Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #45 (Part 4): 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 for the 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. For the first time on British TV, it's the specials and gangsters!

Pow! Are you planning a bootleg LP? Pal, back with the kids, notes that Sparks are batting two out of two on their new LP, which is wrong, because La Dolce Vita wasn't a chart hit. Peter, fucking hell. But then he introduces the television debut of the special AKA with Gangsters. Fucking hell. in May of this year as a limited edition of 5,000 and then officially put out this month. It's a remake of Sorts of Al Capone, the single that was released by Prince Buster in 1964 which eventually got to number 18 in the UK in April of 1967

with rewritten lyrics about an incident earlier that year while on tour in France with The Clash when the band got blamed for trashing a hotel room, which resulted in the hotel manager nicking one of their guitars as collateral and the band reluctantly and unfairly having to pay for the damage. It entered the charts last week at number 74

and this week it soared 33 places to number 41. Here they are in the studio and all of a sudden the world is about to change for the pop craze youngsters oh yes this is a bit of a year zero performance isn't it

it is, I wonder if that guitar taken as collateral was the lime green one that I ended up with, it may well have been I remember this performance really distinctly and I remember that when Powell at the end of it says that they were from Coventry, it was probably my first awareness that they were even from

Coventry. Really? Yeah, absolutely. Because I was seven, you know, and I wasn't part of any scene as such. But, you know, I remember the sense of recognition I felt with it. The only thing I can compare it with is later on, much later on, watching Top of the Pops in, say, the late 80s

and seeing Happy Mondays on it. Or in the mid-90s and seeing Pulp on it. And what I mean by that is nothing musical. No. But suddenly you have people as we know them. Yes. And what I mean by that isn't a gritty down-to-earthness. I just mean that oddness of normal people being themselves in a certain

extent, Terry looking as ever, but then like he exists, he, he lived in black and white in a color world in a way. But it's a different thing than a Bowie moment. This it's a different thing, but,

but it's, but my God, what a record it's, it's still sounds so fresh and unlike anything with that weird middle eastern vibe to it yes totally unlike any reggae i've ever heard before and any scar i'd heard before to be honest with you the melody of it um is more like a pill track or something it's you know it's got that weird middle eastern and slightly jewish klezmer vibe to it as well um but yeah it was that moment of kind of shit these are people these are just people like people these aren't

people selling their normalness they were just normally abnormal if you like and and and there was a real real big moment um it's funny that powell ends it with good time music from Coventry I'll exactly call it good time music but I mean what a completely unique and amazing band this track and this performance still has that freshness in my memory I am not saying I'm mates with all the specials now but

what's odd now is you know frigging John Shipley I know him Horace Panter painted a painting of me the other day oh my god frigging John Shipley, I know him. Horace Panter painted a painting of me the other day. Oh my God. Tell the people of chart music this amazing painting that you did. Well, it's a bizarre thing because I,

you know, I'm on Facebook far too much, but I got my daughter a couple of years ago, I think, to take a photo of me shaking hands with a giant milkshake. A giant milkshake mascot in Cofftown Centre outside Shakeaway, with a giant milkshake a giant milkshake mascot in coftown center outside shake away which is a milkshake shop and something about this photo which i periodically rotate as my profile pic because i just look so gormless rightly so well i just look ever so happy as you

would be shaking hands with a giant milkshake who wouldn't be brings all the boys to the yard yeah and the milkshake himself is sticking up his thumbs and stuff so it's a good shot he's happy as well he's happy he's happy and it's a good shot but oddly enough um a couple of days after i i sort of reposted it as my profile pic horace uh pan to the basis and the specials got in touch and and via messenger actually and he was just like neil i really love that photo and i want to make a painting of it is that okay and fucking hell man i'm a specials fan a big specials fan so it was just an honor and i just said yeah of course you can mate not expecting him to actually do anything but then a couple of days later on twitter it pops up that he's got back into his painting in a sense and his first work spied him well his first thing to get him back into the swing of painting again was a painting

of that shot so there's a painting a beautifully done one actually a beautifully done one of of me shaking hands with a milkshake i think the reason he liked it is because you can see a street sign smithford way which is actually where that photo was taken ironically enough now that i think about it is directly opposite cove central library which back then was the locarno ballroom where the specials used to play a lot so there's perhaps that congruity was also appeal to him it's a bizarre bizarre thing as a fanboy like i am with the specials to know them in that way and to chat with horace and you know to have horace paint a painting of me is just fucking nuts

you're his muse i don't know of course not but i mean you're like the coventry version of hitler's niece well an awful lot of coventry buns um hate me for for various reasons because i've never really boosted cov music just because it's from cov i've always said if it's good then i will and there's been precious little good stuff but um to be to know the specials now as i do as people um doesn't take away from the sheer freshness and oddity of this performance and the excitement of this performance um for all kinds of reasons the specials were suddenly a moment of recognition and it cannot be stressed enough that you've not just got a black drummer here. You have not just, do you know what I mean?

The multiracial nature of the band was so, so important. And that moment of recognition, it happened on this performance on Top of the Pots of Gangsters. It's burned in my memory. And discovering that they were from Cov meant that I had a whole lot of catching up to do. My sister was already there by that point,

but I had a whole lot of catching up to do in terms of, from then on, it was about getting all the accoutrements of the culture that only a little kid could get. You couldn't go to the gigs, but you could sure as fuck buy a Harrington. You could sure as fuck buy the clothes and all of that. And that started with this amazing, amazing record. One thing that occurred to me about this milkshake painting,

which has just blown my mind, by the way, is that, of course, it's got an extra meaning now because milkshakes are now associated with being thrown at Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage by anti-fascist protesters, which ties in with the special's proud anti-racist history. So there's that angle to it as well. Yeah, this song, it's one of those things where I can vividly remember

where I first heard it. And it was basically every Sunday around this time, I'd go and see my dad and my step stepbrothers and stepmom and uh as a treat we would often uh we drive over to barry island and get a hot dog or a bag of chips and sit in the car listening to top 40 and it's just you know a very cheap little treat for the family and we would do just a nice sort of communal thing to do and we'd be sat there and i remember this record coming on the top 40 countdown and just like it's stop stop me in my tracks i was sitting down but it was it was one of those moments and neil's absolutely right to to talk about the middle eastern feel to the melody um that occurred to me as well and also uh neil

compared it to pill i was gonna say to say Newman, Tubeway Army, but Pill's probably closer. But certainly it's got that discordant sort of feeling to the melody. I didn't connect it to reggae or even sped up reggae. I didn't even know what Scar was. It was this thing to itself. It was just this weird sounding slightly harsh but very addictive sound it's hard it's kind of a bit kind of jarring and discordant on the ears but i but i wanted more of

it yes and um i had no idea about um two-tone or because well it was the first record on two-tone i didn't know there was a scar revival brewing because i didn't even know what Scar was. I didn't know it was connected to skinheads. It was just this sound that was extraordinary and then of course seeing it on top of the Pops and then reading up more about it in Smash Hits, I found myself really drawn to it and as I've said before,

Two Tone was my punk. I caught the arse end of punk by buying that Sham69 record but really for me this was it. this was the life changing thing this was um all right i couldn't uh shave my hair off straight away but as soon as i'd left that shitty boarding school and uh i was my own person i i got the crew cut and i became that guy and that that's why i'm dressing like that again now the thing about this song and the specials and and two-tone is that kids immediately locked onto it.

