Reviewing BBC Four's Top Of The Pops 1976/77 repeats, and assorted business related to the show
Friday, 17 June 2011
Going badly
From BBC2's much recalled TV Hell theme night of 1992, John Peel runs through the best of the worst, I assure you nowhere near as familiar then as they are now. How unfortunately prescient the link at 2:50 in part three now seems.
there's plenty i could say about this chamber of horrors/rogues gallery, but i'll restrict it to these comments:
1 - i don't know if it was a "lost in translation" thing, but father abraham came up with a classic and hilarious rhyming couplet with "do smurfs like to dance and croon? yes but only to this tune!" also (as a friend pointed out to me many years ago), despite calling his yuletide cash-in "christmas in smurfland", the title didn't actually fit the melody, so it had to be sung (or should i say crooned) "christmas in smurf-ing land"! it must also be pointed out that another performer featured in these clips tried to cash in with a parody called "father abraphart and the smurps"...
2 - when the artist also known as father abraphart did his note-for-note cover of the torremelinos-holiday-hit "una paloma blanca", i'm sure both his and george baker's original were at times next to each other in the charts, so they'd get played straight after each other on the sunday night top 40 chart rundown, which i thought was highly amusing...
3 - like many other "music lovers" of the time, i was outraged when "shaddup your face" kept "vienna" off the top of the charts. yet listening to the latter now, in its own way it seems just as preposterous and toe-curling as the dolce record ha ha!
"i'm sure both his and george baker's original were at times next to each other in the charts, so they'd get played straight after each other on the sunday night top 40 chart rundown, which i thought was highly amusing".
Absolutely correct, Wilberforce. They were at 10 and 11 for one week in October 1975, and at 11 and 13 (with Esther Phillips in between) a couple of weeks later.
Highly intrigued by John Paul Joans (part 3, starting at 7:00) - turns out he was an avant garde Northern comedian (the Charlie Chuck of his day) who released a single in sympathy of miners losing thir jobs. It got banned by the BBC, but his rich tones were discovered, earning him a recording session with the band that became 10cc (three of them co-wrote "Nazareth" and played on the single) and this pre-Xmas 1970 release on RAK, under the name of John Paul JONES, whereupon the same-named Led Zep member took out an injunction on the name. The single was withdrawn after three weeks in the top 50 while RAK printed labels with the new surname, causing it to drop out of the chart over Xmas. It re-entered in January 1971, reaching 25, but it had lost its main impact by then. Could well have been a major hit and established this eccentric in the public eye, but it became his vinyl swansong.
3 comments:
there's plenty i could say about this chamber of horrors/rogues gallery, but i'll restrict it to these comments:
1 - i don't know if it was a "lost in translation" thing, but father abraham came up with a classic and hilarious rhyming couplet with "do smurfs like to dance and croon? yes but only to this tune!" also (as a friend pointed out to me many years ago), despite calling his yuletide cash-in "christmas in smurfland", the title didn't actually fit the melody, so it had to be sung (or should i say crooned) "christmas in smurf-ing land"! it must also be pointed out that another performer featured in these clips tried to cash in with a parody called "father abraphart and the smurps"...
2 - when the artist also known as father abraphart did his note-for-note cover of the torremelinos-holiday-hit "una paloma blanca", i'm sure both his and george baker's original were at times next to each other in the charts, so they'd get played straight after each other on the sunday night top 40 chart rundown, which i thought was highly amusing...
3 - like many other "music lovers" of the time, i was outraged when "shaddup your face" kept "vienna" off the top of the charts. yet listening to the latter now, in its own way it seems just as preposterous and toe-curling as the dolce record ha ha!
"i'm sure both his and george baker's original were at times next to each other in the charts, so they'd get played straight after each other on the sunday night top 40 chart rundown, which i thought was highly amusing".
Absolutely correct, Wilberforce. They were at 10 and 11 for one week in October 1975, and at 11 and 13 (with Esther Phillips in between) a couple of weeks later.
Highly intrigued by John Paul Joans (part 3, starting at 7:00) - turns out he was an avant garde Northern comedian (the Charlie Chuck of his day) who released a single in sympathy of miners losing thir jobs. It got banned by the BBC, but his rich tones were discovered, earning him a recording session with the band that became 10cc (three of them co-wrote "Nazareth" and played on the single) and this pre-Xmas 1970 release on RAK, under the name of John Paul JONES, whereupon the same-named Led Zep member took out an injunction on the name. The single was withdrawn after three weeks in the top 50 while RAK printed labels with the new surname, causing it to drop out of the chart over Xmas. It re-entered in January 1971, reaching 25, but it had lost its main impact by then. Could well have been a major hit and established this eccentric in the public eye, but it became his vinyl swansong.
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