And then, on the 17th... two TOTPs in one night! Christ alive, I'm already dreading how I'm going to work out that week. 7.30 and 8.30, since you ask, with the long promised Tales From Television Centre documentary at 9 and a 1974 Blue Peter featuring a tour of the same building at 8, and the unedited Pops will be shown back to back from 11.20.
Back to forty minute originals this week, so let's try a new way of doing things - if possible (as, for example, not this week) I'll have the Thursday evening recap up later the same night, then some time on Friday the songs edited out will be included.
Oh, Tony Blackburn. With your Lego man hair and your cream polo neck and your lack of jokes now Diddy's off the roster.
Eddie & The Hot Rods – I Might Be Lying
PUNK! Well, no it isn't, it's not even as punk-like as their previous appearance with Get Out Of Denver, it's just not-as-good-as-Dr Feelgood-style pumped up rhythm and blues pub rock. Barrie Masters is certainly aware of what's going on with his stance and microphone attack mode, forward and back across the stage with an artfully bare chest and with the camera following his every step eagerly from almost underneath, but somehow it's not quite right. Maybe it's because it always looks like he's about to break out into a great big smirk. Both guitarists and the becapped bassist are in shades, one of the former pulling plenty of rock action moves unbecoming to his Graham Parker-in-leather-jacket appearance. Not for the last time tonight the audience couldn't be less interested. Three girls right by the front of the stage are watching the overhead monitor. Another is not only looking away from it but also chewing gum nonchalantly. Put some ripped leathers on her and she'd make the lead in a bad comedy sketch about punk, I suppose.
O.C. Smith – Together
"This used to be one of my records of the week". Oh, Tony, everything's your record of the week. He even mentions it again afterwards, he's so proud of its status. It's a long way from the Soul Train clip of two weeks ago to Elstree, but in his neat all-blue ensemble incorporating waistcoat Smith still exudes a kind of glazed sophistication against the very vague efforts of the orchestra, showmanship limited to some finger clicking. In the background various Hot Rods briefly appear to tidy up after themselves.
Stevie Wonder – Sir Duke
Cameraman and director in perfect misdirection harmony.
Pauline and the others (bar Patti - well, she needed time off after what Floyd put her through last week) are in very shiny and reflective silver dresses with something similar on top of their heads and they're going right through their training, bits of celebrated dance styles mixed in with the usual exertions somehow to balance with Stevie's appreciation shout-outs. Plus, for that extra ingredient, audible handclaps. As long as they weren't dubbed on in post-production, that's all that matters. And the audience respond in kind with... well, no, they don't respond in the slightest. Hardly a twitch, even though Pops seems to have built them three ringside grandstands to sit in and still have to have some standing around at the sides. Never a good idea, putting the audience in the background, you can then see how easily distracted they get. In one close-up only Tony, absent mindedly tapping the mike against his other wrist, is showing any sign of life.
Berni Flint – I Don't Want To Put A Hold On You (edited from 7.30)
Can't work out if this is a repeat or not. There are after all a limited number of things a director can do with one seated man and his acoustic guitar picking.
Tavares – Whodunnit
"I hate to brag but this was another of my records of the week". How many does he get a week? It's a clip from Holland's Top Pop, possibly chosen for the name alone, and a show that clearly holds no truck with the art of miming as only the lead singer is given a microphone even though backing vocals and harmonies are scattered throughout. Their matching crimson outfits with elaborate collars are quite the thing, along with the standard issue soul wing shirt collars. The shirts are pink. Pink!
Lynsey De Paul & Mike Moran – Rock Bottom
Lynsey's special 'ROCK BOTTOM' paper didn't arrive that morning, nothing amuses her and this time nobody can be bothered with flags (or reactions) around them, but otherwise it's pretty much the same facing pianos arrangement as last time. They didn't even play it like that on the night, which was still more than two weeks away at this time due to strike-related postponement. The early version features a tremendously clumsy mid-song edit.
Leo Sayer – How Much Love
Well, this is decidedly odd. A video (here it is) directed by the man behind the Bohemian Rhapsody video (and has directed every live American Idol), it's essentially built around up to four Leos dancing and essentially messing about while singing, filmed individually and often in silhouette, looking like a cross between Once In A Lifetime and the credits sequence of Bottom.
