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 30/6/77 (tx 25/7/12): summer shorts

Courtesy of Google's scans of the Glasgow Herald archives, that night's BBC1 at a glance...



In fact it comes out at a sneaky 27 minutes, which means we've just about lost another likely non-charting single of forgotten rubbish oddness. Gnh.

"There's only one way to introduce this week's TOTP - and this is it". It may be a shortened programme full of repeats, but Noel's going to bring out all the stylistic big guns we've become accustomed to nonetheless.

T-Connection – Do What You Wanna Do
Kicking off with a video is a surefire way of showing there's not much going on this week, or that someone pulled out late. A really ropey quality performance video clip, as if they'd prefigured the cabling running the floor of the Atlantic by dragging the reel to reel along the sea bed on the way across, mostly featuring an overhead shot of the singer at the keyboard wearing a bright yellow tabard with some sort of flower-cog design on. But never mind that, as just 25 seconds in... Toppotron™ time! And what a motley crew of uncomfortable dancers we have in tonight, ranging from a couple on a raised platform who have the swing and the moves to a man in a grey jumper lively pacing three steps into the bulk of the throng, then three steps back, then repeat. TV studio, wedding reception, all the same. The girls swing their bobs prettily. The boys either fancy themselves in their stylish white jackets or look like they need an urgent piss. One girl has brought her autograph book with her and is clutching it for dear life. Just a minute and a half in - maybe the end was damaged by rocks or covered in seaweed - Noel wanders on, and either it's a massive con with green screen and last week's crowd or he's oddly lit from above. "Born with a teaspoon in their mouths" is his first attempt at redefining the presentational art.

Gladys Knight & The Pips – Baby Don't Change Your Mind
"Three new entries in the charts this week - well, four altogether but three in tonight's programme". Sounds like he's actually over-read the script. They've still not learnt how to wear orange headphones properly.

John Miles – Slow Down
Not a repeat! So there was life in TVC that week. Miles still has his luxuriant tache, embellished with Les Gray shades this week, and can play the talkbox a little better even though he can't remember to start using it at the right moment, but his band have made up for it with a variety of bad fashions. The keyboard player in his wing-collared shiny catsuit open to the navel because he thinks it makes him resemble Travolta makes a good effort, but the drummer in green PE kit (and no shoes) takes the prize for not thinking through how he's going to look. Noel commends the "unbelievable" pace before allowing us to scratch another off the bingo card with a failed prediction. "It's got to have number one written all over it" he suggests. Well, it's closer than most of them.

Jesse Green – Come With Me
Or Jess, as Noel renames him. As the kids literally scarper from the marauding camera that keeps changing its angle, maybe through people getting their own back, we see Green has gone for the page of the style booklet titled 'international man of leisure'. Shades with lenses that awkwardly reflect the studio lights, tight afro, thin and very neat long moustache with mere hint of before its time goatee, black shirt with top three buttons undone, pristine white suit. Quite the smoothie.

Queen – Good Old Fashioned Loverboy
Well, they're not going to turn up twice, are they. "For some reason I always want him to say 'give us a kiss' at the end of that" Noel muses. Your fantasies about the flirting habits of the manly Freddie Mercury, Noel, are yours to keep.

Cliff Richard – When Two Worlds Drift Apart
Noel's been chatting to Cliff. "He says if it's not a hit, it'll be a miss with style. I reckon he's got style, I reckon it'll be a hit. Otherwise I wouldn't have chosen it as my record of the week." Two in one! Inaccurate prediction - it peaked at 46 - and record of the week humble brag. No, wait, the song is "what happens when two worlds drift apart", so he's described the title too. The song seems an anticlimax now. It seems an anticlimax while it's progressing too, a stately piano ballad. Cliff in his powder blue suit, promotional badge for own album and two medallions can at least attempt to pull this descriptively emotive vocal style off, but the Ladybirds, around one mike and two in Carole Bayer Sager tribute outfits, cawing almost over him in a slightly different key don't help.

