Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #45 (Part 3): August 2nd 1979 - Treat Dad To Joan Collins For Xmas

Episode Date: November 8, 2019

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: who would win in a stage-show spaceship fight between Earth Wind and Fire, ELO and Funkadelic?It's the final furlong of the Critics' Choice series, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and Our Simon has dragged us back to the dawn of the Eighventies and pulled out a ridiculously bountiful episode with so much to talk about, making this our BIGGEST EPISODE EVER. It's the middle of the Summer Holiday Of Our Extreme Content, your panel have spent their downtime crying tears of laughter at the sight of nudists in supermarkets on telly, avoiding the Punk House, and having a break from the draconian private school system respectively, but are all clustered around the telly to see what Peter Powell has up his sleeve this Thursday eve, only to discover that he's not wearing any.But so what? Because musicwise, this could well be the greatest episode of TOTP we've come across so far, and a solid case for '79 being even better than '81. The Dooleys are gotten out of the way early doors. Sham 69 have their end-of-term party. Olympic Runners get mithered by Some Bird. The weediest-looking lead singer in Pop history sings with his teeth. There's an actual naked woman playing a cello in a massive pram. Abba slap it about in a disco. Ron Mael stares at us. Legs & Co have a sultry mornge on some sand. And we see the debut performances of The Specials and BA Cunterson.Simon Price and Neil Kulkarni join Al Needham as they just switch off their television set and go and do something less boring instead, veering off on such tangents as pulling your trackie bottoms up around your neck and running at girls, integrity-free reviewing jobs, your chance to have your achievements in the Welsh music scene recognised at last, wearing the wrong-coloured laces in your Docs, having a wazz on a Pop star's back door, and Exciting News For All Listeners. Swearing!Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | TwitterSubscribe to us on iTunes here. Support us on Patreon here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. You've just seen and heard the corgis at number 13, if I had you. This is ABBA. It's the AA side.

And the one side we're playing for you is Hoolay Food. Without cutting back to power, we get another digital effect, this time one that looks like a fly being unzipped. And the pants revealed therein contain Vu Le Vu by ABBA. We've covered ABBA many a time and often this, their 15th single release in the UK, is the follow-up to Does Your Mother Know, which got to number four for three weeks in May of this year. Uniquely for the UK, it's their first and only double A-side paired with Angel Eyes. But as the band only shot a video for Voo Lay Voo, it's become the de facto A-side on top of the pops.

video for Voulez-Vous, it's become the de facto A-side on Top of the Pops. It was written by Benny and Bjorn in the Bahamas, and the band immediately decamped to Criteria Studios in Miami, where the Bee Gees did all their disco records to record it with assistance from a local band called Foxe, who had a US dance hit the year before, and whose drummer was the son of Tito Puente, making it the only ABBA song to be recorded outside of Sweden. It's the third and fourth cut of their 6 LP of the same name, which came out in April, went straight to number 1,

stayed there for 4 weeks, and is currently at number 10 in the album charts. However, when Angel Eyes was featured on Jukebox Jura, it was unanimously voted a miss by the panel, which consisted of Alan Freeman, Elaine Page, Joan Collins

and Johnny Rotten. But it entered the chart at number 48 three weeks ago, then soared 25 places to number 23 and this week it's up from number 12 to number 5. Now then chaps you could say that there was always a

dance element to ABBA's music but this is clearly their first serious grab of the disco arse what with recording in America and everything. Well they're kind of in their sort of future disco mode by now because in 76 you had Dancing Queen and that was a more

organic kind of lightweight george mccray type of disco but this is your thumping georgio marotta style stuff you can totally imagine donna summer singing this actually i would say you could imagine this being a single uh somewhere in between bad girls and hot stuff uh you know the only giveaway that's abba is that it's the close harmonies but apart from that it is very marauder um and obviously it precedes Gimme Gimme Gimme A Man After Midnight which is in a similar vein yes so yeah I I think this is a badass record I really do it's just yes you know I I know that ABBA are forever associated with camp and they haven't done themselves any favors with the Mamma Mia musical and film which has just kind of cemented that kind of angle

on what they are. But around this time, they were making serious music. This is really good. They're entering a phase, probably their best phase, around this time. I know it's obligatory to have a pop at David Stubbs whenever we talk about ABBA. But I'm going to do it because he is Britain's leading ABBA sceptic.

How can he dislike this record? Seriously. He's picked out this record in particular for his coat downiness. No, but I'm assuming that he has no time for it. And he's just wrong, wrong, wrong. We've talked about Abba before, but they are

the greatest pop group of the 70s, maybe of all time um Angel Eyes I'm amazed that uh Elaine Page um sort of gave that as a miss yeah and then and then was allowed to work yeah with with Betty and Bjorn they obviously don't hold a grudge or either that they didn't see the footage um what I love about this uh this this record um I think Sarah in a previous podcast was talking about the idea of pop songs which when you're a child they hint at secret adult knowledge

that you don't quite get yet this is a prime example I think several of us have talked about this before in various contexts but just the bit where they go you know what I mean on this record, I mean I didn't but I thought I'd quite like to know what they mean.

No, you're right, Simon. I was confused as well because for years, I thought the lyric masters of the scene was actually masters of the sea, which makes the song be about trawler fishing. You know, when they're going back to get some more, you know what I mean. I always assumed that that must have been cod.

Yeah. You know, our cod that they were nicking off us. But no, it's that classic ABBA trope, isn't it? Jaded adults slapping it about. Now, this could have been on the soundtrack to The Bitch. Yeah. It could have. Yeah, but they couldn't afford it.

That world weariness of the lyrics is what's absolutely key here. That world weariness combined with the upbeat drive of it. I've always loved that mix. I mean, that kind of is why I like things like Teardrops by Womack and Womack. here that world weariness combined with the upbeat drive of it i've always loved that mix i mean that that kind of is why i like things like teardrops by womack and womack that mix between mournfulness and a forward driving music so it is crucial that this is the only one recorded outside of sweden to a certain extent um you know criteria studios where this is recorded i mean so much legendary stuff is recorded there um but what, like, as Simon says,

I wouldn't even call this a disco record to a certain extent. It's almost like you're a beat before it's time. It's got that mournfulness of old Europa mixed into it, accentuated by those world-weary lyrics. And, you know, the odd thing is, Abba, if you were doing this as a kind of, like, index of what were the most popular songs, this would almost count as a failure because it doesn't get to number one.

It only gets, you know, into the top five. But I think it's just fantastic, this record. Absolutely brilliant. And, you know, to the point where that horn line, that's part of my internal whistles. You know, I whistle that just walking down the street, doing something completely different. That'll come there. A lot of rock bands had to go'll come there a lot of rock bands had to go at disco a lot of pop bands had to go at

disco abba did it absolutely fantastically and this is this is one of the highlights of this show i would say this video because because agnetha looks astonishing in this video and so does frida and god knows where this disco that they're singing at is actually going on because what you don't see is the kind of lush theatricality of what you do get to see in the bitch. This just seems like a youth club disco almost. Yes. That they're kind of playing this at.

I mean, the video's directed by Lassie Hallstrom, who went on to direct What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Chocolat, and The Cider House Rules. And it's your standard band pretending to play live video. But the idea of either playing in a club or a youth club disco and not a stadium in Australia is mental. Yeah, that's what I love about it, you know, because they're on a low stage.

