Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #65 (Pt 1): 8.7.82 – Dancey Reagan

Episode Date: April 17, 2022

David Stubbs and Neil Kulkarni join Al Needham for a dance on the car roof of 1982, and prepare the ground for an episode of The Pops from that glorious, World Cup-drenched summer. Prepare for shocking revelations about the toilets in St Pancras Station 40 years ago and how the Rock Expert ended up On Top Of The Pops in someone’s codpiece…   Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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? Um... Chart music. Chart music. Chart music. Hey! Up you pop-crazy youngsters and welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music. The podcast that gets its hands right down the back of the sofa on a random episode of Top of the Pops.

I'm your host Al Needham and rolling deep with me today are my road dogs Neil Kulkarni and rock expert David Sturms. How do you do? Boys, come and sit by the fire and hit a brother off, if you will, with the pop things and the interesting things. Come on. Oh, a few things. I mean, not particularly pop. I was in a car crash. That was fun. No.

Oh, yes. Got rear shunted. No innuendo intended. At speed. But it kind of worked in my favour, although I should probably have fabricated some whiplash and got some compo. But no, wrote off my car.

I split it right down the middle. Really? But it was on its last legs to be fair and the value that the insurance company gave me back has enabled me to buy another car luckily with a cd player in it because without a cd player in it my daughter wouldn't have accepted it i really didn't get on with the courtesy car and all its ipaddy oaks cable you know stuff so yeah i like old-fashioned cars with CD players in it. So that happened. Also, I was a TV host for a weekend. What?

Well, sort of. A festival happened in Coventry a few weeks ago. Another one? Oh, yes. They can't get enough of their festivals. I can not stop festivals around your way, Neil. It's shitty of culture, isn't it? So, yeah, we had a Deliophonic Festival in the magnificent Coventry Cathedral,

a celebration of the life and work of Delia Derbyshire, radio phonic composer. And they, for some reason, wanted me to host the live stream and kind of do interviews and be a bit of a telly person for a bit. Didn't they say, come on, where are you? Let's have the best. Wrong Delia, isn't it wrong deal here but i was bricking it man absolutely bricking it oh yeah the first thing they wanted me to do was a q a with caroline katz who's directed a brilliant film that's on bbc iplayer called delia derbyshire myths and legends which i kind of got ready for and then uh late breaking kind of you know the

q a is about to happen sounds like brian hodgson from the original radio workshop and the guy who made the sound that the tardis makes um had been picked up from cov station just to come and watch the film and in the car he'd been saying i'm a bit nervous about the q a and he's 85 years old you're not going to tell a guy like that, no, you can't do it. So they let him on. And he was fucking fantastic. Was he? The memories he had of Brian Jones being at the Radiophonic Workshop

and his work with Dealey and of making the TARDIS noise. He was fucking wonderful. It's hard doing Q&As, isn't it? It is. I did one a while back with some bloke. He's a right thick cunt in the end. What was he?

I had to carry the whole thing. What was his name again? Oh, David Stubbs. Oh, that idiot. No, it's hard, though. It is hard. You know, you're trying to do a conversation, but it's the fakest conversation ever.

Yeah. It kind of rolled. It kind of worked. The inevitable happened when I threw it open to the audience, if they had any questions. It was basically a lot of very spoddy blokes who didn't really have questions. They just sort of wanted to make statements

about what they'd just seen. But it was okay. And the whole weekend, I mean, it will behoves me to have any civic pride, really. But honestly, on the Saturday night, I'm there hosting the telly bits, and I notice somebody walking past me who's unmistakable. It's Joey Dammers from the specials.

He's a bit of a hero of mine and I've never really met him. And he's got a DJ set, an amazing DJ set that he does later. It was one of those things where my body did something before my brain said no. I saw him and I just stood up and said, hi, Jerry. And I had nothing else to say to him apart from that. But he was beautifully polite. So you didn't say hello jerry dummers no i didn't trick this man but it was a bit it was a bit mad because i think it was a lot of old cov faces after two years of the pandemic it was a slight sense of them sort of reconvening so i'll take a stroll down the

cathedral aisle to have a piss um in the cathedral, and there's Gerry with Linville and Horace just having a photo together. It was mental. So I doubt Terry would have got involved with anything like that. But, yeah, it was a lovely, lovely weekend of kind of a vague sense of civic pride, and I can't have done that badly because they've asked me to do something else. So who knows? I might be a talking head cunt on a BBC Four documentary sometime soon. Great stuff.

Yeah, you need to be, Neil. Yeah, but I'm Melody Maker. They only ask enemy people to do that kind of thing. But cool. I mean, it's good because I quit my teaching job a little bit. So doing this media stuff. You're quite right. Flipping school.

Too bloody right. So doing a bit of media stuff and reminding myself that i can do this shit you know it was um it was a it's been a nice few weeks really oh lovely david been a while mate how you been well you know i've been rocking away and whatnot yeah it's funny you you're talking about um yeah q and a's things i mean yeah i've done quite a few of those in my time and uh yeah and sometimes you feel like a bit of a kind of you know you can be a bit invidious, especially if the person you're interviewing sort of tries to take the piss out of you and make out you're being this kind of pretentious music journalist.

Oh, no, no. Oh, thank you. Oh, dear old Jackie Liebitz, I was a bit like that when I did him. Was he now? Yeah, so I had to play the full guy to the whole thing, you know, with my highfalutin ideas about Cannes. And he's like, oh, we just turned up and played. Yeah, of course he did.

Who's the biggest cunt you've ever had to do a Q&A with? There's a question. I haven't really done that many, you know. I mean, the weirdest person I ever interviewed, I guess, was Ginger Baker, the late Ginger Baker out of Cream. That was just dreadful. I thought I'd been like, oh, who's this? I thought I'd been patched through to an old people's home by this day.

You know, it's just like, I was in it for the quietest. They do this thing, Baker's Dozen. Oh, yes. And, you know, and I was almost, you know, I had to talk with a fashioner, you know, because it's called Baker's Dozen. And I think you took it literally because it's meant to be like the tracks that have inspired you throughout your life. You know, the groups, the artists, et cetera, et cetera. Everything he chose was by himself or involved himself. You know, he thought he was literally ginger baker's dozen and everybody was crap

jimmy engen it was crap it was all everyone's crap except there's just like monotones and lengthy silences and tedious and it was oh it was just it's just an absolute, the cunt to end all cunts, really, he was. Definitely. But, yeah, it's funny, Neil was talking about doing things, you know, audiences, et cetera, et cetera. I did a little thing recently just for some students. I was studying some sort of music and media-type course, and I was just there as the great David Stubbs. I was with the kids.

Exactly, yeah. They'd each prepared a question for me, and it was very nice. And the strangest one was, one of them asked me, they knew that I'd written a book about Jimi Hendrix, and then said, you know, if you had a chance to interview Jimi Hendrix now,

what would you ask him? And I... Oh, man. I froze. I don't know. I've been thinking about it ever since. He's the greatest rock star of all time. He made the greatest album of all time,

as far as I'm concerned, Electric Ladyland. And I had nothing. I'd be a bit like Neil in front of Gerry Danvers. I'd be able to say, Hi, Jimmy! Obviously, David, you should have said, that Ginger Baker records you're a right guy. Why don't you go off and pan in? That is a really difficult question to answer.

Because, I mean, especially with an artist that passed, I think the natural habit would be to say, you know, what do you think of Spotify, Jimmy? Or what do you think of something contemporary? You know, that would be the only thing that comes to mind. Where do you get your ideas? Yeah. Do you practice to get that good?

