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...

God. I remember loving that when it came on TOTP. I was 10. Never really embraced Goth after that.

Apart from the Temple Of Love remix. Which rules.

No, it shines like thunder

xp Andrew Eldritch would claim that he never really embraced Goth either...

I wonder if the Sisters and Erasure met in the BBC canteen?

It's easy to feel sorry for the bass player from Bros, but boy (pun not intended) does he look like a complete tool here.

Heart cosplaying as Jem & The Holograms here. Also the de riguer hair-metal-drummer-spins-a-drumstick-at-the-camera-shot.

I liked Patsy Kensit's version of 'I'm Not Scared' at the time, but the PSB version is much much better.

This re-run of a 2001 edition of TOTP2 somehow manages to be more dated in it's presentation that the 1988 TOTP episode that preceded it.

Still playing catch-up here and had a summer of 87 binge tonight. The one from 23 July was an eye-opener: first Boy George appeared to be rapping in an American accent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmmYMFvhFQI but then came possibly the most surreal performance I've seen in all of these reruns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJMw_kry75w I can only assume I must have fallen asleep for a week in 1987 because I have no memory of either of these.

(Argh, sorry about the formatting)

I remember that chorus but had completely forgotten that Shaky went through a Hi-NRG phase, I hope he recovered.

Originally recorded by Gary Glitter, which explains the lyrical dodginess...

Scott Fitzgerald with the UK's 1988 Eurovision entry - yeah I don't remember either.

ver Boys score another #1, this time with a song they were going to send to Madonna but didn't because they were worried that she might reject it.

(xp) It did very well!

In 1988, he was the first ever artist chosen by telephone vote to sing the UK's entry in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Go". The song was written and composed by Julie Forsyth, daughter of the entertainer Sir Bruce Forsyth.[4] Forsyth joined Fitzgerald on stage at the contest in Dublin, alongside her husband Dominic Grant (also of Guys 'n' Dolls) and Des Dyer (formerly of Jigsaw), to perform backing vocals. Ronnie Hazlehurst conducted the live orchestration. Fitzgerald came second in the contest, by one point, to Switzerland's winning entry performed by Celine Dion. "Go" reached number 52 in the UK Singles Chart in April 1988.

While Climie Fisher were just on I started thinking that we'd reached the point in the 80s where you could probably still dress like that walking down the street and people wouldn't think you were a prize wombat, but then Steve Wright and Bruno Tory Brookes appeared and my theory went down in flames.

Bruno Brookes, the personification of half-arsed. Half-arsed suit, half-arsed mullet, half-arsed off-hand attitude to presenting and probably music generally.

Steve Wright: "Let's cosplay as yuppie wankers!"
Bruno Brookes: "Who said I was cosplaying?"

'Girlfriend' by Pebbles is surprisingly not a Prince song, but boy does it wish it was.

"OK George, so we know you hate making videos so how about we film the entire thing in more or less one take?"

Woo! Woo! Let's all beat Pat & Mick with sticks.

"OK so instead of just using one James Brown sample in this track, how about ALL the James Brown samples? Even the most obvious ones."

Now I clearly remember watching Fairground Attraction's 'Perfect' on this episode of TOTP back in 1988. My father walked in the room and declared dismissively that they were a "one hit wonder". Not that the old fart ever knew anything about music.

the payback mix, trying to claw some money back from all the unauthorized samples. i guess he didn't do too badly out of the whole thing.

people who liked totp 1988 might enjoy jeremy deller's thing on bbc4 last week:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000777d/everybody-in-the-place-an-incomplete-history-of-britain-19841992 specifically the compare and contrast Hitman and Her segments.

I love watching old Hitman & Her clips on YouTube but i thought huge parts of that documentary were really bad and the praise it has been getting has been very confusing to me

I watched about 20 mins of it.

By all means tell me the great bits were later.

Hang on it was this performance of 'Perfect' where my father made the above "one hit wonder" utterance. Also scope Mike Read dressed as the world's worst Lou Reed tribute act.

loads a money, start turn on 45 pints, anfield rap. is this a nadir?

(enough references in those first two to make them an interesting listen, once. for instance, this latter is referencing Ofra Haza twice removed)

oddly, the eric b track that's also in the charts sounds just as hackneyed.

(who is the goalkeeper on anfield rap?)

and now, wet wet wet, which i seem to remember went on to be number 1 for the next 6 months.

Bruce Grobelaar, I imagine. I'm not about to watch the video to find out.

It is.

It's an indicator of how bad music could sometimes be in the 80s that 'Anfield Rap' isn't even the worst football related single of the decade.

(thanks. i figured it was him - we share a birthday - but i remember him being more imposing, somehow)

going through other episodes to clear up video recorder space. and they say the 70s was the decade that taste forgot...

Exactly what I was thinking.

about 6 episodes in and there's been nothing that i've wanted to keep so far.

erasure's 'victim of love' holds up surprisingly well, probably vince's synth parts, but he's on totp 'playing' guitar.

there are some glimmers of hope in the chart rundown - smiths, mary chain, cult, sisters, spear of destiny. but, playing live, here's pepsi and shirlie again...

Oh, I used to do a weekly commentary on another notable Internet site, but there's been so little to get mildly intersted/ing about for so long.

And I used to save stuff on dvd, but then I got a tivo, got so behind around 1979, then the box died and I lost about five years of saved totp shows. Never mind.

Err, DEREK B, not Eric B

both derek b and eric b were in a lot of the shows i watched on sunday, much to my amusement.

Didn't know where exactly to put this, but it is entertaining -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbZ4JbwI6wM

Pursey is entertaining and his Lydon impression at 9 mins is ace.

Steve Wright interrupts some urgent washing up to present TOTP.

gardening gloves, i thought, because of the hothouse flowers.

'Voyage Voyage' - still have no idea what this song is about.

5 Star decide to copy a different Jackson this time.

Travel Travel, apparently xpost

(Soz, 30yrold humor)

Thanks for the Jukebox Jury. It was essential viewing in our house when I was a kid. I'd forgotten about the excrutiating close ups on the audience while they played the singles! I can remember hearing The B52s for the first time on it with 'Rock Lobster', which I seeem to recall was deemed a miss.

A compilation of Pet Shop Boys' performances on the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 10 December 1998.

(a compilation programme of the Boys' TOTP performances, first broadcast in 1998, being shown again tonight)

Oh and it's not a revised repeat, so I don't know why they're using an image from this performance from TOTP in 2000, which definitely won't be in the programme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbJz81cuVcg