ALERT! ALERT! As we well know by now trusting the advance listings is a fool's errand, but we're fairly confident in saying that because Cardiff Singer Of The World takes up that slot every other day that week, the next TOTP will be on MONDAY 13th at 7.30pm, with repeats in the usual Thursday and Saturday loose slots. No idea which weeks. Knowing BBC4, it'll be the one they've just missed out.
Also, to cover next week's fallow period there'll be a new Alternative Canon nomination every weekday. Suggestions through the usual channels.
So, after many references to the odd decision to skip a week we know exists, BBC4 decide to show it anyway. They just don't think of us in such circumstances. This'll be Jimmy Saville's first appearance on the show since New Year's Day, and to celebrate the CSO people have found a way to black out his head for the opening gag. You know in Smashie & Nicey: End Of An Era where they demonstrate the fun they had hosting the Populous? This bit? It's among the most realistic bits Enfield and Whitehouse came up with.
Special mention from the countdown this week for Mud, one of whom turned in for the publicity shot in a jacket adorned with the male symbol in rhinestones. Stay classy.
Heavy Metal Kids – She’s No Angel
Inevitably given the year, people have been only too keen to mention that (insert name of least favourite act on any given TOTP) must be the reason punk happened. Punk wasn't quite happening yet - at least one of the three weekly music papers hadn't even mentioned the Sex Pistols yet, and we don't get a punk single of any recognised stripe until late October - but we're not seeing a lot of the guitar music that prefigured it either. Thin Lizzy will be along before long, Queen had been and gone, but pub rock was hived off to the Old Grey Whistle Test while heavy metal's stirrings weren't yet for wider consumption, Black Sabbath past their peak, NWOBHM still in early beta testing. Heavy Metal Kids weren't all that heavy metal either, but they've been watching closely. Too closely, as if future Auf Weidersehen Pet actor Gary Holton's stage demeanour is anything to go by they knew the Alice Cooper School's Out performance, an umbrella replacing the fencing sword. Then he starts singing, a bit like Steve Harley, and it turns out to be a meat and potatoes pub rock Faces. The keyboard player borrows the Bon Jovi style a decade early and has a range of cock-o-the-walk struts and stances all lost because we can only see his top half behind a band banner. Holton eventually tries to get the audience going, and that's where he gets cut off.
JJ Barrie – No Charge
Also, much as we'd like to believe it, punk didn't happen as a reaction to sappy country hits. Barrie's in the studio again, not that it makes much difference, and he's got a backing 'singer' in overlaid half-light. Song is still awful.
The Wurzels – Combine Harvester
Should mention while the miracle of editing is helping Jim make audience members disappear that he's wearing a yellow vest with the show name on and decorated in the sort of glitter usually only found in school art departments. His hands must have been covered in Gloy for hours afterwards. There's a lot of going over old ground this week, literally in this case as there's a tractor on stage and the non-singers are sitting on the bonnet. A tractor is not a combine harvester, but that's BBC urbanites for you. Jim's on stage before the end so he can make the Wurzels disappear and the woman he vanished "to Birmingham" return in their stead. You know, we never would have imagined Noel Edmonds out of the then current presenting roster would be the musically inclined one, but such are the wiles of entertainment. Maybe he was just trying too hard.
Archie Bell and the Drells – Soul City Walk
Full bib and tucker on film. It's no fun writing this when it's a proper disco outfit, Gamble & Huff proteges in this case, with a fine record because as well as it being easier to critique shite, such outfits expect to put on a showbiz glitz performance so don't look out of place or attempting to fit in, from where we draw humour.
