Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #55 (Part 3): 23.12.1982 – Hygge Pop

Episode Date: December 19, 2020

Neil Kulkarni, David Stubbs and Al Needham continue the death-march into the final TOTP of 1982, pausing to gaze upon Zoo having an ethnic knees-up, reflect upon the last stand of Abba, witness the slow afternoon of Imagination, and muse upon what Comrade Shaky’s version of the Fool’s Gold loaf would be…Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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What do you like to listen to? Chart music. Chart music. It's a time for giving. A time for getting, a time for forgiving and for forgetting. But more importantly, Pop Craze Youngsters, it's time for part three of episode 55 of Chart Music. Hey up, you Pop Craze Youngsters. My name's Al Needham, they're Neil Kulkarni and David Stubbs And we're going to get stuck into the next part

Of this episode of Top of the Pops Don't get cocky It's going to get rocky We're going to move down to the next jajock I tell you there's a crazy atmosphere In here tonight And to top it all it's snowing outside the television centre here in London. Moving on to the music, here's Incantation and Catch a Pion.

The Kid, finally surrounded by The Kids and next to a girl in an appalling puffy-sleeved blouse, tells us that there's a crazy atmosphere in the studio tonight and reminds us that Top of the Pops is going out live by giving us a weather report. Apparently it's snowing outside. Send Zoo out now. He then pivots to the next song, Catch a Pire and Des Pumps a Desert by Incantation.

Formed in London in 1981, Incantation were a loose collective of musicians who were commissioned to write and perform a suite of traditional Andean music for a ballet-rombé production about the victims of political oppression in South America called Ghost Dancers, which led to them ordering a crate of instruments they'd never heard of before, working out which end to blow down and getting obsessed by them. When the show came out, they were immediately given a deal by Beggar's Banquet

for an LP, which they called On the Wing of a Condor. This is the lead-off single from it, named after a traditional Andean leaving do. It entered the top 40 at number 39 last week, and this week it soared like that very condor, 11 places to number 28. And it might be snowing outside, but the atmosphere in the top of the pub studio has now got very chilly. But, aha, people at last. People next to Kid. The thing I love is the way that those girls look at Kid.

That's how i would have looked at kid jensen that thing you do as a normal person looking at someone famous basically like you're checking that their mouth works and that they're human that they function like us mere mortals it's quite a total fascination for a moment now it's a lovely moment now yeah i mean it's got to the point now with this fucking year that i'm looking at things like this on top of the pops now with loads of people huddled together around kid jensen i just think you fucking mad bastards where's your masks yeah cool i think it's going to be really fucking hard for me to go back to that shit i'm very pro vaccine i'll have it anywhere man fucking

stick it in my bellend if you want. But I don't think I'm going to be going out and just throwing myself at a load of people. Yeah, yeah. I think it's going to take a while to regain that sense of sort of mutual social trust, yeah. Because I was thinking I'd be happy to carry on wearing the mask for a bit in certain places. But the trouble is, the problem with the mask is it's an altruistic gesture.

It doesn't save yourself, you know. And so a lot of people aren't really going to bother, in which case you think, oh, well, I'm not going to bother either, you know. I can see the mask being something that disappears pretty rapidly, actually. I guess we'll all slip back into the old habits. But when I try and envisage from this vantage point what it's going to be like, I don't know, yeah, just walking down the street and nobody wearing a mask and being in a supermarket with loads of close physical proximity,

that is going to be tricky to deal with. What would Top of the Pops in 1982 have done if there was a pandemic on? I suppose they could just chuck on loads of videos. They could have, but what could they have done? Yeah, what would they have done before the video era, though? I mean, socially distanced Top of the Pops. It's just as well pop music collapsed, isn't it? So we don't have to face this quandary.

What would Dave Lee Travis have done? I wonder if any of them have been anti-maskers Refuse Knicks, Mike Rees Dave Lee Travis would probably make a mast out of his beard It's a grisly thought out Before we get to this, I've got to raise one thing. Kid Jensen, is he wearing a rugby shirt or is it a jumper and shirt combination? Because the jumper and the shirt are very close to each other, but I'm not seeing any button on the collar.

I thought it was a Newcastle United jumper. Yeah, I think it's something like that. I thought it was West Bromwich Albion. Yeah, it might have been. We will see much superior knitwear later on. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

So anyway, this song. So, yeah, this is what a leaving doing chilly looks like then. It looks like the Andean Wurzels to begin with, doesn't it? Definitely. Ponchos and harvesting twine. But what is sad is that this does arise from this kind of collective and trying to make music and put this ballet about oppression in South America and specifically, I think, Chile.

And I think three of the members of this troupe are from Chile. And of course, you know, you're not far out of the whole Pinochet regime and everything like that. And of course, none of that context is explained. I mean, Top of the Pops would never do that. And so you just get this kind of instrumental, and it just looks like a kind of high-altitude knees-up, basically. Yes!

And any remote context is going to be sucked even further out by the kind of fucking zoo-wankers, you know, like, cavorting around to it. You know, that's kind of sad, really, that something like this is just wrenched from its original intention and context and just lobbed out there as a bit of, like, you know, South American

sort of alternative to salsa or something. It's essentially ethnic popcorn, isn't it? You know, hot butter. I'd have at the time been mildly annoyed by it. I mean, obviously, in some respects, it's ahead of its time. It's anticipating the whole kind of world music and the spurious embrace of other cultures or whatever. That world music really isn't having any bearing on the charts at the minute, is it?

