Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #48 (Part 4): 24th January 1980 – Imagine If Charles Manson Had Heard This

Episode Date: February 13, 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.THE ENTIRE EPISODE IS OUT TOMORROW!This podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 to? Chart music. Chart music. It's Thursday night.

It's January the 24th, 1980. It's Chart Music, episode 48, part 4. And myself, Taylor Parks, and Simon Price are suckling at the teat of the Aventus. Let's move on. I don't want to hold your hand. Nobody there, as usual, see? 79 was a good year for the specials with Gangsters and A Message to You, Rudy. Let's move on. Come on, baby.

Reid complains about not being able to grab a handful of the audience and introduces Too Much Too Young by The Special, a.k.a. We've sucked off The Special's every possible chance we've had on chart music, and this is the follow-up to the AA side, a message to you rude-ass slash nightclub, which got to number 10 in November of 1979. It's the League Cup from the EP The Special, a.k.a. Live, which was recorded at the Lyceum in London and Tiffany's in Coventry last year and is an adaptation of the 1969 Lord Charmer's instrumental Birth Control,

married to lyrics by Jerry Dammers about some girl who's gone got herself in the family way. It also features covers of Guns of Navarone, Long Shot Kick the Bucket, Liquidator and Skinhead Moonstomp and it's crashed into the chart this week as the highest

new entry at number 15. And here, ladies and gentlemen, is the highlight of this episode. It's just laughably good, isn't it? It's ridiculous. I mean, literally, I deliberately chose to watch this with a critic head on rather than just enjoying it like I usually do.

And I started laughing because it just does too many simple things too perfectly and everything gels just too naturally it's absurd it's outrageous it just makes you laugh out loud and in this case I think that critical response is actually less complex than the listener's response because musically this is very simple but i think the pleasure you get from the record as a listener is more complex and bittersweet at a gut level which is sort of normally you'd say that's the most interesting thing about it it's not the most interesting thing about this record but it's an interesting thing about this record because of all of theirs i think this is the one that best captures that weird mixture of darkness and light that's at the heart of everything they did right

i mean they they've been on chart music before and a lot has been said about their cultural and historical background and context but what i always got from their records as a kid who was slightly too young to participate is what really the same feeling i get from them now as an adult who's too old and too distant in time which is the sense that everything in these people's lives is gray and painful and soul destroying except this pure current of joy and vitality that runs through the music and the constant activity and nothing else gets in. So there's no green fields or vague romantic possibilities. Do you know what I mean?

There's nothing happening in a dream world. It's just about this constant tussle between, on the one hand, boredom and frustration and poverty and getting beaten up and getting dumped and hangovers and pressure and miles and miles of blood-stained concrete sprinkled with broken glass and on the other hand this rapidly beating heart and fast music and open mind and friendship and and compulsion to dance and the energy generated by that contrast and that conflict which is very 1980 goes a long long way when you're as good and as natural as the specials to my mind this was when it was on the album it was the weakest track on the whole album

it was the one i liked the least i didn't own the specials album didn't own it for years but i didn't have to because you heard it everywhere you heard it out of people's bedroom windows you heard it at the youth clubs you went to so when this came out it was like oh my fucking god this is it this this is it this is what i want to listen to for the rest of my life yeah simon where do you think this stands in the canon of special singles in a weird way it's the great lost special single because um the one that you'll always see on you know bbc4 documentaries is ghost town uh because blah blah britain blah blah, and all of that. But this one, I think, is as magnificent, and it's magnificent for its lack of social responsibility.

It's a petulant record. It's quite vile, in a way. And the record that I group it together with in my brain is Bodies by the Sex Pistols, right? Now, the legendary feminist rock critic ellen willis wrote about bodies uh in an essay called beginning to see the light and she wrote about grappling with the apparent paradox that she as a feminist could be more excited by the sex pistols with this kind of anti-abortion tirade than by the wholesome positivity

of most of what she called women's music. She wrote, music boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated, as good rock and roll did, challenged me to do the same, even when the content was anti-woman, anti-sexual, in a sense anti-human.

The form encouraged my struggle for liberation similarly, timid music made me feel timid whatever its ostensible politics I think it's a brilliant piece of writing I'm not sure what Ellen Willis thought of Too Much Too Young or if she even heard it but I would like to think

that she might have been excited by Too Much Too Young in much the same way that she was by bodies the the two songs are not exactly comparable one is anti-abortion one is pro-contraception but they both involve angry men telling women what to do with their reproductive systems right um and here's the thing with the specials there's a real dichotomy between what they're generally held to represent which is racial equality and pacifism and all that stuff

and what their records were actually about which a lot of the time was bitter borderline misogyny songs like Little Bitch and Stupid Marriage as well as Too Much Too Young in fact you can listen to the first specials album if you choose to in the same spirit as abc's the lexicon of love and just find yourself wondering

about the woman who made jerry dammers feel that way just like you wonder about the woman who made martin fry feel that way dude what did she do to you you know um some of too much too young is almost right wing um ain't he cute no he ain't he's just another burden on the welfare state yeah right um so that for a record which is i think only about two minutes long and we only get um 90 seconds of it on this episode of top of the Pops, there's already so much to unpack there. By the way, the footage we see, it's not from the Lyceum gig. It's not from Dance Craze, the movie, either.

It's from Rock Goes to College, which was filmed in Colchester the previous year. And it had only just been broadcast on BBC Two on the 21st of January, so just three days before this Top of the Pops. So TOTp had this ready-made clip of it ready to go um so we're not actually hearing the version from the ep what we're hearing it's not the london lyceum audio it is that clip from rock coaster college in colchester um so this you know yeah there's quite yeah and i yeah i'm a bit nerdy about it i sort

of compared various clips um there's quite a lot about Too Much Too Young, which is not as it seems then, because even the famous crowd shot on the front cover is actually from a selector gig, I've been told, rather than a specials gig. And that's a brilliant cover. It's a great cover, yeah, yeah. Just all these scrawny little oiks with their suede-head haircuts

and Fred Perry's just looking like they're in the best place and having the best time of their lives. And yeah, you mentioned it's based on Lloyd Chalmers, a.k.a. Lloyd Terrell, Birth Control, which is hilarious, by the way. I would urge everyone to check out the talking bits like Doris, move that pussy from there. Yes, that's kind of it's kind of pussy-related humour. And I only realised recently that the specials rendition of it, well, really, it's kind of a new song, isn't it? Because, you know, Damers wrote so many lyrics, they're not anywhere near the Lloyd Chalmers one.

But I only realised that melodically, it's very similar to Gangsters slash Al Capone. You know, that... realise that melodically it's very similar to gangsters slash al capone um you know that call me a jewer call me a poser you know it's very similar actually yeah um you mentioned all the cover versions on there that on you know the special ak live ep so as well as uh birth control too much too young you've got guns and have our own long shot kick to bucket liquidator skinhead moonstop it was basically i don't know if you felt this but it was like a beginner's guide to original scar

it's like it's like here you are it's handing it to you you know you two-tone fans here you are this is where we got it from go off and find out about that which is brilliant you know yeah and um and and again um on those live tracks extra tracks, there's a moment that runs contrary to the received idea about the specials. Everyone feels sorry for them, rightly in a way, for attracting skinhead aggro at their gigs. But there's literally a bit where the band are chanting, Stomp on his head, specials! Yes!

