Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #4 - April 12th 1979: The Rabbity Angel of Death

Episode Date: May 12, 2017

The fourth episode of the podcast which asks: what the fuck is a ‘Baby’s Treat’? This episode takes us back to the absolute cusp of the Eighties, a mere three weeks away before Margaret Thatcher starts wiping her arse on the country delivers strong and stable leadership. No synthy palaver or 2-Tonery in the charts just yet – it’s a lucky bag of randomness consisting of Punk bands at the end of their tether, Disco behemoths, and Ted revivalists clinging on for dear life. And Peter Powell is ridiculously excited by all of it, but especially the brass in Supertramp’s The Logical Song. Highlights of this episode include Kate Bush having her arse removed by the BBC, Legs & Co channelling the spirit of Punk by sticking their tongues out, Racey having a Gail Tilsley lookalike as their lead singer, Jimmy Pursey skidding on his arse and influencing Indian wedding videos of the 1980s, and Art Garfunkel’s Kurt Cobain Gun Fingers. Al Needham is joined by Melody Maker scribes Simon Price and Neil Kulkarni for a severe going-over of the Sound of ’79, breaking off to reminisce about listening to the new Top 40 in the bushes of a private school, being tormented by older sisters who can do Kate Bush’s eye-bulge trick, and keeping away from local youths in double-denim trying to smash park benches in time to the drum bits in Hey Rock n’ Roll. (Warning: we were severely bum-rushed by the Skype goblins during the recording of this one, so the edit might be a bit shonky and heavy-manners) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do you like to listen to? Erm... Chart music. Chart music. Hey up you pop-crazed youngsters and welcome to the latest edition of Chart Music, the podcast that just wants tomorrow's world to end now. I'm your host Al Needham and I'm joined by two people who know what they're on about when it comes to music. First up we have the welcome return of Simon Price. Simon how are you sir?

I'm very well thank you Al, how are you? I'm very well indeed sir. Anything amazing and pop happening in your life recently? Thank you, Al. How are you? I'm very well indeed, sir. Anything amazing and pop happening in your life recently? No, I don't really live a sort of pop-tastic life, but I do like the fact that we have a general election coming up right now and we're talking about a TOTP when that was also the case. I love synchronicity like that, don't you?

My second guest is a new arse on the chart music sofa, Neil Kulkarni. Neil, welcome to chart music. Thank you, Al. It's a pleasure to be here. Another Melody Maker veteran, for fuck's sake. It's like a Melody Maker care home now, isn't it, this place? We're going to have a sing-along a suede after we've done this.

Neil, first question to any new entrant to chart music is, when did you start watching Top of the Pops? I think it was um i think it was round about the time that this this episode was um oh that's convenient 79 um because i mean i was i was six when this episode came out so for me this has got a lot of vivid and pungent memories for me this episode it sparked off a lot of memories for me actually so i think it was round about now and i think it was it was around about now that i not only started engaging with pop music a bit but started engaging not with being a critic necessarily but having a kind of critical standpoint towards things because

i'd lie on the floor watching top of the pots with my sister and whenever they did the chart rundown we'd raise our thumbs or you know our thumbs down for what we liked and what we didn't like and you know of course course now, you know, you wouldn't click on a YouTube video of somebody that you hated. You wouldn't watch an Ed Sheeran video, for instance, through Choice. But back then, obviously, you were kind of confronted with this pop music, often stuff that you didn't like. So you spent that time, because it was the only little avenue into pop music that you had every week for half an hour,

you spent the time on the horrible records you were on thinking, why do I fucking hate this so much and i think it was perhaps the start um of you know maybe thinking about being a music critic later i wouldn't have said that at the time i was six for god's sake but i think thumbs up and the thumbs down you pretty much invented the youtube rating system but i think a lot of people did that you'd kind of when the chart run down you'd have a thumbs up for artists that you liked, a thumbs down for people that you didn't. And me and my sister would argue about it and all that.

And where were your parents at the time, Neil? My parents were somewhere, probably in the room. But it really, really absorbed me, Top of the Pops, from that age onwards for a long, long time. You had to be there every thursday night to watch it i think i stopped watching it um about 91 i think i stopped watching it a sort of regular weekly thing when i moved out of home but um and and that was 91 that was the time when they had the relaunch and they had they stopped using djs i think as presenters and they just got this coterie

of kind of young dipshits to present it. And I think I stopped watching it then. And I started getting into that habit of only watching it when I thought somebody that I liked was going to be on it. But for a good, you know, 15 years, I think I watched it fairly solidly every week. This episode takes us right back to April the 12th, 1979. Interesting time, I think. I actually think 1979 is one of the two years that's in with a shout of being the greatest music in pop ever. Whether this episode's going to bear out that theory, I don't know.

But I really reckon that that just immediate post-punk period, 79 to 81, 81 being the other really killer year, I think, for pop music. You can uncharitably say it's because punk was fizzling out or that it was mutating into more interesting things. I think it has a lot to do with how great it was. And for me, it's this last period of innocence. It's the kind of last knockings. I actually believe the 80s began in July 1979

when Tubeway Army appeared on Top of the Pops with Our Friends Electric. That is sort of year zero of the 1980s it's not 1980 itself neil being a six-year-old you've not really worked out what you like yet well of course and i was dimly aware of all these sort of genres and stuff it was like pricey says just pop music and you responded to it um you know depending on all kinds of different things that that could spark you off as a kid. It does feel, watching that episode, that it's not the arse end of things, but it feels like punk has kind of blown itself out, and that something is about to happen. The pop bands

that are British that you see on this show, they are kind of, not relics of the past, but they're certainly made by older people in a sense. And it feels like a time when the charts were waiting for a kind of new, I was going to say new wave then, but a kind of a new group of British bands to take what punk did and what post-punk did somewhere else. And I think Price is right. The 80s probably did start halfway through 1979,

as opposed to starting you know strictly in 1980 you don't get that many hints of what was to come in 1881 from this episode it could have been an episode that came from any of the sort of three years previously in a sense you don't get any sense of new romantics or anything like that no on the horizon but clearly that was all you, just about to break. So what was in the news on April the 12th, 1979? Well, Ugandan radio has announced that Idi Amin is fleeing the country. Iran has just voted with a 98% majority to become anlamic republic rod stewart's got married to alana hamilton and there's a general election campaign

with an incompetent leader of the labour party against a cunt bitch leader of the tory party oh how things have changed but the big news this week is the british rock and pop awards were on the night before sponsored by radio one the daily mirror and Pop Awards were on the night before. Sponsored by Radio 1, The Daily Mirror and Nationwide. And presented by Kid Jensen and Bob Wellings. Do you remember that one? So this was a pre-Brits Awards then, I guess. Pretty much so, yeah. Pretty much so.

Best single of 1978. 1978? One answer each. I mean, what was big that year? You had stuff like Summer Nights. It was all Grease soundtrack stuff, wasn't it? That's what was big in the charts in 78. I'm guessing it wasn't anyone young.

No. It was actually like Paul McCartney or somebody. No, it was Baker Street by Jerry Rafferty. Oh, right. Best album? I ain't got a clue. It was Out of the Blue by ELO. Good choice.

Strong album. Yes, yes. Best male singer? Rod Stewart. Best male... Paul McCartney. Leo Sayer. I've got to go shout out to my stepbrother there

because throughout the 70s, he was convinced that Leo Sayer was called the old sailor and i absolutely i love that so whenever whenever i hear leo sayer record now see him on top of the pops he's always the old sailor to me which is actually a much better name for a pop star best female singer this is you know it's normally annie lennox isn't it it could have been kate bush i guess it is kate well done right uh best group squeeze electric light orchestra again the bgs oh the daily mirror readers award to a singer daily mirror readers which is going to comprise some old folks as well so it is yeah it could be a british male singer well yeah i'm gonna say roger stewart

i'm gonna say um because he was just omnipresent um all the time paul mccartney no no ian juror whoa that's not bad is it and the nation and the nationwide golden award was given to a band. You've got no chance getting this one. Nationwide Golden Award. Bloody hell. Brotherhood of Man. Smokey. The Baron Knight. No.

Yes. They were huge in my school though, to be fair. Everybody loved those songs. That one that was a piss take of the Brotherhood of Man's Angelo is Anne and Joe roaming away together on their motorbike. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone knew every word to that. On the cover of this week's NME is The Mod Revival,

some bloke on a scooter. And on the cover of Smash Hits is Jimmy Purse. The number one LP is Greatest Hits Vol. 2 by Barbra Streisand. In the US, the number one single is I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. And the number one LP is Minute by Minute by the Doobie Brothers. Bloody hell. So, what were we doing in 1979? Neil will establish that you're six and sticking your thumbs up and down.

Simon, we're about the same age, aren't we? We're still at junior school. Well, let me tell you. I was at a minor private school in the south of England. Now, yeah, let me tell you how this happened. You're thinking, oh, good old salt of the earth, working class, pricey, grew up with no, without, you know, two Peter rubbed together, ends up in a private school in England. So I better explain myself. First first of all we were not posh by any means okay um but my mum uh when I was a kid uh my parents were divorced in fact both of them had been divorced twice by this point um and I was living with my I know it's you know get get the

world's smallest violin out and all of that um my mum uh at this point had gone through teacher training and um there was no work in south wales she couldn't get a job there so she saw this advert for a job in this uh prep school in sussex in a village called warning lid um and uh and she got it and the deal was that i had to go with her and it was a real eye-opener i was there for two years it was it was brutal authoritarian draconian with kind of arbitrary justice if I won't even call it justice it was just arbitrary physical attacks um by teachers on pupils uh and um yeah it was it was a real case of seeing how the other half lived for me and uh you know figuring out why the upper classes are as kind of cold and cruel as they are

they're bred that way in order to rule that's why they're the ruling class they are taught how to rule by being that brutal and by accepting brutality as normal um obviously i went to a comprehensive school after that where brutality was also rife but that was pupil on pupil that's fine uh that was kind of consensual brutality so um and the other thing about this school this school in Sussex was pop music was pretty much banned so pop music yeah yeah so pop pop music attained this kind of uh power of you know when when you see these things like footloose or back to the future or even the queen the queen the queen musical we will rock you where pop music is kind of this revolutionary force that you know you almost have to smuggle music in that's how it was i remember um sunday uh evenings um me and a couple of other kids um sneaking off to um some bushes in the school

grounds to listen to the top 40 Countdown and record bits of it. But occasionally, as a treat, if we were good, we were allowed to watch Top of the Pops. So I've got this weird kind of intermittent memory of this stuff. So to me, pop music, even more than it does for the average teenager, had this power, this kind of glimpse into this promised land beyond the cage that you're kept in. Yeah, no, for me, it was also part of a... It was the first sort of time that I realised that my understanding of pop music

and my parents' understanding of pop music was totally different. Watching Top of the Pops, a recurrent thing my mum always used to say, anyone who appeared on Top of the Pops with dark glasses, she'd say, he's on drugs. Or she's on drugs. It was just her interpretation of it. And, dark glasses, she'd say, he's on drugs. She's on drugs. It was just her interpretation of it. And of course, me and my sister were like,

no, he isn't, no, he isn't. And she was probably right. But I wanted to keep, you know, pop music's not an innocent thing, but as our thing, I resisted her interpretation of it. I remember even watching Queen or something on Top of the Pops and her saying, you know, 79, 80, I think, her saying, oh, he's gay.

