The Alternative TOTP Canon #45: Pet Shop Boys - Can You Forgive Her

Despite having been regular stoic visitors in their early years Neil and Chris, supposedly in a dispute over performing live, didn't appear in the studio for any of their four singles in 1991. Upon returning in June 1993, ironically in the midst of the live-performance-first era, the occasion demanded something that Charlestoned all over the boundary between ridiculous and sublime. Fair to say little was spared in the ideas department - 3D effects, the launch of the iconic big coned hats, Chris scavenging behind a pulsing orb. In that setting dancers painted silver in suit of armour bodices and diamond-styled Don King-esque wigs wielding silver cricket bats seems too obvious.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #44: Public Enemy - Shut 'Em Down

Plenty has been written on here about production standards, so it's only fair to highlight when they make a good staging decision. For three and a half minutes there isn't a single switch to another camera other than the crane shot keeping a menacing Chuck D and an almost normal Flavor Flav in centre of shot throughout, not to mention giving them live mikes and allowing a couple of particularly brooding S1Ws to keep watch. If only the floor manager had been as sharp, too many people getting to easily distracted by that roaming camera, even a complete lack of responses to the usual failsafe of putting hands in the air and waving 'em like you just don't care.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #43: Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Two Tribes

It's hard to think of a single that's been performed more often on TOTP, seven times in the studio in all. This sixth, to mark its ninth and last week at the top, is by a comfortable margin the most ostentatious, beginning with Patrick Allen captioning and Holly very deliberately ripping up a copy of the Sun in retaliation for a piece about the band. Note that front page lead which appears to read 'STREET STAR VERA FACES SACK', and sure enough Liz Dawn only stayed on Corrie for another twenty-four years. The rest, apart from Ped Gill and Mark O'Toole swapping instruments, is that of a band given yet another chance to get across the message and succeeding by some distance - the white suits, the flags both hanging up and handed out to the audience, the loudspeakers, the cane, the two coming together, an enormous wattage of flashing lights, Holly's walkabout limited when he realises how small the studio and its number of inhabitants really is. Listen to the volume of that reaction.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #42: Art Of Noise - Close (To The Edit)

As what used to be called studio boffins, Art Of Noise were deliberately faceless and imageless, great for the sort of theories Paul Morley draped around their oeuvre, less so if you have a hit single and the BBC want to know if you'd like to come in and represent it on prime-time television. So step forward Anne Dudley, Gary Langan and JJ Jeczalik, two Fairlights and a liberally 'played' mixing desk, some masks of the design as seen on their record sleeves, some sort of fur stole, berets and the full whiff of artisan. Their Tube appearance for the same is worth a look for Morley visual input, clown costumage and an absolutely static audience.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #41: Mick Jagger - Let's Work

Hadn't expected to see this again, had you? Well, while we've got some time and to mark the imminence of post number 200 I thought it'd be good to resurrect this to highlight some of the lesser seen performances that have cropped up in researching the under-read On This Top Of The Pops Day as that blog staggers towards its inevitable conclusion. This week's bunch of five inductees starts with a song which peaked at 33, wasn't even in the top 40 when featured - in fact the show had already been hanging onto this performance for a fortnight before giving in - but everyone who saw seems to remember. One thing you can't accuse him of is not putting some gumption into it, using the entire studio as a personal bouncy castle of a plaything. One thing you can accuse him of is a lack of subtlety, whether that be in the Tebbitrock lyrics or the two gangs of seemingly barely choreographed groups. There's a BBC Stones season coming very soon including an At The BBC. We should get a petition together to ensure this is included.

The Alternative TOTP Christmas Canon: Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody

And so we reach the apex, the embodiment of Christmas hitmaking at a time when TOTP was at its height or thereabouts. Because it kept coming back Slade actually got to do this on two seperate Christmas shows, going walkabout the following year, but I've picked out the first because it demonstrates something about the show's technical limitations and those of its production ideas. There's a reason why you don't have a stage invasion at the start of a song, not least on television as the weight of numbers means we even manage to lose a tall man in a big mirrored hat in the crowd, and while the little cheer at 1:53 is a clue that something's happened by the time the director finds Noddy again something both savoury (if it's whipped cream) and unsavoury seems to have happened out of shot, which defeats its purpose. Still, worth missing Nod's big moment to admire the movement of that crane camera at length. Someone kisses Noddy at the end too despite having seen the state of him.