On one of the tracks, you know. I agree with you that too much too young itself was quite a slight negligible track on the album um much slower for a start yeah but it's in that select handful of songs where the definitive version is the live version yeah so that puts it along with um no women no cry i want you to want me whole lot of rosy my ding-a-ling and uh arguably purple rain right and and we only get 90 seconds as i say it cuts off before the final bit the final bit ain't you heard of the starving millions ain't you heard of contraception do you really want to program a sterilization state control of the population boom

it's in in your living room uh keep a generation gap try wearing a cap that was considered too controversial it can't have been for time reasons because god knows they played enough that bloody boomtown well they faded it out on radio one as well right yeah yeah we although we do hear linval golding using a variation on the word for black children that boris Johnson got into trouble for using. So that's quite notable in the current political context. And we do get Terry Hall's ad-lib, You Silly Moo, which was probably my favourite bit of the whole song. I mean, of course,

this song was an absolute fucking anthem, both the community centre and the youth club that i went to simply because yes it was brilliant it was dead fast uh and you could shout contraception sterilization and try wearing a cap dead loud which was a really important thing for an 11 year old to do at the time yeah well that's one of the things this record makes me think of is a lot of rough older boys pushing and spitting. Yeah. But going back to what you were saying, Simon, about the sort of that weird nastiness in a lot of special stuff,

what it is, I think, there's a bit in Civilisation where Sir Kenneth Clarke is talking about this hideous, screeching bird face that's carved into the prow of a Viking ship and comparing it to the calm and grace and reason and sophistication of classical Greek sculpture. And he points at this Viking thing. He says, this is a powerful work of art, but it comes from a culture which knows only fear and darkness.

Well, what I think he missed out there is that, in fact, it comes from a culture which knows only fear and darkness and excitement. And when you bear that in mind, you can say something similar about this record. But there's one key difference which makes this better um the screaming viking bird says this is a terrible world prepare to be pillaged uh whereas this says this is a terrible world how can we try to exist within it and however nasty and spiteful and grimy uh special songs could get there was always that positive charge which is why their music endures the way it does when a lot of other music

similarly grown in the cold depressed provincial towns of england in the late 70s and early 80s seems to be of no relevance or value now even as the times turn back towards that sort of hollow desperate feeling you know but there always has to be something else you know something uh magically human uh and in good art even low art there always is and of course five years later the bbc would demand that every pop star say something about johnny's so yeah yeah pioneers yeah absolutely and like i don't know about you al but um i did feel like we're number one we are you know us it's our band definitely yeah just so exciting yeah second time around when it was ghost town they'd all but split up by that point and it was just a bit of a sort of you know valedictory thing but this one is like yes we're taking on the world

and then even you know in the outro here mike reed goes all power to two-tone records in the 1980s i didn't see this episode but had i seen it i would have thought he was brilliant for saying that and i'd be like yes it's our time you know and i mean the only downside of this is that you know simon you like me you you must have watched this and just assumed that every gig you were going to go to in your life was going to be as brilliant as this one loves yeah because it's just perfect yeah band are going fucking man jerry damas is like an excitable puppet. Well, if you watch the full clip from Colchester, there's a stage invasion and it's not in any way kind of aggro. It's just joyful.

Yeah. So the following week, Too Much Too Young soared all the way to number one, staying at the summit of Mount Pop for two weeks before being usurped by Coward of the Canter by Kenny Rogers. 1980 there. The follow-up the double A-side Rat Race Rude Boys Outta Jail would get to number 5

in June of this year but the special aka live EP became the first EP to get to number 1 since the Roussos phenomenon in 1976 and the second live single to get to number one in the UK since My Ding-a-ling by Chuck Berry in 1972, which was recorded in the Locarno in Coventry.

Ooh. Yes. Yes. You've done too much, much too young Right now you're chained to the curtain Like a cow run once for a tale All power to two-tone records in the 1980s. The specials had Too Much, Too Young. Now a song written by the very talented Mike Batt. This is Caravans from Barbara Dixon.

The early light is breaking The morning sun is waiting in the sky And I think I'm gonna break And follow where the birds of freedom fly Reid, hovering over an unlit stage in a circular insert like Big Brother, wishes Two-Tone every success in the 1980s before bigging up his Tory mate Mike Bakht. Yeah, what he actually says is,

all power to Two-Ttime records of the 1980s, now a song written by the very talented Mike Bat. Yes. Might read with each foot on a different horse there. And it's a real handbrake turn there. It's like, my God. Sadly not with each foot and arm chained to a different horse. Sent galloping in opposite directions.

Like a plastic mod Robert Francois Damien. That would certainly give Go With Noaks a run for its money. He fucks up the title of the song, though. It's actually Caravan Song by Barbara Dixon. We've covered Barbara Dixon in Chalk Music No. 29 when she notched her first hit single with Anseme in 1976. Since then, she's had only one more hit with Another Suitcase and Another Hall

from the stage show Evita, which got to No. 18 in March of 1977. She's released a handful of flop singles since then and spent time as a backing singer on two Jerry Rafferty LPs in the late 70s. This single, the follow-up to Come Back With The Same Look In Your Eyes, which failed to chart, has been written by Mike Batt and is from the soundtrack of the 1978 Anthony Quinn film Caravans, which was filmed in Afghanistan and is about the missing daughter of an American senator.

And it's up this week from number 70 to number 53. And here we go. To Ronnie's time, everyone. Yeah, I mean, my first thought was one word. Why? I mean, I guess it's something... Tell me why, tell me why, tell me why.

Exactly. It's something for the old folks. I mean, like the nolans barbara dixon is a bbc woman to the core she's totally a bbc woman and it's something for the old folks this wasn't even in the top 40 so i did wonder why it's i i suppose they were desperate in late january because it was just after christmas most of the records that were options had already been hanging around forever so they're sort of you know sort of forced to reach outside the 40 a little bit. It's remarkable she's only 32. I know we do this thing with footballers and everyone.

We've done this millions of times. But people looked older. They looked older, younger in those days. I'd never heard of her at this point. I know now, thanks to the magic of chart music, among other things, that she had had that hit dance for me in 76 that had passed me by at the time the first i knew of her was january february which is horrific um which came out but the lyrics to this about making a break for freedom

it's basically a poor man's everybody's talking that's what i yes there's almost nothing to say about it for me anyway but parents all over the country would be seeing this as a respite from horrible stuff like the specials you know they'd be turning to their children and saying see that's a nice song yeah because this is this is serious radio 2 business here isn't it it's it's you the night and the music music listening to this feels like being trapped in a late night taxi driven by an antiques dealer who's down on his luck there is i can sort of identify with this song because every single holiday i had up until the age of 12 was in a caravan yeah unfortunately i can't say that i lived out barbara dixon's restless roaming gypsy dream no it was static i'm gonna break away she sings and follow where

the birds of freedom fly because yeah because it was a static caravan yeah uh and we only had it on a timeshare so you had to pick a week in the summer and stick to it. Book early for the factory fortnight. But still, that experience does make me wonder just how emancipated Barbara's going to feel when she's inhaling spores and pissing in a bucket. And trying to refasten a little semicircular window window with a broken latch just using a length of garden twine that she found in the drawer yeah to keep out a rainstorm which sounds like the grand national sounds to the worms of andrew um i if i could go back in time and speak to i would say barbara think on before you go down Don Amott. Don Amott, yes!

Don, I need to break away. I need to follow where the birds of freedom fly, she says. I've got this dream of trying to cook a full English breakfast on a single hob connected to a Calagas cylinder in a kitchen space the size of a vietcong bamboo cage along to become the motorway equivalent of a dickhead wearing a backpack on the tube just with with my my rolling home sheared in half by christian salvis and 18 wheelers jackknifing as i change lanes obliviously in front of them. And Don Amott would just stare back at her and say,

are you Sir Isaac Newton? She said, no, no, but I get that a lot. Don Amott, king of caravans. Did you get them adverts? No, it must be a Midlands thing. Well, round about the time of the Lion Sleeps Tonight, so it had a bit of a Burundi-style feel to it. And Don Amok was essentially a lion with a big crown.

