TOTP 29/4/76: but Spaghetti Junction's nowhere near the M1!

A parish notice first, passed on by TV Cream - so you know there's no TOTP next week but that week's corresponding show will be broadcast on the 13th. However, when it returns, while the first showing will still be edited down to the half hour, the repeat later that night and on the Thursday will be full length. Should we review both? Remember we have a life to lead.

Tony Blackburn, his essential Tony Blackburn-ness shining through. Rather to rub it in, the Stylistics picture is now them on stage three weeks previously, bloke on stool and all.

Slik – Requiem
They'd had a number one in February with Forever And Ever, but Slik are almost entirely now a footnote as being Midge Ure's first band of note, prior to the Rich Kids, not being a Sex Pistol, Visage, Thin Lizzy for a bit, Ultravox, Dolce envy, Geldof lackey, that video with the pin screen, marrying Annabel Giles, his daughter being in girl-group-with-guitars The Faders, and whatever he does now. The start rips off Manuel & the Music Of The Mountains, which had only been a hit in March. That sort of uncertainty is apparent throughout, not least as half the band are in baseball gear. Slik were supposed to be a Bay City Rollers Juniors of sorts, but even that one that was on the other week wasn't quite this ponderous. At least Midge remembers to make a point of looking down the camera at all times. It gets cut off just as a guitar solo starts, but that's their own fault for putting it so late in the show. Tony is with a girl sporting a hat of quite remarkable dimensions, so much so most of it is off the top of the frame. A pity, as its design, mostly crepe paper by the looks of it, seems pretty involved, certainly more so than the bowler titfer still sported by...

Paul Nicholas – Reggae Like It Used To Be
Hooray! Tony calls it "fantastic" in introduction (and then gets the title wrong), and Paul's there in the studio actually wearing a shirt this time. A kid in the audience is quite right to be frantically waving his friends towards the stage. As with Harpo the live version does the recording no favours despite speeding up the tempo, although the song does nothing any favours at all. Although, those lyrics. We've covered reggaeing Beethoven, you may wonder what "reggae pneumonia" would be and how it might be fixed by just taking in more reggae, but can we also draw attention to "if it's good enough for Stevie, if it's good enough for Paul..." Presumably he means Macca in C-Moon terms, but Paul... you are a Paul. Don't go introducing another one in the conversation unbidden. "Don't remember reggae like that, do you?" vaguely chortles Tony, having changed his mind now he's seen the thing in action, even if he does then call it "a really good sound".

Andrea True Connection – More More More
As previously spoilered this was Pan's People's final week, though Tony doesn't say so at any stage and Noel hardly seems bothered with mentioning the end of an eight year stint the following week. The dress code is a memorable way to bow out, though, tube tops, imitation grass skirts, red stilletos and some sort of material tied around the waist, essayed within some sort of cube cage construction seemingly based on a POW prison like Pan's Tenko. "I take it Pan must have at some time been a member of the mafia" says Tony, making no sense at all.

Electric Light Orchestra – Nightrider
A "fantastic sound" now. Cello-heavy, certainly, but sounding much as you'd expect ELO to sound, unlike their best songs which sound little like you'd thought Jeff Lynne would ever pull off. Oh, for disco. Kelly Groucutt is sporting some magnificent mutton chops and is dressed as if part of Robin Hood's gang. This didn't chart, by the way.

Diana Ross – Love Hangover
Not in the studio, but a promo that makes her from-a-train-pensively Theme From Mahogany look like Hype Williams. It's just panned promo photos and old film of her dancing in various dresses. The bit where it stops and starts again as disco doesn't affect things any.

Laurie Lingo & The Dipsticks – Convoy GB
Oh god. DLT and Paul Burnett, of course, with a song that makes even less sense if you don't know CW McCall's original Convoy (and that doesn't make sense if you don't know CB radio language), and given that can't have been purposefully played on the radio for the best part of two and a half decades why would you. Being an attempt at a mid-70s comedy record by Radio 1 DJs there's dubious accents to go and a Jimmy Saville impersonation. Let's not dignify this with much more discussion, especially as nobody's yet uploaded it to YouTube so we can discuss the black studio performance, save to say the B-side was called Rock Is Dead. It's like punk happened.

Eric Carmen – All By Myself
Another one clearly not filmed in front of that week's audience, given away by how he's at the piano and then grasps a microphone in head and shoulders shot. The kaleidoscope lens gets a work-out, the lighting people work their magic, but it's not helping much.

The Bellamy Brothers – Let Your Love Flow
Two hairy men grinning and strumming like their lives depend on it in a pre-recorded promo. Drivetime rock is a very different beast in America, and it's not always likeable.

Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
"I think they're going to be there for life" Tony warns. Don't worry, it's the last week of the unilateral head wobbling and leg lifting. For the occasion it's a completely new performance of unknown source and with no audience, Martin Lee in a red sweater rather than his social club frilly shirt suit. You've never seen four women encircling a TOTP presenter looking as anxious as those at the end do. Ironically the last men standing in terms of TOTP play this week are the Stylistics, the kaleidoscope camera shooting, at last, aimlessly dancing audience members.


EDIT NEWS: For some reason most of Twitter thought Fox had been edited out. They weren't, they're on the next one, though it's just the first week's performance repeated. The editing does bear discussion here, because a) it's a quite brilliant edit, showing Tony's back-announcement of Eric Carmen then naturally linking into a brief voiceover at the start of the Bellamy Brothers clip, and b) in between those two three in a row have been removed. The running order this week does seem incredibly awkward, three studio performances out of the first four followed by promo, pre-filmed, pre-filmed, studio, promo, Pan's People, promo, repeat. Yet what's been removed is, in order, Gladys Knight and the Pips' Midnight Train To Georgia (though it's on again a couple more times), that Silver Convention cartoon promo for the second time and... Pan's People's last stand! Now, as we've said their exit was ignominious as it was and they were dancing to something that's already been played in the studio, the Four Seasons' Silver Star. This dancers on TOTP fan site archives it, where as you can tell Flick and the costumiers really went for it (no, they are wearing proper tops, you can see the straps at the back), but it seems to have been excised purely because of how it landed in the running order. Maybe the Bellamy Brothers or Diana Ross promos could have been carefully cut around, but it's possible it wasn't so easy to edit Tony's links, or they really wanted to keep the Bellamys in for Barclaycard reasons. Whatever, there they went, sashaying off into the sunset. Apart from the couple who stayed on for Ruby Flipper, of whom more in a fortnight.

No-el idea

Right, so ignore all that in the last post but two, we now gather the TOTP shown on the 12th May will be that Edmonds-fronted 6/5/76 show after all. Maybe this is the way they're compressing the run around the missing shows coming in early autumn. Or maybe BBC4 are making it up as they go along. We just don't know.

Bet they still show JJ Barrie. Look up the record he went on to make with Brian Clough, both sides are unintentionally hilarious.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #5: The Smiths - William It Was Really Nothing

We're classing this as alternative canon because proper Smiths TOTP canon is only anything involving flowers, and we'v included it partly for Morrissey's message, partly because he takes his shirt off entirely because Ian McCulloch had done the same a few weeks earlier and got in trouble for it so Moz wanted to see what happened (and note the audience's delayed reaction), partly for Andy Rourke's hair, and a good deal more because linking out of it Mike Smith... well, watch.



Don't go thinking you're innocent here, Skinner.

This, for full points, is from the same show as the Top Of The Pops Train wheeze, which is probably best explained at the time rather than in retrospect. It started like this. Norris McWhirter on the Pops!



And ended mid-Fizz like this.

A quick aside from TOTP business, because in the Sweeping The Nation guise I've curated We Make Our Own Mythologies, a compilation of twenty newish British artists available for £3 or more if you want, with all proceeds to Macmillan Cancer Support.

The last Noel

Well, that's buggered the USP already. At the risk of getting more people going on about how the BBC's treatment of them is some sort of joke - at least they're showing them in the first place! They didn't have to! - just noticed from the advance schedules that there's no TOTP on 5th May. There's no explicable BBC4-related reason why - a Sky At Night repeat takes its place, there's a half hour gap on the Friday had they needed it, and it's back in the Thursday 7.30 slot on the 12th. One likely reason is that the show that equivalent week was hosted by Noel Edmonds, who refused to let any of his stints be shown when UK Gold ran a cherrypicked selection of TOTPs in the mid-90s and it's possible may not have known about this run and/or that this wasn't still the case until one of his shows was re-run back on the 8th.

As for what we're likely to be missing, and if you're that interested it's one of those shows repeated on Einsfestival in Germany and archived in full on YouTube, it was the week Save Your Kisses For Me was finally dethroned, and in the studio were Mud, Frankie Valli, Barry Manilow, Fox (a third and last outing for S-S-S-Single Bed, though just a repeat of the first appearance), Robin Sarstedt, Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, Tina Charles, Mac & Katie Kissoon, the piss-poor JJ Barrie and Cliff Richard, as well as Ruby Flipper's debut hoofing to the Stylistics. Ruby Flipper had no big introduction, by the way, Pan's People were just there one week and gone the next and Noel's links don't provide much background - in fact there was no drama, Flick Colby and the People's management just decided that after eight years the in-house dance troupe idea needed freshening up.

