Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #60 (Part 3): 7.4.1983 – We Need To Talk About Kevin Rowland

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

Simon Price and Neil Kulkarni  join Al Needham as banger after banger after banger rains down from the skies. JoBoxers get blocked out by Zoo. Michael Jackson stops people from hitting each other. Tracie Young performs with Rod, Jane and Freddie. And JESUS CHRIST IT’S DEE SNYDER!Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Tom, and I make a podcast where I log in to celebrities' Amazon accounts. It's called... What a brilliant idea for a pod. There's no original pods out there anymore, but this genuinely is. Thanks, Ben Bailey-Smith. Anyway, it's called... This is good, isn't it? It's clever, this podcast.

You should do more. Thanks, Kerry Godleyman. It's called... This is such a great idea, by the way. What great podcast. Shafiq Korsandi, you're too kind. The podcast is called... It's biographical.

You can get all sorts of information out of people. This is a very good idea. Thank you, Nick Helm. It's called My Mate Bought a Toaster. I'm going to listen to this podcast. Thanks, Alex Swann. Can you tell your friends? The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family.

This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language which will frequently mean sexual swear words chart music sharp music Chart music. Hey, you pub-crazy youngsters, and welcome to part three of episode number 60 of Chart Music. My name's Al Needham. I've gotil kulkarni and simon price with me and they are champing at the bit to get stuck into what has already become a glorious episode of top of the pops let's not

fanny about let's rejoin the episode in progress scotch club and great new singer from then here's lorrie singer famous over top of the studio at the moment. Tour's going really well, isn't it? Oh, it's going terrific. Where are you off to next? Tomorrow, London, Wembley Hall. And then to Birmingham. And then continues right the way through, doesn't it?

Yeah, then to Brighton and then to Israel. Good. Have a good trip. Hey, a band who've done so well, number three currently with Boxer B. This is the debut single

for Joe Boxers. We cut back to Powell with another guest, Laurie Singer, a former child prodigy on the cello, who was the youngest person to graduate from the Juilliard School, and then held down a musician and modelling career before switching to acting and walking

straight into the part of jeweler in the tv version of fame pal tells us that fame is all over the top of the pop studio at the moment and our singer whose real name he actually knows unlike baits about the remaining dates of the tour she tells them they're going to Wembley Hall then Birmingham and then Israel Powell expresses shock that the kids from fame are actively getting involved in the Lebanese civil war possibly and then turns to the stage nearly ramming his microphone into the face of a zoo wanker who's got too close to him as he introduces boxer beat by joe boxers formed in london in 1982 when bernie rhodes yes him again encouraged dig wayne the lead singer of the new york rockabilly band buzz and the flyers who were supporting the clash on an

american tour to relocate to london and link up with members of Subway Sect, who were looking for a new front person after Vic Goddard had jacked in the music biz and started working as a postman. After an appearance on the Oxford Roadshow, they were signed up to RCA and landed a support slot on Madness' Rise and Fall tour. This is their debut single which entered the

charts in early february at number 86 and began a slow pull upward for five weeks eventually entering the top 40 at number 32 three weeks ago then it soared nine places to number 21 and after they made their debut on top of the pops it soared 15 places to number six and after they made their debut on Top of the Pops it soared 15 places to number 6 and this week they've nipped up 3 places to number 3 and here they are again to give the Top of the Pops floorboards another

seeing to I mean chaps I was very glad to see Julie on Top of the Pops as I fancied the arse off her. Did you? Yeah she's lovely. Oh, man. There was just something about her, and it's not her fault, but she's got this face that I just really took against. She just looks...

She's got this look, this kind of like the standard, the classic 80s waspy American Republican girl, you know, and that's kind of her character. She might not be like that in real life. She probably can't help it. But yeah, I just, oh no. She's basically Julian Nancy Reagan to me. Yeah, she looked like she could have been a mean girl.

I think you're right. There was a little bit. I think she was the one that I fancied out of fame. Maybe some of us like mean girls. But there's some fucking book next to Peter Powell wearing boxing gloves. Yes. I just thought he's a member of the audience who's gone a bit

overboard with it, but we soon find out why. They're members of City Farm, aren't they? Who are wearing boxing gloves because they're such fucking wankers. Oh, fucking hell. There's a TV show on later on tonight that links in with this, but we'll get to it when we get to it.

Yeah, I was glad to see you there, but also very fucked off that her and pal were prattling on over dig wayne's call to action at the beginning which is always a thrilling moment when that comes on yes see man you want to know about his box of style all that stuff yeah yes what the fuck are you doing talking over that you talked earlier about the care and attention being given to this episode of top of the pop simon this is where i disagree with you i retract i retract we'll see in this song and another song coming up soon the backroom boys are fucked up big style could maybe say that it's to do with it being a live episode that they just fucked up slightly there yeah i don't know but

yeah it does it cuts off one of the most exciting bits of the record yeah so you're just waiting right looking down the barrel of the camera and just telling you to get up and stomp on things yeah yeah but this tune fucking skill yes into it yeah i i was well into them i really was yeah it was it's what i wanted because like i was into dexys and but dexys had moved on from that kind of stacks soul kind of thing so it's like well come, somebody else come along, give me that. And there's a band who, for a little brief time, delivered that, what I wanted. They even dressed as Dexys Mark I did, as the word that I kept seeing was stevedores,

which I didn't know what it fucking meant. Little did I know it just meant dockers, which is something my town was full of, you know. I mentioned in a preamble that there are certain things in this episode that affected my dress sense. and this is one of them i actually because their look um joe boxer was kind of andy cap meets alf garnett a little bit wasn't it they even had this little cartoon guy um as their kind of mascot on their record label who had the sort of the hat and the big boots and all of that and And I bought not a string vest,

but I did buy a string T-shirt. Nice. And I kind of repurposed my old rude boy braces and started wearing them again, just to sort of get that Joe Boxers look. For when they played in Cardiff University, I was down the front, basically dressed to the best of my ability as a Joe Boxer.

I mean, there's an obvious comparison to be drawn between Joe Boxers and Dexes, but, you know, let's not forget that these cocky young upstarts were more than happy to have a pop at the Governor's. When Dig Wayne was interviewed by Smash Hits, he spoke about this very episode of Top of the Pops, and he said, we're for real, Dexes are a joke.

Whoa. We were really looking forward to meeting them, but, and I'd advise you to brace yourself, Simon. Oh, no. At Top of the Pops, that girl, Helen O'Hara, turned up with a nice haircut, a nice jumper, and flared trousers. Ha! Saxons.

His emphasis, not mine she goes into the dressing room and comes out with her hair messed up and dressed in rags even the bass player got a bbc haircut between rehearsals yeah there you go simon i knew that about helen not necessarily the flares but um i knew the whole thing that she's basically a nice girl out of a sort of conservatoire um who you know kevin had persuaded to change her name and become this kind of gypsy fiddle player yeah that's fine by me it's a big performance because what are you telling me that in their sort of normal lives the joe boxers go around with sideways baker's caps on and well apparently they did male boots apparently

they used to go around wearing that shit all the time they lived it man i mean whether they did or didn't i don't really care you know pop is a performance and you know and joe boxers are completely a conceit they're completely a cartoonish band and that's that's actually what appealed to me you know i i didn't think that these guys are these sort of uh 50s throwbacks who hanging around the sort of the front stoop of a brownstone in Brooklyn or something, you know, it was obviously all an act, and that's fine. That's absolutely fine. Yeah, I mean, when they did this interview that was in Smash,

it's a month from now, the photo shoot took place on the, I think it was Shadwell or somewhere like that, and, you know know showed them going around doing their um don't work a thing kicking tin cans about yeah proper depression style yeah yeah there's actually uh because i've got the album in front of me like gangbusters right and um it's one of those albums that um the packaging must have seemed like a good idea at the time but it's got this um fold-out bit on the front. It's this little thing about the size of a fag packet.

It's like a concertina thing with loads of photos of them and also a stencil. But as soon as you put it in with the rest of your record collection, it gets ripped and it just gets battered. But somehow it's still just about hanging on on my copy. But yeah, in all those pictures, they're basically trying to look like they are in some kind of john steinbeck adaptation or something like that and it's fine you know pop poppies of performance you know there's nothing wrong with that at all oh yeah

so it yeah it's the idea they're trying to be all for real is kind of slightly embarrassing to me i actually got got told off by a joe boxer once no No! Yeah, yeah. It was the drummer, Sean McCluskey, who went on to do a lot of things. He was sort of a London music entrepreneur in many ways. He ran venues like the Leisure Lounge and the 1234 Festival in Shoreditch and all this kind of stuff. And he would make compilation albums. And there was this compilation album he put out in the noughties,

I think it was, of really amazing French punk. And I loved it, and I gave it a good review for The Independent, who I was working for at the time. And I saw him in the VIP bar at Brixton Academy after a gig once. And I went up to him, and I just said, oh, Sean, I just want to say I really like that album you put out. And he said, yeah, well, well, why don't you just slag it off in the paper then?

And I'm like, what? He goes, yeah, yeah, why don't you just slag it off in the paper then? And what it was, it turned out that because he had his fingers in so many pies, inevitably there was something he was involved in that I didn't like. There was this band,

a sort of sub-Liberty and sub-Baby Shambles band called the Kazals that he was managing. And I slagged them off in a live review. And I had no idea that McCluskey was having to do with them. And he just had the right hump about it. He really did. So I just sort of had to say, all right, mate. And I just had to sort of just walk away.

Keep the devil in hell, mate. Yeah, keep the devil in hell. Exactly. But, you know, I don't hold a grudge. This is a fantastic record. I hear the DNA of glam in it as well as song yes

I can hear a lot of well it's stomping isn't it there's a glitter band stomp to it yeah yes it's got that kind of hello hello I'm back again or even

hey rock and roll by the Waddy Waddy kind of feel to it exactly yes going on I bet your mates the Bellites were well into this

they would have been the Bellites would have been into it and a lot of it's down to McCluskey because he's the drummer he just gives it that stomp and it's great I bet your mates the Bellites were well into this. They would have been. The Bellites would have been into it. And a lot of it's down to McCluskey because he's the drummer. He just gives it that stomp and it's great. Yes. Rob March out of the Joe Boxers was actually in a 90s band called Earl Brutus. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. And they were this band with this kind of hooligan edge, this kind of menace to them. And they drew upon glam rock, very much sort of glitter band influenced. So, you know, that was definitely something that was a big part of Rob March's thinking. So, yeah, yeah, I think there's more glam to Joe Boxers than meets the eye. Yes, I love this.

