Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #65 (Pt 2): 8.7.82 – Dancey Reagan

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Neil Kulkarni, David Stubbs and Al Needham commence a gleeful rip into an episode of The Pops smack in the middle of the Yellow Hurll era. And what a start! Kid Jensen pops up in a monarchist Robert Mugabe shirt, Imagination have a proper slink-about, Bruno’s dad lamps someone, and Jeffrey Daniel changes the face of shopping precincts on a Saturday for the rest of the decade…Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Um... Chart music. Chart music. Hey up, you pop craze youngsters, and welcome back to part two of Chart Music number 65. I'm Al Needham, he's Neil Kulkarni. And that one over there is rock expert David Stubbs. You. And, chaps, we find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma, don't we? Because this episode that we're about to get stuck into,

it starts at the same time as ITV actually having something pretty fucking major league on, which is the World Cup semi-final preamble and that brings up the question at what point in this episode if ever do you break and switch over you know what i think i recall exactly what i actually did oh because obviously no remote controls in this period no i was just sat right by the telly probably with my fingers annoyingly on the buttons. And I would have been flicking between the two like a cat. And my sister and mum, who probably wanted to watch Top of the Pops, would have only put up with about 10 minutes of this

before banishing me from sitting next to the telly. So I probably sat there in a foul mood for the last 20 minutes of Top of the Pops whilst it finished. But were it my choice I think I'd have kept flicking until the teams had come out and then I'd be firmly in ITV land because I do believe looking at this BBC's aware of what the pop craze youngsters or at least you know a sizable proportion of them are gonna do and I contend that they front loaded this episode

like a bastard yeah yeah good thinking virtually all of the good stuff is right at the beginning i mean the first 10 minutes fucking hell oh indeed and i think if i um if my my mum and sister hadn't done that i would have missed out on a moment that we're going to come to discuss later that we yes or was major and talked about the next day so i'm sort of glad they did dav David, do you remember where you were? I would have sat astride these very horns. But unfortunately, I don't quite remember what I actually did. I do certainly remember watching that semi-final.

I was as pop-crazed as any youngster in 1982. I was well into my Top of the Pops because New Pop was about to radicalise the world, you know, upgrade our sensibilities as a country, as a culture, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, I was well there for Top of the Pops. I think, actually, I was in the end inclined to think, well, you know, Top of the Pops is every week,

World Cup every four years, you know. What would Top of the Pops have done, I wonder, if England had actually made that semi-final? I think they would have rescheduled. I think they would have stuck it on half an hour earlier. Or just said to Zoo, look, we've got to get eyeballs. Just turn up naked. Everybody performing on this episode does it bollock naked.

That's the only way anyone's going to watch this episode of Top of the Pops. Would have been interesting. It would have been interesting. It's difficult talking about of Top of the Pops. Would have been interesting. It would have been interesting. It's difficult talking about this Top of Pops to a certain extent because this night in my life, I mean, like for many of us, it's a night of kind of heartbreak, really, because of what happens to Batistan and Schumacher, et cetera. I'll never forget that.

I'm not saying it's my first lesson that just this isn't real, but it was heartbreaking, that. It really was. The strutting Schumacher. I think all my Germanophobia that I thought I kind of got rid of by listening to Kraftwerk rose back again to the fore. I was back like a small boy reading Warlord and magazines like that. Eat that, Fritz.

All right, then, Pop Craze Youngster, this is time to go way back to July of 1982. Always remember, we may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget they've been on top of the pops more than we have. Yeah, sort of. What? There is, well... What are you getting at, David? In a sense, well, I think in a certain sense,

I have been on top of the pops. What? Not in person. But it turns out I was reading recently. So when I used to do the Talk, Talk, Talk section in Melody Maker in the early 90s, of course, it was the rise of the shaman and particularly Mr. C. And his god-awful doggerel raps accompanied by a finger-waggling nonsense that were about as welcome in those songs as a trombone solo, basically.

And really, it's just appalling, appalling rubbish. And I just wrote a sketch every week about the shame in featuring that irritating little blonde man in which he keeps bursting into doggerel. Shut up, you irritating little twat. And that was the gist of it, really. It was just an excuse to compose spontaneous doggerel supposedly emanating from the mouth of Mr C. Sportingly, we allowed him to do his own retort,

which was bloody awful. It was worse than any of the parodies I wrote. which is bloody awful it was worse than any of the parodies I wrote anyway fair dues he got his right to reply but anyway it turns out that he did take these things rather to heart

and in fact also took them rather closely to another organ so what he apparently said is that when he appeared on I think it was Ebenezer Good what he did is he cut up the articles the pieces that I'd written the piss takes and he stuffed them down his codpiece he left on the front of his trousers and so essentially my writings you know my my work was nestled around the penis of mr c lord while it was on top of the pops. And so, in a sense, I feel that I've kind of been on.

Yeah, you have. I like you. Well, this changes everything. It does. Yeah. You're going to have to change that catchphrase, Al. I know, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Bloody hell. That's mental, because if he'd have gathered together all the fucking articles slagging him off, he'd look like an inverse Rod Stewart played by Kenny Everett, wouldn't he? Good God. Well, that's ended chart music for me now. What's the thinking about? Is it something like, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger,

gives my penis strength or something? I don't know. It's a very strange thing to do, really. Well, when we actually get round to Eb and he's a good on chart music, I'll just send him the fucking episode on a memory stick and he can stick it up his arse or something. I don't know. They've been on top of the pops more than we have,

apart from David being stuffed into Mr C's crotch. There we go. There we go. Clarification. It's 7.30pm on July the 8th, 1982, and Top of the Pops, by now firmly into the Yellow Hurl era, is dealing with the challenge of ITV actually putting on something decent for a change, the World Cup, which is currently reaching a crescendo in Spain. Unlike the last World Cup, where the pop craze youngsters were actually denied

one whole episode of Top of the Pops so the BBC could screen the opening ceremony and the same nil-nil draw between West Germany and Poland that ITV had put on the third channel of Bagzid all the Thursday night games, which I believe

demonstrates Top of the Pops' place in the pantheon of bbc programming don't you chaps yeah yeah yeah you think that was a deliberate maneuver out i think so yeah yeah because top of the pops is currently pulling down just over 10 million viewers every week and you know with the addition of a new program that we'll discuss later on they pretty much have a stranglehold on the youth audience on a thursday evening and itv know that for years they've been putting on any old bought in american tv movie shit in the knowledge that people like my dad will be forced to watch it if you're below

a certain age you're watching bbc one on thursday nights yeah you have to all of this occasion by the lack of remotes i mean even my mate who had a you know those remotes before remotes that were built into the telly and you could pull them out and they had a cord yeah even that didn't quite solve these issues no and this was back at a time when you know when you watch you go say if you watched a football game on ITV now you know they'd squeeze in what six seven ad breaks within about half an hour yeah in between every single bit of pre-game sort of stuff then it was a pretty much clear run i don't remember them going to ad breaks just before kickoff i remember the run from the players coming on to kickoff uninterrupted by ads so

yeah it would have been a it would have been a thorny issue you're right neil remotes my ass i remember when i was about eight or nine i got what my parents claimed to be a remote control car which was on a fucking wire and i'd made the big mistake of bragging on to my mates about my remote control car and i brought it out man they just coated me right down because you have to stay like three foot away from it but yeah you have to follow it around that's that's no good car on a lead but technology remotes from there do you remember in the apartment that scene where jack lemon lemon sits down to his tv dinner and he put in he has a little kind of remote control there and he keeps flicking and it keeps the adverts keep coming on you know friends do you suffer from loose genders you know he gets fed

up in the end he just turns it off but but yeah the technology was there in 1960 so yeah but it was just a clicky one thing wasn't it you know either forward or back yeah yeah oh yeah yeah but mind you that didn't really matter in this country because you're only two clicks away from the program you wanted yeah yeah absolutely jesus but in terms of like lack of choice and in terms of like lack of opportunity to see pop music these were the very very final years of that really you know i mean it's not long yeah yeah the tube and things like that or videos as well you know and, all those kind of things. Just around the corner.

Lack of remotes as well. It was another layer in which sort of you could exert hierarchy in a household or a family. So the youngest had to get up and fucking change over. Nobody else. Whoever the youngest was in the room had to do that. That was their job. Also, affordability of TVs.

I mean, it was considered pretty much upper middle class to have more than one telly. But, you know, and in 1970, a telly cost 100 quid. I mean, today they cost like 150, you know. And it was a 1970 telly.

