The extended artist credit is a giveaway: Aussie origins or no, this is a music hall number – perhaps the last such to get to No.1, complete with comical national caricature and audience participation. On record, the all-join-in section demolishes the song’s momentum, turning it into a chore. On screen, blackboard at the ready, Dolce made more sense, and at the time “Shaddap You Face” was a welcome relief after two months of piety. But almost anything would have been.
People upset that Ultravox were kept from the top by this have a good case: for a start, “Vienna” is a great deal funnier. The laughs in Joe Dolce arrive from i. the deathless comic value of a mock Italian accent, ii. the joy of yelling “Shaddap-a you face!”. I can vouch for ii, having submitted it to continuous testing that spring, but it’s not a gag whose appeal has crossed the gulf of years.
Score: 3
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Sorry, was there a Number 2 Watch with this one? Can’t remember.
And of course, we are all going to talk about Vienna, aren’t we? A wonderful record, that was, and very poignant because it went with the final breakup of my marriage and my flight to Cambridge and the beginning of a coup0le of years of freefall.
But we aren’t here to talk about Midge and the boys afterall. Midge will get plenty of space in the Popular spotlight but for now we have this strange little thing to consider, one of those rare tracks which will forever be identified with what it kept out fo the top spot.
And unusually for me, I resented it too. I didn’t resent Englebert very much for shutting out Strawberry Fields because I cared much more about the song than for its chart position. Things were different in 1967, I guess.
But to take Joe Dolce at face value, it’s really not so bad as comedy records go. I can imagine him doing this as a stand-up routine and bringing the house down. The affectionate caricature of the Italian mother rings true after all. I could live happily without it, but it isn’t really fair to condemn it for not being something else.
This means nothing to me.
Actual list of funniness from least to most.
3. Joe Dolce
2. “Vienna”
1. Joe Dolce beating “Vienna” to No.1
The Wikipedia entry for this suggests that a. Midge Ure performs it as a coda to “Vienna” live (I like to think with a manful fixed grin), b. by dint of being the most successful Australian pop record ever this has acquired some kind of national icon status over there, with Joe D. being roped into performing endless new versions. Fitting fates for all concerned I think!
(The Midge-era Ultravox were my first ever favourite band but even then I didn’t like “Vienna” much – though my case against was mostly that it was all anyone knew by them and its ubiquity kept the public unaware of their deeper works.)
Yes, eight weeks at number 1 in Australia, only to be replaced by … “(Just Like) Starting Over”. Luckily we only had that for 2 weeks, before Slim Dusty .. erm, whatever.
Speaking of the cover versions, I’d be very interested to hear KRS 1’s.
(Actually I must take back my snippiness re “Vienna” – have just heard it for the first time in years and it sounds AWESOME, probably because I’ve been listening to the Kanye West album so much.)
i thought shuddup was about the funniest thing ever at the time. not so much now, but i do fairly often find myself singing adaptations of it to our baby girl when i run out of lullabys (not majoring on the shut your face motif, obv). and there’s not much wrong with the glorious baroque nonsense at number two either.
it probably shouldn’t be funny, but the vic reeves ‘ruby trax’ version of vienna has kept me amused for fifteen years now… “hitler dwelt in this land/and van morrison was born here”
But more than most comedy records, this one stopped being funny very quickly. About the only time after the first couple of hearings that I enjoyed it was the time when the Capital Radio chart rundown DJ, no doubt peeved by the Ultravox factor, played it at 78rpm to get it over with sooner, and commented “Surely there can’t be anybody left in the entire Western hemisphere who still wants a copy of this record”.
Jasper Carrott claimed Dolce was more American than Australian, and I wonder by what criteria it’s the most successful Aussie pop record ever. I see Wiki stresses “Australian-produced”, which maybe suggests that the Seekers and Kylie made their bigger hits elsewhere.
Indeed Davey #5 – surely the only song ever to be covered by both KRS-One and Max Bygraves!
