As Fox's S-S-S-Single Bed was the widespread breakout hit of repeat number one (and is on again next week, and it definitely will be with the unedited repeats) we were interested to see the story of former member Herbie Armstrong on Britain's Got Talent this week. Herbie, having done the requisite heart melting of Amanda Holden and got through to the final stages, was outed by the papers (by the way, Sun, "despite saying he had "never broken through as the front man", only last year Herbie released his own solo album". Yeah, and did he break through with it? Well, no, given he was selling it himself). According to the Sun, "Several of his previous telly appearances, on TOTP with both his old bands, are available on YouTube. A young Herbie is clearly visible playing guitar."
On YouTube? How quickly they overlook a rerun when it's no longer Trending Topic enough.
Summarily, Steve Williams points us at Armstrong's following band Yellow Dog's sole TOTP appearance, from February 1978, an appearance giving us plenty to admire even if they are clearly The Jags before their time. Flying goggles and shades were clearly someone's idea of the fashion zeitgeist, and keep on for the bit of fadeout-related comedy crosstalk at the end:
Now, according to that Sun article screengrab Herbie is the central guitarist in that clip, wearing a customised T-shirt of his own band, or if you like the acoustic guitar playing one behind Noosha here. If someone could then point out to us which one in both clips is founder of both bands Kenny Young we'd be grateful because there doesn't seem to be much overlap between what the members look like, Herbie aside, and it's not helping that yet another guitarist, Jim Gannon, and bassist Gary Taylor were also in both.
Showing posts with label fox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fox. Show all posts
Friday, 6 May 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.
Saturday, 9 April 2011
1/4/76: Where is Beatles band?
NB. I'll be using original TX dates rather than BBC4 schedules for this. I have a list.
It's Tony Blackburn! In a roll neck! Tony Blackburn is remembered now, apart from being a key component of that tremendous Peel anecdote about the Radio 1 Fun Day Out at Mallory Park, as crassly enthusiastic and thus now ironic, a career bubbling that started in about 1997 on Five's Night Fever and continued to about a year after I'm A Celebrity, by which time, as Paul Whitehouse pointed out, he was doing all the stuff people ascribed to him for comedic purposes. In the last couple of years he's put away the spangly jackets he never wore first time round, having left well before the Radio 1 Roadshow, and reinvented himself as an elder statesman of it being all about the music, whereas Jimmy Saville, who actually was a music man in his heyday alongside the million foibles, has remanoevured so well he's now spent twenty years as the nation's favourite Uncle Disgusting. While he never seems to have been comfortable per se, maybe his spell on Junior Choice loosened him up for TOTP. Actually, here's the start of this very show, and note the Beatles pic at number 27 inventing Oasis' 00s style:
Sailor - Girls Girls Girls
How do you hit upon a setup like that? The adapted drum kit is one thing, but behold the majesty of the Nickelodeon, an entirely self-constructed riot of keyboards, glockenspiels and completely useless bass drum on the side. If Chase & Status used one of them face to face we'd have far more respect for them. Sailor were British, though the singer was Norwegian and they sound somehow Dutch. How thick is this veneer of irony they project?
Diana Ross - Theme from Mahogany
Do You Know Where You're Going To, as you may know it. Diana looks wistfully out of a window, and then it suddenly ends. Doesn't seem to be a modern edit, more the hamfisted nature of a lot of 1970s editing.
Tarmey & Spencer - I’m Your Man Rock ‘N’ Roll
Rock'n'roll isn't sentinent, you know. Actually the Tarney-Spencer Band, but that name is how everyone archived it which shows how big a hit it wasn't. An odd record too, unsure whether to be 12-bar electrified blues, bar band or staccato pop-funk so being none of the above. Alan Tarmey, who Tony is keen to tell us played everything but drums on the recording, went on to produce Cliff during his turn of the 80s renaissance, the first three A-Ha albums and the single version of Saint Etienne's You're In A Bad Way. Bob's work, doubtless.