The Detroit Emeralds – Feel The Need In Me
"And when twelve legs get together with a few other bits..." Just eight months after they joined our happy dancing band Gill and Rosie get their own showcase (though there is evidence to suggest a previous wiped show featured those two alone), dancing alone but likewise in a three-way split screen with the other four in the middle doing a supplementary joint routine. All six are outfitted in a curious mesh of little black dress, flapper style - feather in the hair, sequins, outfit cut to the thigh - and glamorous widow at funeral, some sort of lacey mesh attached to the back. The pair must be across a soundstage from each other as they switch all the time from grinning enjoyment to concerned glances across, as it's never entirely clear whether they're supposed to be in sync. "It's Patti's birthday, and we'll be having a birthday patty for her after" Noel challenges syntax. Actually it was her birthday (a lady never reveals her age. I'm not a lady. 27.) the day of recording, but with link time short Noel probably had enough on his mind, unlikely as that seems.

Emerson Lake & Palmer – Fanfare For The Common Man
Still snowed out. That gong never gets used.

Hot Chocolate – So You Win Again
"Rather appropriate to have a fanfare before the number one sound, and men don't come more common than this lot". Ah, Noel. A smile, a quip, an insult. Errol, who's even more stationary than usual, affects not to notice. Obviously. A comedy rolling xylophone trill seems to have been added to the chorus by the orchestra, as well as some parping trombones. Noel, after commending their "phenomenal rush to the top", introduces as the playout "Ma Boney". Frank Farian's wife?

We'll have to be going some to make it past fifty comments this week.

TOTP 16/6/77 (tx 12/7/12) open thread

Hello. Yes It's Number One can't come to the blog right now as he's on a business call* elsewhere. This is therefore your chance to fill in the details and ruminations without my giving you a head start for once. Kid's in charge, so remember to wish him good love back at the end, with the following:

John Miles – Slow Down
Olivia Newton-John – Sam
Hot Chocolate – So You Win Again
Andy Gibb – I Just Wanna Be Your Everything
Emerson Lake & Palmer – Fanfare For The Common Man
Gene Cotton – Me And The Elephant
Queen – Good Old Fashioned Loverboy
Archie Bell & the Drells – Everybody Have A Good Time
Bo Kirkland & Ruth Davis through the auspices of Legs & Co and special friends – You're Gonna Get Next To Me
The Foster Brothers – Count Me Out
The Muppets – Halfway Down The Stairs
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Anything That’s Rock 'N' Roll
Kenny Rogers – Lucille

(* in a wet field in Gloucestershire)



Oh, and as I didn't want to just leave you with nothing, here's a Spotify playlist of 1977 so far - everything that was performed in the studio or number one and is on there in original form.

TOTP 21/10/76 (tx 3/11/11): this competition is now closed

Parish notice first: were you in the audience for a TOTP recording in 1977? A BBC4 team are putting together the launch documentary for next year's rerun fun and want to hear from you if you were, by emailing david.maguire(at)bbc.co.uk

"Ello darling!" Yeah, of course he'd start like that. Well, here's a turn-up, it's Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart. He was a very occasional visitor to the presenting roster, doing thirty shows between 1968 and 1977, of which still exist... wait for it... three! The last show of 1971 (for which he wears an eyepatch for some reason), a last hurrah in September 1977 and this one. In fact having done 21 shows in 1971 and 1972 he had a three year gap before returning for three in 1975, two in 1976 (a second in December - wiped, of course) and a last hurrah in September 1977. This latter period coincides with his time on Crackerjack*, and he did Junior Choice until 1980, and indeed still does on its annual Christmas Day morning revival on Radio 2. Is he proud of that CV? Will he lose his bearings and attempt to introduce Windmill In Old Amsterdam? Let's see.

