Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #68 (Pt 1): 1.5.80 – The Ken Of The Eighventies

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

Simon Price and Neil Kulkarni join Al Needham to set the scene for an episode of Top Of The Pops from 1980 which comprehensively demolishes the theory that that year was a bit rammel, breaking off to riffle through that week’s issue of Sounds, discuss the pros and cons of organising a skinhead disco, and recoil at the introduction into Chart Music of The BPT…Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language, which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart music. 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 flanking me today are Neil Kulkarni and Simon Price. Oh, Jesus and Buzz, about to embark on another crazy adventure I'll be bound. crazy adventure I'll be bound. So, boys, allow me, and by extension the Pop Craze youngsters, to suckle upon your pop and interesting teeth.

Pop and interesting dugs, yeah. You know, usually I use the pop and interesting bit of the podcast to indulge in some light and occasionally heavy moaning about the squalid minutiae of my life but this time it's big changes this this time big big changes sophia's started college she's doing

a music course in stratford-upon-avon which she seems to be settling nicely into although as a parent i was frankly appalled at the song they got them to learn and play during induction week what um oasis rock and roll star i'm not going to report it as a safeguarding issue or anything but i'm you know i'm going to keep a close eye hate crime what course is she doing she's doing music music performance and technology so it's the first time she's been able to play with a band and stuff so she's learning superstition by stevie wonder at the moment and all sorts but that's how they start them off with rock and roll star i guess to make them feel like a rock and roll star or something set them up for a massive fall early eh yeah i was distressed to hear that but i mean perhaps more importantly big big change i've moved house

oh yes man oh man stressful everything they say about it being the most stressful thing in your life is probably correct the move itself the moving day you know that was a hellacious shitstorm of hand injuries and swearing you know um and also somewhat emotional i was moving from the house that i lived in on and off for for 40 years to the house that i lived in for the happiest and kind of naughtiest 15 years of my life between 96 and 2010 so just being back here makes me feel a bit more prone to daftness which is not a bad thing in the in the year that i've just turned 50 the the day itself was nuts i've got a piano obviously and i was i'd hired a couple of dodgy geezers to move it exactly and i was sitting back and forth trips i've moved moved all the big stuff, the furniture, and I'd come back to my old house,

and I was just getting the little stuff, like the musical instruments and records and things like that. And the piano guys were already in the house. In fact, they've already got the piano out. So I sort of said, Well, that's chimpanzees for you, man, isn't it? Yeah. I said, how'd you get it out?

How'd you get it in? How'd you get it in, in fact? And they said, oh, the new owner's already here. The fucking guy, the money had changed hands at 2 o'clock. He was already there at 3 o'clock. What a cunt. What a cunt. And not only that, he comes out and he goes, you've left all this shit here.

This is my property now. Oh, Jesus. Get off my property. I'm going to sell all this stuff on. Fuck off. So, seriously, for five minutes, I was like trembling, you know, fucking hell. But he was one of those

weird guys, you know, he was really aggressive and then five minutes he comes out and he goes, I'm so sorry, mate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he lets me in. But you know what?

That drew actually a nice line under living in the house. It was like, fuck it, you know, if this isn't a nightmare. But, you know, I saw the move anyway

as a chance to declutter, obviously not records or CDs or books, but everything else. if this is the name. But, you know, I saw the move anyway as a chance to declutter, obviously not records or CDs or books, but everything else. So now my life is this dizzying swirl of giddiness in shots, thinking, you know, what colour soap dish bog brush set should I get? And stuff like that.

But I'm back in the old neighbourhood. I'm back where I belong in a kind of class sense, in a family sense, because all my grandkids are nearby, in a friend's sense, which is why I've seen more of my grandkids and more of the inside of pubs in the last two months than I have in the last two years. So I couldn't be happier. And it's odd being content. I'm always thinking, what am I forgetting?

You know, what have I overlooked? Very much not used to it. But because I made a tiny little bit of money on the move, I might finally get the time to write the book that i am my publisher i'm open to ideas about what the fuck it should be about uh crisps yes yes seems to be the prevailing force at the moment uh the only other big news is that i am now the owner of and it horrifies me slightly to say this a beard no um i'm sorry man it's basically because my girlfriend likes it and that plays into you got a girlfriend and a beard fucking hell no it's all happening mate i mean partly i do feel this is a betrayal of all the values i have ever held dear so i'm staying

vigilant the moment i catch i don't know beer froth in my beard or feel the inclination to get a sleeve tat or anything it's off i think you need to describe it to us so neil i mean is it neat is it neatly kept is it long is it you know what what sort of no it's not long i'd like to stress that it's not a big beard you could lose that lose a badger in it it's kind of just beyond stubble so it does count as a beard but every time it gets kind of tangly and going in different directions. And, you know, in any way, getting close to a thing where I think about topiary or wax or any of that shit, then it's gone. So we're talking kind of Thierry Henry in his coaching career, but not Roy Keane. Indeed. Indeed. Thierry Henry. That's great that you said that, Simon.

Thierry Henry was one of those many men that my wife could just admit that she totally fancied and absolutely wanted to fuck. So, yeah, I'll take that. The beard looks okay. Moved house. And in a strange way, yeah, I'm kind of happy. Lord, Simon.

Well, I've just had my COVID booster jab, like literally in the last hour. Or as I prefer to call it, Bill Gates's new world order microchip. So, you know, if I start trying to lure the pop crazed youngsters into some kind of global paedophile ring while wiping crumbs of very expensive Washington pizza from my lips, you know,

don't blame me, blame Hillary. No, it's been such a long time since I've done a chart music that you'd think for a go-getting, exciting guy like me, there'd be loads to report. But mainly, no, I've had my head down, writing, writing, writing, working on this book that's coming out next year and has turned into an absolute fucking monster.

But it's also really good, if I say so myself, but it's been sort of, you know, the launch date's been put back. It's about the cure, if people aren't up to date with you know previous podcasts and also you know just teaching so i teach the history of pop at lccm in london and djing you know spellbound and late night minicab fm both going well i didn't go to any festivals this year i don't think i've seen any gigs even except uh wet leg back in the spring. Who are brilliant, by the way. Fuck the backlash.

I'm still on the front lash. I mean, last night I finally turned our spare room into a bedroom instead of the box room it's been for the last 12 months. And that, yeah, that is as exciting as it gets lately, which is kind of tragic. Well, that's an achievement, man. I know. It's weird that, you know, in middle age,

this is how you get your kicks, you get your satisfaction. However, back in the summer, the wife, Jan's an achievement, man. I know. It's weird that, you know, in middle age, this is how you get your kicks, you get your satisfaction. However, back in the summer, the wife, Janie, and I escaped this shitty fucking racism-infested shithole of an island for the first time since COVID and since Brexit. Wow. We went on a belated honeymoon to Orléans, which is the OG old Orléans, after which New Orleans was named. which is the OG old Orléans, after which New Orleans was named.

And it was just so liberating and refreshing to breathe the air of free Europe. I mean, I know France has its own problems with the atavistic, nativistic far right, but even so, on the first night there, we went for a fondue, which is so 70s, isn't it? But we got talking to the table next to us who are germans and it just struck me you know here we are a welshman and an english woman at a swiss restaurant in france speaking to german people in a mixture of french and german and english and i nearly wept at how beautiful that was and how different it was from the fucking small-minded shit show that the uk has become all in is great uh anyway it's it's a unesco world heritage site because of it's

got this insanely stunning cathedral and half timbered cobbled medieval streets but places like that can often be a bit boring so for example chartreuse which we went to a couple years earlier um is almost as pretty but it's fucking boring all i aren't isn't it's got the whole it's got the whole joan of arc thing going on they're obsessed right and that's kind of fascinating in itself because joan of arc was a mentally ill teenager let's not you know who suffered from delusions that she was on a mission from god nowadays i couldn't stop thinking nowadays joan of arc would get counseling right in the 1400s first of all they give her army, and then they burn her at the stake.

I mean, the whole story is this incredibly potent parable of the absurdity of religion. The whole time I was there, obviously, OMD in my mind. By extension, David and his dancing. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, David, the OMD denier and the ABBA denier. I mean, when's he going to get round to the Holocaust is all I'm saying. There's that bit in Joan of Arc by OMD where it goes,

I gave her everything that I ever owned. I think she understood, though she never spoke. Which to me really sums up the one-way relationship between the believer and the deity or saint. Because I imagine Andy McCluskey, he's praying to this fucking stone statue the believer and the deity or saint. Because I imagine Andy McCluskey just, you know, he's praying to this fucking stone statue and the stone statue just sort of stares back blankly

because it's a fucking piece of stone. And that's the whole thing with religion. I love that song for that. But the other thing about All I Want is it's got this great bar culture, which, you know, like I say, you don't always expect in these pretty little medieval towns. We spent most of the holiday shit face to be honest

there's this one bar called um la buvette which might be the best bar i've been to in my life or certainly the best in france maybe europe i i don't know if you do this when you go on holiday right or even if you just go in to a city for several days on work do you usually end up having a sort of home bar so the place where all your evenings start or the end or both you know it's a place you might sit for a while to gather your thoughts and decide what to do next or just the place to stay for the whole night if it's that good and you know not really watching the clock well you know la buvette was that it was this small sort of intimate arch off one of the cobbled streets there was no wi-fi right and there was a sticker explaining that saying we're not in paris as if

having wi-fi was this kind of sort of modern hipster affectation um but it had this thing you know lots of bars try to fake a sense of heritage by buying in loads of old tap or having like new prints of old posters in frames right la buvette was genuinely old school i felt in a way that lots of bars tried to fake all the stickers and the posters on the wall were really genuinely faded i had this feeling of accretion of heritage you know right that it all kind of built up on the walls over years and the music was incredible right when we walked in they were playing some um amazing vintage blues track which is good enough already but as soon as they sussed out we were british the landlord hugo started playing all sorts of british stuff from tom jones to the roubettes so like

screaming along to sugar baby love in a medieval french city was like really like something i never had on my bucket list but i'm glad it happened but my favorite moment was when i mentioned jacques dutronc because i love a lot of french music especially the 60s stuff. And Hugo stuck on Les Cactus by Jacques Dutronc. And the entire place, including people sat out on the pavement, suddenly were just shouting, Le monde entier est un cactus. Il est impossible

