Well, it looks like we might have made it. Yes, it looks like we made it to the end. This retrospective year of Glamourpuss and Harpo. Of the sisters Chanter and Surprise. Of Dr Kiss Kiss and Shake It Down. Of Ben Goldacre's Noosha Fox revelation and Alexis Petridis' Guardian article. Of whether young people who've somehow stumbled across this would think Liverpool Express were one of the defining bands of the age. Of the rise and fall of Ruby Flipper, literally in the case of TVC15. Of trying to understand Noel's links, DLT's concepts and Diddy's parting. And, of course, that late run to infamy by John Christie. And now we only have a two part look back at 1976 to go.
Question for commenters to pad out your comments and additions to this show - what's your choice of outstanding moments of Top Of The Pops 1976? As some sort of memory jog, here's a Spotify playlist of a lot of what was featured.
DLT and Noel, a partnership that would produce something rather less suited to family viewing sixteen years later, are your hosts, and someone must have booked the studio as they're in front of a chromakeyed wall behind a full set table at the near side of which is an enormous turkey. There's two on its far side, you may say.
Slik – Forever And Ever
Getting in early, DLT's gag for this link is to pretend to have drifted off, unable to be roused. It doesn't show great commitment to what's ahead of us all when you're acting like that in the first link. This Bay City Rollers song at 33 1/3 - written by the same people who were responsible for the Rollers' original hits and had originally been recorded by the substantially less portentous Kenny - was a number one in February but we've seen Midge and co's baseball jacketed US culture fetishising outfits since. What we haven't seen before, because with hits comes dignity, is the keyboard player's matey grin and nod to camera mid-chorus. On the wall behind our hosts there's shots throughout of aftermath and crowd, so we get to see Slik wander nonchalantly off stage...
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
...as our duo contrive some pundom based on Noel's "flower arranging art". You know this video by now, as even though it's not been on the show since 1st September it's ingrained on every single one of your neurons.
ABBA – Dancing Queen
A shaking with excitement Dave Lee Travis with a knife in his hand. Must we fling this filth at our pop kids and their families? Or indeed this filth, as Legs & Co's two performances are both costumed around bra, pants and accessories. In this case that means big white furry hats the shape, colour and consistency of marshmallows, possibly so they don't catch their deaths of cold, and some sort of arrangement around long necklace-like strands connected to the hats plus wristbands and strips tied to their pants of similarly consistency. It's like mink bondage. A director has the idea of shooting the intro chorus from below, which coupled with pointing and spinning suggests a very wrong Soviet Pennies From Heaven adaptation. Not unreasonably, there's a lot of women standing off to one side, arms firmly folded. A group of gentlemen at the back sway to the beat. One chap caught close up seems transfixed, not moving a muscle. Amid all this, with what must for once have been more than three days' notice Flick doesn't really seem to have got a handle on it.
JJ Barrie – No Charge
Noel makes a Light Brigade joke. If it's meant to provide levity linking into one of his studio appearances, it doesn't work. This is still, after all, No Charge.
Laurel & Hardy With The Avalon Boys feat. Chill Wills – The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine
Yeah, interesting, this. Not just because of its fact - partly Peel's fault, apparently - but also it was a number two at Christmas 1975 and yet is still counted, crossing over as it does into the first couple of weeks, as a 1976 hit. And they're right there in the stu... no, wait, it's the clip from Way Out West. Several more courses, a smaller turkey and a bottle of wine now bedeck the presentational table. Noel tells DLT to "use your loaf". So he does, with a loaf of bread cut in half and enacted by Travis as a talking mouth. It makes Noel and the offscreen crew corpse. That must have been a long shoot.
Tina Charles – I Love To Love (But My Baby Loves To Dance)
The big turkey is back. Behind it Noel elects not to make a joke having been put off by DLT combing down his shirt, claiming he's "trying to clear up my dandruff". It's plausible. Unlike what they've done to Charles, as despite the huge studio floor completely empty apart from three crew and a camera taking reverse angle long shots she's ended up being filmed in one shot on a fairly narrow gantry, her movements even more restricted by some scaffolding and a couple of boxes. She hasn't helped herself sartorially with a test card of a jumper design and big scarf. Was there a draft up there? She should have said something. No explanation of her predicament is forthcoming. Tight schedule? For the Christmas Pops?
The Wurzels – Combine Harvester
You can't imagine the Wurzels had a lot on as they've come back for a studio encore sitting with the audience in the round on a small tractor, as is their wont, without so much as a tuba in sight. Pink shirts, brown waistcoats and brown cords are the dress code this time along with the signature neckerchiefs. Despite the passage of time since this was an unknown song "she made oi laugh" gets an actual audience laugh. Despite some stout singing along things don't really get going until fake snow and balloons get dropped and much batting about of the latter commences, leading to a widespread failure to be really listening any more. One balloon manages to knock Pete Budd's live mike partly round, though just by shifting his posture he's able to continue. A man standing to the side of Budd is enjoying it rather more than a man of his more than mean audience average age should be, waving his arms about all over the place. Has to have been a plant.
Cliff Richard – Devil Woman
Pretty sure this hasn't been on before, as there's an audience in shot, some of them are still theateningly holding balloons (imagine that Cliff/Wurzels green room conversation), no backing band and Cliff is wearing trousers of an acceptable size. A fire is superimposed over him at various points, which is certainly a quick and cheap way of denoting the concept of devilment. Cliff's still largely playing to camera rather than the people, though you may argue his baring yards of hairy chest isn't a way to play to anyone. Congratulations to the audience member who turned up in a red wide brimmed hat, much as it must be blocking plenty of people's views.
ABBA – Mamma Mia
DLT claims it's a Liverpool song - "when the kids came home from school hungry they knocked on the door and said 'mam, I'm ere!'" DLT is from Derbyshire. Apart from Bjorn finding a gap between the girls' heads so he too can sing his inaudible backing vocals direct to camera it's the three session men, and they look the part, we really need to be watching given all ABBA routines are part of the national consciousness these days, standing out only by not being allowed to wear the same colour-coded electric blue outfits as the main four. The drummer looks bored and/or distracted beyond comprehension, not a good look if you're pushed to the front of the stage. This again seems to be a new in-studio version, raising the possibility they may have been watching their own song being loosely interpreted earlier on.
Hank Mizell – Jungle Rock
The bread face has been put at the front of the table with a banana in its mouth, and already it's more likeable than Noel. Legs & Co are back, and we get to compare and contrast now as on the very first show of the run Pan's People in their dying embers worked this to a hunting motif with cameos by whatever animal costumes they could find in the back of an old storage cupboard. With time and expense the whole jungle hunting side is explored further with the ladies doing a wardance in parrot feathered head-dresses and about as small Indian reservation fancy dress bras and pants as could be got away with in pre-Hot Gossip days. As if from a 1940s cartoon they're taking the cannibalistic option on jungle mores, doing a war dance round a large cooking pot, in which stands a bemused Tony Blackburn, who has clearly been given no clues on what to do so just has to stand there observing the madness for two and a half minutes. Before long a whole new menagerie joins in, and clearly the advance notice has paid off with some relatively more elaborate costumes with a hint of Victorian theatre about them, although some of the heads are more Cubist. With a tiny amount of studio space delinated by fake trees, six dancers basically circling the pot with progressively less energy plus extras in varying bear and crocodile outfits variously Susie Q-ing here and ring-dang-doo-ing there doesn't leave a lot of physical room for self-expression and it becomes lots of people trying not to overtly bump into each other, especially when the camel arrives. Still, the girls are visibly having fun, attempting to find partners for the close. An alligator has a balloon attached to its tail. Lulu exchanges pleasantries with a tiger (and if anyone can lipread her - it's right near the end - do tell) Tony Blackburn stands in his pot, unloved, forgotten and alone, watching the young people and not so young crew members have fun without him. Your heart bleeds. No it doesn't.
Pussycat – Mississippi
DLT produces a knockoff Emu in the wrong colours. "I had problems with a man called Hull" Noel comments in a textbook injoke as it attacks. (If anyone does know...) This is a repeat of the studio performance with the girls in black and mysterious wavy lighting effects overlaid. You've probably heard this enough recently.
Demis Roussos – Forever And Ever
"Here's something really big in Greece - BBC potatoes!" Noel and DLT work between them before both collapsing into laughter at their own joke. Not even technically a new joke either - when this was number one Noel introduced it as "the really big thing in Greece at the moment - no, not a BBC hamburger". Demis didn't come over for that single but he's over for the Christmas crowd in an alarming outfit, a red all in one with plunging neckline and an open full length coat. Like Cliff, despite being surrounded by transfixed kids he sings entirely to whichever camera is operational. Even when the Ladybirds take over he just looks straight down the lens at us in a statesmanlike stance for fully twenty seconds or more. He then gradually raises an arm in the air and watches the camera as it circles him for another twenty seconds.
Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody
While DLT continues to attack Noel's hair by proxy, a girl in the audience shot behind them is making a note of something. Quick supermarket trip on the way home, maybe, but some things can wait for the bus journey. This is the video. All of it. This has a video, don't know if you're aware of that at all. Again, this is a 1975 hit that carried on over into the new year, making one wonder if it should technically count at all for 1976. Our hosts see us out with DLT having a health and safety existential crisis as he realises the big turkey of continuity turmoil is real before, bizarrely, Noel announces "we leave you with Legs & Company (always the full version of the name with Noel) and a bit of Wings". Instead, the show ends. How odd. There is a Legs & Co routine to a Wings song on the Boxing Day show, but that's one hell of a glaring editing cock-up. Did someone forget how long Bohemian Rhapsody is? Or just maybe was Noel making a joke about the turkey? Even for him that would be cryptic and unnecessary.
REMINDER: TOTP2 Christmas 2011 is Wednesday 7.30pm on BBC2, though you'll have to be wry about that yourselves; the Boxing Day 1976 special is Thursday at 8pm.
Showing posts with label elton john and kiki dee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elton john and kiki dee. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 December 2011
Thursday, 15 September 2011
TOTP 26/8/76 (tx 15/9/11): prepared loads of material about Can, then BBC4 went and edited it out of the prime time version
And that's despite featuring it in the introductory documentary. I SIGNED THAT PETITION AND THIS IS WHAT THEY DO? What did they consider appropriate?
Noel Edmonds going meta, for starters. Rattling his watch, bemoaning how he might miss Top Of The Pops if we don't get on with it, this is but the start of one of those weeks where his idea of presentation runs to nobody else's wise idea.
Rude reggae man of yore Judge Dread is at 30 with Y Viva Suspenders. We will not be seeing this at any point.
Manfred Mann's Earth Band – Blinded By The Light
No, he doesn't say "revved up like a douche" (it's "duece", as in the common name for the 1932 Ford coupe the Beach Boys popularised. Well, it's a Springsteen song, he'd be nothing without an ostentatious blue collar car to rev) A future radio friendly mini-classic to begin with, and a curious array of men to perform it. Firstly we see Manfred himself, looking about as Dutch as a man can in a half undone sailor top, but that's as nothing compared to singer Chris Thompson. Not only is he sporting long hair in curls and a purple hat with his glasses, but he's accessorised his T-shirt with a multicoloured Colgate stripe across with rainbow coloured braces. It's as if Rod, Jane and Freddy had lost a member to commercial prog. With the drummer stranded right across the far side of the stage from Mann's keyboard set-up about as far as he can go there's never a comfortable all-in camera shot of the whole band, let alone their massive banner which covers the mirror backdrop. Perhaps it was rustled up in a hurry after some of them fell off. The really long vocal fade halfway through seems to briefly confuse the director, pulling back about as far as he can. Noel calls it "accessibly sensible". Rock and roll!
The Bee Gees – You Should Be Dancing
Ruby Flipper, of course, the first of many appearances tonight. It seems someone is trying to make a go of them at the death, especially the whole controversial mixed gender thing, as here we have three of the girls on podiums behind, up front on his own, an attempt by Floyd to assert his own credentials. Obviously having women gyrating bits in turn, Patti especially judging by the regularity of the close-ups of her hot pants, behind him means he's going to be playing second fiddle no matter where he stands, which might explain why his head bobbing, limb flailing turn is so manic, at least three times the speed of the females. Surely nobody choreographed this as much as just wound him up, possibly literally with reference to his tightly wound hair, and let him go. In a couple of weeks he'll be back... no, that would spoil things. The audience repay his energy by sitting down swaying while clapping to a much slower rhythm.
