You can trace the Ninjafication of Western pop culture back to the 70s martial arts boom and then specifically to Shogun, a mass market “Horrid Histories” for Japan. All its Ronins and Samurai and whatnot caught on to some degree but pubescent boys took the Ninja particularly to heart. Here was a figure whose silence portended mystery and power, whose cold-blooded mastery of the night could strike fear into the powerful, who honed in secret deadly skills which the mundane world mocked at its peril. The Ninja was as potent an archetype to small boys in the 80s as the superhero had been in the 30s and 40s – no surprise the two concepts quickly met.
Frank Miller, a hot writer-artist at Marvel, was given perennial third-stringer Daredevil to retool around the time Shogun hit. His root-and-branch reinvention relied heavily on ninja chic – Daredevil continually grappled with his ninja adversaries The Hand and acquired a sexy ninja kinda-enemy-kinda-girlfriend. The series made Miller a superstar. Along the way the Ninja obsession proved infectious: Chris Claremont, Marvel’s hottest writer and the man who had reinvented their mutant superhero X-Men franchise, got the bug and suddenly Canuck brawler Wolverine was off learning the ways of Bushido and matching claw with throwing star. Mutants and ninjas, in comic form, were now entwined. Cue Turtles.
My friend Sam was into Miller, X-Men and Daredevil, and was savvy enough to pick up early issues of a black and white comic about mutant turtles which came off like a parody until you got into it and realised it was more a geeked-out homage, the work of kids too excited about the stuff they were taking the piss out of to do it effectively. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – four shelled nerds given ninja training by a rat, living in the sewers – the comic might as well have been called Teenage Teenage Teenage Teenagers. And it sold, and sold – even the fifth and sixth printings doubled in money. So other writers and artists started doing the same thing.
Some were enthusiastic, some just dollar-eyed. TMNT is that rarest of ideas, something strong enough to go viral twice. Initially it sparked a black and white comics boom (Sample Title: Pre-Teen Dirty Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos) – by the time the film took off the characters had already made their creators potloads of cash, and then the whole thing exploded again, culture-wide this time. And so here we are at Partners In Kryme, the record I’ve been avoiding discussing.
My fondness for the Turtles phenomenon – the first time I could ever say, even slightly, “I was there” when something went from cult to household name – doesn’t extend to any actual Turtles product. The comic got bogged down in self-important story arcs; the cartoon and film seemed dumber; the characters – look, the honest truth is I can’t tell them apart. And this single? There are interesting things about it, for sure. It’s the first Number One specifically aimed at kids and only kids for a very long time, which suggests something about the shrinking of the singles market at this point. And it’s a hip-hop record, which feels significant – an acknowledgement that rap was already the native pop tongue of 9 and 10 year olds.
But, bless it, for anyone else it’s not very good. The main problem is that the MC raps like an action figure: dynamic out of the box but ultimately lacking in articulation. His enthusiastic, lumbering, one-paced flow can’t carry a whole song: if “Turtle Power” had been a posse cut it might have worked a lot better. The bits I remember – “this lethally evil force”, “I was a witness get me a reporter”, “Tonto came pronto when there was danger” – are all in the first verse, before the song gets into a lengthy recap of the film. It’s energetic even if it’s not competent, but even its bouncy, plasticky synth jabs get exhausting well before the end.
Score: 4
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Only 4!!?
I only had about 5 TMNT trading cards compared to my 50-odd Neighbours trading cards and (later on) my two-dozen Batman Returns trading cards. I bloody loved the cartoon though, even though they changed ‘ninja’ to ‘hero’ as kids kept injuring each other in the playground. They should have released the theme from that as a single instead.
Isn’t this significant as the first time a proper (if rubbish) hip-hop number one in the UK? I know we’ve had rapping on other records (like Snap’s The Power) but they weren’t exactly hip-hop.
It’s still bloody awful though
#2 YES. Though the Guinness book doesn’t acknowledge this as such, claiming the honour for another, later 1990 hit.
Though I think we’ve had enough number ones steeped in hip-hop by this point for the breakthrough not to feel quite as significant, particularly as it’s Partners In Kryme.
By the time he launches into the second verse about April being hunted by evil Foot Clan members, I was reminded of a really bad rendition of Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story.”
Dude’s flow is strictly for the kiddies. I keep expecting him to tell me to brush my teeth, stay in school and don’t copy that floppy.
