Monday 28 November 2011

The disappeared: 11/11/76

We've done quite well for surviving shows recently, seven in a row, but now the meat of the wipings kicks in with four out of six lost perhaps forever. Luckily that's as many as are officially missing in the whole of 1977, but unfortunately this first one... well, we'll see. DLT hosts.

Eddie & The Hotrods – Teenage Depression
Another Hotrods opener! Much the same direct, raw post-pub pre-punk energy unaccustomed to 1976 TOTP, so you can imagine much the same tricks being pulled by the director to try and rein it all in.

Billy Ocean – Stop Me (If You’ve Heard It All Before)
We'll see this before long anyway. What lurid clash of colours can Ocean have envisaged this time?

Guys 'n' Dolls – Stoney Ground
A few recovered shows and fragments have come from Guys 'n' Dolls members, but apparently not on this occasion. Maybe they preferred the scaffolding staging of Supersonic.

Leo Sayer – You Make Me Feel Like Dancing
The video, presumably the one we saw the show before last.

Neil Diamond – Beautiful Noise
The video. Don't know if it's the same as this - the video bit, not the pensioners clapping along - but there's a lot more percussion there then the song suggests.

Dr Hook – If Not You
The video! Studio double booked for the second half? It had quite a while near the top so will be on again.

Hank C Burnette – Spinning Rock Boogie
And now, here's the crux. This is the week when ?????? became Legs & Co... and we'll never see it or what Flick did with this lightning bolt 1971 surf-rock instrumental. (In fact we may never have seen it at all as Burnette was invited to come over instead but refused to re-record, have re-recorded or mime.) But! Glancing through Once For The Dads we found the shot released to the Press Association of the girls, the displayed new name and the winner! Elaine Coombes, 16, of Salisbury, says the accompanying details, and she did indeed appear on this show this week and looks delighted to be there.



Chicago – If You Leave Me Now
And as if to come down from that excitement a new number one, with the video we've already seen shown.

6 comments:

Arthur Nibble said...

Okay, why’s Patti sitting down instead of standing top left, and why’s Sue standing top right instead of sitting far left? That spells ‘Egs & LCo’ from here!

No no no, another Linda Kelly moment over the weekend – the passing of Andrea True.

Anonymous said...

Groovy flares Elaine!

wilberforce said...

the dr hook track was one of two american 70's UK hits that mentioned the word "pants", that had a whole different meaning for us brits at the time... the other one was billy joel's "it's still rock n roll to me", where me and my chums would snigger at the thought of billy striding around wearing a bright orange pair of y-fronts!

Noax said...

That Hank C Burnette track is amazing, I was spellbound by it when I was young and listening to it on a K-Tel compilation for the first time.

Good for him for insisting on no miming or re-records either, it would've been awesome to see that live as that's the way this track should be really (and how can we can have Robin ****ing Sarstedt live and not this anyway?!)

Probably a silly question but I guess we don't get this again? Still, it's good enough that it's available on Youtube with a nice potted history by Hank himself! (at least, I hope it's him)

Arthur Nibble said...

Although Hank's single went up for another three weeks it never got another TOTP airing, probably because of his refusal to mime or re-record. I remember Paul Burnett used the spoken line and riff at the end of the track as a trailer before rock 'n' roll songs on his Radio 1 show.

Simon said...

If anyone's still hanging around these older posts a little easter egg for you, as a good portion of the Legs & Co Spinning Rock Boogie routine has just come to light, and it's a corker.