Even the Royal Family rented their telly. Really? Well, yeah, there was an episode of The Crown, I remember. They were talking about, you know, they were renting their telly, yeah. Fucking hell.

My family, my mum and dad, poor poor mugs they were the last people in the world still to be renting their telly i think eventually they came around they took pity and they came and says like look just keep it you know you've been given a site 20 quid a month now it's 1987 or whatever who were they with radio rentals or or DER? Or Rediffusion? I think it was Radio Rentals, actually. Right. Could have been Rumble House. Of course, yes. Saves you money and serves you right.

Grummies. I mean, it's hard to imagine now, chaps, but BBC and ITV's coverage of the 1982 World Cup, patchy as fuck. After they agreed not to duplicate matches as they'd done before, ITV bagged in the opening ceremony in the first game. But as that first game

was Argentina versus Belgium, they chose not to screen it. Do you know what they put on instead? Go on. It was a Sunday evening, so we got Sing to the Lord, which was shaking songs of praise,

Heart to Heart, and a repeat of Mind Your Language. Jesus Christ. Yeah yeah denying the nation the opportunity to have a good gloat at the world champions getting beaten presume i mean presumably a fortland's related thing that they oh yes yeah much like the cancelling of tchaikovsky of late the war was still going on yeah that's remarkable i didn't know that at all i didn't know that that kind of not you wouldn't exactly call it censorship. I suppose it's ITV being careful about the Daily Mail or something.

Yeah. But that is truly bizarre, isn't it? And as the first round kicked in, you know, we quickly discovered that neither the BBC or ITV were particularly arsed about the World Cup, apart from our boys' games. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which meant that we missed out on seeing Algeria beating West Germany.

Oh, yeah. Hungary battering El Salvador 10-1. The Anschluss game, the disgrace of Gijon, if you will, where West Germany and Austria rigged a 1-0 game to shit on Algeria. And we didn't see any of the games in England's group which didn't feature England. Sorry, but that shit, that's unbelievable, isn't it? They would have had highlights packages,

presumably, but yeah. Yeah, but you want to see the fucking thing live, man. It's the World Cup. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's what was on in competition to Top of the Pops over the course of the World Cup. Just let me know your thoughts and what you would have plumped for that evening. So, June the 17th,

Northern Ireland versus Yugoslavia. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Because, you know, we had a handy team in Northern Ireland. Definitely. I'll watch that. June the 24th, Yugoslavia versus Honduras. Yeah, I think I'd have swerved that and gone for TOTP. And last week, July the 1st, this is when the second group stages kicked in. USSR versus Belgium

bear in mind that the top of the pops is a 40 minute concern now so you're only going to miss the first 10 minutes of all of those

games but you are going to miss Jimmy Greaves talking about what's gone on before last 10 minutes I would have

known what number one was so if I didn't like number one it would have been the football penultimate to the number one

it would all have hinged on that. And if, you know, fucking the old sailor came on or something like that, I'd be straight over to the football, I think. Yeah. Your host for this episode is Kid Jensen. No, sorry, David Jensen nowadays, who is firmly bedded in at the 8 to 10 weekday slot on Radio 1.

And tonight he's on between Walter Zwickler and John Peel. Even though he's been there since last autumn when he was tempted back from the Turner Broadcasting System in Atlanta, it's still being very much seen as a good thing and a bit of a coup for the nation's favourite. In the telly pages of today's Daily Mirror, Stan Sayer writes, I know our David has been back from America for a while, but it's never too late to pay a compliment. I reckon he's one of the best presenters of this programme, and the lad was badly missed by us while he was in America making his millions. Chaps, it's very rare for a former Radio 1 disc jockey to get back in after they've left,

and they certainly don't end up bagging a regular weekday slot when they do, but, you know, the former kid has booked the trend here, hasn't he? Yeah, because we like him. The listeners like him, the viewers like him, and the people that he works with like him as well, and he's dealing with the comeback fine and dandy. He's a great presenter at this, isn't he? Yeah, that's slightly different. he works with like him as well and he's he's dealing with the comeback fine and done yeah he's a great presenter yeah i'd be outside that's slightly different i think he's fluffs a couple of

lines or doesn't well not exactly fluffs lines but delivers one or two slightly anticlarotic lines i don't perhaps quite i mean i agree yeah he's a nice man he's a safe pair of hands he's a sort of a decent sort etc etc and i'm sure that he's got as a kind word for the tea ladies etc etc in in the corridors there and what have you. But really, when we're talking about him being a great presenter of Top of the Pops, it's more about the least worst, perhaps. And really, if the bar is set so low that he's not actually a paedophile, a sex pest,

or a helicopter wanker, it's not that high a hurdle, I would say. No. Also, what the hell is going on with his shirt this evening it's got that weird sort of black and white image of the queen on the front i assume it's the queen and then this random collage of sort of glitter and abstract art it looks it just looks like you know something that matisse would have vomited or something it's strange it's just it looks just like one of them shirts robert mcgarvey had wear but instead of having his own face on it he's got the queen yeah i mean i mentioned the semiotics of my trousers

earlier on i suppose yeah there's a sort of lost sense of significance about what this shirt might have meant at that point in 1982 i could see but it just looks atrocious now really you know he does look atrocious but at the same time i think he's slightly aware that he's getting a bit old for this gig there's nothing necessarily oh have a laugh at me and my cheeky zayn's but at the same time I think he's slightly aware that he's getting a bit old for this gig there's nothing necessarily, oh have a laugh at me and my cheeky zany shirt but at least he's sort of self aware to a degree that you're right David it is a low bar that he's not a totally disgraceful

and contemptible human being and therefore we think he's one of the best presenters but he's no nonsense, strictly biz very convivial and where so many other presenters you know you know all the way even to the sort of new breed that have been introduced in this period who are ostensibly one of us like peter powell or something you know even they would use the intro here to sell their own brand no jensen

never does that and it does make you comfortable he removes that always discomforting kind of rub between top of the pops being a show for us to enjoy pop music and a show for DJs to fucking show off and sell themselves. He is just the announcer. And I think at this stage, I think he's starting to think, maybe I'm getting a bit long in the teeth of this. Now, chaps, I've done a bit of digging into his time with Ted Turner, and it doesn't look like he got out of his depth at TBS.

And he certainly wasn't slinking back to the BBC with his tail between his legs. From his autobiography, Kid Jensen for the record, quote, Bob Wussler, president of the mighty CBS TV in the US, was in London on business for a few days. Turning on the TV in his hotel room in 1980,

he caught the end of an open university programme on the subject of heroes. It was hosted by me. There is a lot of luck in any broadcasting career. The opportunity appealed to the little boy in me who had grown up watching the grainy TV pictures as John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. The chance to work for the guy who helped to produce that historic footage was unmissable. Having read his latest idea of a 24-hour news channel, I knew his parent company was where I needed to be. his parent company was where I needed to be. Increasingly, as I grew older, Radio 4 and LBC had become part of my listening repertoire, and I wondered about exploring a more challenging opportunity. On my Radio Luxembourg programme, I had been a newsreader of sorts, but there's a gulf of difference between screaming a few hurried rip-and-read scripts from the Daily Mirror, punctuated by overdramatic Morse code effects,

and delivering an envisioned news programme to viewers in Canada and America. I also preferred to forget the story in a luxie bulletin about the Middle East, in which I declared, without realising, that lesbian troops troops rather than Lebanese troops were gathering. I don't know, lesbian troops would scare me more than Lebanese troops, I think. So he discharged his duties at Radio 1, retired the Kid Jensen name forever, and he relocated to Atlanta and started off as the host of a Hearts of Gold type show called Nice People.

I'd love to see an episode of that. Well, he's a nice person, isn't he? He is. Who's going to be nicer on that programme than Kid Jensen? I'd like to see them. He then settled in as the host of the 10 o'clock news and he got all the fucking perks. He got a house with a pool two cars even though he couldn't drive he ended up working with george bush senior's voice coach because they

thought he was sounding a bit too english so yeah all seemed well in the jensen garden he was just about to be sent to iran to cover the release of the american embassy hostages unfortunately he was starting to be pushed by cnn to become their entertainment producer which really didn't appeal at all to him so back to the book one saturday afternoon when i was shuffling my scripts and preparing to deliver a bulletin between the wrestling and baseball i heard my name being called. Looking up, I saw the familiar faces of all three members of the police. This was at the height of their world fame, with Don't Stand So Close To Me topping the charts. What are you doing here, I sting?