Mac & Katie Kissoon – The Two Of Us
Actually Gerald and Katherine Farthing. There you go. Katie is mixed up a lot higher than her brother here, so much so that by the break he's having to break out a few shimmies given he's practically inaudible. So is Jim's link, which is a shame as he goes right round the houses and doesn't actually properly name the mystery man standing to his right. Looking unimpressed by disco and/or this man he's expected to converse with, and less than two months after Tony Blackburn had deemed him untraceable, it's Hank Mizell, and all he has to share after such a long period of infamy is that his next single would be called Kangaroo Rock. Not cashing in at all, then. Seamlessly Jim then switches to holding up an album sleeve and inviting us to guess who it is on the cover.
David Bowie – TVC15
Somewhat spoiling the event, it's clearly David Bowie. Mind you, being after Station To Station it's possible people had forgotten what he actually looked like. After the girls got their turn last week it's the three men with one woman on screens at the back of the set and... well now.
That's been put up in the last 24 hours, that video, as the only previously available version was unembeddable. And a good thing too, as with one possible exception we'll post next week this was the most freeform Top Of The Pops dancing surely ever got. TVC15 is a pretty groove-free thing and thus pretty difficult to get a collective dance routine together to at short notice. This is apparently how Flick Colby, given a tribute in the link preceding the show, should be remembered. Basically it's three men, one dressed as a jockey, on a stylised living room set-ette making shapes on furniture, standing on their head and rolling around to the melodies in their heads. It does genuinely fade out at that stage, by the way, all possibilities already exhausted.
The Bellamy Brothers – Let Your Love Flow
The same face-off with acoustics as shown at least once already.
The Real Thing – You To Me Are Everything
At least Jim's interacting with the audience, getting the studio's bluffest youth to make the introduction (Jim: "Ooooh! Didn't catch him out!") Notable even among his wildly differently dressed colleagues Eddy Amoo sports an open yellow shirt and the world's largest brimmed Panama hat. Such distractions don't get to Jim, as he appears on the fringe of shot during the second chorus lining people up for his next link, his body language suggesting that he's always like that. His four friends, by the way, are wearing matching striped tops and massive Bay City Rollers tartan scarves tied around their necks, and one of the girls is wearing ludicrously high waisted trousers.
ABBA – Fernando
"At number one, dear friends, of course, Fernando. Abba. How are you. See you later." If you like, Jim. Their last week at the top. Literally, their fire was burning out. Why did they always play this when they had a perfectly good studio performance they only ever showed once? Afterwards Jim has a handful of friends encircling him, there's some playing with another hat and Wigan Casino favourite The Flasher by Mistura soundtracks the British Market Research Bureau's namecheck. More at a later date with some week's show or other.
EDIT NEWS: Ruby Flipper do Melba Moore's This Is It with podiums and streamers, and that Gladys Knight & the Pips performance again. See, they could repeat studio appearances when they fancied.
Showing posts with label the bellamy brothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the bellamy brothers. Show all posts
Friday, 3 June 2011
Friday, 29 April 2011
TOTP 29/4/76: but Spaghetti Junction's nowhere near the M1!
A parish notice first, passed on by TV Cream - so you know there's no TOTP next week but that week's corresponding show will be broadcast on the 13th. However, when it returns, while the first showing will still be edited down to the half hour, the repeat later that night and on the Thursday will be full length. Should we review both? Remember we have a life to lead.
Tony Blackburn, his essential Tony Blackburn-ness shining through. Rather to rub it in, the Stylistics picture is now them on stage three weeks previously, bloke on stool and all.
Slik – Requiem
They'd had a number one in February with Forever And Ever, but Slik are almost entirely now a footnote as being Midge Ure's first band of note, prior to the Rich Kids, not being a Sex Pistol, Visage, Thin Lizzy for a bit, Ultravox, Dolce envy, Geldof lackey, that video with the pin screen, marrying Annabel Giles, his daughter being in girl-group-with-guitars The Faders, and whatever he does now. The start rips off Manuel & the Music Of The Mountains, which had only been a hit in March. That sort of uncertainty is apparent throughout, not least as half the band are in baseball gear. Slik were supposed to be a Bay City Rollers Juniors of sorts, but even that one that was on the other week wasn't quite this ponderous. At least Midge remembers to make a point of looking down the camera at all times. It gets cut off just as a guitar solo starts, but that's their own fault for putting it so late in the show. Tony is with a girl sporting a hat of quite remarkable dimensions, so much so most of it is off the top of the frame. A pity, as its design, mostly crepe paper by the looks of it, seems pretty involved, certainly more so than the bowler titfer still sported by...
