Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #62 (Pt 2): 3.11.1977 – WHOO! HEY!

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

Taylor Parkes, David Stubbs and Al Needham get stuck into this episode of The Pops, but not even they can match the bundle of frizzy energy that is Peter Powell, who makes his debut and hits the ground running. He likes EVERYTHING! Meanwhile, the Great ELO-Faust Wars of Barrack-in-Elmet are re-examined, Paul Weller puts his girlfriend’s address on his guitar, and Karen Carpenter invites some aliens over for tea….    Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic it may also contain some very explicit language which will frequently mean sexual swear words what do you like listening to? erm... chart music chart music Hey up you pop-crazy youngsters and welcome to part two of episode 62 of Chalk Music. I'm your host Al Needham, but fuck me, it's all about my guests, rock expert David Stubbs. Rock.

And Taylor Parks. Oh, yeah. And let me tell you, dear boys and girls, we are rubbing our cakey little hands with glee at the thought of ripping into this episode. Taylor, I suggested we do 1977, and I left it up to you to pick out an episode. Why did you go for this one? Well, of all the 1977 episodes that were available to us,

I think this one was the most 1977. Let's say the real 1977. Yes. Yeah, that was my feeling also, I concur. And having lived it and lived it in that kind of pre-critical phase, this was definitely my 1977. It's early November. The record industry's got its shit together.

So there's a lot of monsters of rock and pop lumbering about wanting to cram that record token in six weeks time into their gaping maw yeah and you get the feeling that you know everybody's wondering if this whole kind of punk hurricane has subsided perhaps and things can get back to uh you know the old normal yeah get the flares back on again yeah yeah all right then pop craze youngsters it is time to go way back to november the 3rd of 1977 always remember we may coat dan your favorite band or artist but we never forget they've been on top of the pops more than we have hi everyone and welcome to this week's edition of top of the pops The lights don't shine no more And so the sun's out way down low

Turn it, turn it It's ten past seven on Thursday, November the 3rd, 1977 And Top of the Pops is into its fifth year Under the reign of Robin Nash Who is still dividing his time between our weekly fizzy pop treat And producing the Generation Game. Oh, chaps, what a shame he didn't mix the two, eh? We could have had every band and artist in the top 30 rundown

going by on a conveyor belt with, you know, the Stranglers being portrayed as cuddly toys. That'd be fucking brilliant, wouldn't it? This is purest Top of the Pops to my mind, isn't it? Gone is the album section gone is the tip for the top slot oh yeah the breakers and the interviews and the star bars and jonathan king's entertainment usa all that shit is years away or years behind us yeah there's no ramble there's no fripper this is purest top of the pops isn't it and it's it's not going to change anytime

soon is it no no no if it ain't broke don't twat about with it as my mum used to say overall radio one on the other hand changes definitely a foot because the bbc after three years of merging radio one and two together during the daytime in the spirit of purse-string-related minginess, have finally decided to start separating them out once again, meaning that by this time next year, David Hamilton will have been finally released into his natural habitat of Radio 2, Andy Peebles and Kid Jensen are going to have their own evening slots, and the talent pool of Radio 1 is about to be enlarged that was really important wasn't it chaps it was kind of important really as a listener at the time there were certain things

that were almost given a deliberate legitimacy via kind of being broadcast through the lucidity of you know radio two but i always liked the fact that with radio one that you just had that kind of sort of gauze of static interference i think you know it's an added dimension really to the whole music that's how we consume the music you know when that goes missing it's actually a little bit weird it's not quite the same you really have to strain to listen to the music don't you back then yeah you know it was kind of coming over the phone to an extent yeah which is why smart producers would uh before they signed off on the final mix of a single would put it through a shitty speaker or go out and listen to it in their car yeah just to make sure that it was going to sound good in the circumstances in which it was mostly going to be heard yeah i mean if you're

listening to radio one right now you're being treated to edmundo ross and his latin american orchestra followed by an hour and a half of david allen's country club before you can get to john peel and chaps no one ever talks about this but surely one of the factors in the pop explosion of the event is has to be the fact that bands of that ilk were finally going to get a fair go on radio one in the early evening which was their natural habitat all of a sudden bands like xtc and x-Ray Specs, you know, there's actually going to be a place on them on Radio 1 that, you know, isn't after the watershed and bedtime.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, it's weird to think that, you know, there was effectively or might as well have been dead air throughout the evening right through until whosoever was listening to Jean-Pierre. Almost like the kind of gulf between the idea of pop and counterculture was, you know, that was duly

marked out. So yeah, I mean that was a massive difference when there's suddenly this kind of gradual gradient from daytime into the evening and culminating in Jean-Pierre. Yeah, and I think that encourages a kind of feed between the so-called underground and the mainstream. Because to me as a nine-year-old,

the idea of stopping up until ten o'clock to listen to John Peel, I might as well have tried to stop up to watch open university programmes about physics. It just wasn't going to happen, man. By 10 o'clock, I'm spark out. The only time I'd do it for football was I'd be sent to bed, but then my dad would whistle down for me when Match of the Day came on on Saturday. So it kind of worked for football, but there's no way he was going to whistle me down to listen to John Peel, you know, in the school night. So, hey, David, he's playing a whole side of Tangerine Dream. Hey, David, the snivelling shits are in session.

So your host tonight is Peter Powell, who has just joined Radio 1 after three and a half years at Radio Luxembourg, most recently as their breakfast show host. He's been pencilled in to take over Simon Bates' Sunday morning show, giving pig-wanker General the opportunity to depose Tony Blackburn and assume his rightful mantle of King of the Housewives. That's not going to happen for another 10 days, but the BBC are clearly so taken by their new sign-in

that they're giving him his first ever appearance on Top of the Pops, even though he hasn't played one record on Radio 1 yet. So, chaps, Peter James Bernard Powell, to give him his full name, very much the new kid in town, even though he's already put in a brief shift in on Radio 1 in 1972 when he held down the Saturday afternoon slot. But by immediately sticking him on top of the pops, they obviously think he's up to the job.

It's like it's got this kind of debut appearance smell about it, this whole appearance, hasn't it? You can practically see him psyching himself up just before the intro energy peter energy and he just kind of overdoes it you know you can just imagine him being quite ingratiating around the radio one offices i can imagine him making simon bates his tv him and simon bates letting him or even going out on coffee runs for dave lee travis and saying nothing when he doesn't get reimbursed all that kind of thing wet niceness about him. Back then, I mean, as a kid, I mean, at that age,

I still ranked everyone, all males anyway, according to hardness. And I reckon he'd been about the 12th hardest in our class, theoretically. But that's only on imagining how we're doing in a fight, because you never actually would. Right. And I kind of stuck with this idea of his essential niceness. But to be honest, after watching this episode, I've now busted him down to creep oh yeah right well look oh you sent um a little little crib sheet before

we recorded this okay that's what we're going to talk about and next to peter powell it said this is his first top of the pops appearance how does he get on and i thought yeah well combination of institutional cowardice and knowing the right people i I mean, fucking poached from Radio Luxembourg. Yes. He should have been poached like an egg. A dirty egg. I mean, what a wanker. You know what I mean?

You look at this non-stunt kite mogul. I mean, look, I've met so many young men like this like privileged rather corny lads with no particular talents who managed not to be wankers so he's just got no excuse at all it's it's barely credible that someone like this ever really existed when you see him now there's a lot of modern equivalents but the modern equivalents aren't quite like this, right? With that crushingly affected, like, fake cherubic energy, you know? It's actually more like a biblically accurate cherub. And that obnoxious, upbeat, cheerleading for everything

and therefore nothing, you know?'s like he does the intro you see him yeah for a second completely just still and silent awaiting his cue you know and then there's a deep breath suddenly a fixed grip and hi everyone the top of the pops yeah that's it it's like a crossroads type moment isn't it or econ antiques just before the action begins yeah it's a giveaway rearing up he's like a jack-in-the-box but with a rotting human foot on the end of the spring he's so unreal but at the same time he's so basic and mundane and undistinguished you know and banal evil spreads out from him like a smell yeah christ almighty what must his real personality be like you know if this is what he puts on for the camera he's got his radio one t-shirt on lest we doubt his commitment to being a company man

it's like he's been signed by a football club isn't he he's got his radio one shirt on what a shame he's not holding up a radio one scarf as well yeah yeah exactly he's got that sort of like little muscle in his face he's like he's sort of physically fit in the days when when muscle bound meant someone who did 50 sit-ups a day and ate bananas you know he's got that that insincere dimpled youthful pseudo charm you know but his eyes are blazing with this pure empty ambition you know and we're still in a period where the best way to appeal to everyone is to be nauseatingly ingratiating and oily you know and it gives me the creeps except that he takes it so far that it's entertaining right it's like a trip to the reptile house makes your skin crawl but you can't take your eyes off it in a weird and horrible sort of way he is on a kind of different energy level to everyone else but that's not necessarily a good

thing i mean he's kind of a paradox really he's at once vacuous and yet full of piss and shit yeah and also i mean peter powell is from stourbridge which is proper black country and there's not the faintest trace of midlands in those values oh no no i mean it's, it's like he's from Malvern or something. That's a bit of an in-joke for Midlands people. But look, I mean, like, I've lived in London. I've lived in fucking gelid eel country for 30 years. And most of the time now, I sound like I'm flogging stolen crockery off a market stall. But even so, I still, to this day, inadvertently pronounce a rogue w after every letter o because you know i haven't forgotten my roots there's something wrong here it's like he's

completely untrustworthy on every level and also did we leave him out of the russian doll yes we did i think we did you know i think in in between Kevin Keegan and the old sailor is where you'd find Powell. We've seen Andy Peebles and Simon Parkin making their debuts on Top of the Pops during our Chalk Music Odyssey, and they both had an absolute mare, but Powell's arrived here fully formed, hasn't he?