It's not the one that truly delivers on the promise of Joe Boxers for me. That has to be Just Got Lucky for me, which was massively important for me that has to be um just got lucky for me yes which was massively important to me that record not just as a great record but i it was another chance much like kids from fame uh well the film at least for subterfuge pornography if you like because the sleeve of the seven yes i've just got lucky was well filthy it's a bloke he's on his it's a bloke isn't it he's on his bed kind of old looking um yeah he does look like he lives near a wharf you know um but he's looking up at a wall that's just just covered in porny

pictures really sort of old 50s betty page type pictures and you know yes you know shy of things that you found in a hedge this was as close as you could get to boring in 83 so yeah that record i loved that record just got lucky and i'd have been delighted to have seen this in 83 but as i mentioned before i'd have been aggravated in the extreme by zoo's seeming dominance of everything you know how hard do they work to fuck this up well fucking i'll be on the six in front of the stage right who were a whole kettle of irritation to themselves. They're also all over the balconies, aren't they? Yeah.

Wearing boxing gloves. And all those punters... And singing hearts and flowers. Sorry, it's an Aztec camera reference. All those punters who've told everyone that they know they're going to be on telly, you know, watch me on telly tonight. You have to snatch glimpses of the audience in between the zoo wankers. I mean, what you can catch is wonderful,

a true 1983 mix of flashy colour and a kind of estate agent style. But what zoo are doing is what they always do, ruining things. And oddly enough, it's with a track like this, you know, you might think that to really illustrate how shit zoo were, you need kind of a dour early 80s track maybe

to illustrate how mismatched things were. But really you can see this mismatch here with Zoo. Fundamentally Zoo, as I've said, are not pop people. With Pans people and with Legs & Co, you could almost imagine that they would go to tremendously fashionable nightclubs and dance to music and enjoyed music. Zoo always just seem like they enjoy dancing and don't really enjoy music and so they fabricate this enjoyment of music which is what we can see in their performance

here it's like it's like someone's singing to a song in a hot hatchback commercial it's all kind of very enforced smiles none of them are ever relaxed other than in their own smuggery there is a smile you can do to this song to boxer b but it's a fact it's a faintly kind of resolute one a hopeful one but a determined one zoo smiles they don't have any of that nuance they're light entertainment people and and it just is ill-suited massively ill-suited to this performance i mean i know i've said zoo wankers quite a lot whenever i come in it to say i am starting to think maybe that's unfair i'm not saying they're not wankers but a lot whenever i'm coming to say i am starting to think maybe that's unfair i'm not saying they're not wankers but you know who's in control of things i'm not sure flick colby's is

really in control of it i certainly would have been thinking zoo wankers in 83 maybe not wankers actually i probably would have been saying zoo dick splashes because i was that was probably my favorite swear word at the time but they spoil this they try their best to spoil it the music's still there whenever it focuses on the band, fantastic. But everything Zoo are doing is bad. I mean, Dig Wayne's a fucking brilliant front man. What a shame you can't see him. Because they've got four fucking Bisto kids in hot pants.

Just in the fucking way. And whatever dance they're doing, it is not the boxer beat. What are they doing? It's mud, isn't it? The fucking mud rocker like it's tiger feet yeah yeah the mud rocker in 1983 the only other people doing that dance in 1983 are hell's angels at a pig roast and kids my age taking the piss out of people in flares on the street. Oh, man. And hello, no horror, probably. I wouldn't credit Zoo with the smarts to realise what you've identified,

you know, that glam rock side to things. That's why they're doing this. It's just wrong-headed, isn't it? And it's kind of piss-taking. They've got contempt for pop zoo and, you know. Yeah. Real problem. I mean, what you really want of this

is a bit of Northern Soul dancing. Yeah, which is true. Absolutely. Because it's a Northern Soul song, isn't it? Yeah, Real problem. I mean, what you really want on this is a bit of Northern Soul dancing. Yeah, which is true. Absolutely. Because it's a Northern Soul song, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, pretty much. But, I mean, in fairness to Flick Colby, it would have been massively unwise to do a usual Route 1 dance-what-you-hear choreography.

Because, you know, the lyrics of this song seem to imply that to do the boxer beat, you've got to be Jesus. Let the crippled ones walk and let the silent ones talk yeah let the blind so they see the sad ones happy you know good luck with that flick but it's just that expression of confidence isn't it um in the lyrics i like it when any band comes along they've got their own theme tune the first singles they're open hey hey it's basically hey hey with the monkeys it's like hey hey with the joe boxers this isn't it you know which is fantastic i'm still a little bit riled up by what you told me about dig wayne slagging off helen ohara for being fake because basically their look i've just figured out where they must have got it

from it's bugsy malone isn't it it's from that yeah for the boxing gym so you want to be a boxer is that see yes That's basically it. But I mean, in interviews long after the event, people have come up to Dig Wayne and said, oh, come on, Dexys, people used to compete to Dexys. Is that fair or not? And he said, absolutely fair.

We fucking love Dexys. Oh, really? Okay. So, yeah. By the way, you mentioned Subway Sect, of course, and the Preamble. And they're one of those bands you're meant to be into meant to care about yes i've never been able to get there they're one of these bands like i suppose television would be another one who if

you're a connoisseur of punk or post-punk yeah you're meant to understand subway sect and their importance but i've tried and it's just it does nothing for me how about you guys i've never tried he is one of those names isn't he vick goddard he's one of those names oh yeah i should be into him but i've never tried with subway sect i'll give him a bash i'll give him a bash but the same goes for like the soft boys as well and there's lots of bands from that period that i've not actually dug into them properly anything else to say about this you know when somebody from a band who only had a couple of hits goes on and carries on making music you sort of do you ever go on setlist.fm and think, I wonder if they play the hit from early incarnations?

I was looking into that with Dig Wayne because he still does make music. And I couldn't verify one way or the other, but I did find a YouTube clip of him. And he's got this 50s rock and roll style band called Dig Wayne and the Chisellers. And they are pretty fucking good, actually. They're not doing Just Got Lucky, which is what you'd expect. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. I don't know.

But I think that bands don't owe longevity to you, right? They don't owe you a sort of a long, a catalogue of great records, or indeed of any records. They are a one album, one to the joke boxes. And I'm fine with that. They served their purpose when I needed them in this year and they you know just flickered in and flickered out and that's fine so the following week boxer beat dropped three places back to number six the follow-up just got lucky got to number seven for two weeks in June of this year, but diminishing returns set in,

and they finished the year with Jealous Love only getting to number 72 in October, and they split up in 1985. And unbeknownst to the Pop Craze youngsters, Laurie Singer has already left fame after the second series, and this tour is her final obligation before she goes off to play Kevin Bacon's knock off

in Footloose see I've never seen Footloose so that's why she doesn't get on my tits right Joe Blossom that's so good. They're all condensable tonight. Having just finished the show, they'll be there. Carlo, welcome to the studio as well.

Thank you. The reaction's been terrific on the tour, hasn't it? The reaction's been great. And how are the fans? They're great too. The great British fan. You're off to New York back in about a couple of weeks? Two, three weeks.

Talking about New York. Talking about New York. Talking of New York, here is a man from New York. If you like heavy metal, try this. Twisted Sister Dee Schneider. And I am... I'm me. I'm me. Who are you to look down and ask what I believe? Powell and Bates realign on the podium,

flanking a man in a blue sweatshirt, green jacket and sand-coloured fisherman's hat. And after telling us that Joe Boxers are off to Dunstable tonight, Powell sort of introduces him. It's Carlo Imperato, who started acting at the age of 13, ended up on Broadway at 15, appeared with Fred Astaire in The Man in the Santa Claus Suit, and two years ago landed the part of Danny Amantullo in Fame. Not only that, but it's his vocals on the latest kids from fame release friday night which only got to number 89 a fortnight ago and was already slipping down the charts but renewed

interest in the kids has seen it soar 31 places from 95 to 64 this week. Powell commences a penetrating interview where we learn that the reaction to the tour has been great and British fans are great too, while Bates just stands there like a spare cock at a wedding. After we learn that Imperato is off home to New York soon, Bates says, talking of New York, and before the heart has a chance to fully sink at the thought

of jonathan king's cuntertainment usa segment taking up five minutes of our lives we realize that it's actually a band from that area yeah these interviews man they're not it's not weekend world or frost nixon is it it is no these are barely even vox pops they're kind of vopos that they remind me of when we were asked late in melody makers era that were you know if we went and reviewed a gig we had to go and speak to three kids you know in the audience and ask them what they thought of it and of course they'd always just oh fucking. Oh, I more or less dodged that. Was that me? Yeah. It was skill.

If this was 1993, you know, the Rick Blacksel era, the kids from fame would be presenting this show on their own, wouldn't they? Yeah, yeah, completely. And they'd probably make a decent job of it. Well, they're professionals. Probably more professional than Bates and Powell, to be honest. Yeah. Formed in Ho-Ho Cuss, New Jersey, in 1972, Silver Star were a glam band influenced by the New York Dolls,

who did the New Jersey club circuit for four years. In 1976, they were told by their agent that if they didn't change their act and mix in some Led Zeppelin covers, they were going to find it hard to get bookings. To this end, they recruited Daniel Snyder, a Queens-based vocalist, as lead singer, and his songwriting contributions immediately pushed the band in a rockier direction. And when their demos were picked up by New York rock stations and put on compilation LPs, they developed a hardcore fan base in the Northeast, going on to sell out the New York Palladium in 1978 without having a record deal.

