Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #69 (Pt 1): 27.12.74 – The Ramadan #1 of 1974

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

Taylor Parkes and Rock Expert David Stubbs join Al Needham to prepare the ground for an in-depth trawl through one of those end-of-year TOTPs – and this one is a rare Friday teatime excursion through the bangers of 1974, and possibly the last episode from the Golden Age of Top Of The Pops. Naturally, there’s a pick through that week’s NME, and the introduction of Pantomime Horse, the parlour game poised to sweep the dinner parties of 2023. TUCK IN, POP-CRAZED YOUNGSTERS… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language which will frequently mean sexual swear words sharp 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 with me today are Taylor Parks and rock expert David Stubbs. Indeed. Boys, before we get stuck into the pop and the interesting things, I have to make an apology to all the pop craze youngsters out there because this was supposed to be the Christmas episode episode of chart music and uh and it's not now it's not even the fucking russian orthodox christmas episode of charmies i miss that cunt as well we recorded a bit late in the day didn't we on this one uh got

it all done just before christmas eve and i thought oh i'll go around my mams for a couple of weeks i'll take my brand new laptop laptop, and I'll do all the editing there and bang it straight out for New Year's Eve, and no, that didn't happen. So, on behalf of no other fucker but me, it's all my fault, I'm soz. I'm well soz, Pop Craze youngsters. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?

We're like those cunts on your street who leave their Christmas decorations up in March, aren't we? Anyway, the pop things, the interesting things, tell me now! Yeah, it's curious really. Normally I see Christmas as this kind of tunnel of barbed wire that you just have to get through and just think about tax returns and all that shit. But there was a bit of a sprinkling of the christmas spirit with me this year oh yeah you know i saw um my little boy dara uh who's seven he did his first ever sort of

nativity i say nativity it was a sort of nativity scene with santa claus heavily involved which i think theologians would probably quibble about a bit but um it was all right they sang loads of songs did some macaton style because in a sort of speech and language unit you know so they've all got like these little particular needs he had one line and that was i have brought frankincense and he was doing all right in rehearsals but i know a little giddy is i just had this feeling we all did on on the day when you know it said i have brought gold says the first wise man and the second wise man dara just looks at you and says what do you want but he didn't he belted it out of the park it was brilliant i brought you frankincense you know it was like brian blessed like he was addressing the

rafters beautiful 10 out of 10 so i've never been to an activity like that before um probably the last time i was when i was in one oh who were you oh i think i was joseph actually of course it was kind of improv really it was like the one in Adrian Mole. Yeah, it's a problem. They got myself suspended. No, I'll tell you who I was. I was the husband. The chap, you know, went going around with the stable owners or whatever.

And there was this other woman there. I was supposed to be married to her. And she'd actually been most of the talking. And I just said, yes, now and again. We do have a stable around the back. It's not very much. And I'd just say, yes. So, yeah yeah it wasn't

exactly um tony slattery-esque i suppose you know my skill did you sing rat-a-tat-tat rat-a-tat-tat no no no no i'm afraid not no no that's i mean you know that's the dimmest memories of this and you know it really you know it's just like frankincense i mean you know everybody can say mur mur's just a noise but frankincense i mean get your laughing ear around, you know, he really, you know, it's just like frankincense. I mean, you know, everybody can say mer, mer's just a noise, but frankincense, I mean, get your laughing ear around that, you know. And I was always like one of the gold Frankenstein and mer kids, you know, when I was at school. It's so easy to fall back on, isn't it, that one?

It is, yeah. Also, a few days before Christmas, there was a train strike and it was his last day of his trampoline class and I had to pick him up from school and it was a three-hour bus journey covering about seven miles. It actually would have been easier to have walked. Just like I was feeling kind of absolutely like shit on a stick. But, you know, finally when he got there into this sports centre where they hold it, they were having their little Christmas party there.

I'd sort of snuck in a bottle of Prosecco. And we did a little toast. I just remember a sort of really kind of like an angel getting his wings or something like that. One of those lovely little Christmas moments. They're only fleeting, but, you know, they do last. Did you get pissed up and have a go on the trampoline? No, I mean, that will happen one of these years. What kind of human being are you?

I know, you're quite right, actually. They chuck us out after an hour, fortunately. If it had gone on all evening, I think, then definitely, yeah. There'd have been a lot of swinging and a jumping and a jumping and a lengthy trip to a and e and yeah definitely taylor what's pop what's interesting baby oh well thomas man said a writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people manfred man said there she was just a walkinger down the street singing do what did he did

he dumb did he do cooper man said hey blunder woman get a load of this one it makes you think doesn't it no you know i've been taking full advantage of london life between the pandemics which is to say uh not having enough money to go out for a drink or to heat my home so uh sitting in a freezing cold flat listening to low-flying police helicopters but i don't really mind them it's company for me and if you had a little box or something like i don't know a tic-tac box or a fag packet you could look out your window and pretend that they're your drones imagine them fun yeah fun in short supply maybe no heating this year so more authentically victorian christmas than usual and a nice lively game of snapdragon you know some especially

energetic charades uh nothing in my stocking but an orange and a walnut and a wind-up toy mouse got myself a christmas present got a rare album of baccarat and david songs very rare it's the songs where but baccarat wrote the lyrics and how david wrote the music it's terrible it's like they definitely got it the right way round, the way they normally did it. That's like that Tommy Cooper joke, isn't it? Now, what you've got there is a Stradivarius and a Rembrandt. Unfortunately, Stradivarius was a terrible painter

and Rembrandt made rotten violins. Oh, yeah, yeah. It has been previously done better, yeah. Thanks, David. Sorry. Other than that, what else we've been doing i watched some more triangle hey out of the way fish here it comes uh so yet more steel gray watery horizons and characters called things like arthur parker and barbara carter best thing

that's happened lately is the ship stopped to pick up some lost Russian sailors whose enthusiasm for the West and wretched tales of their homeland taught quite a lesson to the dogmatic young communist engineer who previously appeared to believe that the Eastern Bloc was like Beverly Hills, but for everyone. Because Triangle takes a similar approach to class consciousness as carry on at your convenience but then when i've grown weary of the middle brow and want to really dive like one of those submersibles from the blue planet descending into the mariana trench of western culture in search of the most bizarre and hideous hr giga fish i've also been on youtube

watching the australian remake of love thy neighbor oh have you seen this love thy australian neighbor i've seen bits of it yes this was a traditional move in the old days when your show had worn itself out you could go to australia and star in the australian remake made for people who'd already seen the british version but were still thrilled to have you over there doing it all over again but cheaper and worse john inman did it yes appeared in the australian iub and served obviously the most famous or notorious one is tony hancock who went over there to make Australian Hancock's Half Hour and almost instantly topped himself. Steptoe did it as well.

Yeah, but it's a little known fact. Jack Smethurst also took that long, long flight and appeared in Australian version Love Thy Neighbour. And when you compare it to the British Love Thy Neighbour, well, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that they flipped the concept. So now Eddie Booth is the foreigner. He's the immigrant next door.

