Or, what happened when a bunch of “shit dance bands” (to quote the always innovative Liam Gallagher) bothered the charts and took to the stages of ‘Top of the Pops’. Featuring The Orb, The Grid, Bizarre Inc, Orbital and Altern 8, Harold Heath gets the lowdown on electronic music’s Thursday night dance with the devil…

As UK dance music exploded into the mainstream in the early-90s, the country’s clubbers began to experience a collective discomfort each Thursday evening as techno acts started to appear on ‘Top of the Pops’. Suddenly, music you’d likely last heard through a decent sound system, uniting a crowd of pinger-ed up ravers at 3am, was being ripped from its original context and played to your family in the front room at teatime. 

For the UK’s early techno acts, while a ‘TOTP’ appearance was an essential business move, it was often a macabre musical charade, a surreal trip into the bloated belly of the corporate beast where competent live electronic acts were forced to mime, a world of furiously stressed producers, backstage Gallagher-related spats and where Dot Cotton from ‘EastEnders’ was seemingly always just around the corner. And they all faced the same issue: how to transfer the raw revolutionary energy of their records and the transcendent group-communion of the rave to an outdated light entertainment TV programme that showcased lukewarm pop and where the mere presence of balloons was considered wild. 

So, how did Phil and Paul Hartnoll from Orbital, Bizarre Inc’s Dean Meredith, Richard Norris from The Grid, The Orb’s Alex Paterson and Mark Archer of Altern 8 deal with a night on ‘The Pops’…

Orbital

Phil and Paul Hartnoll went on ‘Top of the Pops’ a few times over the years, the first of two acts we spoke to who got banned from the show. Their debut appearance was in March 1990 with their fully certified classic ‘Chime’, which hit the national charts while Paul was still working washing up in a pizza restaurant. 

“Us, we played live,” says Phil, “and that was the first problem, because ‘TOTP’ was all mimey, mimey, mimey, so we were like fish out of water… We were going: ‘Please, please, please let us play live, because we can just give you a stereo out of our mixer, that’s it, job done.’ But they weren’t having any of it. 

“It would have been a much better performance because we would be doing things; we wanted them to film us turning knobs and pushing buttons, close up on the 303 and we felt really awkward trying to mime. So, we thought, well, fuck that then! At the time you weren’t allowed to have anything political on your T-shirts on the BBC, and [designer] Grant Fulton who used to do our artwork made us these T-shirts. I had ‘No’ and Paul had ‘Poll Tax’! That was probably the best thing about being on ‘TOTP’, getting away with political slogans on our T-shirts… Once we did it we got banned, but we didn’t get banned for the T-shirts, we got banned for being boring!”

Orbital were accompanied on their ‘TOTP’ debut by a lone silver-jacketed dancer, who apparently was one of the record company's office employees hastily enlisted for the task. “Having to mime and being forced to have a dancer was the worst thing about appearing on ‘TOTP’," Paul recalls. "She was great, but we didn’t see the point, but the BBC at the time couldn’t handle a band that didn’t have a lead singer and insisted on having a dancer instead.” 

“We asked for trestle tables from the canteen and set up on those using the boxes of the gear as we were uncomfortable with the posh keyboard stands they had supplied. We didn’t use them on stage at the time, so it was a case of making it feel like how it would look when we did play live… it was a bit of a weird mix of 'Is this really happening?' and 'This isn’t what I thought it would be like’. The small studio audience that always looked much bigger on TV were standing around confused and trying to like what we were doing!”

They were introduced by Orbital fan, Ibiza raver and UK house early adopter DJ Gary Davies, who had outsmarted BBC Radio 1’s no-instrumentals-during-prime-time rule by playing ‘Chime’ under his daily competition. “Gary Davies was a star!” confirms Paul. 

Nice Orbital ‘TOTP’ sidenote: Phil’s childminder at the time used to play Phil’s kid a video recording of Orbital on ‘TOTP’, who were swiftly followed on the programme by Snap! performing ‘The Power’ and for years, Phil’s kid thought his Dad was in Snap!

