TOTP 15/7/76 (tx 27/7/11): look what the 'puss dragged in

First off, if you haven't clocked the sidebar or just didn't care, this blog has itself a Twitter account, not only with a feed of new posts on here but also daily (unless I'm away) On This Day In TOTP History YouTube posts. Go follow.

Here, then, is the sight and sound of someone who thinks they're clever about television. Noel is on the back of a camera gantry, headset and all. "I thought tonight's proceedings were going to be held in camera but in fact we're just mucking in" he explains. Presumably it meant something at the time, it's just with 35 years' hindsight they seem like a jumble of words. Is it to do with industrial action?

Sunfighter – Story Of The Drag Race Queen
Something we've heard a lot of in the shortish number of weeks we've been following 1976 is bands who heard one lot making a radio breakthrough three or four years earlier and thinking they can follow suit. Sunfighter and their hair metal coiffured singer (and 1987 Eurovision contestant) Rikki Peebles, proving they were ahead of their time in one respect if still the sort of cut one shouldn't be using near the word 'queen' lest it cause gender confusion to the near-sighted, obviously followed the Faces and Queen closely but once their big exciting power chord intro, uncomfortably close to that of the Manic Street Preachers' Australia, is over it might as well be a different song, one which Roger Taylor wrote, perhaps. The song is about a drag race driver, one who seems to enter every race convinced he's about to die in a crash which can't be good for positivity, and the sort of loose broad that generally only exists in 1960s coming of age B-movies. One of the surely overmanned three guitarists - maybe the one who is Sarah Harding off Girls Aloud's father, it's not implausible looking past his Noel Edmonds hair - gets the middle eight vocal. Maybe he won it in a bet. Tellingly, the band are all in white except the bass player, whose hooped T-shirt and jeans suggests a sessioneer ringer. Still, the audience are moving well, especially the five members dressed as sailors. Hamilton would have had them up on stage with him in no time.

Liverpool Express – You Are My Love
Them, and those visual flares, again.

The Beatles – Back In The USSR
"We Moscow, I'm sorry to Russia but we're off to see the Cossacks" Noel deadpans, or perhaps in retrospect finds as bemusing as the rest of us even if that sort of conceit is pure Edmonds. Doesn't work in print, obviously. Ruby Flipper time, and with something of literal heft to work with the costume department come up trumps - hammer and sickle flag, fake snow, barbed wire, big fur coats and woolly hats for the men, headscarves and big peasant dresses for the women with TOCG* grabbing the predominately/significantly virginal white dress. Beyond that it's a freeform version of lyrical expression, and yet again Floyd cops the worst of the first verse as he has to get across the concepts of reading and putting something on a knee while simultaneously prancing and - perhaps artist's own interpretation, this - expressing facial shock. The various chorus routines are wonders of combined movement, including some very decadent western twist-like moves. There's some pretend dragging to the gulags and a little chorus line hoofing but it's a full two minutes before Philip gets to unleash some cossack dancing before getting tired quickly. Sue gets to be Jojo, for the record.

* The Omnipresent Cherry Gillespie

Bobby Goldsboro – The Story Of Buck
Noel tells us that after Bobby's big hit Honey he'd been "sent many others in a similar vein". So much for diversifying. He also tells us this, which is also commonly known as A Butterfly For Bucky, is "a real heartstring tugger", which given we've only just got past the not all that dissimilar in lyrical tone No Charge is a bravura statement. It is admittedly hard to take in the emotional pull of a song when you're witnessing a camera charge through a group of people dancing much like they danced to Sunfighter - one gets a visible tap on the arm and makes off like it's a fire bell - but we're too cynical here in 2011 to really fall for a song about a blind child gifted sight by being landed on by a butterfly in a hospital, the moral being about the dreams of children or somesuch. Noel may reckon it's "as bad as peeling onions" - reaction, presumably, not the act - but the sailors are notably standing right behind the stage absolutely stock still for half the song, two of them eventually joining in for the clear sake of it. One hesitates to ever give Steve Wright the time of day, but there's a TOTP2 upload on YouTube and after Goldsboro has finished singing he bluntly notes "he lives in a world of his own, doesn't he?" Noel reckons with Tony Blackburn-like unerringness that this "could be very successful". It wasn't.

