TOTP 21/7/77 (tx 22/8/12): everything changes

Last time we were gathered here there was a national sensation lurking. This (thanks to jamesonedin from Popscene) is a scan of a page from The Sex Pistols File by Ray Stevenson, published first in 1978, then in 1982, a scrapbook of a great deal written about the band at the time, the centrepiece of which is a mock-lurid telling of the night's events from Sounds magazine's Giovanni Dadomo, who also wrote for ZigZag and The Face, co-wrote a Damned single and fronted cult punks The Snivelling Shits.

The proper big TOTP news from the week is the appearance of one of the great holy grails of 60s British music - Pink Floyd, Syd inclusive, playback-performing See Emily Play on the Pops broadcast 6th July 1967 (if it's too ragged for you, a homemade remastering has been done) The footage has been known to exist initially in private hands - an unknown rock star's collection, it's said - for three years or so and was shown at Kaleidoscope in January 2010 but this is the first time it's slipped into the public domain.

And so to 1977, where the leonine face of DLT greets us and throws to... a song?

John Miles – Slow Down
Yes, now there's a hit to kick things off rather than the rundown. This changearound lasted one week. Shame, as John came in especially. This week's little things: the bassist wearing a tie with an open shirt, Miles' vocal adlibs being adhered to in miming but unfortunately well off mike, and Miles shutting his eyes as tight as David Parton did when a-talkboxing. Four people rush towards the throng just in time for the track's end, and as the camera pulls away we find DLT in full air guitar mode with the mike cord. "He-hey! Is that magic?" is his ungrammatic question. It's left to him to explain what's happened to the rundown, which he does via a completely wrong rendition of the opening riff that sounds more like the end of the Countdown clock timer, followed by the top 30 plus Tavares. Yes, for the next few years Top Of The Pops had no regular theme tune, just another chart hit jemmied in to accompany all the latest action shots:





Bay City Rollers – You Made Me Believe In Magic
And while we're on the changing of the ways, the Rollers final fling, both in the chart and on TOTP. Neither DLT nor the girls surrounding him, one arm in arm with him, another clearly trying to plant their palm on his bum, two clearly mothers with brilliantly northern stereotypical nan perms and bottle-bottom glasses, can truly summon up the excitement over it. There's not a stitch of tartan anywhere on the stage either, as if to show this is the new, mildly funky Rollers, not the ones you like. It's all looking very grown up until the camera gets to Eric Faulkner, who's chosen a leather jacket, rugby shorts and knee-high hooped socks. Nobody mixes styles that much and hopes to get away with it. There's a weird little tableau off to one side of the front of the stage too, where a man who looks like a burly policeman is looking disconsolately at the floor as everyone else does the side to side shuffle, a similarly catatonic if more attentive girl by both sides. Maybe they heard about the last bassist too.

Brotherhood Of Man – Angelo
"Here's a song that's going to do well in the charts, definitely". It's already number five! What more does DLT want? Repeat, anyway.

The Jam – All Around The World
Ah, this'll be a youth explosion, then. Well, maybe outside. Apart from less jumping around this time, either from Weller, Foxton or two blokes at the back, it's pretty similar to their debut showing, as committed young men in suits play power chords to a largely clueless crowd, still moving around just as they had five minutes earlier. Introducing the ways and means of TOTP directing to the new breed, Foxton's interjections in the middle are matched to a tight close-up of Weller. But there is a difference, as while there are a gaggle of people looking bored at the front stage left they're singing along, one directing it at his friend. He could look at the blokes right in front of him if he's that committed, surely.

Alessi – Oh Lori
"Some people from Ireland, say hello!" DLT's next line, or more precisely the bad accent it's delivered in, is sadly inevitable. Weeks after they participated in an awkward chat the brothers get to perform, and Bobby Alessi gets to show off his little bicycle-riding mime. We've kind of already seen the pair of them performing, albeit on video with one mike and a camera stuck on close-up, and pans, the sight of Bobby giving Billy unreciprocated matey looks and a small audience don't add much to the experience. That doesn't excuse the pair visible at the back of the stage having a chat.

Barry Biggs – Three Ring Circus
"In the same sort of vein", according to DLT. Barry's left his ringmaster gear and his mysterious sidekick at home this time, instead sitting down swaying, thinking that now just the song will do. Given the distance he misses the first note by, this isn't the case.

Smokie – It's Your Life
Perhaps as tired with the usual TOTP routine as the rest of us by now Chris Norman is dressed like a flamboyant flamenco dancer, if flamenco ever lent itself to the colour lemon. Not as tired of repeating themselves, the cameraman gets his bottom-of-a-bottle filter out again for the mid-section and waits for everyone to gather around one mike

Fleetwood Mac – Dreams
In what we shall now call the Supertramp Slot, about a minute and a half of grainy live footage - this, should you be interested - chiefly notable for Mick Fleetwood grimacing at the end of every bar and Stevie fiddling with a piece of material throughout.