I mean, it's just... The thing is, what I kind of said rather pompously was, look, Jimi Hendrix just answered all of the questions I had and questions I didn't even dream of in Junie's life and work, you know. And that's a total cop-out, isn't it, David? Bullshat my way through that one, definitely. The best Q&A I ever

did, Chris Needham. Oh, I bet. It was on absolute form. It was a joy. Worst Q&A I did was Chris Needham again a few months ago. And the reason for that was someone had given him a crater booze that was tough going that was interviewing Marky Smith when he's absolutely pissed

at 1.30 in the afternoon over the phone that was the last time I did Marky Smith and it wasn't great it's always tricky if somebody's getting I mean especially if they're getting pissed during the interview well I did Sean Ryder I remember when he was living at the Marylebone Hotel in London. It was Black Great Years, I think. And he ordered a pint

and then he sent someone out to get Xanax for him. Oh, dear. He must have necked about a dozen and then knocked him back with the pint. And yeah, the interview deteriorated quite rapidly after that. I got 10 minutes of gold

and about an hour of dogger all. When I interviewed Sean Ryder, I was pissed. I mean, I'd been waiting for him for six hours in the hotel lobby and playing it back. Oh, and it's excruciating enough at the best of times, listening to yourself in interviews. But listen to yourself when you've got about 10 or 11 pints inside you. Fucking, what do you think of this whole fucking business

fucking fucking business well the only bit of pop and interesting business I have to impart to the pop craze youngsters is that Al Taylor went out on loan to the Cacophony Sessions podcast

for a very intensive blather about Neil Young, which is something he probably won't get to do on chart music. So, you know, that's good. So, you know, if you're missing him like the desert misses the rain, go and fling a tab at that when you're done with us. The Cacophony Sessions podcast, everyone. I've been on that as well, yeah. Very good.

Oh, have you? Knowledgeable chaps, yeah. So this is what goes on behind my back. So we've come to the part of the episode where we stop we drop and we bow the knee to the pop craze patreons who've joined us this month and this month in the five dollar section are such names as alistair bain johnny cabbage mic, Mickey Beats, Liam Devereaux, Denise King, Ash Preston, Adrian Armstrong, Joe Greaves, Chris Durbin, Ewan Wallace, Tim Ward, Don Whiskerando, Ian Sullivan, Christian Bacayord, Matt Taylor, Ashu Rai, and the return of the person who chooses to call himself Leicester is better than Nottingham. It wasn't the other month, was there?

Oh, yeah, David. Yeah, Arsenal lost to Forest in the FA Cup, didn't they? That was a long time ago. I think they kind of threw the game, to be honest. It's, you know, a focus on the Premier League, really. Young team. But, you know, I think Forest, I enjoyed watching them this season.

You know, they're pretty handy stuff. I hope they get back in the old top flight. Oh, you patronising cunt. Fuck off! And in the $3 section. Sorry, David. That was harsh. I'll keep it to him, but that was harsh.

And yeah, fuck off, Simon. Yes, yes, of course. Oh, man. I was just hoping that Forrester beat Liverpool and then the FA would rig the whole FA Cup and get Coventry in for the semi-final. And then I'd have fucking dominion over all of you. And in the $3 section we have stewart king elaine hutton jimball 72 and john lekesne oh and gareth price and gareth hawker they

whacked it right up this week bless their hearts and their cotton we love you superlative and as well as doing their bit from keeping chart music from starving this month, the Pop Craze Patreons have been breaking out the Judy Zook satin tour jackets and rigging the latest chart music top ten. Are you ready? Are you ready for this? Do you like it? Do you like it like this?

Hit the fucking music! Do you like it? Do you like it like this? Hit the fucking music! We've said goodbye to Singleton, Notes, Purvis and Judd, the popular orange vegetable, staircase of cock, skin-heady-heady, and rock expert David Stubb! That is bogus.

Which means none up, three down, two non-movers, four new entries and one re-entry. This week's number 10 is a re-entry for Jeff Sex. First new entry in at number 9, this year's most lovable bisexual. Last week's number 7, this week's most lovable bisexual. Last week's number seven, this week's number eight. Here comes Chisholm. Yes. It's a five-place drop from number two to number seven for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Glitter.

And a former number one drops from number four to number six. The bent cunts who aren't fucking real. Into the top five and it's no change for Bomber Dog. New entry at number four

for That Dog's Dead Now. Into the top three and it's another new entry, the Mary Brennell Boys murder. The highest new entry crashes into the charts at number two this week.

Sugar Blokes, which means... They're still there. The chart music number one, right at the top. Two Ronnies, one cup. Oh, what a chop. What a chop.

Some exciting new entries. This year's most lovable bisexual. High energy, I reckon. Yeah. I was thinking something a bit more twee, to be honest. And ultimately rather annoying. Oh, really? Once you've been amused by the name. Yeah. I always think it's something a bit more twee, to be honest, and ultimately rather annoying once you've been amused by the name. We already know that the Mary Brannell Boys Murderer

acoustic-filled recordings in a Welsh shopping centre. When are we going to get to hear that? You know he's got a tape. Oh, of course he has. I mean, he threw up on social media the poster for a gig. Yeah, and if you've got that, you've got a tape, man. Fuck, exactly. Come on, Price, you know you've got it.

You know we want it. That dog's dead now. What are they laying down? Oh, I think they'd be Italian avant-garde, similar to... Do you reckon? Yeah, my cat is an alien. Yeah, they'd be a kind of... They'd tour together.

And sugar blokes, you know, goes without saying, really, isn't it? It's us. In spangly hot pants. Yeah. Bra tops. The 21st century baron knights. So if you want to stick your oar in

on the chart music top ten, as well as getting episodes of chart music in full without adverts before everyone else, as well as getting episodes of chart music in full without adverts before everyone else, as well as supporting an independent, artisan, bespoke, creative community. Shake that sexy little arse of your never to the keyboard. Tap out patreon.com slash chart music. Press that like button and pledge allegiance to the chart music crusade. Come on. You want it. I do like your use of the word artisanal there you're quite right this feels handcrafted doesn't it this show it is

definitely handcrafted it's always weird though when people talk about something handmade what else is it going to be foot made i mean this is shredding grapes it's pretty much everything's handmade especially when they talk about food. Handcrafted burger. That sounds fucking horrible. Sounds like you've got some poor lad getting his hand in a big fucking frying pan and blistering himself. No one wants to eat that shit. So, this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters,

takes us all the way back to July the 8th, 1982. And oh, can you hear that? That's me rubbing my cakey little hands together with absolute glee because, oh, boys, we always have a good time on the 1982 episodes, don't we? Oh, we do, yeah. Yeah. And this episode's no exception.

82, oh, it's a lovely grab bag of bollocks, isn't it? It is, most definitely. Everything good and bad about the Yellow Hurl era is in play in this episode. There's a bit of cat shit, but you've got to have a bit of cat shit with your good stuff, haven't you? There's always got to be the sublime and the ridiculous.

