Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #54 (Part 1): 25.5.1978 – Nineteen Seventy Gibb

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

Team ATVLand – Al Needham, Taylor Parkes and Neil Kulkarni – reassemble for a catch-up about posture correctors, run down the brand new Chart Music Top Ten, leaf through that week’s NME, and gird each other’s loins in preparation for a massively intense burrow into a Top Of The Pops from the very the heart of 1978… Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language,

which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart music. Chart music. Hey! Up you pop-crazy youngsters and welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music,

the podcast that gets its hands right down the back of the settee on a random episode of top of the pops i'm your host al needham and by my side today are neil kulkarni hello there and taylor pox hello the tripod that is team atv land has been reassembled once more and i just know that the dam of pop and interesting things that have happened to them is about to break well you know evelyn war famously said the second world war wasn't bad provided you were with nice people and the main problem i've found with this half-arsed 21st century attempt at wartime is that you're not with nice people no you're with yourself so because as a former music

journalist all i ever do is jump on bandwagons uh i went and bought myself a posture corrector so i could be just like you so now as if the hours of covid emptiness weren't miserable enough i'm now spending several of them every day in mild discomfort with my thumbs going numb um oh we're gonna leave such nice straight corpses aren't we? In our backs when the layers out in the square. Soon I will not look slouchy anymore to the zero people who can see me. They're good though. What brand did you get? Old Crusher.

I got one called The Grim Inevitability of Death. I don't know why they chose that name.'s depressing isn't it yeah makes makes me think of the grim inevitability of death well you know i've lost mine i don't know how you manage to lose one of them i know i don't i think i flung it off in disgust and anguish or something and i just cannot find it i don't know where it is have you checked between your shoulder blades it's definitely not there maybe the cat's had it i don't know what the cat had it for i don't know but i've lost mine that's my excuse anyway you know when people lose their glasses and they go oh they're on my head you have checked right i have has your daughter not nicked it and put some acdc patches on it well no my

older daughter might have catapulted it away from the house in sheer disgust oh man i thought like when i take my posture corrector off because i obviously want to put it somewhere but i don't want to put it somewhere visible in a sense just in case someone visits i throw it behind chairs and i've checked all the chairs in the house and it's just i know i feel really bad about it actually although to be fair it's already done a fair fair amount of good work to be honest with you excellent just takes a couple of weeks and you're standing up straight wow i haven't worn mine since we last recorded and talked about it i can see it now i can look over my shoulder and see it now hanging off the key on the wardrobe.

Like a conquest from a long-forgotten sex life. I put mine on and I hear this creaking noise like a cartoon door opening. No. Christ. I haven't had a haircut since February, right? So it's pretty crazy. The only thing I can do at this point is just slick it all back so that it looks neat but that leaves big curved fronds poking out on either side at the

back of my neck it's a look i call monty python series three um which is appropriate enough for someone who's only current activity is arguing in their spare time. And I know I can't complain, being the most hestitute male member of the chart music squadron, but it's no fun walking around looking like a tired dog. As well as feeling like a dead one. Don't you have like cockney street barbers

yeah with um safety razors they also sell pies i'm not going there actually taylor your use of the word her suit reminds me of the woman that i knew who thought that her suit meant nevertheless and used it in business correspondence for years always tickled me that did you take that government quiz to to see what you should retrain as it's very useful i did it and uh i thought very carefully about all of the questions and in the end it suggested that i should be a stunt performer um now i would have told them that i'm in my late 40s i've got an anxiety disorder and i have no experience of stunt work but they didn't ask canon boy they didn't ask but you know

but then again i keep myself in shape, and I've got nothing to live for, so what the hell? I might look into it. I might fall from a tall building. I might roll a brand-new car, because I'm the unknown stuntman who made Redford such a star. It's not such a terrible life, is it, really? No.

Even though when you wind up in the hay, it's only hay, a hay hay. That's not ideal. But otherwise, I mean, kids need to understand this, right? Even though writing, acting, filmmaking is no longer financially viable, the world will always need stuntmen. Yeah. That's what my old headmaster used to say to me. If you can grab your chest like you've been shot,

fall forwards off a roof and flip over in the air so you land on your back in a pile of cardboard boxes, you'll never go hungry. I did that. I got bingo cola and crew PA, which I've already fucking done. It's like no government. You can't take me back into that life. Bastards.

That is eerie though, isn't it? Yeah. They know you. I didn't get male stripper though. I was upset by that. Even their shitty algorithms know I can't do that anymore. Expect to earn a living out of it.

Yeah. The other thing I've been doing, I've been on the trail of a bloke called james henderson uh a man with a grudge he's a youtube commenter whose work appears underneath many youtube videos relating to the program stepped on son not the actual episodes of stepped on son as far as i can see, but videos relating to it. And more specifically, the cast. For instance, on a video titled Harry H. Corbett Interview Thames Television 1975, YouTube member Eric G. has left a message which says,

What a wonderfully honest and extremely talented actor. To which James Henderson has replied, He was a hammy over-actor. No. So glad he smoked himself to death so early. I wish he'd smoked 120 cigarettes a day instead of only 60 a day. Fucking hell. That's fair enough. Then on the video, Wilfred Bramble pays tribute to Harry H. Corbett,

brackets, incomplete. andrew hubbard comments they couldn't have casted it better harry and wilfred were made for the roles cue james henderson who replies corbett looked way too old to be the son he looked 45 in the first episode uh so then michael jarrett says Steptoe and Son was and always will be the funniest British comedy out there. To which James Henderson says, the series was just racist crap. So he's got a social conscience,

as can also be seen from another of his many comments on this particular video, where he makes an evidence-free allegation that Wilfred Bramble sexually abused children in Jersey. So we turn to Harry H. Corbett rare interview 1972, where the possibly pseudonymous Donald Trump remarks, never realised how good looking the guy actually was. At which point James Henderson swings through the picture window on a vine and says

he was an ugly bold twat who smoked 60 cigarettes a day and on it goes the video uh steptoe and son harry h corbett's daughter on the one show bbc jay rob offers harry h corbett is the most underrated actor ever. God bless you, Harry. In response, Hendo, he was just a talentless, overacting ham. But this video is where it all comes to a head, when the user Forever Red pumps up his chest, pulls himself up to his full height and says, his voice no doubt quivering with emotion, James Henderson. For over eight years as james henderson and the alias harold jameson you have done nothing but make slanderous about harry h corbett

a solicitor is putting together everything you have said enough is enough it's a heartfelt speech and a completely hollow threat so this is james henderson right a man with a legitimate beef you might think if sort of overzealous sitting at home in the dark watching old walker snaps adverts while clenching and unclenching his fist but i love him right and the one thing i noticed though is that his current youtube account has only existed for a year perhaps he was indeed cowed by the legal threats of forever red but he's back under the same name he has 11 subscribers despite uploading no videos and he does appear to have are you one of them okay he's now got 12 subscribers but he's got over this kind of weird negative obsession with the the gentle giant of british comedy uh and he's

found a new bet noir his three most recent comments are on the video margaret thatcher the miners strike british economy tvi 1985 says, I'm glad we closed the coal mines. And on the video, Arthur Scargill interview, Miner's Strike TVI 1984, he offers, so glad we closed the coal mine. And on the video, Arthur Scargill, Miners, Thames Television 1974, just one week ago, he contributes the comment i am glad we closed the coal mine and unfortunately the only bite he's had so far is from andrew hurst who quips not if you wear a minor ah touche jesus so yeah all i can say is look out bernard breslau or clive jenkins or possibly i don't know uh

brian jacks yeah you you may be next and you don't want that so what else you've been up to neil well what have i been up to i've been um i've been all dramatic and stuff and dynamic um i quit a job and i got promoted in another job i feel like ali mcbeal or something um you know like a young sexually adventurous female lawyer moving and shaking my way to the top with needy brookhouse soundtrack it's all been happening for me yeah but before you say anything ali mcbeal i remember a conversation i had in a pub with one of my mates about ali mcbeal and i never watched it and he had to because he had a girlfriend and I said well what's it about then and he just said it's about this woman who hallucinates because she never has a proper tea