And me understanding what gay meant, but just refuting that, that she couldn't guess that from just looking at these people. But she was probably substantially correct in everything she said about these pop stars. But pop was mine and my sister's, not hers. Do you know what I mean? And I wanted to keep it as ours to interpret, not not my parents so what else was on telly this day well bbc one has already

had clay pigeon shooting with jackie charlton and ian botham on pebble mill at one tomorrow's world has just looked at a new sophisticated phone and done a feature on champion lettuce growers bbc two's running a repeat of When the Boat Comes In and someone's been mugged on Emmerdale Farm on ITV. Oh god the problems of the modern world. Half that stuff sounds like it was being pitched by Alan Partridge to Tony Hayes. Yes

it really does. Hi everyone we're here again it's gotta be good we're running with the chart it's the chart rundown in three degrees. Top of the pops have scrapped a whole lot of love for the moment and any semblance of opening credits. And we go straight into Peter Powell, who's wearing a furry gold jacket over a Radio 1 t-shirt,

excitedly announcing the top 30 rundown. Peter Powell, I think, you know, influential in as much as the Bruno Brooks' and Gary Davis' and Mark Goodyear's. I think they were very much in his ilk. He was a little bit different than the other Radio 1 DJs. But I remember, you know, when the U-Tree stuff was kicking off a few years ago, and of course everyone started their own sort of U-Tree sweepstake. Me and my wife were amazed that Peter Powell never made an appearance or never got picked up on that.

He is a creepy fucker. And my wife remembers him actually doing a disco tour of clubs, just DJing with Kid Jensen in 79, sponsored by Nescafe, I think. Right. So, I mean, ample opportunities for him, for U3-type shenanigans. But, yeah, he never got picked up throughout this episode. Maybe he never did anything, Neil. Perhaps so.

Perhaps so. I mean, clearly maybe he didn't. But throughout this episode, there's something a little off, a little creepy about Powell. And I find that repeatedly whenever I see him on TOTP. I'm glad Neil said that right because I remember, well, there's two things I remember about Peter Powell. First of all, that there was this kind of confusion

and this myth going around that he invented the stunt kites you could buy, you know, the Peter Powell ones. Yes peter it was ages before i realized it wasn't him but the other thing i really remember about peter powell is um my dad uh when he was on top of the box uh saying about peter powell peter powell's a perv and i didn't know what a perv was so i said to my dad what's a perv and he said said, don't worry about it. And I just, I let it go. I let it go, right? But for years, it kind of bubbled away in my subconscious.

Why did my dad think Peter Powell was a perv? What did it mean by that? And as Neil has pointed out, throughout this episode, we do see just kind of, there's two things. First of all, he's trying to be, he's desperately trying to be cool. He's trying to be this kind of hip young guy. But also there is just this kind of edge of creepiness that keeps surfacing again and again in the episode.

Well, born in Stourbridge, Peter James Bernard Powell became a disc jockey at the age of 19 when he was the first voice heard on BBC Radio Birmingham in 1970. He had a three-month stint on Radio 1 in 1972, then moved to Radio Luxembourg before returning to Radio 1 in 1970. He had a three-month stint on Radio 1 in 1972, then moved to Radio Luxembourg before returning to Radio 1 in 1977. At this point in time, he's got the Saturday mid-morning slot on Radio 1. Nowadays, he's running a management company and has had Anton Deck, Darren Day, Philip Schofield, Piers Morgan, and Judy and Simon Cowell on his books

meaning that he's very minted and he's the main reason why ITV is so shit nowadays he's not short of a bob or two you're not going to see Peter Powell rummaging around a skip no but I mean the only thing that kind of ameliorates my repulsion for him is that I feel

slightly sorry for him, the poor fucker ended up married to Anthony Turner and you know my repulsion for him is that I feel slightly sorry for him. I mean, the poor fucker ended up married to Anthea Turner. Well, yes, I did, yes. And, you know, the kind of permanent fixed optimism of him about everything probably went well with Anthea Turner at the start of their relationship, but I'm guessing

towards the end of their relationship, my god, the arguments must have been fucking spectacular. There must have been some really ugly scenes over at their house. Shame there was no fly on the wall documentary about it. When she got blown up in that stunt that went wrong, do we

think that Peter Powell might have been behind it? Some kind of revenge attack? He had the power. He could have pulled the strings. He could do. I mean, one thing that struck me about Peter Powell, he was absolutely enthusiastic about everything that was on top of the pops, he'd kind of do a little jump

when a band had finished and he'd be like, oh hey, that was kind of amazing, I can just imagine, I don't know, a monkey banging on a saucepan for three minutes Gigi Allen shitting himself on the stage and then rolling about in it um screwdriver um

anything peter powell would always have something enthusiastic to say about it and he's he's the start of something i think i mean there's something about his voice um whereas other presenters atop the pops sort of emphatically had british accents i guess there's something horribly transatlantic about Peter Powell's voice. There's something in between British and American. So you imagine that if he was saying the word splitting, he would say splitting. There's this kind of thing about his voice.

And I think that was sort of perhaps a careful move on his part to make himself open to foreign markets or something. But clearly he always had his eyes on a bigger prize, I guess. So Peter Powell excitedly introduces the top 30 rundown. We're going to be running with the rundown to the runner by the Three Degrees. Formed in Philadelphia in 1963, the Three Degrees spent the 60s as a nightclub act who released a few records before signing to Philadelphia International in 1973.

Had a string of hits in the UK from 74 to 76. They took a two year break, signed to Areola Records and began working with Giorgio Moroder and went to bit disco. This is a follow up to Woman in Love which got to number 3 and it's currently at number 10.

It's a bit of a tune isn't it? I've forgotten how good it is. It's one of these tracks that turns up on kind of K-Tel roller disco compilations or whatever and you know you don't even don't even sort of like let the needle get that far but what a banger it is it's i've you know of of all of all the other stuff in the show it's probably in the top three for me it's up there yeah it's a corker i remember having it on um one of those shitty chart compilations that all i remember about it was it had a massive boxing glove on the front of the sleeve with smash hits or something written on the boxing glove but yeah it's a corker the thing is the

rundown and the whole episode i would say there's something about it that's kind of um you know winter discontenty um that you can tell the audience when it gets to the audience sorry are so thin on the ground being harried around like concentration camp victims just just kind of being made to look like a crowd and sound like a crowd even though clearly what's going on in the studio is not actually that many people being there i know it's just from looking at the rundown itself you say that like punk was you know fizzling out but maybe 79 is the year when punk actually happens because you've got suzy and the banshees generation x you've got m who kind of a new wave synthy thing uh you've got the cars

kind of skinny tie american version of it sham 69 lena lovitch elvis costello the jam um sex pistols twice um and squeeze so you know this is actually when punk slash new wave is probably at its commercial peak i don't know yeah and i think because it's commercial peak it's probably why a lot of old punks would say that was the year it all fucked up um you know that that's the year i guess when people were selling photographs of themselves with mohican haircut haircuts posing with policemen in trafalgar square for japanese tourists and stuff it's the moment it got commodified but yeah there's still some great records being made that could be called punk i would say in 79 the other thing to say about that

rundown is um you've still got that element of music for granny so obviously you know you've got uh you've got neil diamonds who are for granny so obviously you know you've got uh you've got neil diamonds who are going to come to but the number one single art garfunkel did you clock the photo the photo of him he's doing pistol fingers in his mouth what's going on there i i mean i know and we will come to that record and what a dark and grim record it is but he's doing a bit of a sort of kurt cobain pistol fingers in his gob it's really unsettling but of course the other two things about the three degrees at the time they appeared at Prince Charles's 30th birthday party and there were rumours abounding that Sheila Ferguson was

having an affair with him and of course there was that amazing photo of him with Cyril Regis Laurie Cunningham and Brendan Batson on a on a training ground at West Brom. From the days before Ron Atkinson was racist. That's right, yes. And they put out a record, didn't they? There was this West Bromwich Albion Calypso. Do you remember that? No, no, really? Oh, yeah, check it out.

Seriously, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, God. Yeah, it was... Is it as good as Mike Reid's Calypso? Oh, man. Well, nothing can compete with the Reid, you know. Is it as good as the Leeds United Calypso. Oh, man. Well, nothing can compete with the Reid. Is it as good as the Leeds United Calypso, though? It was a Leeds United Calypso.

Yes, in the early 60s. To celebrate Jamaican independence, no doubt. So the runner would stay at number 10 for two more weeks before dropping down the chart. The next single, Jump the Gun, failed to make the top 40, but the single after that, My Simple Heart, would reach number three at the dropping down the chart. The next single, Jump the Gun, failed to make the top 40, but the single after that, My Simple Heart, would reach number three at the end of the year.

And they were pretty much done as a group. Sheila Ferguson nowadays claimed that she could have gone there with Prince Charles as he was clearly up for it, but she didn't want to because he was a right slag and the UK would never have gone for a black queen. Our loss. She'd have made a fucking brilliant queen, wouldn't she? The first band up have been fortunate enough

to have been given their own American-style neon road sign, meaning they don't have to be introduced by an excited Peter Powell. It's Light of the World. Formed in London in 1978, Light of the World were a core of three jazz funk musicians backed up with a rotating cast of guest musos this is their debut single swinging and it's currently at 75 in the charts 70 fucking five what's it doing on top of the pops you can tell they're british first off really bad dental care and really bad teeth pretty poor dancing um

noticeable thing is it starts almost exactly like there's a little wobbly bass note at the beginning starts almost exactly like the breakdown in atomic by blondie um and i'm sure we'll mention blondie later but um they're sort of going for it majorly but it's the start of that fiction in top of the pops from both the band and the crowd you can you know the applause at the end starts before the actual applause of the audience and um it feels like you know both the band and the crowd are engaged in this kind of let's let's make it look like a show um it's not really a show I love watching the audience in this clip this is one particular boy in the front row who looks 50 50 baffled and disgusted by the whole thing and and i kind of know where he's coming from

because um they've got they've got a great energy but it's not much of a song is it and like neil says you can tell they're british but for different reasons because britain was at this point and we'll see another example of this later in the show desperately trying to kind of catch up with what america was doing in terms of soul and funk and here they are this kind of jazz soul funk band and they're really going for it but just the song isn't there and it's just not quite right you know british black music i guess was still like four or five years behind yes where american black music was i mean it's a dead giveaway that they're called light of the world i'm guessing they're named after the cool and the gang track or the Call in the Gang album.

That's exactly right, sir. Well done. So, you know, it has that Call in the Gang vibe of things like things that they did earlier on in their career, around about 1975, 1976. It's a dance track, but it's absolutely not a disco track. There's

no sort of trace of disco in it. It's pure jazz funk like pricey says the only sort of great bit i think is that really nasty gnarly kind of wah-wah bass that's on near the end um but there's fuck all to it hasn't really got a hook hasn't really got a chorus and it's kind of like just a loose-limbed kind of jam and i fucking hate music like that the single would jump up to number 45 but go no further. And the band carried on until 1981 after having a couple of singles that scraped the arse end of

the top 40. But the original members changed their name to Beggar and Co. Had a number 15 hit with Somebody Help Me Out in 1981 and of course backed Spandau Ballet on chant number 1. Yes, what a cue. You see, you've joined a party.

