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

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.

Well....'punk had to happen' is a tired old theme, but IF it was ever true then this weeks shows why. Robin Sarstedt - just die you seedy bastard. Sutherland Brothers and Quiver - a soundtrack for cruisin' down the Gateshead bypass in your Hillman Avenger. The singer (Gavin Sutherland?) had great hair though. Frankie Valli, who I maintain it is impossible to dislike looked like he hadn't slept for a year. Manilow - unspeakably awful, and why did he have the piano stool so high? He could barely reach the keys. JJ Barrie - nothing can really describe the horror of this record, although he looked like a decent enough bloke. The Mud record was utterly bizarre - I have no memory of this at all. Even though it was a bit of a disco death-rattle from the bubble-glam stalwarts, they at least seemed enthusistic about it. And bonus marks go to Dave Mount for doing the 'let's arse about on the telly' walk around his drum-kit. What else was there? Ruby Flipper - what did Pan's People do to deserve this fate? Only bright spot was Cliff - crackin' song that with a lovely electric piano sound. The band were hod-carriers even by TOTP session-men standards. They made Sutherland Brothers and Quiver look like arch sex gods in comparison. Oh and of course Abba. But they faded it in verse 2 - bastards. A dire week but at least they didn't show Hank Mizell or John Miles. And how bored was Noel throughout?

Back in 76, I was still watching TOTP as a 14yr old, along with OGWT, but I don't think I was listening to anything much from the charts. I had some Pink Floyd albums, I think I'd just discovered the Syd era LPs. I had a couple of Status Quo albums (Piledriver, Hello) some Bowie and T-Rex, Story of The Who, some K-Tel comps. Within a year I'd be spending my pocket money on scratchy singles in home-made sleeves made by bands barely older than myself from Belfast, Manchester, Deptford and Ladbroke Grove. Happy days, and yeah they did HAVE to happen.

(Imagine a bootmix of "Give peace a chance" with the lyrics of "Sailing" over the top of it)

xpost obviously, blimey thread's suddenly busy.

Two of SB and Quiver played with Pink Floyd - Tim Renwick and Willie Wilson.

And Bruce Thomas was in Quiver!! But not in SB&Q, I think.

Tim Renwick? Something to do with Bowie too?

I watched pretty much all of the variety season of reruns, but wasn't prepared to touch Noel's House Party and only survived 5 minutes of Friends Like These.

The weirdest shows have probably been Call My Bluff and Going For A Song which redefine low stakes and gentle television and are a difficult watch at all, even more baffling by what must have been the viewing figures at the time.

i saw a couple of minutes of arthur negus talking about urns made of coal, recognised him immediately

they are also doing the summer comedy repeats on bbc2, single episodes of things like the Boosh, Cuckoo, and to the manor born.

I love olc light entertainment too much sorry everyone

That said I can't imagine watching through the whole of NHP. But I am tempted to iPlayer it. And Friends Like These is the way I remember BBC game shows looking when I was really little. Cosy.

There's nothing to recommend Noel's House Party unless there's a specific musical performance or a particular celebrity being gunged, and even then that's over-selling it. The Gotchas are woeful with the only highlight being Garth Crooks struggling to explain the offside rule. Then Edmonds comes on pratting about in the Mr Blobby costume. In a nutshell it sums up my problem with NHP - it's light entertainment made by people who think the audience are idiots.

It's odd that it was made by a lot of the same people who made The Late Late Breakfast Show, which itself could be terrible sometimes but a lot of the time managed to be not shit. Or maybe it's my memory as I was younger. And I guess when you're a teenager you revolt against light entertainment.

Not that I hate everything Edmonds has ever done. Despite being a Tiswas kid at heart, I enjoyed Swap Shop. And I liked the first ten years of Telly Addicts, to the point where it was part of my Christmas TV watching schedule.

There was also a programme where Edmonds was interviewed by Terry Wogan where he came across as a reasonable likeable person. But in Edmonds' own autobiography he was a womanising creep and then there's the whole business of driving a taxi with a manequin in the back so that he can use bus lanes and avoid traffic jams. When he got caught he said it was his 'campaign for action against timewasters' or something.

The less said about Deal Or No Deal the better. My father was obsessed with that gameshow to the point that I bought him the quiz book as a sarcastic Christmas present.

> the quiz book

there was / is no quiz element to d|!d

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.