but anyway yeah I mean the only difference really between me and her is is yeah her life is all lattes and biscottis and mine is just tea and blue ribbons. But in a similar way, I'm being very dynamic at the moment in a way that ill behoves me, to be honest with you. I quit a job for the first time in my life, which I've never done before. I took a principled stand and quit a job, but it was so rushed. I didn't kind of get to do all the things you know that you rehearse in your mind when you daydream about those moments you know sticking

your v's up at everyone that you want to stick your v's apart and playing raspberries and leaving it but god it felt good i left a hateful job fundamentally that was really bringing me down and i immediately felt the mental and physical benefit um after doing it but but now i'm teaching more at uni really and i'm in one of those curious sort of circular moments of serendipity i find myself teaching like a module authored by um everett true my old boss which is really quite strange but it's a strange module because i have to moderate debates which i've never done um in a classroom before what you like trisha well pretty much and i'm not i'm not good at it i'm really not good at it because i you know i keep just sticking my massive oar in as you can imagine do you tell people you

that you they're not stepping up to the mark or are you more of a graham sort well well i i can't do it. I mean, you know, suffice to say, my pedagogic style, if we're talking in teacher jargonese, is not Socratic. It's dictatorial. I kind of just want them to accept my opinions. But luckily, the subject… Conform, conform.

I like Nicky Campbell. Yes. I suppose I'm a bit like Anna Subra used to be, like, on Central Weekend. But the subjects have kind of varied from those that are interesting to the kids, i.e. stuff about TikTok, which I have no idea about whatsoever, to some topics that kind of twist all our minds up. Like, you know, can music be objectively bad? I think we've proved that many a time enough.

The one that kind of wound me up the most is one that I actually suggested. I suggested the topic, there has never been a better time to be a music fan. And this wasn't like mindful of COVID or anything. I was just talking in general, you know, it's better to be a music fan now. And I was just massively disappointed to see that many of the young seemed to be laboring under the misapprehension that things were better back in the day. I've tried my hardest to disabuse them of this notion. But they love, you know, our era, the 70s and 80s.

They love it. I've told them I was there and it was shit. But they're outraged by that kind of stuff. The collective gasps of outrage you get when you say to a bunch of kids that, I don't know, just a simple truth like Oasis is shit or something. Yeah. It's ridiculous how outraged they are. It shows what Stranglehold, the kind of John Harris-type cunts,

have over the discourse, I guess. They've really enjoyed the debates of the kids. I found it massively, massively frustrating because I just want to stick my oar in in a big way. So, yeah, new challenges at work, let's put it that way. massively massively frustrating because i just want to stick my oar in um in a big way so yeah new new challenges at work let's put it that way taylor is this the best time to be a music fan come on let's do neil's debate right now it's probably the best time to be a music fan in your 40s yes because well look it's like david stubbs always used to have this argument that this

whatever the year is this year is always the best year to be a music fan because all the music that's ever existed still exists and some more yes which is you know fairly convincing but i think that does apply more when your experience of music is at home rather than if you actually want to engage physically in terms of your life, you know, doing stuff. I don't know if that's true. I don't know, because to me, from where I stand, it looks like modern engagement with music is just paying £250 to stand amongst a forest of raised iPhones. But I mean, it probably isn't just that.

You know what I'm saying? No, no. In the same way that if I was this age in the 70s I'd be like who wants to go and just get gobbed on you know I mean yeah there's a bit more to it than that I don't know maybe there's a bit more to it than that yeah well for me from a young age being a music fan wasn't really about going to gigs or feeling like you belong it was about being in your bedroom listening to music so there's never been a better time to be in your bedroom listening to music because there's more of it and you can

get more of it so it's simple for me what what um aggravated me about the kids responses was what they were appealing to in the past they they thought you know old music was more authentic more soulful all of these things and i i bitterly resist that notion proper music played on proper instruments well quite quite i'm gonna have some fucking arguments for these kids in the coming all of these things and I bitterly resist that notion. Proper music played on proper instruments. Well, quite. I'm going to have some fucking arguments for these kids in the coming years, I really am. For someone of my age, it's absolutely brilliant being a music fan because it's all the stuff that I've always liked throughout my life

but more of it. You know, I can see gigs and television performances by bands that I fucking love that I'd never get the chance to see before and nowadays what what have kids got what's you know when when some poor bastards like 20 years from now talk about the music of 2020 or cunty 20 as i like to call it what they're going to talk about oh there was these two women talking about how they had a fanny that was dripping like a broken freezer that's it you know am i saying that musicians of today are shit compared to ones in the past no

of course not there must be loads of them but i'm not hearing them i'm not able to hear them i'm always fighting against my uh first impression like because i do listen to a lot of modern music and i'm always thinking there's a lot of good music around but there's not very much great music around and first of all i'd have to tell myself that's probably wrong because i'm looking at it through a filter of my own age and cynicism and secondly it's just a weird way of looking at it anyway like who cares you've got a point because you you look at pop music nowadays and you just think well i don't like this but then you immediately think well yeah it's not for me though isn't it these people aren't sitting around going oh

there's some bloke in nottingham who's 52 years old or that's who we've got to appeal to of course they're not thinking that but the problem is people of my generation are the only fuckers who actually want to pay decent money for music. So they better fucking start appealing to me, is all I'm saying. Like a teak box set. It doesn't really matter if we like it or not. Our ears are not tutored in perhaps some of the sounds that are coming out. But I think what's missing is the yearning.

What I remember of release dates for records i'd fucking wait for them you know and i'd be at the record shop i'd tease myself walking around the record shop knowing what i was gonna buy but just pretending i didn't know what i was gonna buy and then buying it and all of that and i think that's gone to a certain extent yeah the only advance notice you get usually is somebody saying i'm gonna drop a track tomorrow you know on their insta or whatever uh which gives you like 24 hours of yearning i guess but some fuck has probably already leaked it already so yeah that that gap in between knowing something's happening with somebody that you love and hearing it as gone maybe what they should do say i'm dropping something new tomorrow is the lyrics for it

and the credits go and print them out and then sit on a bus and look at them yeah yeah yeah i keep meaning to do a proper dive into modern hip-hop like the the popular stuff just purely because whenever i see a modern rapper it's always like some guy he's got like green hair and purple eyes and his whole face is covered in a tattoo of somebody else's face and he's called like x391 hyphen hyphen six six and he's it's like and everyone's going oh yeah he's killed 19 people he's been in jail since he was four he has to record all his albums over the phone and i'm thinking well i don't know if this is any good or not, but at least it's like what I thought pop music would be like when I was in my 40s, when I was in my 20s. Because the whole support system around pop music has gone.

You know, there's no heavyweight music press. There's no lightweight music press. There's no top of the pops. But there is a chart music. And the reason there is still a chart music is because of all those lovely Pop Craze Patreons who make our G-strings swell with glee. Let's hear all about them. In the $5 section this month, Queenie, David Gregg, Sonic Tiller, James Cooks,

Kulde, Andy Wilson, Robin Goad, Richie McCormack, Richard Evans, Joe O'Donnell, Sylvain, Guy Wilmot, Johnny Mohan, Paul H,

Emma Murray, Neil Comfort, Riley Briggs, Kelly N Wiggin, Julian Parre, and Gordie McNair thank you babies cheers guys

and in the three dollar section we have Paul Condon, Nick Warbank Rob Abbott, Occo and Liam Daly oh and Pete Boardman and Chris Adams you whacked your donation right up didn't you James Henderson.

I wonder if Sylvain is. Is David Sylvain called to the chart music flame by your excellent impersonations of him? Maybe so. Maybe so. Don't forget, all those people in the $5 section, they're listening to the full episode right now. None of this advert and having to wait a whole fucking 24 hours for the next bit bollocks.