The Rah Band – The Crunch
"After a good meal on a Thursday, what do you need? A crunch!" Makes about as much sense as the outfits. Repeat.

Danny Willians – Dancin' Easy
Panning over a phalanx of girls in white jackets we find Williams doing a David Dundas, rewriting an advertising jingle, in this case Martini's Anytime Anyplace Anywhere, for fun and profit. Williams had had a UK number one sixteen years previously (with Moon River) and so can be forgiven for being out of the soul style loop, but Huggy Bear's castoff jacket and big hat is not it. Gill tries to provide a distraction in a familiar looking all electric blue small top and flamenco skirt, which by the look of the punters confuses things even further for people already trying desperately to remember where the tune comes from. In fact, so easily distracted are a number of them that a couple openly wave to camera while a third does poses of largesse.

Queen – Good Old Fashioned Loverboy
Well, Queen weren't going to come back in again for the same song.

Donna Summer – I Feel Love
"I forecast it last week" says DLT, before his usual orgasm. Well, it's not like we can prove it. And now the show has a problem, because I Feel Love looks cemented to that top spot for a while and there's no video and no hope of Donna coming over to perform it, so here comes the first of at least four seperate Legs & Co-centric presentations. One can only hope the others are better reflective of its spacey disco rush than this one, in which the effort put into obtaining a rotating colour filter for mood lighting effects seems to outweigh that put into the routine, in which the girls shake their shoulders and wave the hem of their big long dresses a bit, looking more like they're trying to keep up with the BPM rather than do anything clever. Then they run from side to side a bit. Rosie gyrates her bosom at the camera a bit in a solo spot but coming some way into the routine it's literally a busted flush. The whole thing doesn't really reflect the erotic charge of the record, just when you want them to, catatonic as it may have made DLT. "I can assure you our playout group does not refer to Legs & Co - boney? Mmmm...." Over the credits again? Did Frank Farian have photos, just not quite enough? The designers are busy amusing themselves by using the colour filters against the kaleidoscope lenses. It just resembles a blur.

TOTP 7/7/77 (tx 1/8/12): when the two sevens clash

The Jimmy Savile auction took place in Leeds on Monday, to an apparently crammed auction house. The whole thing took the best part of thirteen hours and raised £320,000 or so for Jimmy's own charitable trust, £130,000 of which went on Jimmy's rare silver Rolls Royce Corniche convertible. As you'd expect there were some extraordinary lots among the 549 put up for sale, so before we start here's the Yes It's Number One big top ten, judged on oddness and over-estimate price:

A standard 'JIM FIXED IT FOR ME' aluminium badge - £2,000

The magic chair from the first two series of Jim'll Fix It - £8,500 (under the 10K estimate)

A blow-up of a newspaper's TV viewing figures column from February 1980, Jim'll Fix It at number one with 19.15m viewers - £65

A two-piece suit with an all-over print of Superman cartoon images, plus a pair of white leather platform shoes, worn when Jimmy met Prince Charles, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst - £1,600

A 60cm long machete on a green canvas belt - £140. SIR JIMMY SAVILE OWNED A MACHETE.

A crystal ball - £280

A Metropolitan Police helmet with 'To Jimmy Saville from Marylebone Police Station' written inside in ballpoint - £240

Four seperate sketches of Jimmy by Rolf Harris, two drawn in a TV canteen - total of £7,950

A mounted pebble with the engraved dedication 'By The People Of Keswick For Conquering Latrigg Fell' - £110.

This:



That's an actual Brazil nut, it says here. Not from the people of Keswick, that one. In fact, from one man. A Broadmoor patient - £150


Back in the real, linear world... well, that's a matter of opinion, really, as it's Tony presenting this week. Shot from below at the start, as he seemed to be most of the time.

The RAH Band – The Crunch
Now, this is how you start a pop programme, somewhere far beyond mere description. Spoiler alert for the start of this clip. Everything else alert for the rest. Even the drummer's in an open purple shirt and massive flares.



Look in the background at the start of the performance, there's three people getting down with their own selves away from the throng and next to someone else's drumkit. But really. Imagine in 1977 seeing this, hitherto unheard and certainly unseen, as the first song on, with no intro, on this great unifying family show, and eventually clocking how everyone else was turning out too. You'd wonder what the hell was going on. You'd likely wonder that in 2012. Tony openly admires the combined balaclava/gimp mask. "I must get one of those for David Hamilton". Aah, it's been a long time.

