Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #47: 25th December 1977 – The Last Supper Of Showaddywaddy

Episode Date: December 30, 2019

#47: 25/12/77 – The Last Supper Of ShowaddywaddyA sort-of-festive episode of the podcast which asks: Jesus, why do we always leave this to the last minute instead of doing it in August like everyone else?It’s the arse-end of the year, and you know what that means, Pop-Crazed Youngsters: another ram of our hands into the Quality Street tin of a Xmas TOTP. This year, it’s 1977, which means that Noel Edmonds has taken one of his suits that all look the same out of the wardrobe – but this year he’s joined by Kid Jensen, in full Stylistics clobber. No trifle-related interplay this year, then, but it’s quadruple overtime for the Top Of The Pops Orchestra, who have stashed a dozen or so Party Sevens under their chairs to keep them going, and Team ATVland (combined age: 19) are sulking that they can’t hook their Binatone Pong to the telly, moaning that their Ricochet Racers isn’t much cop, and leafing through the 1978 Starsky and Hutch annual and dreaming of chocolate pancakes respectively. There were some astonishing singles that came out in ’77, but musicwise, and bar a couple of exceptions, this is your Nana’s Top Of The Pops. Showaddywaddy pretend to have a futuristic buffet. Some kids are bussed into White City to wave a tassel on a stick (or just the stick). David Soul’s head floats in space. Johnny Mathis pops up again. You can hear Kenny Rogers’ arse as he lowers it onto a wicker bar stool. And oh God, it’s Manhattan Transfer. But here come Abba, Space, Denice Williams, Hot Chocolate, and the return of Floyd Flipper as a fruity Santa! Oh, and there’s Paul McCartney’s Living Shortbread Tin and Bing Crosby. It’s a massive, sixteen-song evisceration, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, done with the care and attention you’ve come to expect from the little elves of Chart Music.Neil Kulkarni and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham for a long, hard stare at the winners circle of 1977, complete with such tangents as the Showaddywaddy Hanky Code, Lobbing It Out on Channel 4, assuming French is just English you don’t know yet, the gang war between Brighouse and Rastrick, Space Crumpet, when it’s time to finally let go of the Radio Times Xmas issue, and a chance to see someone from Chart Music looking like a massive potato on telly very soon. Merry Swearing!Video Playlist |  Subscribe |  Facebook  | TwitterSubscribe to us on iTunes here. Support us on Patreon here.This podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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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. Oh my God, it's hilarious. There's so much muck in it. The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence,

which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language, which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to? Um, chart music. Chart music. Hey up you pop craze youngsters and welcome to the latest episode of Chart Music. The podcast that gets its hand right down the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host Al Needham, but never mind me, it's all about these two people right here.

One of those is Neil Kulkarni. How do. And the other one is Taylor Parks. Hello, all right. Oh, boys, the Triforce, which is Team ATV land, has realigned once again. Oh, what amazing powers are going to emanate over the next God knows how many hours.

Obvious first question. The pop things and the interesting things that have occurred since we last met. Come on, tell me. Tell me now. It's the tail end of a pandemic blues, isn't it? Everyone's got them. Like trying to work up the enthusiasm to clean the flat

because someone might see it soon. You know, in case anyone ever sees it again. Something touching and slightly poignant about me stood there all hopeful you know trying to get the tannin stains out of tea mugs as i know neil has also been doing oh yes yeah as though they were a future i only got halfway there though because i was using bicarbonate of soda and i got distracted by a thing on the tub which said, to make a simple baking powder, add one part bicarbonate of soda to two parts cream of tartar. What?

I started thinking about all these generations of now dead housewives and all this knowledge gone, you know, disappearing. And I got a bit upset and a bit gloomy and so that was a good excuse to stop work now oddly enough you know bleaching my mugs has been one of the highlights to be honest with you and i still feel quite a lively salon like debate on your facebook over the correct procedure of cleaning mugs wasn't it absolutely a sharing of this old wisdom that is as taylor indicates is kind of passing it yeah we are at the tail end um i'm feeling slightly alarmed not alarmed but worried about the future because i'm noticing some habits creeping into my behavior as

i get re-engaged with kind of going out and going to buildings and meeting people again um you know i'm noticing sort of worrying feelings of incipient senility really that have been creeping into my behavior particularly my language of like i feel that my my changing um sort of nomenclatures for people reflect that i'm at a kind of crossroads in my life a while back things were things were simple a while back i called everyone you know work colleagues students kids i called them all mate right now right this is now shifting um a bit worryingly like i've started a few years ago calling everyone i consider an equal um boss um you know combining that kind of deference that i

think appeals to fellow lecturers and the guy behind the counter at the istanbul kebab shop but and that was fine there's been a worrying development of late, whereby boss has been replaced by chief. And yeah, which is, I don't know, I think I got that off my dad or something, because he used to say chief to, I don't know, toll booth operators. But yeah, I've also started calling people

who are younger than me, son, which is really worrying. Oh, man, there was a kid the other day actually wasn't a kid he was a fellow lecturer but he is younger than me and um he had his mask on and he was doing the old you know under the nose fucking thing um which drives me at the wall so i said to him and i don't know where it came from i didn't decide on this sentence beforehand but yeah i said to him get that over your face son you know and i've started doing it and and i started using chief too much as well i can't use chief because i i lived in london in the early 90s and

chief was a term of absolute fucking abuse really if you wanted to coat someone down you call them a fucking chief when i was at university i used to work in a cinema and there was this one lad called Jamey. And he'd wear his Richmond Odie in uniform, but he'd gangster it up so everything was like ultra baguette and rolled up here and all that kind of stuff. And he got away with it and he would just call everyone a chief. And I started hearing it elsewhere and I said, what does that actually mean, chief? That's, you know, that's not really an insult, is it? He is it he says oh yeah it means you're the chief of the fools what so i just started using it all the fucking time look at that fucking chief over there i i've never heard it's a great insult when you think about it because if you don't know you don't know you're being coated down i don't think anyone

knows that outlet i've never heard it used as a pejorative in that fashion but um maybe that might moderate my usage i mean of course a deeper worry is that chief might seem a little off to i don't know female counter staff etc that i might use it with yeah a native american patriot well yeah yes of course but i do have this awful feeling that my mind might settle. I mean, is it time for me? I don't know. Am I going to start calling female counter staff and other female sort of colleagues like love, petal, flower?

I'm worried about that. I might have to quarantine myself for the rest of my life. This is one of the great things about coming from Nottingham. You just call everyone Doug and no one ever gets offended it's a word you can say to anyone it doesn't matter it could be this like the most strident feminist or absolute meathead oh can you pass me that thing over there please dog and no one gets upset by it everyone understands what you're getting out there except ducks yeah except ducks so yeah i mean apart from that changing my my

linguistics um it's not been popping interesting stuff the stuff i found interesting in recent months has been the bleaching of mugs the fixing of my shed that was a big day man and well played yes and i'm now the owner of a tumble dryer um oh it's a life-changing moment stowing away my clothes horses it really does feel like a bold new sexy and exciting chapter is opening up in my life the tumble dryer years are back you know what now i'm not stalking you in any way right you got a man bra i got one yeah you got an air fryer at the beginning of the year i've got one and aren't they fucking brilliant oh they're fucking amazing. Life-changing. What they don't tell you about air fries is,

yes, you use less oil on your chips, but that means that you just eat twice as many chips as before, man. I'll tell you, I've been having some proper, you know, slap-up meals. Oh, yeah. You know, a big mountain of chips with bits of sausages and pies sticking out. I can't believe air fries haven't been arrived at as a solution before. Fundamentally, because now, I'm sure, like me, Al, as a fellow air fryer owner, you're now looking at your oven just thinking,

what is the fucking point of you? Yeah, what the fuck are you doing here? Yeah, taking up space. Fucking chief. I have to say, I'm feeling totally alienated by this bourgeois chit-chat. But the thing is, Neil, I've also got a tumble dryer now, quite recently. Yeah, I inherited my mam's

when she moved out. So yeah, just loving life. All that lint that you never knew you had is fucking great, isn't it? The faint warmth, the smell, the hum of it, it's just wonderful. Never having to worry about trapping my fingers in a clothesline

was ever a fucking game. I did buy a bowl recently because I broke one in the sink. What, cutting your hair? It's a different world. I'm telling you, look, I've lost the concentration even to watch cheap old horror films now. Oh, mate. I'm just so worn down and hollowed out and poor.

I'm just sat watching terrible American TV documentaries about the monkeys and stuff. That was what I was watching last night. It comes out and goes, they rode the last train to Clarksville to unimaginable riches, but it turned into a runaway train. This is the legend of Davy, Johnny, Mickey, Davy, Ian, Mickey, Douglas, Stuart, Mickey, Bernice and Davy.

The legend of the legend of the monkeys. And it's just like an hour of this. And then they have an hour break every five minutes and I have to recap. And I was sat there just sprawled in front of this. Couldn't move to switch it off. And then it finished. And then the next video comes on and the next video is tribal people rate british snacks and there's this guy he's like a punjabi

guy i think and he's got big rings on and like punjabi dress and he's eating a wagon wheel and he has a bit and then he says something and the subtitle comes up and it says it's very tasty and so i finally stirred myself and pressed the button to skip to the next video but the next video is tribal people react to iron mike tyson's epic knockout. And I just feel too uncomfortable in this world now as it folds in on itself. And that's just staying in my front room. Fuck knows what it's going to be like when I go outside. But good news, big things on the horizon.

I'm currently in negotiations with the estate of Charles M. Schultz to write a new series of animated TV specials featuring those much-loved characters from peanuts i've completed a series of draft scripts six of them titled in order you're a burden to your friends charlie brown for fuck's sake it's fucking christmas charlie brown your inability to cope with overwhelming feelings of worthlessness and dread makes you even more unattractive charlie brown i saw it was you and let it go to voicemail charlie brown your so-called cry for help was selfish and unfair on others charlie brown and the season finale if only there was something we could have done to help you

Charlie Brown now I it's fair to say I've met a bit of resistance from the grey suits and the bean counters who don't understand that I'm taking this thing back to the spirit of the original cartoons I gather they're especially concerned about my decision to kill off the dog in episode two. We're probably worried about the merchandise. I shouldn't wonder. Parasites, enemies of creativity. And anyway, who says you can't sell a lunchbox with just a weeping woodstock on it, sat on an empty kennel i think it would shake things up a bit and

you know raise awareness yeah um but if the philistines prevail i'm planning to fall back on my other pet project which is to coax dennis waterman out of retirement and raise robin williams from the grave for the crossover series that we all deserve uh mork and minder where mork says uh nanu nanu what is this thing you earthlings call a lock-up full of water damaged umbrellas and terry mccab punches him in the face he Go and tell Orson about that, you jabbering prick. My downtime at the minute consists of, thanks to you, Taylor, is watching old episodes of Little and Large.

