Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #72 (Pt 2): 3.10.85 – Rod Vicious

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

Simon Price, Rock Expert David Stubbs and Al Needham set about this episode of TOTP with the usual gleeful abandon, asking themselves; what did Paul Jordan actually do to get nobbed off from Radio 1 in less than a year? And why does Gary Davies look like he’s been thrown into a tub of Bisto? Colonel Abrams gets us housetrained, Iron Maiden have a good widdle in California, and we’re subjected to a break-in… Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | PatreonGet your tickets for Chart Music at the London Podcast Festival HEREOrder Different Times by David HEREPre-order Curepedia by Simon HERE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language, which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart music. Hey up, you pop-crazed youngsters, and welcome to part two of episode 72 of Chart Music. Here I am, Al Needham, and standing with me are Simon Price

and David Stubbs. How do? Chaps, we've walked down 1985 Street a couple of times before on Chart Music, and yes, we have been surprised every now and again by the quality of some of the tunes on offer, but 1985's always going to be remembered as the year pop was expected to pitch

in and solve the problems of the world instead of just being any good like it used to be a couple of years previous yeah there's a sort of debilitating earnestness definitely on all fronts it's a waste of time if you know what they mean try shaking a box in front of the queen as paul heaton of the House Martins sang, about what had happened to Pop around this time. Yeah, I mean, if you ask people what happened in 1985, you know, Live Aid's probably going to be the first thing that comes out of their mouths,

or at least the only good thing, after, you know, Heisel, Valley Parade, all the plane crashes, the Mexico City earthquake, AIDS, the end of the miners strike and you could say that this is a year that pop gets pushed into growing up and being responsible for a few years don't you think yeah yeah it's also i think that um with live aid it's almost like the old order returned um to sort of see off the last vestiges of like post-punk and all that kind of thing and that kind of sort of fractiousness and scrappiness.

Yeah, I always think that Live Aid, in a funny kind of way, was a sort of precursor to things like Rave, then later on Oasis, this idea of us all being together. Yeah. And after the kind of tribalism, the fragmentation of the 1980s. Yeah, that's the thing, you know,

piling everybody together in a massive stadium to all watch a load of pop groups that we all agree on four years earlier that would have been unthinkable you'd have had all the sort of all the mods and the teds and the skins and the rockers and stuff just having a massive fucking fight by 85 no we'd all grown out of that and we're all together yeah yeah everyone's in their choose life t-shirts and everyone's responding to from freddie and just one one big love in. Too many Florence Nightingales, not enough Robin Hoods to quote The House of Martins yet again. Live Aid a few years previous would have been the opening scene

of The Warriors, wouldn't it? With more Parkers. Somebody shot Bob Geldof. It was The Warriors. Come out to play, yay. All right then, Pop Craze youngsters. It is time to go way back to October of 1985. 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. Hey, how you doing? Welcome to Top of the Box. And welcome to Top of the Box for the very first time to Paul Dior. Thanks very much indeed, Gary. Have we got a great show for you. It's seven o'clock on Thursday evening, October the 3rd, 1985, and Top of the Pops, about to broadcast its 1,123rd episode, has spent the year adopting to the choppy waters of the Michael Grade reformations. After beginning the year ensconced in its usual post-Tomorrow's World slot, enjoying the 40 to 45 minutes it deserved,

it was all change in late February, when the timescale was chopped to a rigid 30 minutes, in order to accommodate the launch of EastEnders, whose first episode pulled down 13 million viewers, which wasn't that brilliant in 1985. Desperate to get his flagship drama series into the top 10 of the ratings, Grade mashed up the schedule, moved EastEnders to 7pm, and pulled our favourite Thursday evening pop treat up to 8 o'clock,

which saw the former drop to 8 million as it was in direct competition with Emmerdale Farm, and the latter lose its faction of pop-crazed, extremely youngsters who needed to go to bed at a decent hour, especially on the last Thursday of June, when Top of the Pops didn't start until 8.30pm. Upset that his bi-weekly slab of cockney misery was losing viewers to rural issues, Great shuffled the deck again,

and on September 3rd, Top of the Pops began at 7pm, as the prelude to whatever was going on in Albert Square that week. A format that would stay in place for the next 11 years before it was dumped into the friday evening schedules long story short chaps top of the pops has been fucked about within 1985 that's not right is it it definitely isn't and east enders is another thing you know like live aid ruined everything ruined so ruined top of the pops even coronation street coronation Street felt he had to get more miserable in order to kind of keep pace with

EastEnders and started having kind of stupid, spurious kind of character shifts and regular characters turning out to be wife beaters after about several years, you know. All that kind of nonsense. Yeah, EastEnders. Ruined everything. And Top of the Pops. And it's just really thoughtless of them to hack it back to 30 minutes. How are we

meant to get seven hours of podcast out of a mere 30-minute television programme? You know what I mean? It can't be done. Absolutely, yeah. Have I said this before? I used to own Michael Grade's computer. What? Yeah.

When I bought my first personal computer in the 90s, Apple Macintosh LC2, I got it from a company in Reading called Second User Mac Systems, who had somehow got hold of a load of old Channel 4 stock, clearly. And I expected all the discs to be wiped and everything, but I plugged it in and started looking about, and, yeah, it had previously belonged to Michael Grade, and I was like, I know, I was so excited, thinking I might find something, some dirt that might, you know,

back up Chris Morris's famous interstitial subliminal frame that said Grade is a cunt. Was that a screensaver? Yeah. Sadly, and really boringly, all that was on there was a load of folders with plans for Channel 4 schools programmes. Oh, fuck you. I know. I thought there was going to be some real juicy stuff on there but now but yeah that's my claim to fame my link to michael gray furthermore

after 24 and a half million people in britain sat in front of the telly for live aid which was the biggest television audience of the year in the uk in 1985 it's beginning to dawn upon the television industry that folk rather like watching music TV, and they want more of it, meaning that Top of the Pops is no longer the only game in town. The new series of whistle tests started last Tuesday, Billy Idol, Squeeze, The Long Riders and John Parr. Channel 4 is putting out the final episode of Bliss, presented by Muriel Gray,

with performances by Sade, The Cult and Jessie Ray, with King Kurt modelling the latest in cycling gear, and Soul Train, with Geoffrey Daniel introducing Loose Ends, Ashford and Simpson and the Stylistics. The new series of The Tube kicks off next Friday with Pete Townsend, Dexys Midnight Runners, Depeche Mode, The Thompson Twins and Madonna,

but the big event of this week musically happened on Tuesday night on ITV, when the white-hot sounds of the mid-80s clashed with the cold realities of real kids issues from the daily mirror television pages chaps itv 8 p.m elkie and our gang song and dance show based on the day in the lives of some unemployed young people on their way to an elkie brooks concert they amuse themselves with various routines from ballet to break dancing and on their travels meet jemma craven an american singer sam harris chaps you know i've wasted so much of my valuable time trying to source a video of this, but sadly to no avail.

But would you care to guess where it was set? Nottingham? Well, I automatically assume Liverpool, because everything on the telly about unemployment was set there in the 80s. But yes, Simon, I was fucking appalled to discover that the gig was filmed at Central's lenton lane studios in nottingham the home of bullseye and the price is right fucking hell man the cradle of pop delivers once again who thought that the unemployed youths of the 80s craved elkie brooks yeah this is the reality of it

everyone thinks they must have been sort of you know going to see the style council or something you know a band who would show solidarity with their plight but no it was lp brooks no the one pulls a singer yeah and and all her looks so your hosts this evening are gary davis who's still holding down the early afternoon slot between simon bates and steve wright and is still recovering from Radio 1's 18th birthday party three days ago. Chaps, would you care to guess where such a prestigious event was held?

What, the 18th birthday party? I don't know. Kettering. It was actually a garage in Cumbria. What the fuck? Article in the Daily Mirror two days ago, girls radio wonderful party in her garage. Teenage Rachel Miller threw an 18th birthday party yesterday and Radio 1 turned up.

Rachel was born on September 30th, 1967, the day Radio 1 was launched. So when she invited the station to a coming-of-age party, the BBC sent disc jockey Gary Davis to broadcast his midday show live from her garage. Late night DJ John Peel also joined the party. Rachel from Colbrecht, Cumbria said, When I sent the invitation, I never thought they would accept it

It was really wonderful I don't know how I'm going to cap it on my 21st birthday 50 guests dance in Rachel's garage as DJ Gary broadcasts the show He said it was a knockout just like a real party john peel was even more delighted for cold beck was the home of the legendary huntsman john peel i was shocked to see the local pub named after me he said fucking hell bbc chucking the money about just on a whim yeah and if i was born five days later that could have been me gary Davis, I mean, he looks absolutely basic. He looks like he's sort of fallen asleep

in the tanning lamp. This is his first Top of the Pop since his extended holiday. And by the look of that tan, it seems like he's spent a fortnight on the planet Mercury. Absolutely. He looks like he's been carved

from a block of oxo. He's over-ridgelyd, I think the term of the time was. Yeah, over-ridgelyd. I mean, I'll tell you what it reminds me of. You know, back in... Yeah, you used to get this quite a few times in the 70s and 80s. You'd occasionally get these white tabloid journalists

or even TV reporters going undercover to find out what it was really like to be a black person in Britain today. And they'd adopt this ludicrously unconvincing black face. You could even see a bit of the whites sometimes, you know, between the shirt and their neck. Oh, my God. And, you know, of the shirt and their neck. Oh, my God. And, you know, of course, they'd wander around getting very funny looks.