Yeah. We've talked about the weirdness of the song. That didn't matter to us. We immediately got what this was about, which is very strange because we're that age. We like fast music and their first two singles were not fast. Well, the second one, particularly Message to Rudy, is really quite slow. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Good point. You just looked at it and just thought, I could beat them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Good point. You just looked at it and just thought, I could beat them quite easily. Yeah, absolutely. They're almost wearing what's going to be my school uniform

in a month or so. Exactly. And you look at the audience during this performance, there's one black guy in the crowd doing proper rude boy dancing. There's a white kid

with a suede head haircut. And I wondered, were they mates of theirs, like fans who'd snuck in? But in retrospect, you look at it and think there there is this whole culture coming it's on its way yeah and and you're going to be part of that as as a kid watching it you think right this is where i'm going now yeah yeah and and it's the feel and the sound because and the look because obviously specials massively anti-racist band and then multiracialism is really important but none of that is announced in this record it's just a weird little tune you know it's a weird little tune that

doesn't you know talk about any the lyrics are so obscure to this day i don't think i even know them all you know it's just this weird little paranoid tune but but it's paranoid isn't it like why i must record my phone calls are you planning a bootleg LP yeah yeah the whole the whole song is like that but it's but it you know in that regard this isn't dated in any regard whatsoever I know you can tie it to two-tone or that you put this on on a dance floor now it gets people moving to a really really quite melodically odd odd little song um it's just it's just magical what happens when this record gets played and the lyrics it's funny because i had a pop at ba robertson just now for writing a song uh that sort of is like a nod and a wink to the music business and all that well in a way this is even

more guilty of that but but i didn't care it's such a road to the subject yeah because obviously the original goes al capone's guns don't argue at the start and this one is Bernie Rhodes' Nodes Don't Argue so yeah who the fuck's Bernie Rhodes when you're a kid you don't know but something about the sound of it speaks to you I think if it catches you at the right age and the thing is yeah

everyone's got all the Scar Revivalists and everything I grew up in Ice and Green in the early 70s kind of like the melting pot of nottingham and i had loads of black friends and you know loads of black people living on the same street as me i used to hear reggae all the time never heard scar scar was something completely new to me when this song came out yeah yeah well i even didn't know the timeline i thought scar came after reggae yeah it's actually the Because I remember when I sort of fell in love with this song, my dad saying to me, oh, well, if you like this, you'll hear the original.

And I was a bit affronted. What do you mean the original? And then he digs out. He digs out from a box somewhere the blue beat single of Prince Buster Al Capone. Prince Buster Al Capone and that was coming back as well because in the NME this week they run a competition for a Bluebeak compilation LP plus a pork pie hat

well it wouldn't be long would it before the back pages of all the music mags were full of little adverts for your knock off pork pie hats and your tassel loafers and just specials gear really the look of them as well is Little adverts for your fake, your knock-off pork pie hats and your tassel loafers and just specials gear, really. Yeah. And the look of them as well is really key.

You know, Bradford is so fucking cool and so shitly and so horrid. And, you know, Linville and Neville. But, I mean, obviously key to it is, as I've mentioned, Terry. But also, in a slight, I'm sure he wasn't in any way thinking of Ron Mayall, but there's a similar moment where Jerry does this slow smirk to the camera. He looks up. Yeah, he leans forward. He leans into it, doesn't he?

It's just fantastic. Just absolutely fantastic. I wondered if it was a piss take. I wonder if it was a deliberate reference to Ron Mayall. I did wonder that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like all amazing debut band performances on Top of the Pops, your eyes are all over the place.

Yeah. Number one, you can't believe that there's so many people on a stage Terry Hall is clearly the front man but it's Neville he's got that checkerboard suit looks amazing and he's going berserk

and he's the one you immediately turn to and look at, at this point he is the Flavor Flav of the band. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because it's like all this brilliant shit's going on. Oh, fucking hell, look at him. Too much to look at. That's the key.

He is Bezzing, but he's more of a crucial component of the band than Bezz was. Bezz was the sprig of parsley on the side of the plate at first. Yeah. But with Neville, you immediately look to him and go, ah, okay. Yeah. He's the pop star. Yeah, yeah. And Terry, right?

I think Terry denied wearing makeup. But look at him. He's got eyeliner on here. Yeah. No question. Definitely. I mean, he's got quite shadowy eyes anyway, but he's definitely got eyeliner on here. But the thing with his demeanour of being so deadpan and morose,

I always wondered if it was put on or what it meant, where it came from. It's only quite recently that these really disturbing stories have come out about his childhood and how he was basically raped by a schoolteacher on a school trip to France. Apparently it's been in the public domain for a little while, but it's only recently that he's talked about it quite a lot in interviews and it's one of those things that in it's similar to um when gary newman kind of self-diagnosed as being autistic and you look back and think that makes sense of everything about him at this time um you sort of look at terry hall and think well that there's probably

reasons why he's not a bundler laughs yeah he's only he's only 19 he's only 19 this would have been quite fresh in his memory yeah so i don't want to be an armchair armchair shrink here but you know i'm kind of wondering but but it's that mix it's the mix of the specials that is crucial not only the mix of classes and the mix of music but that mix between the yeah the imprint of this you couldn't get inside Terry's head, really. He does cut himself off a little bit. But it's that combined with Neville just going nuts next to him that just makes this such a riot. It was one of the greatest all-time Top of the Pops performances, this.

And he's got that kind of snottiness to his vocal, which it's a bit... It is a bit like Johnny Rotten. It was almost like johnny rotten for those of us who just just missed out on actual johnny rotten you know and that's important because if you're kind of like uh you know a punk kid or something it's like oh i can latch on to this yeah yeah but if it is like if he'd have snarled it like johnny rotten that would have been a london thing if it you know that sounds really I don't want to come up, come out with any civic pride type bullshit,

but, but it's a cov thing. And I'm not saying nobody could understand. Everyone can understand, but that blankness, that, that kind of, we've already been bombed out.

What the fuck are you going to do to us? Bankness. That, that is key to, to, to Terry's persona that he puts across and key to what makes the band so good. Imagine if he'd done it like Paul Nicholas doing Reggae like he used to do.

And of course, you know, we can't not mention the actual single because the fucking brilliant thing about that was you had this amazing A-side and then you turn it over and it's like, oh God, it's not even the same band. And it's like, oh fucking hell. Do you mean there's another band

that's playing this kind of music? The selector the selector it's a great instrumental great instrument it's fucking brilliant and it's like oh my god this there's a whole thing going on here before you knew it madness and the beat as well yeah yeah and it's it's still massively inspirational in a sense and you know this is all out of a fucking house down albany road in coventry in jerry's room you know this is all gonna happen from that place so you know this notion of i don't know going and selling yourself in london or having to do lots of different things to sell yourself no all you need really with pop music is a fucking amazing record the rest will follow yes a bit like um how the human league always refused to move to London. They were always very proud.

It's been a Sheffield band. They just, you know. Yeah, similar kind of thing. So the following week, Gangsters soared 17 places to number 24. And three weeks later, it began a two-week run at number six. The follow-up, A Message to You, Rude, got to number 10 in November of this year. follow-up a message to you rude air got to number 10 in november of this year and four months later they took the special aka live ep all the way to number one for two weeks Gangster time! Don't, don't, don't argue! Good time music from Coventry.