Oh, yeah. Oh, fuck me. Fuck me. What do you want to do that for? Did you think they were going to be good? I thought, you know what, next time I have people around, I'll do a supercut of Little and Large

doing the pop great great of the time. Jesus Christ, I wish I hadn't have done that. As I recall, there's quite a lot of blacking up, isn't there, with Little and Large? Yes, there is. Sid Little blacks up, they do in the Navy by Village People. And you can imagine, and we were quite shocked by that, when we tell you that the gay doll was functioning that early?

Yeah. In the Navy, you can join your fellow man in the Navy, be a Larry Grayson fan. Oh, my God. Yeah. He was the other gay one. Yes. Yes.

It works. They do Boney M, don't they? Oh, Christ. Yeah. I kind of stopped watching it by about 1983, the fifth series, because they stopped going on about pop music by then. It hasn't matured yet, Al. You've got to watch the last series from 1991.

What? What? Hold on. 1991. You're fucking joking me. No? Oh, my God, Father. Get on one, matey.

Yeah. Yeah, when they do Soul to soul an nwa but i switched from that i thought you know what you got to go back to the fucking classics monkey and yeah i actually thought taylor kind of like wheeling back to what you've been up to. The Monkees as the cast of Monke. Who would be who? Oh. Yeah. I'm going to set down a mark in our David Jones trippy talker because he gets to sit on a horse.

He'd have bagged it that. I don't know if he's the right one for it. To mask his height, you mean? No, because he used to be a jockey, didn't he? Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. All the money he'd blow on booze he spent on horses.

But what about the others? See, it's tricky, isn't it? Yeah. It is tricky. I mean, surely Monkey himself has got to be Mickey DeLand, surely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm thinking of Mike Nesmith's Diagnoburns.

Yeah, but I know what you mean. See, the problem is, who's going to be pig there it's got to be talk I'm afraid and it's got to it's got to be talk oh yeah really

because nobody else would really fit the bill would they hmm hmm what are the other characters Sandy well there's only one left

then isn't there yeah so that's got to be Nesmith I think Delenn's has got to be has got to be monkey hmm yeah. I think De Lens has got to be, has got to be monkey. Yeah, natural front man. Yeah, definitely.

What about horse? Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? I don't count horse, you see. Yeah, yeah. Not a major, not a main character, but. Horse was very much the scrappy do of monkey. And to think we don't make it into those lists of the 100 best podcasts. God, we've gone off on severe tangents here, haven't we?

And we get back. We can't get back, although, just tangentially, I'm sorry to go back to Mork and Minder. No. Did you know Robin Williams stank? Did you know that? What? That he had... Robin Williams stank. What? It just had really bad robin williams stank what it just had really bad bo problems it's by the by it's not that important but i just want to impart that

information on mindy i guess so i was listening to an interview of sandra bernard and she was talking about being on the richard pryor show and um robin williams being involved and just it being notorious that he absolutely fucking honked i I mean, I like Robin Williams. I just want to impart that information. We are a fount of truth, after all. Yeah. Robin Williams, very, very pongy. Yeah.

His swarming body hair holding in the odour. Yeah, exactly. Trapping the musk. Yeah. And being in an egg all that time while going through space. That ain't going to help, is it? No, no, no, no. I'll tell you what doesn't stink, though.

The beautiful new pop craze patrons who have filed up and shoved a handful of dollars down our G-string this month. Shall we read their names out? Let's do that. Fantastic segue, Al. Fantastic. Thank you. In the $5 section, we have Dave Atkinson,

Siobhan McClatchy, Margaret Homunculus, John Stevens, Chris Wood, Martin Reilly, Tim O'Connor, Simon West, Adrian Ward,

Paul Barnard, Mal Campbell, Calvin Stewart, Chris Durbin, John Thorpe, Tony Coffey, William Johnson, Tim Nyland-Jones, Shinty Bolger, and David of Flickston. Bless those people. and David of Flickston. Hey. Bless those people. And in the $3 section, we have Justin Walsh,

William Wright, Adam Robinson, Justin Davies, Michael Campbell, Will Font, David Ellis, and Graham Bell. Thank you, babies.

Yeah, cheers, guys. I think the last one, Graham Bell, he dropped me a message on Twitter today saying he thinks he's seen me with my cock out about 20 or so years ago when I was a male stripper. He used to host club nights and stuff. The troop I was with turned up

and got it out for the ladies of the area. So I can't remember if I was there or not. I think you would have remembered me. I was the least developed male stripper in the country. Seriously, man. Hung like a fucking button mushroom.

That's sweet, though. Because I never tied off. Everyone else said tie off, and I refused to, man. I had an organic cock. Tie off? You don't know about this, neil i'm a neophyte i'm so innocent man what happens is you kind of like you go to the dressing room and you procure a wank mag or use your imagination oh i see i can see where this is going actually you get a bit of

a lob on and sometimes you'd use one of them dick pumps then you get a bit of leather strap and you tie off at the base of the cock to hold the blood in i see but the problem with that is is you you can't really do on calls uh and you've got you've got to watch the time because you know if you leave it too long he's gonna be conju with blood and uh oh god yeah and it's gonna drop off does it absolutely have to be a leather thing oh i mean wouldn't a hair bobble do the job? Well, yeah, sometimes you use hair bobbles and they're fucking hard to get off, man. The amount of time I've seen my mail stripping colleagues

just frantically looking for something, anything, to get a hair bobble or a laggy band off. You know, using nail scissors and stuff like that, man. Oh, my God. Yeah. So I thought, you know what? I'm keeping well away from that nonsense it's either that or toothpaste yeah yeah toothpaste i was familiar

with but thanks our weekend plans and all that oh and um david ellis you jacked your donation right up and i thank you sir for that thank you cheers that thank you and of course one of the things the Pop Craze Patreons get to do is tinker and tanker and fiddle and faddle and generally piss about with the new Chalk Music Top 10, shall we chaps?

It's the fucking music white boy we've said goodbye to concerned Mother of Exeter, Jar Waddy Waddy, Jeff Sex, and here comes Jism. Oh, my God.

Which means two up, two down, one non-mover, four new entries, and a re-entry. In at number 10, it's a re-entry. In at number 10, it's a re-entry for Taylor Parks' 20 Romantic Moments.

Sorry, sorry. A new entry straight in at number 9, Barry the Sexy Lion. A one-place jump from number 9 to number 8, CFAX Data Blast. Down two places from number 5 to number 8 CFAX Data Blast Down two places from number 5 to number 7

Bummer Dog A new entry at number 6 for Christopher Lilliput Into the top 5 and it's straight in at 5 for Mario Cunt No change at number

four for rock expert David Stubbs. Top three and last week's number one drops two places to number three, Jesus Price. Straight in at number two, this week's highest new entry,

a group who choose to call themselves Nolan Tentacle Porn, which means... Britain's number one. They've finally made it to the top, up two places to this week's chart music number one, the bent cunts who aren't fucking real. Oh, what a chart. It's a sexy and exciting chart for a new age.

I'm choking on the magnificence of that chart, but fucking hell, here comes Jism. Jeff Sacks gone. I never thought I'd see the day. End of a fucking era. End of an era. A changing of the guard. It is.

It is. It is. I think this will give the chart music top ten the kick up the arse it needs. No. Shot in the eye. I wonder what Nolan Tentacle Porn sounds like. Fuck knows. It sounds a bit White House to me.

Vapor Wave. Yeah. I want to make that band real. And maybe I will. I've got all summer. Just a t-shirt band, aren't they? That's it. That's who they've reminded me of,

that name. It won't mean anything to anybody who didn't used to read Melody Maker, but I'll just add these words. 70 Gwen Party. Do you remember 70 Gwen Party, Taylor? Fuck me.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You sent me a demo as well. It's like a little welcome to the paper. You get your 70 Gwen party demo and covering letter. Who the fuck are they? Oh, the dreadful kind of experimental act. He's just like...

He's the incessantly bombarded melody maker with tapes. It's just that everyone did end up with a copy. Didn't quite know what to do with them because they were a bit of rubbish. But anyway, moving on. Barry the Sexy Lion. What's his shtick? Well, it's all in the name, isn't it?

His name's Barry. He's fucking horny as fuck and he's a lion. Yeah. This is from you, Neil. This is your description of the Bee Gees as sexy lions. They are sexy lions. I do think of the Bee Gees as soon as I hear that. Yeah, but I think they'll have moved on by now.

They'd be making, yeah, I don't know. What kind of music would they be making now? It wouldn't be disco. It'd be fucking sexy. It would be sexy as fuck. I'm imagining Lazy Lion out of Words and Pictures

but in a thong. And I was thinking about this the other day. Isn't that the most poignant, depressing moment in Threads? When they're all

gathered together, all the survivors are gathered together in that school hall or whatever and someone's managed to rig up a telly and a video. And the only thing they've got is words and pictures. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've remembered that now. Isn't that fucking tragic, though? Because you'd be sitting there going, oh, fucking hell, words and pictures. Yes, Lazy Lion. Fucking brilliant. And it's just a cat skeleton. And you just realise that Lazy Lion's just completely evaporated

and will never return again. They might as well have just ended the thing there with everybody just slitting their wrists. Because it doesn't pick up, does it? It doesn't jolly itself up, does it, from there on in? Not really, no. No. Barry the Sexy Lion, by the way, could have been.