Or on public consciousness. I mean, let's remember that we're still a full year away from the Umbongo advert. I mean, we've had a bit a a salsary flare-up from blue rondo alaturk and modern romance and things like that but this is an injection of the real the real hard stuff isn't it well to a certain extent i don't yeah i probably wasn't aware of the sound of the pan pipes until stuff like this um you know i was too young to watch scarface this is the music that kind of plays when tony montana goes meets sosa up in the hills yeah um kind of reminds me of f marie abraham dangling from a helicopter but yeah it's a

slightly more chilling uh yeah this is it but but without that context which i obviously wouldn't have been aware of i find this fucking torture, this music. It is. I'm sorry, but what an unlovely, noncommittal sound pan pipes make. I like wind instruments, but pan pipes have always sounded to me like there's just more wind than body to them. There's more breath than voice, if you like. And I just fucking hate that.

No one would accept a guitar sound whereby you hear more of the creak of the neck or the squeak of the frets than you do the actual notes um so why do we accept pan pipes i mean not to condemn the entirety of south america around and they in ancient culture yes i'm sure they're part of a venerable tradition but i just watch this thinking these instruments are not fit for purpose you get you get a better sound blowing through a split piece of grass. And it's kind of, it's ice skating music. I don't know, it's musical chairs music. It's not music that I would have liked to sit down and listen to

or even stand up and listen to. Unless your idea of dancing is acting like Zoodoom here. Oh, yes. Like fucking hippie pirates. They're doing the piss head horn pipe. dancing is acting like Zudu here. Oh, yes. Like fucking hippie pirates. I mean... They're doing the piss-head hornpipe, aren't they? That was one of the standard dance routines for Zoo. Yeah, no.

Probably honed when Come On Eileen was in the charts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, it reminded me massively, in the latter years of Melody Maker, when we were encouraged by an editor who sort of bossed us about on site to um you know wander away from the main stages at festivals and explore the fields to see what you know um what you could find i'd always just find this kind of shit mainly fueled by cider and kind of enjoyed by jugglers and cunts with jester's hats on.

And cunts playing panpipes. Yeah. You know, and honestly, I mean, this one, you know, we're away from a video now. We're back in the studio. And Zoo are just being 360-degree cunts right about now. Everywhere you look, they're doing something offensive. Whether it's that rumbustious sailor's hornpipe type shit or anything else. Also, I mean, just in general, this performance.

What the fuck is going on with the camera work and the audience? Everyone seems drunk. It's a shambles. And not in a good way. Cunts to the left of you, cunts to the right of you, cunts in the balcony. Yeah. Do you know what? I think that this belongs i mean it's pop success possibly belongs to a category that also includes things

like jonah lewis stop the cavalry and even likes it life is life which is that kind of steam piston sort of like knees in knees out action you know which is absolute anathema to a principled man like myself. But yeah, obviously it does seem to have a lot of popular traction. This is probably the only influence that the Ballet Rombert have had on the charts. I've got fond memories of the Ballet Rombert because their school was on my campus at university. And you could always tell where it was

because just outside the building there was a bin that was absolutely overflowing with nothing but nub ends they didn't eat they all smoked and i'd go past that bin and just look at it in awe that you could get so many nub ends in one bit well you couldn't get them in in the bin because it was just overflowed it was essentially the tramps version of the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow seriously you could have got enough fags out of them nub ends for a 200 pack of fags to give to your non or at christmas on a daily basis yes yeah i mean the one thing i will say in this song's defense that the camera crew stopped hunting around as much for zoo wankers and concentrate on the instruments they're fascinated

by them they are weird instruments at that time yeah david i gotta ask would you be less down on rockism if everybody had guitars as tiny as incantations. That would be all right, because, yeah, the whole sort of penile representation, you know, if it's nice and modest. Yeah, more realistic. In Haircut 100, they held them right up, like little teddy bears or whatever. That was all right.

It was a low-slung, oh, the obscenity, the macho. I have to say that, like, looking at an episode like this makes you wonder if perhaps anti-rockism went a bit too far. You know, the way that everything is just reduced to this kind of agadooish common denominator, including this, you know. There's an odd thing about the hurl era, whilst it's finding its feet as well. They're encouraging the audience to make a lot of noise. So there's a lot of whooping and hollering.

So when it does cut from the pipes to to single little mandolin solos and guitars, you can't hear them. Either that or I'm deaf as a post. But yeah, I saw guitar... Music's suddenly stopping and it goes to the guitarist who's doing some sort of lick that you're meant to hear.

And you couldn't hear it. All you heard was a load of Gary's and Sharon's whooping and hollering. Yeah, balloons popping again. Yeah, there's a lot of that in this episode. Strange gunshot-type balloon pops. An awful lot of energy expended here that should have been spent fighting Thatcher.

That's all I can say. Sorry, I'm 21 again, you know, going over this. Well, it seems to have affected the cameraman as well because the camera is swooping around, really drunk and thrashing. It does this kind of 360-degree turn as well around the entire studio and come back comes back to a mooring point all it picks up in all of these movements is assorted

zoo wankers and the never that nice sight of british people having far too good a time so um yeah i i i did not like this song or performance i have to say why is this a hit i mean i can imagine my sociology teachers banging this on the stereo in the staff room on their for their piss up again i think it's that kind of steam action you know and he gets faster and faster yeah there's that yeah it goes fast yeah yeah it gets faster knees in knees in, knees out, knees in, knees out, knees in, knees out. Anything else to say about this? No, take it away.

