Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #69 (Pt 2): 27.12.74 – The Ramadan #1 of 1974

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

David Stubbs, Taylor Parkes and Al Needham begin their odyssey into the second part of TOTP’s review of ’74, but not before another few rounds of Pantomime Horse and having to deal with the rampaging egos of Noel Edmonds and The Living Gnasher Badge. The first #1 single that ever enraged Al is up first, then John Denver bangs on about his missus eight years before he ends up taking a chainsaw to their bed, followed by world-class mic-standsmanship by Alvin, and George McCrae gets into even more trouble with his missus as he emotes over a turkey carcass, and we don’t. Know. Why.Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon 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 part two of episode 69 of Chart Music.

Here I am, I'll need them, and oh, look who's over there, Taylor Parks. Yeah, I'm alright. Fucking hell, look over there, it's David Stubbs. How do? Oh boys, so good to have you back. And I must admit, I am still massively delighted that we invented a brand new game in part one of this episode. That I believe is going to set the dinner parties of 2023 absolutely alight. That game, of course, is P pantomime horse should we play a few

more rounds chaps before we get stuck in why not why not okay little and large i think eddie would make sid go in the front and he'd think that was a really nice gesture but it was actually going to be a trick he's like put a firework up his ass or something yeah no no if you put a firework up the ass of someone in. Yeah. No, if you put a firework up the arse of someone in front of you in a pantomime horse, I think the joke

would be on you, wouldn't it? Pretty much. I think Sid would really get into the part and do loads of winning and throwing his head back while Eddie's at the back

showing everybody what John Wayne's arse would look like in a pantomime horse with all the deputy dogs and just spoiling it. Okay, moving on. Ian Paisley and jerry adams

i think they i think they might agree a cordial sort of because they've got kind of cordial ian paisley with people like my thinking is towards the end so i i think they'd have a sort of cordial sort of rota you know one time it was paisley one time one time adams yeah you'd have to end up with a horse with a head at each end like uh noah and nelly's skylar and finally therese bazaar and david van day oh you knew that was coming oh there's no way that van day is gonna go down so here is though he'd be up front and he'd be like now look you stay there i'm going to show you something about charisma yes yes all right then pop craze youngsters it is now time to go way back to december of 1974 always remember we may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget, they've been on Top of the Pops more than we have. It's 20 minutes past five on Friday, December 27th, 1974,

and Top of the Pops, now into its second decade, and officially the longest-running pop show in the world, is about to broadcast the final episode of a year fraught with mither. A BBC technician's strike in the last week of May left the show struggling to cobble together an episode and eventually rammed it with repeat performances and had to cancel its special episode about David Cassidy's farewell to the pop scene. And when the strike solidified

into a full-on walkout a fortnight later, the show was taken off the air for seven weeks leaving the pop craze youngsters turning on their dad's tellies of a thursday evening and discovering extended highlights and punditry from the world cup repeats of dad's army and are you being served could have been worse could have been are you being served all the time yeah that's not too bad i'd have tolerated that so as is the style chaps this episode is part two of top of the pops's review of the year where the winners of 1974 get to stand on the top deck of a bus and be driven around the city of pop waving at folk and brandishing silverware we do like these episodes don't we oh yeah obviously the first part

was on christmas day sandwiched between holiday on ice and the queen's speech and it was presented by tony blackburn and jingle nonso be here's what was on it chaps you tell me who the winner is in these two episodes lonely this christmas by mud ow love Me For A Reason by The Osmonds. Meow. Sad Sweet Dreamer by Sweet Sensation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pans People dressed as ballet clowns, for you won't find another fool like me,

by The New Seekers. Ding dong. Gonna Make You A Star, David Essex. All right. Billy Don't Be a Hero by Paper Lace. Well, sorry, Al. I'm ignoring you. When Will I See You Again by The Three Degrees.

Everything I Own by Ken Booth. You gay pop reggae. Waterloo by ABBA. Hey. She by Charles Aznavourles asnavore i can't forget pants people dressed up all posh for you the first the last my everything by barry white and of course, Merry Christmas, everybody, by Slade. Hoorah. Hoorah.

I mean, I think we're getting the better end of the deal with this episode. Yeah. Don't you? Yeah, yeah. But there's been a price to pay there, because while the Christmas Day episode made some sort of sense with the idea that Tony Blackburn and and jimmy saville live together and they've invited their pop mates around for a soiree this episode has pretty much been left to

fend for itself hasn't it so we get no audience we get an airless environment and crucially no pans people man they spunked their pans people quota in one go on Christmas Day for Dads. Yeah. Not right. No, no, no. Unfair to Dads. So, your hosts this episode are Dave Lee Travis, who spent the year filling in for various weekday DJs on Radio 1 from time to time, while holding down his regular request show spot at 3pm on Sundays, and sort of acting as a hairy tinned salmon sandwich if you will. It won't be until 1976 that he holds down a

permanent weekday slot but he's not arsed in the slightest because he's raking in up to £300 a night £2,600 in today's rubbish money from his personal appearances in provincial discos,

a fee which has no doubt been boosted by his elevation to the Top of the Pops talent pool in November of 1973. And this is his 13th appearance on Top of the Pops. Your other host, Noel Edmonds, who has just completed his first full year in the alpha male role on Radio 1 as the host of The Breakfast Show which was solidified in August of this year when he was selected to present the week-long BBC One splurge on the Osmonds

which peaked when he joined them to present that week's Top of the Pops He's been a presenter since July of 1972 and is now part of a talent pool which currently consists of travis jingle nonso be tony blackburn and paul burnett oh here they are again happy as can be all good pals in jolly good company there's something about the casual carefree way that dlt is humming along with the top of the pop scene when we first see him before he rolls into his usual nightmarish humorless humor babble shtick just seems to radiate pure contempt for the program and for you and me and his mother and indirectly everybody's mother

yes but you know at this point unlike 80s dlt he's not jaded and yawning his way through it he's full of enthusiasm which on the one hand is terrible but on the other it's still terrible but the only thing that makes him less than 100 repulsive here is he hadn't yet developed that little spider's web of gray hair at the front of his cunt throat which you know break through in about 1978 or 79 and complete the skin crawling wrongness because he's more disturbing when he's visually coded middle-aged rather than this relative youngster who's overbearing creepiness could with excessive charity be written off as youthful high spirits you know you could almost think of him here as just another cunt you know and the one sense in which dave lee travis is exceptional

is that he's not just another cunt no he is toxic mega cunt he is the cunt of monte cristo always on pinching a girl's ass with a sausage sandwich in the other hand eternally he's the top he's the tip he's the championship he's the most tip top top cunt cunt to end all cunts close friends get to call him dlt but he hasn't got any actually where do we start with these two and what they're wearing i mean both of them have come dressed for the occasion edmunds is sporting a black dinner jacket with a massive black bow tie which makes him look like he's being savaged by a bat and of course as any pop craze youngster will tell you he always makes an effort when he's on the program article in the daily mirror last

week it's natty noel noel edmunds bought a new suit yesterday because tonight he's comparing Top of the Pops. He has a new suit every time he appears on the programme. The kids who watch the show notice these things, he told me. They complain every time I wear the same shirt and tie more than once. With a regular monthly slot on Top of the Pops. Nor buys at least 12 suits a year. I pay about £30. And I prefer the off-the-peg three-piece suits because they look very smart, he said.

And yeah, that was borne out by his adverts that were running at the time for Hepworth's tailors with Tony Blackburn, you may recall. Edmunds always went for off-the-peg because of his busy lifestyle, while Blackburn opted for made to measure because he was particular. But they both paid the same price of £37.50. So there you go.

The way Noel's dressed up here, he looks like Young Musician of the Year. Yes, he does. Ninth place. He played W.O.L.D by harry chapin on the core on clay it's because he always wore those 70s suits with the big shoulders and wide lapels which are not tailored for the puny likes of noel edmunds he looks like he's disappearing in a black velvet quicksand ear you know while his mum looks on proudly i think he thought the artificial bigness of those clothes would bulk him up a bit but of course it works the opposite way

it's of course he looks like he's standing four feet further back from the camera than dlt when actually they're side by side i mean i'm a bit of a short ass and there are photos of me standing next to gigantic bears of men where that also seems to be the case but then i don't assume the slick superior master of ceremonies manner of a noel edmunds i remember your tag team with giant haystacks but you just look at that bow tie i mean i actually thought it was a comedy but i mean looks like the kind of bow tie clown would wear to another clown's funeral. I mean, it's just ridiculous. And I actually genuinely thought, oh, this is comedy.