This is the Peter Powell that you're going to get right through the Aventis and beyond. It certainly is. He's hit the ground running hasn't he yeah like a sword yeah i mean if you had a competition to decide who's the worst powell you wouldn't actually feel confident about putting a bet on the winner that's how bad peter powell is it's fucking grant bovie placeholder but yeah i do i do take your point, Al, you know, that it's almost like, you know, come on, guys, it's nearly the 80s,

deely bopper time. Yeah, the 80s is right, David. Definitely. You know, this notional 80s, which is going to be lots of white trousers. Radio Luxembourg is definitely the feeder club to Radio 1 right now, because would you care to take a guess

who looks he have drafted in as Powell's replacement in The Breakfast Show? Er, who? Mike Reid. Mike Reid, oh wow. The other thing of note is he automatically becomes the youngest member of the current presenter pool on top of the pubs. Hmm. At the age of?

Well, Powell, 26. Oh. So-called kid Jensen, 27. Yeah. Edmonds, 28. Really? God, great. Travis, 32.

32. Blackburn, 34. Ed Stewart, 36. Ed Stewart 36 Ed Stewart's doing Top of the Pops in 1977 Fucking hell And of course Savile 51

They're all such babies The BBC Globe fades And we are immediately confronted by Powell in a Radio 1 t-shirt Who bellows a welcome And throws us straight into the top 30 rundown, accompanied by Turn to Stone by ELO. We've covered the Electric Light Orchestra loads of times on Chart Music, and this, their 10th single, is the follow-up to Telephone Line,

which got to number 8 in two non-consecutive weeks in June of 1977. It's also the lead cut from their 7th LP, Out of the Blue, which came out the other week. A double LP which was written in a fortnight by Jeff Lynne in a rented cottage in the Swiss Alps and has already notched up 4 million pre-orders and instantly went platinum. The single entered

the charts at number 43 last week and this week it soared 16 places to number 27. Now before we let David in to rave on about the ELO let's get the chart pictures out the way for this day. There's a few in here, aren't they?

Say what you see, chaps. Yeah. Mary Mason. I thought I had a photographic memory of this era. There wasn't a memory of Mary Mason. This is bullshit. This has been photoshopped in for some obscure reason. There was no Mary Mason.

This is a lie. Angel of the Morning. I mean, Giorgio Moroder. Oh, yeah, that photo of Giorgio. Oh, my God, it's like hideous her-sure creation. You know, beyond the imaginings of the Morning. I mean, Giorgio Moroder. Oh, yeah, that photo of Giorgio. Oh, my God, it's like hideous her-sue-ure creation. You know, beyond the imaginings of the farce show. And, of course, flanked by two of the sultriest stunners 1977 had to offer.

Yeah, ending in an A. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, stunners. Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, they've got those huge tinted glasses, that medallion and that kind of right of hair. And it makes Dave Lee Travis look like Howard DeVoto, doesn't he? Yes. I mean, it's ridiculous.

It's just like ultra-Hersu alpha. And yet you say that from this body and this mind sprang the reinvention of pop this very year, Donna Summer. You know, it came from this body. Yeah, so he's entitled to all the lovelies he can get his hands on. Well, that's true. That's true. Oh, Ram Jam.

Now, Ram Jam, to me, a pure 1975. I'm sure that Midnight and New Year's Eve, they literally and physically expired. Yes. None more 1977 than Ram Jam, with the possibility of Wild Willie Barrett. Well, there's the wrong line-up of Roxy music. Yeah, no, exactly.

It's nice to see Brian Eno rejoining Roxy music, ditching all that ambient stuff. Yeah, that's great, yeah. There's those pictures from the first LP where Brian Ferry looks like Doctor and the Medic. Yes, yes. And Phil Manzanera playing his guitar like a World War I fighter ace fly at his biplane.

Yes. Fucking great. It's the re-release of Virginia Plains. Ah, OK, well, fair enough then. Yeah. Oh, that's impressively accurate. Yeah, OK. Ah, okay. Well, fair enough then. Yeah. That's impressively accurate. Okay. Oh, well. Carlos Santana

suddenly remembering his recently deceased dog in the middle of a blowjob. Oh, man! I put down he's looking like he's trying to remember where he put his car keys while he's being given a nosh.

It's unmistakable. We got to the nosh bit in the end, though, Taylor. Great minds think alike. There's the Baron Knights beaming with flinty glee as they hear that the charges have been dropped for lack of evidence yet again. The carpenters, spectral forms, wearing those shirts so white

that they don't actually exist in the visible spectrum. It looks like the carpenter's live from Three Mile Island. The stranglers pictured in front of precisely the appropriate shade of dirty, rancid green, like a 1970s labour exchange toilet wall smeared with itinerant mucus um and uh david soul looking just ever so slightly concerned about the mustache he's grown uh officially recorded as the second ever standalone mustache grown by a blonde man um And he's right to be concerned, since you ask Brian McLean of love.

Oh, and status quo, all leathered and moustachioed and unhealthy, looking like the Albanian secret police in about 1988, inquiring as to where you got that swing-out sister record. This could well be the debut appearance of that photo of the Bee Gees. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, look how unscratched it is. It's pristine.

I don't think the pistols are doing themselves any favours, you know. No. They're rather slovenly and yobbish and uncouth. Yes. In a kind of not really quite punk way, unless it's some sort of meta sort of yobbishness i suspect john lyden maybe he's been metal meta yobbish i think steve jones is being actual yobbish then you've got sid vicious bent over like an untethered punk monkey it's uh odd image all told really yeah so dear boys it's late 1977 and we are at peak ELO, don't you think?

They got off to a good start in the early 70s, but they became more popular in America than they were over here. There was a bit of a brief lull in the mid-70s, but they roared back in 1976, and here they are following up an LP that sold 5 million copies last year, and this is the opening shot out of that blue, if you will. Yeah, yeah. I can sense Pricey already kind of getting sort of angry in advance,

you know, as I sort of muse. Yeah, his Pricey prongs are vibrating at the moment, aren't they? Yes, as I muse upon ELO. I mean, I would only say I don't think this particular thing is their finest. I remember it vividly from the time, and it sort of trundles along in a sort of clapped-out, boogie-wagon-type sort of device. And you can imagine poor old Beethoven lying there thinking, I rolled over for this.

But the thing is, I mean, perhaps I'm a little bit, overall, a bit unfair to ELO because of, like, when this came out, I mean, I had a sort of Peter Powell-type universal appreciation for absolutely anything if it was pop. And I would consider this first class opal fruits for the ears. Then, of course, a few months later, when I gained critical consciousness, they were one of quite a few groups I felt I had to renounce, definitely. I probably actually read somewhere about how they celebrated their own artifice and nodded along and thought, hmm, that's probably a bad thing. Yes, yes.

celebrated their own artifice and nodded along i thought that's probably a bad thing yes yes and then the worst thing was i've mentioned before my younger brother getting into something didn't help at all you know because i always had to be one up when he got his chipper i got my chopper we got into elo it sort of behooved me to step up a notch um so i think perhaps that has kind of colored my appreciation of elo over the years in fairness it was your brother's music yeah exactly so this album would have been ringing through the stub's household my appreciation of ELO over the years, in fairness. It was your brother's music. Yeah, exactly. So this album would have been ringing through the Stubbs household round about this time. Well, yeah, it was, actually, or over the next couple of years.

There was a slight delay, really, because it was more 78, 79, you know. It was the great ELO versus Faust wars raged in a certain part of Barrack and Elmett. Yeah, it's a funny one, this, isn't it, this record? It's like, for me, there's two ELOs, and I like one and not the other, you know. Two ELOs, sometimes in the same song.

There's the chunky, lumbering, beard and pint and mild ELO. It's like the ELO that's very specifically a man from the West Midlands in a very expensive recording studio, as if it were the shed in his garden in Small Heath, where he tinkers with his 1962 Triumph Bon Iver. It's basically, it's driving music, isn't it? You know, you've got your tinted glasses on

and you're driving on an A road, sort of heading for Spaghetti Junction or, you know, full of beef burgers, or heading for boughton on the water to see the model village perhaps you know always worth a visit it's good because it's it's got a model village of the town of boughton on the water including the model village in it then inside that you can just about see another model if you keep going you come to the smallest object in the universe and then inside that is the lead singer from air supply um i bet the people who made fantastic voyage must have felt like right cunts when they found out about this so there's that elo there's like you know the driving gloves elo and then there's the other ELO who sound celestial and otherworldly.

Like there's no friction or gravity in this music. That's the best ELO. The ELO that sounds like the music is genuinely being beamed from the ELO spaceship off the record covers. That spaceship which looked like the game Simon. Yes! And this one is a mix of both it's like there's some really lovely textures in it um just sheets of blue perspex you know like which is absolutely my elo and then there's also a lot

of smoothly produced clatter which which does nothing for me. It's got that river dance rhythm in it for a start. And that's always a bit suspect in records from the 70s just because of the prog associations. The only two 70s records I can think of that have got that rhythm, which I like, are One of These Days by Pink Floyd and the 7-inch of the Doctor Who theme. Other than that that it's right

yeah yeah I mean I'm a bad judge because just as uh just as David had his brother I'd ELO was the kind of music that my not especially musical dad thought was really impressive you know like it was a a great achievement it's not that I ever resented my dad or his musical taste or anything like that. I just felt that those priorities and those concepts of what music should be like or what was good music were not mine and should be rejected and rebelled against. I thought that was what people who don't really get music just assumed was obvious, right? That this great production and this achievement was, you know, this was the pinnacle of what music could be.

