So we reach the final actually wiped TOTP of them all, unless there's some been misplaced or not left in good condition since then. There's weeks not represented in the TOTP archive in future, whether through strike action (for more on which, wait til 2015) or sporting action - three in 1978, for instance - but from here on the document of pop music is pretty much complete. For now we lose Kid in a pink pinstriped T-shirt introducing first The Emotions' Best Of My Love over the rundown, and subsequently...
The Motors – Dancing The Night Away
Somewhere between rhythm and rock and the kind of Chris Spedding-influenced earnest drivetime fare we're seeing every so often, this would make its, but not their, only appearance. Kind of imagine it'd be a lot of men looking hard.
Space – Magic Fly
Mummy, make the spooky aliens and their funny wavey lines go away.
Rosetta Stone – Sunshine Of Your Love
Yes, that Sunshine Of Your Love. Rosetta Stone were other charges of Tam 'Rollers' Paton and included Ian Mitchell, who'd been a Roller for seven months of 1977. What they're trying to be (Smokie) and what they are (Dead End Kids) are very different things.
Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygene Part IV
Legs & Co... what do we reckon? Too early for robot dancing and bodypopping, but lots of stiff limb movements and head turning? Lots of blue flourescent light, surely. EDIT: Actually we don't need to ask, as thanks to One For The Dads' Andee Bee here's just under a minute of it and, of course, it turns out to be not much at all of the above.
Blue – Bring Back The Love
For all its TOTP exposure and chummy looks to camera Gonna Capture Your Heart only reached number 18 and this didn't chart at all, becoming the last we'd see of them. More playing to the gallery, that's what they needed. Also, not this song.
The Boomtown Rats – Lookin' After Number 1
And...punch! And back! And...punch!
Meri Wilson – Telephone Man
Not to be confused with Mari Wilson, as even her Wiki page says. Video for post-Chanson d'Amour/post-My Ding-A-Ling trimphone jingle novelty hit which we'll see soon enough.
Black Gorilla – Gimme Dat Banana
Ah, thanks to newfangled technol we've got this one, its only appearance:
See, not as Black & White Minstrel Show-still-on-telly dubious as it sounds, if still proving unlikely to be covered any time soon. Described as 'krautrock disco' on Discogs.com, which is ambitious. A couple of them went on to become prolific session men.
The Rods – Do Anything You Wanna Do
As you see at the end of that clip, Kid's a bit smug about his rhythm and rock predictive skills. Repeat.
Elvis Presley – Way Down
Crowd dancing next to Toppotron™ stills, it says here. You'd expect little less. Good love!
This was actually a cover of "Gimme Dat Banana", as it had been a hit for Strobe in South Africa the previous year. It was then covered by Alston Koch & Dark Tan (?!) and their version was a minor hit in Australia in 1979. Personally, I couldn't stand it. Reminded me of the sort of guff you'd get on Animal Kwackers.
ReplyDeleteI see the BBC have pulled the 15/9/77 edition featuring Public Enemy No.1 which is a damn shame as I've assiduously been recording all the episodes since the 1/4/76 re-run. Does that mean all episodes with Mr Savile will now be pulled? Why can't the BBC edit him out and just show the songs instead - it should be easy enough!
ReplyDeleteAt the mo, the next two Jim'll-hosted editions have been pulled from the schedules. Typical, just as we reach the holy grail of the last wiped edition. We'll actually miss two TOTPs in a row here, as NowThenNowThen presented the show immediately after this wiped effort.
ReplyDeleteOne big problem with editing links out is the host's tendency to talk over the start of a song by introducing the act over the instrumental intro - a classic example in Jim'll's case being "Oooh, The Trinidad Oil Company!". Trying to chop him out completely would lead to some songs 'starting' in an unfamiliar and maybe unwholsesome manner.
Has the Rule Of Law been dissolved now?
