Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #48 (Part 1): 24th January 1980 – Imagine If Charles Manson Had Heard This

Episode Date: February 10, 2020

Chart Music #48: 24th January 1980 – Imagine If Charles Manson Had Heard ThisThe latest episode of the podcast which asks: Matchbox – big elderly Ted-racists, or just really keen on The Dukes Of Hazzard?It’s a long-overdue return to the Pic n’ Mix counter of TOTP, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and this time we’ve pulled out a plum from the early days of the new decade, which is now FORTY BASTARD YEARS AGO. Mike Read has been quarantined to the balcony, resplendent in a clankening of badges, and he is poised to drop an episode shot through with Eighventies goodness.Musicwise, well: Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes mark time before going off to be Stunt Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman. The Nolans drop the Staying Alive of Mum-Disco.  Legs and Co have a bit of a float-around to the last knockings of Beardo Disco. Bob Geldof looks like Richard E Grant playing Rambo. Suzi Quatro has a whinge about her Walter the Softy-like boyfriend. David Van Day shoots John Lennon in the back a full eleven months before Mark Chapman gets the chance. The Specials con you into thinking every gig you’re going to go to when you grow up is going to be an incredible experience.  Sheila and B Devotion (and more importantly, Chic) kick in the afterburners, and we get the First New Number One Of The Eighties.Simon Price and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham  for a comprehensive dismantling of early ’80, veering off on such tangents as Space Oppression, DAAANGERFREAKS, caravan warehouse-owning lions, The Great Jumpsuit Shortage, another examination of I’m Your Number One Fan, Nazi double basses, and Colleen Nolan’s unfortunate teenage crush. ALL THE SWEARING.Video Playlist |  Subscribe |  Facebook  | TwitterSubscribe to us on iTunes here. Support us on Patreon here.PART 2 OUT TOMORROW - AND THE ENTIRE EPISODE GETS RELEASED ON FRIDAY!This podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. 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. 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 bottom of the sofa on a random episode of Top of the Pops.

I'm your host, Al Needham, and with me today are Simon Price. Hello. And Taylor Parks. Hello. Boys, the pop things, the interesting things, That's what I want to hear about. I'm all right. I'm just continuously infuriated by the insistence of my local tube station on commissioning installations by the kind of artists whose work, to use the term loosely, consists of them writing a sentence and sticking that on the wall.

It's not art is it it's just a sentence which invariably is crass and shit and aside from anything else i take it as a professional insult because we're talking about the kind of you know silly slogans and random thoughts and scraps of like half-baked sub poetry that i or or you or any other half decent writer could puke up between courses on a yeah overcast thursday and as the sort of thing you rackle out on facebook first thing in the morning and go no that shit was deleted instantly worse and as an actual writer and a penniless writer at that, I object to it. I say, mind your own business. I don't pretend that I can draw. So you overprivileged bastards keep off my lawn because unfortunately for me, I lack the necessary upper middle class arrogance to think, hey, it's all creativity, isn't it? It's all creativity, isn't it? No limits on my self-expression.

And do the equivalent, which would be to draw a stick man and a house with a curly line coming out of the chimney in biro on a bit of paper, blue tack it up on the wall and say, all right, London Transport, that's £25,000, please. And I hope that penniless, underappreciated painters have to walk past it every day and look at it and go oh isn't he a good writer yeah fucking shameless cunts seriously i see go back to your million pound garrets and pretend to starve yeah no i feel your pain there taylor the one thing that really fucked me off last decade, amongst all the other thousands or so things,

was coffee shops with the fucking A-boards just writing shit on them. The day that we, as a people, start picking up those A-boards and throwing them through the coffee shop window is the day that we'll finally start to be free. Fuck them. I know exactly what Taylor means, right? It's just as well Taylor doesn't live in Brighton, for a number of reasons, actually. But particularly on Brighton Beach, just above Madeira Drive,

on the kind of concrete wall, this inscription in huge, I think they're copper letters, that some artist was commissioned to put there maybe about 15 years ago. And it says, I have great desire. my desire is great that's it and it's been there for fucking ever and it just makes me furious every time i see it yeah it's no a finger of fudge is just enough to give yourself a thrill is it really simon you're not been on for a while and that's wrong how you been yeah all right um a bit of turmoil going on i've got to move house uh which i yeah it's a

total pain in the ass i really didn't want to but the landlord is selling from underneath us which is you know just one of those things just you know the the uncertainty of being one of the renting millions um but yeah we found a new place um pretty much immediately but it's more expensive um which is a total ball ache um but the good news is and i needed this good news because of the more expensive new gaff um i've got a book contract so you know at last yeah after 20 years out of the game i'm back in the book game good lord um yeah i'm not allowed to say what it's about but it's a it's about a band um a very famous band not one that i'm particularly associated with i'll say that but you know right i'm i'm glad of the work and uh hopefully the first of

