Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #20: February 1st 1979 - Not My Favourite DJ Of All Times

Episode Date: February 27, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: an emaciated John Lennon in a boxing match with the six months-dead Elvis Presley - who wins? This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, is mental. Come with us as we set the Time Sofa all the way into the very heart of the Eighventies, to a Bizarro-world where people actually thought – yes, with their actual brains – that Mike Read was sort of cool. Yes, it’s the Chart Music debut of Mr Blue Tulip himself, which may be touched upon at some point in this episode, we can’t remember. Musicwise, it’s all over the shop, but always in a gloriously entertaining manner. Vaguely Punkish bands lumber about on their last legs, a giant hairy Belgian testicle in a muumuu has to jump up to reach his congas, Mike Oldfield’s sister and her mates break out of a Victorian asylum and pretend to be Martha and the Vandellas, Nazareth still think it’s 1973, Billy Joel has a cup of piss balanced precariously on his mixing desk, and a Birmingham taxi driver has a dark secret to reveal. And Debbie Harry looks down upon us all with her frosty hauteur as Legs & Co have to share four costumes between them. Meanwhile, at a party in New York, Sid Vicious is deciding to have another helping of trifle laced with heroin. End Of An Era. Al Needham joins Taylor Parkes and Simon Price around the industrial dispute brazier of early ’79, veering off to discuss such important matters as wringing every last drop of juice out of your fledgling record collection, asking the Iranian kids at school if they were in the Shah’s or the Ayatollah’s gang, your Dad seeing the Sex Pistols kicking off about a lack of cabbage at a motorway service station, and a disturbing early internet craze called ‘Top Of The Pops Club’. And all the swearing you’ll need to see you through the month. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee, all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. What do you like listening to? Um... Chart music.

Chart music. Chart music Chart music Hey up you pop crazed youngsters and welcome to the latest edition of Chart Music the podcast that gets its hand right down to the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, and I've got back up in the shape of my good friends Taylor Parks and our old friend Simon Price. Hello chaps. Hello.

Hello. Has there been anything pop and interesting to comment on before we get our hands up this episode? No. No. No. Still January. Yeah. No, it's not.

It's February. It might as well be January. Why don't they just amalgamate January and February into one big fucking month called Cuntuary? Oh, where to start? Well, friend of the show Richard Ogood has been in touch and he writes, the discussion of Top of the Pops start times

as commented on by Neil in the last episode has reminded me of the first viral internet thing I ever saw back in the mid-90s called Top of the Pops Club which was basically agreement a load of people had to all have a wank as soon as Top of the Pops started so you'd know that loads of other people

were all having a wank at the same time. There's no trace of it online now, I regret to say. P.S. And no, I didn't. So, yeah, thanks, Richard. I was just thinking, when I was 14, there's a good chance that I probably was having a wank roundabout at the time that Top of the Pops started. Not because Top of the Pops was on, but just...

I mean, there's every chance that with this very episode, Blue Tulip Rose Reid was frantically jilling herself off at the sight of her hero, Mike. But we'll come to that shortly. Oh, spoiler alert Simon spoiler alert so anyway no more fanning in about because this week's episode comes at you all the way from February the 1st 1979 or as we like to call it the Aventus hey Taylor oh yes so 1979 we're kind of like we you know we're coming out of the winter of

discontent but we were all young so there was no discontent about bodies piling up that'd be quite fun wouldn't it actually apparently 78 78 79 was literally the coldest winter since 61 62 or something like that so you know it wasn't just uh these various strikes that mr callaghan was having to deal with but you know genuine freezing weather yeah which i i can remember vividly actually i was you know 11 at the time fucking brilliant one day depends where you were al depends where you were we'll come to that i'm sure at least it kept the bodies fresh So what was in the news this week? Well, Ayatollah Khomeini has arrived back in Iran and is about to kick the fuck off.

Brenda Spencer has been charged with shooting two people at her school and inspiring a Boomtown Rat song in San Diego. The Dukes of Hazzard has run its debut episode in America, two people at her school and inspiring a boomtown rat song in San Diego. The Dukes of Hazzard has run its debut episode in America, but the big news this day is that Sid Vicious is about to have a party to celebrate getting out of Rikers Island and is going to snuff it. Do you remember when Sid Vicious died? Yeah, I do. Although I wasn't fully on top of the details of how it happened and what led up

to it so this is something i kind of learned in retrospect when he'd already been kind of martyred by idiotic punks because i remember a load of uh load of punks kind of like hanging around in town on the on the saturday feeling very sorry for themselves and uh kids like me but but not me because i was too scared taking the piss out of them. Not as good as when Elvis died, really. I remember, you know, at that age, we were incapable of separating kind of facts from pop fiction or from, you know, performance.

And I remember there's that video clip for, you know, it's on the Sid Sings album cover and in the great rock and roll swindle where he's uh I think he's singing my way and he's walking down these steps with a white tuxedo and a gun and he fires the gun towards the audience and this kind of myth went about that the reason he'd been in prison in the first place is because he actually shot someone dead at one of his concerts really yeah like you know sort of Alan Partridge knowing me knowing you style that he actually took a posh shot at his own audience nobody sort of seemed to figure out that that

was just you know staged um so yeah that that became our reality then that you know that that's why he was put away for killing an audience member when sid vicious died my dad told me that he'd once been in a uh motorway services where the sex pistols were on a table across the way. Apparently Sid Vicious was so obnoxious to the waitress or the woman serving that she started crying. He said, oh, it was terrible. He wanted some cabbage and they didn't have any. And the more I think about this, the more I think, was that actually the Sex Pistols or was it just some oiks? Because I'm not sure if the Sex Pistols with Sid Vicious

would have been in a motorway services. If they were gigging round, they would. Yeah, they did, didn't they? Yeah, all right, maybe it was true. So I'm sorry to doubt you, Dad. It's the cabbage thing, which is the weirdest detail of that story. Yes. You know, kids hate eating their greens, don't they?

And there's Sid Vicious actually asking for his greens. Yeah, it's not really punk, is it? No. So, on the cover of NME, Kevin Coyne. Hey. On the cover of Smash Hits, Rod Stewart. Boo. Which was the first Smash Hits I ever bought, actually.

The number one LP in the uk is don't walk boogie a compilation disco lp which somehow featured 2468 by the tom robinson band substitute by clout and the theme tune to empire road by matumbe brilliant uh armed forces by elvis costello's number two that's's not right, is it? That's a bit like the punk compilation CD of the 90s. I love that, though, because I'm a big collector of K-Tel and Ronco and Telstar compilation albums. And around that time, you almost always get that,

that they'll keep the sort of theme going for maybe um seven or eight tracks on on a side of the disc and then suddenly it'll go fuck this it'll lurch from it'll suddenly go from something like when you're in love with a beautiful woman by dr hook into death disco by pill and and there's no you know it just lurches like that and i love that the fact that you know there will have been people out there who bought it to hear, I don't know, Woman in Love by Barbara Streisand and then end up getting exposed to The Slits, for example.

It's just brilliant, yeah. It used to be like this on hits of the 60s, those sort of, oh, the great hits of the 60s. And it would always be the same records at every one because you couldn't license most of this stuff you couldn't license the beatles to be on those compilations or the stones so it was always stuff that had been on pie records because you know they've just they were easy to buy up so you'd always have the same stuff like uh you know sandy shore and things and it

yeah got really repetitive over in the us the number one single is Le Freak by Chic and the number one LP was 52nd Street by Billy Joel. So me dear boys, what were we doing in February of 1979? I was 11 and I was at a horrifically brutal prep school, private boarding school in Sussex. And I was the only working class kid and the only Welsh kid there. I was there because my mum got a teaching job. And it's funny, you mentioned in the news there that the whole thing going on in Iran at the time, we had kids there whose families

had fled. So they were the people who had been, they didn't consider themselves Iranian, it was always Persian to them, you know, and they were from families who probably were the acolytes of the Shah and they were probably quite wealthy back in Iran. But suddenly they fled to the UK with whatever they could gather and sent their kids to a boarding school to sort of keep them out of trouble. Fucking hell, they went from knowing the Shah to shopping at spa. But yeah, it really wasn't Harry Potter, let me tell you.

It was more like scum, but for posh and innocent kids. Did you talk to these Iranian kids about what was going on? Well, yeah, but we didn't really have much of an idea. We probably had as much of a grasp on that as we did on the circumstances of Sid Vicious's death, to be honest. Yeah. The outside world was literally out of bounds I once got into all kinds of trouble for escaping and uh I got rounded up at the local

little chef um by the side of the motorway uh no it was it was just it was horrendous and it was a sort of place where you get beaten for wearing the wrong color plimsolls in the wrong part of the ground and it left well it exacerbated my existing stutter and it left me with a lifelong habit of cracking my nail uh my my finger knuckles in response to terror being hit by teachers um but apart from that good times because it it gave me two years of latin so you know swings and roundabouts oh yeah yeah that's a good deal that is although there were no swings or roundabouts at the school funny enough did you not ask the ask the Iranian kids whose side they were in on? No, I honestly didn't get it.

I just, you know, it was so... I couldn't have pointed to Iran on a map at that time. But there were kids from all over the world, you know. There were kids from Lebanon who'd also presumably come to flee situations over there. But they were always the kind of, I guess, the international ruling class of these places so although they were fleeing troubles that they weren't you know they

weren't the sort of huddled masses they weren't refugees they were kind of rich exiles so they I suppose that the whole thing was fairly kind of virtual and theoretical to them too right they still did better than than our secular left-wing brothers in iran who thought they were in on this revolution until they'd outlived their use and find themselves being tortured to death by ultra right-wing theocrats but that's often the way yeah i was just thinking it's true kids know nothing you've just reminded me for the first time in 35 years or whatever it is of uh we had a south african kid come to our school like a white south african kid from durban and he turned

up and he said uh this is michael he's from south africa and we all said to him what i thought it was black people in africa and he said yeah we call them kafirs and it was like oh right okay yeah it's just you haven't got a clue well i was in my last few months at west glade junior school because i was 10 but going on 11 and i was already shitting myself about leaving and having to go to the comprehensive of the road or big school as it's commonly known i remember seeing people who used to be my mates who were a bit older uh walking through the school when they chucked out in the shitty blazers and just scowling at you and just thinking oh fucking hell doesn't look like they're having much fun up there i remember one lad suddenly became a punk

oh i used to know and uh every time i walked one way to go home and he walked the other way to come back from secondary school he gob gob on me he was just being what a punk was supposed to be I suppose or he was just a cunt and yeah it used to happen all the time and then I saw him about 10 years ago when I moved back to Nottingham and he was begging

in the street and I spat on him no I didn't no I didn't I gave him a quid I didn't spat on him. No, I didn't. No, I didn't. I gave him a quid. I didn't spit on him. I think you've said before that when you're growing up in Nottingham, a lot of the kids you hang around with is a bunch of black kids. Is that right?

Yes. Well, when I went to this boarding school I was telling you about, that was literally the first time I'd ever met black people. And they were, you know, some of them were from Africa, some of them were just from South London. But that in itself, even though in some ways going to school was this kind of very elite strata of society, it did really kind of broaden my mind.

So when you mentioned the high school shooting in the States that of course was referenced in I Don't Like Mondays by the Boomtown R um they were these these twins from uh uh south norwood uh called mark and neil smith who were brilliant at playing piano black kids and uh they uh and they were probably two of my best mates at the school and they mastered the big piano intro to i don't like mondays and i'll always yeah and i just always always picture that and it's actually quite a simple intro but it sounds much more magnificent than it is um I was so impressed by that but but yeah um I'd gone from exclusively hanging around with white Welsh kids to suddenly this multicultural

albeit quite wealthy um sort of body of students so um it was good from that point of view this is the month I think or the month before that I bought my first ever record without asking my mum to get it, which was Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. So yeah, yeah, a good start. I mean, I think it was Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, but, you know, I look at other singles

that were around at that time and I think, oh, it could have been that one. But yeah, I was, you know, actively chucking some money at pop music now instead of just having it wash over me and you know this is a time when you start making decisions and you know once again you look back and go why did i buy that instead of that yeah and you mentioned you mentioned getting your first copy of smash hits um i got mine um at school my my mum went out and got me a copy of Smash Hits, which I hadn't heard of.

She just saw a pop magazine and thought I'd like it. It was one with Debbie Harry on the front around this time. I think Dreaming was their current single, Blondie's current single. And, you know, if there was records that I liked, she'd go out and get me. She went and got me Cars by Gary Newman while I was at that school. I remember that. But mainly I was just recording the top 40

or bits of it in secret on a radio cassette player because it was like one of these things like Footloose or We Will Rock You, the musical, where rock and roll is banned, but the kids have got these underground ways of listening to it and all that kind of stuff.

So what was on telly this day? Well, BBC One has run Pebble Mill at one, Ragtime, You and Me, Play School, Don McLean and Peter Glaze going caravanning in Don and Pete, Jack and Aura, Space Sentinels, John Craven's Newsround, Blue Peter, Noah and Nelly, Newsround, and just before this episode,

Tomorrow's World muses upon the failure of Skylab and how NASA is trying to make sure it doesn't fall on anyone's head when it comes down to Earth. BBC Two has broadcast Play School, then shut down for five hours because it's the 70s, then Open University, Charlie Chaplin in The Tramp, a Yugoslavian cartoon about nuclear war being set off by a butterfly, highlights from the fifth Ashes test,

and is currently showing a repeat of When the Boat Comes In. ITV has put on Little Blue, Pipkins, The Cedar Tree, Crown Court, Money Go Round with Tony Bastable, Danger UXB, Looks Familiar and Lasse, then Glenda Brownlow has an unwelcome visitor from the past in Crossroads, possibly Stalin or Jack the Ripper, and then Dick Barton and the currently running the episode of Emmerdale Farm where Amos Braley gets mugged. Oh, feel the 70s-ness of that lineup.

I've always loved the name Tony Bastable, which is... Oh, it's a classic, isn't it? It's as hilarious to an 11-year-old child, or almost, as Christopher Lillicrap around the same time. Yes, yes. That Yugoslavian cartoon about a nuclear war being set off by a butterfly, it's absolutely amazing. I've kind of forgotten that TV used to show weird stuff like that just just to fill five minutes here and there

the weird thing about february 1979 is how all over the place it is because the punk is finished and there hasn't really been quite enough time for the post-punk groups to come through and change the scene so you can see from this top of the pops it's uh a weird ragbag of all sorts of stuff and it's just you know like the charts don't really know where they're going um disco is huge but apart from that there's no real direction to it and uh sort of you know alternative music has just just devolved into uh sort of that period where it was like what stiff little fingers and that period where it was like, what, stiff little fingers and things like that.

It was like what the late Marky Smith described as a new wave Hollywood where everyone's good but not great. Just a sort of a new star system and a lot of sort of... I agree with you, except that stiff little fingers were brilliant. Just like substandard versions of the older Osperns. It's got to be honest. All right then, pop craze youngsters. It's time to go way back to February of 1979.

Don't forget, 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 another star-studded edition of Top of the Pops. Your host for this episode of Top of the Pops is Mike Reid. Born in Lancashire in 1947, Mike Reid grew up in Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, becoming an estate agent while trying to be a pop singer under the name of Mickey Manchester. Did you not know this? I'd forgotten. Yeah, and also Mike, M-I-C,

like, you know, like a wazoo spelling, like Nick Kershaw, Mike Reed. His broadcasting career began in 1976 when he teamed up with Steve Wright for the Read and Write show on Radio 210 in Reading. From there, he joined Radio Luxembourg in late 1977 and then moved on to Radio 1 in November of 1978. At the same time, he was still trying to become a successful musician,

releasing Ted Revival singles under his own name and punkier ones as part of the group The Trainspotters who put out a single called High Rise which featured the lyrics Never hit your girlfriend nosy neighbours will call the police. Christ.

At present he's got the early evening Saturday night slot on Radio 1 But by August of this year he'll be replacing Andy Peebles in the weekday slot before John Peel And would be the new Breakfast Show DJ in 1981 John Peel was quoted as saying People like DLT and Mike Reed would often complain that they couldn't go anywhere without being recognised But of course would go everywhere in a tartan suit carrying a guitar so they would have attracted attention in a lunatic asylum now mike reeds where did we start with this i mean the first thing i want to chuck in is what

a meteoric rise yeah he did seem to come from nowhere because by the time i was out of the kind of detention center of that school i was talking about and back in reality. He was suddenly, you know, Mr Breakfast Show. He was the main man on Radio 1. Yeah, he was. Just come from nowhere. And I've got to be honest, I quite liked him. You know, I can't rewrite history.

I can't lie. The heart wants what it wants at the time. I enjoyed his kind of chortlesome twee style. You know, what can I say? I was 12. I was getting ready for school. I listened to it pretty much every day. And he seemed not exactly a new generation,

but just a slight shift forwards from, you know, the old school dinosaurs of the early 70s. Yeah. In terms of what he was into. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to explain this to the younglings who were listening, but yes, there was a time when Mike Reid was the cool one on Radio 1.