You know Terry Hall, the ventriloquist Terry Hall? Not that... Yes. He could have been, yeah. His Lenny the Lion's kind, by the way, could have been. You know, Terry Hall, the ventriloquist Terry Hall. Not the... Yes. He could have been, yeah. His Lenny the Lion's kind of, you know, when he did his blue set later on, you know, he'd whip back Barry the Sexy Lion out instead. Do you think Terry Hall at the specials

has ever once considered being a ventriloquist? Just to fuck with people's heads? Considering how many heads that would fuck with literally we could count them on all of our hands um it wouldn't be that many people people don't but it wouldn't hit home to those people who got it oh yeah christopher lilliput oh yeah i mean we've already said that the old sailor was a mini me for early 70s roger dolce so i contend that christopher lilliput will serve that role for the old sailor was a mini me for early 70s roger dolce so i contend that christopher lilliput will serve that role for the old sailor well yeah it's i mean it's a complex it's the

russian doll right yes the the outer shell of the russian doll the Robertson of Magpie and Free Time. And then inside Mick Robertson is Kevin Keegan. Yes. And then you open Kevin Keegan and pull out Tommy Boyd. And then inside Tommy Boyd, when you open it and pull it out, it's Roger Daltrey. And then you take off Roger Daltrey's head and then you pull out roger daltrey's head and then you

pull out the old sailor and then inside the old sailor is christopher lillycrap and then inside christopher lillycrap is wayne sleep finally inside wayne sleep is russell hitchcock lead singer of air supply yes and instead of the babushka headscarf that you usually see on a Russian doll, they're all wearing a rugby shirt, tight pale jeans and white plimsolls. It's a lovely artefact. It's a beautiful addition to any Aventus sideboard. Oh, we need lockdown to continue for another year. We need to get craft projects going for the Pop Trade youngsters, don't you think?

Are you thinking of that as merch? We need to get the Danbury Mint involved, I think. Yes, definitely, yeah. Mario Kunt is obviously the Italian Plastic Bertrand, isn't he? He's gone for an offensive name, but he doesn't realise just how offensive it is in the Anglophone world. I can imagine Mario Cunt being very big on the Mediterranean punk circuit with Lost Punk Rockers. That'd be a great double bill, wouldn't it? And if you want to join all those pub-craze youngsters in getting involved in rigging the charts and the Judy Zoot tour jackets and all that shit, you know what to do.

Hammer out patreon.com slash chart music on the nearest keyboard to you. Step up to that pay window, slap that money down and shout, yes, chart music, you take this money and you rub your podcasty groin all

over my trousers. Go on, do it. I dare you. Go on, do it. I dare you. This episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to July the 3rd, 1986. Now, chaps, the last time we covered the mid-80s, we were a bit shocked, weren't we, that it won't as cat shit as we expected it to be.

But we've only done one 1986 episode so far chart music number 24 and oh taylor we weren't impressed were we it was fucking awful which one was that it was the television equivalent of staring into someone yanking open their unwiped ass and waving it in our face but with christopherg in the middle oh yeah yeah yes yes this is a bit more of a mixed bag this one yes there is plenty of good in this but the 1986 does hang all over this episode this is very much the late 80s is coming in the the it's like the the mid what i think of is the mid 80s is 84 and 85 right by 86 we are sort of really into the late 80s with like the long shiny coats and yeah thatcher rampant you know and and money like not not money in in your pocket or mine but sloshing around very

visibly in pop music and and elsewhere like this is already the era of aspirational adverts for cheese you know and things like this and all that detached sexuality and and cocaine drift you know that sort of glazed expensive mess in people's physical appearance and their aesthetic judgment you know and their artistic output just scrambled and over stimulated and but it was almost enforced you know this is how we do things now it this is what the late 80s is you do this or no other options are available and yeah so you you watch this and there's a few sort of refugees from the early 80s still trying to do things the old way and there's a few yes it but no it all just becomes 1986 it just feels like 1986 it's not pleasant no and that and that feeling is kind of spread all over all the artists who play on this episode i think i mean 86 is a kind

of it's a definite changing of the guard in a sense but it's a changing over to people you didn't really feel were going to occupy any kind of massive center of pop if you like um anymore like the big bands who have their sort of first hits in 86 say the pet shop boys say erasure they don't feel like the kind of bands who kind of want to take pot by the scruff of the neck and boss it they seem a little geekier and a bit nerdier and you know any attempts from here on in to reintroduce a center if you like to british pop whether that's curiosity the following year or even somebody like Temence Trenton Derby. They all kind of – they fail and they're seen to fail.

So it's as if this kind of second generation of 80s pop stars, it's not that they've got a lack of ambition necessarily, but yeah, a slight lack of ambition, a slight lack of ego to a certain extent. At least they want to distance themselves a little bit from the kind of yuppie aspirationalism of the previous generation but i don't think pop is going to let one band dominate ever again in a way uh for a while towards the late 80s it's a general feel of yeah as taylor says this kind of slickness um that kind of covers everything really i mean over in the states this

year of course we have prince proving that you can be a geek and a major star and this is the year where prince becomes immensely important to a lot of us um a lot of us are in 86 as i think we've previously discussed massively disenchanted with the present massively absorbed in the past so it was good to have prince really to feel a sense that surely to god something good is going on now, you know. But, yeah, it definitely feels late 80s. But at the same time, this episode and the fucking songs it throws our way, yeah, there's a lot to get into here in terms of those people who are still hanging on and those old pop habits that the British charts seemingly can't shake. Yeah.

I tell you what, it's like what you were saying that that we were all looking backwards at the time because we thought the present day was so horrible but when you look at it there is a sort of shame and self-consciousness about the or at least about a big part of the culture that even though there's this sort of uh hubris and sort of uh the confidence of wealth people kind of know deep down that this is not a golden era culturally and it's it's really noticeable that starting from here for about the next four years in white culture the only people considered cool and sexy are retro styled right there's yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.. Yeah. Yeah.. Yeah. I don't have pictures There were visual throwbacks. When you went into a would-be trendy place like a cafe or a hairdresser's, they didn't have pictures of 80s people on the walls with their shiny suit jacket sleeves rolled up and tumbling mullets. It was all James Dean and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and all the sullen indie bands wanted to look like the Velvet Underground in 1966. They didn't stand there scowling away in pleated slacks, did they? In a gold waistcoat.

And that sense of forward movement from the early 80s is gone. Well, even you had a group like Orange Juice, whose music was 100% derived from the record collection. But they didn't skulk about in leather trousers. The whole point was they were meant to be fresh and modern and new you know the middle of the 80s is where that switchover happened where if you wanted to be cool you had to look backwards because there was no longer anything sexy and and and positive about being off the moment and that only changed when it met the warm front blowing in from mostly american black culture yeah which is hyper modern and technological and dressed brightly in

modern clothes you know like hip-hop and then after that chicago house as well and that's what yeah blew away a lot of what we see in this episode and made the early 90s sort of looser uh and brighter and more natural even when it was still shit at least it wasn't like this yeah yeah it is in this hinterland at the moment in 86 anywhere it's yeah um mainstream uk pop certainly it's not listening to hip-hop and it's not really listening to jam and lewis think you know controls coming out this year. Things are moving on. But it takes several years, like Taylor says, till the late 80s,

early 90s, for those kind of things to percolate through. And this mean time is a mean time. It's got some grim shit in it. So, 1986. George! Hello, I'm Tom, and I make a podcast George! do more. Thanks, Kerry Godliebman. This is such a great idea, by the way. What a great podcast. Shappi Korsandi, you're too kind. The podcast is... It's biographical. You can get all sorts of information out of people.

This is a very good idea. Thank you, Nick Helm. It's called My Mate Bought a Toaster. I'm going to listen to this podcast. Thanks, Alex Swan. Can you tell your friends? In the news this week, the Peacock Report commissioned by Margaret Thatcher in an attempt to get the BBC to scrap the licence fee and run adverts instead, refuses to recommend that. Instead, it suggests that Radio 1 and 2 be privatised,

the licence fee should be scrapped for the oldens, censorship should be phased out and ITV franchises should be sold off to the highest bidders. The whopping print dispute enters its 23rd week with the leader of the electricians union going to America to meet with Rupert Murdoch. The Statue of Liberty is reopened after a four-year refurbishment. Two days after the World Cup ends, Gary Lineker becomes the most expensive British footballer ever when he's transferred from Everton to Barcelona for £2.75 million.

But a day later, Ian Rush tops that when Juventus agree to pay Liverpool £3.2 million for Ian Rush. £3.2 whole million pounds for a footballer. The fucking world's gone mad! What'd you get for that now? You'd get his toe, wouldn't you? His moustache.

Sade has called in the police after being bombarded with death threats from a crazed West German fan who sends her seven letters a day plus photos of himself and some money. And some money? Photos of himself and some money? Yeah. He's a smooth operator.

Sue Barker reveals that her and Cliff Richard never spent the night in the same room, never mind done it, during their relationship. And now that it's all over and she's with someone else, she can exclusively reveal that she doesn't like Cliff's music. Poor little one, Sue. It's got fucking bells on. ian botham lands himself in the shit for making an after-dinner speech in manchester where he called england test selectors gin slinging dodderers who are quote brought out of an attic then they take the dust sheet off and give them a pink gin then they moan about him doing weed while they sling their 17th bottle of gin down their neck then they go onto the roads and kill 400 kids

on the way home. What? Bit much? So unfortunate that both of them turned out to also be a prick. Yes. Because he was such an inspirational figure for about two years. But the big news this week is the headline on the front page of

Today's Sun. Junkie George has eight weeks to live. It's also the front page story in the Mirror, which reads, The full tragedy of pop superstar Boy George can be revealed today by the Daily Mirror. He is a heroin junkie, and his health is failing rapidly as he feeds his punishing hundreds of pounds a week drug habit. Unless he stops now, he will certainly kill himself. Surely, chaps, you remember that?

Oh, very much so. He's killing bold capitals there. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I love the phrase heroin junkie. It's like people get described as an adrenaline junkie. It's like, no, he's a heroin junkie. That's very much the original junkie.

Yes, the ready salted of junkiedom. I mean, we hadn't had a pop star drug overdose death for ages. If you discount Phil Lineup because he died of septicemia due to his drug habits. I mean, the last major one was Sid Vicious seven years ago. So you do get the feelings that the papers are rubbing their cakey little hands in glee. Yeah, plus heroin had kind of increased in public consciousness. It had basically become an equivalent threat to nuclear war and AIDS. It was kind of piled in with all of that so

yeah i distinctly remember this massively it was always weird being at school talking about drug overdoses and stuff like that because you just assumed that there was a big mountain of coke or whatever and they just fell onto it and died remember when i was about 11 or 12 we were talking in the playground about Jimi Hendrix. And, you know, he took drugs and he choked on his own vomit. But the lad who told me this said, no, they found him in a bath and he drowned in vomit. Years and years and years.

