Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #6 - April 10th 1975: Woody Looks Like Edward Heath

Episode Date: June 30, 2017

This sixth episode of the podcast which asks: a Lego submarine full of maggots? Really? This episode sees us throwing ourselves between two stools marked 'GLAM/FUNK' and 'PUNK/DISCO' and sprawling awkwardly in the space marked '1975', in order to check whether it really was one of the tawdrier years for Pop. Spoiler alert: yes, it rather is, actually. Emperor Rosko (looking for all the world like a Transatlantic Stu Francis) empties out a massive lucky bag of Pop-rammel, which includes people in silhouette pretending to have oral sex with Telly Savalas, someone who wasn't brave enough to be Alvin Stardust hiding behind a dog, Chicken-In-A-Basket (but really decent chicken, not Findus) soul, And Pan's People are dressed like sexy, sexy Vileda SuperMops. It's not all bad, however: The Sweet come back hard on their tottery platform heels one last time, the Goodies wear matching dungarees with a 'G' on them, like radical-feminist Crips, Susan Cadogan drops one of the greatest reggae tunes of the decade, and it's 1975 and Bohemian Rhapsody hasn't come out yet, so you already know what's No.1. Al Needham is joined by Neil Kulkani and Simon Price for a proper snuffle around the bell-bottomed, tartan-fringed crotch of April '75, veering off to sing disgusting variations of Bay City Roller songs, discuss why pirate radio was a bit crap, actually, the thrill of Snuff Delivery Day in old peoples homes in Coventry, and being bequeathed platform shoes by your father. The longest episode yet, full to the brim with swearing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Chart music. chart music chart music hey up you pop craze youngsters and welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music, the podcast that gets its hand right down the back of the settee on an episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host Al Needham and with me once again are two experts in the field of music and talking random shit. First up, welcome return of Simon Price. Hello Simon, how are you mate? You know what, I'm not going to lie to you Al. Simon Price.

Hello, Simon. How are you, mate? You know what? I'm not going to lie to you, Al. Right. Listen, right. I'm Welsh. I'm ginger.

I have freckles. And I'm a goth. How do you think I'm reacting to this weather right now? I'm sat here like Rab C. Nesbitt, basically, just like dying. It's grim. I've got a towel on my head. Actually, I'm a bit more like Blackadder when he puts the shorts on his head and the pencils up his nostrils. That's what I look like right now.

It's fucking horrible, isn't it? It's grim. Welsh people weren't meant for the hot weather and neither were Goths. I'm ticking two boxes. It's 1976 weather, mate. It's one year out. Two right, yeah. So what have you been up to, mate?

I understand you gave a bit of a talk about Prince the other week. Oh, yeah. Well, this is me now. I'm just like an international kind of academic. I'm in demand at conferences all around the UK. I charge incredibly high fees. Yeah, no, I went up to Salford. It was a great thing, actually.

It was called the Purple Rain Conference with R-E-I-G-N at Salford Uni, and it was in conjunction with the University of Tennessee. And Des Dickerson from Prince's Band Revolution was there and uh oh yeah i mean it was just geeking out completely getting very nerdy about prince trivia and all kinds of aspects of it did you give a talk or were you part of a panel i gave a talk actually i gave a talk about prince as a live performer and uh you know he was the greatest live performer i ever saw uh my top five gigs of all time were all Prince gigs. So yeah, and basically the way I saw it was

every aspect of his persona, his sexuality, his religion, his attitude to music and collaboration all plays itself out on stage. So I crammed all that into 20 minutes and hopefully I gave a good impression. Did you kind of like do the splits and kick the microphone over and then hump it and any of that i did yeah but now i'm worried that i've got a potentially fatal addiction to prescription painkillers so we'll see how that works out for

me do you think there's a danger of of uh people like us over intellectualizing uh pop music you know says says the man who hosts a podcast where we spend 20 minutes talking about a Legs & Co routine. No, I think we should intellectualise pop music more, and I think people who do it should be paid lots of money to do so. I heartily concur with the above assessment. You know what? It's the highest art form.

Pop music is the highest art form known to mankind. I really believe that. I think it encompasses all the other art forms. I think it's all the other art forms i think it's greater than theater greater than film greater than anything you care to mention and um you know i think anybody who says that there's anything wrong with intellectualizing that it's just some kind of weird uh weird snobbery at play you know i'll tell you something i really hate right um it's it's private eyes umits Corner. Because pretty much every issue, they have somebody on there who,

the only reason why the thing that they put in there is, you know, supposedly funny is that it's somebody using big words or big ideas about pop. And to the people who write Private Eye, that in itself is inherently ridiculous. And I absolutely hate that because it is art and you know i think art criticism and analysis of art is a really important thing and i think a world with uncriticized art gets the art it deserves in other words shit and my other guest this episode is none other than neil kulkarni welcome back neil how are you hello well i'm sweating my bollocks off, mate. We all are, mate.

Not together. You know, I must say. No, I'm good. You know, it's been a nice sort of couple of weeks of wallowing in Tory misery, mate. Yes, it's been lovely, hasn't it? Which I've really, really enjoyed. With regards to what Pricey was saying about intellectualising pop music,

I think there's not enough of it. And what's been shocking to me in recent years has been that actually some so-called pop critics um you know they've sort of said oh it's only pop music or they've said to me it's just pop music get over it if i've spewed out some rant or something i'm not going to get over it i'm never going to get over it i haven't got over it since i was about 10 years old so you spend your life absorbed in this art form then yeah damn right it deserves intellectualization it is the definitive art form of perhaps the last 50 or 60 years so so yeah it can't be over intellectualized as far as i'm concerned well said neil completely agree excellent so there we

go we've got the two intellectuals and i'm the thick twat who just asks the most stupidly obvious questions so this episode the episode we're looking at this week we're going back back back to April the 10th 1975 I mean this was a very hard one to research because number one I had to

keep eliminating the band The 1975 from my searches and just fuck that band entirely but also it's seen I had to keep eliminating the band The 1975 from my searches and just fuck that band entirely. But also it's seen as one of the worst years in music history. Glam's disappearing through the rear view mirror. Punk's a long way away. Disco hasn't really got started yet.

And people just look back at it and go, this is the absolute low point of pop music. What do you think? You get that a lot with 75. You get that a lot with several years. I mean I think people say the same sort of thing about 85, 86 as well.

And it's always with the caveat that there was something around the corner and it had to get that bad so that this could happen. Obviously in the case of 75, that nadir had to happen so that punk could happen but i mean i do think that usually when somebody says oh this is the worst year or this is this was a terrible year for pop music a they're probably not really reflecting everything that was going on when you think back to 75 in terms of just talking albums you young americans hissing the summer lawns horses marcus garvey there's tons of good albums

out um what i tend to find when people have that narrative that this is this is a terrible year is really it's a terrible year for a certain type of music perhaps and i think in 75 it was probably a terrible year perhaps for rock bands for for white male rock bands yeah but look elsewhere and there's there's way more interesting things going on i mean i see 1975 like i see 1986 um you could look back on 1986 and if you weren't there you'd think oh god look at all the shit in the charts but the thing was there was so much good stuff that was happening that but it just wasn't making the charts. So what was happening on the week of April 10th 1975? Well the EEC referendum has been set for June the 5th. Eric Heffer has been sacked by Harold Wilson from the Department of Industry for kicking off about Europe. West Ham have just beaten Ipswich Town 2-1

in the FA Cup semi-final replay and Leeds United have beaten Barcelona 2-1 in the first leg of the European Cup semis. But the big news this week is that Perry Como has been mobbed on stage by fans in Glasgow. That's what 1975 was like. On the cover of the NME this week, it's Rick

Wakeman who's shilling King Arthur on ice. The number one LP is 20 Greatest Hits by Tom Jones. The number one in America is Philadelphia Freedom by the Elton John band. I don't know why he was going around as the Elton John band. And the number one LP

in the USA was Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin. And already I can hear people pressing the pause button on their iPods and looking for something else. Stick with us. It's 1975. It's great. So chaps, what were we doing in 1975?

I was not even three. I was living in an old people's home. Right. I was living in a flat above an old people's home in Coventry. Right. And my world was small. My world was the flat, the corridor that the flat was in.

The old people downstairs, who were all very scary, really. There's no way of putting it. A lot of them were born you know born in the previous century born in the 1800s for christ's sake did you not did you not get a nuttles minto off them or anything usually it was covered in fluff um but i used to there's certain distinct memories i have at that time i remember a real weekly point of excitement that was actually on the thursday whenever topper pops uh was about to come on, was the snuff delivery. Right.

The delivery of snuff, which was then distributed amongst the residents. And this is a nasal stimulant, not videos of people getting murdered. No, it wasn't cannibal fireworks or anything. It was little tins of snuff. I remember prizing one open with my little toddler fingers

and taking a big quack of it and um yeah not a good idea but yeah these are these are pre-pop times for me to be honest with you al i don't think i mean i was probably in the room when top of the pops was on yeah very dimly aware of pop very dimly aware of music really a very small two two-year-old world the only other thing that happened that year was that um my parents thought i was deaf right because i refused to talk i refused to talk to anybody right and they were getting a bit worried by this time because i was about two and a half and i hadn't said a word to anybody so i actually ended up having to go to a little clinic

nearby and they played me tapes and things like this and they deduced that I wasn't deaf and that I just didn't want to talk to anybody yeah just come and ask so yeah that was my 75 very very dim memories for me that's like the joke about the kid who just doesn't talk and the parents are so upset and all of a sudden the kid says man

me toast is burnt and she bursts into tears and she says why have you been so quiet for so long and he says well everything was alright until now that's it I had nothing to say yeah and you made up for that in the years to come

Simon 1975 what does it mean to you in 1975 I was living in 15 Park Crescent in Barry and it was a former Victorian orphanage. Oh, man. And the reason I mention that is because I was seven years old, and in that impressionable way that children do,

I kind of took that idea around with it, and I kind of hallucinated the ghosts of Victorian children and teachers in Victorian clothing wandering down the hallway. With a hoop and a stick. The other thing I remember about that house is that my bedroom was right up in the attic and I was lying there one night

and the ceiling fell in on me. All the plaster fell in and I was covered, all across the bed, covered in maggots. Oh no! God, this explains so much. And I didn't mind, I wasn't freaked out, because I was just at that age where you're not really scared of stuff like that yet. And I actually kind of treated them as pets,

and I created a Lego submarine to put the maggots in, and I kind of put them in the bath in this Lego submarine because we had to make our own fun in the 70s. One of the reasons why I think 1975 is a bad music year because I always consider 1975 to be a bad year for me because in the first week of 1975

we'd moved away from High St. Green and we moved to a new estate in a place called Top Valley. So yeah, I didn't really like it and I didn't really like the music all my favorite bands you know like gary glitter and the sweet work you know they weren't as prominent as before and you know the new bands and the new things that were coming up i wasn't that impressed by but and we will talk about some of those bands later on so what else was on telly this day? Well, on BBC One, they've just broadcast Blue Peter, Yogi Bear, Magic Roundabout.

And they've just finished an episode of Tomorrow's World, where Raymond Baxter demonstrates a new telephone that can send her a picture of his cock to Judith Han. Took ages. It really did. And the quality wasn't that good it was just pixels but bbc2 has gone for the traditional one two of play school in the open university but on itv uh in the morning they've had mike smith presumably not that one showing you how to make a record player on jobs about the house apparently a record player from scratch with regular household bits and bobs.

Right about tea time, Kid Jensen has presented Rock On With 45 on obvious competition with the top of the pops with the Detroit Spinners, Sylvia and Zig Zag hosted from the Hard Rock Disco in Manchester. And in Crossroads, a missing wage packet causes grief for Amy Turkle oh Amy right now they're halfway through a new episode of the six million dollar man where Steve Austin

and a pretty teenager who possesses extraordinary ESP powers track down a mole who's leaking laser weapon secrets to the Russians and there'll be probably lots of slow motion running that, you know, to make him look like he's running really fast, which I never fucking understood. And also when you got the doll, which I'd get for Christmas this year, his kind of like eagle eye meant you looked through the back of his head and it made everything even more further away.

It was just fucked up. Yeah, I had one of them. It was insane, wasn't it? And the one thing about that doll was I got really obsessed about the smell of his trainers. I I had one of them. It was insane, wasn't it? The one thing about that doll was I got really obsessed about the smell of his trainers. I got quite addicted to them. I got really scared about it. This set you up for life as a football

casual. Yes. Trainer sniffer. The slow motion thing, Al, was so that kids could do it as well. Yes. I remember doing the slow motion run, even at the age of about two or three, and making those sounds, sounds you know this six million dollar man sounds what kind of creaking noise yeah that thing um it was because kids so kids could do it yeah yeah smart bits of marketing by those very good yeah yeah because you would you just see loads of kids just going really slow down the road

and it's like what are you doing i won't being the bionic man it's tltp time so let's hang on in there baby the host of this show is emperor roscoe born in los angeles and the son of hollywood producer joe pastanak mich Michael Pasternak talked his way into being a DJ on an aircraft carrier based off the coast of Vietnam in the early 60s and encouraged a young Sly Stone into becoming a DJ. In 1964, after various stints on French radio stations, he joined Radio Caroline, hosted the Stax Tour of Europe in 1967 and then joined Radio 1 as one of their original DJs. While at Radio 1, he created the roundtable format, pioneered the concept of the mobile disco, recorded a selection of singles for Trojan Records and hosted Cracker Jack with Little and Large. By this point in 1975,

he started hosting Top of the Pops, is handling the post-junior choice slot on Saturday mornings, and has published a massively comprehensive volume entitled Emperor Roscoe's DJ Book. I've actually downloaded a copy of this, and I must say, if you're looking to be a DJ 42 years ago, it's highly recommended. Goes into incredible detail about microphones from 40 years ago. So, Roscoe, what do we think about him? Are we familiar with his earth before we watch this? You know what, right? This is not what I thought Emperor Roscoe would look like

because I remember his stint on Radio 1 on Sunday afternoons in the early 80s. And from his voice, I thought he'd be a guy in a kind of white rhinestone jumpsuit like a sort of cross between the aforementioned evil knievel um elvis presley and liberace or something like that not this kind of weedy little guy in a mustard polo neck that we see on this show and in fact um even though you gave him that introduction of that biography i actually suspect him of not really being American. But having learned a generic American accent at his local AmDram group,

maybe for a production of Calamity Jane, perfecting such faux American phrases as howdy, partner, and stuff like that. Terrible slur. Out of all these DJs who were British and were feigning a mid-Atlantic accent,

Roscoe's the real deal compared to your Ed Stewart's and all those other people that were on Caroline and Radio London and stuff like that. Well, you've got him and David Jensen, haven't you? David Jensen was Canadian, but he had that kind of North American exoticism. But, you know, and we say this every time, let's be thankful that Emperor Roscoe is just a prick. He isn't a safeguarding risk. He's not a two-pin din plug.