de soi. And it's a moment I'm going to remember as long as I live. So we just sat there every night drinking Ricard, which is a pastis like Pernod, and getting shit-faced, right? And one night,

we got so shit-faced that we went on a bit of a rampage around Orléans, and we ended up in a different bar doing karaoke in French. Good Lord. Me and Janie, right? We were Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot,

and we did Bonnie and Clyde. Of course you were. Bonnie and Clyde. And the locals looked at us utterly bemused. These British pissheads doing an old 60s duet in French. I mean, who knows what they thought was going on. The next day, I went out and bought the LP of Bonnie

and Clyde in Fnac, which is their WH Smith thing over there. So anyway, yeah, all I own. Not the most obvious holiday destination in France, but highly recommended. You're the Judithith chalmers of chart music thank you yeah well i'm still fucking reeling from the aftermath of our live show which was oh god nearly a couple of months ago but he still resonates with me fucking hell

what a day that was chaps well you weren't there so i'm telling you now what a fucking day great venue uh king's place and king's cross prince has played there you know no prince has performed there yeah so you're on the same stage as prince you know when he did those hitting how when he did those hit and run gigs uh about seven years ago whenever it was he did a thing for the guardian there at king's place so of course he did because the guardian's offices are next door aren't they yeah so you trod the same boards anyway sorry carry on yeah but yeah we got absolutely love bombed by the pop craze youngsters over there now i know it feels to be claire grogan every day of her life being hugged by middle-aged men you don't know but yeah i was stressing like a bastard beforehand

and when it was done i just hit the wall and was probably not bandied by the love that was shown to us on that day i mean you know what it's like chaps you do a podcast or write articles or a blog or whatever and you see nice things written about you online but then something like this happens and you just think fucking hell this actually means something to some people how can i avoid fucking it up you got stage fright oh God, you lost your mojo. Shit, hell. I don't know if I mentioned, I think I mentioned to you that that same night, because it was a spellbound night down at Brighton,

at least two different Pop Craze youngsters came down, having been at the show, and they came all the way to Brighton. They weren't even Brighton people. They were from somewhere else. They came down just to sort of do a doublehead. And yeah, so, you know, respect, big shout out to those two wherever they were. And you very kindly sent me a care package of some of the merch that was available.

Yeah, I got one too. And straight away, I put on one of the Pop Crazy Youngster t-shirts and I was in a pub in Brighton and someone come up to me and said, I just want to say, bummer dog. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know,

maybe because I'm a bit more visible with a stupid hairstyle, but I do constantly get this feeling that chart music is a thing in the world that people have heard of. But we're not going to let it go to our heads, you know. We do what we do, and if anyone else likes it, that's a bonus. Yes.

So, thank you to all the people who came down from all over the shop man all over the country even one lad flew down from dublin uh sticked around for a bit and then flew back again yeah yeah insane people from glasgow edinburgh newcastle preston everybody's talking about chart music and we all had a lovely piss up afterwards. I do recall leading a chorus of Jubilee Rumba in a beer gun a couple of days before the Queen's funeral. So, yeah, fucking mint. It's what she would have wanted.

Yeah. But let me just say thank you to all the people there who thanked us for getting them through lockdown. But come on now, you did the exact same for us. And especially for me. If it wasn't for your lot, I'd have been fucked during lockdown. So let's, you know, let's move on from all that now, shall we? Can I just ask though, Al, did you get a rider?

Yes! Did Taylor insist on his, you know, orange opal fruits or whatever? No, there was a green room and a fucking dressing room. We had two fucking rooms to ourself it was mint and the selection of crisps were uh i think there were pipers oh pipers are good posh exactly exactly only the best for chart music a nice fridge full of booze and yeah crisps and toffees and even fruit oh lovely yeah the king's place tret's lovely as for merch well simon you've converted your um crap room into a bedroom yeah i've converted my back bedroom to a crap room

it's kind of weighed down with bomber dog t-shirts they didn't sell so well can't imagine why but if anyone does want them under plain wrapper with discretion guaranteed, I can sort that for you. It takes big balls, though, doesn't it? It takes some big swinging Labrador balls to walk around in a Bermudati shirt. Definitely, yeah. So I'm going to sell off what merch I've got left, but I'm going to keep it to Patreon for the moment because it's just easier to deal with.

Moves will be taken in the new year to get merch up nice and properly and they may well i mean i'll not to jump the gun but there might be other live ones won't night in the future funny you should say that neil because we are looking around for venues in the minute and i'm hoping and i don't want to get anyone's hopes up but i i'm hoping that we've got a venue nailed down in the cradle of pop in the cradle of pop notting the cradle of pop. Nottingham. So hopefully there'll be another live show pretty soon and yes, it'll be your two under the spotlight. Well, you say that, but I'm not doing it. Let's get my own dressing room.

I'm not sharing with you scumbags. Fuck that. Basically, I want us to be like the Eagles when they tour these days. You've got a separate red carpet for each member leading to the stage. So yeah, last word on this. Sorry it's taken so long to get back on the chart music hall and thank you to the london podcast festival king's place and especially mark haynes and the

man like matt abysmal and thanks to all pop craze youngsters in attendance and the pop craze universe for their patience we're back let's move on oh before we move on did you have a nice queen death fortnight yeah yeah it was all right but i mean you know all of the mad drama of this year changes of prime minister death of monarch etc i've had to actually go back not not i was happy about the queen's death particularly i couldn't i wasn't really had to actually go back. Not I was happy about the Queen's death particularly. I wasn't really asked either way. But, you know, I was in joy during that just wonderful couple of weeks

where every day there was just loads of delicious schadenfreude to have about Tories going. But now fucking Braveman's in the home office and all of that, all of that joy has just dissipated. I actually found myself the other night going back on news nights just to feel some pleasure again um about it all but yeah no it's been a weird old summer yeah braverman the moment when the tories have literally lost their dog whistle so they're now just they're just coming out straight out and saying we're being invaded yeah well where they're just shouting and slapping their thighs at us yeah yeah as for the queen's

death um like my wife jamie's a school us. Yeah, yeah. As for the Queen's death, like, my wife, Janie, is a schoolteacher, and for the last two years, obviously, the Queen's looking very frail, and, you know, Janie was saying, look, she better die during term time, because I want a day off. And I think most teachers felt the same thing.

And, you know, bless her, if she'd done nothing else for us, the Queen did die during term time. So, you know, there was a death. Fucking Charles, who I will not call King, because there ain't no King in me. You know what I mean, Simon? He's still Prince Charles to me, and he's lucky to have that.

Yeah. If I'm still calling him Marathons and Opal Fruits, I ain't calling him anything different than what he is. He's Prince Charles, and he ain't even got a city beat band. Now, he can go fuck himself. The thing is, his coronation, as I understand it, is on a fucking Saturday, so he don't even get a himself. The thing is, his coronation, as I understand it, is on a fucking

Saturday, so he don't even get a day off. Fuck you. And his fucking son, he's not Prince of Wales either.

No one's a Prince of Wales. No one's a fucking, fuck this principality shit. No one's the Prince of us.

Fuck off. If he must be king, let's just stick to King Tampax and leave it at that. Yeah. Oh, and by the

way, thanks, Mom, for cancelling the rail strike just before the live show. You did us a favour there, Ducker., Mom, for cancelling the rail strike just before the live show. You did us a favour there, Ducker. I mean, the weird thing about the Queen snuffing it is, like, for decades, I've sat and wondered what it's going to be like when she goes,

am I going to be in the same room as my non-Auron grandpa when there's an announcement on the telly? Am I going to be with my parents? Am I going to be at school or college? How's it gonna pan out and everything and the way i found out about how the queen died was i was folding some pants on my bed and i play a conch town and that's when i knew that the queen had died what a fucking letdown that was anyway let's stop talking about the fucking royal family i've had enough of them let's talk about the true legends and heroes of this fine country and beyond.

The latest batch of pop craze Patreons. And oh, it's a big list this time. In the $5 section, we have Dr. Billy Smart, Chris, Bella Lugosi's dad, James Med, James Orton, Michael Price, Antonio de Paula, Mark Gillies, John James, Ian Hughes, Paul Gill, LW Beaumont, Duncan Wood, Jonathan Fox, Andrew Billings, Helen Lawless, Matt D, Thank you. Corre, Paul Stilwell, Jet Haggis, Jade Bowyer, Billy Stanton, Stuart Woolen, Damien, James, and Mrs. I'm Not A Cat, Mrs. Cat Cat. I just want to salute Bela Lugosi's dad. That is a fantastic name. That's a good one. All the way through that list, Al, I was just thinking you were going to break into bill brewer john stewart in the three dollar section we have matt jay ian coulter tom crabb

tom lancaster dan ogood mark wilson porn heart colin jackson brown rocks off Dan Ogud Mark Wilson Pornheart Colin Jackson Brown Rocksoft Lindsay Duff Richard Owen Pugh Nick Venables Matthew Harpum Martin James

Orion Gear Barry Murphy Joni Strikes Up The Band and Humunculus Unle unleashed oh we love you it's the power of live performance i'll in it it really is and not doing an episode for ages that helps as well and oh yes james wharton doug grant stephen metcalf daniel Sullivan. Oh, you went over and beyond and up and away didn't you? And my god, I thank you for it. We love

the Pop Craze youngsters, don't we? We do. We do. We love them. So, apart from getting the latest episode of Chart Music in full with our adverts ages before everyone else, the Pop Craze Patreons also get to tinker and a tanker and a fiddle and a faddle with the brand new chart music top 10.

Are you ready for it, chaps? Yeah, well, can't wait. Hit the fucking music! We've said goodbye to two Ronnies, one cup. Arse to mouth. That dog's dead now. Clippy white boy and DJ Mr. Bronson, and rock expert David Stubbs! No way!

Which means two up, three down, two new entries, two re-entries, and a brand new number one. Holy fuck. It's a re-entry at number ten for Jeff Sex. Yes. New entry at number nine, Legs and Cunny. Another re-entry at number eight, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Glitter. Down two places to number seven,

here comes Jizzle. Last week's number two. This week's number six. My fucking car. Into the top five and it's up one place for the bent cunt who aren't fucking real. He's up three places this week from number seven to number four. Bomberdog. Yes.

