HOT CHOCOLATE - “So You Win Again”
Errol Brown brought angst to the dancefloor as regularly as Michael Jackson ever would, but Hot Chocolate’s neuroses were way more effortful, dredged up from some inner coil of dissatisfaction. The rising riff on “So You Win Again” sounds - in the best possible way - leaden, an anchor chain around Brown’s hopes, forever pulling him down. “Here I am again - A LOSER.” It’s not the best Hot Chocolate track - that might be the dystopic “Mindless Boogie”, or the uncomfortably pitiful “It Started With A Kiss”, or “Everyone’s A Winner”, this track’s savage flipside - but what it shares with the band’s best work is the sense of a man wearing a shabby overcoat of disappointment, doomed to misery. 6
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Billy Smart on June 26th, 2008
Cliff & Janet can be heard on YouTube, by the way (can’t get this computer to put the link up).
I think it fair to say that they have both had better moments, and it sounds rather like a demo to my ears, though that may just be the uninspired 1984 arrangement and production.
LondonLee on June 26th, 2008
Re:#40
I always thought of The Equals as the UK version of Sly & The Family Stone.
wichita lineman on June 26th, 2008
Certainly on Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys (still a guaranteed floor-filler - GUARANTEED!), but on I Can See But You Don’t Know they sound like some incredible Who/Hendrix amalgam, then a bit like Judge Dread on the rather rubbish Rub A Dub Dub, and as if they’re sketching out a Sid & Marty Krofft series on Michael And The Slipper Tree. Verrry odd group.
UK Family Stone or not, they only got a passing mention as Eddy Grant’s first group in Soul Britannia.
SteveM on June 26th, 2008
“uninspired 1984 arrangement and production”
don’t blame the (awesome) year!
SteveM on June 26th, 2008
One other loosely-related thought: Tom HAD to mention Alan Partridge in his Knowing Me Knowing You entry and the spectre of AP also affects my feelings towards ‘It Started With A Kiss’ which he sings at the end of IAP episode 2 iirc. I guess it’s to both Coogan’s and the artists’ credit in each case that neither song is subsequently ‘ruined’ as such - indeed he endeared them to me more.
Caledonianne on June 26th, 2008
When did Fanfare for the Common Man become the RS theme tune? I have completely obliterated this from my memory! Was it some time after this charting date? If so, I would be about to take the long walk up Byres Road, so was never home (yes - that awful Central Belt practice of going to university from home!) in time for teatime news, as always ate in the refectory, and stayed in the library ’til 9pm.
In any event, being plebs we were mainly a Scotland Today, sort of household, but I certainly saw RS quite often when still at school. Never made an ELP connection - though I did like FftCM.
I’m with the overwhelming consensus view on this one - thoroughly deserved, but not the right record.
vinylscot on June 26th, 2008
Caledonianne - couldn’t give you a date, but yes definitely after it had been a hit - probably around the second coming of Mary Marquis - around ‘78 I would say, and certainly before they decided Donna Summer’s “McArthur Park” would be a good idea!
mike on July 8th, 2008
Oh goody, I can drag this one back to punk. Yes, I thought you’d all be pleased.
Picture this: July 1977, the beginning of the summer holidays, and I’m watching TOTP with my 34-year old stepmother. I’ve mentioned that the Pistols are going to be on, performing “Pretty Vacant” (that week’s highest new entry at #7), and she’s curious enough to sit down with me. Meanwhile, my dad’s on the phone in the other corner of the room.
About 20 seconds into the promo video, my step-mother bursts out laughing, glances at me conspiratorially, and starts telling me about the first time she saw Jagger on TV singing about how he couldn’t get any satisfaction, darling, and how everyone was so shocked but she thought it was all SUPER, and this is an update of the same sort of thing really, isn’t it darling?
My dad finishes his phone call.
“Dirty. Scruffy. Miserable. Depressing. I just don’t understand how could this music possibly make anyone HAPPY.”
He’s quite worked up. Nothing unusual there, then.
“So, I take it you didn’t like the Sex Pistols?”
“No, no, they were all right. At least they had a bit of get up and go about them. I mean this lot“, he snarled.
He was talking about Hot Chocolate, concluding the show with that week’s Number One. Unpredictable to the end, my dear old dad.