That's the specials and gangsters. This is dance. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, through this world, nothing can stop Duke of Earl, Duke of Earl. Good time music from Coventry, explains Powell, before nearly fucking up the intro to the next single, Duke of Earl, by Darts. 1976 by the Razors, the former backing group of Rocky Sharp, darts were initially a four-piece who were eventually supplemented by members of John Dummer's blues band. After becoming a regular fixture on the UK university circuit, they appeared on Charlie Gillett's Radio London show in October of 1976. They then signed to Magnet Records

and were teamed up with Tommy Boyce who had written and produced singles for the Monkees their recording career flew out of the blocks in late 1977 when their debut single Daddy Cool got to number 6 in December of that year and then they scored 3 number 2 singles on the bounce with Come Back My Love The Boy From New York City and It's Raining in 1978. Held off number one by Take A Chance On Me, Rivers Of Babylon and Three Times A Lady respectively. Although their run of top ten hits was broken by Don't Let It Fade Away, which got to number 18 in December of 1978,

they roared back in March of 1979 when Get It got to number 10. This is the follow-up, a cover of the Gene Chandler standard which got to number one in the US in 1962 but didn't chart here and it's been produced by Roy Wood and has leapt up 10 places this week from number 32 to number 22. Although there was never a de facto front person, as the lead singer role had rotated from member to member, the most recognised member, Dan Hegarty, had left the band in late 1978 to try a solo career and present the Teen's Music Show All Right Now

and has been replaced by Kenny Andrews, an actual boy from New York City. It's about time we had a bit of a rock and roll thing going on because it's still the late 70s. And got to say that Darts were the band amongst my male friends at school after Show Waddy Waddy and just before Sham 69. I can recall, you know, many a time in the cloakroom after school getting a bit of a doo-wop session going on and singing Come Back My Love,

which was only interrupted by the hysterical laughter of my teacher, Mr. Wright. Amazingly been forgotten about. I mean, I was absolutely shocked to read that, do that research, and find out they had three number two hit records in a row. That's insane. They were massive. They were massive. Yeah, I think I preferred them to Schwaddy waddy yes kind of thing personally yeah i really like them um i i think um

i took them on a sort of single by single basis but um i you know i didn't buy their stuff out of loyalty but nearly every time they brought a single out i was like actually this is great yeah so um i i particularly loved uh come back my love apart from anything else because i was convinced that um the guy the guy who looks a bit like um uh sonny corleone uh in the godfather but he's like like a balding version i swore that i swore that he was going wop do the wank that's what and still to this day that's what it sounds like to me or maybe he looks like a thin Bob Hoskins circa Long Good Friday

I believe that, I believe the person you're talking about is Bob Fish Bob Fish! which is the most un-fucking 70s music name ever this is the truck, I mean we're talking about Earth, Wind & Fire and the specials having lots of members how many of darts were there? Overmanning

big 70s thing man yeah yeah national union of pop groups also a multi-racial group that that a black bass man and of course rita ray is one of the lead singers um yes and in this video i quite like the bit that during the sax break they they cut to a little yes well it's not it's performance but they cut to a video of Rita Ray wearing a sort of tiara, looking like a princess, a tiara and furs. And they got one of the male guys, one of the singers,

looking like Prince Andrew in a naval uniform in this horse-drawn carriage. Yeah, I think at that time they were going for Prince Charles. Oh, really? But he does look like Prince Andrew. I thought Prince Andrew, yeah.

You're talking about Griff Fender there. Griff Fender. Great names. They were all great names, didn't they? Yeah. I mean, the thing I loved about darts at the time was they all looked like your favourite teachers doing a bit of a Christmas review in the assembly hall.

That is spot on, actually. Yeah, they're kind of grown-ups who ought to know better, but they're having a bit of a laugh. And they had a certain kind of anarchic quality to them, I think. Yes, they did, yeah. Particularly when Dan Hegarty was involved. Yeah, especially Dan Hegarty. There was a certain spark of chaos about darts when you saw them on telly.

This is the first time we've covered a darts song, but we have discussed them before. And I think it was with your two, wasn't it? I posted the question out of all the rock and roll revivalist bands. Who would win a Rumble outside a transport cafe? You know, because you've got Show Waddy Waddy, you've got Rocky Sharp and the Replays, you've got Darts and you've got Racer.

I think Racer would leg it pretty quickly. Yeah, no chance. Racer out of there straight away. Rocky Sharp and the Replays. Vicious, I feel, but not mob-handed. They stand their ground, but I think they wouldn't come out of it well. I think Shiwati-Wati versus darts, that's an equal fight, I would say. That's evenly matched.

Yeah, but I wouldn't fuck with darts. No, you wouldn't fuck with darts at all. No, no. Also, because, yeah, that bit more mature. They probably fight dirty. They knew lots of tricks, I reckon, they're probably concealing weapons in their drape jackets Rita would take her stilettos off and just

rush someone across the face in them somebody there would have a snooker ball in the sock tucked inside those little pockets know all the tricks so we kind of I guess we've alluded before to their riotous reputation but i took the trouble of uh going uh into danny baker's book and going to see in a sieve to get the actual

details of this right and um basically what happened was um he tells the story of how he met his first wife he met her in prison and it's it's dart's fault uh because he was right for the enemy at the time and uh went on the road with them and and he says uh that darts were the best band to go on tour with uh narrowly beating in during the blockheads um and what it was it was in derby actually sorry al um where this happened or maybe don't apologize for derby mate i don't actually uh maybe it's maybe it's just as well because uh derby comes out of it pretty badly so you might enjoy this right not surprised yeah yeah so uh they're they're in a sort of um hotel or motel on the edge of darby and uh when they walked in they made the book in uh previously but the manager didn't know that they were pop group and when it turned out that they were a pop group he got really shitty with them and

refused to open the bar um even though you know they're they're probably thought he was going to get jockey wilson and eric bristow yeah exactly oh yeah the bar we're going to make a lot of money on the bar tonight well the way danny tells it i think that is genuinely the case he thought they were darts players oh shit yeah yeah i think it's true so uh and you know they were fairly mature in a in age and respect to be dressed pop group they're wearing suits and all that but nevertheless he wasn't having it and there was a bit of an argument and the guitarist told the manager to fuck off so he called the police so they're in the middle of nowhere it's not like they can just walk

off somewhere they've got nowhere else to stay so they just think right we'll sit it out and we'll sort of make our case when the police turn up so they went and sat in the bar area waiting for the cops to arrive but it took ages so they got bored and inevitably they climbed over the bar and started serving themselves right now they weren't stealing you've got to get it while you can they weren't stealing they they did a whip round and they stuffed 30 quid in a pint mug. But that didn't matter because things escalated. Because, first of all, Danny Baker himself, using his switchboard skills, because he used to be on the switchboard at NME reception,

he went behind the reception desk and started connecting random rooms to each other just for the mischief, causing all kinds of chaos, which he admits is a bit of a shitty thing to do, but there we go. And then the band started having a competition to see who could head this dangling bauble that was this bauble in the bar it's hanging down from a light fitting and they all reckon right who can jump high enough to head it and finally one of them jumps up and connects and sends this bauble flying and it goes into a row of wine glasses and you you know. So the noise obviously.

Brings this fucking manager back. And another member of darts then goes fuck it. He wanted the sex pistols. Let's give him the sex pistols. And he throws a beer bottle over his shoulder. Smashing a plate glass window. Then the police arrive. So they've got.

