Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #69 (Pt 4): 27.12.74 – The Ramadan #1 of 1974

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

David Stubbs, Taylor Parkes and Al Needham conclude their excavation of the last TOTP of 1974. After Ray Stevens lets us all down by refusing to lob it out, Suzy Quatro drops the last ever Glam Bomb and then – YESSSS! Carl Douglas gives another demonstration of Chinese-lettered-pyjama funk with the most perfect Number One EVER. Terry Jacks reminds us that he’s clinging on to life. And then the winners of 1974 – along with West Germany and Harold Wilson, twice – pitch up to remind us that for the next few years, the charts are going to be under the reign of the Blokes of Pop…  Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language, which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart music. It's late Friday afternoon. It's about 13 minutes to six.

It's December the 27th, 1974. The sizzle of the chip pan emanates from the kitchen your mates are outside trying to pull wheelies on their still new rally choppers beckoning you to come out and join them but they can fuck off for now because we're in the final stretch

of the last Top of the Pops episode in 1974 and the last few minutes of the golden Top of the Pops episode of 1974, and the last few minutes of the golden age of TOTP. Ey up, you pop-crazed youngsters, and welcome to the final part of Chop Music number 69. I'm Al Needham, they're David Stubbs and Taylor Parks, and we are rejoining the episode in progress. What an amazing piece of music. Queen for you there, and Killer Queen.

Well, as my part for road safety in 75, I invented this trafficator hat, you see, left and right. And I think it's only fair to go from a flasher to a streaker. Here he comes. Boogie dee, boogie dee. There he comes. Boogity, boogity. Here he comes. Boogity, boogity. And he ain't wearing no clothes.

Oh, yes, they call him the Streaker. Travis, now brandishing four microphones and a remote control button and a microphone cover on the index finger of the other hand, as well as wearing a bowler hat with indicators on each corner, tells that i can't even be bothered to fucking describe this man tells us that he's doing his bit for road safety in 1975 by inventing a trafficator hat which is a piss poor way of introducing the streak by ray stevens oh fucking hell man the bits are just piling atop each other what's the point man oh yeah absolutely i mean you just wonder you know did they have to have a team of like people come in you know sort of cambridge footlights graduates and people like that to help

cobble together all these bits or did they honestly think the two atoms of wit that they had between them you know edmunds and travis was enough to rustle up something usable it's just awful i mean who was their target or you know did they sort of run it by you know nervous secretaries or you know people in a typing pool or whatever i mean you know who kind of gave them the idea that anything of this was remotely funny i know or even zany we've not really brought this up or hammered away at it but you know this is on at friday tea time this is in the crackerjack slot isn't it yeah yeah and even i as a six-year-old would have thought this was massively childish and pointless yeah yeah born in clarksdale georgia in 1939 harold ragsdale formed a band at high

school called the barons and signed to capitol records after graduating from college he spent the 60s writing and recording minor novelty hits such as jeremiah peabody's polyunsaturated quick dissolving fast acting pleasant tasting green and purple pills ahab the arab which was later covered by jingle nonce harry the hairy ape and guitars and by the end of the decade he was a regular guest on the Andy Williams Show in America, which led him to be signed to Williams' label Barnaby in 1970, and his next single, Everything Is Beautiful, got to number one on the Billboard charts and made it to number six over here in June of that year. A year later, he did even better when Bridget the Midget, the Queen of the Blues,

got to number two in the UK for three weeks in April of 1971, held off number one by Hot Rex. After the hits dried up over here and Diminishing Returns set in over there, he found himself on a plane in December of 1973, flicking through an issue of Time magazine, and his eyes alighted on a letter from a student at Colton College in Minnesota about the newly created winter tradition of running about like a bastard through the snow in the nip, which was spreading across campuses all around the states. He immediately started to hammer out a song on the plane, which was left unfinished. But a few months later, when the newspapers suddenly became full of it and over a dozen

singles about the phenomena had already been released, he dug out his notes, finished it off, and it was released in February of 1974. A few days after it came out, Streaking reached its peak in America when Robert Opal, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan who was working as an English language teacher in Los Angeles, managed to get backstage at that year's Oscars by pretending to be a journalist, cut through the backstage curtain and ran bollock naked past that year's presenter David Niven and the publicity ramped up the airplay of the single and got it to number one on the Billboard chart for three weeks in May. It was then put out over here as the follow-up to Love Me Longer which did note, enter the chart at number 40 during the British variant of the streaking outbreak

mainly at football matches and soared 27 places to number 13 he was immediately catapulted over the atlantic to make an appearance on top of the pops which helped it soar to number four and a week later it waved its musical cock at the rubets and scared them off the summit of mount pop denying hey rock and roll by show waddy waddy it's moments at the top and here is a repeat of his studio performance and chaps here's the novelty song of 1974 isn't yeah yeah i think this is my favorite ray stevens song i think this will almost certainly have made it onto the best of ray stevens possibly later reissued as the best of ray stevens featuring the streak not available in any shops except walworth yes you see i i know an element of the sardonic in what taylor said there but

i genuinely did like at the time i genuinely did like, look, at the time, I genuinely did like this. Now, the thing is, I mean, I was acquainted with Ray Stevens also. You mentioned Everything is Beautiful, which was played every bloody 30 minutes

on Radio 2, which unfortunately was the family default station on the old radio. And, you know, and it was just everything is beautiful. And it's just like,

look, mate, I live in Leeds. Everything is not fucking well beautiful, I can tell you. So, you know, I was a bit a bit skeptical about that but i love this and i think i love it in every respect i mean i think part of it right well there are various reasons um one is it brightened up i was having a miserable um summer holiday in triada bay in anglesey in this kind of transylvanian type hotel on the seafront, you know, horrible place, you know.

And it helped brighten up that. There were various things. I think it was hearing boogity, boogity. I'd never heard anybody say boogity, boogity. And it was like having chewing gum for the first time, bubble gum for the first time, you know. Proper chewing gum as well, hubba-bubba. Yeah, exactly.

Big, thick explosions of flavour for three seconds. Exactly, yeah. So there was that element of Americana about it. And, of course, in 1974, America might as well have been on the moon, basically. Might as well be Spain. Yeah. You had all of that going on, you know,

plus, obviously, the self-evident hilarity of the spoken word bits, you know, horror on Apple, you know. I was absolutely taken. I was absolutely smitten. You were 12. I was six. I mean, as a six-year-old there's

nothing funnier than nakedness oh totally tackle out yeah i've already mentioned that documentary that the bbc ran about a nudist camp tears falling on my sabutio pitch while i was watching but yeah even at 12 it's still funny isn't it oh totally yeah other people's cocks are just hilarious that's right yeah i mean one's Oh, totally, yeah. Other people's cocks are just hilarious. That's right, yeah. I mean, one's own is no laughing matter, but other people's, hilarious, definitely, yeah. Yeah.

Just imagine you just sat there pointing at the screen going, he ain't wearing no clothes. Yes. Sadly, he is, though, isn't he? He's just got this suit on. And you're sitting there watching it. Well, he's got to take that suit off at some point and run about

bollock naked after Dave Lee Travis. Yeah. Give him a taste of what he's been dishing out. Oh, God, you just put me in mind of one of the ways in which DLT could have contributed to this performance. Oh, God, yes.

Oh, for fuck's sake, yes. Absolutely, yeah. Although the really terrible thing here, of course course is that if an actual streaker had burst into the studio and onto the stage and not ray stevens hat off and you could guarantee you would have been forced to the ground by bbc security knee in the back you know frog marched into the. Yeah, with a hat over his groin. Like that copper. Yeah, commissionaire's peak cap. Yeah, held over.

Ray Stevens applauding as he's led away. Fucking sellout, I bet you. If Travis actually did decide to get all his kit off and run bollock naked around the stage, do you think Edmonds would take it upon himself to bring him down? Or would he just run off like a bitch what rugby sack a little yeah i think he might produce i mean they've always got a sort of plastic policeman's helmet at hand didn't they you know well i suppose i

was later on they needed one whenever the police came on didn't they you know yes hello hello hello it's sting you know so they might yeah i think that's probably what you've done he'd have like you know call for a minion to minion to grab a helmet from the props cupboard and chased after him with that. It'd be like Steve Austin against Andre the Giant as Bigfoot in the $6 million one there. Thrilling television. Just perhaps with a view to covering his knackers, basically.

I don't know. Knowing Edmonds, I think he's more likely to reach into the inside pocket of his suit, pull out a little walkie-talkie and just mutter darkly into it. And the next thing you know, eight goons appear. But here's a rare chance to see some actual kids in the studio in this episode. And, oh, dear. Yeah. They look well fucking Brentford Nylons, don't they?