Making a return to the countdown is the black and white cutout, this time of Lalo Schifrin smoking a pipe - that was the best promo shot that could be offered? - against a lurid purple backdrop. That sort of low-tech associating got us through that troubled decade together.

(* CRACKERJACK!)

Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – (I Believe) Love's A Prima Donna
Some rousing organ from a man in the early stages of attempting to look like Roy Wood shepherds in Harley in a red suit, casually leaning on the mike stand before launching into a full set of studied interpretative gestures, never losing eye contact with the camera. So the director decides to test him on that with three sudden and unrepeated wipes to other angles. He nearly misses the first, immediately catches the second and decides not to bother with the third, intenion of staring into your very soul denied. The latest of several things we haven't seen for a while to turn up this week is the punctuative intercut shot of some lights rotating. Unusually, it's the lights rather than the lens that are rotating, though you have to say the studio could do with jazzing up in that respect, it's either moody spotlighting or full-on. As we enter the final stages the guitarist, who looks a bit like Art Garfunkel, comes over to have an arm draped round them Mick Ronson-style, except the effect this time is somewhat different and, had Boy George seen this one instead, might well have turned him straight. "Some lovely guitar work in that as well" Stewpot offers before somewhat ungrammatically suggesting "before you can say Cockney Rebel that'll be up in the charts, I'm sure". It peaked at 41, outside the countdown range. Ah, the TOTP presenter kiss of death.

Demis Roussos – When Forever Has Gone
There's a big announcement and big thread running through the show this week as Stewpot promises a competition, one which "everyone watching this evening has got a chance of winning", as if someone unaware of it might guess the address and question. "Get a pencil and paper within the next fifteen to twenty minutes" he further advises. Now, you know how sometimes Jimmy Savile (RIP) will just carry on for ages at the end of an intro because the timings aren't as they should be? Stewpot seems to have a similar problem here, in that he finds himself needing to string out an intro because the music isn't coming in, but instead of spewing forth filler babble he finds himself going uncomfortably staccato. "Lots of good records. Lots of lovely people on the show. And what better. Next. Number two. In the charts. Demis Roussos." It's like his circuitry was breaking down. This is a different performance to that made at DLT's table side and amid shots of a vast space-like blackness perhaps borrowed from Whistle Test after being shorn of their logo it's the grand return of the Noddy Holder's Hat Memorial many mirrored stage backdrop. Standing here stoutly, someone comes up with the idea of training three cameras at him, one profile, two from either side of the face, capturing every glance aside. He gives his all, we'll say that for him.

Paul Nicholas – Dancing With The Captain
Stewpot is flanked by two young blonde girls in ties, white trousers and untucked shirts, looking vaguely like sailor costumes in fact. "You might recognise two of the faces here" - actually, Ed, there's only two people there, so in that you're asserting nobody recognises your face - "they're two of the daughters of the Beverley sisters, Teddy and Joy", pointing to each in turn. Teddy and Joy were two of the actual Beverley Sisters, so clearly their daughters didn't deserve publicly given names yet. I have consequently no idea if these are the precise daughters of Teddy and Joy who formed a close harmony group called The Foxes,, but from the matching dress you'd imagine so, which would explain why, even in 1976, anyone bar Ed Stewart should care about two of the daughters of the Beverley sisters being introduced to a Top Of The Pops audience. Why might we recognise them anyway if the best Stewpot can come up with is identifying them by their mothers? You might go on to rhetorically ask why a 1976 Top Of The Pops audience should care about the bloke from Godspell prancing in a bowler hat singing about having a party on a ship, but such is pop life. In fact how Stewpot actually ends is "...Teddy and Joy. Here's Paul Nicholas!", so clearly he can't come up with much either. Paul's back in the studio, white jacket and bowler as per, nobody else out to help him this time. This means he has no fallback when he finds he can't help himself on the ad libs. All I'll say is the captain seems to have developed a Jamaican accent. Reggae like it used to be, indeed. Audience members try their best but Nicholas still effortlessly laps them for enthusiasm at this stuff. Orchestra and overmiked Ladybirds make a mess of this, by the way, though it proves they had a specialist penny whistle player.