At this point now. Got a leg to stand on. So they're all. They're all thrown in the cells. Buty managed to wriggle out of it by pretending that he and kelly pike of record mirror who was also there uh were just an innocent couple who somehow got caught up in all this yeah yeah yeah and before long they actually did get married so that's the story but yeah it just what comes out of that is you would not fuck with that no definitely not yeah well i always preferred darts to shawaddy waddy

for major reasons. In fact, I didn't like the fact that my mum fancied Romeo Challenger. I really didn't like that fact. Were you worried that she was going to run off with him? Well, maybe, but you just don't want your parents to be like that or telling you who they fancy.

My missus used to say that one of the things that most put her off marvin gaye sexual healing was seeing her mum dancing to it in a kind of sexy way and you don't want to see that do you no romeo challenger was in the wrong band anyway romeo challenger the name like that should have been in dark absolutely yeah yeah yeah yeah but i always preferred darts and they were a singles byby-singles band, absolutely. So this one, Duke of Earl, not that keen of it. I've never really liked Duke of Earl beyond its usage

in Hand on the Pump by Cypress Hill. Yes! I fucking love that song. When I hear that sample, when I hear that Duke of Earl, that's the tune that I want to next hear. In a similar way that, you know, when I hear the start of Jump Around by House of Pain

I'm always fucking massively disappointed that it turns out to be Jump Around by House of Pain and not Harlem Shuffle oh you know what I mean there's that little gap isn't there and you're just hanging there man when you run to a dance floor because you think it's Harlem Shuffle and it ends up being that

it can go the other way as well it can really devise a you think it's Harlem Shuffle and it ends up being... Yes, which is a fucking shame. Well, it can go the other way as well. It can really devise a crowd. If you play Harlem Shuffle, you get all these beer monsters running on the dance floor wanting a bit of a mosh and jumping around. And it turns out to be this really cool 60s soul record. You're like... Fuck them. They deserve their disappointment.

Well, quite. You know what would be the absolutely worst thing you could do to fuck everybody off as a DJ? You could play the opening horn blast of Harlem Shuffle and then play the Rolling Stones version of Harlem Shuffle. What? Nobody needs to do that. Everyone's fucked off then. Yeah, nobody wins.

But no, darts I always enjoyed because of their lively performances. The clips that interrupt their performance here as pricey's mentioned are quite bizarre they're fucking mental i mean and that's not a video that's the bbc have done that yeah haven't they that's one of those things isn't it yeah bbc obviously like darts being on top of the pot yeah because first of all uh the kids who we haven't seen that much of in this episode it has to be said, have been given some proto-Burger King cardboard hats, which is helping dancers cause a lot. And then, midway through the song,

yes, we do cut to video footage, which was obviously shot by the BBC. We see the front of a coach and horses, and the camera swings round, and it turns out they're pulling one of those big prams that the Queen sits in every now and again. Also, it's filmed from the air. Is it filmed from a fucking helicopter or something? So they were sparing

no budget there. Yeah. So you get Griff Fender done up in Naval Commander Rigout, and yes, he does look frighteningly like Prince Andrew. And Rita Ray's next to him in a tiara, but then the camera swings around, and what do we discover? Oh, the nude cellist.

What the fuck is all that about there's a naked blonde playing a cello yeah i didn't get that at all very strange it was mental and then of course during the middle eight we can see griff fender getting changed on stage and we cut back to footage of various members of the band necking bottles of champagne and playing guitar in the carriage. Yeah. So there must be an entire video for this. Just them dicking around in a carriage. Yeah, I'd love to see that.

And as always with darts, when you watch it this time, you do sort of miss Dan Hegarty. Not as much as you think you're going to do, but it's just like, oh, it would have been nice to see what he'd be getting up to here. He's in them now. He's rejoined now. Because by this time, we're not too long from him being

one of the new presenters on Tiz Was. Yeah, exactly. He was a perfect fit for that. I think he was a school teacher at one point, wasn't he? No, he's now a psychology lecturer. Oh, right. Oh, lecturer. Yeah, yeah.

Blimey. Imagine that. Yeah. Yeah, but this single I didn't know the original by Gene Chandler and I think it's one of those weird quirks of chart music that we've mentioned Gene Chandler, a fairly obscure figure

twice in two different contexts And he was in the charts this year wasn't he, with Get Down Yeah, exactly, somebody to come from the doo-wop era and have a disco here, it's quite a thing The whole strange thing about this era is of course, if you think 10 years previous i think this might have been mentioned before but you know who at woodstock would have predicted that the most influential band on late 70s british pop would have been shanana you know definitely yeah and i i like

this single um and i um when i sort of became cool as it were became Specials fan, I still didn't completely give up on darts because I remember in 1980, they brought out a cover of Let's Hang On by the Four Seasons, which I bought. It was the last single I would buy by them, but it just had this really filthy guitar sound. And I just fucking loved that.

A bit different to Barry Manilow's version a year or so later so the following week duke of all jumped up five places to number 17 and two weeks later it got to number six its highest position the follow-up can't get enough of your love only got to number 43 in november of this year and after a cover of the four seasons let's hang on got to number 11 in july of 1980 they drifted off into theater work reforming in 2006 for sporadic appearances darts of um well they're not still going but they occasionally get back together and they're playing a gig at the club soon and apparently um it's nearly the original lineup put it this way everybody who's

in darts now was in darts in the sort of hit making era i think one of them's passed away but um i it's sold out i'm gutted i really want to go to that show yeah so what i'm saying is dave edmonds if you've got any way of getting a ticket for me to see darts you can have your award mate i'm begging you i want to go and see darts at the hundred club well well let, let's take it one stage further, Simon. You've got an award. Yeah, what is it? What's the award?

It's the Welsh Music Award for Lifetime Achievement for Dave Edmonds. Right, okay. So where's the words Dave Edmonds? Oh, yeah, well, it's on a, yeah. You see where I'm going here? Yeah, it's on a little sort of a plate on the front, which, yeah. Right, okay. If you can get Simon tickets to see darts at the 100 Club,

Right, OK. If you can get Simon tickets to see Darts at the 100 Club, he will give you a lifetime achievement in Welsh Music Award with your name on it. And the Duke of... Hey, Darts and the Duke of... It's the Gibson Brothers. They're live on stage at... What a life. Oh, indeed. Oh, what a life. Oh, indeed. What a life. Pow!

With the kids clustered all around him Gets an assist from someone behind his back Looming over him Why? It's Jimmy Purse Who fucks up the name of the song And has to be corrected It's Ooh What A Life By the Gibson Brothers

Spawned throughout the 50s in Martinique Chris Patrick and Alex Gibson were brothers Who took after their dad and played a bit of the old salsa. After relocating in Paris in 1969 to complete their education, they ended up playing in assorted clubs and eventually became session musicians. In 1968, they linked up with the producer Daniel Van Gaard, and although they scored hits across continental Europe with Come to America, Non-Stop Dance and Cuba, it wasn't until this year that they made any kind of dent on the UK charts when Cuba got to number 41 in March. This is the follow-up, and it's up this week seven places

from number 37 to number 30, and this is their Top of the Pops debut. But before we address the Gibson brothers, that introduction by Jimmy Purser. I think a lot of the kids watching at home would be looking at this and going, oh, Purser's selling out. Well, what other punk frontman would have done that? Yeah. You know, you wouldn't get Johnny Rotten doing that. Definitely not. Already mentioned that Sham69's tracks for the Quadrophenia

soundtrack were turned down because there weren't 60s enough, but apparently he was also in the frame to play Jimmy in that. And he's got his whole arty mime career going on. It's sort of interpretive dance. All that sort of stuff. Didn't you run into him recently and ask him about that

Simon? Yeah, he turned up at my girlfriend's club night, Total Blam Blam in Brighton after sham 69 had done a gig and i asked him about his whole kind of arty bbc2 um riverside yeah oh riverside was it yeah yeah of course it was riverside his his uh his his arty sort of dance project thing um and uh you know so it's a bit of an odd thing to do and he said yeah he, he said he did it to piss off the skinheads. That was the reason for doing it and given what we've spoken about earlier in this episode

absolutely fair play to him. I did wonder while I was watching this, do you think like backstage there was an official ceremony between Jimmy Percy and the specials where he handed over his mentalist following. Yeah, you have him now, where he handed over his mentalist following. Yeah, you have him now.

