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

Because, the first one (tonight) is 1976, where we get :

01/04/1976
With Abba, the Brotherhood of Man, the Beatles, Fox, John Miles, Diana Ross and Sailor. (R).

Then after that they are on Thursday night, 7:30pm, and basically are running weekly, each
episode being from (exactly) 35 years ago (near enough)..

Until BBC4 sack it.

Brilliant idea. I can relive my childhood. My earliest musical memories (from pre-school days) are stuff like Abba, The Wurzels, Showaddywaddy and Hot Chocolate.

This docu that's on now makes grim viewing.

The docu made some interesting points, and for all that I'd have loved if they'd started in 1964 (or whenever), 1976 is a good year to kickoff from.

The big point made was that the charts had become a 'variety' show source, as opposed to the 'teen hit parade' of the sixties. So, loads of Mathis, Roussos, BroMan, Abba and Radio DJs having comedy send-up hits.

It'll be like this for a while, but one I do remember being somewhat of a life changing moment was when Eddie and the Hot Rods did "Get out of Denver",and I went straight out and bought the (expensive) ep the next day.

I know, thesedays peopple decry the rods as being "not as seminal as Dr Feelgood", but I saw a repeat on TOTP2 and it was as good as I remembered. So, soon come, that show which showed the juxtaposition of this band against the other acts on that night.

(also, it means that the quality of dodgy Punk TOTP compilation DVDs are going to shoot up. If they get that far, of course)

What tickled me most was the former TOTP producer saying that they didn't get the Pistols on for "Anarchy In The UK" (which peaked at #38) because it didn't chart high enough, very important that we always stuck by the rules etc etc... followed by an April 1976 show featuring two (useless) acts which never charted at all.

The Hot Rods did well to get a TOTP appearance for "Get Out Of Denver", as a) the Live At The Marquee EP peaked at #43 and b) it was the lead track on the B-side.

It was track 2 on the a-side, but yeah.

Also, the funny was having Dave Bartram saying "yeah, a TOTP appearance guaranteed you a top 10 hit" and demonstrating this with a screening of their massive top (fillinasecond) hit "Trocadero"...

32

xpost - Aaargh, so it was!

The big point made was that the charts had become a 'variety' show source, as opposed to the 'teen hit parade' of the sixties. So, loads of Mathis, Roussos, BroMan, Abba and Radio DJs having comedy send-up hits.

Am I misunderstanding? cos the 60s had big hits for Ken Dodd, Englebert Humperdinck, the Barron Knights etc etc

Oh sure, but the theory being that those were in the minority, show-content wise.

oh on the show. yeah probly fair enough. chartwise it was variety a-go-go

Yeah, I don't think the point was that the charts had become (more) like a variety show, but that TOTP had.

fuck Noel Edmonds and his 'comedy' links

fuck Noel Edmonds and his 'comedy' links

I know, what a dick. Still we had the Four Seasons doing "Silver Star" this week. Also Eric Carmen's "interview" with Noel Edmonds, where you couldn't hear a word he was saying, don't be shy Eric!

Interviews on TOTP? that's a rarity...

"Inteview" not really the word.

"You wrote a song for Dana didn't you?"
"Mumble mumble mumble"
"What's the best song you've ever written?"
"Mumble mumble mumble All By Myself"
"Well all the best with the new single"
"Mumble"

Don't know what song he wrote for Dana

Oh and Noel was saying what a good album "Eric Carmen" was: a rare display of good taste from Edmonds there!

Noel had to say he liked it cos he didn't want to blow a raspberry.

My god that it horribly formed.

*is*

OK so Google tells me Dana covered "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again" from the aforementioned "Eric Carmen" album

Is Dana the one who did some religious kids programme called 'Wake Up Sunday'?

Sounds likely

10CC, "Mandy Fly Me" was on too. Fantastic!

NEdmonds always had his love of singer-songwriters, to be fair.

Big fan of Harry Chapin, yer Edmonds.

Balderdash certainly describes droll Noel's career.

This was easily the most WTF song on this week's show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iISUroWbu2U

I watched last night's 1976 episode, it was amazingly and compellingly bad. Lots of odd-looking folks I've never heard of awkwardly performing novelty songs, and one of Pan's People doing some remarkably gratuitous ass-shaking in the direction of the camera. I need more.