They're getting it all now. They're cramming it into their gaping maws. Well, more like their ears, but you know what I mean. And the $3 section people, they get the full episode without adverts a couple of days later. Mmm, yum later yum yum yum and of course one other thing they get to do is to dish out the Judy Zook satin tour jackets

and tinker and tamper with the latest chalk music top ten shall we have at it chaps hit the fucking music we've said goodbye to Taylor Parks' 20 romantic moments, Dusty Shelbyville,

Pryapic Price, the posh grebs from the nice estate, and Mr. Neil Kulkarni's stomach, which means none up, four down, one non-mover, three new entries, and two re-entries. non-mover three new entries and two re-entries it's a new entry at number 10 for fine time fontaine a re-entry at number nine dave d creeper twat and cunt last week's number four is down four places to number eight, The Treacherous Death. Down one place from number six to number seven, here comes Chisel.

He's back in at number six. It's a re-entry for Jeff Sex. Into the top five, and it's no change at five For Spikeful Almond Bollock This week's number four Is last week's number one Suicide featuring Donna Into the top three

And it's a one place drop For Bomberdog A new entry at number two Simon Price's Arsehole material, which means... The highest new entry, straight in at number one, it could only be CFAX Data Blast. Oh, you know what I'm going to say now? What a fucking chart that is. What a chart.

Lost so many good things, but even more good things shoved in. Oh, yeah, and the re-entries as well, Al. That's exciting. Yeah, Jeff Sex, man, he's back. And also, CFAX Data Blast at number one. I think that's right. That reflects what a modern show we are. Yeah, it's the Newman moment, isn't it, for the chart music top ten?

So, CFAX Data Blast dates right is that a or a person it's more a sort of a loose collective yeah boffins fine time fontaine well obviously you know it's cover of you've picked a fine time to leave me lucille b side you picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille? B-side, you picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille. Spikeful Armabolic's still hanging about, man. Yeah, isn't he just? Fucking hell. Simon Price's also material. What is that?

I'm just picturing fishnets and spandex. Can't get it out of my head now. Do you reckon here comes JISM of just got that one publicity, like the Bee Gees, where it was always the same publicity shot on the top of the pop shot. They were always in the chart.

It was always that picture of them in the white leaning on each other. Yeah. That JISM really is tenacious, isn't it? Yes. Yes, it is. Just endlessly reloading. Okay, stop now.

So, if you want to get involved in all of this sexy, sexy chart action and get chart music and keep us eating and living and all that shit, you know what you've got to do. Get them little fingers right now. Take them over to the keyboard. Tip and a tap. Patreon.com slash chart music and pledge and pledge and pledge thank you you don't have to but it's nice if you would yeah do pledge because we're standing up straight now yes for you yes we're erect only for you. This episode, Pop Craze Youngsters,

takes us all the way back to May the 25th, 1978. Can't believe this. I always say, mainly to myself, because I forget to say it when we're recording, that we've done 54 episodes of chart music now, and I still contend we have only just begun to scratch the surface of Top of the Pops because, unbelievably,

this is only the second time that we've walked down 1978 Street, and that is wrong. Don't you think? Yeah, that's odd, isn't it? It's fucking mental. Yeah. It's strange that we've not done 78 before.

I know. Although it perhaps doesn't reach the dizzy heights of 79 and 81 and all that, it's not that we've not done 78 before i know although it perhaps doesn't reach the dizzy heights of 79 and 81 and all that it's not a bad year it's an odd year though because it feels a lot closer in a sense to 75 say than it does anything in the late 80s we're definitely still deep in the 70s yeah even though punk's happened it still feels like, for me, it feels as warm and glowy as a kind of 1975 episode in a sense. There's not that much attitude being copped. But 1978's actually a really good year, a nice mix of stuff. We've groped towards a consensus that 1979 and 1981

are the pinnacles of pop music, with a slight lean towards 1979. But before 1979 was 1979, it had to be 1978 first and i think a lot of the things that we like about 1979 are already in place oh yeah we've already said that 1980 doesn't kind of like reach those heights simply because there were a load of shitty number ones yeah well in 1978 it it was mainly dominated by one film yeah yeah but i always think with 1978 the reason why it's not completely brilliant yet is the streams haven't joined yet and there's a lot of the time there's a bit of a tussle between on the one hand like hungover slobs identically dressed in jeans and leather with zips sort of belching and performatively picking their noses and you know playing that sort of music with the texture and

grace of 15 year old concrete while people smash pint glasses over each other's heads and they're representing truth and integrity and a revolutionary tradition and on the other hand clean young people expressing themselves physically to the sound of swooning strings and angelic vocal harmonies participating in a genuine grassroots lower class cultural phenomenon and they're representing conformity and ignorance and shallow commercialism yeah and it's like which side are you on yeah i mean it's only really 79 80 where you know there's a few people in this episode who've seen already that these things are not really in opposition but it takes another year or so for the penny to really drop. Yeah. And for me as a metal fan, 78 is kind of,

it's the year before people started laughing at heavy metal, as far as I'm concerned. There's no heavy rock bands around, but I don't know, Maiden and Priest haven't really risen to that level of sort of dominance, whereby metal is laughed at by the rest of music fans. So, you know, bands in biker jackets and wearing jeans

that aren't punk bands that are playing quite, you know, that fast, as it were, are not laughed at yet. They're just really good rock and roll bands still. They're not tainted with that kind of ridiculousness of metal quite yet. I mean, I usually ask the question when we start on a new or newish year, you know, when I say the music of 1978 what immediately springs to mind but it's a pointless question here because judging by this episode practically all human life is here i think the only thing that's missing is reggae isn't it but i mean when i think from my vantage point of the of the music

of 78 you know what dominates and it's what it is like you say out it's one film two films actually well yeah two films and two album soundtracks yeah also it's not quite the aventures yet no it's there's corners of culture where the aventures have already begun like i mean there's an episode of the always hilarious post-punk youth TV show Something Else from later this year, where, for reasons that have slipped my mind, a young man from the 80s interviews a woman from the 70s, which is visually really strange. And that's possibly a transitional moment. But, I mean, as I always say,

the first series of the professionals filmed in 1977 but already transmitted on itv by the time this top of the pops went out is quite clearly set in the avences even to the point of featuring uh suzanne danielle with short hair in a kimono style dressing dressing gown. So really that change is underway, and it's just a matter of waiting for the fuse to burn down, you know. And there will be straight-leg slacks in Foster Brothers by year's end. You can't stop progress. Just go out now and buy a massive microwave oven.

Be ahead of the game. Let's get stuck in. Welcome to All Rather Mysterious, the podcast that aims to unlock the mysteries of the past with the key of fact. My name is John Rain. My name is Eleanor Morton. My name is David Reed. Please join us as we present to you mysteries that have baffled the world.

You hear any noises? What about a door creaking? No, you don't have to do that. That weird ka-dunk that lights going off makes for some reason in films. All rather mysterious. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long.

Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Radio 1 News. In the news, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden get divorced, and so do David and Angie Bowie. Don't know if the two are linked, but you never know, it was the 70s. David Steele, the leader of the Liberal Party, has announced that the LibLab pact will be dissolved at the end of the Liberal Party, has announced that the LibLab pact will be dissolved at the end of the current parliamentary session, leaving the country with a minority Labour government.