Can't have one without the other. In certain cases, we get both in one go. We'll have this argument as the episode unfolds but um i'm already uh somewhat disagreeing with this a little bit of cat shit idea i think there's plenty of yeah okay right a big watch yeah there is some fucking horrible shit on this but the good outweighs the bad yeah i think so and it's a very strange time 1982 particularly if you're british because you know we're a month removed from the falklands war wrapping up and uh it's a very strange time, 1982, particularly if you're British, because, you know, we're a month removed from the Falklands War wrapping up, and it's become very clear that Margaret Thatcher isn't going to be the one-term Prime Minister we were hoping and expecting her to be. call off the rail strike or we'll send an airstrike uh lady dies just discharge phase

one of her duties by dropping an air to the throne and you know essentially the uk is going around thinking it's summit at the moment aren't they yeah yes yeah yeah we can perhaps blame one of the artists that we see later on in this episode for this uh spirit of national optimism but having said that this episode that we're going to cover it reveals quite a lot of things doesn't it it's the first tumblings of pebbles and silt of the american cultural landslide that's about to smash into us and define the rest of the 80s and we're pretty much going to witness the coming out party of a lot of elements of the 80s that's going to dominate the decade and um most of them if not all of them are american yeah and enabled by our public broadcaster which is which is the odd thing

yeah i wonder if what accelerated that i mean obviously american popular culture has all you know always had a significant impact on british culture in hollywood etc etc and in the 70s america felt very very very other. Yeah. And I think by this point, it's feeling rather less so. Ever since the war, you know, we've been fascinated by American culture, but, you know, and we took some of the elements on, but even in the 50s, you know, we're rock and rolling and everything. There wasn't many people in America who dressed up like Ted's.

You know what I mean? We could still adopt Americanisms and tailor them to our own style, but by the 80s, instead of just absorbing American stuff, we wanted to live like Americans and act like Americans. We became shaking Americans, if you will. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The thing is, it's also coming to us on all fronts. So you've got music doing that. You've also got film doing that. A fuck of a lot. And that tie up with music and film doing that quite a lot and also you've got prime time british television doing that yeah and i don't mean british television i mean what the british networks are putting on television so on sort of these three different fronts which pretty much when you're a kid in particular this is the only access to culture you have yes you know on all those fronts america is absolutely battering

down the door yes we supposedly have these british invasion bands in place like jiran and things like that yeah and that is sort of happening that yields dividends later on in the decade but yeah everything so american at the time and it's it's the time of the a team and the dukes of all that kind of stuff those shows you could say were always with us, but never the prominence that they have in 1982. No. I mean, you were talking about film and influence. E.T. effectively reinvents Halloween in this country, you know, because you've got those Halloween scenes.

Really, before that, it was just sort of mischief night and, like, you know, knocking on doors and running away and all that, you know. But, yeah, I hate Halloween. It doesn't matter how pricey it is, but yeah. Absolute balls. It's not so much the marmite of annual festivities, it's the shit in a jar of annual festivities.

Anyway, fuck that. Let's move on. Forward! Radio 1 News. In the news this week, Roy Jenkins has become the new leader of the SDP after beating Dr David Owen by 5,000 votes in a leadership election. Aslev have begun a train strike that lasts for two weeks. Terry Higgins, a Hansard reporter at the House of Commons and part-time nightclub DJ, dies of an AIDS-related illness in London, one of the first in the UK to do so.

Michael Fagan is about to break into Buckingham Palace in an attempt to have a chat with the Queen and gets as far as her bedroom before being arrested. Paul Raymond has announced that he's planning to publish a surreptitious photo of a full-fronted naked celebrity while they were rehearsing for the play they're currently in. It's Billy Connolly. Connolly, who kicked off at Raymond after he published a topless photo of his girlfriend Pamela Stevenson, will be featuring in a forthcoming issue of Club International. Jimmy Connors and Martina Navratilova have just won the singles championship at Wimbledon. 27 Barry Manilow fans have forked out £250 between them

for a guided tour of the room in the Metropole Hotel in Birmingham, where he stayed the night during his tour of Britain earlier this year. I expect they will want to lie on his bed and crawl all over it, said the hotel manager. They must see his room as some sort of a shrine. But the big news this week is World Cup, World Cup, World Cup, World Cup! We're in the final week of Espana 82. Northern Ireland have had a good sing on the coach after being knocked out by France. We're three days past from England failing to get into the semis and being knocked out without losing a game

and Italy beating Brazil 3-2 in an all-time classic. And today is semi-final day. Oh, what a time to be alive, Pop Craze youngsters. It was. What a World Cup that was. It was a great World Cup. It was one of the last World Cups to be kind of absolutely soaked in air horns as well, you know, the proper sound of the football, which are now,

you know, they've completely disappeared. It was also the last time that Brazil were actually proper Brazil, weren't they? Oh, God, Zico, Socrates, I mean, oh, man. I was such a fanboy, such a fanboy. That day, the Monday, when Brazil got knocked

out, in the evening,land got knocked out and i know for a fact that i was more upset about not seeing brazil anymore yeah yeah i felt like that but once again they got knocked out in oh god yes yeah spoiled man what a feast of football no i i was devastated by it just felt like the kind of that you know the death of a certain kind of panache yeah yeah who gives a shit about defending you know just briefly going back to that michael fagan business with the queen it just said so much about this sycophantic bollocks that you know that the drowned the royal family anything to do with them i remember there were reports at the time that you

know he got into her room and it was about 20 minutes before anybody had managed to kind of come in and you and apprehend him and arrest him and all that. And during that time, the Queen had been very calm and spoken to him in a way that was not likely to excite him or was very measured and calm throughout. This is all nonsense. Apparently, she just screamed,

Get out! Get out! Get out! But, you know, Lord forbid. That was just a perfectly natural response. But, you know, they had to sort of confet this story about how sort of queenly and magisterial and calm she was in the situation. Just complete nonsense. The 82 World Cup, I mean, although I was cognizant of the 78 World Cup, the 82 one was the first one where, yeah, I fully got,

I could watch it, basically. I could watch it all. None of it was on too late. And I completely, I mean, beyond the Figurini Panini, watch it basically i could watch it all none of it was on too late and and i completely i mean beyond the figurini panini i had the you know the falcon 350 piece jigsaw of the england squad in their lovely admiral kit was ken bailey in it might have been i know the thing i mainly remember about that jigsaw is is the unpleasant tightness of kevin keegan's shorts on the front row um i think i was so disgusted by it, I threw that piece away.

But yeah, no, massively, massively. It was a brilliant World Cup, that. The first one that I felt like I could fully watch all of it, including the amazing semis. It was just a wonderful... So many moments, Tardelli and the rest. The only thing I didn't like about it was the slightly daft format of it, which did mean that England could go out and not lost out and i haven't lost a game you know and that was

good though man we left with our heads held high yeah keegan had held his head a bit high when he put that bloody head we're having this conversation on the cover of melody maker this week captain sensible and dolly mixture on the cover of smash hits the associates the number one lp in the uk at the moment is the lexicon of love by abc and over in america the number one single is don't you want me by the human league and the number one lp is asia by asia so boys what were we doing in July of 1982? Right. Well, I had just completed my first year at university. My mum worked at the job centre in Leeds, and she was always able to blag me some really, really sort of good jobs. So in July of 1982, I would have just started a temporary job

as a pharmacy storekeeper at the Leeds General Infirmary. And the weird thing was, Jimmy Savile was working as a sort of voluntary porter at that time. I never came across him, but technically I would have outranked him. You were still alive, David, that's why. But, you know, I didn't actually come across him, unfortunately. I do remember that what was weird is every week there'd be a consignment of heroin that was brought in from the pharmacy, you know, for the addicts and stuff like that.

And you'd think there'd be, like, mega security. But no, just somebody just dumped it at a loading bay. Good Lord. I went across one of those wheelie things and put it behind the counter. That was the end of it. You know, it was extraordinary. I mean, I could have just made off. You could have.