Yeah. But on one advert, he suddenly went berserk and started clawing at the faces of his own caravans, which looked fucking terrified. And the voiceover went, You better get there quickly. He's tearing his caravan prices to shreds it was terrible but but yeah obviously you know i didn't know at the time it was a

it was a film about afghanistan she was singing about but um because i thought i thought the line i need to breathe i need to leave i thought she was singing i need to breathe i need to lead which would have made it perfect for Watership Down and perfect for following on for a song about not breeding yes that would have put Jerry Dummers in his box quite topical as well being about Afghanistan at a time when the Russians had just invaded

yeah more to this than meets the eye obviously it's funny though with stuff like this and January, February she was really in the vanguard of what you could call AOP, adult orientated pop. You know, it's like there was no more Perry Como and a new generation of aging squares wanted something poppier with a sort of a hint of hint of the modern to it so you suddenly got this stream of stuff like mike oldfield singles um krista berg's early singles uh yeah kiki d uh the old sailor you know like january february is almost the definitive example of that much more than

all the looks yes yeah because this is because this record is still half in the 70s. Do you know what I mean? It's got that flake advert shit about being a soft-focus hippie gypsy, or a gypsy who's as middle-class as the Doctor's Latimer. But whereas January, February is pure forced modernity you know it's like aop all tooled up for the new decade like wired for sound you know it's music that's spiritually roller skating through milton keen shopping center but i i prefer this there's a part of me that actually quite likes this record but you, there are parts of all of us

which need quarantining to be any hope for the future. So the following week, Caravan Song jumped nine places to number 44, but stalled at number 41 the week after. But the follow-up, January-February, would get to number 11 for two weeks in April of this year Follow me After another lick of Mike Batts arse, Reed reappears over a sunburst shape above the studio and doesn't even bother to tell us the name of the next song or even the band.

It's Buzz, Buzz and Diddle It by Matchbox. Formed in Middlesex in 1971, Matchbox were a 50s revival band who played the TED pub circuit of the 70s. In 1978, they acquired the services of lead singer Graham Fenton, the former frontman of the House Shakers, who played the opening slot at the London Rock and Roll Show, which also featured Bill Haley, Little Richard, Chuck Beret, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Gary Glitter, and worked as Gene Vincent's backing band on assorted UK tours. Fenton steered the group towards a rockabilly bent

and after encouraging noises were made in the music press, they were signed to Magnet Records. And after their first single, Black Slacks, flopped, the next, Rockabilly Rebel, got to number 18 in December. This is the follow-up, a cover of the 1961 Freddie Cannon single, which was immediately rushed out late last year. And this week, it's gone up eight places to number 22. Well, Matchbox, come on into the chart music circle.

It's just Rocky Sharp and the replays now for the full set, I believe. Yeah, true. So where do we start with this? I can guess, I think. Well, I don't trust these fuckers. At the time, I would have seen them as harmless old duffers having a bit of rock and roll fun. Super unrated show, Waddy Waddy, really.

And good luck to them, I would have thought, at the time, probably. But with the Confederate flag massively displayed on stage and the whole rebel yell thing and all that that signifies, it's impossible not to find something deeply suspicious about them. Yeah, the hand does rise to the chin, doesn't it? I mean, normally they've been on top of the Popsi 4 with a massive Confederate flag as a backdrop. And in this instance, they've gotederate flag draped over the bass drum

and they've also got an upright bass with a confederate flag on the back yeah they're doubling down on it it's basically their corporate logo and um you know there are people um to this day who will tell you oh you know it's not a racist flag it's just about the pride in the south and all kind of bollocks but you know you just ask black people in the South how they feel when they see that flag that's all you need to know Graham Fenton here, singer with his aquiline nose and his tiny

eyes, like the character actress Anne Way from Carry On and Fawlty Towers and his black Stetson and his boot lace tie, he reminds me of a small town sheriff enforcing Jim Crow laws, probably making the specials sit at the back of the bus. Or Lemmy's dad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, let's not even talk about America. Let's talk about the Confederate flag in Britain because, you know, it was a definite thing in the rock and roll revival of Britain. You know, in Quadrophenia, there's a rocker with it on the back of his jacket who gets thrown off some railings onto the beach. And I've been doing some research on future episodes of chart music,

and I came across an article in Melody Maker by your old gaffer, Alan Jones, where he goes to a TED night in London. According to the article, one of the bands he sees are called the Confederate States of America and he goes on to say that they're specialist shops in the UK that sold Confederate flags and Ku Klux

Klan records so you know I contend that Matchbox clearly know what they're on about here you didn't even have to go to specialist shops I remember there was a record shop in my town where they would sell band badges and patches, sew-on patches, and you could buy a sew-on patch of the Confederate flag.

And, you know, there were sort of rockabilly kids, Ted's, at my school who wore that, probably without really knowing what it meant. Well, to us, it was the Dukes of Hazzard, wasn't it? Yeah. That had just come out in March of last year, so... Exactly. All good knockabout fun, it was the Dukes of Hazzard, wasn't it? Yeah. That had just come out in March of last year. Exactly. All good knockabout fun, it would seem. But then you look at Ted's culture in the UK,

and there was always a right-wing element to it. In the 1950s, there were Notting Hill race riots where the Teds were basically there with a white power agenda. Well, it's hard to call, though, isn't it? Because there were people in that time and place for whom the Confederate flag just meant hoedowns and barbecued pork, you know, and shots of Jack Daniels. I mean, they were just the good old boys, never doing no harm.

Yeah, never being in no harm. Yeah, so they didn't see anything wrong with you know making every object associated with them look like a aerial view of the general league um the i mean the best thing you can say is that in 1980 a lot of british people genuinely didn't associate the confederate flag consciously with a culture in which black people were subjugated or enslaved they just associated it with a culture where black people happened to be absent and like you say there was uh the same shops where you'd go and buy your madness badges would have confederate patches.

A lot of them for would-be Hell's Angels, some of whom would have been aware, gleefully aware of the connotations. But for a lot of people, it was just a signifier of gritty, southern fried machismo and not necessarily akin to waving a swastika to demonstrate how much you like sausages and lager you know and competent engineering uh but i mean that's really hard to understand now any of the youths looking at this now they might as well have a swastika on that base yeah yeah i mean it's easy to forget that before the internet made everything, and especially American issues, global,

there was at least more of an excuse for ignorance. But you can't call it because there was that on the one hand. On the other hand, there was people who did know exactly what they were doing. Who knows? Who knows? Wouldn't want to cast aspersions on match but it is weird seeing a confederate flag on uh chiggers plays pop when matchbox was on yeah yeah yeah mind you swap shop had a lab with a swastika flag as well so you know yeah swings and roundabouts yeah

there's a bit in the outro where um mike reeds particularly impressed by the guitarist guy jumping up on the bass player's upright bass. But that is some half-assed bullshit in itself. Because, do it properly, right? Lee Rocker from the Stray Cats, he plays his upright bass while jumping up on it himself and just balancing on the fucking spike. That's impressive. Yeah. himself and just balancing on the fucking spike that's impressive yeah but then you know we've said it before the stray cats came along pretty much to render these bands unemployed overnight yeah but i don't know about much because i don't know anything about them wouldn't want to cast

dispersions they might just have been a bit thick you know i mean maybe because they strike me as those sort of british people who think americans are like superheroes you know i mean this you still get it now in a slightly different form but you used to get it all the time then they thought americans were like it was like a british person who'd gone in a phone box and stripped off their woolly jumper and cna jeans and underneath had a cowboy outfit you know i mean and suddenly they can fly they can go to the moon get a hamburger at four o'clock in the morning it's fucking crazy it was like a disease you know because there was nothing in this country that you know if you were of a particular age too old for punk and two-tone

and so on and you know there was nothing nothing and it's you know it's tempting to indulge match box almost until you remember the fiery jack by The Fall came out around this time. It had just come out, in fact, which functionally has the same groove as this record, but also it makes you want to burn and crush everyone involved with Buzz, Buzz, a diddle it. Partly just because it's 40 million times better and seething with life and restless thoughts and energy

rather than being a wheezy old revivalist exercise. But also because it's an infinitely more authentic rockabilly record precisely because it's not stylised and dressed up in cowboy gear it like goes deep in and actually reconnects with that frazzled sort of dark raw weirdness of the best 50s rockabilly records and the the unfriendly lunacy of them uh and it uses that connection to power its own freedom and originality. And you couldn't have a sharper contrast between two approaches to what is on paper the same kind of music. One of them completely open and alive and the other one sealed up and numb and lifeless. If you listen to Fiery Jack, you can say, like Mike reed in the intro that rock and roll never went away um if you think of rock and roll as a method rather than a style

and with all that in mind yeah you look at these pricks it's like oh fuck them you know rock and roll never went away it's making me think of that fucking tosser from arctic monkeys that whole rock and roll way you know he does his fucking mic drop at the Brit Awards the song though right the song obviously by Freddie Cannon originally it's a standard telephone operator bothering song in the vein

of the far superior Memphis Tennessee so when they were choosing their songs there must have been a reason why Matchbox didn't want to give any royalties to Chuck Berry. I can't imagine what it was. I'm not sticking up for them. I think they're idiots.

