Well, that's another year done with. Let's start with the six most read posts of 2012 to date, inevitably affected by events but with a heartening end:
6 TOTP 7/4/77 (tx 19/4/12): boxing clever: two clips from Soul Train do some of the legwork, but the central conceit is Legs & Co's boxing exhibition to Love Hit Me. In the comments Brendon's bassist posts PDFs of two TOTP shooting scripts.
5 TOTP 12/5/77 (tx 24/5/12): bee sharp: bees, steel drums, streamers, wine bottles, orchestras, Billy Paul having to recreate his own samples, Lee Brilleaux... the maddest show of the year, where Jimmy comes on quarter of the way through in a wig and suit professing to be his brother Percy and in context it seems perfectly normal.
4 TOTP 22/9/77 (tx 18/10/12) open thread: the first Pops after the series of unfortunate events, emotional balm provided by working out whether Hank The Knife was wearing a wig, why dry ice was so upsetting Jean-Jacques Burnel and whether Stardust's singer was Paul Whitehouse in disguise.
3 The disappeared: 17/11/77: the first skipped show for which video evidence could be provided, featuring Noosha Fox, Brighouse and Rastrick's finest and Bob Geldof's noogieing. Numbers boosted by being linked to from all over the place, including David Icke's forum.
2 TOTP 25/8/77 (tx 27/9/12): your super soaraway show: Legs & Co take to the catwalk in Elvis' honour, Noel sports a Boomtown Rats badge and the Adverts fall prey to the soundman. A record 131 comments, bolstered by outside influences.
1 Contempt breed familiarity: despite everything this was a comfortable winner, a potted history of the one band the internet knew nothing about before appearing on these shows. Don't know how this ended up so popular, apart from one link on doyouremember it doesn't appear to have been linked from anywhere.
Of course were this a more representative look back at 1977 Contempt would have taken pride of place, alongside Joy Sarney, Danny Mirror, Brendon, David Parton, Trinidad Oil Company, Martyn Ford Orchestra, Honky, the Carvells, Page Three, the Foster Brothers, Hudson-Ford, Neil Innes, Gene Cotton, Dead End Kids, Jigsaw, The Banned, Peter Blake, the RAH Band, Berni Flint, John Miles' command of the talkbox, Danny Williams, the Steve Gibbons Band and the Mah Na Mah Na Legs & Co routine with a live feed from the living room of Sue's children, plus Diddy interviewing Michael Nesmith. Instead the ever unimaginative BBC LE department decided to honour the biggest hits of the year instead. Pschaw.
So before we start here's how it fitted into what some say was the greatest Christmas evening's telly of all time, featuring the two most watched Christmas Day light entertainment shows of all time, and the one that received the most viewers isn't the one everyone thinks it is (and wasn't as big as is commonly quoted):
8.55am Star Over Bethlehem
9.55am Playboard
10.10am Michael Bentine appeals on behalf of Wells Cathedral
10.15am Christmas Worship from All Saints Parish Church, Kingston-Upon-Thames
11.13am Weatherman
11.15am The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas animation
11.40am National Velvet
1.40pm Are You Being Served?
2.10pm Top of the Pops
3.00pm The Queen
3.10pm Billy Smart's Christmas Circus
4.10pm The Wizard Of Oz
5.50pm Basil (Brush) Through The Looking Glass
6.20pm Evening News
6.25pm Songs Of Praise
7.15pm The Generation Game
8.20pm Mike Yarwood Christmas Show
8.55pm Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show
10.00pm News
10.05pm Funny Girl
12.30am Weatherman
12.31am Closedown
The best ITV could do? The Christmas Stars On Sunday and nearly three hours of Young Winston.
Back to business, with an intro screen which features previous footage of those who we'll see over the following fifty minutes in the middle and chart slides of others along the side. This is the closest Barry Biggs, Berni Flint and, remarkably, the Sex Pistols get to the end of year spectacular. 'Part One' - well, it couldn't be comfortably edited out, I suppose - has Noel and Kid in charge, the former in the widest bank manager-style tie he could find, the latter in a purple suit, huge bow tie and ruffled shirt giving him the look of a school leaver on work experience at The Comedians. Noel hopes "the pudding isn't lying too heavy cos there's a bit of dancing to do today, I reckon". Not with most of this lineup there isn't. Maybe that's the idea.
Showaddywaddy – You Got What It Takes
Not a lot of new performances given the auspicious occasion but the 'Waddy are always available with a combination of colours to suit all occasions. They start with their backs turned, as per rock and roll showbiz tradition, but it doesn't work if they're initially being filmed from behind the stage left drumkit. Under a variety of large balloons Dave Bartram, who appears to have a large car key for a medallion, struts in allurring electric pink while nobody else at all mimes the prominent sax part. We know from last year that they like a visual gag, so the performance is cut into with shots of them at a large dining table re-enacting the last supper (or having a false Christmas dinner, one of the two) Buddy liberally pours out wine and makes merry, as you'd expect. Romeo looks unenthusiastic pulling a cracker, as you'd expect. Al James sits at the end on his own and looks utterly fed up.
Deniece Williams – Free
Tip: when being shot in artful half-darkness, don't wear a dark coloured dress. At least they've given her a proper stage this time. Lit by spotlight from the front and one in-shot overhead light, Deniece is definitely made out as the centre of attention which enhances her emotive heights of performance that by the end almost reach Minnie Riperton levels, though the only other people in the studio on that side of camera are a discreetly placed well back orchestra. Still applause at the end, obviously. They've got a pretence to keep up.
Brighouse & Rastrick Brass Band – The Floral Dance
Kid comes up with a corker: "1977 certainly saw a lot of new names in the charts, none more outrageous than this." Really, Kid? In the year of punk, something you'd previously indicated you were well across, and the decade of rock excess a traditional brass band were "none more outrageous"? This is a repeat of their regular year performance but it hasn't been on BBC4 before, though with the audience waving balloons, tiny bits of material on large sticks behind them you might be forgiven for thinking it was a special party mood performance.
Emerson Lake & Palmer – Fanfare For The Common Man
Kid challenges Noel to name an act with three names, and Noel dodges the future editing bullet. "Carol Bayer Sager? Andy Fairweather-Low? Value Added Tax?" He actually did that same rule-of-three line when Bayer Sayer was on, but Christmas schedules are famed for repeats. Legs & Co time, and what better physical illustration of the concept behind the title than Musketeer doublet and hose? Maybe Flick was expecting Mike Oldfield to be picked or something. On the plus side it means plenty of knicker shots, which may be the partial point of the exercise. Lots of hat doffing work ensues around Christmas trees with Pauline both opening and on a central plinth from where she gets a solo that amounts to turning round in a circle
Leo Sayer – When I Need You
Noel seems to have a thing with Bayer Sager, specifying that she wrote this song. A repeat of his performance when it reached number one, where Leo in a bare, dark studio models a large ice hockey shirt, sticks his hands in his pockets and lets the director pick up the slack with multiplication visual effects.
Manhattan Transfer – Chanson D'Amour
Or as Kid still calls them "the Manhattan Transfer Company". He ends his intro to the same film clip as original showing on an odd upward inflection as if he's unsure about the chanson's actual properties after all this time.
Hot Chocolate – So You Win Again
Even though he doesn't deliver the punchline this link has the handiwork of Noel all over it as he asks Kid which bands he's not liked this year. "You mean apart from Hot Chocolate?" Kid replies before being bundled almost to the ground, and of course there they are just across the way. Of course Kid called this OK You Win when he first introduced it, so maybe there's truth in there. As usual Errol sings right to us while moving hesitantly to the rhythm while the rest of the band swap glances and knowing grins.
David Soul – Don’t Give Up On Us
Abba – Knowing Me Knowing You
Space – Magic Fly
Johnny Mathis – When A Child Is Born (Soleado)
Four repeated videos in a row, this portion notable only for a shot halfway through Soul of a large group of audience members who don't appear at any other stage of the programme dancing to Toppotron™ - that may be a straight repeated clip from a previous show, which is confusing given they clearly have a clean copy of the proper video to show - and before Space Noel reading out a purported card dedication: "Christmas comes but once a year and when it comes it's very exciting, but Top Of The Pops is always fun especially when done by crew 19". This is apparently so vital Noel never actually introduces the clip, which with its visual effect assault, men in helmets and synth oddness must have left family members baffled nationwide.
Stevie Wonder – Sir Duke
"Legs & Co have invited a special friend along" smiles Kid and that can only mean one thing - Floyd! Dressed as Santa! Well, if you want someone to willingly move and strut with absolute dedication and excitement while in a silly costume you may as well call for the acknowledged expert. Not that the girls are stinting, dressed as they are as trotting reindeer insomuch as they have antlers on their furry hoods, albeit bedecked in holly leaves plus little tops, microshorts, gloves and boots in matching shiny silver. Santa Floyd, who hardly ever breaks his look at the camera, has the human reindeer on a leash, which brings all manner of unsubtle allusions to the fore. Even that shrinks in the egregiousness stakes, however, compared to the fact someone's added to Stevie's precision funk with sleigh bells. It doesn't improve the mix. Eventually Floyd ostentatiously disappears down a model chimney and his flock wave him off. Patti seems to be blowing him a kiss, which adds yet another layer.
Kenny Rogers – Lucille
Noel stumbles forward mid-link. "I've got a loose heel here..." is his punchline. Christ, even the Barron Knights had done that one already by then, and Kid either feigns despair or is genuinely despairing. It's a video but not the one we've already seen, as Kenny is by an empty bar festooned with bottles and instead of leaping over and going mad chooses to sit without a drink and tell his story. When he sits down there's an audible creak. He doesn't seem to be singing live but no foley artist would be so moved, would they?
Baccara – Yes Sir I Can Boogie
Another act returning to the studio, so the director chooses to start with 25 seconds essentially of just red filtered lights before the proper spotlighting is set upon the duo. Uncomfortable shifting and a couple of rehearsed spare hand movements ensue.
Wings – Mull Of Kintyre
Kid predicts the McCartneys will be "celebrating up in Scotland". What, nothing else? It's not like they'd have a turkey, I suppose. The same performance as we last saw, which isn't from Yarwood as previously stated, instead just seeming to be a second, maybe slightly cheaper video perhaps just to show off Linda's tartan socks. Kid manages to get a lengthy outro link out in one breath before Noel cues in "probably the biggest selling Christmas record of all time", White Christmas. That's no excuse. Sadly Kid doesn't wish us "merry Christmas and merry love", just the first half, but, overlaid over a slowly circling camera shot of the studio ceiling that eventually alights on some tinsel and baubles in kaleidoscope-vision, the credits are in Star Wars scrolling type and font. Influential already.
This is quite a long post, isn't it? Let's make it a little longer but simultaneously easier, as thanks to Neil again here's the Boxing Day show, not complete as UK Gold cut out repeats (we assume) of Brotherhood Of Man, Billy Ocean and Joe Tex, featuring a handful of new performances - Boney M with Bobby Farrell still having to sing his own parts and an unwelcome intrusion to mime the news report bit, Heatwave, an Elvis montage, a rather literal Legs & Co routine for Silver Lady and, erm, Showaddywaddy's hit that was already going down the charts when 1977 started. It also starts with the same title sequence as the previous day so you can see what I meant.
Showing posts with label leo sayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leo sayer. Show all posts
Monday 24 December 2012
Thursday 13 December 2012
TOTP 24/11/77 (tx 13/12/12): all the fun of the pharoah
If I knew earlier that a TOTP that wasn't shown would be so much more immediately popular than discussing so many that were, this blog might have taken a different course. Regardless, onwards.
Kid, wearing the sort of mid-length jacket-cum-robe that goes best with a long cigarette holder, a chaise longue and a louche disposition, welcomes us to "the hit music scene". Belfast under the charts, which at 29 includes The Tubes (White Punks On Dope - no, curiously TOTP didn't go near it) with a photo featuring loads and loads of people, surely including people who weren't in The Tubes - on the Old Grey Whistle Test set! Caring and sharing, that's the BBC. Meanwhile Wings are lumbered with the single sleeve, which with the fading of the distinction between photo and photo-in-photo looks on screen like the worst Photoshop you've ever seen.