There and then. You know, bought my own little island. I was too scrupulous and catholic a boy to count and a coward as well to countenance any of that so uh Jesus I'm really kind of into the whole spirit of 82 you know the whole sort of pop ism you know associates abc scritty flitty all that kind of stuff and it's kind of it's all sort of marinated in the sort in the rhetoric and the prose generated by NME at the time, by people like Paul Morley and Ian Pendon.

It just feels like we're on the cusp of some sort of breakthrough, some sort of epiphany is about to occur. You know, all of which sounds pretty grand. I think, actually, I would have struck, probably myself, if I were to look back on Outsiders as a pretty insufferable little man at that point. A bit of a ponce, to be honest. You know, I was... According to that Lear University.

Well, yeah, I mean, it was that. I remember actually going to the boat race that year and sort of dressing up a bit. And I think me and my little gang... No, David, no! I know, I know. But we were all a little bit full of, like, sort of bride's head and all that kind of thing and straw boats

and the video to, like, The Look of Love and all that kind of stuff. And dressed... You you know I remember wearing this pair of bright blue sort of suit trousers with red braces and a shirt and I remember getting the train back to Oxford from London and like sitting there

and then you know there's this local wedding woman goes in a sort of very sarky snarky Mr Lardy Dar Bertie Woofter here sort of thing and I remember just sort of very sarky, snarky, ooh, Mr. Lardy-Dard Bertie Woofter here sort of thing. And I remember just sort of like... Lardy-Dard David Stubbs. I mean, my lip curling with contempt at this lump and crawl.

I said, you know... You should have horse whipped us. Don't you read the NME? Don't you realise that these trousers are bursting with semiotic significance? But, yeah. So, yeah, a little bit insufferable perhaps at the time i was nine going on 10 and i was moving house and also in a sense moving social class i think because i was

living in erdsford grange is very working class neighborhood of country and i moved to where i'm sat right now quite a posh area right um and you just immediately start noticing differences no kids on the street no games no kirby no corner shop um and and you know i moved to this street which oddly enough i'm not a cultural desert well quite i'm now looking at the for sale sign which i have out in front of my house because i'm putting it on the market um because i'm i've had enough i've been here 40 years in a way on and off um but yeah i moved to this house then and yeah i just sort of like i went from a life of like a lot of kids in the street to yeah no kids in the street and if there were kids they were sort of

rarely glimpsed they were almost like in a victorian sense you know uh barely seen and kind of you know i mean i i we've had like friends who were middle class before and the way their parents treated them was really weird and i think i think those were the kids that i was surrounded with because we had somebody who lived near us before and that they had the kind of parents who had a lock for the television what yeah their tv was in a cabinet and it was locked and if the kids wanted to watch it... Oh, no, like the ones you used to get on Sailor the Sentry. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And if you wanted to watch it, they had to ask their parents and they weren't allowed to watch Grange Hill and all this sort of stuff. And even though I couldn't actually see any kids in this new street that I moved to, I suspected they were all like that and they were just being kept under lock and keys was an extent by their parents. And it changed my life because I inevitably, you know,

stopped living in that street life to paraphrase Roxy and started living that bedroom life. Really, you know, when you, there's no kids to play with out in the street, you sort of retreat inward. So I think that starts happening from this age onwards.

Well, I'm 14 and like you i'm absolutely frothing at the gash about the world cup the other big thing that happened recently was i i'd just come back from my first day trip to that there london in order to spunk my birthday money up the wall on trying to look like paul weller so i am now the proud owner of a white lonsdale sweatshirt from the official shop in Beak Street. And I'm teaming that, of course, with a Dennis the Menace and Nasher badge, like Paul Weller had in Smash Hits.

And I got a load of Carnaby Street Rammel, including two jammed tour jumpers. And yeah, I'm teaming them with some dog-toothed Czech trousers. So I'm wearing the shit out of them. Yeah, yeah. And I do believe This is also the time That I've taken on The Steve Marriott

Triangle Toblerone Hairstyle That Paul Weller Was rocking at the time So yeah I am I am mini Weller At the moment

You're looking the part London absolutely Did my head in I got to St Pancras About half past seven In the morning Yeah yeah I needed a shit

So I went into the toilets. And I ended up in a cubicle and was just horrified by the fucking filth on the walls, man. The entire cubicle was covered in graffiti about, you know, if you stand on this platform at this time with the evening standard under this arm, I'll let you bum me on all sorts and i'm just absolutely fucking terrified yeah yeah i was in there for about 10 minutes deciding well shall i just go

back on the train before something happens and then finally i looked down for some bog roll right next to me are a pair of shoes and on top of that was a pair of trousers, and on top of that was a pair of someone's pants, and on top of that was a rolled-up tie. And I just absolutely shat myself, thinking, what the fuck has happened in this cubicle? I nicked the tie, though, and put it in my bag, because it was a nice one, so...

Oh, nice. Yeah. Sin City, eh? Yeah, it's a bit weird to think of the future employee of mr desmond gathering up his petticoats at the obscene graffiti on the toilet i was an innocent lad at the time yeah and then later on i got the flip side of of london i'm looking for a shop in chalk farm because this was a time when if you wanted a certain thing you had to go to a certain shop in a certain town and you know they didn't do mail order or you'd have to wait two

months for it to arrive so i'm looking around for this shop can't find it at all and the first bloke that walks past me i just flag him down and say oh can you help me out give me directions and he does and he's like fucking i recognize that voice raymond fucking baxter of tomorrow's world oh wow so i got it into my head that london was full of people who wanted casual gay sex in toilets and celebrities and there was nothing in between so the truth basically do you still get excited out Al, when you go to London? Just because it's London? I know you worked there for a long time,

so it might have lost this excitement for you, but I still get this sense of immensity to it. Yeah. And I don't just mean the size of, kind of,

the size of London. I mean the size of the structures, the size of the roads, the size of everything. I still get an immense thrill coming off the M25 and seeing the Shard and seeing the city

and seeing it lit up in the distance. It's still Sin City to me. And then you get to ground level and you realise, of course, it's all changed. Yeah, it's still exciting in an immense way. It took me about 20 years to get over not being in London anymore. Because by the time I'd lived there for about 13 years,

and by the end of it, it was just, you know, as they say, tired of London, tired of being fucking ripped off and shat on and having to sit on a fucking tube for an hour and a half to get anywhere you want to go. The thing about London for me now, that's where most of my favourite people in the world live.

And it's the place I have to go to to see them. So that's what London is to me. But, I mean, at the time, throughout the 80s, I used to go twice a year just down to London to just buy shit. And, you know, I ended up walking around Soho and going, one day I'm going to be here. And I was in the end, and it was like, yeah, here it is. Here I am.

Big deal. Yeah. I mean, the early 80s, London and So was like, yeah, here it is. Here I am. Big deal. Yeah. I mean, the early 80s, London and Soho would have been such a great place. Yes. It doesn't exist anymore. No. Oh, no, Soho's crap nowadays. Yeah.

There's nothing there. It's a bit like Manhattan. You get that feeling about a lot of London is that it's an ex-city in some ways. But having said that, I mean, I've lived in London since 1985. So what's that, nearly 37 years, and I do always feel, and it's not a sort of boaster and all that, but it has this great claim to be the centre

of the world, just in terms of, you know, pan-continentalism or whatever, because, I mean, America is too solipsistic and inward-looking to be the centre of the world. It's too disconnected from the world. And there's nowhere else that really quite compares. And I've always felt like that.

If you move away from London, you're moving away from the centre of the world. You're almost like decreasing in relevance in some ways. I've never been able to move away. I've never had that option. I'd love to say spend a year in Berlin or something like that. But I've always been committed to living in London. I will be for the foreseeable future.

