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

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...

They were there for 6 weeks.

The guy without the 'tasche wants to die.

I still fucking hate the last line of that song...not for the paedo connotations...just cos i hate it...

So, there isn't a TOTP this week, but there is a "Primal Scream" themed evening coming up on Friday.

AAAAAAAAAAARGH

No, the band, not the Janov therapy.

You could kind of see why Midge Ure ended up in Ultravox, I mean "Requiem", the title sounds an like Ultravox song. Slik were a pretty cool looking band by 1976 standards.

Oh, it was very Ultravox, for sure.

I got tickets to see them live in 1978, Top Rank, Reading, thanks to being at the Radio210 offices at the right time: The whole band were there, I met them all, and got the signed piccies, and for some reason that escapes me two free tickets and a bunch of discount vouchers. It wasn't full to say the least, and the support band, "Screemer", were perfectly competent early seventies pophairies that would lose their career path in the wake of punk...

That 1978 should be (Nov) 1976 (oops), timings at that point in history are crucial.

Mud go disco, urgh...

Didn't the guitarist write 'Can't get you out my head' by Kylie...sounds a bit like it...

Frankie Valli's tired performance there. He really got a boost from appearing in Grease in '78, didn't he.

Sometimes I think Elvis died just to avoid crappy cover versions like this.

DEVIL WOMAN!!!
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LP_YP0I7zZY/SoFziAfbpiI/AAAAAAAAC-c/RoLUJLbssFU/s200/RikMayall.png

the shadows have let themselves go...

Mud go disco

Surreal

the shadows have let themselves go...

Even by 1976 standards that was one ugly backing band.

Was there anything good in this episode? Apart from Cliff?

The iplayer only has the 30 min version!

Blimey, Robin Sarstedt, what was that all about? Sutherland Brothers/Quiver was quite nice, not enough guys with combovers in the charts these days.

Guessing Annie Lennox has superseded the Sutherland Brothers as Aberdeenshire's biggest chart act though

The Sutherland Brothers and Quiver were pretty great, a lot of quality 70s country rock/AOR tunes. Never heard the Suths on their own tho.

odd that they chopped the Stones out of the longer version.

Robin Sarstedt song was familiar. probably from Jane Russell in The Las Vegas Story.

i think claire grogan has heard that fox single.

The Sutherlan Brothers did the original of "Sailing", and I knew it before Rods version thanks to a k-tel compilation.

Well....'punk had to happen' is a tired old theme, but IF it was ever true then this weeks shows why. Robin Sarstedt - just die you seedy bastard. Sutherland Brothers and Quiver - a soundtrack for cruisin' down the Gateshead bypass in your Hillman Avenger. The singer (Gavin Sutherland?) had great hair though. Frankie Valli, who I maintain it is impossible to dislike looked like he hadn't slept for a year. Manilow - unspeakably awful, and why did he have the piano stool so high? He could barely reach the keys. JJ Barrie - nothing can really describe the horror of this record, although he looked like a decent enough bloke. The Mud record was utterly bizarre - I have no memory of this at all. Even though it was a bit of a disco death-rattle from the bubble-glam stalwarts, they at least seemed enthusistic about it. And bonus marks go to Dave Mount for doing the 'let's arse about on the telly' walk around his drum-kit. What else was there? Ruby Flipper - what did Pan's People do to deserve this fate? Only bright spot was Cliff - crackin' song that with a lovely electric piano sound. The band were hod-carriers even by TOTP session-men standards. They made Sutherland Brothers and Quiver look like arch sex gods in comparison. Oh and of course Abba. But they faded it in verse 2 - bastards. A dire week but at least they didn't show Hank Mizell or John Miles. And how bored was Noel throughout?