Rod Stewart – Sailing
Stewpot, sitting at a piano briefly wearing a top hat with an unidentifiable picture in it, reminds us of the pressing need for pencil and paper before promising "lots of good sounds and lots of good sights". If we hadn't been primed by its first appearance his next statement would make for a spectacular non sequitur: "A lot of you saw that marvellous documentary on the HMS Ark Royal. Here's Rod Stewart again". This is the proper video, shot in cinema verite style as Rod in various combinations of often open shirts and tennis shorts wanders around a barge, looks pensive on an aircraft carrier, hangs around with a blonde woman (EDIT: Britt Ekland! Of course!) and talks to some people.

When that's done, we get to the burning issue. Stewpot declares himself "a thorn amongst six roses", the new TOTP dancers. They even get to introduce themselves, all in cut glass RP. Now, given Ruby Flipper (three of whom made the leap across, of course, not that they're treated any differently) were just introduced as if we should know them and have now been got rid of like so much Greek currency this seems effusive, but then again Pan's People did eight years' service and then as far as viewers could see were just handed their cards without warning. Someone must have got the unions involved. The competition is to give them a name, the required details of your postcard entry - Stewpot just said get some paper earlier, if we had to go to the extra expense of a postcard he should have said so - displayed on the time honoured huge replica complete with cartoon of a stamp - 'DANCERS COMP.' via BBC Television Centre W12 8QT, of course. All entries must be in by first post 1st November and "a set of judges" will make the decision, the winner somehow giving the group their name "formally". By decree? How does that work? It's something of a surprise all this made the edit, actually, with modern BBC compliance structure you wouldn't have thought a repeat could go around giving out addresses.

John Miles – Remember Yesterday
Oh blimey, another man and his piano and his earnest plaintiveness. Miles is wearing far too tight a shirt and far too shaggy a blonde haircut for a man of his balledic standing. As is his trademark it changes pace between the verses and chorus, it being unfortunate that both speeds are pedestrian.

Average White Band – Queen Of My Soul
"Some lovely girls around me" - does that count the bloke at the back? - "we've got some lovely girls for you now". It's the debut of Dance Troupe To Be Named but not that auspicious a beginning, stuck out on a tiny stage in tops that are attached to long bits of fabric they have to keep hold of throughout. All six get their turn at smiling at their own close-up twice over before some spinning and general veil waving. Still, it's something to build from.

Climax Blues Band – Couldn’t Get It Right
Or as Stewpot goes and calls it, Gonna Get It Right. No, that's the exact opposite. The Musician's Union demand to re-record everything before air really drives a coach and horses through this one that no amount of green flare solarisation or the tremendous volume of hair on show can cover for, as the groove develops leaden boots and Colin Cooper sings the whole thing as if he has other things on his mind. Perhaps it's the saxophone he holds onto like a pacifier throughout. Buy a strap, man. When he does actually play it it's both in melodic tune with and in the mix completely overshadowed by the guitar solo so ends up pointless.

Pussycat – Mississippi
"Time to introduce our number one, and who better than the number one boxer in Britain and Europe, Joe Bugner!" Well, Stewpot, there's you, given that's what you're there for. Bugner had in fact won the British and European belts off Richard Dunn nine days earlier, a year after being KO'd by Ali, which supposedly made him ideal for going "Pussycat, Mississippi" as if he wasn't expecting to be asked. And, bar a wave, some standing around looking useless and the regulation comedy sparring on the fade to the video - Crazyboat again - that's the whole of his contribution. Hope he had other things to do within TVC that day.