It's fair to say the audience respond in muted fashion. It's very much like a Belgiangian pop tv audience isn't it yeah like when two man sounder on and uh poor old lou de pricks in his sailor suit jaggering it up and giving his all and fucking people's just fire on the bongos and they're just looking as if a frog's been dissected it's like a who can look the most appalled competition you know their cool rests on this. Yeah. Again, it always amazes me how they manage to find the kids

that are the least excited about pop in the 70s and, you know, manage to get them, like, front and centre, you know, as if they're disappointed that it's not top of the form or something. Yeah, even Ray Stevens isn't enough to get them going. No, no. There's one young lady who looks pretty unimpressed but continues to jig up and down a bit. There's a couple of... Yeah, there's a lot of one young lady who looks pretty unimpressed but continues to jig up and down a bit there's a couple there's a lot of bobbing up and down yeah there's some mild smirks in there um

there's a couple of stone-faced non-movers there's a few who look like they haven't really noticed anything different it's just there's some music playing somewhere so they're sort of bopping about to it you know whatever it is isn't really their concern. Let's just get through this and back home to a New English Library paperback. You know, skinhead goes skiing. It doesn't help that the song is being performed without its usual gales of canned laughter

that Ray thoughtfully provided on the single. And the problem is as well, he's talking gibberish half the time. I mean, fucking snow cone, basketball playoff, what's he going on about? Is that drugs? Yeah, well it's one of those records made by and for Americans. Yeah. And if any other suckers

are dumb enough to bite, he'll go there and he'll do it for them if they pay, but he's not going to worry too much about communication. He's not going to give a TED Talk, is there? No, him doing this in Britain is like British groups going and playing in Japan. They're pleased to be there, but it doesn't worry them much whether anyone can understand what they're singing about.

Certainly not to the point of trying to do anything about it. But Americans are like this. Do you remember when that film Hancock came out with will smith in it right now i know that most tony hancock fans are now dead and i know they're basically have never been any in america but fuck you he's still one of the all-time greats and that's his name and nobody would go to america and try and sell them a film about some character called jerry lewis just because nobody try and sell them a film about some character called Jerry Lewis. Just because nobody in Britain gives a toss about Jerry Lewis, the comedian. And expect them not to care or not to be confused.

Just the arrogance to do that would be appalling. Yeah. As well as commercially stupid, you know. But it doesn't work both ways you know a lot of a lot of americans are anglophiles and love specific british stuff you know the less american the better even though one american who listens to sleaford mods and can sort of follow it with the help of google but that's not the same as the big country bearing down on you is it expecting you to just understand its stupid words,

because, you know... I mean, I didn't mind at all, far from it, that I couldn't understand all the American bits. That actually made it all the better, as indeed, you know, for the pop kids, you know, as evidenced by its number one status, etc. How wonderful must a snow cone be. A snow cone, great.

You don't know what it is. It sounds American, and therefore it's great yeah yeah this would last all the way through to the mid 90s and when 7-eleven started popping up everywhere and you could go in and buy a bar of hershey and find out it tasted a desiccated cat shit but yeah this song is it doesn't help that ray takes far too long to put his hat on to do his redneck voice, which holds the song up so long. Yeah, the fumbling is terrible. Awful. This would have been, you know, a laugh riot back in the summer.

But it's December now, mate. It's a six-month-old joke that's just worn off. If you're not going to get your cock out, just go. I suppose the one thing you can say is that this is an ideal track for cutting a montage of Erica Rowe and that bearded bloke with a police helmet over his bollocks and perfect to listen to on your orange foam Walkman headphones while hurdling the stumps

other than that there's not a lot of use for it isn't there really no what is the defining characteristic of streakers by the way do you think because i've never quite understood it the obvious psychological explanations for it don't really hold up when you look closely you know obviously these people are exhibitionists of a sort yeah presumably not in an erotic way because there are far sexier and less illegal ways to satisfy that craving if you have it even in 1974 and although the the footage and the photos of male streakers tend to be censored it's pretty obvious from the location of the black bars that these men are not aroused by their exposure at least not at the time and

they don't necessarily have anything astonishing to show off and you think there'd be some kind of psychosexual component in a woman stripping nude and running around in front of a say you know like a testosterone frothing crowd at Twickenham or something. But when you see them, it's just carefree smiling and waving. You know what I mean? Like they think of themselves as cheerleaders taking to a logical conclusion. You know what I mean? It's part of the show.

So I don't get it. It must be an act of regressive desperation, like a child getting his bum out you know and cackling at the adults looking shocked yeah you lose your sense of humanity in modern society so they tell me so what better way to refresh that what indeed breaking the lines you know of a controlled and ritualized gathering yeah i suppose i've never done it or even thought about doing it. And you know me, I used to get my cock out for money on a very regular basis.

Yeah, for money, yeah, not for free. In a controlled environment. I've never streaked myself. I don't understand the psychology of it. The newest who got to it in my family is my younger brother, Tony, who was, he'd got, he'd had a few lotions and this was at the, a test match.

It was at Headingley up in Leeds and it was England Australia or whatever and he was kind of being kind of half dead you know he wanted to sort of do a little pitch invasion

and he did he sort of pitched he was right at the front and he kind of I don't know he was just impelled and he pitched over and thought

oh well fucking hell I might as well do it now you know he races across the pitch past the wicket you know they're all standing there looking at him and he feels he's sprinting along

trying to get to the other end you know he thinks he better say something. So he just shouts, me house is on fire! And he carries on and eventually gets to the other end. And, you know, eventually he's scooped up, you know, once he's reached, you know, the other boundary.

And he says, actually, the police were pretty complimentary about it. You know, the security, you know, obviously they had to sort of flush him out of the place. He says, you know what, lad? You're the first person that's ever made it across all the way. Nice one, lad, you know, the security, you know, obviously they had to sort of wash him out of the place. He says, you know what, lad, you're the first person that's ever made it across all the way. Nice one, lad, you know. Well played, Tony. Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah. So the streak would last only one week at number one, when

Gary Glitter chased it off. The follow-up, the Moonlight Special, failed to chart, but he roared back a year later with a country-tinged cover of the Errol Gardner Standard Misty, which got to number two in July of 1975, kept off the top by Tears on My Pillar by Johnny Nash. I don't mind that at all, man.

That gives off very fond memories of hearing that on radio too. Meanwhile, Robert Opal cashed in on his Oscars fame by launching a presidential bid in 1976 and then opening a homoerotic art gallery in San Francisco in 1978, becoming one of the first in America to exhibit the work of Tom of Finland. Alas, he was murdered in a botched robbery attempt in 1979. Is that you, Ethel?

Where do you think you're going? You get your clothes on! Ethel, you shameless hussy! Say it isn't so, Ethel. Ethel! Ethel! The new voices and characters are Ray Stevens and the number one sound of the street.

Why don't we pull a cracker there? Oh, go have a look inside and see if you can get the motto out there. I got the motto. What is small and noisy? What is small and noisy? It's got to be Suzy Quatro, hasn't it? Yeah, sure. Edmund starts to out-reduce the streak when he's interrupted again by Travis running around him in a circle.

After pulling a cracker, they read out the joke, which I can't be fucking bothered to explain. It's Devilgate Drive by Suzy Quatro, everyone. We've dealt with Suzy Quatro a couple of times now, and this single, the follow-up to Daytona Demon, which got to number 14 in November of 1973, was a stopgap release between her debut LP Suzy Quatro and her next one, Quatro.

It was featured on Top of the Pops before it was even released and when it did, it became the highest new entry at number 14 in the first week of February. Then it soared to number 2 and a week later it dislodged Tiger Feet by Mud, another

chinny chap single, to become her second number 1 after Can the Can. And here's a repeat of an earlier top of the pops performance and also it's the last chance i believe to see that huge green screen background that top of the pops were so keen on in the early 70s which flares and pulses as suzy's band worship her bass and she holds it aloft. Oh, it's lovely. And fucking hell, from the back, Suzy Cuatro's band look just like Supergrass, don't they?

I like the bloke on piano who looks like a mad Roger Waters. Or an even more obviously mad Roger Waters. Who comes out from behind the piano and starts dancing around crazily in the photo oh yeah the little

dance really looks like a cartoon of the young roger waters drawn by the bloke who did felix the cat the best thing about this clip and it's prefiguring imagination really yes like the keyboard player and the drummer come out front and do a dance even as their instruments continue to play it's good well i think there was a sort of and you can see this quite a few times in come out front and do a dance even as their instruments continue to play. It's good. Well, I think there was a sort of, and you can see this quite a few times in this episode, that no one's allowed to kind of go all virtuoso

and go off on twaddly to guitar sellers because it's not the old grey whistle test, it's top of the pops. So you've got this alternative form of virtuosity which is being able to high kick as you're playing or kneel down as you're playing or swivel around Hank Marvin way. you know, and that's a sort of a sort of top of the pops form of guitar

virtuosity. Would have appealed to me massively at the time. That piano's playing itself. God. I thought this was the best song, actually. I mean, you know, the thing is about Suzy Quatro is much I was saying earlier on, you know, about sort of queerness and the glam types, whatever. Similar attitude towards Suzy Quatro,

you know. Yes. It was great. It didn't make me a suzy quattro you know yeah it's great it didn't make me a feminist in any way you know this was great yeah this you know got people's backs or whatever but girls were still crap you know girls were just as bad as george best still you know they would wore frilly knickers and a bra well not bras not the one i knew but certainly you know probably frilly knickers you know so it didn't make me any less of a sort of young misogynist i do believe you'll find david it was a platex bra well yeah of course cross your heart yes but the bra was too big and he also wore a wig and that was why he was known as a sexy pig oh he had a busy life didn't i did you remember that time that he skidded off his yamaha and banged his bollocks on a dustbin lid?