He's not a pipe-to-pipe Bushman or a rover-plegic Roncock. He's just a prick. So bless him for just being a prick. Neil? Well, the thing is with Roscoe, I really don't remember him. And I don't remember him on the show that Pricey mentioned in the early 80s. I don't remember him DJing. I don't actually remember him presenting Top of the Pops

that often but I do remember the name the reason being that I think he had a stint on Radio Luxembourg and although we never listened to late Radio Luxembourg, Radio Luxembourg always had a big sort of Pearl and Dean advert before films in the late 70s and Emperor Roscoe is mentioned

and of course yeah I think I developed the same mental picture as Pricey did of him. For me, he was a bit more like Boss Hogg, actually, out of Dukes of Hazzard. I had that picture of him. And he's nothing like that. He looks like a kind of Stu Francis knockoff in a way. I think this is one of the earliest

mullet sightings on Top of the Pops, isn't it? I think you might be right. And because of this Radio Luxembourg link, for me, his name is kind of ineluctably linked with, I don't know, Westar hot dogs and King Cones and things like that. It just reminds me of being sat in a cinema. Need a curry after the film.

But I'm similarly kind of vaguely disappointed with his appearance. But yeah, I mean, that's off to him for not being a pervert, I guess. He actually talks about, in his biography, in the updated chapters, he talks about Jimmy Savile. And the two things he basically says about the man is, number one, he didn't know anything. And number two, Emperor Roscoe knew more gangsters than Jimmy Savile claimed to.

So that was pretty much it. That's it for Jimmy Savile for this episode, probably. The thing I also noticed with Emperor Roscoe's introduction is with the rundown, the music obviously is the same Top of the Pops music they've been using for a long, long time before that. And by this time, I do think it's starting to sound tremendously dated. It's kind of starting to sound 60s-ish and definitely not 70s-ish.

So the chart music rundown itself seems pretty dated at that point. Perhaps hinting at the things that were around the corner after the shit fest that 1975 was. Yeah, and that music, Whole Lotta Love would last as a chart countdown music all the way up to 1980. It's amazing it lasted that long, really, isn't it?

My opinions of roscoe is i'm sure that if i was a 14 year old him on caroline or big l or whatever would sound absolutely amazing and oh my god it's just like america but um pirate mate radio just stank of unwashed cock it really did so i listen to it now and it's, mommy-os and daddy-os and everything's moving and a-grooving and cooking and a-fucking and, you know, all this kind of stuff. And they're all such fucking Tories as well. I think the biggest mistake Tony Benn ever made was have a go at the Pirates because all these people just ended up having really influential jobs in Radio 1

and continue to be massive tourists even though tony ben and the bbc have given these amazingly fucking lucrative jobs where they get to open supermarkets for stupid money and and you know they get to actually live in a flat in mayfair instead of on a boat there's one bit where um in 1970 just before the general election where uh radio car Caroline comes back on the air just to encourage people to vote Conservative in the next election. And to vote for free radio.

There's a jingle, which I will put on the video playlist, about the day that they became properly illegal. And the way they go on about it is as if they've landed on the fucking beaches of normandy to to fight the germans it's incredible and you know that style because i do love my old school american radio and roscoe's from there you know but by 1975 on television it you know it sounds really dated even then he i mean he's not made for television roscoe clearly he seems

uncomfortable with the whole kind of experience in a way yes that residual toryism that you're talking about i mean that that stink hung around for a long long time didn't it you could really say all the way through the 70s and the 80s most djs you'd felt you'd feel would have supported thatcher in the 80s um and probably would have supported Thatcher in the 80s and probably would have supported conservative governments in the 70s. Yeah, people who get landed with really cushy jobs that pay them shitloads of money are kind of cool with free enterprise, aren't they? Funnily enough.

As was the style of the mid-70s, we go into a chart rundown and a series of stills of the top 30 bands and artists. Highlights include the beakiestiest most unflattering picture of barry manilow ever two pairs of groucho marx glasses and mustaches on people's knees a picture of bobby goldsboro that looks like a photo of a cardboard cutout of bobby goldsboro in the style of those cardboard policemen that shops have nowadays the northern soul tribute

group wiggins ovation dressed up like bullseye contestants. Mike Reid in an extremely homoerotic cap and blouse combination. And a very young and unblonde David Van Day in Guys and Dolls. I must say, I do love the photos on the chart rundown. Some of them are just not flattering at all, are they? A lot of the stuff in the countdown is

very stereotypically what we think 1975 was like. Lots of middle of the road stuff, you know, Gilbert Beko, Bobby Goldsboro, but also just like loads of amazing soul music. You just go through a list, Al Green, LaBelle, Barry White, Gloria Gaynor, Moments and Whatnots. So this is

the time maybe when American soul music properly broke through in the UK. But then again, you know, you've got all these television stars having hits now, television becoming a big deal. So you've got Telly Savalas and Mike Reed. Mike Reed has got beautiful breath, but Telly Savalas' breath stinks. Roscoe fucks up right from the start and tells us that it's TOTB time. And we're to hang in there, baby. And we go straight into teaching. there baby and we go straight into teaching formed in nshida the netherlands in 1969 teaching had already recorded six singles in an lp when they participated in the dutch song for europe

in 1975 ding a dong originally called ding ding a dong wasn't their own song it had already been chosen as a dutch own drink and they had to compete with other artists so that must have been a really thrilling night on Dutch television. A month prior to this episode, they smashed it at the Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm, beating the UK's entry, Let Me Be The One By The Shadows, into second place. It was the second time a non-English group

sang a winning entry in English. And of course we all know who the last one was, Abba Waterloo. It's the highest new entry in English. And of course, we all know who the last one was, Abba Waterloo. It's the highest new entry in this week's chart, straight in at number 26. Before you chip in, chaps, I just want to say that my original notes for this read, these people are so European.

Honestly, if you want cliched Euro, 70s Euros, these are they. The thing with teaching is that this is what people make fun of, isn't it? When people make fun of Eurovision, this is what they're thinking of. That kind of Eurovision Esperanto, that nonsense language. Because 1969, Lulu had won the competition with Boom Banga Bang. And then 1974, just one year before this, ABBA had won with Waterloo, but they also released Banga Boomerang.

So this is very much kind of on the coattails of that. Of course, yeah. The other thing that's really noticeable about T-Chain here, first of all, we've got to give credit to the guy with his amazing leopard print waistcoat and flares combo. And also the fact that he looks a bit like Richard Stilgo, which is fair enough, because in the 70s, I think most adult males looked like Richard Stilgo.

And the woman, the singer, reminds me weirdly of Mrs McCluskey from Grange Hill. Doesn't she just? So it's this kind of unholy Stilgo-McCluskey fusion. Unholy Stilgo-McCluskey Fusion being a great band, by the way. I recommend you all go and see it. This singer, Getty Kaspers, wears a surprisingly tasteful baggy peach coat

and matching scarf and a band of dressed-like people on their way to a 70s night. Yeah, there's a real creme brulee look to a lot of the band. I concur about the magnificent leopard print that the bass player's wearing. And the belt buckle, did you see the belt buckle?

It's just this big hoop. It's like someone's just won him on the hoopla. But I think you can also, maybe I'm imagining it, but you can sort of palpably see the ABBA effect in a way, I think, and hear it in the music as well. I was intrigued by the fact that this song, I think one of its writers is a guy called Eddie Owens, who rush-released that song in 77,

I Remember Elvis Presley, straight after Elvis died. It's the same guy who wrote this one. What, Danny Mirror? Yeah, yeah, it's done by Danny Mirror, but Eddie Owens, who's a Dutch musician and record producer, he was responsible for this song, and also, yeah, that I Remember Elvis Presley. How are you not going to remember Elvis Presley in 1977?

He's only just died. Yes. It's like, I remember last week. Yeah. It's like being back at the old people's home. I think people were just impressed by the responsiveness of it, I guess. It's a quick pop record in response to a massive event like that.

There's no great shakes for this song, though, really. If you asked me now to sing you any of it, I couldn't. It's kind of in one ear and out the other. But I think ABBA, there is a slight ABBA effect, I think, in the production. Yeah, I mean, ABBA's kind of pointed the way, but a Eurovision win is still not a guarantee for chart success. Eurovision, I don't think, computed to me at that age. Eurovision started kicking in in importance to me.

And I have to say, sorry about this, Bucks-Fizz, Bucks-Fizz reanimated my interest in Eurovision, I think. It wasn't something that was on the telly every year in our house. Right. But everyone knew Bucks-Fizz were going to win I think in 1980 I think it was 81 yeah

everyone knew they were going to win and consequently that built quite a lot of national excitement these I'm sure I'm not the only one in Britain

for whom the Eurovision these were kind of not lean years but I don't think Eurovision gained as much attention as it did after ABBA

for a while until Bucks Fizz came along what did Eurovision mean to you Simon? well you know what I think the first Eurovision gained as much attention as it did after ABBA for a while until Bucks first came along. What did Eurovision mean to you, Simon? Well, you know what? I think the first Eurovision winner I was aware of was the following year, Brotherhood of Man. I got really into ABBA in the late 70s, but I think I only heard Waterloo in retrospect. So Brotherhood of Man was the first one I remember, but I don't even think I watched the show. I just remember them being on Top of the Pops with their slightly creepy song.

But from then on, I did watch it. And I remember it was Israel two years in a row, didn't they? It was Abani B and Hallelujah. And then, yeah, I was quite an avid follower of it from then on. Eurovision was quite a big deal to me, simply because it was one of the few Saturday nights that I was allowed to stay up until 11 o'clock.

I mean, it was a pretty unremarkable Eurovision Song Contest in 1975. The only controversy was that the Portuguese entry was banned from appearing on stage in his military uniform and his rifle. So, here we go. I mean, I noticed the drummer, he's kind of like holding his drumsticks

as if he's tossing a salad. The drummer's amazing, actually. The drummer's really watchable. He looks a bit like a chimpanzee using cutlery. You're not quite sure what to do with it. It's extraordinary. I've got to say that the kids are getting down, aren't they? Yeah.

I mean, at the beginning, you look at it and it just looks like, you know, there's just loads of people there but then right at the end the cameras pulled right back and there's only a few of them and it and it's a bit like theresa may at a campaign rally you know as soon as you pull back there's not there's not that many people there at all you get that a lot in this episode sudden pulls pullbacks and it's like the stage is kind of floating in space there's just a load of big black space around them there's there's lots of odd strange moments in this episode where suddenly loud applause occurs with nobody actually doing it and things like that i'm choosing to see

it as a harbinger of brexit you know our our lovely our lovely european friends they're abandoned by the british audience So, Ding a Dong went up to number 80 in the following week and got as high as number 13. It was their only UK hit, but it got to number one in Norway and Switzerland and even got into the top 30 of the US easy listening chart. Amazingly,

it only got to number three in Holland. God, those Dutch are so hard to please, aren't they? And going for sound number eight, Peter Shelley in Love Me, Love My Dog. And by the way, look out for that woolly woolly. I'll tell you, he's something else. His name is King, and he loves to chase pussycats.

Not only does Roscoe fail to introduce teaching, he refuses to even acknowledge them afterwards, going straight into introducing Peter Shelley, advising the viewer to look out for that woolly woolly, I'll tell you he's something else, his name is King and he loves to chase pussycats. In Roscoe's

mind and in Top of the Pops' mind one British dog is worth more than an entire Dutch band. A lot of the things Roscoe says in this episode don't make any sense. And I appreciate that he's coming from that 60s pirate radio thing, but that's what makes him so distinctly odd

on top of the top. Yeah, he's trying to fill dead air and there's no need for it. And also, he's made a pussy joke, but kind of lost confidence in it at the last minute. Yes. He just kind of pulled back from the pussy at the last minute.

Yeah, he did. He did. He did. So, a former song plugger and talent scout in the 60s who discovered 10 years after Amen Corner and King Crimson, Peter Shelley became an independent writer and producer working with Marty Wilde and the band Hard Horse. What a fucking band name that is. That is a brilliant name.

You'd have a T-shirt with Hard Horse on it, wouldn't you, Simon? I think I saw them supporting Man to Man featuring Man Parish in 1985 actually. Tips and a g-string made my live here. After co-founding Magnet Records in 1973, he wrote, produced and sang My Cuckoo Chew and performed it on

Liftoff with A. Shea under the name of Alvin Stardust, but then decided he wasn't up for doing it and contracted it out to Shane Fenton, which we discussed in chart music number three. After writing a string of top ten hits for Alvin in 74, he got to number four in his own right in September of 1974 with G. Baby, and this is the follow-up, and it's up from number 11 to number eight. Simon, you know, we absolutely lavish praise

on Michael Kukicu by Alvin Stardust in a previous incarnation of Chart Music. Do you think that he's kind of regretting his decision not to be Alvin Stardust and not to, you know, swan around in a catsuit and point at people, nice gloves and everything? He must be gutted. He's like the Stuart Sutcliffe or the Pete Best of glam,

isn't he? Yeah, yeah, of his own volition as well. Yeah, yeah. So he's only got himself to blame. I mean, he's given it his best shot here, but his face is in soft focus. This is the weird thing about it. And so is his voice. From the very first note, it's got this kind of dreamy, echoey quality to his

voice. And it has to be said that this song lacks the edge of some of his later work, like Oh Shit, Homo Sapien and Orgasm Addict. Yes. Yeah, I'm all about the low-hanging fruit. I went there. Yeah, good luck.

One of us had to. One of us had to. And he's wearing a T-shirt with a dog superimposed on a circular Union Jack, which may have seemed harmless at the time, but nowadays makes him look like he ought to be marching through a town centre shouting and pointing at a small woman in a hijab. Yeah, but the thing is, those kind of T-shirts usually have bulldogs on them, don't they?

Yeah, not a Dulux dog, yeah, to be fair. Perhaps it's a really friendly and cuddly racist. Yeah, yeah, to be fair. Perhaps he's a really friendly and cuddly racist. Yeah, yeah, maybe he is. There's something a bit creepy I think about luring women towards him with the cute dog. It's kind of only one step shy of a bag of jelly babies. And the other thing

I love about it is the dog's not having it. There's a brilliant moment where he's had enough of being fussed by these women and he shakes his head like, get off! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Peter in double denim and a T-shirt of an old English sleep jog on a Union Jack, which I think says, make a brighter Britain or something. Ah, right.