Robin Sarstedt – Let’s Fall In Love
The difficult second single, eh? For this sap beyond reproach Sarstedt has elected to wear the highest waisted trousers known to man and a lothario's slightly opened white shirt. However, he's still Robin Sarstedt, and as such it always seems he's making up in hair volume what he lacks in appeal. The Ladybirds taking off in a different key isn't helping either.
Acker Bilk – Aria
"What a beautiful song, what lovely words" Noel enthuses. Actually, he said it about a song that was edited out, but we doubt he'd have truly meant it in either case as it's just a device for him to go "if you really like lyrics... if you like to see someone singing words and really making them meaningful" and link into an instrumental. Yes, Mr Acker Bilk in the teeth of 1976's family pop roundelay is a very odd thing, especially as it's at funereal pace until joined by the sort of studio strings and drumbeat buskers these days have on a tape playing behind them. Noel is at pains to point out that Acker is "the one with the bowler hat, the one with the white dress was Sydney from Ruby Flipper". Patti, actually, Noel. Unless that was a joke, and if it was that was obscure even by your standards tonight.
The Chi-Lites – You Don’t Have To Go
Making an impromptu video out of 1930s cartoons used to be done quite a bit on the BBC and the Chi-Lites aren't exempt, their storming groove given this one, a Tex Avery no less, in a really ropey print. "Some delightful creatures on that film" Noel marvels.
James & Bobby Purify – Morning Glory
So engrossed is Noel in his concept intro about autumn fashion ("note the see-through jodphurs" he specifies, even though nobody is wearing them) that he forgets to name the song or artist. Finally Ruby Flipper are back to full strength, but Cherry's clearly in the doghouse after her leave of absence as she's pushed out to the side for most of the performance and covered in scarves and sashes even though her costume is as flimsy as those of her female colleagues. One of them manages to land over her face in closeup. Being Cherry, of course there's A Look To Camera, a boggle-eyed one at that. Although clearly enthusiastic to be back under the Colby yoke for a bit she also seems to be a little out of step with the choreographed moments for a lot of the time, and this is Top Of The Pops so they were hardly difficult. The men get shirts and plus-fours of a slightly glittery hue and Philip gets to work his Camp Walking Man schtick with a little bit of Bruce Forsyth Thinker thrown in. He keeps cutting into shot as if he knows the future of mixed sex TOTP dancing is under threat and after Floyd's spectacular affair earlier has to keep his face in the frame.
Cliff Richard – I Can’t Ask For Anything More Than You
Cliff Richard doing falsetto. Once heard, never to be forgotten. He seems to be on a stage of a new design being watched by nobody, which suggests nobody else wanted a part of it either. There's an odd moment towards the end when someone claps five times in quick succession and then stops, and not at a point where it could obviously have been finishing. Flick coaching her charges in the background in the art of simultaneous movement?
Gallagher & Lyle – Breakaway
I'm not going to attempt to transcribe Noel's entire intro here, in which he claims the duo are "more unpleasant than you could ever imagine human being being", because not only does it come from nowhere and have no punchline but he has to go on around the same subject for ages, growing progressively more tiresome than he already was. The restrained adult drivetime duo are the only ones lit at first, apart from a bassist caught in the reflected light, making it look as if they've turned up with a drumkit but no drummer. The secondary keyboard player has a triple decker of boards for no audible reason. Lots of slow pans from a high rostrum camera angle fill things out. Noel pretends to receive a wad of cash a little late in the sentence, and frankly the wrong side of the song, to 'change his mind'. Someone giggles.
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
The last time we'll get this (bar Christmas), thank goodness. It's at this point that Noel finds out what command he has over his audience. With Ruby Flipper warming up in front of him, he suggests they can't show the video again only to get shouted down before he's completed his sentence. That's how popular all that fake studio business was back then. Noel extricates himself from that cul-de-sac, just about, with "we want to dance!" Still in their Morning Glory gear Ruby Flipper oblige, paired off into two girls for every man before forming a big kicking chorus line, throughout which Floyd and Philip mime all the lyrics, the latter even when not clearly on camera. The girls meanwhile keep up their fixed rictus grins, except Cherry who appears to be on the verge of collapsing in helpless giggles. The manly men in the crowd have no reaction to the girls in their bras and tight pants right in front of them. In the background Noel is at first awkwardly shape shifting with the best of those around him and later when clearer in shot, though he can't surely have known, attempts to put two seperate girls off their jigging stroke through chat for which Noel still seems to be proffering his dead mike, and he has an arm around the second victim. What business could he be plotting? Whatever it's not immediately obvious as Noel throws from performance to credits by describing a room packed tight with people giving it the full kick-to-the-left-kick-to-the-right as "the retreat from Moscow set to music". The battle of Stalingrad, more like.
EDIT NEWS: Well, Can, as I just said. Editor permitting it should be on again in three shows' time, but you won't then get to see Noel calling them "an absolute wow" or specifying how they've come "a very, very long way indeed" as if they've never had Americans in the studio. Also a Stylistics video in which nobody is sitting down, and which looks like this. Oh, Noel. Noel, Noel, Noel.
Noel Edmonds going meta, for starters. Rattling his watch, bemoaning how he might miss Top Of The Pops if we don't get on with it, this is but the start of one of those weeks where his idea of presentation runs to nobody else's wise idea.
Rude reggae man of yore Judge Dread is at 30 with Y Viva Suspenders. We will not be seeing this at any point.
Manfred Mann's Earth Band – Blinded By The Light
No, he doesn't say "revved up like a douche" (it's "duece", as in the common name for the 1932 Ford coupe the Beach Boys popularised. Well, it's a Springsteen song, he'd be nothing without an ostentatious blue collar car to rev) A future radio friendly mini-classic to begin with, and a curious array of men to perform it. Firstly we see Manfred himself, looking about as Dutch as a man can in a half undone sailor top, but that's as nothing compared to singer Chris Thompson. Not only is he sporting long hair in curls and a purple hat with his glasses, but he's accessorised his T-shirt with a multicoloured Colgate stripe across with rainbow coloured braces. It's as if Rod, Jane and Freddy had lost a member to commercial prog. With the drummer stranded right across the far side of the stage from Mann's keyboard set-up about as far as he can go there's never a comfortable all-in camera shot of the whole band, let alone their massive banner which covers the mirror backdrop. Perhaps it was rustled up in a hurry after some of them fell off. The really long vocal fade halfway through seems to briefly confuse the director, pulling back about as far as he can. Noel calls it "accessibly sensible". Rock and roll!
The Bee Gees – You Should Be Dancing
Ruby Flipper, of course, the first of many appearances tonight. It seems someone is trying to make a go of them at the death, especially the whole controversial mixed gender thing, as here we have three of the girls on podiums behind, up front on his own, an attempt by Floyd to assert his own credentials. Obviously having women gyrating bits in turn, Patti especially judging by the regularity of the close-ups of her hot pants, behind him means he's going to be playing second fiddle no matter where he stands, which might explain why his head bobbing, limb flailing turn is so manic, at least three times the speed of the females. Surely nobody choreographed this as much as just wound him up, possibly literally with reference to his tightly wound hair, and let him go. In a couple of weeks he'll be back... no, that would spoil things. The audience repay his energy by sitting down swaying while clapping to a much slower rhythm.
Robin Sarstedt – Let’s Fall In Love
The difficult second single, eh? For this sap beyond reproach Sarstedt has elected to wear the highest waisted trousers known to man and a lothario's slightly opened white shirt. However, he's still Robin Sarstedt, and as such it always seems he's making up in hair volume what he lacks in appeal. The Ladybirds taking off in a different key isn't helping either.
Acker Bilk – Aria
"What a beautiful song, what lovely words" Noel enthuses. Actually, he said it about a song that was edited out, but we doubt he'd have truly meant it in either case as it's just a device for him to go "if you really like lyrics... if you like to see someone singing words and really making them meaningful" and link into an instrumental. Yes, Mr Acker Bilk in the teeth of 1976's family pop roundelay is a very odd thing, especially as it's at funereal pace until joined by the sort of studio strings and drumbeat buskers these days have on a tape playing behind them. Noel is at pains to point out that Acker is "the one with the bowler hat, the one with the white dress was Sydney from Ruby Flipper". Patti, actually, Noel. Unless that was a joke, and if it was that was obscure even by your standards tonight.
The Chi-Lites – You Don’t Have To Go
Making an impromptu video out of 1930s cartoons used to be done quite a bit on the BBC and the Chi-Lites aren't exempt, their storming groove given this one, a Tex Avery no less, in a really ropey print. "Some delightful creatures on that film" Noel marvels.
James & Bobby Purify – Morning Glory
So engrossed is Noel in his concept intro about autumn fashion ("note the see-through jodphurs" he specifies, even though nobody is wearing them) that he forgets to name the song or artist. Finally Ruby Flipper are back to full strength, but Cherry's clearly in the doghouse after her leave of absence as she's pushed out to the side for most of the performance and covered in scarves and sashes even though her costume is as flimsy as those of her female colleagues. One of them manages to land over her face in closeup. Being Cherry, of course there's A Look To Camera, a boggle-eyed one at that. Although clearly enthusiastic to be back under the Colby yoke for a bit she also seems to be a little out of step with the choreographed moments for a lot of the time, and this is Top Of The Pops so they were hardly difficult. The men get shirts and plus-fours of a slightly glittery hue and Philip gets to work his Camp Walking Man schtick with a little bit of Bruce Forsyth Thinker thrown in. He keeps cutting into shot as if he knows the future of mixed sex TOTP dancing is under threat and after Floyd's spectacular affair earlier has to keep his face in the frame.
Cliff Richard – I Can’t Ask For Anything More Than You
Cliff Richard doing falsetto. Once heard, never to be forgotten. He seems to be on a stage of a new design being watched by nobody, which suggests nobody else wanted a part of it either. There's an odd moment towards the end when someone claps five times in quick succession and then stops, and not at a point where it could obviously have been finishing. Flick coaching her charges in the background in the art of simultaneous movement?
Gallagher & Lyle – Breakaway
I'm not going to attempt to transcribe Noel's entire intro here, in which he claims the duo are "more unpleasant than you could ever imagine human being being", because not only does it come from nowhere and have no punchline but he has to go on around the same subject for ages, growing progressively more tiresome than he already was. The restrained adult drivetime duo are the only ones lit at first, apart from a bassist caught in the reflected light, making it look as if they've turned up with a drumkit but no drummer. The secondary keyboard player has a triple decker of boards for no audible reason. Lots of slow pans from a high rostrum camera angle fill things out. Noel pretends to receive a wad of cash a little late in the sentence, and frankly the wrong side of the song, to 'change his mind'. Someone giggles.
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
The last time we'll get this (bar Christmas), thank goodness. It's at this point that Noel finds out what command he has over his audience. With Ruby Flipper warming up in front of him, he suggests they can't show the video again only to get shouted down before he's completed his sentence. That's how popular all that fake studio business was back then. Noel extricates himself from that cul-de-sac, just about, with "we want to dance!" Still in their Morning Glory gear Ruby Flipper oblige, paired off into two girls for every man before forming a big kicking chorus line, throughout which Floyd and Philip mime all the lyrics, the latter even when not clearly on camera. The girls meanwhile keep up their fixed rictus grins, except Cherry who appears to be on the verge of collapsing in helpless giggles. The manly men in the crowd have no reaction to the girls in their bras and tight pants right in front of them. In the background Noel is at first awkwardly shape shifting with the best of those around him and later when clearer in shot, though he can't surely have known, attempts to put two seperate girls off their jigging stroke through chat for which Noel still seems to be proffering his dead mike, and he has an arm around the second victim. What business could he be plotting? Whatever it's not immediately obvious as Noel throws from performance to credits by describing a room packed tight with people giving it the full kick-to-the-left-kick-to-the-right as "the retreat from Moscow set to music". The battle of Stalingrad, more like.
EDIT NEWS: Well, Can, as I just said. Editor permitting it should be on again in three shows' time, but you won't then get to see Noel calling them "an absolute wow" or specifying how they've come "a very, very long way indeed" as if they've never had Americans in the studio. Also a Stylistics video in which nobody is sitting down, and which looks like this. Oh, Noel. Noel, Noel, Noel.
Thursday, 1 September 2011
TOTP 19/8/76 (tx 1/9/11): the doors of perception
Just to say the usual cut and thrust of the active comments box will have to do without me for a week or so (that's why this is up so early, almost all of it had to be written in advance off YouTube uploads so I could get it up tonight), but for next week's repeat-blank week I've dragged in a regular commenter of televisual archival note to electronically reproduce some excellent written archive material.