After starting their own label and t-shirt company, they attracted the attention of the UK music press and were encouraged by staff members of Sam's and Kerrang to relocate to the UK and land a proper deal and in April of 1982 they were signed to the indie label Secret Records put out the EP Rough Cuts and the LP Under The Blade and had their coming out party at the Reading Festival in August. In December of 1982 they hit the jackpot when an appearance on the tube with motorhead brought them to the attention of atlantic records who signed them up in early 83 this is their first single release on atlantic and the first cut from the

forthcoming lp you can't Rock'n'Roll. It entered the charts at number 45 a fortnight ago, then soared 13 places to number 32, and this week it's nipped up three places to number 29, affording Top of the Pops the opportunity to confuse the fuck out of your dad this evening. Oh, boys. Much to discuss here i feel oh what an amazing performance this is yes it is i absolutely love this performance it it does make you think of kind of the differences if you like between american glam rock and uk glam rock

i don't think it can just be delineated into you know one was about brickies in eyeliner and theirs was about teamsters in eyeliner but i also don't think it's just as simple to say that uk glam was more artistically interesting the fact is the figureheads of glam rock of our first wave of glam rock you know mark bolin and bowie moved on from those aspects of glam um quite quickly and what proved influential in the uk was more what those artists did after they move on apart from uniquely i would say adamant that explicit glam rock sound wasn't really taken on by many uk bands they were more interested in where bowie bowie went in a sense you know but but whereas in the us i think those glam rock bands

and and bear in mind the u.s people would never have called this glam rock they would have called it glitter rock maybe or shock rock shock in the 70s yeah term that d snyder used mock rock yeah clearly clearly twisted sister are really fired up by the new york dolls and alice cooper um i mean how astonishingly ahead of their time visually the new york dolls were is is here to see but you know we've had warnings if you like that u.s metalers are heavily into that kind of first wave of uk glam rock because the year previous we've had quiet riots cover of come and feel the noise that didn't really make an impact over here is huge over in the States.

It actually turns up on the Footloose soundtrack. I think when Kevin Bacon turns up at school, he's playing it. And, you know, a lot of these US metal bands, ultimately, were very into that simpler kind of anthemic bubblegum side of glam rather than the kind of identity-questioning aspects. I would say that Twisted Sister aren't glam. They're metal but a metal in a way that's about to die it's definitive hair metal a year later a couple of

years later bands like metallica and slayer are going to take all this makeup off of metal in the us and sort of look more like well deliberately to to try and in a sense well just look like the ramones in a sense i'm not saying the Ramones are an explicit influence. And this era will start getting looked back on for shits and giggles, but I think that's a tremendous shame. There's a kind of ridiculousness and manliness to the likes of the bands that would come in this wake

of things like Twisted Sister. So bands like LA Guns, Motley Crue, Poison, I don't dig them. And you realise just what a shot in the arm Guns N' Roses is. I know a lot of people have problems with Guns N' Roses, crew poison i don't dig them and and you realize just what a shot in the arm guns and roses they i know a lot of people have problems with guns and roses but they did genuinely feel like a genuine street level adrenaline laden counteraction to that that period of hair metal but i would actually argue that bands like metallica loved twisted sister and and bands like this i really

miss this kind of band the us band who dresses dresses up without irony and with a real intent. I'd kill for a US rock band like that again. This is not US heavy rock that when you cross it with Springsteen, you get Bon Jovi. This is basically metal. It's Nawabaham type anthemic metal in an American accent. But what I love is Dee, I think. I mean, the whole band look amazing and the performance is amazing but d schneider he's got this thing whereas every band that came in their wake

your poisons and your warrants and your motley crews they used makeup to look more airbrushed and pretty d schneider uses makeup to distort an already freakishly large and eventful face that he's got um he's got an amazing face he'd look amazing without makeup but he uses the makeup almost to push his own grotesquery yeah and it's just an enthralling performance i think this and and the band are just fucking on it of course they're miming but the way that the bass player slams the mic stand into his bass and and just everything they're doing is fantastic i think it this this episode man it's just highlight after highlight yes it is isn't it i mean d schneider if nancy spongin hadn't died and had been kidnapped by the east german track and field association instead she would look like Dee Schneider in 1983. Put a fucking discus in his hand and run for cover.

But he's just fucking going for it. Every single word comes exploding out of him with such force. Yes. It's a miraculous performance. And whereas sometimes, you know when you see metal bands on top of the pops late 70s, early 80s, there's a sense with some of the audience members that they're kind of amused by it. I think here they're not. Everyone is kind of blown away by this

and bowled over by it. And there's people in the audience who you know are not going home and listening to Twisted Sister records. No. They're completely fucking into it. Yeah, the zoo wankers have cleared off now, aren't they?

Yeah, everyone in that audience is clapping. Because there's no need for them. This is possibly the scariest front person performance since you woman out the rackles. It's up there. When they did The Witch in 1970. I mean, if I was five in 1983 and I watched this episode of Top of the Pops,

I'm sleeping in my mum and dad's bed until I'm 30. I'm telling you. It would have shit me up. I mean, this is a time when metal really does plunge into the horror bag you know round about this time Ozzy Osbourne's doing

Bark at the Moon and wearing those really massive scary fangs and coming out of a coffin on the tube yeah yeah I mean that tube

performance was it was quite a thing wasn't it oh it's one of the most incredible things I've ever seen their performance on the tube

I would urge anybody to go and look at that the tube itself what a fucking show that is it probably deserves a deep dive at some point but yeah they're doing it's only rock and roll and you know really it's it's more punk than metal the way they perform it and then halfway through fucking lemmy and the rest of motorhead just come on stage and start jabbing and yeah it's it's it's phenomenal and that was important as well let me coming out it was it was basically saying look all you factory lads in leather jackets he's all right yeah yeah you know it's all right to like this completely yeah

they're reading performances on youtube as well and right at the beginning the fucking bottles and god knows what's being thrown at them but you know not by the end no i mean and metal fans i'm not saying they're a broad church as such but you know not by the end no i mean and metal fans i'm not saying they're a broad church as such but you know you will find people who swear down by say metallica or supporter or some band like that in the 80s they've still got a soft spot for twisty sister i mean i've mentioned before that my daughter is slowly propagandizing awful awful metal to me so in recent months you know i've got into the fucking michael shenker group and the scorpions and and i finally count out and i accept that diawira sabbath has its moments

um and she's gonna work her magic with twisted sister i know it because she fucking loves them and and you know as a kid yes she'd be terrified but simultaneously the lyric of the song you know that i can't think of anyone i don't want to keep saying grotesque, it makes it sound like I'm being mean about it, but I think Dee Snider's amazing. But the only similarly kind of shocking thing I can remember in the 80s on Top of the Pops would be something like Divine,

you know, and that just kind of, fuck you, I am this, is an incredibly stirring thing to hear as a young rock fan. Sadly, Top of the Pops have fucked up again.

I mean, they've got rid of Zoo, which is a good thing, but Dee Snider's obviously worked out this routine where he bends over and lets his hair cover his face before throwing it back to reveal the full horror. That reminds me of when, you know, whenever Pigsy chances across a maiden by a stream in Monca and he's slobbering over her and then she turns around to reveal that she's actually a slug monster but when he does that his face has been obscured by the mic when he should be looking right down the barrel right that would have been brilliant just sitting with your dad and you know what's coming because you've seen the tube

and then all of a sudden the hair goes up and his face just fills the screen. Now, man, teas are going to be thrown up walls right across the country in horror. I'm sulking, right? I'm sulking because you two guys have said everything I was going to say. And I've not been able to get a fucking word in because you're so righteously, correctly overexcited about Twisted Sister. But now I've got nothing. Maybe I should just say it anyway, should I? Just say all my...

Yes, say it all. Well, obviously Neil is our resident metalhead, so this comes a bit more... Our metal guru, if you will. So it comes a bit more naturally to him to get on board with something like this. But just watching this brings out, and probably at the time brought out,

my inner Beavis and Butthead. You just see it's like, yes! You know really is and yeah you're right the audience who are not a metal crowd are fucking loving it yes and yeah he scared me he scared me d schneider and um i mentioned before when we looked at sparks that pop can do many things it It can instil many emotions. And one of them that's underrated is fear, is terror. Sparks did scare me. Dee Snider fucking terrified me. He's all big and custody and yellow. And his lips are all kind of smeary and greasy.

And he looks like he's going to go on you. He looks like he's going to drip on you or smear on you somehow. Like sweat on you he looks like he's going to drip on you or smear on you somehow like sweat on you or something like that and even the fact that he's wearing a corset but he's got like a hairy chest and hairy armpits underneath that corset right in terms of male to female drag performance he's the anti boy george because i suppose you had two two main traditions in drag. You had people who were borrowing female beauty. They were borrowing it to look aesthetically pretty. Or you had people who were doing it for comedy purposes,

a kind of Les Dawson tradition. Yeah. But this is a different thing. This is off to one side. This is using it to terrorise. Yes. It really is. And the rest of the band are pretty strong in that regard as well the drum

drummer looks like frankenfurter as one of the guitarists looks like rob davis from from mud who we've mentioned more times than i would have expected for a 1983 episode but um in terms of the glam heritage though yeah they're very much more in the american glam tradition than the british one i can see that you could draw connections to people like sweet or so on but yeah alice cooper new york dolls kiss definitely um and um hollywood brats if you know know them they're basically the west coast new york dolls and apparently what happened with hollywood brats is that when they came along and made their album, they had no idea that New York Dolls existed.

