Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #23: October 6th 1977 - Soul Rail Replacement Service

Episode Date: April 13, 2018

The latest edition of the podcast which asks: so how do you actually soil a bra, then? This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, takes us back, back, back to the autumn of '77, and it's a proper Lucky Bag of Randomness - just how we like it. The wake for Elvis is still dragging on, Punk is everywhere (apart from on Top Of The Pops, or in the charts), and Noel Edmonds is very keen to tell you that he's the Lion King of Radio One and he has two hours of telly on Saturday mornings, in his Hepworths suit, like a bell-end. Musicwise, it's a proper continental dog's breakfast. La Belle Epoque has a go at this Disco lark, Baccara pitch up for a bit of an undulating swoon, Danny Mirror indulges in a bit of Deadly Spanking, and Giorgio Moroder and Legs and Co pitch us into 1988. But fear not, there's plenty of Brit-stodge in the shape of Smokie and the Steve Gibbons Band, while The Emotions and Deniece Williams spell out the difference between our telly and theirs: the former whoop it up on Soul Train, while the latter gets bludgeoned by the piss-headed jobsworths of the BBC Orchestra. And The Stranglers get their fingers burned. And there's a girl in a massive Jubilee bonnet. Neil Kulkarni and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham 'neath the fraying red, white and blue bunting for a rummage round the back end of 1977, gleefully pinging off on vital tangents such as Bummerdog's Reign of Terror on the streets and playgrounds of Top Valley, Spanish Prog bands recording Sex Pistols LPs without knowing what the fuck Johnny Rotten is going on about, praying to God that your dad wasn't roaring like a Jesse in the pub over Elvis, the eternal Tiswas v Swap Shop debate, being the pub-related go-between for Hutch and Huggy Bear, the return of the Kulkarni Sandwich Test, and some moderately sizeable news for our Patreon subscribers. And lots of lovely, lovely swearing.   Download  |  Video Playlist |  Subscribe  |  Facebook  |  Twitter Subscribe to us on iTunes here. Support us on Patreon here.   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. Tax is 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

Yay! Up you pop crazed youngsters And welcome to the latest edition of Chart Music The podcast that gets its hands right down the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, but I am nothing without the two people who are with me today. Those people are Neil Kulkarni. Hello Al. And Taylor Parks. Hello there.

Hello my dears. As always, anything pop and interesting happening in your little lives? Absolutely not. It's this bloody weather, Al. I'm sorry. You know, we had that day the other day that was quite nice. Yes. It was the first day, it felt like, in six months where I'd opened the curtains and not thought,

oh, fucking hell. But it was a false dawn. I remember the other side of being a human being, you know, the things of having hope, a vague sense of happiness. And that's all gone again. It's pissing it down again. So back in the dungeons, really. Fuck this country.

So before we get stuck into this week's episode of Top of the Pops, we need to drop a massive thank you to the people who put their hands in the pockets last month and pledged to our patreon account at patreon.com slash chart music at the moment i'm basically working out how to get the fucking money out but when i do it'll be new microphones and money for crisps and toughies all round for us for us poor starving writers here. So let me just thank a fraction of the people who have stepped up and delivered for Chart Music. Those people include James Beard, Mark Wood, Sam Hopper,

Harry Stevens, Stephen Jackson, Richard Beret, Keith Miller. Oh, they all stepped up to the pay window. They all slapped some dollar on the counter and they all said, yes, Chart Music, we know how much fire and skill goes into making your podcast. And we want to soothe you with our money. Beautiful people, aren't they? They are. And at this time of year, they should be aware that this is the PayPal donation,

Patreon donation, rather, that I think Jesus would have made in his day. Yeah, definitely. And they're forever. Jesus would have been well up for chart music, wouldn't he? He would have, he would have. And these people are now fundamentally blessed by the pop gods. Let's name some more because Martin Pickles is down with us. Andrew Fryer is down with us.

Stephen Jackson is down with us. Lee Kyle is down with us. Paul O'Dwyer is down with us stephen jackson is down with us lee kyle is down with us paulo dwyer is down with us annette macklin is down with us joseph goss is down with us making funky podcasts is a must we're number one well you know we're not bad really the only difference between us and jesus was that he didn't have to give the sermon on the mount with a sort of chewed edge paper cup in front of him two pence pieces in it because carpentry was a good career in those days oh yeah but we love those people who give money to us and here's what we're going to do for him while we still sort out some new bonus to you so listen to this chaps the episode after next of chart music let the pop crazed youngsters

decide oh yes what we're going to do is that all patreon members will be invited to do a poll to pick from four different episodes of the pops all they'll be given is the year and the presenter and that poll will go live well it's probably gone live now as you're listening to this and whoever gets the most votes whichever episode gets the most votes that's the one we're going to do in our definitive deep style and fashion i like this sexy new chart music podcast interactivity So don't forget patreon.com slash chart music because tips in our g-string make our

living. So this episode takes us way, way back to October the 6th, 1977. And it seems that this is the time in the pop world where everything appears to be up for grabs, doesn't it, chaps? You know, this is a time when an episode of top of the pops was a proper lucky bag of randomness

this episode is a real grab bag it goes all over the place um the only sort of episode that it reminds me of in a sense is not musically but it reminds me of that 1970 episode that i think me and taylor did in that it kind of just veers all over the shop. All kinds of different types of music. A really, really odd episode. Not really reminiscent for me of the Top of the Pops episodes that I remember. I think I was in the room when this episode probably happened. But, you know, 1977, I had just turned five.

So I was dimly aware of things really but um yet all over the shot and yet in a weird way it does provide quite a convincing picture of what is truly going on in pop at the time yeah I mean we've already smashed the myth that you know late 1977 it's all about punk clearly in this episode no spoilers but you know it int is it yeah also it seems to have been sequenced with that in mind in that the zigzagging is so extreme it's like this episode is trying to run away from a crocodile it's just it's like they've lined up the records that are the most different uh right next to each other it's good it does stop it from getting boring yeah even when some of these records are a bit boring yeah we're going to get some cat shit aren't we but

we're going to find a jewel or two amongst that cat shit so what was in the news this week? Well, a student in Stirling is fined £100 for trying to grow cannabis from budgie seed. The Labour Party conference is finishing up in Brighton. Richard Nixon gives his first speech since his resignation at a Republican Party fundraiser. Hundreds of millions of fags containing tobacco substitutes are incinerated after poor sales like victoria wine own brand fags you remember those no victoria wine used to make their own brand of fags um and i never smoked them all i know is that a former editor once told me

that he tried to skin up with one. And when he opened it, a load of wood shavings fell out. Oh, no. But the big news this week is that Roger Daltrey has entered a pinball tournament in America and got absolutely battered. And they even let him look and listen while he was playing as well. Poor show Roger.

I'm glad. I hate Roger Daltrey. Oh, I hope people went up behind him and went, watch your backs. So the ball would go right down the middle. The cover of the NME this week, The Sex Pistols. The cover of this week's TV Times, Robert Redford and the Muppets. The number one LP this week is 20 Golden Greats by Diana Ross and the Supremes, Oxygen by Jean-Michel Jarrez, number two.

And over in America, the number one single is the Star Wars theme by Miko, and the number one LP is Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. So, me boys, what were we doing in October of 1977? I think I was first apprehending my freakishness in a couple of ways. I'd just recently stopped being tested for being deaf because my parents thought I was deaf because I wouldn't really speak to many people. And it had been established that I wasn't deaf but I had it was the first year actually I had to

just ignorant yeah just pig ignorant but it was the first year that I had to it was the first year where I had to get a school uniform and I remember getting oh at five I know it's kind of ridiculous for fucks sake man you're lying but I was getting measured up I remember in a shop

in Cov called Ruby Jacko I don't know why it's called that but I was getting measured up i remember in a shop um in cove called ruby jacko i don't know why it's called that but i was i was getting measured up for a for a cap it was like a proper old school uniform with a cap and um got measured up and my head my noggin was so freakishly large that they had to send out of town they had had to send out to Birmingham to get my cap. Oh, man. Birmingham landed the massive heads. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I was just apprehending I was a little bit odd, I guess.

But I don't really remember much. I know I should. But honestly, before the age of about six, my memories are just arms crossing windows, rays of light, little vague abstract images. Which, oddly enough, later on in this Top of the Pops episode, there is a song which I distinctly remember seeing precisely because of its abstractness, I think, of the imagery around it. So yeah, my memories are very, very kind of piecemeal of this era because I was just so young.

Taylor. Same age as Neil, aren't you? Yeah. As I may have said before at this point um i was living in a a falling down cottage because we'd moved out of our crappy uh semi-detached house because my dad fancied himself as a bit of a handyman so he bought his mate's cottage that was on the market for almost nothing because they've been a property crash so we were living in that in the country so this sort of explains a lot so between the ages of about four and six and seven

i was really isolated so an only child and i was living in this uh just surrounded by fields and woods and rivers um and this was like paul mccartney yeah yeah like paul mccartney chose to do as an adult my days were just spent kind of wandering around walking around in the forest and down by the river and looking at stuff um there's lots of stuff that i can remember from that period that is uh i'm not quite sure if i invented it and that sort of stuff but there's um a clear memory that came back to me that i haven't thought about for uh 40 years which uh something in this program acted rather like the proustian madeline and there i was really yeah hanging onto a tree root um on a sandy bank trying not to slide right down a sandy bank trying to hold myself back up to the surface

because I thought I'm going to fall down here and they'll never find me. Oh, did you see the spirits of dark water lingering at the end of the distance? Just like that, just like that. That branch can't take his weight. The fall. While this was happening, going around in my head was,

don't give up on us by david solter on a loop which i think was my message it was that was the message i was receiving from the spirits of those i would have left behind um and i hung on to that tree root and in the end hauled my little weight back up. Went off to tea. About a year after that, we moved back into another crappy semi-detached house. Oh, you gave up, did you? Yeah, you have to call it a failed experiment. Well, I was in my second year at West Glade Junior School

because I'd been nine for a couple of months. And the big thing that was going on in my life at the time was Forest. I went to my first game about two weeks before this episode. My mate, who I mentioned in the previous episode of Chart Music as being a stylist and ending up sniffing glue in the infant school sandpit, his dad took me and him to see Forest against Ipswich and we battered them 4-0 and Peter Wythe scored all four goals.

And after he scored the fourth one, he just turned round and I swear blind, he gave the thumbs up at me and me alone. As if to say, come and join us Al, forever and ever and ever. It's great now. It can be fucking horribly disappointing in later life, but it's fucking great now.

And yeah, so there was that. On the downside, the childhood terror of this time for me was bummer dog. We had a lot of stray dogs on our estate. And one of them was this dog who would just trot into the playground when we were either on playtime or just about to go to school and take his pick of the litter and knock them down and start humping them. Oh, terrifying. Hashtag me too.

Were you scared of dogs, Al? No, because I'd had dogs. But the dogs in our estate were fucking mental i mean bummer dog his reign of terror lasted for a few good months and yeah you know that that's actually just recalled an incident to me being chased around an estate well a bit of an estate called the box ceiling commentary by just a pack of feral there were a lot of stray dogs back then just a pack of feral stray dogs and it terrified me about dogs for about 10 years after that even as a teenager if i was in a park and i saw a dog like you know sort of half a

mile away i'd start bloody trembling this is around the time of the rabies scare as well isn't it the other great dog of uh of our estate um he didn't get a name for some bizarre reason but he had the dangliest bollocks ever they dangled so much that they actually kind of like dragged and joust along the concrete as he walked along that's no good to him you know you'd be walking along playing football and this dog would walk back and he was happy enough you know he was getting some kind of kick out of it by the look on his face and you know i think this is the first time by the look on his face yeah but he was smiling he was one of those smiling happy dogs passion in his eyes yeah yes and uh i must say

it was the first time that i was aware of my own genitalia because everyone every lad playing football would suddenly stop and just just grab their bollocks out of fear and sympathy. But then there was one time we were playing football, and you could hear from a street away, just kids pissing themselves laughing. And the laughing got louder and louder and louder. And then all of a sudden this dog turned up, and some good Samaritan had put a pair of Y-fronts on the dog.

Samaritan had put a pair of Y-fronts on the dog. I have told you the great story about how my mum pulled a bra out of a dog's arse, haven't I? Have I not told you this? I think you should tell it again. I've pretty much said it all. I mean, it's not something she wants to talk about.

So, I honestly don't know whether it was, I mean, I'm guessing it's just some bikinis or something. It's like, she wants to talk about. So I honestly don't know whether it was, I mean, I'm guessing it's just some bikinis or something. It's like, well, okay. Because it can't be a proper bra, because all that underwiring, you just don't want to think about it, do you? But you just think, well, did the dog eat the bra?

Or did some youth shove the bra up the dog's arse? And every time I try and bring the subject up, she will not talk about it. So and you know every time i try and bring the subject up she will not talk about it so you know there you go and there was other people watching there was other people watching and not doing anything and my mam the mother theresa of top valley dogs just got in there and just pulled it out of course the actual mother theresa of Top Valley Dogs would have put the dog on a slab and left it there. Well, yeah. I'm intrigued now.

I really want to know how the bra got up there. Do we have to talk about Top of the Pops for the next three hours? Discarded bras are just intriguing anyway. Why would somebody discard that? I mean, whenever I've seen one, you know, like you see gloves on railings and stuff. Sometimes you do, honestly.

You see just a massive bra. Why? It's not an item that could be soiled, like however drunk you got. I don't know. We're not the people to talk about this, are we? Next time Sarah's on, we'll ask. How easy is it to soil a bra?

Even after 10 bottles of Prosecco, you don't start lactating. No. No, not even that. What about throwing up down your bra, though? I bet Madonna's done that. Maybe that's why Madonna had her armpits under the dryer. I had a dog around this time. It's the only dog I've ever had.

He was familiar living in this cottage he was supposed to be a black lab but I think he was the runt of the litter his head was the wrong shape and he just used to eat things like books and stuff and shoes and he was really a bit dodgy and in the end uh the parents couldn't couldn't control him and he had gone one day and my dad said oh i took him to live with an old lady in the country who's got a lot of dogs in a big house and for about 20 years i assumed that was a euphemism and then i didn't put down and then one day i said to my dad about the dogs we we have the dog put down. And he said, what? We didn't have a dog put down.

I said, I thought we did. He said, no, I took him to live with an old lady in the country who had a load of dogs in a big house. So there you go. So what else was on telly this day? Well, BBC One has started at one o'clock with Pebble Mill at one. Heads and Tails, You you and me then it's 45 minutes of schools programs then international golf before piling into play school lippy the lion and hardy ha ha jack and ore scooby doo a john craven's news round and then blue peter sent

john noakes to brazil to look at that opera house in the middle of the Amazon. Followed by Barber Popper, the evening news, regional news in your area, then tomorrow's world. Bizarrely, Top of the Pops tonight is starting at 10 minutes past 7. What the fuck? That's right. BBC Two has run the international goal from 12.45, then closed down for three hours at 2 o'clock, and then run Open university at five to

five before closing down again for another hour before running the news at seven they're currently screening inside germany about how that country is currently scrapping their comprehensive school system itv has broadcast schools programs animal quackers, stepping stones, the news at one, then the proto loose women show, women only, racing from York, the Labour Party conference, then little ass on the prairie, the news at 5.45, crossroads, regional news in your area, and they're currently introducing us to the world of Pam Ayres can you imagine she's got her own show got her own fucking world mate see I just remember it on That's Life occasionally

I don't remember getting her own show she was quite the thing she was quite the thing in the late 70s there was also Pam Air's Hong Kong Christmas yes yeah and she did all them

adverts for meat didn't she oh alright then pop craze youngsters it's time to go way back to October of

1977 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 the programme that you can have in any colour as long as it's black.

Your host for this evening is Noel Edmonds. Right about now, he's been the Breakfast Show host for four years and he's into his second series of the multi-coloured swap shop. Neil, you haven't put yourself about with our Noel yet, have you? No, I haven't, no. So I need to ask the first question, tis was or swap shop? You see, I've got to say, right, both. Or Saturday morning detention.