Last week's number one drops two places to number three, the Airbnb 52s. And there's a new entry at number two for Eric Smolkshaw of Eccles, which means... which means the highest new entry straight in at number one the provisional uaruare oh boys what a chart that is re-entries are plenty i'm very shocked about um the dropping out of uh rock expert david stubbs i know yeah i thought that was like bat out of rock expert David Stubbs. I know. Yeah, I thought that was like Bat Out of Hell or, you know, Back in Black. This album's going to be there forever. The new entries then, Legs and Cunny. What are they about? Can we not go there?

Okay, fair enough. Moving on. Eric Smallshore of Eccles, of course. Need no explanation. The new hero of chart music, I believe. And the provisional OORA. Well, that's a mixture between, I believe. And the provisional O-R-O-R-A. Well, that's a mixture between, I don't know,

the wolf tones, the Wurzels and Public Enemy. Yeah. I'm probably going to get cancelled down St. Austell way now, but for me, I just kept thinking of Meb in Curnow. Is that it? Yeah. Yeah. Especially somebody who's come round to the Welsh independence movement of late.

It's a bit hypocritical of me to be taking the piss out of those guys. So, if you're on the outside looking in on all this exclusive chart-related excitement, you know what you need to do. Get that keyboard and clatter out patreon.com slash chart music

and pledge what you can. Remember, it's the Pop Craze Patreons who pay for all the equipment. It's the Pop Craze Patreons who pay for all the research. And it's the Pop Craze Patreons who pay for our lovely arses.

If it wasn't for them, charpmusic wouldn't be where it is today. And oh, we're so grateful to them. Come and join them, you minge bags. So this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to May the 1st, 1980. Now then, we've picked at 1980 a few times now, haven't we, chaps? And the general consensus seems to be is that 1980 is very much the Ken of the Aventis.

But you could say, chaps, that the episode of Top of the Pops that we're about to tuck into this time is a very strong case for the defence, don't you think? Yeah, I mean, 1979, the greatest year for pop singles, and I believe, statistically, it was the year of the greatest sales of singles. 1981, of course, all those classic albums, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret and Dare and all those great records. So, yeah, 1980, by comparison, feels like a little bit of a dip in the middle. But yeah, without too much spoileration,

perhaps this episode does show us that it wasn't quite as much of a slump as we sometimes believe it to be. Yeah, yeah. There's this weird rub in this episode, as if the 80s, you know, they really want to start, but they haven't quite been given permission by the 70s yet. Yeah. At least not in Top of the Pops land. But actually, the charts, when you look at the charts for this week, they're very, very 80s. Yeah, I mean, I always think that the 80s started in mid-1979. So, you know, the election of Thatcher in the spring of 79

and then Tubeway Army performing Our Friends Electric on top of the pops in July 79 is when the 80s really start. But there was a little bit of a kind of revenge of the grands in 80s. If you look across the very top line, the very top line of number ones, there's things like Coward of the grands uh in in just when you if you look across the very top line the very top line of number ones so it's things like coward of the county by kelly rogers and there's no one quite like grandma by st winifred's uh school choir that kind of stuff it does give the impression that suddenly there's this movement almost to sort of drag things back this sort of uh reactionary movement but there was so much good stuff bubbling away in the top 10

that maybe the reputation of 80 as being a dip is somewhat exaggerated. Oh, yeah, it's a cracking episode, this. There's two big things happening in pop in 1980. One of them's bad. One of them's kind of good. The bad thing, of course, is that there's going to be a top-of-the-pop strike in the very near future. And, of course, other elements of the pop there's going to be a top of the pop strike in the very near future. And of course, other elements of the pop scene are going to be taken away from us in a few weeks time as well.

But we'll get to that later. The big shift in pop in 1980 is that things are beginning to splinter again and the pop crazy youngsters are beginning to form into tribes. into tribes luckily for anyone out there who's confused about this the reading evening post swung into action a fortnight ago and produced a guide to the new pop landscape entitled a quick guide to the boot boys the boot boys ruled at easter it wasn't just chocolate eggs which got broken open, but heads as well, as young thugs, high on drink and pills and too many showings of the movie Quadrophenia,

battled on sea fronts up and down the country. Those who remember the Mods vs Rockers battles of the 60s must have wondered why today's kids wanted a rerun the fact is that pop music and youth culture has always split teenagers into rival camps from swing versus bop to disco versus punk yes we all remember those disco punk battles on the high street don't we so in case you're innocently wandering the beaches this

summer and see some kids doing the seafront scuffle up ahead here's a survival guide to the latest pop factions the punks yes they do still exist distinguished by spike hair sometimes colored Distinguished by spiky, sometimes coloured hair Chain link jewellery And badly fitted trousers The girls wear a lot of leather and make-up Which gives them the appearance of suffering from a black eye Most like their music fast, loud, punchy and adrenaline filled The mods A fast growing lot thanks to the music of the jam Loud, punchy and adrenaline-filled. The mods.

A fast-growing lot thanks to the music of the jam, the resurgence of The Who and a certain film called Quadrophenia. Some sulk and regret they weren't old enough to experience the first coming of mods. Others make do with today's sounds. Quick question, chaps. How did Sham69 get their name um from some graffiti that uh be partly rubbed away that said herstrom 69 yeah that's what i used to think as well simon

until i was educated by the reading evening post guide to the skinheads now that sham 69 the group's title stands stands for Skinheads Are Magic. With 1969 being the year for them. I just got a picture of a shaven-headed Selwyn Frog getting some braces, giving the thumbs up. Appear to have reformed and are heading for the concert halls again. The skins are back. They don't seem to like the mods, and some, unlike the Scar fans who dance side by side with the black kids,

are seemingly National Front supporters. The rude boys. The boys wear pork pie hats, brightly coloured clothes, and they follow the music best known as scar or blue beat some are hard to distinguish in appearance from mods but the two groups often don't get along with each other oh man yeah break out the madness modness badges bring them all together well that was the main scrapper of barry island was mods against rude boys really in that era yeah the other factions didn't really get a look in it's just those two so simon you didn't all together. Well, that was the main scrapper of Barry Island was Mods Against Rude Boys. Really? In that era, yeah. The other

factions didn't really get a look in. It was just those two. So, Simon, you didn't have factions known as the Headbangers? Some are today's hippies, although generally these are a rougher lot. Another growing faction, they have made possible a resurgence

of heavy metal music. Denims, long flowing locks, and badges which read, QUO RULE are the uniform. And big patches on the back of the denim jacket saying, QUO are not fucking repetitive. Yeah, too right. But of course, there's also the Music Men, with a K.

These youngsters don't really have a name but they're easily identifiable their favorites are the modern music makers like david bowair gary newman and john fox they wear plastic and try to look like androids and robots. Their dancing is a series of quick jerks like Clockwork and David Stubbs. There are many other factors too. The black community have their own. From those who like pure reggae and reject

the commercial styles to those who dance to Scar. Then there's the vast gathering of youngsters who every Saturday night and most Fridays crowd into their local disco and dance the night away to the Bee Gees and Gibson Brothers. Of course, none of this explains why supporters of one lifestyle and music want to beat the daylights out of another group. It was all going on, wasn't it? I'd love to know who wrote that. Was it Nick Conn? Was it Anthony Burgessess who i think it was philip a column again it's quite interesting it is quite interesting i'm

very very that music men thing yes i mean i'm guessing what pre-neuromantic era isn't it so they hadn't really found the name yet yes well so midway through 1980 yeah and that phrase neuromatics doesn't seem to be in common currency yet but nobody is saying post-punk or anything like that you know these are all yeah i don't think anybody said post-punk at the time they. You know, these are all... Yeah, I don't think anybody said post-punk at the time. They might have said New Wave, but that was a slightly different thing.

But I think that was all over and done with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. So, yeah, obviously, there is a lot to get into here and in this episode of Top of the Pop. So let us not fanny about

Forward! In the news this week, Operation Eagle Claw, the attempt to rescue the hostages in the American embassy in Tehran, ends with Delta Force absolutely spunking on their jumpers, when three of their eight helicopters conk out in the Iranian desert, and then another helicopter crashes into a transport plane, killing eight soldiers. King Khaled of Saudi Arabia has cancelled a visit to the UK in the wake of ITV screening the docudrama Death of a Princess three weeks ago. Cynthia Payne has been jailed for 18 months for keeping a brothel in Streatham

which accepted luncheon vouchers as payment. Eton School has announced the end of fagging from next term. Police in Barle have lobbed tear gas at Swiss punks who are attempting to march on a villa where the Queen is staying,

brandishing banners telling the Brits to get out of Northern Ireland. The government have agreed to pay a £1.8 million transfer fee to Lazard, the American investment banking firm, in order to poach their chairman, Ian McGregor, and put him in charge of British Steel. McGregor, the former chairman of American Metal Climax, goes on to fuck everything up before he does likewise to the mining industry and puts

a carrier bag over his face and looks through the fucking hole at the top like a twat. McFisheries, which used to be the biggest fishmonger chain in the world, has announced it's closing down its remaining 55 shops in the UK due to the popularity of frozen

food trisha ray the 12 year old girl from sutton coldfield who's been in the news for sneezing non-stop for six months has finally stopped after 124 days thanks to a holiday in switzerland i remember her she was on record that's remember her. She was on Record Breaker. That's right, yeah. And she was on Midlands Today and ATV Today all the fucking time. Alfred Hitchcock has died at the age of 80. Prince Charles has

been kicked in the face by his polo pony. Men only revealed their new advice columnist, David Wilkert. Paul Raymond magazines have been keen to point out that the Olympic swimming champion won't be telling readers how to give their missus a seeing to, but he'll be focusing on fitness tips and the like instead.

But the big news this week is that we're in the second day of the Iranian embassy siege in London. With the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liber day of the Iranian embassy siege in London. With the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the liberation of Arabistan taking over the embassy, rival groups of demonstrators kicking the shit out of each other, some non-Iranian hostages being released, the area becoming the biggest tourist attraction in London, and we're four days away from the SAS going the fuck off on live telly.