So two weeks later, Catcher Pie jumped another 12 places to number 16, like the mountain goat itself. It's highest position. The follow-up, Securiadas, failed to chart, and they never scaled the heights of the top 40 again. But in 1986, they worked with Ennio Morricone on the soundtrack to the mission, and

are still active today. Unfortunately, the single reappeared in the news in 2018, during the trial of Barry Bennell, the former youth coach of Man City crew alexandra stoke city and leeds united when it was revealed that he would play the song on a ghetto blaster when he was sexually abusing youth players jesus al you are you're tainting songs today

really effectively that's little drummer boy and this oh fucking grim believe it or not incantation actually comes from just off the jizzic high road and that was zoom moving to their music right now at number two in our Christmas countdown, it's Shake and Stevens having a blue Christmas. Woo! We'll have a blue Christmas without you. I'll be so blue just thinking of you. The camera sweeps across the studio in a frantic search for Kid, who has been swallowed up by the kids, some of whom are still jumping and whooping like gibbons

with a bulldog clip on their genitals. After Kid tells us that the last group lived just off the Chiswick High Road, presumably in a big tent with some goats, he pivots to the balcony and introduces Blue Christmas by shaking Stevens. We've covered Michael Barrett, or to give him his full title, the highest incarnation of the white-shod comradeship, ever-victorious Iron Will commander of the white shot comradeship ever victorious iron will commander of the top forte double denim defender of the green door of revolution an eternal guardian

of heterosexual rock and roll many a time and often chart music this his fifth single of 1982 is the lead cut from the Shakin' Stevens EP, where Comrade Shakey finally tips his hand and reveals that he's been slightly influenced by the American singer Elvis Presley, it being a cover of the 1948 country song first recorded by Ernest Tubb that Elvis recorded for his Christmas LP in 1957 and got to number 11 when it was finally released in 1964. It's a follow-up to I'll Be Satisfied, which got to number 10 only last month.

It entered the charts at number 35 a fortnight ago, then soared 31 places to number 4, and this week it's nipped up two places to number two. Oh, here he is. The master. I mean, this is shaking, shaking. I mean, you know, I don't know. I don't think it's his finest work.

It just seems to be, obviously, you know, it's covering the Elvis song, but I think it's going directly for the whole Lonely This Christmas vibe yeah i think that mud yes definitely it's also got you know that the feeblest ever guitar it's uh yeah i mean i it's hard really i try and get in the shaky spirit you know the whole biz type thing and everything like that and it's shaking but you know i again you know as neil said i was a principal boy I'd have been shaking alright, shaking with fury that it was Shaking Steams and not Joseph K that was on this top of the pops

So yeah, another big year for Shaker he got to number one with Oh Julie in January, he had a number one LP with Shaky last month this is his third top ten hit in 1982 and yes Shaky's now confident to do his first ever Elvis cover as a single, along with covers of Lordy Miss Claudette and Que Sera Sera.

Yeah. A thoughtfully wrapped gift under the tree for your dad. He is confident now, isn't he? He's a master as well in terms of, like, he plays the camera quite well in this performance. You know, he's good at coming down the stairs and pointing at the camera and addressing the audience like that but he's let down badly by zoo i find um i found myself watching and just getting increasingly censorious about what zoo were doing i mean one thing i liked about the intro while kid was prattling on you could see the floor managers just shoving the zoo wankers

off the balcony because comrade shake is about to turn up and they have to they have to position themselves on the stairs yeah and on the stairs he he strolls down but you know christmas is about the birth of our lord jesus christ why are your legs so far apart zoo it's disgusting the ones on the stairs just look like they've got indeterminate ass problems or haven't wiped properly there's nothing to do with what what the song is as ever no it's weird with blue christmas because i i i sort of am fond of the elvis version i'm very fond of a very old version by doy o'dell from about 1948 um it's really really good version but the trouble is i i think shakingaking Stevens hasn't yet figured out

a way of sounding like he even Elvis on Blue Christmas sounds like he likes Christmas and he would be having a good Christmas if his lover's with him if it wasn't for you you bitch yeah yeah whereas Shaking Stevens just does not sound like he'll

be having an absolutely smashing Christmas if his lover was just with him. He doesn't sound like that. You know, the enforced jollity of Merry Christmas, everyone, a few years later, at least prods him into sounding like he actually enjoys Christmas. In this, he just seems to sink into a bottle of bells, basically. And, you know, just starts yodeling like A-Tase. He doesn't sound best happy. So, yeah, it doesn't really come across great.