Yeah, he kind of looks like that, really. Black like Gary. Or they'd be putting a tea towel on their heads and trying to sort of trick Bruce Grobbelaar into accepting a bribe or something. It's like when Beadle was an oil sheik. Yeah, yeah. This is his 26th go at presenting top of the pops and he's become a permanent fixture in a talent pool which currently features peter powell mike smith steve wright

dixie peach mike reed and simon bates and there's a new addition to the pool this week born in london in 1959 paul Paul Jordan spent his university years dividing his time between reading law and working in hospital radio, and just before his final year of passing the bar at Grains Inn, he decided to jack it in and make a go of becoming a DJ. After sending a demo tape off to various stations, he was contacted by Radio City, the independent station for Liverpool and surrounding area, who were looking for a new DJ after Janice Long had departed. And by 1982, he was holding down the graveyard shift on City for three months, eventually moving to the late night slot and finally bedding down in the 6pm to 9pm slot by 1984. Advert in the Liverpool Echo, February 1984. Wind down to the best sounds around.

Paul Jordan 6-9. Essential listening for people who are really into today's music scene starting with the charts paul goes on to explore fringe music especially from local bands pop news top 10 videos and all the latest film reviews plus scoop interviews with pop stars miss it if you dare fucking hell interviewing local liverpool bands in 1984, he must have sniffed around Frankie's crotch a few times. By 1985, he started to make a play for the top of the mountain and started sending demo tapes to Radio 1.

And at the third attempt, he was signed up, beginning his career at the station on July 1st of this year, filling in for Gary Davis while he was doing the Radio 1 Roadshow. The following week he filled in for Adrian John at the 6am to 8am slot, and spent the rest of the summer bouncing around the weekday schedule as a de facto holiday cover, including two weeks in Janice Long's chair, bedding down last sunday in the 230 slot taking over from steve wright and we'll be beginning a regular 3 p.m stint on fridays tomorrow so chaps it appears to be only a matter of time before he becomes a big part of radio one

and this is his debut appearance on Top of the Pops. Yeah, but it's so weird, isn't it? I've never heard of the geezer. No? He doesn't even have a wiki page. That's ridiculous. I mean, talk about Radiohead's how to disappear completely. I mean, talk about being un-person, you know, airbrushed out of history.

I mean, just wondering whose nose did he put out of joint? You know, what did he eventually do that was, do that was so sordid, so unforgivable that even 1980s top of the pops presenters couldn't abide to have him in their ranks? I thought that when I was doing research on previous chart music in his name tournament. I just thought, ooh, what did he do? Yeah.

I can just imagine, actually, if he went down to actually investigate all this. If he'd actually gone down to BBC Television Centre and asked about Paul Jordan and been gaslit by the senior receptionist. Paul Jordan? There is no Paul Jordan. And there has never been a Paul Jordan. But, you know, why don't you look in your database? There is no point in my looking on the database because there is no Paul Jordan

and there never has been a Paul Jordan at the British Broadcasting Corporation. Do I make myself clear? But I would advise you to leave the building, Mr Stubbs, with immediate effect. No, it's just extraordinary, really. I mean, it's the mystery. It's a mystery, as somebody said. Yeah, I mean, I'd absolutely never heard of him either. And, you know, this was an era where I had very little else to do

other than sort of, you know, watch Top of the Pops and listen to Radio 1. So it's bizarre how he's faded from not just my consciousness, but it seems everybody's you know yeah i know he only did top of the pop six times but six is enough to leave some kind of impression you know both the presenters here there's an interesting dynamic they both look well sort of miami vice with their oh yeah and uh paul jordan's winning the battle of the sleeve push most definitely but he does have this energy of a sort of competition winner of somebody who's just kind of looked their way into being yeah because the thing with gary davis at this point

he's a safe pair of hands by now he's oh yes he's slick and confident crucially and professional the thing with paul jordan is when you see people in any walk of life who are nervous it makes you nervous yes and i got that instantly from him he's trying too hard he's got and it's interesting that you say he sort of was a guy who would stand in when janice long or whoever went on their holidays because he does have this kind of supply teacher energy about yes but it's like definitely it's a sort of trendy the trendy supply teacher so like every time he goes woo or way whatever it sounds really forced you know and he does this thing you know apart from the sleeve push which i guess everyone did because it was fashionable at the time he puts his hands in his pockets it's as if he sort of

you know thought what are the signifiers of being the cool kid that i can do yeah it's like i always used to crack up at um everyone saying eric canton i was so cool right because to me what he'd done canton art was he popped the collar of his football shirt like he thought he was the fonz you know and everyone thought oh he's so cool but i just thought that's such a kind of french person's idea of what being cool means is like turning up your collar and yeah paul jordan's a bit like that yeah he's sort of like you know his sleeves are rolled up he's got his hands in his pocket he's sort of slouching in a kind of slightly kind of insolent cool way and and all the way through it's it's just trying really hard to be down with the kids and he's only 26 but something about that trying too hard makes him seem older than

he actually is like an old person trying to be cool you know what i mean and 26 in 1985 was probably about 32 in a sense really yeah oh at least yeah yeah but yeah jordan as a dj he's definitely in that young guy who's really into his music vein that's currently in vogue at radio one and you know him and dixie peach the other new recruit of the era era they've already nudged out Richard Skinner from the lineup and it's Mike Reed's turn to fuck off next but far as Jordan goes even though he's been on the same career path he's clearly no Janice Long well it's interesting you say like young guy who's really into his music I mean did you get that from him

because I think we've both listened to the same audio interview that is out there with him. Oh, that's the look. That's the image that Radio 1 want to portray of people like him and Davis. But yeah, you're right, Simon. There's an interview of him floating about. And he seems like a perfectly nice bloke, you know. But he's a careerist DJ, isn't he?

Well, this is it. To me, he shares that fatal flaw that so many of the Radio 1 lot had, which is that he loves radio more than he loves music, and he loves the idea of being a presenter more than he loves music. I'm sure he was into his music as well, but for him it does seem to be all about the airwaves and all that kind of stuff, rather than the sounds that he's playing.

I think it's almost a prerequisite that you're not really into the music that much, otherwise that shunts you towards the evening of the evening slot or even the graveyard slot. In some ways, I don't mind him not being this kind of strutting alpha male, you know, because we've had plenty of those on Top of the Pops and they are monstrous, you know. And I'm sure I would rather spend a couple of hours in the pub with Paul Jordan than with Dave Lee Travis. Do you know what I mean? Would you sooner see Paul Jordan play Macbeth though? But sadly, the way that these kind of alpha male

bullies like Travis hold down their job is by their completely unearned confidence that they have. And someone like Jordan, who just doesn't seem to have it, was probably never going to hold down that position in quite the same way hey how you doing welcome to top of the box and welcome to top of the box for the very first time to Paul Jordan thanks very much indeed Gary have we got a great show for you tonight we've got a wonderful show we have cameo we have iron maiden we also have Rene and Angela and a brand new number one. But first to get us underway, a superb song at number 10 in the charts. Here is Colonel Abrams and Trap.

