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

Because, the first one (tonight) is 1976, where we get :

01/04/1976
With Abba, the Brotherhood of Man, the Beatles, Fox, John Miles, Diana Ross and Sailor. (R).

Then after that they are on Thursday night, 7:30pm, and basically are running weekly, each
episode being from (exactly) 35 years ago (near enough)..

Until BBC4 sack it.

Brilliant idea. I can relive my childhood. My earliest musical memories (from pre-school days) are stuff like Abba, The Wurzels, Showaddywaddy and Hot Chocolate.

This docu that's on now makes grim viewing.

The docu made some interesting points, and for all that I'd have loved if they'd started in 1964 (or whenever), 1976 is a good year to kickoff from.

The big point made was that the charts had become a 'variety' show source, as opposed to the 'teen hit parade' of the sixties. So, loads of Mathis, Roussos, BroMan, Abba and Radio DJs having comedy send-up hits.

It'll be like this for a while, but one I do remember being somewhat of a life changing moment was when Eddie and the Hot Rods did "Get out of Denver",and I went straight out and bought the (expensive) ep the next day.

I know, thesedays peopple decry the rods as being "not as seminal as Dr Feelgood", but I saw a repeat on TOTP2 and it was as good as I remembered. So, soon come, that show which showed the juxtaposition of this band against the other acts on that night.

(also, it means that the quality of dodgy Punk TOTP compilation DVDs are going to shoot up. If they get that far, of course)

What tickled me most was the former TOTP producer saying that they didn't get the Pistols on for "Anarchy In The UK" (which peaked at #38) because it didn't chart high enough, very important that we always stuck by the rules etc etc... followed by an April 1976 show featuring two (useless) acts which never charted at all.

The Hot Rods did well to get a TOTP appearance for "Get Out Of Denver", as a) the Live At The Marquee EP peaked at #43 and b) it was the lead track on the B-side.

It was track 2 on the a-side, but yeah.

Also, the funny was having Dave Bartram saying "yeah, a TOTP appearance guaranteed you a top 10 hit" and demonstrating this with a screening of their massive top (fillinasecond) hit "Trocadero"...

32

xpost - Aaargh, so it was!

The big point made was that the charts had become a 'variety' show source, as opposed to the 'teen hit parade' of the sixties. So, loads of Mathis, Roussos, BroMan, Abba and Radio DJs having comedy send-up hits.

Am I misunderstanding? cos the 60s had big hits for Ken Dodd, Englebert Humperdinck, the Barron Knights etc etc

Oh sure, but the theory being that those were in the minority, show-content wise.

oh on the show. yeah probly fair enough. chartwise it was variety a-go-go

Yeah, I don't think the point was that the charts had become (more) like a variety show, but that TOTP had.

fuck Noel Edmonds and his 'comedy' links

fuck Noel Edmonds and his 'comedy' links

I know, what a dick. Still we had the Four Seasons doing "Silver Star" this week. Also Eric Carmen's "interview" with Noel Edmonds, where you couldn't hear a word he was saying, don't be shy Eric!

Interviews on TOTP? that's a rarity...

"Inteview" not really the word.

"You wrote a song for Dana didn't you?"
"Mumble mumble mumble"
"What's the best song you've ever written?"
"Mumble mumble mumble All By Myself"
"Well all the best with the new single"
"Mumble"

Don't know what song he wrote for Dana

Oh and Noel was saying what a good album "Eric Carmen" was: a rare display of good taste from Edmonds there!

Noel had to say he liked it cos he didn't want to blow a raspberry.

My god that it horribly formed.

*is*

OK so Google tells me Dana covered "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again" from the aforementioned "Eric Carmen" album

Is Dana the one who did some religious kids programme called 'Wake Up Sunday'?

Sounds likely

10CC, "Mandy Fly Me" was on too. Fantastic!

NEdmonds always had his love of singer-songwriters, to be fair.

Big fan of Harry Chapin, yer Edmonds.

Balderdash certainly describes droll Noel's career.

This was easily the most WTF song on this week's show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iISUroWbu2U

I watched last night's 1976 episode, it was amazingly and compellingly bad. Lots of odd-looking folks I've never heard of awkwardly performing novelty songs, and one of Pan's People doing some remarkably gratuitous ass-shaking in the direction of the camera. I need more.

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...

i feel like entering the dancers competition 40 years late. i could walk the envelope around, save myself a stamp.

they've been showing consecutive episodes from other years recently, haven't they? so you'd hear Eton Rifles one week after another. seems odd.

lots of things I've never heard before recently too.

and 5 episodes tonight, one of them a double length Christmas episode

that Darts song and the abba has been on very recently too

GAY DAD - finally the 90s has its own Raygun

Yesterday I watched a report from Tomorrow's World in 2002 about Digital TV and it seemed dated but also in a way like it wasn't that long ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWTvplkBeNM
These TOTP re-runs have reached early 1999 and I get a similar feeling.

honey bane, basquiat, visage and decent old spandau in a single episode. and buster bloodvessel as Henry viii.

basquiat looks such a dork pretending to dj in the rapture video

The previously unknown to me Next Of Kin AND Moffats? Hansonsploitation really was a thing for a second there huh.

was that basquiat again in the atomic video at the beginning leading the horse? it was solarised so hard to see but...

I wonder why people bother covering Cameo's 'Word Up'? The original is perfect. Gun's version here is better than Mel B's attempt from 1999 but still it just sounds like a cover a band would throw into a live set to mix things up. Their cover version of Hot Chocolate's 'Every 1's A Winner' - which they also released as a single - is a similar mix of competency and head scratching "why would anyone do this?".

