TOTP 9/6/77 (tx 28/6/12): we love our queen, god save

Tony greets us in his usual slicky cold way, and we're off in Jubilee week. Keep that detail in mind. The Eagles on their way down marks up one of the great inconsistencies of entirely living 1977 through these repeats, in that we've almost completely skipped the presence of one of the great rock classics were it not for Legs & Co's Spanish interpretation. Now here's some stout manly MEN:



SPOILER: the Sex Pistols aren't number one here either.

Osibisa – The Warrior
Always going to be a tricky sell when a show begins on a close-up of a bongo which reveals its player seems to be wearing a small child's toy on a necklace. It's energetic Afrobeat, which means a smiling drummer and someone wearing a headband and cape but no shirt employed to play a huge shaker when he's not manfully miming a trumpet part. The Ladybirds are complete fish out of water attempting to add vocal chorale light and shade. The bongo player's more of a worry, all sticking out elbowy in his actions, never going to get proper force downwards like that. At the end our extraneous friend picks up a clarinet, with which he seems to be making the sound of a recorder. Tony comes on laughing, as always.

Electric Light Orchestra – Telephone Line
"Let's keep the holiday atmosphere going" urges a post-bank holiday Tony. With a ballad. Video repeat.

Berni Flint – Southern Comfort
"It's even better, it's going to go even higher (than his first hit)" beams Tony. Obviously, it didn't. This isn't that surprising, not being a touching folk ballad but a jaunty strum with an unfortunate touch of the Richard Digance about getting it together in the country that seems about a decade out of time in 1977. The second verse is about himself - "they put me on a programme and the votes came flooding in, and they told me you're a winner, you're a star" - with a conclusion that suggests he doesn't want any part of the fame really. The record buying public concurred. Be careful what you wish for.

Frankie Miller's Full House – Be Good To Yourself
Frankie belts it out once more, still not getting over the suspicion they've watched the Faces a bit too much given their stage positions, his craft and the general choogling undertow.

The Wurzels – Farmer Bill's Cowman
Not before time, they literally face down Tony. The problem with Farmer Bill's Cowman - well, apart from the obvious - is following Brand New Key and Una Paloma Blanca it's based on a song with no lyrics and thus no vocal melody to rearrange, I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman by Whistling Jack Smith (and incidentally, if any of you are looking to adopt a new dance style...) All the mugging in the world - cockerel impressions, looks to side camera of disgust donning a top hat, referencing Burlington Bertie - isn't going to convince the audience that these people are doing anything useful any more, quite some change from the days people would fight each other with balloons to get in shot with them. To their credit they're singing live; to nobody's credit one of them puts the mike out to various audience members and is met by stony silence. They're all wearing election-style rosettes. They lost their deposits.

Gladys Knight & The Pips – Baby Don’t Change Your Mind
Horrible 1977 edit at the start of this, cutting without warning from Tony to a shot of some sort of disc a young Knight had been awarded at some undisclosed time. The amateur hour at the VT suite feel carries on through the video, which features the Pips rehearsing moves in their own clothes in what could either be someone's oversized studio flat or a provincial leisure centre, being watched by Gladys wearing her own band's T-shirt. Then there's Knight and band recording their vocals seemingly without studio facilities but with bright orange plastic-seeming headphones, which they're all holding under their chins. Surely eventually someone would realise there's an inbuilt way they could keep them on while freeing a hand or two. Eventually we get some cursory shots of a balding man at a soundboard, but for someone attempting to record four lead vocal takes at once he seems very relaxed.

Neil Innes – Silver Jubilee
"You're probably wondering what this little bit of string is here" enthuses Tony, next to a piece of string that hasn't been seen before and you may not have spotted until Tony predicted you'd be wondering about. It's to set off a load of balloons on top of... oh my. Neil Innes, second in command of the Bonzo Dog Band, author of the Rutles, most plausible seventh Python candidate, man behind the long-demanded-for-DVD-release series The Innes Book Of Records, auteur of The Raggy Dolls. Him. He turns out to be the anti-Rotten. Imagine if this was the only thing you now knew about him. Now, his real intentions are kept straightfaced as to potential subversiveness and, presumably after being tweeted at by half the viewers, he claimed this morning "Jubilee song was a dare", but there's precious little irony inherent when you're standing under a flotilla of balloons entirely surrounded by young people waving Union Jacks singing "sailing in the yacht Britannia, nowhere in the world would ban ya" to a frankly reggaefied backing track that makes Paul Nicholas sound like King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown. Then there's his conduct during the short break, which in its jauntily skipping to the back of the stage, picking up a flag and waving it to either side isn't too far from the David Parton model. Top marks for working the word "highfalutin" in, mind.