That's night of the world. And swinging. Award winner last night on Total Pops Tonight of 14, Kate Bush. Wow. An excited Peter Powell points out that we've just joined a party before reminding us that Kate Bush won Best Female Singer at the British Pop and Rock Awards last night and announces the song as if Legs & Co have dropped their dressing gowns

in front of him and showing off all their bits. He softens his voice in a really revolting way. Yes, he really does. He kind of goes, wow. Yeah. It's just vile. He kind of goes, wow. Yeah. It's just vile. After the success of her debut single, Wuthering Heights,

an LP that kicked inside the year before, Kate Bush was pressured into recording a second LP, Lionheart, in 1978, which neither she or the record-buying public liked. The first single from that album, Hammer Horror, failed to make the top 40 the previous November, and this follow-up is being backed by her first and only tour and her only live performances until 2014.

The single's jumped up from number 27 to number 14. And because she's playing at the Sunderland Empire tonight, we get the video. This song is what people make fun of when they make fun of Kate Bush. I think even more than Wuthering Heights, this is the one that people like Faith Brown or even Kenny Everett did it, I think. But I think it's still great, actually. I've got to make a confession here about Kate Bush. Probably a couple of years after this, I had my first ever sex dream about Kate Bush.

And I didn't realise I fancied her I had no idea well it's an improvement on Madame Cholet isn't it Simon that's one for regular yeah that's one for regular listeners yeah I think the previous you know a few years earlier I had a crush on Madame Cholet from the Wombles now I graduated to Kate Bush so I'm making progress there but yeah this is this kind of um pre-Raphaelite amdram pop that is is very easy to mock but i think there's something really likable about it i think she hadn't quite found herself yet kate bush hadn't quite found her thing um and the video it's not really a video it's more a video effect isn't it it's kate bush times four or times five or times six um but you know i i think we can see the beginnings here of

the kind of brilliantly inspired um avant-pop genius that she was later to become yeah um i mean it's interesting um pricey talking about his his sexual awakening as it were um a couple of years after this i mean i was pre-sexual i guess at six um but it watching this you know as this being kind of the time when i started watching top of the pops the memories of that of kate bush's appearance were really vivid for me because when you're a kid when you're a really young kid you can take a dislike to something off the tiniest thing and it doesn't necessarily have to be yeah musical my deepest memory of kate bush at that time anyway later on i would certainly get to like kate bush was just being genuinely terrified of her yeah there was a thing she did a little thing that you might not

notice but you know she does this thing with her eyes where she widens yeah yes she just yeah and that when i was a kid that scared the living shit out of me it really scared the bejesus out of me so for a long time it's not that i couldn't get over that but that was my sort of um predominant feeling about about kate bush and like like simon said um she what i think wow was the one that really made her prone to kind of people doing parodies of her i know faith brown i think the year before did wuthering heights but she also did one of wow oh it's kind of terrible it is awful um and i was actually watching an interview with kate bush where she's asked about the faith brown spoof and and and she says oh it's great she must have really studied me yes sarcasm dripping off

her well yeah but i mean at the time the wide eyedness just freaked me out there was something creepy about that it's astonishing the way that when you're a little kid the tiniest little thing

can set you against somebody I've had a real animosity towards Shaq Attack for a long long time and I couldn't locate why and my sister reminded me that I was watching Top of the Pops

I think 82 I think it was and there was a look the keyboard player gave the camera that really angered me as a nine-year-old there was something about it he looked too happy or something and because of that look i didn't like shack attack for two years didn't listen to their music just didn't like him and i think it was the same with kate bush when uh in 1979 the frank langella version of dracula came out and i remember the trailers being on the telly the vampire women scaring the fucking shit out of me and there was something about kate bush's that the

bit when she opened her eyes i couldn't watch it i had to turn away it seemed like it was almost too much because we weren't so suffused with pop from everywhere, little images would absolutely stick in your head. And kind of that wow video that's shown, it's just really her against the black backdrop. And that in itself was kind of scary. I used to go to the supermarket sometimes in 79, and there was a copy of Stephen King's Carrie

on the bookshelf and I just used to walk past it to look at it and get scared because it was just a scary shot of her face covered in blood you know on a black background and I might be sort of going a bit too deep into my psychology here but I feel that the Kate Bush's image you you know, white skin, red lips, black background, had a similar kind of horror-style effect on me at that young age. I mean, let's talk about the video, because do you know that the BBC actually censored the video? It looks like they freeze-framed it with the Vaseline line,

so you can't see her slapping her arse. Yes, they did. That's exactly what they did. They put a black box over her arse so we can't see a slap in it when she says he's too busy hitting the Vaseline. No way. I always misinterpreted the line

because I always thought the line he's too busy hitting the Vaseline was actually he's too busy licking the bottle clean. So I always took it that she was singing the song about an alcoholic actor and no he was uh he liked his bum sex lyrically it seems like she's got really kind of rapidly tired of fame after presumably like her emergence the year before yeah she's got quite quickly cynical about it all um it's kind of almost like a song that

that you'd expect somebody older perhaps who's been in a career for a long time to write because it's about the kind of it's about the emptiness of kind of congratulation after shows and things like that yeah um um so it's a really a grown-up song for such a young person to write yeah and perhaps that's why i didn't respond to it initially, but I've come to love it in the years gone by. Another thing we've got to mention, it is one of two records in this week's chart that name checks the Sweeney.

Which is the other one? Sweeney's doing 90 because they've got nowhere to go. Yes! Call for cats by Squeeze. No, Al, I've just got one more memory I've got to get out of my system get it in mate get it in you know she does that thing and I think Faith Brown

parodied it Faith Brown's one of those impressionists obviously who has to announce who she's impersonating before she does it she did that thing of swinging her arms you know that arm swing I've just remembered my sister used to torment me um because she knew i was scared of kate bush um by do it by singing the wow chorus

and swinging her arms in in that fashion um she used to couple that with a game called disco lights where she i was hoping you'd bring this in and i probably told you about it before but um she used to she used to sing a song calledco Lights that she made up off the top of her head. And flick the lights on and off. And then suddenly plunge the room into complete darkness and scream at the top of her lungs. And it absolutely terrified me. And because she'd combined that, obviously, with the Kate Bush impressions, for a long time I was scared of Kate Bush, but I've obviously come to love her music since.

But fear has a big part to play, I think, when you're a kid watching pop music, because an awful lot of artists spook the living hell out of you. So the single stayed at number 14 the next week, and the week after that, before dropping down the chart. Top of the Pops did nothing for her there, man. That's terrible. But follow-up, them heavy people got to number 10, and then she was impersonated by Pamela Stevenson

on Not The Nine O'Clock News. That's great. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Kate Bush, and she is just as lovely as you think she is, I tell you. And remember then? Well, remember Shirley Waddy. It's 27. Remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember, remember Peter Powell is surrounded by five young girls. He kind of looks at the girls who are next to him. They all look about 14. Yeah.

And he goes, wow, to each of them. And he directs one of his glances down at a girl's bum or a crotch or something. He was 28 at the time. It's just revolting. He also says, I think, she is just as lovely as you think she is. Yes! He says, and she's just as lovely as you think she is,

in a way which implies he has some kind of secret knowledge, you know, of how lovely she is. Yeah. What, really? And then he asks us if we remember show Waddy Waddy. Of course we fucking do. It's the late 70s. They're on every month. Formed in leicester in 1973 from two bands choice and the golden hammers show waddy waddy appeared

on new faces two months after their first gig won their heat and finished second in the all winners final their debut single hey rock and roll got to number two was kept off the top slot by the streak by ray stevens which started a run of 15 hit singles including the 1976 number one under Hey Rock and Roll got to number 2 and was kept off the top slot by The Streak by Ray Stevens which started a run of 15 hit singles including the 1976 number 1 Under the Moon of Love. This is a follow up to Pretty Little Angel Eyes which was the 7th top 5 single on the bounce and it's up from number 35 to number 27.

You know what, I really like Shawody Woddy. They've got this really pleasing kind of hooligan doo-wop sound um and the the thing i get from this obviously in the early 70s there was this kind of rock and roll revival with things like the film american graffiti and you had shanana lingering on from the 60s then you had greece the musical you even had bands like mud and then you had um the film that'll be the day there was all this stuff going on you know um it was probably the first time in pop history that pop was looking backwards uh and um of all of those bands i think shawazi wazi are really pleasing just they've got this um atmosphere about them that they are a fun party that that you want to be invited to they

look like the in crowd well they don't look like the in crowd they look like your dads but they just got this they just got this thing about them that they feel they feel popular does that make sense they feel like the popular kids or the popular grown-ups and i quite like the way that even though they're going for this kind of um uh 50s vibe uh dave bartram has got defiantly 1970s hair he just hasn't he just had you know they've got the kind of uh neon or pastel colored drape suits but they just haven't gone that extra mile with the hair he does look like he should be in some kind of american teen movie and be a heartthrob called cory or blaine or something like that i remember like yeah i remember liking him again for a sort of pointless

reason in a sense that i just really liked dave bartram's face he just he was like someone's really handsome dad um and and i really liked him but the thing is with this appearance um is it me but it seems like they're miming is terrible yeah um the guy in the blue isn't even trying he's not not singing the words. He's singing something. He's mumbling. And there's a weird bit where suddenly the crowd are on the stage and she wasn't in the crowd. And it just suddenly happens for three minutes. Three seconds, rather. And I don't know why they did that. But, as again, the sort of illusion of a party that Top of the Pops

always tried to create really crumbled for this one. They remind me of... They actually remind me of the slightly always tried to create really really crumbled they remind me of um they actually remind me of the slightly scary older kids in my town who were hooligans who were they wore double denim and stack heel boots and they were called the bellites they're called the bellites because they're from bell street in barry right and uh they used to hang around the local park singing hey rock and roll and stamping on the wooden benches and trying to break the benches but it's a good song i think it was first to hit it wasn't it for the caylin twins back in the 50s the first set of twins to top the charts until the proclaimers actually really um

and produced i think by mike hurst who used to work for mickey most and andrew lou golden first guy to record mark bolan and the year before he did this hit for Shewoddy Woddy, he produced Modern Priscilla, Cilla Black's disco album. Oh, God, yeah. And later on, he started his own company, record company called Lamborghini Records. Right. Who signed Sam Fox.

And the poor sod, he ended up producing Bell and Sebastian, I believe. Right. But I think the reason that this stuff and as we'll probably talk later about racy as well is so popular is because it it's a reflection of of mums and dads memories at that time yeah in the 70s and it feeds into a lot a few things as price is mentioned, the kind of whole Grease happy days thing. Yeah. But also that sort of stars on 45, it's okay to just do old songs type stuff. I mean, it's odd when you think this is the year,

I don't know, Metal Box came out. Yeah. Like Racy, I think she waddy waddy, you know, does go in 20 year cycles. The 70s look back at the 50s and the 80s look back at the 60s. The thing about the looking back to the 50s and the 80s look back at the 60s they the the thing about the looking back to the 50s was that they were not really you know if you could say

people like amy winehouse and that were looking back to the 60s to get some grit and authenticity in their music racy and shawadi wadi were looking back to the 50s really just for fun yeah and for for a kind of ephemeral thing and that that's fine. It's a fun record. The record stayed at number 17 and then dropped down the chart, breaking shawaddy, waddy, waddy's. Oh, fuck's sake. Leave that in. The more waddy's, the better.