I thought it might have been a T-shirt for Digby, the biggest dog in the world. Right. That came out a couple of years ago, a couple of years before that. And I think that's the reason why Roscoe said that the dog's name's King, as opposed to the Dulux dog. I think BBC would be extremely worried about that. And I think that's the reason why Roscoe said that the dog's name's King, as opposed to

the Dulux dog. I think BBC would be extremely worried about that. Oh yeah. Well, the intention, obviously, with any top of the pop performance is that we focus on the performer, but I really ended up just watching the girls who were surrounding me during this, because they

have that lovely, I think Price has referred to it a lot in in in in other chart music podcasts um about that innocence towards the camera and that and that kind of they look at the camera with the same kind of curiosity that an undiscovered tribe in the amazon would look at a camera that they're kind of not perplexed by it as such but they're always looking for where it is and what's going on. And it's really, really touching in a way that, as Pricey's mentioned, today's sort of camera-confident audience members couldn't get. The thing that struck me immediately watching this song is, the first thing I said is a habit of my family, actually. Actually, my sister. Sorry to go on

about my sister. But whenever we watch old films and there's an animal on it she'll say that dog's dead now that horse is dead now that you know that cat's dead now i always think that about that cow on the pink floyd album first of all that several people ate that cow but also plenty of people are wearing that cow on the pink floyd album now yeah yeah so yeah that dog's dead now um there's no interaction, though, really, between him and the girls that surround him. And I think as time goes on through the performance, he's getting increasingly annoyed with them, I think, and increasingly not committed to the performance,

as Pricey mentioned. They're sucking on lollipops, and there'll be a reason for that, as we'll discover later on. They're mithering the dog, and by the end of it, they're talking amongst themselves. They get bored with the fucking camera

and the song as well. But one of them who looks the dead spit of CITV character from the 80s, Marmalade Atkins, is actually miming along with him. Yeah, yeah, I did notice that.

I did notice that. She's sometimes getting the words wrong. Yes. Yeah. I mean, the overall impression you get is of a man at a bus stop with his dog and the local reform school has turned out and he's just sitting there you know singing to himself uh hoping that you know someone doesn't say the wrong thing or touch the

wrong part of the dog and it all kicks off oh yeah did you notice that one of the girls that sets the dog off has got a six million dollar man jumper awesome knitted for her or do you reckon a bit of merchandise it looks it looks like she got it from the market some enterprising barra boy has put out a load of steve austin knitwear the greatest promotional jumper and it was a jumper i ever saw it wasn't really promotional there's a mate of mine in the 80s he couldn't afford a metallica t-shirt so his nan knitted him a metallica jumper brilliant with the with the ride lightning flash on it and and everything and you know he proudly wore it that's off to him it's a good bit of kit that wow yeah well but that's the kind of thing

they'd be selling now wouldn't they at christmas i mean that that slayer christmas jumper i don't know what to think about that there There was a Slayer Christmas jumper? Yes. Fuck that. That's Slayer, man. No. Yeah. They're Satanists for Christ's sake. Yeah, Satanists get code in winter though. You know when the Darkness had that Christmas hit, Christmas time

don't let the bells end. And the guitarist Dan Hawkins had this tradition that he always wore a Thin Lizzy t-shirt on stage. And in the video, they give him a Christmas jumper. He opens it and it's just like a normal Christmas jumper. And I thought, oh, come on, for fuck's sake. That's an open goal.

What, you know, clearly the thing is he's meant to rip it open and it's a knitted Thin Lizzy jumper. But no, they missed it. Yeah. That's where it started to go wrong from wasn't it so I mean this actual song I mean what's it about it's a fucking I mean it's one of those ones

you get a lot with any episode of Top The Pops I suspect from any year in its history it's one of those why did anyone fucking buy this record basically he's saying he can't form a relationship, really, because he's too attached to his dog. And I'd love to know what became of him in later years.

You know, there's the kind of stereotype of the mad cat lady. And I'd love to imagine that Peter Shelley, you know, spent the last few decades in a cottage somewhere, surrounded by about a dozen Dulux dogs. Yeah, but wearing jumpers knitted out a dog i mean the song's basically saying look if you want to have a relationship with me you've got to put up with the smell of dog shit and getting ears all over you but the one thing i don't understand is that he's it's one of them that he's on the highway and he keeps moving on which

always smacks to me of being completely uh unable to form a relationship anyway it's all right when a dog sings that when a dog sings that like the littlest hobo i can go with that the littlest hobo's the dog and he's yeah the littlest hobo he's on the road he's running from town to town having adventures yeah but the idea that peter shelly is his kind of wild spirit and that you know uh his dog means more to him than any woman ever could and he's just like moving from town to have he seen him he looks like he hasn't been the town center and back never mind you know going going over to zeebrugger or something yeah the idea of him taking the skyway on the california highway and shit so you're actually going abroad do you not realize quarantine

laws you know your dog's gonna have to be fucking in a cage for six months you bastard well there's a deeper thing I mean that bloke's life is fundamentally one of disappointment isn't it because he made that cowardly decision not to be Alvin Stardust and yes we've all made that cowardly decision not to be

Alvin Stardust though but I bet he regretted that massively yeah I'm sure he did. Do you think he ever tried on a glove that was just lying? No, it would have been too heartbreaking for him because that decision speaks of cowardice. And that cowardice would have haunted him for the rest of his days, I suspect. Yeah.

I mean, this is essentially BJ and the Bear, but with a less interesting animal, isn't it? This song. Oh, man, I haven't heard BJ and the Bear for a long time. So the song jumped up to number three. The following number three. It's highest position, and it would be the last time we saw him in the charts.

He dropped out of the music business not long after this and devised the comic strip Robot Man, which mutated into something called Monte. Anyone? No. No, absolutely not. It's an American thing. Yeah. Woof, woof, woof, woof, love me, love my dog from Peter Shelley

and doing currently at number eight. Let's go for the number two sound right now. From dogs to foxes, animals and music. The Sweet and we're going up where the air is rare. I don't want to know your name While Roscoe waits ages for his cue, we actually see Peter Shelley in the background grabbing the dog by the collar and getting the fuck out of there.

He wasn't happy at all, was he? Roscoe strangely draws a link between dogs and foxes and points out that we're going up where the air is rare and introduces Fox on the Run by Sweet. Formed in London in 1968, the Sweet Shop were a popular band on the London

pub circuit and were approached by an actor-singer looking to become their manager. Do we know who that was? Paul Nicholas. Yes, was? Paul Nicholas. Yes, it was Paul Nicholas. He gets mentioned every fucking episode, doesn't he? After a spell as a bubblegum band in the early 70s, they jumped onto the bandwagon or, in my opinion,

dragged the glam bandwagon to new heights and had six top five hits on the bounce. At the end of 74, their hot streak ended with Turn It Down failing to break the top 40. And this is a follow-up, and it's jumped up from number five to number two. They're back. I just think the Sweet are absolutely amazing.

I think they're one of the greatest bands who ever lived. And everyone, I mean, everyone knows the story with the Sweet. You know, they're originally the serious, proper rock band, as you say, called Sweet Shop. And the narrative you usually hear is that they kind of sold their souls to Chin and Chapman for hits. And that they personally always resented it. And they stuck their serious, proper rock songs on their B-sides. And then eventually, when nobody cared anymore, they became a serious, proper rock band.

But the kids weren't interested in that. And I think the kids had it right because at their best they literally hit a sweet spot of pop that rocks and rock that popped that run they had a five top five singles from wigwam bam to teenage rampage and that's taking in blockbuster hellraiser and ballroom blitz those five in a row um and they all made the top five that stands up alongside anyone else you can't mention. You could pick an equivalent five from T-Rex or David Bowie. It doesn't matter. The Sweets Five stands up just as well.

And this track, of course, it's late period, though. And they've got rid of the makeup. Brian Connolly's lost the silver Flash Gordon cuffs, and Steve Priest now has got a clue what to do. got rid of the makeup. Brian Connolly's lost the silver Flash Gordon cuffs, and Steve Priest now has got a clue what to do. He's no longer a gay Nazi. I've got to say, Steve Priest is one of my ultimate cult heroes of pop, and I really want to read his autobiography,

which is brilliantly titled Are You Ready, Steve? But it's something like 300 quid a copy. It's something insane. If you look for a copy of it online, it's really expensive. But anyway, Fox on the Run. Fox on the Run is Pop Hawkwind. It's Silver Machine for looking readers. And even though they're not glam anymore, this is glam, I think.

I think it's got that edge of hysteria. It's got those kind of... And that's because of the kind of heliumia uh it's got the those kind of and that that's because of the kind of helium harmonies they've got going on and that that kind of hysteria and those helium harmonies that to me is as much um as much as the kind of hooligan drumming and the stonesy guitarist that's the essence of glam that kind of high pitched you know it's this hysteria pitched vocal yeah but i completely concur with with Simon about that runner singles. It does stand up to the, I mean, similar runner singles, say, if you're

talking T-Rex, you know, from 20th century, well, 20th century boy backwards, actually. It's a stunning runner singles. By now, of course, by Fox on the Run. Fox on the Run isn't a Chin and Chapman song. It's one of their own. It's the first one that they wrote. It's the first single written by the band. And it was actually on the album, I think, the year before.

But it's a completely different version. album version is as pricey says a sort of proper grown-up rock song if you like i mean it rocks don't get me wrong but it but there's none of the synths there's none of those textures or the helium harmonies that simon was referring to i definitely prefer um this single version um to the album version and um yeah i mean still a stunning record and don't forget that we're going to follow this up later on this year with action um which is another fucking amazing record so um yeah i mean this is one of the high points of this episode i would say one of the things that i was intrigued to find was because a lot of people have covered that song um i was intrigued to listen to the version by scorpions mid cindy laupa no not with cindy

laupa but um scorpions did a cover of it in 75 they did a german cover of it called fox which is actually about a fox um it's not about groupies or anything it's actually about fox they changed the lyrics they also did a cover of action actually i think on the b side of that um and it's a really fucking good version don't on the B side of that. And it's a really fucking good version. Don't like the Scorpions much, but it's a really good version, proving that it's just a brilliant, brilliant song. Oh, fuck.

Is that Winds of Change? Oh, right. Yes. Up there with Through the Barricades, that song. I mean, I hated the fact that Glam had disappeared by 1975 because I fucking loved it. And, you know, The Sweet were one of my absolute favourite bands then. And, you know, probably my absolute favourite band.

And so when they came back, I was very, very pleased about it. And I've got to say, this song... I mean, is there much of a progression going on here? No, like I say, if you take this single on its own merits, it could have slotted right in there with all the glam singles, I reckon. Yes. Why did, Al, as a fan of glam, why did glam go? Why did it go?

Why did it go? Why did it not stop as such, but why did that stop happening? Was it just because Bowie moved on or T-Rex moved on? I have no idea, mate. I mean, to me, as a kid, you know, and I'm talking about being six years old here, it was crunchy guitars, opportunities to punch the air, people screaming like banshees, ridiculous clothes.

I mean, everything. It was made for six-year-old boys that music but that's you know it's the kind of music that you just want to skid and fuck up your the knees of your flares or across a you know a wedding reception floor and perhaps that's what we're seeing in 75 is a replacement of that kind of young hysteria i think hysteria is absolutely the right word to use about this record. They're a lot of sweet records. Replacement of that kind of young hysteria with just yet a bit more, a sort of grown-up attitude in a sense,

which is anathema to good pop music. And it's a real shame, I think. Yeah, and we're seeing a lot of the change in what they're wearing. Brian Connolly is in this tight powder blue jumpsuit. And I sent you a photo of this earlier. It's clearly based on Helmut Schoen, manager of West Germany in the 1974 World Cup. His tracksuit, it looks just like it.

But cut a little bit more. He does look like a right helmet, I'll say that. He's got helmet haircut anyway. But Helmut Schoen inspired hip hop Adidas tracksuits Kangol caps

that's it yeah as you said Simon Steve Priest has stopped being camp but now he looks absolutely fucking satanic he does bare chest and waistcoat yeah

yeah he looks like dim out of clockwork yes that's exactly what he is yeah and of course Andy Scott we see him fiddling about on a synth

but you know after a few seconds he just gets bored of it andy scott we see him fiddling about on a synth but you know after a few seconds he just gets bored of it and starts playing air synth you know the disregard for equipment you know there's no there's no oh look at us being serious musicians playing this i mean they do you know we are being told that they wanted to be serious at this time but there was still an element of playfulness in that band yeah Yeah. There's no fake guitar leads plugged in or anything like that, but one of the things you spotted out, I think early on in that performance.

Yes. That lad who's. Yes. Right at the beginning. Yeah. There's a lad. He's kind of, he basically goes up to one of the girls.

I think he was with the, with Peter Shelley for the dog song and whisper something in her ear. She shakes her head and he goes away, kind of shrugging his shoulders clearly chancing his arm in a similar way it would have reminded me of Mickey Pierce

trying to ask Cassandra out in Any Calls yes you get the feeling that he probably said thanks a lot before he walked off but that's a not

he had a go but you don't you don't do that to a girl when the suite's on it's just that's not the song mate wait for something a bit

you know you should have gone you should have gone with a girl when the suite's on. It's just that's not the song, mate. Wait for something a bit, you know. You should have gone with a dog tune. The other thing with the suite is I would have absolutely loved to see them live at their peak because if you go on YouTube, there is actually a gig from, I think, about 1974 and it is

one of the most punk rock things I've ever seen. Obviously, it's two years pre-punk and it's the perfect kind of marriage of the most punk rock things I've ever seen. Obviously, it's two years pre-punk. And it's the perfect kind of marriage of the pop songs that they had in the charts and their desire to actually rock. So, for example, when they're playing Hellraiser, which I think is my favourite sweet single, the most exciting single they ever did, I think Brian Connolly, if I remember rightly,

sort of trashing the microphone and there might be some guitar smashing going on and all of that kind of stuff. It's incredible and I would absolutely love to have seen them around that time. And Brian Connolly can really fucking handle a mic stand, can't he? During the middle eight where he just twizzles it and just plunks

it down so precisely. But again, he's... I feel that he's standing really awkwardly because... And I'm thinking it's because of his platforms I mean we're going to see a lot of examples of grown men having great difficulty

standing up on platforms it's an honourable tradition it's an honourable tradition but it's something you've got to carry off yeah Simon I've got to say have you ever you ever tried to you know you and platforms have they ever got together this is me we're talking about here right i can't believe i can't believe you're even asking me this question um

yeah uh basically yes i have um and oh very high basically of sort of pint glass height you know um in fact um i inherited an amazing pair of uh silver and black platform boots for my dad which i do wear from time to time. And the thing about them is, and this says a lot about my dad, actually, they're a pair of silver platform boots, but with a blood stain on the toe. Because even though he got involved with Ponzi Fashions,

he was also a hard bastard. Wow. Wow. That's very sweet. So I wear them with a weird kind of pride. I remember one time I was my dad came back

from the pub one night and he looked at me and he started looking at me feet and he was kind of like thinking to himself and nodding to himself and he says

oh you wait there I'll be down in a minute came down after five minutes with a shoe box opened it up and it's a pair of brogues and it must have been about three

three inch platform sole. And he said, I said, Dad, what, what? He says, here you go. They'll fit you now. They're your size. And I said, Dad, it's 1980 fucking three. I'm not wearing these fuckers. He got them.