Not yet, not yet. But I've got to say both. or Saturday morning detention not yet not yet but I mean I've got to say both and also people ask when they ask what you're into when you're

what you're into when you were a kid there is a tendency I think with a lot of with a lot of us to re-brush it a little bit according to modern taste I think the official line now is

that Tiz was was far superior and that Tiz was is what the cool kids watch in a sense similar to the way that Magpie is what the cool kids watch they're a sense similar to the way that Magpie is what the cool kids watch,

they're not Blue Peter. But if I'm genuine about it, I liked Noel at the time. He was comforting. And Saturday, sorry, Swap Shop was comforting. It was warm and gentle, whereas Tiswas was kind of chaos. And chaos isn't always what you want to see as a kid uh for me it was a key moment actually for me al if i can elaborate a bit more is that much later in the 90s i remembered i realized the folly of kind of pretending to be cool in your taste when you're

a kid because um i was reading you know articles in the music press where people saying yeah in the 70s i listened to the stoogeses and all this other stuff and I always thought that was nonsense and I remember I was lying this is a sidetrack but I'm going to do it anyway I was lying on my carpet

watching some crap on telly and this was in the 90s it would have been Pebble Mill or Afternoon Plus with Gloria Hunniford or something like that and it went

the show finished or it went to wads and it was a sunny day outside the sun was shining in and momentarily i caught a precise reflection of my face in the screen as i was watching this utter pile of shit and the idiot glee on my face the happiness i had the contentment i had with this pile of crap I was watching it was really revealing to me that actually if I'm honest I don't look for challenging stuff and I certainly didn't when I was a kid though I loved Tiz was in bits I like Lenny Henry I like the bands in cages I like the

odd moment I was too young to be sexually aroused by Sally James or anything like that um I preferred the dependability of Noelel and swap shot noel would keep talking even when things went wrong and really all i was into it for was the steady diet of kind of grape ape and hong kong phooey that's what mattered when it went to the live bits with cheggers out in the park somewhere doing some swaps that's when i turned over to tis was so i was actually really fond of Noel when I was younger because he was, what you want as a kid sometimes is a sense of order and a sense of control.

I know it's boring, but you really do, you are comforted by that. Noel had that. Chris Tarrant and Sally James didn't. So for that warmth and gentleness, I've got to say I was a swap shop kid, not a Tiswas kid. All three of us are from the great nation of ATV land.

So our loyalties should be towards Tiswos. Taylor, your thoughts? No, I was Tiswos. I was a lot nearer to Birmingham than Neil. So you sort of felt like the energy radiating from ATV land every Saturday morning. You just... No, I was always dubious of Edmunds to be honest uh I mean he's the thing is you look at him now he's like a lot of DJs in that you try to

picture someone with this personality and this image and this manner of speaking in your everyday life like working in an office with you or living in the room upstairs and you can't imagine them having a friend in the world um i always felt this about chris evans as well right what how come the blokes who would get like three people turning up at their birthday drinks are the ones who make a living out of their personalities yeah um and noel edmonds especially always struck me as he's like he's the kind of person that reggie perrin was trying to get away from you know i mean the sort of specifically southern english uh homeowning no sense of humor monster from the suburbs but with extra extra narcissism and wrongness and this was the face

of british pop music yes the interesting thing about him is that we're used to mad people being eccentric in some way and by i don't mean like mentally ill i mean crazy i mean divorced from reality uh we're used to the raggedy square peg type but edmunds is the is that weirdest thing he's a totally dull weak personality square and high achiever uh who goes totally around the twist and nobody nobody notices until it's already happened and suddenly it's too late yeah certainly this this this family entertainer is coming on like david eich or the unabomber for for mansion dwellers with pilot's license so you can imagine the same thing happening to michael owen i always thought right is that it's that same mixture of indignant straightness and a sort of unearthly creepiness.

That sort of bleak, dead-eyed inhumanity and sheer stupidity to tell someone with cancer that it's their own fault for having a negative attitude and not spending 300 quid on a fucking magic box invented by a crank with no conscience and it's this is a personality disorder whatever this is is a personality disorder and in that sense it's quite mundane but at the same time that specific combination of factors is very unusual and i think only activated by money and success and self-confidence.

But I mean, at this point in time, 1977, he is definitely the king of Radio 1, but now he's a hugely recognisable face on the BBC. Yeah, but for me, he was still kept, apart from Top of the Pops and Kids' Telly, really. And he hadn't started that, you know, dominating people's Saturday evenings. For me, he started destroying any fondness I had for him the moment he started, you know, dropping pianos on top of innocent members of the public later on.

Yes. At this period, he was just... That'll do it. At this time, he was just a sort of faintly avuncular host of this kids' programme. And to me, just a linking device to the avuncular host of this kid's programme. And to me, just a linking device to the next episode of, like I say, Hong Kong Fooey. So he wasn't so obtrusive.

It's when he got delusions that he was just the greatest entertainer in England, the greatest TV entertainer. And he kind of saw himself almost as an almost Letterman-type figure. It's kind of like a TV innovator. That's when he started destroying any fondness any fondness i had for him i only found out the other day that in the mid in the mid 80s he had a uh he had a very short run as a chat show host in america have you seen that godfathers it's like a lot of people when they go to america thinking that they're the business you know and like you you get to New York or LA

and you are just a small provincial Englishman who people just look at like who is this guy you know what I mean yeah he made made Chevy Chase's career in

Chacho look like a roaring success didn't it it's kind of old hat to sort of Heavy Chase's career in Chacho looked like a roaring success, didn't it? It's kind of old hat to sort of talk about what he looks like and everything, you know. But it's one of those things that's become so familiar to people that they've stopped seeing it. Yes. You don't notice how weird it is. But no one else has ever looked quite like this. In this episode, he's got a hairstyle

that's like blow-dried or back-combed into a sort of a cone that extends about five inches above his cranium, like whirled into a hollow cone, but with a deep centre parting which continues past the top of his head. And then there's that slope on either side. So the hair is pyramidal, but each side is like swept to a curled tip.

So it looks like the drooping wings of a dead dead kestrel and to have this haircut at all is peculiar but to have it when you stand five foot five in high-heeled slip-ons is flabbergasting and to combine it with an estate agent's beard and a condescending also it's the fact that he has no shoulders he's got the the narrowest feeblest shoulders i've ever seen on a grown man and he doesn't understand that wearing suits with big starched pointy shoulders on them and having a haircut that effectively trebles the size of his head will accentuate how small and slight he is and it's like his unearned self-confidence is so extreme that he doesn't notice this he has because he has no taste his vanity has made him uglier rather than more beautiful i mean the 70s appear to be for men

uh the thing to do was try and make your face as big as possible so you you know you were uh you you were very on trend neil at the time i mean do you think do you think do you think edmunds and dlt were in some kind of competition to see who you could have the biggest face it's that leonine thing isn't it they're trying to look like man lions in a way but but but but noel i mean do you remember when we were talking about the 70 episode we're talking about that man alive documentary yes noel absolutely fits with the fucking weirdos on that you know what i mean he's got yes what taylor was saying really fits in also with what what previously been said about tony blackburn these these strange individuals genuinely haven't got

any friends and yet appear you know they they're sort of friends of the nation, if you like. And the old story about Peely, the old story about Peely going to Noel Edmonds' house and not finding any records and not finding any... That's DLT, Neil. Oh, shit, sorry. But you can imagine Noel being exactly the same way. What use would that man have for music?

Well, something to listen to when he's in his many cars. No doubt. But he's clearly a sociopath because you remember his funny phone calls that he used to do like the the most toothless prank calls you've ever heard like it's all a harmless chuckle um you know but it's still no having the laughs at your expense right so there's you get the worst of both worlds it's like they mustn't upset anyone uh mustn't be in poor taste but at the same time it's you that looks stupid while noel is the chuckling prankster sniggering at you from a higher level as though from his chopper but those saturday evening shows that sort of made him a really big star in the 80s um the annoyingly inventive in a way because when you watch

saturday night takeaway when for british tv yeah yeah when you watch saturday night takeaway the ant and deck show the whole thing about you know you remember on those shows there were those moments where it suddenly cuts somebody's living room and stuff like that that is all still happening all of those all of those kind of motifs and ideas he came up with those shows are still getting mind and use so i'm sure he reassures himself with that and kind of has a real layer of bitterness about that that he hates and yeah i mean i presume he still considers himself a major innovator and a changer of british culture um but yeah he he sort of rapidly because of his megalomania and his kind of self-delusion about how important he was he destroyed any affection that any of us kids might have had

from him from the 70s so that by the mid 80s if you're a kid who grew up with him in the 70s you fucking hated noel edmunds by the by the 80s so as part of the deep and detailed research that the pop craze youngsters demand i have in front of me right now the multi-coloured swap shop book which was published in 1978 let me ripple through it because it is a testament to the edifice that is noel let's have a look. Okay, so Noel Edmonds. Birthday, 22nd of December. Birthplace, Ilford, Essex. Colour of eyes, blue. Colour of hair, brown.

Hobbies, decorating, motor racing, photographer. Cars, Jaguar XJ6, Triumph TR7 and the Ford GT40. His favourite food, chips and brown sauce. Whoa, eh? Fancy that. Favourite music. This would be interesting. Anybody want to take a guess?

When Cissandy will farm out. 1978. 1978. All male Soloists. I thought it would have been smooth ballads sung by a beautiful lady with a beautiful...

Male Soloists. Oh, man. See, this is it. We can't penetrate his brain. There's no way of guessing this. B.A. Robertson. Paul McCartney. Harry Chapin. Neil Diamond. Elton John. his brain there's no way of guessing this b.a robertson paul mccartney harry chapin

neil diamond elton john julian bream julie likes jersey cows poly filler donuts the lake district dislikes large leaking oil tankers and people who don't say please and thank you and he probably would have added unions or something like that John Craven

do you want to care to have a guess what his favourite music is no let's not even bother Olivia Newton-John the Moody Blues and Gustav Mahler No, let's not even bother. Olivia Newton-John, The Moody Blues, and Gustav Mahler. And what bands do you think Keith Chegwin likes? Oh, 78.

Shawoddy Woddy? No. He'll like pop. He'll like pop. Yeah, but they are the most Cheggerish bands ever is it basically Rollers were over

by then no no yeah think think of of satin bomber jackets if only that would narrow it down the doolies

Wings Queen and ELO Man of the People say yeah we like the music we like the disco sound Kings, Queen and ELO. Man of the people, say. Yeah. We like the music, we like the disco sound. Hey, black is black.

Black is black. Edmunds in a grey suit and a spotty tie does some rubbishy Ford Model T related intro and introduces this week's top 30 as we hear Black is Black by La Belle Epoque. Formed in Italy in 1976, La Belle Epoque were essentially a disco vehicle for the French singer Yves-Lin Lenton,

which makes me laugh because that's Lenton, that's near me in Nottingham, who performed throughout the 60s as Yves, supported the Beatles and the Rolling Stones when they played Paris, and relocated to London in the early 70s. In 1976, her brother invited her to move to Italy and form a group consisting of Jussie Fort from Cape Verde

and Marcia Briscoe from America. This is their first release, a cover of the Los Bravos hit, which got to number two in the uk 1966 and it's up this week from number eight to number three now do we need to talk about the song first or do we need to talk about the pictures that accompany the top 30 because we've got a very very special crop this week haven't we yeah i mean first off we've got some really bad and very dark close-ups of George Benson, the old sailor, and Jean-Michel Jarre, which is terrible, but which is, you know, of the style. But yeah, Giorgio Moroder, that's a bit of a special one, isn't it? taken uh well the thing that struck me was he's got an overexposed medallion around his neck and it first time i saw it i thought fucking has he actually shaved a cock and balls onto his

chest it looks he's just like fucking that's a bit go ahead for 1977 and for 2018 medallions make a massive, massive appearance throughout the show. They're really important. Yes, they do. This is peak denim aftershave advert period, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

I mean, the other ones that jumped out at me were the Doolies standing behind each other and leaning out, giving off the impression that they're waiting for you to come out of a festival toilet. Ram Jam looking like cowboys who've tagged their name on the wall while they're waiting for the methadone clinic to open. Mary Wilson in a phone booth during a nuclear explosion.

Yes, in a ridiculously dark and badly taken photo, dossing about on a bench as if they're casually trying to hide a spliff and the emotions having their hands in the air as if making a protest against the police. I like the shot of space as well. That's a brilliant one, isn't it?

It's a brilliant shot. Yeah, always sort of lunar jetman helmets on. I really like that shot. Yeah, a bit like the Sputniks brought into the late 70s yeah yeah Edmunds his outfit he's basically saying I'm above all this pop shit

don't you think very very David Jacobs kind of thing it's like taking us back to the to the top of the pops and the pop programs of yore yeah he's like a it's like a Hepworth's polyester mix suit it's like one of those

suits that and we will see as the program goes on that it starts to crease up really badly yes it's one of those ones where like you know your dad goes out to work wearing one of those in the morning and comes back and it you know it looks like he's screwed up into a ball and slept on it like as as it goes on the the horizontal lines start to appear across the the crotch and thighs uh from where you've sat down i agree oh that it looks really dated because you know other presenters at the time if they were wearing a suit that have combined it in a sexy and exciting way with a pair of jeans or maybe a t-shirt, at least undone their top button, you know what I mean?

But he's fully togged up this is why it's so oddly reminiscent for me of previous episodes like you say I haven't seen a top of the pops presenter dress like that since really early 70s episodes, so it's a bit strange really. Of course at the time Noel Edmonds was doing an advertising campaign

for Hepworths with none other than Tony Blackburn. He was wearing a ready-to-wear suit at £37.95, while Tony Blackburn was wearing a made-to-measure one at £37.95. Just the same price. Amazing. Yeah. Those two great friends sharing a bit of banter down at Hepworth.

Yeah, they can't even agree on suits, man. They just fucking hate each other. But anyway, the song. It's good. This is a good song anyway. But the original, the Los Bravos track, song anyway but the the original the los bravos track sort of does fizz with the tension of that comes from making beat music in a fascist country because those Spanish group and it's a 60s track um it's sort of more emotional sounding and a bit wilder than this version but it has that sort of slightly contained sound that you get with a lot

of beat music from non-rock countries and especially from countries that are kind of monocultural whereas this is a crazy record and it's great partly because it sounds like a load of kids let loose in a then modern recording studio with a fairly basic song to cover and a brief to make it sound ear-catching so you get a bit of everything thrown in you get uh crazy textures there's a slightly illogical mix uh sort of black arc type delay effects on the vocals um there's a sort of decadence to this record um to the sound and spirit of it which makes up for the sort of slight gaucheness and yeah you compare the original to this and you're listening to the difference between uh 60s spain uh and late 70s western europe yeah completely i

mean i love the what what taylor's mentioned there the the echo on the vocals is is so brilliant because it's not correct it's kind of out of time slightly yeah and the electronic nature of it for me i prefer this to the to the 60s version massively and it is it i think you mentioned al it's quite a europhile top of the pot yes very much so um um you know and i don't think there's necessarily anything going on deep that we need to interpret about that but um it's really just an establishment that we've always been massively europhile in our pop taste in this country and and it might be conjectured to say i think rock fans voted out and pop fans voted remain but i don't know um rock set

but um no i i to me yeah it is a really europhile totp but i think a lot of them have been and a lot of them are the charts we have no problem with loving european pop music i hear the power of abba in this cover as well. There's a slight sense of those close harmonies. But yeah, I love the echo on the vocals. There's frequent times in this episode where for the first time in several years in Top of the Pops, I think, you can almost just faintly hear the future, the far future, one that isn't going to arrive yet.

But you can hear the future, and I hear that in the kind of echo on the vocals. It's a great song, this. This is their best record but when you listen to their other stuff like Miss Broadway and Bama Lama and things like that

it is the same it's this strange blend of like plasticky funk and synth noises and a bit of reggae and it's all held together by this dead simple relentless disco beat i mean none of them are as good as this this is the one where they got lucky but

there is that same sense of not giving a fuck running through all their stuff right down to what they look like they're so weird they don't look like a group it's like they got these two weirdly anonymous black singers at the back who kept changing they would get different ones in and hope that nobody noticed and then this french lady of a certain age up front uh really going for it's like it's a karaoke on her 40th birthday and she's like you know really up for it um really strange looking group and all the better for it i think but is this the beginning of the end for disco because you know we're starting to see that people are going oh we can just do a cover version and just whack a disco beat on it

because we've got the thing to fucking star wars at number 24 in a disco styler yeah and nobody really needed that i think we are we are by now in a time whereler. Yeah. And nobody really needed that. I think we are, we are by now in a time where people have realised that, it isn't obviously, but people have realised it's, it's kind of easy to do a disco tune. Yeah. And it's exploitable and it's immediately lucrative.

Yeah. So you will get loads of songs that think that if they shove Boogie in the title and have this kind of vaguely electronic production, they're a disco tune. And consequently, you know, this is going to be an earner only some of those records are good yeah most of them aren't but this one wins out just by din of of the little bits that are excessive yeah that that don't really make sense like the echo on the vocals and the electronic nature of the sort of backing they are a weird band because the video that I've seen of the song, not this being

played on Top of the Pops, the video I've seen of the song the French lady who's singing it, Evelyn, the two backing singers yeah, yeah, they're kind of they're doing the performance but there's a black guy in the band who doesn't appear to do anything but

dance. He doesn't appear to sing you can't hear him on the track, but he apparently is part of the band. So yeah, a weird band. But it's a great little single, this. Oh, so they're trying to be Boney M there? Yeah, I immediately got that. I immediately thought that I was waiting for him

to do some really low vocals. But he didn't. He didn't. Rubbish. Is the late 70s the last time that the French were really held up as that sophisticated race of people that never really came back i mean french pop i can only think of

vanessa parody well just frenchness well they they brought a new smoothness to hip-hop of course when french hip-hop got big yes it't it? It was like, you know. I think in general, European stuff was held up as a kind of, yeah, a symbol of sophistication because people were starting to afford holidays over there. We're still only a few years away after, I guess, a time when things like minestrone were considered exotic. I mean, they still would be for a while. Yes.