That's the thing, though. Also, they mentioned their own name in the song, didn't they? Of course they do, yeah. The backing vocals vocals they repeatedly say shawaddy shawaddy shawaddy shawaddy intentionally no doubt oh that's um subliminal isn't it it's almost like they're trying to make you buy the record while they're singing the record at you they're cross-platform brand synergizing the other thing about shawaddy shawaddy of course is that they do have a drummer with maybe the greatest name in pop um last week or last episode we were talking about ariel bender of mott the hoopoe

well um the drummer in shawdy waddy of course romeo challenger that is a fantastic name for a drummer and of course um i'm sure you're all aware of the urban myth going around that he was the father of deon dublin absolute bullshit bullshit. His dad was the mate of Dion Dublin's uncle or something like, some really tenuous connection like that. But because they're sort of like two black men from the East Midlands that somehow added up to, you know,

it was as prevalent, I think, as the Bob Holness playing sax on Baker Street rumour, that rumour. All of those rumours, I've always believed pot rumours. When I was told that Adam Ant was dead, I believed it. Follow of those rumours, I've always believed. Pop rumours. When I was told that Adam Ant was dead, I believed it. Follow-up, Sweet Little Rock and Roller got no higher than number 15, and they had six more minor hits until they were pretty much done as a chart act round about 1982.

Hits after hits after hits. Shoddy waddy. And remember then, silly thing. Legs and Co. No way. Sex Pistols. Peter Powell absolutely refuses to believe that Legs and Co. are going to dance to the Sex Pistols, even though they did a routine to something else the previous month.

Where do we start with this? Do we start talking about Legs & Co. or do we start talking about the Sex Pistols? Well, if I could, I wouldn't mind talking about the Pistols. Because, of course, much later on, got to Nevermind the Bollocks and Bodies and Holidays in the Sun and all the things that made them great. But I think this actual video of, you know, Legs & Co dancing to them

was my first experience of the pistols and a really tangible memory. So punk, for me, for a long time, actually meant this, and it meant the monks nice leg shame about the face which is not a punk song of course but you know it's what you experience legs and coat had form didn't they dancing to piss to punk stuff because i think they danced to bank robber that year as well by the clash yes they did yes um if i could just move on to talk about the song. For me, it's not good.

And it sounds like a New York song that kind of needs a New York single. I'd love to hear David Johansson or the New York Dolls do it. But without Lydon, they're nothing, really. His voice is so essential to what makes Pistol songs work. And Bill Price's production as well. So, essentially, this comes across as not as good as the

theme tune for Murphy's Mob. And the lyrics are kind of worse, to be honest. They're terrible, aren't they? Well, one of two Sex Pistols singles in this top 20. The cover of Something Else is currently at number 11. And the third single after Johnny Rotten left the band. It's also

the second single to be taken from the soundtrack of the great rock and roll swingle but this version has Steve Jones on vocals instead of Paul Cook. Of course it's two months after the death of Sid Vicious and at the time of release Steve Jones and Paul Cook are kicking around the idea of drafting in Jimmy Percy as the

new vocalist of their next band it's the highest climber in the top 40 this week moving up to number seven from number 24 and of course the reason that these songs are in the charts is Malcolm McLaren shamelessly cashing in on the whole thing um you know post the death of Sid Vicious with um the film the great rock and roll swindle umle. And similar to Neil actually. I think the first Sex Pistols record I ever heard. Was also from that soundtrack. It was I'm Not Your Stepping Stone.

And it was in the picture sleeve. That was basically the poster. The Great Rock and Roll Swindle. And I've got to say. Yeah silly thing. It's not a great Pistols record. But I just think steve jones is brilliant i really like him i think he might be my favorite sex pistol in a way um he we he

weirdly rather than even more so than rotten or vicious he's the kind of loose cannon in the pistols if you look at them on the bill grundy show he's the one who actually takes control of that situation yeah and starts absolutely yeah nailing Bill Grundy to the floor and just completely ripping the piss out of him also um I'm sure you've all heard uh the um uh the some products album where the pistols where Jones and Cook are in America being interviewed for local radio and they just can't they cannot take the whole thing seriously at all every caller if it's a female caller they'll just go have you got big tits have you

got big tits have you got airy jackie darnay there's a also brilliant interview out there from australian telly which is with uh with jones and cook but mostly jones really it's about 20 minutes long and he's actually quite smart you know in in that kind of untreated working class way but he's just really really sort of switched on um and not not in a sort of cartoon not a sort of cartoon punk cynicism sort of way um the other thing about these two singles being in the charts at the same time is that um something else uh it uh and silly thing is you need to look at the b-sides the b-side of silly thingilly Thing was Who Killed Bambi, Tempo Tudor. So, first of all, I'm imagining Legs & Co. somehow figuring out a routine to that track.

And the other one, something else, the flip side of something else was Friggin' in the Rigging. Now, Friggin' in the Rigging being the classic record that when you're a teenager, you bring into school on the last day of term when you're allowed to play your own records to make all the other kids laugh. And, you know, if Legs & Co had tried to act that one out, you've got something for the dads right there, haven't you? Friggin' in the Rigging is the first Sex Pistols song I ever heard

at my mate's house. Really? He had a great rock and roll single. He could have played me Anarchy in the UK. He could have played me God Save the Queen. No, Friggin' in the Rigging because it's like listen to this it's got swearing on it yeah you get things slightly wrong don't you i i remember when um i had uh i'm not your stepping stone i lent it to a mate of mine who decided he was a punk rocker

and uh his dad had a bass guitar so he learned how to play I'm Not Your Stepping Stone on this crackly old bass guitar. And he was convinced that the lyrics went, you won't find me in your fridge of Jews. He used to sing that at the top of his voice, like it was some kind of anti-Semitic punk rock anthem. I'll never forget. And also, he wanted to have green hair hair and we didn't have access to green hair dye but my mum happened to have some uh green food coloring from my previous birthday where she'd done me a cake to look like a football pitch so we got the remaining green green food coloring and put it through his hair and it didn't work but it just ran down his face

and made him look even more horrific than that front cover of Stephen King's Carrie that Neil referred to earlier. I can completely echo what you're saying about frigging in the rigging is perhaps more important than people realise. It did have that kind of hallowed, secret vibe to it that a few people knew about it, a few people had it on tape and a few people had heard it. And it was a shocking thing. I never got to hear it.

Nobody will play it to me. But I remember people going on about that song, frigging and rigging, far more than they go on about the things that are now officially the kind of rock history of the Pistols. Well, back then, if I'd have listened to Anarchy in the UK or God Save the Queen, I would have been really disappointed

because there's no swearing in it. No talking about eels going up people's fannies and stuff like that you know which is what punk's all about when you're that age we should talk about the performance that legs and co put in yes we should wearing these sort of pastel jackets and satin leggings they basically look like the pink ladies from greece or something like that yeah but they are sort of they're sort of pogoing and they're sort of... Yeah, but there's head shaking and kicking, isn't there? Yeah, and the first thing you see

is one of them putting a tongue out. Yes. And they're sort of pulling stupid faces, you know. That's punk, mate. You half expect them to put their thumb on the end of their nose and waggle their fingers at you.

Yes. Because that's punk. And imagine the meeting, there must have been a meeting, I love stuff like this, just sort of try and sort of dial back a bit and rewind and imagine that before this was filmed there would have been a sort of choreographers meeting with flick colby and maybe robin nash or whoever's

producing the show saying right you know it's a punk record here's what you've got to do and they were sort of brainstorming ideas of well what's punk about it's about sticking your tongue out isn't it wearing both ties but not attaching them to shirts it's it's i mean i'm impressed with their ability to pogo in the heels that they're wearing definitely yeah but but it's a recurrent thing whenever legs and co and later on the other dance troops got odd records or records that weren't things that were simple to dance to and they would just pull stupid faces i think there was one on the totp83 recently it was a creatures song um you know suzy and co and and it's just all all that the dancers could think of to do was pull those yeah stupid strange wide-eyed faces. Right. So, yeah, Flick Colby.

But the thing is, it doesn't seem like a whole routine. It seems like it's cut together from about 15 seconds of footage. Yeah, there's a lot of freeze frame as they jump in the air, isn't there? A lot of freeze frame, jumping in the air. That image of people jumping in the air with spiky hair, with their legs kind of tucked behind them, as a silhouetted image if you just add a pair of headphones to it that is the flyer for every single shit um rock night um that i've

ever been to somebody in midair with headphones on or a guitar silhouetted jumping exactly like that so ahead of that i think both both the punks and the dads are going to be enormously disappointed by this routine aren't they yeah it ends up trying to please everyone and pleasing no one let's be let's be fair about that so silly thing would move up to number six the next week but no further the follow-up a cover of come on everybody would get to number three in june and there'd be two more releases long after the band were no more i think come on everybody was the biggest selling sex pistols record ever wasn't it i don't know about that but do you know what it's brilliant i i know we're meant to think okay it's a shameless cash in and you know it's the sort it's the arse end of the sex pistols and it's sid vicious on vocals it is it's just just a production of that it is

turbocharged it's fantastic i love it if i'm if i'm reaching when i'm djing if i'm reaching for a pistols track i'll often go with that one rather than one of the obvious ones because it just got it's just got this kind of propulsion to it yeah hey

thank you legs and two hits in almost as many weeks Sex Pistols and Silly Thing if I was Neil Diamond I'd stay forever in blue jeans

he's doing OK at 26. Born in Brooklyn during the war, the pre-American chunk of the war in any case, Neil Diamond started his career as a songwriter in the early 60s and had his first successors when he wrote I'm a Believer and a little bit me, a little bit you for the monkeys. His first UK chart success as a singer came in 1970 when he got to number three with Sweet Caroline.

This is his ninth straight top 40 hit. The follow-up to the top five, You Don't Bring Me Flowers, the duet with Barbra Streisand, and it's been stuck at number 26 for two weeks running. So the thing that strikes me about this, he goes on about being forever in blue jeans which is pretty disgusting if you're not taking them off and washing them but he's wearing black flares while he's singing and a spangly shirt yeah he's wearing flares and it's kind of silver taffeta shirt as well that's a fucking hypocrite but I love the idea that you know he's singing about forevering blue jeans as if blue jeans somehow symbolizes kind of carefree rock and roll youth um when he

is clearly not even singing to the mums and dads but to the the nans and granddads and um i actually i went to see neil diamond at the o2 oh god must be about 10 years ago now and um i i found the merchandise store really interesting because there was a t-shirt with a depiction of him as a young man with like long hair and look like a bit of a hippie and i i think that maybe that that idea that he wants to let everyone know that he is coming from this place of being vaguely countercultural i think that maybe informs informs this song in a way and also um he's got this singing style, hasn't he, of trying to make every line passionate.