It's another Dave Lee Travis conceptual opening, I'm afraid. Using some doors, the purpose of which you'll see later, he opens a door outwards on one half of the screen and says hello to himself coming inwards through the same door on the other half. At least it shows mirror image effects are quickly progressing.
Hot Chocolate – Heaven Is On The Back Seat Of My Cadillac
It's a Brit-funk odyssey with which to begin, and one that at the off uses the changing tones effect we last saw on the 5000 Volts backline on their fabled first appearance. Errol has bought a portable mic stand like Freddie Mercury's and has decided on his own form of outre garments, sporting loads of necklaces and a Olympic medal size-besting medallion as well as a sparkly bolero jacket and silver trousers with the sort of tremendously high waist that we seem to be learning was incredibly fashionable back then. They're not as tight as some have managed, but they're getting there. Well out in front of his bandmates it's already clear that he's being groomed as the face of some interchangeable men. He and most of his band's crazy feet just can't keep still to the rhythm either. Some late fish eye lens work demonstrates... that... the BBC had a fish eye lens and they wanted to use it, but we already knew this from a year of closing credit abuse. Given the vigorous thrusting he's carrying off with it we must just cut away before Errol can consider actively grinding the mike stand. Awkwardly, DLT does his next link from between audience front and stage with a crane shot swooping in from the back of the room, which means we get to see his own unsure bop. He lands his cue perfectly from range, though.
David Dundas – Jeans On
"Hit sound three", a new iteration of the more common "number three sound" line, with "a few young people you may well recognise". Same as we saw last week.
5000 Volts – Dr Kiss Kiss
"I'm very sad to say this record stayed at number eight this week - it's got to go higher next week, it's fantastic!" DLT chides, before delivering the band name in an approximation of Barry White's tone. Amazingly/desperately they actually came into the studio on four seperate occasions even though their box of stagecraft tricks was pretty much up after two. Linda, the Lynn Faulds-Wood of lover's disco, has trousers on. Guitarist Martin Jay, of errant talkbox fame, is sporting an open mustard coloured waistcoat and nothing underneath. It was the times. For the record, as this is where 5000 Volts and TOTP part company after a storied run: Jay later helped out Tight Fit and is now in a corporate entertainment band, his CV listed therein claiming work with Take That, Jason Donovan, Sonia, Michael Ball, David Essex, Cockney Rebel, Buggles, Twiggy, Mike Batt, P J Proby and Bombalurina (Timmy Mallett, then). Sadly Kelly died in 1998.
ABBA – Dancing Queen
A new entry at 26. The video, which surely everyone knows. It's too obvious! There's nothing to be gleaned or learnt from it! Well, except for DLT's outro line, "I'll dedicate that one specially to David Hamilton, he loves that record". Did he? Or is that a 'Queen'-related diss? If so it's not lasted the ages.
Bryan Ferry – The Price Of Love
And still Bryan can't be bothered to come into the studio. He's lost his own pimp tache but not Jerry Hall's attention as she gets to wave a cushion around as other women generally look coquettishly to camera in slow motion.
Wings – Let 'Em In
Here's perhaps the most unrepossessing thing DLT has ever said, and there's plenty of competition.
Ringing the bell apparently caused temporary but virulent seasickness in the mid-70s. Those of you with 42" plasma screen sets, let us all know how that bit came across. There's really too much stuff to discuss in so scattershot an interpretation, the fourth in just this run of Macca-related songs. Still no Cherry (I think we can do away with TOCG if she's not going to be omnipresent and nobody on the show mentions a thing about her exits and forthcoming re-entrance), so everyone's trying to take her crown as expressive ruler. Having made a fine effort last week Lulu seems to be less than convincing (what is she doing at 2:31? Dietrich as a defrocked nun?) and despite Patti's best come-on efforts it seems to be the men making the headway, specifically Philip at 1:18 - a future as a Duncan Norvelle stunt double eluded that lad - and then the sequence starting at 2:33 with implied Dr Hook-style homoeroticism then, after some vigorous arse-waggling, Floyd... well, you tell me, but it might be connected to his 3:05 hustling. Wonder whose insistence the bit just after that came from. A routine for this must have been decided well in advance as I can't imagine those doors were just lying around in a BBC stock cupboard in those designs but there's not that much actual dancing in it. There's some leaning and forearm work, and then about halfway through some fancy walking after which Floyd tries to style it out while heading backwards. Opening and closing doors does not qualify as dancer choreography. DLT says something about a cat flap, perhaps as distressed as the rest of us.
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – Here Comes The Sun
After that we needed familiarity, and the video shot on the cloudiest day possible gives us that. DLT makes some gag about needing a security guard around Harley's props, suggesting erroneously that this was somehow made at the BBC's expense when we've just seen what extra levels the LE department can reach given the right musical impetus. "Here comes the rain should be the title of the next one!" DLT ungallantly suggests.
Jesse Green – Nice And Slow
Firstly, flagrancy from the drummer has to be pointed up. He's playing above his hi-hat! It's not at all moving. Green doesn't come across as the most charismatic performer, and when TOTP has played the instrumental version of your song over the end credits last time out maybe you need to be forceful, which may have been why he has a flautist with a droopy moustache standing right next to him. Unusual instrumentation and of its time facial hair is always a winner. The only other detail that can add light and shade to a fairly rote disco makeweight is that Green, who you may also note is the only person making his debut on the repeat run tonight, and 5000 Volts share a Best Of for no connective reason I can work out.
Twiggy – Here I Go Again
DLT is leaning on some bongos as "my knees are going to go weak", apparently because Twiggy has grown her hair. As he then goes on to highlight her "gorgeous voice" he might just be being kind above and beyond. She's changed into a purple dress and red boots and her vocal's been turned up a bit but very little is otherwise different, right down to her placing on the set and the picture montages against lights and second angle shots.
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don't Go Breaking My Heart
Look, I haven't got much time this week to mess about with this again. Even DLT sounds bored, complaining "do I really need to tell you?" Afterwards is a curiosity, though, as while wearing a glittery hat with elastic under the chin he tells us "there will be a new number one next week". Eh? Without spoilering he couldn't have known whether there would be. Maybe he meant 'may be'. Or maybe he had a touch of the Ortis Deleys. Anyway, the Stylistics' 16 Bars sees us out. Next time out on the 15th there's only one song you'll have seen before on here, and not before time.
EDIT NEWS: Edits within edits, for the most part, as for some reason BBC4 decide to squeeze as much of the whole show on as possible, maybe out of repeat-fuelled boredom. That's surely the only reason they'd keep Steve Harley in again. Oddly, though, Dancing Queen losing half a verse seems to be in the original broadcast, though it's not as if nobody's ever heard it and doesn't know that it comes out of the introductory chorus with "anybody could be that guy". Johnny Wakelin still misses out, though, which is a shame if only for the intro where DLT has two girls on each arm and nearly drags one backwards off the stage as he tells us kids are resultantly rushing out to buy tom-toms. Are they? Are they really?
It's another Dave Lee Travis conceptual opening, I'm afraid. Using some doors, the purpose of which you'll see later, he opens a door outwards on one half of the screen and says hello to himself coming inwards through the same door on the other half. At least it shows mirror image effects are quickly progressing.
Hot Chocolate – Heaven Is On The Back Seat Of My Cadillac
It's a Brit-funk odyssey with which to begin, and one that at the off uses the changing tones effect we last saw on the 5000 Volts backline on their fabled first appearance. Errol has bought a portable mic stand like Freddie Mercury's and has decided on his own form of outre garments, sporting loads of necklaces and a Olympic medal size-besting medallion as well as a sparkly bolero jacket and silver trousers with the sort of tremendously high waist that we seem to be learning was incredibly fashionable back then. They're not as tight as some have managed, but they're getting there. Well out in front of his bandmates it's already clear that he's being groomed as the face of some interchangeable men. He and most of his band's crazy feet just can't keep still to the rhythm either. Some late fish eye lens work demonstrates... that... the BBC had a fish eye lens and they wanted to use it, but we already knew this from a year of closing credit abuse. Given the vigorous thrusting he's carrying off with it we must just cut away before Errol can consider actively grinding the mike stand. Awkwardly, DLT does his next link from between audience front and stage with a crane shot swooping in from the back of the room, which means we get to see his own unsure bop. He lands his cue perfectly from range, though.
David Dundas – Jeans On
"Hit sound three", a new iteration of the more common "number three sound" line, with "a few young people you may well recognise". Same as we saw last week.
5000 Volts – Dr Kiss Kiss
"I'm very sad to say this record stayed at number eight this week - it's got to go higher next week, it's fantastic!" DLT chides, before delivering the band name in an approximation of Barry White's tone. Amazingly/desperately they actually came into the studio on four seperate occasions even though their box of stagecraft tricks was pretty much up after two. Linda, the Lynn Faulds-Wood of lover's disco, has trousers on. Guitarist Martin Jay, of errant talkbox fame, is sporting an open mustard coloured waistcoat and nothing underneath. It was the times. For the record, as this is where 5000 Volts and TOTP part company after a storied run: Jay later helped out Tight Fit and is now in a corporate entertainment band, his CV listed therein claiming work with Take That, Jason Donovan, Sonia, Michael Ball, David Essex, Cockney Rebel, Buggles, Twiggy, Mike Batt, P J Proby and Bombalurina (Timmy Mallett, then). Sadly Kelly died in 1998.
ABBA – Dancing Queen
A new entry at 26. The video, which surely everyone knows. It's too obvious! There's nothing to be gleaned or learnt from it! Well, except for DLT's outro line, "I'll dedicate that one specially to David Hamilton, he loves that record". Did he? Or is that a 'Queen'-related diss? If so it's not lasted the ages.
Bryan Ferry – The Price Of Love
And still Bryan can't be bothered to come into the studio. He's lost his own pimp tache but not Jerry Hall's attention as she gets to wave a cushion around as other women generally look coquettishly to camera in slow motion.
Wings – Let 'Em In
Here's perhaps the most unrepossessing thing DLT has ever said, and there's plenty of competition.
Ringing the bell apparently caused temporary but virulent seasickness in the mid-70s. Those of you with 42" plasma screen sets, let us all know how that bit came across. There's really too much stuff to discuss in so scattershot an interpretation, the fourth in just this run of Macca-related songs. Still no Cherry (I think we can do away with TOCG if she's not going to be omnipresent and nobody on the show mentions a thing about her exits and forthcoming re-entrance), so everyone's trying to take her crown as expressive ruler. Having made a fine effort last week Lulu seems to be less than convincing (what is she doing at 2:31? Dietrich as a defrocked nun?) and despite Patti's best come-on efforts it seems to be the men making the headway, specifically Philip at 1:18 - a future as a Duncan Norvelle stunt double eluded that lad - and then the sequence starting at 2:33 with implied Dr Hook-style homoeroticism then, after some vigorous arse-waggling, Floyd... well, you tell me, but it might be connected to his 3:05 hustling. Wonder whose insistence the bit just after that came from. A routine for this must have been decided well in advance as I can't imagine those doors were just lying around in a BBC stock cupboard in those designs but there's not that much actual dancing in it. There's some leaning and forearm work, and then about halfway through some fancy walking after which Floyd tries to style it out while heading backwards. Opening and closing doors does not qualify as dancer choreography. DLT says something about a cat flap, perhaps as distressed as the rest of us.
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – Here Comes The Sun
After that we needed familiarity, and the video shot on the cloudiest day possible gives us that. DLT makes some gag about needing a security guard around Harley's props, suggesting erroneously that this was somehow made at the BBC's expense when we've just seen what extra levels the LE department can reach given the right musical impetus. "Here comes the rain should be the title of the next one!" DLT ungallantly suggests.
Jesse Green – Nice And Slow
Firstly, flagrancy from the drummer has to be pointed up. He's playing above his hi-hat! It's not at all moving. Green doesn't come across as the most charismatic performer, and when TOTP has played the instrumental version of your song over the end credits last time out maybe you need to be forceful, which may have been why he has a flautist with a droopy moustache standing right next to him. Unusual instrumentation and of its time facial hair is always a winner. The only other detail that can add light and shade to a fairly rote disco makeweight is that Green, who you may also note is the only person making his debut on the repeat run tonight, and 5000 Volts share a Best Of for no connective reason I can work out.