The Carvells – The LA Run
I don't know what image comes to mind when you try to imagine a song from the mid to late 70s called The LA Run, but I doubt it's this. It may well start with a close-up of a bass, metronomic drumming and some Moog squirting, but before long it's headlong into the world of early Beach Boys pastiche we go, leading-on bass vocalist and everything. Except... about skateboarding. In fact the Carvells, nom de rock for prolific backing singer Alan Carvell, have a board and helmet on the amp and keyboard, called 'their' subsequent album Skateboard Rampage and this is one of only two tracks on that album without the word 'skateboard' in the title. Fad cash-in much? Almost all clad in white trousers they're apparently a three guitar band without sounding anything like one, but they won't let us see the guitar solo as we cut to some stock footage of skateboarders doing their underdeveloped thing next to Tower Bridge - which, you may know, isn't in LA - on parapets and in bowls. And ny sheer amazing coincidence someone in the crowd has brought a skateboard with them! Lofting it above their head they resist any temptation to either try out some moves or chuck it at them. The director gets bored with the overlong outro and puts the skater footage back on, after which we see the keyboard player dancing with the board. You know how Dennis Wilson was the only Beach Boy who could surf - was he the only Carvell who could skateboard?
Wings – Mull Of Kintyre
"A long, long way from the skateboard scene" comes Paul near a cottage, then near a beach, then pipers on a beach. Macca gets up just as Linda approaches so he can go on a wander with Denny Laine. He must have had some explaining to do after that. "That must stand a big chance of being this Christmas' number one sound" Kid predicts, accurately by the show's standards in a stopped clock way, while surrounded by the apparent winners of a Brotherhood Of Man Dress-alike contest.
Bonnie Tyler – It's A Heartache
We've seen Bonnie before on here but this is the first appearance since throat nodules gave her the full cement-gargling treatment. "That sad sweetheart from Swansea", as an onomatopoeic Kid is keen to point out, Bonnie's voice actually seems to be rougher even than we've become accustomed to, borderline laryngitis. Footballer-resembling keyboard player in green T-shirt aside her entirely functional backing band are all in different shades of classic mid-70s brown, keeping it low key for now until the John Milesalike guitarist gets his solo and goes for his moment including a foot up on a non-existant monitor. A very odd moment right at the end, as while Kid confidently states her to be "my tip for success in 1978" - she didn't have another top 30 single until 1983 - Bonnie's voice on its own suddenly appears at seemingly louder volume than during the song for two and a half words, literally cutting off mid-syllable. Cut like that it can't have been a live vocal mistake, but surely a pre-record would have played in the whole band. Curious.
Darts – Daddy Cool/The Girl Can't Help It
"Those darlings of the doo-wop" have their first visit, falling Hegarty and all, repeated. Kid vouches for their live reputation, as if we hadn't just had a taste of it.
Leo Sayer – There Isn't Anything
Kid chooses to deliver his link not so much with his arm round a young woman (stop it) as restraining her with his forearm round her throat. Is she gurning and glancing round the studio out of choice or for assistance as the oxygen depletes? A carefree Kid tries her out as straight woman regardless of her situation. "There isn't anything... isn't it?" is his question to her at the end, again trying to work that particular charm of his, to which she can only say "no" and laugh because the question doesn't make sense without the song. Leo's on his own, as he has been before, a service we've only recently seen granted to Queen. To think there was a time when both would be of the same level of prestige. A blacked out studio highlights the brightness of his top and also the fact that he's basically trying to recapture the big ballad emotion of When I Need You only to find his big notes are just shouting before, using the magic of perspective, he wanders into a large picture frame towards a mike stand. He is, of course, on a part of the stage well behind the frame. What the point of that little sojourn was isn't clear but it keeps us guessing a little. Afterwards he's with a different woman, the stud, making a pointed remark about "beautiful Britain". No, Kid. Not now.
Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers – Egyptian Reggae
Ah, paydirt. Kid cracks it's "the music a few English football managers are dancing to these days". Presumably that's a Don Revie joke, but he went to the United Arab Emirates. Still, all the same to Kid, isn't it? Anyway, the quixotic Richman instrumental gets the Legs & Co treatment. Treatment is the operative word. No words can do justice.
I described this on Twitter a couple of weeks ago as Legs & Co's equivalent of Pan's People's Get Down, not only in that it's probably the most likely of their routines you'll see on nostalgia clip shows but it's also people doing what on the face of it is a quite stupid looking routine with a great big animal-based elephant in the room with absolute poker faces and total commitment to their craft. In case you were wondering, according to the former it's Sue front end, Lulu at the back, and you have to say that Ms Cartwright's let the side down a little at the end there, assuming her end tableau position half a bar early while Sue's still wobbling her/its head, though she's also half a second late in the climactic head drop. And see the venomous power of that snake! I really have no idea how Pauline didn't run cowering. Or alternately piss herself laughing. "I'm sure Jonathan Richman would like that" Kid says, giggling. Well, he might.
Hot Chocolate – Put Your Love In Me
The graphical wizards have already moved on from their rainbow coloured circles and seem to have constructed an oval out of coloured lights and wires to project close-up shots of instruments into the middle of. A little moving about and the effect is quite psychedelic for the 20p budget's allowance, though the CSO framing could do with some steadiness. Errol's ever emotionless face mostly gets the full screen treatment, of course, but after he's started there's some judicious wipes from the centre so we can be reminded who's boss round here. There is an audience at this taping, but they're only glimpsed once in a long shot in complete silhouette. Eventually they end with a pan to the lights, like they want to finish already.
The Bee Gees – How Deep Is Your Love
The intro to the video, the one with all the spotlights you're probably aware of, sees Kid take to the Egyptian set and hoists a hitherto unused novelty tiger head print stole over his shoulder. With it in place he tries an Eric Morecambe routine and gets it wrong. Honestly, we shouldn't expect that sort of prop-based fallacy from anyone. Apart from DLT.
Santa Esmeralda & Leroy Gomez – Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
Odd demarcation, given "high stepping", as Kid refers to him, Leroy Gomez was the singer in the group Santa Esmeralda. It's Gloria Estefan And Miami Sound Machine before its time. Perhaps in protest Santa Esmeralda haven't shown up, which means fewer people to take issue when Kid in voiceover tells us they're "from the land of flamenco guitars, the group Baccara and Manuel". Just say Spain, Kid, we've heard of it. Leroy's up for it regardless, doing some frantic clapping as an intro before a full stage shot reveals it to be him plus three dancing girls - I don't think they're Legs & Co members, though I stand to be corrected, from other European TV performance clips it seems to be more like Leroy's personal harem - performing a routine big in standing side-on in pleated Spanish-type skirts, just to ram it home. Two of them are in their bras. The other probably counted as the demure offering. Gomez, in his afro, half-shaved goatee beard and half-open shirt with sleeves that resemble the shape of tin foil immediately after it's been removed to reveal the buffet sandwiches underneath, tries his best but it can't be helped that he's been placed out to one side of the stage so the dancers get most of the central space.
ABBA – The Name Of The Game
Still there, still at deadlock in their Ludo game. "The Kid", as by now he's calling himself, is back on that new "exotic "set seemingly surrounded by the entire audience, some of whom are in ties, some in rollnecks. Ahead of the Jacksons' Goin' Places he has only one thing left to wish us - "good week and good love!" What? Don't mess with a winning formula!
Kid, wearing the sort of mid-length jacket-cum-robe that goes best with a long cigarette holder, a chaise longue and a louche disposition, welcomes us to "the hit music scene". Belfast under the charts, which at 29 includes The Tubes (White Punks On Dope - no, curiously TOTP didn't go near it) with a photo featuring loads and loads of people, surely including people who weren't in The Tubes - on the Old Grey Whistle Test set! Caring and sharing, that's the BBC. Meanwhile Wings are lumbered with the single sleeve, which with the fading of the distinction between photo and photo-in-photo looks on screen like the worst Photoshop you've ever seen.
The Carvells – The LA Run
I don't know what image comes to mind when you try to imagine a song from the mid to late 70s called The LA Run, but I doubt it's this. It may well start with a close-up of a bass, metronomic drumming and some Moog squirting, but before long it's headlong into the world of early Beach Boys pastiche we go, leading-on bass vocalist and everything. Except... about skateboarding. In fact the Carvells, nom de rock for prolific backing singer Alan Carvell, have a board and helmet on the amp and keyboard, called 'their' subsequent album Skateboard Rampage and this is one of only two tracks on that album without the word 'skateboard' in the title. Fad cash-in much? Almost all clad in white trousers they're apparently a three guitar band without sounding anything like one, but they won't let us see the guitar solo as we cut to some stock footage of skateboarders doing their underdeveloped thing next to Tower Bridge - which, you may know, isn't in LA - on parapets and in bowls. And ny sheer amazing coincidence someone in the crowd has brought a skateboard with them! Lofting it above their head they resist any temptation to either try out some moves or chuck it at them. The director gets bored with the overlong outro and puts the skater footage back on, after which we see the keyboard player dancing with the board. You know how Dennis Wilson was the only Beach Boy who could surf - was he the only Carvell who could skateboard?
Wings – Mull Of Kintyre
"A long, long way from the skateboard scene" comes Paul near a cottage, then near a beach, then pipers on a beach. Macca gets up just as Linda approaches so he can go on a wander with Denny Laine. He must have had some explaining to do after that. "That must stand a big chance of being this Christmas' number one sound" Kid predicts, accurately by the show's standards in a stopped clock way, while surrounded by the apparent winners of a Brotherhood Of Man Dress-alike contest.
Bonnie Tyler – It's A Heartache
We've seen Bonnie before on here but this is the first appearance since throat nodules gave her the full cement-gargling treatment. "That sad sweetheart from Swansea", as an onomatopoeic Kid is keen to point out, Bonnie's voice actually seems to be rougher even than we've become accustomed to, borderline laryngitis. Footballer-resembling keyboard player in green T-shirt aside her entirely functional backing band are all in different shades of classic mid-70s brown, keeping it low key for now until the John Milesalike guitarist gets his solo and goes for his moment including a foot up on a non-existant monitor. A very odd moment right at the end, as while Kid confidently states her to be "my tip for success in 1978" - she didn't have another top 30 single until 1983 - Bonnie's voice on its own suddenly appears at seemingly louder volume than during the song for two and a half words, literally cutting off mid-syllable. Cut like that it can't have been a live vocal mistake, but surely a pre-record would have played in the whole band. Curious.
Darts – Daddy Cool/The Girl Can't Help It
"Those darlings of the doo-wop" have their first visit, falling Hegarty and all, repeated. Kid vouches for their live reputation, as if we hadn't just had a taste of it.
Leo Sayer – There Isn't Anything
Kid chooses to deliver his link not so much with his arm round a young woman (stop it) as restraining her with his forearm round her throat. Is she gurning and glancing round the studio out of choice or for assistance as the oxygen depletes? A carefree Kid tries her out as straight woman regardless of her situation. "There isn't anything... isn't it?" is his question to her at the end, again trying to work that particular charm of his, to which she can only say "no" and laugh because the question doesn't make sense without the song. Leo's on his own, as he has been before, a service we've only recently seen granted to Queen. To think there was a time when both would be of the same level of prestige. A blacked out studio highlights the brightness of his top and also the fact that he's basically trying to recapture the big ballad emotion of When I Need You only to find his big notes are just shouting before, using the magic of perspective, he wanders into a large picture frame towards a mike stand. He is, of course, on a part of the stage well behind the frame. What the point of that little sojourn was isn't clear but it keeps us guessing a little. Afterwards he's with a different woman, the stud, making a pointed remark about "beautiful Britain". No, Kid. Not now.
Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers – Egyptian Reggae
Ah, paydirt. Kid cracks it's "the music a few English football managers are dancing to these days". Presumably that's a Don Revie joke, but he went to the United Arab Emirates. Still, all the same to Kid, isn't it? Anyway, the quixotic Richman instrumental gets the Legs & Co treatment. Treatment is the operative word. No words can do justice.
I described this on Twitter a couple of weeks ago as Legs & Co's equivalent of Pan's People's Get Down, not only in that it's probably the most likely of their routines you'll see on nostalgia clip shows but it's also people doing what on the face of it is a quite stupid looking routine with a great big animal-based elephant in the room with absolute poker faces and total commitment to their craft. In case you were wondering, according to the former it's Sue front end, Lulu at the back, and you have to say that Ms Cartwright's let the side down a little at the end there, assuming her end tableau position half a bar early while Sue's still wobbling her/its head, though she's also half a second late in the climactic head drop. And see the venomous power of that snake! I really have no idea how Pauline didn't run cowering. Or alternately piss herself laughing. "I'm sure Jonathan Richman would like that" Kid says, giggling. Well, he might.
Hot Chocolate – Put Your Love In Me
The graphical wizards have already moved on from their rainbow coloured circles and seem to have constructed an oval out of coloured lights and wires to project close-up shots of instruments into the middle of. A little moving about and the effect is quite psychedelic for the 20p budget's allowance, though the CSO framing could do with some steadiness. Errol's ever emotionless face mostly gets the full screen treatment, of course, but after he's started there's some judicious wipes from the centre so we can be reminded who's boss round here. There is an audience at this taping, but they're only glimpsed once in a long shot in complete silhouette. Eventually they end with a pan to the lights, like they want to finish already.
The Bee Gees – How Deep Is Your Love
The intro to the video, the one with all the spotlights you're probably aware of, sees Kid take to the Egyptian set and hoists a hitherto unused novelty tiger head print stole over his shoulder. With it in place he tries an Eric Morecambe routine and gets it wrong. Honestly, we shouldn't expect that sort of prop-based fallacy from anyone. Apart from DLT.
Santa Esmeralda & Leroy Gomez – Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
Odd demarcation, given "high stepping", as Kid refers to him, Leroy Gomez was the singer in the group Santa Esmeralda. It's Gloria Estefan And Miami Sound Machine before its time. Perhaps in protest Santa Esmeralda haven't shown up, which means fewer people to take issue when Kid in voiceover tells us they're "from the land of flamenco guitars, the group Baccara and Manuel". Just say Spain, Kid, we've heard of it. Leroy's up for it regardless, doing some frantic clapping as an intro before a full stage shot reveals it to be him plus three dancing girls - I don't think they're Legs & Co members, though I stand to be corrected, from other European TV performance clips it seems to be more like Leroy's personal harem - performing a routine big in standing side-on in pleated Spanish-type skirts, just to ram it home. Two of them are in their bras. The other probably counted as the demure offering. Gomez, in his afro, half-shaved goatee beard and half-open shirt with sleeves that resemble the shape of tin foil immediately after it's been removed to reveal the buffet sandwiches underneath, tries his best but it can't be helped that he's been placed out to one side of the stage so the dancers get most of the central space.
ABBA – The Name Of The Game
Still there, still at deadlock in their Ludo game. "The Kid", as by now he's calling himself, is back on that new "exotic "set seemingly surrounded by the entire audience, some of whom are in ties, some in rollnecks. Ahead of the Jacksons' Goin' Places he has only one thing left to wish us - "good week and good love!" What? Don't mess with a winning formula!
Thursday 18 October 2012
TOTP 22/9/77 (tx 18/10/12) open thread
I'm not being much help at the moment, am I? Two missing weeks and now being away on 'business' for a few days. So it's another comments box free for all as, having neatly skipped a fortnight's turnaround, we find a load of new-to-BBC4 clips, though the same old number one's there.
Hank The Knife & The Jets – Guitar King
La Belle Epoque – Black Is Black
The Stranglers – No More Heroes
The Emotions – Best Of My Love (Legs & Co)
Leo Sayer – Thunder In My Heart
Baccara – Yes Sir I Can Boogie
The Boomtown Rats – Looking After Number 1
Meri Wilson – Telephone Man
Stardust – Ariana
Elvis Presley – Way Down (Legs & Co semi-repeat)
Hank The Knife & The Jets – Guitar King
La Belle Epoque – Black Is Black
The Stranglers – No More Heroes
The Emotions – Best Of My Love (Legs & Co)
Leo Sayer – Thunder In My Heart
Baccara – Yes Sir I Can Boogie
The Boomtown Rats – Looking After Number 1
Meri Wilson – Telephone Man
Stardust – Ariana
Elvis Presley – Way Down (Legs & Co semi-repeat)
Friday 18 May 2012
TOTP 5/5/77 (tx 17/5/12): no show without Punch
We will get round to this in the fulness of time.
"Right, come on! You're not supposed to enjoy yourselves!" It's to be assumed Noel was making a joke, but this is at the start of a TOTP fronted by Noel Edmonds so who really knows.
Cryptic.
Bay City Rollers – It's A Game
Ah, the Rollers! Except this is the beginning of the end, down to four and this their first single not to reach the top ten. Les has gone for the open shirt look plus high waisted white jeans and a badge reading 'I CAN DO IT' but more notably there are few strands of hanging on to the tartan tradition, Eric Faulkner with a scarf, Stuart Wood his collar. Not that this matters much to the Rollerites, there's still quite a few scarves and one girl down the front completely losing it. Later, however, when the camera is right behind her she keeps turning back and checking where it is. Fearful of being found out? "Somebody wrote to me and said 'how do you measure tartan? With a Bay City ruler?' Well, close" Someone wrote to Noel, yet it still sounds like the sort of line only he would attempt.
Rod Stewart – The First Cut Is The Deepest
"Rod Stewart also wears tartan". Yes, Noel, maybe so, but not in this video clip. Rod looks uncomfortable playing an acoustic guitar, as if it's physically weighing him down, and notably there's no instrument shots for the difficult bits. That'll be why on the second chorus he suddenly swings it behind his back, as if he's making that Kenny Everett sketch flesh and playing it with the arse cheeks, before bringing it back just to turn his back on camera and then abandoning the instrument entirely regardless of the soundtrack. He then makes like he's using his vertebrae to fingerpick. "What a moody lot of romantic individuals we have here" comments Noel. The Rollers and Rod? We can't hear screaming but we're led to assume it, which is an interesting touch.
Delegation – Where Is The Love (We Used To Know)
And now, The Green Lantern - The Harmonic Soul Years.
It's not a colour that radiates serious minded greatness, is it? As if this weren't undignified enough, a badly timed closeup reveals a massive gap in the front teeth of the lead singer.
The Eagles – Hotel California
"They're touring around the UK at the moment" Noel tells us. So why aren't they on the show? Legs & Co - still Patti-free! Three weeks now - instead, and what says more about Californian decadence then dressing your dancers as matadors in fake moustaches. Well, that's one way of putting paid to the literalism accusations.
Mac & Katie Kissoon - Your Love
"You might well have heard the rumours of Mac & Katie Kissoon in split partnership riddle. Well, here's the truth - they're back together again." What? They don't seem very together to start with, Katie having to descend some stairs to join Mac. She's also been lumbered with an impractical looking Mexican-inspired dress with what seems to be a large peacock feather affixed to the front. A lot of people only seem to come over to watch right at the end.
Leo Sayer – How Much Love
The massed Leos of the VT suite strike again.
Joy Sarney – Naughty Naughty Naughty
This is true. Within the last day another clip of this has appeared on YouTube. Title: 'Punch & judy song on Top of the pops'. Description: 'What the hell is wrong with people from the past....'
The first line of the middle eight is "he's been in trouble with the law for grevious bodily harm", and it's sung like a grand soul statement. As you admire the work of the director, who refuses to let on any sight of Sarney's singing partner or his habitation until right at the end of the first chorus, just think about this for a moment. As this blog post reveals, the recorded version is different. Johnny Pearson had to find out how to play this and then run it through with his orchestra. The Punch operator, wrist blatantly in shot, had to provide live vocals. Someone had to get all those balloons pumped up. Humanity, that whole curing cancer thing can wait for another day, we've got a new performance of a song in which a session singer pretends to be a forgiving rival for Judy's affections in the face of a heavily sexed up Punch to organise. You'll notice the lack of audience shots.
Tavares – Whodunnit
The TopPop clip again, enlivened by Noel picking a fight with a girl in a flat cap behind him.
Frankie Valli – Easily
Surrounded by Rollermania girls, of whom there really are a lot, Noel informs us Valli is "doing some fabulous concerts". How important is he? He gets a walk-on. Presumably the best bits don't include this sappy piano ballad, judging by the fact that half the audience, even the two seemingly transfixed at the front are distracted by the crane camera as it swoops from round the back of a 50p shaped mini-stage we haven't seen before. Some start waving at it. You're not telling me that wouldn't distract Valli, stage veteran or not. Noel, now in front of the balloons, takes quite some time to start talking afterwards.
Andrew Gold – Lonely Boy
"Sounds like a company with Angela Rippon as managing director, doesn't it?" It's taken him this long to think of a line for Legs & Co? The oddest piece of early version editing comes here and must be for timing reasons, even though the edit comes in a good minute or so short of as long as it can run, as the earlier routine was cut but this repeat, Floyd and all, was left in.
Mr Big – Feel Like Calling Home
Noel has got a Union Jack flag ("the only thing that spoils it is it says Made In Hong Kong") and hat from somewhere. That's more intriguing than this leaden number, which the singer tries to enliven with some very odd strained falsetto singing at the start and his bandmates add some "bidibidibidi" backing vocals to at one stage.
Deniece Williams – Free
At last, a new number one! Noel, absolutely surrounded and packed in by people - well, let's be fair, girls - asks one what it will be and gets no answer. He seems to be chiding someone in response as a slow wipe takes him and his kind off the screen in favour of Williams' studio performance from two shows ago now, just before someone holding an autograph book can reach him. He's on telly, woman! "It's been great presenting Top Of The Pops from inside a lift" is Noel's line out of the action and into Sir Duke and the credits as everyone presses in on him, but not before someone clearly pokes him in the eye.
Friday 4 May 2012
TOTP 21/4/77 (tx 3/5/12): just because a record has a groove don't make it in the groove
A side note to begin: there's no Pops next week - don't know if The Sky At Night is moving any time soon but this month's is a special to mark 55 years on the air so give them some leeway for now - but as part of their 1970s series BBC2 is getting in on the act by showing this one at 10pm on the 12th May. Surely there's better choices? And not just for Gary Glitter's presence, much as that'll get the duty log going.
And then, on the 17th... two TOTPs in one night! Christ alive, I'm already dreading how I'm going to work out that week. 7.30 and 8.30, since you ask, with the long promised Tales From Television Centre documentary at 9 and a 1974 Blue Peter featuring a tour of the same building at 8, and the unedited Pops will be shown back to back from 11.20.
Back to forty minute originals this week, so let's try a new way of doing things - if possible (as, for example, not this week) I'll have the Thursday evening recap up later the same night, then some time on Friday the songs edited out will be included.
Oh, Tony Blackburn. With your Lego man hair and your cream polo neck and your lack of jokes now Diddy's off the roster.
Eddie & The Hot Rods – I Might Be Lying
PUNK! Well, no it isn't, it's not even as punk-like as their previous appearance with Get Out Of Denver, it's just not-as-good-as-Dr Feelgood-style pumped up rhythm and blues pub rock. Barrie Masters is certainly aware of what's going on with his stance and microphone attack mode, forward and back across the stage with an artfully bare chest and with the camera following his every step eagerly from almost underneath, but somehow it's not quite right. Maybe it's because it always looks like he's about to break out into a great big smirk. Both guitarists and the becapped bassist are in shades, one of the former pulling plenty of rock action moves unbecoming to his Graham Parker-in-leather-jacket appearance. Not for the last time tonight the audience couldn't be less interested. Three girls right by the front of the stage are watching the overhead monitor. Another is not only looking away from it but also chewing gum nonchalantly. Put some ripped leathers on her and she'd make the lead in a bad comedy sketch about punk, I suppose.