The Unabomber detonates his first bomb at a university in Illinois. The Foreign Legion has dispatched a Zaire to rescue Europeans trapped in the middle of a civil war. The Daily Mirror runs a week-long expose on Joyce McKinney, the former beauty queen who kidnapped and chained up a Mormon missionary she fancied in Devon, and reveals that she had a career as a vice queen and publishes loads of photos of her in the nip. The Who play a gig at Shepperton Studios

for the forthcoming retrospective film The Kids Are Alright this very evening, their last ever gig with Keith Moon. A 17-year-old girl who was in a coma for 19 days after a car crash comes out of it after a visit from her favourite band, Show Waddy Waddy. England, after beating Scotland 1-0 in the home internationals, go on to batter Hungary at Wembley, headlining the Daily Mirror this very day. We are the masters now. But the big news this week is that Alan Jones of Melody Maker

has been biffed by Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath before a gig in Glasgow after he described him as looking like a gypsy violinist in an Old School pizza parlor and the Italian contestant in next year's Eurovision Song Contest during an interview written in 1974. Quote from an article in this week's Melody Maker about the incident. Jones writes, You're Alan Jones, ain't ya?

scowled Iome in that comical accent that so afflicts those unfortunate to have been born in the colourful vicinity of Birmingham. I've got a bound to pick with you, he continued, sounding like one of the more anonymous stars of Crossroads. I laughed. Tone looked annoyed. You won't be laughing in a minute, he glowered, his whiskers bristling. His finely judged left hook, a blur out of nowhere, at least convinced me that his talent is less musical than pugilistic and left me with a

viciously split lip spouting more blood than you've seen in the climax of the wild bunch disgraceful behavior yeah i wouldn't fuck with tony i am he looks like he can handle himself although he does also look like all of alan's descriptions of him just then as well yeah yeah see i was quite disappointed. Well, not disappointed, but the legend of this is that he got the shit beaten out of him by... You read this, you only got hit him once. Mm.

Yeah. Bit of a letdown, isn't it? Chinese whispers, because I'd heard that he was whipped with a chain or something, not some sort of sexual thing, but he'd been tied to railings or something and beaten, you know, the absolute shit out of him. But Jones, you can make anything convincing.

Greatest editor I ever worked for. Yeah. Also, he had to have his stomach pumped. It's terrible, isn't it? Because we hear all these stories about musos beating up music journalists, but has it ever been the other way around? Has a music journalist ever just laid one on a fucking muso?

I've often thought that. That you should do it. Like, if you give them a bad review, and then they come up and try and hit you. If it's just they played a really shit gig, just go up to them and just headbutt them. Go, that was shit. Bang. So, you know, that's what I call criticism.

But truth be told, most of the music journalists I know, they can't handle themselves to a certain extent. They're not violent types. No. And even if they wanted to be. You're a writer, not a fighter. Well, quite. I mean, I have seen the aforementioned Everett True

actually attempting to beat up Simon Price. That was hilarious. It was just a pathetic sight all round. That was really funny. What was that about? That was in the, as I recall, it was at Reading Festival. And I think it was in the bar afterwards at the Marriott Hotel. And I think Pricey was talking about Dex's Midnight Runners.

And you can't talk about Dex's Midnight Runners in front of Everett because only he understands them and only he gets them. So he just like ploughed up to Simon and started punching him, rather ineffectively, I have to say, in the arm. Yeah, in the arm. You don't understand Dex's, you don't get them. Yeah, it was one of those. But fairly pitiful sight, I think.

Yeah, he's trying to hit him because he also likes Dex's Midnight Runners. Hang on, wasn't there... You know Guns N' Roses did a song about... Get In The Ring. Get In The Ring, that's right. Didn't it turn out that one of the people who in that song Axl Rose invited to get in the ring was like a jujitsu black belt or something.

He sent him a message saying, anytime, Axl, you choose the time and the place, I'll be there. At which point he just stopped doing that song. Got a feeling Tony Iommi, he's probably in quite a lot of fights, wasn't he? You know, win or lose on the booze. Yeah. On the cover of Melody Maker this week Jethro Tull

Jethro fucking Tull 1978 everyone it might as well have been a Uriah Heep or something on the cover of Looking, Leif Garrett on the cover of Record Mirror Hugh Cornwall of The Stranglers

painted half black and naked, cupping his bits. I don't know if he painted himself half black or just stripped off and laid on his kitchen table. You don't know with The Stranglers, do you? That's an atrocious cover, that. If you read the feature, it's made very clear.

Seriously, that's how fucking bored and how little to do I've had. I read the feature. The number one LP this week is, of course, the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. 20 Golden Greats by Nat King Cole is number two, and the highest placed new LP, and then there were three by Genesis.

That's the thing about punk, it gave the music industry the kick up the arse it needed. Over in America, the number one single is Night Fever by the Bee Gees and the number one LP is the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. So me boys, what were you doing in May of 1978? Well, I mean I was five going on six. 1978 well um i mean i was five going on six uh in my last few months at stoke lodge school just kind of getting used to the idea that the older you got as a school kid the shitter things got in a sense yes the the little kids got all the good stuff because i remember starting school

you know like three when i was in infants or whatever or four and the school dinners were fucking amazing they were like you'd see these big steaming sort of metal trays of shepherd's pie being carried aloft for your dinner and then by the time we were five it was like here's your savory lump of cheese and here's your here's your pudding and apple you know it's just got oh yeah we had that for dinner once it was it was just got rubbish so just a lot of rubbish dinners. Lots of fingers on lips in the corridor. Musical movement in my pants.

Not movement in my pants, obviously. I mean the lesser musical movement in my pants on the top floor. Musical movement in my pants would have been a great title for Saturday Night Fever. Or The Stud. But, yeah, I mean, well, I mean i mean the thing is because i was only five you know trying to trying to remember these times it is all a bit foggy was this the year that i got my head split open by a school bell maybe was this the year that i kicked my sister in the face and thought i'd killed her yeah probably but it's all a bit foggy. It was. I do remember, though, this year getting tremendously excited,

probably around this time that this episode came out, because it would have been very close to Coventry Carnival time. And Coventry Carnival was just, well, you can imagine the combination of a carnival with Coventry. It was magnificent. Did you have a Lady Godiva? We did, yeah, yearly. Was she wearing fleshings?

Fleshings, yes. But actually, the Lady Godiva who took the role sort of in the early 70s, I think, and then just bossed it for the next like 20 years that the carnival was still happening. She was a lady called Prue Perretta who, I don't know whether I should name her.

No, i have named her now um she's um she's still sort of godivering about in coventry whenever they need a godiva um she's there although she's knocking on a bit now um i went to see her give a talk actually at one of my kids schools um and yeah i don't know what i can't remember but she's i remember because as a child like watching prue pareto go passed on a white horse wearing fleshings was quite it was kind of intriguing but um she's really full of herself because she's been godiva for ages so she just she was talking to all his kids all she was going on about was about how amazing she was but um club carnival it was basically it just seemed to be like you know you get your usual floats going up the high street and going up warwick road and that

um with the scouts and the rotary club and all these people it just seemed like an excuse for kind of mass transvestitism amongst um sort of bearded middle-aged men. That seemed to be the main purpose of it. Any excuse, really, for that kind of activity. And that seemed to be what Coventry Carnival was about. The traverses of the community. Well, quite, yes. And all those hilarious characterful dads in your street

would see Coventry Carnival as opportunity for for fun and being tom of bedlam's and basically being unfunny but um cov carnival was a bit of a highlight and that's my biggest memory of 78 getting really excited about cov carnival i'm very surprised to hear that someone whose uh main occupation was parading around nude was a bit of a narcissist. That's unusual. Well, 1978, me, I was just absorbing the damp, debility, that sort of vague, looming sense of threat and chaos of mostly bad ideas that was the English late 70s. Oh, and fancying carol chell

oh yes which i did i was a reverse pedophile um you'll be relieved to know i grew out of it i turned 10 at the beginning of this month and i was finishing up the third year at west glade junior school and i was fucking loving it i was just enjoying being 10 so much um the things that come to mind in May of 1978 was I began to discover what sex was sort of mainly because of what's starting to appear in the newspapers you know the Joyce McKinney story really sticks in my mind because even then as a 10-year-old, I was being told that here was a woman who actually wanted to have sex with someone

for no reason apart from enjoying it. And the newspapers were making such a fucking big deal about this. I mean, I can distinctly recall standing around in the school playground with my mates talking about Joycece mckinnon and you know there's just lads there with their arms folded and their foot on the ball saying oh well if she wanted to do that to me i'd say oh well you go ahead darling and everyone nodding and then

someone shouting bummer dog and it's all fucking scattering music wise this is pretty much the month that uh punk broke in our school i mean in 1977 we didn't like punk even though we'd never heard any of it because we'd found out through the newspapers that punks didn't like ted's and our dads were all ted's right um you know we were still into show waddy waddy and then you know even now we're still into darts and all that kind of stuff and we didn't like it when they wore swastikas. Yeah. Because people who did that were all the baddies in the comics that we were reading at the time. But all of a sudden, here comes New Wave.