several let's say that because um the way music journalism is going at the moment i think that's probably the most solid way forward is just to churn out books you know well good luck with that simon yeah cheers man yeah i actually watched the story of 1989 last night oh yeah well done mate yeah yeah i didn't watch it when it was on because i was around my mums and i just thought oh no i can't i can't be doing with this can't be doing with my mum saying oh you're not holding your mouth right and yeah what a fat cunt i am nowadays is the main takeaway i got from that it was well i wouldn't say that but quite horrifying at least you didn't get your cock out in front of a distinctive fireplace you know so small mercies small mercies yeah because you thought i was

sean rider didn't you simon well i was just scrolling through it and there was this bald bloke and i thought al doesn't look that bad sure surely. And then again, at the same time, Sean Ryder sat at home going, fucking hell, look at the state of me. I didn't even know I wore glasses nowadays. Poor son. Yeah, I hope it's the first of many for you. I hope you're on a few more of these, you know,

story of the year going forward. Well, I hope all the members of Chart Music are on them. You know, not just me. I mean, the downside was, yeah yeah i look like a barrage balloon and my best lines were left on the cutting room floor as they always are in always the way yeah the upsides were i got the word rambling on bbc4 for the first time ever uh and you could see my teapot on the shelf that's shaped like the queen's head that i got from qvc for a fiver years ago everyone talks about that teapot,

so I was glad it got a bit of a shine on the telly. You're on a one-man mission, aren't you, to popularise Nottingham dialect around the UK, as well as Nottingham kind of earthenware, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, the thing about that teapot is, everyone thinks it's brilliant, but then they get really disappointed

when they find out that the tea doesn't come out of her nose like he should do. Oh, fuck's sake. When I got it about, God, nearly 20 years ago, I was going to turn it into a bong, but I just couldn't be bothered in the end. I wish I'd have done now. That would have been good. And the most important thing, of course, was it had I'll Need Him Chalk Music Podcast, which is what I wanted.

So, yeah, punch the ear when that came out. And it helped us get to number one in the music commentary charts for the UK on Apple. So yeah, the job was a good one. Well played. Yeah, so hurrah for us. Yeah, well, I wouldn't want anyone to think that I had no extracurricular activities going on

or indeed curricular activities going on, or indeed curricular activities going on. So I'm going to plug my crowdfunder. I'm looking to crowdfund a movie project, trying to persuade Sean Connery out of retirement to play James Bond one last time uh in uh Never Say Never Again 2 um right title is uh full title is Never Say Never Again 2 colon Never Say Never Say Never Again Again um don't tell Mr Broccoli but I think we can make this work I mean it won't have the big budget obviously or the glamorous locations but I think we can make this work. I mean it won't have the big budget obviously

or the glamorous locations but I don't think people want that anymore. Times are changing. There's a whole new generation out there. You've got to get with it. I've already sounded out a few potential stars.

We're looking at some very well known names.'m uh hoping to cast bend over as blowfeld um currently in talks with uh the fantastic mr tumble um for the role of jaws very popular with the younger set i'm told told. For the love interest, that all-important Bond girl, well, let's just say for now, it's a mystery what that Bond girl is going to be. But I can tell you that information wants to be free. When it is, I'm sure there'll be some thunder in the mountains.

Oh, man. Yeah, well, if any of the listeners want to... You're going to turn the movie industry inside out with that. So, you know, if any of the listeners want to chuck in a couple of thousand, we'll put the link on the website. Yeah. And, you know, if it doesn't come off, at least you contributed to something which could have been great.

As Mr Bond himself would say, be sheeing you. And talking about collecting the crumbs off the table of the general public, you know that we don't do anything in chart music until we stop, drop a knee, and give thanks to the Pop Craze Patreon. Here are a list of the people who joined us since last I read out a list of Patreon people. In the $5 tier we have Rory McNamara Brian Smith Alex McKinnon

Peter Hedden Robin Karen Keire Joe O'Donnell Paul Whitelaw Nick Duffe Johnny Keire Slang King

Doug Grant Matt Verrill Christopher Richard Hansen and Gary Lactis and the Beast must die. In the $3 section, we have Ray McNamara, Ian Laver, Dean Minchin, Tom Apps,

Andrew Lowe, Bobby Sutton, Lisa Cassaday, Ashley Davis, Mike Atkinson, and Fenton. Oh, thank you so much. You lovely, lovely people. Yeah, legends, a lot of you. Can't you see? It's the chemistry. You really must agree that together chart music and the Pop Craze

Patreons are beautiful. Beautiful. And of course, one thing the Pop Craze Patreons get to do is to rig the latest chart music top ten Hit the music We've said goodbye to Pig Wanker General Quo Wadi Wadi

And Taylor Parks' 20 Romantic Moments Which means four up, three down And three new entries A new entry at number 10 for the old sailor. Another new entry at number nine, ATV eyes. Up two places from number 10 to number eight, working class youth of Newcastle. Last week's number two has dropped four places to number six, Lesbian

Doll Factory. Up one place to number five, Bummer Dog. Yes! Up from number eight to number four, here comes Jizzle. Yes!