Twiggy – Here I Go Again
DLT is leaning on some bongos as "my knees are going to go weak", apparently because Twiggy has grown her hair. As he then goes on to highlight her "gorgeous voice" he might just be being kind above and beyond. She's changed into a purple dress and red boots and her vocal's been turned up a bit but very little is otherwise different, right down to her placing on the set and the picture montages against lights and second angle shots.
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don't Go Breaking My Heart
Look, I haven't got much time this week to mess about with this again. Even DLT sounds bored, complaining "do I really need to tell you?" Afterwards is a curiosity, though, as while wearing a glittery hat with elastic under the chin he tells us "there will be a new number one next week". Eh? Without spoilering he couldn't have known whether there would be. Maybe he meant 'may be'. Or maybe he had a touch of the Ortis Deleys. Anyway, the Stylistics' 16 Bars sees us out. Next time out on the 15th there's only one song you'll have seen before on here, and not before time.
EDIT NEWS: Edits within edits, for the most part, as for some reason BBC4 decide to squeeze as much of the whole show on as possible, maybe out of repeat-fuelled boredom. That's surely the only reason they'd keep Steve Harley in again. Oddly, though, Dancing Queen losing half a verse seems to be in the original broadcast, though it's not as if nobody's ever heard it and doesn't know that it comes out of the introductory chorus with "anybody could be that guy". Johnny Wakelin still misses out, though, which is a shame if only for the intro where DLT has two girls on each arm and nearly drags one backwards off the stage as he tells us kids are resultantly rushing out to buy tom-toms. Are they? Are they really?
Thursday, 25 August 2011
TOTP 5/8/76 (tx 25/8/11): it's like punk happened
Let's get this out of the way first, because it'll be keenly felt in the comments box, I can tell. Yes, unfolding drama in the Ruby Flipper camp as it turns out TOCG isn't so O after all - not only was she not present this week, she'd been excised from the troupe's end credit! Did she get time off? Surely not, dancers can't go on extended breaks from the show, they just record in advance, surely. Unless... she does come back, but given she's not long for the show anyway maybe she went on strike like that time Noel Edmonds had creative differences and refused to do House Party one week.
Unless she was ill.
Shall we ask her?
She'll probably have forgotten. It's not worth it. Also, I wouldn't know how to ask her.
Jimmy's back in charge for one of what aren't that many appearances in 1976, at least in the sector of it we're covering. He's dressed up for the occasion this week, none of his glitter patterned speciality T-shirts, it's a jacket a bit like a police constable's, dignified if polka-dotted tie... oh, the pull-back reveals he's wearing a kilt. Always has to spoil things.
The charts reveal a new Wings single and a new Wings picture, all five holding gold discs to emphasise their big shot status. Linda looks most unsure.
Slik – The Kid's A Punk
Now, hold on youngsters, while there may have been prescience in choosing to release a song with that word in the title in July 1976, the month of the Ramones' celebrated catalystic London Roundhouse gig and six months after it was first coined in America to refer to that form of rock (we caught on in February within the Sex Pistols' NME debut - see, it's not just sneering at bad mainstream music fashion here, you learn stuff too), but what eleven year old Midge and baseball-attired friends are clearly meaning here, unless they were hugely prescient on writing it, is the (namechecked in the second line) youth gone wild delinquency/cool-as dropout use of the word. Midge backs that up with his opening stance, clicking his fingers contemptuously like someone who was just too damned good for Guys & Dolls round a pretend lamp-post. His acting masterclass isn't over once he gets into the song, though, staring down the camera on the chorus, challenging us to disagree with his assessment of the fictional subject. As if we didn't know from the dress sense Slik are by this stage definitely the sort of people who wish they were American or at least second hand aspire to its culture but aren't quite sure how to go about co-opting it, rolling out barrelhouse piano, FM soft rock choruses and the idea Glasgow is well across the idea of a "hip shaking, heartbreaking hobo". As a crazed sax player holds the middle eight hostage Ure, just to set the seal on this being someone else's dream, draws out a flick-comb and draws it across the sides of his hair like he thinks he once saw James Dean do. America was a long way away in those days, congenitally as well as figuratively. "Of course they're from Scotland, of course" Jimmy repetitively states afterwards, just to rub it in. It wasn't a hit. By this point in 1977 Ure was an actual punk in PVC2 (who were Slik with a new name, clothes and guitar tuning anyway) and then the Rich Kids.
David Dundas – Jeans On
And this week providing something to fill the stage gaps, the temporarily reduced Ruby Flipper! The message is clear. BACK OFF, HOT GOSSIP, THIS IS OUR PATCH. As if to show they can do the suggestive stuff as well as any Arlene Phillips choreography, their collective stance at outset will come in familiar to anyone who's seen Rita, Sue And Bob Too. For some reason all but Lulu are wearing hats too - huge peaked cap for Floyd, workman's cap for Sue, blue Liam Gallagher bucket hat for Philip, golf visor for Patti. Maybe Lulu's hair was too high maintenance to be messed with. Also worth noting "when I wake up" is literally rubbing of eyes. Dundas has at least remembered not to wear slacks this week, but he still looks a little friendless there all on his tod.
Billie Jo Spears – What I've Got In Mind
Jimmy must have completely mistimed a simple introduction as having introduced this video he chooses to improvise: "Also we have all sorts of other great sounds as well, on account of tonight is a good night for music. How about this one? Yes siree." Not exactly a flashy COMING SOON graphic, is it? Billie Jo is on whatever show it was that all the country clips come from and looks most unsure of her surroundings, and rather like a lost early 80s Coronation Street character.
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – Here Comes The Sun
It's a video and a half, this one.
Oh, no, that's not the right one, hang on a moment. Ah, now, this is it. Never quite tops its opening thirty seconds, really.
I want the percussionist's job. He's still not as threatening as Harley, despite wielding a mallet for his job. Harley himself has before long been comfortably covered from every angle.
KC & The Sunshine Band – (Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty
Or The KC Sunshine Band, as Jimmy calls them. Of course Ruby Flipper were always destined for this one. Surrounded by an expectant audience and with TOCG having been kidnapped by errant gypsies Patti steps up and takes the jointly significant mantles of most gawping at camera and most minimalist top, although all three will catch their death if they go out like that. Obviously there's shakeage when required, and occasionally when not, but Flick must have been caught off guard by the reduction in numbers as the rest is mere leaning, arm waving and sidestepping filler. What's more, most of the shaking is done from the shoulders and on at least a couple of occasions the lower legs, which defeats the purpose of choosing this song. Dancer of the day goes to Floyd, who gets to illustrate the words "very well" in closeup by pretending to lick his finger and then making that circle with the thumb and forefinger gesture that people did in the 1970s to express goodness.
Dorothy Moore – Misty Blue
"Everybody take a breather!" Surrounded by pretty much the entire audience, which he creeps into surely accidentally while on camera in the background about thirty seconds before Ruby Flipper have finished, Jimmy cues up the same video clip as last time.
Billy Ocean – L.O.D. (Love On Delivery)
And will sir be favouring the mustard coloured waistcoat with matching trousers a size too small over the shirt with the green and white striped mint-like design tonight? Decently strident and professional performance, but this is where the cameraman gets his excuse to indulge in his weekly hit-and-run audience rampage, his target primed and set this week for a girl getting into Ocean somewhat, joyously bouncing around in her cool Wolfie Smith-turns-fisherman cap until being stopped in her tracks and then, judging by her expression, having her foot run over by the machinery.
Twiggy – Here I Go Again
One thing we haven't discussed in the two or three weeks since it was erected is the new stage backdrop, designed in a V shape without the point, with hundreds of small Noddy Holder's hat-style mirrors attached which at times move about as if being shaken by some black-clad stagehand. If it's meant to resonate the glitter of glitzy pop it only works in stages - Dundas' backing was a spectacular prism of random flashing, yet here they don't seem to reflect any light much as Twiggy doesn't seem to exude much charisma or singing ability. Of course this is the same Twiggy who stands now in her big eyelashes as shorthand for 60s Mary Quant fashion, going on to spend the 70s and much of the 80s in stage musicals and the early 00s being the worst This Morning host ever, but with a shot at pop in the middle. Fair to say that by this time she's less the waifish Vogue androgyne and more the lost Charlie's Angel in her all white trouser and waistcoat outfit and poor make-up. Just to make sure it's caught the trend of the day it's a country number (originally by Country Joe & The Fish), one that, reinterpreted in-house, loses Ms Lawson's voice somewhere in the mix. All the pleading eyes she makes at the mixed-in close-up camera shots won't save her now.
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don't Go Breaking My Heart
Yeah, I know. What can you do? This time it's enlivened by Jimmy's original and wayward way with the language. "And now, what should we have now?" is the link's opening gambit and again it runs slightly too long for comfort, leading him to freestyle: "We have just time to say how are all of you at home? Very good we are? Here we go!" Rather too late in the show to be asking after us, your loyal viewership, but it's appreciated nonetheless. "We've assembled the troops!" Jimmy announces afterwards, though they aren't actually troops, they're women in nurses' uniforms whose presence is never explained, and he spends most of the link standing in front of them anyway, but is presumably something to do with Jim's famously tireless charity work. That's how he earned that OBE he proudly has displayed by his name in the credits. Hopefully. "Yes siree!" he concludes for the fourth time in the show. Someone called Jesse Green's something called Nice And Slow, which seems to be an instrumental only because in the actual version (he's on an upcoming show, you'll see) he doesn't start singing for more than a minute, soundtracks those controversial cast lists.
EDIT NEWS: So evidently BBC4 don't trust a pre-watershed audience with Sheer Elegance's 'challenging' subject matter, as It's Temptation misses out for the second of two appearances. Unique Sheer Elegance sense of fashion watch: red dungarees over blue shirts with sleeve ruffs. When at one point all three try twirls, all completely out of sync and one in a different direction to his colleagues, you begin to understand why they never had another hit. 5000 Volts turn up with just Linda, the guitarist (who doesn't even bother pretending when it comes to the talkbox bit) and bassist, so there must have been rows there. Lastly was Johnny Wakelin & The Kinshasa Band, which has to be posted for all sorts of reasons, from Jimmy's manner of disappearing out of shot to the shaker maker's manly chest, but mainly the bassist having some gloriously undignified issues with his headgear at 1:38.
Oh, and Jimmy was wearing a kilt to promote his role as Chieftain of the Lochaber Highland Games, a role he still holds after forty years albeit only in an honorary position now. That's not an excuse.
Unless she was ill.
Shall we ask her?
She'll probably have forgotten. It's not worth it. Also, I wouldn't know how to ask her.
Jimmy's back in charge for one of what aren't that many appearances in 1976, at least in the sector of it we're covering. He's dressed up for the occasion this week, none of his glitter patterned speciality T-shirts, it's a jacket a bit like a police constable's, dignified if polka-dotted tie... oh, the pull-back reveals he's wearing a kilt. Always has to spoil things.
The charts reveal a new Wings single and a new Wings picture, all five holding gold discs to emphasise their big shot status. Linda looks most unsure.
Slik – The Kid's A Punk
Now, hold on youngsters, while there may have been prescience in choosing to release a song with that word in the title in July 1976, the month of the Ramones' celebrated catalystic London Roundhouse gig and six months after it was first coined in America to refer to that form of rock (we caught on in February within the Sex Pistols' NME debut - see, it's not just sneering at bad mainstream music fashion here, you learn stuff too), but what eleven year old Midge and baseball-attired friends are clearly meaning here, unless they were hugely prescient on writing it, is the (namechecked in the second line) youth gone wild delinquency/cool-as dropout use of the word. Midge backs that up with his opening stance, clicking his fingers contemptuously like someone who was just too damned good for Guys & Dolls round a pretend lamp-post. His acting masterclass isn't over once he gets into the song, though, staring down the camera on the chorus, challenging us to disagree with his assessment of the fictional subject. As if we didn't know from the dress sense Slik are by this stage definitely the sort of people who wish they were American or at least second hand aspire to its culture but aren't quite sure how to go about co-opting it, rolling out barrelhouse piano, FM soft rock choruses and the idea Glasgow is well across the idea of a "hip shaking, heartbreaking hobo". As a crazed sax player holds the middle eight hostage Ure, just to set the seal on this being someone else's dream, draws out a flick-comb and draws it across the sides of his hair like he thinks he once saw James Dean do. America was a long way away in those days, congenitally as well as figuratively. "Of course they're from Scotland, of course" Jimmy repetitively states afterwards, just to rub it in. It wasn't a hit. By this point in 1977 Ure was an actual punk in PVC2 (who were Slik with a new name, clothes and guitar tuning anyway) and then the Rich Kids.
