Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #18: April 29th 1976 - Dave Lee Travis Stamping On A Human Face, Forever

Episode Date: January 23, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: what, him out of Brotherhood Of Man with the ‘tache? How old? Fucking hell! After an extended hiatus, the greatest podcast in the world about old episodes of Top Of The Pops roars back with its usual melange of incisive music criticism, flare-baiting, dodgy microphones and the language of the billiard hall. This episode, we’re on the cusp of The Great Drought, and Tony Blackburn is on hand, bearing the gormlessly smiley visage of a man who knows he’s going to be giving his next-door neighbour a seeing-to in a Kensington flat after the show is over. Musicwise, this episode is pitted with British rubbishness, saved by the advent of Disco and the intervention of black America, who are repaid with comedy racism. Yes, Diana Ross and Gladys Knight drop two of the greatest tunes of the era, but we’re forced to listen to the Genuine Concerns of Paul Nicholas, an early appearance of Midge Ure trying to be James Dean, some Racist Animal Disco, and the most hated lorry driver of the Seventies who wasn’t Peter Sutcliffe. Oh, and because it’s April 1976, you already know what the No.1 is. On the upside, we get two appearances by Pans People. On the downside, it’s because this is the week they are made redundant, marking the very end of TOTP’s Golden Age. Taylor Parkes and Simon Price join Al Needham for a rummage through the skip of mid-70s Pop, breaking off to discuss if you can actually wring any kind of enjoyment out of 70s grot films, Monk Rock, the futility of CB radio, the lack of Birmingham accents in Pop, having your 8th birthday ruined by Manchester United, passing out in a lion suit, and some quality swearing. Download  |  Video Playlist  |  Subscribe Follow us on Facebook here. Link up with us on Twitter here. Subscribe to us on iTunes here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do you like to listen to? Erm... Chart music. Chart music. Hey-o, you pop-crazed youngsters, and welcome to the latest edition of Chart Music, the podcast that gets its hand right down the back of the settee of a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, and as always I'm joined by two hot music criticism studs

who are gagging to fill your ears with their sexy sexy pop chat first up it's the man like taylor pox a up taylor good day and next up is my good friend simon price hello simon hello al i'm bursting with sexy sexy pop chat today let me tell you i'm barely contained here before we go any further need to apologize to all the Pop Craze youngsters for leaving you hanging for so long after the Christmas splurge. I also need to apologise for the really shitty edit on the last episode because I was dead set on putting it out on Christmas Eve. And the day before, my edit file completely corrupted

and I had to do the whole thing from fucking scratch overnight. Tapping away like a little fucking elf. Yeah, I mean, in the circumstances, you did a remarkable job. And it sounded cat shit. I sounded like I was in a fucking biscuit tin, so... No, you're a master of the fast edit, just like, was it Ridley Scott that had to reshoot, you know, reels and reels of his latest film

because of, you know, your man Kevin Spacey and had to replace him with christopher plumber not that anything like that has happened with no dark music i hasten to add you know the repeat of the 1973 christmas special they cut the fucking thing to ribbons didn't they on the bbc yeah yeah bbc4 i mean obviously they didn't play leader of the gang by gary glitter uh but they uh they cut the suite uh presumably on account of steve priest's uh swastika armband which is weird considering that's previously been shown with the swastika armband blurred out in fucking germany so you know when the german tv station repeated it it was there

it was only the bbc that blurred out the swastika oh really yeah so the german tv broadcast that despite the fact that it broke the law well yeah well it's the sweet outlaws to the last yeah i'm actually quite outraged by by that decision from the bbc um i mean and in a way it's easy for me to say because i'm not jewish no the meaning of the swastika steve priest wasn't you know advocating the final solution neither was he saying it's actually an ancient symbol for the sun he wasn't doing that he wasn't going for the for the cooler shake a cop out either yeah yeah um certainly people who were born more recently won't won't realize what the swastika was like in seven it was everywhere it was like you know drawn on your school you know

exercise books to show that you've learned how to do it but yeah in every kind of boys comic like you know uh warlord or something like that yeah um and you'd see about 30 swastikas a week, wouldn't you? Absolutely. And I think we thought the Nazis were funny. And maybe we were thinking it was funny from a position of privilege because... It was a pure dad bait mission. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I think there was a slightly different spirit to it when people like Sid Vicious and Susie Sue wore it. I think that was to kind of annoy the parent

generation and basically say, we are badass. We're your worst nightmare. We're the worst thing you can possibly imagine. But the thing was, Hell's Angels were doing that in the early 70s. Even in the early 60s, the swastika was being worn for that thing. It's a weird one and I think

it's a shame. i can certainly see how you know uh i wouldn't be thrilled about a band now walking around with swastikas on for all kinds of reasons because the climate has changed well really it was worse then because people's dads had been killed and things you know i mean it's also people's dads people's dads had beaten them people's dads had they were enjoying their comfortable retirement having kicked the arse of the Nazis so they were enjoying you know the Mel Brooks generation if you like yeah well this is it the the one area which it's it was acceptable to wear a swastika is comedy well Steve Priest I guess was walking the line

between rock music and comedy at this point i wouldn't personally stick up for anybody's right to wear a swastika for a laugh but at the same time if somebody did 50 years ago you don't have to cut the whole fucking clip out you know yeah yeah yeah yeah you can't if you if you're trying to airbrush the past, then you're acting like them. Just almost exactly. Yeah. Anyway, this episode, Pop Crazy Youngsters, takes us all the way back to April the 29th, 1976, on the very cusp of the hottest summer of our lifetimes.

Of course, when you mention 1976 in musical things, you know, people always go on about the first stirrings of punk and all that kind of stuff. But I think, as we're going to see in this episode, you're not going to see any of that at all, but you are going to see a lot of disco. Yeah, I mean, punk didn't really get going in the UK until July of 1976, when the ramones played at the roundhouse

and all of the kind of um london would-be punk bands were there and that was kind of year zero moment so still a couple of months away from even that happening never mind people bringing records out the nice thing about the disco in this as well is that it's early disco from before it was standardized so um even the stuff that's uh made on a conveyor belt um still sounds pretty fresh um but it's weird isn't it night and so is this the time of the great in between it's like the perineum of the 70s like if you 74 75 76 they're like the problem years if you look at the charts most of it is sort of uk schlager and like just random imports and stuff it's like the big acts of left or they're uh they're too big for petty concerns like making pop records so whoever's left in the

room has to improvise and it's like hey so we're the pop stars now and hope that nobody notices the difference and so you get these charts that are really varied and it should be intriguing but it kind of isn't like you get you get some weird hits that there wouldn't have been room for in a busier year. But for every one of those, there's 15 nightclub singers and 25 60s leftovers. And you end up, as usually happens in lean periods for pop singles, you have to turn to black American groups if you want something that's popular and good

because they just never stopped. And it's, yeah, there's a lot of great british hits from this time but there's never so many that it feels like a party you know what i mean but do keep on listening everybody yeah i mean we are one we are one year removed from 1975 which is you know generally accepted as the worst year of chart music uh definitely in the 70s, if not ever. Are we seeing an improvement? Yeah, things are picking up. I mean, although I noticed from the charts here

that ABBA are at number two and Brotherhood of Man at number one in this ass-backwards world. Yeah, you can cut that for a spoiler if you want um no thing with them the thing is spoiler alert is right um top of the pops in this era spoiled itself because the very top of the show you've got the countdown you've got the usual kind of jim bowen style here's what you could have won um which kind of destroys the suspense of the show and um so we see that we've missed out on things like Single Bed by Fox

and Jungle Rock by Hank Mizell, which would have been amazing. Yeah, I noticed Jungle Rock is at number three and we don't get it. Presumably because they did it the week before. I know Pan's people and friends did a sort of safari-suited interpretation. Oh, yes. That must have been the week before. The story is that they couldn't get hank mizell himself because nobody knew where he was because nobody had seen him for about 15 years and then eventually they found him and shook him awake and

flew him over to europe for some craggy pas you know this is song... By which time it was too late to go on top of the pops. Do jungle rock. Well, this is a song from one year. Do jungle rock. Radio One News. So, what was in the news this week? Wow. Tony Benn announces that the UK has produced 30% more North Sea oil than expected.

Two retired Secret Service agents revealed that the US ambassador's mansion in Moscow was exposed to intense levels of radiation in the late 1950s when Richard Nixon visited there. Jimmy Carter has just won the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. Wembley Stadium have announced that they're recruiting a private army of ex-army NCOs to patrol the ground during this Saturday's FA Cup final. And Liverpool have just beaten FC Bruges 3-2 in the first leg of the UEFA Cup final. But the big news this week is that four cornish women have volunteered to strip naked and act as bait for a sea serpent which has been cited in falmouth bay amazing on the cover of the nme this week buffy sent marie on the cover of tv times

huey green dressed as a schoolboy. Was that bait for a sea serpent as well? Yes. On the inside, he's dressed as a black and white minstrel. Yeah. Different times. The number one LP in the UK

is the soundtrack to Rock follies over in america the number one single is disco lady by johnny taylor and the number one lp is wings at the speed of sound so me boys what were we doing in april 1976 do tell me. Well, we've done this period in my life before, ish, because we did 1975. But I was eight years old, living at 15 Park Crescent in Barry. And that's the house. And I've mentioned this in previous podcasts, but just quickly, I believe to be haunted by Victorian orphans. And where Yes, the ceiling fell in on me in my sleep covering me in maggots, maggots for whom I made a Lego submarine. I was attending Romley junior school down the road and my spare time mainly involved riding a purple rally budgie over makeshift people can evil style ramps in the lane behind the house

and i do remember uh long summer of 76 vividly uh growing up by the seaside i remember going down the beach and there was a um an infestation swarm of ladybirds and there were so many but they were floating on this i remember being the water just seeing ladybirds floating on the surface which is a bizarre thing um i mean i remember there were um you know water cuts you had to basically there was maybe one hour a day you were allowed to turn the taps on you'd fill the bath and fill those a gallon bottles and you'd live off that and i remember um there was a parade through barry the carnival thing carnival procession and um i got roped into being on it because my mum was in the local amdram group and the theme of the float was the um uh it was the wizard of oz and i had to be the cowardly lion

and this is on one of the one of the hottestly lion. And this is on one of the hottest, this is like July or something, one of the hottest days of the year. And I had this full fur lion suit and a rubber lion head mask covered in fur as well. And halfway along the main shopping street, I passed out on this lorry. And I had to be revived with orange squash. So basically that's what 76 means to me. Ladybirds, water shortages.

And being the UKIP logo. Yes, I was basically, yeah, BLT. Yeah. Taylor, what can you remember of this wonderful time? Well, obviously, I don't have lots of memories of April 1976, as I was still three when this broke down. Oh. So I basically remember about two minutes of 1976 but in

tiny flashes of two seconds each dotted through the entire year so the rest of it may as well never have had complete waste of time I may as well have stayed in bed what flashes can you remember ladybirds yeah vocal backing. Yes! No, I just, I never knew who they were. Do you know who they are? The Ladybirds? Yeah. Oh, well, you know, you sit tight, Taylor,

and maybe we'll find out who the Ladybirds are. Right. Yeah. I mean, personally, I was two days away from my eighth birthday, so that was more important than this episode of Top of the Pops, even though I do remember watching it. And I was really looking forward to the FA Cup final on Saturday between Man United and Southampton because due to my friends on my street all being Man United fans,

I was toying with the idea of crossing the floor from QBR to Man United. And, you know know thank fuck they lost I supported Southampton that day I loved it well done as I should have done but no I was talked into it by my mates and I remember having this little party and all my mates came round and we watched Man United lose

and I got so upset and angry at myself that I'd I'd backed this fucking dead horse that I distinctly remember pulling my shorts off at the end and putting them over my head so I could cry and be angry without anybody else noticing. Is that your way of expressing anger and sadness these days as well? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

But I don't think anybody noticed. Nobody even noticed me at all with my, with my shorts on my head. It's weird how these things stick with you. I can still remember loads of players

from that Southampton team, like Jim McAleog, Peter Rodriguez, and stuff like that. Yeah. Bobby Stokes, Mick Channon. Well, it was FA Cup final in the 70s.

It was all encompassing. That was your day, wasn't it? Mm-hmm. absolutely yeah you talk to the youth nowadays and try to explain them that once upon a time the FA Cup final was massively important they just I just hated Man United so so in any

given match I you know any situation I would support whoever the most sort of direct threat to Man United was so for about two months I was a sat-down to that. But yeah, FA Cup final means nothing now, apart from when Forrest beat Arsenal in the third round. Hello, David. The other thing about this time was I just played my first and only gig

about this time was I just played my first and only gig uh in in a band uh in the reading corner at uh a junior school uh me and my mates decided to form a band and that involved uh cutting out and painting cardboard guitars and miming to show Waddy Waddy and Rubex records in the reading corner even though it was a few years past I insisted on having the star-shaped guitar that they had in the glitter band nice yeah and uh I mean the only thing I remember about that concert was I remember uh John Rosen uh who was the who was the front man so he he just had a uh a toilet roll holder with a bit of string hanging off the end, turning around and saying, come on, let's rock and roll. And I immediately dropped down on the floor on my knees and leant back and just peeled off this amazing guitar solo.

And everybody said it was dead good when I did that. So, yeah. How did the audience react when it came out that you were miming? Oh, no, they knew. Because, you know, I think everyone was aware that miming was what you did. So, you know, I was just being a proper rock and roll band. Yeah, and then we all went off and played football. And, you know, that was it.

That was it for the band. You know, there was nowhere else we could go. We thought we'd go out at the top so what else was on telly today well bbc one has just broadcast pebble mill at one finger bobs the 607080 show play school barbapopper jackanore blue peter john craven's Newsround Boss Cat No, fuck that, it's Top Cat Nationwide And has just finished an episode of Tomorrow's World

Which has examined magnetic floats Unveiled the newest invalid car And has had a major rethink of the thimble Wow BBC Two Has run the Open University Play School The Open University again And has just finished the health show where Terry Wogan counts the calories in certain foods and Miriam Stoppard has coated her teeth yellow in an attempt to remove plaque.

Mr. Trimble, Money Wise spelling out the basics of tax evasion, Mavis Nicholson interviewing someone in Good Afternoon, then it's Racing from Newmarket, General Hospital, Thunderbirds, University Challenge, then David Hunter is questioned by the police in Crossroads and they're currently halfway through The Six Million Dollar Man where Steve Austin helps a scientist and his son defect from the ussr by running dead fast and jumping dead high i love the six million dollar man i had one of the toy ones where um you look through his eye and it actually makes things look further away yes somehow that's meant to be good yeah yeah we've talked about the doll before i mean the other

thing we didn't mention was that, you know, he had a foreskin for an arm, didn't he? He did have a foreskin for an arm. What was inside it was some mechanical panels, wasn't it? Bionics, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, then, Pop Craze youngsters. It's time to go in hard on April of 1976.

