I was looking at a chart breakdown from 1995
yesterday, just getting my head in the game for
this deep dive, and the energy jumping off the
page is just, it's chaotic. Oh, it was a totally
frantic time. The turnover in the charts was
incredibly high, trends were shifting week to
week, and the line between underground, cool,
and pop was getting violently blurred. Violently
blurred is right. And sitting right in the center
of that chaos is the group we are unpacking today.
We're talking about the British group, Clock.
Right. Now, if you were listening to the radio
or, you know, going to clubs in the UK or Europe
in the mid -90s, you couldn't avoid them. They
were everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Glow
sticks, high -tempo beats, the whole nine yards.
Yeah. But looking at the sources we've pulled
together for you today, so we're going through
their Wikipedia history, the official discography,
and a ton of old chart data. It turns out Clock
wasn't really a band in the traditional sense.
No, not at all. It was more like a machine. Our
mission today is to unpack that machine. We're
going to look at the mechanics of 90s dance music,
the bizarre split between producers and performers,
and one of the most surprising career pivots
in music history. Machine is actually the perfect
word for it because clock is one of the best
case studies we have for the Eurodance formula.
Right. This wasn't four friends meeting in a
garage to write songs about their feelings. This
was a studio project specifically designed to
bridge the gap between the hardcore rave scene
and like Saturday morning kids TV shows. Which
sounds like a recipe for disaster, honestly.
Yeah. Trying to please the ravers and the pop
kids at the same time. Usually you just end up
pleasing neither. Well, that's where the tension
lies in this whole story. And to understand how
they managed it, we really have to look at the
architecture of the group. Let's start with their
origin. So Clock formed in Manchester, England,
and they were active basically from 1993 to 1999.
A very specific, very intense window of time.
Extremely. And we talk about the visuals because
that's what people remember, right? If I pull
up a video of Clock right now, I see a very specific
dynamic. I see a rapper. And a female vocalist.
Exactly. You're seeing Marcus Thomas, who went
by the name ODC MC, and Lorna Saunders, who performed
as Tinka. Tinka, right. Yeah, they were the face
of Clock. They were the ones on the single covers,
doing the dance routines on top of the pops,
giving the interviews. You're using the term
face quite deliberately there. I am. Because
in 90s dance music, the face and the brain were
rarely the same people. Marcus and Lorna were
fantastic performers, obviously integral to the
brand, but they weren't. the ones staying up
until four in the morning programming drum machines.
The true architects, the real band, were two
producers, Stu Allen and Pete Pritchard. It's
that classic Milli Vanilli anxiety that kind
of hung over the whole 90s, isn't it? The idea
that what you see isn't what you hear. It is,
but with Clock, it wasn't a scandal. It was just
industry standard. It was accepted that the producer
was the artist and the front man was essentially
a cast member. Like a theater production. Exactly
like that. Stu Allen and Pete Pritchard were
the directors and scriptwriters, and Marcus and
Lorna were the actors delivering the lines. But
even the actors' part gets a bit murky when you
really dig into the sources. Yeah. I was reading
through the liner notes of their discography,
and there's a track called Keep the Fires Burning.
Oh, this is a great example. Right. Because if
I'm watching the video for that song, I'm seeing
Lorna. So naturally, you assume you're hearing
Lorna. Which is a totally logical assumption,
but an incorrect one. On that specific track,
the vocals were actually provided by Georgia
Lewis. Georgia Lewis. So we have a producer making
the beat, a session singer recording the vocal,
and then a performer lip syncing in the video.
It's like a Russian nesting doll of identities.
It creates a fascinating disconnect for the fans.
The audience is bonding with an image. They project
their fandom onto Lorna and Marcus. But the sonic
DNA of the track comes from a completely different
set of people. It really makes you wonder who
you're actually a fan of. The person dancing
or the person pushing the buttons? Speaking of
pushing buttons, we should probably get into
the sound itself. Because before they were the
polished pop act covering Axl F, they were coming
from a much grittier place. Yeah. Manchester
in the early 90s wasn't exactly known for bubblegum
pop. Absolutely not. Manchester was the epicenter
of a very specific, hard -edged dance scene.
And Stu Allen, one of those producers, was a
legend in that world. Right. He had serious roots.
