Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #67 (Pt 2): 9.6.77 – God Save Chart Music

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

Neil Kulkarni, Taylor Parkes and Al Needham continue their journey into the Silver Jubilee episode of Top Of The Pops, pausing to gaze forlornly at Tony Blackburn – who is in full Fathers 4 Justice mode – before being a bit disappointed by Osibisa failing to do the West Midlands Safari Park advert, and having to talk about ELO AGAIN…Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon*** See us LIVE on Sept 17th *** Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language, which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart music. Hey, up you pop craze youngsters, and welcome to part two of episode 67 of It's Alright's Royal Chart Music. I'm your host, Al Needham.

They're Taylor Parks. All right. And Neil Kulkarni. Howdy. So, before we move on, chaps, let us set the mood of the nation, or at least the officially sanctioned mood of the nation, with an editorial from the Sunday Mirror from four days previous to this episode. The British people are having fun. That's what the Jubilee celebrations are all about.

The message is, we are fed up with doom and gloom. So light the bonfires, put up the bunting, bring out the flags, let's have a street party. Give the kids something to remember, just like VE Day. It's an excuse to be neighbourly, to be nice to each other, to be happy, just for the sake of it. The excuse is a good one. The British people are pleased with the Queen. for the sake of it. The excuse is a good one. The British people are pleased with the Queen.

You could say they are proud of her, but a better description is that they like her. She isn't arrogant. She is utterly dedicated, and whatever she has to do, whether it's looking suitably solemn at Troop in the Colour or tossing a pebble into a lake to illustrate a point in a Christmas

TV message, she does well. Down every street they will be toasting her and Britain and all that we stand for in a country that has been getting a little poorer lately but not in spirit we were poor but we were rapper i agreed with that up until uh light the

bonfires after that it went a bit off course there's something a bit brexity about that wasn't there yes i mean we're living in proto brexit times here aren't we absolutely 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 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, 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, 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 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 the first bet lynch as britannia ena sharples as queen victoria er 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 loan from Newton and Ridley developed a flat battery When Stan Ogden left the lights on overnight And Rini 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 the pub'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 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 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. Nash'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 Bayer's Sega lives with someone who has a rubber hose and nasty bedtime habits. And Joy Sarn is naughty, naughty, naughty. He's just that, if you want to think that way. All have appeared on 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, 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 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 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 the little window they've got is practically only a day it just sounds like a freaking nightmare it's amazing that nash stayed in the job for that long because it sounds immensely stressful being top of the pots 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 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. A six-hour rundown voted upon by Radio 1 listeners.

Chaps, would you care to hear the top ten? Oh, yes, please. All right. Hit the fucking music. Number ten, I'm Still Waiting, Diana Ross and the Supremes. Number nine, All Right Now, Free. All right. Number eight, 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 4, Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen. Bloody hell. Number 3, Without You, Nielsen. Fucking hell. Number two, Maggie Mae, Rod Stewart.

Fair enough. 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 10, 15 years, but it says a lot about 77, actually, that 10, 15 is 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 typically zany goodies scenario. The new government

have outlawed fun. Just like in the Republic of Geoffrey Archer's ever fertile imagination. So the goodies go underground and drive around in a car, collecting all the now redundant entertainers 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 they see rolf harris and they grab him and they chuck him in the car and then we see tony blackburn standing on a street corner reading the paper uh the goodies car pulls daily mail no doubt i wouldn't be surprised tony walks over the car waves and just as he gets there it speeds off tony stands 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 and bagsy 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, are top of the pops compares Tony Blackburn and David Hamilton. A couple of game lads, outsiders but full of stamina, are top of the pops compares Tony Blackburn and David Hamilton. Of the two, I find David the crisper puncher. See if you agree.

Blackburn on Hamilton. 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 ouch and he hadn't even finished coloring 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. Because, chaps, as we all know, what better judge of natural beauty than Tony Blackburn and David Hamilton?