Boy, surely remember that. Oh, yeah, completely. Yeah, we'll show you how to do it, Yanks. Even though it's in our own capital city and therefore a bit easier. On the cover of Melody Maker this week, nothing because there isn't one. And then UJ Strike shut it down last week and it won't come back for another five weeks. Apparently, writers on the mag had had enough of being paid a pittance and started lobbing their typewriters through the office windows.

Fucking hell. That seems remarkable now. From our vantage point now, it just seems amazing that music journalists were once part of a unionised workforce that could withdraw their labour. Right now, any of that, and you'd just be replaced by interns who'd work for the experience or probably some sort of ai bot that could generate an awful lot of the copy that passes for music journalism now you see lobbing typewriters out the window it sounds really dramatic but you've

got to remember melding maker was only on the first floor i bet there were big typewriters simon they were big but we were on the 26th floor. Like, you hear these stories of, at the NME, Charles Shaw Murray and Nick Kent lobbing their typewriters out the window just on a whim because they were angry with something about the Rolling Stones. And yeah, it might have hurt you if it landed on your head, but it wouldn't kill you.

But if you chucked it out of the Melty Maker window that we worked in, it would destroy half of central London. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, even when I started, you know, there wasn't this encouragement to join a union. And there was actually a pervasive atmosphere from sort of publishers down that what you did wasn't real journalism anyway.

Oh, totally. Yeah. And we were, I mean, I remember sort of the tail end of the night is we were being encouraged to sign all kinds of things by whoever we were for, EMAP, IPC or or bauer that signed our rights away for syndication and because everyone was terrified they did yeah and they assumed to this day that we all did sign those forms because you know whenever you get those nme originals come out there'll be loads of our work in there that we

didn't agree to because we used to get paid on the pay slip it would say one use you know we would be paid for one for one use of that article and that's what they wanted us to sign away they wanted us to sign away that one use clause and that's why that you know um these companies just think that anything we did in the past is theirs forever nope it's ours yeah too i never signed that because i mean beyond anything else it would have disgusted me for any of my work to appear under the NME banner. Oh, God, yeah. On the cover of the NME this week, fuck all, because they're in the same boat as Melody Maker, coming out on Strike 2.

New music news, a mag launched by Felix Dennis to capitalise on The Vacuum. Scabs. He's on its second issue, but copies of that are as rare as rocking horse shit and it folded as soon as the heavyweights came back i would like a flick through one of those so maybe one day new music news is the paper that that famous photo appeared in of the six um front women of punk bands actually one of them wasn't the front woman but yes susie sue chrissy heim debbie harry polystyrene pauline black and the non-singer Viv Albertine. But yeah, that kind of historic photo by Michael Putland. So that's the only thing worth remembering New Music News for,

is the historic sort of summit meeting of those female punk or new wave legends. On the cover of Smash Hits, Susie. On the cover of Record Mirror, John Cooper Clark. The number one LP in the country at the moment is Greatest Hits by Rose Royce. Duke by Genesis is at number two. Over in America, the number one single is Another Brick in the Wall Part II by Pink Floyd. And the number one LP is The Wall by Pink Floyd for its 15th and final week. Fucking hell, America, come and join us in the 80s, why don't

you? So, me dears, what were you doing in May of 1980? I was in that brutal and abusive school, Hollingbury Court Preparedness School in Sussex, that I've spoken about before, where my mum had got a job, and that meant that I had to go with her to be educated

for free. Oh, lucky me. We have talked about this before, but it was the sort of place where you would be beaten for wearing the wrong coloured plimsolls in the wrong part of the ground. And it left me with a much worsened stutter and a nervous habit of cracking my knuckles and a lifelong distrust of authority and a visceral hatred of the English upper classes.

I was nearing the end of my two-year sentence there. We wouldn't have been allowed to watch Top of the Pops, I'm sure of that, but I was fully across what was going on in the charts because of the radio cassette recorder on which I used to listen to the Top 40 run down on a Sunday evening in the grounds if it was sunny or in the games room if it was

raining. There was a games room, you see, which had a snooker table and a table tennis table and that games room is connected to a memory which still makes me cringe of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It was about six weeks, I suppose, after this episode of Top of the Pops would have aired when I was leaving the school for the last time. And I went into the games room to say goodbye to a few of the kids who were still knocking around. And as I left the room, instead of just saying bye i said see you and and after i shut the door i walked down the corridor about three seconds later i heard them all burst out laughing because i wouldn't see them where was i going to see them that was it forever and i was developing shame and embarrassment at that time as

well in 1980 i was kind of i would have been nearly set, well, seven knocking on eight. And this was the first year I wore glasses, which might seem like a little thing. Not when you're that age, mate. Oh, good God, no. You know, I was always sat at the back in class and it was basically becoming totally obvious I couldn't see the blackboard at all.

So, you know, got sent for an eye test and I got the usual NHS specs, you know, which now are cool, I guess. But back then just looked horrific. Were they the tortoiseshell ones? Exactly. Yes. Exactly those. That's what I had.

Yeah. And immediately, you know, the piss taking was immense at school. And I think I didn't, I wasn't like going home crying or anything, but I think I mentioned it to my mum. And unlike sort of any other time, she did that thing went into school and you know indeed she went and spoke to the headmaster i think it was the headmaster or might be my teacher and of course that necessarily ensued that horrible moment where you're sent out of the class for some pointless task and then obviously when you're out the teacher speaks to the whole class and says, you know, stop taking the piss out of Neil. So inevitably after that, yeah,

the piss taking ramped up immensely. Of course it did. So yeah, that was my sort of time in 1980 really. Wow, it's my 12th birthday today. Can't remember what I got, but it was probably money and it definitely got spent on records and mod ramble as I was fully pop crazed by now. So my week round about this time

would go as follows. Tuesday dinner time, me, Gormy, Dorney and Jovo nipping out of school to the shopping precinct, choffing a cone of chips from the chip pan, then nipping in to save it, the tat shot to knock back a can of Saudi Arabian cola and hover around the

radio for the brand new top forte and then nip back to school and tell everyone Wednesday night a youth club at the school for their disco Thursday night well top of the pops obviously and then straight off to Top Valley Community Center for their disco Saturday day into town to hit up Fox Records and Pendulum in Vicky Center for singles and clankin' ins, then a bit of a march to Broadmoor Centre with the other plastic mods have a look round the HMV

have a march back, back home for me tea and then off to show whatever skinny tie and badges I'd bought that day at Rise Park Community Centre for their disco see me walking around I'm the boy about tan that you've heard of. Youth

clubbing. I'm youth clubbing. I'm what's happening. I'm at that glorious age, chaps, where I'm still young enough to binge on kid stuff, but old enough to start dipping a toe into teenage stuff. So, you know, I'm still reading comics. I'm still playing Sabutio.

I'd just been to the city ground the other week with my dad to see forest batter ix in the european cup semi-final everything in may of 1980 is both mint and skill wow what kind of music were you into at the time chaps i was on this kind of crossover um similar to your kind of lifestyle crossover between childish things and adult things so prior to 1980 my favourite music would have been ABBA and the Bee Gees and Boney M and stuff like that. But then I heard Gangsters by the Specials. And, you know, I suppose if it was a TV drama version of my life,

that would be the moment everything changed. And I sort of shaved my hair off and walked Dr Martens everywhere. But life isn't ever quite like that, really. So there's this kind of crossover and i still liked abba but um i also loved madness and the specials and the beat and all of that and i think i mentioned it before but i've got proof of this which is a stamp album yes where um on the inside cover i've stenciled like abba vu le vu on one side and madness one step beyond on the other so, yeah, I was at a crossroads. How did your parents feel about you buying some dogs?

Well, they were four-hole shoes rather than boots. So I managed to sort of pass it off as being school wear because you were allowed to wear them at school. So that was all right. I mean, I was always trying to do that. You know, the school uniform had certain provisos, and you'd always try and, within those rules... Game the system. system yeah pick something that you could maybe wear on a friday night as well you know what i mean so like you try and make sure that your black school trousers were stay

pressed and yeah you know and that your white shirt was a button down and all that kind of stuff yeah yeah obviously simon your parents might have been a bit worried that you wearing doc martens would meant you were a violent racist but you bought a pair of shoes that are going to last you for a long time so they would have been happy about that yeah that's it you know i think um skinhead fashion or rude boy fashion was practical above all else yes long lasting unlike the movement you know i was about seven so i was pre-pop really i mean i was still listening to pop obviously but my favorite record age seven is probably hello my darling by charlie drake so it's just weird mix of kind of being aware of pop but all these old records that we had

getting into those as well and it's probably the peak of me being a poncy cunt and listening to classical music as well so me dears i do believe that this is the part of the episode where we retreat to the chart music crap room, riffle through some boxes and pull out an issue from the music press of this week. And this time I've been forced to go for sounds. May the 3rd, 1980. Oh, never done a sound before, have we? No, I don't think we have.

Did you ever buy it yourself? Yes, I did. In 1981, when my mate got a paper round and slipped me cobbers in the music press, I would get Melody Maker, NME and Sound. So yes, I was very au fait. All three, wow. I mean, for me, it was always very much third best, you know. I suppose when I first started reading the inkies, it would have been NME.

And then later on in the 80s, Melody Maker, when that sort of became better than NME. But Sound was very much like, if everything else was gone in the 80s, Mel DiMecco, when that sort of became better than NME. But Sounds was very much like, if everything else was gone in the newsagents, I would buy it just out of desperation. Or it would have to be somebody phenomenally good on the front cover. But usually I just thought it was a bit shit. It was always third play,

but a lot of writers that I then came to love started there. That's true. You know, like Chris Roberts started there. And also, you know, we wouldn't have, I mean, for better or worse, we wouldn't have things like Kerrang! and the whole growth of the metal press

in the 80s without sounds. Yeah, and they were first to a lot of things, like the first time Manic Street Preachers won the front cover of anything was sounds. That was John Robb who did that one. And, you know, so it provided useful function, but I wasn't a meddler. I wasn't into the kind of awy street punk stuff

that they also covered.'s very much like oh i've got like a pound burning a hole in my pocket and all the other good papers are gone it'll do for me yeah so on the cover the cure in front of a headstone shaped like an angel going about thinking the joy division you know it's what's weird about that photo of them on the front? Yeah. Lowell Tollust right at the front. Yes. Robert Smith right at the back. Yeah. You can barely see Robert Smith. I tell you what, he wouldn't let that happen many of the times, I don't think.