I just have this image in my head, particularly when I was eating my tea, of Jimi Hendrix in a bath that was absolutely full to the brim with vomit and he's doing his Jimi Hendrix face. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I recall when the Boy George story broke, there was a sense of glee from the tabloids

that finally they'd nailed him in a sense, you know, finally they'd got him on something. I don't remember it being that shocking though. It was just even then you could detect a faint tone of hyperbole and hysteria about something that, you know, probably should have just remained a private matter. You're right about that heroin as self-administered nuclear war. It really was.

But I was at school at the time, obviously, and I was always reading about how school playgrounds were full of heroin yes they're called pushers right and it's like i was sort of faintly disappointed that nobody ever offered me heroin because i wanted to be able to go no but when we moved down south right i'd heard that places like milton keynes were full of drugs right because they were like there was loads of people on smack and stuff they used to chase dreams now they chase the dragon they did indeed and so i remember thinking the first time i go to milton keynes what would i do if i found some drugs on the floor

would i would i pick them up and take them away and take them on my own? And I thought, well, it depends what the drugs were. And I had this fantasy about finding... But how would you know? Well, I knew what they looked like. I was into, like, the Beatles and stuff. I wanted to take acid at the time, right? And I was about 14.

But I remember thinking, if I found an acid tab lying on the floor, I would pick it up and take it. It's as if you're going to go to Milton Keynes and the first thing you're going to see is a little Superman on a square of blotting paper lying on the ground. Oh, I'll have that. So for years I was like, oh, what an idiot I was. And then in about 1991, a mate of mine was walking down the street,

not in Milton Keynes, but not far away, and picked up a little wallet thing that he found on the ground, opened it up, there was two acid tabs in it, wrapped in cellophane. Yeah, absolutely. And? He took them, didn't he? Didn't he give one to you?

No, I wasn't there. Bastard. Could have saved it. Yeah, well, I... Put it in the fridge or whatever you do with it. I don't know. I had my fill in due course, I can tell you that. I've got to say, though, all that anti-drug messaging of the 80s, it really didn't have that much of an effect on me.

And, you know, to the point where I'm not making light of addiction, but I'm penciling heroin in for my retirement. I don't know about you guys, but I'm thinking, yeah, that'll, you know, beats falling asleep in a bus stop. Yes. You know, I'm penciling it in for that and saying, no, it didn't really work. You're going to nod off anyway.

This is it. Why not be blissful? Heroin or a repeat of fucking heartbeat. Or senatogen. Yeah. It's got to be heroin all the way, hasn't it? It's a classy option. But that's the thing.

In 86, of course, contemporary messaging was all about, yeah, the drugs are all awful. But of course, if you're looking back to the 60s, that's all telling you that drugs are fucking ace. Get into them as soon as you possibly can but but yeah i mean this news about boy george and the very recent splitting up of one of the monoliths of the era it gives off the feeling that we have reached the end of the proper 80s haven't we oh yeah you could say this week is that is that end point for the 80s that everybody thinks about when they talk about the 80s. Yeah, definitely.

No more. There's never going to be a Duran again. There's never going to be a Wham again. There's never going to be anyone that dominant. Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet is still about, but not in the sense that we knew and liked them. They're fighting for themselves now. They are.

They're appealing purely to their own already developed fan base. They're not getting any new fans by that stage but also never anyone with ideas do you know what i mean it's like at the time joan joan and and spada ballet were seen as and coach club were seen as like they're just the the new bland you know like these pop acts that had nothing and said nothing and offered nothing. But when you look at it, I mean, Duran Duran were trying to be arty and clever. Yeah, yeah. Spandau Ballet started off with all those ideas about doing things differently to other groups. You know, Culture Club had a sort of agenda based around, you know, gender.

And after that, there genuinely was nothing. You compare that to what came really soon after this. Like, I love A-ha, but there's nothing to A-ha except the nice songs and the nice faces. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. There was less than that to New Kids on the Block, etc. Yeah.

Stuff that falls on either side of that midday is dividing line you it one is the last knockings of something and on the other side of that line is the first rays of a of a sour new dawn um and because it seemed like a gradual uh transition at the time i don't think people noticed it quite as clearly as when you look back, it's just, it's blatant. Yeah, there's a sense towards the late 80s where that idea of ideas and that sense of agency, if you like, is

taken out of bands' hands and it's going to increasingly be in the hands of the producers rather than the kind of the bands themselves. So what we'll increasingly see as the 80s go on is, yeah, you can hear producers coming through these records they don't really get any strong personas

or anything like that and those bands those major bands we were talking about earlier you know they had been going for at least five years or at least been

a child presence for the past five years and that was a fucking long time yeah and a lot of them were just fucking knackered with the whole notion of being a pop star

which started to look less and less fun as the 80s went on yeah and also it reached that coke limit you know there's a coke limit where like for a while coke just makes you do what you do but you know with more enthusiasm then you reach a point where it's like hmm this stimulant appears to be de-stimulating something rotten. And then, you know, they disappear for four years. On the cover of the NME this week, the Jesus and Mary chain. On the cover of Smash Hits, Robin and Ali Campbell of Jawaddy Waddy. The number one LP in the UK at the moment is Invisible Touch by Genesis.

The number one LP in the UK at the moment is Invisible Touch by Genesis. And over in America, the number one single is On My Own by Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald. And the number one LP, Whitney Houston by Whitney Houston. So, boys, what were we doing in July of 1986? It was all happening for me. I mean, my balls had dropped um i was shaving finally yeah very pubescent time but i think the most important thing that happened to me that year was that my library ticket finally enabled me to get records out which i couldn't do previous to that age and of course that just changed everything absolutely everything it's not the internet before it's time

but some blessed lunatic behind the counter at cove central library seemed to get in all the records that were featured in the music press that week so i could check them out but also just just just left me with so many avenues of exploration i mean looking back it seems an astonishing act of largesse i can barely believe that it's real that a library ticket could gain you access to all of this stuff so mentioned before that i was disappearing into the past very much using the library for that very much using paul gambaccini's 100 greatest albums ever book also as a kind of guide for that as well which was a kind of aggregated sort of critics list basically but that that was 10 million

launch pads in one book in a sense and you know i i had my circuit down if you like my teenage circuit you know the library um poster place for badges and stuff like that um and then of course inter shop the future of shop yes so yeah going to inter shop getting drunk at the weekend exploring the past in a big big way but it's the start of in a sense what my life is now really i before then it's it feels like childish concerns in a sense but from this point on from being 13 onwards yeah just diving and losing myself in old music via the miracle that is the library that's that's my major memory of this year libraries gave you power without a doubt i mean it's it's heartbreaking um what's been lost there um but but just it's not even an act of generosity it just staggers

me that you know i could read about um i don't know some cecil taylor album or some you know just quite obscure shit walk into cove central library and get it out and take it home listen to it tape it obviously and and yeah that sustained my interest in music um to a huge degree do you think if you were 13 years old now you'd be investigating music as as hardcore as you did then yeah absolutely and the reason i know that is because i've got evidence i've got a daughter and she's 15 now granted she's not going to library but i'm not going to balk at the fact that she you know isn't investigating discographies properly she's enabled to investigate all kinds of insanely obscure shit um you know she dragged me into the living room the other day

dad you've seen this band before and it was a clip from beat club it was can and she's off on her own you know i'm on dual and all of this just chanced on that well she was watching beat club clips anyway because of i think she was watching sabbath or something um because there's a great sabbath early sabbath clipper and you know once you're on youtube and you just follow trails and stuff she then got into curved air and then it was can and it was all this beat club stuff so yeah you know this idea that i think we have now because the music press has kind of disappeared to a certain extent yes they're specialist titles but they're mainly selling to old folk who know all this stuff already we get this idea that old kids aren't investigating old music yes they fucking are they might not be able to name you

an album you know but they they know that and then they investigate this stuff and they're completely open-eared and open-eyed to it. It's easy to get depressed about how libraries have gone, you know, to a certain extent, and kids certainly aren't going to use a library maybe to amplify their musical knowledge. But, you know, they've got it in the palm of their hand now. I'm not bellyaching about it. I'm just amazed that literally for several years of my life,

the library fucking, you know, it starts becoming your real education, doesn't it? You go to school, but the library teaches you so so much and of course you know digging into books about music because i was so obsessed with it of course starts getting me interested in music writing as well so in a way i start here sort of 85 86 time where the library becomes just a second home really um i should stress i did have friends but but but on your own reconnaissance this is just thrilling and and also you know beyond libraries bookshops become massively important because bookshops you can you can stand in them

and read books without buying them and and that's my trip around town and and it's just building and feeding this voracious kind of hunger for all this old stuff basically because you listen to the radio you listen to the charts and you're just thinking none of this is floating my boat really apart from the odd thing so inevitably you start diving into the past and of course every great album you hear suggests another 10 albums that you should potentially investigate of course that can send you down dead ends. Because, you know, I remember in 86, you know, I don't know,

listening to a fucking 10 years after album or something, maybe you've gone too far down this road, you know, and pulling back and realizing, yeah, this is it. You know, stop at free, stop at Led Set. You just can't get with Blue Oyster Cult. But yeah, this is the miraculous thing about the library. You could get six records out, you could keep them for a week. I mean, it was just astonishing.

Yeah. Although I've got some hope for the future if YouTube algorithms really are pushing people towards clips of Cannes on Tee Club. Because I put YouTube on this morning and the first three videos that it was offering me were titled uh lunatic republican arrested after kicking student in the balls scammer rages after i destroy two thousand dollar gift cards and tribal people try kinder bueno i remember thinking what am i doing with my life i clearly need to get my daughter on these but no I mean it can send you down these weird tracks I mean she also had a similar

she was asking about ZZ Top the other day and I said oh you should watch Old Grey Whistle Test them doing cheap sunglasses because it's a great clip and she watched it and because you know OGWT is part of that search then she's sent onwards to all kinds of crazy shit.