I always thought that Dolce was actually Italian and couldn’t understand why he’d play up a cartoonish stereotype in this way, but I just found out he’s a bloody Yank/Aussie and now I can’t decide if it’s merely affectionate or the worst kind of “Love Thy Neighbour” caricature. Best not to think of it at all really. Even “Imagine” was better than this. Where he hell did this come from? Can we blame Noel Edmonds for it?
A mate of mine used to do an impression of Bryan Ferry singing this song. It was hysterical, but you had to be there.
Are you going to see the fully reformed Ultravox next spring Tom? (I say ‘fully’ because I was on the verge of getting tickets to see The Specials, until I read that Jerry Dammers isn’t part of the line-up).
#9 – he’s a yank/aussie of Italian descent isn’t he? He’s also only the first of a few, erm, ‘drag nationalities’ we’ll be getting over the next couple of Popular years…
what’s the kanye west/vienna connection btw?
A dismal run of number ones, I must say. I do remember reading some interview with Dolce where he said this single had ruined his chances of ever being taken seriously as a musician, bla bla bla. Then again, I just looked at his website and judging by the titles of his follow-ups (‘You Toucha My Car, I Breaka You Face’, ‘Pizza Pizza’), he was still trying to milk it several years later.
I seem to recall quite liking it at first as a welcome break from the Lennon mopefest but it quickly lost it’s appeal.
I don’t/didn’t care that Vienna only got to number 2 – it’s ok but not so great
#12 – Pink – just the same kind of pomposity/deep-freeze-beats mix, slap a bit of Autotune on Midge and “Vienna” would fit right into 808s and Heartbreak.
#15 Tom blimey. i haven’t heard anything from 808’s, but the reviews i’ve read (okay, the review. in the metro) made out it’s all low key and dour and minimalist – i had no idea there was any flouncy keening for central europe. (my real hope was that kanye had gone all out and sampled vienna in a diamonds are forever style, of course).
There was an awesomely Wagnerian eurodance cover by Infernal a year or two ago that will also satisfy your “Vienna” needs.
The Infernal cover of Vienna is GREBT!
I’m sure I have witnessed a cover of ‘Shaddap You Face’ done by Bob Hoskins dressed as Mario, but that may just be my mind playing tricks on me.
I think the bigger Ultravox injustice is that the song was never used for a Wall’ss ice-cream advert. “This means pudding to me…oh! Vienetta!”
Being of Italian descent myself, the joke in this one wore pretty thin pretty quick, as everyone seemed to be constantly taking the p*ss. (I wonder if any other Scots of Italian descent felt the same way – I guess we’ll never know!)
Thankfully, as so often happens with comedy records, this one disappeared pretty quickly, and is only ever revived on these dreary “100 Worst” type Channel 4 time-fillers. I doubt if the whole song has been played on radio (or anywhere else) since it left the charts! (Apart from by duty – end-of-year chart, etc. Does Dale play it when it crops up on his show?)
Before anyone else saye “Its-a not so bad…” – Yes it is!
I don’t mind this, I think because whenever I hear it (which admittedly is very infrequently), I imagine it as the climax of an autobiographical one-man show, where the audience would have been innoculated against its sentimentality and Cornetto pastiche Italian.
Eight year old Billy enjoyed this, especially the custard pie climax of the video – a gag which is sadly not so amusing to my grown-up self.
Extremely popular in the primary school playground, where “Ah shadduppa ya face!” worked very well as a comicly irreverant catchphrase. Indeed, I think that the last song to work so well in that context was ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’.
Remember the version by Andrew Sachs as Manuel, he sang it on Pebble mill at one, maybe Ross and Brand should cover it.
Joke hasn’t worn thin in our family, and I fully expect to hear my dad shout “Whatsa matter you? Gotta no respect?” as I snaffle the last bottle of Spitfire in a couple of weeks.
Must revisit post-Foxx Ultravox and possibly re-adjust my prejudice. I get the feeling that disliking Vienna in 2008 is on a par with people laughing at The Monkees in the early 80s.
Didn’t most of the indignation about Shaddap You Face keeping Vienna off the top emanate from Ultravox? That’s how I remember it.
they should have written a song about it!
