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

7pm tonight there's "Smashie and Nicey's Top of the Pops Party" - a retrospective on the show's first 30 years, originally broadcast on 4th Jan 1994.

If you don't fancy that then there are two regular episodes following.

I was just coming here to say I think I'll skip Smashie and Nicey. The BBC broadcast a mockumentary about them that went through just about all the jokes anyone could make in about 15 minutes. Unfathomable to me - both then and now - how those two characters became so big.

The good news is that there's not that much Smashie & Nicey, the bad news is that they've added a load of later clips, everything only gets 30 seconds, and the whole thing is an incomprehensible mess.

In the context of 1994, 'Things Can Only Get Better' isn't that bad, despite the singer's attempts to come across as an egotistic cock. It sounded worse during the 1997 General Election.

the sax solo is the only good bit

'Blow Your Whistle' is the kind of song that I was excited to hear in the club as a 19 year old but then after two minutes dancefloor freneticism I'd be "ffs enough" and dive towards the bar for another drink.

Marti Pellow, so sweaty.

Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting can all fuck off together pls

all for one, all fuck off

1977 was very white male, with only pussycat(!) as relief (and legs and co dancing around whilst dressed as car wash brushes). david soul sounds like he was pitch shifted up a couple of octaves.

Blow Your Whistle is a classic functional dance hit and gets bonus points for not being 2002 No. 5 smash Blow My Whistle Bitch.

Garth Brooks clearly subscribes to the Billy Joel school of "make facial expressions like you're taking a really long and difficult dump while singing".

First show tonight was pretty good! second was less good though. These were the last two shows for Dortie & Franklin, a shame as I've grown to like them a lot. Next week we have the relaunch format to kick off the real mid-90s

I saw Therapy? live about four or five times in the mid 90s. They were... considerably less good than I remember.

no actual good shot of the keyboardist on either of the d:ream appearances

only bit i enjoyed in the 4 episodes was martika's hair

I don’t think Brian Cox was in this version of D:Ream, but he was in the performances when it was previously released.

I was never that into Therapy?, but Screamager is a banger.

Britrock bands are to this era of TOTP what Senseless Things and that ilk were to the last.

"Give It Away" is one of those songs that I think I like when I try recall what it sounds like, but when I hear it (especially accompanied by the video) I realise that it's a bunch of nonsense.

I like that TOTP heralding their new era included a single from an album that was released before the last era. Why wasn't it a UK hit until 94 I have no idea.

No-one said it was going to be easy... for Mark E Smith to even both singing all the lyrics of this song from a piece of paper.

Also, number 7382 in a series of 'singers who look like someone snoball works with' - there's a guy at work who I've just realised looks like a blond version of young MES.

Morrissey being a choad as normal - "I will be in the bar... with my head on the bar" ffs

xxp s/both/bother
(or for me to even bother typing out the word 'bother' apparently)

Electroswing really has just been a decades-long, even less good riff on Doop by Doop, hasn't it?

Doop by Doop is brilliant and all electroswing is terrible shit, apart from that I agree.

decades long
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6r1tUhl1cQ
Electrovelvet, the UK's Eurovision 2015 entry. Which at the time I thought sounded like 'Doop'.

Such awful shit, nothing redeemable there. Doop still magnificent though.

Doop is brilliant and I'm happy to see it get some love here.

Whenever it's revived these days it's the version from the video, which is RONG. The (hit) Urge 2 Merge Mix is only the vid mix for a minute then it becomes something else.

there are I believe two different videos for the two mixes

I've never seen the U2M video? Either way the other one is all I'm used to seeing.

Before Doop led to electro-swing there were some much nearer descendants, like Yomanda's hardbag Blind Date (no. 31 in '95).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Peijv1JnEg0

you've been fucking framed

A slightly later and hipper electroswing precedent is Get a Move On by Mr Scruff.