The syndromes pound. The TV screen flies through the ionosphere and the pink vinyl explodes to reveal Davis in an appalling light grey suit with sleeves are rolled and American football-like shoulder pads welcomes us to our Thursday evening pop treat and then introduces his YTS lad Jordan who's wearing a huge flimsy black and grey jacket over a white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up even more. Jordan runs down some of the bill of fear on tonight in a manner more suited to blokes in flat caps and gilets

selling sets of crockware in the market and then pumps his fist and goes way as davis announces trapped by colonel abrams born in detroit in 1949 colonel abrams yes that's his real name was relocated to new york in his teens where he learned guitar and piano and won an amateur night at the Harlem Apollo. After a spell in the funk band Heavy Impact in the mid-70s, he started his own group, Conservative Manor, in 1976, before relocating to Minneapolis and becoming the lead singer of the funk band 94 Street, until they split up in 1979 due to their guitarist getting a solo deal. He moved back to New York, got involved in the post-disco scene and linked up with the WBLS DJ Timothy Regisford and in 1984 they recorded an eight-track demo which included the song Release the Tension

which absolutely blew up across the clubs of the Five Boroughs and beyond, even though it wasn't available in any shops and a cover was released by someone else. Unperturbed, he landed a deal with Streetwise Records and recorded another set of demos, including Music Is The Answer, but it was this track which got his contract bought out by mca who after throwing loads of different producers at him including sarone finally linked him up with richard burgess yes mr einsteiner go-go himself after ripping through the clubs of america and getting to number one in the billboard dance club chart, it was put out over here, entering the charts at number 95 in early August,

and took five weeks to get to number 34. The following week, after it jumped six places to number 28, some city farm wankers did the Thatcherite stride to it at the end of that week's Top of the Pops, which helped it jump another six places to number 16. This week, after yet another six-place jump, it's at number 10, and here he is, fresh off the plane, making his official Top of the Pops debut. And it's got to be said, looking like he's got a telegram

to deliver to someone, as he's sporting that non-more 1985 garment the bolero jacket beloved of christopher dean and les dennis that's festooned with gold braid around the shoulders and sleeves and adorned with golden buttons it's quite the look isn't it yeah i i think uh you know it's meant to be a sort of visual pun on his military name yes indeed yeah there's lots of scrambled egg yeah yeah i mean you know he's got the epaulets I think it's meant to be a sort of visual pun on his military name. Yes, indeed. There's lots of scrambled egg. Yeah, yeah. He's got the epaulets, the brocade brass buttons. I thought it was a play on the Colonel thing.

But to me, he looks more like a bellboy in an upscale Hollywood hotel. I actually think he looks kind of amazing. He's got these pleated trousers and this Cab Calloway moustache. And he's never not doing something if he's not singing he's sort of windmilling his wrists around in a sort of come and get it you cunts kind of way you know or he's always he's sort of bunny hopping up and down the spot during an instrumental break or whatever everything's very literal i think you know the jacket and how you know he's on a small podium he literally is trapped he's he's surrounded by the city farm

wankers you know and you know just general audience members who are going mental by the way they're loving this oh yes in fucking love it in their very british hand clappy very much not soul train sort of way you know what i mean and yeah there's lots of weird camera angles shot from his waist height up chin or up nose as it were like like a sort of blowjob pov but from the pov of the giver not the receiver of course you know yeah this is his big moment uh but i remember when he was just lieutenant abrams you know and uh and i watched him push up the ranks captain abrams major abrams and here he is colonel at last we thought he could push on and become a brigadier maybe even a general, but it wasn't to be.

And listen, right, if you think that's a shit joke, just be grateful that I abandoned a whole riff based on Colonel with a C, being a homonym of Colonel with a K, meaning seed. There was kind of nothing there. But it is confusing, though, right, because there wasn't just one other Colonel Abrams. There were two, right?

During the first Gulf War in 1991, the US Army had two Colonel Abrams, Colonel John N. Abrams and Colonel Robert B. Abrams, both of whom went on to greater things. But in the first Gulf War, it's well documented what happened to American soldiers who were made prisoners of war under the supervision of Oday H Hussein, Saddam's son.

They were subjected to starvation, mock executions, mock castrations and chemical injections, as well as brutal beatings. How can you mock a castration? I know, and they were made to appear on TV, famously, you know, battered and bruised, denouncing American war policy while blinking out the word torture in Morse code. However, the Allies themselves took 69,000 Iraqi prisoners of war, and it's less well documented what happened to them. Fancy that. Yeah, although Human Rights Watch expressed concern that the US Army was reneging on its obligations under the Geneva Convention

in terms of their treatment. And let's not kid ourselves, we know what happens when the Americans take prisoners of war, especially in Iraq. But I like to think that at least some of them, somewhere around Al-Basaya, perhaps, in the Al-Muthana province, just over the border from Kuwait, were under the watchful eye of either colonel john n abrams or colonel robert b abrams and they were able to heckle their captors hey colonel abrams i'm trapped i'm like a man in a cage i would love to think that happened there's a lot of confusion around this song as we'll dip into later on and the singer particularly his name so let's go back to that interview with simon witter in this week's nme where he says before i made it in music i used

to work in a personnel office and people would come in and say i spoke to you on the phone but when i heard colonel abrams i thought you'd be an old man in glasses. They expected me to look like the guy from Kentucky Fried Chicken. In fact, I was asked to attend the opening of a KFC joint in New Jersey, but I didn't want to. And one photographer wanted me to pose with a rifle. So, yeah. Oh, yeah. There we go.

What he should have done, he should have mashed up Colonel Sanders and Father Abraham of the Smurfs and turned up looking like that. Which is just basically Father Abraham, but with some glasses and one of them stringy tie things. A far-right chicken pimp, yeah. Yes. The same thing struck me, you know, as it did Simon of Great Vines and all that.

The same thing with Colonel Abrams as it did Colonel Gaddafi. If you're going to make yourself out to be the big man, the top the top man you know why don't you just go for the top right i mean if you're colonel gaddafi yeah you're outranked by your generals isn't there's going to be a bit of a shit dictator i mean i mean it's like so colonel abraham's is outranked by the funkadelic associate general kane you know so general kane got some top of the whole general johnson yeah you're gonna have to salute him you know it's a bit weird bit weird. Just like you say, just call him Field Marshal Abrams. Major Lance, yes. Then again, that logic, like king, as in love and pride,

outranks prince, you know, so it's... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was quite weird, yeah. I mean, as regards to the song, I mean, I was eating this sort of transatlantic electric funk for breakfast. Oh, I think this is a fucking tune, mate. Yeah. But in 1985, it's mint.

Yeah, I'm afraid I'm slightly less is a fucking tune, mate. Yeah. In 1985, it's mint. Yeah. I'm slightly less enthusiastic about it myself, personally. No. Sorry. Well, you know, I get that way, and then you can sing its praises. Oh, I guess I think it's not good enough for you. Yeah, well, you know. I can tell by the way you act and your attitude, David.

No, but when I wasn't dipping into a bit of Stockhouse or Sunrise, it was this sort of affair. But, you know, so I was all set when I was first listening into a bit of Stockhausen or Sunrise, it was this sort of affair. But, you know, so I was all set when I first listened to this, and I'd have sat there and waited patiently for something to happen, you know, a sort of explosion, a little release, a sort of ejaculation. But for me, it's just a bit stiff. You know, it just sort of robo-twitches inside this sort of self-imposed straightjacket.

I mean, obviously, you know, it's called Trapped. I guess, you know, that's the idea. And I mean, I don't know, Prince was doing this sort of minimalistic thing at this time, but things happen with Prince, and for me, it just doesn't here. It's like a sort of moonwalk minus the walk and the moon, you know. I'm kind of stunned here. I thought David was going to love this record. I really did. Yes, me too.

Yeah, no, I did as well. When I first started, I thought, yeah, this is for me, and something just doesn't quite click on it for me, you know. What it is for me, right, I think people talk a load of revisionist, self-aggrandising bullshit about house music, OK? Nowadays, you get British people who pretend they were completely across what Larry Levan was doing at Paradise Garage, what Frankie Knuckles was doing in the warehouse,

what the Belleville Three were doing. Everybody is basically the person james murphy from lcd sound system is addressing in losing my edge everybody claiming they owned don't make me wait by the peach boys in 1982 on an import right everyone claiming they had their fingers did you david yes i did ah for fuck's sake well i suppose yeah all right a fiver i spent that was a fiver a proper fiver back in 1982. Well, everyone likes to make out nowadays that they had their fingers on the pulse of New York and Chicago and Detroit. Bollocks!

David did, but most people didn't. If they're honest, the first house music most people heard in the UK was Love Can't Turn Around by Farley Jackmaster Funk, featuring Daryl Pandy, which was number 10 in September 86. And the thing that softened us up to make us receptive to that wasn't derrick may or whoever it was this kind of thing it was lovely yes look i'll turn around was a hit because of things like this coming first true it's proto house really yeah true have you heard release attention simon no oh it's housey as fuck this is um kernel abrams another

track right yeah recorded in 1984 and you just listen to it and go, ooh, fucking hell. Right. It's the foundations of the house, if you will. And stuff like this, stuff like Trapped, is what I was dancing to at the aforementioned Feathers Disco at Barry Island, and the other one, Tramps, at the land end of the causeway. And I mentioned that I had this little gang of mates in the sixth form at Barry Boys, and we all went to house parties together. That's house with a small h, but, um, and we all went to house parties together. That's house with a small h.

But we also went to feathers and tramps together. And there was me, there was my mate Neil, who's a listener to the pod. Hello, Neil. Hello, Neil. There was Richie and there was Symes. The problem was I was also called Symes. So we needed some form of disambiguation.

