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

10CC, "Mandy Fly Me" was on too. Fantastic!

NEdmonds always had his love of singer-songwriters, to be fair.

Big fan of Harry Chapin, yer Edmonds.

Balderdash certainly describes droll Noel's career.

This was easily the most WTF song on this week's show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iISUroWbu2U

I watched last night's 1976 episode, it was amazingly and compellingly bad. Lots of odd-looking folks I've never heard of awkwardly performing novelty songs, and one of Pan's People doing some remarkably gratuitous ass-shaking in the direction of the camera. I need more.

70s was the golden age for ugly blokes, you could still end up in a band on TOTP with groupies galore. Rubettes' (sans caps) song sounded more like the Beatles than the Rutles!

I'm watching this now. LOL at the male members of the Vagabonds miming the female backing vocals. Something massively depressing about second tier disco groups though, like they're trapped in time, it's as if they're composed entirely of all the bits of late 70's disco that don't influence music today.

Shoeless and carrying a walking stick with a bicycle bell on it? Fucking hell, Harpo could teach Lady gaga a thing or two.

Sheer Elegance one of the most misnamed bands ever judging by what they were wearing, the uglyness of the Rubettes & their overcocky drummer, the utter WTFness of Harpo. mandatory viewing from now on!

I'm sure Punk would never of happened if Sky+ would of been available in 1976...ended up fast forwarding most of last night's show...bring back Noosha Fox...become a little obsessed with s-s-single bed...

^^^ same goes for watching it on iPlayer. I don't know if 'compellingly bad' is the term, or just 'bad'.

the uglyness of the Rubettes & their overcocky drummer

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx-aH0oBscw

definitely 'compellingly bad' for me. and Fox lady really reminded me of Alison Goldfrapp which is a Good Thing.

Noosha F missing link between Clare Grogan and Goldfrapp. Love that record.

Ah, been catching up via good old iplayer on the wii.

Old enough to remember these episodes quite clearly in some cases.

Sad that they haven't gone back far enough in time to have Sparks on.

Still, don't recall that Gilbert O'Sullivan song though I must have heard it then.

Oh, last I heard, they are definitely doing this run for a year.

After that? Who knows...

Still, don't recall that Gilbert O'Sullivan song though I must have heard it then.

He was long gone as commercial proposition by 1976. That song sounded like a demo, did artists have to re-record tracks? I know they had to re-record vocals, hence the ubiquity of the Ladybirds. But then other acts obviously just mimed to the record.

They did 'have' to.

A lot of them switched the tapes post-session, apparently.

ooooooo-oooooooooooooh Vienna it's Slik

It's Midge Uuuurrrr...

And Paul knickerless

Jesus Christ, superstar?

DLT looks like Badly Drawn Boy.

This is sooooo much better than last weeks....

Only one novelty act so far.

Shit Brotherhood Of Man are still number one...

They were there for 6 weeks.

The guy without the 'tasche wants to die.

I still fucking hate the last line of that song...not for the paedo connotations...just cos i hate it...

So, there isn't a TOTP this week, but there is a "Primal Scream" themed evening coming up on Friday.

AAAAAAAAAAARGH

No, the band, not the Janov therapy.

You could kind of see why Midge Ure ended up in Ultravox, I mean "Requiem", the title sounds an like Ultravox song. Slik were a pretty cool looking band by 1976 standards.

Oh, it was very Ultravox, for sure.

I got tickets to see them live in 1978, Top Rank, Reading, thanks to being at the Radio210 offices at the right time: The whole band were there, I met them all, and got the signed piccies, and for some reason that escapes me two free tickets and a bunch of discount vouchers. It wasn't full to say the least, and the support band, "Screemer", were perfectly competent early seventies pophairies that would lose their career path in the wake of punk...

That 1978 should be (Nov) 1976 (oops), timings at that point in history are crucial.

Mud go disco, urgh...

Didn't the guitarist write 'Can't get you out my head' by Kylie...sounds a bit like it...

Frankie Valli's tired performance there. He really got a boost from appearing in Grease in '78, didn't he.

Sometimes I think Elvis died just to avoid crappy cover versions like this.

DEVIL WOMAN!!!
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LP_YP0I7zZY/SoFziAfbpiI/AAAAAAAAC-c/RoLUJLbssFU/s200/RikMayall.png

the shadows have let themselves go...

Mud go disco

Surreal

the shadows have let themselves go...

Even by 1976 standards that was one ugly backing band.

Was there anything good in this episode? Apart from Cliff?

The iplayer only has the 30 min version!

Blimey, Robin Sarstedt, what was that all about? Sutherland Brothers/Quiver was quite nice, not enough guys with combovers in the charts these days.

Guessing Annie Lennox has superseded the Sutherland Brothers as Aberdeenshire's biggest chart act though

The Sutherland Brothers and Quiver were pretty great, a lot of quality 70s country rock/AOR tunes. Never heard the Suths on their own tho.

odd that they chopped the Stones out of the longer version.