And they were just about to launch. And then this band, New York Dolls, comes out doing exactly the fucking same thing. It's like, oh, for fuck's sake. But yeah, Hollywood Brats. But more than anyone else, because I said that their performance on The Tube was so punk, what they remind me of is

Jane County. It's that confrontational drag yes he is a very frightening presence but as i said about sparks you're frightened of something but you're also drawn to it if you're a kid and i was drawn to this yeah by the way despite everything i've said about there being this heritage of people like kiss and as cooper that they were still quite daring in terms of the macho world of metal to be how they were in the world. I only found out today that they used to go on stage without

any makeup on performing as Bent Brother. They'd be their own support band and call themselves Bent Brother just to sort of get a bit of practice in and sort of warm up before gigs which is amazing. This performance, it starts off with pyros which this is what i was getting at when i said that they pushed the boat out a little bit here top of the pops yeah i can't remember seeing pyros

on top of the pops very often certainly not yeah yeah the only other one i can think of before this was wild in the country by bar wow wow yeah okay yeah the flash pots and the song i mean yeah it's it's a assertion of self-determination it's i want to be me isn't it yeah or it's a uh neil diamonds i am i said or glory again as i am what i am but somehow twice as twice as camp as either of those which is quite an achievement i mean the first verse right goes who are you to look down at what i believe i'm onto your thinking and how you deceive well you can't abuse me i won't stand no more yes i know the reasons yes i know the score i am and i'll be i will you'll see i am and i'll be and all that stuff right no no no yeah yeah

he is he's him yeah um yeah it's a standard It's a very standard heavy metal trope, isn't it? Men in their 20s and 30s providing the words for 13-year-olds to tell their parents and teachers where to stick it. Yeah. Teeny libertarianism, isn't it? And one of their later singles, We're Not Gonna Take It, even more so, you know, it's like, no, I won tell you my room

and do my homework fuck off that kind of thing amazingly i only found out uh recently we're not going to take it was not a hit in the uk only yes 58 mad isn't it it was a big hit in the state well number 21 but their biggest hit there what a fucking record that is yeah oh god yeah i mean we're not going to take it the video in particular as well accentuates that kind of message that it's got it's the most exciting record of its kind since schools out we're not going to take it yeah yeah it's exactly pitched at the same market and has the same effect yeah and the performance that he does here is even more extraordinary given as simon bates has snarkily pointed out it's it's all mined um you wouldn't fucking think it from the way snyder and his band are just fucking committing to it

oh by the way I've got a because it's all part of the performance I suppose I've got to praise the guitars that his band have one of them's got this thing with pink and black concentric circles on it which is really great I'm not enough of a guitar geek to say what kind of guitar it is

but there's the other one it's all kind of jagged and pointy, one of those ones, which is a very metal thing from that time. They look great. I met Dee Snider once. This is at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards. I don't know whether you'll be more or less happy to hear that he wasn't a complete cunt. He's really lovely.

He's such a nice bloke because i i was wary of him because i i'd heard it and i don't know where this came from this idea there was this smell of bad politics hanging around him right and i don't know where it came from but i've looked into it and uh as far as i can tell he's pretty sound he backed barack obama um he came out as pro-choice he even dedicated we're not going to take it to striking teachers at gig once so you know he's on he's on the side of the angels and even though i would never say that i went on to be a twisted sister fan from this i didn't go and buy the album or anything it is just this sort of three and a half minutes where your heart's racing you're just thinking

i i don't know what to think. I don't know what this is doing to me, but it's exciting. And I'm probably not going to become a metal fan or even a twisted sister fan, but fucking yes. Fucking thank you. Thank you for this. This is what I mean about the perfect top of the pops episode.

I mean, do I like this single? Absolutely not. Wouldn't give it house room. Do I like the band? No. Cause they're fucking grebs in slap am i being entertained yes yeah will i be talking about this in the

playground tomorrow fucking yes incessantly yeah and and i think the frequent thing that we've identified in top of the pops where it doesn't work if you like or the moments that are dull and when top of the pops isn't a young person's show you know when it puts on stuff for the older folks i mean twisted sister and not that band you know they are they are hammering in that generational wedge um with their boots i mean you know there's gonna be a split in living rooms up and down the country well you know parents are going to be disgusted by what they're seeing and kids are just going to be unfeasibly excited by this. And of course, practically every Twisted Sisters song is,

oh, we're going to do what we want and you can't stop us and everything. And of course, Dee Snider, you don't drink, don't smoke. So you just think, well, what do you do, Dee? Must be something inside. Well, Dee Snider's a Christianian this is the thing yes you know when the pmrc were on his case in the 80s he just he wrong-footed them by saying you know i am a christian i adhere by those principles yeah that's right we're not going to take it was part of the filthy 15 on it yeah so the following week i am i'm me soared 10 places to number 19 and a week later it would begin the first week of a two-week run at number 18. The follow-up The Kids Are Back would get to number

32 in June of this year but it would be their last top 40 hit over here. But it wasn't like they gave a toss as they immediately became MTV darlings in America, leading to Snyder hosting the channel's Heavy Metal Mania program, and then teaming up with Frank Zappa and John Denver to slap down the Parents Music Resource Center in an American Senate hearing over a parental warning sticker system on LPs. They split up for the first time in 1988, reforming from time to time, and finally calling it a day at the end of their 40th anniversary tour. And Friday night by the Kids From Fame soared 26 places to number 38 the following week, and would get to number 13 at the beginning of May,

the last top 40 hit by the kids and imperato would be the only original cast member of the tv show to stick it out through every series of fame making him ken barlow in a leotard I am a man! Pull apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Tax is extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Heavy Pencil. An actor of my experience, you just get run dry. A podcast sitcom with Anna Crilly and Tony Gardner.

I played Edmund Gelder, and he played Fanny Snatch. The Observer called it a lovely thing. Wonderfully funny, pitched perfectly, produced with a light touch. I'm not having any more of this. I need you to pull me off immediately. Heavy Pencil from Great Big Owl. Oh, that's wild. That's Twisted Sister. More rock from them in Nottingham tonight because they're leaving right now. Debbie Allen, the choreographer and teacher in fame, welcome to Britain.

Thank you. We're so happy to be here. Good reaction. It's terrific, isn't it? Absolutely. The fans are loving us and we appreciate all this wonderful love. What do you make of Michael Jackson? Michael is fantastic. He's one of us. Beat it. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go Pow! On the podium with assorted zoo wankers warns me personally that Twisted Sister are coming up my way right now before turning to the next guest, Debbie Allen,

who did a bit of Broadway and sitcom work in the 70s before landing the part of Lydia Grant, aka Bangy Stick Woman, in the film version of Fame, and then had her part built up for the telly version she's also the lead choreographer for both the tv series and the current uk tour making her very much the mother hen of the kids from fame after batting away another soft question about how the tour's going it's great love etc. Powell asks her what she thinks of Michael Jackson. Alan replies, Michael's fantastic.

He's one of us. What's she getting at there, chaps? Is it a Todd Browning's freaks kind of thing? One of us, one of us. Yeah, yeah. There is something really deeply unpleasant and intimate about her chat with powell they're very close together looking into each other's eyes it's like something well embarrassing

that you see among teaching staff at the school disco that you then talk about the day after it's really really unpleasant i don't know what she means by that it's odd that in it well because one of my black mates one of your dark mates one of my dog mates and i can't remember which one it is he told me that he remembered watching this and punching the air with glee because apparently this was around the time that questions about you know the ethnicity or who michael jackson was trying to be uh was circulating and he just punched the air and you know next day in the playground it was like yes he's ours not yours yeah i can see that yeah that makes sense yeah maybe yeah or could be some illuminati child blood drinking shit going on i don't know don't want to speculate the backstory

of debbie allen herself maybe feeds into this she came up uh against a lot of racism in her early career there's there's a thing i found out about her basically she was denied admission to two different ballet schools because african-american dancers were discouraged from ballet because they were told their body structure did not fit the preferred stereotype of a ballet dancer's body right so you can see how that might shape her wish to assert that a successful performer somebody like michael jackson is from her point of view one of us definitely yeah yeah we've covered the bad king of pop many time and oft the last time in chart music number 56 when billy jean was let out for a victory lap in the 1983 christmas day special this song

beat it is the follow-up to that and the third cut from thriller it was written by jackson when quincy jones asked him to provide one track for thriller that embraced the majesty of rock and to this end they approached eddie van halen to peel off a solo that, according to legend, was so metallic that it caused one of the monitor speakers in the control room to catch fire. Rushed out on both sides of the Atlantic in the wake of the success of Billie Jean, it entered the chart this week at number 30. And here's the video which Jackson had to pay for

out of his own pocket because CBS refused to chip in $150,000. The minge bags. It was shot on Skid Row in Los Angeles with a supporting cast of loads of dancers

and over 80 members of the Bloods and Crips. And this may well be the first time that we've seen it. Because Channel 4 weren't doing their world premiere video release thing just yet. Well, as a kid then, you saw... I mean, I know kind of rock historians use albums as the kind of totemic textual demarcation point in someone's career. They did this album and they did that album. For it was about the next michael jackson video yeah really

yes you know um i mean also to kind of fight against the idea of it all being about albums you know for for so many of us this idea that you know michael kind of cast off his past with off the wall and thriller and had become a man's partly true, but it shouldn't erase really just exactly how big a part of our childhoods Michael Jackson was for all of us. No matter how old you are, you have a different Michael Jackson who is part of your life.

Michael Jackson's been in my life for about 10 years by this point. Yeah. I remember being at infant school in the playground with my mates of all races just saying, wouldn't it be fucking brilliant if the Jacksonson five moved to

our school next term and we got to be mates with them and you know we could teach them how to play football and all this kind of stuff even then at the age of five the jackson five was seen as this gloriously brilliant thing yeah probably even better than the banana splits yeah which means that by the time he's releasing things like beat it um we'd grown up with him and and we'd see how we develop you know an amazing feline dancer and singer he'd become which is quite a revelation but it was also a bit like seeing a childhood friend making it i mean i would i would argue you know billy jean for me is the one in a good way yeah in a very good way yeah uh billy jean's the one off-thriller, I would say.