Well, he was the first of those Radio 1 DJs to want to seem cool in a way that kids might understand. That's certainly true. Yeah. You know, there were some people like DLT kind of thought they were dudes you know what I mean but they had no connection with teenagers and they didn't necessarily feel like they needed to have one yeah well Mike Reader is in this episode he's 31 years old right he looks older but he's 31 yeah uh and yeah he's supposed to be the voice of youth and it's just weird this

is the first time or almost the first time probably since the 60s that you see someone on top of the pops making an effort to seem like they're part of the generation watching rather than uh lecturing them on the superiority of the AOR ballad. Yeah. And it's, but I mean, he fails appallingly because, you know, I don't think, I don't think anyone over about, you know, 10 or 11 ever thought Mike Reed was cool. I mean, let's put a bit of perspective here. I mean, if you stood me now next to DLT, Simon Bates and Jimmy Savile, I'd look like fucking Miles Davis, wouldn't I? But Mike Reid at the time, I mean, looking back now,

he looks like a trendy English teacher. I think the only thing that's missing from his outfit is a little silver CND badge. But at the time, the idea that someone presenting top of the pops not only knew who the jam was but appeared to like them uh that was a big deal wasn't it yeah and i think there was enough about him at that time that you'd at least if you're a kid watching it give him the benefit of the doubt until he proved otherwise i don't know i remember remember seeing him link out of a Morrissey performance on Top of the Pops with the words, anyone who likes Oscar Wilde and Billy Fury is all right with me. Now that's fucking desperate, you know. And also like, yeah, because Oscar Wilde would have banned Relax, wouldn't he? And if you've got to say, and you, Kip.

to say and ukip well this is it you know everything that mike reed has done in the last two decades or more from his um you know the the failed oscar wilde uh musical that he tried to stage to the mockery he's received for his ukip calypso to um yes the car crash of an onstage q and a he did just the other month with Chevy Chase um yes just it fills me with glee when when things go wrong for him because he's clearly such an appalling human being but at the time I am I certainly didn't know that it's easy to say in retrospect oh obviously he was a dick but ah I don't know I didn't think so yeah by comparison yeah when you go back right if you look at a couple years ago for reasons i can't adequately explain i watched a load of old episodes of pop quiz

on youtube and the the deadening dryness and lack of wit that he brought to that is unbelievable it's like there's all these coked up, pissed rock lags on the teams. And then there's this ludicrous school teacher trying to be hip, dragging it all down. And they're deathly. They've just got this dead atmosphere. There's no life to them at all. Yeah, I mean, by that time he had this really bad mullet and the soup holo glasses. He was turning into stewed apples of terror hawks right

in front of our eyes wasn't he but he he speaks entirely in cliches as well like when this top of the pops begins the first thing he says is hello and welcome to another star-studded edition of top of the pops it's like just this boiler the one thing that seems different about his presentation style than some of the people we've looked at in in the earlier 70s are that he actually seems to sat at home and written his links he's you know there there's a pun there's a pun in nearly every link it might be an appalling pun but he's actually he's not emperor roscoe just kind of winging it and talking gibberish do you know what i mean no he's actually Emperor Roscoe just kind of winging it and talking gibberish. Do you know what I mean? No. He's actually given it some thought. And I don't know whether that's better or worse.

Well, this would have been one of his first gigs on Top of the Pops, wouldn't it? So he'd have been wanting to make a good impression, clearly. Yeah. Yeah. And as we will see, he's trying a bit too fucking hard to make a good impression at various points in the show. I'll tell you what I used to hate the most about Mike Reed in the 80s was, you know, he always used to get his guitar out, and it was like everyone would go, oh, no, Mike's got his guitar out.

And it was this sort of cloying, false self-deprecation of the guitar thing. It wasn't even original because, like, you know, Jasper Carrot used to do this shtick. But it's like he wants to play his fucking guitar and he wants to be cute right like oh no one wants me to play let me be the center of attention while pretending to laugh at myself and then still and those are always the worst people those are the worst people at a house party or a picnic or anything somebody turns up with an acoustic guitar and they say, do you mind if I play a little bit? And it's almost always Redemption Song, isn't it?

Yeah, Redemption Song, absolutely, yeah. The thing with Mike Reed is that he even does that when he's interviewing people. He's turned up. Yes, yes he did. I can't remember who it was. It might have been Paul Simon or somebody of fairly great stature. And Mike Reed turns up with his acoustic

and tries to get them to sing along with him. It might be something he'd written. He did that with Chevy Chase, didn't he? Yeah, he certainly did with Chevy Chase, absolutely. And yeah, as we'll see in this episode, he desperately wants to be a rock star. He still hasn't given up on that, even though Mike, Mick Manchester didn't quite get there.

Yeah, he still craves that more than anything the funny thing is when you listen to his music i mean it's obviously it's it's fucking terrible but the best track he ever did is called uh what the dickens and it's uh it's like a tory bob dylan he's uh it's a rant about having to pay his taxes to a sort of protest. Oh, yes. He goes, he's addressing the tax man. He says, you're a legalised vampire.

You rob your own countrymen. It's horrendous. But that, he's part of that. It's good enough for George Harrison. It's good enough for him. Yeah, but this is it. He's a 60s man, basically. He's a non-counterculture 60s man.

And part of being that kind of sort of would- embraced the idea of classlessness because it obscured their own privileged upbringing and made them seem like individualist entrepreneurs, you know. There's a particular kind of Toryism that was reactionary and patriotic but also sort of spivvy and enterprising and you know into fast cars and that sort of thing uh and i mean it's all over the place in that 60s generation when you look at it all the pirate radio people uh you know michael cain um nouveau riche footballers you know uh i mean and the thatcherite boom was created by those people banging into the sort of upwardly mobile lower middle class.

And it's that combination of entitlement and dumb patriotism and the illusion of individual achievement is very UKIP. And it makes complete sense that someone like Mike Reid would end up in that place. But, you know, at the time, it wouldn't have occurred to me that he's a Tory because I think he kept his political opinions pretty quiet at that time. And, yeah, he was into the jam and I thought, well,

the jam are into, you know, nuclear disarmament and, you know, voting Labour and, you know, certainly by that point they were. So I just assumed, well, he's probably one of the good guys i just yeah i had no idea yeah simon explain to people who don't know about blue tulip rose reed right yeah i was wondering when we're going to get into this we've alluded many a time and off to her but i think we need the full explanation now here's the opportunity right well in the 90s there were two great fly on the wall reality documentaries that became kind of cult classics one of them of course is the one from which this podcast gets its intro in bed with grace needham aka teenage diaries uh and the other

it was called i'm your number one fan um was on Channel 4, and it was about stalkers. And, I mean, I know stalking is no laughing matter, and for all that I said about finding glee in the mishaps of Mike Reed in later years, I genuinely wouldn't wish what happened to him on anyone. That said, the documentary is absolutely hilarious. It's guilty laughs, but you cannot help laughing at it. And it follows various people. There's somebody who's stalking the snooker player,

Stephen Hendry. There was somebody who's obsessed with Princess Diana and is convinced that the royal family's all lizards. He calls the queen a lizard beast. And this German guy, he's amazing in in himself and and uh you know he almost gets overshadowed by the more spectacular fireworks of blue tulip but um the main thing that everyone remembers it for is this woman um from somewhere like letchworth it's some garden suburb north of london um and she's changed her name to Blue Tulip Rose Reid she is obsessed with with

Mike Reid and this is in the 90s now and Mike Reid at this point was no longer on Radio 1 he was on Classic FM and um so we the first we see of her is her uh lying in bed under a filthy duvet while Mike Reid's voice is coming out the radio speaker and she's making sex noises uncontrollably. She's, you know, really on the brink of orgasm just from the sound of his voice. Other things that we learned during the show is that she has named her washing machine Mike Reed.

We see her go into a sort of Pronto Prince shop to get T-shirts made, to get a top made saying, when will you get into bed with me? And we picture some Mike Reeds all over it. And the guys by the counter said, you know, so who's this in the picture? And she goes, my husband, Mike Reed. And they go, I thought he was gay. Yeah, no one, no one says he's gay.

No one. She starts slamming her fist on the counter. Sorry, I'm upset. Yeah, all of that. And then she goes to Classic FM and starts doing chants outside. Give me an M, give me an I, give me a K. It's terrible, isn't it?

I think some of the best bits are when she's reminiscing about the first time she saw him. She turns up to the Radio 1 car park. And Mike Reid's there coming out of the building with Ed Stewpot Stewart. In blue shorts. Yeah, yeah. And she becomes breathless. And she's, not my favourite DJ of all times.

And she goes up to him and says, is your name Mike Reid? And he goes, yeah. And she slaps his bum. And then she goes, oh, tenders. And then she turns to the camera and she says, Ed Stewart's breath stinks. Mike Reed

has got beautiful breath. And see, this is what I've been quoting it now for about three minutes in a row. It's endlessly quotable. And League of Gentlemen were really into it. League of Gentlemen in Royston Vasey put loads of quotes from it on uh on on the sort of newspaper billboards outside the news agents um and it's become a real cult thing um it's the sort of thing that nowadays it would go viral on the internet for about a week and then everybody would forget about it but because there

wasn't really any internet in the way we understand it now in the late 90s it was this thing that was passed around on copy of copies of vhs tapes and taylor remembered because you know we used to sit around late at night with mates playing it especially if someone hadn't seen it it's like oh my god oh my god right right sit down sit down you're going to watch this and yes and the the amount of people i've kind of inducted into it it's strange though the funny thing is that like nowadays i think well as someone who's had mental health problems myself every fiber of my being is telling me not to laugh at someone who is quite literally barking mad but to but to pretend that the very specific details of her personal madness aren't funny would be kind of priggish and dishonest and it wasn't us who had the awful idea of making this program in such an unethical way you know what i mean um yeah in a way i feel worse for although he's dead now for

klaus wagner the uh the diana obsessive who's just as troubled but you don't feel bad for him i think because he's german and male and a bit unpleasant but he has it bad he's equally afflicted um and his obsession is dead which proves his paranoia correct and the beast is still on the throne uh yeah yeah i'm reading one of the letters she wrote here uh well bits of it uh darling sweet lips mike reed how would you like to discover a dead body in your doorway because that is what is going to happen if you don't marry me yeah that's the point where you're stop laughing your face freezes yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's really grim. And that wasn't the end of her story either.

She turned up on Britain's Got Talent a few years later. So some researcher, some snickering researcher at Britain's Got Talent was obviously hip to the blue tulip cult and had somehow tracked her down. And they got her on just to sort of go on stage with a feather bow around her neck and to bark, as Taylor alluded to, Portsmouth by Mike Oldfield.

Because that was her party trick. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, I hope she's all right. I hope she's stopped stalking Mike Reid. Oh, God, I hope so. It'd be great if she just went, oh, I didn't know he was into UKIP fuck him there's also a great

moment in that documentary because they interview Mike Reid and ask him what he thinks about it and there's a brilliant moment of another of his failed attempts to seem cool where he says well his words of wisdom right he says well love and

hate are very closely connected. It's like Oscar Wilde said in the Ballad of Redding Jail, each man kills the thing he loves, which is, and there's a pause, and he says, which is true. Yeah, thanks for that insight, Mike. Yeah, cheers, Mike. I mean, what I'm suggesting is next time he goes bankrupt, let's get a Kickstarter going.

Mike Reid, million pounds, sex with blue tulip Rose Reid on video. Jesus Christ. Come on Mike, give her what she wants. We'll play the Icicle Works. Yes! That fact emerged, was that

in a Smash H hits interview or something where i i can't remember where it was but he did reveal that um was it love is a wonderful color or just the ice cool works in general

was was what he liked just one song making love yeah one song over and over and over no just once and for all we know this episode that we're talking about, because it was early in his career,

this might be the one that Bruce Tulip himself was watching and thought, oh, I fancy a bit of that. He's a cracker. Hello and welcome to another star-studded edition of Top of the Pops. Born Charles Hatcher in Nashville in 1942, Edwin Starr became a member of the Cleveland doo-wop group The Future Tones in the late 50s and moved to Detroit in the early 60s. As a solo singer, he was signed to Rick Tick Records, an early rival of Motown, and scored his first UK hit in May of 1966 with Stopper on Sight. in May of 1966 with Stop Her On Sight. By 1969, Rick Tick was bought out by Motown and Starr scored UK hits with 25 Miles and War,

which got to number three in November of 1970. After recording the soundtrack to the Blaxploitation film Hell Up In Harlem, he relocated to England where he made a living on the Northern Soul Circuit, eventually moving to Nottinghamshire. That's me punching my heart with pride. And helped Stevie Wonder feel a cow for the first time. Yeah.

Stevie Wonder came round and a cow obviously mooed. And Stevie Wonder said, oh, is that a cow? And he said, yeah. He says, oh, I've never touched a cow before and he said right come out. He shouldn't have told him what it is he should have done that you know like the parable of the blind men with the elephant and they have to sort of feel around and figure out what it is

one thinks it's a tree the other thinks it's a mouse blah blah blah yeah right come on Stevie what do you reckon this is you know how good are your inner visions on this one? Very good very good. After moving from Motown to 20th Century Records, he had a go at this disco thing everyone was going on about. And this is his first top 40 hits since Stop the War Now in February of 1971.

And it's a new entry this week at number 27. Now then, Edwin's having a go at this disco thing and i think it's paid off for him don't you think yeah the sound of this record is a weird lurch backwards and forwards between new york berlin and philadelphia because there's a bit of philly soul in it as well and it's sort of chasing the various sounds of the moment and it is that self-conscious and it shouldn't really be as good as it is but he's still so talented at this point that it comes out brilliantly and it doesn't matter that it doesn't have the the class of his earlier stuff you just you just focus on the contrast between the the robo beat and the freaky noises and his really rich and intense singing and it's totally

convincing as well as completely transparent can i surprise you um i i don't like this record really yeah and um i really like all the edwin starr hits you mentioned um apart from stop the war now which i've got to admit i haven't heard't heard and it's making me chuckle just to think about that because the other week we were talking about Mijua and Slick the way they followed up Forever and Ever with Requiem which basically sounds exactly the same

and we were riffing a bit on that whole thing of people who do these identical follow ups like Dance the Kung Fu by Carl Douglas and all of that. And this one, it's like, you know, he's already had a hit with war and then he brings out a follow-up called Stop the War Now

as if we hadn't heard him first time. Edwin, we heard you. You were quite insistent on the anti-war thing there. Yeah, he should have done a single after that called Do I Have to Say This Again? Yeah. I still hear banging. there yeah you should have done a single after that called uh do i have to say this again yeah i still hear banging five years later the war was over yeah yeah he put out a single called at last yeah about fucking time but yeah i mean his 60s motown stuff particularly um you mentioned sos stopper on side

yeah oh 25 miles brilliant you know sort of like northern soul dance floor yeah immortal immortal tunes those are this one um his voice definitely works with disco i think you know he's got that thing that people like you know daryl pandy had in the in the 80s with mixing house music with um there's really really kind of deep heartfelt soulful vocal um and um so it's not that it's just the tune itself it's what can i say it's it's kind of cold it freezes me out it is that there doesn't seem much much kind of warmth to it and i'll tell you what it is um it doesn't have any bottom half of the body. It's all upper body hustle.

That's what it feels like to me. Yeah, no hips and no arse, as Neil used to say. It's got no arse. Yeah, it's, you know, like Dan Hartman, Instant Replay. It's got that kind of feel to it. And I don't like that kind of disco, I've got to be honest. That kind of busy, hustling, but upper body disco. Yeah.

And I feel disloyal because i'm a massive motown fan um but yeah this doesn't do it for me i actually saw edwin star um once though live um he turned up to this nightclub pa thing in cardiff in the top rank yeah with and it was one of these random uh uh kind of gatherings of celebrities that you used to get doing tours or nightclubs. It was Edwin Starr, Woo Gary Davis, Christopher Quinton from Coronation Street, and DLT. Gah!

How about that? Jesus Christ. That's a collective, isn't it? I was really excited to see Edwin Starr because I was in the first flush of being a kind of, you know, 20 years after the fact Motown fan. And Edwin Starr, I don't know what I expected. I think I expected him to turn up in this kind of bathe of black and white.

Everything else around him would be in colour and he'd be in an old black and white photo and he'd look like, you know and white photo and he he'd look like you know like he did in 1966 or something but instead he had this massive kind of this this um white leather jacket with huge shoulders like uh it looked like a cross between something Gary Glitter would wear and something that Mr T on the A-Team would have worn and um it was all it was all kind of and it's about 1984 or something like that and it's all kind kind of glitz and it was very 80s. And I mean, fair play to him.