And Simon Bates. Yeah, yeah. Did you really let yourself be called sign yeah yeah yeah i mean it was partly inspired by simon bates i suppose it's a bit of a piss take of that but you know i i called him sims he tried to call me simesy or simesy baby right um but it never stuck um perhaps thankfully there was a half-hearted effort on my part to call him big sims and me little sims but that was never going to fly because i'm not i'm six foot you know he's six foot six so it should have been big symes and

one inch above average height symes over here but anyway the thing is there's this gang of us we all had very different taste in music in terms of what we were listening to at home there was a ghetto blaster in the sixth form common room and you know everybody's sort of trying to fight over what tapes got played on it and i was into the smiths and the cure and um neil was into scritty plitty and howard jones richie was into you too i think and sims was into springsteen the one common denominator was that we all love prince but when we all went out to tramps or feathers all that went out the window all your kind of tribal things all the stuff you cared about and you know that was your musical dna it kind of just just flew out the window and we were just happy dancing to stuff like like trapped so there was this and

there was we don't have to by jermaine stewart um there was let the music play by shannon there was that is a tune ain't nothing going on but the The Rent by Gwen Guthrie. Also a tune. And sometimes I'd pester Sammy Black who was the local DJ to play something by the cult selfishly but that would

clear the dance floor. That would clear the dance floor. This is the stuff everyone fucking loved and when Morrissey comes along and goes

burn down the disco hang the blessed DJ because the music they constantly play it says nothing to me about my life. Even as a Smiths fan I thought fuckj because the music they constantly play it says nothing to me about my life even as a smiths fan i thought fuck off the music they constantly play doesn't have to say something to me about my life it cheers me up right it's possible to be a miserable teenage

indie fan six days a week but put your shiny dancing shoes on and go out on a friday and have some fun so i absolutely love this record and so did all of my friends you've touched upon something there sam because we we need to remember that in 1985 this sort of thing would have been lads music you know i mean all the rough ass hues i knew at school wouldn't be listening to indie guitar rubbish or whatever the equivalent of oasis was in 1985 they'd be getting the chinos on piling into chivalros or barry noble's astoria and shaking their arses to this i mean it wouldn't be until i don't know the happy mondays came along that the lad started drifting towards that end of the spectrum you know what i mean yeah it's interesting because this sort of music was also

considered music for girls or perhaps that was a little bit later on when handbag house came, that pejorative term, handbag house, that all the girls be dancing on their handbags. But I guess, above all, it was music for normals. It was music for, you know, just your ordinary kids. Townies. music for normals this was an era when the stuff that your normals went to feathers and tramps were dancing to was fucking brilliant and this record it just fucking kicks ass the producer you mentioned it was uh you know richard burgess einsteiner gogo you wouldn't necessarily expect him to come out with something with this much funk to it although he did produce um spandau ballet uh chart number one paint me down so So he got the funk as well. He might not be the most obvious person to produce a track like this. But yeah, I think it's an amazing record. Very strange lyrics though, eh?

God, yeah. He says that he doesn't want her folks to turn him over to the hands of the law. What's he done? What have you done, Colonel Abrams? What have you done? He's 36 here, so why is he bothered about what her mum and dad think? Forkham! I mean, if he wants legal representation, fortunately Paul Jordan is right there.

But yeah, there's definitely some kind of backstory to this song. What it's like, it's like it's part of a bigger piece. Like, you imagine it's part of some kind of opera or some kind of concept album. Like, you know, Keith West's excerpt from a teenage opera or something like that. If you hear the whole thing, you know why he's running from the hands of the law. And there's all that thing, if you think I can afford to support you

if you want to ever think about ever settling down. Yeah, he's the one who wants to get trapped. Because you think the song's trapped, it's like, oh, I've got my girlfriend pregnant, I'm fucked, I've got to get married. But no, he's the one who wants to settle down. Yeah. You alluded in your intro to the guitarist in his former band

who went on to greater things. Yes. This is a bit of a myth. Someone in the press department of MCA has played a fucking blinder here because we're talking about Prince, obviously. Perhaps not obviously, but Colonel Abrams' connection to Prince is minimal.

Apart from also having a first name that is a rank or title, but it's actually his real name. What happened was there was a funk band in the mid-70s in Minneapolis called 94 East. And they were led by a guy called Pepe Willie, who was married to Prince's cousin and was a sort of mentor figure to Prince and to André Simone and all the other Minneapolis funk musicians. And 94 East's lineup at various times included Prince, André Simone, Matt Fink, Dr. Fink and Bobby Z, all later members of the Revolution, of course. all later members of the revolution of course no the only recording that 94 east made with colonel abrams was a couple of tracks for a single called fortune teller in 1977 which was written by one of the motown backing band the funk brothers hank cosby and by the time that was recorded prince had already left and was working on his first album for For You. But according to Matt Thorne's Prince biography, what happened was that Prince just ran into Pepe Willey

and said, oh, you know, yeah, I'll play a bit of guitar on this track for you. Also, according to Pepe Willey himself, in the other Prince book by Dave Hill, A Pop Life, the two never actually met. So Prince played his guitar in the studio separately to Colonel Abrams recording his vocals. And by the way, I've got about a dozen books on Prince, and I looked through all of them to research this. Only two of them even mentioned Colonel Abrams in the index. Right.

The single never actually got released because the deal they had with polydor fell through so for that very tenuous prince connection to get mentioned uh as it does in this episode of top the pops in fact just just makes you think that yeah someone at mca uh is working overtime and deserves a pay rise funny you should say that simon because in next week's Daily Mirror White Hot Club there's this headline Colonel's Rocket hit singer Colonel Abrams has launched a blistering attack on his old pal Prince he has a dreadful voice and no sense of style says the good Colonel whose song Trapped is at number four. He once played in the same band as Prince and claims, man, he couldn't sing.

I had to do it all. Fucking hell, that's some severe over-egg. Yeah, I mean, come on, this shows that I was right, isn't it? Come on, he's bogus. Him saying that he was in the same band as Prince is a bit like anybody in the current Blackpool FC squad saying they were in the same football team as Stanley Matthews.

Yeah, and then saying he was shit and I had to do everything. Had to do all the dribbling for him, yeah. Top of the Pops' relatively new neon set. Working to full effect here, you have to say. It's essentially recreating what Colonel Abrams must be doing all over the country right now. It's a PA at a sparsely attended but comfortable nightclub. You know, he's standing on a black circular platform surrounded by the kids on the floor

and members of City Farm on site. He's short of plinths. And the only disappointment I had from this performance is that there's some nubby white stripes around the Colonel's plinth that makes it look like he's on a trampoline and when he starts doing that weird little skipping dance you think oh fucking hell he's gonna start doing some proper somersaults any minute now but alas no well there you are you see there aren't the somersaults i mean you're not easily pleased david you expect somersaults from your proto house singers yeah metaphorical somersaults you know he's giving it loads he's even grabbing

his wrist david what more do you want to indicate how trapped he is yeah true the thing is um yeah it is quite housey sounding from this distance because it's got that sort of synth the top line the synth that's quite housey it's quite busy though rhythmically it's quite busy and that's what makes it not house i think i think it's only when things get stripped down and boiled to the very basics you know or bass x that you you actually get to what house music is but all the elements are here really yeah richard burgess has added a bit of high energyness hasn't he with the stubby sense yeah it's quite stubby it doesn't have the house cadence but it um but i can sense i think what someone said has a point actually about the sort of the straightness of it the lenientness of it you know perhaps preparing people for house yeah that

enemy interview we alluded to earlier that they're clearly painting him as the next in the line of soul men when yeah you're right he is a house pioneer and i'd go as far to say is that we as a public are being house trained in this performance don't you think yes the other thing that was in the enemy interview uh that you read earlier was that people kept comparing him to luther van dross and teddy pendergrass and people like that um i actually listened to a radio interview with colonel abrams from 1987 right where he acknowledged both those influences but he said he was more influenced by female singers like nancy wilson the supremes and dion warwick but he also said that he thought singers like him had a duty to be a male role

model um which meant he comes out with quite a lot of unreconstructed stuff like you can look good without looking feminine and uh you can be the head of the household always kind of like you know strong black man kind of rhetoric which is kind of interesting um i i found in another interview for a tv interview this time from 92 by which time he's claiming to have been one of the inventors of house music you know inventor you know that's that's a bit of a stretch you know even i'll say that um and he now considered himself by 92 to be part of acid jazz interestingly right he was saying he's added a new aggression to his music which he thought was gonna you know finally make him uh break through and be a star in the u.s listener it didn't yeah but it's interesting that in the uk we went fucking crazy for this stuff yes

we did this was number three you know number three in the proper charts half a million copies sold but in america you know stuff like this, you couldn't get arrested. Well, ironically, you know. Or even court-martialed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've often wondered why it is that great black American pop struggles, or has struggled historically, to chart in the proper billboard charts. And I don't know if it's just to do with how the charts were compiled over there,

because surely, you know, the African-American population must have been buying stuff like this yeah fairly significant numbers is it just not getting registered uh by by billboard or is it you know sort of segregated off and sort of lumped into their their r&b chart or their dance chart or whatever or is it the records like this were selling through shops which by their very nature were segregated whereas in this country yeah you know maybe in cities like london birmingham manchester there might have been kind of black music specialist shops but mostly people were just buying this stuff from your local hmv or your local woolworths once it's charted i don't know you got any theories on that yeah uh we're skill and americans are twats yeah i need to work

