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

Apparently, his timeline on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presenters_on_Top_of_the_Pops has it he begins this year.

Ah okay, he always seemed to be enthusiastic about music. Apparently still calls himself Kid though which is kinda wishful thinking. Sonic Youth syndrome.

Well, he dropped it at the end of his Radio1 tenure, but I guess it's a 'condition of employment' at Capital Radio, "Smooth" or wherever else he is thesedays...

Ideally these would be preceded by the relevant Nationwide and Tomorrow's World. Panorama afterwards, perhaps. And a full John Peel show on the radio later. Is this too much to ask, BBC?

So that was great prom right guys? The Janacek was awesome in particular.

Lemmy movie on tonite.

Ideally these would be preceded by the relevant Nationwide and Tomorrow's World. Panorama afterwards, perhaps. And a full John Peel show on the radio later. Is this too much to ask, BBC?

Last week, when Hamilton suggested I tune in on Saturday for Seaside Special I really really wished I could.

Yeah, and tone plugged it too.

oh maybe it was tone. I got a bit lost imagining what i'd see.

Should have just checked the wiki:

10 July 1976
Location - Southsea
guests Lulu, Mike & Bernie Winters, Janet Brown, Dream Express, Ron Martin, host Paul Burnett, and New Edition

17 July 1976
Location - Blackpool
guests Al Dean, Kate T. Fields Rod Hull and Emu, Little and Large, New Edition

24 July 1976
Location - Southsea
featured acts from Gerry Cottles Circus.
guests Tony Monopoly, Paul Daniels, Cannon and Ball and Explosion (the original pre-duo trio), Surprise Sisters, Mary Chipperfield – chimpanzee act, Jacko Fossett and Little Billy, Cimarro Brothers, host Mike Reid, New Edition

Cannon and Ball and Explosion

Want to know more!

Even their Wikipedia page starts at 1979.

He wasn't with them long and then he got fired.

I should sell them that joke btw

Boom Boom!!

Good to see a young Les McQueen there, handling bass duties on "Dr Kiss-Kiss", back in the days before it all turned sour.

It's a shit business.

On BBC4 tonight at 7:30PM.

Cannon and Ball and Explosion - oh, this must be someone goofing around with the Wiki page, surely? Yeah, Little and Large really got going once they dropped second straight man Medium. And thank goodness Hinge & Bracket jettisoned Fixing Screw.

Talking of Wiki japes - the C&B Wiki page currently seems to have been merged with that of Adam Ant...

I think it probably is messing around - this article says they were a trio for a bit ("with a guy called Stan on the keyboard"), but also implies that they'd become a duo by Opportunity Knocks in 1969.

Sunfighter - never heard of them - and the awful Queen pastiche 'Drag Race Queen'.

Ruby Flipper do the can-can dressed as Russians to The Beatles' 'Back In The USSR'.

Noel successfully breaks the world record for using the word 'successful' as many times as possible in a sentence.

QUO!

fat Russell Brand Demis Roussos

I think my mother had a blouse made of that shirt material.

I have just learned that one of Sunfighter's many guitarists is Sarah Harding's estranged father.

If that's a Demis Roussos I'd hate to see a full one (Circa 1976 joke)

yes, sunfighter, who dey?

the butterfly song also completely unfamiliar.

a question: what are the wings song and the shangri-las song in the top 30 countdown?

ok, wikipedia says for the wings:

"Silly Love Songs" / "Cook of the House"
"Let 'Em In" / "Beware My Love"

both released in 1976, both reached #2.

and shangri-las:

The recordings for Morton featured lavish production with heavy orchestration and sound effects, and their next and biggest hit, "Leader of the Pack" (U.S. #1, UK #11), climaxes with roaring motorcycles and breaking glass. UK re-issues peaked at #3 in 1972 and #7 in 1976.

glamour puss? history has not been kind.

Wings' track is 'Silly Love Songs'.

Singing a song whose lyrics namecheck Superman is not going to work unless you're Laurie Anderson.