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 rumors in the press that o'sullivan 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 Wyatt 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. 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 easy way out. Oh, Tony, listen to Chris Needham. There's no easy way out. Put your hands in the air and shout. Going to Capitol 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 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 going to 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 equally you you can't quite feel sorry for him when things go wrong no he makes it

very difficult yeah 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 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 smile that's a leah you know travis's smile is a bug-eyed kind of colin hunt style proof of zaniness simon base always looks like he's posing for a brochure. And Noel Edmonds' smile is just pure careerism. But Blackburn, what's behind that smile? It's something I've been thinking a lot about recently because I 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, 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 program very much his own and turned it into something of a cult for several years, you know. And I was a bit annoyed 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 dealing with tony 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 yeah but i think he just likes music that lets him be tony blackburn smiling and dancing and essentially self-pitying so it's so his smile here yeah worst year of his life 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 number 10 since it was him that got it released by tamla motown right yeah yeah yeah i'm sure he wouldn't have failed to mention that i think all music for him is just it's a it's a spiritual thing it's part of the sort of the ceremonial reanimation in his mind of tessa it's just her like incorporeoreal 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 dancer in new edition, the regular troupe 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 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. Yes, Jesus Christ. 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 5.0 levels, disgraced liar, grand chaps.

A different one. It's where Jonathan King's Disgraced liar. Grouch out. A different one. Um, it's where Jonathan King's wretched interlude. Oh yes. Come to Tame in 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,

huh? gay Jonathan King in Paris, to which Gary Davis says, I think you mean Jonathan King in gay Paris, 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 and 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. 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 prayer cubbyhole. 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 who kind of explain why punk had to happen i guess lots of bearded beden and totally indistinguishable bands elp gen Blue, they all kind of look the same. Yeah, not that blue, hasten to add.

Yeah, not that blue, not that blue. But, I mean, the other one that stuck out to me is Brian Ferry. Yes. He looks like Roy of the Rovers' teammate, Blackie Gray. Yeah, yeah. Comes alive. 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 it yeah and the only other one I noticed was yeah Boz Skaggs nonce estate agent well equally terrifying is the Bay City Rollers who've been airbrushed into the realm of the uncanny. They're like the Bay City Real Dolls. Although it has to be said that the so-called 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 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 and it's immediately out of date because Kevin Keegan's on it 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. 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. You'll see it. Genesis, Phil Collins has got his face right glommed onto Tony Banks' neck, making him look like the world's hairiest conjoined twin. Yes, and also the one that no one knows what his name is, has got this sort of fair isle pullover and scarf thing going on. The four of them look like Ford Prefect, Slarty Bartfast,

and Leif O'Biebelbrox in a public school production of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Piero Umalane is depicted as a plastic mushroom with a face and springy horns. Yeah. Well, maybe he is. Maybe that's what he is. Oh, and rock follies are entitled Julie Covington, Charlotte Cornwall, Rule Lensker. 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 Lensker, the patriotic Polish song. HE LAUGHS As the wiggly guitar reaches a crescendo and the canned applause kicks in, we're immediately whipped into the image of some congas being bashed as the first act appears. It's Ossie Beeser 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, 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 a cover of a song taken from Ipitombe, the 1974 South African musical, 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. 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? Hi-ya! Hi-ya! Hi-ya-hoo! Oh, we yum! Hi-ya! Hi-ya! Hi-ya-hoo! Hoo-wee-yum! 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, 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-ya-hoo 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 maybeely plausible, actually. Maybe next to the River Tom, where Tickletown is. In fact, it's right next to an area of common land called Rid Covert, 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 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 light bulb on inside the tent. So if you stood outside the tent, you got one hell of a shadow play.

Putting that aside 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 deliberate. I mean, it's a cracking song to start an episode with. But there is this odd dissonance with this performance.

It's presented, and Offsibis, to their credit, actually presents 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 jubilee special that i've got to admit that jubilee specialist now haunts my dreams wait for the bonus episode pop crazy

get you sent signed up to patreon you don't want to miss it but you know that it's a weird thing to put in a jubilee episode of top ofops. It's a very upbeat tune. Yes. It's got these weird lines about, you know, the vultures fly, the wind is high, the warrior fights, the battle of power. It's not exactly celebratory of Britain or British. The scavengers wait, each find their space. Death is late, the battle of power. Yeah. You're not going to notice those lines. It's an upbeat version of Run to the Hills, isn't it?