No, no, remember, this isn't comedy. It's the 70s. These aren't intended as comedic parodies of the day. No, certainly not. Did you know he went to the same public school as douglas adams really whose middle name was noel and yet another eerie coincidence both of them capable of creating an entire universe out of their own imagination peopled with the fabulous otherworldly creations like zephyr bebelbrox and Mr Blobby. I realised

the other day I've now lived longer than one of those people did and yet achieved so much less than either. Travis though Travis has essentially come as a white gollywog hasn't he? Yes it's actually a face

it's like he's in whiteface of some sort yes. Yes. He doesn't actually feel racially offended. Yeah, you're right, yeah. If Spa or Fine Fair made their own brand of marmalade, he'd be on the front of it, wouldn't he? Yeah, different times, definitely.

He's wearing an appalling shiny black suit with massive silver lapels, and he's teamed that with a dark fuchsia shirt and a white bow tie. You know those absolutely shit suits that sports personalities wear nowadays? Yeah. He's sort of like that. He looks like he's just been drafted in the fourth round

by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, or he's off to a press conference to pretend to be angry at some other boxer in order to sell some more pay-per-views. Fucking dreadful tailoring. I mean, I think of all the toxins running through the bloodstream the boxer in order to sell some more pay-per-views. Fucking dreadful tailoring. I mean, I think of all the toxins running through the bloodstream of 70s star that sort of coalesce into a boil on the end of the nose of the 70s, I think

this outfit, these glasses, this beard as well, that'd be it. So the obvious question, chaps, we have to return to it. Noel Edmonds, Dave Lee Travis, pantomime horse. Yeah, I think these two cunts can sort it out between themselves yeah yeah i think they would end up as a hideous push me pull you straining in different directions until their skin burst and frayed and the kiddies started screaming and

crying and the dads would have to get up on stage and get involved again just as long as somebody walked on stage and blazing saddle style punched that pantomime horse in the face i could just imagine a sort of thing you know a sort of great tussle when noel edmunds his head emerging triumphantly out of the top of the horse's head and then being pulled back down in again by travis and his head popping out and so your long evening wears on i always wanted to go up to bernie clifton when he was on his ostrich. Just walk up to him, punch the ostrich in the face, and they both go down. That would be great.

Anyway, look, allow me to quote from this slim volume here. The top of the Pops annual, 1975. Yes. I.e. the one that would have been in the shops and stockings right now as this episode went out. Oh, oh, I've actually got that taylor right in front of me now top of the pops annual 1975 it's got a big white number one on a red background and there's three circular image bits off to the sides of saville noel edmonds tony blackburn

turning around the back no d DLT on it whatsoever. Oh, dear, oh, dear. And in the middle, a big picture of the Osman family. Yeah, of course. Which is nice. Well, this particular copy that I've got here is perfectly preserved, but absolutely reeks of somebody's shed, which I think tells its own rather poignant story. God, yeah, so does mine.

Anyway, among the features on pop groups, there are also profiles of the top DJs that we at Top of the Pops viewers have come to think of as our extra special friends. Now, most of these interviews are clustered in one section of the annual, imaginatively titled Top DJs, except for the feature on Jimmy Savmy saville who has this kind of

early medieval king figure has a much bigger section all to himself written in the first person almost as though he'd bothered to sit down and write it himself rather than talk down the phone at some hack reporter who's had to go away and assemble this shit into a coherent piece and credit it to Sir Jim. But that's at the start of the annual. That's the very first thing you see when you open it. The typically soothing picture of Savile with the slightly horrifying headline,

Jimmy Savile, the daddy of the DJs. Yes. What tour? This fucking tour. Further in, you get interviews with his serfs, including one with Dave Lee Travis. Oh, yes. Which begins like this.

Dave Lee Travis admits it. I'm a complete loony, he says. An absolute nutcase i'll do anything for a laugh and so the article goes on running through his career it says dave spent two and a half years in bremen germany doing his own tv show which pulled in an audience of over 80 million viewers which for those of us who've seen beat club um specifically travis's constant comedy sex pesting over ushi nurka the main to whom he was very much second banana in fact just one of a string of male sidekicks, and which very visibly makes her extremely uncomfortable. Him then going back to England and claiming he had his own show in Germany

is even more grotesque. But he goes on to talk about it here, and he says, they thought I was a nutter, a maniac. So I then used to do anything at all just to get a laugh well that's interesting teller because as i found out to my cost when i went on a german exchange in 1982 the german for nutter is prostitute i called my mate a nutter and all the german teachers just glared at me and i was took to one side and informed as to what I'd said.

Right. Well, it says here that in Germany, he became known as Big Dave, the English nut. That's what he thought they were saying. Big Dave, the English nut. It's actually a German phrase which sounds very like that, but actually translates as, I hope his arse falls off so he has to shit through his eyes. But wait, you've got more to say in this interview.

Of course. He says, I'm not just a DJ, I'm a really dedicated all-round entertainer. Oh, no. It might sound a bit big-headed to say so but i know i'm going to be a really big name entertainer a few years from now just wait and see i'll have a really monster tv show of my own and indeed the golden oldie picture show was quite a sensation do you think in later years his co-host on this program ever read that quote back and chuckled darkly oh he's framed in his toilet

maybe or one of his many toilets no doubt i love it i got so much terrible pleasure from reading that quote about how davely travis knows he's going to be a top entertainer with a show of his own that might actually be my second favorite quote of all time after my mate when i was 15 eating some mushroom stroganoff making a face and saying erg this tastes like spunk i imagine it says hastily appended there yeah uh noel is also featured at punishing length in the 1975 top of the pops annual if you'll allow me to uh quote the words of the great man educators taylor he says already i think i've proven that i'm not just another tony blackburn yeah that's nice for you i'm sure some of the kids had no comprehension that gary glitter could actually sing a song like happy birthday until i played it from one of his albums on my

radio program oh no it's really an excellent piece of music this is the song happy birthday yes it's about it's about waiting until midnight so that the girl turns 16 and is legal so you can then have sex yes lyrics 11 59 about time one more minute to go. I can hardly wait. In this state, don't my feelings show. All we gotta do, me and you, see it through. When we do, what a big surprise I've got for you. When you're old enough, ha, I do my stuff till you beg for more. Now the time has come. Have your fun. Bang, you come. Give me some. Look out, birthday baby. Here I come. You're alone, almost grown, on your own.

Move a little closer. Fucking hell. This is like Sean Ryder writing a song about the day drugs are decriminalised so he can take some. Anyway, Noel, in this probing pieceing piece he got plenty more to say he says there's only one fault with top of the pops it doesn't give me enough time in between the numbers to set up a proper comedy situation you see i'm really a frustrated TV comedian, and I'd like to do more comedy on television. God!

The sadly unnamed writer of this article continues here. It's not what you call a combative interview. One young girl who was in the audience for Top of the Pops knows just what Noel means. Noel asked her during the show do you like surprises she innocently replied yes he turned away from her then suddenly turned round and shouted boo everyone in the studio roared with laughter including the girl that's what noel means by being a zany character these are the closing lines of the article that's your takeaway and there's the man who actually

would end up with a monster tv show of his own not once but on numerous occasions it's funny isn't it one disordered psychological state and you end up in a mansion with a helicopter on the roof. Another only very slightly different disordered psychological state and you end up as an unemployable convicted sex offender. There's no real logic to it, is there? No. Is that the article that mentions right at the top his single? Yes, it is oh kirk houston alcatraz have you heard it chaps i have oh if i'd have played that to you and said this is a top of the pops presenter you would have thought it was travis wouldn't you i think probably so yes it's weird he sounds like a throat cancer victim he's singing about how horrible Alcatraz is, and at the end he says,

how do you think I know about all this? Because I'm the governor. It's like his fantasy, isn't it? Well, his wank fantasy. Like to be in charge of a men's prison. They all have to do exactly what I say. They all have to bathe in sewage. Do we know that these two hated each other, by the way?