ABBA - Fernando
It's the video around the campfire. Tony mentions Eurovision in his intro even though that was nearly two years back by then.
Laurie Andrew – I’ll Never Love Anyone Anymore
Or Lawrence Andrew, as Tone calls him twice. A bloke who looks like Kevin Godley and has a vocal bordering on Tracy Chapman-tone female plays a dull longing ballad with wistful synths while wearing a jacket meant to look like that of a child's cartoon pauper.
Hank Mizell - Jungle Rock
"Trouble is, nobody can find him" Tony says, which is plausible when you find out it was recorded in 1958, did nothing at the time but was rediscovered by influential DJs around 1971 after appearing on a Dutch bootleg. He was found eventually and would appear in a later week, while in 1997 Mark E Smith added it to his personal list of quixotically covered rockabilly. In the here and then it was given for Pan’s People to hoof in khaki shorts with bazookas accompanied by cutaways of the world's single cheapest animal costumes. Seriously, religious programming on specialist satellite stations would be ashamed. Tony makes a joke about David Hamilton.
John Miles - Music
"Music was my first hit and it will be my last" quoth Nick Hancock. Miles, see, never quite gets across the message that he loves music as much as he thinks it has wronged him and must pay. He's heard Live And Let Die and thought piano into rock section must be the key. Then he has a go at grandstanding orchestral, during a section where his band are concentrating hard. Then there's a key change right out of an appalling music and well above Miles' vocal range. My, the self-absorption.
Fox – S-S-S-Single Bed
And then a strange woman in a bedsheet comes on and this is the one that gets on Trending Topics. Noosha Fox did, at any rate, and so nearly did Alison Goldfrapp, the comparison made seemingly more on an individual comeliness rather than musical basis, though were Alison and Will ever to go slithery disco we'd be keen. Go on, Will, get your talkbox out. Then Ben Goldacre, kind of an Alan Maryon-Davis for the Tens, let slip that Susan Traynor, to give Noosha her proper name, is his mum and all merry heck broke loose. What else? This was their third and last (and not even biggest, despite being the one people know - not enough funk, that's the problem with those) top 20 single, and songwriter/Frampton-to-be Kenny Young penned Under The Boardwalk, worked in the Brill Building and most recently worked with Buena Vista Social Club. This is from a later show but it's the same performance, and it's great, so...
The Beatles - Hey Jude
"We go back to 1966" as Tony says both before and after. Seriously, did they not have researchers? Or books? There's no particular reason I can tell for there being loads of Beatles songs reissued - it was ten years after their last gig, but that was in October. The clip is a performance I've never seen before and even then badly stored and all sepia.
Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
There are crowd members giggling at the choreography. Should that not have been a hint? Mind you it's number one, like they should care. That last line is quite something. It's still number one next week so I'll mention that the Drifters' Hello Happiness is over the end credits with its ill-advised British Invasion guitar line and cover the Eurovision fall-out then.
It's Tony Blackburn! In a roll neck! Tony Blackburn is remembered now, apart from being a key component of that tremendous Peel anecdote about the Radio 1 Fun Day Out at Mallory Park, as crassly enthusiastic and thus now ironic, a career bubbling that started in about 1997 on Five's Night Fever and continued to about a year after I'm A Celebrity, by which time, as Paul Whitehouse pointed out, he was doing all the stuff people ascribed to him for comedic purposes. In the last couple of years he's put away the spangly jackets he never wore first time round, having left well before the Radio 1 Roadshow, and reinvented himself as an elder statesman of it being all about the music, whereas Jimmy Saville, who actually was a music man in his heyday alongside the million foibles, has remanoevured so well he's now spent twenty years as the nation's favourite Uncle Disgusting. While he never seems to have been comfortable per se, maybe his spell on Junior Choice loosened him up for TOTP. Actually, here's the start of this very show, and note the Beatles pic at number 27 inventing Oasis' 00s style:
Sailor - Girls Girls Girls
How do you hit upon a setup like that? The adapted drum kit is one thing, but behold the majesty of the Nickelodeon, an entirely self-constructed riot of keyboards, glockenspiels and completely useless bass drum on the side. If Chase & Status used one of them face to face we'd have far more respect for them. Sailor were British, though the singer was Norwegian and they sound somehow Dutch. How thick is this veneer of irony they project?