It's just knowing what the times were like, I don't know if they were consciously racist idiots. It's a fair point, and I was just saying, don't trust them. I can't prove anything, but I just get a bad vibe, which is equally, you know... Well, that's just another form of racism. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. So the following week, Buzz Buzzer Diddle It dropped two places to number 24, but a week later it went up to number 22, its highest position. The follow-up, Midnight Dynamos, got to number 14 in Juneune of this year and then they slowed it down in the latter half of 1980 when they took when you ask about love to number four

and their cover of over the rainbow to number 15 oh god have you seen the video of that on top of the pops no graham fenton's gone full gene vin Gene Vincent and he just looks like Ted Bovis without the moustache they would have been Ted Bovis' favourite band no question yeah their own operator how loving future

hangs on you buzz buzz dee lip buzz buzz dee lip buzz buzz dee lip buzz buzz dee lip buzz, dee-lip. Buzz, buzz, dee-lip. Buzz, buzz, dee-lip. Buzz, buzz, dee-lip. Buzz, buzz, dee-lip. What a great rock and roll band they are.

Max Box and Buzz, Buzz, and Diddley. I love the way he jumps up on the old double bass. Works a treat that every time. Right, here comes Sheila and B Devotion and Space. MUSIC PLAYS The camera pans up and away from the stage to reveal Reed standing in a ringed enclosure like a zoo exhibit and holding an old-fashioned bicycle horn for no reason whatsoever. After expressing his delight at seeing someone stand on a Nazi base, he links to a video of Spacer by Sheila B Devotion. Born in Paris in 1945, Annie Chancel signed a deal with Career Records at the age of 16, was given the name Sheila,

and became one of France's top female singers of the 60s, recording French-language versions of Do What Did He Did It and Tweedle Deee tweedle dumb amongst others in 1973 she got married to the singer ringo willie cat and recorded as the duo sheila and ringo for a few years in 1977 keen to break out of the francosphere and have a go at this newfangled disco music but not wanting to alienate her current fan base, she teamed up with B Devotion, a trio of American soul singers, and put out the LP Love Me Baby under the name SB Devotion,

and had a worldwide hit with their cover of Singing in the Rain, which got to number 11 for two weeks in April of 1978. After she was outed by their label, they were renamed Sheila and B Devotion in France and America, but for one reason or another, the name Sheila B Devotion stuck over here and in other parts of Europe. This is the follow-up to Seven Lonely Days, which failed to chart over here,

and is the first cut from her new LP, King of the World, which has been written and produced by Niall Rogers and Bernard Edwards after spending three weeks at number 33 over Christmas it slowly dragged its way up the charts and this week it's risen two places from number 22 to number 20 so yeah Reid calls them Sheila and B Devotion while the chart rundown calls them Sheila B Devotion but the pop craze youngsters call them what they actually are Chic with a French woman yeah I mean I'm saying Sheila and B Devotion

because I've got the UK single of this and that's what it says on there so all right Black Devotion is what it meant to be wasn't it Sheila and Black Devotion yeah differently named in different territories I believe like Jif

yeah exactly I mean Sheikah's still about in the UK charts aren't they My Feet Keep Dancing has dropped 10 places to number 31 this week so whatever's going on in America we love this shit and rightfully so I believe. We do I mean I've often said that there are a handful of records, maybe 10 records

that when I'm hearing them it's impossible to me that there's anything better in the world this is clearly the greatest record that's ever been made and then when the record finishes you might change your mind slightly but in that moment that's how you feel about it

and more than half of them involve Nile Rodgers and Sheik. And Spacer is way up there in that top ten for me. What I find astonishing is that Spacer was only number 18 in the UK, whereas her crap disco version of Sing in the Rain that you mentioned was a bigger hit. Oh, it's awful. Even more astonishing to me, neither Sheila nor Spacer even get a mention in Niall Rodgers' autobiography, Le Freak, which is a brilliant book.

Really? Yeah, but just does not get a mention. There is the sense that I found from other interviews that Niall and Bernard just felt it was a bit sort of tossed off and a bit, you know, half-assed. But, I mean, really, if that's your tossed-off bullshit, then you are shitting gold at that point. Apparently, and I got this from the Daryl Easley book about Chic.

Apparently, they'd seen Star Wars and Close Encounters, and they'd heard things like Sarah Brightman's I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper. And they just wanted to try making a sci-fi single for a laugh um so the object of sheely's desire in a song is based on harrison ford as han solo that's who the spacer is it's basically han solo um and yeah in in the book um nile rogers actually this daryl easley book nile rogers says nothing chic did was bullshit but that was the closest thing to bullshit we'd ever done i I mean, I just hugely disagree. I've been to see Nile Rodgers and Sheik many times

the last 10, 15 years, and very rarely do they play this song, but when they do, you're in luck, because it's just phenomenal. And it's not just about Nile Rodgers and that chucking, as he calls it, that guitar style of his it's about the piano

on this record the sustain on those beautiful arpeggios you hear at the start that's Andy Schwartz who also plays on Upside Down and We Are Family and loads of other sheet productions so he deserves some credit I've got the album

this is from King of the World, the Sheila B Devotion album. On the cover, she's parachuting through a sky full of pterodactyls, and I think that couldn't be more symbolic, because it's like futuristic disco coming to save the world from rock dinosaurs. That's how I interpret

it anyway, maybe I'm reading too much into it. Oh my word, the full 12-inch version, this is about six minutes, 15. Yes. Oh, it is just out of this world, if you'll pardon the pun. And sampled brilliantly in the early noughties by Alcazar, crying at the discotheque, if you know that.

And, yeah, I just think one of the greatest works from one of the greatest production houses ever so the video's fairly standard isn't it just silver jumpsuits and blue lasers and these glowing sticks that are meant to make us think of lightsabers I think

so again that ties it back into the idea that the spacer is Han Solo the one thing that used to confuse me, or that really surprised me about this record, was I've been getting the lyrics wrong for years, right? Right. There's this bit where I thought it was going, in his own special way, he is gentle and kind.

