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

lol King!

Featuring future MTV VJ Paul King!

"We're going to see Foreigner now"

Hmm yeah, no we're fucking not, mate!

*grabs remote*

ABBA mk 2 - lol at how the video really tries hard to minimise the height difference between Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson.

x-post:

Ha yeah, I remember seeing an interview Paul King did with Richey from the Manics, and Richey found some way of getting a dig in at him about it.

xxp 10 year old snoball thought this Foreigner track was a bit depressing but I think of it as a bunch of self pitying posturing toss.

Paul King still had that fuck-awful mullet even in the early 90s.

Still, be did revive DMs as a fashion item.

Get your boots on!

> lol King!

i remember a friend was excitedly planning to go see King play in gloucestershire somewhere but they cancelled and did totp instead.

Just realised that Paul King looks like one of my co-workers in a bad mullet wig.

Phil Collins nailing the 'Del Boy from Only Fools & Horses pretending to be a yuppie' look.

Bruce Springsteen is "America's answer to Russ Abbott" and Prince is "another American". Who knew?

Maybe it's because of the repetition of the performances on endless clip shows but parts of tonight's episode feel like they happened last month.

Shaky with a song that sounds like something mid 80s Rod would have passed on for being too shit.

It's not on here yet!

Straight out of the gate with some Glenn Frey yuppie music this episode..

...I'd never seen the video to 'Be Near Me' by ABC before... that song should have been fucking huge.

xp I was catching up on last night's programme.

All of REO Speedwagon's hairstyles can fuck off.

Pat Benatar - another singer who was big in the US but hardly known in the UK apart from a couple of singles.

More like REO Shitewagon...

I was and still am always amused by how far off Simon Bates' predictions were: "These guys are going to be huge!" *tumbleweeds*

I've never really considered 'The Heat Is On' to be yuppie music because I associate it so heavily with 'Beverley Hills Cop'.

Y'know when people say "the '80s were shit" or take the piss out of the fashions etc., this is the exact era of the '80s they mean. 1985 feels like it's worlds away from 1981 etc., not a few years away. The drop in quality from even the preceding year has been noticeable.

This video for 'Easy Lover' is fucking awful - I always remembered it as being quite slick but the 'candid' bits make Phillip Bailey & Phil Collins seem very punchable.

More like REO Shitewagon...

Classic song and video!

"Prince's girlfriend Madonna" ???

One of my favourite Prince stories is from Madonna: she went to his place to discuss a possible collaboration, and Prince's chef had set out a massive amount of food on the dining table. Madonna was shovelling food into her mouth when she noticed the purple one wasn't eating. "Aren't you going to have anything?" she asked. "No" whispered Prince.

Hey look another shit UK Eurovision entry.

Whistle Test never looked older or grayer.

I'd forgotten how shit and cheesy the video to 'View To A Kill' was.

Also I'd forgotten how shit and cheesy a lot of these videos from 1985 were.

There's very little about 'A View to a Kill' that's aged well - I actually don't mind the song itself, but the production is really lumpen and the video, as you say, is cheesy and shit. Particularly when Simon le Bon goes into his Bond spiel.

If the cracks were starting to show on Seven and the Ragged Tiger, Le Bon's bum note at Live Aid was the moment it all smashed to pieces.

Pure 1985 toss so far tonight. It says something that I'm actually almost glad to see Fish's "oh I just smelled a really noxious fart" gurning face.

I have a lot of time for Robert Palmer but Power Station's cover of T Rex's 'Get It On' is fuck awful. Also I'm fairly sure Bowie saw this and thought "I can do way worse that this" and then formed Tin Machine.

It's been said upthread already but 1985 is peak 'shite video with huge budget'.

Basically everyone got a tonne of cash to make whatever crazy video they wanted no matter how 3rd rate their singles were.

Depeche Mode break new ground by having half a shopping trolley on stage.

Steve Wright and Mike Read really are the ultimate when it comes to guys who think they're cool but totally aren't cool.

It's been said upthread already but 1985 is peak 'shite video with huge budget'.

― 2018 has to be better (snoball), Friday, March 2, 2018 7:46 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Basically everyone got a tonne of cash to make whatever crazy video they wanted no matter how 3rd rate their singles were.

― 2018 has to be better (snoball), Friday, March 2, 2018 7:47 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hah, yeah! Although we're in peak MTV territory now, aren't we? This was, after all, the year even Dire Straits were singing about MTV - although I think MTV Europe was a couple of years away from launching. But yeah, you can tell that people are basically competing against each other for screen time at this point - huge video budgets thrown at terrible songs etc. - the thinking clearly being that if the song doesn't grab 'em, the video will. Duran Duran and Michael Jackson have a lot to fucking answer for.

Looking at the Be Near Me video by ABC on Youtube and it has more than double the number of views that When Smokey Sings has which was a much bigger hit in the UK. Was Be Near Me on an episode of Twilight or something? I know it was club hit in the States..

No-one really had a clue what to do at this point in the 80s, did they? Should I wear a jacket and then not tuck my shirt in?

Whoever picks the music for Co-Op in-store radio clearly watches this programme, since Bryan Ferry's 'Slave To Love' was playing while I was buying some chocolate yesterday.

Has Alexei Sayle been on yet? That's the all time low point for me before House music comes along to save the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXEXO1YHpmQ

Bane of the cheap musical keyboard section of WH Smith's in the mid 80s, Harold Faltermeyer's 'Axel F'.

Late 80s sighted with the first mention of the Fine Young Cannibals.

Alexei has been on, yes.

Since 'Ullo John Gotta New Motor'?