And I thought, that's not true. But I hear it now, it's all right. I mean, it's ripping off the Beatles a lot and Queen, which for English rock is pretty bass level you know but it's okay it's a bit of a yeah a carvery meal but it's all right you know i can hear it and not implode yeah when i watched this episode for the first time in ages and uh this came up it's like i don't know this song and then all of a sudden of course the chorus tips up and it's like oh yeah there we go i know you now elo very good at choruses yeah well

that's the trouble you see so in the in the great elo versus faust wars the whole one of the great maxims of kraus rock is that you eschew you know choruses you know there isn't yeah oh your god yeah you know you plow motric on so you know that would have been a pointer against them for a start they're kind of insidious facility for a chorus yeah it's interesting you know there's this um a compilation has just come out on Cherry Red and it's called something like Boston and it's a three-disc anthology of Brumrock, you know, from 66 to 74.

And I mean, you know, whilst there's some distinctly variable stuff on it, you do realise just what a kind of civic force, you know, Birmingham stroke Wolverhampton was and how much it actually produced. And yet at the same time, as implied in the title of that collection, there's possibly always been this very slight cultural cringe around Birmingham it's almost like there's a sort of built-in kind of modesty in a sense you know

despite you know the kind of strength of the achievements you know or perhaps you know in terms of it being sort of taken seriously and highly regarded you know you think that places like Liverpool and Manchester have been a lot more exalted but in terms of of, you know, quantity, at least, and especially in that era, you know, Birmingham and Wolverhampton produced a great deal, you know. And they probably did more to fill out the early 70s than your Liverpools and your Manchester's did. Yeah, but unlike Liverpool and Manchester, the area has an inferiority complex. The cultural cringe, like I say, yeah, definitely. The UK are finally catching on to Ielo by this point, aren't i mean a couple of years ago they were playing madison square garden and then

coming back here and struggling to get 300 people into de montfort all in leicester but a year from now they're going to be doing eight nights at wembley arena with a big fuck off spaceship which was clearly nicked from funkadelic yeah and. And being introduced by fucking Tony Curtis, of all people. I remember that footage, yeah. The greatest rock and roll band in the world. Yeah, Tony Curtis, man. He was well up for the Midlands, wasn't he? ELO, Debbie Ashby, and that's it.

But that's enough. I watched that at the time, and I was really bitter when I saw him saying that, and I lost a lot of respect for Tony Curtis that had built up during the Persuaders because Faust was obviously the greatest band in the world. How he didn't see that. What did Roger Moore have to say about ELO?

He kept very quiet about that, didn't he? Yes, he kept his own counsel. So the following week, Turn to Stone nudged up three places to number 24, stayed there the following week, and then took three weeks to crawl its way to number 18, its highest position. Oh dear. Boat's ill.

But the follow-up, Mr. Blue Sky, got to number six in February of 1978, kicking off a run of three singles from the LP getting to number six that year, and out of the blue would go on to sell over 10 million copies worldwide. Mr. Blue Sky, David, where do you stand on that? In a noise. Ooh, lovely.

Let's go. When you're coming home, I can't go on. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply love football can't wait for the season to hit its stride salivate over super sunday well this podcast is probably not for you if however you're tired of the hype but part of you still loves the

game you could try the famous sloping pitch from Great Big Owl. With Chris England, Nick Hancock and guests. The famous sloping pitch. It's a podcast about football, not market traders. This is a modern world. This is a modern world. What kind of fool do you think I am? You think I know nothing of the modern world Before Turn to Stone and the canned applause

even has a chance to fade out, we're hit in the face with a rickenbacker being played with fire and skill and the first performance of the evening. The Modern World by The Jam. We've covered The Jam in Chart Music 15 and this

their third single is the follow up to All Around The World which got to number 13 in August of this year. It's also the lead Cup from their new LP, This Is The Modern World, which comes out a fortnight after tomorrow, a mere six months after their first in the city.

The single, which has been re-recorded for Radio Airplay, came out early last week, and it's already crashed into the charts at number 38, and they've been rushed into the top of the pub studio well boys this this really is the only thing that's even remotely punk on this episode because you know even now just after 11 months to the day of the grundy incident which was punks coming out party it's still not bossing Top of the Pops about, is it? I mean, here's a list of all the punky appearances

that have occurred on Top of the Pops so far in 1977. And by punk, I mean bands who look as if they're personally angry with you for making them do this sort of shit. So, The Jam, In The City, 19th May. The Stranglers, Go Buddy Go, 26th of May, 9th of June and 23rd of June. The Saints, This Perfect Day, 14th of July. The Sex Pistols, Pretty Vacant, also the 14th of July. First chant music we ever did, David.

The Jam all around the world, 21st of july 4th of august 18th of august television prove it 6th of august the rods do anything you want to do 11th of august and 25th of august the stranglers something better change 18th of august The Adverts, Gary Gilmore's Eyes, 25th of August. The Boomtown Rats, Looking After Number One, also the 25th of August. Elvis Costello, Red Shoes, 8th of September. Generation X, Your Generation, 15th of September. The Stranglers, No More more heroes 22nd of september tom robinson band 2468 motorway 27th

of october and the sex pistols holidays in the sun also on the 27th of october so no clash buzzcocks or damned in 1977 but for top ofops, the jam were always in reception. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I was just purely a pop craze younger at this time, and so punk to me would have meant the Pistols, obviously, the Stranglers, and the jam, essentially. The Clash didn't really have a look in, because, of course, the Clash didn't do Top of the Pops.

It was out of their militancy and what have you. But this cut through this really spoke to me because i think for kids my age so i'm what about 15 just turned 15 i mean punk wasn't really about bond engine mohicans or any of that king's road stuff i mean it's about the rise of the school kids and it's kind of been in the air for a while we've been kind of ready for this this look you know this whole attitude's been simmering in us since well it's 1973 i mean my first inkling of punk was in the bino in dennis the menace dennis and the din makers if you remember with nashor on drums pioneers that's right walter of all people on bass and um that

was my kind of early sit that something was about to change and there was a little i was a little bit off it as well but there'd always been that kind of surliness and gobbing and repurposing a school uniform into something that's sartorially rebellious. You know, big ties, top buttons undone, Oxford bags, stacked shoes. Yeah. It was weird, but also, you know, these 70s things. Because we all know, I mean, nobody was immaculately dressed in punk. There were loads of flares and centre partings and what have you.

But for me, you know, the essence of punk was Kevin Burke from our Class 4S knocking on the staff room door, Big Bill, French master, answering it, and Kevin Burke in his flares and a safety pin through his nose shouting, punk rock, at him and running off. Punk rock. What was he into? What bands were he into? Oh, he didn't.

He just knew about punk rock. He'd heard about it. He understood the essential delinquency of it. I bet he'd heard about it in Cheeky Wheatcliffe. So there's a lot in this. It's about school and the song and his teachers and stuff like that. And so there is this schoolish attitude. They're like sort of rogue prefects here,

hijacking the school disco. It's got that kind of energy about it, really. You know, we don't know what's right and wrong. Yeah, right. I do like also, you know, Rick Buckler on drums. Yes. Have I told you my Rick Buckler-related joke? Go on.

Have I? You want to hear it? Yes. Really? Yeah? The jam one? Yes, please. Oh, right. Okay. Because, you know, it's fantastic. drums yes have i told you my rick buckler related joke go on have i you want to hear it yes yeah really yeah the jam one yes please all right okay because you know it's fantastic and i don't think it it just doesn't get the appreciation for some reason it's never had i mean people have been left cold by it but you you wait until you hear it it's because it sounds like it's going to be brilliant so i i well i think that's that that is the promise yeah go on go on i'm ready to laugh let me put my tea down before it goes through my nose. I know.

If you've got an aisle nearby, be ready to roll in it. So anyway, the joke is, if I were to open an estate agent... Oh, no, we've heard it! No! Oh, no. Oh, no, it's that one. Well, sorry, I'm sorry. That's the only one I've got.

Okay. Every time the jump comes up, you do that joke, David. Oh. And Taylor beat you to it. Well, are you sure? Come on, let's hear it again. I'm sure I've got. Okay. Every time the jump comes up, you do that joke, David. Oh. And Taylor beat you to it. Well, are you sure? Come on, let's hear it again. I'm sure I'm going to laugh just as hard this time. Exactly.

Even with all of this, I think you're going to laugh. If I were to open an estate agent, I'd call it butlers and only do business with people who got the joke. Ah! There we go. Exactly. That is exactly. I'm sure that's happening That's resounding up and down the country

Among the pot-crazed youngsters You're raising some very good points here Shit joke notwithstanding Because you know me, I would become a massive jamhead But not now, not here Because you're 15 years old You're fucking leery aren't you? Oh tell me, yeah

And surly Yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me, yeah. And Sir Leary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for me, the modern world meant Forrest, Sabutio, 2000 AD, actually being liked by the teachers and trying to get seven fizz bombs into my mouth in one go on the way to school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the modern world was fucking mint for me. If I'd have written this song, the song would have been called

This Is The Modern modern world hurrah i always felt that my younger brothers got life just that bit better all these kind of things just suddenly opened up a bit um and they had a better quality of life just two or three years down the line than i did definitely because you know there was empty desperation really as far as i was concerned the only other thing i'd say is um i do well again once again i mean politely received you know by the audience you can actually see them taking a cue from the floor managers who applaud you can actually see them turning heads as the floor managers clearly make oh i'm sorry enthusiasm enthusiasm not too much enthusiasm but that's always a thing not too much enthusiasm no spitting yeah i mean i remember seeing them do in the city on mark uh the mark boland

granada tv show uh with me granite and just thinking that they look like the cunts from the secondary school up the road who walk through our playground thinking there was summer the surliness and the snot in us he's just coming off paul weller and to a lesser extent bruce foxton but rick buckler really lets the side down when they do a close-up on him and he just gives the camera this gormless smile. Yeah, he just has that kind of, look, I don't give a shit, I'm the hardest kid in the class. He's also got a ring of padding around his cymbals.

Did you see that? So he can give them a proper thrashing without, you know, pissing off the neighbours. Paul Weller looks angry and leery. Rick Buckler just looks confident in his hardness. I never felt scared of Bruce, though. He looks like a man flying through turbulence.

