Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #67: June 9th 1977 – God Save Chart Music

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

The latest episode of the podcast which asks; are the Wurzels going to float in an eternal hellscape of bodily waste and toenails for singing about turning bulls gay?This episode would have been perfe...ct for the other month while Shakin’ Jubilee was occurring – but no matter, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, because we’re going right back to the apogee of the Silby Joobs, which no-one ever said in 1977 because people weren’t as rubbish as they are today. Flags! Bunting! Street parties! Massive patriotic Yorkshire puddings! Blatant chart-rigging! Your hosts are a) giving thousand-yard stares over some sausage rolls and praying that their father isn’t going to run off with a Characterful Dad in a dress and some balloons up their shirt, b) communing with nature with a Jubilee coin in their grubby paw and c) watching some Caledonian ultra-violence outside a pub and pretending to be asleep under a Union Jack listening to their Dad banging on about Elvis again, but they all unite on Thursday evening to witness a Tony Blackburn – who has just invented Fathers 4 Justice – introduce a decidedly mixed bag of Pop treats. Musicwise, it’s a veritable trifle of Pop, layered with West Midlands Safari Park Hi-Life, Ormskirk Americana, Southampton Funk, and a thick, satisfying custard of Black American Pop. Frankie Miller pulls a mic stand about. The Pips warm up for a night at the rollerdisco. The Stranglers piss about and stomp on someone’s fingers. Demis Roussos lies to us about an island. Neil Innes drags TOTP into 1982. Legs & Co have to make something up on the spot. Bob Marley celebrates Jubilee week by telling us that Britain is rammel and we should clear out as soon as possible. The Wurzels bring us another unflinching examination of rural life. And we get ‘treated’ to Little Rabbit Arse. But there’s an elephant in bondage trousers in the room, isn’t there?Neil Kulkarni and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham for a gargantuan street party of critical analysis, with tangents ahoy – including a trawl through the Nationwide Jubilee Fair, 35 hours of Triangle, Demis Roussos’ £30,000 bed, Retirement Pop, the dark link between the Wurzels and the Radio 1 Roadshow, and cycling tips from Simon Bates’ massive floating head. If you’re a fan of the Monarchy, best skip the first hour – and yes, swearing a –plenty…Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon*** Get your tickets for our live show HERE *** Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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. 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?
Starting point is 00:00:34 Chart music. Chart music. Hey! Up you pop-craze youngsters, and welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music, the podcast that gets its hands right down the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, and standing firm with me today are Neil Kulkarni and Taylor Parks. Team ATV Land once again all up in the area, if you will. Indeed. So boys, the pop things, the interesting things, gizm. Yeah, nothing pop and interesting. I've got a bollockingocking from the doctors so i've had to eliminate chocolate and crisps for my already joyless
Starting point is 00:01:30 existence oh no oh no man what am i going to do you're made of about 70 crisps on you i don't know what's going to happen to me um because healthy alternatives no they're not going to hit the spot so i've just had to eliminate them in a catholic sense um so yeah somewhat joyless at the moment i've had a bit of work on bit of interviewing been employed unbelievably as an expert advisor to a museum oh yeah it's bizarre south asian music museum in manchester um they sent me all their exhibits and asked for my expert advice as if i know what the fuck i'm doing um but that was interesting but to be honest with you the pop and interesting has been displaced by the sheer pornographic joy of watching the fall of Boris Johnson. And, you know, I mean, round here, the sudden online rise of binly mega chippy to international prominence.
Starting point is 00:02:17 Yes. Is that any good? No, no. It's mediocre chippy at best. The Marina Fish Bar in Willanall, about a mile down the road, or the Poseidon that serves the pig people of Charlesmoor are both much better. But yeah, that was seriously fucking mad. I mean, you know, City of Culture, which we've had for the past year,
Starting point is 00:02:35 had no impact whatsoever. No. Shifting public perceptions of commentary. Binley Mega Chippy, biggest global sensation we've done since Wheelie Bin Cat Lady, really. Oh, Lord. So lord so you know people seem freaked out and delighted that we have a neighborhood called binley i mean thank christ they didn't find out about mount nod or spawn end or paradise or any of these other weird neighborhoods in coventry but yeah pop and interesting stuff thin on the ground to be
Starting point is 00:02:59 honest with you for me no taylor well graham green said that success is more dangerous than failure which is easy for him to say after all those hits with the goodies but if it's true then all i can say is few so i've been mostly at home you know finally filling in the gaps in my cultural education. So I've been watching some Game for a Laugh. Right. And let me tell you, they shot the wrong Kennedy. And also I thought it was finally time to tackle one of the great long works. I'm not getting any younger. Well, I am, but not temporarily.
Starting point is 00:03:42 So I thought, okay, now's the time. And so it was between La Recherche du Temps Perdu, Le Mort d'Arthur, Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, and Triangle, the ill-fated early 80s BBC soap opera. Yes, sailor! Sailor Passenger Ferry. So I tossed two coins and spent the last month or so really trying to savor the nuance of triangle it's a series that's become a kind of one joke aside in shit lazy tv programs
Starting point is 00:04:17 about shit lazy tv programs and i thought well there must be more to it than this. So I watched the whole of series one, which was 26 episodes. Now on the series two of three of this nautical odyssey. And basically it's everything you'd expect from a program shot on video aboard a ferry that sails between Felixstowe, Gothenburg and Amsterdam over and over again. You've got non-actors shouting over the sound of the ship's engines, curtains drawn against the glaring grey void outside, high drama in parked estate cars on rainy, wet dockside concrete in Suffolk,
Starting point is 00:05:04 all shot like an Aventis management training video or the dialogue scenes in a Learn French programme that went out at 7.40am on a Sunday, but presented as primetime entertainment, like practically every scene starts off like, hello, Mr Exposition, hello, Mr Infodump. So what's been going on then? It's amazing.
Starting point is 00:05:27 After 35 episodes of this, just nothing in the universe seems to matter anymore except this life on the low seas. Knock it all you want, Taylor, but no triangle, no El Dorado. And where would we be as a nation? It's true. I mean, people are familiar with triangles an easy gag right like everybody knows like the first episode starts with kate omara super milf um seven years younger than i am now i think it would practically be cradle snatching taylor faircloth sunbathing in a bikini on deck which obviously sounded great in a production meeting
Starting point is 00:06:06 but of course they're shooting in the middle of the picturesque north sea in late autumn and they still had to go through with it it all became a running joke for terry wogan and all this sort of stuff but it's like once you get past that you discover the deeper truths concealed within like the archaeologists sifting through the Roman rubbish dump. You know, you get that true insight into this world of blue blazers and grey slacks, you know, where a lettuce and radish salad with thickly buttered white bread and a glass of just juice is health food. and a glass of just juice is health food you know your lunchtime routine might be uh light ale bacon rolls and a game of squash it's britain trying to soup itself up you know away
Starting point is 00:06:53 from the the shabby egalitarian 70s and into uh an exciting euro-american future but finding that it had nowhere to go it was always for me let down by the actual boat itself that show yeah because kate omara undeniably glamorous but the boat just looked like a herring trawler or something yeah it didn't look in any way kind of somewhere you'd want to be yeah and it's a shame because as a kid i loved cross-channel ferries like the loved is too weak a word they were magical to me it because it was a rupture in everyday life getting on one of those things especially if you're from kidderminster which is like virtually the furthest point in britain from the sea but you get on one of those things
Starting point is 00:07:37 and set sail it was like going into space that this this boat might as well have been apollo 11 you know i mean if apollo 11 had had a track and field machine. It's like your entire experience of the world just changed the moment you stepped aboard into this alternative universe. Yeah, I would have liked a bit more of that spirit in Triangle, to be honest, really. But anyway, it'll all be in my forthcoming book,
Starting point is 00:08:03 Triangle, the Unfolding Text. really you know but anyway it'll all be in my forthcoming book triangle the unfolding text but having basically having now absorbed close to 35 hours of triangle i can say with some measure of authority that they should have called this program ship of cunts or possibly the boat that sucked um it's just never go. Just never go back. Never, never go back. But it's, no, no, I know. Do you remember that thrill of standing on deck and the North Sea wind was blowing so hard
Starting point is 00:08:33 you could just lean into it and it would keep you upright. Oh, beautiful. Just happier, simpler times, you know. The pleasure you could take from simple things like 30 tonnes of floating metal with triple controllable pitch propellers, three Solzer ZA40s and an inaccessible club class lounge sloping towards Boulogne. being on a ferry off the coast of Scotland. And seeing the proud prow of this boat completely bisect a jellyfish in the water. What a delightful sight that was. It was so satisfying.
Starting point is 00:09:13 Yeah. I tell you what, though, Series 2 of Triangle was much worse than Series 1. For a start, Kate O'Mara's not in it. So, like, I mean, what's... What? No! They've got a new character, which is like a rich old lady. Does she troll up about in a bikini?
Starting point is 00:09:30 Alas, no, but she's got a... Well, what's the point of it? She's got a little yappy dog. And the point is that she lives on the boat. She's like a permanent passenger. Like, as if it's a cruise liner. Imagine being rich and choosing to live on a boat that sails between Felixstowe, Gothenburg and Amsterdam.
Starting point is 00:09:49 Like, she just loves that bluish-grey half-light and she's got a thing about sleeping in very narrow beds. I don't know why she's got a dog on there as well. She's got this fucking dog running around. Yeah, yeah, bounces ball on deck, bounces over the railingsings oh well i've got something that's very pop and extremely interesting in case you've not heard chart music is making its first ever live appearance at the london podcast festival fucking hell we announced it first to the pop craze Patreon people and the day after we sold it right out on day one. It's not that.
Starting point is 00:10:27 But the good people at King's Place have opened up the balconies and tickets are still available. So sit tight, listen keenly. King's Place, King's Cross, Saturday, September the 17th at 2pm. Ticket price £12.50 plus 10% booking fee. And it's going to be me and the London contingent of Chart Music. So that's David, Sarah and Taylor.
Starting point is 00:10:51 And yes, we're going to attempt to break down an episode of Top of the Pops in 90 minutes because we're fucking stupid. I won't mention which one it is yet, but we've looked at it and it's doable isn't it Taylor? Yeah, thanks. Back to the early days it and it's doable, isn't it, Taylor? Yeah. Thanks.
Starting point is 00:11:05 Back to the early days where the podcast was about an hour and a half long. Yeah. What are you going to do about all the sort of bootleg merch shitehawks who are going to be outside, you know, with their split up scarves and stuff? Well, arms are going to be broken, aren't they? Yeah, we've reanimated Peter Grant. He's just going to just stride around in an open neck shirt, patting a baseball bat against his open bum.
Starting point is 00:11:28 Yeah, afterwards, because it finishes at about half past three, we can all go to the pub, and if you're really nice, I'll let you have a feel of me Judy Zook sat in tour jacket. How's that? Pop crazy youngsters. How can you resist? A couple of questions that need to be answered. Yes, we will be recording it and putting it on
Starting point is 00:11:45 patreon as for a live cast don't know yet and yes we will be attempting to sell merch our own merch official chart music yeah none of these t-shirts with the chart music logo over a picture of stewart mcconaughey and andrew collins as far as tickets go, there's, I don't know, let's ask future Al, shall we? Greetings,
Starting point is 00:12:12 people of chart music slightly past. This is Al of the near future. At present, I can report that there are three seats available
Starting point is 00:12:24 in the stage balcony and available in the stage balcony And 37 in the main balcony So I command you to buy all the remaining tickets Before B.A. Robertson and Toya do And they lock balloons full of piss down on us Oh, an owl of the past Well done for doing all the merch in the wrong dimensions, meaning I have to spend the entire weekend doing them properly, you thick twat.
Starting point is 00:12:52 Anyway, chart music live. Tickets still available. You can do it right now, please. You can do it right now, please Well, thanks very much, Al of the very near future And fuck you too, you guys What's the weather like? So yeah, here's what you need to do right now Get your arse over to bit.ly slash chartmusiclive
Starting point is 00:13:21 And you, yes you, could be in the same room as some of us for a bit. It's going to be mental, because you've got people travelling. I know. A long way for this, it's brilliant. I know, and it's frightening. I'm not going to lie to you, mate, I'm shitting myself. What happens when they see me? And they've got this image in their head of what I look like,
Starting point is 00:13:38 and just be totally disappointed. I'm terrified that the fucking audience are just going to get up after three minutes and go to the bar at the back and ask for angela and you're going to look up whilst you're doing it and there's going to be like a sea of phones out there all taking photos and stuff yeah i want to say that now don't hold your phones up all the way through it please just live in the moment but yeah it's something we've we've put off i put off for fucking ages. But you know what, sod it. Let's just do the fucking thing. And yes, Neil, the next one we do will be in the provinces.
Starting point is 00:14:13 And yes, you and Simon will get your go. Oh, fab. Great. Oh, the other pop and interesting thing of late is that I have treated myself to my first bike since 1981. And I'm fucking loving the shit out of it it's great brilliant yeah i just got bored of being a fat cunt sat at a fucking desk looking at a computer like i'm doing right now and i wanted to lose a bit of weight but you know me i'd rather go to a scat club for the elderly than go to the gym and one of my biggest regrets of lockdown was that why didn't i get a bike and claim the empty streets of Nottingham for myself?
Starting point is 00:14:47 You can say it's my midlife crisis, but instead of arsing around in a sports car and trying to relive the 20s that I didn't have and wouldn't want anyway, now I want to be fucking nine again, man. I just want to go out and just bomb around the streets all day long. What sort of bike is it, Al? Is it, like, well, chunky? Or is it, like, well, racer-like?
Starting point is 00:15:05 How many gears has it got and all that? It's an e-bike, of course. You still have to pedal. Yeah, yeah. But you can touch a button and you can get up hills without having to get off your bike and push it up
Starting point is 00:15:14 and have people laugh at you. Has it got, like, eight massive long wing mirrors on each side coming out? No. No, no, not yet. Now, obviously, because it's been so fucking long and the roads
Starting point is 00:15:27 are so fucking dangerous i've been very nervous to go i'm not going to be one of these cunts who ride on the pavement because i fucking hate them but i've been really worried about going out on the road and been casting about for advice and what better pool of experts are there to teach me the ways of two wheels than the Radio 1 DJs of the mid-eighties? Chaps, I'm going to send you something right now. Okay. Say what you see. The Radio 1 Guide to Pedal Power. A poster which was issued by the Department of Transport,
Starting point is 00:16:04 which was sponsored by Motorcraft Ford transport which was sponsored by motocraft ford illustrator by sandy james of tiger with the real johnny cougar's face at the bottom and packed with tips on bicycle safety from some of the radio one djs of the era who happened to appear as ghostly disembodied heads who float over which i think is a bit dangerous but let's go through it shall we so kid jensen the modicum of common sense as always tells us to keep that bike in proper shape you know check the chain and the spokes and the lights and the tires and accompanied by an image of what looks like billy dane sorting his bike out which is nice mike reads in his reactor light repeat phase here isn't it yeah yeah telling kids to read the highway code mike smith what's he saying to the youth don't
Starting point is 00:16:51 risk it the typical mike smith message isn't it just don't risk it whatever it is no chances instead of moving to the center of a busy road to turn right it's often safer to stop on the left-hand side and cower on the pavement like a bitch, essentially. Which is completely wrong now, apparently. I think the highway code encourages you to go in the middle of the road. No, I think you're right there. Mike Smith also says,
Starting point is 00:17:17 remember, a helicopter is actually a safer way. Yes! Or, on to the next image. Why is Peter Powell in full in full woo hey mode isn't he yeah he's delighted isn't he practice cuts out all sorts of wobblers basically telling kids to just fuck about on the playground get off the fucking road and out of my way essentially i saw peter powell in a 1983 top of the pops the other day he didn't half look middle-aged fast it's like yeah because you know like he's all sort of bubbly and curly in the late
Starting point is 00:17:51 70s ones someone from 1983 looks like grant shapps oh he's always had a bit of grant shapps about him which is weird actually because grant shapps also looks like anthea turner yeah on to the next panel why it's steve wright telling us to dress up and get crazy with fluorescent or bright clothing and of course who else but pig wanker general that's a really disturbing image isn't it yeah yeah why uh am i wrong i've not seen him without glasses on before that i'm not used to that look at all no he almost looks like he's leering he's telling the you let's have lots of good clear signals telling others exactly what you're going to do but that doesn't fucking matter to the driver behind the bike because he's looking at the terrifying sight of simon bates's massive edge veering for him man yeah he
Starting point is 00:18:42 does not suit not wearing spectacles, that man. No. That should never happen again. On to the next one. Andy Peebles tells us to watch your backs. Yeah. Check behind. That's essential. Whenever you start or make a turn or move out to overtake,
Starting point is 00:18:57 watch your back. Andy Peebles here looking like a pornographer. Yes, he is. Very seedy picture of Andy Peebles. He's always looked seedy, hasn't he, Peebles here looking like a pornographer. Yes. Very seedy picture of Andy Peebles. He's always looked seedy, hasn't he, Peebles? Yeah. And finally, who else but John Peel, who tells us that the others may be crazy,
Starting point is 00:19:15 but there's no need for you to be. Get yourself fully trained to ride a bike properly. And that's accompanied by an image of what looks like a really satanic looking Dracula in a Volvo. About to plough into poor old Billy Dane. Yeah, it's like a small scale sort of remake of Spielberg's Jewel going on. Yes, without the tarantulas. Draculas like Volvos.
Starting point is 00:19:40 Department of Transport, Motorcraft Ford, Johnny Cougar, and Radio 1. Putting the youth right. It's interesting to note who isn't on that. I'm putting this at about 1984, 1985, don't you think? Yeah, yeah. No Travis.
Starting point is 00:19:57 He fucking hates cyclists, obviously. No Janice either. No, we don't. No, because what would she say? Get some nice pink tassels on your handlebars and boys will like you, no doubt. Do you think any of the people in this poster have actually ridden a bike since they got out of short trousers? I don't know if any of them have ever ridden a bike at all. The important advice for bike riders at that age and at that time is how to avoid the saddle hitting your head when you come over the crossbars and stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:20:22 There's none of that here. No. Can you do wheelies on your bike, Al wouldn't dare try it's become a sort of male right now it's just a thing boys do they just ride around with a constant wheelie it's like pre-epism in bike form yes i think bikes are designed to do that whereas i don't know hefting a grifter wheel off the ground oh no if you weren't jeff capes you couldn't do that oh yeah notes and corrections from the previous episode we mentioned when we talked about the inspire of carpets how they were
Starting point is 00:20:51 in the dance charts and we cast dispersions and scoffed at it well yeah obviously it was a remix of this is how it feels isn't it and if it's the one that i've heard it's fucking cat shit really yeah it's just some generic biff boff and you have to listen for about five and a half minutes before um tom hingley comes in and does a bit of singing so yeah and secondly when we covered new kids on the block we assumed that that t-shirt that ken out of new kids on the was wearing, was South Today as a tribute to the BBC regional show. No, no, no, no, no. You're saying it wasn't?
Starting point is 00:21:28 It was actually, and thanks to an unknown pop craze youngster who chipped in when he was given as a five-star review, which you can also do, pop craze youngsters, it's Youth of Today, the hardcore band of the late 80s, early 90s. One of the forerunners of the straight edge movement. Oh, I thought you meant it was a promotional T-shirt for the musical youth single. It's a judgment time, sang bong, bong, bong, ayo. Anyway, it's time as always to give thanks and praise to the true heroes of chart music,
Starting point is 00:22:01 the new batch of pop craze Patreons. And in the $5 section this week, we have... Leighton Crook. Bongo Inferno. Matthew Trash. Bexter. Michael Murphy. Peter Moore.
Starting point is 00:22:17 Pete Boardman. And Phil Robinson. Thank you, babies. Cheers. Lovely people. And in the $3 section, we have Matt D, Hannah Wood, Simon Banner, Jeff Lloyd, Duncan Condé, Two Meter Wingspan, Jim Tomlinson, Mark Colclough, and Matthew Evans.
Starting point is 00:22:39 Oh, you are the wind beneath our wings. You are the wind beneath our wings. Oh, and Gavin Montgomery, Denise King, Kat and Clive Parry just jacked it right up this month. Oh, bless their hearts. You get special treatment. And of course, one thing that all Patreon members get to do that you cheapskates out there can't is jig and a rig and a reconfig the brand new chart music top ten. Shall we, boys? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:13 Hit the fucking music! We've said goodbye to mini whores, the worst dressed homosexual in the Castro, The worst dressed homosexual in the Castro Heat big cunt and semiotic trousers Which means two up, four down Four new entries and a brand new number one Whoa, bloody hell The former number one drops seven places from number three to number ten Two Ronnies, one cup
Starting point is 00:23:43 New entry at number nine for Arse to Mouth. Down two places from number six to number eight, Rock Expert, David Sturlabs. It's a three-place drop from number four to number seven for Bomberdog. But it's a three- place jump for this week's number 6. The Banked Cunts Who Aren't Fucking Real. Into the
Starting point is 00:24:12 top 5 and they're up three places from number 8 to number 5. Here comes Jizzum. A new entry straight in at number 4 for Cliffy White Boy and DJ Mr. Bronson. Top three time and it's a one place drop for That Dog's Dead Now.
Starting point is 00:24:35 Straight in at number two, my fucking car. Which means... The highest new entry straight in at number one, the Airbnb 52s. Oh, my days, boys, what a chance. What a time to be alive. Exciting movement up at the top there. Let's just go through those new entries, shall we? Arse to mouth, and that's a Roman, too, of course.
Starting point is 00:25:02 Like soul to soul, but a bit fisty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cliffy Whiteboy and DJ Mr. Bronson proves once again that there's always been a dance element to the chart music top ten. Yeah. My fucking car is obviously a 90s indie landfill. And the Airbnb 52 speaks for itself really, doesn't it? It does.
Starting point is 00:25:23 So, Pop Craze youngsters, if you're still holding back on dobbing in your subs to chart music, now is the time to get things right. Now is the time to see the light. You get them fingers, you set them up on the keyboard, you mash, mash, mash patreon.com slash chart music and... Hang on, let me demonstrate. You get that money.
Starting point is 00:25:46 Hear it? You pull open this G-string right here. And you hear that? I'm jingling, baby. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th.
Starting point is 00:26:13 Terms and conditions apply. It's for you. So this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, really should have been the last episode, but it didn't cross my mind until it was too late, due to me being a big thick bellend of a man. Because this time, we're going all the way back to June the 9th, 1977. Yes, Pop Craze Youngsters, Jubilee Week. Proper Jubilee Week.
Starting point is 00:26:43 Because when you say the Jubilee, you always mean the silver jubilee you know i mean yeah yeah just like the war is the war that jubilee is the jubilee yeah and it wasn't this fucking shitty recent one that got in the way of everything indeed indeed so how did you spend shaking jubilee because you didn't mention it in the pop and interesting things. Can't imagine why. Just tramadol, I think. I mean, the difference is, with the platyjewbs... Oh, that word's banned. That phrase is
Starting point is 00:27:13 banned, Neil. Okay, okay. I don't recall anybody calling it the silbyjewbs in 1977, because we're a proper people and not cunts. A country of adults. Yes! Like fucking thick adults, but adults nonetheless. I mean, the thing is, of course, with the Platinum Jubilee, you could ignore it. Yes.
Starting point is 00:27:31 And only let it percolate in for you to take the piss out of it. Whereas when you're a kid, it wasn't quite so simple. I mean, what I caught, you know, is as usual, you know, this myth that we have in this country, oh, we do pageantry well yeah it's the old myth we don't actually we do it fairly poorly we do it in a way that reflects our national character really kind of half-assed and totally embarrassing yes and and what kind of disgusted me about the bits that i did see was the blending in of all that bloody wokeness yes kids pretending to be a river with flags emblazoned with their worries about climate
Starting point is 00:28:05 change i mean for fuck's sake i would rather have had yeah that's a north korean style statement of mass fealty to the crown really perhaps a procession past the queen and and king tampax and prince nonce with with kids crawling on the knees yeah nonce andrew and it was just way too touchy-feely and the only genuinely genuinely moving moment was Boris Johnson getting booed. Yes. Oh, that made me proud. That was sweet. But, you know, I mean, during the original coronation in 52,
Starting point is 00:28:34 when the cameramen and the presenters went on lunch that day, they didn't bother putting anything on. They just had a shot of the uni and Jack flapping for an hour in total silence. Part of me would have slightly preferred that or something similar you know like just just a flag just for three days on bbc one yeah with a faint face on shot of the queen looking like a miserable cow bag as normal but with infinitesimal slowness yeah it going from the center of the flag right up to her eyeballs um that would have been much better than this sort of mawkish,
Starting point is 00:29:05 cringeworthy weekend of national shame. But hey-ho, yeah, I avoided it because you could. But 1977, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Proper jubilee went on all fucking year. And this is the absolute pinnacle of the cap doffing, isn't it? We're two days removed from the official day of celebration and the street parties and the non-stop ramming of the Royal S days removed from the official day of celebration and the street parties and the non-stop ramming of the royal scepter up the arse of the nation i mean i was
Starting point is 00:29:30 nine years old when all this went down and it was the first time in my life where patriotism had reared its ugly head seeing union jacks everywhere seemed like an absolute novelty as opposed to nowadays where the union jack's just a fucking logo on a bag of carrots. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It wasn't the idea so much that, oh, we're a great country
Starting point is 00:29:52 and all this kind of stuff. It was like, oh, it's the mid-70s. Let's have some kind of a celebration. Let's do something. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's like when Argentina used to win the World Cup and everyone was cheering. They were going like, but aren't you worried the It's like when Argentina used to win the World Cup and everyone was cheering. They were going like,
Starting point is 00:30:05 but aren't you worried the dictatorship views it as propaganda and all that? And they're like, yes. No, yeah, it's our football team just won the World Cup. People are able to separate that a bit more. I'm not sure if you can do that in Britain now, unfortunately. It doesn't seem possible to do, you know.
Starting point is 00:30:22 No, no. And that flag has just become completely corrupted by BNP, NF, FRAJ, whoever's been waving it. Yeah. Razorlight included. It's funny, though, isn't it? Like, a few years ago, it seemed like it had become old hat and almost embarrassing to talk about how appalling the royal family are
Starting point is 00:30:43 as an institution and as a reality because it was pretty much taken as read yeah but you know yet another consequence of the upper middle class colonization of culture that's gone out of the window now you know and people can't see it for what it is which is basically the kind of uncivilized illogical idolatry the existence of which in other countries the british used as justification for conquering half the world to civilize them out of these uh backwards ways but who will civilize the civilizers it's uh i wish i could say that it astonished me that we're still having conversations like this you know but what can you i mean what's that quote you can tell a lot about a country which has a royal mint and a national
Starting point is 00:31:32 debt um you think people would catch on but it doesn't really surprise me because it's part of the erasure of class consciousness or class awareness and people now seem genuinely unaware of the fact that the purpose of the royal family is to enshrine and personify the british class system and to nail the entire country by the bollocks to the church of england you know which is a an appropriately made up religion which only exists in the first place for the convenience of a narcissist psychopath serial killer who's also one of the great icons of our nation and it's just another thing you're expected to pledge loyalty to as if it were real and people wonder why post-truth politics caught on so quickly in this country when the the basics have been embedded in
Starting point is 00:32:27 the national psyche for centuries you know this solemn faith in things that are self-evidently not true like the inherent superiority of what clearly some of the worst people in the country it's like you know how in most countries where fascism took off it was effectively the political arm of the catholic church um because fascism needs a mystical glue to hold it together to persuade people to participate in their own degradation and it has to be something that's already wedged deep into the national psyche right something pre-existing and the quasi-mystical blind faith aspects of catholicism work for that in latin countries and in germany they use like blood and soil myths and ancient germanic horseshit well if you listen to followers of mosley in this country the
Starting point is 00:33:27 old buf people there's a great radio documentary called um potter is fascists about uh mosley supporters in stoke-on-trent and they went and interviewed a load of old geezers who were you know and the one thing they all said was oh he was a gentleman sir oswald he wasn't like us we had faith in him because he was a gentleman because the british equivalent of these fascist enabling myths is the class system yeah and it never ends you know it never ends because even in times of mass cynicism the royal family is the one institution about which the media is just expected to lie. It's not optional. Like Michael Fagan broke into the Queen's bedroom.
Starting point is 00:34:13 And for years, we're told that she was amazing. She was so brave, so utterly calm and composed. So ruddy, bloody brave. She just talked him down. So ruddy, bloody brave. She just talked him down. And yeah, it's just like how Kim Jong-il got a hole in one the first time he played golf. All those ancient Eastern rulers where historians say, well, all we know about him from the historical record is that he was nine feet tall and he once ripped a tiger apart with his bare hands.
Starting point is 00:34:47 You know, it's like maybe not and i feel embarrassed to say this stuff because for people of my generation it's so fucking obvious but it's barely said these days and this perception persists of the royals is purely a ceremonial thing as well with no power you know or like even a bulwark against extreme politics taking hold in this country which you know would you want a president blair then yeah whereas of course anyone who knows anything about history could tell you exactly what would have happened if the fascists had taken hold in this country i don't think the royal family would have been a bulwark against them as far as i can see the only extreme viewpoint against which the monarchy is a bulwark is the viewpoint that we should abolish the monarchy and of course you know when you
Starting point is 00:35:29 actually look at it it's not purely ceremonial there's countless examples down the years of the royals abusing queen's consent you know where she has to wave through every law that goes through parliament to secure exceptions for themselves especially to equality and diversity laws anybody who was not white was not employed by the palace in any role in which the royals themselves had to see them until surprisingly recently and they tampered with the 2010 equality act along those lines as well which was also something barely reported in the papers you know and that's before you even get to a fucking jug-eared half-wit of a son with these these henry root level letters you know leaning on various public bodies about architecture and
Starting point is 00:36:19 the value of homeopathy you know because of course like all pampered celebrities they're enthralled to quacks and too fucking stupid to read a book is another consequence partly of the upper middle class colonization of culture yeah this idea that it's a harmless lark or something to be proud of in some unspecified sense you know like recently all the the posh kid pubs and cafs around where i live in london all had the union jack bunting up you know here it is fucking bunting um and it's like wannabe cool kids you know like celebrating the platy jubes my life fucking i did leslie crowther die for this taylor stop that first public Taylor, stop that. First public warning. I do think there is a class split in this, though, Taylor,
Starting point is 00:37:08 because like you were saying about the sort of middle-class kids, you know, unironically waving Union Jacks and stuff, I do think for a whole load of kids at the moment, it is a protection racket set up around the nonce. That is the way that they think about the royal family. They think about Andrew. I think that Andrew thing has cut through a bit on social media quite a lot so i think that's an awful lot but the idea of not having a royal family just does not occur um at the same time do you know i mean it's just
Starting point is 00:37:33 they do so much for business and tourism because no one ever goes to fucking cairo or paris anymore since they got rid of their royal family yeah and people go on about that oh they do so much for tourism and it's like what that oh they do so much for tourism and it's like what so do they stand in the fucking arrivals lounge at heathrow airport giving out fucking lemonade and a sticky bun singing here we are again like the cast of i.d.i no fuck off you get more tourists if they weren't about because it could stop the night in buckingham palace yeah yeah i told i was watching the other day uh do you remember that thing monarchy the nation decides it was a big studio debate on itv in uh 1997 probably the peak of the of the unpopularity of the monarchy so they have a big studio debate and a phone-in vote whether
Starting point is 00:38:20 you should have a monarchy or not and the people of britain voted in the yeah you should have a monarchy but it was only like 60 something percent it was i think a lot closer than it would be now and as uh something in the papers at the time pointed out yeah look at what was on the other side food and drink brookside and harry enfield show or something so there's probably not that many people watching it but it was famously a complete debacle i mean people should watch this to be reminded that social media makes things worse and more visible but it doesn't change what britain has always been like was it full of angry loud people who don't know what they're on about so there's this massive out of control studio audience on this program all bellowing and making animal noises
Starting point is 00:39:06 like from both sides all of them just waiting for the internet to be invented so they don't have to leave their homes anymore and it's all in this 90s nuclear brightness as well sort of like terry venables sports jacket eye assault you know brash new britain and it's all exactly what you would expect from a fucking pantomime like this right like there's people like frederick forsyth you know just lecturing and barking at the mob like literally just pointing at the audience and shouting at them you know like people like peter hitchens and bernard ingham trying to be a blunt overbearing yorkshire patriarch, but he's just too squeaky and he's got a big Muppet foam face, you know.
Starting point is 00:39:50 And then on the other side, you've got like, sort of a few sort of beard and tie socialists, you know, like some like lunatics shouting. And there's this guy, he's like Captain Tom, OG, you know what I mean? Like, after the war, he met with some Russians and they explained it all to him, you know. Jesus. It's just horrible.
Starting point is 00:40:10 Max Clifford turns up to add a bit of gravitas. Oh, gravitas. Geoffrey Archer comes on, right, trying to do the Boris Johnson bit, but with no charisma, right? It's like a dry run for johnson he's doing this are you you boring gray republicans you all hate fun off with your heads you know but while looking like the least fun mammal on earth it keeps coming up on screen ring this number for
Starting point is 00:40:40 yes and this number for no you know it's like I'm not saying they're trying to destroy all nuance for a sensationalistic TV experience, but it might as well have been, you know, which is better, red or blue? Yes. Call or text now, £19 a second. And it's just, yeah, it's just Burke's screaming, right? And as you can imagine, all the pro-roy royal ones are completely unheeded but it's the point is you watch it you see these absolute lunatics screaming and you think okay a lot of
Starting point is 00:41:14 these people are now dead but if you restage this today it'll be exactly the same but just with these people replaced by a load of old punks and new romantics you know it's like even after all these years people still act like the next generation is going to be the one that saves the world and puts everything right you know as the old fools die off yeah how's that been working for the last hundred years anyway the final result of this is like yeah we should have a royal family it's been decided and the way they big it up and they've got newspaper editors coming on live links telling you what the front page is going to be the next day like as if it's legally binding as if it had
Starting point is 00:41:55 gone the other way the queen was going well it is with great respect that we bow to the wishes of the itv viewers but the right always set up the debate like that, that they have a joy for life and the left hate life. Yeah, it's the whole thing. It's exactly the same as what happens now. It's just in those days, everyone involved was a little less sophisticated at being a cunt. And of course, it's going to get sticky when the Queen dies because...
Starting point is 00:42:24 Oh, man, the psychological blow to this country is going to be fucking immense. You know those posts that people share on Facebook where people take the dogs out to the beach and then feed them a massive Flintstones-sized steak with all the trimmings before they go off and put the dog down? That's what the Platinum Jubilee was like. You know what I mean? It was.
Starting point is 00:42:44 She's going now. This is her last chance. And she didn't even turn up either. No. Couldn't even be asked. I don't blame her. Yeah. But it's going to be really tricky
Starting point is 00:42:53 because despite all the racist remarks and the paedophilia and the fact that the Queen is shortly to receive tens of millions of pounds from the public purse, even in the middle of the current cost of living crisis because of a law that david cameron made that said the queen's income cannot decrease regardless of the economic state of the nation just delightful things like that but despite all of this there's still this idea that the queen at least is somehow fundamentally a good person yeah she's
Starting point is 00:43:26 the good one yeah yeah you hear people saying this i don't like the rules but i do respect the queen just based on thin air right it used to happen with the queen mother like a viciously anti-semitic quasi-fascist with a sincere belief in bloodlines as the measure of human worth i think oh isn't she lovely though lovely old lady and this still goes on with the queen you know do you remember after brexit you heard like liberals and and saying oh maybe the queen will step in to save the country from this oh she actually wore a blue and yellow hat no it's the same queen who oversees the extra private education given to young royals and young people marrying into the family where they have to go and sit in a room with these specially brought in hand-picked very right-wing historians to tell them imperialist
Starting point is 00:44:19 lies about royal history and the importance of the crown in the greatness of the nation something i only found out recently during the miners strike wives of striking miners petitioned the queen because they just assumed that she would be on their side because of their perception of her fundamental belief in fair play and decency we wonder why we live in a country that's infantilized at every level do you know what i mean so we live in a country where people respond to their sports team winning by pulling a face like someone's just shot their nan and they're out for revenge it's just a weird place isn't it yeah i think the royal family's got a big part to play in this i say bring back the days when these fuckers died at 31 from eating a surfeit of lampreys but we have one chance we fucking blew it fucking cromwell
Starting point is 00:45:16 isn't it like oh thanks for that yeah let's cancel christmas and outlaw fun would really make people think republic's great yeah it's a shame that in it it's such a shame you bought encrusted lunatic still the music's all right in this episode isn't it well some of it it's a proper mixed bag in it a proper grab bag yeah a lot of stuff on this episode's not even in the charts yet and and some of it won't be can't understand that it's a really weird episode of top of the pops and i kind I kind of think the producers sense that, you know, Jubilee fatigue was perhaps setting in, especially among young people.
Starting point is 00:45:52 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, they sort of swerve it a little bit, include it a little bit, and consequently a very, very odd mix of music. Yeah. As tonight's host said in a Daily Mail interview a couple of years ago, the best thing about Top of the Pops was you couldn't get on it if you weren't in the charts.
Starting point is 00:46:08 Hmm. Onward! Radio 1 News In the news this week, the train siege outside the village of De Punt in Holland by South Moluccan nationalists is in its 18th day, ending two days later with a counter-terrorist attack, which kills two hostages and six hijackers. Idi Amin has threatened to gate-crash the Commonwealth Conference, which is taking place this week in london with the home office declaring he'll be detained at whatever airport he arrives at and sent back on the next plane after he tries to
Starting point is 00:46:52 get a crog on president mabuto of zaire's plane and he's turned down he gives up and crashes around colonel gaddafi's house instead a group of six-form girls in Leicester who were caught drinking in a pub have protested against sexual inequality by writing a letter to the county education board which accused their headmaster of contravening the Sex Discrimination Act by not caning them, like he did to their male counterparts. an estimated 10 000 scotland fans go mental after they beat england 2-1 in the home international at wembley ripping down the goal posts and causing 18 000 pounds worth of damage to the pitch fucking hell that was the most punk thing i ever saw in 1977 oh great days great yeah yeah meanwhile england have gone straight on to their summer tour of South America without manager Don Reaver, who has gone to Helsinki to see Finland lose 3-0 to Italy. But while England hold Brazil to a goalless draw,
Starting point is 00:47:55 he's secretly nipped off to Dubai to take a big fat check off the United Arab Emirates to manage their national team. A Led Zeppelin gig in Tampa is cancelled after 11 minutes due to torrential rain. And when it was announced that the band wouldn't be returning, an estimated 4,000 fans stormed the stage and go all Scotland. George Harrison and Patti Boyd have got divorced today. Kevin Keegan has been transferred to Hamburger SV for half a million pounds. Agnetha and Bjorn of ABBA have announced that they're having a second baby.