Into the top three and it's a one-place jump for Dave D, Creeper, Twat, and Cunt. Last week's number one has dropped down to number two, Jeff Sex, which means... This week's chart music number one, the highest new entry, Noel Edmonds' Gas Disco. Oh, man, a new era has arrived on Chart Music. Yeah, it's Chart Music, a new decade. New entries, the old sailor, obviously, is the old sailor. ATV eyes, what are they all about? Yeah, just ten minutes of cat noises.

And Noel Edmonds' Gas Disco, the new number one. That's intriguing, isn't it? I reckon it's kind of like a novelty house, a novelty rave record in the vein of Mr Wazzo Flat Eric, you know that thing. Steampunk house.

Oh, fucking hell, that's going to happen this decade, isn't it? So if you want all of this episode right now without someone telling you to buy shit buy our shit by taking your little fingers over to the keyboard and tapping out patreon.com slash chart music go on do it so pop craze youngsters this episode takes us all the way back to january the 24th 1980 which is shockingly 40 years old man that's terrible isn't it jesus yeah we are now as far away from this episode of top of the pops as this episode of top of the pops was from the beginning of rationing in the uk the first ever tom and jerry cartoon and the release of Top of the Pops was from the beginning of rationing in the UK. The first ever Tom and Jerry cartoon and the release of Gone With the Wind.

In the immortal words of Leonard Rossiter in Rising Tap, been on rations ever since. Yes, no such thing as the permissive society. I should know, I've been looking for it. So yeah, why are we doing this one? Well, I just thought, you know, it's a new decade. It's a fresh start. It's a turn of a page. Fuck that. Let's go back to the aventures because i like it there well who doesn't you won't get any complaints from me yeah except the unemployed so yeah we've done recently we've

done 1979 we've done 1981 we praise them to the skies and you know we touched upon the reasons why 1980 weren't quite on that level so i thought let, let's go back and examine it with a BDI. In a way, as we'll see, January 1980 is basically a continuation of 79. Yes. It's a lot of the same good stuff. Thankfully, no Christmas shit, though. True, yeah. I think there was a bit of a sort of um backlash against all the exciting

new stuff that happened in 79 in 80 where to some extent particularly in terms of the number one records the sort of mums and dads and the grands and granddads took control again with some big kind of uh middle middle of the road number ones if i'm not mistaken it was things like um crying by don mclean was that year, was it? And There's No One Quite Like Grandma and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, there was a lot of that kind of very saccharine, middle-of-the-road stuff that had us, you know, pop-crazy youngsters as we were at the time, tapping our feet with impatience, waiting for something more exciting.

Yeah, in every sense, but the one we're considering today at 1980 was one of the bleakest years on record wasn't it do you know what i mean it's like in its way yeah bleaker than 1975 um possibly less bleak than 1340 but we can't be absolutely sure. And at least back then... People were happy what they had. Yeah, you know, they just, you know, they're happy with their life. At least in 1340 there'd have been a bit of fresh air. But yeah, I remember 1980. And even at the time, even as an eight-year-old kid,

you know, sort of full of all the joys of childhood, I remember thinking, it's a bit shit, isn't it? It's a bit bleak. Things are a bit bleak. I remember it being a really cold winter. I think we talked about that before, actually. Yes. And, you know, this episode is bang in the middle of that winter.

Yeah. I remember writing an essay about the special second album for Melody Maker, for that book we gave away called Unknown Pleasures. And in that that I went on quite a bit about just the general sort of bleakness of 1980 and you know there was the Russians invading Afghanistan and all that kind of stuff and unemployment was starting to kick in big time under Thatcher and yeah there was there was just this sense of everything turning turning wrong I tell you what it makes me think of um you know um the film boogie nights

uh there's um they basically use the tip over from the 70s into the 80s as this kind of plot device this is kind of watershed um in the film the new year's eve party is essentially this moment where from then on everything starts going wrong the porn industry shifts from cine to video and everyone starts getting hooked on cocaine and it all spirals downwards and in my own innocent 12 year old way i i think and i hope i'm not sort of projecting backwards but i i think i felt a bit like that i had mixed feelings the 1970s was home as long as the year began with 197 i knew where i was you know yeah it felt more like a leap into an uncertain future, even than moving into the 21st century.

Moving into the 21st century, I wasn't bothered, but there was something about moving into the 80s, which was kind of scary, also exciting, but it's like we're not at home anymore. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I remember being really upset that it wasn't going to be the 70s anymore. Yeah.

Because, like you, I was very comfortable in it. I mean, my memory of New Year's Eve 1979 that it wasn't going to be the 70s anymore. Yeah. Because like you, I was very comfortable in it. I mean, my memory of New Year's Eve 1979 was my dad coming back from a New Year's Eve do at the pub and it was the one and only time I ever seen him drunk enough to vomit in the toilets. You're not going to forget that in a hurry. But luckily, the music's good. Yeah.

This is a decent episode, isn't it? No spoilers, but there's not a lot of shit in this episode. Yeah. I'd give it a good sort of solid 7 or 8 out of 10 in terms of the content. Yeah. Yeah, you're a discerning man, aren't you, Simon, when it comes to this sort of thing? I am, particularly for this era, yeah. So let's get stuck into it.