They're almost audience level in this sort of sweaty, you get the feeling of sweat in the air, sweaty dance club. And yeah, previously they presented these kind of untouchable pop superheroes, but here they are sort of getting down and dirty absolutely which which totally matches the mood of the song and what stops it just being an attempt by europeans to replicate black american pop is what pricey mentioned the folkiness of the vocal that makes them set the close harmonies that folkiness that makes them so nordic and so compelling makes them impossible to sing harmonies

to always with abba because it's just so close you have to be swedish almost to understand how to sing that way um so you know i would not call this although abba fans may well not put this high up in the kind of pantheon to me it's well high up it's it's an absolute tune it's an absolute tune this is good disco by non-disco people yeah and like the best disco records by non-disco people you always say oh this is an abba song rather than this is a disco song yeah i mean things like yeah no absolutely do you think i'm sexy miss you i would count as good disco by by non-disco people whereas something like i don't know eagles one of these nights that's trying too fucking hard and it's got none of them in it in a way it's trying too hard

so it's still it's still unmistakably an abba record in in every way but it just has that pulse to it i would love i've never played this out as a dj but i would love to and i i absolutely love them still at this time uh going back to what you said earlier on Al about being in that era where you didn't care about being cool yet you just pick a bit from here and a bit from there that's very much how I was and ABBA were key to that

ABBA Greatest Hits Volume 2 which had only just come out was just you know rinsed permanently on my turntable at this time. I just completely worshipped them. And there wouldn't have been any contradiction in my mind

between loving this and loving the Sham 69 record. It's just, yeah, I love it all. Yeah, if you were at Youth Club Disco and this came on after Hershen Boys, you wouldn't be leaving the dance floor, would you? No, no, no, no, not at all.

You'd just be kicking people a bit less. So, the following week, Voulez-Vous slash Angel Eyes nipped up two places to number three, its highest position. And the follow-up, I Have a Dream, closed out the year spending four weeks at number two, held off the Christmas number one by another brick in the wall by Pink Floyd. Yeah, I Have a was was pretty much the

moment i was starting to turn away from yeah it's a bit of a misfire to be fair Zabba at number five, and Bule Vu, a guy I've been waiting to make a child entry, and at last he's going to do it. B.A. Robertson, Bang Bang. Bang Bang. The strike jacket of true love's fine Bang, bang If you're Houdini in your spare time Bang, bang

Lord Nell and Lady Hamilton, they fought for love When he come home from the war, he give a whoop for love A mighty fall when love has come Pow! Back under the palm tree, but now surrounded by a handful of the kids, tells us about a guy who's been waiting for ages to get it charted, and now he's on the verge of doing it. Then he stands up, points at the stage again, and introduces Bang Bang by B.A. Cunterson. Born in Glasgow in 1956, Brian Alexander Robertson was a graduate of the

Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama who signed his first record deal with Ardent Records and released the LP Ringing Applause in 1973. After spending time as a fill-in pianist for Steve Arley and Cockney Rebel, he was picked up by Arista Records in 1976 for the LP Shadow of a Thin Man, but success continued to elude him. However, he was picked up by Asylum Records earlier this year, and this is the follow up to Goosebumps which failed to chart

it was co-written with Terry Britton who played guitar on Elvin Stardust My Cuckoo Chew and co-wrote Devil Woman for Cliff Richard in 1976 and has also co-written 7 of the tracks on Cliff Richard's next LP Rock and Roll Juvenile with Robertson

and after entering the charts at number 69 last week, it soared 25 places to number 44. And somewhere in East London, Taylor Parks is stopping whatever he's doing, cocking his head, sniffing the air, and emitting a blood-dling howl oh man it's just not right as doing bang bang without taylor being here maybe it's for the best you know it's a really strange shot of power with those kids um because some of them have got their back to the camera um and

there's one girl who looks kind of hanging on his every word oh yeah the one who looks like olive from on the buses she is hanging on his every word oh yeah the one who looks like Olive from On The Buses she is hanging on his every single bloody word but it's interesting what he says as well been waiting on him to have a chart entry

at last he's going to do it I always got that feel with B.A. Cunterson that he was there by official sanction he was made a pop star by his mates you know

and for me there's too much horror here to really get into to a certain extent. But there's one line that crystallises it all. Lyrically, this is a horrible song. And there's a line, Sherlock Holmes produced a little toke of love.

And he does this knowing wink and a tap of the nose. I fucking hate that. And I hate this song lyrically, musically. I hate him because he just seems to have like an awful lot of stage schoolers who become pop stars just scorn for pop music that's all he's got he's just got scorn for it all

and he's just constantly taking the piss and arch about it so the only thing I'd like to note about this horrible record sung by a cunt is that this is perhaps another solitary note in favour of Cliff Richard is that we don't talk anymore keeps this shit off the top spot.

I found this bit loathsome. My question has to be, as a kid, would I have been amused and into it and excited? No, I don't think I would have been. I would have not particularly understood what his words were about. But I would have thought, I know, I would have thought, oh, he's going to be a pop star because somebody has said that that's what's going to happen i mean he was on radio one all the fucking time yeah yeah around about this time and this song i knew it i probably heard this song more than any other song on this episode yeah yeah and simon this is why we've

selected it only because you love it well, funny you should say that. Because, one disclaimer before we give this man yet another chart music kicking, I probably quite liked this song at the time. It was on the K-Tel album Night Moves, which is my favourite of all the K-Tel albums. And, you know, I didn't skip the track when it was on. As a grown-up, I can see that

it's a lyric which is more pleased with itself than it has any right to be. And a lot of what I'm going to say is essentially repeating what Neil said because I agree with him. It's not said enough, Simon. Well, I mean, right, so it just lists a load of historical couples,

Romeo and Juliet, Samson, Delilah, Lord Lord Nelson Lady Hamilton and it sort of suggests that love causes people to lose their minds blah blah and it's just sort of that kind of songwriting it's too Ronny's level that's what it is it's too Ronny's level stuff and and it bothers me as much as it bothered Neil that it uses the word toke because I hate drug references in pop songs. He even copped out of it because if you go back and listen to it, he sings Sherlock Holmes preferred a little

token love for the top of the pop's performance. Yes. I had a very beady eye on that. And he says, yeah, a little token love. He does tap his nose. He does the nose press at the side to let the heads know what's going on. I mean, you know, I find that stuff alienating, personally,

because it's just basically a nod and a wink to the adults in the room. And it shuts out the kids. Another thing that bothered me, in a similar way, actually, is that he name checks a guy called Johnny Fruin. Yes. Who was an executive at Warners. Johnny Fruin is John Fruin, who'd been managing director of Polydor

and was currently the managing director of WEA and he was the villain of the piece in that 1980 World in Action episode about chart-rigging. Yeah. And he resigned. He resigned afterwards. Yeah, of course. And wouldn't you believe it,

this was one of the singles that he'd helped to hype up the charts. Fucking hell, it's a murky old business. A lot of Judy Zouk tour jackets were used in the making of this song. He just does it to rhyme with ruin. Yeah, Samson and Delilah. Yeah, apparently this record executive copped off with Delilah. Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.