Yeah. Music-wise, I'm still absolutely rinsing the gift the recent jam lp and the one and only jam lp that i actually bought on the day it came out yeah but i'm still inhaling everything that the charts and the music press and top of the pops is throwing at me i'm i'm an open-minded child in a way that we're not yet into the years out where you disdain top of the pops is thrown at me i'm i'm an open-minded child in a way that we're not yet into the years out where you disdain top of the pops no no no no no no if top of the pops is on i'm there yeah yeah but more importantly chaps i've spent the day fretting that i'm gonna have to watch this episode of top of the pops and the west germany france game on the black and white portable telly in my bedroom that's got a coat hanger for an aerial, which I'm sure you'll agree is absolutely no way to watch such an event.

No, no. That World Cup was full of sun and green and blue skies. It was a colourful event. Yeah. And as I say, air horns, just drenched in air horns. You know, we've got all these digital options nowadays. Can't we have an option where the World Cup's on, where you can get air horns and distorted commentary and that shine?

Yeah, that sounds like it's being kind of, yeah, commentary over the phone. Yeah. Some sort of filter, definitely, to stress the otherness of European football. Absolutely. We've already established in the past 64 episodes of child music that my dad was the cruel overlord of the living room teller and would rather watch old man

scat pornography than top of the pops but the other thing that he refused point blank to watch was football so i'm fucked at the moment not interested in sport at all right but the other thing he was interested in was going to the pub right luckily for me was still a pre-video household so you know he can't watch a fucking bronson film or any of that shit so this perfect storm of pop and football hinges upon what's on bbc2 at all past seven yeah you know i'm bearing in mind that my dad would happily sit through Emmerdale Farm so I couldn't watch

Top of the Pops downstairs, I know it's going to have to be something pretty majorly unsuitable to the taste of a 39-year-old lorry driver to drive him off to the pub early. So, you know, I'll leave you on that cliffhanger

for now. Yeah, I'm on tenterhooks. My mum goes to the bingo on Thursday night so she's out of the picture. Yeah, yeah. And my sister can fuck off. She can go out and talk to some lads from the other estate or something.

You know, this is a battle of wills between the master and the pupil. So, Pop Craze youngsters, we arrive at the part of the episode where we retire to the chart music crap room, rip open a load of boxers, and pull out an issue of the music press we retire to the chart music crap room rip open a load of boxers and pull out an issue of the music press from this week at this time we present to you the july 10th edition of the accordion times a new musical express shall we leaf through chaps yeah on the cover bananarama again fucking no enemy they're like the Bananarama, aren't they?

In the news, the gig news is coming thick and fast this week, and the top story is the return of David Bowie to a British stage for the first time since a three-night stand at Earl's Court in the summer of 1978. He's been lined up for a 20 minute slot at the Princess Trust Rock Gala at the Dominion

Theatre with madness as the headliners. But don't bother trying to get a £50 ticket if you're not involved with the Princess Trust as it's invitation only. And in any case, he pulls out a week or so later and is eventually replaced by gary brooker

yeah what's debbie bowie doing groveling around prince charles yeah glad he did pull out the other big comeback after 18 months in activity the associates who will be playing three nights at the george square assembly in mid-august as part of of the Edinburgh Festival, after which they'll be playing Glasgow Ultra Tech, The Hacienda and Two Nights in London. They're also about to release their 12th single and the follow-up to Club Country at the end of the month, 18 Carat Love Affair. But the jam's mooted open-air gig at Loftus Road, the home of Queen's Park Rangers, is officially off. Plans are afoot to find an alternative venue, but the band's management acknowledge that it's getting very late in the day to sort out a gig while the weather's still not shit, and it sadly never

comes off. Killing Joke are officially back from the dead and an active unit again after their drummer Big Paul has scrapped plans to form a new band a week after he announced it and has pegged it over to Iceland to reunite with Jazz Coleman and Geordie Walker. They've also unveiled a new bassist known as Mr Raven, the unfortunately titled Paul Raven, who the NME reports is a capable musician and deranged.

They've immediately announced a two-month tour of North America beginning next week, and will be playing here in the autumn. Topper Hedden, the ex-drummer of The Clash, has been bailed and sent for trial on a charge of nicking a London transport bus stop worth £30. Theatre of Hate is a man down after the departure of their guitarist Billy Duffer in an amicable split.

There was a clash of styles, says Theatre of Hate's manager Terry Razor. I think Billy was more interested in a straighter rock and roll thing. Duffy, of course, eventually goes on to link up with wolf child and form the cult elena lovage announces her return as the co-writer costume designer and star of the musical matahare which will begin a four-week run at the lyric hammersmith studio theater in october some things falling into place there isn't it killing joke solidifying i four-week run at the Lyric Hammersmith Studio Theatre in October.

Some things falling into place there, isn't it? Killing joke, solidifying. I mean, why would you announce a new band before you've actually got it sorted? But Raven, I mean, he ends up in ministry and revolting cocks and things like this. So he's quite an important figure later. It's weird. I say that I would have bought this issue,

and I don't recall anything that's sort of... I don't recall everything that you've mentioned so far would have zoned out. I bet you probably remember the reviews and stuff more. Yeah, I mean absolutely. I think Paul Morley wrote a big thing about Killing Joke at one point around this period and he says, oh and I've been told by the editor that Killing Joke have got a new basis. No one in the world wants to know this, but they do. Yeah, that was my attitude as well. In the interview section, well, Mark Holman gives us a guided tour of the nightclub scene in Leeds, starting with his old workplace, The Warehouse, where he wrote the first ever soft-sell songs in the cloakroom. He tells us that glam rock is making a comeback there and fits in perfectly with the all-encompassing playlist at the warehouse he also tells us that le phonographique has become

more adventurous and on good nights feels like a party in a living room but points out that the ballet high across the road is a poor imitation while while noting that Primo's on the top floor of Belinda's Club has started one of those video texts that David Van Day and Therese Bazar keep going on about. Oh, David, you could have written this. Yeah, I used to go to the warehouse on the Ballet High, and it is right to have a low opinion of that particular place. It was a bit Yates's Wine Lodge, really.

Yeah, the warehouse, all kinds of people there, yeah. Cabri Voltaire, a certain ratio, all that lot, yeah. Did you ever hand in your coat to Mark Holman? I didn't, no, no. I was probably just a little bit too young, yeah, for that to have happened. Oh. I mean, it's a great place, the warehouse, as long as you don't want to go to the toilet,

because the toilets are very intimidating. Really? Mm. Especially if you don't like being looked at as you urinate. Oh, really? want to go to the toilet because the toilets are very intimidating really you know especially we don't like being looked at as you urinate oh really well i mean just i'm not not people were sort of like you know going out of the way to do that particularly just there's a lot of people in there just like a little bit oh right a bit peace and quiet and solitude perhaps a cubicle to myself ideally what right in where people ought to stand with a Yorkshire Post under their arm if they want a blowjob?