on that a bit more but you know that's that's the basic crux of it isn't it yeah it's interesting though we can sort of slap ourselves on the back a bit sometimes where we look at the chart positions of these what to us seem like classic tracks and and you see that they absolutely fucking bombed but it even goes back to 70s things like i don't know um odyssey or well that's more the early 80s but limmy and family cooking that we talked about before yeah stuff that just did nothing in this state and i suppose radio stations have got something to do with it you know we didn't have black radio stations in the 70s and 80s no radio wasn't segregated so something like this was getting played it was getting played to everyone it wasn't

sort of being racially profiled and sort of ghettoised, as it were, in radio terms and marketing terms and everything else. So the following week, Trapped made its fourth six-place jump on the bounce, getting to number four. And the week after that, it began a three-week stand at number three, spending seven weeks in the the top 10 his next dent upon the charts came at the end of the year when streetwise records released music is the answer over here but it only got to number 84 in november but the official follow-up the truth only made it to number 53 the

following month he'd get back into the top 40 when i'm not going to let you made it to number 53 the following month. He'd get back into the top 40 when I'm Not Going To Let You made it to number 24 in March of 1986, but his last MCA release in the UK, the painfully apt How Soon We Forget, only got to number 74 for two weeks in August of 1987, and he never troubled the charts again. And sadly, he dropped off the radar until a GoFundMe crowdfund was started for him in 2015

as he was homeless and suffering from diabetes and he died a year later at the age of 67. Oh, that's sad. 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 with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. The Six Foot Reaches tour comes from New York.

Used to be in a band with Prince, Superb, Colonel Abrams and Trap. Right now, here's the highest new entry in the chart this week, straight in at number 20 for Iron Maiden. David, on his own in front of some Ponzi 80s Iron Munger tells us about the Colonel Abrams Prince lie before pitching us straight into Running Free by Iron Maiden.

Formed in Leighton in 1975, Ash Mountain were a group put together by the bassist Steve Harris who told him that his band name was shit and they wanted to be called Iron Maiden instead. After they played their first gig at St Nick's Hall in Poplar in May of 1976 they took up a residency at the Carton Horses in Stratford and underwent myriad line-up changes with band members being sacked for not having enough on

stage charisma, pretending to be in Kiss and coughing up fake blood during gigs, getting the arse about the band recruiting a keyboard player, being that keyboard player and it not suiting the band and pretending to play guitar with their teeth which led the band to split up at the end of the year. In early 1977 however Harris and the guitarist Dave Murray decided to have another go, finally completing the line-up where their new drummer Doug Sampson recommended Paul Andrews, a hotel chef who changed his name to Paul D'Anno to play up his Italian heritage as lead singer.

After recording a four-song demo, they passed it on to Neil Kay, who ran a disco in the back room of a pub in North London called the Bandwagon Heavy Metal Soundhouse, who ran a disco in the back room of a pub in North London called the Bandwagon Heavy Metal Soundhouse, who was so taken by it that he listed one of the tracks from it, Prowler, at number one in his Soundhouse chart, which was published every week by Sounds. After the tape crossed the desk of Rod Smallwood, a student gig promoter who managed Steve Holley and Cockney Rebel for a while, he expressed an interest in managing them and set up two pub gigs. Although the first one

fell through when the band didn't fancy playing so early in the evening and they had to play the second one without Deano because he'd been arrested outside for showing off with his knife in front of a copper. Undeterred, smallwood encouraged them to set up their own label and put out their demo with the run of 5 000 copies selling out immediately which led to record company interest and eventual deal with emi who immediately put two of their tracks on the compilation lp metal for mothers and catapulted them to the forefront of the new wave of British heavy metal. At the same time, their debut single, This Tune, was put out and it entered the charts at number 46, leading to the band being immediately rushed into the top of the pop studio, sandwiched between

Carrie by Cliff Richard and Coward of the County by Kenny Rogers which helped it get up to number 34. By mid-1981 after the band had notched up three more top 40 hits and were midway through a world tour Deano had become a proper custard gannet and the rest of the band decided to knob him off and replace him with the former frontman of Samson, Bruce Dickinson, which propelled Maiden to a run of six top 20 hit singles in a row and three top three LPs, including Number of the Beast, which spent two weeks atop the LP charts in April of 1982. This single, a cover of their debut and the follow-up to Ace is High, which got to number 20 in November of 1984,

is the lead-off cut from their next LP, Live After Death, which comes out next week and was recorded in Long Beach, California, and Hammersmith Odeon during the World Slavery Tour, which started in Warsawaw in august of 1984 and ended in california in july of 85 the band preferred the hammersmith version but according to bruce dickinson the lighting engineer had a cob on with the film crew and deliberately made the lights too dim to render any shooting usable so they had a go with what we're seeing here because video rules the music industry these days it's thudded into the chart this week at number 20

this week's highest new entry and here they are getting some american lads worked up so chaps the world slavery tour 331 days 189 gigs 25 countries four continents apparently there were going to be some dates in south africa but they were cancelled by the south africans who objected to the word slavery loads of cash rates in one very knackered band who have taken the rest of the year off hence them putting this out as a stopgap and a prelude to the live album apparently after um bruce dickinson's first big european tour with iron maiden he suffered a real bout of depression because all of his dreams had been fulfilled it was a i was reading andrew o'neill's book the history of heavy metal and he compares it to Alexander the Great weeping

because there were no worlds left to conquer. Yeah. Like Paul Jordan. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. My mate Andrew, the metaller that I've talked about before, that's Andrew who lived next door, not Andrew who was a member of the Mary Brennell Boys' Murder with me.

He had that album, Metal for Mothers, but the thing is, we didn't know what that meant so we thought it was metal for muthas who's muthas then and he said i don't know just somebody called muthas sounds like a doctor who villain yeah yeah exactly oh god iron fucking maiden i've got to say we've had some metal bands on chart music before i've really enjoyed you know watching twisted sister and motorhead and things like that this has put me in a really bad mood about heavy metal yeah it's just sort of made me revert to my sort of not that deeply buried view that

heavy metal is just fucking stupid you know it's just sort of thwarted masculinity it's power fantasies for inadequate teenage boys you know it's it's all about male heroism and people will sort of scream in disagreement about this but for me heavy metal is very right wing i mean there's literally you know quite a lot of far right stuff going on in the world of metal but i just mean there's something inherently right wing about this music that is based around fantasies of power in this song okay dickinson didn't write it it's a paul diano song but yeah it's it's about you know this this this 16 year old who's you know is running free and it's so oh god this american bullshit man the american

bullshit in the lyrics just 16 a pickup truck you know fucking pickup trucks in eastland no you know apparently paul diano wrote this about when he was a skinhead right this is a skinhead song it's hersham boys yeah with more hair a skinhead who somehow got a pickup truck and is hitting the gas and ends up in an la jail for fuck's sake maybe a layton jail yeah the thing with maiden to me right is that i don't know if you ever read those war comics as a child you know like they were kind of a5 sized uh things like commando yeah yeah and it's you know it's all sort of square jawed germans who would go i if you threw a grenade at them that kind of thing don't know where to eat lead fritz yeah and maiden aren't coming from rock and

roll they're coming from that that roll. They're coming from that. That's where Maiden are coming from. So many of their songs are about war or enslavement and things like that. Well, the World Slavery Tour, every gig, begins with We Shall Fight Them on the Beach is the Churchill speech. Right, exactly. And, you know, they've got that beer that they sell, Trooper Beer. I mean, it's got this picture of Eddie in sort of military uniform,

Eddie, their mascot, waving a tattered Union Jack and all of that. Looking like he's in the Liberties. But Maiden's attitude to the horrors of war is really ambiguous, I think. It's this kind of mix of disgust and glee, right? There is this sort of craving for gore and mayhem among prepubescent boys, isn't there? And grown men have never quite stopped among prepubescent boys, isn't there? And grown men have never quite stopped being prepubescent boys. And Maiden kind of have it both ways.