You belong in Britain. The irony of those words coming from a man living in a New York penthouse was not lost on either of us, but his words struck a chord. Another taste of home was a stock report which crept into my news programme about how Dallas had emerged as the world centre for the radio jingle industry, which included the familiar Radio 1 melodies, followed by an interview with my old boss, Johnny Bailing. Taken aback after seeing the feature in my own programme, I confessed it seemed a little being

in the Twilight Zone. Then the phone rang early one morning. At the other end crackled the familiar tones of Johnny and Paul Burnett. They had been talking about me and decided to say hello and tell me I was missed. I missed them too. Even hearing Jerry Rafferty's Baker Street reminded me of a crowded London tube. After a visit from Doreen Davis, the matriarch of Radio 1,

he was invited back to the station and slotted into the early evening weekday slot and immediately ushered back into the talent pool atop of the pubs alongside the likes of Peter Powell, John Peel, Dave Lee Travis, Simon Bates and Jingle Nonto B.E. And this is his eighth appearance since his American hiatus and it's been an effortless transition back to the routine, hasn't it, champs? Yeah, it's as if he's never been away. That's kind of heart-rending, that.

The fact that he got tempted back by seeing a thing about jingles. The thing is, that whole trajectory from UK Radio 1 to a major news network in America, just think, fuck it was in. Because if it had been edmunds or something and because in a job like that working for an american news network you're going to come into contact with people in power ultimately the thought of noel edmunds coming into contact with various conservative forces in america in the 80s fuck knows where that could have ended up you know he had to a go at it, though. When? He hosted his own chat show in America for a while.

And how did that go down? Not very well. I think he stood in for someone for a couple of weeks, and yeah, he wasn't invited back. He must always be kept away from news, and if he was kept near American news... And other people. And other people, yeah.

But if he would have been near the corridors of power, as it were, that would worry me intensely, and we may well be looking at a different future if that had happened. Imagine if fucking Travis had read the news on CNN. Colonel Gaddafi, what a pilcher.

That lesbian troops thing earlier on, it was Lebanese troops. I just wonder if it was some sort of mental fraud or whatever type slip on Jensen's part because, of course, Colonel Gaddafi did have his own Amazonian guard made up of this elite cadre of women. And I just wonder if David Jensen thought, well, if they're in the army, they must be lesbians.

And so lesbian troops, Lebanese, sounds a bit like Libya, you know. Oh, man, I'm not having that. You can't cast such aspersions on kid Jensen, David. Oh, well, there's a whole big Golden Girls gag that relies on that. We need to find some Lebanese lesbians and see how they feel about it. So if any of the Pop Craze youngsters out there are A, Lebanese, and B, lesbians, get in touch. And a warm welcome to another 40 minutes of Pimp Sounds Envisioned.

And we begin this week's Music and Lights with this from Imagination. The syndromes pound, the coloured singles cascade, the numbers flash, that voice goes, and pink vinyl explodes all over your mam's carpet, as we're hit with a neon Top of the Pops logo with Kid standing next to it, looking suitably early 80s compliant in white trousers and a red, gold and blue shirt, which probably costs your dad's weekly wage packet with elephants on the sleeves and a portrait of the queen beneath his rock and roll heart. He invites us to another 40 minutes of hit sounds and visions before

yielding the floor to the first act of the night imagination with music and lights we've covered imagination a couple of times on chart music and this their fifth single is the follow-up to just an illusion which got to number two in april of this year shamefully held off number one by seven tears by the gumbane dance band it's also the second cut from their second lp in the heat of the night which will be coming out in september and it's entered the chart at number 31 of fortnight ago which led to a performance on top of the pops where lee john decided to wear a massive silky jr hat a diamond shaped spangly breastplate and a pair of flojo tights a full six years before the sole olympics that left the nation wondering

if his bollock would flop out of it angering dads of albion in a way they could not articulate the following week the single soared 26 places to number five and although it's been a non-mover this week that doesn't matter because it's imagination and here they are again and boys we are off to an absolute flyer would you care to describe to the pop craze youngsters what imagination have come as this week? Well, I mean, I made a few notes. The first two words were absolutely ridiculous, but of course that's the point. But that's the point.

No, no, no, that's the point. They should be, you know. You don't want them to be tabled and restrained. But, yeah, you've got, I think he's wearing, you know, the Seinfeld episode about the puffy shirt. I don't want to be the pirate. Yeah, he's got that. The golden pantaloons, the sort of hat that Hyacinth Bucket would wear to a wedding. All of his combos.

And the other guy is wearing a life jacket from some sort of 1980s super yacht. And this is what it should be, the stuff of, like, you know, Arabic legend or whatever, you know. When I say ridiculous, I use it in a kind of non-pejorative sense, you know, the price it would approve of. I mean, because the weird thing is, this is an era in which certainly I was, again, you know, semiotic trousers and all that, you know, and I was very conscious, especially with suits. And I would have worn a suit or a shirt and tie every day at this point to university, you know, never, never do since, you know. And I was very conscious of tapering down, you you know in contrast to the sort of flares and the sort of rocket successes of the 1970s but there was a lot of other nonsense you know going on in the 80s i mean imagination have a certain license but if you look across the rest of the

crowd there i mean it's a menagerie of mistakes really it's a sea of errors you know and that was all going on at the same time and how we had the gore in the early 80s to sort of like laugh at the 70s as the decade that style forgot because there was some pretty howlingly bad stuff. Like I say, imagination, of course, they rise above it. Song-wise, they can never be accused of straying from the formula, but, you know, it's great, isn't it? It's a good formula.

That's right, that's the whole point, you know. And we all like to hear the sound of a mystic melody. Hell yeah. They're amazing what they're wearing, I think. very good point you know and we all like to hear the sound of a mystic melody and um hell yeah they're amazing what they're wearing i think these aren't just shirts that are flouncy oh no they've looked at these shirts and and seen spaces where they can add extra flounce and and they've packed it in it it's fantastic they are the best looking people in the entire studio for this performance to the point of course where I got really fucking angry with the little City Farm cunt looking like... Oh, yes.

You know, that guy looks like a Dexys groupie. He's got kind of braces and kind of... Yes, or Bobby Ball. Yeah, Bobby Ball. He looks like a really flamboyant Bobby Ball, doesn't he? And he's dancing on Imagination Stage. Fuck off. Yes, on their turf.

How dare you? Yes. That is Imagination Stage stage and they completely completely own it yeah it's it's like you say i'll totally off to a flyer let's put it out there right now lee john looks like a sexy meringue doesn't it yeah yeah the e stands for extra exciting egg whites absolutely yeah it's basically nick's lady diana's train from the previous summer and just put it on his hat the thing is there are other people on his show tonight who are who think they look good and they look crap um but i think the difference with imagination is they know the weight of what they're doing they know exactly what they're doing and there's a dance in the department they know exactly what they are and

they for that reason absolutely pull it off yeah yeah yeah and the thing is as a kid watching this because i i'd have been like about nine or ten watching this of course now i see the joyans but for me as a nine-year-old kid who who's had his mind blown by just an illusion and the first few imagination trucks yeah and especially their appearances i just assumed imagination walked about like this you know all the time like all day and all night they were dressed like this i mean of course now looking at it i see how this entire routine would have been i don't know pounded out in pineapple dance studios the day before in a way and you know i can also see that that they're sort of pantomime miming of this because the vocal is actually not a loud one it's

like a lot of imagination vocals it's a little sultry one but they've got their big gobs opening and they're completely at variance with the tone of the vocal making the sort of miming a bit blatant but as a kid i'd have just loved this because this is what you want from a top of the pops performance nothing cool and therefore totally cool yes total gusto and really in a way watching it now you know for the first time in a while actually this was one of the imagination songs that i think has probably slipped out of a lot of people's memory yes in contrast to the big hits you know i think the performance it covers up actually a really a great song which is it's it's like a hymn to

pop music and i like hymns to pop music i like like things like Kylie's Can't Get You Out of My Head. And this is kind of like that. It's delivered like a lot of Imagination's work at this period. Like they're a kind of little pervy queer camp cousin group to Earth, Wind & Fire. Yes. The thing is, they're avoiding cliche but also playing with cliche deliciously. And from my current vantage point now you can really appreciate i think what uh what a unique thing imagination were

they're not just a response to american funk and soul and pop they're also a uniquely british black post-modern response to a teenage life spent yearning for both american sort of black pops ease and style but also those strange british eruptions of queerness and oddity into everyday life that watching top of the pops would have given you and this is why imagination i think go big you know unlike central line or links or becker and co uk pop culture much more than us pop culture is a world in which your life can kind of change overnight and where a decision to wear i don't know revealing togas on tv can make the difference between being a star or not and lee after so many years at the peripheries of fame because he's done so many jobs before imagination you know yeah um singing weights and all the rest i think his past

is really important he dates the beginnings of his career in showbiz back to playing a snowflake in a primary school play in which his sister was a pixie. And he was a shy kid, used to sit in the corner and, you know, act everything out in front of a mirror at home. And that shyness kind of gets knocked out of him when he moves to New York with his dad. And that leaves him with bits and bobs of kind of New york slang he said himself in an interview that living in new york gave him an awareness of

himself as a black person and a sort of big knowledge of songs from broadway musicals and that mix of show business and the street i think is really really important yes i i read an interview melody maker actually january 1982 and paolo paolo eber asks lee why they dress the way they do yes and he you know he says that visually this is lee talking he says especially on british television you have three minutes to yourself and in that three minutes you have to create the biggest most almighty impact ever and if it isn't almighty you're gone um and errol actually says as well in that interview, you know, we believe in being showbiz and glamour.