And to our mind, a lot of the New Wave acts like Elvis Costello and Blonde, to us, they were punk. Yeah, absolutely. Well, at the very least they sounded what we thought punk ought to sound like so we were starting to get into it and it became another thing to like we didn't all switch to punk but we we mixed it into our 10 year old diet yeah but the main thing of course is that i'm working myself into an absolute froth about the world cup which starts a week from tonight. Yes.

This could well be the night before that my parents went to my school for report night. And my teacher, Mr. Wright, took them into the classroom and showed them my art project, which was an entire wall filled with these massive cutout footballers that he'd done for me. And I'd coloured all 16 of them in. And then he pointed at them again and I'd coloured all 16 of them in and then he pointed at them again and said look at their faces

I'd done all of their faces apart from Scotland they all had Hitler moustaches and they all had Hitler haircuts so I'd done Scotland

I think I did a beard for that one a ginger beard but everyone else it was 15 Hitlers that's how I think that's how I saw it

Scotland were going to Argentina to face off against 15 Hitlers. One week from this episode of Top of the Pops, I got so excited jumping up and down, waiting for the first game to come on, that I actually got a groin strain. I had to sit and watch a 0il-nil draw between west germany and poland with me legs wide open and a bag of peas on me groin oh mate i mean people say the best world cup you'll ever have is the one nearest to your 10th birthday and i've got to say that's the case for me i mean not

so much the actual tournament but the fucking anticipation for it and the reading of things and the buying of things and the stickers and the special TV times where they had the TV times logo in TV times tartan that they designed themselves. Oh, fucking hell. I was so up for the World Cup. The front cover of the Figurini Panini album for the World Cup was a gorgeous thing.

I remember coveting that immensely. Yes. But it's the thing about being 10, Al. You know, being in double figures, especially with sexuality. I seem to recall when I hit 10, which would have been a few years later, obviously, that's when people started using the word virgin as an insult. Yes. You know, which had never happened before.

Something happens at 10, where of course you've not had sex. You're 10 for fuck's sake. But yeah, fuck off, you virgin. Yeah, or wanker. You get called a wanker before you've even started wanking. That always done my head in. At my school, when you're about 11, people would go round and go,

do you wank? Do you masturbate? And the idea was that if they said yes, you'd go, ah, ha, ha, ha. I would say if someone's 10, you'd give them a little round of applause. It's like, hey, hey. There's no stopping you.

The best retort I ever heard, though, was my mate. Do you wank? And he went, I don't have to. Nice. Someone from my old school suddenly popped up on Facebook a couple of years ago, and he just sent me a message saying, you did the best retort after you got debagged on the school field and was called maggot man

first day back at school apparently someone came up to me going oh Needham you've got a really small cock and I just turned around and said well at least I've got one but then I realised it was a girl who said it to me so

you know so as is the style in chart music we're going to stop for a moment and we're going to run a finger along the bookshelf and well not not a bookshelf that's fucking stupid you don't put your old music magazines books unless they're q of course we're going to dig through the crates and we're going to pull out a copy of one of the music papers from this very week and this week i have gone have gone for the NME, May the 27th, 1978. Should we leave through, chaps? Yeah, slaps.

On the cover, Public Image Limited, even though they're not called Public Image yet, with John Lydon in glasses and a white diamond patterned coat, Jar Wobble wearing neck curtains like a wedding veil, and Keith Levine in a fly mask and a t-shirt which reads never mind the blood clots here's jobson and the title introducing johnny rotten's lonely hearts club band in the news rumors abound that bob dylan is penciling in a massive extra open air gig in july at the end of his European tour after all six of

his gigs at Earl's Court next month have sold out and tickets are changing hands on the black market for up to £150. The gig does take place six weeks from today at Blackbush Airport in Surrey. It's one of Dylan's longest ever gigs and is supported by Eric Clapton, Joan Armatrading and Graham Parker and The Rumour. None shall sleep. Meanwhile it's revealed that Dylan has

demanded that a bed be set up in his dressing room for the Eales Court gigs so he can have a bit of a kip between the soundcheck and the performance. As for when the support acts were on the entire audience also requested one each but they were denied someone's been stabbed at a buzzcocks gig in bradford after a national front twat was set upon after chanting during their set when the police turned up they cut PA, leaving the band to play an acoustic set with the audience singing along.

I bet that National Front twat now has a very active Twitter account because he's so concerned about grooming gangs. Lord Snowden has been dispatched to Rio de Janeiro by the Sunday Times to take pictures of the new Sex Pistols lead singer, Ronnie Biggs, who was linked up with Steve Jones and Paul Cook. Dearly died a bunk. Fuck, you know, that's Sex Pistols' artistic trajectory. Yes. It's like that of Franz Reichelt

in his homemade flying suit leaping from the Eiffel Tower. Yes. Except at least he stopped when he hit the ground. Yes. The Sex Pistols went on to record No One Is Innocent brackets the biggest blow. Who would a Sex Pistols

of today record with? Which criminal? Julian Assange. Yes. Or Maxwell's daughter. Yeah. Berkshire County Council are looking into creating a permanent music festival site at a currently disused US airbase, Greenham Common. The USAF want to convert it into a base for fuel tanker planes,

but a spate of local protests over that idea and the high cost of policing for the Reading Festival is making the council consider moving it there. Margaret Thatcher gets elected the next year. The rest is history. Roger Daltrey has bought the film rights to the biographer McVicar by himself about the armed robbers spell in prison. He's also announced who's going to play the title role, Roger Daltrey of The Who. There's his prison memoir subtitled, Watch Your Backs.

Yes, the McVicar himself. Johnny Bivouac, guitarist of Adam and the Ants, is now the ex-guitarist of Adam and the Ants. He left the band last weekend over personal differences. So anybody out there interested in being a number one band four decades ago needs to call Ander on 01584 982 before they give the job to Matthew Ashman. That's 01584 932. Brian James, former guitarist of the Damned, has debuted his new band, Tanzda Youth, in a support slot for the stranglers in brighton some great

news stories there isn't it yes the week in bleak and satral records have announced their new signing the radio luxembourg dj mike reed who is also the host of the yorkshire TV kids show Pop Quest. His debut single, Are You Ready? is out this weekend. Oh my God, have you heard this? No. No, nor have I. I just wanted to know. His 19th debut single you mean. Fucking hell. The Week in Extra Bleak.

Mike Reed is basically just one more shot. There's still time and if it doesn't work out this year, I'll settle for the Radio 1 breakfast show. Either way, it's a mansion in Weybridge. And no less than a man of such talent and application deserves. And not one person alive would begrudge it.

Fucking hell. Features. Neil Spencer, in his last interviewing gig before becoming editor of the NME next week, nips over to a pub in Edgeware to meet John Lydon and his new band, who haven't settled on a name yet and are currently calling themselves the carnivorous buttock flies. Immediately, Lydon taps him for a fiver to get around in as he's completely skint. I'm broke. Completely pennililess there's no money coming

in at all nothing he has it all referring to talkie malke after dropping in on a rehearsal a few days later spencer reports that whatever they turn out to be they're not going to be sex pistols part two chris salowitz gets to spend six pages nosing through Trenchtown where he gets to see Tapa Zouke doing up a youth club, finds out that Junior Mervyn loved the Clash's cover of Police and Thieves and would like to work with them, discovers that Lee Perry charges $20 an hour for his production services and concludes that Trenchtown is no scabbier than parts of Leeds and Manchester 15 years ago and a lot sunnier.