He's rewriting the Bible. It's just fucking incestuous, isn't it? It's a bloody, it's a nod and a wink to his music business. Exactly. Including the drug reference. Yeah, both those things. There's also, you know, nice reference to domestic violence because Lord Nelson gave Lady Hamilton some Watford

and he mimes a black eye. And of course BDSM with a Marc Dessard. So, yeah, there we go. But with all this stuff, and particularly the toke and the John Fruin, he is shutting out the pop kids and he's winking at his own peers who are grown-up music biz people who would have known what a toke was and who John Fruin was. And they would have shared his anti-pop worldview,

which I agree with Neil on that. I'm going to come to that shortly. Just about the performance itself, one thing that jumps out at me is that BA's face is superimposed on a big upright drum. One thing that jumps out at me is that B.A.'s face is superimposed on a big upright drum. And I wish his actual face was stretched across it like Cassandra O'Brien in Doctor Who. And repeatedly beaten by the session drummer, Graeme Jarvis. Yeah, and we could get Stuart Coteman to write Brian is a cunt on it. Because, right. And by the way, the fact that he studied at the royal scottish academy

um just says it all explains a lot because he hates pop right even his na na nas in song are sarcastic right and here's the thing right um if you think pop is shit and trite and banal then there are two respectable things you can do right one you can reject pop entirely and pursue an alternative path fine yeah two you can embrace pop but twist it and turn it to your own ends what you can't do and expect to emerge with any dignity or credit or credibility is act like you're above it all yeah right making a pop record but holding it at arm's length with tongs at an ironic distance pointing at it and saying oh look a pop isn't it silly you fuck off absolutely right so yeah and by the way it even upsets me that peter powell at the end says those guys are too

much like like you know like he's in on the whole joke as well even though i know it's powell's job to enthuse about everything just the whole thing seems to be huh we're the grown-ups and we're making a sort of jokey pop song while knowing that really it's all a bit down fuck off for me his entire shtick and attitude and why he's so repellent is summed up with that bow wow interview um yes his snotiness his out his is yeah he's just such a cunt in that interview. And I can't shake that. I think like Pricey though, maybe at the time this came out,

I would have let it pass in a sense. I wouldn't have seen that score and I wouldn't have understood all of that because like we've all said, pre-discernment, if you like, pre-taste, you just respond almost physically to what tunefully gets you, what rhythmically gets you.

But yeah, ever since I sort of learned more about this wank snap, I've hated his guts. Yeah, at the time, Neil, he was, to someone of my age and Simon's age, he was just another stitch in the rich tapestry of pop. He's a kid's entertainer ultimately um at that point but the further remove we get from this we can realize just what a horrible reprehensible company was do you reckon anybody in 2019 is listening to ba robertson records you know with any kind of sense

of fondness or nostalgia is there anyone out there because it's sold a lot of records but is anyone no well i bet you if you go on spotify and and get on bo robertson there's probably something insane like 20 000 monthly plays or something it strikes it's one of those things it's like i often thought this about elton john's made in england right that somebody somewhere in the world right now is making a decision to listen to music and is choosing to listen to that. And somebody right now is doubtless, you know, through the entire panoply of pop history, is plucking out Bang Bang by B.A. Cunterson as what they want to listen to.

Well, who those people are, who knows? Let's hope we never find out. So the following week, Bang Bang entered the top 40 at number 27 and four weeks later, it went all the way up to number two held off number one by we don't talk anymore by cliff richard one of the songs from the rock and roll juvenile lp he didn't go right oh i bet that pissed him right off the follow-up knocked it off got to number eight in november of this year and he'd have three more top 40 hits in the Aventis, making his last chart appearance in 1983 when Time, a duet with Frida, only got to number 45.

However, after a spell snuffling around the crotch of the BBC, writing I want to be a winner for Brown Sauce and the theme tune to Saturday Superstore, as well as appearing in the BBC Two comedy show dear heart and his own music show ba in music he relocated to america and wrote silent running and the living years for mike and the mechanics and was executive producer for simply mad about the mouse a compilation of disney songs which featured billy joel soul to soul michael bolton and ll cool j fucking hell ll cool j and ba robertson actually had a conversation once that's fucking insane well i once pissed on

jazzy b's back door and um i'm saying really yeah yeah and i'm saying that's uh still less kind of disgraceful than the idea of uh baA. Robertson working with them. Why did you piss on Jazzy B's back door, Simon? Tell the tale. Soul to Soul had a shop, a clothes shop in Camden Town. Yes, they did. And I'd been out on the piss and I was waiting for the night bus home and there were no public toilets. And shamefully, I thought, I'm just going to run down an alleyway here

and find a dark corner to piss in. And I ended up pissing against like a wooden back gate of some property or other but little did I know it was the Soul to Soul shop and suddenly a light goes on the fucking gate opens and I'm legging it zip myself up as Jazzy B himself he's going oh and chasing me down the alleyway

so yeah yeah fucking hell now I know that he worked with B.A. Robertson I'm thinking well, well, you know, fucking had it coming. When you were running away, you should have sang to him, You'll be in my life, my life always, Yellow is the colour of my piss. Bang, bang, the mighty war. Bang, bang, what love has called.

Bang, bang. Bang, bang. Bang bang when love gets cold Bang bang You know that lot are just too much. B.A. Robertson and Bang Bang. Well, girls talk, don't they? At four, on top of the pops, it's Dave Edmonds. There are some things you can't cover Up your lipstick and powder But I heard you mention my name

Can't you talk any louder? Pow, on his own, gestures over his shoulder and says, you know that lot, they're just too much. He then immediately pivots to a video of Girls Talk by Dave Edmonds. We've already discussed Dave Edmonds in Chart Music's number 25 and number 34, and this is the lead cut from his fifth LP, Repeat When Necessaire, which came out in June of this year. It's the cover of a song that was written by Elvis Costello

for his forthcoming album Get Happy, which was donated to Edmonds by a drunken Costello who turned up at his studio with a demo tape. According to Edmonds, quote, he came to the studio one day and said, I've got a song for you and he gave me a tape. Now, it wasn't very good. According to Edmonds, I'm not sure Elvis likes it, mind you. It's the follow-up to A1 on the jukebox, which failed to chart, and it's his first chart entry since I Knew The Bride got to number 26 in July of 1977. It's spending its third week in a row at number four, and here's the video featuring Edmonds,

and he's not officially a band yet due to record contract, neither Rockpile performing on the roof of the Warner Brothers office in Midtown Manhattan. Before we get stuck into the single, I mean, last time the three of us discussed Peter Pyle, there was much to say about his general demeanour. And in this episode, we don't get so much of that, do we? He's very businesslike.

He moves straight on. Here's this, here's that, pal. Yes. I think the calming influence of tea has put him right, I feel. Yeah, I think he's slightly aggravating with his kind of Mr. Cool affectations, but essentially he does a professional job in this episode, moves things along, and you can't really fault him.

He's been doing this for a year now, and he knows the ropes. Yeah, he's this for a year now. He knows the ropes. He's alright on this one. One of the reasons why it's such a good episode, I feel. Yeah, you could have had a similarly dull presenter like Skinner, but Skinner would irritate where Powell soothes. So, this video, it's

pretty bog standard for 1979, isn't it? Here's the band, they're on a roof and it's cut with shots of Dave walking about with some girl who's a bit too young for him and there's someone with a camera doing some very intrusive filming of women just walking about, just on the

way to work, including one on roller skates who nearly goes into the back of a taxi. That precise film grain and those streets it's very Annie Hall, this video it's very King of Comedy, it's that kind of era of New York, but what the cameraman seems to be doing, yeah he's perving

he's spying, this is next to an upskirt video really which is a shame because it's such a great song, but it shows the profound difference between New York and Los Angeles isn't it, because if they'd have shot this in LA there'd be one woman who wasn't on roller skates

and they'd be showing off to the camera but um in this case it's just like oh look there's a bloke with a camera but my my favorite one is the one with a hair pulled back in pigtails and the satin bomber jacket and she looks like she's going out with one of the warriors and she just turns around and just shoots an absolutely filthy look. You do get people walking around and roller skating in New York. If they'd have filmed this in LA, street walkers didn't really exist unless they were prostitutes to a certain extent. Whenever I went to LA, because I was obviously skint, I was walking the streets and you'd get stared at like you were a leper

if you're not in a car in that city. So it had to be filmed in New York, I think. And I think it's quite a glamorous scenario in the middle of a very british episode of top of the pops you know just to get that little taste of america it just it's quite it's quite exciting for a moment there he's there in his sort of elvis shades and yeah you mentioned the rooftop thing in manhattan my mind went to that famous photo shoot of John Lennon by Bob Gruen, where he's wearing that NYC, that New York top.