At the time? Yeah, you just assume it, don't you? Partly because there was so much bad blood and bitching at Radio 1. And partly because, well, why wouldn't they? Everybody else does. Well, neither of them is remotely likeable. If they did hate each other my response is good now you know how we feel yes now you are both halfway to knowing how we feel yeah at the time

i wouldn't know i just thought they were brilliant mates i just thought everyone in pop was best mates with each other i mean the thing about these two is at the time you know i was a pop kid and i didn't mind them at all in. And there wasn't actually a general protest against them from us pop kids, because, I mean, first of all, this crap was mercifully brief, and they sort of functioned, you know, as signifiers that Top of the Pops was on. We're seconds away from pop. I mean, Raymond Baxter was a far more impressive broadcaster, but he signified that Tomorrow's World was on.

You know, and for fuck's sake, can we get a wriggle on with the items about talking robot waste paper baskets and roll on the closing credits yeah fuck tomorrow we want now exactly it's like the mr whippy jingle you know it's not like we kids you know we're all hand jiving in the streets digging that jingling vibe we just knew that ice cream was imminent but they delude themselves people like travis and edmunds are thinking that somehow they had some sort of autonomous function beyond that and the perversely turned out to be right good evening ladies and gentlemen on behalf of your friendly neighborhood hairy monster and his colleague Noel Edmonds welcome to the Christmas edition of top I'd just like to say

that I completely concur with the viewers that have just been expressed. We've got to work this together, son. Oh, all right, then. Now, we've got a host of golden hit records and the artists with them on the show. We do. So shall we start with... The Rubets!

We're hit with the Pavlovian twang and blare of Whole Lotta Love as the top of the Pops logo flares up in the middle of a Christmas wreath effect which is somewhat ruined by the array of images of this afternoon's bands and artists as they've tried to fit rectangular images into a round space. That's replaced by a shot of Travis, seemingly caught unaware at first, but quickly rallying and starting to mime the horn bits of the theme tune. He reminds us that he's the hairy monster

and welcomes us to the Christmas top of the pops before being rudely interrupted by Edmonds in vintage BBC announcer mode. After a bit of 15% passive, 85% aggressive banter, they hold out their hands in an introductory fashion to welcome the first act on stage, the Rubettes with Sugar Baby Love. Born in Rhyl in 1941 and Liverpool in 1943 respectively, Wayne Bickerson and Tony Waddington were members of the Pete Best Four in the mid-60s,

who went on to form a songwriting partnership when the band split up. Although they wrote nothing but a heartache for the flirtations in 1968, the hits eluded them throughout the 60s, and they settled into providing filler for the likes of the Brotherhood of Man, Barry Ryan and In Is Fox, but when Bickerton became the head of A&R for Polydor UK, they began work on a rock and roll musical, and realised that one of the songs they'd knocked out, this one, had definite hit potential. After rounding up a collective of musos to knock out some demos, the songwriters initially intended

to enter this tune in that year's Song for Europe, but then offered the song to the hottest new mock and roll band in the country, Show Waddy Waddy, but they turned it down flat and after their second choice carl wayne knocked it back they went back to their demo band and offered it to them on the condition that they formed a band only two of them took up the offer but no matter a few ring rounds to jobbing musos later the rubets were formed they were immediately signed to Polydor and the single was put out, and it did absolutely fuck all for six weeks, despite non-stop badgering of Radio 1 and Robin Nash from Polydor promo chief Tony Bramwell, the Beatles' arty fufkin.

But then, on April 24th 1974, But then, on April 24th 1974, Robin Nash was informed that his booking of Sparks to perform This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us in the studio was off because he'd assumed that they were British, only to be told at the last minute that they weren't, they hadn't joined the Musicians' Union and they didn't have a promo film or wrote. Staring aghast at the three-minute gap in his episode, he called Bramwell and told them if he could get the Rubets into the studio by 7pm, they'd get their break. After ringing round, sending taxes out across the country, and ordering in 12 sets of flared white suits and matching caps from a boutique on the King's Road, because they didn't know the measurements of the band, they made their first ever appearance on the show and a week later, Sugar Baby Love entered the charts at number 27.

The following week, it soared 25 places to number two and the week after that, it deposed Waterloo by ABBA to assume total dominance of Pop Mountain. Fucking hell, what a story, chaps. Yeah, yeah. The power of Top of the Pops, eh? Indeed. Question for the panel and the Pop Craze youngsters listening.

What was the first number one single that made you angry about it being there? Because I've got to say it was this one for me, which is absolutely mental because there was far worse songs than this. But even then, as a child, I could rationalise the likes of Long-Haired Lover from Liverpool or Welcome Home becoming the most successful song in the country. It just felt right. But I remember seeing this on Top of the Pops

and absolutely hating it because it was too slow and too high-pitched and they all looked like dads and then i was in the playground one afternoon and i got into a huge argument with a lad there who told me that this had just got to number one and i absolutely refused point blank to believe him and accused him of being a liar because it just couldn't be number one when there was a sweet record knocking about and they were nowhere near as good as a sweet and getting done and having the teacher have a word with me to stop accusing lads of lying and then watching top of the pops the

next day and finding out that he was actually number one couldn't believe it so fucking angry i'm getting angry now just thinking about it yeah i mean i'm less militant about this song now but god it's still a noise man yeah for me it was probably um i think there's maybe a false memory but i think it was dawn is it tie yellow ribbon oh simply because sweet were kind of roaring up the charts with hellraiser and it kept it off and it was just like i thought this is the week it's got this is the week this is the week and you know i was listening to tom brown or whatever and then number two it's hellraiser. What? I was distraught. I was crying like a 12 year old French boy

you know. It really was. I was on holiday at the time and I was absolutely you know it blackened my mood for a good hour or so. It really did. I felt thwarted. I don't think I ever got angry about it as a kid but

so the first record i can remember getting angry about getting to number one is also the last one right which was that record by lenny kravitz oh god yeah i wish i could fly into the sky so very high like a dragon fly i heard it on a advert for a car i think and i burst out, thinking it was just a song they'd written for the advert. Yeah. And thought, is that really the best they could do? This is absolutely pathetic. People are just going to laugh at this.

And then I heard that it was actually a real record by a real musician. And then I heard it had gone into the British charts at number one. Fuck. And that was the day that i spat on this nation and also then later america because it also won a grammy i think i was in a state of pretty much perpetual rage about what was number one from 1978 to 1993 but anyway here they are in the studio you know celebrating their breakthrough and and again it's reminding me of another reason why i was so pissed off with the Ruberts at the time.

The lead singer's got a necklace with Alan on it in gold. And up to that time, I believed I was the only person in the world with that name. So looking at him made me feel a bit less original and a bit less special. That's nice, I suppose. I mean, the geezers on the, like, the sort of bop-shoe-waddy-waddy detail,

they're a bit of a chinless bunch. And there is some kind of mildly annoying, wacky humour going on. But when you're in the same building as Noel Edmonds and Dave Lee Travis, you know, you're going to be, like, you know, far the less of the criminal party. I mean, they are genuinely having a bit of a laugh. I think they know it's going to be back to sort of lunchtime at the Batley Variety Club in about a year's time.

Yeah, the first thing that always strikes me about this group is that the singer is trying to be a pin-up and the others are playing comedy ugly. Yes. And has there ever been an all-male band who've done that and it worked? Maybe Sparks, in a different way. Can't think of any others. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, of course, the Wurzels. Cheap trick. Oh, cheap trick, OK. okay oh shawadi wadi i suppose yeah um there's a similar sort of overgrown juvenile look on bartram yes but i've always been sort of intrigued by alan williams that singer because he's got those sort of strange slavic features and permanent brian jones barry norman eye bags there's something a bit unusual about him in the context of the mid-70s i always assumed he must be one of those low-key foreign blokes you used to get in britain when britain was a lot more culturally homogenous you know like he had y Yugoslavian parents who moved here in 1962 or something, you know what I mean? He didn't make a big deal out of it.

But his name's Alan Williams, so the furthest he can come from is Anglesey, surely. You know what I mean? You see quite a lot of the other members of the Rubets in this clip. Yes, we do. They're like a collective, you know. It seems a bit weird weird we get very well acquainted with the drummer oh yes we learned that the rubettes like like too many bands before and after have been afflicted by a bad case of performative drummer yeah yeah he's like a sort of sub asquith burke isn't he's like mr lucas

yes mr spooner depending on you know where you stand on that great rivalry I think fans still duke it out over the definitive Grace Brothers junior sales assistant oh man the fights in the market square on a Saturday over that though but yeah he's got a green electric bow tie that flashes when he does the spoken word bit and there's a lot of fakery on this because of course williams uh mimes the castrato bit which was done by paul da vinci who refused to join the band and would go solo later on this year you must have seen his top of the pops performance of your baby ain't your baby anymore no no oh wait till we get to that on chart music. Fuck me. The thing is, this is actually a pretty good record, considering what it actually is.