Paul Nicholas – Reggae Like It Used To Be
Hooray! Tony calls it "fantastic" in introduction (and then gets the title wrong), and Paul's there in the studio actually wearing a shirt this time. A kid in the audience is quite right to be frantically waving his friends towards the stage. As with Harpo the live version does the recording no favours despite speeding up the tempo, although the song does nothing any favours at all. Although, those lyrics. We've covered reggaeing Beethoven, you may wonder what "reggae pneumonia" would be and how it might be fixed by just taking in more reggae, but can we also draw attention to "if it's good enough for Stevie, if it's good enough for Paul..." Presumably he means Macca in C-Moon terms, but Paul... you are a Paul. Don't go introducing another one in the conversation unbidden. "Don't remember reggae like that, do you?" vaguely chortles Tony, having changed his mind now he's seen the thing in action, even if he does then call it "a really good sound".
Andrea True Connection – More More More
As previously spoilered this was Pan's People's final week, though Tony doesn't say so at any stage and Noel hardly seems bothered with mentioning the end of an eight year stint the following week. The dress code is a memorable way to bow out, though, tube tops, imitation grass skirts, red stilletos and some sort of material tied around the waist, essayed within some sort of cube cage construction seemingly based on a POW prison like Pan's Tenko. "I take it Pan must have at some time been a member of the mafia" says Tony, making no sense at all.
Electric Light Orchestra – Nightrider
A "fantastic sound" now. Cello-heavy, certainly, but sounding much as you'd expect ELO to sound, unlike their best songs which sound little like you'd thought Jeff Lynne would ever pull off. Oh, for disco. Kelly Groucutt is sporting some magnificent mutton chops and is dressed as if part of Robin Hood's gang. This didn't chart, by the way.
Diana Ross – Love Hangover
Not in the studio, but a promo that makes her from-a-train-pensively Theme From Mahogany look like Hype Williams. It's just panned promo photos and old film of her dancing in various dresses. The bit where it stops and starts again as disco doesn't affect things any.
Laurie Lingo & The Dipsticks – Convoy GB
Oh god. DLT and Paul Burnett, of course, with a song that makes even less sense if you don't know CW McCall's original Convoy (and that doesn't make sense if you don't know CB radio language), and given that can't have been purposefully played on the radio for the best part of two and a half decades why would you. Being an attempt at a mid-70s comedy record by Radio 1 DJs there's dubious accents to go and a Jimmy Saville impersonation. Let's not dignify this with much more discussion, especially as nobody's yet uploaded it to YouTube so we can discuss the black studio performance, save to say the B-side was called Rock Is Dead. It's like punk happened.
Eric Carmen – All By Myself
Another one clearly not filmed in front of that week's audience, given away by how he's at the piano and then grasps a microphone in head and shoulders shot. The kaleidoscope lens gets a work-out, the lighting people work their magic, but it's not helping much.
The Bellamy Brothers – Let Your Love Flow
Two hairy men grinning and strumming like their lives depend on it in a pre-recorded promo. Drivetime rock is a very different beast in America, and it's not always likeable.
Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
"I think they're going to be there for life" Tony warns. Don't worry, it's the last week of the unilateral head wobbling and leg lifting. For the occasion it's a completely new performance of unknown source and with no audience, Martin Lee in a red sweater rather than his social club frilly shirt suit. You've never seen four women encircling a TOTP presenter looking as anxious as those at the end do. Ironically the last men standing in terms of TOTP play this week are the Stylistics, the kaleidoscope camera shooting, at last, aimlessly dancing audience members.