And his macho Aussie neighbour thinks he's a whinging pommy layabout. So it's slightly easier to watch without the barrage of racist language. But the bad news is this means there are now no black people in the show at all thanks to the white australia policy we have an all-white cast which isn't so progressive and it makes the program kind of pointless and they only got one episode out of the cultural differences between england and australia which is meant to be the point of the thing because the writing is so uninspired they can't even get original ideas out of that or aboriginal ideas either yeah they didn't dare so by halfway through the series they're doing gay panic storylines even before

that they were already reduced by episode three to creep up behind burglar and clonk him over the head but it turns out it's not a burglar there's not a single new joke in sight but it's almost vaguely interesting to watch at least next week on the ugandan buses starring reg varney and joseph adongo and you'll be watching it won't you taylor well i mean what else am i going to do try actually i was thinking as a money-making scheme you know those dinner nights based on only fools and horses or faulty towers where like non-lookalikes walk around dressed as del boy or yeah that's all fine you eat your dinner in this uk gold tribute band ambience well don't you think a really shrewd operator would start one of those based on love

thy neighbor yes i think it would be a big hit with the target demographic despite the inevitable elitist whining and virtue signaling of the the so-called non-racist errati it's either that or set up a cable channel called great britishy, which is just an endless montage of two-second clips of every time David Jason in early series of Only Fools and Horses used an unpleasant term for an Asian grocer's. Just all of those edited together, looped and repeated 24 hours a day with the audio playing twice, overlapping and going in and out of sync like a steve wright tape composite yes just that interspersed with videos of the who all day

and if the bbc set up bbc nine and just broadcast that forever i'd say all those triple lock cunts would soon stop moaning about the license fee christ i love i had to watch a lot of rub thy neighbor for this book that i've just about finished and uh oh dear me i mean it's just so awful things the weird thing about it is that smethers will say like knick-knock and of course you know rudolph walker comes back with honky and it's as if to imply there's kind of a parody oh yeah that's just as bad isn't it honky yeah because i remember as a white kid you know being called a honky so often and how damaging that was you know to my sense of self esteem and what have you maybe he was just talking about his favorite southampton funk band though

it's always disappointing christmas at home when you're not a family man you know makes you long for the days when ordinary humans could go on holiday do you remember that you could spend your christmas in an alpine fantasia and pull through the streets of grindelwald on a fairy lit reindeer sleigh on christmas eve it'd be nice you've ever been to switzerland yeah i've been yeah quite a few times not at christmas though yeah have you are you fucking david bowie or something yeah yeah i summered rather than wintered in switzerland it's an incredibly great and incredibly terrible place. Every time I've been there, I've felt enormously comfortable. You've been to Switzerland as well?

Oh, yeah. Am I the only person who hasn't been to Switzerland? That's right. It appears so, yeah. For fuck's sake. Well, it's the young gods and yellow and all that, you know. Always sort of trotting over there. I've never been to me either.

Fucking hell, what a shit life i've had but listen what it is you go there and you feel comfortable because almost everything about the the rural or the alpine areas of switzerland is kept exactly as it was in 1926 right it's so laughably beautiful and so exactly what you'd expect from storybooks and sappy films. And personally, that countryside and those old buildings stirs some real emotion in me. I hope it doesn't make me a literal Nazi, but being in a picturesque old-timey European setting does feel very comfortable to me, even being so close to all that gold and all those paintings. And all that aside, the terrible truth is that it's genuinely wonderful to have a place in Europe that is still sealed in the olden days

and feels like a century ago. But the price you pay for that is that it's not a real country. It's like a middle Europa theme park. Because to keep a European country in that state indefinitely first of all you have to forcibly stop it from developing naturally and then you also have to fund this somehow so the payback for the preservation of this beautiful place is that you walk down the high street of any of these picture book alpine towns and in between the fondue restaurants and the chocolate shops it's all jimmy chews and louis vuitton and prada because they've all become play pens for the well

for the very rich but not quite super rich and the price you pay is that the cities in switzerland are the most boring cities on earth because they're just money and business towns they're only there to keep the billions of Swiss francs churning to subsidize this vast expanse of beauty and the major price that you pay is you become a country with absolutely no culture which is also pretty racist apart from the young gods apart from the young gods yeah yeah a few other things in the 21st century there's no way you can have a place like switzerland without all that also being the case so i think it's probably good to have one place like that in europe or two if you count lichtenstein which is switzerland taken to its logical conclusion and it would be awful

to lose it but the reality is fucking creepy and unnerving as well as being the loveliest place i've ever seen that isn't a tropical or arctic archipelago but i think that you know liking the tinkling of cowbells doesn't make you a national socialist um really but um but having said that yeah it is fucking hell it is never said more cowbell, did he? I used to watch Ski Sunday, and I'd just feel the jackboots bursting out. Goose-stepping across to switch it to BBC Two. Yeah, with blue eyes lighting up. It's bloody expensive.

The last time I went to Switzerland, I went to Gstaad, to some luxury hotel. You've been to Switzerland more than what for fuck's sake? I know, I know. This was actually with a friend that was on some sort of jolly to this hotel, but a glass of wine has set you back 20 quid. People living in Geneva would cross the border to France to do their shopping. Was this the Gouinard Palace Hotel?

I think it might have been. Yeah, I was looking at the menu of that online the other day. And quite frankly, 60 quid for the grilled beef olivet with sauteed potatoes and perigordian juice. And I bet you could fit it in the palm of your hand. Pathetic, isn't it? And I'll tell you what, I hope you don't like sea bass unless your surname is Monopoly. Well, goodbye to all our Swiss listeners there. I just think it's a shame that for the Pop Craze Patreons,

we didn't have time to do like what Nationwide or Blue Peter or All-Star Record Breakers would do and put on a little pantomime for Christmas. Oh, maybe next year, Taylor. Because at this spooky time of year, thoughts turn inevitably to pantomime because everyone goes to one every year, don't they? Oh, yeah.

Because like what Christmas would be complete turn inevitably to pantomime because everyone goes to one every year don't they no yeah it's like what christmas would be complete without a 32 year old woman in green tight and a three-cornered hat i went to one once in birmingham where there was a flight of stairs leading down from the front of the stage into the orchestra pit right i remember when the pantomime horse came on and stood a bit too close to it, really, really wanting to see the pantomime horse fall down the stairs, not out of any particular ill will, but just because if a pantomime horse fell down a flight of stairs, I can't imagine the patterns it would make. Have you ever been in a pantomime horse?

No. Nope. Oh, fucking hell, I've never been to Switzerland. I've never been in a pantomime horse no no oh fucking hell i've never been to switzerland i've never been in a pantomime fucking hell this entire episode is about belittling me and my my meager achievements in life i mean if it was you and me al i mean you know you haven't been to me but at least you'd have been to me it would have been in time to my horse together you know if david and i were in a pantomime horse dav David, who would you put at the front? I'm sorry, Albert. I just have to. I get claustrophobic.

But this is it, right? What are you saying about my arse, David? This is precisely what I was thinking about. I'm sort of fascinated. I don't know if there's some rule which determines who goes up front and who brings up the rear. I don't know whether there are front guys and back guys, and that's their speciality. Yeah.

And the back guys are proud of it, like power bottoms. Or whether it just comes down to seniority or who grabs the suit first, you know. And do they get paid the same? I don't think they should. Right. Because, I mean, mean look what if the pantomime was going on and a loose stallion burst into the theater unexpected i see where you're

going galloped onto the stage on my horse yes the pantomime the man in the front would be having by far the better time i think but he'd also have the greater responsibility to do something about it so you know I presume that if that happened in that crisis scenario while the bloke at the back was screaming the bloke in the front would shit into his screaming mouth just to establish the hierarchy within the horse. Because without that hierarchy, all you would have is chaos. So you'd be shitting out of malice or fear? You've just got to lay down some principles. All right, then, I'm going to chuck out some duos. You tell me which one of the two's at the back of the horse.