O.C. Smith – Together
"This used to be one of my records of the week". Oh, Tony, everything's your record of the week. He even mentions it again afterwards, he's so proud of its status. It's a long way from the Soul Train clip of two weeks ago to Elstree, but in his neat all-blue ensemble incorporating waistcoat Smith still exudes a kind of glazed sophistication against the very vague efforts of the orchestra, showmanship limited to some finger clicking. In the background various Hot Rods briefly appear to tidy up after themselves.
Stevie Wonder – Sir Duke
Cameraman and director in perfect misdirection harmony.
Pauline and the others (bar Patti - well, she needed time off after what Floyd put her through last week) are in very shiny and reflective silver dresses with something similar on top of their heads and they're going right through their training, bits of celebrated dance styles mixed in with the usual exertions somehow to balance with Stevie's appreciation shout-outs. Plus, for that extra ingredient, audible handclaps. As long as they weren't dubbed on in post-production, that's all that matters. And the audience respond in kind with... well, no, they don't respond in the slightest. Hardly a twitch, even though Pops seems to have built them three ringside grandstands to sit in and still have to have some standing around at the sides. Never a good idea, putting the audience in the background, you can then see how easily distracted they get. In one close-up only Tony, absent mindedly tapping the mike against his other wrist, is showing any sign of life.
Berni Flint – I Don't Want To Put A Hold On You (edited from 7.30)
Can't work out if this is a repeat or not. There are after all a limited number of things a director can do with one seated man and his acoustic guitar picking.
Tavares – Whodunnit
"I hate to brag but this was another of my records of the week". How many does he get a week? It's a clip from Holland's Top Pop, possibly chosen for the name alone, and a show that clearly holds no truck with the art of miming as only the lead singer is given a microphone even though backing vocals and harmonies are scattered throughout. Their matching crimson outfits with elaborate collars are quite the thing, along with the standard issue soul wing shirt collars. The shirts are pink. Pink!
Lynsey De Paul & Mike Moran – Rock Bottom
Lynsey's special 'ROCK BOTTOM' paper didn't arrive that morning, nothing amuses her and this time nobody can be bothered with flags (or reactions) around them, but otherwise it's pretty much the same facing pianos arrangement as last time. They didn't even play it like that on the night, which was still more than two weeks away at this time due to strike-related postponement. The early version features a tremendously clumsy mid-song edit.
Leo Sayer – How Much Love
Well, this is decidedly odd. A video (here it is) directed by the man behind the Bohemian Rhapsody video (and has directed every live American Idol), it's essentially built around up to four Leos dancing and essentially messing about while singing, filmed individually and often in silhouette, looking like a cross between Once In A Lifetime and the credits sequence of Bottom.
Delegation – Where Is The Love (We Used To Know)
With Tony keen to state they're from Birmingham, so we run into 1977's Sheer Elegance, only with toned down wardrobes, if that's how you'd describe all-in-ones with zips right up the front in Wolverhampton Wanderers colours. All things are relative, after all, and you definitely wouldn't run them over. As far as the song goes it's pretty much the same as every other male vocal harmony soul outfit, their USPs seemingly being a) the Charlie Williams-a-gram lead singer pitching the mike at an angle where he constantly has to tilt his head upwards, and b) the chain of male pattern baldness from left to right - curly perm, shaved short, actually receded to the sides. "They now go back to Germany" Tony enthuses.
Elkie Brooks – Pearl's A Singer
Repeat from her second appearance. The pianist is quite Lennonish, isn't he?
David Dundas – Another Funny Honeymoon (edited from 7.30)
"At last David Dundas has given us another hit single!" I can't imagine that was an oft heard exultation at the time. Better arrangement - no chicken guitar, less In The Summertime stealing - and an unobtrusive white suit but ultimately a lack of charisma does for him no matter how much he tries to make unbecoming doe eyes at the camera. Someone right near the front in a huge floppy hat nods along while looking away from the stage. He's not that bad. "A nice happy-go-lucky one for the summer, I'd have said" is Tony's only half listening interpretation.
Dead End Kids – Have I The Right (edited from 7.30)
The multi-stage production from last time around.
Deniece Williams – Free
As with OC Smith she was performing this on clips imported from Soul Train two shows ago. Impractical as it sounds, it'd be nice to think there was some exchange program going on and that same week Showaddywaddy and Dead End Kids were confusing the cool kids of LA. What is definite is even for the time those are the greatest width of bell bottom we've seen, and in another all-in-one to boot. Turquoise, too. Great live vocal, hamfisted interpretation, and only what looks like a portable set of steps for her to sing on, Delegation obviously far more important to properly locate than an American boasting the country's number four single. The camera crane ends up behind her so we can see the orchestra in the middle distance and in between a sea of blank faces. Johnny Pearson, it transpires, is miles away, behind part of the camera run. Maybe that was the problem.
ABBA – Knowing Me Knowing You
With the minimum of fuss it's a third week atop for that video, then someone behind Tony adds their own "bye!" just after he says it, then Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill and we're out.
And then, on the 17th... two TOTPs in one night! Christ alive, I'm already dreading how I'm going to work out that week. 7.30 and 8.30, since you ask, with the long promised Tales From Television Centre documentary at 9 and a 1974 Blue Peter featuring a tour of the same building at 8, and the unedited Pops will be shown back to back from 11.20.
Back to forty minute originals this week, so let's try a new way of doing things - if possible (as, for example, not this week) I'll have the Thursday evening recap up later the same night, then some time on Friday the songs edited out will be included.
Oh, Tony Blackburn. With your Lego man hair and your cream polo neck and your lack of jokes now Diddy's off the roster.
Eddie & The Hot Rods – I Might Be Lying
PUNK! Well, no it isn't, it's not even as punk-like as their previous appearance with Get Out Of Denver, it's just not-as-good-as-Dr Feelgood-style pumped up rhythm and blues pub rock. Barrie Masters is certainly aware of what's going on with his stance and microphone attack mode, forward and back across the stage with an artfully bare chest and with the camera following his every step eagerly from almost underneath, but somehow it's not quite right. Maybe it's because it always looks like he's about to break out into a great big smirk. Both guitarists and the becapped bassist are in shades, one of the former pulling plenty of rock action moves unbecoming to his Graham Parker-in-leather-jacket appearance. Not for the last time tonight the audience couldn't be less interested. Three girls right by the front of the stage are watching the overhead monitor. Another is not only looking away from it but also chewing gum nonchalantly. Put some ripped leathers on her and she'd make the lead in a bad comedy sketch about punk, I suppose.
O.C. Smith – Together
"This used to be one of my records of the week". Oh, Tony, everything's your record of the week. He even mentions it again afterwards, he's so proud of its status. It's a long way from the Soul Train clip of two weeks ago to Elstree, but in his neat all-blue ensemble incorporating waistcoat Smith still exudes a kind of glazed sophistication against the very vague efforts of the orchestra, showmanship limited to some finger clicking. In the background various Hot Rods briefly appear to tidy up after themselves.
Stevie Wonder – Sir Duke
Cameraman and director in perfect misdirection harmony.
Pauline and the others (bar Patti - well, she needed time off after what Floyd put her through last week) are in very shiny and reflective silver dresses with something similar on top of their heads and they're going right through their training, bits of celebrated dance styles mixed in with the usual exertions somehow to balance with Stevie's appreciation shout-outs. Plus, for that extra ingredient, audible handclaps. As long as they weren't dubbed on in post-production, that's all that matters. And the audience respond in kind with... well, no, they don't respond in the slightest. Hardly a twitch, even though Pops seems to have built them three ringside grandstands to sit in and still have to have some standing around at the sides. Never a good idea, putting the audience in the background, you can then see how easily distracted they get. In one close-up only Tony, absent mindedly tapping the mike against his other wrist, is showing any sign of life.
Berni Flint – I Don't Want To Put A Hold On You (edited from 7.30)
Can't work out if this is a repeat or not. There are after all a limited number of things a director can do with one seated man and his acoustic guitar picking.
Tavares – Whodunnit
"I hate to brag but this was another of my records of the week". How many does he get a week? It's a clip from Holland's Top Pop, possibly chosen for the name alone, and a show that clearly holds no truck with the art of miming as only the lead singer is given a microphone even though backing vocals and harmonies are scattered throughout. Their matching crimson outfits with elaborate collars are quite the thing, along with the standard issue soul wing shirt collars. The shirts are pink. Pink!
Lynsey De Paul & Mike Moran – Rock Bottom
Lynsey's special 'ROCK BOTTOM' paper didn't arrive that morning, nothing amuses her and this time nobody can be bothered with flags (or reactions) around them, but otherwise it's pretty much the same facing pianos arrangement as last time. They didn't even play it like that on the night, which was still more than two weeks away at this time due to strike-related postponement. The early version features a tremendously clumsy mid-song edit.
Leo Sayer – How Much Love
Well, this is decidedly odd. A video (here it is) directed by the man behind the Bohemian Rhapsody video (and has directed every live American Idol), it's essentially built around up to four Leos dancing and essentially messing about while singing, filmed individually and often in silhouette, looking like a cross between Once In A Lifetime and the credits sequence of Bottom.
Delegation – Where Is The Love (We Used To Know)
With Tony keen to state they're from Birmingham, so we run into 1977's Sheer Elegance, only with toned down wardrobes, if that's how you'd describe all-in-ones with zips right up the front in Wolverhampton Wanderers colours. All things are relative, after all, and you definitely wouldn't run them over. As far as the song goes it's pretty much the same as every other male vocal harmony soul outfit, their USPs seemingly being a) the Charlie Williams-a-gram lead singer pitching the mike at an angle where he constantly has to tilt his head upwards, and b) the chain of male pattern baldness from left to right - curly perm, shaved short, actually receded to the sides. "They now go back to Germany" Tony enthuses.
Elkie Brooks – Pearl's A Singer
Repeat from her second appearance. The pianist is quite Lennonish, isn't he?
David Dundas – Another Funny Honeymoon (edited from 7.30)
"At last David Dundas has given us another hit single!" I can't imagine that was an oft heard exultation at the time. Better arrangement - no chicken guitar, less In The Summertime stealing - and an unobtrusive white suit but ultimately a lack of charisma does for him no matter how much he tries to make unbecoming doe eyes at the camera. Someone right near the front in a huge floppy hat nods along while looking away from the stage. He's not that bad. "A nice happy-go-lucky one for the summer, I'd have said" is Tony's only half listening interpretation.
Dead End Kids – Have I The Right (edited from 7.30)
The multi-stage production from last time around.
Deniece Williams – Free
As with OC Smith she was performing this on clips imported from Soul Train two shows ago. Impractical as it sounds, it'd be nice to think there was some exchange program going on and that same week Showaddywaddy and Dead End Kids were confusing the cool kids of LA. What is definite is even for the time those are the greatest width of bell bottom we've seen, and in another all-in-one to boot. Turquoise, too. Great live vocal, hamfisted interpretation, and only what looks like a portable set of steps for her to sing on, Delegation obviously far more important to properly locate than an American boasting the country's number four single. The camera crane ends up behind her so we can see the orchestra in the middle distance and in between a sea of blank faces. Johnny Pearson, it transpires, is miles away, behind part of the camera run. Maybe that was the problem.
ABBA – Knowing Me Knowing You
With the minimum of fuss it's a third week atop for that video, then someone behind Tony adds their own "bye!" just after he says it, then Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill and we're out.