He growls at the end of every line. And it's just a bit much, isn't it? I think if you make every line in the song sound passionate, it means that no lines in the song sound passionate. Exactly. I think because it's a live performance video, that's why his vocal is really really ragging and kind of like, like Simon says a bit,

but you know, he's a bit gnarly on it. Um, and I think probably the recorded version isn't like that, but I mean, what the live concert footage reveals, the old stereotypes about black people having natural rhythm, the old white people stereotype of them having a natural lack of rhythm,

um, is vaguely true. Nobody in that audience can manage to clap in time yes um which is odd because because the song there's a frequent thing that people say about music i think that it's kind of troglodyte music or simple music this is music that a paramecium could dance to you don't even have to dance you could just shift your weight from foot to foot to this music it's got the same kind of umpire feel that um opus would exploit later on in the 80s in live is life it's got that kind of same beat to it but um the audience can't even manage that it's the same simplicity i guess

you'd kind of want in music for ice skating yeah or that cliff richard exploited at wimbledon that kind of simple foot toto-foot kind of thing that anyone could surely be rhythmic to, but this audience managed not to. It's granny claps, isn't it? It's granny claps. They're clapping on the on beat, not the off beat. That's the telltale thing.

It's old people's home clapping. Straight between the eyes of your grandma. Yeah, I mean, I grew up in an old people's home and i remember we used to have um sort of music and movement type sessions uh where somebody would sit in the middle and throw a beach ball to all the old folks and it used to be kind of um neil diamond type music that well neil diamond himself actually that would be on i disagree though i don't think this is yet just nans and grands music i think this is still mums and yeah okay and consequently that that that's why it's kind of in the charts and you can tell it's mums and dads music when you're a kid

because he looks like an old bloke he was 38 years old which is just a kid from where i'm standing now but yeah yeah at that point he would have seen impossibly ancient yeah yeah and he's got a comb over it's not even a comb over it's that kind of brillo pad comb over like andrew neal the whole thing about forever in blue jeans i find that a bit unpleasant um it's got this kind of eagles take it easy vibe um that's not nice and i don't't like the line, the one that says, honey's sweet, but it ain't nothing next to baby's treat. Yeah, what the fuck is that about? I don't like that line.

It makes me think of middle-aged Bavarians in nappies getting fed on Euro trash. It's just not pleasant. And you're right about the idea of how bad he must have smelled if he was forever in blue jeans, because do you remember the kooks with that song? No, it was The View. Do you remember the view with that song same jeans i've had the same jeans on for six days now i'm gonna go to a disco in the middle of town this is about 10 years ago and we

all laughed at them and thought well you disgusting grotty little horrible oiks and like they were comparatively kind of fastidious about their cleanliness compared to neil diamond of all people yeah yeah and you just you know when you nowadays of course when you think of the term forever in blue jeans you think of jeremy clocks and so you know nobody needs that and i remember hell's angels greasers and rockers in the late 70s had this thing of pride that they would never wash their jeans that you know their denim jacket and their jeans would actually be held together by the dirt and by the motorcycle grease on yes so yeah i don't know i don't know if i'm getting that with neil diamond you know his probably irons yeah he probably did go for the clarkson corby trouser press look on on the on the blue jeans he was wearing so the song would rise to number 16 and then stay at number 16 the following

week and go no higher. Neil Diamond would spend the rest of the year starring in the remake of The Jazz Singer with Laurence Olivier and Paul Nicholas and won the first ever Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor. Fucking hell, Laurence Olivier and Paul Nicholas, those two go together so well, don't they? The follow-up, 19 months later, Love on the Rocks, was his last top 20 hit in the UK, but he'd rack in the royalties when UB40's

version of Red Red Wine got to number one here in 1983, and in the US five years later. It's Neil Diamond and Forever in Blue Jeans. All in white, she is. All in white. Do me a favour, say hello to the fellas back there, and Forever in Blue Jeans. All in white. She is all in white. Do me a favour, say hello to the fellas back there. They're all on their top.

Oh, I like it. This is racy. Some girls do, some girls don't. They're at number three. I'm doing OK. OK. Peter Powell has availed himself of the pick of the litter in the audience, a girl in white dungarees and matching shirt,

and gets her to blow a kiss for the male viewing audience. Did you notice how hands-off he was? He's got his arm round her, but he actually sticks his hand out on the other side as if to go, look, I'm not trumping her. I just noticed how incredibly shy she seems and the kind of contrast between that and the clockwork orange look that she's got going on there yes she's got white dungarees and a white top underneath um but yeah she does seem absolutely terrified of the camera and as we've said in a previous podcast i i do miss that thing of people being a little bit camera shy uh which they're just not anymore and peter powell introduces racer formed in western

supermer in 1976 and originally called alive and kicking racer were discovered on the somerset pub circuit by mickey most after a fan tracked down where he lived and gave a demo tape to his wife, and they signed to Rack Records in 1978. After their first single, written by members of Smokey, flopped in 1978, they were linked up with Nicky Chin and Mike Chapman, otherwise known as Chinny Chap, the renowned hitmakers for Sweet, Mud and Suzy Cuatro. This is their third single, it's a follow-up to the number three hit, Lay Your Love On Me, and it's jumped up eight places from number 11.

First of all, does the panel know which band this song was originally offered to? I think originally offered to Blondie, or they're originally thinking of it for Blondie. Yes, that's right. Blondie obviously ended up producing Parallel Lines and producing a few Blondie albums actually I'm utterly fascinated by Chin and Chapman I think I know they're renowned as you said Al but I think that they're really unheralded um they're kind of early sweet singles they're just fucking astonishing records yes they are

just brilliantly written things and um the way that Mike Chapman worked with withondie, the way he forced them to be good basically and kind of forced them to get into the habit of actually doing loads and loads of takes of songs to get parallel lines absolutely spot on I suspect Chapman was the if not the brains of the operation the main

sort of figurehead of it in a sense Chin by that time, according to Chapman anyway was going off the rails deep into alcoholism and thehead of it in a sense chin by that time according to chapman anyway was going off the rails deep into alcoholism and the rest really but but um uh you know the chin and chapman songwriting partnership i i think is a really really great run that is why i can't understand why racy parted company with chin and chapman i think later on in that year after the album that this song came from why would you do that I mean they're a guaranteed hit factory

and I think I suspect them leaving this sort of Chin and Chapman stable was what fucked them and I wonder as well how Blondie could have done this I mean presumably would the gender have been changed some boys don't I don't

know how she would have necessarily sung it. Simon, where does this song stand alongside other Chitty Chap tunes? You know what? First of all, with or without Chitty Chapman, Rack Records, what a stable that was. So obviously you've got Mertz and Hot Chocolate, Suzy Quatro and Racy. And I've got to say, Racy sounds brilliant in your accent uh Al just a name

but um also um does anyone remember the band Exile they had a one one hit called Kiss You All Over that was on Rack and uh and probably uh the last big act I can remember on Rack would have been Kim Wilde um but I've actually been in Mickey Most's office because they've kept it in the Rack Records studio exactly as it was it's uh you know it's kind of like like the Mary Celeste of 1970s pop and it's fascinating just going in there and uh I think he's got one of those um drinks cabinets that's actually a globe you know uh globe of the earth and you lift the lid and there's one of the sailor's sentry jobs yeah yeah yeah but this song um some girls I Girls, I've got a really vivid memory attached to it,

and it goes back to the boarding school that I was in. You know how sometimes you'll hear a bit of one song, and in your brain it'll run on to another song? It'll become a sort of mash-up without any technology needed inside your brain. Well, I've got that with Some Girls some girls by racy because what happened was uh when i was at this boarding school in sussex um there was this other kid there called rupert fraser who was actually um he was the younger brother of the now famous uh tv and radio cleric giles fraser um and who also went who also also went to that school and and as a bit of a sideline here,

Giles went from the school called Hollingbury, which he recently talked about on Channel 4 News in a piece about the brutality of toxic Christianity in English schools. The school he was talking about is the school I was at. Giles Fraser went on from Hollingbury to Uppingham. Do we know who else went to uppingham peter fucking powell oh my god everything is connected boys everything is connected but the point is this giles's younger brother rupert i remember when uh indeed when when some girls

and remember then uh were both in the charts, he used to mash them together and he'd start singing, Some girls will, some girls won't, some girls need a lot of lovin' and some girls don't remember then, then, then. Yeah, and it really works. And every time I hear either one of those songs now, that just, it's a ready-made mash-up in my brain.

I think Racy, or Racy, if i'm going to do it your way um a really likable not quite as likable as almost in the shawadi wadi um vein of of pure kind of showbiz pop without any pretensions to being cool and i kind of enjoy the way that the singer guy looks like Gail Tilsley from Coronation Street. Yes, exactly. So the song would spend three weeks at number two and it went to number one in 12 different countries and it sold five million copies worldwide. But then the follow-up, Boy Oh Boy, got only as far as number 22. And in 1980, the only single off their only LP Smash and Grab

a cover of Run Around Sue got to number 13 and they would never trouble the UK charts again however the album track Kitty was picked up by Tony Basil renamed Mickey and got to number 2 here and number 1 in the US in 1982

terrific, good time music. That's Racy, this week at number three and some girls. And for me, this record is absolutely magic. It's the blast which really turns me on.

It's Supertrap, 24, The Logical Song. When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful. A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical. Peter Powell excitedly introduces the logical song by Supertramp by saying that the brass really turns him on. This is what we were saying earlier about Peter Powell being just really surprisingly creepy. Because he's one of these top of the pops presenters,

because he's untouched these top of the pops presenters who because he's untouched by utree you sort of think well at least he's got that in his kind of you know credit column and at least uh you know uh we we don't have to strike his episodes from the record and they still get repeated but there's something really quite unsettling about i don't want to know what turns him on at all whether it's brass or you know it's the way he says it kate bush yeah it's the way he says it if he doesn't say it in a kind it turns me on musically he does say it in a kind of vaguely sexual way that's just um uh yeah deeply unpleasant well you wouldn't want to take him to a country pub would you because he'd just start

rubbing himself up against the wall but this is the follow-up to Give a Little Bit, which got to number 27 in July of 1977. And it's the first single from the Breakfast in America LP and was based on singer Roger Hodgson's 10 Years in a Boarding School. Simon, you've already mentioned the hell of schools like that. Is this crying out to your very soul? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I served two years in a boarding school as the only kid whose parents weren't paying the fees. So, yeah. Oh, nice. Yeah, I was kind of like the novelty working class kid in the boarding school. So, I don't know how that fits in with Roger Hodgson. He was probably one of the standard uh fee paying kids um i actually saw him before live perform live um i went to the concert for diana in uh 2007 and uh right actually there's this myth about diana

that she was the cool royal that uh you know just because she was into duran duran that she was like the young person's royal and all of that but it turns out that she was a massive fan of Supertramp. And that's why Roger Hodgson turned up at Wembley that day. Ten years ago. The way I think about Supertramp is this. We all know what Math Rock is. They're Maths Teacher Rock. Yes.