It's one of the greatest singles of the 80s. But Beat It is up there. And as with all the massive hits off-thriller, it ostensibly kind of has a subject matter. But what gives it urgency is the sense that no matter what the lyrical hook is, Jackson is really working on his own issues to a certain extent. This isn't a song, really, about resolving gang wars or getting more black

music on mtv the lines that resonate are things that you know the lines about people who kick you and beat you and tell you it's fair you can't help thinking now of joseph jackson in a way you can't help feeling that michael himself feels you know this is the reason he always has to run away and escape and change and the whole album thriller has him in this world in between childhood and adulthood and b is a big big part of that and and you know when he sings throughout this album apart from the sappy stuff he's such a thrillingly tense one take singer yeah and the video is perfect for it i mean all the way down to the tiny details you know that the the caron billiards tables instead of pool tables i'm glad we do get at least a glimpse of those in in this bit of the video that we see the idea of a pool table where you couldn't pop the

balls in a weird way adds to the tension um saggy pockets would have compromised that i feel but yeah i mean it was it was single to single by this stage for me as a kid with with mj and this blew my fucking head off um and Eddie Van Halen's solo, I know it's characterised as kind of, oh, look, white rock fans in the US. Look, you can get into Michael Jackson. But actually his solo, it may well have caused the speaker to go on fire,

but it's not just a big, ugly, squawking metal solo, airdropped into it. It really fucking works. And it's a masterpiece. I actually hate the whole narrative around eddie van halen's solo on this though this narrative of the white savior essentially yeah yeah comes along and makes michael jackson's music palatable i mean the cynical view of this record is that it's an exercise in triangulation and it's all about getting mtv on side And maybe to some extent it was. But it's got to be remembered,

black people literally invented rock. You know? I mean, tell Ike Turner or Chuck Berry or Little Richard or John Lee Hooker or Jimi Hendrix that this is somehow a novelty, you know? Black people releasing a rock record. Also, this is three years after Prince made Bambi, right?

And Jack Owen, Quincy Jones were still recording Thriller when Prince's 1999 album came out, which a lot of people also see as a kind of exercise in triangulation, but it had definite rock elements on that, things like Little Red Corvette. So, yeah, it bugs me a little bit that this record is seen as being palatable to a white audience. And it probably bugs me because it's true.

It probably bugs me because in America, that is absolutely what was needed, was Eddie Van Halen's squealing solo. And the main riff, though, it's not Eddie Van Halen. It's Steve Lukather from Toto, who plays the main hook all the way yeah right and and it is a fantastic record and it probably did pave the way for the acceptance of things like walk this way by run dmc and then all the kind of um rick rubin produced def jam uh rock rap of the late 80s but yeah it's it's a fantastic record and it's so right and i just find it kind of weird it's because because we're not american i don't think we have those kind of demarcations between music that they have no so it just seems weird where people say yes they smash down the doors and this kind of stuff

and and we and you know we're supposed to thank hairy old eddie van halen for somehow you know paving the way and yeah like i say i i probably hate that narrative because it's true i've mentioned um in the preamble and i've mentioned a couple of times uh ways in which this episode of top the pops or bands on this episode directly affected my dress sense i mean there was yeah it should be interesting uh there was the uh the dexys woolly hat and there was the joe boxes string vest and uh there may be another one to come further along in the episode. I nearly went for it with this Jacko thing, right? Right.

There's a market in Cardiff called Bessemer Road Market. It's still there. Well, it was very near the old Cardiff City Ninian Park Stadium. It's basically Grangetown on the way into Cardiff. City, Ninian Park Stadium. It's basically Grange Town on the way into Cardiff. The sort of things they would sell there would be batteries that weren't

Duracell or EverReady or cassette tapes that weren't TDK or Memorex but they were some other shit brand you've never heard of and they turned out to be absolute dog shit. The main attraction that pulled the crowd in there was this guy selling pots and pans

kind of like a sort of DIY QVC before QVC existed. He had like a little tannoy system set up. He'd be going, and ladies and he'd sort of talk up this fucking non-stick pan and he'd be going, and it's not £20, it's not £15,

it's not £10, it's not even £5 it's £4.99, ladies. And you see people almost fighting to get to the front to buy it. And, oh, yeah, this market, by the way, is immortalised for John Grant fans. It's in the John Grant video Chicken Bones, if anyone wants to know what I'm talking about. I used to go there regularly.

My dad used to take me in there on a Sunday, and I'd buy my shitty cassette tapes. It didn't work but one thing that they had there was an exact replica of Jacko's red leather jacket from this video and it was selling

I'm pretty sure it was 25 quid I don't know what that is in today's money but it was an amount of money that was almost unreachable to me at the time but if i put all my pocket money together my birthday money my christmas money and maybe begged and borrowed a little bit more from my family i might have been able to just about afford it and i really fancied the idea because i thought he looked so fucking cool in this video of like getting that jacket way too big for me,

but pushing the sleeves up to the elbows, you know, and just see nobody in my town was doing that. You were, you're basically either a rude boy or an ex rude boy or, you know, whatever, just like a normal,

but nobody's got around dressed like fucking Michael Jackson. And I'm kind of, in a way I'm relieved that I never did buy that jacket. But there's also part of me that would love to see a kind of parallel universe timeline of how my whole life might have been changed by that item of clothing if I'd somehow put the money up and got that Jacko jacket. I don't know.

Because there are certain items of clothing that you don't wear them, they wear you. And if I had that jacket, I would definitely have to change everything else about myself. In order to live up. I'm not saying I was going to black up. But apart from that, I would have to somehow live up to that jacket. I'd have to change my whole persona. And yeah, I wonder.

I wonder if maybe now at the age of 53, where I maybe could afford one. Just get one and see what happens. It'd be like Billy's boots. I wonder if maybe now, at the age of 53, where I maybe could afford one, I should just get one and see what happens. It'd be like Billy's boots in that comic strip. Simon's jacket. Just put it on and suddenly I can fucking bust a move. You know what I mean? You know, Simon, if you'd have bought that Michael Jackson jacket,

would you have been compelled to go out and stop a fight between your school and the one next door through the power of dance? Yeah, definitely. There'd have been us against St Helens, the Catholic school down the road. So, yeah, it would have that element of the troubles as well. But, yeah, I'd just sort of slide. I'd moonwalk into the middle of it and just go, you know, and that would be it. It'd be fine.

And everyone would just back the fuck off and there'd be some kind of dry ice there'd be smoke going around as well and it would take place in a warehouse obviously and yeah yeah just uh everything would be all right from then on so in a way um the fact that i didn't buy that jacket is why the uk is in such a fucking shit state at the moment so bre Brexit is my fault, essentially. Yes. Well, I was hoping we'd get to this at some point. Yeah, yeah.

I did have a jacket, I think it was later on this year, that had the same kind of shoulder pad pattern as the one he's wearing, but it was grey. It was your bog standard C&A jacket or something like that. But it had that pattern on it, and there was a couple of lads at my school who would offer me stupid amounts of money for the jacket. And it's like, no, man, I can't. It's mine.

It's part of my look. Did you feel really different when you put it on? Did you just feel some power coming over you? I actually teamed that with a grey and burgundy hooped T-shirt. Toweling, of course, because it was the early 80s. Some grey state press. It's the colour palette, isn't it? That burgundy and grey, pale grey.

It's got to be pale grey and burgundy colour palette. Nothing says 1982-3 quite like that. No parlay. No parlay. That's the colour palette, isn't it? Yeah, burgundy and pale grey. It's the Paul Young no parlay palette. And some great slip

on shoes which were extremely slip on because i remember playing football one time and just smashed my head on the tennis court pavement you know my mates thought it was the funniest thing ever they were just pointing and screaming and going shame guy no i can relate i mean i've done my ankle in many times on my giant marvinon-style stack-heeled goth boots, and, you know, I don't expect any sympathy from onlookers. No. It's the price we pay, isn't it? Yeah, the price you pay. Bit of foreshadowing there.

Yes. And I teamed that with white socks, of course, you know, because, yeah, Michael Jackson, and that's the only socks I had. I wasn't deliberately going for Michael Jackson. There was no way I was going to try that but I look back now and I think, oh fucking hell, I look just like Kel in Kath and Kim. At least you wore socks. At least you didn't

go the full espadrille Club Tropicana route, you know, because that's what every cunt does now. It's like no socks at all. Or those little kind of trainer socks that, you know, sort of for people who are embarrassed to admit they're wearing socks. Sock up, sock and be proud, I'm saying. This video, right, you know, you've got this whole fight going on

between the supposed Bloods and Crips. Yeah. But a lot of them are dressed like they're 1920s mobsters, which is a bit confusing. There's just one little guy, this really small guy who's got a fucking trilby and a long coat on, and he does look like one of the children from Bugsy Malone. Second reference for that in this episode.

But I like to think that the videos, particularly the video for this and the video for Thriller, link together in some way, and that Jacko fails to completely defuse the fight between the two gangs and one mobster bites another one and becomes a zombie and then everything spirals out of control from there

yeah i mean i do like the fact that the gangs are all multi-racial i think that was nice yeah it's like they've gone hey guys we don't need to let skin color divide us let's let's all join together as one and then beat up those cunts because they've got a different postcode to us well i mean we forget over i mean i'm not saying the uk has doesn't have problems with racism but we do forget you know i mean i take on absolutely what simon saying about you know this notion of the white savior you know eddie van halen coming in and saving jackson in a way is nonsense but jackson with thriller is responding i think to kind of what happened

with off the wall now off the wall is a massive hit but it's ignored at the things like award ceremonies and things like that apart from motown award ceremonies you know it wins hardly fuck all at 1980 grammy awards you'd expect off the wall to win a load, but, you know, best R&B vocal performance in the 1980 Grammy Awards goes to Don't Stop Till You Get Enough, but Record of the Year goes to 52nd Street by Billy Joel. And What a Fool Believes by the Doobie Brothers wins the equivalent single award.

I mean, that is the year, 1980, where Jackson explicitly goes to Rolling Stone magazine asking for a front cover. And they tell him exactly what Mark Sutherland told me in 1994 you know black faces on the cover mean a drastic reduction in readership so I think he was

and Quincy Jones were trying to battle it but I think it's kind of yeah it seems weird to us because I think we're in the UK I'm not saying we didn't have problems with this but over there the lines were much tighter drawn especially across the big swathe of the us that isn't on the coasts you know so i think this was part of the disco sucks states exactly yeah and there would have been loads of people going on what's this fucking wiggly shit doing in the middle of a michael jackson song

yeah yeah anyway i don't know even why we're bothering to talk about this because the bbc have just cut the whole fucking Eddie Van Halen solo out, haven't they? Yeah, weird. Yeah, that bit can go. Fuck that. I think by this point we were well aware of what it sounded like through radio play and stuff like that.