Starting point is 00:48:33 But the big news this week is that the country has gone jubilee mad. Chefs at the Jester Hotel in Leeds have made a record-breaking Yorkshire pudding measuring 16 foot by 3 and 3 quarter foot, which has been dyed into a Union Jack. Oh, God. There's something grotesque about that. That ain't right. A Mr. and Mrs. Lee have named their daughter Juby. Spelt J-U-B-I.
Starting point is 00:49:02 It'll never date. The winner of a competition for the best way to commemorate the year in nationwide has suggested that we tow massive chunks of great britain out to sea and terraform the country into the shape of the queen's head bonfires are going off all across the land the sunday mirror has started a campaign to reward the European Cup winners by renaming them Royal Liverpool FC. Of all the fucking clubs. And even the
Starting point is 00:49:32 Queen's gone a bit mad by deciding to make Derby a city for a laugh. Royal Liverpool FC. Good lord. Because man you, that year's cup final they went out with Jubilee didn't they
Starting point is 00:49:47 on their shirts I seem to recall did they yeah just below the Man U logo on their shirts for the 77 cut final
Starting point is 00:49:54 it said yeah it had like they'd sewn in some silver Jubilee emblem sycophants yeah no doubt under immense pressure
Starting point is 00:50:01 from the equally royal crazy people of manchester but yeah this is it this is the absolute pinnacle of all the jubilee nonsense and we've been fortunate enough to have a taste of that trifle if you will haven't we oh we have oh yes we went on the dark web and we pulled out the nationwide Jubilee Fair. It's so good, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:50:28 It's a remarkable document of those times. Broadcast two days previously, just before all the royal balcony waving shit. Let's go through it. It's mad. It's mad. The moment I started watching it, I mean, I did get that familiar feeling of looking for an exit, you know, wondering how long this was going to last, the pull to see that it's like 90 minutes of this shit.
Starting point is 00:50:46 But I started finding it strangely compelling. It's a different country, isn't it? Sort of. It is. And not just because steadily I found myself totally seduced and falling in love with Valerie Singleton for the first time, but partly because of the juxtaposition of the show. You know, it's got these strange studio pieces. Big chunk of pride time with so many audience members milling about yes but i started enjoying it for when it went to the streets
Starting point is 00:51:09 and just spoke to these grassy eyed flag shagging pricks it was actually strangely reassuring to see that the great shittest public who celebrate these things they've always been these docile chirpy cunts much as they are now so, it's a mental hour and a half. Yeah, it's got to be one of the finest things ever broadcast during the golden age of British television. It's a fitting tribute to our bejeweled superiors.
Starting point is 00:51:37 Yeah, it's 90 minutes of, it's like a studio full of scum, like real bank holiday peasants. And it's like most celebrations of royal occasions, it really ends up being a festival of a certain kind of Britishness. Yeah. Plain cotton underwear, curled up white bread corned beef sandwiches and coppers who look like Graham Gooch.
Starting point is 00:52:03 It's that world, you know what I mean? So they're all milling about in the studio, and it's like the boys and girls from Nationwide are holding it all together. Yeah, it's hosted by Frank Bath. Of course. Who I notice isn't sitting down. But he is dressed like Brian Jones for some reason.
Starting point is 00:52:21 Yeah, he is, isn't he? Yeah, but in this unchanging England, he's a reassuring reminder that we do still have progress of a sort because back then Frank Boff's presence and manner and look were ideal for prime time television but his private life almost finished his career whereas nowadays his private life would be celebrated, but his presence and manner and look would get him banned from television. So he's in this giant studio full of these flag-waving now-deads introducing guests like they've got Humphrey Littleton of all people
Starting point is 00:53:00 in the studio with his band, because nothing says monarchy like new orleans jazz um queen's favorite music i'm sure uh but it's because like most patriotic occasions it's really a nostalgia trip so that's there for the that middle-aged generation of wool and pullover wearing national service doing goon show listening public school homosexuality dabbling pre-beatles british men you know and god bless humph but listening to this it really is hard work it's like i remember louis armstrong said to me he said who do i sign this to and they go around the country like on like ob stuff to to meet the people out and so there's
Starting point is 00:53:46 like some piping fools at edinburgh castle yeah it's a proper shortbread tin of an ob isn't it yeah and then they go to wales and nobody says in wales like how do you feel about the fact that all the castles of wales aren't actually welsh castles they're fortifications built by the english to uh subjugate wales and they're so impressive because the english wanted to strike fear into your hearts and remind you of your place in this country they don't say that they go to cardiff castle and they say to some kids what do you like best about the queen? Yeah. To which the answers are, she likes dogs and I like the way she waves. I dug the,
Starting point is 00:54:32 there was total Wicker Man vibes when they do go to that castle in Wales. There was a stunning aerial shot of Diane, the presenter, in the middle of a maypole dance. You can almost smell the singed pubes and, you know, John Stapleton cutting some capers and
Starting point is 00:54:45 using his bladder the stapleton of knowledge but the weird motif as well throughout the show wherever they go outside or inside the studio is they've encouraged audience members to bring in objects that they think summate the last 25 years of british history and and it's just so bizarre it's grotesque to see how many the fucking old dears are perfectly happy to fall into every stereotype of just confused old racist nan whether it's a woman saying that her object is her artificial hips some daft old cow from harrow on the hill talking about churchill and then there's that woman who says you know quite darkly she's quite old she starts saying quite darkly now what a pity some people can't enjoy england and the presenter senses that she's
Starting point is 00:55:36 going to embark on some rant about the darkies so she moves on that inner enoch is festering under the surface of a lot of the stuff here yeah i. I mean, the whole tone is, oh, weren't things better then? Yeah. Oh, yeah, completely. Yeah, and there is quite a lot of imperialist bilge as well, right? There's somebody comes on talking about the Commonwealth, and they say, like, as a boast, well, we made all these countries independent.
Starting point is 00:56:01 Yeah! Well, that's one way of looking at it. Did you notice that paul burnett the kind of this lanky gormless knob who looks a bit like prince charles yes at the beginning yeah he gets interviewed keeps his hands in his pockets of course doubtless his fingers don't look like a 10 pack of richmond sausages sizzling and singing in a pan so we wanted them hid but yeah oh man some mad mad moments. And they go to Edinburgh and Wales and Cardiff,
Starting point is 00:56:27 sorry. Or was it Chepstow? I can't remember. But you know. They go to Northern Ireland don't they? No. No, of course not.
Starting point is 00:56:33 There were some great moments featuring people who simply don't exist anymore. And I don't just mean that they're dead. I mean, those sort of people don't exist anymore.
Starting point is 00:56:42 I was particularly struck by Mrs. Duncan who's introduced in Edinburgh who has kept a royal scrapbook going for over a hundred volumes and she speaks with this kind of cut glass poshness that's a really careful construction yeah she's well higher synth in show very much so and you can detect this sense of old fuckers thinking that the values that that they were taught you know total loyalty to king and country have absconded in some way so that's a faint thing to the whole show yeah you know it's very telling that you know they look back at the 50s and they look back at the 60s
Starting point is 00:57:15 with fondness but there's no sort of yeah that this sense that today right now things are horrible and you know we need to bring these values back. But fuck me. They should have tried to lighten it a bit. Mrs Duncan, out of interest, are you Rangers or Celtic? Just raises one eyebrow and it looks like. But yeah, lots of looking back to the 60s. Maybe this is where it all begins.
Starting point is 00:57:39 Maybe the mod revival starts right here on Nationwide Jubilee Fair. Lots of Union Jacks. But look, back at the 60s is so, I mean, obviously, look, this isn't a critical piece, this show, but it's so fucking shallow, isn't it? It's like Miniskirts, The Beatles. There's an astonishing bit. I think my favourite, well, there's too many favourite bits in this,
Starting point is 00:58:02 where two of the presenters, for some reason, they go down this thing called the Tun of love in oh yeah in the studio and what flashes or i mean there's two bizarre things about it firstly it's just a collage of various famous couples from the past 25 years so you got i think you got you got paul and linda haven't you and you got mick and marianne and then straight after mick and bianca. But they keep the presenters there as if they're travelling through this journey of love. Yes, and they're cuddling up to each other, aren't they? It's just bizarre.
Starting point is 00:58:32 And there's too many amazing bits. There's also a chef, a French chef, a comedy French chef. A French chef, how dare they? Who cooks like, he's these um ridiculous dishes to one of the queen it reminded me very much because they're so literal these dishes it reminded me very much of an episode of great british menu i watched when they had to cook something to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of world war one and that all the chef's creations were pretty much you know like two spherical mounds of raspberry coulis foam on a bed of chocolate dust representing the shot-off genitals of an infantryman in Verdun or something.
Starting point is 00:59:09 It was just so fucking literal. There's all these bizarre tableaus. And the chef, oh my God. I mean, Taylor, can you describe the food he makes? I don't know. Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, this bloke is like a hee-hawing caricature. I was really suspicious that he's not actually French at all.
Starting point is 00:59:27 But he comes on and he's like, yeah, he goes, I have been to feud for the Queen. And it's like, it's just repulsive things sealed in Aspen. Which, being French, he's almost certainly pissed in, right? I mean, you know, we can think, well, okay, maybe this proud frenchman is here to celebrate the the queen of england or maybe he's just done what's come naturally straight into the salmon royale um yeah he's got like a glazed ham that that has got brown
Starting point is 01:00:01 piping on it and that description of much of the audience of this as well. Yeah, it's glazed ham. It just looks like a big sort of football, but just covered in like some sort of weird opaque white stuff and brown piping on it that says E2R. And he's got, yeah, you just got this idea that if you eat that, you're just gonna instantly vomit it all straight back up again but it doesn't matter because in my country that is a great
Starting point is 01:00:31 compliment his best dish that he's got is um duck a la range which couldn't even be bothered to do swan a la range i guess he couldn't get her permission but his duck à la Ronge appears to have an impromptu Flanders gravestone sticking out of it you know those little like simple little gravestones they put where they don't know where the body is
Starting point is 01:00:57 it's one of those like so reading you know R.I.P. Duck R.I.P. Mr. Wadley but you've never seen such a feast of congealed glue in fact i don't believe he's a chef at all his accent is obviously fake and his beard and all that i think he's a disguised anarchist bomber at any moment he's gonna rip his large-nosed mask to reveal a little thin moustache and a wide-brimmed hat and a cape and a stubby, flat, filterless cigarette, and then the duck explodes.
Starting point is 01:01:35 But that's the thing. There's lots of ideas in this show that read on the page might have made sense, maybe a kind of sense, but when they achieve realization the result is just that's occasionally in the show there's just genuinely mind-meltingly surreal moments they tie a message to a pigeon um yes they do the message it's a three two one clue or something it's just bizarre and then it cuts to this guy playing you know a sort of
Starting point is 01:02:05 fanfare for the queen with this massive legend on the screen airborne the tribute nationwide our affection and it's just where the how did we get here and that bloke looks just like fred quilly bent jockey but yeah generally the main thought you have while watching the nationwide Jubilee Fair is how strange that the most enthusiastic supporters of our national insanity should be actual mad people. It's always a danger for royal reporters throughout time. Like wherever you find them, when they're out in the mall or outside the palace of whoever's just died. Like, whenever they have to interview the crowds for royal occasions. Like, well, let me just speak to this lady and gentleman here. Arr, arr, arr.
Starting point is 01:02:53 Oh, dear, they're actually insane. OK, let's speak to this person over here. Arr, arr, arr. Oh, no, he's insane too. And the artefacts that people have sent in, that they've made as well, just reveal a national insecurity. Oh, yeah, a load of artifacts that people have sent in that they've made as well just reveal a national insight oh yeah the load of shit that people have made but as a gift for the queen yeah a tiny little crown and also a massive crown more befitting you know a colossus queen or something it's just there's just so much strange shit in it and a fucking enormous welsh love spoon
Starting point is 01:03:21 yeah and there's that radio that, obviously, there's loads of companies trying to get a free advert. And they've done a radio, which is just a big silver brick that's worth thousands of pounds. Also, I was really disgusted to note that there were a load of really amateurish paintings of the Queen by Henry Mellish Infant School, who were the Rodney Bennett to my school's grain gel.
Starting point is 01:03:44 Oh, no. You look at them, you go, yeah, your parents have done that, and they're still shit. henry mellish infant school who were the rodney bennett to my school's grain gel oh no you look at them you go yeah your parents have done that and they're still shit and one would think in in a show so jam-packed full of insanity that the the music sections would introduce some normality into proceedings but but they don't really no i mean beyond anything else at one point i think the kids are given woodwind instruments or something, because I swear down, when those, you know that big royal pie gets bought out and Frank Boff has a bit? Yeah. They bring out a selection of royal food, don't they? At that point, it sounds like Albert Euler's Spiritual Unity is playing in the background. It's fucking demented.
Starting point is 01:04:20 They bring out a load of ladies dressed up as Emer um emery the apes knockoffs still with their heads on obviously yeah bringing out things in aspic and just enormous stupid pies i think the goal of all the food sections in this program was to make you feel a bit more uh grateful for yeah the sausage rolls you were gonna get yeah yeah yeah buffet this afternoon yeah but yeah all the way through i mean because the musical passages that there's a bit where new edition the dance troupe yeah sadly not bobby brown and his mates no unfortunately um dance to some jubilee girl you used to run half the world yeah well they dance to some 50s stuff they do the twist yes with this really palpable sense of sadness of what's lost empire Empire deprivation trauma in full effect.
Starting point is 01:05:06 It's like being in a care home, isn't it? It is. It really is. Are we going to talk about Alan Price's song? Yes, we are. Alan Price sings a song all about the 60s. It's a kind of proto, we didn't start the fire, isn't it? Yes, it is.
Starting point is 01:05:23 Cherry picking certain moments. what moments does he cherry pick again i think i he mentions the beatles he mentions those two pandas getting it on yeah he does do the chatterly band and the beatles first lp that's right oh my god he doesn't mention his appearance in bob dylan's don't look back drinking vodka and orange by taking a massive swig out of a bottle of vodka then a massive swig out of a bottle of orange and doing the mixing in his mouth pretty awful song searchers are also on oh yeah and actually you know what the searchers i mean look it's a shit show i think they're the least shitty in the whole thing because they've got a nice little jangle to them it's already that thing of the 60s it was the last
Starting point is 01:06:05 time we were any good and we are just declined as a world power now because there's a bizarre tableau at the end where yeah like taylor says all the countries that we supposedly you know out of the beneficence of our heart gave them independence scroll up the screen the union jack gets lowered it's it's so weird um but you know if i was sending someone something to diagnose the mental illness that is being british i probably would send them this yeah absolutely it's fucking amazing to watch all these old fools and think my god these people won the war because look we all spend a lot of time criticizing that tedious british self-deprecating sense of humor you know that like all the endless tiktoks of the general public dancing you know
Starting point is 01:06:56 and all that sort of comedy shows where the only joke is that someone who looks awful does a dance dressed up as someone who looks good, and you just laugh. Just that shit British self-deprecating bollocks, that mindset where it's like to stop people getting above their station, you know, where like, it's that, oh, well, at least they don't take themselves too seriously. Who do you think you are? Why don't you join in with the fun? It's this thing that where they won't be happy until we're all walking around with clown noses on with our trousers around our ankles
Starting point is 01:07:29 right but i'm never going to criticize that again because watching the nationwide jubilee fair it dawned on me that if we hadn't had that in our darkest hour we'd have been bigger nazis than the nazis and madder. Yeah. And of course it ends on a thrilling denouement, doesn't it? Oh, God, yeah. The winner of the nationwide Jubilee Song Contest. What a thing that is.
Starting point is 01:08:00 An event of such monumental musical arse lick that we decided that we just can't toss it away here. So we're going to do a very special bonus podcast about it only available on patreon yeah you are not going to want to miss this no no so now is the time to get on patreon if you want that fucking hell so on the cover of the enemy this week a massive mushroom cloud on the cover of record NME this week a massive mushroom cloud. Hooray! On the cover of Record Mirror the Sex Pistols. Fucking hell, first time we've mentioned them. It's like they've been
Starting point is 01:08:32 censored. The number one LP in the country is Arrival by ABBA. Over in America the US number one is Sajouk by Stevie Wonder and the number one LP is of course Rumours fleetwood max so boys what were we doing in june of 1977 well i remember it being a reasonably big deal at my school i'd
Starting point is 01:08:57 literally just started school it was my first year of primary school i think and the first two things i remember about school are the local rector came in to give us a talk about god every week thankfully hands off and then this peculiar assembly for the silver jubilee where we all had to queue up to be presented with a jubilee coin yes i got one of those yeah it's like some base metal medallion you know now worth £1.79 on ebay no doubt just to leave us in no doubt as to our place in the jubilee picture you know um and all the union jacks were up everywhere and hideous potato print portraits of the Queen by the slightly older kids. And at the time, it never struck me as odd that both these things, the rector and the queen, were essentially compulsory and considered a valid and important part of a child's education in a free post-war society you had to be there and you weren't allowed to snigger or talk back and i wonder sometimes whether it was that kind
Starting point is 01:10:13 of upbringing that made our generation such piss takers right so yeah so widely atheistic and and cynical about the royals it's like in america you can't mention god in schools at least until the current supreme court gets to grips with that but there's there's immense social pressure in a lot of the country to go to church and all that sort of stuff but then they look at britain with when we were growing up compulsory christian prayer every day and americans are astonished that the result of that is a nation of atheists and apatheists when in fact that's part of it you know you grow up associated in the certainly the church of england with boredom pomposity yeah um the shit experience of school people you don't like droning on at you in cold wooden halls um and you see straight
Starting point is 01:11:08 through it and you can't get away fast enough it's not some magical thing that exists in your community outside of the imperfect state you know offering you salvation you can see it for what it is it's part of the apparatus so maybe it would have been a good thing in the end to uh you know if they'd made us bow down to her majesty yeah a little bit more you know really rub it in might have made it seem less of a jolly lark you know taylor's right it was sort of mandatory in 77 unlike now i mean there's photographic evidence of what i was doing for the for the silver jubilee you know i was sitting in a garden in oxendon way earnst for grange commentary pretty much appalled by everything i was seeing hearing and experiencing i mean you know i was only five probably like i i think i had a dim awareness of
Starting point is 01:11:56 the jubilee and also an unsureness about it and whether i mean the worry of course of whether i was expected to be part of anything i mean shock horror that would have been fucking awful we were given a big coin um older kids in our school got given jubilee sweets what um yeah a little tin of sweets fucking hell um and some were some were given a leather bookmark as well yeah yeah um but i do also remember the sort of cowardly likes of the bino in 77 having special jubilee covers, you know, plastered in the Union Jacks. The newsstands, you wouldn't see that many Union Jacks until, you know, the rise of Britpop, basically. As an adult...
Starting point is 01:12:34 Did it have Dennis the Menace on the cover slapping his arse and saying, Socrates, go home? It should have. But as an adult, you know, you could have avoided it, I guess. Because these things always bring all the cunts out the woodwork but as a kid you were plunged into all this nonsense and like any public event involving that horrible hateful idea of participation for a small shy child i loathed every moment of it i've seen the photo of your face now it just says everything well one of my major terrors my whole life is a fucking lp cover waiting to
Starting point is 01:13:05 happen one of my major terrors my whole life as i may have mentioned in the past on shark music is characterful dads yes you know and things like the jubilee much like comic relief now it just seemed to be an excuse for these wannabe sort of new faces cunts wannabe it's a knockout dads to come out the woodwork put on a, put on some unsuitably ribald entertainment for children. And as far as I can ascertain from the photographs I have, I'm in someone's back garden and there's two characterful dads, both bearded. Cause it was after all 1977.
Starting point is 01:13:38 Expecting us kids to watch their pratfalls and be amused. And shockingly, it seems most of the kids were, I was wary of one of those chaps his name was uncle john just like everyone we knew was called uncle something um and he'd always put himself about on special occasions you know i mean so at the old people's zone when we live there whenever there'd be like a special day like christmas or something like that he'd be there dressed as something i remember him doing santa i remember him doing drag and jokingly
Starting point is 01:14:05 coming onto my dad at a show sitting on his lap and flirting with him which everyone in this old people's own found fucking hilarious because my dad was quite straight laced but obviously you know no one needs to see their dad going through that it angered me um because i was just grateful that i didn't have a character were you scared that your dad was gonna run off with him not at all but you know you don't want to see your dad get hurt and you don't you scared that your dad was going to run off with him not at all but you know you don't want to see your dad get hurt and you don't want to see your dad laugh that no and and there's this and you also don't want to see your dad lamping someone in a dress but there is this photo al yeah you're right of me sitting in a tent with a plate of jubilee food
Starting point is 01:14:39 before me looking as i normally did at occasions whether with family or friends any occasion you know like I just wanted it to end when can I go home please well this week really sticks in my mind because on the Saturday before the entire family as we did on a Saturday night round about that time we went out to the Meadows to have a drink in the Queens with me non-or and grandpa and they'd let me and my seven-year-old little sister sit in the corner or hang about in the doorway which was a fucking massive upgrade from having to sit in the car outside a pub without the radio on like i used to do with my dad but on that night scotland had just ravaged wembley that afternoon and practically every scottish person in Nottingham had just come out to get absolutely battered and the landlord refused point
Starting point is 01:15:27 blank and rightly so to let kids witness the carnage that was going to unfold. But of course it didn't stop me dad and grandpa and me nanos staying in there and having a drink so I remember for hours sitting on the back seat of me dad's car watching some
Starting point is 01:15:43 absolutely graphic violence, like three feet away from me. And it got to one point where there's two blokes just practically fighting with pint glasses with each other. And my mum in her best white trouser suit trying to lean over the back and cover my eyes. And me dodging out the way and anticipating my status as king of the playground when we went
Starting point is 01:16:06 back to school on wednesday were you scared are you scared no because i was in a car and i was with my parents i thought oh nothing could go wrong here yeah yeah i mean actual jubilee day like you i've been given a jubilee medal but also we got given a jubilee mug which had the official logo on it and lots of filigree and gold all around yeah yeah but it also had a massive logo of bbc radio nottingham and pork farms which was a local sausage roll and pork pie factory but the actual day it had been decided upon pretty early in the day that to my disgust no one on our street could be arsed with a street party. And that ruined my fucking VE Day fantasies. Because I was really looking forward to a proper street party with, you know, bunting and all that kind of shit.
Starting point is 01:16:56 So we just put up my grandpa's blue enzyme on the garage door. And some massive swirly red, white and blue banners by the side of the house. And then we went to the Lammy's next door and their dad played loads of boe my dad played loads of elvis and i was just absolutely disgusted that i wasn't having my ve day moment so by the end of it i can remember lying flat on the settee, it absolutely bored and angry, with a union jack over me pretending to be asleep and just seething while my dad and Lamy got pissed up and took turns to say, fucking Elvis is the fucking king, isn't he? That was the day that I became completely anti-monarchist.
Starting point is 01:17:40 Lamy, the bloke next door, absolute fucking vision rare. Two weeks before this episode i was around his house being babysat and we were watching liverpool going through the streets holding up the european cup on the top deck of a bus and he turned around to me a nine-year-old boy and he said you see that two years time that's going to be forest wow and i looked at him as if he'd fucking gone out but my god he was so right yeah an unwise prediction at that point it has to be said this is what forest were in the second division yeah just got promoted right i mean music wise i'm still into show waddy waddy and playing the shit out of elvis and little richard and buddy ollie on a tape to tape player that my dad had liberated from his round as a removal man, and not yielding to Punk at all, because
Starting point is 01:18:29 I hadn't heard any yet. You know, the only thing I knew about Punk was what I was seeing in the Sunday papers, and they all looked very scary, and I was just worried about ever seeing one, which I hadn't yet. I would have definitely been on the side of the Teds in the forthcoming king's road wars but you know forrester just got promoted judge dread is fighting call me kenneth and the robot rebellion in 2008 the six weeks holidays coming up you know it's all good there's going to be a lot of subutio that's going to be played over the next six weeks or so but that's all it when you're a kid that's the thing though you don't have any affection towards the royal family,
Starting point is 01:19:06 so just one bad day, that's all you need, to turn yourself into a committed anti-royalist. For me, it wasn't this day, it was Charles and Di's wedding, where I just got fucking sick of it, and decided to hate the monarchy as a result.
Starting point is 01:19:20 You know, that's all it takes. I mean, a few weeks after this episode, I actually saw the Queen and Prince Philip, and I was standing in the exact same spot where all those Scottish people were beating the shit out of each other. Wow. Yeah, luckily they'd stopped by then.
Starting point is 01:19:35 Yeah, yeah. And my jaw just swinging wide open because it was the first time I'd ever seen a famous person. Yeah. They're the people on my grandpa's T-track. There they are in front of me. And I was absolutely awestruck. But to be honest with you,
Starting point is 01:19:48 if it had been Rod Hull and Emu, I would have had the same reaction. And then, you know, afterwards, I'm walking about in a daze, and I thought, hang on, I waved at them, and they didn't wave back at me. Bastards.
Starting point is 01:19:59 How dare they? That is star power, isn't it? There's no denying it. I mean, I even felt it once like in 2010 when when gordon brown visited where i worked but you know yeah famous people oh i've only seen you on the telly before fuck me you're in real life there's nothing between us but air that's always a mind-blowing moment in it well chaps i do believe it's time to retire to the chart music crap room and rip open a box or two
Starting point is 01:20:27 and peruse an issue of the music press from this very week. And this time, we've gone for Melody Maker, 11th of June, 1977. Would you come and have a riffle with me? Oh, yeah. On the cover, while the NME get into the party mood With a mushroom cloud And the headline A hard rains are gonna fall The new musical express
Starting point is 01:20:51 Consumers guide to the nuclear age Melody make a focus on What's really happening in the world of music This week The earth shattering news that Martin Carthy Has rejoined Steel Ice Band The cover is dominated by a great barry plumbershot of bob marley from his recent sellout shows at the rainbow in the news wow unsurprisingly
Starting point is 01:21:16 the main story is the sex pistols and their current single god God Save the Queen, which is selling like a bastard, despite a total nationwide TV and radio ban. Under the headline, Pistols Beat the Sensors, the maker reports on the blanket ban on the single by the media. Quote, A statement issued jointly by BBC Radio and Television says the corporation has no intention of playing the record because it is in gross bad taste and they intend sticking to this edict even if the single gets to number one in the charts. Radio 1 spokesman James Conway said we're not pretending the record isn't there
Starting point is 01:22:00 we mention it when announcing our chart listings but we refuse to play it if it reaches number one our top 20 show will finish with the number two record the compere will say what's at the top and then it'll be straight into the news headlines over at bbc tv center robin nash is asked whether they'll be allowing john Johnny and the Chaps on top of the Pops and he says the single is quite unsuitable for our Thursday evening pop treat A BBC spokesman is also quoted
Starting point is 01:22:34 admitting that it was unfortunate for the Sex Pistols that their chart success coincided with Jubilee Week What bad luck Terrible timing on their part. If it had been at any other time in the year, we might have given it the occasional play.
Starting point is 01:22:52 Oh, would they bollocks. Would they bollocks. And the IBA and ITV have not only followed suit, presumably denying the band the opportunity to play the single on Get It Together, Run Around and The Sooty Show, but they've also put the block on Virgin's attempts to buy advertising time. The piece concludes by reporting that Radio Luxembourg
Starting point is 01:23:14 have taken the issue a step further by ignoring the single completely. As far as they are concerned, it simply does not exist, and God Save the Queen does not feature anywhere in their top 30, nor will it at any time. Ooh. Good job they didn't do a song about the Queen of Luxembourg. Yes, the fascist regime. The rest of the news is dominated by gig and tour announcements,
Starting point is 01:23:43 including Blond Air, City Boy and the Curzel Flyers. But the big news is that the Beach Boys are coming to Wembley and they're bringing along the fragrant Romeos of pop themselves. Dr Hook as support. While promoter Ken Campbell is mooting the very unreal possibility of Richie Blackmore's Rainbow and the Steve Gibbons Band headlining an open-air concert at Salford Rugby Ground. The gig never materialises. There's a party going on at Alexandra Palace.
Starting point is 01:24:15 A communist party. The 12-hour People's Jubilee Festival, organised by the CP, will feature Soft Machine as what and none other than the white shot commissar of heterosexual rock and roll shaking steve yeah man brothers and sisters we should keep fighting until the only bands allowed to perform here are those personally approved by moscow which we are sure will include the Soft Machine and Aswad. While everyone else who plugs in electric guitar will be taken to a
Starting point is 01:24:49 5 foot by 5 foot concrete cell with a metal grill in the floor for the blood to drain away. And don't let decadent western propaganda trick you into thinking this is not desirable. If you don't fancy that, then top promoter Richard Wrigley has announced a series
Starting point is 01:25:06 of Jubilee concerts in a circus tent next to Tower Bridge from mid-July to October. They include the likes of Lindsay DePaul, Perry Como, Cliff Richard and The Shadows, John Lord performing his latest solo album
Starting point is 01:25:22 Sarah Bands with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the New York City Ballet and reunion shows for Deep Purple and King Crimson. On second thoughts, all power to the Soviets. Meanwhile,
Starting point is 01:25:38 Malcolm McLaren and Bernie Rhodes have announced plans for a two-day punk fest on the outskirts of Bristol featuring The Pistols, The Tubes, The Clash, Iggy Pop and The Ramones. As you can imagine, we're running into all sorts of problems with the local council, says Rhodes to the Maker, but the site is fairly isolated and hopefully won't lead to any protests. In more flared news, CBS have announced that Punter's paying the £1 admission fee
Starting point is 01:26:08 and turning up before 7.30 for any show on the upcoming CBS promo package tour, which features Crawler, the band which had Paul Kossoff in it before he died last year, Moon, and Boxer, will be presented with a free EP, whether they like it or not. It features all three bands and is part of CBS's ultimately futile promo push for three shit-bricked cock-rock acts. The maker reluctantly confirms, however, that Steely Dan will not be touring Britain in September,
Starting point is 01:26:42 contrary to reports elsewhere. But Johnny Thunders and the heartbreakers are shaking off their recent arrest in birmingham on suspicion of breaking into a telephone box by announcing that they're going to bring 1 000 pounds worth of fireworks to their july the fourth show at an as yet unannounced location. This does not come off, unfortunately, but they do spend that evening playing The Vortex on its opening night with Buzzcocks, The Fall, and John Cooper Clark. A thousand pounds worth of fireworks, fucking hell. Can you imagine?
Starting point is 01:27:17 In 1977. That's a lot of fireworks. Just imagining the heartbreakers, Buzzcocks, The Fall, and John Cooper Clarke playing to a room full of mildly disappointed Steely Dan fans. And finally, under the headline New Beagle Show on Tour, we learned that a new musical based upon Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band begins a six-week national tour later this month
Starting point is 01:27:46 entitled lucy in the sky and directed by michael bogdanov it follows the fortunes of the girl whose hopes and ambitions are drawn to the magic of the circus with beatles tunes interspersed with various specialities circus acts yeah they've gone straight to, for the benefit of Mr. Kite, and gone, yeah, and what next? Serious question. Has there ever been anything associated with the Beatles, but which wasn't actually created by the Beatles themselves, which shouldn't have been set alight in an oil drum?
Starting point is 01:28:23 Because I can't think of anything. Apart from the ruttles, yeah. Oh, of course. In the interview section, well, Harry Doherty hits the road with 10cc in the wake of the departure of Lowell Cream and Kevin Godlair and reports that the whole band are feeling great about the split. The old band was like a musical eunuch it had no balls
Starting point is 01:28:48 this one is much healthier says eric stewart i'd resign myself to the fact that life in the music business just stank but at this stage there's no aggravation nobody's bored No self-consciousness or funny remarks. Oh, get the reggae singles going, Lyle. See, I would accept this split if they'd renamed themselves 5CC. Why didn't they? Actually, that maybe would have been singly inappropriate since he's suggesting there that Kevin Godley and Lul Cream each represented minus one testicle. Yes.
Starting point is 01:29:27 Their departure is a kind of negative castration, allowing the remaining two members to come up with testosterone-packed hard hitters like Dreadblock Holiday, which they just wouldn't have been capable of. From Rochdale to Ocho Rios. Still, there is something for all those disappointed Steely Dan fans. Go and see Aluminiumy Dan, as I like to call him. Stanley Mises catches up with Ian Hunter in New York,
Starting point is 01:29:57 and they have a natter about his new album, Overnight Angels. I've done an all-out rock album, because nothing else moves them in england any modicum of common sense is ignored there they have to be faced with the national front to be moved it's so civilized it disappears up its own arse gentility and civility is what keeps them down the great minds have left The Labour government is in total chaos and when the Conservatives come in, they don't get on with the unions. They're kicking out the middle class and bringing in Asians. There's no difference in them as people, but the economic
Starting point is 01:30:38 support is not there. I'm a patriot, totally loyal. I live in New York because what's going on in the UK is stupid. It drives me nuts. Oh, did you see the nationwide Jubilee Fair, mate? What the fuck are we going on about? What does he mean, they're kicking out the middle class? No idea. And bringing in Asians. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:30:59 He's treading an interesting line there, isn't he? Yeah, I've heard people make that argument, like, you know, kicking working-class people out of jobs and giving it all to immigrants. But what does he mean they're kicking out the middle class? From what? Maybe he's been in America a while, and consequently he's got that middle-class definition that they use. Right.
Starting point is 01:31:16 And the British definition say perhaps it's that. He's probably just pissed. Yeah. Yeah, more like it. Rob Halford and KK Downing of Judas Priest sit down with Harry Docter and pretty much predict the wobbum. Yeah, yeah, yeah, more like it. says Halford. Bands like Zeppelin should play more gigs and give the kids something back. The kids in our audience want to feel the music as well as hear it. They want the floorboards vibrating. When he asks if he feels his style of music has had his day, he says, I don't think rock is dead. Punk to me is rock. I saw the pistols and they packed a wallop.
Starting point is 01:32:05 Good raw rock material and it created a reaction. I like their directness and musical punch. They haven't left us behind though. We may have left them behind. Oh. And finally Paul Barrere of Little Feet whinges to Roy Carr about his band's inability to score a hit and indulges in some light bitching about Laul George. Laul's trouble is that he doesn't do anything by half measures and recently he's been overdoing it,
Starting point is 01:32:37 staying up too many nights in a row, too much booze, too many pills to help him stay awake, insufficient sleep and in the end he went down with a bad case of hepatitis. Too many pills to help him stay awake. Insufficient sleep. And in the end, he went down with a bad case of hepatitis. Perhaps next time he'll think twice, says Paul. 14 months before George dies from a heart attack. This is not a good way of cementing good band relations, man. Doing your bitching in an interview like that. Fuck me.
Starting point is 01:33:03 Single reviews. Well, in the chair this week is Caroline Kuhn, who stops being the original female punk journo it's okay to like for a bit and addresses a slew of distinctly non-punky product. Single of the week is So High, Rock Me Baby and Roll Me Away by Dave Mason, which is an inspired love song
Starting point is 01:33:24 celebrating dream days of good time fulfillment the single is commercial without sounding like a cross between peter frampton and the carpenters a hit reader it wasn't there are two singles out that have been written and produced by dominic bagatti and frank musker the king tubby Scratch Perry of Coddiness who wrote reggae like it used to be last year. According to CC, the first, Woman in Love by Twiggy, has definite chart potential. It's the best musicianship, production and guidance for Twiggy yet, says Cass. A simple love d'etat, superficially catchy, but hardly inspired. It failed to chart, but eight months later the song was given to the Three Degrees,
Starting point is 01:34:14 who took it to number three for three weeks. The other Bugatti Musca single, Heaven on the Seventh Floor by the conquering lion himself, Paul Nestor Nicholas O.M., fares much better. Paul, an artist who excels in sugary showbiz presentation, is never less than a bunch of energetic good fun. But it's a coat down for dandy in the underworld by T-Rex. The very lovely mark,
Starting point is 01:34:44 I was the first punk, B, slows it right down for a deathly dirge, suitable for the gloomiest of occasions, like the burial of the album from which this song was taken. Fuck you now. Was Caroline Coon being played
Starting point is 01:35:00 by Jane Asher in this singles page as well? We'll explain a lot. Queen's first EP, a selection of tunes from their last four LPs called Queen's First EP, is out, but Caroline doesn't understand why they've even bothered. Staunch fans need hardly bother since they have all the albums and the packaging is too dull for want for aesthetic reasons alone if the band is searching out new fans then why release such unlikely bait like
Starting point is 01:35:33 these second rate tracks another ep kirilla by demis roussos fares much better there's a move afoot to persuade us all to holiday on our own shores this year, and really, with anything but English being spoken from Brighton to St Ives, and the King of Benidorm Blues releasing this smashing EP, who needs the Costa Brava? A hit! Forced jollity of the kind some adults imagine will appeal to ten-year-olds, says Coon of Southern Comfort by Bernie Flint.
Starting point is 01:36:06 The song drifts tritely along, with Flint obviously trying to do his best behind gritted teeth. The Small Faces scored a hit last year with the release of Ichiku Park, and they're having another go by shoving out Tin Soldier. But Caroline spends a review comparing them to the Buzzcocks before stating that it's a fine reminder of the fresh rock style which is still admired by young musicians today. Rose Royce, a follow-up, I want to get next to you with an even better tune, I'm Going Down, but our Kaz doesn't reckon it.
Starting point is 01:36:48 Good try, people, but it won't work. It's the third or fourth track lifted from the soundtrack to Car Wash. Classy and moody, but without the instant appeal of Next To You. No, no duck. Slow Down by John Miles is an unimaginative disco sound which reduces everything to the lowest common denominator. Everybody Have a Good Time by Archie Bell and the Drolls is an uncontrived atmosphere of gay disco abandon. Dancing in the Dark by Acker Bilk is debonair and suave. And anything that's rock and roll by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sees a band that many people are dying to be
Starting point is 01:37:25 a huge success, pissing on their chips once more. If this were not another song with boring lyrics about rock and roll is rock and roll, etc., it would be great. Block out the words and you have a near-perfect diamond-hard sound, but it's
Starting point is 01:37:41 not a patch on American Girl. This band are requiring a second division aura oh harsh but you know you know what caroline coon right routinely held up as a kind of godfather godmother if you like of punk writing her stuff when i've read it it's actually not bad you get the sense she's a music fan you get the sense she knows what she's talking about. She, I think, can be effectively contrasted with what's going on at the NME at this point. Because, you know, I mean,
Starting point is 01:38:13 the NME front cover this week of the Mushroom Clan looks tremendously exciting, but I've actually looked at that issue. And, oh my God, it's terrible. It's full of Tony Parcell and Julie Birchall just chatting shit. And, you know, when you read those guys writing, you genuinely cannot believe they got away with just this unfunny dog shit writing. You know, the enemy that week, I think the LP reviews page,
Starting point is 01:38:39 it's got Julie Birchall slagging off rock follies of 77 or something. And you've got all these great names in there yeah there's some Leicester bang stuff a bit off colour Leicester bangs actually you've got some yeah which you see sometimes does but you know you've got some Nick Kent stuff in there that's pretty good but the domination of the enemy in 77 by Tony Parcell and Julie Birchall is unbelievable they get loads of pages to just write what they want. Tony Parcell does a whole piece about wanting to drive across America. And it's just fucking sad.
