The proper big TOTP news from the week is the appearance of one of the great holy grails of 60s British music - Pink Floyd, Syd inclusive, playback-performing See Emily Play on the Pops broadcast 6th July 1967 (if it's too ragged for you, a homemade remastering has been done) The footage has been known to exist initially in private hands - an unknown rock star's collection, it's said - for three years or so and was shown at Kaleidoscope in January 2010 but this is the first time it's slipped into the public domain.
And so to 1977, where the leonine face of DLT greets us and throws to... a song?
John Miles – Slow Down
Yes, now there's a hit to kick things off rather than the rundown. This changearound lasted one week. Shame, as John came in especially. This week's little things: the bassist wearing a tie with an open shirt, Miles' vocal adlibs being adhered to in miming but unfortunately well off mike, and Miles shutting his eyes as tight as David Parton did when a-talkboxing. Four people rush towards the throng just in time for the track's end, and as the camera pulls away we find DLT in full air guitar mode with the mike cord. "He-hey! Is that magic?" is his ungrammatic question. It's left to him to explain what's happened to the rundown, which he does via a completely wrong rendition of the opening riff that sounds more like the end of the Countdown clock timer, followed by the top 30 plus Tavares. Yes, for the next few years Top Of The Pops had no regular theme tune, just another chart hit jemmied in to accompany all the latest action shots:
Bay City Rollers – You Made Me Believe In Magic
And while we're on the changing of the ways, the Rollers final fling, both in the chart and on TOTP. Neither DLT nor the girls surrounding him, one arm in arm with him, another clearly trying to plant their palm on his bum, two clearly mothers with brilliantly northern stereotypical nan perms and bottle-bottom glasses, can truly summon up the excitement over it. There's not a stitch of tartan anywhere on the stage either, as if to show this is the new, mildly funky Rollers, not the ones you like. It's all looking very grown up until the camera gets to Eric Faulkner, who's chosen a leather jacket, rugby shorts and knee-high hooped socks. Nobody mixes styles that much and hopes to get away with it. There's a weird little tableau off to one side of the front of the stage too, where a man who looks like a burly policeman is looking disconsolately at the floor as everyone else does the side to side shuffle, a similarly catatonic if more attentive girl by both sides. Maybe they heard about the last bassist too.
Brotherhood Of Man – Angelo
"Here's a song that's going to do well in the charts, definitely". It's already number five! What more does DLT want? Repeat, anyway.
The Jam – All Around The World
Ah, this'll be a youth explosion, then. Well, maybe outside. Apart from less jumping around this time, either from Weller, Foxton or two blokes at the back, it's pretty similar to their debut showing, as committed young men in suits play power chords to a largely clueless crowd, still moving around just as they had five minutes earlier. Introducing the ways and means of TOTP directing to the new breed, Foxton's interjections in the middle are matched to a tight close-up of Weller. But there is a difference, as while there are a gaggle of people looking bored at the front stage left they're singing along, one directing it at his friend. He could look at the blokes right in front of him if he's that committed, surely.
Alessi – Oh Lori
"Some people from Ireland, say hello!" DLT's next line, or more precisely the bad accent it's delivered in, is sadly inevitable. Weeks after they participated in an awkward chat the brothers get to perform, and Bobby Alessi gets to show off his little bicycle-riding mime. We've kind of already seen the pair of them performing, albeit on video with one mike and a camera stuck on close-up, and pans, the sight of Bobby giving Billy unreciprocated matey looks and a small audience don't add much to the experience. That doesn't excuse the pair visible at the back of the stage having a chat.
Barry Biggs – Three Ring Circus
"In the same sort of vein", according to DLT. Barry's left his ringmaster gear and his mysterious sidekick at home this time, instead sitting down swaying, thinking that now just the song will do. Given the distance he misses the first note by, this isn't the case.
Smokie – It's Your Life
Perhaps as tired with the usual TOTP routine as the rest of us by now Chris Norman is dressed like a flamboyant flamenco dancer, if flamenco ever lent itself to the colour lemon. Not as tired of repeating themselves, the cameraman gets his bottom-of-a-bottle filter out again for the mid-section and waits for everyone to gather around one mike
Fleetwood Mac – Dreams
In what we shall now call the Supertramp Slot, about a minute and a half of grainy live footage - this, should you be interested - chiefly notable for Mick Fleetwood grimacing at the end of every bar and Stevie fiddling with a piece of material throughout.