(Clem Cattini Watch: this was session drummer Clem’s 41st UK Number One. Just four more to go…)
DJ Punctum on July 8th, 2008
Billy S to thread, please, to confirm line-up for that edition of TOTP since I’m pretty sure that they cut from “Pretty Vacant” to an utterly bemused Des O’Connor but then it is 31 years ago…
Billy Smart on July 8th, 2008
TOTP Watch: The 14th of July 1977. (Neither The Sex Pistols nor Hot Chocolate were actually in the studio that week. ‘Pretty Vacant’ had been pre-recorded - presumably the dangerous anarchists needed to be closely controlled - and ‘So You Win Again’ was a repeat of the previous week’s performance)
In the studio that week were; The Real Thing, The Saints, Dave Edmunds, Jigsaw and Cilla Black, plus Legs & Co’s interpretation of ‘Easy’ (”if only” reflected a youthful Waldo…). The host was David Jensen. The tape survives.
I can’t find any reference to Des O’Connor appearing on TOTP after he stopped having hits.
DJ Punctum on July 8th, 2008
That was it - a baffled-looking Cilla Black (whose last Top 40 hit had been in 1974). I do tend to get my veteran British light entertainers mixed up.
FT's Drucius on July 8th, 2008
“TOTP Watch: The 14th of July 1977. (Neither The Sex Pistols nor Hot Chocolate were actually in the studio that week. ‘Pretty Vacant’ had been pre-recorded - presumably the dangerous anarchists needed to be closely controlled - and ‘So You Win Again’ was a repeat of the previous week’s performance)”
I don’t think the Pistols ever played TotP live. Far too dangerous.
“The Saints,”
Hooray!
“I can’t find any reference to Des O’Connor appearing on TOTP after he stopped having hits.”
Not having hits didn’t stop them throwing on Bing Crosby’s corpse every now and then… Baffling.
mike on July 8th, 2008
It was definitely Pistols-then-Chocolate! I’m standing my ground here! Also not convinced that Cilla would have been baffled by a promo video that I’m guessing wouldn’t have been screened in the studio.
More evidence of bunker mentality: I have clear memories of the Dave Edmunds and Saints appearances, but none whatsoever of the Jigaw, Cilla or Real Thing appearances. (Edmunds played with Nick Lowe, Nick Lowe produced The Damned, ergo hey presto, Punk Cred!)
A couple of years later, HotChoc’s “Mindless Boogie”/”Going Through The Motions” period chimed closely with my own feelings on the Evil Brainrot For The Lobotomised Masses that disco music had come to represent (in my strange little world, that is). I still had a lot to learn.
DJ Punctum on July 8th, 2008
Duran Duran doing “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”; I’m writing to my MP.
mike on July 8th, 2008
Made all the more special by Simon Le Bon’s climactic extemporised breast-beating bellows of “WHO’S YOUR DADDY?!”
DJ Punctum on July 8th, 2008
I think the apposite terminology here is NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST IN ONE SECOND
Billy Smart on July 8th, 2008
If the reference book is to be trusted, Mike is correct. Pistols then Hot Chocolate was the climax of that week. Cilla appeared immediately before the Pistols, and immediately following the promo for ‘Give A Little Bit’ by Supertramp - Would that have nonplussed her?
Mark G on July 8th, 2008
Would that be her “I’ll take a tango” which a friend told me was actually written by Alex Harvey?
Billy Smart on July 8th, 2008
No. “I Wanted To Call It Off”
mike on July 8th, 2008
Thinking more about HotChoc - despite their long-running TOTP residency, I guess I’ve always thought of them as outsiders in some sense. Never part of any particular scene or genre, no common cause with any other acts, never a band to “define an era” in any way - they just pootled along, changing their style to fit the times, and yet not really being part of any time at all. And I guess I’ve never had any strong feelings about them, either - they were part of the pop landscape before I started paying attention, and it just seemed as if they had always and would always be around. They were never anybody’s favourite, or even fifth favourite band, were they? Did anyone ever meet a Hot Chocolate fan? Did we ever get to read about them in the pop mags? Did we know what made them tick? Could we pick out anyone other than Errol in an identity parade? Did we know anything about them at all?