Delegation – Where Is The Love (We Used To Know)
With Tony keen to state they're from Birmingham, so we run into 1977's Sheer Elegance, only with toned down wardrobes, if that's how you'd describe all-in-ones with zips right up the front in Wolverhampton Wanderers colours. All things are relative, after all, and you definitely wouldn't run them over. As far as the song goes it's pretty much the same as every other male vocal harmony soul outfit, their USPs seemingly being a) the Charlie Williams-a-gram lead singer pitching the mike at an angle where he constantly has to tilt his head upwards, and b) the chain of male pattern baldness from left to right - curly perm, shaved short, actually receded to the sides. "They now go back to Germany" Tony enthuses.
Elkie Brooks – Pearl's A Singer
Repeat from her second appearance. The pianist is quite Lennonish, isn't he?
David Dundas – Another Funny Honeymoon (edited from 7.30)
"At last David Dundas has given us another hit single!" I can't imagine that was an oft heard exultation at the time. Better arrangement - no chicken guitar, less In The Summertime stealing - and an unobtrusive white suit but ultimately a lack of charisma does for him no matter how much he tries to make unbecoming doe eyes at the camera. Someone right near the front in a huge floppy hat nods along while looking away from the stage. He's not that bad. "A nice happy-go-lucky one for the summer, I'd have said" is Tony's only half listening interpretation.
Dead End Kids – Have I The Right (edited from 7.30)
The multi-stage production from last time around.
Deniece Williams – Free
As with OC Smith she was performing this on clips imported from Soul Train two shows ago. Impractical as it sounds, it'd be nice to think there was some exchange program going on and that same week Showaddywaddy and Dead End Kids were confusing the cool kids of LA. What is definite is even for the time those are the greatest width of bell bottom we've seen, and in another all-in-one to boot. Turquoise, too. Great live vocal, hamfisted interpretation, and only what looks like a portable set of steps for her to sing on, Delegation obviously far more important to properly locate than an American boasting the country's number four single. The camera crane ends up behind her so we can see the orchestra in the middle distance and in between a sea of blank faces. Johnny Pearson, it transpires, is miles away, behind part of the camera run. Maybe that was the problem.
ABBA – Knowing Me Knowing You
With the minimum of fuss it's a third week atop for that video, then someone behind Tony adds their own "bye!" just after he says it, then Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill and we're out.
45 comments:
The audience looked they were out of Stepford.
And one of the audience was so bored during Rock Bottom she started checking her nails
A good show this week with Tony Blackburn in fine form when introducing Legs & Co, with Pauline having first pose for the camera. I did like the grandstand style seating, especially as you could see Tony sitting in the audience throughout the song. I admit I did look away occasionally from Legs & Co, hard as it may sound, to see the audience involvement, but without Patti, I survived somehow. Can'y believe that Lulu was just 17 in that clip! Anyway, a great Legs & performance this week. I just wasn't sure that the pink socks on all the legs matched the siver dresses!
My only other highlight of the show was Lynsey de Paul & Mike Moran singing 'Rock Bottom'. Apparently it came second place in the 1977 Eurovision Song contest. Lynsey however looks so great, that I wish she could have joined Legs & co that night to fill in for Patti.
Was great to have the full 40 minutes in the late show on Thursday night.
Looking forward to next week.
Why do they have to have multiple Leo Sayers whenever he's on. It messes with my head!
Sir Duke. Best song so far, even better with sexy girls!
Is it just me or does the girl in red and blue next to Blackburn before the playout look like Les McKeown?