You know the drill. We may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget they've been on Top of the Pops more than we have. Hello and welcome to Top of the Pops. Your host for this episode is Tony Blackburn. At this point, he's working the 9 to 11 weekday slot on Radio 1. And when BBC4 started broadcasting repeats of Top of the Pops in April of 2011, he wrote the following piece for the Daily Mail.

I quote, 76 is exactly the right year to begin this musical trip down memory lane. Oh, good phrase. of its colossal appeal. Chiefly, it was lack of pretension because Top of the Pops never took itself too seriously. The emphasis was always on enjoyment and giving a good time to people at home or watching live in the studio. The mood of excitement was helped by the determination of the producers to keep the show fresh and new.

We also had to obey rules. No act was to appear on consecutive shows apart from the one with the number one single. Nor was there any room for a performer who was sliding down the charts or whose single was outside the top 40. That's bollocks for starters. Yeah, hand going to chin there, Tony. The novelty value was further enhanced by the emphasis on fashion. It might seem absurd now in a more cynical age but in the mid-70s viewers from around the country tuned in to see what the young crowd in london were wearing yeah right yeah we all i remember sitting there in nottingham and

go oh look everyone's wearing brown flares again he is kind of starting to show his age it has to be said yeah i've just finished uh reading his autobiography actually poptastic yeah you you get the sense that blackburn's politics are a bit daily mail let's say but apart from that um he seems really likable i think and um yeah you mentioned the slot on radio one that he was doing at this time of course a few years earlier he'd been booted off the breakfast show and replaced by his nemesis noel edmunds and so he's now doing his kind of mid-morning show but this would have been the same time that he was secretly shagging a woman called margo in a kensington hotel who was the wife of

one of his neighbors meanwhile blackburn's wife's wife, the actress Tessa Wyatt, was secretly shagging Margot's husband in a rented cottage down the road from their home. Messy. Yeah, so after the show... And this is before Richard O'Sullivan. It is before Richard O'Sullivan. So after the show...

Good Lord. The 70s, eh? We can assume Tony's off to Kensington straight after this. Wouldn't it be great if he was shagging Margot out of a good life? Well, who knows? I mean, he got through a few. The stuff about his sex life in the book is amazing. Just for the 70s language,

so, for example, he refers to having a clinch with someone, stuff like that. And there's a story about spending the night with someone who's blatantly Barbara Windsor, and being unable to get it up. So that, to this day, whenever Barbara Windsor and being unable to get it up so that to this day whenever Barbara Windsor sees him

at a social function she gives him a little wave but she lets her middle finger kind of droop down oh man but yeah he just he got off lightly he's lucky he didn't get killed in a gangland slaying

yeah there is that, yeah. Yeah. But I don't know. Everybody always made fun of him. He was always the butt of so many jokes. But I just think he comes over as fairly likeable to me. I don't know about you guys. Well, yeah, you know, we've discussed this many a time and oft.

Yeah, Tony Blackburn, he's a likeable knob, I think. Yeah. Unless you're Barbara Windsor, of course. Taylor, last time we spoke on Chart Music, Blackburn was there with Nemesis Noel. You know, we're three years on from that. And he, you know, he is kind of just getting on a bit. Yeah, and he doesn't really contribute much.

I mean, his usual kind of terrible, barely a joke jokes are not much in evidence. I mean, he keeps the fake smile up. But, yeah. And also, as with a lot of the presenters from this era, he seems to be quarantined for the first half of the show. And it's like occasionally he's standing next to the audience. And the rest of the time he's in some weird place on his own. And I'd love to know what that was, if those were pre-recorded links or if he was just, know in a corner yeah with

arnold so uh the chart rundown as as simon's pointed out it is spoiler alert time and you know once again we get we get some very interesting photos i mean i think that what the ones that i noticed were uh the sutherland brothers and quiver uh the overexposed pic makes them look a bit like a slap heads convention yeah it looks a bit prince william nowadays-esque doesn't it oh he shaved a lot off today hasn't he yeah well no he's he's just gone for a jeffrey fairbrother answer oh yeah fair point shave the fucking whole lot off william prince william is is the only man i've ever seen who's uh gone from having a thin comb over to a shaved head and looks worse as a result. Normally, it's like, oh, shave that off, you'll look 10 years younger.

And he did. And now he looks horrific. Yeah, well, he needs to do the lot. People used to really fancy him. I remember girls in the 90s just going crazy for him. Britney Spears. Do you remember? Britney Spears said she had a crush on Prince William.

So he should have struck while the iron was hot. The other photos I noticed were, there's a late 60s picture of the Beatles where they all look absolutely fucked off with each other and can't even be bothered to look at each other anymore. Apart from Ringo, who's staring at John a bit mopey. In a way, seeing the Beatles in that chart just kind of emphasises what Taylor was saying earlier. Apart from Ringo, who's staring at John a bit mopally. In a way, seeing the Beatles in that chart just kind of emphasises what Taylor was saying earlier

about, you know, the big players have left the stage. But they occasionally appear in this kind of ghostly form when one of their singles has been re-released or something. And it just puts everything else in perspective. There were a lot of re-releases at this time, weren't there? There were, yeah. Yeah, and of course, we've got Cher Elegance, which is the most unapposite band name ever.

I love that. They look awful, don't they? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, It's over We've come to the end now Formed as Salvation in 1970, Slick worked as a covers band in a Glasgow club when they recruited a 19-year-old guitarist called Jim Ur who reversed his name to avoid a clash with a bassist, also called Jim. In 1974, Midge Ur was promoted up to lead singer the band was renamed Slick and they hooked up with the songwriters Bill Martin and Phil Coulter who had written Shangalang and Saturday Night for the Bay City Rollers as well as Congratulations and Puppet

on a String for Cliff Richard and Sandy Shaw. In 1975, Midyore was approached by a London band who were looking for a lead singer, but he turned them down and said band, the Sex Pistols, had to make do with Johnny Rotten instead. After signing to Polydor in early 1975, their debut single, The Boogiest Band in Town, flopped. but after being picked up by Bell Records and an image change from dog shit glam to old school baseball shirts their next single Forever and Ever got to number one for one week in February of this year

this is the follow up written by Martin and Coulter it's just been released it's not in the chart yet and it comes in the wake of them being voted Best New Band of the Year by Readers of the Sun. And oh, if anyone was ever right about anything, it was Readers of the Sun in the 70s. Right, kids?

I mean, before we get stuck into Slick, we've got to say, Tony, you lying bastard. No acts outside the top 40 ever getting on top of the pops indeed. Yeah, I mean, there's more than one in this episode. Oh, yeah, definitely, yeah. Yeah, as there is in most episodes. Yeah. Where did this get to in the charts in the end?

Do you know? I didn't look it up. I will tell you later on. Because it's terrible. For a start, the first minute of it is Monk Rock. And Monk Rock is notoriously hard to pull off right it's harder than it sounds because it's really easy to do um but to make it sound convincing yeah much much trickier and then it slides straight into like a really poor version version of pilot like yes german winks pilot uh and it's it's really horrible and when when people look back at 1975 and 76 so they say this is why punk had to happen a lot of the time

they don't really know what they're talking about because they're going on a sort of false simplified version of pop history which is wrong in loads of ways but when you watch slick you realize that punk did have to happen so that bands like this would have something to copy like a like a ready-made musical map because it's completely obvious that uh if they'd come out in 1977 there'd have been punks and if they'd come out in 1978 they'd have been punks and if they come out in 1978 there'd have been a new wave prior to this they were glam and so on they're one of those non-descript bands who are too professional to do anything accidentally interesting uh too serious to do anything fun but too too uninspired to come up with anything new uh and they're in this sort of quiet period for white

band pop and they have got they're just completely directionless so they just bolt a load of stuff together there's a bit of bubble gum and a bit of roxy music and it it doesn't work and punk set all those people free uh to be unoriginal with impunity and you know it's rather a painless and forgettable punk tune than this you know or maybe they might even have been jolted into making one acceptable record like uh like the pinkies or one of those sort of you know new wave and post-punk groups that were sort of terrible but you know you play fast enough and you know pinch a tune from someone and you you know you've got a halfway acceptable record but this is fucking horrible it is isn't it i mean as a follow-up to number one it's piss poor and it just drags on for fucking ages doesn't it

i mean as soon as they go into this into the next chorus you just think oh not another one i mean um the way it starts could not be more portentous and pompous and pretentious could it um because um and the way it's presented is kind of interesting as well the camera zoomed in on one hand on this old f-hole guitar strumming and this ominous chant of amen going on and um that that whole first bit is apparently lifted from concierto de aranjuez by joaquin rodrigo which um was a hit only only two months earlier geff love orchestra and then top the pops do that thing that they don't respond on at this time which is that weird kind of fly-eye effect with the camera. You've got the sort of image in the centre,

then like lots of satellite images revolving around it. And then Midge blooms up looking like a sort of pinched, vitamin-deprived James Dean in his red jacket and his quiff. And I can't do any better than Monk Rock. I tell you, that's amazing. But they are a kind of gothic pop, basically, rollers rollers and um this is exactly this song is exactly the same formula as their previous single forever never which is much better obviously um and i'm i'm quite fascinated by the times in pop history when when people do that they have a big hit and they just think right well we'll do exactly that again like um famously, Carl Douglas, Kung Fu Fighting,

followed by Dance the Kung Fu. And it's a phenomenon I'm really interested in. But the weird thing is, this is divorce pop, and it's coming from 23-year-olds. Seems a bit premature, but then people did live their lives much more fast in those days. And then there's, after all that kind of ominous build up, there's that

jaunty knees up bit in the song and the audience seems to be quite into that bit but never mind the song just fuck it out of relief more than anything else the only Scottish contribution to popular culture that any

civilised people care about that's called requiem um is that bit in the limmy show where um limmy prank calls various small children and growls requiem requiem down the phone at them with all kinds of sinister made-up latin taylor mitchell's in this isn't he yeah i know it's we meet again The thing is, you look at Slick in this clip, and their image is obviously USA winners. And they didn't seem to realise that if they'd turned up in America looking like that, all sort of awkward in these brand new spotless baseball jerseys and sort of camp 50s things trying to be cool, they'd just be blown off the stage by gales of laughter.

It's like to Americans, this would look like, you know, all those sort of tappany-apeny 60s British invasion copyist groups from America. Yes, the beef eaters. Yeah, and the Buckinghams and the chumly smithes. The rocking Shakespeare's with, with like bold wigs and knee britches it just looked like one of those they're fucking horrible i would i've no idea who would like this i can't imagine who you'd have to be to really like this and just to go and spend money on it um this sort of you got a bit of monkery and this dead-eyed schlager and this sort of, you've got a bit of monkery and this dead-eyed schlager and

this sort of, yeah, this like arrangement of Concerto di Aranjes which is not quite up there with Gil Evans' arrangement, it has to be said and all these bits with Midge trying to look pained and enigmatic and solemn and emotional, it's

The other thing to say about this I don't know if you guys noticed it is that in the background we see a woman wandering around in a massive victorian bonnet who who we're about to meet of course which is it's just terrible stage management it was just kind of yeah disarray and chaos going on in the studio at this time yeah i mean i mean the thing that that's really strange about this is that you know we're kind of used to the pattern of of top of the pops is particularly around this time and it is it always is first song bang something fast something um by an usually by

a new band uh you know something that just gets the show off to a flying start. And with this, you know, not only are they doing a band who are following up a fucking number one, it's also just slow as fuck. And it's just, it's just like, you just end up going, well, surely this episode's like halfway over by now. Who else is going to be on this? Yeah.

And I think they thought it was striking. I think they thought it was ear-catching. And also, it's coming off the back of a number one hit. So just on previous form, they would have had reason to think, oh, well, the audience are going to be into this. But clearly they weren't when you look at the chart position.

No. So the following week, Requiem entered the charts at number 45 but a couple of weeks later, Midure was injured in a car accident and the band was unable to promote the single on TV and had to scrap their tour. See, this is it, right? Real James Dean in his real quiff and his real red jacket died in a car crash.

Midure just gets injured. The single eventually got as high as number 24, but they never troubled the charts again, releasing five singles on the bounce that failed to chart. In the wake of Punk, the band changed their name to PVC2 in 1977 and put out one flop single before the band split up. Midyore would go on to join the Rich Kids with Glenn Matlock

and two other members joined the Skids. This is a Requiem. That's going to be a smash hit. Look at this silly hat. And it's Sandy, isn't it? Yeah. Who gave that to you? I think that's fantastic.

And this is fantastic as well, from Paul Nicholas. Reggae just like it used to be. Oh, well, my brother can boogie, my sister can rock, but we keep it in the family. We all agree, we love that riggy like it used to be. Blackburn, standing next to a woman wearing a hat that makes her head look like it's being devoured by a giant popper asks where did you get that hat she says something i couldn't make out but tony says it's fantastic

and introduces something else that he also thinks is fantastic reggae like it used to be by paul nicholas born paul buselelink in Peterborough in 1944, Paul Nicholas was the son of a retired MI6 agent who became the lead singer of Paul Dean and the Dreamers in 1960 before being poached by Screaming Lord Such for his band. In 1966, he was signed up by Robert Stigwood who changed his name to Oscar and gave him songs written by Pete Townshend and a then unknown David Bowie both of which flopped. By the late 60s he became involved in musicals starring in the first West End production of Hair becoming the original Jesus Christ superstar and starring as Danny Zucco in the original West End production of Grease alongside Elaine Page.

After playing David Essex's rival Knee Tremble Johnny in Stardust and treating Roger Daltrey like shit as cousin Kevin in Tom Air, he linked up once more with Stigwood and recommenced a solo career, and this is the first single, a plea for a return of good old-fashioned reggae before it was culturally appropriated by Jamaicans. And it's up this week from number 36 to number 29. Oh, release the dogs. It's interesting that he did play David Essex's rival in Stardust

because Paul Nicholas is the destitute man's David Essex, isn't he? But you've listed all the things that he did before this point and it's actually quite impressive. I heard him on the Danny Baker show a few months ago and I didn't know all this stuff that he'd done before. Another thing he had a hand in was

getting the Rocky Horror Show off the ground in a roundabout sort of way. He'd done all kinds of stuff. And fast forward to the 80s, I have to admit, I had a soft spot for Just Good Friends, a sitcom. But his 70s pop career is absolutely wretched, isn't it? I mean, first of all, what does he mean, reggae like it used to be? I mean, reggae was more or less brand new at this point. It had only been around since 1968. Before that, it would have been called

star or rock steady so um are we meant to believe that paul nicholas was a suede head in a ben sherman in 1969 doing the moonstomp the nanny goat by larry and alvin you know on the original studio one vinyl i mean what what is it that he thinks what is it that he thinks reggae has lost by 1976 that he wants to get back to is what I don't get the day after this episode was broadcast Rastaman Vibration by Bob Marley and the Wailers came out

so I'm wondering did someone send Paul Nicholas an early promo copy and he heard that the highly Selassie inspired anti-racist lyrics of war and thought now reggae reggae's got a bit too far now and something needed to be done and and he he wears um his clockwork orange style bowler hat and twirls a cane and does jazz hands and all that and yeah yeah it's it's pretty it's vile i sorry, I've gone on too much Taylor. Go on.