You know what I mean? He's always got that slightly look on his face. And it has to be said that the Jam are not sharp-dressed men at the moment, are they? They've got button-down shirts, but, you know, if one of them buttons popped, they'd be on the verge of being condor collars the camera stays above the ankle but

i'm pretty sure there's going to be a bit of swing in those trousers oh definitely yeah but that was just right that was just perfect because that's how all those kids looked in a little you know fourth form class photos if they'd look too smart too immaculate we wouldn't relate it to them and also i love the the grange hill image of the early yes it's like that gripper weller yeah whatever the logic of dressing in off the peg suits as a reaction against punk or you know a reaction against like a sort of utilitarian workers protest against bohemianism you know the aesthetics of it are great like jet black suits and not in that mohair suit so the light just disappears into them pure black suits gleaming white shirts washed by his mum uh jet black ties gleaming white socks and fire engine red guitars um it's such a strong vivid look you know although it's slightly spoiled here

by bruce turning up with the white bass because it always looks wrong when their guitars aren't color matched um the rest of the image is so so perfect and symmetrical no you you have to have the same color guitars come on you're supposed to have an eye for detail. It's a mod thing. It is much better than the other top of the pops appearance they made for this song, where Paul Weller's wearing a pair of dark glasses that look like he borrowed them off his nan. Who wore them with a knitted cap

and a plum-coloured leather coat. I mean, the appropriation of shirts and suits and ties is just one of the key things from sort of punk through post-punk onwards, you know, across the board in various ways and very specific ways. But overall, it is just a rejection of like what seems like a rather trite kind of anti-suit and tie thing that you get from sort of prog and hippie or whatever. So it's kind of represents a rejection of that. It has to be said that Weller's got a proper Weller dad haircut here.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And it's proper mullity, isn't it? Probably here by Robert at Shoemaker. That kind of shit you just remember. Yeah, all those kids rushing into the shop, holding the record sleeve, pointing at that picture of Bruce Foxton. Makes me look like this. But this is the whole thing.

For all its massive imperfections it's perfect if it had been perfect it would have been imperfect sort of thing you know it's it's this is just right they just hit exactly the right sartorial note for people like me watching so well has got a red rickenbacker and he's one of the first artists of the era to have adorned his guitar with messages on top of the pops isn't it he scratched i am nobody into the top right of the guitar her body yeah which you wouldn't do unless you thought you were somebody or what you're trying to say is people keep telling me i'm important that's what that way kind of contradicts the thrust of the lyric doesn't it yeah uh but more importantly

more more intriguingly he slapped a sticker with an address typed on it, hasn't he? At the bottom right, which, shall I read it out? I don't know if I need, well, it's Jill,

Bromley, Kent. And as we all know, Jill was Paul Weller's girlfriend at the time and would be so right the way through the jam's career because, you know, she's the one holding the white flag on the cover of beat surrender but fucking hell yeah it's a bit

odd one of many things about this clip that you probably wouldn't do the same way today yeah look the full address like when they report on uh court proceedings in the local paper yes or read out viewers letters on the big match it's like and i went on i'm sure you did too i went on street view of course it's a nice maps yeah it's a nice first flat for a young professional lady you know it's a it's a purpose built behind some trees you know yeah nice area yeah they need to fix that gate it's just as well there weren't video recorders around so much at that time because you know that house would have been laid siege by lads in jam shoes and parkers you know hoping to catch a glimpse of their hero

having a ride with his girlfriend and having to be taken to hospital because he smashed a teacup over his head in frustration as was documented documented in the Paulo Hewitt book, A Beat Concerto. This isn't a very good song, really. Do you reckon? No, it's all right. I'm arguing with you on that one. Beef, beef, beef, beef.

Well, I mean, it's clearly the best track on the new LP, isn't it? It's up there, yeah. But you don't get much of a sense from it of what the jam would become. I mean, you do in a sense because the blueprint is very much already there, but you don't get a sense of how strangely subtle and weirdly brutalist beautiful they would become. It is just the skeletal jam.

It's just an angry bloke barking over this tangled wiry cacophony um with these comical lyrics about how he still hates his teachers you know even though he left school years ago but what it does show you is the base on which the jam's good music would be built in the yeah this is already like it's an explicitly working class expression, which was specifically suburban rather than urban, because Londoners always look down on the jam for theirage or Maidstone you know like there's council estates on the fringes of medium-sized towns you know and it's also he comes from Woking and they think he's a fraud but his art is in the city where it belongs yeah and also already at this point the jam are specifically aspirational in a in a sort of quasi-spiritual rather than materialistic sense you know that but they're aspirational they're not nihilistic or hedonistic right which is quite an unusual thing at the time and when you put

that together it does explain why they meant so much to so many people, for better or for worse, especially at a time when there wasn't much else to do, you know. And even at this stage, you listen to the album that this is from, This Is The Modern World, with its ultimate new wave cover shot of them underneath the West Wing with some tower blocks in the background. And it isn't a very good lp but

even there it's got stuff on it like life from a window which is a properly beautiful song about a very specific but universal experience of being young and alienated and we you know with no self-consciousness whatsoever they sing i'm staring at a gray sky oh i try to paint it blue teenage blue teenage which is beautiful and it's out and the fabulous closing line i'm standing on the post office tower so i can see all there is to see it's a pure possibility you know and you can chuckle at it but it's great that that stuff's there and you have to write it down fast because once you're 23 it's not going to come in your head as purely as that so by that point if you're writing about adolescence suddenly you're writing about a character and it might as well be quadrophenia you know it's good to have a

bit of the real thing when it's charming and pop is the one medium that can accommodate that sweet lack of sophistication and make it glorious so i i mean this is one of their weakest and silliest singles but i like the way that it isn't just a song played by people who look like pupils at Grange Hill. It's a song that could have been written by pupils from Grange Hill. Yeah, this is it. Again, it's the gauche adolescence, I think, that is actually essential. It's not something you have to tolerate.

I'm only surprised he doesn't say flipping heck. Actually, he might as well because they did censor out the swear word didn't they oh yeah it's a bit scarlet o'hara isn't it i don't give a damn yes imagine how good gone with the wind would have been if clark gable had played a character called rick buckler to my mind the best track on the new lp this and standards are the highlights of that album but to my mind this is paul weller saying you know this is the modern world and i'm part of it i'm not a who copyist this is clearly the paul weller who

read a review accusing him of being a revivalist and then cut it out stuck it to some card wrote how can i be a revivalist when i'm only 18 over the top of it and then wore it around his neck to the pub that night yeah angry. Yeah. Angry young man. It also brings to mind Chris Needham sitting on the bog with his trousers still up after his blazing set in the drama hall of Rawlings Community College, flushing the toilet and saying,

flipping school, and then getting the arse of his jeans all wet. Yeah. But, I mean, this is the modern world, is the key note, really. This is the modern world is the key note, really. This is the modern world, and I'm making it. Yeah, convenient that it's got the word mod in it, though. Yes.

He does want his cake and eat it here. But, I mean, yeah, they were obviously accused of ripping off the Who, my generation, period, which they obviously were. But the sound of it is completely inverted, right? Like, the black andwhite look of the early jam is indivisible in my mind from the weird black-and-white sound of the early jam record, right?

Where there's a bizarre mix on them all, where it's a guitar record, but the guitar is mixed so low you can barely hear it, probably because it's so trebly that if you had it at normal volume it'd rip through your eardrums like a corkscrew um and the drums are always absurdly loud like thudding plastic skins walloping you know and this is the same on every song they never did anything different for about three years paul weller played guitar solos that may

as well not have existed you know just in the distance somewhere uh whereas when you listen to my generation lp are the overdubs that pete townsend's doing on the 12th string record back sound like a plane taking off on the other side of the room yeah and this is considerably less fearsome i guess you you gotta thank the producer right vick smith um whose real name or full name was victor coppersmith heaven yes but uh it's so that was i mean it's a delightful name but not something that he was prepared to reveal in 1977 probably the worst time in pop history to have that so you know there's that goalkeeper ba Bailey Peacock Farrell. He's the Northern Ireland goalkeeper. Like, for a time, he played for Leeds United. And then I was thinking, this isn't right.

You can't be Leeds United goalkeeper called Bailey Peacock Farrell. Yeah, but that's their nickname, isn't it? The Peacocks. Well, yeah, that's true, yeah. Leeds Peacocks. It's one of those teams, you know, that no one ever called.

Yeah, it's like the Throssels. Perfect name. Yeah, I remember saying at the time, you might get away with that name in Chapel Allerton, but if you're out in town on a Saturday night, you better ask your friends to call you killer. This really is the sound of a band who have been folded into the punk boom,

whether they like it or not, and they're trying to kick on, but they don't really know who they are now they pull the right shapes but they don't want to be trapped in amber yeah well have you heard their demos from 1975 it's like from like when they're like kids they're like 15 16 year old kids and they're doing like yeah beatle type pop songs and the singing and the playing is much better than it is on these records. It's obviously like really good

and just slightly dialed it down a bit for punk. Well, this is it. I think quite a few people had to pretend to be a bit less proficient than they actually were, didn't they? I mean, you know, this whole thing about people that can't play, you know, as always said,

if people physically couldn't play, then it would just disintegrate after 10 or 15 seconds. But, you know as always it was said if any people physically couldn't play then it would just disintegrate after 10 or 15 seconds but um you know i always thought it was just that people were playing in a very limited way or deliberately limited way you know so to avoid um you know prog excess etc etc you know a bit like dave greenfield and the stranglers but yeah it's it's an interesting album because it is the sound of a band just trapped. Yeah. You know, like Nick Haywood said, you get your whole life to write your first album and then three months to write your second.