Starting point is 01:39:14 They've clearly, like, made an impression, if you like, i.e. generated enough angry readers' letters, that they're now being given half the paper. And, you know, when you read that NME from, you know, I'm sure that Mushroom Cloud cover is probably held up as, oh, wow as a wow wasn't the enemy amazing it put stuff like this on the cover dig into it into the actual issue itself and the writing it's fucking terrible because birchville and parsons were were always terrible terrible writers so yeah i massively disagree with a lot of what caroline coombs says in this singles page but she's a thousand times a better writer than them to imagine not
Starting point is 01:39:45 being able to make nuclear war fun and interesting fuck's sake enemy but i mean look at what caroline coons had to review man fucking demis russer aca bilk in 1977 as the clash said no russos bilk and flint in 77 clearly not the case that's it the punk records themselves a few and far between it's still quite a live phenomenon rather than a recorded phenomenon so you're going to see
Starting point is 01:40:08 them on the live pages but maybe not on the singles pages and certainly not on the album pages yeah you have to feel for any idiot who have to try and
Starting point is 01:40:14 think of something to say about Demis Roussos and Bernie Flint in the LP review section the lead review this week belongs to Peter Frampton's I'm In You. The follow-up to the massively selling in the USA Frampton comes alive, and the dagger is handed to Chris Welch.
Starting point is 01:40:34 But after pointing out that it doesn't quite have the magic of its big-selling predecessor, he concedes that it's pleasant, unpretentious, and there is no reason to suppose it won't be another giant smash. Golden age of music journalism, right? Oh yeah, it's a toe-tapping smash. David Coverdale has struck out on his own, and his debut LP, White Snake, is received more than favourably by Brian Harrigan.
Starting point is 01:41:01 Of course. In a nutshell, he he surpassed all expectations. It's easy with the benefit of hindsight to suggest that Coverdale wasn't really at home with the Deep Purple musical concept, but here he demonstrates where his musical inclinations really lie. The man has already recorded his second solo, and I can tell you now it's even better than this. his second solo and i can tell you now it's even better than this for good measure harrigan tacks on a review of the re-release of his old band's debut lp shades of deep purple and deems it a
Starting point is 01:41:33 great start to a career and a valuable collector's item imagine if you started a metal band in this period and brian harrigan didn't like it, you'd be screwed. If Brian Harrigan and Tommy Vance both thought you were crap, it'd be like being an American fascist now who Donald Trump had a personal problem with. It'd just be like your career's over before it's begun. Coverdale's just another one of those people fleeing from Ritchie Blackmore
Starting point is 01:42:02 because Ritchie Blackmore just antagonizes everyone he works with although I think Richie Blackmore is delightful and delicious I think he's hilarious but yeah you know the amount of people who just part company with that guy whether it's Ronnie James Dio from Rainbow or David Colwood from Deep Purple it's just there's something about Richie Blackmore that is truly hilarious like Dolly Part, Tanya Tucker has realised that it's possible for a country singer to cross over, but her latest LP, Riding Rainbows, sees her falling between two stools, according to Michael Oldfield. The bulk of the album is dreary pop songs on which Tanya wastes her superb country voice. Brian Harrigan reckons that bringing in Barry Blue as producer
Starting point is 01:42:46 will kick Moon up into the first division with their new LP, Turning the Tides. It doesn't. Michael Oldfield reckons that Two Can Do It Too by Amazing Rhythm Aces is a great album that could have been a masterpiece if they'd spent more time on the lyrics. But Fundamental Role, the debut lp by walter
Starting point is 01:43:06 egan is a bit cat shit according to harrigan he really needs to work harder than this if he's going to bring out a memorable album and if you're wondering where all the punk is it's in the live section where blonde air television and the cortinasinas in Bristol gets bouquets and brickbats from Simon Kinnesley. It is with bands like television and talking heads that the more wholesome future of 70s music lies, he says, and he praises the Cortinas for musically extending themselves further than the more usual Holocaust punk-arama. But Blondie performed with
Starting point is 01:43:45 detached indifference as Debbie Harry went through a series of laughably lame martial arts poses as the band plodded along behind. And Caroline Kuhn goes to Ramones Talking Heads and the Saints Triple Header at the Roundhouse, which she
Starting point is 01:44:01 calls one of the most exciting good fun shows of rock to be remembered for a long time to come thank you william mcgonigal in the gig guide david could have seen the jam at the winning post twickenham or if he'd rather at chelsea football club hawkwind at the music Machine, Sarah Vaughan at Ronnie Scott's, Georgie Fame and the Blue Fames at Dingwall's, Mike Harding at Victoria Palace, or Eddie and the Hot Rods at The Rainbow,
Starting point is 01:44:33 but probably didn't. Taylor could have seen Clodagh Rogers at Billingham Forest, The Damned and the Adverts at Barbarella's, Muscles at Sloopy's Birmingham, or Strider at Dudley JB's. No, no, it's Clyde Rogers. She's going to bounce up and down on her spring.
Starting point is 01:44:53 She invented pogoing, didn't she? Neil could have seen Mealticket and Lou Lewis Band at Coventry College of Education. Oh, yoffie. Or nipped out to Wolverhampton to check out trapeze at the Lafayette, and fuck all that. Sarah could have gone right out to see Lin Paul at the Aquarius in Chesterfield, Stranglers at the top rank in Sheffield, or caught up with the Damden adverts at Outlook Doncaster.
Starting point is 01:45:20 Al could have seen Lou Lewis Band at the Boat Club in Nottingham or ventured out to catch Johnny Nash at Bailey's Club in Leicester City Boy at the Retford Porterhouse or the fabulous Poodles at the 76 Club in Burton-on-Trent and Simon could have seen 5cc at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff bombed over to Bristol to catch the jam at Bristol Pollair or darts at the old Granary, then nipped back to catch Ian Hunter and the Vibrators at the top-ranked Cardiff.
Starting point is 01:45:52 Not many decent gigs knocking about. It's 1977, what's going on? Too hot. But, I mean, judging by the news section, most of the managers are just making up gigs that aren't going to happen just to get in the papers, you know, it's a bit crazy. In the letters page, well, this week's mailbag kicks off with an impassioned letter from Malatis de Ville
Starting point is 01:46:10 from Dere, Northern Ireland. To all the angry young punks out there, Joe Strummer may look awfully impressive in his battle fatigues, but he and his playmates prance about, pretending to be urban gorillas. Over here we have had seven years of urban gorillas, only we call them terrorists, which I'm afraid isn't quite as glamorous. It sticks in my gullet to see Strummer clowning
Starting point is 01:46:39 about, glorifying the kind of bastards who have wrecked the lives of thousands of people and left a country in ruins. There wasn't anything dashing about the men in the shades and parkas who would roll up to your house to blast you away because they don't like your religion or politics. I hope this puts a new angle on the new punk chic for you. I'm so bored of the uda ira dup uvf uff etc etc what does he know i'm sorry but i have to say that's very naive in more contentious news caroline coon dared to coat down the new genesis ep spot the pigeon the other week and s eggingtonggington, P.G. Robbins and J.C. Hume, all studying at Grey College, Durham University, have drafted a combined response directly from the common room.
Starting point is 01:47:37 What on earth did Caroline Coombe mean when she wrote that the new Genesis single is, quote, a prehistoric attempt at reviving interest in a strange band. The whole phrase is a collection of misguided, if not false, statements, taking it piece by piece. A. Prehistoric implies outdated and simple. However, this band have been constantly changing and influencing modern rock, and still are still are b how is it possible to
Starting point is 01:48:07 revive interest in a band that sell records by the million and incites thousands of fans to queue out overnight to get tickets for their concerts which sell out at every venue admittedly punk rock has its place and although we don't like it we wouldn't put it down unnecessarily in the way cc puts down genesis say these three spots you wouldn't expect pernickety condescension from genesis fans no meanwhile simon kinnisley made a fatal error in his live review of Queen by suggesting that Brian May was never a wildly gifted guitarist. And now he has to deal with Alison Maloney from Heddington, Oxford. This must come as a great surprise to anyone who has ever seen Queen live or heard them on record. He is a highly sensitive and mature musician with a rare gift in that he has no
Starting point is 01:49:06 need to bring his music to the front of the band to reveal its brilliance maybe queen as a unit is becoming jaded and in need of a change but to condemn one of the best guitarists britain has seen since hendrix is nothing short of criminal. Twelve-inch singles are starting to become a thing and Kevin Botting from Budde Cornwall is not having it. Is it right that such quantities of vinyl should be used for just a few minutes of music? Haven't we forgotten the infamous vinyl shortage of not long ago which sent the prices of albums rocketing?
Starting point is 01:49:44 Let's save resources for the future and keep prices down by not wasting vinyl. Or when can we expect to see 24-inch albums that play at 45 RPM? That'd be amazing. Yes, but imagine having one of those under your fucking arm coming out of Wolves on a Saturday afternoon, though, or getting it on a bus. Kate Constable of Dorchester made the mistake of
Starting point is 01:50:06 watching the nation's top pop show the other week and was appalled by the sight of brendan having sat through another edition of top of the pops i wonder how the beep can show pathetic little people singing something called rock me good grief they obviously don't know the meaning of the word. The programme was saved by the brilliant Stranglers. Thanks to John Peel, the only DJ giving groups like Stranglers and The Clash some exposure, it might just keep the music industry alive. And finally, there's a pat on the back for Alan Jones for his piece on John Otway, and in particular his mention of Pete Townsend as an early champion of the new wave. Townsend, regularly pilloried as the epitome of jaded old-wave flatulence in less discriminating journals, was in fact the first person to discover punk, to see its potential,
Starting point is 01:51:02 and may his shallow detractors eat humble pie though never having met him in my nine years of knocking round the edges of the music business I get the solid impression that he is one of the very few rock stars who cares writes Pete Frame of
Starting point is 01:51:19 Yeoman Cottage North Marston yes that Pete Frame that Pete Frame bless his heart I Crane. Bless his heart. I wonder how the letter was laid out. Was it one on a massive sheet of A3 with all branching offs and everything? Yeah, he's right, though. It's like the only problem with Pete Townshend was, unfortunately, he cared just slightly too much, which you wouldn't think was possible.
Starting point is 01:51:40 But, yes, it is. 48 pages, 15p. I never knew there was so much in it so what else was on telly today well bbc one commences at 20 to 7 with a double barrel blast of open university with programs about peer gint and embalming then they close down for four hours and five minutes. Yeah, imagine taking that for your degree. Then they close down for four hours and five minutes, springing back to life at noon with live coverage of the Queen on a boat in the Thames
Starting point is 01:52:15 and walking around the Tower of London. Then after closing down for another 15 minutes, it's on the move, the midday news, then ragtime with Maggie Henderson and Fred Harris and closes down again for another 10 minutes. At 5-2, we're whipped over to the park in Nottingham for the second round of the John Player Grand Prix, the men's warm-up tournament for Wimbledon.
Starting point is 01:52:41 After regional news in your area, it's play school with Julie Stevens, Brian Kant and Christopher Lillicrap, White Horses and Scooby-Doo. Then Blue Peter checks in on the progress of Rags, the trainee pony for disabled riders who was paid for with 800 tonnes of old wool and cotton collected by viewers two years ago after captain pugwash it's the news nationwide and they've just finished tomorrow's world where the power trio of baxter woolard and rod have been augmented by judith han for the screamy high-pitched bits no doubt the rod of correction it's what they used to call it down in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Starting point is 01:53:30 BBC Two opens at 6.40 with a triple bill of organisation development, organosilicon compounds and viewing the invisible in Open University. There's a gig poster right there, isn't it? Then shuts down for three hours and five minutes before coming back hard with play school. Then he shuts down again for another four hours and 25 minutes before picking up the tennis. Then it's two hours of more Open Universitaire, news on two, and they're a quarter of an hour into having a baby. The series about everything to do with pregnancy, apart from the shoving it in bit.
Starting point is 01:54:06 ITV kicks off at 10 to 10 with Woobinder, Animal Doctor, the Australian kids drama series of the late 60s involving kangaroos with their arm in a sling and such like. Then Ron Ely rescues a load of kids from the jungle in Tarzan. After a repeat of survival about some snow geese, it's the Woody Woodpecker show, followed by Granny's Kitchen, where one of the old uns gets a musical box to play aching drum, and then makes some cream cheese and pastry men. Jefferey takes a couple of puppets and a man in a bear suit to the seaside in Rainbow. Then it's the first in the new series of Treasures in Store,
Starting point is 01:54:46 which looks at a sort of museums and what's inside them. After the news at one and regional news in your area, it's the drama series Rooms, followed by Women Only. Then the 1950 Alastair Sim and Margaret Rutherford film The Happiest Days of Your Life. Then The Cedar Tree, more Australian kids drama with The Lost Islands sim and margaret rutherford film the happiest days of your life then the cedar tree more australian kids drama with the lost islands and the evil stamp collector colonel gum gets a biffing in batman huey green is the special guest in the latest episode of moon movies where a celebrity
Starting point is 01:55:20 is asked to name what films he'd take with him on a journey to the moon yeah nothing like desert island dishonest what are you saying that's followed by the news at 5 45 and regional news in your area then david hunter finds himself in the shit with his casino debts in crossroads and they're currently 20 minutes into the magnificent showman the 1964 john wayne and rita hayworth film about a circus that was known everywhere else as circus world boys what is jumping out at you there anything not a lot apart from my my very very first crush oh yeah woody woodpecker what yeah woody woodpecker i would say um not not he wasn't arousing in any way but yeah probably my first crush woody woodpecker we can discuss this perhaps in a separate podcast now but yeah i think
Starting point is 01:56:13 we need to man taylor anything um no stunned silence no i was listening to all of that and i was astonished at how little there was to comment on but i mean it was all you know entertaining to hear but i couldn't think of anything to say about any of it i'm afraid so great no wonder they're queuing up to see us live all right then pop craze youngsters it is time to go way back to june of 1977 always remember we may coat down your favorite band or artist or moniker but we never forget they've been on top of the pops more than we have apart from the monarchy bit hello and welcome to Top of the Pops. It's twenty past seven on Thursday, July the 9th
Starting point is 01:57:20 1977 and British television is still basking in the afterglow of a jubilee splurge. There's been a special episode of Mr and Mrs ITV have put on a gala of 100 stars featuring the likes of Patrick Allen
Starting point is 01:57:36 Les Dawson, Sir John Gielgud, Barbara Windsor Cleo Lane and Charlie Drake Saturday night at the Millers asked Frank Windsor and Kenny Ball and his jazz men what they were doing during the coronation a shitload of documentaries and dramas
Starting point is 01:57:52 about the past 25 years have been on and last night's Coronation Street had the residents of Weatherfield dressing up as a sort of British icons as part of a parade with Annie Walker as Elizabeth I, Bette Lynch as Britannia,
Starting point is 01:58:09 Ina Sharples as Queen Victoria, Ernie Bishop as Walter Raleigh, Fred G as William Shakespeare, Ken Barlow as Edmund Hiddlery, a blacked-up Albert Tatlock as Sherpa Tenzin, and Eddie Yates as a caveman. That's a great episode. Alas, the wagon
Starting point is 01:58:30 loan from Newton and Ridley developed a flat battery when Stan Ogden left the lights on overnight and Reanie Roberts had a go at Albert Tatlock in the Rovers for dressing up as Idi Amin. But tonight, it's the turn of our favourite Thursday evening pop treat as it enters its fourth year under the kindly reign of robin nash who continues to keep a firm and unchanging hand on the top of
Starting point is 01:58:56 the pop's tiller but oh dear the boat is beginning to rock as the charts become more unpredictable and adulterated and captain nash is discovering that the job is becoming less of a doss article in next week's music week chaps 13 is a difficult age every parent has to face the problem of how much their adolescent offspring should know about forbidden things. When the 13-year-old is a television program, it seems the answer is no easier. A sex and punk rock have laid siege to the singles chart. Top of the pops is finding life a little less than straightforward. The Sex Pistols, of course, could hardly be expected to be welcomed with open arms, but in the same week that they rocketed embarrassingly to number 11, the Rock Follies single OK, already shown on ITV to an audience
Starting point is 02:00:00 larger than Top of the Pops' was edited out of the show at the last minute after producer Robin Nash had listened more closely to the words. He has been producing Top of the Pops on and off for four years and believes in changing nothing when you're on to a winner. Its audience goes from about 8 million to 15 million between summer and winter and Nash is responsible for deciding what they see. Yet he could justify he is more sinned against than sinning. The BBC rarely bans a record unless it is inconsiderate enough to chart. A doubtful disc will just not be played in the hope that it will go away. But while radio can argue that a record
Starting point is 02:00:46 does not fit in with its programming, Top of the Pops is there to put on the hits, and if it does not, it will at some stage have to say why not. As the Sex Pistols, for example, clearly have the power to offend some people merely by existing there was a case for discretion with god save the queen aside from which top of the pops was only following suit in the blacking by other media nasha's problem in arbitrating between good and bad taste is complicated by the fact that sex stares out from all over the top 50 kenny rogers easy listening lucille is openly adulterous carol beyer sega lives with someone who has a rubber hose and nasty bedtime habits and joy sawn is naughty naughty naughty is just that if you want to think that way all have appeared on
Starting point is 02:01:43 top of the pops but sadly pop craze youngsters not in this episode before you get your hopes up the new wave bands pose a similar problem though they are really anything but explicit the line is easier to draw nash has booked the jam and the stranglers when they came up with a lyric that was inoffensive and will do so with other new wave acts. Although one dodgy thing gets to slip under the radar in this episode, as we'll discover. Chaps, filth, sex, punk rock, what's going on? Well, I mean, the major thing that comes across in that article
Starting point is 02:02:17 is that although we might think of Top of the Pops as, you know, a sort of palace of dreams, it really doesn't sound much fun producing that show. No, not at the moment. No, the things that he has to balance, you know a sort of palace of dreams it really doesn't sound much fun producing that show no not at the moment no the things that he has to balance you know not only potential content with the songs but just the record companies the fact that more american acts are becoming more popular and consequently much more difficult to get them in the studio sounds like a nightmare yeah and it also sounds so fraught because the time of sort of like deciding what's going on and actually filming the thing is so, the little window they've got is practically only a day.
Starting point is 02:02:49 It just sounds like a frigging nightmare. It's amazing that Nash stayed in the job for that long because it sounds immensely stressful being top of the pops producer. And at this time, even more so because the charts are fucking going mad. You know, things are going down and then up again. As we're going to see uh at the top end of the charts there's been some definite tinkering going on that's going to have an impact on the charts for at least a month to come so yeah poor robin nash man he gone are the days when he could
Starting point is 02:03:16 book an entire episode of top of the pops from a phone box in italy when he was on his holiday your host this week is Tony Blackburn, who has just reached his fourth anniversary as the sitting tenant of the Simon Bates lot from 9 to 12 on weekdays on Radio 1. Two days ago, on Jubilee Day, he linked up with Paul Burnett and his foul nemesis Noel Edmonds to present the nation's all-time top 100.
Starting point is 02:03:46 A six-hour rundown voted upon by Radio 1 listeners. Chaps, would you care to hear the top ten? Oh, yes, please. Alright. Hit the fucking music. Number ten. I'm Still Waiting, Diana Ross and the
Starting point is 02:04:03 Supremes. That's not good. Number nine. Alright Now, Free. Alright. Number 10, I'm Still Waiting, Diana Ross and the Supremes. Number 9, Alright Now, Free. Number 8, Seasons in the Sun, Terry Jackson. Number 7, Sailing, Rod Stewart. Number 6, Hey Jude, The Beatles. Number 5, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel. Number four, Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen.
Starting point is 02:04:36 Number three, Without You, Nielsen. Number two, Maggie Mae, Rod Stewart. Number one, I'm not in love 10cc. Says a lot, doesn't it, that? Yeah, it does. It says a little bit about the previous sort of you know, 10, 15 years. But it says a lot about 77 actually.
Starting point is 02:04:58 That 10cc's at number one. Yeah, it also says just write a self-conscious anthem. They will fall for it. His demotion from the breakfast show has not diminished his star power one jot and he's already spent the first half of 1977 putting himself about on celebrity squares being in the rotating judges pool on new faces and he even made a tv appearance on jubilee tuesday in a repeat of goodies rule okay the 1975 christmas special taylor you've got the box set refresh our memories as to what he got up to in that episode yeah it's uh typically uh zany goodies scenario the new government of outlawed fun just like in the republic of jeffrey archer's ever fertile
Starting point is 02:05:47 imagination um so the goodies go underground and drive around in a car collecting all the now redundant entertainers uh with the intention of building a resistance movement and putting them back at the top where they belong so they drive all over london or in fact if you look closely all over ealing where they used to make comedy and first thing they do they see tommy cooper and they grab him and they chuck him in the car and they see rolf harris and they grab him and they chuck him in the car and we see tony blackburn standing on a street corner reading the paper uh the goodies car pulls daily mail no Mail, no doubt. I wouldn't be surprised.
Starting point is 02:06:26 Tony walks over to the car, waves, and just as he gets there, it speeds off. And you must see Tony standing in the street crying. Again. And in two days' time, he'll be co-presenting the first in the third series of Seaside Special in Eastbourne, having seen off Noel Edmonds and Dave Lee Travis,
Starting point is 02:06:49 and bagsie in a permanent slot with his wingman David Hamilton, who will no doubt be continuing their ongoing banter war, which has been dragging on for years now. Article in the Sunday Mirror in March of this year about the current fashion of celebrities knocking each other in public. A couple of game lads, outsiders but full of stamina, a top of the pops compares Tony Blackburn and David Hamilton. Of the two, I find David the crisper puncher. See if if you agree Blackburn on Hamilton
Starting point is 02:07:25 the only reason he got engaged this week was so he could have someone to carry his white handbag for him Hamilton on Blackburn a burglar broke into Tony's library and stole both his books and he hadn't even finished
Starting point is 02:07:42 colouring one of them in yet but if they ever get matched against Jimmy Tarbuck and he hadn't even finished colouring one of them in yet. But if they ever get matched against Jimmy Tarbuck, there'll be a lot of needle, because Jimmy can't stand either of them. They are the most unfunny people I've ever heard. Tell them to leave the jokes to the pros. As well as introducing the nolans janet brown and ronnie corbett they'll be overseeing the first heat of the 1977 miss seaside special natural beauty contest
Starting point is 02:08:17 because chaps as we all know what better judge of natural beauty than Tony Blackburn and David Almont? Absolutely. But it has to be said, chaps, behind that smile lies pain, as I do believe we're coming to the culmination of Tony's career of Britain's most famous cookhold, a title which he bestowed upon himself in the autumn of 1976 when he broke down in a press conference to announce his split from Tessa Wyatt, and Tony played with Thrown It All Away by R&J Stone and If You Leave Me Now by Chicago over and over again. His 1977 started with Wyatt appearing as Richard O'Sullivan's stage girlfriend in the ITV sitcom Robin's Nest, which was followed by rumours in the itv sitcom robin's nest which was followed by rumors in the press that o sullivan
Starting point is 02:09:06 was on wyatt's nest and in a few weeks time blackburn would give an interview where he moved to the next stage she's turned the weans against us headline in the daily mirror next to a photo of him with his headphones around his neck looking absolutely tramadol to fuck headline breaking up is hard to pay disc jockey tony blackburn wants a men's lib movement to protect spurned husbands tony 34 is now suing his actress wife tessa wired for divorce on the grounds that his marriage is irretrievably broken down. Tessa left Tony last October after five years of marriage, taking their son with her, and he opened his heart about the breakup in today's Woman's Own magazine. He said, this is the worst year of my life. To this day, I shall never know how i managed to keep up the chat and corny jokes
Starting point is 02:10:07 i even thought about taking the easy way out oh tony listen to chris needham there's no easy way out put your hands in the air and shout doing going to capital radio tony also said after my experiences of being a loser in marriage, I'd be quite interested in starting a men's lib campaign like they have in the USA. I really feel quite strongly about this. Why should a man have to go on paying for the privilege of having someone walk out on him, yeah?
Starting point is 02:10:41 He's gone full Fathers for Justice there, hasn't he? He's not entirely wrong about this in terms of the way men get shafted in divorce cases but in typical blackburn fashion he has made it as difficult as possible to sympathize with him it's like the phrase men's lib or men's rights he's never gonna win anyone over it just makes you think that when he dressed up as superman in roller yes he was actually on his way to scale big ben made out of a bed sheet which is not easy to do in uh slip-on shoes no bit of a heel the thing about tony is that you can never quite hate him for his stupidity and banality but
Starting point is 02:11:26 equally you can't quite feel sorry for him when things go wrong. He makes it very difficult. Even in the sort of tiny five second segment in which he introduces this episode even if you were a kid who didn't know about all of these shenanigans and what
Starting point is 02:11:42 he was going through that year there's something incredibly even more forced than normal you can sort of simultaneously see why he's so emblematic for so many people of this sort of anodyne superficial nature of pop radio and pop television but you can also see why out of all of the radio one djs at that time he's perhaps sort of psychologically most compelling in a way that that that smile i mean is that an expression of true emotion or is that a reflex of kind of avoidance of real emotion you always find yourself in this episode are we watching an adult man or are we watching a kind of painfully withdrawn child playing his games of pretense at being normal in an adult body when i think of the smiles of the other DJs, like Savile's smile, that's a leer, you know?
Starting point is 02:12:25 Travis's smile is a bug-eyed kind of Colin Hunt-style proof of zaniness. Simon Bates always looks like he's posing for a brochure. And Noel Edmonds' smile is just pure careerism. But Blackburn, what's behind that smile? You know, it's something I've been thinking a lot about recently, because I've shifted my radio habits of a Saturday morning of late. I'm radio 3, 9 till 12, but 7 till 9, I'm now listening to Sounds of the 60s with Tony Blackburn,
Starting point is 02:12:52 you know, pottering around, having my tea and my facts. I was kind of initially angry that he got that gig because the Coventry-born Brian Matthew made the programme very much his own and turned it into something of a cult for several years, you know. And I was a bit annoyed when when tony took over tony blackburn has definitely editorialized this show it's very reflective of him it's got a northern soul section now and a motown a to z and a do what feature it clearly reveals his obsessions in pop but still after what nearly on sort of 50 years really of
Starting point is 02:13:20 dealing with blackburn in my life i've still got no clue really what he does with music and what it does to him he likes music I'll give him that but I think he just likes music that lets him be Tony Blackburn smiling and dancing and essentially self pitying so his smile here yeah worst year of his life
Starting point is 02:13:40 and there's just an extra tincture of forcedness and facadeness to Tony in this episode that I found really compelling, actually. He would have been well chuffed about I'm still waiting to get to number 10 since it was him that got it released by Tamla Motown. Right, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 02:13:54 Yeah, I'm sure he wouldn't have failed to mention that. I think all music for him is just, it's a spiritual thing. It's part of the sort of the ceremonial reanimation in his mind of Tessa Warren. It's just her, like, incorporeal form. I know she comes from Woking, and you say she's a fool, but her heart is in the city where it belongs. Well, at least Tony will be able to console himself this weekend by linking up with an unnamed
Starting point is 02:14:27 dancer in new edition the regular troop in seaside special who's been knobbing for the past two series really oh yeah i mean this is the thing about tony blackburn he goes on about being the jilted husband and everything but you know he also mentions that oh yeah i was i was being a massive slag at the time as well why is she left me oh yeah let's not forget that what broke up their happy home was that he slept with what he referred to as a lovely oriental person and i quite like oriental people so you know i was watching the top of the pops from 1983 a while ago. Not the same one with Peter Powell looking like proud earner of five O levels, disgraced liar, grand chaps.
Starting point is 02:15:12 It's a different one. It's where Jonathan King's wretched interlude. Oh yes. Entertainment USA. Yeah. But he was in Paris this time and it was outroed by Tony Blackburn with the words, that was a gay Jonathan King in Paris. To which Gary Davis says, I think you mean Jonathan King in gay Paris.
Starting point is 02:15:37 To which Tony just grins silently. So, on top of everything else a pioneer of outrage not only that outing people when he wasn't gay himself which i think shows real dedication to the cause we're hit with a cold open of tone air in a light blue short-sleeved shirt with all waves on it and some sort of animal that i can't work out what it is on it tucked into beige saxons sporting an exceedingly lank hairstyle in his trademark smile which makes him look like the joker played by terry wogan after nailing two critical pieces of information. Hello and welcome to Top of the Pops. He hurls us into the top 30 as the clarion call of whole lot of love by the Top of the Pops orchestra blares out.
Starting point is 02:16:34 And chaps, it's a return to those pictures. Oh, what caught the eye this time? The first thing that caught my eye was the Eagles. Yes. Looking like five versions of the statue of christ that carrie has in her under the stairs they look fucking terrifying one of the eagles on the left hand side he's been perfectly bisected by the picture crop hasn't he just like that jellyfish yeah indeed but there's i mean the thing is with the eagles there's actually a lot of bands here
Starting point is 02:17:05 who kind of explain why punk had to happen i guess lots of bearded beden and totally indistinguishable bands elp genesis blue they all kind of look the same yeah not that blue hasten to add yeah not that blue not that blue but um i mean the other one that stuck out to me is brian ferry yes he looks like roy of the rovers teammate blackie gray also wearing a one comedy mr spock ear unless that's his real ear which would make me wonder whether he had his eyes surgically moved closer together to distract anyone from ever noticing yeah and the only other one i noticed was yeah boz skaggs nonce estate agent well equally terrifying is the base city rollers who've been airbrushed into the realm of the uncanny they're like the base city real dolls although it has to be said that the so-called
Starting point is 02:18:00 restoration that someone has done on this particular file has made pretty much everyone look kind of disturbing. They all look like the pictures you get if you type their names into Dal E. A timeless reference there that will never date. That is the Liverpool football team in a very dark, creepy photograph in front of some flock wallpaper, A very dark, creepy photograph in front of some flock wallpaper, which looks like it was taken at the scene of a spontaneous human combustion. The heat from which has melted off the faces of the players. I don't think too many children would have pinned that poster up on their bedroom. No.
Starting point is 02:18:41 And it's immediately out of date because Kevin Keegan's on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What else is there? 10cc. A spiteful Eric Stewart, having shrunk godly and cream to the size of bodkins, displays them hidden in the palm of his hand to a delighted Graham Goldman. Caption. Yes.
Starting point is 02:19:03 Lol. Get it? Gladys Knight and the Pips. The Pips jackets patterned after the first half second of the then current Tyne Tees ident. Niche but accurate. Well spotted, Taylor. Honkair look like they're watching a stripper at a working bench. Go back and look at that picture.
Starting point is 02:19:24 You'll see it. Genesis. Phil Collins has got his face right glommed onto tony banks's neck making him look like the world's hairiest conjoined yeah and also the one that no one knows what his name is has got this sort of fair old pullover and scarf thing going on yeah the four of them look like ford prefect slarty bart fast yes they fall beagle brocks in a public school production of hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy pierrot umilane is depicted as a plastic mushroom with a face and springy horns but maybe he is maybe that's what he is oh and rock follies are entitled julie covington char Cornwall, Rule Lenska.
Starting point is 02:20:05 Yeah, yeah. Because the BBC aren't about to advertise an ITV television programme. Right. They're not going to call them rock follies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Rule Lenska, the patriotic Polish song. As the wiggly guitar reaches a crescendo and the canned applause kicks in,
Starting point is 02:20:40 we're immediately whipped into the image of some congas being bashed as the first act appears. It's Ossie Bisa and the Warrior. Warrior, come out to play! We've already covered Ossie Bisa, the Ghana-Nigerian-Caribbean collective in Chart Music 29 when they took Sunshine Date at number 17 in january of 1976 and this single the follow-up to dance the body music which got to number 31 in june of last year
Starting point is 02:21:15 is taken from their seventh lp ojar awake it was originally put out by the band as a single in 1975, but failed to chart, and is the cover of a song taken from Ipitombe, the 1974 South African musical, about a young man who leaves his village and goes to work in the mines of Johannesburg, which made it to the West End last year before transferring to Broadway. On the back of the success of the stage show, it's been dusted off and put out again. And while it's not in the chart yet, Robin Nash clearly doesn't give a toss, as here they are in the studio.
Starting point is 02:21:54 And chaps, Ipi Tombe, being good and upstanding citizens of ATV land as you are, we all know the title track of that musical, as well as we know our own mother's faces don't we is it from the advert for the west midlands safari park only during the research of this song for chart music did i learn that they aren't english lyrics because i'd listen to that advert for the West Midlands Safari Park and just think,
Starting point is 02:22:26 they're saying something, but what the fuck is it? And I just assumed it was a really thick Birmingham accent. You know the second bit where it goes, hee-yuh-oh-ee-yum, me-oh-ee-yum. That bit.
Starting point is 02:22:39 I worked out that the last line must be, it's on the um. And I just assumed that there was a river um that i that was somewhere in birmingham and that's where the west midland safari park was on the um strangely plausible maybe next to the river tom where tickle town is in fact it's right next to an area of common land called rid covert right which is where we used to go camping when i was in the cubs and the best thing was because it was right next to the safari park you'd be sitting around the bonfire at night like
Starting point is 02:23:10 eating your marshmallows or whatever and they'd be trying to get you to sing those stupid songs and in the distance you could hear lions roaring wow yeah even better than the bit where you all had to queue up outside a tent and go in get naked and be washed by the people no yeah yeah yeah and it was kind of unpleasant because they had a a light bulb on inside the tent so if you stood outside the tent you got one hell of a shadow play putting that aside um forever any notion that this episode of top of the pops is going to be an orgy of flag shagging is immediately dispelled isn't it i wonder if that was deliberate i don't think it was i mean it's a cracking song to start an episode with but there is this odd dissonance
Starting point is 02:23:56 with this performance it's presented and also to them that you know to their credit actually present it as a kind of upbeat holiday anthem. Yes. But, you know, slowly the lyrics, if you notice it, start snagging on you a little bit and you wonder what the hell it's all about. I mean, we've already mentioned one of those deeply gratifying scenes in the nationwide Ghibli special. I've got to admit, that Ghibli special now haunts my dreams. Wait for the bonus episode, Pulp Crazinesses. Get your sense signed up to Patreon.
Starting point is 02:24:24 You don't want to miss it but you know it's a weird thing to put in a Jubilee episode of Top of the Pops it's a very upbeat tune yes it's got these weird lines
Starting point is 02:24:34 about you know the vultures fly the wind is high the warrior fights the battle of power it's not exactly celebratory of Britain
Starting point is 02:24:44 or British the scavengers wait, each find their space. Death is late, the battle of power. You're not going to notice those lines. It's not people who should have run to the hills, isn't it? You're not particularly going to notice those lines, perhaps, when you're a kid. And you're just going to see it as a nice, sunny,
Starting point is 02:25:00 sort of very danceable tune. And you wonder who you're going to be chucking the spares at. It could be our brave boys. But it's both simultaneously a start that makes sense because it's upbeat, but the lyrics, you know, tell of something completely different. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with this,
Starting point is 02:25:16 but I don't generally get on with African pop that sounds simultaneously this jolly and this shiny. Either one is okay, but the two together i'll switch off a bit i wish that there was a little bit more of that uh bloodshot eyed terror in the actual music as well i mean it's very slick as you might expect from an afro rock band produced by eleanor bron's brother right um who also did manfred man and uriah heap and the bonzo dog doodah band so a pro but not someone who's necessarily going to capture the grit and the heat that you hear on the best afro rock stuff never mind the actual african based
Starting point is 02:26:00 rock bands who i always prefer to the british ones. But I mean, it could be done because some of this stuff is great. Like there's brilliant and well-recorded records by like Ofo, the black company, right? Lafayette Afro rock band. But part of what's great about the bands who were playing rock and soul and funk influence stuff in Africa was that they had to use relatively crappy old studios yeah which really suits the music in the same way that it suits the velvet underground or whatever you know you you hear the amps hissing and the heat haze and it really brings out the the power of it then also beats would always sounded fairly slick so that if you listen to their early albums it's kind of afro prog right yeah yeah yeah roger dean covers didn't they yeah yeah they're fantastic like roger dean's only ever good covers
Starting point is 02:26:51 like if you listen to their first album with the cover of the elephants with butterfly wings on it i mean that's you know produced by tony visconti it's as slick as this track but it weighs about 15 times as much. You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh, and also the cover of Heads, which I should say, Heads, the greatest ever title for an Afro prog LP, inspired Roger Dean to his greatest and most grotesque work ever.
Starting point is 02:27:19 He's obviously trying to be influenced by Bitches Brew cover and stuff like that, trying to go a bit afro but his own style is so absurd that you can just add anything to it and it you know it looks completely crazy and of course ossebisa end up using matty clarwine don't they who did the bitch's brew cover really i think they yeah they start using him straight after they sort of they don't dump roger dean essentially they start using matty clarwine so soon after but yeah there's no dirt here yeah and the polish i mean the polish is actually something that's picked up in reviews the review of this the album that the warrior is from um is by chris welsh in a melody maker and and he actually praises its clean guitar lines and all of this
Starting point is 02:27:59 sort of stuff he talks about cleanliness and and it does make you think i mean what a shame in a way talking of afro rock that comes from england if you like or comes from london you know what a shame a band like i don't know demon fuzz um who came up you know this is the same time as ossebisa in the same kind of scene their africa album from 71 is fantastic and dirty and filthy and that's why it's sampled so much by so many hip-hoppers um they never made it because they're a bit too weird osabisa were always going to get ahead because they're clean and their sound provides no kind of barrier if you like it's just very clean and palatable yeah although i mean like that first album was a hit record it was a top 20 album in britain right no so it just makes you
Starting point is 02:28:41 think they could have done something a little bit crunchier for a hit yeah yeah yeah i mean also i mean this is basically high life in it the way it's like yeah and there's always the temptation is to put too much gloss on highlight and because it's already super bright and when the band can really play like this one you want to hear them i like the breakdown bit in this where you get like a hint of funkiness all of a sudden. And then when all the band come back in again, it sort of spoils it. I mean, it sounds like trying to be cool or worse, you know, saying, you know, I want my Africans recording in a sweltering shack in Zambia. You know, putting out their records with Letraset front covers. But Taylor, those records sound better.
Starting point is 02:29:23 I mean, the Zambrock records from coming around about this same period, you know, from bands like Witch and stuff, who are recording in pretty poor scenarios. Amonaz. Yeah, they're fucking amazing records precisely because of the dirtiness. And I don't think those things were necessarily just foisted on those bands.
Starting point is 02:29:37 They love that dirt and they love that distortion and that sound. Osso Bistro is a different thing entirely. But it's a great, I think it's a good start to the show. I mean, it's upbeat at least, yeah.