I don't want him anymore. Yeah. Yeah, probably. Yeah, I forgot to mention who the other guest host was on Mike Reid's evening show after Jimmy Percy. Oh, yeah? B.A. Cunterson. Of course it was. Yeah, you can imagine those two getting on really well.

Yeah, I think they were a bit matey, weren't they? But anyway, this song and the Gibson Brothers. I mean, here's the thing about disco. It was truly global at the time. And nobody gave a toss where the artists came from as long as they were any good. You know, everyone goes on about, oh, you know, French pop and stuff like that in a disparaging manner.

But no one ever said that about french disco or i don't know belgian disco or latin disco absolutely and didn't have to be from that one place no and this is um well the gibson brothers in general were kind of a latin disco act even though they're french and sort of caribbean heritage and uh yeah i I think that the production team here so as you mentioned it's Daniel Vanguard and Jean Kluger they were also responsible for DISCO by Otterwan which is

obviously a bit of an atrocity but this the Gibson Brothers I mean I think they're a cut above that stuff Vanguard and Kluger did lots of other Yoh Disco stuff but I do think the Gibson Brothers were a slightly different class I actually bought this album it was

called Cuba and it was again a six track album I wonder if that was a nod to Giorgio Moroder if that was just sort of an idea at large that if you make a disco album there's only any point putting six songs on but make them bloody long songs and that that had uh three hits on it out of six so k sarami vida

um oh what a life and of course the communist propaganda of the title track cuba yes yeah the follow up the falkland islands didn't do so well in the uk charts I recall. I remember going to Kelly's Records in Cardiff which was and still is in fact a shop on the upper level of the indoor market and it's just a wonderland just an absolute treasure trove that place and my dad used to take me there when I was a kid

I used to sort of, I'd be allowed a record while he was sort of spending hours grazing through the racks and one time I chose the Gibson Brothers album which again is an example of how kind of wide my musical tastes were at that time before I sort of focused in on the cool stuff

Did you ever get any reaction from your dad when you handed him that week's record? Yeah I'd be kind of raised eyebrows sometimes and usually it was fairly positive, usually there was an element of, as I said before with the specialss oh well if you like that you'll like this and then yeah you find something else that was similar to it and um sometimes i was resistant to that because i didn't like the idea that my music had all been done before that you know so i sort of resented

that a little i don't know how i'd cope with that you know having an encouraging dad yeah picking my way through the pop minefield because my best mate in the mid 80s is dad terror he'd sit and watch top of the pops with my mate yeah and he'd be there going oh this is good oh yeah i like this band or the the you know they've done this this and this and he was well into it and it was like oh man i'm not used to this at all because if i ever watched top of the Pops with my dad, he'd be just like, oh, look at these fucking bent cunts. No, they're not fucking real. And I used to love that. It's like, yeah, dad, this is my world now.

You're not part of it. I was deprived of that kick you can get as a teenager from your music pissing off your parents because it just very rarely works. I remember one time going around his house with a Jesus Mary Chain record and stick it, sticking it on thinking, surely this is going to be too far for him.

And, and then he goes, Oh, is this a Jesus Mary chain? Yeah. I played them on my radio show the other night. I'm like, Oh,

you know what I mean? So there's an element of that. Your household was a bit of a happy medium between those two extremes. Neil, were't they? Yeah, my mum liked some pop. My dad sort of took the piss, mainly. My mum liked some pop. She liked, as I've said before, fast music.

So she was a big Quo fan, oddly enough. But yeah, no, there was that mix. There was that mix of me and my sister being into pop. And my dad taking the piss and considering it a little bit beneath him. He'd just sit there in stony silence, to be honest with you. And my mum just pointing out who was homosexual and who was a drug addict.

So, you know, we had that nice mix going on. It wasn't, but I think the key for me, the moment where the wedge was in between our music and my parents' music was actually oddly enough when I started exploring older music. Cont music contemporary pop never antagonized my parents it was when i started buying things like never mind the bollocks is the sex pistols and things like that that that things didn't get fractious as such they couldn't have given a toss but but that was certainly stuff i wouldn't sit around listening to with them neil i really wish that um when you're a kid you um

actively and formally sat down with your mum and made a list, made some kind of record of every pop star and whether or not they were gay or whether they were taking drugs. She knew. I don't know how, but she did. Can you imagine how much money Kelvin McKenzie

would have paid your mum for this information? To be honest with you, her list of who took drugs was basically a list of who wore sunglasses on stage on top of the pops. Because they're obviously covering up their eyes because they're all fucked up on drugs. Lenny Peters.

This song, it's quite slight. It's just, it's more of a feel, it's more of a breeze, like a sort of summer breeze than a song itself. But I do really like it. And I do, i really enjoy the performance here because for a couple of reasons first of all um it's very energy packed um the singer which i think who i think is chris gibson he's doing particularly towards the end he's doing all star jumps and twirls and stuff yeah it gets very mad lizzie and they're wearing these amazing sort of silvery metallic jumpsuits, which I'm quite envious of. Well, they're purple, but they're metallic.

Well, lilac, sort of like metallic purple, silvery purple, like lilac. And the keyboards, one of the keyboards, I think is... It's like if Prince ran a garage, this is what the staff would have to wear. Yeah, quick fit, quick fit as run by Prince, totally, yeah. But the keyboardist in the middle who i think is alex gibson uh looks exactly like don cheedle circa boogie nights and that really adds a little something to it for me it's interesting all that you said that uh with disco it doesn't matter where people come from um you could still do disco and still not get away with it but be

liked it's but the the odd thing about this record is that i i think yeah it's like it's massively likable but that martinique accent if you like um really makes it a little not different to a disco record but it's really important the singer's the singer's accent he's got a kind of sternness to his voice in a way it's not loose it's different a voice oddly reminiscent to me and this is a bizarre comparison that probably nobody else would make but a voice oddly reminiscent of kind of Fergal Sharkey after his balls had dropped there's a there's a kind of there's an odd sort of confluence there yeah but yeah you're right you're absolutely right in terms of disco from anywhere worked um

that martinique accent is so important to the gibson brothers well i mean the big criticism of any disco band was oh you all sound the bloody same so no well they don't have a distinctive voice like his absolutely if you listen to the radio and a new disco song came on it's like oh that's the gibson brothers yeah yeah i mean i think his voice works best on the track um that's another one of theirs non Non-Stop Dance. I love that track. In an amazing year for disco, this is a pretty good single. And it is an amazing year for disco,

as you've mentioned. His voice and the lyrics as well. There'll be no more fighting and there'll be food for everyone. He does sound like a dictator giving a speech on a balcony. But in a really nice, pleasing disco way. Yeah.

