STEVE MILLER BAND – "The Joker"

I have to report that this was hugely popular in Crown Woods School sixth form circles, more so than anything contemporary. Eltham kids considered it to be ‘proper geezer music’ – i.e. non-weird melodic rock, while Lewisham kids heard the lines “I’m a smoker – I’m a mignight toker!” with tremendous approval, frequently singing them when toking themselves (“Skin oop!”)

I absolutely *despised* this single at the time, Steve Miller seeming to be the embodiment of every winking-“Chill out mate”-unfunny-‘laidback’-although-actually-very-manipulative-unthinking-inconsiderate-lad-geezer-JackDaniels-stoner-wanker that I’d ever met.

I’ve just heard it again. Jesus God, that bit where he makes the guitar wolf whistle is grotesque.

Yuck.

Wow. I am gobsmacked that this made number one. Being, as I was, in my ZX Spectrum is better than pop music phase at the time.

I just assumed that this was one of the tracks that had sort of fallen into Radio 2. Ummmm – it’s reasonably amiable. The wolf whistle is – erm – well, it’s probably nothing that a million other male guitar player led bands hadn’t done.

I have nothing against this particular song. But nothing for it either. Taking a step back, it’s memorable – choosing it for an ad was a good move, probably. But give me the Bellamy Brothers any time.

So, erm, what happened in the second half of 1990 to make the number 1s suddenly go back in time? We’ve had a Stock/Aitken/Waterman throwback cover from Mr Mallett, now a re-issue, and it’s not the only one to come this year. Just a few months earlier we had the likes of Snap, Adamski and Madonna with tracks as up-to-date as you could imagine for 1990, but they’re not bothering the top spot anymore.

I like The Joker. It’s ridiculous in a good way, especially the ever-welcome “WAHP-WOAWW” bits (including the one right just before the fade out, which catches you off guard and is hilarious). But it sounds as out of place in 1990 as if, say, New Kids On The Block suddenly got to number 1 again now, it’s almost the same time length away as 1973 was then.

Dee-Lite would have been a much more deserving #1 had the UK 7″/radio edit not ridiculously edited out Q-Tip’s rap, which is my favourite part of the song. God knows why, probably same reasons as 2 Unlmited…

That’s odd because Q-Tip is present in the video version as played on TOTP). I give GIITH a 9 (tho it is surely one of the five most beloved floor-fillers of the decade)), The Joker a dismal 3 – always found it way too corny.

For me the next chart-topper is worse tho so am torn between wanting it out of the way ASAP or delaying the pain as much as possible (fortunately not my decision…). The second half of 1990 really did feel like a retro relapse and the revenge of the “golden” oldies (Bobby Vinton, er, one or two others…that said I do prefer these to ‘The Joker’).

I don’t love Groove is in the Heart as much as a lot of other people seem to. It’s good and fun and everything but it’s one of those records that contributed to the overbearing haughtiness of a lot of the dance scene in the nineties. Not that Dee-Lite can be held accountable. The actual vibe of their record made for an endearing fantasy.
No such fantasy is discernable on The Joker. An unwanted arm around the shoulder and a dodgy chat-up line at the Grafton on a Saturday evening. It’s a smarmy record and the sound effects/double entendes just make it twice as tacky.

I love both songs equally, though given my historical fetish for keeping everything in its place I would have vastly preferred to read about Deee-Lite in this spot.

Very odd to think of “The Joker” having any traction in the UK at all; its arrhythmic Deep-South-by-way-of-San-Francisco vibe is I would have thought one of the more quintessentially American sounds, a genial album-rock goof that became an unexpected (but by my lights deserving) sleeper hit thanks to a clever combination of old blues tropes and Miller recycling the least sensical bits of his own old songs, and that wolf-whistle guitar scratch standing in for a hook until they thought of something better. Lazy is right, and all the more lovable for it.

This was number one in the States in January 1974, and it got a fair amount of airplay over here around that time, especially on Radio Luxembourg.

Although it certainly doesn’t sound like it now, it was probably originally a little ahead of its time, as far as the UK was concerned. Songs like this and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils’ “Jackie Blue” would probably have been hits if they had been released in 75 or 76, once the wider public had been more exposed to the likes of the Eagles et al.

I enjoyed it the first time round, and I still like it now, but I too was surprise it did quite so well in 1990, even with the help of the Levi’s ad.

#2 Isn’t the “sold 8 more copies” justification likely to be a load of rubbish though? My understanding of how the chart worked is that, effectively, it was a survey. A sample of record stores around the country – the chart return stores – would have their sales data collected and run through a data entry processor and the chart would be complied from that – this seems to be supported by the pages in England’s Dreaming by Jon Savage dealing with the GSTQ issue. As such, the data is dependent on the sample used and is not a full scale audit of all the sales in any given week from all the shops selling singles. Unless the sample was absolutely huge, 8 copies must easily be within the margin of error, surely? (And, yes, I won’t call you Shirley – that joke works so much better out loud than on the page). And if within the margin of error, you can’t really say that it definitely sold 8 more copies.

Does anyone know better and can correct me? Logisitics of the compliation of the chart not necessarily being my strong suit.

On chart return stores as well, I heard a few tales of people finding out where the chart return stores were (which should have been kept a secret to stop chart rigging) and going and buying masses of copies from them (although not necessarily in this case). Is this true?

The song. Meh. Dad liked it and it was on in the car a lot. Can’t say I hate it but it’s hardly outstanding. 5 seems about right – though from the comments above it seems, that for the people who have replied thus far at least, it’s a lot more polarising than I would have thought.