Hello, my darlings. It's me, Anna Mann, actress, singer, welder. Gotta have a backup. I've been in everything, my darlings, and I've been cut from most things. However, I will not be cut from one thing, and that is my own podcast, Talking to Actors with Anna Mann, where I meet those rarest of creatures, the actors. That's Talking to Actors.

Look out for the new series starting soon on The Great Big Hour. So, what's in the news this week? Well, Andrei Sakharov has been arrested in Moscow and has been exiled to Gorky for six years. The official Iranian news agency has claimed that the Shah has been placed under house arrest in Panama. Jimmy Carter does a bit of fish shaking at Iran over the hostage crisis and has a go at the USSR for invading Afghanistan in his State of the Union address. Six American diplomats pretend to be Canadian so they can be smuggled out of Tehran. The merchant ship Athena B is beached on the sands of Brighton

and the local electric railway starts operating out of season so the locals can have a gosset it. I didn't know about that. That's amazing. 23.5 million people watch Live and Let Die on ITV, the highest ever audience for a film on television ever world in action broadcast an episode claiming that louis edwards the chairman of man united has made under the counter payments to parents of promising players and has cut shady deals with local councils to provide meat for school dinners before yeah! Before he had a chance to sue Granada, he died a month later. The Rubik's Cube is introduced to the UK

at the British Toy and Hobby Fair in Earls Court. Where's Captain Cook by Spiz Energy and Dirk Where's White Socks by Adam and the Ants are the number one single and LP in the first ever UK independent charts but the big news this week is that Paul McCartney is about to be released from a Tokyo prison after nine days after customs officers found eight ounces of weed in Wings' tall luggage gee you must remember that yeah yeah in fact it fact, it became this kind of comedy thing. It was permanently associated with him.

I remember when Pipes of Peace came out, we all humorously sang, Smoke the Pipes of Pot. Yes. Because that's all anybody my age knew about Paul McCartney is to be done for drugs. I do recall quite a heated conversation on the school playground round about this time

over whether the army should be sent in to get him out. I mean, this was before the SAS, because it would have been oh yeah, send the SAS in, they'll get him out easily. But yeah, it was not a good year to be an ex-beagle, was it really? Terrible. They had a shocker, a lot of them, yeah.

The other thing that jumped out on that is the independent shots, because, you know, at this time i was starting to dip into the music press and the idea that there was this chart and there would be at least 40 bands 40 more bands you've never heard of and you just be looking and going oh what what the fuck are they like well that was a great thing about smash hits um they yes they had that page bits um which was sort of like a gossip and that and then they had independent bits and it would have the independent charts, and it would basically be kind of sort of John Peel festive 50 type stuff. And you'd look up and down it, and these bands like Swell Maps or whoever,

you had no idea what they sounded like. But, you know, your mind would start racing and trying to imagine. It was an education, really. Yes. The thing that jumped out at me about that little rundown was the rubik's cube i mean who remembers the rubik's cube nobody nobody ever talks about the rubik's cube these days do you know what i would do right if i was making a cd of the best of the 80s i reckon right i would put i put a rubik's cube on the front because that would no yeah and if i was doing

an 80s club night let's say you know yeah like a rubik's cube flying towards you from space because that's such a forgotten thing it's a forgotten memory but it would really be hauntological and trigger so many proustian memories in people yeah sarcasm lowest form of wit on the cover of melody maker this week the pretenders on the cover of smash hits sparks the number one lp in the uk is pretenders by the pretenders and over in america the number one single is rock with you by michael jackson and the number one lp is the wall by pink floyd so, what were we doing in January of 1980? The thing is, we've covered this era, the late 70s, early 80s,

which I prefer to call the late 70s, early 80s, a few times. But I'm aware, also, that we have lots of new listeners via our hookup with the lovely people at Grey Big Owl and being on platforms like Acast and so on

um so for you guys i'll just very quickly recap and you know apologies for repetition to everyone else but i was being educated slash incarcerated for free um oh lucky me in a fifth rate boarding school in sussex where my mum had landed a job uh we did not come from money but you know that was the whole deal i had to go with it um and it was such a third well third rate fifth rate i said i'm going to stick to fifth um it let's say fourth okay go forth it was uh it looked like a kind of minor stately home in fact um it was uh later used in an episode of only fools and horses as a location as uh you know kind of stately home. Not the chandelier one?

It might have been the chandelier one. Cool! Anyway, it was definitely used in Only Fools and Horses. But it was a place where, just to give you an example of the kind of things that went on, a maths teacher called Mr. Willie would stand and watch us shower after games with an inscrutable smirk on his face,

just to make sure that we cleaned ourselves properly, of course. It's a place where, as I mentioned before, you'd be beaten for wearing the wrong colour plimsolls in the wrong part of the grounds. And where all our letters home were pre-read and initialed by a teacher, just to make sure we didn't make any spelling mistakes and when i tried to sneak an unchecked letter through to my dad telling him how brutal it all was i was beaten for that but on the plus side i had a year's head start in french and i learned a bit of latin

uh so you know uh swings and roundabouts uh we weren't allowed to watch top of the pops so um a lot of these episodes that you know we look at from this time i have no actual memory of of them uh pop music was essentially bad it was like like we will rock you the musical or footloose or something you know um my my main contact with pop music was secretly recording top 40 on a radio cassette on a sunday and reading smash hits and at the time this episode was broadcast i'd have been in rehearsals for the school play, which was The Tempest. And I was in the lead role as Prospero. So like a middle-aged man. So which, you know, I was 12 years old, required a bald wig and lots of prosthetic makeup.