And, you know, this is the Molden World is a prime example and that no other singles released off this you'll note. Yeah, but this little slump, this early slump in their career, wasn't it that he'd just met Jillill of only kent and uh basically just wanted to spend all his time with her wasn't really into doing the band and so it all got a bit hard for us so you got like bruce foxton right in the a side of the next thing yes it's really not yeah i mean by this time well has actually moved to london to baker street and the other two are still living with the mums and dads in Woking.

And Weller's put himself about a little bit in London, and he's already seen the punks on its arse. And he's wondering whether the view has been worth the climb of being in the jam. And, yeah, he seems to be more interested in his girlfriend than his band. Not that you'd know it from the fearsome performance here, where he's doing that usual thing where he rears back and then plunges forward with his guitar, like grimacing,

baring his teeth like he's hacking the head off a 400-foot serpent. Yes. Which in his head he probably was. It's the serpent that can play to you. A pretty good start to this episode of Top of the Pops, I'd say. Yeah. But they were on the verge of becoming the real jam. Yeah.

It's just about to click in the next year, you know. And I think part of it, and I mean, I've said this before, this happens to other groups of people too in the same way, but there's a problem for young working class songwriters and performers because middle class songwriters are allowed to do and be anything that they like. Whatever they feel, it's their artistic entitlement to go in any direction they want. Whereas working class songwriters are always expected to be symbols of and or spokesmen for the working class, right?

Or else they're somehow letting everybody down. It's like they're not granted that same freedom. It's like, no, you have to be where you came from. When in fact, of course, the jam are good and interesting to precisely the extent that they're not trying to be symbols of or spokesmen for anything. They're just being creative. And they're dull and prosaic to precisely the extent that they are symbols of and spokesman for the working class the worst

paul weller artistically is the paul weller with a chip on his shoulder trying to express his his commonplace confusion and uns like is relatable confusion and uncertainty in this specifically tough street kind of way you know with the pugilistic huff and puff instead of singing and all this scorching heat and and lack of light you know and it's fun but it's not good and if that's all the jam had ever been and if they'd split up after this album as they almost did yeah um they'd be one of the more interesting of the suburban hang around the adventure playground smoking and spitting type bands uh but it's when he worked out that he could express that confusion and vulnerability and defiance in a subtler way and could work it into an aesthetic and a kind of cool sort of.

That's when they went from black and white into colour, like figuratively as well as sartorially. Yeah. But they always clunked when they tried to be ideological. That's the thing. Yeah. Partly because his lyrics are really painful whenever he writes general social comment. but they always clunked when they tried to be ideological that's the thing yeah it's like partly because his lyrics are really painful whenever he writes general social comment uh rather than doing it through stories about individual people which is what he does on the

best songs you know yeah and also it never worked when he tried to stitch his socio-political concerns into that kind of zap pow this is what's happening sort of 60s pop art vagueness you know that kind of vague optimism so all these songs about commitment and idealism and passion but it's almost for its own sake you know no definable goal just this hunger for something which wasn't material wasn't religious wasn't politically achievable couldn't really be defined in any way but it's it's what we're yearning for you know it's uh it's beautiful in songs like the place i love where he sort of acknowledges its futility and melancholy you know and he just goes am i gonna stand against the world which is

like the line you could hear in a million new wave songs but then the next line is there's those who'd hurt us if they heard he's really paranoid and worried yeah but you know it all goes wrong whenever it becomes pseudo-constructive. And that's the bit of the jam I never like, when he's trying to link expensive shoes and youth CND, you know. Have a cappuccino for international socialism, you know. Yeah, and that's sort of pushing on towards style council, I guess. So you've got, like, this cynical, miserable bastard who also thinks that society is perfectible, you know. And that the best way to start

is with a 200 quid haircut that looks like a novelty hat. Lyrically, it is odd that a 19-year-old lad is still pissed off with what teachers told him at school. Because when I was 19, things that happened at school just didn't give a fuck. That was the past. You only start getting angry about the way you were treated at school when you're a lot older and it's like oh fucking hell my life could have been so much better if i'd gone to a better school and all that kind of stuff but you can see this

song as the prequel to billy hunt can't you yeah yeah yeah but it's he's still 19 that's the thing that he hasn't really developed an aesthetic yet he's still groping around a bit and sort of like piecing together stuff that he likes trying to just waiting for it to click into a shape that is his you know i think that's true in terms of his concerns as well as his uh you know artistic influences etc a lot of the strangeness of the jam and by extension the most interesting stuff about the jam is down to the fact that paul weller is one of the greatest ever examples of a naturally bright lad with almost no education trying to inform and educate himself on the fly while churning out songs um and i mean there's countless examples of this

in pop music from you know the beatles on down but paul weller is almost the greatest example because he didn't write many love songs he was desperate to communicate every idea that he read about as soon as he'd read about it right like as soon as he got into a thing or or an idea that was maybe slightly beyond his capabilities as a writer at that point but no as soon as he discovered something new whether it was shelly or you know jeffrey ash and his mushroom headed pender's fan idea of um camelot and the vision of albion you know it would all go straight into a lyric or straight onto a record sleeve there's a total lack of context like you would you always get with self-educated people like they read shelly and it's right now i know shelly but there's no wider

understanding of romantic poetry or the context of the early 19th century or you know opposing critical views of shelly or anything like that um which i certainly don't mean in a sneery way because i went through all that stuff too i didn't go to university or live in an environment that was literary university alive a taylor yeah absolutely hard knocks and tough surprises and the stuff that i was writing at 20 is exactly the same you know yeah um but it means that you get all these strange straining lyrics where he's blazingly passionate but just slightly out of his depth and sometimes it's great and sometimes it's hilariously awkward in a way that you just don't get with most other self-styled new wave poets right who would tended to stick to what they knew and tended to be a bit older than they made out as well yeah yeah yeah this is the

the best thing as well as the achilles heel of paul weller he's always straining at the limits of his brain and the limits of his vocabulary and the limits of his secretary modern education. You know, which is why you get all those malapropisms and all those sort of lines, like down at the tube station at midnight when he says, the glazed dirty steps repeat my own and reflect my thoughts,

which is sort of a horrible line because it's so overwritten and it falls foul of the basic rule of thumb of one image per image you know um but you can see why you would have thought that was great you can see why you thought that was real poetry you know yeah musically you get something similar to that overreach you know there's loads of examples of the jam running before they are walking, right? Which you usually get away with apart from when they do soul and funk, you know. There's a few of their attempts at soul and funk later on in their career, which make the top of the pop's orchestra sound pretty fierce, you know.

But they had the same problem that most white guitar bands post-punk had, which is that they are not from that generation that grew up playing R&B or pure blues to audiences of people who were dancing. You know, it's like, Paul Weller was enough of a soul boy that he could grasp how soul music worked, even when he couldn't quite execute it. But Bruce and Rick so obviously grew up listening to Bad Company, you know, and live in this musical world of straight lines and regular intervals. But here's the thing.

This is the thing that, say, like indie bands don't understand. You listen to Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones, right? And we all know how that riff goes. It goes... And every garage indie band on earth, someone has that riff, and instinctively, when you're trying to work out an arrangement,

the drummer comes down hard on it, and the bass player doubles it, and you would get essentially a heavy metal track. But when you hear the Stones, they don't do that. Bill Wyman doesn't double it he plays something completely different it's syncopated against the guitar and drums he goes like and you put them together

and that tiny change makes the whole record move just the fact that the gaps are in slightly different places makes you want to move it makes you want to dance. It turns into a dance record as well as a rock and roll song. And it was second nature to that rhythm section to do that because of their musical background.

But this generation of musicians don't have that grounding in R&B. So everything they play is straight lines, right? The best example in the jams case being Start, which everyone thinks has got the riff from Taxman. It's not actually the riff from Taxman. No. If you listen to Taxman, Paul McCartney plays do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do,

and there's a gap at the end, right? And that gap is where the funk is, right? Because you leave spaces right in in any sort of r&b or funky bass playing where you put the silences is as important as which notes you play but on start bruce foxton plays the riff that most people think they can hear on on taxman he goes do do do do do do and yeah and rick buckler compounds it by coming down really hard on that last note because they don't understand the territory right so you get do do do do do and it sounds like a fucking goose stepping umpire band it's not funky at all but it's great though it's fucking great it is great in its own way but it's just

sometimes bands wonder why they sound so white and unfunky and it's like oh is it something genetic it's like well no it's not just the looseness or the tightness of how you're playing it's the actual notes and beats themselves they don't understand the musical nuts and bolts of what they're trying to play and i strongly suspect that Paul Weller, who had an instinctive grasp of musical forms, did understand this stuff. And I suspect the fact that the other two didn't may have had quite a lot to do with why the jabs split up when they did.

I mean, obviously, I take the point about the Beatles and the Stones, and I think it was necessary that they be what they were and they have that proficiency and that background or whatever. And I think that is important. But I think that one of the sort of aspects of post-punk was kids who loved black music were fascinated by it sometimes on the sort of extremes you'd even like Carrie Voltaire's or

whatever pop group whatever finding a way an untutored way to come to this music and the fact that it was so sort of off beam as it were made it more interesting you know like a certain ratio for instance the thing about a certain ratio is they spent their careers trying to get slicker and slicker and better and better at playing that kind of dance music and as they did so the less and less interesting arguably they became you know certainly in the first phase of their career they're now a different kind of band really they're more kind of proficient you know but but I think in that early stage it was when they were sort of feeling their way towards it and creating that kind of weird sort of gothic slight perversion of funk that was quite fascinating but I don't know if that necessarily It was when they were sort of feeling their way towards it and creating that kind of weird sort of gothic,

slight perversion of funk that was quite fascinating. But I don't know if that necessarily applied to the jam there. I mean, what you say about Paul Weller just whacking everything down as soon as he comes into his head, you're totally right, Taylor. But, you know, that's because he's in a band that for all he knows is going to be a flash in the pan and could end any time soon. And he's also got a big record coming on his back saying,

we want second album now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's got to think like that, hasn't he? Yeah, I guess. But I mean, that immediacy is what he's into, you know. And I mean, look, anyone, including me, who wants to snigger at the youthful excesses and over-enthusiastic awkwardness of Paul Weller's lyrics or whatever.