So it's not an issue. Well, the fact that this came in at only number 30, that's mental. Yeah. But the general assumption would be, well, everyone's got Thriller, which isn't necessarily the case. Not necessarily the case, but I mean, you don't apprehend year zeros when you're living through them, in a sense.

For so many of us, Thriller is. It's the first pop album, you know, that we had for a lot of us. You know, when pop begins with it. There wasn't ABBA. Yeah, pop begins for us with that album. It's massive. It's not exactly true that everyone had Thriller, but everyone had access to a copy,

or everybody knew somebody who had a copy. You know, like my best man at my wedding and an old friend of mine, Neil Spahn, and hello, Neil, was a massive Jacko fan, and he had Thriller. And it's an album that I taped off him, and if I went round his house, it was playing. And it had this kind of afterlife

that long after the hits and the singles from it had dried up um it just carried on being part of everyone's soundtrack from you know 8283 8485 i would say right right the way through so that there is that thing that you almost didn't need to go out and buy a michael jackson single because no it would find you it was generally is Thriller, it was generally reviewed pretty scathingly and it nearly died a death. I mean, it's out November 82, that album. And why did they choose The Girl Is Mine as the lead single of it?

It's such a bizarre choice. It is, yeah. You know, which was the first song to be recorded for the album back in April 82. And maybe Epic just thought that's a play safe option, but it was too safe. And you know, a lot of people just was too safe and you know a lot of people just saw it as sappy and a lot of people actually when thriller came out slammed it it was

no off the wall there was no what rock with you in it there was no don't stop in it and and kind of people didn't quite get with it straight away it was regarded initially as a major disappointment but eventually the singles just the good singles and i think billy jean's the key one just started breaking down all barriers, if you like. But we should remember that in 82, when it first emerged, I mean, for starters, it came out just before Christmas, and it was very swamped by the Christmas market initially. It took 83 and these big vids to really enter our consciousness

for it to start becoming the rampaging juggernaut that it did. So the following week, beat it sword! 25 places to number five, and then spent two weeks at number three, its highest position. The follow-up Wannabe Starting Something

got to number eight in June of this year, and he closed out 1983 with two records in the top ten in November. Say, Say, Say, his duet with Paul McCartney, spending two weeks at number two, and Thriller getting to number ten. A few weeks later, Beat It formed the second slice in a Jack O'Dexie sandwich

when it usurped Come On Eileen as the American number one. And after Jackson allowed the song to be used in a public information film about drink driving he was invited to the white house in 1984 to receive the presidential public safety communication award by ronald reagan because there was an election on oh you must be out of your tiny mind meanwhile our wonderful british newspapers were delighted to report that the kids were rebelling against alan's iron fist during the tour which reached a peak when erica gimple who played coco got into a full-blown row with alan over wanting a coffee break during a rehearsal

then they accused bangy stick woman of hogging all the limelight and quick the tour which is why she isn't here tonight i think debbie allen probably also imposed a ban on dancing on cars as as well too flimsy and shit and you your foot would go right through him alan went on to become a producer director and her character went on to be the principal of the school in a 2009 remake, making her the only person to appear in all three versions of Fame. The road is the road, right just here Two singles from the show, Michael Jackson, Mrs Lee from Frank. Thank you very much indeed for coming out. There's a lady called Tracy who was on this programme last week, you'll have seen her with Style Council.

This time she's got her own record, her own hit. She's backed by the questions who wrote The House That Jack Built. Here's Tracy. The House That Jack Built Jack built. Here's Tracy. Bates, surrounded by members of City Farm, is accompanied by a curly-haired young man in a black T-shirt, sporting a digital watch with a calculator on it. Did you have one that played a tune?

Oh, no, I never had one. I had one. Yeah, it was Can Can. Yellow Rose of Texas. Bad Manners, Can Can. Well, but Can Can. Oh, of course, yes. It was the only Rude Boy related tune you could get on a digital watch. Why, it's Lee Carrera, a former graduate of the Manhattan School of Music where Herbie Hancock,

Harry Connick Jr. and Rupert Holmes went. And at the age of 19 he was cast as bruno a keyboard prodigy and sometime nemesis of mr shirofsky in the film version of fame he stayed on for the tv show chipping in on the soundtrack very much an icon of the show wasn't it yeah very much so he kind of um went up in my estimation because i mean, wasn't there? Yeah, very much so. He kind of went up in my estimation because, I mean, this wasn't the only time that the Kids From Fame appeared on Top of the Pops. That's right, yes.

I remember him genuinely getting into the intro to Human League's Keep Feeling Fascination when he introduced that song in a later episode and that massively put him up in my estimation. Good lad. Keyboard master recognises keyboard masters. He really looked like my best mate in my first year at uni, Tony, who also made a big deal of his resemblance to Tim Curry

in the Rocky Horror Picture Show with the curly black locks. And I just wondered if the fella from Kids From Fame there actually ever traded up his resemblance and played Frank N. Furter, because he would have been perfect for it, wouldn't he? Bates has nothing to say about Bruno, so Bruno ends up asking Bates how he's doing. Bates practically ignores him, bar thanking for coming out to stand next to him for five seconds,

before telling us that the next singer was part of the style council in last week's episode, and here she is with the questions who wrote this. It's Tracey and the house that Jack built. Born in Derby in 1965, Tracey Young was a former switchboard operator and till girl at Woolworths who was on the dole in August of 1982 when she chanced upon the following article in the bits section of Smash Hits. Fancy yourself as one of the great 60s chanteuses? Well, if you do, and you're female aged between 18 and 22, Paul Weller's Respond Records are looking for you. Just whap off a cassette of

your singing, a list of your influences, and a photograph to respond records 45-53 Sinclair Road, London, W14. But she didn't bother to, ahem, respond, because she was still 17 at the time, I know. I tried to write my way around that, but I just couldn't. After the original wave of applicants failed to provide anyone suitable smash hits announced that weller was still looking and she decided to go for it sending off a tape of her singing the betty wright song shirar shirar and after an audition she was immediately snapped up put on the jam's final tour as a backing singer and appearing on Beat Surrender, the jam's last single, and Speak Like a Child,

the Style Council's first. This is her debut single, which entered the top 40 at number 38 last week and has soared 15 places to number 23 this week. It was written by Paul Barry and John Robinson of label mates The Questions, who were in the studio acting as a backing band in advance of their participation in the forthcoming Respond Posse tour, which I am going to in just over three weeks.

Yes, Pop Craze Youngsters, this is my first gig. Tracy and the Questions, yes. Quite jealous. When it was announced announced the questions were top of the bill but Tracy got bumped up because of this really yeah of course yeah and I'll be watching this absolutely fizzing with

anticipation that I am going to see actual pop stars right in front of me and in the end they weren't because I ended up on the balcony at Trent Pollard still not believing that I'd been let in and absolutely terrified I'd get thrown out at any minute for being very under 16. I look back at it now, my main memory isn't so much the gig,

but who I ended up standing next to, which was Vaughan Toulouse, formerly of Department S, now in the main T-posset, and he was the DJ on the tour. And I didn't end up talking to him but I was listening very intently while he was talking to some bloke about Respond and just picking up information. He said at the time that Paul Weller

was the cappuccino kid so he must have written the notes for Speak Like A Child. Interesting. And he turned out to be Lord Jim who wrote the sleeve notes on the back of the house at Jack. Ah, right, yeah. We'll come to that.

At the time, I was the Cappuccino kid. I think I've already mentioned before that at this time, I didn't know what Cappuccino actually was, but I really wanted to drink it. And for some reason, I'd worked out that it was a mixture of coffee and tea. And I am full Weller sheep at the minute whatever paul weller says i gotta do i fucking do it without question or questions hey i i hated coffee which meant i wasn't really cut out for this oh man sort of europhile mod lifestyle unfortunately um but isn't that interesting that both our first gigs are on this top of the pop yes dexys was my first one under my own steam if we're not including the folk festival my dad took me to no and we're not no we're not i mean all i can

remember the actual gig that the questions were fucking brilliant yeah but it was rammed out with mods and jam twats who like me were hoping that paul weller was going to show up yeah i actually did see one of the speakers and it did have fire and skills stenciled on it which meant it was one of the jam's original speakers from 1977 which gave me a bit of a thrill yeah i bet but the audience were cunts there was a load of them who was singing get your tits out for the lads after every song and and by the end there was a chanting war but half the people at the end were shouting trace it and the other half was shouting tits out for fuck's sake i was kind of wondering you know how the jam audience would respond to this because it's

such a stylistic shift for something well as involved with i mean i know the whole style council already were but but the jam are really not that long gone at this point and this shift to synths and drum machines and you know 80s textures on this song it is pretty total and complete yeah and from what i've read as well you know she wasn't happy about it either tracy you know no um about the kind of comparative lack of oomph this record has i guess but i think that's i think that's precisely what's good about it i can understand why she might not like that because her voice is like this this kind of wondrous relic from the 60s. Not relic as in sort of sounding old,

but it really does sound piped in from the 60s. Yeah. We're just over three months away from the jam's last gig and Beat Surrender and all that. And, you know, 1982 was a year of kind of like discovery for me because it was, you know, my last year where I could buy jam records the day they came out so i was absolutely full-on into them but kind of realizing that being

a jam fan didn't necessarily mean you're on the fucking right side of history i remember when we went to germany on the school exchange and we're on the ferry over and i'm wearing my brand new gift t-shirt uh which i got from the back of the NME. And I'm wearing it for the first time, and it's the cover of the gift. I end up just walking around, and I'm walking past one of the bars on the ferry, and it's full of jam lads who are on their way to Amsterdam

to see a gig. And they go, oh, look at that lad. Are you going? Are you going? And I go, no, I'm 14. I'm on a school exchange. They say, oh so come with us come with us we'll get you in and i'm sorely tempted but i ended up talking to them and they're saying oh you know what's on this album they're testing me out and i'm fucking batting their

questions back and it's like i know more about the jam than you do and actually you're fucking horrible because you're you want to start you know you want to start kicking off on someone like yeah let's go and find some germans and beat the shit out of them and by the end of the night we ended up getting locked into our rooms because he's gone completely fucking arms house in the bars on the ferret so it's like oh man jam fans are knob ends there's this famous photo i'm sure you know the one i'm talking about um from uh it's from october 1984 and i'm gonna um give a little plug here because um as we're recording this just literally through the letterbox plopped the new record collector paul weller special um which i've

contributed an essay to and i talk about this photo but it's the photo of weller in oxford on the 6th october 1984 taken by steve pike and it's in the courtyard Weller in Oxford on the 6th of October 1984, taken by Steve Pike. And it's in the courtyard of a pub. And he's surrounded by all these mod lads in their parkas. And he's moved on at this point. You know, he's very much in style council mode and looks very sort of tailored and very sort of European. And you can just see this kind of, maybe I'm projecting,

but you can just see this sort of look in his eyes of like, oh, for fuck's sake, I've still got this lot following me about. They just don't get it. It's a really, really important moment in Weller's career. Well, actually, probably the important moment is what we're talking about, the 1983 bit. But by 84, people still hadn't forgiven it.

