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

also, "No Limits" is the first song I remember dancing to as a child in the living room, we're heading into peak nostalgia for me!

Yeah, was really good to see that Beloved song.

What was up with the Gloworm performance?

We missed this in the episode they left out:
https://t.co/Tns0kVSIvW

Favourite part of last night's two episodes - the bit where a freeze frame of Brett from the Suede video s-l-o-w-l-y cross faded into the aerial shot of Miami before the kd Lang performance.

Xpost swines!

it's becoming really obvious where the show's direction is not working. All these respectable acts like Sting, Paul McCartney, Bryan Ferry - the only bit of life from the studio audience is when "No Limits" is performed.

What was up with the Gloworm performance?

the costumes and dancing were definitely a bit culture-as-costume

the women playing with ferry looked very familiar but no credits on the single or lp for anybody female

Some real garbage this week. Didn't know and didn't need to know about this Hue & Cry remix of 'Labour Of Love'. Remember when Q magazine offered them £10 to split up?

Only one episode this week and all of it musical wallpaper (oh a song from a VW Golf ad!) until Robin S and 'Show Me Love'. Almost everything else has this 'smug gloss' over the top of it. I can't really explain it, it's like the performers are making the minimum effort while saying "look at how cool I am not caring about this". Even though this episode is from March 1993 these songs feel like they've been lazily put together to be 'summer hits'. Maybe, like punk and grunge before it, Britpop had to happen to get us away from where we'd ended up, and that the actual content of Britpop didn't matter so much as the 'getting away from somewhere' part.

Got to say if I a DJ dropped this Hue and Cry remix while I was on a good pinger I probably wouldn't leave the dancefloor.

Maybe it's just because I was 17 at the time and have rosey nostalgia for this era, but I'm now enjoying Snow - Informer.

More Covid-adled observations may follow as I continue watching the episode.

I don't mind Labour of Love '93, but that functional tinny disco-house sound is the most 1993 thing in existence, and adorning it to an older hit to peddle a greatest hits is also what gave the Doobie Brothers their biggest UK hit later in the year

I used to have this Grid track, quite fond memories of this one too, it had some nice remixes.

More nostalgia via Therapy? being an indie disco staple for a while, but I doubt anyone remembers the Big Country track.

gave the Doobie Brothers their biggest UK hit later in the year

No spoilers 😉

I feel like if they skip episodes because Rold Harris is in them they should skip Right Said Fred ones too.

Apologies - pretty much jumped into this thread without seeing if there was a rule.

The other in the trilogy that comes to mind we've already had, We are Family.

Sorry, to be clear I don’t think there is a rule, I’m just being “very funny” :D

No rules, that's a different website

Only some websites have ominous bunny warrens in the corner, alas

Ah, remember it well...

David Bowie's cover of 'Here Comes The Night' isn't great but it's a lot better than this shouty mess of a version from David Essex.

the casio preset reggae rhythm didn't really do the song any favours either

This Duran Duran song feels like it's 15 minutes long.

ffwd 29 years and they're opening the commonwealth games in clothes designed by stabilo boss...

They just making their marker..

Honestly at the time I wasn't too bothered about Haddaway's 'What Is Love', but it's (rightly) a classic tune when played against some of the other songs these past few episodes.

I'm miles behind, but just binge-watched a load of them tonight and saw the Hue & Cry one everyone was talking about upthread. I bought the original (1987) version and musically this 1993 one isn't too bad, but the fashion sense of the non-singing members of the band was absolutely criminal. I was a bit disappointed we didn't get to see this one, which appears not to have a been as big a hit as I thought it was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQljxfLmcKg

a little bit behind but I loved that performance of "Can You Forgive Her?" and also how everyone currently seems in competition to wear the most ostentatious hats

For some unknown reason, an episode from 1987 is being shown on BBC2 tonight at 10pm.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00029mk

probably because it’s the only episode that features a Queen (Freddie Mercury performs “The Great Pretender”) and a King (Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” is that week’s number one). also, it features Christians.

Should have been the following week, which features Freddie and King too, cus that's the JAMs 1987 episode and I missed it at the time.

The time = 2019

Caught up on a few more last night. Some good nostalgia from my early days of going to clubs (chart-based ones before graduating to 'proper' clubs): Sub Sub, Robin S and Cappella. Also The Bluebells at number one every week: I remember the one where they did the 'techno, techno, techno, techno' bit from There's No Limit, but didn't realise they did a different ad lib every week (culminating in 'there's no business like show business').

Good to see Diane Charlemagne on last night‘s repeat.

Shara Nelson sounded like she had a cold.

wasn't a really good shot of his face but is that still prof cox on keyboards for d:ream, the one with the hair-metal hair?

Yes I think so.

o_____O at Bad Boys Inc's crotch thrusting dance moves. I'd get arrested if I did that. But musically they're harmless, what you'd get if you stuck Jason Donovan and Take That in a cloning machine.
'Mr Vain' is a banger but for me it's mutilated by the memory of a housemate who used to sing it in a tuneless falsetto all the time for several months.

I always wondered if 'She Kissed Me' was D'Arby taking the piss out of Lenny Kravitz.

it's like a Kravitz song but done 1000% better so maybe?

sympathy for everyone else who sat through that performance from Cilla, jfc.

A song taking the piss out of Lenny Kravitz and D'Arby is ostensibly on the way next month, except it only reached no. 40 so I don't think we'll see it on breakers

not familiar with sisters past floodlands, which i love, but this seems bad...

"we are on the cutting edge of rock and roll, living dangerously. next week, special guest, cilla black..."

That was their final single. But their previous, Temple of Love 1992, was a top three hit and the corresponding early singles/EPs comp was their only top five album. This is all conveniently forgotten now but surreal to think about.

Is this the Will Smith single with the ridiculous arm-wavey dance move? Why yes it is. I recall people having to hold their hands at more of a right angle to avoid smacking other people in the face on the dancefloor.

These two shows were the best since, what, 1990? Earlier?

Maybe not that bad but the most solid back to back shows in a while. I think it's because - at least for my taste - landfill dance is a lot less obnoxious than landfill indie.

These two shows were the best since, what, 1990? Earlier?

My thinking was that these were definitely the best we've had in ages. Not since 1990 but yeah, in the first episode for instance the only song I didn't like was Craven

Think the key thing was the lack of old timers playing their comeback singles and dance remixes of disco hits, that's accounted for half of some of the recent shows.

Ha, my wife and I thought there was a lot of poor stuff in these and we skipped quite a few tracks this week. Maybe Moby just put us in a bad mood – just dreadful in every way. It was good to see Björk and New Order and Radiohead were OK but most of the other good tunes were from videos.