‘my real hope was that kanye had gone all out and sampled vienna in a diamonds are forever style, of course’
I am still hoping he’ll get his hands on Alphaville’s ‘Sounds Like A Melody’
As Rosie said, this is a number one whose significance is the record it kept from the top.
However, I would say that, good record though ‘Vienna’ is, I’m somewhat mystified by its enduring classic status.
#23 – I think those principles aren’t in much need of re-adjusting, for all that I have an affection for them still: I thought at 13 they were a very thoughtful, meaningful and modernist band but – and this is crucial – I was listening to almost no other music (having Gone Off Pop).
“Vienna”‘s pomp and circumstance has aged better than I expected it had though! I can believe very easily that the outrage started with Ultravox – Midge Ure clearly thought he’d written one for the ages (as it turns out he had! But – in Oz at least – so had Joe).
I think Ultravox ultimately benefited from being denied the number one spot. Vienna is now immortalised as one of a trio of “great records cruelly confined to number two” along with Strawberry Fields and God Save the Queen, even though it’s not as good as either of them (no doubt there are many other worthy number twos but the injustice of being number two to a comedy record means Vienna is always mentioned in this context).
If it had made number one it would have just been another number one of 1980 – one of the better ones, admittedly. I bet more people know that Vienna reached number two than know that some of the other Popular entries of this year reached number one. I wouldn’t have thought it made much difference to the royalties.
#28 – “Common People” has joined this trio too now I think.
Uhhh what is this ‘Vienna’ you are all talking about? I don’t think I’ve actually heard of it before. I have never heard of ‘Shaddap You Face’ either but it sounds completely appalling and slightly racist.
There are a million records which stalled at No 2 which are better than ‘God Save The Queen’ or ‘Common People’…
#29 – It would certainly be a worthy contender (and a better song than Vienna). But I just had to look up whom it was number two to, despite the fact I was a Pulp-loving student in 1995 – I don’t automatically associate the song with being number two to R***** & J*****, whereas I do associate Vienna with being number two to Joe Dolce. Extrapolating wildy from my own experience, I think that would be the case for a lot of people.
#30 – I’m sure there are – but they’re not automatically remembered as part of this particular club.
Remembered by whom? My point is that I’m wary of “immortalising” records in this manner, as though this judgment arose out of consensus agreement. I mean, I don’t subscribe to that particular trio of “great records” in the slightest.
There are so many potential jokes in the phrase “worthy number twos” I don’t know where to start.
Ignore me, I’m juvenile.
Yes but by the time of “Common People” (notwithstanding that artificial record company engineered Oasis vs Blur thing I mean it was hardly the Beatles versus The rolling Stones was it)did many people give a toss who was number 1 anyway?I’m pretty sure in the 60s and 70s and up to the late 80s the “man in the street” (whoever he was) knew who was Number 1 but by the mid 90s who cared? And wasn’t that a few years later proved by the final demise of Top of the Pops after its sad descent from a 10 million plus ‘all-the-family-gathered-round-the-telly’ occasion to a show that was living on borrowed time fueled by sentiment for far too long.
Beware relatively irrelevant tangent approaching: PS I hate “Common People”.Oh yes those posh London art students who he gets so worked up with in the song must have been VERY posh to call someone called Jarvis (not exactly your typical proletariat name in early ’60s Sheffield was it?), who’d managed to be a student for about 10 years and who’s mother eventually stood as a Tory councillor in a posh Derbyshire village; a “common person”.I got dragged along to Pulp farewell do at Magna in Rotherham by some Pulp loving friends and am pleased to say I was one of I think I estimated about 50 people who stayed in the other room listening to one of LFO deejaying while Pulp played their final concert. LFO, Royksopp and Green Jelly notwithstanding it wasn’t the best of nights overall – you had to queue for about an hour for a drink, the beer ran out, it was freezing, there were hardly any taxis and we had to walk half the way back to my friends’ house in Sheffield.
Hi all, been lurking here a while – finally decided to join in with this one as it was number one when I was born.
I’ve just re-listened to the song on YouTube and the best thing I can say about it is that it’s shorter than I thought it was. Other than that, it’s terrible. Can anyone shed any light on who actually bought the single? Very young kids? Racist dads? Going on what I know of the early ’80s pop scene it doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere but then I guess that’s the point of a novelty/comedy single.