And Lee actually talks about sweet and Gary Glitter and things like that, you know? And I think that's really revealing. There's also a fantastic interview in 82 by Barney Hoskins, I think in the NME, where Lee talks about the videos for Poison Arrow and Bizarre's videos as being really inspirational to him. So when I saw Imagination for the first time on Top of the Pops,

there was a similar sense of what-the-fuckness that I've heard other people talk about when they talk about, say, when they saw Bowie or they saw Bolan or they saw Adam Ant for the first time. In a sense, it fucks them in terms of developing a long career because what they can't do is settle into comfort and familiarity. They have to keep giving us these eye-popping performances and there's a thing that's going to start happening soon with pop stars in the uk in 82 and it's something smash hits i think in the music media encourage

that desire to take clearly strange otherworldly figures and bring them down to earth a bit boy george is great at that talking about cups of tea tea and the day-to-day humdrum things that kind of everyone experienced in a mid making these mad records. But Lee John can't do that. He still speaks urgently, even in 82, about how imagination music is total multimedia package almost, and every line needs to matter. And as a multimedia package, imagine that. They're one of the all-time greatest

top of the pops performance, I think. Although I may have forgotten it because I might be flicking over to the fucking footy, this is actually a really, really great performance. And like you say, it's a brilliant start to the show. It is. I agree with all of that, actually. I mean, you know, it was a very, very style-conscious era

was the early 80s, and I was like 1920 at that time. So I was kind of, you know, very much into all of that. And I would never in a million years have dressed like imagination, but I loved imagination, and as I say, they pulled it off because they knew exactly what they were doing. You could tell that they knew exactly what they were doing. You know, they weren't sort of like, you know, delusional about, you know, like looking kind of like suave and, you know,

and like sort of a million dollars or whatever or anything like that. They knew what they knew what we're doing and this is you might say it's a masterpiece of overstatement in a sense let's talk about the great unsung hero of early 80s pop ashley ingram yeah you know he starts off the performance holding his bass in one hand with no strap not making the slightest effort to play it and then halfway through when the camera's off it, he just stashes it by the drum kit because he's getting in the way of his slinking about. And yet, like you've mentioned, he's got those white American football pad things on with them big silver balls that you get on cakes

that break your teeth. And he's teamed that up with gold Sinbad trousers. And of course, you've got Errol Kennedy on the drums. He doesn't come from behind the drum kit this time, which is a bit of a shame. Imagination were always the black smokey on there. Yeah, that did happen. The drummer's got to come up and get up the front near the end of the song. That doesn't happen in this case.

But he's quite tastefully got on a white jacket and a matching scarf draped over his shoulders, but just over some tight black pants. Not bothered to put a shirt on or any trousers because, hey, it's in imagination. Yeah, well, this isn't a simulacra of performance. It's theatre. No, not at all. It's theatre.

Yeah. It's this unity of theatre and stage and performance presentation, plus the music. I mean, one of the great quotes of Merrill, actually, when he's asked about imagination costumes, he goes, we worry about it a lot. We really think about it. What are we going to wear next? And will they let us wear it?

I love that. It's as important as the song. Definitely, yeah. Oh, when imagination come on, you're always going to wonder what they'd get away with this time. Yeah, which is, of course, an inbuilt dwindling returns thing. They can't keep doing this but for the two years where they were there fuck me what one of the greatest british pop groups

ever for those couple years just for those top of the pops appearances i mean i i'm sure the albums are great but nothing is as mind-melting as top of the pops delivered into your room your little provincial room at 7 3030 in the evening with this. I mean, it's just miraculous, isn't it? And of course, Errol's got some right familial grief going on at the minute because his sister, Grace, who's got her own show on BBC Two and has just married a millionaire,

has been in the papers having a go at Errol and his band for their provocative image. And, you know, as far as I'm concerned, if you're embarrassing your little sister on the telly you've won at life haven't you i mean this is the only time in history that black men can caper about like this and have a successful career isn't it nowadays if you want to be black and camp you've got to be like rue paul and just push the boat right out and just make it glaringly obvious to everyone. I've been trying to think what's come close to imagination in this century.

And the only thing I can think of is peer pressure. That collective from Alabama who did videos where they took turns to give an Ottoman a C and 2 to some landfill R&B about 15 years ago. You ever seen that? No. When I say Ottoman, i don't mean some poor bloke in a fez and a big mustache yeah you know the actual item of furniture it's uh interesting and disturbing yeah i mean the thing is there's a lot of artists now who i think i'm not saying

they could fill imagination shoes who could but there's a lot of flamboyant gay black performers right now who would make fucking amazing oh really oh yeah i mean i think of mickey blanco and other people gay rappers i mean now that the back of that has been broken i mean i remember when you know a gay rapper was the subject of rumor and yes oh there's a gay rapper out there it's pudgy the fat bastard or whoever it might it might have been that week when i I think of the ones, Flawless, for instance, a video from this century, it's filled with imagination-type visuals. So there's a load of these artists,

but of course, that centrality, that breaking into people's lives who don't want it in their lives, which is so important to these mind-melting, top-of-the-pops moments. No, these people have a fan base, and they can quite happily exist in the margins without gate-crashing the mainstream.

And that's where those people are at the moment. But that's the thing about Lee Jon. I think Lee Jon and Imagination, they remember British pop introducing things into your life that, yeah, just changed your life. And they want to do that with Imagination. With every single Top of the Pops appearance they do,

they want to do that. That with every single top of the pops appearance they do they want to do that that is never recoverable again yeah but you know we talk about queerness and in a sense you know as print shows you can have male queerness without necessarily homosexuality it's you know and i think that's actually really really quite interesting you know when you have that when i was on the school playground um getting into the the usual hot debating topic of the day which was who on telly's gay yeah imagination never came up yeah because it was like well they're black black people aren't gay are they yeah there was the blackness there was also the sheer henchness of not lee but you know errol and ashley were big yeah and they were they were hench they were muscly they were big he-men. Of course now

even me saying that sounds camp but at the time, no, that wouldn't have been associated with gayness to me. Gayness, which you know as a 70s or 80s British kid you learn ostensibly in parody and sitcoms, was a limp-wristed effect thing. It wasn't this.

It was Sylvester or that bloke in that uh ill-advised late series of um alf garnett during when he has the uh oh marigold yeah marigold yeah he was brilliant anything else to say about this no it's just fucking ace and it is so good that it does take your eye off the zoo wankers who are just all around them yeah doing their usual cuntish yomp absolutely yeah absolutely there's there's two occasions in this episode where zoo wankers are present but you either forget about them or fuck me they're made to look old-fashioned and shit yes and this is the first yes that hip-hop and dance review section in this week's nme that we've talked about earlier

the reviewer mentions that just an illusion is the second most played single he hears on the ghetto blasters after planet rock so yeah they're making a bit of a dent in America as well yeah and the thing is with imagination is that sort of deeply political without being in any way political in a way they're kind of you know I remember a lot of interviews with Lee John where he's talking people expect them to be more ethnic is the term that he uses right at a time when don't forget reggae is being kind of employed as the expressive voice of the black man if you like and people are expecting imagination to have something to say but of course imagination's point is that the freedom they're exerting in what they look like and what they sound like

that's a statement in itself yes um that's really important so the following week music and lights dropped one place to number six although the lp in the heat of the night entered the album chart at number nine at the beginning of september and would eventually get to number 7, the title track and next single took 6 weeks to struggle up to number 22 and they never bothered the top 20 ever again in 1987 after their last 4 singles flopped

Ashley Ingram and Errol Kennedy left the band, leaving Lee John to get ringers in and they straggled on until 1992 when they split up. Oh, that rubbish decade wasn't meant for one as beautiful as you, imagination.