Isn't it? You're not particularly going to notice those lines 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 you're just going to see it as a nice sunny sort of um very danceable tune and you wonder who's going to be chucking the spares at our brave boys but it's it's it's both simultaneously a start that makes sense because it's upbeat but the lyrics you know tell us something completely different yeah there's nothing wrong with this but i don't generally get on with african pop that sounds simultaneously this jolly and the shiny yeah uh 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 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 Braun's brother, who also did Manfred Mann and Uriah Heep and the Bonzo Dog Duda 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 rock bands who i always prefer to the british based 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 hear the amps hissing and the heat haze, and it really brings out the power of it. But then also, Peter, it always sounded fairly slick. If you listen to their early albums, it's kind of Afro-prog. Right. Yeah, yeah. Because they had Roger Dean covers, didn't they?

Yeah, yeah. They did, yeah. Fantastic. Like, Roger Dean's only ever good covers. Like, if you listen to their first album with the cover of the elephants with butterfly wings on it, I mean, that. Fantastic. Like, Roger Dean's only ever good covers. 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. It's inspired Roger Dean to his greatest and most grotesque work ever. He's like obviously trying to be influenced by like 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, Oss ossebisa end up using matty clarwine don't they who did the bitches 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 i've seen 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 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 f Demon Fuzz, who came at the same time as Ossie Beeson, the same kind of scene, their Afrika album from 71 is fantastic and dirty and filthy. And that's why it's sampled so much by so many hip hoppers. They never made it because they're a bit too weird. Ossie Beeson 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, that first album was a hit record. It was a top 20 album in Britain, you know. So it just makes you think they could have done something a little bit crunchier for a hit single. I mean, this is basically High Life, isn't it?

And there's always the temptation to put too much gloss much gloss on highlighting 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, 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. I mean, the Zamrock records from coming around about this same period,

you know, from bands like Witch and stuff, who are recording in pretty poor scenarios. Amenas. 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 they love that dirt and they love that distortion and that sound osb 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 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 if your strengths as a band are adventure and drive and like red hot ensemble playing um 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 but in a way, they suffer for coming first on this programme. 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 would sit up soon enough. Yeah, but that's the funny thing. I mean, tying it in with the nationwide Ghibli special, 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 are 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 jubilee episode here starts with an anti-colonialist song played by an african group it's it's really odd isn't it but it's totally of course unnoticed by the audience and also tony blackburn yeah 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 true sound of africa as a nine-year-old this is the only african music i'm gonna hear apart from

you know the opening credits of Tarzan. Yeah, and the aforementioned West Midlands 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.

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 molly and the whalers 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 ossebisa

what oh yeah they got a new record out all right isn't very good, but it made it into the only chart that counts. Yes. I was just thinking how long until the first angry letter to Mike. Dear Mike Reid, I was under the impression this was meant to be the heritage chart show, not the African heritage chart show. And knowing old Muck Reid, he might even read it out. and knowing old muck read he might even read it out yeah i'll give you a quick update on this because i decided to read it and weep the other night um with a drink to fortify myself against the soul attack and i caught up uh nick kershaw was at number one still hasn't grown any taller

guess who else turned up your friend friend and mine, Dean Friedman. Ooh! Alas, saying nothing of interest. But I did notice something about the new record by Katrina. Well, Katrina of Katrina and the Waves, as she's now called, 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 oh and the other thing that caught my eye is one of the rubets 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 kirby with whose adam and they go like out of what but at least at least that's one band ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. There it is.

That's the sound there of Arsibisa and another 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 Arsibisa was a good way to start the Jubilee Top of the Pops. 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. 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 Bank holiday anyway. And let's face it, we've all been there. That and not watching the summer repeats of series one of Robin's Nest. No.