That's their modus operandi here. Because, like, Run to the Hills, right? Run to the Hills, you can make a defence of it saying it's this kind of excoriating critique of the genocide inflicted on the indigenous peoples of America. but the relish the sheer relish with which dickinson rasps the words raping the women and wasting the men right that that is just made for the adolescent fans of iron maiden to to punch the air you know drooling like yeah rape death you know so you have it's kind of having a both ways thing and i i think in some ways i'm quite grateful to iron maiden because we live in a time now where metal and alternative music have kind of merged yeah and a lot of

people think that metal is goth goth is metal and it's all part of this continuum but for me maiden served this kind of useful reminder that metal was all about reinforcing patriarchy and hierarchy all that royalist imagery and all that flag waving and you know shall we say traditional attitudes towards sexual equality that stuff was never alternative never cool and metal existed for for weaklings you know kids at my school who into metal they were not the tough kids no they were sort of acne encrusted bespectacled runty kids really and they'd wear their leather jacket like a protective carapace. And metal allows them to live out these vicarious power fantasies,

that kind of stinky Doddington rock, allows them to feel hard and to feel tough. And I think that's what metal's all about. And all of that that I just said is an opinion that I have, and I sometimes try and suppress that. I've got really good friends who are into metal. know john doran um from the quietus gives talks about this about how great metal is and i think i'm going to be interviewing him at one of these talks later in the year so this is going to be interesting i respect their view but i can't

things like maiden make it so hard for me to get on board with it you know um yeah i'll shut up for a bit and let david talk yeah let the rock expert have his say yeah i mean it's fucking rubbish isn't it i mean you know it's absolute fucking garbage i mean you got you know these adolescent west coast dreams you know they're wearing trousers that make spinal taps look positively semiotic desperate rubbish absolute piss garbage but you know i mean i absolutely agree with everything that simon says you know about the kind of you know the sense of trying to reimpose patriarchy having a vicarious joy in war and rape and death etc etc and it was felt and it was despised heavy metal i suppose now

the only way i look at it is that i see it as perhaps a sort of equivalent to the um you know world wrestling federation or something like that you know or whatever it is, WWE. Oh, careful. Al's going to come for you now. It's part of me that kind of likes all of that. And I mean, I was always very much more, I became much more endeared towards heavy metal people. I never interviewed Iron Maiden. When I actually interviewed him,

and it was like, bless you, you have something to say, you know, that you knew part of the job was entertainment. And I suppose the most charitable thing I can think is that like all of these elements are there, but perhaps they're not necessarily insidious because everybody involved is aware that it's a fantasy, perhaps, at some level, and it's just a way of getting the rocks off, you know.

I'm being around this time. You know, they're well established by this point, but I just think that they feel that heavy metal will be taken more seriously. There's a double standard. There was an interview with Steve Harris around this time. It was in an American magazine, you know, and he says, like, hey, look, somebody will go along and see a David Bowie show, and he brings on a big scary monster on stage or something,

and they go, it was wonderful, it was very entertaining, and everybody had a party. Then they go to an Iron Maiden concert, we bring a big scary monster on, and suddenly we're worshipping the devil. We're worshipping scary small children, or whatever particular bogey you want to lay at the door of music. People love to lay at our door. I mean, first of all, laying a bogey

at Steve Harris' door is a bit of a slightly ugh thing, but, you know, I think that's the idea that there's a sort of a double standard, and David Bowie is revered more than Iron Maiden is, perhaps to do with things like, you know, Ziggy Stardust and the Berlin Trilogy, and I don't think Iron Maiden produced quite an equivalent of all of that

around this time in 84, 85 I used to like have mates who were heavy metal fans and fucking hell I used to call myself Sweaties

they were called and there was no sweaty quite like a Yorkshire sweaty I tell you I mean piss hurling Cro-Magnon meatheads seriously

not even the missing link between man and ape you know the missing link between ape and divot you know I mean just fucking awful horrible people actually in fact actually thinking about them makes me kind of yeah i'm beginning to kind of get my gander a bit like pricey now actually now that i'm thinking about these fucking what's weird is but it doesn't it seems to be as simon said it's there's now sort of metal goth alternative kind of sort of merging

to one and you've got people like sun you know who are kind of avant metal and a brilliant you know it's become kind of respectable but i think that the sort of the the crapness of an iron maiden i don't i don't know that there's an equivalent for that these days um certainly not on a kind of mass scale you know it's metal seems to be one of those in some respects kind of slightly in the iron maiden sense a kind of extinct genre in some ways i don't't know, I mean, people like Rob Zombie can fill the O2, I mean, don't underestimate it, it is still fucking massive as a live thing.

Yeah. And, you know, if you look at this concert, it's clearly a massive gig that they're playing, but Maiden can play those kind of venues still now. Yes. They really can. Oh, yeah. But I just wonder if it's like a kind of new generations and new, you know, kids coming through. I mean, you know, you never hear metal blasted out of an open-top car. No.

It's got run around anyway. No, I don't know, man. I think it's still huge. I mean, even by 1985, metal was passe. Yeah. I don't know, because metal has split into two directions by the mid-'80s. On the one hand, you had glam metal, that whole L.A. thing of Motley Crue and Guns N' Roses and stuff like that. But you also had Thrash.

Thrash was coming along at this time. You had the big four of Thrash, who were Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer. Yeah. I mean, the new wave of British heavy metal. Oh, in Britain. Well, the thing is, the first Nwobham lot had actually started cracking America, as we see with Maiden. So basically, the two that really made it are Leopard and Maiden, aren't they? And Judas Priest.

Yeah, did they? Right, OK. If you've not seen it, have a look at Heavy Metal Parking Lot, which I believe was filmed round about this time, before a Judas Priest concert. And it's just loads of youth drinking pissy beer and throwing up the devil horns and everything, saying all rock and roll woo and then the bloke interviews them and he's you know he talks to one lad says oh what

you what you up to now he says oh well i'm joining the army next weekend right yeah woo yeah yeah well rock and roll the thing is with maiden is that there's no sex in their music i mean this this song is actually a really rare example where they talk about girls you know and that's because it's a song from their very early days written by paul yes where it's like pulled her at the bottle top whiskey dancing disco hop now all the boys are after me and that's the way it's gonna be yeah um but yeah it's quite rare for maiden to sing about something like that about girls because normally they they are about war and death and in that respect they have more in common because there was this you know dichotomy that i spoke of in this split in in in mid 80s metal um even though they're not thrash um maiden have got more in

common with slayer than with guns and roses or something like that because you know slayer famously sang these really dodgy questionable lyrics about uh about the nazi death camps where it's really not too clear that they disapprove let's put it that way and you know as i said with with maiden they seem to really revel in the the blood and gore of war yeah so i i think maybe it's the same kind of mentality, just very different musically to bands like Slayer. As we've discovered, chaps, within Lizzy and Motorhead, Meckler bands are very keen to put out live singles or EPs. And, you know, it's a win-win, isn't it?

The fans get a souvenir of being wedged up against other people in denim and leather while having their senses assailed. And, you know, the band gets to knock out an old song as a single. But I'm detecting an ulterior motive here, having their senses assailed and you know the band gets a knock out an old song as a single but i'm detecting an ulterior motive here because to me this is bruce dickinson painting out the image of paul diano by covering the latter's own song and having a bigger hit with it yeah like when taylor swift re-recorded all her albums to obliterate the earlier taylor swift yeah what's odd though once again i again, I interviewed Martin Fry recently,

and he was talking about the very early days of ABC, you know, perhaps like Vice vs. ABC, and he was talking about the Sheffield scene. And I thought, you know, I might get him on to, like, you know, Klopp DVA and Carrie Voltaire and people like that. And he says, oh, no, it was all right, you know. Yeah, the drummer from Saxon, he was great. He was a really good bloke.

You know, he really helped us out, you know, and he helped us out, gave us tips, you know, and all that kind of stuff, you know. Yeah, the drummer from Saxon, he was great. He was a really good bloke. You know, he really helped us out, you know, and he helped us out, gave us tips, you know, and all that kind of stuff, you know, gear and whatnot. And I was like, you fraternise with the foe, the enemy, the arch enemy. The idea, I've been absolutely horrified if I'd have known that Martin Frye was consorting with fucking Saxon.

Shoot that poison arrow through David's heart. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, Saxon, another example of a band we've talked about that I really enjoyed sort of reacquainting with them. There's just something about Maiden that rubs him the wrong way. And it's probably the whole Brexit thing. That's part of it as much as anything else. You know, fucking all right.

You know, he's obviously not a complete idiot. He can fly a plane, which is more than I can do, right? But I just don't think Dickinson's the brightest bulb in the box because he voted for brexit and then he started complaining exactly yeah that uh brexit made it difficult for bands to tour like what the fuck did you think was gonna happen yeah yeah jesus christ as far as the video goes it's your bog standard you know band on stage job but they are singing live they're not miming to anything and as you'd expect in 1985 there is a

lot of spandex on that stage there is and it kind of works in a metal band because you know it allows free and easy movement as bruce dickinson capers about and rests the foot on the monitors and the rest of the band um just i don't know just stand about and lean forward when they're doing a solo. But it's not practical for the metal fan, is it, wearing spandex? Because where are you going to put your keys? You need to have a very big belt buckle, which Dickinson does. Or a codpiece. Yes, in order to hide, you know, what's going on there, because they're quite indecent.