In the news, the main story this week is the return of the Nebworth Festival with the headline Nebworth turns to the old guard. According to sounds, the fall, and itworth turns to the old guard. According to sounds, the full, and it must be said,

deadly boring running order is expected to be the Beach Boys, Mike Oldfield, Elkie Brooks, with all the looks, Santana, Lindisfarne, and the Blues Band. Fucking hell.

It's interesting they could editorialise in a news piece. Yeah. Deadly boring. You couldn't do that later. I quite like it, actually. Yeah, yeah. At £9 a ticket, the price is 50p more than last year, which the promoters say compares favourably

with the increase in the rate of inflation. Hey, rock and roll, everyone. They've also promised special undertakings to local authorities local residents and you the punter such as a 100 000 crowd limit a bond of 25 grand to be paid to a charity of Hertfordshire County Council's choice if the music runs one second after midnight, unless Pongy lose. The beat, Eddie Grant, Iron Maiden, the Body Snatchers, the Q-Tips, Janet Kaye, Saxon, Rush, Simple Minds,

The Only Ones, The Au Pairs, and Suzy Cuatro have all announced tours, but sad news for fans of Stalin's organs, as all of their forthcoming gigs are cancelled owing to the departure of guitarist king lee gutter who was accused by the rest of the band of being quote too hippie oh wow i've never heard of stalin's organs but having read that i'm gonna investigate sham 69 sorry skinheads are magic 69 i've had to cancel the last two gigs of their short uk tour but no one knows why sounds reports that the tour ground to a halt after a bad night in birmingham which saw another outbreak of violence which caused jimmy percy to walk out but sham's manager, Tony Gordon, insists that it's just a nasty bout of glandular fever

that has forced the band off the road. Still in yim-yam land, local police are reported to be leaning hard on local record shops over the sale of crass LPs to young kiddies. over the sale of crass LPs to young kiddies. According to Sounds, the source of the fracas is one complaint from one irate mum, whose offspring have been playing either Stations of the Crass or Feeding of the Five Thousand. Hugh Cornwall of the Stranglers has just been released from Pentonville, Nick, after his eight-week drug sentence was cut short for good behavior it's the most depressing demoralizing inhumane place i've ever spent any time in he said and he's been in a van with the

rest of the stranglers yeah neil here's a question right um a sandwich made by the stranglers or um a regulation standard sandwich from pentonville Prison? Yes, good call. Ooh, great question. I could never eat a sandwich made by the Stranglers. Look at them. Look at their jeans. No, no.

They always look so grubby and filthy, the Stranglers. So no, Pentonville, I'm sure, do you good, Sarnie. You sure, Neil? I've seen that episode of ours where they ground some glass up and put it in a sandwich. I'd still rather have a sandwich, yeah, with ground glass and maybe a sachet of spice in it than Hugh Cornwell's pubes.

There was a concert at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park to sort of free Hugh Cornwell around this time. Do you know about this? Really? Yeah, there's a kind of solidarity movement among fellow musicians to try and, not to spring him from prison, but, you know. So it was basically the rest of the Stranglers, but with different lead singers, including Robert Smith from The Cure.

Oh, really? Because I think the Stranglers were already booked to play a gig at the Rainbow Theatre, which they couldn't fulfil for obvious reasons. So they just played it, but with this sort of all-star band of new wave heroes instead fucking hell yeah there's an album of his bootleg of it in the gossipy section of the news pages entitled jaws with a zed and unmistakably written by gary bushell

we learned that iggy pop's european tour is not going well at all, with support bands pulling out left and right at the, quote, chronic nature of the tour. Seems he was playing every German carzy known to man and only two-thirds filling them. Even worse is the revelation that he's being referred to as Gloria by the roadies due to his uncanny resemblance to Bombardier Beaumont

in It Ain't Our Fart Month. You know what? I never thought of it. That is fucking spot on, isn't it? I know. Around that time, particularly. And also, what a shame we can't, I mean, post-Dre,

we can't use chronic anymore as a phrase for something shit. Used to use that all the time. Squeez have been left very distressed at the excessively heavy bouncing at a recent gig in Baltimore, where a female fan had her eye gouged out for trying to get backstage. Fucking hell. And Bushel also gleefully tells us that skinhead rucking

attained a new high of political consciousness last week with two street level attacks on prominent conservatives first off former prime minister lord hume was belted by skins at piccadilly tube station last monday then on friday former toriite labor foreign minister and all-round reactionary lord chalfont was given a beautiful shiner down the King's Road. Apparently, Chalfie complained when a skin kicked his car, so the lad done him, to the extent of one black eye, some lacerations and a batch of bruises. There you go, skinheads.

Not just there for the nasty things in life, they can be violent to other people too. I mean, between them and Prince Charles' polo horse, there's quite a lot of violence against the upper classes happening there. Class war was clearly on the agenda. I've actually got former Prime Minister Lord Holmes'

autograph. Why? I expect Neil did this as well. When we got records we didn't want at Melody Maker, we would take bags and huge bags of them to the record and tape exchange of course, the music and video exchange to get to people like me yeah right, what did you work

there? yeah, oh fucking what the London one? yeah, early 90s early 90s, which is probably just a bit before your time, whereabouts, which branch? Notting Hill, Notting Hill yeah where was the other one? Camden and there was one in Soho as well yeah it was Notting Hill and Camden yeah and where was the other one there was Cam Dern and there was one in Soho as well yeah it was Notting Hill

and Camden yeah well I was actually in the Notting Hill branch with a big bag of crap from IPC that I didn't want and if I was alright

for cash I would tend to swap them for the fake Monopoly money that Music and Video Exchange gave out because you get double your money for that and I would just sort of

you know go through all the cheapo record racks and fill up my collection like that way and i was going through one of the ultra cheapo boxes where it's just absolute shit that they can barely sell it's like a pound each yeah and there was an lp called conservatives in big blue letters right and it was um this sort of lp history of the Party. And whoever put it in there obviously didn't notice what was written on it because there were two autographs on the front of that LP.

One of them was Lord Holme, the other, Margaret Thatcher. No! And I thought, for a fake quid, for a monopoly quid, I'm having that. Yeah, yeah. So I had it. Obviously, there's no certificate of authentication,

but whatever the fuck that means anyway, you know, it's fucking certificates, you get an autograph. It's only one person's word against another. But I thought, yeah, you know, one day in my life, this LP signed by Thatcher and Home is going to be worth something.

So I've still got it. I've still got it, yeah. And Malcolm Owen, vocalist for The Ruts, has phoned Sounds to confirm that he's recently been addicted to heroin, but he's now off it. I went round me mum's and she locked me in for a week i stayed in bed shivering and moaning but it worked i'm totally free of the filthy stuff now he said two and a half months before dying of a heroin overdose in his parents bedrooms 1980, a fucking grim year for music deaths.

In the interview section, well, Phil Sutcliffe joins The Cure in New York, who are touring the new LP 17 Seconds, and he joins in on their on-the-road game, where they describe the perfect place they'd like to live. Matthew Hartley desires a vegetable garden that he could eat his way through forever. Simon Gallop wants to live in a town where everything is made of leather, like a BDSM

Mr Soft advert. Long told her stream location is a long street with a sweet shop, then a pub, then a toilet, then the same again and again into infinity. a pub, then a toilet, then the same again and again into infinity, and Robert Smith's utopia would be full of people in separate rooms sitting and staring at the walls.

Cheer up, Gough. When Sutcliffe finally gets to speak to Smith alone, he discovers a downcast, fractious front man. If I wasn't in love, being in a group would be an ideal existence, but for me it's getting more and more difficult really schizophrenic he says on the road i shut down all my emotions

that's why i don't enjoy company i'm walking around in a daze often i would be perfectly happy to leave the group but there's a responsibility on me because I know if I stop, the cure stops. Fucking hell. He hasn't stopped. Being in a band, shit. Dave McCulloch nips over to the Rainbow to link up with Paul Weller after a jam gig, and is told that Going Underground is, quote,

mainly about the nuclear thing, but it's an ambiguous title. It's about going underground from the whole of this poxy society. After telling McCulloch how rushed the Setting Suns album was and how their recent US tour was a damp squib, Weller bangs on about how mint and skilled Two-Tone is and then spells out the limitations of punk.

The Clash trying to break up fights and then singing white riot as an encore what's the point of that if you want a riot you can't say what sort of riot you want the clash are all americanisms now we've achieved more than the sex pistols did we've affected just as many people and we do get through to people without that poxy crusading bit we were asked to go on nationwide and talk about the mod riots capital radio wants us to go on and talk about the mod explosion but all that spokesman for a generation stuff is crap why didn't the jam go on the fucking Jubilee Song Contest then, Paul? That spokesman

for a generation thing obviously rankled with him, didn't it? Because on the sleeve of Café Bleu, the first Star Council album, there's some little jokey... What is it? Former spokesman for a generation now into... What is it? Now into a bit of jazz or something. I can't remember what it says exactly. Paul Souter witnesses a

stormy gig in Birmingham by Samson, which culminates in a mighty explosion from a misplaced flashpot that burned singer Bob Cately and set the drum kit on fire. Guitarist Tony Clarkin, who was seen tottering around in stack heels and tight leather trousers, dismisses the praise flying about for their soon to be tour mates death leopard well i bet they're not as fat as me he sneers before saying we just dress how we want to dress in a voice straight out of jasper carrot's bovril sketch reports suitor

david mccullough takes himself to whoppingapin to crash round Jar Wobbles' house and listens as he bitches about Virgin Records' mistreatment of Pills Mecklebox. What, they scuffed it up? Then he goes on to talk about how he met John Lydon and Sid Vicious and how the group are floating in their own bubble nowadays. We're unique, but we have no brazen political theories.