The Rah Band – The Crunch
"After a good meal on a Thursday, what do you need? A crunch!" Makes about as much sense as the outfits. Repeat.
Danny Willians – Dancin' Easy
Panning over a phalanx of girls in white jackets we find Williams doing a David Dundas, rewriting an advertising jingle, in this case Martini's Anytime Anyplace Anywhere, for fun and profit. Williams had had a UK number one sixteen years previously (with Moon River) and so can be forgiven for being out of the soul style loop, but Huggy Bear's castoff jacket and big hat is not it. Gill tries to provide a distraction in a familiar looking all electric blue small top and flamenco skirt, which by the look of the punters confuses things even further for people already trying desperately to remember where the tune comes from. In fact, so easily distracted are a number of them that a couple openly wave to camera while a third does poses of largesse.
Queen – Good Old Fashioned Loverboy
Well, Queen weren't going to come back in again for the same song.
Donna Summer – I Feel Love
"I forecast it last week" says DLT, before his usual orgasm. Well, it's not like we can prove it. And now the show has a problem, because I Feel Love looks cemented to that top spot for a while and there's no video and no hope of Donna coming over to perform it, so here comes the first of at least four seperate Legs & Co-centric presentations. One can only hope the others are better reflective of its spacey disco rush than this one, in which the effort put into obtaining a rotating colour filter for mood lighting effects seems to outweigh that put into the routine, in which the girls shake their shoulders and wave the hem of their big long dresses a bit, looking more like they're trying to keep up with the BPM rather than do anything clever. Then they run from side to side a bit. Rosie gyrates her bosom at the camera a bit in a solo spot but coming some way into the routine it's literally a busted flush. The whole thing doesn't really reflect the erotic charge of the record, just when you want them to, catatonic as it may have made DLT. "I can assure you our playout group does not refer to Legs & Co - boney? Mmmm...." Over the credits again? Did Frank Farian have photos, just not quite enough? The designers are busy amusing themselves by using the colour filters against the kaleidoscope lenses. It just resembles a blur.
43 comments:
I must admit I was mostly unmoved by tonight's show, apart from the Jam. No matter how much I might admire the Brotherhood of Man, there's a limit to how much I want to hear Angelo.
And just my luck to lose my reception for the entirety of the all-new countdown and theme tune. :(
Whole lotta love, ah there it went. Another example of what seemed like a need to refresh the show at the time, but now seems like the end of an era.
the alessi brothers looked rather thin - and their magical helmets of hair accentuated it.
this seemed like a lazy repeat show for the most part - half the stuff had been on before - usually the same footage too.
What a massive, massive anti-climax that show was. As mouthwatering as a piece of dry toast, cobbled together like an episode of “Crossroads” and vying for the worst show of the re-run so far.
Who on Earth decided that the show’s dynamic start be relinquished for a feet-first opener and a chart rundown where, in this case, the song jarred with some of the captions? The Sex Pistols over Tavares?
Sadly, Barry Biggs’s fantastic ringmaster pic was all I saw of him on his final pre-watershed TOTP appearance (Simon must have seen a separate edition to me, as I didn't get to hear that bum note). To rub it in, thanks to the impossibility of editing some of DLT’s links, we suffered BoM and bloody Queen yet again – still, at least we were spared Smokie.
We never got to find out what the ‘BB’ stood for on John Miles’s drummer’s old cossy – at least he smartened up a bit this time round, though not as smart as the keyboard player in the Rollers (?!?!) – was that the original member who’d left and come back dressed as Peter Skellern? What awful slop that song was. Can’t believe it made number 34.
At least DLT made a decent fist of introducing The Jam, unlike his hashes of announcing Alessi and Boney Hmmm. The audience seemed to enjoy the new mod...er, punk...er, ABOTSOR. I always thought Bruce Foxton was / is one of the coolest bassists ever.
