TOTP 6/10/77 (tx 1/11/12): the king is dead

We've covered elements of this week already, as the Radio Times for this week featured this cover and a chat with some prime DJs. Noel wasn't amongst them, odd given he was the breakfast show host at the time. Maybe they thought as he was doing Swap Shop he'd be beneath them. In any case here he is with the show "you can have in any colour as long as it's black". So cue Henry Ford. Not really, La Belle Epoque. They like the music, they like the disco sound.

Ooh, look who's charted! Hope they're on soon!



Meco of previous post discussion fame gets the original drawn poster for Star Wars, dully.

Smokie – Needles And Pins
Feels like they're on every other week with something new, so obviously they'd be down to covers eventually. And roughly seventy seconds in audience member of the week is decided:



Imagine being on the bus to the studio wearing that. Even if it's made out of crepe paper it must still weigh a bit. Not that we're looking for distractions from this fairly straight and anaemic cover of the Searchers hit but VT have bought some new edit equipment in the week that creates rainbow-edged radial and diagonal wipes, the former used in conjunction with fish-eye and that through the bottom of a bottle effect we saw last time Smokie were on, probably not coincidentally. Alan Barton is the only member not on a riser. Certain issues?

The Emotions – Best Of My Love
A return to stealing from Soul Train's bins with all the actually dancing audience members that implies and in doing so shows up our lot somewhat. It's hard to decide who's best - a couple off stage left are doing a very kind of straight-legged foot-in-foot-out routine with both extending their arms out straight while somehow still touching fingers. A gent in a powder blue suit right at the front is bending from the waist. A man stage right is spinning every fourth step. The band meanwhile only take the mikes out of their stands just as they finish. Should have thought about that one.

Danny Mirror – I Remember Elvis Presley
Of course you do, he only died seven weeks ago and you've already been in the top 30 for three. Crooning Dutch grief hawker Danny, like so many, looks a bit like Keith Lemon by way of Mike Flowers, and is wearing a jacket with massive fringed bits and an immense number of shiny buttons on the shoulders with an Elvis T-shirt underneath. The audience are stunned into silence. Noel isn't stunned into silence by the demands of his job but from the way he glances over to the stage he looks about ready to say something.

Giorgio – From Here To Eternity
Noel suggests we get the Christmas decorations out, though what the one down Legs & Co are holding is clearly some sort of mass of shiny streamers. The reason I can't be any more accurate is the whole routine is in silhouette with a projected extreme close-up backdrop, which isn't really reflecting the futuristic nature of the record, electro years ahead of its time, and also fools those who look out for their favourite every week. One of them's Gill. Probably. They do look like they're giving it plenty in terms of energy and exuberance, it's just we can't tell for sure.

Yes – Wondrous Stories
Punk killed prog off in 1977, you know. A live performance video, Jon Anderson clad in an oversized dishcloth, most of the others in adapted Edwardian gear.

Deniece Williams – Baby, Baby My Love's All For You
A lovely lady, according to Noel. No staircase this time so she gets to move about, which for her means sticking one arm in the air and turning round. As the orchestra prove yet again they can ride a coach and horses right through disco if they so choose, sadly Hat Lady looks bored in a sea of interest, turning away from the stage when we catch her. Her friend is wearing a blue beret and what looks like the same top as Jon Anderson, oddly.

The Stranglers – No More Heroes
There's not even that much dry ice down JJ's side of the stage.

Baccara – Yes Sir I Can Boogie
Noel polls two interested ladies on how to pronounce what seems a fairly straightforward name, revealing some thought it was "Bacc-arer". "I thought it was the Osmonds meself!" chortles Noel to no reciprocation. They already did this once on the show and told you in the first verse too.

Steve Gibbons Band – Tupelo Mississippi Flash
Say this for Noel, he gets the audience involved, first chiding them on making noise around him and then sharing reading out the title duties with two women. It's another song about Elvis, one Gibbons, who somehow looks even more craggy than before, begins with some spoken word before falling into rock and roll line. The bassist is wearing a gas station cap and overalls, supposedly signifying trad working man identification. It probably isn't his own.

David Soul – Silver Lady
"Smile! Alright, don't overdo it" Noel commands a whole line of ladies, in his sharp suit looking briefly like a dressed down, swapped sexes version of the Parallel Lines cover. Soul wanders around as before, Leo Sayer sees us out, and in the middle a very strange moment with Noel and a single, unidentified older woman. "Now Kim, tell me about the brand new single you... oh, sorry, we don't have time, we'll find out about that later... she's livid, but it was only a joke. Bye bye." What? How? Why?