Dr Hook – A Little Bit More
"I fell for this song hook, line and sinker. I got rid of the line and sinker, here's the Hook". Oh bloody hell, Noel, just learn when to stop. Dennis Locorriere's beard is at ridiculous levels of length and depth, virtually two-tiered and topped off with shoulder-length hair that when put in a woodland glade as he is in this video makes him look like a native. Then at the end Ray Sawyer gets homoerotic with him, which nobody called for.

Glamourpuss – Superman
See, Arthur, they did manage it. Well, Noel's clearly got in tonight.



WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN. Making the Surprise Sisters look like Destiny's Child, this didn't chart and perhaps wisely there is nothing at all online about who these people were, unless the lead singer really is a bewigged Carol Vorderman. It's not all their fault, the backing is too brusque and someone's mixed the backing vocals over Carol, but someone decided that their best move would be for two of them to change places before the big finish. This might be why prime-time variety died.

Status Quo – Mystery Song
A live clip! The wind machine goes on full! The chords keep on changing between the three for basic boogie! Rick Parfitt shows some manly chest! Repeat to fade. It's not as good as Hugh Laurie's Mystery Song.

Jimmy James & The Vagabonds – Now Is The Time
The supper club Vagabonds are still in place, this time proving with a wah-wah guitar pedal and a disco hi-hat they can really coast along. For his part James is a consummate performer with a fine eye-popping expression, enlivening some slightly second division funk and enthralling suspiciously many kids in huge white caps.

Demis Roussous – Forever And Ever
"What is the really big thing in Greece at the moment? No, not a BBC hamburger". That doesn't even work, you don't get grease on hamburgers unless you're very clumsy. Interestingly it's not the same video as a couple of weeks ago, this one shot close in - very close in at times - at head height so we don't fully get to see what mighty outfit the genetic spawn of Danny Baker and Geoff Capes has on. Noel unsportingly calls him "the Greek Womble" before the Chanter Sisters' overtly blockbusting vocal on Sideshow sees us off into the night.

EDIT NEWS: Two moments of great interest. Second one first, there's Tavares' Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel as essayed by Ruby Flipper as angels and devils. Here it is, and note TOCG has the best fake crying in the business before later managing to stare out Floyd, who having had so much practice at becostumed indignity is on fine threatening form. For that he gets to take the last dance with TOCG and Lulu. All works out well in the end. Except, that is, for the Paul Nicholas-a-gram of television pop interpretative dance Gavin Trace, for whom this was his last show. According to Philip on the old TOTP2 site "Gavin, I think, was finding it hard to keep up, because of the pace and quick turn around. Flick again didn't make a big thing of it, she just asked whether he was happy in the group. He then just volunteered to leave. She dealt with it really well."

The other song not included in the pre-watershed version (and whether it was in the late night one I don't know at time of publishing, but let's treat this show as a fait accompli) was a cover of a Tavares US hit from the previous year, though it wouldn't chart here until 1986, which the more famous version of would be released much later by Take That. Now.. how are we going to tackle this? Bluntly?



Odd thing about that intro, which is largely why it's embedded here, is a suddenly reticent Noel is presenting this as King being revealed as the man behind the record, but in the rundowns both last week and this there's been a big photo of him and the 'band' have been referred to with his name in brackets afterwards. Not entirely surprising, that footnote's presence, King having gained the level of fame which meant Noel could introduce him as a mystery (despite the vocal style being recognisable) knowing the viewers would instantly know who he was through a certain level of projected self-regard running through his prolific work as recording artist, A&R, manager, producer, label boss and general man about town. Lulu gets a backup dancing gig still in her Back In The USSR gear. This was his last appearance as a singer on the show, though in the early 80s he'd occasionally pop in with a US chart update. And a million letters to Paul Dacre remained unsent.