Yes, it is. But there's no actual point in listening to it when you could be listening to something that actually came out of the actual New Jersey in the actual early 60s. Yes. Do you know what I mean? It's like buying a seersucker suit that looks okay at a

glance but it isn't and will obviously shrink and fade and dissolve as soon as you wash it but it costs the same as the real thing is that really required you know so the only thing it's got going for it is that it's here now and you can take it or leave it you know and i think there's a at least a discussion to be had about you know when so-called credible bands i.e not really people like the ribettes do something that is so closely patterned on something else that it's virtually pastiche right by which i mean a discussion about whether that's fair enough and whether anyone should care. I remember a friend of mine who really loved Big Star getting into Teenage Fan Club and being a bit apologetic about it. Saying, I know they're rip-off merchants, I just want some more music that sounds like that.

Fair enough. When you don't have the responsibilities of a critic, that's understandable, you know. And it's doubly understandable in that case, considering that early Big Star were in a lot of ways just the teenage fan club of their day, like completely unoriginal, just playing their favourite kind of music that already existed. But I think if what you're doing is heartfelt pop songs which are at least aimed towards the emotions you can plausibly argue that there's always room for more of them

in any style you know you don't necessarily require the shocker than you yeah but when it's music like this which might be designed to create feelings but it's not about personal emotional expression then a very derivative record feels a little bit more like a forgery you know because you feel like if an idea of their own had occurred to them at any point during recording this uh they would have excluded it because that would have complicated the song to the detriment of what they were trying to achieve clearly Clearly, they are part of that general thing that's going on at the time, the attempt to sort of replicate the spirit and the style or whatever of, I don't know, pre-Beatles music, rock and roll, etc., etc., because things have kind of slowed up a bit culturally.

It's almost like the first postmodern moment in some ways. But at the same time, they are quite 70s in their attire. I mean, you know, they've got their shirt collars peeping right over their shoulders, you know, so they don't go for the absolute strict sort of teddy boy type, you know, period detail. They don't really bother with that. I mean, it's a bit conceited of them, you know,

given that they don't take themselves that seriously. It's a bit conceited to filter the beginning of Twist and Shout at the beginning. Oh, God, yeah. As if they're going to represent this new pop cultural era, you know, as if Philip Larkin's going to write, sexual intercourse began in 1974 with the Rubets because nothing important had happened before, you know.

They're all in a mixture of the stage togs that they've worn throughout the year. Yeah. And they appear to be performing in front of the giant Iron Man in the Channel 4 eye dents that's just collapsed on the floor in despair at what's happened to Glam. Yeah.

The companion piece for this performance, and indeed for the whole of this Christmas Top of the Pops, is that cheap and not-so-cheerful British film, the unfortunately titled Never Too Young to Rock. The word rock there has so often possibly a euphemism for something. Made by the same people who made the naively titled Gary Glitter Vehicle, Remember Me This Way. It's a film that features the Rubettes, the Glitter Band, Mud, Bob Kerr's Whoopie Band.

Right. We talk a lot about the grimy mildew damp atmosphere of the mid-70s but watching never too young to rock off a vhs rip or smeary and and muffled is like having your head plunge right into that particular outside toilet all the way up to your knees it's barely watchable but it's in that elite class of mid-70s cultural artifacts which wouldn't be believable if you did them as a parody yeah it would seem a bit too on the nose um with freddie jones as the appropriately named mr rock bottom driving around in a group detector van which apparently tunes into the modulated frequencies emitted by the pop groups required for the concert this concert they're

putting together being very important because it's going to be on tv and if for some unspecified reason if it doesn't get brilliant ratings rock and roll is going to be banned from television that's the plot such as it is and of course this group detector van is basically a converted second world war army ambulance with the doors rusting off you know and a shitty multi-colored paint job and the rubette big moment in this film is miming to this track on the back of a lorry that's going slowly down Golders Green Road when it's obviously just stopped raining. And it's great, to be honest.

It shows off whatever is likeable about them far better than this clip here does. We'll return to that film later in this podcast i'm sure but basically if you think that the natural visual accompaniment to late period glam rock is the look and feel of a public information film with about as many laughs despite the fact that it's meant to be a comedy then you must not sleep on this film no or. Or indeed fall asleep during it, which is a hazard. But definitely watch it, if you can, before the last remaining copy known to man

is deleted off a hard drive somewhere to make room for more low-budget American pornography. Because there's nothing like it except feeling sick in the cold. This is a film whose closing credits include a thank you to Ready Mix Concrete Limited. A thank you that I doubt was ever reciprocated, but one that says it all.

So Sugar Baby Love would spend four weeks at number one, giving way to a tune we're going to be subjected to later on. The follow-up, Tonight, got to number 12 for two weeks in august and they'd round off 1974 with jukebox jive which is currently the christmas number three and would spend four non-consecutive weeks there that's a miles better tune after three top 40 hits in 1975 they changed tack and became a proto smoker getting to number 40 in september of 1976 with the anti-homophobia song under one roof got to number 10 with baby i know in march of 1977 but never bothered the charts again. However, there are three versions of the Rubets still in

existence today. Of course there are. Good lord. They should make a film about trying to book all three of them for a festival. She's the one, it's Anne Watson. You fill up my senses Like a night in a forest We return to a shot of the outstretched forearms of Travis and Edmunds and realise that we have been subjected to a bit. We also get the chance to contemplate how meaty dave lee travis's

wrists and hands are fucking they're like rowing oars aren't they wouldn't like to be slapped across the face or grabbed on the arse by that after some incisive and thoughtful word play on the title of the next single we're finally introduced to ann's song by John Denver. Born in Roswell, New Mexico in 1943, Henry John Deutchendorf Jr. was an army brat who was given an acoustic guitar by his non-are at the age of 11 and ran away from home at the age of 15 to start a musical career in California. But his dad went looking for him and dragged him back

and presumably tanned his arse and he would have fucking deserved it as well. After one year at Texas Tech College in 1963, he dropped out and moved to Los Angeles to begin his music career proper, playing open mic sessions in folk clubs, changing his name to John Denver and replacing the leader of the Chad Mitchell Trio,

which changed their name to Denver, Boise and Johnson in 1965. In 1969, he signed to RCA as a solo artist and put out the LP Rhyme and Reasons. Although it failed to chart, one of the songs on it, Leaving on a Jet Plane, was picked up by Peter, Paul and Mira and took it to number one in America and number two over here. When RCA told him they weren't ready to fund a tour of America off the back of his debut LP, he decided to hit up towns and cities in the Midwest on his own, turn up unannounced at venues asking for support slots and then hit up the local radio station and told

them he was the writer of Leaving on a Jet Plane and asked for the chance to play a few songs live and promote his gig which garnered him a hardcore following and when he put out his second LP Poems, Prayers and Promises in 1971 he landed a number two hit on the Billboard chart with Take Me Home, Country Roads. Despite a barrage of hits in America, which culminated in Sunshine On My Shoulders getting to number one, the UK wouldn't have recognised him if he'd shagged our mams. But in 1973, his manager, Jerry Weintraub,

decided his artist needed his own TV show and convinced the BBC to do it, as he knew that British TV didn't cancel series mid through their run like they did in America. So, six episodes of the John Denver show, which also featured Pants People, were put out in the early summer of that year, but still no hits. Then, earlier this year, Denver had a row with his missus one afternoon and went off for a bit of a ski and according to legend he was so pumped with adrenaline after going downhill really fast on some massive sucker sticks that he wrote this song in 10 minutes while he was on the ski lift back and decided to name it after his missus, presumably because you fill up my senses sounded a bit druggy.