The Stranglers – Go Buddy Go
"We're gonna change tempo a little bit now", although that is at least rather jaunty and not too far from this sort of pace. Then it becomes clear Tony cannot actually physically say the magic word (or two, right Kid?) yet in this Pistolian of all weeks: "a bit of that sort of, er, a bit of rock now". Same as two weeks ago. A royal tribute followed by this? That's got to have been deliberate.

Demis Roussos - Kyrila
"We'll conjure up the lovely island of Demis" promises Tony, which seems a bit personal. It's the fulcrum of a thought about people going on holiday, because he's Greek, see. This clearly hasn't been filmed at the same time as everything else as the blue smocked Demis is in front of a big off-white wall like it's Pebble Mill or something, no sign given of the usual Pops studio sets, with a wind machine to one side and, to denote the luxury holiday content, two potted plastic trees in front of him, not so much carefully arranged to give the impression of far off desert islands as grabbed out of reception and hoping for the best.

Honky – Join The Party
"I've got two ladies here, you come from Blackburn, aren't you? What a sensible place to come from!" So there you have it - Blackburn, says namesake, is "sensible". Such positivity. Odd that this repeat made the early edit when two new songs and a third that hasn't been on at 7.30 before, but we're long past the stage of second guessing the editing intentions.

The Jacksons – Show You The Way To Go
Tony recalls seeing the Osmonds in Vegas "who were sensational" and spotting the Jacksons in the audience. See, the jet set lifestyle. This seems to be the same set as Demis, with a single line of the backs of people's heads in front of the stage, some of whom are wandering about throughout, but somehow with a setting sun projection behind them the trees look just a little more convincing. The blue slit dresses don't fit the routine that seems generic and half-arsed as it is, as if this was one of those late replacement song weeks and they had the set built so they may as well kill two birds with one stone.

Bob Marley & The Wailers – Exodus
Well, this is no Neil Innes. Tony impresses on us that "wherever you go they've had smash hits", this being Marley's debut (and penultimate) appearance in the studio. Just for that it's something of a landmark and the moment clearly gets to the director, who halfway through cuts to some lights for too long, then very briefly to the bassist with his mouth open, then back to the I-Threes where he started before finding Bob again. Even more jarringly, it takes ages for the audience to get into it - there's plenty of strutting at the back from the well dressed older kids but down the front the best they can manage is some half hearted Union Jack waving, which shorn of context seems almost adversorial. Also note that just like any band unwilling to cart a full backline around they're kit sharing, sharing stage space and an organ with Osibisa

Rod Stewart – The First Cut Is The Deepest
One more week of waggling from the rear and emoting with the forehead. (Alright, stop that, we all know the story by now). Tony hopes we join him for Seaside Special and over the aforesnowed Emerson Lake & Palmer there's the rare sound of a fulsome round of applause over the start of the credits. They're supposed to be dancing, right?

TOTP 24/6/76 (tx 14/7/11): fuck Art, let's dance

Firstly, because people are starting to question this and I had an email about it since we all last met up (hello David), the issue of missing weeks. Despite what was made known at the start of the run there are eight shows missing believed wiped from the year, especially in its last couple of months. In fact I think 1976 has been chosen because it's the first year they've got a good set of unbroken runs of retained shows for. As it stands they're showing The Sky At Night once a month in that slot, which works because... well, because it's a well known monthly programme, but for our purposes it actually works out that missing out a week a month means hitting the last pre-Christmas show of 1976 on the Thursday before Christmas 2011. There's no official confirmation of all that but it works out so well it's the most likely explanation. The first lost programme is in fact next week, which is annoying if only because it contains a failed comedy single that sounds fantastic, and we will be covering that absence.

Oh yeah, and for at least the next couple of weeks the live Proms coverage shoves TOTP back onto Wednesday. As for this week we're back in the 1970s one-liner and dubious hairline realm of Diddy David Hamilton, sporting huge badges on *both* lapels, one reading 'I'm In The Mood For Love', the other as far as I can tell 'It's No More'. "I'd like you to meet my fan club" he begins. I don't need to fill in the details, apart from how he ends by doing a pointless but flirtatious fall back aided by a Nicola Roberts lookalike, right down to the complexion and nervous half-smile. Her, not him. Though it could easily apply to him, actually.