Yeah. 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 for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Music and lights from Imagination. Well, the highest new entry in this week's chart, straight in at four,

is from the award-winning motion picture Fame, some three years old, which has spawned a successful television series. Here's Irene Cara singing the title. Kid, surrounded by members of City Farm and one youth with a sensible parting and cheap-looking sunglasses, skilfully pivots towards a single that's been knocking around for three years but has smashed into the charts this week, Fame by Irene Cara. We've already covered the former Irene Escalara in chart music number 53,

when Flashdance, What A Feeling, appeared in the Christmas 83 Top Of The Pops, and this is her debut single. It was co-written by Michael Gore, Leslie Gore's little brother, and the lyricist Dean Pitchford, who'd worked with Stephen Schwartz, Alan Menken and Rupert Holmes,

and it was originally released in America in May of 1980 as part of the soundtrack of the film Version of Fame, and got all the way to number four on the Billboard chart in the summer of 1980 while doing absolutely fuck all over here a year later while cara was working on a sitcom which didn't get out of the pilot stage nbc commissioned a tv version of fame and cara was invited to

reprise her role of coco anandes but turned it down in order to focus on her recording career. After becoming a ratings hit in America at the beginning of 1982, the first episode was broadcast three weeks ago today and became an immediate smash amongst the leotard-crazed youngsters. That encouraged RSO to re-release Cara's single before BBC Records, the owners of the UK rights to the tunes from the TV show, could put out the TV theme, which had been recorded by Erica Gimple, Cara's replacement. It entered the charts last week at number 51, but this week it soared 74 places to number four, the highest new entry on the top 40. Instead of running the original video

or giving Zoo the opportunity to jump up and down on a mini metro, the BBC have opted to run an extended clip from the film where Bruno's taxi-driving dad sets up some speakers on his cab and plays the song outside the school oh chaps there will be a video on top of the pops with irene walking about time square but we've got this for now which is giving off some severe screen test vibes to me you know i'm expecting michael rod to pop up at any time asking some youths what color leroy shorts were and it's got that courtesy of mgm yes well hasn't it yeah which is you know pretty nice because this clip is essentially an advert for the film which is being re-released in uk cinemas

tomorrow and we'll be competing with the likes of history of the world part one the coal miner's daughter georgia's friends firefox partners some kind of hero countryman and honeymoon swedish style a lot of crisp red action in that last one i'll be bound. I would have pretty much detested this at the time. Of course you would, David. Not necessarily out of humourlessness, or a bit out of humourlessness. There are various things that still stick in my craw. I mean, that whiny guitar sound,

is my least favourite sound in all of pop and rock. It's just insipid, it feels entitled. I don't know. It just sort of signifies all manner of awfulness. I mean, it's strange that the whole vibe about fame, you know, it seems to imply that there's a strong kind of

multi-ethnic sort of sensibility, a Sesame Street-ish sort of thing, community activity, dance, blacks, white, Puerto Ricans, everyone just a freaking, you know, halting the traffic, subverting commerce, you know, in their leg warmers, upsetting the rabbis, all that kind of... You know, there is something that's kind of somehow

sort of socialistic and subversive about it. But, of course, every single... It's not just this Aaron Cara song, but other songs, it's all about individualist ethos, and it just felt a little bit sinister, really. A sort of transatlantic cultural exchange is you know between thatcherism and reaganism is just beginning to come into force and it's coming through in the popularity i think of things like this really and it's it's a bit like

when somebody wants to describe the difference between european feminists and american feminism that european feminism is about like how women in communities can kind of like you know raise themselves as communities as a part of a wider community. And in America, it's all about individuality, how I can succeed, how I can break through. It's all very, very individualistic. You know, the dream, hold on to your dream, you know, and that kind of thing. That's what makes it, in a way, for me, slightly more insidious. That it's wrapped up in this kind of likability, this amiability, this sense of young people doing their thing as a collective.

And it doesn't really feel like it's actually about that at all. It feels like there's a sort of propaganda is being kind of not too subtly smuggled in at the lyrical level. Yeah. I mean, Neil, you coined this, didn't you, last episode? The genre of music that I believe is up there with white pyjama music and yacht rock. Dancy Reagan.

And this might not be the first example of that genre, but it's definitely the one that broke the dam, don't you think? Oh, I think, in a weird way. I mean, it's a very meta start to Top of the Pops. We've got Imagination singing about pop. We've got Irene Cara singing about fame. But crucially, where Imagination seemed to be quite 1982, this, in a totally ghastly way it could also tell the story

of kind of 83 and 84 and 85 and it because it foregrounds that american notion as david's been saying this lie of meritocratic fame you know in the uk fame is seen as miraculous and random in a lot of ways in the us powerfully especially in the dance calls um that this would birth you know and you could argue actually that this song is a very stagey dry run for flash dance in which cinema and pop totally cross over this still has a kind of jazz handy staginess that remember remember bits are very very stagey but there is this neatly kind of reaganite idea that combines as david said this dissolution of differences between people towards this capitalist mindset of work bringing reward yeah so so it's

all about really the only thing holding you back is your laziness yes and and this deeper suggestion i think that the vast majority of lives are anonymous and mortal and the only way to make your life immortal to have people remember your name and live forever and see you and die is to gain this celebrity which is utterly detached from the ability to change the audience but entirely sort of down to your own messianic zeal about your own ego the the enemy for a song like this much as it is throughout sort of reaganite conservative culture to this day really is self-doubt an absence of self-doubt is a triumph in itself for a song like this um and we're about to hit it really badly i mean we're two years away from the la um olympics right which i remember being the

first time i heard usa being used as a chant um yeah you know we're close to top gun we're close to the second rambo film you know do we get to win this time when he dances on a tank yeah but but the film i think we've discussed this last time we talked about fame you know it is quite 70s grit and it's the film at least contains the suggestion that dreams can get derailed by reality and that you know your race your gender can have an effect on that the misreading that the tv series does of the film is very akin to the way that u.s culture in general say misread something like born in the usa but like that song this song seems to invite that misreading and the video backs up all of this i'm just kind of disappointed there is a

performance of fame by irene carer on top of the pops later on i think um perhaps when it climbs up the charts a bit more i'm sure i didn't dream this where you know to hollywoodify it and make sure that we know this is a big hollywood. She's singing it in front of a backdrop, basically of posters for Star Trek Wrath of Khan. It's a really, really odd performance, that. But yeah, everything that David said, really. Oddly enough, though, you know, two years after it's been created in 1980,

it already seems really dated, doesn't it? it sounds like fucking prog rock roller disco or something yes definitely you know the other songs from the album or whatever you know high fidelity star maker they just cement that so a bit of a bit of a calm down to be honest with you after imagination but i'm only saying that now as a kid you know the scheduling was obviously really important for fame, the TV series. That is why it got so big. And its international success became really important to the show itself. I think if it had just remained an American show, it probably would have died to death within a couple of years.

But it would have gone after one series. But it keeps going to 1987 because of its international popularity. 1887 fucking seven. Yes. Because of its international popularity. Well, I mean, the BBC love having this on because they're screening an advert for a film, but they're also screening an advert for a TV show that's going to be on right after this episode

of Top of the Pops. Yes, indeed. Fame's doing really well at the minute because it's kept the audience at Top of the Pops for another 45, 50 minutes. Yeah. You know, so they're getting, I think they're getting slightly more than

top of the pops. So, you know, the Emmerdale crowd have pitched in. And of course, being on at the same time as the World Cup, there's going to be

a lot of people who have gone, OK, I might as well watch this then instead of the dishy soccer men. Well, I mean, part of the appeal of this,

just like the part, I mean, the massive appeal of all American TV shows in this period especially when you're a kid it's just this is what you think America is like

yes you know whether it's this or the fucking Dukes of Azad or Cagney and Lacey whatever you're watching this is what you think America is like yes

by the way do you know what the most popular show in the UK was at the time no I don't know To the Man of Bourne was it an American show was it an American show was it an american