There were still these sort of bereaved mods, as it were, you know, jam fans following him about in this kind of forlorn way. I wasn't as invested in the jam as you were. I liked them the more soulful they got as they went along, which was basically when they were becoming the Star Council anyway. So when they're doing things like on the double vinyl gatefold or beat surrender, the cover versions of things like War and Move On Up and Stoned Out of My Mind, which pointed the way of where he was going.

I loved that. And even slightly earlier things like Town Called Malice being very Motown. And, you know, I suppose Precious being a funk track and all of that. So I didn't have anything to lose. I could very easily sort of kick off the jam bowling shoes and put on a pair of Style Council tasseled loafers, which I literally did. I was fully into this, and I was very ready for Respond Records,

and we've spoken a little bit earlier about that. It was a little bit of a letdown, I suppose, in the end, but just the idea of it, at least. I wanted in i really did and in that enemy piece right and they're talking about tracy they say in the piece that we shouldn't call her the girl next door according to that piece right which is what everyone called her didn't they because but it's a it's a weird phrase anyway girl next door isn't it because everybody lives next door to somebody unless unless you live on an island, I suppose.

So she's best case scenario, I guess, girl next door. I mean, I live next door to my mate Andrew, the metler who had the air rifle. And on the other side, it was that woman who played Fool If You Think It's Over by Elkie Brooks 17 times in a row, because she was having a breakdown. So those are my next door neighbours yeah but i suppose what what people mean when they say girl next door is basically what fhm magazine was doing with that high street oh yes yeah yeah you know i mean and tracy did win um a smash hits most fanciable female at the end of this year but the deal with tracy was she was super relatable yeah she was two years older than me so she was like your mate's older sister who was too cool really to talk to a little squirt like you so you've got a secret thrill if

she deigned to acknowledge you in the street you know what i mean she was that girl i've seen an interview with her on the tube and she's quite funny and quite saucy in a carry-on way she does her big ones are the best joke but it's also really clear how much of a genuine pop kid of 1983 she was yes she you know she wasn't just this sort of um blinkered weller right she was in a spandau ballet um mainly because she fancied gary kemp and she liked the jacksons and madness and culture club and paul young and wham and all that stuff yeah her first gig was paul young oh i read an interview with smash hits i think it was a few months after this where she said uh they were talking about her influences and all that kind of stuff and she

said well paul weller told me not to say this but my first gig was the q-tips i fucking love paul young brilliant yeah yeah and and seeing on the front of smash hits when she appeared on the front with weller it felt like breaking the fourth wall or maybe even holding up a mirror to us the readers because she was one of us she was a smash hits kid breaking through this kind of invisible barrier and becoming one of them a pop star yeah i don't know if you heard this this is getting a bit obscure but on on the 12-inch of the house that Jack built, there's a track called Tracy Talks. Yes. Which is some idiot with a sneering Mancunian accent interviewing her.

Is it Weller putting on that accent? It's Weller pretending to be Paul Morley, isn't it? I thought, is it a Paul Morley parody or just a generic Mancunian? And so he goes, Sir Tracer, tell me... No, I'm not going to use the accent. How does it feel to be suddenly elevated from the dole queue lines into the world of the pop business? And she replies, it's great, it's fantastic,

and I can hardly believe my good fortune. Now, obviously, the whole thing is a kind of slightly heightened, exaggerated comedic set-up, but that is the thing. She's just happy to be here. Yeah. And that's really appealing. I suppose it's similar to the rise of sheena eastern a few years earlier via that tv show the big time and there is a bit

of the sheena easterns about her in this performance i would say there's also a bit of the girls from the human league yeah for me um who were also of course genuine teenagers plucked from the local disco yeah so you know she's dressed in double denim jacket and skirt with a collar turned up fringe right down over her eyes in that bashful princess diana style and she's in white heels she is from essex after all despite being born in derby um picking her way through the balloons and she does that authentic teenage disco dance which was previously owned by joanne and susan from the human league where you go step to the right bring your left foot alongside step to the left bring your right foot alongside

repeat while your upper half pivots the opposite way and again you know that's a sight you would see at any provincial disco in 1983 and and it's as if and i always think this when i see the human league live even this to this day it's as if she's dancing to the hit single, The House That Jack Built, by Tracy, rather than performing it. Yeah. Tracy as well, IE. Yeah. Yeah, that was quite rare, I suppose. The only other Tracy with an IE that I knew of was my little sister.

Really? Yes. Oh, wow. My mum and dad agreed that she was going to be called Sally. And my dad was going to the register office but he went to the pub on the way there decided that that was wrong and changed the name to Tracy without consulting my mum

She was furious with him There were a lot of Tracy's around I mean I knew a lot There were fucking loads of Tracy's on my estate There were at least seven Tracy's within a mum's shouting distance That's a great unit of distance, by the way. There'd be kids playing on the street and someone's mum would appear at the door and go, Tracer!

And half the fucking girls' heads would turn. Yeah, yeah. As we've already mentioned, there was even a lad at my school called Tracer. Tracey Unwin, a victim of bummer dog. Wow. The streets were filled with Tracer. How come Tracey is such a popular name in this period? I don't know.

Was it Spencer Tracer? I wonder. No, it's fucking Thunderbirds, isn't it? Oh, is there a Tracer? There must have been some girl born in the late 60s, early 70s called Tracey Island who fucking hated life. Yeah, there were a lot of Tracys in Barry. Big shout out to Tracey Pullen, Tracey Marsh, Tracey Duggan. There was a lot of them around. It was very much a name of that generation's and barry big shout out to tracy pull in tracy marsh tracy

duggar and there's a lot of them around it was very much a name of that generation and it became sort of a definitive and definitive of something negative eventually it was always sharon's and tracy's became a kind of shorthand for again and i hate this word but kind of chav girls but we didn't use that word then no and i i hate that whole thing where where a name just you know a given name takes on that kind of meaning so that i hate that whole thing where where a name just you know a given name takes on that kind of meaning so that i hate the whole karen thing for example i really i really do um i think the the fat slags in viz if i'm not mistaken were called shat sun and tray right there we go yeah yeah um from nottingham yeah but in a way just the fact that tracy had a very ordinary

name did help with that again that, that relatability. Yeah, ordinary name with a bit of a twist. A little bit of a twist. An exclamation mark. You know, like Wham and the Mighty Wah. Yeah. Yeah, because when I bought this single, when it came out, I bought a Tracy badge as well and I'm sitting on the bus and looking at it in my

hand going, what the fuck am I going to be doing wearing a fucking badge with my sister's name on it? So I gave it to her. She was well chuffed no way i was doing that that next door motif it was used a lot in this period it's quite a loaded phrase i mean there's obviously approachability as we've already mentioned but there's also the hint of someone being easy to manipulate in a way it's similarly derogatory is the sort of coverage that joanne and susan in the human league were getting at the time um but here what we see as simon said is a normal person really that you know the white high heels are really key at this point you know white high heels like blue eyeshadow has become a way of kind of characterizing townies but she's she's unashamedly herself

and enjoying it and the other sort of fantastic thing about this performance is that we see more audience members than zoo wankers there's a good fair bit of the audience who seem to be who seem to really be split into two vague camps there's those people who were you know sort of perfectly happy to see what is trendy and fashionable in the 80s is fundamentally becoming identical to business wear so we see a lot of suits and linen suit and fundamentally those kids who don't think that at all and even at this kind of new pop party there's dissidents there's the odd kid who contrary to floor manager's instructions i'm sure it just stood there watching um within a few years you know that just wouldn't be allowed and what i also particularly like in the audience is that that slightly old sense from the 70s in a way of pairs of kids um often girls who've come

to this thing together dressed in the same outfit there's a particular pair of girls there who just chat shit through the entire episode they don't even bother dancing but you can see them in the background and that gives this episode i think a sort of authenticity that i really like and and that kind of thing would disappear as the 80s go on the thing is her voice as well is just relatable enough while also being sufficiently pop starry i mean she isn't a bad singer at all you know you mentioned al on that demo tape she sent in response to paul weller's advert and smash hit she sang shirar shirar by betty right and at the audition apparently she sang band of gold and reach out i'll be there and you can actually imagine her having the chops for that kind of soul vocal

potentially at least but she also had a similar thing to millie or helen Shapiro or Louie or maybe Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las or Shirley Owens and the Shirelles because whatever other qualities their voices had in terms of technique or soulfulness they also had this teenage flavour about it this slight kind of citric sweet edge like lemonade with your vodka you know and it works because she can sing but she kind of sings like she's singing along again like dancing along and singing along and i like that well for me it's actually it's actually a really good start to the label isn't it if the quality could have been kept up to this level yeah i mean clearly what happens with the label is that is that rock stars they often have the ambition and the pull to start a

label but but not the work ethic to maintain well all the time i mean it's all very well wanting to start a motown or a stacks but you know to do that you need a smoky robinson and an isaac hayes who can just sit there and pump out bangers and paul weller and to a lesser extent paul barry and john robinson you know they're keeping the good shit back for their own bands because that's what you do. This is it. And if you're running a label and being a pop star at the same time, you've just got to delegate a bit of fucking responsibility, really.