Yeah, definitely. The late 70s, French culture. Yeah, the French were still held up as a thing of sophistication. But I remember starting to hear tales from people who'd gone over there about, oh, yeah, you have to crap in a hole on the ground and stuff. It immediately ruined all of that for me. The name Belle Epoque, it sounds a bit, you know, a bit continental and a bit saucy as well.

Taylor, what does it mean? It was the period in the sort of late 19th century, very early 20th century, sort of like the French version of the naughty 90s, you know. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. But the problem is, to english ears it does sound like belly pork which which makes them sound like a pub band you know they do blues yeah play biker pubs so the following week black is black nudged up one place to number two and stayed there for three weeks.

Fucking hell, nearly number one. It would be their only bit of chart action in the UK, however. And after a rotating cast of backup singers, Evie Lenton split up the group and eventually opened an off-license with the same name as her band. Really? I mean, Wikipedia says wine shop,

but I like to think it's an off licence. Sitting behind there now selling lighters and lottery tickets. We go straight into the first performance of the night, Needles and Pins by Smoker. Night, Needles and Pins by Smoker. Formed in Bradford in 1964 as The Yen, then The Sphinx, then The Essence, and then The Elizabethans, and then Kindness, and then Peter Noon's backing band, Smoker finally got their break when they were picked up by Nicky Chin and Mike Chapman in late 1973. After spending 1974 recording their debut LP and supporting Pilot on tour, Smokey finally entered the UK charts in July of 1975 when If You Think You Know How To Love Me got to number three. Also around this time the band were threatened with a lawsuit from Smokey Robinson over their name so they had to change it from EY to IE. This is a follow-up to It's Your Life which got to number

five in August of this year and it's a cover of The Searchers song that got to number one in February of 1964. It's just been released and it's not yet in the charts. Smokey Robinson and Smokey the Band, I could never tell them apart. Thank God that name change happened. I went to Wikipedia in the course of researching this to check a fact about Smokey. Don't give away our secrets, Taylor. Don't give away our secret resource.

But it took me to a disambiguation page which said smoky may refer to smoky band an english rock band from bradford yorkshire smoky food sheep or goats prepared for food by blow torching the fleece off the unskinned car which is more or less what they do to needles and pins here it's of course edmunds with his dumb obliviousness and total failure of imagination where pop music is concerned at the end says this is a song that you could justifiably call a pop classic um simultaneously misunderstanding pop music as a form in which concepts like classic and justifiable are useful or meaningful and making it very clear that it's not a classic it's a pop classic but it is a great song despite despite having been co-written by Sonny Bono. Yeah.

And it's a prototype of I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better by The Byrds. And every version of it is great, except this one. This song is full of hurt and bitterness, right? And it speaks of the pain of broken love and associated calamities in terms of physical torture. The only consolation is that she'll feel those needles and pins hurtner, hurtner. It's a bit sort of, it's a bit dark. And you have to perform it either in the way that Jackie DeShannon did the original with a measure of anger and resentment. that Jackie Deshanon did the original with a measure of anger and resentment

or the way the Searchers did it with a sort of helpless emotional attack. Whereas this is a Chinny Chat production. And as such, it's very compressed. Like the whole band has been mushed into a densely packed strip. And when you do that to Suzy Quatro or The Suite, you end up with something really tight and powerful.

But when you do that to Smokey, who don't play with any guts or drive and have a sort of open, ringing, laid-back sort of sound, especially on this particular song, which is all based around suspended fourths and relative minors and is therefore about as different from blockbuster musically as you can get that kind of sealed in sound just kills it so the group don't sound bothered um and any mild exuberance in the playing is flattened down

anyway so you've got all these early 60s mersey beat chord changes and and harmonies but with that generic flat 70s studio sound like all the salty coastal air has been sucked out of it um and there's nothing left yeah i mean this is the second 60s cover in a row i mean this is this this is the the thin end of the wedge that leads to uh poison ivy by the lambrettes isn't it the thing is everything that taylor says about um this particular version is he's absolutely right but precisely because i'm um getting old and like i've said before i'm easily pleased it does smooth out everything that the searchers version makes really apparent i mean the search version is it's a tense song and the lyrics are really dark about her being on her knees and feeling those needles and pins with in this version it does lose its tension it becomes

something reassuring rather than uneasy well it becomes more a song about having bad circulation isn't it well I mean accentuated by the fact that the singer he smiles all the way through this song with no kind of relation to what's going on lyrically and the search is original for me I think my favourite version not just

because you can hear the squeaky kick drum pedal at the beginning of it but it has a kind of tension to it this doesn't but that's precisely why i kind of enjoyed it as an almost sort of narcotic experience it's a nice sealed in um uh competent production of a brilliant brilliant song but if i had to choose a version of this to listen to this would probably be the last version I would listen to. What I was really found myself concentrating on whilst watching it was the odd little shots of the audience you got

there's a woman in a big hat and I've got a horrible feeling it's to do with the Jubilee or something. Yes it's a cross between a red white and blue rosette and Norman Collier's oversized flat pound isn't it? Yeah, it's a fucking Easter bonnet or something.

And she's making sure... We've seen it before. We've seen something very similar before around about this time. But that's how you can tell which songs in this episode are from the studio recording with Noel Edmonds and which are repeats from the previous week or the week before.

Because if she's there, you see her. Because that hat, it takes up half the space of the audience. Whenever she's not visible, you're watching a repeat from another area. She makes sure throughout that she is seen when she can be. Yeah. And also that she's not going to get hurt when a camera charges into her. Well, the camera height is absolutely crucial to the changing nature of Top of the Pots.

At this point, the camera height is on an audience level. In coming years, what we'll see is that camera height will just lift until the audience become, not dots, but something to be swooped over. At this time, the camera's still living with the audience and is still low enough to catch the natives, as it were. Yes. But, I mean, this song, I mean, at this point,

the chinny chap magic is starting to fade, isn't it? To my mind, this is chinny clap chap. You know, the band just look like they've just piled out of the pub, which is, you know, what bands do anyway. But now they're starting to look as if they are you know just regular blokes apart from the lead singer

of course Chris Norman who does look like he's gone on Stars in the Rise and said tonight Matthew I'm going to be

Steve Marriott totally man that's exactly what I thought Steve Marriott yeah circa 1968 he's got that look

nailed down hasn't he Steve Marriott, circa 1994. The trouble is, he's got the kind of face that doesn't really benefit from long hair. He's got this sort of... There is a bit of Marriott about him, but where he differs is that Steve Marriott looked like a cheeky chappy,

whereas this fella looks troubled. He has a long, sensible face with a flicker of anxiety and self-doubt. And really, those people should have short, neat hair and play a troubled Madison Avenue man in an episode of The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He's got that old-fashioned sort of born and adult face and when you put a face like that inside that hair um it instantly loses any dignity he might have had he looks like someone sneaked up behind him and draped it over his head or or dropped it on him from an upstairs window.

It definitely is the tail end of Chin and Chapman's. Any intrigue around them, really, because, you know, it's now all about smoking, it's about racy, and it's not really about making pop that sounds now or sounds even like the future. It's just about kind of good songs from the 60s replayed with nice production. There isn't really a Chin and Chapman specialness to this record at all.

Yeah, I'm watching this as a nine-year-old. It's just like, well, this ain't for me. This is grown-up music. Also, the defining characteristic of the smoky sound was a kind of featureless surface. If you listen to all of their stuff i mean it was inevitable that they would break from chinichap because they obviously fancied themselves as a real band but if you listen to the music they made afterwards um it still sounds

flat and machine made because even though they're quite muso-ish and organic the music they made it's so motionless like the surface of a canal you know i mean all the every chord seems inevitable and all the harmonies go where you expect them to and there's unnaturally balanced sound and all these songs just go through you and leave no trace yeah something so flat they look astonishingly pleased with themselves throughout this performance every single lick every single little drum roll every single little thing that anyone in the band does they look so smugly pleased with themselves about it there's that bass player who looks like the wacky jack the lad of the gang in the 70s american sitcom but this what I don't like is the singer's face, though.

He looks like it's all a bit of a hassle being on top of the pops, especially towards the end. He's looking off camera at the rest of the band. Yeah, we should be on whistle test. Blowing his cheeks out like, here we go, churning out needles and pins. Yeah, well, it's like this isn't the real meat of being in a band, which is your feet sticking to spilt beer

on the stage of the Batleodian. It's pretty grim. It is. There's a real, we've done this before, lads, isn't it? A bit of a laugh kind of, yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, while I was watching this,

I was trying to decide who would be their audience, and I managed to narrow it down to Dennis out of Alveda's Aim Pet I think he'd like Smoker yeah don't ask me why but I just think yeah just no nonsense get on with the job I'll tell you what I listened to uh Living Next Door to Alice the other day yeah the in? Yeah, in the course of researching this, not for playing. The original? Well, they listened to the original by New World, which is even worse, and then the Smokey original. And I sort of passed on the remake.

But two things struck me about that song. First of all, it should have been a hot chocolate song because they were experts at that kind of weepy, our tune, short story. They could have really done it justice. And secondly,

some candy talking by the Jesus and Mary channel is stolen from it. Almost note for note, the chorus. Yeah. And ironically of those two songs, it's, that's the one which could really have done with being remade with Roy Chubby Brown. Who the fuck is Candy? Yeah, who the ex is Candy.

I would have loved to have seen that. Yeah. So the following week, Needles and Pins entered the chart at number 48 and would scamper up to number 10 a month later. The follow-up for a few dollars more would get to number 17 in february of 1978 and they'd have one more top 10 hit that year before diminishing return setting and they split up for the first time in 1982 however they'd have one last hurrah in 1995 when chubby brand joined them to re-record Living Next Door to Alex

which got to number 3 in October of that year. I'm still laughing at the picture of that Roy Chubby Brown in leather trousers Needles and Fins Needles and Fins Needles and Fins, a song which I think you justifiably could call a pop classic. An oldie brought up to date there by Smokey. And here's one of the best records of 1977,

Best of My Love, The Sound of the Emotions. Don't you think must you make me happy And make me smile with me After deciding that Needles and Pins is a pop classic, Edmunds introduces what he calls one of the best records of 1977. Fair play, Noel. The best of my love by the emotions. Spawned in Chicago in the 1940s,

the emotions were three sisters wanda sheila and jeanette hutchinson who formed a vocal group called the hutchinson sunbeams in 1962 after spending the rest of the 60s as a gospel group they were spotted by roebuck pop staples and they were signed to stacks records and and worked with Isaac Hayes. In the mid-70s they linked up with Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire who co-wrote this song with Earth, Wind & Fire guitarist Alma Kay which has already spent a whole month at number one in America. In the UK it's up this week from number seven to number four

and because they can't make it in the studio and Legs & Co have got something else to do we are anointed with a clip from them doing the song on soul train let's talk about that first chaps soul train fucking hell well it's it's bigger isn't it and it's wider and there's more space and there's more adults than kids and the kids that you see they're on top of things they're cool kids in a way they don't look at the camera yeah they're not bothered about the camera they're dancing so so whenever we got to see and it was rare but whenever we got to see little clips of soul train um american superiority which we were all kind of ground under just got you know reproved in a way this is well ordered a black american i mean it's a well-ordered performance and there's no darkness, there's no night-timey

sense of it like there is on Top of the Pops. It's better produced, they were better at telly. They could do it. I guess I'd longer experience. If American Bandstand started in like 58 or whatever, they've got longer experience of doing pop telly. So Soul Train was always a joy

to see those little clips that you did get to see. And now, you did get to see. And now, you know, if I wanted to listen to old music via the medium that an awful lot of people use, which is YouTube, it would be Soul Train that I'd be going for. Because some of those performances, the fucking James Brown performances just by themselves are just amazing. And this performance is just utterly fantastic. Yeah, because there was one band, Blue Magic, who did Sideshow on Soul Train. Just amazing. Yes. And this performance is just utterly fantastic. Yeah, because there was one band, Blue Magic,

who did Sideshow on Soul Train. And, you know, as you're watching Soul Train, your eyes are going all over the shop like they're doing Top of the Pops. And you just see this couple near the front, and they're doing slow dancing, but they're doing slow robot dancing. Oh, wow. In 1974.

And of course there's the performance of Make It Funky by James Brown, where there's one lad who's got an Adidas holdall on his head and he's fucking robot in a way. Oh man. It pains me to say, but Soul Train pisses on top of the pubs from an enormous height. From an enormous height. And where Michael Jackson does the robot for the first time with the jackson five performance of dancing machine it's just fucking fantastic yes fantastic yes yeah no oversized jubilee

and it does it does look a nicer atmosphere than top of the pops it like despite the fact that they were probably being poked around like cattle too at least this isn't quite so redolent of stewed bbc tea and camera men with sweat patches on their arms polyester shirts it just sort of glows with a a deeper focus on the music and a healthier attitude to sex and nobody's being driven home from soul Train on the freezing leather seats of a Morris Marina. By a dad who's come out driving in his slippers. And in a way that's what makes Top of the Pop so brilliant. But the lack of that is...

Don Cornelius kept his hands to himself at all times. I'll take your word for that. But it's also what the lack of that kind of thing is what makes soul train so brilliant and it's weird to see a clip on top of the pops uh featuring an audience who can actually dance yes although there are a couple of duffers in there flying the flag for stiffness and poor coordination but yeah wouldn't it have been amazing if Top of the Pops had had their own version of the soul train walk can you imagine the fucking joy

that could have been wrung out of that but of course I mean both shows are expressions of national character aren't they I mean Top of the Pops is perfect for British pop music and for Britain it suits us our crampness our discomfort our inability to to you know our general inability to dance as well as this um yeah so yeah i mean

and the amazing weird products that can sometimes emerge from that melia in fairness the thing is what taylor said about the dancers there are a few duffers but what's glorious about it I mean Top of the Pop's never in the 70s

anyway it did earlier on but never in the 70s had that big enough space so that couples could dance together and more importantly

than that people who weren't with anybody could dance by themselves and create their own space around them there's a couple of guys in the audience for this who you know they're not with anybody but dance by themselves and create their own space around them there's a couple of guys in the audience for this who you know they haven't they're not with anybody but they're just

creating their own moves yeah well they're just creating their own moves in their own space and it's just one it's it's a wonderful wonderful clip a good clip for an i mean if we can move on to talk about the song for an immaculateulate record. Yes, yes, and it is, isn't it? Well, I mean, as a hip-hop fan, obviously I'm always reminded of third bass Brooklyn Queens by this. Yes. But it immediately gives me that earworm. But the emotions were great. And the albums that they were releasing round about this time,

Rejoice and Flowers and things like that. I mean, anyone who likes... We're at peak EWF time here. Yes, we are. Because they're coming off a run of albums, you know, That's The Way Of The World, Gratitude In Spirit etc anyone who's got them and hasn't got the Emotions albums from the same period should get them

it's a fantastic song, Morris could have sung it but it needs Wanda Hutchison and it needs female vocals it's a brilliant record this and also the atmosphere of the show carries over into the performance. And their rapturous smiles at the beginning actually look and seem completely genuine. It looks like they're out having a good time in a club and then this record comes on.

And that's the smile that most people would be wearing when they heard the intro of this record. It's like they understand that this is their best record and they're as thrilled to be a part of it as anyone else would be and i'm not even sure if that kind of joy and abandon is possible now which is not a backwards looking thing to say because there's lots of stuff about contemporary pop music that's as good or better than ever like the the sound design and the the carefree attitude to the past but what has or what seems to have largely gone is the simple expression of positive emotion that isn't sickly and sentimental or empty-headed or based on having defeated somebody else and i think if you put this record out now

and you were just a group of normal looking women who happened to be really good singers and there was no fake attitude just this i'm not even sure if it'd be accepted i think you might be seen as rather naive or a bit old-fashioned i think the the joy that comes across in their performance is precisely because they're on soul train. You know when you sometimes see a Top of the Pops performance and you can tell that it means so much to the people, the band involved, that they're on Top of the Pops.