No wonder he had to retire at 27. I mean, obviously, you know, it was just one of these passing novelties, a woman fronting a pop group, you know, it was just like Sparks or whatever, you know, just a passing fad and heteronormative service would be resumed as soon as possible. Yeah, Hitler, a woman. But anyway, Chris France says that, service would be resumed as soon as possible yeah hitler a woman but anyway chris france

says that um because tina weymouth was very reluctant to join talking heads i think it was a bit unseemly but one of the things one of the ways he got to play the bass was actually to get to listen to suzy quattro so suzy quattro begets talking heads is this the last ever glam number one single chaps because always yours came after this, but that's a bit more mock and roll, isn't it? Yeah, it could be. I mean, there is an element here of last Tucky in the shop. I was going to say I really like the early Suzy Quattro records,

or the only Suzy Quattro records, but really it's only Can the Can that is so good that it makes Len Tucky seem like a dude, you know. Yeah. Because the other decent ones are basically Can the Can, but less exciting and dramatic, you know. And she is not the only early 70s pop act whose record sounded broadly similar,

but one was clearly better than all the others at doing the same thing. I mean, there's at least two or three others on this program but i don't know i think the suzy quattro formula was a little bit more limited because there's no weirdness or depth it's just hannah barbara boogie um yeah with a good production you know so it seems like there's more of a drop off even though this is still a good record in itself. But it's no high, high, high by Wings, as hard as it's trying. There's more kids in this clip,

but this time they're fucking well into it, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah, you see them off to the side, just frugging away like bastards. They love it. Yeah. Well, she was very popular, Susie Crotrow, which I don't know, despite everything,

I find it sort of hard to warm to her, really. Right. She's the Barbara Windsor of America. You know, like small, cheeky, right wing, taste for brutes, scrappy-do energy, fancied by maladjusted reactionaries and overgrown conkers champions. i just can't really get with it somehow but that's retrospective i guess you know i mean at the time you know i didn't really

wasn't aware of her politics or a personal unpleasantness which one or two people reported on and all that kind of stuff oh no you'd be a fire breathing mini minx at the yeah definitely yeah yeah yeah i mean the only memory that this triggers for me once i was doing the melody maker letters page right and somebody had written us a letter about something or other and for some reason it mentioned halfway through that the letter writer used to live next door to suzy quattro so i published the letter and then at the end i tampered with the address so that instead of saying Steve Jackson Chelmsford, it said Steve Jackson Devilgate Drive Chelmsford,

which I found really funny for no good reason. And they say I got a raw deal. I deserve penniless obscurity with a fucking track record like that. Anything else to say about this? Yeah, isn't it sad? By the 80s, she was reduced to selling her piss as a soft drink. That's what I always assumed that stuff was anyway. And if you think it wasn't, prove it.

So, Devilgate Drive would spend two weeks at number one before giving way to Jealous Mind by Alvin Stardust. And the follow-up, Too Big Big got to number 14 in July. She'd rallied somewhat in November when The Wild One got to number 7, but her next single, Your Mother Wouldn't Like Me, would only get to number 31 in February of 1975, and sadly diminishing return setting with her third lp the non-more 70s titled aggro dash phobia failing to chart what a fucking title that is she returned to america in 1978 to play leather

tuscadero in happy days for a couple of series and musically changed tack in 1978 with a softer rock approach, and got to number four for three weeks with If You Can't Give Me Love in April of that year. I don't wanna let it come, let it go, shake and jive, time and day will get dry. Mmm, very interesting. Thank you. and with his Kung Flu and nasty cock. APPLAUSE Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Fucking yes! Edmund suddenly pops his head out of the forest of silvery Christmas trees and does a shit impression of Wolfgang,

the German played by Artie Johnson in Rowan and Martin's Laughing, and then pulls down his suit trousers, squats on the floor, and shits out an appalling introduction for Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas. Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1942, Carlton Douglas was relocated to California to live with extended relatives in his teens before joining his family in East Dulwich. While he was serving an engineering apprenticeship

and was still nursing the ambition to be the first ever black player for Tottenham Hotspur, he attended a dance at the local amateur football club that he played for and was still nursing the ambition to be the first ever black player for Tottenham Hotspur, he attended a dance at the local amateur football club that he played for and ran into a band who were playing that night, Sounds Five. After being egged on by his mates to join the band on stage and singing Tutti Frutti and Long Tall Sally, he was invited to join them full time. Changing their name to Carl Douglas and the Charmers, they spent the next six months tearing up the South London beat combo circuit. After getting interest from

assorted small local labels, they recorded a demo and changed their name to the Carl Douglas set, but the only offer they got was from Strike Records, who just wanted Carl and put out the single Crazy Feeling, featuring Big Jim Sullivan on guitar and John Paul Jones on bass, but it only got to number 56, even though it was voted a hit on Jukebox Jury. Returning back to the Carl Douglas set, who had now changed their name to Carl Douglas and the Big Stampede, he spent the late 60s supporting Cream, Ike and Tina Turner, The Move, Curtis Mayfield, the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band and Jimi Hendrix, who joined them on stage for a few songs. In 1968, the band gave up and Douglas signed a solo deal with United Artists, putting out the single Serving a Sentence of Life, which failed to chart, as did all the other singles over the next six years when he bounced to Polydor, to Budda, to CBS, to Blue Mountain, to Youngblood International. earlier this year though Biduapaya who was born in Bangalore in 1944 and relocated to London in 1967 with the intention of becoming a singer but ended up working for Pi Records as a producer

was lined up to produce a song written by Larry Weiss who had already written Rhinestone Cowboy Bend Me Shape Me and Hi Ho Silver Lining and was looking for a singer. Remembering the man he had worked with on a Blaxploitation soundtrack a few years earlier, he summoned Douglas to the studio. When Douglas arrived, he was told by a pyre that he hadn't even thought of a B-side yet, needed something that very day and asked him if he had any lyrics and when Douglas produced his notebook Bidu was struck by something Douglas had written about Chinese lads kicking each other in the face and worked something up on the spot. After taking two and a half hours of a three

hour session to nail the A side with a tea break thrown in Douglas was given 10 minutes and two takes to get the B-side done, which was then massively over-egged in post-production by Bidu with lashings of and the oriental riff, because it was only a B-side and who the fuck was going to listen to it anyway? When Pi took delivery of the single, to the astonishment of everyone involved they insisted that kung fu fighting had to be the a-side in order to capitalize on the tsunami of interest in martial arts that had swept the playgrounds of britain and they released it in the summer of 1974 where it did precisely fuck all and got zero radio airplay but But the Phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown,

and it spread through the clubs and discos like a bastard, and finally entered the chart at number 42 in mid-August. The following week, as nimble as the tiger, it soared 13 places to number 29, but Top of the Pops were far too busy concentrating on the finger of mud in the Osmonds to contemplate the heavenly glory of kung fu fighting. But when it soared another 20 places to number 9, the nature of Carl Douglas was irrepressible. He was finally allowed on for an astonishing display of Chinese-lettered pyjama-suited funk. And three weeks later, it scaled the summit of Pop Mountain, confronted Love Me For A Reason by the Osmonds,

and shouted, stupid fool, you're forcing me to kill you! And here he is, back in the studio, back in the studio, readying himself to face off in a monumental battle against the 36th chamber of the Top of the Pops Orchestra. Fucking hell. Where do we start with this, chaps? Oh, yeah. I know that people are going on about the specials and ghost town at the moment.

And let me say on behalf of all of Char Music, thank you, Terry Hall. And Pop Craze Youngsters, you really need to neil's piece on him and the quiet yeah but i'm sorry because for me this is the ultimate right place right time perfect number one of all time i fucking love it man it's interesting that i think that once again sitcom and um pop were in this kind of cultural alignment because around this time he would have had the steptoe and son episode he was at the interesting that i think that once again sitcom and um pop were in this kind of cultural alignment because around this time he would have had the steptoe and son episode he was the seven steptoe right yes the old man and all his geezer mates yeah they they see off frankie barrow with a few

kind of kung fu moves in um perhaps not one of the kind of more naturalistic uh episodes of steptoe um no but uh yeah and of course eggy thump yes yes was this around about the time that Fu Manchus came out as well? There was some Fu Manchu, there were sort of repeats. Yeah, there were a lot of repeats of Fu Manchu at the time, but of course there was... No, I'm talking about the Treebor Fu Manchus. Oh, sorry. I beg your pardon, yeah. It was spelled C-H-E-W at the end.