show no no it wasn't an american show blank i i've no idea no idea the biggest non-film tv audience last month was 13.1 million viewers for crossroads there you go. The counter-narrative. Yes. So it's not all about American dreams. So the clip that we see, it's essentially the world's first flash mob, isn't it? It's the scene where Bruno's over-proud taxi-driving dad decides to rig up a PA on his car and park up outside the school and blast out his son's demo, which, you know know wouldn't be embarrassing to you at all would it i mean imagine if your dad had parked his car up outside your school neil and and read out your um early reviews oh my god father he complains doesn't he says this

is just this is just a demo this isn't finished yet and he's like so we're getting a fobbed off with an unfinished version then are we you know and it's all it's not finished yet exactly david that's right we'll come back when it's finished then the pop craze youngsters would have been absolutely thrown at the release of this single because this isn't the theme to the tv show which to my mind is a superior version because erica gimple sounds like a woman still learning her craft while right carla sounds like donna summer like she always does yeah yeah and you don't get bangy stick woman telling you you've got big dreams you've got fame and fame costs and right as you start paid in sweat yeah we don't get no sweat no you don't get no sweat you get a tiny

hint of the aggravation that actually happens in the film when the scene happens because it ends badly doesn't it it ends extremely badly for Coco yeah the cops come and break it all up yeah absolutely it ends badly for Coco I mean we get a fight between two taxi drivers we get a lot of why I ought to

with a proper Hollywood smack in the face as well it never sounds like that when you actually punch somebody in the face not that way no because i don't you know it could have been so much worse because they could have chosen the clip from the actual tv show which on a weekly basis to be honest with you served you up some fucking atrocious bits oh yes i fell down a youtube rabbit hole with this and i found the show show show sharofsky clip yes of bruno Jesus Christ. You've got to put that on the playlist, I think, this week.

What's he going to say? Have a nice day. It's just fucking awful, man. I can't believe this shit used to entertain me, but it did. Oh, it did. It entertained everyone.

I used to stay on BBC One after Top of the Pops to watch Fame. There's no denying it. Another small thing about this is I mentioned previously in a chart music you know the all sort of checkered black and white thing down inside the new york cabs and you know there's such a wonderful signifier of new york in the early 80s and zeddy records or z records all that kind of stuff

and yeah and it turns out i read about you know what you know and at the time i thought what mean spirited cancer if you said no we can't be having that anymore. We've got a surplus of yellow paint and whatever. But, you know, it's just, that's just market forces got rid of it. It was some firm in Philadelphia who were producing, you know, these checkered cabs. And it was just no longer feasible for them to carry on operating. You know, and it's just ridiculously sad as a result, you know, because the free market, you know, Reaganism is all, that, you know, you lose market you know reaganism is all that you know you lose something as kind of small but joyful as that yeah the other main difference

between the irene corra version and the erica gimple version is that irene corra sings people will see me and die whereas erica gimple says people will see me and cry yeah yeah that's nothing to brag about. Is it? Really? Cry is at least ambiguous. You can cry in joy, you know? Yeah. People see me and die.

Yeah. That is a weird line, isn't it? Well, it's like see Naples and die, isn't it? I guess so, yeah. But, yeah, basically implies that after you've seen Irene Cara, there's nothing left in life to enjoy. I don't know. but even you know the dancing in this as is about to be revealed by something coming up on the episode is in itself so fucking dated oh it really is i was watching um there's one thing i used to illustrate the way

that white culture commercializes and blams out black culture or black innovation and it's two clips from the 50s it's little rich Richard doing Tutti Frutti on telly and then Pat Boone doing it two years later. And yeah, this is kind of what's going on here. It's street dance that looks a fuck of a lot like ballet, basically. Oh yeah, it's just skinny girls doing plies or whatever off a Cadillac or something. It just annoys me seeing people dancing on cars.

What, in all circumstances? I don't know. Now you've put that in my head, I'm trying to think of a good example of a dance on a car. I can't think of a good one. My mind can't get past Nicolas Cage dancing on a car in a fucking annoying way. Yeah.

Yeah, good car dancing. Does it happen? Janet Jackson, When I Think of You, isn't there something there? Oh, yeah. Oh, there we go then. Does does grease lightning piss you off as well no not at all because they're doing something constructive you know i mean they've got to be on that car to do what they're supposed to be doing if they want to have a bit of a dance along the way then who am i to stop them but this is essentially what everyone under 30 thinks the 80s was like all the time and i've got

to say if there are any younger listeners to chart music number one why what's up with you go out and have sex or something while you can and number two no it was never like that we never danced on cars so the following week fame would fly to the very summit of mount pop staying there for three weeks before giving way to come on eileen by dex's midnight runners although it would take another five weeks before it was dislodged from the top 10 by which time the bbc records lp The Kids From Fame had begun its 12 week run as the number one LP in the UK. Although Cara's follow-up, Out Here On My Own Tonight, only got to number 58 in September of this year, fame would go on to sell 1.1 million copies over here. The second biggest single of 1982. One behind Come On Eileen

and one ahead of a single that we're going to deal with very soon. And she'd roar back in 1983 when Flashdance, What A Feeling, got to number two in July of that year, taken from a film which was written by dean pitchford the lyricist of this single is so incestuous chaps fame and another slice of americana coming up just a little bit later. A couple of weeks ago, Jeffrey Daniels from Shalimar danced his way onto the programme,

and we've had hundreds of letters from people asking for him back. Well, he is back, moving to his music, A Night To Remember. KID KID, back amongst more members of City Farm, warns us that we're going to get more American stuff later on before reminding us that social history was made in this studio a fortnight ago. And we're going to get another taste of it with the next single, A Night To Remember, by Shalimar. Formed in Los Angeles in 1976, Shalamar was originally a concept created by Dick Griffey and Don Cornelius, the booking agent and producer-presenter of the American music show Soul Train, which put out a medley of Motown

classics over a disco beat called Uptown Festival in early 1977, which got to number 25 on the Billboard chart and number 30 over here in May of that year. Inspired by its chart placing, Griffey formed a vocal trio to perform under the name and picked out two regular dancers from Soul Train, Jodie Watley and Jeffrey Daniel. They joined Gary Mumford, one of the singers on Uptown Festival, but after he bailed out a year later and his replacement left a year after that, Howard Hewitt was folded in and the first single with the definitive Shalimar line-up, Take that to the bank, put them back in the charts, getting to number 20 in January of 1979.

This single, the follow-up to I Can Make You Feel Good, which got to number 7 in May of this year, is the second cut from their six LP Friends, which came out in January. It entered the charts five weeks ago at number 49 and two weeks later it got up to number 25 and Top of the Pops came a knocking. With Jodie Watley being stuck at home being pregnant and the group being on hiatus the logical option was to stick on the video but when Michael Hurl was made aware that Jeffrey Daniel was in London

doing promo work and hoovering up influencers from the club scene and the King's Road, he invited him on a fortnight ago to dance to the single on Top of the Pops. Daniel responded by turning up in a new haircut and performed a body-popping routine he'd knocked up in his hotel room the night before, which feated a move he called the backslide,

which involved travelling backwards whilst giving the impression of moving forwards. And the pop crazed youngsters went berserk. While the single jumped eight places to number 17 the following week, the BBC were bombarded with letters from the body pop crazed youngsters, panting for them to repeat the performance. But Hurl, God bless him, has tracked down Shalamar's management, who were with Daniel in Amsterdam, and begged them to drag him back for an encore.

And this week, after the singles jumped another 11 places to number six here he is again and before we move into it kids falling into the unnecessary s trap there hasn't he a rare misstep on his part jeffrey daniels yeah a little misstep yeah i wasn't quite sure his heart was 100 in this one um i think he brightens up considerably for the next one. But, yeah, I saw that I absolutely, absolutely loved it, particularly the first performance. I may have missed this one. Looking at it now, it's great.

It's really, really good. And obviously it's technically wonderful. It's just a little bit alternative car parking places. Walking down the imaginary staircase, staircase you know and the limbo maneuvers and i don't think he quite pulls off the moonwalk not to the extent that like michael jackson who obviously famously copied it from him does but um this was absolutely far and away the coolest thing on the block um was like chalamar in my world it It was transatlantic, it's robo-romo-funk, it's contemporary, it's electronic, it's rockless.

And I think there's a real bonus, the sense that, like, Geoffrey Daniels and, to an extent, Jodie Whatley, actually, they connected with the sort of whole new romantic, you know, the fashion thing, the club thing that was happening in London, and it affected their appearance. How I didn't quite get it really sort of affected him.