Although his engagement with the camera is good. But I would always go for any other version of this than this one. It's interesting, Al, that you point out that there is definitely an Elvis Presley influence. I've already thought about that before. But, yeah. But I suppose this is a sort of commonality I suppose A lot of people Find a certain poignancy About Elvis in the later

The rhinestone period The burger period or whatever This kind of bloated Sort of tragic figure that he cuts And I suppose Shakey's equivalent Is his little boogie woogie at the back of my mind High energy period I think I find a similar poignancy about that

Oh wait till we get to that. Yeah. The problem I have with a song like Elvis' version, it's just rooted in a lie. Because no way Elvis would ever spend any time on his own. No. Let alone Christmas. You know, Elvis would have all his mates around

for a nice drug burger. And Shakey, Shakey's not spending any time on his own. He's shaking fucking Stevens. You know, and the idea that he's putting forward that he's going to spend Christmas day skulking around outside of Colliery, feeling a bit sorry for himself. No,

mate. Yeah. But Shaker, you know, are they my real friends or my so-called friends? He's still feeling a little bit lonely, really. You know,

are they just... What a shame Shaker didn't have his own version of the Memphis Marv have his own version of the memphis are they here for michael or are they here for shaking there's a big difference if he did have his version of the memphis mafia i also wonder what shaken stevens's version of the fool's gold loaf would be oh yes oh explain that neil oh the fool's gold loaf is elvis's favorite sandwich um, I mean, he was so fond of that he used to, I mean, he's Elvis, for God's sake. He can get it whenever he wants. It's an epic construction involving basically, I think, an entirely hollowed out piece of bread. Well, loaf of bread, rather.

Filled with one jar of peanut butter. Yeah. One jar of, I think, grape jam or jelly, as he would have called it, I guess. And a whole pound of bacon. Yes. And he used to get these flown in, didn't he, from the Colorado Mine Company, a restaurant in Denver, Colorado, where I think he first had it. Yeah.

One time he was with a load of coppers or something, wasn't he, Elvis? He came up in conversation and one of the Memphis Mafias said, Oh, I could go one of them right now. And he said, right, let's go. And so they all fucked off. They take a private jet from Graceland, don't they? And they buy about 30 of these fucking things. Yes.

And spend hours eating them. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, God knows what shakers would be like. It would probably be a massive Welsh cake filled with sausages. Fizz whiz. One of the good things about this performance is, you know, because Shakey's given his balcony appearance like a rock and roll Ceausescu that everyone likes, the kids have been allowed to reclaim the floor to hear his message,

but only for about five seconds, and then the fucking camera barrels in and scatters them left and right yeah that's it i mean because there are a few in the audience dotted about like they're not ted's as such but they're dressed um in very 50s yeah bit quiffy and and actually quite sharply dressed um a couple of them presumably they are there for Elvis I mean not Elvis they are there for Shakey God you see how easy it's done he really does keep that

keep that it really is I mean and Shakey he's switching up his image a bit isn't he he looks very Beverly Hills cop here but he's got a powder blue bomber jacket

with the the letter S on his tit, which I initially took that to mean socialism, because you would. But when he comes off the balcony to commune with the people, he turns around and it says Seahawks on the back. So it's a Seattle Seahawks bomber jacket, which is pretty go-ahead for 1982. American football has only been on for a month on Channel 4.

Yeah, and he's a pro. He deals with the snow, the fake snow, really well. Yes. Not many people can wear a black shirt with fake snow hitting it and still look okay, and he manages it. He's a pro. And yeah, I like you say the zoo wankers. If they're on the road they've got arse rash.

But there's a lot of slow dancing as well, isn't there? Oh yeah, there's some people yeah, last chance for slow dance kind of clinching each other there actually is the only moment in the entire episode where any members of zoo are tolerable um but yeah they are completely obliterated by these just as yeah it's the four or five who are down the stairs who just have not wiped properly and no need yeah it's disgusting this is why b-day should have really come in in this country

in a bigger way yes he's making his first power move into christmas isn't he he really wants to be part of your christmas oh yes pretty soon he will be oh in a big way i've been sitting here very quietly actually because it's occurred to me elvis Presley, he died age 42. Technically, biologically, plausibly, he could have been my son at that age. No! Oh, Elvis, boy, son, what have you done? Look at him on the toilet. So, two weeks later, the Shaking Stevens EP dropped five places to number seven. The follow-up, a cover of the

1959 Ricky Nelson song It's Late, got to number 11 in August of 1983 but he'd go on to have seven more top 10 hits throughout the rest of the 80s. You'll be doing all right With your Christmas of white Oh, blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas Oh, blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas 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. Terms and conditions apply. history of comedy, so it will kind of be like a free audiobook, which you can listen to at the gym, or jogging, or at your desk while pretending to do your job, or on the train without the embarrassment of people seeing you actually reading a book like some kind of swat. Jake and Stephens, and you'll be able to see Shakey again in action on the Christmas Day Top of the Pop special that'll get underway about 2 o'clock. Meanwhile, here comes imagination going through some changes. Kid reminds us that Comrade Shakey will be delivering his Christmas

Day message on the Top of the Pops Christmas special on Saturday as he's surrounded by more members of City Farm, who've been clearly told by the floor managers to start snapping their fingers for no reason whatsoever. He then points at the stage and introduces to Changers by Imagination. We've covered Imagination in Chart Music number 8, and this, the fourth single from the LP In The Heat Of The Night is the follow-up to the title track of that LP which got to number

22 in October. It entered the charts of Fortnite to go at number 66, jumped 21 places to number 45 but then got tangled up in the Christmas rush and this, it's edged up only two places to number 43, but no matter, because Imagination are always welcome on top of the pubs in the early 80s. And here they are to caper about for our entertainment. Imagination, we love them, don't we? Oh, of course. I mean, you know, know at this point I would have

at last basically especially as I was not as taken with the mazonettes as you chaps were but I think what's interesting about this as well is that like Sartorial in every respect they're out wanking the zoo wankers but you know in a good sense they've shown them how to do it

exactly shown them how it's done I would have loved the fact that, again, they're proceeding at a kind of contemporary pace. It's got the 1982 groove. Yes. You know, that's got on place. You're hearing that for the first time on the show. I love that.