Well, hence Cuba. You know, hence Cuba. He's basically uh repeating a fidel castro speech there i'm thinking yes but what a year for disco what a year risque we are family bad girls secret omen by cameo and off the wall it's fucking amazing year for disco knock on wood by amy stewart yes and the Doolies and the Doolies so the following week ooh what a life jumped five places

to number 25 and three weeks later it got to number 10 its highest position the follow up Que Sera Mia Vida did even better getting to number 5

in December of this year and a re-release of Cuba made it to number 12 in March of 1980 after Mariana got to number 12 in March of 1980. After Mariana got to number 11 in August of 1980, they never troubled the top 40 again, although they're still going today.

Hopefully in them jumpsuits. Oh, what a life. Oh, what a life. Oh, what a life. Gibson Brothers at number 30. Well, what more do you want? Second week at number one. Take it easy. It's the Boontown Rats. How? How?

Hiding behind a palm leaf asks us what more do we want? The number one single, of course, and here's the video for it. I Don't Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats. We've already discussed the Boomtown Rats in chart music number 13 when Rat Trap was at number one, and this is the follow-up and their first single in nine months. It was written in Atlanta on Monday January the 29th of this year when Bob Geldof was doing an interview at the campus radio station of Georgia State University and a news flash came in through the telex machine about brenda spencer a 16 year old girl from san diego who

started firing a gun out of her bedroom window at some kids waiting for the school gates to open across the road eventually killing two adults when a local reporter called her and she was barricaded in the house she explained i don't like mondays this li Livens Up The Day. Although it was originally intended as a B-side and a reggae song at that, the band's mind was changed by the response to their pared-down version during their American tour, and it became the highest new entry at number 15 two weeks ago. And last week, it knocked our friend's electric by Tubeway Army off number one, and here it is at its second week atop the summit of mount pop all the temptation to go for our friends electric

simon that must have been killing you true because yeah that is the sort of year zero of the 80s or the week zero of the 80s but we've done newman plenty so oh god yeah yeah enough newman for now yeah well in a way this is not in a musical way but in a way this is year zero the 80s because this is one of those songs where i'll come on to the song actually but the video for this which is what we get shown here for me it's one of the first and most memorable pop videos ever and it almost dushes in the video age obviously bohemian rhapsody had kind of done something not similar to this video visually but you know had been an important video had been an important promo video i would say this is the next one um i remember everything about this video the clothes the kids in the classroom with their

village of the dam style eyes the living room every single move that geldof makes standing up sitting down whatever he's doing i remember all of it so so this video in a sense you could say it itself didn't know it was ushering in the video age but from here on in we increasingly start remembering pop records from their videos more than perhaps we do the actual sort of top of the pops performances if you like yes um yeah i mean this is getting around to the time where if you're that big a band as the boomtown rats are at the moment and your record label is going to drop enough money to pay for an expensive video then you are going to go well what's the point going on top of the pops we can't get this song over better yeah on stage than this video does yeah and it still gets there i mean the thing is i don't like

i don't like mondays i don't like it much of a record but i'm still exposed to it because every monday morning i pick up my grandsons to drop them at school because it's the one day that i can do that uh every monday morning and they obviously are any good kid hate school so i get this they know this song and they sing it at me quite aggressively on a Monday morning, perhaps because they know that I've called it in front of them. They're only little. They perhaps don't understand what I'm saying. But I've said, yeah, this is just like a hippo meatloaf, basically.

It's this drumless kind of pompous, odd record. But it's an interesting record in all kinds of ways because it does feel to me, this Aventus thing. It's interesting that you mention Newman because in this record you get Silicon Chips mentioned and you get a Telex machine mentioned. These are extremely Newmanoid lyrics, but whereas you feel that Newman would have sung these things in celebration,

here it's in fear to a certain extent. You do get the feeling that 70s are ending something that's different coming in pop um and it's gonna be this kind of i can't get over the fact that i just don't actually like the song to me it is a it's not gotta be obviously it's a big it's like a jim steinman production it's it's a massive big meatloafy type record to me. I'm much, much preferred Rat Trap. But, you know, this is one of those records that, whether I like it or not, is a big part of my headspace

when I think about the late 70s, early 80s. Because it ushered in that video age to a big degree. Yeah, and it's a clear play for the American audience, isn't it? Which he then fucks up by singing about something america doesn't really want to hear about yeah this is a song from back in the day when someone shooting up a school was was something that was worth writing a song about because it was that fucking weird and strange and christ you could fill a top 40 with songs about american school shootings nowadays couldn't you Similar to Neil, I remember every moment of this video.

It's engraved into my memory. And watching it again, that really struck me, is that every time something happened, I knew what was about to happen next. It starts off the exterior shot of a rural schoolhouse, and then you've got... Yeah, with barbed wire in the front. Yeah, and you've got the band stood like a choir

on the stage in front of, as Neil describes, in the village of the damned kids. Yes for johnny fingers on the piano and then the girl significantly gets up and leaves and then we're in her family living room yes and then suddenly geldof um and fingers are there then the whole band and on on the sofa and that bit where they lurch forward to go tell me why yes and then Geldof on the armchair jumps looking startled. That moment is like, oh my God, I could play that in my head without anyone ever showing it to me. Yeah, and looking at it now,

I'm struck by the similarity between that set and Father Ted's living room. Just the same, no, they've got the set in and the telly in just the exact same spot. And I'm just thinking, was the set of Father Ted done likey in just the exact same spot and i'm just thinking was the set of father ted done like that in tribute to the i don't like monday's video or are all irish houses just like that i've got a bit of an obsession with um 1980s even though it's 79 but video tropes and one of them is the sort of old-fashioned family living room yes that

you get quite a lot and i i believe there's one in bad boys by wham which we mentioned earlier and i i whenever i see that in the video it always really pleases me it's like oh it's that thing again you know i think tears of fears using one of theirs and yeah it's um a sort of a very often used trope um this song though what it is essentially it's the punk bohemian rhapsody isn't it that's what it is it is essentially it's the punk bohemian rhapsody isn't it, that's what it is it's the punk or slash new wave song that is meant

to make us think oh this is proper this is proper music it's a bit classical sounding it's got that kind of because Johnny Fingers is basically Johnny Fingers kind of showpiece isn't it because prior to this yeah he's

present on most Rats records but he's marginalized particularly on something like She's So Modern which is a straightforward yelping punk record which I love by the way he's that one who wears the pajamas yeah yeah he's the pajamas one yeah um and uh yeah exactly and that's all he's really significant for in a lot of their stuff he's got a bit more of a presence on Rat Trap, but in this one it's like, right, right, guys, it's my turn to show off. And he does that big kind of virtuoso bit at the start. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And two of my friends at the aforementioned horrible boarding school,

Mark and Neil Smith, who were black guys from South Norwood in uh in london my dark mates they were really good pianists and there was a piano in the school and i remember um them sitting down and playing that johnny fingers intro and i was just blown away i think i'd started or i was about to start learning piano and i just thought i'm never going to be that good it's actually fairly simple it's that it's not as complicated as as as it looks it's just descending chords but at the time it's like oh my god you can play I don't like Mondays and I must have loved that it's like oh my god here's a song that we can do that's not going to embarrass us yeah exactly yeah

I bet they didn't do the man with a child in his eyes no so it made it made piano cool music is my first love yeah and it will be my last i actually disappeared down an internet rabbit hole about the um the true story behind i don't like mondays recently and i think it was probably it was probably prompted by sadly yet another um modern high school shooting um and that day's one yeah that day's one exactly and there are so many um little details to it that there's no time to mention it in the song, obviously, or maybe Geldof didn't even know it at the time.

