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

My overarching feeling from the current period of reruns is how much better 90 percent of the performances would be if they were mimed.

I feel sorry for the guy who has to yell "Utah Saints U-U-U-Utah Saints".

oh dear, they open the second programme tonight as well. His voice sounds shot to shit. At least the BBC didn't make him impersonate Kate Bush.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190228065833/https://sabotagetimes.com/music/the-orb-playing-chess-on-top-of-the-pops-changed-my-life

Wow turns out Bob Geldof is a cunt after all

Not sure which is worse, the above or his introduction for Sophie B. Hawkins "I don't wanna ask yer any questions i just wanna look at yer...(baffled silence)... you've got 5 minutes, sing your song"

I mean I do know which is worse

Geldof so fucking vile on this.

what's jimmy nail's star quality do you think, is it his looks or his singing?

the story of 1990 tomorrow night though, is that one of the ones they missed?

no, first shown "Fri 2 Oct 2020 21:00"

The 1991 and 1992 stories have definitely been made and will be shown around Easter, I remember reading somewhere. Maybe here - can't be arsed to scroll up.

Just caught up on a load of these this evening. I was very confused by Shut Up And Dance's 'Raving, I'm Raving' that didn't appear to be anything like the tune I remembered, but it turns out that's because by the time they got onto TOTP they'd been forced to delete the single and couldn't use virtually any of it in the performance.

Yes I wondered that as well. Good investigating.

Future Sound of London were pretty sick. I did not expect that bloke in the hat to sing the high bit!

The Story of 1991 is on BBC2 tonight at 7:45pm.

...and The Story of 1992 is on BBC2 next Saturday at 8:45pm.

All is right with the world

Take That cavort, Undercover serve up a version of Baker Street completely shorn of it's tension.

that's the version of Baker St I grew up with, I didn't know there was an original for a startling long time

Bananarama somehow very proto-Steps there. Followed by Mr. C and the most early 90s haircut. TOTP got considerably better at hiding camera operators when they went on stage, but that was a awkward scuttle there.

Sonia's 1993 Eurovision entry came second in the final.

East 17 set up shop as the Stones to Take That's Beatles.

we all have our kinks

They can be ironed out in East 17's laundry.

Had Jon Secada in my head for weeks now.

a bit behind so catching up via iPlayer and wow are the lyrics of that Betty Boo song terrible

I can't say I noticed the lyrics, but I enjoyed the use of the Pet Sounds sample.

we watch with the subtitles on and they jumped off the screen as being particularly embarassing

Were the Shamen subtitled "He's a good" or "E's are good"?

"eezer good"

incidentally I read ages ago that the reason he shouts "anyone got any underlay" during that performance is that he wanted to insert a gratuitous rug reference

I probably don't need to say it to anyone who's readiny this thread, but you should all get in on these re-runs of Dusty Springsfield's '66-67 TV show.

Suede (or as a French aquaintence pronounced it, "Sue Ed"), a glorious rough around the edges mess that I fell in love with the first time I saw this performance.

Always a good sign when the presenter makes a snarky remark.

Like boxedjoy I am a handful of episodes behind. A surprisingly good performance by Extreme in this one!

The song's distinctly mediocre, but they're giving it so much welly.

Miles more entertaining than this dreary Weller number anyway.

1993 on bbc2 today (iplayer). they are getting ahead of themselves.

I was in first year of secondary school in ‘93 and as a result listened to a hell of a lot of Radio 1 while doing homework, in the absence of money to go buy music. As a result every lyric of every last song on this special is burned indelibly into my memory, even songs I haven’t heard for maybe 28 years. It may just be nostalgia but to me this special is just wall to wall classics.

By the end of the year I was buying NME / Melody Maker / Select and deep into learning guitar. I often wonder if my first year of school had been one of those ‘crap for pop’ years how different I would have ended up.

I’d met Brett Anderson a few days previous to this at their gig in Manchester and was horrified at just how short he’d cut his hair since. He looked much more casual and slightly disheveled when I saw him, I think it offended me that he’d made such an effort to smarten up. What a clot I was.

1994 tomorrow

they are really spoiling us with these.

No no, no no no no, no no no no...

I thought I'd clicked on the rolling stones thread, and was gonna say "I thought it was "Doo do Doo doo doo" "
etc

Ha ha!

xp Chartbreaker

1994 seemed to start late so the recorder cut off the end. but they were onto the Brit pop by then so i doubt i missed much

enjoyed the dawn penn section

Before tonight's TOTP revival show on BBC4, I had no memory of The Farm covering the Human League's 'Don't You Want Me' in 1992.

I now feel very nostalgic for the time when I wasn't aware of this monstrosity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmwNwXcEA30

yeah, totally unnecessary.

conversely i didn't know about bjorn again covering erasure but that worked well.

1995 tonight

I'd totally forgotten about The Farm's cover. Bjorn Again's Erasure cover better than I remember. I guess dozens of crap ABBA tribute bands have affected my memory of them, but they were actually pretty good.

xp story of 1995, followed by the biggest hits of 1995, followed by over two spirit-crushing hours of Oasis nonsense.
I was wondering if the back to back broadcast of these latest few Story Of... programmes was because BBC4 might be about to sack these TOTP re-runs. But then I remember we're on the edge of Britpop and maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea? I was away at university by this point and didn't get to see TOTP much for a few years - anyone remember if those shows were any good?

I don't know why they'd stop showing the re-runs. Mind you, I also don't know why they didn't show the 1991 and 1992 shows until we were already halfway through the 1992 repeats and then decided to start showing the rest of the 90s ones long before those episodes were going to be shown.

91 and 92 roundups were victims of covid, i thought, editing suites and studios shut, nobody able to be talking heads (ironically as that's what everybody else had been reduced to)

i think bbc4 less likely to stop repeats given that it's been reduced to the archive channel. but yes, the Saturday evenings on bbc2 seem to be heading on bbc4 Friday evenings' ground a bit