I think that's the way the emotions are feeling here. This is a song born for soul train in a sense. And for a band like The Emotions, being on soul train, that is the same sort of zenith that being on Top of the Pops would be to a British artist. So it's that lovely coming together

of all those things with such a brilliant record. This is, for me, the absolute topmost of the popmost of the whole show. It's the best bit. And they did one of my favourite Christmas records as well.

You know, What Do The Lonely Do At Christmas? Oh. Sorry, that's just going off a tangent there. I heard that. What do they do? Yeah, well, this is it. They don't... They probably watch non-stop episodes of Bullseye on the Challenge.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where they've just put it on all day this fucking shit yeah the pre-recorded continuity announcements so the following week the best of my love fuck it i can't believe i'm saying this dropped one place to number five fucking british cunts the follow-up i don't want to lose your love would only get to number 40 in december of this year but they teamed up with earth wind and fire in the spring of 1979 for boogie wonderland which got to number four oh man oh i don't know which one's the better between that and this i've got to say boogie wonderland i mean that is that's like god sweeping down and giving you a

nosh, that song. Really great song, that. Absolutely marvellous emotions and best of my love. And the next song is really quite self-explanatory. It comes from Danny Mirror. I remember Elvis Presley Lord, how I loved to hear him sing

So I'll adore him just forever For he's the one and only king Edmonds rightfully drools over the last song some more before making a non-introduction for I Remember Elvis Presley by Danny Mirror. Born in Rotterdam in 1946, Eddie Owens worked as a concert organiser as a teenager until he offered to fill in as lead singer for the Edisons and changed his name to Eddie Nelson in 1966. After moderate Dutch chart success in the late 60s, he switched to producing while holding side

jobs as a publisher, plugger and weekend disc jockey and in 1972 he became the presenter of the Dutch TV show Popsien. After scoring regional hits as a producer, he wrote Ding Ding a Dong, T-Chin's 1975 Eurovision winning song, and his performing career seemed to be in the past. Then, six weeks before this episode of Top of the Pops, Elvis died while he was having a shit, and Ewan sprang into action, writing this tribute to the king the next day, having it pressed the day after, and releasing it the day after that before Elvis had even been buried. This caused the Dutch music paper Hitkrant to describe the single as

and I apologise to our Dutch listeners in advance Lickenpikkerij which various internet translators say means looking for corpses or deadly spanking. Also sorry about our football supporters. We think they're cunts too. The original version, which shot straight to number one in Holland, had an introductory voiceover by the Radio Nordsee newsreader Tony Burke.

But when it was released over here, it was introduced by Radio Luxembourg's Tony Prince and after four weeks in the chart it's gone up this week from number 11 to number 8 well well well the king is seven weeks cold in the grave now and we are still grieving here in Britain can you chaps remember uh I love the title of this record like it's a boast like he's only been dead six weeks and it was headline news around the world and all his records are back in the charts and this guy thinks he's like solomon cherishevsky or he's like the musical memory man he's standing there with one hand to his temple going oh it's all coming back to it didn't he have sort of slick back hair like very

dark like a crow yeah there's something hugely necrophiliac about elvis worship anyway it's like same as with uh you know like marilyn monroe fans and their weird sadism it's like whatever you might say about mad lennon fans they're not really like that whereas with elvis there's always this christ-like thing like his death was the whole point and his life and work was it only makes sense in the context of that it's really creepy but alas this record is only creepy in concept not in execution so even as an early example of the elvis death cult it's not as interesting as it should be no no neil can you remember when elvis died well this is it i was i was racking my brains i genuinely it was in all the papers you know

i know it was in all the papers i'm sure it was in the news I remember nothing about Elvis dying Whatsoever I think to be honest with you By then he'd already effectively sealed himself off From pop And from our lives And he was already a retro thing And crucially someone who didn't really care about success anymore And

This you know What staggers me is what you just said Al About this going back up the charts at this point um you know this is a gesture purchase as it was it's a slow pull up the charts it really is yeah and elvis by then had already become a metaphor for stardom for pop music for entropy for the collapse of things um i'm astonished this was this was going back up the charts the elvis record that is in the chart way down that's awesome that's almost like a glam record um but i do think the seven elvis had to die in 77 or towards the end of the 70s not just because of his lifestyle etc

but it was the last decade i think elvis could have got away with his shit um he that he could have got that ever since he come back from the army he was laughing at himself to a certain extent um and that humor that that crook lit that kind of humor about himself he was already parody and he kind of knew it yeah so so this record i mean it doesn't sum up i don't think you know much of anything or anyone's feelings about Elvis. But Danny Mirror looks, I mean, the performance. Like, when he puts his hand to his head, like he is, like Taylor mentioned, like he's just trying to recollect Elvis Presley.

It's just astonishing. And the jacket. What the fuck is going on there? Right, right, right. Before we go into the jacket, before the 10-minute dissection and the jacket what the fuck is going on there right right right right before we go into the jacket before before the 10 minute dissection of the jacket um i remember elvis presley when he died uh because i was i remember the night i was i was uh i was staying around my non-hours and i'm sitting on my grandpa's knee watching news at 10 and i was there when reggie boz and k announced it and then got the phone call to say, oh, it might be a load of bollocks.

And so News at Ten ended on a right cliffhanger because they said, oh, we don't know. We don't know if Elvis is dead or not. So, you know, if we hear anything, we'll let you know later on. And I was sent straight up to bed. But before that happened, Minona was sat there watching it

and she pulled on a fag and said, hey, your dad will be roaring into his pint tonight and I was just terrified of my dad making a complete arse of himself because he was mad into Elvis and I just went to bed and I actually prayed

for one of the few times in my life that Elvis would live so my dad wouldn't make a tit of himself in the pub or at the very least everyone else would be crying too I'm not lying this is the first time that a news event impacted upon my family

and my life can you recall what your dad thought of this record the Stanley Mirror record he probably agreed with it I mean the astonishing bit about it is when it slips into Elvis songs halfway through yes it does. Do you miss him tonight?

And it's an exercise in ambulance chasing. Well, hearse chasing. Lick and pickridge, Neil. Come on, let's have the correct term. But let us speak about the outfit. I only jotted down one thing, Al, and that's that he looks like the

shittest stalker in The Running Man ever. That's what he looks like. He just looks fucking... I mean, he's got an Elvis T-shirt on underneath. I wonder whether that was his original plan and then this jacket was foisted upon him or whether it was a sartorial choice of his own. No, I think this is a deliberate look.

I mean, I have got, if Shaking Stevens' denim jacket had sex with Roger Daltrey's fringe jacket from the early 70s, this would be a Pearly King version of that. He's like Pearly Shaking Daltrey, isn't

he? Except if you look closely, what's actually stuck to his jacket is little white buttons like he put on a kid's romper suit or something. Yeah, he had a Ronco button there or something, didn't he? Also, at the very beginning, his hair and microphone stance

makes him look like the very young Marky Smith, but drunker. He's got the same sort of... He's got the sunken, exhausted eyes like those of an exorcist. But this record would have been better if he'd done what Marky Smith did when paying tribute to a favourite singer and attempted to personify him. He did I am Damo Suzuki this record should have been I am Elvis

Presley imagine how much better that would have been this is one of those records that seems to make no sense until you realise that he's Dutch and everything becomes clear I love the Netherlands up to a point but me too

they're sort of less natural rockers than the Germans because they don't have the same enforced independence from their own history and the same congenital lack of self-awareness as individuals. And also he's the Dutchest looking man I've ever seen. If he had a gingery moustache and a wooden bow tie, he'd be the perfect late 70s Dutch straight. You know what I mean? He looks like one of the often overlooked, murderous Dutch central defenders who were the bodyguards of total football.

And the trouble with coming from Holland as a pop as a minor pop singer is that the only people from Holland that anyone else in the world has ever heard of are all actual genii of one sort or another so it's like the the line goes like Christian Huygens, Vincent van Gogh, Johan Cruyff, and now this bloke, right? And it's like you get a lot more cover if you're British or American. It's easier to be of minor interest. Whereas if you're Dutch,

it's like there's pressure on you to... Go big or go home. Yeah, you've got to do justice to the heroes of the Enlightenment, you know, in which respect danny mirror has to be judged at least a partial failure um but what a name though danny mirror yeah it's like if i put out a record in the netherlands and called myself dave telegraph it's does he not

realize but to me danny mirror sounds like if there was an episode of Roy the Rovers where a pop star got involved, Danny Mirror would be the perfect name. Yeah. If a pop star was hiding away from his fans in the Crossroads Motel, he would be called Danny Mirror. It's too perfect a name for a pop star of the late 70s to my mind. But the thing is, look, this record isn't for charity. No, it's not. late 70s to my mind but the thing is this look this record isn't for charity no it's not it so so what i'm not i'm not wondering why people buy it or bought it rather it is for people with elvis alzheimer's well but what would you do with it once you got it home would you really put it on

and listen to it and then several weeks down the line would you listen to it again it apparently so near it's going up the charts this is what I cannot fathom that it's going up the charts because it is like I said a gesture purchase you buy it in some way to show solidarity with other Elvis fans or something just to show your sadness about this but then what the fuck do you do with it

you sit alone in the dark at night sobbing about Elvis listening to this I don't get it at all why don't you just listen to Elvis you've probably got a few records by him in your arse if you bought this there were probably people out there who didn't own any Elvis records

but fucking own this what's going on with them I suspect a lot of copies bought for dads and granddads don't you think yeah but yeah ultimately he's no panther man he's not

even a Mai Tai he's barely even the opus of the 17 year old Simon Price's imagination there were worse Elvis sort of tribute records

in a sense or mournful there's one by a guy called Skip Jackson called The Greatest Star of All which is awful and actually turns up on a Kenny Everett compilation

yes the world's worst record yeah most of which are brilliant absolutely it's got Tump Thumpers Kick Out The Jam it's got Jess Conrad's

Pull Over it's got Surfing Bird Surfing Bird it's got Tump Thumpers Kick Out The Jam it's got Jess Conrad's Pull Over it's got Surfing Birds has it also got Transfusion by Nervous Norvis on it I think it might

she's a fucking amazing record yeah leave Kenny over for now chaps let's return to this because you're right Neil

I mean tribute singles to dead singers that was you know it was quite a thing in the 50s and 60s we haven't had it for a while and here it is again

and you just it makes you wonder oh come on Danny you could have milked this cow for a fucking long long time as soon as some big pop star snuffs it get the fucking song out mate I wouldn't be great if yeah wouldn't it be great if he'd have come back a couple of years ago with I remember Sid Vicious it would have been great if he'd have

come back a couple of years ago with I remember David Bowie or I remember

Ian Curtis he'd have come on to sing that one in a long overcoat yeah I mean he

had a chance soon didn't he because I think Bing Crosby dies later on that year as well yeah so he he had a chance soon didn't he because i think ding crosby dies later on that year as well yeah so he did have a chance but he didn't do it but he should have done mr trick there done yeah the song itself is terrible as well by the way um we haven't really talked about the lyrics of it yes but they're fucking never set me free no lord how i love to hear him sing it's just like you know the thing about eddie as uh you know his real name he had the mainstream dutch pop market sewn up in the 70s didn't he was like a producer and he did a bit of everything yeah um and it's so it was so easy then to become a big fish in a small pond and make a great living from being the only person in your small market

who bothered to do it. Yeah, the Johnny Halliday. Because people wanted to embrace something local. It's like how the whole world watches American pornography, but really they would like to see people from their own country doing it. It's like that. And even if the standard is a bit lower, it still makes up for it.

There's a sort of an alternate history of pot there. If you go around the smaller countries of the world, you can find somebody in every country who did that and made a million out of it. In this case, the big lad in the windmill. So the following week, I remember Elvis Presley jumped four places to number four, its highest position.

The follow-up, We Wish You Merry Christmas, an original-ish song sung in an Elvis style, failed to chart here, and he never bothered the UK top 40 again however in 1981 he hooked up with the Jordanaires Elvis's original backing singers for a 50 track LP of Elvis tunes and he won the defamation lawsuit against HitCront magazine for the deadly spanking accusation. Good on him. He's pretty much bankrupt now though. He spent all his money on the

one-armed bandits. What? Really? I think he's just waiting for Shaking Stevens to snuff it. He's just a golden memory. It's just a golden memory decorations out and start hurling yourself around. Edmunds advises us to get our Christmas decorations out, which people in 1977 wouldn't have done until the beginning of December at the very earliest because they were proper unlike our cunts today,

and introduces us from here to eternity by Giorgio Moroder, or, as he's known here, Giorgio. Born in South Tyrol, Italy, in 1940, Giorgio Moroder started as a bassist in the late 60s in West Berlin, releasing the singles Blah Blah Diddley, Moody Trude and a cover of Manar Manar. And an LP called That's Bubblegum, That's Giorgio. Giorgio. He also had a regional hit with Son of My Father which was covered and turned into a UK number one by Chicory Tip in 1972. By this time he'd moved into songwriting and producing and hit the jackpot when he linked up with Donna Summer in 1975 and released Love to Love You Baby

which got to number four in the UK in february of 1976 three months previous to this episode maroda and summer stayed at number one for four weeks with i feel love which has obviously encouraged georgio to give his solo career another go it's up this week from number 30 to number 25 and it's this week's showcase for legs and co and fucking, it's the future. It's amazing, isn't it? It's ridiculous. I was watching this. First time I watched this episode in preparation for this, I'm kind of like fart-assing about doing other things,

and suddenly I turned around and, you know, copped an earful of it, and I thought, fuck's sake, what the fucking hell are the Pet Shop Boys doing on Top of the Pops in 1977? Oh, absolutely. It stops you in your tracks. Yeah. Within about 10 seconds of it, you're hearing things that you can actually hear now in current pop music and i don't know whether that's an indictment of how electronic dance hasn't always been interesting in finding a

way beyond beyond this or just a testament to how ahead of his time maroda was i mean there's another electronic record in this chart space magic fly which shows how instruments electronic instruments when they're put in the hands of musicians they don't necessarily sound revolutionary no magic fly shout sounds like a shadows instrumental played on synths this sounds like the future because electronics seem to have actually had an effect on the on the innards and the structure of the music it's a fucking amazing. Like it's been teleported back from the early 80s. It's almost like house music, isn't it? Yeah, without the big... Yeah, it's like Acid

House, 10 years early and already better. Absolutely. Another thing, of course, that it reminds you of in retrospect is that the rhythmic undertone of it massively reminds me of Robots by Kraftwerk. But Moroda is nothing like Kraftwerk. He's, for me, he's like an electronic Jeff Lynne or Roy Wood.

He's more like that. It's an amazing performance as well, I think. This is burned into my memory like an arm across a window. This has the ability, this performance by the dance troupe, to burn itself into your memory precisely because it's so abstract. But listening to this, yeah, my jaw dropped the dance troupe to burn itself into your memory precisely because it's so abstract yeah but but but listening to this yeah i i my jaw dropped because this is so so um ahead of its time yeah because remember pop craze youngsters when legs and co are on and we talk about the song first

it's a fucking good song yeah yeah yeah yeah and as a kid i mean as a kid hearing this and i remember hearing things like this and hearing things like craftwork early on that there was never you know you know musicians throughout the world were were doing their keep music live bullshit um as a kid there was never any problem with electronic music because it was blatantly apparent that machines did things better you sensed as a kid the precision of it and you loved that um you know there's something deeply deeply satisfying about the precision of this record and i think any kid as opposed to grown-up musician would immediately respond to this music because it's got it fulfills that function it's incredibly satisfying and incredibly well perfect yeah yeah this record begins and it's like everything else on the show has melted

it's like everything else sounds fiddly and old-fashioned and over elaborate and full of bullshit what this reminds me of it's like an electronic music equivalent of bo diddly or yeah link ray where it's not pioneering in the sense of having invented the form but pioneering in the way that it finds a new fresh simplicity and power and minimalistic weirdness and presents that with such force and flash it becomes almost commercial and in the sense that it's like a mother load you can take this and draw out so many different possibilities and variations without losing the fundamental appeal yeah um and i don't know i always get the impression that now much as i love the the really high tech modern

pop records it feels like music technology has slightly decreased the space of popular music it's created a sort of an unnatural architecture um which most modern pop records and specifically most modern black pop records which as is so often the case are currently the most forward-looking all seem to have in common so the old-fashioned acoustic space is gone but so has any comprehensible 3d effect everything's so tight and mangled which is great but in a way there's something even more futuristic about this because it's so wide open and uh celestial without sounding new agey or or sort of falsely soothing it's like it's authentically psychedelic in that it gives you a sense of being part of something much bigger than

yourself without that feeling like a good thing or a bad thing it's just a natural thing um that at the same time makes you intensely aware of small detail um this is uh yeah it's unbelievable and the visual presentation as well well yes you've got to say legs and co have risen to the challenge here haven't they yeah absolutely and all they're doing is just kind of like poncing about with some tassels yeah it's like the opening titles of a bond film that was made entirely on location in Molden. But it's great. And this might be one of the last examples of a proper visual freakout on mainstream television. Like an analogue visual freakout on mainstream television.