$20 for Lee Perry? Fucking hell. If only we'd have known that over here. Can you imagine him doing the Don Amok King of Caravans jingle? Stuff like that. Or the new iDemp music for Central. Well, it would have been amazing. I mean, if Chris Salowitz concludes that Trenchtown's no scabbier than bits of

Leeds and Manchester, fair enough. But I suspect it's a little bit more dangerous. Phil McNeill takes a trip to Wageningen on the Dutch-German border to see Gruppo Sportivo, the second biggest band in Holland after Golden Earring,

playing at a school assembly hall. He thinks they're rubbish live, but when they make their imminent tour of the UK, they should be given the sort of reception we gave Blondie last year. And if they're not bigger than ABBA by the end of 1978, he'll eat his hat and his cat. Have you ever heard them? Grupo Sportivo?22s in it musical equivalent of a plastic flower that squirts water they've all been given the welcome that mark chapman gave john lennon mark ellen chips over to camberwell to meet the first group to call themselves the Band of the 80s. It's Landscape who have set up their own label so they don't have to be nagged into having a lead singer or any vocals at all.

Drummer and spokesperson Richard Burgess talks up their burgeoning following in the pub rock scene of London and that they've started to attract a punkier audience. But they're not worried about being gobbed on as their trombonist can reach six feet into the crowd and can also spit very accurately. Landscape pretty much were the Crystal Palace of pop, weren't they, in the end? Monty Smith is dispatched to South Bank Pole to catch a rear gig by Johnny Moped

with a guest appearance by Captain Sensible. Backstage, he tries to get to the nub as to why they haven't caught on as well as their contemporaries and concludes that's because they can't be arsed to tour. And Paul Rambali has a phoner with the latest Euro sensation, Plastic Bertrand, whose saplan pour moi has just soared from number 33 to number 19 over here

and gives a shout out to the writing and production team behind it Lou Dupric and Yves Le Comble the sacred people my audience ranges from little children to old people says Bertrand

in 20 years time I will be a crooner like Sinatra. Rumpali also divulges that while Radio 1 is claiming the title is French for That's Alright By Me, Plan is actually French stoner slang for caned and it actually means I'm high because of it all. Sadly, spoiler alert alert Pulp Crate says that song is not on this episode of Top of the Pops yeah for years

I overlooked the fact that I knew perfectly well that plane in French is avion in order to believe that that title meant that plane for me like he's about to catch like he's rushing to catch a plane which is why he's so frantic in his demeanour.

You know, like a punkish burlesque of the international jet set. But sadly, it's not quite that interesting. Single reviews. Well, your reviewer this week is Tony Parsons. Oh, for fuck's sake. Gives us a bad name, that wanker.

And his single of the week is Jilted John by Jilted John. Spoiler alert, that's not on this episode either. It's a fucking great episode though, don't panic. After wasting three paragraphs slagging off

Elvis Costello for no discernible reason, he claims that Graham Fellows is destined to become to the 80s what presley beagles and rotten were to their respective decades and that's an understatement you see that's the kind of sentence that we get characterized by music journalists twatty sentences like that yeah arsehole sorry yeah bringing up the rear is we are socialists by youth man dialectical though tender a polemical exposition with room in its post-revolutionary heart for an abundance of human warmth this resolute militancy comes across with the power

of a love song capable of moving the listener to tears. Marching Men, the new single by the Rich Kids, gets a meaty thumbs up. The matlocky and melodic consciousness and monkey-lyrical sensibility garnered by gorgeous Glenn for their debut disc is bravely deserted with this commendable choice for a single, an ominously repetitive anti-Nazi pay-in As good as that. Oh, fucking hell. Old Mitchell in mouth is back doing his goat's head droop era Al Jolson party piece while the stones sound to me like jerry-built faces touting for the trade of the Travolta market.

Sorry, I need to interject there. Fuck it. Misuse amazing. Yes, it is. Yes, it fucking is. And also, sorry, if Tony Parsons, right right was one of my students my music journalism student sending me this shit i would send it back this is overwritten the adjectives oh fuck anyway carry on i'm sorry i'm getting getting angry with this the kinks are back with their new single rock and roll

fantasy but parsons doesn't reckon it over insipid lonnie Donegan acousticisms, King Conk Raimondo gets down on bend at Mincing Gate to wring his hands and beg his band through simpering sinus trouble not to end it all. Can We Still Be Friends by Todd Rundgren is given the shortest of shrift. We find Dobbin the R runt exercising his choir boy fetish with maudlin banality and leaving his handsome head out of his nose bag oats for just long enough to confirm all suspicions that his dulcet tones are absolutely identical

to those of David's soul. Fuck off, that's a tune as well. This writing is phenomenally bad. I mean, I get a cold sweat whenever one of the reviews I wrote when I was 23 gets reproduced somewhere because they're mostly terrible, right? But fucking Parsons was much worse at that age.

Look what happened. Fucking hell. Yeah. Parsons gives a thumb at right angles for airport by the motors. The motors! Last year's crow's foot encrusted, HM

notorious bondage birds with a Y, have struck out for uncharted, potentially platinum territory. Yes, music haters, they want to be the new Waves' Rick Wakeman. While Bang Bang by Squeeze is merely a three-chord hardening of the arteries and a weakening of their capability to gain access to the charts.

And Silly Boy by Cilla Black is battered away thusly. So sad about Cilla, in these lean years without a Dionne Warwick stateside hit to call her own. Her mournful foghorn hounds plaintively in the strobe-lit darkness. That wasn't too bad. Yeah, but what's he talking about? LP review section. So what's he talking about? LP review section. Almost a full page is given over to the lead review for Thin Lizzy's double live LP, Live and Dangerous.

Ah, now this. This is a little more like it, squeals Nick Kent, who calls it the best live LP since Stupidity by Dr. Feelgood. Lizzy are now easily the best mainstream hard rock band in the world and this LP is the clincher. Live and Dangerous is as hot as they come and as hot

as it gets. Lizzie have always played like warriors and this is an album made by heroes. The second LP by Tom Petty and the heartbreakers you're gonna get it is out now but roy carr who drooled over their debut 18 months ago is disappointed by it all the rough edges have been beveled off and the intensity tempered to give one the impression

that it's been purposely sanitized for fm radio acceptance while their debut album and the promo only live bootleg indicated that they were capable of rubbing shoulders with elvis costello thin lizzie and graham parker the new lp suffers from a lack of commitment and poor production tom petty and the Heartbreakers are capable of much better things. And there's a half-page advert a couple of pages back, the headline of which reads, John Travolta sucks, Tom Petty rocks. Heaven Tonight, the third LP by Che cheap trick in a mere 14 months is gleefully seized upon by

paul rambale cheap trick have always been a cheeky almost recklessly confident bunch here they've managed to align that audacity with a sense of purpose and inescapable musical growth and yet still sound like they've had more fun making the thing than any one band could have hoped for. Misfits, the 17th album by the Kinks, is, according to Marcus Smith, vintage Kinks with Ray Davis whining, pining, shining and maligning about his favourite topics, losers, little little men dedicated followers fashion the crowd the mundane fantasy escape rock and roll life he doesn't say whether he likes it or not though probably not yeah it's always really funny when when you see a review by someone whose name you

don't recognize and they've obviously spent a really long time on it. It's like they think, this is the one that's going to propel me into the top rank. Steve Clarke reckons that Showdown by the Isley Brothers is dead good, but if you're expecting a radical departure from their 70s oeuvre because of the lead-off single Take Me To The Next Phase, don't. Rather, it's a honing down of the style they've been peddling to enormous success these past few years. Unlike numerous established acts, both black and white, the Isleys have steadfastly refused to move nearer to the middle of the road

with each successive release and have hardened their music, stripping it down to a backbone of hard funk and neil peters is massively unimpressed by a debut album which has found the american top 30 with alarming speed van halen by van halen it's the same old hmxs judging by the the cover. David Roth sees himself as the new Jim Dander and on the record he yells, screams and shrieks as if someone were intermittently wrenching his balls. And there isn't a track where Edward Van Halen doesn't play guitar solos so frenetic and fatuous they make Richie Blackmore sound positively tasteful.