Thursday 1 March 2012
TOTP 24/2/77 (tx 1/3/12): oh, what a circus
Here's something entertaining One For The Dads has found - Legs & Co on Larry Grayson's Generation Game in 1978. Patti, Rosie, Gill and Pauline to be exact, plus friend Floyd and a couple of others, doing a very teatime-friendly version of ballroom disco dancing, while Flick is in charge of choreography, scoring and getting a round of applause for not being male. Of course Larry and Isla have a go afterwards.
Meanwhile, here's someone's stream of consciousness version of Pops recappage.
Noel this week, before a chart the captions for which have turned an uncomfortable mushy peas green. Barry Biggs is still in the top ten.
Heatwave – Boogie Nights
Lots of videos this week but none with a more forceful setting than this. Heatwave are in virtual silhouette at the front, some neon pink lines behind, and every so often a set of full beam lights dazzle everything in their path as the two singers sway in a fashion that suggests meaningfulness. Eventually the lighting change reveals a band costume of black jumpsuits with some sort of yellow 'sun rays' motif around the wide collar and belt. On the energetic frontmen it works a treat. On the '70s British detective series criminal of the week' keyboard player and the well built, defiantly English session drummer, less so. Midway through the clip gets the Toppotron™ treatment, excitingly this week at a slight angle to the shot, the proleteriat in at least one Panama hat and who knows how much poor knitwear shuffling before their telescreen. Noel calls it "a somewhat melodic way to get proceedings underway" as if it's MOR pop, while not for the last time this week the applause at the end is overlaid by a medium-sized youthful sounding cheer. One or the other, come on.
The Racing Cars – They Shoot Horses Don't They?
"One of the songs that is particularly beautiful at the moment" is Noel's take on a ballad that takes the average RPM down hugely, before offering a blacksmith-based pun that does nobody any good. Once you've got over how alarmingly singer Morty looks like Bill Bailey with short dark hair and Simon Pegg's eyes it's notable how carefully it treads the line between anthemic and catatonic, never one thing nor the other. At the end the guitarist starts kissing/biting the neck of his instrument, possibly just because he can.
The Real Thing – You’ll Never Know What You’re Missing
And out of the tombola this time comes Eddie in the hat to go with his wedding suit from last time and a jacket that looks like it's made out of his dining room carpet, a white jacket with velvet pantaloons and the other two looking like they were rushed on stage in what they arrived in, including dungarees. Had they still not learned from the Americans about coding their gear? There's an acoustic guitar restored to the lineup too.
Mary McGregor – Torn Between Two Lovers
"She doesn't know whether to marry McTavish or marry McGregor". No. Serious, Noel, no. The video is a series of shots of tight close-ups of McGregor's face, but she still feels it necessary to hold a mike throughout. These were the early days of promo shoots, maybe some still needed the crutch.
Electric Light Orchestra – Rockaria
And another video, a full ELO onstage extravaganza in which the track's opera singer starts high up in a false castle and a quartered screen reveals Jeff's gang going at it ten to the dozen. Duelling cellists drag their instruments at right angles around the stage.
Barbara Dickson – Another Suitcase In Another Hall
Before Barbara can get underway Noel wants to introduce us to some people, Andrew Lloyd Webber looking about twenty while simultaneously not actually looking young at all and Tim Rice looking like a provincial PE teacher. Noel starts with a very strangely worded question: "Everyone says to me you've got so many hits on that LP, so many hits behind Evita, is that true?" Lloyd Webber, understandably confused, points out the first single was a number one and they've released the second. "I think we like this one at the moment best" Rice offers when asked which his favourite is, which is handy. It turns out to be both Noel's record of the week and his prediction for a number one, so its chances are sunk well before it can ever begin. Dickson looks very stern in her knockoff Laura Ashley, choker and ostentatiously huge flower in hair. To add artistic merit there's a shot from the far side of a harp being played by a disembodied hand. At the end a man in a bobble hat looks nonplussed.
Earth Wind & Fire – Saturday Nite
As ever, Noel's off on his own logic perambulation: "The next introduction sounds a bit like the sort of insurance company you'd need cover from if you were going to walk round a volcano". Having given Legs & Co mini-tunics that make no attempt to cover the underwear Flick seems to have set them on autopilot and let them go on the standard uptempo move set. Gill's trying, though, if the addition of what seems to be a Chaplin sped-up shuffle qualifies by itself as trying to add something new. It's not impressing the audience surrounding the dancefloor, who spent three minutes listening to disco, watching professional dancers and don't move a muscle throughout. Some men at the back stand with their arms tightly folded, women at the front look like they're being forced to be there. Is this Legs & Co's first time in front of a live audience on the regular show? They really needed to involve the crowd more, unless Flick's still reeling from the Ruby Flipper reproach - they did crowd participation a few times - and vowed not to go that far again.
Leo Sayer – When I Need You
"Two weeks at number one, it's got to stay there even longer". It did! Noel got a chart prediction right! Stopped clock and all that. Leo, the very definition of 'always available', gets all sort of multiplication camera tricks, but more telling is his standing before a catatonically swaying audience with his hands in his pockets again. It doesn't mean casuality by itself, Leo. Before cueing up Bowie's Sound And Vision to play under the credits - and at this stage of 1977 aren't we all waiting for certain gifts of sound and vision? - Noel promises Leo will be joining "the Swap Shop supergroup this coming Saturday". And yes, this was a thing - the show put together an actual supergroup which recorded covers of Roll Over Beethoven and Bo Diddley under Mickie Most's production. Leo sang, with backing from John Miles, Suzi Quatro, Kenney Jones of the Faces and... John Christie! 1977 was going to be marvellous for him after all.
And yes, he still had that smug face he pulls. Via this set of Swap Shop Book 1978 scans, which also features actual slides used in the chart rundown
EDIT NEWS: videos by Bryan Ferry (This Is Tomorrow) and Boston (More Than A Feeling, which you'd have thought would have been more of a pull than Rockaria)
Meanwhile, here's someone's stream of consciousness version of Pops recappage.
Noel this week, before a chart the captions for which have turned an uncomfortable mushy peas green. Barry Biggs is still in the top ten.
Heatwave – Boogie Nights
Lots of videos this week but none with a more forceful setting than this. Heatwave are in virtual silhouette at the front, some neon pink lines behind, and every so often a set of full beam lights dazzle everything in their path as the two singers sway in a fashion that suggests meaningfulness. Eventually the lighting change reveals a band costume of black jumpsuits with some sort of yellow 'sun rays' motif around the wide collar and belt. On the energetic frontmen it works a treat. On the '70s British detective series criminal of the week' keyboard player and the well built, defiantly English session drummer, less so. Midway through the clip gets the Toppotron™ treatment, excitingly this week at a slight angle to the shot, the proleteriat in at least one Panama hat and who knows how much poor knitwear shuffling before their telescreen. Noel calls it "a somewhat melodic way to get proceedings underway" as if it's MOR pop, while not for the last time this week the applause at the end is overlaid by a medium-sized youthful sounding cheer. One or the other, come on.
The Racing Cars – They Shoot Horses Don't They?
"One of the songs that is particularly beautiful at the moment" is Noel's take on a ballad that takes the average RPM down hugely, before offering a blacksmith-based pun that does nobody any good. Once you've got over how alarmingly singer Morty looks like Bill Bailey with short dark hair and Simon Pegg's eyes it's notable how carefully it treads the line between anthemic and catatonic, never one thing nor the other. At the end the guitarist starts kissing/biting the neck of his instrument, possibly just because he can.
The Real Thing – You’ll Never Know What You’re Missing
And out of the tombola this time comes Eddie in the hat to go with his wedding suit from last time and a jacket that looks like it's made out of his dining room carpet, a white jacket with velvet pantaloons and the other two looking like they were rushed on stage in what they arrived in, including dungarees. Had they still not learned from the Americans about coding their gear? There's an acoustic guitar restored to the lineup too.
Mary McGregor – Torn Between Two Lovers
"She doesn't know whether to marry McTavish or marry McGregor". No. Serious, Noel, no. The video is a series of shots of tight close-ups of McGregor's face, but she still feels it necessary to hold a mike throughout. These were the early days of promo shoots, maybe some still needed the crutch.
Electric Light Orchestra – Rockaria
And another video, a full ELO onstage extravaganza in which the track's opera singer starts high up in a false castle and a quartered screen reveals Jeff's gang going at it ten to the dozen. Duelling cellists drag their instruments at right angles around the stage.
Barbara Dickson – Another Suitcase In Another Hall
Before Barbara can get underway Noel wants to introduce us to some people, Andrew Lloyd Webber looking about twenty while simultaneously not actually looking young at all and Tim Rice looking like a provincial PE teacher. Noel starts with a very strangely worded question: "Everyone says to me you've got so many hits on that LP, so many hits behind Evita, is that true?" Lloyd Webber, understandably confused, points out the first single was a number one and they've released the second. "I think we like this one at the moment best" Rice offers when asked which his favourite is, which is handy. It turns out to be both Noel's record of the week and his prediction for a number one, so its chances are sunk well before it can ever begin. Dickson looks very stern in her knockoff Laura Ashley, choker and ostentatiously huge flower in hair. To add artistic merit there's a shot from the far side of a harp being played by a disembodied hand. At the end a man in a bobble hat looks nonplussed.
Earth Wind & Fire – Saturday Nite
As ever, Noel's off on his own logic perambulation: "The next introduction sounds a bit like the sort of insurance company you'd need cover from if you were going to walk round a volcano". Having given Legs & Co mini-tunics that make no attempt to cover the underwear Flick seems to have set them on autopilot and let them go on the standard uptempo move set. Gill's trying, though, if the addition of what seems to be a Chaplin sped-up shuffle qualifies by itself as trying to add something new. It's not impressing the audience surrounding the dancefloor, who spent three minutes listening to disco, watching professional dancers and don't move a muscle throughout. Some men at the back stand with their arms tightly folded, women at the front look like they're being forced to be there. Is this Legs & Co's first time in front of a live audience on the regular show? They really needed to involve the crowd more, unless Flick's still reeling from the Ruby Flipper reproach - they did crowd participation a few times - and vowed not to go that far again.
Leo Sayer – When I Need You
"Two weeks at number one, it's got to stay there even longer". It did! Noel got a chart prediction right! Stopped clock and all that. Leo, the very definition of 'always available', gets all sort of multiplication camera tricks, but more telling is his standing before a catatonically swaying audience with his hands in his pockets again. It doesn't mean casuality by itself, Leo. Before cueing up Bowie's Sound And Vision to play under the credits - and at this stage of 1977 aren't we all waiting for certain gifts of sound and vision? - Noel promises Leo will be joining "the Swap Shop supergroup this coming Saturday". And yes, this was a thing - the show put together an actual supergroup which recorded covers of Roll Over Beethoven and Bo Diddley under Mickie Most's production. Leo sang, with backing from John Miles, Suzi Quatro, Kenney Jones of the Faces and... John Christie! 1977 was going to be marvellous for him after all.
And yes, he still had that smug face he pulls. Via this set of Swap Shop Book 1978 scans, which also features actual slides used in the chart rundown
EDIT NEWS: videos by Bryan Ferry (This Is Tomorrow) and Boston (More Than A Feeling, which you'd have thought would have been more of a pull than Rockaria)
Friday 24 February 2012
TOTP 17/2/77 (tx 23/2/12): after the spike
Hello, everyone following the Guardian mention/online link about to become quite confused. You want the next post down.
Ruby Flipper update! Now there's a factual concept that hasn't been exerted in thirty five and a half years. A newspaper clipping of their rejection has been unearthed dated 19th August 1976, the date of broadcast of their face-making meisterwork Let 'Em In and also, adding mystery to that previous side issue, the last week of Cherry's still unexplained break. Three and a half months it seems to have taken for the BBC to decide they were wrong. The BBC spokesman - offical quotes! - claimed viewers were missing the all-girl nature of the dancing, which maybe gives away quite something about their actual purpose by this stage.