Should mention Blackburn mentioned in Radio Times this week he prefers Rihanna to the Beatles. Idiot.
did someone put mogadon in the audience's tea beforehand? apart from one rabbit-in-headlights moment when a young girl realises a camera is heading very quickly in her direction, the only time they stir from their lethargy is when they're all rather amusingly herded up like cattle from the eddie and the hot rods stage, around the back of the camera filming tony's link and onto the oc smith stage just as the band strike up... as if they're trying to get on the tube before the doors shut!
i think this subject has been touched upon before, but what exactly was the criteria (if any?) for audience participation in those days? this show is worse than usual but even at its best the audience normally consisted of callow self-concious teenaged wallflowers - were we all that gauche back then? couldn't the director have induced them to show a bit more enthusiasm, even if they weren't into the music? i remember a work colleague saying she went to a totp recording because she knew someone who worked there, so if that was the basis of participation no wonder they were such a motley bunch, and also no wonder they resorted to getting rentacrowd in by the early 80's (what is particularly puzzling is that whenever you see early 70's clips of the show, it always seemed to be heaving with "dolly birds" gyrating away in hot pants, so what went wrong?)
when delegation (or is that sheer delegance?) first appeared, the guy on the left wasn't doing the same bouncing-up-and-down routine as the others, so i assumed he had to be the mainman and his colleagues the "oohs-and-aahs/shape-throwing" contingent... and then the guy in the middle started singing lead! even when he finally tried to get in step with the others he wasn't doing it with anything like the same conviction...
and did anyone notice that deniece fluffed her lyrics at the start of one verse, making some nonsensical noise instead? you'd have thought if she was going travel all the way from the states to put in some appearances here in blighty, she would have had plenty of time to memorise the words properly...
A very soulful, rhythm and bluesy edition tonight, with a host of lookalikes and audience frenzy, hosted by Tony ‘I’ve slept with 500 women’ Blackburn...and I bet every lady was sensational. Not one Diddy-withering quip by Tone in the entire 40-minute version...do you think he knew we'd seen the last of our pointy mate?
Punk’s not arrived yet, so we’ll have to make do with Canvey Island R&B in front of an audience frozen in fear by Barrie Masters’ fully unbuttoned shirt revealing a weedy beanpole frontage and a silver star on his chest (oh dear) prior to doing the splits (oh dear God). Should have learnt from the master Brendon – he who unbuttons shirt fully covers up with trusty guitar.
Next up, it’s Chris Kamara’s dad, out-Oceaning Billy with his get-up! Where can I get that tie? Note the herd-like rush of the crowd to fully check this dude’s gear out. Phil Drabble would have been proud. Not exactly a “Soul Train” response by the crowd, but OC would have pleased to even be here, seeing as this song had dropped from 29 (last showing) to 32 then back up to 25 this week. Felt sorry for the couple gently swaying and smiling, given the “What, me?” treatment by the camera crew. How many seconds did OC hang on before he sang that "S" in "reasons"?
Then we get Legs & Co (with Gill probably busting a few HD tubes in that outfit – if this had been in 3D..!) clapping their hands when needed, in front of an audience seated like a cross between “Question Time” and “Cheggers Plays Pop”, plus an uncovered terrace to the right, who don't even get the benefit of an arse flick in their direction. Maybe the crowd was also stroppy at the lack of Patti and went on emotion strike.
Is Berni in early on? Not this time (turned out to be a new and assured performance - lighter coloured shirt - which got the biggest cheer of the night), cut to make way for Tavares’ rich red soul and suits with weird sash effect ..oh, get me, a reguar Gok Wan (anyone else notice his name's an anagram of 'Go Wa..." - anyway) featuring a doppelganger for the mutton-chopped Stylistic to the right. Clip courtesy of “Sop Pop” with its weirdly worded sign - funny how the Dalek in the corner didn't think this song good enough to gyrate to, unless they'd run out of Gilders for the meter. As for "Whodunnit", if ever there was a time for a cash-in re-issue of "King Of The Cops"...
Now it's Eurovision entry time. Let's see...Tetris piano – check. Trademark MM glasses – check. Financial paper – where’s it gone? Audience moves - You must be joking. I hadn't seen so many faces that looked like slapped arses for years. Lynsey’s attempts at getting a crowd response would have gone down better at the Glasgow Empire.
Poor Mike Nesmith, possibly dropped for Our Soul last week, then he slips out of the chart after a solitary week in the top 30 and finally loses out to an almost black-and-white and, frankly, sodding boring Leo Sayer video which showcases his unique dancing style and, through the use of silhouettes, made me hungry for some Golden Shred on toast, if you get my vibe.