Altern 8

After dissolving their techno alias Nexus 21, Chris Peat and Mark Archer’s Altern 8 burst into the UK pop charts with ‘Infiltrate 202’ and then ‘Activ 8’ in the second half of 1991. As such, the duo suddenly found themselves, according to the breathlessly shouty ‘TOTP’ presenter: “Breaking in at number 11 with one of the hardest sounds around!”

In 1991, the BBC had switched from insisting acts mime on TOTP to insisting on live performances, so when Altern 8 appeared to perform ‘Activ 8’, they used a live vocalist and MC to recreate the various samples on the record, although wisely avoided employing a young child to perform its ‘Top one, nice one, get sorted’ refrain. 

“The worst thing about our ‘TOTP’ appearances,” Archer says, “was when the producer changed and they insisted on everyone singing live. This caused problems when dance records used sampled vocals and you had to try and get someone suitable to sing for you. I wasn’t happy with our first performance but because we weren’t a big name we weren’t allowed to re-record our track.”

Altern 8’s infamous amphet-telly tubby/hazmat-suit chic went down well at the BBC: “We were told that there was a meeting at the BBC," Archer explains, "where someone who was representing us tried to impress the producers by stating how we were going to look different from other groups of the same genre who had already appeared. We had to change what we did each time we went on TOTP to make sure we didn’t get boring, so I think our accidental image was a good selling point for the first performance.”

He continues: “It was all very bewildering to be honest, being in the same studio as loads of actual pop stars like Tina Turner and Cher, bumping into Dot Cotton in the canteen… Being there was totally surreal.”

Fun ‘TOTP’ Altern 8 fact: They were briefly banned from the show in 1992, apparently because, as Archer says, “...in an interview I complained about the programme!”

The Grid 

When Dave Ball and Richard Norris first appeared on ‘TOTP’ as The Grid with ‘Crystal Clear’, they were already an accomplished live electronic act. On stage the duo manned their chunky Moog and Oberheim systems, ably assisted by a percussionist and sax player and, as Norris recalls, “secret weapon and legendary Manchester door person” MC/singer Elton Jackson, who for their ‘TOTP’ debut was resplendent in (John) Galliano and (Vivienne) Westwood and perched on a massive plush throne. 

“The producers were a bit unsure of all the new dance acts suddenly hitting the Top 20, as many weren’t traditional bands as such,” Norris says. “We were a little more of a band set-up, since we’d toured extensively, so we thought we’d be fine. However, in one break I sneaked into the producer's control room, and he sat next to me, not sure who I was. Looking at the rest of the band below, randomly jumping up and down, the producer suddenly had a bit of an episode. “WHAT ARE THEY DOING??? WHY AREN’T THEY DANCING?” he shouted, while going a deep shade of red. “AND WHERE’S THE ONE ON THE LEFT GONE???” I replied that I was right here and would pass on the feedback to the band. The room went a bit quiet after that.

“They were all shot in Elstree, next door to the ‘EastEnders’ set... It was nice sitting on the bench in the square, pretty unreal. As was seeing Dot Cotton sitting with a fag chatting to that big bloke from the Do It All adverts in the bar."

The Orb

The Orb's ‘TOTP’ debut famously featured Dr Alex Paterson and Kris Weston responding to the BBC’s insistence on miming by not bringing instruments and refusing to perform. Instead, playing a vastly trimmed-down 7-inch radio mix (you can hear it on their recently released Best-Of ‘Orboretum: The Orb Collection’) of their 39-minute epic ‘Blue Room’, the pair dressed like spangled astronauts playing alien chess, one holding a fluffy sheep, the other an orb, all while some trippy dolphin visuals played behind them. 

Neatly avoiding the BBC no drinking on set rules by decanting bottles of brandy into coke cans, Paterson recalls this didn't go down well with the camera crew and set the tone for the rest of the day: “They really didn’t want us to play chess for a start. And we didn’t want to take any instruments which really pissed them off. And then we turned up drunk and E’d off our tits dressed like spacemen with a film of dolphins floating around behind us…”

The BBC attempted to spice up the performance with some spacey visual effects that made it look like the performance was underwater which was perhaps why they insisted the pair didn’t move while filming. “We were just having a laugh,” Paterson smiles, “but they were all like: ‘Don’t Move! If You Move One More Time We’re Gonna Take You Off The Set!’” 