Only up to the Inspiral Carpets, Mark E Smith but a strong episode so far. Hearing Barbara Tucker’s pleasant enough garage house track and realising that is where the vocal from Hardrives “Deep Inside” is sampled from - a song I know inside out and upside down but without investigating the source - was a moment.

Argh, jinxed it. Morrisey.

The U2M mix of "Doop" is the version I remember from radio growing up - 1995 is when I really started paying attention to the charts and pop music properly - and it's so much better because it fully commits to being the most obnoxious, brash version of the idea of, what if we stuck a donk on the charleston?

"Blind Date" also comes in two mixes and thankfully westbury white horse has posted the correct version. I would make a case of Paul Masterson being a secret hero - he's the man behind this and "Synth & Strings" - but also Amen UK's "Passion", all the Candy Girls singles, and loads of poppers o'clock dance remixes as Sleaze Sisters and Wand. All this stuff is really tasteless, cheesy and bold, but I love the way that it fully embraces shamelessness as a positive value.

that said electro-swing is all fucking terrible, and I am immediately suspicious of anyone who identifies themselves as a fan because at best they have terrible taste, at worst you find they're nearly always terrible regressives who feel a sense of borrowed nostalgia for the socially repressed values of the 1920s

Never thought I’d see another Paul Masterson stan here. He had quite the knack for getting as much energy as possible out of pretty simple loops - his Yolanda mix of Quo Vadis - Sonic Boom never left the bag for years back when I had those kind of gigs.

Yomanda even, thx autocorrect

I'll be third in this gang. I've long really liked his work but I developed an even stronger interest when a) an old friend declared my own beloved Synth & Strings her favourite track of all time, so it sort of become 'our' track for quite a while and b) I got really into hardbag as a thing in and of itself, which meant I gave more time of day to Candy Girls and Amen! UK than I had before.

xps I always think of Get a Move On as the first electro swing track, which I know isn't by any means accurate.

Between 'Doop' and 'Get A Move On' there is Apollo 440's 'Krupa'

(and is just as amazing as either)

I never really thought of Get A Move On as electro swing, probably because the Moondog sample isn’t as obnoxiously retro as someone like Caravan Palace.

Either way that whole scene sucked from my brief experiences with it - chancers throwing together incredibly slapdash electro-swing on Ableton mainly to get sets (and therefore free tickets) on the uk small festival circuit all summer.

Seemed like a load of posh boys from money slumming it in wacky sequinned blazer and captains hat combo’s, kind of like an Eton lost vagueness. The live band Gypsy Swing side of things, while not my kind of thing definitely harboured a lot more talent.

/rant.

Re: Recent TOTP, Dina Carroll’s ‘The Perfect Year’ is up there with Whitney ‘I Will Always Love You’ and Marian’s ‘I Can’t Live’. She doesn’t seem to have been remembered at all though?

The thing with Dina Carroll is that she had/has a stunning singing voice, but her singles always seemed to be dreary ballads with cloying, syrupy production. The album track she played on the show a couple of weeks ago was much better, so maybe there are other things to discover from her.

The one actual electro swing track that does anything for me is Gramophonedize's Why Don't You - which probably borrows more from Audio Bullys' Shot You Down.

Ah thanks, heard that in a Little Boots set at the time and never knew what it was until now.

came across this podcast episode about “Synths & Strings” with Paul Masterson as a guest on Spotify:

Soundcloud link

Thanks for the link. I first heard this only a short while ago but got distracted iirc so am listening again in full now.

To tie this to the TOTP chat, he has an anecdote around 20m that S&S was issued by Manifesto on the same day as Dina Carroll's Without Love, and the label were both wanting and expecting Dina to outchart Yomanda and were furious when it didn't happen. Dina's last top 20 hit, sadly.

Dina was MASSIVE in the early 90s wasn't she, seems to be on TOTP every other week.

Doop of course stole the idea from Cajemere - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwtCsg-NfRM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CUYXzLm7WE