So now one of her favorite songs is, you know, Alex Harvey band. So it does just send you in weird places. The library is gone as a kind of institution where, where kids do this kind of pursuing, but I don't think we should be downhearted and think that these kinds of pursuits and,

you know, reconnaissance aren't happening. They absolutely are. Maybe on a single song rather than an album basis, but there's nothing wrong with that. You know, it's still happening.. They absolutely are. Maybe on a single song rather than an album basis, but there's nothing wrong with that. You know, it's still happening. You should say to her,

you see that drummer, the only one without a beard? Well, guess what? She knew that shit. She knows that shit. Does she listen to modern stuff though? She will listen to a modern band, but only if they basically sound like Black Sabbath. Right. She loves the odd

little bit of swedish doom metal but she's very much locked in the past locked in the 70s and the 80s and she's not alone in that regard you know a lot of kids feel that way and they're doing exactly in a weird way exactly what i was doing in 86 when what is contemporary and when you're a kid it repulses you it's not just that you don't like it it repulses you you don't want to be part of what is contemporary you are you are sent back like that and and plenty of kids are in exactly the same you know place taylor well my main memory of 1986 was experiencing my first serious adolescent crush. Oh, sweet salad days. I still remember it like it was yesterday.

She was a redhead. No hair. No body. Just a redhead. So I met her in the canal. Oh, the times we had. No, in fact, she was a girl in my year at school. And I didn't know anything about, except that somehow I fancied her.

And as I think I mentioned in a previous podcast, she looked eerily uncannily like Sandra Burnham in King of Comedy, which is not at all what I expected my first big crush to be like. You don't get a choice in the matter, Taylor. Yeah, because the other person is almost irrelevant, right? Your first big crush is your psyche and your endocrine system powering up for adulthood and nothing to do with the qualities or the character

of the hapless recipient of your affections, who may as well be a crash test dummy. You know what I mean? They're just a blank white wall on which all your own obsessions and fantasies and preoccupations are projected god help them which is why these things so rarely work out uh but i was a terribly secretive and emotionally introverted kid despite being a a noisy piss taker i was sort of emotionally hopeless and not properly socialized because girls thought i was a weirdo so i kept it to myself for a whole year i didn't even admit to my friends for six months that I'd become obsessed with this girl. And it had become an obsession with all these weird sort of romantic

or hopelessly unworldly ideas, despite the fact that we'd never spoken and there was not the vaguest hint of chemistry between us and no sort of eyes caught across the room or any of this stuff. But I was not cynical at this point, right? I was what you might call pre-cynical, as innocent as a rolferoo. And so I waited a year full of frustration and longing. And finally, in the last week of the summer term, I plucked up courage and mentioned it to a girl on your mutual friend because there was a big house party coming up the weekend after school finished. So we all went to this party.

And at some point I was sat in the garden wondering what to do and whether anyone had mentioned anything to this girl because I didn't have the guts to go and say anything to her. And eventually this girl's French pen friend who was staying with her came over to where I was sitting and she said quite grandly, I have got a message for you from name redacted. And I thought, okay, here we go. The moment of truth. And she went on.

She said, she says, go fuck yourself. And I'm glad. And I'm glad because this taught me several things. One of them false, but the other is true. But the terrible postscript to this story, right, is within a year or so, like in the sixth form, me and this girl became quite matey because people develop quite quickly around that age and we'd laugh about the unfortunate events you know and um it was all very

good natured and then one night a couple of years later there was another party in a different house and i was sat around talking to her and she suggested going into one of the empty bedrooms to continue the chat because it was very noisy in this we couldn't really probably someone pumping out the fucking first stone roses album for the fourth time and and so yeah we went into this empty room and sat down on someone's sister's bed and i carried on talking about whatever bollocks we'd been talking about uh and i remember to this day watching her face slowly change as we sat there and just went on talking you know like drumming her fingers glancing all around the empty room right and i thought to myself, I wonder, I wonder if there's just a fragment of a millionth of a chance that if I just... Yeah, yeah.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Come on, be realistic. Until eventually, with slightly raised ginger eyebrows, she said, well, okay, I'm going to get another drink and left the room and i watched her leave and i thought phew at least i didn't make a fool of myself and i thought nothing more of it until a while later some some chuckling friends were delighted to to pass on news of of the head-shaking incredulity with which this story had been relayed back to her friends by her. There was a bit of cackling and a bit of finger-pointing from, you know, the more laddish element of our friendship group.

But the worst thing of all is that I learnt nothing whatsoever from that experience, except that women should be more assertive. And what the fuck was I going to do about that? Confidence, isn't it? That's what it's all about. No wonder you identify with Charlie Brown so much. Yeah, was she little, this red-headed girl?

Little red-headed girl, yeah. Yeah, I know. Then you went off to kick an American football. Yeah, some cunt moved it at the last minute. It's terrible how, what puberty does it changes kind of because i remember junior school kind of you know primary school i i could talk to girls fine and it was just normal prime but then something sets in when you're about 13 14 it's not just tongue-tiedness it's just it's this paralysis um and it's all hormonally related i guess but yeah if you could go about relationships with with girls with the same ease that you could at junior school where you're just laughing about

poop and stuff um things would be things would be a damn sight easier in puberty but they're not yeah i'm just about getting over the hangover of the 1986 World Cup, which I fucking loved because it was the World Cup. You know, just spent the whole month on the settee. Yeah. Just enjoying everything. Even England losing to Argentina. Yeah. Possibly even especially England losing to Argentina.

I don't know. There was a lot to enjoy in that game. Oh, God, yeah. Even at a young age, I enjoyed that. I mean, I'd'd finally finally finished sixth form and i got a place in the college i wanted to do my a level so i was massively looking forward to it but you know enjoying the the brief repose before throwing myself into it just dosing and knowing i didn't have to get a job basically which is great music wise as I always was right through the mid 80s

and onwards I'm just rinsing the second hand record shops in town hitting up record fairs but anything to do with James Brown or Sly and the Family Stone

Motown I'm having it so yeah I'm totally up here spending far less money on that kind of stuff than I would on the modern stuff

and not missing it at all oh god yeah when you I mean because at this age for me like 13, 14 record shops oh, less money on that kind of stuff than I would on the modern stuff and not missing it at all. Oh, God, yeah. I mean, because at this age for me, like 13, 14, record shops become massively, massively important as kind of sanctuaries and all the rest of it. And you start lingering in them, you know, far longer than you need to make a purchase in a sense. And also, it's not just record shops like HMV

that have really fond memories for me at this time. It's odd little shops, sort of hinterland shops like Exchange and Mart become massively important, where, you know, all the secondhand vinyl is. And, of course, you can turn around and pick up a crossbow or a catapult if you need it as well. So, you know, Exchange and Mart was such a bizarre shop. Weaponry on one side, secondhand stuff on the other. I'm still watching Top of the Pops, but I'm not expecting to be

nourished or surprised by it anymore. I might as well be watching repeats of Wacky Racers and thinking, oh fucking hell, why was I ever taken in by this bollocks dick dastardly never wins? It's four years of doing this podcast. Oh, you mean in 1986? Okay, yeah.

I'm not saying I was training myself to be a critic or anything, but I think, you know, you do still watch... I was still watching South of Pops in 1986, but mainly as a chance to sneer, you know? Mainly as a chance to deride. Why is this popular? Who the fuck's bought this? Oh, God, yeah, I was such an insufferable cunt.

But looking at this episode, I think I was on the right lines to, you know... But you still watch it as a masochistic thing, partly masochistic, partly pleasurable. Not thinking, oh, this will sharpen up my critical acumen, but it's nice slagging off contemporary pop. It's nice slagging off contemporary. And I reassert, it repulsed me, this stuff.

It wasn't just that, you know, I wanted to distance myself from it. So putting yourself at the coalface of it every Thursday was still a duty. And, of course, as we'll see later, there was still the odd little thing, the odd little tiny flash that actually did, you know, give you pleasure. So, dear boys, round about this time, we do what we always do, which is dig into the crates and pull out an example of the music press from this very week in question. And this time I've gone for melody maker

july the 5th 1986 shall we dig oh yeah let's on the cover the house martins in the news john lyden has threatened to go to court to take out an injunction on the forthcoming film sid and nancy in an attempt to block its release. According to a spokesperson, quote, John went to see the film a while ago and he wasn't impressed. He doesn't think people should make films about other people who are still alive and he found it a bit offensive. There was a possibility we were going to prevent them using the Sex Pistols music

but the film's not worth the effort, basically. We don't think it's going to do very well, and by suing them, we'd probably draw more attention to it than it'll get anyway. I wonder what he thinks about that new one. Oh, fuck me. Those production stills. With those twats giving the fucking finger.

Those cunts. Yeah. You just go to show you can't fake malnutrition and bad skin. Yeah. It's like doing a biopic of Sid James where he flips the bird.

You know. Yeah. I wonder if they do a bit where they call Bill Grundy a freaking ass munch. Meanwhile, the soundtrack LP of the film called Love Kills

has been announced and will feature Joe Strummer, The Pogues, Steve Jones, John Cale, Circle Jerks and a cover of I Wanna Be Your Dog by Gary Oldman. And a horrible idea for a film, trying to construct modern myths and legends around real people, especially people who were deeply flawed, you know, and never grew up or never had the chance to grow up. It's a sign of a very unhealthy culture. between the British phonographic industry and UK TV stations, which started six weeks ago when the BPI banned the use of videos on ITV because the regional stations refused to pay the record industry to broadcast them, rumbles on, with Time T's becoming the first on the network to cave in and cut a deal, just in time for their five-hour EuroTube 86 special, due to be broadcast on Channel 4 in two days' time. Meanwhile, Channel 4, who have taken their own music programme, Chart Show, off the air, continue to dig their heels in, while Yorkshire TV, who have held up plans for their forthcoming

late-night cable pop service Music Box, announce that they're in talks with the BPI. The BBC and Top of the Pops remain unaffected as they've already cut a deal with the BPI earlier this year worth £150,000 per annum for the right to broadcast music vids. Isn't that a thing? Top of the Pops there being a bit arsey about videos a few years ago. Now they want them.