I could probably just carry it off now without any. But the thing is, I was... Now all your pals are overthrown. Well done, mate. Yeah. I did The Tempest a year later. All right. now without any but um the thing is i i would say all your pals are overthrown well done mate yeah i did i did the tempest a year later all right well as mentioned before who were you who did you play trinculo the jester were you of course you were that suits your personality yes yeah well i was struggling not to stutter through my lines you see because i had a speech defect exacerbated by being turned into a nervous wreck by the very teacher the headmaster's

son who was directing the play and who once hit me so hard around the head that i thought my head was coming off and i actually had to rewrite shakespeare in my head because the word i struggle with the most was the and any sentence that started with the i had to sort of rearrange the syntax of it so that the came a bit later in the sentence. And it took quite a lot of doing. But anyway, yeah, you know, rose-tinted spectacles, golden years, jumpers for goalposts, marvellous stuff. And you know who else was in the Tempest round about this time, don't you?

Go on. Playing Miranda. I'm not Toya. Oh, yes, Toya. Jesus Christ. That's a crowdfund there. Me, you and Toya doing The Tempest. Hell yeah.

Taylor was Caliban. What, 1980? Yeah, I was just walking around sounding like Gemma from West Bromwich out of the Oakham Customer Testimonial, which is the best thing on YouTube. Really? Yeah, a masterclass in effortless spontaneity um you'll know what i mean if you see it um in fact i'd video playlist getting a bit getting a bit self-conscious about my uh yim yam accent that's uh endured through years after neil of all people chided me last time for this yeah problem is i'm a massive accent sponge myself um so day

to day when i'm walking around like where i live you know i sound like a costamonger um it's only when i get on air and i'm talking to people from the midlands that it slips back within two seconds you know it's like good it's like having sort of hs2 vowels zooming up and down the proposed route between euston and new street um but it's what happens when you have a a persistent regional accent which midlands sort of is you know what i mean because those vowels it's like chocolate on corduroy it's hard to get them off um so uh in in 1980 did you you basically sounded like jess phillips who i think is a breath of fresh air i i think she she's an ordinary person and she talks to ordinary people in a language they understand which is also what i've always

thought about you see i didn't because i was one of these people like these people used to laugh at me when I was a kid for not having a sufficiently strong West Midlands accent. Can you imagine what happened when we moved down south? Oh, the irony of it. But yeah, the thing is, I do still have a bit of that accent, but not that much in day-to-day life because the truth is, when you've lived in London for more of your life, you start to sound like that if your day-to-day existence involves being with people, right?

You know when you get like actors and writers and stuff who've like lived in London for fucking 40 years but they still sound pure Doncaster and people talk about it like as if they're like working class heroes or something no it's because they don't mix with local people right because if you spend all your time on buses and in boxing gyms and down the one-stop shop and on top of roofs dancing with chimney sweeps precisely you're gonna sound like a native really soon it's like you know i hate this uh you know he's a true geordie hasn't lost his accent after 30 years in hampstead it's like oh what an inspiration i lost mine in london you know uh you know i've been away for so long now i only sound welsh when i'm pissed really oh i'd love to hear that suddenly i'm basically

ruth maddock out of heidi high when i'm pissed you know yeah well i was still in the first year at top valley comprehensive and still fucking hating it just didn't i didn't adopt a big school very well at all i didn't like yeah i just didn't like anything about it i didn't like the way the toilet stank of stale fags i didn't like the fact that there were people about twice my size elbowing me out the way on the for rights to the tennis court at playtime didn't like the fact that i couldn't call it playtime anymore and i had to call it break and just just fucking hated it basically just thought well fuck this i'll just hang this out for five years and i became a full-on pop kid instead i just absorbed myself in all that i was at that stage where i was absolutely fucking inhaling issues of smash hits uh i became that kid who knew all the lyrics to all the songs

had to know everything about every band that came along whether i liked them or not i'd also acquired a transistor radio at this point which was fucking brilliant because it just basically meant i could just go off on my own on a break and just ram it in my tab for a bit and there are certain songs one of which comes up on this episode where i can remember the exact spot where i was when i heard it on the radio yeah and because it was a radio you really had to strain to listen it makes you appreciate what was being played more it's funny how we we all romanticize hearing things out of a tinny transistor and yet we get really pissed off at the sound of teenagers playing music out of a shitty phone.

And it's really just the same thing, isn't it? So music-wise, I mean, I was still at that point where I was open to anything I liked the sound of. I hadn't picked a side yet. And I was also in the phase of still buying the number one single unless it was really shit yeah i just bought my first vinyl lp which of course was one step beyond that was mine as well my first my first by a band as opposed to you know film yeah yeah it was either that or the specials i was 11 so it was obviously going to be madness this was the exact time when all the kids on my street suddenly turned up at my door and they'd all just gone out and decided to get skinhead haircuts.