8/4/76: Vince Pinner Meets Rockers Uptown

At this stage Noel Edmonds was Radio 1 breakfast show host and about to start on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop that autumn. That move seems to have knocked the RP out of his accent, which is often in evidence here and on later TOTP appearances in this run (look up the famous Can intro, for one). Marvellously Hank Mizell is up to number 7 and his countdown still is two of those back-of-the-shop costumes. Fox, incidentally, entered at 41, their appearance making more of an impression 35 years hence than at the time.

Hot Chocolate – Don’t Stop It Now
Unpromisingly, smooth soul man Errol Brown has taken the Rod Stewart approach to mike stand technique, giving it the full base in the air business while holding it with both hands. It has a stand, y'know, Errol. Johnny Pearson's orchestra, while well within Musician's Union rules, seem particularly syrupy this week, which may explain why Errol and the bass player have a chat during the instrumental break during which both seem to be trying to make the other laugh. "They'd go down a wow collecting for charity, all that keep on giving it to me. Outrageous!" Noel gallantly suggests afterwards, seated at an abandoned organ.

ABBA – Fernando
ABBA performances never stand up to being deconstructed as at least they knew stagecraft, though Benny's giving it a go on the close-ups.

Paul Nicholas – Reggae Like It Used To Be
There's a flying start to this one as Noel lists Paul's entire musical and film CV over the intro, then states "this is going to be very successful forrrrrrrr... this man!" Noel, after all that build-up, clearly forgets who's warming up behind him even though he must have had cue cards, a script, access to rehearsals, memory etc. It turns out that's the least of our problems.



The mid-70s has latterly been tagged as the Golden Age Of Reggae. It was the year of King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown, Police And Thieves and Super Ape. Burning Spear, Big Youth, Dillinger, Max Romeo and U-Roy were all active. Marley had his biggest Billboard chart hit. A year later came Heart Of The Congos, Two Sevens Clash and Don Letts playing dub plates to punks at the Roxy. And yet someone saw fit to hire the bloke from Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, give him a bowler hat and a thick pinstriped jacket (with nothing underneath) and have him sing about how the only reggae for him is from the good old days despite seemingly having no more knowledge of the genre then he would about sheet metal turning. The BBC orchestra and backing vocalists aren't helping, true (here he is miming to the recording elsewhere for comparison), but then the song devolves into a sax solo and an increasingly obtuse manner that turns the titular word into a verb: "You can reggae Beethoven, reggae anything you see". How does one go about reggaeing Beethoven, Paul? We never find out.

What we can say for it, as we were tipped off about this by celebrated DJ about town and latter day Paul Weller associate Andy Lewis, is it had a properly great psychedelic B-side:



The Beatles – Paperback Writer
"The resurgence of interest in the Beatles is going on and on and on" says Noel, which makes me wonder how much of a recursive resugence there could technically have been six years after their split. Four in the top 30, two more between 31 and 50, and commemorated by Pan's People in fringed white jumpsuits reading paperbacks at various distances between spins. In the round too, showing audience members more bemused than fond reminiscence ever suggests. Where do you get that many full book carousels in a hurry anyway? One book on prominent display is about the Third Reich, so they're not picky.

10cc – I’m Mandy Fly Me
An adapted concert clip in which proper live footage has four-part vocal harmonies in a line and acoustic guitar battles edited in amid a new slow fade every second. Studio tape worn through with overdubs, as per.

Linda Lewis – Baby I’m Yours
The old favourite, a disco soul singer put out on her own with no real idea of what to do once there. The forever being revived vocal range scraper gives the uncertain swing a go. "How does she get her hair like that? She must do it with rollers..." Noel envisages, partly as link to the next performance but instead making many wonder about him.