You know, first of all, you have to acknowledge the brilliance of his best songs, but also you've got to see those creaky lines and those weird lines that don't work, not as blemishes, but as living proof that this is a kid who came from an environment like where, you know, he came from a school where even the most creative and sensitive kids had to do 15 hours of metal work a week, you know.

Yeah. From an environment where you didn't read books, you didn't watch films, right? Transforming himself through sheer talent and application within about two years into an amazing songwriter you know and one who connected with a young audience of like you know football hooligans and juvenile delinquents and bus shelter kicker inners and fucking made them think you know yeah like and the fact that 40 years on half of those people are now

calling drinking brexiteers you know with air cuts that look like they were tipped onto their head out of a bowl it's not really his fault is it you know there's something genuinely amazing about this that the biggest band in the country for a while certainly the biggest band with these kind of oiks, used to put out songs that went, I think we've lost our perception. I think we've lost sight of the goals we should be fighting for. I think we've lost our reason. We stumble blindly and that vision must be destroyed. But he gave them all these songs that are ripping into male violence

and unthinking machismo and social deference and the class system and the grinding down of individuality, you know. And once he'd moved on from the clumsy period that we get in this particular Top of the Pops, he usually did it without too much sloganeering or, you know, rabble rousing. He led all those horses to water and some of them drank, you know, and some of them didn't. But it's a genuine achievement and he didn't have any help. Certainly not from the teachers who said he'd be nothing. You know, and then you get these amazing songs like Ghosts and Burning Sky and Start, where everything just comes together and it's perfectly balanced and it's proper, fully functioning, purposeful pop that actually got into millions of people's lives and minds. And you look at a lot of those people now and you wonder what it was all worth or what it really meant.

But that's not Paul weller's fault i wonder what kind of friday morning those teachers at sharewater comprehensive had the day after this came out did you tell paul weller he'd be nothing sir but yeah in an alternate universe there is an episode of chart music that's going on right now where we talk about the jam and say, oh, what happened to them? Yeah, it would be like the members or something. Yeah. And it was really close. It was really close.

Yeah. Well, I mean, by this point, they've started work on their third album and they've already been told that songs like I Want to Paint a Cat Shit and they'd better do something about it or they're going to be out on their arse and bruce foxton's having a chat with somebody from sounds or something like that saying that he's thinking about going into the hotelier business oh yeah gonna buy a little bed and breakfast and work his way up from there to a state agency yes so the following week the modern world dropped eight places to number 46 but rallied the week after to number 36 its highest position meanwhile the lp entered the album chart at number 54 and the following week got to number 22 its highest position and the worst performing jam lp during their lifespan. The follow-up, News of the World,

got to number 27 in March of 1978, by which time they had scrapped work on their third LP, started again, and were putting together all mod cons, and the rest is history. Oh, and I promised the Pop Craze youngsters I'd read that Bruce Foxen story, didn't I? Oh, yeah. This is the modern world. This is the modern world.

Woo! Hey, that's a jam on Modern World. Wild stuff in the jam. And let's just think about those occupants of interplanetary craft, shall we? The Carpenters, Richard and Karen, together, and they're at number ten. In your mind you have capacities, you know To tell a path, messages through the vast unknown Powell, demonstrating how au fait he is with a young idea, reacts to the jam by jumping into the air and shouting,

Woo! Hey! Wild stuff from the jam. Fucking idiot. He sounds like Bobby Gillespie. What a cunt. I mean, it's the least ever spontaneous jump in the air, isn't it? And again, you can say, like, three, lots of energy, lots of energy. You know, it's possibly, vaguely it's meant to be pogoing. The one person in the studio allowed even to do a kind of approximation of pogoing.

But actually, it's more like Kevin Keegan leaping up to head the ball into the path of the onrushing Trevor Brooker. You know, it's got, ugh. And you can actually imagine Simon Bates, Dave Lee Travis, Noel Edmonds all round at Travis's house with a pile of auto car magazines where a record collection should be. And they're just saying to each other, who does this little prick think he is?

And for once, I'd actually fully sympathise with them. Although when he saw that, Paul Weller had a swig from a can of lager and muttered something underneath his breath. Yeah, see, all that shit you came out with, Tayloreter powell's just summed up the jam like that but this is powell isn't it this is this is the absolute essence of powell if you ever want to write an essay about peter powell all you need is an animated gif of this looping over and over and over and over. I'm surprised no one on YouTube has put up Peter Pyle going,

woo, yeah, for 10 hours. That's on my to-do pile now. It really is. Does anybody remember laughter? He then goes all serious and asks us to think about those occupants of interplanetary craft, as he links to calling occupants of interplanetary craft, as he links to calling occupants of interplanetary craft by the Carpenters. Formed in Harold Carpenter's bollocks in 1946 and 1950,

the Carpenters, Richard and Karen, were born in New Haven, Connecticut, and relocated to Los Angeles in 1963. In 1965, they teamed up with the bassist Wes Jacobs and formed the Richard Carpenter Trio, who won a Battle of the Bands competition at the Hollywood Bowl a year later and banked a contract with RCA. But after their covers of Every Little Thing and Strangers in the Night were deemed unfit for release they were dropped by the label after the trio disbanded and richard carpenter was sacked from his job playing covers at disneyland for being quote too radical richard and karen formed the middle of the road band spectrum becoming a regular fixture at the whiskey a go-go and supported step and wolf before they disbanded in 1968.

After Karen was knocked back as a vocalist for Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, they acquired a new bassist and appeared on the talent show Your All-American College Show performing Dancing in the Street later that year, which led to a deal with A&M in April of 1969. Their first single, a cover of the Beatles' Ticket to Ride, only got to number 54 in America and did nothing over here, but the follow up, a cover of the 1963 Richard Chamberlain single, They Long to Be Close to You, got to number one for four weeks over here and made it to number six in the UK in October of 1970. That kicked off a run of 12 top 40 hits in the UK across the 70s including a pair of number two hits when Yesterday Once More was kept off number one by Leader Of The Gang by Gary Glitter and Young Love by Donny Osmond in August of 1973, and Please Mr

Postman was held back by January by Pilot in January of 1975. This single, the follow-up to I Need To Be In Love, which got to number 36 in July of 1976, is the lead-off single from their new LP Passage, which came out in September. It's an LP that they've thrown the kitchen sink at, employing not only the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but all 50 of the Greg Smith singers. It's a cover of the 1976 album track by Klar 2, the Canadian rock band who were rumoured to be the Beatles under an assumed name,

and is based on World Contact Day, a yearly event which consists of members of the International Flying Saucer Bureau attempting to send a telepathic message every March 15th since 1953. It entered the top 40 at number 26 three weeks ago and then stealthily scaled the charts and this week it's nudged up one place from number 11 to number 10 making it their first top 10 hit since only yesterday over two years ago fucking hell this this song man it's like a lorry of unboxed jigsaw puzzles has just shed its load all over this episode because there is a lot to piece together here to unpack and to piece together yeah yeah

i mean it's weird because i mean at the time the carpenters represented almost the absolute mor norm because they were played on heavy rotation the whole time when my mom was like cooking or whatever on the kitchen transistor the The ultimate Radio 2 band. Absolutely. And so, you know, they've got this kind of... With their insidious clarity, you know, they'd be sort of playing round and round the clock the whole time. Absolute fixture.

Wafting around like the odour of slightly overcooked shepherd's pie. And so, you know, to me, they just represented this absolute insidious norm from which even... Burnt cheese. Yeah, yeah. yeah elo or almost like left field by comparison you know well left field by comparison but you can actually see why people like thurston moore or whatever rhapsodize about the carpenters because there is other as kind of peter brotzman or something like that in their own way there's a genuine alienness about

them you know with karen's oval face and that weird sort of eerie frictionlessness that they've got yeah they're only the band the white stripes could have been yeah exactly yeah unbelievably this is the first time we've done the carpenters on chart music which is fucking mental because they are a 70s straddling band aren't they i mean you could you could go around someone's ass right about the late 70s and you could almost guarantee that the singles 1969 1973 by the carpenters would be on their record shelf on their unit in between abba's greatest hits and the sound of bread but unbeknownst to us the carpenters are in the shit richard's become addicted to quaaludes karen's grappling with anorexia the hits are drying up and you know being known shit richard's become addicted to quaaludes karen's grappling with anorexia the

hits are drying up and you know being known as richard nixon's band isn't a good thing by 1977 is it absolutely but you know this is almost like you know there's straightness in extremis well this is very of its time in that it's another hopelessly optimistic, close encounter style, 70s idea of the likely outcome of a vastly technologically superior civilization meeting a comparatively primitive civilization. Hey, no, this time it's going to play out differently, I promise you. I've touched on this before when we've covered the mid to late 70s. This is when the defining figure of scientific inquiry was Carl Sagan in a polo neck with an anorak over it,

standing in a field going, how lovely is a tree? The dying days of hippie liberal optimism, right? And even as the planet first began to groan and sweat under the weight of humanity you know still humanity was so bright and godlike our destiny lay among the stars you know um it where we could realize our cosmic potential and terraform pluto or some shit you know this is this is when we started like never mind the fucking flying saucer bureau uh putting their fingertips to their temples and trying to summon aliens actual fucking telescopes were beaming out signals into the cosmos yeah saying here we are come and find us you know we're tasty tasty very very tasty yeah like just we're

very tasty so certain that the cosmos is a playroom not a jungle i mean i get emotional at the end of 2001 a space odyssey too but i know that it's bullshit and the the yawning expanse of the universe isn't really an inspirational thing the the the key to understanding the universe is the knowledge that everything in it is moving further and further away from everything else in it and the speed at which that happens is increasing and that's the fundamental truth behind all others but also just because someone tells you that they're your friends it doesn't mean they haven't got ray guns behind their backs right and when you're when you're only previous contact with someone is them terrifying a cow by lifting it up off the ground with a tractor beam

i'm not sure that unquestioning trust is the wisest first response and also even in the sweet shop world of this record these aliens that we're meant to be so pleased to meet sound like davy jones yes it's like that that's the worst bit of this record by miles is where it sounds like there's suddenly an unexpected cameo from fucking Davey Jones. He goes, we've been observing your earth. It's like he's just smashed into your window on a wrecking ball, you know, jabbing at you with his space maracas. It's, yeah, yeah.

