The recent connection troubles at this end meant we've missed the opportunity to mark a couple of recent TOTP-related deaths. Jerry Nelson, who died on 25th August aged 78, had worked as part of Jim Henson's company since 1965 and was best known as the voice of Count von Count (he also did Statler for a while and innumerable minor characters), but it's him voicing Robin on Halfway Down The Stairs, the tender AA Milne-penned song that never failed to send Noel into giggles.
More pertinently for Pops, we lost Louise Clarke a couple of weeks short of her 63rd birthday. She wasn't strictly a founder member of Pan's People, joining a year after they were initially set up and not appearing with them on TOTP until May 1968, a month after their debut, but she was there through their imperial phase, leaving after almost exactly six years, the famous Homely Girl routine her swansong, to get married and start a family. Here's a tribute to her work.
Meanwhile, many have noted the letter in this week's Radio Times in response to praise for this series/year that "it has no immediate plans to show the 1978 series, but is keeping that decision under review". The reading from our end: calm down. It doesn't say they're not going to, it says essentially they don't know. BBC4 won't have made any plans for next year (apart from a couple of already announced special seasons, but that's different) by the end of August when RT would have started being put to bed and they didn't announce or start working on '77 until some way into October.
Back to this week. (Well, the week we're up to in 1977, but you know what I mean) Kid's in charge and literally showing his true colours in a red and white lace-up top emblazoned with a maple leaf motif and, in case the subtlety was lost, 'CANADA' in big diagonal letters. We later see '74' is emblazoned on the maple leaf. No idea. The countdown is restored, as is only correct, to the top of the show, and Kid has a countdown of his own to add as Jonathan Richman's Roadrunner is the chart rundown music. Kid then does a voiceover link into the first song, ruining the ever fun element of surprise and anticipation. Or maybe not, in this case.
Showaddywaddy – You Got What It Takes
"Unmistakeably Showaddywaddy" at that, though surely that doesn't take into account all the original rock and roll bands and all the songs they cover, this included. We do at least know the drill now, wherein Dave Bartram and his lush, tumbling, vitality-filled locks attempts to look appealing towards crowd and camera in turn, coupled with the odd bit of visual comedy double take. Very low forms of visual comedy, admittedly, when it constitutes looking quizzically at his open palm for the line "with your money we won't get far". This time the drapes seem to be colour coded by instrument, with the allotted backing singers in canary yellow meaning despite it being mostly hidden by Bartram's head we can kind of get the gist of their middle eight routine involving spinning, kicking and the ever present notion there's got to be more dignified ways to come across on television, as Bartram goes on to glad-hand the front row and plant a smacker on some girl's forehead. Meanwhile Buddy Gask does his single basso profundo vocal and wonders when that supposed joint lead singer role is going to come up again. To close everyone turns their back on the audience as a mystery invisible sax solos away.
Steve Gibbons Band – Tulane
Hard to describe the motion Kid makes into this, a kind of swung arm round towards camera into leg-aided air guitar power chord. Splendidly, with only two to choose from the intended opening close-up on the guitar strings chosen by the director is on the rhythm, which has two notes to play, rather than that playing the distinctive lead riff. A Chuck Berry cover, rock and roll business is conducted by a man who's really tried to look the part - receding pompadour, white shirt and leather trousers, one handed confident mike stance leading to full knee knocking once the mike is in his hand, looks, like Alvin Stardust, far too old for all this. As for his band the bassist is wearing the cap of a stereotypical camp biker - as he is in their countdown photo and was last time we checked in, maybe it was his "thing" - while I still can't work out whether both guitarists have moustaches or not. The audience are into it, at least one young couple jiving as much as what they understand jiving to look like. Even better, one long shot reveals two men in a committed full-on rendition of that shoulder-first routine usually carried out by men in distressed denim jackets at Status Quo gigs or on stage with Mud doing Tiger Feet. Not for the last time tonight, Kid appears alone in the distance, slapping the side of his thigh in time to the beat during the instrumental break. Kid promises more for "the rock fans" later.
Barry Biggs – Three Ring Circus
Repeat. The seated one rather than the ringmaster one, sadly.
The Rods – Do Anything You Wanna Do
Not a mistake, Eddie & The Hot Rods traded under this name for a little while, presumably to make people think they were a hot new young punk band. It seems to have worked on Kid, who goes falsetto by the end of declaiming the title having enthused "this has got to be one of the best rhythm and rock records this year". Rhythm And Rock, for those who don't recall, was the more ostensibly commercial parallel to A Bit Of That Sort Of Rock. Not that the band are hiding anything, Barrie Masters still restlessly stalking and covering every inch of the stage and gurning between occasionally mimed lines in white jeans and an open shirt, occasionally grabbing the above the crotch area of his huge belt. Of course there's a member, the bassist, in dark glasses. Less punk-like, he's also wearing a yellow and black striped headband.
