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

(that's weird - i watched 1988 big hits episode this morning and the above line jumped out at me too (is bros))

I'd love to know what Neil is thinking when he looks at the camera here. Maybe something like "fuck everyone at Smash Hits who thought this would be over in a year".

oh wow, is this 'shit Bros lyrics' hour? "I watch you crumble like a very old wall"

Phil Collins looks like a boy wearing his dad's suit. It's a real marvel of late 80s boxy shouldered baggy trousered tailoring.

Xpost I used to think it was "I want your bum boy, like a very old boy"

I knew it couldn't be, but never found out what it really was.

Anyone else watch the TOTP Christmas show yesterday? Would that be what TOTP would be like if it were revived today? Because it seemed very Brit School and safe.

I missed it, I thought it'd be after the Queen for some reason

TOTP Big Hits 1989 - this is a year when there were a lot of big changes in pop music.
Also I was unaware that there was even a Happy Mondays vs Pulp episode of Bargain Hunt.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640x360/p06m6pv7.jpg

I really liked this song at the time. However, Marc Almond's 50s rocker / forehead vein look is distressing enough, but it's combined with Gene Pitney's Terry-Venebles-does-Gene-Pitney-on-Celeb-Stars-In-Their-Eyes appearance.

Mike and the Mechanics: their singer looks alarmingly like Phil Collins, I wonder if that was in his contract? 'Clause 15.a.III - must look at least 85% like Phil Collins at all times.'
Also here's Phil Collins with perhaps the worst 'multi-millionaire rock star tells you YES YOU the average person what to think about some social issue' song of the time.

that bargain hunt episode made the national news because someone related to the HM camp was caught bidding for their items.

Bez's girlfriend.

That remake of 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' was unspeakably awful. Somehow I have no memory of it.

Happy Mondays vs Pulp episode of Bargain Hunt.

googled on seeing Candida's hands there and she was diagnosed with arthritis at sixteen. it hurt just looking at that pic.

that bargain hunt episode made the national news because someone related to the HM camp was caught bidding for their items.

― koogs, Saturday, January 4, 2020 4:37 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao. I really want to see this episode now.

just watched best of 1989 and it seems like more of the same tbh. the meatiest thing out of the tracks they played was transvision vamp (and then salvaged at the last minute by the stone roses)

AND SO IS MICHAEL FISH!

I don't recall Jacob Rees-Mogg being in U2...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6d/Angel_harlem.jpg

'Buffalo Stance' still sounds great today, it doesn't sound dated at all.

it's looking good today

lol at Holly Johnson being referred to as "a star of the past" in 1989 when his last single (albeit with Frankie) was in 1987.

Not seen the latest one yet, still blinded from Milli Vanilli's meat and two veg effort last week.

Their video is shown this time, which somehow manages to show how terrible they are at miming and dancing, despite someone having edited it.

This week's Breakers, featuring Michael Ball, who isn't Unicorn on The Masked Singer, and also Sam Fox, who isn't Fox on The Masked Singer...

I want to open a chain of fast food restaurants that specialise in Eastern European DUMPLINGS!, called 'My Perogi-tive'.

DUMPLINGS!

wait WTF?

For those wondering what Mike Read was chuntering on about re: the B side to Def Leppard's 'Rocket', it's a cover of Englebert Humperdinck's 'Release Me' with their tour manager on vocals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yak7FDnHXCI

Racist twonk Morrissey demonstrated his inability to tuck in a shirt properly.

wait WTF?

This has long been embedded in the code of ILX. I have no idea why. Fortunately I never have any need to say DUMPLINGS!.

Well it's a first for me.

Anyone ever see that HK horror flick, DUMPLINGS!?

pretty sure it's a noize board thing? Dates back to like '09! Maybe later!
dump|ings

Dümplings

Dumings

That Morrissey "Playboys" TOTP line-up is basically all of the Smiths (including Craig Gannon) minus Johnny Marr. Didn't realise he was still pally with Rourke and Joyce in 1989.

That's the lineup on the single, too.

(also Interesting Drug)

Stephen Street was hoping for a call up for that totp, but didn't get one.

PWEI bring the 90s early. Actually from here on out the rest of 1989 sounds increasingly 90s. It's a real sea change from the previous year where everything seemed to be a bit stuck.

oof 2 singles I bought at the time on this show. Rocket which still stands up. Belfast Child, which really doesn't. Dreadful.

I was DJing weekly at this time, and buying heavily from the Top 40. I counted 21 purchases from last week’s second show.

I’d completely forgotten that Billie Ray Martin debuted with S’Xpress before Electribe 101.

Neneh Cherry revisits Raw Like Sushi

Hale & Pace, remember them? My commiserations. They were shit.
The Reynolds Girls - surprisingly it's four years between this and Simon Bates resigning from Radio 1.

lol Lenny Henry fucks up his link "I'd rather jack Profumo" or was that what he meant to say? At least Dusty got a laugh out of it. I miss this kind of thing from current TV - things like that wouldn't make the edit now.

(kids get off my lawn etc etc)

the stonk was a tune.

That might have been down to the backing musicians:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hale_and_Pace#%22The_Stonk%22
Brian May playing keyboards and guitar, (...) David Gilmour and Tony Iommi on guitar, with Neil Murray on bass guitar. Cozy Powell, Roger Taylor and Rowan Atkinson – appearing as his character Mr. Bean – performed on drums. Joe Griffiths and Mike Moran contributed on keyboard.[

Madonna fails to unseat Jason Donovan from #1 - I'd forgotten how totally obsessed the public were with him at the time. Also I think this is the first Guns'N'Roses appearance on TOTP despite them being huge for two years by this point.

catching up...

i guess if you're going to mime playing synth on totp then mime using a 'cost the same as a house at the time' fairlight.

> Also I think this is the first Guns'N'Roses appearance on TOTP

GnR was the playout video a couple of episodes ago too. lots of wasp and poison(?) recently too

> lol Lenny Henry fucks up his link "I'd rather jack Profumo" or was that what he meant to say?

iirc he said Supremo, corrected to Profumo by the other presenter. the comic relief thing was an entire show of comedians fluffing their lines or saying them off mic.

lol at reynolds girls dissing the olds and being followed by dusty springfield.