Anyway, if anyone does have a better or more accurate idea about why this one's being skipped, let us know.

TOTP 22/4/76: with the ring dang doo

Diddy David Hamilton's our man this week. Somewhat of a Radio 1 nostalgia B-teamer, yet he of everyone we've seen so far was the most typically Mike Smash-like and was on the primary Pops presenter list for it. At this time he was simulcasting on Radios 1 and 2 and earned the nickname 'the housewife's choice'. Fair to say that nobody on dashing hipy young Radio 1 should have been any sort of housewife's choice, which may have been the problem. Now he pretends to admire that Michael Jackson statue and the eclectic striker stylings of Bobby Zamora for money. Anyway, Diddy is wearing a jumper with 'THE BIG ONE' on the back and a Radio 1 247 logo on the front with the collar of a red and white striped shirt peeking out over the top. With his Partridge-like parting as well - and we know it's the height of obviousness to compare a DJ to Smashie & Nicey and Partridge, let alone both in the same paragraph, but the oleaginousness is none more pronounced - you have to wonder why the spoofery didn't occur to anyone sooner.

Laurie Lingo and the Dipsticks are in the top 20, which must have caused furrowed brows among the production team. Don't worry, they'll be on soon enough and we're preparing things to say about it already. Meanwhile a photo of Hank Mizell has been found, in which he's standing with his guitar in the middle of a woodland clearing.

Jimmy James & the Vagabonds – I’ll Go Where Your Music Takes Me
It might say that, but at first look it seems like no Vagabonds the soul revue second division outfit would have known. In fact the original Vagabonds had split in 1970 and James formed a new backing band in 1974 when based in England, and in their matching grey suits, red shirts, shaggy hairdos and sheer semi-distracted air of £7 an hour for hire no band can surely look more like they've been dragged up from the working men's club circuit. As we first see Jimmy he's indulging in light larks of a conversational gee-up hue with the guitarist, who isn't paying him the blindest bit of notice. Maybe he's trying not to acknowledge some nasal female backing vocals that have been mixed on the same level as James' own and the world's least effective vibes solo. Meanwhile, someone in the front row wears a morning suit top hat with what looks like a crepe paper rose on the front. Nobody's getting sweaty here.

John Miles – Music
No explanation why the whole of Miles' band are in his rundown picture. It's the same performance as three weeks ago, with Miles' ineffectual guitar soloing at the piano and the bit that sounds like the theme to Blake's Seven. Despite this extra time I still can't work out if he's wearing a biker's jacket, a T-shirt with epatulets or a tabard.

Harpo – Movie Star
"Our next star sings shoeless and with a bicycle bell on his walking stick". Funnily enough, Harpo failed to turn this into a hitmaking career that lasted for longer than one number 24 single. His extra affectations - tartan cap, neckerchief, David Soul cardigan, tremendous amounts of hair, pronounced accent when singing live - don't add up to the sort of thing that makes careers either. To compensate for his clothing box ransacking he developed a full range of interpretative hand signals, as can be seen on this clip from TOTP2 when Stuart Maconie was writing the captions and couldn't think of anything to say about his oeuvre either. Extreme close-up!



Anni-Frid is on backing vocals on the recording, which reminds someone...

ABBA – Fernando
Third appearance in four weeks! And it's not even ***SPOILER*** number one yet. It's the promo clip from week one, for the record. This is going to be a very drum-hearing late spring on BBC4.

Sheer Elegance – Life Is Too Short Girl
On two weeks ago as well! But the poor man's Temptations are back in the studio for a second go, still in that remarkable get-up of tartan waistcoats, yellow all-in-ones and paisley shirts with huge collars. You'd think they'd have at least made this "Sheer Elegance's infamous yellow all-in-one uniform" by now, but as they're wearing blue suits with ridiculously large black with white polka dot collars in their chart rundown picture this must be a uniform specific to this song. They're trying to get some swaying in unison going too, except one of them steadfastly refuses to play ball. No wonder people remember Lenny Henry and Marti Caine instead from the 1975 New Faces intake.

The Rubettes – You’re The Reason Why
As if to prove the real power of a uniform, the Rubettes had ditched the flat caps and matching pastel suits by this stage, turned into a wet boogie band and accordingly only had one more hit. Maybe what really turned things was what they went for here, with one member dressed as a sitcom bus conductor and Alan Williams revealed as looking like Alan Freeman. It takes mere seconds for the drummer to wink at the rostrum camera. Diddy David calls it "incredible".