Aside from bumping into Take That backstage which eventually led to The Orb producing a tripped-out reggae version of the old Bee Gees ‘I Started a Joke’ tune for Robbie Williams (Paterson: “Yeah, there you go, work that one out!”), he also remembers: “I saw the drummer from Def Leppard. Def Leppard! Didn’t see Dot Cotton but we did have a Dot Cotton microdot sheet…”

Bizarre Inc

Bizarre Inc appeared on ‘Top of the Pops’ several times in the early-90s. “It was something you grew up with and suddenly you are asked to appear on there," the band's Dean Meredith remembers, "but it also felt like you were betraying the scene, so it was a double-edged sword scenario. Things were definitely changing as the scene was moving into the charts. It happens with music culture, whether it’s flower power 60s beat, punk, disco, new wave, electro, acid house etc."

Looking back, Meredith admits the band’s appearances look a bit lame today. “I don’t think it transferred well, really we just danced around behind our 909 and samplers! We had live vocals, but the music was on a backing track. Electronic music is never really that exciting to watch in the raw and there are only a few I would want to watch live also performing with computers, sequencers and drum machines, because things tend to go wrong. Remember New Order doing ‘Blue Monday’? But that’s the fun I guess, anything can malfunction. In fact, there was one particular performance when we had these stands that had the gear suspended by chains and one fell apart during recording. They said: ‘Don’t worry that will be edited out.’ It wasn’t unfortunately!

“The best thing was the BBC canteen and having the crack with the other bands. I remember Bryan Ferry’s manager saying to me: ‘I like your shoes, will have to get a pair for Bryan!’” 

There’s a brief Richard Norris anecdote that neatly sums up the early-90s ‘TOTP’ experience for techno acts: “When Oasis were first on,” he says, “we’d been on a couple of times so knew the ropes a bit. Liam was getting a bit mouthy with Grid percussionist Pablo and a standoff ensued. Liam backed down, wisely, which is remarkable, given that Pablo was dressed all in white, wearing a white cowboy hat. Over in the bar, Elton was chatting to Noel as he knew him from Manchester clubbing days, when Liam came up to the table, shouted “Shit Dance Band!!” in Elton’s face, then stormed off. We didn’t get that reaction from Mariah Carey. Or Whigfield. Or Shaggy. Maybe we won’t be getting the support slot on the forthcoming tour after all, eh?”

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UK Techno and Rave Early-90s ‘TOTP’ Appearances, here’s the essential data at a glance:

Orbital: ‘Chime’ (1990) 

Famous people spotted: Neneh Cherry chatting to Boy George

Encountered Dot Cotton? No

Banned: Yes

Podiums: One, begrudgingly

Props/special items: Trestle tables, No Poll Tax T-shirts

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The Grid: ‘Crystal Clear’ (1993)

Famous people spotted: Elton John, that big bloke from the Do It All adverts

Encountered Dot Cotton? Yes

Banned: No

Podiums: None

Props/special items: Red throne

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Altern 8: ‘Activ 8’ (1991)

Famous people spotted: Tina Turner, Kurt Cobain, Cher 

Encountered Dot Cotton? Yes

Banned: Yes

Podiums: None

Props/special items: Branded keyboard lecterns, silver stilt dude

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Bizarre Inc: ‘Playing With Knives’ (1991)

Famous people spotted: Bryan Ferry’s manager

Encountered Dot Cotton? No

Banned: No

Podiums: Two

Props/special items: Double-keyboard set-up, rave ponytail

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The Orb: ‘Blue Room’ (1992)

Famous people spotted: Def Leppard’s drummer, Take That

Encountered Dot Cotton? No, but had a sheet of microdot LSD called Dot Cottons

Banned: No

Podiums: None

Props/special items: Alien chess set, stuffed sheep, an orb

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This article first appeared in issue six of Disco Pogo.