― you gotta roll with the pączki to get to what's real (snoball), Friday, 14 April 2023 19:08 (two years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0OZlKTemxk

The official end of Suede as a good band, the god awful She's In Fashion.

did that come before or after I Can't Get It Up?

Before, with (ughhh God..) Everything Will Flow in between.

I was working as a painter and decorator in 1999 and the boss's radio was tuned to Capital FM. The only two songs they ever seemed to play were Lou Bega's 'Mambo #5' and 'Livin La Vida Loca' by Ricky Martin, interspersed with Steve Penk's prank phone calls.

God, Geri doing "Mi Chico Latino", A Teens*, a stirring anti war song from Ocean Colour Scene AND Stereophonics in one episode, bleak stuff.

*I am as susceptible to the charms of a good novelty act as anyone but jesus, even the choreography's balls

lol I posted that before discovering what was #1 as well

i went to watch it live for the first time in months and the fucking snooker was over running like it always does.

That authentic TOTP experience.

Post Did "The Wicker Man" get broadcast?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001t443

says yes. but 40 minutes late.

Haha, I thought the A Teens track was quite good - but I have to admit I was “multi-tasking” when it was on.

jeez, they're digging them up tonight. sting, bono, Tom Jones, Bowie...

This is the month after I moved to London for a job, and I didn't have a TV until February 2000. So there's a six month gap where I didn't watch TOTP. It's weird seeing these dance acts basically for the first time because they all seem to have some visual gimmick. The 'The Launch' guy in a spacesuit, Eiffel 65 and their matching tracksuits.

I'm a bit behind but that A*Teens performance was shocking, the two boys looked like they'd only ever been shown the choreography once before. Also I don't know why Sharleen Spiteri decided to sing that album track in the voice you would use to parody the Bee Gees.

I'm gutted that Scott Mills' scandal has meant we've skipped a lot of episodes, this was the last summer before I started high school and one of the best ones for me!

An old 1991 diary entry reveals that the radio 1 chart broadcasts on Sunday were extended by half an hour from 5pm-7pm to 4.30pm-7pm in order to play the whole chart. Hadn’t thought about this for thirty odd years but I do remember it now. Presumably the 5-7 era was just the ‘highlights’.

These days Radio 1 speedruns the chart in an hour and 45.

I am enoying the saga of Britney Spears recording video after video apologising that she can't be on totp this week. If she ever does come on I'll feel a profound sense of narrative catharsis.

'Just Like Fred Astaire' is James most U2-like song. Particular the singer manages to channel Bono's unlikeable smugness.

3 football songs in the one episode is something of a nadir

The 'jitter' video effect they've put on this that accentuates Ian Brown's 'busting for a piss' dancing.

Prince - proof of the concept that if you're really bringing it then people will put up with any amount of periphery nonsense.

oh shut up Damon you prat

There's a lot that can be said about Craig David's career since this single but from this first performance he comes across as a fully formed pop star - an effect heightened by the backing track which is basically a beat and some comedy sound effects. Most singers wouldn't have been able to pull it off.

Yeah, head and shoulders above everything surrounding it, that performance.

If only that nasty Leigh Francis hadn't ruined his career.

2000 gets off to a shaky start.

That Westlife perf had me cueing up Brel's "Le Moribond" just to get the taste out of my mouth.

Just to think that if the English translation had been more faithful we'd have one of them singing about how he dislikes his wife's lover but hey at least this way someone will still be fucking her after he dies.

2000 is my favourite year ever - the fact of it being the first year I have strong memories of (and thus its world is the one I'll always understand best) is of course entirely irrelevant and of no relation at all - so, now we're past the wobbly January episodes, everything pairing here on in is going to be automatically classic to me. Don't Falter, Glorious, A Little Bit of Luck, The Great Beyond and Ooh Stick You in one episode alone (murmurs something about my 'comfort' era etc).

This is the hugely important 2000 hits compilation we had in the house at the time. We're now five songs in.
https://www.discogs.com/release/8104381-Various-Contenders-For-The-Record-Of-The-Year-2000?srsltid=AfmBOorCzPp8pxF99maC39tyJ-82YbBXKvfBhGKxZOWK_gK-zB--MRKY

Early 2000 I was having an increasingly shitty time in London, but I managed to make a change in living circumstances in March of that year that made a big difference. Most relevant to this thread, I had a TV again, and also was living in central London, so could go clubbing much more (maybe too much more but that's another story).

Upthread I make a criticism of The Beautiful South's 'Song For Whoever' which boils down to 'you can see the scaffolding'. In other words it's obvious that it's a song that someone has planned out, almost as if on a sheet of graph paper. Geri Halliwell's 'Bag It Up' strikes me the same way. Both are songs that would have been better if the thought that had gone into their lyrics was less on display.

For what is basically an album of Tom Jones doing a series of covers of well known songs with various other artists plus one new song, 'Reload' is much better than that description might suggest.

It's 2000 so even Sisqo's hair has to be silver. I love the energy of this era. Only here are Oasis to spoil it with more transparent Beatles copying.

Black Box Recorder - I bought the album on the basis of this single, played the album twice and then filed it away, not listening to it again until 2014.

At the time I bought Armand Van Helden's 'Koochy' single and also 'Legal Man' by Belle & Sebastian.

rare sighting of Fuzz from Car SOS on totp tonight

the giorgio track was a treat, never heard it before.

but two songs about Elvis? i guess he must've died recently

Not that Trevor and Simon.

A good pub quiz question (especially if the pub quiz is outside the UK) would be:

"Name the only number one singles from these artists:

Isaac Hayes
Chuck Berry
Prince"