In mid-August, when it had already been and gone as the Billboard number one, and his song entered the chart at number 37 and started a two-month pull up the charts until it knocked Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas off number one. And here is a clip of him on some american tv show to commemorate that very thing boys we touched upon this song when it was done by james galway's flute and vd in chart music 54 but here's the original i think you know i need to say that there's this ongoing raging debate about whether up-and-coming flautists or copyright abigail's party james

galway's version is better than Denver's. I'm in Camp Galway, I think, on the grounds of mellifluousness. So he's got a sort of, slightly sort of disagreeable war will as Denver. You know, you've got the geezers working, have to work pretty hard on that mandolin to sort of take the edge off it. But look at this cunt.

You know, the milky bars may well be on him, but he's the only one eating them sideways because john denver's wide mouth frog look it really unsettles me right he looks like a rubber ball that someone's drawn a face on and sliced almost in half and now they're squeezing the sides to make it talk he looks like if his doctor told him to open his mouth and say ah his head would split in half and fold back over on itself and his glasses would slide off at the back and hit the ground uh which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing

if that meant that he then stumbled myopically, arms held out in front of him, off the edge of the treehouse, into a paddling pool full of crabs. I mean, he is pretty much zippy in a wig and glasses, isn't he? Yeah. It's actually strangely cybernautic, really. There's a bit of a Commander Data vibe about him. It's as if his lips are made from the same material as his face.

And his hair looks weirdly silvery, like it's some sort of fine synthetic fabric that's been generated by a microchip in his skull. Like bleep the space boy. Yeah, very odd. Very odd indeed. What surprises me is the story of how it's composed. It's sort of at breakneck speed, because this is one of those breather songs.

One song in, we have to have the breather. Yeah, piss break. Well, definitely piss break, because it doesn't have any velocity about it at all back then when i was 12 my bottom lines were fast is good and slow is bad and the weird thing is retrospectively actually pretty much all of the slow stuff was poor i i reckon it's not like guys and gals and what an only nick drake was popping up in 1974 i mean you know you did have exceptions i did like i'm not In Love by 10cc, and I admit, you know, that The Carpenters had a fairly mysterious effect on me. But generally, the slow numbers, to me, they weren't just a change of pace.

They just seemed deliberately, consciously designed to dampen down the teenage rampage, you know, to deny the velocity of youth and exuberance and try and reassert the timid innovation of you know the pre-rock and roll years you know it's anti-funk anti-rock anti-disco anti-electronic and it's willfully maliciously tepid and twee yeah at this point john denver is pretty much a one-man osman's for the mams and dads isn't it yeah he's living that american heartland life he's clearly not going about thinking he's summer. And he's obviously real and not a bent cunt.

Ticks all those boxes. And to be honest with you, chaps, I never minded John Denver because as the 70s went on, it was obvious that he was best mates with the Muppets because, you know, they'd all go round his house for a bounce around on his grandma's feather bed. And as far as I know, the Muppets don't knock about with Bellens. Al, the reason he was mates with the Muppets

is that he shared their physiognomy. But they accepted him as one of their own. I've got to be honest, though. I've got no time for this Colorado Beatle. It must be a funny place, Colorado, what it does to people, right? Whether it's Hunter S. Thompson pouring drugs into his bald head and blowing it to pieces when he got bored. Or the empty air of Aspen, Colorado, the American Switzerland.

Yeah. Except that Aspen actually has a long-forgotten countercultural history which makes that even worse. Appropriately enough for a man like this who's essentially a cozy conservative entertainer clinging onto the hippie bandwagon yeah like frank spencer on roller skates they just legalized magic mushrooms in colorado apparently yeah which i suppose is one way to make john den seem interesting. Don't like him. He's got a capo on his guitar at the first fret,

which always just seems like cheating, really. Just shunt the song into some freaky brass band key, you know, rather than just singing a semitone lower like a man, you know. And also, let's face it, even within the unholy genre of western shirts this is a bad oh yes it looks like he's wearing a denim bib over an old lady's nightie but i mean you know he had d snyders back at the pmrc earrings he did loads of benefits off his own back did one in chernobyl a couple of years after the disaster there it was on the waiting list to get on the space shuttle before the challenger disaster fucked all that and he thought ronald reagan

was a cunt which i mean it's a pretty low bar yeah but you've got to take your hat off to him there's just something really unpleasant about this song i hate the the emotional build as the song goes on though it keeps getting bigger and more history on it swelling up like a boil you know it's just a grotesque spectacle of this wide beaked eagle rising higher and higher on the ghastly thermals of his own wind it's horrible to witness but this was always going to happen in the 70s once the mo of the singer songwriter moved on from poetry and social comment to relentless self-examination the deeper people get into that the drippier and whinier they're going to get because ultimately that's what's inside all of

us right so we were drowning in this stuff know, people opening their hearts to the world. There's something about that that's slightly dangerous. Like a night out in Sheffield. Because it doesn't work as culture, just exposing your soul. Ultimately, it's like blokes exposing their bollocks. You know, they might appreciate the fresh air, but nobody else wants to see them. And when one person does it at least it's a novelty but when you live in a world where everyone's running around with their

bollocks out you're not sat there applauding everyone's bravery and vulnerability you're just sick of seeing ugly bollocks all over the place and it's the same with the indistinguishably basic emotions of unexceptional troubadours you end up thinking all right mate it's your bollocks we've all got them except the ladies please look at my bollocks but most of us don't even find our own particularly interesting oh no get up on a stage every night and just pull out your bollocks and expect applause all i can say is hey denver zip it i only wish we could zip up his mouth but sadly his physical resemblance to zippy doesn't extend as far as the useful i mean it's true to this whole business about soulfulness

people think it's an inherent virtue to be soulful. But, you know, most people have got mediocre souls, and Denver's obviously no exception. Yeah, yeah. He's the pioneer of Ed Sheeranism. You know, like stripping down a potentially interesting and lively and affecting musical form to its barest and least emotionally complex and most dumbly commercial elements and then presenting those in a context of reassuring mediocrity and making millions and not doing that out of cynicism

or financial ambition but as a genuine perfectly natural expression of your personal mediocrity and if you do that slickly you can never go wrong with it from a career point of view because there's always going to be loads of people who relate to that and feel very comfortable yeah yeah absolutely that's that's it and um it's he wrote it in 10 minutes i mean it took you that long but yeah the wedding song of 1974 if you had older cousins or aunties or whatever who were getting married in 1974 you had to sit there in your horrible tiny three-piece suit with a bow tie on a bit of elastic be made to listen to this without even being able to touch the buffet and it just wasn't fair

i bet the wilkins in the family when they got married i bet this got played still i'm glad i saw this clip by which i mean i'm glad i saw it as opposed to i'm still seeing it yes so annie's song would spend one week at number one giving way to sad sweet dreamer by sweet sensation the follow-up back home again failed to chart and this remains his only sniff of the british charty arse as a solo artist although his collaboration with placido domingo on perhaps love got to number 46 for three weeks in late 1981 early 1982 i can't believe that only one hit yeah i know yeah sadly denver and annie got divorced in 1982 when the relationship went from her filling up his sensors to getting on his tits it led to a massive row over alimony which culminated in denver taking a chainsaw into the house and cutting their marital bed in half.

And he was killed in a plane crash in 1997. And of course, the song lives on in Britain, thanks to the supporters of Sheffield United, who adopted the lyrics to read, You fill up my censors like a gallon of magnet, like a packet of woodbines, like a good pinch of snuff, like a night out in Sheffield, like a greasy chip butter. Oh, Sheffield

United, come thrill me again. You fill up my senses. Come fill me again. Come fill me again Oh, fantastic. That, of course, is the sound of John Denver. He's out a long time. He finally made it to the top.

And the story, all about Annie, who, of course, is his wife. Lovely sounds of Annie's song. 74, a great year for Alvin Stardust. He's here on Top of the Pops with his jealous mind. Edmund, who has clearly dropped the British accent he had in the 1972 Christmas show, goes into his awful northern accent as he comes out of Annie's song and then introduces a man who's had a great

1974 alvin stardust with my jealous mind yeah no earlier the way he says uh alvin stardust with his jealous mind he's always trying to work the title into a sentence very awkwardly and i hate that when anybody does it most of all when it's noel just because of the creak of it and he does it all the time he's like this is donna summer and she feels some love this is can and they want some more it's a petty peeve but to me it's excruciating and half the time it doesn't even fit with the actual lyrics of the song. It's like, here's Chris de Burgh, and he is the lady in red. Edmunds, he's one of those people that thinks that accents doing voices in itself,

you know, it's humour, you don't have to try any harder than that. We last chanced upon the king of the mansfield delta in chart music number three when he took my kooka choo to number two in december of 1973 this is the follow-up but it's also the first alvin stardust single which the former bernard jury has actually sung on instead of having to mime to the vocals of pete Shelley, who has settled for just writing and producing from here on in. It entered the charts at number 22 in the middle of March, then soared 19 places to number three. And a fortnight later, it knocked Devilgate Drive off the top spot.