He did. He wasn't a pop guy originally. He was
a hip -hop DJ and a hardcore rave pioneer. And
if you listen to the early clock tracks, the
stuff driven by the club scene, you really hear
that lineage. How so? Like, what should you be
listening for? Well, compare it to the... Italian
Euro dance of the time, acts like capella. The
Italian sound was very polished, very sequencer
heavy. It had that clean galloping best line.
The classic do -do -do -do -do sound. Exactly.
Klopp took that structure but injected it with
the UK rave virus. They used breakbeats. Instead
of just a steady thump -thump -thump kick drum,
they layered in these choppy syncopated drum
loops. Which gives it that rougher texture. It
felt urgent. It felt like it belonged in a dark,
sweaty warehouse, not a bright discotheque. So
they have this credibility. They have the underground
cool factor. But then they start charting. And
this is where we get to the part of the story
from our sources that I find just, I find it
so fascinating. It's the Visa secret. The Visa
alias. This blew my mind. So the producers are
seeing Clock get famous, getting played on daytime
radio. But they're terrified of losing their
street cred with the hardcore rave crowd. So
they invent a secret identity. It was a survival
mechanism. In the 90s, the tribalism in music
was intense. If you were pop, you were the enemy
of the underground. You couldn't be both. Right,
you get bottled off the stage. Exactly. So Stu
and Pete devised a workaround. They would release
the mainstream, radio -friendly version of a
track under the name Clock. Okay. Then they would
take the stems of that exact same track, speed
it up, pitch up the vocals to that chipmunk frequency,
distort the kick drums, and release it as a white
label record under the name Visa. But did it
actually work? Or was it one of those things
where everyone in the scene kind of knew and
was just winking at each other? Oh, it worked
surprisingly well. The Visa tracks became massive
anthems in the darker, harder clubs. Wow. There
were plenty of kids sweating it out to Visa on
a Friday night who would have turned their nose
up at clock on Saturday morning, never realizing
they were listening to the exact same producers.
and often the exact same melodies. That is incredibly
cynical, though, isn't it? Selling the exact
same product to two warring factions. I wouldn't
call it cynical. I'd call it pragmatic. They
understood that the packaging, the tempo, the
drum sounds, the name on the record mattered
more to that specific audience than the melody
itself. It allowed them to have church success
without completely abandoning their roots. I
guess you can pay the bills with clock and feed
your soul with visa. But eventually, the bills
take priority. As time went on, the pop side
of the equation definitely started to take over.
The breakbeats faded out and we entered the era
of the covers. The covers. This is really the
defining legacy of clock for the general public.
It feels like around 1995, they just collectively
decided. Why write new songs when there are perfectly
good old songs we can just speed up? Well, looking
at the chart data we pulled, it's really hard
to argue with their logic. 1995 was their golden
year. They transitioned from a credible dance
act to a bona fide chart juggernaut. Let's break
down the discography from that year because it
is wild. Starting with Axl F, which is just a
bold choice. Taking the instrumental synth theme
song from Beverly Hills Cop and trying to make
people dance to it. It is bold. But think about
the melody. That synth line is a massive earworm.
Everyone knows it. But the original is mid -tempo.
Right. Clock took that recognizability and applied
the Eurodance template. Crank the tempo to 140
BPM, put a massive kick drum underneath it, and
suddenly you have a track that triggers a dopamine
hit of nostalgia and the physical urge to move.
And it worked. Axl F, released as a double A
-side with Keep Pushin', reached number seven
in the UK. A huge hit. And then they just kept
doubling down. Woof! There it is. That was their
biggest hit of all, peaking at number four. And
notice the pattern there. They didn't pick an
obscure track to cover. They picked a song by
Tag Team that had already been a massive hit
in the U .S. They were taking proven commodities
and Euro -izing them. I have to ask, is that
just lazy? Just via -roxing other people's homework?
You could view it as lazy, sure. But from a pure
production standpoint, it's actually quite difficult
to do well. Really? Yeah. There were hundreds
of cheap dance covers released in the 90s that
went absolutely nowhere because they sounded
cheap. Clocks' productions were punchy, they
were loud, and mixed perfectly for radio. They
managed to make woof sound like it belonged on
the same playlist as Oasis. That takes real skill.
They certainly committed to the strategy. That
same year... Everybody hit number six. They had
albums charting, too. The album It's Time hit
number 27 in 95, and About Time, too, hit number
56 in 97. They were relentlessly productive.