Sound like Morrissey. Fake reggae is vile. In you come, Taylor. Yeah. Every time I see Paul Nicklaus, what I always think is, what is he so confident about? Yeah. He thinks he's tip top, right?

There's not a flicker of self-doubt or even self-awareness when you've been jesus man how can you not be i think it's because he's pure showbiz right uh and he's a showbiz kid and this is his thing he's grinning and winking uh even right to the end of a bad matinee you know it he's just he's this irrepressible song and dance cunt who can't stop performing like uh like a shark can't stop swimming he's always on you know but it's but it's good for the confidence that because when you actually meet those people they're always really self-assured presumably because they don't think about human things you know they've got they've got life down like a like a well-rehearsed routine you know like a tap dance or something they've just they've got it down um and this particular kind of cockney country or or you know, Mockney, really, because most of these people are from places like... Mockney Muntery.

Yeah. Well, most of these people, when you look at it, are from places like Peterborough and Kettering. Yeah. You know what I mean? But it's like, basically, David Essex did it and was charismatic and likeable. And after that, people thought that any twinkly-eyed,

Jack the Lad twat would just win everyone over. And it's not true because these people are generally loathsome. And the only other one who seems like a genuinely good bloke is Carl Howman, right? You would be quite happy to go out for a pint with Carl Howman. But every other one of these people is a massive wanker. And even when they're in something good like nicholas ball in hazel right some of which is quite good they make it harder to digest not easier and really the mystery is why david essex was likable but i think that's a mystery for the ages if we understood the

secret of david essex's likability we'd all be rich men it's like it's an indefinable inexplicable magic it's like pop music's answer to the wings of the hummingbird or a rain of frogs um but paul nicholas no and also it's he's he's singing live on this right and yeah it's it's an actor's voice right he's not it's not a singer's voice it's an actor's voice it's like It's not a singer's voice. It's an actor's voice. It's like he's doing a show song. What kind of musical would have a plot where the lead decides that what needs to happen is reggae like it used to be? Yeah, I don't know.

You know what I mean? You can't imagine him doing it. It'd be great if he did it in Jesus Christ Superstar, isn't it? Well, he went on to be in the film of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Of course he did. The role he was on to be in the film of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts. Of course he did. The role he was born to play. It's like his sort of smarmy, showbiz,

cokie cheesiness is just tailor-made for that fucking film. I think you've nailed it, Taylor, by using the word showbiz more than once there, because that's what this is it's not even pop right and i think what what this performance tells us um as much as the episode tells us really is that pop in 1976 is no longer a direct evolution of rock and roll but it's a form of variety it's it's an adjunct to the light entertainment industry at this point by the way i mentioned uh bad stage management earlier i think we actually see the stage manager at the end of this there's there's this balding ginger man in a purple shirt lurking at the back and looking anxious yes yeah what worried that paul nicholas is going to whip the kids up into a state of anarchy I was thinking about this

why is he particularly so awful right why does he make your blood boil when you see him on screen and I think it's the colossal insincerity right which you don't always get from these sort of people

but with him you do and when you put that immense insincerity with the smugness it makes him seem untrustworthy and sort of vaguely contemptuous like he's smirking at you and he seems like he'd be really manipulative if you knew him like you wouldn't want him around you know uh it's like you know in ever decreasing circles uh paul in ever decreasing circles peter egan's character and it's hard to tell whether he's meant to be a total wanker or a flawed good guy because the performance is kind of slimy and charmless um the ambiguity in the script is lost a bit and you just want rich Bryars to wipe the smirk off his face.

Yeah. Like a sex symbol with a Prince William comb over it, a pastel lemon cardigan with grey slacks. And it's like this with Paul Nicholas. It's like you get the impression that he's being sold as a charmer with maybe a sort of a dark sexy evil side you know

but it doesn't come across you just you just wouldn't want him around you wouldn't want him to be anywhere that you were every time I hear this song and see this performance I just picture a flat in Notting Hill with a load of rasters in it,

just staring at the telly. Just go, what the fuck is he going on about? Because it's not reggae, is it? It's more Calypso, isn't it? That's what he's going on about. And he's basically performing as a minstrel, isn't he? It's a minstrel performance. Yes.

Yes, a white and blonde minstrel. I mean, he's not blacked up, but apart from that. Yeah, like, fuck. Oh, can you imagine? I'm sure that, you know, backstage, that was discussed, like, shall I black up for this? You can reggae Beethoven. That's the one bit of the song that really gets on my tits because they go, you can reggae Beethoven. That's the one bit of the song that really gets on my tits

because they go, you can reggae Beethoven and then you hear the opening bars. Yeah, it just goes, da-da-da-da. It's like, that's nice. Oh, and he mimes it with his walking stick,

doesn't he? Yeah, with no reggae rhythm behind it at all. Yeah. You know, it's like, okay, if you can reggae Beethoven, do it. Do it now, Paul.

Do it now in front of us. Show us. All it is is four notes. They could at least have put them on the offbeat. You know what I mean? know it's like okay if you can reggae beethoven do it do it now paul do it now in front of us show us all it is is four notes they could at least have put them on the offbeat you know at least jeff lynn of the electric light orchestra rocked up a bit of beethoven you know and made an effort yeah and you you can actually reggae beethoven because there are you know there are videos of youtube of reggae versions of Beethoven songs, but you won't want to because they sound fucking cat shit. It's awful. I'm just surprised that nobody in Jamaica did a cover of this.

It would have been hilarious. It would have been amazing, wouldn't it? They used to do reggae covers of fucking anything. You know what I mean? You know that... But they should have done it in a real white English person's accent. They should do it as a Wurzel song. Folk music like it used to be.

You know, there's that reggae version of Hello Mudder, Hello Father, Here I Am in Camp Grenada. Just any old shit. They just get a good rhythm going and it didn't matter what the song was. Yeah. It could have been a surprise hit. By the way, going back to the David Essex thing, I read between the lines,

you get the impression that Paul Nicholas hates David Essex, right? I think this came over in the Danny Baker show when he was on there, that any mention of David Essex and you could just sense the atmosphere, the temperature in the studio just plummeting to zero you know, it doesn't like being compared

to him at all to this day I mean the one thing I'm trying to think of was what would the modern day equivalent be it would be James Corden doing a song called Old Time Grime or something like that isn't it the following week,

reggae like it used to be jumped up six places to number 23 and would get as high as number 17. The follow-up, Dancing With The Captain, would get to number eight in November of this year and he'd have one more top ten hit with Grandma's Party in January of 1977 before fucking over Neil

Diamond in The Jazz Singer, pissing Jan Francis about in Just Good Friends and squatting with Sue Pollard on 2 Up 2 Down. It always sounds like a terrible euphemism, dancing with the captain. So does squatting

with Sue Pollard for that matter. Yes. Yes. Straight in at number 29, that's a really good sound. Fellas, we have for you now the delightful Pans people. And they're going to dance to Andrew, True Connection. Straight in at 17 and more, more, more. More, more, more. How do you like your love? You've been towed, haven't you? It would have been great if he'd have just gone, Paul Nicholas. In this link, right? I don't know if you're going to mention it.

In this link, Tony Blackburn is manspreading like a bastard, isn't he? He's got one knee up in beige trousers, which is so tight that we can read his intentions later on that evening with Margot. Then he tells the dads to hold on tight to their teasers it's time for pan's people as they dance to more more more by andrea true connection what he actually says is uh fellas we have for you now the delightful pan's people which is a bit unfair on lesbians really isn't it yes very much so it's just being excluded as usual well there weren't no lesbians in 1976

it was too hot for lesbianism born andrea truden in nashville in 1943 andrea true moved to new york in the early 60s, became a club singer and landed a few bit parts in films including The Way We Were. In the late 60s however she started to dabble in pornography and by the mid-70s had been in over 50 grot films. In 1975 she was invited by an American real estate company to shoot some adverts in Jamaica. But after the American government fell out with the country after the election of Michael Mandler, she was ordered to give up her fee or spend it all in Jamaica. So she decided to invest it in a demo of a song she'd been working on more, more, more. After being picked up by Budda Records, it got to number four in America

and it soared up this week from number 29 to number 17. And it's an early appearance of Pants People, presumably because there isn't any footage of Andrea True that they could show on BBC One at 7.40pm. By the way, there's another part of this story, that when she was in Jamaica, yeah, she couldn't take the money out of the country the other thing was that the music to this is written by a bloke called greg diamond who worked with uh luther van dross and uh joe bryath and people like that yeah people like that yeah that sort yeah um well he was having an affair with andrea true at the time, he was having an affair with Andrea True at the time. He was also heavily into drugs,

and he owed quite a lot of money to a dealer, which was apparently part of the motivation for getting this record out. He's really good, actually. There's a track by him called Hot Butterfly from 1978, I think it was, sort of a really laid-back funk track. Maybe Andrea True was the hot butterfly he's singing about. Obvious question.

Have you ever, have you seen any of her work? Not knowingly. I tend not to go for the vintage stuff myself, though. Well, I don't really enjoy watching any of that 70s stuff. It's just so grotty. Fannies like monkeys' faces. I mean, as Neil would say,

you wouldn't want a sandwich from any of the people in 1970s grot. Yeah, no, catering on the set was, I mean, you know, like if it was a bowl of peanuts and it was halfway down, you wouldn't really want to stick your fingers in that. No. The thing is, I love those 70s porn films, but they're not in any way erotic. No, no, no.

The idea of using them for the purpose for which they're intended is, I can't even imagine it. But they're great to watch because they're great to watch as documentaries. Yeah. Especially the New York ones. The ones in LA, not so much because we've all seen California in the 70s. We've all seen far too much of it. But the ones shot in New York,

you really do get to see the inside of brownstones and the back end of Times Square and stuff. They're extremely atmospheric, but yeah, not very sexy. Aceus club in the 90s called the frat shack on around old street and on the top floor they'd show all these films you just lob out on the settee and and i remember um going there one night and everyone's lobbed out on the settees watching some old school grot and i go and get a round of drinks and i come back and everyone's gone and i just thought where where and I come back and everyone's gone.

And I just thought, where the fuck is everyone? And then I looked up and they've got a film of 1970s transgender surgery. Was this just part of the film? I get it now. Kind of a Ludovico effect, like in Clockwork Orange, trying to sort of like put you off it. Because they used to put some weird things

in those films. Yeah they really did it was because they would show in you know movie theatres and stuff like that there was a bit of a feeling that you had to cater to all tastes within one film

you know because there wasn't that thing if you'd go to the rack and choose the specialist film, you know, because there wasn't that thing if you'd go to the rack and choose the specialist film that suited your tastes. They felt like that to cater for everyone. So you watch these films, and about 50% of the scenes are just sex. And then there'll be, like, the most horrific shit. There'll be, like, a rape scene and a a water sports and you know some like really

heavy snm stuff and there'll be and it's all in the same fucking yeah um and it's yeah it's a bit uh a bit uneven tone yeah i remember the first first porn film i ever watched he went around my mate's house and he says oh i've got some gotot in and he didn't know what he was and he just put it in and the first thing that came up was an Australian film called Piss and Champagne and the opening credits were basically the words piss

and champagne on some made out of fuzzy felt on a fuzzy felt board and an empty champagne glass and the next thing you know this arc of piss just comes in and fills up the glass and it spills over and it's like oh okay this is what you got to do then is it i think i was about 13 or something like that uh yes you you've got to you've got to be with a load of australians then you've got to piss on each other they're great that's a just

a regular friday night yes it is yeah yeah i've seen that episode of neighbors but i'll tell you what this could have been the defining moment though of 70s crumpetry all right people really could have danced to a cash-in record by a porn star yeah with lyrics about being in a porn film this could have been the most brilliantly confusing tangle of total wrongness and total rightness. Yeah. In fact, it's something of a non-event though, isn't it? It is, yes. They were not going to have been a lot of dads

with the TV times on their laps while this was on. Would this have been known about? That she was a porn star? I'm not sure. I mean, a lot of people would have just heard the name. You think the news of the world would have had something to say about it? Yeah, maybe.

But they probably wouldn't have announced it on Radio 1. Oh, here's a song by the porn actor. Yeah. Sensational. The thing is, I think it was common knowledge that she was a porn star. But this is almost, but not quite, the only example of a porn star crossing over

and becoming successful in another entertainment field because this was the last days of porno chic right this was yeah before the cold winds started blowing through that particular industry she didn't have to hide her past uh or even hint at it she could reference it directly and people would think it was delightfully exotic rather than some kind of moral curse you know um yeah so this is what i mean by saying it's a cash-in record um but it's great um and this is how we rolled in the days before auto-tune you just had to like it or lump it um it's not just that she can't sing she can't time the words properly it's all over the place um and by the end of the song it sounds

like she's out of breath as well but it doesn't matter because the only way in which it matters is that the sort of seductive come on of the lyrics is slightly undermined by the incompetent singing right it's like someone winking at you and then spilling a glass of prosecco into their lap but it doesn't matter it's great because it's a aside from being a good solid early disco record um it's just beautifully evocative of that sort of business first sleaziness of the time you know what i mean uh but it there's no reason why it should be as good as it is but it is uh i mean i've got loads of great thrown together slightly amateurish disco records and it is an easy genre uh in which to be a bluffer because as soon as you put the basic elements together,

you've got something that already sounds quite good. But I think the reason this stands out is that it's too early for it to be generic. The arrangement is much busier than on a lot of disco records. There's more going on. The beat is a bit less overwhelming, which gives it a sort of a slightly different kind of charm i mean post saturday night fever this this wouldn't have been half as good

yeah i mean this this is the kind of song that uh bevin abigail's party would put on when she wanted to revel on totally have you heard the original jama version of this, by the way? No. I don't know if it was ever released, but it's knocking around. Because it was remixed for the American market. The original Jamaican mix is not such a good pop record, but it's worth hearing. I mean, predictably enough, the bass is louder and there's more echo on it

and our voice is a bit lower in the mix and there's a lot more space in the sound which works uh really well on the instrumental break where it all sort of opens up beautifully you know but ultimately it's not as good because in the end a track like this needs to be buffed and polished because it's built to be slick and slinky and it isn't really anything else so it has to go all out for that um and i tried listening to some of her other stuff to see if it was any good you know like uh two later lps white witch and war machine um yeah they're not they're not very this is this is as good as it gets with andrea true i'm afraid uh but pants people i mean they are they're essentially dancing in in a hawaiian prisoner of war camp aren't they yeah now what's going on i mean i wondered about

that are these costumes left over from some kind of hawaiit on the Two Ronnies the previous week or something? Because it seems to have no connection to the song. And they're running around in a bamboo cage looking simultaneously frightened but excited. Well, it's because the cage isn't very good, is it? It's like, oh, we're trapped, but look, we can walk through there if we want to. So let's have a dance.