TOTP 22/9/77 (tx 18/10/12) open thread

I'm not being much help at the moment, am I? Two missing weeks and now being away on 'business' for a few days. So it's another comments box free for all as, having neatly skipped a fortnight's turnaround, we find a load of new-to-BBC4 clips, though the same old number one's there.

Hank The Knife & The Jets – Guitar King
La Belle Epoque – Black Is Black
The Stranglers – No More Heroes
The Emotions – Best Of My Love (Legs & Co)
Leo Sayer – Thunder In My Heart
Baccara – Yes Sir I Can Boogie
The Boomtown Rats – Looking After Number 1
Meri Wilson – Telephone Man
Stardust – Ariana
Elvis Presley – Way Down (Legs & Co semi-repeat)

TOTP 23/6/77 (tx 18/7/12): I knew Irresistible Dennis when he used to rock and roll

We're now into a run of half hour originals from now til the end of August '77, bar a couple that are slightly longer. The reason? A re-run of Max Bygraves Says I Want To Tell You A Story. Next week's was 25 minutes in its original form, which would have to lead to a hell of an extended outro.

If you've got time you want to kill this week, look through the catalogue for the auction of Jimmy's personal belongings taking place in Leeds at the end of the month, including the Jim'll Fix It magic chair, the pottery likeness of himself wearing a kaftan and the mounted Brazil nut presented to him by a patient at Broadmoor. His turn at hosting this week, which he commemorates with a none more timely (for 2012) Union Flag embroidered tracksuit top, alongside the flags of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Not a cross of St George? Consistency, please.

Dave Edmunds – I Knew The Bride
Rockpile, really, so on bass and songwriting a man deeply embedded in punk already, Nick Lowe, makes his Pops bow. It's still the shaggy/Shaggy-from-Scooby Doo-haired Edmunds front and centre, or in this case front and above, the camera shooting right up his nose for the vast majority of the song. Few cutaways, little relief. Barely a sight of Billy 'not that one' Bremner's cowboy hat. By the end Lowe, presumably thinking he's more than likely off camera, has stopped playing with his left hand, only picking up a chord shape with the very last note. "Got my feet tapping down here" Jimmy exudes as much as he's capable of.

Tony Etoria – I Can Prove It
Long time since we've seen Jimmy dancing. Having pretty much used his guitar as decoration alone last time he was on, Etoria has abandoned it this time, meaning with no other idea of what to do he starts with his hands on his hips. He's also tightened his afro especially, which doesn't quite gel with his yellow neckerchief and extravagantly patterend shirt, like you'd find in the tiling of a kitchen at the time. A little wink on "ain't no way I can treat you like a queen" is surely transmitting mixed messages. As Etoria exhibits a kind of running action from the elbows when not singing the camera trolley goes on another maiming spree. One woman is visually manhandled out of the way by her partner, another in a 1930s errand boy's cloth cap checks on his friends' safety before realising he himself is in the firing line. People are, perhaps wisely, leaving the stage well before the end. "Yowee!" is Jimmy's appraisal.

Gary Glitter – A Little Boogie Woogie In The Back Of My Mind
ALRIGHT, SHUT UP NOW. Even if the song's not there he's far more like his old self then when we last saw him, big collar up and pomade alive, charging down the tiered stage, playing it right down the lens, overactive limbs a-flailing as lyric sign language that actually makes no sense against the lyrics, miming appallingly. But it's not the same, chiefly because where the Glitter Band used to be are an aged band of sessioneers, perhaps even plucked from the orchestra's numbers. The drummer, and there is only one, is clearly in his fifties and grins throughout as if to say, not unreasonably, that however he got to this stage in his life he's going to be on telly so he's enjoying it. This time when the camera makes its way through them young people merely turn and walk the other way, no matter how much the girl right at the front grins at them. And away from our prime-time pop sight Glitter goes for more than four years.

Carole Bayer Sager – You’re Moving Out Today
"I think we'll show some of the interesting people in town tonight" is Jimmy's cover for a third showing of this, not that any of whatever that means actually appears. Still we don't know what her ex could possibly do with bread.

Brotherhood Of Man – Angelo
You know how sometimes like minds seem to gravitate towards each other?