There’s a couple of things I genuinely do like about this record even now – mainly its relative similarity to the work of Digital Underground at the time (the bassline and beat are both decent, what else there is about the track is quite cheap but it’s driven by the heaviness of the first two things and the robotized voice in the chorus is fun and faithful to the often just as goofy electro from a few years before e.g. Newcleus). Sure ‘The Humpty Dance’ is a superior track in any case but ‘Turtle Power’ sounded better than it had any right to be for these reasons. Take the ‘for kids/crass tie-in’ aspect anyway and you’d also take away much of the disdain, and there are quite a few worse kids TV/film songs to come on Popular so it’s a borderline tick (6) here.
The MC sounds a lot like a straight cross between Humpty Hump and Heavy D but with a deeper voice and delivery that goes some way to compensating for cringey lyrics about a concept (not necessarily the original concept of the comic) that I’m sure would’ve delighted me a lot if I’d been five years or more younger at that point. I watched the terrible cartoon before this movie of course, always marvelling at how there was never actually anybody on the streets of the big city the TMNTs were always trying to protect – not that I expect the slave labour artists to draw any more people than they need to really.
I was totally baffled by the appearance of this on “Popular”, since I have no memory of the song whatsoever, and certainly can’t remember it ever being at number one! I must have been away on holiday at the time.
There again, the Turtles were something that just blended into the background for me in the early nineties. I can’t remember myself getting either irritated by them or enjoying the idea of them, they were just there for whoever wanted them. As such, they were probably one of the few children’s crazes of the last 37 years to have no impact on or relevance to me at all – they occurred shortly after I grew up myself, and shortly before I became an Uncle. Oh, the bliss of not even having an opinion on something targeted at children.
The song itself is OK – a bit better than “Sacrifice” at least – but I’m struggling to think of any substantial to say about it, and I doubt I’ll remember how it goes by tomorrow morning.
#2 Watch: A week for Madonna’s ‘Hanky Panky’, then three weeks of ‘Tom’s Diner’ by DNA featuring Suzanne Vega.
Pre-Teen Dirty Gene Kung Fu Kangaroos??????????
Despite being almost exactly the right age I’m neither a fan of Turtles nor Hip-hop. So this single was an early indicator that I was destined to feel exiled by my own generation.
Never owned a Gameboy either.
Rotten record by the way.
This totally passed me by, although I was well aware of the existence of the pizza-loving Turtles.
After acquainting myself with the song, I’m somewhat stunned by it’s simplicity. A few more bits and add-ons compared to say, The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air theme, but if you boil them down, essentially they are the same beat and bassline.
Very little more to add, apart from Partners In Kryme invent SA “internet sensation” Die Antwoord.
Although this isn’t actively irritating, I was disappointed when I heard it again – for the first time since 1990! – today. Y’see the single I was expecting to hear was the #15 follow-up official Turtle single, ‘Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)’ by Hi-Tek 3 featuring Ya Kid K, which, by virtue of repeating the title a lot, clearly made more of an impression on me.
Turtlemania didn’t leave much of a lasting chart presence beyond that, though. A Christmas release, ‘Turtle Rhapsody’ by Orchestra On The Half Shell, struggled to #36, despite the value for money inclusion of ‘Turtle Power’ on the B-side.
And that seemed to be that, until major label crusties Back To The Planet released a protest record, ‘Teenage Turtles’, about the phenomenon and how the kids were being duped, man, as amusingly late in the day as 1993! It was a bit condescending.
Maybe not as early as this (current age: 1 year 10 months) but flash forward about three years and I was a huge fan of the Turtles. In a box somewhere I still have all my action figures, from the Donatello that flips around in a circle (when it worked) to the Leonardo that transformed into a fire engine for some reason. Simply listening to the cartoon’s theme tune again takes me back to younger times, before I moved on to Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.
The film though confused me. I was very excited when my auntie gave me the videotape, but to see a world I’d previously only known in cartoon form rendered in slightly scary-looking live action was a bit off-putting. The song I didn’t even know about until a few years ago, it has some nice moments but doesn’t quite stick in the mind.
Now, had the cartoon theme tune got to number 1, on nostalgia alone I’d have given that a high mark. Heroes in a half shell, turtle power!
Oh, and I am amused to report that Partners In Kryme’s follow-up, ‘Undercover’, spent one week at #92 in November 1990. I’m assuming that one was Turtle-free.
Light Entertainment Watch: One UK TV appearance for Partners In Kryme, which is one more than I was anticipating;
THE SMASH HITS POLL WINNERS PARTY: with Jason Donovan, Craig Maclachan, Phillip Schofield, Betty Boo, Partners In Kryme, Monie Love, Snap, Roxette, The Boys, Vanilla Ice (1990)
The Boys? Who were they?