You know, he's trying to stay relevant and trying to cling on to the zeitgeist with his fingernails. But you don't want that, do you? No, I was like, come on, Edwin, you're better than this. Yeah, exactly. You're a Motown soul man, wear a nicely tapered suit and don't exist in colour. Yes. And stop hanging around with fucking Brian Tilsilsley and dlt and gary davis oh imagine them sharing a bus oh it was like um gino washington won it gino washington yes and famously this this is why dexys wrote a song

about him he was over here and available um g you know Washington? He was a real living, breathing, black American soul singer who even though he wasn't even third division in the States, because he was over here and he was a real American black man, he was revered. And I think Edwin Starr sort of figured that out himself. I think he realised what was going on with the northern soul scene and all of that. And he thought, if I go to the UK, they're going to treat me like a god

and I can make a nice living from doing kind of nightclub PAs. And, you know, fair play to him. But, yeah, I was, you know, being a kind of pathetic white sort of Motown snob, I was all about the early stuff. See, I do like this record. But for the first couple of times i watched this top of the pops i barely noticed it because i was so distracted by the photos because they play it over the chart rundown um yeah um it's a really odd set of pictures this week oh it is

yeah like there's uh i had another steve Priest moment seeing the shot of Leif Garrett. Leif Garrett, yes! For a split second, and thinking, oh, she's nice. I know! I'm so glad you said that before me, so that I don't have to put in the kind of I'm not gay, but preface.

My God, how good looking is Leif Garrett? Yeah. And then there's a shot of the exquisitely horrible-looking Dr Feelgood, followed immediately by a picture of Funkadelic. And it's like 14 black people in military fatigues forming a human pyramid while throwing peace signs. And it's like if you want to see a contrast between Britain and America in 1979, It's right there. Yeah. I've got down here Funkadelic creeping up on the camera in combat fatigues as if they're playing What's the Time, Mr. Wolf? And then, best of all, there's a picture of the Shadows.

Yes. I think it would have been their version of a theme from The Deer Hunter. Cavatina. Yeah, they'd just released an album called String of Hits. Actually, let me correct you there. It wasn't that. It was Don't Cry For Me, Argentina. Yeah, another track off String of Hits,

which also, I think, had their haunting, twanging instrumental takes on Bright Eyes. Yes, of course. Yeah, Parisian Walkways by gary moore oh really yeah yeah the woman lived next door to me had that um but and if you don't want to fuck me fuck off by wayne county electric chairs but the the picture is is fucking amazing this publicity shot all that's missing is the sticker on it saying, not to be used.

They look fucking terrible. Like, Hank Marvin looks like he's just been told that his balls have got a week to live. He's really old and broken. He looks like he's sat down with a blanket over his knees. Bruce Welch, former paramour of olivia newton john looks like the coventry city physio 1978-79 season and then brian bennett at the back he's hovering over them like uh he's got his arms around both of them he's got a hand on each

shoulder hasn't he yeah like a cosmic puppet master slash knicker thief the other ones i've got is that uh elton john is cuddling a horse which was nice uh paul evans uh yeah he's popped his shirt collar up shaky style but the problem is it's a 70s shirt so it comes up around his ears. Looks like he's got no neck. And that would have been for Hello, This Is Joni, right? Yes. So clearly not the only car-related drama happening in the charts. No, not at all, no. This week he says no spoilers, yeah. So the following week, contact soared to number 11

and would eventually get to number 6. The follow-up, HAPPY Radio, got to number nine in June of this year, but it would be his last solo hit in the UK. How do you feel about that one, Simon? Was that the theme from Only When I Laugh? No, it's not. No. No, H-A-P-P-Y, we're here to make your day go by. It's a musical natural high.

However, he appeared on Ferrier's cover of let it be in 1987 which got to number one in april of that year and he teamed up with a cookie crew forgot to keep on which got to number 17 in april of 1989 that was quite good that yes it's fucking genius that song is i love that song yes it's 25 miles kind of rebooted with a cookie crew rapping over the top and it actually works. It does, yes. Alas, he died in Bramcote, Nottinghamshire in 2003 and is buried in the same graveyard as loads of my family,

which makes me weirdly proud. Oh. Contact Eye to eye Contact Well, it's nice to see them back on Top Of The Box, celebrating six years of hits. It's Nazaroth. Read in a modest jacket with nice little lapels, a button-down czech shirt and pvc trousers mentions that it's nice to see the following band back on top of the pops celebrating their sixth anniversary that's a a sugar anniversary in the uk and a nine one in america um it's nazareth and may the sun shine formed in denver malin as the shadets in 1961 nazareth changed their name in 1968 and got

a bit ever before moving down to london in 1970 after supporting deep purple on tour they first made the charts in june of 1973 when broken down angel got to 9. I think that's what Mike Reid's referring to there. After two further top 20 hits in 1973, they became a bit of a global concern, becoming particularly big in Canada and scoring a top 10 US hit with Love Hurts in 1975. This single is the follow-up to Place In Your Heart, which got to number 70 in May of 1978,

and it's currently at number 51. Now then, here's a band who haven't looked at the notice board telling them that it's the Aventers. This horrible sway-along folk metal feel to this is so horrible. It's lumbering and fidgety at the same time and it wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to see them because they look almost too perfectly like you'd expect a band making this music to look yeah if you were feeling particularly uncharitable like the singer yeah dan mccaffey he looks like he looks like what diego maradona

would have looked like if he'd been scottish like this little sort of sort of like if bruce banner was changing into the hulk and he got stuck halfway through like part human part mutant misfit imagine if kevin keegan's mom had had twins and kept one in the attic just to go up there and hit it in the face with a stick when she needed to let off some steam yeah i mean his outfit as well is he's got he's he's basically wearing a white vest he's got some red white and blue bracers and a pair of tight jeans that were known round my way as ball splitters they are incredibly tight so the overall effect

is he looks like a really violent looking Mork Mork and Minder he looks like he's just going to burst out of a massive egg and put your fucking teeth down your throat and there's the young george galloway on bass uh chosen as it's the least jewish instrument uh there's a bloke on acoustic guitar

the pink jacket and a sort of raf wings shaped mustache who looks like fucking baby um i mean Like fucking Begbie. I mean, this is not a band you'd want to get into a fight with. No. This is a band you wouldn't want to get into a train with, never mind anything else. No. Or the same postcode. No, no. They're a band, they look like that, you know,

that rock cliche of when they take their shoes off in the van and they'd have like comic style smelly socks you know with a big big toe poking out mushrooms growing off their toes yeah just a single fly buzzing around and the word niff hovering in the air stink line wavy stink lines yeah yeah and they look like they would be skillful and frequent pub fighters uh not least because they would have nothing to lose because their faces are already smashed in. Yeah, it's not the kind of thing, if you're having a late tea,

this is not what you want. Yeah. But I would contend that they are not the ugliest looking band we're going to see on Top of the Pops tonight. I'll just leave it there for now. But Simon, what's this doing for you? Well, they are the hypervalue acdc

and um hypervalue by the way is a bit of a shout out to anybody in south wales who might be listening but you get the idea and uh dan mccafferty yeah i mean he's the hypervalue bond scott yeah i enjoyed uh taylor's descriptions of the band members but instead of george galloway um i had terry mcdermott on bass and uh and Dave out of Chaz and Dave on lead guitar um Jeff Lynn on drums and uh oh yeah um but the guy I actually really like the guy um in the gingham jacket on the acoustic guitar with a pointy tash so I decided to find out who he is and it turns out that's Zal Cleminson, previously of the sensational Alex Harvey band. Oh, that's him who dressed up as a Piero

and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. He joined Nazareth just for about a year, year and a half. And that's him. I used to hate him. I used to think he's the biggest wanker ever to be on top of the pops. And then I read some background

and how they started up in Glasgow. And then I changed my mind completely. I thought, if you can play fucking pubs in Glasgow dressed like that, you're a fucking better man than I. Balls of steel. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you see him on this in Civvies,

you understand why he was so fearless because he looks fucking rough. I heard a story about him that, I guess shortly after he quit nazareth um he was actually working as a taxi driver in uh glasgow because the sensational alex harvey band were no more and um somebody who was uh you know driven by him recognized him because you know you probably would recognize this guy with or without the piero makeup and just asked him what what the hell he's doing now and it

turned out that he was doing better driving a taxi than he was in any of his bands. So they asked him if he wanted a gig. So he basically joined Barbara Dixon's band the kind of pop folk singer so you know he did a year and a half or however long touring around with her.

So obviously a gun for hire. Good luck to him. I don't know i i quite i quite like this record you know i think it's all right i do think nazareth is a brilliant band name because it's so crass and pompous and so absolute right uh like what it reminds me of i mentioned to a few people uh back in the late 90s i know i know it i know go on i know this i think you probably do know what i'm gonna say yeah i wanted to form a metal band called barabbas yes which is clearly the ultimate metal band name um and then a few years later i got really paranoid because i saw the film uh 24 hour Party People. There's a scene where John Simm, as Bernard Sumner,

laughs with the rest of the band about his mate who came up with the worst band name ever, Barabbas. And aside from everything else, I thought that's a bit rich in the mouth of John Simm, a man who spent years in a band called Magic Alex, which, as band names go, is pitiful. Nazareth, though, just reeks of... It's just the archetypal early 70s rock band name, isn't it?

It does smell. It smells, definitely. Do you remember there was a myth going around you could get high from smoking your own hair? I'm getting that kind of... No! Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a myth going around that if you rolled up your own hair and stuck it in a cigarette or a joint or whatever,

you'd get really high off it. And for some reason I hear the name Nazareth and I'm thinking of burning hair. Well, we'd be fucked now, wouldn't we, Simon? I just quite like the overall feel you get from Nazareth. You know, they know they're not Led Zeppelin. They also know that they're um being left behind by history but they're just having a good time and um this is i mean we're going to see some

an example later on the show of the new wave of british heavy metal this is this is the old wave of british this is the awobbum and um there's something i don't know there's just something quite likable about it i would never have gone out and bought it or anything. But Nazareth were one of these bands, or just one of these names, actually, that you'd hear people mention. They'd say, oh, if you're into metal, have you heard of Nazareth? And everybody would sort of claim that they'd heard of them, but they couldn't name you a record by them. They're just one of these names. You might occasionally see a track on a compilation album or something like that.

So it's only through doing chart music and stuff like that that i've actually found out who the hell they were and what they sounded like and i you know i'm not gonna say i love them or anything but you know they seem all right they seem all right but it's 1979 isn't it this has this has the whiff of 1972 oh but listen right it's yes it 1979, but this is something that becomes clear throughout this episode, I think, is that it's still very, very much the 70s. This is not the Aventys, I'm sorry, it isn't. I've got Simon to say the Aventys, yes! I don't think anything is the Aventys, but this definitely isn't.

No, what I'm trying to say is I think you could trace the development of 1979 on an almost week by week basis and spot when it's actually starting, when the 80s are actually starting to happen. And I still contend that it's July when Two Way Army are number one on Top of the Pops with Our Friends Electric is when the 80s truly begin. And obviously in May of that year, you had Thatcher getting elected. But this is February, there's still strikes going on. There's nothing really on this episode that's particularly futuristic. And it just, to me, it feels like the endless 70s, not the 80s, it's the never-ending 70s. And I think we're still very much in it at this point. And I think that Nazareth still kind

of have a place in it, even though they probably sense that the game is going to be up pretty soon. This particular Top of the Pops does have a lot of records on that seem strangely out of time and strangely behind their time. I'll tell you what I will say about Nazareth though. This record has

got one great verse in it lyrically which goes, talking to my lover she was out it was independence day don't be nervous you can hold me tight someone turn the light out on the stairs now if you can't write great lyrics write startling non-sequiturs that would be my advice to any songwriter because it's it's the next best thing yeah but i'll tell you what everything that makes hair metal and 80s la fm radio hard rock sound worse than it should it's all here right it's no surprise to me that people like guns and roses all love nazareth

because if you want to know what makes guns and roses less than brilliant or so much less brilliant than they could have been uh listen to some nazareth because they don't sound that alike but if you drew a venn diagram of their respective sounds everything in the overlap would be the trouble anything else to say about this song i'm gonna go out so out so it's got a digital watch on, which is very impressive for 1979. Did you ever have a digital watch, Chad? Yeah, one of the first ones I got played the Can-Can, and I got that because I was into Bad Manners,

and I was so excited to have a little tinny version of the Can-Can on my wrist. That's better than me. Mine played the Yellow Rose of Texas. Yeah, I've got to say that in 1979, probably around this time, I had the first digital watch at my school. I was the fucking king of the playground that morning.

It was one of those where you had to press the button for the display to come up. It was really basic. And after about an hour of everyone in the whole school, including the teachers, coming up to me and saying, what's the timer? What's the timer?

What's the timer? Battery went out. and saying, what's the timeout, what's the timeout, what's the timeout? Battery went out. I mean, I've started collecting those now because I'm one of those retro wankers, you know. But I do love a proper old school chunky digital watch where you press it and the letters shine up red. Love it. Nothing else on it, no calculator, no bad manners songs, just purely the display.

The following week, May the Sunshine entered the top 40 at number 36 Nothing else on it, no calculator, no bad manners songs, just purely the display. The following week, May the Sunshine entered the top 40 at number 36 and would eventually get to number 22. The follow-up, Star, would only get to number 54 in July of this year and they would never trouble the charts again. However, they continued as a working band, were followed around by a pre-famed Guns N' Roses and turned down an invitation to play at Axl Rose's wedding. Dynamic, new single from Mesra, that's Made Of Sunshine. Five years ago, The Three Degrees had a number one record. Now they're trying to make it two with their new single, A Woman In Love.

MUSIC PLAYS It's the same old story You care but you don't love me Though I know it It still hurts to hear the truth We've already covered the three degrees in chart music 6 and 13, so we'll just say that this is the follow-up to Giving Up, Giving In, which got to number 12 on November of 1978, and it's up this week from number 5 to number 3.

Well, chaps, here we are again. Who'd have thought that we'd be the number one podcast authority in the world on the fucking three degrees? Do we have to talk about Prince Charles again. Shall we? Well, yeah, because now it's topical again, isn't it? Because she could have been the Meghan Markle of her day. Yes, she really could. Since the last

time we talked about this. Yeah, and this song really is a soul version of Stand By Your Man, isn't it? Well, it is. A country song, isn't it? It was originally by Twiggy, I believe. Twiggy recorded a version. Really? Yeah, Twiggy recorded this before the three degrees. And it was written originally by twiggy i believe twiggy recorded a video he recorded this before the three degrees and it was written by dominic bagatti and frank uh musker who were bagatti musker songwriting team who worked for all kinds of really middle of the road

people like john wait and they did too much love will kill you with queen and all kinds of sort mor things like that so so yeah this is a country song not a soul song isn't it definitely she's basically saying you know I'll be loyal to you even when you say something stupid about architecture or have a go at body popping in public or get recorded telling your knock off that you want to be shoved

up a fanny when it's the time of the month I'll stand by you because a woman in love will understand. I like how they've got these cherry red sequined frocks that have got big monster bites out of the sides as if they've been savaged by Tyrannosaurus Rex. Very fetching.

I also like how the one on the left, well, on Sheila Ferguson's right, looks like she's really kind of blissed out on Valium and gin, which ironically describes the state of every single person who bought this record. It's a real housewife's record, isn't it? Yeah, we've been pleasantly surprised by Three Degrees records in the past,

but they were the exceptions, and this is really what they did, and this is what we remember them for, and this is why we don't speak of them in the same breath as other superficially similar vocal groups who were clearly superior and far more interesting. I mean, this is... It's strange to think that this was number three

because it's hard to see who's buying it. Obviously, adults. But, I mean, it's adult-orientated, but it's not really divorce pop's buying it obviously adults but i mean it's adult orientated but it's not really divorce pop it's not granny bait and it's not any kind of hip you know i mean i always thought of the three degrees as a group who made their money in cabaret and like sit down night spots and it's weird to think of them having smash hit singles with unfunky, unmemorable ballads. I mean, this is pure MOR, and there isn't anything interesting happening in it, good or bad.

So near the end, when she does that big almighty vocal explosion, the song doesn't deserve it, so it really makes you jump. It seems really out of place. The most interesting thing about this clip is their dresses, which as well, as Simon says, looking like they've been attacked by a Trolleybuss Rex, are also encrusted in these sparkly fake jewels, which under the studio lights and in the semi-soft focus

that they're filmed in, explode like a box of fireworks. And it means watching this clip, it's like being shot at by a platoon of stormtroopers. It's just these red and green flashes in your face. You want to do the sound effects like... It's really distracting. It's like you're trying to listen to an unremarkable middle-of-the-road ballad

while being blasted in the face in the future. They're kind of like on the stage, but they're on their own. They're not surrounded by any of the kids who would get in the way and take away from the adult sophistication that's being presented to us. Yeah, there's no audience there. You don't want no fucking chip-pan-headed oiks picking the nose and looking at the camera

or mucking about. It's very obviously there's no audience. And at the end, it cuts from the three degrees filmed in an empty studio to Mike Reed's link into the next record, which I think is recorded in the same empty studio at a different time. And they try and cover the join with a wash of pre-recorded studio at a different time and they try to cover the join with a wash

of pre-recorded applause from a different time it's yeah it's it's not thrilling tv uh yeah and they the way they're filmed it was this strange color cast giving them purple hair um on that weird bbc set that's like half art deco and half star wars it's just yeah it's really dreary this looks like a really thankless task being the second and third degree as well doesn't it they're like the musical version of the the shirtless blokes rowing in the gallery the two kens you mean yeah yeah the ticket they're plugging away plugging away in the background uh without being able to stop and scratch themselves or anything just yeah this is this is what was understood as class isn't it is a sort of yes natural self-restraint very much so yeah so the following week Woman in Love stayed at number three and would stay there for another week before dropping down.