It's something you used to see a lot more in the days when TV visual effects were primitive. Because now they can do anything there's this terrible sort of good taste where you don't want to overdo it uh you don't want to make it look vulgar whereas in those days you could only do a few things and to do it you basically had to break or mistreat the equipment um so you had to go all out or nothing so you get these fantastically gross color effects and flashing lights like in doctor who uh like a this fantastically intense television and this is a great example uh and one of the last because soon it was all uh quantel paint box and mirage all these sort of early digital things where all they would do would be put someone in a box and whiz

them around the screen you know this is vastly superior and we're seeing examples of this on top of the pops already aren't we this is kind of like rainbow line of things yeah yeah opens and closes and stuff but i mean the actual performance is essentially legs and co in silhouette in tassely mini skirts uh waving more tassels on a stick and in the background is close-ups of them. It's quite arresting, isn't it? It's very arresting. And it's kind of...

I think it benefits from perhaps not having had enough time to get it right in a way. It's kind of reminiscent... Remember the 70 episode, 1970 episode where they had these weird experimental films almost for the tracks. And it's like like that you sense they got the footage they had to get it together they did but it's precisely the kind of not rush nature of it but but yeah the abstract

nature of it that makes it really really unforgettable it really burns itself into you into your consciousness and i think i think when i hear this song in the future because i'm definitely going to investigate the Moroder solo album this comes from you know I will be visualising this it's odd I didn't you know when you hear that you're going to do an episode from 77

I'm sure all of us expected certain things and you know the official line is the punk revolution had torn a hole in the blah blah blah whatever there's nothing of that. The whole episode could really be, for many of the preceding years or any of the next two years, there's black pop looking forward, at least,

to express the president. There's quite a lot of white morbidity and wrestling with the past, but the true revolution is going to come in a few years, and it's only Giorgio Moroder, who's the only prophet on this episode really of the future definitely this is essentially the top of the pops version of the the Vrillon broadcast

that was on Southern TV a month later isn't it it really is for people who don't know that Southern TV one Saturday afternoon the signal got jammed and someone spoke a load of intergalactic bollocks over a looney tunes cartoon yeah pretending to be a message from a space alien overlord

watching our planet yeah yeah yeah the best thing of all about this is that it's got an edge to it right there's something mechanical and raw and sexy about it like the record um like it's crap technology pushed to the limit so what you get is genuinely disorientating and mentally stimulating yeah dads are going to be pissed off though because they don't get to see much of oak do they do they? Also, the Disco Sucks people are not going to be impressed by this. I mean, they were angry enough about the stuff that was recognisably song-based.

Whereas this, you would be able to attract 50,000 men in egg-stained hockey shirts on lewds and fortified wine to drive their subarus in a convoy up to the sports stadium with a bag of hammers in the trunk right making a day of it like someone roasting a hog on a propane stove and some guy who says he's george lincoln rockwell's cousin signing autographs at a trestle table uh You can picture it now. I think it can't be stressed enough how much... Legs & Co are kind of...

People are a bit piss-takey about Legs & Co, but when they get it right, they can absolutely accentuate and amplify the power of a record. And I think on this, they really, really do. I love the way their movements... They I think on this they really really do I love the way their movements they've listened to this record and they understand

it's the rub between it's fluidity and it's mechanistic things that make it work so their moves are precisely like that they're both fluid but also kind of

rigid as well and it's a perfect performance it's a really good coalescing of sound and the dancing. Yeah, I've got to say, this is the best Legs & Co performance we've seen so far. Yeah. I would say so, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well done, Legs & Co. I was listening to a compilation of Giorgio Moroder's early stuff and various oddities, which i dug out um and like loads of it is sort of crap cheapo funk you know and really mediocre but every now and again you get something really amazing like uh uh boy on the ball by tracy dean which is like it's like an attempt to do something like this with conventional instrumentation you know but you listen to it and there's no sense of this being a visionary in waiting you know what I mean yeah it's like one day you just got the gear set up

and did something and thought fucking hell that sounds amazing and then just went down that road and you know it was like suddenly everything went from black and white into colour i i still count it as a sort of badge of national pride that i that i feel love only got to number one in britain yes yeah yeah so the following week from here to eternity jumped four places to number 21 and we'll get as high as number. The follow-up, Utopia, Me Giorgio, failed to chart anywhere and he knocked the singing career on the head to concentrate on the soundtracks to Midnight Express, Battlestar Galactica and American Gigolo. I bet those outfits made you concentrate on what was happening. Hardy Amies tells me everyone's going to be wearing those.

What wondrous stories. Yes. Yes. Edmonds is strangely bemused by Legs & Co's rig out and then tries to be a bit too clever with the introduction to the next song Wondrous stories by yes yeah it's horrible because he does one of those hacky bbc continuity announcer introductions like you know where they you say like and now it's time to pay a visit to albert square and catch up with the eastenders or uh now on bbc one we take a trip to ramsey street to pay a visit on those neighbours.

He does one of those. Oh, it's just the cringe. The cringe. Formed in London in 1968, Yes were one of the four most progressive rock bands of the early 70s who had already scored seven top ten LPs but had left no impression on the UK singles chart. The band went on hiatus in the mid-70s so they could all record solo albums, and came back together in early 1977 to record

their latest LP, Going For The One, in Montreux. Seen as a backing away from the mad shit they were coming out with, and a veer towards a more accessible sound, it spent two weeks at number one on the UK LP chart in August of this year. This is the first single from their LP, written by singer John Anderson, and according to Wikipedia, it's about a lovely doss he had one day in Montreux. It's the first ever dent Yes have made in the singles charts, and it's up this week from number 16 to number seven as they're playing a gig in kansas city tonight we're treated to

their first ever promotional film for a record in a concert situation and fucking hell all of a sudden we are dragged back into the mid 70s completely. Completely. Yeah, totally. I mean, you know, I would ask who the fuck buys this, but I sort of know who buys this. From the actual title onwards, it kind of annoys me. Yeah. Wondrous.

Yeah, yeah. Wondrous. That bugs the fuck out of me. It's almost like a deliberately medieval spelling. Yeah. Why don't they call it Wondrous Storias then? Fucking have done with it As a pop song It kind of fails for me

As a song that is catchy and hasn't got 20 different sections In 20 different time signatures I guess it's a progression for Yes But there's one thing That snags me with Yes And prevents my exploration of them And that's Wakeman I've got to say i'm sorry um

i mean is there anything he's ever done that isn't shit he's kind of like a great musician inverted commas who's up there for me as somebody i don't know i just can't stand hearing him he always seems to play weirdly weak yes so everything they're wearing on this um video just makes them look like a suicide cult but what wakeman in wakeman in particularly that's that thing of making even the sort of silkiest satiny stuff look shit and he's got all the grace and glamour of bernard breslau in a dress basically yes yes i wasn't i wasn't massively into this i to say. Well, what Wakeman would wave at St Peter is the piano on Life on Mars by David Bowie, which is his greatest moment.

But what I've always hated is the way you're meant to think that Rick Wakeman was sort of all right because he's quite clubbable and down to earth and he had a lager. And he had a curry on his side to gig once. Yeah, while he was making this fucking fairytale shitbag music. But I say that's worse.

I say have the courage of your convictions and at least have the decency to float around being ethereal and idiotic and fucking own it. You know what I mean? In that respect, even Donovan is preferable. Even the 1972 film version of the pied piper with donovan in the title role is preferable to this half measure to this uh vindaloo breathed beery medievalism of rick wakeman wearing a pointed hat and checking his Paul's coupon. Fucking bellend.

Hate him. But yeah, that medievalism is so fucking aggravating. The pretty main liege, flipping your hands around in little circles while curtsying. There's people playing little trumpets with triangular flags hanging off the bottom. with triangular flags hanging off the bottom, you know. But with no sense of historical weight, like you get with early Fairport Convention or even Steel Ice Band, right? You don't feel the past pressing down on these people. It's a bit Clopper Castle, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are not being haunted and invaded by the past, right? It's more like one of those medieval banquets where sales consultants eat chicken legs and throw the bones over their shoulder. Yeah, and all the serving wenches have got those crosses on the front of their blouses to make their tits stick out even more.

I know somebody who works as a serving wench at Coombe Abbey near Cobb, and she posted a photo of herself doing one of these meals and she had one of them fucking you know in a uh mike things like janet jackson it really ruined the fucking mood oh you nasty knave the terrible thing is you speak honestly about yes and you sound like you're following that sort of creaky old consensus you know yeah but in fact that creaky old consensus is a rare example of the hive mind of the music business getting something unequivocally right albeit for the

wrong reasons um yeah and it's mind-boggling to think that otherwise intelligent people would have considered this to be objectively good music compared to that Giorgio Moroder trash or the pop shit of the emotions. The sheer nerve to put aside the great rockers of the past and claim to have progressed. As though these people, like these upper middle class British public school products who belonged in the foreign office or, you know, on the 810 into Victoria in fucking bowler hats.

As though they knew better. Yeah. It's this terrible thing with english prog which they okay it's good to have a desire to expand and extend rock music but they didn't understand the form and they didn't trust the form so you listen to someone like can and they take brutal rock and roll and they unfold it or or coax it open like a like a bud coming into flower whereas people like yes just bolt on a load of ornamentation and sort of tokens that that flown in from classical music or jazz and it's like those people who put reindeer horns on their dog and make it walk around

and film it and put it on youtube it's like doing that and then calling that a progression like you plebs with your ordinary dogs fido has progressed far beyond meanwhile the stooges are walking a wolf on a lead and roxy music have got a dalmatian that can write novels you know i mean it's completely wrong approach. It's humiliating to the subject and ultimately an embarrassment for the perpetrators. And there's a sort of gross and debased way in which this is quite a pleasant sounding record. The horror is the way it all comes together.

And something which should sound airy and dreamy is so full of its stupid self that it just sounds like stodge and what it reminds me of is a cosmic mumford and sons i mean this is the thing with yes and other bands of their own. To my generation, we've avoided it, pretty much. Most of us have anyway. And that's because at the age of nine, this wasn't grown-up music, it was teacher music.

It's the sort of thing that would be played while you're filing into assembly to be told that the football team's lost again but they had a good try. Another reminder that you're not allowed to play Dobby off-ground, round the bins near the back of the canteen.

And then we're going to play You Never Talk to Strangers. Let's listen to Wondrous Stories again. Yeah. I remember we had to file in once to Fanfare for the Common Man by EOP. Yeah.

It was... Yeah, we had one teacher who played Sotworth Camel all the time. For the Common Man. By EOP. Yeah. It was. Oh. Yeah. We had one teacher. Who played. Sotworth Camel. All the time. Or.

As they were known at the time. Camel. And he'd say. Oh. That was a song by Camel. You ought to listen to them. It's better than. Show Waddy Waddy.

Or whatever you listen to. We were like. Fuck off. Yeah. Show Waddy Waddy. Your skill. This is boring i should say actually right although they didn't have hits yes did put singles out all through the

70s um they weren't one of those bands that thought it was beneath them they were right slags which it was relatively healthy i think i mean the the the obviously the primary sin of prog rock is thinking that to be the idiot little brother of classical music is more progressive than the emancipatory act of mistreating musical instruments and torturing machinery to create uh vital works of popular culture but um at least they recognize that pop singles could have value even if they miscalculated their relative worth anything else to say about this appalling confection i wonder with yes who was the sort of dominant person in the band were they all equally not stupid but were they all equally committed to this

because I wonder if John Anderson just kind of wanted to write pretty songs and Steve Howe just wanted to play some guitar I feel well no but this is it I feel that Wakeman drives it I feel that Wakeman drives

the pomposity of it and that's probably my major problem with this band you know i'm just in general dubious about musicians who are invited um to be the star in a reasonably priced car on top gear with regularity and he's one of them the only musical contribution to this record that I quite like is Chris Squire's bass playing, which is genuinely imaginative without being too fancy. And that's really unusual because usually the over-elaborate bass playing and drumming is what really kills it's like the only british prog or prog related band that i like is pink floyd up to about 1977 when roger waters strangled the life out of them because uh the bass player and drummer were by far the worst musicians in that band so there's a sort of primitive undertow so you listen to pink floyd and they sound like a garage band floating in space, which is totally different to when everybody in the group is playing 19 to the dozen and showing off simultaneously. So, yeah, I just wonder if if you put Chris Squire in a good band, if he might actually have improved them, because I don't think that's something you can say about any other member of Yes.

So the following week, Wondrous Stories dropped seven places to number 14. The follow-up, Going For The One, got to number 24 in December of this year, and they would never penetrate the top 20 again. I always thought Owner Of A Lonely Heart was a big hit in the 80s and it wasn't. It was only in the high 30s. Really? Oh, right.

Yeah. Okay, that surprises me as well. Hearing your wondrous stories Hearing your wondrous stories Gözler şiştik. Baby, baby, baby, my love's all for you Born in Garret, Indiana in 1950, Denise Williams was a medical student who sang in clubs on the side, who eventually dropped out of college and spent the late 60s recording a variety of tracks, some of which were picked up on by the northern soul community. In the early 70s, she became part of Wonder Love, Stevie Wonder's backing singers, but in 1975 she signed to CBS as a solo artist and linked up with

Maurice Wright of Earth, Wind & Fire and his producer Charles Stepney. The first single from this collaboration, Free, got to number one in the UK for two weeks in May of this year. This is the follow-up to That's What Friends Are For, which got to number eight in August of this year, is the first release from the new LP Songbirds, and is not in the charts yet. Well, chaps, the eternal battles of the mid-70s, Punks vs. Ted, the MPLA versus the Portuguese army,

the Grunwick strikers versus the police, and black singers versus the BBC orchestra. Yes, yes, that's exactly what this clip is all about. I mean, we've seen a confederate and presumably mates, the emotions, being given the full-on soul train treatment. And poor Denise, she's stuck here. Oh, God. They're pissed out of their face, aren't they?

The BBC orchestra. If you stood in front of those trumpets, you would get pissed. Just breathing that air. These fucking saps. I quite like the bit of, the horribly gnarly bit of feedback on the intro to this.

Yeah. That she almost laughs at. But from then on, the BBC orchestra, they just badly let her down. The crucial thing about this record, I mean, personally,

I prefer Free. Free's a fucking great song. Great song. And off this album that this is from, Songbird, Time would have actually been a better release I think, the first track on it Well it's basically a great rip off Of Shooting Star by Earth, Wind and Fire That's all it is, but it's a fantastic tune

But on this, the crucial hook up Between the bass and the kick drum That gives the original it's kind of propulsion Is gone Because they've had five points of heavy Or something bass and the kick drum that gives the original its kind of propulsion is gone because because they've had five points of heavy or something yes she sees it through quite gamely in front of a mainly sort of smirking audience but yeah she's been badly badly let down by the bbc orchestra here and if jonathan cohen is part of this he should be ashamed of himself the the terrible thing is she's in great voice as well

but there's a that honking feedback at the start and then the drums coming in it throws her off and she never quite recovers and yeah she doesn't you know on the record there's those amazing high notes at the end where she really goes from she doesn't do it on this performance because i don't think she trusts the musicians um it's fair to say that they don't really capture the funky snap of this record the the moment you know this is going horribly wrong um on the record there's a big brass blast after the first line like she sings the first line yeah and there's a sort of clip it's like a clipped textural detail of this kind of brass uh blast and here it sounds like a ruddy faced bank manager blowing off after a lunch of piccalilli and worthington e it's fucking horrendous and you just see something die on her face

at that moment and it's like she's playing the night out in Birmingham for a load of chicken in a basket eaters you know what I mean just with this horrible sound and

what sums it up as well the girl in the Jubilee hat is right at the front for this performance too and her dancing is a sight to see it she doesn't look like she's moving to the beat she looks like she's trying to stand upright on a moving tube train without holding on to anything it's the worst attempt to dance to a soul record I've ever seen in my life. What's more, Denise Williams has to sing in front of a load of struts

holding up a rickety wooden platform with some drums and flight cases stuffed down the side, which is, I would say, a lapse of design and direction that i don't think you'd have got on soul train yeah yeah my heart this is soul emergency train service isn't it soul soul rail replacement service it's a double-decker bus to take you to skegness for five hours my heart breaks for because mean, she's still young.