Starting point is 02:29:46 It's just that, you know, you listen to their first few records and compared to that stuff, this is a bit like their You Better You Bet. It's like,
Starting point is 02:29:55 if your strengths as a band are adventure and drive and like red hot ensemble playing, that's what you want to hear on the records right yeah yeah yeah and in a way it's i can understand why they're first on this program to kick it off
Starting point is 02:30:12 but in a way they they suffer for coming first on this program because this is so much better than a lot of what's coming up later and if you heard it halfway through the show you you would sit up soon enough yeah but that's the funny thing i mean tying it in with the nationwide ghibli special that that classic bit when you know it scrolls up the scene all the colonies we've lost we are pretty much by this time in 77 we haven't got anything left that we still got belize maybe i don't know but you know we've got nothing left and that's accompanied by the lowering of the union jack and this ghibli episode here starts with an anti-colonialist song
Starting point is 02:30:46 played by an African group. It's really odd, isn't it? But it's totally, of course, unnoticed by the audience and also Tony Blackburn, inevitably. I don't think the general public's ready for the Burundi beat just yet. That would happen a few years later with I Eat Cannibals and The Lion Sleeps Tonight. You know, the true sound of africa as a nine-year-old
Starting point is 02:31:08 this is the only africa music i'm gonna hear apart from you know the opening credits of tarzan yeah and the aforementioned uh west midland safari park advert yeah yes although it you know instantly provides tony with a chance to fuck up yes we'll come to that in a minute okay okay so the following week and for every week after that to this day the warrior failed to chart the follow-up living loving feeling was also given the rub of a top of the pops performance in december of this year but that failed to chart as well and they never bothered the top 40 ever again. But they made a nice living on the festival circuit throughout the late 70s, playing at the Zimbabwe Independent Celebration gig with Bob Marley and the Wailers,
Starting point is 02:31:54 and living out the rest of their careers as a strictly world music concern. But wait, guess who appeared the other week on Mike Reed's Heritage Chart Show? What? Only Ossibisa. What? Oh, yeah, they got a new record out, which isn't very good, but it made it into the only chart that counts. Yes.
Starting point is 02:32:15 I was just thinking how long until the first angry letter to Mike, dear Mike Reed. Yes. I was under the impression this was meant to be the Heritage Chart Show, not the African heritage chart show and knowing old muck read he might even read it out
Starting point is 02:32:33 I'll give you a quick update on this because I decided to read it and weep the other night with a drink to fortify myself against the soul attack and I caught up Nick kershaw was at number one still hasn't grown any taller guess who else turned up your friend and mine dean friedman oh alas saying nothing of interest but i did notice something about the new record by
Starting point is 02:33:01 katrina of well katrina of katrina and the waves as she's now killed in case anyone thought that she was a hurricane yeah hurricane katrina's got a new record out but her song goes every day is like a holiday and i thought wait a minute is this demographic targeting is this a song about being retired yeah like how great would that be rock and roll songs about being retired yeah how many of them have it been i don't know but how cool would it be thumb in their nose at the working stiffs you know it'd be like a wham rap but about being retired i might not have a job but i have a good time with the girls that i meet daily mail below the line o-a-p-o-r hey everybody take a look at me i got a scooter for mobility
Starting point is 02:33:53 oh and the other thing that caught my eye is one of the rubettes now looks exactly like larry david it's really kind of yeah you must get it all the time, people coming up to him and saying, hey, bald asshole. And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, like out of Curb Your Enthusiasm. And they go, like out of what? But at least that's one band where you can't snigger when they all turn up wearing hats.
Starting point is 02:34:33 There it is. That's a sound there of Asa Bisa and an album called The Warrior. And that's a good way to start our sort of jubilee edition, I guess we would call it, at the top of the pots. Hope that you had a really lovely holiday and let's keep the holiday atmosphere going with the Electric Light Orchestra and Telephone Line. Tony, off to the side, tells us that Ossie Beeser was a good way to start the Jubilee Top of the Pops.
Starting point is 02:34:57 He then expresses his hopes that we had a good Jubilee Doss, and tells us that they're going to keep the holiday atmosphere going with a song about extreme loneliness and borderline stalking yeah yeah yeah he says let's keep the holiday atmosphere going yeah with this song about a desperate man who's lost his dignity endlessly ringing his ex even though she won't pick up well that's how tony spent his jubilee holiday anyway and let's face, we've all been there. That and not watching the summer repeats of Series 1 of Robin's Nest. No.
Starting point is 02:35:31 And let's face it, we've all been there too. Anyway, the song Tony's talking about is Telephone Line by ELO. It seems that we're contractually obliged to talk about the Electric Light Orchestra every fucking time we do a late 70s top of the pops and this their 13th single released in the uk is the follow-up to rock aurea which got to number nine in march of this year it's the third and final cut from their 1976 lp a new world record which is still putting itself about on the LP charts and is currently at number 11. It entered the chart three weeks ago at number 42, then soared 14 places to number 28,
Starting point is 02:36:14 and this week it's moved up five places from number 18 to number 13. As Jeff and the Chaps are currently in Munich recording their next album, Out of the Blue, and have already drawn a line under making in-studio performances on Top of the Pop since Knight Rider in April of 1976, here's a still new innovation for the time, a promo video. And Chaps, here we have 70s video cliche number one,
Starting point is 02:36:44 the fake live performance, which was pretty much the only game in town in this era, wasn't it? I mean, even Bohemian Rhapsody, when you look at it again, is a fake live performance, but with extra overlays of fire, like a coal-light advert. Yeah, yeah. I mean, ELO on film always look like they're on another planet as well. And I'm never able to work this out.
Starting point is 02:37:06 It always looks like footage from Apollo 17. You know, like Gene Cernan collecting dust samples, you know. And yet, they're such earthbound people. So, yeah, ELO, they don't do top of the pops anymore. Yeah, how come? Is it beneath them? Well, because they're massive now. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 02:37:24 And probably something to do with jeff lynn being the most reticent man in pop at the moment you know when out of the blue comes out in a few months time he
Starting point is 02:37:31 tells the record company that the only press interview he's going to do for it is with the birmingham mail because that's the only paper that his
Starting point is 02:37:39 mom and dad read so yeah it's a bit of a control freak which reveals itself in this record actually i quite like this song it's lovely this yeah it's a bit of a control freak which reveals itself in this record actually i quite like this song it's lovely yeah it's firmly in the in the you know let's rewrite the beatles something area of elo's work but it is a it's pristine it's perfect the harmony is a really choice and it's got that kind of pacific coast suggestiveness in the baccarachi chords that i
Starting point is 02:38:03 mean it always comes naturally that kind of thing to people living in the most landlocked bit of the uk so yeah i mean it's a really good song and actually they benefit i think like taylor says it does have this sealed in space age kind of vibe this little clip yeah it's a song about technology a bit odd i mean is he talking to an operator yeah it sounds like he's trying to leave a phone message or something. But then he talks to an operator. I mean, phones were the music streaming service of the day, of course, with Dial-A-Disc. That was getting 100 million calls a year. Real money spinner.
Starting point is 02:38:35 Even if people had started figuring out to press the B button before the end of the record and get a refund. Maybe Tony spent the Jubilee talking to the Dial-A-Disc playing of this song. Just adding an extra level to it well I mean I remember people phoning dialer discs and saying they could hear other people what? in between the record yeah in between
Starting point is 02:38:53 you know because it was I think it changed how many songs were on it but in between each song people that I spoke to especially if you did it from a phone box could hear little bits of
Starting point is 02:39:02 they might have been bullshitting me but that's what they could hear certainly but the annoying thing i mean it's one of those things that as a songwriter you know old technology it provides better rhymes to be honest with you phones calls radio in 2022 we're still at that point really where even in hip-hop mention of i don't know instagram or followers or feeds it still sounds in a weird way more dated yes because instantaneously it's kind of superannuated by being mentioned in the song whereas the phone call is something that will immortally be in pop yeah because it puts you in that position an interesting lyrical position um of being able
Starting point is 02:39:41 to talk and perhaps also listen to someone who's not there with you and that's kind of the pull of this song and it is as taylor said it's a dark despairing kind of song yeah as well the other sign that they've been kicked up into the big league is the dial tone which is an american one yes yes indeed apparently they rang up an american number at random and hoped no one would pick it up you know partly so they could record, but also partly so they wouldn't get a massive phone bill and then run it for a moon. Yeah, they know all the tricks of transatlantic pop from A to Z.
Starting point is 02:40:15 And yeah, you're right, Neil. You know, people talk about films that you couldn't make shot for shot nowadays because of technology's rendered the plot unworkable. Well, you know, that kind of applies to this as well because, know there wouldn't be an operator involved nowadays you'd have to call the song 5g mast or 700 unanswered text messages i don't like how when you type elo in the youtube it auto completes as elon no I mean, it's an easy mistake to make.
Starting point is 02:40:46 It's two ugly rich men with spaceships. It's just a good thing they didn't call themselves Electric Toaster Orchestra. Right. Or it would auto-complete as Eton Musk. Oh! The sweet smell of success. It's a pungent fragrance of old meat,
Starting point is 02:41:10 masturbation and somebody else's sweat this is one of my favorite elo singles though i always go on about how elo records are on or off with me there's some that i love and some that i can't bear but this is great it's as much of a weird artificial underwater neon world as all the best elo records but it's also a genuinely emotional ballad that you can believe in on that level too and they work together like the strange unearthly atmospheres created by the production enhance the meaning of the song yeah and enforce it so you don't get the feeling that you sometimes get from elo that the record is a giant impressively sculpted uh blue glass abstract which has function but no meaning which is perfectly okay but it's just it's nice to have some sort of contact too like jeff lynn is not what anyone would call a soul man no but he can create sounds which trigger peculiar emotions so
Starting point is 02:42:12 all the better if he matches them to an appropriate song yeah and this is the slowest yellow single so far isn't it yeah you'd have to wait until wild west hero for another one like it and that's nowhere near as good as this, to my mind. Although it is the usual mixture of late Beatles and pre-Beatles style. But the 50s or early 60s type bits here aren't just decoration or like a beery nostalgia trip like they are on some of these records. They're integrated into the song and it works. They wring a bit of tragedy
Starting point is 02:42:45 out of the do-what bits you know it's like they're all behind perspex as usual but you do feel something when you hear them because the song has properly set you up to well yeah i mean it's interesting you say the 50s and 60s because for me the harmony is like straight from the everly brothers and and the song's like quite beatlesy but the lines themselves the lyrics are definitively 70s i mean i'm living in twilight it's just such a fantastic payoff in that hook that i think is a very 70s thing so they're combining those things to make something contemporary it's good yeah i like it reminds me of me in the winter when it always seems to be either 4 p.m or 4 a.m yeah i mean it's it's certainly not an original song that's for sure there's bits in here that are essentially identical
Starting point is 02:43:30 to other songs yeah the long and winding road for that piano and the way he goes yeah yeah yeah yeah all the young dudes for the chorus although that chord sequence wasn't new when Bach used it, never mind the L-O. And most obviously, Hello by Lionel Richie for the opening line. So that's two from before this record existed and one from after. So on balance, that's a deficit. Oh, and you haven't even mentioned Hello, This Is Jonah. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 02:44:02 A year or so later, which ramped up the technology even more because there's an answering machine and you can hear Jonah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even though she's dead in a car crash. I miss all those story songs. Yeah. I do like Jeff Lynne, but it's just the way it feels like for him. His whole life was just leading up to joining the Traveling Wilburys.
Starting point is 02:44:21 Yeah. You just get the impression that he's more of a fan than a visionary. Do you know what I'm saying? Which is, you know, even though David Bowie had already shown that you could be both. But it's just that fuzziness of purpose, you know, as well as of face. Also, he's the only person in the world where you don't recognize him until he puts a pair of dark glasses on.
Starting point is 02:44:44 Oh, it's Geoff Lynn. You know, he's just another browser in the pornographic bookshop until he sticks the literature under his coat, pays and leaves, steps outside, slips on a pair of shades, and, oh, hey, Geoff, all right? Hey, Geoff, don't bring me down. Gruce. He loves that.
Starting point is 02:45:07 And it's a quick thumbs up, and he's backing his allegro speeding back towards spaghetti junction i also like the way that the orchestra if you like the string players in this they don't do that normal thing of like dressing them up like they're playing in the abbott hall or something they just sort of like jobbing musicians and they seem like part of it all they don't feel like oh look we're making ourselves a bit posher um they feel like musicians as well so it's actually a really successful video in a way even though yeah it's cliche to have those kind of performance videos but this is actually a really good one and and the face on kind of shot of jeff that dominates most of it is spot on i think he looks great i mean the thing is
Starting point is 02:45:46 it could be argued as we were saying when we were looking through those photos to start this episode of top of the pots an awful lot of people look like this in terms of big hair big beard big shades but jeff does it really well i think i think he looks fantastic yeah i think he does too i gotta be honest although in the west midlands in the 1970s if you were in your 30s or even late 20s and you wanted to look kind of cool but not too cool this was very much the look you'd go indeed yes i've met so many people who look like why don't we ever see him on the heritage chart, eh? He thinks he's too good for it. Honestly, I might read over Zoom in the kind of visual quality
Starting point is 02:46:30 that people watch live streams of 9-11 on, on QuickTime, you know. Did I ever tell you when I was a kid, by the way, that I was in the car and we were driving somewhere near Birmingham and we were following a big car with the registration number Bev1. Oh. Which I thought, that has to be Bev Bevan, surely. Cool. That's my claim to fame.
Starting point is 02:46:57 Although, you know, probably a Vauxhall Viva or something. Because at the time you had no idea. It's like when me and my mates thought we must be delivering the local paper to robert plant's house so i never tell you that one because on my paper round there was like one big detached house you know right so obviously it was owned by like an estate agent or something uh but because it was the the only big sort of posh looking house on our paper round we used to speculate perhaps that's where Robert Platt lives. It wasn't just that we didn't know how the other half lived, it's that we couldn't even imagine it properly.
Starting point is 02:47:33 So the following week, Telephone Line moved up five places to number eight, then dropped two places to number ten the week after, but moved back up two places to return to number 8 the week after that, its highest position. But over on stateside US of A, it got to number 7 on the Billboard chart, their first top 10 placing. The follow-up, Turn to Stone,
Starting point is 02:48:00 was put out in November of this year, and, with the assistance of legs and co shaking it all about while trying not to knock over some wobbly polystyrene stalagmites and stalactites got to number 18 the following month Oh, oh, telephone line Well, I don't want to put a hold on you as Bernie Flint's very first record,
Starting point is 02:48:33 and of course he was a smash hit. He's got a brand new one out, and this, I think, is even better. It's going to go even higher. It's called Southern Comfort. I was brought up in the country I was taught to have respect. And at home I learned the words to every song. Born in Southport in 1952, Bernard Flint was a former sailor and window cleaner
Starting point is 02:48:56 who was working as a van driver for a laundry in Ormskirk in November of 1976 when he went with his best mate Dave Mead, the little brother of Sid Little, to Manchester to audition for Opportunity Knocks, the long-running Thames TV talent show. The panel was so taken with his singer-songwriter stylings that they wanted to immediately rush him on the show, only to discover that he'd only written down
Starting point is 02:49:24 the name of his street in his application form, which led Huey Green to contact Fleet Street and spark a manhunt that was instantly successful. Fucking hell, if only they'd got in Huey Green to look for the Yorkshire Ripper. He made his debut appearance on the show in January of 1977 and became an instant success winning 12 episodes on the bounce and retiring undefeated breaking the record of new world who won nine weeks in a row in 1970 thanks to over 18 000 fake postcard votes partially organized by janie jones's husband He was immediately signed to EMI and his debut single, I Don't Want To Put A Hold On You, went all the way to number three in April, spending six weeks in the top 10. And this single,
Starting point is 02:50:15 taken from his first LP, is the follow-up. It's not in the charts just yet, but Top of the Pops knows a hit when it sees one and i mean that most sincerely folks it's only the second or third time that we've come across someone who's been on opportunity knocks chaps and you know that's a collective which includes peters and lee mary hopkin middle of the road lena zavarone neil reed the jam bobby crush millican and Nesbitt, Paper Lace and Max Boyce. Yes, and I did say The Jam. Paul Weller's girlfriend at the time applied to Opportunity Knocks on behalf of the band in late 1974
Starting point is 02:50:54 and they were invited to audition in August of 1975 at Surbiton Town Hall doing a medley of Beakles covers but they failed to impress. What a shame, man man i think we'd be living in a different world if the jam went on opportunity yeah yeah i used to watch opportunity knocks at my nans yes it was an extreme nans show wasn't it yeah well i remember even then two things were agonizingly obvious firstly there was something not right about huey green and secondly the clapometer did not appear to be the complex piece of highly technological sound measuring equipment
Starting point is 02:51:34 we were led to believe actually a bit of cardboard moved by a hidden hand which uh yes struck me as both worryingly imprecise and potentially open to corruption. But that's what's remarkable about Flint. 12 weeks. I mean, the staggering thing about that is that people wrote in, you know, to vote for him. Letters, stamps, get into the post box. Ted into lock Middlesex. To get this hateful fucker in.
Starting point is 02:51:58 Yeah. Because bloody hell, this is awful. Well, you do wonder how Mr. Charie flint won it for 12 weeks straight but i mean you'd be happier about spending 12 weeks in flint michigan than 12 weeks listening to but then you think well he was almost certainly up against identical septuplets with stylophones playing sometimes i feel like a motherless child and you know an old bloke who smashed himself in the face with a baking tray over and over again while screaming and a bearded group of popular northern entertainers with their trousers rolled up over their knobbly knees so they could
Starting point is 02:52:38 break off in the middle of the song and kick each other in the kneecaps for comic relief i bet if you watch the shows that he was actually on he looks like nick drake even though you watch this you just think oh i see your uncle bernie finally got to make his record he never gave up always believed in himself yeah it's nice for him i I remember Opportunity Knocks extremely well. I mean, it was on the telly at me mam's house and me nanar's house right through the 70s. And both Opportunity Knocks and New Faces
Starting point is 02:53:12 were a massive deal at the time. But the great thing about them was, unlike the talent shows of today, Opportunity Knocks would pitch up on a Monday evening and then it would just fuck off for the rest of the week and not bother you. It wasn't rammed up your arse non-stop like pop idol or any of that shit so yeah i knew of mr flint quite well but you know going by this performance it is hard to work out why he won
Starting point is 02:53:34 every week for three months it's just dog shit in it i mean for starters i mean the title bugs me because he's yeah has he just basically chosen that as a drink he's heard of as, as I don't know, some kind of proof of his Americana roots. Maybe. And it's an awful drink anyway, immediately brought back emetic memories for me. Only rivaled by, I don't know,
Starting point is 02:53:54 diamond white or Thunderbird blue. It's not a session drink. No, no, no. But I mean, there's no way of proving it. I'm fairly sure that his 12 week reign,
Starting point is 02:54:03 I think Brummie's had a big part to play in this. And he's just hateful. He's not particularly good looking. His voice is horrible. I don't know. But 1977, he was all right. Yes, right. But his voice is horribly mediocre.
Starting point is 02:54:17 He looks like a defender for Liverpool. Yeah, he does. But his voice is mediocre. He pushes it into the choruses like kids in a choir who've been told to enunciate clearly. I mean, as a kid, I would rather have had, yeah, Bob Blackman singing Mule Train and bashing his head with a tea tray or something like that.
Starting point is 02:54:35 Yes. His song is really pretty awful. The audience can't dance to it. No. And really, if it wasn't for his religious leanings, he'd already basically be looking ahead at a future of pontins. Yeah. Supporting the Grimbleweeds or Roy Spook Slither Jay
Starting point is 02:54:49 in between the bingo, you know. He's not got a lot going for him. Well, hang on, let's look at this. His song is, I'm going home to southern comfort. He's from fucking Southport. Exactly. That world-famous Skelmersdale hospitality. Sitting on the porch with a mint julep.
Starting point is 02:55:08 A battered sausage and a kick in the balls. In terms of what he looks like, he's got this feathered hair, like, flicked back, but manageable, with a neat, unthreatening moustache and sideburns, which almost touch the tips of the mustache but not quite yeah less that hinted diabolism or the permissive society and he's got that hair shaped like an upside down strawberry like strafed with cossack and yeah what's weird is that today, even if he was trying to look ultra-conformist like this, it might be a moderately attractive man. But 1977-styled Bernie may as well be a different species.
Starting point is 02:55:57 I mean, at least he's made the effort in his grey leisure top. Yes. Accessorised with caramel-coloured boots. It's a beautiful combination going perfectly with the the off-white trousers and the the yellowish wood of his acoustic guitar it takes quite a man to make natural colors clash you know there's something irresistibly british about it he he ends up looking like like like dickie davis dreaming about being back on his speedboat and he's also got a tattoo of a swallow on his right forearm
Starting point is 02:56:33 which was the 70s signifier of being a wronger yeah yeah well he was a salty sea yeah wasn't he it was a pretty part of some yeah some hazing i'm unfamiliar with it on the arm. I'd normally see those kind of tats on the neck. It's a dead giveaway and it's like a spider's web. And he's Bernie with an I. One of those spellings which makes you think, oh, well, his name must not be Bernard. You know, sometimes people try and signal to you
Starting point is 02:56:58 that it's not the shortened version of the name you're thinking. That's why they've spelt it differently. It's actually Bernardino or Bernossus. Yeah, bernossus yeah bernoffel or something it's like but it's not it's bernard so why name yourself in a way that in 1977 only means one thing moderately priced steakhouse yes you know i mean there used to be a bernie in in kidderminster to be fair in blackwell street in the town centre there's a place called the riverboat which for me always lends some extra magic to the first verse of neil young's ambulance blues because it was like a heavenly grotto to me as a kid yeah luxury beyond compare a complete break from the everyday almost as much as going on the ferry out
Starting point is 02:57:46 of triangle yes you disappear into this tall dark building dimly lit with lights designed to look like candelabras and everything was dark wood and red velvet yeah seating in alcoves and there's like medieval look wooden doors through which would emerge unimaginable delicacies. Scampi and breadcrumbs cooked from frozen. Prog cocktails. Yeah, gammon with pineapple ring. Good Lord. With chips done to a brown dry turn.
Starting point is 02:58:20 Yeah. Yeah, big fat chips. Black Forest Gato for afters. Oh, lovely. yeah yeah big fat chips like forest gato for afters obviously had the same relation to a proper american steakhouse as this record as to johnny cash but it was all we knew you know and if only this record could be described as a complete break from the everyday yes i don't think so the bernie in that was round our way that uh my mom and dad took me and my sister to a time or two he had these these big windows and dickensian urchins looking in on us he always used to make me feel
Starting point is 02:58:51 really fucking guilty i just wanted to invite him in and give him some of my chips so thatcherized so so bad isn't it it's like it's not even that bad that's the worst thing about it but it doesn't belong on top of the pops man this ain't pebble mill yeah not not least because it's not in the fucking chart it's like i don't want to put a hold on you was a big hit you can sort of see why when you listen to it it's yeah it's not bad it's like yeah glenn campbell's condensed mulligan tawny you know it's a proper old school radio 2 record you know. It's a proper old-school Radio 2 record. You know, it's like a soothing soundtrack for root canal work or, you know, potato peeling in the sink on Valley.
Starting point is 02:59:35 But it's incredible how quick he's run out of steam in such an easy line. It's like you hear the twittering woodwind on this record, like badly imagined birds. It's first line, time-pressed, hack, prettification. It's a dead giveaway, that sound. Just nobody has tried with this record. That's the thing. And it's just left Bernie high and dry.
Starting point is 03:00:01 Is this the first shift at the top of the Pops Orchestra tonight? I think it is. Yeah. Well in the comfort zone here, aren't they? In the southern comfort zone, if you will. Well, I mean, it is doomed because Tony's already predicted confidently that this will be a bigger hit. Yes. Than his previous ones.
Starting point is 03:00:17 Yes. Inevitable. The thing I hate the most about this song is that it goes, my father taught me working. Yes. My mother taught me love. It's glo no wonder his dad didn't like him then yeah but it's autobiographical isn't it because he wins a talent show and gets loads of votes and oh and he's a success yeah i didn't listen that far. He talks about being made a star, doesn't he? Yes.
Starting point is 03:00:47 So it's quite self-reflective. You know, he goes on about how he's a massive success now due to Opportunity Knox, without mentioning Opportunity Knox. But, you know, he's a massive success, but all he wants to do is get back to the Everglades of Ormskirk and sit a spell, if you will. Yeah, and drink a horribly sweet booze yes yeah well soon he will get his dream because never mind a fucking bernie this is like something from the
Starting point is 03:01:11 bird's eye steakhouse crushed up stale breadcrumbs and someone's unsuccessful racehorse oh yeah yeah press that in pontins is a beckoning without a a doubt, at this point. And, you know, I'm gutted that I couldn't find any episodes of Pop Gospel, the show that Bernie Clinton did shortly after this. The belated, kind of wary ITV response, if you like, to See You Sunday, which was a BBC show from 73 to 75. There was a few shows, actually, in in this period leading into the 80s as well that try to combine pop and religion see you sunday was a bit of a weird show from bbc in the early 70s presented by alistair perry who ends up on razzmatazz yes and and you know the
Starting point is 03:01:57 bbc described it as a weekly reflection of the religious world of a new generation, which meant, you know, 10cc, Colin Blundstone, Cat Stevens, Medicine Head, you know, Randy Newman, with discussions about the children of God and transcendental meditation and young Methodists and things like that. But Pop Gospel starts in about 1979, and I think
Starting point is 03:02:19 basically it starts because of Cliff Richard, who seems to appear on it every week. And Joe Brown. Yeah. And in a sense, it grows out of the kind of late 60s, early 70s Jesus music movement from the States, which is the whole start of the multi-billion Christian contemporary music market. The producer Muriel Young of that was also involved in a few other pop shows like Breakers and Get It Together at that time. Shang-a-lang. Yeah. I mean, I think pop gospel killed religious
Starting point is 03:02:45 pop telly until of course the bbc came back with the rock gospel show which you might not remember but sheila walsh alvin stardust were the host yes and they'd talk to people like mike and the mechanics and you'd be living in the news and they'd talk to kajagoogoo you know about their christian beliefs but yeah i cannot find an episode of pop gospel probably for the best because i've already sort of vaguely hold bernie in contempt and i think that would probably just increase it so two weeks later southern comforts enter the chart at number 48 and immediately dropped out a week later beginning a 45 years and counting period of bernie flint not troubling the chart undaunted by the sudden end of his chart career,
Starting point is 03:03:26 Flint put out two more LPs and plied his trade on the cabaret circuit, popping up on the telly as the host of Pop Gospel, which was one of Mickey DeLensa's first TV directing jobs in 1979. He went on to be the co-host of the ITV kids show moon cat and co in 1985 no wonder moon cat was green and is still active today well he became uh as you would expect a music and comedy cabaret act right i mean that's what he was last time his act was recorded on video, which appears to be 1993, if you check out YouTube. He's there with shoulder pads and an estate agent beard like Beedle. Doing variations on the old embassy club standards, like the one about the black man who walks into a pub with a parrot on his shoulder.
Starting point is 03:04:21 Oh, no. Where'd you get that thing, etc. I'm sure he kept everyone's spirits high backstage at this top of the pops and also be so laughing along good sport yes um but then he punctuates his off-color gags about homos by uh strumming idly a round-backed ovation guitar which is almost worse you know he's like he's the last twat standing in the old britain you know in that world where you all you do is you just go out there and do what's already popular which is jokes so offensive you can't repeat them and songs so inoffensive you
Starting point is 03:05:00 can't remember them and that's his act more recently, he started his own YouTube series, Bernie Flint's Pallet Palace. What? Yeah, he goes into his shed and breaks up old wooden pallets and builds a TV stand out of them. And he's all smiley and creepy, sort of chuntering. Fuck off, you're making this up. No, no, no no 200 views so
Starting point is 03:05:26 obviously followed by all the bernie bros hopefully in a couple of years he's equally adept at breaking up old wooden pallets and making them into a dialysis machine because you know for what is summer without summer's end uh but for now he still needs his public so now on the YouTube it goes yeah yeah shitting hell it fucking is Bernie Flynn
Starting point is 03:05:49 fucking hell he's not lying Neil god damn how many views 200 odd 200 2
Starting point is 03:05:57 0 0 it's 201 now yeah fucking hell Taylor meant that most sincerely, Neil. Home to southern comfort.
Starting point is 03:06:10 Home to southern comfort. Home where everyone will be. To comfort me. That's lovely, isn't it? That's the sound there of Bernie Flint. Frankie Miller's Full House has come straight in at number 27 this week with The Good To Yourself. Say goodbye.
Starting point is 03:06:41 Touch me deep inside. Baby, I hope it's not farewell. Tony, not fannying about this week, immediately pulls us away from Bernie Flint and pushes us towards Be Good To Yourself by Frankie Miller's Full House. Born in Glasgow in 1949, Francis Miller spent his childhood burrowing into his
Starting point is 03:07:07 family's record collection and started writing his own songs at the age of nine. And one song he wrote when he was 12, I Can't Change It, would later be recorded by his mum's favourite singer, Ray Charles. While still at school, he became the singer in his first band, the Deljacks, and after stints with Glasgow bands West Farm Cottage and Socket to Em JB, he joined his first professional band, the Stoics. In 1971, after he moved down to London, he linked up with Robin Trower, who had just left Procol Har Horum and they formed a band called Jude which garnered much acclaim from the heavyweight music press but split up a year later without recording an LP but Miller who lived near the Tally Ho public house where he would get up on stage from
Starting point is 03:07:57 time to time and sing with the band Eggs Over Easer who was seen as the founders of a movement called Pub Rock immediately signed a solo deal with Chrysalis and was teamed with Brinsley Schwartz to record his debut LP, Once in a Blue Moon, which came out in 1973. After making a guest appearance on the Thin Lizzy LP Nightlife, dueting with Phil Linner on the track Still in Love With You, Miller relocated to New Orleans for his second album, High Life, becoming the first white artist to be produced by Alan Toussaint, the first person to record Shoo-Ra Shoo-Ra, best known as a hit for Betty Wright, and garnering a reputation as a de facto white soul singer of the 70s who was so good he made Otis Redding's widow cry when she heard him for the first time. None of this buttered any parsnips with the UK charts however and by 1976
Starting point is 03:08:55 Miller was seen by the music press as a perennial also-ran who would never reach division one due to his inability to transfer his pub act to the big stage and his habit of hitting the self-destruct button, having only released four LPs in six years. But he's teamed up with members of Ace to form a new group, Full House, and put out his fourth LP of the same name, which comes out this week. And this tune, which was written by andy fraser the basis of free is the lead off track from it two weeks ago the day before it was released he made his
Starting point is 03:09:33 first ever top of the pops performance which put it into the charts at number 41 and this week it It soared 14 places to number 27. So here's another chance to see that clip. First question, chaps, would you call this pub rock? Because that's pretty much the label that was tagged onto him. I wouldn't, actually. No. I do kind of find the term pub rock a little bit offensive sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but...
Starting point is 03:10:01 Tagging the word pub onto things tends to downgrade it, doesn't it? You know, pub singer, pub team, pub grub. The implication is that they're good enough to fill out the Hope and Anchor on a Tuesday night, but not good enough to fill out a proper venue. Yeah, which I don't think is the case for Frankie. I think he's got a great voice. I mean, the thing is, you're right. He gets a lot of press support throughout these years.
Starting point is 03:10:23 And almost all that press is talking about how he's almost of a piece with the likes of i don't know joe cocker and paul rogers and rod stewart and you know one of those regional singers who comes good but he never comes good i mean there's a really interesting piece actually from 1979 where penny valentine is interviewing rod stewart and rod stewart says that the only singer he's really worried about is frankie miller yeah and the only singer he's really worried about is Frankie Miller. And the only thing he's pleased about is that Miller isn't good looking. But when I think about other regional singers, if you like, who came good and became pop stars like Robert Palmer, you can kind of see in this performance on Top of the Pops
Starting point is 03:10:56 that Frankie Miller, he's kind of limited. He's kind of dated already. I mean, basically, it's a track, and this is precisely what I like about it. It sounds almost exactly like The Faces, circa 71. You know, and he's clearly obsessed with Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding. The drinking is a problem for Frankie Miller. In an NME interview, so it might even be this week,
Starting point is 03:11:17 he says the last time that he touched a drop was at the aforementioned England-Scotland game that you mentioned. But I don't think he's got enough musical versatility to kind of make the moves that people like Rod Stewart are making. And in an era where black pop is kind of moving into disco, he's sounding very, very dated. I am dubious about his claims that he's not drinking on the head.
Starting point is 03:11:37 Because in similar interviews with Cream magazine in the States at the time, he talks about how he scored some great heroine in detroit whilst touring and about how you know sort of brian robertson being unable to join the fin lizzy tour that year is as a direct consequence of brian robertson getting glassed while defending frankie and the speakeasy club in london in spring of this year but it's precisely that datedness that i like and and i never knew that this was written by Andy Fraser. Because this is fluid and funky like Prime 3. And the riff at its heart is really nice.
Starting point is 03:12:11 It's almost ACDC-ish. But this is music that even though I enjoy it, I can tell in 77 this ain't going nowhere. And unless he can find a way to shake it up or move on a little bit, it's going to be the same for him. I mean, at the time as a nine-year-old, I would have looked at this and gone, oh, this is dad music. Yeah, yeah. Not necessarily my dad music, but it's like, well... Yeah, Frankie Miller's full house.
Starting point is 03:12:34 He had to show Reef how it's meant to be done. He is a bit of a phantom, isn't he, Frankie Miller? Yeah. Considering the relative success he's had over the years, you'd be hard-pushed to find too many people nowadays who knew who the fucking Elliot was. I mean, I only knew the name. I wasn't really familiar with any of his stuff.
Starting point is 03:12:54 You know, and I'm embarrassingly well-informed on things that don't matter before I was born or shortly afterwards. But I think that could be because he's so exactly the same as other people who are well-remembered. He's standing right behind them and he fits perfectly into their shadow.
Starting point is 03:13:15 So from here, you just can't see him because let's face facts, this is Twig Stewart. If Rod Stewart had walked on stage, castrated himself, and then booted both testicles into the audience, Frankie Miller would have gone out and done it the next day. This song is almost exactly the same as Stay With Me, but the face is almost identical. And the band are 50% faces and 50% free.
Starting point is 03:13:44 They should have called themselves cheap almost free and there's literally nothing here that isn't sourced from one or the other of those places you can tell his roots are the same as those groups and he likes all the original people that they but there's nothing here that isn't sourced directly from those groups and despite the fact that he's a really good singer in his own right and authentically scottish yes so the sheer tonight matthew energy is it's a bit uncomfortable although i wouldn't say that to his face at least not in 1977 so i wouldn't fancy my chances in a dust up Clydeside rules I get
Starting point is 03:14:28 the impression Frankie was at least the real deal first and for it wise Frankie say stitch that and in fairness you know he was sort of the real deal musically even if it was somebody else's real deal
Starting point is 03:14:44 I mean as neil says ross stewart himself is on record numerous times as being a a big frankie miller fan he doesn't consider him to be like some croaking donovan you know what i mean he considers him a respected contemporary which like that wouldn't be the case if he had nothing going on and it it's not going to be down to generosity which is a trait rarely associated with rod stewart so it's like if erno rubik was going around saying hey i love this taiwanese made cuboid logic puzzle fascinating color block maybe you can find one in your local pound shop fiendishly difficult let me tell you and it's a bit of a shame isn't it because he's obviously a talented bloke yeah i think he just
Starting point is 03:15:32 needs a big monster hit he needs a song that is a hit this isn't it but if he's gonna break out of the ghetto that he's in and cross over he just needs a really big hit and this isn't it this is just it's kind of album tracky yes. And I wouldn't have appreciated the lyrics either. It sounds like your mum done it all. Get yourself a girlfriend, sort yourself out. He's basically saying to someone, hey, you're a complete fuck-up. Why don't you drag some woman into your life
Starting point is 03:15:58 and make her life a misery? Which is what I didn't want to hear when I was nine. It's just, it's a funny thing to say about someone we're seeing right here on Top of the Pops and who's written enough American hits to presumably make him a very rich man. But there's always something a bit uncomfortable watching someone who wasn't anywhere near as successful as you would expect them to be for no apparent reason. I mean, there's more egregious examples than this
Starting point is 03:16:24 where the forgotten guy is actually better than the people who made it expect them to be for no apparent reason i mean there's more egregious examples than this where the forgotten guy is actually better than the people who made it because you know in most areas of creative art and media and frankly everything else bland and fundamentally talentless people will succeed and will take over and will close ranks to squeeze out anyone who's not like them which is how so many things end up like they do and sometimes it's just dumb luck or bad fortune like you know when you're watching crackerjack crackerjack and you see peter glaze and you think fucking hell man by 1978 you should have been living in bever Hills next door to Moe Howard Yes. Only leaving your poolside to be flattered
Starting point is 03:17:08 by Dick Cavett and instead here you are playing second banana to Ed Shitpot Stewart. Yeah. Making plans for Nigel. I mean fucking hell yeah you know entertaining a bunch of runny nosed Cub Scout cunts. Yes.
Starting point is 03:17:24 Holding a precarious stack of MB games with a cabbage balance. And Frankie isn't quite on that level, but he's talented enough that you know that when he was starting off, all his friends, contemporaries, girlfriends, family, they would have found it utterly implausible that he could possibly have failed yeah it's like in the same way that any premier league footballer even the donkiest donkey if he came and joined in your kickabout in the park he looks like a 24 year old leonel messi you know what i mean because it's you know levels yeah it's the same when you're up close with someone
Starting point is 03:18:01 who can really sing and can do it live night after night. All you can see is the gulf between them and the rabble. And you think, oh, I'm in the presence of a future superstar. But it doesn't always work like that. And although in the grand scheme of things, Frankie Miller is not a failure. Don't you think that deep down in his own mind he kind of was yeah yeah he's in a white shirt a tight black waistcoat and even tighter jeans so he looked he looks like a cross between Francis Rossi and Hurricane Higgins more importantly he would look like those Scottish
Starting point is 03:18:39 people who were beating the shit out of each other and glassing each other outside the pub on saturday night of course yeah yeah yeah car window yeah look like yeah the other thing i wouldn't like was that his guitarists are doing that really over egging of the playing of their instruments you know it looks good from the back of the hall but on telly it looks like they're wrestling with an anaconda and it's like all you're doing is just plucking a string mate surely it doesn't take that much effort yeah with legs immensely far too far apart yes yeah yeah yeah what tory power stuns yes yeah exactly it's just they get so many things right but ultimately there's just nothing here to bother you or delight you do you know what i mean i sat watching this scribbling down notes and i'm looking at that page of notes now and it just says so drunk and so used to it like having piss in your ears ears oh piss actual killer of coal bridge water question mark Killer of Carl Bridgewater? Question mark.
