Friday 13 January 2017


"How did I miss that one?" 
Occasionally you hear a song from way back and wonder why you have no memory of it, despite it being very popular at the time. 
Over Christmas BBC4 aired a programme called 'Top of the Pops: Christmas Hits'. Normally such a title would have us grabbing the tv remote, faster than you could sing "Merry Christmas, everyone", and swiftly changing channels. However on this occasion we didn't.
Intrigued no doubt by the opening song, a lesser known track by The Rolling Stones, we remained watching. Aside from a few dodgy 'hits' and a couple of the anticipated well worn festive ditties, the show was more unexpected than expected, playing music spanning four decades.
Question: In 1987 who had one of the biggest UK hit singles of that year? The Bee Gees, Madonna, maybe the Pet Shop Boys? Well Rick Ashley was 'Top of the Pops' for 5 weeks and, shortly before Christmas that year, so was T'Pau with 'China In Your Hand'. As they played this song I simply had no recall of such a big hit.
The single went on to top the charts in 5 other european countries, but didn't do so well in America and Australia. And here lies the explanation for my missing memory. During the height of its popularity I was away in S.E. Asia before moving on to Australia.

No longer missing, here is that TOTP performance.

During research I discovered that the single release was a shortened version of the album track and it was also slightly sped up to reduce its length. I'm sure you'd like to hear the longer version with extra verses plus I also found a 'live' performance with the guitar taking the sax solo. 
Longer version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfvJS4UO7xI
Live version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ch-Z9HqV4

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