Pilot - Canada
First things first, this is the fifth time in six weeks the show has started with a record that failed to make the top 50 at all. Not only that, but this is a run that will become eight in nine weeks. What's causing this? You have the marketing opportunity of the prime position in the country's top music show and it turns out to be a poisoned chalice? In further contemporary news, the director has brought in a wobbly fade. It doesn't achieve much other than a showy way of getting from one shot to another but it's more interesting than the band, who weren't going to chart again now the days of Magic and January were gone. No wonder, given this is a song maybe trying to hitch a ride on the Typically Tropical-esque ticket of marvelling at things across the Atlantic but choosing to deliver them in the medium of plodding AM rock, which doesn't wash when the best specific toothy Paul Whitehouse lookalike singer Billy Lyall can come up with is their "snow peaked mountains tumbling down, you had them from birth". There's some guitar solo duelling with Ian Bairnson cheating by using a twelve-string, even though he only seems to use half of it. The bassist has an open shirt, maybe attempting to cement a status as Pilot's looker.

Bryan Ferry - Let's Stick Together
"What more appropriate? In this weather we can't do anything else" chortles Diddy, our first reference to the long hot summer of '76. You've seen this video already. Spiv tache, Jerry, all that, though it must be stated for permanent record that a red spotted tie does not complement a suave look when worn over a suit jacket. Diddy claims everyone's wearing white suits as "we're all doubling as ice cream salesmen". Having already begun the link by extending a hand towards an imagined stage, it seems he's trying to convince us that Ferry was there all along.

Mistura - The Flasher
Ruby Flipper time, and anyone making reference to how it should have been a literal performance can get out now. In fact it's as opaque a raiding of the dressing up box as any TOTP dance troupe ever got, and they get to do it in the round too. So that's the girls in tiara and evening wear (long gloves inclusive), already retro white polka dotted skirt and flower garland taped to chest and hula skirt (Cherry, inevitably, and for the vidcappers' record it should be stated it stays in place when she's turned upside down) and the boys in cossack wear, flying suit and full tiger catsuit with appropriately painted face (Floyd, inevitably - was he just slow to rehearsals every week? If he were a footballer he'd be spending years only driving a yellow Robin Reliant). And, well, they get into a circle and perform one by one in the middle. Occasionally some expressive lifting occurs, ending with the girls on the boys' shoulders in an ever decreasing circle. At other times they all come in together in formation and do a move. It's Wigan Casino meets speciality suit hire £15 a night.

Demis Roussous - Forever And Ever



"It's been quite a long time since we had an EP in the charts" says Diddy enticingly. We get a live in concert clip featuring a particularly glistening kaftan and the biggest mike head you've seen. In the original stage version it was José Feliciano's version of Light My Fire and it was changed for copyright reasons, you know.

The New Seekers – It’s So Nice (To Have You Home)
"A lot of people were very sad when the New Seekers split up and no doubt they'll be glad to know that they're back together now." Really? Well, it's possible, but then so is that fans will spot that two members have changed. Very much an air of ITV LE, all forced jollity and smiley handclap and sideways movement from the two female singers as if Abba had never happened with a comparatively brave brief middle eight attempt at falsetto harmony. They seem to have an extra acoustic guitarist where the drummer usually sits. This didn't reach the top 40, by the way, and co-founder Paul Layton later said "I think that with hindsight we identified less with that song than the others". Given it features a new member proclaiming "it's so nice to have you home again and you're looking just exactly as you looked before" I can understand that.

Osibisa – Dance The Body Music
Ooh, Noel's turned up for this one, he's there in the back of shot...oh, wait, this is a repeat of the performance from his most recent show and the producer didn't spot him. That cheap champers won't drink itself.

Art Garfunkel – I Believe When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever
Having been given something the shape and about the size of a wedding cake base to perform from, Art's a bit stuck for things to do as he overemotes a Stevie Wonder song that threatens to carry on for as long as John Miles' Music. With thumbs in pockets he chooses to stand stock still. At least one girl in the audience is prominently doing likewise. In fact, the big wobble just before the final panning out camera shot might well be its operator falling asleep on the job. No, this didn't chart either. Sackable work by the editors at the end as an audience almost entirely in shot sway noncommittally yet are clapping on the soundtrack.