The thing is, this show is Pans People's last appearance. This is the last Top of the Pops on which Pans People appeared. And when you hear... Do we know if they knew that or was it sprung on them afterwards? We'll talk about that later. You'd think, well, they're doing this kind of explicitly sexy

record. Maybe they could go out with a bang. But then you realize they're just they're just holding their fire they're gonna do this later um i'll tell you what relatively few you know there's a load of uh missing top of the pops from the mid 70s but there's very few missing pans people clips because yeah funny that eh? Because a few years back, somebody found a videotape of loads of their mid-70s routines,

just the Pans People routines, that had been taped off the telly by a vicar. So the following week, more, more, more, dropped one place to number 18, but then rocketed up to number five its highest position maybe that's when the news of the world said what what she was up to the follow-up ny you got me dancing failed to chart in the uk but she got to number 34 in march of 1978 with what's your

name what's your number after having surgery on her vocal cords in the late 70s, her singing career was over, and she became a psychic reader and drug counsellor, dying in New York in 2011. What a life, though. How do you like it? Oh, no, no. How do you like it?

How do you like it? Oh, no. Are you like the light? Electric Light Orchestra. It's called Night Rider. Blackburn makes a shit joke about Pants people being former members of the Raffia before introducing us to a most fantastic sound, Nightrider by ELO. We've covered ELO in Chant Music No. 5, so let's just say that this is the third single from their 1975 LP, Face the Music, and the follow-up to Evil Woman, which got to No. 10 in January of this year and was their biggest hit to date.

Straight away, right, I've got to take issue with Taylor here because I was listening to the Christmas 1973 episode of Chart Music and Taylor described Boy Wood as the thinking man's Jeff Lynne. Now, hang on a minute, right? Hang on a minute. as The Thinking Man's Jeff Lynne. Now, hang on a minute, right? Hang on a minute. I'm a man.

I have guts. And I absolutely love Jeff Lynne. I genuinely think he's a genius. This is one of Yellow's less remembered songs, let's be honest. So, follow up to Evil Woman. And also the track directly after Evil Woman on the Face the Music album. So, it's quite odd that it failed to chart,

not even, it didn't even make the top 75, even after being on top of the pop. So to be fair, it has got album track written all over it. It's not a great song. It's actually about being in a touring band. Jeff Lynne had previously been in a band called Night Riders and being lonely and miserable on the road and all that stuff. I mean, I'll admit this performance hasn't got much that's remarkable either,

except that snaggletooth bassist Kelly Gruka gets a line. And it's a rare sighting of Jeff Lynne without sunglasses as well. Yeah, and he needs to put them back on fast because his weak, tired, baggy eyes are not attractive. He looks like a mole tossed onto an operating table. But even so, there's... Well, seeing Jeff Lynn without his sunglasses is like seeing Midge Yor without his moustache.

And it's like seeing Sooty with a hard-on, to be honest. It's just not right. There's something about Yellow's sound, even on a hard-on, to be honest. It's just not right. There's something about ELO's sound, even on a sub-par song like this, that I just want to swim through. The way the strings are arranged and recorded by, it's Louis Clark and Richard Tandy, the keyboardist, as well, arranging all that stuff.

It's like blue-amber, and I just want to get trapped in it. It's just a really lovely sound, even when the song's a bit crap. So that's my take. And, yeah, I just got a rep for Yellow and for Jeff Lynne. I think he's a genius. And how dare Taylor say that anybody is the thinking man, Jeff Lynne. That's it. Over to you.

Taylor. I can't really rise to this fight because the thing is I do like Yellow. I just don't love them. But they're good you know uh I mean this is no Mr Blue Sky but it's actually one of my favorite ELO singles because it's a bit weird uh and it's much too fiddly and stop start to be a big hit and there's no hook uh but it's enjoyable because it's unpredictable and there's a sort of depth to the sound as well as a nice surface, right? The problem I always have with the ALO is if you're going to make your sound that smooth and full, you have to give it a bit of depth too. Otherwise, it can sort of tire your ears out.

ears out um and while i don't object to yellow the sheer glare that comes off their records um can sometimes be a bit much like listening to an arc light but um i rather like this one so uh it's yeah we can't have big scrap about it no but i do i mean i just i prefer the tracks like this where they they sound like they're up with the aeroplanes to the ones where they're knee deep in Banks is bitter that's Banks is the I mean Banks is bitter as in the West Midlands brewery not the fatuous ruiner of brick walls um but it's although it is actually probably another it's probably time I had another go at listening properly to ELO because whenever there's a hugely popular group who aren't clearly just terrible shit loved by idiots for stupid reasons,

but I'm not that into them, I try and give them another go every few years because I assume that I'm wrong. And at some point the penny will drop, you know. And sometimes you just have to have reached a certain point in your life, like with Steely Dan. And suddenly you've got something to discover. And also, I was always slightly put off by the fact that

they're a Birmingham group. And I've said this before in the same way that a lot of Scousers at one point would react against the Beatles and be a bit sort of you know it's not about the Beatles I always felt this when I was young felt this urge to

sort of dislike the local heroes like you know ELO and Jasper Carrot and stuff it's like although it's speaking i always speaking of birmingham groups i always think it's a shame that so few people really exploited the birmingham accent as singers right the way that northern singers exploit the open vowels in the northern accent right or london singers use the cockney thing right the the whining edge

of a pure west midlands accent can be really useful to a singer and i think aussie used it definitely um but beyond that the only other group i can think of who really did something with it were the sea urchins who were a sort of obscure birmingham 60s revivalist group from the 80s who nonetheless managed to do something really individual um in the course of reviving the 60s not even noddy holder with this sorry noddy holder i don't know he i don't know he sounds kind of more americanized Really? Yeah, I mean there's one thing I love, like the Sea Urchins bloke has got this flat whine

where he shifts the notes off the beat and it's very and if you listen to their best record, Solace it's got a sort of California Dreaming style answering backing vocals, so you've got two of them and it's like being trapped

in this tiny box with these uh uh electric brummy voices um yeah i mean i think i think the streets would have been a million times better if he'd actually kept his birmingham accent instead instead of instead of sounding like a really angry david beckham well it's he's got that sort of hybrid voice yeah it's a bit of both i think of the only three people i can think of who've got it are the bloke out of the streets stewart lee uh and me um the only three people i've ever heard where you have a birmingham accent that's or a west midlands accent that's mostly faded and the space has been filled by a South East accent but I don't know after those the only

the only record I can think of which really uses the accent is Funky Moped by Jasper Carrot on which the backing band is ELO Oh my god I was going to mention that in a bit. I mean one thing I need to get over here is ELO,

they look like dog shit, don't they? They look like a renaissance fair. Yeah, much facial hair. And you've got Mick Kaminsky. Oh, so much perm. Yeah, Mick Kaminsky with his blue violin is the only kind of concession to kind of glam or glamour. And the way they're lined up on stage struck me as really odd.

They're all pretty much in a straight line on stage, except for Bev Bevan, the drummer, who's right at the back. And there's this whole, of course, litigious history between Jeff and Bev Bevan that ensues. And you wonder whether this was kind of the start of it, that he just got exiled behind the rest of it. So the following week, and every week after, Knight Rider failed to break the chart.

Do you think they'd be shitting themselves about that? They probably saw themselves as an album band in a way. So they kind of had a foot in both camps, didn't they? They were a hit machine, like ABBA were a hit machine, but also they wanted to be almost like led zeppelin or something that you know they want to be a big serious kind of prog rock hard rock act so they they might have taken the failure of the single as some kind of validation in a weird kind of way like well you know we're not just about the hits anyway yeah

or a kick up the arse maybe Maybe. Because the follow-up, Strange Magic, only got to number 38 in July of this year, but they'd finished the year strong with Living Thing, which got to number four

in December. Well done, Mr. Leather. That's the Electric Loud Orchestra and Night Rider. So here I am So here I am Blackburn, strangely unencumbered by girls, as is the want of top of the pops presenters of the era, introduces the next song, Love Hangover by Diana Ross. The lovely Diana Ross. Diana Ross has already been covered in Chart Music's 5, 8 and 9, and by this point in her career, she's still getting over starring in the film Mahogany, where she fell out with Barry Gordy before shooting had been

completed and he was forced to use a body double to finish it off. This is the third release from the LP Diana Ross and was never intended as a single until the Fifth Dimension announced that they were going to cover it which inspired Motown to rush it out in America where it got to number one. Over here, it's the follow-up to the theme from Mahogany, Do You Know Where You're Going To?, which has just dropped down from number five to number six, and it's this week's highest new entry at number 24. I mean, this song, Marvin Gaye was considered for it. So do you think his version would have been better than this?

It's hard to imagine it. I'd like to for it. So do you think his version would have been better than this? It's hard to imagine it. I'd like to hear it. It's hard to imagine it because this is, there's something really feminine about this record because of the way that she sings it. Yeah, it's very sort of breathy and swooning. And you can't help but think that Marvin would have had to take a slightly different approach.

You know, the story behind this, I don't know if it's just an urban myth or what, but supposedly the producer, Hal Davis, actually got Diana pissed the night beforehand in Las Vegas, if I remember rightly. And so she really did have a hangover. And, you know, to make her sound a bit kind of husky and sexy the next day when they recorded. And also they installed a flickering strobe light in the studio to help her kind of get in the zone for the disco section. If that had been me, I'd have puked my ring.

Yeah, you're hungover anyway and there's a strobe light going off. It's amazing she got through it. Also, does that mean that she sang this song after eating a full English breakfast? Yes. over anyway and there's a strobe light going off it's amazing she got through it that's also does that mean that she sang this song after eating a full english breakfast did you do the same thing for upside down oh man i bet old um bony blackbird as my dad used to call him he's loving this one isn't he because uh he actually um he had an important role in diana ross's career because yes he did yes tony blackburn persuaded motown to release i'm still waiting as a single yeah he

picked he picked up on it when it was just an album track and then it became the biggest solo hit at that point in the uk um love hangover is a really useful record for djs um because of the tempo change it gets you from the erection section back into the dancing because of that right of course yes i love djs for that yeah it's it is just um a peerless immaculate record isn't it um by the way do do we know if this video was even intended for this song or is it just like a load of random clips of diana edited together because she's she's never mouthing the words and she's wearing about a million different outfits and also it's in the wrong aspect ratio and it's really rare to see stuff on tv in the old days in the wrong aspect

ratio but it is it makes her look like beaker i can't understand how that could have happened i don't understand i understand now why things sometimes turn up on TV in the wrong aspect ratio. But in the days of wall-to-wall, 4-3 TV screen-shaped television, I don't see how it could have happened. Maybe it's a load of clips from Mahogany, you know. Maybe. Just a guess.

It's a very 21st century thing, though, seeing stuff stretched like that. It's like very 21st century thing, though, seeing stuff stretched like that. It's like when older relatives are watching UK Gold on their widescreen TV. It's like, why is Del Boy's head elliptical? Oh, I've never noticed. I don't really notice. I can change it for you.

No, leave it, leave it. It's fine. Yeah. I mean, what they're screening is a montage of Diana being all sensual and that in, as you said, about 50,000 different costume changes. And it works. It works very well, doesn't it? Well, it's all right.

Yeah, it's all right. It'll do. I mean, this is crying out to be emoted to by pants people, I think. Yeah, that would have worked, actually. Yeah. Actually having a hangover. All the pants people i think yeah that would have worked actually yeah actually having a having a hangover all the people absolutely hanging yeah yeah just sitting on a settee just hunched up going just looking all in kind of ugly boots and duvets over you know just like yes yeah looking really

yeah with the curtains drawn yeah and the thing is, we just had Andrea True connection as an adult performer doing a disco record, but there's something quite kind of infantile about the sound of the Andrea True record, whereas this is actually adult disco, if you know what I mean. It really does have that kind of mature feel to it. The one thing this does have in common with Andrea True is that it's early

enough in the disco boom that you can still do it how you want which is really good for diana because it frees her up from the sort of the stylistic rigidity of the stuff she'd been doing in recent years um i mean she'd become very much a ballad singer and then she was doing that that billy holiday stuff and it with this she can take that breathy vocal style and stretch it out to a logical conclusion you know it's much more open uh and free uh as a singer um yeah and i wish i had more to say about this record because it's so brilliant, but it's one of those tracks which almost defies discussion and criticism because it's that... You make a good point there, though,

about her being this kind of ballad singer and it's... Never mind sort of DJs in club nights shifting from the erection section to the dancey bit. Diana Ross's entire career is doing that midway through this record. It's like that is the kind of her whole career is turning on a sixpence in the middle of that record yeah but that particular mix of um

sort of rhythm and ambience it's like a sort of astral funkiness or like a like a funky mist it's always notoriously difficult to put it into words because it doesn't seem to relate to anything on earth, except, you know, Gary Davis's erotic ideal. You know. It's hard to describe. It's like,

it's almost like really pure and abstract. But it's, yeah, it's an amazing record. And of course at this time, you know, a lot of the early 70s soul artists are coming a right cropper trying to jump on the disco bandwagon, I mean Isaac Hayes is at number 10

at the moment with I think Disco Connection I think it's called, is that right? Yeah with his love handles on display on the shot they use on the chart and you know you have people like Curtis Mayfield, they have a go and it just doesn't work. But with Diana, it does.