Bloody Hell! Alessi in the studio! Looking like mutations of The Fonz and that Ron Mael out of Sparks! The singer needed lessons from Jigsaw’s drummer to nail that falsetto and he held his throat near the end like a complete wuss. Then...ah, Stevie Nicks, easily the best part of that comatose Fleetwood Mac video. I can’t look at Mick Fleetwood now without thinking of that Brits debacle with Sam Fox.
Following the S&M Lieutenant Pigeon, complete with puss in boots and male...er, female...er, androgynous bassist, a blatant three-minute commercial for Martini. Why was evervone looking at the poor man’s Huggy Bear (shouldn’t really diss Danny, he departed seven years ago) and ignoring the gorgeous Gill in the corner? Sacrilege! Talking of which...
So, Dave, we’re gonna see some beautiful women dancing to Donna Summer? Not with that camera, lighting and direction work we’re not. Apart from the segment with Rosie making a decent bid for shapeliest Legger, that was the most shambolic screening of the gals I can ever remember. Absolutely appalling, and somehow topped in amateurism by the blurry kaleidoscopic smudge under the end credits. By the way, apart from (spoiler alert) “Way Down”, anyone know how many number ones were danced to and not represented by the performer?
To think we were made to wait a fortnight for that. I only hope next week’s a marked improvement.
Full disclosure: I haven't yet seen the full show but Biggs is repeated in a couple of weeks and that's on YouTube.
Why are they showing Queen again? They're only number 17. This definitely looked and felt like the changing of things, no theme tune, punk/new wave/abotsor, queen starting to fade, dads army finishing, Elvis Bing and Bolan dying, my schooldays coming an end, my drinking days beginning, the introduction of Kid, the goodbye to Diddy, shall we go on?
Yes that's Alan Longmuir (brother of drummer Derek) returning for keyboarding for The Rollers on their finest moment !
Queen fading? Their next single reached number two!
Well, if you're going to start the show with a song (and as mentioned, that only happens this week), Miles is as good as any as I've really grown to love that song, and probably know it better than Miles given how many lines he forgets to mime to. It's been mentioned here before but this show doesn't have much of an identity anymore - no titles, no theme tune and the logo only shown for about five seconds right at the end of the programme.
The edit on the early version was quite well done, cutting to an intro-free video, because we've seen that happen quite a lot on the show this year. The I Feel Love dance looks like the kind they'd do in week four, not week one.
Normally I'd moan when the credits don't show the studio enough to see the georgraphy of it but I thought the screensaver at the end was quite restful, as well as inventing the 1991 BBC1 globe.
Also, Eric from the Rollers has looked more pissed off in his last few appearances than any of the punks so far.
Who on Earth at the BBC makes the decisions as to when the second showing goes on air? Not that it matters too much in these days of 30-minute editions, but next week's first repeat starts at 2.50 on Thursday morning!
I didn't realise Barry got another airing after this, as I knew this was the highest position "Three Ring Circus" reached. I've since discovered that both this and "Dreams" are on again in three episodes' time (two for us as one of those was wiped), during which time both songs have dropped down the charts and, in the space of those three weeks, have gone from 22 to 22 and from 25 to 24 respectively. Obviously a slow month in TOTP-land.
did anyone else notice the guy running towards the john miles stage at the end and then pretending to dance as he realised the camera was on him? i would say that going by his monk's tonsure he was was one of the floor managers (perhaps the legendary ducking man?) rather than one of the audience...
however, the stone-faced burly chap with the moustache grimly staring into space and not twitching a muscle to the rollers' (failed) attempt to hitch a ride on the disco bandwagon (guys, it might have helped had you done to the alessis' hairdresser rather than persist with the bogbrush look) rather disturbingly was actually an audience member, despite displaying all the characteristics of a pyschopath (aren't floor managers suppose to root out and remove people like that?)
on an anecdotal note, i have a friend who works the live music circuit in scotland, and his band "supported" les mckeown at one engagement. after they had finished, les (who had just turned up and was presumably trying to trade on his status as a rollers "legend") asked them if they would lend him their p.a. rather than have to set up and use his own (and in so doing save wear and tear on it)... they told the guy where he could go!
i always thought "dancin' easy" was a really lame title/lyric - i know they had to write something that rhymed with "martini", but was that the best they could come up with?