David Dundas – Jeans On
And this week providing something to fill the stage gaps, the temporarily reduced Ruby Flipper! The message is clear. BACK OFF, HOT GOSSIP, THIS IS OUR PATCH. As if to show they can do the suggestive stuff as well as any Arlene Phillips choreography, their collective stance at outset will come in familiar to anyone who's seen Rita, Sue And Bob Too. For some reason all but Lulu are wearing hats too - huge peaked cap for Floyd, workman's cap for Sue, blue Liam Gallagher bucket hat for Philip, golf visor for Patti. Maybe Lulu's hair was too high maintenance to be messed with. Also worth noting "when I wake up" is literally rubbing of eyes. Dundas has at least remembered not to wear slacks this week, but he still looks a little friendless there all on his tod.
Billie Jo Spears – What I've Got In Mind
Jimmy must have completely mistimed a simple introduction as having introduced this video he chooses to improvise: "Also we have all sorts of other great sounds as well, on account of tonight is a good night for music. How about this one? Yes siree." Not exactly a flashy COMING SOON graphic, is it? Billie Jo is on whatever show it was that all the country clips come from and looks most unsure of her surroundings, and rather like a lost early 80s Coronation Street character.
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – Here Comes The Sun
It's a video and a half, this one.
Oh, no, that's not the right one, hang on a moment. Ah, now, this is it. Never quite tops its opening thirty seconds, really.
I want the percussionist's job. He's still not as threatening as Harley, despite wielding a mallet for his job. Harley himself has before long been comfortably covered from every angle.
KC & The Sunshine Band – (Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty
Or The KC Sunshine Band, as Jimmy calls them. Of course Ruby Flipper were always destined for this one. Surrounded by an expectant audience and with TOCG having been kidnapped by errant gypsies Patti steps up and takes the jointly significant mantles of most gawping at camera and most minimalist top, although all three will catch their death if they go out like that. Obviously there's shakeage when required, and occasionally when not, but Flick must have been caught off guard by the reduction in numbers as the rest is mere leaning, arm waving and sidestepping filler. What's more, most of the shaking is done from the shoulders and on at least a couple of occasions the lower legs, which defeats the purpose of choosing this song. Dancer of the day goes to Floyd, who gets to illustrate the words "very well" in closeup by pretending to lick his finger and then making that circle with the thumb and forefinger gesture that people did in the 1970s to express goodness.
Dorothy Moore – Misty Blue
"Everybody take a breather!" Surrounded by pretty much the entire audience, which he creeps into surely accidentally while on camera in the background about thirty seconds before Ruby Flipper have finished, Jimmy cues up the same video clip as last time.
Billy Ocean – L.O.D. (Love On Delivery)
And will sir be favouring the mustard coloured waistcoat with matching trousers a size too small over the shirt with the green and white striped mint-like design tonight? Decently strident and professional performance, but this is where the cameraman gets his excuse to indulge in his weekly hit-and-run audience rampage, his target primed and set this week for a girl getting into Ocean somewhat, joyously bouncing around in her cool Wolfie Smith-turns-fisherman cap until being stopped in her tracks and then, judging by her expression, having her foot run over by the machinery.
Twiggy – Here I Go Again
One thing we haven't discussed in the two or three weeks since it was erected is the new stage backdrop, designed in a V shape without the point, with hundreds of small Noddy Holder's hat-style mirrors attached which at times move about as if being shaken by some black-clad stagehand. If it's meant to resonate the glitter of glitzy pop it only works in stages - Dundas' backing was a spectacular prism of random flashing, yet here they don't seem to reflect any light much as Twiggy doesn't seem to exude much charisma or singing ability. Of course this is the same Twiggy who stands now in her big eyelashes as shorthand for 60s Mary Quant fashion, going on to spend the 70s and much of the 80s in stage musicals and the early 00s being the worst This Morning host ever, but with a shot at pop in the middle. Fair to say that by this time she's less the waifish Vogue androgyne and more the lost Charlie's Angel in her all white trouser and waistcoat outfit and poor make-up. Just to make sure it's caught the trend of the day it's a country number (originally by Country Joe & The Fish), one that, reinterpreted in-house, loses Ms Lawson's voice somewhere in the mix. All the pleading eyes she makes at the mixed-in close-up camera shots won't save her now.
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don't Go Breaking My Heart
Yeah, I know. What can you do? This time it's enlivened by Jimmy's original and wayward way with the language. "And now, what should we have now?" is the link's opening gambit and again it runs slightly too long for comfort, leading him to freestyle: "We have just time to say how are all of you at home? Very good we are? Here we go!" Rather too late in the show to be asking after us, your loyal viewership, but it's appreciated nonetheless. "We've assembled the troops!" Jimmy announces afterwards, though they aren't actually troops, they're women in nurses' uniforms whose presence is never explained, and he spends most of the link standing in front of them anyway, but is presumably something to do with Jim's famously tireless charity work. That's how he earned that OBE he proudly has displayed by his name in the credits. Hopefully. "Yes siree!" he concludes for the fourth time in the show. Someone called Jesse Green's something called Nice And Slow, which seems to be an instrumental only because in the actual version (he's on an upcoming show, you'll see) he doesn't start singing for more than a minute, soundtracks those controversial cast lists.
EDIT NEWS: So evidently BBC4 don't trust a pre-watershed audience with Sheer Elegance's 'challenging' subject matter, as It's Temptation misses out for the second of two appearances. Unique Sheer Elegance sense of fashion watch: red dungarees over blue shirts with sleeve ruffs. When at one point all three try twirls, all completely out of sync and one in a different direction to his colleagues, you begin to understand why they never had another hit. 5000 Volts turn up with just Linda, the guitarist (who doesn't even bother pretending when it comes to the talkbox bit) and bassist, so there must have been rows there. Lastly was Johnny Wakelin & The Kinshasa Band, which has to be posted for all sorts of reasons, from Jimmy's manner of disappearing out of shot to the shaker maker's manly chest, but mainly the bassist having some gloriously undignified issues with his headgear at 1:38.
Oh, and Jimmy was wearing a kilt to promote his role as Chieftain of the Lochaber Highland Games, a role he still holds after forty years albeit only in an honorary position now. That's not an excuse.
Friday, 19 August 2011
TOTP 29/7/76 (tx 18/8/11): anything can happen in the next half hour (but it's doubtful)
We're getting well into the summer slowdown on the show now, best exemplified next week where in an original programme featuring twelve songs only four haven't been on the show before, and those are portrayed by a video, a Ruby Flipper routine and two exclusives, one of which didn't chart. Then it's a wiped show, then one with 11 performances of which five songs are new to the show, two of those being videos and one a Flipper. By the time we get to 26th August 1976 there's a complete clearout and it's all newly minted, and a really quite fascinating selection too. We'll get to that, I reckon, on 15th September 2011, but in the meantime there's some songs we're getting to know very well. Just the half hour in its original form this week, but even then more than half the records aren't new to the show.
David Hamilton's back in charge this week, in a T-shirt that shares a red hooped design with a cartoon swimming costume - white jeans too - and against quite some background noise. He has his own obsession to work through too, the Olympics giving him the opportunity to claim "some racing certainties", himself "for the high jump" and "plenty of discus". Except that doesn't work unless he's lapsed into pig latin. Is 'discus' meant to sound like 'discs'?
Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak
Ah! Now this is a way to break a show in, even if like so many it ended up falling short of the top 30. Such is their profile they've managed to get a backcloth of their logo up, while Lynott can get away with entirely mirrored shades that reflect the lot. Meanwhile the rest of the band get to amuse themselves, one cutaway showing Brian Robertson grinning manaically at Scott Gorham as they share a backing vocal mike. The audience react to rock by awkwardly moving very slightly quicker than usual. During the instrumental break the director decides he hasn't done much yet and as the camera pans from one side of the stage to the other he brings in a solar flare effect fading in and out to no great effect. Still, it's a day's work. Right at the end a man with similarly long hair walks to the side of the stage with arms folded. Why did they need a roadie? It's mimed on a single use TV soundstage!
Dr Hook – A Little Bit More
"A man who is a member of the medical profession but he is not a psychiatrist and it's not your mind he's interested in, it's your body". Such is Diddy's convoluted introduction to the hirsute and homoerotic video, as previously discussed. Really he's not a member of the medical profession at all, is he, he's just a carnival huckster. And it's not a 'he' either. "What a naughty man!" Diddy concludes afterwards, having only just been given prime evidence that it's several people.
The Chanter Sisters – Sideshow
Rum girl groups seem to be an occasionally recurring feature of these shows, and to prop up a week of songs we know all too well here's a pair for whom sophisticated style is other people. We've come across the song before, it was playout a couple of weeks ago, but actually seeing the none more rock'n'roll named Irene and Doreen brought home the fashion low comedy that has always hovered just under the surface of this repeat run. Irene sports a large curly perm and a dress seemingly made from some huge, unliked Christmas novelty curtains tied to a ribbon round her neck. Doreen has taken to the crimpers and has donned an all-in-one. She also favours the full-on hair flick during her solo dance, where she sways gallantly from the hips with feet planted to the floor while Irene is on vocal. She's clearly the more confident performer, giving it some enormous held notes, and certainly the more confident dancer given Irene seems to be mimicking the audience's own uncertainty. As if to compensate for unexpected vocal volume, after the instrumental break the soundman has clearly turned her mike down, only for her to come in at normal pitch for once and sound strangely distant. "Great! Fabulous!" Diddy says with no conviction before making a "flown over from Nashville/very hard on the arms" joke. They're British, by the way, why they'd need to fly over specially is unrecorded. The Sisters, should you wish to know, went on to sing backing vocals for everyone from Elton John to John Cale to Justin Hayward to the Undertones before Doreen split off to work with Bryan Ferry, sing in a chorus at The Secret Policeman's Ball and back Roger Waters, Meat Loaf and Van Morrison. She also wrote Kiki Dee's Star. And that's more than you ever hoped to know about Doreen Chanter.
Walter Murphy – A Fifth Of Beethoven
One of the issues always raised with Ruby Flipper is that Flick really had no idea what to do with the male members. By this stage, neither did the male members. This is one of those routines that has to be seen as words are not enough (it's on YouTube too, but with the soundtrack replaced at WMG's insistence) Basically it's intended as a Flipper leg show in tiny hotpants, crop tops and some sort of headwear with a feather on. What that means is we must look at it as anything but a sop to the dads, for instance to the air traffic control arm movements and the fact the whole thing is performed seated, which makes it look more like a music and movement class in overcoming collective limitations. Note how TOCG and Patti can hardly take their eyes off the camera (and the first closeup is of TOCG, despite her being the shortarse of the team, and she gets to work in some of her prime 'yeah, I know which one you're watching' faces) Of course the secondary routine, assuming we don't count the overuse of CSO completely different while parallel to the live action, is the switches between Philip and Floyd in the conductor's umpire hat, Einstein wig and big overcoat (overexcitable men in overcoats getting worked into a frenzy by underdressed young women? Did Mary Whitehouse know about this?), only for it to turn out they're both behind their own music stands. Philip, if you watch closely, does appear to be giving Floyd some in-character dagger looks, it's just we don't get to properly see them except in profile. The ending between the two is a welcome reminder that these were the days of high farce comedy.
Jimmy James & the Vagabonds – Now Is The Time
A new performance, and some people in the audience have brought scarves! Or toilet roll. Seems to be a similar density of material, in any case, and long enough to require three people holding them aloft. Such was the evident popularity of James and his far too high waisted mustard coloured trousers. If anything, his eye-popping routine in the breakdown is even more full-on.
Status Quo – Mystery Song
The video again. See Rick's open shirt in a very unmanly pattern! Watch Francis' hair in the indoor breeze, revealing a pair of mighty sideburns! This, of course, is the superior Mystery Song.
Liverpool Express – You Are My Love
Not the same as the previous two showings, as there were tight regulations on solarisation overuse. Instead our visual effect comes from the shape of the keyboard player's hat, pretty much Puritan in dimension. The guitarist has swapped his twelve string for something proper and some leather jackets have been broken in, but instead of being in a big open space they're hemmed in at the front and the comparative lack of comfort shows a little.