Well, for what it’s worth I like it. I seem to catch a taste of sour grapes in this thread. It’s a very acceptable piece of country rock (you couldn’t imagine a British band doing it at any time). 5 is harsh. 6 from me, 7 on a good day. I’ve been called reactionary lately – well if this is reactionary so be it.

Re 20: Agreed, Tom, that highest climber seemed the fairest tie-breaker rather than “greater sales increase” – I’m still not entirely sure what that means. More shop orders is a given – it was the number one record in the bleedin’ country! Seeing as The Joker had already been number one, you think they’d give the new kid in town the benefit of the doubt. Also, GiitH must surely have had more sales in specialist shops than The Joker?

Re: chart return shops. By the mid 80s they had a little black box on the counter into which the sales were fed, so no great secret there. Even though I worked in the Peterborough branch of Virgin in 1985 I can’t remember how we fed the the info in – barcode, I imagine.

Having seen (and done) it, large-scale buy-ups of singles – ten in one hit, anyway – did happen!

Indeed, the gag was rather played out back then, when the Labour leadership campaign was in full swing. Sadly, no mention for the even more neglected fourth Miliband brother, Glenn, who’s been missing for some time now.

I liked “The Joker” a lot when it first came out, although wouldn’t die in a ditch as to its merits (prefer “Rock’n Me” or “Fly Like An Eagle”, the latter of which was to be purloined by a certain white rapper we’re going to meet shortly). “Joker” was a feelgood song, none too serious, and of its time. Would have loved it to be a big hit in 1973, but here it did seem out of place and indicative of the power of the ad campaign rather than the music when, as many here have said, people wanted to get on with the 90s.

Wouldn’t have begrudged GIITH a turn at the top, either. I think DJ Punctum of this parish was well aware of his local chart return shop, if memory serves…

Much prefer The Joker to GIITH but agree with the general anti-revivalist sentiment many have expressed. The record’ is a 7 in the ’70s but presumably less than that in the ’90s (looking ahead there are some *ace* record revivals coming up that are going to be painful to have to score relatively lowly for lack of timeliness, oh well).

Somewhat related to Tom’s Tarantino point: there was a (rather Apatow-ish/bromantic) 1996 rom com called The Pompatus of Love which featured endless sub-Reservoir Dogs dialogue about The Joker and its famous, silly line.

From reading these pages I get the impression that Mr Billy Smart went to school very near me. The names of the schools clang like old bells in my head.

Some people were into ‘smoking’, but you never heard about ‘toking’.

There was a lot more of a drug culture in my school than (almost) any group that I’ve known since. Cannabis everywhere and the focal interest of Lewisham kids, some E, but oddly acid still had quite a following at the time (“Ya tripping? Ya tripping?”), which you don’t really think of as being a 1990 London concern. I don’t remember there being any speed, though there was some experimentation with amyl nitrate.

I didn’t really feel a part of any of this, though I was coerced into toking on occasions, always with the abrasive effect of the tobacco far outweighing any mellowing power that the cannabis might contain.

It was a difficult time.

Oddly, my generation weren’t very interested in drinking though, the presence of alcohol being taken as a given, and its effects being seen as much less interesting than drugs.

I’m with Ewing on that one – don’t know the Doors that well but they strike me as the worst of the major 1960s bands – if they were indeed a major 1960s band.

This makes me think that I sort of like all 1960s bands except when they’re really psychedelic / prog or something (eg I don’t think I like J Airplane, or Pink Floyd bar the very early songs that everyone knows). Doors had other bad things going on though – vocally, lyrically, bathos, bad in lots of ways, I would think, and not that much to redeem them.

#18 I imagine you’re right – a lot of “close run things” would have had to be sorted out this way. Speaking as someone who works in data analysis for a media company though, if I turfed up data that was that close my conclusion would not be “this one is higher than that one” but “these are, on the balance of probability the same”. Agreed that basically that this was a failure of imagination on behalf of the charts – they could have run with the story if it were a tie.

Interesting stories on the chart return stores – the leaking of their location must have been people at the relevant research companies taking a back hander to let people know where they were going to be. The PR companies knowing before the shops involved is pretty funny.

Funny really, at the time it made No1 in the USA, it was held up as an example of how inferior the UK charts were compared to the US.

I believe it did get released over here. As did a whole bunch of his singles from this point onwards, with plenty of airplay, to no effect until “Rock’n’me” finally crept into the lower reaches…

I loved Groove is in the Heart and still do, especially its cheeky purloining of that great bass line from, if memory serves, Herbie Hancock’s soundtrack to Blow Up?

And talking of bass lines, The Doors would have benefitted from a bit of bass guitar on their first few albums. Very tinny sounding they are. And not very good really. Part of the problem is they are so precious as musicians, without any of the verve of contempories like Hendrix, the Stones, Zep etc

Quite like bits of Morrison Hotel and LA Woman though – Love Her Madly, Peace Frog, Queen of the Highway

As for The Joker, it bored me. But then I hated the whole Levis ad tie-in thing.

I think Smash Hits must have run a report on chart return shops, showing a picture of a Dataport (possibly) machine, because we kept trying to lean over the counter in WH Smiths to see if they had one.

They probably didn’t, or Duran Duran would’ve had way more No.1s.

The Joker? I didn’t like it, but I remembered a mid-80s Spandau Ballet interview where Gary Kemp said they had a special dance for it at school.

Here’s Steve and the latest incarnation of his band playing “The Joker” on Later with Jools last October, with 2010 Poptimist favourites Cee-Lo Green and Janelle Monae appearing to rather enjoy it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bokGbTtJ5Nw
I do love that bass line and the drum sound, though, even if the song isn’t all that great.

I never really noticed this before, but SM sounds VERY like Elvis Costello. Or I guess vice versa.