Lloyd Bradley, fretting that the post-Marley reggae scene is disappearing up its own arse, links up with a duo that he believes has the best chance of stopping the rot, Sly and Robbie, who were in town last week playing with Black Uhuru at the Stones' Wembley gigs? They put the blame on artists and producers who only want to sell enough records at home to buy a new car and will only bother to put out new products when they want a new car, as well as musicians who immediately graduate to studio work without learning their chops on the road, playing all sorts of music. They really like the british variant of reggae that's knocking about at the moment but it never gets released in jamaica for fear it'll put

all manner of noses out of joint and in any case they're happy being the rhythm section not the front persons bradley ends the piece by gloomily conceding that the work that Marley put into establishing reggae as a bona fide popular music is steadily being wiped out as reggae music climbs backwards further into the hills of Jamaica, lost forever. Lynn Hanna travels to Hamburg with Bananarama, who are doing the Toppin' Poppin' circuit and discharging their final duties with the Fun Boy 3. She finds a trio of young British women who stick out like a sore thumb amongst the other ladies on the programme who are go-go dancing with their tits out.

We learn they're grateful to the Fun Boys for giving them a new sense of direction and showing them that it doesn't matter that they don't play instruments. They find it hilarious that the daily mail said they were putting the glamour back into rock and that the vast majority of their fan mail comes from girls who want to look like them bow wow wow are currently plying their ways on the american market and according to adrianills, there's a gaping hole in our charts and hearts about to be filled by the tough and tantalising new pop narcotic of Hazy Fantaser, who have just put out John Wayne is big legger.

Jeremiah Healer, who claims that he was expelled from a voodoo cult in South London a few years ago after they accused him of being the Antichrist, gives us tips on how to get your dreadlocks hanging just so, while we learn that Kate Garner comes from Wigan and is keen to let us know that they're not going to be another Bucks, Fizz or Dollar.

Oh, and they'll be going for a skiffle feel in their next single. That worked out for him. And Amrik Rai makes a pilgrimage to the top of the pop studio to interview the man of the moment captain sensible after noting that the studio looks like victoria coke station in the middle of a train strike john peel is referred to by michael hurl as john darling and visage have a coughing fit on the dry ice in their dress rehearsal, he finds sensible in a belligerent mood.

He wishes that his current success was as a member of the Damned than a solo affair, and he's insistent that now that Dave Vanian can actually sing, the Damned are more important and relevant now than they were in 1976. When asked about how he's changed since then he says i'm not sure i tend to despair a lot more for my country this is probably the worst period in world history and you can't ignore something like that happy talk wait another 40 years mate yep all my beer single reviews at the controls this week is adrian thrills and his single of the week by a country mile is don't go by yazoo no contest the i cantina turner of the new pop return with a slice of soul melodrama that knocks the rest of this week's releases into a cocked hat

in terms of impact and intensity. There was a time when we pop snobs used to muse, more in hope than desperation, that singles like this deserve to be big hits. These days, it is a four-con conclusion that the likes of Yuzu will chart. So instead, we say that Don't Go deserves to be a number one. It might just turn out to be the first great single of the summer and about time to. I bet you agree with that, eh, David? I certainly did. Yeah, I mean, I'm just wondering this.

Ike and Tina Turner comparison. Yes. It's appropriateness. I mean, the thing is, I mean, was it known in 82 what a horrible piece of work Ike had been to Tina? Or was that not yet revealed? Yeah, I think probably so. Tina Turner, I think, was just pretty much off the radar

because when the British Electronic Foundation, BEF or whatever it was, she was just living very modestly. You know, they went around to her little house and uh yeah she she completely dropped off the uh radar at this point it all came out in i want to say 1986 when her autobiography came out and the subsequent film yeah i think she just started doing more interviews didn't she when she went solo when fully solo started getting hits and then it all came out so yeah it's an incredibly meaty thumbs up for the

devil lives in my husband's body the debut single by pulsa llama 10 timbala toting women with names like gene caffeine wendy wilde bubbles montana april palmieri and bone finder thomas pulsa llama are the most exotic band to burst into bloom south of East 96th Street in the past 12 months. Sure, they're not totally serious, although behind their smiles, there looks the surly snarl of the Big Apple's belated but brusque answer

to Banana Rom. And that's a fucking tune, that is. I can't understand how that wasn't a hit over here have you heard it i've not heard no imagine if the slits were a calypso band i've got to hear this kid creole and the coconuts have finally broken through in the uk charts and thrills reckons their latest release stool pigeon is going to decide whether they're here to stay or not. One of the few truly memorable moments on a disappointing LP and a much better single than the flat, flimsy, wonderful thing, says Thrills. Another hit? Hard to say.

There haven't been that many successful singles about super grasses and for such a leisurely stroll of a song song the arrangement is needlessly fussy and drawn out the single like most of tropical gangsters also suffers from the low profile adopted of coty monday the undoubted star of the live show over here another banger our title banger leisurely stroll of a song i know yeah i think maybe we're trying to get a little bit spoiled at this time you know if you can be that blasé about kikril and a coconut yeah yeah but it's a coat down for the clapping song by the bell stars although their effort was the more listenable the bell stars were pipped to the purse strings of top of the pops by natasha's

update of aiko aiko last month. Undaunted, they now return with yet another cover version, doing their bit to ensure that a tediously regressive trend continues. The dredging up of old material to appease conservative radio controllers.

The Bell Stars have more than enough class and character of their own to be able to do without this sort of desperate dishonesty. Talk Talk have had two flop singles in a row, with Talk Talk only getting to number 52 a couple of months ago, and Thrills gives them an even chance to break the curse with their new single, Today. A change of heart from heavy-handed tub-thumping to a more airy, almost secular feel. As a result, they at least sound a little less like a surrogate Duran Duran and more like themselves.

Wispy synthy pop meets candy floss psychedelia. King Trigger, the first new British group to be signed to Chrysalis Records in Spandau Valley nearly two years ago, have put out their debut single, The River, but Thrills doesn't reckon it. They obviously want to be Bow Wow Wow, although Steve Lillywhite's production has left them stranded closer to the skids, all bristling drumroll rolls and serrated guitar.

What sort of fire will they begin to breathe once they find themselves a song worth getting really worked up about? Again, that should have been a fucking hit. Again, I've not heard it. The sound of the street last summer, the bleep of the Casio calculator, provides the rhythm track to this,

the most painfully twee excess doshes of the Germanio calculator provides the rhythm track to this, the most painfully twee excess doses of the Germanic electro dream since Andreas Dahlrahl's Fred von Jupiter, says Thrills of Da Da Da by Trio. You may have caught five seconds of this on one of those

excruciating Euro joints on top of the pops a few weeks ago, in which case you, like me, will be trembling at the pretty real prospect that the thing will actually be a hit. Hanging Garden by The Cure is a dismal exercise in rolling, tumbling textures. The Cure have drifted disappointly and indulgently from the idyllic pop invention of their younger days girls got to know by as what gets coated down for having to go at women who are only trying to make themselves look nice i wish i could be me by

honey bane is toyah without the histrionics and war child by blonde air is more mild metal than the usual fake funk coy joy like all the other singles milked from the hunter they're the final poisoned arrows in the throat of a once great singles band but then again who needs blondie when you've got abc adam altered images and you zoom he has a point yeah well it's true really meanwhile there's so much stuff coming out of new york at the moment that a separate review section has been set up handled by richard grable and he tells us to get ready for planet rock by africa bambata and the soul sonic force this is becoming the theme song of the summer street. Some records just come along at the right time and embody a moment,

and this is one of them. If it hadn't been for the fact that WBLS started opening its playlist to the new electro-pop, allowing Kraftwerk, Soft Cell and the Human League to be heard and accepted in parks and schoolyards, from Washington Square to Pelham Bay, Too right. It is too right. Fucking hell, what a singles page that is. That Richard Grable page, I remember that section, because I used to go out and spend a fiver ago on on imports that uh