But because I was always disappointed at this time, I was just like listening to so much music coming out of like New York or whatever in the early 80s in this particular style, you know. And the appearances of the, you know, which I took deeply to heart, you know, the appearances of the people making it didn't, they felt like they were still in the sort of 1977 vibe, basically. Too many sort of flares and big open shirts and all that and medallions and, you know, wrong hair, you know, for my liking and moustaches and what have you. But no, I mean, you can see that Geoff Dunst has been really affected by that kind of sensibility of what's happening in London, the club scene, he's going out.

And, you know, and I love that. And I felt it's, you know, I felt there was a kind of a reaching out there that was going on. I mean, it's absolutely true. I didn't realise until much later on when a lot of the Soul Train footage was released onto YouTube of just what a great dancer Jodie Whatley was as well

and just how brilliantly they worked in tandem. You know, they just do these kind of wonderfully kind of like sprightly routines. At one point they pretend to have a fight and she sort of pretends to punch him out, and then everybody else. And you just sense that a lot of the Soul Train dancers were pretty game, but they just weren't at that level. And I think that when the two of them bridled a little bit,

these two, frankly, brilliant youngsters, showing them up on the old Soul Train line or whatever. I mean, the original performance of this is, it's the definitive starman moment of the early 80s to my madden yeah i'm gonna go further chaps i believe this is even more influential than the starman moment because you know yeah bowie encouraged the youth of 1972 to experiment with hair dye and eyeshadow but he never got them to perform kabuki theater in a shopping precinct on a saturday afternoon did they this was so fucking influential yeah massively i mean and that's what's remarkable

because it's such a happenstance thing to happen it's just out of hell making a phone call yeah you know but body pop it when we first saw it as kids it was fucking miraculous yeah absolutely miraculous it was like like hip-hop in a. What was exciting about it was that it looked mental and great and amazing. How do I do this? But it seems self-sufficient. You just needed to crack the trick, the magic, and you could do it. Yes. And it didn't seem like something, I mean, obviously it probably was,

but it didn't seem like something you needed to put years of effort into learning. It wasn't like fucking juggling or something. No. What was exciting about body popping, for little kids i think was that it was almost like an attempt to um how could i put it to sort of cartoonify human flesh yes it was it was like replicating robot moves it was a massive nod to pop culture we'd grown up watching cartoons of robots and things like that and that kind of liquid metal kind of thing perhaps i'm going too far but it's only of course later you realize as a kid how it emerges from things like the electric boogaloo and that idea of a human body without

bones and of course jeffrey daniel has been popping on soul train if you like for years he says he's been doing it from 78 but the crucial thing is taking it from soul train to top of the pops that is a massive move not just in uk dance culture in uk playground culture yeah and it proves again the centrality of pop and top of the pops to young people in the uk and what's really telling about even though this is the second iteration of this what we are seeing here isn't just this amazing dance routine we're ultimately seeing the past kind of fading away, including the past of dance that's indicated by a show like Fame. Yes.

That's dying. And this new age is being born. Of course, there's still a BBC-ness to things that can never be avoided. You've got that strange random floor manager guy walking past towards the left at the beginning. You've got that strange shot from between a guy's legs where you half think a knacker sack might start swinging from the top of the screen that bit looks like he's humping up towards absolutely poor old jeffrey but it feels so distinctly new and my god how shit does zoom look yeah yes during this yeah i remember not to preempt any you know

what we talk about the playground stuff but everyone every time this appeared you you just have your minds blown yeah and you'd have discussion about how we did it yes i remember talking with my friends about this and like some of them were always on wheels or oil or some shit like that it was a proper proper mystery yeah it was so cool and you wanted to know how we did it like david said, I do think MJ does the backslide slash moonwalk better. I think MJ's just a better, more fluid dancer. And he has the extra aura of fucking being Michael Jackson, for Christ's sake. So that truly blows minds.

But I recall this blowing a lot of minds as well. In the original performance, of course, he accentuates the oddity of the backslide with that final moment where i think he's handcuffed isn't it and he backslides off here the gimmicks are a tad forced the drinking of a cup of tea yeah and the umbrella snowstorm and all that but it's still pure magic my jaw would have dropped watching this the original performance it really helped that he was introduced by dave lee travis who by this time is looking like an absolute relic of the 70s yes his beard's starting to go a bit gray at the edges and he just looks like i'm widdicombe's crotch by this time you know he's got 14 more episodes in him and he's looking more out of

place as time goes on and the golden oldie picture shows beckoning. So to set him aside Jeffrey Daniel, fucking hell. But anyway, fuck Travis. Let's talk about this. I can definitely see how Neil, being at school at the time, how there would have been a real direct playground impact. I'm absolutely sure. I was at Oxford and there wasn't a lot of body hot in the Hartford College

quad. Didn't you have a varsity breakdance crew? The blue ribboned massive. But actually actually there was this stuff was going on at least a sort of bodybuilding thing at um when they started doing a club in oxford about 82 83 there was there was a whole you know a bunch of sort of local geezers came in and um you know did the whole sort of moves to pretty much everything whether it was in toomey juicy fruit you know it was all you know whatever it was you know it didn't have to be electro frunk no god no you learned how to was all, you know, whatever it was, you know, it didn't have to be electro-frunk. No, God no.

You learn how to do it, you've just got to do it all the fucking time, aren't you? Yeah. Or Leet Warehouse when he had things like the electric teas, what was it, E.T. phone home. Yes. You know, that electro-frunk, you know, the thing like that, you know, that was just, so it really was happening and I just couldn't do it. I just stood and watched and admired, basically.

I think there was also a connection, maybe I've mentioned this before on chart music, but it's worth reiterating the context of something like this, the attraction of, you know, young African-Americans to things like craftwork, to things like automation, to these kind of, like, futuristic things, which a lot of people would decry as mechanical and soulless and why you're sort of performing soul like you did back in the old days or whatever. And I think, you know, there was a link between, you know,

the attraction of futurism and black people. I mean, you think about how nostalgic sort of white rock and pop culture is, you know, and a lot of it's, you know, the subtext. Weren't the 50s good? Weren't the 60s good? Weren't the 70s memorable? And black people want to say, not for us, they fucking well were. You know, and so there's perhaps sometimes a disillusion to dwell on a past that was like full of like strife and the struggle for civil rights or whatever present

ed weren't that great either but the future maybe yeah we're only a couple of years away from like model 500 no ufo you know i mean it all feeds in definitely this is the year that shallamore absolutely blew up in the uk that was down to them and daniel in particular coming over here and just sucking in the new pop aesthetic in an interview with smash hits this year he essentially laid it all out and he said when i watched top of the pops for the first time it was pause abc they were something i'd never seen before white guys in gold lamé suits doing all these choreographed steps with a funk backing bow wow wow imagination mark almond they all had their own concepts which is something you don't get in the states everyone just hears a guitar lick on someone else's album and thinks that's great we'll rip it off english acts on the other hand are genuine wow and you can actually see how quickly he's picked

it up because on the cover of this single he's still in 1979 he's got an afro and leather trousers on yeah it's fucking amazing let's break down the routine then so it starts off with a load of zoo wankers but they eventually part to reveal daniel rising from behind a table with a chalamet logo on it essentially reprising his role as a barman in the video then he does the walking downstairs bit and then he comes up via an imaginary spiral staircase he does the backslide because that was expected of him yeah i mean he's doing the backslide behind the table so you can't see what his feet are doing which is what everyone would be watching at this point yeah, he's doing the backside behind the table, so you can't see what his feet are doing, which is what everyone would be watching at this point. So he's teasing us.

And when he comes round from the table, he looks like he's come from the future. He's got these amazingly complicated red and white trousers tucked into white socks, and he's got a Roy Lichtenstein-esque image of an anti-aircraft gun going rat-a-tat on a sleeveless T-shirt. A month later, I was watching him on some Channel 4 show, and he going rat-a-tat on a sleeveless t-shirt a month later i was watching

him on some channel 4 show and he had a similar t-shirt on that just said jam with about five a's in it and i just thought fucking yes he's a well all right too and he's surrounded by the zoo wankers who tried to dance along with him but it just looks like a pub team playing keepy up next to Maradona, doesn't it? Oh, gotcha. Eventually they give up. He's blown them out of the water. It's one of those great things where the right 80s

throws in to relieve the wrong 80s. Absolutely. Oh, God, yes. The deep off the crowd. Yeah, yeah. And also, it's quite interesting. It's quite, to Top of the Pops credit here,

it's actually quite an adventurous play that went round with the format. I mean, you know, on Hurl's part to sort of do something like this. Because if I think of all the great previous Top of the Pops moments, is actually a quite adventurous play that went round with the format. I mean, on Hurl's part, to do something like this, because if I think of all the great previous Top of the Pops moments, like the Starman thing, or Sparks' town at the beginning of the both of them,

they're just things that occur within the format of the show, and here, they've actually been quite imaginative in terms of the format and said, yeah, why not do this? And it's a throwback to Ready, Steady, Go and that, isn't it? Because it's like saying, look, here's the new dance that everyone's talking about, here's how do it yeah well here's how you do it but the thing is like you say out we of course as kids we're like craning our necks close to the television trying

to look at his fucking feet yeah how does he do this shit but even beyond the backslide and moonwalk there's actually a more even more mysterious moment in this where he sort of revolves. Yes. And I swear down, like, as a kid, I remember looking at his feet. Of course, this is pre-video and everything like that, so you couldn't re-watch it. I watched it again, obviously, for the purpose of this chart. I still can't figure it out. Cannot figure out how he does this stuff. No.