Starting point is 03:19:49 Liechtenstein is Switzerland taken to its logical conclusion. Harry Maguire dash Stan Ogden stunt double. Paul Heaton dash Alf Roberts stunt double. And Rummy Cub World Championships live from Mogadishu. So I think it's fair to say that Frankie Miller's Full House didn't quite succeed in holding my attention all the way through. But then, inattentive type. My advice to Frankie is try harder, or better still, don't try quite so hard.
Starting point is 03:20:21 That's all gold though, Taylor. When's the solo album out? Poor old Frankie Miller. He was usurped by Rod Stewart musically and his game show got taken off him by Bob Monkhouse.
Starting point is 03:20:33 And he ended up less famous than his brother, Windy. So, the following week, be good to yourself, dropped two places
Starting point is 03:20:44 to number 29, but, like ELO, nipped back up two places the week after, but got no further. A year later, Miller's latest producer, David Mackay, nudged him towards doing a cover of a flop single by a band called Poacher, who had been on New Faces, and he fared much, much better when he took Darling all the way to number six for three weeks in November of 1978, and got to number one in Norway. The follow-up to that, When I'm Away From You, only got to number 42 in January of 1979, and bar getting to number 45 with Caledonia in March of 1992,
Starting point is 03:21:25 he never troubled the chart again. But he had a go at acting in 1979 as the star of the Play For Today episode Just A Boy's Game, where he attempts to live up to his beloved grandpa's reputation as the hardest man in Greenock, and spent much of the 80s writing and performing songs for films such as all the right moves act of vengeance and bill and ted's excellent adventure have you seen that play for today yeah i can't say i have no fucking brilliant in it very good yeah the ending of
Starting point is 03:21:58 that is just fucking brutal isn't it taylor yeah video playlist everyone his career unfortunately came to an end when he suffered a brain hemorrhage in 1994 went into a coma for five months and underwent extended rehabilitation oh and his number one in norway inspired chrysalis to rush out his first compilation lp for that country alone in 1979 entitled Frankie Who, Frankie Fucking Miller, That's Who laughter love one another
Starting point is 03:22:34 till your dying day may the sun shine down your way yeah yeah applause applause There you go. It's an hard life when you're working on the farm Down on the farm, I don't need no alarm I rise from me bed at 5.30
Starting point is 03:23:20 After we get to contemplate the overhead lights for a couple of seconds, we return to Tony, who warns us that it's ooh-ah, ooh-ah time. And then, out of nowhere, the two members of the next band who don't look like a kindly Fred West, hove into view and whistle in his ear. It's Farmer Bill's Cowmen by The Wurzels. At last. We chanced upon The Wurzels in chart music number 35,
Starting point is 03:23:47 where they trotted out their prized number one single, Combine Harvester, in the 1976 Christmas Day episode, dead lambs being shoveled into plastic bags, etc, etc. This single, a cover of Iowa's Kaiser Bill's Batman, the single recorded by Whistling jack smith which got to number five in april of 1967 is the follow-up to give me england a self-penned single where they go around europe and aren't impressed because they don't have scrumpy or bingo realizing their mistake they reverted to the winning formula of taking a well-known tune and
Starting point is 03:24:25 fermenting it in a still, and put out this from their latest LP, also entitled Give Me England. It's not in the charts yet, but the BBC fucking love the Wurzels for reasons we'll go into later, so here they, who are,
Starting point is 03:24:42 in the studio. That's the only bit of interaction tony's had with anyone so far in this episode why do you think he's being kept away from the kids it is around about this time that the uh top of the props presenters get a bit more isolated yeah they usually start off on their own in their little fortress of solitude and then over the course of the episode they're gradually reintroduced to society yeah like a godzilla film isn't it it's just the same godzilla's always on his own and then about an hour in godzilla's surrounded by a load of kids and he's introducing the wurzels well i mean as
Starting point is 03:25:17 we'll see later there's there's a bloody good reason tony's not allowed near the kids at the moment yeah as we'll see later the wurzels, chaps, it's easy to forget, but they were fucking massive in 1976, 1977, weren't they? A cursory skim of the newspapers of the era reveals the following article from the West Britain and Royal Cornwall Gazette. Headline, OOAAA!
Starting point is 03:25:41 It's strange how folks go for Wurzels. The merits of the pop group the Wurzels and the New Seekers were discussed by members of Carrier Council's Amenities Committee last week. Mr Ashley Horley, Deputy Manager of Corn Bree Leisure Centre, said the centre made a loss of just under £900 on the New Seekers concert. Mr Jim Hamm asked how the sale of tickets for the Wurzels concert, due to be held on Saturday, were going. Mr Hawley said that nearly 1,000 tickets had been sold.
Starting point is 03:26:17 Why can't the new Seekers create local interest like the Wurzels? asked Mr Hamm. It was suggested that reports that one of the New Seekers girl singers had left might have put people off. Mr MJ Gale said his daughters were not interested in the New Seekers but were going to see the
Starting point is 03:26:36 Wurzels. It was just the matter of choosing the right people to appear. I think that is the most granular I'll ever get on a bit of research fucking council meetings from nearly 50 years ago everyone well they were massive and the thing is you could not avoid them especially in the year of no characterful dads you know here that here they are and and and the thing is even if they stopped having chart success as they soon do
Starting point is 03:27:02 it doesn't matter they've got the battle brush show to go on they've got chagas plays pop to go on they've got all the summertime seaside specials so there's just so many shows that they can fill in on and that's why they're kind of a big part of 77 but that's certainly a big part of my memories of this period because they were just fucking everywhere you're right new people are turning out for that somerset sound, even when the Wurzels aren't appearing. Here's another article, this time from the Litchfield Mercury, a fortnight from this episode, entitled A Night For Some Wurzling. Pop group the Wurzels have obviously had a great effect on Litchfield people.
Starting point is 03:27:39 Out of about 300 people who attended London Cricket Club's Wurzel Night at Seedy Mill Farm. At least 60 joined in the spirit and went dressed in smocks and other rustic gear. The grand Wurzel Night was inspired by the Wurzels, famous for their country-style
Starting point is 03:27:57 inspired versions of pop songs and the evening went with a Somerset swing. A challenge to sing a Wurzel song was not taken up, but there was a prize for the worst-dressed couple. The event was in aid of club funds. So this is people turning up, even though the Wurzels aren't going to be there in any way, shape, or form.
Starting point is 03:28:18 Exactly. It's mental. It's incredible, isn't it? It's just the concept of the Wurzels has drawn them there. Yeah. They're like living Wombles at this time, aren't it? It's just the concept of the Wurzels has drawn them there. Yeah. They're like living Wombles at this time, aren't they? And this summer, this puts a tin lid on everything. The Saffron Walden Weekly News reported on a visit at the local Baptist church
Starting point is 03:28:35 by two strolling gospel minstrels who performed a Wurzels hit with rewritten lyrics entitled, I've Got a brand new holy Bible. So yeah, it's Wurzel time, man. It is. I mean, this song, Farmer Bill's Cowman, this performance, I mean, this is golden era Wurzels, isn't it, really?
Starting point is 03:28:54 Before the jokers warm completely thin, which is fair. I mean, I think it probably reached its unfunniest nadir on the I hate JR and I shot shot jr singles yes but this is the words i remember i don't remember the adge cutler years and and and i don't think i ever caught an episode of the great western musical thunderbox because it was only on htv so of course so this is the words i do remember this this kind of permanent too ronnie's sketch of a band yes i mean it's just a permanent preemption
Starting point is 03:29:26 of Spinal Tap's sex farm, and I'm astonished to learn that they covered that. Yes, extremely well. It's a fucking great version. But yeah, you're right, Neil. You know, life after Aj Cutler, that makes the Wurzels the new order of the late 70s, doesn't it?
Starting point is 03:29:43 So, the single, as we've pointed out, it's a rewrite of a hit the kids didn't give a fuck about which is good and as always they lean heavily on imaginative reinterpretations of the lyrical motif who are in the last single that made the charts i am a cider drinker they went for which does sound to me like a West Country paramilitary organisation. The provisional OOAR OOAR A have played responsibility for the tractor bomb outside the Woodpecker factory last Saturday. The silage bomb. And this time they've opted for OOAR OOAR R, which sounds like something Scooby Doo would say to Shaggy when a Frankenstein was lumbering up behind him. So, not as good, but, you know, still good enough.
Starting point is 03:30:28 As a kid, Neil, what did you think of this? Well, you've already laid your cards on the table, re-Brigas and Rastrick. I'm assuming that you'd like this. Well, I did like this. I mean, I liked the Wurzels anyway, because of their cartoonish kind of aspect. I mean, their faces are like they're drawn by Hanna-Barbera. They do have this horrible habit in a way a lot of comedy records do this um in this period that they've got a in a sense thief from contemporary culture and and blend it in if you like do you remember that kind of comedy music that just uses everything in combine harvester i seem to recall
Starting point is 03:31:02 there's an ad lib where he goes who loves your your baby? Yes. And it's kind of this code. During the performance. Exactly, yeah. On the single. Yeah, yeah. But on top of the pubs, yeah, certainly. I remember that Kojak ad lib. And here, in this performance, I think they nick John Inman's line from Are You Being Served?
Starting point is 03:31:16 I think there's a moment where they go, I'm free. I fucking hate moments like this. But they have pushed, at this period, completely beyond local beyond local fame i mean it's astonishing when you look at those old singles drink up the cider yeah it sold like 100 000 copies in the west country or something insane like that but isn't it at the same time though i enjoyed their appearances on all the different shows that they were on they're pretty much on all the different pop shows you can sense already here that they're running out of songs to parody, really, aren't they? So, yeah, the writing's on the wall,
Starting point is 03:31:49 but I would have loved this being on. I mean, the lyrical content, as always, is an uncompromising examination of rural life. So there's scatology, violence, alcoholism, sex, and, yes, bovine homosexuality. Pete Boog gets so pissed up on cider that he milks a ball does a bit of simon bates in on it and that ball gets turned that's what the i'm free thing is about total joke would have gone over my head i reckon as a kid not me i got it your uh your heritage
Starting point is 03:32:22 is hindu isn't my heritage is hindu yeah would fundamentalist hindus be offended by record where a ball gets wanked off yeah they probably would you know i mean you know over there it's nuts in mumbai you know if a cow is walking down the street as they do and just sits on its arse you can't do anything the cars have to avoid it you know you can't move it on very very very holy about cows and um then when the vegetarianism kicked in with my dad couldn't have beef burgers for four years man i was gutted yeah no this this might not go down well in india particularly now with the hindu hindu fundamentalist nutters in charge so yeah so yeah people would be floating in a world of shit and piss and spunk when he dies
Starting point is 03:33:05 and toenails and snot and yeah pretty much everything else well there was a diversion yeah certainly didn't expect to be talking about that
Starting point is 03:33:13 but the audience reaction is kind of revealing in a sense I think you know it's only little kids who are going to be digging this there's a handful
Starting point is 03:33:20 of kids amused here a hell of a lot more totally unamused just with their arms crossed. So, yeah, the writing's on the wall. It's going to be over soon in a chart-topping sense, or in a chart-crushing sense, but there's still going to be a going concern
Starting point is 03:33:33 for several years hence in kids' imaginations and on Cracker Jack and everything that they could ever appear on. Taylor, in you come. Come on, tell me some Worsley stories. Yeah, well, I mean, if you got 100 people at random and you asked them, who's your favourite pop group of all time? I think most of them would probably say
Starting point is 03:33:54 Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe. But if you then asked them, who's your second favourite group? Undoubtedly, almost all of them would say the Worsles because even today, these icons of Britishness make all of us feel so proud of the landscape and traditions of our country. I mean, you know, that's a joke, right? They're about as good an advertisement for the British countryside as straw dolls.
Starting point is 03:34:22 But there's a kernel of truth there. You know when you go into the british museum and you walk through all the galleries of like ancient art and artifacts from all around the world and there's all these perfectly smooth jade amulets on leather chains and glittering bird statuettes sculpted from solid gold with sapphires embedded all the way around and then you go into the room with british stuff from the same period and it's like some mud with a stick in it you know what i mean like science saying early british figurative art and it's a bit of rock with a parsnip for a nose you know i mean it's not our fault it's because it's so cold and wet here you just have
Starting point is 03:35:03 to concentrate on survival and once we invented buildings we managed to catch up but yeah there's still something in the british psyche that will revert to that when under stress and you know in its way with its mixture of cowpat brain simpleton primitivism and slick showbiz. This is a form of authentic English country music. You know, give me England indeed. Yes. I mean, yeah, it's like if the trogs had been shit. But, yeah, it makes me a bit sad because I used to really feel the countryside. You know, I lived there for a bit as a kid and it was really in me.
Starting point is 03:35:45 the countryside you know i lived there for a bit as a kid and it was really in me i used to feel nature deep down with a really intense and yeah almost inexplicable seriousness nature boy taylor parks and nowadays it's just something i see in the distance from trains passing by you know it's like looking out of a window at youth or social democracy. It's like familiar, but far away, made into flats, you know. So I sort of thank the Wurzels for reminding me of what it's really like and why I shouldn't go back. You know, here we are, it's Jubilee Week. Professional surf. I mean, at the time, I'd have been well up for this.
Starting point is 03:36:24 I didn't know I was Kaiser Bill's Batman, but I fucking hate that tune. It's just proper Carnaby Street cat shit. Yeah, my mate hates that more than anything else in the world. You're good. Late night, they used to show repeats of Beat Club, and there's that clip of whistling Jack Ketch on Beat Club doing this. And it's not even him whistling on the record.
Starting point is 03:36:48 It's just some bloke dressed up in, like, a guardsman's outfit. My mate, his steam used to come out of his ears at how smug this guy looked, considering he's miming to I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman. It's not even him. No, I can't hear that tune without seeing that fucking mini with Zoom written on the side. You know what I mean? Yeah, well, those blokes picking out Red Guardsman's jackets off a rail. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 03:37:14 But yeah, you're right, Neil. They are practically full-time BBC employees at the moment, aren't they? They've been on Swap Shop. They're regular guests on the latest series of That's Live. They're on Seaside Special. Kent Dodds' World of Laughter, Ronnie Corbett's Saturday Special, Cabaret Showtime, The Basil Brush Show, Sunny Time Saturday, regular guests on the Radio 1 Roadshow,
Starting point is 03:37:38 and, of course, Top of the Pops. And, you know, while I was watching this, I started to think, why the Wurzels? Why are they on the BBC all the all the time well let me take you back chaps to 1972 when johnny berlin the controller radio one was on a camping holiday in france and he chanced upon a mobile variety show on a stage that was towed from site to site on the back of a lorry and when he returned back to work he set about doing a wholesale nick of the idea but then he discovered that the bbc didn't have anything suitable in their garage to put it on with so he cast around looking for advice and he ran into a producer from bbc radio
Starting point is 03:38:16 bristol who put him in touch with a chap called john miles not that music is my first love hit maker but the manager of a local band who bought an old furniture van and amended it so it could open out into a mobile stage which was then taken to fairs and festivals and when beerling got in touch he was told that the van had already been sent off to the knackers yard because it kept breaking down but he'd be happy to build another one on the condition that radio one had rented out for for the summer and after he made them a scale model of what he wanted made out of Weetabix boxes, Beerlin
Starting point is 03:38:49 gave his approval. So Miles located a suitably sized chassis, did a drawing of what he wanted and he gave both to a local coach builder and let him get on with it and the result was a portable stage that was able to be towed around the country by a Range Rover,
Starting point is 03:39:06 which was driven by his brother, Tone, or Smiler, if you will. And, yeah, that's how the Radio 1 Roadshow came about. And would you happen to know the name of the band that Miles managed? Yeah, the fucking Wurzels, mate. Really? I see, I see. Because the BBC looks after its own, doesn't it?
Starting point is 03:39:27 Indeed. It all makes sense. Anything else to say about this? It's always a bit glum when you look at a band's official website. You start at the news section and the most recent story is from last year and it says one of the bands died of
Starting point is 03:39:43 Covid, although he was 80. I'm sure at his funeral, they led his empty horse with his wellies backwards in the stirrup. Yes. But in the lyrics section, they include the words to this song. Right. The first verse of which ends, Out in the pen, there's a broody old hen.
Starting point is 03:40:04 She is as wild as a tiger you try to touch her egg and she'll bite off your leg i feeds her on faggots and cider yeah and depending on your worldview it's either a good bad or hilarious thing that the wurzels have felt the need to put an asterisk next to the word faggots, leading to a footnote which clarifies faggots, a dish of chopped liver, etc., made into balls, lest any of the woke snowflakes misconstrue these lines to mean that Pete Budd entraps homosexuals
Starting point is 03:40:41 and feeds them to his carnivorous hen. It's just helpful. It's like the little pride flag you know i'm just just but except that the very next verse goes i felt such a fool tried milking the bull yes he must have enjoyed it somehow man now every day at three he comes and says i'm free that's why i'm farmer bill's cowman it's every red-blooded hayseeds nightmare accidentally pulling on a bull's penis him liking it yeah and it making him a gay like john inman yeah fucking i can imagine oh i, I only got half a bucket of milk, but it weren't half creamy. Oh, yeah, I love drinking that bull spunk. I mean, it's an occupational hazard, isn't it, I suppose.
Starting point is 03:41:33 It floats on top of your tea, man. It's not good. I think, I mean, us being the ATV land people, we've got a natural kind of predilection towards this stuff to a certain extent. Because, you accents are a mix of west country and then and other stuff your accents perhaps so but yeah there's a little bit of uanus around here i'm very close to like worcestershire and places like that and it's on the downward slope towards that area and you know faggot and pea batches are very very popular around here in a rich west country sort yeah so you know um i've always wondered what a west country source is i think taylor's just described how you do it
Starting point is 03:42:10 maybe so but mate i mean maybe that's why i had a sort of slight affection towards this but yeah i must admit i've been moaning about character for dads there is something deeply unpleasant about the way tony introduces this record and the leering looks on the faces of the Wurzels as they practically pretty much nibble his ears. Yes. It's pretty gross, isn't it? They're whistling in his ears. I can't remember the names,
Starting point is 03:42:32 but the one who looks like a potty thistle defender and the other one who looks like Rennie's dad. Yeah, Tommy Banner and Tony Bayliss. The two redshirt Wurzels, basically. Yeah, they converge on tony whistling and he backs away he looks absolutely riven with pain what he backs away grimacing he reacts as if they've just started whistling the theme tune to robin's nest well what it's meant to be he backs off grimacing to suggest that they stink, right? Like they got bad breath.
Starting point is 03:43:05 Or they're horrible. I'm just saying, we know that unlike Richard O'Sullivan, Tony couldn't act. And that is a very convincing halitosis recoil. It was a really good introduction because they hove into view and Tony kind of like withdraws. And then all of a sudden Pete Budd rises up from under the screen pointing into the distance. It looked brilliant. I a sudden Pete Budd rises up from under the screen, pointing into the distance.
Starting point is 03:43:25 It looked brilliant. I do like Pete Budd. He does look really friendly. He's got a lovely voice as well. He is like an old Amororo Dave Bartram, isn't he? They've got that same kind of bell-shaped haircut. Well, the secret of the Wurzels, I think, is their believability. I mean, everyone concentrates on Pete Budd, the leader of the Wurzels I think is their believability I mean everyone concentrates on Pete Budd
Starting point is 03:43:45 the leader of the Wurzels because he looks like a beano drawing come to life yeah but the whole band are genuinely unnerving right any one of them away from the stage you could imagine meeting on a rural walk and it would be just him standing there smiling vacantly next to another bloke who does all the talking who looks at you suspiciously and he's holding a shotgun and he says occasionally cocks his head towards the wurzel and says he don't much care for newcomers sometimes he forgets his manners i'm thinking here mostly of tony bayliss uh nature's cruelest and most powerful mistake he crushed a tender young bloom in his fist but it was his way of loving it's terrible though isn't it you see the words was here and they're all rosy cheek smiles but you know chances are one barren autumn
Starting point is 03:44:46 one moonless night around the back of the grain silo shoot the dog first goodbye my lovely bang and leaving a scene of carnage back at the farmhouse and then it will be 12 bore in the mouth no hesitation and he'll decorate the galvanized steel behind his head with the valueless jelly that he'd been keeping in it and somewhere in the distance there's seven new people born there is a slight terror of the countryside which is part of the Wurzel's appeal I think I mean they're here in a big smoke but yeah but you don't know the darkness that they're going back to I think that that that is part of it it the west i mean i spent about a weekend recently um in east anglia which i've never been to before and it was spooky as fuck the countryside has always terrified me
Starting point is 03:45:36 but this you know the east anglia is particularly terrifying but this is it who knows what the wurzels are going back to exactly you know if the west country was I'm not saying it's a mysterious zone but it did exert that kind of mystery to it um whenever I got down to Devon or Cornwall on holiday it was a bit spooky and um the Wurzels keep that in their faces basically you don't see faces like that in the city they could only be born in Somerset or from that area. So, yeah, there is that slight darkness to what the hell are they going back to once their pop business is done in the big city appearing on top of the pops.
Starting point is 03:46:14 You know, that long drive back to Devon. Their farmsteads and homesteads. All of that still spooks the shit out of me. And they are realistic. They're not city boys dropped into farming schmocks. You do sense that much as, you know, most burgers that you have at Glastonbury
Starting point is 03:46:30 have animal feces in them. These guys probably have got a bit of shit on their shoes. You know, there's that realism to them, which I think appeals. It was terrible. By the time they found him, his neck stump had been licked down
Starting point is 03:46:43 to almost nothing. Okay. Yeah, they're spinning a total myth about the bucolic lifestyle of the farm because about a year from now our class in junior school gets took out for a trip to the farm and of course Wurzel's songs got sung on the coach and you know there was kind of like great anticipation amongst the youth that although we might not see the Wurzels there that day, we were going to see people just like them in smocks and pitchforks. But, oh dear, those illusions were totally shattered when we got there to realise that everything fucking funked animal shit. And it goes without saying that there were no Wurzels or Wurzelikes in attendance, just some chunky blokes who looked absolutely fucked off
Starting point is 03:47:28 about being stared at by some junior school council cunts. And my teacher thought it'd be a great idea to take a tape recorder and hand it round the kids so we could record an oral diary of the day, and he played it back to us the day afterwards. And what was heard on that tape was me refusing point blank to walk through a barn and then try heaving and fighting not to cry when sir dragged me through it and then us looking at some cows in a field and one of them rearing up and landing on the back of the other and michael hall shouting ah sir Look at them cars bumming!
Starting point is 03:48:06 Bummer cow. Yeah, bummer cow. And the tape concludes with us standing next to the pigsty, which was properly rank. By this time, you can hear on the tape that I'd absolutely fucking lost it. Now, this is the era of Prince the Dog
Starting point is 03:48:21 on That's Life, and you can actually hear me manhandling the tape recorder off some youth going up to the pigs and shouting sausages sausages sausages and by
Starting point is 03:48:36 this time I'm lying completely face down on the desk with my arms over my head totally shamed up and I've never been to a farm since so yeah thanks Wurzels no i mean the realities of the farm are something that the wurzels don't really talk about their idea of farming it's not the brutal inhumane angry business that is actually going on you know which would probably lead to entirely different type of music yeah it's just getting pissed
Starting point is 03:49:01 moving some shit from one end of the barn to the other, and then getting K-Lied on scrumpy and trying to get your end away. That sounds appealing, whereas, I don't know, having a job where you get a box of freshly hatched chicks and throw them into some machine that destroys them would lead to, I don't know, some proto-industrial murk in the mid-70s, I guess. But yeah, the world wasn't ready for it. Ah, you're a bunch of soft city boys. So two weeks later, former Bills Cowman entered the charts at number 45,
Starting point is 03:49:32 then entered the top 40 at number 39, and a week later got to number 32, its highest position. The follow-up, a tune for their favourite football team called One for the bristol city failed to chart but they went back to the formula and put out a cover of the push bike song called the tractor song which also failed to chart and this remains their final appearance on top of the
Starting point is 03:49:58 pops probably for the best just just a warning by the way to the pot crazy youngsters do not seek out the b-side to the tractor song Funky Farmyard. Oh, it's so disappointing, isn't it? It is. It's just not funky in any way whatsoever. Disappointing. Yeah, I was expecting a bit of Bill Oddie style. Yeah, or a bit of... What's that meter's track? Seahorn's Farm or whatever it's called.
Starting point is 03:50:19 Yeah, something like that. But no, it's resolutely unfunky. After trying once again to do a bit of Euro bashing with I'll never get a scrumpy ear in 1979 and then jumping on the Dallas bandwagon with the double A side, I hate JR, I love JR in 1980, they got all urban in 1983 with Wurzel rap, but all failed to chart.
Starting point is 03:50:44 Have you heard that? No, I actually avoided it. I did see it, but I just thought... Video playlist, everyone. Yeah, I'll check it out. However, they resurfaced as a student union act in the early 90s, and a re-release of Combine Harvester got to number 39 in November of 2001,
Starting point is 03:51:01 and their cover of Don't Look Back in Anger got to number 59 in December of 2002. Neil, have you? No, of course I've bloody... I bet it's better than the fucking Oasis. I mean, presumably they've adapted the lyrics
Starting point is 03:51:17 in a Wurzel style-y. No, no. It's just a straight cover. Why the fuck would I want to do that to myself? After putting out Make Hay Not War for the Stop the War movement in 2003, they went back to basics with a re-recording of I Am A Cider Drinker with guest vocalist Tony Blackburn, which got to number 57 in May of 2007. They're still active today
Starting point is 03:51:45 and share the same manager with which other band? Ooh. White House? The Stranglers. Blimey! Neil? Yeah? You know what I'm going to ask?
Starting point is 03:51:58 I think I do. Something about the catering. The Wurzels or the Stranglers? Who would you have a sandwich of? Oh, man. I mean, they're both gross. But, yeah, with the fear of genuine fecal contamination from the Wurzels. Bread all soggy with cow placenta.
Starting point is 03:52:19 I think I've got to go Stranglers. Wow. Fucking hell. You've got to consider, though, from the Wurzels, it's going to be Farm Fresh. Yeah, but Farm Fresh is often gross, to be honest with you. With that West Country sauce.
Starting point is 03:52:32 Yeah, I'd have brains faggots in a West Country sauce off the Wurzels, so long as they assure me that they're just putting it in a microwave. Anything that they've touched. No, they're farm folk.
Starting point is 03:52:42 They don't know cleanliness. Neil! No, you know, it's the country way way i feel so apologetic to our rural no no no your stomach hardens to that stuff this is it years this is bacteria just die like dogs in there yeah my air con in my car right is fucked so um when i was driving through the countryside on my way to norfolk, of course I was hit by those gusts of chicken shit and pig shit. You know, the really bad stuff. And, you know, because my aircon's full, there's no point closing the window. So I just had to, you know, brave it.
Starting point is 03:53:14 But these countryside folk, you know, you just get used to it, don't you? They are completely inured to that stuff. So, you know, during sandwich preparation, who knows what the fuck will be going in there who knows whether they've cleaned oh look i'm not saying everyone in the countryside is a dirty disgraceful bastard but the words are committed rural folk and yeah i'd be dubious about proper contamination from animals uh animal shit basically so yeah although the stranglers are grubby bastards as well um i don't think they've got um you know pigs in their back garden or anything so yeah although the stranglers are grubby bastards as well um i don't think
Starting point is 03:53:45 they've got um you know pigs in their back garden or anything so yeah i've got to go got to go stranglers i'm afraid so pop craze youngsters if you read in the news about a cow being thrown off a bridge onto someone's car on the outskirts of coventry soon that'll be watching when he does that pitch walk, I tell you. Just have a look at this. Guess who it is. You're absolutely right. Glad it's not in the bits. And this one, called Baby, don't change your mind.
Starting point is 03:54:37 Tony, alone again, naturally, decides to turn the show into an episode of Who's Baby? As we see a photo of a toddler who's so obviously the front woman of the next group followed by a photo of her and her mates with ed sullivan as he finally introduces baby don't change your mind by gladys knight and the pips we covered gladys a brother bubba william guest and edward pattern in chant music number 18, when they took Midnight Train to Georgia to number 10 in June of 1976. Since then, there's been a steady presence in the lower reaches of the top 40 over here, but this single, the follow-up to Nobody But You,
Starting point is 03:55:17 which got to number 34 in January of this year, written by Van McCoy and the lead cut from the LP Still Together, sees the group sniffing the wind, recognising the gamey tang of disco and scampering after it. It entered the charts for Fortnite to go at number 33, then soared 11 places to number 22. This week it's only nudged up one place to number 21, but no matter, because here is the video. I really like Tony's link here where he says, I'll be watching what he does with that pitchfork, I'll tell you. Because although it's not a very clever or funny remark, it does make you think how incredibly exciting and memorable it would have been if Tommy Banner had actually leapt off the stage, pushed through the audience and rammed his pitchfork up Tony Blackburn's arse, causing Tony to throw back his head and scream with pain. So both prongs of the pitchfork emerged, tearing through his exposed throat and showering the cheering audience with
Starting point is 03:56:26 blood and tissue and uh tommy banner whispers you was right to worry young and as he performs a unspeakable pagan right on the body and up in the gallery they're getting calls tell them to cut the feed and robin nash is screaming don't cut don't cut we're staying live this is sensational stuff no at home tessa wyatt is watching it with richard o'sullivan and they're both laughing anyway that's what tony was worried about i think he needn't worry quite so much have you been watching a lot of italian folk movies of late, Taylor? No more than usual. So anyway, this video, it's 70s video cliché number two, isn't it? The band having fun in the studio.
Starting point is 03:57:14 Even though the entire film is just set in a massive couple of boxers, you still get that American vibe off it. And, you know, by this time, 1977 1977 any bit of film about america even if it's just a studio is thrilling oh without a doubt to the youth isn't it i mean by american standards this is actually kind of a budget video you know yes but after the wurzels my god what a magical other world america looks like yes i mean i love this song the van mccoy production tilts them towards disco like you said it's not wholeheartedly disco yet, I don't think. No, but it's getting there, isn't it?
Starting point is 03:57:48 It's getting there. And it keeps the Motown-ness and the soul. And it's just a great track. And fundamentally, I mean, as ever with black American pop from the 70s, I'm not saying CMP contributors have to stand down in a sense, but it's tricky because the sense of relaxation that happens with American artists when a camera is pointed at them is just totally different. British bands in a video like this would feel the need to prove their relaxation by sort of gamely sort of grinning along.
Starting point is 03:58:15 But Gladys Knight and the Pips, they just have it. They're Gladys Knight and the Pips for fuck's sake. And good on them, really, in a way, for sending a video. Because I think by now the Pips and Gladys had twigged sort of just how odd the British are. And I think it would have been that they kind of always dressed down a little bit for their TOTP appearances. And I think, you know, it would have been, frankly,
Starting point is 03:58:35 undignified for them to follow the Wurzels. No. So this video is a delight. But it's accompanied for me watching it with a sense of Christ what to say about this, but it's accompanied for me watching it with a sense of Christ what to say about this, because it's just wonderful. It's just a wonderfully produced record with a great little budget video with it as well.
Starting point is 03:58:52 Yeah. Yeah, luckily this was before anyone had heard of homosexuality, except the Wurzels. And it was unexceptional. And it's only mildly fabulous to see grown men with moustaches wearing tennis shorts and dancing in formations and doing exercises together. Yeah, with the t-shirts all rolled up and everything, exposing their midriff. Yeah.
Starting point is 03:59:14 Yeah, yeah. Socking each other on the arm, no doubt. Talking about the ladies when Gladys is out of the room. I love those shorts. I love those shorts. Those Jimmy Connor shorts are really strong yet as taylor said highly camp look at the beginning we see them kind of like doing a bit of a dance routine being taught by someone standing behind them in a vest and yeah they
Starting point is 03:59:34 do look like they're about to go roller skating afterwards aren't they yeah but they look like they're having so much yes yeah like nobody that age or nobody who looks that age ever has that much fun without a bit of an edge on it. Do you know what I mean? But the pips look like they don't have a care in the world. Only blue skies for the pips. And Gladys looks really cool in her sportswear as well. And it's a shame because then she gets sort of frumped up a bit for the main bit,
Starting point is 04:00:02 you know, where they're in civvies in the studio and all that. Whereas whereas the pips you're kind of grateful when they're back in the slacks yeah yeah i mean to a nine-year-old like me it was obvious that being gladys knight and the pips was the fucking best dos in the world they have a bit of a sing then they have a bit of a dance and then you know there's a couple of blokes lingering in the doorway watching on, and then we cut to the other side of the glass, and there's two blokes behind a mixing desk, one of whom is the absolute dead spit of Ron O'Neill in Superfly. And they're watching Gladys Knight and the Pips perform, and they have a bit of a chat to each other.
Starting point is 04:00:37 I mean, I don't know what they're saying, but it's bound to be words to the effect of, fucking hell, this song is mint and on our life skill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they've got the best headphones in the world. Oh, yes. Massive red headphones. Yes.
Starting point is 04:00:49 And I don't know whether they've been told to hold the headphones in a certain way, because they all kind of hold, not over their heads, but kind of under their chins. Yes, like a giant telephone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The kind of phone that Busby had on top of that telegraph pole. Indeed, but they're instantly, deeply covetable, these objects, these red headphones. They really catch the eye. But the whole look of it, it's just instant.
Starting point is 04:01:10 You're propelled to this magical land called America. And after the Wurzels, fuck me, you need that. Yes. I mean, they're on the way out here, really. They've got one foot in a chicken basket. Yes. They've got a couple of sunset hits ahead. Yeah.
Starting point is 04:01:23 But that's about it. I mean, this is sort of their last hurrah but this is so great yeah it's just one of those records that sounds like it came off a production line in the best possible way yes you know like everyone involved knew exactly what they were doing and just did it without any fuss you you know. And it's another one of the few 1977 records that I think I remember from the time as well. It stuck in my head because of that moment where half the instruments drop out on the chorus
Starting point is 04:01:54 and the vocal melody is doubled by the string section, which is a trick they used to use on a lot of American records at the time, just underlining the hook we talked about the same thing on silver lady by david soup i seem to remember it really does weld a chorus onto your brain yeah and the chorus sort of needs it because it's not an especially strong tune but it sounds heavenly because it's done with that effortless American sophistication and gloss, which 70s British records could never replicate. British records could do cold, dry strings in a way that you would never, ever hear on an American single,
Starting point is 04:02:39 which is brilliant. But they also could never get that brimming over pearly gate sound that you get from yeah philly soul and late 60s early 70s motown and stuff like this yeah and these moments are important in any episode of top of the pops because they're just transportation away at midway through this song you know you've forgotten about the fucking jubilee you've forgotten about top of the pops and tony blackburn to be honest with you and you know you're completely immersed in it so it's magical and it's the first bit of proof in this episode that there is life after motown for a lot of acts yeah as we're going to see again later so the following week baby don't change your mind jumped seven places to number 14 and three weeks
Starting point is 04:03:21 later got to number four its highest position the follow-up home is where the heart later got to number four, its highest position. The follow-up, Home Is Where The Heart Is, got to number 35 in October and they'd make their last appearance in the top 20 when Come Back And Finish What You Started got to number 15 in August of 1978. That's a fucking tune. Very much so, yeah. By which time the group had fallen out with their new label, Buddha Records, and were forced to record as two separate entities until their deal ran out. They eventually signed a new deal with CBS in 1980,
Starting point is 04:03:52 but their hits dried up over here and they parted ways in 1989. Baby, don't change your mind Don't change it You know my love is in your mind Baby, don't change your mind Don't change it Well, there you are. You're probably wondering what this little bit of string is here. Well, I'll tell you what will happen. If I pull this bit of string, two things will happen. First of all, some balloons will fall down on Neil Innes,
Starting point is 04:04:25 who will then sing a number, Silver Jubilee. Let's see if it works. Sure. Queen Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth, Silver Jubilee. Queen Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth, God save you and me. Tony, standing next to a tatty bit of string, tells us that when he pulls it, some balloons will fall down from the ceiling and the next act will do their bit. He does, and by God, we're thrown into Silver Jubilee by Neil Innes. Born in Danbury, Essex in 1944,
Starting point is 04:05:09 Neil Innes was a fine arts student at Goldsmiths in the early 60s when he joined the Bonzo Dog Dada Band, a rotating collective of art school sorts who took the piss out of trad jazz cover versions in local pubs and college balls. As the only trained musician in the group, he whipped them into some semblance of a band, and they made their TV debut playing Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey on Blue Peter. They signed a deal with Parlophone, but after the success of the new Vaudeville band, a group of session musos put together to record Winchester Cathedral,
Starting point is 04:05:43 the Bonzos were invited to inherit the name for a tour, which they all turned down by their trumpet player Bob Kerr, which gave Innes the opportunity to convince the band to drop the old stuff and steer them towards the new sounds of the mid to late 60s. On December 23rd 1967, they became the resident band on the new Thames television kids show Do Not Adjust Your Set, which introduced them to Eric Heigl, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, and three days after that, they appeared in the Beatles film Magical Mystery Tour on BBC Two. After myriad TV appearances and a string of sessions for John Peel's Radio 1 show Top Gear and a punishing gig schedule, they finally made it big in late 1968 when Urban Spaceman, written by Inez and co-produced by Paul McCartney
Starting point is 04:06:37 got to number 5 for 3 weeks in November After touring America in 1969 they decided it wasn't any fun anymore and they split up in January of 1970 and Inez and Viv Stanchel spent the early 70s in bands such as Freaks with Keith Moon on drums and Grimms a collaboration with members of the Scaffold and he also put out his debut LP How Sweet to Be an Idiot in 1974. Later that year he reunited with Idol, Jones and Palin as a filling of sorts for John Cleese in the final series of Monty Python and wrote songs for the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In 1975 he and Idol starred in the BBC2 sketch show Rutland Weekend Television
Starting point is 04:07:25 which featured a song called I Must Be In Love which was performed by a band called The Ruckles. By 1977 he's working up a film script and a soundtrack for the forthcoming Ruckles film All You Need Is Cash and has just put out his second LP Taking Off this April. But while being interviewed by the BBC World Service, he was challenged to make up a song on the spot about the Silver Jubilee, and this is it.
Starting point is 04:07:54 It's been rushed out by his label, Arista Records, and it's not in the chart yet, but Robin Nash is clearly looking for a hook to hang his oversized Jubilee hat on, and this will do very nicely leading to innis's first appearance on top of the pops since he wore a ball gown to perform urban spaceman nearly nine years ago and all chats were instantly thrown into the top of the pops of 1982 aren't we without the zoo wankers i mean if michael hurl had been asked to organize a
Starting point is 04:08:26 national front demo it would probably look like this wouldn't it yeah this almost cancels out the ruttles i mean obviously the key factor the main characteristic of this record and also the main problem with it is that you watch it and even if you're very familiar with Neil Innes and his work, it's impossible to work out how it's meant or how you're supposed to take it because clearly he's not hailing the Queen with an expression of murderous intensity. But it doesn't sound like he's having a go either.
