Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #62 (Pt 4): 3.11.1977 – WHOO! HEY!

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

Taylor Parkes, David Stubbs and Al Needham finish off this episode of The Pops in fine style. David Bowie watches his mate cheat on his missus up against a wall. Showaddywaddy nick some girl’s silver top hat with ‘VOTE FONZIE’ on it. Abba eschew all that Pop-A-Matic rammel and deliver another whopper of a #1. And Smokie are represented by a black void. PLUS Dave Bartram’s travelogue of rubbish holiday parks, what an audition for Opportunity Knocks looks like, and some properly obscene Bruce Foxton stroke fiction…   Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Some days at 3pm and 7.30pm. People are going to watch us, a bit like a zoo or whatever, and I'll give you a cut. If you do want to find out more, look at the internet, menierchocolatef factory.com speak soon bye

the following podcast is a member of the great big owl family this will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language, which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to? Chart music. Chart music. It's Thursday night. It's about 28 minutes past seven.

It's November the 3rd, 1977. And the behemoths of pop are fighting like bastards and issuing triumphant roars as they charge and claw at each other in an attempt to reach that succulent record token your non-ars promise you for christmas because you're such an awkward bastard to buy for these days hey, you pop-crazed youngsters, and welcome to the denouement of chart music number 62. I'm Al Needham, right by my side are Taylor Poggs and David Stubbs, and we are going in hard on the last knockings of this episode of Top of the Pops. Woo! Hey!

Rockin' all over the world It's Dennis Crowe, you know, and rocking all over the world. We're rocking on the very best show on television. This is the biggest party in the whole lot, and this is David Bowie, one of the best, the 24th. How? With two more 70s lovelies, one with the most flicked back hair ever,

reminds us that we're rocking on the very best show on television. This is the biggest party of the whole lot. Before introducing us to Heroes by David Bowie, we've done David Bowie loads on chart music, and this single, the follow-up to Sound and Vision, which got to number three in March of this year, is the lead-off cut from his 12th LP of the same name, which came out a fortnight ago.

Co-written with Brian Eno during his Berlin period, the lyrics, according to Bowie at the time, are about an anonymous couple he saw snogging by the Berlin Wall while he was in the studio. Before it was released at the end of September, Bowie was already out and about plugging the shit out of it. Even though a promo video had been shot in Paris, he performed it on the last episode of the Granada TV kids show Mark, nine days before Mark Bolan was killed. Granada TV kids show Mark nine days before Mark Bolan was killed. Then he

performed it on Bing Crosby's Merry Old Christmas a month before Crosby died. It entered the chart at number 27 and a week later he went for the hat trick when Dave Lee Travis introduced him singing live over a specially recorded backing

track. But sadly Travis lived. So here's a repeat of his performance a fortnight ago. His first appearance in the top of the pop studio since Gene Gena in January of 1973, and only his third overall appearance on our favourite Thursday night pop treat. First things first, chaps,

Peter P Powell is the absolute enola gay of the B-bomb isn't it? Fuck's sake. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely but again I mean the girl on the left of him has a real sort of kind of go now vibe about him and I don't think that's entirely down

to the creepiness of Powell I just think it's that people, even people that were on a show like that in those days, it was like a collective shyness it was just a general attitude you know the stars of the stars and we are but the humble audience and all that kind of stuff there wasn't yeah don't look at me i'm no one special absolutely and it's almost like in parallel in football the way that like fans in this era would they would just wear scarves and like maybe sort of you know rosettes or something like that they wouldn't actually wear replica shirts with that tender implication that they clearly had dreams

and aspirations of being players themselves and would do something as daftly precarious as wear the actual shirt or, in some cases, full kit. You'd see Liverpool fans in the absolute full kit. Right about that time, the only person who was doing that was Brian Glover in Cairns. Absolutely. I think that reticence is partly a humility

that we have lost as a people. But it's also because this was a more violent time where it was a really good idea not to put your head above the parapet. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If you didn't have a bodyguard and a limousine, just keep your head down, eh? Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. You were on telly the night. You must think you saw that. Extroversion would get your fucking head kicked in.

That's right. And that even went on into the 80s, because, you know, I mentioned in a previous episode of Charmies that I auditioned for the Central Television Workshop, didn't get in, and failed to be on Your Mother Wouldn't Like It. Since then, I've known loads of people who were in that,

and were on telly and all that kind of stuff. They told me that their lives were just made fucking hell by it. And they just said, yeah, you just wouldn't go into town. who were in that and were on telly and all that kind of stuff they told me that their lives were just made fucking hell by it yeah and they just said yeah you just wouldn't go into town on a saturday because there'd be a load of youths coming up to you going oh you're on fucking telly you must think you're somewhere yeah yeah i believe this phenomenon continues to some extent in that i'm told male porn stars avoid the local pub. Oh, really?

Yeah. So, yeah, this song, I mean, fucking hell. What a mountain to scale. Yeah. People go on about it as if it's one of his biggest hits and he's currently promoting the arse off it. But, you know, let's look at the chart position so far. Number 27, number 26, number 25 and now number 24 what what's going on is this something to do with

rca pressing plants around the world still hammering out elvis vinyl because you know he's just died and there was a massive surge in demand for elvis lps in the wake of his death and that's been compounded by a trade union dispute at rCA's plant in County Durham only last month. Yeah. I guess it's one of these songs, and there's two or three of them tonight, actually, that really transcended their times. And it's like, you know, the performance in the charts at the time is just incidental because they really kind of, in their own way, even include rocking all over the world and that, they kind of belong to the ages, really. And Bowie has that wonderful sense of self-possession he's bowie david yeah fuck say oh oh yes bow wow wow wow wowie yes yowie bowie um you know he has this wonderful sort of self

self-possession you know he's in the moment but he's kind of belongs to the ages i mean you know he has a sort of timeless appearance about him you know there's not apart from possibly is the sleeves on his shirt or whatever, it's a kind of pretty timeless look he's got there. He's just wearing a standard shirt but he's unbuttoned his sleeve hasn't he, and they're hanging down. I just admire his whole demeanour in this song.

I mean, if you contrast it with the ludicrous histrionics of Freddie Mercury early on, that kind of willful preposterousness, you just get the feeling here that Bowie, Bowie, Wow, Wow, Wowie, he's pretty conscious of the massive and exact precise weight of his importance but just carries it really modestly very lightly indeed he's sort of radiating this quiet supremely confident benevolence really is absolutely at ease with the idea of sharing himself with the world yeah and i mean this is 1977 and he's such

an important you know i've talked about this before really in terms of um krautrock and everything like that and the fact that he kind of gives it his blessing and that sort of changes so many things but he's so he's in the process of redirecting rock culture or subculture from from west to east you know he's meeting kraft work and contemplating working with michael rotter out of noi but i always think that with Bowie it's there's always an essential Bowie-ness about him you know he's meeting and he's always in between he's well observed yeah he's meeting Ralph Hutter but he's also meeting Bing Crosby you know he's signposting Crap Rock but he never imitated Crap Rock as such I mean no he's generally classic I always think of him as a classic artist this is classic in the sense of being immaculately sculpted and balanced and built for durability and no built in obsolescence or faddishness or anything like that.

Yeah. And I think I would just say if I could go back in time and tell him anything, I'd just say, look, just leave it here, mate. Don't bother keeping pace with the times or signposting the times as we go into the 80s, catching the tail of the zeitgeist. Fuck the zeitgeist. Just do what you do. You know, a bit of sax, Tony Visconti at the controls, you know, a lute from the fray.

Don't be worrying about the bloody pixies or drum and bass. Because I think, belatedly, he did come to that sort of sense. And I think that was why he was kind of more universally exalted. Whereas during the 80s, to be honest, he was a bit of a laughingstock after this moment. You look at a wonderful moment like this and perhaps he should have just sort of stepped back at that particular point.

Ever since the early 70s and right up to 1982, he's an RCA man. And apparently Colonel Parker would threaten to end Elvis's deal with RCA at a stroke if they ever signed anyone that he saw as competition. That was shaky shaky was on epic i mean so at the moment their roster is boe iggy pop hauler notes harry nielsen baccarat and fuck all else but you know elvis did save rca there's a story that they were having a

board meeting on august the 16th of this year, and they're absolutely in the shit. And someone runs in and says, oh, I've got even more bad news. Elvis has just died. And someone just jumped up, you know, threw his papers in the air and went, fucking yes, we've made the month. Full steam ahead to the printing press. As I said, I've heard Elvis is dead. And the guy's like, his eyes shiftly go from size.

Oh, really? Oh, what terrible. said i've heard elvis is dead and the guys like his eyes shiftly go from size oh really oh what terrible talking of elvis this song has become bowie's american trilogy hasn't it it's that one song that from here on in has to be on every set he plays yeah yeah yeah but yeah i like david was saying i really like this neither young nor old um seedy robert redford version of bowie it's like before he climbed back into the clown suit for uh ashes to ashes you know it's like he's dignified but he's the opposite of boring you know it's like he's like it's just it's 30 ish you know in front of a decolourised mutation of the LWT logo. And his chunky dad jeans, you know.

And it's funny because in 1973, David Bowie comes on top of the Pops. And it's like this freak has materialised from another planet. Yeah. The everyday world of Y-fronts and power cuts, you know. And he's going to electrify and pervert everything and in 1977 david bowie appears and it's like a real normal person has just walked into this creepy pantomime of peter powellism and you know souped up variety show nonsense and he's surveyed the scene and lifted one eyebrow.

