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

My god that it horribly formed.

*is*

OK so Google tells me Dana covered "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again" from the aforementioned "Eric Carmen" album

Is Dana the one who did some religious kids programme called 'Wake Up Sunday'?

Sounds likely

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!

I'm behind. Hale & Pace's attempt at satire in their presenting capacity was hugely confused, to be charitable.

Camp ageing rockers in Blur and Oasis tees, for some reason? Still less loathable than Keith Allen's joke presenting a few months back.

Fairground's a pretty odd number one really. I kind of like it, Hucknall's obvious off-putting qualities aside. Nice groove in the verses, huge chorus drop.

Were they pre existing H&P characters? That would make more sense.

As much as I despise the human rodent that is mick hucknall, I really love 'fairground'

It's a good song! Actually come across more decent 'Red tracks than expected over the TOTP repeats.

Next episode, Ant & Dec invent electroswing.

Enjoying the well curated TOTP2 snippets at the end

My longstanding in-joke with a friend was that jazz was a genre floundering until PJ & Duncan dropped "Krazy Katz" in the autumn of 1995, at which point sales for jazz records increased 100,000% overnight, much as sales for Western classical music did in the wake of the Toy Dolls' Orcastrated earlier in the year, and luminaries like Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Dexter Gordon were disinterred and paraded in celebration of the new music.

I'd forgotten how many singles PJ & Duncan released. I thought it was basically 'Let's Get Ready to Rhumble' and one other, but no, they were polluting the charts like Robson & Jerome's kid brothers.

Well this Beatles song that's been cobbled together from an old demo sounds grating, I guess they won't be trying that again.

xpost yeah almost all of their hits live in the "forgotten" zone.

There was a budget "best of" in Poundland, one track was clearly too expensive to license but it had all the other 'hits' (except the football one, too new I guess)

They had three studio albums but five compilation albums. Is there any other artist or group who have had far more compilation albums than original studio albums, apart from people who have been dead for decades?

Ant & Dec are credited as songwriters or co-writers on nearly all of their original songs. Which is both simultaneously impressive for what was essentially a comedy inflected boyband, but also pretty tragic when you listen to the actual songs.

It would be impossible for something like their music career to happen nowadays. I think the nearest, in broad terms anyway, is LadBaby, but he's only released singles.

one track was clearly too expensive to license

That would be the cover of 'Stepping Stone' I'm guessing.

No. The one that everybody knows..

A&D's strong but now invisible hits career is a subject I love to bring up (and have already during the TOTP runs). The pair of them are obviously more than eager to pretend there was nothing more than LGRTR.

My fav Ant & Dec single is Shout - classic boyband maturity move that. Look forward to when we get to it.

I have that budget comp (Takeaway). The best one (if more A&D = best) was the 'essential collection' double set that came later that I definitely remember Tesco stocking. Still no We're on the Ball though.

lol Takeaway isn't even in the list of five compilation albums on Wikipedia. And it doesn't have Rhumble - https://www.discogs.com/release/7661579-Ant-Dec-AKA-PJ-Duncan-Takeaway-The-Best-Of-Ant-Dec

Yep, that's the one

Gary Barlow looks so cross all the time he's singing.

Barlow (thinks): I can't chuffing BELIEVE that I'm having to sit at THIS PIANO singing THIS RUDDY SONG *fumes*

Compare to how Mark Owen always looks like he's having a great time.

Oh here's Damon - at least the crowd here are singing along.

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.