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

"Give It Away" is one of those songs that I think I like when I try recall what it sounds like, but when I hear it (especially accompanied by the video) I realise that it's a bunch of nonsense.

I like that TOTP heralding their new era included a single from an album that was released before the last era. Why wasn't it a UK hit until 94 I have no idea.

No-one said it was going to be easy... for Mark E Smith to even both singing all the lyrics of this song from a piece of paper.

Also, number 7382 in a series of 'singers who look like someone snoball works with' - there's a guy at work who I've just realised looks like a blond version of young MES.

Morrissey being a choad as normal - "I will be in the bar... with my head on the bar" ffs

xxp s/both/bother
(or for me to even bother typing out the word 'bother' apparently)

Electroswing really has just been a decades-long, even less good riff on Doop by Doop, hasn't it?

Doop by Doop is brilliant and all electroswing is terrible shit, apart from that I agree.

decades long
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6r1tUhl1cQ
Electrovelvet, the UK's Eurovision 2015 entry. Which at the time I thought sounded like 'Doop'.

Such awful shit, nothing redeemable there. Doop still magnificent though.

Doop is brilliant and I'm happy to see it get some love here.

Whenever it's revived these days it's the version from the video, which is RONG. The (hit) Urge 2 Merge Mix is only the vid mix for a minute then it becomes something else.

there are I believe two different videos for the two mixes

I've never seen the U2M video? Either way the other one is all I'm used to seeing.

Before Doop led to electro-swing there were some much nearer descendants, like Yomanda's hardbag Blind Date (no. 31 in '95).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Peijv1JnEg0

you've been fucking framed

A slightly later and hipper electroswing precedent is Get a Move On by Mr Scruff.

Only up to the Inspiral Carpets, Mark E Smith but a strong episode so far. Hearing Barbara Tucker’s pleasant enough garage house track and realising that is where the vocal from Hardrives “Deep Inside” is sampled from - a song I know inside out and upside down but without investigating the source - was a moment.

Argh, jinxed it. Morrisey.

The U2M mix of "Doop" is the version I remember from radio growing up - 1995 is when I really started paying attention to the charts and pop music properly - and it's so much better because it fully commits to being the most obnoxious, brash version of the idea of, what if we stuck a donk on the charleston?

"Blind Date" also comes in two mixes and thankfully westbury white horse has posted the correct version. I would make a case of Paul Masterson being a secret hero - he's the man behind this and "Synth & Strings" - but also Amen UK's "Passion", all the Candy Girls singles, and loads of poppers o'clock dance remixes as Sleaze Sisters and Wand. All this stuff is really tasteless, cheesy and bold, but I love the way that it fully embraces shamelessness as a positive value.

that said electro-swing is all fucking terrible, and I am immediately suspicious of anyone who identifies themselves as a fan because at best they have terrible taste, at worst you find they're nearly always terrible regressives who feel a sense of borrowed nostalgia for the socially repressed values of the 1920s

Never thought I’d see another Paul Masterson stan here. He had quite the knack for getting as much energy as possible out of pretty simple loops - his Yolanda mix of Quo Vadis - Sonic Boom never left the bag for years back when I had those kind of gigs.

Yomanda even, thx autocorrect

I'll be third in this gang. I've long really liked his work but I developed an even stronger interest when a) an old friend declared my own beloved Synth & Strings her favourite track of all time, so it sort of become 'our' track for quite a while and b) I got really into hardbag as a thing in and of itself, which meant I gave more time of day to Candy Girls and Amen! UK than I had before.

xps I always think of Get a Move On as the first electro swing track, which I know isn't by any means accurate.

Between 'Doop' and 'Get A Move On' there is Apollo 440's 'Krupa'

(and is just as amazing as either)

I never really thought of Get A Move On as electro swing, probably because the Moondog sample isn’t as obnoxiously retro as someone like Caravan Palace.

Either way that whole scene sucked from my brief experiences with it - chancers throwing together incredibly slapdash electro-swing on Ableton mainly to get sets (and therefore free tickets) on the uk small festival circuit all summer.

Seemed like a load of posh boys from money slumming it in wacky sequinned blazer and captains hat combo’s, kind of like an Eton lost vagueness. The live band Gypsy Swing side of things, while not my kind of thing definitely harboured a lot more talent.

/rant.