I think sometimes we border on psychosis. I'm not using that word lightly. I really mean psychosis. In other words, we lose touch with reality. And Gary Bushel goes to Dundee to catch up with Mensa of the angelic upstarts and finds him on the phone with Warner Brothers, their label. Upon discovering that their new LP, We've Gotta Get Out of This Place,

has dropped 16 places to number 70, he demands that whoever is in the arty-fufkin' position at Warner's bends over a record rack this very minute, so Mensa can put the trainers to the anus. They promised us big displays, big promotion, everything. And what did we get? Fuck all. Well, you can print this.

We are looking for a new company. When asked if punk is dead, he counters, Punk rock is a form of working class rebellion, and there's still plenty to rebel against. How can punk be dead when there's new blood all the time? It's realer now than ever. The pistols turned out to be a bunch of wankers, and so many of the others were posers. Now you've got us and the rejects up there in the limelight, adding more fuel to the fire. When asked about the infiltration of British moving skinheads at upstarts gigs,

Menci gets all protective. Hoff, these BM kids aren't really Nazis. They've got grudges against blacks, but it's just gang war with skin colour instead of areas. The BM kids are looking for an identity. They are being used by people who aren't working class and who are against the working class. The interview concludes with fond reminiscences about the band's former manager,

who happened to be Menzies' brother-in-law. One time he locked us all in a room and told us to write a song supporting the IRA. We refused. We sacked him, and then he and his cronies threatened my mother, burnt down my sister's stable containing a horse and four grand worth of equipment. stable containing a horse and four grand worth of equipment. He got paid a visit with a sawn-off shotgun and one of his henchmen got shot in the legs. He's inside for four years now. Blimey.

Fucking hell, 1980. You know that Samson gig you mentioned? Yes. I think that was at the Hummingbird, right, in Birmingham, which reminds me just of a little urban legend. Something that happened, well, it used to happen quite a lot. I don't know whether this still exists. In the canal near the Hummingbird, because you know Birmingham,

it's the Venice of the Midlands or whatever. It's for the canal. Of course it is, yes. And, yeah, one of the common sightings in the canal near there was the Birmingham piss troll. What? Yeah, the Birmingham piss troll. If you ever speak to a yimmy-yammer or a brummie, they will tell you about themingham piss troll um yeah the birmingham piss troll if you ever speak to a yim yam or a brummie they will tell you about the birmingham piss troll i've never heard of yeah

well birmingham piss troll was a legend of the 80s and 90s and i think he went all the way up into the noughties i don't know whether he's still with us maybe a brummie uh pop crazy youngster could help us out on this but basically if you went for a slash in the canal right you'd unzip and you'd start pissing and then slowly as you were pissing a guy would come out of the canal and just let you piss all over him well he wouldn't stay there whilst you pissed all over him and then he'd retreat back into the water and sort of swim away um oh my god. This is a real thing. I'm not making this, I didn't dream this, honestly. Yeah, the Birmingham piss troll,

as seen near the hummingbird, as seen around the Birmingham area. Can't believe he wasn't part of the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony, to be honest with you. Yeah, there we go. Birmingham piss troll, obviously going straight into the next chart music top ten. That's the next episode's number one right there and then,

unless not even fucking bother. Yeah, I mean, if you're looking for the Birmingham piss troll, obviously, you've got to go to Birmingham. You've got to go to Canal and have a piss, and it's got to be under a bridge, hence the troll thing. And the BBC made all them fucking episodes about Peaky Blinders, man.

I know. Missed opportunities, man. Yeah, pissy blinders, eh? On the single reviews page, well, in the chair this week is Sandy Robertson and his single of the week is A Certain Girl by Warren Zeven.

A vintage piece of obsessive delirium. It's loud, it's excited and it hits. Hear it and believe it, desperados. Graham Parker has ditched the rumour and signed to Stiff, and his new single, Stupification, is dead good, according to Robertson.

After 15 seconds, you call it dull, but after a minute, you're scanning the charts and seeing if it's in there yet. The much-maligned foreigner turned out to be loud but pleasantly mid-weight as they catalogued those female types who scare their audience, says Sandet about their new single, Women. An album cut, but an acceptable album cut. See, this caught my attention. I thought, female types who scare their audience have you

seen the lyrics to this song women by phona right it begins women behind bars women in fast cars women in distress women with no dress women in airplanes women who play games women in uniform see that woman with her clothes torn and so it's really fucking creepy right uh it goes on like that and then the album is from head games has got a really dodgy sleeve it depicts it's a photo of a 14 year old girl and i know she's 14 because she's went on to become a quite famous actress and film producer in like in a mini skirt and a bra top, crouched over a urinal in a male toilet with a toilet roll in her hand,

scrubbing away at some graffiti, which I don't know what it's meant to be symbolic of. But combine that with the lyrics of Women, it's no wonder that Lou Gramm still wanted to know what love is when it came to the age. No one's going to fucking go near him and that's why

he fucking waited so long for a girl like her yeah I'm just surprised in that selection of women couplets there wasn't the golden one that always used to

crop up in metal records and rock records at the time women who both pump the gasoline but also keep the motor clean yes

there is a bit women who can't be beat get that woman in the back seat so it does have that kind of automobile thing going on there yeah but towards the end it's like women you dream about all your life women that stab you in the back with a switchblade knife oh treacherous you see you ask for it yeah fucking treacherous, you see. No fucking wonder. You asked for it, you cunt. Yeah. Fucking treacherous staff all over again, innit? Yes. But it's a coat down for messages by orchestral manoeuvres in the dark. The sleeve's more artful than the predictable science pop inside. I didn't know David Stubbs wrote for sounds.

Fucking hell. It's a great single. Truly great single, Mess Juice. Magnificent. I'd anticipated something less agreeable, says Sandy of Rescue, the second single by Echo and the Bunnymen. Agitated and modernist, but in the final analysis

quite conventional rock and roll with clean guitars shimmering away over a slightly bowie vocal. Peter Gabriel became a chart concern earlier this year with Games Without Frontiers and his latest release,

No Self Control, looks like it's going to keep him there. Harsher and less nimble than games, No Self Control finds Gabriel nearly sliding into chaos, right in the middle of the Enterprise, pulling back from the brink of excess with more fevered chanting. Squeeze are back with another cut from their argy-bargy LP, pulling muscles from the shell, but Robertson is more interested in asking us if we knew that their new bassist

john bentley played with throbbing gristle for a bit before telling us this sounds nothing like throbbing gristle and will be a hit do you know where that got in the charts i'll be outside the 40 i'm sure yeah yeah 42 i could not believe that i used to hear that all the time it's about fingering that song you don't get time It's about fingering that song You don't get many pop songs about fingering I can't think of any other ones Of course it is That's never occurred to me Simon

Thank you Squeeze do songs about fingering And there was something called the Birmingham Piss Troll What an education chart music is Motörhead have rushed out the live EP The Golden Years And Sandy reckons it. It's the loudest single of the week,

enough to make your tweeters run for cover. Play at 4am and get evicted, no bother. Reggae is still alive and kicking in May of 1980, but the only releases that cross sounds as deaths this week are made by whiteys trying to put a rock slant on it. The Pat Travers Band's cover of Is This Love is a competent and distinctly unheavy retread of Smarmy Bob Marley's M.O.R. reggae. Well listenable. But it's a coat down for one of the most popular bands in Sweden, Dag Vag.

And their new single, Wipeout single these swedes are true turners it's probably dog vag isn't it but sorry i'm english and i've got that kind of mindset that brings up disgusting images because we all know what a dag is and we all know what a vag is you dag two of them together you're flaming galah yes a sheep's ass with all yeah with all the dangled berries on it you know oh i didn't know that i thought it's an australian insult but then you know there is a lot of sheep farming you know so maybe that's where it comes from there's that's number two in the charts next week make it real by scorpions sounds like the lead singer is giving orders to a battalion of blonde psychopaths

Steve Bates is the nicest ex-punk in the world but his new single not that way anymore is not suitable for UK tastes mercenaries ready for war by John Cale will do you if you're into gun love at high volume.

And Two Triple Cheese, Side Order of Fries by Commander Koda comes on like the Ramones, covering Eddie Cochran. I've just looked up Dag Vag or Dag Vag on Google Translate. Sadly, in English it means Day Vague or I guess Vague Day. Spoil spot, eh? In the LP review section, the lead-off review this week is given over rightfully to Bass Culture by Linton Quasey Johnson. A radical style of DJ album in the tradition of King Stitt, a scorcher of a reggae album,

rather than a self-conscious study in racial sociology, writes Eric Fuller. What with police asking for wider powers to stop and search, no planned repeal of the sus laws, a government plainly committed to making the poor poorer, and blacks completely excluded from any of the bureaucracy that makes decisions about their own lives burning and looting on a grand scale is plainly festering not very far below the surface

oh different times eh chaps buying a copy of bass culture won't make it go away but you can't say you haven't been well warned and George Lindo was innocent what a fucking outstanding album that is oh it's a great album i mean thinking about that review yeah i mean obviously not different times but you could do that you know actually reflect the times that

you were living in in an album review you wouldn't fucking do that now or you can't see that now you know racist anti-vax junkie cunt eric has just shit out the live lp just one night which is hailed by david lewis as a strong and balanced showcase of clapton on stage recorded at what is fast becoming everyone's favorite public studio tokyo's buddha con mega venue then lewis remembers he's not much of a fan of live lps becoming everyone's favourite public studio, Tokyo's Budokan Mega Venue. Then Lewis remembers he's not much of a fan of live LPs. Despite Clapton's moments of inspirational guitar virtuosity and captivating vocals, no live album can ever hope to match the recording sharpness of its studio counterpart, and no amount of whistling and cheering crowd

atmospherics can begin to convey the true excitement of actually being there i kind of agree with that yeah me too although whenever i do express that opinion i kind of then remember quite a few good live lps yeah i mean they tend to be the fake ones like finn lizy live and dangerous you know the ones where it's kind of confected live. Who Live at Leeds is another fake one, isn't it? So, yeah, all the ones that get hailed as the great ones are actually completely fake anyway. With punk receding into the distance,

Pete Shelley feels it's safe enough to release Sky Yen, the experimental electronic curio he recorded in 1974 with a purpose-built oscillator and dave mcculloch approves a reminder that punk and its great early protagonists were never about starting or ending or aimlessly carrying on the alf garnett three chord thrash i hope some of them shelly included will soon go on from where they left off in the garage with an oscillator back in the dim days of 74 which i suppose he did because you know stuff like homo sapien and then later on telephone operator is very sort of tech very synth based and you know his work with martin

russian so so i guess he did kind of pick up where that left off i've not heard this um sky yen but i want to. That and the LKJ, this is great. I'm getting loads of things on my sort of Discogs Wants list now. But it's a coat down for Growing Up In Public, the 10th solo album by Lou Reed. Who else but Lou Reed would have the balls to exploit his past as a culture hero

through eight years of mainly wretched solo product all the while nullifying his senses with various pharmaceuticals that bounced his spunky little body into any number of grotesque shapes ranging from pasta fat to dacquoise thin offset with innumerable vile hairstyles, and after giving us the big finger for so long, dare to invite us to weep at his recorded personal confessions, asked Sandy Robinson.