So, yeah, I just quite liked it. It's a nice little interlude of, I don't know, almost a different flavour of the air, even if it's full of carbon monoxide, but it's also full of sunshine. It's a very Dowdy interpretation of New York. There's nothing amazingly glamorous about it,

but even so, in 1979, it's like, oh my God, that's America. Their cars are bigger than ours. Like Kojak. Oh, there's a yellow taxi. Exactly. It's like watching Kojak where the streets are filthy, but still you're watching it. It's like, oh, it's America.

It's glamorous America. It's that kind of thing. And of course, yeah, the band is that nick lowe very visibly on base there even though he's yeah not not officially meant to be there and all that i see this and it's quite interesting this coming straight after b.a robertson because b.a robertson um was kind of a vaguely pub rock figure um that this is redeemable pub rock as opposed to ba it was yes redeemable pub rock yes i've mentioned before that i have sort of local pride and um family connections with uh dave edmonds he's and one of his awards got one of his awards yeah um so yeah my dad knew him because dave edmonds uh is from dinners powis which is the posh village down the road from Barry uh and uh um he was born exactly a year to the day before my dad and they knew each other

and uh there was a Welsh music award ceremony that a prize was given to Dave Edmonds but he wasn't there so I actually presented it to my dad and as a family we still have it and I sort of think if the Edmonds family are listening to this if dave himself happens to hear about this uh i'm happy to pass the award on but i also kind of want to keep it because i've got no no no come on simon come on dave if you're listening that award that simon's got in exchange for a pair of fonds boots oh remember simon you you had a fonds doll but you didn't have exactly so. Exactly. So, yeah, like multiple swap shop style. We could get that going.

Yeah, there's the deal. There's the deal, Dave. Yeah, I'm holding it to ransom. Or, you know, Welsh and everything, a Shaking Stevens heterosexual rock and roll badge. You know you've got one, Dave,

in a drawer somewhere. I bet he's got one. Yeah. He must have gigged with Shaking Stevens in the sunsets in the early days. Yeah. No question about it.

There we go, then. There's the deal, Dave. You can swap in the early days. Yeah. No question about it. There we go then. There's the deal, Dave. I'll just swap it for a badge. Yeah, no problem. So this song, I really like it. The Costello lyric, I often wondered, is it so subtly misogynist? You know, just the opening lines. There are some things you can't cover up with lipstick and powder.

I think I heard you mention my name. Could you talk any louder? some things you can't cover up with lipstick and powder I think I heard you mention my name could you talk any louder so it's kind of that the whole lyric seems to almost be portraying girls women as being somehow trivial and superficial but

he's this kind of truth seer who wants to strip all that away and he can hear what's really going on you know the line Simon you've brought up something interesting there because you know the line I heard you mention my name can you talk any louder I always up until you said that i assumed it was i heard you mention my name can you talk any louder because i want to hear what you're saying about me yeah or is he saying oh can you can you talk any louder there's some people in australia

who did yeah right right right no i think i still think it's the former i don't know i don't know but but but either way yeah it's got that kind of fairly gentle, I don't know about misogyny as such, but it's kind of bitterness. It's bitter against women. And I actually think bitterness from males towards women, while a horrible and destructive thing in real life relationships, actually makes for some great rock and roll, great rock and roll songwriting. I really do.

So I think it's a very, very good song. And I just really like it. I've got kind of nice associations that my dad loved this record and all of that. And, yeah, and again, a bit like the Corgis, just a kind of irresistible melodic pop rock song. I think that mean-spiritedness that you're talking about in the lyrics, I get that way more from Elvis Costello's version than I get from this. This just

seems like a warm song to me. I really like this song. I think it's probably my favourite Dave Edmonds song. The sort of Everly Brothers homage of it is a little less obvious than it is in other records, but I hear a lot of the Everly Brothers problems in this as well. And I love this. I kind of have mentally confused it for an awfully long part of my life with a squeeze song for some

reason when i when i hear it i kind of mistake it for a squeeze song and think it's by squeeze but i like most of the versions of this apart from the obvious castello version i actually love the linda linda ronstadt version of this too um i've not heard oh it's a good version it's it's a good version of a good song um so yeah it the mean spirit costello got irate i think with dave edmunds version because dave edmunds structurally makes it make more sense as well he makes the second verse have four lines rather than three lines he adds a line in that elvis didn't like um but i actually think it makes it more balanced more effective as a pop record and i love this tune if this came on the radio of course i'll jack this up loud now this is a good tune and of course with the video every time you see a video in new york in the late 20th century you're immediately looking around for the

world trade center yeah first time i watched the video i thought it was there i thought i thought they were playing right next to it but then i just went oh it's it's new york isn't it it's just two other stupidly massive buildings but the weird thing when yeah i mean this is a side track but the first time i went to new york the first time anyone goes to new york what you feel like is you're on a film set because you've seen so many fucking films there and my first time was with a photographer called steve gullick from melody maker and we were going over to do chuck d from Public Enemy in his house in Long Island. And it was my first trip to America.

And we arrived at night and I didn't even know Steve. I've never met him before. But we sort of met up at JFK Airport and we get in a cab and to Steve Gullick, who was there constantly, this was just another work trip. Do you know what I mean? But it was at night. We drove out of JFK.

We're coming over the Hudson and I, for the first time in my life see manhattan lit up and i'm just you know you can imagine what that feels like especially for an inveterate nerdy movie watcher um how important that is and there's steve gullick next to me for whom all of this he can be blasé about he's suddenly twigged that i'm from coventry just like he is um steve gullick's dad by the way is still about in coven he's a great cabbie if you ever get a cab is. Steve Gullick's dad, by the way, is still about in Coventry, and he's a great cabbie. If you ever get a cab with Steve Gullick's dad, he's great.

Fucking out adverts and podcasts, fucking out. But no, Steve Gullick's in my ear just going, oh, what's going on in Coventry? What's going on in Stokeheath? What's going on in Cadley? And I was just like, shut the fuck up, this is New York. You know, it was amazing to me, but I had this Coventry presence dragging me back.

While you're trying to lose yourself in a kind of Woody Allen. That's it. Where he was sort of Shostakovich or whatever it is playing in your ears and stuff like that. That's it. That's it. But no, as soon as, when you get to New York and you see a yellow cab and you see one of those things in the,

that one of those, uh, manhole covers with steam coming out of it. My God, that's just the moment in your life. Alligators down there. So the following week, Girls Talk dropped five places to number nine. The follow-up, Queen of Hearts, got to number 11 in October of this year. And in 1980, Edmonds finally managed to get Rock Pile signed to a deal.