It's the one jarring moment in the Carpenter's Canon. It's a bit like there's a version of a crap that's the model, whereas it's got Emil Schultz comes in, who doesn't normally sort of say something, he goes, correct, like that. What was that? What was that? You know, this is the carpenter's. It's one weird tear in the fabric is that moment.

But the thing about UFOs and ufology, I mean, I think that I was part of it because I was that age. I can be forgiven. But John Lennon was going on about UFOs the whole time at this time. It was very much part of the mainstream. I would say that like it's in terms of ufology and that kind of fascination, there was a bit of a crest, really, the like of which hadn't been seen since the sort of mid to late 50s or whatever. I think we understand these days that aliens, creatures from another planet would have to traverse billions of light years or whatever to get anywhere near us. And why would they bother just looking at New mexico but back then there was a tremendous i

mean for instance another mainstream author was a fellow called brinsley poer trench the eighth earl of clancarty and right and the book i would have read on my holidays that year was his secret of the ages ufos from inside the earth it's theorized that the center of the earth was hollow with entrances to his interior located at both the north and south pole areas this interior he suggested consists of large tunnel systems connecting a large cabin world trent's also believed that lost content of atlantis actually once existed and these tunnels were probably constructed all over the world by the atlanteans for various purposes and that basically ufos emanating from the earth's interior various ideas like that.

I mean, he had another... Yeah, ideas with the healthy and reassuring pedigree of some of the weirdest Nazis also believed that. Yes, absolutely, yeah. But this was, I mean, you know, he was considered a pretty mainstream author and, you know, all very credible ideas. Another idea he advanced, I remember,

because I remember reading at the time, was that the younger generation, this rock and roll generation, were themselves aliens. Yes. Yes, consider it, he said. You know, because, you know, this would account for their sort of, you know, they'd come here to kind of rebuild the world. And it would account for their kind of strangeness, their long hair and their faraway air. I remember reading this.

The pop music. Yeah, on the pop music, of course. And I remember reading this on holiday yeah on the pop music of course and i remember um reading this on holiday in bumaris and saying to my mum hey mum according to this book i might be an alien and she said to me nonsense david you were born in a hospital like everywhere else in edgeware with a difficult birth as befits a difficult child alien she didn't actually say that she's too nice but i'm sure that's what she was thinking. And of course, things like the pyramids, well, they weren't built by white people,

so they had to be made by aliens. Yes. Yes, of course. But yeah, you're right. You're right. This song is totally of the moment because, you know, 1977, the year of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

But also, NASA continuing its refusal to do something for the oldens and deciding to have a nose around the outer solar system and beyond. Because, you know, they'd already sent out two Pioneer space probes bearing plaques about information about Earth. But only last month they launched two Voyager space probes, each featuring a gold-plated copper record containing the greatest hits of planet Earth, with Carl Sagan as your selector.

Oh, yeah. It was curated by Carl Sagan. What a shame this wasn't on it. Unfortunately, the record opens with an introduction by Kurt Waldheim, who was Secretary General of the UN after being a massive Nazi. Yeah, yeah. Then there's a load of people around the world saying hello, and then there's a big wodge of world

music, animal sounds, and classical ramble. But there is Blind Willie Johnson and Chuck Beres, so you know, there is that. Yeah, dark was the night, cold was the ground. Has now left the solar system. Yeah. Sagan did try to get john lennon involved in the selection process chaps but he was too busy lying on a bed out of his tits in new york

and sagan did want here comes the sun by the beacles on that record but emi wanted a cut because they're fucking minge bags so you know if an alien does hear this record the only british contribution is the fairy round conducted by richard holborn which you know essentially makes it sound like a right bunch of foppish medieval cunts to the rest of the universe so cheers sagan yeah i mean another thing around this time i do remember well first of all i was living in constant fear that the sun was going to explode any second. Because I'd read that somewhere. I was like, fucking hell, you know.

But also, yeah, there was some footage. I remember my brother said, oh, let's peruse it now. Aliens, UFOs, whatever. And it was these kind of large, huge, looming lights on a kind of dark, you know, on a dark cityscape. And I was like, you know, for two weeks, well, that settles it, doesn't it? And then turning on the sky at night and Patrick Moore going,

yes, these images have been doing the round, and I can assure you that it is in fact the planet Venus. And that kind of like, you know, I think he was so certain about it, I just felt a bit deflated, really. And I never really reacquired my sort of ufological ardour. The thing about the Voyager record is I can just see some aliens just getting this and just thinking, fuck, you know, look at these backward hipster

cunts with their vinyls. It's all mini-discs around here, mate. Yeah, mini-discs, yes. Yeah, let's go round there and kill them. And eat them. And why did you destroy the greatest medium of all, 8-track cartridge? Shall we have a go at trying to call some aliens in? Because I've actually found the Destroyed the greatest medium of all, 8-track cartridge. Shall we have a go?

Trying to call some aliens in. Because I've actually found the actual words that they use every March the 15th to call down aliens. Would you like to hear them? Yes. Okay. Calling occupants of inter... And Pop Craze Youngsters at home, you know, join in with us. Oh, yeah. Calling occupants of interplanetary

craft that have been observing our planet earth we of ifsb wish to make contact with you we are your friends and would like you to make an appearance here on earth your presence before us will be welcome with the utmost friendship we will do all in our power to promote mutual understanding between your people and the people of Earth. Please come in peace and help us in our earthly problems. Give us some sign that you've received our message. Be responsible for creating a miracle here on our planet to wake up the ignorant ones to reality.

Let us hear from you. We are your friends. Your friends. Friends. Did it work? Hang on, let me have a look. Now there's a squirrel going down the road. Well, you don't know what form they would take.

It's all quiet in Lower Sydenham, I have to say. Never mind. Next time. Didn't do it on March the 15th, you say? Yeah, no, there you are. I said, what do you expect? Anyway, we get the video of this, and oh, what a video it is. It's essentially a recruitment video for Heaven's Gate, isn't it, this? Just makes me want to put on some redike trainers and get into a bunk bed and die well when do you not feel like doing that let's be honest i mean we're not getting the full seven

minute version but we're getting enough of it aren't we to to understand it's all massively cosmos isn't it yeah yeah yeah we got karen and richard floating about in space asking us to have a bit of a think about aliens and wanting to be their mates uh which is utterly ruined by the illustrations of the aliens that pop up halfway through which are fucking proper hg world shit up material yeah these are not alf or baby yoda are they no it looks like it's from the osborne book of UFOs. Yeah. I mean, I suppose we have to wonder if all of this was impelled by a genuine fervour to make kind of, you know, interplanetary contact, or was there perhaps just a speck of bandwagon jumping? I don't know.

I mean, the thing about the Carpenters that people seem to forget, myself included, the vast bulk of their singles output have been cover versions. They're essentially M.O.R. Wadi Wadi. Top of the World, Yesterday Once More, Only Yesterday, Goodbye to Love. They're the only original songs that have charted over here. And their new LP is nothing but other people's songs. They even do a full version of Don't cry for me Argentina for fuck's sake yeah other people's songs scrubbed until they're squeaky clean but I mean look David's hit on this already the the

what is the most sort of annoying and bland about the carpenters is also what's most interesting about the carpenters because it's so extreme the whiteness of it the like the full cream mayonnaise lava flow of it is sort of interesting look and also we had a cassette when i was a kid right might even have been an eight track in fact of the carpenters greatest hits and that was the only music that we had in the family car when I was young. So when we went on holiday and were in the car for extended periods of time, which to a small child felt like periods of time so super extended that scientists should have given each one a name,

The Carpenter's Greatest Hits would go on. So it's absolutely a foundational and formative memory for me, sitting in the back of a Simca rolling around North Wales, right, looking out the window at some wet hills and slate and absorbing the sound of the carpenters. Before I could really understand or grasp what music was or how songs worked you know at that age it's just like someone's taking control of your brain chemistry and it's flicking levers

and you don't quite get it like it's not a picture it's not a story it's not something you take in visually or cerebrally but also it's not like a song song like you sing at school where it's like it's this engulfing wave of texture and feeling and mysterious associations and connections and you just respond involuntarily to this play of light and shadow in your brain, you know. And this was The Carpenter's greatest hits. This wasn't Bitches Brew or Take Omega. This was not an annihilating, sort of overwhelming introduction to the power and mystery of music. But it taught me something else as well,

which is that music sometimes could be that powerful and affecting, but sometimes it could be, be like inert and smoothed off and fundamentally banal to the point where it just sounded silly you know and i didn't understand that some of this music was specifically produced to have no effect on you and to just glance off you know and not leave a mark all the records like top of the world and jambalaya and sing you know this sort of creepy ned flanders music that they did which is where the the edges were so soft it was almost sinister yeah i was just going to use the word sinister yeah and there's something kind of absolutely quite appalling just lurking beneath

the surface and then in terms of their dysfunctional lives you know and in a sense anorexia is almost a sad metaphor really for the sort of hyper perfection perfection inverted commas there that they sort of achieve in their music yeah and they left you clues as well because occasionally they'd do something like rainy days and mondays or superstar or um goodbye to love and i could hear those songs i could hear they were sickly smooth like all the others but they also had this weird power to induce feelings which you hadn't asked for you know and you would immediately recognize at some primal level even though at five or six you hadn't experienced regret or loss or anything bittersweet you know but even on these records i mean they were very they were still very careful they weren't daring records but the the sonic suggestion of

them still prods your brain into producing certain chemicals associated with melancholy it's like whenever they do that brian trick of you've got a spacious piano chords and a French horn in the distance with loads of reverb on it, you know. It's really an instinctive response. In these songs, you could feel that something wasn't right, you know. There was something, it was this weird airless music coming out of an unfathomable world of pretend smiles, you know. And hidden horrors behind doors that are always locked you know it was like it was all tied aesthetically and spiritually to this kind of religious american suburban falseness you know and denial of humanity like it's like they were

cracking up but they were just incapable of creating any kind of emotional artifact which didn't have a white picket fence around it yeah you know and it's and there's something genuinely intriguing about that you know like and the creepier it is the more intriguing it is and at the time i was always a bit freaked out by the the creamy platitudinous warmth of her voice as well. You know, every track sounds like it's recorded inside an airtight sandwich bag, you know. There's something mysterious about that.