And I always love that about imagination. You know, they could always like, you know, they would fit into any kind of sort of, you know, mix list, whatever, you know, and that would be great. You know, any sort of playlist, mixtape, whatever you made up. Obviously, there weren't exactly changelings, you know, there were samelings, really, I suppose.

Yes. But, you know, it's fair to say that they... Yeah, I think this song really should have been called The Same instead of Change. Exactly, yes, because, yes, that is very much it was. And, I mean, you know, and I guess, you know, it's hard, really. They just pounded it for as much as they can get. And this is probably just about the last bit of juice

that they managed to kind of mangle out of it. I mean, in the previous issue of Smash, in the singles review page, Tim DeLeal wrote, I don't know what to make of Imagination. Are they, as Filoki said, the best soul band in the world? Or are they the multiracial society's follow-up to Gary Glitter?

Either way, they've discovered the art of making disco music sound equally good on the radio. This has the usual swang jolly tricks, a passable melody and surefire hip potential. It does have those things. Smash Hits were very keen on finding a Black Gary Glitter. Because that's what Neil Tennant, I believe,

said about Prince. The Black Gary Glitter. And a few other things as well, perhaps. I think it's more pertinent with imagination, if at all. Certainly closer to that than Best Soul Band in the World.

Yeah. The thing is, though, I enjoyed this, if at all you know yeah certainly closer to that than best soul band in the world yeah yeah this the thing is though this is i mean i enjoyed this but this is no body talk and it it it's no it's no just an illusion i'd say there's a couple of problems here for me anyway i sense a slight michael jackson influence um in the speed of the groove i for me personally imagination suit a slow sexy groove um rather than this something libidinous and grinding because lee john's voice his voice is a soft falsetto thing with no kind of edge to it in a sense um he's best off not to get too rude but he's best off yet sliding his voice in between the callipicus undulations of a slow groove. Let me put it that way.

What's needed here is a voice that cuts through a little bit more, cuts through the groove a little. And his voice can't really do that. And I think that there's a heavy MJ influence here. And I know their outfits are good. But with imagination, kind of, and this has nothing to do with sex in a sense. I just want them wearing less clothes i want them i have a picture of them in their pants um and i can't yeah i should wear but just over your bed no anywhere they they go i just i have this picture of them just living in their pants to a certain extent i like the dance moves here there's some great just just yeah filthy stuff that cameo would get it in the neck for a few years later i think yes um and hats off to john for the spinning thing that he does um made me feel dizzy as i was

watching it i i felt watching him spin as i would have um in a playground on a witch's hat or on a roundabout because he's not even doing the ballerina thing of looking at a fixed point and then spinning his head at the last moment it's it's very impressive but yeah it they feel like a band i'm possibly wrong but they feel like a band on the wane a little bit yes from their heights yeah yeah yeah well this is this is your bog-standard fourth single from an album track, isn't it? It makes you wonder why they bothered putting it out. Yeah, yeah.

Perhaps go away. Particularly at this time of the year. Yeah, I suppose they had to keep their hand in, really. It was probably all they had, really, in their quiver. I like the kind of pansexuality of imagination. I like the fact that it's queer, it's you know it's it's it's just across the board really you know i do i i always enjoy that really i mean the downside to this performance for me is that they haven't got their instruments out yes yeah and that's wrong because imagination are an actual band yes actually

without his base it loses something i mean they're essentially capering about they're wearing kind of like green red and white leggings which makes them look like a sexy italian flag does demean them slightly yeah the perfect imagination performance is them with their instruments and then just going oh fucking instruments yeah we don't need them we we've got sex and then they just put them down and start grinding and capering. The wonderful thing about imagination is that they provide, actually, the complete opposite to daddisfaction. They provide dad...

Dad enragement. Yeah, dad is outrage. And also dad is slight confusion as well. That's what's really great about them. Those performances of body talk and stuff are just etched in my memory as these things where you were almost watching it in a room with your parents god it was faintly you know uncomfortable it was as uncomfortable as a sex scene in dynasty it was uncomfortable viewing being in the same room i mean it's a mercy in a way that my late granddad had um you know died

by this point because i think if you'd seen this it'd have been 14 days added potato peeling i think yeah a shame that they're on the wane a shame that this song's been highlighted on chart music because it's only the second time we've come across them and this is them at the arse end of their career really but even arse end imagination of um it's serviceable. But who's like imagination in the mid-80s and the late 80s? Not really... Nobody British, certainly. I mean, the masterpiece, I suppose, of that kind of like, you know, that sort of pace, that slinky pace that Neil was talking about, I guess, is M'tume and Juicy Fruit, which is kind of around this time.

I think perhaps it's about a year later. I suppose that's the actual gold standard. We could do with bands like that. I'm not saying, oh, there's no music. I'm not going to start saying, oh, you know, back when music was good. But more bands like Imagination through the 80s and 90s would have been a fantastic thing.

Yeah. Nice to see a message on the rigging from the camera crew, though. There's a big tinsel-y Merry Christmas from Crew 7 on the rigging. As we'll see throughout this episode, the backroom boys are having a bit of fun this week. So two weeks later, Changers finally slumped over the line of the top 40 when it nipped up four places to number 39.