70s was the golden age for ugly blokes, you could still end up in a band on TOTP with groupies galore. Rubettes' (sans caps) song sounded more like the Beatles than the Rutles!

I'm watching this now. LOL at the male members of the Vagabonds miming the female backing vocals. Something massively depressing about second tier disco groups though, like they're trapped in time, it's as if they're composed entirely of all the bits of late 70's disco that don't influence music today.

Shoeless and carrying a walking stick with a bicycle bell on it? Fucking hell, Harpo could teach Lady gaga a thing or two.

Sheer Elegance one of the most misnamed bands ever judging by what they were wearing, the uglyness of the Rubettes & their overcocky drummer, the utter WTFness of Harpo. mandatory viewing from now on!

I'm sure Punk would never of happened if Sky+ would of been available in 1976...ended up fast forwarding most of last night's show...bring back Noosha Fox...become a little obsessed with s-s-single bed...

^^^ same goes for watching it on iPlayer. I don't know if 'compellingly bad' is the term, or just 'bad'.

the uglyness of the Rubettes & their overcocky drummer

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx-aH0oBscw

definitely 'compellingly bad' for me. and Fox lady really reminded me of Alison Goldfrapp which is a Good Thing.

Noosha F missing link between Clare Grogan and Goldfrapp. Love that record.

Ah, been catching up via good old iplayer on the wii.

Old enough to remember these episodes quite clearly in some cases.

Sad that they haven't gone back far enough in time to have Sparks on.

Still, don't recall that Gilbert O'Sullivan song though I must have heard it then.

Oh, last I heard, they are definitely doing this run for a year.

After that? Who knows...

Still, don't recall that Gilbert O'Sullivan song though I must have heard it then.

He was long gone as commercial proposition by 1976. That song sounded like a demo, did artists have to re-record tracks? I know they had to re-record vocals, hence the ubiquity of the Ladybirds. But then other acts obviously just mimed to the record.

They did 'have' to.

A lot of them switched the tapes post-session, apparently.

ooooooo-oooooooooooooh Vienna it's Slik

It's Midge Uuuurrrr...

And Paul knickerless

Jesus Christ, superstar?

DLT looks like Badly Drawn Boy.

This is sooooo much better than last weeks....

Only one novelty act so far.

Shit Brotherhood Of Man are still number one...

Jesus christ.

Mmm, snooker is better than Phil docs, but.

but both are a load of old balls?

snooker next Friday too

snooker loopy nuts are we
us and them and him and me
we'll show you
what we can do
we can mess up the schedule
worse than Prince Phillip too

pot the reds and
screw that
because Vanilla Ice is never
coming back
snooker loopy nuts are we
we're all snooker
loopy

they're just trolling us now

Re-runs resume. Bizarre to see Shaky perform a Christmas song in May but we've landed in mid December 1990.

the trolling continues

Of the video for 'Freedom', George Michael said something to the effect that "people will enjoy watching it more that I'm not in it".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w8XVtETu98
from 14m25s onwards

return to form there for jive bunny.

not much mixing in that grease megamix.

Worst two show run of the year?

Yes. There have been worse individual shows but these last two are the worst back-to-back shows in a while.

I guess Christmas is often the time of the year the charts are at their most tedious, but fingers crossed January might bring something better.

there are already green shoots of recovery in the breakers section, first show was bizarre in that there were four climbers in the top 10 and they played none of them!

Christmas Day 1990 TOTP on now.

Andi Peters in 'about to hit the gym' action.

That could have been edited down to half an hour and there'd still have been filler.

I really am not sure why they didn't edit out the old Xmas number one clips.

Coming very soon then; Shoe-gazing hits!

High point was the live version of Killer, it wasn’t the worst Christmas show at all though, even if all the old clips were a bit dull - maybe in 1990 you weren’t bombarded with them quite as much as now when November 1st appears to be the start of Christmas.

Some Killer mostly filler.
Radio 1 did play Slade's Zmas joint back in the early 90s but it definitely wasn't like today's streaming dominated chart where for Nov/Dec it's seemingly every Christmas song ever recorded including at least three versions of 'Let It Snow' and Tones & I's 'Dance Monkey'.

