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

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.

The main riff from Kon Kan's 'I Beg Your Pardon' seems to be the same as Spagna's 'Call Me', except played on a cheap Casio keyboard. Also this single seems to be equal parts Jive Bunny and The KLF, with some can't-be-arsed early 90s Eurodance vocals.

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Madonna snipped at the end there because of 'controversial' black Jesus? I know the Pepsi advert was pulled very last minute that same week (or the previous week).

It's been short every time I've seen it, like little more than a minute each time, but longer tonight, if anything. Oddly it does seem to be the black Jesus part, ie the end.

The The, tonight, but nothing like their best. Fuzzbox ditto. The Cult ditto.

Kon Kan sound to me like a cheap new order.

Can you keep a secret? Brother Beyond are shit. Oh wait that's not a secret.

xp I think we're entering the TOTP era where if you were #1 and couldn't/wouldn't appear in the studio, the producers wouldn't play more than 2/3 of your video the first week, then the merest suggestion of the video on subsequent weeks.

They were really big on the whole "Look!!! Bands and singers appearing in the studio!!! Still (mostly) miming, but in the studio!!!" at this point.

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The shit-arse Ritzy's nightclub I used to frequent as a student just two years after tonight's episode would play Simply Red's version of 'If You Don't Know Me' as the last record of the night.

INXS reminding me of how much I loathe 'band in the studio recording the song you're listening to' videos.

also live footage badly synced to the recorded version

I turned violently against TOTP at the end of 1988 and I think I only saw it twice* in 1989 so I'm seeing these for the first time and often don't seem to have any memory of the tracks.

*I have a vague memory of seeing the Beautiful South doing that "I love you from the bottom of my pencil case" song shortly after we moved house that summer and I'm pretty sure I saw Black Box doing 'Ride On Time' in the autumn, but that's it

The first half of 1989 was even more of a renaissance than I’d remembered. So much good stuff. I think it continues for at least another year or so; there was a solid run of Number Ones at the start of 1990.

I don't remember seeing Roland Gift's cartwheel into a piano riff.

Wasn't expecting Metallica the other week.

I'm pretty sure nearly-15-year-old snoball saw that and said "FUCK YES!!! METAL!!! RAAAAARRRRRRWWWRRRR!!! WIDDLY-WIDDLY-WIDDLY-WIDDLY-WIDDLY-WIDDLY-WIDDLY-WIDDLY-WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" and then went out and bought a black t-shirt.

Yeah cudos to the editors for playing the thrashout half rather than the ballad half!

*kudos

According to Bill Drummond's intro to the reprint of 'The Manual', Edelweiss followed the instructions in the book to get this hit.

and it's godawful. looks like the skits they do on red bull soap box races.

Somehow that tie doesn't suit Freddie Mercury at all. A couple of fairly duff episodes in a row, but IIRC 1989 was like that generally.

Stefan Dennis' 'Don't It Make You Feel' is the worst Neighbours related single and in some sense simultaeously the best, because it's so brazen in it's awfulness.

Haven't seen the latest ones yet, but feel like taking a few minutes off from coronavirus-gloom to talk about last week's ones. As I've said before, I scarcely saw any TOTP in 1989 so these repeats are filling in gaps for me. I bought 'Rok Da House' by Beatmasters/Cookie Crew in early '88 and until the last few weeks assumed it was a one-hit-wonder for both groups, so it's been a pleasant surprise to see both of them had more chart success the following year. I knew the Beatmasters one, just didn't know it was by them (and was convinced as a 15-year-old that it went 'Wolves in the house!'). 'Eternal Flame' is a guilty pleasure of mine. Whenever I hear it, I'm transported back to that weird period where secondary school has kind of half-finished but not completely - all the 16-year-olds who weren't going to college fucked off at Easter and those of us who were left had two or three weeks of cramming before the GCSE exams started.

Yeah that Edelweiss thing is horrific.

I quite like "eternal flame" now but it was bloody EVERYWHERE at the time

I'll see your Stefan Denis and raise you the theme to cell block h.

Acapella thing was on twice yesterday, hadn't heard it before.

Aside from those, there's a lot in the chart that you still hear, usually on radio 2.

Wow, this (terrible) Live Report song I am hearing for the first time here, apparently came 2nd in Eurovision with 130 points… amazing how the UK’s popularity has fallen so much.

Never heard that Stefan Denis thing before. It was a special kind of awful, but I think the London Boys one a week or two before was possibly worse.

As a bit of a connoisseur of Hi-NRG I enjoyed that one.

Yes the Stefan Denis song is admirably terrible.