Obviously he's not a sailor, so indeed he's "a magic disc jockey of one of the more colourful varities", one who delivers the title in comedy falsetto. You'd think a DJ would want more of a plug than that, even someone like him. Especially someone like him. The blonde is blonder and flickier, the dark-haired one is more rouge tinted, but the two blokes have guitars rather than one being on piano so THEY'RE OBVIOUSLY NOTHING LIKE ANY OTHER BAND, ALRIGHT? Something no other band definitely did is their special move for the song, namely raising their left arm, first outwards, then backwards, to each chorus piano riff. It adds a certain flourish, if perhaps not as much as they expect.

The Stranglers – Go Buddy Go
Jimmy introduces us to a hangdog middle aged man who is apparently "the world famous Irresistible Dennis". This seems to come as a surprise to him, but he does waggle his eyebrows in a quite funny way. That may be his secret. He seems less sure about the third showing of this. If only someone had found a way to edit Blue's piano from out the back of the stage, or advised Hugh Cornwell not to wear something that looks like an apron. As we cut back to Jimmy people are actually dancing to it at last. "It's a good night tonight, as it happens. Heh heh heh" is Jimmy's tart comment.

Johnny Nash – That Woman
About quartering the BPM at a stroke, Nash has the afro thing right, matching it with muted greens and cool soul. Not that it's having the same effect on everyone, one hirsute youngster turned away from the stage until the shot changes and his friend, presumably watching the monitor, has to literally point him towards Nash. Others are clearly also waiting for a signal to turn away when safe. Neither does it help that when on the second chorus we get a shot from behind Nash the girl front and centre of the audience is extravagantly chewing gum and holding a conversation while the man next to her stares off into space at a 90 degree angle to the stage. All the while Nash continues pledging his love, oblivious as he should be.

Alessi – Oh Lori
No link, strangely, and this is Legs & Co's song for the week even though the twins were in the studio just a couple of weeks ago. They're either dressed in 1930s wedding dresses or as toilet roll holders, bonnets and off the shoulder flouncily tiered dresses the attire. Inside some sort of cage of glittery decorations it's all very lovely and cosy in a one for the caring mums/daughters way. Is that what we're here for? You decide.

Paul Nicholas – Heaven On The 7th Floor
"Wowee!" Jimmy exclaims while his shoulder is being assailed by a toy Paddington Bear. Paul abandoned the hat and cane. They must have turned out to be the lucky charms as this ended his chart career - and began/ended it in America, where it somehow reached number six despite sharing its production values with his previous hits. Maybe it's because he keeps referring to an elevator. It's that transatlantic touch. Having realised Paul can't come up with anything himself for the instrumental bits a close-up of a man playing a harmonica solo is overlaid as Nicholas waves his arms about and does some frantic hopping from foot to foot, knowing that he is somehow perhaps the only one he can get a TOTP audience moving. Jimmy meanwhile has Peter Frampton with him, shirt open to the waist, grin plastered on. As befits the traditional uncomfortable chat shot the interview lasts one question - "where've you been living?" - before Jimmy waves a picture we can barely see for both being out of frame or reflecting studio lights. Luckily he does know what the number one is, unlike some. Jimmy makes a joke about making him work hard. Then he makes it again.

The Jacksons – Show You The Way To Go
Oddly, despite having been in the studio not so long ago this isn't a repeat of that but a clip from their TV series, the second series of which had run on CBS in the first three months of 1977. As soon as Michael picks up the mike the screaming takes over the soundtrack almost completely, even though there only appear to be three people going mad on camera. More notably, the mass frantic applause we hear is from somewhere else entirely, as well as seemingly dipping in and out at virtual random, and it's not visually happening when we get a shot of the whole studio audience, some of whom are standing up waving their arms about but none of whom seem to be cheering or whooping all that hard. I sense skulduggery. Jimmy has "the Bournemouth raver", who seems to be a girl completely unphased by anything, to one side and another girl held in a tight headlock to his other. As T-Connection's Jamiroquai-must-have-been-listening Do What You Wanna Do soundtracks the credits her expression gradually changes from televisual experience enjoyment to panic for her health.

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 26/5/77 (tx 14/6/12): Japan to France via Cornwell

I really hope BBC Four have some sort of strategy for this run, we're a good few weeks behind now with only two wiped shows for the remainder of the year and The Sky At Night remaining in that monthly slot, with that double from last month seemingly a one-off.