Because in my. I remember being at school one day. And our Maths Teacher brought in a record. teacher rock because uh in my i i remember being at school one day and uh our maths teacher uh brought in a record uh to assembly and what it was it was uh not the logical song it was dreamer by super tramp which uh goes dreamer nothing but a dreamer but can you put your hands in your head oh no because you know the teacher was trying to make this point to us so like yeah stop day do stop daydreaming about you know your your stupid ambitions and stuff you know the teacher was trying to make this point to us a lot yeah stop day do stop daydreaming about you know your your stupid ambitions and stuff you know you've got to be

practical and you know you've got you've got you've got you've got you've got to you've got to knuckle down and and do your maths homework you know um i love it when teachers uh decide that that a rock record's got some kind of real meaning and that they really want want to want to impart that meaning to the kids he's really intense about it i remember the other band he was into his barkley james harvest oh jesus gives you some idea of his taste but but had he not heard this song well exactly you know i mean uh yeah i noticed the maths teacher was very quiet on the subject of the logical song um yes i'm trying to work out what exactly um the the two songwriter guys from super tramp are complaining about here about apart from some vague idea of of of them this sort of disembodied

they probably meaning uh the parent generation or or the man with capital letters trying to mold them you know uh uh acceptable respectable presentable a vegetable he sings here yeah oh yeah yeah think about it man think about it um and then uh then of course the sax break comes in at which point we inevitably picture peter powell rubbing his eyes yes vic reeves yes oh oh that's sax you know in a kind of kind of in a manner of um of blue tulip rose reed at the start of i'm your number one fan you know peter powell having some kind of saxgasm at that point i can just imagine anthea turner playing the trombone on their wedding night yeah giving him some sexual healing um but super tramp they're just so wet that they're just the weediest the

wimpiest band i can imagine i just look at the state of them they look like they've had each one of them's had a bucket of mazola cooking oil over their heads just everything about it is completely fucking despicable um it doesn't he doesn't even have the decency to be a kind of meaningful, pompous, pretentious, grown-up song. It's just saying, you know, we're kind of superior to this kind of juvenile chart pop that the rest of you are listening to, and yet we haven't really got anything better than that either. It's just nothing.

The list of kind of things, the rhymes in the song, they're just smug. It's just the stacking up of words that you wouldn't expect in a pop song that kind of rhyme with each other. I'm just surprised this was the lead-off single and not the title track, Breakfast in America, which I think was probably a bigger hit. Breakfast in America's all right, actually. That's a decent song.

Yeah. I've never listened to the album. I've sort of tucked it away. I suppose it should be for my current age, but I keep knocking it down five years down the line for when I've got a beard and a nice pair of Reactolites and I look like an estate agent is when I'll get into them. But I remember once, this is a bit of a digression,

but I was interviewing a metal band in New Orleans called Disturbed. I don't know if you remember them um yeah yeah gone to a bar started the interview and i was i had about half an hour with them i think uh from which i was meant to get a cover feature but five minutes before the interview i was chatting with their manager and it emerges that he's um doogie from Supertramp, which totally blew my mind. I wasn't a massive Supertramp fan. But he just starts idly chatting about touring in the 70s. And within that five minutes,

he was just immensely more fascinating than anything fucking disturbed, I have to say. Straight after the interview, I just ploughed back into speaking with him. The band were not happy. But yeah yeah I completely echo what Simon says, there is a sort of smuggery about this

record and there's a smugness about the lyrics, the stacking up of those rhymes gets on my tits eventually but Breakfast in America great tune but I'm not sure I'll dig out the rest of the album until I'm a few years older yet. That's because

you're a radical, liberal, fanatical criminal. So the Logical song will move just one place up the following week, but soar to number 7 the week after, which was their highest placing in the charts. Follow Up Breakfast in America will get to number 9 in the summer of 79, but

they wouldn't get any more sexy top 40 action until 1982 with It's Raining Again terrific that's a super trap and a logical song and this is Mr James Percy no less which shows us tonight at Christians and Answers which shows us tonight a Christian's and answers Peter Pyle goes

possibly because of the hot brass action bemusing the two male audience members next to him that always struck me as odd when they had actually blokes next to the presenters yeah he's not patting any of their arses or looking

at their crotches but by the sounds of it yeah he needs to go and wipe his cock on the curtains or something but I'm interested to know what Pricey thinks of the Sham 69 tune because I know that in sets that he's played DJing that you play Herschel Boys don't you and

I'm wondering just in general. Hersham Boys is a fantastic record I did buy that when it came out. I've got to admit I wasn't familiar with this song Questions and Answers I don't think I'd even heard it until now watching this episode it obviously left that little impression. Formed in

Hersham in 1976 from the ashes of Jimmy and the ferrets a band which used to mime to base city roller songs and the infamous walton hop where jonathan king used to knock about sham 69 took the name from an eroded piece of graffiti commemorating walton and hersham fc's 1968-1969 season sham 69 made their chart debut with angels with dirty faces in may of 1978 they had two top 10 hits in late 78 this is the first single from the new lp the adventures of the hershen boys and the follow-up to oreo pare and it's up from number 33 to number 20 i think it tells you everything you need to know about sham 69 that that they come not from the Vortex or the 100 Club or the Roxy,

but from the Walton Hop. They are very much kind of home counties punk rather than gritty urban punk. And, yeah, I loved Hirschen Boys. That was a fantastic single. It's kind of... It's sort of like Slade meets the Charlie Daniels Band, this kind of tub-thumping's sort of like slade meets the charlie daniels band this kind of um tub thumping

um you know punk rock but with a hillbilly breakdown in the middle um but this song um no memory of it at all uh it's it's barely even uh it's certainly not uh made any uh impression on my consciousness but it's it's a very slight tune isn't't it? And he's kind of getting angry about this and that and sort of giving some message of self-determination and rebellion against what they want you to do. In a way, it's just a slightly more adolescent version of what your lank-haired fella in Supertrap was singing about. Exactly.

At the time, of course, Sham69, they were attracting a lot of attention from the National Front and skinheads and stuff like that. And you get the feeling off the band that they absolutely love being on top of the pop, simply because they're going to be playing safe in the knowledge that DLT isn't going to try and jump on stage and start a fight, or Kid Jensen's not going to start giving Nazi salutes or anything like that. going to start giving nazi salutes or anything like that so uh you see i mean and the other thing that uh that i have to say is isn't jimmy percy the chris needham of punk he is you know what i've got written down here lyrics worthy of needham piggins vintage because the lyrics truly are fucking they're awful it's like the fucking Levellers or something

it reminded me of that Only Way of Life or whatever that song was that self determination thing that Pricey was on about they clearly enjoy being on Top of the Pops

I don't think the audience dig them that much there's like a dozen people stood there looking pretty bored and yeah of course the bit when he falls on his arse

is just great well let's go through that during the middle eight Jimmy Percy throws a towel into the crowd, attempts to click his heels together, fails, walks down some steps with a mic stand like Mick Jagger, skids on his arse, stands there, stands up, laughs, then gets fucked off,

sits between the Marshall stacks at the back, goes back to the mic, goes into the splits and fails to get up in time to mime the chorus i think what's wonderful about the moment when he falls on his ass isn't that he just falls on his ass it's like you say it's the bit when he sits down um in front of the and his shame in a sense i know he's he kind of he feels slightly embarrassed and his embarrassment is so tangible it actually makes the makes the video go into slow motion. I don't know if that was intentional or not.

In a way, that's as punk rock as any of the Legs & Co choreography to Silly Thing. If only Flick Colby had seen Jimmy Percy's performance of this first and said, right, girls, this is what you've got to do. And to me, this was punk. I mean, I remember being at junior school and we loved Sham69 because that was what we thought punk was, was

Sham69, which was basically just... Being a lout, being a lout, basically. That was it. It's not rebellion as such, just kind of obnoxiousness and just being a bit kind of snotty and loutish and oikish. That's what punk was. And that's why it attracted that kind of snotty and loutish and oikish that's what punk was and that's why it attracted that kind of far-right following which apparently sham 69 wanted nothing

to do with but jimmy percy he goes through it with gusto he's got he's not a stage school kid i know but he's got that kind of thing to him um and and it's interesting what he said about the video effects and like you say they do seem to only have a couple of effects available. The mosaic effect and, like you say, the slow-mo one. I think this had a heavy influence on Asian wedding videos of the 1980s, which all seem to incorporate both those effects quite heavily. Was there also a lot of slipping on your arse in Asian wedding videos? Yeah, a fair amount.

So, question and answers would drop two places the following week, but nudged itself up to number 18 afterwards, its highest position. The follow-up, Hersham Boys, was a number six hit in August of that year, but the next two singles, Flopped and Sham, split up in 1979.

Yes! Questions and answers from Sham69. You want to pull it down a bit? OK. Candidates. Peter Powell delivers his decision on Sham 69 Ace Peter Powell does a thing He makes that kind of ring with his forefinger and thumb And he says Ace

The A-OK Because that's his idea of cool He's like Ace I love that Yeah, like Jazz Club Yeah, yeah, yeah Because he's the kind of young, cool, trendy Radio 1 DJ. You know, he's not like these old dinosaurs like DLT and Savile.

He's the kind of groovy young thing who will say, Ace! And introduces Candidate. Formed in London in 1976 by members of 70% Proof and Hot Wax, who later became High Tension, Candidate was signed to rack records by mickey most at the end of 1977 their debut single failed to make the top 10 but this the follow-up didn't and it's jumped 10 places to number 22 clear i thought they're basically a shit tavaris

you know i'm sorry this wasn't working for me at all this goes back to what we're saying about light of the world at the start of british people trying to do soul and funk music and just not quite getting it right not doing as well as the americans and i really want them to you know i i hate the idea that you know it's all got to be about the authentic rootsy stuff from the states i hate the idea that we can't manufacture our own but this this record, apart from anything else, 1979, it just seems so out of date. It's like they haven't got the memo that the 80s are nearly here. They've still got the kind of high-waisted trousers and open-neck shirts. Yes.

And, you know, I don't know. It just seems like a really pale photocopy of something like Always and Forever or, you know, a decent stylistics ballad. Yeah. In a sense, exactly like light of the world it is quite dated actually uh even in 79 it sounds like a sort of late 60s early 70s temptations or delphonics track really um the strings and everything else what's surprising about it is the backing singers look magnificent in a kind of milly-vanilly way um but then the geek kind of takes over um he's got a lovely voice but perhaps i'm masturbatorily fixated today but

because he's got one hand on the keyboard the way the camera pans back it does look like he's tugging himself off and and and they the the the studio directors clearly know the audience can't do anything to a song like that because the sham 69 fans aren't going to suddenly start slow dancing to it so it becomes like an abstract bit of collage in a sense there's just that there's those there's those bits where the the singer's face and the backing singer's face are kind of melded together. Very Asian wedding video. But also, there's a thing, though. There's something about the way that spotlights look on Top of the Pops.

They shine with kind of four prongs to them in a way. And that is the look of disco. That is the look of Top of the Pops at that time. And this performance, it's barely a performance in a sense. It's kind of like this strange abstract collage of those spotlights, the kind of mixed up faces. And this, I have to agree, a slightly dreary, dreary song. And isn't it Phil Fearon who was later in galaxy and did uh dancing tight which i hated

i hated that song i hate i hated galaxy as well so yeah this is getting a thumbs down for me sorry so the follow-up girls girls girls got only as far as number 34 and they split up in 1980 however guitarist phil fearon had a string of hits throughout the 80s as Phil Fearon and Galaxy. Oh, that's so good. That's Candidates and I Don't Want To Lose You. I'm not going to lose you, or you, or you. And we are going to have Sister Sledge and he's the greatest dancer at number six Peter Powell out-reduces this suddenly he's got a hat

right and he's and he's he's turning to these girls next. He's going, I don't want to lose you. Or you. Or you. How creepy can he be? Is he going to have some kind of foursome with them?

What's going on? Back in the green room. It makes you wonder what Jimmy Percy actually slipped on in the previous song. Yeah. But Peter Powell has found a hat from somewhere and is surrounded by audience members, giving us a chance to discuss the fashions of 1979. Shit, aren't they? They all look like trainee geography teachers.