And then they split up after one LP. By which time Elvis Costello nicked his song back and put it on the B side of I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down. Which is the rarest record on two-tone of course. Yes. Because they accidentally pressed up a few dozen copies of that. It's the rarest record

I own. Fucking hell. Have you priced it up? Well it varies. You sometimes see it for as much as £180. I managed to pick one up for about £50 or £60. So, yeah, it's not super valuable. But just being a sort of two-tone completist, I had to have it. MUSIC PLAYS

Dave Evans and Girls' Talk. Hot work here. Sun, sand, legs and coat, earth, wind and fire. What have you got? MUSIC PLAYS For a while To love was all we could do We were young and we knew in our eyes How? With his jacket over his shoulder

Revealing his short-sleeved yellow shirt, tells us that he's dead hot and asks us what do we get when Legs & Co. are fused with the next single, After The Love Has Gone by Earth, Wind & Fire. Formed in Chicago by Maurice White, a former session drummer for Chess Records in 1969, White, a former session drummer for Chess Records in 1969, Earth, Wind & Fire were signed up to Warner Brothers and put out two LPs in 1971. Their eponymous debut release and the soundtrack to Sweet Sweetback's badass song for Stax. After the original band split up in 1972, White pulled together a new band under the same name, signed to CBS and became one of the biggest dance acts in the USA. But it wasn't until 1977 that the UK caught on when they went all disco and the single Saturday Night got to number 17 in March of that year. They kicked off 1978

with Fantasy which got to number 13 in March of that year and after two singles that stalled outside the top 40 they roared back with September which eventually got to number three in January of this year. This is the follow-up to Boogie Wonderland which got to number four for three weeks in June and it's the second cut from their ninth LP I Am which is currently at number eight in the UK album chart it was originally written but never used for JP Morgan a 60s female singer who was best known in the US at the time for getting fired as a panelist on the gong show when she flashed her tits at the camera and had already been offered to and rejected by Hall & Oates. After entering the charts last week at number 59,

it soared 29 places to number 26, making it the second highest new entry in this week's top 40. And as they're not kicking around London at the moment and are probably having a big stage show spaceship fight in the desert with ELO and Funkadelic, here come legs and co to emote to it yeah or could i just talk about the song before we talk about legs and co because i think this song after love has gone and songs like it by earth wind and fire put me off earth wind and fire for the longest time um you know that thing that we talked about

in the past where at some point in the 80s we all got sick of the present and started investigating the past yes earth wind and fire really should have been part of my funk education if you like you know so if i'm listening to slider family stone and stuff like that and p funk i should have been listening to earth wind and fire i should have been listening straight away to that's the way of the world because that's a fucking amazing album from 1975 but songs like this I think you know because they're so grown up and and because they're they're sort of soft in a sense um put me off exploring Earth Wind and Fire properly for the longest longest time that kind of quiet storm last chance for slow dance stuff really didn't appeal to me as a kid yeah um it wasn't

made for me no you know it was made for adults so although now i i quite like this song actually um i don't love it i don't love it as much as you do perhaps perhaps because of overexposure but but i do like this song because i'm an adult at the time i wouldn't have responded to it at all um but ewf are left out of a lot of people's funk educations and they need to be in there they're such a brilliant band I mean they're on fire this year fucking hell, Boogie Wonderland

amazing song September which has taken on a second life for me because it's a Wales football child Johnny Esther they sing Johnny Esther. So it's, yeah, they sing Johnny Esther at the tune of September. But yeah, I absolutely adore this song.

And even though I was only 11 at the time, and it is very adult. It's divorce pop, isn't it? Yeah, it is divorce pop, totally. It is talking about adult feelings. Again, it's one of these things, talks about adult feelings that I couldn't yet comprehend, but something about it reached me and maybe sort of said, well, you will understand one day.

Do you know what I mean? Don't want to get all personal, Simon. This is after your parents had got divorced. It was probably after they both got divorced from their second marriages as well. There's a lot of divorce in my life. So maybe that's why it was, you know, something that I could comprehend on some level. And Neil is right that Earth, Wind & Fire should be part of people's funk education and I feel remiss in that respect because I've not really

done a deep dive on them I feel and you know I'm slightly ashamed of that I feel like I really need to get into the albums not just the singles. We knew them as a disco band didn't we? I guess so I guess they had that whole Egyptology, that whole sort of Afrofuturism thing going on around the same time, I guess, as Funkadelic Parliament and way ahead of Janelle Monáe. But when I see Janelle Monáe's artwork on the Arch Android album, I instantly think Earth, Wind & Fire rather than anything else.

I do think I should give Earth, Wind & Fire a bit more of a chance. And you could probably pick up their albums for about two quid. You know what I mean? Maybe a bit battered around the edges, but lots of people seem to have those LPs. Yeah. You know, when I think back to that era.

Musically, it was sophisticated in a way, which again, I'm surprised it spoke to me at the age of 11. Because in terms of the musical sophistication, it's got that big key change it goes higher and higher and higher and oh that bit you know that bit uh and it's just sublime and i i wouldn't say i'm a big fan of uh all of their stuff in terms of the hit singles but this and i've obviously i've played it late night minicab fm it's that, of course. I'm kind of quite proud of my prepubescent self

that somehow I recognise the greatness of this. Yeah, it's a sophisticated record in a musical sense as well because one of the things that Earth, Wind & Fire do quite frequently in their stuff that a lot of other bands didn't do, at some point in this record, where's the lead singer? Or is there a lead singer? Do you know what I mean? There's a lead singer on the verses, without a doubt, but when the chorus kicks in, the backing where's the lead singer or is there a lead singer do you know i mean there's a lead singer on the verses without a doubt but when the chorus kicks in the backing vocals become the lead vocal and yeah and there's just this lovely layering of texture of the

backing vocals to the point where the tune is there but it's more of a collective thing the thing that did register for me at a young age about earth wind and fire was that there seemed to be about 50 of them because because the video for boogie wonderland i mean it's nuts that video but it just seems like there's about 30 people on that stage all doing something that you can hear um and that collective sense of earth wind and fire was very very important and it makes love songs that could be a bit i don't know that could got could have gone the teddy pendergrass route into something different this is a different kind of the pop, as you've said. Yeah, I mean, divorce pop was a proper thing in the 80s.

And the Black American acts are the absolute best at it. I mean, you know, if you bar Hear My Dear by Marvin Gaye, the Black American divorce pop, it never allows itself to get any more than slightly rueful. There's no blame ascribed to anyone. It's just like, you know, something happened along the way and yesterday. The other prime example is Jones vs Jones by Callum the Gang.

Before we get stuck into Legs & Co, is it just me or have Top of the Pops actually dubbed Seagull Noises over this? They have, yeah, because it's not on the record. I've watched it a few times and all of a sudden it's like, hang on, Seagull No over this yeah yeah it's not on the record i've watched it a few times and all of a sudden it's like hang on seagull noises i don't remember that being on the record went back and checked my version it's not there top of the pops have put sound effects

on a fucking record like it's that awful that awful single summer the first time yes by whoever it was yeah or or more pertinently uh portland bill and cock of shell bay fucking hell can you imagine if they got the wrong record and done horror sound effects i being gouged out by red hot poker i used to love that album when i was at college we had a sound room and everything and they had all the bbc sound effects it's like oh i've got to hear fucking horror sound effects yeah and it was them doing horrible things to cabbages. Like, you know, putting a cabbage in a guillotine or plunging a red-hot poker into a cabbage.

Yeah, like what Toby Jones has to do in Barbarian Sound Studio. Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah, me and my mate used to sit around and listen to those horror sound effects albums. We'd just sort of like switch the lights off and just sort of scare ourselves. It's amazing. It is weird, though,

adding that foley in as they do here, the seagull sounds. Yeah, there's no need for it. And I don't remember them doing that for any other record with Legs & Co. No.

So it's a strange one-off that perhaps they should have explored further in, you know, future months. Well, can you imagine when Pan's people were dancing to Horse

with No Name and they got some fucking coconut shells out or something? Yeah. I mean, why they've chosen that... I mean, obviously, they've chosen a sound effect to match the set, which they've done as a kind of sandy beach. Yes, yes. It's to make their set look better, not the song.