DLT, sitting behind a drumkit, introduces with his usual verve a chart remarkable for the breadth of its many new entries. There's the Muppets, who'll we'll see on the show soon enough, and the Ramones, who we won't, plus...



They're no oil paintings, haw haw haw. One can only assume their handlers decided actually seeing a photo yet would be somehow transgressive. They could have at least paid more attention to their big printout of the chart. They wouldn't even appear on the show until Jeffrey Daniel walked against the wind five years later (that's coming up very soon on On This TOTP Day, for what it's worth)



We'll come back to what this was, but the focus has not been tampered with in any way. Is that Emlyn Hughes and Kevin Keegan bottom left? It's hard to tell. Clearly what Liverpool had in prestige and silverware they lacked in photographic ability and string. Nice wallpaper.



Rule Lenska, more successful in her acting career than her sisters Eraser and Protractor. This of course is Little Ladies of ITV's, and presumably thus BBC LE verboten, Rock Follies Of '77, with OK, featured on the show literally the week before release. Then half the series got delayed til November due to industrial action, so that was that nipped in the bud. Bob Stanley tells us he bought this very 7" last week for 25p. The B-side is called B-Side.


Blue – I'm Gonna Capture Your Heart
You again. Not often a song gets to open the show twice, much less that it's one with as undynamic an opening as this. This time the piano is so far forward on the stage someone could easily pull at it and bring the whole thing crashing to the floor, though note that would be quite dangerous and all told I'm glad they don't. Already before we're seconds in modernity is making a mockery of studio soft rock, as someone self-consciously jigs about at three times the speed of the song before sharing a laugh with his friend right in front of camera. The bassist is pulling rock poses, the drummer looks like a lost member of Gabriel-era Genesis and Hugh Nicholson begins giggling two thirds of the way through at apparently nothing but a very private joke with the bassist.

Olivia Newton-John – Sam
Grease being a year (to this week, in fact) away, it's easy to forget how long before then Neutron-Bomb had spent performing doe-eyed ballads while seated, in this case on some steps left over outside the prop cupboard from Deneice Williams' visit. DLT, flanked by two girls wearing T-shirt bearing the legend 'DESERT', calls it "lovely" and the orchestra seem on safeish ground with a country lament, but it's been a rather crowded field for this sort of thing of late.

Piero Umiliani – Mah Na Mah Na
Those who've been fearing how DLT might introduce this, luckily he restrained himself to inviting a call and response. Again, have to ask whether Sue was choreographed individually or just told to do whatever the suit allowed in the overlaid single shots.

Frankie Miller's Full House – Be Good To Yourself
"Sensational number", no less. Well, clearly the work of people au fait with the Faces, as much with their positioning and stance as their rollicking rock'n'roll strut. Clearly over time the audience has learnt, as by now when the camera charges through the middle of them towards the stage they get out of the way sharpish. "Was that fantastic or was that fantastic?" DLT enthuses.

Kenny Rogers – Lucille
"Stop pushing! I get nervous, I tell yer!" warns DLT before referring to this not by name but as being "one of my favourites at the moment". After the reception he gave the last one? Seems like damning with faint praise even more. Same video as last time.

Liverpool Express – Dreamin'
"It's going right up there" DLT confidently predicts, and sure enough it stalled at 40. This would be the last we'd see of the 76-77 hardy perennials with the mid-tempo locked down, all with their Richard Beckinsale hair. In what may constitute an attempt at forging an image Billy Kinsley, looking more and more like an exact scientific cross between Eric Idle and Jasper Carrott, has a very thin and ragged looking scarf on, while the guitarist has brought his motorbike jacket and the keyboard player has gone for the white suit jacket and Dave Hill hair combination. None of this makes it sound less country-Rubettes-could-have-this-any-day like. There's a fading away fish-eye lens shot to end, and then DLT wanders onstage. "Just one thing, I want to apologise for the fact Manchester United whacked your team on Saturday" he offers, in reference to the FA Cup final. Then the band make to beat him up. This they do by having one of them growl and two grab lightly hold of his arms.