You know, usually on Top of Pops you can see people who are there just yeah one band or something um who look clearly like fans of one band you can't really see that in anyone there and it is it's jumpers slasinger jumpers with a shirt and just extremely dull clothes i mean they are young people i guess but they're young in the same sense that the cast of Please Sir were young you know they're dressed in particular they're dressed just like their parents would I guess so anyway Peter Powell

introduces a video of Sister Sledge spawned by a Broadway tap dancer father and an actress mother the Sledge daughters Joni, Kim, Katha and Debe were trained by their opera singer auntie as church singers until they started a pop way tap dancer father and an actress mother the sledge daughters joni kim katharine deborah were trained by their opera singer auntie as church singers until they started a pop career in 1971 and signed with atlantic they made the uk top 20 in 1975 with mama never told me but were at a crossroads in the late 70s when they were linked up with nile rogers and bernard edwards of chic

who produced their l We Are Family. This is the first single of the album, which was originally lined up as Chic's next single, but when the record label wanted a more overt disco tune for the group, it was given over to Sister Sledge and tacked onto the LP at the last minute. This is a touch of class, isn't it? This is just a cut above anything else on the whole episode. It's been a bit shit and tawdry uh so far and suddenly you've got something that's just come from the future or from outer space or from you know some

incredibly glamorous world that's uh never mind outside the uk it's just outside the realm of of most pop just just the sound of it it's absolutely sublime um and i i love i love the story uh behind sister sledge that um and this this is kind of uh anecdotal but it's also backed up in niall rogers's uh amazing autobiography le freak basically what happened was that they were a failing pop group on the atlantic roster um they they'd had a couple of records that hadn't really done anything. And it was almost a sort of Henry Higgins, My Fair Lady situation, where basically Jerry Greenberg of Atlantic and Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards just had this kind of conversation about it. And originally, the Sheik guys were offered anyone they wanted.

They said, you can produce the Rolling Stones, even Bette Midler, just anyone on the roster. and that didn't interest them they wanted somebody who was a failure and it was almost this thing you know i'll wager with you sir that i can turn this this failed uh bunch of gospel singers into an international pop sensation and they went and did it and the album you mentioned the album we are family um hardly any tracks on it so you know um was it seven six seven tracks on it but it's just one it's you know probably the in terms of albums it's up with up with um rmbs day by donna summer as as you know uh for an actual suite of disco music uh one of the greatest albums uh to come to come out of of that that genre i think noel rogers actually says that out of all the records

that the Sheik organisation made, We Are Family is the best album, the one that he's the most proud of. It's just a moment, like Pricey says, it just rises above immediately as soon as it starts. It's just a cut above. And it still sounds like the future. There's a way of talking about disco in a way

that it was the 70s it's it's 30 years old but certain records particularly sheet records and sheet produced records they still sound like the future to me um they still sound like they're finding i know they're completely different but in a way like craftwork they're finding a way for human beings and technology to create something just sublime um it's just such a glorious record and their sisterliness i think is important to it it's natural and kind of unforced in this video they're not so perfectly choreographed they dance like sisters on a dance floor um and um also one thing i noticed it's one of the first tracks that i can think of or remember to feature brand names

quite heavily. I think Gucci's mentioned it, a few other things. A very, very hip-hop thing in a sense. And also Frisco. I thought, where's Frisco? What do they mean? What's Frisco? It took me ages to work out they meant San Francisco.

Well, when that song came out, I always thought it was One Night in a Disco on the outskirts of Bristol. And that was as exotic as San Francisco to me me at the time in terms of getting the lyrics wrong um i always thought that they're singing i wonder why he's the greatest dancer and i thought well you know he's probably put in the hours he's done a bit of practice but it's they're actually but if if you lip read you know with the benefit of youtube they're singing oh what wow which doesn't really make any sense oh what who says that no one says that oh well i thought it was i wonder why until yesterday when i googled the lyrics i i thought it was i wonder why he's the greatest dancer and i will

probably continue to sing that it makes a weird kind of sense more than oh what wow for me but um it's just it it's a total cut above the the rest of the show you know the other story with this song is that they nearly refused to do it yes because um they're good christian girls and uh and the lyrics go my creme de la creme please take me home and they were really uncomfortable with singing a line that implies that any member of sister sledge would be interested in a one night stand but Cathy Sledge as well I think takes the lead vocal she's just such a likeable singer there's something about

her face when she's singing this it's just so joyful and wonderful even though it's a video and they're not in the studio it's without a doubt by miles the high point of this show it is isn't it if this song had actually been by chic would there been any real difference at all no not really and you know uh if you go and see nile

rogers and chic perform live now he'll do this as part of the show and he'll do things like spacer by sheila and b devotion which i think might be the greatest record ever made this is the thing with nile rogers and chic is that they produced maybe six or seven records which, when you're hearing them, that is the best record anyone has ever made. And I don't think this is even the best Sister Slash song. I think Lost in Music, that, when you hear that, yeah, you hear Lost in Music, you are...

I'm a thinking of you kind of guy, to be honest. Really, can't argue with thinking of you that is great but for me there is this kind of other worldliness to Lost in Music which he also recaptures again with Diana Ross on Upside Down which just sounds

kind of just slightly spaced out and concussed that I really love and it does just sound like music from another realm and and and it doesn't seem possible that human beings can have made it and it doesn't seem possible that human beings can have made a better record and i think yeah like i said i think chic did six or seven of those yeah and what a shame they didn't put that effort into the into the video because the video's cheap as fuck, isn't it?

It's like, here's a rug, stand on that, here's a silhouette of a palm tree in the background, dance in front of it a bit, you know, put your arms out and sway and that. Nice costume, though. It is, but it enables you to focus, I think, on just the groove. Very true. Like Simon says, because Sheik had I Want Your Love, or Need Your Love, rather, in the charts at the time. I Want Your Love. Those records, I Want Your Love, sorry. and it's just like like simon says whether you i mean because she had i want your love i need

your love rather in the charts at the time those are records i want your love sorry and um you know upside down things like that they are records that you still kind of even with all the distance of time you step into them they're like worlds and you just want to stay there yeah um and and this is one of the you know i think one of the most sublime things to do although I would agree Lost in Music is the one for me from Sister Sledge Amazingly he's the greatest dancer dropped down one place the following week fuck people

Phyllis Stines, Heathens The follow up We Are Family would get to number 8 two months later and would be their last top 10 hit in the UK until the re-release of Lost in Music in 1984 then all them songs got re-release of Lost in Music in 1984 then all those songs got re-released and they were massive

they were all top 10 hits weren't they in 84? We're not going to talk about the song Frankie are we? No we're not I know Niall Watson's Chic very much not involved in that one Hey take me anytime

Sister Sledge at number 6 And who's the best dancer? It could be you Right time to stop posing And think about this week's number 1 Peter Powell tells Sister Sledge that they can have a piece of him any time and introduces the new number what he does, he implies that doesn't he

and he introduces the new number one which is Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel, formerly half of Simon and Garfunkel, Art Garfunkel spent the first few years of his solo career as an actor and a maths teacher not releasing his first solo LP until 1973

his only previous chart action in the UK was a number one hit in 1975 with the cover of I Only Have Eyes For You and the song Bright Eyes was written by Mike Batt for the film Watership Down the grimmest children's film ever and it's about a rabbit that's slowly dying after being shot

by a farmer. Get down kids! And it's moved up to number one from number three, and has knocked glory again as I Will Survive off the top spot. First of all, Watership Down, have we seen it? Did we see it as kids? Do you know what? I didn't

see it at the time i think all i saw was the excerpt of it you get in this video yeah but being the kind of poncy snobby brain box kid that i was i'd read the book instead um so yeah yeah and also i'd read richard adams other book the plague dogs which is absolutely brilliant by by the way, which is about two dogs who escape from an animal testing laboratory, probably setting up for my later life veganism. But, yeah, it's so incredibly bleak, this, isn't it? I remember Manic Street Preachers actually did a cover version of this during the last three gigs with Richie edwards at the astoria um in

london in uh 94 uh when everything seemed to be hurtling towards some kind of apocalypse for them anyway and then in the kind of um acoustic break where james does his bit he sang this and it was actually really beautiful but um it does just have this sense of impending doom hanging over the whole thing yes i wonder how many people who bought the record were aware of that though because it does just have this sense of impending doom hanging over the whole thing. I wonder how many people who bought the record were aware of that though because it's just a sort of if you take on its own merits it's quite a nice sweet sort of acoustic ballad

isn't it and maybe when it was on the radio people didn't realise it's about the rabbit-y angel of death It's a lovely tune, that's the thing but I think the darkness of it only really became apparent to me when i saw james dean bradfield do it at those story shows that um simon's referring to um it's interesting that they don't show much of it on this episode do they it's like a minute and then it disappears almost as if it's too bleak for the audience to yeah almost as if it's too bleak for the audience to cope with

perhaps I didn't see Watership Down when it came out in 79 I remember being taken to the cinema to see it but I think unaccountably it was sold out so I ended up being taken by the person who was babysitting me at the time to see Kramer vs Kramer

instead and I was 6 years old man so yeah you're not allowed to see rabbit death but you can see divorce so that's fine yeah yeah child injury in playgrounds it's weird isn't it because one of the reasons that's always given for um giving children pet animals is to um accustom them to the idea of death you know the idea that sooner or later one of your grandparents is probably going to die so if you have a guinea pig or something that's probably only got a three-year lifespan then it just sort of eases you into the idea of death so in a way

i suppose there's something quite kind of benevolent and uh it's kind of public spirited about this whole enterprise and you know uh you know uh sort of you know confronting children with with the brutality of the natural world but obviously i don't have kids myself neil i know you have are there any examples now or in the last few years of um films which uh are as bleak or you know aimed at children that there is kind of not as I wouldn't say. There are moments in Pixar movies where, I don't know, death is confronted,

but you know they're going to be alright, whereas I don't think that was always the case with Watership Down, and some of the lines in this song that, of course, you don't notice when you're a kid, but,

you know, following the river of death downstream, and things like that, incredibly bleak. One wonders, kind of, what the fuck is going on with mike bat who can go from the wambles to to crafting songs like this it's a great song and and this isn't a

plug or anything but my band the band that i'm in covered this song so consequently i had to learn the words and learn everything and it's beautifully made and the words are really really suggestive it doesn't have to be about a load of rabbits it can just be about i don't know anybody facing a sort of sense of mortality and very very bleak but yeah i was kind of really interested by the fact they cut it they basically cut it if it had been at number one for like 10 weeks or something fair enough as they started doing brian adams but that had only just got to number one, so, exactly, yeah,

I'm wondering why that, why that happened really, well I'm trying to think about, what else was in the video, that would make them cut it, I mean there's the one, where the rabbit's kind of like, soaring into the air in this arc,

and the goodies, took the piss out of it, by shooting it, I can't remember there being anything, particularly grim, that isn't already there you know what though later in this same year

in fact the final, I think it's the final number one single of the 70s there's an equally harrowing animated video, Pink Floyd another brick in the wall with people being fed into a kind of sausage machine pulverized and all that kind of stuff

and that was shown, I and all that kind of stuff um and that that was shown i remember that that left quite an impression so yeah i mean i don't know if there's anything involving uh you know jcb diggers and rabbits that's more traumatic than that i don't know i think i guess i mean you know very little kids watch top of the pops like little little kids yeah so i'm guessing they just thought well the rabbits might grab them but we don't want to have them to hang around and actually hear the deep dark tale of bereavement that kind of is actually going on but it's a somewhat inexplicable decision given that yeah it was only just number one it's not a song i necessarily want to hear again never but it's nice to know it's there

and there had been a tradition of big chart records in the 70s about death. You know, you've got things like Bobby Goldsbrough's Sunny, haven't you? And you've got Hot Chocolate Emma. I'm sure you can name some. Seasons in the Sun. Seasons in the Sun, yeah. So, you know, in a way, it wasn't breaking new ground in singing about death and getting to the higher reaches of the chart. So it's kind of surprising.