Diana Ross - Theme from Mahogany
Do You Know Where You're Going To, as you may know it. Diana looks wistfully out of a window, and then it suddenly ends. Doesn't seem to be a modern edit, more the hamfisted nature of a lot of 1970s editing.
Tarmey & Spencer - I’m Your Man Rock ‘N’ Roll
Rock'n'roll isn't sentinent, you know. Actually the Tarney-Spencer Band, but that name is how everyone archived it which shows how big a hit it wasn't. An odd record too, unsure whether to be 12-bar electrified blues, bar band or staccato pop-funk so being none of the above. Alan Tarmey, who Tony is keen to tell us played everything but drums on the recording, went on to produce Cliff during his turn of the 80s renaissance, the first three A-Ha albums and the single version of Saint Etienne's You're In A Bad Way. Bob's work, doubtless.
ABBA - Fernando
It's the video around the campfire. Tony mentions Eurovision in his intro even though that was nearly two years back by then.
Laurie Andrew – I’ll Never Love Anyone Anymore
Or Lawrence Andrew, as Tone calls him twice. A bloke who looks like Kevin Godley and has a vocal bordering on Tracy Chapman-tone female plays a dull longing ballad with wistful synths while wearing a jacket meant to look like that of a child's cartoon pauper.
Hank Mizell - Jungle Rock
"Trouble is, nobody can find him" Tony says, which is plausible when you find out it was recorded in 1958, did nothing at the time but was rediscovered by influential DJs around 1971 after appearing on a Dutch bootleg. He was found eventually and would appear in a later week, while in 1997 Mark E Smith added it to his personal list of quixotically covered rockabilly. In the here and then it was given for Pan’s People to hoof in khaki shorts with bazookas accompanied by cutaways of the world's single cheapest animal costumes. Seriously, religious programming on specialist satellite stations would be ashamed. Tony makes a joke about David Hamilton.
John Miles - Music
"Music was my first hit and it will be my last" quoth Nick Hancock. Miles, see, never quite gets across the message that he loves music as much as he thinks it has wronged him and must pay. He's heard Live And Let Die and thought piano into rock section must be the key. Then he has a go at grandstanding orchestral, during a section where his band are concentrating hard. Then there's a key change right out of an appalling music and well above Miles' vocal range. My, the self-absorption.
Fox – S-S-S-Single Bed
And then a strange woman in a bedsheet comes on and this is the one that gets on Trending Topics. Noosha Fox did, at any rate, and so nearly did Alison Goldfrapp, the comparison made seemingly more on an individual comeliness rather than musical basis, though were Alison and Will ever to go slithery disco we'd be keen. Go on, Will, get your talkbox out. Then Ben Goldacre, kind of an Alan Maryon-Davis for the Tens, let slip that Susan Traynor, to give Noosha her proper name, is his mum and all merry heck broke loose. What else? This was their third and last (and not even biggest, despite being the one people know - not enough funk, that's the problem with those) top 20 single, and songwriter/Frampton-to-be Kenny Young penned Under The Boardwalk, worked in the Brill Building and most recently worked with Buena Vista Social Club. This is from a later show but it's the same performance, and it's great, so...
The Beatles - Hey Jude
"We go back to 1966" as Tony says both before and after. Seriously, did they not have researchers? Or books? There's no particular reason I can tell for there being loads of Beatles songs reissued - it was ten years after their last gig, but that was in October. The clip is a performance I've never seen before and even then badly stored and all sepia.
Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
There are crowd members giggling at the choreography. Should that not have been a hint? Mind you it's number one, like they should care. That last line is quite something. It's still number one next week so I'll mention that the Drifters' Hello Happiness is over the end credits with its ill-advised British Invasion guitar line and cover the Eurovision fall-out then.
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