And a week later, it got to number 31, its highest position. The follow-up, looking at midnight, got to number 29, its highest position. The follow-up, Looking at Midnight, got to number 29 in June of 1983 and out of the nine remaining singles they put out across the 80s, Only Thank You My Love made the business end of the charts when it got to number 22 in January of 1985. There goes imagination. Well, the record industry tends to regard the end of the year chart as the most prestigious. So let's see who's made it then

as we go through our Christmas hit sound countdown. And at number 30, it's Eddie Grant and I Don't Want to Dance. A new entry at number 29 from Kid Creole and the Coconuts and Dear Addie. At 28, it's Incantation, another new entry. At 27, Where the Heart Is from Soft Cell. At 26, a New Entry from ABBA with Under Attack. At 25, The Other Side of Love from Yazoo. A Flock of Seagulls are at number 24 with Wishing. At 23, I Feel Love from Donna Summer. At 22, Living on the Ceiling, Blamange.

Duran Duran are at number 21 with Rio. Let's go back to number 26 right now and see ABBA and a film they recorded in Sweden performing Under Attack. Whoo! Don't know how to take it, don't know where to go My resistance running low And every day the hold is getting tighter And it troubles me so Kids reminds us that this is the week

that the music industry starts cupping itself with unrestrained glee at all that money being chucked over the counter of record shops across the land as he breaks down the first third of this week's top 30. He then tells us to prepare for a bit of video all the way from a TV studio in Sweden as he introduces Under Attack by ABBA. We've done ABBA loads on Chart Music and this, their 28th single release, is the follow-up to The Day Before You Came,

which got to number 32 in October. It was recorded in August of this year as part of a proposed follow-up LP to The Visitors, but when the project was shelved, the group decided to put out a double compilation LP called The Singles, The First Ten Years, and this is the final track on it. They've been in the country recently to promote the LP and The Single, appearing on saturday superstore and the late late breakfast show which got the lp to number one at the end of last month but the single only entered the chart at number 46 it jumped 15 places to number 31 last week and this week it's up a

mere five places to number 26 but fuck it because they're still ABBA so here's another chance to see their live link performance from a tv studio in Stockholm for the late late breakfast show 12 days ago before we get into ABBA and this song the chart picks again as always in in this era reassuringly disappointingly adequate they are I mean Top of the Pops has got very professional, hasn't it? Yes. The only thing that leaps out really from that rundown is Dave Ball somehow managing to look even seedier than Mark Ormond in the shot of soft sell,

but beyond that competency all the way. Yeah. Mark Ormond there firmly in his headband phase. Definitely. What Rambo could have been. Tall chap from Plemons looks like a young Jeremy Clarkson. Yes. The only thing that jumped out at me

was that picture of Eddie Grant that they always use where he looks solemn yet resigned. As if he's just been informed that another of his songs has developed musical herpes. But there is a nice image of a stumpy Christmas tree on either side, just in case you forgot it was Christmas. Yeah, but the hastiness of the shots has gone.

The kind of random strangeness that we used to encounter is long gone. And love. Yeah. Just thoroughly competent music biz shots. So ABBA then, the lp the first 10 years kind of suggests that they're drawing a line under the 70s and preparing to kick on but from the round of interviews they've just done to promote it and the uh shocking chart performance of the day before you came the next 10 years uh they're being called into question aren't they yeah i mean those figures

are just mad aren't they just thinking of an abba single that only gets to 26 or 31 is just it's just crazy i think it's not right it don't feel right and and you know i don't think anyone i mean i certainly wasn't aware as a 10 year old that abba were one this was their swan song pretty much and they were on their way out um it's going but it's odd i mean you know what are abba gonna do in the 80s if they would have stuck around yeah i mean there's an indication on this song how 80s abba would have panned out they've started to get a little bit synth there yeah i mean it's interesting because actually i mean i wasn't even aware of this track it completely passed by at the time and i you know, a close scrutiniser of the charts, as I've said.

But, you know, actually, listen to this now. It actually sounded very, very promising, actually. You know, that kind of warm, arpeggiated approach. But then, I don't know, just especially when it gets to the chorus, it's just such a letdown. It's so sort of blandly resolved, know and schlagerish almost it's like abber at their kind of abber at their leastest and um in terms of like coming to terms with the 80s i mean at least like freed has made a bit of an effort with her hair you know it's

futuristic or whatever but the two chaps i mean those are the beards of complacency aren't they you know they're just thinking it's kind of perma 70s and it's just like for fuck's sake shake well quite i mean it's 82 and i think david's absolutely right the verses are ace on this song you know kind of nordic droney techno pop it kind of like a premonitions of of erase rewind by the cardigans or robin's every heartbeat i mean i'm kind of annoyed that they felt they had to put and i do think they felt they had to put an abba type chorus in it because they're abba i know i know but god a whole song of just the verses would have done me that in the verses they've allowed the sounds that they're using the synth sounds as you say out to actually sort of direct the writing in a sense but the chorus is just a typical abba chorus um which

doesn't really work so yeah it's a shame abba are made for the glacial and the gliding and in the 70s they pretty much perfect it in the 80s that sound might have got horrific i'm kind of glad they called it a day when they did i mean we do get a bit of robo Benny in it, don't we? Yes. Yeah, I mean, you know, little vocoder touches. But, yeah, I mean, I'm supposed to be, you know, like, Bob Expert, David Stubbs, you know, despises ABBA and all that kind of stuff. ABBA skeptic David Stubbs. Yeah, I mean, I think they're perhaps slightly overpraised, but that's as far as I go.