And let's face it, we've all been there 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 the 13th single released in the uk is the follow-up to Rock Aurea, which got a number 9 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, 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 night 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 the fake live performance which was pretty much the only game in town in this era wasn't it i mean even bohemianhapsody, 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. 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 and probably something to do with

Jeff Lynne 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 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 mum and dad read. So, yeah. He's a bit of a control freak, which reveals itself in this record, actually. I quite like this song.

It's lovely, this song. Yeah, it's firmly 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 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 harmon is a really choice and it's got that kind of pacific coast suggestiveness in the baccarachi chords that i 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 right but then he talks to an operator i mean phones were the music streaming service of the day of course with diet that was That was getting 100 million calls a year. Real money spinner. 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 Dial-A-Disc and saying they could hear other people. What? In between the record. Yeah, in between. You know, because 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 conversation. 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. Because it puts you in that position, an interesting lyrical position,

of being able 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 as well. The other song 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 it, but also partly so they wouldn't get a massive phone bill and then ran it for a moon. Yeah, they know all the tricks of transatlantic pop from a to z and yeah you're right neil you know people talk about films that you couldn't make shot for shot nowadays because of technologies rendered the plot unworkable well you know that kind of applies to this as well because you 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 into youtube it auto completes as elon no yeah i mean it's an easy mistake to

make it's two ugly rich men with spaceship it's just a good thing they didn't call themselves uh electric toaster orchestra or it would auto complete as eaten musk oh sweet smell of success it's a pungent fragrance of uh old meat uh masturbation and somebody else's sweat this is one of my favorite elo singles though i always go on about our elo records uh 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 all the better if he matches them to an appropriate song. Yeah. And this is the slowest ELO 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 a beery nostalgia trip like they are on some of these records they're integrated into the song and it and it works they they ring a bit of tragedy out of the do-what bits you know they're all behind perspex as, 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 harmonies are like straight from the Everly Brothers and the song's quite Beatles-y. But the lines themselves, the lyrics, are definitively 70s. I mean, I'm living in Twilight. It's just such a fantastic payoff line in that hook that I think is a very 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 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. Yeah. Although that chord sequence wasn't new when Bach used it. Never mind the LO. And most obviously, Hello by Lionel Richie for the opening line. Yes. So that's two from before this recordie for the opening line. Yes.

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. A year or so later, which ramps 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 used to get yeah I do like Jeff Lynn but it's just the way it feels like for him his whole life was just leading up to joining the traveling Wilburys yeah I mean you just get the impression 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 a face that's also he's the only person in the world where you don't recognize him until he puts a pair of dark glasses on yes oh it's jeff lynn you know he's just another browser in the pornographic bookshop until he uh sticks the literature under his coat

pays and leaves steps outside slips on a pair of shades and oh hey jeff all right hey jeff don't bring me down gross he loves that 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 albert 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 it could be argued as we were saying when we were looking through those photos but at the start this episode of top the Pops 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've got to 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 would go for. Indeed. Yes, I've met so many people who look like that in my life.

Oh, God, yeah. 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 that people watch live streams of 9-11 on on quick time 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 bev one oh that has to be Bev Bevan, surely.

Cool. That's my claim to fame. Although, you know, I'm 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. Did I ever tell you that one? Because on my

paper round, there was like one big detached house, you know. So obviously it was owned by like an estate agent or something. But because it was 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 so the following week telephone line moved up five places to number eight then dropped

two places to number 10 the week after but moved back up two places to return to number eight the week after that its highest position but over on stateside us of a it got to number seven on the billboard chart their first top 10 placing the follow-up turn to stone 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. Well, I don't want to put a hold on you as Bernie Flint's very first record, and of course it 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 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

Knox, 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 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 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 organised by Janie Jones's husband. He was immediately signed to EMI, and his debut single, I Don't Wanna Put A Hold On You, went all the way to number three in April, spending six weeks in the top ten.