OK, wham. Well, you know, come on, we know this one. I mean, he's barely at the back of the horse, this old Andrew. It's the tail, really. Simon and Garfunkel. Oh, well, there's a height issue here, isn't there? Despite the fact that Paul Simon wrote all the songs, I think you'd have to put art up the front, really.

I mean, there's his head and all that. Yeah, there's a sense in which their recording of Bridge Over Troubled Water is like a pantomime. All right, Liam and Noel Gallagher. I think what you'd have is like a horse-shaped bag with like a lot of sort of bulges coming out at different areas like a be no fight cloud peters and lee well yeah you see i think that we've established that lenny peters in the past is not the most sort of progressive of thinkers. So I think that despite his blindness, he might nonetheless insist

that as the bloke, you know, he gets to go at the front with disastrous consequences. Down the stairs, though, we'd get to see that. Liz Kershaw and Bruno Brooks. They're both at the back. Surely that must be possible. How about this one? Mr.

Ed and Hercules from Steptoe and Son. Oh, and can I add to that Taylor and modify it a bit? Yeah. Hercules and Mr. Ed trying to get into the pictures with a big long overcoat. I mean, Mr. Ed's got to talk, isn't he isn't he so he's he's gonna be at

the top yeah obviously yeah that's a no-brainer is that one in the stalls and tries to pass over some money whilst forgetting he hasn't got opposable thumbs or anything speaking of chaos by the way since the last time we were here have we all got that excited new monarch feeling oh yes it's lovely isn't it my only concern is how's king charles gonna manage now that he can't ask jimmy saville for advice about everything like he did for 35 years i fear that as a nation we may be lost without that power behind the throne. He's going to have a problem, is old King Charles, because the thing about the Queen is that by virtue of, like, doing nothing and saying nothing, effectively, in terms of public life,

people could just project whatever they wanted onto her, and they could project this kind of rather sort of virtuous, saintly, otherworldly, wise, shrewd woman. But, of course, Prince Charles has spent most of his life saying loads and doing loads, so he's a bit sort of demystified, really, and I think that's going to be his major problem. Well, it'll probably be a shortish reign, I would imagine. But, anyway, before we go any further, you know how we go about at this point, because I have come to tell thee of all the newborn patreon subscribers to see

in the five dollar section this week we have james shooter emily grant johnny m michael avery Emma Murray, Tim Ward, Joe O'Donnell, Dave Valentine, Jason Branigan, Ian Robertson, Robert Oliver, Ted H, Paul Braithwaite, Tina Boffin, Michael Cook, Nacho Vidal, Colonel Nutz, Richard, open brackets, Levi Levi everybody wants to be a cat porridge selection box please please me pip it from Jaws 221B Baker Street

close brackets and the return of someone who chooses to call themselves Leicester is better than Nottingham the real Nacho Vidal. I'm surprised he's got time. And in the $3 section,

we have Simon Mulvaney, Kylian Fowler, John Bennett, and Steve Hughes. Oh, babies, we love you so. These guys rock. And Mark Savage, Daniel Sullivan, and Doug Grant jacked their contributions right up,

which means they get to go into the private room with me and watch me oil up my breasts and mash them like they were Play-Doh. And it goes without saying that this episode is dedicated to all the Pop Craze Patreons who have put a jingle in our G-string this year. Fucking hell, you're amazing, your lot. Excellent. We think you're lush. Great people.

And as well as getting this episode in full without any rubbish advert bollocks ages before everyone else, the Pop Craze Patreons get the opportunity to prize open the back door of the record shop, grab that chart return book, and fiddle with it like a bastard in order to rig the chart music Christmas top ten. Oh my God, are you ready, boys? Yes!

Hit the fucking music! We've said goodbye to Jeff Sex, Legs and Cunny, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Glitter and my fucking car. Which means none up, five down, one non-mover, one re-entry and three new entries. A former number one now down seven places to number ten, the Airbnb 52s. It's a new entry at number nine for Dag Vag. Reentry at number eight, rock expert David Starr.

No change at number seven for for here comes the inches. And it's a one-place drop from number five to number six for the bent cunts who aren't fucking real. Into the top five, and it's a one-place drop for Bomber Dog. Straight into the chart at number four, the Nagasaki Hell Blaster. Down from number two to number three for Eric Smallshore of Eccles. Last week's number one has dropped one place to number two,

the provisional Uaruare, which means... Britain's number one! the provisional which means it could only be the highest new entry and the chart music Christmas number one of 2022 the Birmingham Piss Troll oh

what a chart boys so the new entries chaps Dag Vag well we know Oh, what a chart, boys. Represent. So, the new entries, chaps. Dag Vag. Well, we know they're a Swedish band whose name I've completely mispronounced, but it sounds better that way. Kind of Swedish reggae. Not as good as Finnish reggae.

What's his name? Ricky Scorza in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1981, Reggae OK. You know that one, don't you, David? Oh, of course, yeah. Yeah, about time the accordion was introduced to the cultural mix of reggae, don't you think? Definitely, yeah. I think there's nothing like skanking along to a bit of accordion. The Nagasaki Hell Blaster.

Well, you know, there's only three words that sprang to mind when I heard him. That's called thrash. And the Birmingham piss troll. What does that sound like? Yeah. The do they know it's Christmas of this chart. Probably surprisingly avant-garde, actually. So if you want in on the pulsating thrill ride

of being a Pop Craigs Patreon, you know what to do. Keyboard. Patreon.com slash chart music. Pledge. Pledge. and pledge some more if you can it's your money that we want and your money we shall have so this episode pop craze youngsters takes us all the way back to december the 27th 1974 and I have to say that for reasons both musical televisual and personal there's a definite end of era tinge about this one particularly when you

compare it to the 1972 and 1973 episodes we've already covered on chart music. I mean, there's no T-Rex, there's no Sweet, no Wizard, no Cassadare. Slade is still in there, but only for a song they did in 1973. You know, there's a few acts hanging in there, but you can't help but feel that the wind has changed. Yeah, I mean, obviously, I was 12 at the time. I didn't really feel that kind of sense of declinism or whatever. You know, this is my pop life. It was almost like a kind of a kind of a peak really but yeah i guess you can look at it now and think that a certain 70s is on the point of ending yeah now this is really the the first time in the

pop era where the general feeling is hey everything's quite shit now you know the entire history of pop music up to this point is all about freshness optimism and modernity yeah some definition of progress and now suddenly over the last year or two all of that's dried up and for the first time there's no excitement about living now that's right there's a kind of hiatus and i think that what fills that is the first great pang of nostalgia the early rock and roll and there's so much of that around from about 73 onwards because ultimately you can see the national mood like the effects of the oil crisis and what it means for the west and all filtering through to this place here pop music where consumerism and the imagination meet

and both those things have been affected by the gloom you know and it's partly that and it's partly just well you can see everything has gone a bit shit hasn't it you know it's funny once the technological optimism and the thrill of prosperity drops away you realize that in 1974 you're still in a philip larkin hancock's half hour world where people sit by a lamp in a cold room in silence writing each other letters to break up the solitude you know and on a sunday or after about 10 o'clock at night there's literally nothing to do except inhale the damp, you know. So there's all that lost energy and curdled optimism.

