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.
Showing posts with label eric carmen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eric carmen. Show all posts
Friday, 29 April 2011
Friday, 15 April 2011
15/4/76: even though it's only number three
Ah, Dave Lee Travis. A man to whom history has not been kind, but then contemporaneousness wasn't particularly kind to him either. Pre-Cornflake, pre-snooker, pre-quacking quacking oopsing, his what would now be drivetime show laboured under the title 'It's DLT OK!' as if his desire to find an audience through innovation had hit a brick wall and he only had the power of his name to go on. Here he is indulging in one of his loves, aside from editoralising and laughing, in 1979, feeling proud about launching DJ race days and introduced by a film of last week's host when he looked slightly different. They hated each other, you know.
The dewey-eyed promo still of Tina Charles in the rundown gets us every time.
Fox – S-S-S-Single Bed
As if to predict what would have been the breakout viral success of repeat week one, even though it's only just entered the top 20 we get this for a kickoff. As an extra bonus, as the camera pans to Noosha's good side - and in this performance she really works the sideways looks - you can see DLT in the background poised as if still waiting for his cue. He is jigging on the spot. Amid such seductiveness the talkbox solo still sounds completely out of place, let alone that it's delivered by a man in a David Soul brown cardigan through a Peter Frampton-like plastic tube. Two women in matching brown Homburgs sway in time at the front. Maybe they're waiting for Pan's People to do Jungle Rock again.
The Stylistics – Can’t Help Falling In Love
A Philly soul cover of the Elvis standard shorn of quite a bit of its unison twirling style by the glaring fact one of them's sitting sideways on a stool, looking quite put out at the bits he'd otherwise be joining in with. Russell Thompkins Jr's almost constant thousand yard stare is a thing of... no, not beauty, the opposite. DLT calls it a "super new sound". He doesn't explain the seatedness. It's like a less spectacular version of the Tams fiasco.
Diana Ross – Theme From Mahogany
Not the age of the train promo clip from a fortnight past but Pan's People in outfits seemingly comprised of ruffs and silk twirling around big boxes and a tree with no leaves. They can handle the tempo, the meaning of the words less so. DLT's outro suggests he immediately wants to sodomise them all. Wonder if they reciprocated the notion.
Brass Construction – Movin'
The Funk in evidence, as are the requisite gold and otherwise reflective suits and about a million members. Only on film, which saves the BBC orchestra a job.
Sailor – Girls Girls Girls
Nickelodeon news! Since beholding the majesty of Richard O'Sullivanagram Georg Kajanus' specially made dual sided keyboard collection last time out, we find there's an entire page devoted to its construction and design developments, and they wrote a song about it (if you're like us you'll get an advert for Natalia Kills before the clip starts, and you may like to wonder if we've really come on that far as a species) By the way, they're still going, though in a unique twist with all the original members except the singer.
Isaac Hayes – Disco Connection
Pan's People, for all the opportunity to wear crop tops and short skirts, rarely looked at home with disco, where moves are led by the soul rather than a flailing Flick Colby. No Hayes vocals on this, bar some low growling, but some cracking Stax strings and only the merest hint of slap bass.
Smokie – Wild Wild Angels
"A consistently good sounding group" is the nearest Travis can get to all-out promotion all night, and he even has to spit that out. Their workaday northern club take on freeway rock is enlivened no end by a woman dressed for Little House On The Prairie, wide brimmed hat and all, dancing at the back of the stage with a book in her hand. Maybe she'd come to clean the studio from the evil spirits. The singer tries soul growling. He fails. This didn't chart, by the way.
Eric Carmen – All By Myself
"1976 is definitely the year of the big production numbers" Dave tells us, and the proprietors of a hip King's Road boutique snigger. You can tell there's been an edit in recording as the same big-brimmed lady is still strutting her careful stuff in the same place, though she's put her book down. Actually, unless they were recording two at a time and taking wild guesses with the chart placings Carmen has come back to deliver his local radio Smoochy Love Line Hour staple in the same clothes he wore when bothering Noel last week, right down to the openness of his blue working man's shirt. Like John Miles, it feels like it lasts for hours.
Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
For the fourth of six weeks at number one not the studio performance, or the Eurovision appearance, but some sort of video filmed in a very 70s slightly brown filter. All they actually do for the expense is wander through Holland Park, first in a line, then behind small fences pointing at things. The chorus gets a slow pan across some flowers and later a peacock in profile. It doesn't really reflect the song.
And we finish over some studio lights with Rodger Collins' You Sexy Sugar Plum, a funk pop jam in search of a dynamic chorus.