on his recommendation and that's when i was living on about a fiver a week man how many of them records because you got with just a bit of smack david idiot in the lp review section well the prime slot this week belongs to junkyard the third lp by the birthday party and richard cook reckons they're not up to it, lacking the campness of Bauhaus and the sarcasm of The Fall, and it's shot through with religious ramble. The Birthday Party is like an ongoing cannibalistic domestic feud, writes Cook. A strangely literate atmosphere of Victorian melodrama pervades. The birthday party's tracks dwell in a gallery,

haunted by the rancid horrors of Mish Havisham and Les Miserables. Venture inside, take in the exhibits, and leave by the back door. I never thought that the birthday party's problem was that they were insufficiently Bauhaus-like. Some extraordinary things have been happening I never thought that the birthday party's problem was that they were insufficiently Bauhaus-like. Some extraordinary things have been happening in popular African music in recent years and are only now making their way to Western ears, says Neil Spencer, as he opens his review of Juju music by King Sonny A Day, which he reckons is skill. It's a compelling voyage down dark sinuous currents of rhythm a jangle of melodic color clamoring up above with periods of lilting almost placid vocal delicacy and plunging

instrumental rapids take a dive into juju music it's magic he, putting his thumbs up like Selwyn Froggatt, no doubt. Richard Hell and the Voidoids have finally got round to putting out their second LP, Destiny Street, five years after Blank Generation, and Richard Grable chalks it up as an interesting failure. Even before you realise how standard, regular and old the songs are, Even before you realise how standard, regular and old the songs are. Even before the blazing guitars and lagging, dragging shuffle start to really bore you. The first thing that really scares you is the voice.

It's choked up and despairing, infested with self-pity. It sounds like a death rattle. Hell, for all his professions of hope, sounds sad and lost. A wasted talent in both senses of the word. Nina Hargan has moved to Los Angeles and signed to CBS, and her first English-language LP, Nonsense Monk Rock, has been lobbed over to Mark Cordere, who reports that she's turned into a Teutonic Kate Bush. Perhaps in years to come, this mild blend of mirth-making voodoo iconography will constitute a camp classic.

Who knows? Message from the future, Mark. No, it isn't. In the gig guide, well, David could have seen Samson at the Marquee, Sylvain Sylvain at the Hope and Anchor, the Flying Pickets at the venue in Victoria, the Clash at the Brixton Fair Deal,

Lords of the New Church at the Herne Hill Half Moon, the Birthday Party, Sisters of Mercy and Play School at the Zig Zag Club, Howard Jones at the Hammersmith Claridon Hotel The Four Skins and Combat 84 at the Blue Coat Boy in Islington or Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club at Wembley Arena Oh David, spoilt for choice

Taylor could have seen Magnum at the Whip Club Willie and the Poor Boys at the Barrel Organ Handsome Beasts at the Murcat Cross or Several Young Men Ignite and Hardboard the poor boys at the barrel organ handsome beasts at the mercat cross or several young men ignite and hardboard stump at the star club oh not very good for birmingham this week neil could have seen evil wind at the general wolf or marillion at busters now you see i could have invited taylor over to carp because he loves yeah brilliantest Taylor, doesn't he? Yeah, he was well into him at the time, wasn't he?

He was, he was. Sarah could have seen Blamonge at the Leeds Warehouse, New Model Army at the Keefly Funhouse or the Really Big Boys at Leeds Royal Park Hotel. Don't know what they're about. Don't want to speculate, to be honest. Al could have seen Incognito at the Palais, Saracen at Zhivago's,

Joe Jackson at Rock City, or nipped out to Derbyshire to see Liquid Gold for a week-long residency at Chesterfield Aquarius. Chesterfield Aquarius? When the moon is in the seventh house. And Simon could have seen Samson, Bernie Marsden's SOS, and Angel Witch at Cardiff top rank,

and fuck all else, because music agitates the privy pots and encourages the youth of Wales to steal flowers. In the letters page, well, Paul D'Onoio is entrusted with Gasbag this week and immediately has to start defending his colleagues who have offended the readership this past month i can't imagine that any of the enemy writers would refer to blacks as n words or to jews as y words writes vincent

homolka of bristol however referring homosexuals as F-words as Danny Baker did in his singles column is apparently okay. Contemptible. He goes even further, he calls pubs boozers a pound note a quid and ciggies are F-words

as well. Phew, it doesn't do to be sensitive when that Baker boy's around, nor pathetically paranoiac. Different times. The Rolling Stones have recently swung by the UK as part of their European tour

and Barney Hoskins, in a review where he pretended to be an alien observing a weird and confusing rite of worship, reckoned that they looked like five mangy and middle-aged characters and their new stuff was ramble. The readership was not impressed. To old man Barney Toskins.

Did you write your review of The Stones before actually going? The review was unfunny and at times inaccurate. I expect you were listening to the gift on your Walkman, says Margaret Trudeau of Battersea. The Stones are to rock what Coronation Street is to Ian Penman and two million other grannies. Both have been going for at least 20 years and neither look like stopping. In 20 years' time, Strummer, Weller, Brandon and others will long be forgotten by your paper.

Yet few weeks have passed this year without a reference to at least one of the Stones. This is 20 years on Blarney. You're not blind to reason, just pig-headed. Blarney Toskens, that's not bad. It's not as good as Neil Cumsarney. No, it's not quite at those heights, but it's good. It's good. But it's not all bad news, as the midnight rambler of Earl's Court points out.

To the guy at Turnstile F at Wembley Stadium who admitted me free one minute into the stone set. I don't know who you are, my friend, and I probably never will. But being unemployed, I was most reluctant to give Michael and co. ten quid. So when, to my absolute delight and disbelief, you told me to run on through i started to believe in miracles may the bird of paradise fly up your nose and here's looking at your kid oh bless 10 quid to see the stones he paid for call this time you have gone too far gasp stephen jones ofchester. Your live section from the June 26 edition contain reviews of the following artists. Alan Eager, The Big Combo, Designed for Living, Gorp, Cherry Boys,

and The Perfect Crime. I am not criticising your coverage of these groups, but if you cover these famous celebrities, you should also cover the real stars. You seem to have forgotten that 72,000 people went and watched Simon and Garfunkel perform brilliantly at Wembley. How you ignorant morons can decide that Simon and Garfunkel are not worth reviewing is beyond me. To be quite honest, you make me sick. Regarding your interview with Iron Maiden, we, as three Lady Rock fans,

are appalled by the comments made by Steve Harris and Bruce Dickinson mentioning that they were not aware of females in the audience, right three invisible maidens of Cornwall. It is obvious that they are still in the Stone Age and have been giving autographs and too much attention to men only. And the reason for this is that females alone at a rock concert are classed as groupies. We would love to meet groups in person,

but we don't want to put over the wrong impression. Gurp and B. Lash of Abu Dhabi moans about British artists knocking about in Germany and Japan just because Bowie has. Bod and X of Fitzroy, Australia, complains that the new Chrome cassette LPs being released by record labels are going to shag up the tape head of his car stereo ADB Burr is upset that the casing of the new Jethro

Tull and Toya cassette LPs don't fit his shelf and why Yang of Blackheath is spitting feathers at the enemy's negative review of this year's Glastonbury when it raised 50 grand for CND the drugs were skill and you could get a vegetable curry for 60p oh you see what a time to be alive exactly yeah nonsense about the

worst time in human history yeah 48 pages 30p i never knew there was so much in it a good issue and yeah very good you know and those letters you've just read out i think there's a kind of feedback loop that happens with the music press whereby if the writing in it you know the features the interviews the reviews are literate and well written the letters are as well to a certain extent by the time i was editing the letters page especially towards the tail end of things tail end of the 90s the letters were dog shit you know they were just semi-articulate but you know just look at the language that's used in some of those reviews and and singles reviews that you read out you know you wouldn't find a review i

don't know these days that uses words like secular or cannibalistic or aggressive or rancid or any of those things but you know if you're writing into a music paper and it's literate like that and it uses words well, you're going to up your game, in a sense, writing that letter in. And later on, that all falls apart when, you know, if the copy's shit, the letters are going to be shit as well. Yeah, Craig David sucks. Yeah.