Is it because she's female? Well, I mean, a more direct comparison would be Martha Reeves, who, you know, was neck and neck almost with Diana Ross in the 60s. But she tried to do a disco thing and it totally flopped. So, yeah, it was quite rare I suppose for people to kind of survive both eras. But I think you could have given this backing track

to almost anyone and they could have made a success of it. Well Paul Nicholas. You know what I mean Disco like it used to be So the following week Love Hangover jumped five places to number 19 and would eventually get to number 10. Diana Ross's last top ten hit in the UK until Upside Down in 1980. The follow-up, I thought it took a little time, only got to number 32.

only got to number 32. There you go, that's the love hangover it doesn't kill from Diana Ross. Time now to go up the M1 motorway to the Scratchway service area and we are going to find Lori Lingo, the plastic chickens, the dipsticks,

everything, and Convoy GB. It was a foggy day on the 6th of May in a scammel hall in Brits. It was just foggy day on the 6th of May in a scammel hall in Bricks. It was just cracking dawn and I started to yawn

because I couldn't find any nice chicks. I tried Newport, Pagnol, Toddington and even Watford Gap. But after so many eggs, chips,

sausage and beans what I really needed was a nap. Oh God. Here we go. Laurie Lingo and the dipsticks are Dave Lee Lee Travis and Paul Burnett. The former may have already been discussed on Chart Music.

I can't remember. And he's currently manning the drive time slot, which has been rebranded. It's DLT, OK? While the latter is currently Radio 1's weekday dinner time presenter, who apparently created this song on air whilst playing the CW McCall single Convoy, which got to number two in March of this year. It was rushed released in collaboration with the Ladybirds, a female backing trio who were known as the Vernon's Girls

due to them all working at the aforementioned Football Pools Company who appeared on Oh Boy, The Benny Hill Show and have been part of the Top of the Pops Orchestra since 1966. They also recorded the most scowl song ever, You Know What I Mean, in 1962. And it's up this week from number 19 to number 14 and i step back and i yield the floor to my compatriots i hope he jackknifes this is well brexit isn't it djs doing songs you know we've seen examples before you know know, we all remember the Brown Sauce incident.

And Tony, of course, got to number 31 in 1968 with so much love. So, yeah. Let's not piss about it. Let's get stuck in this fucking song. I was actually thinking about DJs doing records and if there'd ever been a good one. And the best one I can think of is Let's Take a Trip by Godfrey, which is, you know, an okay novelty record.

And I really think that number two is probably Snot Rap by Kenny Everett. That's how low the bar is. Yeah, I mean, if you're talking about British DJs, yeah, if you expand that out, then obviously, you know, Sly and the Family Stone there we go there's your top 50 everything by

Sly and the Family Stone but Sly and the Family Stone this is not my first thoughts when this came on and by the way I didn't give myself

sort of cheat sheet thing of looking to see what's coming so I watched it kind of blind where I just wrote down oh for fucking fucking fucking fuck's sake and this came on um i mean for a start it's it's a really lame comedy trope taking a heroic american narrative or american

mode and and transposing it to a british setting foros. So, for example, like, you know, Ernie, the Fastest Milkman in the West by Benny Hill, or we mentioned earlier, Funky Moped by Jasper Carrot, or pretty much anything by the Baron Knights. So the original Convoy was by C.W. McCall. So here we've got Dave Lee Travis playing McCall. I'd rather see Dave Lee Travis play Macbeth.

He's wearing this super scouse. I'd rather see him play Davina McCall. He's wearing this super scouse superhero costume and speaking in a bad Liverpudlian accent. And to give you an idea... He's in a white jumpsuit with a red mask,

gloves and a calf adornments shall we say and the red mask obviously doesn't cover his beard so immediately you know who it is yeah it's his pubic face and um yes to give you an idea of of the level of humor he does that bait and switch rhyming thing which i've now learned is called a subverted rhyme or in america a miss suzy where you're misdirected towards expecting a rude word but at the last second it delivers an innocent one instead so it goes i tried newport pagnell toddington and even watford gap but after so many egg and chips sausage and. What I really needed was a nap. I know. By the way, I also hate, hate, hate the comedy

of specifics. That very British vein of comedy that holds that mentioning a place with a banal name like Newport Pagnell is inherently funny. I've always hated that. It's that kind of Victoria Wood thing. She does that a lot. I really don't like it. And it's no coincidence.

You did not just compare Dave Lee Travis to Victoria Wood. Oh, I a lot. I really don't like it. And it's no coincidence. You did not just compare Dave Lee Travis to Victoria Wood. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not a fan of her either. I know we're going to lose a load of listeners, but it's no coincidence to me that the Smiths started going badly wrong after they released the B-side called Is It Really So Strange?

which contains the line, I lost my bag at Newport Pagnell. And, you know, everyone's like oh how funny you mentioned you put back off i really hate that kind of kind of humor um i've got loads more to say but i'm gonna just wheel back a minute and let taylor have a say in you come taylor it wanted what really comes across on this record is that contempt for pop music which you sort of sense in so many of these old djs uh like dave lee travis thinks he can just have a bash piss about and it'll do you know he's got no sense that he's polluting anything he thinks it's just a bit of fun and and if you don't laugh it could be hazardous to your

health you know but he can't do it he's not funny he can't even deliver the lines properly um you know he's everything's hit much too hard and his timing is abysmal and he can't he can't do a scouse accent or he can't sustain a scouse accent but he can only have been doing it as a as a derisive gesture because he's from Manchester Dobby well yeah he's from Dobby I think he grew up in Manchester or he spent most of his time in Manchester and he's so he could have made his protagonist

a mank trucker which would have worked just as well but he insists on ruining it by doing an accent he can't do just to be a dick although it's not the worst accent he does in this song of course no no no we'll come to that later yeah um and also spare a thought for paul burnett the richard hammond of this setup as indeed on his own song he was the richard hammond of every setup he

was ever involved in um but yeah but this is his fault isn't it burnett um because he plays because they've all got sort of cb radio handles and he's the plastic chicken character wearing a chicken suit this is his fault because as you say it started out as a skit parody on his major one show so he's a dlt enabler um yes first of all by the way why is it Burnett he's from Yorkshire surely it's Burnett but he wanted it to sound sexier I don't know and it worked didn't it

oh yeah the most interesting thing I could find about Paul Burnett is that he discovered a load of Lord Haw Haw tapes when he was at Radio Luxembourg which had been broadcast from there during the Nazi occupation, which is pretty amazing. He,

tried this again a decade later with that novelty Rambo song, rugged and mean, butching on screen, but people weren't having that. Only got to number 52. Oh, I can't imagine if Dave Lee Travis had nicked that. Oh, man. Oh, Trambo. Oh, God, don if Dave Lee Travis had nicked that. Oh, man. Oh,

Trambo. Oh, God, don't. By the way, right, there's some Tony Blackburn connections to this record. In PopTastic, the Tony Blackburn autobiography, he reveals that when he was at

Radio Caroline on the boat, he goes, I shared a cabin with a large and rather loud DJ called Dave Lee Travis. It wasn't always easy. So basically just reading between the lines there, the horror of Blackburn having to share a cabin with Travis. Oh, that's awful, isn't it? There's also a Paul Burn a paul burnett mentioned in the podcast which is

that uh when blackburn and his wife tessa wyatt broke up the papers wrongly reported that she had shacked up with paul burnett so all this is in the background when Blackburn, in a very even tone, just sort of recites the names of the participants in this. Yeah, it really is. It really is. Talking of books, I've got David Hamilton's book here called The Golden Days of Radio One. And he's devoted a chapter to each DJ. Oh, my God.

Travis's, it says, So what kind of bloke was he tactile for sure a hugger of women and men since he was such a great bear of a man when he hugged you you knew you'd been hugged a practical joker with an enormous laugh a man adored by his mother his was the only DJ's mother I remember coming along to our events she was a mini version of Dave open brackets without the beard of course

I mean this record is really based on two shaky concepts like firstly as Simon mentioned the the idea that taking American things and replacing the details with sort of crap down at heel British stuff is automatically funny you know not as a self-mocking or to deflate pomposity but just as a sort of gormless celebration of British idiocy and stunted ambition. And the other thing it's based on is the idea that Dave Lee Travis is a funny and charming man,

as opposed to a goat's arse that talks. You really have to buy into that before you can uh before you can even accept this but i'm imagining dave lee travis as a lorry driver yeah i'll tell you what else as well this is this is so early in the cb radio days that he doesn't even refer to it as cb radio he calls it two-way radio yeah it's really in a sense, he was a pioneer. Yes. Because, I mean, this is, what, five, six years before the CB boom? This is absolutely loaded with 70s sitcom stereotypes, isn't it?

You've got the queen going by in a car one, which, you know, happens a lot. Usually Prince Philip sticks two fingers up like he did in Steptoe and Son. You've got the comedy homosexual in a camper van. Yeah, typical gay, always a bothering DLT in a sexually predatory way. There's a bear in the air.

Yes. And of course there is the comedy black person. Oh God. DLT goes into a, it's a London bus driver, isn't it? Yeah. There was even a London transport bus.

Yeah, that's a nice waggon. Fares please. In a sort of Jim Davidson davidson style uh racist uh west indian accent yeah in the style of chalky white jim davidson's non-existent black friend yes and have you noticed by the way the dlt dodges it in the performance he gets one of the backing singers to lip sync it for him as if to kind of distance himself. And also, do you notice it's not the black member of the Ladybirds who does it? It's the blonde one. Do you think it was offered to her?

It must have been. It must have been. Yeah. Fucking hell. In fact, what... As if that would have somehow made it okay. It's like, look, she's black. She's doing it.

She's fine with it. I mean, we have to bring out that while jim davidson was pioneering this this comical poke at uh at ethnics uh dlt also had a black character called edwin that he used to trot out every now and again there's a an actual fact when radio one had their 40th anniversary there was one show of clips of best ofs of the first 10 years of Radio One and they played it yeah they played

Edwin interviewing some brewer who ends up throwing him into a mash tun or whatever you call it that sounds hilarious yes it was oh my aching sides. What's incredible here is that a clip,

which itself could not be shown now because of who's singing, also contains two other separate moments, which would stop it being shown today. There's the chalky white moment, of course. And then at the end, there's that unwelcome cameo of a photo well the suicide jockey yes right at the end sir jimmy saville obe kcsg as we're contractually obliged to call him yes suicide yeah if only yeah he brandishes this photo is of jimmy saville with cigar in his mouth and he does an impression of the yodel thing as it happens

and it's just you're thinking can this song get any more horrific and then yes it does that happens. But amazingly this song did feature on the repeat on BBC 4 in 2011 they cut out three songs

from this Top of the Pops for that BBC 4 repeat and they kept this in. Was this before he'd been convicted or even accused? I'm not sure. Oh, this is 2011, so this is before everything. But even so, you know, oh. This whole performance and this record is, to me, it's like some kind of horrific dystopian vision of what an eternal 1976

would have been like davy travis stamping on a human face forever bellowing through his pubic grimace telling you to laugh telling you to laugh not making you laugh telling you to laugh yeah with that mask on in close-up it's fucking horrendous it's like what you see is you're losing consciousness as he's revving up the chainsaw and also dave lee travis in a in a lorry in 1976 with a mask over half of his face oh that cab's gonna funk isn't it face oh that cab's gonna funk isn't it if you were a female hitchhiker if you were a female hitchhiker you would definitely put your thumb down if you saw that did you ever have a cb or have a go on a cb yes my my mate had one. Yeah, so did I.

My mate had one, but he wasn't very good at it because all he'd do is he wouldn't have a handle or anything like that. He'd just listen in on police cars and stuff like that and other people. There was one bloke, I went round his house one night, we were in his bedroom on the CB, and the only thing I can remember was following one bloke around.

And all he was doing was, you know, asking for a come on or a, I don't know, a fucking 10-4 or something for any female CBers. I mean, he said it in all the lingo and he was really good at it, you know. And it all down pat. But as soon as a woman came on uh he'd say have you got big piss flaps it's like the sex pistols in that uh thing where they go america some project yeah and it's like oh okay you know that that wasn't really a big feature of the film convoy remember it's weird how you know in about 1981 wasn't it i think 81 might have been the high point of CB

as a kind of cultural moment. That's when it got legalised. That was when it got really big. I remember, you know, like these days on market stalls, you get those really shit t-shirts that say things like Facebook your mum or something like that. It was like that. I remember in

there's this market called Bessemer Road Market in Cardiff where there were just all these badges that said something like that i remember in there's this market called best my road market in cardiff where they were just all these badges that said something like you know 10-4 good buddy and stuff like that it was either that or ones that said i shot jr those are the two things yeah and have you got big yeah you're right this is years before that so yeah big selling t-shirt my mate's dad had a cb and it was right when they were legalized and And I used to go around and stare at it in awe. He was a plasterer, so he was richer than the rest of the street and spent that money freely and conspicuously.

So any sort of modish gadget would turn up there, right? And this is where I saw E.T. two months before it was in the cinema on a pirate video. It was Yorkshire Terriers and a Velveteen sofa. His handle was plasterboard. But the thing is, me and my mate, his son, used to sort of have a go on it, but there was a hostility towards carpet monkeys,

which means children, for most CBers, unsurprisingly. But, yeah, you could listen in. There used to be a bloke who would park his car in the street and put his CB on with a little speaker on the roof and listen to people having romantic conversations and stuff. I thought you meant that there was this antagonism between plasters and carpenters. No.

Yeah, always getting spots of plaster on the edges no but it was i mean it was it was shit it was it was like the radio days of the internet it was like this idea of being able to it was it seemed really exciting that you could converse with idiots that you didn't know as long as long as they were nearby it was like uh like on a telephone but more primitive and that yeah and i suppose the uh that was the convoy thing the convoy thing would be the equivalent of like flash mobs on the internet wouldn't it when that was a thing yeah but the point is there was never a convoy not in this country no no it's just a bunch of people coming to the slow realisation that there's nothing to say.

There's nothing at all to say. No one out there. No. You really are alone. It's meant to make you feel less alone. It makes you feel more alone. Bit like podcasting then, isn't it? The following week, Convoy GB jumped

10 places to number 4 it's highest position fucking hell number 4 the 4th most popular record in the hip parade in the United Kingdom in our lifetime Simon

this happened this is something that I find really bleak about the whole thing is actually I can't work out what's more bleak thought that Dave Lee Travis believed that this was funny and would be popular or that he

was right I don't know what's worse anyway sorry and this you know this pisses on an enormous height on virtually every other Radio 1 DJ who released a single it would be like

Ukip Calypso getting into the top five this decade Jesus Jesus. She's way back. Er, listen, plastic chicken, do you want to stick it in behind that suicide jockey? Er, what's a suicide jockey? As it happens, how's a mouth? Oh! That's the sound of Convoy GB.

Laurie Lingo and the Dipstick, spelled out as Davley, Travis and Paul Burnett at number 14. And at number 13, it's Eric Kahn, all by myself. at number 14 and at number 13 it's eric kahn all by myself when i was young i never needed anyone making love was just for fun those days are gone. Born in Cleveland in 1949, Eric Carman started his music career as lead singer of Raspberries, an early 70s power pop band which got to number five in America with Go All The Way in 1972.