I think he just very much went on the headline. He went with the headline of what was pouring out of the Telex machine and then sort of ran with it in his own imagination. But the truth of it is that Brenda Spencer herself, I mean, she was 16, I think. She'd had a really grim life up until that point. She wasn't just a sort of bored, spoiled school kid with a grudge. She lived in what was essentially a squat with a parent who was an addict.

I think there were issues of abuse and alcoholism and all sorts of stuff in her life that had led up to this. And the gun was hers, wasn't it? Yeah, well, exactly, yeah. Present from Dad. Yeah, the more you look yeah. So it was... Present from Dad. Yeah. The more you look into it, just the more depressing it gets.

Fucking hell. The journalist who phoned up and got the quote from I Don't Like Mondays, apparently he just, he didn't know the number, he just tried every number in that neighbourhood and finally got lucky with it. Extraordinary.

And they only ended the shooting and saved a lot of lives by pulling up a garbage truck in front of her house because she lived directly opposite the school so yeah it's only by parking a garbage truck in front of the school that they managed to get everyone out safely jesus um did people really when when they heard this song did they really get what the story was about yeah i think they did i think it was it was known about okay yeah good bob geldof was a was a big tabloid figure in 1979 as he would be for the you know for years to come and it was you know always big god bob and he's doing a song about a shooting oh that's that's so punk i remember you know the boontown rats was seen in the particularly in

the daily mirror which is what we had in our house right he was like that he was the punk figurehead yeah of the time even more much more than jimmy persa yeah yeah and certainly more than johnny rotten by this time john lyden but there were parts of the lyric that i didn't get you know um uh the the bullhorn crackles and that kind of stuff i didn't know what a bullhorn was at that time and stuff like that i didn't know what a telex machine was so a lot of it i only really understand telex machine was so a lot of it i only really understand more in retrospect i think a lot of us heard the record first and then learned the story behind it later um to the point where the video actually gets scarier once

you know that story um and and but like pricey said there's so many moments you know that there's a shot of geldof with shades on and a kind of green top on and and if I had to divide define new wave in a way that's the image that is the image um and it's that mental top where the um the shoulders kind of like jut out yeah yeah is that the bit where he's kind of leaning diagonally and then in the top absolutely in the top right the screen you've got Simon Crowe from the rats doing some kind of weird dance yeah yeah absolutely a lot of it about a lot of it about i'm just interested by the idea that it was originally meant to be a reggae song yes eventually they did have a hit with banana republic yes which is a reggae song and i when he told me that in my mind i was trying to mash

those two songs together and imagine that happening but it's actually impossible yeah i mean apparently bob goldoff was dead set on every new single that comes out is completely different from the last one right which kind of fucked him up in the end because it was i suppose so it was like well is their new single but i don't like it it doesn't sound like the last one i went to see them last year in uh in dublin oh yeah and i've got to say it was absolutely brilliant um we only went there on a whim we were on holiday over there to see Wales in the football and we had a spare night and they happened to be playing and I managed to blag my way on the guest list

and it was just, they had somebody from Thin Lizzy on stage and they did the Boys Are Back In Town and it was a great gig and I know on previous chart musics or on a previous chart music we collectively have laid into Bob Geldof and there are good

reasons why but I will say that you know I thought he was a great front man and they had some brilliant singles and as a night out I would still recommend a Boomtown Rats gig seriously. And this song was fucking massive I don't know whether it did stay at number one for weeks and weeks and weeks but it certainly felt that way virtually every single compilation you get that year chart compilations which are the kind of things you'd pick up had this front and center i remember having k-tel hot tracks that comp um and this was the first track on it followed by dollar and janet k and some of the people that we're talking about earlier sparks and and people like that but yeah i don't like monday's tune of the year in a sense uh historically so i don't like monday spent two more weeks at number one

eventually being usurped by we don't talk anymore by cliff richard oh i remember when that got back to number one i remember reading the papers and it was like, oh my God, Cliff has come to rescue us from the threat of punk. Yeah, a reassertion of tradition. Kind of the opposite of when Rat Trap kicked John Travolta and John off the top, and that was seen as a victory for punk. Yeah, Cliff Richard should have ripped up a poster of Bob Gandolf. Yeah, this is for you, Olivia. By the way, let's do a duet soon. It finished the year as the fourth best-selling

UK single of 1979 between We Don't Talk Anymore and When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman by Dr. Hook. Although the family of Brenda Spencer failed to get the single banned in the USA, it only got to number 73

there and was scrubbed from the playlist in every San Diego radio station for years. The follow-up, Diamond Smiles, would only get to number 13 in December of this year, although they'd have two more top five hits in 1980 with Someone's Looking At Ya and Banana Republic, diminishing return setting, and they eventually split up in 1985. Earlier this decade Bob Geldof revealed in an interview that he received a letter from Brenda Spencer thanking him for making her famous and he said that he regrets writing the song now and earlier this year it came out that he didn't completely write the song in any case when pianist Johnny Fingers finally received a co-credit and a financial settlement.

And the schooling question was pulled down in 2017 and Brenda Spencer is still in the California Institution for Women awaiting a parole hearing in 2021. God, can you imagine being on the parole board for that and saying, alright Brenda, so you want to be released? Tell me why! The

whole day down through the wall Don't like Mondays, don't like Thursdays That was number one It was Boontown Rats

And we'll see you again next week I'm going to have a bit of a kip here See you around, bye bye We were born to be alive We were born to be alive Born to be alive Born to be alive Pow! In Legs & Co's hammock

Has bits of sand tossed at him off camera As he signs off on this episode with Born to be Alive by Patrick Hernandez. Born in Le Blanc, Menil, in Seine-Saint-Denis in 1949, Patrick Hernandez was a Frenchman with Spanish and Italian parents who worked the dance halls of the Riviera throughout the 1970s. In 1978 he linked up with the producer Jean Van Loo and relocated to Belgium to have a go at this disco thing everyone was going on about. This is the first fruits of his labour which was originally a hard rock song he'd had for a few years and it's already been number one in austria denmark france germany italy norway portugal spain and sweden and after a slow pull up the uk charts it's nipped up from number 13 where it's been for two weeks to number 11 first of all um thank you for clarifying that it was sand being thrown over Peter Powell.

Because I thought he was being splashed with something in some kind of bukkake or water sports scene, which was really, really alarming. And by the way, he says, don't like Mondays, don't mind Thursdays. Of course he does, yes. Do you think anybody told him what the song's about? No. I mean, fucking hell. It is the equivalent of Alan Partridge in Sunday Bloody Sunday, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, Sunday Bloody Sunday. So, yeah, this track. We get 1 minute 55 of it accounted, which is very generous for the closing credit song of Tartar Pops. Particularly when we're not seeing much. I mean, the last chart music we did, there was a big, long, old trawl through the crowd to ZZ Top.

And that would have been appreciated here because we have not seen much of the pop-crazed youngsters in the studio. No, we get nothing, do we? Not in the slightest, no. Well, we get the usual trope of the kaleidoscope effect on the lighting rig that Top of the Pulse was so fond of. Yeah, that kind of fly-eye thing,

I guess turns the studio into a mirror ball, effectively. Yeah. It's nice, but there were better things to film. Yeah, after two minutes of it, it's a bit... Well, yeah. Loses dramatic interest. But the song. I love it.