If you listen to the lovely song 1974 by the very occasionally great Robin Hitchcock, it's in there. And you can see why things felt like that. Unlike a lot of easy assumptions about pop cultural eras i think this is true there's a bit of a sense of decline because it's verified by pretty much everyone who was there or at least everyone who'd lived through the years immediately before this and could feel the sudden difference maybe if you were 15 at the time it might have seemed exciting although i'm not too sure about that because i was 15 in 1987 which was the 1974 of the 80s and i was acutely aware of how dead things were there

was this sort of sense of you know decline is and indicating despair or whatever and just especially going on into the mid 70s the only thing was it it's more sort of cultural, it's more a sort of latitude, it's more a mood. It's not really, I mean, in lots of ways, you know, there was a bit more political justice and a bit more equality back in the 70s in the UK. And there was more job security, housing was cheaper. We had sort of public services intact. Nonetheless, people did feel a little bit sort of jaded, certainly,

and that things weren't as good as they were and yet you know there was an index at a time when people like i mean going on later into the 70s when you know lindsey depaul or whatever singing about where are we rock bottom and say well fucking hell you know i'll show you what we start drooling in the 21st century i can fucking tell you you know but um actually there was some there was a survey done in 1976 that suggested that people were actually at their happiest overall in any sense States since the end of the Second World War. And actually, although there was a lot of that mood, and I think a lot of it was sort of fed into punk and things like that, it was also coming from the top, though. I mean, a lot of it was like sort of shareholders pissed off that, like, you know, that they weren't getting the kind of returns they are, or people having to pay the kind of tax that they were under wilson and all that kind of stuff you know they were generating a lot of the kind of britain

going to the dogs type stuff at the same time as this but yeah i mean what taylor says is it is true certainly having said that yeah if you watch anything that's genuinely representative of the mid-1970s like this top of the pops for instance you do get the feeling that in some ways this was a more advanced culture than we live in today and yet in others it was a complete shit show well yeah and it's the tug between those two things that makes this period compelling despite everything so if i were to say chaps the music of 1974 what is immediately going to fly out of those musically minded mouths of yours crap work i suppose but um that's something that's kind of happening beneath the surface really um in terms

of what's happening at that you know as it were surface level it's a lot of people still slightly moldering i guess from the early 70s is yeah it was the the energy and pop has dropped off all the interesting music being made is not in the charts it's like we always say the only reliably good music in mid-70s british charts is black american music yes british pop is kind of in the doldrums a bit and all the interesting music being made is away from the chart i think in this episode we're going to see confirmation that glam is now morphing into mock and roll. I mean, this is the year that show-woddy-woddy won new faces. The big band of the moment is a definite throwback.

It's all going that way. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a strange time. And, like, look, forgive me if I go on a bit again. No, no, no, go ahead, sir. These podcasts aren't just fabulously long because we're self-indulgent fucks it's because the only way to get any sense out of these relics of a recent semi-recognizable past is to live with them bolt the doors and gradually torture out the true essence of the time. Because if you rush it, you end up falling back on all the myths

and all the misleading clichés, you know, about discontinued sweets and happy, smiling kids playing out on the main road, you know, with nuclear waste and crocodiles. And every single one of those kids who's still here to say, well, I survived, really did survive. Every single one of them but looking back this period seems somehow weirder and more foreign than 10 years earlier do you know what i mean even though this is within my lifetime the atmospheres and the vistas that i

can personally remember seem stranger and more alien than a lot of stuff that i can't you know because this is like some of my earliest memories are from this time and when i think back it's really hard to relate to now just everyday stuff that's far stranger when you think about it years later than any crazy fashions or anything like that like people driving around in the mist in cars that were just metal inside you know you know you get in a car now and it's all sculpted plastic and upholstery and little screens which light up and the interiors of these cars look like the inside of an old spitfire it's just metal you might as well have had a like a oxygen mask hanging under the front seat you know i mean i remember when i

was in the car with my dad around about this time to go and see my non-armed grandpa i'd climb up off the back seat um didn't have to take the seat belt off because fucking hell he wears a seat belt yeah and i'd just climb up on the parcel rack at the back and just lie there yeah yeah yeah yeah and dad didn't say anything yeah i remember being in my uncle's car, driving down the street, and the cold wind would be streaming into the car through a hole in the side where a bit of the bodywork had just rusted away. You'd just sit there in the draft with your coat on,

toggled right up to the neck, you know, like sitting at home Christmas 2022. And the suspension was like everything in the car was on its own spring so when you went over a pothole or if you had to drive over a field which in those days people sometimes did everything was moving in different directions inside the car as the outside rolled around on its axles it was like a carnival sideshow. If you're over five foot eight, the top of your head would just bang off the roof. Yes. If there hadn't been a roof, you'd have been propelled out of the car.

Because as you say, seatbelts were for homosexuals. Yes. God, I remember eight of us, me, my two brothers, my mum and dad, my uncle and aunt and cousin, eight of us, all travelling out to scarborough from leeds and a mini fucking hell i mean you wouldn't do you wouldn't do that these days thank christ i tell you what as well speaking of cold the lack of modern style properly warm clothes right because a lot of which hadn't been invented so they just have to wear layers you see someone in a string vest with a shirt and tie over that with a jumper over that with a suit over that with a leather jacket over that with a big overcoat

over that without anything done up so around the arms you'd have about nine layers of clothing but in the front channel like the breastplate area there's almost nothing between frost and flesh so i wonder people always getting a cold on the chest but it's trivial stuff like that seems non-trivial to me because when i think back to my earliest memories that's what they feel like you know it's all about the cold of buildings and the smell of mildew and terrible wartime fibres, you know. At that time, really did feel drab and evil, even though a lot of people were having an awful lot of fun. It's sad. I was watching an old daytime cookery programme from the mid-70s the other week.

And I got a bit upset when they were talking about some recipe or other and the older lady presenting said or you can use black currant leaves they'll be coming along soon and i could only think of this battalion of elderly dying people you know still living by the seasons born in the 19th century their houses all silent and cold at night you know all of them soon gone was it worth it merry christmas yeah i'm not saying at all that this episode is catchy i mean there are a lot of bangers in the trifle of pop that's about to be served up to us but i do feel this does mark the end of the golden age of Top of the Pops, and it's going to be a long winter until the Aventis come along

and perk everything up again. So we better enjoy it while it's here, eh, chaps? Indeed. Onward! This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long.

Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Radio 1 News In the news this week, John Stonehouse, the disgraced former Postmaster General and current Labour MP for Walsall North,

who was believed to have been eaten by a shark in Miami, has been arrested in Melbourne on Christmas Eve by local police who thought he was Lord Lucan. The IRA round off the year by bombing Oxford Street, Harrods, a pub in Wiltshire, a Dixon's in Bristol and also find time to lob a bomb through Ted Heath's living room window. The Australian city of Darwin has practically been flattened by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Day,

destroying 70% of its buildings, 80% of its houses and causing £4.2 billion worth of damage in today's rubbish money. Gerald Ford, the still relatively new president of the USA, reveals in an interview that he believes 1975 will be a year of crisis, with a new war in the Middle East and the complete economic breakdown of a European country allied to America, who he won't name. It's us poor cunts. There's been a mass arrest of over 150 Santas in Denmark

who went on a shoplifting rampage in Copenhagen and gave out their booty to passers-by in the shopping centre as a protest against commercialism. Mick Taylor has left the Rolling Stones after five years and rumours abound that his replacement will be Ronnie Wood

of the Faces. Pope Paul VI is nearly brained by falling rubble on christmas day when the holy door is open for him during some ceremony or other jack benny has died at the age of 80 john purtwee has recorded his final episode of doctor who and will regenerate into tom baker next week outrage has broken out all over the country over the latest tour by Britain's most controversial group with angry parents leading walkouts

at the general rubbishness of the stage show The Wombles of Wimbledon Common. According to the complaints which have been aired right across the media, the kiddies were unable to hear anything through the masks of the actors, there weren't enough Womble songs in the show, and a lack of padding in the costumes made the South West London eco-warriors look positively anorexic.