The follow-up, The Runner, got to number ten in April of this year and alas, Prince Charles had to make do with Lady Diana a couple of years later. You fucked up, Charles. Let us all down. Creeping up by degrees, it's the Three Degrees at number three this week. And one of the best new singles, second highest new entry this week, The Members and The Sound of the Suburbs. Reid, standing by a big gong, introduces one of the best new singles of the moment, in his opinion, Sound of the Suburbs by The Members. Formed in Cambly in 1976 by an insurance salesman called Nick Lightowlers,

who changed his name to Nicky Tesco, The Members did the London pub circuit and donated a song to the first LP released by Beggars Banquet, the punk compilation Street. In 1978, they signed a one-shot deal with Stiff Records for their debut single Solitary Confinement, which failed to chart. This is the follow-up, their first single on Virgin Records, and it's a new entry at number 38. First chance we get to have a look at Mike Reid's PVC trousers.

Yeah, he's manspreading like a bastard there, isn't he? He is, isn't he? He's Tory party conference standing, isn't he? Yes, definitely, yes. It's Gideon Osborne, it's Theresa May, Manchester, two, three years ago, whenever it was. Yeah. Yeah. So, um,

Smash Hits used to have a saying that Toyah was in reception and what they meant by that was that if someone had dropped out of being on the front cover and they desperately needed somebody at short notice, Toya would always say yes, she was always there always readily accessible

Top of the Pops, I reckon around this time the members are always in reception because they seem to appear on Top of the pops far more often than their stature would really justify. And maybe that's just a false impression I've got from watching BBC4 reruns, the story of 1979 or whatever it was.

But yeah, they seem to have appeared on TLTP an awful lot. And I'm sorry, but I'm going to get in trouble for this because I kind of know one of them. Ooh! One of them's a friend of a friend. Which one? His name's JC, JC Carroll, and he's a guitarist. And he's, yeah, I've been drinking in his company

with sort of mutual friends, but no, I don't like him. I'm sorry, you know, I think this is just awful. This is wrong. It's weird that it's become a kind of iconic staple of punk compilations

and punk kind of retrospectives, probably because of the title. It's got this kind of retrospectives probably because of the title it's got this kind of definitive title, Sound of the Suburbs but it's a great compilation LP title isn't it but it is shite and it's 1979 and they're still the weird thing is

you look at the state of them they don't look like the kids I was shocked to find that JC was actually 23 when this was filmed I don't know like the kids i was shocked to find that jc was actually 23 uh when this was filmed um i don't know how the others were but they all look a lot older they are not the kids um and uh there's there's actually ironically there is a punk kid in the audience isn't there with a a yellow and blue stripe dyed into his hair i i try to figure out if it's leeds united or cardiff city or what um you know that the floor manager's going oh there's one of them punk kids right get him in

the front shoot the shot over his head but i think it's 1979 and we're the real dregs of punk here and we've reached a stage where all punk means is being a bit disrespectful in your manner and and singing in estuarine vowels so it basically means sounding a bit cockney that's what punk has become now but simon i remember in a previous chart music you you were saying that this was the era where punk was bigger than uh than it was before you know we weren't finally broken through to uh to people like us on this on these states well it it did um there's a kind of delayed reaction you know certainly in in wales it didn't break until 78 and i i'm struggling to justify uh my reasons for not liking this and liking sham 69 because i did like sham 69 there's not a lot of difference

between the two really when you get down to it they're both kind of suburban you know outskirts of London takes on punk and you know there's not a lot of subtlety or inventiveness to either but yeah I don't know there's just something so on the nose about it

the way the guy shouts you know something about what the kids want now is anarchy, as if tying themselves in. Hey, remember Sex Pistols three years ago? We're a bit like that. But we're also kind of standing back from it and making a comment on it or something. It's a bit late for this, isn't it? That is the thing.

But the funny thing is, a lot of other members' records, even if they're not that good, are less straight and silly than this. Like the follow-up offshore banking business is a million times better than this. And the Top of the Pops performance of that is quite something as well. So, yeah, I'm not 100% sure

why they were impersonating The clash this closely in 1979 um what you can say is nicky tesco is obviously one of the great pop stage names although it's questionable whether it's better than nicholas light owlers um but he has that air of somehow being not a young man of the late 1970s. Yeah, there's something in his face and build and the way he wears his hat. He seems more like... Yeah, his hair's a bit jazz club, isn't it?

He seems more like a displaced 35-year-old from the dark ages or an unfortunate mid-Victorian baby in a sepia photograph um but i like the way he's a poor fit as a lead singer and he's so naturally awkward um and sort of turns that into the point i mean that's i do miss that in bands that now you just get contrived awkwardness and and false cool blur doing this with a bit more musical proficiency and a an ironic upper middle class sneer became the sound of 1994 which displeased me hugely at the time because aside from anything else uh one thing you can say for this record is that it's about boredom and it's about a form of boredom which had ceased to exist by 1994 and was never experienced by rich kids anyway um yeah yeah the retreads of this

missed the point and and sort of reveal a deeper boredom which is and a contagious boredom which is the boredom of having no ideas yeah i mean the one thing about this is we're going to see an example of a london punk band to see an example of a London punk band and this, an example of a non-London punk band. And you can see the difference straight away, can't you? This lot look like they've been loaded into a cannon and fired through a charity shop, haven't they? I mean, Nicky Tesco's got some kind of

Jackson Pollock suit on, but everyone else is wearing manky jumpers and T-shirts and lots of little badges that that can be quite charming though like when the undertones did it definitely yeah that was all right the undertones were the absolute you know template for that the guitarist singing backing vocals i don't know if it's simon's mate or not is on poor terms spatially with the microphone which was a big thing with bands of this period.

It's like he can't see it. It's like he doesn't know where it is, and he's just moving his head around, thinking, well, it's around here somewhere. That's quite appealing. So what about the bit where he flips it over? Oh, what, flips his guitar over? Yeah, he flips his guitar over,

and on the back, in sort of silver glitter paint, it says, that's right. And it's just to coincide with a bit where he goes, that's right, in really kind of weak backing vocals. Yeah, the guitarist out of Bon Jovi did that as well. But on the back of his guitar, it said, tits. But I mean, it's not exactly this machine kills fascists, is it? That's right.

Nor is it Gordon is a cunt, unfortunately. And also, they zoom in on his scratch plate and he's got a sexy lady in a bikini cut out of a newspaper stuck on there. Yes. I'd say the best thing about this record, though, is the way that it so perfectly captures a particular cartoon version of late 70s britishness which looking back it's like oh yeah late 70s it's you know dad's washing his car and all this sort of stuff but that's actually the very thing he's trying to do which

is quite interesting and you know although it's not exactly in utero, it's not whimsical either. It's not a gag and it's not a dress-up. They do sort of mean it. And the only problem with the... You know, there's that really loose, shouty climax to this record. Well, all the stuff that makes that authentically exciting is the stuff that's stolen directly from The Clash. And the rest is a bit shabby because it's them um it's weird though

you couldn't make a record like this now because it's not 21st century to address disaffected youth in terms that the rest of the country can understand right there's a sort of universalism to this record like you know if your parents hear it they get it they understand what's being said they just don't like it you know whereas now records made by and for you know bored kids from the suburbs um are completely incomprehensible to everyone else i mean most of them are completely incomprehensible to me even though i like them you know and that's probably how it should be. I mean, we talk about punk breaking through at schools

and things like that. And we don't see much punkishness going on in the audience in this Top of the Pops, do we? I mean, there's that one lad with the dyed hair. But the only other one I noticed was there was one lad at the front and he really wants to pogo, but he's a bit too scared to. So he just shakes a bit as if he's trying to get a trapped fart out. So the following week, Sandler Suburbs jumped 14 places to number 23 and would eventually get to number 12.

The follow up offshore banking business would get to number 31 in April of this year. The last time they got to spray their musk upon the hit parade. And they split up for the first time in 1983. Sound of the Suburbs. APPLAUSE Sound of the Suburbs, the only record around in transparent vinyl. I've got something transparent, something reflective. Mirrors. MUSIC PLAYS We are mirrors of the sun and we brightly shine We are singing and dancing in perfect time

There is nothing in the world that we can do to stop the light of love come shining through Reid points out that Sound of the Suburbs is available on transparent vinyl, which was a huge deal back then, wasn't it?

Yeah, I love things like that. I got several records by people like Squeeze just because they're on see-through vinyl, you know? Yeah. Very exciting. Of course, this is a time when smash hits used to mention whether singles were coloured or had picture sleeves on the reviews page. And it became something that was very tied in with punk

and very tied in with the new wave to have either see-through vinyl or kind of lurid green or pink sort of vomit-inducing colours. It was a very punk thing, wasn't it? Yeah, and when they were shaped, it was even better, wasn't it? Yeah. Although that said, ELO did it, and they're probably the least punk band imaginable.

But, yeah. I remember in my local record shop, they had a shaped picture disc of a Barry Manilow record, and it was Barry Manilow's profile. Like, they'd only done it to encourage the obvious joke that as it went around on the turntable his nose would shear off the stylus and you know yeah i remember there was um uh one of it's probably my best friend's girl by the cars in the shape of a car and um there was a folk rock band from Ireland called Horse Lips. It was a shamrock-shaped disc.

I remember that one, yeah. The last one I can remember was, oh, God, Down Under, Men at Work, shaped like Australia. They sounded like crap as well, those, like picture discs and stuff. The actual sound of the record is abominable. Yeah, I've got one of Prince, Kiss kiss and it's basically his body is him um and yeah it's just a piece of shit you know to get a better sound off an iphone one um and uh oh god what's the other one oh king kurt destination zulu land this kind of cartoon tasmanian devil type thing. At least they didn't do one for the LP Big Cock.

And I remember Madness always put out, yeah, Madness always put out picture discs and I was a bit of an obsessive collector of their stuff. And I remember going down to the local record shop, Christopher's, where I got all my records and picking up the copy of Driving In My Car that I'd ordered and um strapping it to uh the the pannier thing on the back of my bicycle and then putting my lunch putting my lunch on top of it which is a bag of chips fresh from the chip shop and of course by the time i got home it was shaped like one of those novelty ashtrays

and i i had the nerve i had the nerve to go back to christopher's and complain and say sorry this record you give me is out of shape. And it smells of vinegar. And because I'm such a regular customer, you let me get away with it. Anyway, read Pivots from talking about something transparent to something that's reflective. It's Mirrors by Sally Oldfield. Oh, did you see what he did then?

It's very clever because this is reflective in two senses as well, isn't it? Yes, yes. Now, he'd obviously put a bit of work into it. And I don't know if that's tragic or kind of quite nice. But yeah, you know, I don't know. At least he's not just... I suppose he starts the show with all that cliched stuff that Taylor mentioned about... What was it again? He says...

Welcome to another star-studded episode of top of the pops yeah yeah so that's all kind of you know bog standard of the script stuff but um yeah yeah at least at least he's put a bit of thought into these absolutely cringe-worthy puns is this his first top of the pops do we know his first top of the pops was in early november 1978 yeah if it is that makes a lot of sense because it's like i remember tv database is telling me that this is his fourth top of the pops yeah no it must be it's i mean i remember it's like when you were music writers you know on the weeklies your first review would be packed with great lines like the one yeah that thanks for my first review.

You'd make sure it was brilliant. And you'd spend hours on it, making sure it was brilliant. And then about your fifth review, you'd do it in 20 minutes and it would be dreadful. Just because you suddenly realised you had to work to tight deadlines and the novelty had worn off. Yeah. So, born in Dublin in 1947,

Sally Oldfield started her music career in 1968 when she recorded some demos overseen by Mick Jagger and assisted by her younger brother, Mike Oldfield. After the two of them formed the folk duo, the Sally and Je, she provided backing vocals on his debut LP, Tubular Bells, in 1973. This is the first single from her debut LP, Water Bearer, and it's up this week from number 23 to number 19. Now, chaps, you see, we're seeing all these new wave acts around this time,

particularly the female ones, trying to be a bit weird and different, but this is fucking mental, isn't it? Partly because it's not trying to be weird and different but this is fucking mental isn't it partly because it's not trying to be weird and different um that's why it's so authentically strange basically it's uh it's these women wearing dresses that make them look like they're about to be burnt by matthew hopkins um or that they're about to go in for an operation. No, wait, what it looks like, it's like they're in a fictional convent and they've all hopped out of bed

in these drab nighties and bare feet to do this song and dance routine in the dormitory. It's got to be said that Oldfield and her backing singers are in nighties but not the naughty ones that you could buy for £2.99 and a couple of vouchers out the sun. My immediate impression was that it was like the Bronte sisters having a go at imitating Martha and the Vandellas,

and they've all got out of bed for a bit of a midnight sing. Yeah, and the vibe of this clip is 50% stars on Sunday and 50% blood satan's claw there's a it's because this is a funny week because there aren't that many really good records on this top of the pops but there aren't that many really terrible records either what you get is a lot of peculiar things which aren't that representative of the period but are good examples of particular styles and sub-genres now this is a bit of an exception because it's quite difficult to pin down um it's sort of folky but it's not it's like i mean i love properly eerie folk stuff and even some of the properly

eerie hippie folk stuff but there's a sort of there's also a kind of neat jazziness to this record which is like an exorcism uh and all the old ghosts of merry old england or merry old ireland just uh vanish and you know what you're left with is uh just what meets the ear which is a kind of radio to suburbanism and uh prosaicism yeah it's all very music and movement in the assembly room in your vest and pants isn't it well it takes me back there was a lot of this kind of thing around when i was at primary school actually like women with perms in shapeless smocks singing la la la with a creepy kind of religiosity sort of on the edge of sanity. You know what I mean? To me, right, she looks like she's been let out of the loony bin in Girl Interrupted.

But also, she looks a bit like Madame Peignoir from Fawlty Towers. So I keep expecting her to, you know, pin John Cleese to the light switch and say, oh, Basil, you're very naughty and this kind of stuff. But I quite like this record. I've got to be honest. Yeah, okay, I admit, me too. Do you know what?

What it is, it's the Orinoco flow of its day with added weird kind of Aloha Hawaii kind of business in the chorus. I don't know what that Hawaiian stuff is. But yeah, it's... Kili Aloha, roughly translated from Hawaiian, is Hello Flower. All right.

Which makes it sound a bit like Charlie Williams, doesn't it? Oh, yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like ambient folk pop. And I grouped it together in my mind with, I don't know if you know, also from the 70s, a folk rock hit, Northern Lights by Renaissance.

Yeah. It's got that kind of feel to it, I and it's the theme tune to the paperland the people who live by the time all right okay and um yeah it's it's um a bit kind of idyllic and utopian and it's just yeah i mean uh as as it you know it does what it says on the tin, mirrors and all that. It does sound quite sparkly. I do like that about it. But the other thing about the performance, other than her bizarre outfit, is the pampas grass on the stage.

And we all know what that meant, don't we? No. Go on. Well, apparently, supposedly, leaving a massive vase of pampas flowers outside your front door on your patio meant that you're a swinger and you're inviting other swingers to come round. Oh, shit.

My mum's just got some of that in. This happened to Mariella Frostrup a few years ago. It was amazing. If you look this up, if you just Google Mariella Frostrup pampas grass, it was this amazing story where you look this up, if you just Google Mariela Frostrup Pampas grass, it was this amazing story where she'd supposedly innocently left two massive vases full of Pampas grass on the balcony outside her flat in London.