After the band split up in 1975, Carman launched a solo career and this is his debut single which got to number two in America and is up this week from number 20 to number 13. It's also unashamedly based on Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 which was under the public domain in the US but not anywhere else. But Eric doesn't know that yet after that horrible uh halo of hair that we've we've just had to endure um we see another massive halo of hair at the beginning but it's a lot nicer isn't it it's a it's a lovely bit of work for the lighting guys actually isn't it yeah it's beautiful spotlight behind his hair gives that kind of halo effect so you can't see his face at first and then and then then you do see him and his his head is it's like something radio had to do his head is twice as big

as his body like like one of those nodding head figurines you can get and um yeah when you do see his face he looks like eric gates of ipswich town but but a sad eric gates of ipswich town but they they put a lot of effort in it i mean assuming it's a bbc shoot that you know we're watching because they they filmed it in two takes one way he's holding a mic and the other way he sat at the piano and they sort of yeah but so he sings in that in that nasal voice when i was young i never needed anyone and making love was just for fun those days are gone so what is it now for him

you know making love is it hard work a grim ordeal yeah a grim ordeal that makes him sound like Ron Atkinson

though doesn't it he's making love just for fun like like you know footballers score goals just for fun

yeah alright yeah yeah at the top of a hat, yeah. Yeah, the next line was, but I give it the full gun. Yeah. And that kind of doe-eyed, wobbly-lipped performance he gives, like Princess Diana in that Martin Bashir interview, it makes you want to ask, you know, you OK, hon?

Yes. I mean, cheer up, mate. You're a pop star. And then six other equally sad Eric Carmens start revolving around the central one. Yeah. Bohemian Rhapsody style. The thing is, his gravitas, the gravitas of this song, the sadness,

is undermined by the motor mechanic shirt he's wearing with an SO pass on it. It's like when Alan Partridge turns up at a funeral in a Castrol GTX bomber jacket. Yeah, I think those, it's like garage mechanics overalls, isn't it? I think it's for the common touch, but he's an unconvincing grease monkey, it has to be said. He is, isn't he?

Like Billy Joel in Uptown Girl. Yeah, but at least Billy Joel looks like a sort of a little Jersey bloke, you know what I mean? Whereas this is like, the fact that it's got Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto and it just adds to the impression of the events of this song taking place in the life of someone who has at some point taken piano lessons. Yeah, yeah. Also, the trouble with records like this,

and to some extent Nielsen's version of Without You, which I think this might be partly based on, that structure of having these sort of quiet passages giving way to a great emotional eruption in the chorus, it just puts me in mind of I've Lost My Mummy by Rolf Harris. There's a sort of similarity but it's other i mean i i do quite like the raspberries i'm not sure they're half as good as some people want to think or used to want to think and you know this is not an offensive record but it's pure drip music and it's like a lot

of songs in this genre it's so self-obsessed that it doesn't really let the listener in you know he sings most of it with his eyes closed he won't he won't even look at us he's so absorbed in the significance of his pain you know and he's not even singing to or about anyone if you listen to it he's just saying that he's got no mates and is to put it gently, going through tissues at a rate you wouldn't really expect from a man without a cold.

But I don't even dislike it, really. He's watching Andrea True, basically. I just don't think it's healthy for anyone to listen to this sort of music. It's not right. This is why we need a minister for loneliness, isn't it? It's not good for the soul.

No. It's interesting Taylor mentioning Harry Nilsson, because if Paul Nicholas is Destitute Man's David Essex, then Eric Carman is a biblical barefoot beggar's Harry Nilsson on his song. Do you reckon women fancied him? I don't know. Let me try and be a 70s woman for a minute.

Do they want to mother him or do they want to make it better, make him alright? No, it's still David Essex for me, I'm afraid. See, I would put it this way. You wouldn't really want to play that piano after he'd been on it. because all the spunk all over the keys coming off his fingers and i mean you wouldn't want to define yourself the way that he does it because there is a difference between uh honest expression of pain and you know, cloying self-pity.

And bear in mind, it is the 70s. What is a bloke going to do on his own in 1976? Yeah, well, the telly shuts down at half 11. Yeah, no Xbox, no Tinder. You know, yeah, I do understand why he's feeling a bit sorry for himself because it's like, oh, shit, I'm on my own and the telly's gonna switch off soon

fuck my life it's just that sense that all of this the entire expression of his loneliness and sadness is entirely for the benefit of any passing women comes across so strongly

this whole genre of music was huge at the time it's kind of really wet, depressive, piano-based, singer-songwriting stuff. Yeah. You know, Gilbert O'Sullivan as well, obviously. I mean, Nilsson's a class above, I suppose. One of my mates, she went,

oh God, back in the 90s, she went to a wedding and the groom's widowed mother insisted on having the first dance with him. And it was to this. Jeez. Exactly, yeah. That must have been fun.

Yeah, you imagine the bridesmaid would have been, what was her name, Cheryl Vernon from the Wedding Bell Blues video. She would fit in. So the following week, All By Myself nudged up one place to number 12, its highest position. The follow-up, Never Gonna Fall In Love Again, oh, he's a fucking one-man Facebook thread, isn't he, this bloke, was also nicked from Rachmaninoff, but failed to chart here.

All By Myself was taken to number six in September of 2004 by Celine Dion, by which time Eric had given up 12% of royalties from the song to Rachmaninoff's estate. All By Myself Man in Office's State. by himself, a number 13. Here's an American group who are touring around at the moment, all around Great Britain, but not actually at the moment. They're here with us at the top of the pots. That is Night on the Pips, and they're going to take that midnight train to Georgia. LA

Ooh Too much for the man Too much for the man He couldn't make it So he's leaving life He's come to know Ooh Tony Bumblefucks' way through a link explaining that the next group are currently touring the UK. Why, it's Gladys Night in the Pips and Midnight Train to Georgia. It's Gladys Knight and the Pips and Midnight Train to Georgia.

Formed in Atlanta, Georgia in 1952, the Pips were a R&B band managed by Gladys Knight's mam before being mentored by Cholly Atkins, a dancer and choreographer from Alabama who drilled them to dancing perfection. They signed to Motown in 1966 after insisting that Atkins stayed with them, leading to him working with the rest of the roster but they were kept in the second division of the label and didn't score their first UK hit until Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me In The Summer Of 1967. After failing to make the charts with the original version of I Heard It Through The Grapevine they'd have to wait until

1972 for their next UK hit Walking My Shoes which got to number 35 that summer but they'd have to wait until 1972 for their next UK hit, Walk In My Shoes, which got to number 35 that summer. But they'd then go on to rack up five hits on the bounce and switch labels from Motown to Budda. In the UK, this song, a cover version of the Jim Weatherly song Midnight Plane to Houston, is the follow-up to Part-Time Love, which got to number 30 in November of 1975. But the single had been a number one hit in America in 1973, and it's not in the charts yet. I do not understand why they didn't release this earlier, because it's fucking brilliant, this song.

It must be nearly eight o'clock, Top of the Pops, because you can hear the pips. Oh! No apologies, that's a joke worthy of tony blackburn and doubly so in fact because he invented time checks as he keeps reminding people yes yeah nobody knew what the time was until tony came along um i i used to hate gladys night um because i had why i i held a disproportionate grudge against her for ruining a compilation album when I first got into Motown

because of being into the Style Council and Dexys and all those other bands who ripped off Motown I got this otherwise brilliant various artists compilation called The Big Wheels of Motown with loads of absolute bangers on there but there were just two really

syrupy 70s ballads to ruin the vibe on the album one of them is i'm still waiting by diana ross and the other is help me make it through the night the chris christopherson song by and it was way too adult for me and way too kind of showbiz hebel miller one if you know what mean. So I unreasonably resented Gladys Knight for that. But she does have a great choked up, just been crying voice. And you can't argue with Midnight Train to Georgia, which I think in Gladys Knight in the Pips' hands is a political song in a gentle and subtle way.

It's originally written, as you say, by Jim Weatherly, white guy, country song, but in the hands of soul singer like Gladys Knight or Sissy Houston who recorded it before her, it takes on a different meaning. It's, you know, sung by a black singer. It's telling a story

about the glass ceiling on the ambition of young black people to make it big in 70s America. It's about thwarted dreams. Yeah, and you know who gave the original song, the title, Midnight Plane to Houston? No. Farrah Fawcett Majors.

Really? He was knocking, yeah, he was knocking about, the singer, the songwriter was knocking about with Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett Majors. And yeah, she was uh she just said oh yeah i've got to got to go tonight i've uh got to get the midnight plane to houston because that's where a family lived what's interesting is um the way um that the backing singers the pips um yeah they they advance the narrative with with their lines

so instead of just repeating what the lead singer has sung, which is the standard thing, they actually sing different stuff than the lead singer's. And it pushes the storyline along. It's kind of an interesting way of delivering it. Yeah, I mean, you do touch upon the political side of things, but this is a universal song because it is about people kind of like walking

away from their dreams you know and what makes it even more tragic is is that it's not her yeah she's gonna go with him she's gonna stick by him yeah yeah she has to capitulate to this loser and uh who won't even stay in the same state as her because he can't face his own failure. That's an uncharitable reading of the song. Just as a bit of contrast. But yeah, they all count. Yeah, she could have said, well, she could have said, yeah, well, you know, I'll see you back in Georgia. He's fucking off back to Tbilisi.

Because, yeah, I mean, she could easily have said, all right, well, you know, safe journey back and maybe I'll see you at Christmas. But, you know, I'm going to see how it goes out here. But there's never a bad time to hear this song, especially not when it's actually being sung by Gladys Knight and the Pips right in front of you, even with Gladys in a Windy Miller smock.

And the Pips look terrible. The pips are dressed like country rubes in the city. I don't know, man. I like that they've got this tablecloth jacket, so they're kind of quite fly. Yeah, to me, they look like farmers trying to make it in the Big Apple. Maybe that's appropriate, really.

Yeah, or cut-price salesmen, like flogging Norg hide way uptown but the dance the dancing gives the game away though because you see them dancing it's like yeah okay all right they're they're actually really cool the other thing that i'd like to direct people towards on the on the video playlist is the episode of the richard pryor show where uh the the pips perform this song on their own with no Gladys Knight it's fucking beautiful wow no words no no no singing from Gladys Knight just the Pips bit it's great but this is um presumably they're backed by the BBC yes on this um because they're singing live and it's obviously not the record um but there's a really nice warm rolling feel to this that's really different to the record i mean despite

the fact that it's being played by far hackier musicians like far hackier and presumably far drunker musicians um but the sort of the the well-practiced immediacy of the singing really sells it uh also i think gladys has got a cold right if you listen closely that all these blunted consonants right it's like big diet train to georg. But it's very intelligent how she drops a lot of the consonants. Second class return to dotting ag. Yay! Yeah. She allows her voice to crack over a lot of the consonants in this song. If you listen, it's really smart. A really sort of someone who goes out and sings every night

and knows how to do this. Oh, I've got a bit of a cold. I'll crack my voice over the consonant so people don't hear but she can't get away with it on the phrase bid diet train to georgia it's too central to the song but it doesn't hold her back at all in fact there's a few songs like this where people have got a cold like the long and winding road by the beatles cartney's got a cold yeah you can hear it and the other one is Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, which, you know,

it's an amazing record. Stevie Nicks is croakier than usual on it. And if you listen, she actually sings in the stillness of rebebbering what you had. It's really noticeable

as soon as you spot it. I think, I mean, you'd think she'd have gone out and got something to clear her nose, but obviously not. Yeah, I wonder why. I can't imagine what that would have been. But this song, it is quite,

it is the happiest miserable song ever, isn't it? And it's because it's seen from the woman's perspective. I mean, her bloke is, you know, if he was singing this song and it's and it's because it's it's seen from the woman's perspective i mean that her bloke is it you know if he was singing this song it's like oh fucking i've got to go back to the fucking shit all i've just come from and look everyone in the face and they're all going to take the piss out of me for thinking i was summer where she's like oh well george might be nice you know get loads of peaches and you know fuck it why not It's an amazing record of self-sacrifice, really, isn't it? I'd rather be with him in his world than without him in mine. Yeah.

Incredible life. Good on you, Gladys. So, two weeks later, Midnight Train to Georgia would enter the charts at number 48 and a month later would peak at number 10. The follow-up, Make Yours a Happy Home, would get to number 35 in August of this year and then have eight more top 40 hits before splitting up in 1989. Get up and boogie That's right

Formed in Munich in 1974 Silver Convention were a production duo consisting of a Yugoslavian arranger called Sylvester Levy and a German protest singer of the 60s called Michael Kuntz. They had their first hit in May of 1975 with Save Me, and this is the follow-up to Fly Robin Fly, which got to number 28 in November of 1975, and it's up this week from number 10 to number 9.

For some reason, the BBC can't get hold of any footage of the group, so they've gone for playing a selection of old black and white cartoons, whistle test style. There's also no introduction on this, because we've taken it from the UK gold version, and it came after a commercial break. So I hate it when that happens. Imagine what Tony could have said about this.

You've got to try pretty hard to find a disco record from this era that I don't like. But Get Up and Boogie is one. It sounds cursory and impassive and functional, not even in a good way. It tells you to get up and boogie, but it doesn't make you want to get up and boogie. Part of the problem is that all the bass is rolled off

because it's 1970s telly. And without the heavy bass, there's not much reason for this record to exist anyway because it's just a four on the floor with a bass pulse with the same musical and lyrical phrase going round and round and round and when you're dealing with that kind of minimalism everything has to balance or it just sounds silly now obviously this record is quite silly anyway and not very good but the point is it's a pure dance record there's nothing else to it at. So it has to be right on that basic level,

which means an earth-pounding bass. And as soon as you take it off, it's just intensely boring. And the animation traumatised my cat. Oh, really? Yeah, as soon as it came on, she sat bolt upright, staring horrified at it right to the end and it's not good at her age with her health no but if you were a cat though you you would be quite horrified by this wouldn't it it's very well considering what's going on in the in the

elevation yeah well let's let's go through it shall we uh scene by scene we have a snake dancing to a cat playing the piano and then there's two giraffes strutting about uh then monkey brass section then two elephants tap dancing uh then the smaller cat uh clonks the snake on the head with a bone and the pianist applauds and then it you know then it takes a a rather troubled, doesn't it, chaps? Yeah, yeah. We have African tribesmen dancing around a hut with spears and shields and the cats shitting themselves while the tribesmen stick their heads through the hut and try to eat them.

And then the cats end up in a pot and then we go back to a monkey band and it finishes off with two monkeys having a snog, which is nice. But, you know, if I was your cat, Taylor, I wonder what would happen to them other two cats in the pot. Yeah, well, soothing her was at least a distraction for me from how creepy the animation really is.