The Alternative TOTP Christmas Canon: Dennis Waterman & George Cole - What Are We Gonna Get 'Er Indoors?

Oh, pop culture. What are we going to do with you? 'Interpolating In The Bleak Midwinter', apparently, and going on the recorded version there seems to be some ad libbing and half-forgetting of lyrics going on. Stage fright?

The Alternative TOTP Christmas Canon: The Specials - Do Nothing

Not the most festive number, but think of Christmas cliche - family get-togethers, too much turkey and bad jumpers. The latter must have been what whichever Special had in mind, because Jerry doesn't strike me as the type, when this performance was envisaged, proving the most effective gags are the subtlest, something the duo Simon Bates chats to before they come on would have done well to learn (though fair's fair, there's a couple of good lines in there, it's just a shame he feels the need to giggle after each one) Actually the show was broadcast on 18th December 1980, but when replayed on the first show of 1981 it must have taken on the required comedic poignancy.

The Alternative TOTP Christmas Canon: The Snowmen - Hokey Cokey

What is this? Well, it's a 1981 conceptual pop idea from the conceptual pop idealists at Stiff Records, some uncredited people doing one of the great party records in costumes not actually designed for knee bending or arm stretching. Rumour continues to this day that it's Ian Dury on vocals, but quite apart from that no definitive biography has ever linked him to the song it sounds like someone doing a bad impression of Dury. A more likely candidate is Jona Lewie, a Stiff artist fond of both Christmas hitmaking and novelty hits under a pseudonym (hello, Terry Dactyl & the Dinosaurs), not to mention that future hot shot video director Nigel Dick has claimed to be in one of the costumes and he was in Lewie's backing band. (Which of course means he made an appearance on a definite Lewie TOTP showing - he's on the tuba and claims alongside him is John Otway) The men in top hat and tails at the back had been participating in Godley & Creme's Wedding Bells earlier in the show; at the start is unlikely proof of Simon Bates' S&M tendencies.

The Alternative TOTP Christmas Canon: Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas?

Christmas songs, performances from Christmas shows and general festive cheer all this week, starting with the notorious 1984 Christmas show run-through of the song that may well have changed everything. Nearly everyone involved was on the show anyway but with playback miming in force and that crucial word 'nearly', see the incapacitated George Michael replaced by a Sting who clearly isn't concentrating, and at 1:22 that pretty conclusively isn't Bono. Not to mention Black Lace among others getting onto the end of the group chorus and that, even though Culture Club were on the show, Boy George clearly isn't ready to join in with the onstage frivolity along with everyone else. No wonder Bob looks bashful. Two questions arising near the end: who is that holding a bass as the credits start, and what do you suppose Odile Dicks-Mireaux did with their days?



(better but unembeddable quality here)

The Alternative TOTP Canon #40: Whale - Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe

Clown wig and Groucho glasses/tache set, Bardot blonde wig, interpretative boa waving, shouting. That's the spirit! Watch for the guitarist diving into the crowd and the crowd throwing him straight back onto the stage.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #39: Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missile F1-11

The song that proves nothing ages as badly as ideas of what the future will look like, but you can't say the TOTP team weren't trying to fit in with the image with the colour oversaturation, the visual effects and of course the explosions. For all that, the band's disappointment that all the audience are doing is clapping in time much as they would for Wham! must have been palpable. The band aren't doing anything to help, though, they're just standing there with their haircuts!

The Alternative TOTP Canon #38: Billy Howard - King Of The Cops

Yes, this was recorded for the show, it counts. Couldn't he have thought of a second joke per character?