After the Liverpool show closed down after one performance, the final straw came in Belf when angry dads bum rushed the stage demanding their money back meanwhile the malcolm mclaren of the group great uncle bulgaria has been subjected to a full body search at heathrow airport while dressed as santa on his way to the lord mayor of belfast christmas, brandishing a suspicious-looking Christmas cake. After they made him do a dance and pick up some stray litter and put it in a bin, the customs officers were satisfied as to who he was, and he was allowed to board the plane. I'm in full sympathy with the angry dads of Belfast because I've been through that

when my nephew was five years old he was well into Noddy and they were doing Noddy the stage show at the Ice Arena in Nottingham so I got tickets for it and I took him out I didn't tell him where we were going I thought you know what

I'll just walk around and he's just going to bump into Noddy and he's going to think I'm the fucking king of the uncles so anyway we're walking around we do a few bits and bobs and we get to the ice arena and i said oh i hear that in that building there's someone you'd probably like to see shall we go in so i sat him down in the fucking ice arena and the lights come up and there's noddy and big ears and everything dancing on the stage and i'm just sat back arms folded job well done and look down he looks absolutely disgusted by the whole thing

and i say hey look jamie there's there's nod air what do you mean he turned around and looked at me with a look of pure fucking hatred and he just said this makes me mad i couldn't work out why it was i think it was something to do with the fact that he knew that noddy wasn't human sized because he fitted on a small screen television and he realized that he was all a cod and i've got a photo of him at half time and he didn't want to go back in i was just like look i paid fucking stupid amount of money i can't afford on this you little cunt you're gonna go back in there you're gonna enjoy it and he's just leaning against the wall with his head against the brickwork in absolute defeat oh he's never allowed to forget the little fucker but the big news this week is santa's been what did you get chaps do you know what i was thinking of this

because i can remember it pretty clear 1975 was crossfire year no 1972 was monopoly year 1973 was cludo year but i can't for the life and remember i think i would have got obviously the latest in the sort of top of the pop series of course you know one of my grandmas i said on the back of the sleeve building up a collection that will make you the my grandmas, it said on the back of the sleeve, building up a collection that will make you the envy of your neighbourhood. I wasn't the envy of my neighbourhood, I can assure you. How could you be the envy of your neighbourhood?

I don't know. Somehow or other, the entire neighbourhood would be kind of, you know, green and wistful. See that David Stubbs there? He's got a full set of the Top of the Pulse collection. Bastard.

He's got 20 LPs in total. Fucking hell. That's all I can remember, really, you know. It would have been absolutely mint whatever it was i mean yeah i'm sure not blanking out or messing some disappointment you know i was two so i suspect my parents were still taking advantage of the fact that you can just lob anything at a kid it's christmas yeah party seven at the wrapping paper from my pack of aftershave. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Crunchy, crunchy.

On the cover of Melody Maker this week, Freddie Mercury raising a glass of champagne. On the cover of Music Star, Alvin Stardust dressed up as Santa. On the cover of Radio Times,

Frank Spencer holding the empty half of a cracker. On the cover of TV Times, Tommy Steel as Hans Christian Andersen reading a book to some kiddies. That's a bit fucking cerebral for TV Times, isn't it? The number one single this week is Lonely This Christmas by Mudd. The number one LP is Elton Lonely This Christmas by Mud. The number one LP is Elton John's Greatest Hits. David Essex by David Essex is at number two.

And Rolling by the Bay City Rollers is at number three. Over in America, the number one single is Cats in the Cradle by Harry Shapin. And the number one LP is Elton John's Greatest Hits. It's only rock and roll by the Rolling Stones at number two, War Child by Jethro Tull at number three. So, me boys, what were we doing in December of 1974? I was 12 years old. I was in the first year at St Michael's College, a very

sort of college-like institute in Headingley in Leeds. And you know what? I was doing pretty well. I was getting pretty much top marks across the board, you know, across all subjects, except chemistry. I was a bit rubbish at that. And I was in the football team. The only thing that really, you know, to sort of make me the complete chap, as it

were, at that age, was the question, you know, was I cock of 1A? That was my class. You know, was I, like, best fire? Could I knack anyone that they put up against me? Trouble was, I was so well-liked and popular that no-one ever picked a fight with me, so I never got to test my strength.

You know, that's the sadness of it. Walking around the playground with a full set of Top of the Pops LPs under your arm, no doubt. Exactly, yeah. Not just the envy of my neighbourhood, yeah, definitely. It was pretty grim. I mean, I had to take two buses from my little village of Barrack-in-Elm into Headingley in Leeds.

And you just, every morning, especially in the winter, you know, you've just got the full gamut of the David Peace-like toxicity of 70s Leeds. And I guess that's generally why the colourisation of pop had such appeal, even though it was only manifested on a black and white TV. We don't have colours up here. Absolutely. But all of that music springs from the kind of the greyest, dourish shitholes of like, you know, Cardiff to Wolverhampton, wherever. It's like that photo of Adrian Street, you know, the wrestler's glam to the absolute nines with his coal miner dad and his mates at the mine shaft.

I mean, the point about that isn't that major street has been on this long long journey far away from this place but he's born out of this place he actually represents a reaction to this place it's a completely appropriate picture in that respect yeah so yeah i mean that was me really that was that taylor uh lobbing cow and gate at the wall rocking a bear suit fine time i'm six at this point and i remember exceedingly little about christmas day 1974 the only presents i can remember is getting a cap gun with no caps in it and a big hunk of soap on a rope shaped like a womble which never got used it just sat in my bedroom out of the box until it gathered dust it looked even more like a womble it was it was hairy by that point we would have gone to my non-orrent

grandpas on christmas day and i do remember that i had a singing contest with my sister on my grandpa's brand new tape recorder which i lost and had a screaming fit about so that was christmas ruined but the main thing that's hanging over me is the knowledge that in one week's time we were going to be moving out of the house in ice and green that was the only house i ever knew because they were about to pull it down and we're moving into a new building top valley just a few days before this episode uh me and my mom went down to a building site to see the house and we were absolutely convinced that they'd given us the wrong number because you know we were looking at

it and we couldn't see an outside toilet and it looked like it had a bathroom and central heating so my mom went back to the foreman and said you've given me the wrong number dog this can't be where we're moving to and he said no no no this is it is the key just went in it was like fucking hell i was convinced we'd suddenly become posh for some reason and as the council were waiting to pull the entire street down as soon as possible they let us in earlier and we're moving in next week that's great but it's only just beginning to dawn on me this week that everything in the world is going to change so there's going to be no more scott home infant school which i absolutely loved no more rudy guys in the school dinnertime discos and i do believe that this episode marks the last ever time that i'll be