That's true magic. And that stays with you in a big, big, big way. There's this revolving thing he does. He, like, turns circles, and he's moving like a robot whilst he's doing it seemingly not moving his feet how the fuck is he doing it this is before the days of you know you can buy trainers with wheels in them so it's a real mystery a real mystery and we can see kid in the background watching on at the beginning as he transcended everyone else but

halfway through we see him talking to someone out of shot and laughing i don't know what that's about i wonder what they can see behind that well i know he's just doing the walking down fake stairs stuff but it's exciting seeing that that some people have access to what the fuck he's doing behind that screen but yeah like davis said it is weird isn't it it's a totally different thing for top of the pops yeah having Having this almost a magician's table is distinctly odd, but because of that, unforgettable. So he does the backslide with an umbrella while someone blows confetti

at him with a fan. And then he goes into the only bit of the routine that I didn't like when he does the thing with a tea cup and saucer. You know, an actual tea cup and saucer that's on the table, because I felt patronised as a British person. Yeah, that was definitely for the British.

I mean, I remember the other year in the Women's World Cup and I got really into it, you know, and I was really up for appreciating the skill and flair of the American team when they played England. But then that woman did a goal celebration by mimsily drinking a cup of tea and crooking a little finger. I just thought, ah, fuck off, you bastard. I know. I really

wanted one of our players to score and then pretend to be morbidly obese and shoot loads of school kids. That would have fucking taught them. They were absolutely obsessed Americans. I remember interviewing bands and they keep making jokes about tea and high tea. Crumpets. Everything

stops at four o'clock for high tea. I remember there was a trailer for, I think, when Frank Bruner fought Mike Tyson in America. And it shows, like, Bruner, like, really kind of, you know, wailing away in a sparring session. Then a little butler rings a bell, ding-a-ling, and everything pauses in mid-round so they can have high tea, you know, because Frank Bruner's English. Then he backslides behind the bar, suckily shoos the zoo wankers out the way and then he descends behind it giving us a wave as he goes like you say David

a lot of the stuff is just mime but he's done the amazing thing of doing mime and not being a wanker that's incredible could you do any of these moves Al? no and I didn't even bother trying me neither I just thought well that's fucking brilliant

I can't do that no this is it I rapidly realised I couldn't do any trying. Me neither. I just thought, well, that's fucking brilliant. I can't do that. No, this is it. I rapidly realised I couldn't do any of it. Oh, you had a go though, Neil. That's good. Everyone in the playground was having a go, but you could figure out within 10 seconds, oh shit.

Did you have a crew? No, I did not have a crew, Al. No, I'm sorry, but I didn't. Everyone had a go, but no, I realised rapidly I couldn't. I'm still jealous of the fact that Sophia can moonwalk. No. God, yeah, she can moonwalk no god yeah she can moonwalk without a doubt in fact

she likes if I'm telling her off moonwalking away because she knows it staggers me no what a fucking insult well it's a good

it's a good way of evading telling off you know not just fucking off with two fingers it's no way of pursuing her is there you just have to stand there

waving your fist I'll get you next time but backsliding away it leaves me struck dumb with both awe and anger so um she uses that a lot brilliant someone in knots made a documentary about breakdancing and body popping in nottingham called ng83 and i did an article for the newspaper i edited ended up meeting a lot of original members of the of the rock city crew the very good but very unimaginately titled breakdancing crew who played at rock city and were based there and i always ask them you know obvious first question what what was it what was the first

when was the first time you saw this and wanted to do this and i just thought well okay uh buffalo girls uh wild style being uh shown on channel four but no no no they all said the original performance of this wow jeffrey daniel just fucking changed this country yeah he made the weetabix breakdance for fuck's sake yeah they stopped being racist biscuits and started spinning on their grains yeah because of jeffrey daniel we got to see kids robot dancing on that's life we got that advert for right guard with the bloke in the suit break dancing yeah and we got i know what breakfast is all about it's ready brick there ain't no doubt he made ready break cool for fuck's sake and the thing

is i mean i know it's a cliche hip-hop has these four pillars and all that but there were sort of four different ways in you know and you could be into graffiti you could be into dancing you could be into the music we're about to hit a period where hip-hop is in danger in a sense of becoming not a fad but a detail of pop rather than a genre to itself of course down the pipe soon we're going to have things like yeah white lines and message blowing our minds and in a couple years we're going to have houdini but you know this period this was remarkable and it seemed to sort of yeah open up possibilities we obviously were not seeing wild style we had to wait like fuck to watch that film but this was a glimpse of something.

And I think the promise of that, the excitement of that stayed with a lot of us. And it takes the focus right off the rest of the band. The one person in the band who doesn't take solos is the absolute front person of the band now. That must have pissed Howard off big style. Well, look at what we're talking about. We're talking about the dance.

We're not. I mean, it's a fantastic record, of course. And we need to talk about it. And we need to talk about Shalimar. Because Shalimar are a fucking skill. Yeah. It doesn't get said enough. To all intents and purposes, a disco band who have gone post-disco.

Is this single the follow-up to I Can Make You Feel Good? Yes. I mean, fuck me, what a run they're on. Yeah. Is this sounding slightly dated? No, not really. The futuristic dancing helps. It's a brilliant song and people forget about it

because there's so much shit around this song, good and bad. Yeah. At the time, this was held up as a prime example of Gary and Sharon music. You know the John Godber play, Bouncers? This is the song that the Sharons sing at the disco. Right. The prime example of, oh, disco, eh? Good on the Sharons. Totally. And plus, it's been chopped up

a lot, this song, to the point where the chorus becomes the thing that only people remember and the rest of it is forgotten about because it gets used in adverts so much. But it glides so beautifully. It's such a beautiful song. Absolutely. And it's had such a long, long afterlife. You know, it had been played and heard countless times since 1982 in a way that, like, sort of precludes it from dating.

It's up there with Boogie Wonderland as prime disco. Yeah, totally. So the following week, A Night To Remember nipped up one place to number five, its highest position. The follow-up, There It Is, also got to number five in October, and they'd rammed off the year with Friends getting to number 12 in December. In the meantime, tapes of both Daniel's performances were asked for by Michael Jackson, which resulted in Daniel linking up with him and teaching him the backslide, he used in his performance of billy jean at the motown

25th anniversary special in march of 1983 and called the moonwalk in 1984 after chalamar split up daniel relocated to london presenting 620 soul train for channel 4 popping up in give my regards to broad street being a train in starlight express and releasing the single acdc which was written by andrew lloyd weber and richard still go and becoming michael jackson's choreographer in the late 80s fucking hell he went from this to richard still go but the choreography in Bad and Smooth Criminal, which are the two videos I think he works on, are fucking amazing.

So, you know, good collaboration there. And in the early 90s, A Night to Remember was saddled with being the music for an advertising campaign for Shaking Bernie In, Harvester Restaurants,

but survived it. Because it is that fucking good. Shaking Bernie In good let me just throw out two more things if you've not seen shalimar's performance on the tube at the end of this year go on youtube and do so the version of a night to remember is fucking astonishing and number two imagine if zoo had formed a band fucking hell Oh my god That's made a little bit of sick come in my mouth I'm sorry Oh mate

This episode of Top of the Pops Is putting the trainers To the anus But, we've got to stop there, because this is too much for me, and if I've got to stop, alas, you have to stop as well, but don't forget, the Pop Craze Patreons have already devoured this episode in full, without any rubbish adverts, and if you want to get with them. You know what to do. Patreon.com. Slash. Chart music.

Anyway. See you tomorrow for the next part. My name's Al Needham. They're David Stubbs and Neil Kulkarni. And you. Are. Staying. Pop crazed.

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