And he's visibly above the fray here in that he's thinking adult thoughts, but not the boring ones. And he's slightly bemused by all the trashiness, and he's not concealing a quiet smirk, but it's not in a snooty way. He's just an intelligent, mature man enjoying an amusing evening out before he gets back to the serious work. And it's not in a snooty way. He's just an intelligent, mature man enjoying an amusing evening out

before he gets back to the serious work. And it's fair enough. He doesn't need to be here. Like, you wouldn't have got Paul McCartney or The Stones or even Queen into the studio to do their latest song in front of 50 lank-haired adolescents, you know, shifting from foot to foot

like they need a piss. But while Bowie clearly considers himself to be above the reality of Top of the Pops in 1977, he doesn't consider himself to be above the concept of it. So here he is, you know. He's a mature artistic rock musician who still understands the thrill of the game, which is as rare as a newspaper article about The Who,

which spells all their names correctly. The only regret is it means we don't get to see Legs & Co dancing. Yes. Like dressed as Odysseus, Spider-Man, Kevin Keegan, Bob Fish out of darts, you know, Merlin reese all the heroes of the time you know lord boothby david berkowitz um euther joyce you know oh yeah euther he's singing this live over a specially pre-recorded track that was knocked up that very week fully complying with musician union regulations

which is a bit of a shame because just imagine what the top of the pops orchestra could have done with this one but by appearing on top of the pops you know as we've seen he's done a kids tv show he's done a show for the oldens and here he is on top of he's very keen to sell this record isn't it is that because he's finally enjoying being a pop star again or is he being pushed by rca to remind people that there's more to them than elvis or is he worried that the spotlight's moved away from him i think that yeah there's definitely an element of the latter i think there i mean i don't think that bowie really had anything to worry about in terms of punk no nonetheless i think that he was you know

he was it was a little bit sort of nervous i suspect by nature i do remember a tale of him when john wild at melody maker reviewed one of the tim machine albums and the last line was something like sit down man you're a fucking disgrace and he was absolutely devastated by this review i mean you don't mean by you gives a shit but he was and his press officer had to kind of read it out to him line by line and sort of hold his hand, as it were, you know, to kind of, I don't know, it's not so bad. Well, it was bad.

But, you know, it's kind of sad to think of an artist being that kind of thin-skinned, I guess. And, you know, he probably was. And so I imagine that maybe Punk did unnerve him, despite the fact that he was absolutely adored. So, yeah, this single is seen as one of his best isn't it well when we started doing this podcast 16 years ago come micklemas i remember everyone thinking how is this going to pan out if we keep on going and the big hitters start turning up over and over will it become tedious and repetitive and i remember thinking only if

the records are tedious and repetitive yeah if they're not then no and there's no better illustration of this than in the sequence in here right we go from trying to talk about status quo for the third or fourth time trying not to say the same things about Endless Formica and Hamster Wheels, to getting to talk about David Bowie for the third or fourth time and immediately filling up with too much to say. All of it different from the last time we did him because it's a different David Bowie record. Exactly. And while this record, like the Quo record,

is based on repetition and momentum and locomotion, that one, by the time it finally collapses, feels like it's used up half your life. This one, this is cut to three minutes precisely, I guess because it's a repeat clip. And just that fact, it leaves you feeling half full because the song is not a grind. It works by building momentum and then setting up contrasts and emotional switches

within that momentum so when it's cut short like this it actually feels unfinished because it's going somewhere as opposed to the way you can cut the the quo boogie off by the yard you know like lead piping it's like you know what do you want 15 foot there you go same as the other 15 foot right was here it's like you've dived into this this rushing lurid blue river of this record and then someone's hauled you out with a boat hook after 300 yards you know it's like yeah i was on my way to the sea it's just you just you want to hear the whole thing it gathers moss as well there's a sense of that i always feel about it i mean yeah you could go for an aquatic analogy but there is a sense of you know rolling stone gathering moss it's a real sort of physical sort

of tangible furry feel to it almost you know it's almost like the classic bowie record in as much as when you break it all down joylessly there's not much here that hadn't already been done by hands that's rhyming slang for German bands but nothing that Bowie ever did was original in that sense right it was always all collage and cut-ups and rearranged stuff that was already there but that's okay if you do it well because imagination is much more important than originality and something people don't always get about music you don't have to be original if you've got imagination and i've always smilingly admired the way he cleverly presented that. Like, hey, this is me.

This is actually a true reflection of me, the restless, questing artist in a postmodern world of echoes and shadows and reflections. Eclecticism is actually the natural state of the true artist in the 1970s. That was a neat trick for a man who had every ability in spades except the ability to sit down in an empty room and create something completely new out of nothing right but it's okay if you're this good a singer and this good a songwriter and this good a performer and this good a catalyst for bringing the best out of other people and you've got this many ideas it's fine you can take everything from other people and make it into something of your

own you know in a way you could say that bowie was an interpreter of other people's ideas in the same way that frank sinatra or ella fitzgerald or elvis presley were interpreters of other people's songs you know which is a very long way from shameful it's not like he was some hollow jackdaw you know I mean yeah because he was never totally original always or almost always incredibly imaginative yeah I mean I'd stick my neck out and say that in terms of like your relationship your source material, which isn't necessarily your own, he is something of a world apart from the Baron Knights. Controversial. Well, I know. You know, that's what it's all about. The hot takes. So the following week, Heroes dropped one place to number 25, stayed there the week after, and then tumbled down the chart.

The follow-up, Beauty and the Beast, would only get to number 39 in February of 1978 and he'd have to wait until June of 1979 for his next major hit, Boys Keep Swinging, which got to number 7. Despite its piss-poor chart position, Heroes would go on to have a prolific afterlife featuring in bowie's set at live aid his performance at the freddie mercury tribute concert the concert for new york city in the wake of september the 11th and as the intro music for the british team at the london olympics it became the most streamed song on Spotify in the week after Bowie's death in January 2016, and the highest placed of the 13 Bowie singles, which entered the charts at number 12. Fucking hell.

So there's this, rocking all over the world, and we are the champions. The three most key songs of Live Aid are all on this episode of Top of the Pops. That's fucking insane, isn't it? Absolutely. And in 1999, Tony Visconti admitted that the anonymous snoggers by the wall were actually him and a backing singer

while he was still married to Mary Hopkins. Oh, man. That's taken a lot from the song for me. Yeah. With Bowie covering up for them Exactly, yeah Bowie enabler Yeah

We could be sneaky bastards just for one night Yeah I don't know about you, but I don't see anything particularly heroic about shitting on Mary Hobkin Not at all, no No the music and the charisma of david barry at 24 with heroes nine hits in all so far this could be the next one for them it's shawty waddy they got a brand new hit out to be it's called dancing party and it goes like this. It's fantasy!

Yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah! Are you ready? Yeah!

Powell, finally on his own, drops a second B-bomb before informing us that the next group are on the cusp of their tenth hit single. It's Dancing Party by Show Waddy Waddy. The Wads are always welcome on Chart Music, and the last time we chanced upon them in chart music number 47 they were having a big tensely slap up meal in the 1977 christmas day episode to commemorate you got what it takes getting to number two in august of that year held off number one by that classic hispanic suicide anthem angelo by the brotherhood of man this is the follow-up and in a surprise move they've elected to do a cover version in this case the 1962 chubby checker single which got to number

19 in september of 1962 it's just missed out on the top 40 this week entering the charts at number 41 but top of the pops clearly doesn't give a fuck about that waving them straight into the studio for a bit of leicester sexual rock and roll oh shawody waddy welcome back we've missed you yeah how many episodes is it now one i like the fact that beginning they've got that group huddle going which is decades in advance of like every sports team in the world yes yeah that group huddle going, which is decades in advance of, like, every sports team in the world. Yes. Yeah, the group huddle. That's excellent.

I was, initially, I was going to come in with, like, you know, all guns blazing about how come, you know, the black guy, there isn't allowed in on the bonding session at the beginning, you know. But, of course, somebody has to hold down the beat. Yes. So I think we can let them off, you know. Not a racialist bone in their bodies, I think. No, no think no no no

safely say of the wads yeah i mean you know it's a dancing party you'd want to be at isn't it you know yes the village hall the orange squash flowing home by quarter to eight in the evening i mean it's got that vibe about it yeah like i've said before if you did put a gun to my head in 1977 number one i'd shit myself and run off. Because that's what my dad's mate used to do. Every time I used to go round his house, he had this big gun on top of his telly that acted as a lighter.

And he'd point it at my head, and I would absolutely quiver while my dad laughed. Teary-eyed. You know what I mean? That's grim, yeah. But no, show whatty-whaddy My favourite band at the time So I would have been absolutely fucking delighted

To see this on top of the pubs Yeah And it's a tune as well You know, I was very au fait with Chubby Checker at the time Because I think 1977 was the year That I had a rummage through my dad's record collection And pulled out Less Twist Again by Chubby Checker Took it to the West Glade Junior School

end-of-term summer disco and demanded it get played. And oh, what a fucking reaction from the youth. It was just like Kool Herc putting on Champ for the first time ever. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Another cover version,

but unlike the Baron Knights and the Carpenters, the Wads have wisely put out one of their own compositions written by all eight members of the band on the B-side. They're a true workers' collective, a Leicester commune. Because, you know, they did start their career off with original songs like Hey Rock and Roll, but they very quickly floundered about in the 30s. But in May of 1975, they did a cover of eddie cochran's three steps to heaven which got to number two and after going back to original stuff and re-floundering in the 30s again they of course got to number one in december of last year with under the moon of love and they've

now gone full covers for the rest of their career yeah when you're completely fucking talentless it's a wise move one of the things i like about his performance is the radicalism was talking earlier on about like how the audience feel like they are there is such an incredible divide you know that punk has supposedly come to kind of narrow the great divide between the humble audience and the superstars and here they are mingling with the audience yes you get that off like i the only person i remember seeing do it well the rolling stones kind of in the late 60s when i was a kid it really terrified me they sort of like the audience

there was a real kind of breakdown of the division between the crowd and the band which I thought was all a bit terribly delinquent when I was five and Gilbert O'Sullivan did it he once sort of got up from the old piano and started dancing around in the crowd and it feels like you're really breaking down a wall when you're doing it on top of the pops

it's like Hey Jude in reverse, isn't it? Yes, yeah, definitely, definitely. And when you think about it, chaps, it's weird seeing a load of men in Teddy Boy outfits capering about and having fun with the audience. When, you know, you consider that Teddy Boys were the Weetabix of their day. And the current version in 1977 is still fucking Nasty Bastards. That's really strange, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It's a very kind of laundered version

of Teddy Boyism in 1977. They're being the shit out of punks, you know. Yeah, there have been a few young punks watching this who would not have seen this as a group of lovable party people living it up. No. No.

It's like a band in the early noughties calling themselves Skin Heady Hey-Head-E. And doing cover versions of Screwdriver and Foreskins records in different coloured Doc Martens. Yeah. Skin-Heady-Heady-Eye-Center. Future top ten entry there. Yeah.