And here's Alvin and his mates returning for an encore performance. Oh, Alvin, you're always welcome on Chart Music, Doc. We had to ask, you know, is Shaking Stevens shaking Alvin? I don't think Stevens comes anywhere close to the majesty of Alvin Stardust. I agree. It's weird because Alvin Stardust has basically got to be the Alvin Stardust in My Cuckoo Chew, which was actually somebody else in Tyler.

He's trapped in this role. But, oh, what a role, and he plays it so well. It's fair to say that he says 99.99% of what he had to say in My Cuckoo Chew, but even so, he's got that kind of Ian McShane vibe about him that's very pleasing. Very much so.

And of course, the glove lives on in The Rock Expert as well. Yes. We cannot forget, definitely. And this is one of the great forgotten number ones of the 70s, isn't it? Yeah. As we pointed out in that episode of Char Music, everyone assumes that My Cuckoo Chew was his biggest hit, but no, it's not.

It's this. Yeah, and this record must have come as a bit of a shock to his fans. Like they'd heard My Cuckoo Chew and they thought they had this guy pinned down. Yes. Yeah, well, forget that. But this is how you bring rock and roll into the 70s, isn't it? You know, screaming guitar, meaty drums, and a front man who's clearly too old for this sort of thing

having a moody cavort. He's a fucking brilliant man. As before, he's in his old black leather rig out with matching gloves and a big chunky ring and his pompadour's been puffed out even more and his sideburns are even beefier the overall look is that he's being school fucked by a baby chimpanzee isn't it

bummer chimp imagine coming home from school one day and you open the door and your ted dad's in the living room cosplaying as diana rigg this is the look isn't it yeah it's great it's like his hair is worth talking about here though he's got he's got lockdown hair basically but it's like a lot of people in the 70s who wanted to recall the styles

of the 50s but couldn't quite bear to cut their hair off at the back yeah which i think is really the origin of the mullet yes like the fonz in the latest series of happy days or brian ferry when he quiffed it up in the end i think it's what bowie was trying to do with the ziggy stardust haircut yeah which is kind of the og mullet yes which is stand it on end for rock and roll but without being so hopelessly square as to leave your collar visible so you get this terrible halfway house you'd see a lot of 70s guys not fully committing to the quiff because they'd been growing out their hair since 1964 and they just couldn't dare to chop it off and also I think they were possibly worried that someone would see them from the back

and think that they had a short back and sides like hung up old Mr Normal so you end up with this half and half which really combines the worst of both you know. It's for weekend rockers who want to have the long floppy air in the week for urban camouflage

and then just quiff it up on special occasions. No, no, no, no. This lack of commitment has a cost, and the cost is you're going to look shit. It's kind of, yeah, it is sort of a hybrid. It's like the, you know, the Sethifties. What are you going on about, Dave? The Sixthinties.

You've got the Eighthinties. The Fifthinties, surely. Well, you could have that as well. Yeah, yeah. I love his giallo gloves, surely. Well, you could have that as well. Yeah, yeah. I love his giallo gloves, though. Like a kinky, sexualised 1970s Italian murderer whose identity is concealed for most of the film. You just get a POV shot of his strangling hands.

Probably in the last scene, he'll turn out to be an old lady or a dwarf. Or the main young female protagonist who somehow survived the murder spree hey you didn't expect that it doesn't need to make sense no i've actually got a pair of black leather gloves a bit like this and it's funny because if i wear them with a suit or a nice leather jacket i look like an italian murderer right but if i wear them with a zipped up parker and jeans i look like an aging rock star who owns a helicopter i like both of them but the main difference between the performance of

my kooka choo and this one is that his band have changed you know gone are the egg and chippers in the scoop neck pink t-shirts and in their place are younger lads in less durable and luxuriant black rig outs yeah it's good the thing i think there's a sort of a theme actually running throughout this episode of like they're sort of the backing musicians stroke session musician whatever kind of just having a bit of a laugh really just strumming away on these bog basic piss easy chords you know they probably could do a note for note of richie blackmore on sweet child of mine if they've been asked. But, you know, this is the gig that they get, you know. And you think that, like, in a way,

you know, people talk about post-punk and the intensity of post-punk, and I think that comes from the fact that the players, they're having to concentrate furiously on getting every change right, you know. But, you know, these guys, they can just swish away or grin or even play pat-a-cake mid-song, you know. But there's kind of a vibe running through this.

It's a very end-of-term feel, isn't it? Very end-of-term, and it's almost like a cultural end-of-term. They should have played Crossfire while Alvin was carrying on. Yeah, it's got a cultural end-of-term feel as well, yeah. Although Alvin does come really close to clonking the keyboard player in the teeth with that mic stand. Oh, yeah, yes, he does. He does a little comedy jab.

Just look how skilled Alvin is what mike standsmanship you know there's none of this poncy freddie mokery half a stand bollocks he just sees this chunky mike standing he just hoiks it up and then points it at the camera and twirls it and then he holds it in one gloved fist so he can point at his jealous mind then he uses it as a claw to ensnare his pianist like he's trying to win him in a fairground and once again that pianist is hunched over awkwardly and not deploying the alexander technique and is therefore paying for it right now yeah but fucking hell worth the price i think i think maybe the keyboard player's being punished for having his white underpants sticking out the top of his black ice skater bell bottoms at the back,

which lets the side down a bit. Although, actually, I looked closely, it might not be that. It might actually just be his skin. He is one of those unhealthy-looking 70s blokes, even with that helmet of blonde hair that makes him look like he's trying to save his sweetheart from matthew hopkins but no to my mind this is a fucking tune yes and what a welcome relief from the last two songs we've had this episode has officially begun here with alvin yes christmas has officially begun

this of course chaps is taken from his debut lp the Untouchable, which came out late last year. And it's inspired me to turn to a book which is currently residing in bedrooms right across the country, the 1975 Music Star Annual. As always, the cover delivers a snapshot of the stars of the day. So we get Donny Osmond, Noddy Holder, Elton John, Suzy Cuatro, David Cassaday and Gary Glitter.

But inside is a penetrating interview with Alvin, which I'd like to share with you right now. Headline, how to touch Mr. Untouchable. I am the untouchable. No one is allowed to get close to me. Not yet, Alvin told us, putting his feet up on the desk in his manager's office and showing off his leather boots. You see, I even wear gloves.

That means that no one can touch me even if they want to. Not my skin, or the real me. But why should he be so distant, especially from the people who love him? I am a star. I love my fans. I love everyone around me. I love making music. I love my family. Just because I don't let anyone come too close doesn't mean I don't love them. But for the moment it is very important to me that I stay apart. I don't want to reveal anything about myself right away. I want to keep a few secrets for a rainy day. Anybody and everybody who really loves me must understand that.

In time, you will be able to touch me. But I never want to be the same way as some of the stars. I think there are some who are truly distant from their fans. It's all outward show and nothing in the heart. With me, it's the other way round. I have a lot in the heart. With me, it's the other way round. I have a lot in my heart. For all my fans out there who are reading this,

I want you to know that I love you, and I would do anything for you. I'll be faithful to you. Will you be for me? Very naturalistic that, yeah Round about this time he'd do interviews with the music press

Particularly the serious music press Flanked by two massive henchmen Who would wag fingers and tap on shoulders And look menacingly if the journo asked a question that Alvin didn't like I don't think that's the true Alvin Also we've got to remember that he's responsible for a generation of city kids Not being flattened like roadkill Yes, that's how you's the true Alvin. No. Also, we've got to remember that he's responsible for a generation of city kids not being flattened like roadkill, you know? Yes.