He bought them in a pub in 1974 thinking, oh, these will fit our one day. hub in 1974 thinking oh these will fit our one day and it's like you know do you not wear out how much of a fucking kicking for the rest of my life i would get if i went out in these and of course i wish i had them yeah yeah yeah totally they would have been fucking amazing and of course this is this is from someone who would go to london and spend fucking 40 quid on a pair of black and white brogues that paul Weller had but they didn't have my size when I went down there but I still bought a pair that were two sizes too tight and just basically walked around town

like a fucking Chinese ballerina. Melandi of Carnaby Street right? Yeah. Yeah I feel your pain brother. Oh man. The frustrating thing is obviously after this year for Sweet I think it kind of went downhill really and then the hits dried up. And it's just sort of another example of that frustrating phenomenon

of bands getting tired of success and departing from what makes them successful. This is a great song. I think Action That Comes Later that year is a great song. But how great would they have been had they stayed with Chilling Chapman and perhaps got some of the hits that they were writing for other people um in in the sweet roster i think they could have not i wouldn't say milked it but they would have continued to be a hit machine i think for several years afterwards if they'd have stuck with what made them successful which was the mix between them being in a fucking amazing band the live videos that i've seen i mean

i know it's it's an old cliche that they're clearly rehearsed or they're tight but they're fucking razor sharp from years of playing together it's the combination of that with chin and chapman songwriting i think made for such a sort of intoxicating thing and once they just became another band great band don't get me wrong but but the hits dried up yeah one thing that's almost been written out of history actually about about the suite is that in the early 80s, when the hits are totally dried up, they weirdly became aligned with the goth scene. Really? What happened was they started touring around student unions around the country and stuff like that.

And probably still, you know, maybe they dug out the old Nazi uniforms and the makeup and the glitter because that's what audiences expected of them. And yeah, they had this kind of quite devoted following for a couple of years of Batcave kids, essentially. And I would have loved to see them in that era. That would have been incredible. The sweet sound and the sweet promise, that's never been recovered by any other band since.

Completely and utterly unique and stand-alone. So the song stayed at number two the following week and got no further. The follow-up, Action, got to number 15 in July of 1975 and they'd have two more hits before splitting up in early 1979 before reforming and reforming and splitting and reforming and all that kind of stuff. The song got to number five in America

and has been covered by Scorpions, Kath & Kel in an episode of Kath & Kim, and more recently by Chris Needham as a tribute to his beloved Leicester City. I've got to say now, I actually heard from Chris the other day. He's not been well. He's been in hospital.

He's gallbladder removed. So Chart Music wishes him a solid rocker and recovery like a killing machine. Get well soon, Chris. Yeah, get well soon, Chris. Fox on the Run. Check it out. Fox on the Run one time from Sweet. That's number two.

Will they topple the Bay City Rollers from that number one spot next week? You'll have to stay tuned to find out. But let's look at something new for you right now. Some winners, three winners. Got three degrees to take good care of yourself. Roscoe, sat at a keyboard, advises us that we'll have to stay tuned to BBC One for a full seven days if we want to find out if Fox on the Run is going to be next week's number one. Fucking hell, Roscoe, save it, energy crisis.

And then he introduces the three degrees. We've already covered the three degrees, both of us, I believe it was. Yeah, all three of us did, in chart music number four. But this is a follow-up to Get Your Love Back which only got to number 34 in november of 1974 after they scored a number one in august of that year with when will i see you again they're in the uk on a tour where they'll record a live lp in leicester and this is a new entry at number 40 live lp at leicester good lord i i do actually have because you said probably what i've had to say about them, I do actually have a couple of things to say about Three Degrees. Please do, please do. Just visually

there's something about them which echoes the Motown charm school. Obviously they're sort of Philly act, but it sort of tells you the way that Philly learned from Motown. The way they dress, the way they move is kind of this aspirational way that they're moving.

The dancing, it's all in the shoulders. It's a sort of hunched shoulder dance. It's the dresses they wear, isn't it? There's no straps on them, mate. You can't. Everything's got to be in the shoulders or, you know, it'll be tits out. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the way they move, it reminds me of Bev played by Alison Stedman in Abigail's Party. Yes! It's that kind of, it's all in the shoulders. And, you know, it's all about that kind of it's all in the shoulders and you know it's all about that kind of charm school mentality and of course they did charm their way as we've learned in previous episodes into the very upper echelons of the British establishment

Prince Charles blah blah blah but I've got this theory about the three degrees which basically if Philly, Philadelphia Soul was a missing link between Motown and disco you know basically it was, then that means the three degrees of this missing link between the Supremes and Sister Sledge.

You couldn't have just gone straight from Supremes to Sister Sledge. You had to have this stage of evolution of the three degrees first. And I don't particularly care for them myself. I think Year of Decision's a bit of a two, but apart from that, I've got very little time for them. But they had their function, and I think that was it. This bit of a two but apart from that I've got very little time for them but they had their function and I think that was it this song's not a great one it's a bit pious

take good care of yourself it's like your mum isn't it it reminds me of a discussion I had recently about the correct if my mum was three black women this is what it'd be like it reminds me of a discussion I had a few days ago with somebody about how to sign off on emails because i say regards um yeah but apparently what's the

regard now is is take care uh which which i'm not too sure about the end of emails this performance by the three degrees um yeah the song's not good enough it needs a stronger concept it needs a stronger sense of persona coming from them what it actually reminded me of do you remember they're in the french connection the three degrees yeah they're singing a terrible song about everyone going to the moon um in that film and it reminded me of that performance because they're wearing nearly identical costumes even though this is like four years earlier um what i also noticed in this performance a lot is again people looking over their shoulder at the monitors and looking at the big screens um in a way that

perhaps slipped out of top of the pops later on the mechanics of making a tv show is still miraculous to most of the audience and most of the audience are not looking at the three degrees they're looking at themselves on big screens and kind of dumbfounded yeah yeah i mean the idea of yourself being on telly in the 70s would have been mind-blowing. Absolutely. Now you walk into a shot, you see yourself. You walk past a branch of Radio Rentals or Rediffusion in the 70s and some of them would have a very primitive home camera pointing out at you through the glass and then you would see yourself on the screen

and people would stand there for hours, sort of hopping back and forth from foot to foot. Look, it's me on a telly. You know, so it's a little bit of that. And also when they had security cameras in supermarkets when they first started off, you know, to stop you from shoplifting. But it's like, oh my God,

have you gone to Grandways? They've got cameras that you can see yourself and they've got doors that open by themselves. And the one thing I'm taking away from this performance is this is chicken in a basket soul but it's good chicken it's not thin dust yeah you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah yeah it's quality it's very pebble mill it's very end of the pier um you know there you know people

say the supremes are too polished but i really think the three degrees were too polished for my tastes but yeah you know i mean it's it's professional enough it just doesn't really move me there is that thing with this episode and perhaps this is something about 75 and why things did have to change but you do get the feeling that really this episode of top of the pops is interchangeable with summertime special or is interchangeable with you know any other entertainment show that was on at that time. It wasn't young people's pop music and perhaps that is what had to change.

Well, as we've learned earlier, Roscoe plied his trade with Little and Large on Cracker Jack. So they just thought, oh, well, yeah, that's it. He can do it. There is something about Roscoe at the beginning of this as well. He sat at that piano. I think by then the directors of the show had realised he was pretty awful and just wanted him to do something.

He has real difficulty making eye contact with the camera, perhaps revealing his radio pedigree as opposed to his television pedigree, but he can't look the camera really dead in the eye. So the single will rise up to number 22 the following week and peak at number 9. The follow-up, Long Lost L the single will rise up to number 22 the following week and peak at number nine the follow-up long lost lover would only get to number 40 and it won't be until the late 70s when they linked up with giorgio maroda before they became a regular chart fixture again very very nice indeed take good care of yourself it's something new i hope you can hear

me all right i can hear me all right. I can hear me. Hey, let's move things on right now. I'd like you to take a number one record, put it together with a lollipop, use a bit of imagination, and you have a hit record. Ying and Yang. Okay, right in here, sweetheart. Now look, this is nothing to worry about right it's just a rehearsal you got it theo don't upset me now roscoe still at the keyboard is surrounded by three young ladies in t-shirts that say i am a yin and yan fan and have lollipops in their gobs i mean this is the first time that that that roscoe's been allowed to to mix with girls it's almost as if okay we're about four songs in uh we think he's not going to eat them so who are yin

and yan they're two voiceover artists called chris sanford and bill mitchell chris sanford was an actor best known for playing the character walterts in Coronation Street in 1963. He was a young window cleaner who was discovered by a talent scout, changed his name to Brett Falcon and led a band called The Brainwashers. Sadly a year later he was spotted waiting on tables in a Soho coffee bar but in 2011 it was mentioned that he'd become big in Yugoslavia, and the song he performed on Coronation Street, Not Too Little, Not Too Much, got to number 17 in the charts in December of 1963. Bill Mitchell, on the other hand, was a Canadian

best known for being the gravelly voice of Denham, Carlsberg, and a million other adverts who'd been a merchant seaman, a bouncer in a brothel in Genoa, and a drinking partner of robert powell and tom baker in soho while they were waiting for voiceover jobs fucking out wouldn't you like a drink with them three that's a life lived and the same the same voice i think that was just on every cinema trailer back then as well the motion picture event of the yes it was yeah um what what a fucking nothing song though i mean the other

pop connection with that is the denim thing with the woman's hand that goes in the denim shirt with the long nails. That hand belonged to the mother of Mickey Berenyi from Lush. No! Bloody hell! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fucking hell.

I love doing this podcast. Mickey's mum was a hand model, so there we go. There's pop connections everywhere. Good Lord. They're doing a piss take of Telly Savalas' version of If the song recorded by Bread in 1971 that had been a number one for Kojak only last month and is still in the charts

at number 18 and this version is up from number 37 to number 25 it's the first comedy record of the episode and comedy records are notoriously hard to do on Top of the Pops, I think. How do they play this one? I've got no memory of this whatsoever,

you know, but yeah, it's a piss-take, and it's a vaguely homophobic one, I've got to say, of Telly Savalas. And that's how huge Kojak was at the time. It's kind of a bit mind-boggling, but you could do a crap parody of Kojak and still reach the top

30 um well the fact that on the whole kojak got to number one well yeah um on on the whole i do quite enjoy these weird novelty records that turn up on the old top the popsies my personal favorite is um loving you has made me bananas by guy marks but but this one frankly can sod off you know who loves your baby not me so they've um they've gone for the uh they've wisely gone to for the doing it doing everything in silhouette uh they're basically doing everything in silhouette which is you know pretty pretty wise because it avoids miming problems because miming to stuff like this is next to impossible and you lock even more of a knob than you will do.

Neil, Kojak, does that mean anything to you? It does mean a lot to me, obviously. I mean, Who Loves Your Baby was just something everybody said. I mean, I'd just like to pick up on one thing Pricey said. The homophobia was really, really noticeable in this. Towards the end in particular,

that's the very last line, I think. When he's noshing on a lollipop and has an all-girl. That's it. It's just unpleasant. And I guess it's not funny for a start off. But secondly, perhaps it's reading too much into it.

And I like the odd comedy record as well. But there seems to be perhaps a sort of urge towards parody in a lot of things um in top of the pops at this time which perhaps is the sign of not of a dying culture necessarily but something that's on the skids a bit um whereby just sort of sniggering at stuff in a very vaguely unfunny way is kind of all that's left really i mean let's bear in mind there's people here who probably haven't heard it i mean i hadn't heard it before before you know we watched this and

it's basically a piss take of the recording process of it and there's uh there's there's kojak there's a uh producer a very camp producer and there's barry who's playing on the piano and it's just you know he's just coming to record the song he starts singing he says no we just want you talking through the way through it it's the kind of thing that you if you heard it once on the radio you thought you thought it was brilliant but god knows how many times you've heard it by the time it's got onto top of the pops i tell you what you you mentioned voiceover artists and you mentioned tom baker right now you probably know where i'm going with this.

Tom Baker Symphony. That's all I'm going to say to the listeners. Go into YouTube, type in Tom Baker Symphony. If they put that out as a double-sided seven-inch single, that'd be number one, never mind number 23 or whatever it's got to. Oh, I can imagine the performance of it on top of the pubs. Without a doubt. I can imagine pants people dancing to it.

Oh, as sexy items of furniture. Even for monkey shaggers. Yes. So, I mean, this really fucking drags, doesn't it? And the end bit where... With the groupies? No, no, no, no. I mean, the actual end of the song

where the Kojak offers the producer a lollipop and there's a lot of unsavoury sucking sounds and he gets arrested at the end. And it's like, well, what's he been arrested for? Am I supposed to believe that he's giving Telis of Ars and Nosh or are there drugs in the lollipop or is there any cottaging going on? It's just so confusing.

He's just been arrested for being a bit camp or something. Yeah, exactly. Well, yes. Yeah, pretty much so. Pretty much so. So anything else we want to say about this? No. No, me neither.

The following week, this performance helped it to drop right down to number 38. Chris Sanford has retired and now has his own fly fishing business, but Bill Mitchell and that incredible voice of his sadly died in 1997. Oh. Oh, Theo. Oh, these are, oh, these are truly wondrous. I mean,

oh, heaven, oh, oh, Theo, oh, what it's in, these lollipops. You're under arrest, sweetheart. Yin and Yang, Sound 25. And that's it. Second time in the charts. Hello there. Excuse me interrupting you, but where the Yin and Yang group is?