I mean, this looks like a pre-record from the previous week because it looks like a different audience. Because it's 1977, of of course two of the kids are wearing massive jubilee tinfoil top hats with writing on the side that the dave bartram puts on when he's getting involved with the audience did you notice what they said on them was it hello mom hello mom on one side and on the other side vote fonze uh yeah and the other hat that her mate was wearing just said call it happy days is absolute apex by 1977 i mean i never got to see shiwari what i did i saw them in 1987 yes she did before and when they supported einsturz and annoy bound yes and absolutely won our hearts

um but i do remember around this time, the only other cultural impact, it was a friend of mine, Carl Pease, he sagged off football in order to go and see Shawadi Wadi play. Good lord. And the teacher, who was also the jogger teacher, the next day he just spent the entire lesson talking about dark sarcasm in the classroom. He was just like,

so, you'd rather see Shawadi Wadi play? You'd rather see shawadi paddy play and play football hey shawadi paddy hey not football hey shawadi paddy and he was just going on this the whole time he thought it was a pretty witty stuff you know the idea that there could be an irish tribute band uh no doubt but um yeah shawadi paddy hey hey no matter what your football hey shawadi paddy that's cool and it was just relentless you know and about that level of wit and searing he was excruciating so poor old carl peas you know burying his head in his desk you know trying to keep his head down but oh yeah yeah so you know they they had an impact we used to seeing shawady waddy bouncing about on the top of the pop stage in different colored drapes

certainly are like a bag of rock and roll skickles, but not this time. They're all in red. Yeah. Even the Sikh lad is in red this time. Why? I'll take your word for it. Maybe someone left a red sock in the communal show Waddy Waddy washing machine, or if we're deploying the show Waddy Waddy

gay drape code, they're all into fisting at the moment and have spent the afternoon jamming their arms up each other's assholes in the top of the pop's dressing room but i actually contend it's to commemorate their third lp red star which comes out a week tomorrow red star yeah the cover looks like a parcel it's not it's not a communist thing or a tribute to belgrade no it's a parcel i mean but what a parcel it is i mean look we were talking about repetition um i don't understand why you would buy this record if you'd already bought a shawdy waddy record especially if you'd bought under the moon

of love the previous year uh just play that again let's have a ball at the hall tonight under the moon of love absolutely and i mean in terms of this podcast it's like you know there's that famous story about how when alex ferguson was managing manchester united uh that he'd kind of give him these team talks before every match, except when they were playing Tottenham Hotspur, where he'd just walk into the dressing room, shrug and say, lads, it's Spurs, and walk out again. And they'd always win.

Always win. Getting a bit like that. We might as well just come around and go, lads, it's Shawoddy Woddy. And just, you know, everyone knows exactly what we're talking about. But Taylor but taylor i mean fucking hell you could say the same thing about shaking stevens and look at the fucking tangents we've gone off with it's true it's true but luckily on this occasion i don't have to say that much about the record because uh instead i can give you a book report. About 10 years ago, Shawodewoddy lead singer, or a lead singer, Dave Bartram,

the one who looks like Joey Sarney with slightly shorter hair, he wrote this book called The Boys of Summer, which is a memoir of Shawodewoddy's disastrous 2005 tour of British holiday camps um yeah described to him on the phone by the agent who set up the tour as not quite as upmarket as the rival butlin's camps he doesn't specify the company but he does tell you where these places are so with five minutes on google you can work out they were haven holiday parks, in fact, not quite as upmarket as the rival Pontins camps.

No. E.g. Pontins Breen Sands, subject of a memorable ITV News expose, which I watched on YouTube the other day. It's very funny. But it's one down from that. It's the kind of places that would hire Shawawadi wadi in 2005 basically now first of all i don't care who you are you're gonna be impressed when you open any book and see that it has a forward by amanda holden oh definitely unless you're les dennis i guess so that's good

but the problem is that a book like this is all about the author's voice right these stories are only as funny as the way they're told and it has to be said dave bartram's dad joking exclamation mark heavy pro style is not really a beautiful thing i don't think he's used a ghostwriter because he makes quite a big deal about writing it himself but he really should have i mean fucking i'd have done it for 50 quid and a night out with amanda holden i mean you know i reckon i'd have had a chance you know when i told her that i know dave bartram out of shawadi wadi but yeah it's one of these situations where someone writes a book about themselves and they're the worst thing about their own book.

Yeah, the writing style is very stout yeoman of the bar, isn't it? It is, yeah, which gets very wearing. And it's also a little bit, needless to say, I had the last laugh. I had the last laugh. That's what I found. And it's that kind of like Alan Partridge thing of like, and then his job's work behind the bar. He said, I don't recall a single story in this catalog of calamity where dave bartram comes out looking silly or in the wrong or makes any kind of mistake

even a bit where he tells us all about his terrible hemorrhoids it's not really self-deprecating he's just passing on information which we will presumably find interesting because it's about him uh let me give you a little illustration of what i mean please do he spends quite a lot of time describing a kid's magician who's also on at one of these camps, who's got a dog which barks after every trick, right? Which he thinks is one of the funniest things he's ever seen. frequently rears its head to silently amuse my warped sense of humour and cause me to snigger much to the puzzlement of those in my company at the time. Now, if you can imagine 336 pages all written in that style, it's like an extensive course in how to write badly.

You know, some people who are articulate and can spell and punctuate and aren't completely thick always think that means that they can write yeah that's why it's the most undervalued specialist skill if you start singing and it's terrible people will tell you to stop and no one will employ you but if you start writing and it's terrible, a lot of people can't tell. And if you start writing and it's good, a lot of people also can't tell. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not in a position to lecture anyone. I've written plenty of rubbish in my life,

but I've done it for long enough that I know the things you shouldn't do. Yeah. Right. There's an awful lot of POV-ing in this book, which does not stand for point of view. It stands for popular orange vegetable um the famous story sort of shared among journalists some hack had to write

an article about carrots and they use the word carrots and they use the word carrots again it gets to the point you have to start reaching for synonyms or finding roundabout ways to say these things and by the end of the article they were reduced to writing the phrase the popular orange vegetable and uh dave gives us one of the greatest povs i've ever read in a scene where he's walking through a caravan park and he mentions the caravans and then he says something else about the caravans and he doesn't want to say the word caravans again so he refers to them as wheeled homes an exquisitely awkward phrase which hasn't left my head since i read it wheeled homes i mean i heard the audio version of this and i do must confess i lost a little bit of the kind of the goodwill and respect that had accrued after the Blue Neubau went off the stage.

Oh! Well, there's potentially a very funny book in it, obviously, because spending weeks on end in some of Britain's shittiest holiday camps is an intrinsically funny situation. And also, operating at this depressing basement level of rock and roll is clearly funny in itself. But what's funny about it is the atmosphere and detail which is all the stuff that dave can't do no but unless lots of

really really funny things happen to you it's not automatically going to be funny as a collection of anecdotes which is what dave does so uh not wanting to take up too much of your sweet time here's a very brief selection of highlights from the book so uh please come on this journey with me the first place they play is uh inevitably has recently hosted a shawadi wadi tribute band um most writers would see that as a an open goal but rather than explore that personal humiliation for laughs dave just mentions it in passy and instead goes on his first flight of fancy here we are i wandered back to the reception area as prior to the gig i'd received a phone call from the duty manager who'd said he was looking forward to meeting me and asked if I'd pop in to

say hello upon arrival. Behind the front desk was an anorexic looking girl who informed me that he was on a call but wouldn't be long if I'd be so good as to take a seat. My eyes were immediately drawn to the pallid woman who clearly had an aversion to the fare they served up at the camp, if not to anything nutritious in general. There's something eerie about very skinny people that gives me the creeps. Perhaps it's the angular bones that jut out beneath a thin sack of skin that renders their appearance as almost deathly but whatever it may have been rather than engage in a conversation about her daily dietary

requirements i took the option of perusing the notice board which listed some quite fascinating forthcoming attractions well this is page 14 i think you know punching down on women with potential eating disorders isn't the most engaging of attacks well you may say that david but you know don't let it be said that he uh concentrates on his ghoulish preoccupations and look because dave can do comedy listen to this right this is when they play that place with the magician and his dog right and during the set wait till you hear this right it's quite the yarn uh the the the dog wandered onto the stage while they know just like altamont again yeah yeah dave takes up the action in the midst of hilarity, I quickly improvised and ranted into the mic,

who let the dogs out? To which the crowd instantly responded with barking noises, something akin to the answer backs on the original Baja Men recording. It was a while before anyone was able to regain their composure and complete the show without further incident but the receptive punters had lapped it up and we had rounded off a good day in fine style and then just when you think no more laughs can possibly be squeezed out of the dog story. On the next page, he gives us a top ten,

an indented top ten, mark you, of all the songs they should have played that night, as suggested by members of Shawoddy Woddy after the show. And it's like Hound Dog, Elvis Presley, Black Dog, Led Zeppelin, I Love My Dog. It's just a load of songs with dog in the time there's not puns or anything like he put this in a book i think after this people are going to be racing back gratefully for my rick buckler joke he has a running joke through the whole book where he wants some fresh

fruit but the camp shop never sells it because he strongly implies all the punters are fucking subhuman peasants who only eat chips and like super kings fried in lard. So at one point he gets very excited because he thinks he sees some oranges through the window. So he goes in. The popular orange fruit. That's right. Yes, yes, yes. So take it away, Dave. I went inside, eager to see if I was right,

and picked up a plastic netted bag containing two solid wooden rackets and a bright orange ball. The pallid assistant looked across and said, they're £8.99. I explained to her I'd mistaken the ball for an orange, to which she sharply retorted, I think you need an optician's, not a supermarket.

Nothing super about this store, I snapped back and strode out with my do demeanor intact well that definitely happened didn't it i was going to say danny baker's got a series on his podcast called now that never happens everything that you said so far will be absolutely private yes no doubting the veracity of this particular rock and roll legend what else happens d Dave goes to the gym and gets a personal trainer. Yes. But his personal trainer's gay. Oh. And, uh, obviously he propositions Dave. Um, that's another story. Yeah, of course.

Watch your backs. Well, I think he does a bit more than that. Does he? I can't remember. Well, he gets his cock out and dangles it in front of his face while he's lying on the floor. Yes. I didn't even remember that bit. Sorry. There's just so much gold in this book. It just, it just washed right over me, yes. I didn't even remember that bit. Sorry. There's just so much gold in this book. It just washed right over me.