Bay City Rollers – Love Me Like I Love You
Compared to what's been presented as show so far, the Rollers have taken up pop Nuremberg. They start atop a huge globe, spinning clockwise around Eric Faulkner amid showers of sparks in slow motion. Then there's a lengthy close-up of Eric on a swing. One of the band attempts to juggle some small silver spheres. The band are put through lightning quick directorial cuts. There's a lengthy close-up of someone's crotch. Now all five are swinging around for no reason. None of this goes in any way with the song, which is chirpy and upbeat in a forgettable way.

The Four Seasons – Silver Star
Noel uses the intro to plug the later appearance of Frankie Valli. Not entirely sporting when confronted with a band boasting an invisible flute intro and a singing drummer. Not only had they changed since their heyday, they seem to have changed style since the previous year's December 1963 (Oh, What a Night) into a speedy shuffle about Westerns. The drummer really goes at his kit between vocals too.

The Carpenters – There’s A Kind Of Hush
Pan's People are back and they're dancing on podiums next to a large globe ("all over the world", see). Flick very much making do in a rush.

Sheer Elegance – Life Is Too Short Girl
There's some confusion online as to whether these came from Opportunity Knocks or New Faces. They don't seem to have won either, maybe because the world wasn't ready for a poor man's The Real Thing. Mainly because The Real Thing hadn't had any hits yet, in truth. But with their mix of matching tartan waistcoats over yellow dungarees over paisley shirts with collars that stretched to the shoulderblades, who could resist?

Frankie Valli – Fallen Angel
Before Valli, though, Noel gets to talk to Eric Carmen. All By Myself was about to come out but Noel had made his album his record of the week. Carmen, resembling a ruffled Julian Cope and wearing a shirt open enough to reveal a tablespoon sized medallion, really isn't keen on being interviewed and even less so when he realises once that's finished he's got to stand behind Noel for the rest of the intro looking like a lemon. The cameraman then takes so long to zoom onto Valli that we see Carmen get bored and start wandering off, only for Noel to grab him and indulge in further chat. Carmen then has to grab someone else by the arm and get them to move out of the way of the marauding camera as it attempts to mow several more down, unfortunately going nowhere near the man in a huge red and white pillarbox hat with tassles off the back. The performed piano ballad much less interesting. No wonder they cut Valli off early with that competition.

Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
Between last week and this the 'hood have gone to The Hague and pissed Eurovision, helping it become the year's biggest selling single. Back over on STN we're going to do some Eurovision-related charts in the week leading up to this year's gathering so we'll save further detail for then, save for this example of what a foreign film crew can achieve with a budget stretching to four bobby's hats from a fancy dress shop. OK, we know Eurovision songs have to be sung live, so when they all gather in the same shot how do we clearly hear the girls' first "I love you"s?



And at the end, some Barry White and a multi-lens shot of that globe. Like the thing now straddled by British pop, eh?

1/4/76: Where is Beatles band?

NB. I'll be using original TX dates rather than BBC4 schedules for this. I have a list.

It's Tony Blackburn! In a roll neck! Tony Blackburn is remembered now, apart from being a key component of that tremendous Peel anecdote about the Radio 1 Fun Day Out at Mallory Park, as crassly enthusiastic and thus now ironic, a career bubbling that started in about 1997 on Five's Night Fever and continued to about a year after I'm A Celebrity, by which time, as Paul Whitehouse pointed out, he was doing all the stuff people ascribed to him for comedic purposes. In the last couple of years he's put away the spangly jackets he never wore first time round, having left well before the Radio 1 Roadshow, and reinvented himself as an elder statesman of it being all about the music, whereas Jimmy Saville, who actually was a music man in his heyday alongside the million foibles, has remanoevured so well he's now spent twenty years as the nation's favourite Uncle Disgusting. While he never seems to have been comfortable per se, maybe his spell on Junior Choice loosened him up for TOTP. Actually, here's the start of this very show, and note the Beatles pic at number 27 inventing Oasis' 00s style:



Sailor - Girls Girls Girls
How do you hit upon a setup like that? The adapted drum kit is one thing, but behold the majesty of the Nickelodeon, an entirely self-constructed riot of keyboards, glockenspiels and completely useless bass drum on the side. If Chase & Status used one of them face to face we'd have far more respect for them. Sailor were British, though the singer was Norwegian and they sound somehow Dutch. How thick is this veneer of irony they project?