Rita Coolidge – We're All Alone
Well, this is quite rum. "The mood is mellow" maybe but not so literally, surely. For one thing, surely it's a late replacement given we've seen the video twice, but it's not clear what it might have replaced. Tavares' One Step Away seems most likely as it had been hovering around a central position before suddenly falling right out of the top 30, while Mink DeVille's Spanish Stroll had entered the top 50 the week before but hadn't quite yet made the rundown. Danny Williams' Dancin' Easy, surprisingly sticking at 32? The Ramones' Swallow My Pride, which entered at 36 the previous week but fell? We can but ponder and create unlikely mental images. Anyway, We're All Alone it is. The troupe, in non-fetching shades of electric blue/mauve and orange dresses with matching legwarmers, start lying on their backs and kind of stay there. Not just like that, obviously, even Flick would be called into question were it a tableau rather than routine no matter how clearly properly undanceable for slowness reasons the song is. No, from there is carved out a succession of seated positions, Oops Upside Your Head-recalling bends and lunges, rolls, crawls and just about every combination of arm and leg bending and swinging, closing with an extreme close-up on... well, I can rarely get them right when their faces are the right way up, but I think it's Gill... whoever, she's making something akin to devil eyes at us, perhaps hoping for something upbeat soon. It's more like a gymnastic floor exercise routine-cum-keep fit video on 2x fast forward and for all we know might have constituted an ongoing sit-down protest following Roadrunner's seated delivery. And not a cacti in sight either.
Thin Lizzy – Dancin' In The Moonlight (It's Caught Me In It’s Spotlight)
"From some delightful Lizzies..." Eh? I double checked, he does say "Lizzies". As seems traditional with Lizzy - and that's what Kid calls them at the end so it's an official diminutive - it's a repeat, slow dancers and all. Perhaps inspired by the Rods, Kid calls them just "Lizzy".
Delegation – You've Been Doing Me Wrong
Delegation were soul's own Liverpool Express, clearly. In very Seventies ruffled white suits over paisley patterned shirts and huge bow ties and embarking on choreographed knee lifting, they can't quite disguise that they've just slowed You To Me Are Everything down a bit, or that the first verse is clearly supposed to be in three part harmony but the Willie Thorne one either has been written out of the part at late notice or can't be bothered to lift the mike to his mouth but is gamely miming along anyway. After that he's always just slightly out of the movement routine, glancing across more out of blind hope than checking, sometimes affecting a half turn to make it seem more noticeable. The main singer isn't well served by shooting from below either given it means we can see the gap in the front of his teeth all the clearer. When the camera pans back to Kid he's swaying gently sat in the lotus position grinning to himself, as if in the midst of a pleasant flashback.
Fleetwood Mac – Dreams
A few more seconds than last time of the live clip, I reckon. "Isn't that fabulous?" Kid says. Maybe if we saw more of it.
J.A.L.N. Band – I Got To Sing
"Back to the disco scene", apparently. Apart from the keyboard player in grey slacks hoping we won't notice because of his instrument, more white suits all round. Was there someone unscrupulous going round the dressing rooms? Plausible given the horn section, who so clearly aren't regular members of the band they should have had their own caption. If the singer gets any closer to the edge of the stage for the verses he'll be dragged in, and he can't say he wasn't warned. Maybe that's why he's not concentrating on his miming, missing half a line at one point. Or maybe he's just terrible at it, not clear in his own mind whether vocals are lead or backing by the end. He's completely disrespecting the title of his own band's song in that.
Donna Summer – I Feel Love
Week four of four atop, and evidently not a moment too soon for the show. Obviously we don't know what they did in week three, but given week two involved slides and seated lunges you'd have put good money on a kaleidoscopic image of a potter's wheel or similar by now. Instead once Kid has symbolically clutched at his heart it's the escape hatch once more, but with a twist - Donna's passport photos on Toppotron™ once more, awkward dancing in semi-darkness again, but in the distance five sixths of Legs & Co swish their long dresses about in strict formation - shimmy, dip left shoulder, shimmy shoulders, dip right shoulder. In other words, a standing version of the routine they developed from within RoadRunner, and just as then most people aren't paying the blindest bit of attention. Five, though? Sue's the odd one out as she faces off and shimmies on a raised corner of the set with... Floyd! The man for all emergencies. Sue's still wearing her outfit from earlier, from which we must assume her colleagues are too, and we now see a bit of netting on the front, which we see the rest moving around a bit during the chorus. The little details lost on the big stages. To fully cap this mise-en-scene of disco shaking, visible in his colours right in front of the Legs & Co quorum is Kid. He's dancing. Or so the intention seems anyway, his style developing over time from some awkward rhythmic (but not rockist) finger clicking to full-on shifting from side to side in an approximation of getting down with the groove, apparently not only completely unaware and out of time with what's immediately behind him but with everyone else too. We're allowed just the 1:50 this week before Kid, still shifting in one spot with a little arm movement too, delivers the coup de grace before resuming with even more gusto as the song continues to play us out: "from me, Kid Jensen, it's goodbye and good love!" Yep, the full version. It's been a while.
By the time Pops returned the following week, there'd been a death in the family.
Showing posts with label fleetwood mac. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fleetwood mac. Show all posts
Thursday, 13 September 2012
Wednesday, 22 August 2012
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.
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.
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