I think it's magnificent. I absolutely fucking love born to be alive uh i bought it on 12 inch when it came out i can still picture the purple sleeve of it among other things i love the relish with which he sings the word barn oh that went around the playground barn to be alive he sings that line like someone off copycats or Who Do You Do doing a really shit impression of Ian Paisley, don't they? Barn, Derek. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

I just think this is another absolutely fucking thumpingly great Euro disco record. Probably better than the Gibson Brothers one. Right. Yeah, yeah. I just think this is a great, great record. It's up there with with and I do bracket it in my mind with Strut Your Funky Stuff by Fran Teak

and with Knock On Wood by Amy Stewart maybe not quite as good as those two. To my 11 year old palate it was a bit too seaside special was it? yeah and I understand the whole seaside special thing about disco for me that would be things like um kelly marie uh yes um so yeah i i get where you're coming from but i i

thought this was the right side of the line you know the big rumor about this record by the way you know who's supposedly on it go on right well supposedly right supposedly madonna yes is that is that yeah madonna was his backing vocalist she would have been 19 when this came out. And supposedly when you hear the backing vocals going... That's her. But there's not really any confirmation of it. What I've heard about that isn't that she sang on it. But when he was preparing for his US tour that year, 79,

he sent his producer to find a group of dancers to accompany him. And they held the auditions in new york city and madonna was one of those who was chosen to tour with him but just as a dancer as i recall not exactly so maybe she's not on the record yeah we heard on the playground that madonna was having sex during this single you can hear it so the following week born to be alive moved at one place to number 10, its highest position. The follow-up, Disco Queen, failed to chart, and he never troubled the UK charts again. But the single also got to number one in Australia, Canada, and Mexico.

And by the end of the year, it got to number 16 in America, selling a million copies there. And he eventually racked up 52 gold and platinum discs from 50 different countries fucking hell his his living room man you needed sunglasses to walk in there and as mentioned during his tour of america at the end of the year one of his backing dancers was a 19 year old mad. It's a good single. Seek out the album version because it's over seven minutes and it's just, it's fab. I will do, thank you.

And that, Pop Craze Youngsters, closes the book on this episode of Top of the Pops. What's on telly afterwards, you say? Well, I'll tell you. BBC One gets stuck into Citizen Smith where Wolfie Smith and his mates chance across some stolen goods. And then it's The Persuaders, the documentary series about advertising and marketing.

And they're looking at Hubba Bubba's £1 million advertising campaign in the UK. After the 9 o'clock news, it's the first part of The Duke, the Robert Conrad miniseries about a former boxer turned private eye. Then it's Person to Person, the interview series, and this week David Dimbleby has a chat with Peter Cook. Then they close out the night with Shirley MacLaine, the one-woman show which has just won the Golden Rolls of Montreux. BBC Two have just finished Landscapes of England, where Professor William Hoskins has a nose about Cornwall. Then it's the school's prom from the Royal Albert Hall, featuring the South Nottinghamshire Music School Orchestra,

conducted by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Then it's the law drama series The Paper Chase, and then tonight's film For A Few Dollars More. After the late news, they finish off with highlights from The Cricket. ITV has just finished Thundercloud, the sitcom set in a naval shore base. And then Cheryl Light gets kidnapped in Charlie's Angels. Then it's the comedy series Jack in a Box. Shelle, The News at Ten,

and Estate of the Nation, a documentary special about the 10th anniversary of the British Army in Northern Ireland. And they send us off to bed with Charles Aznavour in concert. So me boys, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? I'm saying Sham 69, without a doubt.

The specials performance would have a longer lasting effect on my life but yeah the next day it'd be like oh do you see that band they took their shoes off and they had a violin and they didn't even play it and then they smashed it up and then they all walked off and yeah that would be it yeah yeah I'll be talking about sham definitely um I'll probably just be talking about the fact that Peter Powell said at the end great pop music from Coventry because I would have been amazed by that and I would have wanted to talk about it with people. Like where? Yeah, who are these people, where do they live?

And of course the scary bloke from Sparks. Yeah, I don't know if I would have wanted to talk about that. I would have almost not wanted to admit how frightening I found it, but yeah. What are we buying on Saturday, I wonder? Sham 69, The Specials, Corgis abba sparks earth wind and fire

darts boomtown rats dave edmonds gibson brothers and patrick hernandez uh that's 11 songs i bought all of those either straight away or not long afterwards so that's basically the whole show apart from ba robertson the doolies and olympic runners okay now i would have probably yeah i probably would have bought gangsters um and little else but now i'd be hoovering this shit up hernandez gibson brothers there's a lot of good stuff in this episode the strike rate is high isn't it yes very much so and what does this episode tell us about august of 1979 i'm gonna climb off the fence the fence. You wanted to ask me. Here we go. And I'm saying that, yeah, 1979 is the greatest year for pop ever.

Ooh. Yeah. I would say it's probably the pinnacle of human civilization. And within that, the 2nd of August might be as good as it ever got. I mean, the thing is, we normally look for those years or those moments where we feel that the freaks have taken over, and we see that as kind of, yes, that's right. But actually what's nice about this episode,

and perhaps about 79, is the balance. The balance between great, great pop music, but also this little weird shit going on that you can tell in a few years is going to go overground a bit more. That hasn't happened yet, so you can still feel cherishably kind of elitist in a way, being into something like the specials. But it's balanced against a great era for disco

and a great era for pop music as well. So it's that nice mix of the two. It's a corking episode, Simon. Thank you very much. You're welcome. We need to do this Critics' Choice thing again at some point. You're pulling out some gold, all of you. Well, me ducks, that is the end of this episode of chart music all i'm gonna do now is the usual promotional shit website www.chart-music.co.uk facebook.com slash chart music podcast you can

get us on twitter at chart music t-o-t-p more importantly put a jingle down our G-string for Christmas. Patreon.com slash Chart Music. Thank you ever so much, Simon Price. You're welcome. God bless you, Neil Kulkarni. Cheers, Chief Rocker. My name's Al Needham. And when you go to bed tonight, don't worry about us. We're all right!

We're all right! Chart music. GreatBigOwl.com Hello, my name's Peter Powell. Welcome to a tape of some really fine music from some ace acts. Bowie, which you've probably heard many times before. I must keep saying... I must not keep saying Bowie, I must say Bowie.

David Bowie, Blue Jean, it's called, on EMI America. And it's off his forthcoming album tonight, which is full of treats, apparently. Recorded in Canada and produced by Bowie Hinson. Can I go again? Bowie. Well, how exciting. How terribly exciting. There I am on the phone to one Jonathan King who's just returned from America

and has just bet me at least, what is it, 100 quid was it, Jonathan? I can't remember. I can't put you on the air either. 100 quid that Lilac Time returned yesterday, a record I played before that one which got stuck is going to be a top 10 record but i had to unfortunately inform him that the lilac time record returned yesterday has been out for some time therefore a fairly safe bet and i

think i'm probably going to be 100 quid better off jj from the stranglers jean-jacques you're half french aren't you yes is that a problem no at all. And if you want something to happen to you... So, David Bowie. David Bowie. David Bowie said, let's dance. And the world danced. Serious Moonlight. The music video.

1995 from WH Smith.