
Morgan-McVey
SONY 1986
A-side: ‘Looking Good Diving’
Prototype for Neneh Cherry breakthrough ‘Buffalo Stance’.
Morgan-McVey may have only released one flop single in their short pop life (okay, two if you count Nick Kamen’s 1990 cover), but its B-side helped launch a star. While the least said about ‘Looking Good Diving’ – an uneasy mix of over-sweetened Scritti Politti-lite with autopilot Stock, Aitken Waterman beats – the better, beneath the sheen (and the dead-eyed posing of its toe-curling video) there’s the germs of something richer. That was teased out on the flip, as Cameron McVey’s future wife Neneh Cherry sprinkled attitudinal raps above the original’s beats and an instantly recognisable burbling synth riff. This B-side had all the constituent parts of ‘Buffalo Stance’ – the raps, the scratches, the chorus, the thematic nod to Malcolm McLaren’s ‘Buffalo Gals’, even the “What is he like refrain” (Cherry’s impersonation of Fat Tony, chief DJ at London’s Wag Club) – but the dynamic is skewed. And had the Wild Bunch’s Nellee Hooper not played it to the Wag’s weekend DJ, Tim Simenon – on the lookout for a new project after Bomb The Bass’s kaleidoscopic sample fest ‘Beat Dis’ went mega – it may have been lost forever. A master sound collagist, Simenon gave it bass, propulsion and depth, before the pregnant 24-year-old Cherry made it iconic, thanks to an unabashed performance on Top of the Pops.