Oh, gracious, yes. But no, it's going, in his own special way, he is gracious and kind. Oppression he hates. In a French accent. Oppression he hates. In a French accent, oppression he hates. There's a lot of oppression in space. Oh, yeah, there is. Over and over again,

when we watch these old episodes of Top of the Pops, we find that the records whose presentation and general visual and lyrical aesthetic make you laugh the most are the best records, or at least the sweetest, or the most interesting, or the most imaginative. And here we are again, but at a whole new level. It's a fucking sheet record with added Aventus Euro atmosphere,

like pouting and louche, Aventus Euro atmosphere, like pouting and louche, presented like a Chinese-made toy ray gun in a pound shop. You know, next to amusing duck and powerful fashion

wristband. Or more specifically, in fact, presented like Luigi Cozzi's unsatisfying 1979 Star Wars clone, Star Crash, which is one of those films that manages to be completely unhinged and hilarious and really boring at the same time,

except for the fact that whenever you see space in it, all the stars are different colours, like they've used fairy lights for the special effects it's genuinely adorable but that film is like a more heterosexual version of this except that the deeper you go in the star crash the more crap you find it's like falling into neptune you know it's just blue gas all the way through the only difference is it's colder and denser the nearer you get to the heart of it whereas inside this hilarity is a beautiful pop record which is undeniably brilliant in almost every way i'm not sure that contrast has ever been that stark uh i love how there's

nothing weighty about it like no substance at all to the music no sort of heft um there's nothing weighty about it, like no substance at all to the music, no sort of heft. There's a hell of a lot of musical activity happening in there when you listen closely. There's a lot of instruments playing a lot of notes, but it just creates this glide, this sort of frictionless drift. Everything's lighter than air. Even with that big clumping piano cadence at the end of each line in the verse you know and it's got a big

rock guitar solo but it's all just like sweet gas you know the groove just sweeps everything along it's a beautiful construction and it's quite right that the the as with most records in that vein the best version is the 12 inch version because it's just the same but more of it and it includes that bit where most of the arrangement just melts away and it just leaves the rhythm track ticking over yeah by itself for about a minute like a happiness machine just churning away oh it's so good also something that makes this um almost unique i think among sheet productions is that nile decided to do a bit of soloing it's like now now now now starts rocking out a bit bit sort of eddie van halen kind of stuff that makes it unusual but yeah um just immaculate by the way what i did find while going through sheila's old stuff

on youtube um and i like a lot of old french pop but most of this is not so good but what i found which was wonderful was a fan-made slideshow video to accompany her so-so 1976 euro hit le femme which is like a second most famous and second best record after this one um and it's anyway it's titled my video de sheila semicolon le femme all in caps lock and what it is is a sequence of composite images fading into each other in which sheila pictured at various points in her career is photoshopped badly into a variety of scenarios like leaning into stock photos of bunny rabbits and rearing up in the foreground of Christmas card scenes. And best of all, giant-sized, emerging head and shoulders from a mountain stream behind an Alsatian. It's clearly made with real love and it's absolutely terrifying.

So the following week, space arose another two places to number 18, its highest position. The follow-up, King of the World, failed to chart, and the group were immediately disbanded when Sheila wanted to back the fuck away from disco and become a mum rock singer. Oh, Sheila. Hello and welcome to Rule of Three, a podcast about comedy. I'm Joel Morris. I'm Jason Haisley.

And as usual, we're joined by someone who makes comedy to talk about something funny that they love. Martin's voice jumped up onto my back and sneaked round to the side of my neck and went down my throat and then came out again. And suddenly, there he was. I think I'm the only scaffolder or ex-scaffolder to have been on a BAFTA-type stage. There's more money in faces. There's more money in faces, but there's no control. That's what I like. You can't control your face.

I can't control where I put my face. And Rory sort of pitched to James, can flute be the last word? Because I think that's the funniest word to end on. And James went, I know it is, and that's why I don't want it to be at the end. But there's this idea that there's a limited amount of space for funny. It's like when men

think they have to go out with someone who's not funny. As if like, but if she's funny, what'll I do? You'll both laugh! You will both have a laugh! Sheila and B, Devotion at number 20 with Spacer. Bright chums, it's time for the Regents with 17.

And you'll notice the lead singer's wearing a seatbelt in case the girls try and pull him off into the audience. 17 An odd gentlewoman So holey Thought that you were never coming We immediately crossfade to a guitar neck as Reed introduces 17 by the Regents. the Regents recorded this, their debut single, in the shared house of singer Martin Scheller and bassist Damian Pugh on a four-track,

which landed them a deal with Rialto Records. After putting it out in 1979, they were advised to change and line in the lyrics to make it more radio-friendly, and after an appearance on Top of the Pops when it was stuck at number 72 and heavy rotation on Mike Reed's Breakfast Show, it took three weeks to enter the top 40 and this week it's up 11 places to number 22 reed's introduction though fucking hell you'll notice the lead singer is wearing a seat belt in case the girls try to pull him off into the audience. This is the man who banned Relax for fuck's sake. Do we know

what line they changed? Yes. Oh, no, go on. Go on, Taylor. It was permanent erection. Erection! Yes. Changed to, was it permanent reaction? Reaction, yes. Mike Reid wouldn't have been quite so jovial. So yeah, this is a

prime example of an Aventis one hit wonder which you can put alongside Echo Beach turning Japanese My Sharona Is Vic There and Love All Tear Us Apart because it was a one hit wonder Joy Division yeah

well by this point in an episode of Top of the Pops you're always grateful for anything that is hard to place you watch it and you can't quite work out what it is or what it's meant to be doing um which is true of this right i mean it's sort of i guess it's two parts delta five to one part dolly mixture you know but this is the thing it makes sense in the context of 1980 much more than it does now you know you you you research it and it's not much of a surprise to find out that at least some of them were art students at St Martin's you know and you go back

to 1980 there was a fair bit of music that was sort of like this sonically and or spiritually but most of it is more or less forgotten now because it was more about ideas than it was about a pleasing sound you know and what you did was more important than how you did it and everything had to sound slightly austere and unfriendly because it wasn't the old days anymore or because comfort was bourgeois or uh because if you strip something down people can get closer to the heart of it or because it was considered to be a part of the demystification process you know or because nobody had any money for gear or studio time yeah except what they could prize out of their invariably middle-class families. Or the grunts.

Right, right, yeah. But I mean, that's the thing. Even with this televisual record and a little bit of background detail, we still don't really know what the point of this record was because these records were not self-contained. This was a time when there was a discourse around music, you know,

and people would read music papers and talk about stuff. And it's like, oh, what are they doing? What are they about? It was a big thing. And when that's gone, which it has when you just see this out of context, you don't really know. Like these people, they could have been anarchists or they could have been arch-satirists or club trendies, you know,

or feminist revolutionaries or just chancers trying to follow a trend for that sort of spindly music that's all the rage in the NME, you know. That's what's so weird. When the context is gone, so is half the act. Still quite good though, isn't't it but when people hear that music now and they don't know anything about it what they do is take it at face value and just listen to the sound uh and people in general they tend to like a sound that's sweet or rocking you know yeah uh and this is extremely neither of those things. So that's why people still listen to Rumours,

or never mind the bollocks, more than they listen to the raincoats or the fire engines, even though they were great. And speaking of Rumours, doesn't this sound like it was built on the rhythm track of Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, which is virtually identical, except that the rhythm trackactor Dreams by Fleetwood Mac it sounds like you're gliding up the escalator to heaven

whereas this sounds like riding a penny varding over a ploughed field but otherwise identical yeah it's funny a record that I've loved ever since it came out and I bought at the time and yet I've got far less to say about it than Taylor who I think has only recently discovered it um that's often the way it goes um yeah it's it's had a weird kind of shadow life in pop culture this song it's not really ever been considered uh one of the sort of defining um

iconic songs of the new wave and yet it'll always you know it'll be on let's say the best punk album in the world ever two you know uh it's that sort of thing it's it's kind of um treated as a barrel scraping but um at the time i i i really liked it um i i get what taylor means with references to um did he say delta five and uh what was the other one um who else did you say? Deaf school? Dolly Mixtures. Dolly Mixtures. And yeah, and there's people like Girls Are Best and yeah, all that kind of stuff. Modets and this and that, a bit of deaf school and things like that. But a comparison occurred to me

that's maybe not the most obvious, but I think there's something in it. It's not dissimilar to the stuff the police were doing at the time. But what is it's if you imagine a police record but without the beefy middle bit with all the sort of beefy flesh the middle bit stripped out so that all that's left is the spindly bits it's the points the spikes the angles the pointy bits um that's what this record is really it's a very pointy spindly record it's partly visual suggestion that makes me think of it that way because it was

on the Rialto label which had a sort of punky spiky looking logo but it really does sound like that and I thought, I think at the time I didn't quite get what they were talking about obviously it's a fairly standard And I thought, I think at the time, I didn't quite get what they were talking about.