My personal favourite passage from the book. He's still on that fresh fruit search motif. Yes. So here's another deathless vignette. Irritatingly, the shop was closed, but reopened at 7 p.m with an appalling schwarzenegger impersonation i posed hands on hips and said i'll be back yeah that's the closest dave gets to being self-deprecating, by the way. Dissing his own short-term. Shawadi Wadi's reputation is just in ruins for me after this. Oh, you wait.

Dave's hemorrhoid hell. He goes to the doctors, only to find that the wonderful NHS could do nothing for me, with no doctors sitting until the following Monday morning. So, after muttering some curmudgeonly un-PC comment, I hobbled off in search of a chemist. David later transpires, reads the Daily Telegraph. Surely what is intro tape is the Dambusters theme.

In Perranporth, they're put up in a caravan next to some Eastern Europeans. Right. Dave picks up the story. There had been much media speculation in recent weeks about the growing number of asylum seekers being allowed entry into the country. And perhaps the government had enforced some new legislation that temporarily placed those seeking UK residency into empty

caravans in the country's seaside resorts but whether or not that was the case here we figured it may not actually be a bad idea the din became almost unbearable as glasses and bottles clinked together and then a CD of wailing gypsy-type music began blaring out through the open door. To cut a long story short, in the end, Shawody Woddy have a ringside seat for a bare-knuckle boxing match between two of these Eastern Europeans, one of whom is called ivan brackets pronounced even you're right it's so sad there's some fucking great stories clearly here

there and he's just not telling them well you say that but here's something which may be of interest to the pop craze youngsters for varying varying reasons, I've long had an intrinsic dislike for that vast majority of DJs the band have so often had the dubious pleasure of working alongside. Don't get me wrong, in my humble opinion, there have been many talented

protagonists of the decks over the years. Protagonists of the decks! Such as Emperor Roscoe, Tommy Vance, Kid Jensen, and more latterly steve lemac who all share brackets a genuine appreciation for good music and consider their playlists to be infinitely more important than filling the airwaves with inane verbal diarrhoea. But those apart, in our eons of experience, we've shared stages with a whole multitude of egotistical dummies,

most of whom bear no responsibility whatsoever for the tunes blasting out from their mixing consoles and turntables. One episode of my career, of which i'm not particularly proud was back in 1978 when the band was invited to record a song with a high profile radio one djs of the day the studio was littered with such names as tony blackburn dave lee travis noel edmunds diddy david hamilton simon bait there was a face for radio if ever i saw he's what god made him sir and many more but the session itself was to put it mildly an eye-opener with the celeb djs resembling a clan of hyenas released into the wild for the day as they bitched and henpecked from the word go such was the unremitting nature of their jarring that at one point i was forced to rudely

request that they pipe down and concentrate on the task in hand which was to deliver in unison a football style chorus that provided the song's monotonous hook and which would be dubbed over the backing track that five of our members had prepared a couple of days earlier the record new wave band by jock swan and the meters was made to mark the frequency change not the actual meters of radio one from 247 meters to 275 and 285 meters and despite receiving a fair amount of airplay it was a mercy that the band's name remained anonymous as the awful release justifiably sank without trace oh Oh. Anyway, I won't spoil the ending of this book. They get sacked from the tour because Dave goes on stage with the novelty elephant head,

which belongs to the camp, which is against regulations. But needless to say, he has the last laugh. That is the ending, but trust me, nothing has been spoiled here. You missed out the bit where one of Show Waddy Waddy shits himself in the van oh god yeah when they're just outside a service station but there's a traffic jam and yeah he uh fills his drain pipes he needed his gutterings cleared after that but yeah the uh the book concludes on a happy note with shawadi what his retirement and the warm glow of Dave being able to report

that one of his many named antagonists from earlier in the book was later arrested by Northamptonshire police for indecent exposure, which probably served him right. It's terrible. After all of this, I've kind of radically revised my opinion

and now think that Shawadiwadi are a load of awful shit and should never be seen or heard again. That's terrible. After all of this, I've kind of radically revised my opinion and now think that sure there were a load of awful shit which had never been seen or heard again. That's terrible. What are we going to do in future chart musics? In the light of all of this? The Boys of Summer by Dave Bartram. Published by Phantom Books. F-A-N-T-O-M. Available in all good, well... No, available on the internet

With a forward by Amanda Holden So the following week Dancing Party soared 24 places To number 17 That week's highest new entry And two weeks later It would begin the first of two non-consecutive weeks At number 4 The follow-up and two weeks later it would begin the first of two non-consecutive weeks at number four.

The follow-up, a cover of the 1958 Dion and the Belmont single I Wonder Why, did even better, getting to number two in April of 1978. Held off the top spot by Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs by Brian and Michael, and the rest of their 1978 output, A Little Bit of Soap and Angel Eyes, both got to number five, marking seven top five singles on the bounce. The scales have fallen from my eyes.

They really have with the waltz. I begin to think that perhaps Neubauten were the better band on the night now, now that I kind of think about it. Well, maybe not. All right. Yeah, well, just wait until you read Neubauten were the better band on the night now, now that I kind of think about it. Well, maybe not. All right. Yeah, well, just wait until you read Neubauten's book about their disastrous tour of the whole season circuit, David. Blicks of barbells.

Leaders say I had the last laugh. 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. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Hello, it's Mr. P here.

And the other Mr. P. And we are the hosts of two Mr. P's in a podcast. The educational podcast where you don't actually learn a thing. No, instead we explore the weird, wonderful and downright hilarious things that happen in school from people actually doing the job. We reminisce on our own time at school, funny things we experience each day. And of course, we share your hilarious stories from the chalk face. So if you work in a school or just want a nostalgic trip down memory lane, sit up straight, fingers on lips and get ready for the lesson. Shorty Waddy, and that's their brand new single.

Give me three other hits of that. When? On the move of love, Saturday night. Very good. And now it's number one time, because it's brand new, it's ABBA and the name of the game. Powell, surrounded by five girls, keeps doing that thing he's been doing all episode,

suddenly crouching down as if the camera's got a ray gun mounted on the top and jumping back just a little bit he's a bit nervous would you say that's nerves or is it just him at just being an unstoppable force of energy yeah he doth leap too much really doesn't he definitely i think he's definitely masking a kind of craven fear yeah and of course he's not concentrating because he's actually got a low-grade agneta look-alike standing right next to him completely ignores her call yourself a professional fuck off back to hospital radio where you belong you've got to get stuck in peter yeah it's just the inanity though it's just virulent it's like a plague a one-man plague

inanity you know you can imagine that you know if this had been untreated unvaccinated you know centuries ago there'd be a pal in every village of some geezer going around with a wagon ringing a bell shouting bring out your inane it's just dreadful how did he ever tolerate it he then drills the kids on their knowledge of show waddy waddy hits and they all pass with distinction he then pivots to this week's number one the name of the game by abba it's the late 70s so of course we're going to talk about abba again this is the follow-up to knowing me knowing you which got to number one for five weeks in april of this year and like practically everything else in this episode

is the lead-off cut from their forthcoming LP Abba the Album which is due out in five weeks time. It also features in their forthcoming drama doc Abba the Movie which will also come out in December. It entered the charts at number 20 a fortnight ago then soared 15 places to number 5. And this week it's effortlessly

knocked Yes Sir I Can Boogie by Baccarat off the summit of Mount Pop. And here is the video. Oh chaps, where do we start with this? I mean, hands up, cards on table, all the Danny Dyer cliches. i think this is

their best single i agree it's a definite toss-up between this and knowing me knowing you david usually an unfairly builders and abba skeptic you get in first okay yeah i mean i do have this sort of reputation for regarding abba as kind of i don't know for micah nazis or whatever but it's um it's it's, you know, it's a bit more complicated than that. I was forced on occasion to play Devil's Advocate and it's kind of stuck with me, which you know, perhaps serves me right, really.

Serves you right for being a whore for television, David. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he has a whore of contrarianism. Definitely. Yes. On that appearance, on that documentary which I showed every six months, I think a million people watched it. How many pence did I get for my appearance?

Zero. No. I sold myself. I didn't even sell myself. I gave it away for nothing. Yeah. You got your name out, though, David. I did.

I got some exposure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very useful, yeah. And the name was The Man Who Is Wrong About ABBA. Yep. Yeah, just what a kind of up-and-coming 50-year-old journalist needs. Absolutely. But, no, I think this is really, really good,

particularly the intro, which is just absolutely exquisite, crystalline. It's among, possibly it's my favourite passage of ABBA music. Apparently it's inspired by I Wish, but with the kind of funk surgently removed, which is absolutely fine. I mean, you know, that's... Yeah. ABBA's going to ABBA, and that's no problem with that.

Also, I think this is the only... I remember it was sampled by the Fugees. Yes. For that song in the Muhammad Ali documentary, When We Were Kings, it's used at the end there. Yes, Rumble in the Jungle. That's right, Rumble in the Jungle, that's right. and apparently that's the only time abba have been sampled i know that's extraordinary yeah i've been absolutely extraordinary i don't know whether it's like you

know the rates they charge or whatever i mean in a sense people like simple minds i'd say on new gold dream in a sense well i don't know they don't sample abba but they kind of echo abba in all kind of ways whatever say what any old school hip-hoppers could do worse than listening to Hey Hey Helen. It's a very nice run DMC type beat in that, just go in spare. Okay, yeah. As for the video and everything, I mean, I suppose it's become a sort of almost like a French and Saunders type cliche, you know, the way that they kind of all kind of interact. It's the usual ABBA video, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. You know, they're all sitting around, they're all flirting with each other and then feeling a bit sad yeah that's fine it's abba yeah it looks like they're contemplating a possible bit of a swing you know um you know sort of frieda and benny and bjorn and frieda and agnese or whatever you know whatever combination but uh yeah you know there's there's an air of that i think the one thing that that perhaps was educative about this track for me was that I learnt finally the meaning of the word bashful. Because I'd always understood the word bashful to mean like, you know,

like the Bash Street Kids, you know, somebody was like, you know, bash them up, you know. And I think I'm really into it. I'm a bashful child. Oh, okay, fair enough. You know, because I used to, you know, hear my mum or whoever saying, you know, he's a bit bashful. That Isaac, he's's very bashful says no he isn't i'd batter him you know he's not battering not need little get he's not bashful i'm bashful i'm more bashful than he is you know so i mean

you know so it was helpful to me in that respect definitely yeah so you you thought you initially thought freda was saying you know she puts herself about well i mean i think i realized then she's game yeah exactly yeah i think i kind of realized that uh i've got it wrong that's not the first time i got it wrong about abba but um in this case they're having a nice game of flash bell which is the swedish version of the german mensch ager dich nicht which is roughly translated to don't get angry man it's nice that we do actually learn the name of the game it's a Swedish ball game where everybody

wins and then you all have sex and then kill yourself yeah fun for all the family I mean out of all the 70s games that they could have played man it's a bit disappointing yeah I mean Mous of all the 70s games that they could have played, man, it's a bit disappointing. Yeah.