But the most crushing condemnation of this album comes on the back cover, where at the top of a long special thanks list appears the name of Gene Simmons. You see, Van Halen are farmed out to that area in the same way that I've never explored them because I've associated them with kiss and i hate kiss yeah so i've just never bothered with van halen but i probably should i

mean i'm you know rest in peace eddie van halen because i hear he was a really good guy so i should probably check out that early stuff but you know all of those album reviews are not written really by big name writers apart from the nick kent one um that attained the fame that tony parsons did But all of them are better written than Tony Parsons' singles reviews were. Yes. I mean, when Eddie Van Halen died, everyone's doing that usual Facebook thing

of chucking up videos. I couldn't bring myself to do it, because it's like, yeah, he seemed like a nice guy and everything, and he was a fucking brilliant musician and everything, but Dave Lee Roth is a knob end. Yeah, that's it. So I just threw up Beat It. Yeah, of course. They did rip off

Jim Dandy. Yes. David Lee Roth. Scandalously so. The gig guide this week, well, David could have seen XTC at the Marquee, John Otway and Wild Willie Barrett at the Rainbow, Gregory Isaacs at Lewis and Odeon,

Bonnie Tyler at the Royal Festival Hall, the members at the West Hampstead Railway Hotel, panties at the Canning Town Bridge House. Wait, panties? Panties, yes. Can you imagine coming into the office the next day and saying, oh, what did you do last night? Oh, I went to see panties at Canning Town. It was one of my mum's favourite wind up things.

Whenever we went shopping for clothes, even though I'm a male, obviously, if she was buying me pants when I was like 10 years old or something, she would shout in the shop, not shout, but say, Neil,

do you need some panties? Oh no. To really fucking embarrass me. Yeah. My mum had a vindictive street to her. It just reeks of the 70s, doesn't it? It's a sexy word with two E's at the end. I still like that word, panties.

Do you? Yeah. I don't use it, but I don't mind. I don't object to that word. Neil, my advice, don't. I don't think I've ever asked a woman, oh, you know do you want to take your panties off

yeah but do you say pants because pants is a bit I don't know no pants is male yeah I just say drawers that covers everything doesn't it I said to a woman once

do you want to take your panties off yeah I got I got sanctioned that's a really poor poor joke isn't it that's a really poor poor joke that's really lazy I really need to know what panties sound like the sound of

panties panties at the Canning Town Bridge House the two Ronnies summer season at the London Palladium or Fred Rickshaw's hot ghoulies at the Rutland in Hammersmith but probably didn't. I can't imagine David ever going to see Panties. What an assortment of entertainment, eh?

London swing like a pendulum do. Yes. Taylor could have seen the Buzzcocks at the Mayfair Suite, XTC at Barbarella's, George Benson at the Hippodrome, the armpit jug band at the King's Eve here in Harms, guys and dolls for a whole week at the King's Club. Yes.

Bring me Scampi. Gene Pitney for a whole week at the Night Out, split ends at Barbarella's, Ricky Cool and the Icebergs at the Pastoral Centre, or Elkie Brooks, supported by all her looks, at the Birmingham Odeon. Neil could have seen the Steve Gibbons Band at the Locarno, Lindisfarne at Warwick University.

No, I couldn't have seen that. They hate me there. Ian Durie and the Blockheads at the Coventry Theatre. The Motors at the Locarno. Black Sabbath at the Coventry Theatre. Or have his head turned by the bright lights of Wolverhampton with Sham 69 at the Civic Hall. Fucking hell. All human life is in Coventry this week sarah could have seen cyanide at the

outlaw club harry shaping at sheffield city hall david price and the galactic symposium at the pack horse in leeds the pleasers at the sheffield top rank bino at the Holt Piper Club or Ethel the Frog at Branigan's Bar in Leeds. Because where else would you hold a galactic symposium? Al could have seen Peter and the Testube Babies at the Harty Goodfellow, Slip Hazard and the Blizzards

at the Imperial Hotel, Grupo Sportivo at the Sandpiper or packed his Oxford bags into an Adidas holdall and hitchhiked down to Melton Mowbray for a three-night stand by Wiggins Ovation at the Painted Lady. Oh, man.

A northern soul three-dayer skiing in the snow. And Simon could have seen girls' school at the Port Talbot Troubadour, Tony McPhee and Terraplane at Cardiff Top Rank, and Girl School again at Swansea Circle Club. Oh, Wales. Getting the shitty end of the stick again.

Well, you say that. I mean, two Girl School gigs. In the letters page, Monty Smith is in the chair this week, and the main topic of conversation is Nick Kent's coat down of Power in the Darkness by the Tom Robinson Band. Okay, so aging scribe Nick Kent thinks Power in the Darkness fails as a rock and roll album. I disagree, says Nick Mercer of Panache.

Mercer of Panache. Until you write something bearing a twentieth of the merit of winter of 79, then you don't deserve to be in the same room as the object of your scorn. Until then, keep your mouth shut before the sheep start sussing you

out. That's a terrifying prospect. Well, ageing scribe. Nick has 27, isn't he? Well, I'll tell you what, I'd hate to be sussed out by some sheep. Your life wouldn't be worth living. To Nick Kent,

all we can say about your review of the TRB album is bollocks! Thank you and good night, writes two incensed TRB fans. I got out of Borstal last Wednesday, says R.E. Lees of Stevenage. While doing my bird, I received your mag every week. Great, but some of the things I read really used to do me in. I wanted to write and give my view, for all it's worth, but I couldn't.

I wanted to write and give my view, for all it's worth, but I couldn't. Now I'm home and there's nothing in your paper to rile me, apart from Kent's TRB review. My God, if he wants to slag TRB, that's his affair, but the way he puts it over as if he really feels bad about doing it. Why? He's never worried before. Sing if you're glad, Nick. Nuff said. Basically what you say there is, Nick Kent, where's your tool?

What tool? This fucking tool! Who's the daddy? However, Rich, an art student from Leicester, has Kent's back. I was driving home last night and TRB came on the radio singing what sounds like a rather innocuous ditty called

Power in the Darkness. I wasn't taking much notice until he started talking in a posh voice about freedom from pansies, punks, football hooligans, women's libbers and so on. He was being ironic, sarcastic and satirical but then i realized that the sentiments he was taking the piss out of were the sentiments of the ordinary people of england tom robinson speaks in a retired colonel's voice but that is to disguise the fact that he knows that the ordinary people are against him if he had power he would obviously persecute the people who held those views and that means that every normal person in this country is in danger from the people who attend his concerts and buy his album robinson is homosexual anyway and doing it all out of self-interest. He is a bigot.

Beware the new fascism. Wait a minute. What is this rhetorical game of marble madness? Is it supposed to be funny? I can't tell. Well, it's like Black Lives Matter protesters are the real fascists. Yes.

He's just airing his genuine concerns, Taylor. It all becomes clear. Rock music is a joke, says Cliff Richard, fan of London. Enemy journalists get their knickers in a twist over Blondie copping out. But perhaps what really frightens them is that the whole rock and roll circus and their part in it threatens the establishment as much as Crossroads.

Harsh words. Bit unfair to Crossroads, that. A bit unfair. What's he on about? They brought up many an issue, like, you know, old women shoplifting. Yeah.

Lawnmowers getting out of control. Fires! That's an issue. That is an issue. Yeah. Lawnmowers getting out of control. Fires! That's an issue. That is an issue. Yeah. What's he on about, though? Enemy journalists get their knickers in a twist over Blondie copping out.

