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"...

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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...

Suede (or as a French aquaintence pronounced it, "Sue Ed"), a glorious rough around the edges mess that I fell in love with the first time I saw this performance.

Always a good sign when the presenter makes a snarky remark.

Like boxedjoy I am a handful of episodes behind. A surprisingly good performance by Extreme in this one!

The song's distinctly mediocre, but they're giving it so much welly.

Miles more entertaining than this dreary Weller number anyway.

1993 on bbc2 today (iplayer). they are getting ahead of themselves.

I was in first year of secondary school in ‘93 and as a result listened to a hell of a lot of Radio 1 while doing homework, in the absence of money to go buy music. As a result every lyric of every last song on this special is burned indelibly into my memory, even songs I haven’t heard for maybe 28 years. It may just be nostalgia but to me this special is just wall to wall classics.

By the end of the year I was buying NME / Melody Maker / Select and deep into learning guitar. I often wonder if my first year of school had been one of those ‘crap for pop’ years how different I would have ended up.

I’d met Brett Anderson a few days previous to this at their gig in Manchester and was horrified at just how short he’d cut his hair since. He looked much more casual and slightly disheveled when I saw him, I think it offended me that he’d made such an effort to smarten up. What a clot I was.

1994 tomorrow

they are really spoiling us with these.

No no, no no no no, no no no no...

I thought I'd clicked on the rolling stones thread, and was gonna say "I thought it was "Doo do Doo doo doo" "
etc

Ha ha!

xp Chartbreaker

1994 seemed to start late so the recorder cut off the end. but they were onto the Brit pop by then so i doubt i missed much

enjoyed the dawn penn section

Before tonight's TOTP revival show on BBC4, I had no memory of The Farm covering the Human League's 'Don't You Want Me' in 1992.

I now feel very nostalgic for the time when I wasn't aware of this monstrosity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmwNwXcEA30

yeah, totally unnecessary.

conversely i didn't know about bjorn again covering erasure but that worked well.

1995 tonight

I'd totally forgotten about The Farm's cover. Bjorn Again's Erasure cover better than I remember. I guess dozens of crap ABBA tribute bands have affected my memory of them, but they were actually pretty good.

xp story of 1995, followed by the biggest hits of 1995, followed by over two spirit-crushing hours of Oasis nonsense.
I was wondering if the back to back broadcast of these latest few Story Of... programmes was because BBC4 might be about to sack these TOTP re-runs. But then I remember we're on the edge of Britpop and maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea? I was away at university by this point and didn't get to see TOTP much for a few years - anyone remember if those shows were any good?

I don't know why they'd stop showing the re-runs. Mind you, I also don't know why they didn't show the 1991 and 1992 shows until we were already halfway through the 1992 repeats and then decided to start showing the rest of the 90s ones long before those episodes were going to be shown.

91 and 92 roundups were victims of covid, i thought, editing suites and studios shut, nobody able to be talking heads (ironically as that's what everybody else had been reduced to)

i think bbc4 less likely to stop repeats given that it's been reduced to the archive channel. but yes, the Saturday evenings on bbc2 seem to be heading on bbc4 Friday evenings' ground a bit

quo vs oasis by the look this week.

bbc4 getting its own back later in the week by showing snooker...

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0086/6995/4110/products/IMG_5921_c00b0906-6a71-4cb5-ba34-8645ae5feeb5_1200x1200.jpg

Mentioned on this months Chart Music podcast. This has to be the coolest TOTP performance, I cant stop watching it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU_XhM-4S1Y

That's quite something

Only really liked Trio when they were performing live, or miming as on TOTP

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46OoOtOnEuo

I've got miles behind again, but caught up on a few episodes last night. Really like Bizarre Inc - I'm Gonna Get You, one of those tunes that you know but can't remember who it's by or what it's called. Not sure if the worst outfit ever award goes to the cossack-tetris crew or Andy Bell.

story of 1998 tonight. I'm not sure i remember the last two.

and the last weekly show was Christmas special which are never great

xp I always get the feeling that there's a deliberate intention behind Andy Bell's costume decisions, even if I don't know what it is. Gluing styrofoam Tetris blocks onto a bodysuit however is pretty bad.

It's never a good sign when the Christmas episode is mostly going through the year month by month showing clips of songs. It means the producers thought there weren't enough strong enough songs to fill out an entire show. Despite moving away to university in late 1992 and not ever really watching TOTP even after a housemate got a TV, I remember seeing the 1992 Christmas show at my parent's house. I didn't think much of it then either.

1998 a really awful year for pop.

I don't know what East 17 were trying to do here but they look like they're channelling Madness.

It must be love ..

The 'smoke weed twice a day' crew at university really like Duran Duran's 'Ordinary World' for some reason that I could never figure out. For me the song is an underwhelming attempt at... maturity? reflectiveness? coming to terms with their 80s past? I don't know. But I much prefer the (wild) boys when they're acting like pompous coked up yuppies worrying about their expense accounts and Learjets and Renoirs.

There must be some kind of name for this kind of landfill dance music that consists of one line of vocals repeated over and over again, but it just reminds me of being in a shit-arse Ritzy's nightclub in the early 90s.
I was so focussed on my dislike of Sting at the start of tonight's second show that I completely missed Take That standing right next to him.
I've come to the conclusion that Stereo MCs are the Muse of dance music. Once you've heard three of their songs there's really no need to hear any more, and you can watch a video of either of these bands with the sound off and still know what the song probably sounds like.

C'mon, Ordinary World has such an undeniable chorus.

Ordinary World is amazing when it has a big stadium trance backing and a singer with a pleasant voice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA39yqwnX98

Been catching up on a few of these. Pop Will Eat Itself were dreadful.

I've always been well disposed towards them for their Prodigy collab, but yes that song is terrible.

I quite liked it at the time, so it brought back some happy memories of wearing their T-Shirts. I think the remixed single version with slightly more polished singing was better - but I’m not going to dig it out just to proof myself wrong.

There must be some kind of name for this kind of landfill dance music that consists of one line of vocals repeated over and over again, but it just reminds me of being in a shit-arse Ritzy's nightclub in the early 90s.

Which song is this about. I recall their being a Snap one on which I had forgotten about and found myself quite enjoying.

Honestly I can't even remember which song it was I was referring to.

I'm still catching up via iplayer but the last episode I watched felt like a real improvement with The Beloved and M People's best song, not even that weird racist performance from Gloworm or Sting's bizarre hat could spoil it

also, "No Limits" is the first song I remember dancing to as a child in the living room, we're heading into peak nostalgia for me!

Yeah, was really good to see that Beloved song.

What was up with the Gloworm performance?

We missed this in the episode they left out:
https://t.co/Tns0kVSIvW

Favourite part of last night's two episodes - the bit where a freeze frame of Brett from the Suede video s-l-o-w-l-y cross faded into the aerial shot of Miami before the kd Lang performance.

Xpost swines!

it's becoming really obvious where the show's direction is not working. All these respectable acts like Sting, Paul McCartney, Bryan Ferry - the only bit of life from the studio audience is when "No Limits" is performed.

What was up with the Gloworm performance?

the costumes and dancing were definitely a bit culture-as-costume

the women playing with ferry looked very familiar but no credits on the single or lp for anybody female