I mean, Mousetrap was going under. Yeah, but they don't need it. They've reached the state of Nordic calm. They don't need all this stuff flashing in front of their eyes. But it's fascinating how many ABBA videos are just film of some adults sitting around, hanging out, you know, looking relaxed or tense. You know, there's a bowl of fruit on the table. It's a little bit chilly, but you're all in knitwear. Yeah.

You know, some conversation and a quick round of fjord spell. You know, checkered curtains, pale light, no telly. no telly it's nordic blanc really isn't it it's uh you know it's reminiscent of a caravan holiday in the rain isn't it where everyone's stuck inside playing pontoon with matchsticks yes it is except with a standard of living high enough that that you're not too worried about it you know well that might well be a caravan that they're in but a really massive one. Because they've got a better standard of living than us. And they don't go to Chapel St. Leonard's or Mablethorpe.

Well, I mean, this video is sort of in the vein of the Knowing Me, Knowing You video. Except if that one really is Ingmar Bergman, this one is like an episode of Doctors. It's a bit less intense and a bit less carefully put together but you know I'm surprised to hear that you think this is their best single I mean I really love it

but I'd put a few ahead of this I'd say Dancing Queen, Know Me Know You, SOS Winner Takes It All possibly Mamma Mia there's no consensus opinion on the greatest ABBA single. It's personal, isn't it? And for me, this is it.

If you were an ABBA single in that company, you'd be pleased to finish sixth. Yes. Like Arsenal. Yes. Hurtful, hurtful. Just outside the Champions League of ABBA singles. But it is amazing.

Whenever you see footage of abba in an house as we did then you're just looking around going oh what have they got that we haven't and i'm always reminded of the publicity shot that i saw that was taken around this time where they're kind of like sat at a breakfast bar and on the table they've got a holder for crisp breads which did my fucking head in when i first saw it. It was like a kitchen roll holder, but stubbier and with a wider base. And I asked around, and someone said, yeah, it's a crispbread holder. You know, for certain massive crispbreads with big holes in the middle. Yeah, for the brot.

Yes. Yeah, because even then, at the age of nine, I was quite a continental lad. And every time I went out to the co-op in bulwark with my mam i used to mire the roof of things like crispbreads you know not not because i like them but they seem massively exotic and the and the sort of thing that a go-ahead household should have in their cupboard even when she caved in and we got some you know i'd only have a couple of them with an entire triangle of dairyairy Lee on them before they got long. But that wasn't the point.

The point wasn't to eat them. The point was to have them in your house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of like a bottle of Perrier in your fridge a few years later. Yeah, in your completely spotless kitchen with hardly anything in it. I just remember my poor old mum in her 70s. She used to go on these occasional diets. And it consists of a bit of crisp bread and a huge lump of cheese.

Cottage? No, no, just regular cheese. Oh, that's where she went wrong then. Exactly, yeah. Never worked, but yeah. I mean, the poor, in these videos, they always seem to be very much downplaying, you know, it's not like kind of Lifestyles to Envy

or anything like that. They always look like, you know, there's a national pub strike and they're just trying to find something to do with themselves, you know. No, but beer's so expensive in Scandinavia, isn't it? Yeah, that's true, yeah. Apart from Denmark. Yeah. So it's like they can't go to the pub.

Yeah, because it's too expensive even for ABBA, yeah. Yeah. And it's always like Benny never gets his round in. No. Yeah. No. I mean, the other great thing about this video and the single, to my mind, is that it gives Frida a fair go because she was always pushed to the back in this country.

You know, I never forgave Not The Nine O'Clock News for having her portrayed as Griff Rees Jones in that video for Super Duper. Yeah. And the lyric, one of us is ugly, one of us is cute, one of us you'd like to see in her birthday suit. Oh, fuck that that frida's mint i know god i mean in this video agneta looks a bit like bet lynch about to go out on a picnic with mike baldwin by a canal log but frida she gets the best line tell me please because i have

to know i'm a bashful child beginning to grow and it's obvious in the footage that frida's got an absolutely filthy laugh man i love to see that in a woman yeah well the dynamic of it was always that benny and frida were like the rockers you know they were the ones that you go out and you know you go to some bar and you'd crawl back at two in the morning, you know. Whereas Bjorn and Anya are very sort of, a little bit more sort of weird and neurotic and more like, you know, raising the family. If you're into that sort of thing. But people couldn't get past the fact that one of these women looked like the ideal of Swedish beauty.

Yeah. And the other one didn't because she's not Swedish. She's half Norwegian. I think the politest way to put it is half Norwegian. beauty um yeah and the other one didn't because she's not swedish she's not half norwegian i think the politest way to put it is half norwegian um all things considered yes um but yeah yeah i know she does she doesn't get a rough deal there's some clips where frida looks amazing and there's other clips where she kind of doesn't because she would chop and change her look a lot. I sort of know someone. This is how bad it's got, right? I sort of know someone who's in an ABBA tribute band.

Right. And I've seen pictures of them, and both the women are done out like Adieta. And that ain't fucking right. That's true. I'd say something, but I don't feel I know the person in question well enough to just put them right on

it i mean it's a bit rich people having to go at freedom and looks when you look at fucking bjorn and benny i mean you know even as a kid joe jackson style grudge against this pair of little kind of shaved gorillas punching well above their weight but this song's fucking amazing isn't it it's like all their songs from this period like the more you sort of dig into it the more interesting it is as well like the link between the music and the lyrics is really odd here like the lyric is really uh hesitant and helpless and the music matches that it's very sort of anxious until she starts singing about this bloke lifting her out of her rut, and it rises up, hopefully, you know, reaching out. But then the chorus spills over into this creepy, strident victory march with that triumphant trumpet,

which I suppose allowed people who didn't really listen to assume that this was more bright pink candy floss, you know, from cheery old ABBA, bopping around in their comedy platform boots to no great effect, rather than what it is, which is an uneasy song about someone with no confidence

surrendering to a love affair and it's accompanying terrifying loss of self-determination and putting themselves in a position of complete vulnerability to their more confident and experienced lover about whom we learn nothing so it's neither a happy song nor a sad song nor a cheerful or a bleak scenario it's all of those because the song takes place at a moment when literally anything could happen next. But that ambiguity and that focus on specifically adult anxieties and neuroses is what defines this whole period of ABBA,

this mid-period of ABBA between the pure pop years and that final sort of live-almond period where when they tried to sound like ABBA, they'd end up sounding like ghosts. pure pop years and that final sort of live Olman period where, you know, when they tried to sound like ABBA, they'd end up sounding like ghosts. Yeah, I agree with that.

And I think that's particularly, um, you know, that opening, that very hesitant, very brittle opening. And I think it kind of wonderfully, um,

yeah, captures this, you know, the character and the sentiment of the song and the kind of that delicate mood, you know, and it's, it's,

um, yeah, it's excellent. I mean, I went overboard on this when we uh covered knowing me knowing you in the christmas episode a couple of years ago obviously not we didn't cover it that might not have sounded quite as glorious but this middle period is when they were their most remarkable because they could still combine that relentless angst and uncertainty with worldwide number one singles you know yeah i mean there's a clip of them playing this song name of the game on some tv show somewhere and they're still in the white judo suits and the

white micro kimonos and there's all these colorful balloons being blown around in the background and everything's virginal white like a sixth birthday party you know and it's all massively over lit and it's because that's how you present the bubbly wholesome family act abba you know as opposed to how they were presenting themselves around this time most of the time on record sleeves and in videos which was all uncertain glances and cold skies but nobody noticed so yeah once again a completely worthy number one what a fucking one-two punch eh this and knowing me knowing you it's a volley of blows around this point so it's like a street fighter 2 combination abba in 1977 it certainly is so the name of the game would spend four weeks

at number one eventually usurped by the long winter of mulligan tire by wings amazingly the uk was the only country in the world that rightfully sent it to number one even in sweden it only got to number two held off music fjall that's pop mountain by yes sir i can boogie which was number one in sweden for 22 weeks eventually knocked off number one in january of 1978 by naughty naughty naughty by joy sarnie i remember elvis presley by danny mirror fuck it up news traveled travelled slow in Sweden in 1977. Bloody hell. ABBA only had three number one singles in their own country, don't you know? Ring Ring, Dancing Queen, Summer Night Sitter.

But two of their early LPs were number one in their charts before they split the singles in the LP charts in 1975. As the bloke from Al-Andul dual said to me a profit is not without honor saving his own country the following month there were so many advance orders for abba the album in the uk that our printing presses couldn't cope and we had to wait a month after everyone else by which time it had sold so many copies in poland that it exhausted their entire allocation of foreign currency fucking out the follow-up take a chance on me got to number one for three weeks in february of 1978 and as we've already mentioned in 1997 the name of the game was sampled by the fujis for

rumble in the jungle which got to number three in march of that month but anyway fuck the fujis for rumbling the jungle which got to number three in march of that month but anyway fuck the fujis abba they're back sort of what do we think chaps what are we saying i mean i'm i'm really not keen and that's not out of any sort of anti-abba thing one of the great things about abba is that they kind of let it lie and that they'd left it pristine no i don't really like any revival it's like when my bloody valentine came back i didn't really care for it um well the pixies you know it's not even determined by people who i like or not but i just think in their case that's a wonderful thing they've just absolutely let it lie but they would not let it lie yeah well at least they're not doing caravan yeah yeah i think the support act is going to be the Smiths.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Taylor? Well, I mean, it sounds exactly like you would imagine the next ABBA album would have sounded if they'd made one in 1983 instead of splitting up. Except if they had made one, it probably wouldn't have sounded quite so retro or quite so 1983. But I think it's quite pleasing just because

like most people i was worried about what was going to come out you know i was still vaguely expecting something like chess but worse you know boggle maybe yes but it's not that so good but what creeps me out is those computerized artificially de-aged avatars that they're using for the live show avatars well they're so yeah they're sort of great and sort of horrifying on so many levels because i mean they're unnerving in themselves but also the combination of of abba being presented in this kind of holographic, necromantic kind of way, coupled with the inescapable existential darkness in so much of their music, not King Kong song, obviously, but a lot of it.