#10 – Billy I have a perilously flimsy 7″ of Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real) that came off the back of a packet of Frosties! The vinyl was so thin that you had to leave it stuck on the cardboard and cut round it. Also in the set: Venus by Don Pablo’s Animals and a Technotronic track that I cannot currently recall the name of as my sister SWIPED that one off me without so much as a ‘please’.
#13 does this mean we get to discuss Craig McClachlan now? Henry Ramsey in Neighbours was such a better character than Scott Robinson AND one of my best mates at junior school was called Shimona so we used to sing “Heeeeeeeey Mo-NA!” at her a lot. His fake guitar playing on that is even worse than Jason’s.
Craig McClachlan who called his band Check One Two lest we doubt that he was au fait with the authentic language of the hard-gigging rock and roller.
#13 I THINK the Boys were an American sub-NKOTB “boy band”, who meant nothing whatsover over here (maybe with a Teddy Riley or similar beat under them???) I’m sure I heard some of their stuff on US chart shows. Of course their name makes them hard to research on the web, and Spotify has none of ’em. I can’t believe anything they did was of any more lasting worth than the dross that this thread is about, though.
FOUR is an incredibly generous score for this, IMHO. Four letters would suffice.
As for Craig McLachlan (with or without Check 1-2), the follow up to “Mona”, “Amanda” was at least less annoying, even if it was more or less tuneless. (Although it was released so quickly afterwards clearly the record company knew the game was up) Clearly he was following the Beautiful South’s advice to stick to girls’ names songs. (Still, I reckon Stefan Dennis maybe had the worst Neighbours spin-off record, the previous year, and the one that wasn’t a hit was even worse than the one that was. Although I am saying that without ever hearing one that the Twins made a bit later on)
Ahem
re #2 this is an interesting read by Suzanne Vega about how that remix means she is seen in the states as a ‘two-hit wonder’ and on the subject of being remixed, and being ‘the mother of the mp3’- http://measureformeasure.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/toms-essay/
I’m bummed that this kept Tom’s Diner w/DNA off the top of the chart. That would have been another of 1990’s consensus ace #1s if it had made it. Anyhow, this record chugs along but doesn’t seem to get anywhere…
Yeah Tom’s Diner was one of those records I willed to get to #1. Obviously the power of will was as nothing compared with the power of ninja pizza action.
This rang no bells whatsoever, though I must have heard it a fair bit at the time. Bit worrying. My strongest turtle-related memory is of the pizza section in Sainsburys, Camden Town, which tripled in size to include such exciting new toppings as apple. It might have even had a green pizza base.
The Ya Kid K record, a cute enough piece of hip house, was released as a single (without the Turtles Get Real suffix) in ’89 before it became official Turtle product.
Did DNA’s Tom’s Diner start out as a bootleg? Along similar lines, but dreamier and lovelier, there was a great Balearic white label mix of Edie Brickell’s Circle around the same time. Gosh. 98bpm magic.
I must have ignored this at the time because I have no memory of it whatsoever. The repetitive flow and tinny synths make it sound like the soundtrack to a Nintendo game – so that I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Still only a 4 though
I thought I had no memory of this, but actually listening again it rings a bell. It’s not… awful, and it’s definitely, unmistakably hip-hop. It’s rather wordy for a kids’ hit, though.
People after simpler kids’ hits won’t have long to wait. Unfortunately.
I blame the turtles, an influence bad…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LohdW6K1E04
Almost in tears here. I always forget how amazing it is. BLAME THE TELLY WITH ADVERTS COOL.
Oh, the Turtles movie soundtrack… Unfortunately, my Panasonic cassette player in 1991 didn’t support Last.fm scrobbling software, but I believe this is one of my all-time most listened albums.
I don’t trust my own critical faculties when it comes to this record, obviously, but “Turtle Power” is nowhere near the best (or “best”, if you prefer) track on there.
Nominations: MC Hammer’s “This is What We Do” (http://youtu.be/o2NCqneAbDo) Only about two minutes of actual material in this five minute track (the rest is endless hook repetition), but those two minutes are quite fun.
Spunkadelic’s “9.95” (http://youtu.be/f1Ki01c2nEM) is incredibly cheesy, but I can’t help it, I think overly earnest, glossy, slightly crap pop music like this is one of the greatest legacies of the eighties/early nineties. My favourite type of soundtrack filler.