Back in 76, I was still watching TOTP as a 14yr old, along with OGWT, but I don't think I was listening to anything much from the charts. I had some Pink Floyd albums, I think I'd just discovered the Syd era LPs. I had a couple of Status Quo albums (Piledriver, Hello) some Bowie and T-Rex, Story of The Who, some K-Tel comps. Within a year I'd be spending my pocket money on scratchy singles in home-made sleeves made by bands barely older than myself from Belfast, Manchester, Deptford and Ladbroke Grove. Happy days, and yeah they did HAVE to happen.

(Imagine a bootmix of "Give peace a chance" with the lyrics of "Sailing" over the top of it)

xpost obviously, blimey thread's suddenly busy.

Two of SB and Quiver played with Pink Floyd - Tim Renwick and Willie Wilson.

And Bruce Thomas was in Quiver!! But not in SB&Q, I think.

Tim Renwick? Something to do with Bowie too?

Muso note - Cliff's bass player was playing an interesting Burns Bison bass. And he looked like a bison too. A bespectacled bison.

xpost - yes, Space Oddity-era IIRC

Re: SB+Q, I like this idea of two struggling bands joining together a la Dagenham & Redbridge or something

A bit like Bob Dylan and The Band, with a shared credit!

Or do I mean Cliff Richard and The Shadows, but ran backwards?

Was Robin Sarstedt related to Peter Sarstedt? Were they even their real names?

Yes, they were brothers. Also Eden Kane, who was actually Richard Starstedt

although, you are also right, Robin's first name was Clive.

I thought they looked alike but I was worried I was just being racist. I love Peter Sarstedt, I'd love it if a performance of this turned up on BBC4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRyIiutZ8ck

> Back in 76, I was still watching TOTP as a 14yr old, along with OGWT

that's something else they should repeat, whistle test.

Enjoying the well curated TOTP2 snippets at the end

My longstanding in-joke with a friend was that jazz was a genre floundering until PJ & Duncan dropped "Krazy Katz" in the autumn of 1995, at which point sales for jazz records increased 100,000% overnight, much as sales for Western classical music did in the wake of the Toy Dolls' Orcastrated earlier in the year, and luminaries like Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Dexter Gordon were disinterred and paraded in celebration of the new music.

I'd forgotten how many singles PJ & Duncan released. I thought it was basically 'Let's Get Ready to Rhumble' and one other, but no, they were polluting the charts like Robson & Jerome's kid brothers.

Well this Beatles song that's been cobbled together from an old demo sounds grating, I guess they won't be trying that again.

xpost yeah almost all of their hits live in the "forgotten" zone.

There was a budget "best of" in Poundland, one track was clearly too expensive to license but it had all the other 'hits' (except the football one, too new I guess)

They had three studio albums but five compilation albums. Is there any other artist or group who have had far more compilation albums than original studio albums, apart from people who have been dead for decades?

Ant & Dec are credited as songwriters or co-writers on nearly all of their original songs. Which is both simultaneously impressive for what was essentially a comedy inflected boyband, but also pretty tragic when you listen to the actual songs.

It would be impossible for something like their music career to happen nowadays. I think the nearest, in broad terms anyway, is LadBaby, but he's only released singles.

one track was clearly too expensive to license

That would be the cover of 'Stepping Stone' I'm guessing.

No. The one that everybody knows..

A&D's strong but now invisible hits career is a subject I love to bring up (and have already during the TOTP runs). The pair of them are obviously more than eager to pretend there was nothing more than LGRTR.

My fav Ant & Dec single is Shout - classic boyband maturity move that. Look forward to when we get to it.

I have that budget comp (Takeaway). The best one (if more A&D = best) was the 'essential collection' double set that came later that I definitely remember Tesco stocking. Still no We're on the Ball though.

lol Takeaway isn't even in the list of five compilation albums on Wikipedia. And it doesn't have Rhumble - https://www.discogs.com/release/7661579-Ant-Dec-AKA-PJ-Duncan-Takeaway-The-Best-Of-Ant-Dec

Yep, that's the one