And all kinds of weirdos kept coming around knocking because they were taking it as a signal. So it's extraordinary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I don't know if... So it's like the middle-class version of the Omo packet in the window. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I don't know if... So it's like the middle-class version of the Omo packet in the window. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Well, that was a military thing, the Omo packet. It's like, you know, sort of in army towns. Old man out. Yeah, yeah. Like if your husband was away, you know, fighting a war, you'd stick the Omo in the window. Yeah. I mean, you know, not that for one moment the homo in the window yeah i mean you know not

that for one moment we're suggesting that that sally oldfield was into all that but you know hey it was the 70s free love who knows you know come in have a bit bit of the old sex to my brother's album she does look a lot like her brother in a curly wig it has to be said our old editor alan jones actually had a book out called Can't Stand Up For Falling Down and it's all his old rock and roll war stories and in there he meets Mike Oldfield he's very over familiar with Jonesy Mr Oldfield

it's an extraordinary thing I think he's kind of one of these people how do you pronounce it, exegesis this weird kind of self help cult that you know it it basically the people people they invade your personal space and they get very intense with you and look you deep in the eye and try and make some kind of connection with you and all this kind of stuff

and um that's what michael phil was into um for all we know uh you know if if sally oldfield was into the old pampas grass routine, who knows? But it certainly sends the imagination racing when you look at the clip in hindsight. I think that if I was there, I would make my excuses and leave because there's something a bit weird and crazy eyed about her that puts you on your guard. And it's weird because the record is so sort of i mean it's an unusual record but it's not there's no whiff of madness in the record right which is what it's missing i mean folk and this is basically a folk record was the officially sanctioned music of childhood in the 70s before being displaced by rap in the 80s but that's what um provides that sort of queasy

folk horror feel to all that yeah ontology stuff you know and people of our generation but see this record isn't mysterious it's pretty uh but the arrangement is so sort of twee and soft-hearted you don't really feel anything but then you look at her and she genuinely does look like you know the ghost of someone who was burnt at the stake or something is but i sort of don't like it because the there's a sort of bogus spirituality to this record and there's this sub-pagan awe at the fact that the fucking sun comes up in the morning you know what i mean it's like a sort of a suburban paganism i mean now i'm not one of those people who resists pop records which set themselves in a dream world or a fantasy land but fucking hell there's

something about this the sort of this jolly sort of jolly, aniministic wooziness. But you set that next to the relentless bleakness of 1979, and it makes me feel like one of those people. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.

One of the members watching this. Why isn't she singing about real life, real kids problems? You know, you're watching it. You're longing for the for the Roman Legion to come along to a Wattle and Dorb settlement and knock some fucking sense in there. The lyrics, though, we are, we are, we are perfect. She's got a point. But it has to be said that the kids are not feeling this. No.

They're a bit scared. Well, rightly so. Bear in mind that The Wicker Man had come out about six years earlier and they're probably wondering what's going to happen to them. Well, we're not that far removed from the exorcist here. So maybe they're worried that she's going to start masturbating with crucifix and start vomiting on them and telling them that the man sucked cocks in hell.

To be fair, we don't see what happened after the cameras stopped rolling. Which, of course, her brother did the music for that. Yeah. It all links together, yeah. The following week, Mirrors dropped five places to number 24 and it was her one and only appearance in the charts. Yeah, you notice she wasn't invited on Top of the Pops again, so, yeah. I guess it's people heard the record

and assumed she would look like Britt Eklund or at least Britt Eklund's body double oh yeah that's the other great picture disc of the era isn't it Britt Eklund we know Tom with a shiny ball over a fanner yeah I had the gatefold well yeah I did have the picture disc but the gatefold of that it's amazing yeah

yeah yeah yeah doesn't open now. LAUGHTER UFO! Doctor, doctor, please Read points out that the following band are making their first appearance on Top of the Pops and it's long overdue. It's UFO and Doctor Doctor. Formed in London as Hocus Pocus in 1969 after changing their name in tribute to the fabled hippie club where they were first discovered, UFO were a hard rock band who poached the German guitarist Michael Schenker from Scorpions in 1973. After Schenker went back

to Scorpions in 1978 after musical differences with lead singer Phil Mogg, they had their first close scrape with the top 40 when Only You Can Rock Me got to number 50 in August of 1978. This is the follow-up, and it's a new entry at number 39. Bloody hell. UFO, I didn't realise they'd been knocking about for so long, chaps. Well, that's it. I mean, because this is the new wave of British heavy metal.

This is the Newobham, even though they formed in the 60s, because it took that long for these bands to kind of percolate their way up. And if you look at chart positions, it's only now, 78, 79, 80, that UFO and all these other bands actually start selling many records. Yeah, Judas Priest are having their first chart hit with take on the world which is currently at number 31 yeah and absolutely judas priest are considered that you know the kind of first true new wave of british heavy metal band or the first two heavy metal band i think because priest were the first sort of metal or heavy metal band who had kind of excised

all elements of blues from it and it's just purely metal um but phil mogg is probably the most new album name possible for lead singer i think yes phil morg what brilliant that's just such a metal name um i think uh even though he'd left the band i think michael shenker plays guitar on this track but we don't see really yeah yeah because uh he co-wrote it and he's on the album that it's from but um he he left by the time this top of the pops performance happens because it was a sort of belated hit i think i just quite like the whole the whole look of them uh i like this something that makes me feel quite sentimental nostalgic about that particular heavy metal look that combo of dark drainpipe jeans and white shoes or you know um white dunlop green flash and um good hair yeah but kind of fly away hair they've got real kind of just sort of

flicks up at the ends not deliberately just because that's you know it's this it's a real kind of um castle donnington you know monsters of rock kind of look they've got going on there and um yeah i and it's got a bit of balls to it this record it really has you can see why even though it wasn't a massive hit it's become a bit of a um hard rock standard this this tune um the leopard jacket on the guitarist is is pretty fly as well i've got to give him credit for that yeah you're talking you're talking about the rhythm guitarist the pleasantly named Paul Raymond. Yes. How brilliant would it be if it had been the Paul Raymond?

I don't know, this is all up, but I mean, yeah, in this case, UFO stands for utterly fucking horrible. Something so sort of, you know, I don't know. Also, Phil Mogg gets the words wrong to the first lines. You notice this because he's miming. Yeah, and he fucks up the first line. How many times must he have sung it? It's so weird.

I mean, Ozzy Osbourne famously always used to forget the first line of Paranoid, which was the best line that Giza Butler ever wrote for him. Finish with my woman because she couldn't help me with my mind. Whereas Phil has to remember the less memorable Doctor, Doctor, please, whoa, the mess I'm in. But, you know, come on, it's not hard, is it? It's all right, this, but it's the way it's not hard is it i don't know it's all right this but it's the way the

the way that it sort of plods the way like the drums and bass plod through the verses and there's that weird lack of dynamics that you get with downer music you know plus the the bare bones sound of the band it's uh it's like a lot of stuff you sort of lose if you sit in the middle it's like you're better off going to extremes like if you're if you're going to play hard rock then either sound busy and dramatic and uh expressive like the who or led zeppelin or go minimal and channeled and sort of wall-eyed, like early Sabbath. Because if you're in the middle, you end up with something like this, which is just a not very melodic pop song,

played too loud and too slow. I mean, it isn't bad, but this kind of heavy rock is a very forgiving genre, like we were saying about disco last time it's a forgiving genre you put the basic elements together and you'll have something that at least sounds quite good uh but it's very plain it's a very plain record you know um david stubbs on his podcast is always talking about the darkness in the corners of the studio on the screen and that kind of stuff i think there's a similar thing in this performance where um we get a view from uh behind the drum kit like it lasts quite a long time and uh um from behind the drum kit you get to see the studio floor and how kind of tiny it all is there's only about there's only about three rows of kids and then

beyond that this empty space and then there's another stage um across the way getting ready for whoever um so yeah i think that's that's some kind of metaphor itself for the the the hollow void at the heart of pop this song though fucking hell talk about tying up the nhs with petty concerns there's probably a load of fucking non-ars in the waiting room dying of hyperthermia and he's in there banging on about his odd loving woman all night long it's it's it's not right is it no i mean for all we know the woman that's injured him is the same one out of uh you shook me all night long who's you know knocked uh not the fella from acdc out with uh her american thighs because you know it's a hazardous business they can't you know put you in traction totally see what I would say is I'd rather have this UFO than the previous UFO

because if you look at someone I know used to like them and they had all their 70s albums. When you look at their 70s albums, it's like the Scorpions. They've got all those sort of nasty hypnosis-type covers, you know, sort of touched-up photos of you know like sort of touched up photos of some grotesque tableau you know if you look at the covers of uh what their album is called force it and uh no heavy petting and i think phenomenon um they've all got those covers that make your eyes go a bit nauseous, like, it's like advertising agency on LSD, you know. But it's, I'd much rather have this,

because it reminds me of being at school, you know, because we had mods and rockers, right, and the mods were the mod revivalists, and the rockers were metal fans. And it's kind of hilarious that the primitivist rockers had moved with the times and given up Gene Vincent and got into heavy rock, whereas the modernists had not. But I like the rockers.

They were a good laugh. And to this day, when you meet people who are into metal, they tend to be really good, likeable, non-judgmental people, whereas mods are often wankers. But I always lent towards mods at the time because even then, well, even then I recognised this stuff as a bad porno vision of sex set to a wiggly thump of mediocre head-banging bullshit and i couldn't see myself in pissy denim um and i always went the modric because i came from you know the midlands merc and i wanted to escape it uh not not wallowing it but you know i can listen to late 70s early 80s metal and you know apart from apart from iron maiden most of it lacks that sort of freaky

alienated feel that made the older heavy rocks are great and more recent metal more interesting but i do feel like i really understand it uh and i did grow up around it and when i see that that donnington look of a sort of a that kind of weird crouch with the guitar swaying backwards and forwards with the with yeah the tight jeans and white pumps it's like it takes me right back Doctor Doctor by UFO or Doctor Doctor

by the Thompson Twins Christ UFO UFO UFO yeah if nothing else it's chunky. The following week, Doctor Doctor dropped two places to number 41, but would re-enter the charts the week after that when it got to number 35, its highest position.

The follow-up, Shoot Shoot, would only get to number 48 in April of this year, and their only other top 40 hit, Young Blood, got to number 48 in April of this year and their only other top 40 hit, Young Blood, got to number 36 in January of 1980 and they split up for the first time in 1983. The NHS advised that people suffering from hard-loving women all night long should consult their pharmacist or call 111 and speak to a fully trained advisor. Doctor, Doctor, UFO, is there really life on top of the fox?

Yes, is the answer. Billy Joel, My Life. Are they enjoying it so far? Yeah? Got a call from an old friend We used to be real close Said he couldn't go on the American way Reid, hanging over some congas, does a pretty rubbish link into the next song before asking one of the congas if they're enjoying themselves.

The song is My Life, the singer is Billy Joel, which makes him sound like one of Superman's uncles. We've done Billy Joel in Chart Music's 15 and 16, so we'll just say that this is his third chart single. It's a follow-up to Moving Out, Anthony's song, which got to number 35 in July of 1978. It's from the LP 52nd Street. It features Peter Cetera and Donny Dacus of Chicago on backing vocals,

and it's up this week from number 15 to number 14. Now, chaps, before we go into this one, we need to point out that you can really tell that Reed's still bedding into television presenting, isn't he? Because, you know, we see him here nodding back to the gallery at the beginning, and he lets his presenting face drop into a

was-that-okay expression immediately after. He's doing his thing here, leaning across some bongos, isn't he? Which is kind of prefiguring one of the songs that's coming up, it turns out. But what is this obsession with him? He can't keep away from them instruments, can he? He really does, doesn't he?

Yeah. Then he goes, is there really life on Top of the Pops? Yes, Billy Joel, perhaps it's Joel, my life. Oh, God, yeah, yeah. So, the video is essentially Billy and his mates pricking about in the studio, cutting a tune and living that musician-y life.

Simple blue-collar guys, although one of them's playing a clarinet, and you think, is he going to take that home on the subway? They're trying to do some kind of tricksy thing here, aren't they, where you've got Billy Joel and his band walking into the booth in the studio, sorry, into the control room in the studio,

behind the glass, looking through the glass, watching themselves. And, you know, that's meant to fuck with our heads, but it just doesn't quite come off because they don't really commit to it, no. And I think that's the actual producer, by the way, Phil Ramone. Right, yeah. and it's i think i think that's the actual producer by the way phil ramone right um yeah produce produce the album i think that's actually him well the first thing that caught my eye was an overflowing fruit bowl on the mixing desk which was nice but kind of offset by what appeared to me to be a plastic cup of piss it might as well

be 1972 because they all look like they're in an episode of Quincy or Ironsides or something like yeah it looks like everything smells of cigarettes you can just you can smell it through the screen it's like it's like Sylvester Stallone's runty little brother or something isn't he what he looks like to me is like if Lou Reed had followed up his his makeup junkie freak image with a sort of underachieving mature student image or uh montgomery from fame because it's that and it's that thing again that um that particular kind of new york like the the new york skyline in the opening titles of a warm american sitcom well exactly yeah somewhere out there through the through the grimy windows of that recording studio, Dean Friedman is brushing his teeth

and Cagney and Lacey are earning their badges. And the same wallet has changed Anne six times this afternoon. It's got this same feel to it as... I remember on a previous episode we talked about It's Still Rock and Roll to Me, where he's this kind of unfathomably angry little man. And you wonder what he's so angry about. I mean, the lyrics to this,

the delivery is more furious than the lyrics warrant, put it that way. And I just, I don't get it. He's this sort of stroppy little man with his piano. And also, oh, by the way, there's the bit where it goes, I never said you had to offer me a second chance. I never said I was a victim of circumstance. That bit of the song, total 10cc ripoff.

Did you think that? Well, I'll tell you the most shocking thing about this record. I bought it. No! I know. I know. As a 10-year-old, a 10-year-old boy bought this fucking record, one of the first records I ever bought.

And I'm looking back now, I'm thinking, and I'm thinking, and I don't know why. Do you think it spoke to you in your life at that time that you felt... Well... You needed some kind of anthem of self-determination to make you feel centred? Well, yeah, maybe so. I mean, maybe it was because I felt I was becoming independent

and, you know, I could go into town on my own. I could make my own choices. I could make toast toppers when my mum was at bingo. Yeah, looking back on it now, I think it was the line, I don't need you to tell me it's time to go home, that really sold the record to me. Because that's how I felt when my mum was screaming my name at the top of the street when I was playing football.

The weirdest bit is the verse, they will tell you you can't sleep alone in a strange place. Then they'll tell you you can't sleep with somebody else. Ah, but sooner or later you'll sleep in your own space. Either way, it's okay. You wake up with yourself. Which, oh, that last bit's really deep, isn't it? Yeah, you know, you wake up yourself. But, I oh, that last bit's really deep, isn't it? Yeah, you know, you wake up yourself.

But, I mean, who are they? Who are the they who are telling the probably 30-year-old or something Billy Joel in late 70s New York that he can't sleep with who he wants to sleep with? This goes against everything we know about New York in that era. The bit that gets me about this song is his mate in the first verse. He claims to be tired of living the American way, so he goes to Los Angeles, which is a bit fucking thick, isn't it, really?

It's like me saying, oh, God, I hate England. I think I'm going to fuck off to Skegness. Well, yeah. The funniest thing about this record is the disco bass line as well because this is not a disco record. And they put this disco bass line on it, because this is not a disco record. And they put this disco bassline on it, which seems so forced and such an obvious bit of radio bait. But if you took that away, the rest of the song will collapse, because that's what keeps it functioning and stops it fading

completely into sort of gutless introspection. I mean, this is an Elton John song in all but composer credit. And when you're listening to post-Elton John music, something has gone badly wrong in your life. And I fucking bought this. You know, everyone bangs on about the first record they bought. You know, it's one of the key milestones in our lives. But, you know, I'm of the opinion that it's far more interesting to find out about the records that we buy at the beginning of our lives

as record consumers that we look back on and think, why the fuck did I buy that? So, Chaps, what's yours? Yeah, the first single I bought, well, the first serious single I bought because the first thing I actually bought was Nevermind the Present by the Baron Knights. But it doesn't count because it's comedy. The first actual record I bought was Ebony and Ivory.

Yeah, I'd love to say it was something cool, but it wasn't. But, I mean, the only get out is it's because I like the Beatles. And it was like, oh, Paul McCartney's got a new single out. I'll go and buy it. But I think at that age, I couldn't really tell if it was good or bad, you know what I mean? I mean, the first record I bought, and we've talked about this before, was Gary Glitter, I'm the Leader of the Gang I Am.

But around this time, when I was starting to properly collect records, it was weird, because on the one hand, I'd be buying things like Boomtown Rats and Blondie and stuff, and then later on, you know, Madness and the Specials and stuff that had a bit of a sort of punky edge to it but at the same time I would sort of quietly buy sort of soft adult ballads like Reunited by Peaches and Herb or Together We Are Beautiful by Fern Kinney and yeah yeah I did I just yeah I bought them and I it kind of I think I went through a phase actually of feeling that I had to buy every number one record.

Some of them I can justify without. So, for example, I bought Three Times a Lady by the Commodores because it was number one. So that partly explains it, but even so. Yeah, I think most of us went through a phase of buying the number one single. But what single was it, Simon, that broke your streak? I think maybe Kenny Rogers' Cow to the County

might have broken me. That might be the end of it. Yeah, yeah. And of course, the other thing about being that age and having so few records in your collection is that you just rinse them to death, don't you? I mean... Absolutely.