Billy Smart on July 8th, 2008
The one non-compilation Hot Chocolate album that I possess has got two misjudged contemporary cover versions on it (’Walking On The Moon’ and - bizarrely - ‘Green Shirt’) possibly indicating a desire for rock credibility. Was this sort of thing a regular feature?
Erithian on July 11th, 2008
If you’re interested in seeing what covers Hot Chocolate do these days, get along to the Thamesmead Community Festival tomorrow (12 July) in Birchmere Park, where they’re on stage at 3.50. Also on the bill: Jaki Graham, Michelle Gayle, Booty Luv and the bloke who did Lionel Richie in “The One and Only” on BBC1!
DJ Punctum on July 11th, 2008
Is Errol actually still in Hot Chocolate?
Mark G on July 11th, 2008
of course, they started off their existance with a cover of “Give peace a chance” under the name of “Hot Chocolate Band”
.. and not “The Plasic Ono Band” as my old copy of Look-in magazine had it.
DJ Punctum on July 11th, 2008
And they were christened as such by John Lennon since they approached him (because they wanted to make some minor changes to the lyric) and I think Lennon even arranged for their version to come out on Apple.
Erithian on July 11th, 2008
DJP - according to this:
http://www.trust-thamesmead.co.uk/folder.cfm/id/469/folderName/Hot%20Chocolate
- Errol Brown left in 1986 and the singer for the past 13 years has been one Greg Bannis.
Waldo on July 11th, 2008
Didn’t Marvin Hagler tour with them at about the time he beat the living shit out of Tony Sibson?
“It Started With A Fist…”
Mark G on July 11th, 2008
#75 - Mavis Smith! ‘part from that, yep. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Chocolate
#77, I guess he wouldn’t sing “So you win again” though.
mike on July 11th, 2008
A second chart-topper of for Russ Ballard, then - his first being as a member of Unit 4+2 (although he didn’t compose “Concrete & Clay”). Not a patch on Colin Blunstone’s “I Don’t Believe In Miracles” or the aforementioned “Since You Been Gone”, though.
Billy Smart on July 13th, 2008
TOTP Watch: Of course, I’d forgotten, The Sex Pistols did eventually appear live in the Top Of The Pops studio, on the edition of the 28th of June 1996! They performed ‘Pretty Vacant’ and ‘New York’.
Also in the studio that week were; Everything But The Girl, The Divine Comedy and Black Grape (featuring Joe Strummer, oddly enough), plus a live performance from Toledo, Spain by Shampoo. The host was Gina G.
Erithian on July 14th, 2008
Another favourite Pistols-on-TOTP moment - the video for “Somethin’ Else” showing Sid Vicious motorbikin’ down the Queen’s highway in his punk leathers, standing up on the pedals and looking as surly as possible. Cut to Jimmy Savile saying “of course dear old Sid wasn’t wearing a crash helmet, guys and gals, which you should always do on your motorbike…”
Billy Smart on July 14th, 2008
I can remember an incident in about 1983, when - following a Madness video - Jimmy Saville warned viewers not to play electric guitars in swimming pools.
DJ Punctum on July 14th, 2008
Clunk click every dive…
DJ Punctum on July 14th, 2008
The Black Grape/Strummer thing would have been “England’s Glory,” their Euro ‘96 song, and I believe the only time Strummer ever appeared on the show, miming the football commentary samples very badly indeed.
Billy Smart on July 14th, 2008
That’s a single which I sometimes think that I’m the world’s sole advocate of. “We live in a land of crass hypocrisy. I’m gonna win the National Lottery. Eee-I-adio, I don’t think so”, “My wife’s lactating and I’m spectating. It’s a football thing”, etc
It’s a precise evocation of what life in England in the summer of 1996 was actually like.
DJ Punctum on July 14th, 2008
“England’s Glory”? That was a Max Wall record (on Stiff)! I meant “England’s Irie” *sigh*…
Mark G on July 14th, 2008
Darn, could have gottim there….
JStrummer did ‘appear’ when “Should I stay” made number one, and the performance was represented by a live film version.
As opposed to a Legs and co performance.
DJ Punctum on July 14th, 2008
Who could forget Legs & Co’s typically literal interpretation of “Bank Robber”?