(Part 2 in a mo)
Delegation could have been this year’s Sheer Elegance if they really tried – like The Sheers, they eschewed the jackets beloved by their Stateside rivals – but Delegation all moved in the same direction together (once the bloke left of screen stopped imitating the dippy one out of Silver Convention), they could all sing, they didn’t look like carnival castoffs and, crucially, they had a Carl Douglas lookalike stage right. I guess it just wasn’t mean to be.
Weird, another full outing for Elkie, while other songs get hacked earlty doors. I now think the pianist (caught enthusiastically singing “When she plays the piano”) looked more like a beardy Robin Gibb from a certain angle. Funny how Elkie's slowie got arguably the best 'putting out small fire' crowd moves in the programme.
Milord Dundas gets left chopped from the early shift (in the late show he showed so much tongue between lines I thought he was trying to kiss me through the screen), and a repeat of those chancers The Dead End Kids also gets ditched early doors (I bet Dave WeddingSuit was punching the air!), so we go straight to...
Deniece (Deniece) wearing an alluring Bond girl-cum-speedway rider outfit, skintight except for the yard-wide flares. Shame we had another polar opposite recation to the “Soul Train” clip, Still, Tone’s so overcome that he sort of predicts this’ll go to number one...and he was right! Oh, great, it’s that Abba video again, followed by…no namecheck or song credit for the fadeout track. Tut tut!. Was it “Solsbury Hill” from the Album “Peter Gabriel” (or was it from the album “Peter Gabriel”... or was it “New Song” by Howard Jones? Meow!
That was what I meant to mention, Lynsey trying to get a singalong going on the last set of "rock, rock..."s. And, obviously, failing miserably.
The audience were there under duress, it's the only explanation for their unsettlingly bovine unease.
Thought the microphones were rather too high for too many acts, was Lemmy watching?
Leo's video looked like he was introducing his own kids' TV show. The Big Perm Gang, maybe?
Nice of Deniece to beam down from the Starship Enterprise.
Re the audience response - its noticeable that each week it improves for songs/acts they actually seem to like - that is they dance as though they actually mean it/actually look interested for the soul/disco stuff ie the kind of music that girls like these (by the look of them I'd guess generally working-class girls who probably worked on tills/in hairdressers etc)actually enjoy.
Hence the total apathy/dislike directed towards noisy rock like Eddie & the Hotrods (working class girls in Britain en masse have never really gone for rock) or what they'd see as mums and dads stuff for example like Lynsey DePaul & Mike Moran.
The madly gyrating hipsters from the late 60s/early 70s looking as so they've come straight from trendy clubs in central London were a thing of the past by 1974 at the latest.
Didn't think it was bad this week Abba, Peter Gabriel, Stevie Wonder, Deniece Williams - all great and didn't mind OC Smith, The Tavares and Delegation. Incidentally the best thing about the Delegation single was the amazing skyscraping string arrangement (crying out to be sampled)something that the arthritic TOTP orchestra didn't even try to reproduce.
I'm not entirely sure how credible my (borrowed)theory about the dowdy appearance of the audience is, but I will stick with it nevertheless; the two half's of the decade were quite distinct, with the early seventies (until the oil crisis in 73)a sort of backwash to the late 'swinging' sixties (admittedly an oversimplification!).This was reflected in the funky mini-skirted/hot pants wearing/velvet loon-pant encrusted energetic TOTP audience.
The second half of the decade, particularly from the last half of 76,was altogether less optomistic (again, to generalise etc). This was reflected in the often drab appearance of the TOTP audience and sets and on a wider scale in the mainstream fashions of the late seventies. It was also reflected in the antithetical stance of Punk.
In many significant respects Britain in the late seventies was a more affluent, diverse and less unequal society than ever before (and in the latter case since)but these positive factors were often contradicted by our perceptions.
By the way, Tony Blackburn says he never claimed Rihanna was better than The Beatles and he wasn't interviewed by the Radio Times for that article. Journalists making stuff up? I know, it's hard to believe.