And as we've brought up Signora Gillespie, something else I've stumbled across since we all last met in this place is her perhaps sole piece of choreography work, Enya's Caribbean Blue video from 1991. This is known because there's an lengthy making of the video feature (part two) to which she contributes, still with the Rapunzel-esque tresses of her heyday but with the crucial addition of a bumbag. Also, though it's not mentioned, one of the nymph-like figures in the video is a young Martine McCutcheon.
"Don't panic, you've got the right channel" asserts Paul Burnett. Not one of Radio 1's great and legendary figures, Burnett, despite being in charge of the Tuesday afternoon chart reveal and being DLT's sideman on Convoy UK. It's this intro that was used at the start of the Big Hits 1977 compilation, odd given it's his only appearance of the year - he seemed to be doing one Pops a year at this stage - and he's not a figure any casual viewer would ever connect with the programme's storied past.
Is that another new angle of the Rose Royce Cortina?
Suzi Quatro – Tear Me Apart
We're seeing a lot at the moment of what the glam stars did next once Chinn and Chapman had stepped aside - Slade, the Rubettes, Gary Glitter, Mud last year. Suzi of course was pretty much doing this stuff from the off (and this actually is a late period Chinnichap), but her swapping of leather for fringed jacket-cum-catsuit - the angles never make it entirely clear - while the rest of her band donned the black biker accroutement of her heyday perhaps just to tease us, demonstrated how she'd now willingly let her country side eke out. Yeah, another one. Having started with an alarmingly wayward note she never quite finds her new range but can still play a bass the size size as her, and her showmanship credentials are renewed quite apart from her looks deep into the lens and vigorous upper body shaking - that is when she's on camera at all, the director fascinated by closeups of the guitar - as she spends most of the break with her foot up on the piano. It's a wonder she isn't trying to play it with the heel. If it's a muted instrument, perhaps she was. Less than lucidly, Paul calls it "a new chart contender". Yeah, we'd assumed that already.
The Moments – Jack In The Box
Just because, Paul refers to this as "a Tony Blackburn record of the week... and it made the charts". No, surely it's Noel's selections that tend to stiff. It's matching powder blue suits all round it transpires as well as doing virtually all the singing Harry Ray is the only one into the art of movement to. At one point he nearly goes for a spin on the spot and gets halfway before thinking better of it. At another there's some impromptu knee bending. The director, confused, zooms in on the back of his head. Bunched up uncomfortably in the middle of the stage, Ray's bandmates strive to look interested.
The Brothers – Sing Me
There's a very awkward moment when the camera lingers on Paul while pulling away towards the stage as he gathers up the mike cord, looks downwards while grinning and looking mildly embarrassed as if in realisation that, given a national telly platform on the nation's pop conversation hotspot, "it's always exciting to see a new band in the charts" really was the best he could come up with on the hoof. Brown suits and very wide open lapels on yellow shirts are the dresscode this time. There's now a hand gesture developed for 'paper kite' and a tug on the cord for 'pull my string', so the time in the spotlight is teaching them tricks of stagecraft alright. At the back of the audience a woman wears a red hat with a remarkably broad brim. You know that 'Barry Manilow from above' cartoon gag? It must be like that.
Boz Scaggs – What Can I Say
"A fabulous thing" Paul labels it. Doesn't bother with the title, though. It's the overmanned video clip again. And they left it in the edit ahead of a song that isn't on again.
Thelma Houston – Don’t Leave Me This Way
Again Paul doesn't name the song, but he does stress that "we're very fortunate" to have her here as she has to go back to the US straight afterwards. Judging by her outfit - scarf around neck, functional white dress, notable lack of item (YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN) - she'd done most of the packing before arriving at the studio. The orchestra for their part sound like they're merely on holiday, leaving the little regarded on record Hammond organ player to do the heavy lifting. The funky bassline is apparently being played by osmosis. At least Thelma's giving it plenty, staring out the front row, shimmying, adlibbing and a huge note to near enough close. People are clearly impressed. Well, some are, a good swathe of the crowd not even waiting for the full fade out before racing across for the earthier delights of...
The Rubettes – Baby I Know
With Tony Thorpe singing, not Alan Williams, you're right. Chiefly of interest this time is bassist Mick Clarke, who is giving it one last go on his own in resuscitating the white flat cloth cap from their heyday. Is he intending to stand out further? Given how unrepossessing his colleagues look it doesn't take much.
Mr Big – Romeo
The mildly disturbing wild card from the last show has a video every bit as quixotic. One of the singers is only wearing an open leather jacket on his top half, which given they're serious minded AOR makes it all the more alarming he's liberally slathered himself in baby oil. The other one has a camera angle that exclusively films right up his nose. Loads of dry ice and backlighting and no small amount of visual tricks, one a kaleidoscopic Bohemian Rhapsody nod, Mr Big having toured with Queen.
Tavares – The Mighty Power Of Love
Legs & Co are in the studio with an audience, which seems rare these days. It's a 'see what's around' week, everyone in a different coloured leotard, a differently wrapped beige scarf and, for flavour, a tambourine, shaken and tapped against the other wrist vigorously throughout to reflect the instrument's position high in the mix on the record. Wouldn't that make a hell of a noise in the studio? Can you get tambourine deadeners? (Don't answer that) Maybe that's why the crowd aren't all that enthusiastic compared to earlier, though something clearly happens to Patti up front as she puts her right leg out in accordance with the choreography, makes a surprised face and glances down at where her foot was. "A beautiful performance", apparently.
Leo Sayer – When I Need You
Very hesitant, Paul. And this man read out the chart rundown. Not a man always given to dynamism, Leo, as he stands stock still at the mike in what appears to be an ice hockey jersey, hands actually in his pockets for a good two and a half minutes. Look lively, Leo, much as the song may not demand it and all the director can come up with is multiple panning shots. Perhaps knowing we need something for the big finish, the Earth Wind & Fire outro seems to be focusing on the audience without telling them. Some leave, some stand around chatting, a large camera is dragged into shot for no good reason and with only a couple of exceptions everywhere is a tableau of awkwardness and knitwear.
EDIT NEWS: A song we'll see again but not in this version, Manhattan Transfer's Chanson D’Amour given the Legs & Co treatment, worth a look not for Burnett's comedy French accent but the leg work and the country thematic costumes with a hint of Where's Wally - on the occasions Ruby Flipper had two routines a show one would almost always be lost, but they decided the other was superior? - and a song we won't see again, Les Gray's unbecoming solo cover of Groovy Kind Of Love in a white jacket producing a rose out of seeming thin air at the end. He makes about as convincing a loving balladeer as Danny Dyer would.
Ruby Flipper update! Now there's a factual concept that hasn't been exerted in thirty five and a half years. A newspaper clipping of their rejection has been unearthed dated 19th August 1976, the date of broadcast of their face-making meisterwork Let 'Em In and also, adding mystery to that previous side issue, the last week of Cherry's still unexplained break. Three and a half months it seems to have taken for the BBC to decide they were wrong. The BBC spokesman - offical quotes! - claimed viewers were missing the all-girl nature of the dancing, which maybe gives away quite something about their actual purpose by this stage.
And as we've brought up Signora Gillespie, something else I've stumbled across since we all last met in this place is her perhaps sole piece of choreography work, Enya's Caribbean Blue video from 1991. This is known because there's an lengthy making of the video feature (part two) to which she contributes, still with the Rapunzel-esque tresses of her heyday but with the crucial addition of a bumbag. Also, though it's not mentioned, one of the nymph-like figures in the video is a young Martine McCutcheon.
"Don't panic, you've got the right channel" asserts Paul Burnett. Not one of Radio 1's great and legendary figures, Burnett, despite being in charge of the Tuesday afternoon chart reveal and being DLT's sideman on Convoy UK. It's this intro that was used at the start of the Big Hits 1977 compilation, odd given it's his only appearance of the year - he seemed to be doing one Pops a year at this stage - and he's not a figure any casual viewer would ever connect with the programme's storied past.
Is that another new angle of the Rose Royce Cortina?
Suzi Quatro – Tear Me Apart
We're seeing a lot at the moment of what the glam stars did next once Chinn and Chapman had stepped aside - Slade, the Rubettes, Gary Glitter, Mud last year. Suzi of course was pretty much doing this stuff from the off (and this actually is a late period Chinnichap), but her swapping of leather for fringed jacket-cum-catsuit - the angles never make it entirely clear - while the rest of her band donned the black biker accroutement of her heyday perhaps just to tease us, demonstrated how she'd now willingly let her country side eke out. Yeah, another one. Having started with an alarmingly wayward note she never quite finds her new range but can still play a bass the size size as her, and her showmanship credentials are renewed quite apart from her looks deep into the lens and vigorous upper body shaking - that is when she's on camera at all, the director fascinated by closeups of the guitar - as she spends most of the break with her foot up on the piano. It's a wonder she isn't trying to play it with the heel. If it's a muted instrument, perhaps she was. Less than lucidly, Paul calls it "a new chart contender". Yeah, we'd assumed that already.
The Moments – Jack In The Box
Just because, Paul refers to this as "a Tony Blackburn record of the week... and it made the charts". No, surely it's Noel's selections that tend to stiff. It's matching powder blue suits all round it transpires as well as doing virtually all the singing Harry Ray is the only one into the art of movement to. At one point he nearly goes for a spin on the spot and gets halfway before thinking better of it. At another there's some impromptu knee bending. The director, confused, zooms in on the back of his head. Bunched up uncomfortably in the middle of the stage, Ray's bandmates strive to look interested.
The Brothers – Sing Me
There's a very awkward moment when the camera lingers on Paul while pulling away towards the stage as he gathers up the mike cord, looks downwards while grinning and looking mildly embarrassed as if in realisation that, given a national telly platform on the nation's pop conversation hotspot, "it's always exciting to see a new band in the charts" really was the best he could come up with on the hoof. Brown suits and very wide open lapels on yellow shirts are the dresscode this time. There's now a hand gesture developed for 'paper kite' and a tug on the cord for 'pull my string', so the time in the spotlight is teaching them tricks of stagecraft alright. At the back of the audience a woman wears a red hat with a remarkably broad brim. You know that 'Barry Manilow from above' cartoon gag? It must be like that.
Boz Scaggs – What Can I Say
"A fabulous thing" Paul labels it. Doesn't bother with the title, though. It's the overmanned video clip again. And they left it in the edit ahead of a song that isn't on again.
Thelma Houston – Don’t Leave Me This Way
Again Paul doesn't name the song, but he does stress that "we're very fortunate" to have her here as she has to go back to the US straight afterwards. Judging by her outfit - scarf around neck, functional white dress, notable lack of item (YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN) - she'd done most of the packing before arriving at the studio. The orchestra for their part sound like they're merely on holiday, leaving the little regarded on record Hammond organ player to do the heavy lifting. The funky bassline is apparently being played by osmosis. At least Thelma's giving it plenty, staring out the front row, shimmying, adlibbing and a huge note to near enough close. People are clearly impressed. Well, some are, a good swathe of the crowd not even waiting for the full fade out before racing across for the earthier delights of...
The Rubettes – Baby I Know
With Tony Thorpe singing, not Alan Williams, you're right. Chiefly of interest this time is bassist Mick Clarke, who is giving it one last go on his own in resuscitating the white flat cloth cap from their heyday. Is he intending to stand out further? Given how unrepossessing his colleagues look it doesn't take much.
Mr Big – Romeo
The mildly disturbing wild card from the last show has a video every bit as quixotic. One of the singers is only wearing an open leather jacket on his top half, which given they're serious minded AOR makes it all the more alarming he's liberally slathered himself in baby oil. The other one has a camera angle that exclusively films right up his nose. Loads of dry ice and backlighting and no small amount of visual tricks, one a kaleidoscopic Bohemian Rhapsody nod, Mr Big having toured with Queen.