They all turned up in single file. Single file, sort of like leaning backwards, doing a weird pelvic marching. So I was toying with the idea of doing that. But then I thought, no, my mum will fucking batter me. So I didn't. Just allowed time to take its course. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I mean, this is a time when you're

starting to think about picking a side you know there's a lot of things out there but part of me thinks did i did i fall in with the herd there but a bigger part of me thinks no man this is what i fucking liked at the time absolutely right yeah i mean i i picked a side i picked the same side that you did but perhaps also like you i was reluctant to let go of the old side and um and i've mentioned this before but i can actually of the old side and um and i've mentioned this before but i can actually sort of visually prove this with something i've got from that era which is my stamp album oh yeah i was a stamp collector but i've got madness one step beyond stenciled on one side and abba vu le vu on the other so yeah i wasn't letting it go and

and i i did that thing of just buying number one as well like like you did i even bought i guess it's a couple of years earlier, but I bought Three Times a Lady by the Commodores, which is like a weird thing for a sort of 10-year-old kid at the time to be buying. But yeah, I just had this idea that it was almost a matter of record that I had to, no pun intended, that I had to sort of preserve the records that were officially the best. And if something was number one, that meant it was officially the best. Yeah, I mean, I bought Another Brick in the Wall.

And I look back now and I think, why? Why the fuck did you do that? It's actually, it's a great record. Well, yeah, yeah. And it's anti-school. So yeah, it spoke to my heart at the time. Which was the last number one of the 70s.

That's the one we just left behind, isn't it? Yeah. So as is the style of late, we're going to rip open is the style of late we're going to rip open a box or two and we're going to pull out an issue of the music press from this week and this week i've got the enemy of january the 26th 1980 shall we leave through chaps no yeah go on on the cover the pretenders in the news the top news story, of course, is the McCartney bust. NME report that customs officials were alerted by Paul McCartney's

listlessness at the airport. And since being incarcerated, he's been allowed bread and coffee instead of rice and green tea. He can only get his thumb up to, like, 45-degree angles. Meanwhile, Motown have announced a swathe of concert appearances in the UK to commemorate their 20th anniversary.

Diana Ross will be coming in April. Stevie Wonder's first UK gigs in ages are being firmed up and dates for Billy Preston and Sireta are being set up within the month in the wake of With You I'm Born Again becoming a massive hit over here. It's currently at number two. However, Marvin Gaye's UK tour, which was supposed to have kicked off last weekend,

was cancelled at short notice after his second wife ran off with Teddy Pendergrass, leaving him, quote, a physical and emotional wreck poor marvin you wouldn't think teddy pendergrass could run very fast to be fair but yeah what we one thing or another elvis costello has played a secret gig his first in ages in a pub in hammersmith for 300 winners of an enemy competition after the original prize a copy of his 1976 demo tape was withdrawn at the last minute. He dedicates Accidents Will Happen to Paul McCartney. Finn Lizzer have announced the permanent replacement for Gary Moore. It's Snowy White, who was taken over from filling guitarist Midge Ur. Dex's Midnight Runners are about to

start the first leg of a massive UK tour, with 26 dates already lined up with more to follow. Meanwhile, the latent buzzards have reformed, and Spizz Energy have changed their name to Athletico Spizz.

Wasn't it actually Athletico Spizz 80? Yes. That was the full name. That's what they turned out to be, yeah. Yeah, people were quite excited about this whole new era thing, weren't they? I know that Mr Spizz changed his name at the drop of a hat, but even so. And the fabulous poodles have put out a limited edition pressing of their new LP, Think Pink, in a 24-inch square cover. Limited edition. Imagine getting that fucker back on the bus.

In the interview section, well, the pretenders are given three pages and an interview with Paul Morley, who says that Brass in Pocket is going to be a great way to remember January of 1980. But James Honeyman Scott implies that the band are already worried that they're going to be turned into the next Blondie. They wish. Chrissie Hynde has a bit of a strop when she arrives late

and realises Honeyman Scott has been talking about her behind her back, but cheers up when she realises the hotel room they've booked for the interview is en suite and she can nick a bar of soap. She'd rather not go on top of the pops later that evening to mime a song she's been doing for a year, but says it's quite fun when you actually do it. What a ray of sunshine Chrissie Hynde always

was. Meanwhile, Damon Edge pops over to the NME offices to tell Max Bell all about Chrome, the San Franciscan electronic duo he's part of, and talks about their new concept album Room 101. Adrian Thrills meets the Body Snatchers in a pub in Camden Town

and finds out that they started with an ad in the NME entitled Rude Girls Wanted to Form Band which led to three months of heavy breathing phone calls. She also says that some people at their gigs boo them when they play The Boiler and they're looking forward to their support slot on the forthcoming Selecta tour and putting out their debut single