Oh, ah. And of course there was Kung Fu by David Caran. David, I was going to say, David Kwai Kang Che. That was a fucking cowboy thing. That was so disappointing. Yeah, snatch the pebble from my hand yeah yeah yeah and this was the time when every comedian on the telly was cutting ping pong balls in half and shoving them into their eye sockets that's right snatch the pebble yeah yeah i mean kung fu was the absolute rage of the playground at the time and i like everybody else i was just fascinated by it even though i was too

young to actually see any of it but the thing is i lived in a violent you know i was in i was 12 and it was a violent playground i was in and yeah it was kind of all the rage but no one was actually performing kung fu as such it was all like headlocks and kicks in the bollocks basically that was still the tried and trusted methods of uh fisticuffs wherever kevson our playground would just throw themselves at each other doing flying kicks and stuff i mean missing each other i mean not deliberately but yeah no it was just the old method i mean but you couldn't really have a song called everyone was kicking each other in the bollocks you know it wouldn't have the same cachet but that's what was actually happening i tell you you know yeah sung by uh john thor

i mean i remember every weekend I'd crash-ramming on our grandpas in the meadows, and every Sunday morning, me and my grandpa would walk up Arkwright Street, which is a big, long street that connected the train station to Trent Bridge, for the sole purpose of me getting me comics for the week from this massive newspaper stall in the train station.

And every time we went past one particular shop, I'd beg my grandpa to take me in there. And he'd look at me as if I'd gone out and get really confused and say, oh, no, no, no, you can't go in there. You're not old enough. And I'd get really upset. And one time, after months of this, he just stopped and he asked me why I wanted to go into that shop and i pointed

up at the sign and said look grandpa martial arts and he just pissed himself laughing and he wouldn't tell me why and a few years later i went past that shop again and i realized it actually said maricolades it was a fucking sex shop and my grandpa was just so confused why I wanted to go into a sex shop. I mean, thank fuck he didn't take me in because he'd be like, oh God, look at these crap nunchucks, grandpa. Where's the chain holding them together? I mean, there was a Chinese restaurant next to it

and I'd always duck behind me, grandpa, because I was scared of it, as mentioned before. Just want to point out, I wasn't scared of Chinese people. I was just scared of it, as mentioned before. Just want to point out, I wasn't scared of Chinese people. I was just scared of big writing, and more importantly, big Chinese writing that I didn't understand. I was terrified that I'd be dragged in there,

and they'd hold up big fucking placards with Chinese writing on it, which would have absolutely terrified me. And also, come to think of it, next door to that, on the other side, there was a barber shop. And it had a massive anti-abortion poster in the window with a photo of what I thought at the time was a bin filled with dead babies and all blood. It must have been a load of dolls in a bin with loads of fake blood.

I think, I hope, Ockwright Street was terrifying, man. It does sound it, yeah, yeah. But anyway, I remember being in the playground and a mate telling me that someone had made a song called kung fu fighting and i immediately realized that this had to be the greatest record ever and when i heard it fucking hell it was because this song is fucking brilliant my first introduction to funk and you know teaming funk and kung fu was a stroke of absolute genius 17 years before the wuTang Clang, let's remember. Yeah, from the motion picture, Bollocks of the Dragon.

Now, obviously, look, I love this record like everybody else does. How can you not? Or at least everybody below the rank of Blue Belt. This isn't the best performance of it. Oh, no. Oh, no. As I'm the fact that he's got the top of the pops orchestra backing him up and a distinct lack of you know i mean he completely muffs the opening line that's

the weird thing i don't know if he can't properly hear the top of the pops orchestra lucky man or if he's just not concentrating but he comes in a beat and a half late yeah expert timing indeed and you just think how do you not remember how to sing the song kung fu fighting how many times in the last year have you had to sing this song it's like if you were locked in a room for nine months with the same song playing over and over again through a speaker in the ceiling and then when you got out you're telling someone about it and they said oh my god what was the song and you said i can't remember that's the equivalent of carl douglas in december 1974 forgetting how to sing kung fu fighting we can talk about carl douglas fucking up the timing of his own song but come on now the top of the

pops orchestra are to blame because they have desecrated this song in a manner very similar to the opening of a kung fu film where the baddies go to a rival school give everyone a panning and then rip the school sign off the wall break it over their knee and throw it down in contempt they should have made a film where carl douglas swears revenge on the top of the pops orchestra culminating withating with Johnny Pearson at home in his cardigan and slippers. And Carl Douglas just bursts through the wall and says, you have offended my family and you have offended Pi Records and just kicks the fucking shit out of him. I'd pay to see that.

I would pay to watch him chopping them up and chopping them down. And aside from anything else, there shouldn't be a top of the pops orchestra he shouldn't have a microphone he obviously should be miming it yes to somebody else's voice out of sync yes some jobbing actor exactly oh that's what i used to love about the wu-tang clan all those samples of fucking middle-aged jobbing actors in the 70s hey dadio you want to fight the thing about cole douglas you're not going to want to select him in street fighter 2 are you no he's a big chunky lumbering hunk of a lad who he only appears to have two moves one of which is flailing about with his arms as if his picnic's just been ruined by a swarm of wasps.

And his other move is the kick up from the hip, which makes him look like he's trying to fend off Bummer Dog. You know, Chun-Li and Dal Sim are going to have no problems sorting him out. And flared kung fu trousers won't work, man. You've got to put some proper drag on your kicks. It's like when you see footage of fighting on the terraces from the mid-70s, and people are kicking the shit out of each other,

but they've got flares on and really heavy, clumpy boots. And it's like, well, that can't have hurt that much because of the drag. Yeah, and they're trying to kick each other in the stomach. But you could just grab the flares. Yes. And then you've got that unseemly thing where after you've grabbed the leg

of someone who's trying to kick you in the nuts, you just start walking backwards, and they hop along for a bit and then fall over. Yes. That was always my best art of self-defence. I shouldn't have said that now, because if some, like an angry B.A. Robertson confronts me, you'll know my trick.

It is a recreation of the original Top of the Pops performance, but there's no bidu this time, which is a recreation of the original top of the pops performance but there's no bidu this time which is a bit of a shame i think i think he realized i think he's well out of it to be honest but i mean even a crap version of kung fu fighting is still a fucking towering landmark over this episode it is it is yeah also reminds me a little bit of um was it willie hutch brothers gonna work it out it's got a yes very similar feel to this and that's a stone salt classic yeah and of course cole douglas was on the christmas day top of the post wasn't he taylor uh yes he was i was gonna say first of all another nice thing about this is it provides a little reminder to us white people that everybody else does things that are maybe a little bit racially insensitive as well. Yes. You know, both on the grand scale and on this sort of blundering, well-meaning, silly bugger scale.

You know, usually doesn't come with the same baggage, often doesn't have the same consequences. But it happens everywhere all the time because that initial impulsive response to difference is a human flaw. It's not genetically specific. So, I mean, this record is not Kanye West. No. Instead, it was driving me mad trying to think of what Kanye West's permanent fixed facial expression reminded me of. And I realised it's Homer Simpson when he's got a thought bubble rolling tumbleweed. homer simpson when he's got a thought bubble rolling tumbleweed um but yeah carl is no yay uh oriental riff notwithstanding it's not even hey pedro by chuck berry if you know that which

is a great record musically but it's all done in like speedy gonzalez type mexican accents you know my buggy has a hole and all that stuff, which he obviously thinks is fucking hilarious. At least Carl is trying to be nice and trying to show his appreciation for another culture that he obviously thinks is fucking wicked. It's an ancient Chinese art. He's trying to do a nice thing here

by making out that he lives in a pagoda with a massive gong inside it with a pet panda called confucius but yes on the christmas day episode hosted by savel in a toga and santa suit christmas day episode yeah the one of these two we chose not to do carl makes a guest appearance in between songs just chilling out he doesn't sing he's just hanging yeah with sir jim obe kcsg um he's just there to say hi yeah except it's more like hi yeah because he does the he does the are so me so very solid egged on by savel it has to be yeah very much to savel's delight and then he wiggles his

tongue when jimmy introduces the three degrees and the last lady's here and lynn paul's turned up listen lynn there's a question i've got to ask you now i got who do you my name how do you yeah so i am merry christmas to you oh Oh, goodness gracious. I have experienced more edifying 15-second periods, but at least he hasn't taped back the corners of his eyes. Yes. So we can at least be thankful for that. I mean, this was the time in any film or programme, you know, no Chinese person could come on screen without an enormous gong bashing.