Obviously, it's a fairly standard rock and roll jailbait themed song, even though 17 is legal. But, you know, it's one of those things that has been there through rock history of slightly older men fetishizing slightly younger women and writing a song about the kind of forbidden fruit or not quite forbidden fruit um they're just doing it and but they make it quite clear that she's only interested in a future boy yeah uh boys love future girls that's a good line i don't quite know what it means but it just it's because they all sing that line don't they they all come in on that line like it's really me sheila b devotion well yeah and um i i just thought these are modern people i want to be like them um the singer guy's got that kind of malcolm mclaren bubble hair which it hasn't dated hasn't dated that well but um even the way i think that the um the producers the bbc uh sort of sense that this is one of those edgy uh new wave records let's do something different for it they They do that three way

split screen trick with it which is quite nice. The backing singers carry a lot of the weight of this track actually, don't they? Yes. With, you know, reaction and mutant and that's all that stuff. And yeah, it just really works for me.

They were a one hit wonder which suggests there might not be any more to them. But I am kind of intrigued. After all these years, 40 fucking years, maybe I need to try and pick up that LP on vinyl and just inhale the dust of a lost time and see if there's anything in it for me. There might be.

I was confused by this song as well, but mainly through the line, all the girls just love to hate her, all the boys, they want to make her. I wasn't aware of the term make. I'm still not now. It's a fucking stupid way of saying shag. So I just thought,

all the boys want to stuff some of the mam's tights with newspaper and make a guy friend. Yeah, like that Goldie Looking Chain song. I made a corn beef kelly osborne and i fucked it when i was watching porn anything else to say about this yeah the top of the pops audience seem distinctly unmoved literally it's like as they have been throughout the whole fucking episode it's like a wax museum down the front and i don't think they're stunned i think they're just sort of unengaged

you know i don't know what it can't be that the group look like dickheads because a lot of groups did you know nobody cared i think they just find it a bit stringy and remote which it is but that's the point isn't it probably yeah we don't know the following week, 17 soared 10 places to number 12. And the week after that, it nipped up to number 11, its highest position. The follow-up, See Ya Later, got to number 55 in June of this year and was due another leg up on top of the Pops. But a strike by the Musicians' Union that week knocked the show off the air. It slithered down the charts

and when their next two singles flopped, they called it a day in 1981. Martin Scheller went on to form The Bick with his partner Bick Brack, the blonde singer, who had moderate success in German air while her co-singer Kath Best became an actor. Oh, no, please Thought that you were never coming 17 Completely new sensation

Number 22 this week, that's 17. It comes from the Regents, who took their name from a wall in London Park. High park. Second week at number one, Pretenders and Brass in Pocket. Read! Obviously not going to be allowed to stand next to the general public, drops a shit joke about parks in London and then whips us into this week's number one,

Brass in Pocket by The Pretenders. Or, if you blew tulip rose, read, FWAAA, PRETENDERS! Formed in London in 1978, The Pretenders were the band created for Chrissie Hynde, a transplanted American who wrote for the NME in the early 70s before working in Malcolm McDonald's. Oh, if only sex had been owned by Malcolm McDonald.

Can you imagine the sex pistols being managed by Malcolm McDonald? Before working in Malcolm McLaren and Vivian Westman's expensive perv shop. Her first kick of the musical arse was when she joined McLaren and Vivian Westman's expensive perv shop. Her first kick of the musical arse was when she joined McLaren's band Masters of the Backside with a sort of Future Members of the Damned before she formed the Moors Murderers with Steve Strange. On the encouragement of Dave Hill, who just started his label Real Records and isn't the wrong Fringe Slate guitarist, she recorded a demo of her songs with phil taylor of motorhead and the pretenders were put together and their debut single a cover of the 1964 kinks

lp track stop your sobbing got to number 34 in march of 1979 this single the follow-up to kid which got to number 33 in August of 1979, is the lead-off track from their debut LP Pretenders, which went straight into number one at the LP chart last week, ripping ABBA's Greatest Hits Vol. 2 off the summit. After dithering around the lower reaches of the singles chart in December, it suddenly soared 20 places to number 10 on Christmas week of 1979. And three weeks later, it finally usurped another brick in the wall from the top of the charts, becoming the first number one of the 80s.

And this is its second week at number one. You know, there's this whole thing about the pretenders being hyped into the charts. Yes. Satin tour jackets and all that. Yes. I thought I'd check up on this in Chrissie Hines' book, Reckless, and she's quite sanguine about the whole thing. Her idea is very much the kind of Hunter S. Thompson line,

you know, the music business is this sort of vile, venal money trench and this kind of stuff. And she's fine with that she she thinks it's just a you know total corrupt cesspit and that's the game that's the game you got to play um and she she says thanks john fruin she thanks john fruin in the book um b.a robertson's mate yeah i mean we've talked about the world in action documentary the chart busters before i i digged a little bit deeper this time here's here's a list of the other hyped records that are mentioned in that documentary so you've got all right bang bang bba cunterson new amsterdam elvis costello tusk

the lp and the single fleetwood mac lute and airport by by Cats UK. Cars by Gary Newman. That's insane. Love's Got a Hold on Me by Dollar. It's My House by Storm, which is the reggae cover of the Diana Ross song. It's My House by Diana Ross. WEA hyped up the reggae version to try and stop Diana Ross's version from getting up the top of the charts. My Tune by The Cool Notes. Girl It's All I Have by Shy. OK Fred by Errol Dunkler. Silly Games by Janet Kaye. Hey Girl by The Expressos, which actually got deleted from the charts.

The Runaway by Elkie Brooks. That was the one that got a tick every time a shop sold Roxanne by the police. And If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body, Would You Hold It Against Me by the Bellamy Brothers. Wow. But I have to contend that this song shows that, you know, chart rigging's not just there for the nasty things in life. I think this is a fitting first number one of the 80s myself. Maybe you should talk about it, Al. Why didn't you go first for once i'm not i'm not the music writer i just think it's a brilliant song i love it i mean it is a brilliant

song but i didn't really understand that at the time i didn't understand this um i didn't know who it was for what it was doing um it it's just i think it's the way that it proceeds at this kind of quite tentative, compromised, gentle plod, you know, the rhythm of it. And yet they looked and she looked like, you know, a bit rock and roll, a bit edgy, a bit part of the new wave, but they didn't sound like that. And the name, The Pretenders, sounded like a bit of a throwback, like The Platters or The Coasters or even like The New Seekers or something like that.

Yeah. One of those kind of bands. Named after The Great Pretender, which was one of Chrissie Hines' exes' favourite songs, apparently. Right, yeah. And in a lot of ways, I sort of felt they were throwbacks and maybe they were a band who really were appealing to people

who hadn't given up on pub rock and that sort of pre-punk melodic stuff. She had been around a while. I mean, you've given a little potted biog there. The thing that blows my mind, she was at the Kent State shootings. Yeah. Yeah, you know, the notorious, you know, one of these things that's held up as along with Altamont and various other things as being symbolic of the death of the 60s dream

that the Vietnam protesters, anti-Vietnam protesters were shot at Kent State Uni in Ohio. And she was there. So and that seems like a different century, never mind a decade. a different century, never mind a different decade. So she'd been around, she'd earned her stripes. I actually teach about her at BIM when I teach about her journalistic career. Yeah, her journalistic career. It's quite interesting. This is no kind of inference on her

or any other female writers of that generation, but it's really notable that so many of the well-known female writers in the music press of the 70s got their job because of who their boyfriend was. And in her case, it was Nick Kent. All the accounts I've read, he comes out of it really badly.

Like, you know, basically, he punched her or he beat her up or whatever. And this is why, I don't know if you've heard the story of Nick Kent being beaten with a motorbike chain by Sid Vicious well apparently it was revenge for that because you know Chrissie Hines and

Sid Vicious were close mates and all that they worked together at the shop didn't they so there's all this she was obviously somebody who brings a lot of life experience to her songs and this is it it's the song of an experienced person it's not not an ingenue who's singing this um i remember when it was on top of what's first

time or certainly one time my dad telling me she's sexy and i didn't really know what sexy meant because i was too young but you know but it's like you didn't know why he said peter powell was a perv yeah yeah exactly but the idea of her being sexy rather than pretty, because most of the sort of women stars that I would have been attracted to, like Agnetha from ABBA and Livy Newton-John, they were pretty. But Chrissie Hynde, it's more this kind of vibe, isn't it?