Cheesy peasy? Nice and sleazy?
"Dancing Easy" was on the same label as "Dancing Tight" (so take your pick of styles) and The
Boomtown Rats!
Was that the singer from the Wurzels moonlighting as the lead guitarist in Smokie? Did anyone see them in the same room together?
In a moment of weakness, and by sheer nostaglic fluke, I unearthed the YIN1 writeup and comments for the 8th April 1976 edition, whereby Alan Longmuir leaves The Rollers and is replaced by Ian Mitchell by means of substitution halfway through the video for "Love Me Like I love You".
Terribly disappointing this week, and not just because of DLT. Or the wrong, wrong, wrong idea of putting the rundown second.
Bay City Rollers - I actually quite liked this as a song, though clearly it's been placed with totally the wrong band. I picture Sheer Elegance sitting around waiting for their new song, getting the post and going 'What's this weird teenybop thing?!'
Brotherhood of Man - You CRASHED the vocal, Dave. Call yourself a DJ?
The Jam - Less viscerally exciting than before, as it's not a great song, but at least it's something new (unlike most of this show)
Smokie - Nice to see them enjoying themselves as usual, and I still like the song.
Fleetwood Mac - Well, that was well worth it! I remember assuming that we'd never get to see this.
As it happens we may as well have had a minute and a half of DLT gurning at some girls which would at least have been a visual representation of his dreams, I expect.
The RAH Band - The only thing I can think the intro was referring to here is those Nestle Crunch chocolate bars that you used to be able to get?
Actually, I think you still can but as with most old chocolate bars, they're not the same.
Danny Williams - And there was me thinking that Cats UK had the only Martini related song. We're lucky that this didn't start a trend or we could have had more old pop stars doing this kind of thing and no-one wanted to see Eden Kane singing 'The taste of paradise' (say) did they?
Ooh, chocolate again. You can tell I'm supposed to be on a diet, can't you?
Donna Summer - Song = Awesome, Performance = Terrible, as everyone has said. We haven't had a good Legs & Co for a while, have we? Was Mary Whitehouse super-active at this point because of the Pistols or something?
That must be it, I blame the punks.
I must admit, no matter the uncertainty of Legs & Co's dancing, when Donna Summer started up after all that it sounded fantastic.
As for everything else, Roller Les sounded a bit like he had a sore throat there, unlike Alessi who I thought were miming until they threw in a few ad libs, which impressed me a bit more than the last time I'd heard the song.
On that Jam track the first line always sounds to me like Paul Weller's vocal has been slowed down, dunno why, maybe he was putting on his deep voice especially.
Danny Williams didn't look as if Martinis were his tipple of choice there.
But yeah, Donna redeemed the whole show for me.
Oh, and Barry, don't get up on our account, dear.
Forgot to say - surely that Alessi performance was recorded weeks earlier when they popped in for a chat?
I must admit I still can't get used to these Wednesday outings, TOTP should only ever go out on a Thursday.
DLT clad head-to-toe in waffle denim. I think I'm going to be sick. I remember the jeans at the time but I've never seen a waffle denim shirt before.
John Miles with his dapping block medallion (now that we're all in Europe should we be calling him John Kilometers?). I could be wrong but I think the audience members rushing in at the end are doing it on purpose (they 'can't slow down', geddit?). And DLT's weak attempt at air guitar makes him look more of a wanker than he did already
Poor old Tavares, relegated to being the rundown backing track. Not a bad song actually but I swear one of the lines in the verse was "And so I go and change my Ovaltine".
Some of those rundown pics are a bit dodgy. Still no colour pic of the Detroit Emeralds and now they've found a sepia photo of Johnathan Richman.