ReplyDeleteI have put up a brief snippet of Oxygene IV on the official One For The dads You Tube account, the Elvis routine is repeated 29/9/77
ReplyDeleteThanks Andee, post edited to include link.
ReplyDeleteThanks Simon, more exposure for the account and the lovely Legs & Co ladies
ReplyDeleteLuckily we're not missing much in this edition, though I'd quite like to see The Motors doing their not very big hit. They were ugly sods though, as we shall see next year.
ReplyDeleteRosetta Stone I can gladly live without, ditto Blue, and at least we have the 'treat' of the Black Gorilla clip existing. The following rhyming couplet is truly a work of genius :
All the chimpanzees,
High up in the trees,
Are hiding their bananas,
'Cos they feel ill at ease.
Poor chimps, I wonder why they were feeling so perturbed. Were the PG Tips casting agents visiting again?
Can you ride tandem?
ReplyDeleteWonder what the end credit song would have been this week?
That actually looked an intriguing Legs&Co routine. Shame we missed most of it, but big thanks to Andee for the taster.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that Hugh was stage front instead of behind the piano for that Blue song, which wasn't much cop, was it? However, I was fascinated by the timer at the top of the screen. Can anyone technical tell me why it didn't show hundredths of a second and only timed fractions of a second up to 30 segments before defaulting to the next second?
Oh god how much longer do I have to wait to see Telephone Man? It's absolute torture!
ReplyDeletelooks like most of this wiped edition has fortunately made the internet in some form or other, the only real casualties being the motors, but even they are in the BBC vaults with a live rendition of this on OGWT that i saw on BBC4 fairly recently... why wasn't this track a monster hit? along with boston's "more than a feeling", the perfect track to blast out at maximum volume whilst cruising the highway (or in my case the M6), and miles better than their later hits... as someone has pointed out, they were no oil paintings and maybe that affected this song's chart progress? when they put out their second album with their ugly mugs featured prominently on the sleeve, those browsing through the record shop racks were so offended they had to change it to a less-frightening design!
ReplyDeletei checked out the blue "marc" video and noticed that the singer was now on much cooler guitar rather than piano as on their hit - i actually prefer this to "capture your heart" but that's not saying much. with reference to the black gorilla track described on discogs as "krautrock disco", this one is more deserving than most to be catagorised under the much-maligned catch-all style of "pop-rock"...
changing the topic to add something of interest to this month's hot topic, earlier today i was reading an article by daisy goodwin published in the sunday times on 30th september about under-age schoolgirls being taken advantage of by older teachers back in the 70's, to pretty much indifference if not actual acceptance - although there was absolutely no reference to any slebs doing such things, this was published mere days if not actually hours before the storm broke on PEN1 - one has to wonder: was it sheer coincidence, or did she know something others did (yet) not?
here's the link anyway (sadly you have "subscribe" to read the whole article):
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/newsreview/columnists/article1136338.ece
The playout track on that edition was "Black Is Black" by La Belle Epoque. Also, I've only just realised that the running order on Popscene is wrong. It should read: Emotions, Motors, Space, Rats, Meri, Gorilla, Rods, Blue, JMJ, Rosetta, Elvis, Epoque.
ReplyDeleteWhen's Bowie on?
ReplyDeleteWe didn't lose most of JMJ, just half of it, the track was already cut to 2 minutes on original tx, as was the Motors. I recorded about half of this show on audio cassette, including these two tracks, but not the JMJ interview unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Neil and John as well as Andee, for completing more of the mosaic for this edition than most of us could have expected.
ReplyDeleteSo, JMJ was in the studio being interviewed, a rarity for an artist to be interviewed in the same ediiton as their single's played, but he didn't fancy having a go on the old joanna in the studio? I bet if that had been Rick Wakeman he'd have had a crack. Maybe JMJ could have sub-contracted The Rah Band (or at least Mister Binbag Balaclava) to give their special take on the tune.
Only another year to wait for The Motors' subtle re-write of the Grandstand theme!