Let's Do Rocksteady. Yeah, people booing The Boiler because the audiences actually agree with Rape. They think it's brilliant and they don't know why this band is slagging it off. And they devote eight pages to a history of music films, including reproductions of the posters of Rock Around the Clock and Loving You.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. In the single reviews, well, Charles Shaw Murray is at the controls and his single of the week is Disgracing the Family Name by Scarfish, the Chicago punk band with a cross

dressing lead singer. A supremely annoying record that would make marvellous radio made by the person least likely to be the next Debbie Harry, says CSM. It's also a thumbs up for New Adventures and their cover of Come On, and Matchbox's cover of Buzz Buzzer Diddle It, which is a seriously exuberant noise, and he also praises Loves Out to Lunch by Annette Peacock. However, it's a coat down for Loco Mosquito by Iggy Pop. Oh God, what's the old fool up to now, says CSM. He starts off crazily intoning the opening lines of Shirley Ellis' The Clapping Song,

and then the band kicks into, yes, that catchy West Indian shuffle beat. The Plastic Age by The Buggles and At The Edge by Stiff Little Fingers get a thumb at right angles, like Paul McCartney. The former is an intriguing ditty in the best electropop vein, but if we are living in the plastic age, this record is part of the problem rather than the solution. While the latter is a bunch of well-meant and well-performed noise, but the song isn't deserving of all that energy.

There's a ton of ska and two-Tone influence singles to wade through, obviously, including Spider-Man by The Acrylics, which features Roland Gift on vocals, but isn't a cover of the TV-themed tune.

Why the fuck didn't anybody do that? That would have been mint. Bloody hell. Yeah. And Trouble by 999, but it's Chatty Chatty by Toots and the Maytals,

which stand head and shoulders above everything else. Murray is exasperated by Nantucket's sleigh ride by Quartz, which the pop-craze youngsters know as the theme from Weekend World. Quite why anyone, especially a heavy mechelban from Brum, would want to record a note-per of mountains incredibly boring ode to the joys of hunting sperm whales is a matter of purist conjecture he says and he thanks the Jags for lending him an amp once but slags off woman's world for being yet another example of shaking

Costello in the vein of back of my hand we to talk about Nantucket's sleigh ride. I mean, he never appears on Top of the Pops, but fuck me, the theme from Weekend World, that introduced a lot of pop-crazed youngsters to the world of rock, didn't it? It did, and it's also no wonder that we all grew up in absolute terror of this kind of apocalyptic-seeming adult world

that we were growing into. It's absolutely terrifying. I always used to like to imagine Len Murrayray and jim pryor and brian wolden just headbanging at the beginning just as the credits ended in the lp review section the lead review is given over to adventures in utopia by utopia which is todd rundgren's side project and Paul Rambrall doesn't know what to make of it as it's a soundtrack for a video that might be coming out on video disc but no one's sure yet but it sounds nice

Graham Locke gets stuck into Stations of the Crass by Crass and spends half of his review coating them down for being set in their ways wasting their time having a go at the music press and for thinking it's still 1977 the mafia stole my guitar the last lp alex harvey released in his lifetime isn't an even but likable return to form according to paul denoya but ufo are dismissed by peterskin as mediocre alchemists and their new lp no place to run sounds like the progressive nonsense you used to hear in college halls of the early 70s useless feeble ordinary goes the headline think about it is that really the best they could do in the gig guide well david could have seen

phil daniels and the cross at the clapham 101 club suzy quattro at the venue dex's midnight runners at the music machine def leppard at the marquee or barclay james harvest at hammersmith odian but probably didn't taylor could have seen The Clinic at the Mercat Cross, UFO at the Birmingham Odeon, Gang of Four and the O'Pears at Birmingham University, or The Stains at the Sheldon Club. Neil could have seen UB40 at the Lafayette in Wolverhampton, The Details at Manchester Poly,

UFO again at Coventry Theatre. Or gangsters at the City Centre Club. Gangsters, wonder what they sounded like. Sarah could have seen the Piranhas at Hull University. Tom Robinson's Sector 27 at the Limit in Sheffield. Toyah at Doncaster Institute. The Clash at Sheffield Top Rank. Or oral sex in the Bradford College

Vaults Bar. Al could have seen Ossie Beeser at Leicester Polytechnic, the drug squad at the Harty Goodfellow, Renaissance at Loughborough University, the Ronnie Lane band at Trent Polley or Dave Barry at the Radcliffe onrent British Legion. Simon could have seen UB40 at Carmarthen College, and fuck all else, man. Welsh are being poorly represented in the music press at the moment, aren't they, Simon? I'm pretty impressed that a well-known band came to Wales at all in that era, so fair dues. Good old UB40.