Bryan Ferry – Tokyo Joe
Legs & Co, under some Chinese lampshades - well, close enough geographically - struggle here only because the lighting is only on the back of the stage so they spend almost all the routine in elusive shadow. Because this is the era of Mind Your Language everyone (bar an absent Lulu) is in too short kimonos with at least one set of permanently visible knickers, doing a bit of bowing and a lot of that shuffling-with-hands-clasped thing, and everyone has their hair in buns or side ponytails. In fact pretty much the entire routine is based around the prayer gesture, with few exceptions including a wide swinging running motif on which one member is noticeably leading with a different arm to her colleagues. "That was not Legs & Co, that was Legs Ah So" remarks DLT, laughing at his own joke. At least he didn't do the slitty eyes.

The Stranglers – Go Buddy Go
"Watch out for this lot coming in the charts next week" DLT says with some confidence in front of a man wearing a fez, before growling something like "they are supremmmmmme!" like that means anything to anyone, most of all himself. So, more of this new music called New Wave. Or something. Taking the glam band adage of three out of work bricklayers and their hard looking mate and pushing it into new frontiers, Hugh Cornwell and Jean-Jacques Burnel are, frankly, having a bit of a lark. Cornwell is playing his riffs on Burnel's bass, while Burnel 'plays' attack rhythm on a guitar sans strings. Burnel, wearing a T-shirt with the Triumph motorbikes logo in the Ford style, is leaning forward like he wants to chin someone, anyone, but as we've seen on this show on pre-punk occasion it's more straightforward rock'n'roll than anything too far ahead, especially when the overjaunty pub piano solo kicks in. The audience are, as last week, stunned into silence. One man looks directly at the camera, glances back as if in late realisation, then decides that's enough of that and resumes looking back. The two people right at the front between the lead two are having a conversation during Cornwell's vocal part. Burnel just gives up pretending long before the end, which clearly comes long after he'd anticipated, ending up gathering up his guitar cord.

Marie Miriam – The Bird And The Child
"Something completely different, as they say in musical circles, for you now". No, DLT, that's Python you're thinking of. This was the French entrant that beat out Rock Bottom at Eurovision, presented here in a typically Eurovision Second Language translation which in its open line refers to its singer as "a child of creation" as opposed to a couple of lines later "a bird flying in motion", presumably as opposed to flying by osmosis. Miriam, decked out in varying shades of brown, including a scarf with a massive knot, can only try in getting it across, helped by the orchestra having a whale of a time building up the brass fanfares and getting a big showbiz finish, much as the Ladybirds try to take over the thing. Miriam then just neglects to sing the last bit, standing back and admiring a relatively lively crowd. "Ooh la la!" says DLT, of course.

Electric Light Orchestra – Telephone Line
"That famous Yorkshire group", with comedy pronunciation, are on video, all second hand half washed out colours, slightly dry iced string section and meaningful close-ups.

Brendon – Rock Me
"And now we have a few words from our sponsor... he's been eating at the BBC canteen!"



I'm not even going to try. It looks slightly blurred because DLT is bouncing both and his croak-emitting friend up and down in time to the intro. Surely this is what friend WeddingSuit, this time all in white, meant by "an unexpected intro"; presumably it isn't Brendon and band leading the the audience in a clapalong to begin this Abba B-side cover, as he did that last time to similar acclaim, and almost throughout hands clapping, unclear whether superimposed or reflection, appear in silhouette on the big round set design screen next to the stage. See, punks, look and learn. Looks like Brendon's got the same denim shirt on too. See, Liverpool Express, that's how you go about building a lasting image. (Not that it worked, this is his last appearance on the show too, but nevertheless) That all said, despite visuals this clearly isn't a three guitar song, though by the second verse one of them, in a Rubettes cap, seems to be 'playing' the brass section instead. "A bit of fun music" is the best DLT can come up with.

Rod Stewart – The First Cut Is The Deepest
And back to Rod's guitar soloing gluteus maximus. For once the last link and credits song are really quite interesting, as is DLT's body language: "We must add from all the team here on Top Of The Pops our congratulations to Liverpool (thumb up) for winning the (screws face up) European Cup (makes funny circular hand gesture) final!" That final was played on Wednesday night, so during the recording of this show. One assumes two endings were recorded, one with a straightforward goodnight message followed by Good Morning Judge. What we get instead is We Can Do It, Liverpool's Cup final song, a lyrical rewrite of a Rubettes song ("do you remember '65, we really had the place alive!") to charging glam riffs. Now that's who should have been performing in the studio next week. (Apart from that the single immediately started dropping down the chart, but you know what I mean)