Yeah, yeah. So they've got surfboards and boardwalks and all that kind of stuff. They've got kind of like a squared-off boardwalk and they've got a couple of surfboards and they've got a hammock and they've got loads of sand laid down as if a giant child has just been sick. The fucking hammock,

that's a foreshadowing of what happens later in the episode as well. Yes. But yeah, this is a one-off in another sense because for the first time, I genuinely and unironically enjoyed a Legs & Co routine. Ooh, what now? This episode episode this this work now or then well uh ever you know because i yeah i'm not you know uh

we we sort of routinely rip the piss out of them and it's usually along the lines of well they only had six days to come up with a routine and you can tell and it's really rough around the edges but this i thought was genuinely good. I think it's not erotic as such, but I thought it was kind of sultry and sensual. It isn't kitsch. And I think it matched, apart from the crappy set with the surfboards,

I think the actual dance routine matches the song really, really well. They're being a bit monger on a beach in sarongs. It's like they're all getting over a breakup by going away and having a bit of a dance. Well, oddly enough, I did find it strongly erotic. I had to loosen my collar to let a jet of steam out at one point. Oh!

I did find... Like a New York subway. Well, I got lots of satisfaction out of it. Normally, beaches are not erotic places for me because you just think about getting sand in your grundies. Broken glass and dog shit. Well, I think about 60-year-old nudists. But no, I did get an awful lot of satisfaction from this routine.

It does, however, their moves do suit the music. And, you know, short of earth wind and fire being in the studio doing this um this is this is pretty good so a fucking a victory all round for both earth wind and fire lexicon and pop music and seagulls oh wouldn't it be great if someone had just chucked some seagull shit on lexicon oh streaking down them or one of them swooped down and nicked a bag of chips that they were eating pricey as a synchronicity as a brightonian you must have plenty of run-ins with them with seagulls yeah i love them but it's a controversial issue down here a lot of people hate seagulls um there's um a terrible terrible facebook group called

brighton people which is full of the sort of people who say um i'm born and bred um it wasn't like this in the 60s um usually 60s with an apostrophe s yeah uh and they say uh i i blame pride it's all the political correctness and yeah so it's just full of awful people but we've got so many seagulls because of gay people is that what they're saying yeah yeah basically the things they hate they hate the greens they hate labor um they hate foxes gypsies um single parents students gays immigrants generally and seagulls and um it's illegal to kill a seagull but they think it shouldn't be right they think you should just be allowed to shoot them. And I fucking love them. They're beautiful creatures. They're a sort of miracle of hardiness, of evolution. They live to be 30 years old, amazingly. And the reason that they're here ripping our fucking bin bags open

is because we've overfished the seas. So they have to move inland. And they've adapted to that. So when they're nicking bags of chips off people, it's because they fucking have to. We're on their patch. They're not on our patch. that's the thing to remember so there ends my party political broadcast on behalf of the seagull party but i love them i hear that you can just the

the tactic if you don't want them nicking your chips is just to stare them out it's if you if you make eye contact or fuck off back to london you do identify a clear thing though that if you want to meet utter cunts um top commenters on local news uh sort of pages are there yeah if anyone's been christened with a top fan badge you can bet they're going to say something horrible pretty soon yeah well i i've it's kind of backfired to me because i i joined that group and i often i i know i often go on there and i i troll them by sort of adding a comment on a thread which is like a grotesque exaggerated parody yeah of the sort of the sort of thing that they would say but then they think i mean it and some of them agree with me i do exactly the same pricey on

a commentary group whenever anything comes up because it always comes back to students being blamed or something else being blamed. I have just started popping on and just saying, yeah, gas them like badgers. And I get likes, you know what I mean? Simon, you want to go on there and pretend to be a gay immigrant seagull?

Well, I mean, if they look at a photo of me, they're going to come to that conclusion anyway. Let's be honest. So the following week after the lovers gone leapt 12 places to number 14 and a week later it got to number four its highest position a month later it would get to number two in america held off the top spot by my sharona by the knack the follow-up in the uk star got to number 16 in November of this year but in the US their follow up In The Stone

only got to number 53 when it was released over here in March of 1980, fucking hell In The Stone is a genius song Britain, you fucking knobheads 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, We'll be right back. You gotta beat the pop, you gotta beat the pop Had no time to learn to drive Goodbye mama got to die Bye bye bye bye bye You gotta beat the pop, you gotta beat the pop Powell rapidly stares off into the distance

shakes his head in a post-coital daze loosens his tie and says Woof! This is... Peter Powell always does that with Legs & Co A bit too much for my liking, I feel. Yeah, it is like Rick Mayall as Flash Hart in Blackadder, isn't it? Yes. Yeah, it really is.

He's putting over the fact that he really likes girls. Like the brass, they turn him on. But he is at least the same sort of age as them. It's disgusting when your Bateses and all that do exactly the same thing. With Powell, it's kind of vaguely acceptable. He then pitches straight in to beat the clock by Sparks. Formed in Los Angeles in 1969 as Half Nelson, Sparks were originally a five-piece band,

which consisted of the Male Brothers, Ron on keyboards and Russell on vocals, Harley Feinstein on drums and the manky brothers earl on guitar and jim on bass fucking hell the manky brothers would be a great fucking new wave band name wouldn't it it'd be a great reggae band name as well it's a good name that yes after being discovered by todd rungren and signing to the bearsville label they put out two LPs in the early 70s. But when they came to London to promote their second LP, A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing, scoring a residency at the Marquee

and an appearance on the old Grey Whistle Test, the male brothers decided to relocate to the UK, change their name to Sparks, an advertising melody maker for a new backing band. In 1974, the new line-up released their third LP, Kimono My House, and the lead track, This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us,

got all the way to number two for two weeks in May of 1974, held off number one by Sugar Baby, loved by the Rue Betts. They would go on to score two more top 20 hits that year and three top 40 hits in 1975, but in 1976 they decided to return to America and adopt a more rocky AOR style, recording the LP Big Beat with the producer Robert Holmes,

yes, the Pina Colada man, and appeared in the disaster movie Roller Coaster. After that LP and the follow-up introducing Sparks flopped over here and over there, they had a rethink and decided to have a go at this electronic thing that was starting to bubble up. After an interview in a German magazine where they proclaimed their love of the music Giorgio Moroder was coming out with, the interviewer told them that him and Giorgio were bestest mates and linked them up, resulting in the LP Number One in Heaven, which came out in March of this year. single off the LP, the number one song in heaven, put them back over the top, getting to number 14 in June. And this is the follow-up. It entered the top 40 at number 21 last week. And this week, it's rocketed up 11 places to number 10, their first UK top 10 hit in over five years. And yeah,

I'm going to shut up and pass the baton to simon run simon run well uh this song perhaps more than any other is the reason i chose this episode because um i am evangelical about sparks and a lot of fans are they're one of those bands that if you're into them you really feel this burning sense of injustice that they're not bigger than they are um i heard there was a really really funny email uh that was read out on another podcast but it sort of went a little bit viral somebody described queen as sparks for cunts right and then and i i don't mind a bit of queen actually but it did make me laugh because uh a lot of a lot of sparks fans do think that the success that queen had should rightfully be sparked and also um there is a direct connection in that when sparks first played

in the uk queen with their support band and i'm saying they probably learned a thing or two because prior to that queen were just a sort of a rock band before they sort of get started getting really operatic um yeah and baroque um and also uh sparks did try and uh headhunt brian may and roger taylor um to join their band unsuccessfully um but all of that backstory i had no idea about at this time when i saw this and i'll talk a little bit about the record later i'll let neil in first but i just want to talk about the performance before that um because here's the thing right pop music um it can play a lot of tricks on your emotions it can inspire love or lust it can offer solace it can provide cathartic release it can it can catalyze revolt feelings of rebellion but but sometimes it

can cause terror right and that's how it was for me when I saw this episode. This is the first time I saw Sparks on this Top of the Pops. I distinctly remember, and this is probably, this performance is why I remember this episode above all else. I was terrified and I was transfixed. And it was this kind of contrast between the two of them, that kind of light and shade. So the singer, right, he's fine.