It's this sort of sexy thing in the voice, the sort of slight crack in her voice and the way she sings, just the sort of poise she has in the performance. Sometimes that goes overboard, the bit where she goes, I'm winking at you. And I just think there's something really comical about that because have you seen the video to this? No.

The video's great. Another job she had as well as being a music journalist was working in a cafe. And they shot the video in a typical kind of British greasy spoon cafe and she's been this kind of saucy waitress just like flirting with the customers and like winking at them in a really exaggerated way it's quite quite comical I wish they'd shown that on top of the pops but I was going to say about her journalism she she was a classic case of writing extreme negative reviews to get attention. And we've all done it.

The first example for her was Neil Diamond. There was a Neil Diamond album. She totally destroyed it. And she started getting death threats at the enemy offices. And immediately, the enemy were like, oh, right. Well, yeah, this is great. Let's give her a front cover story. So they sent her off to interview Brian Eno for the front cover.

So, you know, that sort of tells you a lesson about the music press back in the day. I think it would get you sacked now. It would be completely the opposite. But, yeah, she's a total badass. And I love her. I've interviewed her a couple of times. She's a fantastic interviewee. I really admire her stance on animal rights.

One time I interviewed her, she gave me this terrifying bag of sweets that she'd just brought back from Finland called Turkisk Pebbe, and they blow your mouth off. They're just insane. I'm not sure if that was some kind of trick, like some evil trick she's playing on me there,

but I really like her. I like her more than I like the Pretenders records. This record for me, it is, if one can react to music objectively, and I don't know if you can, but objectively it is a great, great song,

brilliantly put together. And I think it's, it's probably dated better. It seems more timeless now than, you know, I spoke about at the time, it felt like an old fashioned record to me. I think it's actually dated better. It seems more timeless now. You know, I spoke about at the time, it felt like an old-fashioned record to me. I think it's actually, you know, it feels more,

I don't know, modern, but out of time now than it did then, which is probably something that speaks well of it. The only other thing I was going to say about this performance, I meant to say this during the Joe Jackson one, the backdrop on top of the pops at this time, it looks like those fidget spinners you get in newsagents now but kind of like broken apart into bits isn't it weird so I'll now hand over to somebody more eloquent

to talk about Brass in Pocket they're not here the thing about the Pretenders I just don't see it to me the Pretenders are a monument to grinding, uneventful competence. Do you know what I mean? I can see that this music has a sort of quality to it, but I can't see how it's anything more than moderately dull.

You know, I appreciate this is probably their best record and it has a certain momentum and grace to it. But I just think there are other important things missing that are stopping it from being good. You know, it's like a, it sounds like a drained blondie, like drained of life, drained of excitement, drained of drama. And I don't like the half-hearted rockist pose and i don't like the tasteful sound um i can't bear the lack of surprises it's just this sullen

plodding music with a horrible sense of its own seriousness even though there's nothing really serious or meaningful about it they're just like a boring pop rock band for civil servants and deputy headmasters to get their leather jacket on, you know, and feel like they're part of a subculture. It doesn't do it for me at all. Or maybe I just don't care for it the same way I don't care for Echo and the Bunnymen. Do you know what I mean?

I've got nothing against them, particularly. If someone's playing an Echo and the Bunnymen record, I don't have to leave the room. They did a few good ones. But if you ask me, do I like Echo and the Bunnymen? No. To me, they just sound like a posturing rock band, very blank and empty, hollow.

But the difference is the best Echo in the Bunnymen track is actually great, whereas the best Pretenders track is this. And can you imagine the Pretenders ever suddenly turning around and making a record like The Killing Moon? It's unimaginable because that sulky traditionalism was all they had in their heads so nothing else could come out even by happy accident don't like it um i'm not not fond of chrissy hind either i just find something disagreeable i knew you wouldn't i knew it yeah well what it is it's it's it's that she's just it's the Geldof thing again to me.

It's someone whose sense of their own personal rightness isn't in any way softened or informed by the possibility that they might be an idiot like everyone else after all. When people have that, it tends to mean no playfulness, no humour, no ambiguity. it's just this idea that the spunkier you act the writer you are you know and a lot of people from this era of rock music had it and i don't really like it i just find it mock youthful you know it's like it it's not the actual reckless insanity of youth it just seems immature you know if you're going to make pop music when

your whole band is about 30 and remember that you know 30 was the old 45 um you have to make a choice you either be unashamedly childish or find a way for your age and experience to inform and enrich and deepen the music that you're making uh and i suppose some people would say the pretenders did that but to me they're a perfect example of a rock band that's too old to be silly and too dull to have any depth it's just you know it's lukewarm water and i've heard a lot worse and this isn't a bad song and their other bigots aren't terrible either. But you can say that about the police, you know, and they're impossible to love too, you know. And yeah, Sting and Chrissie Iron maybe got a bit more in common

than either might like to think. I don't know. It's just, you know, like Geldof, they don't have the decency to either be intriguingly smart or dumb enough to just fucking get on with it one thing that's just done my head in is i've i've had this image in my head while i was watching this episode of top of the pops chrissy hinder be there on stage first number one of a new decade and suzy quattro being the wings watching on approvingly at the younger generation taking the ball and running with it

fucking chrissy hines only one year younger than Suzy Quatro. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I quoted Hynde earlier on writing about Suzy Quatro. So yeah, they were kind of contemporaries in the early days. And also Chrissie Hynde, when she decided to pack in being a music journalist, sold her typewriter to Julie Birchall. Right.

So it's her fault. her typewriter's a Julie Birchall. Right. So it's her fault. Al, you're from Nottingham, obviously, which is not the North, but it's adjacent to the North. Yes, North adjacent. Yeah.

Is the phrase brass in pocket a thing there, or not? No, not brass, but I knew what brass meant. Because that's the weird thing, isn't it? She's dropping brass and bockle and all that kind of stuff. And reet. So reet and stuff like that. Yes, particularly so reet, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know what the northernisms are about, to be honest. Makes it sound like a rocking bet lynch. I think that's sort of something faintly charming about it, actually. But there we go, yeah. So the following week, brass in But there we go. Yeah. So the following week, Brass in Pockets slipped down to number two, replaced by Too Much Too Young. And the follow-up, Talk of the Town,

would get to number eight in April of this year. That lucky kid Jensen's got Chrissie Hynde on round table on Radio 1 tomorrow afternoon. Right time for me to go. I'm on the wireless in a minute. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye. At 17 we fell in love High school sweethearts

Love was so brand new We took the vows of man and wife Forever for life Reid, back under the-up of his signature, Schill's Tomorrow Night's Round Table on Radio 1 with Chrissie Hynde and Stuart Coleman, who led a protest march to the Radio 1 offices in 1976, demanding that they play rock and roll,

and was immediately offered a weekly show. Fucking hell, man. The way people got jobs back in the day, it's upsetting. That's how I got my job. At the Bowery District News, so, you know. Yes. Steady on. Oh, no, I'm not knocking it, mate. He'd also go on to produce this old house for Chicken Stephen. He then stumbles through his sign-off, leaving us with the sound of Too Hot by Kool and the Gang. We've covered Kool and the Gang in Chart Music 11 and this is the follow-up to Ladies Night the single that introduced them to the UK when it got to number nine in November of 1979. It's the second

cut from the LP Ladies Night it entered the top 40 last week and this week it's gone up six places from number 29 to number 23 and here's a snatch of it while we look at the credits i mean there has been a distinct lack of shots of the audience in this episode as we've pointed out which is which always upsets me and once again we've been denied at the death because we get that standard fisheye lens sweep over the studio lights, which is pretty boring when you've seen it over and over and over. But it does give us a chance to see how Top of the Pops would have looked like for Julian Cope when he was on. Yeah, but you're right, it's bullshit, isn't it?