Yeah. Yes. Did you ever do kung fu or any ancient chinese art when you were younger once i think the community center was having kung fu classes and i went once yeah and then my parents realized how much they'd have to lay out for kids and belts and everything and yeah it kind of ended there for me yeah i i was a little bit too young but i know that as a kid yeah i did go to judo lessons for a couple of weeks and wow civic center we didn't have the kit or the the white suit we were just

doing it in like track suits and stuff the gi is that what it's called the gi yeah it shows what i fucking know it was just flopping around on crash mats in a big echoing brick room you know and i decided i had better things to do with my days off the main thing i remember about it this must have been the very early 80s because i remember a kid there telling me about his uncle who apparently looked so much like john lennon that on the morning after john lennon was killed he went into a shop and a lady saw him and screamed. As if not only had she been visited by the ghost of John Lennon, but that ghost had chosen to haunt not Liverpool, not London, not Weybridge,

not even New York City, but Kidderminster. A town that the local boomers always insisted to me as a kid that the beatles had once played and of course they were there watching and yet no record of such a gig appears on any beatles concert calendar so if they're ghostly apparitions that already graced the town once it's not so unbelievable that one of them might do it again yeah yeah the only um connection i've got really is just um a friend of a friend who actually reached adulthood by this point but he kind of went through he did the whole thing he completed the whole kung fu thing he got his

kind of black belt and he went and he was from scotland he went back up to his family place in glasgow and told his dad you know very proudly he says yeah i'm black belt now in kung fu yeah what do you think of that? I said, yeah, is that right? And he took him out the backyard and beat the crap out of him. That's what I think of your Kung Fu, mate. But no, this song, one of the two

songs that instantly makes me happy whenever it comes on, along with My Guy by Mary Wells. Oh, fucking love it. It was my karaoke standby song for a very long time and it's on the short list for my funeral songs as well kung fu fighting yes cool why not it's also responsible for one of the best dreams i ever had when i dreamt that do they know it's christmas was made in 1974 instead of 1984 and i was at home watching the video and just thinking oh my god

this is the greatest thing ever and sadly the only thing I can remember of the whole video is a shot of Carl Douglas in his Kung Fu rig out waving his hands around and then smashing a plank of wood with the word hunger on it which was being held by

two of the Wombles so come on chaps do they know it's Christmas which was being held by two of the Wombles. Oh, we're not supposed to... So, come on, chaps. Do they know it's Christmas? Written by Chinnychop instead of Yuri Goldov. Yeah, of course. Who's singing what? Come on, I'm throwing that in there.

I've had a bit of a think about it, and I think it's Christmas time, and there's no need to be afraid. I think it should be the person who should have sung it in 1984, but couldn't. Boer. Yeah.

He was lined up to sing it, but he couldn't get away from new york yeah yeah yeah yeah okay that's out the way in this world of plenty that bit the boy george bit who's doing that i know brian ferry oh brian ferry could work or johnny nash yeah maybe johnny nash i'd um throw mark bowler in a bone get him back in yeah i'd have him for that i suppose so, yeah. But say a prayer, pray for the other ones, the George Michael bit. Someone soulful.

Yeah, this is where the energy goes up. So, Les Gray. Oh, or Dave Bartram. Yeah. There's a world outside your window and it's a world of dread and fear. Obviously, Elton John, but then Judge Dredd comes in to do the Dredd and Fear bit with a massive wink to the camera. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging

chimes of doom. Surely Ozzy Osbourne. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And obviously the key line, well, tonight, thank God it's them instead of you, the dad line. I can't think of anyone but Noddy Holder. Noddy Holder, absolutely. Oh, no. Steve Priest.

Oh! Oh, fucking hell, yeah. That's a night, thank God it's there. Instead of you. With a little point into the camera. Oh! Yeah. And then you bung in Roy Wood, sweet sensation.

Cole Douglas, show what he want it. Glitter Band on drums. And Gary Glitter all the way through going, Hey! At the end of every line. sensation. Cole Douglas, show what he wanted, glitter band on drums and Gary Glitter all the way through going hey at the end of every line. Ensuring it can

never be played again. How much better would that be though? Oh, miles better. And it would have had a bit of

a sort of glam stomp to it as well. Yes. You can imagine Alvin pointing at us. Yes, right.

Yes, shaming us into donating money. Are we out of our tiny minds? Yeah. So, Kung Fu Fighting would stay at number one for three weeks in the UK before giving way to Anis. Oh, fuck off. And then got to number one for two weeks in America and, as we all know,

became the Ramadan number one of 1974, eventually selling an estimated 11 million copies worldwide. Wow. That's not a bad day's work, is it? Mm. Oh, have you got your notebook on you? Oh, here's a shitload of money for the rest of your life, mate. The follow-up, Dance the Kung Fu,

got to number 35 a couple of weeks ago, and he had one more hit in 1978 when run back got to number 25 in january of that month dance the kung fu is a fucking tune i don't care man we often bring it up yeah you can learn a lesson from it though can't you which is if you have a novelty hit and you're lucky enough that people want another thing from you they may want you to repeat the form but not necessarily the content what it makes you think of you know when you see twins and one of them is always distinctly better looking than the other even though they're supposed to be identical that's sort of the thing with carl douglas records isn't it dance the kung

fu is almost indistinguishable from this, but it's just nowhere near as good. Maybe you should have gone for Savate or whatever it's called, the French one. Yeah, because it's got exactly the same comedy sketch set in Chinese restaurant vibe to this one. And the same mock Eastern sound on the record. Because he turned up to sing it in the same kung fu outfit with

kung fu fighting written on his headband right the one of the least necessary headbands in world history it doesn't feel like just artistic continuity it feels like you're just thinking what is it with this bloke and western pop cultural cliches about china it's like he was trapped in this world unable to get out it's like if the crazy world of arthur brown had wanted to do a follow-up record about feeding their rabbit but they just weren't able to do it you know you are compelled to continue on your path maybe he could have done a song about origami or bonsai and And in 1998, Daz Samson and his dance band Bus Stop teamed up with Douglas for a cover of Kung Fu Fighting, a single I chose not to listen to then and still refuse to now, which got to number eight in June of that year. And of course, one of Simon's favourite questions is,

which football manager is mentioned in a number one single of the 70s? And of course, it's little Sammy Chung. Yeah, yeah. Oh, so... All right. All right. Kung fu fighting Ladies and gentlemen, that was Carl Douglas and Kung Fu Fighting. And now we have a somber song.

This is Seasons in the Sun. And Terry Jackson. Seasons in the Sun and Terry Jacks. Get off my place. Goodbye to you, my trusted friend. Travis, now bristling with microphones, with Edmunds behind him blowing a curly paper whistle thing, tells the kids it's time for a piss break as he introduces Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks.

We've already covered Terry Jacks, who was born in Winnipeg in 1944, and this single, because hey, what other Terry Jacks singles are we going to come across in chart music number nine? Last year, he was doing a production job for the Beach Boys, who were pissing about with an English-language version of the 1962 Jacques Brau song Le Moribond, before presumably having an argument started by Mike Love and giving up on it. Terror, spotting an opportunity, decided to fiddle about with the lyrics even more

and change the sentiment from Go on, you cunts, have a good piss up at my funeral. It's not like I give a shit anyway, to Oh no, I'm dying. Goodbye, everyone. And it spent three weeks at number one in America in March. On the back of its American success, it smashed into the chart at number 20 in late March

as the highest new entry, and then soared 17 places to number three. And a week later, it had Billy don't be a hero on the run but the fun didn't last because the bastards ran too fast so here's a rerun of his performance recorded for the bbc on the west german top and poppin music larden who have thoughtfully changed their name to Music Shop, so as not to enrage any seven days jankers type grandparents with German words.

Yeah, David, we've already done it. As we've established, you thought Terry Jacks was actually genuinely dying, and the moment the song stopped being number one, he'd cock it. And here he is! Here he is, still alive. What a cod. I mean, the person that told that to me, oddly enough, he mentioned John Lennon earlier

on. I had a mate called John Lennon coincidentally. I knew about my mate John Lennon before the actual Beatles John Lennon. But anyway, he's kind of a bit of a spoofer. I mean, you know, he was the one that put me on the list that he was actually dying. And I believed it. He was also someone that told me, you remember Frank Lampard, the West Ham player,

Frank Lampard Senior, that Frank Lampard, the West Ham player, Frank Lampard Senior, that Frank Lampard Senior was blind. Blind? He showed me this, like, you know, these bubblegum card things, and there was this kind of weird mauve thing, and his eyes were shut, you know, and this was, like, evidence that he was blind.

How did he play football? And he just had a sense for the ball, you know, a bit like the old snatch the pebbles from my hand geezer, you know, that's how I was able to beat the shit out of Kwai Kang Cheyne, you know, that he had a kind of, a sort of bat-like senseer you know that's how i was able to beat the shit out of quai can chain you know that he had a kind of sort of bat like sense you know for the for the ball and for like it's such a strong positional sense he didn't need his sight you know and um a right fool i made of myself when i actually was we asked to write an essay about which person do you find the most

inspirational and i said frank lampard you know i put this whole essay. My inspirational person is Frank Lampard, who, despite his blindness, played 200 games for West Ham, you know. And, yeah, I got roundly mocked for that. Yeah. There you go. We'll explain a few of his tackles. I mean, this is supposed to be heart-wrenching and all that. Yes.

But really, this song, it's like, hello, mother, hello, father, here I am in Camp Granada. You know what I mean? And of course, the original Jack Braille song is not like this at all. It's another Viva España job, isn't it? Yeah, you have this problem wherever you find translated Jack Braille songs, because so many of them were translated to death. For example, Numa Keep Pat is one of the most uncomfortably intense and emotionally desperate songs of all time. It's about helplessness and terror and impotence in every sense.