EDIT NEWS: As previously discussed this is the first of the 40 minute shows edited down - quite well, as it happens - to fit a neat half hour, so we lost Get Back - just the Apple roof footage you've probably seen in all its shambolic nature - The Three Degrees' undistinguishedly slow "brand new sound" (another one?) A Toast Of Love (though they're styled about twenty years ahead of their time), to which DLT gallantly suggests "they can singe my toast any time", and Silver Convention's Get Up And Boogie, disco trying far too hard to groove and accompanied by 1930s cartoons that fail to explain why in their chart still the three female singers are crouching down with their hands on their knees.
The dewey-eyed promo still of Tina Charles in the rundown gets us every time.
Fox – S-S-S-Single Bed
As if to predict what would have been the breakout viral success of repeat week one, even though it's only just entered the top 20 we get this for a kickoff. As an extra bonus, as the camera pans to Noosha's good side - and in this performance she really works the sideways looks - you can see DLT in the background poised as if still waiting for his cue. He is jigging on the spot. Amid such seductiveness the talkbox solo still sounds completely out of place, let alone that it's delivered by a man in a David Soul brown cardigan through a Peter Frampton-like plastic tube. Two women in matching brown Homburgs sway in time at the front. Maybe they're waiting for Pan's People to do Jungle Rock again.
The Stylistics – Can’t Help Falling In Love
A Philly soul cover of the Elvis standard shorn of quite a bit of its unison twirling style by the glaring fact one of them's sitting sideways on a stool, looking quite put out at the bits he'd otherwise be joining in with. Russell Thompkins Jr's almost constant thousand yard stare is a thing of... no, not beauty, the opposite. DLT calls it a "super new sound". He doesn't explain the seatedness. It's like a less spectacular version of the Tams fiasco.
Diana Ross – Theme From Mahogany
Not the age of the train promo clip from a fortnight past but Pan's People in outfits seemingly comprised of ruffs and silk twirling around big boxes and a tree with no leaves. They can handle the tempo, the meaning of the words less so. DLT's outro suggests he immediately wants to sodomise them all. Wonder if they reciprocated the notion.
Brass Construction – Movin'
The Funk in evidence, as are the requisite gold and otherwise reflective suits and about a million members. Only on film, which saves the BBC orchestra a job.
Sailor – Girls Girls Girls
Nickelodeon news! Since beholding the majesty of Richard O'Sullivanagram Georg Kajanus' specially made dual sided keyboard collection last time out, we find there's an entire page devoted to its construction and design developments, and they wrote a song about it (if you're like us you'll get an advert for Natalia Kills before the clip starts, and you may like to wonder if we've really come on that far as a species) By the way, they're still going, though in a unique twist with all the original members except the singer.
Isaac Hayes – Disco Connection
Pan's People, for all the opportunity to wear crop tops and short skirts, rarely looked at home with disco, where moves are led by the soul rather than a flailing Flick Colby. No Hayes vocals on this, bar some low growling, but some cracking Stax strings and only the merest hint of slap bass.
Smokie – Wild Wild Angels
"A consistently good sounding group" is the nearest Travis can get to all-out promotion all night, and he even has to spit that out. Their workaday northern club take on freeway rock is enlivened no end by a woman dressed for Little House On The Prairie, wide brimmed hat and all, dancing at the back of the stage with a book in her hand. Maybe she'd come to clean the studio from the evil spirits. The singer tries soul growling. He fails. This didn't chart, by the way.
Eric Carmen – All By Myself
"1976 is definitely the year of the big production numbers" Dave tells us, and the proprietors of a hip King's Road boutique snigger. You can tell there's been an edit in recording as the same big-brimmed lady is still strutting her careful stuff in the same place, though she's put her book down. Actually, unless they were recording two at a time and taking wild guesses with the chart placings Carmen has come back to deliver his local radio Smoochy Love Line Hour staple in the same clothes he wore when bothering Noel last week, right down to the openness of his blue working man's shirt. Like John Miles, it feels like it lasts for hours.
Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
For the fourth of six weeks at number one not the studio performance, or the Eurovision appearance, but some sort of video filmed in a very 70s slightly brown filter. All they actually do for the expense is wander through Holland Park, first in a line, then behind small fences pointing at things. The chorus gets a slow pan across some flowers and later a peacock in profile. It doesn't really reflect the song.
And we finish over some studio lights with Rodger Collins' You Sexy Sugar Plum, a funk pop jam in search of a dynamic chorus.
EDIT NEWS: As previously discussed this is the first of the 40 minute shows edited down - quite well, as it happens - to fit a neat half hour, so we lost Get Back - just the Apple roof footage you've probably seen in all its shambolic nature - The Three Degrees' undistinguishedly slow "brand new sound" (another one?) A Toast Of Love (though they're styled about twenty years ahead of their time), to which DLT gallantly suggests "they can singe my toast any time", and Silver Convention's Get Up And Boogie, disco trying far too hard to groove and accompanied by 1930s cartoons that fail to explain why in their chart still the three female singers are crouching down with their hands on their knees.
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