I do actually admire them. I was very disdainful of them when I was, you know, in the late 70s, when I was in the fifth form at school, and I wrote a kind of lambasting essay about all of the kind of, you know, the superficiality of pop culture. I singled out ABBA. The Toothpaste Society. The Toothpaste Society, yes, a symbol of the Toothpaste Society.

What's wrong with brushing your teeth, David? That's very much how I feel like those. I'm actually very glad indeed that we're in the Toothpaste Society. I don't know really what I was thinking at the time, actually. But no, that's what they symbolise. Parma is a warning from history. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think that it's interesting.

I think ABBA very much belong to the late 70s. And I think they're not needed in the 80s. They're extraneous. And it's funny how people just suddenly judder to a halt, really. to the late 70s and I think they're not needed in the 80s. They're extraneous. It's funny how people just suddenly judder to a halt, really. I mean, I always think that Bowen didn't... You can give him Let's Dance or whatever, but essentially he was of the 70s and Prince was of the 80s.

And it's almost like abruptly about 1990, I mean, he becomes a sort of fraction of what he was before. People seem to want 70s ABBA because here's another greatest, another of the many greatest compilations by ABBA that people are buying. They're not really keen on new ABBA. Maybe the fault isn't with ABBA, it's that the fault is with us.

Yeah, perhaps so. I mean, fatigue is just inevitably going to set in. But actually, the verses do hint at something, a possible future for them that never ends up getting, you know, followed up. But I mean, the weird thing is, yeah, it's kind of their latest sort of TV appearance, in a sense, in their entire career.

But the actual dynamics of the bit of footage that we get from the Late Late Show is strangely dated. It's got this why are the audience got their back to them i mean i believe it's your standard european tv show thing where they're all sat at tables very much so they've got a very chicken in a basket or what no sorry herring in a basket vibe about it always struck me as odd it reminds me of in a sense of that led that danish tv appearance late 60s where they're playing this amazing shit but the kids vibe about it. Almost struck me as odd. It reminds me, in a sense, of that Led Zepp Danish TV appearance

late 60s where they're playing this amazing shit but the kids have got their backs to them which is a strange way of doing it. Yeah,

and that astounding performance of Charlie Brown by Two Man Sound where old Lou Duprix fucking working his tits off doing his best Mick Jagger impression in a sailor suit.

People are just sitting there as if they're watching a frog being dissected. Oh, man. And the audience, you know, the pop-fregged hunger of Stockholm, if you will, they're very subdued. But then again, you know, this is Sweden. They've probably

seen members of ABBA nipping out to the shops with some crispbread all week. True. And I think you could do with some of that under-excitement though in, you know, as a kind of mitigation in this particular,

you know, top of the pop zero, couldn't you? Yes, definitely. You do miss that. Quiet contemplation. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But yeah, I mean,

it is a very strange performance because it's, you know, they're still fucking ABBA and they're on their home turf. But, I mean, they've Christmassed up the studio a bit but

they've not laid out too much Kroner on the trimmings have they Swedish TV's looking very uh min-gen compared to uh his Top of the Pops layout definitely I mean there's no awareness really that this is going to be the one of the last times that we see this band and if there was perhaps it would have been a bit more lavish just to echo what david said though yes and yetta as taylor has always corrected me and um frida look vaguely contemporary but ben and bjorn yeah they're airlifted out of 1976 you know and yet she looks very um oh what's the i don't know how to say this word higge she looks she looks right higge is that how you say it i think so yeah or is it huger or whatever i think it's higge but she looks massive i'm gonna say higge fuck it brexit i can say what i want now try and stop me bulgham so she looks she looks very higge higgy pop if you will

in a nice jumper but i mean just to just echo Neil, yeah, I mean, or actually yourself, in fact. Yeah, they are fucking ABBA, and in a sense that's the problem. They are, in a sense, genuinely a bit too grand to have to kind of, like, adapt and, you know, to, like, new trends or whatever. I think that, you know, ABBA should ultimately be themselves, and their selves really are what they you know are of the late 70s really also this thing about glacial and gliding that Neil mentioned and that's true and I think in a sense there was a sort of synth pop quality to them before they really took on board

synths however but that's then kind of ubiquitous in in the 80s you know which are obviously much more kind of synth based and and so they do feel kind of a bit superfluous, really, I guess, ABBA at this point. Plus all of those, you know, all of those kind of bands that adopted synthesizer use and that kind of glacial gliding thing like mentioned, they're not going to admit to liking ABBA, you know? In a weird way, ABBA are completely bypassed

by the current wave of electropop that's just happened in 81, 1980, et cetera. They're just considered cheese. The Human League drew a bit of influence off of that Yeah, the Human League, I think solely the Human League. I can't think of anyone else who's kind of boosting ABBA in any way I think actually Paul Morley may have written

about Simple Mind at this point that there weren't so much post-punk as post-ABBA and I think he sort of recognised elements of ABBA in their kind of keyboard sound, that very weren't so much post-punk as post-ABBA. And I think he sort of recognised elements of ABBA, you know, in their kind of keyboard sound, that very chiming sort of glacial keyboard sound that they've got. So I think they kind of feed into, like, you know, that New Gold Dream here of Simple Minds, I would say. We're saying that there appears to be no need for ABBA,