It's nice to see the Rollers have finally ditched the tartan half-mast trousers although drummer Derek and Woody are keeping dream alive with tiny tartan strips on their shirt sleeves and collar. Les looks pretty cool in black jeans and a baseball sweatshirt and regarding the way Eric's dressed, I've seen lots of people dress like that, albeit mainly teenage girls. This is quite a good tune which I completely missed at the time and like the two recent Gary Glitter songs proved that there was life after glam/teeny bop but sadly the fans were moving on. NB: I see the group had they're own personal bouncer (the fat git at the front right of the stage), not that he is needed and never will be again.
BOM. I've also had enough of Angelo and it isn't number one yet. And then we've got bleedin' Figaro to look forward to.
Those two stoney-faced bubble permed clones in the audience look like a cross between 1980s Deidre Barlow and one of The Chanter Sisters. If Victoria Wood was doing a spoof of The Chanter Sisters that's what she'd look like.
God Paul Weller was cool wasn't he. This is easily the best song and performance on the show. My brother bought their first LP and wrote off to join the fan club. They didn't have one but Paul's sister Nikki Weller wrote back with a signed photo, badge and a poster which I still have. The underlined M of their spray painted JAM logo made it look like a B and I used to call them The Jab to wind my brother up.
The lead Alessi brother looks a bit uncomfortable at first singing jazz in such a high voice as though he guessed a lot of people thought it looked a wee bit camp, which it does. This is a song to be heard and not seen.
I notice the grinning Union Jack hat guy is back again. He was a slut for Cilla last week and now he's all over Alessi like rash (dies that mean this was actually recorded last week?).
Someone should have told Barry Biggs that those circus outfits and polyseter jumpsuits do him no favours at all, they're piling the pounds on him. AndI miss his little leopardess/lioness friend.
Lindsay Buckingham seems to have been to the same hair salon as those two permed ladies. Nice beard sir.
The Crunch again and then The Martini Theme in all but name. Danny Williams in a big hat. What's the old saying 'If you can't fight wear a big hat'.
Queen with Freddie still in that nasty judo outfit/boiler suit. Why didn't they film two performances on the same day in different clothes like they did with Lee Garrett last year? This was only 5 places higher than it was when they first showed this clip 6 weeks ago. How quickly the Bohemian Rhapsody effect has worn off. Not sure what that strange noise is at the end, sounds like someone dropping a tray of glasses.
With a good disco song you don't really need to see the artist so Legs and Co should work well with I Feel Love but although it's nicely done it's the wrong kind of dancing and doesn't quite work.
The Fleetwood Mac video along with the Donna Summer No.1 were the two highlights of the show for me, but what a shame that the Mac only got a minute and a half of their video. I wonder if any full copy of that video exists?
@Arthur Nibble - it was me who posted the comment about Alan Longmuir's unusual mid-video departure from the Rollers. And now he's been shoehorned back in albeit as a Simon May clone at the keyboards.
When you think about it most of the Rollers weren't much older than Paul Weller at the time but their chart career was coming to an end when his was just starting.
@Simon Jenkins - Loved your comment about the Smokie guitarist looking like The Wurzels lead singer, I had exactly the same thought. I wonder if they are related? I still don't know if it really is him singing the middle bit on the track or is he miming to an anonymous female's vocals. Can he really sing that high?
Smokie were originally called Smokey by-the-way but Smokey Robinson threatened to sue them so they changed it.
Noax, just to clarify your food points (and I need to get out more), you can still buy Nestle's Dairy Crunch but it's smaller than it was in the past, like so many chocolate bars these days, and Cats UK's hit was a spinoff from a Campari advert, not Martini. Anyone else remember Aztec or Teaxan bars while I'm at it? Rock family tree fact - Cats UK included the actress who became Viv in "Emmerdale".
i've mentioned smokie's name change in a previous post - i remember reading about it in either the daily mirror or some pop mag at the time: it was quoted that they did it "out of respect to smokey robinson" - what they didn't mention was that berry "money! that's what i want!" gordy would have sued them ragged had they not done so!
bamaboogiewoogie's theory about that guy in the rollers audience being their bouncer makes sense - but the guy still looks like a psychopath (but then again all bouncers do)...
i remember the aztec bars from the seventies - they were cadbury's own version of the mars bar, and they filmed the adverts for them in aztec temples and ruins... i seem to recall like other well-known brands of the past they made some sort of limited-edition comeback in more recent times, although sadly i never got around to eating one myself then...
however i can't think offhand of any other chocolate bars from back then that are no longer around (i believe you can still buy curly wurlys and freddos for example), but what i do miss are those cheap bags of crisps made by burtons and another company i can't remember the name of, called "puffs" and "chips" (the barbecue variety were particularly tasty) that you could buy at school - i would take great delight in opening the packet, holding it to my mouth and then shoving as many of them down my throat as i could in one go!
ha! the name of that other crisps-manufacturing firm has now been dragged up from my subconscious - it's walters...