And the covers just kept coming. Later on, they
had, oh, what, A Night Reaching over 13 in 96,
and You Sexy Thing hit number 11 in 97. Over
the course of the 90s, they managed a string
of top 40 hits with nine different covers. Nine.
It's a staggering amount. They proved that familiarity
plus a high BPM was an absolute winning formula,
but it also points to the limitation of the project.
Also, when you rely on other people's songs that
heavily, you start building your own identity.
You become a delivery system for melodies rather
than an artist with a distinct message. Which
usually signals that the end is near. You can
only run that high tempo engine for so long before
it overheats. Exactly. And the intense pace we
talked about at the beginning, it wasn't just
the tempo of the music. It was the lifestyle,
the burnout inherent in the industry. We see
this so often in these deep dives into 90s bands.
The lineup changes started happening. In 1998,
Marcus Thomas left to join a band called Sant.
And when you lose the face of the group. the
illusion really starts to crumble. They did try
to replace him. They brought in a rapper named
Chagon Peters, but the magic was fading. And
by 1999, the group completely disbanded. The
official reasons cited were a mix of personal
reasons and just an inability to continue at
that same intense pace. The shelf life of high
-energy dance groups is notoriously short. Plus,
the Eurodance bubble was bursting, trance was
coming in, UK Garage was bubbling up. The sound
of clock was just becoming a relic. Yeah. Their
time was up, pun completely intended. So 1999
hits, the party's over. Usually this is the part
of the show where we find out they spent the
next 20 years touring student unions singing
Axl F. Which many of their peers did. But Lorna
Saunders -Tinka, she did something else entirely.
This is the where are they now reveal that I
still can't quite wrap my head around. It's one
thing to leave the music industry, but it's another
to jump into perhaps the most... Opposite profession
imaginable. It really is. So let's set the scene
based on the articles we found. It's 2004. Lorna
appears on the TV show Nevermind the Buzzcocks
in their celebrity identity parade lineup. Where
they had to guess which one was the pop star
from 10 years ago. Right. And on that show, it's
announced she's working as a legal secretary.
Which is a sensible, steady job after the chaos
of the 90s. But she didn't stop there. By 2015,
it was revealed that she had become a fully qualified
lawyer working for a firm called Jackamans. A
practicing lawyer. Dealing with serious legal
matters. Married, two children, completely removed
from the pop spotlight, from top of the pops
to a law firm. It's an unusual but incredibly
impressive trajectory. You know, initially I
thought that was such a bizarre pivot. But the
more you think about it, you mentioned earlier
that being in clock was like being an actor.
You learn a script, you perform, you present
this confident face to the public. Yes. Being
a lawyer is also a performance. Yeah. You have
to be prepared. You have to be persuasive. That's
a brilliant connection. In the 90s, she had the
discipline to maintain that high energy persona
night after night. She took that exact same grit
and applied it to law. It's the ultimate post
-pop survival story. But we can't close the book
on clock without talking about the other side
of that partnership. The brain behind the face.
Yes, Stu Allen. The sources end on a very somber
note regarding him. He passed away in September
2022. He was only 60 years old. It was gastrointestinal
cancer. There's just no age at all. It's not.
And we really have to take a moment to acknowledge
his role. Clock might have been his big commercial
pop success, but Stu Allen was the architect
behind the sound that defined a massive era of
Manchester music. He was a true pioneer for that
scene. He really was. His legacy isn't just the
pop covers. It's in the break beats and the hardcore
rave culture he helped build. It brings us right
back to the duality of the group. You have Lorna,
the visible star who completely reinvented herself.
And you have Stu, the invisible architect who
stayed true to the music his whole life. It raises
a really interesting final thought for you to
chew on. When we look back at the 90s, we remember
the faces in the music videos. We remember Marcus
and Lorna. But the true creators, people like
Stu Allen and Pete Pritchard, remain in the background.
It really begs the question. In the context of
electronic dance music, who actually is the band?
Is it the image that sells the record or is it
the sound coming out of the speakers? That is
exactly the kind of question that makes digging
into these old charts so rewarding because nothing
is ever as simple as it looks on the surface.
Never. So, listener, here is your homework. Go
look up the track, the rhythm. But try to find
the Visa remix. Put on your headphones and see
if you can hear that exact moment where the hardcore
rave beat fights against the commercial pop melody.
You'll hear the whole history of 90s dance music
in that one track. You really will. Thanks for
taking this trip back to the dance floor with
us. We'll catch you on the next deep dive.