And this single, 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, Maryary hopkin middle of the road lena zavarone neil reed the jam bobby crush millican and nesbit paper lace and max boyce yes and i did say the jam yeah paul weller's girlfriend at the time applied to opportunity knocks on behalf of the band in late 1974 and they were invited to audition in august of 1975 at surbiton town hall doing a medley of beacles covers uh but they failed to impress and what what a shame man i think we'd be living in a different world if the jam went on opportunity 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 we were led to believe. Actually, a bit of cardboard moved by a hidden hand, which struck me as both worryingly imprecise and potentially open to corruption. But that's what's remarkable about Flint. Twelve 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. Headed to lock Middlesex. To get this hateful fucker in. Yeah. Because bloody hell, this is awful. Well, you do wonder how Mr. Charisma Bernie Flynn 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 Bernie Flint.

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 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 mean i remember opportunity knocks extremely well i mean it was on the telly at my mom's house and my non-os house right through the 70s and both opportunity knocks and new faces 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 bothered you you know it wasn't rammed up your ass non-stop like pop idol or any of that shit so yeah i knew of mr flint quite well but you know going by performance, it is hard to work out why he won every week for three months.

It's just dog shit, isn't it? I mean, for starters, I mean, the title bugs me because he's just basically chosen that as a drink he's heard of, 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 diamond white or thunderbird blue yeah 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 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 i don't know but 1977 he was all right but His voice is horrible. I don't know. But 1977 he was alright. That's right. But his voice is horribly mediocre. 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 um mule train and bashing his head yes or something like that 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 grumbleweeds or roy spook slither jay in between the bingo you know he's he's not got a lot going for him well hang on let's look at this it's his song is uh 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 a bad sausage and a kick in the balls in 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 moustache but not quite, lest that hint at 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 yeah i mean at least he's made the effort in his gray leisure top yes accessorized with caramel colored boots it's a beautiful combination going perfectly with the uh the off-white trousers and the yellowish wood of his acoustic guitar.

It takes quite a man to make natural colours clash. You know, there's something irresistibly British about it. He ends up looking like Dickie Davis dreaming about being back on his speedboat. And he's also got a tattoo of a swallow on his right forearm 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 yeah and he's bernie with an eye one of those spellings which makes you think,

oh, well, his name must not be Bernard. You know, it's like sometimes people try and signal to you 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, Bernies. Yeah, Bernoffel or something. 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 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 frog cocktails yeah gammon with pineapple ring and good lord with chips done to a brown dry turn yeah yeah big fat chips black 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 means to make me feel 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 this is 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. Yeah, it's not bad. It's like, yeah, Glen Campbell's condensed Mulligatawny, 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. 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 sound just nobody has tried with this record yeah that's the thing and it's just left bernie high and dry 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 one so inevitable 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 quite an admission yeah yeah it's 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 no he talks about being made a star doesn't he yes um so it's quite self-reflective but yeah you know he goes on about how his massive success now due to opportunity knocks

without mentioning opportunity knocks 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 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 doubt at this point and and and you know i'm gutted that i couldn't find any episodes of pop gospel the show that yes did shortly after this uh 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 this period leading into the 80s as well that tried 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 razzmatazzle yes and and you know the 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 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 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 hosts. Yes. And they'd talk to people like Mike and the Mechanics and Ubi Lewis and the News. And they'd talk to Kajagoogoo, you know, about their Christian beliefs. Yes. 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 Comfort entered 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, 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 DeLenta's first TV directing jobs in 1979.

He went on to be the co-host of the ITV kids' show Mooncat & Co. in 1985. No wonder Mooncat was green. And is still active today. Well, he became, 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. Where did you get that thing? Etc. I'm sure he'd get everyone's spirits high backstage at this Top of the Pops. And also be laughing along. Good sport.

Yes. But then he punctuates his off-colour gags about homos by strumming idly a round-backed ovation guitar, which is almost worse, you know. He's the last twat standing in the old Britain, you know, in that world where 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 can't remember them

and that's his act but more recently he started his own youtube series bernie flint's palette palace where he yeah he goes into his shed and breaks up old wooden pallets and builds a tv stand out of them um and he's all smiley and creepy sort of chuntering fuck off you're making this up no no no 200 views so 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? But for now, he still needs his public.