Yeah. Because it's that very kind of early animation, sort of black and white. It's kind of 20s, isn't it? Yeah. And that early animation is always terrifying. If you watch stuff like, you know, even stuff like Gertie the Dinosaur and that,

it's so crude and it feels so weirdly ancient that you get freaked out. Same way the original viewers must have been like the drawings they're coming alive for some reason live action stuff from the early 20th century still can have a great warmth to it like if you watch laurel and hardy or buster keaton it still feels really human um whereas early animation is like breathing in corpse dust always always gives me the creeps it's worth remembering that you know back then cartoons weren't automatically kids stuff was it the only thing that the section with the african tribesman is lacking is davely

travis doing the voices yes yes but it's a shame we don't see the ladies of Silver Convention because they look great. It was just these three women in crazy outfits, like, you know, skin-tight jumpsuits and with feathery cuffs and stuff, doing ludicrously basic dance moves, almost in unison, and smiling creepily. Although the clip I've seen before of them miming to this record is even

more disturbing than the animation because yeah they're surrounded by these it's got to be german it can only be german tv they're surrounded by these strange overlapping sort of limb shapes the color of dead flesh and it looks like they're standing in a mass grave basically but like they've been miniaturised and they're literally dancing on a mass grave I've no idea what it's meant to be but

yeah I mean this cartoon clip presumably it wasn't sent to the BBC by Silver Conventions record company saying, oh, we think you should play this alongside the song. So it must have been chosen by someone at the beep.

I mean, what, Robin Nash or somebody thought, right, that's what we'll show. What a weird decision to make. They just went, oh, look, it's loads of animals and people dancing. I mean, its position on the show is just weird in itself, given that there's not one but two trans people routines.

So already you've got two songs where there's no performer in the flesh. So really, I mean, couldn't they have just, I don't know, why? I just don't get why it's there. Yeah, well, I mean, obviously, as we said, the BBC have got form in this sort of thing because they were doing it for whistle test since the early 70s. And, you know, it wouldn't surprise me

if this was... if they'd just lifted this from a previous thing that played on whistle test. It doesn't seem to be, you know, exact syncing of anything. No, not at all. It's not cut to the beat at all, is it? No. But then again, you know exact sinking of anything no it's not cut no beat at all is it no but then again you know this is kind of like this is demonstrating that you know disco's already

being seen as this throwaway thing and you could put anything to it and it won't matter yeah but you know in the case of this record that's pretty much accurate because it is fairly crap i didn't like fly robin fly either myself no me neither and i love this kind of stuff but talking about as we were before about the relationship between hit records and their follow-up um fly robin fly is just it's exactly the same it's basically this record but with it's got a minor chord in it that's the only difference and slightly different lyrics and it's got an instrumental break that is like the theme from a daytime magazine program but it's the same concept of just the same sort of banal phrase repeated an absurd number of times it's like uh like an early

andy warhol painting in music um but yeah it's no better than that so the following week Get Up and Boo get nudged up two places to number 7 it's highest position the follow up Tiger Bay was immediately released a week later but would only get to number 41 but they'd have one more hit in February 1977 with Everybody's

Talking About Love with everybody's talking about love. There you go, that's us on the Silver Convention, number nine this week, and it's called Get Up and Boogie. Here's one of my favourite Four Seasons records called Silver Star, and to dance to it, the lovely Pans People. Blackburn introduces one of his favourite songs by the Four Seasons, Silver Star. introduces one of his favourite songs by the Four Seasons, Silver Star. Formed in New Jersey in 1956 as The Four Lovers, and then changing their name in tribute to the local bowling alley four years later, the Four Seasons first bothered the chart in late 1962 when Sherry Bay Bear got to number eight.

After ten top 40 hits and three top ten placings, they finally landed their first number 1 when Oh What A Night got to the top for 2 weeks in February of 1976. This is the follow up to that and the first cut from the new LP Who Loves Ya. It's up this week from number 27 to number 16 and it's the second of a double shift for Pan's People. However, what Tony has failed to mention is that this is the last ever appearance by Pan's People. Earlier this year, the last original member, Ruth Pearson, had decided to retire as she was about to turn 30

and Flick Colby and the Top of the Pops production team were keen to start with a new mixed gender troupe. However, auditions for a replacement were conducted without the knowledge of the BBC, who were well dischuffed and it led to the newest member of Pants People, Lee Ward, leaving earlier this month claiming, quote, it's a big mistake. Men rush home to watch sexy ladies.

They do not want to see other men. Yeah, once again, lesbians pushed out of the equation. I mean, this is the snuffing out of the dying embers of Top of the Pops' golden age, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, it's already the golden age, which I consider to be 1972 to 1974. But this is, yeah, this is the definite end, isn't it?

At least past people are going out with a very typical performance. You know, they've got the long, unkempt tinsel pubes. Well, you know, it was the 70s. Yeah, they've got a silver star over their crotches with a bit of tinsel it's very literal it's very literal

with the silver stars on their heads and Pans people were nothing if not literal one of them does a twirl on a podium

nearly falls over which I like which shows you the kind of time pressure they were always working under and one of them that was Ruth who got a spot on her own, which was nice.

Oh, was it? Right, there's that... Hang on, there's the bit where one of them, who I thought was Cherry Gillespie, absolutely works her arse off during the slow bit in her tassel jumpsuit. Yeah. And, you know, I hope she got paid extra for that. But, yeah, I mean, we can talk about the song, but...

Yeah, we'll put that to one side for the minute so it's all about the people of Pan as if to make up for the missed opportunity of their previous routine on this programme the very first shot is of a Pan's person opening the white sheet

wrapped around her to reveal that she's almost totally naked, which is as good a way as any to go out, I suppose. Yeah. But it's an interesting outfit because with the loincloth and the pointy thing on the head and the arms spread out wide and the prominent ribs, but also with the nipple glitter and the sparkly tassel dangling from the crotch, nipple glitter and the sparkly tassel dangling from the crotch it's like an almost perfect cross between the crucified christ and an exotic dancer in a in a in a port city somewhere it's like a

it's like at any minute tony blackburn's gonna pierce a hole in her side with a spear and she's gonna start firing ping pong balls out of it. But it's noticeably better. It's noticeably better than most Pans people routines in terms of the actual dancing. And I don't know whether that's by chance or whether Flick was pulling out all the stops for the bigger part. Yeah, because there's a lot of special effects here, isn't there? There's lots of overlays and green screen nonsense going on.

They're going out with a bang, aren't they? They're going supernova, if you will. And Ruth's solo spot in the middle actually looks like proper dancing. Yes. I mean, not that I know fucking anything about dancing, but I do know that a lot of the time what Pan's people are doing isn't really proper dancing. And this is she's really

expressive and uh you know like something that she's actually worked on and you can you can tell because it's great the only thing that would make this even better would be if if they if they just basically zoomed in on one of the star crotches and it exploded and created a black hole and sucked everything into it. What a way to go that would be. Surely that wasn't beyond the budget of the BBC special effects department at this time. You know what I mean?

They were doing Doctor Who at this time. They could have done it. What a missed opportunity that they couldn't all transform into Ruby Flipper right there and then. Like Doctor Who, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Regenerate, yeah.

Yes, thank you. That's the word I was looking for. Thank you, Taylor. Well, it's a horrific thought. It is. But the song, Silver Star, I fucking hate it. I wasn't really listening. Yeah, I mean, you know, I love a bit of Four Seasons with Frankie.

I mean, who doesn't love a bit of Frankie Valli? But, you know, this is not one of their best. This is a kind of AOR country disco period. And it's not even... This is probably one of the crappiest follow-ups to a brilliant number one ever. Well, yeah. And it's not even Frankie Valli on vocals.

It's the drummer, Gary Fulci, sang lead on this. Because Frankie Valli was losing his hearing due to otocerosis. Yeah, yeah. I'd be ringing up Pete's Root and demanding that this Four Seasons got sent back. I'm just thinking about the over-sexiness of this routine. Yeah, you can't go away from it can you tell i'll be thinking quite a lot about it but it's i don't know it's i don't know if this is just me projecting onto the past but it's like there's two ways you could look at this one is a bunch of poor exploited women suffering from a bad case of false consciousness or stockholm syndrome you, flaunting themselves for an audience of wanking patriarchs. Or two, some beautiful dancers expressing themselves

within the slightly restrictive limits of the programme they're working on and the era they're living in. You know, you never get the sense of Pan's people doing it as anything other than people having a really good time doing what they enjoy, which is why, you know, however sleazy the DJ intros and outros might get, you never get a bad feeling from them.

You never get a sense that they're pandering to anything. Do you know what I mean? Although they sort of are in a way, you never get the sense that they're pandering to anything. Do you know what I mean? Although they sort of are in a way, you never get the sense that they're pandering to anything unpleasant. Top of the pops of this era without pants people is unthinkable. Yeah, and this is actually a really nice and slightly emotional farewell for them. Who, of course, I mean, they get no official send-off. They just disappear.

And that's so wrong, man. They should have made such a big deal about that. They just disappear and they're never spoken of again. You know, like they're totally disposable. As opposed to these completely uncreative, inarticulate, unfunny blockhead DJs who seem to think they're fucking superstars. And that tells you far more about 1970s sexism than this dance routine ever could.

They should at least have been gathered around Tony Blackburn at the end of the show all waving goodbye or something. Yeah. Yeah, it's goodbye, Pans people. Hello, Ruby Flipper. Don't get comfortable. Yes. Yeah.

So the following week, Silver star jumped up 10 places to number six and would get as high as number three the follow-up a cover of we can work it out from the soundtrack all this and world war ii would only get to number 34 and it was a series of diminishing returns until they split up in the mid-80s. The following week, the new troupe, Ruby Flipper, made their debut featuring former Panspersons Cherry Gillespie and Suman Hainik and were managed by Ruth Pearson. Oh, Ruth got kicked upstairs. That's nice.

Yeah, it's like a football manager. You're playing careers over and, yeah. That was an absolute star there. Yeah. After making no mention of the death of Pan's people. Tony, the heartless bastard, bangs on about Frankie Vallet and introduces Let Your Love Flow by the Bellamy Brothers. Spawned in Pasco County, Florida in the late 40s, the Bellamy Brothers, David and Homer, formed a country rock band in the late 60s.

After moving to Los Angeles in the mid-70s, they hooked up with a roadie for Neil Diamond, who offered them a song that his boss knocked back, Let Your Love Flow. It ended up being their debut single, and had been the number one in America the previous month. It's up this week

from number 33 to number 28, and because they're not in the country and pants people are dead, we get some mocked up concert footage. I think this is Simon's favourite. What? Is it? What's that say?

It's right up your street. This is right up your street, isn't it? I quite like this. Really? Yeah, Let Your Love Flow. It's in the same vein of beardy white man country soul as something like Love The One You're With by Stephen Stills or Couldn't Get It Right by Climax Blues Band or Even When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman beardy white man country soul as something like love the one you're with by steven stills or

couldn't get it right by climax blues band or even when you're in love with a beautiful woman by dr hook um they do look like they're going to hold you at gunpoint in a remote forest and make you squeal like a piggy and um the one on the right looks like eric idol i noticed um yes he does yes they're real cowboys by the way um they've got a 200 acre ranch in Florida where they raise cattle and horses and they now right they both now look like the old guy stranger at the end of the Big Lebowski

played by Sam Elliott who starts chatting to the dude at the bar in the bowling alley and asks the bartender for some of that good star spirilla that's what they look like is this doing anything for you, Taylor, at all? No. The trouble with this marriage of country music

and middle-of-the-road FM rock, it seemed to work when people came from one side or the other into the middle, right? Like country acts that went for mainstream radio hits or soft rock bands that went country. Sometimes you end up with a good record, but bands who just appeared already playing that hybrid are almost always terrible.

And the thing about this record is it's almost perfectly generic. It's almost flawlessly generic, like a denim egg. But I can't get into it. Also, I wonder what it was that made the lanky one think he was so special that he didn't have to grow any facial hair. Yeah. Completely clean shaven. What's it?

I mean, I don't know. He's let the side down there, hasn't he? I mean, this to me sounds like a three-minute advert for jeans. Yeah. Yeah, and also the fact that it's like an American clip. Like when I was a kid, this would have looked like it was being beamed in from the moon, right? It's that smeary, standards-converted NTSC look to it.

Yeah. As well as this completely foreign music uh yeah and it just it just leaves me with a slightly queasy feeling yeah they're just in a box aren't they yeah and get get next to some cactuses of summer you know show us a bit of america yeah well they're from florida aren't they which is it's the south but it's also far enough off to the side that it's a little bit different yeah and they really were they really were brothers weren't they yeah yeah yes it's not it's not like the walker brothers they really were brothers which is funny because you know they look about as similar as chops and cheese they're not there's

nothing they've actually converged now If you look photos of them now, they've both got grey handlebar moustaches and they both live on this ranch which has got, over the gateway, like, you know, South Fork in Dallas,

you know, you drive through and it's got a massive thing in wooden letters, like hanging down wooden letters saying Bellamy Brothers Ranch. So, yeah, you know,

they're really sort of trading off the name, off their like three hits that they Ranch. So yeah, they're really sort of trading off the name. Off their like three hits that they have. Of course, one of the other ones being when there was classic country, Dublon Tundras, if I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?

Yeah. Fuck. So the following week, Let Your Love Flow moved up eight places to number 20 and would eventually get to number seven the follow-up satin sheets would only get to number 43 in august of this year but they'd get to number three in september of 1979 with if i said you had a beautiful body no fuck off get away from me now you dirty bastard in 2008 thanks to that Barclaycard advert where that bloke leaves work on a water slide,

Let Your Love Flow got back in the charts, peaking at number 21. Oh, imagine them two in satin sheets, man. You have to pick a lot of hairs out of those satin sheets afterwards. hairs out of those satin sheets afterwards. There it is, that's the big 128 sound. Now, the Bellamy Brothers and Let Your Love Flow. And we're going to go up there right to the number one slot right now on top of the pop, so don't believe it, I think they're there for life.

Brotherhood of Man and Saviour, Kisses for Me. Though it hurts to go away It's impossible to stay me. Blackburn makes the doom-laden suggestion that the next song could be number one forever. Save All Your Kisses For Me by the Brotherhood of Man. Formed in 1969 by songwriter Tony Hillier, Brotherhood of Man were a rotating collective of session singers who had a number 10 hit with United We Stand and a number 22 hit with Where We Stand and a number 22 hit

with Where Are You Going To My Love in 1970. After being dropped by their label in 1972, Hillyer settled on a permanent lineup which failed to score a hit in the UK but became popular in Europe where they toured extensively throughout the mid-70s. In 1976, Hillyer decided to try to put the band over in the UK by entering them in the Song for Europe competition with a tune he'd written with the male members of the band, Save All Your Kisses For Me, which beat the band Coco and Cheryl Baker by two points. The single entered the charts as the highest new entry in mid-March

of this year, knocked I Love To Love by Tina Charles off the top spot the week before the Eurovision Song Contest and then it battered the rest of Europe, breaking the record for highest average vote which still stands today. This is its sixth

week at number one. Telly, you can stay at this because, you know, after all, you're only three. Simon, you're the same age as me. Eurovision Song Contest 1976, did it mean anything to you? Did you feel a swell in your chest of pride?