but they're in between a rock and a hard place at the minute, aren't they? Because they've got Bucks Fizz to the left of them, Human League to the right of them. It's almost as if people are saying well who needs abba now that tight fit have done fantasy island you know i mean there's so many bands copping bits of abba's stick well meanwhile the real abba had just fucking had enough of being abba yeah it's incredibly difficult keeping a pop idea going beyond 10 years you know and it's fatiguing for the band it's fatiguing for the audience you know with bands that do stick together for fucking ages like the stones you just get the sense they've got nowhere else to go whereas with abba i never

got that sense really and certainly as their relationships started splintering they certainly had somewhere else to go so by this time we're fatigued with them in we're not tired necessarily of the records the hits are great no but we don't need no more of them. And I don't think ABBA need to do this anymore either. So there is that sense of just drifting away. But Jackie Lieberzeit out of Cannes said that the lifespan of a band should be the same as that of a dog. And I think that, you know, as it were, the Fido of ABBA,

it was probably time for them to sort of turn up their paws at this point. So what would have happened if ABBA had stayed together throughout the 80s? I don't know. It's odd. With ABBA, although I like them, I'm kind of not actually that interested in a sense with how they would have gone through the 80s. Because, you know, we all play these parlour games in our minds. You know, what would people have done?

But with ABBA, I think, think you know chess gives us a fair indication that maybe the songwriting wouldn't necessarily have suffered but when I think about ABBA in that big gated 80s sound world that's just around the corner it's not exactly a pleasant combination so I'm kind of happy with everything they've given me up to this point and I'm not that sad that they're going to bid it farewell when I think about them in that sound world um of the mid-80s um it's not a pleasant place no I'm sure also that if they would have pushed on the circle of the four of them may well have ended up being breached by kind of I don't know new friends in a sense uh Habba wouldn't

have got on with each other throughout the 80s and i i sense that you know angeloid weber and tim rice as indicated by the chest thing they'd have made their moves in and i'm not saying they would have become members of the band but um i know that would have been atrocious but i just sense that the the kind of cohesion of the 70s stuff would have started getting farmed out a little bit they wouldn't have like i don't know suddenly thrown their lot in with start aching and warming they would they would have continued i suspect sounding increasingly dated um as time goes on because by the late 80s just the dynamics of pop have changed the sounds of pop have changed and the pace of abba songs was no longer about so I just think they would have looked increasingly dated as the

80s gone on things with Abba always dignified never desperately trying to look contemporary yeah so yeah by the late 80s I just think they would have gone beyond I mean the thing is with Abba of course endlessly parodied I think it would have just yet they would have become something of a laughing stock if they'd have just plowed their own furrow in a sense for the rest of the 80s but that's the only choice that i have if as soon as they would start taking on elements of the mid-80s sound wise or anything else they would have really started looking laughable i think they would have gone at it with a plum in terms of adapting new synths sounds into it but yeah by 1985 things would have got hella ugly with this sound so i'm kind of i'm glad they called it a day.

Yeah. And they'd have lost their essential abitude, wouldn't they? You know, it would have... Yes. And the thing is, yeah, they were always going to break up. And I think it's one thing if you're solo, if you're Cilla Black or Cliff Richard, you can kind of labour on pointlessly for years and years

and decades and decades. But with ABBA, it's a group. And I think to sort of sustain, you know, the sort of, you know, the relationship and four and four people you know to maintain the same level of enthusiasm and enthusiasm for each other I mean it's just never going to happen so two weeks later under attack stayed at number 26 stayed at number 26 for another week and then slid down the charts unbeknownst to the pop craze youngsters, we had just seen the last ever performance of ABBA as a working group

as Agnetha and Frida went off to pursue their own solo careers and Benny and Bjorn forged ahead with the musical chess. Only coming together again in 1986 to record a video of them performing the first song written by their then manager Stig Andersson for a Swedish TV special celebrating his 55th birthday. However, they

had one last single in the tank Thank You For The Music which got to number 33 in November of 1983. Only number 33. 33, that's nuts, isn't it? Yeah, because that's a very dignified, valedictory sort of thing.

And I mean, you know, like you said, apart from that 86 thing, I mean, the great thing about ABBA is that they split and they've stayed split and I really admire them for that. Yes. Although, you know, I'm sure I've mentioned this before,

I remember being promised a new ABBA song about two Christmases ago. Where the fuck is that? That still hasn't turned up. Like a boy denied his chopper. Yes. I understand something now But I want you and not your life All right, Paul Craig's youngsters, we're going to leave it there. We're going to finish this off tomorrow.

So if you can stand it, I'll see you here tomorrow for the final part of Chant Music number 55. My name's Al Needham. On behalf of Neil Kulkarni and David Stubbs, for the final part of Chart Music number 55. My name's Al Needham. On behalf of Neil Kulkarni and David Stubbs, I advise you most strongly to stay pop crazed. Chart Music. GreatBigOwl.com Hello, my name is Pete Ellison.

This is Dave Cribb. Hello, and we do a podcast called Friends with Friends, as you might have guessed from the music that's playing underneath, which is a sort of lo-fi rendition of the Friends theme tune for rights reasons. We get a different guest on every week on our podcast to talk about their favourite episode of Friends. And we look through it in excruciating detail. We pick through levels of plots like no one has ever done before.

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