Starting point is 04:09:02 No. And as usual, he's just standing there looking underwhelmed, a little sheepish and incorrigibly morose. So you won't find any clues in his facial expression. And generally, I'm broadly in favour of not being able to tell how sincere somebody is on a record because it allows discussion and it encourages you to think a bit but here it's it's a bit annoying yeah and i mean a big part of neil in this is aesthetic and the bonzos and to a certain extent mon, which creates this kind of perpetual satire. But at the level of a lack of seriousness and an inability to be po-faced about anything, which people never tire of pointing out is a very comfortable middle class old world way of seeing things because you don't have the complication of any of those things being a direct threat to you even though that wasn't the background of everyone involved in those groups but it was the reality of their lives and in the
Starting point is 04:10:19 context of comedy that can work very well you know like the best satire of the ruling classes tends to come from the children of the ruling classes uh or used to but i'm not sure it works so well in the song because this isn't comedy it's just whimsy and so all the protections and defenses that comedy has just fall away and and you're just left thinking yeah but what are you doing it's like your your half raised eyebrow as you sing a deliberately trite song about the queen silver jubilee suggests that you don't really care either way perhaps you don't dislike royalty but you're aware of the the silliness of the whole palaver but it doesn't work even as a sort of dryly equivocal take because you're doing it right here and now in this content which tips you over into unironic celebration because that's the
Starting point is 04:11:14 way the current is moving and you've decided to step into the current and not swim or his record labels decided he's going to do that oh yeah but yeah. But the end result is, there you are on TV, waving a very small Union Jack. And it's kind of upsetting. I mean, it's fucking shit, this record. I don't like the equivocation of it. But, I mean, you know, I do think, I mean, Innes is a great hookmeister.
Starting point is 04:11:38 He can knock out a pop song. I mean, I know he said he did this as a bet, but fuck me, we just did not need this. Yeah, it's a bet that we lost. Well, yeah, and he does great cod reggae. You know, if you listen to the section about medieval open field farming systems in Monty Python's The Background to History, he does great cod reggae. And I guess some of the rhymes here are kind of pleasing. You know, saluting with highfalutin and that.
Starting point is 04:12:02 But I love Neil Innes. But this, you know, he was part, actually, Neil Innes, mean i love neil innes but this you know he was part actually neil innes sidetrack of one of the best gigs i've ever seen i went to see yola tengo at warwick art center once and they had a couple of guests on stage with them one of them was sonic boom from spaceman 3 and the other one was neil innes and he was wonderful he was playing their songs he was also playing spaceman 3 songs songs. He even did Urban Spaceman. But this is surely an idea. I mean, thinking of ex-bonzos,
Starting point is 04:12:33 if you want a picture of class at this time in British society and culture, probably dig into Viv Stanchel's Sir Henry at Rawlinson's end LP that comes out the year after this, and maybe the film from 1980. But Taylor's exactly right. There's this equivocation in this song. Is he taking taking he's not quite taking the piss you know at any other time i guess i tolerate it but in the thick of the jubilee it's a time to call sides in a sense and he hasn't done so no and i don't like seeing neil innis do this because i like neil innis a lot yeah i mean you'd see how this would work on the
Starting point is 04:13:02 end credits of rutland weekend television or the innis booker records where you can actually control the visuals but here on top of the pops yeah yeah yeah and the crowd's frenzy and the flags and the balloons and stuff do not help it they make it look like he is yeah in celebration whereas the the lyrics are a little you know more nuanced than that and he's not dressed up either i I mean, if he'd have turned up dressed as the Queen, that might help. He looks very Paul Simon, doesn't he, in his dress. He's got this baggy suit jacket on and a white flat cap.
Starting point is 04:13:34 And, of course, we've got the heavy-duty discipline of the top of the Pops Orchestra. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The cap is to hide evidence of a hair transplant. Oh, right. Unfortunately, he was the donor. Right. The thing is, hide evidence of a hair transplant. Oh, right. Unfortunately, he was the donor. Right. The thing is, it's not surprising that this is where Neil Innes has ended up,
Starting point is 04:13:53 sort of, kind of, almost, sort of, celebrating the Queen, because spiritually a big part of his work was a kind of melancholic distrust of progress. And, you know, he was like terry jones out of monty python he liked natural things and old stuff and like you know real ale and things he was distrustful of anything too organized or too cerebral or too manufactured and in his book of records is full of that all this sort of little man in the modern world, you know, retreating into magic and imagination, which can be lovely, but in the wrong context, it can easily seem reactionary, or at least in sympathy with a reactionary position.
Starting point is 04:14:36 This is the first time he's been on Top of the Pops in seven years. It's like, oh, fuck, where's the Dollybirds on the gantret? Who are these kids? It is weird, isn't it? And there's not many other performances in Top of the Pops in this period that I can think that are, not the performances,
Starting point is 04:14:49 but the crowd dynamic that are quite like this. You're very right to point out that it's prophetic of kind of an 80s Top of the Pops in a way. And it's unbelievable that none of them Ruttle songs charted because they were fucking brilliant.
Starting point is 04:15:02 Yeah, he never made a penny out of any of them, of course. Yeah yeah but he did make a ton of oasis yeah i'm ripping off how sweet to be an idiot along with gary glitter yeah good old no giving a peter bone a million pounds well played yeah i tend to prefer neil innes's uh collaborative work right to his solo stuff, partly because that sort of vague whimsy and distracted sweetness doesn't really do that much for me. Like, he was brilliant in the bonzos because he provided the platform and the guardrails for Vivian Stancher, you know,
Starting point is 04:15:40 and he was great working with Monty Python because of his grasp of the detail of music and what sounds like what and what should go where to create this or that effect. Which went brilliantly with Monty Python's least discussed superpower, which was the incredible eye for the detail of, for instance, English archetypes or styles of television presentation. People forget this now because TV doesn't look like this anymore but in 1969 1970 monty python's parodies of tv looked as uncannily almost unbelievably precise and accurate as the day-to-day did in 1994 so when they added music to that they needed someone with the same observational skills and it's like yeah it's like Neil just mentioned, the best bit of Monty Python's matching tie and handkerchief LP is that sketch, which if you haven't heard it,
Starting point is 04:16:30 the only joke is that it's like an open university broadcast or like a highbrow radio lecture about the medieval open field farming system. And they introduce various eminent history professors. Professor Tofts of the University of Manchester puts it like this, and each one sings their bit to a different kind of pop tune, and there's a reggae track, a glam rock track.
Starting point is 04:16:55 Raw, raw. Sort of... Framework. Framework. And it's just an obviously contrived Palin and Jones sketch where you put two incompatible things together so they spark and undermine each other's
Starting point is 04:17:08 seriousness and then the sketch writes itself. But it's not even a funny idea. It's only funny because of how convincing and well judged and well observed Neil Innes' music is. And it sets up Michael Palin as
Starting point is 04:17:24 the professor of medieval studies at cambridge doing a uncannily accurate impression of a stoned rock star being interviewed on the old grey whistle test which is possibly his greatest ever acting performance but the point is there aren't any jokes it's just playing with formula and context and neil innes one of the very few musicians you could trust to get all of that precisely right which you need to or the whole thing dies and it's just not funny you know which is obviously also why he ended up doing the ruttles but his own material i mean the only song of his that i like you know that i love that I love, let's say, in that sort of slightly sad, whimsical style, is How Sweet to Be an Idiot. All the other songs of his I like are dead straight, you know, the Ruttle songs.
Starting point is 04:18:14 And, you know, I watched it in his book of records a few years ago, and God bless him, it dragged a little. I didn't like it as much as I really wanted to. Because, again, a lot of it is stuff where you can't quite work out the point or what he's trying to do, which should be interesting. But too often, you just end up with the impression that actually there is no point. And he's not really trying to do anything at all.
Starting point is 04:18:37 He's just singing a song, which, you know, is fine. It's fine. But this is not a pretty sign. Sailing on the yacht Britannia, no one in the world would ban you well i can think of a few pubs on the falls road that might have issues and nowadays a few schools might turn her son away yeah it's a line that's been left behind by time a bit hasn't it that line so the following week silver jubilee failed to chart and never would the follow-up the bob dylan pastiche protest song also failed to chart and he never troubled
Starting point is 04:19:14 said chart ever again two years after this performance he returned to bbc2 with three series of the innis book of records a collection of music videos of his own songs, and then spent the 80s as the host of the ITV kids' show The Book Tower, played the magician in Puddle Lane, and wrote and narrated the cartoon series Raggy Dolls. And he died in 2019 at the age of 75. Dolls like you and me, don't you know? Made imperfectly.
Starting point is 04:19:48 Queen Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth Still my Jubilee Queen Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth Well, I hope you're all having a really lovely Jubilee week. We're having a fabulous time here at Top of the Pops. Hope you're enjoying all the music.
Starting point is 04:20:09 We've got to change tempo a little bit right now. We're going to have a bit of that sort of... a bit of rock for you now in the shape of the Stranglers. And this one... Working! Working! The boys and the girls are dancing around Tony, still in his realm of solitude,
Starting point is 04:20:29 suddenly notices that the camera's on him again and he expresses his hope that our Jubilee week hasn't been a crashing disappointment ruined by your dad constantly going on about how Elvis is the fucking king. He then warns us that a change of pace is imminent and tells us we're going to have a bit of that sort of, uh, bit of rock for you
Starting point is 04:20:50 because he can't even bring himself to say punk. Yeah, that's exactly what's going through his head. Yes. To Tony Blackburn, saying punk is as good as saying fuck. Yeah, it's sedition. You can't say punk. No. That's exactly his thought process.
Starting point is 04:21:03 I mean, and as ever with Tony, not hiding his disgust. He introduces Go Buddy Go by The Stranglers. We've dealt with the happy-go-lucky, squeaky-clean former Guildford Stranglers on numerous occasions, and this, their second single, is the follow-up to Get A Grip On Yourself, which got to number 44 in March of this year and should have done better were it not for the British Market Research Bureau, the compilers of the official chart, somehow mistakenly taking a chunk of the Strangler sales
Starting point is 04:21:35 and lumping them onto everyone's talking about love by silver convention, he said, placing his hand on his chin. It's actually a double a side with peaches which features on their debut lp ratus norvegicus which came out in april and is currently at number seven in the album charts but seeing as the subject matter is about hugh cornwall dosing on the beach looking at women's arses and the cover of the single depicts a hand pulling at the back of a pair of pink knickers that have been put on a peach, Radio 1 forced them to put out a radio edit and don't want it on Top of the Pops. It entered the chart three weeks ago at number 37 and only nudged up one place to number 36 a week later, but that didn't stop Top of the Pops from issuing an
Starting point is 04:22:24 invite as long as they played the song on the other side which involves john jack burnell encouraging his mate to stop being a warflower at a club and get stuck into all the punky crumpets and being delighted to see him with a chicky on his knee at the end of the song which helped it jump nine places to number 27 this week it's moved up four places to number 23 and here's a repeat of that performance a fortnight ago chaps let's deal with peaches first because to my mind that's the far superior song yeah the only thing about it it reminds me of that hp sauce advert that frankie howard did with the uh couple in the seaside postcard with a fat bloke with a tash perving on women while his wife doesn't know it.
Starting point is 04:23:10 Oh, HP, you've got to admire their sauce. I mean, it would have made for a better Top of the Pops appearance. Yes. Whether it was the band. Imagine Legs and Co doing that. That's exactly what I was about to say, yeah. Probably dressed up as giant peaches. One of them dressed as a massive banana
Starting point is 04:23:25 running round after them no doubt played by dave lee travis this song is less good it's interesting though this i mean listening to the demo of this song from 76 right because the before you know the stranglers even got signed the demo this song and it's totally different it's like a slower pace a sluggier sound because it's a demo but you can at least hear an attempt uh with the hand claps and the harmonies on it to sound i don't know professional yeah um this has been it's kind of been professionally scuffed up yeah it's been punked up a bit hasn't yeah because of punk completely much like the whole band has that there is um a deliberate fuck you amateurism to their performance here.
Starting point is 04:24:05 Yes. Because they swap instruments and they take all the strings off their guitar. Ah, yes, yes. I was wondering about that. I think it's JJB, isn't it? He's playing guitar
Starting point is 04:24:13 and other fellas playing bass and he's playing quarter U. Yeah, that's right. He's playing chords on the bass like he would on guitar. No one's playing the guitar solo at all. There's a couple of good moments
Starting point is 04:24:24 of kind of spikiness if you like towards the end when his guitar lead starts tangling him up um jjb has a nice pull there's a lovely moment as well did you see the bit when um i think somebody's got their hands on the stage yeah and he stamps on it um he goes to the front and stamps on them it's kind of nice but as ever with stranglers um although yeah they're punked up but dave greenfield's keyboards yeah are the kind of thrillingly problematic spanner yes in the works he's not changing instruments with jet black is a i mean and he's always you know far too good a player in a sense to be a punk and he always confers this instant 60sness to what he
Starting point is 04:25:05 plays not just in the sound of his keyboard but in the lines and the melodies but that said you know even though it's not as good as peaches in the context of this episode of top of the pops this is weird and thrilling and i think it would have been to any punks or kids tuning in this is the moment when that wedge is in and when mums and dads are probably talking about sticking them in the army or something yes um which makes jankers which makes i mean it makes the crowd's reaction kind of inexplicable i don't think top of the pops audiences at this point have figured out how to move to music like this no um because the inevitable consequence of moving to a record like this is is probably something like a mosh pit.
Starting point is 04:25:46 And The Stranglers, unlike the bands that are coming in a few years, they haven't bought their little coterie of fans with them to Top of the Pops. In an ice cream van. There's not a couple of hardcore devotees down at the front to show the way. So the crowd's reaction is a little bit odd. But in the context of a pretty, I'm not going to say awful episode of Top of the Pots, but there's been precious little excitement, this is one of the most exciting moments of the show.
Starting point is 04:26:12 Yeah, I don't dislike this record. I mean, it's just a garage punk tune, isn't it, with just enough of an edge left on it to pass. Yeah, it's more pub rock than Frankie fucking Miller. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, you know, I'm no fan of the Stranglers, really, but when you look at the pantheon of 77 punk tracks,
Starting point is 04:26:31 like the non-heroic ones, that's some pretty floppy competition, really. And the Stranglers are actually up there, although, like you, I'd rather have Peaches, which is musical trolling, you know. Peaches is just a musical shit posting but i sort of like it because it's like if the doors were as stupid as they actually were but knew it do you know what i mean and also the problem with it being this song is that is it just
Starting point is 04:27:02 me who doesn't like to see groups on top of the pops and it's not the usual lead singer singing like i know you know it's it just sets bad bells ringing because yeah all the a sides where someone other than the usual lead singer is singing has there ever been a good one i can't think of one ever i mean guns of brixton wasn't a single, was it? No. There's nothing. And I don't count XTC, where the one who wasn't the main singer was better than the one who was the main singer and wrote all the best hits. There must be one.
Starting point is 04:27:34 Doesn't really leap out at you, though. That wasn't a single, was it? K-Sara Sarar by Sly and the Family Stone. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it makes sense having JJB as the front person, because before Generation X pitch up, he's the only one who's going to be on the centrefold of Jackie, isn't he? Yeah, yeah, with his Trotsky T-shirt, which...
Starting point is 04:27:53 Yes, yes, it is. He's had to half cover up, like the Flying Pickets tea towel. Yeah. Trotsky's still stuck in the number two slot on the commodified communist top ten behind Che Guevara, the everything I do, I do it for you of oblivious consumerist irony. JJB's wearing a t-shirt with the pastiche of the Ford logo
Starting point is 04:28:14 but it says Trotsky. Yeah. Yeah, this all started in January of this year when Hugh Cormor was spotted at a gig by the member of the GLC's public committee wearing a Ford logo on his t-shirt that read, Fuck. The GLC went on to force the Rainbow
Starting point is 04:28:28 to put a clause in their contract with the Stranglers when they were about to open as support to the Climax Blues Band, which forbade them to either say or wear obscene language on stage. And on the night of the gig, Cornwall had the same T-shirt on, which he either chose to wear or he was just living in at the time and a glc inspector spotted it from the back of the hall with some binoculars and they just cut the power on them blimey so yeah if you'd have been in the know you'd been looking at that t-shirt and going no they haven't oh i see what they've
Starting point is 04:29:01 done there but they're doing a nice bit of subversion on this episode, as you pointed out, with the swapping of the instruments and the removal of the strings. But also, it appears that the BBC is so preoccupied with T-shirt slogans that they've failed to notice that Burnell's kept in the line,
Starting point is 04:29:17 I'm with my friend, with Bob, having a good time. I got me some speed and I'm doing fine. Yeah. They probably thought he got a motorbike or something yeah no exactly 10 or 15 years earlier you could definitely imagine them getting away with singing about speed because the straight and narrow people might think oh he must have been prescribed it by his doctor for weight loss or listlessness or a general sense of malaise you know uh trying to mill spanchules but probably not by now but then again probably nobody who listened to this with a censor's hat
Starting point is 04:29:54 on could understand any of the words you know i mean but the thing is historically references to speed do tend to slip past the sensor in a way that references to other drugs don't. There's a lot of records that were never banned that are obviously about speed. The Small Faces got away with singing about their dealer. Yes. He's always there when I need some speed. At a time when you could get banned from the radio if your song had the word smoke in it, even if you were actually referring to a senior service untipped yeah dexes were named after dexes yes and had a number one hit whose lyrics helpfully explained what that
Starting point is 04:30:34 meant i know we have a band that was then if you can't understand what the stranglers are singing here good luck deciphering gino i mean the thing is is this punk rock probably not the stranglers never really were jjb he is though he's punking it up in his delivery of this song he's jumping about like almost like jimmy percy or something and there's a slight discomfort there it don't feel right because it's almost like a cartoon approximation of what punk rock is i guess because they're not quite and they never do quite fit in with punk rock so it's a little forced but anything i mean we've just fucking kneeling and singing that song you know i mean anything will do at this point so so it's pretty
Starting point is 04:31:15 thrilling to just have a yeah just have a rock and roll band doing what they do but i would encourage by the way people to seek out that demo from 76 because it's totally different different. A lot of people, a lot of Stranglers fans, prefer it. I don't. But it indicates the kind of process that's going on with the Stranglers, in a sense, that before 77, they had a lot of material. Now they're figuring out ways of punking it up and making it sort of current and making it feel contemporary, rather than just being another rock and roll band.
Starting point is 04:31:41 Well, this is the thing about punk. I mean, bands like the Stranglers, they're years behind the the curve and a lot of the punk elite just look down on them because look you're too old and you're too proficient but punk's giving them the keys to the charty kingdom hasn't it it's like okay we'll do these songs but we'll be yeah yeah the arrogant aggressive bastards that we are anyway and here we go into the charts yeah but i think what i don't like most about the stranglers apart from the the beer breath ambience in general is that feeling that they're putting it on or taking it off you know like you know they're all about 56 and they could play better than they let on you know and i completely understand why older, proper musicians would enjoy power and simplicity over anything else
Starting point is 04:32:28 and would find it genuinely refreshing and exciting that suddenly everyone was playing fast and quick. And I just would like it more if they'd used their experience to create a different way of doing the same thing rather than doing exactly what a group of untutored 18 year olds would have done except they're playing all the right notes i mean yeah at this point they were probably the only punk or punkish band in britain who could write a song with a hook line based around a circle of fifths which is this um and they're almost certainly the only one where you can imagine at least one of the members might know what a circle of fifths which is this um and they're almost certainly the only one where you
Starting point is 04:33:05 can imagine at least one of the members might know what a circle of fifths is even though they probably refer to them as the hey joe chords just like everybody else does and they're also the um the only punk adjacent band who are having no problems getting gigs they're about to announce their tour and there's a bit of fury in the local papers but it's never comes to anything they they never get banned so yeah everything's coming up stranglers but the thing is with the stranglers i mean as letters to the music press kind of reveal um although aligning themselves with punk they are liked by proper music fans you know and and that's the thing with the stranglerslers i like the stranglers but i know
Starting point is 04:33:45 that they are satisfying whereas the damned and the pistols are thrilling and and those are things that the stranglers never really are you know they're satisfying they're filled out but then they'll never be as thrilling as the great punk records that are coming out this year and just before we close can we just have a little word as usual for dave greenfield they're always the hero of the stranglers never has he looked more inappropriately named than in this clip you would believe it if somebody told you that he was something they dug up the night before for a laugh and got him moving with puppet strings and electrical charges and the reason this song is so short is that his jaw keeps dropping off
Starting point is 04:34:26 so they can't take any chances. No, he looks just delightfully half rotten. He's in a green boiler suit. He looks great. Yeah, it makes him look like someone's just snipped the top of a body bag and just sat him down in front of the keyboard. Exactly.
Starting point is 04:34:42 And also, a quick word for Jet jet black who i do like because he looks like what he is a coach driver that you definitely wouldn't want to speak to while the vehicle was in motion or afterwards one word out of place and we're like to ask him where the bucket of sand was your classmates threw up in the aisle one word out of word out of place, and he'd fell you with Richard Burton drunk karate. You ever seen that? It's one of my favourite clips on YouTube, when Richard Burton was really drunk, like literally almost dead in the mid-70s.
Starting point is 04:35:16 He did this film called The Klansman, where he was in America battling the Ku Klux Klan. There's a clip on YouTube of this where he has to have a fight where this good old boy starts on him and his and his missus and he has to kung fu him but because he's so drunk he can hardly move he just has to walk up to him with his fixed grimace with a bright purple face and then he just kind of raises one flat hand up and the bloke goes, and flies through a window, you know. It's like you've got to, yeah, yeah,
Starting point is 04:35:49 put it on the playlist. Of course it will. Worth a watch. So the following week, Peaches slash GoBuddyGo jumped four places to number 19 and continued its slow pull up the charts, eventually getting to number eight three weeks later. The follow-up, Something Better Change, got to number 8 three weeks later the follow up, Something Better Change
Starting point is 04:36:06 got to number 9 in August and they close out 1977 with No More Heroes getting to number 8 in October and the LP of the same name getting to number 2 in the same month held off number 1 by 20 Golden Greats
Starting point is 04:36:21 by Diana Ross and the Supremes imagine the party that the manager of the Stranglers and the Wurzels has every Christmas. Can you imagine what the buffet's like? Lots of finger food. Well, I guess it's holiday time at the moment, and if you go to Greece and you look for an island called Carilla, you won't find it, actually, because it's in the imagination of Demis Roussos. But for the wonders of Top of the Pulse,
Starting point is 04:37:00 we'll conjure up a lovely island and demise for you right now. Tony, still alone, reminds us that it's holiday time, but takes the opportunity to warn us about unscrupulous Greeks trying to tempt us towards islands that don't actually exist as he introduces Kyryla by Demis Roussos. We first encountered Artemis Venturis Roussos in chart music number 35 when he reprised Forever and Ever which got to number one for a week in July of 1976 and this tune the follow-up to Because which got to number 39 in April of this year is the lead track from the EP of the same name. It's been taken off his recent LP Kirilla in Selde Trauma a German only album and it along with a few other tracks have been englished up and shoved out for the
Starting point is 04:38:06 bevs and angers of albion to slink about too it's not in the charts just yet but the bbc are fully expecting it to be so so while demis is in the country they've winched him into the studio and what a spectacle oh it is i mean no expense spared on the holiday vibe no from the bbc props department um no what a couple of palm trees i think yes but it but it would have impressed me you know i mean the blue caftan would certainly have impressed me but it looks great i mean i i just think for the longest time as a kid i was just impressed by russos simply because of his size i mean much as much as you know in the middle ages like fatness was seen as a signifier of wealth and status and all that i did look on him not as rotund but but
Starting point is 04:38:52 a winner you know somebody who could presumably have as many goblin burgers and scampi and chips and chris and pop as he wanted you know and of course that contrast between his physicality and his high fluted sort of John Anderson style voice provided a bit of novelty value. By this point, 77, he's already well into the kind of being parodied years. You know, the sure sign of making it, Benny Irwin and, you know, always did an anonymous score. I remember a Freddie Star routine as well, where Star was, was doing the Demis Rousseau song in the higher voice, and then he walks across the stage and suddenly his voice drops, and you notice that behind him there's a bloke with a pair of pliers. He's getting parodied a lot. I think he is the first solo artist who was born in Africa to get a number one in the UK. I know about Manfred Mann and Freddie Mercury and stuff.
Starting point is 04:39:45 It's odd how he's covering this Cameroonian song. The original by It Can Be Brilliant called Ilongi is a lot more interesting in its arrangement. Oh, really? Yeah. And if you stumble across, by the way, any mid-70s It Can Be Brilliant records, hoover them up. They're great Afro-funk records. But this song, Kir carilla both in its recorded
Starting point is 04:40:05 version and in this uh slightly sloppier iteration by the bbc orchestra oh yes it's aiming for this kind of yeah fernando style world music feel because he's got a great voice it kind of works there's there is that bring your package holiday home yes feel to this you know to my mind it's massively unfair that the germans heard about this mystical island before us because, you know, that means they've already got their towels on the best sun line. But seeing as Tony has told us that the island doesn't actually exist, well, that's the Germans' fault, isn't it?
Starting point is 04:40:34 That meant a lot in 1977. I mean, 1977 was the year of the fake island, wasn't it? Because, you know, two months earlier, the Guardian devoted eight pages of its april the first edition to a supplement on the island of sansa reef all right this didn't exist either yeah it really went for it but this song well there's a question we can ask about a lot of the songs on this episode what's it doing on this show it's a non-chart record why is that happening what is it about the jubilee that has made this happen
Starting point is 04:41:05 yeah um and this ain't very jubilish oh very much no no unless it's for the queen's husband of course and of course you know another question what the fuck has he got on his feet oh oh lovely yeah shiny red knee boots with a cheeky heel basically it looks like if superman one day said oh to hell with a lot of you mcconnell's aggro boys kick to kill yeah it's this weird combination of platforms and kind of ronald mcdonald shoes um yeah the very pigeon street yeah he cuts quite an impressive figure doesn't he all around yeah not so much a dash more of a gouge i'm sort of half certain that this is the clip i saw as a kid actually because that stuck in my head it's exactly how i remember first seeing demis roussos and you know yeah i appreciate that in terms of his presentation he was very much the non-chameleon of pop but there's something
Starting point is 04:42:07 familiar in a very deep way about this particular combination of sound and picture and the fronds because he made a mark on the very young me you know i was half disturbed and half intrigued by the sound and the look and the movement, the way he always had a fan on him, you know, the foreign sound. And I remember asking my mum, why does he wear those clothes? And she said, because he's so fat. And I got it into my head somehow, linking it in my brain with another clip that had fired my imagination and worried me a little bit that perhaps demis roussos had jumped up and down on the tacoma narrows bridge
Starting point is 04:42:53 and that was what sent it wobbly and so maybe these two unnerving things were connected i mean i didn't actually think that had happened but in in my head, those two things got mixed up to the point where it was all I could think about. And yet here he is, still smiling beatifically, despite having wreaked so much terrible destruction. Do you know how old he is at the time? Ooh. I'm guessing 36, I'm gonna say 31 oh that changes things he's not looking great then
Starting point is 04:43:30 is he no but you know it's 31 in 1977 money yeah yeah yeah but i mean to me demis roussos you just saw him and just went oh yeah that's demis roussos you didn't think oh my god look at that enormous fat man no no, no, no. You know, there was plenty of people knocking about who looked like Demis Rousseau. Oh, yeah. Mainly men. But, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, the blokey soldier,
Starting point is 04:43:53 a brown paper bag full of plums probably looked like Demis Rousseau. Exactly. My only problem is that whenever I hear a song by Demis Rousseau that isn't one of the famous or good ones and isn't by Aphphrodite's child all i can think of is the film ultimo treno della notte also known as uh night train murders and also known as don't ride on late night trains it's a classier offering than most of the don't movies right these are instructionally titled horror films right
Starting point is 04:44:26 which urgently advised us against going into the basement looking out of the window going into the house and so on yeah but what if you live in the stockbroker belt and this film's only on at the west end and you didn't want to bring the car out yeah yeah you're fucked aren't you good point but yeah look this film is a bit grubby it's a blatant remake of wes craven's uh last house on the left as acknowledged in the original title the last train of the night but the english translators just work too fast to spot that you know even though last house on the left itself was a blatant remake of igmar bergman's the virgin spring which itself is a implausible story that's centuries old um and it doesn't get
Starting point is 04:45:13 much more believable when as in l'ultimo treno della notte you put it on a train in europe in the 70s but incredibly enough the first thing that you experience when you watch this very unpleasant film, the key events of which are too gruesome to detail, even on a broad-minded podcast like this, and which was actually banned in the UK until relatively recently under the absurd video nasty moral panic laws,
Starting point is 04:45:43 which made it a crime to sell or purchase it, and any copy of your possession could be confiscated by the vice squad. It's just a low-budget horror film. But the first thing that you hear is the theme song, A Flower's All You Need, by Demis Rousseau. Oh, no. Co-written by Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone. Whoa.
Starting point is 04:46:04 Which gives you some insight into relative British and European attitudes to low-budget exploitation films at the time, even those that are so transparently desperate to shock that the opening scenes show the baddies attacking a department store for the Christmas, which happens more often than you might expect, including in L'Ultimo Treno della Notte. But there he is singing the theme to this vomit splurge of sexualized violence and elementary emotional switch flicking.
Starting point is 04:46:40 The Rousseau phenomenon himself singing this song that goes, tell the world I saw a man fall in the street and die and just where he fell for love grows a flower a big red flower like the blood he shed for love and peace wow find a way to live your dreams you'll make it if you try for love can't be wrong your dreams will come true if you don't want to die before you get a bed of love you never had with your love beautiful words man right which might seem oddly inappropriate lyrics to any viewer of this film no although the main refrain goes sing a song sing an everlasting song which does feel quite appropriate when you're listening to it but the thing is i may just be showing my ignorance here of middle of the road greek pop but that song is almost indistinguishable from this song at least in my memory so when i hear this
Starting point is 04:47:39 i subconsciously brace myself in preparation for traumatic sights, which, in the context of this episode, is actually quite fortunate, as we'll see shortly. Yeah, I mean, they've obviously got him in early because he's in the country, but, oh, they've served him poorly here, haven't they? They've just got a few trees from fucking Habitat and bunged them in the studio,
Starting point is 04:48:03 and they've got some kind of yellow moon and in a blue sky in the background and yeah that's pretty much it one of the motifs of this episode of top of the pops there's a lot of sweeps of the camera behind things whether it's trees or bits of the set so there's times when we don't see anything for about two or three seconds yeah it's like someone's stalking top of the pops and also i mean this whole episode feels not like a bodge job but it's a bit cheapskate to be honest with you it's like they've shat all their money bbc entertainment budget has just shat it all on that nationwide on the nationwide jubilee special obviously but of course yes yeah well money well spent but yeah i mean at the time and even now greece might as well be mars to me and my
Starting point is 04:48:46 family because our holidays were chapel st leonards and i think this year we went to mabel for golden sands oh get you my nana uh got an earwig in her ear and uh turned her half deaf really and yeah we got charged 50p for a broken cup which we hadn't broke and my mom tried to bite off them so she could smash it in front of them so they couldn't rip off anyone ever again i got one of them big cat's head things made of uh toffee apple whatever to lick on the way back and i ended up throwing up all over the back of my dad's neck so yeah not the best holiday that year golden memories but i want to wanted to go to kiriola anyway,
Starting point is 04:49:25 because, you know, he's singing about the sky and the sea and all that boring shit. Where's the amusement arcade? Where's the chip shops? Where's the clubs that kids were allowed into where they had blue comedians on? No, mate, not having it. So the following week, Kiriola entered the charts at number 50,
Starting point is 04:49:42 that soared 17 places to number 33, but got no further. The follow-up, Life in the City, was given a run out on Top of the Pops in April of 1978, but did fuck all, and he never troubled the charts again. But he remained an endless subject of fascination in the tabloids. Here, chaps, is a tasteful article in the Daily Mirror that doesn't allude to sizism in the slightest. From this November, £30,000 winks in the mink. For Demis Roussos, the glamorous Greek, money is just a big, big yawn. To prove it, the 17-stone singing colossus trundled into a London store yesterday
Starting point is 04:50:29 and bought a giant mink-lined bed for £30,000. Gross. Does it actually say gross? Yes. That's £35,000 in today's money. Perhaps even more.
Starting point is 04:50:45 The falsetto-voiced pop star plans to take the Super Bowl, fuck knows what they mean there, on a world-warbling tour. And since it measures a jumbo-sized 8ft 6in by 8ft, there should just be about enough room for his pretty eight-stone wife dominique to climb aboard too clearly they're sure to enjoy setting off on a luxury snooze that's actually about 142 338 pounds today wow on a bed that's impressive yeah i like how the subtext of that article basically is
Starting point is 04:51:23 but how do they actually do it? Yes. And also making it seem as if, you know, when Demis Roussos goes on tour, he has to be, like, winched into a cargo plane or something to get anywhere. Yeah. 17 Stoner, that's not that much nowadays, is it?
Starting point is 04:51:37 No. I know, but, I mean, these were the days before high-fructose corn syrup. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, only pop stars could afford that. Well, we have two ladies here who, well, you come from Blackburn, don't you? What a very sensible place to come from. And I'm sure you've had a street party,
Starting point is 04:52:05 so why don't we join the party now with Honky. You know your body is grooving But you might want to give it a chance Don't worry about a thing Just feel the music and dance Toner is finally allowed to mix with the maidens of the studio audience. All flicked back hair and paper baseball caps that have been pushed back so far, they look like cast members of the Young Doctors.
Starting point is 04:52:42 He tells us that he has two ladies here, but he only bothers to talk to one of them, as she comes from Blackburn. Presumably the other one lives in Bury St Edmunds, I don't know. He's convinced that they had a street party without even asking if they actually had, and then awkwardly winces at his tenuous link and waits for the video machine to kick in and play
Starting point is 04:53:04 Join the Party by honker formed in southampton in 1975 on care a fucking honker this appears to be their debut single on creole records and came out in march of this year catalog number cr137 uh the label is orangey brown at the top with a 50 graduated fade into a goldy color seriously chaps that's pretty much the total result of my research on these bastards i couldn't find anything else well first off i just want to say something extra about what tony does oh please do i mean am i wrong did mishear this? He says Blackburn's a very sexual place. Does he say that? I think he says a very sensible place.
Starting point is 04:53:51 Does he say sexual? It's right on the edge. And he gives this little sort of grimace before it cuts to video where he realises he might have put his foot in it. He's thinking about them 4,000 holes, isn't he? There's a little deflated sort of... And his posture sags.
Starting point is 04:54:08 It does. It's a real sort of, that didn't go well. But that does set us up nicely for honky. After a couple of months in general circulation, they were drafted in to perform it on Top of the Pops almost a month ago. And two weeks later, it entered the chart at number 43, then jumped 12 places to number 31.
Starting point is 04:54:29 And this week, it's only moved up one place to number 30. But what does that matter to Robin Nash, who's clearly putting any old shit on this week? So here is a repeat of their previous performance and fucking hell, the state of it of it yeah this is a band that seems to have slipped through a hole in everybody's memory and yeah as your intro suggests are now essentially google proof but if nothing else they do make you sit up oh yes like ect i mean basically I mean, basically, this is two-man unsound. Yes. We have to start off by talking about what they look like,
Starting point is 04:55:09 i.e. breathtaking and horrifying. It's a stage full of misshapen uncles in full flight going for the check of flight. The singer has got a face that makes you think you might need glasses, or if you wear glasses, a face that makes you think you might need glasses or if you wear glasses a face that makes you want to take them off his black throat singing is so absurdly exaggerated that oh it would have made sandy shore a bit uncomfortable yeah it is proper 90s pot noodle advert black voice isn't it yeah, I'll have a baby sham.
Starting point is 04:55:48 And he dances like he's wearing stilts, which is very suspicious, as he also dresses like he's wearing stilts. He's got some massive billowy white Saxons on, hasn't he? Fucking hell. Yeah, and his constant violent and rhythmic crotch thrust makes you feel like you're being threatened with a licorice comfit it's not comfortable then there's the horn section of watson keegan and hodl in the kind of socks people wear in lieu of having a personality yeah they're mad cat woman socks
Starting point is 04:56:21 aren't they oh god yeah there's a drummer who looks like the secret brother that John Travolta keeps in the loft. A bass player who actually appears to be Pete Townsend, brandy edition, in a joke shop wig, a genuinely uncanny and unsettling likeness, but not half as uncanny or unsettling i think you know what i'm about to say as the fact that on lead guitar is the yorkshire ripper yeah yes hiding in plain sight i guess nobody recognized him without the tuxedo and dickie bows or the blanket over his head
Starting point is 04:57:00 if he'd been driving in a laura waving a crisp five pound note yeah i mean i know it's not nice but this can't be ignored this man beat dave lee travis in the second place in a peter suckcliffe look-alike contest lends a certain visual menace to honky which quite frankly they were not in need of yeah the brass line they just look like a packet of fruit pasta they actually look like hector or uh any other third division glam band and it's like oh come on daddy get with the program it's 1977 yeah yeah i couldn't actually notice much of the rest of the band because the lead singer oh his face right oven i mean he looks like sort of brian tilsley's cling-on brother and it's i mean it's no accident actually whilst we're on a sci-fi thing he also looks like charles
Starting point is 04:57:53 napier aka adam the singing leader of the hippie group in the way to weed an episode of star trek but the problem is i mean beyond the slight vocal black face of you know black throat of his vocal as taylor's identified with his crotch movements he's trying to be sexy and in fact when he twirls his totally inconsiderable packet in a sort of vaudey simulation of stand-up sex inevitably i mean perhaps it's just me but it makes you visualize just horrible stuff you know three things for me one him looking down at you grinning maniacally as he plows into the vinegar strokes two oh with his lad in his hand this is wanting you to degrade yourself yeah or number two him looking up at you good men cleavage pop
Starting point is 04:58:37 crazy youngsters or him looking up at you as his nasty afro chafes your thighs or in a scenario that i must admit i perversely and masochistically spun myself into um him andy mccluskey and roger daltrey all staring at me in a club a lascivious leer creeping over their face as they plan to pull the ultimate intercity repellents train on me um he's just vile he's just vile watch your backs now yeahile. Watch your backs, Neil. Yeah, bummer Cerberus. I mean, the problems start really with the name. I mean, you know, I mean, the average shite band. There's this sense in the name. Yeah, they are Panda Pops Wild Cherry, aren't they?