going around the house of tony bones as mam who is after all the patron saint of chart music. Yeah. So, yeah, this is landmark times for me. Still going up in the world. Oh, yeah, upwardly mobile, mate. Sounds like nowadays, but in reverse. Mm, yes. I mean, we'd been on the waiting list for Ice and Green Flats for years, and six months later, after this episode went out, Nationwide broadcast an entire episode live from ice and green flats

hosted by frank boff and he called it the most notorious housing scheme in the country with blues parties going off and prostitutes operating on the balconies so yeah sliding doors and all that we could have lived there i don't know how long frank boff stuck around after the filming but you know so maybe that's why 1974 seems such a kind of year of sort of transition for you oh definitely yeah we've already talked about sitcoms and apart from the cast uprooting and going to australia the other dominant motif of sitcoms and film versions of sitcoms from that era is everything's being pulled down and everyone's living in new flats yeah or the lightly lads film in 76 yeah there's a lot of that yeah yeah yes my dear yeah and actually the end of till death is due park film as well exactly yeah right at the end there yeah it just seemed like the whole world was tearing itself down and rebuilding itself you

know it's like we were living in a very small-scale Dubai. So, Pop Craze youngsters, it's round about this time that we go into the crap room, have a riffle through a few boxes and pull out an issue of the music press from this week. And this time I've gone for the NME, 28th of December, 1974. Would you like to come with me on this journey, chaps? Indeed. Take our hands. On the cover, a model called the sensational Lucia, holding a

cardboard cutout of Mick Jagger and an armful of t-shirts for a four-page review of the year, which is a bit boring. It's just quotes, and none of the quotes are interesting, so I've not bothered with it. In the news, after last week's announcement that Ian Hunter has signed a solo deal with CBS,

it's official. Mott the Hoople have split up. Mick Ronson, who joined the band earlier this year, has confirmed that he's also leaving for America to work as Hunter's musical director. The three remaining members have announced that they're keeping the name and carrying on, and they do so right up to 1980,

with exceedingly diminishing returns. Yeah, I mean, it's a bit weird. It's a bit Wombles-like, really, isn't it? I'm sure the kind of antipathy they must have got from the Angry Dads and whatever, when they realised that this isn't not the hoopla as they'd anticipated when they bought their tickets. No, this is not the hoopla.

Indeed, not the hoopla. Oh, very good. Yeah, yeah. The next Osmonds World Tour, which would have taken in Southampton, Birmingham, Glasgow and Hammersmith Odeon, as well as 12 other countries, is off a mere two weeks after it was announced. According to a spokesman, it's down to unforeseen logistics problems.

All venues in the UK bar Birmingham have been sold out and refunds are currently being processed. But girls throughout the nation are currently being consoled by the news of new tours by the likes of Lindisfarne, Argent, Backman Turner Overdrive, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and John Entwistle's Arcs. Great news for the heads in the new year, though.

The BBC have announced that the Old Grey Whistle test is being moved to a peak time slot and being extended out to 50 whole minutes. Look out for Man and Fumble in the studio in the first episode on January the 11th. David Bowie has granted a rare TV interview to Dick Cavett in America and Lisa Robinson has been given the opportunity to review it in the news pages. From his appearance, Bowie is not a well man. He's thin, almost ravaged beyond belief.

There was something depressingly sad about this TV appearance. I'm frankly amazed that Main Man allowed this thing on the air. Oh, we've seen that, haven't we? Sounds like somebody needs a crash course in myth making and the main points from the teaser's gossip column is that elvis is about to announce a two-year world tour to commemorate his 40th birthday he doesn't the three degrees are posed for penthouse with strategically placed props in front of their bits. Keith Moon is shopping a film about a day in his life around Hollywood.

Roger Daltrey is taking fencing lessons for his forthcoming film Liztomania. Chrysalis Records officers have had all their windows blown out by the IRA bombing of Selfridges and Motown are about to sign up an advertising executive called Chinga Chavin and put out his LP Country Porn which features tracks such as Tit Stop Rock, Sit Sit Sit Sit On My Face

and Cum Stains On The Pillow open brackets where your face used to be close brackets sadly the deal never comes off and the LP ends up being sold by open brackets, where your face used to be, close brackets. Sadly, the deal never comes off, and the LP ends up being sold by mail order in the pages of Penthouse in 1976. In fine company.

In the features section, well, Chris Salowich nips across the channel to see the most controversial gig in France's Istre. Angry parishioners called for the purification of Reims Cathedral last week, claiming that the 12th century building was desecrated during a pop concert last Friday. They said the concert by Tangerine Dream, supported by Nico, had been attended by 6, ewes who left litter everywhere smoked hashish and urinated in the cathedral but father bernard guru of the local diocese stuck up for the kids when he said it is true that some ewes smoke pot to communicate more with the sound of tangerine dream it is also true that some others

because of the need that prevailed found it necessary to urinate against the pillars it is also true that some because of the cold in the cathedral were seen folded in each other's arms and kissing but it is also true that six000 youths staying three hours in the dark, stretched out on the floor, enjoyed the music, and could have caused more serious damage and behaved in a more disgraceful manner. I mean, just lay on some toilets, bins and heating your twats. Salowitz reports that it was one of the most profoundly vivid and elevating occasions in his life, and it was dead good when Nico did Janitor of Lunacy.

Tony Stewart drops in on the top of the pop studio to talk to the new hot pop sensation, Ralph McTow, whose Streets of London is currently the Christmas number six, and according to Stewart, sticks out of the glittering array of personalities in the charts like an erection at a eunuch's ball although Ralph has made an effort by changing his denim flares for some quote Carnaby street trousers he gets asked when he's going to change into his costume by a floor manager and is bemused when someone else congratulates him on his comeback

when this is his first hit single. After thanking Noel Edmonds for playing Streets of London constantly on his breakfast show, he tells Stewart that the song is eight years old and was actually written in Paris in order to book up a mate he was busking with there and after it appeared on his debut album in 1969 he got sick to death of people asking for it at gigs although he dislikes being called a folk singer he tells stewart that he's too old at 30

to get into rock i wouldn't want to shake my arse around and wear silly clothes he says yeah that would never do down at the alphabet zoo i wouldn't stand for that sort of thing long tail wagging flippers flapping feathers flying too charles sean murray schleps over to east grinstead to check in on what woody woodman's he's been up to since the dissolutions of the spiders from Mars. And discovers that he's crashing round Mike Garson's house. He looks a bit like Gilbert O'Sullivan these days. He's been playing in a sort of bands. His latest band is called Flight.

And he's brought along a friend to the interview. The public relations officer for Scientology UK. the interview the public relations officer for scientology uk who takes over very early on and renders the rest of the article unreadable him and a mellow candle john ingham finds himself in a hotel in frankfurt having a chat with alvin lee formerly of 10 years after and now touring his new band Alvin Lee & Co. across Europe After playing a gig populated by the residents of the local US army bases who are all smoking massive spliffs and are being told to fuck off by Lee when they keep asking for I'm going home

he gets stuck into the brandy Alexanders and tells Ingham about what it was like to work on george harrison's forthcoming lp dark horse you ought to see his place it's a 100 room abbe a real victorian folly the fireplaces have incantations carved into them and the light fittings are friars with their noses as the switchers. And Mick Farron revisits Rodney Bingenheimer's English discotheque and laments the end of an era. For a couple of years, Bingenheimer's was the high spot of the international sequence set. Britain might throw up the bands. New York has Max's in 82, where the glam comes with a sinister perversion.