And I mean, perhaps a lot of people that write in, you know, write letters into the music press, they are perhaps saying, can I have a job, please? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they feel like they've got to measure up. Some, not all, but I don't think the Simon and Garfunkel correspondent falls under that category. You know, by the end of Melody Maker, Neil, did you ever have to make up letters? No, I never did, actually.

I made them up all the time. Yeah, it depends how bored you got, I think. Sorry, David, you said you did. Yeah up all the time yeah it depends how bored you got sorry david you said you did yeah all the time i did the letters no yeah you know eight or nine weeks uh consecutively and i just made the whole thing up no like david every single letter or just like every single letter yeah yeah i you know i think it kind of began to sort of tell a little bit you know but uh yeah you know because it was just getting it was just pretty thin really you know yeah yeah that's coming at that point when i was working on video game magazines but the first three issues or so i was handling the letters page obviously issue one we just nicked them off all the magazines

on our stable but by two and three it was like oh these are all dog shit i'm gonna write them myself my favorite letter that i wrote myself was uh i wanted a version of mortal kombat with soap opera characters so you can set fire to ian beale and rip his art out and show it to him before he died i just do little things like i'd have a letter from somebody sort of saying, you cover a lot of decent indie and all that kind of stuff, but I notice that you don't really give much coverage to Arbroath. You know, there's a really good, vibrant scene happening in Arbroath.

I think we should hear a lot more of it. And then it'd be signed by, I don't know, M. Irvin, Doncaster. And then the next letter would be sort of the same thing. But, you know, the whole Doncaster music scene, you're just completely overlooking it. So, come on, let's hear a bit more about the Doncaster music scene. And that'd be from S. Johnson from Arbor Oath, you know. You know, stuff like that.

So, what's on telly tonight? Well, BBC One kicks off at 6.40am for an hour and a quarter of red-hot Open University action featuring analysing interaction, an hour and a quarter of red hot open university action featuring analyzing interaction bought for manufacture and steel castings i think you saw them once didn't you david steel castings what a bill that was they then shut down for three hours then at 5 to 11 they whip us over to the oval for the first day of the third test against India. After the news and regional news in your area, it's a repeat of the first ever episode of Mr. Ben,

where he becomes the Red Knight and helps a dragon who's been laid off by the advent of matches. Then it's Pobla come, regional news in your area and play school. And then we're dropped into the new camp in Barcelona for live coverage of the first World Cup semi-final between Poland and Italy. After Paolo Rossi has dealt with the plucky polls, it's the news nationwide and another chance to see the highlights from the last game and have a bit of a froth over the next semi-final

with David Coleman, Laurie McManamare and Bobby Charlton in World Cup Report. BBC Two also starts at 6.40 with a hardcore Open University bum rush with flavours and fragrances, children's television and semiconductors and the sun and then shuts down for two and a half hours. Springing back to life for Play School with Chloe Ashcroft, and then shutting down for another two hours and 40 minutes. At 25 to 2, it's the afternoon session of the Test Match, followed by the 1930 short film The Laurel and Hardy Murder Case.

Yes. Then it's the chat show 655 Special, the 1930 short film The Laurel and Hardy Murder Case. Yes. Then it's the chat show 655 Special where Sally James and her special guest co-host David Soule invite established stars and newcomers

to contribute to a lively half hour of music and conversation. It says here in Radio Times. Followed by a news summary. They've just started the 1968 musical comedy Funny Girl starring Barbara Streisand.

Yes! Yes! Two and a half hours of the bastard. Fucking yes! So you watching it, Dad? Because you love musical theatre, don't you, Dad? You know who else likes Barbara Streis theatre, don't you, Dad? You know who else likes Barbra Streisand, don't you, Dad?

Bent cunts who aren't fucking real. Are you going to the pub, are you? See ya. Although, having said that, I would kill to spend an evening watching Barbra Streisand with me dad nowadays. Oh, just a look on his face. ITV gets the party started at half past nine with the cartoon barney google and snuffy smith followed by a chance to see the uninhabited bits of colorado in the wildlife series wilderness alive after history of the grand prix looks at

jackie stewart's championship season of 1971, with dropping on some refugee families from Vietnam, starting a new life in America as farmers in a big country. Then it's a repeat of Paints Along with Nancy, Gammon and Spinach, Get Up and Go, and The Sullivans. After the news and regional news in your area, it's a repeat of Emmerdale Farm. Then Here Today, whatever that is. Then it's an hour and a

half of racing from Newmarket. That's followed by In Loving Memory, the sitcom that puts the fun in funeral. Then the 1934 Laurel and Hardy film, March of the Wooden Soldiers. Fucking hell, so much Laurel and Hardy, David.

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I think there'd been a disagreement. They were taken off for a couple of years. There was some dispute with a German production company or something like that. Yeah, so I think obviously that's been resolved by now. Or perhaps it was about to happen. Anyway, yeah, you're in Laurel and Hardy heaven. After the news at 5.45, it's regional news in your area.

Then a repeat of Give Us A Clue, where Una Stubbs and Lionel Blair are joined by Melvin Hayes, Windsor Davis, Maureen Lipman, Susan Stranks, Barbara Windsor and Mick McManus. Good Lord. Yeah. McManus. Benny Hawkins continues his quest to buy a house for Miss Luke in Crossroads and they've just started the build-up for tonight's World Cup semi-final

between West Germany and France. What a fucking banquet. That semi, man. That semi gives me a semi just thinking about it now. So what's jumping out at you there on those listings? It's Easter holiday time. It is.

And they're just bunging on any old shit for the youth. Any old shit. Oddly enough, Laurie McMenemy is leaping out

of me as a name from my youth. But obviously, you know, long story football career, but all I can remember is

fucking Barbican. Yes, it's great, man. It's great, man. And also, the Open University

thing you mentioned, I have to say, later on in the 80s, Open University programmes became a hot have to say later on in the 80s Open University programmes became a hotbed for musical experimentalism did they really? oh yeah indeed

as a melody maker reader I was obviously avidly hoovering up everything that David and Simon Reynolds and various other people were telling me about every week and I remember putting on one I think it was about industrial welding or something and it being accompanied by the soundtrack of The Young Gods and

Spaceman 3 and Loop. Yeah, it was really odd. Honestly, I didn't dream and I wasn't tripping. Somebody at Open University obviously loved all of that shit as well and started soundtracking kind of really odd industrial-like films with the cutting edge of

Melody Maker-style music. God, I wish I'd known that at the time. Yeah, you'd be learning about, you know, arc lights, and your arse would literally be quaking. Yes, yeah. Well, chaps, I do believe that we've filled in the wall chart on this preamble, if you will, and we've set the stage for this episode of Top of the Pops

that we're about to tear into. So I think we should leave it there and come back tomorrow and set about it properly don't you that sounds like a capital notion so in that case then to very much david stubbs thank you god bless you neil culcone thanks my name's i'll need them and i command you to stay pop crazed chart music Pop crazed. Chart music.