What have Blondie copped out of? Any ideas? They were having hit records or something. I don't know. Oh, right. Got you. Here's another nail to knock into the coffin of the Stranglers

and any credibility they have left writes paul drew of plymouth yes the tune of their latest money spinner nice and sleazy bears more than a passing resemblance to charlie chaplin's first ever screen song in modern times that song too had nonsense lyrics or the dave Greenfield quartet running out of ideas? All time and who cares? Meanwhile, Mol Esther, think about it, of St. Neots asks, All I want to know is, does Joyce McKinney give lessons in getting off Mormon chastity garments in one foul swipe and chaining them up? P.S. Any chance of full frontlers of the stranglers smith responds by saying the daily mirror has been boring the pants off the

nation with facts and pics of the old slag all week different times i'm providing a photo of jean-jacques bernell with his t-shirt up and his trousers down with his tackle buried between his legs to make it look as if he has a fanny. Touché, sir, touché. It's 1978 shit, isn't it? Who needs this dirty newsprint fucking can of beer and a leather jacket, unwashed schoolboy version of rock and roll? This is what authenticity was in 1978.

You know what I mean? It's like who with a soul would not hear the string arrangement on a disco record and instinctively grab at it in the hope that it might haul you out of this quicksand like a helicopter with a ladder dangling in front of it. The 80s make a lot more sense when you look at this stuff. Yeah. Anthony Bass of Darby is

incandescent with rage over the NME reporting that Steel Pulsar performed their new single Ku Klux Klan at a gig and said it would be dead good to shoot perpetrators of racial attacks and not having a go at them for it. Don't look now, but your mask of trendy socialism has slipped.

You don't have to be white to be a bigot. Are you that blind that some of you can't accept that to be black don't mean you're always right? Fucking hell. They get your priorities in order. Yeah. And an amazed Lizzie fan of Derbyshire writes, what the bloody hell happened to Top of the Pops on May the 11th?

First we see thin Lizzie, no less, and then we were amazed by Ian Durer, Sham69, Blonde, Patty Smith, and last but not least, Tom Robinson. But who were them twats from Newcastle? That was Golde with Breaking Up Again. They made up balls of it, but no one's perfect, eh? No doubt back to the same moronic rubbish next week. Top of the Pops game, big dub. In the letters page of the nme you never know they

might repeat a couple of those clips 72 pages 18 pennies i never knew there was so much in it 18 pence that is even with the shit that is a bargain so what else was on telly this day well bbc one kicks off at 6 40 a40am with a triple shot of open university action, then shuts down at 7.55, then reopens at 9.41 for a schools and colleges splurge, and then shuts down for an hour and five minutes. At 12.35, Bob Hoskins, Patricia Hayes and Martin Shaw unite for On The Move. Then it's the news. Pebble Mill at one.

Chigley and you and me. After closing down for 21 minutes, it's the school's programme merry-go-round, which lasts nine minutes. Then it closes down again for an hour and ten minutes before coming back hard with regional news in your area play school sinbad and the magnetic mountain heads and tails laugh olympics blue peter and rhubarb after the news it's nationwide in europe live from brussels as it has been all week and tonight they're looking at all the funny food foreigners eat, like pasta. Nationwide in Europe. That doesn't work, does it?

They've just finished Tomorrow's World, where Michael Rodd has put the shits up your mam about the dangers of being irradiated by a microwave oven, and Judith Hand tries out a suitcase that converts into a bed. I saw something just like that on Facebook today. Yeah, what, being sold by Wish? Yes. BBC Two, like its

one-year-old counterpart, starts at 6.40 with the Open University, also shuts down at 7.55 and then fucks off for three hours and five minutes before coming back with Play School. Then it closes down again, this time for five and a half

hours. Then it hits us with two and a bit hours of the Open University again, the news on two headlines, the documentary series The Engineers, where we get to spend the day with the director of manufacturing at Perkins Engines in Peterborough,

which essentially involves watching him having his breakfast and presenting cups at the sports club dinner and dance. They've just started Newsday. ITV commences at 9.30 with two and a half hours of schools programming. Then Valerie Pitts reads the porcelain band by Richard Kennedy in Gammon and Spinach. In what? by richard kennedy in gammon and spinach jeffrey what it gammon and spinach gammon and spinach hilarious uh sitcom about a 56 year old racist forced to share a flat with a self-righteous 21 year old vegan

wood watch that's waiting to be written yes it really. It's busy, man. Yes, it really is. Geoffrey shows Bungle, Zippy and George how he puts on his socks and shoes in rainbow, followed by Treasures in Store, one of the few network programmes produced by Boulder, which features somebody looking at abbeys and the like. Afternoons at One, a regional news in your area it's crown court afternoon with mavis nicholson the crez the drama series about the brontes quick on the draw with michael bentin spike milligan bill tidy and paul trevillian fucking out oh paul trevillian yes it's responsible for you are the yes in shoot along with uh stan lover chairman of the London Referees Association.

Then it's the Sullivans, Lasse, Little House on the Prairie, the news at 5.45, and of course, regional news in your area. Doris Luke is mithering about Benny in Crossroads. A skeleton has been uncovered in Emmerdale Farm,

and they've just started the 1973 film The Thief Who Came to Dinner where Ryan O'Neill packs in his job as a computer analyst to become a jewel thief with his girlfriend Jacqueline Bissett. Anything jumping out there chaps?

For the past three minutes whilst you've been reading all of that, all that's been going through my head is, um, on the move on the move we're on our way again i mean reason being is because whenever we were on a motorway and we saw those signs you know those those um those kind of black and white chevron signs yeah kind of indicate how to go round a roundabout we would sing that theme tune on the move because that was a big part of the title sequence of that show. So yeah, I'd completely forgotten about that show until you mentioned it.

You know who did it, Neil? The song? I don't actually, I don't know. The Doolies. We're ghoulies. Fucking hell, what a dos job working at the BBC television was in them days. Yeah.

Oh, let's put this schools programme on for nine minutes, then let's all fuck off to the pub for five hours. It's one of those days where you just scan the listings and it's like, yeah, bring back the golden age of television. Yeah. You know what would have really struck me as done as well? It's that patch that ITV hit in the afternoon there with Lassie and Little House on the Prairie.

Yeah, fuck that. That's not kids. No, that's not kids. Little House on the Prairie, fuck that. That's your mum's programme. I remember a mate of mine complaining round about this time that he had to sit there and watch Little House on the Prairie. And the main story was a lad who had to have his leg cut off with a saw because he had gangrene. And his dad cried all the way through it.

And he said it was just the most crappiest hour he'd ever spent in his life. But that's the thing. With Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons, they were actually upsetting. They were too emotional when you were a kid. You didn't really want to watch that at all. And knowing that Lassie was dead as well while you're watching it. That's not good either sort yourself out itv let's have some real kids issues if i didn't if i didn't know that

lassie was dead then my sister would have been there with her usual helpful that dog's dead information so well chaps i do believe that in the picnic of episodes, the cloth has been laid out with all the cutlery and everything. So we can have a proper go at this episode of Top of the Pops in the next part, don't you think? Definitely. Let's tuck in. Yes. Slough, time for a feast day, readers.

And on that note, I'm going to bid you farewell. Thank you very much, Neil Kulkarni. No worries, Al. God bless you, Taylor Parks. Yes. My name's Al Needham. See you for part two very soon. Stay mint, stay skill, but above all, stay pop crazed.

Shark music. GreatBigOwl.com Hello, I'm Jack Beaumont. I do Crime Club. In Series 1, I spoke to people like this. Did you not kick a policeman in the head? Yeah, that was... When was that? I was 17.

Wait, was I 17 or 19? I think I might have been 19, actually. In Series 2, I talked to people like this. There was a paedophile with one leg. I kicked him clean Out of his wheelchair About four of us I mean we battered him

And this Cheating on your boyfriend To give him gonorrhoea Do you want to go there Or should I have a knock Yeah no no no I can talk about it I have jingles like this

That's Crime Club Where strange people Tell stories involving Bad behaviour New episodes out Every Monday