And then the nostalgia element for people who are now at the end of their lives, and then the nostalgia element for people who are now at the end of their lives, or at least approaching that stage, which is the case for pretty much everyone who remembers ABBA. You put it all together, and it's quite a death-packed experience, you know. I mean, more than watching the stones shuffling around, you know, like old pit ponies having a laugh, like crows i mean that's one thing but but watching the videos of these old crocs from abba having their stage movements mapped and motion captured onto these virtual ps5 versions of their younger and more beautiful selves

i don't think you're supposed to find it depressing or unsettling but i think almost anyone with a realistic view of life probably would and it sort of works because their best work is about this jumble of emotions and and moods but it's just that idea of of robot communion you know i find it a bit it's like imagine this is a real gig and we're all young together again you know i don't look at that and and only see blue skies but obviously when like i went on youtube and i looked at all the stuff they'd put up for the reunion all the sort of one show like celebratory interviews with them and members of the pub they just you know in fact it's far bleaker than that because obviously it's all framed 100 as a it's a lark for the oldens and

it's uh yeah camp and office party and you know hen night and all this stuff and that's all it is right and of course you listen to i still have faith in you their new song it's it's not like any of that at all right there's absolutely none of that in it all of that bubblicious sort of ultra commercial you know hey it's really cheesy stuff contrasts incredibly sharply with that song and this song and and yet there's face and manner you know too good for this world but also too weak um yeah it's very weird i'd still like a beer with benny though even now yeah i told you about that waiter at his hotel he was impressing upon me what a great bloke he was i can really believe it laid backid back, but impatient with bullshit, you know.

And he's still the same. And he hasn't gone any bolder, despite apparently having a comb-over since 1975, you know. Yeah. But, you know, these are the thoughts you think when you become the kind of person who sees old clips of John Noakes on Blue Peter and thinks, blimey, doesn't he look young?

That's me now, you know. That's us, ABBA's audience. Fucking hell, may God have mercy on us. It's funny, actually, listening to Taylor talk about these gigs. It's actually filled me now with a sort of eerie, grim fascination. I think I perhaps would like

to see it for about ten minutes. That ten minutes is all I could bear, really um because you do wonder if it is some sort of harbinger for the future yeah there's one thing you know i was talking about people coming back i make an exception for craft work whatever because i think that if you look at their in their 70s heyday i think they were always keen to create this total work of art this and there just wasn't the way at all to do it you So you've got these kind of crappy brown stage curtains behind them as they're playing and things like that. And I think the justification for Kraftwerk doing what they're doing

is they could present this kind of fully-fledged digital Gesamtkunstwerk with all the kind of graphics, et cetera, et cetera, which is what they would have loved to have done if they'd have been able to back then, you know, if the technology had been up to speed with the music. But, yeah, I can just imagine, though, that, like, once Ralph Wutter goes, that, you know, I can imagine Crabfoot carrying on as a touring proposition with just sort of, like, you know, four chaps, you know.

And, you know, perhaps if there is a future, or if anybody cares, you know, that somebody will perhaps sort of do a replication of, like, The Beatles or something like that, you know, sort of using holographic, you know, sort of skew together things you know um so yeah I mean this could be the harbinger of like what's to come as upper always were well that's right I hope this episode hasn't been too much like last of the summer wine oh yes yeah strong resemblance I'm sure i'm kind of in the middle between you two because as soon as lockdown kicked in i completely bunkered myself in and you know me i'm not exactly a a boy about town but you know i i used to run into the same people over and over again and

i started mithering about the people who i used to see who didn't particularly know and i'm just fretting about them hoping that they were doing all right. I mean, in particular, there's one old woman who used to just absolutely hammer it up and down the hills of Nottingham with a shopping trolley in a floppy hat with all flowers on it, her, not the trolley. I think we'd exchanged about two words to each other all the time I've been here.

But we were on nodding terms and you know i hadn't seen her for ages and about six months ago i was in tesco in town and i just turned the corner and there she was and i just couldn't stop myself from punching the air and going fucking yes yeah i was so delighted it's like yes you're still here well done and that's exactly how i felt when i watched this abba reunion after i'd sat through all the zoe ball bollocks but when they actually got to the music and i heard frida and agneta's voices melding together again it was like yes yeah they're still here fucking brilliant good on them i've got no interest in in going to to see robo abba but you know i've had a bit of a thought

about this all this is it's going on near you into it apparently oh you mean london generally yeah yeah yeah i suppose so yeah east london well you know why don't you get your heads together and put together a brotherhood of man puppet show as a fringe event for people queuing up your two could do that and I'm only going to take 20% of all your audience. How's about that? I just sort of tugged a little bit of string for the kind of kick on kisses for me.

Yes, the performative form. See, what I'm going to do now, I'm going to be very clever and turn up there with a guys and dolls puppet theatre and I owe you nothing. David Van Day's ABBA. Yes! Well, they've done it again.

The name of the game from ABBA. And that's it from all of us here to all of you back home. Good night, God bless. And join us next week for another edition of Top of the Bops. Pow! Alone once more. I saw her today I saw her face It was a face I love Pow! Alone once more informs us that Abba have done it again

before telling us that everyone in the studio tonight wants us, the pop-crazed youngsters at home to be blessed by God Almighty before saying goodnight and leaving us with needles and pins by Smoker. We covered Smoker and this fucking single in chart music number 23. As before, it's the follow-up to It's Your Life,

which got to number five in August of this year, and is a cover of the Searchers song that got to number one in February of 1964. After making an appearance on Top of the Pops before it was even in the charts, it made a modest debut at number 48, then soared 26 places to number 22. And this week, it's up four places from number 17 to number 13. Now then, chaps, me and Taylorlor we've already done this and david this band are practically your lot so you say something about them and we'll sit here and learn

summit oh smoky i mean yeah i was brought up in west yorkshire and so i ought to have some sense of affinity and kinship and loyalty to smokey but I didn't I hated Smokey because I hated I hated West Yorkshire I hate the fact that I lived there you hated yourself didn't you David no I liked myself I was all right it was all these northern bastards I hated you know with their coarse accents and what have you you know and there was just something about West Yorkshire at this time I mean I'm not necessarily very proud of feeling this way but um i just thought it was like willfully ugly you know it wasn't like you know there was just the grim lot of these working folk it was that they actually liked this kind of mediocrity this ugliness this cheerlessness

and i just thought the whole place was toxic it was like a david peace novel it was like drinking out of a coal scuttle and you know a used one you know you know and this place yorkshire was not where i belong and smoky for me they were just essence of west yorkshire and if they've been called heckman dwight there couldn't be more west yorkshire just read like grim freezing days in what was laughingly called playtime at our school you know this school looked like cold it's you know he's standing around in a freezing circle everyone's hawking up and spitting into a collective puddle and swapping stories about all the sex they'd supposedly had even though they're only about 13 and i was stupid enough to believe them you know my virginity was a secret shame you know and

but just smoky it was like who would want this whose pop dreams are made of this the germans apparently but i don't know and also smoky had been the name of my cat so the reminder that my cat was dead thanks for that as well um but but and also and then one of the like respites i had you know so at the weekend so there's my granddad seven days jankers but grandma is his wife she but she was hip she was she'd been a flapper She was the hippest member of my family. She'd been a flapper in the 20s. She had a radiogram. I've probably mentioned this before.

And it was a whole stack of records. But one of them was Needles and Pins by The Searchers. And it gave me a kind of sort of silvery, slightly kind of nostalgic spike for kind of other places, other modes of being or whatever. Manchester. And then these fucking cunts smoky get their fucking grubby northern west yorkshire paws on it and desecrate that as well you know

it's the absolute final straw yeah they are the bird's eye beef burger of pop yeah smoky yeah so david what you're saying is if someone had said to you do you like smoky you just said, no. Just about, just about, yeah, yeah. And, you know, really, to be honest, I don't want to waste further breath on them. Terrible, despicable, awful. But, you know, perhaps that was me as well, you know, in some respects. But I found it hard to divine the beauty in them that others did. Did they?

We don't get to see them here in their steve maria on stars in their eyes demeanor we get some kind of weird rainbow edged pool of oil effect yeah rather than the usual uh credit sequence with a sort of drunken fly point of view it's yeah it's these wobbly pulsating colored lines just to you know express the the psychedelic intensity of of smoky yeah it's like the kind of thing that mario would fall into on rainbow road yeah on the last bit of mario kart but i mean we we talked for like 20 minutes about needles and pins by Smokey last time. I mean, I could say it all again. 19 minutes too much for them.

Yeah, no, let's not do that. I came across a video on YouTube the other week, Punch on the Road. Yeah. Have you seen it, chavs? Oh, yes. An amazing BBC documentary from 1976 about a band doing the grim slog of wheel tappers and shunters land. And it's very clear that being smoky is the absolute pinnacle of this band's ambitions, isn't it? Definitely, yeah.

It's the only conceivable ambition for a band like this who want to be pop stars, because nobody else has ever followed that path. No. It's not just, oh, yeah, we're playing the clubs, man. It's like, well, look, first of all, this is a documentary of impeccable bleakness in every respect because it's shot on that murky public information film, 16mm film with speckles on it, you know, on days with no sunlight. Do you know where your lad is tonight yeah he's playing

the red rose club in wakefield it's these absolute chances i mean they're a show band they're like this basically they're like the sort of group that i used to see at my dad's works uh sports and social club on a Saturday night that's what lower middle class people used to call a working men's club it's basically a working men's club with a bowling green out the front um it's like when you used to buy a Rolls Royce and in the manual that came with the car the cigarette lighter was referred to as a cigar lighter yes absolutely true uh yeah it changes your perception a lot what we call things which was in what it was called in the manual to the vw camper van but um what that's what they are they're like the first group i ever saw live who were called

distinction and they had matching closet powder blue suits and fender guitars these groups always played fender guitars for some reason and they had you know cover they did covers of the eye of the tiger when you get caught between the moon and new york city you know and and at some point they'd say what what arthur's theme the best that you can do no by crisscross before he uh before he sold out and did uh yes jump he used to wear he used to wear his suit backwards he also had his beard backwards as well on the back of his head um so distinction would do all those songs and then at some point they'd say, anyway, if you don't mind, we'd like to do one now that we wrote ourselves.