When you see people like the Drifters on Wheel Tappers and Shunters and that, and they're playing with backing bands, you know their old stages, they played the Chitlin' Circuit, etc. They went round it, but Denise, I feel really sorry for her because this is possibly, I mean, I know she's had the hit with Free,

it's got to number one. This is her next potential hit, and this is the most important pop show in the country the hit with Free, it's got to number one. This is her next potential hit. And this is the most important pop show in the country. And, you know, it's almost sabotaged. In a way, I'm glad that this is such a dog's breakfast because much as I love the actual record, there's a problem with trying to talk or write about this kind of 70s soul, the commercial, romantic, popular stuff stuff which is that it doesn't really lend itself to being written about unlike you know art rock or p-funk or dub or post-punk

or any of these musics that sound like they involved a lot of artistic choices rather than just a moment's inspiration because when you talk or write about music, the easiest thing and the most natural thing to do is to write and talk about the artistic choices on the record. And the great thing about this record and a lot of other records like it is that it sounds so natural and effortless that it's hard to see where those choices were,

despite the fact that it is the product of very well-practiced musicians and considered songwriting and a meticulous production. The effect is so spontaneous and straightforward. And having to hear this sort of Too Ronnie's version instead sort of dug me out of a hole in that respect. Absolutely, yeah. If she had just come on a mind to the original we'd have very little to say about it to be honest with you because it's just that yeah would you say from what a decent song exactly and that'd be it but

yeah so five weeks later baby baby my love's all for you entered the chart at number 45 and would only get as high as number 32. Her next bit of chart action came in the spring of 1978 when she teamed up with Johnny Mathis and got Too Much Too Little Too Late, which sounds like the BBC Orchestra's performance, to number three. In 1980, she started veering towards a gospel route, but she'd have one more massive hit when Let's Hear It For The Boy got to number two for two weeks in June of 1984.

Oh, and the BBC Orchestra are now based in the same studio complex as Jeremy Kyle, which I love, because you can always see people rowing outside their studio. It's fucking great, man. I just imagine these white-haired violinists just screeching to a halt with their mouths hanging out as people are fucking having a go at each other

and talking about using Toffee Crisp rappers as johnnies. Baby, baby, baby I'm all for you Baby, baby, baby I'm all for you Yeah, yeah Gorgeous lady with a beautiful voice and a very beautiful song. That's Denise Williams. Here are the Stranglers and No More Eros. I think. The heroes are the Shakespeareos.

Edmunds drops an especially shitty joke before introducing No More Heroes by The Stranglers. No more ear-rolls, but one massive arsehole. We've already discussed The Stranglers in Chart Music 11, so we'll just say that this is a first release from the new LP No More Heroes. It's the follow-up to Something Better Change. We've got to number nine in August of this year. And it's up this week from number 20 to number 30. Now, bit of a mystery here, chaps,

because immediately we see Hugh Cornwell waving about and then throwing what appears to be a copy of the NME, I suppose, off the stage, which makes Jean-Jacques Brunel stop miming to retrieve it so he can wave it about and lob it again. Now, what is this about? Because first time I saw it, I thought they were just waving it about and chucking it. But then, you know, I noticed there was all this smoke and I thought, oh, fucking hell, they've set fire to it.

And they've started fretting that he's going to get out of control. And, you know, that's not very punky to me, is it? So what is going on? Yeah, I think they've tried to set fire to it, presumably to show that they don't take no shit from the critics, man. But they just haven't done it very well. And it's just smoking. Also, this clip's a repeat.

It's from the previous week. So if you look, they play the start of the song over Edmund's horrible face when he's doing the intro. And you only go to the clip a few seconds late. So they might have tried to cut that bit out, you know, in case any kids watching tried to set fire to their mum. Well, according to the BBC website,

it says that they were trying to waft away some dry ice that was on stage. Yeah, that's what I thought when i first saw it but i don't think it is first of all because it's only on that one side of the stage uh and secondly some of the props wasn't using dry ice in this period was it you don't see it with anyone else um i don't think they'd have made an exception for this bunch of scrote yeah there you go then mystery solved well to be honest with you before we talk about the Stranglers I kind of want to say what the fuck is up with Noel Edmonds' between song

announcements it's awful isn't it they're awful and he's doing that I see the influence of Everett here again it's that voice that Kenny Everett used to do to kind of mock the BBC that RP kind of talking he's doing it for real in a way but it's all

falling flat you know for somebody who prides himself on his supposed competence and brilliance and all the rest of it he makes a dog's breakfast of this presentation every link every link it's just a failed flat damp squib

you know I don't get it at all makes your hand for Tony Blackburn eh although I think there's a bit of subtle editorialising here. I think there's a bit of implied disapproval. Yes. That was a gorgeous lady with a beautiful voice and a very beautiful song. Now here are the stranglers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the thing about Edmonds is that he's now in that position at the BBC where he appears to be above everything. And he's deigned to appear on top of the pops. And he obviously doesn't give a fuck about the music, and particularly this kind of music. And it's all about being a vehicle for him.

And, you know, that never works. I mean, you have people like Peter Powell who, you know, whatever you think about him and his, you know, in never works. I mean, you have people like Peter Powell who, you know, whatever you think about him and his, you know, in his presentation technique, he appears to give a fuck about the music. Yeah. There's just no generosity at Edmonds. It's all private gags.

Yeah. That aren't funny, you know, obviously. Yeah. So, yeah, that really annoyed me. Actually, is it Jean-Jacques Bernal who throws the enemy on the floor? At the end, yes. Yeah, that really annoyed me. Actually, is it Jean-Jacques Bernal who throws the enemy on the floor? At the end, yes. Yeah.

I mean, is that going to register with anyone beyond about 200 people watching this show? Probably not. You know, there are things I like about The Stranglers, don't get me wrong. I like their kind of oddity in a way. The fact that even though they were tied in with punk, you know, they've got tashes and beards and they've got that keyboard sound. I've always loved their bass sound. They get the bass sounding

fantastic. But really, this is probably one of my least favourite Strangler songs. Oh really? Yeah. You know, the lyrics now don't exactly annoy me. I mean, what it reminds me of is how little you care about lyrics when

you're a kid um these these names that they're talking about leon trotsky etc obviously meant nothing to me no not me i would not have known any of those people mentioned at the time i just thought they'd be their mates in the pub or something well lyrics when you're a kid just have a continuum with the music they don't really you don't really pull them out i don't think in isolation and kind of analyze them in any way but really this is just the kind of i don't really pull them out, I don't think, in isolation and kind of analyse them in any way. But really, this is just a kind of, I don't know, it's just a kind of rougher pub rock, but not as tough as metal. For me, it's one of my least favourite Strangler songs, in a way. There's Strangler songs on the albums that I love, and they're probably the ones that, when, you know, they're at their most unpleasant, in a way.

They're least co-optable by punk things like london lady and they're probably quite misogynistic songs but um things like that they just have a groove and it's the bass sound for me it's the bass sound for me that really that really makes me love the stranglers but this is not one of my favorites um and a weird performance as well in terms of the way that the bbc have done it is that they've included this massive middle section with the keyboard solo and then cut it when he comes back for the final

verses so you don't hear anything towards the end of the record it's a bit of an odd one I'll pass on this one I prefer other Strangler songs to be honest with you. Yeah I mean before Taylor comes in I've got to say that I was a bit offended by this at the time the fact that there were no more heroes anymore because I used to think well where does that put

Brian Clough and Judge Dredd and Chris Bonington and people like that what are you saying stranglers all I've got written there is uglier than a string bag of snouts and arseholes and the program probably did need a blast of foul air at this point.

Yes. But even so, look at these fuckers. Scaly with yesterday's perspiration. I don't know. Do you think the Stranglers were slightly narked that already they were seen as the acceptable face of punk? Well, this is pretty much the only punk content in the whole show. It would have been seen as punk anyway

by most of the people watching it, including myself. Yeah, they were older and more classic rock and they could play and they didn't sound weird. And they didn't give a fuck in the sense that they were quite happy to go on tv and you know censor the swear and in the lyrics so it could be played on the radio and all that sort of stuff so they seem to be the band that were allowed in to do the funny scowling thing and have a horrible name and wear black and be anti-social so that box could be ticked you know yeah yeah and i mean i don't

hold it against them and they were just being a pop group but they did it at a time when that willingness to play the game was sort of seen to clash with that sleazeball image you know and i don't know how they would have felt about that at the time or whether they would just have cackled all the way to the bank if they were going to get some punk on this episode it would have felt about that at the time, or whether they would just have cackled all the way to the bank. If they were going to get some punk on this episode, it would have been perhaps far more interesting to get the adverts on or something like that. They're in the charts. I think they're going down, though.

Yeah. I mean, what punk-ish singles you can see, things like The Rods and things like The Stranglers, show just how, for an awful lot of us, punk just meant rougher rock and roll by the rough boys. Do you know what I mean? It's not a playing with the structure of songs or anything. It's just kind of a bit gnarlier than other music.

That's all. Yeah, I mean, the punk or punkish element in the charts this week is Complete Control by The Clash, which is a new entry at number 28. Gary Gilmore's Eyes has dropped down from number 23 to number 26. And Rods, Do Anything You Want To Do, or Eddie and the Hot Rods, as they're better known as, down from number 15 to number 18. So this is the only punkish thing that could have been played this week but i mean i i i hate the word that people use these days about curators of culture as it were but the fact is the music press felt they were part of punk and felt they're important

part of it and consequently its importance has been grotesquely overinflated ever since yeah i'm not just talking about record sales i just you know looking at this chart in a dispassionate way you really realize that punk for most of us meant yeah a bit of gobbing a bit of sort of shouting and oyishness and that's all it meant it didn't mean it didn't mean revolution it just meant that a few bands got popular who like taylor said look like they didn't wash talking to which boomtown rats have gone down one place to number 15 so there you go Neil

yeah would you eat a sandwich made by the stranglers no absolutely no

can you imagine it you can imagine like making this sandwich with the fag hanging out like

fag ash dropping into the margarine just spreading it in you know like old man steptoe like six different kinds of fecal bacteria under their fingernails it would be it would be

be white bread it'd be like mother's pride like that real cheap stuff like window putty it would it'd be fucking horrible fish paste uh and made on a made not on a bread board but directly on a kitchen worktop that's nice scurrying all over. Also, because you're a journalist, they'd have done a cum in it. Yes. You deserve it. No, I ate a kebab batch, right,

with batches what we call bread rolls around here. I ate a kebab batch from a chippy and cough about six years ago. I don't know why I ordered it. Kebab meat in a bun and halfway through eating it found fingernail. Oh, lovely.

Yes, that is how repulsive a sandwich from The Stranglers would be, I think. All right, all right then, Neil. Let's take it one stage further. Would you eat a pre-wrapped sandwich that was given to you by The Str stranglers?

No, no. And you looked at it and it wasn't tampered with in any way? No holes in it? The date's still good? Yeah, but it might have been in their pocket or something. Yeah, this is it. Or in the worst smelling van in rock. Yeah, yeah.

No, no, I wouldn't actually. Because, yeah, it would have been near them i mean it's kind of like it's kind of like you know if you had a hermetically sealed sandwich would you eat it if i put it for like 20 seconds in a latrina to festival no no and that's what it'd be like getting a sandwich off the stranglers yeah the stranglers have a special kind of filth that can penetrate cellophane. The pig pens have popped. So the following week, No More Heroes jumped four places to number nine and would eventually get to number eight.

The follow-up, five minutes, got to number 11 in February of 1978 and they'd have to wait for four years before making the top ten again. Oh, and in 1995, the band settled out of court with Elastica when they accused them of nicking this song for their single, Waking Up. Whatever happens to you I'll have a drink with you

Stranglers, now we move on to the hard part of the programme. How do you pronounce the next name band? Baccarat. You reckon Baccarat, what do you reckon? Baccarat. Baccarat. I thought it was the Osmonds, myself. Chaps, I've just had a flash of fucking genius.

How about this? Let me lay this out for you, right? Taylor. Yeah. You go off and you jot down the 16 scabbiest bands you can think of, right? Right? And you rank them from 1 to 16. And we form a bracket. We all come back together at some point

we put to Neil which of the bands he would not have a sandwich of and we go through a knockout phase and we do it as a bonus series of podcasts for the Pulp Craze youngsters on Patreon how's about that? let's settle this once and for all

because you'll be surprised how many bands I would accept a sandwich off. Yeah, but fuck them. We're not interested in them. We want to know which band you would accept a sandwich off the least. There we go. So, Edmunds is finally allowed to stand with some ladies as he asks a question that no one has ever thought of. How do you pronounce the name of the next act?

A girl with a brown jumper tied round her neck and a clear balding haircut thinks it's Baccarat, while an early adopter of the Trisha Yates look thinks it's Baccarat. Noel does a shit Osmonds joke because he's a minged-mouthed bellend and introduces Yes Sir, I Can Boogie by Baccarat. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. It's worth going into detail about Edmund's introduction here.

They do this thing of, how do you pronounce it? Oh, I say Baccarat. What about you? Oh, Baccarat what about you oh baccarat and then noel looks at the camera and goes i thought it was the osmonds myself this guy's good formed in madrid in 1976 as venus by mates mateos and maria mendiola two former members of the ballet company of tE, the state-owned Spanish TV channel, Baccarat started as variety show dancers, but when they were let go by a nightclub in Zaragoza for

being too elegant, they decamped to the Canary Islands to do flamenco dancing and singing for German tourists. It was there that they were discovered. By the manager of RCA Germany. Who brought them to Hamburg. And introduced them to the Dutch producer. Rolf Soha. Who renamed them Baccarat. This is their debut single. It's already been number one in Germany.

Belgium. Denmark. Finland. The Netherlands. Norway. Sweden. And Switzerland. And it's up this week from number 24 to number 14

well chaps we've had france the netherlands germany and now spain this episode of top of the pops is well remain isn't it why why the foreignness well in this case it's because franco's gone um this is very much much although they went off with a Dutch producer to make this record it is quite sort of very reminiscent of that early post Franco period when

Spanish people were greedily grabbing all the cultural freedoms that they'd been denied for so long but without quite having had time to grasp the context of a lot of those moves. I'm thinking particularly of Lost Punk Rockers. Yes, I knew you would. Okay, let's take a complete detour. Explain, Taylor.

Yeah, if anyone listening to this has not heard it, Lost Punk Rockers were some Spanish musicians who made an album. A prog band. They were supposedly a prog band who were corralled to make a note-for-note remake of Nevermind the Bollocks, or as close as they could get, with a singer who sounds like the great Cornholio. Yes, he does. And crucially, they had to make this album

with no lyric sheet so he just sings phonetically they couldn't be bothered to get the rights from virgin to release it in spain no it was still a bit wild west um yeah so he just kind of sings phonetically what he's hearing on the record and he can obviously speak a little bit of English because English words are creeping in which are not on the original record that he's misheard yes the highlight being their version of bodies yes yes yes

stop what you're doing pop crazy youngsters if you've not heard it go to YouTube's lost punk rockers bodies come back to us she was a lot of crap to YouTube's Lost Punk Rockers bodies. Come back to us. She was a lot of crap. Yes, yes.

Immaculate like a terrine. I'm gonna like them all. Yes, yes, Wally, I'm gonna like them all. Yes, indeed. Fuck this, fuck that, fucking all the fuckers, fucking rats. I don't want a baby who look like that.

She want a baby, a lot of crap. It's fucking amazing. In its own way, it rivals the original. Yes, yes, it does. But let's attend to the needs of this, because once again, the BBC Orchestra are involved but they're in the comfort zone here aren't they this is proper Too Ronnie's funk

yeah they still sound pissed out of their face though the wooziness of the track lends itself to their maybe but they ruin the best bit of the record for me the sort of don't leave me this way style intro is one of the few bits of this record that I like the the sort of don't leave me this way style intro is one of the one of

the few bits of this record that i like um and and they mangle that to um i i this record splits my house right down the middle because my wife loves this record um i've never liked this record i'm sorry to say um i mean you, I do like it when it becomes clear that something is being sung phonetically. So I like... There's some lines that I like, already told you in the first verse and in the chorus.

I like that. But there are things I should like. It's a bleak, kind of barely audible record that is a disco record, but it has no strength to it. It's kind of weak it's it sang through like a nightclubby mogadon haze or almost through the glass to the producers in a way um but it's joyless and kind of grim and lifeless in its arrangement all of those things

could be good things but i i find it an effort to hear it i find the tone of it a little subservient which i which i've never liked and i've never liked really the sense of whether the piss is being taken or not um you know um but for me it has that mix i mean you're talking about europe um being so well represented in the charts it's it that's perhaps its flaw in the in the it's got the kind of mix between um middle europe kind of German, Austrian classical melody, but modern disco production. It's the same thing that made Gunbei Dance Band

so repellent to me. So, you know, this is a great chart if you dig into the chart for dance music. Commodores, Jackson 5, Candy Staten, Rolls Royce, Donna Summer, they've all got great records in the charts. But this to me is,

yeah, it's a record I just simply cannot get along with, I'm afraid. I find it an effort to listen to it and it's soaring chorus just leaves me sort of wilted, slightly exhausted and a bit pissed off. Yeah.