Fucking hell. I mean, I remember playing the B-side of Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick far more than I did the A-side, probably because it was called There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards. There Ain't Half Been Some Tony Bastables. No, just one. Tony Bastable.

But you're right about doing anything you could to get your money's worth out of these purchases you made. So the B-side, yeah, I mean, Three Times a Lady by the Commodores, I can still remember, the B-side was a funk track called Can't Let You Tease Me, and it's an absolute banger and you know to this day i value that a lot more than three times a lady to be honest oh and the

other thing was was that the record player in our house uh it went to 33 and a third 45 78 and 16 so there was fun to be had with billy jo that point of view. Yeah, you get me. And in those days and at that age, it genuinely was funny because, you know, it was simpler times and we were amused by simpler things. It's like there's that clip of Question of Sport where David Coleman plays a clip, I think it's two rugby players, and they play the video back and forwards, back and forwards, sort of two seconds

um to the sound of some classical music and the panellists are just falling about laughing and the idea that you can rewind tape and make people look like they're doing ballet or something yeah yeah on the ball used to do that in the early 70s though with the used to call it the dancing footballers yeah it was on all the time and it wasn't even new then because um they did hitler doing the Lambeth Walk, weren't they? You know what I mean? That's where it all comes from.

I mean, that was brand new. But yeah, 1970s, oh, look, it's a referee tripping over something. And then, oh, he stood up again. Oh, he's tripped over again. Oh, he stood up again. Yeah, fuck off. Oh, well, most definitely, yeah.

And I'll tell you what, Boney M sound fucking satanic at 16 RPM. I can imagine that getting played in Burgheim now in Berlin, you know. My mate had Pass the Dutchie by Musical Youth. And the funny thing about that single is if you play that at 33 RPM, it sounds like a good reggae record. So the following week, My Life jumped up two places to number 12,

where it stayed for two weeks before dropping down the chart. The follow-up, Until the Night, only got to number 50, and he'd have to wait until August of 1980 for it still rock and roll to me to put him back in the top 40. My Life became the theme tune to the early 80s American sitcom Buzz and Buddies, where Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari played two ad men

who dressed up as women at home in order to live in the one flat that they could afford to in an all-female block. Oh, what larks there must have been. Yeah, if I was going to say... I bet it was shit. If a sitcom like that

never appeared at 6 in the evening on BBC 2 on a Tuesday night worse than Rhoda Number 14 this week for you Joelle and My Life and now to put you in the holiday mood, straight out of the holiday brochure, we have a nice group over there.

Come on, then, kiss me slowly, kiss me slowly. Oh, slower, slower, slower. Right, it's Too Mad Sound. Reid, wearing a kiss me quick hat and flanked by two ladies, introduces the next band and is awkwardly kissed on the cheek by both of them. Before we go into that song, Reid's uh performance with with the ladies it's it is a bit awkward isn't it and it brings it home to you that he's been solo up until now uh yes you know he's not doing that traditional 1970s thing of being flanked by you know two or four or six girls cramming them into his face yeah but but now he's making up for it and he makes them

kiss him in this weird kind of sex pest way. And then he starts going... It's more of an uncle-y kind of way, isn't it? Oh, come on, give your uncle a kiss. Well, you say that, but I don't know how many uncles would go, oh, slower, slower at the end. Well, yeah, that's very true, actually, yes.

Meanwhile... Certainly not me. Meanwhile, Blue Tulip is at home going absolutely mental, putting a foot through the telly probably. But the band are Two Man Sound and the song is Keital America. Formed in Belgium in the early 70s, Two Man Sound were a pop trio that went all samba disco and had a European hit in 1976 with Charlielie brown this is their first uk hit and has been remixed by a british dj called pete waterman and it's up from number 62 to number 51 well here

come the belgians as uh as somebody else who you don't see on telly anymore used to say um whenever we do one of these episodes there's always one song on the list that i've never heard of when i'm scanning the names um but then when i played it and as soon as i saw the harmar superstar meets hair bear bunch looking guy in a in a caftan going mental behind the bongos i realized and we'll come to him in a minute, I realise what this is. Right, so Lou Dupric, the brilliant name Lou Dupric, is who he is. He is the man who wrote and even sang on Sa Plan Pour Moi by Plastic Bertrand.

Yes, he is. Which is an amazing bit of pop history that none of Plastic Bertrand's hits or none of his hits were sung by him. Making him the Belgian Alvin Stardust. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. But what a weird career in the late 70s for Lou Dupric

to have been responsible for Sa Plan Pour Moi, which is a brilliant record, by the way. Yes, it is. And also for this, which, if nothing else, is a brilliant Top of the Pops performance. Isn't it just? Where do we start on this one? Let's start with Mr duprick he's uh he's like a sailor on one leg with a saucy tash yeah

and a look of shall we say simple wonder yes on his face and teeth so gappy that it looks as they say like his tongue is in jail and he's and then there's that that massive unshaven bollock on springs playing congas he's look who looks like uh an enchanted ron jeremy yes yes whirring away with a giant key sticking out of his back. Ooh, ooh, Mr. Peaveley. This is where I got confused, obviously, because I thought the Ron Jeremy guy, in other words, the Highmars Superstar guy, was Lou Dupric. You're saying Lou Dupric is the sailor guy?

Yes. Right, so the guy on the bongos with the big hair, he's an absolute fucking legend. So what's his name? Ivan Lecomble. He's not Lou Dupric. We've's his name he's Ivan Lacombe he's not ludicric we've got to put out that Ivan Lacombe is uh according to wikipedia is often known by the nickname people which makes it even funnier because he is amazing yes he is yes he is one

of the greatest performers in top of the Pops history. Yes, he is. Yes, he is. And the Hair Bear Bunch comparison was not far from my mind. He's really having it. He's going for it. He's just having more fun than anyone in continental Europe at that time. Yeah, yeah. And he keeps that up as well. Because have you seen the video?

There's a video clip on YouTube of them performing Charlie Brown, which is an extremely n-descript record but they're playing it on a on a belgian tv entertainment show it's that typical 70s european pop show thing where the performers are wearing mad shit and going mancle and everyone's just sitting there as if they're at a funeral it's wonderful i've i found a picture of Ivan Lacombe now, and it is terrifying, by the way, of what he looks like these days. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Come on, mate. Describe. Well, basically, he's the same size as he was then, but his hair is kind of white, and he looks like somebody who might have been of interest to the police uh shall we say um basically we need to stick this photo on on the blog yes we will we will it's fantastic yeah good skills good skills the one of the best things about him as well is when they film it from a low angle you see behind the congas and you realize that under that that crazy poncho he's wearing black suit trousers and

shoes which you never would have expected the trouble with this clip is it's hard to talk about it in words yeah without destroying the magic yeah yeah i mean i made the mistake of first watching this in a state of artificial relaxation and i couldn't stop laughing for the whole song it's that that kind of laughter that has a life of its own right because this what you see here uh and the reason why you can't describe it in words it has the same strange quality as a successful spike milligan sketch or maybe reeves and mortimer that quality which is so conspicuously missing from their unsuccessful sketches which is a sort of indefinable wrongness and disorder with uh so many clashing absurdist elements that they balance perfectly and and create a kind of a

a weird power where the whole thing just seems to lift off and you can't stop laughing and you can't really explain why except that it's just funny um and yeah the i mean the nearest thing i've seen to this in music previously is that a clip of the bonzo dog doodah band doing canyons of your Mind on BBC in 1968. But even that has to build. It doesn't have the one-punch knockout effect of two-man sound. The thing is, yeah, everything Taylor says is absolutely true. And it's overwhelmingly funny to the extent that I didn't even notice the song. I was struggling to pay attention to the song,

which apparently, I think, from what Mike Reid said in the intro, even notice the song i i was struggling to pay attention yeah to the song which um apparently i think from what mike reed said in the intro was some kind of holiday hit that people have you know bought abroad and it's a kind of fairly forgettable bit of latin disco look if you want to know how just incredible the the actual visual appearance of two man sound are um legs and coat or at least half of legs and co involved we've not even talked about them yet we usually pile straight into the legs and co also i don't know if it's a coincidence they've picked rosie and jill who are by far uh the best looking members of legs and co so it adds this sort of conventional beauty and glamour which make the band look even more bizarre by contrast.

Yeah, I mean, the record is nothing amazing. It's got a nice little instrumental break, which is very understated and striking. It's shaking Cuba by the Gibson Brothers, isn't it, really? Yeah, there's not a lot to it if you're not swaying on a foreign dance floor with a bunch of sweating Grace Brothers dickheads from fucking 1970s Maidstone, drinking out of a halved pineapple, you know what I mean? Stinking of failed deodorant.

It's so perfect that our job on these podcasts is to describe performances on top of the pops but when something comes along there's absolutely astounding fucking rubbish it just floors us we cannot we cannot say anything all you can do is watch and laugh and and by the way um the the exoticism that they're going for here and and achieving in a weird way that they're achieving exoticism in in a way that they didn't intend it's not so much exoticism of the place or the sound

it's more of the spirit of it the mood of these people having this insanely good time is so un-British that's what's exotic about it and then that is highlighted further by the fact that we then see the crowd and there's these two girls in the

crowd who we're going to who we're going to meet the deirdre twins yes yes they both look like deirdre barlow um and so yeah they're grinning at the camera looking like deirdre barlow and then you've got a contrast with these absolute lunatics on the stage who even though they're only from belgium um might as well come from the moon it's it's hairberry catches your eye but i would like to know more about the salty flamingo with his dazed smile i'd like to sit down with him and hear his tales of yes i'd tell you all about you know how he saw a mermaid and that, and you'd look into his deep brown Belgian eyes and you realise he genuinely means it.

Find out about his rivalry with Captain Birdseye. He once had him keelholed for wearing a tie-dye neckerchief. There's a whole world behind, you know, and there's bandy leg Jesus on base and just a massive, a massive beak in a Hawaiian shirt playing keyboards. It's just, I, I could watch if this clip was half an hour,

I wouldn't get bored. No. And of course, right at the end, right at the end, he's cause he's, he's bongo planes a little bit suspect isn't it yeah well he knocks one of them over at one point well yes and then has to kind of sneakily push it back up

again yeah and um you know he at the end he tries to do that finger snappy thing which goes a bit like this but he can't do it and he's smiling and it just looks like he's wanking he's it's a bit of a masturbatory gesture done really cheerfully though so you know if he was calling you a wanker that face how could you argue he wants to put a bit of mayonnaise on your chips yes an enormous amount of masturbation in this podcast. But yeah, anyone who still doesn't bother to check out the video playlist. Yeah, if you're still listening to this

and you've not paused it and gone off to check YouTube, man, what the fuck is wrong with you? Your eyes can do more justice to this than our mouths and brains ever could. That's probably all we can say now, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Welcome back to the people who've just watched it on YouTube

wasn't it fucking mint so the following week Keetal America which is how are you America all the better for seeing you yes the following week Keetal America nudged up six places to number 46,

its highest position. Oh, man. Two Man Sound would continue to have chart success throughout mainland Europe in the 80s, but not here. We just couldn't handle the Belgian-ness, could we? However, in 2010, a Belgian court ruled that Lou Dupric, sailor boy himself, was the singer of Sa Plan Pour Moi, causing Plastic Bertrand to reveal that he had not sung a note on his first four LPs. The clue is in the name. Yes, yeah. I mean, the number one shocking thing Is that he hadn't sung on four LPs

The second and biggest shocking thing was He had four LPs There are four LPs APPLAUSE I'm not saying that fleets in. There you are, some ideas for the fashion wear on the beach this summer. One of the best singles around at the moment is currently at number 28. It comes from Generation X, so it's King Rocker. MUSIC PLAYS Jailhouse rockeroos straight out of Memphis Well, Liverpool Johnny Rock's out round Paul's place That's the way history really comes down

Well, being best king in the rainbow crown After some low-level for 1979 homophobic mockery, Reid introduces one of the best singles around at the moment, King Rocker by Generation X. Formed in London in 1976 as Chelsea, Generation X were named after the Jane Diverson and Charles Hamlet book about youth culture, which the lead singer Billy Idol's mam was reading at the time. After being picked up by Andy Ciesielski, they were the first band to play his new punk club, The Rocks, in December of 1976. They were one of the first punk bands to appear on Top of the Pops in September of 1977,

when their debut single, Your Generation, got to number 36 and were immediately set upon as middle-class sellouts by other bands and a considerable chunk of the music press. by other bands and a considerable chunk of the music press. This song, about a boxing match between Elvis and John Lennon, has been produced by Ian Hunter. It's a follow-up to Ready, Steady, Go, which got to number 47 in March of 1978, and it's up this week from number 31 to number 28. Before we delve into anything else,

Elvis versus John Lennon in a fight. Who's going to win? Elvis all day long. All right, not L Lennon as he turns out in this song no Elvis got the Kung Fu moves definitely no it would be Lennon because he was still alive yeah but even then

Elvis in a coffin versus John Lennon apparently when they did the autopsy on John Lennon the coroner couldn't believe that a human being could have that little muscle on them. Apparently he was skinny as a rake, but all his muscles had just vanished to the point where he was basically a skeleton

with some skin wrapped around it. And talking of Elvis, Billy Idol, he's in the early stages of his Elvis mouth fist brandishing routine but it's not quite there yet is it? I don't know I mean yeah I think he looks amazing I think yes he does he looks like somebody out of that

don't be a dummy Lee Cooper advert meets a young Elvis with added Alvin Stardust hand movements towards the camera. And yeah, he's got amazing hair, beautiful face, great jacket, even the brooch on his shirt. It just, he looks so fucking cool.

Yeah, and this is what I was saying earlier about the difference between the London bands and the non-London bands. Yeah, yeah. These lot have been done, haven't they? Yeah, I mean, he's been there from the beginning with the Bromley Contingent and all that, and a lot of them were very kind of fashionista for the time i suppose um and the rest of the band at least don't let the side down they don't look amazing or anything

but you know they they look all right um i suppose to the members um i just i just think this this this is one of the great top of the pops performances we've had two in a row now i think two man sound followed by generation x doing king rocker that's a hell of a one too I just think this is one of the great top of the pops performances. We've had two in a row now. I think Two Man Sound, followed by Generation X doing King Rocker, that's a hell of a one too. That really is a real double whammy there. I genuinely think this is one of the great TOTP performances. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, Billy Idol, you look at him here, and he's obviously good-looking enough and silly enough that he's going to make a great record like White Wedding one day. But I don't know, with all that white hair quiffed up, he looks like Joe Brown or Heinz. Oh, I don't know. you look at tail end pop punk in 1979 and to some extent you know ever since it's a battle between the mentalities behind these two stage names billy idol and nicky tesco yeah um it's heroic vanity and make-believe versus sly would-be subversive sarcasm. Now, to some extent, I think they're both dead ends. But in the short term, they both have something to be said for them.

Yeah. But in a way, I think this is a worse record than Sound of the Suburbs. No. No, no, no. The boys are fighting. Even though it's kind of better produced and better done and it's sort of clever and stuff, but I just think that there's something weirdly charmless about this, which is the one criticism you can't make of the members' record.

I mean, you can't loathe a record about a boxing match between Elvis Presley and John Lennon for the title of King Rocker stroke King Kong I don't know it would be easier to take if it was by a Belgian group or a Czech punk band or something so you could sort of chuckle about

their naff take on punk rock but the fact that it's London scene stars I don't know it just seems too hard to forget that this is a joke being played on you and unlike with zigzag sputnik you're you're not being invited to laugh along with them if you're smart enough to catch on but it's there's definitely a clear line between this and zigzag sputnik which of course it's the connection being tony James, who appears here looking like a slightly camp hand solo.

But it's got the same quality as Zig Zig Sputnik, of a sort of... It's like an entirely percussive record with a sort of contrived simplicity. There's a lot of name-dropping of sort of boring pop culture icons and a lot of will-dropping of sort of boring pop culture icons and a lot of willful fake stupidity. But it's not funny.

So I kind of end up thinking, what's the point? I mean, these tail-end commercial punk records, they baffle me a bit because it's like punk only worked because it was musically it was kind of frenzied and austere so if you replace that with a pop approach you just end up with pop records that aren't particularly well played or written and don't have a lot to recommend them and it's like that's where indie music you know the modern indie music came from now you're wrong wrong wrong this is a super exciting record king wrong i mean i'll i'll state up front but also kind of as an aside that i loved zz sputnik but that's probably one for another day you do surprise me yeah it is yeah oh me too

it is it is a purely percussive record and you say that like it's a bad thing what this is it's turbocharged it's turbocharged beau diddly And you say that like it's a bad thing. What this is, it's turbocharged. No, it's not a bad thing. It's turbocharged Bo Diddley. That's what it is. It's a turbocharged Bo Diddley record. And it's super exciting. It really is.