Everyone in the world knows 'Forget About You' was really the Grandstand theme with lyrics.
DeleteThe Man: next month.
ReplyDeleteA show with a French flavour.
ReplyDeleteThey chose a good upbeat song for the rundown this week, I bought The Best Of My Love when it came out. The Emotions did a superb (now rarely-played) Christmas song called Black Christmas.
I remember someone calling The Motors 'the ugliest band in pop history' but boy could they write a great power pop tune. Love and Loneliness was my fave.
I had no idea what the name Rosetta Stone meant when I was 15 and thought it was the name of a girl singer until the boy band came on.
Jean-Michel Jarre. I bought the single and then the album and played it a lot. I never realsied at the time that Oxygène is French for Oxygen, I always assumed it was some clever play on words about life.
Black Gorilla. There's certainly enough of them on stage, more than Showaddywaddy. It looks like two bands merged as one. I recognise the guy playing the bongos from somewhere. The guy playing the tambourine is rivalling Errol Brown in the tight strides department, we can tell which religion he is.
Black Is Black by La Belle Epoque, another record like Oxygene that was a big hit in Europe months before it was in the UK - I used to listen to the French charts on Luxembourg on Sundays (anyone know where those charts are listed?) so I knew what was on the way - we've got The Smurfs and Jean Paul Young to come soon they were already huge in Europe by this point.
Bon smour.
Arthur, to answer your question re: the timer on the Blue clip, I believe the timestamps on these kind of copies are counting frames rather than hundreds of seconds. I think the last digit actually goes from 0 to 24 (not 30) to reflect twenty-five frames a second for a PAL video such as this. You couldn't really have hundredths of a second displayed because there wouldn't be enough frames in a second to show each individual value. In a broacasting / editing context a frame counter just makes much more sense.
ReplyDelete(My first comment, although I've been folowing this blog for a while, and find it a pretty essential accompaniment for each episode now. Keep up the good work, people!)
Perfect sense, drykid. Thanks for the answer,and welcome along.
ReplyDeletethanks for the compliment drykid! your comment makes me wonder: what kind of "hit rate" is there for this blog/comments site? can blog head honcho simon provide any statistics?
ReplyDeletei would guess there are about 20 of us now making regular contributions of some sort, but just how many more out there are merely viewers rather than activists?
Law graduate: yes, indeed. Looks like nowthen nowthen is guilty until proven effing guilty.
ReplyDeleteSounds like he was a right twat and i recall doing an impression of him in a pub with my cricket teammates back in 75/76 only for my non swearing fatherly captain to go all poker face and telling me to stop it as the saintly jim was a total c@@t and he had the misfortune to come across him regularly in leeds and manchester. He turned to the older ones and warned them not to let their daughters near him.
So hearsay goes way back. But; i saw that exposure pgm on you tube replete with testomonies from two anonymous ladies with very similar verbal constructions who also admitted that they went back to studios many many times (!!!), a producer who has done time for credit card fraud, a woman who had been to borstal and one filmed woman called Fiona whose story now looks dubious.
And then i saw tony blackburn dissing him and to describe him as not a very nice man. Interesting to see all this xmas totps they did together and this coming from a man who boasted sleeping with over 500 women.
Deeply unpleasant obviously (and illegal in the uk) but for me the one that does matter is if he really was absuing those vulnerable patients.
If he gets blasted for underage sex fair enough but then surely bowie wyman and page should be brought to book as well assuming all those internet articles and books about them are correct: why are they above this?
Just as despicable of course are the politicians and dailymail using this to again attack the bbc
Re hits: it's hard to tell how many regular readers there are due to random Google hits and suchlike, but I can tell you the blog as a whole has averaged 475 impressions a day over the last month.
ReplyDeleteI check in every couple of days to read comments, When I first started reading here I just read Simons blog, now I come back for the comments (and the odd bit of joining in)
ReplyDelete