In 1974 the Wombles were Britain’s best-selling singles act, and sixteen years later came the anti-Wombles; still post-holocaust mutations living underground, but in the middle of the city rather than on its suburban fringes, fighting crime with cold rationalism rather than picking up litter with peculiar, insular grace.
The irony is that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started life as a parody of overly earnest Marvel Comics of the early eighties, specifically Daredevil; but knowingness doesn’t sell tickets or sustain franchises, and by 1990 they had become merely the first entry in the list of animation brand management which will become increasingly familiar as Popular treks through the nineties and beyond.
“Turtle Power,” if nothing else – and there really is nothing else – demonstrates exactly why “The Power” was powerful. Despite the two records’ titular similarity, identical bpm and near-identical rap delivery, “The Power” swings and has purpose, whereas, despite its references to “defeat the sneak, protect the weak,” “Turtle Power” is cold, bossy, graceless, strident and harsh; there to sell a film and other associated marketing produce, its willing young audience all the more malleable to absorb its ode to vigilantism and self-reliance, and thereby ensure that society’s weak remain unprotected, except within a commercialised chimera of a fantasy.
Well, old man lobbyB (anag) started as irony also…
@19 that Suzanne Vega essay is one of my favourite things on the internet. She’s a great storyteller in print as well as in song, it turns out! I love the sense of wonder at how this tiny germ of an idea, which she’d envisaged as something else entirely, had all these incredible consequences – it’s like she can’t quite believe it herself.
I do wonder sometimes how a woman as wordy as S.Vega feels about her most memorable contribution to culture being “der-der-der-der-der-der-der-der”, though. “Tom’s Diner” would be a [10] from me, for sure.
*pointedly ignores actual subject of thread*
I’ve no time for hip hop at all – as someone once sang “It says nothing to me about my life” – so I can’t tell a good record in that genre from a bad one. My reaction is always “Why can’t you learn an instrument or how to sing before making a record ?” So this is just one in a long line of number ones that just bemuse me.
Very good point Tom on the native pop tongue of 9-10 year olds.
I think that made me feel the wrong side of a generation gap even more than the subject matter.
@31 that’s why I love that essay so much (as well as her previous one about Luka) – her sense of wonder, but also the fact that she’s not precious about the reinterpretation, but fully embraced it (even if that was partly to help sell her latest album) and fully seems to revel in the consequences
The weird thing is I can so hear “Tom’s Diner” with a vaudeville piano arrangement. Totally think she should actually do that, surely she knows a few piano players now.
It just struck me that “says nothing to me about my life” is pretty relevant in child-related pop: most stuff you encounter when v small is a mystery — an exciting mystery if you’re keyed into kid-size in-built curiosity, a massive bore if you’re a self-involved parochial never-grew-up tantrum-pot like morrissey (i’m kidding! well kinda!) — but even mystery and curiosity can pall now and then… and then suddenly there’s a record all about [INSERT FAVOURITE BOOK/TOY HERE], which you DO know about, and you know you know about and grown-ups seem pleased you know about (because it means you’re “making progress” or some such): the TURTLES! they EAT PIZZA! This says something to be about my life!
And round we go…
That was my story, except for “Turtle Power” substitute Trout Mask Replica: he’s a CARTOON CHARACTER! Well, he MUST be, he’s got a fish face! The music’s all wacky like Wacky Races! The Magic Band look like (and I actually, albeit briefly, thought that they WERE) the Banana Splits! He plays sax like I play the recorder! There’s a bit where he mucks about with the tape recorder like I was prone to do at that age! It said everything to me about life, and not necessarily mine alone.
I still know pretty much all the bloody lyrics to that bloody song.
Weirdly, I don’t remember watching that many episodes of the cartoon – but I was into the film (it came out the week before my eighth birthday, so my birthday trip was to the cinema to see it), the action figures and DEFINITELY the trading cards. In our school all sorts of rules had to be put in place to stop people fighting over them. And the most prized card was one that showed Michaelangelo with his mask off, as it was LIKE THE ONLY TIME we ever saw such a thing.
As far as the various products being a bit rubbish, though, oddly I remember ending up with some issues of the Archie comic (the one based on the cartoon that had little or nothing to do with the Mirage comic) some years down the line and it turning out not to be that bad. By that point it had diverged somewhat from its origins into all kinds of weirdness, and was actually kind of fun.
I remember seeing a TMNT role playing game on sale, about a year before the film came out, and being amused by it (not amused enough to buy it though).
