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

fuck Noel Edmonds and his 'comedy' links

fuck Noel Edmonds and his 'comedy' links

I know, what a dick. Still we had the Four Seasons doing "Silver Star" this week. Also Eric Carmen's "interview" with Noel Edmonds, where you couldn't hear a word he was saying, don't be shy Eric!

Interviews on TOTP? that's a rarity...

"Inteview" not really the word.

"You wrote a song for Dana didn't you?"
"Mumble mumble mumble"
"What's the best song you've ever written?"
"Mumble mumble mumble All By Myself"
"Well all the best with the new single"
"Mumble"

Don't know what song he wrote for Dana

Oh and Noel was saying what a good album "Eric Carmen" was: a rare display of good taste from Edmonds there!

Noel had to say he liked it cos he didn't want to blow a raspberry.

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.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQEFKqBhv1Gan_s28o_gYBnrD_awK5nfglorA&s
I just saw the book in a charity shop and bought it for my father's Christmas present. I don't know how faithful it is to the TV show.

the boxes just get given out at random at the beginning and the player picks the order of boxes to open, he / she gets to keep the money in his / hers. the only game-like element is whether to choose the banker's offer or not, based on what has been revealed. (am assuming the banker is as blind as the player) (there may be the option to swap boxes).

you do get an option to swap boxes at the end. the maths works out as a 23% chance of getting more than the average prize

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/deal-or-no-deal-investigating-gameshow-maths/

I once watched the very beginning of a round of Deal Or No Deal and when I saw the randomness of the box allocation I realised that it was a bit pointless (pun not intended). It's like Golden Balls but without all the different rules.

I liked Deal Or No Deal - before contestants and gameplay started getting far too New Age and superstitious (encouraged by Noel himself ofc) - and I like the new Mulhern version. The box allocation may be random but the show is about deciding when to get off and shake hands with the banker. A Deal or No Deal without it is a disaster like Tarrant's The Colour of Money.

Golden Balls on the other hand was, Jasper aside, a load of balls. So ruthlessly cruel - like Divided and, years earlier, Shafted - that unless there was a split-split it would spoil my afternoon.

The horrible thing about Noel - the flaw in my character - is even though he's a raging egomaniac I like seeing him do well because he's been around so long and he takes failures badly.

A few things.

"Then Edmonds comes on pratting about in the Mr Blobby costume." This never, ever happened, right? He wasn't ever Blobby, was he?

"pointless (pun not intended)" I remember something somewhere speculating Osman was the banker. Is this more widely recognised than I thought?

It's clear Edmonds is as much as Madeley the real Alan Partridge inspiration. Of course he is a terrible person.

Osman was never the Banker, it was Glenn Hugill.

He wasn't ever Blobby, was he?

Yeah, he was. The rehearsal would be some young bloke in the costume talking to um, celeb. Then on the real show, it'd all get maaad! then Noel would unveil himself....

I "auditioned" for Shafted - I was doing too well and got held back from doing the "final", and by then I had decided that there was no way I'd get any money out of this, so didn't go back.

Right decision!

... he was naked in that Blobby suit too.

they let Keith Allen back?

(first '96 episodes for a while)

Candidate for worst compilation album ever?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beautiful_Game_(compilation_album)

Northern Uproar – "I Am the Cosmos" – 3:17

Say it ain't so

I grew up with The Beautiful Game and created that (very badly written) wiki article in my teens

Missed TOTP tonight - too busy trying and failing to travel to see A.R. Kane and Seefeel - but England's Irie is brilliant.

Gina G (presenting) saying "the band that refused to do totp" meaning the Sex Pistols, but Joe Strummer was right there (and miming!)

Sex Pistols were bad, of all the songs to perform, Pretty Vacant and New York, the worst single and an unremarkable album track? And Rotten's hair has never been worse.

"the band that refused to do totp"

and in the year of the Prodigy having two number ones

Gina G was TERRIBLE as a host and the Sex Pistols were and always will be rotten, that episode was a real slog for me

I loved the competition winner being completely unimpressed. He probably thought he was going to Vegas with Blur or Oasis instead of a Spanish holiday resort to watch Shampoo do one of their less successful songs

Also that Black Grape effort was terrible, watching it felt like when you're sober at a party when everyone else is snorting cocaine. And that Simply Red I had no recollection of might be the most dismal attempt at a terrace anthem ever.

I didn't like them at the time (cos I was 8 and girls were yucky!!!) but you can see why Spice Girls really had to happen by this point

Hate the competition winner, if I'd been in Madrid with Shampoo in 1996 I'd have been having an amazing time, miserable cunt thought it was beneath him or something.

he 100% deserved to be that miserable for going in with the worst attitude

Oh he had a great time, Shampoo always did 'grumpy' and he was doing likewise.

Turns out that winner's name was Mark G

Well he does have track record of winning TV show competitions.

!

Or, he could be called David Howe, of Chingford in Essex - according to Julia Carling...

Another episode presented by Keith Allen as some kind of comic character. Terrorvision have a new album out this year - 'We Are Not Robots'.

TOTP late getting on the Spice Girls train - they were already in Japan, which for a mid-90s UK band meant that they were already huge.

Been awaiting their arrival for the last few weeks, good to have them around again.

There's definitely been some episodes skipped. Not that I'm desperate to see missed performances by Gary Barlow but I wonder why.

This Rock Therapy song makes me want to rob a charity

TOTP late getting on the Spice Girls train

how so? they had to have the first single out to be on it

a bit of digging reveals that the competition winner in those two episodes is a man who became a councillor and was then convicted of horrific crimes, no wonder they were skipped.

re: the Spice Girls - the video for Wannabe was ubiquitous on The Box in the run-up to its release and the Spice Girls did lots of "bonus content" over their imperial phase exclusively for the channel. It's hard to say if the group helped the channel or the channel helped the group, but they mutually benefitted from it - the video sets up their striking imagery and their camaraderie, while The Box helped the band to succeed in a pop climate that really wasn't set up or welcoming to them. But it was The Box, more than TOTP or Radio One, that broke them. They were eventually omnipresent on Saturday morning and CBBC TV shows, but that came after the success of Wannabe.

Kate Thornton was editor of Smash Hits at the time and told the Spice Girls they would never have a hit. It was the TOTP magazine that coined the scary/posh/ginger/baby/sporty nicknames that stuck.

I remember them doing 'Wannabe' a few weeks before release on whatever that equivalent of The One Show that ITV ran at the time was.

First time I saw them was on whatever the summer replacement for Live & Kicking was, they seemed like they were having a good time.