Re: Recent TOTP, Dina Carroll’s ‘The Perfect Year’ is up there with Whitney ‘I Will Always Love You’ and Marian’s ‘I Can’t Live’. She doesn’t seem to have been remembered at all though?

The thing with Dina Carroll is that she had/has a stunning singing voice, but her singles always seemed to be dreary ballads with cloying, syrupy production. The album track she played on the show a couple of weeks ago was much better, so maybe there are other things to discover from her.

The one actual electro swing track that does anything for me is Gramophonedize's Why Don't You - which probably borrows more from Audio Bullys' Shot You Down.

Ah thanks, heard that in a Little Boots set at the time and never knew what it was until now.

came across this podcast episode about “Synths & Strings” with Paul Masterson as a guest on Spotify:

Soundcloud link

Thanks for the link. I first heard this only a short while ago but got distracted iirc so am listening again in full now.

To tie this to the TOTP chat, he has an anecdote around 20m that S&S was issued by Manifesto on the same day as Dina Carroll's Without Love, and the label were both wanting and expecting Dina to outchart Yomanda and were furious when it didn't happen. Dina's last top 20 hit, sadly.

Dina was MASSIVE in the early 90s wasn't she, seems to be on TOTP every other week.

Doop of course stole the idea from Cajemere - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwtCsg-NfRM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CUYXzLm7WE

The thing with Dina Carroll is that she had/has a stunning singing voice, but her singles always seemed to be dreary ballads with cloying, syrupy production.

Been thinking about how much of this was around in the 90's, and how you could view it as the return of pre-Rock Pop values. Ballads of the 70's and 80's tended to be in closer conversation with the Pop styles of the day, but there's nothing New Jack Swing or Acid House about any of this stuff, it is v self-conciously "classy" and aiming for a timeless feel where timeless means "sounds like a crooner". You can tie in career revivals for Tony Bennent and Nat King Cole (posthoumously) into this as well I guess.

1st episode tonight the worst in a long while.

It was tough going

I can imagine the ego salving conversation the producers had with Michael Bolton / Michael Bolton's "people" re him introducing the show: "OK so we'd like Michael, er, Mr Bolton to introduce the show and announce that Barbara Striesand is going to be on. But then he'll perform last for an unreasonably long time with a terrible cover version so really he's the most important act on the show, OK?"

2nd episode was kind of rough as well.

the 1980 one though was hit after hit, all things you still hear, 42 years later.

Janice and John presenting the 1985 one. both dead now.

Dismal last night - never in human history have so many session musicians displayed such gritted-teeth fake enthusiasm. The rest of it made a minor 2 Unlimited hit and sodding Stiltskin seem like the bleeding edge of musical innovation.

Carry Me Home is one of the best singles ever, but it wasn't the best performance of it. A bit too croaky and mixed a bit too high.

In 1994 I was living in a shared house where one of my housemates had cable TV. Among the channels was The Box - 'Music television you control' - in other words a fairly basic video request channel. People would phone a number and then dial a three digit number to select a particular video. For about a month in 1994 it seemed like the only two videos they played were Prodigy's 'No Good' and General Levy's 'Incredible'.

At some point we'll get to see the episode of TOTP where Levy gets the audience to chant "booyaka booyaka".

Carry Me Home is one of the best singles ever, but it wasn't the best performance of it. A bit too croaky and mixed a bit too high.

Definitely better this week. Overall there was a lot to love tonight.

Swamp Thing! In my memory I'd written it off as a slightly annoying novelty, turns out it was in fact an absolute tune.

I remember The Box well, but from a few years later than Snoball. Home of 'No Way No Way' by Vanilla.

1994 episodes dire again.

1981 contained good things i haven't thought about since, well, 1981. the bad manners, the hazel o'connor. and i don't think i'd ever heard that version of John I'm Only Dancing. and teardrop explodes at #8 in the chart (not played but...)

Swamp Thing is really terrific. It also led a trend of (mostly bad) country Eurodance-y type things; although only Two Cowboys (in a week or two) and later Rednex did really well, there was also Bravado's Harmonica Man (37 in June) and 2 in a Tent's When I'm Cleaning Windows (25 in December), the latter of which, while not country obv, is still the most obvious ST descendant.

strangely enough I loved Swamp Thing at the time and didn't care for it much last night.

otoh there was 'Babies' which is still one of my favourite songs, really happy to see that.