Diana Ross - Theme from Mahogany
Do You Know Where You're Going To, as you may know it. Diana looks wistfully out of a window, and then it suddenly ends. Doesn't seem to be a modern edit, more the hamfisted nature of a lot of 1970s editing.

Tarmey & Spencer - I’m Your Man Rock ‘N’ Roll
Rock'n'roll isn't sentinent, you know. Actually the Tarney-Spencer Band, but that name is how everyone archived it which shows how big a hit it wasn't. An odd record too, unsure whether to be 12-bar electrified blues, bar band or staccato pop-funk so being none of the above. Alan Tarmey, who Tony is keen to tell us played everything but drums on the recording, went on to produce Cliff during his turn of the 80s renaissance, the first three A-Ha albums and the single version of Saint Etienne's You're In A Bad Way. Bob's work, doubtless.

ABBA - Fernando
It's the video around the campfire. Tony mentions Eurovision in his intro even though that was nearly two years back by then.

Laurie Andrew – I’ll Never Love Anyone Anymore
Or Lawrence Andrew, as Tone calls him twice. A bloke who looks like Kevin Godley and has a vocal bordering on Tracy Chapman-tone female plays a dull longing ballad with wistful synths while wearing a jacket meant to look like that of a child's cartoon pauper.

Hank Mizell - Jungle Rock
"Trouble is, nobody can find him" Tony says, which is plausible when you find out it was recorded in 1958, did nothing at the time but was rediscovered by influential DJs around 1971 after appearing on a Dutch bootleg. He was found eventually and would appear in a later week, while in 1997 Mark E Smith added it to his personal list of quixotically covered rockabilly. In the here and then it was given for Pan’s People to hoof in khaki shorts with bazookas accompanied by cutaways of the world's single cheapest animal costumes. Seriously, religious programming on specialist satellite stations would be ashamed. Tony makes a joke about David Hamilton.

John Miles - Music
"Music was my first hit and it will be my last" quoth Nick Hancock. Miles, see, never quite gets across the message that he loves music as much as he thinks it has wronged him and must pay. He's heard Live And Let Die and thought piano into rock section must be the key. Then he has a go at grandstanding orchestral, during a section where his band are concentrating hard. Then there's a key change right out of an appalling music and well above Miles' vocal range. My, the self-absorption.

Fox – S-S-S-Single Bed
And then a strange woman in a bedsheet comes on and this is the one that gets on Trending Topics. Noosha Fox did, at any rate, and so nearly did Alison Goldfrapp, the comparison made seemingly more on an individual comeliness rather than musical basis, though were Alison and Will ever to go slithery disco we'd be keen. Go on, Will, get your talkbox out. Then Ben Goldacre, kind of an Alan Maryon-Davis for the Tens, let slip that Susan Traynor, to give Noosha her proper name, is his mum and all merry heck broke loose. What else? This was their third and last (and not even biggest, despite being the one people know - not enough funk, that's the problem with those) top 20 single, and songwriter/Frampton-to-be Kenny Young penned Under The Boardwalk, worked in the Brill Building and most recently worked with Buena Vista Social Club. This is from a later show but it's the same performance, and it's great, so...



The Beatles - Hey Jude
"We go back to 1966" as Tony says both before and after. Seriously, did they not have researchers? Or books? There's no particular reason I can tell for there being loads of Beatles songs reissued - it was ten years after their last gig, but that was in October. The clip is a performance I've never seen before and even then badly stored and all sepia.

Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
There are crowd members giggling at the choreography. Should that not have been a hint? Mind you it's number one, like they should care. That last line is quite something. It's still number one next week so I'll mention that the Drifters' Hello Happiness is over the end credits with its ill-advised British Invasion guitar line and cover the Eurovision fall-out then.