And of course the BBC Orchestra decide for some reason to do a lot of electric piano noodling, don't they? Yeah. And there's no need for it. See, I think this record is sort of likeable and different enough from British or American or Italian disco records that you can sort of give it a pass. But it is rickety and slapdash like a musical equivalent of a jess franco film uh except that they don't have to take all their clothes off and get electrocuted but there's there's one genuinely beautiful moment

in the record where she says no sir i don't feel very much like talking with this beautiful sighing delivery um and it's like a genuine world weariness. But she mangles it on this because it's a live vocal. Unfortunately, the next line after, no, sir, I don't feel very much like talking, is no, neither walking. Yeah. Which the effect is a bit blasted into smithereens.

You would expect better English from a Dutchman. Yeah. And lyrically, as Neil says the least expected bit of post-modernism ever to grace the top 40 have already told you in the first verse and in the chorus they don't deliver that line

slyly which is refreshing but it is sort of a bit more jarring than charming it's like North European smart arsedness creeping in and sort of a bit more jarring than charming. It's like North European smart-arsedness creeping in and sort of hurdling the Catholic sincerity of the rest

of this song. I'm always a bit dubious about that kind of meta-ness in songwriting. That's kind of why I slightly dislike True by Spandau Ballet, because, you know, about the next line and things like that. I'm always a bit dubious about that. But there is a sort of slickness to the actual record which is not really reproduced here uh top of the pops orchestra again i've become a bit obsessed with the drummer from the

top of the pops orchestra who i can only picture as a giant dog with his ears swinging around as he just lollops away, like wails away on the drums, oblivious, like with his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth. Like Noel Edmonds in Brown Sauce. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's either the sloppiest and least subtle drummer I've ever heard or just the drunkest. And it's like he's already ruined Denise Williams' day,

and now he's picking on these poor Spanish innocents with his arms flying around vaguely. He thinks that's only disco. Got a bottle of Johnny Walker in the bass drum to help him forget the days when he thought he was going to be the next Buddy Rich. The rest of the musicians were looking at him out the corner of the eye.

Is he okay? At least he didn't reach for the maracas. Yeah. But I mean, one thing about this song that stands out a little bit from the rest of them, presentation-wise, is we get a good scan of the audience, don't we? And there's a belting Deirdre lookalike

holding a rose, looking very forlorn. I wonder where she got that from. I bet the Stranglers gave it to her. Yeah, right. I think, and she, at the beginning of the song, she's turned round. She's completely not,

the rest of the audience are looking at them. And she's completely turned round looking really forlorn. I liked her a lot. Yeah, she's connected with this song, I think. Or it's a reminder of her holiday in spain and uh the waiter that never wrote back to her i read somewhere that um this was the first female duo number one apparently so yeah i think for some time it was the best-selling record by a female group yeah female duo or something for about 15 years a template that wouldn't be picked up again until yeah tattoo and the cheeky girls yeah more europe more european promise see i i think in a way this is not what most people wanted from their europe in 1977 right

if you were like a horrible vest wearing bloke stranded on this fucking prudish turnip chewing iron in the 70s and you looked across the water and you saw sunshine free pouring barmen continental versions of films

and women who were as up for it as the yes whereas they're kind of weird like all the all the baccarat records quite explicitly say hands yes at least for now you know that was like their lyrical theme and for a british bloke it's just like being back in in the starlight rooms hereford you're not there Being told to go and put a ring on it first. And it's like, yeah. Or like Simon, you're left with a bulge in your pleated trousers. Yeah.

And they seem to have been picked from this untouched pool of millions of talented Spanish women freshly liberated from Franco. Neither for their voices nor for their looks which is really odd um it's like you've got that lady in white it looks like a bottle of milk and she can't sing a fucking note what's she even there for um it's like you know without wanting to be rude she's not the best looking looking woman in Spain and she can't sing. What's she doing?

And she doesn't really know how to style it out either. It's all a bit strange. The follow-up to this makes this better than it is because Sorry I'm a Lady is a terrible record, which I think was the follow-up to this. And when they represented Luxembourg in Eurovision 78 with a song called Parlez-vous Francais that was pretty awful as well so this is the high point for them

still pretty much a low light as far as I'm concerned yeah and you know the idea of a television station having a ballet company that's pretty decent isn't it I can't imagine the ATV ballet company at all it only took a fascist government to bring such culture to the masses.

Yeah. So the following week, Yes Sir, I Can Booger soared up to number three, stayed there for a week, and then got to number one for one week, being usurped by What's the Name of the Game by ABBA. Oh, more European-ness. by What's the Name of the Game by ABBA. Oh, more European-ness. Yes, Sir, I Can Boogie ended up selling 18 million copies worldwide,

although it only got to number two in Spain, behind Rock Collection by the French singer Laurent Vauzy. Oh, you Spaniards. The follow-up, Sorry I'm a Lader, got to number 8 in February 1978 but they were done as a chart act in the UK. After they

represented Luxembourg in that year's Eurovision Song Contest, finishing 7th, they eased back into cabaret becoming regular guests on Sacha D'sel's BBC show but they split up in 1981 and now have their own separate versions of Baccarat It's Mates Bac their own separate versions of Baccarat.

It's Mates Baccarat, Maria's Baccarat and of course, David Van Day's Baccarat. I need a certain song I can boogie, boogie, boogie On my own Wait a minute, we're trying to sort out the next one, which is called... Tupelo, Mississippi. Flash, it's the tale told by Steve Gibbons.

I want to tell you the story it's all about. A job I had one time was a talent scout. I'd had a hard day in the office, the boss wasn't in town. And as I did, this hard-looking guitar pickers just happened to come around Yeah, he walks in the office, got a great big grin And folks, that's where the story really began He said, my name is Beauregard Bridger Edmunds, surrounded by more young ladies, gets a cypher going as he introduces Tupelo, Mississippi Flash by the Steve Gibbons Band. Born in Birmingham in 1941, Steve Gibbons was a plumber's apprentice who became lead singer of the Dominettes in 1960, who became the Uglies in 1963 and had moderate chart success in Australia.

In 1969, he teamed up with Denny Lane of the Moody Blues and Trevor Burton of The Move to front the group Balls and then joined the Idol Race at the arse end of their career. When the Idol Race split up, he formed the Steve Gibbons Band who were spotted by Pete Meaden, the original manager of The Who. After releasing their first LP and supporting The Who on their 1976 world tour, the Steve Gibbons Band made the charts on their sixth attempt when Tulane, a cover of the Chuck Berry song, got to number 12 the previous month

and is still in the charts this week at number 43. the previous month and is still in the charts this week at number 43 this is the follow-up a cover of the 1967 jerry reed song about elvis and it's not in the charts yet and oh dear the tang of lick and pickeridge is hanging thick in the air on this one yeah along with a tang of a few other things as well yeah this guy looks like he lives on benzadrine scotch and bacon sandwiches he's like for a start i can't believe he's only 36 i had to look this up yes he looks fucking older than i do um but genuinely hard looking right he looks the dead spit of peter blake who did the 50s themed pepsi adverts of the time and you know is currently just outside the top 40 with lip smacking

rock and rolling and later became Vincent Clearing dear John yes yes so chaps there's so many 50s revival songs about at the moment I mean the the theme tune to Happy Days by

Pratt and McLean is at number 38. But why, oh why, are they all so piss poor? This is fucking awful, this song, man. I mean, it angered me so much. It was so bad. Yes. What it reminded me of is that my mum, because she didn't come from a Western musical culture,

in a sense, she'd come over in 67. I remember her attitude about pop music she loved pop music don't get me wrong but her criteria were really interesting because for her it was simply a matter of i like fast music you know genres didn't matter she liked fast music she didn't like slow songs and as a kid i was kind of similar i liked fast songs i liked status quo for instance Because their songs were fast I should like this Because I guess it's fast

But it's utter refusal To have a memorable moment A hook, a line A lyric, a melody It just angers me massively Fucking yim yams This is what they do The only good moment of the whole thing Explain yim yams this is what they do and and and the only good moment of the whole whole thing

is when explain yim yams to our foreign listeners oh sorry yim yams is what some of us call people from birmingham and the black country because they speak all that and they say yim yam a lot um and um this is what goes to the smooth, classy accent of Coventry. Hey, Coventry is a subtle accent that mixes in yim-yamishness with a bit of West Country softness, I think. And we don't have the upward inflection. So, yeah, I mean, but this is the music, though. Why hasn't there been a Birmingham tribute band called Wim Wam? There should be. I mean, mean look there's a reason why

line dancing is so popular in Birmingham you know Birmingham is in a sense the West Midlands are like the Texas of the UK so this kind of big pork chop sideburns shit it's going to be I guess quite popular

when coming out of people from Birmingham this is just awful it's got to be i guess quite popular and coming out of people from birmingham this is just awful it's got it's got nothing memorable about it and the only good moment of this whole performance is when a floor manager runs on to budge a girl out of the way um and then later he does it as well he's like creating some sort of atrium hallway vibe at the front of the stage versions that versions that i've heard of this anyway they don't have all this extraneous bullshit that this one has so yeah this out in every single episode we look at a record angers me this is the one that's done it in this episode yeah i think i think the problem i have with it it goes on about this bloke and he's amazing with his guitar and when the guitar solo comes along it's fucking shit it's so fucking hidey high there is a bit of that i mean

look we're talking here about a band where people decided to leave the idle race and decided to leave the move because they were going too poppy and this is what they wanted to do so fuck them the move was great you know you know what i was saying the other week about uh birmingham acts not singing in their natural accent yeah well here we are fucking hell what a waste of a recording session yes it's what it is it's american music of the straightest and least imaginative kind and they've taken out all the stuff which makes that music listenable which is yeah the authentic grit and dirt and grease um and this lot look authentically gritty and dirty and greasy but they don't sound it um and it's hard to imagine more of

a bore even from the backs of their heads you can see that the kids think this is dog shit um nobody's moving to it no there's a lad ahead no thumbs are going into belt loops are there oh god there's a lad staring ahead of him blankly like just chewing gum like he's working on the waltzes not looking at the band could not give a toss about Steve

so called Gibbons and his feeble pastiche and you watch him and he thinks he's a bit charismatic as a performer, but really what he looks like, he looks like a B.A. Robertson that's seen a bit of trouble. That's it. That's all it is.

This would have been much better if it was Steve's Gibbon Band, and they'd all be dressed up. It would have be fucking brilliant we had a teacher at my school called mr gibbons um who as luck would have it was kind of ape-like yes unpleasant to look at um and he never taught me he used to teach computer studies and yeah i never did that subject and he had a little they in the classroom there was a little office bit out the back and he used to bring his dog into school and tie his dog up in the little office room

at the back of the classroom and everyone in his class used to speculate about this and I was watching and I can vouch for the existence of this because I saw it. Somebody wrote in the mock exams of their computer studies class, did an essay about whatever it was, something to do with computers. And it went, computers, computers, computers. And halfway through, new paragraph, my computer studies teacher shags dogs in his office. New paragraph about computers and they'd got this paper back marked and all that there was was that sentence had a red ring around it with a line

coming off it leading to a question mark that was the only response the best bit of marked work i ever saw sort of um uh in relation to what sailor was just saying was i remember we had to draw a picture once of um you know um the story of joseph in the bible um and and he gets thrown in a pit by his brothers and then picked up yeah and i remember my mate did a picture it's pretty good and you know where this is going probably because because joseph was meant to be naked in this pit um my mate had clearly picture it's pretty good and you know where this is going probably because because joseph was meant to be naked in this pit um my mate had clearly just given him a massive bell end and we were waiting to see how this would be marked and it came back and the re teacher

just you know politely erased the penis with her own boring in a strange echo of her own life but yeah do you think danny mirror's standing there going yeah you fucking amateurs i know how to pay respect to the king i'll tell you what though i would pay to see uh a bare knuckle fight between steve gibbons uh danny mirror and the stranglers that fucking hell i'll tell you what yeah there'd be some uh some tattered cheekbones at the end of that yeah danny mirror would just whirl around and fucking take people's eye out with his tassels I think pretty quickly the Stranglers will be out of it because

you know they're all talk between Owens and Gibbons that would be interesting yeah but Sean Chapman he's a bit of a karate expert isn't he or was that a load of bullshit

no I think he was yeah i think he was yeah whereas hugh cornwell um i mean he wasn't quite a public school boy but he did go to quite a nice uh north london uh i think grammar school it's uh the one that michael palin sent his kids yeah but i think givens after a few points of Brew 11, would just, yeah, just kick them in the nuts with his Winkle Pickers. I think they'd be out of it. And it would be between Owens and Gibbons. That is an interesting face-off. I'd be intrigued to see who'd win that.

So the following week, and every week after that up to this day, Tupelo, Mississippi Flash failed to make the charts. The only other bit of chart action the band got was when Johnny Vortex got to number 56 in May of 1978 but the Steve Gibbons band still exists today

and what's really angering about that song it's not even in the fucking charts what's it doing on top of the pops well exactly yeah isn't it always disappointing when people called gibbon actually don't turn out to be real monkeys yeah it's false advertising yeah yeah because you know channel 4 news gary gibbon and he's like oh you're just a bloke aren't you yeah i i just hoped he'd be some kind of monkey with a trilby with a ticket with the word press on it.

Like a trilby that's much too small for his head. Great height. Yeah. And, you know, he's there at a Prime Minister's conference or something and he just spots some banana sandwiches on a table. But he's not. He's there at the EU and just suddenly goes crazy and starts ripping people's faces off

and stuff before having to be destroyed by a Channel 4 marksman. The Steve Gibbons Band. It's more like an identity parade here. Cheer up. Smile. Smile. All right, don't overdo it. Here's number one, and it's David Searle. Tired of drifting and searching Shifting from town to town

Edmunds, flanked by even more sulky-looking maidens, pretends to get savilled as he introduces the brand new number one, Silver Lady by David Soule. Born in Chicago in 1943, David Souleberg was the son of a Methodist preacher who turned down the chance of a baseball career and studied political science in Mexico City, where he started to learn guitar. In 1966 he appeared on the NBC chat show The Merv Griffin Show as The Covered Man, a singer in a mask who eventually revealed that he was David Soul and he wanted to be known for his music. But before that

he became an actor having guest parts in Flipper, Star Trek and a film part in Magnum Force. He got his big break in 1975 when he took the role of Ken Hutchinson in the TV film Starsky and Hutch, which was turned into a TV show which made its UK debut in April of 1976 and immediately became a smash hit. However, the singing bug wouldn't go away, and he released Don't Give Up On Us, which got to number one for four weeks in January of this year. This is a follow-up to Going In With My Eyes Open, which got to number two for three weeks in April of this year, held off the top spot by Knowing Me, Knowing You by ABBA.

It's been patiently waiting three weeks in the top three, you by ABBA. It's been patiently waiting three weeks in the top three and it's finally taken down the king and way down to get to number one. And we're treated to the video. Chaps Starsky and Hutch, you were five

what impact did that have on your little lives? I was only five but I loved Starsky and Hutch I'm not sure I really followed the stories as such but I just loved the car Huggy Dobie loved Starsky and Hutch I'm not sure I really followed the stories as such but I just loved the car Huggy Dobie, Starsky and then Hutch in that order

in that precise order and they were a massive influence I think on everyone I'm not being ridiculous, I think the fact that their best friend and their boss were black was massive I remember that just being a real revelation and i remember my dad driving me um somewhere and saying look me look at this i'm starting to drive

with his knees like you know using his knees to drive to move the steering wheel and that was something starsky and hutch did they were massively influential um so when it came to him doing songs it kind of freaked me out a bit at the age of five but already by then he was changing after the vitality and excitement of the first series of starsky and hutch he got a bit more doleful i guess he got a tough he got a tash and um i love the video to this i like the way he looks so forlorn at the beginning i like the bit when he's walking down the street and that massive black dude can't help but shake his hand there's a forlorn

loneliness and warmth in his heart and in his face to David's soul that really reminds me it reminds me you know the closing moments

of every single episode of The Incredible Hulk with David Banner it's almost like too poignant for kids in a way and you know I think this is a great song.

Written by, you know, Jeff Stephens and Tony McCauley, who are kind of old 60s songwriters. So there's that bubblegum, almost Jimmy Webb feel to some of the lines. The lines about the Indiana wind chilling into the bone. The arrangement, what it really reminded me of, is Grease by Frankie Valli. But crucially, it's less controlled.