EDIT NEWS: For some reason most of Twitter thought Fox had been edited out. They weren't, they're on the next one, though it's just the first week's performance repeated. The editing does bear discussion here, because a) it's a quite brilliant edit, showing Tony's back-announcement of Eric Carmen then naturally linking into a brief voiceover at the start of the Bellamy Brothers clip, and b) in between those two three in a row have been removed. The running order this week does seem incredibly awkward, three studio performances out of the first four followed by promo, pre-filmed, pre-filmed, studio, promo, Pan's People, promo, repeat. Yet what's been removed is, in order, Gladys Knight and the Pips' Midnight Train To Georgia (though it's on again a couple more times), that Silver Convention cartoon promo for the second time and... Pan's People's last stand! Now, as we've said their exit was ignominious as it was and they were dancing to something that's already been played in the studio, the Four Seasons' Silver Star. This dancers on TOTP fan site archives it, where as you can tell Flick and the costumiers really went for it (no, they are wearing proper tops, you can see the straps at the back), but it seems to have been excised purely because of how it landed in the running order. Maybe the Bellamy Brothers or Diana Ross promos could have been carefully cut around, but it's possible it wasn't so easy to edit Tony's links, or they really wanted to keep the Bellamys in for Barclaycard reasons. Whatever, there they went, sashaying off into the sunset. Apart from the couple who stayed on for Ruby Flipper, of whom more in a fortnight.
Tony Blackburn, his essential Tony Blackburn-ness shining through. Rather to rub it in, the Stylistics picture is now them on stage three weeks previously, bloke on stool and all.
Slik – Requiem
They'd had a number one in February with Forever And Ever, but Slik are almost entirely now a footnote as being Midge Ure's first band of note, prior to the Rich Kids, not being a Sex Pistol, Visage, Thin Lizzy for a bit, Ultravox, Dolce envy, Geldof lackey, that video with the pin screen, marrying Annabel Giles, his daughter being in girl-group-with-guitars The Faders, and whatever he does now. The start rips off Manuel & the Music Of The Mountains, which had only been a hit in March. That sort of uncertainty is apparent throughout, not least as half the band are in baseball gear. Slik were supposed to be a Bay City Rollers Juniors of sorts, but even that one that was on the other week wasn't quite this ponderous. At least Midge remembers to make a point of looking down the camera at all times. It gets cut off just as a guitar solo starts, but that's their own fault for putting it so late in the show. Tony is with a girl sporting a hat of quite remarkable dimensions, so much so most of it is off the top of the frame. A pity, as its design, mostly crepe paper by the looks of it, seems pretty involved, certainly more so than the bowler titfer still sported by...
Paul Nicholas – Reggae Like It Used To Be
Hooray! Tony calls it "fantastic" in introduction (and then gets the title wrong), and Paul's there in the studio actually wearing a shirt this time. A kid in the audience is quite right to be frantically waving his friends towards the stage. As with Harpo the live version does the recording no favours despite speeding up the tempo, although the song does nothing any favours at all. Although, those lyrics. We've covered reggaeing Beethoven, you may wonder what "reggae pneumonia" would be and how it might be fixed by just taking in more reggae, but can we also draw attention to "if it's good enough for Stevie, if it's good enough for Paul..." Presumably he means Macca in C-Moon terms, but Paul... you are a Paul. Don't go introducing another one in the conversation unbidden. "Don't remember reggae like that, do you?" vaguely chortles Tony, having changed his mind now he's seen the thing in action, even if he does then call it "a really good sound".