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Oh, you know by now. Diddy revels in the detail they've "done the double - they're in the top ten in the States, they're number one across the nation in this country". In what way is that a) a quantifiable double and b) proper syntax at the end? Once the awkwardness has subsided, having referred to their being top "across the nation" for the third time in three sentences Diddy bades us farewell, in the style of a kids' presenter, with the Bee Gees' You Should Be Dancing and the news "we'll see you on Radio 1 tomorrow afternoon at 2 o'clock", which isn't accurate in either time or visual sense.
David Hamilton's back in charge this week, in a T-shirt that shares a red hooped design with a cartoon swimming costume - white jeans too - and against quite some background noise. He has his own obsession to work through too, the Olympics giving him the opportunity to claim "some racing certainties", himself "for the high jump" and "plenty of discus". Except that doesn't work unless he's lapsed into pig latin. Is 'discus' meant to sound like 'discs'?
Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak
Ah! Now this is a way to break a show in, even if like so many it ended up falling short of the top 30. Such is their profile they've managed to get a backcloth of their logo up, while Lynott can get away with entirely mirrored shades that reflect the lot. Meanwhile the rest of the band get to amuse themselves, one cutaway showing Brian Robertson grinning manaically at Scott Gorham as they share a backing vocal mike. The audience react to rock by awkwardly moving very slightly quicker than usual. During the instrumental break the director decides he hasn't done much yet and as the camera pans from one side of the stage to the other he brings in a solar flare effect fading in and out to no great effect. Still, it's a day's work. Right at the end a man with similarly long hair walks to the side of the stage with arms folded. Why did they need a roadie? It's mimed on a single use TV soundstage!
Dr Hook – A Little Bit More
"A man who is a member of the medical profession but he is not a psychiatrist and it's not your mind he's interested in, it's your body". Such is Diddy's convoluted introduction to the hirsute and homoerotic video, as previously discussed. Really he's not a member of the medical profession at all, is he, he's just a carnival huckster. And it's not a 'he' either. "What a naughty man!" Diddy concludes afterwards, having only just been given prime evidence that it's several people.
The Chanter Sisters – Sideshow
Rum girl groups seem to be an occasionally recurring feature of these shows, and to prop up a week of songs we know all too well here's a pair for whom sophisticated style is other people. We've come across the song before, it was playout a couple of weeks ago, but actually seeing the none more rock'n'roll named Irene and Doreen brought home the fashion low comedy that has always hovered just under the surface of this repeat run. Irene sports a large curly perm and a dress seemingly made from some huge, unliked Christmas novelty curtains tied to a ribbon round her neck. Doreen has taken to the crimpers and has donned an all-in-one. She also favours the full-on hair flick during her solo dance, where she sways gallantly from the hips with feet planted to the floor while Irene is on vocal. She's clearly the more confident performer, giving it some enormous held notes, and certainly the more confident dancer given Irene seems to be mimicking the audience's own uncertainty. As if to compensate for unexpected vocal volume, after the instrumental break the soundman has clearly turned her mike down, only for her to come in at normal pitch for once and sound strangely distant. "Great! Fabulous!" Diddy says with no conviction before making a "flown over from Nashville/very hard on the arms" joke. They're British, by the way, why they'd need to fly over specially is unrecorded. The Sisters, should you wish to know, went on to sing backing vocals for everyone from Elton John to John Cale to Justin Hayward to the Undertones before Doreen split off to work with Bryan Ferry, sing in a chorus at The Secret Policeman's Ball and back Roger Waters, Meat Loaf and Van Morrison. She also wrote Kiki Dee's Star. And that's more than you ever hoped to know about Doreen Chanter.
Walter Murphy – A Fifth Of Beethoven
One of the issues always raised with Ruby Flipper is that Flick really had no idea what to do with the male members. By this stage, neither did the male members. This is one of those routines that has to be seen as words are not enough (it's on YouTube too, but with the soundtrack replaced at WMG's insistence) Basically it's intended as a Flipper leg show in tiny hotpants, crop tops and some sort of headwear with a feather on. What that means is we must look at it as anything but a sop to the dads, for instance to the air traffic control arm movements and the fact the whole thing is performed seated, which makes it look more like a music and movement class in overcoming collective limitations. Note how TOCG and Patti can hardly take their eyes off the camera (and the first closeup is of TOCG, despite her being the shortarse of the team, and she gets to work in some of her prime 'yeah, I know which one you're watching' faces) Of course the secondary routine, assuming we don't count the overuse of CSO completely different while parallel to the live action, is the switches between Philip and Floyd in the conductor's umpire hat, Einstein wig and big overcoat (overexcitable men in overcoats getting worked into a frenzy by underdressed young women? Did Mary Whitehouse know about this?), only for it to turn out they're both behind their own music stands. Philip, if you watch closely, does appear to be giving Floyd some in-character dagger looks, it's just we don't get to properly see them except in profile. The ending between the two is a welcome reminder that these were the days of high farce comedy.
Jimmy James & the Vagabonds – Now Is The Time
A new performance, and some people in the audience have brought scarves! Or toilet roll. Seems to be a similar density of material, in any case, and long enough to require three people holding them aloft. Such was the evident popularity of James and his far too high waisted mustard coloured trousers. If anything, his eye-popping routine in the breakdown is even more full-on.
Status Quo – Mystery Song
The video again. See Rick's open shirt in a very unmanly pattern! Watch Francis' hair in the indoor breeze, revealing a pair of mighty sideburns! This, of course, is the superior Mystery Song.
Liverpool Express – You Are My Love
Not the same as the previous two showings, as there were tight regulations on solarisation overuse. Instead our visual effect comes from the shape of the keyboard player's hat, pretty much Puritan in dimension. The guitarist has swapped his twelve string for something proper and some leather jackets have been broken in, but instead of being in a big open space they're hemmed in at the front and the comparative lack of comfort shows a little.
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Oh, you know by now. Diddy revels in the detail they've "done the double - they're in the top ten in the States, they're number one across the nation in this country". In what way is that a) a quantifiable double and b) proper syntax at the end? Once the awkwardness has subsided, having referred to their being top "across the nation" for the third time in three sentences Diddy bades us farewell, in the style of a kids' presenter, with the Bee Gees' You Should Be Dancing and the news "we'll see you on Radio 1 tomorrow afternoon at 2 o'clock", which isn't accurate in either time or visual sense.
Thursday, 4 August 2011
TOTP 22/7/76 (tx 3/8/11): states of independence
Parish notices first, in the wake of last week's by far the largest number of comments for one show. Pan's People and TOTP Dance Troupes are interviewing those who strutted for the greater Pops good, one per month, starting with three Gojos but for our timeline purposes getting round to Lulu in October and Sue in December. We suppose you can drop questions off via that site.
Hey ho, it's DLT! He too seems to be riffing on the long hot summer by wearing big shades, but is the rest of his face burnt or has something been chromakeyed over his eyes or... oh, no, they've wrongfooted us all again by superimposing his finishing the opening sentence onto one of the lenses, pointlessly. Billy Connolly's in the top 30, unfortunately not appearing on the show any time soon with his ultra-quick parody No Chance as it doesn't seem to be the most family friendly of songs. At least they've found a picture of him looking his most affable.
Here's a question with no set answer - why was Queen's You're My Best Friend, already on its way down but still in the top ten, never represented on the show when labelmates Sunfighter were?
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - Here Comes The Sun
Oh, sweet meterological irony. The graphics team do their best with what we must presume to be a rain shower effect but actually seems to be strips of foil overlaid as a far too hairy man prods at far too many keyboards. The second Beatles version we've had in this run (and the first is imprinted on all our brains forever) is one of no fixed pace, rattling away in rhythm and keyboard run even as Harley refuses to budge from its normal speed. The bass player is wearing a Cockney Rebel T-shirt, Harley at one point sings towards a camera at the back of the stage which is quite some queueing and it becomes noticeable that someone has the dual job of bongos, which remain largely untouched, and tuned percussion, the fake playing of which is exemplary. Then there's some varispeeded outro vocals, which Steve makes a valiant attempt of looking cool while miming. Oh, and this actually was a hit for once of an opening song.
David Dundas - Jeans On
DLT, in his Florida World Football League top - how glamorous that must have seemed at the time, the idea Radio 1 disc jockeys got to go right across the Atlantic as a matter of course and then show off about it - claims it's about "something that we do first thing in the morning - well, for me personally it's second thing". There's no wink or little eyebrows to suggest double entrende, so that could mean anything. It could just be he's being scrupulously accurate about how he gets up first thing. It could. Advertising jingle writer made good Dundas is wearing pink trainers and slacks, the big liar, and is playing a keyboard that looks like a typewriter from the side angle, but the attention is instead drawn to a woman right at the front who seems to be enacting St Vitus' Dance, all pointy elbows and physical upper body jerks. Soon enough a wider angle reveals the truth, that there are three women dancing in front of the stage in, well, jeans but also tight white T-shirts bearing the legend 'HOT GOSSIP'. Now, Arlene Phillips' gusset-gyrating Everett sidelings did exist at the time but as far as I can find they had no direct connection with Dundas, and what are they doing on Flick's patch anyway? Had they heard on the interpretative shimmying grapevine that Ruby Flipper were in trouble and decided to cheekily stake an early claim? Surely, with all now six of the residents about to take their marks, any interlopers could be chased out. If they wanted a peaceful resolution, could the unions not have been brought in? Whoever these invaders are they require some work, all three never managing to simultaneously choreograph anything, one just off on a turning round and arms high in the air freestyle. There's a lot of spinning on the spot too, as well as some pushing out of chests to get word in for any viewing competing producers. Whatever, there's a couple of typically uncommittally frugging girls at the front getting increasingly annoyed by it all. Meanwhile Dundas plays on affecting nonchalance.
The Isley Brothers - Harvest For The World
Eventually Ruby Flipper get their oats. "All expense spared on the costume" DLT... jokes or knows? Because at first there's three different routines. Stage right Patti and Floyd are slow dancing, her in evening wear, him in something that seems to be made out of second hand tartan. In the centre Philip lives it up as a silver trousered ringmaster with two flappers, while stage left it's TOCG in some sort of two-tone get-up. Around them an audience clap, more in hope than expectation that this might lead anywhere. Patti gets to mug a kiss to camera. What does it all have to do with the song? Nothing, but it has a rhythm that brings forward awkward body shifting, though Lulu is rather splendidly caught singing along. Philip then gets a solo spot and goes for it with some vigour as the non-Patti girls get together to form an impressive circle of spinning and outreaching. Before long all six are off into the crowd, and in one of those moments of directorial indecisiveness we see the floor manager rush into a shot back from the stage towards the retreating dancers to push some people out of the way. They knew how to handle a crowd then, with force and not caring whether it was seen by the nation or not. Even then the camera has to keep zooming in and eventually just cuts outlying Flipperers out altogether. For a closing piece de resistance, everyone grabs a partner out of the crowd in the hope they'll match their exultations. As Lulu's partner can't even get the moving from side to side in time right that seems a vain hope but the seemingly spontaneous nature is somewhat dulled when you find someone on Pan's People etc has spotted that Floyd's partner is Pan's Person and Flipper co-manager Ruth Pearson. TOCG gets DLT. Of course she does.
Johnny Wakelin & The Kinshasa Band – In Zaire
In another triumph of the editor's art we cut from DLT being frankly flung about, and not before time, to DLT in a different part of the studio looking across and feigning weariness. It's at this point he tries to affect a black American accent, possibly in tribute to Ali ahead of Wakelin's Rumble In The Jungle tribute. It doesn't suit... anyone. And it's a drum circle! Or at least two drummers plus a self-consciously I'm-mad-me bloke in the middle in a pilot jacket and polka dotted trousers wielding a massive maraca in one hand and two tambourines in the other. Meanwhile the guitarist has on voluminous flares and Wakelin has gone for the pimp Sly Stone camouflaged in a carpet warehouse look. Pink fedora, outgrown pencil tache, ageing supper club comedian shades, jacket-cum-waistcoat with card suit symbols sewn in ("an explosion in a paint factory" DLT says when Wakelin's safely out of earshot, which can't be right given it has definite patterns), the lot. Bearing in mind he was a club singer in his late thirties from pre-hip Brighton it feels wrong to hear him emote about Elijah Mohammed while having to write in two seperate goes at pronouncing the titular country, but that's Love Thy Neighbour-era Britain for you. Only to add that on Spotify there's a whole album of Wakelin songs about boxers, proving there's a man who knows his market as much as he knows his wardrobe.