I remember cheese and tomato puffs at school and Quavers which you can still get. I also loved Curly Wurlys. I remember you could send off for a badge which said "Hands Off My Curly Wurly!". I sent off for one and at school my friend borrowed it and pinned it on the front of his trousers which had us in stitches for about ten minutes as you do when you're 13. I also remember Nutty Bars and Pyramint, the latter had a advert with Kenneth Williams doing the voices.
Definitely going off topic (a hazelnut in every bite - boom boom) but, for starters, there used to be a Milk Tray bar, and a Fry's 'five fruits' plain chocolate bar with different flavour fruit fondant in each segment.
That Alessi clip's bugging me - did the lads come in to the studio that particular week? If they'd actually recorded the clip on the same day as that powerful interview, why wait until the song's third TOTP slot before showing it?
ah yes, i remember the milk tray bar, and i think the fry's one as well (are fry's still going? the only thing i really liked of theirs was the turkish delight)... i now also remember boxes of chocolate balls with various fillings made by a firm called paynes (are they still around? can't say i was ever into that much either)...
the alessi boys were wearing different shirts when they were interviewed (of the same design but i think one had red sleeves and one blue or something like that), but that doesn't mean they didn't bring a change of clothes with them - after all, showaddywaddy did!
@Arthur Nibble - re the filming of the Alessi performance as I said above I think it was recorded last week, the same week as Cilla, because that geeky guy in the glasses and the Union jack hat (and the 'shit-eating grin') is dancing (badly) in the crowd again and he was in almost every crowd shot last week, so my guess is it was recorded last week. Unless of course he turns up every week, some audience members do in fact I think Simon should start a post about our fave regular audience members.
The curse of the repeats strikes again... Muppet man Jerry Nelson, voice of Kermit's nephew Robin, has died aged 78. RIP nice man.
Quite a mixed bag I thought this week.And DLT was slightly less irritating I thought.Probably sending Noel Edmunds to the bottom of the league in the process.
Alessi - didn't know they ever actually appeared on the show singing this until now
And good to see a Rhodes before it became synonymous with the kind of R&B ballads they always played for the midnight and 10 to 2 slowdance slots in a thousand 1980s nightclubs.
Fleetwood Mac - why no Christine McVie? you could hear her keyboards but they showed everyone but her.PS I thought the Mick Fleetwood/Samantha Fox awards was great and about the only time the programmes ever been bearable. Mad but brave decision to pick such a random pairing but what a good way puncture the pomposity of the whole idea of rock awards.
Queen - was the person above who said "Queen starting to fade" being sarcastic? because it was from here they sort of started to take over the world.
Danny Williams- believe it or not this was actually quite appreciated as an oldie by certain people on the jazz-funk scene a few years later. if you can divorce it from it's advert status its quite a pleasant piece of jazzy soul of the smooth kind that always went down so well on the scene.And sung by someone who can actually sing. Probably why legendary pre-house dance DJ Chris Hill had it on the label he was connected with (which also as someone said later had Galaxy and most significantly Light Of The World). Oh and extremely embarrassingly also the Boomtown Rats.
The Jam - looking as cool as hell even if the tune's not up to much.
Donna Summer - the future has arrived chartwise (soon to be joined by Jean Michel Jarre and Space) and then (Gary Numan and the odd disco tune aside) promptly disappeared again until 1980!
Funny how TOTP were plugging Queen's "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy" to death, while "Somebody to Love" didn't get even a first glance!
I quite liked that Smokie song BTW...