But at Rodney's, the children rolled in straight from the suburbs and put on their tinsel before they'd even reached puberty. At 12, they were getting down, and by 15, they were expected to be jaded and world-weary, but it's all begun to fade. On a recent saturday night there were only a handful of suburban 12 year olds in their third stage glit where they had the sad expression of kids who'd looked out and chosen the place when nothing was happening oh dear playground bang around yeah

those poor children well They really missed out. Single reviews. In the chair this week is Bob Woffenden, and he's got an absolute dos job, as it appears that only three singles have been released this week. His single of the week, Boogie on Reggae Woman by Stevie Wonder, deserves the title,

but Woffenden claims it works better on the LP Fulfillingness's first finale, an album which has divided opinion in the NME office. He reckons you should take the £55 you were going to spend on the single and lump it in with the £2.50 required to buy the album, which he thinks is skill. Next up is Crying Over You by Ken Booth, his follow-up to the number one smash Everything I Own. This is what reggae sounds like when they balderise it for the English market. Sort of filleted stuff, which gives the genre a bad name, says Bob. Booth's a good singer, all right.

It's just that the only concession he makes to the authentic reggae sound is to have someone half-heartedly rattling a jar of whole black peppers in the right-hand speaker. And what's the point of reggae in stereo? He also points out that the B-side is an answer song to the Three Degrees

called Now You Can See Me Again. Think about it, man. But it's a coat down for Bowie protégé Dana Gillespie and her single Really Love The Man. Dana, whose image as murky sex kitten has carefully been

fostered by main man through stunning symbolist photos with pussies, unfortunately delivers this in the sort of womanly sincerity adopted by such as wholesome Diane Solomon. It's watery and wimpy and makes

the darned Tigress scene seem as thoroughly phony as it no doubt is. Oh, only three singles, man. That's rubbish. I know. In the LP review section, well, luckily there's plenty of new album releases this week,

and the main review is given over to Flashes from the Archives of Oblivion by Roy Harper. It's the strongest bit Harper has made yet to reach a mass audience, with his intensely accurate insights into love, illusion and conflict, says Angela Arrigo. The album, if you already love Harper, is indispensable.

If you've never listened to him, it's the best possible introduction. If you can't make your mind up about him, if that's possible, give it to your mum for Christmas. Skin I'm In, the first new LP from Chairman of the Board in two years, is finally out over here and Bob Fisher has a good froth over it. Funkadelic, Stevie Wonder and the Isleys and managed to come up with a combination of rock and soul that might well influence their influencers. Despite their presence in the UK for the next few weeks, this album

may still get lost in the Christmas rush. Don't be a loser because this is one hell of an exciting record. Reviews didn't used to say much, did they? No, but it's a coat down for Desolation One hell of an exciting record. Reviews didn't used to say much, did they? No. But it's a coat down for Desolation Boulevard by The Suite, in which they make the effortless transition

from technically competent but artistically suspect teeny bopper band to technically competent but artistically suspect heavy band, says Charles Shaw Murray. At one point, it looked like they were the only British band with the potential to be the UK edition of the MC5, but instead they've decided to become budget in heavy clothes. There's only one way to save the suite now. Send them all copies of Back in the USA

and somehow convince them that this is what is required oh dear perspective lost to time someone sweet as the british mc5 fleetwood mac's major problem since losing peter green has been one of identity reckons steve clark in his review of Heroes Are Hard To Find, where he notes that they've been leaning too hard on their new guitarist Bob Welsh and have put out a tasteful LP which doesn't come anywhere near their Peter Green heyday. While this record isn't by any means a disaster, it doesn't stand even a remote chance of re-establishing Fleetwood Mac's following in Britain.

Hijack by Eamon Dull 11 is seized upon by John Ingham as he's always liked them, but he comes away from the experience disappointed and bereft. Most of the songs would find a more useful occupation as background music in a berlin wimpy bar he says but he likes three of them including traveler which he calls the most unredeemingly repetitious thing since venus infers it's great david your thoughts well i think with amandou kraut rock generally always go for the early stuff i was actually going to call that book generally. Always go for the early stuff. I was actually going to call that book, that, actually. Always go for the early stuff. A history of Krautrock. But there you go.

Curtis Mayfield has put out his sixth solo LP, Got to Find a Way, but Neil Spencer doesn't reckon it because he's a fucking knob end. It might be just dandy for cruising down the freeway with the throb of a V8 barely discernible above the patter of funk on the car stereo, but for sheer emotional concentration,

you could probably squeeze more from the two and a half minutes of Gypsy Woman. Such judgments may seem severe for a record which is by no means bad, it's just that one expects more from one of the most hallowed figures of black music. And this LP is just another disappointment. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It's a fucking brilliant album. Ain't no love lost, so you don't love me. Can't find a way.

No, fuck off, mate. It's me. In the gig guide this week. Wow. David could have seen Kilburn and the High roads at the hope and anchor brinsley swarch at dingwalls the edgar broughton band at the marquee rupee edwards at the edmonton ballroom or the heavy metal kids at the marquee but probably didn't definitely didn't taylor could have seen ken booth in the cimerons at the bir Birmingham Locarno or the Steve Gibbons band at Incognito.

Fucking hell, he's always playing Birmingham. Yeah, yeah. With his disappointingly human band. Exactly, yeah. Neil could have seen Band Called Charlie at the Coventry Novotel Motel or nipped out to Dudley to catch Ace at JB's. Sarah could have seen Medicine Head at Scunthorpe Bath.

Desmond Decker at Dewsbury My Place. Brotherhood of Man's week-long residency at the Sheffield Cavendish. Or Millican and Nesbitt's All Weaker at the Wakefield Theatre. Oh Christ. Al could have seen UFO

at the Boat Club. Or trekked out to Worksop to see Hello at the Carousel club or Sweaty Better at the Golden Diamond in Sutton in Ashfield. Fucking hell, I think that was the most 70s sentence I've ever read out. Simon could have seen Shaking Stevens and the Sunsets at Cardiff Top rank, Sassafras at the HTV Social Club or gone to his future home to see the old sailor and fumble at Brighton top rank. And there's so

few listings this week, the NME have had to fill the space with photos of breasts different times. In the letters page, well, Charles Shaw Murray is in the chair for this week's gas bag, and the lead-off letter is concerned with the BBC's latest round of cuts to its music wing. So, the rock fan gets it in the codpiece again.

So, the BBC intends to scrap sounds of the 70s and also four of its edge-of-the-road DJs. Great stuff, aren't there? Says J.A. Vine of Orpington. This and shorter hours will save the BBC £300,000 in the next year to fritter on the overblown salaries of such playlist flunkies as Blackburn and diddy david didn't the rock revolution achieve anything in the broadcasting fold look at television god look at it we still have the disposable but not inexpensive prancing of top of the pops peak time. In contrast to mini-budget shove-it-on-anytime old grey-whistle test.