Nothing scary about Russell. He's hyperactive. He sings he sings and he has got his hot pants on this time no not the hot pants not the hot pants so he's he's singing in that sort of high histrionic voice um but i wasn't really noticing the lyrics to be honest at that point you couldn't necessarily make them out because of the high pitched voice no later years later i realized they're absolute genius because the song is this ridiculous narrative of precociousness, exaggerated precociousness of reaching life's landmarks ahead of time. But my favourite verse, it goes,

too bad there ain't ten of you, then I'd show you what I'd do. I could cheat on five of you and be faithful to you too, but there's only one of you. I said, that's brilliant. But anyway, my attention wasn't on russell at the age of 11 i was focused on his elder brother ron keyboardist and he right so he's immobile he's almost sort of catatonic there he's like he's like a komodo dragon in the sun

right wait wait waiting for a fly to go past and shoot out his tongue or something so he's not moving at all apart from his fingertips which it's jabbing at the keys in time with the synth stabs on the record um which i don't i'm not even sure he played them on the record i think it's probably maroda but um but crucially the other part of him that's moving his eyes right so he's very still but his eyes would swivel suddenly Almost like in a horror film We've got a painting on the wall And the eyes of the painting just move back and forth

And suddenly he'd stare At you down the camera With this kind of blood chilling Sinister leer And he's breaking the fourth wall But not in that welcoming way That David Bowie did on Starman But a way which

Made you wish the fourth wall had fucking prison bars in it so he had this menace and the menace of course, the menace was completed by his moustache the toothbrush moustache always compared to Hitler or Chaplin or both apparently after

Sparks was first on Top of the Pops which I guess would have been this time a bit bigger for both of us, John Lennon reportedly said he'd seen Hitler on TV. And Ron himself acknowledged the problematic nature of his facial hair. There's a song called Moustache

on one of their albums, and it goes but when I trimmed them real small, my Jewish friends would never call. So he recognised there was a problem there. But that kind of duality, Hitler slash Chaplin, was perfect as a summary of his persona, because it's horror plus comedy,

which is what you get from Sparks a lot of the time. But at the time, rather than those two, I was thinking of Dr Crippen, because my mum had taken me to Madame Tussauds in London. And I'd sit, so the Victorian serial killer, he's in the Chamber of Horrors in Madame Tussauds. And so when I saw Ron, and it reminds me of that, nothing, neither, you know, people talk about the Daleks. They say, oh, I hid behind the sofa when the Daleks won or people talk about the child catcher

bang bang whatever nothing, none of those things had unsettled me quite as much as Ron Mayle on top of the Pops, but the funny thing about children, right, when they're scared of something, they're sometimes compelled to move towards it rather than away from it

so it hooked me in and i i bought the single so i mean i'll talk talk about the record in a minute i want to let neil in but just that that performance you know yeah that's no we've already discovered that um that you've had a terror of kate bush's eyes yeah yeah yeah what is this doing for you at this age well no i no. I mean, I think for an entire generation, Ron Mayle is still a scary thing in our head, a memory. We remember those looks. We will remember them for the rest of our lives. He absolutely got an ad and Price is spot on.

It was both terrifying but entrancing. And you kind of wanted to know what was going on here. I mean, God knows there's precious few things to be proud of um in being british these days but i guess the fact that we took sparks to our heart and they couldn't succeed in america but did make it here yeah i'm fiercely proud of that fact um sparks are a massively important band to me not only only as a listener, but also as a songwriter and a musician. They just up the ante, lyrically, musically. And they put demands on you as a listener.

They set standards in you as a listener and as a music maker that stick with you for your whole life. The last gig me and my missus went to see together didn't come and see you, Al, I'm afraid, even though it was in Nottingham Rock City, but it was Sparks. And we were so excited. We were a a stylish couple so we got dressed up properly and we got there and just like it was with Prince a few years before that nobody else had got dressed up and and I felt that was like a betrayal almost of what Sparks were all about it was just

loads and loads of big old blokes in band t-shirts um which kind of exasperated me because the demands of band like sparks put on you have been caught and their last record by the way hippopotamus is just fantastic yeah um personally i prefer the run from woofer through um propaganda which is i think my favorite sparks record uh kimono my house and indiscreet more than i i prefer that one more than the Marodi years a little bit. But this is still just fantastic. And they're one of those bands that I still

judge other bands by. If Sparks can write these dense little pop symphonies with such fucking brilliant lyrics. I mean, from the off they did good lyrics. They didn't get better at lyrics. You listen to girl from germany on the first you know it's a fucking just some of those songs are just amazing um you know if they can write these sort of songs whenever i sit down at a piano to write a song i'm not saying i'm thinking of sparks but because i've heard those

songs they've set a standing in me that i you know this is what pop can do it can it can go this far and it can pack this much in and yet still be so hook laden and wonderful um this is a brilliant song it's a brilliant performance i also love the effects that the bbc are putting on them those kind of weird traily effects um that are kind of very psychedelic, very reminiscent of Leroy dancing in fame behind that screen. But for me, this is definitely one of, if not the highlights of the episode. I couldn't love anyone who didn't love Sparks.

I mean, the effects, the clocks and everything, that's from the video, isn't it? Yeah, there's little bits of the video sort of blended in, aren't there? Yeah, the Mickey Mouse clock and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I mean yeah I mean Ron Mayle I mean the thing about him at this time was yeah he shit me up as well

by doing absolutely nothing but the way he just looked at you and you know I think it was my age I think if I was a little bit older it would be like oh this is a bit of a laugh isn't it here we are on top of the pubs again but when you're 11 the way he looks at the camera it's almost as if he's looking at you and saying what are you doing

watching this this is a bit too grown up for you absolutely he's the man that that your mum drags you away from in a shopping street tells you not to go near him yes yeah or like he's looking out the window down the road of the kids yeah but it's not even not even as if you think, oh, what's he going to do to me? Well, because you know what he's going to do? He's going to do fuck all. He's just going to stay there. No, this is it. No, but what's scary out? What's scary out is this thought that you get when he looks at you that,

shit, does he know me? He knows me. What does he know about me? It does feel like he's looking right at you. Right at you. Nobody else. And that's what's so terrifying at you, right at you, nobody else. And that's what's so terrifying. Yeah, I mean, the most terrifying thing he ever did was smile in one performance.

Yes, yes, yes. Looking at this now and thinking, well, if I was 11 and watching this, and at some point he'd have actually just stood up, that would have been fucking terrifying. That would have been too much. I would have fainted. Because remember, this is a time when all the punk bands were going about, the new wave bands. And as I've mentioned before, Bob Geldof was a prime offender for this.

You know, he'd suddenly just be singing, and then all of a sudden he'd just stick his face right into the camera. And that used to shit me up, big style. And if he'd have got that, if he'd have just stood up and then walked towards the cameraman i'm going through the fucking back window mate through it i'm leaving a fucking you know an outline of my body i i read a thing where ron was explaining all this why why he does that and he said he was trying to figure out a way of upstaging his brother by doing the least possible. Mission accomplished.