The lads told me to give you this. Thank you very much indeed, gang. I've got my lollipop and you've got bad company. Good luck and gone bad. Roscoe is now flanked by two men in drag smoking a pipe and cigar, respectively, who hand Roscoe a massive lollipop as he introduces a film of good loving gone bad

by Bad Company. Formed in London in 1973, Bad Company was comprised of Paul Rogers and Simon Kirk of Free, Mick Raths of Mott the Hoople, and Boz Burrell of King Crimson. Yes, we're talking about a super group. This is a follow-up to Can't Get Enough of Your Love, which got to number 15 in June of 1974,

and it's up from number 34 to number 31, and it's a film of them looking as if they're playing live but probably knocked out during a sound check. Do we talk about the two men in drag? Because that would have been absolutely hilarious in 1975, wouldn't it? And also

completely baffling. I mean, what is the connection exactly to that comedy song beforehand? They had the girls beforehand in t-shirts saying i'm a yin and yang fan and these were wearing t-shirts saying i am a yin and yang groupie so right yeah great tumbleweed yes yes it's following the same sort of straight it's like the production is following the same sort of strange stream of consciousness that that that roscoe seems to be mining and there's no there's no fucking connection i think nothing clicks with that bit yeah um but bad company can i talk about them just briefly i

mean um i have distinct memories of this song oddly enough really um not from top of the pops it's from being parked in a pub in a pram and and and remembering um there was a lot of blokes i mean look i'm from the west midlands so a lot of blokes with kind of beer bellies who look like jeff lynn basically there are a lot of jeff lynn alikes um beard reactor light shades pint of brew 11 in the and they'd always march up to jukeboxes in pubs whenever i was parked in a pub in a pram and put songs like bad company like this song on um so so it has it for me in an odd sense even though i suppose it's young person's music at that time yeah it's dad rock it's dad rocked in a big big way um although they're more famous i think for feel like making love um i actually quite like this i i didn't like

the song as such but i like the feel of it they had a sort of um that they were throwing some led zeppi type moves i like his voice anyway and i kind of like the off-free song as well and they've got a kind of acdc type thump to it um that i actually quite enjoyed but but yeah in an odd sense for me at the time this was dad rock this is what grown-ups listened to and because i'm from the west midlands what grown-ups listened to was was this and um black sabbath yeah and bands like that um so so this has quite quite potent memories for me in that regard yeah i mean i must i must admit that that a little bit of love by free was the first song I ever loved and ever sought to play and listen to.

God knows why we had it, because the only records we had were the ones that my dad had got off his rounds. He was a removal man. So any records that no one wanted, he'd bring home. So there'd be a lot of Ronco stuff. And I think the only record he actually ever bought, apart from his old Elvis and Little Richard singles, was the soundtrack to That'll Be The Day. record he actually ever bought apart from his old Elvis and Little Richard singles was uh the

soundtrack to That'll Be The Day and a little bit of Love By Three is the first song where I went oh yeah this I love this song and I want to I want to hear it again so yeah got a very soft spot for Three. Now I just have one more thing to say though there was there was something about the posture of the bass player in this band that for me signifies heaviness it doesn't even matter what he's playing there's that kind of troglodyte stupid it's like he's wanking into a sock or something yes yes it's it's i mean i don't see bass players do that anymore they should do that it instantly confers heaviness upon what you're doing yeah and and again like brian in sweet it's it's platform problems and i i see i see pa see Paul Rogers because he's doing a lot of standing about like Theresa May.

It has to be said. And he's got a very ill-advised tucked in blue turtleneck, which, in the words of my mum, makes him look a bit titty. Get a denim waistcoat on or something, mate. Simon, what do you think of all this? Well, we know who they are. So it's, you know, a bloke out of three, two blokes out of three,

a bloke out of Mott the Hoople and a bloke out of King Crimson. But we also know who they're not. And this is where I've got to say, Neil has stolen my thunder. I'm a bit gutted about this. Oh, sorry, mate. No, no, because I was going to say

at exactly the same time on the other side of the world, germinating, and unbeknownst to us in this country at that time, were ACDC, who actually released their first album in Australia the same year. It didn't even come out in the UK. Was that TNT? No, it was High Voltage. Was that the one? The first album, it was released twice.

But first of all all only in Australia in 75 and for me ACDC when they you know eventually broke through did everything

Bad Company do but a million times better this song well I'm going to say it's not a song for me it's just some rock capital S

capital R just some rock you know just some stuff and imagine what their luggage must have smelled like. They just looked like the stinkiest band. And the thing about not being able to stand up straight,

it's a really good point, actually. You know, the inability of rock bands to stand up straight in 1975. It must have been a kind of boom time for osteopaths and chiropractors. Yeah, can you imagine the state of their spines nowadays? It is all that perilous footwear. It really is.

But I think you're right, Pricey. High Voltage, the album that you're referring to, it's got good songs on it. It's got memorable songs on it. And they have that thump to them, ACDC. It's just 50% more raw. It's 50% sexier. It's just 50% harsher.

And for me, just Bad Company, it's just really kind of feeble and lame and rotten it smells rotten to me it's just you know rotten in the state of rock if there's anything on this episode that makes me think yeah you know punk probably did need to happen that old cliche this is probably the one so the song would drop to number 35 the following week but the follow-up feel like making love would get to number 20 in october of this year and they were done as a chart act and split up in 1982. I mean, of course, the other thing that was, Peter

Grant was their manager as well. So, you know, just... You wouldn't mess with them basically. No, you really wouldn't, no. No, you wouldn't tell them to wear some proper shoes. Stand up straight. Good loving gone bad, bad company getting things together.

You may cross now as we cross over the threshold of sounds. Peter Skellerin, Hold On To Love. All in my life, I found that it pays to wait. Roscoe has still got the massive lollipop in his hand and makes a lollipop man reference and introduces Peter Skellerin. Oh, Roscoe. Born in Berre, Peter Skellerin started a career as a concert pianist in the late 60s, but succumbed to the siren song of pop music and kicked around in a couple of bands. He went solo in 1972 and got to number three of that year

with You're a Lady. This is his second chart here and it's up from number 36 to number 21. I mean, before we go into this song, it only struck me while I was writing the notes of this, did he ever go round dressed up as, you know, Boney Monster and bill it as the

Skellentor? Go home, you drunk. Peter Skellen, who wasn't in the Buzzcocks, he was in Oasis, though. That's Oasis, the classical pop trio with Julian Lloyd Webber and Mary Hopkins. What a shame that

the original Oasis didn't reform to perform Oasis songs. I'd love to hear Peter Skellen have a go at Champagne Supernova or something like that. You could have made a shitload of money in the mid-90s by putting on a festival with the other Oasis, the other Nirvana and the other Charlatans. Oh, that would have been brilliant. And imagine an Oasis tribute band, but for that Oasis. And you pitch up at the Stone

Roses bar or whatever in your fucking pretty green parka, and you get subjected to that. My ex-girlfriend's brother was a big T-Rex fan and he once turned up to a DJ set by the drummer-based DJ Mickey Finn because he didn't up to a DJ set by the drummer bass DJ Mickey Finn

because he didn't realise, he thought it was the same guy, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, there's a T-Rex going isn't there, yeah, yeah and we've got a Princey in Nottingham, oh for fuck's sake any DJ that does that has to go under the name of Gary D for six months

to see how they get on I've got to say, I'm getting absolutely nothing from this song. And the thing that upsets me about it more is I can't even look at him because he doesn't have enough skin for his face. It's like looking at a laboratory rabbit that's lost all

of its hair. But he did write one of the songs on the Blade Runner soundtrack, so fair play to him for that at least. Which one was it? I can't remember any Blade Runner tunes with colliery bands. Do you expect me to fire up Wikipedia at this late hour? Nils, is this doing anything for you?

I mean, this era, we've already covered Gilbert O'Sullivan. It was quite the time for young men and pianos. Yeah, I mean... Mr. Shifter in the PG Tips advert. This is the one I can think of. The opening of this record is fantastic. You can make a really good hip-hop track, basically, out of that opening. It's a nice opening.

But then it all gets horribly ripe and over-egged and just gruesome. You can't actually hear the song in it. You can't hear a song. What you can hear is a shitload of musicians being musicianly, to kind of echo what Pricey was saying about Bad Company. This is the kind of stuff as well

I think that probably militated towards something rawer and something more energetic and something more interesting. This is grown-ups kind of showing off off that's all it is it's just everyone playing all the time there's no space in this song for anything to emerge and the lyrics and melody are entirely unmemorable it went up to 21 i think you said didn't you and i'd love to know what happened after it must have dropped like a stone yeah

and it's very arch it's kind of upsettingly arch, isn't it? That he's, you know, basically trying to be a bit Cole Porter and, you know, a bit Flanders and Swan and a bit Noel Coward and all of that. But it almost stinks of kind of superiority and elitism of, you know, this kind of nod and a wink between him and the people watching it that, yeah, we are the superior folks.

We know better than the idiots, the pop idiots who are buying all these other records on the show. The same thing you kind of identified with Supertramp the other week. Yes. And it's the reason a lot of people hate the Divine Comedy, who I actually like, but you know, there is that thing about them too. Yeah, I mean this is, to me

this is the kind of thing that Bev of Abigail's Party would play when she's got a bit sick of Demis Roussos. The following week after this episode of Top of the Pops, hold on to love, drop down to number 24. My God, Top of the Pops, you're a curse. But would recover and end up at its highest position of number 14. That's always weird.

That is when a song goes down and then kind of like goes up again. You know, usually... Yeah, you wonder what forces were at play. Well, usually it's because the artist has died. It's like Elvis with Way Down and John Lennon with just like Starting Over. You know, it usually takes something pretty major. I mean, maybe Peter Skellen had a, I don't know,

had a bad injury that wasn't his fault or something. He might have fallen off some big shoes. Yes. There's a lot of it about. He next bothered the charts in 1978 with a cover of Love Is The Sweetest Thing. And as Simon's pointed out, in 1984 he formed a super group

with Julia Lord Webber and Mary Hopkins called Oasis. When the other Oasis pitched up 10 years later, Skellig noted, while it's obvious that they revere the Beatles, the Beatles were bright people and never rude. He then formed a partnership with

Richard Stilgoe, who I discovered today, used to own a 10 ton digger. He's now just got a normal JCB, so he scaled down. Peter Skellon was ordained as an Anglian minister earlier this year just before he passed away.

So, yeah, he's had a busy life, that man did. Skellig and Hold On To Love. It's sound 21, going down two spots at 23. We go for the 10cc. Let's go for a little minestrone. I'm feeling a bit hungry. How about you? Try it because life is just one big minestrone.

Roscoe mispronounces Peter Skellen's name again and then goes into a massively overlong and rambling intro about minestrone he just won't fucking shut up about it yeah clearly here's an example of a radio dj who's just conditioned to fill dead air until the song starts and he's working with tv producers and he just don't work like that does it yeah it's like that bit in i'm alan partridge where he's looking up at the clock ticking towards the hour and he's going news the formed in Stockport in 1969 and named after a wodge of spunk 10cc's first two singles Donna and Rubber Bullets got to number two and number one respectively in 1972 by 1975 they'd had three more hit singles under the belt and had just got out their record deal with Jonathan King and have signed with Mercury Records for $1 million

on the strength of a new song called I'm Not In Love. They're keeping their powder dry on that one for the moment because this is the first single on their new label, the follow-up to Silly Love, which got to number 24 in May of 1974, and it's a new entry at number 23. Kevin Godley's wearing a jumper with his own face on it. How do we feel about that? I quite like it.

I quite like that as well. I do like that a lot. There's something really odd about 10cc and that's another manifestation of it. From their name outwards to everything else, there's something distinctly odd about them. Real sparks, kind of Todd Rundgren feel to this song.

Yeah. Overladen in the same way that the Scanlon one was, but a good song. Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's fascinating the way that, yeah, they were holding on to I'm Not In Love at this point. And Nigel Grange, I think, who'd taken over A&R for them, taken them off Jonathan King's label and brought them over to his label

and said hold back on that this song, I'm interested by the fact that it mentions Minestrone was Minestrone in 75? That was exotic mate Yeah it was exotic wasn't it? Oxtail, we were conversing with that

Minestrone, no I hading with that. Minestrone, no. I had no idea what a minestrone was. There's a great story that only a few years before this, The Who were playing a gig in Britain where they had a stall selling pizzas and nobody knew what pizzas were. The British audience were completely baffled. So instead, the proprietors folded the pizzas in half

and sold them as hot cheese and tomato sandwiches and made a killing of it. So, you know, that tells you the kind of culture that we're talking about. Yeah, Minestrone, who knew what that was in 75? I don't think anyone did. But, you know, these guys, they've probably, you know, been on holiday in, you know, in Tuscany or something like that. Yeah, and and you know,

they go on about Parmesan and then they go on about lasagna. It's like, what the fuck is this weird language you're throwing at us? You want drugs or something? I really liked NCC though. Yes. Of course, they are another super group,

a band with four, I would say four geniuses in it, in fact. And of the two clever, clever pop bands of the 70s, you've basically got them and you've got Steely Dan. I much prefer 10cc. And I strongly suspect they've been an influence

on some of my favourite bands from more recent times, such as Super Fury Animals. I've got to say, though, I think this song isn't them at their best. It's just a load of fairly tortured Christmas cracker puns like, had an eyeful

of the tower in France. So basically they've failed to heed the no smirking sign in the studio because this is a four minute smirk. The one lyric I completely got wrong was the line about Minnie Mouse

that she gets more fan mail than the Pope and I always thought it was she gets more fanny than the Pope. I like the exotic look. Although there is a whole verse about shitting. The fact that Minnesotan was exotic in 75. 75 I think was the first year that a McDonald's opened in this country.

So a lot of food was uh was like minestrone i guess occupied the same place as musaka at the time as a kind of exotic relic of holidays it's tucked away on the b side of the album isn't it it's tucked away like near the end yeah of this album which suggests it probably wasn't a single initially. I think Simon's right about the lyrics, etc. But the sound of the record is great, I think. The mix of things, and I can definitely... Super Furries was the band that I was thinking of all day, but couldn't name, because

it was reminding me massively of them. But you're absolutely right, it's got a vibe to it. Yeah, in fact, there are two particular... There's a song by each band that I really connect Do you know the song Ice Hockey Hair By Super Furry Animals Has got a real feel of I'm Mandy Fly Me

By 10cc about it I mean as far as the performance goes The cameraman doesn't know what the fuck's going off Because he spends so much time Ignoring the singer Who's Lol Cream behind the keyboard And he focuses on Graham Goldman goldman so you get big chunks of him just like standing there playing a guitar nothing coming out of his mouth i love it

when that happens and when it finally goes over to lol cream that the camera spends so much time zooming in on his hand looking at his ring it's like a camera's gone oh that's a really nice ring yeah for people of my age actually uh although only a few years younger than you two but um godly and cream were more apparent to me in the 80s yeah then and then i kind of worked backwards um via you know you know the odd way pop music gets opened up to you by the strangest artifacts for me it was a book um paul gambaccini's 100 greatest albums ever um obviously you know back then you don't really have kind of reference books as such to learn about music. So this book from Coff Central Library sort of taught me an awful lot.