Olivia Newton-John – Sam
Aaaand back down to earth. This performance has been in this slot on three occasions and has never failed to bring down the mood.

Smokie – It's Your Life
The warmup man must have really been on it this week, the audience are moving more than we've seen then in months to these first two studio acts tonight. Quite the effort that seems too, as surely never mind Rorschach tests, the psyche would receive a good going over were candidates shown Smokie doing cod-reggae while two girls in zebra patterned plastic top hats look on. One man in shades and a leather jacket really isn't planning on moving when the camera sweeps past him, mind. Then the song takes a weird detour as a phasing effect leads not into a psychedelia section but a slow synth-led ballad middle eight by way of 10cc and seemingly shot through a pint glass. Did they think they really had to use that bit somewhere, never mind its context in the rest of the track? After that it's open season on keeping it together as three members, including bassist Terry Uttley looking like a perm/hippy haired Chris Barrie, gather by Chris Norman's position even though they all had perfectly good mikes of their own. Alan Silson, in a smart suit, puts one hand in his pocket - brazenly, the pocket towards camera - and the other on the back of Norman's neck. Then they start openly giggling for no good reason. Heady days.

Brotherhood Of Man – Angelo
Tony refers to BoM winning Eurovision "a couple of years back". It's as if he just doesn't care. As hardened Brotherhood watchers will know the moves don't change from performance to performance, but there is a telling moment when Nicky joins Sandra where they're nearly standing at right angles to each other. But this isn't like Abba at all, remember. Well, with the girls in pink golfing pullovers and the boys in gold jackets over black waistcoats it's not like they were aiming for a sartorial match. One man stands alone near the front in not moving, and while on camera looks across in the opposite direction, just in case. He's still there, immoveable as an Easter Island head, a chorus later. "One of those songs where you hear it and you just keep singing it over and over again" reckons Tony.

Bob Marley & The Wailers – Exodus
They're no Smokie. Repeat, on this of all days of Rasta/reggae importance.

Alessi – Oh Lori
"My very favourite record" says Tony, and we are accordingly prepared. A soft focus video, the brothers in close shot around one mike.

Barry Biggs – Three Ring Circus
Oh my. Barry, of course, we remember from his pink working men's club entertainer shirt from Sideshow, and now with the upgrade in travelling show he's graduated to the full ringmaster uniform. Big bow, stripy cummerbund, top hat, he's gone the whole hog. Coupled with his familiar striding back and forth stage style and his familiar light reggae beat it looks faintly unnerving, never mind uninviting. It's only on rewatching that things become weirder - like a spectral presence, a Pops Pipes, there's someone in a full leopard suit and spotted make-up sitting on the stage behind him. The camera never focuses on them or catches them in a full stage still shot, you just see them in passing two or three times, never clear enough even to work out a gender. What a liva bamba aie indeed.

Boney M – Ma Baker
I'm sure after Noel's mix-up last week Tony calls them "Bernie M". Legs & Co's go, and so soon after Mah Na Mah Na Sue gets the short straw again for the first in the group's occasional historical characters through disco-pop series, dolled up in decorative hat, big dress, grey wig and every so often swinging a handbag for all she's worth before heading into calisthenic dudgeon, the full jaunty pearly queen without the outfit routine high kicking, hands on hips, bravura expression. Do you reckon she had to get thoroughly pissed before recording to carry it off, a professional ballet-trained dancer like herself? I do. (Lawyer's note: I don't.) We see precious little of her indignity, as it's projected onto the back of a set they can't get to appear in shot whenever there's a close-up on what's happening in front of it. What's in front of it? The rest of Legs & Co in colour-coded jackets and big crinolene skirts thrusting, swaying and kicking over the back of chairs. It looks a little like a late replacement, in truth, what with very similar routines for each verse. Maybe Sue was having to make a 'mother dancing' routine up on the spot. That would be the respectful explanation.

Andy Gibb – I Just Wanna Be Your Everything
Gibb the younger with his rhythm guitar, his co-opted falsetto and his Radio 1 Roadshow bomber jacket again.

Hot Chocolate – So You Win Again
They do seem to be available a lot. Errol shows a little sign of movement to the groove this week, while sporting a medallion large enough to display in a museum and pass off as a Roman era discovery. Is that an extra member on keyboard pushed off to the side this week? Cutting the number one off literally on the first line of the last verse, evidently it getting even that far a surprise to Errol as he has his mouth shut and his mike far away from it, Tony invites us to join him on Summertime Special come Saturday and out pretty much in the same ballpark as we began, with a sound of the future that must have confused plenty at the time, Donna Summer's I Feel Love.

Next week's show... well, that's a story in itself.

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.