Having set the record straight, now Tony can go back to obsessing about the weather.
This week's audience wins the award for the most non-plussed ever.
The non-plussed audience are probably thinking: "oh, god, some armchair theorist in 35 years time is going to drone on about the social/economic reasons for our dowdy, non-plussedness"! I think they are straight from central casting. The TOTP producer wanted a rent-an-audience, wearing cardigans, tank tops with star motifs, NHS specs and Pageboy hairstyles (always looked better on 'New Avengers' era J. Lumley!). The only other plausible explanation is that they are clinically dead.
Ironically given the erm, interesting colour of outfits on display this week I thought that musically, it was all a bit beige.
Still, at least the audience were enjoying themselves. Oh no, hang on, they weren't. What I found weird was the sheer number of hats on display at the start. Which then steadily reduced in number throughout the show.
There were a lot of Union Jack badges on display which were obviously given out. I particularly enjoyed the 2 girls wearing alomst identical outfits who were each wearing a pair of badges that were pinned quite close to their nipples. Obviously not exactly, or they would have been out on taste and decency grounds. Or....given hats to cover them up? Is that where they went?!
Anyway, the songs - if I must.
Eddie & The Hot Rods - The very definition of average. I wasn't really paying attention until the unnecessary splits at the end.
OC Smith - Now this is weird, when it was on the other week I said (as did many others) how surprised I was that I did know the chorus and quite enjoyed it. This time, despite a decent vocal performance, it completely left me cold.
Stevie Wonder - As soon as I saw how the audience were sat, like Arthur I thought of Cheggers straight away. As for the performance - not in time, and the outfits were hideous.
Tavares - Which looked like it was from a show called 'Bob Bob'. Those crazy Dutch gherkins. An incredibly silly song which always makes me luagh. One thing that bugs me though, as I don't know the answer, would Sherlock Holmes have been in the right period for access to a phone to be feasible?
Leo Sayer - As soon as Leo zoomed down the screen I started pissing myself laughing. I had to rewind it and watch it again. I thought this was brilliant (did it take a while to make which meant it wasn't ready for the previous week, perhaps?) and put me in mind of the title sequence for the later series of Kath & Kim, which was equally ludicrous. Oh, and the crash zoom into Leo's face looked like nothing other than the cliffhanger to Part 3 of the Tom Baker story 'The Face of Evil'. Check it out.
Delegation - Zzzzzz....OH! I'm awake again. Another soul group. Tony thinks it's 'his kind of music'. Yes, we know Tony, 'cos you play all the bloody soul songs in Pick of the Pops every week at the expense of more interesting songs!
Sorry, got a bit sidetracked there...
David Dundas - I still rather like this. Nobody else seemed to at the time. Still, it didn't really matter to Dave I suppose, because of the DAAAAA DEEEERRR DI DUUUUHHH to come.
Deniece Williams - I still can't work out how this got to Number One. Unless everyone was won over by her stylish fashion statement (Unlikely)
One final note - found Tony Blackburn's autobiog in a charity shop today in seemingly unread condition for £2. I didn't bite.
As for how many records of the week you can have in a week, the answer is...five! Does anyone remember when certain Radio 1 DJs were each given a week's stint at the lunchtime spot, the most celebrated being John Peel? When it was Peter Powell's turn, he did something similar to his "5 45's at 5.45" when he'd showcase a new single each night after "Newsbeat". He chose a different record of the day each day, the Friday one being his favourite, "What I Want" by The Donkeys, a Wakefield band who combined the essence of punk / new wave with Beatles harmonies and achieved a major label re-issue for a regional label single but, sadly, it never achieved deserved chart status.