Yeah, it's a bit of a Super League type situation. What shit names for TV shows, though? Music Box. Fuck me. I mean, Channel 4 Chart Show, that's nothing to do with the chart show that used to be. I'm sure it used to be on RTV, the chart show later. No, it's the same programme.

They moved it. I see. It's weird, though, isn't it, when you think about it? Isn't this a bit like if the advertising industry pulled all adverts from the network because ITV wouldn't pay to broadcast them? You want to show 90 seconds of this Cactus World News video? Well, you better put the money on the table. So it's a company desperately struggling to drum up any interest in Cactus World News.

At the same time, Equity were pitching their oar in, saying that these pop videos, they have non-Equity members in them playing instruments and stuff. Fucking hell. And, you know, they get their mates in to the videos. For fuck's sake. And that's wrong. You need some, you know, proper professional actors for that shit.

What are all those indie bands going to do if they can't do a video where it's just the best-looking girl that any of them know in 60s clothes walking around on the field? Yeah, yeah. Speaking of pop TV, Granada have announced Rock Around the Dock, an ITV music special from Liverpool's Albert Dock featuring Frankie Goes to Hollywood,

The Style Council, The Pretenders, Five Star, Status Quo, DC Lee, Ruby Turner, and the damned performing Eloise with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, all of which will be performing on a specially built floating dock and hosted by Gary Davis.

Gear. Fucking glad I've got no memories of that. The Reading Festival announces its return after a three-year absence on a new site next to the original one. No headliners have been fully confirmed as yet, although rumours abound that Hawkwind and Doctor and the Medics are likely to appear. And they do.

Along with Killing Joke, The Mission, It Bites, Zodiac Mind Warp and The Love Reaction, Lords of the New Church, New Model Armour and all that lot. I'll tell you what, I would have loved to have had a stall there selling snake bite and hairspray. Yes. You could have gone home and bought up most of central london and sat back run dmc have finally sorted out a uk distribution deal with london records and will be releasing their latest lp raising hell over here next week fucking. And the hip-hop crazed youngsters were invited to crash through walls,

cut through floors, bust through ceilings and knock down doors of their local record emporium tomorrow for the double A side my Adidas, Peter Piper. Oh, it's all going to change for the better, everyone.

And the cavalry's coming. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You just have to strain to hear them. And Bob Geldof, currently recording a solo LP in Los Angeles, has denied reports in the UK press that he'll be standing as a candidate for the SDP in the next general election.

Fucking milk thief. Inside the paper well Helen Fitzgerald drops in on Jean Loves Jezebel Of course she does It's the melody maker in 1986

who have just signed a US deal with Geffen Records and are beginning to become more popular in America than the cult but are still unable

to break out of the independent chart ghetto over here and don't seem to be that bothered about it touring elsewhere made us realize how insignificant england is in many ways and how parochial the music business is here says mike aston their third lp discover comes out soon i know fuck all about Jean Loves Jezebel, and I don't feel deprived by that. No.

But I was absolutely over the fucking moon to find out that one of them's called Jay Aston. Why isn't Melody Maker making more of that? Why aren't they asking him? Why have you left Bucks Fares? What was that coach crash like? Well, like you said, David's not yet joined the Maker, has he?

I'm sure he would have asked that. But there is that sense during that period that the the music press you know supposedly there to boost the alternative and independent they're struggling for figureheads themselves so for the next four years they're in a kind of holding pattern of things like gene loves jezebel feels of the nephilim sisters of mercy the mission all being sort of like you know posited as kind of cover stars and none of them ever achieve that kind of centrality to pop or centrality to indie music that they're looking for but much like mainstream there's no figureheads anymore there's no big ones the smiths are kind of i'm guessing at this point on i'm not saying on the way out but are they sort of tailing off

are they stopping are they making less i don't know they sort of peaked yeah in the summer of 86 i think but melody maker at this time was a a very weird and directionless paper um it really was just blokes and mullets in leather jackets standing around watching goth bands with a pint of lager in one hand it was that was just how it felt when you were reading it yeah you know they know, they used to do, like, the Patsy Kensick corner. Yes. Because Patsy Kensick was just like a music biz socialite, and they'd always have a picture of her with, like, an upskirt or something, and they'd put it and go,

and, whoa, it's Patsy Kensick every week. Oh, kiddo. Yeah, it was weird, weird. When David Van Day set up David Van Day's books first and got Mike nolan then why didn't he get jay astin out of gene loves jezebel in as well man he was probably unaware wasn't it it's a shame it's been a huge weekend for enormous concerts and ted miko and barry mccall herney are given a double page to wang on about the artists against apartheid deal on Clapham Common last Saturday,

featuring the Style Council, Gil Scott Heron, Billy Bragg, Gary Kemp performing an acoustic version of Through the Barricades, Boy George wearing a coat with Fuck Me Stupid and Suck My Knob written on it, Maxi Priest, Sade, Sting, Hugh Masekela, Elvis Costello, Peter Gabriel, Princess, maxi priest shard a sting hugh massacala elvis costello peter gabriel princess and big audio dynamite they reckon it was dead good while noting that all pop stars can do is keep apartheid in the public eye until the general public demands change can Can I just throw in there, Boy George spelt knob without the K. Well done, sir. I can't stand it when people say knob with a K,

when they're not referring to the thing on a door. Is that OED official, you know, Al, that if you're referring to a penis, there's no K at the beginning? I don't need to look at it, I know. Okay, okay. Alan Sillitoe spelt knob, N-O-B, so that's how I spell it, and it's right.

That is how I remember spelling it as well, when referring to genitals, yeah. Yeah, because in the early 80s, that was the official spelling of Bachelor Boys, the young ones book. That was our knob and stuff throughout. Used quite a few times in that book. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I think everyone took their cues from that. And the other thing that used to piss me off at the time, people spelling Pratt with two Ts. Yes. But Christ, sorry, just out of that thing you read out for that gig, Gary Kemp performing an acoustic version of Through the Barricades.

Fucking hell. The debut performance, Introduced to the World. I just imagine while that gig was going on, little Stephen sat at home with his arms folded. On the next page, Steve Sutherland goes to Wembley to see Wham's final gig and is distinctly unimpressed. Hell yeah.

Who were this Wham anyway? What have they actually done to deserve such devotion? Oh, fucking hell andrew ridge is lush you knob with no k could it be that of all the things live aid achieved its most potent and abiding impact is a public expectation for annual events to partake in nothing was happening here but the illusion of happening the mirageage of change, something to scream at, something to savour. How very, very sad.

Fuck's sake. Yeah, unlike Steve Sutherland to be a troll for no particular reason. I mean, if you're going to slag off Wham!, then OK, that's not impossible, but you need either an interesting argument or a few good jokes you know you can't just say some girls screamed and it wasn't like live aid you know he was always a weird one i steve sutherland like unlike his namesake he was a proper music journalist and a proper music fan but he used to come out with so much bil build almost like he felt he had to up the

ante all the time do you know what i mean but he wasn't quite sure how i remember he used to write all the all those melody maker hype covers in the early just before i joined you'd get the melody and every week there was like a quite new band on the front um with a gushing cover feature by steve sutherland about how they were the most incredible thing you've ever heard. You know, they never were. And I know that's what music papers do, but there was something about the way Sutherland used to do it that used to get my back up.

I mean, he wrote the Suede cover. You know the Suede, best new band in Britain, when they hadn't put a record out or anything like that. He wrote that. And that feature contains possibly the single most embarrassing sentence in the history of music journalism, which I've memorised by heart, which is, their sexuality is quite dark. Brett pouts a lot and spanks his own bottom on stage.

Look out. I mean, you know, like 15 to 20% of everything I say on here is complete bollocks, right? But at least I don't say that. Colin Irwin finds himself at a summer ball in Hampstead to watch the House Martins play a gig they can't get out of. So they start Tory baiting the audience and pretend to be happy that Argentina beat England in the World Cup. Backstage they reveal that they don't know what to make of suddenly

being catapulted into the top 10 and having girls hang about their record label offices and having to sign autographs and are even considering putting out a blatantly uncommercial follow-up to happy hour to put the brakes on their rapid rise to the top. And they want to chop the Royal Family up and sell the bits to Japanese tourists. Well, watch out for those guys. And Carol Clarke sits in the back

garden of Arista Records with a duo back on the comeback trail. Dollar! They tell her about their split in Japan when someone asked david van day to do something he didn't want to do and he immediately bought a ticket home yeah stop being a cunt david probably what they've been doing in the interim which was van day launching a flop solo career and bizarre producing a band from birmingham who acted like animals and pissed the record company off so much they refused to put the record out.

According to Van Day, we'd like to be remembered like Sonny and Cher. Well, they kind of will be, won't they, I guess. Barry and Yvonne. I was thinking the other day, if you had a dollar tribute band, would you call them the Australian dollar? Very good. Or would you just have to go with David Van Day's dollar? Single reviews.

This week's singles are reviewed by Caroline Sullivan, and the crop is so poor that none of them is worthy of the term single of the week white knight by adult net the fall side project band led by brick smith appears to be the best of the lot i've never heard a fall song or i might dislike mark smith more vehemently than i do his consort seems to share his dreary indie characteristics which make me realize how much i'll miss wham but on her own far from hubby's sobering influence bricks makes great exuberant splatters of trash rock and this is her best yet there are many criticisms of marky smith which i would concede are perfectly fair but dreary indie characteristics is one that could only be leveled by someone who has indeed never heard of fall song sullivan lumps together touch and go by emerson lake and pal

coronach by jeff rotol and your wildest dreams by the moody blues and expresses her fears of a prog revival all three singles are more of the same oh the dinosaurs are back in force aren't they jane county's cover of san francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair get some meaty thumbs up you criticize jane county at your peril the letters pages of other mags have been bombarded by communiques from this sensitive artist who takes great umbrage at the merest intimation that a bubblegum Verity releases

might be rather silly things. I'll save Jane 17p fucking hell 17p by pronouncing this more interesting than a Smith single. She said it. But it's a coat down for every beat of my heart by Rod Stewart. Stewart is weakest in his reflective moments,

which surface every few releases as if to atone for the slobbishness of the rest of his stuff. I'd opt every time for the gross exuberance of Baby Jane rather than this. While one may acknowledge that he's got problems like everyone else, as outlined in this single, there is simply no way to feel sorry for him. That's a fucking shit record, that is. Wait till we get to that one.