That's how you get to touch Alvin. Absolutely. Just by legging it across a road. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could have done with Alvin Stardust back in 1969. You know, I got run over. You know, I was out of my tiny mind. I'd been sent out by my mum to buy echo margarine with a sixpence

and crossed the busy road. Didn't look right. Didn't look left and um you know i got walloped by this green cortina and uh my life saved by a sort of um a grassy verge um yeah so there you go see swings and roundabouts jfk and you david the thing is more than anything else and this may not be totally obvious to modern day viewers, it may require expert vision, which is what we're here for. Oh, yes. We're in the big bucks.

But this is pure North Country steam rising off the TV screen. or at least a bit of digital manipulation in a steamed up morris marina with a handbrake on near some chimneys or a colliery wheel it's not romantic but it's sex right and because people in those days had to work for their sex in ways that the youth don't really understand now because nowadays it may be as hard as ever to find anyone prepared to have sex with you certainly for blokes but other than that basic obstacle most of the other barriers have been cleared away metaphorically and physically right like i mean in spiritual terms most people have now been cleansed of that spurious Christian hangover, faux morality, and that deeply misogynistic Taliban-esque concept of honour, you know. And to a great extent, they've left behind the terror of pregnancy.

And also, physically, people are now less likely to be battling their way through layers of two-inch thick clothing and huge arm armored undergarments from sternum to knee you know with tights over them and all the concomitant incubated yeast infections and forests of musty pubic hair you know the unwashed british slime you know just the the thug rising off foul smelling undeodorized unmaintained bodies you know and merry christmas people so protected by their society from any kind of useful sex education or visual representation of sexual contact they literally don't know what to do right and all these things still live on here and there.

But nowadays, they're not an electrified ring fence around non-marital sexual relationships or the accumulation of sexual experience for mutual pleasure and personal growth. So at least that stuff is less fraught these days. But it's starting to make British people almost blasé in the continental fashion whereas at this point in modern british history if you were an ordinary person in an ordinary town and you wanted sex you had to work for it not just locating and communicating with a prospective sexual partner the actual practical physical act was like an assault course, not just for the body, but also for the straining libido, like tested to its limit. And it was only starvation and deranged hunger and the sexual tunnel vision that resulted from that, which allowed anyone to ever get through it i think if you put a modern person in a 1970s sexual situation they'd be so turned off they'd cut their losses and just go home for some toast i think and it's

hard to explain to people especially if they've grown up in a universe of porn hub and doja cat and articles about fetish clubs in the lifestyle section of the sunday telegraph you know but despite how funny and good-natured and showbiz this top of the box performance obviously is at the time it would have looked almost too hot to touch because this was a country where as late as the mid-1950s lest we forget the home secretary was prosecuting seaside postcards for obscenity like seafront sweet shop proprietors bucket and spade shop proprietors were arrested as pornographers for selling them and the unspeakable postcards themselves would be taken away and literally burnt in government furnaces. Ashes would then be shoveled out and dumped in the same pile as the ashes of all those impounded copies of Ulysses and the Decameron and Mole Flanders and Death War Bobby Socks by Hank Jansen.

You know, all of which were regularly set alight by our spotless moral overlords in order to save our souls from corruption and literally the only thing that stopped those mass book burnings was the clean air act which meant they had to start shredding them instead and in what was basically still that country this was practically hardcore pornography you know in 1974 a lot of men or at least men who were not fortunate enough to be in the rolling stones would have to gulp and run a finger around the inside of their shirt collar at the slightest glimpse of cellulite you know the gust of wind up a miniskirt provided them with a quick flash of old cotton drawers sagging around the backside blokes would just spontaneously ejaculate you know and remember

this also is only a couple of decades after alvin's fellow nottinghamshire legend dh lauren yes having been forced to relocate to italy was having all his letters to his British publishers opened by the Home Office in their ongoing attempt to silence and suppress the honesty of his otherwise unremarkable writing to the extent of, at one point, trying to put pressure on his baffled Parisian publishers not to publish his work in French,

lest it creep back across the channel to deprave and corrupt the bilingual. This is where we were as a country, right? And this, 1974, this is a time when local councils, which were always cobweb covens of weirdos and crusty old misfits, as they still are, had de facto control over cinema censorship at the local level and would exercise that control so enthusiastically that, according to James Furman, the former head of the British Board of Film Classifications, at this time, West Yorkshire was the most heavily censored region

in the English-speaking world, including apartheid South Africa. And meanwhile, Mary Whitehouse and cohorts were insisting that despite all this, we were all submerged in filth. be further tightened up very severely at the cost or as they would see it the benefit of turning a historically lewd and vicious country into a silent fascist theocracy as if that were britain's natural state and everything else was a perversion and in this very year 1974 the police had seized more about the language of love which was an only mildly exploitative Swedish sex education film, which had been passed with an X certificate by the GLC, but which the police independently decided

to seize and prosecute as an obscene article. After two plainclothes policemen went to see it in a West End cinema, despite being told as they went in by the shuddering old woman in the ticket office, I don't know why you want to see that film. It's just sex, sex, sex. She even puts it in her mouth. This determination to keep Britain in a state of arrested development,

sexually and psychologically, and to close off all those avenues of self-expression and that connection with our own essential humanity and to deny British people by law the opportunity to understand that sex is the only kind of everyday pleasure which doesn't ultimately feel empty and temporary and worthless in the face of crushing capitalist routine and does make almost any life seem worth living and crucially does show up the hypocritical morals of the old british establishment as twisted and dangerous and ultimately evil that determination to deny us all of that was so great and for various reasons

considered so important and such a high priority that cases like that were rushed before the courts while actual sex crimes and large-scale sexual abuse were frequently not prosecuted at all yeah and in a lot of cases offenders were protected from prosecution to preserve the spotless image of the british establishment so that it could continue to moralize and forbid and in this context alvin stardust attempts to do authentic raunch english style with only the flimsiest sheath of humor and silly bugger pantomime are really something. Obviously, no cultural commentator at the time looked at this and thought, fuck, you know, what we've got here is a poptastic reincarnation of D.H. Lorre.

And we would laugh if they had, because that's stupid. But it's not quite the stupidest thing you could say about Alvin Stardust. It really isn't. But it's not quite the stupidest thing you could say about Alvin Stardust. It really isn't. And on these grounds, I also have new respect for Lisa Goddard. You know what you could have done with, I suppose, at this stage, is for Alvin Stardust to have sort of fronted a campaign for the sexual highway code. Going into bedrooms, doing it wrong. Are you out of your tiny mind?

Just walking in you've got like you can see all those 70s bedrooms all done out in Brentford Nylon yes one of those big coffee and wardrobes

the door just flies open hey you yes point but yeah Sixpence's Elvis fuck it he really set the template

didn't he oh yeah because isn't this the year Taylor that Eli Culberson came over from America But yeah, Sixpence is Elvis. He really set the template, didn't he? Oh, yeah. Because isn't this the year, Taylor, that Eli Culberson came over from America and pretended to be Elvis in Heathrow Airport and went on liftoff with A. Shea and performed the most obscene Elvis impersonation ever with some fucking girl guide sitting at his feet?

Yes. Oh, fucking hell. Oh, man. You must see that clip, Pop Craze Youngsters. It's incredible. Oh, yeah, video playlist. So, Jealous Mind would spend one week at the top, deposed by Billy Don't Be A Hero by Paperless. Fucking hell, Nottinghamshire, the cradle of pop.

The follow-up, Red Dress, would get to number seven in may you you you made it to number six in september and he'd finish off his most prolific year with tell me why becoming this week's number 16 sadly diminishing return setting rapidly in 1975 and the wheel tappers and shunters circuit beckoned but he'd roar back in the early 80s with three top ten hits, and he died in 2014 at the age of 72. I wish I could have interviewed Alvin Stardust. Have you seen that massive long interview with someone from Cherry Red Records on YouTube?

It's fucking brilliant. It is, isn't it? Yeah, it's just captivating. Oh, he's such a nice bloke. We're jealous, my jealous mind. Living on my jealous mind. We're jealous, my jealous mind. I've got a status for you there, I'm jealous mind.