It used to remind me of that other thing that used to creep me out, which was the Radio 2 jingle singers, which is very close to, you know. You know what they sound like? It'd be like, yeah, Radio 2. And there's like a slow harmonised major seventh or something at the end. And they used to creep me out because I'd hear it and think, when did this happen?

Like, why does this sound so eerie? What sort of music is this? And I always got something similar from that, you know, the Richter's grin of the Carpenters music. It's the Pam Singers, isn't it? Yeah. From Dallas. Yeah, yeah.

Have you heard their version of the emergency broadcast system? No. Fucking hell. Not the four-minute warning? Not quite. It was a test that the radio stations had to do once a week that just basically said, this is a test, you know, if this was an actual emergency you'd have to you know do this and that don't panic and uh yeah they did their own version in their own

inimitable style for uh for a certain radio station oh wow and uh only played it a couple of times before the uh FCC banned it but quite remarkable that's that's worth a link to yeah video playlist but yeah that eeriness you know you'd hear it on radio one and two all the time Quite remarkable. That's worth a link to. Yeah. Video playlist. But yeah, that eeriness. You know, you'd hear it on Radio 1 and 2 all the time, but you always thought, this doesn't fit, because this is American. Even though there was so much American shit being played, it seemed a step too far for me.

And we're still in that pre-Feddy Laker era where everything American is very other. Yeah, it's all got that weird sort of fuzzy glaze on like the love boat yeah i mean for me there was always a sort of metaphorical sense of the carpenters of things like angel delight and instant whip and smash and these things you know i'm not one of these people that sort of hankers for like nature and authenticity and soil and all this kind of stuff but there's such an eerie lack of that in the comments they are this kind of scientifically created confection of some sort that bears no relationship you know to nature that is this

simulation of it that's unearthly that has no connection to the earth. Klaatu a very weird band for someone like the carpenters to cover isn't it? Yeah well it's a bit of a shame for Klaatu because apart from this the only thing anyone remembers them for is that some journalists thought it was the beatles yes under a false name like despite the fact that it didn't sound anything like the fucking beatles i mean the in the 70s american rock media were obsessed with the beatles and the possibility of a beatles reunion yeah you know they're gonna come and save us all you know despite there being no evidence at all

that the beatles would have reassembled and made great music in 1975 i mean yeah they would have got free as a bird out of the way 20 years earlier yeah but it became a kind of sport to suggest that certain records were actually by the beatles recording in secret under a pseudonym there was a few of these right despite audibly not having the Beatles singing on them, I mean, famously the NME reported on this Klaatu business with the headline, Deaf Idiot Journalist Starts Beatle Rumour. Which is what it says it all.

It's like one of the great no-bullshit headlines. Like, you know, when Edith sitwell in the 20s did uh facade with uh modernist music by uh william walton and uh one of the critics who was not really used to this sort of uh this avant-garde approach wrote the headline drivel they paid to hear which i always wanted like on melody maker when you'd write a review and it was a the headline they put on it was always a weak pun yeah on the band name or something you should have had something a bit more direct i'd like to have you know written about cast at the london astoria and next week's in the headline uh shit some morons queued up for but the thing is that clartu never played up to it themselves but they were

fucked by capital records who did yeah and they lost a lot of credibility as a result because you know the record company was running around going oh oh oh oh wonder who this could be you know and it's all fuck off but it brings home how vaguely most people listen to music right it's like eating a raspberry until you've eaten a tomato you know what i mean it's what who would hear that he listens quite it doesn't sound like the fucking beatles as far as a lot of people consider as i said before you know the 70s the entire 70s were a void where the beatles should be yeah it really was and of courseaps, we're only a few weeks away from Vrillion pitching up on Southern TV, aren't we?

Why didn't he just cut into that Looney Tunes cartoon by saying, I've been observing your earth? Anything else to say? Yeah, it just struck me. I should probably say that I really like this record. I don't think I've mentioned it. Despite its babyish insistence that First Contact would resemble the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977, rather than the film Prey, 1977, except not as sexy. 1977, except not as sexy. I've just got one little shout-out to a friend of mine.

Apology, really. We just tormented each other with, like, physical insults at this time. And this fellow, Patrick, his ears were just a little bit pointy, so we just sort of jeer at him every day. We've been observing your ears. We think they look like Mr Spock's. Drove the poor sod mad. You were his friend.

I know. Well, yeah, it was banter. So the following week, calling occupants of interplanetary craft nipped up one more place to number nine, its highest position. The follow-up, Sweet Sweet Smile, would only get to number 40 in February of 1978, and they'd have to wait over 13 years to return to the top 40, when a re-release of Merry Christmas Darling got to number 25 in December of 1990, by which time Karen Carpenter had succumbed to heart failure in February of 1983. And 44 years after the release of calling occupants there has been no official record of extraterrestrial life hollering back at the carpenters because aliens are ignorant cunts yeah i said it yeah come and do something about it if you don't like it aliens

come and have a zap if you think you're hard enough. Oh, but of course there was that Carpenters TV special a year later, wasn't there, Taylor? Oh, yeah, you can't talk about this record and not mention Space Encounters. A lot of thought went into that title. There was so much of this space shit around in the aftermath of Star Wars, right? Everything had to be space for

about three years like to the point where you'd see a tv advert for dfs and it would be like a three-piece suite floating in space and the voiceover guy come to dfs earthling and encounter the lowest prices in the galaxy and for about five years it was just relentless yeah just as the actual space program had ground down to the point where the only off-earth possibilities that anyone was exploring was like fucking tv satellites and the space shuttle going round and round like one inch outside earth's atmosphere We've been living in a post-space age since 1972. Yeah, yeah, shit. I mean, of course, this is the era of KP outer spaces.

Yeah, pickled onion flavour, lovely. You've sat through that Carpenters thing, though, haven't you, Taylor? Because that's the commitment you give to chart music, time after time. Yes, yes, well, this was it. The Carpenters, they weighed in to the space craze with uh space encounters which is an hour long yes space themed tv special brought to you by clairol herbal essences shampoo you'll swear that you've got more hair um which you know inevitably it makes the star wars holiday special look like tarkovsky's solaris i mean aside from the fact

that the carpenters circa 1978 are about as well suited to a wacky knockabout pantomime as pink floyd circa the final cut right it's just not right no and it's like all these things they've built all the sets and the costumes and they've hired a studio and gone to all this trouble to do that but then they thought it was okay if the actual script was written by a chaffinch and a dead guy nobody nobody ever cares about writers ever so what happens is this sub but rogers alien like nickel rogers comes to earth and he he beams down into the carpenter's recording studio because his race want to learn how to make music with warmth and feeling which when you've traveled millions of light years to get here seems an avoidably catastrophic miscalculation probably by his co-pilot who's a mini skirted bimbo um suzanne summers despite being second in command of an intergalactic spaceship.

She's thick as shit. So the Carpenters teach him how to make music that sounds how air freshener tastes. And then he beams them up to his ship where, first of all, Karen and the bimbo co-pilot do it on Harry Belafonte's Man Smart, Woman Smart. Yes. It's a good old battle of the sexes moment. Like just slightly undercut by the fact that they spent the previous half hour showing us that one of these women is so calamitously unintelligent that you wouldn't leave her alone in a room with a potato. potato um and then there's an inevitable romantic duet between nickel rogers and and the grotesque straining mask of karen carpenter's happy entertainer face um before the aliens fuck off home in time for the adverts and we end with a version of calling occupants that

really makes you think specifically about what you're going to be doing when it's finished. That's about it. But if nothing else, the audience seemed to be enjoying whatever it was they were watching when their laughter was recorded in 1965. It's the most choking late 70s white American entertainment. You know, it's like a it's a

plastic cup with an inch of cold coffee and 12 cigarette ends in it you know it's like just don't pick it up and try and drink from it by mistake you can't get more of that late 70s malaise it's like being asphyxiated in norgah hide and gabardine if you think that late 70s native american chief was upset about pollution right show him this he tried to eat his own legs just what has happened what have they done to our country past the fucking fire water i have mixed feelings about this in a sense because these days there's a kind of protective tier of creative consultants, et cetera, et cetera, whose job is to ensure that things like this never, ever happen. But as well as this ridiculous, they also repress the sublime as well.

So I'm not quite sure we were perhaps better off back then. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'd rather have this than, you know, the cartman that's sponsored by a hair gel company. What if the aliens sent us a record, though? Maybe they already have. Yeah, mouldy old dough. No, please.

And on that jarring note, we're going to step away from this episode, catch us breaths, and come back for another pick at the scab of November 1977, this time tomorrow. But if you can't wait until then, you know what to do. Get yourself over to patreon.com slash chart music. Put a little jingle in our G-string and get the full episode with no adverts right now. So, on behalf of David Stubbs and Taylor Parks, this is Al Needham,

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