Could Top of The Pops please give us two consecutive episodes in one evening until we catch up.
We're still in July 1977, and these shows are supposed to be this week 35 years ago....a month behind already.
There was one week this year that TOTP did give us two consecutive episodes in one evening, so we need them again!
I agree, two or even three in one sitting to catch up would have been a great Bank holiday treat.
[Spoiler alert] I'm looking forward to one of the shows in October featuring John Ford(e) doing Star dance. I remember hearing the song on Radio Luxembourg at the time (it was in the European chart) and I assumed it was John Ford from The Strawbs and Hudson Ford but having found a copy of the record at a car boot a few years back I was intrigued to see the names Hughes and Lemon on the B-side label who were the guys behind Judge Dread. I'll finally be able to see whether John Ford(e) is Judge Dread.
Jerry Nelson's obits reminded me he was on another UK hit record 15 years later: Sesame's Treet by Smart E's. It was a sample of his voice as Count Von Count, but I think it still... er, counts.
Bamaboogiewoogie : I loved Nutty bars! They are the vintage sweet I would bring back, every time.
Dory : I'm hoping we'll have a catch-up bonanza over Christmas fortnight!
@malmo58 - My mum was addicted to Nutty Bars. In 1976 I worked in the local market and got a box of them cheap from one of the stallholders and gave them to my mum. She soon got sick of them.
I worked in the market on Saturdays with my brother running a toy stall for my dad's cousin. I was 13. It wasn't the most interesting job in the world but the 30p an hour I got meant that I could go to the local record shop and buy 4 singles each week (they were 60p each at the time). I started doing this in January 1976 and used to make up my own Top 30 chart. Happy days!
every month from may 1977 until march 1978 i would compile my own top 75 chart from what was my burgeoning singles collection - i've still got these lists hanging around, so i can tell you what my "number ones" were:
may & june 77: the miracles "love machine part 2" (i was already well into b-sides)
july 77 - the isley brothers "that lady" (a double a-side reissue with "summer breeze")
aug & sept 77 - t-connection "do what you wanna do" (my first ever 12" single)
oct 77: smokey robinson "theme from big time part 1" (promo with a green and white label as opposed to the then-new usual blue and white one)
nov 77 to mar 78: the rhythm makers "zone"
i can't remember why i stopped doing it now - probably either because it started becoming a chore or i was actually making some effort to study for my "o" levels... i know if i had to put together a top 75 from my collection now, "zone" wouldn't even get in it!
Graham, Judge Dread was Alex Hughes, though he also went under the pseudonym of Jason St. Clair so he could well have been Mr. lemon as well.
Chris Hill was one of the five writers of "Dancin' Easy", along with Tony Eyers, producer of 5000 Volts.
We never got to see her on this re-run, but RIP Pan's People siren Louise Clarke.
While on the subject of the Pink Floyd TOTP clip, what would be the other great holy grails of 60s British music that are missing? I realise only 50 episodes exist from the first ten years or so of TOTP, which is shocking, but are there any lost performances revered as much as that discovered clip?
I've been quiet here lately because I'm currently in the midst of the private hell that is broadband line failure - an engineer is expected tomorrow but there's a plausibility that as I don't have a reliable connection at the moment it might have to be another open thread, so word of warning for that. Quite the intriguing show too.
See Emily Play, due to the lack of Syd footage, is revered but of course, with such a number of shows gone there's a great swathe of classic 60s pop, most obviously all six Beatles visits*, missing from the vaults. The Doors' one appearance (Hello I Love You), Peter Noone covering Oh You Pretty Things with Bowie on piano, Waterloo Sunset... in fact the show after next is the penultimate to be wiped and, no spoilers, includes a really quite fascinating prospect through a band making their only TOTP visit.
(* March 1964 Can't Buy Me Love/You Can't Do That, July 1964 A Hard Day's Night/Long Tall Sally, a few weeks later Things We Said Today, December 1964 I Feel Fine/She's A Woman, April 1965 Ticket To Ride/Yes It Is, June 1966 Paperback Writer/Rain)
Even though I was forewarned by the previous comments, I'm astounded at how lazy the Legs and Co "choreography" was...
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