Well, at this point in the proceedings, oh, forgive this, by the way. We decided, as it's sort of Christmas, that we'd have it in stereo. The other speaker's in the kitchen. Where are you? This is George McRae. Rock your baby. Travis, on his own, holds up two microphones,

and you already get the feeling that a bit is being deployed, which he wastes time on when he should be introducing the next act, which he finally does when he puts on that American disco voice he started to do round about this time, and throws us into Rock Ya Baby by George McRae. Born in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1944, George McRae formed the group the Jiving Jets in his late teens before joining the Navy in 1963. Four years later when he came out, he formed a duo with his wife Gwen and when she landed a solo record deal, he acted as her manager while keeping his hand in on session singing and club dates. Earlier this year, McRae was on the verge of chucking in the music business when he was

approached by Harry Casey of Casey and the Sunshine Band, who had written a song that was out of his range and was offering it to Gwen. On the day of the recording, however, Gwen was running late, so Casey asked George to have a go. And by the time Gwen had arrived, the single was already in the can, and her husband suddenly had a solo career. With the single rocketing up the Billboard chart, it entered our chart in the last week of June, then soared 30 places to number 15, then bounded up to number four the week after that, then grabbed hold of She by Charles Aznavour and told it to fuck off out of the number one position. And here is the man himself.

And chaps, after crossing the Atlantic and freezing his bollocks off in this frigid husk of an island so close to Christmas, how did the BBC treat him? Like shit. Not only is he having to perform on a set that's been encrusted with big emerald pyramids, which makes him look like he's been shrunk down and been imprisoned in a quality street tin by someone who likes everything bar the green triangles. But the opening sequence is George saying,

sexy mama, or some such. Then a Christmas cracker which pans up to a turkey carcass with some holly on the top and a carving knife rammed into it which has been placed off to the side of him and he's expected to sing in front of it why why i ask yeah turkey with a carving knife like it's had a visit from alvin stardust In a POV shop dubbed with heavy breathing. An Italian prog rock. There's a load of people listening to this laughing. And all the others going, what are you an Italian prog rock?

What's he on about? Now go and listen to Goblin. It's like English prog rock with better food. But yeah, they haven't really been asked to turn the studio into a winter wonderland. It's fair to say. I'm assuming this is a call back to the previous episode and this is what's been left over after mud and david essex have had a go at it yeah yeah or somebody's just not bothered to clear the stage properly you know yeah i find it massively disrespectful yeah i do yeah i mean george you'll be looking at this going on are you calling me a turkey i feel sorry sorry for George McRae immediately just because the fucking turkey's there.

But also, I've got a feel for the poor bastard because he must have been walking on eggshells all year with his missus. And this performance surely puts the tin lid on it. You can imagine him saying, oh, by the way, Gwen, I'm not going to be around to help you eat Christmas shopping because I've got to go to London to do that song that you should have had but you were late remember you know that song that got to number one in america britain canada austria belgium holland germany italy norway sweden and switzerland see you on christmas eve doc it's great i like it now i liked it at the time it's just the effortless superiority i mean it was something like this it's like pele coming up against terry darricott or something although this particular version of rocky baby well yes yes there is that yeah yeah i mean it's famous

for being one of the first songs to employ a drum machine but not in this version but this is the top of the pops orchestra in mid de evolutionevolution like we've seen that they went on what would now be called a journey yes from backing stevie wonder and the jackson five and keeping up with them yeah not disgracing themselves to just a few years later essentially just randomly honking and squawking while Denise Williams was trying to sing a song. And I suppose this is sort of halfway through that transformation, you know, sort of hovering a little above Butlin's standard. Yes.

I mean, it's not as bad as their attempts to play Jamaican music. No. As seen on any top of the Pops performance by a solo reggae singer, where the backing is not so much sly and robbie as ray and knobby because they don't understand how in reggae music feeling is conveyed through the details of timing and inflection and if you muff that you're really gonna sound like a bbc studio band reading charts under a big clock in a room painted hospital green turning reggae into a variety show umpire like you know that sound right yes when two

Ronnie's clash no wait wait wait wait better one better one L.E. Scratch Perry and although soul music was never exactly their friend either no i think they'd have had much worse problems if soul music was still otis redding and wilson pickett and stuff like that because like the stack sound works the same way as reggae in terms of the playing and they really would have slaughtered those records beyond all recognition oh god but at least by this point, American soul music has a sort of slickness and a smooth line to it. So if you play in time and you get the notes right, even if you do sound cabaret sloppy,

at worst you're going to come across as hacks rather than vandals. Although it's a close call on this one because obviously the original backing track is so exquisite and that's the main point of the record yeah and obviously this sounds horrible compared to that but it's just you know unlike them doing uptown top ranking or or sideshow by barry they don't turn a great record into a terrible record they can only downgrade it to a much less good record yes you know because even without that magical rolling feel that you get on the real rock your baby just the notes and the arrangement and the singing are enough on their own to still sound good just not in the same way i it doesn't sound sexy which is

a bit of a shame considering it's a record about sex this is the same record but as an elderly virgin with those those rim shots going all the way through it going click click click like a cane on the pavement outside mr harper's the fishmonger at 8 30 a.m on a wednesday picking up a bit of salmon for the cat i mean obviously this is embryonic disco i guess 74 yeah and there's beginning and it's perhaps one of the first instances of a clash between like the machinery disco increasingly involves machinery and in this instance like the drum drum machine and the tension between that and the musicians' union and, you know, TV studio orchestras. The culmination for me of that is there's footage somewhere of Donna Summer doing I Feel Love. And of course, they haven't got the kind of marauder backing.

They've just got this kind of TV studio audience sawing furiously away on their high lens to kind of simulate that kind of sequencer effect. And yeah, it's not great. He wasn't the first one to use a drum machine. Oh, yeah. You know, Sly Stone used a drum machine throughout There's a Riot Going On, and Shuggy Otis used it, and, of course, Timmy Thomas. But this is the first one that really hit big. No, what's good about this, though,

is that fabulous quick cutting between cameras that they do later on in the song like they did with david ansel double barrel yeah yeah it sort of lobs back a bit of the thrill that's been siphoned out of this track you know and in fairness to george he does that too because he really goes for it as wildly as he can to his credit he's not discouraged he's trying to make up for the the lost funk you know and he's got the standard black male singer suit on hasn't he just one of them zip up all-in-one jobs with loads of spangles and whatnot on it yeah yeah you can look at this performance one or two ways right either it's

the amazing very arguably one of the top 10 singles of the 70s rock your baby by george mccray being desecrated by hacks with george mccray right there to witness it like a 17th century traitor having his entrails pulled out and held up in front of his face before he dies or it's british light entertainment cracking down the sides as it attempts to accommodate the sumptuous girth of Rock Your Baby by George McRae. And what you're watching is the dead past being torn asunder because this, and not the record coming up next, this is now what ordinary people like. So really what we're seeing here is just one of the stranger artifacts of change at a point just before these old ways were banished to the echoing concrete corridors of the little and large show for 10 years, and then finally into the grave with that audience.

You can look at it either way, and neither of those two things is lovely listening, but it's better to think of it the second way, because that's much nicer to witness. We've talked often about this song in previous chart musics, and even in the last episode, we talked about how this song influenced Dancing Queen, and by extension, Don't Make Waves by the Nolans. But we can't hate it for that. But we can also kick in another song which was whatever gets you through the night by john lennon which got to number one this year and

lennon was quite open about nicking from it yeah yeah so this episode has properly picked right up now hasn't it and nothing can go wrong from here going from strength to strength to so rock your baby would spend three weeks as the toppermost of the poppermost, eventually yielding the floor to When Will I See You Again by The Three Degrees. The follow-up I Can't Leave You Alone got

to number nine for two weeks in October of this year, and his latest single You Can Have It All is currently at number 42 and will get to number 23 in January of 1975. He'd score one more big hit with It's Been So Long, which got to number four in August of 1975, then diminished and returned setting, but he's still active today. Meanwhile, Gwen McRae scored moderate hits of her own in the late 70s with

Funky Sensation and All This Love That I'm Giving, which in their own way are just as fucking monumental. I love those songs. All This Love That I'm Giving is a fucking banger. It is. Keep the Fire Burning. That's great. And on that note, Pop Craze youngsters, we're going to step back, Take me in your arms and rock me Ooh

And on that note, Pop Craze youngsters, we're going to step back, catch us breaths, and come back hard tomorrow for part three of Chart Music number 69. Always remember, if you're sick of being edged by us and you want it long and hard in one big go without any rubbish adverts, patreon.com slash chart music. Money down the G-string.

All right, and Pop Craze youngsters, on behalf of Taylor Parks and David Stubbs, this is Al Needham, and you are staying Pop Crazed. Chart music.