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

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...

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

I once saw JoBoxers supporting Gary Glitter, and that right there is the unfortunate story of my 1980s

ive been watching the 80s xmas specials and i could have lived the rest of my life happy without knowing who "shakin stevens" is (this dude DID NOT make it to the us)

joboxers did make it over here tho. just got lucky got played on kroq a lot.

one of joboxers did a lot of interesting stuff - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_McLusky

Normal service resumed tonight from 7pm.

Agent Smith from The Matrix takes a break from chasing hackers to perform a cover of The Beatles' 'I'm Only Sleeping'. Or it might by Suggs (Suggs... Suggs...). The album this track is taken from ('The Lone Ranger') is actually pretty good.

Oh yes, the h-h-h-h-hilarious performance of 'Roll With It' where Noel and Liam swap places.

just catching up and lol what happened in that Tina Arena perf? Voice insanely louder than the backing track, feels like she's doing karaoke of her own song

all Steve Wright all of the time

Couldn't the BBC have picked an episode without Black Lace?

Tonight's first programme, starts with Roy Chubby Brown, ends with Mick Hucknall.

Did no-one tell you we would over-act this way?
Our show's a hit. It's shit. You watch it anyway...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exe7T9TpJZo

The Rembrandt's singer looks like Guy Pearce in Memento. No wonder he wanted to forget.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9IDDLXcrMA

BEAT ft General Levy - Incredible - TOTP - 1994

Would love to know how Iron Maiden ended up thrashing through ‘Man on the Edge’ on top of an ancient hill fort in Israel

The pieces are beginning to slowly drift into place as we approach Spiceageddon. The shiny metallic look of the studio bathed in big washes of colour from the lights. Bryan Adams turning up to do odd duets with various people. East 17 looking like they might actually win the war of the boybands against Take That. Somehow even fewer people in the studio audience than before, and they have enough space to all do this non-commital sway-y/shuffle-y dance. Suggs keeps popping up either as the presenter or performing a song.

I'm behind. Hale & Pace's attempt at satire in their presenting capacity was hugely confused, to be charitable.

Camp ageing rockers in Blur and Oasis tees, for some reason? Still less loathable than Keith Allen's joke presenting a few months back.

Fairground's a pretty odd number one really. I kind of like it, Hucknall's obvious off-putting qualities aside. Nice groove in the verses, huge chorus drop.

Were they pre existing H&P characters? That would make more sense.

As much as I despise the human rodent that is mick hucknall, I really love 'fairground'

It's a good song! Actually come across more decent 'Red tracks than expected over the TOTP repeats.

Next episode, Ant & Dec invent electroswing.

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