So, yeah, on the YouTube, it goes. Shitting hell. It fucking is Bernie Flynn. Fucking hell, he's not lying, Neil. How many views 200 odd 200 2

0 0 it's 201 now yeah fucking hell Taylor meant that most sincerely

Neil home to southern comfort home to southern comfort home where everyone will be Home to southern comfort. Home to southern comfort. Home where everyone will be. To comfort me. 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.

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 family's record collection and started writing his own songs at the age of nine. 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 mam's favorite 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 them 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 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 time to time and sing with the band Eggs Over Ease, who were 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, 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 Linnett 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, Miller was seen by the music press as a perennial also-ran who would

never reach Division 1 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 first ever top of the pops performance which put it into the charts at number 41 and this week 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 on to him i wouldn't actually no i do kind of find the term pub rock a little bit offensive sometimes but yeah you know but um tacking the word pub onto things tends to downgrade it doesn't it you know pub singer pub team pub grub yeah 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. 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. 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

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, 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 because in similar interviews with cream magazine in the states at the time he talks about you know how he scored some great heroin in detroit whilst touring and about how you know sort of brian robertson being unable to

join the thin 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 free and the riff at its heart is really nice it's almost acd shish but this is music that even though i enjoy it i can tell in 77 this ain't going nowhere and 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 willis full house here to show reef how it's meant to be done he is a bit of a phantom isn't he frankie miller like considering the relative success he's had over the years you'd be hard pushed to find too many people nowadays who knew the fucking hell he was i, I only knew the name. I wasn't really familiar with any of his stuff. 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 so from here you just can't see him because let's face facts this is twig stewart you know yes 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 it's just this song is almost exactly the same as stay with me but it's almost identical and the band are 50 faces and 50 free 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. 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 a bit uncomfortable. Although I wouldn't say that to his face, at least not in 1977. Good on you. Because I wouldn't fancy my chances in a dust-up Clydeside rules. I get the impression Frankie was at least the real deal,

fists and forehead wise. Yeah. 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. I mean, as Neil says, Rod Stewart himself is on record numerous times as being 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 that wouldn't be the case if he had nothing going on. And 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 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 yeah and i wouldn't have appreciated the lyrics either sounds like your mom 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 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 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 that which is how so many things end up like they do and sometimes it's just dumb luck or bad fortune. You know when you're watching Cracker Jack? Cracker Jack! And you see Peter Glaze and you think,

fucking hell, man, by 1978, you should have been living in Beverly Hills next door to Moe Howard. Yes. Only leaving your poolside to be flattered by Dick Cavett. And instead, here you are playing second banana to Ed Shitpot Stewart. Yeah, he's singing Making Plans for Nigel.

I mean, fucking hell, yeah. You know, entertaining a bunch of runny-nosed Cub Scout cunts holding a precarious stack of MB games with a cabbage balance on the top. 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 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 you know 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 looks like a cross between Francis Rossi and Hurricane Higgins.

More importantly, he would look like those Scottish people who were beating the shit out of each other and glassing each other outside the pub on Saturday night, which I watched from a car window. Yeah, looked like. 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. With legs immensely far too far apart. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, what Tory power stunts. Yes, exactly. 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 is oh piss

actual killer of carl bridgewater question mark lichtenstein is switzerland taken to its logical conclusion harry mcguire dash stan ogden's stunt double paul hayden dash alf roberts stunt double and rummy cub world championships live from mog edition 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. 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. And he ended up less famous than his brother, Windy. So the following week, Be Good To Yourself dropped two places to number 29, but, like ELO, nipped back up two places the week after, but got no further. two places the week after, but got no further. A year later, Miller's latest producer, David McKay, 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, 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 & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Have you seen that play for today? Yeah. I can't say I have, no. He's fucking brilliant in it. He is very good, yeah.

The ending of 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. Love one another Till your dying day fucking Miller. That's who. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha All right then, Pop Craze youngsters. We're going to break our Kit Kat, whatever comes first, and we're going to reassemble tomorrow for part three of Chart Music 67. This is Al Needham signing off on behalf of Taylor Parks and Neil Kulcone. Stay Pop Crazed!

Chart music.