I noticed there was a large quota of flat caps in the audience this week. This is excellent stuff. Keep up the good work.
noax - having done some sherlock holmes-style sleuthing (on wiki of course) i can tell you that he was "active" in the late 19th and early 20th century, during which time telephones were also commercially introduced so i suppose it could have been feasible for the tavares to have given him a bell - had he existed, and were they able to step into a time portal! i have watched most of the jeremy brett series, but i can't recall him ever using the phone...
lord dundas just looks lost when he's not behind his piano singing another funny honeymoon,i'm not suprised he gave up performing to concentrate on film and tv work
The 'change' in TOTP re: atmosphere & audience happened as 1974 rolled into 1975 - look at this recovered Elton John performance from September 74, the show was still quick-paced and as much about the studio audience as the performances http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HxYuCsj26s
i took a look at the above, and i see what you mean... but i had to watch it with the sound off as i hate reg's singing so much!
if anyone's interested, i thought i'd give an update on this blog's "competitors": sadly yellow pearl has long since stopped commenting on the show and just offers bone-dry stats, and now it seems trip tv has given up the ghost as well as they haven't filed a report since the last kid jensen show... a shame really as although this blog is the original and best, the others also provided entertaining rashomon-style differing views. still, at least steve does top of the pops! continues to give us an alternative outlook...
Enjoyed this week's show, although I must admit the catchy, heartfelt and beautifully sung refrain, 'Living with you is beautiful', hasn't quite left my head from last week yet.
Neither has the WTF moment of Cleo Laine and Andy (sic!) Williams. I know we didn't have the phrase WTF in 1977, but I do remember thinking its equivalent back then, which was 'Gosh, what is this doing on my favourite pop music charts programme without being in the charts?'
Always interesting to see what isn't on a particular show, and it's sad so many new entries recently have been ignored for one reason or another - Glen Campbell, Streisand, Van McCoy (although those two are around for Barry Biggs style ages!), Mike Nesmith, Rose Royce...
Waiting in the wings in the Top 50 are Joe Tex, The Eagles, 10CC, Deep Purple, Rod Stewart, Television, and, er, Barry Biggs' latest, which doesn't actually make it past 36. Bless. He needs to do something else with a circus theme really...
Oh, and it was Abba's fourth week at number one. Pedantic mode off.
See you for the double in a fortnight.
I must have watched the Deniece Williams song about 20 times now. Never tire of it - absolutely magical.
Out of completeness, and as quite a few people seem to remember it: Richard Digance's Earl's A Winger
Sorry I'm late, most of the points I was going to make have already been made other than the fact the guitarist in Eddie and The Hot Rods doing all the rock poses looked exactly like Kevin Eldon as Simon Quinlank. On Popular someone says that the audience fleeing to OC Smith should be accompanied by a speech bubble saying "Thank Christ that's over!". The audience really were comically unimpressed this week.
I loved that Leo video, I'd never seen it before and it's hilarious, even though it fails to follow the golden rule that every video filmed in a white void must at one point go into a black void.
Looking good for the next few weeks anyway, the double bill makes up part of surely the best night's telly ever with that Blue Peter coming from 4th November 1974 and also featuring Petra's birthday, then the week after that Jim presents probably the most eclectic and bizarre line-up in the show's history.
It's a shame that - after that Blue Peter - the BBC doesn't present to us the almost-complete Dick Emery recovered TOTP of the same week - a very fast-paced as-live show feating the likes of Queen, Glitter Band, Sparks, Roxy Music, Pilot and a load ofothers live in the studio....
Another (one-off) take on this week
Tony Blackburn and myself have much the same taste in Soul music, that's why I enjoy his shows so much. So I was delighted to see OC Smith, Deniece Williams, (whose single I helped get to number one, and whose album, This is Niecy, is soulful and seductive) and Tavares. I bought a number of their albums, Sky High (1976) and Love Storm (1977) which contains Whodunit and two follow up singles, the dreadful One Step Away, which I remember Radio One Jock Robbie Vincent on his "Long hot summer of '77" disco show describing as "turgid, standard disco fayre" Too right. The album's third single, the excellent I Wanna See You Soon, a duet with labelmate Freda Payne, failed to chart. I gave up on Tavares albums after that one and only bought any singles that came out, and much, much later a greatest hits cd which is just about bearable.
I thought this show was a good one, although I'm getting a bit fed up of the seeing the same Elkie Brooks performance now, can't wait to see something different from her, I see a swift follow up is on the way. I'm also getting a bit fed up of ABBA at number one, familiarity breeds contempt eh! Roll on Niecy when she gets to the top.
