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

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Guessing Annie Lennox has superseded the Sutherland Brothers as Aberdeenshire's biggest chart act though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

Muso note - Cliff's bass player was playing an interesting Burns Bison bass. And he looked like a bison too. A bespectacled bison.

xpost - yes, Space Oddity-era IIRC

Re: SB+Q, I like this idea of two struggling bands joining together a la Dagenham & Redbridge or something

A bit like Bob Dylan and The Band, with a shared credit!

Or do I mean Cliff Richard and The Shadows, but ran backwards?

Was Robin Sarstedt related to Peter Sarstedt? Were they even their real names?

Yes, they were brothers. Also Eden Kane, who was actually Richard Starstedt

although, you are also right, Robin's first name was Clive.

I thought they looked alike but I was worried I was just being racist. I love Peter Sarstedt, I'd love it if a performance of this turned up on BBC4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRyIiutZ8ck

> Back in 76, I was still watching TOTP as a 14yr old, along with OGWT

that's something else they should repeat, whistle test.

in fact, ditch bbc3 and just use it to show bbc1 from 35 years ago, verbatim.

I keep reading OGWT as Odd Gang Wolf Them. Argh.

Don't mind me, just catching up:

Mud's "Shake it down" the latest victim of the "must re-record with the BBC orchestra" rule, the record is much better than this.

The musicians featured on the Cliff Richard recording are Terry Britten on guitar, Alan Tarney on bass, Clem Cattini on drums, Graham Todd on keyboards.

So, some top names in that list. OK. they're a bit ug, but hey.

I'd forgotten how bad Ruby Flipper were. Pan's People's over-literal interpretation of lyrics were much better by comparison.
And Midge Ure looks about 14.

Three times a month, a little reggae like it used to be

NOT AGAIN

Wait till we get to 'Mull of Kintyre'...there'll be mass suicides across the country...

austerity totp this week - 75% recycled clips and robin sarstedt singing to an empty studio.

am amazed at the amount of blokes in the charts, think i counted 6 acts containing women in the top 30 and 2 of those were BoM and abba. and also at how long things are hanging around - BoM were #1 for 5 or 6 weeks and are still in top 10 a month later.

late version, the long one, started 15 minute late so i missed the end.

ok, wasn't as bad as i thought:
29 Melba Moore
28 Tina Charles
24 Gladys Knight and the Pips
16 Wings
15 Diana Ross
12 Silver Connection
10 Fox
08 BoM
06 Andrea True Connection
01 Abba

I remember Linda Lewis getting nominated for Best Female for years at a stretch in Record Mirror.

True moved to New York City as a teenager, to seek fame as a mainstream movie star. While she did manage to get some minor roles in mainstream movies, including The Way We Were, the fame she sought was fleeting. Desperate for work, she decided to pursue a career as a porn star. She appeared in more than 60 hardcore porn films throughout the 1970s and early to mid-80s, and distinguished herself as one of the more recognizable porn stars in the early New York adult-film industry.

During her heyday as a porn actress, True was hired by a real estate business in Jamaica to appear in their commercial ads. During her stay on Jamaica, a political crisis gripped the island, and no one was allowed to leave with any money. Not wanting to lose her hard-earned pay, True asked her friend, record producer Gregg Diamond, to travel to the island and produce a track for her, which she would finance locally. Diamond arrived with a composition in hand, to which True added lyrics. The result of their collaboration was "More, More, More."

i never knew any of this but it goes some way to explaining why Andrea True Connection gives me funny feelings in my tummy when i watch her video

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/may/29/critics-notebook-alexis-petridis

I agree with everything he said. Staggering Noosha Fox - Ben Goldacre fact, too.

Sailor are Roxy-lite, but you can bet that Ferry wishes he'd written 'A Glass of Champagne'.
I like the idea that R&B/hip hop in 2011 is in the same state as glam in 1976 - a style left to second tier chancers after the real innovators have long since moved on.

Catching up with last week's. thought I'd acclimatised to this strange world, then they start off with close-up on golliwog logo.

This is my favourite thing on television at the moment.

Oh dear... Heavy Metal Kids

Holton is like a UK Woolworth's version of Alice Cooper.

The naff disco really kicked in at this point, didn't it?

I'm pretty sure that the dream Iggy had that inspired 'TVC15' didn't look like Ruby Flipper's interpretation.

Jesus fuck, Heavy Metal Kids.
how did punk ever happen after that? how could that not make every youth in the country immediately swear never to make chugging pub rock with out-of-tune faux-working class vocals?

</reductive mis-analysis of the trends of 35 years ago>

also sadface because "Heavy Metal Kids" made me think of Kraftwerk with Rother and Dinger. But still, Archie Bell and the Drells!

(did the presenters get to choose the acts? last week's was very conspicuously all white, in rather stark contrast to the acts pictured in the chart rundown at the start, so this week's was a refreshing change after that. wondered if JS should get any credit for that or if I should continue to be skeeved out by him)

I don't think that the presenters had any real say in who was on. By the mid 70's the producers of TOTP had to pick from whoever was available, the programme not being able to get the big hitters like Bowie or the Stones. Hence the procession of uninspired soul/disco groups, Ruby Flipper, videotapes of MOR stuff like Barrie and Sarstedt, and arse-end-of-glam bands like HMK (the singer desperately trying to sound like Ian Hunter and failing dismally).

I don't know about 'punk had to happen' but certainly something had to happen. If I was a young teenager in 1976 I'd have been in fucking despair.

favourite bit was Archie Bell and the Drells 'looking for their contact lenses' dance moves
also didn't know the junkie from Auf Wiedershen Pet was in a band

(the singer desperately trying to sound like Ian Hunter and failing dismally)

Ah! That works, yes.

Or rather, it didn't work. But it probably was the general idea.

Wikipedia has the goods...

in 1976 their single "She's No Angel" was regularly played on BBC Radio 1, a favourite of legendary DJ John Peel, and this led to an appearance on Top Of The Pops

Can't see why Peel would particularly care about them. There is something very vaguely proto-punk about them, highlighting that glam was quite a big part of punk.

And HMK minus the more obvious theatrics would be more or less Sham 69.

I thought HMK was okay! What the hell's going on with this J J Barrie character though.