This has not the clipped brilliance of his first solo LP, nor the camp wankery of Transformer, the maudlin vaudeville of Berlin, or the conceptual outrage of metal machine music. This dancing dwarf

will occasionally quarrel out of the garbage can and leave off interviewing drag queens about dipping spam in shit to make a record that shows that he can still cut it the way he did back in the Velvet Underground days.

But this album sounds like James Taylor, Graham Nash and AOR half-hard rock. The Beast is back in Sheep's clothing. What song did Lou Reed make about dipping spam in shit? I don't know. Neil, would you? It was good to hear or read that review because it's kind of how I feel about the myth of Lou Reed as well. And it's good to know that somebody way back in 1980 was calling out his bullshit.

I mean, obviously he's done loads of amazing stuff, but the whole kind of fucking heroine chic around this supposed kind of damaged junkie genius has always turned me off. He's somebody who thought he was a lot cleverer than he was. I mean, are you with me on this? Am I just going out alone? Yeah, I mean, he's patchy as fuck, Lou Reed.

Maybe three good solo albums, less about you lot, really. All I've got to add to this is, he thought he could do a cover of Soul Man. Fuck Lou Reed. And in terms of dipping spam and shit now I'm strictly a pure luncheon meat man just to clarify actually I've been consulting with my

Birmingham piss troll team and I just want to clarify that if anyone does want to go and you know micturate over a bridge to an

appreciative troll it's not the hummingbird it was a nightclub called Subway City in Birmingham that is now called the Tunnel Club

go there for all your piss troll needs I wonder how many other cities have got these kind of folk demons obviously in Liverpool there's Purple Aki if you don't know who he is just look him up but was there anything like that in Nottingham? We had the Nagasaki Hell Blaster in the 50s according to my mum

who's now going to be number 3 on the next chart. Yeah, he was a war veteran. Obviously, he didn't come out of it too well. He'd go about all the coffee bars and not open the doors and shout, I am the Nagasaki Hellblaster. And then, you know, everyone in the coffee bar to a person would shout, fuck off.

I mean, I know the crazy world of arthur brown struggled to find a follow-up single but come on in the gig guide well david could have seen cabaret voltaire red crayola and young marble giants at the clarendon hotel right up his street there magazine and bar house at the lyceum, Splodgenus Abounds at the Victoria Venue, Saxon and Tigers of Pantang also at the Lyceum, and rounded off the week nice with

Black Sabbath at the Hammersmith Odeon, but probably didn't. Taylor could have seen the au pairs at the Birmingham College of Food and Domestic Art, Joy Division and a Certain Ratio at Birmingham University, The Only Ones at Romeo and Juliet, or nipped out to Wolverhampton to see Judy Zouk at the Civic Hall,

or even Magazine and Bauhaus at Digbeth Civic Hall. Neil could have seen Shitkov Punk's Chainsaw at the Climax Club or Desmond Decker at Tiffany's. Sarah could have got the Coastliner bus to see The Cure at Hull-Unair, Sky at Sheffield City Hall, Roy Harper at Leeds-Unair or Martha

and the Muffins at Sheffield Polytechnic. Al could have seen UB40 at Trent Poly or the Drifters at Heart of the Midlands, the bakery that was converted to a chicken in a basket venue before it became Rock City.

Also the site of the final of the world's first ever professional dance championships, don't you know? Simon could also have seen UB40 at Newport Village, the Stylistics at Carefilly Double Diamond, UK subs at Cardiff Top Rank and

fuck all else because it's Wales it is but you know apart from me and Wales getting the shitty end of the stick that's one of the best gift guides we've ever had I think there's so many in that I thought fuck yeah I'd love to go and see them Judy Zook in the letters page this week,

the main topic of conversation this week is Rob Halford of Judas Priest deciding to get his kit off on stage at the Rainbow last week and sounds treating its readership to a good look at his cock and balls. Thank you, thank you, thank you for printing that marvellous picture of Judas Priest Rob Halford exposing himself so triumphantly at the Rainbow recently, writes Louise from Fallowfield. I think she's barking up the wrong tree. I do hope more bands, and not just heavy metal bands,

follow Rob's example at their live gigs by allowing their frontman to remove their leotards, tights, underpants and all. Trust Rob to be the first to have the guts to peel off his tights and pull down his knickers in front of all those people. I wonder if Paul D'Anno of Iron Maiden wears knickers under his tights on stage. Why not let's have a look, Paul? Let's have lots more nudity, please.

More priestly support comes from the sinner from Portishead. I think the two letters you printed from ex-Priest fans were unfair. Priests are really nice blokes who care for their fans. They're not in it for the money. If they were, they would only play a few nights at big venues like Rainbow, Van Halen and ACDC do.

P.S. More nude pics of Priest, please. Annie Nightingale took metal to task in a recent article for the Daily Express and two of many female HM followers from Cleve Forbes are well dischuffed about it. Has she nothing better to do

than sit in a poxy air-conditioned office, drink cups of coffee, and insult people's taste in music? Is that her brain, or is she breaking it in for an idiot? If Miss Nightingale does not like writing about HM, then we suggest she gets herself another job, the sooner the better. In her so-called write-up, she stated that HM is music aimed at boys, and the concert audiences are totally male-populated. We would like to inform her that of all the concerts we've been to, a good third of the audience has been female.

Shock! Horror! Gasp! Yes, it's true! Some girls do like HM. As for her comments about HM being out of fashion since the days of Led Zepp, we would like to say that as far as we know, Led Zepp are still going strong with more followers now than they had in the early days. Not all HM groups prance about the stage bare-chested and tight trousers and sing about sex in a way that infuriates women's livers, we will be sending Miss Nightingale a turd in the post. Not all HM groups prance about the stage bare-chested and tight trousers and sing about sex in a way that infuriates women's livers,

but the best ones do, really. Oh, Neil, I don't know about you, but I was in a reverie there. That was so nostalgic, where there was that bit, sit in a poxy air-conditioned office drink cups of coffee and insult people's taste in music man that was the 90s yeah that was my life while rob halford has been lusted over this week it's a coat down for debbie our air for not making an effort anymore in the latest blondie video debbie looks rather like a bleached gary moore but without the playing ability says perverse pig from gotham city also all my followers agree that you know is he on twitter or something yeah what's going on there

all my followers agree that debbie's haircut has given her looks a turn for the worse and that her orange boiler suit makes her look like a dustbin man slash woman. She's not going to fancy you, mate. No. No. That's proper negging, that is. Yeah. Genesis are currently the darlings of the daytime DJs.

Peter Powell, Andy Peebles, Mike Reed, Kid Jensen and Noel Edmonds are all falling over each other to lavish them with over-the-top and totally uncritical praise, says Jim from Pool, but he reckons their new LP, Duke, is a right sellout. Genesis seem to approach their music in a totally unenthusiastic and business-like manner, with the exception of Phil. If they continue to plough their currently profitable little rut, they seem bound to fail, just like ELP.

The readers with their prophetic powers, you know, Led Zeppelin are going from strength to strength. Going back to punky lust objects, a Luton Town fan who doesn't like sexism, ignorance and sounds ignoring the louse takes issue with a recent news piece on the plasmatics. A lot has been written about sexism lately, so I thought I would add my views.

Since I was 13, I have observed the way men look upon women as bits of tit and embarrass and degrade them. I am disturbed and shocked at the media's treatment of women, so I couldn't believe it when I saw the seedy page three type article and picture of the plasmatics in the April 12th issue. If the plasmatics vocalist wants to strip off all day every day, that's up to her. But by giving it media coverage, you are arousing men sexually

and embarrassing and offending some women. Fucking hell, Wendy O. Williams with her fanny out, Rob Alford with his cock and balls out. I never knew there was so much nudity in sounds, did you? Fucking hell. Is there any intelligent life which reads sounds? Asks Derek Hitchcock.

Then why insult it? The jokes in your recent column entitled Roscoe's Moscow Adventures made me want to crawl into a corner and vomit. They were cheap, naive, stupid, ignorant and insulting to anyone with a minimum of intelligence because of their blatant mocking prejudice. Jokes about bending over backwards and homosexual space monsters are insulting because of their cheap datedness, lack of originality, insulting to lesbians as they assume they don't exist, insulting to gay men because of its mockery and its weird ideas of what a gay man is.

I wouldn't take it so seriously if it weren't so very clear what the general line of sounds is on sexism, feminism and homosexuality, i.e. they don't really exist except in the weird imaginations of a small minority. Why don't you take the same attitude to Jews, socialists, the Irish and racial minorities? Then you can claim to be completely ignorantly prejudiced. You could also not print this letter to get the full set against freedom of speech too. Yours disgustedly Derek Hitchcock. I can work snowflake. And Rob the HM fan from

Romford is appalled that sounds haven't even bothered reviewing Jethro Tull's latest shows. And finally in the back pages is the following advert. Notice to skinheads! This is to inform you of the opening of London's first regular skinhead disco, which opens on Friday 2nd May at the All Nations Club for Martello Street E8

and every Friday after that. Admission is £1.50, doors open at 8pm and there's a drinks licence to 3am. Now we all know that skins have got a bad name for certain things and all the trouble you have trying to get into places, so now you've got a club where you can go without being stared at or treated like animals. A place where you can meet your mates and have a laugh and hear your kind of music and see the occasional band. So the club's there, the music's there,

and so long as everything stays cool, it'll stay there. So forget about football and politics and be there on Friday. It's your club. So use it. Fucking hell. I wonder how long that lasted. You take football and politics out of skinheads, what the fuck have you got left?