The Real Thing – You To Me Are Everything
This week's mix and match of outfits is less pronounced, though it does seem to incorporate a crimson butcher's apron and matching trousers. Or maybe they're stylised dungarees. Eddie meanwhile rocks a choker and satin suit, the latter in the future style of Lenny Henry's Theophilus P Wildebeeste. Are the other three meant to be clapping in unison? They appear to be not so solid about whether they should be a backing singing trio in unison - no rhythm guitar this week - or just some mates mucking in. Again we hear applause but don't see it, but one of the girls flocking to Diddy's side for the last link is dancing along nevertheless. Maybe she got confused. Another of his companions seems to be an exact cross between Kathy Burke and Rebecca Front. They get to hear Diddy's introduction to the Beach Boys record that was this week's pointless reissue first hand - "if you want to get good vibrations for yourself try sitting on the washing machine after the show, it works wonders for you". Burke/Front grins. The dancing girl is too preoccupied with the middle distance to take it in.

EDIT NEWS: All studio work - the Sensational Alex Harvey Band (back in the studio very, very soon) and the monologuing Lee Garrett repeated, Cherry alone (see what we mean?) doing Dorothy Moore's Misty Blue (One For The Dads archive and, losing out to the vagaries of how easily the edit can be made, Johnny Nash, again in the studio, covering (What A) Wonderful World.

TOTP 10/6/76 (tx 23/6/11): Tea Party mandate

Odd Twitter #totp comment of last week, which was spotted during the Saturday showing: "do the bbc have any old totp from 1976 that DONT have 'our kid'?" Er, yeah, all of them apart from last week, the Christmas show and possibly one of the lost shows. At least it's not the endless, endless get out clause "this is why punk had to happen". Because obviously Malcolm McLaren was sprung into action solely by JJ Barrie and Mud, and any week now the entire top 30 is going to be overtaken by punk records. There's a distinct air overtaking these shows of nostalgia somehow not being how it used to be, that what was actually showing at a time when Top Of The Pops was another branch of light entertainment, as it was for most of its lifespan, was somehow wrong and it must be the BBC's fault, not yours. Even those who made their name from easy nostalgia are looking on bemusedly. Still, onwards.

Oh yeah, another week off on 6th July, meaning another week of nothing but Alternative Canons.

Anyway, this week's big news - the director has discovered split screen. Noel gets to trial it in the time honoured looking one way/looking back over the other shoulder/into full screen all in real time effect. Before long they'd have invented a way to run tapes back to back and no doubt DLT would soon enough use it to have a conversation with himself.


The Surprise Sisters – Got To Get You Into My Life
I don't know if the recording has this much Philly soul influence - it was produced by Tony Visconti, it says here - or if the BBC orchestra are doing this cover a good service, because the Sisters (the actual Sutcliffe sisters, for the record) don't look the most with-it of vocal acts. Their step-step-step-bend choreography is half-hearted at best and they still manage at one point to visibly get their mike wires tangled, while two of them are wearing dresses that don't exactly flatter their figures and appear to be made out of the purple wrappers from Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Quality Streets. Another one appears to have nearly finished growing a quiff, an unbecoming look in that set-up. Vocally, well, maybe they were merely the Nolans ahead of their optimum time. It doesn't help when a directorial decision means they all end up facing away from camera on the second chorus lead-in, but the die had rather marvellously long been cast when on the first chorus one of the Sisters looks directly down the camera with hand on hip and stern of expression while her colleagues face straight on. After that point she's plainly minding her own business. By the third chorus she's stopped bothering to sing/mime. Our favourite moment comes at this point where the one nearest the camera appears to have been confronted by a sudden, hitherto repressed memory. It's Noel's breakfast show record of the week, somehow.

The Real Thing – You To Me Are Everything
More mismatched wardrobes this week including a ripped T-shirt and a hat with an even wider brim than last time, now of cartoon UFO proportions, but no guitar and everyone more spaced out, in one member's case so he can lead into the start of the lead vocal with some impromptu Pete Townshend windmill air guitar. Maybe he got bored with trying to mime handclaps. Most glaringly, Eddie Amoo is wearing a T-shirt with, possibly picked out in sequins, the legend 'U 2 ME R EVERYTHING'. Somewhere Prince was taking notes.