You know, when Frank Sinatra starts reprise records in 1960, he's not turning up to meetings or anything. He just starts it with intent and then he fucks off. He lays down some laws and then fucks off and lets the label be run by pros. The reason this label fails is obviously because, in a way, too many pop stars are involved. They should have said, you know, these are the constructs of the label.

We want to put out this kind of music and then got the pros involved, but they didn't. Has anyone else apart from Sinatra done it right? Well, you could kind of argue that paisley park worked for a bit before warner's fucked him over yeah i mean two tone yeah doesn't that count yeah but you know these things they just tend not to have longevity really um and this is another example i guess we're two-tone that the specials were brand new yeah yeah it's not an established act there is it it, who's launching it? Yeah, Paisley Park, I mean, Prince's protégés, there's usually only one or two decent songs that he bestows upon them.

And then he tends to use them as sort of testing ground for songs he wasn't sure about that he would then kind of pinch. So Maserati were originally, you know, Kiss was for them originally. And then you've got something like Nothing Compares To You with Family and stuff like that, where if the song seems to sort of fly well it's like thank you very much you know i'll take that off your hands and do something else with it you know something these labels should have done that hip-hop labels do much much later actually is just get artists involved but purely on an a and r basis of kind of finding the new shit and

leave the marketing and the production stuff to the pros. You know, I mean, if I'd have heard this, I mean, I, of course, was not really cognizant of Weller's involvement in this, you know, at all. This was just kind of another... I was aware of Paul Weller and Style Council, but I had no idea that this was connected to him. I can't let this go by without

mentioning that this song gives me a massive jay giles band uh centerfold yes yes it is isn't it throughout i noticed that you know shit yes yeah i mean i've been swerving around talking about the song to be honest i mean there's there's a reason for that i mean i'm not i'm not a fan of the song tracy isn't really, though, either. Yeah. I don't know if you saw this. She did a Tim's Listening Party on Twitter. Yes.

And she said as much. Here's what she said. She said, not quite what I had in mind as an artist, but actually I love the track Paul put down, the strings and guitar and backing vocals. They were fun, and I really got into it until it was speeded up post-vocals. And had that drum machine part added. Nonetheless, what a thrill at 17 years old.

So, yeah, about that drum machine bit, by the way, I thought it was particularly cruel of Michael Hurl, or one of his minions, to cut to the drummer at that exact moment. So he has to do some really awkward miming to what is very obviously not played by a human so yeah paul weller's production really is his fault um he was involved sometimes under a pseudonym um on her album he called himself jake fluckery and and just just reading between the lines i agree with tracy about the production i i think it's almost too pop, if such a thing can be possible. It is like eating 10 Bubblicious in a row and feeling sick.

Tragically, this is, to the best of my knowledge, the only appearance of the questions on top of the pots, which is a fucking shame, because they were brilliant. I loved them. Winners of the Young Group of the Year Award on the TV show Saturday Banana in 1978, played support to the jam in 1981, signed to respond the same year, and their next single, Price You Pay, comes out tomorrow.

And that's a fucking tune. It is brilliant. Their songs had a real emotional pull, a real soul dynamic to them. And as a, I feel like a wanker saying this, but as a musical unit they were they were great they're one of those very scottish funk bands that tradition that ran from average white band through the associates and hip sway and love and money and i suppose

hue and cry and ultimately wet wet wet and all of that there's a distinct kind of bustling urgent white funk from scotland and it And it's there in the questions. I really liked it. It's a shame they didn't look very cool. This is something that gets... Well, they look a bit Rod Jane and Freddie here. Yes, exactly that. They do look like presenters from Watch It, children's ITV.

Yes. Their pastels and their primaries and their slacks. I always wanted them to look a bit more mod. In my head, when I heard the records records they were much better dressed than that you know because yeah i mean there were three superb singles that i owned um tuesday sunshine yes price you pay and tear soup tear soup's fucking amazing and it's one of those things that i sort of mentioned earlier where i knew that hardly any of my mates had even heard of them which made them that bit more mine you know i played those respond singles by the questions till they were worn as thin as

flexi discs you know and yeah the weller connection definitely got them a foot in the door with me obviously the other day i watched a video for the 12 inch of tear soup by the questions and it's hilarious how much they play up the weller angle the youtube clip starts with a bit of silent footage of weller talking and the camera spends more time on weller in the control room looking impassive with a uh a slightly partridge like uh lemon colored jumper slung casually around his shoulders that then it does on the questions yeah i think that was from Switch, where they were interviewed for the NME.

Oh, is that what it was? I knew it was a TV show. Yeah, yeah. But it's a shame that the footage that survives of the questions is very much riding on Weller's coattails. They were on the tube once, but I think this Tracy performance is there, is the only sighting of them on top of the pops.

But on that Switch interview, Weller talks about Respond. He's big on the idea of teenage and on the idea of youth. And this is the thing, he was so young himself, he was only 25 himself, but he said he wanted youth to get back its arrogance. But also, on the thing of being a label boss, he said, I've always had this power kick the whip hand and he's obviously sort of saying it tongue in cheek

but he compared himself to Captain Bly or whatever but this song it was literally a questions B-side so that backs up your point about you know saving the best shit for themselves I looked at the lyrics

and there's not a lot of meaning to be squeezed from it there's a line about the house being a home for hatred. So it might be a very, very vague metaphor, a sort of metaphor, if you will, for Thatcher's Britain and all that. But yeah, it's a shame that this is the only time we see the questions. But not that Paul Barry's going to care. He went on to have a really successful career um eventually he i mean he had he had some flop solo singles and some success in india with a dance pop band

called dream house but it's when he became a songwriter for hire that he really struck gold he uh he co-wrote hero by enrique iglesias and yeah let it Go by James Bay, and Believe by Cher. Yes. So he'll never have to work again. He lives in the house that Cher built. Tracer, The Questions, A Craze, Big Sound Authority, Ocean Coliseum,

The Ordinary Boys. Being endorsed by Paul Weller is a fucking kiss of death, isn't it? It really is. I know. As soon as you hear that Paul Weller is a fucking kiss of death, isn't it? It really is. As soon as you hear that Paul Weller's bigging up this new band, you think, well, they're fucked. Ocean Coliseum did alright for themselves. Eventually, yeah.

By being Jethro Tull. But it took a while. This is where Tracy and the questions ultimately fell down, because if you didn't like Paul Weller, and a lot of people didn't, you wouldn't give a mouse room. And if you were a massive jam head,

then you'd be like, oh, this don't sound like eating rifles. Yeah, exactly. And you'd turn your back on it. There's only going to be a select amount of Paul Weller's fan base that were going to be full in on this. This is even more antagonistic

to the original fan base of the jam that even the style council were entirely plastic music so a lot of them trace is just some bird by the end of this year snap comes out the jam's compilation lp and um there's a live ep inside the first 50 000 or something like that and they do get yourself together the small faces tune and trace is doing backing vocals at the beginning and she's just going oh oh ah oh oh ah and you can just hear this from the fucking audience you just think yeah fuck's sake yeah bananarama got the same treatment as well should we talk about the record sleeve um The Lord Jim thing on the back. Yes.

So you've already whipped the mask away and we now know that it's worn to lose but I suppose he was to respond records what the cappuccino kid was to Star Council records and on the back of the house that Jack built here's what he's written.

Go 83 and there's no looking back if this is to be the year of decision, then who's to decide? If youth clubs are for youth and discos are for dancing, why are you at home watching videos every Saturday night? If records are for selling and you're not buying, it's because you're not hearing enough to want to buy, right? And so from the land of a thousand young hopefuls, from the influence of soul to the essence of pop,

Respond Records asks you to try Tracy, then decide, Lord Jim. And then underneath, in her own handwriting, Tracy's written, and this is just the start, we bairns and funksters, Tracy. Yeah, yeah. P.S. Don't buy those black and white brogues that are two sizes too small for your owl. So, the following week, the house that Jack built soared 11 places to number 12,

and a week later made it to number 9, its highest position. The follow-up, give it some emotion, got to number 24 in August, but despite being voted the most fanciable female in the Smash Hits readers poll, diminishing returns set in very quickly. And after her fourth single, I Love You When You Sleep, written for her by Elvis Costello, only got to number 59 in June of 1984, she never troubled the chart again. After being drafted in to provide backing vocals on the style council lp track boy who cried wolf in 1985 respond records wound down a year later and young was picked up by polydor but she was dropped after her second lp was scrapped eventually becoming a local radio presenter in

and is currently working for a homeless charity. My first gig. Oh. All right, Impulcations, because we're going to step back and catch his breath for a bit. So come and join us tomorrow for the final part of our evisceration of this glorious episode of Top of the Pops. Oh, one more thing before I go. Don't forget that we do a video playlist for every episode we do.

This one's got about 200 videos on it. Everything we talk about, everything we listen to, everything to do with this episode you can find there so go on dip your head into the bucket of 1983 so on behalf of neil kulkarni and simon price my name's i'll need them and if you're not staying pop crazed i'm gonna tell sir I'm going to tell Sir. Shark music. GreatBigOwl.com Hello, I'm Chris England, and I'm here to tell you about the Fun Factory podcast,

available now on Great Big Owl. Each time, I will be reading a couple of chapters of my novel, The Fun Factory, a historical comedy about the history of comedy, so it will kind of be like a free audiobook, which you can listen to at the gym, or jogging, or at your desk while pretending to do your job, or on the train, without the embarrassment of

people seeing you actually reading a book like some kind of swat.