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"...

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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 prefer Smack..., and er, pretty much anything off their first two albums, but yeah Breathe is still excellent, certainly better than Firestarter.

Yeah, better than Firestarter, but far from their best. I probably like Break And Enter the most.

Break and Enter was the fist dance track I really loved, it has a special place in my heart.

As much as I’m more into the stuff before 96, Firestarter is iconic - you are both mad ;)

Also, every evening between Monday 16 and Thursday 19 December, BBC4 are showing the Christmas Day edition of #TOTP from the years 1978, 1985, 1993 and 2002.

— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 6, 2024

just copied a couple of dozen 1986 / 87 repeats that have been on the PVR since 2018 off onto another disk.

task for christmas holidays, go though 1980-87 episodes and either list what's on them or ditch them (or maybe i should just cut out the good bits)

last night was the noel edmunds in a box christmas episode (all recordings, nothing live - some kind of strike?). it's peak Grease year, kate bush, abba, probably too much boney m. i think i'm probably forgetting the worst of it despite just having watched it but the good bits are probably as good as these things got. (darts, showaddywaddy, brian and michael also, it's telling me)

Oh, wasn't that Noel's last TOTP presenting job? He looked hugely reluctant to even be there, if I remember rightly...

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/1925238/top-of-the-pops-1978-christmas

" The reason the Christmas 1978 edition was so basic was down to a technicians strike at the BBC at the time, during the winter of discontent when just about anyone was seeming to take strike action. It even affected Top Of The Pops at Christmas that year. "

the forum he mentions is probably this one - https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/1772097/top-of-the-pops-1978-bbc4/p126 - but it's 126 pages...

I cannot read the phrase "winter of discontent" without having flashbacks to tories and internet tories using it as a get out of jail free card for the last 45 years

We sat down to watch the 1978 episode and it was dreadful. We made it through 20 minutes. It was all so brown and sad and everything felt like a novelty song with no punchline.

We then tuned into BBC4 to watch the 2002 episode which wasn't much better - some excellent highs but some really dismal stuff slotted through it.

i guess you can focus on the good bits and enjoy it or on the bad bits and not. i had the luxury of watching on catch up and could skip the worst of it.

> so brown and sad

the 70s

The Christmas specials were pretty much at best boring. At worst, focussed only on the top selling singles, no matter how dull.

And as for the "end of the sixties" one, it was a coproduction with German TV, so you got Cliff along with Horst Janowski who'd had a UK hit, no Beatles, stones, who or any of that. So poor, I remembered it when it got repeated a while back. It was in colour, but it was helmed by you know who, so it's never gonna be repeated again...

Review of 2024 on now on BBC2, if anyone can muster the requisite two shits.

there should be some good stuff on this year, surely.

You'd think but they're already reaching back into the archives. ABBA, Madonna, and Sade.

Oh and Ticketmaster ripped of a load of people.

Dave Gahan: "Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be Brian Molko from Placebo!"

TOTP was completely stacked. It absolutely ruled tonight.

But of course it did, because we're in Now 36 times.

The two best heroin dirges of the 90s back to back as well.

I should mention that a bunch of 1975 episodes are being broadcast "for the first time since original broadcast".

You get to see Kojak / Bay City Rollers at No1, and so on.

sing a song, ding a dong...

these are familiar even if they say they've not been on since original broadcast. Fox are in the chart and i'm sure i've seen those (s-s-s-ingle bed..)

the audiences all look so square

want really paying attention but was that Apollo 440 with the vaguely drum and bass track? has there been much drum and bass recently? it says Roni Size was only on in 2001 which is still 4 years off. Photek LP was about now and he had plenty of singles out before that. Inner City Life was 94. it seems to have swung back to white, vaguely indie bands recently.

^ Everything But The Girl's 'Walking Wounded' would've featured recently...don't remember if they did it in the studio. Photek could've done 'Ni Ten Ichi Ryu', a Top 40 smash after all, but for some reason we were denied.

Two Sword Technique and a Technical Itch single on Moving Shadow were the first two things i bought, in 97, but both had had a few singles before then. i guess it still wasn't mainstream even if apollo440 were appropriating bits of it.

New Forms won the mercury prize in 97. but i think the shows are currently early 97.

(Valentine's Day 1997 in fact)

I don't really remember drum and bass being a commercial force at all, and this is the peak era of childhood me listening to the Top 40 every week religiously and taping The Chart Show. But this might just be my own biases speaking - I've never really "clicked" with drum and bass.

I presume the M-Beat track with Jamiroquai was featured a few months back...maybe video only. Likewise Alex Reece (if at all) and then probably a similarly brief glimpse of RSR later in '97 (they did perform on Later if not any other show).

> I've never really "clicked" with drum and bass.

i understand, not least because there's a lot of different styles and i only like like 20% of it (the tech itch, photek, skynet, ed rush stuff, probably what rough trade would call 'tech step', dark, very choppy, amen-based), none of which troubled the charts. was religiously listening to peel and he was playing a lot.

drum and bass on TOTP you say?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7KGg3MNFAU

but no, in fact 'drum & bass mix 97' (polygram tv), led by the fab apollo 440 track, was iirc the only real attempt from any of the usual mainstream mix series (in the mix or in this case club mix) to venture into dnb, and unsurprisingly it is almost entirely filled with non-hits. an experiment unrepeated.

Gary Barlow always looks so cross when he's singing.

Although he did seem to be enjoying himself standing behind Jayne Middlemiss as she announced that Radiohead's tiresome/brilliant (depending on your mood) 'Paranoid Android' had been beaten to Number 1 by Hanson's fucking 'MMMBop'.

Rosie Gaines blew everyone else away in both eps. What a voice.

I was just thinking that Mark Owen seemed to be trying to impersonate Brett Anderson, and then Suede come on straight after. For those wondering why Brett looks like shit, it's because at this point he's six months into a heavy crack addiction.

There are a lot of boybands in this week's two episodes.

Those lads that covered "All Out Of Love" felt very scraping the barrel.

Man, the past few episodes have felt desperate. The dumb digital effects over performances, the petulant "IT'S STILL #1" intro, it really feels like a show that suspects its time has run out.

ironically, one of the lower freeview channel is also showing repeats of totp (1998 vintage)

U&Eden (Fr57), 3 at a time, mondays and thursdays?

it has changed again recently, pivoted back to live vocals?

it also advertised a Smashy and Nicey hosted episode which didn't seem to materialise

"Stand By Me" - Oasis's "Hey Jude". And by that I mean, a song that's way too long and repetitive.

This song by Björk repeats a lot too, but it does have the virtue of not being long.

Assuming this kid singing about being 17 is actually 17, he's 45 now.

if you mean Toby Slater from Catch then no, sadly he died in 2021.

merri-choney

Repetition is good. Oasis by this time were not.

No TOTP (at least from 1997) tonight because of the snooker (two episodes from the 80s on later). Not much changes.

U&Eden channel have taken to running Totp repeats too. 1998

911 (so called because they should have been arrested by the police) the Black Lace of boybands.

Haha, I have a little soft spot for them now after watching Boybands Forever.

Enojyed seeing Double 99 RIP Grove this week.

I love that there was a cash in book for them called "The Truth About 911"