The crediting of Tom’s Diner has always rankled with me. Surely it should be Suzanne Vega – Tom’s Diner (DNA remix)? Given how little they actually did to the original, crediting it to “DNA feat Suzanne Vega” seems like crediting Strawberry Fields to “George Martin feat The Beatles”.
Who were Partners In Kryme? It seems that they released one hit movie-tie in #1 single, one flop follow-up, then never did anything else.
How did they get the job? The strangest part of it is that the song isn’t actually that bad.
Whereas.. oh hang on that is bunnybait.
Anyroad, you lot would no doubt remember “Tom’s Album”, a compilation of lots of covers/reinterpretations of the track, the original acapella and instrumental versions that was the original 7″ version (reviewed in NME as “Well, we won’t be anticipating the 12″ remix of THIS one then!!” lol), and reggae versions/cheesy europop/reimaginations of wartime new lyrics/etc.
Also, there was an excellent (well, I liked it) 12″ re-remix of it as well….
#38 maybe but DNA remixed the track (and considering how sparse the original was they added a reasonable amount) which became popular and allowed Vega to make money and from it that she otherwise wouldn’t have as she probably wouldn’t have chosen to push it as a hit single herself. If she’d intended the song to be what it became I’m sure she would’ve got the primary credit but as it is everyone knows who she is and nobody really cares about DNA anyway.
She says in the essay why she wanted it credited like that – partly to make it clear it wasn’t her production, partly because she wasn’t sure her own fans would accept it. It sounds like she came out on top financially, given that they just paid DNA a flat fee!
Whereas (ach, going for it) the “Professional Widow” one had the remixer totally absent from the credits, and the original artist the only one named on the record, even though she had nothing to do with it.
Briefly on subject of thread: as I was listening to it I thought “hey this really isn’t all that bad” but I have no will whatsoever to listen to it again. 4.
More importantly re #23: anything which sounds “like the soundtrack to a Nintendo game” automatically gets 10/10 and thankfully for me we will reach at least one such song HURRAH
I’d much rather talk about Frank Miller’s Daredevil than this. Used to have all of them until I sold all me comics (got quite a tidy sum for them too)
#19 et seq – thanks for the link to the Suzanne Vega essay. I bought her first album on the strength of a Whistle Test appearance in 1986, and what a talent. Still treasure the memory of being in Bunjies coffee shop just off Cambridge Circus when it had a folk club in the basement (in the old days unknowns such as Al Stewart and Paul Simon had played there) and an American tourist asked to do a floor spot and sang a perfect acapella version of Vega’s “The Queen and the Soldier”.
When I was alone and newly arrived in London, Bunjies was a real haven of a Saturday night. I became part of the regular crowd listening to a duo called Les French and Jon Griffin playing Dylan, Incredible String Band and Little Feat covers. If anybody else on here has ever heard of them I’d be gobsmacked, but it’s a fond memory to warm a winter’s afternoon.
As for the record supposedly under discussion, the less said the better. Long past the age of being influenced by children’s stuff, and nine years before becoming a dad myself, this did indeed say nothing to me except “what a horrible cash-in”.
Number 1 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, if I’m not mistaken!
@32/35 yeah, there’s not much of a line between “says nothing to me about my life” (nice line that it is) and “of course i don’t know what auschwitz is, i wasn’t even born”. having said that, the whole turtle thing did kind of pass me by. (er, if this is a fair comparison)
some poor teenager won a national poetry competition in the 80s by submitting ‘the queen and the soldier’ as his own work before being rumbled by the express, iirc.
#47 A bit simplistic to imagine that mere exposure to other cultures prevents something like Auschwitz happening. It wasn’t like Hitler had never met a Jew before he invaded Poland.
“Says nothing to me about my life” tends to feel like a declaration of one’s own…let’s say narrow focus, or prioritsation of something in music which they might otherwise not require from literature or other art. It might imply an emphasis on lyricism and thematics over the actual sound of music and if so that is something I don’t relate to much. What the music/sound is saying (and how) is something I value foremost regardless of genre (and the supposed rules that genres are formed on or affected by). I think this is worth bearing in mind if you’re prejudiced towards or only ever negatively affected by an entire genre.
#49 It probably wasn’t the most appropriate quote to use actually – it’s hip hop’s general (I know it’s not total) disregard for melody and preponderance of street slang that I find such a barrier. There’s a sleevenote on a Linkin Park LP (the one before last I think) where they talk about whether or not to have “melodic singing” on a track which just seems perverse to me.