And also, there was a fucking compilation come out in about 83, I think, and it was called Formula 30. It probably doesn't ring any bells for you, but it featured a blackboard on the front with, I don't know what Formula 30 meant oh wait a minute yeah I remember this it was a double album and it contained an odd mix of things

it had like Hi Ho Silver Lining and stuff like that on it but it also had stuff like Virginia Plain on it and Love Is The Drug and it had Common Eileen on it it was a really odd mix of stuff but I'm Not In Love by 10cc was on that and making the connection

and of course that record just blows your mind the first time you hear it when you're a nipper so I worked backwards to 10cc from Godley and Cream

and really I worked backwards from the fact that their videos were so astonishing in the 80s I worked backwards from those towards 10cc I've really enjoyed them

since I mean the 10cc record that really grabbed me as a kid was Good Morning Judge for some bizarre reason I mean I was around and I was interested in the charts when I'm Not In Love was number one and that was just everywhere, it was so ubiquitous that you couldn't have an opinion on it

it was just, you know before Bohemian Rhapsody that was the song of the time you know with this one, you know it Rhapsody, that was the song of the time. Yeah. You know, and with this one, you know, it's nice enough. I like this song, but, you know, what the fuck is a minestrone? The thing that annoys me about Godley and Cream,

in fact, just about Lowell Cream, is that a few years ago, not that long ago, he formed a band with Trevor Horn. Right. And they didn't call it Cream Horn. They called it the producers. I mean, for fuck's sake. That's just irritating. Open goal.

So the single jumped up to number 14 the following week and would peak at number seven. The follow-up, I'm Not In Love, would get to number one in the summer of 1975, but Godley and Cream would leave the band a year later. but Godley and Cream would leave the band a year later. 23 this week and checking things out from 10cc those musical merchants from Stockport with Life is a Minestrone

Pans people have something nice to do right now little hip shaking little moving and grooving gonna make your liver quiver and your back crack to number 7 Jim Gilstrap Swing your daddy Little moving and a grooving gonna make your liver quiver and your back crack. To number seven, Jim Gilstrap. Swing your daddy. Roscoe informs us that Pans people have something nice to do that will make your liver quiver, your back crack,

and presumably, in your dad's case, make his knob throb. It's Swing Your Daddy by Jim Gilstrap. Born in Texas in 1946, Jim Gilstrap served a stint in Vietnam before becoming a session singer in the early 70s. His most recognisable session work at that time was the opening two lines in You Are the Sunshine of My Life by Stevie Wonder. He signed a solo contract in 1975, and this is his first single,

which was written by Kenny Nolan, who co-wrote My Eyes Adored You for Frankie Valli and Lady Marmalade for LaBelle. And it's up one place to number seven. Do we talk about the song? It's a bit of a tune, this, isn't it? It is, yeah, it is, yeah. It's sort of, it's 70s soul meets 50s doo-wop. Exactly, yeah exactly the stylistics

the stylistics meets the Spaniards it reminds me a lot of Miss Grace by the times it's got that kind of swing to it yes

yeah or even we talk about Godly and Cream Wedding Bells by Godly and Cream that kind of feel sort of yeah

yeah I guess 50s meets 70s somewhere in the middle you know sort of temptations kind of maybe, that kind of vibe. But Pants People, right? Pants People here, they look like they've been fed through a document shredder. Yes, they really do.

What's the theme? Document shredding, man. That's what it's all about. Basically, if this performance was broadcast this week people would take it to be a topical satire on what's going on

behind closed doors at Kensington Chelsea Town Hall as we speak yes I I I didn't get the concept

at all because I've just written down bog roll yeah and that clearly isn't the concept yeah but I think I was thrown by roscoe what he said before the song liver quivering your back crack what the fuck is he on about yeah it's your

standard go-to remark isn't it you know make your knees freeze and your um tits go on the fritz but it is a tune because the vocal is wonderful you can tell the guy's got yeah pedigree as it were yes uh i think he's someone talking, but didn't he? I need a vision. So he's been on some good stuff. Yeah, an actual discovery for me from this. I never knew this record before. No, me neither. And we'll seek it out. And I have to say that both the actual song

and the performance is ruined by the camera work. Because the camera's swinging from side to side, and it looks like the whole studio's been tossed about on the waves meaning that there must be some teas being brought up across the land as we're watching this i mean roscoe probably felt right at home with that probably did it just for him but i've got here that pants people like simon said pants people are in dresses that look like they've been put through a paper shredder, making them look like sexy Violeta supermops.

You know, Roscoe, is he a character in that film, that fucking boat that rocks? Apparently one of them is. I've not seen the film because it looks catchy. No, I've not seen the film. That is a film that I know I cannot stomach.

Just watching the brief seconds that I've watched of it. Now I was just checking. Yeah, there's an American character on it and apparently it's based on Roscoe and apparently Roscoe was pitching his own film about pirates years before. And I think he was talking about soon with them, but now he ended up promoting it and saying,

yeah, that's me. So I don't know what went on there but I don't care it's not a film I'm going to watch I mean the other thing the other takeaway I've got from this performance by Pants People is that Cherry Gillespie has the best hair ever I would kill to have hair like Cherry Gillespie

I'd kill to have hair like Bobby Gillespie I mean you know beggars can't be choosers to be honest at the time I don't think he realised it but I'd kill to have hair like Bobby Gillespie. I mean, you know, beggars can't be choosers, to be honest. Yes. Yes. At the time, I don't think we realised it, but Pans people were good in a way that no other dance troupe on Top of the Pops were.

And, you know, like a lot of you, I'm sure, watching the 84 Top of the Pops and 83 Top of the Pops, those dancers are just fucking atrocious. Yeah, they've just been dragged out of Pineapple Studio, haven't they? Pan's people, for all their kind of lumpiness, and I don't mean lumpiness bodily, I mean lumpiness in their movements

and their kind of predictable Flick Colby moves. There's something really likeable about them, I think, and likeable in this performance. And not just because they're nice to look at, there's just something that carries that song along with some energy, it's good. You know what, right? The more we see of Roscoe in this episode, the more I

wonder if he even has any kind of clue what he's saying or what he means. Just going into autopilot, hasn't he? I think he's maybe kind of internalised a bunch of random phrases. It's a bit like you know you used to get action men that you pull a cord out of

their chest and you let it go and they'd say like five or six phrases or um i got this thing from la it was like a little um bb some butthead speaking thing and you just click it and they say a load of stuff um he's basically like that isn't it it's um i guess you might have seen the film vanishing point the classic road movie and there's there's's a DJ character in that called DJ Super Soul who just does these kind of stream of consciousness rambles and rants. And, you know, whether or not Roscoe was the real deal, he really was over that generation. He's one of those kind of DJs.

Or whether he's kind of come over to the UK and tried to pitch himself as that. Whichever of those is true, I don't think he knows anymore. No. I don't think he knows what he's saying. And so, I mean, this is maybe why he's quite a rarity on Top of the Pops. Yeah, definitely.

I mean, the reason that you don't see much of him after 1975 is that he actually goes back to America because his dad is diagnosed with Parkinson's. So he's got legitimate reasons for not being on top of the pops anymore but yeah I share your opinion Simon he feels a bit like a fish out of water here and you know when

compared to someone like you know someone we take the piss out of all the time like DLT and Tony Blackburn at least they know when to shut up and they know when to talk there is that massive contrast between him and British presenters in that know, Tony Blackburn come out of the same

pirate background, but Tony Blackburn's... That's clear all of the debate. Yeah, yeah. Tony Blackburn's really slick as soon as he arrives on Radio 1 and throughout his kind of career. He makes a vague kind of sense, but he does make sense. He doesn't do this kind of mad

dog kind of hollering nuttiness that Roscoe. Yeah. Yeah. So the following week, swing your daddy got to number four, his highest position. And this will be the only hit single in Jim Gilstrap's career, but he went on to sing the theme tune to good times,

which is something that any American literal know. And all of us Brits have absolutely no fucking idea about. Uh, it was one of the backing singers on the Grease soundtrack, and he worked with Keith Moon, Leo Sayer, and Khalees. Sadly, not all at the same time. Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah. Twing your daddy to check things out there with Pan's people. They're very, very nice indeed.

Take a chance on romance. Anybody seen a gibbon anywhere? I know there's a gibbon. There must be one. Gibbon! You're number four! Come on, everybody! It's gibbon time! Formed in Cambridge University in the mid 60s Timbrook Taylor Graham Garden and Bill Oddie began the tv series The Goodies in 1970 and by this point they're pulling down 10 million viewers an episode have already won two silver roses of Montreux and one month before this episode

caused a viewer to have a fatal heart attack while laughing at the Eckie Thump episode. Thanks to Bill Oddie, there was always a musical element to the goodies. He had a deal with Parlophone Records in the mid-60s, and he signed to John Peel's Dandelion Records in 1970 to do a version of On Euclid Mall Bar

Tat in the style of Joe Cocker. Have you heard that? Jesus. No, I haven't. Should I? It's really good. I've got to say, I'm going to put my hands up. I really enjoyed it. This is a follow-up to the double A side,

the in-betweeners, Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me, which got to number seven in December of 1974, and it's jumped up from number 10 to number four. I definitely loved the goodies at the time. Me too. And this song was huge in my school playground um but now through the ravages of time and rock and roll and all of that literally all i

can remember about them is the giant kitten bringing down the post office tower in the opening credits so yeah i would actually love to re-watch the series sometime but then it'll be with a certain kind of trepidation because I've got a horrible feeling that it wouldn't stand up at all It can be a tough watch at times I mean there are elements of it that we just never get on British television nowadays

I mean the one thing that springs to mind is there are celebrities at Safari Park where they're trying to bring down a wild escaped Rolf Harris which obviously

isn't going to happen nowadays but the other thing is they've got black and white menstruals acting like monkeys and jumping on cars and snapping off aerials and stuff like that it's like ooooh it's all coming back to me now like my name was Celine Dion I sort of wonder if in the same way that I was saying earlier that the Three Degrees and Philly It's like, ooh. It's all coming back to me now, like my name was Celine Dion. Yes. I sort of wonder, in the same way that I was saying earlier,

that the Three Degrees and Philly were a missing link between the Supremes slash Motown and Sister Sledge slash disco, the goodies were sort of missing link between maybe the Monkees in the 60s and the Young Ones, you know, in terms of, you know, kind of funny blokes living in a house together and all that. And maybe they subconsciously set me up for my absolute love of the young ones. But, you know, I do think I'll go back and watch, even with a caveat of what you just said.

You must. I mean, Kit and Kong's fucking brilliant. I mean, I watched, I went back to the goodies about seven, about a decade ago, because I wanted to show them to my nephew who was five and he fucking loved them. You know, obviously didn't show all of them and I vetted them. But no, I mean, things like that. However crap it might have been, I still reckon it was probably better than Monty Python. You know, in terms of like laughs per minute, laughs per second.

Definitely. And by the way, I've got a soft spot for Bill Oddie because he apparently has, and you probably know where I'm going with this, he's got a massive mural of Prince on his living room wall. Yes. And it's the picture from the Back of the Dirty Mind album. So that's the one where Prince is reclining

with his knee in the air wearing stockings and suspenders. That's in Bill Oddie's living room. So apparently he's a bit irascible and a bit difficult to work with. And, you know, he's had, you know, mental health issues and all of that. And, you know, whatever else. I don't know much about him. I'm not interested in ornithology or anything like that. But I just think just for being a massive, massive Prince fan,

it makes me think kindly of him. I just think, just for being a massive, massive Prince fan, it makes me think kindly of him. The goodies, I mean, were on definitely at this time in my house. And I remember them throughout my childhood. I loved that show. Bill Oddie, I think, is the most interesting goody, in a sense. He's clearly the most irascible, the most problematic, the most angry.

And probably the driving force behind things like the Funky Gibbon. I think the reason this record in a sense works is because it is actually funky because they've got that band gonzalez playing the music and it is actually oh really it is actually a pretty funky little thing gonzalez were a sort of disco funk band from the mid 70s from britain right haven't stopped dancing yet yeah they out with their first album I think 74 is what it is Roger Deakins favourite album of that year the guy from Queen that's John Deacon John Deacon not Roger Taylor

come on Neil I need to pin you down on this which member of Queen is it it's the one whose surname is Deacon it was his favourite album of the year Joey let's not go down that route let's not but but um it is actually it's a funky record it the the the the keyboards are

quite are quite funky they go for it with some gusto bill oddie more than anyone's graham garden is actually the best dancer um i Yes. He's got a sort of soft elegance and poise like Eric Morecambe had whenever he danced. Yeah. So, yeah. Graham Garden's kind of like a ginger Jermaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords, isn't he?

Jermaine out of Flight of the Conchords must be the bastard son of Graham Garden. He must be. For me, something like Funky Gibbon totally links through to things like Living Doll by Young Ones. For me, I don't think

Python ever did a comedy record that got in the charts. They had the whole Rutles thing and everything else. They only did albums, didn't they? Yeah, they did. I've got a 70s single of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Well, of course yeah apart from that one yeah

yeah you're right I doubt Python appeared on top of the pops and were willing to do that because goodies were cognizant I think

of their massive child audience and kids fucking loved them a night when the goodies were on followed by it's a knockout that was

absolute bliss in the 70s and the goodies you know there was a time when I can't remember what year it was but the goodies would be on right after Top of the Pops.

Perfect. Yeah. The one thing that I'm a bit confused about is, midway through the song it cuts to the goodies in ecky thump gear, Pans People doing the funky gibbon, along with the yin and yang cross-dressing groupies, and

there's someone in a spotty dog costume with a hat on. What the fuck is that about? This isn't Peter Shelley come back in to try and plug his whole dog thing. I thought it was the stand-in for Peter Shelley's dog. It's just wracking my brain and I'm absolutely terrified that this dog is something that's so fucking obvious and anyone listening to this is just going to go oh he's just described so and so

thick bastard it's a spotty dog isn't it it looks a bit like Snoopy I think what's unsettling about that moment is that it is a moment, it doesn't last for any longer than about a second and a half with no explanation, probably happened earlier on in the day when they were rehearsing

because Pans people were there in their costumes and stuff. But I think... Cherry Gillespie's giving it the fucking proper gas face, isn't she,

like in her third bass. It's like a strange little subliminal message. Yeah, it's like that bit in the film Gregory's Girl where two people in penguin costumes just walk down

the corridor and it's never remarked upon. No one ever explains it. It's just there for a split second. But the song dropped one place to number five the following week and the follow-up, Black Pudding Bertha, would go to number 19 in July and they'd have two more top 30 hits before 1975 was over.

They were one of the biggest bands of 1975. Yeah, them and the Wombles were kind of these BBC absolute bankers in the charts. Yeah, you know. And what with Paul Nicholas and Telly Savalas. Sometimes you just switch on Top of the Pops and it's all the people you're watching the rest of the day, the rest of the evening. That's right, yeah.

Funky Gibbon. Funky Gibbon. We've got to be out of breath after all that. The funky Gibbon done for you by the goodies, currently number four. I still haven't worked out if it's legal or not. That's the thing that I'm looking into at the moment. We're going into disco land right now. This lady by the name of First you take my heart Roscoe takes us into disco land and introduces Susan Cadogan. Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1951,

Alison Cadogan worked as a librarian who did a bit of singing on the side. In 1970, her boyfriend, a DJ, encouraged her to release a single, which led to her linking up with Lee Scratch Perry. This cover of a 1971 song, made famous by Millie Jackson in 1973, did nothing in Jamaica, but it got to number one in the UK reggae charts. It's a new entry this week at number 34.