Shangra-Las' is indeed 'Leader of the Pack'.

This is a good site for chart stats, the cunningly named Chart Stats.

Anyone else think that the Glamour Puss on the left looks vaguely familiar? I can't place where from and can't find out who were in Glamour Puss.

BTW Jonathan King was edited out of that edition - he was on just before Glamour Puss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i524U9YfyXs

was that a necklace of teeth demis was wearing?

(JK might be on the long version)

Even Edmonds thinks this is shit...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta3EeMi4Ll4

oh and we also missed RubFlip dancing to Tavares' 'Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel', which must have been even worse than their BITUSSR routine.

Anyone else think that the Glamour Puss on the left looks vaguely familiar?

Looks a bit like Nell Campbell but I'm pretty sure it isn't her. The (nominally) lead singer on the far right and the black woman seem familiar from late 70's TV. Maybe after Glamour Puss did spectacularly well failed dismally they pursued acting careers.

Now is the Time by Jimmy James and the Vagabonds. One of those records I remember very clearly listening to on the radio as a child. It's still sort of wonderful, that voice and that song. Rest of the show execrable.

tavares was on the longer version - girls dressed as angels, blokes dressed as devils. lots of dry ice. this stuff writes itself.

no JK in the long version either.

I want to know everything there is to know about Glamourpuss! Like someone upthread, the singer on the far right looks familiar, possibly from TV comedy. Were they some sort of fictional TV spin-off thing? They look/sound more like actresses than singers. (And there's the "of a certain age" factor, as well.)

The singer on the far right kind of looks like Carol Vorderman in a blonde wig. Isn't though. The single didn't even chart in the Top 40, this being the dry period where TOTP were so desperate to get acts in the studios that they'd consider just about anyone.

fictional TV spin-off

That would be the unrelated and considerably better Rock Follies, from the same time. On ITV, so they wouldn't have been on TOTP.

Yeah, I was wondering if it was some sort of Rock Follies-inspired copycat manoeuvre.

I watched it last night in some disbelief. Did I have amnesia? I didn't remember any of it - not even the ghastly video for "A Little Bit More" - but then I remembered we spent July ’76 on holiday in New York, so all this stuff would have passed me right by. Don’t remember Sunfighter, Glamourpuss or that dreadful Bobby Goldsboro* effort ever being played on the radio. It’s always extra-duff when Noel’s presenting.

The only thing I can find out about Glamourpuss on Google is that they were allegedly “five beauty queens.”

The ghastly “Now Is The Time” (it went top five!). “Revolution is no solution!” – erm, Jimmy, there are these guys (and gals) in West London (and Bromley, and Manchester) warming up on the touchline…Rhyming “future” with “nuclear.” Extraordinary.

When an eight-year-old Beatles track is the rockiest thing on the programme and Status Quo couldn’t even be bothered to turn up then you know things are up for grabs.

*Bobby Goldsboro actually did make some very decent records – one of which I’m planning to give a spin at the Hangover Lounge this coming Sunday (plug, plug) – but it’s very hard to convince people of this.

Ok, this show is getting weirder the closer it draws to Year Zero. Sunfughter?!??!? What the fu...?!?!? My encyclopaedic knowledge of crap bands of the 70s has badly let me down here. And this lot got three minutes on one of the most watched shows of the 1970s! I thought they must be Swedish or something. Song sounded a bit like the Stories, if you're at all familiar with that band. And Glamourpuss? Jesus... pure Seaside Special material, except not even that good.

Bobby G (no, not that one) was utter crap and even the Quo song was a duffer

Sunfighter were probably locked in a right-angled room straight after that TOTP performance.

As for Demis, can't hate it 'cos his voice is really a thing of wonder and... DOUBLE BOUZOUKI SOLO!

For a seocnd I thought Demis was Danny Baker.

it was quite an episode for beards

The one on Dennis Thingummabob from Dr. Hook was fairly startling