Hank Mizell – Jungle Rock
"Once again we have some very good news for the fellas". Yeah, cheers. Another re-run, but some repeat performances are worthwhile so as the viewer can take in the level of attention to detail. The BBC props and costume departments have long been the envy of the television world.



Someone uploaded that just after the first showing so we can now gain more of an understanding on some of the big questions. For example, are those convincing outfits - alligators look just like that, of course - inhabited by ver People? Well, the 'gator seemingly has evident breasts but otherwise it's unclear. It's not the same people in the camel and elephant, we can say that almost for certain, as the camel is quite reticent about moving more than one leg at once whereas the pretend pachyderm is going for it with running man-like gusto. You could ask what sort of jungle houses a fox, rabbit, camel and kangaroo, but you'd have had to take that up with Mizell directly had he not died in 1992. One set of lyrics claims a "great big falcon" appears just after the alligator and what Flick interprets as a leg-shaking grizzly bear is in fact "all the fish stepped by", but both are indistinct and completely confuse jungle ecosystem matters. And then there's the issue of the girls themselves and what sort of faces they're pulling to camera when not asked merely to express neutral seduction for three minutes. We point for specific evidence to 1:34. Hope we all appreciated Cherry Gillespie's spirited waggling of her arse direct to camera in time for the lyric "I moved a little closer just to get a better view". Having seen Tony Blackburn make a joke about him out of the first showing, Hamilton obligingly makes a joke about Blackburn this time.

This was the last time this appeared on Pops, so here's the Fall's cover, which appears on a fascinating new album called Beyond The Fall of originals of songs Mark E taught us, and a note that Legs & Co redid Jungle Rock for the Christmas show, which is here. Despite the paucity of clothing, the ramping up of cliches, developed setting, Tony Blackburn cameo that takes far too long and leaves him with nothing to do for two minutes and frankly nightmare inducing new animal costumes just make it too crowded. Look at the end, there's so little room left that everyone all but gives up on proper dancing.

Gilbert O'Sullivan – Doing What I Know
Although the knot of kids behind him seem keen, the insistent electric piano sound didn't translate to chart business and he only bothered the top 40 once more, in 1980. One of the audience already seems to be copying Noosha Fox's haircut.

Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
"It's a hit all over the nations" David enthuses somewhat ungrammatically. Back to the studio performance, and we're pretty sure there is already nothing else that can be said about this. April 1976 was very much a studded denim jacket/wrongfooting last line sort of month. Hamilton claims four people are "going mad" around him, Andrea True Connection play us out, and we still wait for the great leap forward. Unbeknownst to most, the Wurzels are only three weeks away.

EDIT NEWS: The major discard this week is a Pan's People routine involving the girls in bra/crop tops. And it was their penultimate week on the show too. Have some respect, BBC4. The song is You Sexy Sugar Plum by funk-soul variable attraction Rodger Collins, the routine one of those where having got the girls dressed down Flick can't really think of much to do with them. There was also a video for the Sutherland Brothers' classic rock staple Arms Of Mary, presumably the same Bay City Rollers Love Me Like I Love You video as the first week and, perhaps left out because enough people on Twitter go on about the imminence of punk, Keith Emerson. Honky Tonk Train Blues is a cover of boogie-woogie trailblazer Meade Lux Lewis and is basically a man playing barrel roll piano at great speed. How Pops would have staged that one, and how the dancing kids would have reacted to it without starting to smoke from the heels slightly, will remain a mystery.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #4: The Inspiral Carpets featuring Mark E Smith - I Want You

Ahead of tonight's rerun, let's officially induct this given that elsewhere we've been discussing little else. First thing to say is we were partly alerted to this being online by Pop Unlimited 1994, a blog running through the year's chart pop and uploading full Pops episodes on or around the anniversary to this Vimeo channel.

Somewhere online is an interview that we now can't find in which the Inspirals talk about how they were nearly kicked off the show when Mark, as expected, turned up pissed. That he seems to be inhabiting an entirely different song to the rampaging garage rolling thunder of I Want You is about par for his peculiar course, and also note that nobody - Simon Mayo, the producer, the caption writer - can think of anything to say about it all.



Followed on that show by Morrissey, too. But oh, the controversy it caused. As with so many things in life, it takes an animatronic disembodied cat called Ratz to offer the facts.



The Fall never appeared on TOTP themselves, perhaps wisely. However this is an equal opportunities blog, so here they are on The Roxy.