As I can't get off on rave teeny-bop singles or the middle-of-the-road yawn trip, here are a few questions to broadcasters. Am I in a minority of one? Do you ever read music paper polls? Who sells more records and concert tickets the rock giants or the middle of the road artists who hog the media is there a tv chief among you with the guts to put on a zeppelin or purple concert at peak time against a Des O'Connor show and compare the viewing figures? I don't think they'd compare very well.

Either one would have been watching Des O'Connor. Yeah, and first compare Peter Grant's proposed contract with Des O'Connor. Having followed Roxy Music for years, we were delighted to hear that Brian Ferry was going to do a concert at the Odeon, writes Lina and Christine of Birmingham. The two of us planned to start queuing 24 hours beforehand to be sure of getting front row seats. We were then shattered to find that tickets would be on

sale by postal application only because of the riots in the Faces queue the previous week. We duly sent our money off weeks before anyone else we knew and then weeks later we received our money back. We are outraged that we should have to suffer like this just because a couple of thousand imbecilic Faces fans got pissed and beat a few coppers up everyone knows that roxy and ferry fans are to quote the man himself le creme de la creme and therefore would have behaved very well while queuing poor lena and christine man yeah and just see lena

and christine queuing there for 24 hours in their Nan's fur coat and fascinate her. Kilburn and the High Roads got a feature in the NME the other week, but Deadhead Paul, representing both the Kingston Rough Kids and the Battersea Grammar Mob, is not at all happy about the attitude they displayed toward them. First of all, Nick Kent said that they're becoming last year's thing, which is a typical redundant trendy expression anyhow. Now Pete Erskine joins in with a rather vacuous interview with Ian Drury. Yes, you could at least spell his name right. Erskine replies that it wasn't his fault that pie records unexpectedly demanded that

he interviewed the entire band which meant a lot of awe sticking him where everyone talked over each other and nothing of note was said and points out that his name actually is ian jure so just fuck off with yourself mate straight demotion in the kingston rough kids and the battersea grammar mob there mate yeah yeah yeah also one tip never interview the whole band at once oh i bet you've had to deal with that oh it's a shy it really was it's like five against one basically yeah it's either just babble or it's the opposite that that each of them says less than if they were together because their mates are looking at them and they don't feel stupid. Oh, absolutely.

That happened really, really badly with the Pixies. They didn't say anything. You could see them just looking at each other, worried that what they might say might sort of take issue with. Yeah, so everybody's really constipated. And, like, you know, basically banned. Certainly back in my day, they treated interviews like they were under police caution in any case.

So that's made it even worse. On a happier note, a staid veteran of the psychedelic generation of Newcastle on Tyne wishes to thank Mick Farron for his piece on Hawkwind in New York. It's nice to read a pleasant Hawkwind review for a change. And it's a refreshing change also to know that at least one band haven't turned into a bunch of neatly coiffured glitter and makeup poofs are you reading this ian hunter keep it up mick that's nice apart from the poofs yeah when did poofs change to puffs uh yeah i i mean private

i always used to use poofs you know know, with a V, in the 60s. Because it went to poofs to poof to poof. Poofs, yeah. I mean, it was, you know, a winter day of it. It's, you know, what's up, you bunch of poofs? You know, in our thought, Mum, there was no poofs then. No. And it was never poofs when I was at school, yes. There was always poofs in Monty Python as well.

Yeah. Brian Chapman always referred to himself as a poof. Hmm. Maybe it's a class thing a stones fan from seaford wishes to pass on his regards to mick taylor on his departure from the band wishes him the best of luck in the future and hopes that the stones will be touring in 1975 tina short of stratford coats down bob edmunds review of Elton John's greatest hits for writing that one of the tracks is Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying when it's actually Don't Let The Sun Go Down On There.

Sammy Saturated of Glasgow asks if we've ever noticed that the end bit of The Gates of Delirium by Yes doesn't half sound like The Way We Were, and it does. And Dee Davis of Highgate writes, Incidentally, I once gave someone a piece of pomegranate isn't that just far out 32 pages 10p i never knew there was so much and it's a mingy issue for the christmas one it's usually double sized i know just like file it and fuck off down on the pub you know for the christmas piss up i was just thinking d davis of highgate my old uh weed dealer years

ago used to live in what he swore was the only hippie flat in highgate in the 70s may have been one of his mates there boasting about his uh pomegranate santaism. I'll tell you what. Hoofs, hooves, roof, roofs. Yeah. Maybe one of those. Like, you know, like, it's technically correct. You can say fishes. Obviously, it's a loathsome word, et cetera, et cetera.

But phonetically, I definitely prefer poofs to poofs. You know, it's just... So, what else is on telly today well bbc one commences at 25 past nine with a repeat of mary mungo and midge followed by a repeat of top cat then david attenborough talks about how animals sort out somewhere to live and get their ends away in his royal institution lecture then a load of kids from Lincolnshire go to the massive Centrale in France and fall down a lot in the documentary Ski School. That's followed by From China With Love,

where Desmond Morris tells us why pandas are so skill. Then a massive hand reaches out from the cosmos and grabs the Starship Enterprise in a repeat of Star Trek. Then it's Bewitched, The News, and then it's a short blast of Grandstand, featuring racing from Kempton Park and Leopardstown, and a repeat of the fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire. After that, we get the complete set of Planet of the Spiders, the Doctor Who adventure, followed by Brian Kant, John Craven, Bernard Cribbins,

Tony Hart, Leslie Judd, Pat Kiesel, Johnny Morris, John Noakes, Peter Purvis, Michael Rodd, Valerie Singleton, Julie McStevens, Ross and Norris McWhirter, and Roy Castle in the all-star record breakers then it's the news and they've just finished regional news in your area fucking hell what a line up that's my childhood all right yeah just to clarify actually an edited feature length compilation of the last john right dr who story planet of the spiders you know someone's

only going to write in and complain if we don't get that bbc2 opens up at 11 a.m for play school with derrick griffiths and chloe ashcroft and then shuts down for six and a half hours and we're about to come back with highlights from the second day's play of the third test between england and australia in melbourne itv kicks off at half nine with schools programs building the tv times as a chance for parents and teachers to see a selection of programs which have been shown at schools throughout the year which is actually a chance for itv to pad out the morning schedule, followed by the best of Laurel and Hardy. Mr Trimble shows the youth how to make a crocodile out of some cardboard boxes.

Then Leslie Crowther, Willie Rushton and Bill Tidy join Bob Monkhouse for an episode of Quick on the Draw. After the news, it's Cup Glory, the 1972 documentary narrated by Richard Attenborough about the FA Cup in its centenary year. Then it's the 1967 Tommy Steele musical Half a Sixpence. Tommy Trinder, Margaret Lockwood, Jack Douglas and Douglas Bing join Dennis Norden to bang on about old stuff in Looks Familiar. And they've just started an episode of the proto-Simpsons Hanna-Barbera cartoon

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. Fucking hell, that is a very decent line-up for a Friday, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Football, boxing. Oh, that Arlie DeForeman fight. I mean, that's fight of the century, that. Oh, my God, he's won the title back at 32. Well, chaps, I do believe that the buffet that we're about to tuck into,

which is the episode of Top of the Pops we're going to talk about, has been laid out nice, don't you think? Oh, yes. This is going to be an interesting one. So, come and join us tomorrow for part two of episode 69 of Chart Music. And until then, ta very much, David Stubbs. Ta-ta. God bless you, Taylor Parks.

All right. My name's Al Needham, imploring that you stay pop crazed. Chart music.