And they'd put more passion into that than all of their others, despite the fact that it was the worst song in their set. And Punch are exactly like that. They're all about 32, but they look older than I do now. And they're all married. And yet, seized by this bizarre conviction

that they might actually make it big you know, in 1976 I ask you the worst possible moment this is it you're married with four children and this is like you can't be doing this man this is ridiculous you know did you

have a family meeting about this you know we don't know what the kind of you know the poor wives think of this you know they don't have a say mate no it's absolutely shocking as long as he puts money on that table at end of week the whole vibe was like that paul sykes documentary you know the boxer there's the whole thing that's grim you know there's's working men. And it's this terrible, sad thing, you know, these poor sods, these drinkers sitting there watching this stuff. It's almost like a kind of...

Oh, with arms folded. It's the opening shot, isn't it? You see the lead singer's massive meaty head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In some flared white sub-Elvis costume. Really trying to please an audience

that are unpleasable. And you get a shot from the back of the hall, well shot from the back of the hall well from from the back of the club there's the band all togged out looking extremely 1972 and they're just seeing a row of folded arms absolutely you know they get blokes coming up to them and saying oh you don't you don't applaud me when i come out the pit so i'm not applauding you and they say right at the beginning, you know, hello to everyone over there, yeah?

And everyone over there, yeah? And you sit back and watch us work for you. It's like, yeah, it's the idea of musicianship just graft. And that's what you get off Smoker, don't you? Yeah. And obviously people talk about these audiences kind of being implacable or whatever, but I also read it as a sense of just collective class,

low self-esteem, and this kind of entertainment is all we deserve. Yes. It's really, really sad. I mean, when Michael Rocha and Klaus Dinger were in Dusseldorf in 1971 or 72, and they were thinking about forming NOI, I mean, their primary concern is

what can we do distinction what can we do that is actually distinctive from you know the conventional anglo-american tropes and format etc etc what what sound can we devise that is generally original and therefore gives us you know a particular edge and with this light it's just a sort of we play our cards right our names could be up in lights. And it's just that, and it's just horrible. Yeah, they spend their whole life inside a brown transit van full of heavy denim and wire-framed spectacles and sort of flossy, over-the-ear, not-quite-graying-yet hair

flossy over the ear not quite graying yet hair just for the privilege of playing a working man's club in sunderland yeah and there's like 20 people there yeah yeah sat behind the four tables and tin ashtrays yeah with their massive arms folded yeah while the while punch do morning of my life by the bg and then have a possibly staged argument in the dressing room yes before the uh chairman of the committee gives them their pay which is 43 quid in one pound notes yes and you know even back then it didn't stretch very far didn't that well they earned about five pound more than they did in the factory so they were up yeah but not that long ago was a time when you could actually make a living as a musician without being famous yeah yeah and if you wanted to you could live that life and cover your arse. Yeah. Pay for your kids' Leeds United tracksuit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, not that it seems to have made them particularly cheerful. No. I mean, there's all those interview clips with them, and they just moan about how miserable their lives are. Yeah. I mean, the first thing they do when they drive up is look where the loading is. Yeah.

And there's this massive, massive oh that goes up inside the van where they realize they've got to go up some fucking steps with their amps yeah yeah some bands nowadays have to fucking pay to to play venues like well those venues don't exist anymore they're not they're not getting 40 quid now i was gonna say 43 quid that's that's yeah 43 2021 quid um yeah yeah it's hard to come by, definitely. Another thing is that it's from an era, though, if and when all of this goes tits up, they can go back very confidently into the jobs market.

You know, there isn't that kind, you know, into probably very secure and decent jobs, you know. And they can probably, you know, they probably felt secure enough, in a sense, to be able to abandon all of their, the jobs that they were doing. Yes. You know, no particular any kind of terror that you know that they once they embark on this then there's going to be no way back for them into the um you know into the workforce be a bit of disparaging banter over the lathe when they came back yeah yeah yeah oh here

they come jimmy fucking hendrix yeah and that's about it really but it's all all in the same way that the punch go on about how miserable their life is the only other thing they talk about is how hard they work for such little money which does appear to be true but yeah it makes sense because that's what their music's like it's very professional and hardworking and and horrible and wearing it's like listening to them he's like a seven-hour drive on the m1 sat on a speaker cabinet you know but it's what makes you feel so bad all the way through is that it's not enough for them they do want to be pop stars yeah and but they are this very weird and nowadays unthinkable cross between rock and roll and cheap cabaret um and that never made

it that never ever made it these groups in their beer soaked bar towel world you know like playing gigs to adults to married adults you know yeah reading up bits of paper passed up to the stage you know like well the driver of an osteo maxi registration but you know please reading up bits of paper passed up to the stage you know like it's a well the driver of an ostu maxi registration but you know please can you do rolling round river yeah last orders half past 10 you know except wearing jeans that's all it is and talking about being pop stars constantly as if they're treading this this familiar path to rock and roll glory you know they do an audition for Opportunity Knox at one point. Which was the route for bands like that.

Well, to release one single. Yeah. And get on telly and get more bookings. Yeah, yeah, I suppose. And chaps, wouldn't you know what song they do? Did you notice? No. So You Think You Know How to love me by smokey i watched it the other night

for about the third time and it just hit me it's just like hang on i know that song what do you know smokey of course of course that's their presentation to the world they're just trying to drop you a hint of like no no we're not like just a bunch of old men in a band like you've never seen before there is there is a precedent don't worry yeah there's a heritage got a world with two smokies in it oh like a world with six dlts in it but this is it their only possible inspiration is smoky yeah yeah You have to blame Smokey for this. You do. I was just going to say, it's just a massive indictment of Smokey

and their rubbishness that encourages poor, sorry saps like this that they could make it. It doesn't seem such an unreasonable proposition if arseholes like Smokey can. Yeah, giving them false hope with their wasted work ethic. Yeah, yeah. Really, you can't even watch it and take the piss out of them. You just think, yeah, you poor sods.

I don't even think these will have been the best days of their lives. Or if they were, God help them. And I would imagine that at least one or two of Punch are very dead now because that's how it goes but if any of them aren't i hope they can laugh about it rather than you know rather than telling themselves those stupid stories that that people invent for themselves after defeats you know no shake it off embrace the cosmic joke you know you'll feel much worse and much better. The footage of the Opportunity Knox audition, though, fucking hell.

It's worth watching just to see what the talent spotters on Opportunity Knox in 1975-6 look like. Yeah, it's a camp old man and a randy, bibulous old lady. It's exactly what you'd expect. Yes. I mean, look, what really sums up Punch is that one of them is called Malcolm Jagger. Yes. He couldn't be any more perfect than that.

His real name was Ziggy Jagger. Yes. Anything else to say about Smokey? Obviously not, because we've talked about another band entirely for the past quarter of an hour. So I'll just say that the following week, Needles and Pins moved up three places to number 10, its highest position.

The follow-up, for a few dollars more, would get to number 17 in February of 1978, and they'd have one more top 10 hit that year before diminishing returns set in and they split up in 1982 and although punch did appear on opportunity knocks in november of 1976 there is no further record of them and we have to conclude that they failed in their attempt to be smoky we should get them to do a comeback gig supported by renyah yes yes on the scene all that glitters program yeah animatronic holograms of punch the renyah documentary is fascinating because it was it was

basically telling kids you know all being a band but it's not going to be all glamour and getting noshed off by brit eckland have you seen the follow-up to that yeah yeah and they they're all but they've split up yes the interview and they go out of shit the thing was even at their lowest point renier seemed to be having a better life than somebody who was working in a bike factory or summit for prog bands there was the university and polytechnic circuit yeah yeah for egg and chippers like punch you know there were the working men's club but you could play music and be paid for it yeah as long as you were happy to sit in a van for hours on end well you know and of course music was more of a scarce resource back then yes one of the things i loved the most about

that documentary was the knowledge that just about 18 months later uh the fall were playing those places like just perversely choosing to play those places instead of rock clubs you know kind of they're doing roush rumble no christmas fores, as heard on the LP Totals Turns, where, in fact, Marky Smith does actually have to read out a bit of paper that says, Last Order's a fast ten. One of the great live albums. And that's Pop Craze Youngsters closes the book on this episode of Top of the Pops.

What's on the telly afterwards? Well, BBC one kicks on with the first ever episode of a brand new sitcom or should that be sitcom communism citizen smith then james bolum gets involved in 1920s wheeling and dealing in gallowsfield in when the boat comes in after the nine o'clock news frank cannon discovers a chinese hatchet embedded into a snowman in the middle of the desert in canon then omnibus covers the history of the bbc radio features department followed by an examination of child pornography in tonight then it's the weather then regional news in your area and they close down at midnight

bbc2 is midway through the current affairs show newsday following it up with chronicle the long running archaeology series which pisses off to the andes this week to take a good look at the nascar lines that's followed by the 1955 version of guys and dolls where david van day played by marlon brando that's dominic grant portrayed by frank sinatra that he'll be playing gigs in care homes in 40 years time they round off the night with the late news on two and they close down at 25 to midnight. Oh, 1977. You just could not get away from the NASCAR lines. No. ITV eventually gets round to K is for Kill,

the latest episode of the new Avengers, where John Steed, Shaking Em Appeal and Coffee Wanker have been transported to war-torn France in World War II. Then it's Odd Man Out, the sitcom where John Inman inherits a stick of rock factory that isn't as bad as Take a Letter, Mr Jones. Then this week, News at Ten, a regional politics in your area

show, What the Papers Say, and then we go over to the Cauliflower in Ilford for the northern heat of Pub Entertainer of the Year, which is hosted by Frank Carson, with a special appearance by Clive Dunn, and they close down

at midnight. So, boys, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? Well, I'm standing in a freezing circle with a bunch of, you know, 15 year olds now, you know, spitting into a collective puddle. But probably we're talking about the jam primarily, I think. The fact is, I would have actually taped everything.

I do remember, in fact, having the cassette. I'd got my kind of cassette recorder like previous Christmas. I would have taped everything on this show, the Baron Knights included, and listened to that cassette over and over. So you'd be watching this in your living room? I'd have watched it in the living room, but I would have taped it off the Tom Brown show, you see. You know, when Tom Brown did the, it was on Radio 2. Yes, Countdown, yeah.