You mentioned the guitar solo. I don't know if you noticed and i think uh it might have been david who described big country's bagpipe style as being the most pointless guitar innovation ever but um maiden do this thing where the twin guitarists play exactly the same solo at exactly the same time yeah it's just a really ridiculous stunt. It's like something out of ice skating more than rock and roll. Yeah, absolutely. I also noticed there's someone

in a really shit homemade Eddie costume in the crowd. Did you see that? Yes. It looked like the head was made out of foam from an old sofa or something. Amazingly, we don't see Eddie in the video. Because by this time,

he was a 30-foot sarcophagus because they were going for a very egyptian theme for this uh well you know maybe michael grade wouldn't have it you know didn't want to scare people yeah by the way chaps do you know how spandex got its name no because it expands it well nearly simon it's an anagram of expand oh right yeah and i was going to say that spandex would be superseded in the early 90s by Lycra, but I did a bit of research. Actually, it turns out that Lycra is a brand name of a company that makes Spandex, and the term was adopted across the industry

to help the fabric move away from the image portrayed by bands such as Iron Maiden. That's what I thought, because I got right into the Lycra game in the late 80s, let me tell you. Did you now? Yeah, yeah, when I arrivedondon and started going on the goth scene because the thing with pvc or leather trousers is they're never tight enough you know if if you wanted shiny but sort of drain pipe like legs there was no point getting pvc or leather because they were just all sort of flaccid and baggy and saggy. So what you needed was lycra. So I would buy these lycra leggings, and people would say to me,

oh, nice spandex you've got going on. What are you talking about? Never heard of spandex. But yeah, it turns out it's exactly the same fucking thing. Did it help reduce our sweat at clubs? I mean, I couldn't possibly comment. Is it better or worse than PVC? I mean, it's better for the sweat point of view. You haven't got to put talcum powder down here anything like that better at wicking it

tucks nicely into your sort of little pixie boots with with skulls for buckles put it that way and where did you put your keys that would be revealing too much um yeah yeah i i'd always have like a leather jacket or something that was the trouble with it yeah you've got no way to put things yeah um i tell you what i've come up with now is the solution to that problem is a spore I'd always have a leather jacket or something. That was the trouble with it. Yeah, you've got no way to put things. I tell you what I've come up with now as a solution to that problem. It's a sporran. I've got this kind of fetish sporran. It's a black PVC sporran that I got from a kind of fetish wear retailers.

And it's perfect for that kind of thing. If you're wearing a garment which doesn't allow stashing of your keys, yeah, a sporran is your friend. So there's a fashion tip for the pop craze youngsters anything else to say yeah seriously fuck iron maiden man what what the fuck are you doing here i did under the desk my metal dial was twitching man i heard maiden chat and i cannot let it pass without sticking my tuppin a thing there's something wrong with you man i'm calling the police every time the subject of maiden has come up neil said he can't wait to get stuck into him who am i to deny a lad his opportunity so come on neil he's rising up

like the coventry maiden troll it needs saying man it needs saying um no for me to be honest with you i massively agree with simon and david on this i have to say that the maiden like say their american equivalent would be i don't know wasp or something they're that point they're that marking point as simon was kind of saying that i needed metal they're a kind of mark off point that says you know just stop you've gone too far you know my, my daughter, as previously explained, is quite a retro metalhead, and she burns a lot of CDs for the car called Poisonous Metal.

We're actually up to volume 12 now. And they've pushed things into my life, you know, that if you'd have told me back in the 80s... Metal for daughters. Spoke D-A-U-T-A. But they've pushed things into my life. life you know if you'd have told me back in the 80s that i'd be earnestly sort of singing along to these things in my car in my 50s i'd have seen that as a colossal defeat in my life really you know it was a quiet riot except

scorpions michael shanker group all of them you know tigers of pantang witch find um you know walpurgis night by storm which these little things that i i now sort of dig but she peppers these compilations i mean she put on one kiss track on one of them and i just i'm not having that one that one could just comes out the cd player as soon as it gets. But she does pepper these compilations with Maiden tracks, which only ever sort of kicks off arguments, all of which eventually end up with me, you know, just driving down the A45 with my thumb down like the audience for Spinal Tap's Jazz Odyssey.

And me getting a dead arm, you know? But, I mean, as I patiently explained to her maiden suck and and i use that americanism carefully because i think something simon said there's a real incipient americanization of so many aspects of metals revival and rehabilitation in recent years it's entirely along kind of american lines of fandom that i would suggest yeah include wrestling also include the kind of consumption of hot sauces, you know. You can trace a lot of it back to Wayne's World and Bill and Ted, I think. But the reason I really don't like Maiden,

and I cannot get along with Maiden, despite an awful lot of dreadful metal shit being sort of rehabilitated in my mind. Well, several reasons. I mean, Simon's mentioned the warfare aspect of Maiden. of maiden and you know metal obviously uses a lot of warfare imagery from sort of war pigs onwards you know um and through bands like like thin lizzy who obviously maiden are taking musical and lyrical ideas from but maiden's obsession with military stuff it never becomes critical in a kind of war pigs or emerald style it's firmly a sort of really celebratory boy's own airfix view of history yeah um because it's for those kind of boys

who would have you know collected a 24 part series by orbis on tanks of the eastern threat or something you know it's that sven hassel ie thing as sign and said and and you know that obviously feeds into diano and dickinson's brexit nurse and right wingery and that's why maiden sleeves and eddie becomes this flag shagging thing this there's the union jack is often on maiden product whether it's terrible awful wallets in shops called fantasy and reality or or trooper beer you know they're like the ukip of metals and beyond beyond the politics beyond the politics just sonically uh you know there's often this thing you know maiden or priest and i love priest right and unlike priest who they're often contrasted and compared to, Maiden just don't groove.

They can only gallop. That's all they can do. They have this sort of giddy-up kind of rhythm to their music, which really reflects that this is metal now entirely shorn of the sort of blues or black music influences that fed into bands like Zeppelin and Sabbath. So that there's smiths of metal. there's something to that there's definitely something to that you could argue it was priest that really birthed heavy metal by melding kind of prog with heavy

rock and these sort of heavily arpeggiated twin guitars that are kind of a metal a signal if you like but priest how can i put it they always just had plenty of ass to their sound they always had a groove maiden are all about the treble and and the kind of detail and they're much more engaged with kind of proving their chops in a really entirely sort of european almost classical kind of way it leaves me cold and and it's perfect for metal boys and and you know maiden exclude women in all kinds of ways not only from their audience but also from their music but it's perfect for metal boys to feel because you know that metal boys want to feel that metal is the best music because you know to play an instrument that fast etc but but if you're out of metal subculture and

you're aware of pop in any way it made them feel really cold and undanceable they're kind of headbanger but not danceable and consequently at the time you know in the 80s among my few friends made them with the band clung to by the most sort of squalid of my friends how can i put it yeah the friends who made swords and played dnd and and that and you know and even that back then those guys i gave a wide berth to because they kind of stank and i didn't want to get nicks and stuff so it's that side of metal and finally i mean really awful awful front men for maiden and you know the front man is kind of decides whether you like a band or not quite often.

You know, I mean, the first singer, benefits cheat Paul D'Arno, he was a nasty piece of work. And his lyrics, I mean, if you dig into lyrics for Killers or Murders in the Rue Morgue, you know, they show a really appalling attitude to women and violence against women. And beyond that, D'Ariano's a total fantasist i mean there's a fantastic quote from diano in michael hann's oral history of nwabahum denim and leather where he's recalling one of maiden's early shows at the the music machine and he goes um you know the direct quote he goes we went up there and we had kate bush up on stage with us i remember that i was seeing her at the time oh my god um he's like the aldridge prior hopeless liar i mean to hand to michael hans credit he swiftly follows that quote up with a quote from murray charmer kate bush's pr which just flatly says kate doesn't know that guy and has never been on stage at the music machine and then there's a good quote there's a good quote straight after as well from malcolm dome which says you know it didn't happen i was

there it didn't happen but i think he genuinely believes the stuff he comes out with he lives in a fantasy world to some extent so you know there's diano problems dickinson is just this awful brexit sort of top gear adjacent cunt isn't he and the thing is with the other and the wobbleham bands the front men were really key in those bands appeal i think you know whether it's saxon's uh bill bifford sort of being just dead funny or that's just the magnificent rob halford you know that these guys are hilariously kind of unembarrassable and lovable because of it and it's kind of wonderful that these people who are essentially fans of glam rock really became stars whereas with maiden from the moment they started there's just this feel of management and business really guiding them to

the top that they're signed in the early days because when emi come see them play in the middle of a bill that also included a white spirit an angel witch maiden for that show they knew that emi were coming and they bought tons of pyro and they kind of secured that record deal. There's something cold and calculating about Maiden. You know, the band themselves, when they used to get on their leathers

and their kind of clothes and spandex and stuff, they used to call dressing up for the shows getting on the cunt kit. And getting on the cunt kit. And I think, cunt kit and i think i mean it's funny but it kind of reveals something about them and their attitudes to their audience so for all those reasons i kind of proudly state fuck maiden and fuck dickinson and fuck this kind of sexless groveless bo rock in 1984 i mean simon's mentioned the big four you know the big four thrash bands swinging that that was where i was listening to the metal.

