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

Watched a bit of last night's show as I couldn't stand any more of Alan Shearer interrupting people on BBC1. Looked entertaining - not any good of course, just entertaining - saw end of Gladys Knight + the Pips, Neil Innes (doing an embarrassing song in celebration of the Silver Jubilee), Stranglers ("Go Buddy Go", which has a blatant reference to taking speed, how did that escape the censors?!?!), Demis R. + some all-white funk band called... Honky!

"Hope you had a great Jubilee; to keep us in the holiday mood, here's the Electric Light Orchestra with 'Telephone Line'" - Tony Blackburn.

I had no memories at all of Neil Innes' Jubilee cash-in single. I'm guessing it dropped out of the charts pretty quickly.

You guess wrong, the record never troubled the charts.

And if you thought that the Neil Innes track was bad, cop a load of this: http://lordofthebootsale.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/elizabeth-god-save-sex-pistols.html

Oh, is that the Jonathan King one? Heard about it, never heard it.

Actually, track down "Anarchy Rock" a bside from The Weathermen (i.e. himself), a better 'take-off' even though it's from 1971.

suck it John Miles!

double suicide, cheery...

The way break in that Smokie track rips off the verse of The Beatles' 'Baby You're A Rich Man' wholesale.

xp oh right, you're referring to Bro'hood 'o Man's 'Fernando Angelo'

'they took their lives that night' tucked in there mid-chorus.

rah band were a bit o_O. looked and sounded like something on Mute.

That Barry Biggs single was the last one to trouble the Top 40.
Boney M couldn't even be bothered to appear on TOTP with one of their signature songs, leaving Legs & Co to, er, sit on some chairs. Really Flick, really?
Hot Chocolate again in a class by themselves, Donna Summer relegated to the end credits - she never performed 'I Feel Love' in the TOTP studio.

The Alessi Brothers' 'Oh Lori' - another track I can remember Wogan playing to death through my mother's kitchen radio.

The Alessi Brothers' 'Oh Lori'
This is a guilty pleasure of mine

The Saints!

looking like they could've been from any time in the last 20 years, really, in their normal everyday clothes.

Best thing on the show?

Erol from Hot Chocolate; cooler than Bob Marley.

nice to see the veritable future of all recorded sound get 20 seconds at the end.

Fanfare? wasn't that on last week as well?

No

what year did they switch to doing the 'rundown' at the end/ throughout the show rather than at the intro? i was.. just about watching in 77 but have no real recollection of this era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_of_the_Pops#Theme_music

The first TOTP of 1980 still had the chart at the beginning of the show. The switch to doing it in three pieces (30-21, 20-11, 10-1) happened in mid-1980.

I can't pin it down exactly, but there's a YouTube clip of the chart from the May 8th 1980 show done old school style, and a clip of the August 7th 1980 chart done in three bits.

According to the On This TOTP Day blog, the change happened on the 7th August 1980. Big changes on that show - it was after a strike by the Musicians Union where there were no TOTPs for over a month, the format changed with the chart rundown moved from the start, an end to rerecording songs and a return to pure miming, the dissolution of the TOTP orchestra and with Michael Hurst taking over control of the show, moving towards the neon bright 80s shows we know, love and remember.

I had completely forgotten about the strike until I read about it, can remember watching the first show after the strike thinking "Hurrah, it's back!" (I was eleven).

ah right so 1980 thanks chaps.

innit weird how the chart used to be revealed on a *Tuesday afternoon* until about the 1990s?!

Yeah, that was because Capital Radio would compile their chart on Saturday, so it'd be more 'up to date' than the BBC one.

And they'd advertise it as being "hey, why listen to "Auntie", when you *could" be listening to "The Kid"!!!

Jensen's crepe-y sign off this week, uh...

Legs and Co. in love with the modern world!

Also Television in at 28.

And on the next edition of TOTP which was wiped from the archive to make way for Train Your Dog To Piss In The Gutter or something similar.

Christ, what a pile of crap this show was.

While it could be said that the show was only a reflection of the music of its time, Marcello does have a good point - TOTP at the time was dull as ditchwater. The presentation was boring, the presenters were wet dischcloths, the sets were dull - it really is quite sad watching the shows, because while our collective memory remembers all the brightly lit highlights from (insert your own golden era here), the reruns show that week after week it was repeats of songs and general monotony. And Legs and Co weren't that great really. The best things in recent weeks have been The Saints and Rockpile, otherwise awful throughout. But at least Liverpool Express have disappeared.

If you watched these reruns alone and had no direct memory or knowledge of the era, you'd think that Barry Biggs and Liverpool Express were the major figures of mid-'70s pop.

I've yet to find enyone that even remembers seeing Television doing "Prove It" on TOTP.

I know if I had, I'd have remembered. Where the hell was I that day?

Well, the whole thing was scuppered by the imposition of the must re-record/must use TOTP orchestra rule. Major acts (e.g. ELO, Rod Stewart) mostly stayed away and sent in performance clips instead, leaving the studio clear for the second, third and fourth tiers (e.g. the Liverpool Expresses of this world), who would do whatever it took to gain the exposure. When the rule was lifted, the average quality of the studio acts duly rose.

Only about five years to go then, into the exciting new age of the Pinkees and Modern Romance.

What year is it in now?

http://arc.lib.montana.edu/brook-0771/objects/283.jpg
"It is 1953, young man!"

35 years ago, so '77

Oh I was only 4. Probably saw some episodes but no chance of remembering.

We're now moving into the 'Showadywaddy on nearly every cocking week' period of 77/78.

i guess it was Top Of The Pops 2 that made it look so great; all those glossily packaged highlights flitting from decade to decade but week by week in the mid-late 70s the actual original show looks like sheer misery.

tbf this week hasn't been bad: Eddie & the Hot Rods, Thin Lizzy, Fleetwood Mac

Although on the other end of the scale, Barry Biggs, WTF? He's like a bag of stale three day old current buns on the supermarket shelf.

Also, drink a shot every time 'Kid' Jensen says "disco scene"...

Should note, the latest from the "BBC" seems to suggest they're not continuing these repeats into 1978...

But we're just starting to hit the good stuff.

I know, is this blatant "let's see how loud the objections are", umm, trolling?

Where do we object to? I've given up watching these because they're unbelievably shit, but I'm really looking forward to 1979/80.

A surprisingly filler free week so far.

The appearance of the Adverts feels like the first genuine breakthrough of punk. The Jam & the Stranglers could've broken through on the back of Dr Feelgood, Eddie & the Hot Rods etc.
EDIT - Oh, I forgot the Saints.

most punk thing last week was Phil Lynott's shiner!

Latest news seems to be that any episodes involving Saville (as he now seems to be referred to) will not be shown...