The Countdown on a Sunday evening. I'd have taped it all off that. And I would actually listen to pretty much everything off of this, but the jam in particular. Punk rock! Yeah, we'd have been talking about the jam. Someone would be going, my big brother's got the LP, and he

swears on this song. No, no, he does. Honestly, I've heard it. Yeah, you want to bet? What are we buying on Saturday? This is the modern world, and actually heroes, I think. I think I'd consider everything except

Queen, Quo, Waddy and Smokey, I suppose. I would certainly have bought the BKs at the time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Big fan. They're the ideal. If you were like an awkward kid, you could buy a piss-take record and feel fine about it. It was a joke.

It wasn't about love or anything. Didn't suggest any kind of vulnerability or it didn't suggest that you either fancied women or were gay, which were both really embarrassing things. Just some old cunts have a laugh about float on. Yeah, excellent. Yeah.

I think, I mean, the thing about ABBA is that I like the ABBA thing, but I think i might consider it too effeminate to buy it myself i'd probably had to bribe a girl you know to go in and store and buy it for me you know the way you'd you know get adults to go in and get you some candelabra or whatever yeah it's terribly i remember when it when i was 11 or 12 whenever it was uh and since yesterday my strawberry switchblade came out and I thought it was one of the best records I'd ever heard in my life but I couldn't go and buy it because they were girls

and I was worried someone would think I fancied them, even though I did. Yeah, yeah. And what does this episode tell us about November of 1977? I think it is very much essence of 1977 as far as I'm concerned across the full gamut really in a funny kind of way I think there's a sort of delayed impact with punk

I think it's really kind of beginning to rumble around this kind of time and I think that jam the jammer will kind of but punk's kind of weird like that punk sort of some people think it's already over at this particular stage yeah punk had seemed

to apparently come along to drive out because it wasn't necessarily um emerson lake and palmer and pink floyd necessarily it was the kind of slightly overblown polished likes of queen elo abba all of whom were on this um episode you know and they're still very much intact yeah and all of them disappeared didn't they by 1978 never heard from them again yeah yeah yeah

I just don't get that way of thinking I saw an interview with Genesis recently and it was like oh how Genesis coped with punk

they were going on about oh yeah we were really worried about punk and I was like like fuck you were you know social workers and common room boars who dominated the the record player aren't suddenly gonna go oh look there's

this new thing i'm not gonna listen to genesis anymore no no ridiculous yeah it doesn't work like that no no it's not like jethro tolle put on the breadline by the nipply rectors or anything like that but what did happen is that a lot of these bands lost their sense of importance and relevancy and you know in terms of the way that they were perceived and i think that they did smart a bit at that but yeah also it's like i mean you can see from this 1977 is never the 1977 that people who were around in 1977 tell you it was you know it's like there's yeah no elvis beatles or the rolling stones but plenty of shawody-wody left to go around. It was just a decent year for music,

which happened while some other people who had nothing to do with this programme were leaping around in small clubs doing something else, you know. There was never any problem with coexistence between the different forms of music. Apologies for the grown-up long perspective there, you know there was never any problem with coexistence between the different forms of music it's you know apologies for the grown-up long perspective there you know yeah sorry for telling the truth pop craze youngsters before i reach the point where we're just a pale blue dot a molt of dust in a sunbeam so why does any of this matter but yeah you know it is odd to me to think that just only just a few

months later i was kind of very conscious of the fact that um 1977 had been the year of like you know john martin one world suicides first album people like perry who were kind of knocking around um even throbbing gristle you know i just became aware of that kind of whole undertow of activity which was completely oblivious when this episode actually went out sweep it all away for sid vicious's version of come on everybody yes but i just saw punk at this point as like you know just some other sort of just something that was joining the general party you know come on you know there's a party going on the baron knights are there she waddy waddy there abba are there the janna there you know. Come on. You know, there's a party going on. The Baron Knights are there. She-Waddy-Waddy are there. Abba are there.

The Jan are there, you know. It's just all part of the same pop party. Yeah, a punky reggae party, if you will. Yeah, yeah. Without the reggae, because there isn't any in this episode. Well, yeah. And that, me dears,

is the end of this episode of Chart Music. Use your promotional flange. Website, www.chart-music.co.uk facebook.com slash chart music podcast reach out to us on twitter at chart music t-o-t-p money down the g-string patreon.com slash chart music thank you dav, David Stubbs. And thank you, Al. God bless you, Taylor Parks. Cheers, everyone. I hope you've enjoyed this half as much as I have.

My name's Al Needham, and I don't give two fucks about your review, unless it's five stars on iTunes, please. Thank you. Thank you. Chart music. Great big owl.com Woo! Hello there.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Quickly, quickly, we haven't got long. Please listen to the all new Angel of Sandberry Podcast. It's a funny one. Oh, my God, it's hilarious. There's so much muck in it. This is a test.

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In the event of an emergency If you said we had an actual emergency You would have been instructed where to tune in your area For news and official information. This includes the status of the emergency broadcast system. On WHEN Syracuse. Rock expert David Stubbs. Rock expert David Stubbs.

Hi, my name's David Stubbs. Rock expert David Stubbs. Rock expert David Stubbs. Rock expert David Stubbs. Rock expert David Stubbs. Bringing you a hard-driving mix of hard rock and hard facts. Today, I want to talk to you about the daddies of them all. That's right, Jeff Wayne and his merry men, the Electric Light Orchestra. With me as my guest is a young lady who blotted a copybook last time out Her name's Alicia

Got a little sassy Got a little wise But she begged me Begged me to give her a second chance And so I thought to myself What would ELO's Jeff Wayne do? I think he'd be magnanimous So I'm giving her that chance

What do you have to say to that, Alicia? Thank you from the bottom of my heart, rock expert. This is the happiest day of my life. Damn right it is. Well, Alicia, I'm going to fill you in on the Electric Light Orchestra. Lay some hard facts on you. If you were Yorkshire

born, you'd say, I never knew that. Oh. You come knew that. Oh. You come in there. Laughter. Bracket. No, no, you're supposed to... No, Mike. Ruin the joke. He's a rolling and rocking and rocking and rolling

rock expert, David Stubbs. Why were yellow important? Because Jeff Wayne saw rock and roll music and he saw classical music and he thought, I am going to mix the two. No one in rock had ever thought to do. Jeff Wayne was the first. Then?

No, Jeff. E.O. were iconic pioneers doing something that had never been... What about the Beatles? Huh? Huh? All you need is love. That doesn't count.

That was after 1966. They didn't know what they were doing then. No. ELO were the first, the very first, to mix rock and classical music. It was unheard of. Perhaps the finest example is their iconic hit single, Roll Over Beethoven, catalogue number CH56. What about Deep Purple?

Huh? Deep Purple? A concerto for a group and orchestra. Me and my friends listen to it all the time. All right, this is bogus! You've ruined the catalogue number readout. It's the most important part of the show. Little lady, you are out of here. Join me next time when I won't be hassled by some error-prone, know-nothing chick

who thinks the lead singer of the Electric Light Orchestra was called Lin Wayne. Heh, women's lib. Embarrassed, embarrassed. Catch you later, folks. Meanwhile, take it away now! Rockin' and rollin', rollin' and rockin', rockin' and rollin' and rockin'! If you want to hear more from me, rock expert David Stubbs, subscribe to me on YouTube.

Address, HTTPS, full colon, slash, slash, www.youtube.com, slash, watch, question mark, V equals Q-K-L-E-H dash O-O-F-D, 8 amps and T equals 134S. It is. I heard it. All right, chaps.

I promised, and now I'm about to deliver. Hey. From the book Starloss by Fred Vamoril. It reads as follows. And, yeah, if you're having your tea or you're a bit squeamish um turn off now my name is steven i am 16 years old and i am a homosexual after reading your advertisement i decided to write and tell you about my secret sexual fantasy. It is with Bruce Foxton of The Jam, and it is as follows.

I attend a modern comprehensive school, and I always imagine going to the toilets during the lessons and finding Bruce there, facing the wall, apparently having a piss, dressed in black trousers, grey jumper, shirt and tie. Anyway, as I have always liked Bruce Foxton, that sexy looking fifth former, I decided to stand next to him to get a good look at his prick. As I do, I realise that he is wanking himself And what an ace dick he has

It is seven inches long with a big red knob And I can see his brown hairs peeping through Having good fun, I say to him Yeah, there's nothing like a fucking good wank, is there? At this, he walks over to the door and said that we'd better lock it in case anyone came in. Wouldn't want our wanking session disturbed, would we? He said as he walked across the floor, dick in hand,

until he rested against the wall and continued wanking. By now, my nortinge prick is rock hard, and I was enjoying a great wank. Facing Bruce, I watched him slowly pull his foreskin back and forth, revealing his lovely moist red knob. Bruce started moving his blazer pocket and brought out a pack of cigs. He handed me one and we both

had a smoke and a chat whilst wanking off. After a while he says, oh balls I'm gonna have to take these bloody things off, they're aggravating me to death. And so he quickly pulls his trousers off revealing his

long masculine legs then he takes the undies off and everything he had showed his long seven inch cock stood upright just waiting to be sucked in between his legs were a massive pair of really fleshy balls. The largest balls I'd ever seen. And then his dark, bushy, brown prick hair. He was fantastic. It wasn't long before we were both completely naked. He turned round for a minute, revealing his bum. It was ace!

It was smooth as silk and just the right size. I felt him slip down my body and take hold of my cock. He moaned softly as he gave my dick an expert sucking.

After a few minutes, he withdrew and licked his lips. He sat on the floor, legs open, and said, It's your turn now. I opened my mouth and put his balls inside. His balls were so big, really a mouthful. Then I pulled away and started to kiss his knob and suck at the beautiful thing.

Well, yeah, it was veggie sausages and dumplings for tea for me tonight, but I think that's enough. Well. He was now so excited I could feel his spunk ready to shoot out, so I decided to let him bum me, as there is nothing better than someone shooting

their load into your bum so I told him and I kneeled down while he got behind me and slowly guided his weapon in when after some lovely forcing he was finally up me he started to let my bum wank him off until finally i felt the spunk shoot up and i heard him moaning sheer ecstasy you see when uh when bruce came he leapt in the air and went that was my secret sex fantasy with bruce foxton I hope you enjoyed reading it. And then Peter Powell came out of the toilet and said, Hey!