As for ‘Vienna’, I remember it making the charts as a reissue in 1993 (trailing a best-of I assume) and loving it then – the oddness of it appealed to me I guess. Still enjoy it now, although I’d pick ‘All Stood Still’ as their best Midge-era song. Anyway, Joe Dolce’s getting a 2/10.
Cover version Watch: EMF, on the 1992 NME ‘Ruby Trax’ compilation. Absolutely atrocious – though perhaps not as bad as their 1995 Vic Reeves disembowelling of ‘I’m A Believer’.
However, Vic Reeves’ aforementioned version of ‘Vienna’ is also on the album – new verses about the Belgian Police and all – and is very good indeed.
I think Jarvis was
1) Commenting that he understood what it was to be working class, not saying he was
2) being taken aback that this girl had decided hewas “common people”..
anyway, back to…
When the Beatles ‘took’ america, a thought was posited that it was a reaction to coming out of mourning for Kennedy.
So it is, that as we all came out of grief for Lennon, what we needed was a bit of singalonga “shut-uppaya-face”
And rightly so. Give it 5 from me.
Re: 37 Which makes Joe Dolce our very own Singing Nun.
I’m ashamed to say that I thought this was great in 1981 but then I had only just turned six and liked simple songs and it was a birthday present. I bet all you older ones thought the same about something like “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” ten years before. I don’t care about it stopping Vienna. I agree with the person who said that Vienna is remembered more as a number two than it would have done had it gone one better. As for Shaddup, I now wish it would because of course the song is for kiddies or piss heads like Waldo who sing anything when bladdered. As someone also said you never hear this now outside chart shows and we all know why. Shocking record.
#34: some people definitely cared what got to number one in the mid-90s, i.e. me and my mates at school! It only really got ridiculous post-Spice Girls.
The first record I ever bought.
I remember being very annoyed at the singalong section, because the audience kept shouting “hey!” at the end of every line, when Joe had very specifically told them that they should shout “hey!” at the end of the first line, then he would “singa the rest” – at which point they could all sing “shaddap-a your face.” They JUST DIDN’T LISTEN. I can feel myself getting slightly cross when I think about it now, actually.
What’s strange is that they could have fixed that pretty easily – this is one of the great “not really live” recordings, its in-concert facade about as convincing as “The Seeds – Raw And Alive”, or The Beatles At Shea Stadium. In fact, sonically, it’s one of the most synthetic things I’ve ever heard, like it should be coming out of a greetings card. There’s clearly a “proper” band playing there, but they sound like they’re one inch tall and thin as paper. Something else peculiar about this record: it lasts more than three minutes, but feels a great deal shorter. I mean, a lot shorter. I’m not sure why. Perhaps Mr Dolce’s hatred of his mother is just so vivid it warps your perception of time.
I have no idea what made me want to go out and buy this, and can only assume it was the joy of hearing someone shouting “ah shaddap-a you face”, and being able to join in; sort of punk for pre-teens. The B-side was “Ain’t In No Hurry”, which I think I preferred slightly, a nasty boogified AOR number with another “interaction with the audience” interlude: Joe tells everyone that they’d “smoked a lot of cigarettes” and “drunk a lot of coffee” and had finally reached the B-side of “Shaddap You Face”. I remember being slightly confused by that, but only in a vague, casual way, like I’m confused that this was the first record I ever bought, but don’t really care.
As for “Vienna”, it’s the sort of record that sounds pretty impressive to a kid, horribly pompous to a teenager, then laughably irrelevant to an early-20s Music Expert – but right now, it sounds… fascinating. I’ll never love it, as it calls to mind too much of what I didn’t like – and still don’t – about the early Eighties (and indeed about Midge Ure), but it’s also saved by having been made in the early Eighties, in that it lacks the weight and power of a 70s production or the digital force of a more recent production – either of which would have added weight to its pretensions, and sunk the whole thing. Rather, it’s delicate and slightly dinky, a perspex symphony. Simulataneously tacky and beguilingly unreal, like a remake of “The Third Man” filmed on 1981-vintage videotape. The instrumental break is fantastic, lovely strings gliding over a nasty Binatone music box backing, growing steadily more saturated till they white out and go snowblind. The drop in pace back into the last chorus does quicken the heart slightly, corny as it is, and the “Countdown”-style pssstcheowwws in the background undercut that daft grandiosity. I haven’t listened to this for many, many years – my memory had touched it up, made it the record Midge would have wanted, booming and foggy and classic, and completely wretched. I’m pleasantly surprised: it’s nothing like that at all. I like this “Vienna” far better.
