The Rolling "Top of the Pops" BBC4 Revival thread.

Anyone who saw the beginning of Britain's Got Talent last Saturday will know that Ant & Dec still can't dance.

This week's shows only worth it for a few songs - Shampoo, Rozalla, Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry - but still worth it.
Really coming back to me how much Wet Wet Wet can fuck right off.

A good friend of mine until quite recently thought Youssou N'Dour was two blokes called Youssou and Dour.

Haha, that’s brilliant.

My mum thought Del Amitri was a bloke called Derek.

The first time I saw Olivia Newton John on TV, there were three people on stage, so I thought...

What was Wet Wet Wet's deal, exactly? Audience reactions seem to suggest they were a kind of boyband, but their music doesn't resemble NKOTB or even Take That in any way (plus they play instruments). I'm having trouble thinking of another group that you could compare them to, though their uniqueness by no means makes them less crap.

I remember at the time, but can find no current reference to, suggestions that Wishing I Was Lucky had had more spent promoting it than any previous major label debut single.

wishing I was lucky / sweet little mystery were fine, I guess, not for me but w/e

their version of Love Is All Around OTOH is the worst fucking thing of all time and the 15 weeks it spent at number one felt much worse than Bryan Adams 16

the fsol single, I've never heard it before or seen the terribly dated cgi video

except i have both the lifeforms LP and the EP so i must've

fsol video was the worst kind of artless raytraced bollocks that plagued the mid 90s, and the sound was a random snippet which obviously didn't survive being played on my TV speakers, you really wonder why they bothered

FSOL do TOTP properly you cowards

I'm having trouble thinking of another group that you could compare them to

You couldn't move for groups comparable to Wet Wet Wet in Glasgow in the 80s and 90s. Hue and Cry, Texas, Hipsway etc. Always found it amusing that Wet Wet Wet were the most successful of the lot (apart from Texas arguably) because they were a bunch of Rangers fans from Clydebank and not West End hipsters pretending to support Celtic.

Hmmm ok that does scan.

Believe me it was like a plague, and all of them had at least one song with Sugar, Honey or Candy in the title. Tailors did good business though.

used to feel a bit sorry for the WWW guitarist as he was never a member of the band, was left out of photos etc
but then one night he was a total creep to some friends of mine, so fuck him

"Not a dry eye in the house..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0VOJ0Z3vY0

My wife and I always shout “MARTIIEE PELOOOH” in an atrocious accent anytime we see WWW thanks to Limmy.

Believe me it was like a plague, and all of them had at least one song with Sugar, Honey or Candy in the title. Tailors did good business though.

― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.), Sunday, April 30, 2023 11:28 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, not like the Jesus and Mary chain oh hang on....

One of the reasons JANC seemed like cornball provincials to a lot of people on the Glasgow indie scene.

the one PWEI song that i like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAxAOK885B4

I remember well the woman from Texas crashed her scooter into a chelsea tractor outside The Queens right in front of a load of smokers, drinking before MBV played at The Roundhouse. She walked away from it as said smokers all clocked her but were only amused cos fuck those cars

Actually quite impressed they bothered to feature the FSOL video (and a written credit for Fraser as if most viewers would recognise her name and voice) during the chart rundown (lol Mayo's 'mmm...' after it) but the CGI probably has aged worse than anything else on that episode (Pantera's 'Planet Caravan' cover from later in '94 has a similar vid and charted higher than I remember but doubt it will have featured at all).

fsol video was the worst kind of artless raytraced bollocks that plagued the mid 90s

I'm quite fond of it mostly because I see it as an outgrowth of Dougan's Stakker/Eurotechno filmery - of which there was no going back to after even Pot Noodle got in on the fun (plus, the style did wonders in numerous ardkore videos at the same time). But I also can never get Reynolds' pan out of my head: "their music sounds as disgustingly denatured and plasma-morphic as those godawful videos and Buggy G. Riphead cover images." Obviously remove the word 'godawful' and this could read like high praise (and I do like - sometimes love - most of their work from their 94-97 imperial phase a lot).

"FSOL do TOTP properly you cowards"

The Far Out Son of... gets momentarily used as background music the week it charted* while Lee & Herring do their thing but the video never actually appears IIRC (and obv not performed either).

*same week as Oxbow Lakes. A nice moment for formless soundscapery in the top 40.

Just catching up on this episode. That 90s CGI aesthetic has been really popular as a revival style for lots of clubbing and club-adjacent kids the last few years.

Also, I'm going to tell my grandkids that was Linda Perry jumping around in that episode.

Robert Smith looking very winsome tonight

As much as I dislike Jon Bon Jovi and his music, I have to grudgingly acknowledge that 'backing vocalist on a Star Wars LP' to 'Always' is impressive.

Dee dee na na na

Always is even more absolutely fucking irredeemably shit than R2D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas though

It is hard to tell which is the more cynical attempt to sells records.

sell records

the 1983 show, chock full of quietly brilliant records.

Was gearing up to proclaim that there's an amazing happy hardcore remix of Always, but just listened to it for the first time since 1998 and it's total shite.

I get Always mixed up with all those Aerosmith ones.

who wore it better, Debbie Harry or David Sylvian?

David Sylvian, in that show anyway.

The first 1994 show tonight was one of the dullest in ages, only Whigfield at the end to cheer things up. Second show was a bit better, unfortunately Sting and Take That at the end were both a bit of a damp squib.

Punt and Dennis demonstrating how not funny they are.

The more I think about them the more I realise they're a bit crap. They were the weakest part of The Mary Whitehouse Experience (both the radio series and the TV show), their early evening BBC1 comedy sketch show was crap (Newman & Baddiel In Pieces was far superior), their sitcom was crap (like 'Jim Davison Up The Elephant And Round THe Castle' crap), and their radio show is crap (from the few bits I've heard it's obvious 'oh Boris is a bit of a clown' observations).

Their radio show has been going on for, what, a quarter of a century now? And has never been either funny or insightful.

To be in the worse half of a comedy quartet in which the better half contains David Baddiel takes some doing.

That's you that is

Rob Newman does a lot of heavy lifting.

that boyband with the 9 year old looking kid singing about what kind of girl he wants, I know this is technically no different from the Jackson Five but it felt pretty grotesque

Both of Friday's episodes were great, especially the first.

This week's episodes have a higher than usual number of acts whose subsequent singles don't quite match their earlier ones: Sophie B. Hawkins, Whigfield, PJ & Duncan (sounding like two lads from the Sales team at the company wide Christmas talent show).

I was out last Friday, might go and check them out after these finish.

As an aside this guy's YT channel has a mess of old British telly programs, seemingly in very good quality including a mess of music-related stuff like The Tube, OGWT, TOTP and things like this -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C882xK4bcLc

Christmas 1994 episode GO! (I don't remember a thing about it)

If I had watched it at the time, I would certainly have remembered Take That being extremely annoying.