Robin Sarstedt song was familiar. probably from Jane Russell in The Las Vegas Story.

i think claire grogan has heard that fox single.

The Sutherlan Brothers did the original of "Sailing", and I knew it before Rods version thanks to a k-tel compilation.

Weller looking a lot like mr Spock there

odd set tonight. and the way the style council were set up seemed odd too, all on top of each other.

i don't remember this episode at all

um, was i watching a previous recording rather than one from tonight? they aren't following the published schedule because of the snooker and the epg won't let me go backwards and see.

Last night the schedule was snooker from 7pm until 10pm, then an episode from 1984 followed by one from 1980.

yeah, the one i watched was this from 83 which is in the recent list on iPlayer but must've been recorded before last night (the pvr bundles things of the same name together so it got bumped to top of the new recordings list along with the new one, which turned out to be 30 mins of snooker)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08fsfy0/top-of-the-pops-31031983?seriesId=unsliced

I daresay iPlayer will be fine, but if you were wanting to see "NY at the BBC" and didn't set yr TiVo to record Christine and the Queens, then... yr out of luck.

It wouldn't be TOTP if you didn't occasionally miss it because of the snooker.

i got a 2 o'clock showing of totp 1980 and 1984 which both turned out to be david byrne at the union chapel.

iplayer will be fine, not least because these were pre-delivered - it doesn't record off air unless the programme's live. sometimes this can be missing bits if the schedule's changed but it's generally tidied up on the next working day. (unless it's the snowboarding on the red button which was royally fucked up but there were whole days cancelled and rearranged by the organisers so it's hardly surprising)

1984 had the bunnymen, Will with his teardrop vox(?) 12 string.

1980 was the cure again and bad manners again.

(my facebook history for friday was me railing against the snooker exactly two years previously, for similar reasons)

The post-Diana week must be coming up soon? Was it even on that week? Many BBC things weren't.

Normal service is resumed next Friday with two consecutive episodes from January 1996 (plus episodes from 1987 and 1976). Diana's death wasn't until August 1997. So we're quite a way off.

For some reason I like 'Slight Return' by The Bluetones despite the many small problems - lead singer looks like Ray Davies but in Phil Daniels' parka from Quadrophenia while shuffling around like Ian Brown / Liam, song title irritatingly reminds me of Hendrix's 'Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)', the rest of the band look like a generic mid '96 Britpop band, I get the sneaking suspicion they were signed because some record exec wanted a band that were a bit like Oasis but not headstrong wankers, etc., etc..

they are soooo stone roses lite

The Lighthouse Family - if you were ever on hold to Dell tech support in the late '90s then you've probably heard their entire greatest hits.

This is an absolute classic tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5gx6dlurtI

six episodes tonight. two from the current run, two 'random' episodes and two with the featured artist, tina turner tonight.

It's hard for me to hate Ocean Colour Scene, but it's equally hard for me to like them. Alcatraz - I've said this upthread, but for my taste landfill dance is way less obnoxious than landfill indie. For the last few weeks there have been some real bangers that I've either forgotten about or don't even remember. Luniz 'I Got 5 On It' I remember from Now 60 or whatever it was. I don't remember Diana Ross completely stealing Gloria Gaynor's signature song but it boils my piss. Music may be RHCP's aeroplane, but Kiedis is a strong candidate for my idea of worst frontman ever.

Supergrass - the Slade of Britpop

In the sense that I have a lot of fun listening to their records but don't really expect deep intellectual content or insights from either band.

co-incidentally on the second of tonight's 1996 episodes, Oasis - a band that I don't expect deep intellectual content or insights from but also don't have fuin listening to the record of - cover a Slade song.

the Alcatraz track is excellent, pretty lush sounding for an almost top ten hit, not to mention rather hookless

but i've written about that before

Giv Me Luv is amazing. love the head-scrambling way in which the different rhythmic layers are brought in. there's also this call-and-response thing going on between the lead synth and the bassline, and with that handclap, it always make me think of it as some sort of wordless electronic gospel

yes i know it has actual words too, but they seem kind of by the bye to me

a couple of episodes behind but I am in awe of that East 17 single that I don't recall from the time, the lyrics and Tony's performance are ridiculous. I'm also really enjoying the performances of 3T where the singer explodes with emotion and... throws his backpack on the floor. Both when they were in the studio, and on the beach.

"The Naughty North & The Sexy South" is a banger for all ages though.

Classic hardbag. I wonder if we'll be getting it again later in the year during chart rundown (i assume not)

My intro to it was actually this erm Doctor Fox 'mix' CD, a very first-four-months-of-1996 compilation albeit with a few stranger older choices (i assume never forget is there as a memorial for take that)

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/djmix/doctor-fox/mixomatic/

Supergrass' first album is still such a blast