TOTP 22/4/76: with the ring dang doo

Diddy David Hamilton's our man this week. Somewhat of a Radio 1 nostalgia B-teamer, yet he of everyone we've seen so far was the most typically Mike Smash-like and was on the primary Pops presenter list for it. At this time he was simulcasting on Radios 1 and 2 and earned the nickname 'the housewife's choice'. Fair to say that nobody on dashing hipy young Radio 1 should have been any sort of housewife's choice, which may have been the problem. Now he pretends to admire that Michael Jackson statue and the eclectic striker stylings of Bobby Zamora for money. Anyway, Diddy is wearing a jumper with 'THE BIG ONE' on the back and a Radio 1 247 logo on the front with the collar of a red and white striped shirt peeking out over the top. With his Partridge-like parting as well - and we know it's the height of obviousness to compare a DJ to Smashie & Nicey and Partridge, let alone both in the same paragraph, but the oleaginousness is none more pronounced - you have to wonder why the spoofery didn't occur to anyone sooner.

Laurie Lingo and the Dipsticks are in the top 20, which must have caused furrowed brows among the production team. Don't worry, they'll be on soon enough and we're preparing things to say about it already. Meanwhile a photo of Hank Mizell has been found, in which he's standing with his guitar in the middle of a woodland clearing.

Jimmy James & the Vagabonds – I’ll Go Where Your Music Takes Me
It might say that, but at first look it seems like no Vagabonds the soul revue second division outfit would have known. In fact the original Vagabonds had split in 1970 and James formed a new backing band in 1974 when based in England, and in their matching grey suits, red shirts, shaggy hairdos and sheer semi-distracted air of £7 an hour for hire no band can surely look more like they've been dragged up from the working men's club circuit. As we first see Jimmy he's indulging in light larks of a conversational gee-up hue with the guitarist, who isn't paying him the blindest bit of notice. Maybe he's trying not to acknowledge some nasal female backing vocals that have been mixed on the same level as James' own and the world's least effective vibes solo. Meanwhile, someone in the front row wears a morning suit top hat with what looks like a crepe paper rose on the front. Nobody's getting sweaty here.

John Miles – Music
No explanation why the whole of Miles' band are in his rundown picture. It's the same performance as three weeks ago, with Miles' ineffectual guitar soloing at the piano and the bit that sounds like the theme to Blake's Seven. Despite this extra time I still can't work out if he's wearing a biker's jacket, a T-shirt with epatulets or a tabard.

Harpo – Movie Star
"Our next star sings shoeless and with a bicycle bell on his walking stick". Funnily enough, Harpo failed to turn this into a hitmaking career that lasted for longer than one number 24 single. His extra affectations - tartan cap, neckerchief, David Soul cardigan, tremendous amounts of hair, pronounced accent when singing live - don't add up to the sort of thing that makes careers either. To compensate for his clothing box ransacking he developed a full range of interpretative hand signals, as can be seen on this clip from TOTP2 when Stuart Maconie was writing the captions and couldn't think of anything to say about his oeuvre either. Extreme close-up!



Anni-Frid is on backing vocals on the recording, which reminds someone...

ABBA – Fernando
Third appearance in four weeks! And it's not even ***SPOILER*** number one yet. It's the promo clip from week one, for the record. This is going to be a very drum-hearing late spring on BBC4.

Sheer Elegance – Life Is Too Short Girl
On two weeks ago as well! But the poor man's Temptations are back in the studio for a second go, still in that remarkable get-up of tartan waistcoats, yellow all-in-ones and paisley shirts with huge collars. You'd think they'd have at least made this "Sheer Elegance's infamous yellow all-in-one uniform" by now, but as they're wearing blue suits with ridiculously large black with white polka dot collars in their chart rundown picture this must be a uniform specific to this song. They're trying to get some swaying in unison going too, except one of them steadfastly refuses to play ball. No wonder people remember Lenny Henry and Marti Caine instead from the 1975 New Faces intake.