It just leaves me with an image of Rod Stewart trying to staple a fucking seagull to his crotch in a doomed attempt to fly home. Guile by Bruce and Bongo may well be the number one single in German air, but that butters no parsnips with Sullivan. I listened to this novelty record twice because the press release said its double entendre German title is explained within its 3.55 minutes.

Fourteen choruses of I'm so guile, you're so guile, we're so guile, everybody's guile later, I'm unenlightened, and cross. Jack Bruce's update of I Feel Free is given the shortest of shrift. Ignoble remodel of a splendiferous song. This won't impress the pre-pubes like last week's NME reviewer, who seemed unaware that the thing had an identity

as other than the Renault music. In this week's NME singles review, someone's written that Lady in Red by Kristerberg isn't going to be a hit. Whoa! Their faces must be as red as that lady. This week's charity single, We Got The Love by Jersey Artists For Mankind,

which consists of Bruce Springsteen and his mates plus Frankie Vallee, is the usual epic anthem, but it's pretty stirring stuff. What a disappointment that Jersey Artist for Mankind is American Jersey and not our Jersey. You could have Tony Jacklin

and Major Bennis in it. There's not one, but two singles about Frank Bruno and his upcoming fight with Tim Witherspoon this week. Where's Harry? By The Contenders.

And Bruno? By Johnny Wakelin the Ali the Black Superman slash Inzaier hit maker. Sullivan prefers the latter even though the cover has caused mither in the Bruno camp with the title being printed on the

soles of a boxer's feet implying that Al Frank is doomed. And he was right. Have you ever heard that Johnny Wakelin record, Bruno? No. implying that our Frank is doomed. And he was right. Yeah, yeah. Have you ever heard that Johnny Wakelin record, Bruno? No. No.

Well, one thing you can say for it is it's perfectly downscaled from Inzae. Right, as Frank Bruno was to Muhammad Ali, so Bruno is to Inzae. Love of a Lifetime by Shaka Khan is hampered by being produced by Skriti Palite Bang Zoom Let's Go Go by The Real Roxanne with Howie T is quote a rather average hip hop track and Don't Be Scared of Me by The Blown Monkeys

is a lively fluff thing jazzed up by preposterous warbling and a bleating saxophone. So yeah, fits in with about 90% of the output of the mid-80s, that. Mm, very much so. I didn't know if the singles were shit, you didn't have to give a singles of the week. You know, I had to make things single of the week that weren't that good. Really?

Because sometimes, well, I mean, I usually found a couple. What's the one record that you've given single of the week that is just the biggest load of dog shit oh i've never given one to the one that's absolutely dog shit no but out of the ones you've given single of the week which one was the worst oh fucking hell fucking hell fucking hell did you ever do the singles the week before christmas neil no i don't think i did taylor that was bad because nobody put a record out in December because it's too late for Christmas

and it was just going to get lost so there'd be about like 12 singles in the pile which meant you had to review all of them and I did it once and you had to make one single of the week I presume yeah yeah I did it once my single of the week was a nick haywood solo single in which year uh 95 it was all right yeah it was but it's 1995 and he's

nick haywood yeah i gave underwater love by smoke city single of the week once which is a terrible boring trip-hop tune um but you would this was in the days when you had to do three singles a week oh yeah that started happening that there wasn't just one single of the week that you had like three singles of the week um so i had to choose three and two of them are great and one of them was yeah this underwater love thing which is now just it's the it's a fucking bank commercial theme tune really um but because it wasn't um you know it didn't feature the coronation street cast or something like that which seems to be what is dominating the rest of that week yeah it managed to make it single of the week but i didn't realize we have this option thing is with caroline

sullivan the reason she's not getting on with any of these singles caroline sullivan's very much i could tell from the moment i started reading melody maker she's very pop to mist writer and she was odd oddly isolated at melody maker really um she was very much the person that they gave all the pop stuff to whereas everyone else got on with the important business of writing about the mission so yeah in the lp review section the lead review is given over to revenge by eurythmics and barry mcculhenny seriously reckons it. Revenge, presumably, on all those faint hearts who are standing by with the obituaries after the long sabbatical of last year

and the relative flop of the supposedly crucial comeback single When Tomorrow Comes. Well, the flowers will have to wait a while, thankfully, as Britain's premier double act stomp proudly on with their most accomplished release to date this idea that you know the year before everyone was preparing obituaries for the eurythmics like anyone gave up also this really is like melody maker circa 1986 yeah their most accomplished release to date say what you like about the Eurythmics you have

to admit they're accomplished well what what exactly have they accomplished well they've accomplished this their most accomplished release to date and it may not be your personal taste but you can't deny the accomplishment so no wonder people were still reading the nme which was fucking boring as death around this time carol clark spends a big chunk of a review of every beat of my heart by rod stewart by going on about how great rod stewart is and this album does not disappoint her even though rod has rewritten the killing of georgie and called it from here to eternity sings lines like i met her in a little french cafe legs like a young giraffe jesus come on rod legs like a young giraffe a or calf fuck say yeah i had to go and listen to that to find

out because i thought he's obviously going to say I met her in a calf legs like a giraffe, but no, he doesn't. This is coming from the man who gave us, she was tall, thin and tarty. And she drove a Maserati. Which is like,

you know, come on, you can do it. Anna's done a barbershop raga of the Beatles in my life. It's all far too ordinary, far too clean to be taken seriously at all, but that's the point. With this album, Rod Stewart takes the piss out of himself as well as us, and that I admire.

Brilliant. Brian Case has a listen to Bring On The Night, Sting's live jazz odyssey featuring tracks from Dream Of The Blue Turtles and lesser police LP tracks, and thinks it's a bit of a waste of musicians like Branford Masalis and Kenny Kirkland. DC Lee has attempted to strike out without the help of Paul Weller with her debut LP Shrine, but Will Smith reckons she's dropped a massive bollock i think she's still seeing paul weller at this point

in doing the decent thing and attempting to minimize any predictable associations with chairman weller lee has severed a strong source of songwriting ability. A huge disappointment. Should the World Fail to Fall Apart by Peter Murphy demonstrates that he doesn't know the difference between a shaman and a sham, according to Steve Sutherland. Simon Reynolds thinks Sacrifice by Throbbing Gristle is brilliant, yet somehow pointless. Mark Cordery deems Bakl of Armageddon by Lee Perret

a living dream of a record. And songs from Liquid Days by Philip Glassley's Paul Mathur distinctly unimpressed, even though it's got David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Suzanne Vega and Paul Simon on it. Well, it's telling that that very early simon redwood's review contains the only sentence that we've heard uh which provokes even the gentlest thought yeah yeah just those four words and he's right as well probably gristle haglock kind of pointless by that point in the gig guide well david could have seen Rod Stewart, ELO, Fergal Sharkey,

and the Blown Monkeys at Wembley Stadium. They were doing a benefit for Ronnie Lane, I believe. Erasure and Pete Shelley at the Euston Shore Theatre. That Petrel Emotion at the Mean Fiddler. Madonna in Slag City at the Camden Centre. All the Communards, Sandy Shaw, the Beverly Sisters, Tom Robinson and Sue Pollard at the Gay Pride Festival in Kennington Park, but probably didn't. But he did see James Blood Ulmer at the Electric Ballroom that week because that was his first review for Melody Maker. Oh, wow.

Taylor could have seen Rod Stewart at the Birmingham Odeon, Paws of Men for the Virgin at Mega's Wine Bar, Orphan at the Barrel Organ, or Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames at the Elbow Room. Did you hang out at Mega's Wine Bar, Taylor? No, I can't say I did. Neil could have seen Howard Hughes and the Western Approachers at Buster's, or Napalm Death at the Hand and Heart and fuck all else. Fucking yes.

Napalm Death. Although Lee Dorian from Napalm Death. I've got history with that guy. Oh, really? He threatened to glass me. What? It was several years after he was in Napalm Death and he was in a band called Cathedral.

And this was in the early 90s. This was, I think, just when I'd just started being a music journalist. And I ran into him in a bar in Coventry called Brown's. And I'd never met Lee Dorian before. I've got a lot of friends who were friends with him. And I just thought I'd say hello. But he has this kind of,

I don't know what the sort of class equivalent of gay Dorian is. He could spot I was a posh kid, basically, straight away. He could spot I was middle class. And he was a bit pissed up and leery. And yeah, he just threatened to glass me that night,

which is a shame because quite like a lot of the music... Without even knowing, you wrote for Melody Maker. No, I think it emerged in discussion or something. Oh. No,

not that I was at Melody Maker. That wasn't what pissed him off. What pissed him off was that I was a posh kid. And I went to a certain school in Coventry that he obviously just wanted to glass everyone there. I've got to say, I've known posher.

Yeah, it's comparatively posh. It's comparatively posh for Carve, I guess. But I mean, Hand and Heart has some history for me. It's up Far Gosford Street. It's the pub actually where my band came together. The band that I'm in, we first met up at the Hand and Heart on a night when my mate was putting on Eddie Temple Tudor and had to deal with Eddie Temple Tudor's diabetic coma attack

and getting some sugar super quick. That was the night my band formed. So yeah, Hand of Heart's got some history. Lee Darnian's got some history. Not all of it good. Sarah could have seen the meteors at Leeds Adam and Eve's, the Mekons at Leeds Central Station Hotel, the Incest Brothers at Bradford Royal Standard.

That's inappropriate. I don't think a mum would let go and see the Incest Brothers at Bradford Royal Standard. That's inappropriate. I don't think a mamma let go and see the Incest Brothers. I don't think Sarah nowadays would want to see them. And Pulp at Sheffield Western Park. That's mental, isn't it? Yeah, Stone Rose and the Happy Mondays. They're in the gig guide

this week. They're all about waiting. Al could have seen Easter House at Treadpolle and been forced to having to go to Leicester to see Big Country at De Montfort Hall. And Simon could have seen We've Got A Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It with The Nightingales and

Ted Chippington at Nero's in Cardiff and been glad of it because there's nothing else going on in Wales that week. Terrible. I think the alarm we're having a week off or something. In the letters page, the main topic of conversation this week is Steve Sutherland and the Stud Brothers review of this year's Glastonbury. And Martin P. Johnson of Camberwell is not impressed,

particularly at the fact that they all fucked off a day earlier. I bought Melody Maker purely because it had a so-called review of Glastonbury in it. He writes, double whammy there, so-called, and review in air quotes. Now, I wish I hadn't. The article should have been called Being a Rock Journalist at Glastonbury

because the reviews had as much relevance to the festival as my arse. Yeah. I wonder if that's the one I'm thinking. There was a Stubbrothers review at Glastonbury once that had one of my favourite sentences in it where they were in a car trying to get out and there was all, like, travellers trying to attack their car for some reason.