Andrea True Connection – More More More
As previously spoilered this was Pan's People's final week, though Tony doesn't say so at any stage and Noel hardly seems bothered with mentioning the end of an eight year stint the following week. The dress code is a memorable way to bow out, though, tube tops, imitation grass skirts, red stilletos and some sort of material tied around the waist, essayed within some sort of cube cage construction seemingly based on a POW prison like Pan's Tenko. "I take it Pan must have at some time been a member of the mafia" says Tony, making no sense at all.
Electric Light Orchestra – Nightrider
A "fantastic sound" now. Cello-heavy, certainly, but sounding much as you'd expect ELO to sound, unlike their best songs which sound little like you'd thought Jeff Lynne would ever pull off. Oh, for disco. Kelly Groucutt is sporting some magnificent mutton chops and is dressed as if part of Robin Hood's gang. This didn't chart, by the way.
Diana Ross – Love Hangover
Not in the studio, but a promo that makes her from-a-train-pensively Theme From Mahogany look like Hype Williams. It's just panned promo photos and old film of her dancing in various dresses. The bit where it stops and starts again as disco doesn't affect things any.
Laurie Lingo & The Dipsticks – Convoy GB
Oh god. DLT and Paul Burnett, of course, with a song that makes even less sense if you don't know CW McCall's original Convoy (and that doesn't make sense if you don't know CB radio language), and given that can't have been purposefully played on the radio for the best part of two and a half decades why would you. Being an attempt at a mid-70s comedy record by Radio 1 DJs there's dubious accents to go and a Jimmy Saville impersonation. Let's not dignify this with much more discussion, especially as nobody's yet uploaded it to YouTube so we can discuss the black studio performance, save to say the B-side was called Rock Is Dead. It's like punk happened.
Eric Carmen – All By Myself
Another one clearly not filmed in front of that week's audience, given away by how he's at the piano and then grasps a microphone in head and shoulders shot. The kaleidoscope lens gets a work-out, the lighting people work their magic, but it's not helping much.
The Bellamy Brothers – Let Your Love Flow
Two hairy men grinning and strumming like their lives depend on it in a pre-recorded promo. Drivetime rock is a very different beast in America, and it's not always likeable.
Brotherhood Of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me
"I think they're going to be there for life" Tony warns. Don't worry, it's the last week of the unilateral head wobbling and leg lifting. For the occasion it's a completely new performance of unknown source and with no audience, Martin Lee in a red sweater rather than his social club frilly shirt suit. You've never seen four women encircling a TOTP presenter looking as anxious as those at the end do. Ironically the last men standing in terms of TOTP play this week are the Stylistics, the kaleidoscope camera shooting, at last, aimlessly dancing audience members.
EDIT NEWS: For some reason most of Twitter thought Fox had been edited out. They weren't, they're on the next one, though it's just the first week's performance repeated. The editing does bear discussion here, because a) it's a quite brilliant edit, showing Tony's back-announcement of Eric Carmen then naturally linking into a brief voiceover at the start of the Bellamy Brothers clip, and b) in between those two three in a row have been removed. The running order this week does seem incredibly awkward, three studio performances out of the first four followed by promo, pre-filmed, pre-filmed, studio, promo, Pan's People, promo, repeat. Yet what's been removed is, in order, Gladys Knight and the Pips' Midnight Train To Georgia (though it's on again a couple more times), that Silver Convention cartoon promo for the second time and... Pan's People's last stand! Now, as we've said their exit was ignominious as it was and they were dancing to something that's already been played in the studio, the Four Seasons' Silver Star. This dancers on TOTP fan site archives it, where as you can tell Flick and the costumiers really went for it (no, they are wearing proper tops, you can see the straps at the back), but it seems to have been excised purely because of how it landed in the running order. Maybe the Bellamy Brothers or Diana Ross promos could have been carefully cut around, but it's possible it wasn't so easy to edit Tony's links, or they really wanted to keep the Bellamys in for Barclaycard reasons. Whatever, there they went, sashaying off into the sunset. Apart from the couple who stayed on for Ruby Flipper, of whom more in a fortnight.
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