Tavares – The Mighty Power Of Love
Legs & Co are in the studio with an audience, which seems rare these days. It's a 'see what's around' week, everyone in a different coloured leotard, a differently wrapped beige scarf and, for flavour, a tambourine, shaken and tapped against the other wrist vigorously throughout to reflect the instrument's position high in the mix on the record. Wouldn't that make a hell of a noise in the studio? Can you get tambourine deadeners? (Don't answer that) Maybe that's why the crowd aren't all that enthusiastic compared to earlier, though something clearly happens to Patti up front as she puts her right leg out in accordance with the choreography, makes a surprised face and glances down at where her foot was. "A beautiful performance", apparently.
Leo Sayer – When I Need You
Very hesitant, Paul. And this man read out the chart rundown. Not a man always given to dynamism, Leo, as he stands stock still at the mike in what appears to be an ice hockey jersey, hands actually in his pockets for a good two and a half minutes. Look lively, Leo, much as the song may not demand it and all the director can come up with is multiple panning shots. Perhaps knowing we need something for the big finish, the Earth Wind & Fire outro seems to be focusing on the audience without telling them. Some leave, some stand around chatting, a large camera is dragged into shot for no good reason and with only a couple of exceptions everywhere is a tableau of awkwardness and knitwear.
EDIT NEWS: A song we'll see again but not in this version, Manhattan Transfer's Chanson D’Amour given the Legs & Co treatment, worth a look not for Burnett's comedy French accent but the leg work and the country thematic costumes with a hint of Where's Wally - on the occasions Ruby Flipper had two routines a show one would almost always be lost, but they decided the other was superior? - and a song we won't see again, Les Gray's unbecoming solo cover of Groovy Kind Of Love in a white jacket producing a rose out of seeming thin air at the end. He makes about as convincing a loving balladeer as Danny Dyer would.
Thursday 26 January 2012
TOTP 20/1/77 (tx 26/1/12): records of the weak
"No, don't worry, you don't have to telephone me" reassures a luxuriantly follicled Noel. Bit late in his Pops career to be making Swap Shop references, he'd done plenty of TOTPs even in the three months since the show had been launched.
Slade – Gypsy Roadhog
First time we've seen them, too. With glam but a fading memory already, even Slade are having to dress down. All things are relative, of course, Noddy, shot for the entire first verse in unflattering close-up, sporting a Homburg hat bearing a massive set of peacock feathers, while Dave Hill has gone the fringed cowboy jacket route. Which are fine, but they're no mirrored stovepipe and metal nun, are they? As far as songs about the idiomatic realism of drug abuse go, a hard riffing song in which every second line starts "powdered my nose" isn't entirely subtle. Still, Dave's enjoying himself, all round the place.
Donna Summer – Winter Melody
Having judged the chart "interesting", possibly in the Chinese proverb sense, it's the latest in a long line of anodyne Noel Records Of The Week. In this case it's a live clip with one of those audiences that burst into mass spontaneous applause after the first line, interspersed with a dramatic presentation wherein Donna sits about bored, drinks from a silver goblet and looks at an open hearth fire before, in a nod to the fact it's been stealthily climbing since before Christmas, unhooks and regards at length a massive silver bauble before looking out of a window at some falling snow. The melody goes to prove she can't fully command a country ballad melody, so the soul backing singers and strings are fed in eventually. The next time Summer appeared in both show and charts, it'd be for I Feel Love.
10cc – The Things We Do For Love
It doesn't get an intro link again. Band insistence? The video again, but through the magic of CSO there's a couple of cuts to it allegedly being shown on a big screen while the entire audience ungainly shuffles about, not sure whether you can actually dance to it but willing to give it a damn good try.
Jesse Green – Flip
Appearing from behind the screen, a pan held for the entire first verse which means people keep distractedly walking across the shot, Green hasn't brought his flautist and uncomfortable band this time. What he has brought is his sense of rhythm, which keeps threatening to break out - a little shuffle here, a Bruce Forsyth-style running on the spot there. What he actually does during the break is a triumph of stage minimalism, as some soft shoe shuffling Sammy Davis Jnr style turns into the running man and then just knee and elbow lifting on the spot before some sort of attempt to put one foot in front of the other in sequence as if walking a tightrope. It's the fact you can't see the feet that just about saves whatever shred of dignity he retained.
Elvis Presley – Suspicion
See, Clash, some Elvis in 1977. But not for much longer, and this song was fifteen years old anyway. This, it's fair to say, is one from the bottom of Flick's ideas chart, the girls starting in big white hats and overcoats doing standard moves against a cityscape backdrop, occasionally with a lamppost to lean against, and we pretend (although Noel had pre-empted it in fairness) that some sort of small outfit is underneath and will be revealed in the fulness of time. 45 seconds, that takes, the reveal being red outfits that lie somewhere between Playboy Club corset and swimming costume.
Leo Sayer – When I Need You
There shouldn't be an edit here but there seems to be, Noel on the same emptied set starting "now here's something that makes quite an impression" over badly faded out applause. This is a Noel record of the week too, Sayer reflecting the showbiz glamour of having the breakfast show's priority tune by turning up in his dad-goes-golfing outfit of bright yello jumper, big collar and grey slacks. They put him in the kaleidoscopic rotating lenses when appropriate, but it doesn't help.
Thin Lizzy – Don’t Believe A Word
"Especially for Flynn's new girlfriend Lizzy, this is Flynn Lizzy" What? WHAT? NOEL, WHAT ARE YOU DRIVELLING ON ABOUT? The performance from just before Christmas repeated. Noel doesn't mention their number one bet, nor that you can still see him from that show in the background.
Silver Convention – Everybody's Talkin' 'Bout Love
We've only come across these from that chart picture of three women with their hands on their knees; now it merely transpires they're a poor man's Three Degrees going disco. If the purse lipped spoken word to open is meant to invoke the Shangri-Las, the spangly blue bikini tops and matching trousers with ruffles on the bottom scream 'suburban nightspot'.
David Soul – Don’t Give Up On Us
"Strikes me that everybody's talking about this gentleman..." The video, as you know because he didn't come over once in 1977. This is going to be a long few weeks filling this bit. Boney M play us out with the minimum of fuss. Recorded version. Obviously.
EDIT NEWS: Gary Glitter. Well, obviously Gary Glitter, who was not just some distance past a point where he could have been any influence on pop when he made It Takes All Night Long but had just come back from a retirement to get over not selling any more, being on drugs and having to pay tax. No idea at time of writing whether it'll be reinstated for the unedited repeats (EDIT: yes, it did), but given Jonathan King got an apology off the BBC for cutting out It Only Takes A Minute it's possible, even though the Mirror kicked up a stink-ette in the week only really notable because they assumed the song shown would be Leader Of The Gang. Also hopefully it means people on message boards will stop going "will they show gary glitter lol", as they have been doing ever since the rerun was first announced (EDIT: no, they haven't) A clean edit point means the show can also lose the clip straight after it (EDIT: except it isn't, the episode guide I work off had it wrong, it was after Legs & Co which explains that awkward edit), the Drifters video shown the programme before last.
Slade – Gypsy Roadhog
First time we've seen them, too. With glam but a fading memory already, even Slade are having to dress down. All things are relative, of course, Noddy, shot for the entire first verse in unflattering close-up, sporting a Homburg hat bearing a massive set of peacock feathers, while Dave Hill has gone the fringed cowboy jacket route. Which are fine, but they're no mirrored stovepipe and metal nun, are they? As far as songs about the idiomatic realism of drug abuse go, a hard riffing song in which every second line starts "powdered my nose" isn't entirely subtle. Still, Dave's enjoying himself, all round the place.
Donna Summer – Winter Melody
Having judged the chart "interesting", possibly in the Chinese proverb sense, it's the latest in a long line of anodyne Noel Records Of The Week. In this case it's a live clip with one of those audiences that burst into mass spontaneous applause after the first line, interspersed with a dramatic presentation wherein Donna sits about bored, drinks from a silver goblet and looks at an open hearth fire before, in a nod to the fact it's been stealthily climbing since before Christmas, unhooks and regards at length a massive silver bauble before looking out of a window at some falling snow. The melody goes to prove she can't fully command a country ballad melody, so the soul backing singers and strings are fed in eventually. The next time Summer appeared in both show and charts, it'd be for I Feel Love.
10cc – The Things We Do For Love
It doesn't get an intro link again. Band insistence? The video again, but through the magic of CSO there's a couple of cuts to it allegedly being shown on a big screen while the entire audience ungainly shuffles about, not sure whether you can actually dance to it but willing to give it a damn good try.
Jesse Green – Flip
Appearing from behind the screen, a pan held for the entire first verse which means people keep distractedly walking across the shot, Green hasn't brought his flautist and uncomfortable band this time. What he has brought is his sense of rhythm, which keeps threatening to break out - a little shuffle here, a Bruce Forsyth-style running on the spot there. What he actually does during the break is a triumph of stage minimalism, as some soft shoe shuffling Sammy Davis Jnr style turns into the running man and then just knee and elbow lifting on the spot before some sort of attempt to put one foot in front of the other in sequence as if walking a tightrope. It's the fact you can't see the feet that just about saves whatever shred of dignity he retained.
Elvis Presley – Suspicion
See, Clash, some Elvis in 1977. But not for much longer, and this song was fifteen years old anyway. This, it's fair to say, is one from the bottom of Flick's ideas chart, the girls starting in big white hats and overcoats doing standard moves against a cityscape backdrop, occasionally with a lamppost to lean against, and we pretend (although Noel had pre-empted it in fairness) that some sort of small outfit is underneath and will be revealed in the fulness of time. 45 seconds, that takes, the reveal being red outfits that lie somewhere between Playboy Club corset and swimming costume.
Leo Sayer – When I Need You
There shouldn't be an edit here but there seems to be, Noel on the same emptied set starting "now here's something that makes quite an impression" over badly faded out applause. This is a Noel record of the week too, Sayer reflecting the showbiz glamour of having the breakfast show's priority tune by turning up in his dad-goes-golfing outfit of bright yello jumper, big collar and grey slacks. They put him in the kaleidoscopic rotating lenses when appropriate, but it doesn't help.
Thin Lizzy – Don’t Believe A Word
"Especially for Flynn's new girlfriend Lizzy, this is Flynn Lizzy" What? WHAT? NOEL, WHAT ARE YOU DRIVELLING ON ABOUT? The performance from just before Christmas repeated. Noel doesn't mention their number one bet, nor that you can still see him from that show in the background.
Silver Convention – Everybody's Talkin' 'Bout Love
We've only come across these from that chart picture of three women with their hands on their knees; now it merely transpires they're a poor man's Three Degrees going disco. If the purse lipped spoken word to open is meant to invoke the Shangri-Las, the spangly blue bikini tops and matching trousers with ruffles on the bottom scream 'suburban nightspot'.
David Soul – Don’t Give Up On Us
"Strikes me that everybody's talking about this gentleman..." The video, as you know because he didn't come over once in 1977. This is going to be a long few weeks filling this bit. Boney M play us out with the minimum of fuss. Recorded version. Obviously.
EDIT NEWS: Gary Glitter. Well, obviously Gary Glitter, who was not just some distance past a point where he could have been any influence on pop when he made It Takes All Night Long but had just come back from a retirement to get over not selling any more, being on drugs and having to pay tax. No idea at time of writing whether it'll be reinstated for the unedited repeats (EDIT: yes, it did), but given Jonathan King got an apology off the BBC for cutting out It Only Takes A Minute it's possible, even though the Mirror kicked up a stink-ette in the week only really notable because they assumed the song shown would be Leader Of The Gang. Also hopefully it means people on message boards will stop going "will they show gary glitter lol", as they have been doing ever since the rerun was first announced (EDIT: no, they haven't) A clean edit point means the show can also lose the clip straight after it (EDIT: except it isn't, the episode guide I work off had it wrong, it was after Legs & Co which explains that awkward edit), the Drifters video shown the programme before last.