I'd say underpowered Bo Diddley. I just love Billy Idol anyway as a personality. I think last week Sarah talking about we've got a fuzz box and we're going to use it or fuzz box, described him as brilliant decades. I think that's right. Well, Billy Idol is a brilliant idiot. He's the perfect 50-50 combination of dumb and beautiful for a rock star.

And, you know, he knows it. He understands his own dumbness, and he played on it in the 80s. But, oh, there's just so many stories about him. Like, you've got to read his autobiography. It's quite something. There's a bit where he's had a one-night stand with someone and he's fist... Oh, I knew you'd pick this one out.

Oh, right. Carry on. Well, he's fisting someone and basically she gets all kind of clamped up and he can't get his hand back out. There's that one. The other one also involves his hand. It's when Niall Rogers, this is in the Niall Rogers autobiography,

Le Freak, which is amazing. They're both hanging out in some super celeb-packed bar in New York in the 80s. And they spot David Bowie over in the corner. And they're both really big fans. And I think at this point, Niall Rogers hadn't worked David Bowie over in the corner and they're both really big fans and I think at this point Niall Rogers hadn't worked with Bowie yet so he says come on let's go and talk to him so they go over this is how he was introduced to Bowie

and the idol just goes oh David Bowie and then he vomits into his hands because he's been drinking so much and then he sort of like wipes his hands on his trousers and then extends his hand to shake Bowie's hand he's been drinking so much. And then he sort of like wipes his hands on his trousers and then extends his hand to shape them. He's amazing. Lovely.

I love Billy Idol. And I think this is one of the great kind of tail end pop punk records. It's just a great record. It's a magnificent, arrogant rock star performance that he gives here. And I just totally love it. Well, the two things I want to chuck in is that he's here and i just totally love it well the the two things i want to chuck in is that that he he's almost fully formed billy idol here but he's not putting those fists up with the authority that he he brought to those fists in the 80s he's a bit like he's a bit

like one of them punching puppet things you know what i mean at the minute um and the other thing is i really like this song. I'm looking back now thinking, why didn't I buy this over Billy fucking Joel? What was I thinking? Oh, yeah. In the Battle of the Billies, it's fair to say that he comes out on top.

The thing I couldn't get my head around at the time was, I understood that punks and Ted's hated each other. And all of a sudden, here's a punk band being ted and going on about rockers and singing about elvis and it blew my tiny mind it really changed in the paradigm well when when elvis presley died um danny baker had to because it was announced on stage at a punk club um either the vortex at the the Roxy. And Danny Baker got up on stage because everybody was sort of cheering Elvis' death. And he just took the microphone and said,

no, no, you fucking idiots, you know, and saying that Elvis was way more punk than any of them and all that kind of stuff. And so I would imagine that if Billy Idol was there that night, he'd have been on Baker's side, put it that way. Yeah, I mean, I'm basically pro-Idol, even though I'm not that fond of this record. I think I'm slightly biased against Generation X

because they were the unfortunate subjects of a particularly embarrassing publicity shot where they're all smoking cigarettes which have been freshly lit, making it all too obvious that they've just lit up especially for the camera to look hard and cool and that's the one bit of advice i'd give young smokers in rock don't let anyone near you with a camera unless it's gone down far enough that it looks like you just so happen to be puffing stagger the lighting up yeah yeah yeah

you mentioned the way that the media treated generation x um they weren't very popular with the kind of um punk writers at nme for example so um tony parsons uh interviewed interviewed them who tony parsons being a fucking idiot of the non-brilliant type um and he was he was taking the piss out of generation x in the article for all drinking orange juice during the interview rather than getting pissed. And it turned out that the reason was they were all on antibiotics

because they all had VD at the same time. The following week, King Rock had jumped eight places to number 16 and would get as high as number 11, Generation X's highest charting single. However, their standing in the punk community sunk even further, leading them to be buckled off stage by UK subs fans in a gig at the Lyceum

later that month. The follow-up, Valley of the Dolls, got to number 23 in April of this month, their last top 40 placing. Valley of the Dolls split up in November of this year. Idol and Tony James renamed themselves Gen X and put out one LP before going their separate ways in 1981.

King Kong! King Kong! King Kong! King Kong! I love it. Generation X and King Rocker. The Poynter Sisters have come up with a record to satisfy everybody's ego. Smile. Everybody's a star. Even us three. We're stars, you know. Everybody is a star Who could rain and chase the dust away Everybody wants to shine Who would come out on a cloudy day Reid, with the daidry women on either side of him,

introduces Everybody Is A Star by the Pointer Sisters. Spawned in the late 40s and early 50s in Oakland, the Pointer Sisters, June, Anita, Bonnie and Ruth, started as a nightclub duo in 1969, then signed to Atlantic Records as a trio and then became a quartet in 1972. After a phase as a 40s jazz revivalist group, Ruth left them to have kids, but not before recording Pinball Number Count for Sesame Street, one of the greatest things ever in the whole world.

You know this, don't you? No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. That's the pointy sisters. No way. Yes way. This is their first appearance on Top of the Pops. A cover of the Sly and the Family Stone single

which got to number 1 in the USA 1970. And it's a new entry at number 61. Before we do that, do you know the other great Sesame Street song bit? Do you remember the one with the spies and the race cars that went... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Know that one? Yeah.

Do you know who sang that? Go on. Grace Slick. Whoa. Yeah. I've got to say, before we dive into this, I love Sly and the Family Stone. My favourite band in the whole fucking world. Breaks my heart that I'm going to be talking about

shaking Steve's and show Waddy Waddy more on this podcast than them. And I love this song. And I love the Pointer Sisters, but no, mate. This ain't doing anything for me. The thing that's always put me love this song, and I love the Poet Sisters, but no, mate, this ain't doing anything for me. The thing that's always put me off this song is the title, because nothing could be grimmer than a world where the title of this song was accurate,

and everybody was a star, partly because then the concept of being a star would cease to be meaningful, and partly... Well, like it does nowadays, pretty much be meaningful uh and partly well like it does nowadays pretty much yeah and partly because it would mean that everybody was a preening narcissistic wanker yeah um there are sort of two phases in their hits really aren't there there's the kind of quite rootsy and soulful um things like uh um fire and slow, and then you've got the more glossy 80s things like Automatic and I'm So Excited and Jump,

and this is kind of caught somewhere in the middle. They look like they've just run amok in the Shepard's Butch branch of the Spastic Society. It's a weird look they've got going on there. The audience are not so excited. This is not exactly jump or automatic either. But I've got to admit, the thing I enjoyed about it is, it's Ruth Pointer, isn't it?

The one with the deep voice. Yeah. And she does crack me up. And I know it's really bad, but she's the one who on automatic goes, you know, look what you've done to me. That's her. She's that one. So when she comes in,

if you haven't seen them, you expect her to be a bloke, were it not for the name The Pointer Sisters. And what I like about this is that, like male soul bands like The Temptations or Stylistics, they've got a bass man, except it's a woman. And they actually toured.

The Pointer Sisters went on tour with The Temptations. And I wonder if that kind of maybe sort of gave them a little light bulb over their heads or that's just, oh, that's just how she sings. That's how it has to be. But it's not a great record. But I quite like the way that they're able to turn their hand to pretty much any style. They used to get grief for not sounding black enough, apparently. They used to get grief for making records that sounded too kind of country um right but they also used to get racism come

the other way there was um a gig that they uh did in nashville in 1975 where there was an after party that they went to for their own gig and when they, they were taken around the back and left in the kitchen because the person who answered the door assumed that they were the hired help. Oh, fuck's sake. So there you go. But no, this isn't a great record. Yeah, and they don't really do justice to that ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba bits. No.

This was always a problem with, like when I was writing in the 90s, you'd get all these indie bands do like where they're just going to pet sounds or something and they're trying to do a record where it had like a bar bar bar section on it sung in the round but the music they wrote was so pedestrian like they thought it was going to come out like the middle of god only knows but in fact what it would end up sounding like is the end theme from Jim'll Fix It. You know what I mean? It's just like an aimless stream of... over some boring chords.

Now, this obviously isn't going for a Beach Boys sound, but it feels like the same pointless torrent of non-words for no reason, creating no effect. I mean, the kids aren't getting down to this at all are they? Well no, who can blame them? So the following week Everybody is a Star dropped four places to number 65 however the follow up

Fire got to number 34 in April of this year and they'd have seven top 40 hits in the 80s What's your favourite out of them, Simon? I think Slow Hand for me, actually. Yeah. Really? Yeah, fair enough. I'm an automatic person myself.

I am an automatic lover. Automatic lover. There you are. Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, is 6-7 here, I can hear you loud and I can hear you clear, yeah. Control, this is 6-7 here, I can hear you loud and I can hear you clear, yeah. Good morning 6-7, good morning, bit of a light start, isn't it? Reid, on his own, doesn't rubbish-link about limousines before introducing Car 67 by Driver 67. Formed by Paul Phillips, a Wolverhampton musician and music journalist,

and his brother-in-law Pete Zorn, an American musician who was a long-standing member of Richard Thompson's backing band, Driver 67 signed to Logo Records in 1978 and started work on a debut LP. In the meantime, Phillips, who had spent three months working on the side as a London cabaret, knocked out a demo of a novelty song that he'd been working on and it was immediately rushed out. It's up this week from number 11 to number 7, but two weeks before, when it made its top of the pops debut while it was at number 10 orders were coming in for 20 000 copies a day but the record plant could only manage to press 20 000 copies that week meaning that there was a chance of it getting to number one that was spurned how do we start talking about this song then? Well, at least it isn't Convoy GB. Yes, there is that, yes.

Yeah, that's a very strong point in its favour, isn't it? See, although this isn't quite a great record, I really love it because it's the best kind of novelty record in that it's a song with an unusual scenario which genuinely draws you in like uh to me it's in the same vein as a lot of those records from the late 70s early 80s which take a novel scenario and tell the story from the point of view of whoever's deepest in it like hello this is joni uh or centerfold by jay giles band or um eight six seven five three oh nine jenny by tommy two-tone which is uh another amazing record this is one of the few english examples um and it's also one of the few English records that genuinely understands country music both on a musical level and also spiritually without trying to sound American because it's not really a country record

but it takes that that the form of the melody and the spirit of the music the spirit of the lyrics and just plonks it down in the suburbs of wolverhampton like in merry hill or ettingshaw or the lunt um and it takes the the alienated sort of isolated introspective romantic figure of the american truck driver and anglicizes him into a provincial minicab driver which is perfect it's the same um the same qualities uh in a smaller sadder environment with no majestic landscape and no heroic mythology uh well he's just a man that sort of glides almost unnoticed through other people's lives and now we hear his story complete with the the deep damaged alienation of the late night cabbie that comes over in the way he sings you know i'm only here to please you um do you think there's a

touch of do you think there's a touch of wichita linemen about that as well? Yeah, but it's a common sort of theme or trope in American music, which you don't get a lot in British music and you do here. I think it's fantastic. Although, yeah, I mean, you can't make huge claims for this, but in a quiet way, I think it's a really good record. Is it important that it is set in the West Midlands? Yeah, because just as Phil Mogg had that unmistakable London look,

Paul Phillips is so clearly from the West Midlands with his hangdog look and his mournful eyes and soft chin. You can see it in my life. He looks like a chubby Joe Mangala at Neighbours, doesn't he? Yeah, and of course, in this clip, he's playing both the driver, as on the record, he's playing both the driver and Control. It took me a while to cotton on to that, I have to say. Yeah.

And as control, back at base, he has that look of the kind of popular Midlands entertainer who might have got work on Tiswell. Yes. Like some fucking adenoidal charisma vacuum. He's got a touch of the Carol Jesus about him, hasn't he? Yeah, yeah. And why is he wearing a hat with Driver 67 written on it?

If he sat in base. See, if I was Driver 67, I'd be a bit, I think I'd find that a bit creepy. Yeah, yeah. But I do love the little sets that Top of the Pops used to build for novelty records now and then. And this is the best of all. They did Chalk Dust, The Umpire Strikes Back by The Brat. I seem to remember they set up a little tennis court.

And Toast by Street Band, which we've already covered. Yeah. I mean, in this case, you've got the cab operator on the stage with the band and then it keeps cutting to him again as the driver in a car which would that be a Cortina?

Yeah or like a Morris Marina or something. Yeah. Something from that period. Just the shell of it like you used to get on Z cars in the 60s. That's right, yeah. The only thing that spoils this record or the scenario is how understanding control is

about his personal situation. Yeah. From the chat I've ever overheard in cabs between driver and base, this bloke is a soft touch. Anyone who used to take Meadway cabs between driver and base this bloke is a soft touch anyone who used to take meadway cabs in london in the 90s and remembers the irascible cockney who always seemed to be the control for them yeah this is a very very different approach

i just say right i i i think this record is rubbish but I've really enjoyed hearing Taylor make a case for it that was just really really fascinating to hear that um it it doesn't do it for me and I'm baffled it's its popularity completely baffles me it's not like I think oh it's it's horrible but I can see why it's sold I've I'm genuinely stunned to find out could have been number one yeah that it it sold half a million copies i i don't get it but i i really enjoyed hearing taylor make a case for it from the performance itself probably what i enjoyed most are the little glimpses we get of the backing band um yes i don't know if they're just bbc musicians uh they they possibly are um

but they're these kind of craggy old lags in tuxedos who look like they've been roped in from the nearest butlings which given that it's London is probably quite a long way away. I'll tell you what they remind me of actually. If you see any old footage of the Moody Blues in the late 60s at a time when the Moody Blues would have been about 25 years old but they

look like they're 50 them except for pretty boy Justin Hayward, the singer, everyone apart from Justin Hayward, that's what this band looked like. They looked like the Moody Blues without Justin Hayward. Well, you say that his band's anonymous, and I know you can hardly see him,

but the drummer is actually Richard Burgess, soon to be of Landscape and Einstein and Go-Go fame. Whoa! Simon, do you not think there's a weird sort of faint but uncomfortable similarity between this record and This Is What She's Like by Dexy? Really?

The conversation between a soulful lead singer and a sort of deadpan West Midlander who just talks. For me, the similarity starts and ends at the accent but okay I'll take that so the following week Car 67

dropped two places to number nine but it ended up selling half a million copies the follow up well I can't tell you about the follow up because Taylor barged in right before we've started putting this together and said,

don't look at the follow-up, I want to surprise you. So, Mr. Parks, I step back, I give you the floor. Yeah, the one thing that throws a little bit of a cast over my love of this record. But the most incredible thing about Drivers 67 is their choice of follow-up single, which is a song called headlights and anyone who's ever heard this will be in no doubt as to why i'm bringing it up here um it's got the same flat dry sound as this record but with these low ominous synthesizer notes so it sounds like the music from the denim advert right and the, from the point of view of Driver 67,

are about him driving around, stalking and menacing a woman who's just rejected him sexually with the very clear suggestion of impending assault and or murder. Now, he tries to put some distance between the scenario of this song and that song by having him driving a truck rather than a cab. But as it's credited to drive a 67 and it has the same kind of sound as this record, you just have to assume that it's him when he's not at work.

Now, I've got the lyrics here. work now i've i've got the the lyrics here um the first verse he's driving along with this woman he tries to kiss her she's not interested so i say baby no that ain't no way to talk she says honey you ain't got no respect i think i'll get out and walk uh run run baby running down the road trying to be brave in the night fucking out honey you ain't kidding me none because i can pick you up in my headlights i can see your face in my headlights i can see your fright in the dead of the night i'll pick you up in my headlights fuck run run baby going down the road for a country mile or two but just when baby you think you're all right i'll pick you up in my headlights full speed ahead and with my full beam on i can see you praying for dawn but just when baby you think you're out of

sight i'll pick you up in my headlights I go anyway the wind blows that's where I'm going to be there's nowhere to run no place to hide you can't get away from me Thought for the day was brought to you by the Reverend Taylor Parks

now if this was by Nick Cave or someone you'd just think yeah okay but it's by Driver 67. And the horror of this song washes back into Car 67 because now you feel like you know what kind of man Driver 67 really is. And his ex at 83 Royal Gardens is actually a bit lucky here. And you can never hear this record the same way again. And you wonder what they're trying to achieve.

Like, they think, OK, we've got to have a follow-up. Well, what else do minicab drivers do? Be racist. Or they thought, well, novelty records are old hat, so maybe the new thing will be records with the leering, sadistic misogyny of a 1970s italian horror film and of course we didn't we didn't know at the time but you know peter sutcliffe yeah yeah yeah can we do two man sound again yes I'll do it, I'll do it, I'm free, I'm free. 63, go on. Somebody give me a time.