No, I didn't. I didn't watch it. I didn't watch it. I didn't really get into Eurovision until probably about 78. I do remember this being number one though and it feeling like it was going to be forever as tony blackburn says um to the extent that i mean i don't think i saw this episode of top the pops apart from anything else because um a lot of the time we didn't have a telly and i'm not sort of getting out the world's smallest violin here but um quite often our telly was it was a rental one from like radio rentals or

rediffusion or whatever and it was getting repossessed if we haven't um but i certainly do remember seeing at least one episode where this was number one and um yeah there's there's there's something really upsetting about their giant white bell-bottom trousers and it's the way they're lifting up one knee at a time, as if they're letting out a fart in unison. It's like a rectal gas harmony. I mean, to me, that Eurovision Song Contest win was massively important because, you know,

we're eight years old, right? We missed World War 2 we missed both World Wars and we missed the 1966 World Cup we're British we've not won anything all of a sudden here come the brotherhood of man to win something for Britain

Christ that desperate the originality of British music with their completely ingenious line-up of two couples. If the actual ABBA, in their way, are perfect Scandinavian archetypes, it does make sense that for the cheap shit British knockoff version,

you should have these sausage sandwich eating motherfuckers in their Littlewood slacks, you know. Shake in Sweden. Well played. The main bloke looks so much like he should be in a 70s British sex comedy don't you think like running around Martin Lee the one with the tush

running around a damp bedroom in purple Y fronts they might as well have a John M East in the group it's fucking horrible the thing about Martin Lee right because this is a good old thing that we do on this show quite often is in the group. It's fucking horrible. The thing about Martin Lee, right? Because this is a good old thing that we do on this show quite often

is the guess the age game. I mean, I guess you've already looked into it, right? No, I couldn't bring myself to. Go on. Martin Lee, he's the crinkly-eyed avuncular lead singer of the Brotherhood of Man. He looks like a young 8-8.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I'll just come out with it. You know, people listening to this can now have a guess. They can picture him in their minds and think how old he probably was. He was 26, right? No! That is...

No! Yeah. Yeah, Martin Lee was 26 when this was going on. That is younger than the lead singer of was going on that is younger than the lead singer of the 1975 that is younger than Taylor Swift that is the same age as Ed Sheeran, Louis Tomlinson

from One Direction, Eden Hazard and Antoine Griezmann so wow he had a tough paper round everyone had a tough paper round that's shocking. Oh my fucking god, man. We're old enough

to be his dad. Fucking hell. It's just you look at him and no way is that man 26, but hey, that was the 70s. No way. No way. Who do you think was the last of those blokes? I reckon Steve Bruce People who looked 40 when they were 25

Yeah At the time Talking about ABBA comparisons He was actually living in sin With Sandra Stevens The blonde girl And that was kept really quiet because, apparently because they had loads of young fans

and they didn't want to be a bad influence or something. I can't imagine any teenage girls, you know, killing themselves because Martin Lee's been taken, to be honest, because they do look, they look like two couples who met on holiday in mallorca or somewhere and you know the meaty they meet up with each other at bernie inns and stuff and pampas grass pampas grass outside um outside the uh on the patio outside the front window yeah yeah yeah and there's been you know there's been a bit of wife swapping yeah yeah

but yeah but but you know, they're past that now and they can still be friends. And, you know, I've always said it, Martin Lee would be the ideal next-door neighbour of the pop world. I'd love to have him living next door to me because he'd lend you his leaf blower, wouldn't he? Yeah, as long as you didn't get on the wrong side of him yeah it might not be pleasant but there is no you're right there's but there's something blandly sleazy about this record and i can't quite put my finger on it because it's i think it's the

fact that it's so sexless and cutesy yeah and they're so sort of, you know, goody-goody. Your mind just scrabbles around for it. Well done. I mean, surely this is one of the creepiest songs ever written, right? Oh, sure. But, I mean, in the way they present themselves, they're very clean. But it's like nothing looks clean in the 70s.

No, it really doesn't. Like, nothing looks clean in the 70s. No, it really doesn't. It's like you're watching the early stages of, the very early stages of an orgy for Ponton's Blue Coat. Simon, explain to anybody who doesn't know what you feel is creepy about this lovely song. All right, well, obviously it's one of the creepiest songs ever written because um it leads you to think that he's got his wife or girlfriend at home and he can't wait to get home and shagger basically only to drop the big where does it say that well

that's what is implied in the lyrics to me like you just can't go on pick out a little well you know he's gonna give her a scene too well he doesn't say seeing too you just can't go on pick out a little well you know he's going to give her a scene too well he doesn't say seeing too but he can't wait to like you know get a load more kisses uh while he's at work it's all he can think about it's all that's on his mind and he wants to get home to her and all that kind of stuff right and then they drop the big reveal at the end even though you're only three it's like and then and the music the music at that point audibly goes almost you know and dude it's a bit terry in june at the end doesn't it and and for me and what's even better about it is the conclusion to their choreography where as they do the big reveal they actually all smile fold their

arms and step back as if to say ah you weren did you see? They put their heads on one side. Yeah, you thought it was X, but in fact it's Y, and we were pointlessly fucking with you, and you drew the logical conclusion from the information you were given. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's us that are the sick perverts. But listen, right, for me, the fact that he's asking his three-year-old daughter

to save her kisses for him is gross enough in itself i i get creeped out by families where everything's too touchy-feely and huggy and kissy-kissy between the parents and the kids there's no that in my family i tell you it's brisk handshakes and a polite hello at best and um that that's how i that's how i turned in that's how i turned into the well-adjusted adult you see before you today. No, it gives me the creeps. The following week, Save All Your Kisses For Me dropped to number two, knocked off the top spot by Fernando by ABBA, but it finished the year as the biggest selling single of 1976.

Contemplate that for a moment. six oh contemplate that for a moment the follow-up my sweet rosalie only got to number 30 taylor explain my sweet rosalie i don't know this one so i'm all ears here well spoiler alert um they did exactly the same thing again it was the same uh giving out of insufficient information followed by a big reveal at the end it's exactly the same trick you think it's about his girlfriend but it it's actually about a dog i mean no one no one can have trusted anything they said ever again no it's like they just they're just fucking with you all the time. Oh, we're brotherhood of man, we're playing tonight.

Oh, alright, come in. No, we're playing Scrabble. Do you reckon, right, they just heard Lola by the kinks and they thought, right, well, you know, Ray Davis has done that, like, is it a man or a woman thing? And they thought, right, well, where can we go after that? Like, a three-year-old child and a dog but they'd score two more number ones in 1977 and 1978

with angelo and figaro however their chalk career petered out by the aventures fuck off simon and their last throw of the dice was to model themselves on Bucks Fizz, renaming themselves BHM, and releasing the single Lightning Flash, which only got to number 67 in the summer of 1982. Still going today, though, aren't they, Taylor? Yeah, but they play gay clubs. Do they? Yeah, but it's not because they did a load of great high energy records

or anything like that it's just as camp right so imagine if this was your job that was like hey we're still going because we're so shit and people just turn up to sort of because they think we're funny because we're so crap

and he's still 26 years old no he's 68 now which when you look at him then you think well surely he's got to years old no he's 68 now which when you look at him then you think well surely he's got to be nearly 80 by now but no good lord save all your kisses for me

even though you're only 45 yes Bye-bye Don't cry, honey Don't cry But you saved them for me Even though you're only three That's one lovely brotherhood of man. Save the Kisses for me, the number one song. What a shame, there's one right out of time.

Thanks very much for watching. Be back with us next week for another edition of Top of the Pops. See you then. Bye. Falling in love Falling in love Falling in love With you Falling in love

With you Blackburn, finally surrounded Falling in love with you Blackburn, finally surrounded by the comely young maidens of 1976, bids us farewell and introduces Can't Help Falling In Love by The Stylistics. Formed in Philadelphia when members of the Monarchs and the Percussions merged in 1968, The Stylistics were signed to Avco Records in 1970, hooked up with producer Tom Bell and notched up a run of chart hits in the US, including the original versions of You Are Everything and Stop, Look, Listen to Your Heart.

It wasn't until 1972 when they started to make an impression in the UK when Betcha By Golly Wow got to number 13 in July of this year but as their appeal waned in America they went on a run of 11 top 40 hits over here including the number one with I Can't Give You Anything in the summer of 1975. This song a cover of the Elvis tune which got to number one for four weeks in the spring of 1962 is the follow-up to Funky Weekend, which got to number 10 in March of this year. And it's up this week from number 40 to number 20. Elvis songs, you kind of like,

you covered them at your peril, didn't you? Not many people went there. Yeah. And they certainly didn't go covering an Elvis song in this way. Does it work? No, I mean, like any... No, it really doesn't, does no no like any decent person would i love

stylistics i i love i love that twanging sitar like guitar thing they do um i i love russell tompkins juniors falsetto but this is a piece of crap it does not need to exist and it's for the best that on this episode we only get 45 seconds something of an anti-climax isn't it i mean of all the stylistics tracks it could have been we find ourselves talking about this it's horrible it just feel it just feel wrong it's like the stylistics come on and we have to spend 10 minutes slagging them off it No, no, no. Let's just pretend this never happened. The following week... This is the shortest one ever, isn't it?

The following week, Can't Help Falling In Love jumped six places to number 14 and would eventually get to number four. The follow-up... I know, I know. What was wrong with 1976, people? The follow-up 16 Bars got to number 7 in September of this year

and would be their last top 10 hit. Their greatest hits album though, right? Sorry. There's one called The Best of the Stylistics. I can picture it now. It's got a black sleeve with yellow writing. And then

they had a few more hits. So they just brought it out again called the very best of the stylistics it's the same font and everything um with probably with this song and 16 bars added on the end you listen to that lp and it's just fantastic what you know what what what a band really um my mild ocd is slightly triggered by the thought of the best of the stylistics being followed by an album called The Very Best of the Stylistics that has more tracks in it. Oh, yeah, good point. But, you know, would you sooner listen to this version or UB40's version?

Jesus, I forgot about that. Is suicide an option? So what's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One follows up with Are You Being Served? where a fire alarm at Grace Brothers give John Inman and friends plenty of scope for their naughty humour, it says here in the TV listings. And then the Burke special deals with the future of the square peg,

the person who doesn't fit in properly in the job that he does. After the news, it's a repeat of the Francesca Anis series, a pin to see the peep show, and finishes off with a repeat of the omnibus episode about Busby Barclay. BBC2 is shown in episode of Chronicle, where a Danish family spend a fortnight living in an Iron Age village, followed by Call My Bluff, a Man Alive report on the treatment of long-term mental patients, the first episode of a new series of Rhoda where she's wondering whether to tell her new husband that she's pregnant,

a tribute on Jack Robson who wrote Blade and Racers and finishes the evening with News Night. ITV is running a repeat of Man About the House where George Roper is thinking of splitting the house up into flatlets. The Janet Sussman and Denham Elliott drama series Clayhanger about the intrigues of the potteries in the 19th century. This week News at 10 and Driving where Tony Bastable explains the mysteries of transmission and why cars sometimes refuse to start. Meanwhile, Tony Blackburn is on his way to a hotel in Kensington to see Margot. So, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow?

For me, literally, probably nothing, because I didn't even see the episode, didn't have a telly. Yeah, I don't know. What would be the most probably pans people although we wouldn't have known it was the last travis isn't it oh god yeah pans people practically in the nude yeah yeah yeah you can see the families and everything that's what people have been telling you simon yeah yeah knowing you hadn't seen it. Yeah, yeah. In a Welsh accent. It depends what age I'm meant to be in this playground of the imagination. Well, whatever age you want to be, it is a playground after all, Taylor. Yeah, I think I'd rather be the age where I was fascinated by Pans people practically in the nude rather than the younger age

where Dave Lee Travis being funny would have been the most memorable moment of that top of the pops yeah what records are we buying on saturday chubs in in reality nothing i was spending my money on action men and panini stickers but um if anything probably andrea true connection more more more um I did buy it eventually, just like 20 years later or something. Yeah, with my musical tastes transposed into a child's head. Yeah, True, Ross and

Night. I'd like to think I'll be buying Rustaman Vibration because, you know, reggae as it actually is. As a protest against you know, reggae as it actually is. As a protest against, you know, Nicholasism. And what does this episode say about April of 1976? It says that music badly needs a rocket at the arse in a form of punk rock.

Yeah, it sort of does tell us that the charts were, let's say, directionless. And fashion had ground to a halt in the middle of a branch of cna uh and yeah still as has been the case for a couple of years it was it only seemed to be black americans who could make good music and get it into the charts on a regular basis yeah yeah disco is uh is the saving grace of this episode. Yeah, not only in the stuff that we see, but you look at the rundown, there's some great disco tracks in that rundown,

which gives you some idea of what people were, if not sort of going out and buying in the shops, they were maybe listening to in clubs and enjoying it. It's becoming part of the fabric of British life. And that, dear friends, is the end of this episode of Chart Music. All that remains for me to do is the usual shit, www.chart-music.co.uk You can join us on Facebook,

facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast and you can get involved with us on Twitter, chartmusicTOTP Thank you very much, Taylor Parks. Cheers, Al. Rock on. Yay. Thank you ever so much, Simon Price.

You're welcome, even though you're only three. My name's Al Needham, and I am being pissed on by some Australians. Chart music. Our hero is also broadcast from a number of unlikely locations. There were a couple of shop windows, an airport lounge, a factory canteen and a Hartlepool brewery. It was Dave Lee Travis who hopped along there with his faithful companion Edwin to meet Sam Wilson, the head brewer, who blanched visibly when Dave mentioned the word water. That is a nasty name in our industry. It's liquor.

What's wrong with water? I like water, and it come in the beer. What you gave me before, I like that beer. It's not in our beers. You don't have water in your beer? Definitely not. Well, how does it become liquid? What are you doing if you've not got water?

It's already changed and blended by that time. I see. Will you, Edwin, get back? Can you give him another half of something, please, with this stuff in it? Yeah, I think we should throw him in. We should throw him in? Yeah, go on. Over the side.

What are you doing? Ah!