And really the major impact Maiden had in my life in 85 was probably, I mean, this is three years short of Nico McBrain's drum battle with Sooty, don't forget. Oh, yes. You know, their major impact is them soundtracking, you know, Daily Thompson, I'm going to swig a lucas, eh? Oh, yes. In the advert. No, no, no, no, no no no no no no no no indeed voiced by fellow brexiteer you know des linem so yeah no fuck maiden metal and athletics man not two things you'd naturally put together not at all i mean later on in the nought of course, we do get a kind of sports metal. Oof. Horrific.

Yes. But, yeah, no, at this period, no. I mean, yeah, the metal fans were the guys at the back of the cross country, you know? Yes. They're walking with some soap bar on the go or something. Yes. I've got something I want to ask Neil. In fact, it's kind of a question.

Oh, by the way, the police are on their way. Don't you worry about that for your breaking. Yeah, what it is, it's kind of a question. Oh, by the way, the police are on their way. Don't you worry about that for your break. Yeah, what it is, it's a question in two parts. Don't you fucking hate it when someone does that, by the way, in a Q&A. It's like a question in two parts. The only thing worse than that is if they say, not so much a question, more of an observation. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah.

But anyway, what is this this um i i said that you know metal in general and maiden in particular are all about these sort of male power fantasies and you said yourself you know it's it's all about it's boys stinky boys into this your daughter loving this music is the kind of hole in my argument. And I wondered, and here's the two parts. First of all, how do you explain that? And secondly, when she started showing an interest in this kind of music, did you feel like a bit of a failure as a parent? No, the thing is, the thing is right.

I know sort of, you can't fail as a parent. I mean, I think as a parent, you've just got to kind of let your kids get into what the fuck they want to get into you know what i mean and not guide it in any way whatsoever so it is thrilling when her and then cut them out of you well no it's nice you know when their own reconnaissance sort of loops around with yours to a certain extent but but you're right there there is an odd thing because not many how can i put it when she listens to to stuff like maiden when she listens to songs like murders in the room or will killers which are quite misogynistic in a way i think the place she puts it in her head is purely alongside horror um as a genre um both in literature and in film so she's watching giallo movies and where she is she's

watching horrifically violent shit to be honest with you you know my daughter when i walk in the front room the telly suddenly goes muted and and stops fuck how many knows what she's watching she's watching a lot of really gruesome shit but i think she sees it as it doesn't speak to her as a kind of like you know i want to go out and do that to women or i want to go that out and be that violent for her it's kind of in a sense yeah pure fantasy and just an evocation of violence but yeah it is problematic because like we the major thing that i always say in the car when she's punching my arm saying maiden are great is but they're so fucking brexit and and that's important to her she's like my arm saying Maiden are great is but they're so fucking Brexit and and

that's important to her she's like no no they're not Brexit anymore he's apologized if she knows that I don't know a singer is right wing or a Trump supporter or doesn't agree with her politics she rapidly falls out of love with that band um she's had to rationalize in her head that Maiden you know aren't Brexit Bruce has apologized etc um you know to to be into it so yeah yeah i i don't feel embarrassed that she's playing fucking storm witch or has convinced me of the value of the scorpions she's inspired much more by women in metal i think than she is by by all the bloke as opposed to women in uniform! But did Bruce Dickinson apologise or did he just moan about

the consequences of Brexit? I think that was it. He kind of, he said, yeah, he moaned about its impact on touring bands, didn't he? So I'm sticking to my guns. I don't care.

She can keep giving me a dead arm. But those political problems haven't shoved Maiden out of her listening because musically they appeal to her I guess but yeah the grovelessness it's a constant sticking point with me and Soph that Kiss fucking suck

and Maiden suck and yeah I will never ever retract those opinions because they're true maybe she I think she'll grow out of them and wasn't it totally unsurprising that about 20 years ago, when Meckle t-shirts became fashionable and were in Topshop, it was Iron Maiden. Yeah, and it still is.

You can still get Maiden t-shirts in places like Primark and stuff like that because it's an instant signifier or something. But people, I've got to say, I mean, Maiden, of course, are still selling out big stadiums and stuff like that. But in terms of the records I'd still keep from that period um they're the worst and and and you know there's no place for women in their music maiden never sing love songs or sex songs there's no place for sex in their music either because the boys that they're appealing to are not having sex so they don't want to hear about a front man who is having sex they want to hear

about a front man who's obsessed with their small you know wank sock world of warfare and horror movies and all of that i i always remember the boys that i used to teach um i used to teach them gaming uh they used to want to be games designers right they were horrible and hateful and kind of right wing um in that way the alternative culture has got a bit right wing in recent years. But I always remember kind of stepping out of the room to go and have a fag and coming back to this room of these 10 metal boys. And fuck me, it just stank. I know that's a prejudice and it's kind of a cliched prejudice. But it's true.

But it's true. and it's kind of a cliched prejudice. But it's true. But it's true. And, you know, I mean, teenage boys are pretty gruesome in whatever they're into. But, yeah, that kind of horrible, squalid grubbiness

of the fans of Maiden in particular, it's an undeniable truism, I think. And it percolates into their music. Priest, for instance, asates into their music. Priest, for instance, as another metal band of the period, they're writing really quite interesting songs. You can hear Halford,

you know, having to cover up his gayness. Um, so that songs like Breaking the Law, et cetera, are kind of reflective of something really, really interesting. Whereas Maiden are just unproblematically telling little boys that,

yeah, um, their tiny penises matter. And, you or bitches etc you know so it's kind of unretrievable yeah although you know the the horned hand and all of the other americanized kind of aspects of metal culture now seem to be dragging everything back into the fold In terms of their influence on other metal bands, yes, of course, you're going to hear most metal people saying, yeah, Maiden were important. But in terms of their influence,

I don't hear it much in modern metal. A teenage dirtbag. You weren't listening to Judas Priest. No, no. But I mean, yeah, in that particular war, Priest went hands down. And yeah, Ma made into this groveless kind of you know the way alan freeman used to pepper his kind of show this friday rock show with flourishes of classical music um maiden are very much on that side of things they've got no groove because they're not really

coming from a heavy rock background by which i mean something that's informed at least tangentially by r&b or something they're coming purely they listen to lizzy they listen to these wiggly wiggly wiggly bands and all they got was the whittle they didn't listen to the to the groove underneath it i feel really grateful to neil for this i feel like he's kind of sort of fastidiously dissected and examined this enormous great turd you know which i just just sort of flushed from my kind of... He's the Gillian McKeith of chart music. No, you know, we've said in the past

that everything ends up rehabilitated. We've had discussions in the past, you know, why is Toto's Africa now considered a classic? It's this thing, that passage of time happens, and because those old things that people are into are just sort of charming and quaint um they end up getting rehabilitated but maiden should not be rehabilitated their music their music's dreadful and then it always was yeah and and you know i knew this as a child i knew this when even when number of the beast came out i thought how dare you exploit omen for your for your mercenary

so yeah no a cold calculating and somewhat unmoving band maiden you are not wrong to dislike them good thank you so the following week running free would only manage a one place jump to number 19 its highest position the follow-up a live version of Run to the Hills, became the Christmas number 26, while Live After Death entered the LP chart at number two, held off the summit of Albumberg by Love Songs by George Benson on KTEL. And of course, the original version was used to devastating effect as the soundtrack to the Maiden Minute

in In Bed With Chris Needham, where manslaughter take time out from the stress of being Loughborough's top-ranked thrash metal band by running down a school corridor, wrapping sellotape round Chris's little brother's head and filming themselves having a big wazz into a toilet. Hello! We're drinking! Thank you very much, Neil. See you down the line, brother.

No worries. See you later, guys. See you, Neil. Bye. And while Neil's being ejected from the premises, I think it's a good time to stop there, catch his breath, and come back hard tomorrow for part three of Chart Music 72. So, on behalf of David Stubbs and Simon Price, this is Al Needham asking you nice to stay pop crazed. Chart Music Hey Pop Crazed Youngster

Do you love chart music But hate London Do you want to see our new live show But would sooner stop at Tom and Doss About in your pants on a Saturday Are you going to our live show but would sooner stop at Tom and Doss about in your pants on a Saturday? Are you going to our live show but want to see it again and again

and again and again for a week or so? Well, it seems to me like you need to get booked into our live stream at this year's London Podcast Festival. See that keyboard. Use those fingers. Mash at tinyearl.com slash cm live 23

or lowercase step up to the pay window lay your money down and get ready to see team atv land throw down live and direct on saturday september the 16 That link again, tinyearl.com slash cmlive23, all lower case. Come on, Pop Craze youngsters, stick that money down this G-string and watch Team ATV Land grind and thrust just for you. No wanking, though, OK?