Friday 18 November 2011
TOTP 28/10/76 (tx 17/11/11): there's a whole Lalo Schifrin goin' on
Shocking news with which to start this week, as thanks to singer-songwriter and Paul Weller bassist Andy Lewis it turns out the silver mics were more often than not complete fakes (read down the end). I don't know what to believe any more.
Some confusion this week, as BBC sources claim this was screened on 27th October but nowhere seems to back up a move to Wednesday night. Unless of course you know differently. Tony Blackburn in charge this week and he's wearing a blue T-shirt on which is the slogan to end all running gags, 'I HATE DIDDY DAVID HAMILTON'. Now, I doubt this story was well known at the time, but just over a year earlier the future Johnny Rotten was spotted by Bernie Rhodes (who was co-conspirating with Malcolm McLaren at the time) on Kings Road wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt with 'I HATE' written above the name. The idea, however fleeting, that this may not be mere coincidence opens up fascinating alleyways of thought.The chart rundown is worth noting for Harry Nilsson having a new entry with a pointless reissue of Without You (which we won't see on the show), because a) they've spelt his name 'NILLSON' and b) he looks almost exactly like Bon Iver.
Alan Price – Kissed Away The Night
This is a prosaic way to start, a solo single by the former Animals organist, who for reasons best known to himself is wearing an off-yellow T-shirt with a drawing of Andy Capp in the middle. Must be a northern unity thing. The song aims at being a treatise on community and the working day but gets drawn back by some horribly clunky rhyming. The actual opening verse requires archiving in full:
That's roaring/snoring and taxi/jacksie. Lord preserve us. To make matters worse during that last line he delivers a look to his band that equally says "I can't believe I'm being allowed to say the word I'm about to say" and "look at me about to use a very mild curse!" The performance never quite recovers. Tony, duly impressed, looks into the wrong camera and then calls it Kiss Away The Mild Nights. He then remembers to suggest we get a pencil and paper. Actually, Tony, a postcard would be more immediately helpful than paper.
Chicago – If You Leave Me Now
"Doing so well in the charts at the moment" Tony somewhat pointlessly adds. This is the plain studio shot performance video about which little can be said except for noting Peter Cetera's hair, as long and lustrous as on any Head & Shoulders model.
Leo Sayer – You Make Me Feel Like Dancing
But first, comedy. Tony chooses this moment to point out his T-shirt slogan, at which Diddy himself creeps out from behind him in an 'I HATE TONY BLACKBURN' T-shirt. It's a battle for hearts and minds alright. They exchange some light remarks about "the new look for 1977" before indulging in a swift shuffle on the fade into the clip, Diddy with the broadest shit eating grin on his face. Difficult to tell whether this is the video or a specially shot piece, but the presence of a shadowed mike might be a clue even if there is no audience in sight. Sayer begins in silhouette like the start of Bohemian Rhapsody, of which this might be a polar opposite of a song. After that he and his yellow cardigan gets shot in mirror image then standing in the middle of what seems to be a huge soundstage, nobody else visible even when carefully peering into the dark. As for the title he may feel it but doing it is another matter, unless some sort of knee bending or twitching like Alf Ippititimus counts. Then there's a cut back to him with some frantic backlighting, which is what passed for excitement then.
Joan Armatrading – Love And Affection
Now faced with the prospect of jazzing up some lovingly wistful acoustic-led folk-pop, the director goes the close up on strings route with Joan's head superimposed over the sound hole. After about a minute of that followed by slow head and shoulders and top half of body shots the graphics people give up waiting and decide to superimpose many reflected images of that one shot over and over from different distances, because they can. There's an awkward moment during the sax solo when, with our man wailing on one half of the screen in CSO, the main shot stays tight on Armatrading's head instead of following the guitar playing or cutting to a wider angle as would happen now, as after all the singer's face is unlikely to be doing anything when not singing.
Lalo Schifrin – Theme From Jaws
Please remember, this competition is now closed, and has been such since 1st November 1976. "You don't have to have one quite as big as that."
Lovely stamp drawing. Meanwhile the dance to Schifrin's lounge-disco cover is a triumph of staging, as first we get some cut-out waves with a hopelessly realised fin moving around and about over which is superimposed our six new friends expressing facial shock. That's save for Lulu, who when scared for her life apparently reacts by sucking her cheeks in. Then there's some sort of bare legs and feet kicking in mid-air motif, following which comes the meat, those we must either call Our New Dancers or ?????? in short, somewhat figure hugging all in one wetsuits. That's what they paid the money and got shot of the boys for. Not much teamwork is going into the troupe's work yet, there being a lot of jumping about and running around but not much actual evident choreography in front of the sea representation with the fins still moving about as if by magic or underpaid stagehand. Patti gets a lengthy solo spot to close, which is somewhat upfront when attempting to press a favourite on us. "Fins ain't what they used to be" Tony retitles it, which somehow doesn't earn him a solar plexus punch from one of the two girls flanking him. "I wonder what you're going to call them next week" he wonders. Same as we'll call them for years afterwards, Tony.
Simon May – Summer Of My Life
As with Chicago and Leo Sayer Tony presses home that this was his record of the week, which doesn't reflect as well on him as he'd like to think. At last an audience turns up to watch him plod through this again while staring right down the camera, the hint of a smug smile on his lips. Not with that weak a vocal you're getting away with this sort of thing, May. Tony gets caught in a titular reverie: "Didn't we have a lovely summer? All that lovely sunshine, not like all the terrible rain we're getting now. Still, we could do with it, couldn't we." Always the cheaply populist DJ, Tony.
Wild Cherry – Play That Funky Music
The faux-live video, and Wild Cherry's frontman is dressed as 1976 funk men should be - reflective jacket, no shirt, semi-hairy chest, medallion. Textbook "really feeling it" facial expressions for his guitar solo too. Also the drummer's yellow T-shirt reads 'DRUMS'. The amazing self-captioning man there.
Pussycat – Mississippi
Only its third week at number one but it already feels like forever. This week they're back in the studio and keen to show off their new kimonos. The lead sister seems to have a little trouble hitting her correct notes at first but before long we're back into the professionally delivered country lament we know oh so well. Professional delivery is of course no use.
Some confusion this week, as BBC sources claim this was screened on 27th October but nowhere seems to back up a move to Wednesday night. Unless of course you know differently. Tony Blackburn in charge this week and he's wearing a blue T-shirt on which is the slogan to end all running gags, 'I HATE DIDDY DAVID HAMILTON'. Now, I doubt this story was well known at the time, but just over a year earlier the future Johnny Rotten was spotted by Bernie Rhodes (who was co-conspirating with Malcolm McLaren at the time) on Kings Road wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt with 'I HATE' written above the name. The idea, however fleeting, that this may not be mere coincidence opens up fascinating alleyways of thought.The chart rundown is worth noting for Harry Nilsson having a new entry with a pointless reissue of Without You (which we won't see on the show), because a) they've spelt his name 'NILLSON' and b) he looks almost exactly like Bon Iver.
Alan Price – Kissed Away The Night
This is a prosaic way to start, a solo single by the former Animals organist, who for reasons best known to himself is wearing an off-yellow T-shirt with a drawing of Andy Capp in the middle. Must be a northern unity thing. The song aims at being a treatise on community and the working day but gets drawn back by some horribly clunky rhyming. The actual opening verse requires archiving in full:
Overhead morning planes are roaring
Under the bed the dog is snoring
Down the street rolls up (something) taxi
Boy, am I glad I'm not on my jacksie
That's roaring/snoring and taxi/jacksie. Lord preserve us. To make matters worse during that last line he delivers a look to his band that equally says "I can't believe I'm being allowed to say the word I'm about to say" and "look at me about to use a very mild curse!" The performance never quite recovers. Tony, duly impressed, looks into the wrong camera and then calls it Kiss Away The Mild Nights. He then remembers to suggest we get a pencil and paper. Actually, Tony, a postcard would be more immediately helpful than paper.
Chicago – If You Leave Me Now
"Doing so well in the charts at the moment" Tony somewhat pointlessly adds. This is the plain studio shot performance video about which little can be said except for noting Peter Cetera's hair, as long and lustrous as on any Head & Shoulders model.
Leo Sayer – You Make Me Feel Like Dancing
But first, comedy. Tony chooses this moment to point out his T-shirt slogan, at which Diddy himself creeps out from behind him in an 'I HATE TONY BLACKBURN' T-shirt. It's a battle for hearts and minds alright. They exchange some light remarks about "the new look for 1977" before indulging in a swift shuffle on the fade into the clip, Diddy with the broadest shit eating grin on his face. Difficult to tell whether this is the video or a specially shot piece, but the presence of a shadowed mike might be a clue even if there is no audience in sight. Sayer begins in silhouette like the start of Bohemian Rhapsody, of which this might be a polar opposite of a song. After that he and his yellow cardigan gets shot in mirror image then standing in the middle of what seems to be a huge soundstage, nobody else visible even when carefully peering into the dark. As for the title he may feel it but doing it is another matter, unless some sort of knee bending or twitching like Alf Ippititimus counts. Then there's a cut back to him with some frantic backlighting, which is what passed for excitement then.
Joan Armatrading – Love And Affection
Now faced with the prospect of jazzing up some lovingly wistful acoustic-led folk-pop, the director goes the close up on strings route with Joan's head superimposed over the sound hole. After about a minute of that followed by slow head and shoulders and top half of body shots the graphics people give up waiting and decide to superimpose many reflected images of that one shot over and over from different distances, because they can. There's an awkward moment during the sax solo when, with our man wailing on one half of the screen in CSO, the main shot stays tight on Armatrading's head instead of following the guitar playing or cutting to a wider angle as would happen now, as after all the singer's face is unlikely to be doing anything when not singing.
Lalo Schifrin – Theme From Jaws
Please remember, this competition is now closed, and has been such since 1st November 1976. "You don't have to have one quite as big as that."
Lovely stamp drawing. Meanwhile the dance to Schifrin's lounge-disco cover is a triumph of staging, as first we get some cut-out waves with a hopelessly realised fin moving around and about over which is superimposed our six new friends expressing facial shock. That's save for Lulu, who when scared for her life apparently reacts by sucking her cheeks in. Then there's some sort of bare legs and feet kicking in mid-air motif, following which comes the meat, those we must either call Our New Dancers or ?????? in short, somewhat figure hugging all in one wetsuits. That's what they paid the money and got shot of the boys for. Not much teamwork is going into the troupe's work yet, there being a lot of jumping about and running around but not much actual evident choreography in front of the sea representation with the fins still moving about as if by magic or underpaid stagehand. Patti gets a lengthy solo spot to close, which is somewhat upfront when attempting to press a favourite on us. "Fins ain't what they used to be" Tony retitles it, which somehow doesn't earn him a solar plexus punch from one of the two girls flanking him. "I wonder what you're going to call them next week" he wonders. Same as we'll call them for years afterwards, Tony.
Simon May – Summer Of My Life
As with Chicago and Leo Sayer Tony presses home that this was his record of the week, which doesn't reflect as well on him as he'd like to think. At last an audience turns up to watch him plod through this again while staring right down the camera, the hint of a smug smile on his lips. Not with that weak a vocal you're getting away with this sort of thing, May. Tony gets caught in a titular reverie: "Didn't we have a lovely summer? All that lovely sunshine, not like all the terrible rain we're getting now. Still, we could do with it, couldn't we." Always the cheaply populist DJ, Tony.
Wild Cherry – Play That Funky Music
The faux-live video, and Wild Cherry's frontman is dressed as 1976 funk men should be - reflective jacket, no shirt, semi-hairy chest, medallion. Textbook "really feeling it" facial expressions for his guitar solo too. Also the drummer's yellow T-shirt reads 'DRUMS'. The amazing self-captioning man there.
Pussycat – Mississippi
Only its third week at number one but it already feels like forever. This week they're back in the studio and keen to show off their new kimonos. The lead sister seems to have a little trouble hitting her correct notes at first but before long we're back into the professionally delivered country lament we know oh so well. Professional delivery is of course no use.
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