Why is Roscoe saying Disco Land? Yeah, what's he on about? Disco Breaker, I didn't get that at all. No, I have no idea. For me? I have no idea, but Roscoe has got form with, you know, he's done, he did a version of Al Capone for Trojan Records in the late 60s. Wow. So he's not an

unknown to it, you know, you'd think he'd be on safer ground than someone like say, Tony Blackburn. I love Hurt So Good. It's up there for me with Silly Games and with Uptown Top Ranking. It's just one of those one-off, you know, female reggae hits that's just unforgettable

and just superb. You know, it's the best version of this song. The Millie Jackson version, I think, is a bit too grown-up. The Katie Love version, which is actually the first version of this song, is quite a nice little cell number. But this is the best version.

And she's got real poise and presence, I think, in the performance, which gives the lyrics, I mean, some of the lyrics, there's a line in there, I think, sink your teeth right through my bones, isn't there? And it's like Cannibal fucking Corpse or something.

But it's a dark song in a sense but just just a great song guaranteed floor filler for me if you dj with it and and um the other thing about susan cadigan she was a librarian i was racking my brains to think of other librarian singers but um uh no i couldn't think of any uh the only other famous librarian I could think of was Mao Zedong. But it's not a disco. Yeah, his reggae songs were shit. It's not a disco song, but it's one of the all-time greats, I think. Yeah. Suddenly the world just stops, doesn't it?

I mean, this is utterly sublime. My favourite sub-genre of reggae isn't heavy dub or conscious protest reggae, but lover's rock. This stuff. Lover's rock, of course, being a very British genre, really. First-generation immigrants in West London or Birmingham making these kind of sweet, usually female-fronted reggae pop records. And because of that, I think it's the musical equivalent

of vindaloo or Biryani. It's something that was transplanted over here from somewhere else and mutated into something unique. I mean, this song was recorded in Jamaica, but British audiences made it a hit and she signed to a British label.

And the national anthem of Lovers Rock, of course, Neil mentioned Silly Games by Janet Kaye, who actually is British, which is straight up one of the greatest records label and the national anthem of lovers rock of course neil mentioned silly games by janet k who actually is british which is straight up one of the greatest records ever made um especially the 12 inch but this this is close and and it's aimed squarely at the demographic who were more interested in a thousand volts of hope than in catch a fire by Bob Marley and the whalers. And, and it's all the better for that. I think it's just completely haunting and completely magical.

And I like what Neil said about her having this kind of poise and presence. She really has. It's not overstated. It's the way that, yeah, she, she does hold back.

And that, that echo effect on the vocals just slays me every time, you know, never, never fails. And of course the poise is needed because not only is she dealing with wearing a Santa themed halter neck dress

she's also dealing with a BBC orchestra interpretation of the song and I've got to say that they make a better stab at this song than they do normally with reggae songs I didn't even notice until you said that no I didn't notice

exactly because the classic one is Uptown normally with reggae songs. Yeah, it's all right, actually. I didn't even notice until you said that. No, I didn't notice either. Exactly. I didn't notice. Exactly, yeah. Because the classic one is Uptown Top Ranking, which turns into a bit of a fucking unpopular song. But no, they've got it nailed on here, haven't they? Yeah, they have.

I mean, the thing is, with all kind of, with a lot of the lowest rock records in the mid-70s and a lot of reggae hits in in the mid 70s and a lot of reggae hits in the uk the heartbreaking narrative always with reggae is that people don't get paid and and the the mess of labels that this song was on it was on perry's label and then dip and then magnet and then black wax and it was you just get the sense with so many records that you know if you if I put on Janet Kaye's City Games at a car party now it's it's floor filler you know it's one of them tunes that you hold back for the last hour um yeah it's just one of those and and yet one wonders did Susan Cadogan you know get what she

deserved for her brilliant performance of this song? I've got a feeling she probably didn't, which is a bit sad. And it's an extremely adult song as well, isn't it? I mean, I remember being into reggae when I was a teenager and that. And Love Is Rock, I disliked it for such a long time. I had to grow up to be able to appreciate it. You know what I mean? You had to get your heart broken.

Well, yes, exactly. A little while ago, God, it's probably anything up to 20 years ago, because that's how old I am now. But Trojan did put out, well, they put out a whole series of these box sets, but there was a brilliant, I think it was on three discs, of Lover's Rock. And it's just fantastic if, you know, people listen to this, wondering what the hell we're talking about, want a sort of primer, that's the one to get.

So the following week, Hurt So Good jumped up to number 25 and would eventually spend three weeks at number four. The follow-up, Love Me Baby, was produced by Pete Waterman and got to number 22 in August of 1975. But that was the last bit of sexy chart action she got and she went back to being a librarian, intermittently coming out of retirement from the 90s onwards. And of course, Hurt So Good was covered by Jimmy Somerville,

and it got to number 15 in 1995. Susan Cadigan, getting things together there with Hurt So Very Good, a disco breaker, and now perhaps through the media of television, who knows? Next week, super success. Moving on toward that number one,

Bay City Rollers, Say No More. If you hate me after what I say I can't put it off any longer. Just gotta tell her anyway. Bye-bye, baby, baby, goodbye.

Bye-bye, baby, don't make me cry Bye bye baby Bye bye You're the one girl I want to marry Big tits and an ear A funny That was taught to me at school Didn't you have that Simon? No but I think that's amazing

I think somebody should collect all these things into some kind of book or some kind of oral history. I mean, what was the other one we had at our school at the time? Of course, New Faces, which was, You're a star, you're a star. Left me knickers in me boyfriend's car. Is this ringing any bells for you, Simon? You must have had loads at your school.

Yeah, there was... Oh, God. You put me on the spot now. The first one I ever learned was the Wrigley Spearing Gum advert, which was Wrigley Spearing me gum, gum, gum, sticking up your bum, bum, bum, if it don't fit, fit, fit, go and have

a shit, shit, shit. I only heard a really lame one about it. Do you remember was there ever one at your school out for Boogie Nights by Heatwave? No. There was one at ours. I'm not going to sing it. It was called Boogie Nights and it's about picking your nose

and putting your mouth in it. It fits with the lyrics but yeah, somebody should collect these things. Fantastic. Well, alright Insomniac, you must know this one. Surely my school wasn't a fucking the hothouse of of twisted lyrics you know the basic to roller song you know b-a-y b-a-y b-a-y-c-i-t-y with an r-o-double-l-e-r-s basic to rollers yeah of course yeah yeah you sing it right did you ever sing usually the boys which was b-a-y b-a-y b-a-y-c-i-t-y with an r-o-double-l-e-r-s

bass city rollers are a mess they can't sing got false teeth woody looks like edward i feel like my life's been wasted. I went to the wrong school. Al, it was just your school, man. God. So anyway, formed in Edinburgh in 1966, the Bay City Rollers got their name by throwing a dart at a map of America

which landed on Bay City, Michigan. If the throw had been slightly off, they could have been called the Otter Lake Rollers, the Bad Axe Rollers, or even the Titter Boassy Rollers. They first troubled the charts in 1971 with Keep On Dancing, a 1965 hit by the Gentries

that the Rollers took to number nine, but they'd have to go through a two-year run of flop records before getting in Les McKeown as lead singer, and they'd have four top ten hits in 1974. This is their first single of 1975, a cover of the 1965 four-season song and the follow-up to All of Me Loves All of You which got to number four in October of 1974 and is currently celebrating its fourth week at number one. Their new TV show Shang-A-Lang has just started on the first of this month their new lp once upon a star has just been released and we are in the throes of peak

roller mania this is also the first song that the band have actually played on where do we start with this well my next door neighbor and best friend at park crescent uh was liam goff whose dad owned the newsagents which i was very jealous of because he mainly got free My next-door neighbour and best friend at Park Crescent was Liam Gough, whose dad owned the newsagents, which I was very jealous of because he mainly got free toys, free sweets, all of that. And as you can probably guess from the name Liam Gough, they were an Irish family. Now, Liam's older sister, who was probably called Sinead or Siobhan or Niamh or something, was obsessed with the Bay City Rollers.

So she had the Tam O'Shanter and the white flares with the tartan trim and all the rest of it. So pretending to be Scottish, really. The 70s were a very pretending-to-be-Scottish decade, in a way. We even did it in 1978 when Scotland qualified for the World Cup, despite the fact that... At 74, yeah. Despite the fact that Joe Jordan had cheated Wales

out of their rightful place. I never got the rollers myself, although Bye Bye Baby's a tune, and Shang-a-lang, that is a tune, I've got to admit. But my roller story is that I once saved Les McEwan's life. Well, kind of collectively I did. When I was at uni, Les mckeown's bay city rollers um were booked to play our summer ball and there was a riot basically not not a riot of hatred but of

love um you know everybody had had a few drinks and people who had succumbed to roller mania 10 years earlier i guess having some kind of dormant lust triggered in them and going absolutely wild just reaching out it was insane and I was on a social committee and we quickly all of us had to leap into action and link arms because there's no barrier there's no barrier across the stage

people thought there was no point you know you're not going to need a barrier so we quickly all had to link arms to form a human barrier across the front to protect les from the claws of these rabid fans the rest of the game jesus a mate of mine actually uh he won't be listening but big shout out to david rider prangley a mate of mine um served some time in um eric falconer's rollers uh right yeah and um you know they're pretty popular on the german festival circuit and apparently to this day there are women of a certain age who go absolutely mental crazy throw themselves at eric falconer who's got to be you know i'm guessing in

his early 60s or something by now he is is still, it's still dormant in, well, not even dormant, it's latent, rising, frothing to the surface in a lot of people. Because, I mean, the obvious compare and contrast for the Rollers is the Osmonds. And they, you know, and obviously, you know,

Tom Payton was putting out, oh, they're all good lads, they don't have girlfriends, they drink milk. But you never got that feeling off them, did you? They were Scottish, for fuck's sake. They'd obviously been around the track a few more times than Donny.

What are you actually saying about Scottish people? Could you just clarify that point for the listeners? They've lived life. That's all I mean by it. Alright, okay. I'm going to cut that now he lives in nottingham you know what price is you know what price is hinted at there is i think the most powerful thing that comes across to somebody obviously i mean i wasn't

there you know i was two and a half but at the time i don't think people could fathom out why the hysteria about yeah the bay city rollers and and and what were they i don't know what were they providing that was unique perhaps after the hysteria as was mentioned earlier of the glam years they were they were presenting something a little bit more clean cut and a bit more copable with i guess but uh the most powerful feeling you get reading press from the era from 75 which was the year where it went fucking nuts for that band really yeah right not only in terms of success but in terms of just the demented things that were happening around them you know the the car accidents and and all the rest of it um there's a palpable

sense of just why is this happening there was obviously a big machine behind them in terms of and you know um a lot of pr going on but nobody could really quite get to the nub of why kids were going so mental um for the bay city rollers um shangalang I think is a tune, this one a bit less so. I think the Rubettes had better songs. Oh, I love the Rubettes. So, you know, it's still a little bit unfathomable to me why

this band were without a doubt the One Direction of that year. They were absolute pop hysteria everywhere they went. I mean, you know, I have never seen such hysteria about a band in my life, you know, because I missed out on the Beatles. I mean, at the time I was six years old

and none of the girls in my class were acting, you know, deranged. It was a young, you know, early teenage thing. So I couldn't understand it. It's like why these why why is this why is this number one and and the suite's number two that's not right the thing is as soon of course as you start digging into the roller story um an older motif about pop music i think comes through and that is that yes it's about youthful hysteria yes it's about young people responding to music but behind the scenes it is about older people

sometimes older people fulfilling extremely squalid urges of their own um in in crafting these pop acts and and reading about patterns treatment of the of the rollers it's it's horrific it's absolutely horrific have you read that book that came out last year? I would love to from the little bits that I've read. I mean, just reading odds and sods about what they were put through at parties, what they were put through at the Walpole Disco and things like that. It's just horrifying. And in a way, you can understand almost why conspiracy theories would arise around pop music,

around these people behind the scenes who are kind of unseen in terms of being on stage, but are pulling some really evil strings, creating absolute hysteria through PR blitz, but exploiting them. I mean, that is what is going on with the Rollers in 75. Total exploitation. I mean, yeah, the book, When the Screaming Stops, The Dark History of the Bay City Rollers,

written by Simon Spence, came out last year on Omnibus. I got it recently and it is a complete wicker basket made of yew tree. I mean, I strongly recommend that people buy it just to read the prologue, which is about the Radio 1 fun day at Mallory Park in Leicestershire. The one where they're kind of like stuck on a boating lake

and fans are pegging it across a racetrack to try and get to them. The race actually featured Noel Edmonds, John Peel, Annie Nightingale, Cozy Powell and Emperor Roscoe. Whoa. Whoa, what beautiful synergy. I think the key to the appeal, perhaps, I'm just suggesting this, is, I mean, pop critics,

we spend a lot of time kind of celebrating and rhapsodising about the kind of outre elements of pop, the oddities of pop, the freakishness of lady gaga or something that we celebrate um whereas actually what appeals to girls in particular perhaps at that age in their lives is a sense of security in a sense yeah a sense that that these are these are lads that you know are not so far away that that kind of look like people in their own lives

and and i think that perhaps accounts for why they had such a strong fan base in a weird sense you know what you got a point there Neil because you know it's basically girls going oh you know I'm really attracted to him and oh all my mates are as well that's good

whereas with lads of that age they want to fancy someone that no one else does like Madam Showery Whereas with lads of that age, they want to fancy someone that no one else does. Like Madame Cholet. Yes, exactly like Madame Cholet, yeah. How dare you mock my love for Madame Cholet? I'm not mocking it, it's a beautiful thing. No, seriously, man, you go ahead.

I'm standing behind you, Simon. Not literally, that'd be hideous. But I mean, have you ever seen episodes of Shang-La? No. They're awfulhai they're awful they're awful i mean the the obvious compare and contrast with shanghai is uh the mark boland show because same company you know a few years later and whereas mark boland's actually you know kind of introducing other bands and it's an opportunity for him to say look i know what's going on and and all that kind of stuff basic rollers are left to their own devices and they cannot present to save their life there is absolutely not one jot of charisma in this band the only time you see any element of charisma is les mckeown when he's holding a microphone

and then he's a bit of a swaggering jack the lad but you you take that you take him off that stage and put him down in front of a microphone they're awful but it's part of the appeal of boy bands really is not out of worldness the appeal of something yes the appeal of something like take that the appeal of something like e17 um god i'm going to show me age here um the appeal was their kind that's that that their sort of spotty closeness to home, in a sense. In that way, I've been to see freakish pop acts. I can see the hysteria at a Marilyn Manson concert, for instance, and understand it, but it did not compare at any point. The most extreme gig I ever saw in my life was E17 at the Albert Hall

because just the power of that hysteria, that mass hysteria, is a Nuremberg-type feeling. And I think that's perhaps what that kind of everyday could-be-your-next-door-neighbour-but-he's-a-pop-star thing that pulled so many people in.