Starting point is 04:59:15 They are. But there's a lot of that about at the time. I mean, just like AWB, they're heading off accusations of cultural appropriation from the off, I guess. But, you know, what next? white motherfuckers here with their song. Honky, Taylor, has anyone called you Honky? No, I've been called a white cunt, which was preferable, really. I mean, Honky, to me, means Fingers Girlfriend in Nuts in May. She should have been on the side dancing to this.
Starting point is 04:59:43 Hey, Honk, look at them bleeding bluebells. Bleeding millions on them. There's a fair few artists who call themselves Honky over this. I remember a Midnighters hip-hop troupe called Honky. Right. Who did an album called Cold You, I think, which was actually fucking ace. No. But it's a repeated
Starting point is 04:59:59 trick. It got thrown about at the playground but it just bounces off, doesn't it? That was a really frustrating thing, though, Al. You know, as somebody who needed, obviously, words to combat with for stuff that I was called, there weren't many. Honky was one. Bird shit was another. Oh, that's a good one.
Starting point is 05:00:16 You know, but they weren't satisfying in the way that the racial epithets throw my way, presumably, were to the people who said them. I mean, out of the honky songs you know actually you know inevitably like Taylor says
Starting point is 05:00:28 they're very google proof and you can find scant sort of tracks by them anywhere Can't Sit Down was their other single I think
Starting point is 05:00:35 and that's a better call in the gang rip off slightly I would also if you get a chance and you're on YouTube and you're intrigued by the honky phenomenon
Starting point is 05:00:43 there's a video called Join the Party TV Television Special 76, which is basically, it's like, it's Join the Party, this track, with accompanying visuals. It seems like a home video in a way, which is odd for 76, obviously. It's weird because obviously, you know, they're a funk unit, but they've filmed a video like an indie band from the mid-80s. It's all done down the park and they're on swings and there's sort of comedy bits reverse bits
Starting point is 05:01:10 totally sexist bits as well they've managed to persuade a couple of dolly birds to dance with them and they occasionally carry them off to the woods in a caveman way it's actually a really poignant snapshot of something um it's a it's a snapshot of a band who are about to in a sense make it you know they sell 40 000 copies of this record and they're all necking champagne and stuff it's just a nice little snapshot of those times yeah it's just some super eight film edited together to this song but yeah for a start it makes it clear to the point of utter desolation that in mid-1970s brit, even being a successful pop group, could look about as cheerful and glamorous
Starting point is 05:01:48 as having your sub-post office robbed by Donald Nielsen at Black Panther. It's all unwashed wranglers and creosoted garden fences and a plain grey judgmental sky, you know. And this is the six-week period when honky were all the rage you know yeah remembered by them like it lasted a decade i'm sure mostly spent i would imagine drinking warm beer out of small cans in a artex ceiling room at the back of southampton politet dressed in singlets and dried sweat those cans
Starting point is 05:02:27 with a really fucking hard ring pulse to get off yeah yeah yeah two lads with a spiral bound notebook hanging around saying now do you get the name honky you know glory day i just think that they they should actually call themselves hanky. Yes. Plain, square, tucked out of sight. And then when you retrieve and unfold it, you're staring at the gross waste product of humanity ready to be swept away in the wash. And the terrible thing is they're really good musicians. And they've obviously rehearsed loads and loads and
Starting point is 05:03:05 loads and should they ever have passed through alberta canada they might reasonably have been able to call themselves the funkiest band in medicine hat tonight but in the grand scheme of things it's a bit lacking in it there's a bit in this song where he starts to lecture us on what soul is about. Because when a band can all play this way and are clearly marinated in funk and soul music and yet sound as stiff and as pale as honky, there's some explaining to do. This is one of those records that would sound a lot better if it was
Starting point is 05:03:46 worse do you know what i mean if it had been this peppy and had this much front but it was as malformed and broken and semi-functional as their big english faces you could get with that that would be interesting but it's that cellophane layer of slick competence that just seals this up and renders it literally useless in five years time they could have been level 42 and just dressed up as themselves and got on with it and people would have accepted it but because it's 1977 if you're playing this kind of music you've got to try to look the part at the very least and have a jokey name that alludes to your whiteness yeah unlike say level 42 who are using funk i don't know i'm not saying mark king was talking about his situation but there was no attempt to sound american in his vocal no necessarily whereas this is yeah this is pure
Starting point is 05:04:41 this is pure black throat yeah as tay as Taylor says, it's fairly worthless. I think it's been undiscovered, though, of course, by hip-hop producers, because it's got a groove. Yes. They can summon up a groove, the bass and the drums and everything else. It works. But, yeah, as a performance, it's actually grotesque. I mean, if you're looking for positives, the backing vocals are great good work there by the
Starting point is 05:05:07 two peats and i like the synth squiggles that they've plastered all over it in a semi-successful attempt to liven the thing up a bit and good for them that they just did this and then melted away you know they weren't like right said fred you imagine when i'm too sexy came out if someone said to you in 30 years time they'll still be controversial why oh because of their dangerously arrogant stupidity right why so why are they still getting attention because of their dangerously arrogant stupidity all right i don't understand this new century. No, neither do we. Right and Set Fred have got a new record out, getting play on Mike Reid's Heritage Chart Show. Of course.
Starting point is 05:05:49 With a cartoon video about how we're all being spoon-fed disinformation by the MSM, like robot sheep. There's a bit where a TV appears and it says on it, Tell-I-Vision. Oh. Think about it. Tell-I-Vision. Oh! Think about it. Yeah. Google Operation Northwoods.
Starting point is 05:06:10 Look, this time traveller has a mobile phone in a picture from 1906. You're all so blind. So blind. I bet you don't get any of that from the surviving members of Honky. No. If any. No, they just want to throw up videos of their old photos on youtube when they're stripped at the waist and a bit too close to each
Starting point is 05:06:30 other put the caption we weren't gay yes yeah important in case was there in super drug today picking up their prescriptions some homosexuals might rush in and attempt to fuck them up the ass yeah it's a bit protest too much in it yeah but you know at the end of the day they may look like the contents of a crate marked for euthanasia in a section of the wonderland zoo that's closed to the public but at least their only message to humanity was come on get up and join the party them and the late dr gerbil it's pretty obvious at this point that robin now she's just bonging anything oh yeah this is a repeat of a performance from a month ago a month what's going on robin it's a rush job it feels yeah episode at times
Starting point is 05:07:18 it's a rush it's like oh jubilee jubilee jubilee oh there's nothing we go we can't use that we can't use that oh party yes chuck it in. Oh, party. Yes, chuck it in. Yeah, anyone would think there's a currently popular record in the charts that for some reason they can't use. So the following week, Join the Party moved up two places to number 28 but would get no further. The follow-up, Give All You Got, failed to chart and they were never seen or heard of ever again. David Bouchard. Burn! About four weeks ago, I went to Las Vegas,
Starting point is 05:08:07 and one of those hours saw the Osmonds, who were sensational. In the audience were the Jacksons. They've got a record out called Show You the Way to Go, and here to dance to it are Legs and Company. Tony brags on to us that he went to Las Vegas the other week, but because he's Tony Blackburn, he went to see the Osmonds. In 1977, everyone. And who did he see in the audience but the next act, who are going to be emoted to by, in his words,
Starting point is 05:08:49 legs and company, the Jacksons, which show you the way to go. I've got to say, I misheard Tony's intro the first time I watched this. Right. I thought he'd accidentally called them legs and cunning, which is a bit rough, but it actually might be an advance on their real name because it does at least refer to two parts of their bodies instead of just one it's a little bit more feminist you know as a step forward you know legs and other bits yeah
Starting point is 05:09:20 tops and bottoms lady love your legs and coat we've wallowed in the glory of the Jackson 5 many a time and oft, most recently in chart music number 63, when they assisted Michael in a live performance of Rockin' Robin in the 1972 Boxing Day episode. Since then, they notched up three chart hits in 1973, with only Doctor My eyes breaking the top 10 getting to number nine in march of that year but diminishing returns set in and their first release of 1974 dancing machine failed to chart over here that failed to chart fucking stupid british
Starting point is 05:10:02 cunts you deserve brexit in 1975 after a stint in Las Vegas, Joe Jackson discovered that his lads were only getting 2.8% of royalties from their Motown contract and instructed them to down tools forthwith while he shopped them around to other labels. He eventually settled upon epic records in June of that year, even though they were still under contract to Motown until March of 1976, and after Motown sued them for breach of contract, they eventually allowed them to leave on the condition that they change their name, which was owned by their old label. Epic immediately went into a joint venture with Philadelphia International Records in an attempt to update and season the group. And in November of 1976, the newly titled Jacksons, minus Jermaine who stayed at Motown,
Starting point is 05:10:55 but plus Randair, the youngest brother in the family, not only put out their family variety show on CBS, but also released their new LP, The Jacksons, which was produced by Kenny Gamble and Leon Hough, the overlords of the Philly sound. The first cut to be put out as a single, Enjoy Yourself, got to number six on the Billboard chart, but only got to number 42 over here in April.
Starting point is 05:11:21 But this, the follow-up written by Gamble and Hough, entered the chart last week at number 23, and this week it soared 17 places to number 6. Although they've already appeared in the top of the pop studio three weeks ago performing the single live, as they were in the country for the first time since late 1972, to join the likes of David Soul, Lena Zavarone, Dolly Parton, Eric Sykes and Hattie Jakes and Sari Lewis and Lamb Chop at the Royal Show in Glasgow in front of the Queen, Robin Nash has opted to give the song to Legs and Co this week and oh chaps I had a look at that Jackson's performance the other day and and what did I come across? None other than Kid Jensen wearing the exact same shirt
Starting point is 05:12:09 with a Queen's head on it that he wore on chart music number 65 over five years later. Fucking hell. That explains a lot. Legs and co first, I think, because they've completely recycled Demis Roussos' bit, haven't they? Yeah, same set.'t they yeah same set pretty much the same set
Starting point is 05:12:26 apart from the floor Demis' floor was a bit silverer and Legs & Co's a bit more wooden yeah and those plants are now sort of providing
Starting point is 05:12:34 furtive cover for members of the audience to look at Legs & Co with and not only that but they've also cut up Demis Roussos' muumuu
Starting point is 05:12:41 and made six outfits for Legs & Co haven't they with some green feathery bits and some gold tinsel on it. So yeah, make do and mend top of the course.
Starting point is 05:12:50 The routine itself, I mean, as usual with Legs and Co., it suffers with that simultaneous need for it to be a dance but also that infantile storytelling of a dance.
Starting point is 05:13:01 So every time it's a me in the lyric, it's a thumb towards themselves and every time it's you, they point at you's a thumb towards themselves and every time it's you they point at you and every time they they come together in the lyrics they link arms sometimes i wonder with legs and co routines how much better it would have been to just i don't know get them a bit tanked up take them to a club and just film them dancing to this music but actually in i know i've said it's moaned it's a kind of cheapskate episode the combination of
Starting point is 05:13:24 camera work the subtle way of knowing the moments when the hook and the chorus has come in and stuff like that, it's one of the more successful moments of the episode, I'd say. It doesn't feel randomly timed. So, yeah, pure satisfaction, really. Yeah, I mean, the routine is a cursory flounce about it. It does make you wonder if this has been another last-minute job. Yeah, as we know very
Starting point is 05:13:45 well by now there are legs and co routines that are unfathomable and intriguing there are legs and co routines that are hypnotically catastrophic there's legs and co routines that are just appealing and casually sexy in an unthreatening way. And then there are legs and co-routines like this, which are barely there, and all too obviously cooked up and rehearsed in front of a giant egg timer that is tapped by Flick Colby. Where ultimately the most important thing
Starting point is 05:14:19 is not the steps they dance, but just that they dance at all. Yeah, yeah. That Music Week article about robin nash mentioned the fact that flick colbert had to scrap two routines that spent a week on last month one was due to a single going down instead of up and the other okay by rock follies being binned off at the last minute going back to that piece it says the rock follies single okay had been played admittedly rarely by radio one and had already been shown on itv to an audience about the size
Starting point is 05:14:52 and range of top of the popsers having failed to secure either the performers or the thames tv clip nash had set flick colby and legs and co to work out a routine for the song a week before screening. At 6pm on Wednesday, June the 1st, Nash had decided to take the song out, having listened at someone's suggestion more closely to the words and checked that Radio 1 had received complaints. A combination of this, the Sex Pistols ban and the fact that the performance were ladies, the song begins, you want to do me persuaded him to hold off for a week. So yeah, 6 o'clock on Wednesday evening and they start recording
Starting point is 05:15:31 at what, 7, 8? They ended up doing Got To Give It Up by Marvin Gaye and they put on a repeat of their routine to The Shuffle by Van McCoy and OK dropped two places from number 10 to number 12 this week so you know we never got to see legs and co wiggling their fingers as disapprovingly so i think we can deduce that
Starting point is 05:15:51 this routine's been cobbled together at very short notice yeah and other than that it's it's the usual study in contrast it's the the smiley cutesy lady display versus the fact that if you banged a spoon off Legs & Co.'s legs, it'd sound like whacking a spanner against an aluminium pipe. But, you know, it works. But the song is fucking mint, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Another example of a Motown act kicking on, and a proto-boy band showing us that there is life after the dropping of the balls.
Starting point is 05:16:24 Michael's going to be 19 in a couple of months. So this is his transformation into adulthood, this song. Yeah, it's another Sublime Jackson single in a Sublime run of singles. But yeah, they are demonstrating that there's life after Motown. And they sound just, obviously they're getting older, but they sound so relaxed. It's so odd that it's only once they're on Epic and they're with Gamble and Huff that they start picking up gold records and platinum records because yeah i mean not because they haven't sold before but because motown had never submitted sales to the riaa no that's mental
Starting point is 05:16:54 it is mental so yeah it's just another great jackson's single and the perfect people to team up with in 1977 it's an interesting pair in the jacksons and gambling because you know they are the absolute masters of mature love songs aren't they you know married people coming to the end of the line either trying to cling on to what's left or giving up and having illicit relationships with other married people in cafes you know gambler huff songs are all grown-up songs and so is this in a way yeah you know it's either about a couple getting ready to put some serious work into a relationship or it's an older man initiating a younger woman and swearing loyalty to them.
Starting point is 05:17:32 And it's clearly touched a nerve with the people who grew up with the Jackson 5. Yeah. Being a gambling huff record, do you think that is partly almost like a jab at Motown? You know, well, you were the big deal, but we hear that these are the big deal now. And it's also appropriate,
Starting point is 05:17:50 because Jackson's leaving Motown involved both a gamble and a huff. That's such a cunt, Mr. Huff. I'm sorry. I've had a difficult month. No, bravo, sir. And of course, Gamlin' Huff also wrote I'll Do Anything He Wants Me To
Starting point is 05:18:07 for Doris Troy, which was recorded a year from now by Lenny Gamble, who is Tony Blackburn. Ooh. Yes, Tony Blackburn's Northern Soul song.
Starting point is 05:18:19 Whoa. It was the roadblock of the day because they were going round shopping it round saying, oh, look at this Northern Soul classic we've just dug up from a fucking warehouse in Miami. And you listen to it and it's clearly Tony Blackburn singing.
Starting point is 05:18:36 Backing vocals by Arnold. Yes. The thing is, if the Jacksons had stayed with Motown and I try to imagine what songs they would have been given by Motown, it would have gone too adult. It would have gone too the other way, I think. The thing that Gamble and Huff do is they do smooth, but without schmaltz.
Starting point is 05:18:54 And I think that separates them from Motown in a big way. Motown would have given them big, I'm still waiting style ballads, perhaps. And, you know, try to, I don't know keep them there it's it's definitely a good move for them yeah yeah Jermaine no longer with the group stayed with Motown of course yes because he married into the Gordie family yes not the only artist whose career was affected by doing that for better or for worse and it's something I've never understood because however well we got on I don't think that I could A, marry a close relative of my boss, or B, marry someone with a facial resemblance, however slight, to my boss.
Starting point is 05:19:36 Yes. Because you could just be sat there one day clinking cocktails on the patio, or worse, and suddenly the sunlight hits their face at a particular angle and oh god it'd be like if you married stella mccartney do you know what i mean just a bit uncomfortable but this is the jacksons just approaching that changeover moment in terms of the tone of how the jacksons present themselves isn't yeah this is still the period where they're releasing albums with covers that are just a picture of them maybe smiling goofing around until suddenly they go big and blustering and start putting out records called destiny
Starting point is 05:20:17 and victory and triumph like these bizarrely over heroic covers and videos where they're they're looking down on humanity even as they deign to become its ultimate saviors is a development i never quite understood especially as that happened when they were something of a low ebb commercially yeah yeah and suddenly it's gaze upon us mortals you know what i mean it's like like the front cover of destiny looks like the titles of life of brian if they weren't meant to be funny do you know what i mean i don't know enough about the personal lines of the jacksons in this period to know whether there was some reason why that might have happened or if it was just on a whim but it's like one minute they're
Starting point is 05:21:05 these warm chummy family entertainers and then suddenly you're being addressed like the shepherds on the hill you know do not be afraid it's like the funky enunciation oh just wait till we get to the video for can you feel it for oh that video fucking hell but that's interesting you say that totally because i mean you know that big promethean thing they do on the sleeves coming up contrast that with you know off the wall which is only two years down the line yeah um you know yeah and of course i mean at this point 77 none of us could have predicted off the wall no i mean that that you cannot compute that that is two years from now god it's just remarkable i mean it's still 1977 so it is the pre-video age for 99.9 of the general public so it is odd that robin
Starting point is 05:21:52 nash hasn't dialed back the uh live performance that he did a few weeks ago but yeah i managed to look at that and you know like rocking robin is live but they're not as assured and polished as they were in rocking robin uh but it is the first time that michael starts doing his breathy whoopee verbal tics and yeah carry him through the aventures and beyond so yeah that is it's all bubbling up yeah also don't forget i'm assuming that they were backed by at least some members of the top of the pops orchestra true something's happened to the top of the pops orchestra Orchestra. True. Some things happened to the Top of the Pops Orchestra since 1972. Yes.
Starting point is 05:22:27 I don't know what it is, but it has happened. Yes. Because we heard them doing Rockin' Robin. Yes. And it was halfway through before you knew for sure that this was not a band they'd brought with them. So the following week showed you the way to go, nipped up three places to number three,
Starting point is 05:22:44 and then deposed lucille by kenny rogers from the summit of mount pop staying there for one week before giving way to so you win again by hot chocolate their only number one single in the uk as either the jacksons or the jackson five which is mad yeah fucking mad the follow-up dreamer got to number 22 in september and they close out 1977 with the title track of their next lp going places getting to number 26 for two weeks in november in 1978 they ended their relationship with gamble and huff re-signed to epic and were given full creative control. And it paid off big style when
Starting point is 05:23:28 Blame It On The Boogie and Shake Your Body Down To The Ground returned them to the top ten. Here's a group now who are literally known worldwide. Everywhere you go, they've had smash hits. They've got a brand new one out called Exodus here of Bob Marley and the Wailers. Exodus
Starting point is 05:23:51 Well, all right Movement of the people, yeah, yeah, yeah Tony, sitting in the gloom of the corner of the studio, tells us that the next band are the Rupert the Bear of the reggae world because everyone knows their name. Why? It's Bob Marley and the Wailers and Exodus. We last covered Jamaica's answer to Paul Nicholas in Chant Music 64 when his posthumous career began in full with a re-release of one love
Starting point is 05:24:26 and this the follow-up to who the cap fit which failed to chart in the autumn of 1976 is the lead cut from his new lp of the same name which came out last week after the attempt on his life in december of last year bob and his chums have relocated to London, where they've finished off the LP, and they've just finished a tour of Europe, which culminated in a four-night stand at the Rainbow in London last week. Cut down from its original seven minutes and 40 seconds to a slightly more radio-friendly four and a half minutes,
Starting point is 05:25:01 it was put out last week and is not in the charts yet but robin nash's ital and azusha the band into the studio making their first ever in-studio performance on top of the pops and their first appearance on the show since no woman no cry was played out to some studio lights and the credits in October of 1975. Chaps, Bob Marley arrives for real on chart music. We ripped into the Leninification of Bob Marley a few episodes ago, so here's a much-needed chance to see him as a living, breathing entity. Quite reggae-influenced, this one, isn't it?
Starting point is 05:25:42 I mean, it's interesting you say that lenonification that we talked about in the 84 episode i mean reading the music press on reggae in this period is quite interesting because yes because bob is already kind of deified by most of the writers and even those sort of non-believers um see him as important as someone as someone to focus on uh that of course already enables disregarding the rest but but there's it's interesting that in the music press at this time there still persists this debate about reggae as to whether i don't know not whether it's proper music but whether it's okay to not like it and to actually not like the entire genre with the faint suggestion that the kind of
Starting point is 05:26:23 groove of reggae is a kind of one note groove and the space that it takes up is is really limited so in the live reviews of the rainbow shows that you know last week then that were pictured on the front of m&m with that great shot um there is a sense in the reviews oh he's legitimizing this form and he's proving that it can happen live the same kind of condescension was sent towards Public Enemy when they figured out how to do hip-hop live. But reggae's in this interesting place, not to aficionados, but just in the general kind of music press idea this time.
Starting point is 05:26:53 Yeah, it's not, is this proper music? But can we admit we don't like this? Although the Wailers have notched up a mere one single on the UK charts, therefore Bob Marley's definitely known about in the non-music media, but it's mainly for being someone else's knockoff. I refer you to an article in the Daily Mirror dated November the 20th, 1976,
Starting point is 05:27:13 headline, Miss World's Wild Man. They look an odd couple. Call Cindy Breakspear the new Miss World, and Bob Marley the wild man of pop. But they're in love, according to Cindy, 22-year-old Miss Jamaica. Bob, a 31-year-old Jamaican, is a reggae superstar with a lust for life. He says he has fathered nine children by seven girls. He says he smokes a pound of pot a day. And as a member of the
Starting point is 05:27:48 mystical Rastafarian movement, he believes it is morally wrong to comb his hair. Cindy, a health-loving vegetarian, said she would like to marry and settle down with children. But getting Marley to marry and settle down with her might be difficult right now as he has no plans to divorce his legal wife rita meanwhile molly is laying low a friend said in kingston the nation's capital bob seems to have vanished from his usual haunts i bet he's off enjoying himself somewhere is bob molly the wild man of pop? Yeah. In 1976? Come on. Yeah.
Starting point is 05:28:28 I mean, they're basically painting him as the new Jimi Hendrix there, aren't they? Yeah, there's a definite similarity in tone. Yeah, they must have had something in common. I mean, fair play to Robin Nash for putting him on, but it's weird that it's this single and not one of the love songs, because, you know, in a Jubilee episode,
Starting point is 05:28:44 Exodus is basically saying, hey, black people, this country's shit, of the love songs because, you know, in a Jubilee episode, Exodus is basically saying, hey, black people, this country's shit, get the fuck out. Probably would have gone down well at a blues organised by the National Front, don't you think? But it's nice to hear it because the last time that chart music covered Robert Nestor Marley,
Starting point is 05:29:01 Robert Aaron Marley, Robert Patrick Marley, Robert Cougar Marley, Robert Aaron Marley, Robert Patrick Marley, Robert Cougar Marley. Last time Shark Music covered Robert Frogman Marley. It was the hit single which best represents the fluffy, prettified, ultra-commercial end of the catalogue. Yeah, social worker Bob Marley. Yeah, whereas of all the hits this one probably best represents the heavier and more hardcore side although it's very smart what this record does which is to present as roots reggae while also incorporating all the most commercial
Starting point is 05:29:39 musical trends of the period which you could conceivably fit into a reggae record you know you can hear things from 70s soul you can maybe hear a little bit of disco and it's got that very smooth but deep production that almost sounds like rumors by fleetwood mac you know it's not rough this record at all and i think in fairness it works brilliantly artistically as well as commercially partly because marley knew exactly what he was doing and partly just because the Wailers are such a good band. Yeah. It's always great to just listen to them play, you know,
Starting point is 05:30:13 which they get the chance to here. But even so, to me personally, it's not a patch on Duppy Conqueror and all that stuff, you know. Yeah. Because to me, reggae is like rock and roll i just like it better when it's got a bit of a rough edge on it yeah and when it breaks the rules of musical taste rather than finding ways to work within them but if you are going to make consciously commercial reggae i don't think it's possible to do it better than this because it doesn't sacrifice anything apart from
Starting point is 05:30:46 the rude edge you know which maybe stuff like one love does and it makes sure that the smoothness which replaces it is also appealing in its own right it's not just a cop out you know yeah i'm not overly fond of the exodus album this is probably my favorite track off it. Because the Exodus album, in a sense, it is that sort of total ironing out of Bob's roughness that Tony was speaking of. But this is one of the tracks I do like off that album. And to be honest with you, straight after I watched this clip,
Starting point is 05:31:16 I wanted to go listen to the seven-minute version. Because on the seven-minute version, it just becomes more and more hypnotic and engrossing. But it's still one of the most sort of watchable moments of this episode. And not really because of Bob. I mean, because of a chance to witness, you know, Aston and Carlton Barrett in the rhythm section and also Junior Marvin on guitar.
Starting point is 05:31:35 And is that Judy Mowat and Marcia Griffiths on backing vocals? I couldn't quite tell, but it might be. But the Wailers, you know, they're no longer sort of in a sense loads of things to look at because there was always the attendant danger back in the day that you'd actually find yourself much more compelled by the the weird unique presence of peter tosh yeah more than anybody else but you know the thing we have to remember from this vantage point is if you're black or west indian in 77 this kind of moment this is unforgettable and and it's as important to you as say i don't know the freaks are later on in the late 70s and early 80s for
Starting point is 05:32:11 an awful lot of other people you know it's something from your home that you thought was private suddenly brought to the people and go away from this and you you walk into the playground or the football field or the street the next day with just a little extra pattern of resistance in your armour that this has happened. So it's one of the best moments on this episode, definitely. Yeah, I think you can definitely defend the way in which Bob Marley commercialised reggae and made it into something that sold a lot in, you know, Britain and to some extent America. But there's always a price to pay. And there is a reason why on Prince William's recent visit to Jamaica,
Starting point is 05:32:54 he kept quoting Bob Marley rather than Prince Jasbo or Leroy Horsemouth Wallace. You know what I mean? It's Leroy Horsemouth Wallace. You know what I mean? It's like, it's not Marley's fault, but if Babylon's gilded representative can use your words for PR and people stand and clap it, you know, something must have got twisted somewhere,
Starting point is 05:33:17 you know. You didn't see him hand-jiving with Kate to President Mashup the Resident. You know what I mean? To some extent, Bob Marley makes me understand why some people are weirdly ambivalent about the Beatles you know because in terms of simple old-fashioned musical talent he probably was the best Jamaican actor the 70s in terms of he was the best songwriter and the best singer and you know the slickest performer and it's obvious why
Starting point is 05:33:45 he made it bigger than everybody else because there's just this sort of quality to his stuff yeah i'm just not that fussed about that particular type of quality you know in this genre yeah where a whole lot of other people who couldn't write songs half as cleverly as he could or sing half as sweetly were able to make records that were much more interesting and weirder and more raucous and more wildly imaginative. I mean, I think the difference is that the Beatles had the craft, but they also had the mad visionary bit, you know, sort of low-key,
Starting point is 05:34:20 which I don't think Marley did. He was a great singer-songwriter with a band who were agonizingly shit hot when they were on it and his particular talent broke down those barriers because it was so commercial and could be marketed a particular way which obviously makes him one of the most important figures if not the most important figure in reggae history and all that it's just that when you listen to bob marley even the very best stuff it's great but it never sounds like a raw outsider using the freedom of the genre to create baffling magic which a lot of other stuff from this period does and it's not some
Starting point is 05:35:04 weird snobbery about his records being commercial, because some of the records I'm thinking of were big British hits too. People tend to forget this, that there were millions of reggae hits in the charts all through the 70s. It just wasn't considered an album genre or a serious genre until Bob Marley. It's just that for Bob Marley, reggae was the style through which he could express and exercise his conventional musical talent, you know,
Starting point is 05:35:32 and express his basic thoughts and feelings, which is what most music is, what most songwriters do. Whereas for someone like Lee Scratch Perry, reggae was an open-ended magic spell through which new and previously unimaginable thoughts and feelings could be shocked into existence, you know. And all the horrors and iniquities of the world could not just be protested and lamented,
Starting point is 05:36:01 but placed under psychic attack, which might not work but it made for for wilder music you know can you imagine say lee perry on top of the parts can you imagine max romeo on top of what these people would have done is they would have put across a pop performance now bob can write great pop songs but he's not a pop performer he's a serious musician and consequently he's taken seriously i mean look at look at this, what he does here. I mean, in a sense, this feels a bit more like a whistle test clip or something like that.
Starting point is 05:36:31 And Bob, he's already in that sort of closed-eyed communion with God that shuts the audience out, really. And that's perhaps why he was acceptable. It's not particularly a top of the pops performance. I do sort of, yeah, wonder, you know, put that top of the pops mic in do sort of yeah wonder you know put that top of the pops mic in the hands of a lunatic like max romeo and what would you get it would have been
Starting point is 05:36:50 fucking amazing perhaps there should have been more of that yeah big youth riding his motorbike yeah yeah stage yeah singing about communism or yeah dr alimentado or yellow any of these people it would have been amazing bob isn't that he's not a pop performer he's he's a he's a in a sense almost like a rock performer so i found myself throughout this performance not looking at him i was just dazzled by the rest of the band i know they're not playing it live but it don't matter just seeing aston and carton barrett nailing it down you know and it's just a remarkable sight yeah strangely the strangely, the top of the Pops Orchestra have been stood down for this performance. As I say, the other thing is that, even though Bob Marley, in most senses,
Starting point is 05:37:31 is a more conventional or, you know, in Britain is considered like a more traditional artist, really, he was the outlier in 70s reggae. Yes. You know, because, yeah, so much of it was not about melodicism in this sense it was about roughness and a psychotic edge and about the disorientating artifacts of its own production you know the studio sound like the noise uh the extraordinary exaggerated weight of of the bass
Starting point is 05:38:04 you know all all the stuff that isn't just about the playing and isn't just about the music. All these unpredictable ideas. And wild gimmicks, you know, in the best sense. A lot of people forget how gimmicky the best reggae music is because they didn't see it as a bad thing. It was just about just doing stuff to grab your attention. And this is all the stuff that just isn't there on Legend.
Starting point is 05:38:26 Some of it is there on some of the earlier Whalers stuff. But there's nothing wrong with that, especially on this particular record, which is, you know, fantastic. It's not compromised in any negative sense. It's just that when you've got years of Jamaican music spread out in front of you, and it includes literally hundreds,
Starting point is 05:38:45 maybe thousands of records like space flight by iroy you know or wet vision by uroy or heart of the congos or king tubby or keith has all these amazing oddly shaped pop singles that you get on tighten up compilations you know like barbed wire by norah dean and uptown top ranking for fuck's sake you know or the male equivalent three-piece suit by trinity i'm trying to fill out the video playlist there just so i can put it on one night and just relax in your diamond socks and ting exactly as usual but compared to that a lot of marley stuff it starts to seem like ready salted crisps by comparison you know reggae salted crisps apparently the most popular and dependable option but how often do you want to pick them out you know and this that's even before you get to the impossible
Starting point is 05:39:40 mental adventure playground that is dub you know especially late 70s dub versions of ultra heavy root stuff like if every household in the world that bought a copy of legend had instead bought a copy of a compilation like open the gate which would have been tricky as that wasn't compiled until the 90s but i can't imagine what a difference that would have made to to music and and to say like open the gate is a is a 3lp trojan box set yeah of um lee scratch perry dub versions of mostly roots tracks and almost every second of everything on it is totally mind-boggling. It's got stuff like Sons of Slaves by Junior Delgado and Open the Gate by Wattie Burnett.
Starting point is 05:40:32 The so-called disco version of Words by Anthony Sanghi Davis. It's like the heaviest thing you've ever heard. These amazing exploding flowers and adventures in musical space and none of which is to denigrate bob marley it's just a shame that this reggae got waved through while that reggae had to stay semi-underground yeah but how many people would have heard that reggae if they weren't allowed to hear this reggae first on top of the place yeah yeah yeah it's a gateway absolutely absolutely but i mean i think for bob this pound of weed that he's smoking every day yeah it's it's not psychedelically inspiring him it truly is just the holy chalice and as a good raster he's he's doing his duty i guess whereas with
Starting point is 05:41:19 perry and the rest of the people taylor mentioned yeah it opened up things that they then wanted to reflect in their music and that's why you get so many fucking nutty sounding records round about this period. Yeah, he might have been a superstar, but I heard he was very tight. He'd go backstage at one of his gigs, see the whole of his band sharing one cigarette. But no, speaking of which, I was going to say, I don't know if you're aware, but there is, in Britain,
Starting point is 05:41:44 a group of cannabis growers and activists who name themselves exodus after this song and album oh really yeah and these days the trend in marijuana especially since it was decriminalized in most of the united states is to keep cross-breeding strains and creating new ever more finely tuned types of weed with increasingly ridiculous names like super glassy cherry og or thunder yeah pittsburgh meow mix you know or like strawberry dog shit or something like that and people, Exodus, created a very popular variation on the type of marijuana known as cheese. So it came to pass that currently one of the most common strains of weed in Britain is called Exodus cheese, which sounds like a character from To Kill a Mockingbird.
Starting point is 05:42:40 Oh, Exodus cheese. He never believed in mixing with folks what if i was a marijuana grower at this point in time i would like to create a new strain of marijuana called andy peaball's don't you think that'd be great sell it in a pack with a cut out of his face on the front or maybe maybe just that unmistakable silhouette. It's a particularly dank bud. You'd have to call it Andy Peebles' Space Cush or something like that. I know, yeah. Anyway, I like this one better than the Wailers' follow-up single,
Starting point is 05:43:14 Rocco Can, which somehow just never seemed to work for me, that one. I don't know why. And the kids seem to like it. Yeah. They're bouncing around with their cardboard silver crowns on their head. Yeah, i think reggae by this point has become a music that the british audience is completely used to completely familiar with yeah and you know i mean it might sound like we're popping at bob but this is one of his best songs actually i mean from this period and it's a really hypnotic little window out of this episode in a way you kind of again forget that you're watching
Starting point is 05:43:43 silver the pops i mean if the whalers really wanted to sell out for american and european success they could have gone for a more dynamic image never mind the old jeans and the adidas tracksuit tops they could would have had more impact with a bit of a gimmick wouldn't they like they should have called themselves bob marley and the whalers and all dressed in oil skins thick white woolen polo necks and bobble hats and carried binoculars and bloodied harpoons how great would that have been call me israel call me they could have done a version of nantucket sleigh ride fuck me you have to be careful with that stuff though or you because you can end up like the crazy world of arthur brown you know like he called his record fire he came up with a great gimmick and it was his only hit so he had to spend the next 25 years on stage with his head in flames
Starting point is 05:44:35 what a fucking bind you know if he'd called that record shoulder massage yeah the rest of his career would have been an awful lot more comfortable. Or Cornettos. Yeah, but then he'd have been 30 stone, wouldn't he? Every night, I am the god of Cornettos, and I bring you more Cornettos. He's got no teeth. Expensive, too. Taylor, I have to bring up the question that me and Neil discussed a while back. Bob Marley's 80s, what would it have been like?
Starting point is 05:45:06 I want to wake up with you by Boris Gardner. Would he have done Live Aid? God, yeah, without a doubt. I still say no. I looked into this a bit more. So just say, not one of my seeds shall sit in the sidewalk and beg bread. Come on now. But more importantly importantly he would not
Starting point is 05:45:25 have lifted one finger to help mangisto right a man who let's remember interred the remains of highly salacious directly under his private toilet so he could shit on it yeah bob molly's not gonna fucking do out for him on reflection i think you're probably right. Yes, yes I am. Giving myself a pat on the back there. So a fortnight later, Exodus enter the charts at number 41, then soared 15 places to number 26, beginning a slow pull upward, which culminated four weeks later when it got to number 14,
Starting point is 05:46:02 its highest position. The follow-up, waiting in vain, got to number 27 in October and they'd finished their most successful year so far with the double A-side jamming slash punky reggae party becoming the Christmas number 28 and eventually getting to number 9 in February of 1978. Punky reggae party sounds so barren nice, doesn't it?
Starting point is 05:46:26 It's amazing to think that Bob Marley, Demis Roussos and the Wurzels were in the same fucking building though. Jesus Christ. Pete Budd claimed in a Channel 4 documentary that Bob Marley came up to the Wurzels and said Who are man?
Starting point is 05:46:41 How you doing, babe? You know it was just, he said, when you got any bud and they slightly yes yeah he's over there are you satisfied with the life you're living you know we know where we're going and we know where we're going And we know where we're from And we're leaving by the road That's Exodus there from Bob Marley and the Wailers. Right now it's number one time on Top of the Pops, and here he is. He's still there, Rod Stewart.
Starting point is 05:47:18 And the first cut is the deepest. Tony, standing alone next to a blue backdrop, finally gets round to the best-selling single of the week. Formed in London in 1975, the Sex Pistols were a band put malcolm mclaren from out of his pervy clothes shop on the king's road who signed to emi in october of 1976 and put out their debut
Starting point is 05:47:54 single anarchy in the uk a month later which got to number 38 for three weeks in december this single god save the queen is the follow-up which went under the working title No Future and originally contained the line God Save Window Lean and had been part of their live set since late 1976. It had already been recorded in October of that year and was supposed to have been the first release on their new label A&M who had pressed 25,000 copies of the single immediately after they signed to them outside Buckingham Palace in March but when they were dropped six days later all but nine copies of the single were destroyed. Only last month the Pistols signed a new deal with Virgin and the single was readied
Starting point is 05:48:43 for release only for workers at the pressing pressing planted down tools when they were told about the lyrical content, and plate makers for the sleeve artwork to do likewise when they saw the image of the Queen with her eyes and mouth obscured by the name of the band and the single. When that was all sorted out, the single finally came out a fortnight ago, was made single of the week by melody maker the enemy sounds and record mirror and was immediately banned by the bbc the iba radio luxembourg wh smiths boots walworths and every single jukebox in pubs in britain but still sold over 150,000 copies
Starting point is 05:49:25 and crashed into the charts at number 11, which instantly set the tabloids into a froth, which was compounded when Malcolm Viv put out a new line of T-shirts. Article in last week's Sunday Mirror, Juby Punk, Sex Pistols Pin Up Rocks Palace. Royal circles were rocking with horror last night at this jubilee souvenir produced by the Sex Pistols pop group. The punk rockers are offering a three-pound t-shirt bearing a portrait of the Queen with a safety pin through her lips. Buckingham Palace was far from amused. A spokesman said sternly,
Starting point is 05:50:07 we think it is in deplorable taste. At the office of the Lord Chamberlain, a spokesman said frostily, our rules do not allow this, but any action we may contemplate to get it banned would only give the group the publicity they are so obviously seeking. An angry spokesman for the Silver Jubilee Appeal said, it is really horrible and derogatory and every citizen must be hopping mad. This week, CBS, who are distributing both God Save the Queen and the current number one single, have reported to Virgin that the former has been outselling the latter by two to one. But John Fruin, the managing director of WEA Records, who is also the head of the British Phonographic Institute,
Starting point is 05:50:54 the trade association of the record industry, has clearly been worried for some time that certain record shops who provide the BMRB with chart returns are owned by record labels and in the spirit of fair play you understand has issued a secret directive to the BMRB telling them not to bother counting returns from those shops including the virgin ones two days ago god save the queen jumped nine places to number two although that didn't stop the band from having a lovely party on a barge that went past the Houses of Parliament
Starting point is 05:51:29 that people assume is a foreshadowing of today's licking of the Queen's arse but is in actual fact a recreation of the opening credits of the current series of That's Life but no matter because this is the real number one and by god we're gonna treat it as such aren't we yeah completely yeah and what would have been different if officially this had got to number one yeah been accepted as such i don't think much would have been different there'd have been a bit more fish shaking but that's about it isn't it yeah i kind of presume that the way it played out this this
Starting point is 05:52:05 underdog status that was conferred upon this single um you know which is a single bought out by a major label you know by a band who had multiple labels interest this is all perfect for mclaren you know all of it and i think it's crucial to i think to realize that even by the time this record came out that reaction of kind of appalled recoil that we see among some music fans and certainly the moral majority towards punk that's never going to be shared by the commercial record industry the music business is not thinking this must never happen again it's thinking this must and will happen again and we have to be in on it yes next time you know yeah so you know it changes that for the music press this also sets something up about about around
Starting point is 05:52:45 being a pop critic this needs to be a profit to see things coming you see that a lot in coming years but it needs pointing out why does this get to number two why does this get to number one it's because it's a giant fuck you to the jubilee and a more general fuck you to the future partly but it's also selling because it's a great pop record. Yes, it is. It fucking is. It's possibly the Pistols' best single. There's other Pistols songs I prefer, but it's the best single, I think, because it's all about Johnny. You can see him singing and snarling and spitting every line.