5000 Volts – Dr Kiss Kiss
It's her again! It's a new performance but Linda Kelly still moves like it's a works night out and is now sporting something that can't decide whether it's dress, robe or curtain. Her bandmates just look even sleazier, guitarist and bassist alike favouring the plunging neckline, the latter with a silk shirt and more top lip hair, the former in a red playsuit. The whole charade crashes down, though, as we get to the talkbox bit and the guitarist - let's dignify him with a name, Martin Jay, who was later involved with Tight Fit somehow - realises they didn't bring it. His solution is to make a "ooh" face, grin and look to his right, where the bassist is trying not to look at him for fear of giggling too much. The bass drum and panels around the back of the stage start flashing via the magic of CSO but it's far too late to distract from the moment. Quite a few people start wandering towards the stage right at the end of the song, perhaps in wanton hope. This is on twice more, by the way. It's the new Shake It Down.
Johnny Cash – One Piece At A Time
While going through his full range of expressions DLT extends an arm as if showing us the other stage. Cash is, of course, on tape on a much grander stage. Because he's Johnny Cash and he's singing about essentially stealing a car he can get away with abandoning his guitar halfway through with no change in the sound. Because it's US TV they feel no shame in adding canned laughter that doesn't match the crowd size or imagined ambience at all. DLT claims his engine fell out in Amersham last Sunday. He may or may not mean his car.
1776 – Oh Susannah
Well, this is a mess. First off, it's a grandstanding arrangement of a California Gold Rush song traditionally performed by blackface minstrel troupes by a French band named after the year of American independence. Secondly, singer Jacques Mercier (who in his previous band Dynastie Crisis had invented rap) is rum indeed, bald and with an extravagant moustache he's either the prototype for cartoons of dumb-bell lifting strongmen or the violent prisoner Charles Bronson, were the latter ever to favour purple trousers of a width you could hold Summertime Special in. There's some staging going on here as we begin on a close up of him before slowly panning out and a lighting change revealing bloody loads of people, four extra musicians and eight gospel singers. Mercier certainly has an expressive way of singing, lots of muso looking into the lights and the occasional Eric Clapton feint. It's hard to know what to make of all this. That's probably why nobody bought it and 1776 didn't make a second single.
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Again with Kiki's pink dungarees for its first week of six (sorry) at number one. If this video ever looks rushed that's because it was, being shot in one take with three cameras and no rehearsal at a tiny dressed up soundstage round the back of a Rod Stewart TV special taping. DLT introduces the closing KC & the Sunshine Band and says goodbye "on behalf of Phil, Brian and the rest of the maniacs who work here". Don't drag them all into your private hell!
EDIT NEWS: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band again - no idea at time of writing which of the two performances, though it does mean two very differing songs about the American War of Independence in one show - and the grand return of Sheer Elegance, who by now are well beyond the reasoning of mortals. Check the evidence of It's Temptation - the outfits of a boxing Santa Claus with their trademark wing collars, some sort of early business with beads, a Hitler moustache and the half-hidden confession that the object of their love is under 16.
Next show Thursday 18th. Alternative Canon Week next week.
Hey ho, it's DLT! He too seems to be riffing on the long hot summer by wearing big shades, but is the rest of his face burnt or has something been chromakeyed over his eyes or... oh, no, they've wrongfooted us all again by superimposing his finishing the opening sentence onto one of the lenses, pointlessly. Billy Connolly's in the top 30, unfortunately not appearing on the show any time soon with his ultra-quick parody No Chance as it doesn't seem to be the most family friendly of songs. At least they've found a picture of him looking his most affable.
Here's a question with no set answer - why was Queen's You're My Best Friend, already on its way down but still in the top ten, never represented on the show when labelmates Sunfighter were?
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - Here Comes The Sun
Oh, sweet meterological irony. The graphics team do their best with what we must presume to be a rain shower effect but actually seems to be strips of foil overlaid as a far too hairy man prods at far too many keyboards. The second Beatles version we've had in this run (and the first is imprinted on all our brains forever) is one of no fixed pace, rattling away in rhythm and keyboard run even as Harley refuses to budge from its normal speed. The bass player is wearing a Cockney Rebel T-shirt, Harley at one point sings towards a camera at the back of the stage which is quite some queueing and it becomes noticeable that someone has the dual job of bongos, which remain largely untouched, and tuned percussion, the fake playing of which is exemplary. Then there's some varispeeded outro vocals, which Steve makes a valiant attempt of looking cool while miming. Oh, and this actually was a hit for once of an opening song.
David Dundas - Jeans On
DLT, in his Florida World Football League top - how glamorous that must have seemed at the time, the idea Radio 1 disc jockeys got to go right across the Atlantic as a matter of course and then show off about it - claims it's about "something that we do first thing in the morning - well, for me personally it's second thing". There's no wink or little eyebrows to suggest double entrende, so that could mean anything. It could just be he's being scrupulously accurate about how he gets up first thing. It could. Advertising jingle writer made good Dundas is wearing pink trainers and slacks, the big liar, and is playing a keyboard that looks like a typewriter from the side angle, but the attention is instead drawn to a woman right at the front who seems to be enacting St Vitus' Dance, all pointy elbows and physical upper body jerks. Soon enough a wider angle reveals the truth, that there are three women dancing in front of the stage in, well, jeans but also tight white T-shirts bearing the legend 'HOT GOSSIP'. Now, Arlene Phillips' gusset-gyrating Everett sidelings did exist at the time but as far as I can find they had no direct connection with Dundas, and what are they doing on Flick's patch anyway? Had they heard on the interpretative shimmying grapevine that Ruby Flipper were in trouble and decided to cheekily stake an early claim? Surely, with all now six of the residents about to take their marks, any interlopers could be chased out. If they wanted a peaceful resolution, could the unions not have been brought in? Whoever these invaders are they require some work, all three never managing to simultaneously choreograph anything, one just off on a turning round and arms high in the air freestyle. There's a lot of spinning on the spot too, as well as some pushing out of chests to get word in for any viewing competing producers. Whatever, there's a couple of typically uncommittally frugging girls at the front getting increasingly annoyed by it all. Meanwhile Dundas plays on affecting nonchalance.
The Isley Brothers - Harvest For The World
Eventually Ruby Flipper get their oats. "All expense spared on the costume" DLT... jokes or knows? Because at first there's three different routines. Stage right Patti and Floyd are slow dancing, her in evening wear, him in something that seems to be made out of second hand tartan. In the centre Philip lives it up as a silver trousered ringmaster with two flappers, while stage left it's TOCG in some sort of two-tone get-up. Around them an audience clap, more in hope than expectation that this might lead anywhere. Patti gets to mug a kiss to camera. What does it all have to do with the song? Nothing, but it has a rhythm that brings forward awkward body shifting, though Lulu is rather splendidly caught singing along. Philip then gets a solo spot and goes for it with some vigour as the non-Patti girls get together to form an impressive circle of spinning and outreaching. Before long all six are off into the crowd, and in one of those moments of directorial indecisiveness we see the floor manager rush into a shot back from the stage towards the retreating dancers to push some people out of the way. They knew how to handle a crowd then, with force and not caring whether it was seen by the nation or not. Even then the camera has to keep zooming in and eventually just cuts outlying Flipperers out altogether. For a closing piece de resistance, everyone grabs a partner out of the crowd in the hope they'll match their exultations. As Lulu's partner can't even get the moving from side to side in time right that seems a vain hope but the seemingly spontaneous nature is somewhat dulled when you find someone on Pan's People etc has spotted that Floyd's partner is Pan's Person and Flipper co-manager Ruth Pearson. TOCG gets DLT. Of course she does.
Johnny Wakelin & The Kinshasa Band – In Zaire
In another triumph of the editor's art we cut from DLT being frankly flung about, and not before time, to DLT in a different part of the studio looking across and feigning weariness. It's at this point he tries to affect a black American accent, possibly in tribute to Ali ahead of Wakelin's Rumble In The Jungle tribute. It doesn't suit... anyone. And it's a drum circle! Or at least two drummers plus a self-consciously I'm-mad-me bloke in the middle in a pilot jacket and polka dotted trousers wielding a massive maraca in one hand and two tambourines in the other. Meanwhile the guitarist has on voluminous flares and Wakelin has gone for the pimp Sly Stone camouflaged in a carpet warehouse look. Pink fedora, outgrown pencil tache, ageing supper club comedian shades, jacket-cum-waistcoat with card suit symbols sewn in ("an explosion in a paint factory" DLT says when Wakelin's safely out of earshot, which can't be right given it has definite patterns), the lot. Bearing in mind he was a club singer in his late thirties from pre-hip Brighton it feels wrong to hear him emote about Elijah Mohammed while having to write in two seperate goes at pronouncing the titular country, but that's Love Thy Neighbour-era Britain for you. Only to add that on Spotify there's a whole album of Wakelin songs about boxers, proving there's a man who knows his market as much as he knows his wardrobe.
5000 Volts – Dr Kiss Kiss
It's her again! It's a new performance but Linda Kelly still moves like it's a works night out and is now sporting something that can't decide whether it's dress, robe or curtain. Her bandmates just look even sleazier, guitarist and bassist alike favouring the plunging neckline, the latter with a silk shirt and more top lip hair, the former in a red playsuit. The whole charade crashes down, though, as we get to the talkbox bit and the guitarist - let's dignify him with a name, Martin Jay, who was later involved with Tight Fit somehow - realises they didn't bring it. His solution is to make a "ooh" face, grin and look to his right, where the bassist is trying not to look at him for fear of giggling too much. The bass drum and panels around the back of the stage start flashing via the magic of CSO but it's far too late to distract from the moment. Quite a few people start wandering towards the stage right at the end of the song, perhaps in wanton hope. This is on twice more, by the way. It's the new Shake It Down.
Johnny Cash – One Piece At A Time
While going through his full range of expressions DLT extends an arm as if showing us the other stage. Cash is, of course, on tape on a much grander stage. Because he's Johnny Cash and he's singing about essentially stealing a car he can get away with abandoning his guitar halfway through with no change in the sound. Because it's US TV they feel no shame in adding canned laughter that doesn't match the crowd size or imagined ambience at all. DLT claims his engine fell out in Amersham last Sunday. He may or may not mean his car.
1776 – Oh Susannah
Well, this is a mess. First off, it's a grandstanding arrangement of a California Gold Rush song traditionally performed by blackface minstrel troupes by a French band named after the year of American independence. Secondly, singer Jacques Mercier (who in his previous band Dynastie Crisis had invented rap) is rum indeed, bald and with an extravagant moustache he's either the prototype for cartoons of dumb-bell lifting strongmen or the violent prisoner Charles Bronson, were the latter ever to favour purple trousers of a width you could hold Summertime Special in. There's some staging going on here as we begin on a close up of him before slowly panning out and a lighting change revealing bloody loads of people, four extra musicians and eight gospel singers. Mercier certainly has an expressive way of singing, lots of muso looking into the lights and the occasional Eric Clapton feint. It's hard to know what to make of all this. That's probably why nobody bought it and 1776 didn't make a second single.
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Again with Kiki's pink dungarees for its first week of six (sorry) at number one. If this video ever looks rushed that's because it was, being shot in one take with three cameras and no rehearsal at a tiny dressed up soundstage round the back of a Rod Stewart TV special taping. DLT introduces the closing KC & the Sunshine Band and says goodbye "on behalf of Phil, Brian and the rest of the maniacs who work here". Don't drag them all into your private hell!
EDIT NEWS: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band again - no idea at time of writing which of the two performances, though it does mean two very differing songs about the American War of Independence in one show - and the grand return of Sheer Elegance, who by now are well beyond the reasoning of mortals. Check the evidence of It's Temptation - the outfits of a boxing Santa Claus with their trademark wing collars, some sort of early business with beads, a Hitler moustache and the half-hidden confession that the object of their love is under 16.
Next show Thursday 18th. Alternative Canon Week next week.
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
TOTP 8/7/76 (tx 20/7/11): last night before the Proms
Well, there's the first proper row this blog's stoked up. Even in such unfortunate circumstances, glad to find out that Popular, the fine UK number ones blog by Guardian/Pitchfork contributor Tom Ewing, is hosting a lively TOTP debate itself in its comments box. Also, hello back to the One For The Dads forum.
Tony Blackburn in charge this week, and he pretends to forget the show's name... until reminded by himself in a thought bubble. Cliche, I know, but this really isn't too far from one of the set-ups in Smashie & Nicey: End Of An Era. Really did their research, they did. Still can't work out what Archie Bell and the Drells are doing in their chart still. They seem to be doing laps of an inflatable boxing ring.