The Rubettes – You’re The Reason Why
As if to prove the real power of a uniform, the Rubettes had ditched the flat caps and matching pastel suits by this stage, turned into a wet boogie band and accordingly only had one more hit. Maybe what really turned things was what they went for here, with one member dressed as a sitcom bus conductor and Alan Williams revealed as looking like Alan Freeman. It takes mere seconds for the drummer to wink at the rostrum camera. Diddy David calls it "incredible".

Hank Mizell – Jungle Rock
"Once again we have some very good news for the fellas". Yeah, cheers. Another re-run, but some repeat performances are worthwhile so as the viewer can take in the level of attention to detail. The BBC props and costume departments have long been the envy of the television world.



Someone uploaded that just after the first showing so we can now gain more of an understanding on some of the big questions. For example, are those convincing outfits - alligators look just like that, of course - inhabited by ver People? Well, the 'gator seemingly has evident breasts but otherwise it's unclear. It's not the same people in the camel and elephant, we can say that almost for certain, as the camel is quite reticent about moving more than one leg at once whereas the pretend pachyderm is going for it with running man-like gusto. You could ask what sort of jungle houses a fox, rabbit, camel and kangaroo, but you'd have had to take that up with Mizell directly had he not died in 1992. One set of lyrics claims a "great big falcon" appears just after the alligator and what Flick interprets as a leg-shaking grizzly bear is in fact "all the fish stepped by", but both are indistinct and completely confuse jungle ecosystem matters. And then there's the issue of the girls themselves and what sort of faces they're pulling to camera when not asked merely to express neutral seduction for three minutes. We point for specific evidence to 1:34. Hope we all appreciated Cherry Gillespie's spirited waggling of her arse direct to camera in time for the lyric "I moved a little closer just to get a better view". Having seen Tony Blackburn make a joke about him out of the first showing, Hamilton obligingly makes a joke about Blackburn this time.

This was the last time this appeared on Pops, so here's the Fall's cover, which appears on a fascinating new album called Beyond The Fall of originals of songs Mark E taught us, and a note that Legs & Co redid Jungle Rock for the Christmas show, which is here. Despite the paucity of clothing, the ramping up of cliches, developed setting, Tony Blackburn cameo that takes far too long and leaves him with nothing to do for two minutes and frankly nightmare inducing new animal costumes just make it too crowded. Look at the end, there's so little room left that everyone all but gives up on proper dancing.

Gilbert O'Sullivan – Doing What I Know
Although the knot of kids behind him seem keen, the insistent electric piano sound didn't translate to chart business and he only bothered the top 40 once more, in 1980. One of the audience already seems to be copying Noosha Fox's haircut.

Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
"It's a hit all over the nations" David enthuses somewhat ungrammatically. Back to the studio performance, and we're pretty sure there is already nothing else that can be said about this. April 1976 was very much a studded denim jacket/wrongfooting last line sort of month. Hamilton claims four people are "going mad" around him, Andrea True Connection play us out, and we still wait for the great leap forward. Unbeknownst to most, the Wurzels are only three weeks away.

EDIT NEWS: The major discard this week is a Pan's People routine involving the girls in bra/crop tops. And it was their penultimate week on the show too. Have some respect, BBC4. The song is You Sexy Sugar Plum by funk-soul variable attraction Rodger Collins, the routine one of those where having got the girls dressed down Flick can't really think of much to do with them. There was also a video for the Sutherland Brothers' classic rock staple Arms Of Mary, presumably the same Bay City Rollers Love Me Like I Love You video as the first week and, perhaps left out because enough people on Twitter go on about the imminence of punk, Keith Emerson. Honky Tonk Train Blues is a cover of boogie-woogie trailblazer Meade Lux Lewis and is basically a man playing barrel roll piano at great speed. How Pops would have staged that one, and how the dancing kids would have reacted to it without starting to smoke from the heels slightly, will remain a mystery.

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.