I wasn't into the reworked Killer, it changed a lot of what was so great about it and added nothing much in the way of good new bits.

For sure, the single version is at least a 9 out of 10 for me. The vowel-y synth line wasn‘t great and ran for far too long, but taken in the context of a live perfomance I think overall this rawer take worked well with the switch-up to the syncopated rhythm added more energy at a good time and the bleepy stabs in the middle 8 were a nice variation. 7.5/10

ah, that time of the year when there's a metal #1...

(happened quite a bit - sales are generally down after Christmas but the avid metal fans would make an effort to buy there new iron maiden)

also, Grebo week. poppies vocals were terrible.

Sounded like PWEI's backing track was turned way down.

Have I missed the 'highlights of 1991' show or did they just launch into the new year without showing one?

there isn't one.

Well, this is a bummer! 😔 .@russty_russ and anyone else who is following this programme. pic.twitter.com/CcbzqZRVU1

— 80s Retro (@1980s_Retro) May 21, 2021

This is an outrage

I think it will get made eventually, just not at this present time

I'd rather they crack on with the episodes than hang around for months waiting for it to get made like they seemed to with 90.

Someone tell The Stranglers it's not the 80s.

story of '84 on over the weekend and what i think was Mike Reid trying to rewrite history when talking about Relax. he said he was doing a chart rundown show and they were overrunning so he was looking for something to cut...

best of the tube on London Live covering a lot of the same ground recently - siouxsie, frankie, lauper, madonna...

This follow up single from Vanilla Ice is so dire that I'd completely forgotten about it "your body's getting hot yo, so I can smell it"

When I was at sixth form college I had a Saturday job in FADS ('the paint and paper people'). At the start of 1991 the manager decided to jazz things up a bit and replaced the nondescript muzak with something that he thought would get the customers rolling in: more muzak, but this time reinterpretations of current hits. So there's a lot of songs here that are sending shivers down my spine as I recall hour after boring hour of peeling old price tags off of tins of paint / selling rolls of wallpaper to the soundtrack of naff cover versions by cheap session musicians played on an endless loop week after week. I know the Queen song, the Robert Palmer song, the Seal song, the Candi Staton song inside out...but only in their reimagined form. They even had Do the fucking Bart Man on the tape. Devotion by Nomad is actually pretty good, but not when the rap is delivered by what sounded like a very bored Dale Winton.

FADS, like DER, Rumbelows, Do It All and Timothy Whites - all long-gone fixtures of the late 80s/early 90s high street.

Because I am old, I tend to think of FADS as a new thing, as that’s what Ellison’s in Liscard became - where my older brother was sacked from his Saturday job for refusing to unload the van in torrential rain. It’s one thing to turn up at Eric’s covered in paint, but looking like a drowned rat wasn’t on.

This run of TotPs still uniformly bad - constantly dreadful choices from the chart, the odd gem.

mbv in chart rundown during first show, but i'm guessing they went out in time for the second show.

instead we have people like steffi who looks like she could do with a good meal.

To Here Knows When on Top of the Pops would have been incredible

I missed the chart rundown on the radio, apparently that was something...

Yeah, I definitely remember hearing it on the radio on the Sunday evening. It didn't exactly fit in with the rest of the charts.

That DJH performance was an absolute shocker.

MBV on the R1 chart rundown was Tommy Vance. “Incredible atmosphere on that record” he said. I took my AM/FM Walkman with me to David Collett Hall just to hear it (koogs will know that place).

I'm surprised that the isn't anything eps didn't at least scrape the charts.

railway children and Julian cope deserve a mention. the Xpansions not so much.

(never got any nearer to david collett than the library, despite being in elvyn richards for 3 years - every place i had reason to go to was in the other direction)

(I had a poke around campus on Google the other day - much of it has changed, and some of it (which must have been there in the early '90s) didn't seem familiar. Students Union doesn't look how I remember it at all).

Get out of town Xpansions is a banger, Railways Children so boring.

The Chart Show played the video for "Swallow"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSR0-X6nwpA

it's odd when you think how there were only four TV channels and a very limited amount of music programmes at this point, that this got the playout over something more conventional

And on a Saturday lunchtime too.