They were stuck in the mud with all these kind of angry faces around and and they said this has become us and them they are us we are them nice the thing is with with with um glastonbury and things like that very much a very there was always letters in the week after about how in a sense journalists weren't pulling their weight or, in a sense, weren't fully immersed in the festival experience. It always used to happen. You kind of had to prove you were there. And, of course, what that does is it accentuates an awful lot of reviews,

in a sense, where you're at a festival, you deliberately punch yourself up a little bit in the writing that you're in some way perched on a stool, sort of stood there looking at these muddy bastards and you're nothing to do with it because you don't want their mud on your, getting in your creme de menthe. But it used to be that every fucking Glastonbury festival,

there'd be a letter in the letters page, were you really at the same festival? Because, you know, you've got to be a mud-encrusted fucking hippie to have been there at all. Do you think Martin Bell got the same treatment? Oh, you weren't at that war. You were in your hotel watching it out the window. Why didn't you get shot?

Well, these people have gone to a festival, had a bit of a shitty time, they've come back, and I think they perceive journalists as, yes, swanning around backstage and all of that. Which we absolutely were, yeah. Who in their fucking right mind wouldn't? Oh, God, yeah.

I can understand when people got a bit pissed off the year that I missed the minibus to the site or something to get a taxi late and reviewed half the day off the telly. A lot of people were very pissed off with it, but I thought that was a great review. I got a load of grief just for calling Neil, young Neil, fucking old. I mean, come on, grow up, guys.

Yeah, what, no one had ever heard anyone say that before. I couldn't handle it. No, but come on. No, look, Neil, don't do yourself down. Your actual opening line of that review, which for some reason has stuck in my head, was Neil Young might have the same Christian name as me, but I've pissed rusty water out of my arse

that was better than this. I remember that. And kind of my ass that was better than this. I remember that. And kind of, I also suggested, because I think Pearl Jammer is back in band that night, and I suggested that Pearl Jammer sort of sat him in a chair in the middle of the stage and thrown a beach ball to him, sort of back and forth. And I said that he resembled Tandoori Elephant

or something like this. And people fucking wrote in, loads of people really moaned about it. And somebody wrote in saying, you should have sent Alan Jones to review this as he would have given it a proper review. And gratifying, I think it was Andrew Muller doing the replies, he said, I asked Jones about this gig.

He said it was one of the most diabolical things he'd ever seen. So it's nice to get that back up. I love the idea of someone going, give Alan Jones a chance to write that Neil Young and Pearl Jones. Simmo of Leicester asks why they're bothering to cover Zig Zig Sputnik when Lou Reed has shown them how to do it with the track Video Violence

off his latest LP and asks for an interview with him. He is told that Lou Reed doesn't deal with Melody Maker anymore, not since Alan Jones wrote about one of his post-gig strops. Tim Barr of Dunfermline is well dischuffed about Carol Clerk's recent interview with Samantha Fox. Did her facile, star-struck interview really have to include such a desperate admission as Do You Do Ya Wanna Please Me makes more sense to me as a pop record than holding back the years ever will. If I want to read rubbish of this order,

then I'll buy sounds. He's trying to suck up at the same time as having a go. People used to do that a lot. Yeah. Karen Clayton of Montreal has a right go at Jim Shelley for his recent interview with Peter Gabriel, claiming that we all knew a turd like Shelley at school, the kid who ridiculed any classmate with big ears, a stammer or in any way different. as if he can get a copy of the Addicted to Love video, quote,

with just the gorgeous pouting girls in, minus their crooning father, because he keeps putting me off my stroke. Jesus. And Janice Long of Radio 1 asks Melody Maker to ask Martin Degville to return her shorts. 48 pages, 50p. I never knew there was so much in it it it's also the first time we've mentioned

sounds as well isn't it in what regard was sounds held by the colleagues at melody maker feeder club yeah yeah yeah and for readers sounds was a bit dirtier a bit rockier a bit closer to oh yeah that sounds at its uh at Yeah. Basically, if you like metal, but you wanted to read a music paper, you would read sounds. You know, nothing wrong with that. But as writers, people came through sounds. Yeah.

They didn't really stay at sounds. Yeah, I mean, Chris Roberts came from sounds, didn't he? I think, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So what else was on telly this day? Well, BBC One starts the day at 6am with 50 minutes of CFAX AM. Then it's breakfast time with Selina Scott and Guy Mitchellmore. That's followed by the parent programme, which looks at how to cope with, survive and enjoy your under fives, according to Radio Times.

times after another 55 minutes cfax data blast it's play school and then we're wanged over to edge baston for the opening day of the third test between england and india after the news and hokey cokey with carol chell and don spencer it's over to wimbledon for three and a half hours of the ladies semi-final matches then it's regional news in your area. The Laurel and Hardy short Handy Dandy Diary. The Kids Adventure Serial Treasure in Malta. Dungeons and Dragons. And then Peter Duncan joins the Royal Marines for a yomp in Duncan Dares. Then John Peel takes Robbie Vincent out for a bike ride

in Go For It, the health programme. Sue Lawley and Nicholas Wichell do the six o'clock news. And we've just come out of regional news in your area. BBC Two commences with 25 minutes of hardcore Open University action and then closes down for five and a quarter hours before picking up the cricket and tennis right the way through to 10 past eight itv kicks off at five to seven with good morning britain then it's blockbusters the french cartoon series robo story the longest row a documentary about someone rowing across an ocean

narrator by james mason i think then california highways home cookery club about britain tales from fat tulips garden puddle lane and contact after the news and regional news in your area it's something to treasure the royal show take the high road more regional news in your area and then sons and daughters followed by love and laughter then tears and sadness and happiness after a repeat of tales from fat tulips garden it's the moomins nature trail and under the same sky then paul jones and julia mckenzie joining on the ultra-cheap shaking charade show, Give Us A Clue. After the news at 5.45, it's Crossroads, regional news in your area, and they've just started Emmerdale Farm. Channel 4 has had a big doss in bed reading Spare Rib or whatever

until a quarter past two, and then come forward with a repeat of all the red-hot action in the house of lords yesterday with their lordship's house then it's a 1942 film much too shy where george formby plays a painter who gets into some serious shit when an advertising agency buys his head and shoulder portraits of prominent locals and slaps them on nudie bodies after a three stooges short it's the brazilian disco telenovela dancing days then the 1942 western tombstone the town too tough to die followed by the magazine show union world and they've just started channel 4 news this is july

man there's there's not much summer holiday shit going on here, is there? Well, you've got cricket, you've got Wimbledon. I guess that feels somewhat... The thing that leaps out for me is Dungeons & Dragons. I used to love that show. And that show's proved its worth recently. Very useful, citing Dungeons & Dragons when seeking to annoy Games of Thrones fans.

Yes. Yeah, they don't like it when you compare the two. It's a fucking hate it when cricket and tennis run all day. I used to like having the cricket. Yeah, they don't like it when you compare the two. It's a fucking hate it when cricket and tennis are on all day. I used to like having the cricket. Yeah, I like the cricket. I like the cricket.

Especially if you were off school sick. Do you know what I mean? You could just sort of say, if you felt a bit fluey, you could just sit there and there's the sound of the passing cars

and the gentle ripples of applause just wash over you. I would have been very much failing the Tebbit test that day and cheering on Kapil Dev and Gavaskar for India. But Wimbledon can fuck off all the way off. Neil, you know how you always say that somewhere in the world right now someone's selecting A Maid in England by Elton John and choosing to play it?

Yeah. I get the same feeling about people who wake up in the morning and go, fucking yes, Wimbledon's on. There's tennis on the telly all day and I'm going to watch all of it. I just don't get it. I've got to give you a game out.

I like tennis and I play it. I like playing tennis. I just fucking hate watching it. This was a golden age though, 86. You've got Lendl. Imagine us two. I don't know what you're like at tennis. Imagine me playing tennis then, man.

It wouldn't be good. I do take it seriously. I've got to say, I'm not up for just a knockabout out. It'd be three sets. Why am I not surprised by that? Do you grunt? No, I don't. I don't grunt.

Oh, man. Do you make any noises? No, no. I don't actually. That't cry. Oh, man. Do you make any noises? No, no. I don't actually. That's the only point of tennis. The only point of tennis is the ability to go in public. Yeah, like Lulu. Yes, exactly like Lulu.

No, I'll say get the fuck in if I get a shot in, but no, I don't make noises. But that was a golden era in 86. You've got Lendl. Everything's exciting. Gabriella Sabatini. It's nice. Do you not even like

Wimbledon when it's a plucky Brit up against some hard faced Eastern European tennis robot well everyone likes that

when the plucky Brit gets completely annihilated and Henman Hill falls silent alright then Pop Crazy I do believe that this table has been laid

it's a very messy lay we got there though we got there the knives and forks aren't exactly I do believe that this table has been laid. It's a very messy lay. We got there, though. We got there. The knives and forks aren't exactly aligned straight. No. And there's a few stains on the tablecloth, but we'll ignore that and we'll come back tomorrow for the next part of this episode of Chart Music

when we get properly stuck into this episode of Top of the Pops. So, thank you very much, Taylor Parks. All right. God bless you, Neil Kulkarni. Thanks, man. My name's Al Needham, and by God, if you don't stay pop-crazed, I'm going to have a fucking word with you. Chart music.

GreatBigOwl.com Welcome to All Rather Mysterious, the podcast that aims to unlock the mysteries of the past with the key of fact. My name is John Rain. My name is Eleanor Morton. My name is David Reed. Please join us as we present to you mysteries that have baffled the world. You had any noises? What about a door creaking? No, you don't have to do it.

That weird ka-dunk that lights going off makes for some reason in films. All rather mysterious.