But it's most widely known in its English version as If You Go Away. So that the lines, don't leave me, we must forget, all that is gone can be forgotten, are translated as, if you go away on this summer's day, you might as well take the sun away. Just completely bland and opposed to everything Jacques Brel ever tried to achieve. And the lyrics to this song, Le Moribond, in the original are very different because, yeah, it's about a bitter, unfilled man trying to come to terms with his imminent death with a chorus that goes, I want them to sing and dance as they dump me down the hole, you know. And a verse addressing the man back home who's been fucking his wife.

He says, goodbye, Anttoine i never liked you and it it kills me to die today while you are still so alive as robust as boredom but because you were her lover i know you will take care of my wife um now i'm not sure that version could ever have been covered by westlife because it's too fucking good and complex. So instead here, that verse becomes, Goodbye, Michelle, my little one. You gave me love and helped me find the sun. Basically, almost all of these old pseudo-translations of Jacques Brel are an abomination.

And it's worse than not translating them at all because the lyrics would actually be more stimulating in a language that you didn't understand. The big exception being the standard translation of Jackie, the Mort Schumann translation, which everybody knows, which is brilliant and completely in the spirit of the original. Although, oddly enough, the person who did the best braille translations was momus whose right own songs impressed me less as an adult than they did as an overall teenager but whose braille ep has what are probably simultaneously the most imaginative and the

most tonally accurate translations of of those songs It's really, really very good indeed. It's one of the first things he ever did, which I don't think he ever topped. But this, of course, is a song which underwent further rewrites in its turn in Playgrounds and Football Terraces, which may have even further disconnected it from reality because looking at Terry Jacks, I think it's a fair bet that while this bloke may well have had joy may have even further disconnected it from reality because looking at Terry Jacks,

I think it's a fair bet that while this bloke may well have had joy and fun, he never had Millwall on the run. No. No. Although I can't comment on his level of experience re-flicking bogeys at the sun. I'm sure it's all in his autobiography. Jacking off.

It's the inverse of what Eric Thompson did with the Magic Roundabout, where, you know, he just took these Serge Dano originals and actually sort of converted them into something that was probably actually quite decent and watchable, you know, turning Dougal

into Tony Hancock, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's the inverse of that, I guess. It would have been better if they had left Dougal's name as Bollocks, which it was in the original. Oh, I've just remembered. I think this is the only song that I've ever requested

to be played on the radio. Really? I asked my mam what her favourite song was, and she said this. And I said, well, I'm going to write on a postcard and get it played for you on Radio Nottingham. Dear BBC Radio Nottingham, can you please play Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks for my mam?

And I gave it to my mam and she looked at it and she just said, Oh, Alan, your handwriting's fucking awful. She just lobbed it in the bin. Oh, God. You've got a feel for him now, haven't you, in his terrible war that he's had. He's seen the awful flying, you know.

The crimson confetti, the men at the front call that and now he's caught a whoopsie that's made his hair curl and worst of all he has to spend his dying moments immersed in his own treacly cornball thoughts you wouldn't wish that on kaiser bill no but the thing that i really don't like is the upward key change at the end. Oh, God, yeah. This is presumably somehow meant to represent the final collapse and surrender to death. And the rising of the soul to heaven.

Yes, this is the thing. They should have done a downward key change. Yes. And a gradual slowing down and bringing some phasing and echo yes last few crackling flames and cackling demons yes because as it is this sudden fucking breezy uplift sounds horribly like we're meant to think he's passed through the clouds and yeah like the opening credits of highway to heaven yeah outside the pearly gates. Never quite understood why the entrance to heaven

would be in the borough of Croydon. Yes. God moves in mysteriously. I do agree, but I think if you'd put this to Terry Jacks, he would have kind of said, suggestion noted, and stuck with the, you know, upward rising cause. Yeah, that's why he's a cunt.

I mean, this salvation is not an outcome that Brel's moribund would moribund anticipating i tell you that and it just makes me think hang on if you're going to end this song in eternal paradise soon to be joined by all the people to whom you've just bid goodbye yeah what the fuck are you complaining about yeah and why have you then made me listen to your belly aching? Which is, in fact, the question I'd ask all religious true believers, to be honest. If you're so convinced of your eternal salvation, what's the fucking problem? Why the long face? Yeah, this, of course, being the reason why suicide was made a mortal sin in Christianity.

Because there's no mention of suicide in the Bible. But a few years later, when people noticed that life was a rack of shit and, you know, you're probably going to die of scrofula or syphilis at the age of 26 anyway in those days, or some cunt in a hood with a big crucifix around his neck was going to torture you three quarters of the way to death and then throw you in a cesspit to drown because you had a mole on your left shoulder you know

which marked you out as spiritually unclean once that penny dropped in the middle ages people started killing themselves in huge numbers like leaping into rivers holding bibles and stuff just to cut out this miserable slog and get straight to the good bit yeah which meant no more tithes and a loss of social control. And so the church quickly invented this entirely man-made doctrine that anyone who killed themselves was going to go to hell, which was probably lucky, or else the eventual success of Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jackal

would have sent off a quarter of the Earth's population in the year of our Lord, didn't bear thinking about and yet i envy them sat now at god's right hand instead of at noel edmunds feet like the rest of us waiting for his sweet mercy so seasons in the sun would spend four weeks at number one before the life support was switched off by waterloo by abba at the time it was the biggest selling single ever by a canadian and it's currently the third biggest behind my heart will go on by celine dion and everything i do i do it for you by brian adams you know kayak the follow-up was another dig at a jacques song, If You Go Away, which got a number eight in July.

But that was his lot in the UK, and he eased out of the music scene in the late 70s and became an environmentalist and documentary maker. Still alive, don't you know? Oh, absolutely. All our lives we had fun We had seasons in the sun But no yous have you

And over to you for the final number, Dave. Yeah, actually, I'm a bit sad that it hasn't really been in all parts of the country a white Christmas this year, but... I'm dreaming of... Yes. Well, it is time, unfortunately, to come to the last part of the show. You see, I've got a fetish about microphones. I've also got a fetish about mud and tiger feet!

Yeah! Travis and Edmunds, now obscured, but not obscured enough, by a cluster of mic stands, share their commiserations to the parts of the country that haven't had snow this week because snow was a thing we used to have in midwinter quite a bit. While Edmunds dumps fake snow on his partner, Travis tells us he has a fetish about microphones and a fetish about the final act of the episode, Mud and Tiger Feet. We've already covered the former Carl Schultz and hippies who were dropped by CBS in 1970,

went three years without a deal, and were picked up by Rack last year, who then straddled the glam and rock and roll revival trains and immediately scored three top 20 hits this single the follow-up to dynamite which got to number four on two non-consecutive weeks in november of 1973 was selected as their next single on the basis that producer mickey most liked the title they were ushered into the top of the pop studio before it was even released, and the world was introduced to the mud rocker. The thumbs in belt loops and syncopated elbows swinging dance craze performed by their mates, and it thudded into the charts at number 10 on its first week. The following week, it soared to number one. Not only dispatching you won't find another fool like me by the new seekers but keeping their chinny chapula stable makes the sweet from the top with teenage rampage and here they are back

in the studio to claim sole ownership of the pop scene of 1974 because chaps let's not forget they were the first band on on christmas day with their number one lonely this christmas yeah and here they are again in the number one position in this episode yeah well everything ends with mud sooner or later yes everything and everyone um so i don't know if this is hats off or hats on right but fucking hell pure english beef yes you look at this any one of these blokes could have been a copper you know not just the band but also their henchmen who they've got on stage here in that specifically 70s basic young bloke uniform of dirty white plimsolls, tight faded flared jeans over completely flat arse and tight white t-shirts with words on the front.

They look just like those geezers who forced John Noakes up Nelson's column and then later Peter Duncan up Big Ben, from which he so tragically didn't plumb it. And I bet that these fellas here whoever they are i don't know if they're muds roadies or just some faithful fans they're s1w's exactly but if they don't work for the band i bet you they did some nine to five job like that which was fantastically dangerous but never occurred to them because it was the 70s and and nothing safe. There'd have been steeplejacks or waltzers operators or, you know, Semtex manufacturers, you know, smoking and drinking cans of Long Life on the job.

This was peak 1974 for me, I must say, at the time. It absolutely was. And it's great. I mean, I was out there on the old parquet dance floor, you know, with thumbs and, you know, the old loops and clashing invisible antlers, you know, and obviously it was boy-to-quet dance floor, you know, with thumbs and, you know, the old loops and clashing invisible antlers, you know. And obviously it's boy-to-boy action because, you know, as we know, only gays talk to girls. But, of course, they've got the gamut here, you know.

So, yeah, you've got the kind of full-on machismo end of what's happening on stage right through to, it is Rob, isn't it? You know, with enormous great earrings, you know, representing the performative effeminacy or whatever. Yeah, this is it. This was peak 1974 oh yeah and of course the best thing about this song really is how odd it is because i'm with mickey most on this what a title yes tiger feet it's one of those things that's so familiar that you don't think about but might as well go i really love your panda knees like which of us has never told our beloved oh i really love your bison ankles but you know i'm not putting them down

it's like my mate says mud are basically dr feel good before they discovered amphetamine just on brown ale and neat bells drunk out of a tea mug with a plate of triangular ham sandwiches. In fact, you wouldn't even have had to ask them about their rider, would you? It would just have been that and some angel delight. Yeah, all lines of it racked out. Yeah, and a Cox's orange pippin for the fitness fanatic in the back.

