers’ seems a bit of a stretch…

At the same time, medleys had been a big thing throughout the 1980s, and we were probably overdue one at the top of the charts. ‘Stars on 45’, ‘Hooked on Classics’ and the like, had all been big hits. Once the floodgates opened – and boy did they open, with ‘Swing the Mood’ becoming the second highest-selling hit of the year – the #1 hits kept coming. There’ll be more from Jive Bunny very soon…