It's like, fun time's over, go do your homework. You know, essentially. One thing I noticed by this episode, actually, and it's sort of thrown into relief by the sudden arrival of a funk disco act, there's been hardly any black artists on this show. There's been two members of the specials and B Devotion. Yeah. That's basically it.

So, yeah, the follow-up to Ladies' Night. Well, they're sort of this whole matchbox and boycotted. Well, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, the follow-up to Ladies' Night. Well, they saw Matchbox and boycotted. Well, exactly, yeah. So the follow-up to Ladies' Night, and it's midway between Ladies' Night and Celebration, both in terms of their discography and in terms of musical style. And it's very much the shark jump moment, I think, because Ladies' Night was just a fantastic, just a killer funk track.

They were still a sort of top quality funk band on Ladies Night. But from the moment they bring out Celebration, it's just cheese all the way, isn't it really? The cool and the gang. I don't want two decent ones. Get down on it. Well, after Celebration.

You can't offer that. Well, I can, you know, but we haven't got time. I'd rather dance, to be honest. Okay. I mean, all right, it's quite, this track, I mean alright it's quite this track Too Hot it's very slight nothingy I mean it's quite nice the Diodato

production it's the forerunner to Jones vs Jones isn't it yeah yeah it's divorce pop and the fact that we only get this song over the credits you know the Fish Eye Lens you don this song over the credits uh you know the fish eye lens you don't feel shortchanged by that you think well fine no it's in fact it's a perfect top and tail for the episode because we started with azimuth yes uh similar thing just you know sort

of funk instrumental sort of thing that you're not really that bothered about and and uh here we are at the end with with a funk track that's you know it you know it it just washes over you and it's not like the other week where we had born to be alive by patrick hernandez at the end getting us all fired up well we're getting me fired up anyway maybe not anyone else um so yeah um i suppose um it was it's just serving a function here on the show isn't it like let's take it home yeah i woke up today and realized because i've been quite ill this week, and I realised to my horror that I'd forgotten all about this one.

I haven't made any notes or given it any thought, so I'm afraid my contribution to this particular track is going to have... This episode, for me, is going to have the same kind of non-big finish as Mike Reid's presentation, where he just goes, right, I'm off, got to go on the radio. Bye.

And you're like, oh, okay. See ya. I don't mind this record but like most 80s cool in the gang, it's soppy in a way that you only barely get away with if you've got a rhythm section like this. And you never could otherwise. It's like their funkiness is flaking off and you can sort of see bits of cherish underneath you know i mean i mean if you can

forget that um you know it's quite nice can i check something though gone at the end of these bbc four repeats you get this fisheye lens you know yeah rolling around the studio lights for about a minute or two after the credits are finished so we end up hearing most of the song right well this program didn't actually end like that at the time no no no because i don't remember watching fairy lights through a gyroscope you know with no words on the screen for two whole minutes at the end of every top of the pops i think it's something i would remember yeah or something i should remember like thinking up something to say about

too hot by cool and the gang but managed to forget that so you know and that closes the book on this episode of top of the pops what's on telly afterwards i hear you say. BBC One immediately pitches into Wildlife on One where David Attenborough visits Zen, the macaque monkey who goes to work on a bike. Then it's Watch This Space, the Lisa Goddard, Peter Blake and Christopher Biggins sitcom about an ad agency. Then it's the Nine O'Clock News. Then Play For Today presents Thicker Than Water written by Brian Glover about a black pudding competition in Normandy. That's followed by the 1980 European Figure Skating Championships from Gothenburg and then Platform One, the interview show which this week features Sir Derek Rayner of Marks & Spencer's, who's just been appointed as Margaret Thatcher's personal advisor on wasting government.

Just been appointed as Margaret Thatcher's personal advisor on wasting government. BBC Two has begun its patently obvious The Guest, The Mad Invention quiz show featuring Julian Pettyfer and Wilf Lund, followed by the documentary series Public School, then MASH, then Man Alive asks if parents of a 15-year-old girl should be informed that she wants to go on the pill. Then it's Richard Stilgoe who takes another optimistic look at the news and events of the week with special guest Barbara Dixon. And they round off the evening with highlights from the final of the Benson and Hedges one day cricket world series cup between England and the West Indies. ITV have just started part six of The Victim in their armchair thriller series. Then it's TVI, the American cop show Chief of Detectives, The News at Ten, the local current affairs show Format V or Format 5, I don't know, regional news in your area, Lou Grant, and they

close out the night with the militaristic, God-bothering, close-down prayer with your boots on. So, me boys, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? Nothing, because I was in a prison camp and everyone there was treated like prisoners. Oh, mate. Well, specials are always a favourite, just for that essence of youth, which kids picked up on. And we would respond to stuff like The Regents.

You know, you've got a slimy, skanking singer and two grangey, all-voiced, you know, feminist theatre group girls doing silly dances. You did notice that. Nowadays, people, I think, would look at it and just think it looked like the early 80s. But, you know, it would have been noticed in playgrounds of the day. look at it and just think it looked like the early 80s but it you know it would have been noticed in

playgrounds of the day it was more stuff like sheila brackets and be devotion which looks stranger and more eye-catching now yeah but you know back then i don't know it's it that it was that kind of stuff was par for the course wasn wasn't it? Yeah, it was just a better version of other stuff that was around. When you're a kid, that distinction was too subtle. It was like between cheap and expensive pate. You wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. And what were you buying on Saturday? I didn't buy anything on Saturday because I was in prison.

But when we got to the Easter holidays, I bought a whole load of these, actually. Really? Yeah, whether I got them full price or got them sort of a knockdown When we got to the Easter holidays, I bought a whole load of these, actually. Yeah. Really? Whether I got them full price or got them sort of knocked down on one of those sort of greetings card spinners that used to put sort of discounted records on in newsagents and stuff like that. But I definitely owned the following. The Buggles, Boomtown Rats, Bee Gees, Dollar, Specials, Sheila Ruby Devotion, and the Regents.

And I didn't buy the pretenders at the time but you know years later I acquired it so yeah quite a lot of this episode is in my collection yeah buggles and specials I don't think Joe Jackson would have meant much to me as a kid I bought that as well fucking hell yeah yeah Beezy's record would just have sounded like the wind in a shrubbery at that age and Sheila Sheila B. Devotion would have felt like somebody else's business, I think. I went out and bought Too Much Too Young. Yeah, that's the one I bought full

price. I wasn't messing about with that. I just had to have it. No. And what does this episode tell us about January of 1980? A lot of the new wave is actually the old wave in disguise. Space Disco 1, Mum Disco 0 and Two Tone will save us all. Chilly, chilly and dark.

For some people that's an excuse and for others it's a reason to create, to generate warmth and light. I think pop's in rude health, judging by this episode of Top of the Pops in January of 1980. But the really strange thing is, how many of these acts are still going to be going in January of 1982? Dollar. Yeah. From strength to strength.

And that, pop-crazed youngsters, is the end of this episode of Chart Music. Promotional flange. www.chart-music.co.uk facebook.com slash chart music podcast get us on twitter chart music t-o-t-p money down the g-string patreon.com slash chart music thank you taylor parks yeah see ya big up you send Simon Price you're welcome my name's Al Needham

and hang on I can still do this wait a minute Danger Freaks Shark Music Shark music. I like your mother, sister and brother. I like your daddy, he's really cute. But Andy, Andy I love you. I wouldn't swap my Jubilee poster For all the Davies, souls in the world Oh Andy, Andy I love you

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Oh, Wendy, just you and me. I'd sit and check your parachute harness. Make sure there weren't no holes showing through. Cause Andy, Andy, I love you. We'd make small conversations Then write invitations To all our relations For the wedding day

Oh yes I can see Daddy in my eyes Mr. Rabbit Telling the world what to do And that includes you, no I'm only dreaming. What's wrong with dreaming? I'm only one of them to do. Oh, Wendy.

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