It's messier. There's weird broken moments in the turnarounds where it's all a bit strange. I'm not saying it's necessarily a really great masterpiece, but I think it's my favourite David Soul. And it just makes me think why didn't the Sweeney make records and in fact why didn't Jim and why didn't Jim Rockford make a pop record

I think that would have been amazing too but yeah Starsky and Hutch I loved them had the annual, had the matchbox car my dad used to drive around with his knees round about this time the bloke next door to me he had a red Ford Capri and he put a star skiing stripe on it and it looked the fucking bollocks i think a few people with capris i was

just like why can't you do that dad but i i have to say that i was quite angry and upset that david soul was putting out this kind of music because i thought it would be lots of funk songs about jumping onto cars and having a best mate to have fights against other people with and you know good shit like that The thing about Starsky and Hutch though I watched a few recently

and it's an entertaining show but the problem with it is that it's an action comedy and therefore inferior to an action series that's funny because it has no sense of its own ridiculousness which starsky and hutch sort of does especially the later ones uh which as ever with american series as it goes on they get less serious and a bit more desperate and every week they're like dressing up as charlie chaplin and going into space and stuff.

But it's a nice addition to that grand tradition of cop shows featuring people too short to be in the police force, which poor Michael Glazer quite clearly is. But I do like this. Yeah. And it's not really like an all-time classic, but it's a very competent, radio-friendly, soft pop number one. And he doesn't murder it. Crucially, he doesn't murder it.

He doesn't have that much of a voice, but he works within his limitations and he doesn't try to over-emote and he doesn't forget that he's a Norwegian-American singing a light soul ballad and not in any sense other than a nominative sense, a soul man. And also, I remember it from when I was a kid.

And I think part of the reason why it stuck in my head is it's got one of those shameless choruses. It's like one of those fuck it choruses where the entire arrangement follows the vocal melody. So there's all those strings doubling the hook line that he's singing. So it just sort of barges straight into your head whether you like it or not.

I think it's a good record. It's like if Glenn Campbell got kicked in the balls. This is the sort of record he would make. But it's just a shame that he was sort of a bit of an empty space as a cultural figure. Because he was a good-looking fella, and apparently he's a really nice bloke. But when you look at it,

it's appropriate that his character's first name in Starsky and Hutch is Ken there's a sort of a like an overwhelming midwestern blandness to him that does nobody any good we're treated to the video which is which is absolute bonus when when you're a kid at that time because you get to see more of America yeah completely um yeah we see David Soul looking all moody in the city and then he's then he's tooling about on a motorbike and then he's dossing about

in the woods with his knockoff and then and then the best bit is when he's walking around in some dingy small town which is you know

supposed to depict the grimness of his situation but you know when you compare it to 1977 Britain it looks fucking mint doesn't it

yeah you're just looking at the signs and you go, oh, fucking hell, Pizzer, what the fuck's that? I did not know what a pizza was as a nine-year-old in 1977. Well, everything surrounding him was exciting, but the trouble was he was massively un-pushy and he was kind of a really gentle personality. But, you know, I'm sure all of us have big sort of bits of david soul in a sense engraved in our heads the title sequence the starsky and hutch yes you know it

the crucial thing about that show is it grabbed you from the off of the title sequence and it was a title sequence that was re-enactable jumping up going up and down stairs with you know 10 guns you know um obviously blowing on your mate's cheek while he's looking at some girly fences across the playground you'd honestly get in trouble if you jumped on your car in the way they did but it always used to make me laugh

you know he'd hurt his bottom by jumping on the car and it cut to his wide open mouth he was you know massively influential

yeah there's that one where he's screaming as he's throwing something that he thinks a knife or something that got reenacted a lot in playgrounds massively reenacted yeah people stop basically in our playgrounds people stop playing war and they started playing starsky and hutch instead completely which was good the next show i think to occupy that

centrality to kids that was an american import i would say would probably be dukes of hazard and that's that's a long way down a line yes for long time Starsky and Hutch absolutely ruled yes it did and of course David Soule was the de facto heartthrob of 1977 wasn't he he'd put Rod Stewart in his place I like to think and you know Patrick Mower I think he had

but I think his appeal whilst those who fancied him some of them responded positively to the heartthrob thing. I think he also managed to put some people off in a certain extent because they wanted you know Hutch they wanted a certain toughness to the music like you said and they didn't get

his pretty sappy stuff I think this is the best of his singles though. Think about him being a heartthrob. When you watch this video there's that amazing shot near the beginning of him sort of loping weirdly across a lawn he looks like he broke his hip about a year ago yeah there's really strange walk in a casual dark blue short sleeve top and like old guy jeans with that yeah thick flat midriff and wide hips and square jaw he looks like an ex-president

like filled on his ranch in virginia it's a real old guy look it's really distinctive that wide square hip and crotch area sort of like marty funkauser and yeah the heavy slightly pulsed walk he's what what he is is like one of the last of the old school butch physique type fellas. From the days before creatine and abdominal crunches. He's just big. He's just, there's not much muscle definition. He's just a hefty bloke with thick arms holding his stomach in. You know what I mean?

Like Richard Burton or Adam West as Batman. Yes. hefty bloke with thick arms holding his stomach in you know what i mean yeah like like richard burton or or adam west as batman yes or sean connery in diamonds are forever you know he's like 40 something his eyebrows are getting bushy he's just a slab sweating brandy like making low growling noises when he sees a young woman looking sort of like a healthy muscular man who's been like you know wrapped in sausage meat and deep fried you don't you don't get hunks like that anymore no and of course that that's the scene where he's walking along and uh and that yeah the the black guy stops and basically goes fucking hell it's large. Yeah, I love that bit. And shakes his hand.

And you can see it on his face. He's like, oh, mate, please don't do that. I just want this fucking takeover with him. I'm sick of it. But he shakes his hand and everything, and they've gone, oh, yeah, let's keep it in. It's a lovely moment. There's a few lovely moments.

And I like the way, as Taylor says, he looks kind of confused at the beginning of the video, but then looks happy. And I thought at the time, I think think that the song was about his motorbike um but he looks he looks genuinely happy when he gets on his motorbike and in terms of his hunkiness i agree with taylor completely he's kind of reminiscent in a way of somebody else that we've discussed before bj thomas he's got that that bigness that um yeah that sort of big boned, that big boneness. He was just born that way.

Yeah, exactly. So, Silver Lady spent three weeks at number one before being usurped by Yes Sir, I Can Boogie. The follow-up, Let's Have A Quiet Night In, got to number eight in January of 1978 and he'd have one more chart hit that year. He moved to London in the mid 90s and played the title role in Jerry Springer

the Opera and I used to see him all the time in a pub called The Lyric in Soho which is a crossroad from my office when I was working for Uncle Paul Raymond Did you ever go in office? Didn't really speak to him he was just there holding court.

And I just thought, you know, when you, when you work in, so you see famous people all the time. So it was like, it was like, Oh,

look, there's David. So, but I only spoke to him once when I got a phone call out of the blue from Huggy Bear. Anthony, what's his name? Antonio Fargus.

Yeah. He was working on a play with my, one of my mates. And, uh, all of a sudden i got a phone call at work and uh he says is this al and i said yeah hey this is antonio i hear you've got really good taste in uh in funk and soul music and i said yeah are you i think i know you are and he went yeah yeah it's antonio it's ah fucking hell so i had a good old chat about isaac hayes and uh

and curtis mayfield and I said, oh, I see your mate David in the pub across the road all the time. And he says, oh, well, tell him I'm at this theatre and we'll go for a drink. So yeah, I essentially went up to Hutch and said, oh yeah, Oggy Bear says hello and do you

fancy a pint? The strangest conversation I've ever had in my life. Yeah. So when someone tells me that they were working in pornography and they got a call from Huggy Bear, that is not the tone of the vocal in the, in the nineties. That's not the tone of the vocal that I would expect. Yeah. It sounds like a much, much more pleasant experience. That's number one,

David Soule and Silver Lady. Now, Kim, tell me about the brand new single you've... Oh, sorry, we don't have time. We'll find out about that later. Swap Shop returns on Saturday. I'm on The Breakfast Show tomorrow. And she's livid. But it was only a joke. Bye-bye. APPLAUSE Standing here along with you wondering what it is that I'm supposed to do

Edmunds, next to someone called Kim who looks like she works in the studio does a bit of a gotcha on her and then reminds us that he's got the best slot on Radio 1 and two whole hours on BBC 1 on Saturday mornings and is the alpha male Don Gorgon of the BBC and we sign off with Thunder In My Heart by The Old Sailor. Born in Sussex in 1949

The Old Sailor was a porter in a hotel in Hove when he was discovered by Adam Faith and the songwriter David Courtney and began his music career when he co-wrote Giving It All Away, which was a top five hit for Roger Daltrey in May of 1973. His debut single Why Is Everybody Going Home failed to chart, but the next, The Show Must Go On, made it to number two in January of 1974, and he went on a tier of seven top 10 hits in a row including when i need you which got to number one for three weeks in february of this year this is the follow-up to how much love which got to number 10 in may of this year and it's up this week from number 25 to number 22

before we discuss the old sailor what the fuck was that thing about with Noel and that woman? She didn't look very comfortable, did she? No. That really bombed, didn't it? Yeah. All these links, that was just... He just left sort of shrugging and looking around. What the fuck was that supposed to be? And he had to say that was just a joke near the end.

It's like telling a joke that you then have to explain parenthetically at the end it's just what the fuck is he playing and I still think you know he says it's a joke I reckon she might have been in some band and she was fucking living yeah it's a mystery

if anybody knows we'll put up an image on Facebook and Twitter if anyone knows who this lady is poor Kim we'd like to know other than the most british looking woman i've ever seen so the old sailor currently having it large in america he's had he's had two number ones this year don't you know with when i feel love and you make me feel like dancing so yeah he's he's uh he's he's on the rise his ship has come in and yet he makes all the mistakes that david soul didn't on this

record right like trying to sound like he's from you know muscle shoals rather than shore and by sea um it's just coming off like he's got something trapped i mean this song would be reasonably acceptable if they'd given it to someone with a bit of presence as opposed to this desperate shrimp it's like he's busting his guts to sound gritty and raw but you just picture him as the Piero clown mugging him

and miming, clutching his thunderous heart yes, kind of painted himself into that corner hasn't he too bright videotape. Do we know if he was friends with Wayne Sleep and Christopher Lillicrap? Oh, man. Because they should have hung out together.

Although, if they stood too close to each other and their hair got tangled up, they would look like a human Cerberus I'd love to hear what this song would be like like Taylor says I mean not to be racist about it but sung by a black American I would like to hear what this song sounds like something I'll probably never get to do the old sailor he's

a wannabe Elton and I hate Elton anyway you know yes you said he's Elton and I hate Elton anyway you know yes you're saying he's Elton Demichon yeah I mean oddly enough I have Christopher Liddy crap written down as well as Tommy Boyd

oh of course the same cheerful curliness isn't it which I've got to say I find unbearable tight jeans and a rugby shirt my mum had an old sailor album which was unusual because she didn't really have many records, she had Morning

Is Broken by Cat Stevens a Roger Whittaker album and this see this is the difference it makes when your parents got married in 1962 and in some ways I'm glad that I didn't grow up like a lot of my friends did with hippie parents i like the way it forces you to discover things for yourself but it did

mean that the music i heard at home was not always the most nourishing and like my dad had a couple of trad jazz albums and then like about five singles that he'd bought in all the years that pop music had existed he had good vibrations didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to bang um preludes version of after the gold rush star by kiki d only you by the flying pickets and wow anthem one day in every week by the new seekers and i particularly like that last one because he'd left it on the seat of a car on a hot day and it had warped a bit so it sounded really weird uh and looked more interesting going around on the turntable it fascinates me the record collection of people who buy so few records at intermittent points in their life yeah she's like why did you buy that why that i thought that selection of

singles that my dad bought was quite random but looking at it it's not because um four of those six are in entirely or largely acapella. So obviously he liked voices. Isn't that weird? Something I never spoke to him about when he was alive, pop music. For us, records were bought for us, and we didn't really buy that many. I didn't buy any until I became a teenager in a way and started buying records.

So our records were really, really odd. And I think it should be like that. What I can't stand sometimes is parents trying to teach their kids about good music or whatever and giving them a grounding. And whenever you read interviews with musicians, you often find, oh yeah, I grew up in a very musical household. We listened to all this kind of diverse music when we were growing up.

Well, do you really want your parents approving of the music? For me, it's all about your parents going turn that shit off and and actually yeah if they're not banging on the ceiling it's not good musical ourselves we had about seven or eight records all of which were music for pleasure records two of which were probably yeah tijuana brass plays lennon and mccartney one of which was negro spirituals and you know you build you built your own taste in music from that the most important album for me in 77 was none of what was in the charts it was probably hello my darling by charlie drake and that had been bought for us you know like most of our music work i certainly wasn't

raised in a musical household and i'm quite glad about that so the following week thunder in my heart jumped three places to number 22 its highest position position. The follow-up, I Can't Stop Loving You, Though I Try, got to number six in October of 1978, but 29 years later, a remix called Thunder In My Heart Again went straight to number one in February of 2006 and stayed there for two weeks. So what's on TV afterwards? Well, BBC One follows up with Happy Ever After, the forerunner of Terry and June, where Terry finds an old Roman coin in the garden

and goes mental around dealing with a metal detector, followed by When the Boat Comes In, the Nine O'Clock News, international show jumping and finishes off with Robin Day interviewing Prime Minister Jim Callaghan in Tonight. 9 o'clock news, international show jumping and finishes off with Robin Day interviewing Prime Minister Jim Callaghan in Tonight. BBC Two is running for the love of Albert, a play about a senior citizen who's been rehoused on the 10th floor of a tower block, followed

by There's No Place, a short play about a young couple who start living in a disused goods yard, then the 1958 musical damn yankees and finishes off with more international golf itv is halfway through an episode of the national service sitcom get some in followed by the new avengers where an ex shag of purdy avows to avenge the death of his father by killing the arab politician she's having to guard, the police sitcom The Fuzz, then an episode of This Week about how Britain is lagging behind Europe in something else again, then News at Ten,

the documentary Superman and the Bride about gender stereotypes in mass media, then the documentary series This Sporting Life about the divide between rugby league and rugby union, and rounds off with a repeat of the odd couple so chaps what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow I'd possibly be talking about the

stranglers ripping up that paper but just basically asking what the fuck was all that about yeah that was the only thing that anyone actually did that broke the routine but the audio visual extravaganza of the Giorgio Moroder sequence stuck in a few people's minds

and prized them over. I like to think also that I would have, even at the age of five, hated that Steve Gibbons band thing so much or might have been talking about that. And what are we buying on Saturday? Well, now it'd be the Emotions and maroda but then probably only silver lady yeah same oh and denise williams although that would involve me hearing that record on the radio

and establishing that it didn't actually sound like it was played from the the bottom of a party and what does this episode tell us about october 1977 punk had changed the world apart from apart from almost all of it well it tells us that um punk revivalists who go on about 77 being such a year zero um well you know this episode of top of Pops could be from any of the three years surrounding it either way, in a way. It could be from anywhere up until 1980. It could be from anywhere from 75 onwards. Like I said, the real revolution is coming. It's a long way off.

And it's only Giorgio who knows about it. And that closes the book on another episode of Chart Music. But before we go, we need to thank the following people who are mint and skill and have kicked some money into our Patreon account. That is Tom Apps, Desert Clockland, Richard Chaplin, James Harris, Dan Turner, Mark Cooper, Dan Turner, Mark Cooper, Chris Mitchell, Matt Chase, Andrew Smart, Andy Chain, Golden E Pump, John Mullen, Rusty Shackleford, Corm, Paul Thorpe, Chris Alford. Oh, because on the first of the month, all the pop craze youngsters come around and lay their money down.

Don't forget, you can catch us at chart-music.co.uk. You can find us on facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast. You can get involved with us on Twitter at chartmusic, T-O-T-P. And you can give us some money at patreon.com slash chartmusic. Thank you, Neil Kulkarni. Thanks, Al. It's been fun. Thank you, Taylor Parks. Don't have nightmares. My name is Al Needham,

and I'm going to spend the rest of my evening licking my pickeridge. Chart music. She was a girl from the building and She just had an abortion She was the case of insanity And I was calling her Charging Express She was an hour ago today baby She had a letter from the cash way

She was an hour ago She was a lot of crap Hey, hey, hey We've got a lot of devil Hey, hey I'm gonna rock them all Drop on a tie on a fox arena And dance on my socks the queen

And fuck you, North American Serena Glory on a baby, glory baby She's like me, my true love Glory, I'm gonna like them all Glory, glory, she's like me macho though I'm gonna like them all, you know the guys and all Hey, I'm gonna like them all Hey, I'm gonna like them all

Oh yes we know, we're gonna like them all! Oh yes we know, I'm gonna like them all! Fuck this! Fuck that! Fucking all the fuckers! Fucking rats! She don't want a baby, a lot like that! I want a baby, a lot of that! Pull it. I'm gonna like them all. This is the first radio ad you can smell.

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