Dion & The Belmonts – The Wanderer
Noel takes a moment to salute the eclectic nature of that week's chart, mentioning "comedy numbers like JJ Barrie - oop, no, sorry, wash my mouth out, The Wurzels..." Maybe this was a thread carried over from his radio show, because you can't imagine The UK's Favourite DJs were all entirely mad about No Charge any more than those reading this are. Dion, for whom this was a hit first time in 1961 and whose chart rundown shot is a close-up of an album sleeve, is deemed to be representative of "a more nostalgic feel", even though chief retrospective agent Paul Nicholas had by now left the top 30. Dion had in fact tried a Spector-produced comeback the previous year and would release another album in 1976 but presumably his old label fancied a major spoiler. It certainly couldn't be much more spoilt than by the Ruby Flipper treatment, a Patti solo number in a plunging neckline jumpsuit in front of some curtains. The decision to interpret this must have been taken fairly late because Patti doesn't seem to really know what to do and the director is as clueless, breaking out the split screen for an eye close-up, a side of face shot and a longer image of her arm with hand clenching and unclenching in time to the beat. Second go: pursing lips, head and shoulders, seperating of fingers in time. Third attempt: feet close-up, upper face close-up, non-committal moving. By this stage it's looking more likely that Flick was really too busy that week.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – The Boston Tea Party
"Rather appropriate for bicentennial year" suggests Noel, who doesn't seem entirely sure of what's going on. In fairness, neither would Harvey.



Zal Cleminson doesn't make the most convincing Pierrot clown, does he? The crowd are giving dancing a go but it's far too awkward for any sort of proper feet engagement. For someone noted for theatrical onstage behaviour, much as he's giving it plenty vocally Harvey's body language on the second chorus, regarding those who are throwing themselves into it with a withering eye with arms sternly folded, gives away his uncomfortableness with the idea that this should be flung at the pop kids. Now, you see that thing he's holding up from a holster towards the end?

Archie Bell & The Drells – Soul City Walk
"If you're wondering what he was holding in his hand, that's known as a drell spoon". A what? Furthermore, he's planting props on bands in lieu of proper links? This does sound like the sort of thing Noel might do, in truth. The Drells aren't around this week, maybe fearing damage to their glittery jackets and Northern club night issue frilly shirts if they have to be shoved in suitcases for transit.

Flintlock – Dawn
Described enticingly by Noel as "some gentlemen from Dagenham". In fact the kids would have known them from Thames' children's sketch show You Must Be Joking! and its 1976 follow-up Pauline's Quirkes, making this something of a sortie onto enemy territory as far as youthful telly is concerned. Despite such exposure this was their only top 30 single, and peaking at 30 at that. The reason seems apparent, namely they were a poor screaming tartan-encrusted 15 year old girl's Bay City Rollers with added too much smiling and a sax solo that sounds like a goose being worried. History will remember them. For their namecheck in Half Man Half Biscuit's Everything's AOR, of course.

Bryan Ferry – Let’s Stick Together
It's about this point that Noel stops making sense. "It's a very very long time since we've had an artist on Top Of The Pops from behind the Iron Curtain. In fact I can't remember the last time." Er, yeah. Meanwhile Bryan's got his spiv tache and white suit with bowling shoes on for the semi-famous video clip with ostentatiously lurking Jerry Hall.

Osibisa – Dance The Body Music
Percussion! So much percussion! And band style possibly filched from Sly & the Family Stone. Course, it's unlikely many would have heard African rhythms and call and response like this in Britain at the time. Noel's actually laughing when we come back to him to find he pronounces it Os-sea-bee-ser, but he can't have been that truly enthralled as we see him in the background looking distracted before wandering off to the other side of the cameras, a crane shot revealing just how small that studio audience really is. There's a half empty bottle of wine on the keyboard stand, which may have helped. Noel, when not put off by a mysterious cheer after the applause has died down, tells us they've "just come from that part of the world where they grow little Rolf Harrises". It's called Australia, Noel. We're adults. "No, not the west country..."

The Wurzels – Combine Harvester
Now that's a segue. Repeat of the tractor-aided second studio performance, should you need to know, though Noel feels the need to add a top of his voice "ooh-arr!" just as the vocals start. A cursory exit, but Noel does give a namecheck to our playout Young Hearts Run Free by Candi Staton, though the edit fades it out right as it hits the chorus.

EDIT NEWS: The full version won't be on iPlayer until Sunday, I think, but it says here it included Slik (keeping to that no third appearance on the edited version rule), Lee Garrett again, Lulu and Philip from Ruby Flipper (obviously all seven got credited at the end despite only three appearing) doing The Continental for whatever reason that was deemed TOTP worthy and the Elton John & Kiki Dee video (no it wasn't, I was working off an inaccurate list).