I don't think the Rollers' records stand up much. Shang-La-Lang has its moments. But yeah, I mean, this starting, I thought for a moment it was Rubette's Sugar Baby Love

and I fucking love that song. But it wasn't. Can't really see the appeal myself. Pricey might know better. No, I completely agree. They, you know, if there's anything about them to love, I wouldn't pretend otherwise

but they've never done anything for me apart from one and a half songs and the other thing worth mentioning about this performance is that the audience are incredibly subdued for the time, what did they do to get them that calmed down

let them stroke a Dulux dog yes I bet you one of the the floor manager actually gave them a serious talking to and and yeah and told them to behave themselves and perhaps yes at that time

when a grown-up tells you that you might actually listen you're on television now don't let yourself down don't let your mum down don't let your school down. So, Bye Bye Baby would stay at number one

for another two weeks before being knocked off the top by Oh Boy By Mud. It would sell nearly one million copies in the UK, becoming the top selling single of 1975. It kept There's A Whole Lotta Lovin' by Guys and Dolls, Fox On The Room by Sweet, and Honey by bobby goldsboro off the number one spot the follow-up single give a little love also

got to number one and it'd be their last uk number one a couple of weeks later the madness began when the uk tour started a police officer died of a heart attack whilst trying to hold back fans in manchester and tam payton gave his widow a ticket for a gig in Glasgow. Oh, well, that makes everything okay. And she took it. Yeah, and she took it. Les McKeown knocked down and killed an old woman in Edinburgh. And the band signed with Arista Records and started to focus their attention on America.

And with that, we've got to say bye-bye. Top of the pile. Super smile for the Bay City Rollers and bye-bye, baby. Seven days from now, same time, same place. We've got a date. Get down tonight, Casey and the Sunshine Band. Formed in Florida in 1973 by Harry Casey, a record shop worker, and Richard Finch, an engineer at the nearby TK Records. KC and the Sunshine Band first hit the UK chart in 1974 with Queen of Clubs, which got to number 7 in August of that year.

This is the follow-up to Sound Your Funkin' Horn, which got to number 17 in December of 1974, and the first release from their new self-titled LP. And it's up from number 33 to number 28. Roscoe doesn't even mention one word about this. I think the BBC have told him just get out as quickly as possible. This is probably the first trace of disco beginning to

raise its lovely permy head. Although I've got to admit I first got to know this one via an episode of Friends and I know you're going to hate me. Well screw you. I enjoy Friends alright. There's an episode

where a guy called Casey rings up for Rachel and Ross says, what did he want? And Chandler says, well, I'm guessing he wants to do a little dance, you know, make a little love, pretty much get down tonight. So, yeah, I didn't know what they were on about. So I went

out and searched for that song and it's a bit of bit of a banger but yeah casey and the sunshine band and what's interesting about them to me is that they are basically the house band of the tk label um so that means some amazing tunes yeah um casey and the sunshine band played on rock your baby by george mccray which is yeah possibly the greatest record ever made. I mentioned Silly Games by Janet Kaye earlier. Those two records for me are in the top ten greatest records ever made. I've got to say, it's not

even the best George McRae record. What do you reckon then? It's been so long. I'd get lifted. That is a great tune. I see in the Sunshine Band, I decided to keep coming back to DJing, but they were last hour that is a great tune basically in the sunshine band I decided to keep coming back to

DJing but they're a last hour sort of guaranteed good tune to play because that's the way I like it shake shake shake you know get down

tonight I mean all of these I'm sure anyone who's DJed knows that thing where in the first few hours not many people are dancing and people

come up and say when are you going to play something people can fucking dance or if you've got any oasis yeah but it's i mean the case at casey would be one of those things that i'd hold back for that last hour because i don't care who you are you're going to dance and that's it's really interesting kind of light almost sort of salsa latin kind of feel to casey and sunshine band's take on disco and And I think it does come from, you know, coming from Miami, from that kind of Latin world. And there's actually a really good book about the development of disco called Saturday Night Forever by Alan Jones and UC Canterman,

which goes into all this about how all these different strands kind of, you know, were interwoven at the same time. There was no one kind of defining disco sounds. And once you've noticed that and you hear that kind of Casey and the Sunshine Band sound, you start noticing it everywhere. And you can almost sort of say, I bet that record's from Miami,

you know, and it turns, it often turns out that it was. Yeah, definitely. Absolutely laying the ground, well not laying the groundwork for disco, but it's got that,

the crucial thing is the smoothness of the voice, but the propulsion of the sound. It's that combination. And George McRae, I think, is a really good thing to bring up because it's a similar thing. There's no gnarliness or grittiness in KC's vocal, I guess.

It's smooth and sits with the groove beautifully. So yeah, Roscoe, not talking about it, it's been a bit of a dick because it's like the second best record on the whole show. I'm casting through the charts now and disco-wise, it's only this and Pick Up The Pieces by The Average White Band who are anywhere near what disco was going to be.

So yeah, I think a bit of sand's being put down here. Yeah. Well, don't forget, this is also, I mean, yeah, I think a bit of sand's being put down here. Yeah. Well, don't forget, this is also, I mean, 75, we were talking earlier about is it the Nadir or were there good things going on? Another thing about 75, really, Autobahn came out in 75. Yes. And Kool Herc started doing the first kind of mixing

between two decks at block parties in 75. So there is a truth that everything was about to happen but the idea that that everything was only going to be punk or something i don't yeah good point there were big changes there are big changes about to break but they were going on all over the world in all kinds of different areas and yeah obviously top of the pops in 75 is the kind of the arse end in a way of that world where where all of that hasn't yet crashed into the mainstream i've got to say that there is one other track in the countdown at the start that was probably a disco track because moments and whatnot's were on there and

i don't know if that was dolly my love was it girls or dolly my love but either one of those yes right you're right either one of those tunes yeah yeah're right. I mean, I count that more as a stylistics kind of thing. But you're right. You can dance to it. Fuck it. So, Getting Down Tonight nudged up to number 26 the following week and got as high as number 24. The follow-up release, That's The Way I Like It, got to number four.

And the band will pop up in the charts right up until 1983. So, what's on television afterwards well on bbc one there's a repeat of the episode of the liverbirds where polly decides that she needs some new glasses then the first episode in the new series of are you being served where the ladies department are forced to share a counter with the men's department. And then there's a play for today by Dennis Potter. BBC Two has Aquacops, a short film about the underwater search unit of the Lancashire police. That's what it's about. They'll probably find a bike or something. In a canal. Followed by a review starring Twiggy and Paul Jones and finishes us off the night with Poems and Pints,

where the Welsh take a wry sideways look at themselves as Max Boyce sings something about rugby in Clonethley Rugby Social Club. Did I say that alright Simon? It's just a thought. I'm not going to

say a word. No. I can't say what I was going to say. Sorry. Carry on. Assume the worst listener. ITV is showing the episode of Man About to say a word no no because uh there's no i can't say what i was going to say sorry carry on assume the worst listener itv is showing the episode of man about the house where robin pretends to be george and mildred's son in order to help them keep a tax fiddle going basically the same as that episode of steptoe and son but shit and a repeat of special branch the first series made by houston films and the forerunner of The Sweeney and The Professionals. And that is that.

So, chaps, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? Well, it's got to be the goodies, basically. You know, because I was a small child and you could jump around and pretend to be one of them and do the silly dance and, you know, that's all you really wanted in those days. Yeah, that'd be it.

And it was great and very rare that people from one TV show ended up on another TV show. Yeah. It didn't happen. It's like your streams crossing, as it were. Yeah. Cross-platform brand synergising. It'd be like the Wombles being on Newsnight or something,

wouldn't it? Man, that's what I dream about. Well, they make a lot more bloody sense than the bloody politicians today, right? At least they deal with rubbish as opposed to talk it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Neil, you're new to this 1975 thing. What did you... What would you be talking about in your old folk zone? I think I'd be talking about... It would be the goodies. The most instantaneously appealing performance in the whole show. As an ad... Are you going to ask that question about what we'd buy?

Yes, I'm going to. Yeah. Because I think I'd buy that Yes, I will. Yes, I'm going to. Yeah. Yeah. Um, cause I think I'd buy that as well. Um, uh, at that age, looking back up to see if he can again,

but, um, but, but yeah, um, it would, it would just be, I mean,

part of the amazement would be that they were on Sop of the Pops, like you say, um, so familiar from that other show. So what, what are we buying on Saturday? With my current head on, Susan Cadigan, I think.

At the time, well, I was two and a fucking half, but it would have been the goodies. Yeah, I mean, if I had 50p or however much it was to buy a single in those days, or maybe even a quid

so I could get a couple, it would, you know, now, with my kind of adult head on, again, yeah, it would be know now uh with my kind of adult head on again yeah it would be uh susan cadigan or the suite maybe both um uh but um i've got both of those i'll tell you what i'm going to go and download straight away after this is jim gilstrap i love that one that was brilliant um but yeah if we're going to be honest as a small child funky gibbon all day long.

Definitely, yeah. And what does this episode tell us about 1975? Is it as bad a year as we thought it was going to be at the beginning, before we looked at this? I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say yes. I know you and definitely Neil will disagree because I think it's all very well saying that there was genre music out there.

If you went to specialist shops and listen to specialist radio shows or you can say they're brilliant albums made. But the essence of pop is the single and it's the charts. And I think, you know, any year that is failing on that level is a failed year so i'm going to say yeah um it was pretty ropey even if the hissing of summer lawns or whatever came out the same year but pricey is that why for you like years like 81 and 82 um do you know a really important to you because do you find Top of the Pops episodes from that era are, do you ever hit an episode

that is uniformly good? That's a good question. Pretty much. Pretty much actually, yeah. For me, I've said it a million times, but the goal in the era of pop is 79 to 81 and it's precisely because you had all these freaks and weirdos

and outsiders and lunatics and eccentrics from you know the underground and you know from the avant-garde fringes suddenly coming in and seizing center stage um and having number one records not even not getting to number 35 in the charts having number one records and changing lives blowing people's minds and you know pop is a transformative force. I really think it is. There's a tweet I put out a while ago that people keep retweeting, reminds me of that.

I said that however temporarily disappointing they might ever become, there are two things that I will always believe have the power to save us, pop music and the Labour Party. No, spot on, spot on. I mean, pop has a revolutionary possibility that I think it still realises and realises.

I think what happened, basically, the episodes that you're talking about there, 81, 82, maybe 79 and 80 as well, the ratios have shifted completely. In this 75 episode, and the other episode that we looked at a few a few weeks ago um the ratios are we were picking out things like sister sledge and in this episode susan cadigan is kind of rising above and also the sweet one in this episode

and and the ratios were like you know sort of five six shit records and these two shining out from the merc yeah what i noticed in the episodes that i've watched from say 79 80 81 is that those that that's been reversed and what you actually find is a lot of good stuff and then occasionally your spirits sink because some shite old-fashioned stuff comes on that turned up dressed like leprechauns in the green satin or something. Yeah, you're right. That's the music that dominates this 75 episode. Later on, changes in British pop meant that those ratios had reversed. Yeah, I think what we found is

that however good or bad the tunes have been, there's nothing on here that's going to turn someone's head around, is it? And make them go, oh my God, this is what I'm going to follow from now on. This is going to change the way I dress or the way I think or the way I feel about things. I know, man.

I had a shirt with a massive G on the front. No. Fuck's sake. And I think we've talked 1975 to death here. So we're going to leave it at that. This is the point where I bang on about how you can get hold of us, so I'd better do that now.

Our website is www.chart-music.co.uk. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast. We're on Twitter, chartmusic T-O-T-P, and that's how you get hold of us. Basically, how you, chart music, T O T P. And that's how you get old of us. Basically, I got old of us in the first place.

Just keep doing that thing. Really? So hopefully we'll be ramping these up now. I want us to do two a month. So we'll be fortnightly like smashes. Hopefully. So all that remains to say is thank you very much, Simon Price. i guarantee that the

next one we do we will put it in your 1981 wheelhouse yes oh i love you for that yes and i will just sit there and i will just find the shittest episode with sheena eastern and and um it'll be joe dolce shut up your face at number one won't it yeah yeah all over yeah definitely yeah uh neil kulkarn, thank you very much, sir. No worries, it's been a pleasure. Pleasure to have you back, mate, and hopefully we'll have you on again very soon. Oh, that'd be lovely, that'd be lovely.

All that remains to say is thank you very much for listening. This has been Chart Music. My name is Al Needham. I am that woolly woolly, I'm something else. My name is King, and I love to chase pussycats. is king and i love to chase pussycats shark music that's nazareth there and my white bicycle i can't actually see any white bicycles at the moment but i can see looking across the track behind me here

a solid block of cars and a solid block of people as well. I think it's an awful long time since as many people have been here to Mallory Park on a Sunday afternoon. In fact, just in case you were thinking of coming along and joining in the fun, may I just say that the doors are closed so we can't actually accommodate any more people

at all. We've got people going past. I think anybody taking a ski boat, water boat ride with Tony Blackman this afternoon, may I just say, is taking their life in their hands. Let's go over now to the starting grid where Brian Jones, the general manager of the racing school at Brands Hatch, is waiting for us. Brian, do they look just about ready to kick things off? Well, I had hoped to be able to say yes, but it looks as though we've got a delayed start. Probably due to the fact that there are some people on or near the circuit where they shouldn't be. People are not remembering that motor racing is dangerous, and they've got to keep behind the barriers. Can you give me here a little idea of how long you think it'll be now? Well, it's difficult

to say. I would think another couple of minutes anyway, probably three or four. Now, I can tell you a little bit about what's happening on the grid and who's there if you want to know. Yeah, OK, just give us a quick rundown on who's there and ready to go, Brian, if you will. Well, there are some surprises here, because I think most people would expect to see Noel Edmonds on the front row, but no. Cosie Powell is, in fact, in pole position. Brian Gibson of Geordie is in the middle of the front row. Brian drove extremely well in practice.

And on the outside, Emperor Roscoe. Behind them, we have Malcolm Allord and Matt Kissoon on the second row. And we have to go all the way back to the third row before we find John Peel, Noel Edmonds and Rick Price. Right, you are, Brian. Well, thank you very much indeed. We're going to play another disc. We're going to play Hot Chocolate Disco Queen. We'll come back to you after that for the start.