Incidentally, can someone change the size of this blog thing. It's annoying enough to have to type those two words in all the time, very often they're not always easy to read, and I can only see half a screen size and have to keep scrolling over to read the comments. I'd like to be able to see it full screen.
I have similar problems in that, when Simon gives a link to a YouTube clip or the like, I can't get it any bigger than the size of this comments box, so I have to copy the clip's 'long number' and type it into Google to get a full screen version.
Can you not open the link in a new window? Or maximise the popup box?
As I have nothing else for this week off I'll mention here that the week after next (w/c 21/5) there's a TOTP2 listed for every weekday on BBC2 for an hour from 6.30pm. No blurb has been updated yet so I don't know why.
that william b swygert review (linked by simon above) was really excellent - i'd like to contact him to urge him to keep it up but unfortunately there seems no way of being able to do so! let's hope he does so anyway instead of wasting his time writing about contemporary nonentities such as chris moyles and fearne cotton...
Another week where i note i have a lot of the singles still (oc, deniece, delegation, dundas....oh yes...and elkie). Like wilberforce i couldnt abide elton , except ego, and put this down to his having a lot of hits, however crap, in the uk because they were in the US.
Thanks to Arthur i have been showing all and sundry ms Brown's reverse Michael Jackson performances. And the 1970 pickettywitch performance shows why the late 60s, early 70s to end 73 TOTPs were better. Audience more glamorous, bopping more, all around the stage , behind bars, above the band, generally more chaotic and dynamic".........and probably no or less ladybirds/pearson ruining it. I think the mid 80s recovered some of this atmosphere. By the 90s i was firmly abroad but on the occasion I saw the Pops during the late nineties / early naughties, i hardly wondered that it was taken off. Utterly devoid of atmosphere
Forgot to add link above
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfSlzmwkjGw&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Oooh, Contempt are coming... :)
ah yes, pickettywitch - one of those famous-for-15-minutes studio concoctions that were prevalent in the early 70's... i'm sure i'm not the only one here who remembers the sensational tabloid tales of the pickettywitch singer who suffered from "20th century allergy" syndrome? what they always failed to mention was that she didn't actually sing on their few hit singles and only joined later on when they were residing in the "where are they now" file...
))
babblingmouth said...
Oooh, Contempt are coming... :)
))
Er.....meaning?
There's a band called Contempt coming soon on the programme. Hopefully babblingmouth knows something about them, because the rest of the internet knows next to nothing.
Presumably the missing show last week was the one including Television, at 30 with Marquee Moon? It was also the week Rod Stewart was the highest new entry at 13, meaning that the first player in the forthcoming Jubilee-week drama was in place...
A bit late, but another plus vote for Deniece Williams from the last show. And it's always good to hear "Mick And Phyllis Are Lovers" again!
No, we haven't justed miss a week due to a wiped show (it was just a case of weird scheduling), and "Marquee Moon" never got an airing on TOTP. The wiped edition featuring Television is the 3rd August 1977 show, with "Prove It" at number 25.
There are only four missing 1977 editions, thanks in part to Diddy. We've suffered two alreday, and the only other one wiped show is 8th September 1977, whose main 'loss' ("Gimme Dat Banana" by Black Gorilla) was saved and can be found on YouTube...if you're really desperate.
Sorry for the appalling 'Guardian'-style copy just now...is there a way you can go back to a message on this and rectify the typo's?
"mick and phyllis are lovers"???
i'm guessing that's some kind of misheard lyric in "free" a la "scuse me while i kiss this guy"?
"Mick and Phyllis..." is "They can feel it all over" from "Sir Duke". I admit I had to look that one up on t'net to get it.
The classic mis-heard lyric surely has to be "I believe in Milko" (cue "That's Life") unless you know different...
Sorry, I thought everybody knew that one!
Arthur, thanks for the information re Television. Whether they were the first bona fide punk act in the top 30 is a matter of definition, but they were the first of those weird bands being championed by Sounds to make it that far. And there's even a record with "punk" in the title coming along in a few weeks. (not counting Slik's effort!)
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