I was all right with Tiger Feet. I mean, you did the sort of the tiger, it was the prowl, wasn't it? I used to do the prowl across the Barrack and Elmett Village Hall dance floor, you know. Impressing one and all. I think that was my interpretation anyway, yeah. But you can't not love them because they are so beautifully gross and they are indisputably the real thing it's like watching her knees up at the bus depot i mean all the drivers putting on a show for the clippies

help yourself to a rock hard sausage roll you know it's like oh you oh shut up you silly cow it's only a bit of fun you know it's that world right yes and this is a great record it's just that it's their only great record yeah and when you listen to it and watch them perform it's really obvious why it's their only genuinely great record because people who are like this by which i mean not instinctively or naturally creative or musical but also not hung up on their own stupid half-baked concepts of artistry and soulfulness they can make great records when they got people like chinuchat behind them yeah but they usually don't make more than one great one because too many ducks have to be in a row you know what i

mean it's not quite like me standing there taking six thousand free kicks until eventually one of them goes in the top corner because mud themselves have got that basic level of competence and showmanship so something was going to go right sooner rather than later but it's interesting all these 70 showbiz groups have got their own thing going on their own look and feel and atmosphere so the song and the production has to work according to those rules the rules of their tiny universe and when the songs weren't coming from the band sometimes it took a while for everything to match up so that it all felt right do you know what i mean yeah um but in

retrospect it's better to do it this way than spreading the magic moment over a string of really good records do you know what i mean also if you drag out your success too long you can convince an artiste that they are an artist which is always a fucking disaster yeah well i mean i was disappointed in it with lonely this christmas because for me i think the main appeal Mudd is that they were wholly angst-free. You know, there wasn't... Even with Slade, he had all that kind of, look at last night, everybody wants to know you, all that kind of stuff, you know. There was no hint of, like, moroseness.

It was absolutely full-on, 100% bully beef, great time. Don't worry, though, David, here comes show what he wanted to pick up the slack. Well, yeah, yeah. But they weren't quite 100% bully beef enough for me, I i think they were very bentos pie feeling yeah yeah yeah the only thing i don't like about them well actually there's a few things i don't like about them but the worst is that these are the kind of old world blokes where it's impossible to look at them without thinking about their underwear which i think would be tomato red y fronts with

white trim right yeah matching vest you know he's got his y fronts with a yellow patch front left you know what i mean he's got an egg stain on his vest on the back for some reason and vertically striped multi-colored swimming trunks at the beach, worn with nothing but a chain necklace and tinted specs. Or St Christopher. Yeah, that strange male physique where the legs are skinny but the top half's like a barrel. Fried food and an Elvis cassette on the dashboard. And where do you go from there?

Yeah, my imagination never really penetrated as far as their underpants, I must say. I think I feel blessed by that, actually. Well, it's not a choice. No, no, exactly. I know, this is it. You're compelled, you know. But what an introduction to a song this has, man.

It's one of the greats, isn't it? Do you think they nicked it off the metres for Sissy Strut? You know, oh, yeah. Probably. They would have been aware of that, wouldn't they? rates isn't it do you think they nicked it off the meters oh for sissy strut you know oh yeah probably they would have been aware of that wouldn't they yeah of course they would yeah i reckon you're right because i remember a few years ago right in nottingham we have goose fair absolutely loved it as a kid even as a teenager and a young adult right up until i was about 30 wherever i was i had to be back in nottingham for goose fair it was just that thing you had to go to yeah you like romario having it

in his contract that he had to go back for the rio carnival every year even if there was a game exactly like that but when i moved back to nottingham and i started going to goose it got really shit all the good stuff that i loved was going in and nowadays it's just shaking alton towers and i remember going a few years ago and thinking well i've had enough of this now man i i'm this is going to be my last year of going to goose fair and i'm just standing there looking around and all i can hear is this fucking landfill rap that everything's blaring out but then i found myself by the waltzes and all of a sudden it just went i immediately changed back into a six-year-old to the point where i was looking around really

frantically for my mom and dad because i felt that i'd lost them and it was like oh this is just perfect let this be my last experience at goose fair thank you mud you made it special for a few seconds one last time and i'll always be grateful to you for that i think this is one of the things that you get throughout the show actually you think of all of these kind of particular whether it's sparks or whatever and the stop you've got there or the thing here that all of these kind of rhythmical patterns were swept away by like four four and like that and it kind of feels a shame really you know but then at the same time this sort of helps preserve them i mean we've already done 1972 and 1973 christmas

specials and in the 1972 one the winning single of that episode the one either last or second to last was mecca guru by t-rex 1973 merry christmas everybody by slade 1974 tiger feet by mud that that tells a tale doesn't it a tale that in its way is also told in never too young to rock um which mud are really the the big stars yeah Where they stomp through the cat crept in at a lorry driver's transport cab with Les using a mustard dispenser as a microphone. Right. All of them dressed in Ted Pink while a lot of extras playing rival football hooligans,

half of whom are supporting the red team and half of whom are supporting the red team and half of whom are supporting the blue team uh swig nasty metal army surplus mugs of tea the color of monkey fur and they're all wearing their coats indoors because it's an incalculably miserable day just like every day on which they filmed never too young to rock so then mud stopped playing and without their pacifying influence a mass brawl breaks out between the football fans and all the heated cabinets that say hot snacks are flying around no sheila stiefel tragically cast as the owner of the cafe is improvving half-heartedly in the chaos uh So Mudd move over to the stairs out of the fray

and they run through tiger feet while dodging the flying punters. But it's the 1970s where men punching each other really hard in the face is only ever portrayed as funny or exciting. And that's the first scene of the film. And later in the picture picture they seem to become guerrilla fighters of some sort in a sodden freezing wood in Hertfordshire I'm not really

sure what's going on there because I was watching it in below freezing conditions in my flat with no heating on so I could barely stand to look because Never Too Young to Rock is the chilliest-looking film I've ever seen. And the second chilliest is Touching the Void. It's just a lot of people, you know, falling fully clothed in the dirty water in wintertime on location in places where there would not have been a trailer to dry off in.

Just the back seat of a Mark II Cortina and a couple of beach towels. I was watching it in sub-zero conditions and it was almost comforting. It's past, it's past time. It's past, it's past time. It's past, it's past time. It's past, it's past time. Bustin' down the mud, of course, in Tiger Feet.

We hope you've had a great Christmas week and you've thoroughly enjoyed Top of the Pulse, right? Really, we do. We wish you a very happy New Year and if it's anything like this in 75, I shouldn't bother tuning in. Ladies and gentlemen, till the Top of the Pulse 75.

See you in the New Year. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, till the top of the Bob 75. See you in the new year. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Edmunds and Travis, now entangled in a mass of mic cables while the floor managers wobble the mic stands off camera, express the hope that we've had a great Christmas, we have a happy new year, and if 1975 is going to be anything like this We shouldn't bother tuning in Before thrown us into a reprise of Tiger Feet With a sort of cast members joining the band In a Sunday night at the Palladium style farewell

Which includes Carl Douglas and his dancers The characterful dad drummer of the Rubets Holding a large cone of rolled up brown paper to his mouth and walking about like Groucho Marx members of the glitter band who give Les Grey a custard pie in the face, Edmonds clapping

along gamely at the side and finally Travis who takes centre stage with one of the Christmas trees which he plays like a guitar. Fucking hellfire. I mean, at least Noel Edmonds has the sort of native sense to stay on the periphery.

He knows which lane he belongs in. But you just sense that Travis, he's just this leering ignoramus who thinks he's entitled to be front and centre. And yet as soon as he gets front and centre there, he senses immediately that he's out of his element. You know you know he can't dance you can't stay in step he can't play a christmas tree either that's right i can't play christmas tree guitar and you just sense looking at everybody else on that stage like les gray whether that travis is someone who's

pathologically incapable of actually having a genuinely good time you know and like i say you can see this moment of panics it's like well you know all right yes if no if we could just cut out the jostling please you know know your place travis you are literally a waste of space i mean as pop craze youngsters of then and now we we knew that there was a line drawn between the presenters and the true stars and once again travis has crossed it and pissed on it and then rolled about in his pissy line yeah you've got this um star-studded scream full of 1974 i mean it's all the other groups who were actually there yes in the wintry studio rather than flown in from previous episodes but obviously travis has to see his center stage because he's the one everyone really wants to look at. He's the one with natural charisma. He's the one why everyone really tuned in

to watch an ugly, stupid man with no qualities showing off like a small boy at his own fourth birthday party. Barging professional entertainers out of the way to pick up a fake silver Christmas tree and play it like a guitar while gurning a visual joke so self-evidently hilarious it demands that whoever thought of it shoves all the pop stars to the side of the stage to give his physical comedy stylings the the prominence that they deserve i mean a lot of the truly great people are people who by rights on paper should be

total wankers but miraculously pull it off somehow and it's useful to have dave lee travis around as an illustration of what that doesn't look like and exactly as david says it's whatever you may or may not say about noel edmunds he's so obviously smarter than travis if nothing else like as we see here he knows he has to keep out of this yeah and keep a low profile and retain some dignity at least he's very much the midge ewer to travis's bob galdolf here like the the invisible man behind the desperate attention-seeking immature clown with the faintly nasty edge of everybody shut up and listen to me yeah i mean uh do they know it's christmas time at all it's as if brian moore and john motson had run onto the pitch amongst the

liverpool players after the fa cup were taking turns to put the lid on their head before just diving into the plunge pool afterwards it's more like if they'd run on in stoppage time and kick the ball in the neck taking their shirt off and started whirling it around their heads it's interesting to see who's not on that stage at the end there's no glitter alvin's there but he kind of like lingers at the back, obviously making sure that nobody touches him. Yeah, his albino keyboard player is at the front, just exhilarated that he's still got all his teeth.