Maybe it is just that combination of subject matter and the fact that it's a cartoon um if it was just art singing it in the studio you know if he's there sat on a high stool with his uh his kitchen his breakfast bar with his gun fingers in his mouth you know maybe that would be fine yes but it's something about you know it's something about the kind of you know you've got you've got hector's house or whatever and and then you've got a song about death so yeah maybe the juxtaposition was the issue i've got a feeling that later later on he did appear once he became a big hit and stayed at number one which i'm guessing it did he did appear at the top of the pop studio but yeah the cartoon version was just too much for kids didn't Mike Batt and

Art Garfunkel have the same hair didn't they have that kind of balding ginger afro yeah maybe they bonded on that yeah and of course there was that lad on Tizwas who sang Bright Eyes no I don't know this go on

oh well it'll be on the video playlist so Bright Eyes would spend No, I don't know this. Go on. Oh, well, it'll be on the video playlist. So, Bright Eyes would spend six weeks at number one, eventually being knocked off by Blondie's Sunday Girl. It became the biggest-selling single in the UK in 1979, selling over 1.2 million copies. If it had never been released, Call for Cats by Squeeze, Some Girls by Race Air, and Pop Music by M would have been number ones.

Bloody Garfunkel. Pop Music's the elephant in the room on this episode, isn't it? Absolutely, yeah. Robin Scott from M lives in Brighton now, where I live. Does he now? Yeah, and he runs a business. from M lives in Brighton now where I live and does he know yeah and he runs a business and what he does um he advises bands I'm guessing people like Coldplay on how to tour with zero carbon footprint so um I don't know good for him he's traded up his sort of one hit wonder status into some kind of

long-lasting career it's brand new it's number one it's Saga Foggle and Bright Eyes from the movie Watership Down lasting career. It's brand new, it's number one, it's Sarkar, Falkland and Bright Eyes from the movie Watership Down. And that is it from us all here at Top of the Pops. It's Wings. Goodnight tonight! Bye bye! After Mull of Kintyre became the biggest-selling single ever in the UK the year before, and with a little luck got to number five, the two single releases from the next LP, London Town, both failed to make the top 40. This is Wings' first single in 1979 and was originally lined up as the first single from the next LP Back to the Egg but it was held off the album it's this week's highest new entry number 25 I think what's going on here is if you look

at Macca in the 70s he's basically trying to illustrate to the world that he can turn his hand to anything so yes you've got the kind of hard rock nonsense of hell and wheels you've got even a bit of reggae in the um that break in the middle of uh live and let die uh and uh and then and then you've got um you know celtic folk with muller kintyre and here he is going disco with good night tonight which um it's very kind of flimsy end of the pier cabaret disco isn't it he's not really committed to it he seems to it's very and it's very english it's very much like you know tina charles i love to love that that that that end of disco or kelly marie it's

it's got no bottom end to it at all has it which is weird for a bassist you think he put a bit of that in there but uh but no i think he's just trying to prove that that he can do whatever he wants you can do it right now please simon i swear down that video uh you can do it right now please i can't think of anything else now when i encounter mccartney's music we should explain to listeners and if anybody's listening they don't know what we're talking about it's kind of inconceivable you would have missed it, but just in case, just search for Meat Free Mondays, McCartney, you can do it right now, please. It will change your life and you'll see what we mean. Or go on our video playlist,

the link to which will be on the website and on Facebook and on Twitter. Everything we talk about here, every stupid reference we make, we pull it into a video playlist. So, you know so if you're American or if you're young or if you just want to wallow through musical

ramble online that's where you go, we explain everything to you With regards to the McCartney track I think John Lennon was interviewed about it sort of, yeah and he said he didn't like it but he liked the bass line and that was about

it i think um it was it was massively underwhelming to me and and you know the flamenco guitar if you got the flamenco guitars out that's smacks of desperation to me midway through this song so yeah i think simon's right there's there's a slight air with all of mccartney's music of this period although there's the odd track here and there like Temporary Secretary that I like but he's kind he is just showing that he's a jack of ultras and that he can do anything and he can turn his hand to, he can turn his hand to New Wave

he can turn his hand to Disco the odd little gem in there coming up and things like that but this one didn't really float my boat. So the song jumped six places to number 19 and would eventually get to number five uh good night tonight was kept off back to the egg which was released the following month and universally panned timothy white called it the sorriest grab bag of dreck in recent memory

in rolling stone the follow-up single old siam sir only got as far as number 35 in June of this year and was the last Wings single to make the top 40 but Paul McCartney effectively went solo in December with Wonderful Christmas Time And that is your lot What's on TV afterwards then? Well BBC One follows up with Blankety Blank with Bill Tider, Molly Sugden and Paul Daniels. And then there's a repeat of Porridge in tribute to Richard Beckinsale, who died last month.

BBC Two's got an opera on all night. And ITV has Leave It To Charlie, a sitcom I know absolutely nothing about. And a miniseries version of From Here To Eternity. So, yeah, not really anything worth stopping in for you know i think it's it's off out to the shopping precinct and throwing chips at your mates in the bus shelter i was probably sent early to bed and being hit by teachers because that was my life at the time right did you simon did you make friends at that school i mean presumably you did yeah i did i'll tell you what right uh i came from from South Wales and this boarding school in Sussex was it

was the first place I'd met black kids first place I'd met Asian kids or anyone who wasn't white and Welsh and there was this amazing feeling of camaraderie amongst us all because wherever we were from we were being subjected to the same brutality so you did have that kind of bonding thing um but yeah i mean it made pop feel like contraband it really did um i had to hide my radio cassette recorder um at the back of my locker and uh you know and and you you you weren't allowed to uh have a record player or play records or anything like that so uh pop music was this kind of currency this kind of it's like soviet union it was like the soviet union did you did you spend all your money on elton john tapes and flares yeah i did and uh yeah i i had to have uh those uh those x-ray sheets

with uh singles by the tourists or uh i don't know Boney M carved into them at the time you were in that boarding school I was at a private school same one that Gerry Dammers went to oh fucking hell man I'm surrounded by toffs, because you really are posh Philip Larkin went there and all

I can vouch for the fact that the sort of teaching staff of these schools, we just caught the first sort of trace of your hip English teachers coming in. But most of them were just, they were like ex-military sergeants and stuff like this. And they were just sadists, brutal sadists and pederasts to a man, really. So I can back that up. But it's kind of, it it's odd your memories of 79 because

like i say i was six at the time my wife's memories who's six years older than me completely different the specials were going on in coventry you know i mean and two-tone was was bubbling under i did not have a fucking clue about any of that and didn't until the specials got in the charts but it this whole episode has this feeling of something impending something's coming yeah um and this is quite for me i know simon stuck up for the punk stuff on on this show but for me it does feel like those movements in a sense have blown themselves out and there's sort of clear and and the rest of pop is sort of made by very old people and there was there was just

waiting for for a lot of young bands to come through as that as they did uh later on that year like simon says with gary newman and and what followed absolutely it's all about to change i mean even a month after this episode uh margaret thatcher would be elected prime minister and it even at the time i didn't really get the significance of that I knew that we were Labour people I knew Labour was our team I knew it was bad that our team had lost but I remember watching the news and you know it was Britain's first woman Prime Minister has been elected and me saying to my dad well that's good isn't it and he's going no no son it's not it's really not because you know he because because he he knew he

knew what was coming um but then you know for better or worse you had uh gary newman um in in july and then uh two-tone releasing its first singles later in the year and i think that set up the whole decade then you've got this oppositional nature of the 80s of alternative pop culture, even though Newman was famously a bit of a Tory in those days, set against your actual establishment and conservative government. And it needed that. It needed that sense of conflict to kind of galvanise and to fire up the decade that was to come. But at this point, when we're watching this episode, it's a bit of a phony war, isn't it? Nothing's really happened yet.

There still may be a sense that politically Labour can hang on and that the 70s can drag on in a kind of shuffling way for a few more months, because we didn't know of the apocalypse around the corner. So what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow?

If we're allowed to I think I'd probably be talking about Jimmy Percy falling on his arse Did you see that? Yes, that was the... I think we'd all be standing around, we'd get a gang of about five or six of us and we'd all be singing

Remember Then by Shawaddy You're probably right yeah and the biggest kids who's already got pubic hair would have to do the bass notes you know yeah yeah and we'd all have um we'd all have our collars of our blazers turned up to look like drape suits definitely oh definitely yeah and you'd be doing that dancing where you'd kind of like drop on the floor as if you're going to do some press ups and then kind of lean backwards on one hand and then you know get all dog shit on your hand and down

your trousers because you weren't looking where you were going happy days literally yes and what are we buying on Saturday with my current head Sister Sledge by Miles and I think Back Ben as well it's just such a great great record I genuinely did buy Lost in Music by Sister Sledge by Miles and I think Back Ben as well it's just such a great great record I genuinely did buy

Lost in Music by Sister Sledge so I guess I ought to say that but I've got a feeling that if I had a spare quid in my pocket and I walked into a record shop without wanting to fake it and say oh I was Mr Cool I would have bought something really uncool

it would be either Shawazi Wazi or Racy maybe both. So there we go, the book is closed on another episode of Chart Music, is there anything anybody wants to plug before we sign off? I think Neil ought to mention his band Neil goes I'm not plugging it and he says he's in a band that does Bright Eyes

he didn't even say what they're called I'm in a band called The Moonbears our last album was called Let's Get Nice with the Moonbears I would obviously say it's really good but even pop critics that I respect such as Chris Roberts, Taylor Parks and Simon Reynolds have liked it as well

so go to Bandcamp Moonbears, Let's Get Nice I think you'll enjoy it those aren't your words, those are the words of Top Gear magazine so let's go through another run of the fucking all this shit

you have to do when you do a podcast www.chartmusic.co.uk facebook.com chartmusicpodcast twitter chartmusic t-o-t-p

get yourself on them and dip your head into more chart music action that's pretty much it for this episode I'd like to thank Simon Price you're welcome and I'd like to welcome Simon Kulkarni to the chart music family and hope that

he comes back and does more of this kind of shit can I be called Simon Kulkarni again Simon Kulkarni what a fucking knobhead I am I hope I'm allowed back out because I've really really enjoyed it so thanks for having us you've passed the test

you've necked with everybody else in the chart music gang you're one of us now so anyway that is it for this episode of chart music hopefully we'll be doing these a lot more often hopefully the next one will be coming out in two weeks time sit tight for further information.

Thank you very much. My name's Al Needham. Brass really turns me on. Chart music. Hello, Neil. This is your sister. Remember this? Disco lights, disco lights, dun-la-la-la-la Disco lights, disco lights, dun-la-la-la-la

Disco lights, disco lights, dun-la-la-la-la AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadad Ah!