Glue. That's what you've got. I wonder if it's the same club in that Combat 84 documentary a couple of years later, which starts with them playing a song and then ends up in absolute fucking chaos with people picking up bar stools and chucking them at each other.

There's a lot about skins in this sound, isn't there? Yes. Partly because of Bushnell, I think. I mean, he really does editorially kind of dominate the paper. He's got an awful lot in there. I'm going to be a bit sort of humourless

and spoilsport about this, though, and insist that it's very likely that this skinhead club wasn't the sort of place that Combat 84 would have been or any of the sort of skinhead bands because the All Nations Club was a black-owned reggae club. Really?

Yeah, the venue was. Yeah, because i'm always fucking hell to to this day i'm i'm somebody who's still you know flying the flag for left-wing anti-racist skinheads which you know was always the original idea until it got hijacked and such people do still exist you know i've got a skinhead mate who's like a lot younger than me who's very sort of anti-racist and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, this place, the All Nations Club in Hackney, it was a black-owned reggae club. Third World played live there. Steel Pulse played live there.

There was a room in the basement, which was the Lover's Rock room, which, oh, my God, I would love to have gone in there. I think the club carried on, the venue, that is, carried on until 1987. So I was just about in London at the right time. I never went there. But they still have reunion nights, which have to be somewhere else, because inevitably, London being London, that property in Hackney has been converted into a block of flats.

But I just think it's unlikely that it would be your fascist skinheads being invited to hold a night in a black-owned reggae club in Hackney. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe the people putting the advert in could have explicitly stated that, maybe. I'm demanding stuff from the past that they're not going to do. But it's weird, isn't it? I mean, this is the period, like you said.

It's just colossal fragmentation and factionalism within factions, you know. And skinhead culture is kind of splitting apart at this point as well 56 pages 25p i never knew there was so much in it this was sounds chance to snatch a few readers from enemy and melody maker how do you think they got on chaps well i think what they're doing they are putting music in that other magazines probably laughed at there's a lot more metal in there yeah um and as we'll come to see in the episode but that's actually a fairly decent reflection of what's going on yes i think what not did for sounds but it's a shame they couldn't keep metal in the magazine if you like sounds became another kind of enemy melody maker type magazine the split that led to the formation of

karang is i think what might have eventually done for it you know in the same way that when there was a a bbc strike in the 70s which meant that a lot of disco records got into the charts because what was popular in clubs was uh sort of coming to the fore so things like rock your baby by george mccray was was a beneficiary of that i don't know if it's sort of fanciful to wonder if a similar thing happened here with this this strike in the music press so so the more kind of indie or alternative things um are no longer getting catered for in terms of the press uh and if you want to buy music paper you've basically got to buy a paper that's really into metal and and then then then you do get several bands, without spoiling it,

in this week's chart and this week's Top of the Pops who are on the metal end of the spectrum. Do you think Sounds would have put The Cure on the front page in 1980 if the NME and Melody Maker weren't on strike? I was quite shocked by their choice of cover. I think they would, but that's because The the cure were not the cures as we now think of them they were still seen as quite a sort of tough sort of post-punk band and there was actually loads of aggro their gigs they always used to get skinheads coming to their gigs the cure because

don't forget well do you want do you know what their first single was called yes yeah killing an arab right so they would always get um people coming to their gigs, expecting it to be some kind of national front rally. And I mean, in a way, the Cure were asking for it by, you know, stupidly calling the song that when it's based on The Outsider by Camus. And the actual ethnicity of the person who gets killed isn't really relevant. But by focusing on that, it caused them no end of trouble. But yeah, they used to get skinheads to turn up their gigs. There was one gig at some punk venue in London where a whole bunch of skins turned up for a ruck. But the leader of them, some guy called Eagle, he was sort of pushing everyone around and sort of slamming and causing trouble. But then the kids start playing Boys Don't Cry.

And this guy suddenly decides, oh, I like this one, starts dancing about and he calls off the dogs and says to all his tough mates, hey, they're all right, this lot. Let's leave them alone. So, yeah, they were pacified by the jolly pop punk sounds of Boys Don't Cry. The power of music, yeah. I think the poncier these bands get, the less likely they're going to be on the cover of music yeah well it's a bit but i mean i i think the poncy of these bands get the

less likely they're going to be on the cover of sounds sounds is kind of in this period i think it's setting itself up as i guess you call it like yeah it's a street level magazine if you like and and and the people covered in makeup who are going to cover the covers of the enemy and melody maker in coming years are not going to appear on the front cover of sounds they're going to stick with the kind of the punky and obviously the metal end of things. Oh, and before we step away from Sounds, chaps, allow me to draw your attention to a couple of Twitter accounts. At Sounds Clips, who's scanning and ping out cuttings from Sounds,

and at Nothing Else On, which does the same thing for Melody Maker and the NME. If you're regularly plunging your head into the shit bucket that is Twitter, give them a follow because they are doing God's work. Oh, they are, yeah. Full singles pages and stuff like that. It's fascinating. Those accounts, again, at Sounds Clips and at Nothing Else On.

So what else was on telly today? Well, BBC One commences at 6..m with the triple bill of testing infants renaissance spectacle and conflict in the family in open university there's another gig poster for you and then closes down for one hour and 52 minutes at 13 to 10 it's an orgy of schools and colleges programs before it closes down for another hour and 20 minutes. Then it's the midday news, Pebble Mill at one, Mr Ben arses about with a balloon, you and me, a couple more schools programmes,

and then another close down for 15 minutes. After, oh dear, sorry Simon, in advance, Dechraucanu. Nope. Go on, what in advance, Dechraucanu Nope. Go on, what is it? Dechraucani Dechraucani Dechraucanmal which is Songs of Praise basically in Welsh. It started in 1961

you know, so it's before Songs of Praise it inspired Songs of Praise. Wow. Wow, yeah. After that it's regional news in your area Play School, the all new Popeye show, a repeat of Graham's Gang, John Craven's Newsround,

Blue Peter, and then the evening news. Nationwide features their new signing, Reginald Bozenke, as he examines the aristocracy, and then Rod, Han, and Prenderville. Look at the latest developments in sound reproduction in tomorrow's world. That, um, that Bose and Kay view on the aristocracy. I want to, I'm sorry, I want to hear the skinhead view on the aristocracy from what we've heard about what's been going on.

Or the polo pony view on the aristocracy. You know this thing of Prince Charles getting booted in the face by his polo horse, right? Which is obviously 1980. I looked into this, right? It happened again in 1990. And then it happened again in 2001. Fucking horses hate him, man. And it's the wisdom of the equine there.

They know things. And I find this amazing story that in 1981, when Prince Charles was visiting New Zealand, he wrote an angry letter to an unnamed friend back home. I think we know who that unnamed friend is, don't we? Complaining about all the grief he was getting from New Zealand people. Because apparently everywhere he went, they were taking the piss out of him for falling off his horse and getting kicked by it. And it really riled him up.

But yeah, yeah. BBC Two also kicks off at 6 40 a.m with an open university triforce and then closes down for three hours and five minutes then carol leader and don spencer let us into play school and then closes down again for another three hours and 45 minutes before whipping us over to the crucible for the semi-finals of the Embassy World Snooker Championships. Then it's more Open Universitaire, then more snooker, and they've just started the mid-evening news. ITV opens up at half-nine for a schools and colleges avalanche, followed by Gammon and Spinach,

which turns out to be another Jackanory clone presented by Roy Kinnear, Stepping Stones, Gardening Today with Cyril Fletcher, News at One and Regional News in Your Area. At half one, it's the first episode of the romantic terminal illness drama series for Maddie with Love. Then Mary Berry pops up on Afternoon Plus. Then we're front-marched to Newmarket for the 1,000 guineas. That's followed by Windows, whatever the fuck that is. It's only five minutes long.

Fang Face. Then Salvage One. The American series about a scrap dealer who builds a space rocket so he can nick all the gear left on the moon by nasa then it's the news at 5 45 regional news in your area crossroads and they're 20 minutes into emmerdale farm chaps is there anything leaping out at you there well shit scooby--Doo rip-off Fangface, for starters. Never heard of that. Oh, it's terrible.

If you're seeking out shit Scooby-Doo rip-offs, by the way, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids is much, much better. Oh, really? It's got some great music in it, from the 70s, yeah. Their tune, Looking for Someone, is an absolute banger. It's a great cartoon, that. Beyond that, just remembering the sinking sense of tedium when racing would be on the fucking telly oh god yeah i love horses too simon but it's just instant

boredom isn't it there was something incredibly sort of dulling of the senses about those days when you were off school ill and the only things to watch on telly were crown court at lunchtime and and the horse racing and it was just the sort of the the dull sort of thud the rumble of the hooves and the kind of monotonous commentary would would make you feel like you were in some kind of alternate reality but a really dull alternate reality everyone involved in horse racing just seems like a cunt john mcclellan as well yeah was that the london itv listings reading no ATV I always do ATV whenever I can ah right

that's where my heart's at Simon there was on the thing you sent us there was HTV as well it was Harlech

Television it's the Welsh one of course and at 7.30 which I guess is going up against Top of the Pops The Incredible Hulk

and it says Banner is the target of a voodoo healer I thought fuck me that's all I want to watch now. I wonder if, you know that Welsh Songs of Praise show?

I wonder if people have always played the Songs of Praise game with religious shows like that. Go on. You know, where you watch the congregation and figure out if you'd want to fuck any of them. I used to love watching Songs of Praise with me granny because she was fucking dead against religion. She'd just sit there and just say,

oh, look at all these fucking bastards. I bet they're not there next week. And the vicar would turn up. She'd always say, I bet he's got a tie with a nudie woman on it. And I do believe on that note we've laid the table

for the episode of Top of the Pops that we're going to tuck into so come back and join us tomorrow for part two of our odyssey

into the May the 1st 1980 episode of Top of the Pops but until then thank you very much Simon Price you're welcome

God bless you Neil Kulkarni my name's Al Needham demanding that you stay pop crazed chart music