In the letters page, the main topic of conversation is Charles Shaw Murray's recent think piece on what David Bowie will get up to in the letters page, the main topic of conversation is Charles Shaw Murray's recent think piece on what David Bowie will get up to in the 80s, where he speculated that his fan base was slipping away to his number one clone, Gary Newman. CB Advisory Services believes that if Newman is so good at imitating Bowie, Bowie should imitate Newman and see how he likes it. While Callum R. Benny of Volkert believes that Newman's audience

are all kids and Bowie needs to get his arse in gear pronto. Meanwhile, John of Harpenden has a go at Paul Morley for slagging off the jam a year ago but really liking them now and taking Ian Penman to task for being a fan of

walking on the moon after he called roxanne papi a macho yeah imagine liking one record by a group and not liking another one i know you call yourself a critic disgruntled of david has a go at paul weller for saying that england doesn't have any real ethnic music and demands that he goes to his local folk club to check out some mouth music from the Isle of Barrow. Oh, can you imagine Paul Weller's folk direction in the 80s?

Someone complains about the level of slaggings off that the National Front and British Movement get on the NME letters page, and he's just about to ask for a right of reply when their letter is cut short mike thrimble of cambridge calls out lynn hannah for quote coming all peculiar at the sight of sting and applauding the high level of female attendance at a police gig and then claiming that the audience at a blondie gig was full of dirty old men who've only come to look.

It's different for girls, I suppose, he says, topically. The Enemy Readers poll of 1979 has been and gone, and Jimmy O'Neill of the Undertones writes to thank people for voting him the 10th best songwriter of the year, even though the subs got his name wrong. They also put him down as Jimmy O'Neill of Londonderry as well. Maybe he wrote that, though. You don't know, do you? And Richard Hoff of London asks,

the next time you get an assignment to interview Supertramp, please let me go so I can tell the smug, paranoid bastards where to get off. 52 pages, 20p. I never knew there was so much in it. Utterly fucking horrible. Well played, yes. So, what's on telly this week? Well, BBC One kicks off at 9am

with a schools and colleges splurge until 20 past 12 when it shuts down for 25 minutes. Then it's the midday news, Pebble Mill at 1, Heads and Tails, You and Me, more schools and colleges palaver and then it closes down at 3 for 55 minutes. Then it's regional news in your area, Play School, Deputy Dog, Kenneth Williams reading the dribblesome teapots in Jackanora and Brian Truman hosting the second semi-final of Screen Test. Then after John Craven's news round, Tina Heath cleaned some oil off some birds at the RSPCA Animal Centre in Little Creech in Blue Peter.

After the news, Nationwide focus on the 1980 British Rock and Pop Awards with Annie Nightingale and Pig Wanker General looking at the nominees for the Nationwide Golden Award, a trophy for the artist who, in the opinion of

Nationwide viewers, displayed the most all-round family appeal in the last year it was won by cliff richard who couldn't collect it because he was in south africa at the time of course he was and then it's what else tomorrow's world well michael rod kieran prenderville and judith han look at the problems of the 80s and how technology's going to make everything brilliant and skill and mint. BBC Two commences at 11 with Carol Chell in Play School, and then they close down for five hours,

coming back hard at 4.25 with some sexy, sexy open university action. Then it's the Laurel and Hardy film Going Bye Bye, followed by the 1942 Will Hay film The Black Sheep of Whitehall, followed by the mid-evening news. They're currently five minutes into Newsweek, the show that investigates

a current issue in context and close-up, it says here in Radio Times. ITV start at 9. 30 with three hours of schools programs followed by gardening today with cyril fletcher the news at one regional news in your area then it's together a brand new soap opera by southern tv about a housing association in southampton which was the first acting gig for sarah. That's brilliant. Right, if anyone wants this, I've got every episode of that on my hard drive. Oh, you're charming the pants off me, Mr Parks.

This is how I get women back to my flat. It was repeated recently on Talking Pictures channel. And yeah, it's phenomenal. I've got every episode apart from the lost ones, um, which, uh, Southern TV just,

you know, put in a drawer and forgot about, uh, it's, it's a, a slow build that series. But as you watch these episodes one after the other, it,

you really can't get out. You, you just get sucked in. You can't stop watching it. Nothing happens. it's all done on about three sets no location filming it's like there's been a nuclear holocaust and the ragged survivors of humanity are just huddled together in this airless slightly too warm glade scented building where they live with its sort of communal room with the sort of Urkel chairs in it.

This building which nobody ever leaves or enters. This is the Hotel California of Southampton, then. The real interest is watching the scriptwriters' agonised attempts to stir up this inert mixture and try to make it fizz which it never does but the effect is one of which was phil redmond i believe yeah and adele rose and you know names you would have heard but it's yeah the the longer it goes on just episode after episode passing and your life slowly slipping away it becomes It becomes really hypnotic. Then it's afternoon plus,

General Hospital, looks familiar, the Jetsons, Project UFO, the news at 5.45, regional news in your area, then Raymond Hillier, the latest guest at the Crossroads Motel,

is seen acting suspiciously. At 7 o'clock, at Semidale Farm, and they've just started, Bernie, the comedy show, starring Bernie Winters, with special guests,

Terry Scott, June Whitfield, and Schnoorbits, what work in solo, yes, Schnoorbits was in reception, he's quite an easy bookie, for Bernie Winters,

so Pop Craze Youngsters we have laid the table for this episode of Top of the Pop so why not come and join us in the next part and we'll get our hands shoved right up it

chart music Chart music.