Can you do it, Carl? I'll do it, I'll do it. I'm free, I'm free. Carl 67, Driver 67, currently sitting at number seven this week. And this week's brand-new number one is a great record. It comes from Blondie, it's Heart Of Glass, and here to dance to it are Lexie Kerr. MUSIC PLAYS Reid is brandishing a bass guitar. The bass guitar of Tony James of Generation X, in fact. And we can see him in the background with his head between his legs

and his head in his hands, as if ashamed that he's been taxed by a Radio 1 DJ. Yeah, no self-respect joining in this fucking Radio 1 japery. Yeah. Or he's had a premonition about his lead singer fucking off to America

and becoming massive while he's pricking about with Zig Zig Sputnik. That pose he's doing with the bass, the way he's got it pointed towards the camera, it reminds me of a particular photo of Bob Dylan from the 60s, Taylor Pond, the one I'm talking about. And I'm wondering whether that was deliberate. It's also a bit like a kind of Elvis Costello album sleeve photo.

And that's clearly how he fancies himself, isn't it? A sort of Dylan Costello kind of new wave poet. Also, the fact that Mike Reid was a guitarist, not a bass player, suggests that he went to the guitarist of Generation X and said, can I have a guitar? No, fuck off. Fuck off.

So he had to go to Tony James instead. And he introduces the brand new number one, Heart of Glass by Blondie. We've discussed Blondie in chart music number 13, but fuck it, it's Blondie, we'll discuss them again. This is the follow-up to Hanging on the Telephone, which got to number five in December of 1978, and was still in the charts at number 71 this week.

It's the third single released in the UK from the LP Parallel Lines, but it was practically one of the first songs ever written by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein back in the mid-70s, when it was demoed in 1975 under the working title The Disco Song.

When the band met up with their new producer Mike Chapman, he asked to hear every song they had in the tank, and he jumped on this one, encouraging them to go completely disco glitter balls Chapman he asked to hear every song they had in the tank and he jumped on this one encouraging them to go completely disco glitter balls out on it after an amendment to the lyric which involved replacing pain in the ass with heart of glass for most of the song it was tacked onto the LP it was the highest new entry at number six the week before he's jumped up to number one this week, and hallelujah, he's being emoted to by Legs & Co. Now, many places to start here,

but I was quite shocked to be reminded that this is an album track for an album that's been around for a bit. Yeah, absolutely. I suppose it's a bit like Don't You Want Me on Dare being kind of an afterthought as a single release. I think what Chapman has done here is brilliant. What he's obviously done is it's well, it's one of several attempts by rock bands to harness what Giorgio Moroder had done on Donna Summer's I Feel Love.

And it's also one of several kind of late 70s attempts by rock bands to make a decent disco record so you've got things like I Was Made For Loving You by Kiss and Miss You by the Rolling Stones being obvious examples um the thing and I feel heretical for saying this because I know that Heart of Glass is a hugely important record but I don't particularly love it. It's something that it's one of those records that once you hear the intro you realise that you're settled in for long haul and it kind of it's it's it plods it's a very superior glacial plod but it's a plod all the same um so i and i i i do feel like i'm i'm saying something absolutely um vile and unconscionable by by saying that and as a dj um it's one of those records you've always got up your sleeve if you lose the dance floor you stick it on everybody goes nuts it never fails

but i i don't love it in the way that it probably deserves to be loved because I know it is a massive and a very, very important record. Yeah. And I can see what Mike Chapman's tried to do with this. He's trying to make it as robotic and machine-like as possible. And he does that admirably well because, as I understand it, I think I'm right in saying there were no drum machines used on it. It's purely, it's done by taking

Clem Burke's actual live drumming and just kind of chopping and pasting it till it sounds like it might as well be a drum machine. Right. And I'm not alone in not being super keen on this record. Apparently,

Clem Burke himself hated it. Yeah. Clem Burke's one of my favourite drummers, I think he's actually my favourite drummer in the world, certainly my favourite rock drummer I could, I'm not going to say I could watch him play all day but he's great to watch and he's kind of showy and unshowy at the same time

in that he's one of these guys, he'll juggle his sticks and he'll add lots of fills in between each bar or each verse, but he's just so solid, fall to the floor. When he hits a drum, it stays hit. And I think he's absolutely brilliant. And I can see why he would resent his drumming being treated

and manipulated in this way. But I can also see why maybe it wouldn't have sounded the same if it was him doing it, just purely allowed to play for four minutes without any dicking about. So it does what it does successfully, and it's perfect. There's nothing wrong with it. It's one of the most important records ever made, but I there's nothing wrong with it

it's one of the most important records ever made but I'm not in love with it there you go Why is that? Because I think it signals the punk generation absolutely

getting over the hatred of disco the whole disco sucks movement and all that stuff. I mean, Blondie did take a lot of stick for selling out, but I think they embraced disco in such a wholehearted, well, apart from Clem Burke, in such a cool way. And the record getting to number one, if it just got to number two, that would have been almost a sign of failure. But they'd gone disco and they got to number one, if it just got to number two, that would have been almost a sign of failure.

But they'd gone disco and they got to number one. There's nothing, from their point of view, to regret about that. It's their first number one as well, isn't it? First of several, yeah. And yeah, just from that kind of cultural point of view, punk and disco coming together at the tail end of the 70s really set up the 80s, didn't it? Because that's what the early 80s was, was punk meets disco coming together at the tail end of the 70s really set up the 80s didn't it because

that's what the early 80s was was punk meets disco I'm a more of a traditionalist on this record and I think it's amazing I mean I've said my bit on Blondie before on here but I think this is one of their greats and you know nothing I can say is going to depart from conventional wisdom. But I don't know, I think that unlike a lot of what we've heard on this show, it's not locked into a time and place. Although it's an incredibly contemporary 1979 record, there's a sort of timelessness to it in that you could create something with the same feel today and it would work.

And what works particularly well is the fact that it's called Heart of Glass. it in that you could create something with the same feel today and it would work um and what works particularly well is the fact that it's called heart of glass it's got that double meaning like you know breakable and vulnerable but also in the sense of glassy like disengaged and unemotional like debbie harry's vocal and like the effect produced by the drums uh and the lyric doesn't clarify which is the appropriate reading as indeed it shouldn't and the whole record has that same cold warmth or or warm chill to it uh um it's just a shame that blondie couldn't be here uh and so we see legs and co instead now it's a real showcase for Legs & Co, this, and when you look into it, this was the favourite routine

of most of the members of Legs & Co. Really? Presumably, yeah. I mean, probably because they weren't acting out the lyrics to Disco Duck or something. Yeah, there is that, yeah. They were doing serious dancing to a great record with no gimmicks. I mean, you know, when you look at it, it's a bit crappy,

like a lot of their stuff is. But, you know, it was enough to distract me from one of the best records of 1979. So either it succeeds at some level, or I'm a tragic old roué, ten years past the point when I could dream of interesting legs and co with my smooth and sharply defined young man's face. So here I am watching this display like a dying soldier

gazing into the sunrise. They're in different costumes made of the same material but individually cut off in different places. So it's either they've been given some samples from a factory that makes slinky costumes for dancers and they thought fuck it this will do or they've only got i don't know about the six of them and they've only got three costumes so they've gone well if we cut this leg off here and you can have that gel um pauline you have this bra and uh yeah we'll work something out because we're legs and co yeah well i i like how they've gone for this uh black

and white theme which is sort of echoing the sleeve of parallel lines by blondie yes um and yeah it is it is a good it's a dignified legs and co routine and it's pretty it's pretty good as well um although i did start laughing at the moment where they all in unison start goose-stepping, if you remember that bit. Yes. Yeah, they were very fond of that around about 1979. They did it again to that Sex Pistols song we spoke about,

Silly Thing. Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of that going on. In very high heels as well. And the director is loving his new toy, isn't he? With the split screen effects, including at one point diagonal split screen. Yes.

Which normally you only see in like old American TV shows where somebody's phoning someone else. That's right, yeah. But isn't it a shame that, you know, there's going to be some dad sitting there thinking, oh, well, Debbie Arrow's going to be on, she's a bit of all right, and then there'll be Legs & Co, and it's been mashed into one thing. Well, yeah.

And they've seen, you know, they've already seen, you know, a third of Legs & Co with three-man sound, but, you know, they've been put off by... They've been put off by people, so, you know, it's... The thing about Legs & Co, there's a sort of a... almost like a hard edge on them, which you never got with Pan's People. It's shifted, and the sort of sleazy innocence of the early 70s, which made Pan's People seem natural has been drained away and there's a there's a

slightly different uh atmosphere to their their sequences it's a little bit less friendly uh and a bit more aggressive which should be sexy but it often feels a little bit too professional for that and also they're often styled so that they look like one of Bodie's girlfriends off The Professionals or something like that. And it's such a distinctive and unstylish look that it's a bit of a problem. The thing is, there was a video for Heart of Glass and a very good video as well, I seem to recall. But they chose not to play it, which is a bit odd.

Yeah, that's weird. I'm assuming that the video for Heart of Glass would have been on last week's Top of the Pops because it was the highest new entry, so it was bound to have been on that. So just change it up a bit, yeah. Isn't it weird that they've decided to make an effort and gone, well, you know, people have already seen the video,

so let's have some dancers instead. It is. Heart of Glass would stay at number one for four weeks before finally being usurped by tragedy by the Bee Gees. It would get to number one for a week in the USA and it became the second biggest single in the UK for

1979. Biggest selling one was? 1979. God. Already talked about it in a previous episode? Nah, no idea. Bright Eyes by Artgolf Funko. Oh, my God. Right, yes.

Heart of Glass ended up selling 1.3 million copies in the UK. The follow-up, Sunday Girl, got to number one for three weeks in May of this year and so on and so forth and number ones and number ones. That was number one, that's Blondie and Heart Of Glass. Will this next record be number one next week, or will Blondie still be there?

Don't miss next week's thrilling episode of Top Of The Box. will end, you will have no time for grieving read on the end of a line of young ladies, says Tarar and introduces Chikatita by ABBA we've done ABBA in practically every fucking chart music that covers 1974 to 1980 so deal with it, it's fucking

ABBA, this is the follow up to Summer Night city which only got to number five in october of 1978 it's the first single from the forthcoming lp voulez-vous and it was premiered on the music for unicef concert which was broadcast earlier this month around the world and also featured the bgs earth wind and fire rod stewart john denver and donna summer the BGs, Earth, Wind & Fire, Rod Stewart, John Denver and Donna Summer. Consequently, half the royalties from this song were donated to UNICEF. It's this week's highest new entry

at number 8. ABBA's previous single only got to number 5. ABBA Clubbing Crisis. What was it about the relationship between the British record buying public and ABBA in the late 70s that caused this dip? I wasn't really conscious of there being a dip.

Although the weird thing is, I wasn't aware of Summer Night City being a hit at the time. I think it was only when it turned up on ABBA Greatest Hits Volume 2 that I really got to know it. So maybe they weren't getting quite the airplay that they were used to. Also, the records fell off a bit. If you look at it, around this period, there's a little bit of a dip in the quality of their singles, in between the pop ABBA and then the grown-up Scando Divorce ABBA. I mean, I think this is not quite but close to the worst abba single post i do i do

i do i do i do um and that's still extremely listening especially the verses which are really lovely but it's a massive backward step to reactivate the schlager for a post-punk world um i mean okay you could make a pretty strong case that the follow-up to this was worse which was does your mother know um but at least that's a bit weird and wrong i mean around this period you just want them to knock on into that adult orientated disco and then the final phase of live-almond synth pop, which I love so much. I mean, this is just fucking around, really. This and I Have a Dream and all that stuff.

It's the first twinklings of chess coming through. I bought this partly because I was a devoted ABBA fan at the time, as any civilised person is which is why David Stubbs is a complete heathen of course um let it go let it go I bought this not for me but as a birthday present for my mum and then within probably a week I stole it back for myself what what a horrible little brat doing that um yeah i mean basically the record player was in the living room so you know but i merged it with my own collection um and doing that thing where you want to get the most value for money out of your records i did really get into the b-side

it's called love light really good song actually um but yeah taylor's right this is the kind of half-arsed kind of schlager stuff stuff that isn't ABBA at their greatest. I always think of the pianist, it's Benny, isn't it, bouncing up and down in his piano stool when it gets into the big noisy bit at the end. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a great band having a bit of an off day. Yeah, it's a great band having a bit of an off day.

And one thing that really sort of struck me about the way they incorporate this into Top of the Pops here is that the credits have finished rolling, but they carry on with the song for a full verse and most of a chorus, as that kind of fisheeye view of the studio spins before our eyes like a ghostly mirrorball leaving us to contemplate what we had and what we've lost knowing that Top of the Pops

is over for another week and leaving us there sitting sort of wringing any last drops of pleasure from the episode thinking that any second now it's just going to cut to silence knowing that it's all over. Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? Any second, any second now is just going to cut to silence, knowing that it's all over. Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? Any second, any second now, this could stop.

Yeah. It just frustrates me because the verses to this song, you can hear something really deep and beautiful, like another direction they might have taken. And then that glassy umpah music comes in for the chorus and it's all blasted to hell. So the following week, Chikatita jumped up to number two and stayed there for two weeks.

The follow-up, Does Your Mother Know, only got to number four. Fucking hell, ABBA only. And ABBA would have to wait for four more singles before returning to number one, with the winner takes it all in August of 1988. Even Gimme Gimme Gimme didn't get to number one, and that's got number one written all over it, hasn't it? It has, and Gimme Gimme Gimme felt like a kind of a comeback in a way.

It felt like sort of modernising themselves and sort of almost sticking a flag in the ground again and saying, yeah, we're still relevant, we're still here. So what's on television afterwards? Well, BBC One piles straight into Blankety Blank with Jack Douglas, Beryl Reid, Diane Keane, Michael Parkinson, Lorraine Chase and Ian Wallace. And then Ria gets hassled by her knock-off

to spend his birthday with him in Butterflies. After the news it's the 1979 European Figure Skating Championship from Zagreb, then Andre Previn's Music Night and they finish off with Tonight with Robin Day. BBC Two are showing Newsweek, the Peter Lorre film The Mask of Demetrios, then the George Cole sitcom Don't Forget to Write, and finishes off with the docket drama In a Country Churchyard, and an open-door community programme created by the Association of Irish Musicians from London. ITV have put on University Challenge, the episode of Rising Dump where Rigsby's conned by a mystic. Then the streets of San Francisco. News at 10.

Wish you were here. The New Avengers. And what the papers say. Oh, what a line-up. So, chaps, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? That man in a car who seemed really nice. We're talking about Pee-Poo. Yeah, definitely, isn't it? Yeah, it is. really nice. We're talking about Peepoo. Yeah.

Definitely, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Right into the next fucking playtime as well. Yeah, everyone doing impressions of the percussionist from Two Man Sound. Yeah. And what are we buying on Saturday? Or what did we buy on Saturday? Well, I bought the ABBA single, but that was for my mum.

Yeah, I'm saying Generation X for me. Blondie, I guess. And I can't imagine myself as a kid buying a record by that monster driver 67. But I would now. And what does this episode tell us about early

1979? Do you know what? I'm going to say nothing, because there's nothing in it that gives you that feeling of the winter of discontent and Jim Callaghan's grip slipping away from him and the incipient horrors of Thatcherism just three months away. So, you know,

unless you can somehow read that into the mournful despair of Driver 67. I suppose what it does tell you is that the actual charts from a randomly chosen week are often not much like the legend and half of it seems to have been beamed in from the recent past or the near future which is true though isn't it in a lot of ways culture isn't neat and tidy and packed into years and decades you People have old cars and old clothes and a lot of stuff is not contemporary or cutting edge.

But I wonder if those bands that are sort of the arse end of punk, like The Members and Generation X, are almost unconsciously clearing the decks. It's like, come on, this is our last chance to bring out these stereotypical 1970s punk records before the game's up and the tablecloth is whipped away from underneath us. Because, I mean, I guess you had a few things

in the early 80s like Splodge Ness Abounds, but really that kind of oikish idea of punk just being about shouting in a cockney way, that was done, That was done. That was done, wasn't it? Well, by this point, we're long past the point of punk being a danger to anything. Yeah, all that was left from here to splodginess abounds

was just the echo of a... just the hollow echo of a laugh. Wow. And Sid's having his last bit of jelly. Flapping his last fish. So, me ducks, that's the end of Chart Music for this week. Don't forget, you can get on our website at www.chart-music.co.uk. You can join us on Facebook at facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast.

Or you can get involved with the clatter of Twitter at chartmusictotp. Thank you very much for listening, but most importantly, thank you very much, Simon Price. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much, Taylor Parks. Not a problem. My name's Al Needham,

and you can playfully tap my bum and feel the electricity going through you. Shut up, music. Tech spares money, where does it go? Not even George Osborne knows When we're in power and we engage There'd be no tax on the minimum wage Leaders committed a cardinal sin Open the borders let them all come in Illegal immigrants in every town I think you're a slut! Hey, now you can pack that in as soon as you like.

I'll take it back, Lou. I should think so too. Nobody calls him gay. Nobody. Ever. I'm sorry, that hurt. No, that hurt. No, that hurt.