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

It's always been largely rubbish. Last night's shows were crap in 1977 (when I was 13, and therefore remember things all too well) and they're still crap now.

I've been compiling/saving the 'new-wave' entries onto DVD from the off, so far there's not been many.

I did miss Eddie/Hotrods "I might be lying", but then it wasn't as good as I remembered.

Anyway, I was going through some stuff in the loft and I found two 'archive' DVDs I bought at a record fair, clearly copied from someone's original VHS (or were they from UKTV gold? I dunno), quality pretty ropey. But there was a lot of tracks on them.

So, I should end up with much the same as these, just better quality.

Pitiful follow ups by Barry Biggs and Mr Big. That "Promises promises" by Rags I remember liking from the day (I was eight). And great to hear "Shuffle" by Van McCoy, which was used by R1 all the time (can't remember who played it though) And then Legs And Co dance to "Hotel California", my most hated song of all time.

The Bay City Rollers song reminded me of Pulp, for some reason.

I like to think that somewhere there is an ex-member of Rags/Brendon/Contempt happily watching with their (grand)children. It's the only way to get through the show.

The bass player of Brendon has been posting his happy recollections on some other part of the ternet.

Pick of the Pops did the Top 20 from this week in '77 on Saturday*. Apart from Rod @ #1 it was all bloody brilliant. Reinforced Mark's point upthread that TOTP was often forced to look beyond the 20, 30 or even top 40 for material. I guess there was little hope of getting Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder (each doing well with one of their best singles) on the show.

*getting it out of the way before the Pistols turn up?

Funny how guys like Marvin and Stevie readily turned up on Soul Train.

After half an hour of ZZZZZZZZZZZs it's DOCTOR FEELGOOD

saville's hair
m'na, m'na... (half of dancers really nonplussed by it all)

Not one, but two 'oh just move around a bit' piss-poor Legs & Co routines.

odd hearing that song about the doors only months after the original

oh, it was a wig. i missed the setup.

That had to be the worst Legs & Co routine - dancing to 'Disco Inferno' while wearing bikinis made from hubcaps, overlaid with a light pattern like you get after you get blinded by a lightbulb.

And of course, The Jam
Kid Jensen: "That was called New Wave! Don't be scared!"

(fucking search and "s)

> bikinis made from hubcaps

they were 7" singles, painted silver and with tassles. = DISCO INFERNO.

liked the suzi song.

Blue - dirty white piano, repetitive song

STRANGLERS

LIVERPOOL FUCKING BIGGER THAN THE BEATLES EXPRESS

Stranglers were a surprise, but I knew the Ramones was too much to hope for

Watched a bit of last night's show as I couldn't stand any more of Alan Shearer interrupting people on BBC1. Looked entertaining - not any good of course, just entertaining - saw end of Gladys Knight + the Pips, Neil Innes (doing an embarrassing song in celebration of the Silver Jubilee), Stranglers ("Go Buddy Go", which has a blatant reference to taking speed, how did that escape the censors?!?!), Demis R. + some all-white funk band called... Honky!

"Hope you had a great Jubilee; to keep us in the holiday mood, here's the Electric Light Orchestra with 'Telephone Line'" - Tony Blackburn.

I had no memories at all of Neil Innes' Jubilee cash-in single. I'm guessing it dropped out of the charts pretty quickly.

You guess wrong, the record never troubled the charts.

And if you thought that the Neil Innes track was bad, cop a load of this: http://lordofthebootsale.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/elizabeth-god-save-sex-pistols.html

Oh, is that the Jonathan King one? Heard about it, never heard it.

Actually, track down "Anarchy Rock" a bside from The Weathermen (i.e. himself), a better 'take-off' even though it's from 1971.

suck it John Miles!

double suicide, cheery...

The way break in that Smokie track rips off the verse of The Beatles' 'Baby You're A Rich Man' wholesale.

xp oh right, you're referring to Bro'hood 'o Man's 'Fernando Angelo'

'they took their lives that night' tucked in there mid-chorus.

rah band were a bit o_O. looked and sounded like something on Mute.

That Barry Biggs single was the last one to trouble the Top 40.
Boney M couldn't even be bothered to appear on TOTP with one of their signature songs, leaving Legs & Co to, er, sit on some chairs. Really Flick, really?
Hot Chocolate again in a class by themselves, Donna Summer relegated to the end credits - she never performed 'I Feel Love' in the TOTP studio.

The Alessi Brothers' 'Oh Lori' - another track I can remember Wogan playing to death through my mother's kitchen radio.

The Alessi Brothers' 'Oh Lori'
This is a guilty pleasure of mine

The Saints!

looking like they could've been from any time in the last 20 years, really, in their normal everyday clothes.

Best thing on the show?

Erol from Hot Chocolate; cooler than Bob Marley.

nice to see the veritable future of all recorded sound get 20 seconds at the end.

Fanfare? wasn't that on last week as well?

No

what year did they switch to doing the 'rundown' at the end/ throughout the show rather than at the intro? i was.. just about watching in 77 but have no real recollection of this era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_of_the_Pops#Theme_music

The first TOTP of 1980 still had the chart at the beginning of the show. The switch to doing it in three pieces (30-21, 20-11, 10-1) happened in mid-1980.

I can't pin it down exactly, but there's a YouTube clip of the chart from the May 8th 1980 show done old school style, and a clip of the August 7th 1980 chart done in three bits.

According to the On This TOTP Day blog, the change happened on the 7th August 1980. Big changes on that show - it was after a strike by the Musicians Union where there were no TOTPs for over a month, the format changed with the chart rundown moved from the start, an end to rerecording songs and a return to pure miming, the dissolution of the TOTP orchestra and with Michael Hurst taking over control of the show, moving towards the neon bright 80s shows we know, love and remember.

I had completely forgotten about the strike until I read about it, can remember watching the first show after the strike thinking "Hurrah, it's back!" (I was eleven).

ah right so 1980 thanks chaps.

innit weird how the chart used to be revealed on a *Tuesday afternoon* until about the 1990s?!

Yeah, that was because Capital Radio would compile their chart on Saturday, so it'd be more 'up to date' than the BBC one.

And they'd advertise it as being "hey, why listen to "Auntie", when you *could" be listening to "The Kid"!!!

Jensen's crepe-y sign off this week, uh...

Legs and Co. in love with the modern world!

Also Television in at 28.

And on the next edition of TOTP which was wiped from the archive to make way for Train Your Dog To Piss In The Gutter or something similar.

Christ, what a pile of crap this show was.

While it could be said that the show was only a reflection of the music of its time, Marcello does have a good point - TOTP at the time was dull as ditchwater. The presentation was boring, the presenters were wet dischcloths, the sets were dull - it really is quite sad watching the shows, because while our collective memory remembers all the brightly lit highlights from (insert your own golden era here), the reruns show that week after week it was repeats of songs and general monotony. And Legs and Co weren't that great really. The best things in recent weeks have been The Saints and Rockpile, otherwise awful throughout. But at least Liverpool Express have disappeared.

If you watched these reruns alone and had no direct memory or knowledge of the era, you'd think that Barry Biggs and Liverpool Express were the major figures of mid-'70s pop.

I've yet to find enyone that even remembers seeing Television doing "Prove It" on TOTP.

I know if I had, I'd have remembered. Where the hell was I that day?