It's amazing. This minimal upstaging of somebody who's quite a sort of he's a proper front man, Russell. He's pretty and he can dance and he can sing and all of that stuff. But he's upstaged by some bloke who does nothing

except look at you. Sparks, of course, look at you. Yeah. And Sparks, of course, were huge fans of Top of the Pops. So much so that whenever they were touring in the UK and on their way to a gig on a Thursday evening, they were always massively tempted to park up on the way when it got to 25 past seven and just knock on someone's door and ask if they could come in and watch Top of the Pops. Can you imagine that?

They said, you know, we'd worked out that we had a one in four chance that any door we knocked on would have Top of the Pops on. And this was even when they weren't on Top of the Pops. It's like, oh, can we see ourselves on Top of the Pops? It's like, can we just watch Top of the Pops with you?

And I just think, just imagine if them two knocked on your door and you answered it and it was Sparks. And it'd be like, oh, can we watch Top of the Pops? And it'd be like, well, you can't watch it in the living room because my dad watches Emmerdale Farm. You'll have to come up in my room. And they would be in your fucking room and your mum would knock on the door

with a tray of cheese cobs and a crescent of crisps. It's well up there with Prince knocking on your door with the Jehovah's Witnesses, isn't it? Oh, it's even better than that. Because they were hugely Anglophile, of course. But also, just more broadly, Europhile. One thing I always come back to is something that Taylor Parks said about Sparks, which is that they're a straight american band with a gay european aesthetic which at the same time is reductive and blunt but it does get to the heart of something

true about sparks you know and then when this record came out and obviously this is their in at their most euro file um i didn't i i hadn't heard this town a big enough both of us at that age they were a brand new thing to me. Obviously, in retrospect, I've discovered a lot about them. To put my cards on the table, I've done a bit of work for them recently. I wrote the sleeve notes, a booklet for their best of. It's called Past Tense. And by the time people hear this, it will have just come out, which is a real honour. And it was just a real pleasure to go.

More adverts. Yeah, more adverts, exactly. Well, listen i get no i've i've paid a flat fee that record can completely flop and i don't get anything more out of it but um yeah um it was a real pleasure sort of just uh dig back into their back catalog never a chore and the thing with sparks is everyone's got their favorite period neil mentioned his but um for me it's kind of dotted throughout their history if i look at my favorite albums they're from various different times like they did an album in the early noughties called little beethoven which is this kind of synth opera which is an extraordinary record it's built around loops and samples and

a really clever record then go back a little further to the early 90s. They had Gratuitous Sax and Selfless Violins, which is very kind of Pet Shop Boys-y. And of course, they are reclaiming what was theirs because even though the Pet Shop Boys won't admit it, they obviously drew a lot from Sparks. And then Number One in Heaven, the Moroder album that we're talking about, that was fantastic.

And from their early run, Neil mentioned it in passing, Indiscreet. Indiscreet's the album, the one album they made with Tony Visconti. And that's kind of sort of Charleston and chamber quartet stuff and very sort of 1920s, 1930s

sounding. It was a bit of a dead end in some ways because they couldn't really follow it. And they did go into a bit of a dip after that but as a record itself I absolutely love Indiscreet but yeah they lost their way before this this Moroder hook up

and Al you told the story about how they came about with the journalist and all that and obviously yeah they loved I Feel Love because of the sort of futurism of it and by getting together with George and Moroda, the album they made was utterly groundbreaking, number one in heaven.

I love the fact that it was six tracks long, which was a Moroda thing. That was his established thing. He did that with Donna Summer as well. His albums and the tracks were long tracks, extended versions, but there are only six of them on the albums. I love that.

And it's just a stunning, I mean, talk about electro disco. It's one of the high i love that and it's just a stunning i mean talk about electro disco it's it's one of the high points of that genre but it also it brings the art to it uh in a way that maybe no one else had done before um and and a lot of critics just didn't get it um it got slammed everywhere um when i was doing my research for the um for the booklet uh i dug up a lot of reviews of it so tony rains at meldy maker called it pathetic oh ira robbins for trouser press uh said that their synth phase was fruitless and uh in the nme and this is you just got it spectacularly wrong ian penman uh argued that um he said maroda's production is essentially irrelevant i mean it could not be more relevant could it

no no but the thing is it was one of those records and you know people go on about everybody who bought the velve underground's first album went on to form bands i think a whole generation of musicians understood what sparks had achieved here right because this era of sparks when it's just the two of them and they're making this clever, arty electro disco with one deadpan keyboardist and one hyperactive singer. That was the template. Is that Remarkable? Yeah, that's the template, right, so you can go through them all.

Soft Cell, Yazoo, Associates, Blamange, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, all of those, and also any kind of arty new wave act who wanted to embrace electronica and disco. So, I mean, Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode admitted that this album was their Bible, they said, right? Yeah. And even though it got really bad reviews, Russell saw this coming. He knew how influential it was going to be.

There was an interview in Melody Maker with Harry Doherty. And he said, right, and this is so prescient, he said, just wait six months from now and watch all of the new wave synthesizer disco bands which will be popping up and disco music becoming very respectable in hip circles, and then somebody else will capitalise on what we've done. And he was right, he was so right. And interestingly, in the same interview, Ron praised what he saw as the mindlessness of disco.

I think he liked the fact that making a disco record, in theory, freed him, because he was a lyricist, freed him from having to write clever, clever lyrics. Didn't stop him, because he did write clever lyrics. But he just quite liked the fact that the imperative of disco is to dance. It's not necessarily to use your mind. the imperative of disco is to dance. It's not necessarily to use your mind. And he also railed against rockism,

which, and I think rockism was basically, because disco sucks was only just in the rear view mirror. In fact, it was going on. 1979 is when the Comiskey Park incident happens, blowing up the disco record. So there's all that in the air. And I think Ron is fighting the corner against that kind of rockism, which infected the thinking of critics.

And he said in the same interview any band that has got a guitarist is just a joke and this is you know only a few years earlier Sparks were essentially a guitar band but they'd moved on and and you know huge respect to them for that um just one of the greatest singles from one of the greatest albums by one of the greatest bands just um an absolute stunning performance and stunning record yeah and ron is unerringly correct in his musical judgments over the years i remember i remember reading an interview um with him in i think it was the early noughties or mid-noughties and what had really blown his mind in the previous 20 years of music was public enemies fear of black planet it was his favorite album right. He had never heard any production

like the Bond Squad's production on that album. And it totally blew his mind. It really blew his mind. And you know those photos you occasionally see on Facebook of kind of musical legends meeting up? And they're normally quite predictable ones who you'd expect to know each other. I think the one I enjoyed the most

was a shot of Chuck D with Ron Mayer just hugging each other. It's just an amazing, amazing shot. But, you know, so much difference between them two. But both of them, sonic adventurists, intent on not challenging people, but using modern production to create absolutely captivating music. And Sparks have always done that. But every single one of their performances on Top of the Pops is unforgettable.

They're all etched in your memory. This town, you know, getting the swing, that performance, as you mentioned the Hot Pants, it's just unforgettable stuff, and this is another one. So the following week, Beat the Clock dropped one place to number 11. And the follow-up, tryouts for the human race, stalled at number 45 in November of this year. It would be another 15 years

before Sparks troubled the UK top 40 when When Do I Get To Sing My Way got to number 38 in October of 1994. But they finally managed to score a US hit in 1983 with Cool Places, recorded by Jane Weedling of the Go-Go's, who used to be the president of a Sparks fan club. Great Big Owl.com This is the first radio ad you can smell. We'll be right back.