Sutherland Brothers & Quiver – When The Train Comes In
We start on a close-up of a 'SBQ' badge, which is one way of self-identifying. Since we last had them round Iain Sutherland has solved the problem of his receding hairline rather too well with a Breton fisherman's cap and a fulsome beard while his band have gone in for Doobie Brothers-style funk rhythm guitar, if that's not too much a suggestion led on by the train theme. Also, Bruce Thomas looks even more like Chris Langham than last time. There's plenty of dancing going on to their hi-hat heavy FM rock which from its middle eight's interplay sounds like the last chorus is just getting in the way unnecessarily, with the crowd giving each other plenty of space. Tony is so excited he bellows his link out. "Gonna be a smash, that one!" It wasn't.
Candi Station – Young Hearts Run Free
"Listen to the words of this one" Tony advises, good advice given nobody could have been concentrating on the track when presented with Flick's interpretation. As with Thin Lizzy it's awkwardly shuffling audience members intercut with a performance clip in which Candi seems to be wearing a dream catcher, which cocks up when the director fades back in seconds too early for the second chorus and we see another audience, this time American ergo confident, which had clearly been intercut by whichever US programme Staton was recorded for. Both her and the kids prove there was lots of elbow movement inherent to 1976 dancing.
The Champ's Boys Orchestra – Tubular Bells
Tony gets a head and shoulders shot with the studio lights above him, which just means loads of empty blank space as if Rusty Goffe had taken over the camera. And what's the song, Tone? "From Tubular Bells, it's called... from Champ's Boys". Idiot boards are called that for a reason. This week's big idea is to take advantage of the long hot summer and send Ruby Flipper to the Blue Peter garden, not running roughshod over the flowers Les Ferdinand-style but in fact on a big square of carpet in the middle of a dug out patch of soil. Six in white sitting in a circle being liberally doused with petals and confetti out of a big wicker bowl by Patti. There's a lot of outstretching of arms going on before the inevitable running around. It's quite paganistic in a way that doesn't suit a poor attempt to mix Mike Oldfield's theme with Love To Love You Baby. Coupled with that for further oddness, one of them is wearing inappropriate dress, a sheikh's outfit, and for once it's not Floyd lumbered with it (Philip, in fact). Some continuity kept, though - The Omnipresent Cherry Gillespie has the shortest skirt and thinnest top of all four women. Tony attempts a joke about a dead garden. It dies. Appropriately.
Billy Ocean – L.O.D. (Love On Delivery)
If all else fails, stick a soul singer in front of keen teens on the tiny tiered stage and let the orchestra do their worst. Billy's chosen to make himself known by sporting a bright pink top. One girl in the audience attempts oneupmanship in the awkward fashion stakes with triple denim (jeans, shirt, waistcoat) and a Wurzels memorial neckerchief.
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
The video in a pretend studio, which you used to see a lot but is always worth appreciating to see just how smug Elton's face between lines is.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – The Boston Tea Party
For the second time the introduction makes specific reference to the 200th anniversary of American independence, which must have been quite a big thing in that case. And in case we'd forgotten another long running perennial, Tony notes this is "just about the same age as David Hamilton". Just about the only act Tony doesn't actually call "sensational", they're back in the studio to scare the children. Harvey, with bloodhound eyes, fulsome beard and habit of staring down the lens as if it's offering him out, looks like he hasn't been to sleep since his last studio appearance. This is entirely plausible. He has, after all, chosen to appear on prime time BBC television in denim hot pants and a massive hat. There's a small cannon in front of the drumkit but we don't see it go off, and no wonder as you fear what Harvey might have thought it was and what his reaction would have been. Further point: the keyboard appears to be of that Casio-rivalling brand Professional Piano. Surely a Ronseal offshoot. "Showing a pair of sensational legs" Tony lies.
Dorothy Moore – Misty Blue
More Soul Train setpiece, this time far too slow for anyone to appreciably dance to in anything but a sway. "I've never known a time when there's been so many great records about" claims Tony, despite the evidence of this run so far.
5000 Volts – Dr Kiss Kiss
And here's another oddity that, while the records claim it made number eight, seems so out of place it's possible it never actually existed beyond osmosis. A couple of people are seen walking away from the stage after one line, which isn't that sporting but does demonstrate the folly of linking a huge voiced country singer in Linda Kelly sporting a heavy secretary-goes-clubbing fringe with a band who start out tentatively disco-funky - and only a tentative disco-funk band would pose for promo shots like this - before going the full sub-Fox. And by that we mean the most televisually ostentatious talkbox playing we've ever seen, the guitarist gurning to camera and wrapping his lips round the pipe where others (alright, Frampton) do it casually as if we might not notice. Meanwhile the bassist produces a stethoscope and for some reason checks Kelly's shoulder. I'm not making this up. After that's done with Tony introduces "a very surprise guest", which must be a superior level of surprise. It's Ian Mitchell, who seems to be about twelve but is the new bassist for the Bay City Rollers, who in a highly stilted fashion and while sporting an open shirt lets Tony know they played to 50,000 kids in America and they'll be touring here in September. Once Tony has to introduce the next performance he really doesn't know where to look. FYI, Mitchell left in November claiming he was "getting out before I stick my head in a gas oven", not that that stops him playing in America as The Bay City Rollers Featuring Ian Mitchell.
The Real Thing – You To Me Are Everything
A new number one! Presumably the three silver objects are meant to be the stars Eddie Amoo wants to take out of the sky for you, but they look more like forward planning a performance for the Christmas show. Costumes still haven't been synchronised, Eddie in a flat cap, one bandmate in butcher's pinstriped dungarees, another with the magically returned guitar apparently in a woman's orange halterneck top. Awkwardly someone is occasionally clapping along too close to a mike, unless that was an orchestra member wanting to make a point about union rates. Marvellously, at the end Tony facilitates a stage invasion, though once up there none of the kids really know what to do and end up looking like lemons, which is easy enough anyway given they're taking inspiration from Tony Blackburn. War play us out, "see you on Saturday for Seaside Special".
EDIT NEWS: There isn't any, it was only ever a half hour long show this week. Makes this gig a lot simpler.
Tony Blackburn in charge this week, and he pretends to forget the show's name... until reminded by himself in a thought bubble. Cliche, I know, but this really isn't too far from one of the set-ups in Smashie & Nicey: End Of An Era. Really did their research, they did. Still can't work out what Archie Bell and the Drells are doing in their chart still. They seem to be doing laps of an inflatable boxing ring.
Sutherland Brothers & Quiver – When The Train Comes In
We start on a close-up of a 'SBQ' badge, which is one way of self-identifying. Since we last had them round Iain Sutherland has solved the problem of his receding hairline rather too well with a Breton fisherman's cap and a fulsome beard while his band have gone in for Doobie Brothers-style funk rhythm guitar, if that's not too much a suggestion led on by the train theme. Also, Bruce Thomas looks even more like Chris Langham than last time. There's plenty of dancing going on to their hi-hat heavy FM rock which from its middle eight's interplay sounds like the last chorus is just getting in the way unnecessarily, with the crowd giving each other plenty of space. Tony is so excited he bellows his link out. "Gonna be a smash, that one!" It wasn't.
Candi Station – Young Hearts Run Free
"Listen to the words of this one" Tony advises, good advice given nobody could have been concentrating on the track when presented with Flick's interpretation. As with Thin Lizzy it's awkwardly shuffling audience members intercut with a performance clip in which Candi seems to be wearing a dream catcher, which cocks up when the director fades back in seconds too early for the second chorus and we see another audience, this time American ergo confident, which had clearly been intercut by whichever US programme Staton was recorded for. Both her and the kids prove there was lots of elbow movement inherent to 1976 dancing.
The Champ's Boys Orchestra – Tubular Bells
Tony gets a head and shoulders shot with the studio lights above him, which just means loads of empty blank space as if Rusty Goffe had taken over the camera. And what's the song, Tone? "From Tubular Bells, it's called... from Champ's Boys". Idiot boards are called that for a reason. This week's big idea is to take advantage of the long hot summer and send Ruby Flipper to the Blue Peter garden, not running roughshod over the flowers Les Ferdinand-style but in fact on a big square of carpet in the middle of a dug out patch of soil. Six in white sitting in a circle being liberally doused with petals and confetti out of a big wicker bowl by Patti. There's a lot of outstretching of arms going on before the inevitable running around. It's quite paganistic in a way that doesn't suit a poor attempt to mix Mike Oldfield's theme with Love To Love You Baby. Coupled with that for further oddness, one of them is wearing inappropriate dress, a sheikh's outfit, and for once it's not Floyd lumbered with it (Philip, in fact). Some continuity kept, though - The Omnipresent Cherry Gillespie has the shortest skirt and thinnest top of all four women. Tony attempts a joke about a dead garden. It dies. Appropriately.
Billy Ocean – L.O.D. (Love On Delivery)
If all else fails, stick a soul singer in front of keen teens on the tiny tiered stage and let the orchestra do their worst. Billy's chosen to make himself known by sporting a bright pink top. One girl in the audience attempts oneupmanship in the awkward fashion stakes with triple denim (jeans, shirt, waistcoat) and a Wurzels memorial neckerchief.
Elton John & Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
The video in a pretend studio, which you used to see a lot but is always worth appreciating to see just how smug Elton's face between lines is.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – The Boston Tea Party
For the second time the introduction makes specific reference to the 200th anniversary of American independence, which must have been quite a big thing in that case. And in case we'd forgotten another long running perennial, Tony notes this is "just about the same age as David Hamilton". Just about the only act Tony doesn't actually call "sensational", they're back in the studio to scare the children. Harvey, with bloodhound eyes, fulsome beard and habit of staring down the lens as if it's offering him out, looks like he hasn't been to sleep since his last studio appearance. This is entirely plausible. He has, after all, chosen to appear on prime time BBC television in denim hot pants and a massive hat. There's a small cannon in front of the drumkit but we don't see it go off, and no wonder as you fear what Harvey might have thought it was and what his reaction would have been. Further point: the keyboard appears to be of that Casio-rivalling brand Professional Piano. Surely a Ronseal offshoot. "Showing a pair of sensational legs" Tony lies.
Dorothy Moore – Misty Blue
More Soul Train setpiece, this time far too slow for anyone to appreciably dance to in anything but a sway. "I've never known a time when there's been so many great records about" claims Tony, despite the evidence of this run so far.
5000 Volts – Dr Kiss Kiss
And here's another oddity that, while the records claim it made number eight, seems so out of place it's possible it never actually existed beyond osmosis. A couple of people are seen walking away from the stage after one line, which isn't that sporting but does demonstrate the folly of linking a huge voiced country singer in Linda Kelly sporting a heavy secretary-goes-clubbing fringe with a band who start out tentatively disco-funky - and only a tentative disco-funk band would pose for promo shots like this - before going the full sub-Fox. And by that we mean the most televisually ostentatious talkbox playing we've ever seen, the guitarist gurning to camera and wrapping his lips round the pipe where others (alright, Frampton) do it casually as if we might not notice. Meanwhile the bassist produces a stethoscope and for some reason checks Kelly's shoulder. I'm not making this up. After that's done with Tony introduces "a very surprise guest", which must be a superior level of surprise. It's Ian Mitchell, who seems to be about twelve but is the new bassist for the Bay City Rollers, who in a highly stilted fashion and while sporting an open shirt lets Tony know they played to 50,000 kids in America and they'll be touring here in September. Once Tony has to introduce the next performance he really doesn't know where to look. FYI, Mitchell left in November claiming he was "getting out before I stick my head in a gas oven", not that that stops him playing in America as The Bay City Rollers Featuring Ian Mitchell.
The Real Thing – You To Me Are Everything
A new number one! Presumably the three silver objects are meant to be the stars Eddie Amoo wants to take out of the sky for you, but they look more like forward planning a performance for the Christmas show. Costumes still haven't been synchronised, Eddie in a flat cap, one bandmate in butcher's pinstriped dungarees, another with the magically returned guitar apparently in a woman's orange halterneck top. Awkwardly someone is occasionally clapping along too close to a mike, unless that was an orchestra member wanting to make a point about union rates. Marvellously, at the end Tony facilitates a stage invasion, though once up there none of the kids really know what to do and end up looking like lemons, which is easy enough anyway given they're taking inspiration from Tony Blackburn. War play us out, "see you on Saturday for Seaside Special".
EDIT NEWS: There isn't any, it was only ever a half hour long show this week. Makes this gig a lot simpler.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)