Starting point is 05:53:16 And this is obviously, you know, 50 years before he's back in Jacob Rees-Mogg. But, you know, the lines are fucking great. The lyrics are amazing. There's a ferocity that perhaps in pop hadn't been heard since the early days of Sweet. And that kind of glam racket kind of feel to it really helps too.
Starting point is 05:53:33 So it just needs to stay in. Yeah. I don't think the industry had to show, oh, there's some elements of the industry anyway have to show, oh, this is awful. They're already thinking, how can we be in on this? And it's just an undeniably great pop record i think let's say what tony blackburn has to say about the scene it is disgraceful and makes me ashamed of the pop world but it is a fad that
Starting point is 05:53:58 won't last we djs have ignored them and if everyone else did perhaps they would go away i mean obviously it's the relaxed mistake like we're not playing the most talked about record so if you want to hear it you jolly well have to go out and buy it to find out what all the fuss we've made is about someone should have told him there was already a song with this title yeah it's confusing isn't it i was thinking about how funny it is that the Sex Pistols were not only one of the most over-discussed bands of all time, but also one of the most misunderstood, right? As though they are obscured rather than illuminated by all that discussion, right? discussion right but in fact that's kind of perfect because one thing people get wrong about the sex pistols is to suppose that they were meant to have any coherent meaning right because both
Starting point is 05:54:52 on the highfalutin art school theory level and on the actual level of songwriting and performance the point was chaos but not some rock and roll fantasy right chaos as a genuine simultaneously destructive and constructive force right which involves a lot of heavy serious ideas and a lot of plain silly buggers and people can't always tell what's what like americans listen to the end of anarchy in the uk and they hear i want to be anarchist get pissed destroy and they think pissed means angry the whole point yeah is that it doesn't and that's a very deep misunderstanding yes and it's peculiar that a band that were absolutely all about simplistic shock tactics and sensationalism and stripping things down should turn out to be so much more complex than most other groups.
Starting point is 05:55:54 Yeah. But that's partly why pop music is so interesting, you know. And it seems to me that all these years later, the people misunderstanding the Sex Pistols are the people who imagine them to have been one thing or the other like virtuous or wicked or left wing or right wing or constructive or destructive or subversive or a money-making scam because of course they were all these things yes and that was the whole point and in fact now that the dust has settled and covered the sex pistols themselves what is most valuable about these records and about the band is the expression and the reflection accompanying churn of anger and resentment and egotism and self-loathing,
Starting point is 05:56:50 nastiness and innocence and destructive rage and an unforgivable cuntishness and unforgettable goodness. Everything that human beings actually experience and how they actually behave in an environment of enforced poverty hopelessness and anguish in which they're loathed disrespected ignored spat on and then blamed for their own predicament right this is not an earnest student activist type record which wants to make a constructive point on a polarizing topic right it's not a gang of ideological warriors going into battle with this as their cry you know all puffed up with confidence in their own wisdom and their own moral rectitude it's something much darker than that and something
Starting point is 05:57:46 much more nakedly human than that i mean out of context you could mistake this as the granddaddy of all those stupid records that people do now like let's get a song called do a shit in your own eye boris johnson as the christmas number one you know what I mean? But taken as a whole, the Sex Pistols, despite the occasional lapse in a slogan earring, were the opposite of that kind of glib, smug approach. You know,
Starting point is 05:58:15 they weren't meant to be your best mates. They weren't meant to be your wise older brothers. Yeah. You weren't even meant to think they were cool, particularly, you know, they weren't there with a useful lecture they were a horrible mess of contradictions and entirely informed by the experiences of being a bright but uneducated working class kid in the stinking ultra-violent lviolent London of the 70s. And not only do they not have a coherent message,
Starting point is 05:58:49 they ridicule the very concepts of coherence and easy communication. And that's what's great about them. That's the whole fucking point. Yeah. The chaos and contradictions are the whole point of the pistols. They sound like the last band you'll ever need, in a that there's something kind of i don't know i wouldn't say millennial how can i say they're like lollards or something it doesn't make the world feel to their stuff they're an impossible band in the best best way yeah and you're right because the way the
Starting point is 05:59:18 tabloids reacted to this i mean the two big baddies of this month and the previous month are the Sex Pistols and Idi Amin. Maybe they should have got him in instead of Ronnie Biggs. That would have been fucking brilliant. But the way the tabloids were reporting the Sex Pistols at the time, it was as if they were threatening to start rocking the Queen's fucking big pram and then climb up on it and do his shit on it. The tabloids were absolutely furious with them for quer querying the pitch of the jubilee yeah yeah and it's like it's why now they come up with this stuff about you know oh actually i like the queen or actually i like jacob reese mogg or it's you know like
Starting point is 05:59:55 john lyden sat in la drinking tea out of a union jack mug you know i mean cheering on brexit and yeah donald trump this was something people didn't get about lyden people recognized that his instinctive intelligence and sense of mischief is the authentic artistic selling point of the band right this is what makes them different to like slaughtering the dogs or you know chelsea or stiff little fingers but they don't get how this could have happened to John Lydon and how he could have ended up like that. But the point is, this intelligence of his was never based on the possession of information.
Starting point is 06:00:33 It wasn't based on great political or geopolitical understanding or knowledge. That's not how he thinks, right? The reality of Brexit or Trump informs what he says about brexit and trump to about the same extent as the reality of the cold war informed holidays in the sun i.e not very much you know he just sees a still lake of smugness and he wants to throw a brick into it the only difference is that his experience of life these days is unrecognizable from what it once was so the rocks are coming from another direction is the andy kaufman a pop isn't it
Starting point is 06:01:11 oh yeah what can i do to wind people up this time yeah keep me in the spotlight and earn me a bit of money and the pistols are really the last band he's in that actually capture any glee at all i mean when you think about the the three records he's going to make soon with pill such a completely different kettle of fish although a similar kettle of fish in a way but there it's all pretty much despair yeah and the pistols capture that last moment of glee and we have to remember yeah you know so many people rejecting this record and so many people throwing up their arms about it the charts charts do not reject this record in a way, you know. I'm not going to say the kids, the kids.
Starting point is 06:01:51 But even if Top of the Pops and Radio shuts out this record, what we have here, I mean, perhaps I'm putting too much on this single itself. We could talk about this single for fucking hours, mate. I think one of the things that's undervalued about punk, and i'm not saying punk was great for the record industry necessarily but punk doesn't just revitalize alternative musical rock music it kind of revitalizes the chart yes look look at the charts look at what we've seen in the rest of this episode everything else that's happening in charts quite a lot of it is is you know bands are not caring about singles much anymore they're kind of promo things for these old dinosaurs. So it's not just that punk leads to post-punk and new pop
Starting point is 06:02:28 and pretty much the next decade of music. I think it brings back an interest and a focus on the seven-inch single as a form. Yes. And that focus on smashing the charts. So, you know, it had loads of positive impacts. This single just hangs over this episode of Top of the Pops like an upside-down Christ on an anarchy T-shirt, doesn't it? When did you actually hear this single for the first time?
Starting point is 06:02:51 Oh, that's an interesting question. I mean, I suspect it would have been several years after 77. I'm nine years old when this comes out, and I didn't hear it. Trevor Dan, when he was a DJ on Radio Nottingham, he played it once when it came out before the band's kicked in but that would have been in radio nottingham's john peelslot so i wouldn't have heard it didn't have an older brother or sister none of my mates had any older brothers or sisters yeah so you just hear about this song that was just so fucking scurrilous and
Starting point is 06:03:21 evil and you're just desperate to hear it yeah it went around on our playground that it was a cover version of the national anthem but with more belches and farts in it yeah then the lyrics came out in the tabloid so you just stare at them and try and work out what they meant how they'd fit into the song and they're fantastic lyrics oh they're fucking amazing but i think the two pistol songs that anyone hears before they get to the album is probably this and anarchy in the UK. Maybe Pretty Vacant if you're lucky. But of course, as soon as I picked up Nevermind the Bollocks,
Starting point is 06:03:50 which I think I probably did around about 83, 84, you know, it's Bodies and Holidays in the Sun that really fucking got to me in a big, big way. You should never, with the Pistols, underestimate the production on these records. It's fucking great from Bill Price. It's such a big, big-ass sound. Didn't Chris Thomas produce this album? Oh!
Starting point is 06:04:08 Or was it the two of them? I think it was the two of them. Maybe Bill Price engineered it. But the sound's fucking fantastic. Yeah. Absolute explosion in a guitar factory, but it's great. This is one of the great pop singles of 77. Even if the charts don't want it,
Starting point is 06:04:21 even if BBC and Radio 1 don't want it, and IBA don't want it, it's one of the great pop singles, the 77. Taylor, when did you hear it for the first time? The only Sex Pistols song I'd ever heard was Friggin' in the Rigging. Because somebody brought it into school on a little tape player. Obviously that was quite popular. Yeah, Rugby Club Pistols.
Starting point is 06:04:39 Yeah. I was old enough when punk was around to hear all about it, and too young to hear any of the music. So I just carried it in my head. Yeah, that it was this incredible, terrible, subversive, dark thing that was like actual Satan, you know. This was around the same time as the Video Nasties panic as well. And two things happened around the same time.
Starting point is 06:05:03 I started going around my mate's house and watching horror films on pirate vhs's yeah and a mate of mine got never mind the bollocks and started playing it yeah and to find out at the same time that everything i'd read about popular culture in my mum and dad's first of the sun and then when we class-hopped Daily Mail, was bollocks. It was all just lies. It was all wrong. And in fact, these video nasties were just hilarious, stupid horror films with people having their rubber arms cut off and a load of red paint shooting out. And this X-Pistols album was fucking brilliant.
Starting point is 06:05:40 Yes. It's like, what can you know? And actually, they weren't this pure force for evil that went around stamping on kids toys and popping their balloons and you know spitting on old ladies there's a strangely vintage morality to it yeah yeah yeah i mean it would have been 1981 82 for me when a mate who was babysitting for a bloke who had the first video recorder on the street got hold of the great rock and roll swindler. You wanted to hear it and you couldn't
Starting point is 06:06:08 and you were desperate to. Even years after the event, it was essentially the clockwork orange of singles. God save the Queen. And it's also the first time that the world's been introduced to the Mark King of the 70s, Sid Vicious, whose bass proficiency threatens to bring a funk edge to the band. I mean, him replacing Glenn Matlock,
Starting point is 06:06:29 that's what really did for the Sex Pistols, isn't it? It is. It is. They did what? How many songs from Nevermind the Bollocks did they write after Matlock left? Is it two? Something like that, yeah.
Starting point is 06:06:42 I think it's Holidays in the Sun, which is ripped off the jam which tells you how far you know even though it's arguably their best single i think and bodies which i think is steve jones had written already um so possibly the best two songs on the album but yeah they wouldn't go in anywhere without matlock but i mean it's funny you mentioned body bodies provided as close to punk rock as I'd get, in a sense. You know that thing of your parents coming in saying, what is this fucking filth you're listening to?
Starting point is 06:07:12 Bodhi's was the one. My parents would have said fucking filth. But Bodhi's was the one. When you cranked the volume on that, you were playing with fire. Yes. Because it just did feel like that when you first heard that track. You couldn't quite believe what was coming out of his mouth um because we heard these things in a pre-hip-hop age in a
Starting point is 06:07:29 way and you know we're just not used to all of those undeleted expletives so bodies was just and of course bodies illustrates perfectly exactly what we've been talking about with regards to pistols contradictions could i get on board with that message what is the fucking message it's you know it's a really problematic record but that's precisely what makes pistols so always thrilling yeah we'll always love the pistols we'll never love the clash i don't think what it's really about is disordered horror yeah it's a red herring the fact that it's about this all this is what worries me right for all the progress we've made in various areas of society in other ways we've gone nowhere right we were talking about after we went through that period in the 90s where the royals were distrusted and disliked and everyone was saying
Starting point is 06:08:15 is this the end for the royal family we're just basically back where we were in 1977 yeah and what worries me is the way the Sex Pistols are now remembered. Because their inherent instability and madness is the hardest concept to process for a lot of people today. Especially young people who are just discovering the Sex Pistols, right? Because the fashion now is to think in terms of good and evil. And what you have to do, the purpose of your life is to perfect yourself or at least declare yourself perfect. So you can then rain down infinite condemnation on anyone who falls short of your own standards. Right.
Starting point is 06:08:59 Regardless of any difference between their experience of life and yours. Or you make allowances for certain things and not others based on a political checklist right and this is all fine when the question is you know should you be a fascist or something like that uh where the answers really are that binary but it's a fucking terrible way a horrifically terrible way to approach anything more complex than that e.g humanity right which is why the sex pistols when they appear in modern culture they are always rewritten or reimagined and always oversimplified so you either stick them on a t-shirt and wear it with 400 pound sunglasses so you can be cool or you reduce them to your own level of complexity like that fucking
Starting point is 06:09:47 ridiculous tv series that's just been on where they're angelic agents of progressive social change you know because it's a ridiculous middle class rewriting of of the truth yeah because really the key moment in the sex pistols brief musical career or the moment around which everything else revolves is that bit in holidays in the sun where the music goes haywire yeah johnny rotten shouts i don't understand this bit at all yeah and they didn't often express this directly in a musical way because compared to subway sect or the fall or even buzzcocks they were basically a boring heavy metal band who couldn't play fast and a little of them goes a long way i.e you listen to 10 minutes of the sex pistols they
Starting point is 06:10:36 sound like the best group who ever lived isn't there an hour of the sex pistols they sort of don't um but it's right there it's all right there it's about what happens to people under pressure yeah it's chaos right we're not into music we're into chaos yeah um and that's why they're quotes real in ways that make no sense to these people who still sit there trying to interpret bodies or look at that hmm this does not compute you know well no most people's lives and minds are not simple or simplistic and it's a fundamental misunderstanding of and in fact a fundamental inability to comprehend the kind of darkness and confusion and emotional violence that is the engine of this music and this band yeah the
Starting point is 06:11:26 darkness is absolutely crucial i mean it's like you know obviously with the platy jubes this year wins sorry there was that usual campaign you know to get god save the queen back in the charts and i think it got to 42 or something like that showing really that people aren't that interested but you know it's a complete misreading of this record if you listen to the closing lines you know no future in england's dreaming if you see that as a prescriptive didactic thing you're misreading the spiritual pessimism of this record in a sense because you know he's saying no future in england's dreaming the way lyden puts it across you get no sense that he feels there will be an end to england's dreaming he's kind of you know he's sure that that fake dreaming of a bullshit britannia will carry on
Starting point is 06:12:10 forever and that's a crucial component of why the sex pistols are such a simultaneously impossible and confusing band and that's precisely what makes them so good it's so telling that in doa the punk film when god save the queen comes on it cuts to a scene of a really tatty-looking school playground in London. And the camera pans across all these 70s kids who are showing off and doing Fonzie thumbs up. And just the words, no future, no future, no future for you flash up. And it's like, oh, man, that still hits me in the gut that does when i see that yeah yeah i mean there are far more scurrilous songs knocking about about the queen yeah i mean eric burden and war did a cover version of paint it black in 1970 where burden starts going on about
Starting point is 06:12:56 giving the queen a screaming orgasm and then a few years after this we get the queen gives good blow jobs by peter and the test tube babiesjobs by Peter and the Test Tube Babies. Good old Peter and the Test Tube Babies. But this one, it's because it's so fucking impossible for tabloid hacks of 1977 to decipher. Yeah, exactly. You know, and they say, oh, you know, you say fascist regime, you're saying the Queen's a fascist and all this kind of stuff. And they come back with saying, well, you know, if this government wasn't a fasc fascist regime we'd be able to say those words and not get banned so yeah think about it man yeah a working class kid like leiden can only be one note to these people you know he can only
Starting point is 06:13:34 mean one thing at one time he can't summate contradictions he can't summate what it is to be in the crossfire of all this both bullshit from the past and also thoughts about the future he can't do that he's not allowed to do that by the tabloid press and so when they look at the lyrics that they yeah they don't decipher them they take them at surface value yeah no that's absolutely that's the that's the thing about lyden that so many people got wrong that and also what so many of his fans get wrong the idea that like he should be some sort of fount of wisdom and so the sort of stuff he says now is like some sort of betrayal it's like he wasn't a public intellectual the point is he was an awkward bloke whose circumstances once rendered that awkwardness meaningful um and now they don't
Starting point is 06:14:19 that's the price of success it always has been so how would top of the pops have done this if they'd allowed it on if they'd have been forced to play it well how would they have done it oh god legs and coat but yes just as chess pieces or swastikas on legs i have no idea how they would have done this i mean we're shy of inviting the pistols into the studio i think they basically didn't expect to get invited onto you know like liftoff or any of those programs they just didn't know i think it would have been a blank screen and no music for two and a half minutes which of course mclaren would have loved yes yeah so the following week god save the queen dropped two places to number four by which time john through and decided to count virgin shops chart returns again which was
Starting point is 06:15:05 nice of him the follow-up pretty vacant got to number six a month later and they finished 1977 with holidays in the sun getting to number eight in october before it all went wrong in america and johnny rotten got the fuck out of it and in october of 1980 john frewing resigned as managing director of wea due to differences of opinion between him and the shareholders on matters of policy and absolutely nothing to do with the recent broadcast of the world in action episode the chart busters which focused on the distribution of judy zook sat in tour jackets to record shops in order to fiddle the chart return books. Shame on him. He ain't no human being.
Starting point is 06:15:51 So in its place, we get the officially designated number one single, The First Cut Is The Deepest by Rod Stewart. We last covered the king of the Ramadan number ones in chart music number 13 and this single is the follow-up of sorts to the re-release of maggie may which got to number 31 in december of 1976 and the actual follow-up to his cover of get back which was taken from the soundtrack of all this and world war ii which got to number 11 in the same month.
Starting point is 06:16:27 It's actually a double A-side, featuring a cover of Crazy Horse's 1971 LP track I Don't Wanna Talk About It, which featured on his 1975 LP Atlantic Crossing, and this, a cover of the 1967 Cat Stevens song, which P.P. Arnold took to number 18 in May of that year, which had not only appeared on Stewart's 1976 LP A Night on the Town, but was also the B-side of Get Back in certain countries. Despite both sides being already in the public domain,
Starting point is 06:16:58 they were released in April as a stopgap while Rod was putting together his next album, Footloose and Fancy Free, and entered the chart in late April at number 48. The following week it soared 35 places to number 13, then leapt up 7 places to number 4, nudged up 2 places to number 2, and finally deposed free by Denise Williams to assume pole position on the summit of Mount Pop, his fourth number one in the UK so far. This is its fourth week at number one, and has somehow managed to hold back God Save the Queen from its rightful place,
Starting point is 06:17:38 so here's the fifth showing of the promo video featuring Rod grappling with an acoustic guitar. Oh, God. Rod's been in the news this week, chaps. He's made a rare visit to the UK to see the England-Scotland match, and in tomorrow's Daily Mirror is the headline, Star Rod pitches in to repair Wembley. Soccer-loving rock star Rod Stewart had two upsets when Scotland beat England at Wembley. Soccer-loving rock star Rod Stewart had two upsets when Scotland beat England at Wembley. He was angry when rampaging Scots ripped up the turf as souvenirs and he lost a gold necklace
Starting point is 06:18:14 given to him by girlfriend Britt Eklund. But fortune smiled on Rod and Wembley yesterday. Rod discovered that the necklace had been found and he sent a donation towards repairing the pitch. He said, I just wanted to apologise on behalf of the fans who were carried away by all the excitement. Fuck's sake. Very magnanimous of him. Yeah.
Starting point is 06:18:40 I nearly fell asleep watching this, man. The thing is with Rod, unlike, say, Mick Jagger, Rod writes himself into his songs, I think, and into the songs that he chooses to cover as well. Yeah. You know? Yeah, he's like the Carpenters.
Starting point is 06:18:54 A lot of his songs are cover versions. Yeah. And I always picture the songs that he performs almost with him as a central character. You know, with Jagger, you can never really quite find Mick Jagger in his songs, in a way but but it's more a sort of dazed reflection of his surroundings in his milieu but with rod when he sings his great songs like maggie may or you wear it well i don't know about you but i'll picture him you know with his daddy's cue and all the rest of it so there's a
Starting point is 06:19:18 really simple issue of believability about the first cut is the deepest it's kind of vaguely believable as a cat steven song because cat was in his disgraceful partying years at that time the pp arnold version is great and also the the norma fraser uh reggae version is is a real doozy as well but but rod i'm just not buying it and by this time i'm not buying into that kind of slightly damaged young boy thing he doesn't sound hurt he sounds cynical and this song sounds like a tactic yeah yeah telling someone he's gonna try and love again how many times have you said that well he's getting too old to be pulling these kind of lies out and the fact that it's an absolute
Starting point is 06:19:57 dreary shit fest plodding dog of a recording with these horrible harps on it um it's not as utterly fuck awful as you're in my heart or something like that but it but it's down there and it feels and sounds lazy really yeah and the tables have turned now haven't they because rod the former super lad of the 70s he's now cast as a villain of the piece the tax exile holding the new generation down with his reconstituted off course. Absolutely. He's the enemy. The whole thing feels lazy and cynical. I don't want to talk about it.
Starting point is 06:20:30 It's from Atlantic Crossing, which is two years old. This is from A Night on the Town, which is one year old. Yeah, who the fuck's buying this? Exactly. Four fucking weeks. I have no idea who's buying it. It is lazy. He's changed the lyrics a bit from the PP Arnold version because he couldn't remember them,
Starting point is 06:20:45 I think. Right. This is Rod at his most successful. This is a big smash. But I think he always benefits from a bit of roughness around him. So when he's backed, as he is here,
Starting point is 06:20:54 by the best session man and the best arrangers and all that bollocks, he just kind of sounds soft. I like the rough and ready Rod, you know, which is essential. His kind of raspy voice,
Starting point is 06:21:03 it needs a bit of a raspy setting yeah and although he looks great from the waist up in this video although i don't like his diamante shark tooth combination necklace i mean the promo video is 70s video cliche number three the fake top of the pops performance on a stage too big and expensive for top of the pops you know he's on his own with an acoustic guitar with no strap in some i noticed they were non-flared gray trousers so you know there is a progression well i saw with those trousers from the waist up he looks like a kind of pretty glam rock star but from the waist down he's wearing these horrible shiny gray trousers that look
Starting point is 06:21:38 yeah very burtons yes i would have hated this anyway in 77 as being slow and boring but if i knew that simply the fact that he's number one is just not cricket. You know, he cheated. Well, he didn't cheat. I can't blame him, I guess. But I'd hate it even more, yeah. We've mentioned before that Rod Stewart is ugly sexer by the standards of the mid-70s. And it's pretty much a straight fight between him and David Soule as the girly lust object of 1977.
Starting point is 06:22:03 But with his head in a jet engine bouffant, he looks like the sort of woman who keeps getting stopped by the West Yorkshire police and be forced to listen to a tape recording of Wayside Jack and then asked if they'd been in a car with him. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, I find this record and video with its strange focus
Starting point is 06:22:24 on bottoms and man dressed as a lady, I find it to be in deplorable taste and it's my policy to ignore it on this podcast. It won't be getting any kind of airplay or attention from me. Then maybe it'll go away. Yeah, that guitar's getting right in the way, isn't it? You know he wants to collar the mic and emote into it, but with no strap on the guitar, you know he wants to collar the mic and emote into it but with no
Starting point is 06:22:45 strap on the guitar it means he has to keep hold of it and he he hasn't got the courage to do uh to do an ashley ingram so he just ends up holding it and halfway through he does this massively awkward transfer of the guitar to behind his back you know as if his little sister's just coming to the bedroom and he's terrified that she's gonna put it about that rod thinks he's a pop star yeah and then he turns around so he can pretend to play an electric guitar solo on his acoustic and he starts giving it some absolutely appalling arse action doesn't it oh god yeah yeah it's like when father doogle portrayed mid-period elvis in the old priest stars in their eyes look-alike. I remember watching, maybe not this episode, but one of the episodes on which it featured with my mam.
Starting point is 06:23:29 And when he turned around and did that, I can still see my mam tutting and saying, oh, look at him with his little rabbit arse. Massively disapprovingly. And that's who Rod is to me now. Little rabbit arse. Yeah, the music playing while he does that should not be the first cut is the deepest.
Starting point is 06:23:48 It should be... No, fuck him and fuck this record, to be honest with you. Having said that, though, the first cut is the deepest. Johnny Rotten's going to know all about that in a few weeks' time, isn't he? Poor sod. Ouch. The following week, the first cut is the deepest. I donten's going to know all about that in a few weeks' time, isn't it? Poor sod. The following week, the first Cut is the deepest I don't want to talk about. It was finally dislodged from the number one spot by the hardcore new wave sound of Lucille by Kenny Rogers.
Starting point is 06:24:18 The follow-up, You're In My Heart, got to number three for three weeks in October-November while his new LP entered the chart at number three and stayed there for two weeks. He'll have a few more decent songs in him, but these aren't they. No. Boom. Thank you. That's the number one sound from Rod Stewart.
Starting point is 06:24:50 Thank you very much indeed for watching Top of the Pops. We're going to play out with Emerson Lake and Palmer. See you on Saturday, Seaside Special, Top of the Pops next week. Bye-bye. Tony, still exiled on the fringes, thanks us for looking at him on the telly for a bit and then shills his appearance on Seaside Special before throwing us at the studio lights as we're treated to fanfare for The Common Man
Starting point is 06:25:18 by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. We covered ELP and this single with the same fucking people in chart music number 47. It entered the chart of Fortnite ago, then soared 23 places to number 25. And this week it's jumped another eight places to number 17. So can anybody manage one more squeeze of this tea bag yeah i'll tell you what elo and elp has there ever been a top of the pops featuring two groups so close alphabetically i bet not also i don't like how when you type elp into youtube it auto completes as elpen musk there isn't there isn't even an elpen musk what are they
Starting point is 06:26:08 i don't get it were they tories elp do we know because it seems inconceivable that they weren't somehow right it's it's hard to pin down but some music just feels tory at a fundamental level and it's not it's nothing to do with the classical pretensions or the attempts at highbrow which even in 1977 would be a very old-fashioned idea of toryism because you listen to like the aforementioned soft machine for instance and they're not exactly playing music for the people but you can sort of tell that they're commies right if you have a feel for the time and place and how things worked in that culture all the signifiers are there and you understand that this
Starting point is 06:26:52 bizarre difficult uncommercial music which does whatever it wants should be the work of adherence to a philosophy of repression and enforced egalitarianism because it sounds unworldly and academic and anti-social but also idealistic whereas elp sound like they're all about personal gain and glory and tax avoidance yeah yeah well it's like they've put themselves at the head of a meritocratic elite, you know, and yet they don't understand that what they're actually doing is terrible for everyone except themselves. Yeah. No wonder Jim Davidson was a fan. That Tory aspect of ELP is most successfully crystallised, I think,
Starting point is 06:27:38 on the sleeve to their 1978 album. Right. It's one of my favourite record sleeves ever. The album's called love beach right just go google it just go look at the front cover because it's exactly what toly was just talking about it's horrible obviously um because it's erp but it's them three basically on a beach with shirts on all pretty much unbuttoned to the waist with big chunky medallions and it's hugely aspirational oh i'm looking at it now it's a very
Starting point is 06:28:05 expensive cna advert isn't it indeed it's totally grotesque it's what happens when prog completely detaches itself utterly from the counterculture and this is where it ends up and that's what you can hear in this music as well and another way in which they're worse than Soft Machine and more Tory, is that their music is monolithic and intractable, right? You can't do anything with it. It just tries to do its thing to you. The reason I'm talking about Soft Machine, the other day I was listening to Soft Machine's album Seven, very much from their later Open University spod rock period.
Starting point is 06:28:43 It's not all of it to my taste but i was listening to the track carol anne which is actually a kind of limpid jazz instrumental with a synth on it but you hear it and you think oh this sounds like the theme tune to a slightly melancholy bittersweet late 70s or early 80s sitcom if you listen to it on time stretching hallucinogens which it really does by the way if you listen that's exactly what it sounds like and i'm not aware of any elp music which is that open to the imagination or the idea of potentially being anything other than just what it is right right? They're the musicians, and you will listen to them, and you will be in no doubt.
Starting point is 06:29:29 They're more totalitarian than the totalitarian. I mean, I've spent most of my life avoiding Emerson Lake and Palmer. The two things that stick in my mind is the documentary message to love about the Isle of Wight Festival, when there's all this hippie anarchist mentalness going on and then all of a sudden they pitch up with loads of cannons and they immediately strike the opening cord and it's like oh my god here comes the 70s everyone and then the episode of blue peter in 1975 when carl palmer pitched up to show off his new drum kit which he commissioned british steel
Starting point is 06:30:02 to make for him out of stainless steel and then he got it engraved with foxes and voles and badgers and you know i was only six but i knew even then that badgers aren't rock and roll the suite wouldn't do that like a lot of the records on this episode of top of pops it they it very neatly illustrates why the record that isn't featured on this top of the pops is you know so needed yeah i mean i don't like being too harsh on anyone who ended up committing suicide except hitler but fucking hell keith emerson started off sticking knives into a hammered organ to see what kind of noise it made you know like a keyboard pete townsend but the difference is townsend was disrespecting his equipment partly for show and, but also because it made a statement of frustration and nihilism and the inadequacy of pop music and a personal inadequacy to express, but also to place himself above the instrument.
Starting point is 06:31:06 It's like, I've mastered this and all there is now, the only place left to go is to stick some fucking knives in it. I don't know if that was his conscious thought, but looking at what he did later, that's what it looks and feels like. And then when you take him out of the marquee club and put him in a stadium, that extra space to fill with his virtuosity seem to validate him again and keep him happy musically whereas you put pete downs in in a
Starting point is 06:31:33 stadium and he just got more desperate and despairing because it broke his link with the audience which didn't matter to lp because they weren't about two-way communication with the audience even in theory. This is a recital. You should consider yourself lucky to be there with your barbiturates and your bottle of red wine sat in a football stadium in the snow. Yeah, this is a band that
Starting point is 06:31:58 just bought out two albums called Works, Volumes 1 and 2 I mean, fuck it. So the following week Fanfare for the common man leapt another nine places to number eight then spent two weeks at number three then nudged up to number two held back from soiling the peak of pop mountain by so you win again Hot Chocolate. The follow-up, All I Want Is You, failed to chart, and this remains their only sullying of the UK charts. And that, Pop Craze youngsters, is the end of this episode of Top of the Pops.
Starting point is 06:32:37 What's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One kicks on with Part 8 of Royal Heritage, the documentary series where Hugh Weldon noses through all the ramble that the monarchs of England have been given or nicked off some foreigners. This week, he's rummaging down the back of Queen Victoria's knicker drawer. After the nine o'clock news, David Frost has a bit of live chit-chat on the Frost programme, then we're taken over to the embankment to witness the denouement of today's licking of the royal arse with michael barrett as your mc raymond baxter on a motor yacht
Starting point is 06:33:12 which was used in dunkirk and richard baker commentating on a fucking massive fireworks display then they rhymed off the night with john timpson and dennis tooey trying to remind us that other things are going on in the world in the current affairs program tonight only to be interrupted by the queen and her husband going home and waving at folk from a balcony oh she does she does it so well she does a great job i had a look at the telly for today and i love how bbc one's entire prime time schedule is just wall to wall royal arse washing apart from top of the pops and a david frost interview with david irving yes perfect a disgraced charlatan who should be in jail interviewing david irving oh shit that actually is the have i got news for you joke formula isn't it fuck you know so lazy i'm sorry no taylor bbc2 have just come out of newsday
Starting point is 06:34:15 and continues its season of ealing cinema with a gomont newsreel from april 1942 followed by the 1942 tommy trinder film The Foreman Went to France. Then it's a special report from the world about us about the declining population of the African elephant. Then it's the drama series Sea Tales, late news on two, the highlights from the tennis, and they finish off with John Williams playing Cavatina in music at night. ITV eventually gets round to this week. Then it's an extended hour and a half news at 10 in order to fit in all the Royal Rammel. And they finish up with Cyril Fletcher and Bob Price in gardening today, closing down at midnight.
Starting point is 06:35:00 So, boys, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? I think I'll be talking about the stranglers it's quite an exciting performance that demis roussos always going to be talked about and probably the wurzels let's be honest yes yeah the terrible truth is that it would probably be the wurzels bob marley of the whalers take note that could have been you what we're buying on saturday? Wurzels, definitely. I mean, from now, Honky, I actually quite dig. Pistols, Gladys and Jacksons.
Starting point is 06:35:32 ELO, Sex Pistols, Bob Marley, if by this point the theoretical me had progressed to puffing on a crooked, leaky spliff that's 99% silk cut, plus a millionth of a microgram of horrible black plastic soap bar i miss soap yeah me too sprinkled unevenly through it around the around the back of the chippy in the garages you know coughing and bug-eyed iry meditation. At the age of five? I said if. And what does this episode tell us about June of 1977?
Starting point is 06:36:11 They made you a moron. I think it does tell us a lot about how punk rock must have seemed so exciting. And threatening. It's not that mainstream entertainment isn't speaking to kids about their lives or anything. You know, the words will speak to all of us.
Starting point is 06:36:28 But kids don't really have a problem with mainstream entertainment. I just think it's when pop seems barely tolerant of kids at all being even part of it. And much of the pop music we get given here is very grown up and very adult and very slow and very boring. And kids want energy. And it is coming but it needs bearing in mind i think in 77 when we're looking back punk is something i still think that you have to be looking for if you want to be into it you know it's not on the telly and it's not on in your living room much so even though there's hints here you know you could successfully put the
Starting point is 06:37:01 stranglers away as a novelty almost shock rock act at this point it's not gatecrash the mainstream in any way but every single thing on this that isn't by uh black americans in a way or black jamaicans is proof of why we needed it and that brings this episode of chart music to a close usual promotional flange chart-music.co.uk facebook dot com slash chart music podcast reach out to us on twitter at chart music t-o-t-p money down the g-string patreon dot com slash chart music thank you taylor parks
Starting point is 06:37:35 god bless you neil kulkarni as ever a pleasure my name's al al who al fucking needham that's who. Chart music. Thank you. Excuse me, are you the producer? Yeah, right on, baby. Are you going to vocalise on this tune? Well, not exactly me. Well, who then, little brother?
Starting point is 06:38:29 Prince. OK, well, where is this cat? It's not a cat. It's a dog. Wow! Yeah, that was real cool. Hey, dog, keep this up when you've got it made. Bones the size of houses. Your own customized lampposts. The wild is your oyster.
Starting point is 06:39:01 Oh, no. Prince doesn't like oysters. But he likes sausages. Okay, what is this? Can he do it or can't he? Well, yes, he can. So, what went wrong? It's not all his fault. It's just that every time somebody says that word, he says it as well.
Starting point is 06:39:16 What word? Sausages. Has he done this kind of thing before? Oh, yeah. He's even been on the telly. And I suppose he's been on the mantelpiece, too Come on, what do you take me for? Who would be crazy enough to have a talking dog on a TV show? That's right
Starting point is 06:39:34 Well, really great stuff there And so, the nationwide special Jubilee message. Can you lift the pigeon out, Frank? Well, I'm going to get Ken Seddington to do that, because he's the expert, it's his pigeon. Right, as he's doing so, let me just remind you that our royal flight of pigeons took off exactly a week ago today, when one of the Queen's own birds flew out of Buckingham Palace
Starting point is 06:40:00 on its way to the Royal Pigeon Loft near Sandringham. Other pigeons took up the message, adding to it as they flew around the country, from Norwich to Newcastle, then on to Edinburgh, back down through Manchester to Cardiff. And there was actually some pretty awful weather on the way, I might say. And this fine bird here is the last of the relays. She took off from Cardiff yesterday and fluttered into a pigeon loft near the studio just before our fair began.
Starting point is 06:40:24 And these, I'm unrolling them now so you can remember them, these were the key words in our message before today's bird arrived. Airborne, the tribute, nationwide our... And of course now, with Windsor Girl's contribution here, unstrapped from her leg, the verse is complete. The final verse of nationwide's jubilee message reads, Affection and pride, full-blossomed but unseen, now revealed in homage to our Queen,
Starting point is 06:40:50 with palpitating heart and beating wings, our final messenger his tribute brings. Well, there we are, stirring stuff to complete our keyword message to the Queen from the length and breadth of Great Britain. Airborne, the tribute, nationwide, our affection. And now, let's get out and about again. Let's go over to the English and Welsh border at Chepstow Castle. Folks come down from London with all their fancy tricks.
Starting point is 06:41:33 Ha-ha, we got trick or two. We've got milk and we've got wheat. We've got our Weetabix. Ah, tis real goodness. We eats our lovely Weetab And boys, the taste just grand. Just got the country nourishment. Good things from the land. We're not just dancing.
Starting point is 06:41:51 We got brains, too. Weetabix, have you had your daily wheat? Oh, wow.

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