Not sure it’s worth going back and checking out Ure’s Ultravox, though. I had their greatest hits at one point, and there was some really gruesome stuff on there – “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes” stands out as particularly strained, seemingly sung while wearing the expression of someone who’s just made it 4-3 in the last minute of the Champions League final, but without any particular purpose. Very grimy pig-iron: the filth comes off on your hands. I mean, I misremembered “Vienna”, but I’d be flabbergasted if all these years on, “Love’s Great Adventure” was anything other than galloping, mock-heroic horseshit.
Straying way off the point, a package drops through my letterbox thsi morning containing, unsolicited, a book by Mr Stuart Maconie: a man of whom I know sod all and care less except that I gather that in some Populista circles, possession of anything with his name on spells social death!
My correspondent tells me that he writes about Barrow, and I suspect that he has come here to sneer as Mancunians will, but given the fact that the book is called “Pies and Prejudice” I am hoping that he will be shown the error of his ways with the help of a meat-and-potato pie or two from Messrs Green of Jarrow Street.
Rosie – Maconie gives Manchester a bit of treatment too, being a Wigan pie-muncher rather than a Manc. “Monumental hubristic vanity… Manchester has fancied itself rotten for as long as anyone can remember”, he comments after an account of the “Manchester Passion” production of Easter 2006 (the one where Judas sings “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”). It’s an entertaining read and I think you’ll enjoy it. (Barrow doesn’t come out too badly either.)
TOTP Watch: Joe Dolce appeared on the edition transmitted on February the 5th 1981. Also in the studio that week were; The Stray Cats, Fred Wedlock, and The Passions. The host was Simon Bates.
# 41 Very much like the description of Vienna. It’s the combination of earnest (indeed in this instance meaningless) pretension and a slightly cheap pop aesthetic that made the new romantic hits of 1980/1981 so great. And despite their ropey reputation these days, at the time this felt, to me at school in Yorkshire, like a proper trendy record (almost) hitting the top. There are very few #1s among the canon of early eighties new romantic/synthpop records, which makes the infamous #2 status of this one a bit sad.
Personally I still like the Ure-era Ultravox, particularly this and the subsequent Rage in Eden album (although yes, point taken regarding Love’s Great Adventure and everything that followed).
Nothing whatsoever to say about the actual thread subject I’m afraid.
Rosie @ 42 – I received Pies & Prejudice as an unsolicited present too, a year or two back. It’s good fun. I say that as someone born in South Yorks and brought up in the Home Counties. Whatever effect that might have.
As for the record, as a kid I enjoyed ‘Shaddap You Face’ but also ‘Vienna’. I don’t have a burning desire to hear either right now. My favourite Ultravox singles are ‘Visions In Blue’ and ‘Reap The Wild Wind’, while we’re clearing things up.
#41 I like “perspex symphony”.
“Visions In Blue” was about someone dying in a war, or something?
My favourite Ure Ultravox song (then and now I think) is “The Thin Wall”. I’m not sure I could quite articulate why, I’m feeling a bit dozey today.
re #34 ‘LFO, Royksopp and Green Jelly’
was that a deliberate mistake?! thanks for reminding me of ‘Three Little Pigs’ tho
I’ve just heard ‘Vienna’ for the first time on ye olde Youtube. It’s the most pointlessly pompous song I’ve ever heard, I think. It’s not very good at all, I had to turn it off about midway through because I couldn’t take the voice or the po-faced plodding beat or the general hollow air hanging over it. I dare say it’s still better than ‘Shaddap You Face’, though, which I have no intention of hearing.