Yes. And then Les Gray suddenly brandishes a cutout number one as he wipes the custard pie from his face, which is a tradition that began the year earlier, remember, with N noddy older and wizard and travis with his bow tie now fully askew drops a meaty arm around les gray as he attempts to do the shadows walk making it look like he's being drunkenly ushered from a pub before it all kicks off it's the end of the glam era and the blokes of pop have taken over again. Yeah.

Yeah. And they're going to be there for quite a while, aren't they? Yeah. And they're not actually going to thump you unless you say anything out of line. But there's always just that suggestion. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Les Gray's got a very nice tiger head belt buckle.

Did you notice? Yeah. It's lovely, isn't it? I would wear it. You wouldn't want to be his misbehaving lad would you so tiger feet would spend four weeks at number one before yielding the floor to devil great drive and would become the biggest selling single of 1974 the follow-up the cat crept in would get to number two for two non-consecutive weeks in april unable to usurp

seasons in the sun and waterloo they took rocket to number six in august and they close out the year with lonely this christmas as the current number one they won 1974 when we look back on 1974 west germany harold Wilson twice, and mud. Yeah, and I would say that you have to admit, this is arguably one of the four or five finest bands ever to come out of Karsholt and Beakers. But it will never happen again. This blend of old Ted, dodgy uncle, bacon sandwich eater and teeny bop sensation.

There is simply no route to victory for this combination anymore. And that's probably a good thing, but in some ways it doesn't feel like it. And that, Pop Craze Youngsters, closes the book on this episode of Top of the Pops. What's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One kicks on with nearly three hours of El Cid,

the 1961 film starring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren. Then it's the Nine O'Clock News. Then the play Dr Watson and the Darkwater Hall Mystery, starring Edward Fox as the snarf to Sherlock Holmes as Lion-O. Then it's a gala performance from Sadler's World Theatre, featuring Stephen Grappelli and Nigel Kennedy, and they sign off with an episode of Harry-O,

closing down at half-past midnight. BBC 2 finally gets its arse in gear with News on 2, then Tony Bennett at the Royal Festival Hall, then The the breaking a five minute film about an arab stallion getting trained up after that it's a dramatization of alice through the looking glass starring brenda bruce freddie jones and jeffrey baledon followed by in the

spirit a gospel songs of praise from a black church in birmingham then mash and they rhymed off the night with a gene kelly double bell of on the town and singing in the rain closing down at half 12. itv has put out the news and regional news in your area and then dot smith cops off with a new bloke who turns out to be mr Lucas from Are You Being Served? in Crossroads. After some cartoons to see the kids off to bed, see, told you, it's the brand new American TV film Skyway to Death, where Stephanie Powers and Ross Martin

and a load of other actors get trapped on a massive ski lift 9,000 feet above the ground after an explosion. The only remaining disaster movie plot that hadn't been done yet yes these waltzes have gone out of control then it's the final episode of the first series of itv's comedy hit of the year rising damp that's followed by charlie drake and colin crompton on des o'connor entertained i'll be the judge of that the news at 10 and they finish up with the horror series appointment with fear featuring the 1957 film the black scorpion where mexico gets mithered by

giant stop-motion arachnids with stingy bits hanging out of their arses, closing down at a quarter past midnight. So, boys, what are we talking about over the handlebars of our new rally choppers tomorrow? Well, for me, it would have been sparks, most definitely. Mud, absolutely. Ought to have been George McRae, but to be honest, I was too much of a racist when i was 12 it's always sparked it has to be it can only be sparked and alvin stardust almost knocking his

keyboard players teeth out what are we getting with our record tokens tomorrow tiger feet um obviously this town it big enough for both of us. Beyond that, I'm not 100% sure. The trouble is, like, Gary Glitters and Alvin Stardust, I felt, were kind of slightly played at this point. So I don't think I might have ventured beyond that, to be honest. You know, they were precious things, them vouchers. Yeah. Sparks, yeah. Carl Douglas, yeah. Maybe, yes, George McRae,

providing this particular performance had not been my only exposure to Rock Your Baby. And possibly Tiger Feet, although I bet it was one of those records you couldn't avoid hearing every ten minutes when it was current. So I might have been able to save my pennies for the even grimmer year of 1975 that lay ahead. And what does this episode tell us about 1974 i just think there are the first inklings of the long slow march of decay that's ultimately going to culminate in punk yeah yeah by this point

the kids have grown tired of mark bolan and david bowie and decided to only like ugly, talentless men who are almost 40 and are either paedophiles or aren't, but could pass as paedophiles, or at least criminals of some stamp, you know. I bet you every time there was an identity parade down the local nick with all the suspects lined up in a row, they might as well have played Tiger Feet over the speakers because that's what it would have looked like. And that, Pop Craze Youngsters,

brings us to the end of this episode of Chart Music. Use your promotional flange, www.chart-music.co.uk, facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast, reach out to us on Twitter at chartmusic, T-O-T-P. Money down the G-string. Patreon.com slash ChartMusic. Thank you, Taylor Parks.

It's all right. God bless you, David Stubbs. Rock! My name's Al Needham. Special thanks to Ready Mix Concrete. Ha, ha, ha. Chart music. Brother and sister,

open your eyes, mustier mind, try to visualize A hell on earth where men are sent In effort to make the wicked repent These poor men have left our world Went onto this isle of their bodies A world escaped from this prison Nobody has, everyone dies on Alcatraz

Once in a cell a man can't stand an identity numbers burned on his hand the food will be a crumb but don't ask for more the bones of the brave

are beneath your floor defy the god and receive the lash strike from the whip leaves an ugly gash never breathe loud never keep mass the lord is forbidden on Alcatraz

Should you attempt a suicide fail You've been to the door with a giant nail Water from the sewer drips on your head Until the floor starts turning red Next you're thrown in the big salt bath You might as well write your epitaph Until the floor starts turning red Next you're thrown in the big salt water You might as well write your epitaph You'll never get free of that foaming rhyme

OBD is the very next line You're probably wondering after all I said How it is that I'm not dead And how I'm living to tell this tale Well I'm the governor of Alcatraz jail In association with the British Market Research Bureau And compiled by the Pop Craze Patreons, we present the Chart Music Top 40 of 2022.

Number 40, Romo Cop. Number 39, Tyler the XXX Privately Educated. In at 38, CFAX Data Blast. Number 37, Thatcherite Stride. Number 36, Donio Smond. Number 35, Andy Peebles Space Kush. Number 34, Flesh Chandelier. In at number 33, Dag Vag.

Number 32, Legs and Cunny. Number 31, Singleton No, Purvis and Judd. Into the top 30 and at number 30, Taylor Parks' 20 Romantic Moments. Yes, that's it. Number 29. Unkempt youths in spangles. In at number 28.

Mini whores. This year's number 27. This year's most lovable bisexual. And at number 26. The Nagasaki hell blaster number 25 ass to mouth number 24 baxter woolard and rod number 23 the worst dressed homosexual in the Castro. At number 22, it's Cliffy White Boy and DJ Mr. Bronson.

And at number 21, the popular orange vegetable. Into the top 20 and at 20, Eamon Doll 11. Yep. Number 19, the Mary Brennell Boys murder. Hmm. Number 18, staircase of cock. Ha ha ha. Number 17, skin heady heady and at number 16 heap big cunts yes in at number 15 this year

sugar blokes number 14 semiotic trousers yes the number 13 of 2022, My Fucking Car. At number 12, it's Jeff Sex. And at number 11, the Birmingham Piss Troll. Oh. Into the top ten, and at number ten, Eric Smallshore of Eccles. Oh, yes. At number nine, rock expert David Stubbs. Bogus. Number eight, the Airbnb 52s.

Number seven, the provisional OOAR OOAR A. And at number six, that dog's dead now. This year's number five, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Glitter. Number four, here comes Jizzum.

Number three, the bent cunts who aren't fucking real. Number two, two Ronnies, one cup, which means... Britain's number one. The number one act of 2022 by one vote. Bomber Dog. Yes, of course, had to be. My name's Al Needham and on behalf of everyone

at Chart Music, I'd just like to say, fuck off 2022! You were shit and we are skilled! Yes!