The Alternative TOTP Canon #37: Status Quo - Marguerita Time

From the first show of 1984, also the twentieth anniversary special, here's another piece of kit rearrangement as a spectacularly pissed Rick Parfitt walks into, mounts and eventually brings crashing over Pete Kircher's drumkit. Quite the job he does on it too, the whole thing from floor tom to allegedly weighted down bass drum right off the riser in one move. Listen to the appreciation his handiwork gets. Before that is plenty of old school rock and roll showbiz, not counting 0:56 when Rossi spots his mike has fallen out of its stand. Also note Jim Lea of Slade on bass as Alan Lancaster hated the song (or his wife was pregnant, depending on which piece of self-mythologising you believe) and left the band shortly after.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #36: The Who - 5:15

No particular theme to this week's five Alternative Canon entries, just cherry pickings from the wide, wild sweep that was Top Of The Pops. This, for instance, comes from the 500th show from October 1973 and is the full version of the clip you may have seen on Later last week - just rare (the rest of the show has been wiped), scintillating footage of a great rock band near enough to their height. Plus in the last 55 seconds you get some mike swinging, windmilling, a scissor kick and to close some Townshend/Moon patented auto-destruction, apparently due to the former's annoyance at the Musician's Union stance as their members were supposed to be on strike. Eventually some audience members are moved enough to throw their wigs at the band.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #35: Pete Wylie - Sinful

It's John Peel Day, in commemoration of his death seven years ago today. This is the source of his celebrated "break wind in your kitchen" promise/threat (it peaked at 13 but he still didn't), but the never knowingly self-undersold Wylie deserves a look for much more than that. He's brought his own dancers along, The Little Sisters Of The Anfield Road End apparently, and he very much knows where the cameras are.

The Alternative Pan's People Canon: The Chi-Lites - Homely Girl

Another one from the Pan's People back catalogue while we have time to spare, and while the dresses are relatively well known through repeated clippage when such is required they don't spend the whole routine prancing about in them. In fact this fulfils both our immediate requirements: prime Gillespie and a triumph of literalism. Observe the tumbling, vitality filled locks, that alluringly flashed chest, the winning smile... and as for the girls it's a classic of the Plain Jane genre as ugly ducklings (with the aid of screwed up faces, marker pen freckles and the sort of dungareed outfit not to be seen again on the show until the appearance of minor The Real Thing members) turn every so often into baby-doll dress swans. It's a wonder the 'carousel of disenchantment' move never took off in the clubs.

The Alternative Pan's People Canon: The Small Faces - Itchycoo Park

There's already been an Alternative Pan's People Canon collection, but given this week's theme there had to be an appendix of something appropriate. Appropriate might be the wrong choice of word for the family element of the show, mind, given Flick seems to have taken the barely hidden subtext of the song, charting in reissued form in early 1976, to her literal heart. Everyone goes for it on some peculiar tangents that start, especially on the first two lines, with patented movements-sticking-to-the-words but soon enough turn into B-movie witch-based schlock. Cherry certainly seems going on the first chorus to have missed her true calling in that regard. That the whole routine is built around a large mushroom in an enchanted setting and was choreographed by a hip American who was just out of her teens around 1967... I'm saying nothing.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #34: REM - Orange Crush

Well, how's Simon Parkin meant to know what it's about? All REM songs were cryptic crosswords in tone around then. An expert team of musicologists are carefully examining this clip frame by frame for evidence of miming and are expected to report back shortly.

The Alternative TOTP Canon #33: Sue Wilkinson - You Gotta Be A Hustler If You Wanna Get On

One thread running through a lot of this Canon, and quite a few of the accepted faces of TOTP legend, is oddity or plain being out of place, the sense that should it get a high enough profile or sneak into the upper end of the charts anything could be presented to the prime-time pop kids. Originally titled You Gotta Be A Scrubber... but changed on the advice of the head of Radio 1, the late Wilkinson (she died of cancer in 2005) was a model and actress who had an in-house songwriting job and had worked with Chas Jankel of the Blockheads. This was released on Hendrix's manager Chas Chandler's label and hammered by a Radio 1 DJ - our source forgets which but thinks it may have been DLT. Those are facts. Actuality is something different as even by out of place's standards this represents an enigma, a plainly bizarre entry into the show's catalogue, as the kids would say a WTF. Here we have a monologuist on the verge of a nervous breakdown, a tremendous amount of cynicism only matched by the levels of subtle playing to camera. So many questions. Why is she standing like that? Why has the drummer (Don Powell of Slade, actually) set up a full kit if he only plays shaker and muted cymbal? What's with the ruler twanging on the edge of a table? What are the audience supposed to do for two and a half minutes?